We’ve talked about DEVONthink several times on Mac Power Users and there is a lot to like about the app but because I use iOS and iPad so much, it never really felt to me like a practical option. That may have changed with the recent release of DEVONthink To Go 2 for iOS. The new version is all about syncing and power-users like Gabe Weatherhead love it.
I’ve only dipped my toe so far but you may be hearing more about this one.
Like so many others, the Sparks family is obsessed with the Hamilton musical. I was obsessed with Hamilton in the 80’s so his newfound popularity feels like a wonderful karmic bounce.
This week I participated in the Incomparable’s Pod4Ham podcast where we spent a half hour talking about track 29, Schuyler Defeated.
Yesterday we recorded one of our rare news-cycle episodes of Mac Power Users. In it, Katie and I break down all of the news from Apple’s keynote and share our thoughts and opinions on the iPhone 7 and Apple Watch Series 2. Get it while it’s hot.
Sponsors Inclue:
As expected, the iPhone 7 removed the headphone port. I thought the explanation on stage yesterday was pretty good about why they did it. Although I wouldn’t have called it “courageous”. People at Apple have done courageous things. Removing the headphone port, however, does not raise to that level.
BuzzFeed got an exclusive interview with the Apple team where they address the removal of the headphone port more thoroughly and, in my mind, better.
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“The combined promise of sound quality, a steady Bluetooth connection, the battery life, the voice control, and ease of pairing across devices, all free of wires — if it all works, these things do seem to provide value an order of magnitude greater than even the priciest wired buds. But it’s also up to Apple to sell these things, to convince people that they want them. That’s harder, but not impossible.”
If you want to understand Apple’s argument (and spin) on this issue, I’d read the entire article. I do think including the adapter in the box was smart. It doesn’t solve all the problems (you still can’t simultaneously charge and listen to wired headphones) but it solves most of them. I’m starting to think the removal of the headphone port isn’t going to turn into the public blood-bath I originally thought it would.
Free Agents episode 4 published today. Deciding where to get your work done can be a difficult challenge for an independent worker. There are a lot of options and in this episode we cover them all.
Today Hazel, one of my favorite Mac utilities, turns 10. Hazel takes care of me every day renaming and filing documents and so much more. In celebration the app is 50% off for a short time. For today only it’s just $16. If you’ve not purchased Hazel yet, today’s your day. Want to learn more about Hazel? There’s a pretty good video on that.
This week’s episode of Mac Power Users is a deep dive on the two best long form writing tools available for Mac and iOS, Scrivener and Ulysses. Both apps are great and, thankfully, scratch different itches. Listen to the show for the full break down.
Sponsors include:
This week MacSparky is sponsored by Agenda Minder (website)(App Store).
I’m not alone in hating meetings. So often I walk out of a meeting desperately wishing I had that hour back. Occasionally, however, I leave a meeting feeling like work actually got done and with newfound respect for some person that drove that meeting with the efficiency of the Swiss railway.
This week’s sponsor can make you that person. Agenda Minder is a Mac app that gives you meeting organization super-powers. Your team will know how organized and responsive you are when you simply copy email requests into Agenda Minder and cover the topic at your next meeting. They’ll be surprised when they get your beautiful Agenda Minder agenda out ahead of the meeting.
Agenda Minder stays out of your way with simple controls and a clean look. Quickly add meetings and agenda items capturing the objective and any preparation notes you need. Just doing this as a quick preparation can make your meetings better.
You can also quickly find the right meeting by sorting meeting name or date. Filter the meetings you have today, this week, or next.
My thanks to Agenda Minder for sponsoring MacSparky. Go check Agenda Minder out for yourself. A meeting is only as good as the agenda.
There are so many smart people generating interesting content on the Internet. One of those that I recently came across is Michael Kummer (Website) (Twitter). Michael writes about a variety of topics but I particularly enjoy his posts about technology and photography. So Michael, show us your home screen.
What are some of your favorite apps?
Some of my favorite apps include: 1Password, Mail, Messages, FaceTime, OmniFocus, Tweetbot, Workflow and Camera.
Which app is your guilty pleasure?
I wanted to say Tweetbot but in reality it’s the WordPress app. I don’t use the WordPress app to write content for my blog but I regularly check how well my posts are doing in terms of visitor count. It never seizes to amaze me how certain posts keep engaging visitors for months in a row. My post on an “out of memory” issue in OS X Mavericks is still in the top 10 every day. That makes me wonder why so many people still run such an old version of OS X.
What app makes you most productive?
On the iPhone it’s definitely the Mail app, as processing emails is what I do most on my iPhone from a productivity standpoint. I guess you could say that I still feel most productive on a Mac and not on an iOS device.
What app do you know you’re underutilizing?
Drafts, for sure. I put it on my home screen and moved Notes to the second screen for exactly that reason. I know it’s a great app with a ton of features but I have yet to use it to the fullest of its capabilities.
What is the app you are still missing?
