Unlock Amazing Mac Tricks and Protect Your Files with Shawn Lemon (MP134)
Shawn Lemon: I wish that we could turn that on and then Click a button in Time Machine's preferences to say download and Put all of this stuff onto my external drive automatically. And then, as it sees changes, just download the copy and Put it on the hard drive. We don't need to put it on the Mac.
We just want to make sure that it's backed up. Nova AI: Welcome to Macpreneur, the show for Seasoned solopreneurs looking to streamline Their business on a Mac. Unlock the secrets to saving time and money with Your host and technology mentor, Damien Schreurs. Damien Schreurs: Hello, hello! Today I have the pleasure to introduce Shawn Lemon.
Shawn is the founder of The Digital Organizer and has spent the last 17 years helping individuals and Businesses get better at using their technology. A teacher at heart, Shawn believes that the biggest Reason people struggle with their tech is because of a Lack of understanding of the tools, which isn't surprising Because they're constantly changing as technology advances. When not helping businesses operate, more efficiently, Shawn loves making pottery, riding motorcycles, and spending time with his wife, Madeline, and their two-year-old son, Nico. Shawn, welcome to the show. Shawn Lemon: Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to talk to you Damien Schreurs: Yeah, thank you for coming on the show.
When we talked in the pre-show, I realized We started our businesses almost at the same time. So you started in 2014 and started in 2013. And yeah. So let's jump right into the main topic. Which Mac are you using today to run your business? Shawn Lemon: Yeah, I'm running the 2020 M1 MacBook Air, the total baseline 999 MacBook.
I actually bought it as an experiment because everyone was talking about how incredible it was. And I went from a very expensive iMac that was loaded up to this, just as an experiment. And it did so well, I just kept it in production, gave the iMac to another employee, got a monitor.
And I've been using it ever since. And it's about time for a new one. Damien Schreurs: Yeah, I noticed as well, I still have my 2020 iMac, still an Intel, Intel Mac, but when I bought my MacBook Pro, I noticed immediately the difference and yeah, so you have a MacBook Air. Do you have an external monitor as well? Shawn Lemon: I do.
It's a 34-inch ultra wide Samsung. It has a charger. So it puts out about 80 watts to charge Bigger MacBook Pros and such.
It's a nice one. I've enjoyed it. Damien Schreurs: Is it a curved one or a flat one? Shawn Lemon: It is slightly curved.
Yeah. I actually kind of want to size down again and get 4K for just a little bit sharper, but. Every once in a while, it's nice to have it big.
I go back and forth, wanting to focus more and then have more on the screen at once. Damien Schreurs: And do you still use your MacBook Air screen as a secondary screen or is it just in clamshell mode? Shawn Lemon: It's in clamshell mode and it's in a vertical stand that I slipped behind the screen. So it's nice and clean when I'm looking at.
Damien Schreurs: Very good. So you mentioned an iMac before. What was your first Mac? When did you start? Shawn Lemon: My first Mac was a PowerPC.
What was it? The Mac Pro. No, what was it called? A Power Mac, Power Mac, PowerPC, Power Mac. And I got it in 2005. Actually, it was pretty well loaded. I got it for an internship doing video editing and learning Avid and everything like that.
So I needed something powerful and I got a nice Cinema Display, and between those two, I was set up and styling, Damien Schreurs: Yeah, I remember the cinema display. I didn't have one, but I had a few clients who had it. Yeah. Yes, it was a nice screen.
First, it was one of the nicest screens at the time. Shawn Lemon: You know, it was actually how I got into this in the first place. That monitor had a few dead pixels and A $1,200 monitor, whatever, even in 2005, was very expensive.
So I was moving from California to Tennessee, and I grew up in Las Vegas. I ended up stopping in Las Vegas because there was an Apple store there, and I was going to spend a few days with my family before moving over to the other side of the country, and I was at the Apple store dropping off the monitor to get that pixel replaced, and as I was sitting at the Genius Bar, overhearing the conversation the technician was having with a customer who is asking the technician about something in iPhoto, this question in iPhoto. And he gave an answer that was completely wrong. And I thought, Wait a second. That's not how iPhoto works.
