Jason Snell made a chart of the 15” MacBook Pro ports over the years. Looks like 2003-2005 was the period of peak ports. I actually like the USB-C concept of “one port to rule them all” but I can’t help but feel it is, thus far, a false promise. USB-C is not as ubiquitous as we’d hoped for and there are still a lot of technical limitations around it. It’s been years now and I keep wondering when/if USB-C will get it’s act fully together.

The Apple Arcade service is now six months old, and it is, from my perspective, the most successful Apple subscription service to come out of 2019 by far. For my $5 a month, I’m constantly finding fun games that entertain me without hassling me to buy additional “coins”, “tokens” or other currency. Moreover, my kids get full access to the evolving game library for the same $5. (In case you are wondering, right now I’m working on Oceanhorn 2 but also looking forward to No Way Home.) Lately I’ve been on a bit of a subscription purge, getting rid of services I don’t use, but Apple Arcade is definitely worth it in the Sparks household.

It feels like Apple Arcade has the right model, the right price, and the right partners with some of the best mobile game developers in the business. I’m not alone in this opinion. The Verge just ran its own piece on the success of Apple Arcade, and I hear from listeners and readers all the time that are fans. I hope senior Apple management is looking at this success story as they plan to expand their other subscription services.

I’ve been trying out the new Mailbrew service for a few weeks now. The service launched today and is now available for all. It’s an automated newsletter that pulls data from sources like Reddit, Hacker News, YouTube, RSS feeds, and Twitter and combines them into a single email on topics of your choice. It’s a good way to keep up with things without getting lost in things. If you find yourself frequently diving in the online news infinity pool, try limiting it to a daily email with Mailbrew and see if that helps.

Writer and director David Wain returns to Mac Power Users to share how his creative process has changed over the years. He also walks us through the steps of making the show Medical Police.

This episode of Mac Power Users is sponsored by:

• Boll & Branch: The Softest Organic Sheets & Luxury Bedding. Save $50. Try them for 30 days in a risk free trial.

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

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

• The Omni Group: We’re passionate about productivity for Mac, iPhone and iPad.

Today marks the release of HoudahGeo 6. While Apple has geo-location support in Photos, it often feels more like an after-thought. HoudahGeo 6 is an entire app dedicated to simplifying adding geo-location data to your photos.

There are a lot of nice features with the update:

• Support for JPG+RAW pairs.

• Option to select the time zone to use when writing times to EXIF/XMP.

• Imports much more location data from the recesses of Apple media libraries. Write to EXIF/XMP for future-proof storage.

• HoudahGeo now has separate options for sidecars to JPEG and RAW files

• Easy import from Apple Photos. HoudahGeo can now grab the current selection from the Photos application

• Interactive maps now show images, track logs, and waypoints. You can match a photo to a point on a GPS track. HoudahGeo will figure out the camera clock settings

• Lift & stamp metadata. Grab coordinates and metadata from one image. Apply to other images

• Weather data: ambient temperature, humidity, and air pressure. Enter manually or read from KESTREL log files

• Scuba diving: water depth. Enter manually or read from UDDF log files

If you shoot with SLR camera or anything else that doesn’t log geo-location data, check out HoudahGeo to simplify getting accurate location data to your photos.

It was five years ago today that I started my adventure as an independent lawyer. It’s hard to believe this milestone is already here because, in so many ways, it feels like I was packing up my old office was just yesterday. Nevertheless, here I am.

I have learned a lot over the last five years and my life these days is entirely different than it was when I started this journey.

During these five years, my legal income has gone down as I’ve scaled back trial work in favor of helping clients with transactional work. The work I do now feels like I’m accomplishing more for clients, but I make less money. I often tell clients that going to trial is like setting a bonfire of $100 bills. They think I’m kidding, but I’m not. Despite the financial hit, I feel better about being a lawyer now than I have in a long time. I could continue doing this for the duration.

On the MacSparky side, these five years have let me grow the Field Guides into something so much better. They also make me more money now, so that balances a bit of the pain on the legal side. I also have had time to keep up production values on the Mac Power Users and add two new podcasts, Automators and Focused.

On the personal side, I’ve been able to be there for my family so much more now. I have many great memories with my wife and kids since going independent. Overall, the leap, for me, was worth it.

I think the most significant change in my life over this time is the fundamental difference in my heart’s desire. In the years leading up to my big move, I knew I needed to change my life, even though I wasn’t exactly sure how that would work. Almost immediately after making all these changes, I realized that the struggle was no longer to get to the next thing but instead keep the current thing going. Somehow, through a combination of hard work, good fortune, supportive friends and family, and dumb luck, I feel like I’ve landed exactly where I belong. This struck home recently when I was filling in security questions while signing a new online account, and it asked, “What is your dream job?” The answer that immediately occurred to me was, “My current one.”

Thank you to all the readers, listeners, and Field Guide customers that have stuck with me and supported my family and me on this journey.