A Few Rules to Avoid Getting Stung with Crowd-Funding

Three years ago I backed this project on Indiegogo that was a clever iPhone battery/cable/locator/camera trigger. At the time it seemed pretty useful and I was still in those heady days of believing that anything listed on Kickstarter or Indiegogo would necessarily ship.

Well it’s been three years and I’d pretty much written off the idea of ever receiving my GOkey. A few days ago I received an email from the project organizer making it official by explaining he was out of money and unable to ship. He concluded the email:

“I feel terribly shameful for letting you down.
I am sorry.”

I actually felt kind of bad for the guy despite the fact that he got my $69 and I never received anything in return. I would have been more upset about this in the past but I’ve become much more realistic about these projects in the last few years.

The idea behind crowd-funding is a good one. Somebody has a great idea and rather than going to the bank, they get funded by their first customers. Unfortunately, you’ve got to be pretty discriminating if you don’t want to receive any emails like I just did from GOkey. I’ve got a few rules now for backing crowd-funding campaigns:

1. If it has a circuit board, don’t back it.

It often seems to me that the biggest fails on these types of projects involved finalizing, approving, and sourcing electronics. I know that this was part of the reason the GOkey never shipped. These days I’ll only back something that has a circuit board if it is made by a company with already a proven and reliable track record.

2. Smashing success is often a bad thing.

If I’m watching a Kickstarter or Indiegogo that starts blowing up, I’ll take a step back and look very closely before I get on board. Being required to make millions of a product when you originally only expected to make thousands adds a lot of complexity and opportunities for things to go wrong. You may recall how long it took them to ship the original Pebble watch. People I talked to said a lot of this was due to them having to ramp up for so many units.

3. Simple ideas are also subject to peril.

Another problem showing up is intellectual property theft. A clever designer will come up with a new way to solve a problem and the project will get some momentum. That very same momentum, however will attract rip-off artists to start flooding the market with similar products, sometimes before the campaign even ends.

I still think the idea behind crowd-funding is a good one. If you see something you feel passionate about and you want to play a role in making it a reality, there’s nothing wrong with backing it. Just be warned that no matter how good of an idea a product is, it still may never ship.

Star Wars Episode VIII – The Trailer, The Poster, and the Show Floor

Today was the Episode VIII panel at Star Wars Celebration and it was pretty great. The corker was a 2 minute teaser that LucasFilm is calling a “trailer”. I don’t see how you can call this a trailer though. It’s just the barest of sketches about what’s going on with our heroes and villains in the middle act of the trilogy. It’s very well done and I like the fact that it conveys very little information about what to expect. The movie is still eight months away. Keep us in suspense a bit longer please.

<br />

About that Poster

I really like the new poster. Seeing old Luke so prominantly is awesome considering he had such a small role in The Force Awakens.

I also like the way Rey at the bottom harkens back to Luke in the original Star Wars poster from 1977. (I remember seeing that poster as a kid and not sure what to make of it. The guy holding the light saber looked more like someone out of a Spartacus movie than Mark Hamil.)

Also, did you notice how Rey’s saber transitions from blue to red? The point of the middle episode is to leave us feeling our heroes are completely screwed. Between the trailer and this poster, I expect they’ll deliver on that promise.

MacSparky’s Celebration Multi-Media Extravaganza

So far at Celebration I’ve been watching panels and meeting up with friends. Today I plan to spend a lot of time on the show floor taking pictures of both the awesome and the bazaar. It’s all here gang. Follow me today on Twitter, Instagram, and/or SnapChat for plenty of Star Wars content. I’ll even be posting video with my SnapChat Glasses. Such a nerd.

A Long Sunset for Workflow

MacRumors reports that the Workflow team has confirmed in a recent customer support email there will be no further features but imply they’ll do maintenance updates. Specifically, they wrote:

“But just so you know, we have no further planned updates for Workflow. That being said we are continuing to support Workflow’s current functionality and have no plans to end support, so let me know if you run across any bugs or crashes.”

We all knew this was coming. In hindsight, we should have known it was coming this soon. Whatever Apple hired the Workflow team for, it was not to continue developing Workflow. They’ve obviously already started on some sort of integration of Workflow-like tools in iOS.

However seeing it there, in black and white, that the app that I use repeatedly, every day, is now frozen feels pretty bad. I’m constantly writing new Workflows to automate working on iPhone and iPad. I currently have 53 workflows that I’ve written myself or boosted from somewhere else on the Internet.

Whatever Apple is working on, I find it highly unlikely that it will ship with iOS 11 that gets announced in just a few months. So my guess is we’ll wait until iOS 12 to get the Workflow replacement, which is most likely 14 months from announcement and 17 months away from release. Will Workflow still function up until that time? I sure hope so.

PDFpen Version 9

Smile just released a new version of PDFpen for Mac. The new version adds several features including better annotations, linked files, better export options, a new “search and highlight” feature, line numbering, a new hand tool, better table of contents editing, and Asian OCR.

