WaterField AirTags

For a long time, I’ve been a fan of WaterField Designs’ bags and products. They are well-designed and seem to last forever. So, I was curious when WaterField announced their own line of leather-based AirTag products. I was so curious, that I asked to test out a few of them out. Specifically the AirTag Leather Keychain and AirTag Leather Luggage Tag.

The AirTag Leather Keychain

There is, in my mind, a certain aesthetic to WaterField Design products that I think of as rugged honesty. Everything put together in a way that you can see exactly how they did it, and exactly how they expect it to last. I dig it.

The AirTag Leather Keychain is no different. It is full-grain leather sewed together with heavy thread and a metal screw stud closure.

You actually embed the AirTag in the device. There are holes in the leather so you can still hear the AirTag, but it won’t be getting scratched up like it does in the more expensive Apple leather keychain.

There are also several ways to attach it including a built-in ring, an included steel wire ring, and a carabiner. I’ve been using this ring to attach to whatever bag I’m carrying. I keep it next to my wallet and, as I’m heading out the door, I clip it on.

The AirTag has that rugged honesty. It’s already getting a nice patina, and I expect it to last. At $25, I think it’s a great value too.

The AirTag Leather Luggage Tag

WaterField Luggage Tag AirTag Inside.png

The Leather Luggage Tag is bigger than the AirTag Leather Keychain but has the same design aesthetic. It comes in several colors, is made of full-grain leather, and again has the same physical metal stud closure mechanism. In addition to holding your AirTag, it also has a card for you to list your name and contact details and ships with a steel wire connector to secure it to your luggage using a barrel-closure thread.

WaterField AirTag Luggage Tag Sound Holes.png

Like the AirTag Leather Keychain, there are small holes in the leather so you’ll be able to hear your AirTag. To further protect your AirTag (and I suspect make it easer to retrieve), there is a separate leather pouch to hold your AirTag that slides into the Leather Luggage Tag.

This thing looks nice but is built to take a beating. (Have you ever watched airport personnel handle luggage? If not, I recommend against it.) The AirTag Leather Luggage Tag is $50 and looks very nice on your luggage, in addition to giving you all those AirTag features.

All WaterField products are designed and manufactured in San Francisco, and the company stands behind its products. I’ve bought a lot from WaterField over the years and have never regretted any purchase. To learn more, head over to WaterField and check them out.

The Rumored Portrait Mode for Video

Mark Gurman is at it again. This time he is reporting that a focus of the the iPhone 13 will be the ability to de-focus the background with video. Think of it like portrait mode, but for video. This would be created by the depth sensor and even allow users to adjust just how much bokeh is too much bokeh.

If true, this couldn’t come soon enough for me. I’ve been shooting a lot more live video lately with my fledgling Disneyland Field Guide. Thus far I’ve tried shooting with my fancy Sony camera (that is way too heavy and I’m completely freaked out about dropping or breaking) and my smaller camera (an Osmo Pocket) that is good for this job but doesn’t return a blurry background. If the iPhone could give me that blurry background on demand, It’d probably jump to the front of the line as my primary camera for this task.

The Apple MagSafe Battery Pack

A few weeks ago, Apple released the MagSafe Battery Pack. The device itself is a small bit of matte rubber covering a 1,460mAh battery that transfers at 5W and the MagSafe-aligned magnets for it to snap on the back of your iPhone.

I bought one thinking I’d try it out, remaining mindful of the two-week return calendar. I ended up keeping it and thought I’d report a few findings here.

The Short Version of this Review

The MagSafe Battery Pack is overpriced but super convenient.

The Killer Feature: Convenience

The only reason to buy the MagSafe Battery Pack is convenience. It is smaller than nearly all battery packs you can buy, and it easily fits in your pocket. It’s also convenient because it uses MagSafe to charge, so you don’t have to fiddle with a cable. My primary use case for this battery is day trips to Disneyland.

