Dropbox vs. iCloud

Now that Apple can share files and folders, I’m sorely tempted to let my Dropbox subscription expire. I’m generally not a fan of apps that embed themselves in the underlying operating system the way that Dropbox does on the Mac. Indeed on my laptop, I didn’t install the Dropbox hacks. When I need to upload a file there, I trigger a Keyboard Maestro script that gets me to the Dropbox website, and I drag and drop into the browser. Also, I don’t want to give another pile of money to Dropbox.

A few reasons are holding me back at the moment:

  1. iCloud Doubt Dropbox has always been rock-solid and fast. I’m not aware of ever losing a file through the Dropbox cloud sync, and I’ve always been impressed with Dropbox’s synchronization speed. Is iCloud up to that? It has been stable for me in terms of file and sync integrity. It’s definitely slower than Dropbox.

  2. Non-Apple People In the day job, I often have people I share files with that don’t own any hardware with a fruit logo. Historically, iCloud sharing has not been useful outside the Apple ecosystem. That is getting better now, but is it good enough yet?.

Apple could make this decision a lot easier for me later this month if they add additional features for iCloud sharing at WWDC. While I’ve got some time left on my annual Dropbox subscription, I’m keeping it as a backup, but I’m also trying not to use it. If I can get by a few months without having to resort to Dropbox, I’m probably good. Ideally, one cloud storage service is enough for me.

SaneBox: Working AI for Your Email (Sponsor)

Everybody talks about adding artificial intelligence to their software, but this week’s sponsor, SaneBox, is artificial intelligence for your email. Imagine for a moment that instead of waking up to 200 items in your inbox, you wake up to five, and those five are the most critical emails that you need to read. You can have that experience with SaneBox.

SaneBox is the solution to so many of my email problems. What if you had an assistant who worked for you 24/7 that did nothing but sort and manage your email? Wouldn’t that be nice? That is what SaneBox does. SaneBox is the email service that adds a pile of productivity features to your email, regardless of what email client you use. For a lot of folks, email is a constant pain point, and it doesn’t need to be. With SaneBox at your back, you can:

  • Wake up every day to find the SaneBox robots have automatically sorted your incoming email for you so you can address the important and ignore the irrelevant.

  • Defer email for hours, days, or weeks, so it is out of your life until a more appropriate time. They have even added a new feature that can optionally auto-reply to snoozed email with something like, “I’m sorry, but I’m underwater right now. I’ll get back to you in a few days.”

  • Set secret reminders so if someone doesn’t reply to an important email, SaneBox gives you a nudge to follow up.

  • Automatically save attachments to the cloud (like Dropbox).

  • Use their SaneFwd service to automatically send appropriate emails to services such as Evernote, Expensify, or Kayak.

  • Move unwanted email to the SaneBlackHole and never see anything from that person again.

The list goes on, and MacSparky readers love this service. I have heard from so many readers over the years who finally figured out email when they signed up for SaneBox. Why not straighten out your email by getting a SaneBox account? If you sign up with this link, you even get a discount on your subscription.

The Very Slow Roll Out of HomeKit Secure Video


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A year ago, Apple announced a new HomeKit feature, dubbed Secure Video, where Apple would agree to store your security camera video on its servers for you without an additional fee. I like this idea. Not only do I not want to pay someone to store this data, I also don’t necessarily trust third parties with home camera footage either. Apple’s a big company. They are not going to get acquired and they have a stated interest in protecting user privacy. The whole idea of HomeKit Secure Video makes sense.

I left WWDC last year thinking it wouldn’t be long before I had HomeKit Secure Video working in my home. Well, that was over a year ago, and there has been very little progress. Logitech released a HomeKit update for their nearly $200 Circle 2 camera. I bought one as an experiment and it has never worked satisfactorily. The camera is often unavailable with no explanation of why, and it feels like Logitech dropped the ball on this one. Moreover, the price is prohibitive if you want to put several of them in your home. There are almost no other vendors supporting HomeKit Secure Video.

Things are getting better, though. Eufy, a subsidiary of Anker, recently announced that their home line of Eufy cameras is going to get full HomeKit Secure Video Support (9to5 Mac has all the details). It sounds like they’re going through an approval process right now. I have a few Eufy exterior cameras, and I’m much happier with them than my prior Canary cameras. The Eufy cameras stay connected, have an option for local storage, and seem way more reliable than anything else I’ve ever used. Best of all, their indoor cameras start at $40. There may be hope yet for HomeKit Secure Video, but it sure has taken a long time. 

Pixel vs. iPhone Speech Recognition

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.

Mac Power Users 538: I Predate the Home Computer, with James Thomson



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PCalc developer James Thomson joins Stephen and me on this week’s Mac Power Users to talk about his background with the Mac, and what it takes to build and maintain the same application over multiple decades.

This episode of Mac Power Users is sponsored by:

  • SaneBox: Stop drowning in email!

  • 1Blocker: The Fastest & Most Powerful Blocker for Safari.

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

Star Wars Fans Should Watch the Disney Gallery

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.


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Start Automating Text with TextExpander (SPonsor)


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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. 

The New Perspective Icons from MacStories

Today MacStories released a fresh new batch of perspective icons for OmniFocus. This group includes 400 different glyphs in 25 different colors in both glyph and square form. When you do the math, that comes out to 20,000 icons. Yikes! In addition to upgrading my OmniFocus perspective icons, I also find icon files handy for all sorts of uses ranging from graphics in presentations to Shortcuts icons. You can get the whole pile at the discounted price of $18 (usual price $25) for a short time.

Drafts is Now a Wiki



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We talk about Drafts a lot on the Mac Power Users because it just continues to innovate. Greg Pierce recently released version 20. (Version 20!) The new version adds a wiki-like feature where if you wrap the title of a draft in double brackets [[like this]], you can tap on that item to jump straight to a note in Drafts with the same name. (See the above screenshot.) Interestingly, if a note doesn’t already exist with that name, when you tap on it, Drafts will create a new note with that name.

Remember when Drafts was all about quick capture and action on text. There is so much more to it now. This app is most certainly one of those subscription model success stories. The free version gives the basic functions away and there are enough power users willing to pay (myself included) to let Greg pile on new features. Learn more about this new release in the Drafts Forum. Also, if you’d like to learn more about getting started with Drafts, I’ve got a free Field Guide for you.