there are just too many apps it's like ridiculous like the amount of options there are how many different categories so how do you know when to replace it with another one how do you know which ones you should use I probably downloaded and installed a billion apps on my phone on my computer but I only pick up an app nowadays if I need a new problem solved so here's our rating scale at the top here we have S which we basically think everyone should use these These are the best apps in their category and at the bottom of the list we have D tier apps which are apps that we don't really think anyone should be using it all so the first category are project management apps no matter what career what job working with someone else that is probably one of the most valuable skills you can develop in life First St on the list is clickup clickup has like so many features it is extremely helpful extremely customizable and it is like more explicitly like projecty it is opinionated it's trying to get you to do project management I found it like too fiddly it's almost like I'm not enough of a project manager to be a true clickup user to me I like something with a bit more flexibility even though clickup does have so much flexibility in customization but I didn't like that rigid structure but just the feel of the the app is very like I'm going to do work right now I like apps that feel a little bit more calm more chill yeah I would give this a B I would have gone b or a but I think I'm fine with B also monday.com is our next candidate it seems nice it seems real friendly it's almost the opposite of what you talked about with clickup where it's like you're trying to make work too fun man so apparently Vibes matter a lot for project management first personally for me vies matter a lot for all apps that I use yeah but it will never seemed compelling enough for me to ever really dive in deep so I'd say probably like a unqualified C that's fair to me so there's a little app called notion that we're going to talk about next Maddie do you have thoughts it is the app that I personally use for running my entire business for managing my life for managing all my tasks all the projects and things that I work on regardless of whether it can do everything perfectly which I actually don't think it can I think notion is one of those apps that like it can do so much and can do everything pretty good but it's not like the best for anything at the Baseline it's like a Word document with nothing too fancy that you can collaborate with other people at like the top of it it's like you're recreating a lot of the other apps that we're talking about and customizing it just just for you so you can use it as a second brain as a note taking app you can use it for all kinds of things which I think is its downfall in a lot of ways for the average person is that that can be pretty intimidating if you are not careful you can easily suck hours and hours trying to build something that's just a dangerous line to sit on notion is like The Benchmark probably that we're going to measure a bunch of these other apps against I'm going to put notion at s tier with like an asterisk is s tier for so many areas of your life but it's an asterisk when you try to start using it for every area of your life Trello Trello was probably one of the easiest apps to get started and just get going with right out the box it's so simple it's really just a can band board you would just put something on it and you move them around to track your projects doesn't try to do more than it is yeah I'm going to put it at B just because it does what it does well but it doesn't try to do anything else and so it can't get any higher than a b so next one ASA so I bet that if you're really good at a sa it probably does all of this stuff like just as well or better but I wouldn't necessarily tell anyone to start using a SAA it's an app that's been around for a while and if you've built a lot of workflows and youve used it for a long time you probably you shouldn't leave this is probably a solid C tier definitely useful but I don't know if it's the people who are leading the pack anymore so jira kind of like AA and click we're talking about does have that very enterpris feel you know what it feels like to me it feels like when you go work somewhere and then they force you to use Microsoft teams whether you use it or not but it's like the Microsoft teams version of GitHub to me I would probably put jir in D tier I don't know why you would use this personally unless you're in an ecosystem where everybody else is using it okay so our next category is knowledge bases notion as a knowledge base it feels a little bit cumbersome to me I want it to basically be like I think and then it appears it's like the whole way that you set up notion is basically like a whole bunch of filing cabinets that you can put links together but that is very restricting in itself like you can't have something related throughout your entire knowledge based notion I would actually pull notion down from an S here if we're talking about knowledge based down to an A so the next app in knowledge Bas is Obsidian I've always uh actually really enjoyed obsidian obsidian has like one of the biggest like network of plugins like Community plugins all the things we talked about with notion that doesn't exist like the relational linking like creating back links super seamless really easy to do um if you like mark down that is where obsidian shines so you can like export your stuff um whenever you want to you can work offline it's almost like like libertarian vibe to obsidian where it's like Pure Freedom like this is it that said that's I think its downfall for me is like you can have a million plugins but I have to maintain it it's almost feels like it's like a WordPress website that I'm having to maintain all the time and I'm having to stay up to date and you have to really like I think be a very detail oriented almost like developer type person to get the most out of it I'd put it like a or b I want to put a