512 Pixels

Balance is a powerful menubar app for your money built by a team from Apple, Stripe and Ethereum. It was featured in the U.S. Mac App Store when it launched in February.

Securely connect to your accounts

Balance uses Plaid.com, the best API for securely accessing your financial data. It gives the app a read-only token to access your account history.

Quickly check your balances

With one click or keyboard shortcut you can pop open Balance and check all of your accounts. Lock the app with a password or TouchID.

Speedily search through your transactions

As a native app with local data storage, Balance is super fast. Quickly search through all of your downloaded transactions with powerful filters.

Powerful notification engine

Balance is Hazel for money. You can create rules to trigger useful notifications to help you stay on top of your finances.

One subscription, coming to all of Apple’s platforms

The basic plan starts at $4.99 / month. Balance is launching on iOS and watchOS later this year, and is also building a full windowed app for macOS. Early customers will get access to betas for all of these.

Check out Balance on the U.S. Mac App Store today. International support is planned for later this year.

David Sparks shared a page to Road ID’s Apple Watch product.

If you aren’t familiar, Road ID makes identification meant to be worn during a run or bike ride. I’ve had one for years in case I’m involved in an accident when working out alone and someone needs to know about my basic health or contact my spouse. I have worn it on the opposite wrist of my Apple Watch, but now I won’t have to.

Update: Of course, the iPhone has a feature like this, but I figure if I’m in such a bad bike crash I can’t tell responders who I am, my iPhone has probably shattered into a bunch of pieces. A simple bracelet may prove more reliable in an emergency than a phone.

Google is about to replace both its Drive and Photos Uploader app for the Mac with one new application.

The new program will allow users to sync Drive folders and file with their Macs, but also backup the contents of their local disks to Google Drive. I don’t think I’ll use either of those features, but if it improves the reliability of the Google Photos Uploader, I’m in.

In my MacStories column this month, I dusted off my iPod Hi-Fi:

While I don’t use mine day-to-day, I do break it out sometimes, and the thing still sounds great, 11 years after it was introduced.

The HomePod is set to take the Hi-Fi’s legacy and extend it in our age of voice assistants and cloud-connected devices. It trades an iPod dock for Apple Music, and an IR remote for Siri.

I recently received two beige Macs: a Performa 6400 and a Power Macintosh G3. I decided they deserved an unboxing video:

This is my first project in 4K, thanks to my new-to-me Sony a7R II. It is in an incredible camera and I look forward to doing more with it.

If the battery life in your iPod Hi-Fi has you down, this article may be helpful.

This week on Connected:

Recovering from San Jose, the boys wade through an ocean of follow up, then talk about the new iPads and review Planet of the Apps.

My thanks to our sponsors:

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• Storyworth: A new way to bring the family together.

Over on The Sweet Setup, I’ve rounded up a bunch of plugins you should know about if you use macOS’ default email client.

Marissa Mayer, writing on the Verizon-owned Tumblr:

It’s been my great honor and privilege to be a part of this team for the last 5 years. Together, we have rebuilt, reinvented, strengthened, and modernized our products, our business, and our company.

Looking back on my time at Yahoo, we have confronted seemingly insurmountable business challenges, along with many surprise twists and turns. I’ve seen our teams navigate these hurdles and mountains in ways that have not only made Yahoo a better company, but also made all of us far stronger. During these past 5 years, we’ve built products that delight our users, focused on our clients’ businesses, driven substantial value for our shareholders, and endeavored to make Yahoo the absolute best place to work. I want to take a moment to remind you of some of our many achievements together. They are remarkable, and we should all be very proud.

Alex Webb and Emily Chang at Bloomberg:

After years toiling away in secret on its car project, Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook has for the first time laid out exactly what the company is up to in the automotive market: It’s concentrating on self-driving technology.

“We’re focusing on autonomous systems,” Cook said in a June 5 interview on Bloomberg Television that amounted to his most detailed comments yet on Apple’s automotive plans. “It’s a core technology that we view as very important.” He likened the effort to “the mother of all AI projects,” saying it’s “probably one of the most difficult AI projects to work on.”

Well there you go.

Two different stories caught my attention as I spent some time today catching up from a week at WWDC:

1. Jeff Rule built a replica of a long-lost Apple prototype from the early 1990s. The work done in this prototype led to the 20th Anniversary Mac, and Rule’s work really brings the concept back to life in an amazing way.

2. Chris Larkin has put a project together to build a tiny Apple II, complete with emulation. Tested published a video of the model and what goes into making one. It’s pretty incredible the Apple II can be emulate on such cheap hardware these days.

I’m watching macOS High Sierra install on my MacBook Pro. I plan on reviewing it this fall, and wanted to jump in a little earlier than I normally do.

However, I expect that I will need to work on my notebook some this summer, so I’m installing it on an external SSD. Specifically, the Samsung T3 Portable SSD. It’s fast and small, and has a USB C port on the back of the drive. I’m using the included USB C to A cable, but am going to swap it with a USB C cable for a little less clutter.

High Sierra is set up to be this generation of release’s Snow Leopard. That’s a big set of shoes to fill, and I’m hopeful macOS 10.13 is as good as 10.6 was.