The Oldest Software (Apps) I Regularly Use
Proof that applications are not ephemeral and that the long-term quality and stability of software truly matters.
Some VP of Whatever on LinkedIn was arguing in favor of the "ephemerality" of applications, claiming that what is really best in life is to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and…oh sorry got carried away there. I meant to say data. Data is what matters apparently, not apps.
Guess what? In some respects I can agree with that, which is why it's important as much as possible to use open file formats or work with applications which can easily import/export to common interchange filetypes.
But obviously (outside of internal tooling for specific orgs) we know that apps aren't ephemeral. And that's why I thought of going through this exercise of seeing what are the oldest software programs I use on a regular basis. It's a mix of local ("native") apps and web apps, of course. I also didn't includes obvious candidates like web browsers or system software (so no Apple Calendar, etc.).
So here we go: a non-exhaustive list of the long-term apps I use regularly ordered from oldest to newest—proving that good apps do indeed stand the test of time. (Note: I listed the years I started using them, not when they were first released.)
Are you revisiting the role computer technology should (and should not!) play in our lives? Make sure you don't miss another issue of Cycles Hyped No More:
Logic Pro (2002)
Logic is a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) originally developed by Emagic in the 1990s. When I first became a Switcher in 2001 with the ground-breaking release of Mac OS X and my beloved “TiBook”, I had to find a new DAW as a substitute for the Windows-only one I'd used previously (Cakewalk). It took a little while, but Emagic finally came out with a native OS X release (and almost immediately was purchased by Apple!).
Here's a funny anecdote for you: I was already aware of Emagic prior to this as they were one of the companies touting upcoming support for BeOS back in 1999. Alas, Be went kaput and Apple—being lead by Steve Jobs once again—won the “alternative to Windows” OS wars handily. Not the worst outcome, certainly.
I’ll also give a shoutout to Reason here as well, a product by the then-named Propellerheads Software. I started using Reason before I used Logic (gotta love the wordplay here!) as it was one of the very first OS X native music apps right out of the gate. Here’s the crazy part! I can still load up early projects from this time period in modern Reason today! In fact that’s how I was able to rework and release a new refresh of Ja Ja Break basically twenty years later. 🤯
BBEdit (2002)
I don’t always use BBEdit for text editing on the Mac, but when I do…. All kidding aside, when I switched away from Windows I had to find a good text editor for HTML and more besides, and BBEdit was the obvious candidate. The fact that it was already a well-known staple of macOS software and is still actively developed and modernized for the latest macOS releases is a testament to just how good this app was and is.
Lightroom (2007)
I know Adobe isn’t very well liked in a lot of indie creative circles these days, and honestly I don’t use any Adobe software myself other than Photoshop on rare occasions (I prefer to use Affinity Photo or Designer) and, of course, Lightroom.
What is now called Lightroom Classic was first released as a public beta for free, and that’s what got me hooked right away. I switched to the new cloud-based and mobile-friendly Lightroom a few years back, and it remains the way I engage with digital photography whether I’m using my Nikon Z fc or my iPhone. In fact, I often use Halide’s Process Zero functionality to take RAW iPhone images which I then process in Lightroom before posting. Virtually every photo on my Pixelfed account is a product of using Lightroom, so you be the judge.
Dropbox (2010)
I don’t recall when I first started using Dropbox in earnest, but I remember it becoming hugely important for me in the early days of using the iPad, so I’m just saying 2010. Dropbox is a weird company: they’ve tried desperately to become known for all sorts of things other than what their core competency is, which is storing and syncing your files across devices. I continue to use Dropbox for one reason and one reason alone: it just works. Hard to argue with 15 years of stability.
Day One (2012)
I began using Day One for journaling very early on in its product development, and now 13 years later it remains an app I interact with on a nearly daily basis. This is my diary. This app provides me with a personal record of my own life, which is very dear to me. Some folks have said that now that Apple platforms include the Journal app, Day One isn’t necessary. Hate to break it to ya, but you’ll have to pry Day One from my cold dead hands. Journal is hardly a substitute.
Harvest (2012)
Not much to say about this one. I use Harvest for time-tracking and invoicing for my freelance web development company Whitefusion. Harvest’s greatest feature is that it doesn’t change much at all. I use Harvest in 2025 in exactly the same way I used it in 2015. And that’s fantastic.
Jekyll (2016) / Bridgetown (2020)
Jekyll is a static site generator written in the Ruby programming language. Jekyll powers GitHub Pages and thus has been a popular way for developers to put up simple blogs or documentation sites for their projects. I fell in love with Jekyll nearly a decade ago and ported all my websites over to it starting with JaredWhite.com.
In 2020, I decided to fork Jekyll and create Bridgetown which is now what powers all of my web properties. I can honestly say if I didn’t use Bridgetown (and Jekyll before it), I wouldn’t have the faintest clue what I’d use to build sites in the future. (There are a couple of worthy contenders in the JavaScript space, but I don’t feel particularly motivated to switch to any of them…)
Fastmail (2018)
Much like Harvest, my favorite thing about Fastmail is it does the job. And keeps doing the job. And then keeps doing the job still. I’ve run all my emails and calendars on Fastmail for 7 years and counting, and I hope I never have to migrate to another provider again ever.
