Category: Apps

Last week, I was putting things together for an upcoming episode of Mac Power Users¹ and came across a few old posts in which I shared my Apple setups. I thought it would be fun to put them all in one place:

• October 2009: This was my desk in the first apartment my wife and I lived in after getting married. It was about a year after I started this blog and our oldest son was 11 months old. Now he’s 14.
• September 2010: That was a very good iPad wallpaper.
• December 2011: I believe this was my first home screen post over on David Sparks’ site. The images seem lost to time.
• October 2012: I have no idea why I didn’t take any photos for this one. One star.
• March 2014: The desk featured in this article was at the last company I worked for. We would launch Relay FM about six months later.
• September 2014: Sparks’ site does have these images! I look so young.
• September 2015: After I quit my job to go indie, I split my time between a home office (shown below) and this space, which I rented with my brother’s non-profit.
• August 2016: This setup was outlined right before I moved into my current studio. This desk was shoved into what was a spare bedroom in our house that is now home to our youngest son.
• September 2018: I was really excited about this one and I love that photo.
• March 2020: It’s amazing how little my homescreen has changed over the last three years.

If you want a much more updated accounting of things, check out my Gear & Studio page.

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Apple Support:

Dark Sky’s features have been integrated into Apple Weather. Apple Weather offers hyperlocal forecasts for your current location, including next-hour precipitation, hourly forecasts for the next 10 days, high-resolution radar, and notifications.

Apple Weather is available on devices running iOS 16, iPadOS 16, and macOS 13 Ventura. If you’re new to Apple Weather, here are some tips to get started.

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Joe Rossignol with a reminder about Dark Sky:

Apple says it will be shutting down Dark Sky on January 1, 2023. The popular weather app was already removed from the App Store in September and it will stop functioning for existing users starting tomorrow.

The iOS 16 Weather app has a lot of great features in it, but I’m still Team Carrot all the way.

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Did you know that 1Password Business comes with free 1Password Family memberships for employees? This came up in the Discord for Relay FM Members today:

When you’re part of a team that uses 1Password Business, you get a complimentary 1Password Families membership, which you can share with up to 5 family members.

To redeem your free membership, link your family account to your business account. Only your subscription status will be linked. No other information is shared.

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James Thomson:

This is an updated version of a piece I wrote for the 20th anniversary, with an extra ten years of history!

Many people using PCalc on their shiny devices today don’t realise that the app has been around for a lot longer than they think. In some cases, a lot longer than they’ve been thinking.

PCalc is twenty thirty years old on the 23rd of December 2022, so I thought I should take the opportunity to look back at how it has evolved over the last two three decades.

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Geeeeeeeeeze.

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The team over at MacStories has announced their annual MacStories Selects awards and it’s hard to disagree with any of the choices.

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Daniel over at Red Sweater Software has released version 5 of his excellent blog editor for macOS:

MarsEdit 5 features a beautiful new icon, a “Microposting” feature for streamlined short-form blogging, enhanced plain-text editing with built-in Markdown syntax highlighting, a completely rebuilt rich text editor based on Apple’s latest WebKit2 technologies, and a variety of nuanced improvements to make your blogging workflow smoother, and more enjoyable than ever.

My favorite feature of the update is the Markdown syntax highlighting, which you can see in this screenshot:

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This app was mentioned on last week’s Upgrade, but I wanted to highlight it here as well, as it offers in-depth stats on the player, team and game level, as well as loads of customization in the app itself.

Sports Alerts is one of the first apps I’ve found to bring live sports scores to the Dyanmic Island and Live Activies. I’m running the iOS 16.2 beta, and have had Apple’s own TV app prompt me to start a Live Activity for a handful of Memphis basketball games, but it seems hit or miss so far as to what games it can display.¹

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If you got to this post via Mastodon, this is how.

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I haven’t used Evernote in years and years, but for a long time, it was central to a lot of my work. Seeing it get sold makes me feel a little sad.

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Apple Retail expert Michael Steeber has a new app out today:

Five years ago, I opened the Notes app on my Mac and began creating a hub for all of my Apple Retail information. The document started small, but it eventually ballooned and overshadowed the app. It wielded a tiny scroll bar and depleted system resources just to open and search. I needed a better way to find store information at a glance.

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