Today MacStories released a fresh new batch of perspective icons for OmniFocus. This group includes 400 different glyphs in 25 different colors in both glyph and square form. When you do the math, that comes out to 20,000 icons. Yikes! In addition to upgrading my OmniFocus perspective icons, I also find icon files handy for all sorts of uses ranging from graphics in presentations to Shortcuts icons. You can get the whole pile at the discounted price of $18 (usual price $25) for a short time.
We talk about Drafts a lot on the Mac Power Users because it just continues to innovate. Greg Pierce recently released version 20. (Version 20!) The new version adds a wiki-like feature where if you wrap the title of a draft in double brackets [[like this]], you can tap on that item to jump straight to a note in Drafts with the same name. (See the above screenshot.) Interestingly, if a note doesn’t already exist with that name, when you tap on it, Drafts will create a new note with that name.
Remember when Drafts was all about quick capture and action on text. There is so much more to it now. This app is most certainly one of those subscription model success stories. The free version gives the basic functions away and there are enough power users willing to pay (myself included) to let Greg pile on new features. Learn more about this new release in the Drafts Forum. Also, if you’d like to learn more about getting started with Drafts, I’ve got a free Field Guide for you.
It’s Focused’s 100th episode! Mike and I are looking back and looking forward in terms of focus.
This episode of Focused is sponsored by:
Pingdom: Start monitoring your website performance and availability today, and get instant alerts when an outage occurs or a site transaction fails. Use offer code FOCUSED to get 30% off. Offer expires on January 31, 2021.
ExpressVPN: High-speed, secure and anonymous VPN service. Get 3 months free with a 1-year package.
Timing: The automatic time-tracking app for macOS. Use this link to save 10% on your purchase.
Kourosh Dini has a new book, Taking Smart Notes with DEVONthink, that covers the basics of DEVONthink in the context of building your own Zettelkasten (or Slip-Note) note-taking database. I’ve heard the term Zettelkasten thrown around a lot as of late and I’m eager to learn more about Kourosh’s approach. I’m only about half way through the book, but I’m digging it and I’ve already picked up a bunch of useful DEVONthink tips. I’m a particular fan of Kourosh’s approachable, somewhat whimsical writing technique.
From the early days of iPhoto to now, with the Photos app and iCloud, Apple has offered increasingly robust photo management tools for its users. On this week’s episode of Mac Power Users, Stephen and I walk you through the features and tools you should know about.
This episode of Mac Power Users is sponsored by:
DEVONthink: Get Organized — Unleash Your Creativity. Use this link for 10% off.
CleanMyMac X: Your Mac. As good as new.
1Password: Have you ever forgotten a password? You don’t have to worry about that anymore.
If you are one of those people who can’t get through the day without coffee, you might understand the importance of having great coffee.
Each cup of coffee should be supreme and you should enjoy each sip you take during the day. After all, believe it or not, this is part of what makes your day great. Every little detail sums up to produce an outstanding cup of coffee, but freshness is key here. So make sure that you get this part of your coffee ritual right.
To get a fully flavor-filled experience, the first thing you need is fresh ground coffee beans. And to get the richest infusion of flavor and aroma to your coffee, you should grind it just before you brew it. Of course, you need a coffee grinder to accomplish this because coffee beans are super hard!
Gear.Coffee makes it easy for you to choose because they’ve selected the top three high-quality manual coffee grinders by Kinu Grinders. The German-engineered Kinu M47 Phoenix and Simplicity hand grinders feature the best in consistency and reliability no matter how you prepare your coffee: Aeropress, Pour-over, Espresso, Moka Pot, Drip, etc.
Choose the one that suits you better. There’s no wrong choice with these grinders!
Rosemary and I celebrate Automators’ 50th episode by looking at the different flavors of automation and sharing some of our favorite automations for Shortcurts and Keyboard Maestro.
This episode of Automators is sponsored by:
TextExpander, from Smile: Unlock your productivity with TextExpander. Get 20% off with your first year.
MindNode: Mind Map & Brainstorm Ideas
Hulu updated its Apple TV interface this week. (9to5 Mac has all the details.) This is only newsworthy because the prior interface was so terrible for occasional Hulu viewers such as myself. Every time I tried to find Brooklyn 99 in the Hulu app I wanted to throw my remote through my TV. Without trying the new interface yet, I can assure it is better because there is no way it could be worse.
I am happy to announce the release of the all new Photos Field Guide.
THE SHORT VERSION
122 videos, fully streamable, plus combined versions for easier download.
Nearly six hours of video tutorials.
Full coverage for iPhone, iPad, and the Mac.
Everything is broken up and paced so novice to advanced users can get on board and master their photos.
Get it now with the introductory price.
THE LONG VERSION
This second edition of the Photos Field Guide contains nearly six hours of video tutorials that will up your photo game on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Over the years, organizing, editing, and sharing your photos with multiple devices have come to feel like chasing a mythical white whale. Not anymore. The Photos Field Guide delivers the goods, and this video course teaches you how. This course has in-depth video explaining how to get the most from the Photos app on the iPhone, iPad, and the Mac.
