My friend Stephen Hackett’s written another book. This one, called Aqua and Bondi, is all about the the original iMac and the transition of NeXT’s technologies to Mac OS X. If you are at all interested in Apple history and how Apple worked in those days following Steve Jobs’s return, this one is for you.
Tasks vs. Calendar Events
I get a lot of emails from readers asking me exactly how I distinguish between tasks and calendar items. In a perfect world, a task is an item you need to do and a calendar item represents a place you need to be. However, the way I work makes things a little muddier.
For example, I like to schedule appointments with myself. This helps me manage big projects. I will often schedule a block of time on the calendar for a big project. Something like, Thursday 10 AM-12 PM, ACME contract review.
So now that calendar event shows up in my calendar but I’ve also got a collection of tasks related to that contract review in OmniFocus. So how do I resolve that? It really isn’t that hard. I will go into the project view in OmniFocus and select all related tasks to the contract review and set their deferred date to Thursday at 10 AM. Then the tasks disappear from my active OmniFocus list until that time and I don’t think about them anymore.
The trick to all of this is being honest with yourself. If you set these appointments with yourself to manage big projects but don’t keep them, you lose faith in your system and the wheels start falling off. Treat those task-related appointments just as sacredly as you would an appointment with your boss. If something comes up that requires you to move that appointment, go ahead and move it but follow all the necessary steps. Reset the appointment in your calendar and move the tasks in your task manager.
Another advantage of setting aside blocks of time for big projects is that it gives you a more realistic view of how much you can actually get done in the day. If suddenly you see yourself completely blocked and there are still significant tasks left on your list, that should be a warning sign that you’ve got a problem.
So to answer the question, I generally am a purist and keep tasks in my task list and calendar events in my calendar. When I do use the calendar to block time for an extensive set of tasks, I will simultaneously move all of those tasks to the designated time and date.
Sponsor: Brain Storm with MindNode
This week MacSparky is sponsored by my favorite mind mapping application, MindNode. MindNode walks that line of providing powerful tools while still keeping a simple (and delightful) interface.
Mind mapping is something you really should try if you haven’t recently. I was originally unimpressed with mind mapping but when I bought my first iPad I tried it again and it just clicked for me on the tablet form factor. Now I use MindNode every day with copies on my iPhone, iPad, and Mac all syncing data together. One of my favorite uses for MindNode is brain storming. Watch the below video to learn how to brain storm with MindNode and get yourself a copy of MindNode to get more productive.
Apple Spaceship Video
It’s been a lot of fun watching the monthly drone footage of Apples new campus. They’re planting trees now so they must be getting close. When the time comes, I’m going to pester all of my Apple friends to get me in for a visit.
MPU: Workflows with Ian Byrd
Ian Byrd is a former teacher, a professional speaker, and a friend. Ian joined us this week to share his workflows and tips for giving full-day lectures and workshops, writing, video production, and more.
Sponsors include:
- MacPaw: Get a 30% discount on all of MacPaw’s must-have Mac Apps on Cyber Monday – November 28, 2016!
- 1Password Have you ever forgotten a password? Now you don’t have to worry about that anymore. Save up to 20% using this link.
- MindNode MindNode makes mind maping easy.
How to Fight Calendar Spam
I wrote a few days ago about the increasing amount of calendar spam. I’m not alone as I received a lot of email asking how to fix this. I woke up to these little beauties this morning and decided it was time to take action.
A Little More About Calendar Spam
Most of the calendar spam I’ve seen has originated from China. Somebody has a big list of email addresses and sends out calendar invites with spammy links embedded. By default, the Mac looks at these invites and gives them to you via the calendar app along with a notification.
Historically, I’ve really liked this feature. My family uses multiple calendars and we routinely send each other invites. If I need to drive my daughter to a particular event, she sets the event in her calendar and sends me an invite. (We also have a shared family calendar but that includes everyone and in this case it would just be me and my daughter.)
This is what makes me so pissed about calendar spam. It’s taking something I use often and corrupting it. My guess is this is only going to get worse and I really hope Apple intervenes. In the meantime, there are a few steps you can take.
Step 1 – Never Accept OR Decline
While it seems like pressing the “Decline” button is your way of giving the finger to these calendar spammers, all you are doing is confirming that there is a human at the other end of that email and encouraging them to send even more.
Step 2 – Move and Delete
This stack exchange thread has a good idea. Move the offending invites into a separate calendar. (I named mine “Spam”. ) Then delete the newly created calendar with the calendar spam in it. Make sure to select the “Delete and Don’t Notify” when doing so. The crappy part of this is that you’ll need to repeat this process if this becomes a thing, which it will.
Step 3 – Move to Email Notifications
If the problem continues, the best solution is to go into the Calendar screen of your iCloud.com account and throw the lever to move calendar invitations from the calendar app to email. Then you can delete emails before these things ever hit your calendar. The below gallery walks you through the steps to do so.
The crappy part about this is that the next time my daughter sends me an invite to drive her somewhere, I won’t see it until I get to email. Like I said, Apple needs to give us a better way to deal with this.
