Let’s talk about the AI bubble, note-taking app dilemmas, and Apple’s latest hardware. If you have been feeling a bit of AI fatigue lately, you are not alone.

The Verge Doesn’t Hate Tech (They Just Hate The AI Bubble)

People have been coming for The Verge recently, claiming they “hate tech” because of their negative coverage.

But here is the reality: they are just telling the truth about the AI hype cycle.

• The “Vibe Coding” Disconnect: The AI crowd in San Francisco is obsessed with optimizing processes and vibe coding. Meanwhile, 90% of consumers have zero use for pulling up a terminal to use Claude Code.

• No “iPhone of AI”: There is no consumer product that is universally recommendable yet. Right now, companies are asking normal people to pay $20 a month for tools they cannot plainly explain to a five-year-old.

We are entering an era where companies ship broken software behind paywalls under the guise of “future improvements.” If the value proposition isn’t clear, it’s not a consumer product yet.

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My 30-Day Obsidian Experiment

I have been testing Obsidian with Claude Code for the last three weeks. I wanted AI access across my notes, seamless Readwise integration, and unmatched linking.

The Good:

• Split View: Having two notes open side-by-side in the same window is incredible for writing.

• The Web Clipper: It is the best in the game. It pulls full YouTube transcripts effortlessly and offers offline markdown previews.

The Bad:

• The Plugin Problem: Relying on unpaid community developers means tools can break or be abandoned at any moment. That is a massive risk for a business.

• Syncing: iCloud sync and offline mode just do not work smoothly enough for a mobile workflow.

The Verdict: My 30 days are almost up, and Notion is likely next. Notion AI currently feels like the market leader for actual system building and knowledge retrieval without the headache of managing abandoned plugins.

Apple’s Hits & Misses

We finally got our hands on the new $600 MacBook Neo in Blush. It is an absolute hit.

• The Hit: It has incredible build quality, a small footprint, and plenty of power for everyday tasks. It feels sturdier than expected. It is no wonder this machine is having a record-breaking launch week.

• The Miss: The AirPods Max 2. They cost $569, feature the exact same heavy design, and still use that stupid purse case. They updated the chip, but skipped fixing the physical flaws. Skip these and look for a discount on the older models.

(Side note: I am seriously considering replacing my M2 Max Mac Studio and M4 Pro MacBook Pro with a single maxed-out, M5 Max MacBook Pro to end my file-management nightmare once and for all.)

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Rapid-Fire App Updates

• Notion: Added custom AI skills for repetitive tasks and new dashboard views.

• Obsidian: Launched a command line interface, letting AI agents navigate your vault, link files, and manage plugins locally.

• Craft: Focusing heavily on speed and polish for 2026, with Kanban support teasingly on the horizon.

For more you can check out the full episode here:

Thanks for reading, I’ll be back next week with some thoughts on Apple’s latest iPadOS update that has been very controversial for power users.

Connect with me:

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Spotify

Apple Podcasts

Website

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Between the AI model wars trading punches every few days and the undeniably strange cast of characters running these tech giants, it is hard to figure out which tools are actually built to last. But my conflict with Obsidian goes deeper than just the software.

It is a conflict of philosophy.

If you prefer to watch this podcast is available on YouTube, Spotify and Apple.

The File Over App Rebellion

In case you aren’t familiar, Obsidian is a markdown, plain-text notes app. It is entirely user-supported, built by a tiny team of less than 10 people. The CEO is adamant about not taking VC money and not growing the team. Instead, they rely on a massive ecosystem of community-built plugins to drive new features.

On one hand, this is a beautiful rebellion against modern software.

Their entire ethos is “file over app.” By default, everything lives on your computer’s hard drive as plain text. You own the files. If Obsidian ceases to exist tomorrow, you don’t lose a single word.

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This philosophy was born out of trauma.

If you used Evernote back in the day, you probably remember the exact moment you felt trapped. They jacked up the subscription prices, and suddenly, users with tens of thousands of notes realized they had no recourse. They didn’t own their data; they were just renting access to it.

Obsidian is the ultimate insurance policy against that ever happening again.

Is It Worth The Friction?

But here is where the tension lies: Is an insurance policy worth the friction?

In today’s hyper-competitive economy, it is incredibly easy for a tiny, stubborn company to get replaced. A well-funded competitor can come along, clone the best features that Obsidian’s community spent years building, wrap it in a better user interface, and take over.

Obsidian’s defense to that threat is essentially, “Well, you have your files, so you can easily move to the new app.” It is a wildly counterintuitive way to run a business. The leadership comes off as condescending—sitting on a moral high horse about “free” apps and local files.