Please note the introductory price of $24 will go to $29 shortly after launch.
OVERVIEW AND LIBRARY MANAGEMENT
While Photos attempts to make your initial setup simple and easy, there can be complications. What if you have more than one existing photo library? What if you’ve got folders of photographs sprinkled all over your hard drive? All of these can be imported into Photos, but you’ve got to know the ropes. This video screencast shows you all kinds of tricks to run Photos on your Mac, iPad, and iPhone.
Photos also can use iCloud Photo Library to make sharing photos between your Mac, iPad, and iPhone so much easier. The Field Guide walks you through the initial iCloud setup, including advice on which cloud storage to use and how to get the initial upload of your photo library done with as little pain and suffering as possible.
TAKING PHOTOS
While “point-and-shoot” works amazingly well, you can do so much more when taking your photos with a modern iPhone. This section includes multiple videos explaining how you can take photos from portrait mode to panoramas. This section also includes some photography basics to get you up and running.
PHOTOGRAPHY ACCESSORIES
There are some great affordable and compact accessories to improve your iPhone photos. Learn about useful tripods, lenses, and lighting sources that fit in your pocket.
PHOTOS ON THE IPHONE AND IPAD
Multiple sections and videos cover a complete soup-to-nuts treatment of how to take, organize, find, edit, and share your photos in the Photos app for iPhone and iPad.
ORGANIZING PHOTOS
Photos uses an intuitive organizational structure that lets you see your pictures grouped in multiple ways. You have thousands of photos. Photos will make it easier to find your favorites. You can even search your library so if someone says, “Hey! Quick, find me that photo of Aunt Trudy from 2004 wearing that Juicy tracksuit!”, you can deliver the goods. This stuff sounds complicated. It’s not. By the time you get to the end of this video, you’ll be able to embarrass Aunt Trudy in no time flat.
EDITING PHOTOS
Photos also has a surprisingly large toolset to make your photos better. You can do simple edits, like cropping and rotating, but you can also make complex adjustments to color and light. On the Mac, there are even more tools including a histogram, sharpening, definition, noise reduction, vignette and level adjustments. If all of this sounds like greek to you now, that’s okay. After watching the video, it won’t.
The video also explains Photos’ built-in filters and how they can be an excellent jumping-off point for making your photos look great. It also covers the semi-magical “enhance” button. If that’s not enough, there are workflows to get your photos out of the Photos app and into an external editor for further work on the Mac, iPad, and iPhone.
SHARING PHOTOS
With the new Photos app, there are many ways to share your images with friends and family from something as simple as an email to full-blown shared iCloud albums. This section covers all of the sharing options.
PHOTOS ON THE MAC
All those cool tricks covered in the iPhone and iPad are also fully explained and demonstrated on the Mac. Learn how to organize, find, edit, and share your photos from the Mac just as easily as you can on the iPhone and iPad.
VIDEO
Believe it or not, Photos can manage, edit, and share your video files too. This section covers the best practices for managing video files in Photos and its limited editing capabilities.
BACKUP
No photo management system is complete without a thorough backup system. The Photos Field Guide concludes explaining backup strategies and techniques. This section also demonstrates how to export images from Photos for additional backup.
THERE’S MORE!
There are more topics covered in this Photos Field Guide including a primer on digital photo formats, popular third-party photo applications, application settings for the Photos and Camera apps, and more.
Today Apple released iOS 13.5. I can’t help but think of this as the pandemic release with several Covid-19 related changes and features:
If the phone detects you are wearing a face mask, it will go straight to passcode entry.
FaceTime now has the option to turn off those floating panels. How much you want to bet there where a bunch of Apple Executives working from home in the last two months saying, “what the hell is this?”
It’s also now easier to share your data with emergency services.
The Exposure Notification API
I’ve written a lot over the years about government intrusion on user privacy and my general preference that we be allowed to keep our device information private. So when I first heard about this feature, I was skeptical.
Since then, I’ve read the Apple/Google documentation and studied this new feature in greater detail. I’ve also watched the mounting global death toll as a result of this horrible disease.
I fully support the exposure notification API.
Apple and Google created this collaboratively. Because the companies have such different views on user data, I think this was a good thing.
As implemented, your phone will act as a Bluetooth beacon and generate a random identifier. It will then keep a list of other random identifiers you’ve come in contact with. If, for example, you ride up an elevator with a group of other iPhone and Android devices, the anonymous data will keep track of that. If a healthcare professional determines one of those devices was attached to a human that later is diagnosed with Covid-19, you’ll get a notification that you’ve been exposed and advised of the next steps.
There is no geo-tracking. It’s just a list of what random numbers saw what other random numbers. I think it’s a smart API that helps us deal with a massive health crisis and protects user privacy at the same time.
There are already too many people dead. Count me in.
