It’s the end of the year so Katie and I did a show focussing on our favorite new workflows from 2016. I thought this show came out great with a little something for everybody. Enjoy.
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Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone! I was sitting around with my amazing family this morning, listening to Ella Fitzgerald and unwrapping my Star Wars toys (yes … mine) and it occurred to me that if 12-year-old me could see how 48-year-old me spends Christmas, he’d only say, “Well done older me. Well done indeed!” I hope your holiday is as full of joy as mine.
In the Sparks house, we like to make custom holiday cards and often they have a pop culture bent. This year we went for a Hamilton card, which I made with Pixelmator and OmniGraffle. The two MVP features were Pixelmator’s Quick Selection tool, which is like Instant Alpha (just way more powerful), and Piexelmator for iPad and the Apple Pencil. I had to hand draw in several elements. (Strangely, I don’t have any knee high boots and my wife does not actually own a hoop skirt.) The Pencil and iPad Pro really delivered.
Rishabh R. Dassani (Twitter) is a creative nonfiction writer and a management consultant at Dazné. He writes short essays on personal effectiveness for design and business leaders. You can find them at right here and also sign up for his weekly Newsflash. So Rishabh, show us your home screen.
I have used most of these apps for many years now. I find them indispensable in getting work done. Please note they may not all be available on the App Store as some of them are quite old and sport older UI.
YouTube. (Website) I spend way more time with it than I should. Tweetbot and Instagram are a distant second.
Things on the iPhone (App Store)(Website) works great for me to capture items on the go. Later I use Things on the Mac (2.2.6) to process them.
Drafts. (App Store)(Website) I only use it for a handful of things right now, though I know it can a lot more.
I want my Apple Watch to track my sleep automatically. There are apps out there that let you do that but you have to turn them on/off manually.
More than an app, the feature I most want in my Apple devices is Proaction. I want these devices to learn from my use patterns. For instance, it knows that when I am at home, I turn off the Cellular Data (and turn on wifi), and when I am away, I turn on the Cellular Data (and turn off wifi). It would be great if it learns from you without you having to do it every time.
I use my iPhone a few times (10+) during the day. I am trying to cut it down.
3D Touch: I use it all the time on my most-used apps. For instance, I use this feature with the Phone app to turn on/off Cellular Data and to put phone in Low Power Mode quickly.
I would have longer cycles (more than a couple of years) between hardware and software releases.
I would also make the new macOS more mac like. One of the reasons I haven’t upgraded to the newest OS is because I found its UI to be less pleasing to the eye. I also find the older iTunes 10 better. I am happily using Mountain Lion (10.8.4).
I use the Modular watch face most of the time as it can have as many as 5 complications. The complications I use are Activity, Timer, Day and Date, Time, and Calendar. I also use a Utility watch face with the same complications. Although, there are now third-party complications available, these are the ones I have found to be essential.
I use wallpapers from a collection called Focus Backgrounds (no longer available) designed by my friend, Joe Darnell. I have been using them on my Mac (10.8.4) and iPhone (iOS 10) for quite some time.
I am excited to share that earlier this week I put out my 100th piece for my weblog. Please have a look at the Archive page to see what tickles your fancy. And if you like something, please share it with others.
Thanks Rishabh.
It has been years since I’ve mentioned it but I still use the heck out of Default Folder X. This is an application for your Mac that updates the open/save dialog boxes. It gives you an easy way to navigate to recent folders and files, favorites, and otherwise speeds up working on your Mac. If you like to tag files, it also fully supports tagging in the open and save dialog boxes. If you’ve never heard of it, I recommend downloading a trial and given it a shot.
If you have heard of default Folder X, you’ll be pleased to know that they just released a significant update that allows you to create folders in your Library folder for Default Folder X Favorites, Recent Folders and Recent Files. These are actually aliases to the folders and files shown in Default Folder X’s menus, and can be used as a way to access Default Folder X’s data from other applications. I love it when an app this mature can still surprise me with useful new features.
I’m a little late with this story but thought it worth sharing anyway. Yahoo announced last week that they had another security breach (in addition to the 500 million hacked accounts earlier this year). This newly disclosed breach, which happened in 2013, involved 1 Billion Yahoo accounts. As seen in the title, that’s a lot of zeros.
