MacSparky

Apple announced three new home products this morning: HomeView, a fourth-generation Apple TV 4K, and HomePod mini 2. They're available to preorder today, with the speaker arriving first and the other two following in November. Apple's new HomeView is the most interesting, since it's new, but we've been hearing rumors of it for years. The rumor was that the hardware has been done for awhile and the holdup was Siri AI. Well that's here now, and so is the the HomeView.

David and Stephen revisit app launchers, capture tools, and Siri AI, then explore the new Shortcuts actions in iOS 27. David also shares his latest experiments with remote KVM hardware and a foldable keyboard.

Last night I had an interesting experience. I was watching a baseball game with my wife, and she looked at me and said, “Didn’t that guy pitch last night?” I told her no. She looked at me the way wives sometimes look at husbands, and then she pulled out her phone, activated Siri AI, and asked it, “Did number 59 on the Dodgers pitch last night?” Sure enough, Siri AI reported, he did. Then she smiled at me and set her phone down. Gang, Siri is good at world knowledge.

It was a busy week in the MacSparky Labs. Below you’ll find the week’s new videos and podcasts, a few of the conversations happening in the member community, and what’s coming next week. Most of those links lead straight into the Labs community on Circle, so they’ll only open if you’re a member. If you’re a Labs member who hasn’t set up your Circle access yet, send me a note and I’ll get you in. For members, this is your week at a glance. If you’re not one yet, it’s a peek at what you’re missing.

Daniel Gräfe shipped Cotypist 2026.4, and the headline feature is sync between Macs. If you let Cotypist record your writing, it can now sync that history to your other Macs through your iCloud account. The writing is encrypted on your Mac before it is uploaded, and the key travels through iCloud Keychain, so neither Apple nor Daniel can read it. You’ll find the switch in Cotypist Labs, where it is off by default.

Cal Newport joins us on Intentional AI to talk about automating tedious work, protecting judgment, and keeping room for deep thinking. We also discuss digital minimalism and why a robot’s convincing answer can still be wrong. Focused Podcast YouTube Channel Cal Newport’s Books The Deep Life — Cal Newport The Economics of Bicycles for the Mind Has AI Already Killed How-To Nonfiction?

Hookmark 7.3 is out, and Luc Beaudoin and his team keep adding to what was already one of the cleverer utilities on the Mac. If you haven’t run into it, Hookmark links your stuff together across apps. Hook a PDF in DEVONthink to the OmniFocus project it belongs to, or an email to the Obsidian note where you’re drafting the reply, and you can jump between them from either side. The links run both directions, and they work between apps that otherwise know nothing about each other.

On this episode of Focused, Mike and I look at how AI becomes a distraction precisely because it feels like work. We cover tool tourism, infinite collaboration, system procrastination, cognitive debt, and authority drift, then set a few boundaries that keep the robot useful without surrendering your focus.

Team Alfred has posted a first look at Alfred 6, and it looks like they’re working on a pretty big redesign. I’ll be watching this one closely. Written by David Sparks I write about getting more from your Apple gear. If this was useful, go deeper in the Labs or grab the weekly newsletter.

The Information reports that Apple is considering a return to the server business with machines built for artificial intelligence. The proposed hardware would come in two versions, one clustering two M8 Ultra chips and another with four. Apple has also reportedly discussed using Nvidia’s NVLink Fusion technology to connect the chips. The target customers would be AI developers, businesses, and governments. The servers aren’t expected before 2029, and the project could still be canceled.