LaunchBar 6

Yesterday Objective Development released LaunchBar 6, the latest version of their app launcher, phone number finder, file sender, calculator, calendar entry tool, do-just-about-anything with your keyboard application.

The new version features an improved user interface and the ability to select between themes for the entry window, including the somewhat translucent Frosty that seems a bit prescient based on last week’s Yosemite announcement.

The new user interface is a definite improvement and looks particularly good on my MacBook Pro’s retina screen.

LaunchBar also now has its own custom script–based actions that can be written in most scripting languages including AppleScript, JavaScript, Ruby, Python, and PHP.

Web searches also render live suggestions that populate as you type. This was always a feature that I had to go to the browser for. I’m happy to see it working from right in the launcher.

The index also receive some love. In addition to your files, calendar, address book, and the usual assortment of data, LaunchBar will now also index Finder Tags, Emoji, Reminders, Safari Reading List and Top Sites, and iCloud Tabs.

Another useful new feature is the ability to browse file info. LaunchBar can now display information on selected files and drives including file size, image dimensions, disk capacity, Finder tags, browsable file contents, word counts and more. The below screenshot is the text file on a post I did about Macworld 2014.

LaunchBar has really upped its game with this update and I’m looking forward to digging in deeper (particularly with the scripting).

Learn more from Objective Development here. Also, Shawn Blanc did a superb job of documenting all the features in this extended review. Finally, it’s a bit dated, but a lot of the content in this 2009 Mac Power Users episode still applies.

Chronosync Turns 4.5

Chronosync, my favorite application for syncing selected files between networks/computers/drives released its 4.5 update today with some pretty nice upgrades.

Everything is faster with speed improvements to scanning (by about 30%) and copying (by about 10-15%). I ran the new version on some of my bigger syncs and the difference is noticeable. The application is also now 64 bit and has retina artwork throughout (Hooray!). They’ve also added better scheduling and some intelligence to know when you are trying to move forbidden files. In that sense, Chronosync protects you from yourself.

They continue to honor their “free upgrades for life” policy and my upgrade came down no problem. To learn more, go here.

My OmniFocus Perspectives

I’ve not officially written up my thoughts on OmniFocus 2 for the Mac but suffice it to say, I’m a fan. I’ve received a lot of questions lately about my perspectives so for this post, I thought I’d dive into the weeds and share all of my perspectives.

Why Are Perspectives a Big Deal?

OmniFocus is a powerful tool. It can hold a lot of tasks with a lot of associated data. Perspectives give you the ability to filter all that information in ways that make sense. I use many perspectives and am constantly flipping between them as I go through the day. Perspectives, created on the Mac, drive down the iOS versions of OmniFocus so whether you are in line for tea or bearing down at your desk, they are there to help.

Perspectives and OmniFocus 2 for Mac

One of the improvements with OmniFocus 2 for Mac is the ability to more easily create perspectives and, more importantly, their constant visibility down the left side of your screen. There is a default set of perspectives, but you can also add your custom perspectives (assuming you are using OmniFocus Pro) to this list from the Perspectives window. Like on iOS, you can add a perspective to this left menu by starring it in the Perspectives pane. I love this.

Inbox, Projects, and Contexts

I use several of the built in perspectives and while I’ve made specific selections from available options, there is nothing particularly interesting in the Inbox, Projects, or Contexts screenshots.

Forecast

Checking the Show Deferred Items is huge for me. As explained in the above linked article, I manage tasks by deferring them out to future dates. I’m not forecasting tasks that are due in the future so much as I am tasks that are set to begin. I also set the calendar display to 7AM since I often have early morning meetings.

Flagged

I’m using flags more now than I did before. I’ve explained how I use due dates sparingly. Flags allows me to set even fewer due dates. If I’ve got some task that is important but doesn’t have a due date, I flag it. Today, for example, I had two tasks flagged and it felt pretty good checking them off. Getting back to this setting, if I push something into the future and flag it as important, I don’t want to see it until it becomes available so I apply the “available” filter.

Completed

Rarely, I need to go back through completed tasks and when I do, this perspective gets the job done. You’ll note I don’t have this starred to appear on the left side of my screen because I use it so sparingly.

Changed

This perspective shows all my recently changed tasks. Sometimes I’ll get ahead of myself when organizing OmniFocus. The first line of defense in that case is Command+Z but if that doesn’t work, this gives me an easy way to go back and make corrections.

Added

This one is somewhat related to the Changed perspective. A lot of times I capture tasks and only partially process them, particularly when I’m working on the go. This Perspective gives me a list of recently added tasks when I need to make sense of it.

