Mac Power Users Bonanza!

I’m behind on linking some of our recent Mac Power Users shows. If you haven’t listened to these three, you’re missing out.

MPU 303: Email Clients and Workflows

Katie and I spent some time talking about how we are handling those pesky email problems with the latest workflows and software recommendations.

MPU 304: Looking for Solution that Doesn’t Cost $1,000

Our February live show had some great topics including follow-up on interesting uses of Plex for home media, and discuss Day One 2.0 with guest Bradley Chambers.

MPU 305: Travel Tips with Amateur Traveler Chris Christensen

Chris Christensen came in with some great tips for how to get the best airfare and hotel prices on your next trip. He also had some excellent tips on how to avoid technology disasters on the road.

 

Home Screens – Author Brandon Callum


There are a group of authors out there embracing the iBooks format with interactive books like we’ve never seen before. Brandon Cullum (Website) (Twitter) is one of those guys with his recent iBooks Author Children’s book, Alfred the Time Traveling Dinosaur. In addition to being a pretty smart guy, Brandon also loves his iPhone. So Brandon show us your home screen.


What are some of your favorite apps?

YNAB I’ve been with YNAB ever since getting married 2 years ago. It has been a huge help in keeping my wife and myself on the same page with our budget. They recently moved to a web-based platform and update the iPhone app to allow you adjust your budget categories on the fly. Super easy to use and a great piece of mind to know where all our money is going.

Casts There are a lot of podcast reader apps out there but Casts has stuck with me. I like its ability to create episode filters. Since I subscribe to a ton of podcasts and listen to a quite a few during the day (especially when I’m doing illustrations), it’s great to have them dropped into different lists.

Day One I have been using Day One as a productivity journal for over a year. I used to keep a journal inside of Evernote but found it getting lost with everything else I throw at the “everything bucket”. Day One is a super clean design and entries can be added from my iPad and Mac. One of my favorite things to do is to flip into the past and see the things I was working on and thinking about.

Slack I was and still am the champion for Slack at our small company. I’m also one of the admins and love introducing people to what it can do. I can waste a good bit of time trying to figure out new integrations and bots that our team can use. On the design side of things, Slack has made feedback so much faster and less formal as works are progressing. Also, Giphys are never a bad thing…..

1Password 1Password continues to improve their product and user experience. Having the ability to create a unique password for every single login I have is great. I am able to set up separate vaults for work and home and the extension ability makes logging in on iOS so easy.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Pinterest. I’ve created boards for potential children’s book projects and add to them several times a day. I’ve also gotten into woodworking and can lose myself looking at new shop projects and furniture I can build around the house.

What app makes you most productive?

Omnifocus does a great job keeping my projects top of mind and serving up just what I need to get done next. After using the Mac app as a standalone for a couple years, it still surprises me how much I can get done just on iOS.

What app do you know you’re underutilizing?

I know I’m underutilizing Workflow. I currently have a workflow that saves an email receipt to PDF and drops into a Hazel folder on my Mac which then gets filed automatically. It feels like magic every time I see it run and know I could tinker around and find a lot more use cases.

What is the app you are still missing?

I wish HomeKit had a mission control style app that was native to Apple. We recently purchased Netgear Arlo security cameras and Hue lights to go along with our Nest. It has been fun to think through ways to hack them all together with IFTT but I wish the process was easier.

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

Way too much. If I am in the process of doing illustrations for picture books I’m constantly taking pictures with my iPhone of hand drawings to digitize on my Mac. I’m also using the iPad to test features in iBooks and Kindle.

What Today View widgets are you using and why?

Dark Sky Great weather app with a quick look at the weather for the next hour.

Fantastical This is a great way to a get a quick glance of what is coming up for the day. I also like that I have fast access to a calendar view and a list of appointments for that day in just one glance.

Huemote I love creating custom scenes for our Hue Lights and Huemote makes it so easy to access them all with a quick swipe to control the lights in the entire house.

Strava Strava is my favorite running and cycling app. When I am training for my next race I can get a quick summary of my weekly training and see my progress.

Personal Capital-Holding Personal Capital is kind of like Mint if you added investments. They feature a few different widgets but I’ve added holdings. This gives me a quick glance of how my investments are performing versus the index.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

The ecosystem. The ability to transition between Mac, iPhone, iPad and pick up right where I left off is pretty amazing. Since I make books that are intended to be read on multiple devices it is fun to create them on multiple devices too.

Anything else you’d like to share?

Thanks so much for the incredible work you are doing David! If anyone is interested in children’s books and wants to help me make my next one you reach me at my website or on Twitter.can.

Thanks Brandon.

