Things 3.23 'fixes' Repeating Tasks

From the Cultured Code blog talking about the release of Things 3.23:

Repeating to-dos just got far more flexible, with two highly requested improvements: You can now complete them early, and easily reschedule them when plans change!

Just these two lines are enough for any Things user to rejoice. Repeating To-Dos in Things have been my biggest complaint about the otherwise fantastic app, and quite possibly one of the most requested features for the company. I’m delighted to hear that they’ve finally gotten around to fixing them.

I also love how after all these years, Things has maintained its distinct design language that separates it from every other To-Do app. Kudos to everyone at Cultured Code.

August 22, 2026 · + Permalink

Apple Music just got a lot more expensive in India

I had gotten pretty comfortable with Apple Music’s India pricing in recent times. I’ve been a long-time Spotify user, long before it launched in India (thanks, Ronak). However, I’d grown increasingly annoyed at them for pushing their podcasts into their music app, and their recommendation engine — something that had worked incredibly well for the longest time — had become terrible. But I still maintained an active Apple Music subscription, because it costed just ₹99 a month. So some time last year, I switched to Apple Music full-time and ditched the Spotify subscription I’ve held for so long. 

The Apple Music subscription was active long enough that I’d stopped noticing the monthly deduction altogether. That changed this week. Apple has raised Apple Music subscription prices in India by up to 28 percent, while leaving its Apple One bundle completely untouched (so far).

The new Apple Music India pricing in July 2026

  • Individual: ₹119 → ₹139/month (~17% hike)
  • Family: ₹179 → ₹229/month (~28% hike)
  • Student: ₹59 → ₹69/month (~17% hike)

The Family plan takes the biggest hit by far. For context, the US Individual plan only went up about 9 percent ($10.99 → $11.99), so India’s getting a noticeably steeper increase this time around — not the first time regional pricing hasn’t scaled 1:1 with the US, but a bigger gap than usual.

Apple hasn’t put out an India-specific statement, but the new prices are already live on Apple’s India pricing page. This is also the third time Apple has increased their pricing in the country in recent times, following the MacBook and Pro price hikes in June over rising memory costs, and the AppleCare+ price hikes earlier this week by roughly ₹3000.

As for the reasoning, Apple told Music Business Worldwide:

“As a result of rising licensing costs, Apple Music is increasing its subscription price beginning today.”

Same explanation Apple’s given before — more of the fee is supposed to flow through to artists and rights holders, not just Apple’s margins. Licensing costs genuinely have been climbing across the industry, to be fair, and Apple isn’t alone here: Spotify raised its own India and global pricing earlier this year too, and Apple’s marketing team happily took a jab at them for it on social media at the time.

Apple One in India hasn’t changed — and that’s the interesting bit

Globally, Apple did revise Apple One pricing too — the Family and Premier tiers went up in the US, though the base Individual tier there was left alone. In India, though, Apple One isn’t budging at all: it’s still ₹195/month for Individual and ₹365/month for Family, the same pricing the bundle has had since it launched here in 2020. Also worth remembering: India still doesn’t get the Premier tier at all — that’s stayed US/UK/Australia/Canada-only since launch.

Practically, that makes the bundle a noticeably better deal than it was a week ago. Apple Music Individual alone is now ₹139/month — just ₹56 short of the ₹195 Apple One Individual plan, which also gets you Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, and 50GB of iCloud+ storage on top. If you’re already paying for two or more of those separately, it’s worth doing that math this week.

I don’t know if Apple’s planning to eventually bring India’s Apple One pricing in line with this Music hike, or if it’s deliberately holding the line to keep the bundle looking like the smarter buy while everyone absorbs the standalone increase. Either way — if you’re an Apple Music subscriber in India who’s never bothered looking at Apple One, this is probably the week to.

But my gut says Apple One pricing in India is increasing too.

July 18, 2026 · + Permalink

Google Releases a Native Gemini App for Mac

Michael Friedman, Group Product Manager, Gemini App writing on the Google Blog about the release:

Today, we’re bringing the Gemini app to macOS as a native desktop experience, designed to live right where you work. It’s always just a keyboard shortcut away, so you can quickly get the help you need without losing your focus.

