Keyboard Tips

One of the best ways to get better at driving a Mac is to learn to get work done without lifting your hands from the keyboard. There is a certain rhythm to getting work done with just the keyboard that feels great when you are in the moment. Topher Kessler did a nice write-up for Macworld explaining how to get started on the keyboard path.

Sponsor: Rocket X1 and Free Ebook



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This week MacSparky is sponsored by Rocket X1, Internet marketing for professional services. The Internet is the future for all businesses but can be an intimidating place if you don’t know your way around. Rocket X1 puts you ahead of your competition with a combination of top-notch web hosting and design, assstance with social media, search engine optimization and public relations. 

Forget about vague concepts and ideas, Rocket X1 brings real world answers and quantifiable results. Look no further and put your professional service firm on the Internet with a elegant imagery and polished messaging.  Maintain your sleek identity across the web, social media, stationary, and print materials. 

This week, Rocket X1 is offering a free book, Internet Marketing for Professional Services. Go get your copy and check out Rocket X1.

Jazz Friday: Salt Peanuts at Massey Hall



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There are very few live recordings of the bebop jazz titans in the early days. That’s why the May 1953 Massey Hall concert is especially loved by jazz fans. The band included Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus, and Max Roach. It was the only time these five played together and it is the last recording of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie together. (Charlie Parker shows up in some liner notes as “Charlie Chan”, because he was contractually prohibited from recording on the label.)

A further bit of interesting backstory was that this event was never planned to be the epic recording it became. The event was planned as a fundraiser for the Toronto Jazz Society but there was a prize fight the same night and the turnout was much lower than expected. The musician’s checks bounced and they decided to release a recording so they could get paid.

Nevertheless, we end up wbith this great little time capsule of bebop and it is a great listen. I’d recommend buying the entire album but the best track is Salt Peanuts. It starts out with Charlie Parker introducing the song by his “worthy constituent”, Dizzy Gillespie. Then, once the song gets rolling and Bird (Charlie Parker) starts playing his solo, Dizzy Gillespie started throwing handfuls of peanuts at the audience while screaming “SALT PEANUTS”. Finally, Max Roach delivers a stellar drum solo at the end. It all comes out on the recording and makes me smile every time I listen to it. When my kids were young, we used to drive around listening to this track screaming “SALT PEANUTS” at the top of our lungs. I bet I could still get my kids to do it.

iTunes only sells it as a full album but the remastered version sounds pretty good. If you just want to listen to Salt Peanuts, it is on YouTube.

FX Photo Studio Updates with 200 Filters


The most recent version of FX Photo Studio is out, now with 200 photo filters, which is a pretty impressive feat. The image below is one I took on a recent hike following application of a few FX Photo Studio filters. Apps like this are going to be so interesting when iOS 8 extensions arrive. Can you imagine having 200 filters right in the Photos app? I can too.

Back to Work 181

Merlin Mann couldn’t make Back to Work this week. Merlin is one of my favorite people. I’ve lost count of how many times he’s stepped up to help me out. Nevertheless, I was pretty disappointed in him today. Instead of finding a top-tier guest to fill in during his absence, he brought in a low-rung hack. Poorly played Merlin. Poorly played indeed.

Act Now!

Looking through Twitter today, I discovered many of my favorite iOS apps are on sale.

MindNode: $4.99, Usually $9.99

MindNode’s become my favorite mind mapper. It got a nice iOS 7 redesign and it continues to get better.

 

PCalc – The Best Calculator: $4.99, usually $9.99

It took me several years (and plenty of Dr. Drang posts) to finally come around to PCalc but now I can’t imagine not having it on my iPhone.

 

Launch Center Pro: $1.99, usually $4.99

Launch Center Pro for iPad: $1.99, usually $4.99

This is another app that took me awhile to warm up to. Now it’s in my dock.

 

Boxer: $4.99, usually $9.99

I’ve been playing with this app and plan to give it extended coverage in the next update to the Email Field Guide.

 

Fantastical 2 for iPad: $7.99, usually $9.99

One of the best calendar apps on the iPad.

 

Broadwell and ARM Macs

I wrote last month about Broadwell’s delays and the expected impact on the release of new Macs. It appears that is coming true. The recently updated MacBook Pros just received slightly bumped Haswell chips and, as Macworld reports, the speed improvements are small.

Moreover, I’m more convinced than ever that the rumored 12″ MacBook Air with retina screen, assuming it exists, will get pushed back until next year when Apple can get the Broadwell chips it needs to put a retina screen in a small MacBook. If Apple were to release a Haswell-based MacBook Air with retina screen, I’d recommend waiting.

There is also more buzz about the idea of an ARM-based Mac. The ARM chips that currently power iOS devices are Apple designed and Apple controlled. If Apple could put those in Macs, they wouldn’t be dependent on Intel for future Mac releases and wouldn’t get saddled with the problems they have with the current Broadwell delays.

The problem is that ARM chips aren’t nearly as powerful as these Intel chips and it would incur a substantial performance hit. Another downside of ARM Macs would be that they don’t run Windows nearly as easily as Intel based Macs do. (However, I have to wonder how important that is as we increasingly move to web-based services and Windows becomes less relevant.)

On the plus side, ARM based Macs would have ridiculously great battery life. When you think about it, a thin, light Mac that sucks at Final Cut but runs Safari and Mail for 24 hours on a single charge may have a pretty large audience. If Apple were to go this route, I suspect that initially they would keep producing high-end Intel Macs for people that need the power.

Yesterday, Jean-Louis Gassée (who knows more about this stuff in his pinky finger than I do in my entire body) wrote that he believes an ARM based Mac may very well lie in the not so distant future. One of the points he made that hadn’t occurred to me is that since Apple is designing the chips, they could create a separate ARM design for the Mac that is a bit more powerful and uses a bit more power. Pound-for-pound though, I suspect Apple would have a hard time matching Intel on the power end, especially now that the Broadwell chip is on a 14nm dye.

Could something like this be already in the works at Apple? To answer that question I’d state that just a few months ago Apple announced an entirely new programming language for the Mac and iOS that they’d been internally developing for years and nobody on the outside had a clue of its existence.