I’ve been wanting to get back to my default apps. And with good timing, MacSparky has released the Apple Productivity Suite Field Guide.

The field guide is a thorough tutorial of using Apple’s Reminders, Notes, Calendar, and Freeform applications. Done in MacSparky’s easy going and comprehensive style, no feature is left unexplained.

I’m a pretty knowledgeable user of Reminders, Notes, and Calendar. So, I didn’t learn much. That said, I knew this going in and did get new momentum to actually use these three apps more effectively and consistently. So, for me it was worth it. Anyone new to these apps will certainly benefit.

As for Freeform, I had never really used it. I’m planning to upgrade a rather old iPad with an iPad Mini and Apple Pencil and think that Freeform will be much more useful with that setup. The field guide included some extra use cases for Freeform that sparked several ideas.

If you’re curious about Apple’s built-in apps, this field guide could be really useful. The apps have become rather powerful and integrated tools.