Twin boys. Toddler daughter. Hospital Tech Support. Writer. Runner. Gamer. Creating in public again.*

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Apple

Apple Event

The iPhone event just ended. They announced several new products:

iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro now have built in Apple Intelligence, and on the side of the phone there’s a Camera Control button, giving your phone a real camera shutter.

Apple Watch Series 10 is now thinner with a bigger screen, and can now play music straight from your wrist (a feature I’ve been waiting for since the watch first launched). And for health, it now has sleep apnea detection.

AirPods 4 have a new design that brings features over from the Pro models, like Transparency Mode and Noise Cancellation.

iPhone 16

Do you know the release date for the iPhone 16?

The iPhone 16 will be announced September 9th. I expect preorders to be on the 13th, with the release date being the following week, on the 20th. Here’s what we know about the 16 and the 16 Pro so far.

How to Setup A Mac

Appearance

For wallpapers, I download Unsplash Wallpapers. This gives me beautiful wallpapers that rotate each day. When I come across one I really like, I usually set it aside for the newsletter, for those weeks when I don’t have a personal photo to share.

Dock

For the Dock, there’s a few settings that I change immediately. The first thing I do is remove almost all the apps from the Dock. All but the few that I use daily.

Next, I right click on the dock and go into Dock settings. In there I change a few things:

  • Turn on “Minimize windows into application icon”
  • Turn off “Show indicators for open applications”
  • Turn off “Show suggested and recent apps in Dock”

Dark/Light

For Dark and Light Mode, I have two shortcuts that help me instantly switch when needed:

Inside of the Shortcuts app, I add those two shortcuts to the dock, but then remove them from the dock right after. This makes them searchable without being visible.

Now, I either type Cmd+Space Dark or Cmd+Space Light and then press enter, and the Mac now goes light or dark. There might even be an easier way to do this, but this is what works for me.

Heavyweights

The heavyweights are the two apps I use every day: Ulysses is my writing app, and Things 3 is my task manager. I’ve been using these the two apps for so many years now, and I couldn’t imagine using anything else when trying to tackle big projects.

Foundational

As far as native apps, there’s only a handful that I use. Safari, Apple Notes, Photos, Finder, Freeform, Weather, and GarageBand.

In Safari, there’s two apps that I use. PiPifier and Downie. PiPifier allows me to open have a video playing in the bottom corner of the screen at all times. Downie allows me to quickly download a YouTube video.

There’s also a few apps that I download right away to make the Mac easier to use:

BetterSnapTool lets me drag an app to the top of the screen and that causes the app to snap into the very center of the screen, with a clean space on all side. This keeps all the apps in a uniformed clean look.

Alfred 5 is my favorite way to search the Mac. I replace the built-in Spotlight feature with Alfred, making it so cmd+space opens up Alfred to search. Spotlight is probably good enough for most people, but I like how clean I can get Alfred to look.

Bartender hides all the apps in the menu bar, putting them behind a little arrow. This gives the top of the screen a much cleaner look.

And last, Unnatural Scroll Wheel is one I found, if you use both a trackpad and a mouse, it helps scroll the right way.

WWDC (2022)

Normally, the only thing I’d be thinking about today would be WWDC (Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference). Each year, around this time, Apple gets on stage to give us an updated peak into their world. Usually I’d be watching the clock, waiting for the show to start. It’s a fun feeling knowing that I forgot about it until an hour ago. I’ll definitely be tuned in though. I expect big things with iPadOS and iOS.