Guides
- I always resize with just my left hand
- I’ve made a “grid” that uses Hyperkey (Caps Lock) + a letter:
W
andE
is Top Left Quarter and Top Right QuarterA
is Left Half,S
is Maximise/Fill, andD
is Right HalfZ
andX
is Bottom Left Quarter and Bottom Right Quarter
- Pretty fiddly – you can’t even paste text, as it will think you’re trying to set
Command + V
as the hotkey - Doesn’t get backed up – you have to do it again if you reinstall macOS (Pro tip: Take a screenshot to “back up”!)
- Only works on menu bar items
- Works without third-party software
- Will change the displayed hotkey in the menu bar – making it easier to remember
- Many of the apps are one-time purchases (but often not with unlimited updates), so it’s difficult to compare with a single subscription.
- Many of the apps I use, I wouldn’t pay for if it weren’t included in Setapp. I’d either use a free/cheaper alternative, or just not use something like that at all.
- The left one is a specific one for working with subtitles. It splits the selected line into two, down the middle.
- This wraps text in
<figcaption>
, and is used for blog posts. - This wraps the text in a “callout div”, that I use to create callouts like the one about the affiliate link up top.
- If I want to format text in image captions or callouts, I have to use HTML. This creates an HTML hyperlink,
- this is italics,
<em>
- and this is bold.
<strong>
- The pen is some custom stuff for my band’s website.
- The Last One Will Title Case the Selected Text.
- ProMotion display (high/variable refresh-rate)
- Always-On display
- Added Telephoto camera
- Night mode portraits
- Support for Apple ProRAW
- Faster USB-C speeds
- Aluminium → Titanium (With increase weight as well, though.)
- LiDAR Scanner
- Camera Control button added
- Support for Dolby Vision video
- Latest generation Photographic Styles
- Anti-reflective lens coating
- Improved glass
- Faster MagSafe charging
- Lower minimum brightness
- A bit longer battery life
- Larger screen size, from 6.1" to 6.3" / /6.7" to 6.9" (A negative in my book, but not in most’s, I assume.)
- Upgraded chip, from A17 Pro to 18 Pro (Doesn’t seem like the largest bump.)
- Improved thermals
- New ultra-wide camera (Seems substantial!)
- The non-Max also gets last year’s 5x tele lens
- Improved microphones
- Upgraded chip, from A16 to A18 (All-new architecture – more substantial upgrade.)
- More RAM, from 6 GB to 8 GB.
- Support for Apple Intelligence (Due to the last two things mentioned.)
- Added Action button
- New ultra-wide camera (With support for Macro photography – but not as large an upgrade as on the Pro.)
- Support for spatial video
- Thread radio
- 1 whole gram lower weight (🤓)
- In my apartment, I have some light switches that are in idiotically placed. I also have several lights I wish had more than one switch. So the fact that I can easily place switches wherever I want, by just sticking a little button to the wall (or whatever), is very nice. And so is the fact that it’s trivial to have one switch control several lights, or have several switches controlling one light.
- I want nothing to only be controllable by my phone. But I do think it’s nice that I can use it to control my lights — even when I’m not home. I also like that I can create automations, like turning off the lights when I leave.
- I really, really like to vary the colour temperature of my lights throughout the day.
Monitor Resolution Guide for macOS
My Setup for the M4 Mini as a Secondary Mac
NAS, Media Server, and Light Gaming
I spent the weekend setting up my little new Mac – and I have to say: it went pretty smoothly! Here’s what I did, and how you can do it yourself if you like.
The hardware
As Apple’s upgrade prices are certified insane, I went for the absolute base model. I did briefly consider getting 10 gig Ethernet – but I had to change too much about my setup to get any benefits from it. And I don’t really need that fast a connection for my use case.
16 GB of ram is enough for me, but the built-in 256 GB of storage is obviously too little. But as it’s a stationary machine, getting external storage works great.
Some drives will use regular USB speeds (for instance USB 3.2 Gen 2). These are cheaper – but if you go for USB 4 or Thunderbolt 3+ you will get about three times the speed. If you, like me, want to run programs (like games) straight from the disk, you’ll probably want the latter.
