A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet. Sometimes themed, often not.

Happy New Year’s Eve! 🎊

1️⃣ Stephen Hackett gave us an in-depth retrospective on the last PowerPC Macs before they swapped to Intel. It’s so funny to hear how Intel was providing the best “power per watt” back in the day. Now it’s Apple’s own chips that fill that slot as Intel makes fumble after fumble. [🔗 512pixels.net]

2️⃣ This McSweeney’s post about Apple News+ hit a little too close to home. 😅 [🔗 mcsweeneys.net]

3️⃣ I’m pretty happy with using my Action Button to dictate notes or take actions in specific apps, but Ben Brooks put together a compelling “Attention Mode” that he enables with his. [🔗 brooksreview.net]

4️⃣ Speaking of Ben Brooks, he wrote a pretty good guide for getting the most out of LLMs by querying them for information rather than having them generate all your text. [🔗 brooksreview.net]

5️⃣ Annie Mueller’s description of Christmas rings true, in a good way. [🔗 anniemueller.com]

6️⃣ I’m fascinated by design breakdowns, like this one for a personal, artistic homepage by Anh. [🔗 anhvn.com]

7️⃣ John Siracusa doesn’t post to his blog often, but his hit rate is very high for when he does. This post (from January) about generative AI and how it affects ownership and creationship is well-worth reflecting upon. [🔗 hypercritical.co]

Thanks for reading 7 Things. If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know. And remember that you can get more links to internet nuggets that I’m finding every day by following me @jarrod on the social web.

7 Things

Speaking of things I wrongly predicted, considering that it’s the final day of 2024, I’d better check in on how the 24 predictions I made about Apple this year turned out.

I thought this would be a breeze to mark off with a simple 🛎️ and 👎 emojis, but I’d forgotten that I convoluted things by going with (a modified version of) the Connected podcast’s Rickies grading system:

But let’s make this interesting by playing by The Rickies grading system. Correct picks in Round 1 (slots 1-8) and Round 2 (slots 9-16) will be worth 1 point each. Round 3 predictions (slots 17-24), are the riskiest picks and will be worth a whole 3 points each, but any wrong picks in this round will deduct 1 point apiece.

Total possible points: 48

Points earned or lost are noted at the end of each line. Let’s see how I did. 😬

Round 1 (the optimistic picks)

1. Vision Pro will be previewed in January. (👎 0)
2. Vision Pro will go on sale in February. (🛎️ 1)
3. Vision Pro will have multiple storage tier options. (🛎️ 1)
4. The next Apple Watch will be called Series X but pronounced “ten”. (👎 0; It really could have gone either way.)
5. The Music app will get a major revision. (👎 0)
6. The Apple TV will be revised and include the A17 Pro chip. (👎 0; I kind of still think this will happen.)
7. All new Apple TVs and at least some new iPads will be Carbon Neutral. (👎 0; All new Apple Watches and the new Mac mini are Carbon Neutral, but no Apple TV or iPad is yet.)
8. Apple will commemorate the Mac’s 40th anniversary with some kind of video. (👎 0; I’m shocked!)

Round total: 2/8

Round 2 (with a few bummers)

