October 01, 2025

MacVoices #25250: Joe Kissell Takes Control of Tahoe and Mac Basics (3)

21 minutes

Joe Kissell wraps up our conversation about Take Control of Tahoe and Mac Basics (2nd Edition) with comments on Apple’s growing bundle of system apps, arguing choice is good but overload hurts usability, citing legacy tools like Stickies. He highlights Tahoe’s automation boosts—Shortcuts that auto-run on triggers—and new passkey import/export for cross-manager use.

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Show Notes:

Chapters:

[0:00] Why Apple keeps adding apps

[1:26] Choice vs. overload (humor included)

[2:17] Stickies as a legacy example

[4:07] Constraints reduce cognitive load

[5:55] Options you can ignore (Phone, journaling)

[7:22] Familiar tools vs. learning new ones

[8:29] Tying back to Liquid Glass choices

[9:09] Shortcuts: new auto-run triggers

[11:24] Passkey import/export and managers

[14:07] Where to get the books and pricing

[15:36] Premium membership and big discounts

[16:40] Large, frequently updated catalog

[18:09] High signal-to-noise vs. video

[19:42] Lunch plans and wrap-up

Links:

Take Control of Tahoe by Joe Kissell - Take Control Books

Mac Basics by Joe Kissell - Take Control Books

Guests:

Joe Kissell is the publisher of Take Control ebooks, as well as the author of over 60 books on a wide variety of tech topics. Keep up with him if you can on his personal site, JoeKissell.com, on Bluesky, and Mastodon.

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