Apple and Animoji

Apple has a new ad out capitalizing on the success of Animoji.

I think Apple is smart to put the pedal down on Animoji. It is way more popular than anyone expected and gives Apple a chance to distinguish the iPhone X from anything else.

However, I don’t think Apple is doing enough to ride this wave. Just like I wrote about Messages effects last year, Apple needs to be more agile when these social-related features start to take off. There’s no mystery that companies capitalizing on things like stickers and effects, like Snapchat, are constantly rotating in new effects that keep users coming back.

Apple should have a team preparing new Animoji faces that go out frequently. Why not an Animoji Reindeer or Santa or Baby New Year? 
If instead, Apple leaves Animoji as they are right now with significant change for an entire year until iOS 12, people will move on.

Scrivener 3 for Mac


Screen Shot 2017-11-27 at 7.09.39 PM.png

Scrivener, the remarkably good long-form writing tool, just got updated to version 3 for Mac. The update is a big one. New features include a complete interface overhaul. The new interface is cleaner and feels more modern than the older one did. 

The text system is easier to use. There is now full styles system so you can easily format text throughout your document.

Scrivener is now also 64 bits and largely rewritten making it faster and more stable.

A few other things that strike my fancy with this update:

  • The compile tools have always been powerful but also a bit cryptic. While they’ve retained their power, the interface is more manageable than it used to be.
  • Index cards can now use color!
  • Better Epub 3 and Kindle export.

I’ve been using Scrivener for ten years and written several books in prior versions. I’m thrilled to see Scrivener get such a substantial update. In my opinion, nothing can beat Scrivener for research-intensive writing. For instance, I write all of my complicated legal briefs, where I’ve got piles of PDFs, text snippets, images, and web pages as resource materials, in Scrivener. The app can manage a lot of resources while still giving you a useful writing environment. We covered Scrivener most recently on the Mac Power Users last year and virtually all of the merits I listed in that show remain with the new version. If anything, Version 3 just makes all of Scrivener’s best features more accessible to users. You can learn more at the developer’s web site.


inShort for Project Planning and Diagramming (Sponsor)



This week MacSparky is sponsored by inShort. inShort is a project planning application for the Mac, iPhone, and iPad that lets you plan projects and processes graphically across all of your Apple devices. I really can’t underestimate that part about graphical project design. With inShort, you visually see excactly how a process or project are intended to work. That visual feedback lets you see quite clearly when things work and when they do not. This brings a new paradigm to process and project planning and is absolutely worth checking out. 

One of the more innovative features is the way it allows you to embed processes and drill down to the level of detail you need at the moment. I like to think of this as nested flowcharts, and I believe that it’s pretty useful.

inShort also supports traditional project management tools, like Gantt charts, as seen below. 

The inShort development team has also added a satellite service, workflow.link that gives you a way to work with, edit, and manage your projects from any device with a web browser. 

Want to learn more? Check out the website and read the developer’s PDF. 


Click to enlarge.

Jazz Friday: Wynton Marsalis Christmas Jazz Jam


Screen Shot 2017-11-24 at 2.49.13 PM.png

This year I’m going to feature some of my favorite holiday-themed jazz music every Friday. One of my favorites Wynton Marsalis’s Christmas Jazz Jam (iTunes) (Apple Music). Wynton, who I’ll cover another day in greater detail, is very much a traditionalist but as he’s got older, he’s also added more of a sense of joy and humor to his trumpet (in my opinion). This album fits in nicely. It’s jazz music that you could just play in the background while eating or, you could carefully listen to and have moments of delight. This album works both ways. 

Some of my favorite parts are Wycliffe Gordon’s wild, reindeer-inspired trombone Solo on Santa Clause is Coming to Town and the Dixieland feel in Jingle Bells. You are going to either love or hate what they did with Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer but it makes me laugh out loud every time it comes on. Finally, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas is classic, straight ahead jazz, and excellent. If you like Wynton, you’ll also want to check out his 1989 album, Crescent City Christmas Card (iTunes) (Apple Music), which is also pretty an excellent jazz holiday album.