And frankly, regular people don’t care about markdown files. They don’t know what a terminal is, let alone how to open one. They just want an app that works.

The Notion Dilemma

Take Notion, for example.

In my circles, people love to crap on Notion because it is online-only, you don’t own the files, and you have to pay for it.

I even crap on Notion for those exact reasons.

But I will admit this: Their implementation of AI is arguably the most useful out of any app on the market.

It has the full context of your entire database built-in. You can tag a specific document and ask it questions directly. It is frictionless. Yes, your data is locked in the cloud, but you are actually getting work done.

The Tinkering Trap

Personally, I am still caught in the middle. I just set up a brand new Obsidian vault specifically to manage the markdown files for my website, entirely separate from my “second brain.” It is incredibly satisfying to write a post, keep all the connections, and then literally just drag the markdown file into the right folder to push it to the live site.

But I also have to ask myself: Is this actual productivity, or just a sophisticated form of procrastination?

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Tinkering with tools—whether it is setting up a new Obsidian workflow or using Claude Code to rebuild a website—is fun.

I have an engineering brain; I enjoy the tinkering. But it is a huge distraction. When you are trying to juggle a YouTube channel, a podcast, a newsletter, and content across Threads, X, and TikTok, the system often breaks down.

Recently, I found myself completely losing track of what I had scheduled to post and where.

Despite all the philosophical debates about data ownership and the magic of plain text, I still find myself plugging away in Apple Notes for my day-to-day life.

I wish it looked better.

I wish it had more features to handle the sheer volume of stuff I have going on.

But it just works.

Ultimately, the tool you use matters infinitely less than what you put into it. The “file over app” mindset is great for preserving your history, but if the app itself is causing you to spend more time organizing than creating, it might be time to rethink the system.

I had my first-ever guest on Press Pause, and it was long overdue!

Tom Anderson — Apple enthusiast, IT professional, and co-host of the Basic AF Show joined me for a conversation about notes apps, AI tools, devices, and the eternal question of whether the madness of chasing new apps ever ends.

We covered a lot of ground, so let’s get into it. You can find the episode on:

YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts

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Notes Apps: Picking a Home Base

The question I always come back to is: why do we keep switching?

Tom has been on Craft Docs since 2020, with one detour through Bear along the way. He left temporarily when Craft seemed to be chasing the enterprise market and that shift gave him pause. But Craft eventually came back to its roots as a personal knowledge management tool, and Tom came back with it.

Craft is now 90% of where he works, both for personal projects and work.

What makes Craft stick for Tom is the document-as-container model.

You don’t just have flat notes, you have documents that can hold nested subpages, which is a game-changer for project work. One thing that trips up new users is the difference between a card and a page inside a document. They’re functionally the same thing (both are just subpages), but the card gives you a visual, styled block while a page shows a small icon and preview text.

It sounds simple, but it’s one of the first things people ask about in the Craft community.

For me, Apple Notes is still home base.

But I’ll be honest, search in Apple Notes has been frustrating. You can type the exact title of a note and it’ll surface two or three results that have nothing to do with it.

That’s a gripe I need to make a video about, because for a tool that’s supposed to be simple and fast, that’s a meaningful miss.

A few takeaways from our notes app conversation:

• Apple Notes is genuinely good enough for 90%+ of people. The real question is whether you are in that 90%.

• The all-in-one solution — one app to rule all your notes, tasks, and projects is probably a dream we never quite reach.

• The right tool for the job matters more than picking the “best” app. Tom’s wife is perfectly happy with the Apple native stack. His dad is a carpenter with a basement full of different tools for different jobs. Same idea.

Tom also mentioned that Craft’s task system has been replacing Things 3 for him.

The pitch is compelling: when you click into a task, it becomes a full Craft note. You can sketch, add images, build tables — all within the task itself. So instead of taking notes in Craft about a task you’re tracking in Things, you just stay in Craft.

It’s still a work in progress, and Tom gave it the year to prove itself, but early results are promising.

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AI: Useful Tools and Real Risks

AI came up a lot and not just the polished, consumer-facing stuff.

There’s been a wave of open-source AI agents that let you install a chat interface on your local machine and connect it directly to your files, your email, and basically anything a human can do on a computer. One of them, originally called Clawdbot and now going by OpenClaw (after Anthropic had some concerns about the name), has been making the rounds.

People were buying Mac Minis hand over fist to run it a few weeks back.

Neither of us have installed it on a personal machine and we’d advise against it for most people.

Tom flagged a 1Password article noting that a lot of the “agent skills” these tools use have turned out to be malware. When you hand something unfiltered access to your computer, you don’t always know exactly what it’s doing. That’s a hard pass for both of us on a personal device.

