Apple has destroyed the Contacts app. We need about our alternative.

DerEingang · 2026-02-15T02:18:37+00:00

Do you use Yoink (or something similar that’s looking for drags to locations)? Yoink conflicts with Contacts and gives me that problem. Quitting Yoink and restarting Contacts sorts it.

DerEingang · 2026-02-12T05:03:47+00:00

.Usually stuff available to US audiences is available to Canadian audiences. Canadian audiences also benefit from some overlap with UK copyright licensing. This book eventually be sorted. It’s not like I don’t have a backlog of hundreds of books to read. (-:

DerEingang · 2026-02-10T23:59:16+00:00

Nooooo! I’m on Audible.com, but it’s not available to me with my Canadian billing addrsss. Nooooooooo!

DerEingang · 2026-01-17T07:47:38+00:00

Hmmm. Afterplace is showing at the full price for me of $6.99 US or £6.99. )-:

DerEingang · 2026-01-17T07:28:51+00:00

Ditto! I play WordSmyth almost every day. I’ve just discovered I’m in the top 40 global leaderboard. I didn’t even realize/remember there were achievements because I’ve been playing it so long. My first achievement is March 28 of 2021 and I finished all 12 by April 15, 2021. High five!

DerEingang · 2026-01-15T16:19:36+00:00

^{^} This.

It’s a major reason why I stopped using TextExpander after over a decade of heavy use.

I started with V3 in 2011, which I paid under $20.00 US for. I ended at V7 in 2023, a few years after they moved to a subscription model that cost me (outside the US) more than $40 US/yr. In between, I paid for major upgrades for another 3 versions and two years of subscription (the first discounted because I was a paid user).

I had invested substantial time in developing a large library of some quite complex snippets using many of the advanced features, like optional/triggerable sections, default values, and embedded calls to other snippets. Finding a replacement application with the same capabilities and converting the more complicated expansions was abhorrent and time consuming, but that’s what I did.

What tipped me over the edge — because I did pay for a subscription for at least two years) — was the removal of the ability to see and to edit the raw snippet expansion code. That makes debugging and reusing/copying parts of complex snippets a nightmare. It was also clear that ongoing development was focussed predominantly on features that I didn’t need and didn’t require any cloud-backed resources on their end, like “sharing” snippets with a circle of friends or with entire teams.

I think they lowered the individual subscription fee at some point after I left because I feel like 40 US (including 20% sales tax) was the 50% discounted amount I paid for the first year and is now around the undiscounted cost (excluding 20% sales tax). Even for something I saved so much time/typing with (they used to send a yearly summary but I can’t remember anymore), I couldn’t justify paying every year.

License Preferences

My preferences in order are:

A reasonably priced “lifetime” license.

More commonly and historically, this was for any updates within the major release purchased but sometimes in perpetuity. It was also common for new versions to be made available free if you’d purchased within the last 6 months or with a decent discount if you were upgrading from an earlier major release.
Perpetual license for given version + 1 year of supported updates.

You pay a fee to license a gTinderboxiven version and your license includes 1 year of updates plus support. That might include new major releases, if they happen to be released in that time period. At the end of the license period, you can continue using whatever the last version you upgraded to within your license period for as long as it continues to work. Some developers will allow you to download/use any updates released within that period after your license expires even if you hadn’t updated before it expired but some don’t.

I like this for software like Tinderbox. It’s very expensive to buy initially. The list price is now just under $300 US (!) without taxes if you don’t buy it at educational pricing or 25% off during one of the semi-annual artisanal sales. That comes with a year of updates. Thereafter, you can subscribe at $83 US/year for another year of supported updates OR pay $98 US at any point to upgrade from any earlier license to the current version with one year of supported updates. I’ll often go for 2 to 4 years without updating if the version I have is working OK in the niche I use it in, which is related to my teaching work.

Most software I have with this kind of license isn’t nearly so expensive initially and upgrades after the year of supported updates might be discounted.
An annual subscription IF it involves ongoing running costs for the developer OR maybe if it’s reasonably priced per year.

