Focused 129: No One Wants to Work with a Jerk, with Colleen Wainwright



Focused Artwork.jpeg


Gmail ninja Colleen Wainwright joins Mike and me on this episode of Focused to talk about delegating work to others, the evolution of the attention economy, and working out of email without going crazy.

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.

  • HPE Tech Talk: HPE news, tech insights and world-class innovations. Listen now.

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

Will MailKit Save Mail.app?

One of the announcements to come out of WWDC this year is a new framework for third parties to create plugins for Apple’s Mail.app called MailKit. Mail.app has been stagnant for a long time. While the app continues to get support for email rendering and improvements to its basic functions (like search), that’s about it.

Most who use it day-to-day have gotten somewhat accustomed to how dated it feels. Making a stable, feature-rich email application isn’t easy. Most third-party developers seem to fall down on the “stability” part. Apple nails that but seems uninterested in the “feature-rich” part.

I hope that this new MailKit will allow third-party developers to pick up that slack. There is already a rich ecosystem of Apple Mail plugins, but I’ve become increasingly leary about using and recommending them during recent years. My concern was that Apple could, at any point, pull the plug on Apple Mail plugins.
A few years ago, I talked to an Apple engineer at WWDC who explained that mail plugins, historically at least, represented a security vulnerability, and Apple is very much interested in removing any security holes. The good news is that the announcement of MailKit means Apple is not pulling the plug on plugins but instead found a safe way for them to continue while keeping the platform secure.

This new sense that mail plugins have a future path and will continue to exist makes it easier for me to use them. I hope this also encourages other developers to get off the sidelines and explore developing new and helpful Mail.app plugins. Hopefully, another benefit will be that in future updates to macOS, plugin developers won’t have to re-invent the wheel every year. One of my favorite plugins is SmallCubed’s MailSuite, but every year I have to turn it off on beta machines and often for the first few months after a macOS update releases.

Unfortunately, MailKit is only for the Mac, leaving Apple’s Mail app on the iPhone and iPad sad and lonely, still without even the dignity of a sharing button. I’d love to see MailKit also make its way to iOS and iPad OS, but I’m not holding my breath.

Mac Power Users 595: The Poetic Mike Vardy



Mac Power Users Artwork.png


Mike Vardy returns to Mac Power Users to update us on where he has found balance between the iPad and the Mac. Mike also discusses how he blends analog and digital tools, and how he shares tasks and ideas with his remote team.

This episode of Mac Power Users is sponsored by:

  • 1Password: Have you ever forgotten a password? You don’t have to worry about that anymore.

  • SaneBox: Stop drowning in email!

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

  • Setapp: More than 200 powerful apps for your Mac. Try it free for a week.

Windows 11 and Test Drivers

There are a lot of folks looking at the new Windows 11 announcements coming out. I’m always curious to see what Microsoft is willing to do with Windows. Because Windows is no longer the supreme operating system it was, I think Microsoft can take more risks. It sounds like they are doing just that. To learn more, check out the Test Drivers interview with Panos Panay.

Apple TV: Foundation

I read the Foundation series when I was really young. I remember that I enjoyed the books and blew through the whole series over the course of a month during summer vacation. That’s all I remember. I hope this new series from Apple lives up to the books.

Jazz Friday: Steven Feifke with Veronica Swift “On the Street Where You Live”

Over the last few years, I have really come to enjoy Steven Feifke‘s arrangements, particularly for his Big Band. He’s taking more chances than ever with his arrangements, and I dig it. A case in point is their recent recording of “On the Street Where You Live” featuring Veronica Swift (an upcoming jazz vocalist that has it). The song starts with vampy single notes as Veronica belts out the melody on top. It’s like the band is in some sort of holding pattern. Later the arrangement opens up and the band roars to life behind a gifted vocalist, and it’s glorious.

Have a great weekend!

Mr. Hackett’s Mac Calendar

My pal Stephen Hackett has been hard at work over the last month designing a custom Apple-themed wall calendar with some gorgeous pictures and tons of special dates included. For example, did you know the Flower Power iMac was introduced on February 22, 2001?

Stephen has already blown past his Kickstarter funding goal and this calendar is going to happen. Check it out.

Menuwhere



Menuwhere Icon.png


Menuwhere pops up the frontmost app’s menus at the current mouse location. Once on-screen, you can drill down into the menus as far as you need to go, using either the keyboard (arrow keys and/or first-letter typing) or the mouse. Either way, your targeted menu item is quickly located.

And it’s customizable. Choose if you want to see the Apple menu at the end of the list or not at all. Maybe you don’t need the Help menu or the Edit menu. Menuwhere can make them disappear. Want to always see the alternate menu items or never see keyboard shortcuts in the pop-up menu? Set up what you want to see in the Menu tab of Menuwhere’s preferences. You can add a second keyboard shortcut to Menuwhere, and open a menu showing the menus from all open apps. You can also set menus’ text size from a range of sizes.

If you’re tired of mousing to and from the menu bar, get Menuwhere and stop mousing around .


View fullsize
Menuwhere Preferences.png


View fullsize
menus from all open apps.png

The EERO Pro V6 – A Significant WiFi Upgrade

One of the recurring complaints around Sparky headquarters these days is Internet speed. My kids are in college-from-your-bedroom during COVID, my wife is also home, and I use a little bit of bandwidth myself.

Years ago, eero was a podcast sponsor, and I got a free three-pack at the time. After that, I bought three more to get eero into my kids’ rooms and the backyard. We’ve had a good connection, but we didn’t have enough bandwidth for everyone using the Internet so intensely. Speedtest.net was showing WiFi speeds between 50 and 150 Mbps. So I went looking for alternatives.

eero has recently released some new hardware taking advantage of the more recent WiFi 6 standard. I’ve generally been happy with eero. They are easy to set up and just seem to work once you’ve got them installed. So I purchased the eero Pro 6 3-pack. The Pro 6 is made to cover 6,000 square feet. My house is only 1,500 square feet, but I do like to work in the backyard, and I do have WiFi cameras at the very front of the house. At $600, this was no small investment, but my wife and kids have been complaining a lot, and I decided I would do some serious testing once they arrived, intending to return them if the improvements were only incremental.

After several weeks of usage, I am keeping these.


eero pro 6 back.png

Installing the new eero hardware took all of 15 minutes. The eero app will recognize new hardware and let you add or replace existing hardware. One question in my mind was whether I would need to keep any of my older eero hardware to get full house coverage. (My old system had six units. This new system only had three.) Regardless, I took all the old units offline and installed the three new units. Two of the endpoints have Ethernet cable, so two of the devices are plugged in. The third device is at a location that doesn’t have a convenient Ethernet drop, so it is just plugged into the wall. Then I started doing some testing.



I’ve done probably thirty speed tests on this new system, and it has clocked in no less than 500 Mbps every time. However, if I sit close to the transmitter, it gets closer to 700 Mbps. I’ve been shocked at how much faster WiFi is in my house with this 5X increase. Also, my network is a lot easier to manage with just three devices instead of six.


eero pro 6 3-pack.png

If you’re looking unsatisfied with your current WiFi speed, these eeros may be just what you’re looking for.