9. Mac Pro will not get a beefier “Extreme” series chip. (🛎️ 1)
10. The iPhone SE will be revised but will be larger than the iPhone mini (and I will be sad). (👎 0)
11. There will be no new Apple external display revisions or introductions. (🛎️ 1)
12. FineWoven products will get a major revision that increases durability and premium qualities, but the brand name will remain. (👎 0; LOL they got all but dropped. FineWoven MagSafe Wallets and watch bands remain without any notable revision in quality, and the iPhone cases are gone.)
13. At least one new face will join and at least one will depart Apple’s Leadership webpage. (👎 0; Agh, so close! Here’s the comparison. Carol Surface is gone, and Luca Maestri’s spot is set to be replaced by Kevan Parekh as soon as tomorrow. Notably, Deirdre O’Brien got her picture updated alongside resuming her role at SVP of Retail + People when Surface left the post of Chief People Officer. No one else on the page has had their picture updated in a long time.)
14. An Apple Pencil Pro will replace the Apple Pencil 2. (🛎️ 1; Okay, technically you can still by the 2nd-gen Apple Pencil, but it’s all but hidden on Apple’s website and we all know that the Pro is there to replace it.)
15. Apple TV+ content will win more Emmy and Oscar awards than in 2023. (🛎️ 1; Past Jarrod assigned more homework for this one than present Jarrod is willing to do, so I’m deferring to ChatGPT for this. According to Chatty G, they got 4 Emmys and 1 Oscar in 2023, and 10 Emmys and 0 Oscars in 2024.)
16. Apple will acquire at least one household name company (think a NeXT, Beats, Shazam, or Dark Sky). (🛎️ 1; I didn’t think I would get this one, but Apple pulled through with its acquisition of the Pixelmator team and apps late in the year.)

Round total: 5/8
Total so far: 7/16

Round 3 (Risky Picks)

17. Vision Pro will ship in March. (👎 -1; It shipped in February.)
18. There will be a Fitness+ aspect to Vision Pro. (👎 -1; Nope. The Mindfulness app is as close as we got. It’s probably too big and bulky for anything active.)
19. AirPods Max will get a revision that includes lossless audio and a lighter-weight design. (👎 -1; Apple was so lazy with this update that you could say it lost lossless audio since it no longer supports a headphone jack cord.)
20. Lossless audio and other high-bandwidth device-to-device data transfer will be enabled through Ultra Wideband radio chips. (👎 -1; A big ol’ bummer. I haven’t stopped thinking about this possibility since John Siracusa implanted it in my brain nearly three years ago.)
21. iPadOS will gain multi-stream audio capabilities, good for podcasting from the iPad. (👎 -1; Another nada, although Federico Viticci has cooked up ways around this to record podcasts from his iPad.)
22. Shortcuts Personal Automations will come to the Mac. (👎 -1; “Shortcuts is the future of automation on Mac” my ass.)
23. Always-on system extensions will be introduced in iOS/iPadOS to enable things like third-party clipboard managers, text expansion, or launcher apps. (🛎️ 3; I’m really jonesin’ for a win here, so I’m counting this even though it’s not available here in the U.S. The European Union’s mandate for sideloading got a clipboard manager, Clip, on the iPhone.)
24. Apple will host at least one live event with presenters and an audience in the Steve Jobs Theater. (👎 -1; I could have awarded myself points here seeing as Apple did host a live moderated discussion with iJustine from the Steve Jobs Theater during WWDC. But it wasn’t live streamed, just live-blogged like olden times, and wasn’t what I was picturing when I said a “live event”.)

Round total: -4

Grand Total: 3 out of a possible 48 points

That point total looks pretty harsh but The Rickies are notoriously difficult to score highly in. I’m satisfied with getting 8 out of the 24 predictions correct. And Round 2 was particularly pleasing!

Putting my money where my mouth is

No one else joined in my challenge to make their own predictions and pool money toward a winner, but I’ll make good on the promise to award the Winner (me) $3 and the compel the Loser (also me) to make a donation of the difference ($45) toward a worthy charity.

I’d better start brainstorming for 25 predictions in 2025!

Bets

Back in October 2022, I linked to a MacRumors post about Best Buy’s new Upgrade+ program, saying that it sounded like an awesome deal to make a low monthly payment for three years and — having paid less than the retail price of a MacBook — be given the option to upgrade to a latest-and-greatest version.

Well, I guess it wasn’t working out for Best Buy because they’ve unceremoniously dropped the Upgrade+ program altogether and removed its informational page from their retail site and even its announcement post from their corporate site. (Shame on them for contributing to link rot. 👎)

I find it funny (in a morbid sort of way) when large enterprises, despite all their vast resources, can’t keep their promises long enough for anyone to actually reap the benefits of their promotional programs. It’s been 26 months since Best Buy introduced Upgrade+, but even if someone bought a laptop with it on day one, they’d still have had to make 10 more monthly payments before they’d be eligible for an upgrade. Google did a similar bait-and-switch with their Pixel Pass upgrade program, which likewise ended before upgrading anyone’s phone.

