The Presentations Field Guide is Now Shipping

I’m pleased to announce the Presentations Field Guide on is now shipping. The initial response has been fantastic and the book is currently at the top of the charts in the iBooks Store.

I spent a lot of time on the design and this book looks fantastic. Readers already are reporting they love the new design and layout. The content also came out great walking you through planning and giving a presentation in addition to all the parts you’ll be doing on your Mac and iPad.

The book is available in the iBooks and PDF formats. If you’ve been waiting, now is the time to go get it. I’ve got screenshots, the promo video, and a full description right here. 

TextExpander for Quick Defer+Due Dates in OmniFocus

Max Masnick is using Text Expander to quickly enter defer and due dates in OmniFocus. Max primarily uses this for events that have the same defer and due dates. For example if you want a task to disappear but show up as due on Monday at 9am. I don’t have much cause for that style task because I so rarely use due dates but there is no reason you couldn’t also use this to defer with later relative due dates, for example two weeks from Friday, which in OmniFocus speak would be 2w Fri. Moreover, Max figured out how to combine defer dates and TextExpander so of course he gets a link.

 

Apple Opens Up iTunes Pass in the US

I’ve always felt that Apple’s Passbook was a good idea that never really took off. I use it for boarding passes but have found very few other uses. (I know the poster child for Passbook retail use is Starbucks but I don’t drink coffee and don’t like their tea.) Either way, I’ve felt that Passbook has been in limbo lately. I’m sure the whole “pay with your phone” idea is important to Apple but it seemed like Passbook may be one of those things that just lingers until Apple unveils the next initiative to replace it.

That may still be the case but it appears Apple isn’t entirely ignoring Passbook. Today they added a new feature that lets you charge up your iTunes credit with Passbook in an Apple retail store. This makes a lot of sense with the upcoming Family Sharing feature. I would like to see Passbook (or something like it) take off. I’m tired of carrying bits of plastic around when I’ve got a really smart phone.

Josh Centers at TidBITS walks you through how to use Passbook in the Apple Store.

IBM and Apple Sitting in a Tree …

Today Apple and IBM announced a partnership to use IBM’s enterprise expertise and Apple’s products to tackle enterprise sales. It seems like a good fit. There are a lot of moving pieces and, as usual, Macworld covers it well.

For years now, Apple has been building this retail/consumer battleship and largely ignoring enterprise sales. While Apple has lavished significant attention on enterprise support in iOS, they’ve never appeared to care much about selling to and supporting the enterprise. As a result, we’ve all wondered if they had some sort of plan or just didn’t care. With today’s move, it appears the plan is to offload enterprise sales and support to IBM. It makes sense. I hope it goes well for both companies.

Spreadsheet Tricks

I am a business lawyer but did my undergraduate degree in political science, which makes me a bit of a faker among some of the business types I spend time with. However, the one thing that always gives me credibility is the way I can make a spreadsheet application dance. I’ve written in the past how, for certain problems, a spreadsheet application can double as a simple application development platform. Here is the Settlement “App” I’ve built in Numbers.

If you are looking at getting better at spreadsheets, Rob Griffiths wrote up a nice summary at Macworld of nine things you should know how to do with a spreadsheet.

 

Sponsor: Beloved Robot

This week MacSparky.com is sponsored by Beloved Robot, a group of app developers that get it. 

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