Your to-do list will thank you |
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Welcome to Decrypted, Digital Trends' daily newsletter guiding you through the latest news in the world of tech, with insights from our senior writers. |
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"For years, I've hopelessly careened from one to-do app to another — leaving behind a trail of embarrassing, long, and unfinished to-do lists," writes DT contributor Shubham Argawal. "I blamed this behavior on what I believed were imperfect services and I thought that eventually I would find the one that I would stick to. I was wrong.
The truth is, to-do apps are too intimidating for me. They are cluttered with all the tasks I am supposed to do and at the end of a day, they are a damning reflection of just how unproductive I have been — the last thing I want to be daily reminded of before bed. What was designed to aid me in getting my life in order, evolved into a constant source of anxiety.
In the last few months, as we increasingly relied on digital communications, I found myself spending more time in my email inbox than ever. It's where I was given writing assignments, scheduled interviews, alerted of pending bills, all of which I ended up adding to my to-do manager. Over time, lines of this regular back and forth between the email and to-do app blurred and I discovered the panacea for my to-do conundrum. After trying dozens of productivity apps, I figured out what I need to do to be better at to-do lists: Transform my email inbox into a task manager." |
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Apple's iOS 14 added a number of long asked-for features to its operating system, including a default way to organize apps in the form of the App Library, and, finally, the ability to add widgets to the home screen. Along with that ability, Apple redesigned widgets and how they work, giving them a modern flair, and some smart features.
But while they look nice, they don't really … do much now. And that's a problem.
Apple's philosophy around widgets drastically changed with iOS 14, and while that's mostly for the better, it also means that they can't really do much except offer "glanceable information." That means that you can no longer check off reminders in the Reminders widget — you can only see your reminders. Nor can you control your podcast or music playback. Turns out, this was all purposeful. |
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When new consoles came out in November, the PlayStation 5 seemed like the clear-cut favorite. But the more time that passes, the more the Xbox Series X's long-term value is coming into focus and making it this generation's true must-have system.
That might come as a shock. Even in our own reviews of the new consoles, we initially felt that the Xbox Series X was a "sports car with no gas." The system was clearly a technical powerhouse, but there simply wasn't much to play on it when it came to games. The console had virtually no exclusive games at launch, meaning it couldn't do much more than a good gaming PC.
By comparison, the PlayStation 5 launched with a lot of bells and whistles that made it a more appealing day-one toy. The DualSense provided a new way to play thanks to haptic feedback, the system's unique card feature, and a genuine game of the year contender in Demon's Souls. When writing about his first week with both consoles, Digital Trends writer Tom Caswell said, "I'm shocked with how little I even think about the Series X compared to my PS5, which I look forward to playing every single day."
I fully agreed with that assessment in my first weeks, but the tides have slowly changed and the Series X is steadily becoming my primary gaming machine, even over my PC. The change of heart is due to the way the wider Microsoft ecosystem is unifying my gaming experiences. |
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