By Jason Snell

January 9, 2024 3:44 PM PT

BBEdit 15 adds ChatGPT support

Note: This story has not been updated since 2024.

Two and a half years after BBEdit received its last major update, Bare Bones Software has updated the venerable Mac text editor to version 15.0.

The big new feature is the addition of support for ChatGPT via the same Worksheet interface BBEdit has used to interact with a command-line shell for many years. Like a Shell Worksheet, a ChatGPT Worksheet is an interactive BBEdit document: It looks like a regular text window (because it is one!), but when you type a command and press a hotkey (it’s Enter by default), that command is sent directly to ChatGPT, and the result appears right below it in the same document.

It’s a clever way for BBEdit to dip its toe into the large language model waters without implementing a Copilot-like code helper within documents themselves. Now, BBEdit users can toggle between a GPT worksheet and other documents, copying and pasting as needed, without leaving the app. I’ve used it a few times already, and it sure beats having to navigate to OpenAI’s website in order to grab some quick prototype code.

The new Cheat Sheets feature provides interactive floating palettes that can teach custom commands. For example, the Markdown Cheat Sheet not only shows various forms of Markdown but if you click on any of the examples, they’ll be automatically inserted into your document. They’re reminiscent of BBEdit’s Clippings feature, and unsurprisingly, one of the included Cheat Sheets contains all the placeholders used in building a BBEdit Clipping.

There’s also a new Minimap view, which lets you see a large thumbnail of a very long document, highlighting the portion that’s currently visible. You can navigate anywhere in a document by clicking on the Minimap. This feature will be useful for visually oriented users who need to navigate through very long documents.

As usual, there are dozens (Bare Bones says 200!) of new features in the lengthy release notes, including the addition of a grep pattern validity indicator in the Find window (so you don’t have to click before realizing you left off a parenthesis!), a big interface revision to the simple and powerful Text Factory in-app automation system, quick access to comparing different versions of the current document, a revamp of Project Settings so that they’re no longer modal, and improved Accessibility compatibility including Voiceover, Full Keyboard Access, and third-party utilities that rely on the Accessibility system such as Grammarly.

Every time there’s a new version of BBEdit, I’m inspired by the creativity that continues to flourish in a product that’s more than 30 years old. But there’s still more to do! The app’s support for Shortcuts is still quite meager, for example.

A new license for BBEdit 15 is $60, with upgrades from version 14 costing $30 and from earlier versions costing $40.

By Dan Moren

January 8, 2024 2:34 PM PT

Last updated June 5, 2026

Cutting out the RSS middleman

Way back when Google Reader went the way of all Google products (RIP), I ended up switching to Feedly, a web-based RSS service that had good integration with third-party clients. But this past week I decided to ditch it for good.

The truth is, I never really used Feedly’s web-based offerings, or its first-party apps on iPhone or the Mac (the latter of which was apparently quietly retired last year). Instead, I mainly used Feedly as the back-end for my RSS app of choice, Reeder.¹

Lately, though, I’d noticed that certain feeds—especially those on smaller sites—just didn’t seem to update very quickly. That’s apparently by design: in part because those who paid for Feedly (which I never have) get faster updates, and in part because the polling interval seems to vary from site to site.²

Specifically I noticed that a post on my personal blog didn’t seem to be showing up, which a few people subscribed to my RSS feed let me know. That turned out to be mainly because of an issue in WordPress where my own RSS feeds were being cached, but even once I remedied that it still took a solid day for the post to show up in my own reader.

That seemed silly to me: I only subscribe to thirty-some feeds, probably about half of which are actually updated regularly, and I’d prefer for the control over when I get my items delivered to be in my own hands, not that of a middleman.

Fortunately, Reeder (like other RSS readers) at some point added the ability to subscribe to feeds within the app and have them synced between devices via iCloud. All I had to do was export the feeds from my Feedly account as an OPML file and import them into the iCloud account, something that took probably less than a minute.

It was really the simplicity of that last part that struck me: the fact that feed readers still rely on an open format that’s easily portable between apps and services. I’ve relied on RSS to do my job since I first started writing about the Mac back in the mid 2000s, and even in a world that’s become dominated by social media it’s still pretty effective. I kind of wish that other services made this kind of portability so easy and painless—after all, we should be in control of our own data, not some middleman.

I don’t want to knock Feedly here: I found their service stable and reliable for more than a decade, and not only did I not pay a dime for it, they didn’t put roadblocks in my way to leave. That’s actually pretty great, as far as service goes, and frankly I’m a little embarrassed that I didn’t throw some money their way. But as the year starts off, I like the idea of removing some of the little tech annoyances that I just take as a given and seeing if I can make my life a little smoother.

[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors, as well as an author, podcaster, and two-time Jeopardy! champion. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His next novel, the sci-fi adventure Eternity's Tomb, will be released in November 2026.]

By Dan Moren

January 8, 2024 6:20 AM PT

Apple Vision Pro launches on February 2, preorders next week

Note: This story has not been updated since 2024.

The goggles do…something? Well, you’ll find out soon enough: Apple announced on Monday that the Vision Pro will be available in the U.S. starting on February 2, with preorders starting next Friday, January 19.

Unsurprisingly, the spatial computer will be available at all Apple Stores in the U.S., but it’ll also be available via the online store as well—there’d been some speculation in recent weeks about whether or not that would be the case at launch, given the need for fitting particular accessories.

While we’re all plenty aware of the Vision Pro’s $3499 price tag, Apple’s also added some additional information. For one, the Vision Pro has 256GB of onboard storage (and, as far as we can tell, no options for more). For another, those users who need vision correction will be able to pick up optical inserts that attach magnetically: $99 for readers, and $149 for prescriptions, though the company doesn’t go into further detail about which prescriptions will be available or how you’ll convey that information.