tier just because I think it does lack a few things that I'd like but I want to put it up pretty high po Rome research they popularized linked notes they did backlinks which was a revolution at the time and is now just table Stakes for apps like this Rome were the like the punk rockers of the not taking space unfortunately the company just hasn't really executed on its original vision and I think a lot of other people are carrying the banner forward I would probably have to give this one a d tier at this time if you aren't already using Rome I think there is much better Alternatives so remote haven't talked about this app in a long time so remote is an app that Mike and I are actually helped found we're no longer currently working in it at all but remote is unique in knowledge bases where it's very student focused so their whole philosophy is space repetition flash cards it like will create using an editor um flash cards for you instantly and now I think they've even updated it where like there's AI generated flash cards that AI will just generate flash cards for you if you want to do like flashcards and anky style stuff remote's the best in class for that remote tries to do a bunch of other stuff that I think the other apps do just as well or better definitely worthwhile but I'm going to put it on a c relative to its competitors next up on the list is Tana so Tana is basically everything that Rome research wanted to be and is actually happening the cool thing about notion that I always loved is that basically you can enter things into your databases and then you can reformat them into all these different views like they can become a can ban or they can be a gallery or they could be a list Hanah has all of that but it also has like the linking that Rome research has that makes it very very easy to reuse your information you could put one thing in multiple places with basically a couple clicks so it's like the functions of notion but just happening at like this really rapid pace so I'm actually like launching a channel just about Tana which is why I'm so enthusiastic so I might be a little bit biased the one downside is that it is early so it actually is just coming out of beta in the next couple months but its beta version is more impressive than a lot of apps that I've seen like coming out and being multiple iterations in for me tan s tier probably through humility it should be like knock it down to an a because it's still it's got a lot to prove still I want to pull you back down on a just because it's still a beta boy like the first few months after launch is really wor that get stress test and battle tested with the with the world I'm hyped though I'm hyped to see what what happens with it log seek if you look at log seek it pretty much looks like Rome or remote it's an editor it has bullet points that go and everything it includes all the back links all the relational linking um the one thing that log does have over most of these other apps though is that it's open source just that fact alone I do think log seek has an advantage especially if you're a little bit more technical in your orientation like especially if you're a developer or something along those lines cuz then you can get even more power out of it as such like doesn't offer like a crazy amount more than a lot of its other competitors that would give it probably a c I would say C I think it's a a strong app for the right type of person relatively Niche so reflect is really interesting uh it was one of those Rome copycats back in the day but then actually it's gotten it's more simple than Rome it reminds me of like a more advanced Apple notes it's a step below notion in terms of like intimidation Factor so I'd say it's just like a very clean solid modern note-taking app and actually like does a great job at what a lot of these other ones I think don't do which is like abstracting a way the complex for me I would give it a b tier I wouldn't really use it personally because I am more of like a power user Evernote I used to use Evernote back when I was in college back then it was pretty simple like you can store notes you can make folders All That Jazz man for for all these other apps that we're talking about here with all the back linkings relational linkings all these other features Evernote just to me doesn't really feel that need and the fact that it's also just not free for what it can do for the paid versions to me doesn't seem worth it Evernote basically invented this category um that we're talking about so it's got a lot of people who have been using it for ages but it is now pretty outdated it's gotten more and more expensive over time so if you're on Evernote and it's doing the job for you by all means stay there anyone else I would say like strong DTI rating like this the world has continued to move and everno has stayed in one place so me is interesting so they really I think they had first mover advantage in recognizing that AI would be helpful to a note-taking app and as such they had like a nice early reputation for being the AI not taking up unfortunately I think they never quite got it off the ground and never quite got into a polished experience now ai is kind of like a standard feature in a lot of these apps or is becoming one rapidly so I don't think me actually has that much to differentiate itself anymore I think I'm going to have to deter it uh D+ D+ I apologize me Apple notes it's the the easiest app to understand that if you have a Macbook or you have an iPhone it's going to sink across your devices and one of the newer features they added is the fact that you can collaborate in documents now with other Apple users it does what it's supposed to which is basically just capture things quickly easily in a way that you can find again quickly you can tag things if you want you can put things in folders if you want um but really the nice thing is if you have an Apple device it syns across everything so I'd say this is like kind of like the standard and it makes like every other app have to raise their