Like you can do that. But if you continue down that path, you're gonna be unhappy because that's not the way it was really designed to work. And I don't remember exactly what it was. It was something between events and albums.
And it just made me think. Maybe I could do this job because I clearly know the software inside and out. I know the product line inside and out. I just became completely obsessed over it because I was young and had an internship. So I had time on my hands. And so when I moved to Nashville a few months later, I ended up getting hired for the iPhone launch and I worked there for seven years almost.
Yeah. Damien Schreurs: So, did you also have the long queues? Every September. Shawn Lemon: Yeah. Oh, yeah, every September, and I mean, it would stretch outside. There were people camping, the whole thing.
It was a lot of fun. Launch days were really fun, except for the 3G launch. And luckily I had that day off, which is rare to get a day off on a launch day.
But I think I should just work 10 days in a row or something. Just how it worked with weekends that couldn't schedule me. So, it turned out to be a disaster. So I was happy not to be there for that one. Damien Schreurs: Yeah.
Now, let's switch gear a little in terms of applications. So which applications are you using now to run your business? Shawn Lemon: Yeah. So the core of my business is all run off of Google Workspace. And I use Spark for my email app and that's how I like to communicate with my team. And so I'll share a message with them.
That way we can have a conversation without actually emailing each other. Use templates and all kinds of stuff. So I love that app and then I've created web apps using Chrome's shortcut feature to create as a sort of app for Google Calendar, for Contacts, Asana, Pipedrive, Freshdesk ChatGPT and then I actually have 1Password installed. I use Dialpad for my VoIP. I use Zoom for all of my calls.
Spotify for music. And my webcam is an Opal C1. And that's the core stack of apps that I use. Damien Schreurs: Yeah, it took a while for Apple with Safari to bring the same capability to convert a website into a web app. But I think now, now that you talk about that, I don't think that in any of the episodes that I have had so far, a guest has mentioned this capability in Chrome.
We have talked a few times about Chrome profiles, and the ability to have different Google accounts. Completely separated, but the idea of converting a website into an app. If I recall correctly, is it in the three dots in the top right corner, then you go to Shawn Lemon: That's right. Damien Schreurs: Save as app or something like that.
There is a, Shawn Lemon: They changed it and now it says, "Is it?" Is it under more tools? Cast, save and share is the menu. And then you choose. Install page as app. So that's the new terminology for it and it works really well.
My calendar used to change so fast because I was very appointment based. We allowed people to reschedule same-day appointments as I traveled. around around the city, working for people in their homes and businesses. So I just had to switch
to the web app interface from there because Fantastical just didn't update fast enough and it's better than Apple Calendar, but Fantastical, it still wasn't accurate. So I need 100% accuracy. I switched to using the web apps, and then Google Contacts don't work with Apple Contacts properly. I've never gotten it
to work right with my clients. It works at first. And then, all of a sudden, a week later, you update a contact, and then it just reverts back to what it was before.
So now I just use Contacts as a web app, as well. Damien Schreurs: Yeah. So, I'm not using that with Google Chrome. I'm using the same capability with Edge for some reason.
Because Microsoft Edge now is based on Chromium. So they have implemented the same technology. And yeah, for my company, EasyTECH, I have VoIP.
So, my landline, the business landline. I don't have a physical phone. And so, it's a web app and Shawn Lemon: Same.
Damien Schreurs: Yeah, I think it's for that, so I went to Microsoft Edge, logged in, created a web app, and now I just launched the web app. But to return to what you said, the reason you use it, and it's because it's more for the listeners. When you access the web app, there is no synchronization. You are on the server, on Google's server.
So whatever change you make, you apply it to the source, right? And afterward, it gets synchronized to your iPhone, iPad, the Mac, and so on. And so, this is the reason why using the web app is, It's better in your case. Shawn Lemon: Yeah. And it's just that I don't like troubleshooting Apps have bugs and things go wrong. And the most reliable thing is usually the website.