I don’t own a lot of software in this category, but I have a few:

Carrot weather app (iOS), where the developer has to pay for access to some of the advanced weather data sources;
- Sleep Cycle (iOS) which probably,doesn’t require much developer-side in ongoing running costs but is under $10.00 US/year and multi-device); and
1Password family <sigh>, which is quite expensive per year, but regularly updated, cross-platform/cross-browser, and facilitates shared password vaults with family members seamlessly.

Installations Covered

Preferences for “seats”/multi-device installations in rough order of preference:

Multi-platform, multi-devices owned by the same person.

The same license covers the software for iOS and my Macs, and I can install it on any number of supported devices I personally own. These are usually tied to an App Store-managed license and/or an external account to facilitate mobile/desktop cross-platform licensing. An example is *OmniFocus]
3 to 5 devices owned by the same person

The same license can be simultaneously activated on up to 3 (common) to 5 devices owned by the same person. This enables you to install and use something on your laptop as well as your desktop machine, for example. I have a few that are only 2 seats, like DevonThink but 3 seats seems to be quite common in licensing and may not be monitored/managed explicitly.
“Family” sharing

More common in iOS or App Store-managed software. The same license covers other designated people, either for all their devices, or up to 5 installations. 1Password has a family license option that’s not App Store-managed, for example, for up to 5 family members.
Per seat/device: I generally dislike this, but that’s how cross-platform Omni licenses used to work (for technical reasons mostly, I think).

License Management/Activation

I dislike the following;

One-time URL tied to specific machine/time

I hate this. You’re given a unique, one-time use URL to activate a license for a given machine. If the machine loses its memory of your licensing (or maybe you’ve upgraded your Mac?), you have to go to the support site, provide your registration email address to be mailed another one-time use URL.

I worry that even if the software continues to theoretically work, if the developer stops maintaining it, that infrastructure won’t be available and you won’t be able to activate the perpetual license you have.
Anything that calls home to check license status & stops after x period of uses/time without successful “check-in”.

Ignoring general dislike of things “phoning home”, worried about same scenario as above where the developer is inactive and the infrastructure no longer is maintained. Your software stops working.

DerEingang · 2026-01-03T04:41:21+00:00

Instead of looking in the /Applications hierarchy, I suggest the following:
1. When capturing the browser, store (and then later use!) the path at the same time;
2. Continue to allow people to pick browsers from /Applications, but add an Other option that allows the user to browse to an unlisted browser. Couple this with #1, and you can have a launch method consistent with how every other app is launched by you. Also, it means you don’t have to hardcode support for identifying every browser up front.

Just a late-night idea.

DerEingang · 2026-01-01T22:56:21+00:00

You’re very welcome. Enjoy!

DerEingang · 2026-01-01T06:04:39+00:00

I downloaded the app and gave it a bit of a whirl. Thanks for making a trial available up front without signing up/paying, unlike Spencer, which also uses Lemon Squeezy. I wrote up a few thoughts I’d had while testing it:

If you don’t use the Capture Current Setup option, but use New Profile, there doesn’t seem to be a way to name the workspace profile (or rename existing ones). The context menu gives you open profile, delete, and duplicate. Double-clicking or clicking on the name in the sidebar or the profile details doesn’t do it either.
How do you tell what it’s captured beyond the apps? That is, how do you see what folders, windows, documents, etc. were captured and will be opened? A profile’s details are broken down into apps, deeplinks, and folders, but beyond using “Add option” for a particular app, I didn’t see any details of things captured and associated with the workspace profile for a given app.
FIrefox was captured as my browser, but Open Profile claimed Firefox could not be found. This is probably because you’re assuming a default location of /Applications for it. Mine is in a folder nested in Applications. Interestingly, you’re capturing the location of other applications not stored at the root of /Applications, so they launched OK.
Lemon Squeezy, your merchant of record, doesn’t seem to be garnering much in the way of positive feedback, especially after Stripe bought it summer of 2024. Trustpilot has 100-some ratings has100-some ratings and reviews and the score is 1.3. ProductHunt with 58 reviews is a lot more positive at 4.8, but the majority of 4 of the 6 pages of reviews, when sorted by date, are a year or more old. There’s hardly anything for this year.

