TL;DR: AutoShelf ($19.99 one-time) ships an embedded MCP server that works, but do you actually need that? An AI model can write a launchd LaunchAgent and a shell script once and it runs forever, no app, no daemon, no purchase. The MCP's real value only shows up once you're manag … | Continue reading
My parents were young when I was born, only 17, but despite the relatively small time gap, we are from distinctly different generations. They've been divorced since the 70s, so their needs and circumstances, while similar, are still unique. Last year, my dad and his wife moved to … | Continue reading
TL;DR: Part two of the Apple Account series. Backup apps that pull your iCloud data down to storage you control, email providers that speak IMAP/CalDAV/CardDAV so Apple's own apps keep working without iCloud, ways to buy and track software outside the App Store, and a password ma … | Continue reading
TL;DR: Mac power users vet apps carefully and then hand their entire digital life to Apple without a second thought. Apple can close your account on suspicion alone, keep your unspent balance, and never tell you why; a federal judge confirmed all of that in 2023 and threw the cas … | Continue reading
"Radar Love" by Golden Earring Listen on Apple Music Your browser does not support the audio element. What song makes you want to take a midnight drive? - Radar Love by Golden Earring This has got to be the classic answer for a reason: the bassline mimics tires eating up highway … | Continue reading
TL;DR: Four free iPhone apps that handle jobs you would normally do on your Mac: API Bot for testing endpoints, View Source Vibe for inspecting a suspicious link, Fiper for algorithm-free RSS, and Owl VIP for sender-level email notifications. Two earn a place on your phone. Fiper … | Continue reading
You have a chance this week (ending August 7th) to pick up five apps at the lowest prices I've seen them listed for. Sale Details. Reviews of Apps I Have Personally Tested TextSniper - Better Than Native OCR | AppAddict ($7.99- On Sale For $1.99 -%75) Hit a hotkey, drag a box o … | Continue reading
"When I Paint My Masterpiece" by The Band Listen on Apple Music Your browser does not support the audio element. Share a song that perfectly captures anticipation. - When I Paint My Masterpiece, written by Bob Dylan, performed by The Band at the 30th Anniversary Celebration Bob's … | Continue reading
TL;DR: RAD Weather pulls forecasts from four services and shows you where they disagree instead of averaging the disagreement away. Free, with RAD Ultra at $1.99 a month, $19.99 a year, or $99.99 once, plus a MultiPass tier at $2.99 monthly or $29.99 annual. The Mac build is a re … | Continue reading
TL;DR: Orbit runs each of your Google accounts in its own isolated WebKit session inside one native Mac window, for $89 one time instead of the $50 to $200 a year the alternatives want. It exists because you can de-Google yourself but you can't de-Google your father. The catch is … | Continue reading
TL;DR: Blankie is a free, open-source ambient sound mixer for Mac, iPhone, iPad and CarPlay; no ads, IAPs, or subscriptions. 24 mixable sounds, saved presets, custom audio import, menu bar control. Stacked against Noizio, Dark Noise, myNoise, and Endel, all of which charge someth … | Continue reading
Mac users tend to be nostalgic about the hardware and software they used in their earliest exposure to tech. That doesn't mean anyone wants to try to get real work done on a late-90s PowerPC Mac clone, or go back to 14-inch monitors. People just enjoy being reminded how far we've … | Continue reading
"Jack and Diane" by John Cougar Listen on Apple Music Your browser does not support the audio element. Share a song that captures the feeling of being seventeen. - Jack and Diane by John Cougar I grew up fast. I was desperate for adulthood and freedom, but the good stuff already … | Continue reading
Quick Look extensions have evolved over time. Once the category seemed to be made up of legacy junk: kernel-adjacent hacks that broke every time Apple shipped a point release, the kind of thing you install once, forget about, and eventually blame for a random Finder freeze. That … | Continue reading
Is it possible to shrink image file sizes on a Mac using native tools? Yes, but with some big IFs thrown in. Preview can knock a file's size down if you dig into the export dialog and guess at a quality slider, and Photos will do the same on export, but neither remembers what you … | Continue reading
If you bill clients by the hour, it might be time to reevaluate your workflow. Daily, a Mac time tracker from independent developer Niels Mouthaan, continuously supported since 2013, just got a substantial update: a web API, a Zapier integration, and an MCP server. Because it wor … | Continue reading
