Joey Alexander, the jazz piano prodigy that continues to surprise me, released a new album, Joey. Monk. Live!, (iTunes)(Apple Music) where he played music from Thelonious Monk. I’ve written it before but I can’t get over how Joey plays with so much fire. I’ve heard a lot of prodigies that are technically excellent but yet their music still lacks soul. That’s not the case with Joey. This is a great album for the weekend.
This week I’m featuring my own iOS 11 iPad home screen, partly because it’s so weird. Here it is. (Click to enlarge.)
For a long time, I’ve kept all my apps on the home screen with everything not on the screen located in four folders. I’ve given those folders verb names, Make, Learn, Fix, and Play. Traditionally I opened apps from the home screen or one of those folders. I still do that on my iPhone.
To say I flipped out when Apple announced iOS 11 is an understatement. I installed beta 1 like a crazy man. One of my first observations about iOS 11 was that the dock is now much more important. It is prime real estate for apps, particularly if you like to use split screen multitasking. Unless you have your iPad connected to a keyboard, getting to apps to split the screen takes too many steps. At first I filled the dock with as many icons as it would accept but then they got too small and I use enough apps that I still didn’t have everything I regularly needed.
About halfway through the iOS 11 beta, I got the idea of putting all my apps on the dock. It started out as a sort-of joke so I could share screenshots of my iPad looking more like a Mac. The thing is though … it worked for me. So now my home screen is empty and my dock has a few essentials, but also my Make, Learn, Fix, and Play folders. Opening the folder to get to a split screen app feels silly but is still way faster than getting to an app on the home screen.
All of my nerd-friends think I’m crazy but I’ve been pretty happy with this setup. I think the tipping point for this is people that use multitasking without a keyboard. If that’s you, give this a try for a week.
The other thing I did was to turn off Suggested and Recent Apps to the right of my dock. I found I wasn’t paying attention to those so a few weeks ago I toggled them off in the Dock preferences tab. I haven’t missed them.
I love so many Apps. For this post, I want to focus on a few that particularly shine in iOS 11:
Gladys
There was a lot of talk prior to iOS 11 about adding a “shelf” to iOS. Federico Viticci did a great job of showing the advantage of such an interface in his iOS 11 concept video. Apple didn’t add a shelf but with the drag and drop tools, they made it possible for third party app developers to, in essence, make a shelf. The idea behind a shelf is a temporary space on your iPad where you can store things for later use, like digital walnuts you’re burying for winter.
There are a lot of developers releasing shelf apps and I’ve been buying and trying these as they release. I don’t know what app will rise to the top of this space but my current favorite is Gladys. With this app, I can drop most kinds of media, text, and links as I collect them on a project and, using slide over, have them available for use elsewhere as I work on my iPad. This is such a key tool for multitasking that I’ve put Gladys in my dock despite how much I dislike the icon.
Fantastical
Of course the Fantastical team was early to drag and drop. Not only can you now drag and drop events and reminders inside Fantastical, you can also pull events out of Fantastical and drop them in other apps. Drag an appointment out of Fantastical into an email and it becomes an ICS file. Drag some text into Fantastical and it creates an event using the dropped text.
OmniFocus
Drag and drop OmniFocus has been a game changer for me. Every day I start out auditing my email on the iPad with Apple Mail on the left and OmniFocus on the right. Much dragging and dropping ensues. One of the nice things is the link-back created in OmniFocus for linked emails works on both Mac and iOS. I’ve already started production on some screencasts around OmniFocus and iOS 11. It will be a free update to the OmniFocus Video Field Guide and I’ll be releasing it in the next month (hopefully a few weeks).
1Password
This is another app that jumped into drag and drop with both feet. The new 1Password lets me drag passwords onto web forms and re-arrange fields internally.
I feel like this drag and drop thing is going to only get better as app developers feed off each other’s ideas.
I’m spending a lot of time in iBooks lately. It’s not debugging one of my own iBooks but instead reading Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View. A lot of Star Wars fiction is garbage. This is not.
If I were in charge at Apple, I would continue iterate on multitasking. One small change that I think could help would be to include Finder search at the top of the Control Center/Spaces screen. That’s accessible from a single swipe up from the bottom of the screen and would make it much easier to get to non-dock-based apps when multitasking.
Another advantage of putting everything in the dock is that I can use really nice wallpaper and see it all. Currently I’m using some concept art from the Disneyland Star Wars expansion. I change wallpapers often though.
Episode 31 of Free Agents is up. Relay FM Host and App Launch Map founder Aleen Simms joins us in this episdode to talk about her accidental fall into freelance work and setting high standards for her clients.
Today marks the release of the latest MacSparky Field Guide, 60 Mac Tips, Volume 2.
