Ernie Svenson published his PDF book, PDF Essentials for Lawyers. If you want to get better at using PDFs and particularly if you are using Adobe Acrobat or Reader, check it out. Ernie was a recent guest on the Mac Power Users and a swell guy. I really like how is casual and informative voice comes across in this book.

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I’ve never been happy with the built-in camera roll sorting tools. When I take photos with my phone I usually squeeze off three or four of any shot in hopes that I’ll get that one where nobody has their eyes closed or the baby is particularly cute or whatever. The trouble is that sorting through those images in the Photos app is difficult. The thumbnail images are too small and it is difficult figuring out ones to keep. This has resulted, more than once, in my deleting the wrong image. This past weekend I decided I’d deleted the wrong picture for the last time and I went looking in the App Store and discovered Flic.

Flick displays the images from your camera roll one at a time. You flick the keepers to the right and the trash to the left. The images are about 3/4 their full size but if you tap them, they blow up even bigger. Using this app, I was able to make quick work of the images in my camera roll over the past month. The app also keeps a running tab of how much space you are recovering with your deletions. Now that I have an easy way to sort camera roll photos, I expect I’ll be taking even more pictures on my iPhone.

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This week, Marco Arment kicked off some fascinating dialog about Apple’s software development. Put simply, a lot of people are concerned Apple is running too fast with yearly release cycles and appears to be stumbling as a result. I think there is a lot of merit to these arguments. I’ve experienced some of these stumbles myself as of late.

There is one point, however, I’ve not seen stated about these challenges that I think is worth mention. Over the years, I’ve done a lot of home screen posts and one of the standard questions I ask is what my contributor would do different if they were running Apple. I don’t have exact numbers but can attest that by far, before iOS 8 the biggest request was better app sharing and communication between devices. Indeed, some people were arguing Apple was doomed because they weren’t moving forward on these issues.

With iOS 8 and Yosemite, Apple delivered on these requests in a big way. We got extensions, keyboards, handoff, and a host of other new features. I love (and use) these features daily. Because a lot of these features involve communications between my Mac and iOS devices, these features require updates to both the Mac and iOS operating systems. Put simply, the only way this could all work is if Apple stuck its neck out with significant changes to both systems.

While it’s easy to say, “I wish they’d taken a year off on the Mac”, that comes at a cost of functionality. We wouldn’t have these cool features if they hadn’t done the update. Maybe, in hindsight, that was a mistake by Apple adding so much but don’t forget how many people were talking about how stale and “closed” iOS was before iOS 8 arrived. I sympathize for the Apple engineers sitting somewhere right now, thinking they’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t. I, personally, think they did the right thing pushing forward with iOS 8 and Yosemite. I’m willing to deal with a few hiccups in exchange for these new features. 

While Marco may indeed be right and perhaps Apple should slow down the Mac OS release cycles, I don’t see how Apple had any choice in 2014 once they decided to give us the inter-operatability we’ve all been banging on about for years.

In our monthly feedback show, Katie and I talk about auditing your accounts with guest Bradley Chambers, quitting Family Sharing, follow-up on PDFs, discuss applications for money management, and share tips for managing RSS feeds on the go, sharing an iTunes library, managing photos and videos, preserving two-factor authentication codes, discuss the Evernote Stylus, family journaling options and more.

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The rumors surrounding the fabled 12 inch retina Mac have been swirling for about a year now. While you never know if a rumored product from Apple is real or not, this one has had so many leaks and mentions that I have to believe they are at least considering it. Moreover, as nice as the MacBook Airs are, it has been several years since they received a new design and you just have to know the design team is at least feeling a little itchy about it. Moreover, competitors are now perfecting their copies of the existing design.

So with all this in mind, Mark Gurman, one of the most reliable Apple-scoopers, just published an article at 9to5Mac about the new MacBook Air. Much has been written about this since the rumor first hit a few days ago. I think a higher resolution MacBook Air is a swell idea but if Mark Gurman is right and the new machine has just one USB port to cover power, external display, and external devices, I’m going to go on record as saying that is a little bit crazy. Can you image having to unplug your external drive so you can print or unplugging your power so you can connect a scanner? The very first MacBook Air had just one USB port. It was located on a clever little drop down hinge that reminded me of the docking bay on a particularly sleek spaceship. Everyone hated having just one USB port but at least that Mac had a separate MagSafe port. Speaking of MagSafe, if the 12″ Mac gets power via the USB port, what happens to MagSafe? That would be something I really miss.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Mark Gurman is generally right about the new Mac specs but wrong about just one USB port. At least, I sure hope he is.

We received news today of a lawsuit by Monster against Beats. While I have no idea of the merits of these claims, this event has finally given me an excuse to link the second most entertaining letter I’ve ever read between two lawyers. A few years ago Monster issued a cease and desist letter to Blue Jeans Cables, a company founded by a recovering IP attorney. The response starts, “Dear Monster Lawyers” and just gets better from there.

In case you are wondering, James Bailey’s letter on behalf of the Cleveland Browns is the best attorney letter I’ve ever read.