game I agree it's the bench it's the bar because it comes standard with an iPhone S see seems overstated just because it is a simple app I'd say solid a so kopio is like a super Indie note taking app uh has tons of character it's basically original aesthetic which is carried on is like 9s internet I think it's a very fun way to brainstorm put a bunch of visual concepts together in a pleasing way and I just like its Indie Vibes I would give kopio a a SE here yes calendars let's hit them quick Apple calendar is basically the same way I view about Apple notes it's like it is what calendar should do it comes default on all devices I want to give it a b tier Google Calendar are great like inviting people to things is awesome being able to have automatic Google meetings it does a good job of like you can have multiple calendars and turn them on and off I like the fact that you can import calendars in Google Calendar I will say that the Google Calendar interface is not very intuitive most places you just click on your name or you click on like file but this one there's like a random Cog that you to click on so like I'd end up just syncing my Google Calendar to any other calendar I use and then not using Google Calendar but using Google Calendar C because I use Gmail let's give it a c tier just to rebel against that notion calendar previously known as KRON just like these other apps you can import Google Calendars into it and so I just use it to manage all my Google Calendars um but the most important thing to know about nocean calendar is that it does have beta is version of two-way sync with your notion having that integrate with your task manager has been like the biggest unlock for me in terms of my productivity it's very hotkey based there's a lot of hot Keys a lot of shortcuts a lot of like cool automation things you can do um in terms of like quick scheduling meetings um showing multiple time zones in your calendar with like one button so I think just because of those little quick speeds um speed efficiency things I would put it into an a right now next up email huh I'd say Gmail is sort of the standard it's sort of bloated over time they add all these Google features into it there's actually like a lot of nice hot keys and things like you can archive reply forward like have it automatically archive when you send you can keep all of your threads Allin one send in the future which used to be something you'd have to have a plugin for I would give Gmail like an a tier rating for email personally hey I think is just like kind of marketing hype I don't I don't know that much about it it doesn't seem to meaningfully differentiate itself from its competitors I think the thing that they were trying to do is like Auto categorizing your emails and having like stock responses and things like that it's it felt very gimmicky to me so I would say like C tier have you used superhuman I'm familiar with it but I always personally this is personal preference I always thought it was ridiculous to pay for an email apps I never did it it feels like Alfred or like raycast for eail where it's like you're getting a little bit of an edge that you wouldn't have otherwise I would probably put that also with C tier good app if you can if you want to pay for an email so the next category of apps that we're going to touch on here are on the creative Spectrum uh video editing apps first one on the list We Got Is Final Cut Pro so if anyone is a Mac User this is like their Flagship video editing app they try to make it userfriendly you can get as granular detail K as you want with things like transitions with things like uh color grading yeah I think Final Cut Pro is uh phenomenal if you are a like Pro suer if you're a YouTuber and you edit your own things I think Final Cup Pro is fantastic it's super easy to use really easy to pick up the magnetic timeline one big downside to it if you want to add like a lot of complex animations it's possible but most of the industry is in Adobe After Effects which works better with Premiere so if you want to become a pro editor like do it as a living there's a pretty significant downside to specializing in Final Cut Pro if you want to get more advanced I would say overall I would give Final Cut Pro in a tier so Adobe Premiere is basically I would say the incumbent and even Hollywood is starting to use this app more it's more likely to crash on you than Final Cut Pro is but it's also more powerful and its ability to integrate with After Effects just makes it a much more scalable solution so if you are wanting to be a pro editor I'd say Adobe Premiere is a really good option uh I would give Adobe Premiere be just because I think it's difficult to use has a higher learning curve overall D Vinci resolve um it originally was more for color grading and is still fantastic at that it's probably the best for color grading specifically it is also free you can pay to get more stuff but is free unlike a lot of these and they've been making many improvements to just the video editing to the point where a lot of folks who would have done Premiere or Final Cut are now using res so I'd say it's an upand Comer and is a really good one to get into if you haven't started editing yet so I would probably put it at a B tier just because I don't know it that well so descript is one of those apps that they're changing the whole landscape of what video editing looks like for most video editing software that you use you look at a timeline you look at your your video and your audio kind of separate channels whereas descript the main focus is actually on the transcript itself and so you can basically edit in entire video on descript without listening to or seeing anything and with their whole push with AI you can even like clone your voice simply by typing it in as you would like a blog post or a newsletter I think it is a little bit janky in terms of stability sometimes just because of the stability issues at times I would just give it an a My Hope Is that everybody's forced to copy them they're starting