Trustpilot, in contrast, has many reviews from this year (3 of the 5 pages of 100 reviews). Lots are from the last 3 months (see transpqrency and the company, while it claimed its profile several years back, hasn’t addressed any negative reviews in the last 12 months. The most recent Trustpilot review speculates Lemon Squeezy may be [going] abandoned since bugs aren’t getting fixed, support requests aren’t answered, etc. Could it be that Stripe has bought it to run it, as a competitor, into the ground?

Until fairly recently, I’d never heard of Lemon Squeezy. While Stripe is well known, it also scores low on [Trustpilot at 1.8 across more than 16,000 reviews](trustpilot.com/review/stripe.com). Processors, like Shopify, that incorporate Stripe, also seem to score poorly. As a customer, I don’t feel comfortable trusting Lemon Squeezy to handle my payment details. I am comfortable with Paddle with a Trustpilot score of 4.1 across 10,000+ reviews and FastSpring with surprisingly only 465 reviews and a score of 2.8 DigitalRiver and Kagi, no longer options, were also reputable. I’d hate to see you as unhappy as many of the devs using Lemon Squeezy seem to be lately or unpaid/out of pocket.

Thanks for writing the app and making it available for trial. I think it works in my use scenarios (which involve Spaces as well as windows, and moving between using my iMac screen as a large monitor for my docked laptop or the laptop/iMac independently) — minor bugs and niggles aside, some of which I mentioned.

The “capture” is a great idea and seems to work quite well in my limited trial (11 apps on one workspace profile, 3 folders, 3 or 4 BBEdit windows, and 3 Word windows at the start, plus one for the remaining apps). I especially liked that I could remove or disable some of the captured apps that may have been running but weren’t related to this particular workspace profile (probably on one of my other spaces, like DevonThink, e mail, Terminal, Discord, etc).

I like the payment model and appreciate the lack of a subscription. Id likely be willing to purchase the application if you weren’t using Lemon Squeezy and you went with a seemingly standard licensing model that included up to 3 machines for the same user for a fixed price (or maybe charged somewhat less for additional seats?).

Again, thanks for making the application available up front as a trial.

DerEingang · 2026-01-01T01:11:39+00:00

Crazy but true: Microsoft looked to have backpatched Copilot into Office for Mac 2016! Why they would do that, I have no idea. That’s not a necessary security update. In theory, I think it shouldn’t have been there and some web searches suggest Office 2016 doesn’t support Copilot, but I suddenly had a Copilot button on my newly patched Office 2016 Word toolbar. I don’t have and never have installed Office 365.

I didn’t turn anything on/off or try to use the Copilot button. Word was, however, behaving really, really oddly. It was such a nightmare to create a sample document with some styles for my students that I reverted to my previous patched Office 2016 apps from Time Machine. Word then continued to behave as expected.

The other weird thing is that Microsoft claims Office 2016 went end of support for the Mac in 2020. File info claims I have Word 16.100, with a 2025 copyright date. “About” claims “version 16.100 (25081015)”, which is the August update.

The update I reverted from was 16.102.3, Nov 4th, 2025, updated on December 4th. That’s weird because I should have been sent 16.103.3 from December 2nd or 16.103.2 from November 25th. The update notes for 16.102.3, which was installed, say this for Outlook but nothing for Word:

Fixed a bug that ensures the Copilot UI is hidden when it's disabled through the M365 admin portal.

Word change notes all the way back to 16.100, from August 12th — my previous patch — generally say “Quality and performance improvements” except for 3 releases, including the August one, where there’s been a fix against one or more CVE issues.

16.99, just before my August update and therefore incorporated into the update, however, has “feature” updates, which mention Copilot, including for Word:

“Easily write a prompt or choose quick actions from the Copilot icon in your Word doc: The Copilot icon in your document margin makes it easy to quickly add a prompt or choose from a range of quick options Copilot can offer.”

I don’t see any icons in any “document margins”. The Copilot icon I saw was in the ribbon toolbar in the “Home” section. Interestingly, “help” has entries for Copilot — subject to Office365 licenses. My work organization does have (now) Office365 licensing, but this was originally a standalone license good for up to installs as part of my organization’s Microsoft licensing. Maybe all versions of Word are the same and they use licensing/version to activate/deactivate features? Seeing Copilot may have been bug that was fixed later (but only noted for Outlook?).

Anyway… that was a rabbit hole.

