Ulysses Version 2.8

As time goes on, Ulysses (website) (Mac App Store) (iOS App Store) becomes more and more important in my writing workflows. At this point I’m using it for much of my books, this blog, and extended legal writing. I like the app’s clean design. (It won an Apple Design Award last year.) I also like its reliability and ubiquity on all of my Apple devices. Yesterday they released the newest version 2.8. There are several new features worth mention.

Touch ID Security

The updated version adds Touch ID security. You can now add a password to your Ulysses file and optionally open it with Touch ID. As a lawyer, I appreciate this. It’s now going to be a lot harder for unwanted eyes to see my briefs.

New Automation Tools

The new version also adds some additional automation tools via URL callbacks. Specifically, you can now set a group title and you can read from an existing sheet. That second one is interesting. As I’m increasingly using Workflow to automate Ulysses, the ability to pull data out of the database will be useful. I need to play with this more before I can share some useful Workflows but they will be coming.

Better filters Statistics

Document management tools got a bump as well. Filters can now also be used to narrow down the library content according to negative criteria. For instance, you can look for documents that do not include the word “rutabaga”. You can also now see text statistics for groups and filters, which up until today was only available on the Mac version.

An Interesting Story about Icons


I met some of the Ulysses team last year at WWDC. We got in an extended discussion about, of all things, icons. I find the little icons in Ulysses useful as a visual guide as I’m working through my various banks of words. Here’s a screenshot of my MacSparky folder and its related icons. 

I asked why can’t add my own custom icons and they gave me a very opinionated answer. Put simply, they don’t want anyone but their own design team putting graphics into Ulysses. As a compromise, however, they said they take user requests for additional icons very seriously. They explained they intended to regularly update the app with custom designed icons in response to user requests. 

While this approach can work, they’ve got to make good on it. Today they did with several new and interesting icons to help customize your Ulysses groups. I will note that while they have rain clouds, they don’t have a MacSparky thunderbolt. Hopefully 2.9.

“Super Important”

There’s a small tidbit at the end of John Gruber’s post about the new Mac Pros.

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“I asked about scripting and automation — whether Apple still sees scripting and automation as an important part of the pro market. Federighi: “We think scriptability and automation of the system remain super important.””

I’d agree. Power users and large company deployments all rely on scripting to get their work done faster. Craig Federighi’s affirmation about scriptability and automation here is re-assuring but, at the same time, Apple is sending some mixed messages:

  • Apple laid off Sal Soghoian, the biggest advocate of automation and scriptibility. Sal not only got users excited about these tools, he was also fighting the fight inside Apple to make sure automation and scriptibility got updates with the operating system and inside Apple’s own software.
  • Apple not only laid off Sal, they eliminated his position. As Sal explains, “Recently, I was informed that my position as Product Manager of Automation Technologies was eliminated for business reasons.”
  • Apple has been very slow about pushing automation forward on iOS. The current URL-scheme automation methods exist because of clever developers, not Apple. While extensions are a start, there needs to be more.
  • On the plus side, Apple purchased Workflow, a leading automation app for iOS. Some are worried that this acquisition spells doom for the future of Workflow. I think they are going to fold it into the operating system making it (possibly?) even better.

I agree with Craig Federighi that automation and scripting is “super important” but I’d also remind him that if that is the case, we need more than words right now. WWDC is just a few months away and it sure would be nice to see that Apple is moving the ball forward for automation and scripting.

New Mac Pros in 2018

We got some good news out of Apple today. They invited a few reporters to Cupertino where they disclosed that the Mac Pro does, indeed, live. John Gruber’s, who was in attendance, covers it nicely.

Until today, it had been years since they updated the Mac Pro and a lot of folks were speculating that Apple was getting out of the Mac Pro business. I was always in the camp that believed they were going to replace it but something went horribly wrong on Apple’s end to delay that.

It turns out they are replacing it with a more modular design that can satisfy more pro users than the current iteration does. They are also creating an external monitor to go along with it. In hindsight, I think they realize the trash can design, built as a graphics workstation more than anything else, was just a little too preciious.

So we’re getting new Mac Pros but, unfortunately, not until next year. I know announcing upcoming products before they ship is out of character for Apple but in this case, I think it was completely justified. Keeping the new Mac Pro secret another year would only make Mac Pro users more angry. As an aside, they also announced they’ll be releasing more pro-leaning iMacs later this year so if you’re considering a new iMac, hold off a bit.

Grabbing a Safari Link with Keyboard Maestro

Keyboard Maestro is a really powerful tool for automating work on your Mac. Here’s a simple Keyboard Maestro script I use every day. When you write for the Internet, you often include links. This little script, upon me activating the magic keyboard combination, jumps to Safari, selects the URL (⌘L) then copies the link (⌘C), then jumps back the app from which I triggered the script and pastes the link at the current cursor location (⌘V). I’ve been doing this so long that it feels second nature. Below is a screenshot of the script along with a short video of the script in action. Enjoy.



