On this week’s episode of Mac Power Users, Katie and I dive deep on HomeKit and discuss the HomeKit app, managing rooms, creating scenes, automation, and our favorite HomeKit-enabled devices. We also discuss where HomeKit falls down and our workarounds.
This week MacSparky is sponsored by Hoban Cards, makers of fine letterpress calling cards and stationery. I’ve been using Hoban Cards for years and it seems I get a compliment on my business cards every time I give one away. They have solutions for every budget from beautiful existing designs to custom cards. Lately, they’ve also started doing letterpress colophon cards that really stand out. (I’m probably going to end up buying a set of those for myself.)
At the source of all of the beautiful Hoban produts is their collection of vintage letterpress machines. While you may think your cards look just fine made with a Mac and a laser printer, you really haven’t seen anything until you see a calling card made with 1500 pounds of steel and iron. I’m hooked on Hoban’s stationery and cards and I bet you will be too.
Best of all, mention “MacSparky” at checkout for a little help on your order. Learn more at Hoban Cards.
Podcaster and programmer Casey Liss joins us on this episode of Free Agents to talk about his free agent journey, what caused him to take the leap, the tendency to do too much, and his desire to pull the thread which led to him becoming an accidental YouTuber.
A few weeks ago, I posted about my new two-screen setup. I explained that I have started using the second monitor as a “reference” monitor to the right of my iMac screen. I’ve received emails and questions in the forums about how I manage windows between the screens.
I explained in the post that I do use Apple’s Spaces feature—although to a much lesser extent—with the new two-screen setup. What I didn’t explain, however, is how I like to manage windows using keyboard shortcuts and our old friend Keyboard Maestro.
First, a Word about Window Managers
There are a lot of applications for the Mac that will manage windows for you. They come in a variety of shapes and sizes and range from simple to complex. You can also manage windows with an AppleScript, if that’s your thing. If I had to pick one window manager, it would be Moom. I’ve used it for years, and I still have it installed despite the Keyboard Maestro shenanigans listed below.
Keyboard Maestro FTW
I think Keyboard Maestro is an ideal tool for window management for several reasons.
First, it is hyper-customizable without being hyper-difficult.
The second reason for using Keyboard Maestro is that it does so much more. I am a big fan of “stacked” automation. This is the idea that you take two relatively simple automation tasks that you often perform in order and stack them together in the same script. For example, when I want to plan a day, I often open up OmniFocus and my calendar, and I arrange those two applications in a certain way that makes it easy to see data in both. Moreover, in OmniFocus I will open particular tabs so that I can click through them quickly. I demonstrate this below.
These are all simple automation steps, but when strung together (or stacked), they become a powerful tool to manage my day. Using Keyboard Maestro for window management, not only can I make simple scripts to move the current window to the left side of the screen, but I can also stack more complicated scripts that create a working space based on the task at hand. Since I need Keyboard Maestro to do that second part, it might as well do the first part as well.
And Now, a Screencast
So now it’s time to dive into the technical details of how I do all of this. For that, I think a screencast is a lot easier than a bunch of words. Here you go.
The YouTube Plug
You may note with the above screencast that I’m distributing it through YouTube. I have finally set up a YouTube channel for MacSparky, and I’m going to be adding more content going forward. For that reason, I respectfully ask that you subscribe and push whatever other buttons you’re supposed to push to make me feel special.
Jeff Richardson from iPhone J.D. joins Katie and me to chat about how he uses a Mac at home and PC at work, going all in and adopting a paperless lifestyle with the iPad, starting a successful blog, using the Apple Watch, and more. Join us for the latest episode of Mac Power Users.
Today we released episode 4 of the Automators, focused on the new Siri Shortcuts app and related automated tools. It’s still in beta, but it is really powerful. This show goes through the history of automation on iOS and looks at things like URL Schemes in depth before moving on to Workflow and why it’s so powerful. Finally, we go through the beta implementation of Siri Shortcuts and look at where it improves on Siri Shortcuts and where it feels more like a step backward.
I believe Siri Shortcuts is going to open up automation for a lot of people that have never tried it before.
We’ll be sharing lots of Siri Shortcuts once it ships so get on board now.
Also, haven’t been reading the episode notes for the Automators episodes in your podcast player of choice, you really should.
My younger daughter’s laptop has been failing. It’s a second generation 13 inch MacBook air (the first one with the wedge design), and it’s starting to do silly things like random shutdowns (even when plugged in) and otherwise giving us warning signs that it is about to give up the ghost. So she’s going to need a new Mac.
Rather than buy a new one, I’m going to give her my laptop. I have retina MacBook that’s a few years old and which I hardly ever use anymore. Years ago, I gave my prior laptop to my other daughter in hopes that I could live the iMac plus iPad lifestyle. At the time we were in the throes of iOS 10, and I found it just didn’t work for me. The biggest problem was the iPad’s inability to manage multiple files. In my role as a lawyer, I often get numerous attachments (sometimes while sitting in meetings) and I need to be able to deal with them quickly and accurately. The old system, where you had individually tap and save each file and then dig through all of your nested folders to get it in the right place, just wasn’t good enough. However, since iOS 11, I have found that use that laptop very little. File management is a lot easier now on the iPad. In July I took several trips, one of them internationally for a week. With all this travel, I was able to get by just fine with my iPad Pro. I handled several client emergencies on the road and never regretted leaving my laptop at home.
So for the second time, I’m starting the experiment of trying to run with just an iMac plus carrying around iPad for mobile computing. I expect this time the experiment will stick. In addition to improvements in file management in the core operating system, several of my other applications have also got more friendly on the iPad since the last time I tried. For example, OmniFocus 3 allows me to select and edit multiple tasks at once where version 2 did not.
Key to this decision for me is accepting that the heavy-lifting work I do on the iMac: screencasting and video editing, simply can’t be done on the road. For me this wasn’t a big sacrifice since looking back, I’ve never done screencasting and video editing on that laptop.
There are still a few sticking points. Google Docs is still not what should be on the iPad for instance. However, I think now I am at the point where those sticking points are just annoyances and not deal breakers for me. The other thing I did was update and reinstall Screens on my iMac so now I can remote access into the iMac if I ever get in a jam. I will report back as I continue with this experiment, but I expect for the foreseeable future I’ll be laptop-less.
Speaking of Automation and Sal Soghoian, Sal recently posted a video of my presentation at his CMD-D conference last year along with several of the other speakers. My talk was about the Workflow application. This was one of my favorite (and most challenging) talks because the audience ranged from people that had never used Workflow to the actual application developers. Yikes. This was before we learned about Siri Shortcuts but there is still some good stuff. Finally, Sal is going to do the CMD-D conference again this year, and it is a three day AppleScript intensive.
