Recent content on Macdrifter
Long time, no post! Hi diehard readers. I hope this is a little reward for not cleaning up your RSS feeds. I really enjoy using Logitech mice, which is good because almost no one else makes multi-function mice for macOS anymore. The MX Master 3 for macOS is a well designed, comfortable mouse with a lot of buttons and scroll wheels. Unfortunately the Logitech control center software is extremely…
Portable Desktops This is a short comparison of two excellent Thunderbolt docks for the Macbook Pro. The OWC Thunderbolt 3 dock is currently $360 on Amazon . ^spacegrey The CalDigit TS4 Thunderbolt 4 dock is currently backordered for $380 at B&H Photo . ^spacegrey: Strangely the Space Grey version of the dock is almost $100 more. Thanks, Apple. My top requirement for any dock is that a single…
My guilty pleasure is watching YouTube videos about obscure math. Holy cow
I’m still a big fan of ChronoSync for Mac and the new version 10 looks really great. The application is now M1 native and provides more convenient connections to iCloud and support for bootable backups on Big Sur and Monterey. I like Time Machine for convenience of file recovery but I’m always a little wary of it’s longevity. ChronoSync just makes a copy of files on my NAS and…
Modern web tools provide some amazing solutions. Stories like this remind me why the first step in solving most problems is to try to build it myself. Nelson Minar: For anyone wondering how Goodreads could have simply lost all my data, I’m wondering too! It bespeaks contempt for users. And terrible system design, services should not be able to lose data irrecoverably. The specific bug is…
A couple of weeks ago I sat down with my friend David Sparks to talk about nerdy stuff . I always love talking with Dave because he’s exactly as nice as he sounds. We talked about Keyboard Maestro, Shortcuts, and plenty of Star Wars. If you haven’t tried MacSparky Labs , I can tell you it’s pretty great. It comes with member-only posts as well as insightful webinars .
What a great start to a new year. David Sparks is going all-in on MacSparky . He makes such great stuff and his new MacSparky Labs is an awesome idea. I’m constantly impressed by the quality of David’s work. Not to mention, he’s actually an incredibly nice person that just loves all of this nerdy stuff. Go subscribe to MacSparky Labs. It’ll be a joyful part of 2022.
My latest obsession is with improving my personal UX. Now that I spend most of my time on a Mac instead of bouncing between Windows and Linux, I’ve noticed a huge improvement in the pace of my work. When I do run into something inefficient, I jot it down and try to fix it. Lately I’m frustrated with Safari. I typically have several Safari windows open, each with a different group of…
I have a confession: I can’t remember all of my hotkey combinations and I waste a lot of time repeating mundane tasks. Between macOS, Keyboard Maestro , Moom , Alfred , and every little app shortcut, I simply can’t keep them top of mind. Here’s what I can remember at this moment: CMD-Opt-T opens the Todoist quick entry panel. Ctrl-Opt-M opens Moom in grid layout mode to move a…
Someone needs to check in on CBS Boston. Here are two recent titles from their office: Horse And Its Owner Stopped Inside Doors Of Plymouth Walmart 92-Year-Old Injured In ‘Unprovoked’ Attack At Quincy Center MBTA Station Each one of these titles make me wonder what world the CBS writers live in. Perhaps they live in a world of violent nonagenarians and unruly gangs of horses.
Will you look at that! Stephen Millard generously created and shared a Keyboard Maestro plugin for Shortcuts on macOS. This looks like a great bridge to Shortcuts, which is still the best way to work with Apple Calendar data.
One major shortcoming of Obsidian is that it does not integrate well with macOS or iOS so there are no conveniences for capturing text into an Obsidian note. I decided to learn a bit about the Obsidian URL scheme (which works on macOS and iOS) and create some Shortcuts to fill in the gap. New Obsidian Note This is a simple Shortcut that has one purpose: Give me a simple and convenient window to…
This list over at Dynomight.net is maybe the lowest possible bar for being thankful but I still love it. That hokey unfashionable techniques like practicing gratitude turn out to have strong scientific evidence behind them, and several countries happen to have a preexisting holiday that’s already, at least in theory, dedicated to this practice.
Like millions of other people I’m a huge fan of Kurzgesagt . I’ve “supported” them over the years by buying their posters and other doodads, so of course I immediately pre-ordered the new book by their founder Philipp Dettmer . For $22 it seemed like a good purchase. After reading it for the past month I can whole heartedly recommend this book as a way to learn about how…
Ever have a situation where someone contacts you by email about a thing and when you respond there’s no answer? Twice. What’s the etiquette when you suspect the sender has too many layers of email filters to start a relationship? I should ask Merlin about this . Anyway, good episode .
Here’s a twofer. Not only does this article describe a bunch of cool office tools I like but it’s a good affiliate-linked holiday shopping list for you. Hey, I’m like the Wirecutter but without a paywall and I actually use the stuff. The Desk I got an Uplift desk. Well, I got two. I got a convertible standing desk with the “Commercial frame” for my Mac and various…
Apparently Warhammer 40K had to explain why hate groups aren’t part of their real-life culture . For clarity: satire is the use of humour, irony , or exaggeration , displaying people’s vices or a system’s flaws for scorn, derision, and ridicule. Something doesn’t have to be wacky or laugh-out-loud funny to be satire. The derision is in the setting’s amplification of a tyrannical, genocidal…
macOS Monterey comes with some new window management tricks but they feel incomplete and a little frustrating. I have one suggestion for the Apple team that works on Spaces and window management: Get a big ass monitor. I did. It’s a gorgeous 38" display that makes me feel like I’m working on a space ship. It was surprisingly hard to adapt to so many pixels but I’m loving almost…
Thank you Aaron Randall, for this fun solution to something I still think about. I’m not ashamed to admit that I have the Adventure Time comic he is referencing. I’m also not ashamed to admit that I was not clever enough to solve the cipher. At least Aaron proves that those two things aren’t related.
Did you see this? . You probably should. It’s like a list of ingredients for a good life.