Mobile Malware

I think using Apple software makes me vulnerable to malware. After so many years of driving a Mac without virus software, I have this sense of invulnerability that will probably end up biting me in the ass someday. 

Until the last year, I gave no thought to malware on mobile devices. However, mobile platforms (at least some mobile platforms) are becoming a target. As much as limited nature of iOS can vex me, I don’t ever want to deal with malware on my iOS devices. I don’t envy Google and Apple in the task of keeping mobile safe.

Home Screen: Chris Sauvé


Chris Sauve Headshot.png

This week’s home screen post features Chris Sauvé. (Website) (Twitter)When Chris isn’t creating brilliant scripts (like that OmniFocus Template script I gushed about a few weeks ago), he’s busy finishing up computer science and business degrees. So Chris, show us your home screen.


Chris Sauve Homescreen Screenshot.PNG

What are some of your favorite apps?

Looking at my home screen, I realize that there are few apps that I really love, but the ones I do are absolutely vital to my ability to continue to operate as a functional human being. There’s a group of five apps without which I would be particularly lost:

Transit: finds nearby bus routes and gives the next few arrival times for each, all updated in real-time with the buses’ location data. Since I don’t care for owning a car, I rely on the bus (and, by extension, this app) to get everywhere. I just wish it would prevent me from waiting until 2 minutes before the bus arrives to start getting ready but, alas, the solutions to some problems lay outside the realm of technology.

Instacast: I need my podcast-y goodness to get through those aforementioned bus rides, and Instacast delivers better than any other app I’ve used.

Scratch: I like the multitude of options in Drafts, but Scratch wins the spot on my dock precisely because of its more limited feature set. I love how quick and painless it makes my key text-related activities: appending text to a file in Dropbox and sending OmniFocus items via the Mail Drop service.

1Password: even if I weren’t relying on 1Password to generate and store strong and unique passwords, I would need it just to compensate for my pathetic ability to remember such mundane information. Passwords suck, but 1Password makes them bearable.

Dropbox: I use this app constantly. When you have everything scanned and stored in Dropbox, you can create some real “wow” moments for your coworkers by quickly pulling up some document you needed in the moment. If I remember to put things in Dropbox, I don’t have to remember anything else, which is exactly the kind of help I need from my phone.

One key app missing from that list: OmniFocus. I love OmniFocus and have dedicated a substantial portion of mydevelopment and writing to helping people use it better, but the iPhone app is, in my opinion, the weakest of the three versions by a long shot. I love getting notifications when out-and-about or when something becomes overdue, but I think there is still a lot of design and feature potential to be squeezed out of the iPhone version.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

I don’t know that I feel particularly guilty about it, but I love opening up Reeder and seeing what’s new from my nerd family around the interwebs. It’s tough to find folks with similar interests to mine, so I really lean on those relationships, real or imagined, we can create with those online.

I’m Canadian, so the NHL GameCenter is most certainly a guilty pleasure (particularly now, in playoff season). Finally,Twitterrific gives me my Twitter fix more times per day than I care to admit.

What is the app you are still missing?

I do a lot of visual design projects and have a pile of images of websites, apps, and print work that help get the wheels turning when I need inspiration. On my Mac, I use Pixa to manage these images, which lets you sort by color and automatically adds the unmodified images to Dropbox folders. Something similar on iOS would be fantastic. I’d also love a text editor with similar features to Folding Text on the Mac, and a better way to manage and explore code snippets (to learn about a new language, for example) would be a welcome addition to my iPhone.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

I love how restricted to core iOS experience is. The Mac is a playground to which I venture far too often when I am frustrated with, or afraid of, tackling the problems with the next thing I’m trying to build. I can (and have) spent hours fiddling with the unending customizability of OS X. iOS, on the other hand, forces you to get to work: there’s only so many times you can change your wallpaper or rearrange your app icons, and that’s an incredibly good thing when you’ve got a mind with a penchant for getting dangerously off track.

