Road ID for Apple Watch

For people who are active or have special needs, Road ID is a great product and service. Road ID is a wearable doodad that lets emergency responders know who you are and who they should call. There is even an option that allows you to keep an online profile with lists of your medications, allergies, and more.

Best of all, they now support the Apple Watch. They’ve got several products that will work with Apple Watch bands. If you’re active without identification or have a medical condition that you want to make sure first responders are aware of, check these out.



MultiMarkdown Converter Pro

Fletcher Penney, who has put years of work into MultiMarkdown, has a new app: MultiMarkdown Converter Pro. If you write in Markdown or MultiMarkdown, this one is worth checking out. With MultiMarkdown Converter Pro, you can drag and drop text files from anywhere and convert them into the format you desire. It includes support for HTML5, EPUB 3 (including images), LaTeX, and Flat OpenDocument.



The New Glif

I backed the new Glif iPhone tripod mount and mine showed up a few weeks ago. Studio Neat has come a long way with this product. The newest Glif is spring loaded and pulls back easily around your phone (any size, in a case or not). You then just press down the quick release lever and you’ve attached three tripod mounting points to your phone. The whole thing easily fits in your jeans’ pocket. Quick. Secure. Portable.

If you want to go crazy, Studio Neat also sells a wooden grip with a tripod screw on top and wrist strap. You can combine this with the Glif to have a nice comfortable handle for your phone. I used it in this configuration recently at Disneyland while walking in a crowd. Combined with the iPhone camera stabilization, it took some great video for something I just pulled out of my pocket. As an aside, you’ll see some cranes in the background at the end of the video. You’ll never guess what those are for.

This third iteration of the product is so good that I’m not sure where they can go next. If you have any desire to put your iPhone on a tripod, look no further.

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Free Agents 23 — Hard to Get on a Different Train




The latest episode of Free Agents is available for download. In this episode, we talk about what business forms make sense for your new venture. Topics include sole proprietorships, corporations, LLCs, and what seems like an episode-long disclosure that you really need a local attorney to help you out with these things.

Sponsors include:

Hazel 4.1 Update




I’m a little late on this story but Hazel got a very nice update over the last few months. The new version 4.1 adds several useful features including:

  • Better date matching
  • The ability to make a match based on file attributes of another file in the same folder
  • There’s also a new token for “any non-blank character”

These and other additions make this a nice improvement to an already useful Mac utility. I’m working on some new video content based on the updates. It will get added to the Hazel Video Field Guide when it’s finished. I’m not making any promises on a release date just yet.

Subscription Database

Several months ago we did an episode on Mac Power Users about managing subscriptions. During the show I explained that I have an Apple Numbers spreadsheet where I keep track of all of that information. I’ve finally gotten around to posting it. Below is a screenshot and at the bottom of this post is a download link.



The spreadsheet allows you to enter the name of the service and then whatever fee you’re paying. When you click the checkbox as to whether or not it’s an annual subscription, the spreadsheet does some conditional computations to figure out the monthly cost and annual cost in the following two columns. Those are the key locations that you’re going to be getting information about how much you’re spending. At the bottom of those columns you’ll see how much you’re spending per month and per year.

After that it’s just further information concerning the specific service like website, account number, contact information, and email. The point is you want to keep whatever you need in this database so you can cancel a subscription whenever you feel like it. The one thing I don’t keep in this database is passwords. For that I go to 1Password.

Feel free to download, use, and modify. Let me know how it works for you.

Download the Subscription Database.

The Omni Group (Sponsor)




This week MacSparky is sponsored by the Omni Group. One of the most interesting things I saw last week at WWDC was Sal Soghoian’s presentation about JavaScript integration with the Omni applications. The Omni Group has been hard at work adding JavaScript integration. They currently have it on betas of OmniOutliner and OmniGraffle. Using this, Sal was able to prepare an outline in OmniOutliner that automatically generated presentation slides in OmniGraffle. The documents were linked and making changes in one affected data in the other. Impressive! It was really powerful and available on both Mac and iOS.

Seeing how much time the Omni Group is spending putting this advanced automation in place just affirms my decision to buy their software. The Omni Group truly wants to make the best possible software for Mac and iOS. If you’re looking to be more productive, I recommend checking them all out.

OmniFocus — to get more productive

OmniGraffle — to make beautiful diagrams and images

OmniOutliner — a powerful outlining tool

OmniPlan — for project planning

Check out the Omni Group today and let them know you heard about it at MacSparky.

WWDC Reflections and Future Hopes

Now having returned from WWDC, I can’t help but take a few minutes to reflect upon the general mood in San Jose this past week. Developers were a lot less surly this year and I spoke with several developers inspired by Apple’s work to go and create the next big thing.

Why wouldn’t they? We got new Macs, iPads, and the software updates addressed many priority issues, like iPad productivity. I can’t really put my finger on it but it seems like Apple just has its eye on the ball better this year than it did last year. Talking to folks around San Jose, one explanation was that Apple had a lot of focus on the new building and the car project. I’m not sure if that’s the case. It may just be that the features they announced this year took longer than expected. 

Indeed, it really doesn’t matter why it suddenly seems Apple is addressing these issues so much as the fact that they are addressing these issues.

The iPad gets a lot better with iOS 11. I have a long list of critiques having used it under fire for several days but, fundamentally, the iPad gets more useful when iOS 11 ships.

The bottom line is people are generally happy with what Apple announced last week. Now let’s keep the the momentum rolling. I’ve got three hopes for the next year:

  1. I’d like to see that Apple is listening to feedback particularly on the iOS 11 iPad improvements. Beta users have some great ideas and I’d like to see the best of them make it in before iOS 11 ships.
  2. I would also like to see Apple continue to do incremental updates to the Macintosh hardware. The fact that they upgraded the MacBook Pro to the most current processor in less than a year is a great sign. That is, however, just one data point. I hope that they continue to upgrade hardware as soon as the appropriate upgraded chips are available.
  3. With the improvements of the iPad and the iPad operating system, we now need a healthy ecosystem where developers can spend the time necessary to make professional iPad applications and then sell them for enough money to justify the effort. Hopefully Apple can work with developers to find a way to make that happen.

MPU 381 – WWDC Special




The latest episode of Mac Power Users is live. I spent a lot of time this week speaking with developers at Apple’s WWDC. In this week’s episode, Katie and I break down Apple’s latest announcements along with what I’ve been hearing in San Jose and our analysis of what it all means. The episode came out great.

Sponsors Include:

  • The Omni Group We’re passionate about productivity for Mac, iPhone and iPad. 
  • Fujitsu ScanSnap ScanSnap Helps You Live a More Productive, Efficient, Paperless Life. 
  • MindNode MindNode makes mind mapping easy.
  • Fracture Bring your photos to life.