That said, we’re both genuinely excited about where agentic AI is heading when it’s done responsibly:

• Tom has seen Gemini integrated deeply into Google Workspace — Docs, Sheets, and Gmail and they’re doing a genuinely good job.

• Asana’s AI implementation stood out as a practical example. You describe a project, give it some constraints, and it builds 80% of the structure for you. That’s specialized AI actually solving a real workflow problem.

• Craft Agents is a more guarded version of this idea that Craft released as an open-source internal tool. I connected it to my Obsidian vault, pointed it at the folder, and suddenly it had full context of everything in there. More guardrails, more visibility into what it has access to — that’s the right direction.

Context is still the biggest variable with AI right now.

Without it, you get generic results. Feed it the right documents, i.e., your channel data, your project notes, your writing style and it becomes genuinely useful.

I’ve been refining my Claude projects to work around context window limits by breaking up large project files into smaller, focused chunks.

It helps.

Devices: The Stack We’re Actually Using

Here’s where things get interesting for a couple of self-described tech enthusiasts who have been quietly not upgrading everything every year.

Tom’s setup:

• iPad Pro M5 with Magic Keyboard and Pencil — his primary device for about 75% of home use

• MacBook Pro M1 Pro (16-inch) — used for podcast recording from his walk-in closet studio

• Mac Mini (2020, first Apple Silicon model) — still running, though macOS Tahoe has slowed it a bit

• Apple Studio Display

⠀My setup:

• Mac Studio M2 Max — home base for video editing and YouTube production

• M4 Pro MacBook Pro — picked it up for editing on the go, use it less than expected, but the nano-textured display is legitimately great for the studio

• 11” M4 iPad Pro — honestly could probably replace the MacBook Pro for what I actually do away from the desk

The common thread: we’re both sitting on Apple Silicon machines that are aging by Silicon Valley standards, and neither of us feels a strong pull to upgrade.

The M2 Max still handles a couple of 4K editing timelines without breaking a sweat. Tom’s 2020 Mac Mini is doing fine for what he needs. The M5 chips are genuinely impressive, especially for heavy video workflows, but if you’re not doing multiple streams of 8K footage, the generational leap doesn’t feel urgent.

Tom also made a good point about the new Magic Keyboard for iPad. If you’re still on the original version from a few years back, the new one is a meaningful upgrade: quieter trackpad, aluminum palm rest, function row, better keys overall.

Notifications: Red Circles and the People Who Don’t Mind Them

Tom shared a screenshot of his iPhone home screen. No widgets. And badges on basically everything — including 826 unread mail messages.

I have a near-physical reaction to that. Somewhere around pandemic time, I went deep on notification cleanup. My system now: morning and evening notification summaries, and if something sits in the summary for six months without me tapping it once, the notification gets turned off. Clean home screen, no badges, no anxiety spiral.

Tom’s take? They’re just red circles. The CVS down the street has a flashing LED sign and he doesn’t stress about that either. And honestly — he’s right that we’re all wired differently. His co-host Jeff has the same reaction I do. Tom genuinely doesn’t care. Both approaches are fine. Focus modes and notification summaries have made it easier than ever to build the system that works for you, whether that’s obsessively clean or cheerfully chaotic.

One thing both of us agreed on: a daily summary notification from your task manager — just a morning nudge of what’s on deck — is a great habit. It gets you to open the app, triage the list, and actually decide what you’re going to do today rather than pretend your inbox is a to-do list.

The Bigger Picture

The PlayStation vs. Xbox debate never really ends. Neither does the notes app debate, the iPad-as-computer debate, or the Android vs. iPhone debate. They just get new clothes every few years. Ford vs. Chevy had the same energy decades ago.

These are all just tools. What matters is whether the tool helps you get something important done. The moment you stop treating your app choices as identity statements is the moment the whole thing gets a lot less exhausting — and a lot more useful.

That’s the thing I keep coming back to.

Thanks to Tom for being the first guest on Press Pause!

If you want more of his perspective on all things Apple and productivity, check out his newsletter at tomfanderson.com, find him on Threads at TomAnderson, and listen to the Basic AF Show at basicafshow.com. He is also here on Substack at !

If you enjoyed this one, a like, comment, or five-star review on Apple Podcasts goes a long way.

Talk to you in the next one!

— Bill

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I’ve been wrestling with a question lately: Is Apple Notes actually the greatest notes app of all time?

My Journey Through Note-Taking Apps

There was a time when I used Apple Notes extensively, then left because of its lack of features. Here’s how I got back.

