Focused 110: Focus with Michael Hyatt

Michael Hyatt joins Mike and me on this episode of Focused to talk about staying focused, drift, and scaling back on social media.

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A Few Thoughts Following Today’s Apple Event

Every year Apple shows off its latest processor on a chip, and every year I’m impressed. What will it take for the competition to get closer to Apple? It seems like they have this massive lead, and they just keep running at full tilt. Moreover, it is that chip speed that drives so much of the innovation and features. Most of the new features announced today are possible because of processing power.
That was the first time that any carrier partner got any time at an Apple event in a long time. I’m curious to see how the real world numbers compare to the promises for 5G. Also, did you catch how many times they said or wrote “under ideal conditions”? It was a lot.
The new ceramic shield for iPhone glass sounds very interesting. I have a few predictions on this: a) your iPhone glass will break less often; b) your iPhone glass will scratch easier; c) there are going to be some crazy YouTube iPhone drop tests in the next few weeks.
One thing that stands out is how many new announcements (A14, XDR Display, Ceramic Shield, 5G) are all across the line on the iPhone 12. Apple is no longer holding the best stuff for only the Pro phones.
I’ve thought that this would be the year that I don’t get a Max sized iPhone for several months now. Then Apple announced the additional camera improvements with the 12 Max. When they explained an 87% improvement in low light, my smaller phone willpower evaporated. Instantly.
I think MagSafe might be a bigger deal than expected. We’ve all struggled with chargers and cases in the past. The modular nature of MagSafe will resonate with a lot of people (myself included). However, why’d they have to call it MagSafe? That still stings as I look at my MagSafe-less laptop.
It was no surprise that the iPhone is no longer shipping with a charger or EarPods. I get the reasoning, and lowering emissions is a good idea. I do wish they had an easy way for customers to buy these costly phones to click a box and get those things shipped to them if needed.
Did you catch that they will now ship a USB-C to Lightning cable? Finally.
When they said the iPhone was getting the most popular video game in the world, I thought we’d get Donkey Kong. I’d never heard of League of Legends.
You have to think that when Apple decided to make the HomePod mini, the starting point was someone standing in front of a whiteboard and writing, “$99”. I suspect the mini will be much more popular than its older sibling.
Speaking of HomePod, mine were going off like crazy with all of the “Hey Siri”s in the presentation. Apple needs to work on that. I’d like to see them let you create your own trigger phrase.
In hindsight, using HomePods and Apple devices as an intercom system seems such a no brainer. The question is whether anyone will use it, or it will become the next Walkie-Talkie that still exists on the Apple Watch, but nobody uses.
Finally, am I the only one that wants to move into the Apple Demo house?

BBEdit 13.5

Yesterday Bare Bones released BBEdit, version 13.5. There is plenty to like in this new version:

Ready for Apple Silicon — If you get it from their website, it will be a universal build. If you are getting it from the Mac App Store, it is still Intel-only until Apple allows developers to start distributing Apple silicon builds through the Mac App Store.
Markdown Cheat Sheet — Just as they recently did with regular expressions, BBEdit also now has built-in tools to help you learn and implement Markdown.
Server Document Snapshots — If you are accessing documents on a server, now when you quit BBEdit, it will save a snapshot of server-based documents, so when you re-open it, things will go much faster. I spoke to Rich Siegel about this, and he does a cool trick where it checks the server file date to make sure there are no conflicts.
“Rescued Documents” — Have you ever brain farted and quit a document without saving? BBEdit can now save a list of documents closed without saving.

There are several more new features, but the thing that stands out for me is Apple silicon support. There was some justifiable concern in the community that power-tool apps like BBEdit may have a hard time making the Apple silicon transition as quickly as we’d like. BBEdit, which admittedly has plenty of experience with Apple silicon transitions, seems to have had no problem making the move with a version ready before there is an Apple silicon Mac on the market.

Watching the Apple iPhone 12 Announcement

Apple’s big iPhone announcement is tomorrow at 10 AM Pacific. The event will stream at Apple’s website and YouTube. If you’d rather take it all in while in couch potato mode, it will also stream on the Apple TV app.

Just get your popcorn and buckle in for the new iPhone 12. Only a few more hours until my beautiful iPhone 11 feels like garbage. My kids are already dropping not-so-subtle hints about what I should do with last year’s model.

Ulysses Mobile Grammar Tools

I’m currently working on a future secret Field Guide project that involves a lot of writing. So, before digging in I took another look at all the writing tools, as you do, and settled on Ulysses(https://ulysses.app). That was in January. The Ulysses updates this year have only affirmed that decision.