There isn’t an app I’m missing but rather infrastructure that I wished Apple had provided a long time ago. iCloud sharing à la Dropbox for example. Apple is finally moving in the right direction with Notes sharing in iOS 10 and macOS 10.12, I just hope they add the same capabilities to iCloud Drive, iCloud Photo Library etc soon as well.
How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?
Before I got an Apple Watch, I used to unlock my iPhone countless times a day. Don’t get me wrong, I still use my iOS devices plenty of times but the Apple Watch definitely reduced the amount of time I’m on my iPhone/iPad. Also, while I’m in front of my Mac, I don’t really need my iPhone either. I can make and receive calls thanks to Wi-Fi Calling (which is still buggy), get notifications and do pretty much everything else I could do on my iPhone. The situation changes dramatically of course when I’m on the go and out of the house or office.
What Today View widgets are you using and why?
I use Today View a lot and typically do so to either get a glimpse of important information (Calendar, pending tasks…) or to perform quick tasks through Workflow.
My current Today View contains the following widgets:
What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?
The iPhone’s camera and TouchID on both the iPhone and iPad.
If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?
I would try to stop releasing half-baked features. The sharing features in Numbers, Pages and Keynotes, when launched, were years behind what other companies were offering at the time. Collaboration in Notes (in iOS 10 and macOS 10.12) is great but why release it standalone instead of adding it to the rest of the infrastructure first. I’d say that the need to share files/folders and collaborate on them is far greater than the need to share individual notes. I also would try to fix certain bugs a lot faster than Apple has done in the past. Prime examples include: ever returning keyboard shortcuts or bandwidth management for iCloud services, specifically iCloud Photo Library. Last but not least, I would introduce a better
feedback mechanism for developers and public beta testers. It’s still very hard to get an idea if a submitted bug got any attention from Apple or when it will be fixed.
Do you have an Apple Watch? Show us your watch face tell us about it.
I have an Apple Watch Sport and switch back and forth between two watch faces. The Modular watch face is what I use during the week and the Activity watch face is what I use on weekends. The Modular watch face shows me important information such as date and time, upcoming appointments, temperature, open tasks in OmniFocus and it gives me a shortcut to enable sleep mode using Sleep++.
What’s your wallpaper and why?
I use a non-distracting wallpaper so I can find apps quickly. I used to have photos of family members but found that they easily distract my eyes when looking for apps – as funny and bad as it may sound 🙂
Anything else you’d like to share?
My home screen doesn’t change often but it does change. I regularly revisit what apps deserve this prime spot and I intentionally put apps on my home screen that I would like to use more often. Besides my home screen, I generally revisit all apps I have installed every so often and delete what I don’t use.
Thanks Michael.
Next week, on September 7, Apple is having its fall event where it announces, among other things, the new iPhone. That makes it silly season right now in the Apple-rumor business. If you want to impress your friends with your “inside” knowledge, I’d recommend MacRumors iPhone 7 rumor round-up.
As a result of the sheer volume of phones Apple has to build every year, I suspect there will be very few hardware related surprises next week. I’ve got a few pre-announcement thoughts on some of the new features.
Farewell 16GB?
According to the rumor mill, this year will see the long-overdue death of the 16 GB iPhone in favor of 32GB for the entry model. I sure hope that’s true.
The Dual Lens Camera
I am really looking forward to seeing how well the dual lens camera system works. There’s a lot of ways to implement a dual lens camera system and while the hardware manufacturing business is leaky, Apple’s software team is not. At this point, I don’t think anyone outside Apple has any idea what they’re going do with those two lenses and I can’t wait to find out. While I’ll most likely be a fan of the dual lens camara, I don’t like the bulging metal around the lip of the camera lenses in the leaked photos. Unfortunately, even Apple must obey the laws of physics.
Sans Headphone Port
The other big news will be the removal of the headphone jack. Apple is going to take a ton of heat over this. The fact that the headphone jack is being removed is well known enough at this point that everyone who wants to write go after Apple on this has been sharpening their knives for weeks.
As for me, I think the removal of the headphone port is a bad idea unless they can demonstrate a really good reason for doing so. Just last night I walked into my daughter’s room and saw her listening to her iPhone with the headphones plugged in while the lightning port was being used to charge the phone. I know I sound like a grumpy old man but it seems like everyone in my life under the age of 20 prefers to keep their phone constantly at 15% charge. For those people, the ability to simultaneously charge and listen to music through headphones is something they do every day and removal of the headphone port makes that harder.
Also, my wife uses the auxiliary port in her car to plug into her iPhone, which means we’ll probably have to buy several of the inevitably required Lightning-to-headphone adapters. Like I said, I hope they’ve got a good reason. (Water resistance is my guess.)
All that said, I got on the Bluetooth bandwagon a few years ago and rarely plug headphones into my iPhone so other than helping my family cope, it won’t bother me with respect to my own phone.
Part of me is just curious on an intellectual level as to how Apple will go about justifying the removal of the headphone port and how their public relations department will handle the inevitable backlash. Strap in, gang.
We’ll be recording a Mac Power Users episode immediately following the September 7 event so expect more on this topic.
