Mac Power Users 840: Finder and File Mgmt

On this episode of Mac Power Users, Stephen and David take on the Finder. They compare their wildly different file management philosophies, dig into Finder toolbar customization, extensions, Quick Actions, and the apps that make file management actually enjoyable (or at least less painful). Stephen also reveals that he’s written what may be the shortest AppleScript in history, and David’s screen apparently grew a right ear. Plus, there’s a new Apple hardware roundup because they announced a lot last week. Of course, money was spent.

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Half Your Day Isn’t Your Job

How much of your day is spent on your actual work?

Not the email triage. Not the task shuffling. Not the calendar juggling, the filing, the follow-ups, the status tracking, the scheduling, the data entry. The real work. The creative stuff. The thinking. The making.

For most of us, the honest answer is painful. We sit down intending to do meaningful work and spend the first hour sorting email. We open our task manager and burn twenty minutes reorganizing instead of doing. We have systems. Maybe several. None of them talk to each other, and all of them need feeding.

It’s not the work. It’s the work around the work. I call it the donkey work.

I’ve been building something to fix this. It’s a method for using AI to handle the donkey work so you have more time for everything else. I’ll tell you all about it Tuesday.

Apple Should Buy Anthropic (But Likely Won’t)

MG Siegler recently wrote a piece arguing that Apple should acquire Anthropic (paywall). It’s a fun thought experiment, and I can’t stop thinking about it.

The more time I spend working with AI tools like Claude, the more I’m convinced the future isn’t about applications. It’s going to be an AI agent sitting on top of all your data, managing the tedium while you focus on the work that matters.

Apple is in the perfect position to do this right. They control the hardware, the operating system, and the privacy infrastructure. What they don’t have is a world-class model.

Apple has been struggling with AI for years now. The Google Gemini deal brings hope, but it still isn’t their technology, and it seems like they are bleeding AI talent. Meanwhile, Apple just posted a $42 billion profit last quarter. They have the resources. The question is whether they have the will.

Acquiring Anthropic would change the game overnight. It would take Apple from playing catch-up to leading the conversation. Imagine Claude’s capabilities woven into every Apple device with the kind of deep integration only Apple can pull off. We’d be talking about something way beyond a better Siri.

There’s also an ideological alignment. Anthropic has taken a principled stance on AI safety and responsible development. Apple has always positioned itself as the company that cares about how technology affects people. Those values aren’t identical, but they rhyme.

But stepping back into reality, this is certainly a pipe dream. Anthropic’s current valuation sits around $380 billion. Apple just doesn’t make moves like this. But if there was ever a time to start …

Setapp Single App Subscriptions

Setapp just launched something I’ve been hoping they’d do for a while: single app subscriptions. Instead of committing to the full Setapp bundle, you can now subscribe to individual apps directly through the Setapp ecosystem.

This makes a lot of sense. Not everyone wants a bundle. Sometimes you just need one tool. And now you can get it inside Setapp’s trusted ecosystem without paying for the whole catalog.

The list of eligible apps includes many tools I’ve recommended over the years. If there’s a Setapp app you’ve been eyeing but didn’t want to subscribe to the full service for, this is worth a look.

Setapp Single App Subscriptions are available now under the Marketplace menu.

Widgetsmith Wallpaper Shine Through

Widgetsmith 8.2 just shipped, and it brings a feature I’ve been wanting. Your widgets can now go clear or frosted, letting your wallpaper show through.

Old-school Widgetsmith users will remember the trick. You’d screenshot your wallpaper, feed it into the app, and Widgetsmith would generate a background for each widget that perfectly matched whatever sat behind it. No visible borders. The widget just disappeared into your wallpaper. It was clever and it looked fantastic.

Then Apple added the shadow box around widgets, and that trick stopped working. You can’t fake invisible edges when iOS draws a visible container around every widget on your Home Screen.

Widgetsmith 8.2 is the answer to that. It’s not the same seamless blend we used to have, but it’s as close as we’re going to get. Your widgets can now be clear or frosted, so your wallpaper actually shows through instead of being covered by an opaque box.

The update also adds photo backgrounds. You can put any image behind your widgets. Family photos behind a clock widget. Your dog behind the weather. A favorite pattern behind your calendar. It’s a nice touch for people who want their Home Screen to feel more personal.

If you care about how your iPhone looks (and if you’re reading this, I suspect you do), grab the Widgetsmith 8.2 update. David Smith and his team keep finding ways to give us the customization that Apple won’t.

Focused 251: Joe Casabona

On this episode of Focused, David and Mike sit down with Joe Casabona, a podcast and automation coach who helps solopreneurs build systems so they can actually take time off without worrying about it. Joe shares his journey from agency developer to independent creator, and the conversation covers the real cost of independence (spoiler: it’s worth it), managing distractions with tools like the Brick (an NFC device that physically locks you out of apps), setting email boundaries, hiring a virtual assistant, and Joe’s practical approach to automation. Joe’s “PER method” (perform, evaluate, remove) and his “fewest links” philosophy for keeping automations from getting brittle are worth the listen alone.

This episode of Focused is sponsored by:

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Apple Drops 512GB RAM Option on M3 Ultra Mac Studio

Zac Hall at 9to5Mac spotted that Apple quietly removed the 512GB unified memory option from the M3 Ultra Mac Studio. When the machine launched a year ago, Apple made a big deal about that configuration. It could run large language models with over 600 billion parameters entirely in memory. Now the top option is 256GB, and Apple didn’t say a word about the change.

The 256GB model is still available, and for most people that’s more than enough. But the 512GB configuration was a statement. It said Apple was serious about local AI on the desktop. Pulling it quietly suggests memory supply constraints from AI server demand are hitting even Apple’s premium hardware.

I suspect we won’t see 512GB come back until the M4 Ultra ships. And even then, maybe. This also makes me wonder if the M5 Mac Studio will be where Apple starts raising memory prices. I say this as an interested party.