kind of at the like consumer casual level and I think they could very easily go up and like eat the Pro apps that we tou discussed so Luma Fusion is actually the first app that I ever started editing with probably one of the premium experiences for video editing on iPad very easy to use intuitive great hand gestures I would give it a solid B tier just because it's also on iPad so you can't really get as technical or fast and then cap cut I have not used cap cut cap cut feels like canva for editing where they just make it so easy and so intuitive and so unintimidating to get started that if you're doing a simple editing project it feels like a great option I think it's got a lot of potential but I'd put it at a c for now because I think it's got a lot of competition Community platform so longterm I think more and more people are going to be teachers online whatever area of expertise you're trying to build as long as you're one step above someone else then you have something you can share and you have something you can teach first one on the list here is a app that has gained quite a bit of popularity lately is the app called school it does a great job at exactly what it's intended to do you can host courses on there there's a lot of gamification aspects inside community building which is natively built in like leveling up like engagement to and like heat maps to see who's active who's not active very simple you get everything if you just pay that one monthly plan so for me I am much less bullish on school as it is right now as somebody who's built courses for the last like decade and has seen platforms come and go there are better or equal Alternatives out there and it feels mostly like marketing right now and mostly like excitement right now so I'm excited to see where school goes right now for me it feels sort of C tier I have high hopes for it with the names behind it right now which leads us to Circle I think Circle are great they basically leveled up the idea of taking Community elements seriously it is very clean it is easy to manage it's it just feels really like the modern version of a course hosting platform with Community features and then importantly like every single year they are improving the product which gives me a lot of confidence in them as a product I would put Circle at a tier in terms of course building right now so the next app is mighty I've purchased products and I've been part of communities that have been on mighty mighty felt like a glorified Facebook groups with more structured courses hosting and DMs and stuff like that I'm going to give it a c also next we have Discord so Discord The Gamers brought us Discord and then now it's like a legitimate slack alternative basically if you want to do things live at like a highp speed Cadence and especially if you're like younger and hipper Discord might be for you I would say downside of Discord is the same as it's upside it's pretty chaotic lots of energy lots of chaos lots of Vibes yeah I I love Discord though that is where our community is hosted so to me where Discord really shines is the fact that there is live chat and you can have as many live chat channels as you want there's also forums that you can create the main thing is just the ability to hop in on a call with someone like instantaneously and um just start sharing video and so that's something that differentiates it probably from I don't know if any of the other ones can do that it's an a without the course I mean you technically could Frankenstein course hosting which is what we actually tried with study Quest a long time ago it was just a nightmare let's just go with a B everyone's favorite slack slack feel amazing it's still amazing and it feels like slack has entered its corporate era where now it's not you don't necessarily feel good joining a slack I know slack is so like enterpris now I view slack more so for like operational or like business if the corporate Vibe actually enhances what you're trying to do then slack would be great because it's like a more refined version of Discord for our purposes that feels like a c rating the Facebook group I would say d tier unless that's where your audience is features aren't great it's clunky if your audience is on Facebook then you'd be dumb not to be there but most people are not launching vibrant Facebook groups and there are better options so so I would say d tier so kajabi to me feels like very solid almost boring but very dependable like video hosting at scale you're going to be spending a lot more time maintaining your Discord than you are going to be maintaining your kajabi um even your circle is going to be a lot more work so if you've got a simple course that you just want to distribute to people on a polished platform it feels like a good option it probably does a good job I mean it's just it's just one of those apps as like it just feels like it's so solid it's been there for a long time but it doesn't excite me at all so yeah I'd say B tier but also I haven't used it that much social media we're going to take the specific lens for this one I think of how useful it is to someone if they have a business or a Creator or trying to use social media to like Advance their career or get a job or something practical well I guess we would be dumb if we didn't start off with YouTube is it good that you're here you're about to find out I love YouTube I mean I want to say it YouTube's great because I feel like a lot of other platforms you can get away with like making content putting a a picture of myself in a caption so the barrier to entry of YouTube is far higher than the other ones but the payouts are substantially better I think in terms of AdSense in terms of if you're trying to convert an audience to a product or to trust you the trust Factor YouTube is a probably better platform for that just cuz you need to get cameras you need to understand how to edit or hire an editor biggest downside from my perspective is just like the time and cost and the skill that you need to do it well because either