512 Pixels

Earlier today, Dropbox announced that Mailbox and Carousel are being discontinued:

The Carousel and Mailbox teams have built products that are loved by many people and their work will continue to have an impact. We’ll be taking key features from Carousel back to the place where your photos live—in the Dropbox app. We’ll also be using what we’ve learned from Mailbox to build new ways to communicate and collaborate on Dropbox (you can see early signs of this focus with Paper).

I’m like many, many other people — Dropbox is my filesystem. There’s very little on my MacBook Pro’s SSD that isn’t in Dropbox. My documents and my photos are there, in addition to files I share with people I work with and know.

As such, the health of Dropbox is of extreme interest to me. As much as these apps were loved by their users, it’s clear that the company is moving in another direction. While things like Paper don’t make much of a difference to me, knowing that Dropbox will reliably sync my files, be easy to use on iOS and continue to be around is important to me. If Mailbox and Carousel had to go to make that possible, then so be it.

That said, Mailbox is now on a long list of smaller projects swallowed up by big companies just to be shut down later. That’s always rough to see.

For a lot of people, NASA’s space shuttle defines human spaceflight. On this episode of Liftoff, Jason and I talk about the shuttle itself, the program’s highs and lows and more.

My thanks to this week’s sponsor:

• Luminos: A fantastic astronomy app, 10 years in the making! Now with an Apple Watch app for skygazing!

If you’re reading this, you probably already know your way around a Mac pretty well. You get your work done and everything’s fine.

But you probably want to use your Mac faster and more efficiently. You know it’s possible to really make your machine sing, but who has time to go hunting for tips and tricks by exploring an endless slurry of old blog posts and Youtube videos?

There’s a better way: Master Your Mac.

Master Your Mac is an email course for folks just like you: capable Mac users who want to up their game. Each week, you’ll receive a short, specific, actionable lesson in your inbox that will teach you a new trick or tactic for using your Mac faster and more efficiently. No basics here — this is pro-level stuff.

Sign up today and and start really putting your computer to work for you.

Today’s a big day at Relay FM.

Since leaving my job this fall, one of the big projects I’ve been working on is our new membership plan.

Relay FM is home to a wide selection of shows, and now you can choose to support the hosts you love directly monthly or annually. We’ve always felt Relay was part of a bigger community, and I think this is a nice extension of that idea.

We are throwing in some fun perks, and have lots of ideas for future member-only goodies. I’d love if you found a couple of shows you enjoy to help support.

This video may be everything wrong with Apple in 1996. I’d write more about this, but I fell asleep.

This week on Material, Relay FM’s Google-focused podcast:

We’re joined by Matías Duarte, Vice President of Design at Google. We talk about everything from Material Design to how to camouflage LEGO against couches.

Boom.

Now I know I can’t install iLife ‘05 on my original iBook:

iLife ‘05 requires a computer with a display resolution of at least 1024 x 768 pixels. This means that iLife ‘05 cannot be installed on the original iBooks. The original iBooks are Blueberry, Tangerine, or Graphite in color. The iBook (FireWire) computers, which are Indigo, Key Lime, and Graphite in color, are also affected.

This week on Connected, Federico and I talk about the Mac App Store, iCloud Photo Library and (sigh) iPhone 7 rumo(u)rs.

My thanks to these three sponsors:

• lynda.com: An easy and affordable way to help individuals and organizations learn. Free 10-day trial.
• Igloo: An intranet you’ll actually like, free for up to 10 people.
• Foot Cardigan: Make giving socks as gifts fun and cool! Get 10% off any subscription using code CONNECTED at checkout.

Earlier this month, I spoke at Ignite Memphis about podcasting: what it is, why it’s growing and what makes it special. It was a ton of fun, and the video is online now.

Sketch:

We’ve been considering our options for some time. Over the last year, as we’ve made great progress with Sketch, the customer experience on the Mac App Store hasn’t evolved like its iOS counterpart. We want to continue to be a responsive, approachable, and easily-reached company, and selling Sketch directly allows us to give you a better experience.

We don’t expect this decision to be unanimously popular, but we want to share how we arrived at it. We take your satisfaction and support seriously, and hope you can understand the choice we have made.

Unsurprising news for unsurprising reasons.

Well, Fraser Speirs wins our corner of the Internet today.

Are you a full-time freelancer or independent worker? Do you make a pretty good living and like the work you do? Every year, do you think “man, why is my tax bill so high?" then think, “well, I guess this is just how it is for folks like me."

Then, you write that big check to Uncle Sam. You may find yourself wondering if you could have done something different. Or, if the check is really huge, you might even wonder if it wouldn’t be cheaper to just get a regular job again…

Chances are, if you’ve read this far, Andrew Carroll can help you.

He’s a CPA/PFS, CITP, and CGMA and the General Manager of NCH Tax & Wealth Advisors in Fullerton, California. What all that means is that, to be honest, he probably know more about taxes than you or anybody you know.

Andrew has worked with dozens of people just like you in situations just like the one described above.

The Freelancer’s Guide to Escaping Taxes is a distilled version of the same advice he’s been giving to folks just like you for years. If you want to know the truth, Andrew figured out it’d more efficient to spend the time writing it down than repeatedly saying it. Go check it out.