Asana's app kind of sucks. ChatGPT, you don't get all of the features in the app as you do in the web browser. And so now they've got these new groups that you can create and now there's the opportunity to to actually edit and refine a prompt without having to regenerate the whole thing in a new response. And that's still in beta.
In some conversations it works and some don't, but you You only get that in the web app. So if you want it ultra-reliable, and you don't like troubleshooting, going straight to the web is nice. But when I have four different email accounts to monitor, I don't want to do that in four separate Chrome tabs. That's why I use an app for it. Damien Schreurs: And yeah, and to come back to the compatibility or the lack of compatibility between Google Workspace and the built-in or native Mac apps.
I've been burned by that. I don't remember a few years ago, I was using Mail. So for a while, I used a native mail app on the Mac and then something happened, and either email wouldn't synchronize or it would take too much time, and I was fed up. and I realized, okay, so. They don't work well together, and that's when I decided, okay, so when I use Gmail, because I also have a Google Workspace account for the company, now I have my 248 00:12:24,073 --> 00:12:28,928 profile, and that's it. I have my EasyTech profile, I have a
Mac profile. When I want to do Gmail, Google Calendar, or whatever for EasyTech, I fire up that profile in Google Chrome as well. So even though it works with any other Chromium, I think it's still best to use Google Chrome because at the same time when you're logged in with your Google account or Google Workspace account, you have bookmark synchronization and stuff like that. So there are some advantages, and it's nice to have a profile with a Google Workspace account because when I get a new Mac, and when I get a new Mac, I just install 259 00:13:07,308 --> 00:13:07,428 Shawn Lemon: hmm. Mm hmm. Damien Schreurs: Sign in with my Google Workspace account, and everything comes back.
All the history Shawn Lemon: history and your cookies. I mean, yeah, extensions, it all just pops right in. And I'm huge. I'm a huge user of profiles. I have 12 profiles right now because I'm doing I've got some different client projects going on. And so, we often do data migration.
So our thing is organizing people's email files, passwords and project management. And so, because organization sometimes means big data transfers. We need to use other tools, which means it's not just practical to download the content to their machine and then upload it somewhere else. So we'll do a migration.
I have to gather logins for that. And so I use a totally different profile. So it doesn't sign me out of my accounts and load up other people's accounts automatically. And it just keeps things so clean. And then when I'm done with the project, I trash the profile and remove all their stuff from my machine.
It's just so nice. Damien Schreurs: Yeah, I think it's one of the underutilized feature of Google Chrome, but the same thing with Edge, but then it's about Microsoft, for people who are in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, whatever we just talked about with Shawn, you do the same, but with Microsoft Edge on the Mac. Shawn Lemon: Yeah.
And if anyone wants to learn more about those profiles, I did a Q&A for my clients. I don't know, a few months ago or so, and I recorded it all. So, that's it. Basically, five things for really efficient use of your web browser, from how I do bookmarks, profiles, the extensions, using the notes app and screen captures.
So there's some really good stuff. So you can just email me if you're interested in that. and I can send it your way. Damien Schreurs: Or I could even put it in the in the show notes, right? If you send me the link after the episode, I can put it in the show notes. . Shawn Lemon: Yeah, yeah, that'll be perfect. We'll put that in there. Damien Schreurs: Very good.
What tip or trick did you discover on your Mac recently that you wished you knew before? I know it's going to be a hard one for you, but let's try. Shawn Lemon: Yes. I, I, oh! It's using the Option key. So using the Option key to skip between words. So, and also delete one word at a time instead of having to delete characters one by one or delete an entire line.
So, I often used the up and down arrow keys to move my cursor and then I would use Shift-Command left, right, up, down to highlight all from that point of the cursor, but I didn't realize I could just use Shift Option and then use the arrow keys to highlight a few words, or Option Delete was the big one. Oh, I could just delete one word at a time. So it's been nice as I am. I'm a real stickler for naming conventions for my files.
And so, being able to edit a name that someone else gave me or if I'm renaming a file, that's very similar to something else is the same naming convention, except I'm changing one piece. And so it's just quicker to get there like that. Damien Schreurs: Yeah. It's quicker than going character by character. Yeah.
