The Next Web has a nice article about how The Omni Group goes about making apps. I often think The Omni Group is one of the most similar companies to Apple in its fixation with making great things.

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JF Brissette made a nice little screencast showing off the improvements to ScreenFlow 4. This gets you up to speed in under three minutes.

I don’t think I’ve ever had occaision to post something positive about a web-hosting service before. It is usually some cranky rant about downtime and dead elephants. Alas, times have changed.

I’ve been watching Squarespace’s herculean efforts to keep the motor running throughout some pretty dreadful weather. At one point they had guys hoofing gassoline up and down stairs to feed constantly thirsty generators but they pulled it off and, once again, affirmed my decision to move MacSparky to their service. If you want to feel good about a web hosting service, this story is worth your time.

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Adam Christianson and I recently visited a Microsoft store and kicked the tires on the new Surface “tablet”. It felt to me a lot more like a MacBook Air than an iPad. I talked about it at some length this week on the MPU After Dark episode.

The iPad mini has been out a few days now and it seems everybody is going bananas over it. Because I’m weak, I pre-ordered one as soon as I could. My wife received the delivery and did the initial set up for me. (iCloud makes that so easy.) As a result, it got handed to me as I sat down to record the Mac Power Users After Dark episode that published earlier this week. That is an interesting bit of tape in that it captures my immediate reaction “on air”, which was twofold: 1. “Holy Crackers, this is really nice”, and; 2. “This is definitely not a retina screen.”

After now having used it for several days, my immediate reaction hasn’t substantially changed. The small form factor is great. The smaller device footprint and lighter weight make it much easier to carry this out the door and even carry around the house. Nevertheless, I don’t see the iPad mini replacing my retina iPad for a couple of reasons.

1. The Retina Display is a Really Big Deal (to me)

I don’t think I can overstate how much I love the trend towards high pixel density in iThings. The retina display iPhone, iPad, and now MacBook Pro are all gorgeous. I spend a lot of time reading and working on my iPad and the retina screen makes this easier. Crisp, sharp text makes a huge difference in my ability to spend hours working in front of a screen. Looking at the iPad mini, the non-retina display is immediately apparent. I understand why Apple made the decision not to include the retina display with this first iPad mini. I would not like a heavier, more expensive iPad mini but the lack of a retina display is a significant difference and one particularly relevant to the way I use it. I’ve heard people explain how you “get used to it”. I haven’t.

1. Content Creation

While content creation certainly is possible on the new iPad mini, I still think it is easier on the larger iPad screen. Creating mind maps, writing words, annotating PDFs, and the other things I do with an iPad to pay for shoes are all easier using the larger screen. It is not impossible to work with these apps on the iPad mini but just like it’s easier to carry the iPad mini out the door, it is easier to create on the retina third-generation iPad. (As an aside, I believe the iPad mini may be a superior device for wireless presentation. I’m looking forward to trying it out in that capacity at my next speaking gig.)

For now at least, I think one of the big dividing lines between the iPad mini and the larger size iPad is content consumption versus creation. If someone is just going to be reading books, surfing the web, checking email, the iPad mini is perfectly adequate. If someone is going to do significant writing, digital art, or any of the other more traditional “creation” tasks, there’s a really good case to be made for larger iPad.

This makes so much sense to me. There are (at least) 100 million iPads “out there” and Microsoft will make a killing on Office for iOS. I’m really curious to see how far down the rabbit hole they go with feature parity. It could be a slippery slope.

Regardless of the money Microsoft will make, I think this is also necessary to keep Office relevant. A lot of previously die-hard Office users picked up iPads already and are questioning previous assumptions about word processors. I’ve written about this before.

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We’ve received a remarkable number of emails from people asking how to share their Mac. We finally got around to doing a show about it this week. Get it while it’s hot.

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Want to hear Brett and me shoot the breeze about everything but the 60 Tips book? Listen to today’s Systematic.

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