The holidays are here, so let’s automate! On this episode of Automators, Rose and I cover 12 days of automation with cool ideas, tricks, and automation products to up your game this holiday season.
I did it. I bought a pair of headphones that cost more than my first car. I’ve never been embarrassed about spending so much money on something silly but I told my wife to call it my Christmas present and that helped. Getting over the sticker shock, I’ve been enjoying the AirPods Max for the last few days. My desk, thanks to COVID, is centrally located in our home so having noise cancelling is a must. Also, having it so everyone can see I’m obviously wearing headphones also helps. But AirPods Max for this job, really? Here are some thoughts:
The build quality is amazing. I’ve never had a pair of expensive headphones. Even the ones I use for podcasting are low-budget plastic. These things feel like something to come out of a secret government rocket factory.
The stainless piston-style adjustment is nice. My “click adjust” podcast cans never quite fit right. These can be fine tuned to exactly your head.
My ears fit comfortably in the ear cups. I’ve worn them for four-hour sessions without discomfort. That’s another first for me. All prior can-style headphones made my ears sore.
The sound quality is the best I’ve ever heard through headphones. That would make sense considering these cost 5X any headphone I’ve ever purchased, but still good to know.
A lot of people are making a big deal over the weight. It really hasn’t been a factor for me. However, I’m only really using them while seated at my desk. I don’t imagine I’ll ever take these fancy cans on the road or on a plane. The AirPods Pro are good enough for travel and they fit in my pocket. Also, these headphones are so clearly over the top. I think I’d be embarrassed to wear them in public.
Battery life as well hasn’t been a problem. I charged them before using them the first time and I’ve been using them a lot over the last few days and then just hanging them on a hook under my desk at the end of the day. I’m going on day three and there is still gas in the tank from that day one charge. I’ll charge them again today.
All the Apple bits are nice too. The Digital Crown and button are great for an interface that you can’t see when using (since it is stuck to your ear). Also, I’ve made several calls with them and nobody noticed anything unusual.
Noise cancelling on the AirPods Max is clearly superior to the AirPods Pro, which only makes sense with those big cans over your ears.
So much has already been said and written about the cover/case thingy. It does feel cheap compared to the rest of the AirPods Max. I’d be super curious to see if they don’t improve on that with a future iteration. I haven’t used my cover since pulling it out of the box.
At this price point, it’s just silly that they didn’t include a cable for me to plug the AirPods Max into an audio jack while they simultaneously sell that very cable for $35.
If you’re curious, I bought the silver model.
Overall, these headphones tick so many of the Apple checkboxes. They’re beautifully engineered and very good at the intended job of delivering music to your ears. But also they are a little over the top and over priced. That said, I bought these with the idea that I would send them back if I didn’t love them, and I’m keeping them.
One of the first apps to get installed on my M1 MacBook was this week’s sponsor, TextExpander. TextExpander is a text replacement tool. With it, you can type a phrase like “ccell” and it will automatically fill in your cell phone number. But TextExpander is so much more than that.
Using TextExpander, you can have it automatically create the date and time. For example, when I talk with someone on the phone related to the day job and want to keep notes about the conversation, I just type “xdts” which, in my head, means date and time string. Then TextExpander automatically creates something like this, “2020-12-17 – 0901”. If I need to put the full date in a letter, I just type “fdate” and TextExpander puts in the current date, like this, “December 17, 2020”.
But TextExpander can still go deeper. It can use the contents of your clipboard to auto-fill in snippets. It can press keyboard keys, like the tab key, to automate filling in forms on the web or creating an email. You can get it for yourself and your team members so you can share snippets with your team members.
I’ve done so much with TextExpander over the years that I even have a page of snippets I’ve created that you can download ranging from movie to reviews to conference calls. One of my personal favorite groups is foreign thanks where you can say thank you to people in most language. Sending an email to a French friend, just type “french thanks” and TextExpander gives you “Merci”. It’s like your own, personal translator.
To learn more, head over to TextExpander.com and let them know you heard about it at MacSparky in the “Where did you hear about us” field.
For the longest time, I proudly considered myself part of “the hustle”. I always kept many oars in the water, and they were all paddling, seemingly at once. Time for reflection or rest was for wimps.
I grew up with that work ethic, and I never questioned it. Over the last several years, I have thought a lot more about how I spend my time and what are truly my priorities. As a result, I find myself spending a lot more time on the things most important to me and a lot less time on everything else. I am no longer a rowboat. I am a speed boat with comfy chairs.