As a native SwiftUI app on Mac, it does a bunch of cool things the web experience couldn’t. It works with your local files, interacts with app windows, and supports Personal Intelligence as well.

Looks like a solid release.

April 16, 2026 · + Permalink

My Default Apps (2024)

You may have seen a bunch of nice people posting a list of their “default apps” on their respective blogs. I had meant to do a 2023 edition of this, but never got around it — my posting frequency in general on this blog was quite low in 2024. I’m determined to change that in 2025, so I plan to post a lot more frequently on Nuclear Bits starting today. Here’s my list of default apps that I used in 2024. A detailed write-up of the software and apps I use is available on the ‘Stuff I Use‘ page.

Adblocker — 1Blocker
Bookmarks — Raindrop.io
Browser — Safari
Calculator — Calzy + Soulver
Calendar — Notion Calendar + Calendars
Chat — Telegram, a bit of WhatsApp
Cloud Storage — Google Drive
CMS — WordPress (via the Classic Editor)
Currency Conversion — Currenzy (iOS), Calculate Anything (via Alfred Workflow on Mac)
Code Editor/IDE — Nova
Document Scanner — Scanner Pro
Fitness — Peak
Image Editing — Pixelmator Pro
Image Optimization — TinyPNG (via Alfred Workflow)
Journaling — Day One
Launcher — Alfred
Mail Client — Spark
Mail Server — Fastmail for personal use, Google Workspace for work
Maps & Navigation — Google Maps
Media Playback — Plex + Infuse
Meditation — Calm
Music — Apple Music
News — RSS (see above)
Notes — Apple Notes
Package Tracking — Parcel
Podcasts — Overcast
Password Management — 1Password
Photo Management — Photos.app + Google Photos on iOS, Manually (Files & Folders) on Mac
Photo Editing — Darkroom
Presentations — Google Slides
Reminders — Due
RSS — Reeder, via Feedbin (backend sync service)
Screenshots — CleanShot X
Social Media – General — Ivory (Mastodon)
Social Media – Photos — Pixelfed, Vernissage, Refrakt
Social Media – Movies — Letterboxd
Spreadsheets — Google Sheets
Tasks — Things (may be moving to Todoist)
Wallpapers — Backdrops
Window Management — Magnet
Word Processing — Google Docs

Sidenote: The App Defaults website that Robb has put up is turning into a really cool place to discover personal blogs of very interesting people. I’ve already added RSS feeds of over two dozen of them to my Reeder lists, and I urge you to go take a look.

January 3, 2025 · + Permalink

Mike Rockwell on Telegram Founder’s Arrest

Mike Rockwell, writing about Pavel Durov’s arrest, on his Initial Charge blog:

Why should we allow governments to force companies to moderate the content shared through their services? Why should we be treating speech online any differently than speech spoken in person?

Should restaurants be forced to moderate the speech of their patrons? Should they be forced by their government to install microphones at each table to ensure their customers aren’t sharing misinformation or engaging in illegal activity? Of course not.

Should customers be told that they are only allowed to speak in a restaurant if they do so in code? Of course not.

Mike’s Initial Charge is one of the few personal blogs that I read religious in my Reeder feed, so his restaurant analogy in this article quickly caught my eye. Mike compares governments forcing companies to moderate content shared on their platforms to a scenario where restaurants are forced to moderate what patrons talk about within their premises.

I have very little details about Pavel’s arrest, the charges against him, and what Telegram was actually doing, and thus have very little opinion about the whole thing. However, I paint a different picture of this analogy in my head.

Let’s say a particular restaurant gains popularity for illegal and nefarious activity happening within its premises. The restaurant starts becoming known as the goto place for bad things. Sure, it continues to offer good food and service to everyeone, but more and more bad actors start frequenting the restaurant and the word spreads that if you were looking for [whatever illegal], you’d find it here. Bad actors actively start using the restaurant to carry out their nefarious activities. If one mentions the restaurant’s name, the first thing people think of is not its food or service, but all that goes on otherwise. The government, too, hears about what goes down at the restaurant every day, and hence informs the restaurant owner that they should do something about it. May be the restaurant owner does something, or may be they don’t. But the illegal activities keep thriving, leading to many issues that affect people and corporations outside of the restaurant. In this case, should the government do anything about it?

