Clean Up Your Inbox Today (and Keep It That Way Forever) with SaneBox [Sponsor]

What if you had someone to go through your email and find just the important messages? SaneBox does exactly that. Once set up, it leaves your important messages in your inbox and moves the rest to a SaneLater folder for reviewing later. That initial inbox purge is powerful because it reduces your inbox to a manageable number of messages. With additional training to tell SaneBox what’s important to you, it only gets better at dealing with your daily deluge of messages.

There’s much more to SaneBox than shuffling unimportant messages into a designated folder, though. If there’s something you never want to see ever again, send it to the SaneBlackHole, which is much easier than unsubscribing to unwanted messages.

You can also set up SaneReminders by sending messages to an address that sends a reminder to you at a later date if the recipient of your message hasn’t responded after a certain amount of time. Or forward a message to SaneReminders to have it pop back into your inbox at a later date when you are ready to deal with it.

SaneBox works on top of your existing email setup. There’s no particular app to download or new email account to set up. It all works server-side so you can use any email client you want.

Sign up today for a free 14-day SaneBox trial to take back control of your email. MacStories readers can receive a special $25 credit automatically by using this link to sign up.

Internet Archive Adds Early Macintosh OS and App Emulation

Over the weekend, the Internet Archive introduced a curated collection of Mac operating systems and software from 1984 through 1989. The Internet Archive already hosts browser-based emulators of early video games and other operating systems, but this is its first foray into Mac software.

The collection includes classic applications like MacPaint, programming tools such as MacBasic, and many games including Dark Castle. Each app can be run in an in-browser emulator and is accompanied by an article that chronicles its history. It’s fun to play with the apps in the collection and realize just how far apps have come since the earliest days of the Mac. It’s also remarkable how many computing conventions used today were introduced during those earliest days.

I’m happy to see the Internet Archive start this collection. These operating systems and historically-significant apps may still run on old hardware maintained by a handful of people, but it’s emulation efforts like these that make those apps accessible to a broader audience.

Fill in the Gaps with Polycolor

Some games don’t require a manual. They won’t bring out your inner rage, send you searching for answers online, or require you to ask your friend for help. Instead, they challenge you quietly, providing a gaming experience that’s equal parts difficult and soothing.

Polycolor is the epitome of the relaxed puzzle genre, a game so basic that it requires almost no explanation. Here’s why: all you have to do is fill in a pattern so that none of your three colors touch one another, yet the picture is fully colored. You select either red, blue, and yellow, assign it to a shape, and work your way toward a piece of art that signifies your accomplishment. As you continue in the game, you’ll be restricted to only a couple of moves to complete the task.

For an example, take a look below.

Although the premise is simple and early levels don’t pose much of a challenge, polycolor has grown on me as I continue to work through its 70+ levels. It’s a game that requires little physical effort, but increased mental exertion while progressing. Still, I’ve found that it’s perfect for tapping away during moments of boredom or peace.

If you’d like to give polycolor a try, you can download it in the App Store for $0.99 (universal).

Canvas, Episode 33: iOS Device Security→

This week, inspired by true events, Fraser and Federico look at the user-facing security technologies available in iOS.

On the latest Canvas, we go over the best practices to set up an iOS device with security in mind and to make it easy to lock everything and retrieve data when things go wrong. You can listen here.

Sponsored by:

  • Pingdom: Start monitoring your websites and servers today. Use offer CANVAS to get 20% off.
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iPad Diaries: Numbers, Accounting, and Currency Conversions

iPad Diaries is a regular series about using the iPad as a primary computer. You can find more installments here and subscribe to the dedicated RSS feed.

For years, I struggled to settle on an accounting workflow I truly liked.

In the past 8 years of MacStories, I’ve tried organizing financial records and statements with plain text files and PDF documents; I’ve used and then abandoned dedicated finance management apps; for a couple of years, I even tested a combination of Dropbox, Excel, and Editorial to visualize transactions and generate invoices with a Markdown template. My Italian bank doesn’t support direct integrations with third-party accounting services, and my particular requirements often include converting expenses from USD to EUR on a per-receipt basis.

Eventually, I always managed to keep my records up to date and neatly sorted with the help of an accountant, but I never loved any of the workflows I had established. In the end, several factors contributed to begrudgingly assembling reports and statements with systems I didn’t find flexible enough.

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Outflow Review: Simple Subscription Tracking

As I’ve mentioned in previous articles, I’m a huge fan of Bear, the minimalist note-taking app developed by Shiny Frog. To show my appreciation and grab an extra feature or two, I pay a monthly subscription fee of $1.49, a price so low that I forgot that I paid it at all.

It’s a similar story for other services, too – $5 each for Pocket Premium and Apple Music slip out of my bank account monthly without much thought. But that’s where the cheap stuff ends, and the expensive subscriptions begin: $15 for HBO Now, $15 for a Spotify family subscription, and $20 for the Adobe Creative Suite. After all of this, I’m at $71.49 a month for software, some of which I’m rarely putting hours into.

Because my subscriptions span different platforms and renew at different times, I’ve been looking for ways to track where all my money is going. With Outflow, I’ve found a new way to do that.

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