I get the feeling that these massive companies roll out such programs with fanfare, and then promptly forget all about it. Then they only remember it exists when it comes time to check the balance sheet. If the program is in the red, it gets axed — no matter the damage to customer trust. That’s my theory, anyway.

An exception, Apple has stuck by their iPhone Upgrade Program for — gosh — over nine years now. It’s not without its own issues, but they haven’t reneged on upgrading anyone’s iPhone. In fact, I can’t think of any examples where Apple ended a program before someone could enjoy the promised benefits. However, they haven’t, as I wrongly predicted they would, started up a similar upgrade program for the MacBook (or any other Apple product). And it sounds like they’re shying away from further hardware subscription programs, despite their many tendrils into the world of financing.

However, there are other options for financing a laptop with early upgrade options. I was alerted to the news of Best Buy’s cancelation of Upgrade+ by John Erik Metcalf, CEO and cofounder of Upgraded. Upgraded offers their own monthly payment and early upgrade program for MacBooks, financed through Citizens Bank (who also underwrite Apple’s iPhone Upgrade Program and had done Best Buy’s Upgrade+, too), and fulfilled by Apple Premier Partner stores. Their program had Upgrade+ beat in financing terms, as you can get a new laptop after 24 months or just continue to pay off and keep the MacBook after 36 months. With good credit, you get 0% APR, so there’s no up-charge beyond the included AppleCare+.

Surely, John was hoping that I would write a post like this one about their own program, but had class enough not to ask for it. I’m not getting any benefit by writing about them, I just looked through their website and think it looks like a solid option, with good reviews. I don’t have any personal experience with it, so I can’t vouch for Upgraded, but as I told John in an email, it looks like a good deal, and I’m going to consider it when it comes time for me to purchase a new laptop. Spreading out the cost of a major investment like a new computer would be really helpful for me while my business (and therefore finances) get off the ground.

The M4 MacBook Air can’t come quickly enough!

A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Sundays Monday. Sometimes themed, often not.

1️⃣ Ryan Christoffel points out a couple of handy new features for managing audio volume on your iPhone and iPad. [🔗 9to5mac.com]

2️⃣ As if getting pregnant in the U.S. wasn’t dangerous enough, here’s a sobering fact: “When women under age 25 get pregnant, their odds of death by homicide more than double.” [🔗 nytimes.com]

3️⃣ Stephen Hackett’s collection of Genmoji he’s made are quite good. [🔗 512pixels.net]

4️⃣ John Gruber nailed it in this piece laying out why journalism publication owners need to care about journalism, and why that means Jeff Bezos needs to sell The Washington Post. [🔗 daringfireball.net]

5️⃣ In the same vein, Manton Reece shared well-considered thoughts on where he stands regarding WordPress vs. WP Engine. Thoughtful, as always. [🔗 manton.org]

6️⃣ Matthew Smith’s choose-your-own-About-page-length slider is super cool. I’ll have to file this idea away for later. [🔗 matthewsmith.website]

7️⃣ ScreenCred is a cool app I just found from Sam Warnick that lets you easily compare the cast and crew of two works. I found out that Liz from Shrinking also served as a Music Supervisor for both that show and Ted Lasso. And it integrates with Callsheet. Good stuff! [🔗 apps.apple.com]

Thanks for reading 7 Things. If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know. And remember that you can get more links to internet nuggets that I’m finding every day by following me @jarrod on the social web.

7 Things

It was about this time last year that I started feeling particularly sick of my day job. I was working at an outdoor gear shop most days, and guiding outdoor trips through their service, usually one or two per week. Getting outside was awesome, but the retail work was draining and every day felt like it dragged on. It’s not that the work was hard or that my coworkers were bad — it wasn’t and they weren’t — but it felt like a slog. I felt trapped, like a jaguar in a zoo enclosure, endlessly pacing my usual path around the store waiting for 5pm to finally get there.

