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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I made this free Gift Wrap Field Guide a few years ago but it still can help you impress your significant other when you wrap his or her gift like a boss this year.
Recently, I’ve been enjoying a new friendship with Jay Miller, a podcaster, developer, and all-around nice guy that I’m looking forward to meeting in person when all of this is over. In the meantime, Jay agreed to share his setup with us. So Jay, show us your setup.
Some Words about What I Do
I’m a podcaster, producer, and developer advocate. Most of my day is writing code, engaging with folks online, and planning and collaborating. I also spend a few hours recording podcasts and live-streaming on Twitch.
My Office Space
I share my office with my wife, who also works from home; we each take up about half the room.
Jay Miller’s side of the office.
My desk base is a hand-me-down from a friend who was closing up shop and needed to get rid of some furniture.
I bought a riser to allow for standing. It was cheap (for a riser), which was a good and bad thing. The cost of it gave me the comfort in being able to add little things like a hole for a hook to hang my headphones.
To help with livestreaming, video creation, and to introduce privacy for Zoom calls, I have a ceiling-mounted green screen.
Coffee-ing Setup
I mention this only because I do make coffee from my desk. Much like my desk setup, my coffee setup focuses on getting the most for my money.
I am rocking a manual burr grinder, a VICOODA gooseneck water kettle, and a Chemex four-cup coffee system.
Computing Devices
My main computer is a maxed out 16-inch MacBook Pro (2019). When at my desk, it’s connected to a 27-inch 5K LG display and sits in a Twelve South vertical dock.
My “server” is a 2018 Mac mini (6 core 3GHz with 8GB RAM). Some of my work is process intensive, and it’s nice to offload services to that machine. I also use it to run a Pi-hole as my DNS server to block ads and trackers.
I also have a Raspberry Pi 4 that I use as a backup Pi-hole or Linux dev server.
iOS/iPadOS
I have an iPhone 11 Pro Max. I’m thinking about swapping it for a 12 to make using my phone as a camera even easier thanks to this mount coming soon. I use my iPad as a DO NO WORK device. You can do real work from an iPad (don’t trip). I’m more comfortable on macOS and have many configurations to make it easier for me. My iPad has no apps or tools installed to allow me to work from it (by choice).
My Home Screen on my phone is pretty utility focused.
I have a rotating list of times for checking with some of my international co-workers. I have an AQI widget I made with WidgetPack. I’m in Southern California and air quality can suffer from fires. Other than that, I have some buttons to toggle lights in the house and a little note to make time for me.
I did a shootout between this mic and a Shure SM7B. The Blue mic looks funny but is pretty clean and has great tonal balance. I didn’t like the heavy bottom of the SM7B, so in the end I went with this one.
Audio Interface — Focusrite Clarett 4Pre USB
The big decision for this device was supporting either USB-C or Thunderbolt. I couldn’t justify paying for the Thunderbolt, but there were a few USB-C options, so NO DONGLES!
Podcast/Video Recording and Editing
I record audio with Audio Hijack. For video, I use a combination of these tools:
QuickTime (my face)
CleanShot (screen capture)
Reflector (iPad and iOS)
OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) (live-streaming)
For editing, I use Logic Pro X and Final Cut. Both are overkill, but that means I know that I don’t need anything else.
I’m off the digital task and project management train. I’ve embraced the pen and pad, and I bullet journal daily in my Endless Recorder with my LAMY 2000 fountain pen.
The problems that come from email only get worse over time. The email gets worse and it never stops. That’s why you should check this week’s sponsor, SaneBox. Imagine for a moment that instead of waking up to 200 items in your inbox, you wake up to five, and those five are the most critical emails that you need to read. You can have that experience with SaneBox.
SaneBox is the solution to so many of my email problems. What if you had an assistant who worked for you 24/7 that did nothing but sort and manage your email? Wouldn’t that be nice? That is what SaneBox does. SaneBox is the email service that adds a pile of productivity features to your email, regardless of what email client you use. For a lot of folks, email is a constant pain point, and it doesn’t need to be. With SaneBox at your back, you can:
Wake up every day to find the SaneBox robots have automatically sorted your incoming email for you so you can address the important and ignore the irrelevant.
