One of the features I was looking forward to with MobileMe is the ability to send large files without bothering with FTP. There is supposed to be a feature that allows you to easily email a link to a friend that allows them to download the file directly from you MobileMe storage.
Unfortunately, Apple has yet to flip the switch on this feature. However, this is already available on SugarSync. You can even send a file from your iPhone. That is actually an impressive trick over the lunch table.
I just published my longest screencast yet. This one weighs in at 32 minutes and covers email management from top to bottom including such subjects as:
1. Pop v. iMap
2. Gmail v. MobileMe
3. Best Practices (managing your inbox and smart folders)
4. Spam
5. Archiving old mail
I put a lot of work into this one and I hope it is helpful. As usual, it is in Apple TV format. So what are you waiting for? Head over to my iTunes feed and download it.
We had a pretty good shaker here at MacSparky HQ today. The epicenter is about 25 miles from my home. A few things fell off the shelves but overall there are no complaints. As a native Californian, this was an “easy” one.
Regardless, I’m really touched by the emails that have been coming in from readers asking how we are doing. Thanks everyone for thinking of me and my family. We are just fine.
So I woke up this morning to discover the 1Password iPhone application is now available in the iPhone AppStore. Being the fearless soul I am, I downloaded it and installed it immediately. The sync process was flawless and while there are a few bugs (Agile reports 1.1 is already in the pipeline), I must say it is very nice having my favorite password application in my pocket.
Did you think anyone would try to take on Google search? I sure didn’t. Well it turns out a few former Google employees have exactly that sort of spunk. Their new search engine, Cuil.com, (pronounced “cool”) went live today. It claims to search more pages than Google (although Google probably disputes this). What is most interesting is the way in which it displays results. They’ve dropped the traditional “long list” paradigm for something a little more graphic and three column. It will be interesting to see if this gets any traction.
I did a few Cuil searches and the results were mixed. When I tried to search my wife’s business, eclecticpaperie.com, it gave me several accurate results along with a few others that were sort of … well … disturbing.
Regardless of whether Cuil becomes a “force” or not, I like the fact that people are coming up with different ways to display search results. The current method has been the same since the days of Compuserve and, in internet terms, that is positively Neanderthal.
The folks at Apple are masters at keeping us in the dark. And being honest, there is a certain part of me that absolutely loves this. I enjoy the hype leading up to WWDC and Macworld and I love being amazed with the way Apple (in contrast to most of the tech industry) makes few or no promises but always delivers.
All of that being said, silence is sometimes a bad thing. This is especially true with the MobileMess. I get that things went off the rails with this launch but I never got why Apple was so secretive about it. When people are paying for a service and the service breaks, they should be told what is broken and how long it will be until things are fixed. For these reasons I was pleased to see that Apple has lifted the veil (more or less) with respect to MobileMe with a MobileMe status page. While it’s great we can now get the status quickly, I’m still wondering why it took so long.
This week I’m going to look at the OmniFocus iPhone application. Unless you fit in that narrow wedge of a Venn diagram including both iPhone owners and OmniFocus geeks, these comments will have absolutely no interest to you. So there you have it. You’ve been warned.
Since the first day I took my iPhone of the box a year ago, I’ve been waiting for iPhone OmniFocus to arrive. It was, and remains to be, remarkable to me that Apple still hasn’t created a native to-do list management system for the iPhone.
Well, with the opening of the applications store, and my willingness to part with $20, my wish has finally come true. I have OmniFocus on my iPhone. I have now been using it a few weeks and thought I’d share some of my initial impressions.
The most impressive feature of the iPhone OmniFocus application is the robust synchronization accomplished without use of a cute little white cord. That’s right, you can synchronize your task list database wirelessly. In order to perform this bit of black magic, you need to upgrade your OmniFocus license on your Mac to the sneaky peek 1.1 version. (You can read my MacOmniFocus Review here.) I know most sane people avoid beta software (I frequently install it with reckless abandon), but in this case it is well worth the trouble. The Mac version of OmniFocus 1.1 allows you to sync your data through your MobileMe or other Webdav account. Once you have trained your Mac application to put your data into your MobileMe account, your iPhone will look at the cloud version and update itself. No cord required.
