Star Trek TNG, 25 Years Later

Catching up with some reading I stumbled upon this fantastic Grantland article by Brian Phillips about Star Trek, The Next Generation. I have to admit that growing up I was firmly in the Star Wars camp and never could get excited about Captain Kirk and gang. I think it was probably a combination of the cheesy 60’s sets and my inability to grasp “deep” story lines. So when The Next Generation showed up while I was in college, I took a pass.

When I got to law school however, I got into the habit of making my Top Ramen every night around seven and needing a little entertainment before returning to the books. This was when TNG was starting its syndication run and, despite my best efforts, became a Trekky. Captain Picard and and the rest of those aboard NCC-1701-D had me hooked and I watched the whole thing. I think those little breaks with the Enterprise crew got me through those years and for that am thankful.

SSD-Less

Dr Drang writes:

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“I’m still ambivalent about the Fusion drive. The idea behind it is great, but I’m just not sure I want in on a 1.0 device. I’m sure Apple has tested the Fusion out the wazoo; still, this is an iMac, and I can’t just replace it with a regular disk if I don’t like how the Fusion works.”

Having never used a Fusion drive, I still think the good doctor is making a mistake. He buys Macs for a long time. (He is replacing a 2006 iMac.) These new iMacs are not going to make drive replacement easy and his decision to skip on SSD now means he’ll not be using SSD for probably another six years. 


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We’ve got a Mac Power Users episode going up later tonight (or tomorrow morning) about speeding up your Mac and in it I sing the praises of SSD. I’m old enough to remember the massive speed boost we got saving to floppy disc when before we saved to cassette tape. (Yes. I saved my BASIC programs to a cassette tape.) I also remember the fantastic speed boost we got moving from floppy to hard disc. This latest improvement is no less spectacular. Having used SSD drives now for a few years, I can’t imagine going back.

My advice would be to get the Fusion Drive and keep on top of things. If you are really concerned, get AppleCare and it is then Apple’s problem for the next few years.

With respect to Dr. Drang’s opening comments about how the thin design doesn’t move him, I agree. I don’t really get that as a selling point. I actually prefer my existing iMac with the integrated optical drive. Desktops and laptops are very different beasts in my book.

New MacSparky Field Guide Markets

Yesterday I was able to publish Paperless and 60 Mountain Lion Tips in 18 additional countries including Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Chile, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Panama, Peru, and Venuzuela. The book is now available in 50 countries. I love that a nerdy guy like me can do this. Thanks everyone.

Learning Keyboard Shortcuts

I often receive emails asking how I can remember so many keyboard shortcuts. It really isn’t that hard.

The trick is to just learn one at a time. Figure out something you do repeatedly and commit the keyboard shortcut to memory. For instance, sending an email from Apple Mail requires Shift-Command-D. Everybody sends email, right?

The next time you finish composing an email, press Shift-Command-D and you’ll hear that satisfying swooshing sound without lifting your fingers from the keyboard. Do it for every email you send for the next few weeks. At some point, it becomes muscle memory. Then pick another keyboard shortcut and start on that one.

What you shouldn’t do is find a list of shortcuts and try to memorize them. Just pick a shortcut that help you right now and stick with it until it is second nature and then move on.

By the way, if you want help finding a shortcut, try CheatSheet. It’s a simple, free little app that feeds you all the shortcuts for your active application. Remember though, just pick one to learn.

ScreenFlow 4


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I often get asked about how I go about creating my screencasts. It really isn’t that difficult. I use ScreenFlow. ScreenFlow is a soup to nuts screencasting application for the Mac that works splendidly. Over the years I’ve tried some of the competitors but I always come back to ScreenFlow and I never regret it.

Telestream, the ScreenFlow developer is not resting on its laurels. Today they released ScreenFlow, version 4. This newest version adds several features, both under the hood and behind the steering wheel.

64 Bits

ScreenFlow is now fully 64-bit integrated for OS X 10.7 and above. I’ve been using it to capture my retina display MacBook Pro and it’s working without a hitch.

Closed Caption Support

The application lets you to insert closed-captioned text right in your ScreenFlow document.

Nested Clips

This lets you merge multiple elements into a single (nested) clip. You can then access and edit that nested clip on a separate tab timeline. This is going to be so useful for my large screencast projects.

Chroma Key Support

While I was initially scratching my head about the idea of green screen support in a screencasting application, after fiddling with it, it makes sense. It’s not just a green screen you’re looking at, but any custom color. For instance, a solid color on the back of your desktop.

