Apple’s Self Service Repair Store

Apple has now opened its Self Service Repair Store Website. The word “its” in the previous sentence is carrying a lot. Apple’s actually contracted this business of selling parts and tools out to someone else running their own website using Google web fonts. Stephen Hackett did a deep dive and has all the details.

I’m glad that Apple now accommodates people that want to repair their own gear. However, Apple devices really don’t lend themselves to self-repair. The priority is definitely “thin and light” over “let them tinker with it.” I think “thin and light” should be the priority since the vast majority of us have no intention of opening up our devices and risking breaking something or setting the battery on fire.

All that said, the pricing seems kind of bananas. It looks like most of the parts (before you buy/rent tools) are about the same price as just paying Apple to fix it for you. I don’t know if that means Apple is running its own repair program at cost or they are charging too much for parts.

The big win in all of this for me is Apple now hosting its repair manuals. While I have no intention of opening up my iPhone, it is fun to see how it works.

iPad Keyboard Shortcuts

I’ve linked to Jeff Richardson at iPhone J.D. before. What you may not know is that Jeff not only loves his iPhone, he largely uses his iPad in lieu of a laptop. That’s why I was interested to read his recent post summarizing his favorite iPad keyboard shortcuts.

Because historically the iPad wasn’t much of a team player in terms of keyboard shortcuts, it’s easy to forget that is now a thing. You can work a lot faster on your iPad once you get these under your fingers. Perhaps, most importantly is that you remember that long-pressing the command key should get you a list of available keyboard shortcuts in most of iPadOS and iPad apps.

Week Planning and Setting Time Blocks (MacSparky Labs)

I just wanted to send out a reminder about this Friday’s MacSparky Labs virtual meetup at 12:00 Pacific. The Zoom call details are below. The agendas for these meetups are always pretty flexible but I do have a few things on my list…

This is a post for MacSparky Labs Early Access and Backstage Members only. Care to join? Or perhaps do you need to sign in?

Time Tracking Categories

Stephen and I dug deep into time tracking in this week’s episode of the Mac Power Users. Throughout the show, I kept referencing my saved timers. I thought this would be a good place to share them in detail with a bit of explanation.

As I explained in the episode, the idea of saved timers is to give you a way to make sure you are consistently tracking and get more reliable data. In the Timing App, they are projects. In the Timery App, they are saved timers. One of the tricks of doing time tracking is getting data that’s specific enough to help you out and flexible enough to adjust with your active projects.

I explain in the episode how I use different time tracking apps, so you’ll have to listen to that if you want a further explanation, but having the same group of projects or saved timers makes the process easy.

So my main projects are as follows:

Project: Family and Friends

Subprojects: Family, Friends, Ahsoka (the dog)

Project: Personal

Subprojects: Altruism, Comms, Cooking, Down Time, Eating, Errands, Fiction, Finance, Gaming, Household, Media, Music, News, Shopping, Woodworking
This serves as a catch-all for all of my personal tasks, whether reading a book or pulling weeds.

Project: Health

Subprojects: Exercise, Gardening, Hiking, Meditation, Medical, Nap
This is another one that has evolved. Originally it was for exercise and bicycling, but now it’s where I keep anything health-related.

Project: Focus

Subprojects: Incremental Planning, sparkyOS, Planning, Journaling, Time Tracking
I do a variety of tasks to hold things together. They’re both related to my work and my personal life. They drifted between various categories for a long time, but I created a separate project called “Focus” a couple of years ago. These tasks include reading books, journaling, planning, and general work on sparkyOS. “Planning” is what I do day to day. “Incremental Planning” is what I do weekly/monthly/quarterly.

MacSparky

So Many Subprojects: Admin, Blog, Comms, Customer Support, Field Guides (with sub-sub categories for each title), MacSparky Labs, Newsletter, Planning (MacSparky planning only), Podcasts (with sub-sub categories for each show), Research, Screencast Contract Work, Social Media, Speaking, Sponsor Work, The Creator’s Guild, Webinars, Writing, YouTube, Studio Build-Out.

