The Apple Pencil for Navigation

The last week or two I’ve been using the Apple pencil increasingly for navigating around the iPad Pro. I know I’m a little bit late to the game and a holy war has already been fought with Apple to retain this ability. At the time all of that went down, I thought it was silly and didn’t foresee myself using my Apple Pencil to scroll, swipe, and otherwise tap on my iPad. Somehow, nonetheless, I ended up trying it out and to my own surprise, I like it.

One of the reasons pencil navigation is nice is because of the length of the Apple Pencil, I can easily scroll through lists and check off boxes with very little movement of my hand. This workflow is particularly useful for the morning sweep through OmniFocus and email. Strangely, I never find myself using the Apple Pencil on the springboard or otherwise navigating between applications.

If you own an iPad Pro and have held off on the Apple Pencil, I’d encourage you to give one a try. You can pick them up at the Apple Store and they have a two-week return policy so if it really doesn’t work for you, you’re not out any money.

I think Apple made a mistake with the initial launch of the iPad Pro with all the emphasis on using the Apple Pencil for fine art. While obviously it’s good for that, I find a lot of uses for it that have nothing to do with art.

MPU 321: Geeking Out with TJ Luoma

Geek, preacher, and all-around-nice-guy TJ Luoma joins us in MPU 321 to talk about using an off-site Mac mini, rolling your own backup, workflows for preachers, and TJ’s new secret project that will update your Mac software for you.

Sponsors include:

1Password Have you ever forgotten a password? Now you don’t have to worry about that anymore.
Gazelle Sell your iPhone for cash at Gazelle!
Freshbooks: Online invoicing made easy.
Gemini: Duplicate files can run — But they can’t hide. Now, you can find & remove them with Gemini.

Home Screen: Ernie Svenson and Small Firm Bootcamp

This week’s Home Screen features Ernie Svenson (Website)(Twitter). Ernie and I have taught courses together at the American Bar Association and Ernie is one of my favorite teachers. This week Ernie’s just announced a new online course for lawyers called “Small Firm Bootcamp”. If you’re a solo or small firm attorney, you should sign up for Ernie’s course. When I went solo, Ernie gave me tons of advice and saved me from many self-inflicted wounds.

What are some of your favorite apps?

My “favorite” apps are probably those that I use most often without thinking about it. So they deserve more appreciation than I probably give them. Included among those would be Dark Sky, Overcast, and iMessage.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Definitely it’s Enlight, which is a photography app that’s basically like having Photoshop on your iPhone but easier to use. I use it to quickly manipulate photos in cool ways like making part of the picture black & white and leaving the rest in color.

What app makes you most productive?

Two apps fit that category in my mind: Trello and Skype. I use these apps to communicate with my virtual assistants that are located in Croatia and Romania. One of my VA’s likes to communicate by Skype and the other uses Trello. I love being out, like I was at the recent 7 day jazz music festival in New Orleans, and responding to questions from my VAs.

Not many people can say that they’re moving important work along as they sit in a grassy field listening to Steely Dan. So my “Bodhisattva” is Trello and Skype 😉

What app do you know you’re underutilizing?

OmniFocus, but fortunately I know a guy named David who has some great videos that I can watch to up my game in that department.

What is the app you are still missing?

The self-driving car app. But apparently you have to buy a Tesla to get that, so I’m working on that.

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

So many times that I can’t even imagine being without my iPhone. My iPad is used sporadically because when I went to the large iPhone I basically didn’t need it much.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone?

I like Siri a lot now. I use it constantly, and will probably use it more as time goes on. I also like the new Notes app and rely on that a lot too.

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

Make the notifications on the iPhone and Apple Watch more intuitive, or somehow easier to use.

Do you have an Apple Watch? Show us your watch face tell us about it.

I do and I use the default watch face that shows me the time, date, temperature, and my next appointment.

What’s your wallpaper and why?

I use the “Live” wallpaper, and love how it moves when I push on the screen. It’s the little things in life that keep me going… 😉

Anything else you’d like to share?

I bought the first iPhone when it came out. I can’t even remember how little it did compared to the phone I have now. I feel like I could do almost anything with my iPhone now, and in some ways it’s more convenient than my computer.

Thanks Ernie.

MPU 320: Always Good Advice

It’s time again for Mac Power Users Live. This month we share listener tips and feedback on a variety of topics including backup workflows, securing your technology and menu bar applications. We also answer listener questions and follow-up on the 9.7″ iPad Pro.

Sponsors are:

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Drobo Created by you. Protected by Drobo. Save $100 off select models using code MPU100

About the Hypothetical iPhone 7

It seems like there is enough smoke in the air to think the hypothetical dual-camera system in the iPhone 7 plus may be a real thing. Most recently Mac Rumors released drawings from an alleged Apple casing subcontractor. If true, the 5.5 inch phone is getting a dual-lens camera system.

This could mean that the camera in the iPhone 7 Plus is significantly better than the camera in the iPhone 7. It looks like the iPhone 7 Plus may also exclusively get a smart connector.

If the rumors are true and they end up removing the headphone jacks and increasing the disparity between the normal and plus sized iPhones, people are going to go nuts when they announce these in September. Buckle in.

Automating OmniFocus on iOS

I’ve had my head down a lot lately between the day job and the upcoming Hazel Video Field Guide. One thing that’s happened is that I’ve gone completely mad with automating OmniFocus on my iPad. A few weeks ago The Omni Group released a new version of OmniFocus that can interface with template files to create project templates on iOS.