So, it’s no wonder that I daydreamed, every day, about how I would move on from that job.

I turned to what I did enjoy doing: the outdoor guiding. Could I just do it myself? Theoretically, sure! I did earn a degree in outdoor education, after all. And I spent five years planning, budgeting, marketing, and executing activities as a camp director for the Boy Scouts. And I’d spent three years managing a large portion of the operations of my current employer’s guide service.

I knew I could do the work. But could I make it work? There would be benefits aplenty: flexibility to control my schedule, the latitude to try new ideas without having to ask permission from a boss, and, hopefully, a bigger paycheck as I wouldn’t be giving over half of it to the guide service. But for every benefit, there would also be risks: getting enough clients, managing the insurance and liability myself, making the significant investment of purchasing gear for clients to use, and entering a well-established market as a newcomer. Still, I obsessed.

My desire to build my own business stemmed from more than simply wanting those benefits. I thought I could make a real difference. I could be nimble and meet needs that long-established guide services might feel too constrained to. I could offer regular clinics to be of service to locals, in addition to transient tourists. I have years of experience and enjoy working with young kids, another group that I think is underserved. Without kids of my own, I have few other obligations and can be available for longer overnight trips. It’d be good on both sides! I would offer personal, professional, and fun-focused hiking/camping/skiing/paddling/climbing trips in the Adirondacks.

After a couple of months of feeling more and more trapped, becoming ever more convinced that opening my own guide service was the only way out, I finally told my wife how I was feeling. She had noticed my discontent and to my great relief and surprise — though I really shouldn’t have been surprised — she was on board. I regaled her with all the ideas and plans for the business that I had been scheming in my head. She was impressed. We agreed that I shouldn’t rush into anything, or out of my current job, but she had faith that I could run a successful business. We both wanted those benefits that would come with opening a small business and thought it’d be worth the risk. It would be a leap of faith — for her in me, and me in myself.

Not long after our discussion, on February 29th, I saw this post from Seth Godin. I had found my yearly theme: Leap Year.

After that, going back to work immediately felt so much better. I was no longer trapped, no, I was simply biding my time to make my big move. True to my word, I took things slow. Over the next few months, I started looking into insurance and working up a liability waiver. I attended a conference for New York State Outdoor Guides and took careful notes from guides who had started successful businesses. I brainstormed how I would differentiate myself from the crowded market (I think drop-in group events are a missed opportunity around here). I started reaching out to the large gear brands to better budget for wholesale equipment costs. I set a tentative date of June 1st for when I wanted to kick things off.

The summer came and went.

Working through a risk management plan and liability waiver ended up taking longer and costing more than I initially expected. But they were critical pieces of the puzzle. I was able to save some by being a guinea pig in a new program offered by an outdoor law group. Finally, the legal stuff was done.

I applied for an LLC, which was easier, more intimidating, and more antiquated (I had to publish notices in two local, physical newspapers) than I anticipated. The business officially existed, even if I wasn’t ready to start taking on clients yet.

I worked on a website, which was both fun as a creative endeavor and frustrating as I found that my old quibbles with Squarespace had not been resolved in the intervening years. I debating pricing structure with my wife. I scoured my photo library for good images from my outdoor adventures. I went through multiple rounds of edits on my (too long) wording to make it easily digestible by potential clients. Finally, the website was done.

And then, the doubt set in. I had chosen a name for the business long ago. One that I thought would perfectly encompass all my long-term grand plans. But, as I came to realize, it could be confusing and niche to use as the name of an all-purpose guide service. I brought up my doubts to my wife, and she agreed. The name had to change and now was the time before I built any recognition with the old one. I pitched her a few ideas I’d been tossing around, but none sounded right to her. Then she, in one try, came up with absolutely the right one: Onward Mountain Guides.

