I’ve got a Mac Mini and this is hooked up to a LG 27UL850-W and Dell S2421NX monitor. They’re both setup on my desk, with the LG as my main monitor and the Dell as a secondary monitor off to the side.
When using the desktop, I’ve always missed the ability to adjust the screen brightness easily within macOS using the keyboard, like you can on the MacBook and generally any Windows laptop.
I’d been looking at my email clients on the Mac for using with Hook. I like the ability to link any previous email, as it helps me link to emails I’ve received or sent within my Obsidian notebook, and to be honest, it’s paid off a number of times now where it was quicker to look for the specific email that I’d linked in my Obsidian notebook, rather than search for the email I needed.
One of the programs on macOS that I felt was missing on Windows was an alternative for Hazel. I spent ages looking around for an alternative, and the best I could find for a while was DropIt! The only issue with this is that DropIt is a bit more of a manual process in comparison to Hazel, as you have to drag and drop files into the program for them to be sorted1.
Microsoft are making use of their purchase of Github to host the source for their ongoing work in to Powertoys.
PowerToys is a collection of applications that perform a range of different tasks that users may need to undertake regularly. There’s an Image Resizer that hooks in to the right click menu, there’s fancy zones, which expands upon Windows snap, by adding zones to snap to.
However, the big draw for me is PowerToys Run.
Colours For Hue Getting Hue lights has meant that I need to control these. Generally, this works well using the Hue application and Siri (with HomeKit), though as I’ve got one in my office as well, it would be nice to control this from my Mac as well.
This is where Colours for Hue comes in. It’s a Mac app that sits in the menu bar and acts as a Hue light controller.
Keyboard and Mouse with the iPad So, I’ve been playing around with the keyboard and mouse for the iPad Pro after Apple brought out the support for it in iPad OS 13.4.
I’ve been using the Filco 2 Tenkeyless Convertible keyboard and a Logitech MX Master mouse and have been using it on and off over the past week or so.
The whole intention of this is to consider if it’s worth purchasing the £300 iPad Magic with a touchpad keyboard for the iPad.
Outlook for Mac One of the aspects that I thought would be good about working from home on the lockdown has come from being able to use my Mac. I’ve been able to use my Mac to do all things that I’d have to do on my Windows machine at work and it’s really given me a chance to see how the Mac would be able to perform my day to day job.
Inspire Writer I’d been tossing up about purchasing a subscription to Ulysses on the Mac or not this year. In the end, I did and I’ve been using it for the last couple of blog posts that I’ve written. However, I’m not always on the Mac - I’m often on Windows and I miss using it when I am using Windows.
I’d been looking around for ages to find something that replicated it.
iCaching - macOS Review I’ve been geocaching for a few years now and I’ve been using Geocaching Swiss Army Knife (GSAK) for the past year. It’s a handy program for keeping track of caches that I’ve found, as well as organising GPX files for import on to my Garmin or phone.
However, the program is Windows only. Which isn’t the end of the world, as I have a Windows machine, but I’ve also got a Mac and it tends to be my main machine for getting work done at home, so it’s often on.
Shush As Covid 19 spreads around the globe and countries go in to lockdown and work from home, I’ve had to do more and more meetings online.
When I’ve done online meetings in the past, I’ve had to do them either via conference call or via the conferencing setup at work, and therefore on Windows. They’ve generally worked OK.
However, as we’re all currently confined to working from home in the UK, I’ve been using my Mac.