And we now know exactly what’s in the box: in addition to the Vision Pro, it’ll include two different bands, a Solo Knit Band and Dual Loop Band; a Light Seal and two Light Seal Cushions; a cover for the front of the device; the battery and USB-C charging cable; a USB-C Power Adapter (for $3499, I’d hope so); and, most importantly, a Polishing Cloth.

The press release, which happens to drop on the same day that CES opens on Las Vegas and no doubt is intended to steal some thunder there, also suggests that the company won’t hold any further events to talk up the Vision Pro before its launch. Given that supplies are expected to be constrained, and the addressable market is on the smaller side, Apple’s no doubt banking on the fact that people who want to buy one already know all about it.

One big question mark is the retail experience, which Apple Store employees are being trained on now, according to reports from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman and others. The Vision Pro is perhaps the most challenging product from a store experience perspective, and it will be fascinating to see exactly how the company handles the sales and fit process—especially for physical stores versus online. But we’re sure to find out in short order.

[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors, as well as an author, podcaster, and two-time Jeopardy! champion. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His next novel, the sci-fi adventure Eternity's Tomb, will be released in November 2026.]

By Jason Snell

January 5, 2024 3:24 PM PT

There and Back Again: Foregoing Fantastical

Note: This story has not been updated since 2024.

Last month, I took a bit of an odyssey and explored the idea that maybe there aren’t that many must-have third-party apps, only nice-to-have ones. I wasn’t saying that everyone should dump all their software and return to their defaults, but I was saying that macOS’s default configuration has come a long way over the years and that the right approach to setting up a new Mac might be to start with the basics and then slowly add when you find you need a little bit more.

One of the apps I was thinking about while I wrote this was Flexibits’s Fantastical, which has been my calendar app for more than a decade. As a result of that decade spent away from Calendar, I’ve largely lost track of what separates a third-party app with a $57 annual subscription fee from the stuff Apple gives me for free with my devices.

I’ve also had a general sense that most of Flexibits’s recent updates to Fantastical focused on features that don’t actually improve my use of the app. I’m not open for meetings, so the Openings feature didn’t really land, and the meeting proposal feature ended up being much heavier and Fantastical-centric than just using a lightweight scheduling app like StrawPoll. It seems like most of the company’s focus over the past two years has been on refining those features, which might be wise for serving their core audience, but it just doesn’t register for me.

So, I decided to spend a few weeks without Fantastical, just using Apple’s Calendar app. Here’s what I learned.

Surviving on the default

Unsurprisingly, the moment I switched back to Calendar, I lost a whole bunch of features. I was used to Fantastical’s split interface on my Mac and iPad, which lists all events on the left side of the screen and then displays my preferred interface, the Week view, on the right side. Apple just wants to show you the floating colored blobs. (On the iPad, Apple’s calendar also doesn’t display the start time of events in Week view, which was a drag.)

Apple’s got a bunch of Calendar widgets, but they’re inferior to Fantastical’s. The List view, in particular, is not nearly as information-dense as Fantastical’s list widget. Still, I switched over to Calendar’s.

I have a default set of calendars that I want to view at all times, but sometimes, I need to briefly toggle on other calendars so I can coordinate with my wife’s calendar or place something on a shared podcast calendar. I used Fantastical’s Calendar Sets feature to toggle between views, but there’s no such control available in Calendar. Instead, I built a Keyboard Maestro macro that clicks on specific calendar locations to make them disappear and reappear.

Speaking of multiple calendars, it’s baffling to me that Calendar is unable to display multiple identical events on different calendars as a single item. When I toggle into my podcast scheduling view, every Incomparable podcast becomes a cramped stack of three identical items: one for my calendar, one for the calendar used by panelists, and one for our public-facing calendar used by listeners and various automations.

But my biggest adaptation came in the menu bar. Fantastical offers a powerful menu bar app that lets me quickly add events and, more importantly, view a list of events for the next few days without needing to open the app. Calendar has… nothing?

I ended up solving this problem by using Itsycal, a free app by Mowglii Apps. Itsycal hit the spot, though it’s not quite as pretty as Fantastical’s menu bar item, and adding a new event requires a second keystroke and doesn’t support natural-language entry of events. You also can’t edit events from within Itsycal.

Starter calendar

So, after three weeks of using Apple’s apps on my Mac, iPhone, and iPad, what’s the verdict? I feel like my original suggestion about defaults was pretty accurate, actually. Apple’s Calendar app is fine. It works, it’s serviceable, the widgets are fine, and with a free third-party utility, you can even get a nice quick-access calendar in the menu bar.

That said, it was also clear to me that Fantastical offers a much more useful and refined experience than Apple. Calendar feels pretty old and static, and some of its gaps are really baffling—especially quick access in the menu bar! Is Fantastical $57 a year better? (I should mention that there’s a free version of Fantastical, but it omits some features that Calendar offers.)

Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? If you schedule a lot of meetings and have people schedule meetings with you, it’s probably a no-brainer! But for me, it was a little tougher. Still, after three weeks without, I feel like I’m willing to spend $57 a year just to get a nicer, better calendar experience than Apple offers. But I also would not hesitate to suggest that any new Mac user start with Calendar (and maybe Itsycal!) and try it out before considering spending extra on a fancier calendar app.

I wish Fantastical had given me more of a sense of forward motion and value over the last four years for my subscription fee. I wish Apple would take some lessons from Fantastical and strive to make the default Calendar app a little less generic.