Homebrew – For Noobs (Like Me)
I do not know what I’m doing when it comes to the terminal on my Mac. But one use-case, I really like, is Homebrew. So I wanted to explain what it is, and how to use it, to other newbies!
How to install it
I get that I haven’t told you why yet, but to install it, you just copy this into your terminal: $1
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
Then you just follow the quick guide. (I think you only have to copy and paste one set of commands.) For Mac, you can also go here to download the latest .pkg file.
It’s a “package manager”
And this just means that you use it to install, uninstall, and update other apps. These can both be command-line software (called formulae in Homebrew parlance) or what most would recognise as regular apps (called casks).
And here’s how you use it:
Installing something is as easy as typing brew install firefox
. That’s it! No going to a website, no downloading of installers, no dragging and dropping, no nothin'! And you uninstall by typing brew uninstall google-chrome
. Even though you’d be surprised by how many apps support installation through Homebrew, not every app does. Furthermore, every “app name” has to be only one word – so brew search chrome
will help you find out if the app you want is there, and how you should address it.
A Shortcut for Automatic Mac Dock Changes
How to Change macOS Keyboard Shortcuts for Window Management
Or Any Other Keyboard Shortcut, for That Matter (With Extra Added Fun for Multilingual Users)
This year, Apple decided to upgrade the default window management on macOS, from terrible to OK. However, I’ve heard some complaints about the keyboard shortcuts, as they use the Globe key, which can cause some problems if you want to automate the hotkeys somehow.
But I have good news: You can change these, and any* other, keyboard shortcuts!
16/10-24: Now updated to work with weird apps, like Discord!
Here’s (one way) how:
If you go into the System Settings app, hit Keyboard
and then the button Keyboard Shortcuts…
, you’ll open up a screen. In this, you can then hit App Shortcuts
to come here:
This screen is for changing the keyboard shortcuts to the items in your menu bar (or adding to those who don’t have one already), like those shown in this image:
You can either add them only to specific apps (like you can see I’ve done), or to All Applications – and when we’re dealing with this window management, we need to do the latter.
Hitting +
gives us this screen:
When writing the menu title, you have to be very specific. Here’s what it could look like: Format->Bulleted List
The spelling and capitalisation has to be exact – and you need to separate levels with a -
and >
and no spaces.
Here’s what it looks like if I want to set a hotkey for tiling a window top left:
Window->Move & Resize->Top Left
As the option sits two levels deep, I have to add a bit more – but it works!
Yes, the hotkey is Shift + Ctrl + Optn + Cmd + E
, heh. But I use Karabiner-Elements to set up Caps Lock as all of those keys at once.1 Doing that creates a separate modifier, not used by any apps. A word for this, is Hyperkey, and it’s sometimes denoted by this symbol: ✦
The easiest way to set it up is probably with this little utility by Ryan Hanson, and I greatly recommend doing it.
I go more into how I manage windows here – but this is the short version:
The grid isn’t perfect, as I couldn’t set Hyper + Q
as a hotkey, and I like to keep Hyper + C
as OCR Copy. But I still really recommend this setup! For the rare cases I need something else, I use Lasso (launced with Hyper + Space
).
Cons of the System Settings method:
Pros of the System Settings method:
An alternative: Keyboard Maestro
The Apps I Use From Setapp
And Why I Think It’s Great Value
Setapp — which apps do you use? Many, us pay for SetApp yet don’t get all the value because we don’t know the full extent of all the shiny toys. This was last asked 4 yrs ago, so it feels relevant againWhat the hidden gems have I missed?
A while ago, someone, on the MPU Forums, asked the question above. And here’s my answer to this question.
I also got around to writing this, as many of My App Defaults are from Setapp, and because I recently read about the Setapp iOS store in the EU (which Norway, sadly, isn’t a part of).
I hope this post can be useful if you’re considering the service, and wonder if it’s worth it, or if you’re new to the service and would like some tips to get started. If you want to give it a try, I’d appreciate you doing so through my affiliate link to Setapp 🖇️. 🫶🏻
I’ve sorted them into the following categories:
I also have a couple of honorable mentions, that are (or seem like) good apps, but that I, personally, don’t use that much.
