I really enjoy our monthly live shows. This past Saturday Katie and I recorded this show with a full chat room. We covered the benefits of digital meal planning, follow-up on DEVONThink workflows, our favorite RSS feeds, managing small SSDs, resources for a new iPhone user, better fonts for iOS, and my new MacBook.
Activating “Hey Siri” On Apple Watch
I recently ran into a problem where “Hey Siri” wasn’t working on my Apple Watch. I was sitting there, calling out “Hey Siri” with increasing volume and Siri had no interest in me. In fact, I said “Hey Siri” so loud that I set it off on my phone, which was in the next room charging. MacRumors published an article that shed some light.
In order for “Hey Siri” to work on your Apple Watch, the screen needs to be lit. It won’t activate when the screen is dark. If the screen is lit from you twisting your wrist or tapping the screen to wake it up or pressing the digital crown to wake up the watch, “Hey Siri” works. However, if you are in a glance or in an app, saying “Hey Siri” doesn’t work. The above linked Mac Rumors article explains that if you are at the watch face as a result of pressing the digital crown from another view (like the home screen or an app), “Hey Siri” also doesn’t work. However, in my testing “Hey Siri” worked just fine in that scenario.
iBooks Author Conference
This October, there’s an iBooks Author conference in Nashville, Tennessee. I won’t be talking or attending but if you’re are interested in iBooks Author publishing, this is the place. As an aside, I’m digging in on my next iBooks Author Field Guide now that the Photos screencast has shipped and having a great time working on a “book”.
Apple Watch Underwater
Ray Maker is the first person I’ve seen really test the Apple Watch’s water resistence. He swam with it, jumped in off a 10M diving board with it, and simulated 40M depth water pressure with it and the Watch kept on ticking. While all of this is comforting to know, after spending $400 on a watch for the first time in my life, I still take it off before showering. (I do, however, keep it on while washing dishes.)
MPU 255: Photos App and Photo Management
In this week’s show, Katie and I dive deep on the new Photos app and photo management. I’m really impressed with the new Photos app and have been using it a lot. I explain my Photos workflows in this show.
“Hey Siri, Send”
For the first week I used my Apple Watch, it drove me nuts that I still had to tap the screen to confirm sending text messages I’d dictated via “Hey Siri”. Then I decided to try dictating the button press. When presented with the confirmation button before sending a text message, saying “Send”, which is most intuitive, doesn’t work. However, saying “Hey Siri, Send” does. In fact, for any confirmation button that shows up while dictating into the watch, all you have to do do is say “Hey Siri” and then the name of the button.
“Hey Siri, Tell Daisy I’m in jail. Bring bail money.”
Pause
“Hey Siri, Send.”
It is strange that you have to preface every button press with “Hey Siri” and this behavior is different from the iPhone, which asks you to confirm and you just say “yes” or “confirm”. The iPhone method is better. However, if you want to send a text message from your Apple Watch hands free, get ready to say “Hey Siri” a lot.
Update:
Turns out, the iDownload blog figured this out before I did and even made a clever video.
Marco Arment on Apple Watch App Design
I enjoy Marco Arment’s articles on App design and layout. Making an App truly user friendly is a combination of art and science and Marco is one of the best at it. Moreover, he has a way of explaining his thought process that is fascinating to me. This week he wrote about the re-design of Overcast for the Apple Watch.
As an aside, Overcast is one of my favorite apps on the Apple Watch. Being able to start, stop, and change podcasts from my wrist is golden. I have it active as a glance and then tap on it to get the app and it works swell.
The Photos Video Field Guide
Late last year I started outlining a new MacSparky Field Guide on photo management. It was one sweet outline and I’d even started writing words. Then I got my hands on the Photos beta and realized that Photos did something pretty remarkable. Photos manages large photo libraries loads better than iPhoto ever did and the iCloud Photo Library works far better than I ever expected. I started revising the “photo management” outline until I realized this was no longer a comparison of competing photo management services and instead an in-depth manual for Photos.
