Broadwell Delays

Intel’s new Broadwell chips have a lot of hopes pinned upon them. They are supposed to be bring energy efficiency and graphics performance to new levels. I suspect Apple is relying on Broadwell to make the fabled 12″ Retina MacBook Air-ish computer into reality. If that is the case, we may be waiting longer for this computer than expected. MacRumors reports the necessary chips are now pushed back into next year.

If the rumored delay is for real and if Apple needs the chip to release a thin, light retina MacBook, this has got to be driving people at Apple crazy. I’ve always thought the idea of an Apple designed ARM-based Mac a little nutty (at least for a few years into the future). However, when Apple can’t ship a product because a supplier can’t deliver, I bet the super-secret-put-an ARM-in-a-Mac team in Cupertino is getting a few phone calls.

Presentations Field Guide, Sample Materials Available

Starting today you can download 51 sample pages from the new Presentations Field Guide. The book ended up weighing in at 432 pages, 44 screencasts (over 2 hours), and lots of other interactive gizmos.

Everything is on track for the July 21 release date but if you’d like to read a bit of it now, why not go download the sample?

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MPU 201: Mac at Home, PC at Work

MPU 201 includes our recurring guest, Gabe Weatherhead, as we dive deep on the best tools and workflows for living a double life: Mac at home, PC at work.

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Macworld Article on Photos Challenges

This morning Macworld published a piece I wrote about why I think we need to move to cloud-based photo management and and the two biggest hurdles Photos will need to overcome to succeed.

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Lego Fusion

First you build a tower from LEGO bricks. Then it magically appears in an iOS app and you defend the tower you built, brick-by-brick in the real world, from invaders in the virtual iOS world. Sign me up.

New MacSparky Field Guide: Presentations

I’m pleased to announce the newest MacSparky Field Guide, Presentations.

Most presentations are terrible. That, however, does not need to be the case for your presentations. This book explains how to create your own exceptional presentation. This Presentations Field Guide explains how to plan a presentation that will connect with your audience, the technical wizardry to create a stunning presentation, and walks you through presentation day to make sure it goes off without a hitch. The book was built entirely in iBooks Author. There are more than 30 screencasts, audio interviews, and other rich media assets to help you make your next presentation riveting. The material is accessible to beginners and power users alike with a thoughtful, fun, and systematic approach to planning, creating, and delivering a stellar presentation.

This is the first book to reflect the new MacSparky Field Guide design and it’s gorgeous. Here are a few screenshots.

The book is now available for Pre-Order and shipping on July 21, 2014. Also, here’s the first ever video trailer for one of my books.

MPU 200: The Story So Far …

Episode 200 of the Mac Power Users is now available. That’s 200 shows. That’s approximately 300 hours of talking about how to turn average and beginner users into power users. That’s 300 hours of the best work of my life.

This show is a bit introspective but also includes some of our favorite tips and show recommendations. If you’ve been with us this far, you may enjoy this episode just for the sentimental value.

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MILOFest Early Bird Registration

Today is the last day for early bird registration for the annual Macs in Law Offices conference at Disneyworld this October. If you are practicing law with a Mac, this one is just for you. As an added bonus, this year, my pal KatieFloyd will be speaking.

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Sanebox Advanced Filtering

If you’re a Sanebox subscriber (or thinking about becoming a Sanebox subscriber), you’ll want to check out their new Advanced Filtering options. Sanebox still doesn’t read the contents of your email but you can do a lot with a subject line. With advanced filtering, you can tell correspondents to include a phrase in the subject line that puts their email right to the head of the line. You can also filter based on subject lines. For example, if you have an Internet business and want to auto-file your emails from PayPal to a particular folder, you could set up a filter looking for the PayPal header in the subject line and Sanebox will take care of the rest. I continue to rely on Sanebox for my email management and I like it now more than ever.

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OmniOutliner 4.1

The Omni Group just updated OmniOutliner 4.1 with several useful new features:

Row padding control has been added to the standard feature set.
There is a new set of colored toolbar icons. (Purists can switch to Graphite appearance in System Preferences to use monochrome versions of those icons.)
The Pro version now allows you to link to rows to quickly navigate or reference other sections. To make a link, select a row and use Edit > Copy As Link. Paste this where ever you’d like to make a hyperlink to that row. I often use OmniOutliner for witness examination outlines and deposition outlines. This new navigation trick will be huge for me.

The app also got improved Word export and other nice interface tweaks and attachment support. I’m happy to see the Omni Group giving my favorite outliner further love.