I’ve added the price outside Setapp as well.1 Setapp is €10-15/month, or €100-150/year. However, some things to keep in mind:
I still find it to be great value – and I like that I can use nice, paid apps like explained in the second point.
Always-running utilities
These are apps I have running in the background all the time.
Bartender (€21)
The grandad of menu bar organisation. Ice is an interesting free alternative, but I’m still pleased with Bartender – especially as I can have it automatically change layout when I connect my Studio Display.
BetterTouchTool (€22)
I mostly use this to set up trackpad shortcuts – which it does amazingly. But it can do much more as well.
Cleanshot X (€26)
Terrific tool for screenshots, annotations, and screen recordings. An alternative for the latter, called IShowU (€80 or €22/year) also just dropped on Setapp.
Default Folder X (€47)
This app powers up the open and save dialogues on your Mac – with things like recent folders and the ability to click on folders you have open in the background to save there.
Hookmark (€63)
This is an app for creating deep links between different documents and parts of apps (like specific emails).
iStat Menus (€13)
Recently updated, with a beautiful coat of paint, this highly customisable app lets you place what you want in the menu bar. I have RAM and CPU usage, and a weather widget.
Mission Control Plus (€10)
I only use this to allow me to close windows from Exposé. Worth it!
Paste (€27/year)
My favourite clipboard manager. Both pretty and powerful.
PixelSnap (€35)
Used for measuring things or your screen. I think xScope might be a more powerful version of this.
PopClip (€23)
App that mimics the menu you get when you select text on iOS – but you fill it with what you want. I’ve turned off mine coming up automatically, but I get this with a hotkey:
From the left:
New defaults
These are tools that do the same thing as built-in tools, but a bit nicer/and more in a more powerful way.
Archiver (€20)
Just a nice zip/unzip tool. The Unarchiver (free) is more or less just as nice!
Elmedia Player (€25)
And this is just a nice video player. But here Iina (free) is also just as nice.
BusyCal (€45)
It lacks some of the most powerful Fantastical features – but I also prefer some things about BusyCal. And seeing as it’s so much cheaper, this is a great alternative if you want something more powerful than Calendar.app, but don’t want to pay €60/year. It also has a nice menu bar widget (as seen in the screenshot above).
Nitro PDF Pro (€200 or €17/month)
I’ve no idea why this is so expensive! I guess it offers features some businesses just got to have. 🤷🏻♂️ But for me, it’s just a nice PDF reader/editor.
Useful tools
My Take-Away From the iPhone Event: This isn't a "Pro year"
A friend of mine had to buy a new iPhone a couple of months ago – and I liked his phrasing while asking me for advice: Is this a “Pro year”? Now, to some, the things you always get with a Pro phone are so important that every year is a Pro year. But I’m discussing how much you get for your money with the upgrade – because this will vary from year to year.
To be clear: I don't think most people should buy new phones more often than every 3-5 years. But as that interval will hit many people every year, it's still always valuable to analyse this year's phones.
However, I'll be holding on to my precious 13 Mini for at least another year! 💪🏻
So, while we haven’t seen any reviews of this year’s models, to me, it seems like last year was a “Pro year”, while this year isn’t. Let’s find out why.
These are things that are the same – things you’d get for the upgrade last year, and still get this one:
Both from 15 to 15 Pro and from 16 to 16 Pro:
Going from 16 to 16 Pro
In addition, the aforementioned stuff, this year you also get:
Summarised – This Year's iPhone Changes
While working on a different blog post, I made a list of changes to the different iPhone models. Instead of just scrapping it, I thought I’d post it here.
Improvements across the line(s)
iPhone 15 Pro → 16 Pro
iPhone 15 → Iphone 16
Anything I missed? Feel free to let me know!
My recommendation is that it seems like the iPhone 16 (regular model) is the best buy at the moment. And that the €100 higher price compared to buying last year’s iPhone 15 is well worth it. (Where a used 15 Pro fits in the calculation, is a more complicated question!)
The Beauty of Third-Party Services
and Open Protocols and Standards
I’m very much what you’d might call a software snob. Not only do I care about unnecessary things like how an app looks – I also care about how it feels. I’d also say that apps are an interest/hobby of mine, and I love testing new things. So I love open and portable stuff, so that I’m always able to use the software I prefer. Allow me to explain, with four examples: RSS, Email, Browsers, and Markdown.
