Anyone with more than a casual interest in Siri Shortcuts and who has more than one device is likely familiar with the inexplicably awful synchronisation it provides. Changes not propagating across devices in a timely fashion. Conflicts between versions from devices where they were never changed. I’m now getting conflicts from my Apple Watch. You can’t edit them on a watch, so how?
What puzzles me is that other areas where I share via iCloud sync (iCloud Drive, Notes, Bookmarks etc. etc.) all largely work fine.
I am reminded of a famous Steve Jobs story about MobileMe – the precursor to iCloud. Quoting from cultofmac:
After gathering employees in the Apple auditorium, Jobs asked them, “Can anyone tell me what MobileMe is supposed to do?”
He spent the next hour berating the group. He scolded them for tarnishing Apple’s reputation. And he told them they “should hate each other for having let each other down.”
He then fired the head of the team, replacing him with Eddy Cue.
Sigh.
I guess I’ll just turn everything off and on again.
Hookmark is a rather wonderful app that allows you to link together anything on your Mac or beyond.
Connect a web page to your notes on the topic.
Connect your expenses spreadsheet to your receipt photos.
Create a new TODO that links to a birthday present idea on Amazon.
The connections (or hooks) it creates are maintained in it’s own database (SQLite) but can also be pasted into documents using the native URL scheme of the inked items or it’s own extension scheme. Behind the scenes It’s all elegantly sitting atop a pile of AppleScript glue for an impressively large set of supported applications.
Connecting stuff is just a matter of opening Thing 1, typing a hookmark shortcut, opening Thing 2 and typing another hookmark shortcut. Voila, they’re “hooked”.
Open a file or web page and a toolbar icon shows you that it’s connected and allows you to see what it’s connected to. It also somehow copes with files moving and being renamed under its feet.
It’s all far less complicated than it sounds and it’s easy to not quite get it until you’ve tried it – it’s astonishingly useful.
So why write my own?
Cost
I used Hookmark while I was working but the pricing model leaves me in the twilight zone between the Standard and Pro plans. While it’s not a subscription it functionally is: you buy it and you get a year of updates, but you can use it forever after that. Great, but it’ll probably stop working pretty fast. It’s heavily dependent on the maintained app binding library and OS features so you’re potentially just one OS or app update away from doom.
Excess and Duplicated Features
I never really needed the database of everything I ever linked, since the vast majority of the time I was linking between things that could maintain a link themselves in the content. Like a note (an Obsidian markdown file) would naturally contain a link to a web page or OmniFocus task. The task could easily have a link back to the note using the Obsidian URL scheme (or an extension of it).
I keep most of my notes and files in Obsidian which has really good link management itself. When looking at a file it shows what the file connects to and from, updating the links if you move or rename it.
Lock In
I’m also slightly paranoid about relying on what is essentially proprietary metadata of my content, I’d rather links were in the files themselves as part of the content. So it doesn’t matter how the files got connected, they stay connected without extra tooling.
The AI Darwin Awards have stepped in to answer that question, with the tag line:
Honouring Those Who Asked “Can We?” Without Ever Asking “Should We?”
Unlike the more conventional Darwin Awards, removal of oneself from the gene pool is not a prerequisite of entry. However I’m sure many candidates will go the extra mile.
So why create a blog now? I have no good answer for that, it all seems quite uncalled for.
However, as a newly retired software engineer I have an as yet undiminished desire to faff about on my computer, mostly creating things of excessive complexity and very little importance.
Since my long suffering family have precious little interest in my outpourings, I seek gratification here.
Rejoice in the vanilla WordPress theme and broken links while learn how to drive this thing.
Quite Uncalled For 