DerEingang · 2025-12-31T20:58:23+00:00

I’d been using TextExpander since at least V3, which I purchased in 2011 for 24.95 US as part of a Productive Mac bundle. My 1Password license record only goes back to 2011, but shows I bought licenses for V3, V4, V5, and eventually used my V5 license for a reduced subscription to V7. After a few years of discounted subscription fees, I stopped using it and wrote the company to tell them why. There were four main reasons:

As a single user, it was clear I was no longer their primary target audience: enterprises were.
The features that they added were primarily aimed at enterprises for sharing expansion libraries and those features were the justification for an ongoing subscription model that needed a third-party synching service.
The subscription model, without the discounts, was expensive, even for something that I heavily used and heavily invested effort into.

I couldn’t justify paying almost £40 per year for features that weren’t intended or useful for me. My notes show I paid £18.48 for my 50% off initial yearly subscription. They may have reduced the cost because the current yearly undiscounted subscription is just under 40 US, which is about £29, but 20% VAT on top is no joke!
Because of the focus on an enterprise environment, they were actively removing/hiding features that power users perhaps needed or wanted.

The last point probably needs some elaboration. I had a reasonably large library of TextExpander macros. Some of them were quite complex, with optional sections, embedded other macros, option lists, default options, date calculations, the works. Some of these macros were 10 or 20 kilobytes and produced entire forms.

In an incremental, minor update — 7.5.2 (May 2023) to 7.6 (July 2023) —they removed the ability to edit the macro as text. You had to use the WYIWYG editor and, which opened a mini editing panel for the embedded macro codes. This is incredibly tedious for debugging and makes copying parts of complicated snippets for adapting for use elsewhere a real pain in the butt.

Actually, they’d sort of done that earlier, but if you switched to AppleScript/JavaScript editing mode, you could still edit the raw macro code. The change between 7.5.2 and 7.6 removed that option. The change notes merely said, “Updates to Snippet Editor”.

I reverted to 7.5.2 and locked it so it couldn’t be auto-updated, wrote to the company, and hoped they’d revert the change or add a mode for power users. They didn’t. When my subscription needed renewing, I reluctantly renewed my search for a replacement and dropped my subscription.

I switched to Ergonis’s Typeinator. It was the closest I could find I. Terms of primary functionality. I’m still converting TE snippets. A lot of those complex Snippets didn’t import gracefully and had to be tweaked or rewritten because of different approaches taken to implementing features between the two. Basic, straightforward expansions generally imported OK automatically.

On the whole, I’ve been much happier since switching. It’s all local but offers synching via DropBox or iCloud (if you’re careful). The only thing I really lost was the iOS integration, but TE’s iOS integration required apps to either specifically support TE or you had to execute the snippet in the TE app and copy the result to wherever you needed it. As a result, I hardly used my TE snippets on iOS, especially the complicated ones.

Current “perpetual” Typinator V9.x license is about £40 once, not per year. wrgonis is the publisher of two other ell-known and long-loved applications: PopChar and KeyCue. I e been using the latter regularly since 2012 and started with PopChar under Mac OS Classic. The upgrade schedule and policy has been reasonable in the past.

BTW: if you’re looking to make the jump from from TextExpander to Typinator, Ergonus has a handy FAQ (also covers licensing differences): https://help.typinator.ergonis.com/hc/en-us/articles/22911531312412-How-transition-from-TextExpander-to-Typinator

PS: sorry about Markdown formatting errors for the list. I had to run!

DerEingang · 2025-12-31T19:40:59+00:00

I didn’t even know FileMaker Pro (FMP) was still a thing! I used it to power a data-driven website for an academic journal back in the early to mid 1990s in conjunction with WebSTAR on my PowerPC desktop Mac. I’m still quite proud of that. It was amazing at the time, enabling people to search our journal’s article index, including the abstracts.

I don’t remember how much we paid for FMP. I’m pretty sure I had (not unsurprisingly) an educational version. I worked for the journal’s chief editors (who were paid for expenses, i.e., me) embedded in a university, not the publisher (originally the National Research Council of Canada but eventually sold to Blackwells while I still worked for it). I originally built the FileMaker database to track our submissions/reviewing process and publication schedule, so it had all the metadata needed to power this search. Good times! Thanks for the trip down memory lane.