It’s only recently, with this new insight, that I have come back to this idea of “the hustle.” With a little wisdom and understanding, I now realize that “the hustle” is dumb.
The rules, as taught to me, were wrong. It is not he-who-works-most wins. It is he-who-focuses-on-what-is-most-important who wins.
Today the TWIT network announced that my friend (and Automators co-host) Rosemary Orchard is joining as co-host of iOS Today. I’m so pleased for Rose. She is so kind and smart and deserves all the success in the world. If you are an iOS warrior, check it out.
Now that the M1 Apple silicon Macs are sinking in, I have been thinking about what Apple will do next. A few weeks ago, Mark Gurman at Bloomberg shared a scoop that Apple is looking to get up to 32 cores in a Mac with Apple silicon and also putting the gas down on their own graphics processors with up to 128 cores.
I’m, frankly, processing just how fast this M1 MacBook is.
If I were in charge, however, what I’d like to see Apple do is the following:
M1 — The existing M1 turning mere MacBooks into screamers.
M1(B) — This is the chip for the MacBook Pro and iMac, improving the core compute and graphics power of the M1.
M1(C) — This is the chip for the iMac Pro and perhaps a high-end MacBook Pro, even faster.
Understand, this is if I was in charge. I would be a little surprised if Apple ends up releasing three iterations of the M1 , and shocked if there were four. But given how far down the trail the Bloomberg article says Apple already is, we may get more flavors of M1 (before it turns into M2) than we thought.
Another consideration is that just because Apple releases a new A-series chip every year, it doesn’t mean they will do the same with the M-Series. They may have the M-Series on something more akin to a two-year cycle, giving them time to build iterations of the chip for the higher-end hardware.
Regardless, Mac enthusiasts have some exciting days ahead.
Yesterday Microsoft released Office 365 for Apple Silicon. I used the beta version and it’s solid. The most remarkable thing about this announcement is how quickly it happened. When Apple made the Intel switch, it took Microsoft years to make the switch. Maybe this is down to Apple getting better at transition developer tools or Microsoft being more on the ball (or both!) but if you told me a few years ago Apple was going to do a CPU switch and Office would be updated inside a month, I’d have laughed in your face. Congratulations to Microsoft for getting this out so quickly.
There are only so many settings a developer can put in a setting screen. Along the road of development, there are often niche settings that don’t make the cut. For better apps, developers often leave hidden settings to access via Terminal or URL callback.
I set many calendar events via Fantastical, and many of them are block schedules that I sometimes delete. That deletion always requires a confirmation, which was making me nuts. I asked the team at Flexibits about this, and they turned me on to the URL below, which, when you put in Safari and execute, turns off the deletion confirmation in Fantastical. Note the SkipDeleteWarning name and the value=1 (which means “Yes”).
To make this work, quit Fantastical, paste what’s below in Safari, and press return:
There are more cool Fantastical hidden preferences.
Full All Day Row in Display. This puts all day events in one row rather than showing multiple all-day events on one line. This one is iOS only. x-fantastical3://defaults?key=FullAllDayRowInList&value=1&type=bool
Always Show All: Set to YES (“1”) to have the details always visible in the event and reminder popover. x-fantastical3://defaults?key=AlwaysShowAll&value=1&type=bool&group=1
Dim All Past Items: Set to YES to dim all events and tasks on days in the past. This affects Mac and iOS, List, Month, Week, and Day View. x-fantastical3://defaults?key=DimAllPastItems&value=1&type=bool&group=1
Do Not Dim Passed Events: Set to YES to not dim passed events in the list.
Hide Location In List: Set to YES to hide event locations and reminder geofences in the list. x-fantastical3://defaults?key=HideLocationInList&value=1&type=bool&group=1
Default Event Duration: Specify the default event duration in seconds (gives finer control than the presets in the app). For example, to make a default event duration of 25 minutes, use 1500 seconds. x-fantastical3://defaults?key=DefaultEventDuration&value=1500&type=int&group=1
Days Per Week: Change the number of days per week in Week view. This can be set to anything between 3 and 21 (gives finer control than the app’s presets). x-fantastical3://defaults?key=DaysPerWeek&value=10&type=int
My thanks to Michael and Kent at Flexibits for passing along these additional settings.
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