Home Screens – Serenity Caldwell


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One of my favorite people to connect with every year at Macworld/iWorld is Serenity Caldwell (Twitter) (Website). Serenity is a regular contributor at Macworld, roller derby badass, and an ebook wizard. She knows more about creating epubs in her pinky than I know in my entire body. So Serenity, show us your home screen.


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What are some of your favorite apps?

I absolutely can’t get by without TweetbotFantasticalDropbox, or iBooks; and the other apps on my home screen all play vital roles, too.

My Twitter interactions are almost solely on my iPhone, so I need a client like Tweetbot to handle the load. (And the lists support! I love lists more than I probably should.) Fantastical keeps me organized, and it’s so easy to use. I even got my mother using it over Thanksgiving!

Dropbox… what can I say about Dropbox that people haven’t already said a million times? Thanks to the app, I always have the documents I need, even on the go. I’ve been knitting a lot recently, and Dropbox’s offline support is perfect for tiny knitting patterns.

iBooks is just a godsend for reading on the go. I used to be a huge book nerd growing up, and I’d always travel with at least one (if not two) books in my bag. The iPhone makes my habits a little less cumbersome, and though I seem to be one of the few, I really love reading on the Retina screen; were it not for iBooks, I don’t think I would have read half the books I did last year. (Also, it incentivizes me to read a chapter of a book while waiting in line instead of just vacantly scrolling through Twitter.)

Moves is my favorite tracker app, though I also have Pedometer++ for a more week-by-week overview. I love the way Moves tells a story with your map data and your walking patterns—it’s almost like keeping a daily journal without having to write down all the particulars. I find just following my map from a given day sparks those memories: “Oh, right, I went and ate sushi with my teammates here, and there was that terrible lounge singer…”

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

You know, I really kind of love playing with Hatch. I’m not usually a big virtual pets person, but the Hatch animations are super cute and very clever, and it’s just an incredibly well built little app.

I’ve also started using Level Money a whole lot to try and better track and curb my spending—though it was hard, during the holidays! I like the attitude it takes, though, and it feels almost like a little game: “Try to see how much money you can avoid spending throughout the week.” I wish it were a tad more flexible about being able to tag income, though—if your income changes on a given month—do a freelance gig, for example—you have to go in and manually add that to your monthly projected income, rather than have it adjust spending totals automatically.

What is the app you are still missing?

I’ve yet to find a fitness logger (for more than steps) that really catches my fancy, though I’ve got a bunch to try that I’ve recently downloaded. (FitStar and Argus, to name some.)

How many times a day do you use your iPhone?

Many times. Probably too many, to be honest. One of my 2014 tech goals is to be a little less glued to the screen, a little more cognizant of the world around. It’s hard to detach, though.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone?

Even though most folks (including me) rarely use it as a telephone, the iPhone is still a great communications tool. I love being able to instantaneously chat with friends and family all over the globe via text messages, pictures, social networks, FaceTime… it’s incredible. I’ve taken FaceTime calls at ball parks and on (grounded) airplanes before. It really makes the device feel magical.

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

Ha ha. Gosh. Well, as a book nerd and epub enthusiast, I’d love to see more work put in on the iBooks app. Apple has taken the ebook format so far in some ways, but support on the iPhone is lackluster compared to the iPad and the Mac. I want to see active work put in on supporting iBooks Author books on the iPhone, and Apple should continue to incorporate the forward-thinking work done by the Webkit team into iBooks’s .epub and .ibooks formats.

Amen sister. Thanks Serenity.

The Drafts Badge


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I generally have a lot of animosity toward iOS app badges. I don’t like apps screaming for my attention. It diverts me from important things, like Strategery. However I was recently bemoaning my frequent problem in the Drafts app where I’ll dictate notes and forget to later process them. MPU listener Conrad pointed out there is a setting that gives the app a big red needy badge with the number of unprocessed notes in my Drafts App. This is an excellent use of a badge in my opinion and was exactly what I needed to make sure I didn’t leave unprocessed notes in Drafts.