It conveys the right feeling that I’ll help clients forward/skyward/on toward their goals. It incorporates “mountain guides”, which is important for showing up for people searching for guides in the Adirondack mountains. And, best of all, it has a bit of whimsy as it abbreviates down to “OMG”, which you can bet I take advantage of for marketing. The domains onwardmountainguides.com and onwardguides.com were available, as was the @onwardguides handle on Instagram. The decision was made. I would be Onward Mountain Guides.

But that opened a whole new headache as I had already opened the LLC and bank account under the old name, and built my entire website around it as well. My only solace was that I hadn’t yet printed business cards or other physical materials that would need to be scrapped. Figuring out the name change took weeks of work, and it’s still not yet completely resolved. But it was worth it.

I “quit” my job at the end of October. I say that in quotes because I still, technically, work for my old boss. When I told him that I was ready to try my own thing, I told him that I would like to continue to be available as a freelance guide as needed, even if I was stepping back from my work in the retail shop. He took the news well, wished me the best of luck, and agreed that it would be good to continue to have me available to guide trips for them. In fact, I’ve reached out to almost all the guide services in the area to offer freelance support in case they get double-booked or just need an extra hand around. I think that will help fill my time as I work to attract my own client base.

Suddenly, I was free. Free to make my own schedule. If I didn’t have a client, I could still make the time useful by scouting out new hikes and climbs, and working on my personal skills. But also free of a regular paycheck. I’m very fortunate to have a wife who (1) has a job that can float our essential expenses for a little while, and (2) is supportive of me taking this leap while she shoulders that responsibility.

To provide a little financial security from my end, and to further service my overall goals of spending more time outside and honing my technical skills, I applied to work as a ski instructor at the local ski resort. I got the job and committed to working at least a couple of days per week there. However, I could still have the flexibility to choose when I wanted to work there and could make adjustments if I secured client trips.

My first client trips as Onward Mountain Guides were in early November, and they all went great. I hiked High Peaks with folks working on summiting all 46 of them. All of my clients so far have booked multiple trips with me — a truly great feeling to know that I made a positive impression. I’ve started getting reviews, too, that makes me blush as I publish them to my homepage.

Reaching out to the guide services and other local businesses has been working out so far too. Everyone has been very kind and receptive to having an extra person to call if needed, and a couple of spots were actively looking for a go-to guide for the winter months (and maybe longer). I’ve ended up with many promising irons in the fire, just waiting to be pulled out and hammered true.

Between adventuring with my own clients, working as a ski instructor, and spending the rest of my time working on marketing and equipment orders, the last couple of months have flown by. I’m having so much fun — even while I work to balance the new stress of erratic paychecks and knowing I’ve invested a lot of personal funds into starting the business that I certainly want to get paid back.

Everyone I spoke to warned me that by working as a guide in the Adirondacks, it would be nearly impossible to make a real living. The clientele and weather would be too inconsistent. They might be right if playing by the old rules. But I think there’s untapped potential here to be a valuable member of the guiding community, not only for my own service but by being available anywhere that wants to hire a guide. There are schools and local youth groups that want to get outside under the supervision and expertise of a licensed and insured service. There are climbers and hikers who want to work through a progression of skills, crags, and peaks over the long term — with a personal relationship with their guide instead of rolling the dice on who will meet them at the trailhead.

I may not be totally unique in being able to offer those services, but I am ready and willing to do it right now. I’ve leaped onward.

Journal

It’s that time of the year! Time to take stock of our default apps, as instructed in Hemispheric Views episode 97. My changes (deltas) from last year are annotated by little sparkles ✨.

