The Question Siri Couldn’t Answer I was in a small town called Two Rivers with a friend, driving around, when we wondered out loud: what are the actual two rivers that give the town its name? I asked Siri, and she had no idea. It offered up Two Rivers bowling, Two Rivers pizza, and a […]
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Security Bits — 2 August 2026
Feedback & Followups Listener and community feedback, developments in recently covered stories, and developments in long-running stories we’re tracking over time. At least one TV maker is (belatedly) cracking down on residential proxies: LG to Ban Residential Proxies from Smart TV Apps — krebsonsecurity.com/… Another notable age-verification development: 🇺🇸 New York Rolls Out Final Rules […]
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Virtual ][ — an Apple ][ Emulator App for Modern Macs
Last week, I regaled you with tales of excitement running VisiCalc in a browser-based emulator for the Apple II. This was great fun. This week I was on the Clockwise podcast, and my question to the other participants was whether they enjoy dusting off super old technologies and playing with them. Jason Snell told us […]
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Why I Left Fantastical and Todoist for Structured
For years, my entire life ran on Fantastical for calendars and Todoist for tasks. Let me be clear up front: there’s nothing wrong with either app. They’re both excellent, and if they work for you, they’re a great direction to go. This isn’t a takedown. This is a story about outgrowing a system that was […]
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Renaming Scanned Files Using Numbers — George from Tulsa
George from Tulsa here to share a couple of Mac file management tips I use every day. In Allison’s honor, here’s the problem to be solved. There are now four of us in my work group. We download, create, and edit lots of files, then store them on a Synology NAS with zillions of others […]
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Audiobook Audio (V3) Part 6: Leave Headroom
Why headroom is a performance tool This part is about gain staging, which sounds like the dullest part of audiobook recording until the exact moment it matters: a line that suddenly gets louder than the rest. In a chapter I recorded recently, there was a scene where a policeman shouts at a crowd. Not a […]
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Tiny Excel Tip — Find Dependencies
Early one evening, Allister Jenks sent me a fun Excel question. Unfortunately, that was 10 PM the day before for me, as he’s in New Zealand. I was so intrigued by the question that I told him I’d work on it tomorrow. And as no surprise to anyone, it was the first thing I thought […]
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Macstock 2026: How the Cool Kids Really Use Spreadsheets
At Macstock X in Crystal Lake, Illinois, Allison took the stage to teach a 90-minute workshop titled “How the Cool Kids Use Spreadsheets.” Since people have different preferences in spreadsheet tools, she taught the concepts in Microsoft Excel, Apple Numbers, and Google Sheets. She taught how to fill down and right not just functions, but […]
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Tiny Tip: Using an iMac as an External Display with AirPlay
A while back I bought an M1 iMac and I have loved it. I’ve always been cautious of buying an all-in-one machine because of legacy concerns, but it was just such a lovely package that I got it. Roll forward to 2025, and I bought a Mac Studio, effectively making my iMac obsolete. But its […]
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Learning VisiCalc with Ken Case
Steve and Ken With Rainbow Shirts In my look back on Macstock X, I ended by saying that it’s the people that make this conference so special. One of my favorite people I got to hang out with this year was Ken Case, the CEO of the Omni Group, maker of OmniGraffle, OmniOutliner, and more. […]
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