MPU 838: iPhone Setups We break down our entire iPhone setups including Home Screens, widgets, Focus Modes, Control Center, Action Button, and more! Stephen may have inspired David on this one. Links and Show Notes Join the MPU forums. You can watch the podcast over on YouTube. Stephen’s Home Screen David’s Home Screen Stephen’s Focus Mode Screens David’s Lock Screens David’s Focus Home Screen Stephen’s Filming Focus Stephen’s Control Center Basic Apple Guy Wallpapers Parachute Backup iCloud...
7 days ago • 1 min read
Hi Friend, I've been thinking a lot lately about teaching. I've taught the Productivity Field Guide workshop three times now. Each year it gets better. Not because I'm a better teacher, though hopefully I am. The workshop gets better because my students make it better. The act of teaching it live sparks magic. Participants ask questions I didn't anticipate. People get stuck on concepts I thought were obvious. They have breakthroughs on exercises I almost cut from the program. Every single one...
8 days ago • 2 min read
Hi Friend, I've been buying Macs forever. For most of that time, the conventional wisdom was simple: Get as much memory as you can afford. Back then, everyone was doing video editing or photo work. Memory was expensive. So you bought as much as your budget allowed. More memory always made your Mac snappier. Then the world changed. Solid state storage got cheap. Cloud services got fast. Most people stopped doing local heavy lifting. They stored their photos in iCloud. They edited video in the...
15 days ago • 3 min read
Hi Friend, I’ve been using the term “donkey work” a lot lately, and some of you have been asking what I mean by it. Fair enough. Let me explain. When I started paying attention to AI, I realized pretty quickly that I didn’t want it writing for me. I didn’t want it making my videos or drafting my newsletters. That’s the work I love. That’s the stuff I wake up wanting to do. If I hand that off to a machine, what’s left? But I also realized I spend hours every day on stuff that has nothing to do...
22 days ago • 3 min read
A MacSparky Dispatch Hi Friend, I built the AI assistant I’ve always wanted. Then I shut it down. For the last few weeks, I’ve been experimenting with OpenClaw, an open source project that started as ClaudBot, then became MultBot, and now goes by OpenClaw (lawyers!). It’s essentially AI plumbing for your computer. You install it, and suddenly you have an independent artificial intelligence agent that can work without your supervision. It can run on its own schedule, doing tasks while you...
29 days ago • 2 min read
A MacSparky Dispatch Hi Friend, Every year I try to lock in my tools for the following year. 2025 was odd because I moved most of my daily management into the Apple productivity suite to prepare the Apple Productivity Suite Field Guide. Now heading into 2026, I’m rethinking what I’m using and why. Task Management I tried using Reminders all year and largely pulled it off. There are interesting web-based and AI-based task managers out there, but none seem useful to me. I just don’t believe...
about 1 month ago • 9 min read
A MacSparky Dispatch Gang, Mark Gurman delivered more Siri news this week, and I'm left with the same feeling I've had for over a year now: equal parts hope and frustration. Here's the picture as it currently stands. Apple is planning two separate Siri overhauls, releasing months apart. The Spring Update: iOS 26.4 The first update arrives with iOS 26.4, expected around March or April. This is the non-chatbot version built on a custom Google Gemini model running on Apple's Private Cloud...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Hi Friend, The Productivity Field Guide 2026 launched a few days ago. People are already digging in, and the feedback is coming in: “The chapter on roles and arete blew my mind.” — Irene K. “I’ve been playing with productivity systems for nearly 20 years. I wouldn’t expect to have anything new to learn. Sparky proved me wrong.” — Mark L. “This Field Guide is not about figuring out how to do more things in less time; it’s about figuring out how to give more time to the important things.” —...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
A MacSparky Dispatch Hi Friend, Apple Creator Suite Icons Apple announced Creator Studio this week, bundling Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Motion, Compressor, and MainStage along with enhanced versions of Pages, Numbers and Keynote into a $130/year subscription. My feelings are mixed. Every time Apple rolls out a new subscription, I get a little leery. The company's increasing focus on services revenue feels like a slow drift away from the traditional model: make great hardware,...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read