DuckDuckGo (2018)
It’s possible I used DuckDuckGo before this, but 2018 is when I first blogged about it so we’ll go with that. I switched from being a regular user of Google (like everyone else at the time) to using DuckDuckGo and never looked back. It’s true. I never use Google Search. In fact, there were once plenty of times when I’d occasionally fall back to Google when DuckDuckGo didn’t seem to surface the right information (usually some esoteric programming glitch or whatever), but I don’t do that now because Google sucks. Ruined by genAI. Even DuckDuckGo struggles to maintain coherency in the face of massive slop generation, but it’s still the best option I’ve found.
Hello Weather (2017)
I do use Apple’s native Weather app, but I have loved the design aesthetics of Hello Weather for quite a while now and continue to enjoy the app and its widgets on my devices. It may not be as “edgy” as another popular third-party weather app with a vegetable-themed name, but I’ll be honest: the last thing I need from a weather app is snark. Show me temps, show me a basic forecast, and then let me be about my business. 😂
Mastodon (2018)
When I started using Mastodon and discovering the Fediverse in 2018, it was all quite new at the time. Mastodon was around two years old as a project and missing a number of features we now take for granted (like following hashtags). I did switch back over to Twitter after a while (around the 2020-2022 timeframe), but once the news broke that Elon Musk was purchasing Twitter, I dropped that wretched platform like a hot potato and never looked back. At this point I just assume anyone still personally using X outside of strictly business reasons is a Nazi. Because remember, when you walk into a bar and you see Nazis hanging out and they haven’t been kicked out yet, you’re in a Nazi bar. Get out!
Screens (2018)
In the late 2010s, I started to take the idea of using my iPad as a “real” computer more seriously, opting to forgo using a Mac laptop for long stretches of time. In order to do this, I still needed to be able to remote log into my desktop Mac for certain tasks. And once Apple dropped its Back to My Mac feature for reasons I can’t fully explain, I really needed to be able to find a third-party solution to do this in a reliable way.
Screens (and the Screen Connect on the Mac) became that solution, and it’s made it possible for me to be an mobile iPad power user ever since. These days, I actually rarely do need to remote into my Mac as iPadOS has become quite capable all on its own, but for those times when it’s absolutely necessary, Screens is a lifesaver.
Bear (2019)
Markdown editors as well as note-taking apps have come and gone over the years—I was a Ulysses user for quite some time, and still use Apple Notes on occasion—but the one I eventually settled on and use religiously ever since with no signs whatsoever of stopping is Bear.
Again, to keep the theme going, it just works. I never have to worry about Bear not syncing, or weird bugs with editing or searching or tagging or anything like that. It also doesn’t change much from one time period to another. It’s just a good, reliable, and visually attractive tool for writers. A good deal of all the content I work on starts life in Bear; this very newsletter issue was in fact written in Bear. Of all the apps I worry about finding a suitable replacement for if I were to switch to using desktop Linux a ton, Bear is right at the top of the list. (Maybe the new Web version could help with that?)
code-server (2023)
And finally, this one’s not so old but its genesis is older so let me explain.
One of things I always struggled with regarding my experiment to go “full-time iPad Pro” is how to do coding work as a Web Developer. After far too many times wrestling with native code editors with SSH support, I arrived at the perfect solution. Since I’d already been using Visual Studio Code for some while on my Mac, I discovered I could use the open source “hosted” version of VSCode, code-server, as a way of “using” VSCode on my iPad with almost no real loss in fidelity or capability.
And that’s what I’ve been doing for two years now and counting. I never use a local code editor, even on my Mac. I’m always using code-server. I used to host it on my Mac directly, but due to traveling and other factors I decided to move to hosting code-server on a DigitalOcean droplet (aka VPS). Sure it costs some money every month, but for the ability to use the same editor on the same projects across my Mac, iPad, iPhone, and even desktop Linux if I wanted to, it’s absolutely worth it for me.
What are your favorite long-term apps?
I’d love to hear about the apps YOU enjoy using on a regular basis which have some real history to them. Prove, like I have, that applications are not ephemeral and that the long-term quality and stability of software truly matters. Feel free to email me at jared@intuitivefuture.com or ping me on Mastodon and I may include some of the standouts in a follow-up.
Thanks for reading Cycles Hyped No More. Be sure to subscribe so you never miss another issue, and I'll see you here again next week!
Cheers,
Jared ✌️
🤔🌩️ Things that make you think:
Looking elsewhere - Robb Owen
Against the backdrop of mass layoffs, LLMs, site-builders and vibe coding what does it mean to conscientiously build for the web, and where do we go from here?
Despite the questionable stewardship of our industry, the continued resilience of artisans in other fields gives me hope that the devaluation of crafting for the web is not inevitable, rather a matter of framing. Do I believe that any of the ideas presented here will be the miraculous savior of the web industry? Likely not, but then I equally do not believe that there is a single saviour to be found. Whatever the course, I do believe that we need to put in the work together, share our specialisms and then, perhaps, something will happen.
I'm in little doubt that, as long as there is big money to be made, the exploitative, VC-appeasing hype-cycle will rumble ever onwards. However, much in the same way that artisan-tailors and farm-to-table dining continue to work separately from the exploitative worlds of fast-fashion and fast-food, I have to believe that there can be another place—another market—for those of us who still care about the people and the craft. Not really a hard-reset, but a parallel fork of the industry that does right by its users and by the people working in it. Maybe it's misplaced idealism or perhaps it's foolishness, but I can't shake the hope of that place; some odd kind of hiraeth.