With the Option key, you do it word by word, basically. Yeah. Good. Talking about the Option key.
That's something I need to remind myself to to check more often. Oh, the option key before on all the keyboards, it was called the Alt key. To mean alternate, and so something I try to do now and I try to remind myself to use whatever keyboard shortcut or an action I can perform somewhere, Shawn Lemon: Mm hmm. Damien Schreurs: The Option key and you will see some additional options, right? So yeah, one that is nice in preview, right? You can rotate a picture. I don't remember now, but if it's rotated 90 degrees left or 90 degrees to the right. But basically the button is just one direction.
And so, if you want to go the other way, you would have to press three times normally, or four times, or three times to get it right. Shawn Lemon: Yeah. Three. Damien Schreurs: But if you press Option and you click, Option means rotate in the other direction. Shawn Lemon: Oh, interesting. On the U.S. keyboard, you have to use Command.
Usually, Command will switch it around. For me, I feel like what they really should have done is to make the Alt key. Control. Control should have been Alt because Apple calls a right click, a secondary click, or alternate options. And so, instead of holding Control to see the the secondary options, it should have just been ALT, right? Alternative. So, but what do you do? Damien Schreurs: Very good.
We're almost at the end of the show. And so, if you were in charge of the Mac division at Apple, what would be your first priority? Shawn Lemon: The Mac division, it's not software. Damien Schreurs: Yeah, you could. Really, you could. oversee hardware and software. Yes. Shawn Lemon: Okay.
One of my biggest gripes is the ability to back up cloud accounts. And so when we use Time Machine to back up our Macs, if you're using iCloud, Dropbox, Google Drive, or anything, and you're not physically downloading the file or making it available offline, then it won't back up to your Time Machine drive, and so many people are thinking that they're backing up their computers. But really, it's like an iPhone backup, but not quite an iPhone—the opposite of an iPhone backup. It's backing up your applications and your settings, but not most of the data because it's so often offloading data, and it's just streaming by default, like my Google Drive, because I use almost exclusively shared drives.
Even for my personal stuff, I use a shared drive to share with my wife. None of that stuff gets backed up, and none of it gets downloaded. I wish that we could turn that on and then click a button In Time Machine's preferences to say download and put, put All of this stuff onto my external drive automatically.
And then, as it sees changes, just download the copy and put it on the hard drive. We don't need to put it actually on the Mac. We just want to make sure that it's backed up. So that would be kind of the biggest thing that I would want to change.
And then make that cloud sync a little bit more reliable And faster, because what is it? File provider is the new protocol that they switched For Dropbox, OneDrive, and Google Drive to sync to Our Macs and even iCloud. It's all the same protocol, which is nice for consistency, but we're three years into it and it still has some issues here and there. Damien Schreurs: Yeah.
I'm still behind operating system‑wise, so I'm still on Sonoma on my MacBook Pro and Ventura, Ventura on the iMac. But I've heard that Sequoia now is implementing a new iCloud sync protocol that should be faster in the sense that iCloud should only upload the Delta version of files rather than re‑uploading the full files, which is the reason why it's so slow on, older operating systems macOS versions. Shawn Lemon: Interesting. Yeah.
I've really been unhappy with how iCloud's file Sync works between devices and sharing and everything. It's just not quite as good as it needs to be. And especially if we're, we're trying to consolidate someone's files into Google, into Google Drive, and they've been using iCloud storage the entire time.
It can be really difficult. And there's no option to use something like CloudHQ to sync contents of iCloud Drive anywhere else. So it has to download physically onto the Mac But once you initiate that download, it's like you can't stop it.
Once it gets going, like, you have to. Anyway, it's a real mess. Ha, ha. Damien Schreurs: Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. For. I don't know for the other, yeah, I think for the other, it works as well.
But so for Google Workspace, the way I do a local backup physical backup of all my data is through my Synology NAS. Shawn Lemon: Yep. I do too. I've got a Synology NAS and then I'm probably going to go back and set up Spanning Sync again, anyway, just for email synchronization between, or yeah, downloading everyone's emails, contacts, calendars.
