In a world where technology is increasingly conspiring to steal our focus and attention, my goal is to teach you how to be more productive with Apple technology. I want to help you achieve what is most important to you and enjoy your life at the same time using technology instead of becoming another one of its victims. Pretty much everything I make points at that North Star. I believe in this message so much that I’ve staked my livelihood on it.
The Apple Productivity Suite (New Field Guide Coming)
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Hello Friend, If you've been listening to the Mac Power Users podcast the last few years, you've heard me slowly come around to the fact that Apple's productivity apps — Reminders, Notes, Calendar, and Freeform — are getting pretty good. But getting the most out of those apps takes some work. Most people use about 20% of what Apple's built-in productivity apps can actually do. The other 80%? It's a hidden ecosystem of integrations, automations, and workflows that Apple never advertises. I've spent nine months documenting hidden features, integrations, and power-user workflows. The result is the Apple Productivity Suite Field Guide, launching soon. Whether you end up using Apple's apps exclusively or just want to understand what you're paying for elsewhere, you'll finally know what's possible with what you already own. The Launch is just a few weeks away. Newsletter subscribers will get a discount. Stay Tuned. Your pal, P.S. Labs members are already getting early access. The testimonials are eye-opening. Not interested in the Apple Productivity Suite? Click here to opt out. |
David Sparks (MacSparky)
In a world where technology is increasingly conspiring to steal our focus and attention, my goal is to teach you how to be more productive with Apple technology. I want to help you achieve what is most important to you and enjoy your life at the same time using technology instead of becoming another one of its victims. Pretty much everything I make points at that North Star. I believe in this message so much that I’ve staked my livelihood on it.
MPU 855: Shortcuts with Viticci Federico Viticci, founder of MacStories and the resident Shortcuts master, joins David and Stephen for Shortcuts with Viticci. The three get into everything iOS 27 brings to Shortcuts, starting with Describe a Shortcut and how far natural-language automation can really go. They cover the smaller wins too, including Else If support, new automation triggers, and built-in data storage that finally gives Shortcuts global variables. Viticci also talks about his...
THE MACSPARKY DISPATCH Hi Friend, Right now, the frontier AI models are, at best, getting $200/month from AI consumers. And Sam Altman has said publicly that OpenAI loses money on every one of those subscriptions. The compute bills are just that large. Apple is doing something entirely different. At WWDC this year, they started making the case for local AI. Not with a frontier model of their own. They don't have one, and they're not trying to win that race. What they did instead was double...
THE MACSPARKY DISPATCH Hi Friend, I spent the last month setting up a new community for the MacSparky audience. I'm not going to walk you through the build today. That's a piece for another week. What I want to tell you about is where the actual decisions came from. I worked through option after option. Names, structures, pricing, rooms, access tiers, onboarding flow. By the end I had a draft set labeled A through H. Yes, eight versions. I went in deep. Claude was useful for a lot of that....