Cheap Mechanical Keyboard So I’ve been a fan of mechanical keyboards for a while - I’ve purchased a number of the years. The best one that I’ve used to date is the Matias Tactile Pro but that died after a few years of use, but I’ve also tried some of the other ones on the market. I didn’t really have a preference in terms of switches, but I’d tried the Matias ones, and quite liked them.

iPad Magic Keyboard I tried using the keyboard and mouse with my iPad for a while to see how the iPad could cope with being a laptop replacement. I concluded that I wouldn’t get the Magic Keyboard. However, here I am, typing this blog post on it. Many people have already written reviews, so I’m a bit late to the game - they’ve pretty much given their opinion on it, and there isn’t a huge amount more I could add.

Colours For Hue Getting Hue lights has meant that I need to control these. Generally, this works well using the Hue application and Siri (with HomeKit), though as I’ve got one in my office as well, it would be nice to control this from my Mac as well. This is where Colours for Hue comes in. It’s a Mac app that sits in the menu bar and acts as a Hue light controller.

Philips Hue I’ve had a number of smart items around the house now for a few years. These have mainly been the TP-Link smart plugs, but I’d also got two Elgato Eve smart plugs and a single TP-Link bulb. In general, these have been OK, though they don’t all link together - TP-Link is controlled through its Kasa platform (and works with Alexa) but the Elgato plugs only work with Apple HomeKit and therefore have to be operated using our phones only (no HomePod).

Keyboard and Mouse with the iPad So, I’ve been playing around with the keyboard and mouse for the iPad Pro after Apple brought out the support for it in iPad OS 13.4. I’ve been using the Filco 2 Tenkeyless Convertible keyboard and a Logitech MX Master mouse and have been using it on and off over the past week or so. The whole intention of this is to consider if it’s worth purchasing the £300 iPad Magic with a touchpad keyboard for the iPad.

Outlook for Mac One of the aspects that I thought would be good about working from home on the lockdown has come from being able to use my Mac. I’ve been able to use my Mac to do all things that I’d have to do on my Windows machine at work and it’s really given me a chance to see how the Mac would be able to perform my day to day job.

Inspire Writer I’d been tossing up about purchasing a subscription to Ulysses on the Mac or not this year. In the end, I did and I’ve been using it for the last couple of blog posts that I’ve written. However, I’m not always on the Mac - I’m often on Windows and I miss using it when I am using Windows. I’d been looking around for ages to find something that replicated it.

iCaching - macOS Review I’ve been geocaching for a few years now and I’ve been using Geocaching Swiss Army Knife (GSAK) for the past year. It’s a handy program for keeping track of caches that I’ve found, as well as organising GPX files for import on to my Garmin or phone. However, the program is Windows only. Which isn’t the end of the world, as I have a Windows machine, but I’ve also got a Mac and it tends to be my main machine for getting work done at home, so it’s often on.

Shush As Covid 19 spreads around the globe and countries go in to lockdown and work from home, I’ve had to do more and more meetings online. When I’ve done online meetings in the past, I’ve had to do them either via conference call or via the conferencing setup at work, and therefore on Windows. They’ve generally worked OK. However, as we’re all currently confined to working from home in the UK, I’ve been using my Mac.

Geocaching trip A quick geocaching trip seemed to be in order this weekend to grab the new souvenir that was released for palindrome day. To get the souvenir, only a single geocache was needed, and that was initially all I decided to head out to get, but as I planned it, I ended up thinking I could do a nice loop and get more than just a single cache. It would also be a chance to get out and explore the local area by bike, so that’s what I did.