Jazz Friday: New Monk Album, Palo Alto



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There is a new Thelonius Monk album, and the story behind it is almost as great as the music on it. In the late 1960s, a high school student serving as “social commissioner” at Palo Alto High School in Northern California was charged with booking entertainment for the high school auditorium. Instead of booking the local Beatles copycat band, he decided to book Monk. Pulling that off wasn’t easy. First, because he was too young, he had to get his older brother to drive to San Francisco to pick up Monk and his band. They returned with the bass sticking out the window only to find the piano was out of tune. The school janitor agreed to tune the piano if Monk would agree to let him record the concert. It was all a crazy bit of kismet.

So that recording sat around for 52 years, but now we can all enjoy it (Apple Music)(Amazon). You can just tell Monk was having a good time. Monk had a lot of struggles in his life, ranging from getting his Cabaret Card pulled in New York (so he couldn’t perform) to mental illness, but this concert toward the end of his career catches him brilliantly. My favorite track is “Epistrophy”. It is a great song, but this version is special because of the loping groove they start at the beginning and carry throughout the tune. 

Regardless, I didn’t think I would hear any new Monk music for the rest of my lifetime. Aren’t little surprises like this delightful?

Automate Simply with TextExpander (Sponsor)



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We’re all feeling overwhelmed lately. One way to take your time back is with this week’s sponsor, TextExpander. Take your time back with the power of TextExpander. Repetitive typing, little mistakes, searching for answers – they’re all taking precious time away from you and your team. With TextExpander, you can take it back.

The latest version of TextExpander even has new and improved statistics reporting for organizations, including the ability to build reports with customizable date ranges for Enterprise and individuals so you can track how much time your team saves.

With TextExpander, you can:

  • Keep your team consistent, accurate, and current

  • Share your text and images with the whole staff to keep them on track. Everyone will share the same message and give the same answers to all customer questions.

  • Work faster and smarter

  • Use TextExpander’s powerful shortcuts and abbreviations to streamline and speed up everything you type.

  • Create powerful snippets to save you time so that all you type is a short abbreviation, and TextExpander does the rest of the typing for you.

  • Keep your whole team communicating efficiently and with consistent language.

  • Share your snippets of messaging, signatures, and descriptions with everyone who works on projects with you.

The thing I can’t emphasize enough is just how easy it is to start using TextExpander. If you want to start automating but not spend a lot of time getting up and running, TextExpander is for you. Best of all, TextExpander is available on Mac, Windows, Chrome, iPhone, iPad. MacSparky readers get 20% off their first year.

The Latest Drafts Update

I’ve been using Drafts since the day it launched. The idea of easy text capture and action immediately resonated with me, and anything I write that isn’t part of a big research project starts life in Drafts. It’s clean, it supports TextExpander (even on iPhone and iPad), and it is so powerful under the hood.

In the past year, however, my relationship with Drafts has changed. I now use the app not only to write text but also to store it. Drafts has evolved over the years, and so has my usage of it. Many of the new features in Drafts 22 (yes, 22) released with iOS 14 reflect what Drafts has become.

The Drafts update adds widgets. There are two general formats: grids and lists. With a grid, you can get quick access to specific Drafts and workspaces. Lists give you lists of drafts. I’ve been using the grid formatted widget on my home screen. I stack it with my Shortcuts widget and jump between them throughout the day. There are inherent limits with widgets with their lack of interaction. Nevertheless, Drafts uses them as best as possible, given these limitations, and the ability to dive into specific areas of my Drafts is much appreciated.

Additionally, the new version incorporates Apple’s new Scribble features on the iPad. This gives you one more way to add text to your Drafts. I spend so much time writing in Drafts (and so little time in Apple Notes).

My favorite feature is the addition of Apple Finder tag support. Now, if you apply a tag in Drafts and then create an action to save the draft as a file, you can have it convert the Drafts tags into Apple Finder tags. This feature, which I am pretty sure exists because Greg Pierce wanted to get me off his back about it, lets you save a draft with a set of tags that Hazel can recognize and process. Do you see where I’m going with this? If not, stay tuned. I have a separate post and video in the works explaining how I use this to save client call notes from Drafts to the client file with zero work on my part.

Every time I write about subscription apps, I get a certain amount of email griping with the business model. Drafts is the poster child for the subscription model done right. Because the developer has regular income, he doesn’t have to move on to the next app every six months. Instead, he just keeps making drafts better and better and better. Check out Drafts.