RSS
My current RSS reader of choice, is Lire. It doesn’t look and feel quite as nice as Reeder and Unread, but it is still good in this regard. However, I love that I can customise the look, that it caches truncated RSS feeds, and that I can (on a feed-by-feed basis) load an inline web browser. This makes it possible to read blogs with their original design, which I think is neat.
However, my feeds don’t live in one client. They’re synced with Feedbin. This makes it trivial to move between clients, and I can even use several in parallell, as things like sorting and read status instantly sync between them. Maybe I prefer Lire on mobile and Unread on Mac, for instance?
Portability is an important principle here. And if I want to move from Feedbin to Inoreader, for instance, I can easily export my feed subscriptions as an OPML file, which I can then import into Inoreader.
So I’m not locked in anywhere, and I can use the client I prefer everywhere. This reality is what I wish I could have for music streaming as well, as I’ve touched on here. It also shows why I want less bundling and integration.
Notes on cross-platform-ness
My best friend, and fellow nerd, has always been adamant in using cross-platform tools – the reason being that he can be flexible in terms of which hardware he uses. He can easily switch between Windows, Mac, iPhone, Android, etc. However, this doesn't gel well with my software snobbery, as most of the best apps (in my opinion) simply aren't cross-platform. I have the same issue with web apps – I love their flexibility and portability, but I don't love using them. So the approach laid out in this post, is my approach to the same idea. But yes, it would be even more robust if I only used web based and cross-platform tools.Now, as opposed to with RSS, there’s not many good email clients… But the same principles apply!
I host my email with Fastmail 🖇️, and I’m very pleased with it.1 But if I still want to switch later, I don’t use an @fastmail.com address. Instead, I use my own domain, hosted on Hover 🖇️ – so I don’t have to change address if I change hosting. I can also change where I have my domain without having to change anything regarding my email.
Now, I don’t like the default Fastmail client – but email being email, I can use a client I dislike less instead!
Browser
✉️ Learn from my mistakes: Buy Larger Shoes
I love getting email etc. from readers (hint, hint), and recently, I got an email regarding an older blog post about a great pair of sneakers from Crown Northampton.
In the original blog post, I said I first bought them too small — but it took me a year to realise it. I bit the bullet, and bought another pair (of the quite expensive shoes), and I hope that’s a testament to how much I like them.
Here’s the email I got:
Hello there!
I just got these babies. I do have a question for you. I know you’ve said that it took you a year to admit they were too small. I think, I’m having the same problem. They’re a bit tight on the toe box.
I just tried to go for a walk (first wear since I received them), and I already have blisters on my ankles.
Should I re-send them to get the wider option? I just don’t feel like paying $160 to send them back and wait another 4 weeks.
My dilemma is whether I should be patient and try breaking them in a little more instead of getting the wider option. What would be your advice? I’m disappointed that a shoe this expensive is not as comfortable out of the box.
I look forward to your reply!
Best,
Luis 1
And here’s my first reply:
🌱 Coffee: Max Good, Min Effort
My Coffee Setup
My wife and I love coffee — and we drink a lot of it. So we want it to be good, while still not being too much of a hassle to make every day. And this post is me highlighting the equipment we use, and the process.
If you only want one-ish cup (and why I don’t like capsule machines)
When I say that we drink a lot of coffee, I mean that we drink coffee made of 0.75-1 litres of water/45-60 grams of beans. So it’s pretty obvious why something like a Nespresso capsule machine isn’t a viable option.
But other reasons I don’t like it, is that the coffee tastes much, much worse than alternatives, it can get expensive, and how much waste it creates. (For some info on environmental impact, check this video and this video.) In my book, capsules are Min Good, Min Effort.
I think capsule machines can be a viable option if you personally don’t drink coffee, but you want to have something to serve guests now and then (and you have room in your kitchen). But if you only want about one or two great cups of coffee for yourself, I’d either go for the quite quick AeroPress, or a more ritualistic pour-over, like a V60.
We sometimes make a pour-over — but most of the time, we use a (pretty) regular coffee-maker. 1 But they’re not all created equal.
