The end of the year is nearly upon us, so Stephen and I are back to share our gift ideas on this episode of Mac Power Users. Stephen then goes on to share a new life philosophy, only to learn that I am already a master of it.
This episode of Mac Power Users is sponsored by:
Five years ago, Apple released the first M1 Macs. It’s hard to overstate how significant that moment was, not just for what it delivered technically, but for what it meant about Apple’s commitment to the Mac. Because the years leading up to that launch were rough.
The butterfly keyboard was a disaster. Not just for its initial failure, but also for Apple’s slow response and eventual correction. There was also way too much thermal throttling. Most frustrating was the long delays between updates that delivered the smallest incremental improvements (and more butterfly keyboards).
It felt like Apple had lost the plot on what made the Mac great in the first place. A lot of us wondered if Apple still understood the Mac, or if it had become an afterthought to the iPhone business.
Then the M1 arrived, and everything changed. I remember the jump from my last Intel Mac to that first Apple Silicon machine. It was one of those rare, obvious leaps you don’t see often in computing anymore. Like going from a spinning hard drive to an SSD. The speed, the battery life, the silence. It wasn’t just faster.
It was fundamentally different. Better in ways that affected every single interaction with the machine.
Five years later, Apple is still nailing it with the Mac. The MacBook Air is shockingly capable. The MacBook Pro is genuinely pro again. The Mac Studio and Mac Mini are giving people exactly what they need for desktop workflows. The only outlier is the Mac Pro, which feels adrift right now. But otherwise? The Mac lineup is in better shape than it’s ever been. And it all traces back to that decision to take control of the silicon.
What’s remarkable is that Apple doesn’t seem to be slowing down. The M5 family is just starting to arrive, and it’s another meaningful step forward. These machines keep getting more powerful while staying power efficient and cool.
The Mac isn’t just recovered from those dark days. It’s thriving. Five years in, Apple Silicon still feels like the beginning of something rather than a finished story.
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:
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.
The Lab Report is my weekly podcast exclusively for the MacSparky Labs members.
Would you like to join? If you’re already a member, you can log in here.
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.