It appears Yahoo’s user data has been compromised multiple times in recent years. If you’ve used Yahoo in the past and cancelled your account, please make sure you didn’t use the password you had at Yahoo anywhere else. If you have a Yahoo account, why are you still reading this? Go cancel it …. now.
According to Sensor Report, the new Mario game for iOS has already had 25 million downloads. That’s a lot of Marios.
Super Mario Run is an interesting angle for Nintendo. The game isn’t a traditional Nintendo game but instead a taste of one. If you really want a proper Mario platform, you’ll still need to buy Nintendo hardware and that is probably the point.
The most annoying bit for me is their extreme copy protection. The app actually has to have an Internet connection to work. It’s not requiring Internet data to play the game but instead it’s a copy protection mechanism. I hate it when a company makes a product significantly worse for paying customers in effort to avoid software piracy. As an example, I was in line at Disneyland a few days ago and thought I’d play the Mario game while waiting. Unfortunately the Internet sucks at Disneyland and instead I got this.
This week MacSparky is sponsored by SaneBox, the email service that can start saving your bacon today. As the end of the year approaches, it’s a good time to look at your workflows that work … and those that don’t. For a lot of folks, email is a constant pain point and it doesn’t need to be. 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:
The list goes on. Why not straighten out your email in 2017 by getting a SaneBox account and bringing a gun to a knife fight. If you sign up with this link, you even get a discount off your subscription.
My Apple AirPods arrived. Hurray! I don’t think you can call this a “review” after just a day of use. Instead, it’s a list of observations from a new user. Before getting started, I should say a little bit about me and bluetooth. For several years now I’ve been carrying around a variety of bluetooth headsets throughout the day. I use them to listen to music and podcasts. I also use them to make a lot of telephone calls. So as an AirPod customer, I am looking for something that sounds good but is also useful for phone calls. With that in mind, here goes…
About the Case
About the Pairing Experience
About the Fit
About the Battery Life
About the Sound Quality and Range
About Making Phone Calls
About The Controls (and Lack Thereof)
About Siri and the AirPods
In Summary
I fully expect these AirPod’s to take over the vast majority of my Bluetooth headphones duty. The convenience, the easy access to Siri, the ability to carry them in my pocket and always be charging make the AirPods a clear winner for me. While I am certain I will miss the better audio controls you get on a corded headphone, the other features AirPod provide more than make up for this for me.
If you need noise canceling or something over the ear for more strenuous workouts, the AirPods won’t cut it. However, for most people I think the AirPods are going to be a great solution. Best of all, this is only the first generation of Apple’s AirPods. These things are only going to get smarter and more useful over time.
DEVONthink has made some significant strides in the last few years. Most impressive to me, is the way they’ve implemented iOS syncing. You now can have your entire DEVON library on your iPad and iPhone. This week we’re joined by Stuart Ingram, a busy guy that is getting the most from DEVONthink to hold it all together. We talk about the app basics, how to set it up and get started, and some interesting advanced features.
Sponsors include:
This week 1Password released version 6.5 of the iOS app. There are several big improvements including a better onboarding experience and better group management. What really struck me, however, is the new Apple Watch app. It’s what I would refer to in my 80’s vernacular as “a sweet upgrade”.
The new Apple Watch app is a native Apple Watch app taking advantage of the the watchOS 3 update and running much faster. It’s now easy to set up and move key items from any 1Password vault (including 1Password.com vaults) to your wrist. I’ll be using 1Password on my wrist a lot more now. As an example, I still occasionally need to get my credit card PIN number when making a purchase. Now it’s on my wrist.
There has been an evolution with Apple Watch apps. With watchOS 1 and 2, watch apps felt like an experiment more than a finished product. With watchOS 3, Apple Watch apps have the possibility of being useful. That doesn’t mean that they all actually are useful. I think getting the user interface and feature scope on an Apple Watch app is a tricky thing. It’s a small screen and app developers need to think of it primarily as a consumption experience for getting data out of their app. 1Password nails this.
