Ben Thompson runs a successful publishing business from Asia largely using Apple technology. This week he joined us on the Mac Power Users to talk about how business strategy impacts technology, living and working in Asia and global views on the mobile market, and the upcoming March 2016 Apple event.
Ulysses Version 2.5
Ulysses isn’t a text editor or a word processor. It is a writing tool. It lets you collect bits of text together and organize them, reorganize them, hide them, delete them, write them over again, and generally carry you through all the angst that comes with large writing projects. I currently have 2 books half-written in Ulysses and several long legal briefs and letters. Ulysses released version 2.5 today and it’s a doozy.
iPad Pro Support
The new version looks gorgeous on the iPad Pro. They’ve added native iPad Pro keyboard support and full support for iOS multitasking. Now you can have Safari on half of your iPad and Ulysses on the other and get some serious writing done.
iPhone Support
Ulysses now has an iPhone application. You may be wondering, “Why on earth would he care about an iPhone app if he’s using this to write books?” That is, at least, what I initially thought but I was wrong. I carry the jumbo iPhone and quite often I do find myself stuck someplace for 15 or 30 minutes. Being able to open Ulysses on my iPhone and jump into my most recent book to do a little editing or even a little writing (using voice dictation of course) is something I find myself doing every day.
Historically, I’ve done most of this writing in Scrivener. It’s a great tool on the Mac. Unfortunately, it is just on the Mac. Because Ulysses allows me to platform hop, it has become my default big writing tool. Ulysses is less fiddly than Scrivener which could be a plus or minus depending on how you use those extra tools in Scrivener. Ulysses also does not handle research as well as Scrivener does. Using Scrivener for my legal stuff, I would often throw word documents, PDFs, and all sorts of other research into the actual Scrivener file. I could then use the split screen mode to have my research available on the left side of the screen as I wrote on the right side of the screen.
Ulysses doesn’t have that ability to track research so easily and, frankly, I don’t think it quite fits in the philosophy and feel of the app anyway. For my tech writing, it doesn’t bother me because most of my “research” is in my head anyway. For the legal writing, I do miss the ability to have extensive research right in the writing file.
Ulysses uses iCloud for its synchronization engine. There is no Dropbox option. I’ve heard rumblings that people are against the application on that grounds alone. I’ve been using Ulysses nearly every day now for over a year–including this beta now for several months–and I’ve not lost any data through iCloud synchronization.
However, I’m drifting. The big point for me is that I can now work on large writing projects on any of my Apple devices and I love it. I really appreciate the hard work that the Ulysses team put into bringing this application to the iPad Pro with panache. Despite all the new wizz-bang, version 2.5 is a free update. There’s a lot to like about the new Ulysses. For an in-depth review go over to David Chartier’s review at MacStories.
Best Apple Pencil Review Yet
Serenity Caldwell reviews the Apple Pencil with her Apple Pencil.
Intuit Sells Quicken
Long before I knew of the existence of Intuit, I was well aware of Quicken. Quicken was the first personal financial management software that really made sense. Everybody used it and that’s what made their slow abandonment of the Apple platform so tragic. I know they still sell products for the Mac but it has been years since Quicken has been a top-notch Mac application. With this new acquisition by H.I.G. Capital, hopefully that will change. However, part of me wonders if it’s not already too late.
Sponsor: Billings Pro
This week MacSparky is sponsored by Marketcircle, the makers of Billings Pro – a time-tracking & invoicing app for the Mac, iPad, iPhone & Apple Watch. It’s great for freelancers and small businesses such as consultants, lawyers, designers, photographers, that need an easy way to keep track of time spent on client work and a fast way to produce professional looking invoices.
Billings Pro syncs all your devices across all your team members, so you can track time for a project while out on your iPhone while a team member tracks time on their Mac at the office. It supports 3D touch, making it quick and easy for you to start a new timer or jump to a recent one, and includes a handy widget that lets you manage your Billings Pro timers within the Notification Centre. Easily add comments to your slips so you remember all the details of the work you did during that time.
After the work is done, Billings Pro makes it really quick and simple to invoice–whether you’re creating the invoice from your Mac, iPhone, or iPad. You just select the time slips, pick an invoice template, and send. You can also add expenses or bill by flat rate. Comments jotted down on your time slips can be added to the invoice so your client has a clear understanding of the work you did – which means you get paid faster, with fewer questions. Billings Pro customers really like the invoice templates because they are clear and professional looking – and you can further customize invoices to fit your own brand. Marketcircle is full of smart developers and designers that love the Mac an iOS and if you try this app, you’ll see their attention to detail everywhere.
Read about other Mac users using Billings Pro here or experience Billings Pro for yourself with a free 30 day trial.
Craig Federighi on Security
In an op/ed piece for the Washington Post, Apple’s king of all software, Craig Federighi, explains:
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“Great software has seemingly limitless potential to solve human problems — and it can spread around the world in the blink of an eye. Malicious code moves just as quickly, and when software is created for the wrong reason, it has a huge and growing capacity to harm millions of people.”
I remember the first time I saw Craig Federighi on stage for Apple and he was shaking like a leaf. I’m sure he has always been a top notch engineer but in the last few years he has also developed into an eloquent spokesperson for Apple. The guy just stinks of credibility and I hope Apple continues to put him in the limelight.
The Amazon Echo
For about a month now I’ve been using an Amazon Echo in my home. The Echo is the most interesting thing to come out of Amazon’s tech labs since the first Kindle. The Echo is a cylindrical speaker and microphone array about the size of two soup cans stacked on top of one another. The microphones are always listening and the device is connected to the Internet so anytime you say the word “Alexa” followed by a question or command, the Echo kicks in and does its best to obey. For instance I can say, “Alexa, what’s the weather today?” and the device is smart enough to figure out where I’m at and tell me the weather or “Alexa, turn off the kitchen lights” and my kitchen Hue lights will go dark. It’s a lot like Siri but instead of a device on your wrist or in your pocket, it’s a small Bluetooth speaker in your house.
