Get Accurate Time Tracking with Timing (Sponsor)


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A lot of folks are waking up to the fact that accurate time tracking can make a huge difference in your ability to get your most important priorities done and not waste a bunch of your time. The trick, however, comes with that word *accuracy*. For time tracking to work, the data must be accurate, and systems that require you to manually throw a switch every time you context shift are just not going to give you the data you need.

Enter Timing.

Timing automatically tracks which apps, documents, and websites you use — without start/stop timers. See how you spend your time, eliminate distracting activities, and improve your client billing. It’s like Screen Time on steroids.

Timing lets you stop worrying about time and focus on doing your best work instead. Timing also offers a web app to track time from anywhere, not to mention the ability to seamlessly sync data across all your Macs.

The Timing team even offers a set of Siri shortcuts to start and stop timers as quickly as possible. And if you spend a lot of time in meetings, you will be delighted by Timing’s ability to record time for calendar events with a single click. There’s even a third-party app, Zeit,  for iPhone that can update your Timing data from your phone.

Once you know precisely how you’re spending your time, first, you’ll be surprised, and then you’ll start making changes to be more productive. Timing helps you get started. 

Check out the videos I made on timing to help you get started and go download the free 14-day trial today and get 10% off for the first year!

ARM-Based Macs Appear Inevitable

This week, Mark Gurman posted that Apple will announce a transition to ARM-based Macs at WWDC later this month. It is interesting how those of us on the outside have slowly arrived at the term “inevitable” concerning Apple putting a variant of the chip it makes for its phones and tablets in its computers. I think it will be an easy case to make to Apple customers.

By making their own chips, Apple cuts out a middle man, giving them more flexibility on price and raising their profit per unit. Moreover, no longer does Apple (or its customers) have to wait for Intel manufacturing delays to get sorted out before Apple can ship new Macs.

The most significant benefit, however, will be battery life. With a decent-sized battery and a power-efficient A-series chip, Apple could easily double (or triple) laptop battery life. I hope Apple looks at this as an opportunity to dramatically increase battery life and not dramatically decrease weight (by keeping existing battery life and just removing more of the battery).

It is interesting that while the existing Apple A-series chips are powerful, they’ve got nothing in a class that could power the iMac Pro or Mac Pro. Will Apple scale up the A-series for their more power-hungry Macs or stick with Intel for those. My money’s on former and not the later.

If you run Windows on your Mac, this probably isn’t good news. In your shoes, I’d buy one of the last Intel-based Macs and spec it up, so you’ve got several years of use in the tank.

Either way, I sure hope the rumors are true, and we get some news in a few weeks at WWDC. An ARM transition for the Mac is the kind of thing that pushes all my nerd buttons. If you’d like to learn more about this, former Apple engineer David Shayer wrote up a detailed breakdown of the hypothetical ARM transition over at TidBITS.

Focused 101: Taking a Sabbatical, with Sean McCabe



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Sean McCabe is back on the latest episode of Focused to talk about sabbaticals—and to convince David to take one of his own.

This episode of Focused is sponsored by:

  • 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 FOCUSED to get 30% off. Offer expires on January 31, 2021.

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

  • Timing: The automatic time-tracking app for macOS. Use this link to save 10% on your purchase.

Mac Power Users 539: Back to Email



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I have finally roped Stephen into talking about email on the latest episode of Mac Power Users. Topics include email services, apps, and strategies. Later in the show, we are joined by Rosemary Orchard and Myke Hurley to hear about two specific apps they use every day.

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. 

  • DEVONthink: Get organized—unleash your creativity. Use this link for 10% off.

  • 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.

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

Jazz and Black America

If you’ve been reading my Jazz Friday posts over the years, you’ll know that the majority of featured jazz artists are Black Americans. That isn’t a coincidence. Black America is the reason that jazz (and nearly every other pop music of the last 100 years) exists. Jazz is just one of the many things for which America is indebted to its black citizens.

Racism and bigotry are not only abhorrent, they also deny American of its greatest asset, multiculturalism. Adam Neely posted an excellent video about Black America and jazz that sums it up.

Automators 51: Ken Case and Omni Automation



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In this episode of Automators, Ken Case, CEO of the Omni Group, joins Rosemary and me to talk about adding automation in the form of Shortcuts and JavaScript scripting to the Omni Group apps, as well as his first and favorite automations.

This episode of Automators is sponsored by:

  • 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 AUTOMATORS to get 30% off. Offer expires on January 31, 2021.

  • Ahrefs: SEO Tools & Resources To Grow Your Search Traffic. Get a 7-day trial for just $7.

  • ExpressVPN: High-Speed, Secure & Anonymous VPN Service. Get 3 months free with a 1-year package.

The Elusive Green Ring

When I first got my Apple Watch, I’d been using a FitBit for years and was very proud of my daily 10,000 steps. Immediately, however, I discovered that despite much walking, the green ring on my fancy new Apple Watch barely moved. Not only was I not hitting that target of 30 minutes of elevated heart rate a day, I realized I hadn’t even been aiming for that goal in all those years of wearing a FitBit.

So I made some changes, and now I spend time hiking up hills, riding my bike, and (until a few months ago) going to the gym to fill that elusive green ring. Even being stuck home, I’m finding ways to push myself and fill that green ring most days. I read some affirmation for this exercise this morning from cardiologist Brian Lima, who explains that when it comes to those Apple Watch rings, the green activity ring is one ring to rule them all.

Education and Computing

Last week Bradley Chambers wrote an interesting article at 9to5 Mac about how Covid-19 demonstrated how much better Google products are for the classroom than Apple’s iTunes U. For years now, it seems like Apple has throttled back its efforts on education, which seems to me a shame. I know when I was in school, the near exclusive presence of Apple II computers (I know I’m dating myself) resulted in a lot of us getting our first computer experiences while looking at that cute rainbow icon.

I’m sure Apple has thought about this and they’ve probably got a bunch of research that explains how kids are now experiencing computers from home way before school, but there is a part of me sad to them give up this ground.

Google’s big education move, however, doesn’t just aim at Apple. As kids grow up using Google collaboration tools, I expect they are going to question the need for the Microsoft Office Suite when they enter the workforce. I’ll be curious to see what tools people are using for traditional office computing (word processing/spreadsheets/presentations) in ten years.