A few week ago I guested on Brett Terpstra’s Systematic podcast. You would probably think I did that to hawk the new book I wrote with Brett. In that case, you would be right … but only for a few minutes. We quickly moved on to picking some of our favorite things, and the intended 20 minute recording turned into 60 minutes in the blink of an eye.
Mac Power Users 400 – 4 Things
It seems like we just recorded our first show of the Mac Power Users a few days ago yet this week we released episode 400. Crazy. This episode is all about four things. Katie and I picked four of our favorite things in multiple tech categories of hardware and software. There are some gems in there. Also, since we hit episode 400, we went back to our roots with the theme music and it sounds great.
Home Screens – Chuck Joiner
Chuck Joiner’s with his Mac Voices podcast (website)(Twitter) is the James Lipton of our Mac community. He’s been delivering great content for years and today he agreed to share his home screen. Okay Chuck, show us your home screen.
What are Some of Your Favorite Apps?
Downcast for sure. It takes care of keeping all my podcasts downloaded and synced between my iPads, iPhone and Macs so that I can listen or watch to any of them any time, without having to spend time managing what is where. The capability of having custom speeds for each show subscribed to is also important, since some can be consumed easily at 2.5x, while others may only be listenable at 1.5x. My perception is that the algorithm for accelerated listening has improved over time, and the addition of an Apple Watch app puts the audio controls on my wrist if the phone is in my pocket.
Feedly also ranks high because I still use RSS feeds as a major part of my information flow. There are prettier feed-reading apps out there, but Feedly does what I want it to do in a no-nonsense format.
Camera+ is my go-to camera app because of its RAW shooting capabilities, and the best one-touch photo enhancement I’ve seen, though the new Photos in iOS 11 is making me re-think that. Lots of power in this one, but there is a bit of a learning curve to take advantage of all the features.
FiLMiC Pro is a favorite for its versatility and power as a video recording app. If you can’t capture the video you want with this app, then you can’t do it on an iPhone.
What app makes you most productive?
At this point, Apple’s Notes, because it lets my iPhone be an extension of my Mac in making and keeping information, project lists, and other items organized and in sync everywhere. Was using another solution before, but Notes makes it super easy.
What app do you know you’re underutilizing?
Drafts. I know it can do so much, but I tend not to think of it until after the fact. That’s often half the battle with a new or under-used app – remembering what it can do for you and integrating it into your personal workflows.
How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?
iThe Phone is in use almost constantly. Even if I’m at the office, it is out and in sight for incoming messages, alerts, etc. It is also a great second (or third) dedicated screen, even if it is just monitoring Twitter or email. Some might say that’s a distraction, but I see it as keeping what I need or want to know in front of me.
What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?
With iOS 11, I’m just starting to dig in to the productivity features, but really like what I see, especially for the iPad.
3D Touch on the iPhone is another of those features that you have to remember to use. Once you get in the habit, it is amazingly powerful.
If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?
I would set up a team to monitor the Mac media and help the product teams prioritize a list of items that need to be addressed – both bug features and feature requests or reinstatements. That would be a huge challenge since every single user thinks their way and their needs should come first. Still, there are often common issues that crop up that should make their way to the top of the list.
Thanks Chuck.
Ulysses Updates to Support Drag and Drop on iOS
Today Ulysses released its iOS 11-friendly update. With this update, the interface follows a lot of the iOS 11 user interface conventions, like big text at the tops of lists. My favorite part of the update, however, is Drag and Drop support. You can now pick up and move individual text buckets and move them around inside Ulysses. This is, for me, the most useful new feature. I am continually moving notes around inside Ulysses, and now it is much easier (and faster). I also feel that, inherently, the Drag and Drop paradigm makes a lot more sense when working on the iPad or iPhone. The Drag and Drop also extend to other applications, letting you drag text passages and images between Ulysses and other application. One more new feature that made it to both the Mac and iOS application is image preview. Now you can see previews of your imported images.
Getting the Most from the Siri Watch Face
I have been using the Siri watch face with watchOS 4 as my primary watch face since iOS 11 shipped. Ordinarily, I am not a digital watch face guy. I grew up looking at analog watches and I’ve been primarily using those on the Apple Watch since it first arrived. Nevertheless, I like the idea of a smart watch face on the Apple Watch giving me more timely information, so I went in with the Siri watch face. Also, I spend a lot of time at the sharp end of the stick when it comes to Siri, so I had to give it a try.
The idea behind the Siri watch face is to contextually give users the information most relevant to them at the time. The face itself is the time with a few complications and a scrolling list of information boxes below that you can move throughout using the Digital Crown. Tapping on any of these boxes brings you into the source application. Tap on an event, for instance, and you go to the calendar app.
There are a lot of Apple applications acting as a data sources for the Siri watch face. Using the Apple Watch face you can get information as to when the sun will rise, the weather forecast, and upcoming appointments. It runs much deeper than that, however. Data sources can also include reminders, alarms, timers, the stopwatch, your wallet, workouts, meditation/breathing reminders, HomeKit notifications, what’s now playing on your media device, photos, and even news.