In fact the device is so much like Siri that once I unpacked mine, my initial reaction was to put it back in the box and send it back. Nevertheless, I kept it for a few days to see why so many Apple fans also love their Amazon Echos.
After using it a few days, I began to see the light. There are a few important distinctions between the Echo and Siri. The most important of those is reliability. In the month I’ve been using it, the Echo has not misunderstood me yet. Sometimes it still can’t answer me because I’ve asked it something that it can’t do (like when I asked it to add 13 days to February 7) but if I’m asking a question or giving a command that the Echo is programmed to handle, it always does. As an example, while writing this article I asked “Alexa, what day of the week was February 7, 2016” and it replied, nearly instantly, “Sunday”. I then asked the same question of Siri and it transcribed my question as “What Dave of the week was February 7, 2016” and Siri explained it couldn’t answer my question. The second time I asked, Siri got it right but Alexa got it the first time and that makes all the difference
The Echo is also fast. There are probably only seconds between the Echo and Siri response times but it is noticeable. Between the speed and reliability, I feel more comfortable asking Alexa questions because I’m not worried about whether or not the Echo will stop and think for long seconds before screwing up. That trust means I use it more often. Siri needs to get to that point. Part of me feels that if the Apple Watch were more responsive, I’d be less impressed with the Amazon Echo but the fact is there is a lag in the watch activating and using Siri.
Another nice benefit of the Amazon Echo is that it can learn new tricks. The Alexa app has additional “skills” that can be added to the Echo. I’ve added skills that let me find out when the International Space Station will fly over my house and another one that will answer any questions with a Magic 8-ball answer. I even have enabled the ability to check on my car’s gas, location, and trip distance through my Automatic adapter. The integration with Hue lights is also better and more reliable than Apple’s HomeKit. The Echo also connects to the IFTTT service and that really opens up possibilities.
There is something to this always present assistant. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really play all that nice with Apple gear. Since I keep my calendar in iCloud and it only supports Google calendar, I can’t use any of its scheduling features. Likewise you can add items to the Alexa app’s reminders and shopping lists but not directly to the Reminders app. I was able to get around that with some IFTTT rules, shown below.
The speaker in the Echo is fine but it really doesn’t hold a candle to my Sonos speakers and it doesn’t support Apple Music. It does support Prime Music, Spotify, Pandora, iHeartRadio, and TuneIn. The speaker in my Echo is only used for Alexa’s voice.
This is the first voice-only interface device I’ve used and while still quite rudimentary in a lot of ways, it is pretty remarkable that I can use it every day without ever typing in text or seeing a screen. Not only that, my family is in on the act now too. The commands are easy and just common sense enough for just about anybody to use it. I think it their comfort with the Echo is a result of the device’s reliability and the fact there are no steps to activate or screens to look at. Simply speak your request.
Apple should really make something like the Amazon Echo. (I’m not the first person to think that.) Because the device is plugged in, they don’t have to worry about battery saving and I think that makes the immediacy of the microphones and responses just that much quicker and, as a result, the device that much more useful. I still use Siri every day but I didn’t ship the Amazon Echo back either.
As I was finishing up this post, Amazon announced a second Echo-type product, the Echo Dot, which has the same features but a much less impressive speaker. At $90, the Dot is substantially less than the $180 Echo.
Art Channel for Apple TV
One of the nice things about being a parent is that as your kids grow up you get to learn new things. One of my daughters loves fine art. She can talk about artists and their work the same way I talk about jazz music, Star Wars, and technology. It has been a lot of fun for our family learning from her and visiting museums with her.
Several years ago we bought the Art Authority (Website) (App Store) application for the iPad which has an exhaustive collection of artwork sorted by period. As an interesting bit of trivia, the man behind Art Authority, Alan Oppenheimer was on the original Macintosh team and is responsible for, among other things, AppleTalk. While Art Authority on the iPad is, It doesn’t lend itself to more than one or two people at a time.
That has all changed with the Art Channel (Website) application on our Apple TV. Art Channel, made by the same team that makes Art Authority, is an Apple TV application that displays fine art on your television. It comes with a basic set of paintings but for $1/month you can get a lot more. We are subscribers and loving it. Our television often transforms into fine art. There are videos that display artwork to music but the real benefit is playing slideshows with your own music playing in the background.
It really isn’t much of a stretch to think of an application that displays fine art on your television but Art Channel does it well. The images look great and we sometimes leave the app running for hours as we are going about the day. We also put Art Channel on the television when we have friends visiting. It’s so much nicer than a blank screen and often leads to conversation about a particular piece of art. There are also videos that display artwork to music but the real benefit is playing slideshows with your own music playing in the background.
I have two small issues with the application. The first is that the longest play time on one image is 90 seconds. I would like it to be longer. Also, the order of the slideshows is always the same. I’d prefer an option to randomize the images.
I often work in the same room as our family television and having some Dexter Gordon playing while the Apple TV slowly cycles through impressionist art is pretty great.
The Complete History of the Millennium Falcon
Here’s a post that I look forward to reading this weekend the exact same way I used to look forward to opening my Christmas presents. I have a lot of complaints about the Star Wars prequels. One of them is that without the Falcon, it never entirely felt like Star Wars.
(via Daring Fireball)
Talking Email on Home Work
Speaking of podcasts, Dave Caolo and Aaron Mahnke are doing an email series on the Home Work podcast. There are some really great episodes coving the topic in depth. I joined for episode 198 to talk about email priority.