Speaking of Jason Snell, this week on the Free Agents we talk to artist and writer Thom Zahler, an independent creator for 15 years in indie comics (Love and Capes, Warning Label), licensed comics (My Little Pony), and animated television (Spider Man: Web Warriors, Knights of the Zodiac), about his journey from art school student to freelancer to full-on free agent, and how his business has grown and changed over the years.
I enjoyed Jason Snell’s explanation of the new T2 chip in the iMac Pro. The T2 increases security and takes over for a lot of tasks traditionally covered by a suite of separate controllers. I agree with Jason that we should fully expect the T2 (or T3) to start showing up in future Macs. It solves too many problems not to go across the line. I also look at this as further evidence that Apple isn’t done with the Mac.
This week on the Mac Power Users, Stephen Hackett returns to talk about his transition into video production, Internet automation, his home studio, audio and video gear, a new iMac and more.
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A few days ago Panic announced their decision to stop development of their popular file sharing app for iOS, Transmit. This news is not surprising.
For a few years now Panic has made public statements about how little income they’re making off their pro-level iOS apps, and I really can’t blame them for pulling Transmit if it is losing them money.
What is even more upsetting is that an app of the calibre of Transmit for iOS is a financial failure and none of us are much surprised. There are so many iPads and iPhones out in the world. Granted not everyone will need a world-class file sharing app, but enough should need it that an app like Transmit for iOS can flourish.
If this were a simple problem, it would already be solved, but I think it is a combination of factors: hardware, operating system, software, and App Store climate.
Concerning those first two items, we’ve made a lot of progress. iPad and iPhone hardware is solid … and fast! The operating system made a lot of headway in 2017, and we’re all waiting for June to see if Apple is keeping the pedal down on making iOS more productive on an annual basis.
The problem right now is software and App Store economics. Put simply, there isn’t enough pro-level software for iOS. I’m sure there a lot of reasons for this but a big one is the race-to-the-bottom App Store economy.
I use Transmit both on my Mac and iOS devices. I don’t recall what I originally paid for Transmit, but I believe it was in the neighborhood of $50. Since then I’ve upgraded twice so let’s say I’ve now given Panic $100 for the privilege of having their app on my Mac.
When I bought Transmit for my iOS devices, I paid $10. That is it. I’ve been using the app for years and all the money Panic ever got out of me was $10, less than I’m going to spend today on lunch.
If iOS is going to continue to evolve, it will need more apps like Transmit, not less. It seems that Apple has taken some recent steps, including a change in management, to help make the App Store more developer friendly. I hope that bears fruit because, in my mind, software is the weak link right now on the iPad and iPhone and Apple should be doing everything it can to encourage the development of professional level apps.
Yesterday we received news of a flaw with Intel chips that is, overall, terrible news. Early estimates are that repairing the vulnerability will require fixes in software and could slow down chip performance.
For years now, people have been talking about Apple moving its ARM-based chips to the Mac. At first, the idea seemed ridiculous, but as the ARM chips have improved and Intel has missed several ship deadlines, the idea is at least worth thinking about.
It seems to me there are at least a few conflicting priorities at Apple around this decision. On the one hand, designing its own chip and getting rid of reliance on Intel is right up Apple’s alley. They love controlling the whole widget and making their own silicon for their mobile devices worked out brilliantly.
On the flip side, I don’t think Apple wants to spend the resources necessary to switch the Mac off of the Intel chips. Like it or not, the Mac does not have the priority at Apple that it used to. I’m sure there are a lot of people that don’t want to put effort into changing the underlying Mac processor.
All that said, if Intel indeed did drop the ball here, it is precisely problems like this that would result in an eventual ARM Mac. This will be a fun story to follow going forward.
While I have no intention of buying an iMac Pro, I could not tear myself away from iFixit’s recently published iMac Pro teardown. The thing I didn’t realize until looking through these videos is that this truly is a “Pro” computer. It’s not a standard iMac with some upgraded parts but a completely different computer with a very similar case to the standard iMac.
I’ve been taking a lot of pictures lately, and if you looked at my iPhone, you’d see a lot of photo bloat. You know what I mean, right? You take five pictures of people in one pose when you just need one. There is nothing wrong with that. Often it turns out to be picture number 2, 3, 4, or 5 that is the real keeper. The challenge is quickly getting rid of the non-keepers.
Flic Screenshot – Why so blurry? (Click to enlarge)
For a while now I’ve been using Flic for this. Flic is a straightforward iPhone app that displays photos from your photo library and lets you quickly keep or discard them. Swipe right to keep, swipe left to trash. The app is a great idea and an easy way to separate the wheat from the chaff as your sort through photos. On vacation, I would go through this app every evening and have a more-or-less pruned photo library on days where I took a lot of pictures. However, lately I’ve been unhappy with Flic. My problem is that its picture preview mode renders images a little blurry. In my haste to get through photos, I tend to forget this and more than once I found myself trashing good photos.
So I started looking for a replacement and landed on an optimistically named app, Best Photos. This app isn’t quite as simple as Flic. With Best Photos, you can flick up and down between photos and tap a trash can or heart icon to either trash or favorite image. You can also compare two photos on the screen at once. Best Photos is more powerful than Flic but still generally allows you to sort through images quickly. Most importantly, its photo renders are much better than those in Flic so I can do a better job in assessing keepers, which was entirely the point.
Because Best Photos already has you using gestures to move between images, it would be nice if they added a gesture to Trash or Favorite photos, rather than tapping an icon. Nevertheless, Best Photos is a better experience overall for me particularly because of the way it renders the images.
Best Photos Screenshot (Click to enlarge)
This problem could be solved in the Apple Photos app with a setting that turns off deletion confirmation, but I have to admit I’m not entirely certain I’d want deletion to be that easy.
Welcome to 2018! Want to get things better this year? A great way to start would be by discovering where you’re spending your time on your Mac.
This week’s sponsor, Timing, is a tool to help you get rolling. I realized several months ago I was increasingly under water with my own productivity. So I started drilling in on Timing, and it’s beautiful reports showing me where I was spending time. Timing is a timer app that doesn’t require you to manually start an stop timers. Instead, it pays super-close attention to everything you do on your Mac and then reports back to you.
Timings reports are always enlightening and sometimes brutally honest. Reading my own reports, I found that I was sinking a lot of time into some work-related tasks that could easily be off-loaded to someone else. So I did that and got back to work. After a few weeks, I had newer-fresher Timing data that helped me further get rid of unwanted work and identify my own personal time sucks.
The folks at Timing are serious about productivity. They even write about it on their blog with this post with some solid advice for New Year’s productivity and habits.
Timing doesn’t put your data in the cloud. Timing has been crucial for me, and I expect it can help you too. Don’t believe me? Download their free trial software and see for yourself.
Try the free 14-day trial and get 10% off until for a limited time using this link. Let Timing help you get 2018 started right.
In the latest episode of Mac Power Users, as we wrap up 2017 we take a look back at the workflows that worked for us in 2017 including paperless practice, writing workflows, cloud storage, hiring help and more. We also discuss the practices we intend to change in 2018, and gaze into the crystal ball and look at what we may expect from Apple in the year to come.
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While I’ve never written a comic book, I’ve used a lot of the ComicBookFonts fonts for things like presentations, diagrams, and even legal presentations. Every year they have a massive sale on January 1 where pretty much everything is a penny per year, making everything this year $20.18. This is a significant savings with some of the fonts costing in the hundreds. If you’re looking for something to get started, I’d recommend Hedge Backwards or ComicCrazy