What you need to make great coffee
0) Good water
I almost forgot this because in Norway, we are very lucky to have great water on tap. But depending on where you live, this might be an issue.
1) Coffee (duh)
🌱 Some Scripts for Native Tagging of Markdown Files
One thing I like about Markdown is the way the files are just plain-text files, that can be opened and read in different programs and contexts. As much as I can, I try not to lock down my content, or workflows, into specific apps. But I still want to use nice apps! So sometimes I have to jump through a few hoops to make things interoperate. I’ll go into more detail on my workflows later — but I thought I’d share some scripts I use in one piece of the puzzle.
First, here’s what they do:
What I want is to be able to tag things in the different programs I use, and then automatically apply native Finder/Files tags to the files themselves. If I want to make three tags called “Bass guitar”, “Music” and “Effect pedals”, I would write #Bass guitar# #Music #Effect pedals#
. (Notice how the multi-word ones also end with a #
.)
The scripts come in three different flavours:
An Introduction to Mad Max
I recently saw a film poster to Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga - so I thought I’d might watch Mad Max: Fury Road again. I think I remembered it being pretty good - but after rewatching it, I thought: “Uhm, I think this is the best film I’ve ever seen??"
So I’ve spent some time the last two weeks getting into the Mad Max Franchise. I’ve always known about it, but never really had a relationship to it. But now I’m a fan!
I’m not going into why Fury Road is so amazing here. Instead I’m going to give some pointers on how to get into the series.
Worth your time
There are many famous franchises out there - but most of them take a little lifetime to get into. There’s so much Star Wars/Trek, Game of Thrones or Marvel stuff out there. But Mad Max is much more manageable, and the high notes are so great, that it’s absolutely worth your time.
You can absolutely just watch Fury Road, without doing anything else before it. If you’re going that route, you can read this little footnote for a tiny bit of background. 👉🏻 1
I watched Fury Road blind, and then went back to the three old ones - but it could also be fun to simply watch them in chronological order!
Mini reviews of the first three
Game Changing CSS Trick (for Noobs Like Me)
OK, I just learned a brilliant CSS technique I wish I knew about much sooner! This is probably old news for most of you wizards out there - but maybe this little post can be useful for some fellow newbies?
This is one of my "Noob teaching noobs" posts. Some experts are excellent teachers - but not all. Hopefully, these posts can be helpful due to their layman nature, but please contact me if I'm misinforming!
Here are some examples of selectors I could see myself using:
h1 {}
-> Styling Header 1 (h1) elements.
h1:hover {}
-> Style when hovering h1.
h1::after {}
-> A pseudo-element (like a line) related to h1.
h1:hover::after {}
-> The pseudo-element when I hover over h1.
h1 a {}
-> A link (a) within an h1 element.
h1 a:hover {}
-> When I hover over one of those links.
.page-content h1:hover {}
-> When I hover an h1 that’s within .page-content.
Put into context, I could do:
🌱 Why Smart Bulbs > Smart Switches
I really like my smart light setup — and later I will write a guide on how I set it up. (I promise!) But in this post, I want to explain why I think smart light sources are a better option than smart switches (with regular light sources).
(Click here to go to the TL;DR!)
Some notes on costs
Smart lights ain’t cheap. And while I will argue that I don’t think going for smart switches is that much cheaper than smart light sources — my main focus is on what gives the best smart light experience. And then it’s up to each person to evaluate what feels “worth it”, or even possible, to them and their budgets.
I also think the experience is way better if you get the consistency of having (more or less) every light in your home be smart — so keep that in mind as well. I’m not arguing against those who say “Yeah, I only wanted these four lights to be smart, and then it was cheaper to go for a couple of smart switches”. What I am arguing against is those who say going for smart switches is better than smart light sources — and hopefully giving some valuable insights to those who haven’t decided yet.
Why smart lights at all, though?
To me, there are three main reasons (in no particular order):
The two approaches to smart lights
🌱 Some Quick Mastodon Client Reviews
One of my favourite things about Mastodon, is that, as opposed to most other social networks, the service is completely open for other developers to make their own clients. And this has lead to a remarkable ecosystem of third-party options.
