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Essential Apps for Time and Money

Sometimes when you grow accustomed to certain applications they disappear as they’re always there and you use them all the time. In compiling a list of apps that I use every day, I forgot about the ones that are so completely integrated that I don’t really think about them as I just constantly use them. Oddly they are all related to money and time.

I get things done and (frequently) stay within a budget with the following apps for my iPod Touch: OmniFocus, Spend, and Grocery Gadget. Interestingly they all use lists and two of them use the cloud to synchronize the data that they use.
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November 29, 2009 grocery gadget, ipod touch, omnifocus, software, spend

The Beauty of Simple Apps

Over the past few months I’ve been relying on my 2nd generation iPod Touch more and more for connecting to the online world. On a recent 3 day trip I didn’t even take my MacBook pro with me and I didn’t miss it at all. All of my reading and email and even posting things online all stayed up-to-date all with the tiny little powerful computer in my pocket. While an iPhone would allow me to be connected all of the time, there were enough wifi hotspots to keep me connected for most of the day every day.

Another realization that I made is that the applications that I rely upon to stay connected are simple and powerful. The five apps I use throughout every day are Twitterrific, Tumblr, Simplenote, Reeder, and Instapaper. Simplicity is the key and if a choice needs to be made between something that is simple and works most of the time and something that may have a lot more possibilities, it’s obvious that simple is the way to go.

The other aspect of the five apps that I use every day to connect and share things with the world is that all of them rely on APIs to get and share the information that they use. That means that it doesn’t all just stay on my iPod Touch, but that everything is synchronized so I can check things out on my MacBook Pro or even another computer on the web and I don’t have to worry about losing something. Now I start and end every day in bed with my iPod Touch doing a little bit of reading and catching up using my favourite apps.
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November 22, 2009 instapaper, ipod touch, lists, netnewswire, reeder, simplenote, software, twitterrific

New MacBook Pro

I’ve had a lot of Mac laptops (actually every laptop I’ve had since the first has been a Mac) and I can say for myself that the new 15-inch MacBook Pro that I have is great.

Best. Laptop. Ever.

The only other laptop where I’ve felt this sort of love for was my “Pismo” G3 PowerBook that just felt right and was powerful and beautiful. With the G3 PowerBook it was the balance of speed and power and features that made it work. The slightly curving case was comfortable and fit easily into the carrying case. It was fast to set up and very flexible with 2 FireWire 400 ports, USB, s-video out as well as VGA out. There was AirPort too… and this was 8 years ago. I haven’t plugged in a laptop to go online at home for 8 years!
Over the past near-decade things have changed a lot with technology and with the new MacBook Pro Apple strikes the balance just right again. There are 2 USB-2 ports, one FireWire 800 port (which is a bit of a pain, but with an adapter cord, all of the FW400 things work with it), ethernet, a different Mini DisplayPort plug for external video (which means you need to get adapters for VGI or DVI out), and an SD card slot. I initially thought that the SD card slot was kind of strange, but I find that it’s great for getting pictures from the SD card in my digital camera. It is very fast and I don’t need any cables as I just pop in the card and the transfer speed is a lot faster than through the camera with cables. While I haven’t tried it yet, it will also work great with digital audio files that I record with my Zoom H2 recorder, which also uses SD cards.
The battery life is amazing. While the official story is that it will last up to 7 hours, in reality, it’s still pretty amazing, and I’ve been able to get more than 6 hours out of it and I haven’t had the battery die on me yet. It runs very quiet and doesn’t seem to get very warm. I’m using the lower capacity video card as it takes less power. With the video card with twice the RAM (512 MB), it apparently eats more power. For video editing that’s the one that will get used, but for surfing and writing and other non-video tasks, the display is fine.
The screen is absolutely gorgeous with the best colour and contrast that I’ve ever seen on a laptop. In working with photographs there is a lot more detail and the colours just seem to pop. I don’t know about using it for serious colour-correction, but it’s dramatically better than anything I’ve seen before.
Some unique changes that are part of Apple’s zen-like design ethos is the new, buttonless trackpad. The trackpad is much larger and the whole thing is a button. Initially I didn’t even notice the change, since the larger area works perfectly with my thumb where the button would have been. The trackpad is made from a similar glass to the surface of the iPod touch and there are all sorts of cool multi-touch features. Two fingers to scroll, three fingers to page around, and four fingers up and down for Expose (for hiding things and showing all active windows) and finally four fingers left and right to switch between applications. In the System Preferences there are great little videos demonstrating all of the multi-touch mouse action, which makes it much easier to understand.
The new 15-inch MacBook Pro is a simply beautiful and powerful laptop that makes me fall in love with design and laptop computing all over again.

