Naming the Next Mac Apple Silicon

Yesterday we got reports from Asia that the successor to the M1 is now in production. I’d expect this is the chip for the next round of Mac upgrades (MacBook Pro, big iMac, upper-tier Mac mini). I’d also expect this looks a lot like the M1, except it has more performance and graphics cores.

On the marketing side, I’d be surprised if they call it the M2. Presumably, they will make a successor to the M1 at some point as the current lower performance/more battery life chip for things like the MacBook Air. Naming the higher performance chip M2 would put them in a weird place where an M3 (for MacBook Air) could be slower than an M2 (for MacBook Pro). The more I think about this, the more convinced I am that the performance chip currently in production will get an entirely different name, like X1, allowing them to have two chips for Macs. (Or possibly three once the Mac Pro releases.)

iOS 14.5 Improvements and Tips

iOS 14.5 is out and it’s a doozy. Here are a few highlights worth your consideration.

Make sure to install the accompanying update on your Apple Watch. It is that combination of iPhone and Apple Watch updates that allows you to use the unlock-while-I’m-wearing-a-mask mode. You’ll also need to go on your iPhone to Settings>FaceID & Passcode and tick the box for Unlock with Apple Watch. (It’s off by default.)
The new App Tracking features is a win for consumers. I actually don’t mind some apps tracking me, so long as I get to make the decision. I also find the ad industry’s outrage hilarious. Apple makes its position pretty clear with this video.
Siri’s new voices are way better. Go to Settings>Siri & Search>Siri Voices to try them out. Lately, I’m digging American (Voice 1).
There isn’t much to report on iPad. I really hope Apple comes loaded for bear at WWDC with new iPad OS features. Right now, iPad OS feels very dated.

If you’d like to learn more about the new updates, I recommend the comprehensive 9to5 Mac video from Jeff Benjamin or Federico Viticci’s detailed write-up.

Mac Power Users 585: Spring Loaded

In the wake of Apple’s spring event, Stephen and I cover the new iMac and iPad Pro, and also discuss changes to the Apple TV and some of Apple’s services in the latest Mac Power Users episode. In short, everything should be more colorful and some things more powerful.

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Automators #74: Stream Deck: Going Large

Rosemary and I have gone all-in with Elgato’s Stream Deck as an automation tool. In this episode of Automators, we go deep into all the tricks and workflows to turn your stream deck into an automation robot.

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Home Screens — Tim Nahumck

Tim Nahumck (Website) (Twitter) is our go-to guest on the Automators podcast (episodes 23 and 73) when we want to talk about Drafts automation. He’s also a pretty swell guy and, based on his picture here, a complete bad-ass. So, Tim, show us your Home Screen.

What widgets are you using and why?

I only use a single page for my Home Screen, but I have multiple widgets stacked on top of one another in a four small and one medium widget layout. I like having the information density with this configuration. For each stack, I have one widget in each that belongs to Clear Spaces. This allows me to have a clean Home Screen at the end of the day. When I’m done with a particular stack, I simply swipe it to a clear space, and the entire stack is hidden. This started off as a purely neat trick I could do, but I started realizing how much of a productivity hack it ended up being.

The two left small widgets are for calendars and tasks. The top-left widget is Calendar, and the middle-left widget is a stack of Reminders and my Work workspace in Drafts to manage my tasks. The top-right widget is all Carrot Weather. I have a Forecast, Daily, and Hourly widget for when I want to see different aspects of the weather.

The middle-right widget is the health stack, including both fitness and food. I have Fitness, FoodNoms, Fitbod, the meal planning note that I share with my wife, and the Grocery list for quick access to add an item when I’m not using Siri.

The bottom stack is two Drafts and one Shorcuts medium widgets. They are all a grid, so I have quite a bit of power right at my fingertips (which is also why it is located at the bottom). I have quick access to my workspaces and widget-friendly actions in Drafts; for Shortcuts, I have a few frequently used shortcuts in each widget, most of which can be run using Compact UI.

For the Today View, I have a few installed: A small Battery widget and a small Shortcuts widget which runs my Garage Hub shortcut, allowing me to utilize Shortcuts to open or close my garage. Sometimes I need these quickly and don’t want to open the phone and can simply swipe left to get them. I then use two medium widgets for Carrot Weather, for the access reason I just mentioned. The last widget I use in the Today view is PCalc. This is the old style of widget, which allows for it to be interactive. I wish there were interactive widgets with iOS 14, and I remain hopeful this will come to iOS / iPadOS 15.

One other thing to note about my Home Screen are the dock icons. They aren’t widgets, but they are shortcuts. Each one of these are launchers for other apps. The shortcut provides a menu, and allows me to select other apps with a couple of taps. I recently made a change to my dock and have the outboard icons mirrored. I thought of this as a “left brain” and “right brain”: left brain is for creative and media apps, right brain is for more analytical items. The center icon is for social apps like Messages, Twitter, etc. I’m sure there are other ways for me to get to the apps, but I appreciate that not having icons on the home screen that are badged are better for me. Badges generally give me a minor level of anxiety, and I feel compelled to check them.