Clear

Occasionally, I need to clear the decks. Clear gives me all available tasks ungrouped. I can Command+A to select them all and push them out if necessary with the defer date in the inspector. This is also a good perspective to sort out date discrepancies. If I’ve got a lot of tasks with various (and old) defer dates. I’ll select them all in the Clear perspective and set their Defer date today in the inspector.

Clients

This is a Perspective that just points at the Professional/Clients folder. If I just need to focus on client issues, I’ll select this. (I added a similar Perspective for MacSparky tasks as I wrote this article.)

Errands

This perspective shows me all tasks from the Errands context. I don’t refer to this context much either but it is handy on weekends.

Law

This is somewhat related to my Clients perspective but broader. It includes everything relating to my day job: administrative, clients, business management, continuing education, legal speaking, the works.

Today

This is the perspective that a lot of readers have already adopted. It sorts all “available” tasks by project with nice little project labels. It’s a great way to see what’s on deck for the day and an essential tool if you are managing tasks with defer dates.

There’s More…

I’ve been toying with a “Waiting” context but haven’t got it right yet. Anytime you look at OmniFocus and don’t see the information you want at that moment, you should investigate creating a custom perspectives. They are very flexible and you should be able to do just about anything you want.

About Those Icons

I downloaded the new icons from Github. Josh Hughes made this great set that really fits in nicely with the native OmniFocus icons and has them in multiple colors. This too is a work in progress as I continue to fiddle with my perspectives.

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MetalTV

One thing that’s been lingering in my mind since last week was the number of times everyone kept describing the new Metal platform as providing “Console” quality graphics. That’s pretty great and I’m looking forward to seeing some powerful iPad and iPhone games but how would this impact on the rumored updated AppleTV. There are lots of rumors that Apple has teams working on the next AppleTV and it is going to get more than a face lift. What if game developers, using Metal and the next Apple chip could push enough pixels to actually be in the ballpark with existing game systems (or at least close behind) and Apple put it’s weight behind a game controller? These things seemed inconceivable until last week’s Keynote but now I’ve got to wonder. Maybe the push for Metal was more about the AppleTV than iOS.

PDFpen’s “Get a Little, Give a Lot” Promotion

Over the years, I’ve become friends with the team at Smile Software. Smile is a group of incredibly smart people trying to do do right for their customers and the world at large. This is why their latest promotion came as no surprise to me.

Right now, if you buy PDFpen from Smile’s website, you’ll get 20% off and Smile will donate a copy to your favorite non-profit of choice. They’re calling it “Get a Little, Give a Lot.” If you haven’t bought PDFpen yet, this is your chance to get a deal and help someone out.

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Jazz Friday: Ruby, My Dear

That's right. Monk even looked cool in a red wagon. — That’s right. Monk even looked cool in a red wagon.

Thelonious Monk composed Ruby, My Dear for his first love, Rubie Richardson. I first heard the song when I about twelve. At that point I was listening to jazz, but nothing like this. Monk’s complex chords and melodies floored me. This song was where I discovered Monk. There are a lot of recordings of Ruby, My Dear but my favorite is this one, with Monk and John Coltrane together. Coltrane’s forceful melody with Monk’s introspective chords are sublime.

If you’d like to hear me play Ruby, My Dear, today’s your lucky day. I recorded this in Garage Band with my Yamaha MIDI keyboard. I didn’t get cute and fix any notes. I just pressed the red button and started playing. It’s not particularly good but was played with a lot of love for this song and Monk.

Home Screens: Tim Stringer

This week features my pal Tim Stringer (Website)(Twitter). Tim is a productivity consultant at Technically Simple and just launched his own website on teaching OmniFocus called, appropriately Learn OmniFocus. Okay Tim, show us your home screen.

What are some of your favorite apps?

OmniFocus 2

OmniFocus 2 has a proud place on my dock. I find it’s an elegant and convenient app for referencing and updating my projects and actions on the go.

Drafts

I’m also a big fan of Drafts. It’s my go-to app when I need to capture something and don’t have time to worry about where it belongs.

Fantastical 2

I’ve evaluated other calendar apps and keep coming back to Fantastical. It strikes a near perfect balance between style and functionality.

Soulver

Another gem is Soulver. I use it regularly for quick calculations on both my Macs and iOS devices and like how my data is seamlessly synced between my devices via iCloud.

Day One

Day One is the georgeous app that has helped motivate me to journal on a regular basis. I sometimes write Day One entries on my iPad and Macs and appreciate the convenience of accessing my virtual journal from anywhere.

