Hey {{first_name|there}}!

Happy Holidays!! 🎄🎁

Here’s what I have for you today:

Let’s get started!

Snipd + Readwise

Snipd is an AI-enabled podcast app.

Readwise is a service for collecting highlights from the books, articles, PDFs, and web content you read.

I'm grouping these together because, for me, they make a great system.

As I've said on Basic AF many times, I typically only listen to podcasts while I'm driving. Frequently, I'll hear something that I want to follow up on later or capture as an idea or interesting thought, but more often than not, by the time I get to where I'm going, I've already forgotten about it.

Snipd has changed all that. With the tap of a button, Snipd captures that great idea or insight, including a summary of the snip's content, a timestamp, and the relevant section of the transcript.

Snipd will sync those snips into Readwise, where they live alongside other highlights I've made in books, articles, newsletters, and PDFs. What makes this powerful is Readwise's spaced repetition and resurfacing.

Ideas I would've forgotten weeks later come back as part of my Readwise daily highlights review. Or, if I want to go deeper on an idea or thought, I can chat with my highlights using their custom AI integration. The killer feature here is that the AI references my own highlights in its replies. Excellent!

Craft

Craft has become my day-in, day-out workhorse. Work, the podcast, this newsletter, and everything else in my life, are in Craft.

What really stood out in 2025 were Craft's continued improvements: Collections (lightweight databases), tasks, tags, web clipper, massive upgrades to the Craft AI assistant, API and MCP integrations, and so much more.

On top of that, the Craft team remains one of the most engaged I've seen, with active Slack and Reddit communities that make me feel like I have a say in the product. They genuinely care about the app and its users.

I shared some of the ways I'm using the app in my "My day with Craft" YouTube video.

YouTube Premium

I thought I'd never pay for YouTube, but here I am.

YouTube is my primary platform for entertainment, learning, research, and longer-form content. Ad-free viewing completely changes the experience.

The included YouTube Music is a nice bonus, particularly for community playlists, though it hasn't replaced Apple Music.

At around $14 a month, it's not cheap, but given how much time I spend on YouTube, the value is undeniable.

Asana

Asana is my go-to for team-based project management at work.

I use it to manage projects such as ticketing system evaluations and tracking upgrades across 160+ classrooms and meeting spaces.

Asana's AI features have been thoughtfully implemented, especially for creating new projects, including structured workflows and custom fields, and AI generated project update summaries.

If you're working with teams and managing many projects, Asana is worth a look.

Find out more

I go deeper on how I’m using each of these and their benefits in the latest episode of Basic AF, which is linked below. Highly recommend you check out the episode.

In the last poll, I asked how you were feeling so far about Liquid Glass. Overall, the majority of respondents (15 out of 19) are happy, or at least okay, with it.

Reader comments matched those sentiments:

“iOS and iPadOS and macOS do not need to look and work like a Child's Saturday morning cartoon series. The Liquid Glass "upgrade" is horrible, making an Apple device a TOY and not a serious productive Operating System. Linux is looking like the WINNER!!! I will not UPGRADE any of my own Apple devices unless Apple provides an alternate to the Liquid Glass CRAP STORM they are trying to force on long time as well as new Apple Users.”

“Some of the changes were needed. I am not totally sold on the Liquid Glass motif. Opportunities for some adjustments next WWDC.”

“The older I get the worse my vision is for up close reading. The new design makes all that worse. It’s like driving in the rain at night.”

“I like it better than what was, but it’s nothing life changing so far. It’s definitely a good look, but the reality is, and I suspect this is true for most people, I’m used to it now, so it’s no big deal.”

Joe Moyer returns and joins me and Jeff for a fun and festive discussion in the third-annual “These Are a Few of Our Favorite Things” show! Picks range from backpacks to iPhone accessories, books, apps, and more.

Listen to and follow the show in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, all the other podcast apps, as well as on YouTube and YouTube Music.

“Hey, what’s your Wi-Fi?”

If you're hosting family or friends over the holidays, you'll surely get asked for your Wi-Fi password. And if your password looks anything like mine — a ridiculously long mix of letters, numbers, and an occasional % or @ — typing it out for everyone gets old fast.

Luckily, Apple provides a couple of excellent features that make sharing your Wi-Fi password almost effortless.

Here’s my step-by-step guide: https://www.tomfanderson.com/p/how-to-share-your-wi-fi-instantly-on-iphone-or-ipad-perfect-for-holiday-guests

Here’s a quick rundown of noteworthy things that I’ve hand-selected just for you: