A Couple of Podcast Appearances

Over the past week, I've had the privilege of guesting on a couple of my favorite podcasts.

On MacStories Unwind last Friday, I chatted with John Voorhees about media-tracking apps and a few shows that we recommend people check out. Any time I get to talk about Sequel and Mr. Robot is a good time in my book.

And then on yesterday's episode of Vision Pros, Tim Chaten and I dove into my use of the Apple Vision Pro, especially as a device for getting work done. It's the most in-depth conversation I've had about the Vision Pro since it launched, and it was a lot of fun.

Of course, no week would be complete without a regular dose of Magic Rays of Light. It doesn't count as a guest appearance since I'm a regular host, but Sigmund and I released a fun episode that covers Apple Intelligence, Continuity Camera on Apple TV, the latest Apple Original releases, and more.

My thanks to the kind hosts who had me on their shows this week and to everyone who took the time to listen. It truly is an honor to get to share.

AI Writing

David Sparks, aka MacSparky:

Writing is more than just a means to convey information; it’s a way to connect on a deeply personal level. Whether celebrating a milestone with loved ones or sharing insights in this newsletter, these moments are opportunities to express our unique perspectives and emotions. When we delegate this task to an AI robot, no matter how sophisticated, we lose a piece of that human connection. It feels like a form of erasure — a diminution of our individuality and the personal stamp we leave on our work and the world.

I've been hesitant to step into the AI conversation because I find the whole thing fraught and, honestly, not all that relevant to my life at the moment. I use these tools on occasion for specific tasks, and I do appreciate when they're integrated well into apps I use every day, which is why I will be keeping an eye on Apple Intelligence. But I don't consider them an essential part of my work in any sense.

David's point here resonated strongly with me, and it speaks to why I don't use generative text tools when I'm writing. I consider this blog to be an extension of myself. It's the place I go to share my thoughts with the world and hopefully start conversations with others. People come here for my perspective, not a robot's. And I believe the same applies to my writing and editing elsewhere, as well as to my personal conversations.

Writing – and, I would argue, communication itself – is not a means to an end. It's a way of conveying information, sure, but it's more than that. It's a connection between people, a back-and-forth that reflects each individual involved, and I don't believe that inserting an AI layer in the middle adds any value.

These tools have their place, but you won't be reading any AI-generated content here.

Batch Editing Values in Collections with Shortcuts

When I wrote about Collections last month, I also shared a few shortcuts for adding items to a database. Those shortcuts were a bit lengthy because they required me to add two actions for each value I wanted to update. There wasn’t any way to update multiple values at once.

It was a minor pain point, but I’m happy to see that it’s been addressed. The app’s latest update includes a new Update Values with Dictionary action that allows you to set multiple values at once. It’s as simple as adding a Dictionary action, setting the attributes to be updated as the dictionary’s keys, and adding each attribute’s data as its corresponding value. Then a single Update Values with Dictionary action will make all of those changes in the database.

This makes it quicker and simpler to create shortcuts for Collections. Here is the original shortcut I shared for adding a new item to my database of MacStories articles I’ve edited:

And this is what the shortcut looks like now:

As you can see, the updated version of the shortcut is much cleaner, and it took me no time at all to set up the dictionary for updating values. This is an action I’ll be taking advantage of a lot in my future use of Collections.

If you’d like to take a closer look at how this new action works, you can download the updated version of my Collections shortcut.

Using the 13” iPad Pro as a Tablet

A few weeks ago, I picked up a Smart Folio for my 13" iPad Pro at an incredible discount. It was more an impulse purchase than anything else, but I also thought it would be a good opportunity to try something new.

Since I bought the 13" iPad Pro, it's lived in the Magic Keyboard case. Functionally, it's been a touchscreen laptop running iPadOS. I love the form factor and get so much done on it, but I've always had this nagging feeling that I'm not using it to its full potential. The iPad is meant to be a tablet, after all. So I decided to carry my iPad in the Smart Folio rather than the Magic Keyboard for a while and see what it was like using a 13" tablet.

The first thing I noticed was how much thinner and lighter the iPad is in the Smart Folio case. The Magic Keyboard adds quite a bit of thickness and weight to the device, something I've just gotten used to. But carrying it around without the Magic Keyboard, I was reminded what a feat of engineering the 13" iPad Pro really is. (I'm still using the M1 version; the latest M4 model is even thinner and lighter.)

That being said, the big iPad Pro is still a beast of a tablet. I never could figure out how to comfortably hold it in my hands while navigating or reading on it. I always had to rest my arm on a table or prop the iPad up with my leg while holding it, which isn't ideal for tablet use.

I was surprised how intuitive it is to use Stage Manager in touch mode. I've only ever interacted with floating windows via a cursor before, but bringing up new windows and arranging them the way I want them with my fingers made total sense. As much as it's been optimized for indirect input over the past few years, iPadOS still works incredibly well via touch, even in its most complex configuration. One of my favorite things to do with the iPad Pro in tablet mode was working on my creativity log, which involved a lot of switching between windows, copying and pasting, and running shortcuts.

Typing with the on-screen keyboard was something I couldn't ever quite get used to. I would prop the iPad up on my desk with the Smart Folio and do my best to replicate touch typing on it, but it resulted in so many typos that the whole process really slowed me down. I'm just better at typing on a physical keyboard, I suppose. Working with text was the part of this experiment where I ran into the most friction.

There are still certain elements of the web that aren't optimized for touch as well. Most user-facing websites are optimized for any input, and I was able to read my favorite sites without any problem. But when I tried to do any work on the backend of my blog or my employer's website, I ran into elements that still didn't work quite right – or at all – via touch because they expected a cursor.

After a few days of using the Smart Folio, I swapped it back out for the Magic Keyboard and put it away. The majority of what I do on my iPad Pro falls into the categories of text editing and web work, so I really missed the physical keyboard and trackpad, and I decided they were worth the additional thickness and weight. My iPad Pro is a laptop once again.

But at least I got a chance to experience what it was like to use my iPad as a true tablet. There are still cases where I could see myself switching back to the Smart Folio for a limited amount of time, especially while watching TV and films, so I'm keeping it around as an option. For the most part, though, the Magic Keyboard is the perfect iPad Pro accessory for me, and I'm sticking with it.

For tablet use, I still have my trusty iPad mini, which I adore. But this experiment has me once again reminiscing about the old days when I had an 11" iPad Pro that served as both my tablet and laptop. Now that the smaller iPad Pro has the best screen technology once again, could I go back to using a single device for both use cases? Or am I better off with my dual approach, getting the most out of both ends of the spectrum? Those are questions for another day, but for the time being, I'm going to consider this 13" tablet test complete and return to my multiPad lifestyle.

Ebbs and Flows, Indeed

My creativity log is already turning out to be a great investment. I checked it the other day and found out that June 2024 was my most creatively productive month ever. Here’s a breakdown of what I made last month:

• 13 blog posts
• 4 Magic Rays of Light episodes
• 4 MacStories articles
• 2 Club MacStories columns
• 5 shortcuts
• a guest appearance on iPad Pros

To be fair, three of those blogs posts were links to things I published elsewhere, but still, that list represents the busiest month of creation I’ve ever had by far. I’m really happy not only with the amount of work I was able to put out, but even more so with the quality of it, the response to it, and the incredible people I got to work to make it all happen.

One of the themes of my personal writing this year has been the balance between outward creation and behind-the-scenes work in my life. That balance is constantly changing, and I can sometimes get in my head about it. But I’m learning to be okay with wherever I’m at on that scale at any given time.

Sometimes, I’ll be more focused on background stuff and helping others get their ideas out there, so things might seem more quiet from me. Then I’ll have periods like last month when it feels like I have something new to share all the time. That’s just the nature of the work that I’m doing; it all matters, and I find it all so fulfilling.

And funnily enough, I only really recognize where the balance stands after the fact. In the moment, it all just feels very natural, like I’m doing exactly what I’m supposed to do. So I’m going to keep doing it – and, of course, tracking it. If any other interesting insights come up from my creativity log, I’ll be sure to share them.

Thank you for being along for the ride. I hope you’re enjoying it as much as I am, because it truly is a joy getting to share all of this with you.