Combined with my widgets and the dock shortcuts, I have a multi-functional Home Screen layout that works for me and helps keep me focused.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Definitely a few games. On the iPhone, it’s Sneaky Sasquatch on Apple Arcade. It might be one of the most fun games I’ve played on iOS. The gameplay is a mix of cute with just a hint of intricacy that makes it fun for not only me, but my youngest son as well. It’s been regularly updated and has a ton of new adventures and challenges to complete. I haven’t even been able to keep up with it given everything else I have going on! For iPad, it’s Need for Speed No Limits. I do love some car racing.

What app makes you most productive?

Drafts. I know, I know—this is SHOCKING. But it’s true. I’m in it many, many times a day on my devices. In my life, Drafts is the central hub from which my productivity flows. Need to write? I’m in Drafts. Need to get some notes down? I’m in Drafts, sometimes with my Apple Pencil. Need to send an email or a message or a tweet? All started there. I even use it schedule events and reminders, send them to the native Calendar and Reminders apps, respectively. Over the years, I’ve written extensively about Drafts on my site and MacStories, and recommend starting there if you’re diving in.

What app do you know you’re under-utilizing?

My mind says Shortcuts. My waist says Fitness/FoodNoms. I’m working on being better at both.

Do you have an Apple Watch? Show us your watch face tell us about it.

I have multiple watch faces, but I keep going back to two: Infograph Modular and Modular. The Infograph Modular face in multicolor gives me the best visual to what I feel is critical on my wrist: the date/time, weather via Carrot Weather, my rings via Activity, heart rate using HeartWatch, and my Reminders (though I wish I could specify a specific Reminders list like you can in widgets). The Modular face is red for nighttime wearing, and contains the time, the moon phase; it’s the darkest color and minimal amount of information I need to see. I do use two Shortcuts automations to set them at specific times of the day to switch contexts visually, and remind myself that it’s either time to get more alert for work or time to start shutting down for sleep.

What’s your wallpaper and why?

I’m a big fan of black-and-white backgrounds. Always have been. They tend to make the colors pop in widgets or icons. For a while, I would get different pictures and make them black and white. Since iOS 14 came out, I’ve been going more with abstract art. I searched to find a wallpaper that had some dimension, and stumbled upon this wallpaper. Of course, I tweaked it myself into a black-and-white version. It adds some texture to my phone, and fits well with the widgets and neumorphic dock icons I have.

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

I’m very much an iOS-only person. And if I were in charge of Apple, I’d treat the iPad as a first-class computing device. Give me XCode. Give me Logic. Give me Audio Hijack and the ability to record a podcast just like I would on a Mac with multiple audio streams. Let me side-load music into my iCloud Music Library without having another computer around me. Let me plug into an external monitor and have the device morph into more of a desktop-like experience. At the same time, let me have widgets in more than one space. Keep developing on the Apple Pencil. Let me run 3 apps side-by-side-by-side.

I’m not claiming to have the answers on how to fix all this. I’m not sure how some of this would be possible. But don’t hinder my ability to be creative and make me choose between one device or the other because of my pocketbook. Let me choose freely what works best for me to get the most out of my iPad.

Thanks, Tim!

HoudahSpot 6.1

HoudaSpot, the Finder-replacement search tool that spelunks your drive for you, just got a nice update. With version 6.1, there changes are both big and small, like hiding the Tag cloud when not in use or improving the legibility of texts like source code and tabulated data by using a fixed-width font.

The update improves the performance of Apple Mail message searches. It can search message keywords and project names. And with this update, it can now find Apple Mail messages tagged by SmallCubed’s MailTags plug-in.

The Quick Look preview pane in HoudahSpot now lets users select text. It is thus possible to copy-paste from search results without the need to open the found files. This latest version also brings enhanced Quick Look previews for files hosted by DEVONthink (and you know what I think about DEVONthink).

For a power user, the $34 price tag for a single-user license is well worth it. If you have a previous versions, you can upgrade for only $19.

Superior Document Management with DEVONthink (Sponsor)

This week MacSparky is sponsored by DEVONthink, the flagship product from DEVONtechnologies,

DEVONthink is the most professional document and information management application for the Mac. It’s the one place for storing all your documents, snippets, or bookmarks, and working with them.

The Integrated A.I. assists you with filing and searching, while the extensive search language with advanced Boolean operators.

DEVONthink features a Flexible sync system that supports many cloud services – or lets you synchronize over the local network too – with everything securely encrypted. This gives you the choice for however syncing works best for you!

It has Smart rules and flexible reminders that let you automate all parts of your workflow and delegate boring, repeating tasks. Let DEVONthink automatically organize your data with rules you define!

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Even templates can have scripts inside and you can set up new documents with data from placeholders, or inserted by your own AppleScript code.

And, of course, there’s so much more, from an iOS companion app, to email archiving, scanning, or even an embedded web server for sharing your data securely with your team.

