Well that didn’t take long. Ordered yesterday and arrived this morning. I explained why I ordered the case yesterday. Here are some photos of the new case in action and a bit of commentary. Click on any image for further detail.
The New Apple iPhone Battery Cases
Today Apple released battery cases (in black or white) for the iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR.
It has been a long time since I used a battery case on my iPhone. (I am pretty sure my last battery case fig my iPhone 3GS.) The reason I gave up on them is that when you get a new phone, the battery case is of no further use to you.
Nevertheless, I ordered one of these. I’ve got a lot of travel over the next six months, and it sure would be nice to carry an extra charge when I am out of town. With the iPhone XS Max model, this new battery gives you talk time up to 37 hours, Internet use up to 20 hours and video playback of up to 25 hours. The other way I justified it is that when I ultimately hand this phone down to someone in my family, they will inevitably be less interested in charging their phone than I am. This battery will serve them well.
A nice feature of this battery is that it is Qi-certified. That way I can set it on my Qi charger and charge the battery while it is in the case. Ultimately, I expect this will be the battery I use for trips to Disneyland and trips out of town, but not my everyday case. If you are wondering, after way too much consideration, I bought the black one. I think a MacSparky sticker will look nice on the back.
Work Faster with BetterTouchTool – Sponsor
This week MacSparky is sponsored by BetterTouchTool, the powerful little app that lets you customize your Mac’s input devices to match and improve your workflow perfectly. Apple gave us these great trackpads and mice, but they’ve never really let us use them to their full potential. BetterTouchTool does that. With BetterTouchTool, you can completely re-design your Touch Bar, configure various Magic Mouse and Trackpad gestures, define keyboard shortcuts, bind standard mouse buttons, use the Siri Remote with your Mac and do tons more.
BetterTouchTool offers many actions to automate various tasks on your Mac. These can be assigned to any input-device trigger you choose. Additionally, it contains some handy features like window snapping, a clipboard manager, a screenshot editor, and much more. It even includes a free iOS app to control your Mac and trigger actions remotely.
Recently, the BetterTouchTool Community was begun, which you can find at community.folivora.ai. Users have shared some amazing presets there, including some very advanced custom Touch Bar setups that you should check out.
BetterTouchTool comes with a 45-day trial after which you can choose between a license that includes all updates for two years and a lifetime license.
BetterTouchTool has been around for nine years, and I’ve been using it the entire time. With BetterTouchTool, I can make my Mac dance. You should too. To celebrate its 9th birthday, MacSparky readers can purchase BetterTouchTool for 15% off at checkout by using the coupon code MACSPARKYBTT for a limited time. So don’t delay. Go to folivora.ai to learn more and take advantage of the special limited-time, 15% discount on BetterTouchTool.
Mac Power Users 465: The Mighty Mac mini
Introduced as a low-cost way to switch to the Mac, the Mac mini can now be found working quietly as home and office servers, hosting files, media, backups and more. Join Stephen and me on the latest episode of Mac Power Users to find out more about how the Mac mini stacks up.
This episode of Mac Power Users is sponsored by:
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Luna Display: The only hardware solution that turns your iPad into a wireless display for your Mac. Use promo code POWER at checkout for 10% off.
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Squarespace: Make your next move. Enter offer code MPU at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.
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SaneBox: Stop drowning in email!
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The Omni Group: We’re passionate about productivity for Mac, iPhone, and iPad.
Jazz Friday: The 1959 Project
I’ve really enjoyed a new website, The 1959 Project, that chronicles the jazz scene in 1959. During that single year some of the great jazz albums, like Kind of Blue and Time Out were recorded. It also was the beginning of the end for jazz as a mainstream popular music. Each day there is a new post about something amazing happening. It’s a great jazz education if that’s your thing. Also, here’s an interesting article on the back story of the website (and related documentary film).
The Focused Podcast
Today marks the release of the Focused Podcast (formerly Free Agents). The Free Agents has had a great run but Mike and I discovered that we were increasingly talking about productivity and increasingly our audience included people more interesested in productivity than free agency. So we shifted the show and now it’s call Focused. The subtitle, “Life is about more than cranking widgets”, really means something to me.