And then we'll see if I end up doing their, their individual My Drives, because I can get a little more expensive when you add up. Add up more data, but I do like the Synology. It's local. I own it.
Damien Schreurs: And then otherwise, Carbon Copy Cloner. It's an app that I'm using to actually, again, do I do a backup of my Synology onto another external hard drive connected to my Mac. — And so I use Carbon Copy Cloner.
I have to double‑check starting from which version, can tell it to do some backup of cloud storage systems, and it will force the download. Shawn Lemon: Oh, very nice. I'll have to look into that because I haven't used Carbon Copy Cloner in a long time.
Since we've been doing so much more cloud‑based stuff, But yeah, I'll have to look into that. I used to use it all the time. Damien Schreurs: Yeah, I ended up purchasing a, how is it called? 482 00:23:51,319 --> 00:23:53,209 Company license, or, Shawn Lemon: Site license, usually. Damien Schreurs: Life license or something like that. Shawn Lemon: Huh. Damien Schreurs: When I was, when I was doing some Apple consulting, I've stopped doing that now, but when I was doing it, it was super handy.
I could legally install it on any machine of my client. Quickly do Shawn Lemon: Yeah. Damien Schreurs: A clone backup, a reinstall or stuff like that. And then uninstall the app from the computer. But I could then install it on any number of computers, because you're right. There is a site license for companies, And then there is a license for people And then there is a license for people like us, like consultants who help clients.
Yeah, Shawn Lemon: Yeah. I used it a good bit in one of my favorite things about it. And they stopped the ability to do it. But in the day when I was doing a lot of SSD upgrades, some come to me with an iMac or MacBook Pro with a standard hard drive, I'd pop an SSD in there and I never liked to just Clone somebody's data from one drive to another, and usually by the time they got to me, their operating systems kind of messed up. Things are slow. Everything's like I want a fresh
operating system and I want to reinstall everything fresh, pull the files over and organize the files while we're doing it. I called it Reboot, so In the day, I could install Mac OS on a partition on another SSD, so then I would plug both SSDs, the new one in a cradle, and then my other one into the Mac, and I could just clone one to the other, so it would take three minutes. To install an operating system on an SSD. And then I just pop it into the computer and it was so fast. It saved me a bunch of time rather than sitting there for an hour waiting for it to download. And then another hour to an hour and a half to actually install the operating system and the whole thing.
It was just three minutes, and then I don't remember what operating system, it all stopped, and you had to install them fresh. And then at that point, I just downloaded the installers so at least I didn't have to wait. But it still took a while, about 30 minutes onto an SSD to install the operating system for that particular Mac.
Damien Schreurs: Very good. Thank you very much, Shawn. So where can people find you online? Shawn Lemon: Yeah, yeah. So we are at thedigitalorganizer.com and if you go to thedigitalorganizer.com/macpreneur.
I have a file organization guide, so if you are interested in cleaning up your stuff, you've got things all over the place and you want to consolidate them, get it organized with a really good folder structure, great archiving convention. Or, strategy and naming convention and everything. I've got all of it laid out, and that's what we normally take our clients through. So if you want to go and self-implement and learn that, just go to that link, and then we'll give you another one for what is it? The browser tips and everything, but yeah, pretty easy. Damien Schreurs: All of that is in the show notes.
If, like Shawn, you would like to share how you are using your Mac to run your solopreneur business, it's simple. Just visit macpreneur. com forward slash apply. If you are already on Podmatch, just click on the button and you will land on the show profile.
Otherwise, fill out the application form and I will get back to you within a few days. Once again, it's macpreneur. com forward slash apply In the comments below, please share your main takeaway from this episode. And if not done yet, please subscribe to my channel, so we'll get more helpful tips on how to run your business on your Mac.
And until next time, I'm Damien Schreurs, wishing you a great day. Nova AI: Thank you for watching the Macpreneur Podcast. If you've enjoyed the show, please leave a comment and share it with a friend right now.
2025-03-17 20:26
