Productivity App Sale

There are quite a few good iOS and Mac productivity apps on sale right now. Here are the ones I’d buy:

Fantastical 2

For iPad, $9.99 reduced to $4.99 

For iPhone, $4.99 reduced to $1.99 

For Mac, $19.99 reduced to $9.99

Fantastical is in my dock. This is a great alternative calendar app with its legendary text parsing tools and a really functional user interface. I particularly like the event list view. I’ve tried to replace the built-in iOS calendar multiple times and Fantastical is the only replacement that has stuck. I’ve covered this app before.

Duet Display

For iOS, $15.99 reduced to $7.99

I bought this one today. I’ve tried several of these apps that turn your iPad into a remote display for your Mac over the years. This one is the fastest I’ve used yet.

Workflow

For iOS, $4.99 reduced to $1.99

I have so much to say about Workflow but haven’t had time to give it proper treatment, yet. (Well … here is a little bit.) Stay tuned for more from me on Workflow but for now, just buy it for two bucks.

Byword

For Mac, $9.99 reduced to $5.99

Sweet, sweet Byword. I use it every day.

Dropzone 3

For Mac, $4.99 reduced to $1.99

There are a lot of menubar apps made to hold apps and perform magic on files. I started using Dropzone about six months ago and it’s a keeper. This is another app I use multiple times a day and now it’s just two bucks.

MindNode Pro

For Mac, $19.99 reduced to $9.99

Ready to get serious about mind mapping on your Mac? Look no further.

 

Apple Watch in April

Today Apple had its financial call where Tim Cook and the gang explained they’d sold 74 million iPhones and earned $18B in profit during the last quarter, which by any generally accepted accounting principle just seems crazy. More interesting to me was this little nugget Tim dropped about the Apple Watch,  “Apple Watch will ship in April, right on schedule”. Okay, I’ll accepted that April is early 2015, but just barely. Either way, I think it is interesting that Tim would so casually share this information on an earnings call. I can’t remember Apple ever disclosing something like this on an earnings call before. It all sounded so casual but I find it hard to believe anything said on a financial call wasn’t planned and vetted first. If it truly was off the cuff, you go Tim.


Speaking of the Apple Watch, I’m getting pretty eager to learn more and get one. If you haven’t looked at the Apple site lately, you should go back and check our their Timekeeping page. They added that page a month or two ago and I really like the look of the watch faces (particularly the Utility face) and the little on screen widgets, called complications. While I originally crinkled my nose at that name, complications, upon further research, it appears that is indeed the name given to objects on a watch face. I’ll have much more to say about the watch as further details are disclosed but for now, I’m just looking forward learning more.

Visiting NAMM


Every year the National Association of Music Merchants rolls into Anaheim for a four day party/concert/trade show. The last time I attended was 1985 so when a friend gave me an excuse to head over this year, I jumped on it. NAMM is one of those conferences like Macworld Expo used to be, where it is a gathering of a community and much more than a mere conference.

Walking the show floor you’ll see people in impeccable suits chatting with people in torn jeans and creative piercings. They all love music and just about everyone is insanely talented. I stood at one booth that sold ukulele’s strung with bass strings. That’s right, the U-Bass. While that is an interesting idea for a product, I couldn’t help but laugh as passers by would take a minute, set down their bags, and then shred that U-Bass like they’d been playing it their entire life. While there I also got to bump into several friends and a few MacSparky readers. 

Impromptu concerts started just about everywhere. I was chatting with fellow geek (and amazing musician) Sam Montooth, who then joined in with a jam session at a saxophone mouthpiece vendor. In a few minutes there were people arriving from the other side of the hall joining in. So much fun.


Sam jams.

Sam jams.

While there I also got to look at one of Stevie Wonder’s first synthesizers. Running my fingers over the dials, I could feel the braille printing over the settings. I have to admit, I didn’t have the guts to actually play it.


Stevie's Synth

Stevie’s Synth


I also got to take a good look at Yamaha’s new podcaster friendly mixer, which can even run on batteries and connect to my iPad, which may have me upgrading my mic soon. Something tells me I won’t be waiting 30 years to return to NAMM again.

There was one picture of Miles Davis in the building. I found it.

There was one picture of Miles Davis in the building. I found it.

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There was one picture of Miles Davis in the building. I found it.
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Home Screens: John Siracusa


This week’s home screen post features John Siracusa. (Podcast)(Website)(Twitter) John, who writes those amazing OS X reviews for Ars Technica, famously stuck with his flip phone until a few months ago when he got a shiny new iPhone 6. (John is also our workflow guest on the Mac Power Users episode dropping this weekend.) So John, show us your home screen.