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

Everyone enjoys voicing their pet peeves/ hopes and dreams for Apple, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t share in that pastime. However, if I were in charge at Apple, the only thing I would do is make sure that the company stays true to what makes so many of us love it. I’d make sure the company continued to sweat the little things, even if that means pushing out fewer announcements than competitors. I’d make sure that they continue to shame their peers in making their products accessible those traditionally marginalized by technology: the young and the old, the visually and hearing impaired users, and so on. I’d make sure that every bit of hardware and software stays opinionated and true to itself.

The best thing about Apple is that they are strongly idealistic: I believe that they let out the doors of Cupertino only those things that they consider beautiful, that they would be proud to use themselves, that they believe
, deeply and honestly, make the lives of their users better. The worst thing about Apple is that, in the end, it’s just another company. So if I were in charge of Apple, I would try to make sure that the business junk stays in the background where it belongs, and that the creators continue to be empowered to built more beautiful things.

Anything else you’d like to share?

Thank you, David, for all that you have given back to the Apple community. I wish everyone were as passionate and dedicated as you to building amazing things.

Thanks Chris.

 

Paperless Version 1.3



Paperless.png


Paperless version 1.3 is available for download in the iBookstore and via PDF. This update includes the new Scansnap iX500 scanner, including a new movie. There are also updated sections on NeatCloud, PDFpen for Mac version 6, and some additional services. Since I finished this update, there have been even more new improvements (like yesterday’s Hazel update) so version 1.4 is already in the works. 

To download this new version in the iBookstore you need to delete the book and re-download it. (I know. It is a big file.) Because Paperless pre-dates the book-updating mechanism, it appears there are issues. (I’m working on this for 1.4.)

Thanks again everyone for supporting me. My plan is to keep doing incremental updates for free with the Field Guides and then do a second edition a few years after original release. Enjoy.

 

Hazel 3.1 with Date Matching

I often receive inquiries concerning ways to automatically pull a date from the text of a PDF document and insert it into the file name. This has, to some degree, become a Arthurian quest to automate file naming and use accurate dates. Since I first released Paperless, I’ve had several readers send in suggestions that involved very complex AppleScripts, multiple Hazel rules, and other devices that never quite seem to work.

Today, Paul Kim released Hazel version 3.1. The new version includes an improved content matching feature to include dates. This seemingly benign feature is anything but. It allows you to search the contents of a document for date formatted text. You can even set the type of date format you’re looking for. For instance 6/19/13 or June 19, 2013.

If Hazel finds a date, it will then retain that date and save it, in essence, as a variable. You can then apply that variable later to the file. In this case, I’m going to use the date in the file name. Hazel even corrects the date format, converting the slashes to dashes. It’s like magic. This new feature got me so excited, I made a short video explaining how to do it. My thanks to Johnny Knittle for providing the music.

Hazel 3.1 from David Sparks on Vimeo.

Easier Conference Call Planning with TextExpander

Organizing conference calls used to be a lot of trouble. It required a pay service, multiple telephone numbers and access codes (that were always changing), and the simple act of getting word out to everyone about the details always took more time than it should have. Times are changing. I recently started using freeconferencecalls.com for conference calls. It’s a great, free service that gives you a single call-in number and access code that never changes. You don’t have to schedule anything with the service. You just send out the number, access code, and time to your call participants and get back to work.


textexpander-3-app-icon-256x256.png

At first I just kept these numbers in my contacts list and used a bit of copy and paste when necessary. After doing this a few times, I realized TextExpander was a much better solution. I’ve now put together a clever little TextExpander snippet that sends out the conference number, access code, and date and time for the call.

I’ve also added a fill-in snippet for the conference call agenda and a pop-up menu for the estimated length of time. I find that if you give people an agenda and time estimate going into a conference call, you’re much more likely to stay on the agenda and complete it within the estimated time.

Now when I have a new conference call to setup, I just open up an email to all the participants, fire off the TextExpander snippet, and send it off. In addition to saving me a lot of time, I think it scares the other participants to the call just a little bit.

I’ve actually got two of these snippets because I have two freeconferencecall.com accounts. One is for the day job (which gets shared with other participants at my office) and the other is for MacSparky.

Here is the snippet in action:


Screen Shot 2013-06-16 at 1.55.21 PM.png

You can download the TextExpander snippet here.