Now the official ones, are pretty mediocre (especially the web app, IMO) — but I like this prioritisation. They could’ve sacrificed precious dev time to make their own clients great — but this would have to come at the expense of improving the core service. And the only thing we would gain, is “another great way to use Mastodon”.
“How good are the default apps?” is a far less important question than “How good are the best apps for Mastodon?”. Also, what’s a good app isn’t the same for everyone — so why on earth should there only be one client (like Instagram, Facebook and, now, X)?
If you’re new (or old) to Mastodon — don’t be afraid to test different clients! They can be used in complete parallel — so you could just download a bunch on your phone, and log into each of them with your username. And then you could just “main” one of them for a couple of days (turning on notifications on that one, for instance), and then move to another one.
But let’s get to the main point: Some quick reviews of some of my favourite clients!
A Very Good All-Round Game Controller, With One Major Flaw (for Me)
A quick review of the 8BitDo Ultimate Bluetooth Controller
I mostly play boring strategy 🖇️ games that are just as good to play with a trackpad as anything else.
But every so often, I’ll play something that’s best played with a controller. That’s usually on my Switch, where I’ve used the joy-cons with a charging grip — but that’s never been great. Also, my joy-cons have started to drift…
So I wanted to buy a single controller that could fit all my use-cases, and my choice fell on the 8BitDo Ultimate Bluetooth Controller 🖇️. And it’s a great controller, with many smart features. But did you know that a controller can support 2.4 GHz, Bluetooth, Switch, PC, Steam Deck, Android, iOS and iPadOS, but not support macOS?? Well, I didn’t.
A Way To Get a Fancy Link Hover Effect
Jarrod, of (the great blog) HeyDingus.net, wanted to do something about the way his links appear on his website. He asked:
Since the first design of my site, I’ve stuck with blue text for my hyperlinks because that always seemed canonical with the web. Links = blue text, blue underline. But I’ve grown less certain with its readability with all that blue text interspersed. I’m considering a change. What do y’all think?
One thing he didn’t mention there, is that he also has a nice hover effect, that changes the underline to a gradient (that matches his logo and more) on hover.
My first idea for how to solve it sacrificed the gradient — but that just wouldn’t do. But I think I found a pretty good solution in the end!
The solution and how to implement it
🌱 A Shortcut for lite-youtube-embed
YouTube embeds take up way too much on a site - so luckily someone has made lite-youtube-embed.
“Renders faster than a sneeze.”
Provide videos with a supercharged focus on visual performance. This custom element renders just like the real thing but approximately 224× faster.
First you have to include some CSS and JS on your site. 1 And then when you want to embed a video, you could just add this piece to your post/page:
<lite-youtube videoid="CItvhGl__Mk" playlabel="Play: Beatenberg - Wheelbarrow (Official Music Video)"></lite-youtube>
This will embed the video, but over 200x faster - nice!
However, you have to manually add the videoid
and the video title.
And they’ve also made a variant named “Pro-usage: load w/ JS deferred (aka progressive enhancement)”, which I think is even more optimised. But then you have to add all of this:
<lite-youtube videoid="CItvhGl__Mk" params="controls=0&rel=0&enablejsapi=1" style="background-image: url('https://i.ytimg.com/vi/CItvhGl__Mk/sddefault.jpg');">
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CItvhGl__Mk" class="lty-playbtn" title="Play Beatenberg - Wheelbarrow (Official Music Video)">
<span class="lyt-visually-hidden">Play Video: Beatenberg - Wheelbarrow (Official Music Video)</span>
</a>
</lite-youtube>
Chromium and Nested Backdrop-Filters
If you’re like me, you sometimes get these small (often technical) problems, that you work on for so long — and you refuse to surrender.
I had this with CSS a couple of months ago:
I had a menu, that had transparency and blur, and then I also had a submenu that I wanted to have the same. But the submenu just. wouldn’t. blur!
It works perfectly in Gecko and WebKit — but after countless hours, I found the problem: If an element has a backdrop-filter, Chromium won’t let its children have it as well. 1
I had to design around it, and moved on with my life.
A few moments later…
I recently moved to Micro.blog. And one day I was scrolling down my timeline…
Then I opened the submenu:
There it was — the same bug! I’m not alone!