you're already really good at creating video media or you will have to spend a lot of time becoming good at it right but once you do it can change your life I put YouTube as s tier I think everyone should be doing it nice Instagram so this used to be the place that we put filtered selfies on and now I'm not really sure what it is but it is just a sort of like weird in between space that has managed to stick around there has been a shift in Instagram in terms of the investment that you do have to put in there there's so many different styles of content you can can make a story you can make carousels you can make posts you can make reals you can make videos there's just a lot to think about like that's a pretty good way to build an audience and it converts better than I would say some of the other platforms you're almost creating a variety show I put this at B tier probably agree with you there X formerly known as Twitter I have always really really wanted to like Twitter SLX but I just never could and I don't know why that is as it's become more algorithm driven it almost had the feeling of like a more public Discord for quite a while um in particular I think the thing that's best about X right now is that if you are a someone who's doing creative work of any kind it's the best place I think to like share your portfolio so like if you're a thumbnail designer a video editor X is actually one of the best ways to get discovered and people will love that you're promoting yourself and they will want to connect with you and they'll hire you from there X is really underrated as like a career platform he makes some good points I always going to go C but I guess we can go B I'd say B possibly declining it feels like it's moving towards C Tik Tok the place that people go to waste time on the perfect amount of dopamine to keep you engaged of any platform AdSense from Tik Tok that the Creator fund is abysmal almost everyone who's like well known on Tik Tok wants to be on a different platform I personally would put Tik Tok at a solid D tier I'm going to say the same just because I feel like I'm a cranky old man also now so LinkedIn the most sty boring chilling place that you could possibly go has actually become kind of interesting lately um so they managed to incorporate like an algorithm and a Newsfeed and actually a place where I might find interesting things and make interesting connections basically it's a writing platform unlike YouTube where you need to spend a bunch on gear you can just get started and start getting better yeah totally agree LinkedIn is definitely that up andc Comer even though they've been around forever I think it still currently has the reputation of like not really for creators as much or like for entrepreneurs it's more for like networking if you're trying to like find someone who worked at another company or a job so it's very much to like the traditional social media I guess a little bit business broy I'd say still C tier but heading heading up the SL right Reddit I actually don't use Reddit much anymore I used to be fairly addicted to Reddit back in college yeah Reddit in general is pretty aggressive against self-promotion learning or getting a second opinion I use Reddit a lot as a search engine and it's an interesting way to find like less SEO rigged results it's actually really interesting for like research the anonymity of it makes it seem like it's so credible like why would they lie the more gamed that every other system gets the more useful red is not cuz it's become more useful but cuz every other source gets more more tarnished yeah I would just give it a c just because if it's just for research purposes then yeah I would say C note taking specifically like pen and paper using your hand with these new apps like you can really get creative with a lot of different ways to express yourself we'll start with notability it's probably like was the gold standard of note taking apps back in the day it's very clean easy folder management system I like how simple it is there's like a few pens highlighters lasso move things around you can shade you can color pretty solid I would give it a a b tier so good note 6 is the next app on this list if you are someone more aligned with power features you want something that can do more customization has more control over like the finess of your pencil tip how many things you can have in your toolbar good note 6 might be a better option I'm going to give it a b also Concepts Concepts has unlimited canvas and that is something that I've wish all these other apps would just put in like imagine if your textbook instead of five pages was just one big canvas you know that's really how your brain actually thinks and so I think Concepts just for having the unlimited canvas would push itself to an a freeform is a free app this is Apple's handwriting app you can share it with other Apple users you can airdrop it I don't like it as much just because the customization is a little bit limited but it's an Apple app it's pretty solid I'm going to give it a c one note is available for non-apple users it's actually a really powerful app though this is the app that I used before I move to the Apple ecosystem it can upload PowerPoints PDFs really well you can handdraw you can type notes on it you can search like handwritten words as well as text stuff overall I I don't have anything bad to say about it honestly I might get an A pen and paper I use digital tools all the time and I still find myself using notebooks pretty often it unlocks creativity in a way that's really interesting and it simplifies things and the constraints I think are helpful it's the best option if you get distracted easily while you take notes or you write I would put pen and paper with s tier just cuz I think it's so great let's give it an a tier it's just like a burden to carry around it's a burden that you can't white boards I feel like are basically pen and paper but for a group whiteboards are one of our secret superpowers in my marriage like being able to visualize