Appointments in the Menu Bar

I routinely keep my appointments listed in my menu bar when working on my Mac. As someone who does a lot of block scheduling, this is just one more reminder of where I should be as I work through the day. I also use Bartender to thin down the menu bar so truly useful data, like this, can be visible.


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There are a few ways to pull this off. Fantastical has a setting that lets me put the next appointment in my menu bar with the “Show Upcoming Item in Menu Bar” checkbox in the Appearance settings. Fantastical also gives you a calendar and list of events if you click on the menu bar icon.

There are also some apps to scratch this itch. MeetingBar is my favorite. It gives you plenty of control over exactly what will show up and also a nice scrolling list if you click on the menu bar item. Both MeetingBar and Fantastical work with the meeting services like Teams and Zoom so you can launch meetings from the menu bar. Also, MeetingBar has a cool flip board-inspired icon, and I dig flip boards.


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The Never-Ending Inertia of Habits

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about habits. I think most of us have it wrong about habits. We think of habits as these little behaviors we intentionally build into our own selves when the need arises.

While we may think that habits are intentionally formed, habits are more often unintentionally formed. Things like getting french fries on the way home from the office, planting yourself in front of the TV for hours at a time, and hitting the snooze button are all habits unintentionally formed. The unintentional ones are the most insidious because they check all the habit boxes (cue, craving, response, reward) without the human being conscious of them arising.

Then one day, you wake up and realize you can’t stop eating french fries. You waste way too much of your time in front of the television. You can’t get out of bed in the morning. And you don’t know why.

Put simply, habits are always forming. The train never stops. Perhaps even more important than being intentional about forming new habits is being aware of all the habits you have already formed, many of which are self-destructive. I have tried to pull this intentionality to the front by making a list of all habits I’m observing in myself (some good, lots bad) and then trying to rewire myself where appropriate. This will take a while, but awareness is definitely the first step.

Why I’m Leaning Obsidian

Over the past year, I’ve spent way more time than I will ever get back looking at Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) options as they continue to evolve. Three options that have received particular attention from me are Roam Research, Obsidian, and Craft. While I could make a case for any of these three, I’m leaning toward Obsidian.

Why I’m Leaning Obsidian

I continue to be impressed with Obsidian’s feature set and release cycle. We get updates weekly, sometimes multiple times a week. Obsidian’s developers have thus far made a stable, fun-to-use Electron app (I didn’t even know that was possible) that gives you all the expected PKM tools: Wiki-style links, backlinks, and graph view. Just take a look at everything already completed on the Obsidian roadmap. Like all of these apps, Obsidian makes contextual computing so easy. I embed links to OmniFocus task lists, DEVONthink libraries, websites, and anything else I can tie to a URL with no problems. Obsidian also supports creating links to files on your file system or just embedding files right in your Obsidian library.

Moreover, they have added the ability to add third-party plugins, which has spawned a rich assortment of interesting additional features from third parties. Simultaneously, the Obsidian developers plow forward with their app. (They are now close to releasing a mobile app.) Best of all, everything is based on a collection of Markdown files, which means you control your data and can easily get it out of Obsidian if you get drawn to something else new and shiny. Of use to me, but not necessarily everyone else, they have already put together their own end-to-end encryption solution with version history. I’m able to sync my data with my own encryption key.

Why I’m Not Leaning Toward Roam

Roam Research is a web-based linked-text system that lets you link ideas between each other with ridiculous simplicity. Roam, of all the options, is the most granular. For Roam, every carriage return represents another block and linkable entity. Obsidian and (to a lesser extent) Craft are more engineered around the document model. That makes Roam perhaps the easiest solution to laser focus on linking one bit of data to another (which is good) and less useful for writing (which is bad). Along that theme, Roam also uses a weird variant of Markdown that makes writing in Roam even harder.

My biggest gripe with Roam is the data model. With Roam, all of your data goes into their cloud. They don’t have end-to-end encryption. They don’t even have two-factor authentication. If you get a user’s login email and password, you get everything.

Craft

Craft is the newest entry and, to me, more attractive than Roam. It’s the only native Mac/iOS app in play. It also has a very responsive developer that seems to be iterating fast. Craft is the clear winner if you are primarily working on iPhone and iPad. Roam is a lousy experience on mobile, and Obsidian has yet to release their mobile app. In the end, however, it was the idea of local Markdown files, end-to-end encryption, and the lightning-fast development that pulled me toward Obsidian.

These aren’t the only three apps in this space. I’m getting emails from other developers nearly weekly now that are building similar tools. The PKM gold rush is on.

Packal Alfred OmniFocus Scripts



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OmniFocus is an amazing productivity tool, but getting access to your data could be easier. The Packal Alfred Scripts can really help. These scripts let you search and jump around your OmniFocus projects with just a few keystrokes. They’re fast, they work great, and they’ll save you tons of time.

Once installed, you access your OmniFocus data via Alfred with (dot) codes. For example, “.f” gets you searching your OmniFocus folders. Since I have a separate folder for each client, this makes things really easy. There are a lot more though:

.i – inbox
.p – projects
.c – contexts

There are more commands but the above are the ones I use most. You can download the scripts and get the details here.

Mac Power Users 578: Notion, with August Bradley



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Stephen and I are joined by August Bradley, an expert in Notion. We discuss the features of the app, as well as its pros and cons. Bradley then explains Systems Thinking and runs through some favorite apps and services.

