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Become the Boss of Your Email With SaneBox (Sponsor)

Did you know that the snooze button isn’t only for your alarm clock? With SaneSnooze, you can snooze on your emails as well. SaneBox, this week’s sponsor at MacSparky, helps me prioritize my email with the SaneSnooze feature.

There are emails that you don’t have to act on right now, and that’s where SaneSnooze comes in handy. I can snooze the less important emails until I want to respond. The email disappears from my main inbox. Not delete disappear, but more of a I’ll-deal-with-it-later situation because SaneSnooze will hide the email until the time I say I’m ready for it to show back up in my inbox, and I can give it my attention when I’m ready to deal with these kinds of emails.

And SaneBox lets you choose how long you want to snooze. You can set your Snooze Folders to SaneTonight, SaneTomorrow, SaneNextWeek, SaneNextMonth, or whatever you think works best for you. When you move an email to your chosen SaneSnooze time, that email will disappear from your inbox, and then SaneBox will move that email back into your inbox at the time you’ve designated it. Want to deal with email on your terms? Click here to sign up for a free trial, and you can get a $10 credit you can use towards a SaneBox subscription. 

Mac Power Users 617: Back in Whack

Stephen and I are joined by Apple’s Jeremy Butcher on the latest episode of Mac Power Users to discuss the company’s new Business Essentials program. Then, we revisit iCloud storage management, clipboard apps, and email providers. USB-C hubs and migrating to an Apple silicon Mac are also discussed.

This episode of Mac Power Users is sponsored by:

  • TextExpander from Smile: Get 20% off with this link and type more with less effort! Expand short abbreviations into longer bits of text, even fill-ins, with TextExpander from Smile.
  • SaneBox: Stop drowning in email!
  • Indeed: Get a free $75 credit to upgrade your job post.
  • quip: Better oral care, made simple. Get your first refill free.

Shortcuts in Limbo

I’ve enjoyed some recent posts from John Voorhees and Jason Snell about expanding Shortcuts on the Mac using AppleScript and the terminal. However, I still am having trouble getting consistent and reliable automation with Shortcuts on the Mac. The product still feels a lot like a beta in that some parts of it just don’t work as advertised. This is troublesome for a few reasons.

First, I worry that folks eager to try Shortcuts for Mac are going to get frustrated when the creation process fails them. (For example, I spent 10 minutes fighting with Shortcuts this morning to set a variable.) Once new users get a Shortcut built, there is no guaranty it will perform correctly given the current state of things. To make this worse, there is very little in the way of error reporting. A lot of times the Shortcut will fail with no feedback whatsoever to the user so you don’t know if you made a mistake in constructing it, or if the feature you called is just broken.

Second, I’m trying to build a Shortcuts for Mac Field Guide, but many of the lessons I want to teach are in a holding pattern until particular bugs get fixed.

Put simply, Shortcuts for Mac is in limbo right now. The good news is that it is improving a lot in the betas and every sign we can see from the outside points to the fact that the Shortcuts Team is aware of these issues and working on them. I suspect it’s one of those things where they just ran out of time and couldn’t get it entirely in shape before Monterey was released.

Hopefully, this limbo period is short-lived.

Automators 90: Holiday Automation 2021

Automators Cover Art

Automating the holidays has never been easier. Rose and I have a pile of holiday-related automations to make life easier and impress your friends and family on the this episode of Automators.

This episode of Automators is sponsored by:

The Peak Design Everyday iPhone Case

Peak Design is a company specializing in various bags and cases. They make some excellent (and opinionated) gear. They sell many of their new products via Kickstarter and often manage to hook me with their very polished campaigns.

For instance, a while ago, they announced they would be making an iPhone case. I was curious, and I backed the project. While the Peak Design iPhone case was going through design and iteration, Apple released a new iPhone and, thanks to a nifty email from Peak Design, I was able to change my reservation for my new iPhone 13 Pro. A few weeks ago, the case arrived. I’ve been using it ever since and wanted to share some initial impressions.

THE CASE

The case is made of a rugged rubber-ish / plastic-ish material that fits nicely around my phone. The slightly rounded back has a fabric-feeling texture that is very easy to grip and slide in and out of my pockets. The buttons are not independent of the case, like they are with the Apple leather cases, but they press easily and get the job done. The front lip of the case surrounds the front of the iPhone, which I like. There is no problem with swipe gestures with this case.

On the back of the case is a square divot that serves as a more stable mounting point with some of the accessories. More on that later. Also, the case is MagSafe compatible, and it has worked fine with my MagSafe battery, charger, and wallet. I was even able to get the MagSafe pop socket to work with it.

There are two versions of the case. One has a loop on the back to thread your finger through, like a low-profile pop socket. The other version does not have the loop. I elected the case sans loop in that my iPhone is easy enough to handle without it. If I was sporting an iPhone Pro Max, I might have gone for the loop.

THE SYSTEM

Peak Design has done an excellent job of building all of its products into its system. Different products efficiently work with other products. Moreover, they’ve been so successful over the years that a lot of third-party accessory makers also use their sizes, like, for instance, their tripod mount plate.

The new Peak Design iPhone case is no different. Peak Design has built an entire ecosystem around this case. They have a lot of options: magnetic mounts, charging mounts, bicycle mounts, and a clever creator’s mount (pictured) that lets you mount to a tripod or an action camera mount. While the magnetic mount is excellent, if you need something more stable, the locking attachment system is the best I’ve ever seen integrated into an iPhone case.

