Clockwise 144

This week I had the pleasure of joining Jason Snell, Dan Moren, and Georgia Dow on the Clockwise podcast. In 30 minutes we solved the world’s problems relating to email, virtual reality, two-factor authentication, and the privacy vs. services debate. Easy. Right?

ScanSnap Cloud

Fujitsu recently released the ScanSnap Cloud, a cloud-based service for ScanSnap users. The idea behind ScanSnap cloud is pretty clever. Your scanner connects to the Internet and sends all scans up to ScanSnap Cloud where they are then distributed to your cloud service of choice, like Dropbox, Box, One Drive, Evernote, and others. ScanSnap Cloud can figure out if your scan is a document, receipt, business card, or photo and then can follow your specific instructions based on the category of document. ScanSnap Cloud will also do some rudimentary OCR and, where it finds a date in the document, set the file name to match.

The net effect of this service is that it allows you to remove your scanner from your computer. You can put it anywhere in your house or office where it has access to Wi-Fi and your scanning works just fine. I’ve been using my ScanSnap iX500 in my laundry room with ScanSnap Cloud. Now I just scan the mail as it comes in the door. I can trash and recycle as appropriate right there and the paper never even makes it up the stairs to my home office. Getting the scanner off my desk frees up more space and having the scanner next to the recycle bin means I scan things immediately now, as opposed to the old system where I let it pile up until the weekend. Win-win.

They made a clever video, below.

Full disclosure: Fujitsu has been a long time sponsor of the Mac Power Users and I’ve been a long-time customer of their products.

Sponsor – Hoban Cards

This week MacSparky is sponsored by Hoban Cards and Stationery, where you can get quality letterpress calling cards and stationery that stand so far above the competition. There’s something special about the paper goods that roll off Hoban’s 1902 letterpress machine.

Recently, Hoban added several calligraphy calling card styles that look great. If you want to share the Hoban Letterpress love with your friends, they also now have an affiliate system.


Since Hoban Press first started advertising here at MacSparky, I’ve heard from many readers that love their Hoban Press cards and stationery. Every time I give one of my Hoban-pressed cards to a new client, they comment upon how nice they are. You too can set a great first example. Head over to Hoban Cards with this link to learn more.

Home Screens – Christopher Hannah


This week’s home screen features Christopher Hannah (Website) (Twitter). Christopher developed my favorite Wikipedia app for the Mac, Qwiki. Qwiki puts Wikipedia in my search bar and I use it all the time. You should check it out. So Christopher, show us your home screen.


What are some of your favorite apps?

I would have to say Overcast , Infuse , Tweetbot , and 2Do .

Overcast because I listen to loads of podcasts, I prefer this to listening to music, and they’re especially useful when traveling to university. My favourites at the minute have to be Connected , Cortex , and also Canvas which is helping me learn loads of new things about my iPad. I also listen to Mac Power Users and Under the Radar occasionally. I am of course an Overcast patron, as I just /love/ dark themes.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

At the minute I can’t see any guilty pleasure on my home screen but Engage. I know it’s an app designed for people with a big number of followers, and want to see interactions from other influencers, but I like to see stats about everything, so that’s why I downloaded it! But the bottom row of my iPhone home screen is very volatile, and it’s where I put apps that I’m currently trying out, or I can see myself deleting soon.

What app makes you most productive?

Definitely 2Do, it was only recently that I started using this properly, but I can already feel it helping me organise what tasks I need to do. I used it to plan out the features and also the release of Qwiki, and also to schedule things like paying rent, and to reminding me to send invoices on a certain day of the month. I haven’t got a good memory, so I usually forget due dates for coursework, and what tasks I have to do. But luckily 2Do also helped me with scheduling my university coursework, which made it easier to see the scale of work I had to do at a simple glance.

What app do you know you’re underutilizing?

This would have to be Workflow, just because I know it can do so much, and I use it for quite basic tasks. The most used Workflows of mine would have to be joining multiple images together for writing reviews, sending the last photo to a WhatsApp contact, and a few different quick tweet actions.

I can see myself using Workflow more in the future, especially as I’m slowly using my iPad more and more for work purposes.

What is the app you are still missing?

This is a hard question, because if there was a app I desperately wanted, then I would try and develop it myself. I can honestly say that at the minute, I can’t think of anything else I would want my iPhone or iPad to do, if anything I’m more surprised what my devices can actually do when I listen to podcasts like Canvas.

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

I use my iPhone way too much to measure, there’s rarely an hour gone by before I’m on it again, whether I’m catching up with Twitter, or actually doing something productive.

