Home Screens – Bill Wilkins


I love meeting new and interesting geeks. One such person is my friend Bill Willkins. Bill Started out a “farm boy” in from Durham North Carolina but eventually found his way to England and now Switzerland. Bill’s now 75 but still works as a European Outdoor Industry Consultant. I can only hope I’m as much a geek at 75 as Bill is.

So Bill, show us your home screen.


What are some of your favorite apps?

I still find Apple’s native contacts app as the most useful. No other contacts app comes close. I have Fantastical on every device and MacBook. Excellent.

While I’m using 1Password, I’m also testing out other password managers. Apple Notes & Reminders are run as a team on the home screen of my iPhone & iPad.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

My iPhone is my app resource. I have at least 200 apps archived on my iPhone. I review them monthly. I have to start deleting some. I emphasize I don’t use them all but review them monthly.

What app makes you most productive? 

OmniFocus without doubt.

What app do you know you’re underutilizing?

Most likely, OmniFocus.

What is the app you are still missing?

I am not missing anything. The problem is the reverse. Too many.

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

It is the first thing in the morning and the last thing at night.

My iPhone is my most used Apple device. I can see the day coming when I move to a large iPad. This is mainly due to the ease of updates.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

I can use them everywhere. I also like the ease of updates and the relative economy and/or price of apps. (The other side is I buy too many.)

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

I would not take the job even if it were offered.

There was a famous saying. You can please some of the people part of the people some of the time and a few of the people all of the time but you cannot please all of the people all of the time. 

What’s your wallpaper and why?

My wall paper is a plain black background. I do not want any distractions.

Thanks Bill!

 

Wikileaks and CIA iOS Exploits

Yesterday Wikileaks barfed up another pile of alleged confidential data, this time from the CIA. Setting aside the separate conversation about exactly who Wikileaks works for these days, I do believe the CIA, NSA, and intelligence agencies of every other country in the world has an interest in hacking iOS devices. Both hackers and governments have significant motivations to read private data. The question is what our hardware and software vendors are doing to protect us.

Apple released a statement on this point yesterday:

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Apple is deeply committed to safeguarding our customers’ privacy and security. The technology built into today’s iPhone represents the best data security available to consumers, and we’re constantly working to keep it that way. Our products and software are designed to quickly get security updates into the hands of our customers, with nearly 80 percent of users running the latest version of our operating system. While our initial analysis indicates that many of the issues leaked today were already patched in the latest iOS, we will continue work to rapidly address any identified vulnerabilities. We always urge customers to download the latest iOS to make sure they have the most recent security updates.
— Apple on alleged CIA iOS hacks

The battle to retain our privacy will never end. Apple will continue to build walls and governments and hackers will continue to batter them. I do believe Apple is committed to this fight but the continued protection of our private data is by no means a certainty at this point.

Sponsor – Conquer Your Email with SaneBox

This week MacSparky is sponsored by SaneBox, the email service that can can change your life … today. For a lot of folks, email is that thorn in your side that you can’t quite ever escape. It doesn’t have to be that way. With SaneBox at your back, you add a powerful set of email tools that can work in just about any email client. With SaneBox you can:

  • Wake up everyday to find the SaneBox robots have automatically sorted your incoming email for you so you can address the important and ignore the irrelevant. 
  • Defer email for hours, days, or weeks so it is out of your life until a more appropriate time.
  • Set secret reminders so if someone doesn’t reply to an important email SaneBox gives you a nudge to follow up.
  • Automatically save attachments to the cloud (like Dropbox).
  • Use their SaneForward service to automatically send appropriate emails to services like Evernote, Expensify, and Kayak.
  • Move unwanted email to the SaneBlackHole and never see anything from that person again.

The list goes on. Why not straighten out your email by getting a SaneBox account and bringing a gun to a knife fight. I’ve been a SaneBox subscriber since 2012 and just signed up for another year. If you sign up with this link, you even get a discount off your subscription.

Richard Stallman’s Uber List

Richard Stallman has created a list of Uber’s sins. There’s a lot of them. I still can’t get over the idea that one of their executives wanted to spend $1M trashing journalists that wrote negatively about Uber. I know I’m late to this and I’m sure I’ll probably hear from some readers explaining how Lyft is more expensive but at this point I’ve come to the conclusion I don’t want any of my money heading toward Uber ever again.

MPU 367 – Getting Productive with Michael Hyatt

This week we’re joined by New York Times best-selling author Michael Hyatt to share ideas about technology and productivity.

Sponsors include:

  • Squarespace: Make your next move. Enter offer code MPU at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.
  • 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. 
  • Pixelmator Powerful image editing that gives you everything you need to create, edit and enhance your images, now on iPad and Mac.

Home Screens – Bob “Dr. Mac” Levitus


This week’s home screen features Bob “Dr. Mac” Levitus. (Twitter) (Website) Bob is a prolific technology writer and one of my favorite members of the old Macworld Allstar Band. Bob has recently written his very first self published book, Working Smarter for Mac Users. I’m so pleased to see Bob doing his own thing. So Bob, show us your home screen.


What are some of your favorite apps?

Ulysses , Final Cut Pro , Logic Pro , Words with Friends

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Real Racing 3 (with nearly 200 hours of guilt).

What app makes you most productive?

A Pomodoro timer.

What app do you know you’re underutilizing?

Photoshop.

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

Too many to count.

What Today View widgets are you using and why?

Dark Sky (hyper local weather), Workflow (shortcuts and macros), Launcher (shortcuts)

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

Voice control and Siri (especially with Apple Music)

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

Go back to selling Macs with user-upgradeable RAM and storage.


Do you have an Apple Watch? Show us your watch face tell us about it.

Yes, and I use the Simple face for its retro good looks and subtle elegance.

What’s your wallpaper and why?

“Welcome to Macintosh.” The “why” should be obvious: I like retro.

Anything else you’d like to share?

My mission is to show you how to use your Mac better, faster, and more elegantly; how to banish procrastination forever; and how to do more work in less time so you have more time for things you love.

My first self-published book—Working Smarter for Mac Users—ships on March 3 and I invite you to check it out or sign up for my weekly newsletter packed with productivity tips right here .

Thanks Bob.