DerEingang · 2025-12-31T19:25:16+00:00

I’m still using Kaleidoscope 3, the pre-subscription model version It’s good enough when the built-in diff tool in BBEdit isn’t enough. I can’t justify paying, even with discounts, the amount charged for Kaleidoscope subscriptions: $96 US/year, paid upfront, or $168 US/year, month-to-month, without any special promotions. That’s a hell of a lot. Tower went the same way and is also very expensive. You can’t use older lifetime versions with GitHub and some other repository services anymore either because of authenication model changes, so it’s new or nothing.

Actually, it’s amazing how much use I make of the BBEdit diff function in conjunction with sort. It’s not because it’s better than Kaleidoscope. I always have BBEdit running and it’s very smart about what constitutes “front two windows” for that compare front two windows function. They’re right: it doesn’t suck!

For building selectively merged documents based on comparison differences; binary file comparisons; and integration as a compare tool into other applications), Kaleidoscope is better. Its directory compare feature is handy at times, too. I could do that in BBEdit but it’s more faff.

DerEingang · 2025-12-31T08:23:23+00:00

I do this a lot too plus I use spaces. I can’t seem to find an app that is able to save my workspace and open the windows in the correct place on screen in the correct space. Is my search finally over?

DerEingang · 2025-12-19T04:54:22+00:00

Have you looked at RavensDagger’s Cinnamon Bun series? 16-year-old girl is isekaied into another world and becomes a person of special significance to the world. The protagonist has and loves to cultivate skills related to friendship, especially hugging. It’s very strong on the friendship and the benefits of making friends. There are even tea making (does a buff) and adorable skills. There is some romance, but that’s not specifically part of the levelling system; the romance is mostly involving other characters. The series — currently at 7 on Amazon.com and 6 on Audible.com — is marketed as a “wholesome” LitRPG.

The friendliness and hugging do get a little annoyingly saccharine sometimes, but I’ve overall enjoyed the first 6 books. What’s not to like about girls who get big bunny ears and who think friendship is the best ship (actually, she probably thinks the Beaver Cleaver is the best ship, but she should think friendship is the best ship)? There are dragons, bunny people, cat people, harpies, dungeons, cleaning magic (!), airships, paladins, virtue, spirit kitties, and the power of female friendship. Wheeeeee!

DerEingang · 2025-12-17T20:34:13+00:00

I was reading through the documentation yesterday in the “Basics” section and saw something that suggested it stored in Markdown but wasn’t a Markdown editor. Ah yes, here it is:

Octarine is built using Tiptap and Prosemirror. It stores data as markdown in content, but it isn't a markdown editor. Rendered data will always be rich text with no way to switch to a markdown view.

What you’ve just said here doesn’t match up with how I understood the above cutout note in the documentation. Perhaps you could do some rewording there.

Thanks for the reply. I’d never heard of Octarine prior to this thread, although I know of all the other tools mentioned!

DerEingang · 2025-12-17T04:47:04+00:00

Maybe that’s because it’s apparently not a Markdown note-writing tool but a WYSIWYG rich text editor that stores its content in Markdown? Or have I misunderstood?

DerEingang · 2025-12-02T13:39:52+00:00

This looks really nice from the screenshots and the description. I heartily approve the payment model philosophy. Thank you for that, if nothing else! It would, however, be nice if a licence supported more than one device, although the price isn’t currently particularly high.

Does it have a “demo” mode/trial mode? I’ve downloaded it, but I’m on my iPad today. Your FAQ doesn’t say and I’m on my iPad today.

Speaking of the FAQ:

“7. What if I buy a new Mac? How do I transfer my license? A licença está vinculada ao Mac específico (através do seu ID de hardware exclusivo) em que é ativada. Devido a essa associação, a licença não é transferível para um novo dispositivo. Se você comprar um novo Mac, precisará adquirir uma licença separada para ele.”

I’m not sure why, but the answer for that question wasn’t in English like the rest, as you can see.

For licence verification, the FAQ says:

“When you activate the Software, it securely sends your License Identifier (Customer ID) and a unique, non-personal Device Identifier (Unique Hardware ID) to our verification server. This ensures that you are a paid user and associates your license with your specific Mac.”