things on a whiteboard I found just to be such a good like creativity and consensus making mechanism at the same time that I have not found a single replacement for and is one of the biggest disadvantages of remote work and by white War you're saying like the typical big giant on the wall yeah like a a giant I think you can maybe it like got a big old white and we've got small ones that we have hidden around the house you can achieve the same whiteboard effect with like collaborative like good note 6 has lifetime collaboration yeah I guess there's something about like being in person let's give whiteboard B tier because you need to be with another person in the same room yeah and they're a bit hard to bring around Lightning Run for browsers Google Chrome i' would say a tier it's really good it's solid agreed it's great Safari uh I would say d tier it's fine but why would would you use it over any of the other ones I would put a little bit higher than a d I think it's just like native to to Apple stuff it's uh it's pretty reliable but it's not very fun to use I agree with you going to give it a c we can be in the middle Firefox I have no opinion I haven't used Firefox in probably a decade yeah same let's let's call it D tier then next up is Ark I love Arc right now Ark is up and coming they're great option for anyone who likes a more fun kind of browser you can personalize you can customize you can use automations and hotkeys instead of a top toolbar like all these old school browsers it's on the left side bar development team is amazing so I'm going to give Ark an a with a potential to go to s in the future Microsoft Edge I don't know anyone who uses this I don't use it but I think that it is a browser that you could use so I give it a D2 design so canva um I I kind of look down on canva for some reason there are a lot of people who use it and swear by it so I think I'm probably just an unsophisticated canva user is my guess yeah I love canva I AG with you that it is pretty simplified but that's kind of the appeal to it is that you don't need to have design skills you can just hop in and there are templates and it's so easy to click and drag and build something that looks pretty good it looks good enough so it's like the perfect like dummies design tool which is what I needed because I'm not a designer at all yeah I want to go for a b just cuz I love it too so figma in my opinion is the opposite of Canova where if you do have a design experience and you do know a bit about any kind of uiux this would be like why would I ever use canva I would give figma I don't know if I would go lower than a b seems like a b if canva gets a b so next up Photoshop kind of gold standard shared language with other designers in a corporate setting I think makes Photoshop and the Adobe sweet hard to beat um but yeah expensive and a high learning curve so I'd say a tier with the caveats of you got to be ready uh pixler is basically like a lighter end version of Photoshop that you can just access in your browser in a pinch so if you have some photoshop esque abilities it can do most of what Adobe can so it's been super invaluable to me for just doing basic graphic design thumbnail mockups I think it's a really solid option so I'd give it a b tier and I think it's worth mentioning uh music apps Spotify pretty much the library of every music person on the planet and a lot of podcasts are on there I think Spotify has a superior discovering feature for music and playlist making it's exceptional I would give Spotify n Year all the apps that have led up to this point basically it has has combined them together and does it a little bit better as long as you pay for the premium version the free version is absolutely unusable you can't search for songs or anything yeah so Pandora I haven't used in a long time but it used to be the best way to find new music it had like a great algorithm uh before algorithm based music finding was really a thing since then Spotify I think has surpassed it in every way imaginable so I would give Pandora a d tier for me Pandora is a d but YouTube music is actually the app that I use now since I already pay for YouTube premium it comes with YouTube music sometimes you don't even want to rely on an algorithm to curate music for you I want to rely on like a specific artist to curate music for me and so instead of having a machine do it I want my favorite you know like Fred again I want him to compile it for me and then put a 2our set out there and so I just let YouTube which is Creator focused present me what they think is the best like two hour mix or 3-hour mix that's why I think YouTube is great and also you get video with it especially if they're doing some cool like viy nature shot then it's great background Ambiance as well different purposes for the different listener but I would also give YouTube a nest here so brain FM the idea of this is It's a website that supposed to get you into Focus uh I tried it for a while doesn't seem to do it um and I don't mind like Progressive and trans music too but this felt like procedurally generated a brain FM is very specific Niche for the type of person who's like only looking to be productive and only is using music not as music but as noise and so from a music perspective it's almost insulting that you're just having like robots curate you like this brain hacking sound I would give it is C or D I'm offended now too so D cheer it is Apple music I'm familiar enough with apple music it has all the same songs and stuff but like it just doesn't I don't know it's not as it just doesn't feel as good I give it a c minus for the same price as Spotify it's like why on Earth would you pay for Apple music I haven't used SoundCloud in a long time um it it used to be a cool way to find original uh music from people who were not yet popular I feel like Spotify has become a place where a lot of that music gets uploaded now I mean SoundCloud always has a soft spot in my heart just because again I I did produce music before but I do think it does have