Most recently, we got version 21 on the iPad and iPhone(https://ulysses.app/releases/). The headline feature is grammar, style check, and text revisions. With revisions mode, you can track your annotations and comments in addition to the app’s grammar and style suggestions. I immediately implemented these features in my secret project, and my words are better for it.

Mac Power Users 557: Grading the Intel Era

Join us for the latest episode of Mac Power Users. With Apple silicon Macs coming soon, Stephen plays a montage for me that recaps the Intel era, featuring its highs and lows.

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iPhone 12 Rumors Abound

It’s just a few days until Apple’s iPhone 12 event. Maybe it’s just me, but it feels like there are a lot of leaks this year about the new hardware. We seem to know the sizes, colors, storage configurations, and even the cellular radios. 9to5 Mac has done a great job of keeping up with them all. The rumors could be wrong, but they sure don’t feel that way.

The saddest bit for me is that there seems to be no oxygen to the idea that the cool little TouchID button going in the new iPad Air is also going on the iPhone with all of these rumors. I get that Apple has to manufacture millions of iPhones, and when the iPhone 12 was being developed, Apple didn’t know that the universe would conspire to require all of us to wear face masks, but I was still hopeful. The lack of the TouchID button.

Automators 60: Cloud Automation Check-In

Changes are afoot in the cloud automation space. IFTTT now has a pro tier. Zapier continues to improve. There’s a new player on our radar: Integromat. In this episode of Automators, Rosemary and I break down the current state of cloud automation.

This episode of Automators is sponsored by:

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Personal Retreat Technology

A few days ago, I published a video about my personal retreat experience. Since then, I’ve had many people ask me to explain further what technology I used. I’m about to explain what I did, but before I do so, there is a good argument that you shouldn’t take any technology on a personal retreat. It’s so easy to let the tech take over.

However, in my case I wanted to do a lot of typing and dictating, and tuning out infinity bucket apps has never been a problem for me so I brought along some Apple gear. If you want to bring technology and are worried you’ll be wasting time in social media instead of doing the hard work of a personal retreat, turn off your WiFi and cellular radios. I didn’t need to get that drastic, but if I’d caught myself lurking on Twitter, I absolutely would have done so. (I also did bring along pen and paper, just in case.)

If you are going to use technology, there are three phases to my version of a personal retreat:

Identifying and writing out your roles.
Asking tough questions about each role.
Planning for action in relation to each role.

For steps one and two, you could do this with any tool for managing words. A text editor would be fine. Apple Notes or even TextEdit could get the job done. The next level would be an app that supports headings and organization, like Drafts, Ulysses, or even BBEdit. As I explained in the video, the process is very non-linear. You’ll find yourself bouncing around among roles and questions a lot. For that reason, another excellent tool for this process would be an outliner or mind mapping app with both the ability to add plenty of text and folding branches. My two favorite apps for this process would be OmniOutliner or MindNode.

For this past retreat, I spent the first two days using Roam Research. I’ve been experimentally using Roam for a few months. It’s a powerful tool that combines the ability to turn anything into an outline with the ability to link any outline block in your Roam document (“graph” in Roam parlance) to any other outline block in your Roam graph with no friction. Roam is an excellent tool for this process … except for its immaturity. While Roam is a bit of a mind-bender and makes connecting thoughts very easy, it is still very new, and there are a bunch of parts to Roam that are not ready for prime time. My biggest concern is the lack of security. As I started to pour my heart into the retreat document, I became concerned about lack fo security in Roam, a web app, and ended up towards the end blocking and copying into OmniOutliner, which lacks Roam’s cool backlinks but has better security. (We’re going to be digging in on these research tools on an upcoming episode of Mac Power Users, and I’ve got a lot more on my mind when it comes to Roam and its competitors.)

For part three, turning my retreat ideas into action, I relied heavily on OmniFocus and Drafts. A lot of the process toward the end was writing plans out for myself and my collaborators. All of those started as blank text files in Drafts and grew into much more as I worked through the process.

I also set up a series of new repeating tasks and projects in OmniFocus to help keep myself accountable for some of my planned changes. Using a set of custom perspectives and review frequencies, OmniFocus can help keep me honest.

Looking back, my personal retreat technology wasn’t particularly novel or demanding. You need a place to write words down. You need a place to turn words into future actions. To go much beyond would probably just be a distraction on a retreat.