Q: What are some of your favorite apps?

The apps I use most are my favorites: Twitterrific, Overcast, and Instapaper. Those three cover most of my iPhone usage. I listen to podcasts while commuting (using my car’s Bluetooth iPhone integration). I read Twitter when I have a spare moment. While reading Twitter, I file interesting links away in Instapaper and read them when I have a longer stretch of free time.

Q: Which app is your guilty pleasure?

I feel the most guilty when I’m sinking time into Desert Golfing. It’s just one hole after another, with very little reward for making progress. It’s the aloof cat of iOS gaming.

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

Maybe ten times per day on weekdays, more on weekends.

Q: What Today View widgets are you using and why?

I never look at the Today View. I’m not sure why, but it’s never found a place in my iPhone or iPad usage.

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

I’d get serious about network services, applying all the same philosophies Apple already applies to its other products. Apple should own and control the primary technologies that make its network services possible. Look at how much Google and Amazon have invested in creating their own server-side infrastructure over the years: MapReduce, BigTable, Spanner, S3, EC2, DynamoDB, and so much more, and that’s even before considering the (more secretive) data center management and server hardware. Apple is behind here, and it shows in the performance and reliability of its network services—and in Apple’s ability to create new network services.

What’s your wallpaper and why?

My wallpaper is black because I don’t want anything to distract from the app icons. (I also have the parallax animation disabled for the same reason.)

Anything else you’d like to share?

I’m not happy with my home screen as shown in this screenshot. The iPhone 6’s larger screen has made the icons at the top a lot harder to reach, and this has forced me to reevaluate the layout I’ve had since the 5th generation iPod touch was released in 2012. Also, I’d really like it if Instagram would change its icon to fit in better with the others on my home screen. 

Thanks John.

Audio Hijack 3? Yes Please.


I just bought my license for the new Audio Hijack 3 from Rogue Amoeba. Wow.

Audio Hijack has always been a stellar app. (For lesser needs, I also really like Rogue Amoeba’s Piezo.) What is really impressive about this version is the way they had the guts to scrap the old, perfectly functional user interface and build an entirely new one. What is even more impressive is that the new user interface is so much better than the old. So often, drastic user interface changes result in something clever but unusable. That’s not the case here.

Audio Hijack lets you manipulate audio on your Mac with the same aplomb a magician can pull a pigeon out of his pants. Would you like to combine your microphone with an iTunes track into 16-bit AIFF with an onscreen equalizer and a VU meter? No problem. This app isn’t for everyone but if you’ve ever wanted to really work/record/manipulate audio on your Mac, look no further.

∞

The Cantina Band and John Williams

So this week a person that lives in my home wrote an extensive blog post about the history of the Star Wars Cantina Band and included a link to John Williams’ jazz album. That wouldn’t be shocking except for the fact the post was not written by me. Imagine my surprise reading about these things from my wife. I must be doing something right.

Overcast

When Marco Arment first released the Overcast podcast client, I bought it based on my experience with Marco’s prior project, Instapaper. I like how Marco sweats the small stuff and I wanted to see what he’d do with a podcast client. However, I was not as immediately taken with Overcast as was most of the rest of the Internet. Also, at the time I was giving Apple’s own Podcasts app a serious attempt. While the Podcasts app isn’t going to knock your socks off, it does have Siri integration. I can be driving down the street and push the button for Siri and say, “Play Podcast Mac Power Users” and the app opens, and the correct podcast fires up. At the time I viewed that as the killer feature to let me listen to multiple podcasts while driving down the road. Also, Overcast didn’t support the iPad or the Mac and I listen to podcasts on those devices as well.

After using the Podcast app for a month, I found that I’d only used the Siri integration a few times. Normally when I drive, I’m only good for listening to one podcast anyway. Also, in that interim period I discovered Overcast’s ability to play podcasts on my Mac via the browser and the app also got iPad support. 

All of this brought me back into Overcast and now I’ve been using a few months as my full time podcast player. I don’t see myself leaving Overcast anytime soon. One of Overcast’s banner features, Smart Speed, removes gaps and performs other tricks on an audio file so it plays faster without making the it sound too artificial or the hosts sound like they’ve been sucking helium. I’m finding myself using Smart Speed increasingly and now I’m not sure I’d want to do without it. Moreover, the user interface is just better than the other podcatchers I’ve used. The buttons are big enough to easily tap but not ugly or intrusive. I like the Orange color. The way it displays a live waveform is functional and kind of fun.  In hindsight, most of the geeks figured it out before I did but I got there eventually and Overcast is now staying on my home screen.