If you’re looking for more resources on this, I’d recommend this Apple Support thread, this Stack Exchange thread, this piece by Aaron Douglas, and Gabe Weatherhead weighed in too.
Cyber Monday Deals
It’s that time of year and my email inbox has been burning up with press releases about Cyber Monday sales. Between the App stores and Amazon, I’ve come across several discounts from apps and products that I use and enjoy.
iOS Apps
$2.99 reduced to $0.99
One of the few games I’d recommend. It’s beautiful, fun, and strangely relaxing. I’ve written about it before.
$4.99 reduced to $2.99
This is my favorite package tracking app. I bought several competitors earlier this year with the idea of writing up a comparison only to fined Deliveries is still the best.
$14.99 reduced to $10.99
We’re planning a future MPU episode on DEVONthink. The iOS app has made a lot of progress and is on sale.
$6.99 reduced to $2.99
While I still primarily use Apple Mail, Dispatch is on my home screen for certain email tasks.
$4.99 reduced to $2.99
Due is a reminder app that specializes in being an absolute pain in the neck when you fail to take out there garbage cans by 6pm on Thursday.
Fantastical 2 for iOS
My favorite iOS calendar app is on sale. The iPad version is reduced from $9.99 to $4.99 and the iPhone version is reduced from $4.99 to $2.99.
$4.99 reduced to $2.99
Hydra can merge 60 frames to make a single high-quality picture. This is a camera app that’s definitely worth adding to your collection for low light shots without too much action in them, like a Christmas tree in a dark room.
$19.99 reduced to $9.99
I like working with PDFs on my iPad better than on my Mac and PDFpen is my favorite tool for the job.
$9.99 reduced to $4.99
PDF Expert is another great iOS PDF app and it’s on sale too.
$4.99 reduced to $1.99
Pixelmator is my favorite third party photo editing app and on sale.
$3.99 reduced to $2.99
Need to take a picture of a receipt and send it to Dropbox with minimum fuss. Try this app.
$19.99 reduced to $14.99
This year I’m thankful for my beloved Scrivener making its way to iPad and iPhone. Get $5.00 off for the next few days.
$4.99 reduced to $0.99
ABBYY makes some of the best OCR tools on the market and
TextTool is one of the best-of-breed on iOS. As an added bonus, it can translate foreign languages.
Mac Apps
$9.99 reduced to $4.99
Here’s the Mac companion for the Due iOS app covered above.
$59.99 reduced to $39.99
Hydra is one of the best available HDR apps for the Mac and for the next few days, it’s $20 off. While I already own most of the apps in the post, I just bought this one.
$2.99 reduced to $0.99
I’ve been working on my regular expressions chops lately in my free time and Patterns is a great Mac App to help out.
$49.99 reduced to $29.99
Prizmo’s another great scanning app, this time for the Mac. (The iOS version is on sale as well.)
$14.99 reduced to $10.99
This App is made by the same team that makes Scrivener. It’s an excellent tool for organizing thoughts on big projects, particularly writers.
$9.99 reduced to $4.99
Want to remove a bit from the background of your photo, Snapheal does the job. It just does one thing, but it does it really well.
$5.99 reduced to $2.99
Unclutter adds a drawer to the top of your Mac’s screen where you can keep your clipboard, files, and bits of text. Useful.
Amazon Deals
Amazon Echo
$179.99 reduced to $139.99
I’ve been using the Echo for a year and like it. Hopefully Apple is working on something similar.
Anker Batteries
All of the Anker Batteries are on sale. I’ve already bought a few as stocking stuffers.
$49.99 reduced to $23.99
$79.99 reduced to $39.99
$99.99 reduced to $55.99
$49.99 reduced to $22.99
$29.99 reduced to $12.49
$499.99 reduced to $399.99
Apple’s out of the of the router business. EERO’s pretty great.
$199.99 reduced to $149.99
Be warned with this one. The Sonos Play 1 was my gateway drug into all things Son
os.
$16.50 reduced to $8.49
I bought one of these and love it on my tree.
Jazz Friday: Jacob Collier
Last Jazz Friday I wrote about prodigy Joey Alexander and received a lot of feedback from readers that are now Joey Alexander fans. So this time I thought I’d cover another prodigy, Jacob Collier. Jacob’s parents are both musicians with the Royal Academy of Music in London and the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.
In addition to the ability to play the keyboard and just about any stringed instrument, Jacob has a 4-octave voice. In 2011 he went viral with his YouTube video rendition of Pure Imagination. My favorite, although, is Fascinating Rhythm. Jacob is ridiculously talented and at just 22, understands harmony in ways that I’ll never figure out in my lifetime. He’s now working with Quincy Jones and I expect we’ll be hearing more from Jacob in the future.
USB-C MagSafe Adapters
If you own a USB-C MacBook or MacBook Pro and are missing the MagSafe power cord, there’s the Griffen BreakSafe with an integrated USB-C cable and there’s a new Kickstarter project called Snapnator, that works with an existing USB-C cable.
Calendar Spam
Here’s a new one. The last week I’ve started getting occasional spam-based calendar invites. Be careful out there.
