As an admitted Star Wars fan, I couldn’t help buying this book from the iBookstore. It uses the iBooks Author tools that I so love for my own Field Guides and includes tons of great photo galleries, interviews, and outtakes. If Episode V is your favorite one (and shouldn’t it be for all of us?), then check this book out. Just make sure to be careful when you read it because every time I open it up, time seems to stop.
MPU 176: Everyday Automation and MPU Live
This week’s episode of the Mac Power users is out. In it Katie and I share some of our favorite automation tips.
We’ve also decided to add an extra show to the schedule every month where we’ll be dealing with listener feedback, doing some listener questions and mini workflow interviews and field a chat room while we record. We’re calling it MPU Live and we are going to do it at 10AM PST on the first Saturday of each month starting with March 1, 2014. If you’ve got something to share with us, send it in.
Home Screen: Casey Liss
This week features Casey Liss (Twitter)(Website). Casey is a combination straight man/voice of reason on the Accidental Tech Podcast and a very nice fellow. So Casey, show us your home screen.
Favorite Apps
My favorites are the ones I get the most use out of. That list begins with Tweetbot, which I use more than I should. I also quite likeSilo, which I use to keep shared lists with my wife; also, Check the Weather to, well, check the weather. Finally, Fantastical, which is far and away the best calendar app I’ve used.
Guilty Pleasures
Definitely GIFwrapped, which was just released. I have an unhealthy love of animated GIFs, and GIFWrapped lets you get easy access to your animated GIF folder in your Dropbox. (Because, obviously, everyone has an animated GIF folder in their Dropbox). You can copy images or get URLs in no time.
What’s Missing?
Tons of things I don’t know I need yet.
How many times a day do you use your I use your iPhone
Way, way too many. I work as a software developer, so I’m on my Mac all day long during the work day; the iPhone gets a reprieve then. Outside of work, I’m working on being content with not being actively entertained 110% of the time. As much as I love my phone, appreciating the world immediately around me is far more important.
Favorite Feature?
Absolutely its flexibility. The iPhone is truly a pocket computer. The iPhone’s lack of physical distraction from the main input device–the screen–allows it to be remarkably adaptable to any situation.
For a more boring yet concrete answer, Do Not Disturb has been wonderful for allowing more consistent sleep.
If you were the boss at Apple, what would you do?
I would love for Apple to loosen the reins a wee bit for developers. While iOS shines in large part because of its simplicity, there is so much power lurking beneath the surface, waiting to come out. Some are showing us how to make amazing things happen despite the handcuffs. That said, some proper inter-app communication could really give iOS the shove from something to work around versus something to workwith.
It’s a fine line to walk–an “anything goes” attitude would actually be terrible. However, with limits, inter-app communication could really make iOS into a workhorse.
Thanks Casey.
Embracing the Past, 30 Years of Mac
There has always been an interesting dichotomy between Apple and Mac Users over history. As users, we relish in little trips down memory lane about the original control panel or how bleak things were in the 90s. It has been a journey for us all and we can’t wait to talk about it.
Traditionally Apple has, at least publicly, shunned these nostalgic trips. The logic was that it is a tough, competitive world and Apple needs to focus on the future, always. There are several reports that Apple sent its own collection of historic Apple hardware to Stanford to make room. Apple all but ignored the Mac’s 25th birthday, which made me a little sad.
I understand why Apple feels compelled to stay focussed on the future but also very much appreciate the love they’ve been giving to the Mac for its 30th birthday. In case you’ve missed out, they’ve got a special website set up for the event with plenty of cool (and nostalgic) images and stories. They made one video all about the Mac’s impact and another video (shot entirely with the iPhone 5s) giving us a day in the life of Apple products shot on the Mac’s birthday. If you haven’t already, set aside 20 minutes and go celebrate 30 years of Mac with Apple.
OCR with Hazel
A few years ago I wrote about doing optical character recognition with AppleScript and PDFpen. Remarkably, it still works. Katie Floyd had a great idea of incorporating that script into a Hazel rule that looks for PDFs without OCR and performing the OCR automagically. She just published a how-to.
MPU 175: Workflows with Federico Viticci
This week’s Mac Power Users episode is ready for download full of great Mac and iOS tips from Federico Viticci from Mac Stories. We had a lot of fun recording this episode and it came out great.
Sponsor: Rocket Matter with Free Evernote Book
This week MacSparky.com is sponsored by Rocket Matter. Rocket Matter is a fantastic cloud-based solution for running a law practice. You set up an account and log in and get back to work. You don’t need to buy your own server. You don’t need to install local updates. You just work and let Rocket Matter do all that back-end stuff for you. Rocket Matter continues to grow with some great features like billing, document storage, calendaring, and more. If you are putting your documents somewhere else on the cloud, like Box, Dropbox, or Evernote, they’ve got full integration with those services. They even have an iPhone app that lets you accesses and manipulate all of your data.
But there is more! This week there’s a free ebook. Heroic Lawyering is all about running a cloud based service business like a boss. If you are interested in the cloud, his book is worth checking out. Go download the it now and check out Rocket Matter for yourself.
Ken Ray’s EYE Chart
For years Ken Ray has delivered the daily dose of Mac news with his Mac OS Ken podcast. If podcast listening isn’t your thing, Ken now puts out the same content with a magazine, the EYE Chart. Ken is one of the good guys in the Mac community and I’m really happy about all of his success.
Podcast Appearance: Beyond the To-Do List
I recently appeared on Erik FIsher’s Beyond the To-Do List podcast where I talked about coping with email and getting work done. While I acknowledge how boring that sounds, I promise I made it absolutely riveting.
Rediscovering Launch Center Pro
I’ve had an on-again-off-again relationship with Launch Center Pro (Website)(iTunes). At a certain level this app really speaks to me. It has this remarkable ability to make iPhone apps do cool automation-style things despite the fact Apple has never been to sweet on the idea of inter-app communications in iOS. On the other hand it always felt just a little bit too fiddly for me and a little bit too slow in launching and operating for me. Also, because I use Drafts for so much, Launch Center Pro just never really stuck.
This week the developer released a separate iPad version (iTunes) of the app which led me to go back and play with Launch Center Pro again. The app launches and operates faster than it ever did for me before. That may have more to do with my A7 iPhone 5S than anything else but the removal of that delay makes the app more interesting to me. They’ve also cleaned up the interface and made setting up your Launch Center screens easier than before. I’ve been fiddling with it for a few days in my dock and this time it may just stick. I’m using it more as a platform for launching semi-important, non-home screen apps than anything else but I’m also adding some automation steps. It is not replacing Drafts but instead solving other problems. I’m going to leave it in my dock and report back in a few weeks.