I hope this video lights a fire under the Apple speech recognition team. So much is made out of the fact that Apple’s A-series chips are so much faster than anything on Android, yet Android’s speech recognition is clearly more accurate (and faster!) than Apple’s. As someone who dictates every day, Apple cannot catch up with Google soon enough for me.

I don’t think that people appreciate how different the voice to text experience on a Pixel is from an iPhone. So here is a little head to head example. The Pixel is so responsive it feels like it is reading my mind! pic.twitter.com/zmxTKxL3LB

— James Cham ✍🏻 (@jamescham) May 27, 2020

If you are a Star Wars fan and have a Disney+ subscription, you really should be watching Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian. This ongoing show is a series of interviews with The Mandalorian creators and showrunners Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni, along with the directors, actors, and production people who made the show happen. It is a fascinating look behind the scenes. If I were in charge at Disney, I would put the entire Star Wars franchise in the hands of Filoni and Favreau. They are dripping with competence and they *get* Star Wars.

One of the best ways to get started with automation is with this week’s sponsor, TextExpander. Copy and paste is an inefficient way to keep track of the things you type again and again. TextExpander makes you more productive by taking care of all those words and phrases for you. TextExpander works in all your apps so you can use it everywhere, like Microsoft Word and Excel, Adobe Illustrator and InDesign, and Apple’s Pages.

TextExpander does way more than that. With TextExpander you’ll see your snippets everywhere. It syncs between your Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Windows PC instantly.

They’ve got free snippet groups for all sorts of folks including job recruiters, freelancers, airport codes, brand names, and more at the TextExpander website (or you can download some of mine).

TextExpander even lets you run AppleScripts. For example, I use TextExpander to auto address emails with Apple Mail.

Best of all, with TextExpander you don’t have to work alone: TextExpander for Teams lets you manage and share snippets with your coworkers or the entire company. Use this link to get 20% off. 

From the early days of iPhoto to now, with the Photos app and iCloud, Apple has offered increasingly robust photo management tools for its users. On this week’s episode of Mac Power Users, Stephen and I walk you through the features and tools you should know about.

This episode of Mac Power Users is sponsored by:

• DEVONthink: Get Organized — Unleash Your Creativity. Use this link for 10% off.

• CleanMyMac X: Your Mac. As good as new.

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