 

 

 

 

Keyboard Maestro Version 6


kmicon.png

 Keyboard Maestro is one of my favorite Mac utilities. They’ve recently released version 6 and it is a really great update. If you’re unaware of this application, you need to check it out. It lets you automate nearly anything on your Mac. The new version includes some great nerdy fodder. For instance, you can now trigger a macro when you plug in a USB device. Do you have a ScanSnap scanner and want the ScanSnap software to load when you plug it in? Keyboard Maestro can make that happen. The new version also can run macros when your Mac connects to a new network. For instance, if you want certain application to run when you arrive at work, Keyboard Maestro can do that. I also dig the new icon.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. We are going to do an updated Mac Power Users show on this application. (We last covered it in 2011.) If you want to get ahead of the curve, check it out now. If you bought version 5 from the Mac App Store (like me), you need to transfer your license and buy an upgrade from the developer directly. There is no way this app could comply with Apple’s sandboxing rules.

 

iWork for iCloud: Not Enough

iWork ’09 for the Mac released on January 6, 2009. 2009! That is 1,619 days ago. I use the heck out of iWork. In an industry that thrives on Microsoft Word, I surreptitiously write legal documents in Pages. I run a legal practice and publishing business out of Numbers and I largely pay for my shoes giving Keynote presentations. You could say I’m invested.

So when Roger Rosner took the stage on Monday and explained he was going to talk about iWork, I felt like I was finally getting the update for Mac that I’ve been waiting for so long. I know the tech world is full of hyperbole but in this case the term “so long” is correct.

In January 2009, when iWork ’09 was released, I was thrilled. They added some revolutionary new features (like Magic Move and Instant Alpha) that immediately both made me more productive and made my work look better. It was love at first sight. By early 2010 I was ready to fall in love again. What new feature would iWork get to make me look smarter? Then Steve took the stage to introduced the world to the iPad and a fully working version of iWork for iPad.

“That’s okay”, I told myself. “They didn’t have time to make a new Mac version. In 2011, I’m going to get a new iWork for my Mac and I’m sure it will be double the sexy.” Then 2011 rolled around and iWork for iPad got a lot better but there was no new Mac version. Indeed that has been the case every year since 2009. Apple has iterated repeatedly on the iOS versions, taking them a long way. I’ve been consoling myself on this lack of Mac update with noticeable improvements on the iPad. Now I can even track changes in Pages on the iPad. Incredible.

Nevertheless, I still look at the iWork ’09 box on my shelf and think wistfully about four years’ worth of innovations that never shipped. “This year”, I told myself as WWDC approached. “This is the year that I will get a new version of iWork for Mac.” What we got instead was a promise of some future update for the Mac and a demonstration of iWork for iCloud, a product which, in its current form, I will almost never use.

Don’t get me wrong. What Apple did with iWork in a web browser is impressive. I didn’t think it was possible to pull off the intricate graphic operations they demonstrated at WWDC in a browser. Nevertheless, the web versions of the iWork apps aren’t as good as the native Mac versions. I won’t be able to manage tiny granular animations and object transitions the way I can on my Mac. Those four year old features I love aren’t going be in the iCloud versions any time soon.

I understand web apps are a large part of the future of computing and the advantage that comes with any modern web browser—even one on a Windows machine—running iWork. However, this isn’t something us iWork users in the trenches need right now. We need power and innovation on the platform we use every day. We need a new Mac version.

Also missing from the iWork for iCloud presentation was any mention of the best reason to put an office app on the web, collaboration. I’ve never been happy with the feature set of any of the web-based office solutions. They don’t have the features we get with native apps and are often ugly as sin. There is, however, one redeeming feature in collaboration. Multiple people can work on the same online document at once. Google has mastered this so that I can write one paragraph while watching a colleague (or two or three colleagues) write another paragraph on the same page. iCloud for iWork doesn’t support this. Maybe online collaboration is on the roadmap for iWork for iCloud but there was no mention of it on Monday.

What I’d really like is for Apple to stop toying with my heart. It’s okay to start building web versions and continue to improve upon the iOS versions. All of that is important. However, before doing anything else, deliver a new version of iWork for the Mac that throws me head over heels in love all over again.