MPU Episode 200 Live on Sunday 10am PST

KatieFloyd and I will be recording episode 200 of the Mac Power Users this Sunday June 22 at 10am PST. We’ve got lots of plans for this show and we’ll be broadcasting live on 5by5. You can find more information, including how to listen remotely or alternate timezones at 5by5.tv/schedule.

Show 200 is going to be out of the ordinary and fun including a look back on Mac Power Users over the years. If you have any general questions for David or I, curious about the show, or just want to share some of your favorite MPU moments or how the show has helped you, please send those to feedback@macpowerusers.com and we’ll try to include them.

Giving the WiFi a Kick


There’s a bench about 200 yards from my office that I’ll sit and work at a few times a week. The trouble is that it is just close enough to hold a really poor WiFi signal. When the iPhone has a WiFi signal, it is pretty resistant to dropping it, even when you’d be better off on LTE. My solution is to give the WiFi a kick. I just flip up Control Center and press the WiFi button twice, essentially toggling it. Even though the WiFI is off only a fraction of a second, the office signal is so weak that my iPhone knows better than to try and connect and leaves me on LTE. If I just turn the WiFi off, I inevitably forget to turn it back on when I return to the office and end up using cell data when the phone stops connecting to WiFi. By toggling, I temporarily drop the WiFi but get it back when I return to the office.

Name Your Own Price Bundle with PathFinder and Fantastical


StackSocial’s got a new “Name Your Own Price” bundle. With these bundles, they pull together a collection of great Mac software and then allow customers to submit their own price. This particular bundle includes some favorites including Path Finder, Fantastical, Gemini, Disk Label, and more. If you pay over the average price, currently $10.31, you get the whole package. (The recommended price is $49). If you pay less than the average price, you’ll get just three apps.

This deal is pretty remarkable even at the recommended price considering I paid $40 for Path Finder (and considered it a bargain in light of its utility). Head over to StackSocial and check it out. I’m going to buy in for the Gemini and SyncMate licenses since I’ve been thinking about both apps for some time now. This is an affiliate link so I’ll get a small cut if you buy through this link. Thanks for that.

 

The Miles Davis Film


Don Cheadle is doing an Indiegogo campaign to fund a movie about Miles Davis. Miles has both the brilliance and flaws required to make an interesting movie. I grew up obsessed with his older music and not so interested in his then-modern fusion stuff, which I’d argue really hasn’t held up over the years the way his early stuff does. I finally got a chance to see him live and he spent the entire set playing his red trumpet and facing the drummer. Only Miles.

The movie’s campaign description says they’ll be focussing on a “very specific point in his life”, which seems to be the way people do bio movies these days. I actually prefer this. They can go a lot deeper with the characters when focussing on a short period than the usual “… and then he/she did this” biopic. I hope this gets made and portrays Miles honestly, red trumpet and all.

Can Apple Deliver on the Promised New iCloud Services?

Now that WWDC is over and we’ve all had a chance to digest Apple’s announcements, I’ve been thinking about Apple and the cloud. Right up until WWDC, there were several questions in my mind.

1. Does Apple realize how important cloud data is to the future of iOS and the Mac?

This question seems silly in hindsight but right up until a few weeks ago, I wasn’t even sure this was on their radar. It seemed as if every few years Apple announced some new semi-cloudy initiative but things never really changed. It felt as if this were an issue that received lip service but no actual attention. That changed this year with Apple not only announcing some very aggressive cloud tools but also committing to use these very cloud tools for their own software tools (including picture management).

2. Is Apple working on catching up with cloud services?

I use the term “catching up” intentionally. While there are many areas for which Apple remains an industry leader, providing fast, reliable cloud services is not one of them. Moreover, because they are so secretive, we had no idea whether they were taking steps to improve the situation or sitting around convincing each other this isn’t a big deal. (See point one above.) 2014 WWDC’s announcements including iCloud Drive, CloudKit, and the initiative to store all of our photo libraries on their servers answers this question. They have been working on it and they’ve got some pretty big aspirations, which leads to the last question.

3. Can Apple deliver worry-free cloud services?

All of the promise of WWDC will be forgotten if these new services are slow, unreliable, or otherwise not up to snuff. This is the part we are waiting on. While the narrative that Apple can’t do the cloud is fun enough, it’s not really true. They serve a lot of data every day through their app stores. Pieces of iCloud, like contact and calendar sync, have always reliably worked and they include millions of users. Apple’s cloud problem, in my mind at least, has always involved pushing big blocks of data. Does anybody remember how bad iDrive was at moving anything bigger than a Pages file?  

In fairness, this question will not get a definitive answer on day one when all of this goes live. You can’t reliably load test these types of services for hundreds of millions of users. You do your best, stock up on duct tape, and then you push the green button and stand by. I’m certain there will be some hiccups. However, at some point in the not too distant future, we all will make a decision whether services like iCloud Drive are just as reliable as Dropbox or not. Only in that final judgment will we be able to answer this last question. 

Sponsor: MindNode for iOS and Mac




I’m pleased to welcome MindNode as a new sponsor at MacSparky.com. While I played with mind maps for years, I never fully appreciated them until I got an iPad. Now I’m a true believer. I’ve come to rely on MindNode for all of my mind mapping these days. It has a simple, clean interface and syncs over iCloud with zero hassles. Using MindNode, I can start a mind map on my iPad, polish it up on my Mac, and then add a few nodes over lunch on my phone all without any file management.

I keep MindNode in my iPad dock and spend time in the app every day as I plan ideas and big projects. Currently, I’ve got MindNode mind maps for the next MacSparky Field Guide, an extended letter I have to write for the day job, two legal briefs, and a series of articles I want to write for Macworld. Jumping into MindNode for little bursts of brainstorming allow me to properly cook all these ideas and projects before I start digging in on them. I’ve written about MindNode before. MindNode is an essential tool for me and if you haven’t got on the mind mapping bandwagon yet, go get yourself a copy and try it for yourself. 


∞

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.