How I review

A standing page. If a rule here changes, the change gets dated.

One app at a time

An app gets reviewed by becoming the only tool I use for its job. Not alongside the thing I already use — instead of it. Running two apps in parallel produces a comparison of interfaces, not of whether either one survives contact with a normal week.

Minimum two weeks

Nothing gets written before day fourteen. Almost every app is pleasant for three days; what matters is whether you still open it on a tired Tuesday. Where a review says a longer period, that is the real number.

Paid for at retail

Every subscription here was bought at the normal price through the normal purchase sheet. No review copies, no press accounts, no comped upgrades. This matters more than it sounds: a comped account does not show you the paywall, and the paywall is usually the review.

No affiliate links, no sponsorships

Links to the apps discussed are plain and carry rel="nofollow". Nobody pays to appear here and nobody has ever been offered the chance to.

The four questions before any opinion

Every teardown states, up front: what it costs, whether it charges before it is useful, how you cancel, and whether it is still installed. Those four are the ones people actually need and the ones most reviews bury.

Numbers

Where a measured figure appears — accuracy, speed, error rate — it either comes from my own testing and says so, or it is cited to whoever measured it. I do not restate a company's own benchmark as though somebody independent had checked it. Where the only number available is the vendor's, the review says that is what it is.

Corrections

Mistakes get fixed on the page with a dated line saying what changed. Nothing gets quietly edited.