THE MACSPARKY DISPATCH Hi Friend, I recently did a quarterly planning session with some of the MacSparky Labs members. I do that every quarter and find it really rewarding. It gives us a bit of a personal accountability circle. During the session, I started talking about the importance of quarterly review. Now I know, reading this, you're thinking that the new year is just around the corner. If you're going to start thinking about planning and priorities, that seems like the ideal time to do...
13 days ago • 3 min read
THE MACSPARKY DISPATCH Hi Friend, There is a world of difference between asking a robot, “Help me do this,” and asking, “What should I do?” AI can be remarkably good at the first question but lead you astray with the second. New users often learn that distinction the expensive way. I’ve taught thousands of people how to use agentic AI, and I’ve seen a similar pattern. People get into trouble after they have some success with AI and try to push it further. Quite often, the thing they want on...
21 days ago • 4 min read
THE MACSPARKY DISPATCH Hi Friend, You may have noticed (or not) that I've been doing a bit more publicly on YouTube recently. I'm familiar with the video-making process. I've made over a thousand of them for all the Field Guides combined, and I'm approaching 400 videos in the MacSparky Labs. What I hadn't done much of, however, is public videos. So over the last several months, I've been making more of an effort there. I've got some editing help to give my videos a bit more of the public...
28 days ago • 5 min read
THE MACSPARKY DISPATCH Hi Friend, This past week, Apple took the wraps off the new iPhone Pro and the brand-new iPhone Duo. It’s a big deal, and a lot of ink has already been spilled over it. But something else happened that I’d like to shed more light on. John Ternus gave his first keynote as Apple CEO. And his opening remarks in that job carry real weight. He chose to use that moment to make his case for Apple’s place in AI. (Yes, he called it AI.) It starts at the 3:32 mark in Apple’s...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read
MPU 865: Harvard Professor Teddy Svoronos on AI in the Classroom On this episode of Mac Power Users, Teddy Svoronos returns to compare the iPad and Mac in his teaching workflow, explain why he replaced Keynote with PowerPoint plus a custom AI-built remote, and share tools ranging from OpenIn and Macuse to LookAway and Wispr Flow. The conversation turns to the harder question of teaching in the age of AI: preserving judgment and brainstorming, rethinking take-home assessment, and checking what...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Hi Friend, Robot Builders Club Season Two starts tonight, and it comes with the Robot Assistant Field Guide. Hooray! Get the Robot Assistant Field Guide Get $50 Off for the next week with code: ROBOT50 Also, I put a new video up today. Six minutes of my robot assistant doing actual work. So what do I mean by "actual work"? It reads the overnight email and hands me a short list of what needs a human, with the routine replies already drafted. It files the receipts and forwards the tax ones to...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
THE MACSPARKY DISPATCH Hi Friend, Growing up and watching Star Trek, one thing that made it feel futuristic to me was the interaction with the “computer.” You didn’t see Captain Picard updating software or managing user interfaces. Instead, he just said something out into the air, and then the computer responded politely and efficiently, giving him whatever he needed. At the time, that made total sense to me as something that would be natural in a few hundred years, but it never occurred to...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Hi Friend, I spent the past year building a personal assistant with AI tools. It’s not a chatbot. It’s a system that knows my projects, processes my email, runs my daily planning, files my documents, and handles the repetitive admin I used to lose hours to. I call that stuff the donkey work. The Robot Assistant Field Guide teaches the method so you can build your own version of it. Not a copy of mine. Yours. The Robot Assistant Field Guide was a big success. Folks who knew nothing about...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
THE MACSPARKY DISPATCH Hi Friend, I made a video about this week's newsletter. Enjoy! I wear a bracelet with a Latin phrase on it, which is exactly as insufferable as it sounds. Materiam Superabat Opus. This phrase is so important to me that I had a box of pencils made with it etched on the side so I see it every time I write something down. I also laser engraved it on the inside of my belt so I think about it when I put my pants on in the morning and take them off at night. Today, I want to...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read