There’s a lot more. Indeed, so much more that I made a video for Smile.

<br />

Packing the Laptop

I’m about to take a little trip. Packing for me is usually pretty easy. If I can get by on a trip with one pair of shoes, it makes my entire day. I can, however, get hung up when it comes to technology. My current nerd crisis is the decision of whether or not to bring the laptop.

For this trip I’ve really been struggling with this question. There’s a part of me that would love to leave it at home. I do a lot of computing from the iPad and I can often go days without needing a Mac. However, some days I really need a Mac. If I can leave the laptop at home, it means significantly less gear and weight.

There is also the intangible part of this equation. I just enjoy working on the iPad. I like the relative simplicity of it. I like being able to use the Apple Pencil when the mood strikes me and I particularly like the way using (essentially) a piece of glass as my computer makes me feel like I’m living in the future.

Finally, there’s a certain degree of geek thrill from putting yourself out on the ledge like that. As they say, necessity is the mother of invention and leaving the iPad at home may lead to some interesting discoveries.

Against this inclination to leave the laptop at home I always have to stop and think about what work I intend to get done and whether the iPad is up to the task. On this particular trip I’m worried because I’m still in the process of finalizing a large client transaction which means I may need to spend time with a significant number of files and some complex Microsoft Word documents. Microsoft Word is great on the iPad except when it comes to making changes to style formatting, which it can’t do. When I work on big transactions, there is lots of style formatting.

I do have the ability to remotely access my iMac at home so, in a pinch, I could perform any Mac-specific work from the road so long as I have an Internet connection.

The real problem is that we all have this list of things that are either impossible or a lot more difficult on the iPad than they are on the Mac. When deciding whether you are going to use a iPad for 10 minutes or a five day trip, we still have to go through the same calculus. Until the iPad can get closer parity to the Mac where we don’t have to go through this mental journey every time we take a trip, the iPad will never reach its full potential.

As for me, because the friction points relate to client work, I’ll end up bringing the laptop along. What kills me is how close I am to not needing to bring it. If only the iPad filing system were just a little bit more robust and if only Microsoft Word were just a little bit more powerful. I hope people at Apple and Microsoft are getting the message.

TestFlight Improvements and the Developer Climate

Yesterday Apple released an update for the TestFlight app. TestFlight is a tool that allows developers to release beta iPhone and iPad software to testers. At any one time I’m running several beta applications on my iPhone and and iPad via TestFlight. When I saw the update come down yesterday I didn’t think much of it.

Today, however, I have heard from several developer friends that are quite excited about these new updates. In particular, the new version allows developers to send out multiple versions of the application for testing. With the new system developers can test different versions of their app to different users or even multiple versions to the same user. This allows for better testing and comparison. They’ve also extended testing period from 60 to 90 days.

Apple has made strides in the last six months in giving developers for the iPhone and the iPad better tools. In addition to these most recent changes to TestFlight, developers can now also respond to feedback, Apple is improving search optimization, and they’ve even become more flexible with the pricing models for subscriptions.

I would very much like to think this is foundational work to create an environment where developers are more encouraged to develop professional caliber applications for iPad and iPhone. Fingers crossed.

Star Wars Celebration

I remember being a teenager and talking to one of the older gents in my neighborhood. At the time I thought he was ancient but looking back I’m pretty sure he was younger than I am now. Anyway, he told me that the older you get, the weirder you get. I’ve never forgot about that and it generally rings true with my life.

As I’ve been busy with MacSparky, the law practice, and my family, I’ve disconnected from a lot of popular culture things over the years. I don’t keep up with sports and I don’t watch much TV. I do, however, spend way too much time thinking about Star Wars. I was eight years old when the first movie came out and I bonded to it like a baby duck to its mama. I’ve heard all of the critiques of Star Wars and even agree with a few of them but at the end of the day, I still love it more than a grown man reasonably should.

So this week I’m taking a little trip to Orlando Florida where I will be attending the Star Wars Celebration. It’s a gathering of the Star Wars tribe where I won’t be giving any presentations or working with sponsors or any of the other things I do at most conferences. Instead, I’ll be just another guy going to sessions, making a few new friends, and geeking out.

The organizers of the event were crazy enough to give me a media badge so I’m going to take that seriously and even write a few posts here about what’s really going on in that galaxy far, far away. I’m also going to be posting photos on my Snapchat and Instagram accounts. I’ll probably also make some noise on Twitter as well.

So if you’re attending the Star Wars Celebration, please look me up. If Star Wars makes your eyes roll, please feel free to ignore my posts on the subject this week. I will tag them all “Star Wars” so you can set your filters accordingly.

MPU 372 – Workflows with Dr. Drang

This week our favorite snowman returns to the Mac Power Users. We discuss the evolving definition of “pro” and “power user” as well as new workflows for managing text, creative uses for Keyboard maestro, managing Apple Mail and the Doc dives into the iPad.

Sponsored include:

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.
MindNode MindNode makes mind mapping easy.
Eero: Blanket your home in fast, reliable WiFi.