Work Faster on Your Mac with Better Touch Tool (Sponsor)




This week MacSparky is sponsored by one of my favorite Mac utilities, BetterTouchTool. Apple’s built-in gestures for its mice and trackpads are great, but they don’t go far enough. With BetterTouchTool, you can add an entire suite of gestures to your mouse and trackpad for just the apps and actions that you need.

Do you want to move between tabs in Safari by swiping or tapping your trackpad? BetterTouchTool does that. want to put your Mac to sleep with a custom trackpad gesture? BetterTouchTool does that to. BetterTouchTool lets you hot-wire your trackpad and mouse. BetterTouchTool additionally contains some handy features like window snapping, a clipboard manager, a screenshot editor, and much more. This app is an absolute game-changer. Also, you can now join the BetterTouchTool Community at community.folivora.ai to learn how to get even more from BetterTouchTool. Users have shared some amazing presets there, including some very advanced custom Touch Bar setups that you should check out.

BetterTouchTool comes with a 45-day trial after which you can choose between a license that includes all updates for two years and a lifetime license. BetterTouchTool has been around for ten years, and I’ve been using it the entire time. With BetterTouchTool, I can make my Mac dance. You should too. MacSparky readers can purchase BetterTouchTool for 15% off at checkout by using the coupon code MACSPARKYBTT for a limited time. So don’t delay. Go to folivora.ai to learn more and take advantage of the special limited-time, 15% discount on BetterTouchTool.

Private Relay Data Slow-Down

I had an interesting issue with my Monterey Mac. Since I bought my fancy new EERO routers, I’ve been dripping in Internet. But suddenly the party was over. My connection was noticeably slow and laggy. After a bit of troubleshooting, I discovered Private Relay is the culprit.

Here’s my speed with Private Relay turned on.


Here’s my speed just minutes later on the same machine with Private Relay turned off. From 55 to 890! (Interestingly, upload got slower.)


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I’m submitting a bug to Apple, and I’m sure they’re already onto this. Monterey hasn’t shipped yet and I expect when it does, it will not crush your Internet speed. But in the meantime, if you are thinking about running the public beta, you’ve been warned.

New External Magic Keyboards with Touch ID

Yesterday Apple also announced the release of the new magic keyboards (with or without a keypad), mouse, and trackpad for Apple Silicon Macs. These are the silver versions (no other colors!). When paired with an Apple Silicon Mac, you can get Touch ID on your Apple Silicon laptop or Mac mini. These products showed up earlier than I expected. When the new iMacs were first released, I figured it would take at least six months for Apple to get around to releasing the new accessories for other Apple Silicon Mac customers. (However, I also thought there’d be more colors.)

If you’ve never used a Touch ID laptop, they are pretty great. Not only can you unlock your Mac with it, but you can also do things like unlock system preferences and 1Password. I expect it’d be just as useful in front of a Mac mini and a monitor, provided you like using Apple Keyboards.

This release also makes me wonder about the likelihood of Face ID in a future Mac. It’d be nice just to sit behind your Mac and have it unlock, but those laptop screens are very skinny and it’s sounding like the big Apple Silicon iMac won’t show up until 2022.

If you’re not looking to buy a new keyboard but you do wear an Apple Watch, you should turn on the unlock with Apple Watch feature in the Security & Privacy preference. I wear my Apple Watch every day and while this feature is not reason enough alone to wear an Apple Watch, it’s a heck of a perk.


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Focused 131: Liminal Thinking



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We’re all a lot less objective than we give ourselves credit for. Join Mike and me on the latest episode of Focused as we attempt to figure out why by considering limiting beliefs, learning loops, and the slippery slope of self-sealing logic.

This episode of Focused is sponsored by:

  • Squarespace: Make your next move. Enter offer code FOCUSED at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.

  • Discourse: Modern forum software for your community. Get 50% off your first 2 months.

  • Memberful: Best-in-class membership software for independent creators, publishers, educators, podcasters, and more. Get started now, no credit card required.

Mac Pro Updates

Yesterday Apple released some new gear for the Intel Mac Pro. I’ve been telling anyone that will listen to only buy Apple Silicon Macs going forward, but the Mac Pro does remain the easiest exception to the rule. There are folks making motion pictures that need massively powerful computers and use custom software that won’t immediately get updated for Apple Silicon. For those people, there is the Intel Mac Pro.

If the folks who study Apple rumors are to be believed, we’re probably a year (or more) from an Apple Silicon Mac Pro. So Apple updating the Intel Mac Pro at this point makes sense.

