The SummerFest app sale is now live. This is a collection some of my favorite Mac Apps (including apps liked Tinderbox, DEVONthink, Scrivener, TextEapnder, HoudahSpot, PDFpen, and Timing) and they are all 25% off. Take a look and get a deal.
Celestial Girl – Chelsea Cook
Chelsea Cook, the wicked-smart blind scientist that guested on Mac Power Users 293 started a blog, Celestial Girl. Her site is a mixture of technology and space related news and definitely worth checking out.
MPU Meetup in London – July 9
We’re having a MPU meet up in London on July 9th, at 6PM London time at the Wetherspoons just outside of Victoria station 5. Weatherspoons is a basic pub where we can walk around and converse. There’s no dress code – MPU attire is optional! I’ll be there, Rose Orchard will be there, and while Katie Floyd hasn’t agreed to attend yet, I’m working on it.
Your nearest Apple Store will be Regent Street which has been refurbished to be a flagship store.
Also, if you come, make sure to ask me for some stickers!
Apple Extends Repair Period for MacBook Keyboards
There are so many stories about keyboards going bad on MacBooks and MacBook Pros over the last few years. My 2015 12-inch MacBook is now on its third keyboard. Apple’s now announced they’ll continue to fix keyboards on several of these machines. This doesn’t come as much of a surprise but I’m glad Apple is doing the right thing.
The curious part is where they go next. Are they going to abandon the new butterfly keys that are in the effected models? I don’t think so. With several years of data on the new switches, I suspect they probably are pretty close to having the problems licked. My guess is that they continue with the butterfly keys and brag at how they continue to improve while quietly continuing to repair the machines built during that learning curve. While that makes perfect sense for the minimalist MacBook, I’d prefer they abandon the butterfly keys and put something more robust in the MacBook Pros but that’s more a wish than a prediction.
Talking iPhone on the Law Entrepreneur Podcast
Neil Tyra was kind enough to have me on his podcast recently where we talked about how lawyers should be better at using their iPhones and gave a few tips (for lawyers and non-lawyers alike) to help out.
The New MPU and Free Agents Forums
Today we released the brand-new Discourse-based forums for Mac Power Users and Free Agents found at talk.macpowerusers.com. I’m really excited to share this news. A lot of work went on behind the scenes to make this happen. The new forum is based on the open source Discourse project and gives us a really nice place to share thoughts and ideas.
We’ll be explaining the change further on this week’s show but suffice it to say the new forum is better, more organized, more searchable, and (hopefully) more fun for our listeners. Please go log in and check it out. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.
Special thanks go to Joe Buhlig at ProCourse.co for helping us build the new forum and Rosemary Orchard in helping with the transition.
Simultaneously with the formation of the new forum, we are shutting down the Facebook Group because … well … Facebook.
More Drafts Screencasts
I’ve been busy in the Screencast studio lately making some new screencasts for Drafts. Here are my latest on creating your own Drafts action and using tags and workspaces. You can see them all here.
Smile Software Celebrating 15 Years – Sponsor
This week MacSparky is sponsored by Smile Software, makers of TextExpander and PDFpen. This month Smile is celebrating 15 years of bringing its productivity software to the world. They’ve had several products over the years and there is an excellent series of blog posts over on Smile’s website about how the company formed and their journey.
Of course, I have an affinity for companies passionate about making productivity software and Smile has been delivering the goods to me (and a lot of other users) for a long time.
Have you checked out Smile’s current software lineup? If not, you should.
TextExpander is a text replacement application, but so much more. As a result of Smile’s hard work, TextExpander is exponentially more powerful than a normal text replacement application. Here are just a few examples of what I do with TextExpander.
PDFpen has been my only PDF app on the Mac for years. I use it every day to review and markup contracts and otherwise get work done.
Thanks Smile for an amazing 15 years. I can’t wait to see what you do next.
Availability-Based Scheduling with When Works
John Chaffee has been making calendar related apps for Apple hardware for a long time with is involvement with Now Up-To-Date several years ago and, more recently, BusyCal. So when John launches a new product, I’m always interested. His latest venture is WhenWorks, an availability based appointment-setting application.
With this iOS app, you can set your availability and meeting type which ultimately results in a web page you can send out to invitees where they can select an available time. That selection then updates back into your calendar. Basically, it gets you out of the usual multiple-email calendar event setting game. The service integrates with iCloud calendar, Office 365, Google Calendar, and Outlook.
If you’re interested there is a 14 day free trial and, after that you can schedule up to 5 events per month for free and unlock unlimited events for $5/month.
Mac Power Users 435: Catching Up with Don McAllister
Don McAllister returns on this week’s MPU+ episode to talk about building a business around ScreenCastsOnline, building his team, delegation, project management, and more. We also talk chat travel and electric cars.
This episode of Mac Power Users is sponsored by:
- TextExpander from Smile: Type more with less effort! Expand short abbreviations into longer bits of text, even fill-ins, with TextExpander from Smile.
- 1Password: Have you ever forgotten a password? Now you don’t have to worry about that anymore. Save up to 20% using this link.
- SaneBox: Stop drowning in email!
- Squarespace: Make your next move. Enter offer code MPU at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.