If you haven’t been to Disneyland lately, the entire experience now runs off an app. In addition to using the app for your admission ticket, you also use it to make ride reservations, order food, interact with the park, and just about everything else. That’s in addition to the inevitable picture-taking, media-sharing, and messaging that comes with visiting Disneyland. So the park puts more drain on your battery now than it ever has in the past.

Historically, I’d plug my phone into a charger while I sat and ate, or (in a jam) do that thing where you’ve got the battery in one pocket or in your backpack and snaking a cable to the phone somewhere on your person, which in addition to making you look like a dork, is also a pain in the neck when the cable gets snagged while you are moving around.

MagSafe Battery Pack on iPhone at Disneyland.jpeg

So I bought the battery for convenience. I want to snap it on my phone around 2 pm and then snap it off a few hours later, knowing I’ll have sufficient charge to continue using my phone throughout the day. The MagSafe Battery Pack does that. I’ve now taken a few trips to Disneyland, and the MagSafe Battery Pack was easy to carry, juice up my phone, and then get out of the way. I no longer need to remember to charge while I eat or deal with the random cable issue.

Also in the convenience category is how it works with the iPhone OS to display the battery and phone charge levels. Third-party batteries will never get hooks into the operating system. Apple batteries will.

The Downside

If the above-listed conveniences aren’t blowing your hair back, you should not buy a MagSafe Battery Pack. There are alternative battery packs on the market (even MagSafe ones!) that are cheaper and have more capacity. Indeed, I’m not aware of any other battery on the market that gives you so little bang for so much buck.

It’s really simple here. Either you are willing to pay for the conveniences of the MagSafe Battery Pack, or you are not. Neither decision is wrong. Imagine if, instead, we were talking about refrigerators. You can spend anywhere between $300 and $10,000 on a new refrigerator, all of which are perfectly capable of keeping your food cold. It comes down to what features you want. When buying a new refrigerator, I avoid the more expensive conveniences. However, when it comes to my iPhone, I’m willing to pay. That’s why I’m keeping the MagSafe Battery Pack. Also, I try not to think of the fact that for the cost of three of these batteries, I could get a new refrigerator.

Mac Power Users 600: Mac Migration & Settings

The Apple silicon transition continues to march on, so Stephen and I sit down to talk about how to migrate to a new Mac, and what settings and preferences we recommend changing from the defaults on the latest episode of Mac Power Users.

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Field Guide Price Increase Starts Next Week

I’ve decided to raise the price of the MacSparky Field Guides starting next week to $49. There are a few reasons why I’m doing this.

First, I Think They are Worth It

I pour a ton of effort into the Field Guides. Nearly all of them are more than five hours of content with transcripts and downloadable materials included. My goal for every Field Guide is to turn anyone interested in a topic into an expert and give them everything they need to get there. Moreover, many of the Field Guides get ongoing support and free updates for several years. For example, I’m currently working on a free update for the Shortcuts for iPhone and iPad Field guide that will likely result in an hour of additional content for existing customers. This is the second major free update this course will receive.

So, in short, I think they are worth it.

Second, The Field Guides are Expensive to Produce

Every Field Guide I produce requires me to spend over 200 hours of my time and thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket expenses. I’m thrilled with the way the Field Guides have evolved into such a well-produced product. But if I’m to keep making them at this level, I need to charge more.

I hope you understand I did not make this decision lightly. This price increase is to make the business more sustainable so that I can put more time into new titles and updates for existing ones.

The price increase will not start until August 16, so if you’d like to purchase anything before the prices go up, now’s the time.

Thank you for all of your support.

Apple Needs to Get More Aggressive with Scam Apps

Recently in Australia, Apple featured some scam apps in one of their App Store promotions. It’s not surprising that even App Store marketing folks can get confused by scam apps.

