Stephen Hackett recently wrote a delightful article on Apple Jam Packs that made me smile. If you were using Apple gear during a certain decade, saving up for and buying Apple Jam Packs was one of the delights of the platform.
I remember slowly adding to my collection over a few years and the thrill of exploring all the loops, rhythms, and instruments with each new purchase. Folks that were there may disagree as to what the best Jam Pack was, and everyone is entitled to their opinion, so long as they acknowledge that, without a doubt, the World Music Jam Pack was the clear winner.
If you have the original first edition OmniFocus Field Guide, first, bless you, and, second, all the transition music in it was World Music Jam Pack loops.
Apple’s Journal app is growing up a bit and is now a much better candidate to be your journaling app of choice than it was when first released on iPhone. In this video, I take a look at Journal on iPadOS.
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Recently I guested on Kerry Provenzano’s Paper Places podcast where I talked about my analogue and digital writing systems. It was a lot of fun talking to Kerry. I even went deep with my original book, Encyclopedia Sparky.
The team that brought us Arc is back with Dia, their new browser. It’s a Chromium browser with artificial intelligence baked right in. I’ve been using it for a few weeks and here are my initial impressions.… 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.
Speaking of Ken Case, the Omni Group recently posted its post-WWDC roadmap. There are some nice new features heading to OmniFocus, including mutually exclusive tags (for things like priority and Kanban status), better repeat, and a new, third date field for “planned” dates. It all sounds pretty useful.
In this week’s episode of The Lab Report: Pixelmator Pro is adding AI features, why an Apple Ring is a good idea, and [two of my favorite musical artists get together](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjM6Jbd__Qc&list=RDPjM6Jbd__Qc&start_radio=1) and awake my soul.
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As a Superhuman user, my first reaction to this news was, “uh oh”.
What makes Superhuman so valuable to me as a user is the company’s obsession with email optimization. If they just become another cog in the wheel of Grammarly, I’m not sure they’ll keep that up.
However, since then, I’ve been reading the press release and even the email from Superhuman’s founder, Rahul Vohra. It appears that this acquisition was made to accelerate Superhuman’s feature list, rather than impede it. I’ve got my fingers crossed that this turns out to be a good thing for users.
One of the things I love most about being part of the Mac community is discovering thoughtfully crafted software from independent developers. These aren’t apps churned out by massive corporations—they’re passion projects built by small teams who genuinely care about solving real problems for people like us.
The Artisanal Software Festival is happening right now, and it’s a fantastic opportunity to support some truly exceptional indie developers while picking up tools that can transform how you work. This isn’t one of those overwhelming bundles with dozens of apps you’ll never use. Instead, it’s a curated collection of professional-grade software for writers, researchers, and creative professionals.
Some standouts that caught my attention (and that I’ve used): Tinderbox for complex note-taking and idea mapping, Scrivener for long-form writing projects, HoudahSpot for lightning-fast file searching, and BBEdit—the legendary text editor that’s been a Mac staple for decades. There’s also Bookends for reference management, EagleFiler for organizing all your digital information, and SpamSieve for keeping your inbox clean.
These are all fantastic apps and made by teams that prioritize sustainability over growth-at-all-costs, which means better long-term support and more thoughtful feature development.
The festival is running for a limited time with genuine discounts—no artificial markups or gimmicky bundles. Just quality software at fair prices, with full support and upgrade privileges included.
If you’ve been thinking about upgrading your toolkit or supporting indie developers who are keeping the Mac software ecosystem vibrant and innovative, this is a perfect opportunity to do both. Check out the Artisanal Software Festival and see what catches your eye.
