MPU 411 – A Pretty Good Year

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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Zoinks! It’s the ComicBooksFonts Sale

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

My iPhone Photographer Camera Kit

I’m currently on a family trip and as I was packing I stumbled across my camera bin. It’s a pretty big plastic bin in which I’ve kept spare lenses, caps, tripod mounting points, cleaning kits, and the rest of the flotsam and jetsam from my various cameras over the years. There was a lot of stuff in there that I’d forgot I owned. The last few years, I’ve been doing my photography exclusively with iPhone. Although I didn’t need anything from the box, I do still have a small camera kit for when I want to get fancy shoot pictures with my iPhone and I thought I’d share it here.

Click to enlarge all pictures in this post.

The Bag

This is a small sized packing cube that I bought with this set. I keep it in a handy place and it’s always ready to go with me, loaded with iPhone photo accessories.

Mounting Gear

The Glif

This is the latest iteration of the Glif tripod mounting point for the iPhone and by far, in my opinion, the best. With the new, easy ratchet feature I can attach any iPhone, regardless of whether any case is attached.

The Glif Handle

There is also a combo kit that includes a Glif and this turned piece of wood with a mounting screw on the top. I use it most often for shooting video. Combining this big handle with the iPhone’s software motion smoothing gets some really clean video.

The Joby Micro Tripod

This is the smallest tripod I’ve ever seen. It folds up to easily fits in the coin pocket of a pair of jeans. Indeed, it’s so small that I’ve misplaced one somewhere in my house and now I’ve got a second one. I like using this tripod for taking family pictures or even, in a jam, getting a long exposure of something interesting. I can’t tell you the number of pictures I’ve taken with the micro tripod holding my Glif-equipped iPhone while sitting on a table or even trash can.

The Joby Magnetic Tripod

This tripod is the most recent addition to my gear. It uses those Joby interlocking points to give it flexible, trappable legs and it also has magnets at the bottom of each foot giving you one more way to lock your camera down. I haven’t had the guts to hang it upside down for a photo using the magnets yet, but I’m tempted. I’m looking forward to trying this new tripod out on the trip.

Lenses

DxO One

The DxO One is a 20MB sensor that attaches to your iPhone via the Lightning port. It’s a replacement camera lens and sensor for your iPhone with a much bigger sensor than the one in your iPhone and capable of taking some nice pictures. I’ve had this several years now and while the battery is starting to show its age, I still find this lens useful. At this point, I only use the DxO for still images. In my opinion, the iPhone X takes better video than the DxO. It will be interesting to see how many more years before iPhone computational photography can advance to a point that I stop carrying the DxO, but we’re not there yet.

Moment Lenses

While I’ve always liked the idea of bolt-on lenses for iPhone, the mounting systems always make me weary. We’ve been talking about this on Mac Power Users and Moment sent me a few of their lenses to try out on my trip. Moment lenses use a proprietary case that is the best solution I’ve seen yet. The case looks nice and has mounting points over the built-in iPhone lenses that let you screw the lenses onto the case. If you get a new iPhone with a different design, all you have to do is buy the new appropriate case and the lenses will work with it. This makes a solid, secure connection that you can remove in seconds. I can’t wait to take pictures with these lenses and report back. Pictured is their Fisheye and Wide lenses.

Lume Cube

I bought this a few years ago. It’s an LED-based external flash that can either sync to a specific iPhone app or just blast a backlight. I often use this to put a light behind or to the side of a subject for shots in the dark. LumeCube Kick-Started a new version that’s even smaller last year and I backed it. I can’t wait to have a second for even better non-flash lighting.

So that’s it. A small collection of gear put together over the years that help me take better pictures with my iPhone. One of the nice things about iPhone photography is that most times you don’t need a bag. I’ll normally pick and choose from this kit based on what I intend to shoot that day and usually, everything fits in my pockets.

Free Agents 37 – The Twelve Week Year

In the latest episode of the Free Agents, we wrap up the year with a discussion of navigating holidays and vacations, my thoughts about getting projects to completion in the new year, Jason’s update to his Not-To-Do List, setting the bar high for taking on new clients, end-of-year appreciation gifts for clients, and holiday seasonality.

