Of course Pixelmator was one of the first to release a Touch Bar update for its Mac image editor. Indeed I think apps like Pixelmator are perfect for the Touch Bar. It gives users quick access to its more powerful features and speeds things up. It makes me wish there was a Touch Bar-based external keyboard for my iMac. This latest update (dubbed 3.6 Cordillera) also includes tabs (a Sierra feature), Smart Refine (which makes selections faster and easier), and Deep Images support.
If you don’t have an image editor at your disposal, I’d recommend checking out Pixelmator. It’s a one-time purchase, as opposed to the subscription-based model, and, as evidenced here, the Pixelmator team is always on top of things. You can learn more at the Pixelmator blog and there’s a cool Touch Bar video below.
This week the Mac Power Users hit a small milestone (350 episodes) and we celebrated by inviting Shelly Brisbin to bring us up to date on accessibility for Mac and iOS. Shelly is super-informed on this subject and this is worth listening to even if you don’t necessarily need any accessibility features.
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With watchOS 3 and the new Apple Watch hardware, I’m using my Apple Watch more than ever. I have also slowly been assembling a collection of watch bands. While Apple has some pretty impressive watch straps, they are also a bit pricey. Alternatively, there are several third party manufacturers making Apple Watch straps but they make me nervous. The last thing I want to do is put a strap on my expensive Apple Watch made with cheap lugs that break or disconnect.
Last year Nomad started selling Apple Watch bands. I’ve bought products from Nomad before and been happy with their quality. Moreover, the design was impressive and I really like their rugged leather straps. So when my family started asking me for gift ideas last year, I asked for the Nomad leather strap. I was a good boy and one showed up under my tree. It’s been my primary band for the last year.
Recently I purchased a brand-new stainless steel Series 2 Apple Watch. The nice people at Nomad offered to send me a few of their most recent straps to take a look.
The Modern Build in Brown and Gray
The Nomad Leather Straps
Nomad now has two leather straps. The Modern Build is a brown or gray leather strap with a refined design. The stitching is subtle and the strap compares to Apple’s own brown leather buckle strap. Consider this the fancy one.
The Traditional Build leather strap is the successor to the original Nomad leather strap and features a more rugged design with heavy stitching and padded leather.
Both watches use Horween leather from Chicago. The leather in both this new sample band and my one-year-old Nomad leather strap looks great. It ages nicely and if you like leather bands, you’ll be happy with the look and feel of one of these Nomad straps. They only get better with time.
Both leather bands are sold with either silver or black stainless steel hardware lugs and buckles. My older Nomad strap has black hardware, which looked great with my space gray alluminum watch. The new one is silver and can match either the stainless steel or standard aluminum Apple Watch.
I like the lugs in this new Nomad watch band better than the ones they used last year. Third party lugs often look a little cheap and that’s what scares me most about third party bands. These new Nomad lugs are solid and wider than typical third party watch bands with a bit of a shoulder giving the watch a little extra dimension on the top and bottom. It’s both solid and different … in a good way. I feel my watch is secure with the Nomad lugs and I like the way it looks.
Vulcanized LSR Silicone Strap
Nomad also makes an active wear strap designed from vulcanized silicone. As the name implies, the Vulcanized LSR Silicone strap is made of silicone (as opposed to petrolium-based) rubber, which has fewer chemicals and is better for your skin. This also makes the strap more water resistant. This strap also comes in silver and black stainless steel hardware options. Nomad explains on their website that this design should also allow the strap to hold up to weather and heavy use. The overall design is sporty and rugged. There is a bit of texture.
Overall, the design feels different in both texture and feel to Apple’s fluoroelastomer. I’ve been wearing the Nomad Silicone strap on my daily workout for several weeks now with no troubles. When this strap gets sweaty or dirty, I just wear it in the shower and it cleans right up. It still looks like new but you’d expect that after just a few weeks.
I like both of Nomad’s new Apple Watch straps and will be putting them in the daily rotation. Nomad gets obsessive with their design and to me that is always a good thing. I think their most impressive feature is the wide lugs they use in both watches. If you’re looking for a nice strap for your Apple Watch, I’d recommend either of these. See the below gallery for my review samples and more thoughts.