More IFTTT iOS Applets

Cloud-based automation tool, IFTTT has been taking the approach on iPhone and iPad of adding “applets”, small apps that plug into pieces of their service. Today IFTTT announced a few more of these. 

The new Calendar Applet lets you plug into your calendar to both grab and add events though IFTTT’s pipes. One thing I like about this is that it lets me get events into IFTTT even though I don’t use Google Calendar. There’s also a new applet for the App Store that I don’t see as much use for but it does give you an idea how deep IFTTT is going on iPhone and iPad.

We’re planning a future MPU episode around cloud-based automation tools and I’ve been doing a lot of testing. I’m increasingly a fan of IFTTT and Zapier for getting more work out of iOS.

The Slippery Slope of Internet Privacy

The U.S. Senate has now voted to remove prior regulations prohibiting Internet Service Providers (ISPs)–the folks you pay for your home Internet pipe–from selling your browsing and Internet data to others for fun and profit. This is pretty terrible news if you care at all about your Internet privacy. For a long time now ISP’s have been storing and saving your Internet history data. They know where you go and how long you spend there. This new regulation, assuming it also passes the house and gets signed into law (it will) lets them sell your data.

I hate this.

One of the big arguments in favor of this change by ISPs is that because Google and Facebook are making money from our data, they should get in on the action too. That argument, however, fails. Google and Facebook are services that consumers can use or avoid. Consumers can, in effect, opt out of the madness. That isn’t true with your home Internet connection. Every website you visit and every web service you use are now information available on the open market.

You may be thinking how you don’t do anything particularly nefarious so it doesn’t matter. I think that is short-sighted. Somebody with a few bucks should not be able to find that I spend time at certain banking websites or researching certain medical issues or even websites about one political belief over another. Future employers, or insurers, or anybody else with a check book should not be able to snoop through my browsing records.

This seems to me the kind of thing that you’d want to protect no matter where you stand on the political spectrum. Even though the vote on this is down party lines, I have multiple conservative friends that are up in arms over it.

So what can you do?

1. Complain

I’d encourage you to complain to your congressperson. The House of Representatives hasn’t voted yet and 5calls.org is a great place to start.

2. Get a VPN

Virtual Private Network services allow you to get on the Internet without the ISP seeing where you are actually going. The VPN company will know but, assuming you use a reputable one, they won’t sell your data. I’ve been using VPNs for years. They’re particularly helpful if you spend a lot of time on the road using WiFi that you don’t control. Recently I purchased a one-year subscription from Cloak and right now I’m feeling pretty good about that. I could turn that on at home any time (or selectively) to hold on to my privacy.

3. Go Elsewhere for your Internet Pipe

For a lot of communities, the options are very limited but if you have other options for your Internet service, investigate them. Maybe some of them will make your privacy their selling point.

Before you email me to say I’m being alarmist or to remind me that most of our Internet privacy was already fictional, I understand what you are saying. Nevertheless, I can’t help but feel in the slippery slope of Internet privacy, we’re about to take a pretty long slide.

The New APFS File System

Today’s iOS 10.3 update to the iPhone adds the brand-new Apple File System (APFS) to your iOS devices.

The APFS system was announced last year WWDC. It replaces the now 30-year-old hierarchical filing system (HFS, later updated to HFS+) that, until today, was on your iPhone and iPad, and still remains on your Mac. APFS is a much needed modernization, more secure and designed around SSD storage, which didn’t even exist when HFS first showed up. In addition to being more secure, the new system should be faster and more efficient, allowing you to save some space.

When Apple first announced this new system, I expected it would be years before we saw it on iPhones. The iPhone is the lifeblood of Apple and changing file systems can sometimes cause problems. Now here we are less than 12 months after announcement and Apple’s installing APFS across all iPhones and iPads. I spoke to a few friends that are more knowledgeable about these things than me and they explained that implementing APFS was easier on iOS because of the way the operating systems is already so locked down.

Following my usual “fire, ready, aim” philosophy about these things, I already updated all of my iOS devices and while the update took a while (converting a file system is never a fast process), everything went just fine and devices are all working just like before. Indeed, I’m writing this post on my updated iPad Pro.

Hopefully this success is a sign that we will see the APFS deployed on the Mac in the next year.

MPU 370 – Sal Soghoian Talks Automation



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This week we’re joined by long time Automation evangelist and former Apple Automation head, Sal Soghoian. This is a very special episode of the Mac Power Users where we discuss the current state of automation technologies on the Mac and iOS and where we’d like to see them go in the future.

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