An almost useful Siri Shortcut: "Voice memo record"

Apple forgot to add a Siri command that would launch Voice Memo.app and start recording. You can launch it with Siri, but it won’t start recording.

They did add a Siri Shortcut though - “Record a new voice memo”. So I finally found a use for that feature, I added “Record voice memo” and “Voice memo record” as Siri shortcuts. I think the 2nd one works better.

“Record a memo” doesn’t work because Siri uses that to open Voice Memo.app without launching the recording (iOS doesn’t warn about this during shortcut creation). The behavior is also a bit buggy, sometimes the phrase launched Voice Memo.app but didn’t start recording.

I tried creating a springboard Shortcut, but even though “Record a new voice memo” is in Siri & Search settings shortcuts, it’s not available in Shortcuts.app. (btw, deleting a Shortcuts.app shortcut uses an insanely weird UI).

How to find the folder that holds an iOS app in iOS 11 and 12

This is so friggin obscure now. I had to read this Apple Discussions thread a few times. The problem is there are two types of Spotlight search in iOS, and now only one of them shows a containing folder name.

When you type an app name in Spotlight iOS does predictive search first. You don’t tap the Search button. In iOS 11-12 the predictive search result UI doesn’t show the name of the containing folder.

To see the containing folder you need to do search-search (plain old search), not predictive search. Type the portion of the app name that shows your app in predictive search, but don’t tap on the app. Instead tap on the Search (blue) button. That does proper search, and now the containing folder shows next to the app name.

Cisco Receiver client for Mac no longer works with Safari (NPAPI plug-ins are no longer supported by Safari)

Safari 12 “Removed support for running legacy NPAPI plug-ins other than Adobe Flash” [1]. Despite years of warning Cisco wasn’t quite ready (perhaps Apple has made a mess of the plug-in/extension migration [2])

NPAPI support is being removed from Safari 12 | Citrix Blogs (Aug 2018)

… Apple have announced they’re removing support for NPAPI from Safari 12. This will affect the user experience for users accessing Citrix Receiver for Web using Safari on Mac. We’ll address this by turning on the Citrix Receiver Launcher for Safari 12+ in future releases of Citrix StoreFront…

With Safari 12 if you click on a Citrix Receiver link a .ica file is downloaded. You have to click the .ica file to launch Receiver. Prior to 12 the /Library[3]/Internet plug-ins/CitrixICAClientPlugIn.plugin handled the .ica file, clicking a link caused CitrixICAClientPlugIn.plugin to launch Receiver. There’s a Safari 12 workaround, but I’ve not tried it.

Citrix does have new era extension support for Chrome, so you can just use Chrome until Citrix delivers a “Safari App Extension” version of the plug-in. (Which might come with their Citrix Workspace replacement for Receiver.)

- fn -

[1] The dev must have hated keeping Flash support. NPAPI is 1995 old, Chrome dropped NPAPI support in September 2015.

[2] Safari 12 also deprecated the newer-than-NPAPI “Safari Extensions” and Apple is shutting down the Extensions gallery. Instead we’re supposed to get Safari App Extensions, but, as is too often true of Apple, it’s not clear where one downloads Safari App Extensions.

[3] Installed in root Library rather than user Library.

iOS 12.1 Files.app will open Google Drive hosted ePub directly in Books.app

iOS 12.1 Files.app will open Google Drive hosted ePub files directly in Books.app (formerly iBooks). I don’t know how new this is, but tapping on the same file in Google’s Drive.app gives an “unsupported file type” error. (You can still copy it to Books, it’s just awkward.) I’d long used Drive.app to open my ePubs, just happened to try Files.app today.

Books UI doesn’t scale well to significant number of ePubs, storing them in Google Drive or iCloud Drive works much better [1]. I treat iBooks as a temporary store, periodically I clean it out.

[1] Also iOS 12 Books.app won’t sync with Sierra iBooks, so those of us who are putting off painful updates have another reason to store in the file system. Really, though, it’s just way better than using iBooks storage. I’m a bit disappointed Apple hasn’t fully integrated iBook storage with iCloud Files, but this is nice.

iOS 12 Notes.app tables don't render in Notes.web (or Sierra Notes)

Tables have been neglected in the past 20 years of software, so I was surprised to see them in iOS 12.1 Notes.app.

Sadly, they don’t render in Notes.web (Safari or Chrome). Instead we see the same empty block that Sierra Notes uses:

That’s disappointing. iCloud is overdue for some maintenance.

Tableau Public for Mac

Tableau is a popular data visualization tool with strong map features. My workplace version has an extensive list of data connections.

Tonight I downloaded the public (free) version of Tableau for Mac. The connection list is far smaller than the commercial version. It will import from Excel, CSV, JSON, PDF, “spatial file” and “statistical file” files. It can pull data in from Google Sheets, Data, “Web data connector” and “ODBC”. It only exports CSV. It occupies 1.6GB of disk space.

Storage aside, it did a great job pulling data out of a PDF table. That’s almost worth the 1.6GB by itself. Given the state of Mac data tools I think it’s worth keeping around.

An Elgato T2 Hub and USB 3 SSD work pretty well

For 3yrs I’ve used a Samsung SSD (1TB) in a cheap Inatek IDE enclosure with UASP/USB 3 connection to an Elgato T2 dock connected to a 2015 MacBook Air by Apple T2 cable. The Elgato also connects to two Firewire 800 drives.

I realized today that it’s worked quite well for quite a while. Now that I’ve written this it will all go to pieces, but until now — good stuff. My 360GB Aperture library lives on that external SSD and I don’t have any real performance issues with it. I use Jettison to undock when I take the Air with me; I disconnect the power cable and the T2 cable.

Which reminds me of some rant I read today about how the Air is the worst machine in existence and everyone should buy a $400 Windows machine instead. I beg to disagree. The current Air is still a great machine. You may not like the non-retina screen (my eyes suck so what would I know?), but you can buy a nice external display.

The absolute best thing machine Apple could do would be to continue to sell the 2018 13” Air but swap the T2 for T3* and make the display Retina. Leave every other thing about it pretty much the same and sell it for the current price.

*Update: Actually, I’m not sure T3 is so great. Maybe just do the Retina and call it a win.