Home screens: Don Southard

Writer and programmer Don Southard (Twitter) is someone to watch. He recently released his Watermarker App and I really like his writing at MacStories. Today Don was kind of enough to share his home screen.

What are some of your favorite apps?

When it comes to iOS apps, I am addicted to the Productivity category in the App Store. You won’t find many games on my phone. As of writing this, the only game currently on my phone is Kingdom Rush (an insanely hard Tower Defense game). I am pretty sure I have tried almost every todo app available and a part of me has loved every one of them. However, only the best ones stay on my iOS devices and I have no qualms deleting apps that don’t make the cut. Some of my favorite apps include OmniFocus, Drafts, Pythonista, and Launch Center Pro. I use Pythonista for scripting simple actions like uploading images to a web server and I use Launch Center Pro for quickly launching those scripts. OmniFocus and Drafts have also become reliable staples in my iOS workflows. I have an IT day job in addition to my blogging and software development projects so I almost always have a lot going on, OmniFocus is my trusted system that keeps me on track. Drafts is my go to solution for text notes. At one time I tried to keep every note and sync them back to my Mac with Dropbox. I quickly realized that I didn’t care about these scraps of information long term, so for me, Drafts app was a perfect solution for working with quick one-off notes.

Despite the amount of work I can get done on my phone, my most used app is more of a distraction. It is a wonderful Twitter client called Tweetbot. No matter what I am doing on my phone, it is a guarantee that I will check Tweetbot at least once before setting it back down. I truly love being apart of the Mac community and our connection is primarily through Twitter so having a reliable client that I enjoy using is very important to me. Tweetbot fulfills my every requirement of a great client.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

My guilty pleasure would have to be Rdio. I enjoy being able to stalk my friends music habits which is both fun and addicting. I have found some really great albums through Rdio’s social integration. Music helps keep me motivated while I’m working, I even have a specific playlist just for when I’m writing code. It is a great service that allows me to keep music locally and in the cloud, yet it stays synched across all of my devices.

What is the app you are still missing?

In a perfect world, the one app I would love to see on iOS is Alfred. I have no idea what that would look like or how it would function but no other app has changed the way I work like Alfred has and I would love to have that experience on a mobile device. I know Apple has strict rules in place that would prevent a powerful app like Alfred from running on iOS but a guy can dream right?

How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?

I wish the iPhone had some way to measure that because I would love to know, The number would likely be astronomical. I am constantly checking my phone, responding to emails or iMessages. Even at home on the couch, my iPhone is never further than my pocket. My iPad on the other hand, rarely gets touched. I am one of the few that have yet to find a good use for the iPad that isn’t better suited for either my MacBook or iPhone.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

My favorite feature, without a doubt, is the Verizon LTE in the iPhone 5. I was a long time AT&T customer until I jumped ship to Sprint with the promise of unlimited 3G data. I had such a horrible experience with speed and connectivity that I lunged at the opportunity to be on Verizon’s LTE network when upgrading to the iPhone 5. It is really quite amazing to have a device in my pocket with Internet speeds twice that of my home Cox Cable Internet. Also, the Retina display and AirPlay are two very close runners-up.

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

I would personally change the “cold shoulder” attitude that Apple has been giving to power users over the past couple of years. I would focus some of Apple’s resources towards revitalizing both the Finder and Terminal. I would extend Applescript, not deprecate it. I would revert Apple’s stance on sandboxing Mac apps but still maintain the Developer ID program. I am a Mac nerd at heart and I would bring that characteristic back to the Mac platform if I had the opportunity to run the company.

Anything else you’d like to share?

I would just like to thank you David for inviting me to share my home screen and for letting me talk about some of the apps I use everyday.

Thanks Don.

On Productivity

Below is a reprint of an essay on productivity I wrote for the the Read & Trust magazine last October.

Productivity is a loaded word

Superficially, productivity implies some super-human skill to keep busy where other mortals can not. It is the polar opposite of the dilly-dally. I can’t go to the park today. I need to be productive. I want to be more productive. Don’t you? If not, what’s wrong with you?

For the longest time, I thought productivity was something I could conquer. I sure tried to conquer it. I put my head down and ran straight at it full tilt. I repeatedly bashed my skull into it for years. I can look at so much folly in my life arising from this private war with that slippery productivity.

When I should have focussed on why I’d lost interest in engineering, instead I obsessed over learning to use an engineering calculator. As a young lawyer, I spent days generating forms that I’d never use. My life is a long series of fool’s errands all in the name of productivity. Productivity gave me a perfect out when I didn’t want to pay attention to the direction my ship was heading.

I never grew out of this personality flaw. I’m still likely to stick unfortunate body parts into the productivity bear trap. Maybe it is the latest app or technique or book that everybody swears is the answer to finally getting my shit together. They are all so tempting to me. I don’t think I’ll ever entirely get over it. I’m like a reformed alcoholic trying to walk my way down Bourbon Street without falling off the wagon.

What I have obtained, however, is a degree of wisdom. I accept that productivity crap is my own personal kryptonite. I consider myself enlightened in this way.

Having made every mistake, I can testify that for a lot of people, productivity is what people talk about when they are unknowingly running in circles. For a lot of us, it has become what we do when we are having trouble making tough decisions.

Knowledge is power. Now that I’ve accepted this personal foible, I pay attention. If I’m suddenly much more concerned about sorting and organizing projects than doing them, red flags go up. I’ve got to examine things closely. Usually there is a reason. Maybe the project itself isn’t something I want to do any more. Maybe the project no longer makes sense. Or maybe it is just really fracking hard and I’m putting it off by finding some way to be more productive.