July 11, 2009 apple, laptop, macbookpro, software, technology

The Long Tail Up Close

While OS X and most Apple stuff is well-designed and simple, there has always been a bit of room between the smooth lines for utilities and software that make it just a bit better. Fascinating little economies and ecosystems spring up around things like the iPod or Dashboard or the iPhone and the indie Mac developers are there making their stuff and being part of the community. It really hit home with me as I listened to the first Core Intuition podcast with Daniel Jalkut and Manton Reece.
I found out about podcast through Daniel’s Red Sweater Blog, which I found out about because I use (and bought) MarsEdit (which I’m writing these very words with). My using MarsEdit for writing blog posts came about because it was originally developed by Brent Simmons, who also writes NetNewsWire, but Red Sweater took it over. It was originally included with NNW and then became separate and I bought both because they’re useful and I like supporting the little guys in the same way that I like supporting indie bands.
In the Core Intuition podcast it is just two indie Mac software developers talking about developing software and the world that they live and work within. Not overly geeky (a bit geeky, I guess) or technical, but very real and human, which I like. (Cyborgs generally aren’t interesting in a podcast.) So much of the software and films and music that we use now is made by large groups of people with massive amounts of money, and I realized how the Long Tail really applies to the small Mac developer who isn’t developing things for the biggest market. For me it’s the same as buying food and produce at the farmers market as you’re a lot more connected with what you’re getting. It’s about the people and the connections.
Manton’s shareware product is Wii Transfer, which I’d thought of trying out (it lets you listen to music, view photos and move video to your Wii), and now I took the plunge and bought it before I tried it. Luckily I like it and I’ve no regrets. While I don’t think that the intention behind the podcast is to drive a massive amount of sales, it does show how having a voice and a presence can have indirect benefits. It’s nice to be connected a bit more to the people who make things that I use and I think that it’s great both ways as you’ll make better stuff if you know your customers by name.
Even though they’re both relatively far away geographically, it feels like I’m buying locally as they’re members of my community in terms of software and what they do. That’s why I also love being able to buy from indie developers and keep their virtual factories running.

June 5, 2008 longtail, marsedit, people, podcast, software, wiitransfer

Deliciously Organized

I like it when things are organized and I’m not ashamed to admit that I alphabetize my nearly 300 DVDs on their shelves to make it easier to find. But how is it possible to keep track of all of those shiny discs that magically let me watch great films whenever I want?
A few months ago I started using Delicious Library, which is an almost magical way to keep track of about anything that you have that has a UPC code on it. I’ve used databases to organize my collections before (and even used index cards many years ago to keep track of my books), but this is different in that it’s a lot faster and more flexible. The brilliant and easy thing about Delicious Library is in using the built-in iSight camera of my MacBook Pro to scan the barcode on DVDs. It looks them up in Amazon (the Canadian store for me, but it also uses the American, UK, French, German, or Japanese stores) and adds all of the information to the database and presents your collection neatly arranged on shelves.
If you have an iPod you can sync your collection to it as a set of notes that has all of the relevant information, so you can always look something up when you are away from your computer. If you want to share your library you can also publish it online as a web page or just export it to a folder. But it gets even more sophisticated and useful in how you can keep track of who in your address book you are lending DVDs to. It even will give you a reminder after a couple of weeks and when you search for that particular DVD it won’t show up in your library (because someone else has it) but will still be visible as being translucent.
I love having everything organized and I’ll be organizing my books and videogames using it as well. It’s an example of great software that is well-designed with enough complexity to get the job done, but not so much as to make it difficult to use. To lend a DVD to someone, you just drag the DVD onto their name (but you still have to physically give them the DVD as it doesn’t move the actual case). Delicious Library is something that I’ve been waiting for and I’m very glad that it exists.

June 1, 2008 dvds, library, organization, software

It’s the Little Things That Count

Now that I’m safely back on my MacBook Pro with just about everything set up, I have to say that it made me again realize how much of a creature of habit I am and how small changes can make a big difference. Sometimes we come to rely upon something so much that it starts to fade into the background and we don’t realize what we’re missing until it isn’t there anymore.
While the applications that I missed the most came to mind right away, there were some things that jumped out in unexpected ways. I found myself constantly using the keyboard shortcut for the fantastic Mac utility called Quicksilver, which is an application launcher that has dramatically increased my productivity. At a basic level Quicksilver lets you use a keyboard shortcut and launch an application by starting to type the name of the application. The power of Quicksilver is that it creates a catalog of just about everything on your hard drive and you can then combine things together. You can select a file and then move it somewhere else while never touching the mouse.
Things become even more interesting when you do things like add the Social Bookmarks plugin which gives me access to all of my del.icio.us bookmarks. So I just need to start typing and Quicksilver searches through the bookmarks and then I just hit return and go to the web site. All of the files on my hard drive can be included in the index as well, so I can find a file I need and open it up (or copy it or open it with a different application). Even fancier things are possible such as starting and stopping iTunes while it’s playing or playing a specific track. I can even adjust the volume on my MacBook Pro or do things like restart the computer or look a list of recent documents that I had open in Pages, for instance.
I first found out about Quicksilver thanks to Merlin Mann and his 43 Folders site. It was a bit confusing for me at first, but the more I used it, the more I came to depend on it. Quicksilver also keeps track of what you’re doing, so it knows that when I start to type something and then choose what comes up that it’s more likely that I’ll choose that same thing again when I type the same letters. So I only have to type “f” to have Firefox come up, but “fl” will let me launch my web browser and go to Flickr. Quicksilver is incredibly configurable and simple, so you can make it look different and make it do just about anything you want in any way you want. It’s been in beta for a few years and now it’s probably the thing I use the most that I never think about.