For the two complications, I use the one on the right to display the current date and the left one for OmniFocus.
There are a lot of applications feeding data into the Siri watch face. One of the first things I did was customize that. If you go into the Apple Watch settings application on your iPhone and tap on your Siri watch face, you get a screen that gives you several options to turn these data sources on or off. I left most of them on but turned off photos, because pictures on that tiny screen don’t make sense to me, and news, which I found to be too much of a distraction.
I have had a few pleasant surprises using the Siri watch face. I like the way it displays upcoming appointments. They are easy-to-read, and they disappear automatically as the day goes on. Rotating the Digital Crown up gives you future Siri chosen events and spinning the opposite direction brings up prior entries and if you’ve played audio recently, the last playing audio. This gives you an easy way to restart podcast or music from your wrist.
I’ve often been tempted to add the timer and alarm complications to my analog faces, but that complication space is so valuable. With the Siri face timers, stopwatch, and alarms only appear when in use so I get them when I need them and only that. Finally, the now playing entries are great for getting back into whatever audio you played last.
Overall, the convenience of the Siri watch face is enough to get me to stick with it despite my preference for analog faces. I’m going to keep using it for the foreseeable future. If you are going to use it, take the time to go into the settings application and customize the data sources to your preference.
My biggest wish for the Siri watch face is to see third-party applications get on that data source list. For instance, why can’t I get upcoming OmniFocus deadlines or Carrot Weather reports? Hopefully, that comes with future iterations.
Jazz Friday – Bill Evans
For Jazz Friday this week, I’d like to feature one of my favorite pianists of all time, Bill Evans (website)(Wikipedia). Evans was one of the pioneers of the modal jazz movement and a significant influence on Miles Davis with the Kind of Blue album (iTunes)(Apple Music), the best-selling jazz album of all time. I once read an article about how Davis used to call Evans just to ask him to play the piano over the phone. I believe it. I think Evans’s collaborations with Davis were some of his best, but Evans also did some pretty remarkable stuff in his solo career. One of my favorite compositions from Evans is “Waltz for Debby” (iTunes)(Apple Music). It has a little lilting melody that just makes you smile.
After leaving Miles Davis, Bill Evans had a solo career including several groups he put together through the rest of his life. No matter whom he played with, however, the music always showed his influence in those wonderful impressionist-inspired modal tones and themes. Aside from his work on the Kind of Blue album, my next favorite album from Evans is The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings, 1961 (iTunes)(Apple Music). That album gets a lot of play in my library.
Cardhop – The New Contact Management App from Flexibits
Today Flexibits released its new contact management application for the Mac, Cardhop. Cardhop follows in the tradition of Flexibits’ other Mac app, Fantastical in that it sits in your menubar and is completely awesome.
With Cardhop, you can tap any quick keyboard combination to access the application from your menubar and then add new contacts, edit existing contacts, perform actions on contacts (like dialing a phone number or sending an email) and more. You can even perform functions with data that is not in your address book. For instance, if you type in “Dial 1-800-GOFEDEX”, it translates the letters into the appropriate numbers and dials the phone for you.
For me, the ultimate test was when I received a new contact card, and I wanted to add that person to a specific group. All that I had to do was activate Cardhop, type in the person’s first name, and then type “#F”. Cardhop figured out I was putting that contact into my “friends” group and with just those few keystrokes, I had accomplished what used to take me many clicks and navigations in the Apple Contacts application.
Cardhop is for contacts what Fantastical is for calendar entries. You can get it today for your Mac. If you spend any time managing contacts on your Mac, this is worth checking out.
If you want to learn more, I made a series of videos for Flexibits.
Solo
Today Ron Howard announced the name of the previously untitled Han Solo Star Wars Movie.
Solo.
I like it. He finishes the video saying “I’ll see you next year.” The question is … when next year? Previously Lucas announced Solo would be released in Summer of 2018 but since they’ve now pushed Episode IX to December of 2019, I wouldn’t be surprised if Solo gets pushed back to December 2018.
Free Agents 32: It’s Scary Dude! With Kathy Campbell
The latest episode of Free Agents is available for download. Unicorn Sidekick Kathy Campbell joins us to discuss how she ended up becoming a Free Agent while behind a desk at her “real job,” when having her new career discovered her.
iPhone X Supply Constraints
Last week we heard even more rumors about supply constraints for the iPhone X. Yet today the rumors say things may be a little better than we first thought. I think this is going to be the most difficult to find Apple product in a long time. If you want one, plan on being awake at midnight on October 27 and hope that you’ll get one before 2018.
Generally when making these types of purchases, you are better off using the Apple Store app on your iPhone or iPad. They seem to get through the buying process more reliably than the web store when there’s a heavy load. Also, make sure to have your Apple Pay credentials all up to date and “favorite” your iPhone X of choice ahead of time. Seconds will count.