The Obsidian Era (2020-ish)

Around 2020, I read Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte. That’s when Obsidian and note-linking caught my eye.

What pulled me in:

• The graph view (though many now consider it just a meme)

• Bi-directional linking capabilities

• Markdown files stored locally

The reality:

I didn’t really care much about owning my own data at that point and markdown storage wasn’t the biggest driver for switching.

I spent tons of time manipulating Obsidian with plugins and Dataview to get it working how I wanted but iCloud syncing was slow.

I built up 700-800 notes in Obsidian over the years. I still use it to back up my Apple Notes.

Coming Back to Apple Notes

When Apple Notes added note-linking, I started thinking: Why am I not just using the first-party app that’s on all my devices?

The Forever Notes Framework (which came out after I migrated back) really helped. It showed me that Apple Notes could effectively do what Obsidian did:

• Hubs and maps of content

• Linked notes for making connections

• Focus on learning, not just saving information

I’ve been using Apple Notes solidly for about 3 years now, since I started YouTube in June 2023.

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The AI Integration Gap

The Biggest Downside

Here’s my main frustration with Apple Notes right now:

If I want AI help with writing or fleshing out an idea, I’m copying and pasting data into a different application.

What Notion AI offers:

• All context built in

• “Mega prompts” for specific workflows (titles, thumbnails, scripts)

• Access to past examples and frameworks

Hope for the Future

I’m really hoping Apple nails the new Gemini integration with Apple Notes.

I want contextual awareness across my notes. The ability to point AI to specific folders or notes and personal assistant-level help identifying connections.

What I’m NOT looking for:

• AI to do my thinking for me

• Auto-generated scripts to read word-for-word

• Replacement of my personal experiences and voice

What I AM looking for:

• Reminders of ideas I’ve forgotten

• Connections between stagnant notes

• Prompts like “You already wrote about this” or “Here’s a relevant highlight from your Readwise”

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The Free vs. Paid App Dilemma

I’ve been on a kick lately about paid subscriptions. Boy, do they add up.

My Evolution with Paid Apps

Early days (iPhone 6S Plus):

I was happy to pay $2-5 for apps and I had no problem supporting developers.

Now: I added up all my costs (more details coming soon) and I was shocked by the number.

The Notion Problem

Downsides of Notion:

• It’s a paid tool

• Online-only app

• Not end-to-end encrypted

• Focused on enterprise features now

The enterprise shift:

There’s always people on Reddit saying Notion’s become really bloated. It’s gotten slow (though they’ve worked on speed recently).

The issue: These companies have to constantly add features to bring in customers. When most revenue comes from enterprise, you get enterprise

features that solo users don’t need.

The Evernote Warning

We don’t really own anything anymore. Following the Evernote path shows us that companies can make decisions unfavorable to users.

People got locked into Evernote after 10+ years of use:

• Still ridiculously expensive

• Users with 10,000-15,000 notes feel trapped

• They’re paying forever because migration is too painful

Data Ownership and Markdown

I’ve been thinking about the possibility of ownership. Is it even possible today, or just an illusion?

The Obsidian Advantage

What Obsidian does really well:

• Access to all your files

• Just a bunch of markdown files on your computer

• Can self-host on your own server

• Can sync via iCloud

About Markdown:

• It’s 22 years old (I had to Google this)

• At its core, it’s just plain text

• Computers from 22 years ago can read plain text files

• If you want your notes readable 20 years in the future, Markdown is a good bet

The Apple Subscription Concern

I feel like I’m going to be stuck paying Apple $50/month for the rest of my life:

• Fitness

• News

• Apple One Premium plan

• iCloud storage

Another monthly recurring cost that never ends.

The Creator Studio Question

Apple just released the Creator Studio subscription for:

• Final Cut Pro

• Logic Pro

• Pages, Numbers, Keynote (with advanced features)

These apps stagnated because there was no revenue KPI tied to them. Now they’re subscription-based.

My conflict:

I’ve been vocal about wanting to pay for Apple Notes development.

But do I actually need that?

Apps like Bear Notes are only $30/year, but you’re still paying money to access your data.

The valid counterpoint: “Bill, you’re praising Apple Notes, but you have to buy Apple devices and be in the Apple ecosystem to use it.”

That’s true.

Recent Apple News

QAI Acquisition

Apple’s second-biggest acquisition:

• $2 billion for AI startup QAI

• Technology focused on audio content

• For context: Beats was $3 billion

• Shows Apple is getting serious about AI

Gemini Integration Updates

Coming in iOS 27 (Fall 2026):

• Full chatbot experience (like Gemini or ChatGPT)

• I did the betas last year, might do them again

• Should be my upgrade year: 16 Pro to 18 Pro

This could be the year of AI for Apple.