Task Management Pain Points – The Overachiever

Because I’ve written and screencasted so much about OmniFocus, I get a lot of email from people about their particular pain points with task management. With this series I’m going to focus on a few of the more common issues and how I solve them.

The Overachiever

By far the most common problem I read about is how some folks get overwhelmed. I hear from readers that explain they need over an hour every day just to sort through their tasks. That’s nuts.

If you are facing a task list that has hundreds of entries every day, you’re doing it wrong. I think the most common cause of this overload is our technology. Back when I used to write my task list every day longhand in a Franklin Planner, I never wrote more than 20 tasks in a single day. I think it was something about the act of using pencil and paper that my brain just accepted the lunacy of overloading myself. However with computers, there is a certain amount of abstraction and that can work against us.

With most modern task management applications, setting up tasks and projects is a snap. With very little time we can build a task management database with literally thousands of tasks in it. Moreover, because of that abstraction, we often give our brains the afternoon off while adding those tasks, telling ourselves we’ll figure out how important all those projects and tasks are sometime later down the road.

This leads to waking up with hundreds of available tasks that we then spend hours kicking down the road a day or two, only to drag ourselves through the same mental muck again tomorrow.

Just because computers can track hundreds of projects and thousands of tasks doesn’t mean you can do them all. Indeed, as many readers are finding out, loading yourself up like that can be debilitating. You spend so much time pushing the monkeys around every day that you don’t actually get any of them off your back.

If that is you, don’t beat yourself up. I fall into this trap myself more often than I’d like to admit. You can dig yourself out of this and get back to a more manageable task list. It’s going to require a little work though.

1. Begin by looking at projects

If your task list is bursting at the seems, first start by looking at your active projects. In OmniFocus I’ve set up the Today perspective for precisely this reason. I can easily see the existing projects and how many tasks they’ve got attached. With the color coded check-circles I can even see if any active projects have flagged or due items attached.

The point is that in sweeping through the project list, you need to be brutal. Remember the point is not to have to drag through all of this every day. If you see a project that there simply isn’t time for in the next three weeks, defer it 3 weeks and move on. Don’t refuse to accept reality and defer it just two days so you have to go through all of that again. If you see a project that you’ve now deferred three weeks several times, you should probably delete it entirely or, at least, defer it three months. Stop juggling things you are not going to do. It’s just taking you away from the things you need to do.

2. Next focus on tasks

Once you’ve blown out the cruft of unnecessary projects, bring that same killer instinct to individual tasks. Again defer and delete the stuff that isn’t going to happen so you can put a big spotlight on the stuff that needs doing.

It is easy to fall into this overachiever trap because modern technology makes it so easy to build an entirely unrealistic task list. If you follow these steps however and are truly willing to swing your digital machete at unnecessary projects and tasks, you will regain control of your task list and get rid of that underlying dread you’ve been feeling looking at over 200 tasks every day for the last week.

What is your task list hangup? Let me know.

Still Waiting on Apple Pay

Lately Apple has been doing a little puffing about the adoption and general success of Apple Pay. The advantages of Apple pay in my mind are primarily security. Apple Pay generates a unique number with each transaction. That way vendors don’t have to store my data and can’t cough it up to Cirks. It drives me nuts every time I hand a waiter my credit card and watch him walk away with it. Likewise when I visit a retail store that famously had a massive credit card breach just last year yet still has no alternative to scanning my new credit card number for their leaky computers, I want to throw things.

There now 1,000 Apple Pay issuers (mostly banks) and a reported 2 million retail locations where you can use Apple Pay to buy stuff. While those numbers are impressive, it feels like there is a lot of work left to do. I live in Orange County California, a place ripe with conspicuous consumption. Nevertheless, there are very few locations where I can use Apple Pay to buy stuff. This is probably more an indictment of alternative payment methods in general in America then Apple Pay itself but, nevertheless, it’s disappointing that this technology is now several years old and the only places I routinely shop that accept Apple Pay are a hipster super-market and the Apple Store. I hope that by the end of 2016 that changes.

Staad Attaché Review


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Up until last year, my mobile computing platform was a 15 inch MacBook Pro. While Apple has done a lot to make these devices smaller over the years, it still kind of feels like a lunch tray. As a result, I bought a big leather briefcase to carry it around and when going to meetings and court appearances for the day job. It’s a great briefcase, but it’s also big. I transitioned to a smaller 12″ MacBook last year and lately, it feels like overkill when I’m carrying around my small MacBook or my iPad Pro.


So I decided to find something a bit smaller but still classy enough that I can carry it into a meeting or courtroom. That’s what led me to Waterfield Bags‘ new Staad Attaché.


