I spent a good chunk of New Year’s Day looking back at 2019 and what went right (and wrong) for me in the critical areas of my life. For me, that includes how I did with my family and friends, the various elements of MacSparky, the legal practice, and taking care of myself. I usually do this navel-gazing on my birthday, but I didn’t want to wait until February this year.  The reason I did it on January 1 this year was partly because we just started a new month, year, and decade.

I’m sure a lot of people are thinking about things they’d like to change as we head into a new decade. We’ll be talking about this in next week’s episode of Focused. In the meantime, I recommend not worrying too much about resolutions but instead building some new habits.

One of the best pieces of advice I received when I left my firm job to start my own thing, was to be mindful of all the new defaults I’d get to pick with repotting myself. It was an opportunity to build new habits. 

Resolutions are always about the finish line. (“I want to lose weight.”) Habits are about process. (“I want to stock the fridge with spicy carrots every day instead of cookies.”) The only way to get to a finish line is with a process. Don’t make new resolutions this decade. Make new habits instead. If you’d like to learn more about this, one of the best books I read in 2019 was James Clear’s Atomic Habits.

This is a pretty great week for podcast kudos. In addition to 9to5 Mac making MPU a best of the decade pick for the 2010s, the Upgrade podcast named Automators as “Best Tech Podcast” for 2019. I spend a remarkable amount of my time on those podcasts and a little acknowledgement sure feels good.

Today I was reading Stephen Hackett’s post naming the MacBook Air as the “Mac of the Decade” (I agree!), and it got me thinking about what I would consider the Apple Device of the Decade for the 2010s. The answer, to me at least, is the iPad.

While there were lots of rumors and speculation leading up to the iPad, the device was first released in April 2010, at the start of the decade. I remember the first day of owning the iPad vividly. I’d used tablet computers, and the iPad was like no tablet ever before it. It was lighter. It had no fans. It had a beautiful screen. And it had a touch-friendly interface. It’s easy to forget that just like the iPhone changed all phones, the iPad changed all tablets.

Today was not an unusual day, and I spent hours on the iPad planning my week, performing an OmniFocus review, responding to clients in Basecamp, and writing this post.

Throughout the decade, Apple continued to push forward on hardware and (to a lesser extent) software. The currently shipping iPad Pro has some fantastic hardware, and I’m convinced the tablet platform is here to stay.

I often hear from folks that prefer to use a laptop to a tablet, but we are still relatively early to this game, and Apple seems to have recently woken up about getting the iPad software to match the quality of its hardware. Also, there is a much less vocal group of folks that don’t keep up on tech (or read MacSparky) that have already replaced their laptops with tablets. Congratulations to Apple for a decade of iPad. As much as I complain, I love even more.

There is a lot of interest in the recently announced Home over IP project that seeks to unite all the home automation players, including Apple, Amazon, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance, with the goal of a single open-source protocol for home automation products.

Wouldn’t it be nice if everything just worked with everything?

I want to think that the reason for this project is because all the big players took their swing and realized no single company can control this market. Apple has mostly ignored the hardware side of this entirely, and while I like HomeKit, its development is really slow. Stephen and I talk about HomeKit in the MPU episode dropping this afternoon.

At this point, we don’t know much about this Home over IP project. Maybe it is just in early exploration, or perhaps they already are working on a shared protocol. Regardless, I hope it takes off because I think everyone is tired of the “will this smart thingy work with my other smart thingies” game.

I’m pleased to welcome back PowerPhotos as the year-end sponsor at MacSparky. Apple has made a lot of progress with Apple Photos over the last few years, but if you use it for any length of time, you’ll also realize the app is missing a lot of the tools you need to truly manage your large photo library.

That’s where PowerPhotos comes in. If you have photos scattered across multiple libraries that you want to merge together, have a library that you want to split up because it’s gotten too large, or want to get rid of duplicate photos, PowerPhotos can help you get your photo collection back in order.

PowerPhotos gives Apple Photos the tools it needs, but Apple didn’t provide. With PowerPhotos, you can work with multiple Photos libraries and store them wherever you want, including on an external drive or a network drive. You can also split up your giant library into smaller ones by copying photos and albums with a simple drag and drop, preserving metadata such as descriptions and keywords along the way. Or, if you already have multiple libraries, use PowerPhotos to merge them while weeding out duplicates along the way. PowerPhotos also features a powerful duplicate photo finder, a browser to let you see your photos without even opening up Photos itself, a multi-library search feature, and more.

PowerPhotos has all those tools you’d want for Apple Photos but Apple will never add. As we head toward the new year, why not take control of your Photos library with PowerPhotos? You may recall an app from the iPhoto days called iPhoto Library Manager that gave you a similar set of tools. PowerPhotos is by the same developer, and it’s just as reliable.

So go check out PowerPhotos today.

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NetNewsWire was my first RSS reader, and I have to admit I had little hope for it ever making its way to the iPhone and iPad. However, after a circuitous path, NetNewsWire is back in the hands of its original developer, Brent Simmons, and now you can sign up for the NetNewsWire iOS beta.

We recently had Brent on the Mac Power Users. During the interview, Brent explained how the application has wound up back with him, and he’s released an open-source Mac version. This iOS version will also be free, and he has several smart folks helping him develop it. I’ve always been a fan of Brent’s design aesthetic and playing with the beta today I can see his imprint. The app currently supports RSS feeds on your phone, through Feedbin, and Feedly. You can sign up for the NetNewsWire for iOS beta.