Knocking and Unlocking

In a recent episode of the Mac Power Users I made an offhand remark how I thought it would be clever to use the Apple Watch to unlock my Mac. I received multiple emails from listeners telling me that this functionality effectively exists already with the application called Knock. I’ve been using Knock (iTunes) (website) now for a few weeks and am happy to report that those listeners were correct.

Knock is an iPhone application. It costs four dollars and once you install it, your iPhone becomes aware of when it gets near your Mac, even when it is locked. (You also need to download and install a utility app on your Mac found on their website.) Once you’ve got the system in place, when you get near your Mac, you will see a message on the lock screen that invites you to unlock by knocking twice on your phone. You can do this right in your pocket. For added fun, do this while pointing a toy sonic screwdriver at your Mac. The developer has a clever video that shows off this feature on their website.

After two weeks I’m convinced that this is more than a cute demo. I love unlocking my Mac simply by walking up to it and knocking on my pocket. I still think the Apple Watch could make this even easier but for now, you should check out Knock.

MPU 221: Academic Workflows with Aleh Cherp

This week Aleh Cherp, an instructor at two universities and publisher of Macademic.org joined us to discuss how he gets work done with his Apple Technologies. In it we cover dealing with students and research and writing. There are some great tips in this one.

The Last Macworld Magazine

A few days ago I received the final printed edition of Macworld magazine. Even though I get most of my information these days digitally, I could never bring myself to cancel my subscription. There was something comforting about receiving it on my doorstep. Nobody should be surprised about any print publication shuttering in 2014 but that doesn’t make it any less sad. Having made a small contribution over the last few years and seeing the Macworld team in action at Macworld expo, I can attest, Macworld was published by a fine group of geeks.

It is bittersweet to find a small automation piece I wrote made it into the final edition. I’ve published a lot of things in my life but I have to admit I always got a little bit of a thrill seeing my name in the magazine when it arrived.

Retina iMac Review

Jason Snell delivers his review of the new retina iMac over at Six Colors and he liked it enough to buy one for himself. After reading the review, I went into a local Apple Store and violated my own rule. I looked at it. There is definitely a Retina iMac in my future. I am weak.

It is clear to me now that when I wrote this list I should have added:

5. Whatever you do, don’t read Jason Snell’s review.

Home Screen: Dave Stachowiak

Dave Stachowiak (Twitter) is the host of the Coaching for Leaders and Carnegie Coach podcasts. Dave is also Executive Vice President, Talent Development at Dale Carnegie of Southern Los Angeles. Dave, through his podcasts, manages to combine a love of technology with a bit of sanity towards being productive. So Dave, show us your home screen.

What are some of your favorite apps?

One of my go-to apps is Lift. This app helps me reach larger goals by keeping track of daily, important habits. I have seven daily habits right now, including things like “walk 12,000 steps” and “read a book for 30 minutes.” At the end of the day (or when I complete the habit), I mark it off and it keeps track of my progress over time with graphs and other cool stuff. I’ve interviewed co-founded Lift Tony Stubblebine and they’ve got great plans for the future of Lift.

My excuse for owning pretty much every podcast app out there is that it’s helpful for troubleshooting the occasional podcast feed issue for folks in my listening community. The real reason is that I was always searching for the perfect podcast app. That all changed with Overcast. Finally, I feel like I’ve found an app that balances great features with ease of use. The smart speed function is amazing. The rest of my podcast apps have been relegated to a podcast folder on the second screen.

I’ve tried several of the third-party calendar apps over the years, but always ended up back with the Apple Calendar app, since it seemed like meeting invites (I get a lot) never got handled correctly and the learning curves were steep. I have no idea why I was so stubborn about not trying Fantastical, since I’ve heard great things about it for years. Once I did, not only am I not going back to the Calendar app, but it now has a beloved spot in my dock.

Who doesn’t love Drafts? Thanks to Mac Power Users for getting me hooked. I definitely underutilize it…right now, just to capture thoughts as they come in, and twice a week I have an OmniFocus task set to go in and file/clear all my content ideas and random thoughts. It’s high on my list to learn lots of the new advanced sharing and power features in the new version.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Other than Starbucks, my guilty pleasure these days is the MailChimp app. I’m a big believer in slow, steady growth over time, so the MailChimp dashboard gives me a daily smile when I see people subscribing to my weekly updates. My wife Bonni is on the same account for her Teaching in Higher Ed platform so we get to cheer each other on. It’s a blast. There are worse things to be addicted too, yes?

What is the app you are still missing?

I already feel like I underutilize so many of my current apps. Writing this is reminding me that I need to carve out some time to learn the advanced features on a few of them. Every time I’ve done that in the past, the time investment always pays off in the long-run.

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

The short answer? A lot. I work from home and almost all my work is virtual these days, so I choose to stay very connected. We have two children under the age of three, so there are days where a virtual office in my pocket is a life-saver.

That said, I’m intentional about staying off the phone with I’m with our kids or it’s family time. Over the summer, I found I was checking email too much when out and about with kids (Bonni and I aim to share equal time caring for them) so I took email off my phone completely for a month to break the habit. It worked – and today I keep the email app buried in a folder on the second screen. That helps and is a constant reminder to keep email to mostly scheduled work times.

I almost always leave my phone in my home office when work is done for the day and don’t pick it up again until well after kids are fast asleep. The only people I need to be instantly connected to in the evening are already in front of me.

What Today View widgets are you using and why?

I’ve never been much into widgets. I’ve tried (and like) the OmniFocus and calendar widgets on my iPhone 6, but in practice I always just go right to the app.