The Anthropic Fumble

Mark Gurman reported on the Gemini deal:

• It’s multi-year but not exclusive

• Apple can still work with other AI companies

• Anthropic reportedly wanted too much money

• Apple said “screw you guys” and went to Google

My thoughts on this:

• I’ve been a big fan of Claude

• Anthropic’s mission and values aligned better with my preferences than OpenAI

• But they apparently fumbled a huge opportunity

• At some point, AI companies will need to become profitable

• Did we just witness the downfall of Anthropic?

Shared Features Coming Up

I’ve finally started using Apple Notes’ shared features for this podcast. I’ll be collaborating with guests starting next episode.

What I’ll be evaluating:

• Comparison to Craft and Notion for shared documents

• What I like and don’t like

• First impressions of the collaboration tools

Get subscribed so you don’t miss it!

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Where to find me:

• Bill McLean Channel

• For Perspective YouTube

• For Perspective Spotify

• For Perspective Apple Podcasts

• contact@williambmclean.com

Thanks for reading. Until next time, later!

P.S. If you wanted to see the full episode here it is!

The system you use inside the tool matters far more than the tool itself. When you find the right fit, it’s life-changing; when it’s cluttered, even the best app feels like a burden.

My “Big 3” Must-Haves for a Notes System:

• Quick Entry: I need to capture ideas the second they happen (especially on mobile).

• Notes Linked to Tasks: Separate systems create friction. I need to jump between a thought and an action instantly.

• Calendar Integration: If I can’t see my tasks on a calendar, I can’t plan my life.

• Automatic Readwise Sync. I rely on past highlights from books and podcasts to fuel my creative brainstorming.

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The Notion AI Experiment

I’ve been testing Notion AI because it solves a major context problem. While I use AI to sharpen my transitions and optimize titles/thumbnails, most models lack the context of my entire workspace.

• The Pro: It has “eyes” on everything in my Notion. I can ask, “What’s the best title for this video?” and it knows my past performance data.

• The Con: Capture speed. On mobile, nothing beats the “Quick Note” button on iPhone. Notion is still a bit too slow for those “lightning strike” ideas.

Apple’s New “Creator Studio” Bundle

Apple just launched a massive subscription bundle that might actually unseat Adobe for many creators.

The Deal: $12.99/mo (or $129/year) What’s Included:

• Final Cut Pro & Logic Pro (Mac & iPad)

• Pixelmator Pro (recently acquired and now officially “Pro”)

• Motion, Compressor, and MainStage

• New AI features across Keynote, Pages, and Numbers.

Note: For students, this is only $2.99/month—an absolute no-brainer.

The Strategic Genius of Apple + Google

The biggest news wasn’t the bundle; it was the report that Apple is partnering with Google to use Gemini for Siri.

While OpenAI and Anthropic burn billions on infrastructure, Apple is limiting its downside. By cutting a deal with Google:

1. They avoid the “AI Bubble” risk: They don’t have to build the entire infrastructure from scratch.

2. They leverage the best: Gemini Pro is incredibly capable.

3. The “Intel Play”: Just like they used Intel chips until Apple Silicon was ready, they are buying time to see how the AI market matures.

Final Thought

I’m currently 1,000 notes deep in Apple Notes and it feels like a “sea of chaos.” Search is failing me, and the muscle memory is hard to break.

I want to hear from you: What notes app are you using? Have you found a system that actually works, or are you stuck in the “switching loop” like me?

Reply to this email or drop a comment—I read every single one.

Until next time,

Bill

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In this episode, I’m diving into why my latest iPhone video struck such a chord with viewers, Apple’s big moves in AI (including that surprising Gemini partnership), and why the AI race might be a solution still searching for problems.

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We’ll cover:
• Why you probably don’t need the Pro iPhone this year
• Apple’s new data-sharing requirements for third-party AI
• The Google-Siri deal that changes everything
• AI browsers, agents, and the struggle to find practical use cases
• Updates from Craft, recent bestsellers, and more

Plus, I’ve rebranded the show to “Press Pause” to better reflect what we’re doing here—taking a step back to examine how tech and productivity actually impact our daily lives.

Also available on YouTube:

Links mentioned:
Apple Notes Essentials Guide (50% off with code BF25NOTES)
https://billmclean.gumroad.com/l/wdsjz

Claude use cases
https://claude.com/resources/use-cases?utm_source=tldrai

Craft updates
https://viktor.craft.me/bdbGJVKw4f2AQ2