Mac Power Users episode 300 was a special one. We turned the show over to Myke and Stephen and they asked us questions submitted by listeners about the show, our personal workflows, and other interesting bits. Best of all, it’s now available for download.
Awhile ago, I bought this little iOS text based game called Lifeline. It tells the story of a stranded astronaut who has managed, somehow, to get in contact with you and only you. Think The Martian, but creepier. Anyway, your stranded astronaut is freaking out and highly suggestible. He explains his problems to you and asks for your guidance. Your job is easy. Don’t kill your astronaut with bad advice. When I found myself going on the web to research issues before giving him advice, I knew they had me.
It’s all text-based but strangely engaging. It also works with the Apple Watch, which is nice because if you play it properly and he says he needs to hike for 2 hours, it will be 2 hours before you hear from him again. (There is a setting to advance time but where is the fun in that?)
Anyway, the game is a fun little diversion and not terribly difficult. Best of all, this week it’s free. Have a nice weekend.
The team at Agile Bits rang in the new year with some significant updates to 1Password for both iOS and the Mac.
The new iOS version lets you search from anywhere, including the Favorites and Organize tab. They’ve also brought the Watchtower feature to iOS. Watchtower keeps an eye on security vulnerabilities from around the web and lets you know if it thinks you may have a problem. For instance, if you have an online account with at FranksManureAndFineJewelry.com in your 1Password database and they get hacked, 1Password will alert you. I’ve loved that feature on the Mac and am really happy to see it on iOS.
Finally, for iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, they’ve added 3D touch features including Peek and Pop, and a quick action menu on the home screen that lets you create a new item, view favorites, or search 1Password.
Version 6 for the Mac is also here with some notable new features. The new password generator on Mac is both better and easier. It will now also create a random word password, which makes key passwords easier to remember. If you haven’t tried 1Password vaults yet, you should. It lets you segregate your most important data so you can share only the data that needs sharing and segregate everything else. This new version makes managing and viewing your vault data easier with the All Vaults view. Thanks to Apple loosening a few rules, you can now also sync your data via iCloud even if you did not buy your version of 1Password from the Mac App Store.
The 1Password team clearly put a lot of work into these updates. The iOS update is free and the Mac update is free so long as you were already using version 4 or 5. You can learn more and buy 1Password for Mac from Agile Bits or the Mac App Store. You can find 1Password for iOS on the App Store.
The native Contacts app on the iPhone and iPad has always left me a little bit wanting. I use and create contact groups all the time. For instance, if I go to a conference for a week, I will set up a custom group that has the contact information for the hotel, transportation, my co-presenters, and a reputable bail bondsman. After the trip is over, I’ll delete the group and move on.
The trouble is, I have to create those groups on my Mac. While the iPad and iPhone can access the groups after I form them (provided they are not smart groups), I can’t actually make the groups on my device. With respect to the lack of this feature, I’ve traversed the various stages of grief and am now firmly at “acceptance”.
That is why I was so pleased to discover that Greg Pierce, the genius behind Agile Tortoise and Drafts, decided to take on contact management on the iPhone and iPad. The result is the new application that just released called Interact (Website) (iOS App Store).
Interact has the clean design that we see with most modern IOS applications but manages at the same time to present your contact information more densely than the standard Contacts application. For example, the default method of displaying contacts on the iPad Pro with Interact is three columns which can put a lot of contacts on the screen at one time.
Contact groups slide out from the left side of the screen and have a convenient tally with the number of contacts in each group right next to the name. Even better, there is an “Edit” button that lets you manage groups for the first time on the iPhone and the iPad but I will explain that further later.
For a 1.0 version application, Interact has a lot of nice touches. Scrolling up and down with your finger on the right edge and searching are both wicked-fast. On the surface, Interact is a fast, clean contacts manager.
On the surface.
There are some additional power features that really make this app shine.
As I explained earlier, I’d pretty much given up on managing Contact groups on iOS. Interact fixes that. I am now able to add, edit, and delete groups on my iPad and and iPhone and (even better) then see them appear nicely organized when I returned to my Mac. Note that this only works in the default system account and it must be using the vCard protocol. (iCloud and Google both work but if you have more than one account, it will only work in your primary account.) Since I manage all contacts in one iCloud account, I had no problem but this could be a limitation if you use more than one service.
In addition to adding, removing, and editing groups, you can also add and remove group members. Just select a group and then tap on the Add Contacts to Group button and you are off to the races. It was all very intuitive and, as a Beta testor, I was witness to the hard work the developer went through to make it as easy as possible for users. For instance, to remove a member from the group, just tap on the “X” button next to their name.
A nice touch is the ability to see all of the groups a specific contact belongs to. From that view, you can use checkboxes to add and remove that member from specific groups in the same screen. This is another feature I would like to see on the Mac.
Somewhat related is are Interact Operations. Using groups of selected contacts, you can perform actions on them like deletion, group creation, adding to existing groups, and even sharing groups of contacts’ vCard information.