TL;DR Imagin Raw is a free, open-source Mac app (4.3 MB) for culling and rating RAW photos — no import, no library, folders stay where they are. Writes ratings/labels to standard XMP sidecars so Lightroom and Bridge both read them. Compares itself directly to Adobe Bridge (9 MB v … | Continue reading
"Sexual Healing" by Marvin Gaye Listen on Apple Music Your browser does not support the audio element. Share a song that feels like it has healing powers - Sexual Healing by Marvin Gaye "Sexual Healing" works because the arrangement carries the argument: the drum machine's puls … | Continue reading
All four of my grandparents lived into my adulthood. For most of my childhood, they were close enough that we could visit them often. Even though my parents split up the year I started school, my mom stayed close to my dad's family, so that was never an issue. As a child, I thoug … | Continue reading
TL;DR:Iris is a Mac photo viewer that indexes photos where they already live (folder, external drive, or your existing Apple Photos library) instead of importing them into a managed database. It does on-device face recognition, OCR/speech search, and a real map (Photo Trails) tha … | Continue reading
As a Reddit user for over 20 years, I feel qualified to do a deep dive on my favorite subreddit, r/MacApps. I recently analyzed the culture that's developed there. I've decided I like this place, so I am hanging around despite some of its quirks. Take your average question, let' … | Continue reading
TL;DR: PopClip, Raycast, BetterTouchTool, Keyboard Maestro, Apple Shortcuts, Supercharge, and ExtraBar; concrete daily uses for each, not feature dumps. For people already comfortable on macOS who've hit a specific friction point (clipboard, mouse buttons, background-app switchin … | Continue reading
I'm ready to grudgingly accept that the absolute market saturation of mattress retailers in America over the past 10 years isn't tied to money laundering, even though it's one of the few internet conspiracies that kind of, sort of, might possibly be true. I bought a mattress yest … | Continue reading
"Wagon Wheel" by Old Crow Medicine Show Listen on Apple Music Your browser does not support the audio element. Share a song that captures the feeling of being homesick. Wagon Wheel by Old Crow Medicine Show I've heard this called the unofficial state song of my home, state, North … | Continue reading
Here are two Mac friction points: It's been 16 years since Mission Control was released, and "Desktop 3" is still "Desktop 3." Apple's API doesn't expose Space naming to any third-party app — there's no system-level hook to hang a label on. Screen Time gets activated when an app … | Continue reading
"Joe Hill (Live at the Woodstock Music & Art Fair, 1969)" by Joan Baez Listen on Apple Music Your browser does not support the audio element. What song makes you feel like you're part of something bigger? Joe Hill by Joan Baez This old song from the labor movement was adopted by … | Continue reading
TL;DR: Apple Books is a storefront that happens to read ebooks. If you own your library, the real choice is between two apps. Readest is open-source, runs on everything (Mac, iOS, Windows, Linux, Android, web), and has the deepest feature set I've seen (side-by-side reading, sent … | Continue reading
Apple's Cmd+Tab has real blind spots. It works on apps, not windows. It doesn't know about Spaces. It has no search, fuzzy or otherwise. Several independent developers have recently taken a crack at fixing it, each with a different idea of what "better" means. I'm not picking a w … | Continue reading
"Louie Louie" by The Kingsmen Listen on Apple Music Your browser does not support the audio element. Share a song that feels like it was written specifically for you. - Louie, Louie by The Kingsmen Ah, I can only hope to be as famously obtuse and mysterious as the lyrics to this … | Continue reading
"Bring the Noise" by Public Enemy Listen on Apple Music Your browser does not support the audio element. What's a song you only listen to when you're completely alone? - Bring the Noise by Public Enemy No one in my house has any appreciation for the social conscious of 80's HipHo … | Continue reading
My recipe for not hating myself consists of three elements: 1. Keep changing -- and by changing, I mean improving, and by improving, I don't mean "be more productive." I mean be a better person today than I was yesterday. Better means more patient, more kind, more loving. Not ric … | Continue reading
Age: 61 Number of Years driving: 45 Approximate number of cars owned: 13 New Cars purchased: 1 In a twist of fate so cruel it was almost unbelievable, the universe broke my beloved 2005 Camry last Saturday, the same day I wrote about a bad luck streak that included a new dishwash … | Continue reading