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Sonos and AirPlay

Khoi Vinh flirted with Sonos and ultimately gave up on it deciding AirPlay was good enough for him. Since I’ve been talking about my Sonos system on the Mac Power Users, I’ve received a number of emails, tweets, and carrier pidgeons asking this same question. I’d respond that if you have a fully integrated stereo and you want to just play music from your iThingies, AirPlay is good enough and you probably don’t need a Sonos system.

In my case, I had an aging (>20 years old) set of speakers and receiver and I wanted something simple and easy to get music through the whole house. Sonos delivered. It felt like an Apple experience setting it up and it still feels like an Apple experience using it. I’ve now added the subwoofer and my total investment in this system is substantial but I absolutely love the way it improves my experience listening to music and watching movies. In short, I’d do it again.

To answer the question of how you use Sonos with AirPlay, it’s possible but you’ll need an Airport Express. The details are here. I’ve set this up in my own home and use it all the time. I also find myself using the Sonos App quite often to tweek audio settings (particularly for watching movies) and play streaming services. Sonos isn’t cheap but it sure is nice.

ComicBookFonts Sale

The annual sale at Comic Book Fonts has started. Comic Book Fonts has some remarkable fonts that normally sell for hundreds of dollars. They are now all on sale for $20.14 (2014, get it?) I buy a new one every year and find use for these quality fonts in presentations and even some documents. Head over to comicbookfonts.com and get busy. If you haven’t bought it yet, I recommend Hedge Backwards. I use that one all the time. This year I’m trying to decide between Code Monkey and Sign Language

MPU 170: Tech Resolution

The end of the year is upon us and Katie and I share some of our New Year’s tech resolutions in show 170. Topics include network attached storage, less fiddly writing, and more.

Sponsor: Doo.net

This week MacSparky.com is sponsored by Doo.net. Doo offers a complete paperless solution. With your free Doo account you’ll get high quality optical character recognition with automatic language detection and the ability to make your document editable.

Doo also works offline. The OS X version holds all your files locally (and the mobile versions hold all the meta data in a local database) so if you are out of Internet range, you’ve got no troubles. 

Doo is on all major platforms including OS X, iOS (iPhone and iPad), Android, and Windows. Finally, I’d like to congratulate Doo on its recent “Best of 2013” award from iTunes for the iOS iPad version of Doo. Spectacular work by spectacular people. Learn more at Doo.net.

The Saddleback Leather iPad Air Case


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I use the heck out of my iPad and carry it back and forth to work, court, plane trips, family gatherings, and just about everywhere else I go. As a result, I like to keep it in some sort of protective case. When I upgraded to my fancy new iPad Air, I had to leave my beloved and well-worn Dodo case behind. I wasn’t sure where to go next with my new iPad when Saddleback Leather wrote and offered to loan me one of their new leather iPad cases.

I’ve actually been a Saddleback leather customer for a few years now. I love their company motto, They’ll fight over it when you’re dead. I bought one of their wallets years ago (which I still use) and recently, when my decades old briefcase finally gave up the ghost, I ordered a Saddleback Briefcase to replace it. It is the best-made briefcase I’ve ever owned and makes me happy every time I look at it.

Now I’ve been using their leather iPad Air case for a few weeks and it is working out great. The case is well constructed with thick leather and double stitching where it makes sense. The Leather is over-cut, giving a bit of  an edge with the thick leather that acts as a shock absorber when I knock it off the table. (I’ve already done that twice.)


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The iPad Air fits in snugly and the whole case fits nicely in my briefcase.  The final product looks great and I’ve received several compliments on it  already. I’m really looking forward to watching the patina and texture of the case change as the leather ages a bit.

The case secures with two lether straps (no breakable buckles or zippers) that fit into small leather loops sewn into the front. You can bend the front over and reconnect those traps into the loops from the back to give the iPad an angle for lap typing or prop it on a desk to watch a movie. Overall it is a classy, simple design for a top notch leather case. 

The iPad Air version is not yet for sale but I’m told it will be soon. They already have versions for the earlier iPad and iPad mini. You can learn more at saddlebackleather.com