Hitting the Wall and Back Again

The last few days, well last few weeks actually, the day job has been a real grind. Coincidentally, I’ve been helping some friends get their arms wrapped around OmniFocus. It has been really great handing out a few tips and watching the light bulb go off as people find ways to use these tools to get their work done faster and spend more time doing things they love. The funny thing is, they all seem to think that I really have it together. In fact, things are quite the opposite. Lately I’ve been a jumble of loose ends. What I really need to do, is take my own advice and spend about four hours auditing all my various obligations.
Keeping things together is difficult for everyone. We all have our tricks and Band-Aids, but you can never let your guard down. Chaos lurks behind the door. My solution is to table the whole mess and take a few days off and go to Las Vegas with various members of my extended family. While I’m not much of a gambler, I do intend to geek out with some HDR photography and catch up with my inner nerd. Yes, the MacBook Pro will be accompanying me so you may hear from me. When I return Sunday night, the big audit will occur.

Continue reading →

Jumsoft Mail Stationery Review

I am one of “those” people. You know … the kind of people that use Apple Mail stationery. Now before the geek storm troopers raid my house and rip my Apple nerd card from my shaking hands, I don’t use stationary all the time. Just occasionally. Like when a friend invites me over for a nice dinner I’ll send a stationary “Thank You” or when sending out an announcement to family members concerning posting pictures to the web. For occasions like this, the Apple Mail stationery fits the bill perfectly.

The problem is I’ve been using the same stationary for a year now and it’s starting to look tired. Just this week, Jumsoft, the same people who make some great Keynote add-ons, released their own pack of Apple Mail stationary.

The stationary pack includes 50 designs that cover just about every occasion you can think of including themes of “Family,” “Congratulations,” “Invitations,” “Emotions,” “Vacations,” “Seasons,” and “Neutral.”

There are a variety of designs allowing you to send a unique e-mail and even dropping in your own pictures if you like. Using this product I made an announcement for about 40 family and friends. It included a custom font, a very nice background, and a snapshot of my family. Everyone was able to read it.

The developer has samples of the stationary on its website. The stationery offered works perfectly for my intended use. Specifically to send a nice card to someone on occasion that goes beyond the typical blocky text.

This product sells for $39. That may be a little high for the occasional stationary user. If you use stationery repeatedly however, it would not be a bad idea to add some new resources so you’re recipients can see something new.

Continue reading →

1Password Coming to iPhone Soon

I met Dave Teare, one the the 1Password developers, at Macworld and immediately liked him. Dave is my kind of Mac Geek: passionate about his Mac and making the best possible software. So upon seeing Dave’s write up and preview of 1Password for the iPhone and iPod Touch it comes as no surprise to me that it looks fantastic. Make sure to give this one a spin when it goes live in the AppStore. If you haven’t already, also take a serious look at the 1Password application for Macintosh. I don’t know how I could operate without it. You can read my (somewhat dated) review of 1Password here.

Continue reading →

AppleCare After A Warranty Replacement

A few months ago, the Irvine Applestore declared my MacBook Pro officially “dead” and replaced it with a shiny new one thanks to AppleCare. That machine was a few years old so, while the old warranty transfers over to this new machine, there isn’t much time left on it. Today I finally got around to calling Apple to see if there was a way to extend it for three years on the new machine. Turns out there is. Apple is refunding a pro rata portion of the old warranty to me. They say it takes about 30 days to receive the credit. In the meantime I will buy a new AppleCare warranty for this new machine and then I’ll be good for 3 years after the date they swapped me out the new machine. By the way, I saved $70 buying AppleCare from Amazon instead of Apple
I should probably also mention that I have a separate insurance policy on my computers for accidental damage or theft. You can usually get them as part of your homeowner’s insurance or buy one from a specific electronics insurance broker. So between these two policies, I’m covered for just about any problem with my Macs.
By the way, if you are looking for the AppleCare phone number it is not exactly easy to find. Add it to your Address Book. It is 1-800-275-2273.

Continue reading →

Apple Gives a 30 Day Extension to MobileMe Customers

This morning Apple sent out its “mea culpa” email to MobileMe subscribers concerning the less than stellar transition from .Mac to MobileMe. Standing behind the apology, Apple gave everyone a free 30 day extension of services.
We want to apologize to our loyal customers and express our appreciation for their patience by giving all current subscribers an automatic 30-day extension to their MobileMe subscription free of charge. Your extension will be reflected in your account settings within the next few weeks.
Apple also confirmed my suspicion that Calendar and Address Book syncing was less than instantaneous.
I appreciate Apple stepping up and taking responsibility and providing some value to the customers. My only complaint is the lack of information while they were sorting everything out. A few simple postings explaining the problems and estimated time for fixes would have been appreciated.

Continue reading →

Getting Comfy with MobileMe

The dust is finally settling around MobileMe. I am still scratching my head over the bungled launch of this product but as the servers seem to be recovering, I’m already incorporating the new features into my daily life. Specifically, the push syncing is fantastic. I generally use a MacBook Air as my daily computer. I have a MacBook Pro at home at my desk for all of the heavy lifting like video, photo editing and the likes. I also sync my iPhone to the MacBook Pro. Before MobileMe, that meant when I made an adjustment to an appointment on my Mac, it did not get on my phone until that night when I synced it at home. Now it pushes right through. I already can’t live without this feature. Here are a couple other tips I’ve discovered:

1. Do Not Become a Lemming to Email Notification

Just because you can push email, doesn’t mean you have to become a Pavlovian dog like some of our Blackberry brethren. I’ve left the “push” on for my email but I refuse to jump every time it pings, vibrates, or otherwise announced new mail. Stopping for every email would make it impossible to get anything done. Be the master of your email, don’t let email master you.

