Jazz Friday – Bill Evans


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For Jazz Friday this week, I’d like to feature one of my favorite pianists of all time, Bill Evans (website)(Wikipedia). Evans was one of the pioneers of the modal jazz movement and a significant influence on Miles Davis with the Kind of Blue album (iTunes)(Apple Music), the best-selling jazz album of all time. I once read an article about how Davis used to call Evans just to ask him to play the piano over the phone. I believe it. I think Evans’s collaborations with Davis were some of his best, but Evans also did some pretty remarkable stuff in his solo career. One of my favorite compositions from Evans is “Waltz for Debby” (iTunes)(Apple Music). It has a little lilting melody that just makes you smile.

After leaving Miles Davis, Bill Evans had a solo career including several groups he put together through the rest of his life. No matter whom he played with, however, the music always showed his influence in those wonderful impressionist-inspired modal tones and themes. Aside from his work on the Kind of Blue album, my next favorite album from Evans is The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings, 1961 (iTunes)(Apple Music). That album gets a lot of play in my library.

Cardhop – The New Contact Management App from Flexibits


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Today Flexibits released its new contact management application for the Mac, Cardhop. Cardhop follows in the tradition of Flexibits’ other Mac app, Fantastical in that it sits in your menubar and is completely awesome. 

With Cardhop, you can tap any quick keyboard combination to access the application from your menubar and then add new contacts, edit existing contacts, perform actions on contacts (like dialing a phone number or sending an email) and more. You can even perform functions with data that is not in your address book. For instance, if you type in “Dial 1-800-GOFEDEX”, it translates the letters into the appropriate numbers and dials the phone for you.

For me, the ultimate test was when I received a new contact card, and I wanted to add that person to a specific group. All that I had to do was activate Cardhop, type in the person’s first name, and then type “#F”. Cardhop figured out I was putting that contact into my “friends” group and with just those few keystrokes, I had accomplished what used to take me many clicks and navigations in the Apple Contacts application.

Cardhop is for contacts what Fantastical is for calendar entries. You can get it today for your Mac. If you spend any time managing contacts on your Mac, this is worth checking out.

If you want to learn more, I made a series of videos for Flexibits.

Solo

Today Ron Howard announced the name of the previously untitled Han Solo Star Wars Movie. 

Solo.


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I like it. He finishes the video saying “I’ll see you next year.” The question is … when next year? Previously Lucas announced Solo would be released in Summer of 2018 but since they’ve now pushed Episode IX to December of 2019, I wouldn’t be surprised if Solo gets pushed back to December 2018.

iPhone X Supply Constraints


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Last week we heard even more rumors about supply constraints for the iPhone X. Yet today the rumors say things may be a little better than we first thought. I think this is going to be the most difficult to find Apple product in a long time. If you want one, plan on being awake at midnight on October 27 and hope that you’ll get one before 2018.

Generally when making these types of purchases, you are better off using the Apple Store app on your iPhone or iPad. They seem to get through the buying process more reliably than the web store when there’s a heavy load. Also, make sure to have your Apple Pay credentials all up to date and “favorite” your iPhone X of choice ahead of time. Seconds will count.

The New Amazing Stories


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As one of its first big television content deals, Apple has announced it’s going to be working with Steven Spielberg to produce a new series of Amazing Stories. I was all in the first time Spielberg made the Amazing Stories television series. That was some great TV. (If you’re looking for a good episode to get started, check out season 1, episode 5, “The Mission”.) As a child of the 70s and 80s, I personally can’t wait to see the new Amazing Stories, and I’m glad that Apple is spending some of its truckloads of money on content other than Carpool Karaoke.

Timing Makes Time-Tracking Easy (Sponsor)

This week MacSparky is sponsored by Timing, my tool for tracking time on my Mac. Knowing how you spend your time is one of the most useful bits of knowledge you can have when deciding on new (and old) commitments. I’ve gone deep down the rabbit hole of time tracking as I try to figure things out for my own sanity and this week’s sponsor, Timing, has been an essential tool for me.