Defer email for hours, days, or weeks, so it is out of your life until a more appropriate time. They have even added a new feature that can optionally auto-reply to snoozed email with something like, “I’m sorry, but I’m underwater right now. I’ll get back to you in a few days.”
Set secret reminders so if someone doesn’t reply to an important email, SaneBox gives you a nudge to follow up.
Automatically save attachments to the cloud (like Dropbox).
Use their SaneFwd service to automatically send appropriate emails to services such as Evernote, Expensify, or Kayak.
Move unwanted email to the SaneBlackHole and never see anything from that person again.
The list goes on, and MacSparky readers love this service. I have heard from so many readers over the years who finally figured out email when they signed up for SaneBox. Why not straighten out your email by getting a SaneBox account? If you sign up with this link, you even get a discount on your subscription.
I think a lot of people are underutilizing links. Lately, I have been working with contextual computing and the idea that you can go from idea to action on your computer with the least amount of friction. For example, if you need to access your task list for a specific project and open your task manager, you will be immediately exposed to much more than that particular project’s task list. You will see your daily list, your flags, and a host of other unrelated data that can distract and divert you from the reason you went to your task manager to begin with. This is even worse with infinite bucket apps like email and your web browser.
It is far better to jump straight from thought (I want to see the shrink ray project) to execution (looking at the shrink ray project) without the intervening steps of navigating through an app. This eliminates the possibility of distraction. So the trick is to find ways not to open apps, but specific data sets within apps to avoid further distraction.
This is easiest to implement with websites. Every page on the internet has a URL address that takes you to that specific place without any intermediate stops when fed to your browser of choice. If your work involves going to websites, you can save those URLs to your devices and trigger them from just about anywhere. I keep URLs to tasks, calendar entries, notes entries, and other places where I often find myself working and want to go quickly to a particular spot on the internet. When you click that embedded link, you go straight to your destination. No distractions.
It is easy to forget these URL links work for web services. I have been trying out Hey.com for personal email, and one of the things I like about the service is that every email has an easy-to-grab web address. Later, I can get back to that specific message with a URL link.
The bit you may not be aware of is just how many applications have their own built-in URL linking schemes. Most modern applications include a deep link or URL link mechanism to get you to a specific location of the application. I use these app-based URL links daily on my Mac, iPad, and iPhone in Drafts, Obsidian, Craft, OmniFocus, and DEVONthink. DEVONthink takes it a step further and creates unique URL links for any file you store within DEVONthink (iCloud and the Finder have no such feature), so you can additionally link to specific documents inside your DEVONthink library.
As I collect the web and app-based links, I keep them together concerning a general project overview page, but I also put the links in the apps so I can jump back. For example, I may have a project page in Drafts with links to an OmniFocus project, but the OmniFocus project will also link back to the Drafts page. The trivial amount of time it takes to set up these links is paid off immediately. You can start linking things together today with no additional software. Most all of the app-based links I use work on the iPad as easily as they do the Mac.
If you want to go even further with this, I recommend downloading Hook on your Mac. Hook recently released version 2.0 that gives it even more features. Hook gives you extra tools for this linking workflow. Using Hook, you can keep associated links together in the Hook app. Hook also can put links on files and locations that aren’t otherwise linkable. For example, I use Hook to link documents on iCloud drive storage that would not be otherwise linkable. (However, these Hook links only work on the Mac.)
If you are reading this and rolling your eyes, I understand. If I came to this workflow intentionally (as I’m now recommending), I would have rolled my eyes too. Instead, this grew organically for me as the apps I use daily increasingly added linking features. (I’ll blame Drafts as my personal gateway drug.) Over the past six months, I have started to wake up to how often I am doing this direct linking and how much more efficient I am at getting work done without all of the distractions. In short, this stuff works, and you should try it.
Inputs! We all have too many of them and not enough of us have a plan for them. In this episode of Focused, Mike and I talk about those pesky inputs and how to deal with them.