Mac Power Users 599: A Man of the People, with Dr. Drang



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Dr. Drang returns on this episode of Mac Power Users to discuss his recent Mac renaissance, the way he manages notes, and some of his favorite utilities.

This episode of Mac Power Users is sponsored by:

  • TextExpander from Smile: Get 20% off with this link and type more with less effort! Expand short abbreviations into longer bits of text, even fill-ins, with TextExpander from Smile.

  • SaneBox: Stop drowning in email!

  • Squarespace: Make your next move. Enter offer code MPU at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.

  • Pingdom: Start monitoring your website performance and availability today, and get instant alerts when an outage occurs or a site transaction fails. Use offer code MPU to get 30% off. Offer expires on January 31, 2022, and can be used only once.

Script Debugger 8



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It’s a sad commentary on my AppleScripting lately that I just realized ScriptDebugger released version 8 several months ago. Script Debugger is the AppleScript tool that Apple should have released. It’s been in development for 26 years, and it continues to impress.
The most significant change in Script Developer 8 is is support for macOS Big Sur and M1 Macs. Script Debugger 8 runs natively on M1 Macs and generates native standalone script applications for M1 and Intel Macs.
Other new features in Script Debugger 8 include support for Dark Mode, display themes, a reimagined facility for generating standalone script applications that supports code signing and notarizing.
My favorite feature continues to be its fantastic dictionary support. Anytime I hit a thorny problem with AppleScript, the ScriptDebugger dictionaries come to my rescue.
Script Debugger offers a fully functional 20-day free trial. Script Debugger switches to “Lite” mode when the free trial ends, where some of Script Debugger’s advanced features are disabled. Just using the free Lite mode, Script Debugger is far superior to Apple’s Script Editor.

Daylite: A Mac-to-Mac CRM Solution (Sponsor)

If you’re a smallish business (up to 100 people), operating in a macOS or iOS environment, there’s a less-clunky, native Mac option that will certainly “check” all the usual CRM boxes while providing those uniquely intuitive and stress-relieving features that have become the exclusive domain of the Apple community. 

It’s Daylite.

From identifying that first seed of a lead to landing the business and the repeat business, Daylite stays with you and your team for the entire customer lifecycle. And all the resources are at your fingertips, online or offline on a Mac, iPhone or iPad.

In a Mac-inspired way, Daylite expands the definition of CRM and boosts your team’s productivity while reducing the steps and time spent searching, merging and typing. As a bonus, you can integrate Apple calendars, Apple Mail and Reminders, Siri and more. Online or offline, on any Mac device, to and from any Mac user, Daylite is the Mac-minded way of keeping your business, your team and yourself moving forward — fast-forward. Check it out here.



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The Perils of a Services Business

Yesterday Apple announced its Q3 earnings. There is no surprise that the company continues to seemingly print money with $81 Billion (with a B) in revenue. The iPhone now represents 49% of Apple’s revenue compared to the Mac at 10% and the iPad at 9%. (As usual, Jason Snell has all the numbers and pretty graphs.)

However, the most interesting number for me was services, which represent 21% of Apple’s revenue. That’s right. Apple makes more now on services than it does on the Mac and iPad combined.

This causes me a slight pause because historically, Apple has always been a product company. They made gizmos and we gave them money for the gizmos. Being in the gizmo business lead Apple to a particular set of priorities and serious commitment to customer experience.

Services are a different business model. The key to services is convenience and recurring revenue. This model could lead to a focus on customer experience. (People will continue to pay for outstanding services just as they would products.) However, services also can tempt a company to chisel customers. Little bits of services income across millions of customers adds up to a lot of money.

For the first time, Apple has a legitimate motivation that is not centered on customer experience. So how will they proceed? Toward excellent services or chiseling?

It seems to me that, on the whole, Apple is listening to its better angels. For example, Apple Photos and the sync engine behind it provide a truly valuable service to millions of users at a price that makes sense. Another example is the iCloud+ features coming this fall.

However, your free tier of iCloud storage remains a laughable 5 Gigabytes. That number was low when it was first announced. In 2021 it’s absurd. The goofy way in which they determine who is a small developer (lowering Apple’s cut of App sales) is another example that is hard to view as anything other than chiseling.

I don’t have the answers. At this point, I think it is an interesting question that Apple enthusiasts should keep an eye on. As services continue to grow for Apple, will they change their focus?