"Bad to the Bone" by George Thorogood & The Destroyers Listen on Apple Music Your browser does not support the audio element. Share a song that makes you feel invincible. - Bad to the Bone by George Thorogood and The Destroyers "On the day I was born, kings and queens stepped asi … | Continue reading
The first world problems have been coming at us hard the past couple of weeks. Amidst the excitement of moving into our new house we started to experience a streak of serial disappointments so consistent that it seems scripted. It started with a load of dishes, the first load in … | Continue reading
"My Back Pages" by The Byrds Listen on Apple Music Your browser does not support the audio element. What song feels like a personal anthem right now? - My Back Pages, written by Bob Dylan, performed by The Byrds One of the greatest lines Dylan ever wrote “I was so much older then … | Continue reading
TL;DR: Mira is a small (5.6 MB), native Mac app that makes YouTube calm and pleasant: no Shorts, no sponsor segments, no recommendation rabbit hole. It folds SponsorBlock, Return YouTube Dislike, searchable transcripts, optional bring-your-own-key AI summaries, Picture-in-Picture … | Continue reading
"Masters of War" by Eddie Vedder Listen on Apple Music Your browser does not support the audio element. Share a song that represents rebellion or freedom to you. - Masters of War by Bob Dylan, performed by Eddie Vedder The lyrics are just as powerful 60 years on as they were in t … | Continue reading
My phone will ring some time in the next hour. It will be my Dad. He will be having a problem with his television. He will probably be pretty cross about it. He won't ask me to fix the problem. He will just blurt out "It's not doing anything." It's the same way a pre-schooler ann … | Continue reading
RegexPilot by developer Kristof Polleunis, is an app designed to protect you and your work from the hallucinations and miscalculations AI can inject into the regular expressions you ask it to build. Not Voodoo It took a while, but I finally realized that regular expressions are n … | Continue reading
"Eminence Front" by The Who Listen on Apple Music Your browser does not support the audio element. What's a song with lyrics you didn't fully understand until you were older? - Eminence Front by The Who One of my favorite misheard song lyrics - I thought this was a song called "L … | Continue reading
I'm BackA former colleague once told me, "When you see a swimming pool, you don't dip your toe in. You do a cannonball." When I rediscovered blogging a few years ago, I started accumulating domains like bad habits. I went five hundred straight days writing three blog posts every … | Continue reading
Activity Monitor is one of those apps you open when something is wrong and then quietly resent. It tells you a process called java is eating a core and offers you almost nothing else. No version, no path, no command line, no idea which of the four Java apps you have running is th … | Continue reading
"The Road Goes On Forever" by Robert Earl Keen Listen on Apple Music Your browser does not support the audio element. Describe the perfect song for a road trip and why it works. - The Road Goes on Forever by Robert Earl Keen The song is basically Texas outlaw mythology compressed … | Continue reading
If you've ever had to search for "how to make Excel quit removing leading zeroes," I have an app for you. SmoothCSV won't turn some random number into a date and then refuse to change it back. In fact, it won't format anything unless you expressly tell it to. It doesn't try to be … | Continue reading
"Wonder Woman" by John Legend Listen on Apple Music Your browser does not support the audio element. What song would you use to describe your current relationship? - Wonder Woman by John Legend As if there was another possibility, LOL. View Lou Plummer's Crucial Tracks profile | Continue reading
SupaSidebar in Action Most technically oriented people who value privacy do so because privacy is, and should be, a human right, not because they have something to hide. Maintaining privacy in the current technical environment requires a real strategy and almost constant at … | Continue reading
"Little Boxes" by Malvina Reynolds Listen on Apple Music Your browser does not support the audio element. What song makes you think of your childhood home?-Little Boxes by Malvina Reynolds Once again, I owe my Mom a debt of gratitude for being the most influential person in my mu … | Continue reading
"Nation of Heat" by Joe Pug Listen on Apple Music Your browser does not support the audio element. What’s a hidden gem you wish more people knew about? - Nation of Heat by Joe Pug Have you heard this song? Give it a listen. Great songwriting - both the lyrics and the melody. Grea … | Continue reading