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.

  • 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.

  • The Intrazone, by Microsoft SharePoint: Your bi-weekly conversation and interview podcast about SharePoint, OneDrive and related tech within Microsoft 365.

  • Indeed: Get a free $75 credit to upgrade your job post.

In Praise of the Soon-To-Be Retired iMac Pro

Apple has announced it is only continuing to sell the iMac Pro “while supplies last” and only at a base configuration. It looks as if the iMac Pro is about to go the way of the Dodo.

This is interesting. Originally, the iMac Pro appears to have been Apple’s answer to the Mac Pro’s expected demise. They then shifted gears, getting back into the Mac Pro business and leaving the iMac Pro in that weird space between the iMac and the Mac Pro.

I used one for years and loved it. On the outside, it looked just like an iMac (except for the space gray aluminum). On the inside, it had a new design with a much improved thermal system, faster internal bus speeds, and better security. It was fast and whisper quiet. Up until now, it was the pinnacle of the iMac design and implementation.

Things, however, are changing. My entry-level M1 Mac, which was one-sixth the cost of my iMac Pro, can render screencasts just as fast and more quietly as the iMac Pro. The big jump in technology with Apple Silicon has caught up with the iMac Pro. I sold mine a few months ago, hoping to get the best value for it. Since selling it, I’ve missed it and its presence on my desk. This is the first time that’s ever happened to me when selling a piece of hardware. But I expect that whatever Apple has in store for the new iMac with Apple Silicon inside will run circles around the iMac Pro and still be whisper quiet. With Apple Silicon’s arrival, a higher-end iMac will be, effectively, an iMac Pro (though I expect Apple will not call it that). There will no longer be space between a high-end iMac and a Mac Pro for the iMac Pro to exist. Thus, its demise.

Nevertheless, I can’t help but want to pour one out for the iMac Pro. It was the best desktop computer I’ve ever owned.

TextExpander for Text Automation (Sponsor)


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This week MacSparky.com is sponsored by TextExpander, the easiest way to start automating your work on Mac, iPad, and iPhone. TextExpander is a text replacement tool. With it, you can type a phrase like “ccell” and it will automatically fill in your cell phone number. But TextExpander is so much more than that.

Using TextExpander, you can have it automatically create the date and time. For example, when I talk with someone on the phone related to the day job and want to keep notes about the conversation, I just type “xdts” which, in my head, means date and time string. Then TextExpander automatically creates something like this, “2021-03-06 09:14”. If I need to put the full date in a letter, I just type “fdate” and TextExpander puts in the current date, like this, “March 6, 2021”.

But TextExpander can still go deeper. It can use the contents of your clipboard to auto-fill in snippets. It can press keyboard keys, like the tab key, to automate filling in forms on the web or creating an email. You can get it for yourself and your team members so you can share snippets with your team members. I pay for a team account and we use it from MacSparky headquarters to handle Field Guide customer support email. We can make changes to shared snippets and everyone gets updated.

To learn more, head over to TextExpander.com and let them know you heard about it at MacSparky in the “Where did you hear about us” field.

Lit Suite Subscriptions Now Available



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I generally avoid posting legal-specific news at MacSparky, but if you pay for your shoes being a lawyer, I would recommend checking out LIT SUITE. I’m trying to stay out of courtrooms lately, but when I was doing a lot of litigation, I routinely made the other side look bad using TrialPad, which is my favorite law-related app on any platform. The LIT SUITE apps are definitely a group of apps that require full-time development and justify a subscription. Jeff Richardson does a more complete review over at iPhone J.D.

HiFi Streaming

Spotify recently announced its HiFi streaming upgrade where users can, for a premium fee, get higher bitrate streaming music. I would be surprised if Apple doesn’t do something similar before the end of the year.

Apparently, there are some benefits to being over 50 and suffering from tinnitus. I took this test (found at 9to5 Mac) and I couldn’t tell any difference, even with my fanciest headphones. Hopefully, you do better.

Leveraging COVID Constraints

I can’t help but feel things will be a lot more normal-leaning in the next six months as the COVID vaccines make their way into arms, and we, collectively, finally get the upper hand on this damn virus. Kids will go back to school. People will go back to work. We’ll be more social with one another. At least one can hope.

Assuming that is true, I’ve been taking stock lately of all the changes I’ve made to my life throughout the pandemic due to the constraints it brought. Once life gets back to life as normal, I don’t want to necessarily abandon all of the changes I made during lockdown. Maybe you shouldn’t either.

Several of the changes I’ve made to how I work have turned out to be substantial improvements over how I was getting things done pre-COVID. For example, having my kids and wife back home 24/7 means I had to be very particular about scheduling when I record podcasts, screencasts, and videos. This actually resulted in me getting more consistent recording work done than when I had free reign to do it whenever I wanted. I’m now making a list of the positive changes I’ve made during lockdown and figuring out how to keep those parts when things get more normal.

As far as tech, this is not rocket science. I’m just doing it in a text file. I’ve got the idea to build this list in the back of my mind and, as I go through the days and encounter changes I would like to keep, write them down. Ultimately, I’ll incorporate check-ins for myself to make sure I keep up with the new habits in the future via OmniFocus.