Resisting the temptation of a new M1 Mac

I’m starting my 7th month of being iPad only. It is working out amazingly well. But with all the new M1 Macs, I’m being severally tempted to trade in my 2015 MacBook Pro for one of the new M1 Macs of undetermined configuration. If I do this, I’ll want to switch back to a Mac as my main computing device.

Not helping this situation is all the Apple influencers talking about their M1 Macs on their podcasts over the last several months. Especially when you hear some die hard iPad folks getting them.

Of course, the right thing to do is to wait for the rumored 2022 MacBook Air refresh, since a MacBook Air is what I would likely get. As I wrote the other day, the Pros are to damned expensive for my use case.

2022 MacBook Air Rumors: Non-Tapered Design With Notched Mini-LED Display, MagSafe, ‘M2’ Chip, and More – MacRumors

2022 MacBook Air: Specs, colors, design, price | Macworld

Most importantly I shouldn’t forget why I left a Mac for an iPad in the first place.

Apple CarPlay uses cellular data

We’ve been on a Verizon plan with only 2 GB of data for years and have only occasionally run out of data. Recently, we have been burning through it in just a few days. What changed?

We bought a new Jeep Wrangler that has CarPlay. According to this article by Jason Cross at MacWorld, “CarPlay itself doesn’t cost you anything. When you’re using it to navigate, message, or listen to music, podcasts, or audio books, you might use data from your phone’s data plan. Depending on your cellular data limits, that may end up costing you.”

We’ve upgraded our Verizon data plan and yes, it cost us more money.

Using a keyboard shortcut to trigger PopClip

In September 2017, I wrote a post on how to trigger PopClip when it didn’t appear using a Keyboard Maestro macro. With the release of PopClip version 2021.11 on November 3rd you can now set a keyboard shortcut in PopClip preferences. This comes in handy when PopClip fails to appear or disappears.

Guide to using the Keyboard Shortcut trigger in PopClip – How-Tos and Guides – PopClip Forum

PopClip 2021.11 introduced a new control in the prefs, to set a keyboard shortcut. This guide explains what the keyboard shortcut does, and how to choose, set and use it.

What the keyboard shortcut does:

It is a global keyboard shortcut that triggers PopClip to appear. Being global means it will be recognised by the system in whatever app you are using.

👎 Nope

Apple intros 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros with display notches, M1 Pro, and M1 Max

Nearly a year after announcing the first, low-end M1 Macs last November, Apple has finally unveiled its higher-end Macs. New 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models will include the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips, faster successors that build upon the foundation of the original M1, as well as more ports, and a slight redesign. This marks the most significant change to the MacBook Pro since the Touch Bar was introduced back in 2016.

These things are to fucking expensive for a non-pro user. The 14” starts at $1999 and the 16” starts at $2499. Sorry Apple, these things are not in my wheelhouse. I’m happy with my current technology stack. iPhone 11 and iPad Air with Magic Keyboard. That’s all I need.

Viticci slams non-professional reviewers

Mere Civilian: The value of a non-reviewer’s perspective

Sometimes, I hear something and I find the need to consider what my thoughts are on a particular subject. This is one of those times.

In the first seven minutes of the episode 242 of the AppStories Podcast. Federico said:

“You wouldn’t want to read/or watch a review by someone who is not a professional reviewer. It wouldn’t be enjoyable.”

[…]

However, I strongly disagree with the first sentence. I frequently seek reviews written by people who are not professional reviewers.

If you’re wondering who Federico is he is Federico Viticci – Founder and Editor-in-chief of MacStories. He is also co-host of the AppStories podcast with John Voorhees.

I’m not a regular listener of AppStories but this week I was interested in hearing what Federico and John had to say about the new iPad Mini.

Like Mere Civilian when I heard Federico say “You wouldn’t want to read/or watch a review by someone who is not a professional reviewer. It wouldn’t be enjoyable.” I was shocked. Who and the hell does he think he’s speaking for? Obviously, not me and a few others.

Lee Peterson: I’m not a “professional” but my opinion is valid too

I don’t normally post this sort of thing but I feel so strongly on this one I had to get it out of my head.

I don’t listen to App Stories but I do listen to Connected and generally read MacStories but right now I feel really let down. I’ll let you listen to the podcast in question but like I say as a fellow blogger trying to make my way through this online world it’s a let down and shows a lot of hubris.

