Home Screens: DaisyDisk’s Taras Brizitsky


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As we enter the new year, I’m going to be posting these home screens more consistently. This week I’m featuring Taras Brizitsky (Twitter), one of the smart fellows behind my favorite Mac drive management app, DaisyDisk. So Taras, show us your home screen.


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What are some of favorite apps?

There’re many… 1Password (version 4 looks incredible), Deliveries (I rely on it for tracking packages from eBay), Buy Me a Pie (the best grocery list I’ve used), Panamp (music), Light (yes, it’s a flashlight app; I also have a good “hardware” one), Verbs (IM), Partly Cloudy(weather forecast), Fantastical, Chrome, Tweetbot, Reeder, Sparrow…

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Letterpress (you won’t tell anyone, right?).

What is the app you are still missing?

I’m still looking for good music and video players which are not chained to iTunes.
I just want to listen to the music on the go, not sync, re-sync or move my music collection to iTunes (which doesn’t play well with NAS).

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

None to every few minutes, that really depends on what I’m working on.
Sometimes I prefer to leave all my gadgets on a shelf.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

Pocket-sized Web browser. Seriously, this covers most of my needs.
My iPhone is mostly used as a web browser, news reeder, mail checker. And yes, it can make calls (killer, app, huh…). iPad works as a book and news reader and a portable game console. I tried using these devices for writing short texts or drawing and still prefer paper and good old iMac.

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

App switching. Current solution (icons) is even inferior to one of Palm’s webOS.
Notification Center. Either you do have widgets (weather/finance, anyone?) or you don’t.
Camera app. It’s now incredibly cluttered.
Lock screen. Another design abomination…
Siri. She’s unbelievably slow, stupid and useless.
iCloud. There’s a lot of space for improvements.
App integration. Let’s just face a simple fact: files need to be shared between apps.
And, most of all, iBatteryLife. No complains about iPads, but hey, I don’t need a razor-thin iPhone, I need it work longer.

Thanks Taras

iPad for Photographers

Lately I’m doing an increasing amount of photo editing and management on my iPad. It just so happens that Jeff Carlson wrote a really good book about techniques and apps for photography on your iPad. Jeff is one of my favorite tech writers and has a lot of good knowledge to share. Of course there are also some really great photos in the book.

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Kiva – Loans that change lives

Are you scrambling for a last minute gift? Why not set somebody up with a Kiva investment account. For me, Kiva is the perfect charity based gift for kids. Instead of telling them that you made a donation in their name (which means nothing to them), give them some Kiva money to go make an investment. Then get online with them and help them decide who they should invest in. Help someone buy cattle in Tajikistan or phones for resale in Uganda. Most of the investments pay back and then the kids can re-invest it again. You can start for as little as $25. I’m giving this to several young people in my life this holiday.

PDFpen for iPhone Tutorial

A friend asked me why on earth I’d need a PDF app on my phone. Rather than explain briefly, I made a 40 minute video. Here is my soup to nuts explanation of how I use PDFpen for iPhone.

If you haven’t bought the app yet, you should right now. Smile just dropped the price (for a limited time) on PDFpen for iPhone* to $2. (PDFpen for iPad* is also on sale for just $7.) Watch the video, buy the apps, tell your friends. You can’t go wrong. 

* Affiliate link lining my pockets one nickel at a time.

MPU 116: Workflows with Glenn Fleishman

Glenn Fleishman is what you would call a “quality individual”. He writes about technology for fun and profit, skewers trivia geeks on Jeopardy, and is an overall nice guy. Glenn joined us this week on the Mac Power Users to talk about writing, game show training, and general geekery.

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RSS Sponsor: Rocket Matter and Free eBook

Thanks Rocket Matter for supporting MacSparky.com


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I’ve long believed that computing platforms will become increasingly less relevant as we move forward with cloud-based software. The legal profession is a good example where just a few years ago, everybody used Windows PCs.

That’s not true any more and this week’s RSS Sponsor, Rocket Matter, demonstrates why. These guys have built the premier web-based law practice management platform that takes care of all your needs to run a small (or large) law office.

If you are a legal professional, check them out. If you aren’t a legal professional but pay for your shoes through billing by the hour, you should still check out their free e-book, Ridiculously Remarkable Legal Billing, with immediately useful, practical advice, no matter what your trade.

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TextExpander 4.04

The newest version of TextExpander for Mac is out with some nice improvements:

  • Supports Cut, Copy and Paste for items in the snippet list
  • Adds popover to resolve snippet abbreviation conflicts
  • Duplicate snippets are drawn with blue abbreviation (vs. orange for conflicts)
  • Adds “expand abbreviation ‘<abbreviation>’” syntax to AppleScript expand command
  • Restores support for %j day-of-year macro

There was, however a bug with the updater that requires you to manually download. You can get it here.