Video and Audio Filters

Now ScreenFlow has built in filters to add more audio and video control. There is a pile of them and I haven’t even scratched the surface yet but so far I’m really digging the blurring and mask video controls and EQ audio controls.

There are also a bunch of other nice little refinements that make the day-to-day use of this application better. For instance, you can now set the default durations for actions like freeze-frame and callouts. All of these little changes clearly arise from user feedback.

ScreenFlow is, and probably never has been, a hobbyist application. It is professional level screencasting without the usual professional level headaches and costs. I’ve been screencasting for over five years now and sometimes can’t believe how far these applications have come. If you want to start screencasting on your Mac, spend 100 bucks on ScreenFlow 4 and you are well on your way.

Sponsor: Mutual Mobile


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My thanks to Mutual Mobile for sponsoring MacSparky this week.

Why work for Mutual Mobile? We’ve grown from a core 5 people in 2009 to just over 200 at the turn of 2012, and we’re poised to double that figure over the next year. Our client list includes companies like Google, Cisco, and Audi, and your skills help build what we offer. It’s an exciting time to be in Austin’s tech scene, and we work to keep things interesting.

Check out our open positions and apply today.

Sponsorship by The Syndicate.

∞

$329

I’ve been thinking about all the hullabaloo over the price of the new iPad mini. Everybody feels that Apple blew it by not getting the price down to something competitive with Google and Amazon. Upon reflection, this really doesn’t surprise me. Both Google and Amazon have stated that they are selling their small plastic-based tablet products essentially at cost in order to get market share. They have a problem. Apple is beating their pants off in the tablet market and they need a toehold. Apple enthusiasts are eager for Apple to stifle the competition by making a superior iPad mini at roughly the same price. As they see it, Apple has its boot on Google and Amazon’s neck and needs only to push to own all aspects of the tablet market for the foreseeable future.

Apple however does not play that game. Apple likes to make money. I can’t really fault it for that. The iPad mini starts at $329. the Google Nexus device starts at $199. That Google device only has 8 GB of storage whereas the iPad mini has 16 GB. To get a Google Nexus tablet at 16 GB, you need to spend $250, $79 less than the iPad mini.

So a fair comparison is the $250 Google Nexus device versus the $329 iPad. What does that extra $79 get you? For starters, the iPad mini is better designed and built. I’ll take aluminum over plastic any day of the week. Additionally, the iPad mini is an iPad in all senses of the word. It runs, natively, all of the excellent iPad software. The Android tablet software is not there yet. (That thing I wrote about Android apps nearly a year ago still stands.)

When I was on the Mac Roundtable this week, I made the comment that this device isn’t necessarily aimed at us nerds. We all love our large-screen iPads with retina displays and a lot of us don’t see a good reason to go to the smaller device. That’s okay. Apple already has our money. I suspect that the market for the iPad mini is probably less nerd-inclined than that of the larger iPad. The iPad mini is aimed at people who want a quality smaller tablet device. Apple thinks there are a lot of people willing to shell out an extra few bucks for such a device and I suspect they are correct.
All of this said, I agree that if they were able to hit $299 instead of $329, a lot more people would have gotten past the price barrier but Apple is a very successful company and I’m sure people much smarter than I already did that math and the iPad mini will do just fine at $329.

The real interesting part of all of this discussion is the collective concern of Apple enthusiasts over Apple blowing it. All of us remember the times when Apple was nearly on the chopping block and there’s this sort of cultural fear that somehow our beloved company is to stop making our beloved products. As a result, we all wring our hands and rend our garments in fear every time Apple makes a big move. Moreover, when we see any other company being remotely successful in the same space as Apple, a small part of our brains think it is Microsoft Windows all over again. The good news, my brothers and sisters, is that those days are over. There is not going to be a single winner like there was for the Mac vs. Windows days this time. (Not even Apple.) Apple gets that and is more than happy to let others fight over the low margin end of the market and gobble up the high-end of the market where Apple can actually make a profit and, therefore, keep the lights on.

Jason Snell said it best in this week’s Macworld podcast, “Is there a cheap tablet market or is there a small tablet market?” I think the latter and so does Apple. I’ll also go out on a limb and say that, with the iPad mini’s sales starting tonight at midnight, they’ll be sold out before I wake tomorrow.

Date:Yesterday

Ever wake up in a Hangover like haze and need help figuring out what you did the day before? If you were sitting at your Mac, open Spotlight and type Date:Yesterday. This gives you a listing of all the apps, docs, and other related files accessed on your Mac yesterday.

When I’m returning to a big project, this is really helpful.


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