Mike Rockwell: The Value of a Non-Reviewer’s Perspective

This was an incredibly bone-headed comment from Federico. I would rather read a review from someone that isn’t a professional reviewer. I don’t want a phone review from someone that does phone reviews for a living because their perspective is skewed.

My take is that Federico has gotten to big for his britches.

Where the hell is the Escape key on the iPad Magic Keyboard?

Change the behavior of the modifier keys on iPad

If, like me, you rarely use the caps lock key, you might be interested to learn that you can remap it on a hardware keyboard in iPadOS. I mapped mine to Escape.

How to Remap Modifier Keys on iPad When Using a Keyboard

Launch the Settings app on your ‌iPad‌
Select General -> Keyboard
Select Hardware Keyboard
Select Modifier Keys
Select the key that you’d like to modify …
Select the action that you’d like to perform when tapping the chosen key

That’s it.

iPadOS 15 multitasking and keyboard shortcuts

If you are a regular reader, then you are aware that I switched my entire workflow to my 11” iPad Air. It does everything I need to do from writing, handling email, texting, messaging, reading, watching videos and more. I still have my 2015 13” MacBook Pro because I use it to run Hazel rules, which is something that I can’t do on my iPad.

iPadOS 15 has made the iPad even better. The new multitasking features and Globe key keyboard shortcuts have made working on the iPad even more Mac like. It’s fucking wonderful!

If, like me, you use an iPad as your main computing device, check out Chris Lawley’s video for getting your arms around all the new features in iPadOS 15.

iPadOS 15 Walkthrough: EVERYTHING You Need To Know! – YouTube

🔗 Link Post: From TextExpander to Keyboard Maestro again

Another great Keyboard Maestro macro from Dr. Drang. I haven’t been using my MacBook Pro lately, but I definitely wanted to be sure that I have this macro in my toolbox in if I switch back from my iPad. It was straightforward to put together following Dr. Drang’s instructions included in the article.

Dr. Drang writing for And now all this:

After a good bit of thinking, I canceled my TextExpander subscription today. This is not the first time I’ve left TextExpander—I dropped it when Smile first adopted a subscription payment model about five years ago, and stayed away even when Smile listened to the complaints and lowered the subscription price.

[…]

So I’m back to using Keyboard Maestro as my snippet expansion tool. It works well, and I didn’t have to do too much work to switch over. In a rare display of forethought, I didn’t delete my snippet macros. I had merely disabled them when I started using TextExpander again—now I just had to re-enable them.

[…]

And I decided to tackle the one big advantage TextExpander had over Keyboard Maestro: the ability to make a new snippet quickly. By combining AppleScript with Keyboard Maestro itself, I now have a way to make a KM snippet out of what’s on the clipboard.

For example, let’s say I’m writing a report about products made by Mxyzptlk Industries. To make a snippet for that name, I copy it to the clipboard and invoke my new Make Temporary Snippet from Clipboard macro. That brings up this window, where I can define the trigger (I chose “;mi”) and adjust the expansion if necessary. After clicking OK, I have a new snippet in my Snippet – Temporary group.

🔗 Link Post: Moderna starts human trials for an mRNA-based flu shot

Nicole Wetsman writing for The Verge:

Moderna says it hopes to eventually create combination vaccines that could protect people against flu, COVID-19, and other respiratory infections with one shot. “Our vision is to develop an mRNA combination vaccine so that people can get one shot each fall for high efficacy protection against the most problematic respiratory viruses,” Stéphane Bancel, chief executive officer of Moderna, said in a press release.

Moderna Press Release: Moderna Announces First Participant Dosed in Phase 1/2 Study of Its Quadrivalent Seasonal Flu mRNA Vaccine | Moderna, Inc.

I like the idea of getting one shot that includes the flu vaccine and a COVID booster.

NetNewsWire 6 vs Reeder 5 iCloud sync

I’ve been using the free version of Feedly for RSS syncing with Reeder ever since I started using RSS. Reeder 5 introduced a built-in RSS/Feeds service using iCloud to keep everything in sync between devices. For privacy reason, I decided to start using iCloud instead of Feedly.

Here’s a friction point that I have with Reeder. It has three options for syncing background refresh, manually, and on start. My preference is background refresh, but with that option, I get a lot of feed timeouts. So, I’ve been using sync on start, which works fine but is really slow.

Now that NetNewWire 6 has iCloud syncing I’ve been checking it out. What I found is that NetNewsWire’s iCloud background refresh works flawlessly and manual syncing is lightening fast compared to Reeder.

This isn’t final, but I think I’m going to stick with NetNewsWire.