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Time tracking is hard. Having to throw a switch somewhere every time you change tasks or projects never works and is super-distracting. As a result, you end up with bad data. 

Timing fixes that. Timing automatically tracks which apps, documents, and websites you use — without start/stop timers.

  • See how you spend your time, eliminate distracting activities, and improve your client billing.
  • Timing lets you stop worrying about time and focus on doing your best work instead!
  • Timing also understands that your time tracking data is super sensitive, so Timing keeps it safe on your Mac.

In short, with Timing you get detailed information about how you spend your time on your Mac with zero work on your behalf. Try it yourself with the free 14-day trial and get 10% off if you buy in the next two weeks.

Unrelated but cool – The developers of Timing have also recently released Faviconographer, a free utility that adds Favicons to your Safari tabs. If you ever found yourself wanting those icons on your tabs for easier navigation, check it out!

App Camp 2020


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App Camp is an outstanding program working to fix the gender imbalance in technology and giving the campers (and volunteers) a lifetime of memories. My wife and I helped out with the recent App Camp in Orange County, and we’re thrilled to see them expanding. They have a big fundraiser going on right now, and every little bit helps. It doesn’t take long to make a contribution. They even take Apple Pay.

BBEdit 12


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Today marks the release of BBEdit 12.0. There is a long list of new and improved features. There are plenty of minimal text editors out there but only one BBEdit power tool. Using BBEdit, you can do nearly anything to a text file. This app is so powerful that I know web developers that have switched to the Mac for the sole purpose of using BBEdit.

I use BBEdit when I need its power. For example I used it recently on a complicated search and replace to a big pile of text using regular expressions. That simply wan’t possible with every other text editor in my arsenal but it was laughably easy for BBEdit. Jason Snell writes in BBEdit every day. His comments on the new version are excellent. 

Home Screens – Peter Lewis


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This week’s home screen feature Peter Lewis, maker of Keyboard Maestro, which recently got a nice update, one of my favorite productivity apps on the Mac. Peter not only shared his home screen but also some of his favorite apps on both iOS and Mac. So Peter, show us your home screen.


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What are some of your favorite apps?

BBEdit (forever!), PCalc and NetNewsWire 3 are always running, and Acorn and Interarchy are also mainstays. Mail and Xcode are always running too, but I wouldn’t call either if them “favorites”.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Really Bad Chess on the iPad. That and chesstempo.com.

What app makes you most productive? 

Keyboard Maestro. Self-serving comment, sure, but other than Xcode, nothing is more important to my productivity.

What app do you know you’re underutilizing?

Script Debugger. I’m not a particularly competent AppleScripter. I’m hopeful that Script Debugger will help improve that, but so far I’ve failed to get the most out of it.

What is the app you are still missing?

Not so much an app, but the whole home automation space seems almost entirely untapped in terms of potential. That said, I really don’t understand people putting Internet connected microphones and cameras in their living rooms (or heaven forbid, their bedrooms!). But I’d definitely like to see some massive improvements in this space, and an iPad’s size is probably a perfect fit for the controller.

How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?

iPad at night to play games. I use my iPhone sporadically but not for much, just for boring “Smart Phone” stuff like phone calls, Messages, and Maps.

What Today View widgets are you using and why?

I use Workflow, but only for a few trivial tasks, mostly just emailing myself notes. None of my iPhone widgets really get much use — since I work from home on my Mac, I generally have access to my Mac whenever I want to do something, and so I don’t need to try to shoehorn myself into a 4″ screen.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

My favorite new feature is the “remember where I parked”, although I’m looking forward to speed limits and lane guidance when it eventually comes to Australia.

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?

A massive increase on the primacy of software quality. There are just too many bugs shipping currently. I’d also like to see a re-focus on the Mac and accept the duality, and free up the iPad/iPhone to be what they are good at instead of making them so complicated that they lose the simplicity advantage they had.

Thanks Peter.