MacSparky

I know I just linked Chick Corea, but I’m still trying to get over his passing and listening to a lot of his music.Moreover, he won a posthumous Grammy for Best Improvised Jazz Solo and Best Jazz Instrumental Album for his trio performance on Trilogy 2…

I’ve been getting better at food tracking lately. Back when the App Store was new and shiny, there was an initial rush of quality food-tracking apps like Lose It! and MyFitnessPal. The problem is that all of those apps became “platforms”. Things like…

Over the past several weeks, I’ve been busy recording new screencasts for the Hazel Field Guide. Hazel recently released version 5, which doesn’t make many changes to the way the application works, but lots of changes to the way the application looks.…

Mike and I talk about the different ways we track our time, what tools we use, and share the focus and productivity benefits we glean from the process on this week’s Focused.This episode of Focused is sponsored by:Spox: The best story wins. Get 25% off…

I like having one less thing to deal with. SaneBox, MacSparky’s sponsor this week, helps me tremendously with this. People aren’t going to send you less emails, but with SaneBox, you can see your more important emails while the less important ones are…

Today Apple announced its “Spring Loaded” event for next Tuesday, April 20. A spring event has been rumored for months. I’m glad they’ve announced it so we can get on with it.For some pure speculation, I’m thinking we’ll see new iPad Pros and the…

Before there was the sensation that is Widgetsmith, there was Watchsmith. If you're an Apple Watch user, then you know that the device is a lot more than just a watch. It's also a highly customizable accessory. But what if you wanted to make it even more…

With the recent explosion in personal knowledge management tools, it is hard to know which one fits your needs the best. On this week’s Mac Power Users, Stephen and I talk through Obsidian, which builds on top of plain, old-fashioned Markdown…

On the latest Automators, Rosemary and I get Tim back on the show to talk about recent updates to Drafts, how he is using it to customize his workflow, and how other people can take advantage of them too! This episode of Automators is sponsored by:PDFpen,…

I know I’ve been trending a lot lately toward international big bands with my Jazz Friday posts, but lately I am just really digging hearing what musicians in other countries are doing with jazz. This week I've got one more: Germany's WDR Big Band. These are…

I’ve been thinking about the many emails I have received about my recent posts about my status board. I wrote about this on Monday, but that only spurred another round of email from folks that can be summarized as a concern for useless complexity.In summary,…

Day One version 6 just got released with several new features. The headliner is text message-based journaling. With this new version, you can send a text to a magic phone number (even attach a photo), and it gets added to your Day One journal. Think of it as…

This week MacSparky is sponsored by TextExpander from Smile. In our fast-paced world, things change constantly — and errors in messaging often have significant consequences.TextExpander lets you make new approved messaging available to every team member…

Kara Swisher from the New York Times conducted a 35-minute interview with Tim Cook. I was impressed with just how much she covered and how how certain Tim was in his answers. Nothing Tim said felt apologetic. He certainly is shading things in favor of Apple…

Since first posting on my OmniGraffle-based status board a few weeks ago, I have received a lot of emails. Some folks like the idea and want to do something similar. Others think this is a dumb idea, with some pretty good reasons for thinking so. In this post,…

Shelly Brisbin returns on the latest Mac Power Users to explain how she applies power user workflows to working across multiple mediums throughout a normal work week. This episode of Mac Power Users is sponsored by:SaneBox: Stop drowning in email!DEVONthink:…

Hackers managed to grab names, account details, and telephone numbers from 553 million Facebook users, and now they’ve published all that data on the web. Yikes. I'm shocked at the scope but not the source.If you have a Facebook account, now is the time to…

This week Jason Snell wrote an excellent article about the need for Apple to bring Shortcuts to the Mac. I’ve been thinking about that article a lot. My position on Apple bringing Shortcuts to the Mac has always been, “wait”. The reason being that…

Daylite is MacSparky’s sponsor this week. It’s the Mac CRM that takes your business further. Daylite helps you nurture relationships, complete your projects, close more deals, and grow your business—all in one place, even when you are working…

I recently joined Dave Stachowiak on his podcast Coaching for Leaders. We talked about handling paper like a pro. Have a listen.