Business and life coach Amy Wicks joins Mike and me on this episode of Focused to talk about the Enneagram personality assessment and showing up as our true selves.
This episode of Focused is sponsored by:
ChatGPT is getting in on the search engine racket. In this video, I share early tests and my impressions of ChatGPT Search.
… This is a post for MacSparky Labs Members. Care to join? Or perhaps you need to sign in?
It’s Election Day in the United States, and Apple News has added a feature that can make Election Day coverage a Live Activity. You can enable it in the News application. If you turn this on, it will give you updates in the Dynamic Island (on iPhone devices that support it) throughout the day and hopefully let you avoid spending time in front of the news.
It’s tempting to keep the news on during an election for minute-by-minute updates, but I discourage that. As a US citizen, as long as you have voted, you’ve done your part. Instead, go do something productive, fun, or take a nap.
If you feel compelled to follow the election, however, this Live Activity gives you an option that won’t be as intrusive to your day.
On this episode fo Mac Power Users, Vision Pro power user Alex Cox explains how it’s going using the Apple Vision Pro to get work done.
This episode of Mac Power Users is sponsored by:
I recently had a strange beta-related kernel panic on my Mac Studio. I was having trouble diagnosing the problem until I brought ChatGPT in to help. Here’s how I did it.
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Rose and I use this episode of Automators to share some of our favorite automation tips for use in personal knowledge management.
This episode of Automators is sponsored by:
In this week’s episode of The Lab Report: The new M4-powered Mac computers are here! You can get on the Apple Intelligence waitlist, Anthropic’s Claude now has a Mac app, and Oliver Burkeman’s latest book, one chapter per day.
… This is a post for MacSparky Labs Members. Care to join? Or perhaps you need to sign in?
Did you know I have a newsletter? I post some, but not all of my newsletter’s content to this blog. Here’a a recent one.
I’ve mentioned several times on my podcasts that we’re experiencing a renaissance in automation, particularly on the Mac. This shift isn’t driven by a single tool but rather by the interoperability of a collection of tools.
AppleScript has been available on the Mac for decades, offering significant automation opportunities if you want to learn it. AppleScript allows users to connect applications and work with the same data to accomplish unified tasks. However, for many, learning AppleScript was a challenge. Programmers found it too different from traditional programming languages, and non-programmers struggled with its syntax. As a result, AppleScript adoption remained relatively small.
Apple and Sal Soghoian introduced Automator in early 2005 to address this, bringing drag-and-drop automation with its original version. Meanwhile, tools like Keyboard Maestro and Hazel, developed outside of Apple, have been actively filling the gaps in Apple’s automation solutions for years.
Then came Shortcuts (né Workflow). Initially developed for iOS, Shortcuts is now firmly embedded in the Mac ecosystem. It’s a spiritual (if not direct) descendant of Automator, and in recent years, these tools have learned to work together. You can run Keyboard Maestro macros from Shortcuts, and Shortcuts can be triggered from within Hazel. Users can now mix and match these tools to create robust automation chains, combining the strengths of each.
For those willing to invest the time to master—or at least gain a working knowledge of—these tools, few tasks on the Mac can’t be automated today.
The next big shift in this process is the integration of artificial intelligence. AI is already proving useful in helping generate automation, but if Apple Intelligence can fully tap into user data while still protecting user privacy and integrate it with Shortcuts, we could see a new era of powerful, personalized automation. This leap could be as significant as the jump from AppleScript to Automator. Of course, this depends on Apple getting both Apple Intelligence and the integration right, but I suspect this is already on the big whiteboard in Cupertino.
Shortcuts and Apple Intelligence both use the Intents system to work their magic. Developers who build for Shortcuts benefit from Apple Intelligence and vice versa. With this common architecture, I believe Apple will eventually tighten the connections between Shortcuts and Apple Intelligence. It won’t happen overnight, but over the coming years, I expect this combination to become the next frontier of automation in the Apple ecosystem.
A surprising bit of news this week was that Apple doubled the base memory on the M2 and M3 MacBook Air. Before this week, if you bought the entry-level model, you got 8GB. That has now increased to 16. I’m sure this is entirely attributable to Apple Intelligence. 8 gigabytes simply isn’t enough to run those AI models and keep the computer running. Whatever the reason, I’m glad they finally did it.
When my daughter bought a new MacBook Air a few months ago, I counseled her to upgrade primarily because of the base model’s woeful 8GB of memory. This also came up in a recent MacSparky Labs event: the importance of memory when purchasing a new Mac.
My general experience in dealing with Labs members and podcast listeners is that people upgrade their computers because of a lack of storage. The base models don’t have much of it, and between our photo libraries and other bits of large data, we fill it up pretty quickly. For many folks, it’s not that the computer is running too slowly; it doesn’t have enough storage to keep up with them.
However, I expect that in the future, memory could become a similar problem. Apple is only at the beginning of its Apple Intelligence journey, and the AI models will only get bigger. Fast forward a few years, and the reason you need to upgrade your computer might simply be that it doesn’t have enough memory. I’m glad Apple is taking care of this problem on the low end, but when buying a new Mac, particularly if you’re looking toward longevity it may now make sense to upgrade both the storage and the memory a bit more than you think is necessary.
Hooray! The new M4 MacBook Pro is here. The case design is the same in both 14- and 16-inch variants, with support for the M4, M4 Pro, and M4 Max chips with increased CPU/GPU performance.
It’s nice to see Apple improving on the built-in camera, which is now 12MP, including support for Center Stage and Desk View. Like the Mac mini, announced yesterday, it includes Thunderbolt 5 support. You can get it with up to 128GB of memory. The device promises 24-hour battery life on certain models.
The MacBook Pro screens continue to be a highlight, with up to 120Hz refresh and an option for Nano-texture. When will Apple bring the tech they are using in the MacBook Pro to a stand-alone monitor?
If you’ve been waiting for a new MacBook Pro, you won’t be disappointed with this one. If you are still on the Intel architecture, this is a no-brainer. If you are on Apple silicon, it’s more of a head-scratcher. Make sure the new device will result in a noticeable performance improvement before upgrading.