Habit List

Habit List is another beautifully crafted app. I’ve been using it regularly since January 1, 2013 and this app has been instrumental in helping me cultivate some constructive new habits.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Instacast

I admitted to being a bit of a podcast junkie when I shared my home screens a couple of years back. Not much has changed on that front, except that Instacast is now my podcast app of choice. I was drawn to the visual design of this app as well as its ability to sync with Instacast for Mac.

What is the app you are still missing?

I’m still waiting for an app that lets me point my iPhone’s camera at something, such as a tree or an exotic sports car I see parked on the street, and get detailed information on whatever it is that’s grabbing my attention. Though, I’d just rather that this app not be tied to a database of people. I like to get to know folks the old fashioned way.

How many times a day do you use your iPhone?

It really depends on my circumstances. I tend to refer to my iPhone quite frequently when I’m out and about here in Vancouver or traveling the world, but my treasured device often lies relatively dormant when I’m at home, where I tend to favor my Macs and iPad.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone?

I appreciate having a good quality camera in my pocket. I’m planning to upgrade my iPhone 5 when Apple releases the next generation of iPhones and can only imagine what improvements Apple will make to the camera.

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

I would add the option to store dictation libraries on iOS devices, to allow people to dictate text even when they’re not connected to the Internet. While I’m at it, I would have words appear on screen as they’re spoken. I’ve gotten use to having these features in Mac OS 10.9 “Mavericks” and know many people who would gladly give up some storage space on their iOS devices for this functionality.

What’s your wallpaper and why?

I use a simple, grey grid pattern for my wallpaper. This graphic matches my iPhone 5’s black frame nicely and keeps the focus on the beautiful app icons that designers worked hard to create.

Anything else you’d like to share?

I have a total of three home screens. The first contains the apps that I use most frequently and consists of 12 apps right on the home screen and four folders: “News/Read”, “On the Move”, “Social” and “More…”. The contents of these folders varies somewhat depending on my circumstances. For example, if I were jetting across the Great White North, I might have the “Air Canada” or “WestJet” apps in my “On the Move” folder and if I were enjoying some time at Macworld/iWorld I would temporarily add the “Macworld/iWorld” event app to my “More…” folder for easy access. The second home screen contains my less frequently used apps grouped into folders, that I most often launch the iOS search feature, and the third home screen houses the App Store app as well as any apps that I’m currently evaluating.

Thanks Tim.

Eating a Little Crow with iWork Collaboration

I wrote a few weeks ago about my less-than-impressive experiments using iCloud collaboration to work on a Pages document with a client. Following that post, I received a few emails from readers explaining that I was doing it wrong. In order to make collaboration work, I needed to not be using the Mac Pages client but instead we both needed to be working directly in the web browser.

Today I was on the phone with that same Mac-savvy client and we decided to try the experiment again. I started a file in Pages and sent him an iCloud link. However, this time I then closed down the Pages application and logged into my own iCloud.com account and accessed the web version of Pages. We both got logged in and I was pleasantly surprised to learn that collaboration, when both parties are in the web version, works pretty great. We were both typing as we were talking, changing font sizes, and otherwise mucking about in our document and it was showing up on both screens in real time. So Pages collaboration does work so long as you don’t use the native app.

This is good news. Now you can collaborate on documents without Google Docs. I’m going to be exploring this further but there is promise. It is kind of wonky that I can’t use the native Mac app but in fairness, I don’t use Google Docs out of a native app either. I can understand how adding that extra layer of getting this data out of the web and into the native app can gum up the works.

For giggles, I also tried collaborating from the native Pages app on the iPad with the other person on the web and that didn’t work any better than when I was in the native Mac version of Pages. I got the same delays and messages asking me to approve changes that took place two minutes earlier.

While my initial post was correct for anyone using a native app version of Pages, collaboration can work through iCloud so long as everyone is sitting at a browser window.

John Oliver Teaches Net Neutrality

Give this video 13 minutes and you’ll understand why net neutrality is a big deal.

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Apple’s Third Act

“The ways Apple is opening up app access to iOS in particular will change the experience for users more than any single OS feature. And it will happen in unexpected ways, because those developers are very, very clever, and tend to think of approaches that nobody—not even the people at Apple who enable them—has anticipated.”

-Jason Snell

Jason Snell is one of the most insightful people writing about Apple anywhere. When I first heard of his promotion at IDG, I worried that he’d be so busy managing, we’d not hear his voice as much. In fact, things are better because he now gets to write more introspective pieces like this one.

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