60 Mac Tips, Volume 2, is a collection of tricks and tips to make you more efficient on your Mac. There are 60 screencasts and two hours of video that explains why each tip or trick is special and how to use it on your Mac. Learn these tips and turn yourself into a Mac power user.
Among these 60 screencasts are tips on macOS, Siri for the Mac, using the keyboard, Spotlight, Automator, Safari, Mail, Apple Notes, Apple Photos, Terminal Tips, and third-party apps. After reading and watching these tips and tricks, you’ll be more efficient on your Mac than ever.
This book is part of the MacSparky Field Guide series, designed to empower Mac users with great information delivered with fun and panache. It was a lot of fun creating this book. I’m quite proud of it and I hope you dig it.
You can get this new book in the iBooks Store for a self-contained, downloadable book including all of the videos embedded for your Mac, iPad or iPhone. The iBooks Store version was created in iBooks Author and includes all of the whiz-bang interactivity that comes with it.
Alternatively, we also offer this book as a streaming/downloadable product from Vimeo. The Vimeo version also includes closed-captioning and higher fidelity video (1080 vs. 720 in the iBook).
It feels really good to release another FIeld Guide. Thank you all for the support. If you’d like to learn more about how we went about making this book, listen to this week’s Mac Power Users episode.
Brett and I have also updated Volume 1 of our 60 Mac Tips book to version 1.2. We’ve gone through and updated and replaced several of the tips in version 1. The update is free if you purchased the first version. Otherwise, you can get it on the iBooks Store or Vimeo Streaming/Download.
One change from the High Sierra macOS update is a slight modification to the command to print to PDF. Years ago I shared a tip about printing to PDF by holding down the Command key and pressing P twice. It’s a great tip and people still use it. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work in High Sierra. That is because Apple removed the ellipsis from the command. To fix this, go to your keyboard shortcuts and remove the ellipsis, and all will be good again. See the screenshot below and video for help.
Font geeks got our moment in last night’s Saturday Night Live. The punchline is the font used at the end.
This week I guested on the Incomparable podcast where we talked about my guilty pleasure, Star Wars Animation. If you enjoy the Galaxy Far, Far Away, this one’s for you.
Something I’ve come to realize about myself is that my preferences in video games has changed over the years. When I was younger, I loved “twitchy” games where it always felt like a race to get the bad guys on time, or the starship into battle, or my pod racer to the finish line. These days I prefer games that are more leisurely.
That’s why I was such a fan of Alto’s Adventure. It was meandering. Yesterday, the award winning game, Flower, was released for iOS. Flower is the made for meanderers. I played it for 20 minutes last night and I’m hooked. In Flower, you are the wind. As you move around the environments you can pick up flower pedals and slowly change the environment. I’m not sure my 8-year-old self would have been very interested but the current me is digging it. If you’ve never been a gamer, this may be one worth trying.
I also like the business model. The game is $5 and doesn’t bug you anymore about upgrades, virtual coins, or anything else once you buy it. If you’d like to be the wind this weekend, give Flower a try.
iStat Menus, version 6, is now available. If you’re not familiar with iStat Menus, it is a Mac utility that gives you a ton of system information in your menubar. It’s been in development for years and every update seems to add a few new features that you quickly think you can’t live without. This one is no different.
Version 6 adds a weather applet giving you the current temperature, hourly forecast, and weekly overview. You may have another application already providing you this information, but if you don’t, the weather support iStat Menus is just fine.
The ways in which iStat Menus displays data have also improved. Graphs are bigger, there are more color themes, and overall, this update gives you more information than you had before.
My favorite new feature is the addition of a Notification Center widget. The widget is compact and yet still gives you a great deal of information on your system.
I have been running iStat Menus for years on my system. As a power tip, I keep the iStat Menus menubar items hidden behind Bartender. I don’t feel I need that information visible at all times but appreciate having it only a click away.
You can buy iStat Menus new for $18 or upgrade from the prior version for $10. You can learn more at Bjango.com
It’s kind of hard to believe that Apple released a major update to macOS this week. It just didn’t move the needle much in geek circles. I remember when we used to go to the Apple Store on the night of a new Mac OS X release and it was a big deal. (I still have my 10.4 Tiger T-shirt somewhere.)
All that said, I’ve been kicking the tires on the beta for a bit and here’s my collection of notes.
In answer to the emails I’ve received asking whether you should upgrade, I’d say you are fine upgrading (provided you have a few backups first). I expect High Siera adoption will be slower than some of the prior Mac operating system updates. High Sierra has a lot more under-the-hood tuning than fancy paint and chrome. However, those features that were added, like the new photo and video formats and Notes improvements, are also on iOS so leaving your Mac behind could get frustrating.
