Speaking at Macworld 2011

I’m speaking again at Macworld. This year my session will be about Syncing your Apple Life. No Matter what concoction of Macs, iPhones, iPads, and iPods you carry, I will show you how to make them all play nice. If you’ve never been to Macworld, make sure to get there. I always find my trip to Macworld one of the highlights of my year. See you there.

Back to the Mac? We never left.

After a long period of relative silence concerning the Mac, this week was full of news. Apple announced a special event next week to give us a peek behind the curtain on Mac OS X 10.7 (presumably called “Lion”). Furthermore, people who keep track of statistics like how many computers are out there are reporting that the Mac has now jumped to over 10% market share.

I have always felt that the market share statistics underreport Apple’s actual market penetration. Big companies and enterprise purchasers (who buy computers by the truckload), almost never purchase Apple products. As a result, the total market share is always skewed against Apple. For a better idea of Apple’s market penetration, walk in to your local Starbucks or Peet’s Coffee and look around. In Orange County, California, usually about half of the computers are Macs.

My point is, that while Apple has been pre-occupied with its mobile market share land grab over the past few years, that is okay. Mac users have been quietly using a very stable platform and getting work done. Although my appreciation for the iPad seems to only increase with time, I still get a lot of work done on my Mac. While Apple’s focus may be coming back to the Mac, for most users, we never left.

Sparrow, Alternative Client for Gmail

It is nice to see the initial success and interest in Sparrow, a native Mac OS X application for managing Gmail. I think a lot of developers would like to compete with Mail but are worried there is no market for alternative e-mail product when Mail.app is free. Maybe Sparrow’s success will encourage a few more developers to take a crack at it.

TotalFinder Review

Every year or two, a chorus of dissatisfaction swells over the default Mac OS X Finder. The underlying problem is that the Finder really hasn’t changed much since we were all sitting behind our shiny new Macs in 1984.

When the rumors started swirling about Snow Leopard and a “brand new” Finder, there was hope Apple would take a new pass at it but, alas, we only got the same old Finder re-built using modern frameworks.

There are also several third party Finder replacements. PathFinder is my favorite. However, very few third party applications have had the moxy to fiddle with the Apple Finder. TotalFinder does.

TotalFinder is a new Finder enhancement available for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. It brings several new tricks to the OS X Finder.

Tabs

TotalFinder’s premier feature is tabbed browsing in the Finder. You know those tabs you use in Safari? They are now in the Finder. This lets you display multiple Finder panes in the same Finder window and makes it easy to jump between them.

The tabs are based on code from Google Chrome and look like it. You can open a new tab with the keyboard (⌘T). You can move between tabs with a click of the mouse. You can reorder them or pull a tab into a separate window. You can close specific tabs (⌘W) or double-click one to enter dual mode (discussed below). You can also drag and drop files between tabs. The tabs act exactly as you would expect them too. This alone was worth the $15 license fee to me.

Dual Mode

Dual mode is activated by double-clicking any tab or pressing ⌘U. It results in two finder panes side by side. This makes it easy to copy and move files between panes.

Additional Bells and Whistles

The use of tabs and dual-mode are TotalFinder’s big selling points. The developer even redrew the Finder icon, adding tabs. Many users will never stray beyond those two features. There are, however, some more tricks with TotalFinder

One annoyance I have with the default Finder is the way it mixes folders with files. I prefer, when looking at a Finder window, to have folders on top and the rest of the files below. TotalFinder does this. It can be toggled on and off (⇧⌘;) for you traditionalists. TotalFinder also adds a keyboard (⇧⌘.) shortcut to toggle display of hidden system files.

TotalFinder additionally has a system-wide Visor mode that pulls up a dedicated Finder window from the bottom of your screen. I tried this for a few weeks but in the end turned it off. If you are a Terminal.app user and like its Visor mode, you’ll be right at home. It works best with an auto-hiding dock.

There also is an advanced command-line feature, Asepsis, that helps you redirect propagation of those pesky .DS_Store files that seem to be everywhere.

The developer also plans to add some additional features including the ability to cut and paste files between Finder windows.

Overall, TotalFinder is a good investment at $15 if you frequently find your desktop overpopulated with unruly Finder windows.

You can listen to this review on the MacReviewCast.

Home Screens – Eddie Smith

I’m not sure when it happened, but at some point in the last several months Eddie Smith’s (Twitter) Practically Efficient blog became required reading for me. I’ve had the pleasure of corresponding with Eddie and he is a charming person in addition to a rising star. Eddie is one of the many Verizon iPhone hold outs but loves his iPad. So Eddie, show us your home screen.

How do you primarily use your iPad?

The iPad has become my favorite device for reading books, reading RSS feeds, and using social media. I also use apps like Dropbox and GoodReader for “real work.” The iPad has proven itself as a great travel companion too. It’s more portable than a laptop, has a great battery, and can keep you entertained with games.

Why isn’t your home screen full?

Honestly, I’m just odd. Moreover, I’m a big believer in minimizing clutter in workspaces. I leave nothing on my Mac desktop for more than a few minutes. I’ve basically carried this same philosophy to the iPad, which I see as more computer than phone.