📨 Mail Client: Spark
📮 Mail Server: iCloud (with custom domains)
📝 Notes: Drafts (and Apple Notes)
✅ To-Do: Things (and Apple Reminders)
📷 iPhone Photo Shooting: Camera Control button ✨
🟦 Photo Management: Apple Photos
📆 Calendar: Fantastical (and Apple Calendar)
📁 Cloud File Storage: iCloud Drive
📖 RSS: Reeder Classic via Feedly
🙍🏻‍♂️ Contacts: Apple Contacts (and Cardhop)
🌐 Browser: Safari
💬 Chat: Apple Messages
🔖 Bookmarks: Raindrop.io
📑 Read It Later: Reeder Classic via Pocket ✨ (consolidated this year)
📜 Word Processing: Drafts (and Pages)
📈 Spreadsheets: Numbers
📊 Presentations: Keynote (rarely)
🛒 Shopping Lists: Apple Reminders
🍴 Meal Planning (and Recipes): Apple Reminders (and Paprika)
💰 Budgeting and Personal Finance: Copilot
📰 News: Apple News (podcast and app)
🎵 Music: Apple Music (and Marvis)
🎤 Podcasts: Overcast
🔐 Password Management: 1Password ✨ (back on it)

Others

🤖 AI Chatbot: ChatGPT
👨‍💻 Coding Environment: Shortcuts (😉) and Visual Studio Code
🧑‍🧑‍🧒‍🧒 Social Media: Micro.blog and Instagram
📚 Books: Libby and Kobo Libra
🗺️ Hiking Maps: Gaia GPS
🚀 Launcher: Raycast
🎞️ Media Tracking: Trakt via TV Forecast
💻 Screenshots: Cleanshot X (macOS) and Shareshot ✨ (iOS)
✍ Blogging: Blot and Micro.blog

Only a few new ones, and even they were mostly consolidating back to things I’ve already tried, plus using the new Camera Control button on my iPhone to take photos.

Home Screens

Finally, I figured I’d share my home screens as we round out the year.

Apps Uses

A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.

1️⃣ Not only has Jerrod made that Mini Mac Pro enclosure, he’s made a whole collection of amazing 3D-printable designs for the new Mac mini! [🔗 makerworld.com] (Via Robb Knight)

2️⃣ Sarah Shuda shared an awesome resource on the Giftster blog with examples of how wrap gifts really beautifully — even if they’re a bit odd-shaped. [🔗 giftster.com]

3️⃣ Hilarious video. Read the names. [🔗 mstdn.social]

4️⃣ Great little reminder that a disability is only considered such because the world isn’t designed for it. It’s not a given and the world can change. [🔗 instagram.com]

5️⃣ Robert Simmon shared a ton of cool Earth photography in this admittedly long post. I won’t tell on you if you just scroll through for the photos. [🔗 medium.com]

6️⃣ Gui Rambo got Apple’s Private Cloud Compute to run Doom. 🤣 [🔗 mastodon.social]

7️⃣ Want a 10x increase in battery life for your AirTags? Elevation Labs has you covered with their case thing that swaps in AA batteries for power. [🔗 theverge.com]

Thanks for reading 7 Things. If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know. And remember that you can get more links to internet nuggets that I’m finding every day by following me @jarrod on the social web.

7 Things

Imagine this: You’re driving down the road when a Very Good Idea springs to mind. You need to capture it quickly without fumbling through screens or struggling with Siri, which often requires internet access and can be hit-or-miss. What you need is a seamless solution that promptly activates a voice recording, saves your thoughts, and sends them to your preferred app without any fuss.

You need a button — a hardware button — that activates the shortcut without requiring a glance at your screen¹. Enter ‘Dictate a Note’ and the Action Button, available on newer iPhones like the iPhone 15 Pro and later. With this button, you can trigger the shortcut instantly, dictating your ideas or tasks, which are then transcribed and saved to your app of choice.

Get the ‘Dictate a Note’ shortcut →

I designed this shortcut for situations where I can’t (or shouldn’t) be distracted by my phone — like driving or hiking. But its utility doesn’t stop there. It’s equally handy for jotting down ideas during workouts, while cooking, or anytime you need to capture thoughts on the fly without breaking your stride. It’s a fantastic accessibility tool if you have limited mobility or when it’s cumbersome to interact with your phone in cold weather. Simply press the button, talk into your phone, and just know that the idea was saved.

If you allow me a spot of pride, I think I nailed it with ‘Dictate a Note’. Let me walk you through the shortcut.

While this isn’t the beginning of the shortcut, it is the whole foundation. You run the shortcut, it listens, you stop recording, it saves the text and lets you know.

