Happy Anniversary to the Omni Group (Sponsor)

This week MacSparky is sponsored by the Omni Group. For 25 years the Omni Group has been making outstanding software for Mac, iPhone, and iPad users. The Omni Group started writing software for Next computers before Next was acquired by Apple and Steve Jobs brought the Next operating system into what became Mac OS X. So you can say the Omni Group was writing Mac OS X software before it was Mac OS X.

Over the years I’ve spent a lot of time using Omni Group software. In that time, I’ve also been privileged to occasionally work with some of the Omni Group employees. I am so impressed with these folks. Whether they are software engineers, designers, or just the person that answers the phone, the Omni Group is a company singularly determined to deliver superior productivity software.

After 25 years, the Omni Group still delivers the goods with OmniFocus, OmniOutliner, OmniGraffle, and OmniPlan. All of these apps are the best-in-breed for what they do and if you want to get more productive on you Mac, iPad, or iPhone, you should check them out.

MPU 394: Workflows with Dan Moren

My pal Dan Moren has been writing fiction for years and his first novel was recently published. On this week’s episode, Dan, who is a first-order geek, shares how he used his Apple technology to plan, write, edit, and get published. We also talked about how he uses Apple technology to manage social media and do other things published authors do.

Sponsors include:

PDFpen from Smile: With powerful PDF editing tools, available for Mac, iPad, and iPhone, PDFpen from Smile makes you a Mac Power User.
1Password: Have you ever forgotten a password? Now you don’t have to worry about that anymore. Save up to 20% using this link.
The Omni Group: We’re passionate about productivity for Mac, iPhone and iPad.
Squarespace: Make your next move. Enter offer code MPU at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.

The Future of Microsoft Office on the Mac

Microsoft has been telling folks for a while that Microsoft Office 2011 is going to cease getting future development. Lately, they’ve made it even more explicit that if you upgrade to macOS High Sierra in a few weeks, you’re out of luck with Office 2011.

I have received several emails from people worried that this spells doom for Microsoft Office on the Mac. I don’t think that is necessarily true. Indeed, without any inside knowledge I’d argue that Microsoft Office is just fine on the Mac. Microsoft is in the software business. They make money selling software and, since they moved Microsoft Office over to a subscription model, I expect they’ve been doing pretty well at it.

When Steve Ballmer left Microsoft, I believe the company took a very big step toward a business model that includes putting its software on all platforms and away from Ballmer’s prior strategy of using Microsoft Office to trap people on Microsoft operating systems.

I attend plenty of conferences with lawyers and other fancy people that rely on Microsoft Office on their Mac and they are, by all accounts, signing up for Office365 in droves. I did the same thing. Since subscribing to Microsoft Office365, I’ve noticed the application has steadily improved with frequent updates. They also put considerable effort into the IOS versions of Microsoft Office.

I think a more likely explanation for the lack of support for Office 2011 in High Sierra is Microsoft’s further efforts to push everybody onto their subscription pricing model and devote further engineering resources to the currently shipping version of Microsoft Office, instead of one six years old.

Home Screens – Greg Scown

Greg Scown (website)(Twitter) started his programming career at Apple but eventually made his way out of Cupertino and into his the Apple developer community. Greg is one of the owners of Smile Software and is, in addition to being a geek like us, a very nice man. So Greg, show us your home screen.

What are some of your favorite apps?

1Password, Fantastical, Overcast, and Slack are all long-term faves. Micro.blog is my new/trending favorite, and Tweetbot is a stalwart.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Threes, sound on.

What app makes you most productive?

1Password.

What app do you know you’re underutilizing?

OmniFocus.

What is the app you are still missing?

An app (or site) to search podcasts for appearances by a particular guest. Let’s say I want to hear Daveed Diggs. I’d love something which could point me to his appearances on Fresh Air, Morning Edition, Hamilton fan podcasts, etc.

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

I constantly use my iPhone, especially when I’m away from my desk. I’ve recently taken to leaving the iPad open and sitting on my desk so that it can be a gentle reminder of when HootSuite notifications come in from Smile’s Twitter accounts.

What Today View widgets are you using and why?

I’m not a Today View power user, so I mostly use it for Siri app suggestions.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

Beyond the fact that it’s an amazingly powerful computer in my pocket, the likes of which was difficult to imagine just 15 years ago? I’d say the camera, in that having a camera in my pocket allows for spontaneous picture taking which I never did before the iPhone.