So much of the talk about being productive is about life hacks and dumb nonsense like “5 ways to become more productive in 3 minutes”. Focused isn’t like that. Mike and I don’t have all the answers. Instead, we are more like motivated fellow travelers. We’ll be bringing research and knowledge of our own personal successes and failures. We’ll also be bringing in interesting guests to help everyone along. Today the first episode released. We’ve already got several more in production. If you never listened to Free Agents because that was not your thing, I’d encourage you to give Focused a try. I’m really proud of it. Also, just look at that gorgeous artwork.
MPU 464: Stephen Who?
The latest episode of Mac Power Users is now available for download. In this episode, my friend Stephen Hackett joins as the new co-host. Stephen and I have been friends for years and working with him over the last several months as we chart out the future of Mac Power Users has been a joy. In this episode, we get to know Stephen a little better and how he uses his Apple technology to get work done. Stephen also weighs in on other critical questions, like “who shot first”.
We’ve got some great content planned in the coming months and this episode is the start of it all.
Manage Your Email with SaneBox (Sponsor)
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. 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:
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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.
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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.”
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Set secret reminders so if someone doesn’t reply to an important email SaneBox gives you a nudge to follow up.
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Automatically save attachments to the cloud (like Dropbox).
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Use their SaneForward service to automatically send appropriate emails to services like Evernote, Expensify, and Kayak.
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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.
Automators Meet Up In Seattle January 19
I am going to be attending the PodCon conference in Seattle January 19-20. My pal Rosemary orchard is also going to be there so we thought it would be fun to have a meetup. We’re planning it for Saturday evening January 19. We haven’t figured out the location yet but if you’re interested, sign-up here.
Automators 14: Automated Journaling
Get out your artistically crafted paper notebook and favorite fountain pen as we talk about journaling in Automators episode 14. Actually, forget that stuff. We are nerds so while the focus of this episode is journalling, it’s really about automating the process so you can get more efficient at your navel-gazing.
We start out talking about the idea of journaling and why automation can help. The first app we recommend is Day One.
Last year I bought a year subscription to Day One, and I’m digging it. We both approve of Day One’s automation tools with things like IFTTT along with several built-in features (like the activity feed) that ease the process of journal entry creation so you can focus on your precious words. Day One can integrate with third-party apps, like Instagram and Swarm.
Much Love for Day One
Day One is also friends with Siri Shortcuts, which opens you up to lots of potential automation, although I would like more. This leads to the discussion of automating Day One entries in a “prompt style” with a new journal entry generated out of Siri Shortcuts and used to create a Day One entry. I created a sample shortcut on a meditation journal. You can watch it in the Automators course at Learn.MacSparky or on YouTube.
Rosemary goes a step further by using Launch Center Pro to launch her Siri Shortcut to launch her journaling prompts. This lets her present different prompts on different days of the week. Clever. We’ve shared a link to Rose’s shortcut in the show notes.
I also explain audio transcription in Day One, that works much better than you think it would be.
If This Then That (IFTTT) can also create a Day One entry, pulling data from other web services. Think about that one for a moment. Simple things, like a Google Calendar event, can be enough to trigger a new Day One entry. Rose has a cool automation that helps her log and journal television consumption using automation between trakt.tv and Day One.
Another way to automate journal creation is through text automation. You could use tools like Drafts or Text Expander to give you prompts to easily create journal entries.
Other Options
We then talk about journaling solutions outside of Day One. Using third-party applications like Ulysses or even just a plain text file, you can use many of the above referenced prompt-based journal automation to create new entries. There can be some challenges with things like photos and other media, but it can work. I even at one point suggests using Pages, which would work better than you think if you want media in your journal.
Next, we discuss automating public journals with services like micro.blog.
Fancy Pens and Paper
Finally, we break out the pens and paper. Just because you have a fancy pen and paper, doesn’t mean you can’t bring some technology to the table. Use ScanBot or Scanner Pro to grab an image for a digital backup. If you like the idea of us a pen but not paper, there are some great iPad-based digital alternatives like GoodNotes and Notability.
It’s January and a great time to develop a journaling habit. Why don’t you use some automation to make it easier?