The State of Cloud Syncing and Collaboration

Last week Gabe Weatherhead wrote a post explaining how, for him, cloud syncing has become a non-issue. We discussed this recently on the Mac Power Users. It is remarkable how far we’ve come in the last five years concerning syncing data between multiple devices. At this point, I’m using two Macs, two iPads, and an iPhone and I spend very little time thinking about how or why my data is always in sync. As I am heading out the door, I will make my decision between an iPad and a Mac on a whim and no matter what I device I leave with I’ve got access to all the data I need provided there is an Internet connection.

It didn’t use to be that way. Just a few years ago, it required a lot of forethought before leaving and maybe running an application or two to manually sync data across devices. While Dropbox is the usual reason why this stuff works out so well, I’ve been using iCloud since the IOS 11 beta and had mostly the same results.

If there are any rough edges around syncing between multiple devices the days, it is application based. For example, I do a lot of work in iBooks Author, which is an application designed with little thought for synchronizing between multiple devices. While I store the iBooks Author file on iCloud storage, opening it up in two different instances on two different devices can lead to shenanigans. While users need to be aware of these edge cases, in large part the hardware and Internet backbone synchronization is all in place.

To me the obvious next step for technology companies after mastering synchronization is collaboration. Google is the front-runner in this space. Google documents and Google sheets synchronize flawlessly. Several elements of my MacSparky business are based on collaborative Google documents and Google Sheets, and it’s a service that I rely on every day. Apple is trying to up their collaboration game with iWork and Microsoft is doing the same with Office, but nobody has nailed this down as well as Google.

So one of the questions in my mind is whether or not collaboration is also something that will in the not so distant future become a solved problem. The necessary first step for all that is a reliable backbone synchronization engine. We have that. The next step is for software developers to take this problem seriously and give it the appropriate attention to make synchronization something that we can do without relying on the web-based applications. We’ve seen some steps in that direction, but I feel like we still have a long way to go.

Merry Christmas! Now Download Some Jazz

Merry Christmas everybody. I hope you and your family are enjoying a great holiday. This year I shared my Yule jazz playlist, and its got lots of subscribers. I’ve heard from listeners that are using it for everything from cooking Christmas dinner to playing in the background while they perform surgery (that’s true!).

Anyway, if you’d like to listen to my favorite jazz Christmas music, check it out for Apple Music. Also, thanks to listener Alex for converting the list to Spotify and posting it on the Mac Power Users Facebook group.

MPU 409 – Holiday Tech

“Deck the Halls with Ones and Zeroes.”

In this episode, we break down all the ways to use your technology for the holidays including smart decorations, streaming audio (and David’s Yule playlist), managing parties with tech, recommended family-friendly Apple TV games, David’s holiday card production workflow and Katie’s envelope hacks, tracking gift giving, and setting up your network for visiting relatives and friends.

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Better macOS Spaces

When working on a laptop, especially the tiny MacBook, I use a lot of full-screen apps and then the macOS Spaces feature is a big help. You just three-finger swipe up on the trackpad, and you get something that looks like this. (Click to enlarge)

Screen Shot 2017-12-22 at 9.22.59 AM.png

You can also three-finger swipe sideways between Spaces. I guess Apple’s data shows that a lot of people go sideways and few people go up to pick a particular app. I’m an outlier. Because I’ll often have ten or more apps running as I get work done this way, swiping sideways is tedious and feels more like playing a slot machine than getting work done. It’s much more efficient for me to swipe up and tap on the desired app.

The problem with macOS Spaces, however, is that by default, macOS re-arranges the Spaces automatically based on recent use. The idea is that you should be able to get the most recent apps the easiest. Again, I’m apparently an outlier. Just because I haven’t opened OmniFocus for a few hours doesn’t mean I want it to move down to the end of the line. This preference scrambles my apps every time I swipe up causing further unnecessary delay. Fortunately, you can turn the preference off.

Screen Shot 2017-12-22 at 9.20.00 AM.png

With this turned off I manually set apps where I want them and then long sessions of switching between full-screen apps is quick and painless.