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

I’d liberate Newsstand and free the trapped New Yorker app.

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

Yes, and I crashed it trying to make a screen shot of my watch face. In fact, I can’t seem to get it to make a screen shot. I use the Utility face with the battery life, activity, and timer complications. I use timers on the watch all the time when cooking. I particularly like them when I have company because they’re discreet, so I don’t have to interrupt conversations with buzzers or bells.

What’s your wallpaper and why?

Sunset in Ixtapa, Mexico. It’s one of my favorite places.

Anything else you’d like to share?

I generally feel that one is meant to learn something from a home screen post, and I’m not sure there’s much to be gleaned from mine. Here’s one thing, though. I put Settings in a prominent spot because I use it for a DIY dark mode so that I can read myself back to sleep if I wake up in the middle of the night.

Thanks, Greg. Also … thanks for giving me an excuse to link Daveed Diggs at MacSaprky.

The Potential of Apple’s ARKit

While I was at WWDC this year I was talking to a friend that happens to know quite a bit about what’s going on at Apple. I was gushing about the improvements to iPad with iOS 11. At some point he interrupted me to explain the biggest game-changer in iOS 11 is not iOS productivity. “It’s AR”, he said. If augmented reality is new to you, it’s a technology that allows you to overlay computer generated bits over photos and video of the real world. Imagine holding up your phone to look at a line of shops with an AR arrow drawn over the screen to show you the most efficient route you can take to find spicy carrots.

ARKit is Apple’s attempt to bring augmented reality to the masses. Historically, the problem with most AR implementations is that it required two distinct sets of skills. First, the app developer had to have a great idea about how to use AR and second, the developer had to be a wizard at building an underlying AR engine. It’s that second part that prevented much exploration on the first part. As a result, there are very few examples of AR on iOS (and even fewer examples of good AR on iOS).

So my well-connected friend told me that we should not underestimate Apple’s ARKit. As explained to me, a group of very smart people spent years building the ARKit API’s that we’re now seeing with iOS 11. ARKit does all the heavy lifting for app developers that want to add an augmented reality system to their app. It effectively democratized AR so any developer with a good idea can tap into all that work for their AR engine with just a few lines of code.

I admitted to my friend back at WWDC that while I thought ARKit was cool, I didn’t really see why it could be such a big deal. In my head, the above spicy carrot example was the beginning and the end of how I’d use AR in my life.

Watching things happen through the beta process, however, I can see how I was wrong. Giving ARKit to millions of creative developers is going to see the technology used in ways that not even Apple could ever dream of. Ikea can now preview their furniture in your house before you buy it. The Food Network will let you creat an AR cupcake and then give you the recipe to make it in real life. You can have a virtual dog. There are going to be so many games where you can have little cyber people engage in battles on your kitchen table and for me, of course, the clincher is my own virtual BB8 to follow me around.

When iOS 11 ships (probably only a matter of weeks from now), augmented reality is, overnight, going to transform from a fringe technology to something installed on hundreds of millions of iOS devices. I think my friend back at WWDC was right. This is going to be a big deal.

ARKit is going to usher in the newest gold rush for app developers. Once iOS 11 ships, there are going to be several developers that do something brilliant with augmented reality and their apps are going to go gangbusters. To me, however, the real interesting part will be after that initial wave, when someone comes up with a great idea for augmented reality that is completely out of the box and changes a little something for everyone. I fully expect that to happen.

Remote Access to Your Mac with Screens 4

Screen Shot 2017-08-30 at 2.34.27 PM.png

As the iPad gets more powerful I’m using it increasingly on the road in lieu of a laptop. Nevertheless, occasionally I need to get to something on my Mac at home. Over the years, I have come to rely upon Edovia’s Screens VNC application. Earlier this year they released version 4 and the application just keeps getting better and better.

If you’re not familiar with VNC, it’s a technology that allows you to remotely log into a separate computer and drive it remotely. If you’re sitting at Starbucks with your iPad and want to do something on your Mac at the office, this is perfect. However, not all VNC applications are created equal. Some of them are actually quite terrible.

Screens combines reliability with a pleasant user interface that make it hard to replace. One of the nice features in the latest version is the ability to hide the screen on your Mac while you are remotely accessing it in what they call “Curtain Mode”.

The application can work from your iPhone, iPad, or even another Mac. I use it, by far, the most from my iPad. If you set up your iPad with a keyboard and log into your Mac via Screens, you can almost fool yourself into thinking that your iPad just magically turned into a Mac.