I made sure to have it copy the text to the clipboard right away, just in case something goes wrong and it can’t finish saving to the app. You won’t lose your idea. I also have it show an alert with the text it transcribed. Honestly, I don’t look at this very often, but it gives you the option to open the app right to the note you saved or to ignore it and move on.

Running without tapping the screen

It was crucial for this shortcut to work without needing any input on the screen. Why? Because I’m often wearing gloves while I’m out hiking or climbing. Some of my best ideas spring to mind out there, but I can’t be taking off my gloves in the middle of winter every time I want to capture an idea. I needed something where I could activate the shortcut while I’m pulling the phone out of my pocket, dictate the idea, and then verify that the shortcut is stopped and the screen is off as I return my phone to my pocket. All with physical buttons.

Luckily, all that works using the Action Button to activate and the Side Button to deactivate/lock. The dictation interface appears right on the Lock Screen, and pressing the Side Button ends the dictation while still allowing the shortcut to finish running in the background to save the transcribed text. When you end the shortcut in this way, it doesn’t reactivate the screen to show that alert. It just quietly saves the text; no need to worry.

The video below demonstrates the shortcut in action, from activating it with the Action Button to dictating and saving your note. It shows just how seamlessly ‘Dictate a Note’ fits into your workflow without requiring any extra taps or interactions.

Now, personally, I use Drafts as my inbox for nearly all my ideas (and often tasks), so that’s where I have my notes saved. But as I grew more and more pleased with this shortcut, I knew I’d want to architect it to work well with other apps, too.

Allowing the user to choose their preferred app

Here’s where things get interesting. I got to try out a few new advanced techniques to get it all to work.

I wanted to provide a list of compatible apps that a user could choose to save their notes to. Drafts I already built for me, but Notes, Bear, and Obsidian (via a text file) were other popular apps that I figured folks might want to use. And then other people might prefer a task manager like Things or Reminders to save these little notes.

1️⃣ Using a technique I think I recall seeing from Federico Viticci, I used a ‘List’ action to, well, list out the apps that would work. By following it with a ‘Get Item from List’ action to get the first item, I can account for both people who read the instructions and just move their preferred app to the top of the list, and those who don’t and might delete unwanted apps instead. The top app in the list gets saved to a chosen-app variable.

2️⃣ Next, I saved an optional-title variable using the date and time the dictation was made.

3️⃣ And, in case someone deletes everything by mistake and still tries to run the shortcut, I put in an error check for the chosen-app variable.

Saving the note to different apps

This is why adding Shortcuts actions is so important for developers to do. It allows them to plug and play with tools that users create for themselves. And I guarantee you, it’s those custom tools that stick.

In each case, an ‘If’ action checks the chosen-app variable, and if it matches, it will line up the corresponding actions for that app.

4️⃣ For Bear, its ‘Create Bear Note’ action is all that’s needed. But it opens the note automatically, so we don’t get the opportunity to decline that.

5️⃣ For the text file, I used a ‘Set Name’ action on the output from a ‘Text’ action to turn it into a file. Then, that file is saved to the Files app, and the user is given the option to open it with their default text editor. In my case, it opens in iA Writer.

6️⃣ For Things, you create the to-do — this time using the optional-title variable as its title and the dictated text as its note — and, again, use ‘Show Alert’ to give the option to open the task up in the app.

Final check for error

If you accidentally remove all supported apps or select an unsupported one, the shortcut has you covered. It displays a clear error message with step-by-step instructions for resolving the issue. Plus, it automatically opens the Shortcuts app, so you can fix it right away without hunting around.

7️⃣ If the chosen-app variable doesn’t match any of the apps in my pre-built ‘If’ blocks, it will show a final error message with instructions on how to fix the issue:

Please edit the Shortcut to use one of the supported apps. It will open automatically when you press “OK”

Edit this shortcut → “i” info button → Setup → Customize Shortcut…

8️⃣ And, yes, I also set it to open Shortcuts up to this very shortcut so that the user can fix it right away.

