Home Screens: Rene Ritchie


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This year at Macworld I finally got to meet Rene Ritchie (Twitter). Rene publishes iMore, one of the best sources on the web for Apples news, rumors, and tutorials. Rene does an amazing job of sleuthing out details for future Apple products and iMore does some really great tutorials. (Just this week they did a nice piece on iOS message archiving). So Rene, show us your home screen.


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What are some of favorite apps?

Tweetbot and Twitterrific for Twitter. I use Tweetbot to triage @mentions and DMs and respond quickly while I’m out and about or working, and I use Twitterrific for reading the unified stream and linked content when I’m relaxing.

Launch Center Pro is the first third-party app to get on my Dock and stay there. It’s ability to launch actions instead of apps makes it an incredibly fast way to get everywhere I need to go, and do a lot of the basic things I need to do, without the mental overhead of hunting for a specific app, contact, or feature each time.

Fantastical for iPhone lets me enter events into my calendar with incredible ease and speed. It uses natural language, like Siri, but with text instead of voice, and that lets it parse and create stuff literally at the speed of type. Downside: my calendar is now fuller than ever. Jerks.

Dropbox stores my entire Mac documents directory and having it on my iPhone means I’m only ever a network connection and a few taps away from getting to all my stuff, at any time, any where.

1Password is the only way I can mediate the constant battle between convenience and security. My database lives in Dropbox so I can have strong passwords at home and while on the go.

Elements is how I edit text on iOS. It stores in Dropbox so it doesn’t matter where I am, I can pick up and keep working. I can even use Dictation to input ideas on the road. It’s my memory alpha.

Screens lets me VNC into my Macs from my iPhone or my iPad. That it works at all is magic. That it works in so simple, elegant a way is more than magic. (Science!)

The iMore app, self-serving as my including here may sound, is something I use constantly to keep track of the site I run and interact with my community I serve.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Letterpress. That damn Loren Brichter has stolen more hours of sleep from me this year than any other developer. He also did it with yet-another trend-setting design, a delightful experience, and a system that doesn’t feel like it’s gouging or conning me.

What is the app you are still missing?

Whatever is next! I have a ton of great apps, many of which are incredibly clever ways to solve incredibly common or complex problems. But imagination is limitless, and I’m always on the lookout for even better apps that do things in even better ways.

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

Nearly constantly! When I’m out, I’m looking at it all the time, and when I’m home, it’s still how I glance at notifications. I might need an intervention. Not that I want one.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

Simplicity. It’s beautifully yet unobtrusively designed and it powers fantastic software and services that are highly discoverable and accessible and have changed the way I live my life.

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

I’d like to see the next generation of user interface. We — every user of every device by every platform owner — are stuck in an era of pull data where we have to hunt down icons or widgets or apps to find our data and act on it. It’s time to jump ahead again. It’s time to go to push data. It’s time for our data to come to us.

I want actionable notifications where I can respond to messages inside the alert, or reset counters, or play/pause music, without switching apps or control schemes. I want inter-app communication so the stuff I need follows me where ever I am. I want a unified view of all my messages, regardless of whether they’re SMS, email, Twitter, or whatever, and all my schedules/reminders that are easy to get to and act on. And I want a simple, unified gesture navigation system to help me get around even faster. Demanding much?

Anything else you’d like to share?

Yeah, my Home screen is almost completely stock. Hi, I’m Captain Default, have we met?

Seriously, though, I have a bunch of devices for testing a bunch of different things, I restore them often, and I frequently use them to screenshot help articles. Default is the easiest way to always know what’s where.

Now if MacSparky ever asks for second screen shots…

Thanks Rene

MPU 133: Alfred 2

After many years using LaunchBar, Katie and I have both been spending time with the recent release of Alfred 2, the keyboard launcher (and much more) for the Mac. I’ve officially switched. We share our experiences with this very clever new application and explain what we like (and don’t like) about it. We also walk through how to use the app and the addition of workflows, clever user-created plug ins that make the app really useful.

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Microsoft Office and iOS, Revisited

The most recent scuttlebutt is that Microsoft is going to wait until the end of next year to release Office for iOS. I’ve written about this before and my thoughts haven’t changed. I remain convinced that Microsoft is losing dump trucks full of cash by not putting Office on iOS. If the rumors are true and they are delaying it to the end of next year, this is not a function of engineering delays. It’s clearly a marketing decision to give the Microsoft Surface some advantage over the iPad. However, this doesn’t appear to be working.

I understand that Microsoft is laying low on office on the iPad while they try and get their own competing tablet off the ground but I think it’s a mistake. This is an example of competing priorities in a company hurting the overall bottom line.

The real risk is that previously faithful Office users start using the iPad and discover other ways to get their work done. Anecdotally, I’ve met many people who tell me how they used to rely on Office and now have dumped it on all platforms. The worst outcome for Microsoft is that the Surface isn’t successful and Office stops being the cash cow they’ve relied upon it to be. I don’t think that scenario is out of the question at this point.

Automating Billing with TextExpander and Automator

In my day job, we use an antiquated old Windows PC system for managing our billing. It takes multiple mouse clicks and butten presses to make a simple entry. It almost feels like I have to walk across the office and turn a wheel somewhere to make a billing entry. Several years ago I decided I was done with it.

Instead, I started making my billing entries in a Byword file called, unsuprisingingly, billings. I keep this file open as I go through my day and make entries with a series of cryptic TextExpander snippets.

For example:

xrvc

expands to

## Roadrunner v. Coyote

and

xtto

gets me

Place telephone call to opposing counsel concerning

Using these snippets it is really easy to capture billing entries as I move through my day. The Billings file syncs through iCloud to my iPhone and and iPad and I use TextExpander touch on those devices too (syncing through Dropbox) so billing entries are no more difficult there.

Another snippet I use every morning is

xbill

Which renders the date and summary information.

#2013-04-10 Billings

Totals

B

NC

Admin

CD

At the end of the day, I email the text file off to one of the staff members so she can click buttons, turn dials, and feed coal into our billing system.

About the hundredth time after I copied the text, went and started a new email and then pasted it in, I realized that there must be an easier way to automate this. Of course there is. I use Automator to create and send an email to my assistant every day with my billing text. Here’s the Automator service workflow.



The workflow takes the selected text and then prepares an email. It then copies the selected text in the body of the email and uses the recipient and subject line I specify. Then it automatically sends the email. Except for selecting the text and firing off the service, I have no interaction whatsoever. (I should probably attach a keyboard shortcut to make this feel even more magical.)

This is the first automation service I’ve created that sends off an email without me even looking at it and at first it was a little weird but now I’ve gotten over it and I love that my Mac does it all for me.



Nerdy Professionals on iPad Document Management



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Ernie Svenson and I are doing another Nerdy Professionals seminar next Friday, Aparil 19 at 1pm EST on how to use the iPad. This one will focus on managing PDFs on your iPad. We are going to cover the basics of how to get documents on your iPad, and how to manage, annotate, and share them. The seminars are done through Go-To-Webinar and you can watch Ernie and I use our iPads as we talk. The session will last for an hour. We don’t have continuing legal education credit set up just yet but they are pretty helpful. If you’re an attorney and want some help with this or know an attorney that needs some help with their iPad, send them over to NerdyProfessionals.com and have them sign up. Use “MacSparky” for a discount.