2017 MPU Hoodie and Shirt

It’s been a few years since we did any merchandise at the Mac Power Users so we’ve teamed up with the Cotton Bureau on these really great looking hoodies and shirts. The hoodie features an embroidered MPU Battery logo and can keep you warm through the winter. The zipper was at my specific request because nobody likes to wrestle themselves out of a pull-over hoodie. The T-shirt also features the MPU Battery, but its bigger and it glows in the dark. That’s right. My podcast officially has a glow-in-the-dark shirt. According to 8-year-old me, I’ve officially made it.

We really wanted these products to be of good quality and I think Cotton Bureau’s going to really deliver. There’s a pretty short window here. Sales end December 3, so place your orders now.



17434_VdFL.jpg




17435_KADh.png.jpeg


MPU 405: 2017 Holiday Gift Guide



mpu_artwork.png.jpeg


This week’s episode of the Mac Power Users is our annual gift guide. Katie and I looked high and low this year and we came up with some great picks. We also had some great ideas from the community and added those as well. The worst part of this episode (for me) is where I say confidently that I think the HomePod will ship in December. Apparently, Apple disagrees with that optimism.

Sponsors include:

  • Squarespace: Make your next move. Enter offer code MPU at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.
  • Balance Open: Find out more about Balance Open and get $2 in Ethereum.
  • Fujitsu ScanSnap ScanSnap Helps You Live a More Productive, Efficient, Paperless Life. 
  • 1Password Have you ever forgotten a password? Now you don’t have to worry about that anymore.

Get Focussed with Middle Davids Candles (Sponsor)


1396244798978.png

This week MacSparky is sponsored by Middle Davids Artisan Candles. Middle Davids understand the use of rituals to help with productivity. Have you considered using the scent of a candle? It works.

I burn candles while I work and I always feel that the ritual of lighting the candle is a way to help me focus in on my project. After I’ve worked a few hours, I blow out the candle and take a break. When I come back and light the candle again, the focus comes back. It’s kind of magical and don’t worry about using up matches, Middle Davids gives you those too. 


IMG_0231 2.jpg

You’ll be surprised how well this works. This month I’m burning through my favorite Green Tea candle from Middle Davids while I work on my next book. The vast majority of people who try a Middle Davids subscription stick with it. In a world full of technology, this provides a fantastic analog motivational tool. You can literally see the progress of my current side project as the candle burns down in this photo.

With the holidays approaching, you may not just want a candle subscription for yourself. You can gift a subscription so your friends or family get a reminder in the mail every month or two that you care. (They have gift options for one, two, three, four, six and twelve months so every budget is covered.) I love they way they send a hand-written note with something inspirational to all subscription customers.

Dan, the proprietor, is a candle geek (and also a Mac Geek!) and obsesses on candles like I do productivity apps. The candles are 100% botanical soy wax, not paraffin (which is a petrochemical) and the wicks are cotton woven (no metals).

Middle Davids has a subscription plan that gets you two candles a month with 40 hours of burn time. You also get a box of wooden matches, and a sample of the next month’s scent. Give it a try. Best of all, they are giving their biggest discount ever to MacSparky readers. Use the offer code “SPARKY10” (in recognition of 10 years of MacSparky) and get $10 for any new customer or gift subscription. Whether you purchasing for yourself or as a gift, you can’t go wrong.

Gabe Weatherhead’s iPad Experiment

I enjoyed reading Gabe Weatherhead’s thoughts following his attempts to do more on his iPad. Although I have to admit that I could never see Gabe going into the iPad-only crowd, at least not in the foreseeable future. Gabe is far too clever in the way he uses his Mac. Indeed, Gabe never was looking to replace his Mac. While that is possible, and even preferable, for some, I still think for most of us the question should not be about whether one platform can replace another so much as us users figuring out which platforms work for us best under which circumstances, which is exactly what Gabe did.