With my iPad, it’s a bit different. When I go out to friends houses, or just traveling, then I’m now taking my iPad over my MacBook Pro, so it would be used a few times a day. But if I’m at home, then I’m normally at my desk, which means I’ll just use my Mac for everything. So on average I use it 3/4 days a week.

What Today View widgets are you using and why?

I don’t have any at the minute, because I’ve done the risky thing and installed iOS 10 on both of my iOS devices. But before this I just used Fantastical, 2Do, and Workflow with a few quick actions. It’s never been a part of iOS that I’ve used that much.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

Picture in Picture, it’s amazing. The other day I was on my iPad reading twitter, and also watching the Euros at the same time. It shocked me again at the time that iOS has actually come pretty far from when the iPad as first introduced. I sure Federico would also agree!

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

I wouldn’t add anything special, but I would stop or at least slow down the invention of new products. I know the Car is being worked on, and that’s fine for a long term project, but I can see the current devices being updated constantly, and sometimes it’s too much in my opinion. I think they need a good few years of refinements, and slimming down product categories.

Regarding the Macs, I want the MacBook Air to die. Then there’s just the MacBook and it’s Pro counterpart for the laptops, and the the iMac and Mac Pro to represent desktop computing. Each Mac should have 2 screen sizes as a maximum, and I think the non-retina pros should be discontinued.

For iOS devices, I think the iPhone lineup should be thinned down drastically. There’s too many old products, simply for the price range. I think it’s already going that way with the iPhone SE providing current hardware to users who want a smaller screen size. So preferably I would only have 3 different iPhones on sale at any point, but maybe that’s a step too far. I would also do the same thing to the iPads, I think there should simply be an iPad, and an iPad Pro. Then the iPad in all three sizes, and the Pro in the current two.

So yeah, I would try and stabilise Apple off was in charge, there’s a lot going on at the moment, and I sort of want that to change.

Do you have an Apple Watch?

I do, and it’s become one of my favourite devices. I gave two different watch faces, one for casual use, and the other for when I want access to emails, next calendar events, etc.

Before watchOS 3 was announced, my watch was simply a way for me to receive notifications on my wrist, and also to tell the time. But like just my iOS devices, I’ve installed the beta on my watch as well. So I know use it more for reading texts, and also replying got them now with the new Scribble feature. It’s also proven useful for keeping up to date with the football scores. Apps and that are stored in my dock really do open up instantly, and I can see watchOS 3 really changing the watch for everyone.


What’s your wallpaper and why?

For my iPhone and iPad I just have a plain blue graph paper image as my wallpaper, I like it to be as simple as possible. So it’s always something like that, or occasionally a nice wood texture.

Anything else you’d like to share?

The only other thing I want to share about my iPhone is typing, I hate typing on it. I think it’s down to the physical size of the phone, as I’ve got the 5S at the moment. But hopefully it’s fixed when the new one comes out!

Thanks Christopher. And thanks for making Qwiki.

Evernote Changes

Evernote is making some changes. Basic users are going to be limited to two devices and pricing for a Premium subscription just went from $45 to $70 per year.

Katie Floyd sums it up nicely. “… as a long-time Premium user the problem for me, and for Evernote, is I’m just not sure I get $70 worth of value out of Evernote anymore.”

I’m not sure where things went wrong but Evernote is no longer the darling of nerds that it used to be. My pet theory is that they went into way too many lateral markets.

Hopefully these adjustments will let them get back to focussing on what made the product great to begin with. The trouble is there are a lot more viable options now than there were when Evernote first arrived.

Sponsor: Interact

This week MacSparky is sponsored by Interact from Agile Tortoise. Interact is a replacement for the iOS contacts application and it is so much better. The native iPad and iPhone contacts application is feature limited and, as a result, difficult to use for any serious work.

That is not the case with Interact. This app gives you the full suite of contact management tools including the ability to manage groups, communicate with friends and family, and use your contacts with third-party applications.

Everything connects to the native contacts database so any work you do in Interact shows up everywhere else.

One of my favorite features is the Scratchpad. You can paste someone’s contact information in the Interact Scratchpad in just about any format and Interact will figure out what is what and automatically put the appropriate information in the appropriate fields for you. There’s even an extension so you can use this from other applications. The below video shows off the Interact Scratchpad.

Interact is the result of a very clever programmer asking the question, “What if we made an iOS contacts application right?” I’ve been using Interact since the product first launched and it has absolutely replaced Contacts on my iPhone and iPad. 

Best of all, for this week, you can get Interact for 20% off.