I recently guested on the Mac Quadcast, where Darren and I talked technology, podcasts, and other bits of media. It was a lot of fun and a good listen.

This week MacSparky is sponsored by SaneBox, the email service that can help you get control of your inbox. I’ve had some significant challenges lately on my time. Before SaneBox came into my life, times of unexpected down time always preceeded an email train wreck. That’s not the case for me now though. SaneBox helped me stay on top of the most important email and kept things going. With SaneBox, you add a powerful set of email tools that can work in just about any email client. SaneBox allows you to:

• Wake up everyday to find that 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.

• 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 such as Evernote, Expensify, and Kayak.

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

One of the best parts about SaneBox being a web services is that it works no matter which mail application you prefer. If you want to jump between different mail apps on your iPad, no problem. If you want to upgrade your Mac to High Sierra, there’s no need to wait for SaneBox to work. It already does. SaneBox is a set of tools that will move with you between different applications on different platforms with no trouble at all.

Why not straighten out your email today? I’ve been a paying subscriber for years and can’t imagine getting by without it. If you sign up with this link, you even get a discount off your subscription.

On the latest episode of Automators, we talk about turning Siri Shortcuts into home screen app-launcher-thingies. This is actually a great way to further customize your iPhone and iPad and we produced several screencasts explaining how to do it. You can see the full show post here. I’ve also linked my MacSparky Context Launcher screencast below. 

There are several good Black Friday Deals available today.

Apple HomePod (up to $100 off)

While this product seemed to start with a fizzle, it is definitely gaining momentum. Everyone loves them in my house. If you’ve got an Apple Music subscription, they’re great.

Today Best Buy has them for $100 off and Costco has them for $80 off (Costco Membership required).

Apple Gift Cards with Apple Hardware

Apple’s big promotion this year involves giving away Apple Store Gift Cards with purchases going all the way up to $200 with a new Mac.

Application Sales

Some of my favorite applications are also on sale:

Fantastical 2 for iPad – $2.99 (usually $9.99)

Fantastical 2 for iPhone – $1.99 (usually $4.99)

Fantastical for Mac – $24.99 (usually $49.99

Cardhop for Mac – $9.99 (usually $19.99)

Unclutter for Mac – $9.99 (usually $19.99)

Daisy Disk for Mac –  $5.99 (usually $9.99)

CleanMyMac X from MacPaw (30% off)

Gemini 2 from MacPaw (30% off)

Affinity Photo for Mac – $34.99 (usually $49.99)

Affinity Designer for Mac – $34.99 (usually $49.99)

Screens for Mac OS – $20.99 (usually $29.99)

Screens for iOS – $13.99 (usually $19.99)

Alto’s Adventure – $2.99 (usually $4.99)

Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic – $2.99 (Usually $9.99)

Baulder’s Gate – $1.99 (Usually $9.99)

The new Apple Holiday ad is out and it’s a doozy.

This is a great ad that pushes all of my buttons. There’s also an interesting little feature on how they made the ad.

If that’s not enough for you. If you really want an ad that will slay you for the holidays, watch the John Lewis Christmas ads. The Man on the Moon gets me every time.

Jason Snell wrote a thought-provoking article in Macworld about exactly how configurable Apple will make future MacBooks and MacBook Airs. In short, he thinks our options will be limited and that is born out by the currently shipping MacBook Airs that will let you pick RAM and Storage levels but offers no configuration as to the processor.

I agree with Jason. Particularly if Apple moves the Macs (or some portion of the Macs) over to ARM processors, I believe they will be treated as appliance computers more than ever before. Consumers buy iPads and iPhones without considering processor (or RAM!) customization and I think Apple would love to pull off the same trick on the Mac.