I don’t use the application for extended sessions. For example, I’m not going to write a Microsoft Word document on my Mac from my iPad using VNC technologies. However, I might just log into Word on Mac to make a style change on a document I’m editing on my iPad since Microsoft Word for iPad doesn’t have that ability. When I need to log into the Mac to update something or get some information, Screens is always there for me. If you travel with an iPad and have a Mac back at the office or home, this is a tool you should probably have.

SaneBox with Reminders (Sponsor)

This week MacSparky is sponsored by SaneBox, the email service that acts like your personal email assistant. There’s a lot that SaneBox can do for you, but this week I’d like to focus on SaneReminders. They’re awesome.

So what are SaneReminders? Let me answer that question by describing a problem. Often I will send an email to someone that requires a response. That creates an issue for me. How do I track whether or not I ever receive a response? I could create a separate OmniFocus task for every such email, but that’s way more fiddling than I want to do in OmniFocus. Wouldn’t it be great if the computer could keep track for me? That is exactly what SaneReminders does.

When I send an email that requires a response, I blind copy the email to SaneBox. The format is a period of time followed by @sanebox.com. For example, if I’m sending an email that I want to follow up on if I don’t receive a reply in one week, I would blind copy it to “1week@sanebox.com”. That’s all I have to do. SaneBox then keeps track of whether or not I receive a reply to that specific email. If I don’t, in a week, SaneBox sends me a reminder.

I use this all the time.

Because of this feature, I seem to have wizard-like powers to the people I correspond with. I don’t let things fall through the cracks. I love this feature, and it’s just one of the many things you get if you add SaneBox to your email management routine.

To learn more, go to SaneBox.com and make sure you use the link in this post so you’ll get a nice discount. Thank you, SaneBox, for sponsoring MacSparky.

Mac Power Users 393: Developer Roundtable

In this week’s episode of Mac Power Users, prominent app developers Ken Case, Greg Scown, and Dave Teare join us to talk about the future of macOS and iOS, along with a few thoughts on the software business in 2017.

Sponsors include:

MindNode Delightful mind mapping for your Mac, iPad, and iPhone.
Sanebox Stop drowning in email!
Squarespace: Make your next move. Enter offer code MPU at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.
Fracture Bring your photos to life.

The CrashPlan Crash and Online Backup Options

This week we learned that CrashPlan is getting out of the consumer backup business.

For years I’ve been reading emails from Mac Power Users listeners from both team CrashPlan and Team Backblaze. I started out using CrashPlan years ago but left it because there was some bug that kept spinning up a cache file that filled my hard drive. It took me hours to figure out CrashPlan was the culprit and when I tried to report the bug, nobody would respond to me, so I jumped ship to Backblaze.

I’ve now been with Backblaze for a few years and can report it’s been a great experience. The service is always running but stays more-or-less invisible. Backblaze also has a feature that will backup any attached storage (not network attached storage), and I’ve got multiple terabytes plugged into my iMac that are also backed up to the Backblaze servers.

If you’ve been a loyal CrashPlan user, there is nothing wrong with going over to Backblaze. If you want to role your own online backup, I know a lot of folks have done that with Amazon S3 storage and Arq. (Arq also works with Backblaze’s B2 storage, which I’m told is cheaper than S3.)

The one thing that is not an option is giving up on online backup. I’ve heard from so many listeners that had their bacon saved by one of these last-line-of-defense online backup solutions. Your data is worth $50/year for this kind of security. Spend it.

Jazz Friday – Herbie Hancock’s Maiden Voyage

If you’re building up your library of jazz standards, you definitely need tot add Herbie Hancock’s Maiden Voyage (iTunes)(Apple Music) to the list. Maiden Voyage was the name of Herbie Hancock’s 1965 album and the title track. The song has a great sort-of motion feel to it. Herbie explained once that his idea of this song was to capture “the splendor of a sea-going vessel on its maiden voyage.” I can see that.

To me, Maiden Voyage is a bit of sublime modal, post-bop jazz that some days is exactly I need. I particularly like the way George Coleman goes a bit off the rails at the end of the sax solo but, of course, I would.

If you are interested in jazz and you’ve never fallen down the Herbie Hancock rabbit hole (Wikipedia), you probably should. He’s remarkably talented and, by all accounts, a swell guy (and a bit of a geek).