The synchronization process isn’t perfect. It takes longer than a wired-based synchronization. Also, sometimes it runs into snags. In that case, OmniFocus will ask you whether it wants you to use the server or local version. The bottom line is that if you’re going to do this, you need to respect the syncing gods. There are couple ways to do this. First, you tell your Mac software to backup your data every time you close OmniFocus. That way, you have numerous backups of your OmniFocus data in case the gods become angry. Second, don’t tell everything to sync at once. Technically this is possible, but its really like when the Ghostbusters crossed the streams. Very bad things could happen.
With these precautions in place, syncing is great. The Omni people get a MacSparky thumbs up for the sheer moxy to pull it off. I am certain this process will get even easier and better over time but it is entirely workable right now so long as you take a few precautions.
So once I have the data on my iPhone, what do I do with it? This is where the current version of the OmniFocus iPhone software comes up a little short. The application allows you to manipulate the data in your iPhone and make changes to your tasks. Making changes is quite often, however, awkward. For instance, moving the start date on the iPhone requires several button taps and scroll wheels. Strangely, the process of changing the date also changes the start time and requires more steps to set right. Put simply, the interface needs work. The Omni engineers have to figure a way to make data manipulation just as easy on the iPhone as it is on the Mac without benefit of a mouse and keyboard. I don’t envy them. I think what they have is a good start. I hope they continue to refine it. I suspect they will.
The flashiest feature is the location aware function. OmniFocus on your iPhone can look where you’re at and provide you tasks available for nearby locations. This even works on 1st generation iPhones such as mine. For instance, when you are in front of a market, it can give you your grocery list. A lot of people are excited about this function. I get that this is really tricky, but I’ve yet to really find a use for it. When I want to buy my groceries, I go to the market. I don’t need my phone to tell me. Maybe as I use this more, I’ll find a better use for it. If anybody’s got any ideas, e-mail me. I’d love to hear them.
So despite my gripes about the user interface, I have to say I can’t imagine living without OmniFocus on my iPhone now that I’ve had it a few weeks. Every morning, after I get my daily tasks set up, I sync everything to my iPhone and it is very satisfying knowing that I have that list in my pocket at all times. I can check items off and, with a little work, adjust them on my iPhone and it will integrate with my database on my Mac. I’m convinced this will become even more useful as the Omni gang continues to polish and enhance the application.
At $20, this is one of the more expensive iPhone applications. However, if you’ve made it this far in the review, you probably are an OmniFocus nerd so stop kidding yourself and just go buy it.
The last few days, well last few weeks actually, the day job has been a real grind. Coincidentally, I’ve been helping some friends get their arms wrapped around OmniFocus. It has been really great handing out a few tips and watching the light bulb go off as people find ways to use these tools to get their work done faster and spend more time doing things they love. The funny thing is, they all seem to think that I really have it together. In fact, things are quite the opposite. Lately I’ve been a jumble of loose ends. What I really need to do, is take my own advice and spend about four hours auditing all my various obligations.
Keeping things together is difficult for everyone. We all have our tricks and Band-Aids, but you can never let your guard down. Chaos lurks behind the door. My solution is to table the whole mess and take a few days off and go to Las Vegas with various members of my extended family. While I’m not much of a gambler, I do intend to geek out with some HDR photography and catch up with my inner nerd. Yes, the MacBook Pro will be accompanying me so you may hear from me. When I return Sunday night, the big audit will occur.
I am one of “those” people. You know … the kind of people that use Apple Mail stationery. Now before the geek storm troopers raid my house and rip my Apple nerd card from my shaking hands, I don’t use stationary all the time. Just occasionally. Like when a friend invites me over for a nice dinner I’ll send a stationary “Thank You” or when sending out an announcement to family members concerning posting pictures to the web. For occasions like this, the Apple Mail stationery fits the bill perfectly.
The problem is I’ve been using the same stationary for a year now and it’s starting to look tired. Just this week, Jumsoft, the same people who make some great Keynote add-ons, released their own pack of Apple Mail stationary.
