Too often, we treat speed as the primary goal in optimization. Faster is better!
While modern technology and automation offer countless ways to accelerate our lives, the question we need to ask is: should we?
There are times when delay is a feature, not a bug. Going slower has its own benefits, giving you more time for consideration and intentionality. It’s also a satisfying way to occasionally give the finger to the modern world and its relentless demands.
I’ve recently begun writing down things I want to learn to do slower. Although it’s a new practice for me, here’s a partial list:
Reading thought-provoking books
Journaling
Talking with family and friends
Walking
Decision Making
Gardening
Enjoying media (movies, music, books)
Craftwork
My question to you: What should you slow down? In your life, what might benefit from taking your foot off the gas?
I’ve had a lot of questions about how to best use dictation as this technology has improved so much in the last few years. So I’m making a video series covering it, from basic to advanced. Today I’m covering the Apple solutions, which are way better than you may remember.
… This is a post for MacSparky Labs Members only. Care to join? If you’re already a member, you can log in here.
Depending on how you look at it, I’ve either already retired or have no intention of retiring for a very long time. My friend, Jim Eagar, however, has been there and he’s got some real insight. He’s now coaching folks at Retirement Reinvented.
What makes this interesting is that Jim’s approach is not about figuring out whether you have enough money to retire, but instead how to mentally handle retirement. I wish him luck.
Chance Miller at 9to5Mac did an excellent summary of where, in theory, you can use digital IDs and where you cannot. The problem, as always, is the humans.
Even though TSA checkpoints are absolutely supposed to accept Digital IDs, on a recent trip, my particular TSA agent wasn’t having it. His words were something to the point of, “That’s not going to cut it. I need to see a real identification.” I guess I could have argued with him, but I’m not sure arguing with TSA agents is a good idea.
Because I was worried about this, I had my actual driver’s license with me, but if I hadn’t, I’m not so sure I would have gotten on a plane that day.
I’ve had some requests for a simple task tracker “even easier than Reminders”. I found a good candidate in “Did I Do?”. This may not be for you, but it may be for someone in your life.… This is a post for the MacSparky Labs Pathfinder and Insider members. Care to join? If you’re already a member, you can log in here.
For years, power users relied on SmallCubed’s MailSuite plugins (including the beloved MailTags and Mail Act-On) to transform Apple Mail. But then Apple killed third-party Mail plugins.
Actually, they didn’t kill it. The verb is more appropriately knee-capped. Apple did offer an alternative framework, called extensions, but extensions simply lacked the integration that MailSuite needed. (Also, in fairness, Apple did not do this out of spite but instead to eliminate security risks from Apple Mail.)
SmallCubed faced a choice: abandon their users or build their own email app. They chose the latter, and the result is MailMaven, a newly released email application that incorporates MailSuite plus more in an entirely new Mac email client.
If you used Mail with MailSuite, think of MailMaven as that combination plus a bit more. The app delivers extensive tagging (keywords, projects, review dates, notes, colors), keyboard-driven filing, automation rules, and proper Gmail label support, all wrapped in a familiar interface.
I’m happy to see SmallCubed back with this release. They bit off a lot when they decided to build an independent mail app, and yet, they pulled it off.
This week’s sponsor is Quip, and it’s different from every other clipboard manager I’ve tried.
Most clipboard managers work the same way: they save everything you copy, and after a few days, you’re scrolling through a junk drawer of random text snippets, URLs you’ll never visit again, and those annoying 2FA codes that somehow stick around forever. Quip solves this with something BZG Apps calls “Quip Intelligence”—completely local AI that keeps your clipboard history actually useful.
Here’s what that means in practice. The app automatically removes duplicate entries so you’re not seeing the same email address five times. It strips tracking parameters from URLs before saving them. It filters out those temporary authentication codes that would otherwise clutter your history. And it learns from your behavior to skip the stuff you never actually reuse. All of this happens on your device, so nothing leaves your Mac, iPhone, or iPad.
What really stands out is the Smart Collections feature. You can set up rules that automatically organize your clipboard items—all your code snippets in one collection, research links in another, client email addresses in a third. The app handles the sorting, so you can actually find what you’re looking for without scrolling through chaos.
The keyboard extension on iOS deserves special mention. You can access your entire clipboard history from any app without switching contexts. Combined with the Super Shortcuts feature (which turns any clipboard item into a text expansion trigger), it’s remarkably efficient once you get it set up.
Quip is available for $19.99 as a one-time purchase for Mac, or $14.99/year for the full ecosystem across Mac, iPhone, and iPad. There’s a two-week free trial if you want to see how it fits into your workflow.
As a general fan of easy links between file apps, I’m always interested in seeing how things are going with Hookmark, a ubiquitous linking app for your Mac. A frequent question I get about this app is whether or not the links will work on iPhone and iPad.
Sadly, the answer has been ‘no’, until now. CogSci Apps has released a companion mobile app called Hookmark Pal, letting you access your Hookmark-created links on the go.
There is a caveat, though. Due to Apple restrictions, the application cannot access iCloud files. The team at HookMark is looking into ways around that, but even in its current implementation, this is a great tool if you’re already using Hookmark on your Mac.