2. BusySync Still fills a Role

BusySync still lets you sync your calendars with your family and co-workers. Likewise it allows you to painlessly publish to Google if needed. I had an interesting chat with George Starcher and Katie Floyd over the weekend where we figured out a work-around for MobileMe’s inability to sync subscribed calendars. Specifically, if you subscribe to the calendar at your Google calendar and then sync it down to your iCal with BusySync, you can get it to push. If anyone knows a way to push the birthday calendar, let me know.

3. All Push is not Created Equal

I’ve noticed that while the email pushes nearly immediately, the calendar and address push is a bit slower. For me it is generally 5-15 minutes. This delay doesn’t bother me at all.

4. About that Web Interface…

I really like the look of the web access portal. It looks and feels like an application. I think the UI is heads and shoulders above Google’s offerings but feature poor. There are a lot of options available in Google calendar that are simply not there on MobileMe. Lets hope they continue to improve stability and add features as things calm down.

Continue reading →

Launch Day Check In

I’ve had my head under water the last few days with some deadlines at the day job so I thought I’d check in with the MacSparky faithful with a couple of observations.

iPhone 2.0 – YES

I did the manual install that was widely publicized yesterday. The App Store is everything I though it would be and then some. I’ve downloaded a ton of free applications. My favorite two free ones so far are Urbanspoon (it is so satisfying shaking your phone and having it tell you where to eat) and Lightsaber (because .. well … its a LIGHTSABER!).
I’ve also bought a few apps. I have OmniFocus running (review in the future) but am also loving the MLB application and Band. Now if we could just sort out the issue of that pesky bluetooth keyboard.

iPhone 3g Launch Woes

I, along with most of the interweb, predicted AT&T’s painful signup procedures would be a problem and it looks like that is coming true. For those of you going through it, at least rest easy knowing at some point in the next few days, your phone will be faster than my phone.

MobileMess

My biggest disappointment is the problems getting MobileMe off the ground. It has been generally non-existent and, when briefly available, extremely slow. I think MobileMe holds great promise but Apple needs to give it sufficient server backbone to make it snappy AND reliable. I’m withholding judgment on this one a few more days to see if they get it sorted out.

Continue reading →

MobileMe Arrives Tomorrow Night

Apple announced last night that the .Mac service will be going down at 6 PM Pacific on July 9, 2008. The service will remain down for approximately 4 hours or until they have MobileMe in place. This is great news. Thursday morning, I hope to have MobileMe working.
In anticipation of using the new service, I have deactivated the Google sync function in BusySync and will be instead doing it through the MobileMe service. My primary use for the Web calendaring is to view and edit it on my PC at work. That is just the beginning. With iPhone calendar push syncing, it will really streamline things for me. Is anybody else planning on dumping the Google calendar sync for MobileMe?

Continue reading →

Stepping Up the Screencasts

Recently, I’ve been getting a lot of email questions about some of my productivity hacks. It has inspired me to try and step things up with the screencasts. I’m now tooling up to release a series of productivity themed screencasts. The first two installments will be:
1. Email
All things email – IMAP vs. POP, dealing with Spam, archiving, best practices, plug-ins, and my filing system.
2. OmniFocus
My particular OmniFocus tips, tricks, and tweaks.
I’ve got a few other ideas but the above two are going to keep me busy for some time. Let me know if there is anything in particular you would like covered in the above two shows or if you have any other ideas for screencasts. I’m looking forward to putting these together.

Continue reading →

To 3g or Not to 3g, That is the Question

I know that all of the readers have been waiting with baited breath for the MacSparky verdict on upgrading to the new iPhone 3g. [eyebrows roll] Well friends, the wait is over. I’ve finally decided to “go public”.
I have to admit I’ve waited until the last week to post this because when the first iPhone came out I was vocal pretty early about the fact I would not immediately get one. You can imagine how surprised I was carrying that little bag on launch day. What did it for me the first time was that spiffy video Apple did on how to operate the phone. Well Apple just did another one of those videos (with the same Actor no less) and after watching it I’m even more convinced I won’t be buying a 3g iPhone on launch day.
The original iPhone was so much more than my old smart phone that I couldn’t resist upgrading immediately. The difference between the 3g and original iPhone however doesn’t strike me as all that revolutionary.
It really comes down to this: Are you willing to pay $200 plus an additional approximately $30 on your monthly bill for 3g and GPS? I can see how this is a no brainer some folks who need those features. I’m just not blown away by it. I have wi-fi at home and at work. Most of the iPhone web apps I use are already very Edge optimized and acceptable. I own a $100 Nuvi that handles my navigation.
Also, I think a lot of people will be surprised on July 11 to find out that the 3g buying experience, for lack of a better term, will suck. The AT&T folks are going to make sure the phone is activated before it leaves the store. It probably takes 30 minutes to activate. So lets say you are at a really big Apple Store with 100 employees. That means they can sell 200 phones an hour. Ugg. I think people are also going to be surprised how often their 3g coverage isn’t so 3g and more Edgey. This will, of course, depend on where you are located. I am very curious about the non-driving direction uses for GPS on a phone. Maybe not immediately, but very soon I suspect that will be a compelling feature.
Of course I’ll upgrade eventually I’m not even ruling out within a few months but most likely for me it will be in November when maybe they have a 32gig model with (hopefully) a better camera. I can say that I am certain I will be nowhere near an Apple Store on July 11. Hopefully, I’ll be home updating my existing iPhone software and going crazy in the App Store. How about you? Are you going to upgrade?

Continue reading →