I use DEVONthink for document storage and organization. I also use it for research both as MacSparky and a lawyer. I love the way the DEVONthink developers have thought through all the little details from syncing to using the built-in artificial intelligence.

Also, the DEVONtechnologies team is always working to make DEVONthink better. Just yesterday they released their latest update, DEVONthink for Mac 3.7. It fully embraces Markdown editing on the Mac with WYSIWYG editing, file transclusion, and more. While editing your Markdown, you will now see bold characters embolden, italics italicize, etc. directly in the source. Immediately see quotes, code blocks, and links while typing. This also includes support for Roam, Obsidian, and iA Writer syntax.

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Unifying Home Automation with CHIP

I wrote a few days ago about Logitech canceling the Harmony remote. The problem continues to be all the differing protocols for home automation. One solution may be the Connected Home over IP (CHIP) protocol, engineered jointly by Apple, Amazon, and Google. We’re now getting word that some of these CHIP products may ship later this year.

In theory, a single protocol between all of the hardware manufacturers would open the gates wide for interesting home automation hardware, like a re-imagined Harmony remote. However, for the hardware to take off, first the protocol needs to take off. I sure hope it does. Imagine a world where buying home-automation products is just a matter of picking the best hardware solution and not worrying about whether or not it can handshake with your existing stuff.

The best thing we have going for us as consumers is that none of the existing Apple, Amazon, or Google proprietary protocols came out of this first round as a clear winner. Put me on team CHIP.

A Few Thoughts on Today’s Spring Loaded Apple Event

Today was Apple’s Spring Loaded event and it certainly was loaded with a new Mac, iPads Pro, AirTags, AppleTV, and a bit more. I have a few initial thoughts:

The 24″ iMac

Hooray for color back on the Mac. It’s been way too long. I particularly like that Apple went with bold colors on these new iMacs. As a good friend texted me, “They had me at Purple.”
Colored keyboards, mice, and trackpads also make me happy.
This really feels like the ‘Computer as Appliance’ version of the iMac.
I never thought I’d need a Magnetic power connector for an iMac. I’d be afraid I may yank the power while shifting the thing.
Just four ports. No SD card. No USB A. This is probably an M1 limitation but I’m not aware of any other iMac ever shipping with just four ports.
And the Ethernet is on the power brick. Weird. The reason I suspect is that the actual computer isn’t deep enough to plug in Ethernet (or USB A).
Overall, I really like the redesign. I am a bit sad the chin stayed and I’m still curious for the rest of the story with the bigger iMac.
When we saw the rumors of a flat slab iMac, I wondered if they’d be able to make the audio any good. I’m glad they addressed this in the product rollout, but I’m also looking forward to reading reviews on this point.
I think this will be the last implementation of the M1 chip. I suspect the next big Mac announcement will feature Macs with something faster that the pundits collectively call M1X. Probably more performance and graphics cores. If I was a betting man, I’d say that will show up in the 14″ and 16″ MacBooks Pro, a space grey Mac mini, and (hopefully) a big iMac, and (perhaps?) the rumored Mac Pro Cube.

The New iPad Pro

I didn’t expect them to put the M1 in the iPad. I expected something very M1-like, but with an A at the front. In hindsight, however, it makes sense. When you are making your own silicon, you’ll want to keep things as easy as possible.
The new screen technology on the 12.9″ iPad Pro is impressive.
I’d really like to hear about people using a 2TB iPad.
The 5G was expected, but I’m pleased to see it happen.
You can get it in any color you like so long as it is space gray or silver. I hope this isn’t a sign of things to come for the bigger iMacs. Why does Apple think pro devices can not have fun colors?
We heard a lot of rumors about a new Apple Pencil, but that didn’t happen.
I feel like every time Apple brings out a new iPad, it goes out its way to show how useful the iPad is, but then they don’t really deliver the goods with so many issues in the operating system. I wish the software team would reflect the marketing team’s enthusiasm.

AppleTV 4K

All they really had to say was, “We fixed the crappy remote.”

AirTags

Finally! We’ve been hearing about these in rumor-land for years.
I expect these will be a big hit and they seem priced about right at $99 for a four-pack.
I’ve always wondered how Apple would address the “creepy problem” when they announced AirTags. What if creepy people hide AirTags on other people so they can surreptitiously track them? Apple explained, “AirTags are for things, not people.” I’m curious to see how that gets implemented. (I’m also thinking about attaching one to my dog. What about dogs, Tim?)

The Sad Demise of the Harmony Remote

Last week we got notice that Logitech will no longer be making the Harmony remote. I’ve heard from so many listeners and readers over the years who made the Harmony remote an essential piece of their home-automation infrastructure. I tried using one but found it just didn’t work with my brand of TV. Nevertheless, I could see the clear value it had.

It’s interesting that as we go deeper down this rabbit hole of Internet-of-Things, we’re losing a vital tool for many people. Maybe the answer going forward is for TVs to become more automation aware, but I suspect that is asking a lot in an already low-margin business.

If you have an existing Harmony remote, Logitech promises ongoing software updates, but I don’t expect that to last forever. I’d start looking for your Plan B.