Hello everyone. With more than 15k subscribers, I’m sure the Apple community has some great experiences to share with others. My question this week is, “What was the most clever way you’ve ever used an Apple product to solve a problem?”
About ten years ago a dear friend and I started a community radio station. In order to make our FCC license more competitive, we started internet streaming pretty early on.
We had great community buy-in, but we needed to broadcast 24/7 and decided to record and rebroadcast live shows.
We had no money, just a MacMini. So we had to do everything with things that came with MacOS or were free or near free.
We ended up creating a pretty impressive interlinking set of AppleScripts, Automator apps, and iTunes Smart Playlists, all driven by Calendar alarms. Calendar alarms would start recordings, which would use the magic import to iTunes folder to get it into iTunes. This would then move into a smart playlist that was set to look for certain tags and only have the most recent audio file with those tags in it.
When a rebroadcast would come up, it was pretty simple. A calendar alarm would trigger an AppleScript that triggered one of these Smart Playlists.
It all worked well for a long time. Ultimately we got our FCC license, and donations allowed us to improve our IT. But this station ran on iTunes, AudioHijack, AppleScript, Automator, and Calendar alarms for years.
I used to do a show on a tiny internet station that my friend ran. Once a week for two hours.
Did the whole thing from my iPad. Well, two actually. A 7th gen for running DJay and all the assorted apps I needed to make it work, then a 4th gen Mini for the microphone and channel faders. My mic was a Blue Yeti hooked up through a generic powered USB hub. The whole endeavour used 6 or 7 apps, all working in conjunction, and all had to be opened in a specific order or something might crash.
It was a huge pain in the arse, but so satisfying to get it working.
Ultimately, I could have replaced all of that with Mixxx for free on my ancient MacBook, but where would the fun have been in that? Also, the fan on my Mac would have sounded like a jet engine idling in the background.
It’s timeless and perhaps an obvious one (& perhaps not so clever), but the iPod used to always sort out situations where we never had a DJ or any music available. Gotta say RIP those innovative days for Apple, nothing was cooler than being an instant DJ while working as line cook having 160 gigs of music on a device.
I forget exactly, but I used to use Automator all the time to find and sort files. I’ve since learned Python, but Automator is a great tool. I have not tried the new shortcuts thing though.
Automator and Preview are a match made in heaven.
When I got my mortgage I needed to get approval and collate all our documents in one night, I just told Automator to grab all the pdfs in a folder and merge them, it took like 2 minutes to get all our signed paperwork done (after the reading and signing). Plus then I knew I didn’t forget anything we needed, everything on the folder was combined.
I’ve used it for a ton of other things over the years, like bulk photo editing for websites to taking a photo every 5 seconds for a timelapse.
I still find it less complicated to bulk rename files than using Python or bash.
Worked with some teachers in a school. Occasionally we’d forget something dumb at our desk like our attendance notebook or a stack of handouts for the students. In most cases there was usually someone from our group sitting around at our office space, doing a bit of prep work. We all used iPads in our lessons, so one day I used a combination of Siri Shortcuts with IFTTT, a smart plug and a cheap little lamp to create a quick little alert system that would inform a peer at the desk if something was left behind. The light would click on, and when someone noticed, they’d check the group chat to see who sent it and what was needed.
Safari + sponsorblock to airplay YouTube videos to the TV without needing some third party app like smarttubenext on the TV or logging into YouTube premium.
No ads and skipping sponsors with just no extra steps and no need for any other apps is nice. Especially since I don’t even have the YouTube app installed.
I use automations to turn down the volume to 5% when I open games with obnoxious, loud intro sounds. So no more judging faces and annoying questions.
I’m pretty pleased with my automation that plays BBC 6Music on my iPhone at a set time each morning (as a wake up alarm) then automatically sends the audio to my HopePod mini and sets the volume level. It’s a nice way to wake up to the radio each day.
For years I have been trying to get Home Assistant to work nicely with my garage door opener. I used a MyQ system that would constantly go offline and just recently switched to an ESP based switch.
What makes it Apple related is that I installed HomeKit Bridge which bridges all compatible entities from Home Assistant to HomeKit. The new garage door switch is now reliable enough that I can now say “Siri open the garage door” and immediately it will open.
Only Apple for the first 5% of the automation, but boy after all the headaches I’ve suffered to reliably open my garage door, this one feels so damn good.
If you are wondering why I don’t just use a radio remote, I do. But no matter which remote I try, I cannot get them to work through the steel door, they will only work reliably if I am beside the garage, not in front of it. Also when I’m out for a walk or a bike I don’t usually bring the radio remote. So this automation gets used about 3-4 times per day. Plus it will remind me if the door was open for more than 3 minutes!
I love Shortcuts. In the beginning it was hard for me to come up with something but now I have a bunch of simple and complex things in there. But the smallest automations are the coolest. One of mine will simply end a training when Carplay activates. I often forget to stop it myself and then the data is screwed up when I drive home while it’s still running. This solves that issue with a single action.
My wife and I were planning our wedding. Everything was paid from our own pockets. No help from parents or family. It wasn’t like they weren’t there, just wanted to do it ourselves since it’s our wedding.
By the time we’ve booked the venue, catering, photographer, budgeting clothing & decorations, we had no money to hire a DJ. And if we did, we didn’t want some “Top 40” DJ (we’re from the alternative subculture)
I rented some audio equipment, hooked it up to my MacBook, and used iTunes as the DJ. I’ve made a few playlists based on the wedding’s schedule. One playlist for the dinner, one playlist for the “walking down the aisle” moment, one playlist for dancing/post-ceremony. Having the playlists allows me to “play and forget” I’ve had certain songs setup at the end of the playlists in case we’ve overran a certain wedding function and I’ll know the playlist is near the end (most of the playlists were loaded with hours of songs so I wouldn’t have to worry) The walking down the aisle song was on it’s own playlist with the length trimmed down to how long it would take my wife to walk down the aisle (the song would just fade out & nothing else would be playing) It worked out pretty well, with me changing the playlist a few times. All MacBook sounds were turned off and Do Not Disturb was on to avoid unwanted notifications. It was connected to a public wifi (provided by my ISP) if I needed to do any remote controlling or downloading additional songs.
I have ADHD, so my memory is shit. I’ll get really into doing something at work, get distracted onto another path, then forget about what I’ve been working on and it’ll just languish in a half finished hell.
Which is where my automations come in…
I maintain a list of ongoing projects in Numbers that my Calendar is set to open every morning at 7am, at the start of my shift. Because of this, I can keep track of what I’ve been working on, and be reminded if anything needs my attention (because you can guarantee the staff on the shop floor won’t bother reporting any issues if documentation isn’t working…). Of course, it’s not that simple; Calendar runs an Automator script that triggers a Shortcut that opens the app, but it works.
I also have a list in Pages of stuff that I need to remember. Not a to do list, as such, more just reminders to drink water, to take deep breaths every now and then, and the occasional saying that I’ve liked that’s spoken to me at that moment. That also opens automatically at 7am so I don’t forget to open it myself.
They’re silly things, but really important to me, and have really helped me to focus my attention and actually finish projects.