So, yeah. I’ve been using this shortcut as my default automation assigned to my Action Button for nearly a month now. It’s simple, reliable, and customizable — making it my go-to tool for capturing inspiration anywhere. I’ve started relying on it so much day-to-day (not just while hiking and driving) that I removed some conditionals from my overall Action Button shortcut so that it will just let me dictate things in more cases.²

Whisper Memos

Perhaps you’ve heard about Whisper Memos, an app that David Sparks of Mac Power Users and MacSparky has evangelized for many months now. It provides a very similar solution to this problem in that it, too, records, transcribes, and saves text. And, by using OpenAI’s powerful models, its transcription clean-up and accuracy are unmatched.

I’ve tested it a little bit on its free trial, and I’m quite impressed. It works better than my shortcut on the Apple Watch (shortcuts still don’t run very well there). And because you can set it up to send the transcriptions to an email address, I can get all of them into my beloved Drafts using the secret Mail Drop email address that Drafts provides. But there are some downsides to it, too.

Because Whisper Memos has to route all its recordings through OpenAI’s servers, it’s necessarily slower. Transcriptions take a few minutes at least to get back into the app. Furthermore, its transcriptions are locked within the Whisper Memos app unless you set up a Zapier automation or that email address.

Let’s break down those differences:

‘Dictate a Note’ Shortcut:

• Free to use
• Works offline, directly on your device
• Fully customizable

Whisper Memos:

• $40/year subscription
• Requires an internet connection
• Superior transcription accuracy with AI (slower processing)

While Whisper Memos excels in long-form transcription accuracy, ‘Dictate a Note’ is faster, more private, and entirely offline — making it my go-to for quick captures.

Get the ‘Dictate a Note’ shortcut →

Shortcuts Tips

Yesterday, James (of James’ Coffee Blog) announced his newest web project, Artemis. He billed it as “a calm web reader” that he uses “to follow my favourite blogs and websites” with three main design goals:

1. I want Artemis to be part of a web exploration journey, so every web link takes you to the author’s websites.
2. I want the interface to make me feel calm, not overwhelmed like other readers.
3. I want the tool to be slow so I don’t feel compelled to check it regularly.

He delivers on all three fronts!

When he wrote an earlier blog post talking through its design and purpose, he said two things that resonated with me:

I wanted the reader to be the interface through which I found blogs that I could then open elsewhere. This drastically limited the scope of the project. Rather than having to design panels for how to show blogs, I decided I would read them on everyone’s personal websites. Indeed, I love going to people’s websites to see what’s new. A reader could encourage this by directly linking to websites.

and

The reader updates once per day: every day in the early morning. So, when I wake up, I have my morning paper.

So, when James opened up a beta to the public yesterday, I jumped at the opportunity to try it out. I tinkered around with it this evening, adding 14 authors to my account and hoping back and forth through all the things they published in the past few days.

In his invitation email, James asked for feedback and for me to share the project with others. I thought I’d feed two birds with one scone. Here’s the feedback email that I sent to James tonight:

If this project sounds of interest to you, I encourage you to give it a try! You can sign up here and use the invite code coffee to get into the beta. (James permitted me to share it. 🙂)

Reviews Apps

It’s at heydingus.net/sales.

There’s only one thing on it right now, the Keychron K3 Ultra-Slim keyboard that I replaced with my “new” Magic Keyboard, but I intend to list more stuff there over time.

It’s most likely to be populated by gadgets, but I might throw some outdoor gear or other knickknacks there that I’m looking to find a new home for.

As I mention at the top of that page, I take good care of my stuff, and I’ll do my best to price things fairly. I’ll ship for free anywhere in the continental U.S. These things will likely also be for sale via Facebook Marketplace, eBay, and/or OfferUp¹, so act fast (email me) if you see something you like. I just think there might be a higher concentration of people with my interests and tastes right here and, therefore, more likely to find a happy buyer.

I’ll (probably) write a blog post as each new item goes up, and I’ll (definitely) post to my microblog about them. Keep an eye out!

For Sale