If you bang your head into this enough times, eventually it sinks in. Productivity is not something to conquer. Indeed, like some mystic religion (or my sister’s cat), the way to get productive is not through pursuit but instead focussing elsewhere.

It was only when I started really thinking about my life that I got productive. As I started choosing my battles and focussing on my own lovely windmills, I really started getting things done. No collection of productivity hacks and software is going to make a difference when you’re heading full speed at that iceberg. Instead put down the fiddly stuff and and pull hard to starboard.

Then, when you are indeed pointing the right direction, do you become productive. At that point, you can even return to your fiddly tools (with moderation) and they can make a difference.

Like I said, productivity is a loaded word.

People vs. Powerpoints

“‘Consistency’ has become a synonym for consistent mediocrity of ‘powerpoints’: the slides covered with text and bullet points.”

At some point we all need to stand up and just start refusing to submit “Powerpoints” to conference materials. Like Aleh, my slide deck is completely unintelligible without me there talking.

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Did You Buy Your Font Today?

Andy Ihnatko turned me on to this years ago. Every New Years Day, every font in ComiCraft’s inventory is marked down to cost a penny per year (this year $20.13). Every year I plunk down my twenty bucks for another and now I’ve got a really nice collection of interesting fonts. This year, Lunar.

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2012

Before jumping into 2013, I want to thank each and every one of you for reading MacSparky.com. It has been an amazing year for me as the podcast and blog both grew bigger than ever and the successful launch of the MacSparky Field Guides. Apple’s “Best of 2012” award for Paperless was the corker. Somebody pinch me.

While I love and appreciate my day job, writing and podcasting for all of you is really what gets my motor revving. In so many ways, MacSparky saved me. When I think about how many great friends and experiences I’ve had as a result of MacSparky, I consider myself perhaps the luckiest guy in the world. Happy New Year everybody.

The OmniFocus Setup and Debut

People often ask me how I manage pull off a day job and all my MacSparky stuff. The simple answer is that I love everything I do, which makes it much easier to get out of bed early and keep cranking widgets.

However, I also need a system, not only to manage all of this but also to help me decide which of this stuff makes the cut. I would not be able to do this without OmniFocus. I love OmniFocus so much that I made a lot of screencasts about it.

This year during Macworld, the Omni Group is having a special couple of events surrounding OmniFocus. The first is called the OmniFocus Setup, where you can get hands-on assistance getting up to speed with OmniFocus. The event is taking place during the afternoon at the Cartoon Art Museum on January 31. In addition to the hands-on help from the Omni Group’s own staff, there will also be a small presentations and a panel by some really smart people like Merlin Mann, Kourosh Dini, Sven Fechner, and others. (They are also crazy enough to give me the mic for a few minutes.)

That evening, there is an additional event, the OmniFocus Debut, where Ken Case, Merlin Mann, and I get to show off OmniFocus 2. Ken has already written about how the new version will incorporate many of my favorite iOS features like forecast and better review. There is more. It is spectacular. Don’t miss out if you are in San Francisco.

The Omni Group is an amazing collection of people dedicated to improving your life with superior software. I often talk about how much I not only love the Omni Group’s products but also the people that make them. Now is your chance to find out why this is true. I’m going to be there for most of the event so if you stop by, make sure to say hello.

MPU118: Resolutions

The latest Mac Power Users episode is live. In it Katie, and I cover some great geek-related resolutions including a tech security audit, using an electronic diary, geek estate planning, locking down social networks, offsite backup, and creating something amazing with an iLife app.

This episode was exclusively sponsored by 1Password.

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Home Screens: DaisyDisk’s Taras Brizitsky

As we enter the new year, I’m going to be posting these home screens more consistently. This week I’m featuring Taras Brizitsky (Twitter), one of the smart fellows behind my favorite Mac drive management app, DaisyDisk. So Taras, show us your home screen.

What are some of favorite apps?

There’re many… 1Password (version 4 looks incredible), Deliveries (I rely on it for tracking packages from eBay), Buy Me a Pie (the best grocery list I’ve used), Panamp (music), Light (yes, it’s a flashlight app; I also have a good “hardware” one), Verbs (IM), Partly Cloudy(weather forecast), Fantastical, Chrome, Tweetbot, Reeder, Sparrow…

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Letterpress (you won’t tell anyone, right?).

What is the app you are still missing?

I’m still looking for good music and video players which are not chained to iTunes.
I just want to listen to the music on the go, not sync, re-sync or move my music collection to iTunes (which doesn’t play well with NAS).

How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?

None to every few minutes, that really depends on what I’m working on.
Sometimes I prefer to leave all my gadgets on a shelf.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

Pocket-sized Web browser. Seriously, this covers most of my needs.
My iPhone is mostly used as a web browser, news reeder, mail checker. And yes, it can make calls (killer, app, huh…). iPad works as a book and news reader and a portable game console. I tried using these devices for writing short texts or drawing and still prefer paper and good old iMac.

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

App switching. Current solution (icons) is even inferior to one of Palm’s webOS.
Notification Center. Either you do have widgets (weather/finance, anyone?) or you don’t.
Camera app. It’s now incredibly cluttered.
Lock screen. Another design abomination…
Siri. She’s unbelievably slow, stupid and useless.
iCloud. There’s a lot of space for improvements.
App integration. Let’s just face a simple fact: files need to be shared between apps.
And, most of all, iBatteryLife. No complains about iPads, but hey, I don’t need a razor-thin iPhone, I need it work longer.

Thanks Taras

iPad for Photographers

Lately I’m doing an increasing amount of photo editing and management on my iPad. It just so happens that Jeff Carlson wrote a really good book about techniques and apps for photography on your iPad. Jeff is one of my favorite tech writers and has a lot of good knowledge to share. Of course there are also some really great photos in the book.

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