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THE USEFUL TECH
5️⃣ THE USEFUL FIVE · FRIDAY ROUNDUP · ISSUE #012
👋 HEY, IT'S RAJA
The first week of October was a busy one for small Mac developers. 5 new apps launched within a few days of each other, and none of them is a copy of something you already own.
None of them comes from a big company, and a couple come from one person working alone. All 5 are below, with what each one costs.
1️⃣ Cupola, for Calendar, Reminders and Notes in your notch
Cupola pulls Apple Calendar, Reminders and Notes into one window and into the MacBook notch. You type what you need in plain language and it lands in the right app.
What makes it worth a look is that it does not try to replace Apple's apps. Everything syncs straight back to Calendar, Reminders and Notes, so your iPhone sees all of it and nothing gets locked into a new system you might abandon in a month.
It needs macOS 26 or later and an Apple silicon Mac. It is a one-time $20, sold from the developer's site rather than the Mac App Store.
2️⃣ Snapset, for rebuilding your desk in one click
Snapset saves your whole workspace as a set: the apps you had open, where every window sat, your browser tabs and the Finder folders you were in. Restore the set and all of it comes back.
The clever part is that it can apply a set automatically when you plug into a display. Dock the MacBook at your desk and the work layout appears. Unplug and take it to the sofa, and it is a laptop again.
Plans run from $12 a year up to $90 for a lifetime license.
3️⃣ Pixel Soup, for a desktop that looks different every day
Pixel Soup makes live wallpapers out of dithered pixel art, drawn by your Mac's graphics chip. You pick shapes, colour palettes and dither styles and it animates the result, or you hand it one of your own photos and it dithers that instead.
Dithering is the old trick of faking shades with patterns of dots. It is the look of early Mac and Game Boy graphics, and it suits a modern display far better than you would expect.
It is a one-time $9.99 from a solo developer, with a Mac App Store version on the way.
4️⃣ Control My Mac, for using your iPhone as a remote
Control My Mac turns your iPhone or iPad into a trackpad, a keyboard and a grid of shortcut buttons for your Mac. You pair the two by scanning a QR code.
The shortcut grid is set up per app, so the buttons you get for a video player are not the ones you get for Keynote. Think presenting from across the room, or running a Mac mini that sits under your TV.
The Mac app is free. The full iPhone app is $3.99 a month or $17.99 once.
5️⃣ Smooth Recorder, for screen recordings that look edited
Smooth Recorder records your screen and does the editing work as it goes. It zooms in automatically where you click, smooths out a jittery cursor and adds captions generated on your Mac.
The feature that stands out is editing by transcript. Delete a sentence from the text and that part of the video goes with it. If you have looked at Screen Studio and decided it was more than you wanted to spend, this one is aimed squarely at you.
It is in early access at $9 right now, and the price goes up to $69 when it launches properly.
Pick the one that fixes something you already do every week. That is the one that sticks.
See you Monday.
Want to build an app of your own?
Every app above came from a small team or a single developer. The Claude App Playbook is my no-code guide to building your own iPhone app with Claude, Claude Code and Cowork, from the first idea to something running on your own phone.
Keep it useful,
Raja · The Useful Tech
P.S. Enjoyed this? Forward it to a friend who loves their Apple gear a little too much.