Don’t forget that Interact is made by the same guy that brought us Drafts. You can see this lineage with the Scratchpad feature. Using the Scratchpad, you can copy text including address and contact information into the application and it will automatically parse that out into contact data that can be added to an existing contact or create a new one. There is even an extension so you can select text in some other app, like your email client, and automatically send it to Interact to perform its magic. This is a great feature, which the developer screencasted right here to explain. In all of my years of using iOS, I’ve never seen a faster way to grab unformatted contact information and add it to my contact database. Because Interact works with the same database as the native Contacts application, any data you add in Interact populates across your device and back to your Mac.
The whole experience of using the Scratchpad reminds me a lot of the first time I started using Fantastical to add calendar appointments. No longer am I forced to constrain myself to the requirements of the computer. Instead I just give the computer data and it does the work for me. I love this feature and now I wish I had it on my Mac too.
Interact also has a clever sharing feature called Context. This is a way to access your contacts from other applications. If, for instance you have a bit of text you want to send off to multiple family members as email or a text message, you can access the Interact Context feature through the iOS share sheet. Tap on the Interact icon and it gives you a list of your groups. With the above example, you could select your family group and then individually select the specific members to receive the message. Then you can tap on the mail or the message icon and Interact opens up the appropriate application with the text copied in and the selected contacts already in the addressee line. In short, it lets you take bits of text and easily send them off to people from your contact list. I did mention this application was from the same guy who made Drafts, right?
I think the earlier analogy to Fantastical sticks. Interact brings a lot of utility and power to contact managers that I simply haven’t seen before. You can learn more on the website or in the App Store.
There is a strange dichotomy with lawyers and documents. We spend much of our time generating documents and slaving over every word and comma. Yet the documents themselves often look like a blob of Times New Roman mush. Matthew Butterick started his own personal crusade years ago to get lawyers thinking about typography.
Recently Matthew released the second edition of his book and it’s really great. The new version is full of stylistic and technical advice. I wish every lawyer and judge would buy a copy and think about implementing Matthew’s ideas. If you are in the legal industry, you really should read this book.
Today Katie and I are celebrating a milestone with the Mac Power Users when we record episode 300 at 2pm PST. You can tune in for the live feed right here. For the first time, we are turning the show over to someone else. Myke and Stephen will be questioning us with listener questions. (Just tweet them out with #mpu300 attached.) It should be fun and we’d love to have you in the live audience.
This week we gave a full show to the Plex service with guest Plex expert, Todd Olthoff. If you’ve got an Apple TV, you’ll really want to listen to this one.
Peter Kirn, wrote one of the best pieces yet on the hypothetical missing headphone jack in the iPhone 7. I wish I had figured this much out. His point about the lightning jack giving the user more control is the one that raised my eyebrow.
via The Loop
There is a growing list of alleged leaks that the iPhone 7 is going to drop the headphone connector. Here’s the most recent from Fast Company. We’re still probably nine months out from seeing the iPhone 7 so I’m not going to put much stock in these rumors … yet. Speaking hypothetically if the new iPhone does remove the headphone jack, I expect the Internet will shortly after need clean underwear. People went crazy when Apple replaced the 10-year-old 30-pin connector with the Lightning connector a few years back. The current headphone jack is older. Much older. Nevertheless, the outcry in response to removing the headphone jack will be exponentially louder than it was for replacing the 30-pin connector. People are going to go nuts.
I can sympathize. People who are serious about audio most likely have a fancy-pants set of headphones that they paid hundreds (or thousands) for and finding out that investment will no longer plug into their phone will not please them. I often use my earbuds at the same time my phone is charging and if removing the headphone jack means I can do only one at a time, it will be a problem. I’ve heard rumors of inductive charging but I’ll need to be convinced. I know that inductive technology has improved but I wonder if it has improved enough. Also, how would that work for someone that wants to charge her phone in her car and plug it into her car stereo at the same time? Is there going to be a mobile inductive charger or some wonky, expensive cable?
I am generally pretty willing to roll with Apple’s new products upsetting the status quo. If history is any judge where Apple goes, its competitors soon follow. However, if this were to come true and Apple were going to remove the headphone jack, they’d have to convince me of two things:
1. It’s Worth It
Specifically, what are the benefits to removing the headphone jack that justify the effort and expense that will go into adjusting to this change. For me at least, it would have to be more than making the phone slightly thinner. I’m told the internals of those headphone jacks take quite a bit of room. If I could get 2 hours of extra battery life, it’d probably be worth it.
2. They Are Helping with the Transition
I’d need to feel that this isn’t a money grab. The new phones should be bundled with Lightning adapter headphones. Also, Lightning to traditional headphone jack adapters should be sold at non-ridiculous prices.
Don’t get me wrong about this though. Even if Apple were to convincingly make the above two points, the Internet is still going to blow up with claims of “greedy” Apple. We may have an interesting Fall this year.
Flexibits has announced the introductory price for Fantastical 2 for Mac is going to end on January 9. Starting January 10, the new price will be $49.99. I really like this app. So much so that I did a whole series of screencasts on it.
