SaneBox: Your Inbox Perfected (Sponsor)


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This week’s sponsor, SaneBox is the solution to so many of my email problems. SaneBox is the email service that adds a pile of productivity features to your email, regardless of what email client you use. The email just never stops coming at you. If you’re goign to stand a chance against it, you’ll need some powerful technology and SaneBox is that. 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’ve 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 SaneForward service to automatically send appropriate emails to services like Evernote, Expensify, and 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.

The SaneBox team has been hard at work lately improving the SaneBox interface and releasing even more new tools. For instance, now you can have SaneBox send an auto-reply when you defer an email. Why not straighten out your email by getting a SaneBox account today. If you sign up with this link, you even get a discount on your subscription. 

Some Recommended Teleconference Backgrounds

A lot of folks suddenly find themselves using teleconference software like Zoom and Skype for work related meetings. The trouble is that we all don’t necessarily have the perfect space to do such work and we don’t necessarily want our messy houses in the background. Zoom lets you insert a background and, as of yesterday, so does Skype. So what do you use as a background image? I have a few ideas:

ZoomerBackgrounds

This is an assortment of downloadable images and video that is growing fast. Many of them are humorous. A few of them are subtle. There’s something for everyone.

Star Wars Backgrounds

StarWars.com published a set of pictures from movie sets that can put you in the rebel base, in the Falcon, or on the Death Star. We all have to choose a side at some point.

Textures Work Too

If you are looking for something more subtle, a Google Imates for texttures in your color of choice (gray always works) can also do the trick.

If you are going to use a background, make sure you have some blank space behind you and that your face is well lit.

Trackpad Navigation on the iPad

Apple published a nice video showing how to use a trackpad or mouse with your iPad. You don’t have to buy Apple’s $300 keyboard to make this work. You can attach an existing G2 Apple Magic Trackpad or any BlueTooth mouse to try this out. If you use your iPad for productivity-related work (particularly with an attached keyboard), this is a game-changer.

Panzarino on the New iPad Magic Keyboard

High praise from Matt:

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“The Magic Keyboard offers a lovely, backlit deck that holds its own against the 16” MacBook Pro and the new MacBook Air for best portable keyboards. The key travel is excellent — in between the two laptops in my opinion — and the feel is tight, responsive and precise. This is a first class typing experience, full stop. ”

In summary, it sounds like Apple made the right design decisions. Weight and stability over lightness and the wobblies. Still, this new very heavy keyboard makes a 12.9” iPad with an attached keyboard about the same weight as a MacBook Air.

Now that Apple seems to be pushing down on the gas to make the iPad a legitimate laptop replacement, they need to add a second camera along the side (so it is on top when in landscape attached to this keyboard).

I ordered one for my 12.9” iPad Pro, and it’s on the way. I’ve been using the big iPad a lot since being housebound and I can’t wait to gives it a spin.

Mac Power Users 532: BetterTouchTool



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BetterTouchTool takes a Mac’s input devices and turns them into automation triggers. It can transform the Touch Bar into a customized set of tools and make a Trackpad or Mouse much more powerful. This week on Mac Power Users, Stephen and I dive into this utility and talk about what it can do.

This episode of Mac Power Users is sponsored by:

  • eero: Get your Wi-Fi fixed as soon as tomorrow! Free overnight shipping.

  • 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. 

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

Jazz Friday: Jazz at Lincoln Center Plays Miles Davis

Recently Jazz at Lincoln Center did an entire concert tribute to the music of Miles Davis. The musicians really bring a lot of life to Mile’s music, and the commentary throughout the concert gives you all sorts of insight. It’s all good, but I particularly like the second song, “Boplicity”. That melody is one of those that I find impossible to listen to without smiling.

The iPhone SE


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This is actually yesterday’s news, but the rumored iPhone SE update is now for sale. It seems like a pretty good phone for 400 bucks. With prior iterations of the iPhone SE, the story was always about it being the smaller phone (it used to use the iPhone 5 body). While the new one is smaller than some the iPhone 11, it’s not that much smaller. Now I’d call it the economy iPhone more than the small iPhone.

Focused 97: Emotional Overload



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Mike and I continue the overload series with a look at emotional overload on the latest episode of Focused. We consider the value of introspection, share some fun distractions, and discuss being ok with not being productive.

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.

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

Universal GoodNotes


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Just a few weeks ago Apple announced the ability for developers to bundle Mac apps along with their iPhone and iPad apps. You might remember this was a sticking point with last year’s Catalyst release where developers were required to charge for the Mac versions of their apps.

There was a paid version of Catalyst-based GoodNotes on the Mac App Store, but yesterday they became one of the first developers to take advantage of the new ability to bundle their Mac app for free. Because of App Store mechanics, this required releasing a new version of the Mac app. So if you bought it previously, download the bundle Mac version now. That’s the only one that will continue to get updates.

As a daily user of this app, I appreciate GoodNotes getting on this early, but I’m also not surprised. GoodNotes is one of the best note-taking apps available and it comes as no surprise that its developers are on the ball.