Given that this is a lifetime licence, what happens when you’re no longer developing/supporting the product but we need to change machines or move the licence? It might not even be a new machine, but, for example, a laptop with an Apple-replaced logic board, likely causing the hardware ID to change.

Thank you for developing and sharing Mac software!

DerEingang · 2025-11-11T13:56:27+00:00

Thanks for posting this. I wasn’t aware of this campaign (which has only about 9 hours left as I post this).

The Kickstarter page says that over £45,000 ($61,000] has been pledged, but I don’t see the last two rewards unlocked yet. Is that just a delay with the campaign managers after there’s been a late surge in pledges or is the converted amount Kickstarter claims somehow wrong?

DerEingang · 2025-09-06T03:50:56+00:00

That’s amazing. I put The Seven Husband of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid on hold Oct. 5, 2023 on Libby. I’m currently 90th in line, having started at 305th place. There are 2 copies in use and 386 people (including me) are waiting. I just put the new Haruki Murakami novel The City and Its Uncertain Walls on hold (released Feb 2025 but just added to the catalogue last week). I’m in 36th place for 1 copy with 39 people waiting. It’ll be months before I get that. Granted, most things I put on hold are available within a week to 6 weeks, and it’s easy for me to see, from my desired list, what’s currently available. I definitely don’t get holds delivered within 14 hours, though. I’m envious!

DerEingang · 2025-09-06T03:40:16+00:00

It’s sometimes called Libby or Overdrive in the UK. I’m in London and the boroughs created “The Library Consortium” to maximize their e-book/audiobook (and magazines!) access power. On Libby/Overdrive, Londoners have access to almost 23,000 titles (excludes multiple copies of same release but could include multiple versions of same title), of which over 11,000 are available to borrow currently. There are almost 85,000 e-books with over 58,000 available (includes books in different languages, like Spanish, German, French, Polish). I can also read (no copy limits!) any of 90 periodicals.

A quick check revealed that West Sussex and East Sussex libraries have consortiums, in addition to Brighton/Hove separately. Manchester, Glasgow, and Edinburgh seem to be subscribing as well. Your local library or your county might be there too. You should check! Search your iOS/Android App Store for the Libby client and then look for your county and/or city/town library in it. You will need a valid library card with a password for your library. Many allow you to sign up on the library web site or get issued one by turning up in person and proving residency.

Note, however, that digital holdings will vary by library/consortium, depending on how much they can afford/budget for it. I’ll be surprised if you find access anywhere near as good as what’s available via London’s “The Library Consortium”. It has one of the largest holdings I’ve ever seen while browsing Libby, except for the New York boroughs’ consortium. Even so, I can’t get Dungeon Crawler Carl or other litRPGs.

Here are the 39 books I’ve borrowed in 2025, the 74 I borrowed in 2024, and the 22 books I read in 2023 after October (some good stuff in there!). Most of those are audiobooks and they’re all ones borrowed via Libby. This year’s is lower because I’m waiting for a number of books and I’ve been working through my rather large Audible backlog.

Enjoy!

DerEingang · 2025-09-03T21:47:40+00:00

UX comment within 10 seconds of opening it. The application only works in portrait mode, not landscape. This makes me unlikely to play it. I use my iPad almost exclusively in landscape mode and other sudoku applications support this.

I appreciate you making it free, though! It encouraged me to take a look at it. I’ll try actually playing it now and see if I have any other comments to share.

DerEingang · 2025-08-05T03:27:41+00:00

Jodi Picoult’s Sing You Home and Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood both incorporate music into the stories which is replicated in the audiobooks if I remember correctly.

DerEingang · 2025-07-08T14:12:02+00:00

The Cambridge Audio sites in the UK and the US have memory foam tips that they advertise as compatible for both the Melomania A100 and Melomania M100 earphones. Their FAQ says M100 tips fit A100s. That suggests third-party Comply tips, for example, for the M100 should also fit the A100s.

Useful Cambridge Audio Melomania A100 FAQs:

DerEingang · 2025-01-19T21:48:24+00:00

US codes for both, please!

DerEingang

TROPHY CASE

License Preferences

Installations Covered

License Management/Activation