The Staad Attaché is a waxed canvas and leather bag with a wide bottom, allowing you to carry enough to get through your day without overwhelming you. Most Waterfield bags are designed specifically around a particular device. If they make a bag for specific iPad, it will be cut and sewn to those specific dimensions so your device fits perfectly. The Staad Ataché has a wider reach. It holds my iPad Pro with the Apple smart case nicely. But it could also hold the iPad Pro with one of the bigger keyboard cases, 13 inch MacBook Air, a 13 inch MacBook Pro, or a 12 inch MacBook. Indeed, on some days mine holds both my iPad Pro with the Apple smart case and my 12 inch MacBook.

There is a nice leather handle and a padded strap. In addition to holding my hardware, there’s room inside for power adapters, cables, and Apple pencil, and a notepad with papers or even a small book. Everything fits comfortably and closes nicely.



Speaking of closing, I really like the buckle. It’s based on a World War II era ammunition buckle. It attaches securely while at the same time disconnecting easily. Simply give the right piece a tug and you are into your bag. It’s much more convenient then wrestling with traditional buckles and straps. There are two zippers in front for a small pouch that includes a lined pocket for and iPhone.

There’s also a pocket on the back where I can put papers and other items I may need quickly. Finally, there is a wheelie handle slip so you can slide it right over your rolling cart when traveling.

Best of all, the Staad Attaché is extremely attractive and absolutely fits in a professional environment. It’s the perfect size for my iPad Pro or MacBook (or both) when I’m on the road and want to look professional. I’ve been buying bags from Waterfield for years now and they’ve all held up. I expect no differently for this one and anticipate up I will be using it for years to come.

You can learn more about the Staad Attaché from Waterfield.

Sponsor: Marketcircle’s Daylite and Billings







Marketcircle helps individuals, teams, and small businesses on the Mac, iPhone and iPad be more productive with their two apps, Daylite and Billings Pro.

For those of you who don’t know about Daylite, it has been around for almost 15 years. Daylite helps you manage clients, schedules, tasks, projects, emails and new business opportunities, all in one app where they’re interconnected. From a single client you can see emails to and from, who referred them, pending business deals, booked or upcoming appointments, and even future followups. Or from a single Project you can see each person and their role, the tasks and who’s responsible, meetings about the project, and notes, all in chronological order. Daylite helps you remember the little details so you don’t have to worry about anything falling through the cracks. And when you invite team members, you can share this information, assign tasks or check each others calendars before scheduling meetings.

With the release of Daylite 6, Marketcircle has made it even easier to get started. Create an account and login from your Mac, iPhone or iPad. Once logged in, you can even work with or without an Internet connection. Daylite will sync changes between devices and teammates when a connection is available so you always have access to your information. Marketcircle includes a 30 day trial for Daylite, with monthly and yearly plans. Daylite is made by awesome, smart people that love the Mac and iOS.

You can even read about other companies using Daylite here.


∞

Home Screens – Michael Tsai


This week’s home screen features Michael Tsai (Website) (Twitter). Among many other talents, Michael is a smart Mac developer with some great Mac apps like SpamSieve, EagleFiler, and DropDMG. So Michael, show us your home screen.


What are some of your favorite apps?

I really admire Fantastical and Weather Line. They provide basically the same functionality as the built-in Calendar and Weather apps, but the information is presented in a much better way.

Timer is like this as well. It’s both easier (single tap for common times) and more powerful (names, multiple times running at once).

I use the Camera app all the time. It’s amazing how much the quality has improved since the first iPhone. I rarely carry a real camera anymore.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Tweetbot and Overcast. Both are very useful, of course, but I spend more time in them than I probably should. I feel a bit guilty using Overcast because there are always new podcast episodes, and so I feel like I’m not making enough time for music anymore.

What app makes you most productive?

OmniFocus is the most important app that I use. From the iPhone, I use it to collect ideas and notes throughout the day, which I usually process on my Mac. TextExpander touch is a great help here; I don’t have it on my home screen because I pretty much always use it from within OmniFocus. Of course, I also use OmniFocus as a checklist for the things I’m doing.

1Password, Editorial, and Readdle Documents are great for accessing my account information and files of various kinds.

Rain  also makes me productive by helping me to sleep.

What app do you know you’re underutilizing?

I have Workflow installed but haven’t had a chance to do anything with it. I should probably install Pythonista.

I’ve been entering my weight into Health but otherwise haven’t done much with the app.

I definitely could spend more time reading with the Instapaper and Kindle apps.

What is the app you are still missing?

For years, I’ve wanted f.lux to be in the App Store. That’s not possible, but Apple is adding Night Shift in iOS 9.3.

