It’s not every day that Apple releases a new productivity app, but with iOS 16.2 and macOS Ventura 13.1, the company launched Freeform, an infinite canvas app for sketching, organizing, and sharing information. Stephen and I have been using it extensively and break it all down this episode of Mac Power Users.
In this episode of Automators, Rosemary and I dig into the questions and feedback bag. Topics include Apple Notes and Reminders, home automation (hooray for doorbell cams!), window management, and IR blasting. Good times!
We had a busy month in The MacSparky Labs. I’m very pleased with the way that they have evolved this year. It’s a great group of people and I’m able to get them a lot of content and activities. We’d love to have you join.
Here’s a full list of the content that I released in December:
2022-12-30 – The Lab Report Podcast (Levels 1-3)
2022-12-29 – Using Readwise (Levels 1-3)
2022-12-29 – Focus Session (Levels 2-3)
2022-12-28 – 2023 Q1 Planning Session Live Event (Level 3)
2022-12-27 – Cooking Ideas with MindNode (Level 2-3)
2022-12-26 – The Monday Brief (Levels 1-3)
2022-12-23 – The Lab Report Podcast (Levels 1-3)
2022-12-22 – Triggering Shortcuts with Stream Deck Buttons (Levels 2-3)
2022-12-21 – Tab Navigation in the Dialog Box (Levels 1-3)
2022-12-20 – Using Priorities in Reminders (Levels 2-3)
2022-12-19 – The Monday Brief (Levels 1-3)
2022-12-18 – The Next Labs Focus Session (Levels 2-3)
2022-12-17 – Contextual Spaces and Window Management Tricks (Levels 2-3)
2022-12-16 – Lab Report Podcast (Levels 1-3)
2022-12-15 – Focus Session Live Event (Levels 2-3)
2022-12-15 – Sparky’s Dock Launcher Deep Dive Video (Level 3)
2022-12-14 – Setting Up an Aqara TVOC Sensor (Levels 1-3)
This week I’m featuring the home screen of my friend Chris Bailey. Chris is a best-selling author with books like The Productivity Projectand Hyperfocus. Just this week Chris released his latest book, How To Calm Your Mind and it is his best yet. You may not know it, but Chris is also a Mac geek of the first order. So Chris, show us your home screen.
Chris’s Work and Personal Home Screens
What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?
I’ve gone all-in on Focus modes. I just have four of them: Personal, Work, Sleep, and Do Not Disturb. But I’m always in one of these modes, regardless of what I’m doing. My philosophy is that technology exists to support what we intend to accomplish, and I find Focus modes a nice expression of this idea. I hope Apple keeps investing in the feature over time.
Another one of my favorite features with Focus modes is the ability to trigger automations by switching to them. I just have one of these: enabling grayscale mode on my iPhone when I switch to Work focus. This way the device is far less distracting—in grayscale mode I hardly want to use it at all!
Which app is your guilty pleasure?
This one’s easy: Uber Eats. It’s food! On demand! Whenever you want it! What’s better than that?
(Please send help. And Uber Eats gift cards..)
What is the app you are still missing?
TextEdit for iOS. I’ve been waiting for this text editor since it was first rumored, and have only grown to want it more over time.
Which apps makes you most productive?
My favorite apps for productivity are simple ones that let me get in and out quickly, that also have a lot of power when I need it.
Fantastical: My calendar of choice. The natural language event entry feature saves me an inordinate amount of time every week entering events across multiple calendars.
Timeular: My time-tracker of choice. I use this because of how physical it is: the product is an octahedron that you can flip to whatever activity you’re working on. The app then automatically tracks how long you spend on the activity that’s face up. I use this mostly on the Mac, but also use the iPhone app when not working out of the office.
Simplenote: I use digital notetaking apps primarily to capture and then build on my thoughts. Simplenote is the best app I’ve found for this—and it’s incredibly simple, lightweight, and beautiful. The cross-platform syncing has also never let me down, unlike with every single other notes app I’ve tried.
Things: My task manager of choice. (Though these days I’m managing my to-dos in a plain text file in Simplenote with a lot of success. If you can’t tell, I’m a plain text fanatic: it’s just me and my ideas.)
Insight Timer: My meditation app of choice. I like to work a bunch of meditation breaks into my day to keep my focus sharp.
What’s your favorite app on iOS?
My favorite app on iOS is probably Locket. Locket is a homescreen widget that just displays a picture from someone you partner up with in the app (I use the app with my wife). Every day or so, we take a new photo that shows up on the other person’s homescreen widget (I have the widget on every homescreen page so I see it regardless of which focus mode I’m in).
I’m also a big fan of less techy apps that save me time in the analog world, like Instacart, Uber, and Find My.
What app do you know you’re underutilizing?
Shortcuts for Mac. I know I can use this app more, but I’m so familiar with Keyboard Maestro on the Mac that I haven’t pulled the trigger on switching over. (Plus, until recently, the Mac version of Shortcuts has been super buggy.) I should probably get reacquainted with David’s fantastic Shortcuts Field Guides for some inspiration.
If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?
