Wizards No Longer United

I was too old to understand Pokémon Go, but I was interested in Niantic’s “Wizard’s Unite” game that came out a few years ago. The game was set in the Harry Potter universe and required you to catch digital creatures out in the real world. My enthusiasm for the game lasted about a week. I found that I preferred engaging with the actual world around me more than the little window on my phone. It sounds like I was not alone as the game is shutting down today.

All that said, I do think these reality interactive games are going to be huge in the future as technologies like VR/AR glasses evolve into something that you don’t have to literally strap to your face.

Automators 94: Legal Nerd-ness with Jeff Richardson

On this week’s episode of Automators, Rosemary and I are joined by Jeff Richardson: lawyer by day, automator for life. 

This episode of Automators is sponsored by:

  • Fitbod: Get stronger, faster with a fitness plan that fits you. Get 25% off your membership.
  • Doppler: Sync environment variables at scale.
  • New Relic: Monitor, debug, and improve your entire stack. Sign up now and get 100GB of data free, forever – no credit card required.

Journaling Webinar Now on YouTube

Last week I did a free webinar on how (and why) I journal. It came out great, and I’ve got a lot of positive feedback on it. I usually add the webinar content to the appropriate Field Guide after I’ve finished it. In this case, however, I don’t have any Field Guide where adding a 45-minute journaling webinar makes sense, so I’m posting it to YouTube. Enjoy


There are a few links I mention in the video. Here they are.

Sparky’s Journal Prompts Page

Day One

Obsidian App

Craft App

Roam Research

Also, if this sort of thing interests you, please subscribe to my YouTube channel. I’m going to be posting there more regularly going forward.

Audio Hijack is Getting Scripting Support

Rogue Amoeba has the details on their website:

Perhaps the single most notable change, however, is something making a return from years back: scripting support. In the years since Audio Hijack Pro 2 was replaced by Audio Hijack 3, we’ve never stopped getting requests for some type of scripting to make a return. After much research and experimentation, we’ll soon be providing a from-the-ground-up JavaScript-based scripting system, as well as Shortcuts support.

I agree with Jason Snell. Audio Hijack has been my go-to audio recording tool for years. As a podcaster, I can record my mic, the Zoom audio, and a combined version of everything all at once. It’s this ability in Audio Hijack that has all of us nerds with our knickers in a bunch about podcasting on the iPad. It’s powerful enough, but it cannot do that.

That said, every time I record a show, I issue a silent prayer for Audio Hijack to get scripting support so I don’t have to take so many manual steps, even using my beloved, there is only so much I can do. This is going to be an awesome update. I can’t wait to put it in the rotation.

Apple and Support for Old Hardware

There are a lot of knocks against Apple that, when I hear them, I say, “Yup. That’s about right.” They charge too much for storage on new Macs. They’re secretive about new products, which is smart. But they are also often secretive about little stuff, which seems dumb. They are way too stingy with free iCloud storage. (5GB?! Really? In 2022?)

But then there is a separate category of knocks against Apple that baffle me. One of those is the idea that they cripple old devices, so you’ll buy a new one. Where do people get that idea? Until recently, my wife was running a 10-year-old MacBook. I know multiple people that are still using an iPad 2. (The iPad 2 shipped in 2011.) The same goes for the iPhone. When measured against the march of technology, Apple supports ancient iPhones.

John Gruber recently posted a story about Google dropping support for their Pixel 3, a three-year-old phone. At the same time. Apple still supports the iPhone 6S, which shipped in 2015. I honestly don’t get the argument that Apple is usint software updates to kill old hardware. In reality it is just the opposite.

If you look at the iPad in particular, I know a lot of people running old hardware quite happily. Apple keeps the software updates coming and the iPad is like the energizer bunny. It just keeps going and going. I have a theory that we’ll get similar longevity from Apple Silicon Macs, but that remains to be seen.

Use TextSniper for Easy OCR on Your Mac (Sponsor)

My thanks to TextSniper for sponsoring MacSparky.com this week. I’m a fan of this app.

TextSniper is a Mac OCR app that can extract text anywhere on your Mac’s screen and automatically save it to your clipboard so that you can paste it anywhere you need it. It can even read the text to you. The whole thing works a lot like the built-in screen capture on the Mac, just way more powerful.

Also, TextSniper doesn’t collect your data. The text recognition is processed on your Mac and does not require an internet connection. 

With TextSniper, you can:

  • Quickly get a text from PDFs, Zoom calls, Presentations, and Videos. 
  • Copy text from anywhere, even images and websites that don’t let you select text.
  • Quickly grab data like email addresses, phone numbers, and links.
  • Read QR codes and barcodes.
  • Get text out of just about any image format, including JPG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, and BMP.

I find myself using TextSniper constantly in my daily work. As an example, my wife sent me a picture of a letter she received. I needed to grab some data from the letter (account number, etc…) TextSniper came to the rescue.

TextSniper works with macOS Catalina and later and also works with Parallels Desktop

Get TextSniper now and enjoy the fastest way to copy uncopyable text, wherever it may be. Use promo code TS2022 to get an additional 25% off. 

Dashboard 2.0

I missed this post from Stephen Hackett a few days ago, but I couldn’t agree more that we need Dashboard to come back to the Mac. I actually used the Dashboard before it was removed, but in today’s world with Swift UI, a Dashboard 2.0 should give you widgets zooming into your main screen. Imagine if instead of having to give a whole space to my Comms Board, I could just make it zoom in and out as needed?

This also came up on the most recent episode of the Mac Power Users. I think the trick of making a Dashboard 2.0 that would get traction among the users would be to make it fully compatible with Swift UI widgets and let the users put them all over the screen, not just the right corner as they currently are relegated with the Notification Center.

I realize this is just wish-casting, but wouldn’t it be nice?