At that point I scrapped the outline and instead produced a Video Field Guide explaining how to get the most from Photos. After a few months of work, here it is.
The Photos Video Field Guide is a 2.5 hour screencast that teaches you how to install and use Apple’s Photos Application and sync all of your photos between your Mac, iPad, and iPhone using iCloud Photo Storage. Managing your photos with multiple devices has, over the years, come to feel like chasing a mythical white whale. Not anymore. Photos delivers the goods and this screencast teaches you how.
Topics Include:
1. INITIAL SETUP
While Photos attempts to make your initial setup simple and easy, there can be complications. What if you have more than one existing photo libraries? What if you’ve got folders of photographs sprinkled all over your hard drive? All of these can be imported into Photos but you’ve got to know the ropes. This video screencast shows you all tricks to run Photos on your Mac, iPad, and iPhone.
Photos also can use iCloud Photo Library to make sharing photos between your Mac, iPad, and iPhone easier than anyone ever thought possible. The Video Field Guide walks you through the initial iCloud setup, including advice on which cloud storage to use and how to get the initial upload of your photo library done with as little pain and suffering as possible.
2. PHOTO MANAGEMENT
Photos uses an intuitive organizational structure that lets you see your pictures grouped by years, collections, moments, and individual photos. This Video Field Guide shows you exactly how it works and sprinkles in several power tricks to make managing your library even easier. Once you’ve sorted that out, Photos also has options to create custom and smart albums, where the program seeks out photos for you pursuant to your instruction.
Photos also has specialized libraries that can identify the faces of your family and friends. You can even search you library so if someone says, “Hey! Quick! Find me that picture of Uncle Ralph from April 2007 wearing that ballerina tutu!”, you can deliver the goods. This stuff sounds complicated. It’s not. By the time you get to the end of this video, you’ll be able to embarrass Uncle Ralph in no time flat.
3. PHOTO EDITING
Photos also has a surprisingly large toolset to make your photos better. You can do simple edits, like cropping and rotating, but you can also make complex adjustments to color and light. On the Mac there are even more tools including a histogram, sharpening, definition, noise reduction, vignette and level adjustments. If all of this sounds like greek to you now, that’s okay. After watching the video it won’t.
The video also explains Photos built in filters and how they can be an excellent jumping off point for making your photos look great. It also covers has the semi-magical “enhance” button. If that’s not enough, there are workflows to get your photos out of the Photos app and into an external editor for further work on the Mac, iPad, and iPhone.
4. PHOTO SHARING
With the new Photos app, there are many ways to share your images with friends and family from something as simple as an email to full-blown shared iCloud albums. This section of the video covers all of the sharing options from the Mac and iOS. The Photos Video Field Guide also demonstrates how to make books, calendars, and cards from the Photos application on the Mac.
5. VIDEO
Believe it or not, Photos can manage your video files too. This section covers the best practices for managing video files in Photos and its limited editing capabilities.
6. BACKUP
No photo management system is complete without a thorough backup system. The Photos Video Field Guide concludes explaining backup strategies and techniques. This section also demonstrates how to export images from Photos for additional backup.
The screencast is two and a half hours and fully bookmarked. You can buy it now for $9.99.
Did you ask for a sample video? I thought so. Here you go.
Clockwise 86
Today Katie Floyd and I joined Jason Snell and Dan Moren on the Clockwise podcast. We talked about home automation, the hypothetical new Apple TV remote, and some obscure new doohickey you are supposed to wear on your wrist.
The Reserve Strap for the Apple Watch
There is a lot of digital ink being spilled today over the Reserve Strap for the Apple Watch. They came up with a clever design that plugs into the watch’s diagnostic port and makes the strap a lot sleeker. Setting aside my concerns about a permanent connection to the diagnostic port as you wear your watch around all day, I have to wonder how many people actually need more power for their Apple Watch. Yesterday I wore my watch 16 hours and had 40% battery left when I took it off. As I write these words, it is 12:38 pm and I currently have 87% of my battery left.
If you need extra power, this may be the strap you are looking for but I’d advise to make sure you actually need that extra power first. I don’t.