I want Apple to make the Videos app much better or add APIs so that third-party developers can make an alternative, the way I can use Ecoute instead of Music.

I’d like a camera app that can lock the HDR feature on. I’ve tried lots of alternatives to the built-in Camera app, but they all seem to be slower and/or harder to use.

Of course, I’d like to bring SpamSieve and EagleFiler to iOS.

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

I don’t know. I wish iOS were more open so that it would be possible to write an app to answer this question, e.g. like RescueTime on the Mac. There are lots of interesting software ideas that don’t really fit into iOS’s idea of apps.

What Today View widgets are you using and why?

I have not found that I use Today View very much now that Touch ID is so fast. Right now I’m using Fantastical and Apple’s Batteries and Find Friends widgets.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone?

Well, I think the magic is in the combination of features all in one device that fits in my pocket. So maybe the size, if that is a feature.

Otherwise, in terms of hardware features: the camera, GPS, and Touch ID.

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

I would put more of the software focus on fixing bugs.

I would make lots of changes to the App Store: trials, upgrades, faster and more consistent App Review, a way for customers and developers to communicate. I’d also allow sideloading of apps that aren’t in the store.

I would make iCloud and iTunes backups more granular, so that people could, for example, restore the data for a single app without overwriting everything else on the device.

I would make the iPhone thicker and less rounded–more like the iPhone 5s shape. The iPhone 6s is just not comfortable to hold without a case, and cases are bulky and sticky in my pocket. If I’m going to thicken my phone to
make it easier to hold, I’d rather thicken it with a larger battery than an inert case.

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

No. I like not wearing anything on my wrist. I think if I had an Apple Watch I would still be reaching into my pocket all the time because the iPhone is faster and can do so much more.

What’s your wallpaper and why?

My lock screen shows a photo that I took of the fire tower on Mt. Cardigan. That was the first image I chose when I got the original iPhone, and I haven’t seen a need to change it. I added a transparent overlay at the bottom that has instructions for how to access my emergency contacts and health information (by swiping right on the lock screen).

Anything else you’d like to share?

I have both Overcast and Downcast installed because Downcast makes it easy to play ad-hoc audio files that I’ve downloaded or created myself (e.g. by extracting the audio from WWDC sessions or YouTube videos).

Similarly, I have both Instapaper and Pocket installed because I like having two separate buckets for saving links. Instapaper is for articles that I want to read on my iPhone, whereas Pocket is for marking links from the iPhone that I want to process on my Mac. I only ever use it from action sheets in other apps, so it’s not on the home screen.

Thanks Michael.

Day One 2.0


Following up on yesterday’s post, which concluded that good software developers need to make money in order for good software to continue to exist, the best-in-breed journaling app for the Mac and IOS, Day One, just released version 2.

The new version has an improved user interface and the ability to include multiple photos per entry (up to 10). One of the most interesting new features is the ability to run multiple journals. You could, for instance, have a journal about one of your children and another about your own personal naval-gazing. Those productivity-minded folks could even have journals related to specific projects at the office.

This is in addition to all the great features that Day One has developed over the years including tagging, export, and its remaining bag of tricks.

To a certain degree this is aspirational software. A lot of people pick it up but have trouble sticking with it. Looking through my own Day One journal, my entries are sporadic but even so interesting to see where my head was a few years ago.

This new version tries to smooth over the rough points making it even easier to develop a journaling habit. For me at least, the new user interface alone is enough to get me journaling more often. Using the software brings a certain amount of delight and that always gets me opening an application more often.

Jake Underwood at MacStories did a bang up job with a more thorough review and if you’re on the fence, I recommend checking it out. Frankly, if you’re looking for good journaling software, you don’t need to read any further. This is the best that’s out there for the Mac and iOS. It’s on sale for the next week at half off in the Mac App Store and iOS App Store.

Paying for BetterTouchTool

I’ve written about BetterTouchTool in the past (most recently here) and also talked about it on the Mac Power Users. This Mac utility dramatically improves the functionality of your trackpad, mouse, and other input devices. I’ve worried about BetterTouchTool though. My concern has never been the software itself. The developer continues to add new features all the time.

Instead I’ve worried about the fact that it is free. As the software became more complex, I knew maintenance and support had to be time consuming. Nobody can support software this good for free forever and still put bread on the table.

I’m pleased to see that is changing. BetterTouchTool is now on a paid model. The developer has made this as gentle as possible with a “pay what you think it’s worth” system. If you use the application as much as I do, I recommend you pay generously. As explained on BetterTouchTool’s website:

“I understand the concern [about requiring payment]. However I think this is still much better than abandoning BetterTouchTool development.”

Support the software you love if you want to keep it.