The stationary pack includes 50 designs that cover just about every occasion you can think of including themes of “Family,” “Congratulations,” “Invitations,” “Emotions,” “Vacations,” “Seasons,” and “Neutral.”
There are a variety of designs allowing you to send a unique e-mail and even dropping in your own pictures if you like. Using this product I made an announcement for about 40 family and friends. It included a custom font, a very nice background, and a snapshot of my family. Everyone was able to read it.
The developer has samples of the stationary on its website. The stationery offered works perfectly for my intended use. Specifically to send a nice card to someone on occasion that goes beyond the typical blocky text.
This product sells for $39. That may be a little high for the occasional stationary user. If you use stationery repeatedly however, it would not be a bad idea to add some new resources so you’re recipients can see something new.
I met Dave Teare, one the the 1Password developers, at Macworld and immediately liked him. Dave is my kind of Mac Geek: passionate about his Mac and making the best possible software. So upon seeing Dave’s write up and preview of 1Password for the iPhone and iPod Touch it comes as no surprise to me that it looks fantastic. Make sure to give this one a spin when it goes live in the AppStore. If you haven’t already, also take a serious look at the 1Password application for Macintosh. I don’t know how I could operate without it. You can read my (somewhat dated) review of 1Password here.
A few months ago, the Irvine Applestore declared my MacBook Pro officially “dead” and replaced it with a shiny new one thanks to AppleCare. That machine was a few years old so, while the old warranty transfers over to this new machine, there isn’t much time left on it. Today I finally got around to calling Apple to see if there was a way to extend it for three years on the new machine. Turns out there is. Apple is refunding a pro rata portion of the old warranty to me. They say it takes about 30 days to receive the credit. In the meantime I will buy a new AppleCare warranty for this new machine and then I’ll be good for 3 years after the date they swapped me out the new machine. By the way, I saved $70 buying AppleCare from Amazon instead of Apple
I should probably also mention that I have a separate insurance policy on my computers for accidental damage or theft. You can usually get them as part of your homeowner’s insurance or buy one from a specific electronics insurance broker. So between these two policies, I’m covered for just about any problem with my Macs.
By the way, if you are looking for the AppleCare phone number it is not exactly easy to find. Add it to your Address Book. It is 1-800-275-2273.
This morning Apple sent out its “mea culpa” email to MobileMe subscribers concerning the less than stellar transition from .Mac to MobileMe. Standing behind the apology, Apple gave everyone a free 30 day extension of services.
We want to apologize to our loyal customers and express our appreciation for their patience by giving all current subscribers an automatic 30-day extension to their MobileMe subscription free of charge. Your extension will be reflected in your account settings within the next few weeks.
Apple also confirmed my suspicion that Calendar and Address Book syncing was less than instantaneous.
I appreciate Apple stepping up and taking responsibility and providing some value to the customers. My only complaint is the lack of information while they were sorting everything out. A few simple postings explaining the problems and estimated time for fixes would have been appreciated.
The dust is finally settling around MobileMe. I am still scratching my head over the bungled launch of this product but as the servers seem to be recovering, I’m already incorporating the new features into my daily life. Specifically, the push syncing is fantastic. I generally use a MacBook Air as my daily computer. I have a MacBook Pro at home at my desk for all of the heavy lifting like video, photo editing and the likes. I also sync my iPhone to the MacBook Pro. Before MobileMe, that meant when I made an adjustment to an appointment on my Mac, it did not get on my phone until that night when I synced it at home. Now it pushes right through. I already can’t live without this feature. Here are a couple other tips I’ve discovered:
Just because you can push email, doesn’t mean you have to become a Pavlovian dog like some of our Blackberry brethren. I’ve left the “push” on for my email but I refuse to jump every time it pings, vibrates, or otherwise announced new mail. Stopping for every email would make it impossible to get anything done. Be the master of your email, don’t let email master you.
BusySync still lets you sync your calendars with your family and co-workers. Likewise it allows you to painlessly publish to Google if needed. I had an interesting chat with George Starcher and Katie Floyd over the weekend where we figured out a work-around for MobileMe’s inability to sync subscribed calendars. Specifically, if you subscribe to the calendar at your Google calendar and then sync it down to your iCal with BusySync, you can get it to push. If anyone knows a way to push the birthday calendar, let me know.