Of course Peak Design makes an excellent iPhone case system. It’s pricey, and I don’t think it’s for everyone, but if you want a complete, entirely reliable iPhone case, that you can lock into a mount with certainty it will remain stable, this is probably the one.

Get More Done with Textexpander (Sponsor)

A shoutout to TextExpander, MacSparky’s sponsor this week. I’ve been a user of TextExpander for a long time. It’s been a real difference-maker in my workflow by doing a lot of the work for me.

TextExpander supports a variety of macros, and one supported macro is the Tab key. What does that mean for you? TextExpander can insert some text, press Tab for you, then insert more text.

For instance, I regularly send my assistant emails with updates about the latest Field Guide I’m working on. TextExpander allows me to use just a couple of keystrokes and I can start the new email and then trigger a snippet.

The beauty of TextExpander is the snippet will automatically type my assistant’s email address, press tab, put in the the same email subject line, press tab, and fill in a general template for the body of the email. The cursor is ready for me and placed right where I need to start typing the new information for the week. That’s a more efficient use of time. And that’s what TextExpander can do for you: allow you to take your time back. Get 20% off your first year. Leave the boring, repetitive tasks in the past: get TextExpander and focus on what matters most.

Mac Power Users 616: The Quality Will Be Ensured, with Daniel Jalkut – Draft

Stephen and I are joined by Daniel Jalkut on this episode of Mac Power Users. After his absence is blamed on an innocent co-host, Daniel chats with us about his indie development career, the new MacBook Pro, and the many options developers face when picking a method for writing a macOS application.

This episode of Mac Power Users is sponsored by:

  • 1Password: Have you ever forgotten a password? You don’t have to worry about that anymore.

  • TextExpander from Smile: Get 20% off with this link and type more with less effort! Expand short abbreviations into longer bits of text, even fill-ins, with TextExpander from Smile.

  • Electric: Stop stressing over scattered devices. Get a free pair of Beats Solo3 Wireless Headphones when you schedule a meeting.

  • Squarespace: Make your next move. Enter offer code MPU at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.

Chronosync Update

With the proliferation of cloud-based storage, it’d be easy to think you don’t need local backup anymore. I disagree. I make regular backups of my data to big, slow, inexpensive spinning hard drives that I store away from the computer (with one going offsite).

I’ve tried all the tools for this and ChronoSync is my favorite. ChronoSync is the automatic sync and backup app for your Mac, and they have just released a major beta, ChronoSync 4.10. ChronoSync can back up your data, create a bootable disk, clone your hard drive, synchronize files between two computers and store redundant backups in the cloud. This new release brings:

  1. Monterey support and optimized for M1 Macs.
  2. Simple bootable backups, like the old days, for all the new versions of macOS.
  3. iCloud support.

My congratulations to the ChronoSync team on this release.

The HomePod Mini Experiment

Recently, Jason Snell wrote about using a stereo-paired set of HomePod mini speakers with his Mac. I reported on a similar experiment on the latest episode of Mac Power Users.

Specifically, I wanted to see if AirPlay-paired HomePod minis could replace my existing wired speaker system. My current system is nice. They’re Focal speakers with a powerful subwoofer on the floor. I reviewed those speakers, along with their 30-pin connector, in 2009. Rather than sending them back to the manufacturer, I sent back a check and kept the speakers. I’ve been using them every since.

Nevertheless, the siren song of those cute little orange HomePod minis called out to me, and I bought a pair as an experiment. Everything Jason says is right. These speakers sound better than expected for something so small. When paired together, you do get separation and good sound for a minimal footprint.

They don’t match the quality of my subwoofer-enhanced Focals, but to do so would defy the laws of physics. They did, however, sound good enough that I was willing to consider using them as my new full-time speakers.

The problem, for me, was lag in the AirPlay connection. Every time I hit play, there was a slight delay between me pushing the button and the music starting. If I only needed speakers for music, that’d be fine.

Unfortunately, the lag showed up in other places too. For example, I often dictate voice-to-text on my Mac. I use the built-in Siri dictation for this. When I engage the dictation, my Mac makes a pleasing “boop” sound. When I’m done, I push the button again, and my Mac then makes the “beep” sound. The feedback from those sounds makes dictation easier. With AirPlay-connected speakers, however, I got no boop, just the beep.

To make matters worse, I also use those speakers to edit audio and video files. In those cases, I’m looking at an audio wave file while I make the edits. The audio that comes through my speakers must match with the waveform on my screen. With the HomePod minis, it did not. When I pressed play, the waveform started scrolling, and the audio lagged behind a second or two. So when I saw a gap in the waveform (indicating silence), the speakers were still making noise and vice versa. (Interestingly, I do not see a similar delay when editing with AirPods.) I could have just witched to headphones, but I’m not willing to only edit video with headphones.

So the unsurprising answer is that AirPlay is not yet ready for use in video production. I liked my tiny orange speakers with their orange cords, but they had to go back in the end.

I now have a newfound love for my Focal speakers, which I plan to keep using … at least … for now.

One last thought that occurs to me is that no matter how good AirPlay gets, the audio input port on the Focal speakers continues to serve me well. Just think how much more versatile the HomePod could be with an audio input in addition to AirPlay.