a use case if you are a certain type of Creator specifically a DJ because if you pay for SoundCloud premium you actually have access to soundcloud's library to stream and use in mixes and stuff just for like casual listening it's search featur is not that great so I would give it a a good old C so quick video recording so Loom is the app that I feel like popularized this yeah they kind of made of yeah noun for it just being able to shoot off low production value but still comprehensive videos I think is really really helpful so you can save so much time so some kind of app like Loom I would say s tier level contribution to your life if you don't have one um Loom specifically will give an a tier cuz that sounds like there are alternatives the script does have a screen recording feature that's built into it and it basically does exactly what Loom can do the main caveat being that you can record a video for longer than 5 minutes which is pretty great I guess it would also get an A and I think it was a previously so it maintains it's a r okay cool yeah it maintains the a kodo deck the reason I think this is a pretty decent Loom alternative is because it is far cheaper and it also has a pay once for Lifetime option pretty good option I would give it I just give it a b so screen Studio this is the app that I use for all of my YouTube videos really high quality screen captures and there's AI in inside of it where any Mouse clicks you do or any movements you do it'll automatically zoom in and zoom out 4K 60 frames per second um screen recordings I'm going to go with it a b just because it's a oneman show and the updates are a bit slower screen flow is very similar to screen Studio but it is a little bit older but it is very solid very good at recording screen and footage but it sounds like screen studio is better um unless it's buggy or there's some other stuff with it being new based on what I just heard I'd probably give it a c if you're starting fresh sounds like green studio is just a better product lightning round productivity apps Alfred is basically a suite of little things so for example when you copy things to your clipboard uh Alfred very kindly will hold on to all of those things for you so you can pull them back up Alfred can also complete text for you is very lovely so I never write my full address out comma ad and then my address Pops in magically solid B raycast is apparently the better version of Alfred I don't use it so I'm just going to have to trust people and I'm going to give it an a text sniper basically it's just like a superior way to grab and copy paste text out of things highlight an area of your screen and then it will copy the text out of whatever you scan and you can grab text out of images it doesn't sound like it would change your life but it probably will so it's an a clean shot you are recording and capturing portions of your screen or you can capture like your screen scrolling B tier it's really nice to have but not essential task management very essential first app on this list here is an app called motion not notion motion you just assign priorities and then it will automatically like reposition any task if something comes up I think it's cool in theory but I don't want an AI to tell me what to do all the time I'm actually going to give it a c tier things I like things a lot it's just very clean it's got good hot Keys it's it's a nice app it's reliable the downside of it I think is it's relatively expensive especially if you want to get like it on mobile and desktop probably a b Todo us my understanding is it's also solid and it is not macb B so more people can access it let's give it a b Apple reminders it's good and so if you like Simplicity if you're not looking for anything fancy does what it does well I really like reminders it's the one app that I basically allow to interrupt me to make sure that I'm doing something which I think everybody should have one so you don't have to be constantly remembering things like take out the trash tonight I would give it an a tier so structured is a pretty good app it has an inbox click and drag to move them onto your calendar kind of marketed it as like the ADHD person's tool it's pretty good I use it for a bit but I generally don't need that much structure in my life B AI dolly dolly is really great prompting is really really good at creating images it's a great way to come up with mockups to come up with designs do use Dolly quite often since I'm on gbt 4 it comes with the with a subscription for it be tier to me but I will get the job done Gemini it's apparently better than dolly in terms of creating photo realistic images sounds like B tier as well when we don't know we go B the only thing I know about art Forge Labs is the fact that it can do focus on like a theme and continue giving you the same outputs in that same theme so for that reason it could be more useful if you're trying to build a brand or like a mood board or something sounds like a solid C tier to me so mid Journey allows you to be precise and then to iterate recursively whatever inputs you just put in it like rep puts it in I was really really impressed with it you can actually upload an image as a reference and then it will create Styles based on that so your prompting has to be less precise nowadays I like mid Journey I'm going to give it an a Very viy yeah this was the definitive list for pretty much anything full stack from student to Creator to professional to designer to productivity junkie yes these are a lot of different tools that you can experiment with as you start to build your character for this future of productivity but uh it also requires a lot of effort to get into them and so it's easy to like get started realize that the learning curve is steep and then jump ship too quickly give it a few weeks to see if it's the right fit and if there are any of these apps that were especially intriguing let us know I make sure Mike and Maddy get right on that this has been a pleasure yeah that went way longer than I expected I'll be honest