MPU 387 – Workflows with Rene Ritchie




The latest episode of Mac Power Users is live. Our guest, Rene Ritchie, discusses his favorite tools, workflows, and apps for getting work done as editor-in-chief of iMore. Rene also explains what it is like to try and get Apple services outside the United States and how to deal with your Apple gear in extremely cold weather.

This episode of Mac Power Users is sponsored by:

  • 1Password Have you ever forgotten a password? Now you don’t have to worry about that anymore. 
  • The Omni Group We’re passionate about productivity for Mac, iPhone and iPad. 
  • Marketcircle We help small business grow with great Mac, iPhone and iPad apps including Daylight and Billings Pro.
  • Sanebox Stop drowning in email!

Daylite: The Mac CRM for Small Businesses (Sponsor)




For those of you who don’t know about Daylite, it has been around for over 15 years. Daylite is a Mac CRM (Customer Relationship Manager) that helps you get new business and deliver on your promises. Whether you are contacting new leads or reviewing your list of past clients to see who is in need of your services, Daylite helps you track everything. From a single lead or client, you can see every email, every booked or upcoming appointment, who referred them, pending business deals, active projects, and even future follow-ups. 

From a single project, you can see all of the important emails, files, completed tasks, as well as upcoming tasks and who is responsible. Daylite also has custom pipelines so you can visually track the stage of each project. 

The Daylite team is always coming up with new ways to help Daylite make business more productive. They have recently announced that they are working on Daylite Mail for iPhone and iPad.

If you are looking for a mature, reliable system to manage your business, look no further. You can even read about other companies using Daylite here.

OmniGraffle 3 for iOS


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The Omni Group recently released version 3 of their popular diagramming and graphics tool for iPad, OmniGraffle. The new version add several new features including multi-column interface, a floating tool palette that gets out of your way, expanded keyboard shortcuts, art boards and are board layers, SVG paste on canvas, and more.

One of the things I really like about the new version is the refinement of the interface and user tools with the moving pallet and overall attention to detail for making a professional level application for the iPad that is both powerful and easy to learn and use.

I have always thought of this application as pretty special. It’s one of the first applications for iPad that really took advantage of multitouch as an alternative input mechanism. From the beginning, the Omni Group has been refining and perfecting this interface in OmniGraffle and you can clearly see benefits of all that work in this third version.

Moreover, this time I got to spend a fair amount of time on the inside. I produced the tutorial videos for the new version for the Omni Group and saw the painstaking efforts the developers and designers went through to get this application just right.

There’s a lot of talk these days about what you can and cannot do on iPad. To me, one thing is clear. You can make beautiful diagrams and related graphics on an iPad with OmniGraffle. Check out OmniGraffle three for IOS the Omni Group website.

Clips Update for Disney and Pixar Media

Apple’s Clips app came out several months ago. It’s a great app that I’ve seen almost nobody using. I like the app but it has a bit of a learning curve. There’s a lot more power in there than you’d think. The trick is to pick your asset (video, photo, title card, etc…) and hold down the record button to add it to your Clips composition. The best tutorial I’ve seen on the app is this one over at 9to5 Mac.

Today Apple released an update to the application that adds a lot of new media assets including some familiar Disney and Pixar characters. The animations are cute and easy to use. It’s really well done and when I showed it to a few Disney fans in my life, they immediately put time in learning the Clips app. There’s a small sample Mickey animation in the video below. (That right. I met Michael Giacchino.)

Clips is an interesting (and powerful) app. The fact that they can update the app to add new media content without an iOS update is exactly the type of feature I think Apple should be adding to Messages.

The New Transmit


Transmit is the undisputed king of file transfer applications on the Mac. It’s been around for 20 years, and if you need to send files to servers, there’s nothing better. I was frankly surprised yesterday when they released Transmit 5. It seems like just yesterday I was buying Transmit 4 but it turns out that was actually seven years ago.

While I don’t use Transmit every day, when I do need to perform a file transfer operation from my Mac, there’s nothing better. This is an excellent tool to have in your belt. They have a discount on the new version (from $45-$35) but it’s only good for a week. If you ever need to perform file transfers, get in on the discount now. I already did.

Entering the US with Technology

Jeff Richardson did a nice job summarizing the latest from US Customs and Border Protection concerning what it can and can’t do with your digital devices upon entering the country. Even if you are a US citizen, If you refuse to unlock your device you’ll be delayed and your device gets confiscated. If you’re not a US citizen, they send you back. I keep trying to put this into the context of my parents’ generation. If my dad was entering the US after a trip abroad in 1960 and customs wanted to make a copy of his diary, what would he have said? Most likely he’d have a few choice words about getting shot in Korea so this sort of thing didn’t happen.

Privacy continues to erode.

Timing — the Automatic Mac Time Tracking App

Time is your most precious resource. You need to know how you are spending it. But time tracking is hard. Having to throw a switch somewhere every time you change tasks or projects never works and is super-distracting. As a result, you end up with bad data. 

The brand new Timing fixes that. Timing automatically tracks which apps, documents, and websites you use — without start/stop timers.

  • See how you spend your time, eliminate distracting activities, and improve your client billing.
  • Timing lets you stop worrying about time and focus on doing your best work instead!
  • Timing also understands that your time tracking data is super sensitive, so Timing keeps it safe on your Mac.

I use this app on my Mac every day, and it’s helped me learn a ton about where I’m spending my time. This data is very useful in becoming more productive. 

Try it yourself with the free 14-day trial and get 10% off until the end of July with the links in this post.