Widgets and Customization

If Apple only knew …

With the recent release of iOS 14, many folks have been enjoying customizing the look of their iPhones. It is crazy how apparent the demand was for customization once Apple lowered the bar enough for anyone to do it independently. I love that this trend has put my friend David Smith on the top of the app charts with Widgetsmith, but I like even more that this has let users feel a closer connection to their technology.

Stephen Hackett explains why stodgy nerds shouldn’t know widget shame. I want to take it a step further and remind us all to think back to the first time we customized our technology. I used to have an Atari ST that I skinned to look like a Mac. Then when I got a Mac, I UI skinned it to look like a space ship console. Before there was an iPhone, I had a Treo phone that had Mac icons on it. As I sit here, I have replaced the icons of folders on my Mac with custom icons.

Customizing your technology is fun. Whether you are 9 or 90, you often sit at a computer to do work. Why not make it fun and delightful? I hope Apple is taking note. Indeed, I hope that has added a few entries to that big whiteboard in Cupertino. Specifically:

  • Replacing our App icons is cool. Making users go through Shortcuts to do so is not. Why not make it easier (and faster)?

  • Limiting each widget to one application feels like an unnecessary constraint. Wouldn’t it be cool if multiple apps can donate to a single user-customizable widget the same way apps can donate data to Shortcuts? We could make widgets that combine data from the apps most important to us.

  • David Smith’s app, Widgetsmith, can change the widget based on the time of day. We should be able to do that with all widgets, the same way you can now change Apple Watch faces based on the time of day via Shortcut automation. Also, speaking of Apple Watch …

  • Custom watch faces would be just as popular with Apple Watch owners as custom widgets are with iPhone owners. Please, Apple, give us custom Apple Watch faces.

The explosion of creativity with widgets on the iPhone has let the genie out of the bottle. Whatever faction inside Apple has been arguing for more user customization just got a lot more leverage in those Cupertino planning meetings. I sure hope they use it.

Mac Power Users 555: iOS 14 Extravaganza



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iOS 14 is here, bringing new features like widgets, the App Library, increased privacy, and a lot more. Join Stephen and I on the this episode of Mac Powers to hear us review the release and talk about how Apple could take some of these features farther in the future.

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.

  • Mint Mobile: Cut your unlimited wireless bill to $30 a month.

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Automators 59: iOS 14 Shortcuts



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On this episode of Automators, Rosemary and I dive into the iOS 14 update to Shortcuts and what it brings to all of us, as well as how we’re using it.

This episode of Automators is sponsored by:

  • The Intrazone by Microsoft SharePoint: Your bi-weekly conversation and interview podcast hosted by the SharePoint team.

  • Mint Mobile: Cut your unlimited wireless bill to $30 a month.

  • Sidequest: Create helpdesks and personal task inboxes that teams love—with Sidequest, 100% inside Slack.

Updates and Improvements to the Salutation AppleScript for Apple Mail

My relationship with Apple Mail isn’t love so much as familiarity. However, every time I think about walking out on Apple Mail, I think about our long and complicated relationship, and how much work I’ve put into it with things like my salutation AppleScript.

The Updated Script

Using a combination of AppleScript and TextExpander, I’m able to automatically insert an email salutation by typing “xhi”. This is really useful and something I run multiple times a day. The original post and explanation on how it works is still good. However, the script has altered a bit. You can download the updated version, called “xnm” (“X Name” in my head) here. I suggest running it as an embedded TextExpander snippet so you can combine it with a variety salutations like “Hi”, “Hello”, “Dear”, “Hey”, and whatever else floats your boat. Also, you can download the TextExpander group with both the “xnm” and “xhi” snippets here. That should be all you need to get this rolling.

But What About Multiple Recipients?

Reader Mark Bramhill had that exact question and came up with two variations of this script. The first will make a salutation for everyone in the “To:” field. If you regularly (or occasionally) send email to multiple recipients, this variant is for you.

Download Multiple Recipients AppleScript

That, however, wasn’t enough for Mark. He made a separate AppleScript that counts the number of recipients. If there is just one recipient, it inserts that person’s name. If there is more than one (including looking at the cc: field), the script instead writes “Y’all”. I thought both of these scripts were pretty clever.

Download the “Y’all” Script

Language Specificity

I also had several emails from non-english speakers about the script not working. The trouble is in this line:

tell text field "To:" of window 1

As you can see, the script is language-specific. In English, the script looks for the “To:” field, but in other languages, that field has a different name. In Dutch, for instance, it’s “Aan:”. If your native language isn’t English, you’ll need to fix that line appropriately.

I do love how this script has taken on a life of its own. This isn’t a testament to anything particularly bright on my part but the utility of a script that auto-salutes every email you send. This feature is so useful that I’m shocked it isn’t baked in to all email applications.