I’ve noticed that while the email pushes nearly immediately, the calendar and address push is a bit slower. For me it is generally 5-15 minutes. This delay doesn’t bother me at all.
I really like the look of the web access portal. It looks and feels like an application. I think the UI is heads and shoulders above Google’s offerings but feature poor. There are a lot of options available in Google calendar that are simply not there on MobileMe. Lets hope they continue to improve stability and add features as things calm down.
I’ve had my head under water the last few days with some deadlines at the day job so I thought I’d check in with the MacSparky faithful with a couple of observations.
I did the manual install that was widely publicized yesterday. The App Store is everything I though it would be and then some. I’ve downloaded a ton of free applications. My favorite two free ones so far are Urbanspoon (it is so satisfying shaking your phone and having it tell you where to eat) and Lightsaber (because .. well … its a LIGHTSABER!).
I’ve also bought a few apps. I have OmniFocus running (review in the future) but am also loving the MLB application and Band. Now if we could just sort out the issue of that pesky bluetooth keyboard.
I, along with most of the interweb, predicted AT&T’s painful signup procedures would be a problem and it looks like that is coming true. For those of you going through it, at least rest easy knowing at some point in the next few days, your phone will be faster than my phone.
My biggest disappointment is the problems getting MobileMe off the ground. It has been generally non-existent and, when briefly available, extremely slow. I think MobileMe holds great promise but Apple needs to give it sufficient server backbone to make it snappy AND reliable. I’m withholding judgment on this one a few more days to see if they get it sorted out.
Apple announced last night that the .Mac service will be going down at 6 PM Pacific on July 9, 2008. The service will remain down for approximately 4 hours or until they have MobileMe in place. This is great news. Thursday morning, I hope to have MobileMe working.
In anticipation of using the new service, I have deactivated the Google sync function in BusySync and will be instead doing it through the MobileMe service. My primary use for the Web calendaring is to view and edit it on my PC at work. That is just the beginning. With iPhone calendar push syncing, it will really streamline things for me. Is anybody else planning on dumping the Google calendar sync for MobileMe?
Recently, I’ve been getting a lot of email questions about some of my productivity hacks. It has inspired me to try and step things up with the screencasts. I’m now tooling up to release a series of productivity themed screencasts. The first two installments will be:
1. Email
All things email - IMAP vs. POP, dealing with Spam, archiving, best practices, plug-ins, and my filing system.
2. OmniFocus
My particular OmniFocus tips, tricks, and tweaks.
I’ve got a few other ideas but the above two are going to keep me busy for some time. Let me know if there is anything in particular you would like covered in the above two shows or if you have any other ideas for screencasts. I’m looking forward to putting these together.
I know that all of the readers have been waiting with baited breath for the MacSparky verdict on upgrading to the new iPhone 3g. [eyebrows roll] Well friends, the wait is over. I’ve finally decided to “go public”.
I have to admit I’ve waited until the last week to post this because when the first iPhone came out I was vocal pretty early about the fact I would not immediately get one. You can imagine how surprised I was carrying that little bag on launch day. What did it for me the first time was that spiffy video Apple did on how to operate the phone. Well Apple just did another one of those videos (with the same Actor no less) and after watching it I’m even more convinced I won’t be buying a 3g iPhone on launch day.
The original iPhone was so much more than my old smart phone that I couldn’t resist upgrading immediately. The difference between the 3g and original iPhone however doesn’t strike me as all that revolutionary.
It really comes down to this: Are you willing to pay $200 plus an additional approximately $30 on your monthly bill for 3g and GPS? I can see how this is a no brainer some folks who need those features. I’m just not blown away by it. I have wi-fi at home and at work. Most of the iPhone web apps I use are already very Edge optimized and acceptable. I own a $100 Nuvi that handles my navigation.