One related hack I’ve found helpful is keeping my iPhone, iPad, and Macs on the 24-hour clock. This resolves two mental obstacles I have. First, since I do a lot of work virtually, I feel like the mental addition/subtraction of time zones when booking calls is way easier with the 24-hour clock. Second, the number of times I’ve missed alarms I set for the morning because I forgot to slide the “PM” to “AM” when setting a clock alarm is embarrassing. Problem solved on the 24-hour clock (although whatever weirdness going on in my brain likely remains).

I have very few badge notifications active since I only want to be annoyed with things I actually need to take action on (overdue OmniFocus tasks, my Drafts inbox, unread RSS feeds). Probably I should just take badged off my Unread app too since I seem to be chronically behind on RSS reading (who isn’t?)

Any favorite iOS 8 extensions?

I did a Snoopy dance when Pushpin updated their app recently with an extension that allows me to save links right into Pinboard. I use Pinboard for both my reading queue and bookmarking archive. I’ve used both Pocket and Instapaper before (and like them too) but I find it’s way simpler just to have it all in one place.

I’m also loving the new 1Password extension for iOS8. Populating passwords in Safari with Touch ID still warms my heart every time. iOS 8 was worth it for that extension alone.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

When the iPhone got slim enough to fit comfortably in a pocket a few years ago, I dumped my wallet and starting using iPhone wallet cases from SenaCases. I was initially disappointed to see the iPhone 6 get taller, cause I’d gotten used to the small profile of the iPhone 5 and dislike anything taking up more pocket space.

In practice through, I haven’t noticed a pocket real estate issue with the iPhone 6 and I have to admit that after a day, I fell in love with the larger screen. I’m now using the Heritage Wallet Book from SenaCases for this phone and love it.

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

Family sharing doesn’t seem to be all it was cracked up to be. It’s not making sense to have to pay for iTunes Match multiple times or in app purchases again for different IDs in the same house.

Between Bonni and I, we have something like four or five Apple IDs from various stages of Apple ecosystems over the years (.Mac, MobileMe, etc.) It doesn’t compute with me why Apple doesn’t have any option to merge purchase histories of Apple IDs and help people onto a single account. For now, we’re keeping all current/new app purchases on one family account.

What’s your wallpaper and why?

I’m pretty boring with wallpaper. The current one
is an iOS default background. I pretty much always use one of the defaults on every device (the Macs I use already have the stock Yosemite photos on the desktops). I do have a photo of my son and I on my iPad lock screen, but that’s it. Probably there is something wrong with me.

Anything else you’d like to share?

I read all these home screen posts and love getting app ideas from others. Thanks to David for such a creative way for us all to learn from each other.

I feel like I’ve arrived now that I’ve been featured. It’s all downhill from here.

Thanks Dave.

You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby

Here is the original 128K Mac screen laid upon a 5K iMac display. Spoiler: It’s a postage stamp.

∞

Update to Mail Send-From Trick

A few years ago I published a screencast explaining how to put keyboard shortcuts to your email send-from account. With the release of Yosemite, you are going to need to tweak that shortcut. Before, Apple Mail would wrap your email in <arrow brackets>. Now Apple Mail removes the brackets and adds an n dash (Option + “-“). If you’ve suddenly found your Send-From trick not working, that’s why. Go in and reset them with the new syntax and you’ll be back in business.

App Specific Passwords

As Apple ups its game with two-factor authentication (you are using it, right?), you may find some of your apps suddenly stop recognizing your iCloud password. I’ve seen this in my life with Sanebox, Fantastical, BusyCal, and Dispatch just to name a few. In these instances, Apple stops recognizing your password and instead requires you to make an app-specific password just for that third party application. If you suddenly find yourself locked out of third party email, calendar, and other iCloud account related applications, you’ll need to learn to set up your own app-specific passwords. It is not that difficult.

It all starts right here at the My Apple ID page.

You are going to want to bookmark the above link. You’ll need it often as you are required to create app-specific passwords. The My Apple ID page gives you a few options. Click on “Mange your Apple ID”.

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Next, you’ll need to insert your account credentials.

You’ll also need to provide two factor verification to get in.

Once your in, click on the security pane and the app-specific passwords are available at the bottom of the right pane.

Click on “Generate an App-Specific Password” and you’ll walk through the process. First you’ll name the App-Specific password. Name it after the app you intend to use it in. Then iCloud will spit out a new password. Use that in your designated third-party application and you’re in.

You can even access (or revoke) prior app-specific passwords. While a bit inconvenient, this is absolutely do-able. Moreover, having app-specific passwords is much more secure. Given the amount of data and information in my iCloud account, the increased security is worth the time this takes to set up.

Audio Messages in iMessages

Today iOS 8.1 releases (hooray!). Now that we’ve all been using iOS 8 awhile how big of a thing is the ability to send a recording of your voice via iMessages? I’ve done it once for the sole purpose of demonstrating how it works. I thought it may be a generational thing but my kids report they aren’t using it either.

The problem for me is that the ability to send an audio message defeats a lot of the advantages I get from text messages. When I’m in court, my secretary can send me updated witness availability via a text message. I can read that text message without having the judge throw me in the pokey. If instead, I start lifting my phone to my ear or playing audio messages, my results may vary. I just don’t see the ability to send audio messages (even with a slick interface) as something taking off. One wildcard in this for me is the Apple Watch. It may be a lot more convenient with something on my wrist. For now, however, I just don’t get it.