Who’s next as Apple continues sherlocking apps

Apple’s ongoing practice of sherlocking, where it ‘gains inspiration’ from apps and utilities others have developed and added them as features into its own platforms, has been going on for over almost two decades. Over the years, Apple has added new features to its operating platforms, effectively killing off a number of apps. That’s resulted in some small and indie developers having their market destroyed almost overnight. 

As I look at the new features added to macOS 15, iOS 18 and iPadOS 18, I can see a couple of app categories that are going to feel the pinch as Apple boosts its own apps. And Apple’s advantage – its integrated ecosystem – gives it an edge other apps can’t (or don’t – I’m not sure which) replicate. 

Notes 

Apple’s Notes app has become a powerful tool that offer many of the fearers premium apps have offered. I’ve already written about how Apple Notes is on the cost of sherlocking many apps. For me, that’s meant abandoning Evernote after over a decade as a paid user and Notability. 

The reasons for dropping these two apps boil down to a couple of factors.

1. Cost: Both apps changed their pricing models. With subscription costs creeping up and now becoming a major chunk of my monthly and annual expenses, neither could justify their cost subject to my second factor. 
2. Function: Evernote and Notability are both powerful tools that offer lots of useful functions. But most of what they do is covered in Apple Notes. They may  offer great features but I wonder how many of those ‘power features’ are valued by the vast majority of people.

Notes has added many of the features I value in these apps. Things like lined stationery, audio recording (now with automatic transcription), tagging and note linking are now part of the package.

While there will always be users that want more or different to the default apps Apple releases, the market for those will continue to shrink. 

Calendar

Apple has not given Calendar a lot of love over the years.  If you look at calendar in iOS 10 and up till iOS 17, there was not a lot of aesthetic or functional difference. This is why I was drawn to apps like Fantastical and BusyCal. They offered features such as natural language appointment creation and integration with reminders so I could see reminders in my calendar instead of a separate app. 

That’s changed with Apple enabling Reminders to appear and be created from the Calendar app. The implementation is rudimentary. 

I use Reminders as a simple project management system. For example, I have Sections in my work calendar. Within the sections are larger tasks with subtasks (which Apple calls indented tasks). When items from these lists appear in my calendar, I don’t get all the context around the subtasks. That’s something Apple could easily address. 

Passwords

Apple has been using Keychain Access since Mac OS 8.6 – that’s 25 years ago. Over the years it has evolved and is now, finally, a standalone password management app. 

While businesses with multiple users that need to share user accounts (which is not a great practice but that’s another story) may prefer solutions like LastPass, 1Password and others, the Passwords app will suffice for the vast majority of users. 

If you’re a business selling password management solutions to Mac users, it may be time to utilize your Plan B into action. 

The walled but integrated garden

Apple’s ecosystem of apps is tightly integrated with the linkage between apps only becoming stronger. And that means some other tools may find their days are numbered. 

Recently, I was chatting with someone about their use of Notion. It is an extremely flexible and powerful tool for managing workflows for individuals and teams. It’s one of those apps that, I think, has so many options and features that most users will only use 10% of its potential. However, depending on how it’s used, everyone will use a different 10%. 

Notion’s value comes from how it can join information from multiple places to build workflows. But when this friend and I talked about our different workflows and tools (we’re both productivity nerds) they said almost everything they were doing in Notion could be achieved by using the tools that come installed on every Mac, iPad and iPhone. 

Throw in Apple’s Shortcuts app and you can build workflows across multiple apps.

Over time, I’d not be surprised to see tools like Notion, which I think is still an amazing tool, slowly lose popularity as Apple adds more features to its operating platforms.

Apple might be slow at doing this but its history is dotted with times when it was second, third or later to a market but found a way to leapfrog the market incumbents and its competition.