My home screen only shows apps that I get into just about every day. It also doesn’t include apps that show “unread” counts (e.g. Mail, App Store). These seem to emanate an attention-grabbing gravity that I don’t want on my home screen.

What are your most interesting home screen apps?

Soulver is probably the most unique.

It’s basically a mash-up of a note app and a calculator, but it also has the qualities of a word processor and spreadsheet. You can write in natural language and intersperse math expressions. It’s ideal for taking notes when numbers are involved. Soulver does all the math for you and shows the result in a side bar.

What is your favorite app?

I can narrow it down to two: Kindle and Simplenote. Together, they form a very cool duality that, to me, is the true essence of the iPad’s magic. Kindle is pure consumption while Simplenote is pure creation. Kindle is a deep well of all that has been; Simplenote is a canvas for all that can be. The iPad is like a scale that balances these, although it definitely tips more toward consumption most days.

The Kindle app’s interface is very clean and uncluttered. I can focus solely on the current page. Even a paper book is more cluttered than the Kindle app because, in Kindle, the page numbers are hidden — a simple nuance of e-reading I’ve come to appreciate.

As for Simplenote, I really can’t get over how well it syncs text. The fact that I can write blog posts, articles, and notes in Notational Velocity on my Mac and have them instantly available in Simplenote on my iPad is stuff not of the world I occupied just a year ago. It makes the physical location of your words irrelevant.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Definitely StumbleUpon. I discovered StumbleUpon in the last year, and I initially had it on my desktop browsers. Productivity fail. It has been exiled to my iPad along with most of my other social media things.

How many screens have you filled?

Five. I’m actually amazed that I’ve occupied that many. I like experimenting and trying apps, but I also try to get rid of ones that I don’t think I’ll ever use again.

What is the app you are still missing?

I can’t wait for OmniOutliner to arrive on the iPad. I would also love to see a quality, standalone personal finance app that isn’t 100% cloud-based. I think the iPad provides an enormous opportunity for making the chores of money management easier.

How many times a day do you use your iPad?

On a typical day, my iPad gets used a lot. In the morning, it’s a radio while I’m getting ready for work (mostly Pandora). Almost every evening, it becomes a newspaper (Reeder and Instapaper), a book (Kindle), and a social media hub (Osfoora HD and Tumbleroo). It also comes out regularly at odd times when I want to jot something down.

What is your favorite feature of the iPad?

Definitely its instant-on nature. I suppose it’s a simple aspect of the iPad, but I think it’s revolutionary. I think the instant-on-ness of the iPad is slowly waking up mainstream consumers to the idea that a large screen device need not take minutes to come on. (Those of us with Macs already knew that, but most folks don’t.)

If you were Steve Jobs, what would you add to the iPad?

Flash. Kidding — I’m quite content without it.

I would add two things. Now that we’ve been shown the magic of FaceTime, I would love to see a camera added. With a camera, I think the iPad could connect family and friends like never before. Christmas mornings would change forever.

More technically, I would like Apple to make sharing services (e.g. Twitter) more “global” in the OS. It’s one of the few things I like about Android over iOS — being able to share pretty much anything in any app regardless of whether the app developer added sharing services.

Anything else you’d like to share?

Of course. I could talk about the iPad for hours, but I’ve said too much already!

Thanks Eddie!

E-Mail Monkey

This is the first in a series of e-mail workflow posts. Enjoy.

Recently, I found myself engaged in some rather tricky negotiations on a client matter. My opposite number was, for lack of a better word, an e-mail monkey.

The conversation went like this:

Talk talk talk, jabber jabber jabber for a few minutes.

BlackBerry Ding!

Silence.

The other guy’s head pops up like a howler monkey while he reaches in his pocket, takes out the BlackBerry, and completely ignores me.

Eventually, through progressively more aggressive attempts to get his attention, culminating in me dropping a heavy corporate book on the table from 4 inches, we re-engage.

Talk talk talk, jabber jabber jabber for about 2 minutes.

BlackBerry Ding!

It was maddening. After wasting 15 minutes this way, I pointed to a pitcher of water and politely explained that if that thing rang again, I was going to dunk it. He thought I was joking. I wasn’t. Nevertheless, he grinned sheepishly and turned it off.

I got thinking afterwards, how does this person get anything done? If your e-mail dings every 5 minutes, that is …

12 times an hour

96 times a day

480 times a week

24,000 interruptions a year

This assumes you work an eight hour day and take two weeks off for vacation. E-mail monkeys don’t do this. They check e-mail at two o’clock in the morning and on the beach in Maui.

I’ve written about this before. Becoming an e-mail monkey prevents you from getting any quality work done. Instead, your attention and focus are sacrificed every time a Viagra dealer breaks through your spam wall. Don’t go there. Just don’t.

So here is a three step method to escape going primate:

  1. Turn off all dings, badges, and other e-mail intrusions;

  2. Figure out the minimum number of times you need to check e-mail a day. This is different for everyone. I get away with three times. For some people it may be once (or ten times).

  3. Build a habit of checking your e-mail just the minimum number of times and no more. Give yourself a schedule and stick to it.

I’ll cover exactly how to go about checking your e-mail with the next post in this series.