Also, I think a lot of people will be surprised on July 11 to find out that the 3g buying experience, for lack of a better term, will suck. The AT&T folks are going to make sure the phone is activated before it leaves the store. It probably takes 30 minutes to activate. So lets say you are at a really big Apple Store with 100 employees. That means they can sell 200 phones an hour. Ugg. I think people are also going to be surprised how often their 3g coverage isn’t so 3g and more Edgey. This will, of course, depend on where you are located. I am very curious about the non-driving direction uses for GPS on a phone. Maybe not immediately, but very soon I suspect that will be a compelling feature.
Of course I’ll upgrade eventually I’m not even ruling out within a few months but most likely for me it will be in November when maybe they have a 32gig model with (hopefully) a better camera. I can say that I am certain I will be nowhere near an Apple Store on July 11. Hopefully, I’ll be home updating my existing iPhone software and going crazy in the App Store. How about you? Are you going to upgrade?
I just published screencast #14 which explains how to customize the toolbars in your OS X applications. This screencast was inspired by my sister, Alisa and her pal Karen, who are brand new switchers and told me they understood very little of the ramblings here at Macsparky. So this screencast is aimed at the beginner and should help the listeners understand how to customize their toolbars in a variety of OS X applications. You can download it directly right here.
I hope everyone had a nice Fourth of July. The nerdy side of me particularly enjoyed shooting my family with sparklers. For these shots I put the Canon on a tripod and set the ISO to 100, the Aperture to 9, and the exposure varied between 5 and 10 seconds. The above shot is of me.
We also went to Disneyland on the third but one of the legs on my knock-off Gorilla Pod broke. I’m going to see if I can return it. As a result I ended up having to prop the camera on a trash can for this shot.
Finally, with no trash can or tripod, the fireworks shots came out jiggly. Feel free to laugh.
It wasn’t so long ago that there were very few options for Mac users in the graphics department. There was 800 pound gorilla, Photoshop, and Adobe Photoshop Elements for the rest of us. Adobe was behind on its product cycle and for Intel Mac users, Photoshop in any iteration was a slug.
In just one year, this space has completely turned around. Adobe finally got its act together and released CS3 and an Intel friendly Adobe Photoshop Elements version 6. Likewise, Apple beefed up the core animation, core graphics, and other elements of OS X to allow developers to create their own graphics applications. In short, there has been a boom of quality graphics software including Pixelmator, Acorn, and now Iris.
The developers of Iris bill it as a graphical and photo editing application “designed from the ground up specifically for Mac users.” In large part, Iris delivers. It features a simple interface that is much less intimidating than Photoshop. Iris uses a “one window” metaphor for the application. It has simple sliders that are in obvious locations that allows you to adjust color or zoom just like you would in a lot of current OS X applications.
One of my favorite features was the inclusion of a small pane at the bottom of the Iris window that includes thumbnails of all of your current open images. When you’re working on several images at one time, this is extremely convenient.
Within very little time, I had easy access to common tools such as dodge and burn and a decent set of drawing tools. The implementation of layers is both easy to use and powerful once you start using the built-in filters. Iris also accepts and writes a wide variety of files depending on your needs.
Another function that I thought was pretty slick was the inclusion of a “new from clipboard” command. This really made sense to me. In fact, I could see this command being used in a variety of applications.
While Iris does a very credible job of giving you easy photo editing and drawing tools, it is not going to replace Photoshop. Indeed, I don’t particularly see at replacing Photoshop Elements. The selection tools are not as robust and some of the deeper features from the Adobe offerings are simply nonexistent.
Iris fits in that space already occupied by Elements, Pixelmator and Acorn. All of these applications are aimed squarely at that user who does not want to spend the time and money required to master Adobe Photoshop but still wants some photo editing tools beyond iPhoto. If that is you, take a look at Iris. I can’t make a recommendation between Iris, Pixelmator, Acorn and Elements. I think that depends a lot on the user and I simply haven’t spent enough time with the applications to give an intelligent recommendation. Regardless, all of these applications have trial periods available. When making a decision such as this, it’s probably best that you kick the tires yourself.
Iris retails for $79. You can find it at Nolobe.com. You can listen to this review on Surfbits MacReviewCast episode #167.
Recent Comments