I love this question (edit from future Chris: and loved how therapeutic it was to answer)! Here are a few ideas that come to mind:
I’d completely overhaul Apple Music. I find Apple Music an organizational mess, the app often still feels like a web wrapper, and my recommendations are all skewed because I listen to so much instrumental music as I work. I also find it very difficult to discover new music. The app needs a rethink. The only thing keeping me on Apple Music is my play counts, which I don’t want to lose by switching to Spotify. I know I’d discover more music I love if I switched to Spotify.
Siri on the HomePod. Our HomePod minis now answer around 70% of our queries correctly—and I promise that this is not an under or overestimation. Things seem to have gotten worse when we went from two HomePod minis to five.
I’d also change the company’s communication strategy on current products. I totally get why the company doesn’t want to talk about future products. But a lot of my frustrations with the company come from that when something is wrong, the company doesn’t acknowledge it. It’d be nice to hear something—anything!—even if it’s just couched legalese—about real problems that their customers have faced, like Siri frustrations, butterfly keyboard complaints, original HomePods that would randomly brick, and so on.
All that said, luckily the delights of being in Apple’s ecosystem far outweigh annoyances like these!
Do you have an Apple Watch? Show us your watch face and tell us about it.
Here’s the face for my Personal focus mode on the watch! I’m a fan of the Metropolitan face (at least right now). The corner widgets, clockwise, are The Weather Network (which has the best Canadian weather data), Workouts, Activity, and Zero (an intermittent fasting app). It’s green because that’s the color of my watch band right now.
Thanks Chris, and congratulations on the new book.
At the Sparks house, we don’t spend New Year’s Eve watching C-list celebrities dropping balls. Instead, we blow up the Death Star together. Specifically, we watch Star Wars, Episode IV, in such a way that the Death Star blows up precisely a the stroke of midnight. It’s not really that hard. This year I’ll be watching the Disney+ version, which means I’ll hit “Play” at 10:02:43 PM. Just go to this post by the Rebel Force Radio and note the designated start time for your version of Star Wars. Then start the movie at that time.
For my money, it really beats all the other inane New Year’s coverage. I really use the term “watch” here loosely. The movie plays while our family and friends talk and socialize. When the trench run starts toward the end is when we all really start paying attention, and it is always exhilarating watching Luke scream down that trench and knowing that when the Death Star blows, we’ve got a New Year. An added benefit is the very next scene is the award ceremony with majestic music that feels like the perfect start to a New Year. Give it a try this year.
If you ever write for the Web, one of the first things you learn is to never write on the Web. Web-based writing tools treat humans like angry cats do. They occasionally knock your valuables off the shelves “just because”.
For years, Daniel Jalkut has been publishing (and upgrading) MarsEdit, a native Mac app built so you can write your precious words offline (where there are no angry cats) and then easily publish them to your platform of choice. With MacSparky.com back on WordPress, I’ve been able to bring MarsEdit back into my life and I sure did miss it.
This helps you streamline short-form blogging. Small posts are often my best posts. This new growing feature set makes that easier.
Rebuilt Rich Editor
MarsEdit’s rich text editor got an overhaul using Apple’s latest WebKit2 technologies. This makes it faster and more stable.
Markdown Syntax Highlighting
Yes, thank you.
And a New Icon to Boot
There are plenty of other small touches that show this is an app made by someone who cares. If you publish to the Internet, you owe it to yourself to check out the latest MarsEdit.
This update is free for MarsEdit 4 users who purchased a license on or after June 1, 2022. For all other licensed MarsEdit 4 users, the upgrade fee is $29.95. For all other users the one-time purchase price is $59.95.
Users who purchased the in-app purchase via the Mac App Store can obtain the same upgrade discounts within the Mac App Store version of MarsEdit 5, when it becomes available, by locating a valid copy of MarsEdit 4 with premium features unlocked.
This week MacSparky is sponsored by DEVONthink. There are a lot of ways to manage a database on your Mac, but in my opinion, there is no better tool than DEVONthink. Just a few of the things I use DEVONthink for include:
A reliable repository of research documents. DEVONthink will hold as many documents as you can throw at it. In addition, it makes import (and export) easy, so you can have all that power without feeling trapped.
A research assistant. DEVONthink uses artificial intelligence to analyze and connect your documents in ways that may not otherwise occur to you. This isn’t that new-fangled-kinda-dumb AI. This is search AI that finds shockingly relevant documents. It’s spooky.
An OCR Tool. Everything you store in your DEVONthink Pro library gets OCR’d. It just happens.
An Automation Tool. DEVONthink lets you build powerful automation subroutines into your library to help tag, move, and organize documents.
DEVONthink supports multiple sync methods and lets you even use your own sync password, so everything is encrypted. If you’ve got an iPad or an iPhone, you can access your DEVONthink data there, too, with DEVONthink To Go.
It is this combination of power and security that makes DEVONthink the clear winner. You can think of DEVONthink as your paperless office. You can automate your workflow from capture to filing, editing to publishing. It stores all your documents, helps you keep them organized, and presents you with what you need to get the job done.
And of course the DEVONthink team never stops making improvements. The latest update (3.8.7) improves upon Wikilinks, the Concordance inspector, and more.