Stainless Steel
The hardware is stainless steel.
Nice lugs!
Old and New
Here’s my year-old, well-loved Nomad band compared to my new one. You can see the lug design really improved this year.
Standing proud
You’ll notice the lugs stand out just a bit more than most Apple Watch bands. This is my favorite feature.
data-animation-override> “When you think about that top row of function keys, they really were a peculiar remnant of a past age. Rather than ditch them entirely, Apple has transformed that space into something more interesting, with contextual content that brings app features to the foreground in a way that traditional app interfaces don’t. Even if all the Touch Bar did was replace inscrutable function keys with keys with proper, explanatory labels it would be helpful, but it does a lot more than that.”
— Jason Snell
I’m not in the market for a MacBook Pro, but if I was, I’d definitely get one with the Touch Bar.
I spent some time typing on the new MacBook Pro keyboard. This keyboard may turn out to be the most controversial decision in this new MacBook Pro design. Apple explains the new keyboard is the “second generation” of the butterfly mechanism that first appeared on the 12” Retina MacBook. These new keys have significantly less travel than the traditional MacBook keyboards. A lot of people hate it. For others it is not a problem. (Interestingly, I’ve never heard of anyone loving the butterfly keyboards.) I’m not very picky about keyboards and I was fine with the MacBook butterfly keyboard.
Anyway, having typed on the new MacBook Pro keyboard I can report that if you are on a scale of one to five with one being the MacBook butterfly keyboard and five being the old MacBook keyboard, I’d put the second generation butterfly keyboard in the new MacBook Pro at a two. It definitely feels like a bit more travel than the MacBook keyboard but if you hated the MacBook keyboard, I suspect you won’t be very excited about this one either.
I wrote up Joey Alexander, the 13-year-old Indonesian jazz prodigy pianist earlier this year. Joey just released a new album, Countdown (Apple Music)(iTunes), The last time I wrote about Joey, I explained that he is more than just technically proficient. He also plays with his heart. You can hear that even more in the new album. This album is full of John Coltrane music (another Jazz Friday alum) and it’s delicious from beginning to end.
My favorite track is Countdown (Apple Music)(iTunes). I wouldn’t however listen to that track while driving. I could see myself accelerating to 100mph during the piano solo.
Jason Snell wrote an interesting piece about Mac pricing and retina screens. He posits that the increased cost of retina Macs may be partly due to Apple creating an artificial divide between retina and non-retina Macs. This allows them to charge a premium price. There may be something to his hypothesis but I also think the additional costs of retina screens and the processors and graphics engines to drive them are a factor. (Jason concludes its probably a bit of both of these factors.) Apple is rarely the first to drop prices on hardware but I do think that eventually Apple will have retina Macs for under $1,000. Other vendors are already pulling this off.
Whether the reason for the increased cost of retina machines is actual costs or Apple padding its profit margin (or probably both), the next time you buy a Mac, I strongly suggest getting the reatina screen. Even if it requires saving your pennies a little bit longer, you’ll love that retina screen every time you use your Mac.
Speaking of podcasating, I also guested today on the Clockwise podcast where we covered the future of laptop keyboards, whether VR can be good at anything beyond entertainment, the growing importance of encryption, and a watchOS 3 check-in.
This month’s MPU Feedback show includes more on the iCloud vs. Dropbox debate, macOS Sierra, more on the new MacBook Pro, and Katie is super-excited about her VESA mount.
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TextExpander has a new feature called Public Groups. With it, anyone can offer to share a TextExpander group publicly. There are already several interesting public groups. I have shared my “foreign thanks” group that automatically expands to say thank you in the language of choice. For instance typing “klingonthanks” renders “QA TLHO'” (of course in all caps).
Because the public groups are served up from the TextExpander.com site, when the original author makes alterations to the list, it automatically pushes the change out to subscribers. So if you look at my foreign thanks list and find a language I left out, let me know and I will update it for everyone. I plan on publishing several more of my more useful TextExpander groups through the TextExpander Public Groups in the next month. Keep your eyes out.
If you’re a TextExpander subscriber, I recommend checking out the public groups. You can even subscribe from iPad and iPhone and you’ll find quite a few that are even more useful than my “foreign thanks” group.