Last week a non-geek friend called me about his iPhone. He wanted my opinion about what podcasting app to buy because he “heard” that “most apps are scams now”. The whole point of users dealing with the limitations of a single app store is to avoid that kind of nonsense, and the rest of the world is now waking up to the fact that Apple has let a pack of wolves into the walled garden.

I understand that policing the App Store with its millions of apps isn’t easy, but whatever they are currently doing, it is not enough. Putting new laws and regulations aside, I think the failure to clean up the App Store will lead to a crisis in confidence by Apple’s customers, and once more people start thinking like my friend, the App Store is in real trouble.

Work Faster on Your Mac with Better Touch Tool (Sponsor)

This week MacSparky is sponsored by one of my favorite Mac utilities, BetterTouchTool. Apple’s built-in gestures for its mice and trackpads are great, but they don’t go far enough. With BetterTouchTool, you can add an entire suite of gestures to your mouse and trackpad for just the apps and actions that you need.

Do you want to move between tabs in Safari by swiping or tapping your trackpad? BetterTouchTool does that. want to put your Mac to sleep with a custom trackpad gesture? BetterTouchTool does that to. BetterTouchTool lets you hot-wire your trackpad and mouse. BetterTouchTool additionally contains some handy features like window snapping, a clipboard manager, a screenshot editor, and much more. This app is an absolute game-changer. Also, you can now join the BetterTouchTool Community at community.folivora.ai to learn how to get even more from BetterTouchTool. Users have shared some amazing presets there, including some very advanced custom Touch Bar setups that you should check out.

BetterTouchTool comes with a 45-day trial after which you can choose between a license that includes all updates for two years and a lifetime license. BetterTouchTool has been around for ten years, and I’ve been using it the entire time. With BetterTouchTool, I can make my Mac dance. You should too. MacSparky readers can purchase BetterTouchTool for 15% off at checkout by using the coupon code MACSPARKYBTT for a limited time. So don’t delay. Go to folivora.ai to learn more and take advantage of the special limited-time, 15% discount on BetterTouchTool.

Private Relay Data Slow-Down

I had an interesting issue with my Monterey Mac. Since I bought my fancy new EERO routers, I’ve been dripping in Internet. But suddenly the party was over. My connection was noticeably slow and laggy. After a bit of troubleshooting, I discovered Private Relay is the culprit.

Here’s my speed with Private Relay turned on.

Here’s my speed just minutes later on the same machine with Private Relay turned off. From 55 to 890! (Interestingly, upload got slower.)

I’m submitting a bug to Apple, and I’m sure they’re already onto this. Monterey hasn’t shipped yet and I expect when it does, it will not crush your Internet speed. But in the meantime, if you are thinking about running the public beta, you’ve been warned.

New External Magic Keyboards with Touch ID

Yesterday Apple also announced the release of the new magic keyboards (with or without a keypad), mouse, and trackpad for Apple Silicon Macs. These are the silver versions (no other colors!). When paired with an Apple Silicon Mac, you can get Touch ID on your Apple Silicon laptop or Mac mini. These products showed up earlier than I expected. When the new iMacs were first released, I figured it would take at least six months for Apple to get around to releasing the new accessories for other Apple Silicon Mac customers. (However, I also thought there’d be more colors.)

If you’ve never used a Touch ID laptop, they are pretty great. Not only can you unlock your Mac with it, but you can also do things like unlock system preferences and 1Password. I expect it’d be just as useful in front of a Mac mini and a monitor, provided you like using Apple Keyboards.

This release also makes me wonder about the likelihood of Face ID in a future Mac. It’d be nice just to sit behind your Mac and have it unlock, but those laptop screens are very skinny and it’s sounding like the big Apple Silicon iMac won’t show up until 2022.

If you’re not looking to buy a new keyboard but you do wear an Apple Watch, you should turn on the unlock with Apple Watch feature in the Security & Privacy preference. I wear my Apple Watch every day and while this feature is not reason enough alone to wear an Apple Watch, it’s a heck of a perk.