Given the inherent limitations of iOS, it’s a pretty elegant system once you figure it out, and I’m going to explain further as soon as I get done with these big projects. Now I prefer to set up project templates on iOS. I didn’t see that coming.

MPU 319: Teddy Svoronos

This week’s Mac Power Users episode is one of my favorites. In it, Teddy Svoronos, a Harvard PhD student and teacher in their graduate program joins us to share some delightfully nerdy workflows for presenting to groups of people and doing big-boy research projects.

Sponsors are:

Linode: High performance SSD Linux servers for all of your infrastructure needs. Get a $20 credit with promo code ‘mpu20’
Casper: Because everyone deserves a great night sleep. Get $50 off with the code ‘MPU’
Igloo: An intranet you’ll actually like, free for up to 10 people.
The Omni Group They’re passionate about productivity for Mac, iPhone and iPad.

Sponsor: Daylite

I’d like to thank Daylite for sponsoring MacSparky this week. Daylite is a business productivity app for the Mac, iPhone & iPad. It organizes your contacts, calendars, tasks, notes, emails, projects, and new business opportunities all in one app. What’s special about Daylite is that it links all these things together. It’s used by solopreneurs and small businesses as well as teams within larger companies.

Mortgage Broker, Gina Best, in Vancouver loves Daylite because it helps her and her team work smarter and more efficiently. She’s cut down on cc’ed emails between her and her assistant because all the email are linked to their clients and projects in Daylite. It’s helped them increase their volume of customers while still maintaining the same high level of customer service.

Yuri Vlasyuk uses Daylite to manage a local arts festival in Ukraine with his team. They use Daylite to plan meetings, prioritize tasks, and balance their workload. They also use Daylite to segment their contacts and send specific email campaigns to vendors, makers, and people attending the fair. Daylite also helps them automate routine tasks so they can build processes that make them faster.

Consultant and solopreneur, Chris Tossell, in the UK loves Daylite because of the way it integrates with Apple Mail. It helps him process his emails quickly and still be able to search and find them later. Daylite also helps him to keep track of calls and follow-ups with clients. In Chris’s words, “Daylite creates order out of what would otherwise be chaos.”

Daylite is a native app so you don’t need an Internet connection to use it. When you do get an Internet connection, it syncs in the cloud across your devices and with your team.
To learn more about Daylite and how it helps businesses to be more productive, visit Marketcircle’s website. My thanks again to Daylite for sponsoring MacSparky.com.

Moving Forward with Digital Assistants

Siri’s original developers, Dag Kittlaus and Adam Cheyer, left Apple in 2011 and took a bunch of their team with them. Since then, they’ve been working on a new artificial intelligence system, Viv, that is going to get it’s first public demonstration Monday.

Right now there is a lot going on in the intelligent digital assistant world. While Apple was early to this game, Microsoft and Google are right behind and it’s clear there’s a lot of resources from a lot of big companies being thrown at this problem.

Most surprising to me has been the utility of the Amazon Echo. I have been using Siri for years but nobody else in my family does. I think it has something to do with the slight delay that exists between activating Siri and stating a command combined with the sometimes indecipherable syntax you need to use in order to make it work. There is also that thing where Siri will perform a complicated instruction perfectly only to botch things up entirely when you ask it to tell you the weather five minutes later. All of this has improved over the years but there still is enough resistance that my non-nerd family members are not interested.

The Amazon Echo on the other hand has no such resistance. I frequently witness my family turning on the lights, checking the weather, and otherwise interacting with Alexa. To me this is the closest glimpse we’ve had yet to a future with reliable intelligent digital assistants.

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about why the Amazon Echo is “stickier” for the non-techies in my house than Siri. One argument is because the Echo is always on and listening (which is kind of creepy). You don’t need to push a button to get it started. I’m sure that’s part of it, but I believe the real reason is because it’s both easier to talk to and more responsive.

Amazon’s Echo does a better job of parsing the question and giving you useful information. Too often, Siri gets confused because you don’t ask the question just right. Also, the Amazon Echo has never done that thing where it seems to understand me perfectly only report it can’t answer my question because of some mysterious problem out there on the Internet … somewhere. Either way, in the Sparks household the Amazon Echo has been a clear winner for my wife and children.

So getting back to where I started with all of this, we’re getting our first demonstration of Viv on Monday. Your guess is as good as mine over what the long game is for Viv’s developers. Maybe they want to wow us so some big company throws large sums of money at them. However, they already did that with Siri.

I suspect they are more interested in making something that they can develop without the limitations that come with tying their wagon to a large corporation. Keeping Viv independent allows them to make deals easier with third parties so it’s easier to add functionality. It also lets the developers be, generally, more nimble. The downside is that it’s going to be harder to activate. One of the big attractions of Siri is that it is everywhere on iOS. If I have to go open an application to get a digital assistant working for me, I’m much less likely to use it. (I downloaded Microsoft’s Cortana app and I still only launch it for the purpose of testing Cortana.) I think members of my family would be even less likely to launch an app for a digital assistant.

Either way, I hope that Viv is a smashing success. I want there to be a lot of competition in this space and I want these big companies to duke it out. It feels like we are on the cusp of having useful digital assistants in our lives and the sooner that comes, the better.