I don’t think any governmental agency is worries about every messaging app out there. But once it becomes known for a particular kind of thing, they are bound to take actions.

I’ll admit, I don’t know if Telegram was actually resisting any government’s request or it was actively trying to not moderate content on its service. But I do believe that IF that was the case, Pavel’s arrest isn’t surprising. I also do think Free Speech should exist and it’s a critical component of the modern web. But Mike’s restaurant analogy, on its own, doesn’t really fit in a modern society and within the legal & ethical framework of a modern society.

September 3, 2024 · + Permalink

Pocket Casts Mobile Apps Go Open Source

Yael Rubinstein, writing on the Pocket Casts blog:

We’ve been eager to take this step since we joined Automattic last year — after all, the company’s creed includes the phrase “I know that open source is the most powerful idea of our generation.” We believe that podcasting can not and should not be controlled by Apple and Spotify, and instead support a diverse ecosystem of third-party clients.

It was just a matter of time when this would happen, as anyone who knows Automattic knows their love for open source. The only surprising thing to me is that Pocket Casts is only making their mobile apps open source, the Desktop and Web versions are not included in this anouncement and the company says it has no plans to do so either.

This announcement has generally been received positively by users and developers of other podcasts apps.

The iOS repository as well as the Android repository are up on GitHub with a Mozilla Public License 2.0.

October 21, 2022 · + Permalink

Google Discontinues 'Legacy' Free Edition of G Suite

Google has announced that starting May 1, 2022, its G Suite legacy free edition — the original version of what is now rebranded as Google Workspace, will no longer be available. This means that everyone who signed up for a free “Google Apps” account as it was known back then and continues to use it for free will have to switch to a paid Google Workspace account.

If you have the G Suite legacy free edition, you need to upgrade to a paid Google Workspace subscription to keep your services. The G Suite legacy free edition will no longer be available starting May 1, 2022. Starting May 1, Google will seamlessly transition you to Google Workspace, which you can use at no cost until July 1, 2022.

I’m surprised that it took Google this long to come to this decision. The legacy free edition already lacks several features that the company now offers in the Workspace offering, but it was perfectly fine if you just wanted to use the basic Gmail/Email features. I personally have about 5-6 different legacy accounts that I still use for Gmail, something I’ll have to switch away from very soon.

As some of you may have probably guessed by now, I’d be switching over to Fastmail — a service I’ve been using to host my personal email account. It’s a fantastic service, and I highly recommend them. It costs just $5/inbox/month and comes with an amazing set of features. This is also cheaper than Google’s base plan “Business Starter” which costs $6/user/month.

For those in India, Google does offer regional pricing starting at ₹ 210/user/month, which is further discounted to ₹ 125/user/month for the first 20 users added, for 12 months.

If you sign up on Fastmail using this link, you get 10% off your entire first year.

[Via 9to5Google]

January 20, 2022 · + Permalink

Twitter Brings Communities to India and Rolls Out Live Cricket Scorecards

Vikas SN, writing for Moneycontrol:

Twitter has extended its Communities feature to India with the launch of a Cricket-focused community called Cricket Twitter-India that will enable users to talk all things cricket in multiple Indian languages.

The launch comes as the T20 Cricket World Cup officially kicks off later this week.

and

Live cricket scorecards will be available on the Sports tab of Twitter’s discovery-focused Explore page. These scores will also continue to appear on event pages during a match, so that users “can follow the conversation and the scores in real time”, the company said.

Twitter said that more than 75 million conversations were just about cricket on the platform between July 1, 2020 and July 1, 2021.

The Communities feature on Twitter is quite confusing to me, largely because I think it’s being shoehorned into a platform not meant for such a thing. However, I do think that if Twitter opens up the feature to more cricket-loving Indians, they might see a much wider adoption and hopefuly tweak the feature so that it feels part of the overall Twitter experience.

October 21, 2021 · + Permalink