This is another one that has expanded over the years. Anything I do related to being MacSparky goes into this category. And again, because I like data, I don’t mind having quite a few entries under this heading.

Project: DLR Field Guide

No Subprojects
My wife and I have been having a little bit of fun making some videos at Disneyland. This one probably belongs under the personal category. It is a personal project with not any big plans for the future. But ultimately, I decided to give it its own project to keep it separate from other personal time.

Project: Unintentional

No Subprojects

Sometimes, you find yourself drifting off into the unknown when you track time without any real plan. Maybe I spend an hour on Amazon or in front of YouTube or sorting out screws in my hardware drawer. These are voids of time that I follow without any real plan. Whenever I catch myself doing that, I log in as unintentional time. I find the reporting of this to be helpful. When I see unintentional time trending up, it’s a warning sign that I need to look at what’s going on.

I have several friends that, upon learning how much time I track, think I’m crazy. They usually don’t say it to my face, but I can see it in their eyes. The significant benefit for me is getting feedback on where I’m actually spending time. It lets me identify time traps where I’m spending more time than I thought and points out areas of my life that may lend themselves to things like automation and delegation. The trick for me is not to worry too much about the minutes and think more about the hours.

There’s a lot more time tracking, and we covered it in depth in this week’s episode of the Mac Power Users. We’ve also covered it in the past on the Automators and even the Focused podcast if you’d like to learn more.

Mac Power Users 637: Digging Deep on Tracking Time

Stephen and I both track how we spend our time. In this episode of Mac Power Users, we discuss the approaches and tools we use to see how we spend our days.

This episode of Mac Power Users is sponsored by:

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Improve Your Email Workflows with SaneBox (Sponsor)

How much time are you spending on emails? How much time are you wasting on emails? You know by now that you don’t get time back, but you can at least spend it wisely. Thanks to SaneBox, this week’s sponsor at MacSparky, you can do just that. You don’t have to use your time digging through countless emails in your inbox to figure out what is high priority, what can wait, and what can be deleted. 

So, how is SaneBox going to help you? This is where SaneBox’s AI comes in. SaneBox’s AI pays attention to how you interact with new email in your inbox. You’ll train SaneBox and it will learn how to handle your new emails automatically and filter unimportant emails out of your inbox. It’s not just time you’re freeing up. In terms of productivity, think about the mental space you’re freeing up that allows you to focus on the important things, and not get distracted by unimportant or low-priority emails that you can deal with later.  

Get through your inbox quickly. Get more productive. Get SaneBox. Sign up for your free trial, and you’ll get a $10 credit you can use towards a SaneBox subscription.

Automators 100: Celebrating 100 Automations, and More

In this episode of Automators, Rosemary and I look at our favorite automations, most wished-for features, and how our automation has evolved in 100 episodes.

This episode of Automators is sponsored by:

The MacSparky Labs Weekly Update Podcast (MacSparky Labs)

This morning I dropped my first weekly update in the MacSparky Labs podcast feed. If you are a labs member, you should be able to download it now. This short episode includes some additional commentary on the Mac Studio vs. MacBook Air debate, uses for Obsidian, and some interesting Apple news from the week… This is a post for MacSparky Labs Members only. Care to join? Or perhaps do you need to sign in?

Project Management with Obsidian (MacSparky Labs)

I’ve been busy evolving a project management system from inside Obsidian. This system relies upon the use of status folders (instead of tags) and the DataView plugin to auto-sort and display relevant projects. I believe this system could work for all sorts of work but it is, admittedly, still a work in progress. In this video, I walk you through how I’m using it and what I’m up to… This is a post for MacSparky Labs Early Access and Backstage Members only. Care to join? Or perhaps do you need to sign in?