Home Screens – Daman Rangoola

One of the great things about living in Southern California is all the local nerds I get to hang out with. One such new friend I made this year is Daman Rangoola (Twitter). Daman is a clever guy and put a lot of time into his home screen. So Daman, let’s see it.

What are some of your favorite apps?

I find almost everything on my home screen to be invaluable on a day to day basis, but the two that stand out are Downcast and Tweetbot. I also have Overcast, which I find to be a great app in it’s own right, but after spending so much time tweaking my settings in Downcast and having the app work great for me – I haven’t felt the need to totally make the switch.

Twitter is somewhere I find myself all day whether it’s for monitoring the news (in tech and otherwise) during the day and then diving into the glorious world known as “NBA Twitter” – following along with all the basketball games with a phenomenal community of basketball diehards. Tweetbot has consistently proven to be the best Twitter client for my usage but due to Twitter’s API limitations for third-party apps, I also use the stock Twitter client frequently, thus it also lives on my home screen.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

I would say Tweetbot but I can conjure up enough professional purpose to open it to not feel as guilty about it, so I’m going to say Threes. It’s still the best game I’ve ever played on the iPhone – it’s the only game I downloaded and have never removed from my iPhone. It’s challenging, fun, and most importantly – I can play for 2 minutes or one hour and it doesn’t require constant attention.

What app makes you most productive?

Strictly speaking, Asana. Slack is vital to my work but I get most of my daily tasks done in Asana and having an on-the-go view of everything I’m working on has been a great addition to my workflow. If I’m away from my desk but an idea hits me or I am talking to somebody and a task presents itself, I can quickly add it into Asana and lose the burden of worrying that I will forget something.

What app do you know you’re underutilizing?

This will be of particular interest to the owner of this website: Workflow. I know I can make great use of this app, and I know how powerful of an app that it is, I just haven’t put in the proper time and effort into getting the app working for me in that way yet.

What is the app you are still missing?

WhatsApp for iPad, please! WhatsApp has become the go-to communication method for my family (locally and abroad) and for several groups of friends, and it has no iPad client yet.

How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?

Constantly. If I’m not reading something on my iPhone, I have my iPad open next to my Mac at all times for work with the Notes app open with my Pencil charged, jotting notes all day. There is virtually no part of my waking hours that I’m not actively or passively (listening to podcasts etc) using either of my iOS devices.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

The ecosystem. There are a lot of reasons to individually love my iPhone X and the 10.5” iPad Pro, but the way they work together is my favorite single feature of iOS.

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?

I think it’s time to allow for default apps for major app categories to be changed. I wouldn’t do it like Android, I would make it very difficult to qualify to become a default. I would create a new App Review system for becoming a default, ensuring a good experience for the user.

Two of the biggest examples that would be great for me? Allowing Google Maps to become the default Maps option and allowing Downcast or Overcast become my default podcast player. There are more categories out there that could qualify (like Internet browser) but those two would be game changers for me.

Do you have an Apple Watch? Show us your watch face tell us about it.

Screen Shot 2017-12-22 at 7.51.50 AM.png

I use my Apple Watch for the following: seeing the time, monitoring my activity, monitoring my notifications, and Apple Pay. I have never been interested in apps on the Watch, even though they are greatly improved, simply because it’s not what I’m personally looking to get out of it.

The bottom complication is what I refer to as “Mean Boss Time” – my boss is rarely in the same time-zone as me, so it’s important for me to know what time it is for him (and he’s sick of me asking lol).

I swipe right to the Activity Analog face when I’m going to the gym or doing any other workout to track my activity in a focused way.

What’s your wallpaper and why?

I am absolutely in love with the new OLED display of the iPhone X and to get the full effect out of it, I changed my background to be pure black, which is stunning especially in comparison to non-OLED displays. Similarly, I have changed my home screen background to accentuate the stunning black:

It’s just gorgeous!

Anything else?

I have a no folder policy on the home screen of my iPhone. There was a time where I put everything in folders to only have one total page for all my apps, but I enjoy having the ability to see everything clearly and every app on my home screen being one press away. If I need to launch any other apps, I enjoy using Spotlight most of the time.

Thanks Daman