@mwichary the Kanji Study dictionary on Android has a *wild* amount of polish, I'm consistently impressed by how much effort has been put into it, especially because it's sold for a (admittedly high) one-time fee

https://mindtwisted.com/

@mwichary

I have

a Lenovo X200 (2008) that I can't let go because the keyboard is just 👌(runs Linux but I just keep it running, don't use much). I like my Carbon X1 (also w Linux) bc it's so light, has backlit keyboard, matte screen.

many fav apps but two proprietary ones I can't let go despite moving to open source are Beyond Compare (Linux version) and MLO (Mylifeorganized.net; run using WINE). Don't need MLO so much now (retired) but support bc Ukrainian.

@mwichary I'm in love with @maggie's site: https://maggieappleton.com

The general design and the illustrations, the content (from quick notes to polished essays), the way it creates a visual and conceptual taxonomy with the #digitalgarden concept... Just 🤩

@mwichary

https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk

all the liner notes and song texts!

I like Keynote. But am not completely objective about that.

@mwichary "Whatever definition works for you" is leaving yourself wide open here. ;)

I'll give two here, one piece of software as requested ("app" might be stretching it), and one device as *not* requested but a lot of people are doing anyway.

First, the software: the Sway… uh, compositor, technically, despite the domain name (https://swaywm.org), which is a straight copy to Wayland of the i3 X window manager, which is itself a clone of wmii. All of them are keyboard-driven tiling window managers with dynamic tiling layouts. I can't even imagine trying to use a computer with floating, overlapping windows anymore; everything lines up perfectly and adjusting layout is a matter of a few extremely quick keyboard shortcuts. They take a concept—laying out multiple windows on a display without gaps or overlaps—and build a fast, coherent interface around that concept, and it works fantastically.

Second, the device. The LG VX8300 I had as a cell phone back in like 2007. Now, it wasn't actually very pleasant to use. Digital audio quality back in the day was… let's call it "poor" and not go into superlatives; texting with T9 was almost as bad as texting on a phone keypad without it; the displays were garbage; and the thing was chunky in a way that made it weirdly unpleasant to carry in your pocket, despite being objectively quite small. But. But! There were *zero* times I pressed a button on it and had it do something unexpected. (I don't remember any specific examples, but I do remember repeatedly noting that I pressed a button not knowing for sure what it would do and having it do the right thing.) The phone's designers enumerated every combination of UI state and button press, and chose the right behavior for each of them. (This was hugely helped, of course, by it being a dumbphone with fewer than a dozen non-keypad buttons.)

Also, the physical feel of the flip hinge was… really, really good?

The constraints under which it existed (basically, a cell phone when that meant "a regular phone, but, like, not plugged into the wall") prevented it from being very good, but within those constraints, the attention to detail was possibly the best of any electronic device I've ever used.

@mwichary LocalSend is well made, because until sofar it aleay works, even when AirDrop doesn’t. And it also works on non-Apple environments.

https://apps.apple.com/app/id1661733229

@mwichary This website maps out all the sub-sub-sub-genres of electronic music, with descriptions and samples. I think that the fine-grained classifications are comical, but they do an excellent job of what they’re doing.

https://music.ishkur.com

@mwichary I happen to maintain a list of my favourite apps! (And being well-made is sort of a pre-req.) https://lai.nz/approll

There’s also a list of sites at /small-web, but it’s specifically personal websites, so doesn’t quite answer your question directly

@mwichary I like https://regexr.com/

It's a web-based tool to create or explain regular expressions, I often use for exact that use cases.

@mwichary Hi Marcin, I believe my little chess app for iOS, @deepgreen, falls into this category. Not the most feature-packed, but with a uniquely nice piece design and a high degree of system integration (copy/paste, drag/drop, share, …)

(Something that might also interest you is that I have had a dedicated font designed that will be used when supporting printing and PDF export in an upcoming version.)