It’s not because I want to use these spaces to store application windows and external hard drives. Quite the opposite: I want to use this space for nothing. I work well when I’m sitting at a large and oversized desk that has little on it beyond a big glowing screen and a clicky keyboard. The same goes for my computer monitors. I like a lot of pixels available so that I can not use them.

Why this is, I’m not sure — it’s a part of my personality, but it’s also how I imagine my mind working. When the mind is clear like an open field on a blue-sky day it has absolute liberty to run and twirl and throw the frisbee as far as it can. There are no walls or hinderances or buildings that stand in the way of clear and imaginative thinking.

When I’m at my desk typing on my computer it means my mind is working. And the more open my physical and digital workspaces are then the more open my mental one can be.

In Praise of the 23-Inch Apple Cinema Display

My first Mac was a 12-inch PowerBook that sat on the wrong side of the excessive screen real-estate scale. It was the smallest and cutest computer Apple made at the time, and it had a screen resolution of 1024×768 pixels. I cut my teeth as a print designer on that tiny screen, learning the ropes of Photoshop and InDesign and giving myself a splitting headache. I constantly worked in a slouched over position, with my neck stretching forward to get my head closer to the screen.

After my first paid print job I used the funds to buy myself an external monitor: a 19-inch Somethingorother from the Tiger Direct catalog. A few years later I had saved enough for a Mac Pro and with it I bought a 23-inch Apple Cinema Display, a device that I consider to be one of Apple’s finest pieces of hardware ever.

I had spent many occasions in the Apple Retail store looking at the displays, and I read all of the famous Mac setups featured on Glenn Wolsey’s old blog. The 20-inch model was too small; the 30-inch was too big even though it entitled bragging rights; and so, by deduction, the 23-inch was just right. (I think Apple realized this as well and they cut the sizes of their Cinema Displays down to just the 27-inch monitor. This is a great size, it’s big enough to be big but not so much that you lose open applications.)

I have now been working on a 23-inch Apple Cinema Display for half a decade. I’m on my second one because my original was sold with the Mac Pro. You can’t find them as easily as you could even just a few years ago, especially if you want one in good condition.

What I like about the aluminum Apple Cinema Display is that it epitomizes what I consider to be the highest breed of products designed by Apple in California.

The front of the display is nothing more than a matte screen surrounded by an aluminum bezel. The bezel is not so fat as to distract for your attention. Nor is it too thin. Its proportions are sound.

At the bottom-center of the bezel is the Apple logo in shiny aluminum — subtle. The bezel wraps over the top and bottom of the display, and covers the whole back of the enclosure in a sheet of aluminum as well. The corners are rounded, the sides are white plastic, and the base is a hearty aluminum foot.

On the right edge are the only three buttons: one to power the display on and off, and two for adjusting the brightness of the backlights up or down. At the bottom right-hand corner of the front bezel is a small hole cut out with a white light that shines through. This light “breathes” as the old PowerBooks did when the computer is sleeping. When you turn the display on or off that small light gets bright all at once and then dims down to darkness again.

The greatest feature of all however, is what this display lacks: there is no glass panel glued to the front. The aluminum cinema display sports the great matte screens of yesteryear. And a CJ7 will always be cooler than a modern Wrangler.

What has kept me from upgrading to this next generation of displays found in today’s Apple stores has been that front glass panel. I have worked on these displays (and their iMac cousins), and I admit that they are nice and crisp and pleasing on the eyes. They pose well in pictures of our desks and they display colors and text vividly. They are also much easier to keep clean — the solid glass panel on the front makes it easy to wipe off any trace of dust and fingerprints without fear of damaging the pixels underneath.

In Praise of Retina Display Macs

My 12-inch PowerBook had a good long run. After it I bought a 15-inch MacBook Pro (the aluminum body kind that closely resembled the Power PC laptops that had come just before it). I bought the 15-inch MBP for a few reason: I wanted a laptop with more screen real-estate for the times I was working not at my desk, and Apple had discontinued the 12-inch lineup and replaced it with the 13-inch plastic MacBook which came in white or black. Those plastic laptops never appealed to me, which meant there was only one option: the 15-inch MacBook Pro.

Fast forward a few more years to the summer of 2011 where the laptop which superseded my MacBook Pro was a 13-inch MacBook Air.

Everything about the Air was appealing to me except for one thing: the screen. By the summer of 2011 I was no longer doing print design work and so I wasn’t in absolute need of the biggest screen I could carry in one arm. But my affection for a large screen remained. I was able to justify this conflict thanks to the fact that the 13-inch MacBook Air has the same number of pixels as my 15-inch MacBook Pro. Therefore it would provide me with all the same screen real-estate, just in a smaller and sharper image. I was okay with that; I have good eyes.

But there was a second drawback to the screen on the MacBook Air and that was the screen itself. Though it’s not adorned with a sheet of glass like you find on the modern MacBook Pros and iMacs, it does have a slight shine to it. It’s not matte, it’s glossy.

I thought long and hard about if I could handle working on a glossy screen. It seems like a trite detail, but if you’re a nerd then you understand. We all have our various trite details which can act as peas under our mattresses, and I feared that the MacBook Air’s glossy display would cause me to lose sleep at night.

In my mind’s eye I placed the glossy screen on one side of the scale and on the other I placed the all the rest of the hardware (the new i7 Core Duo processor, the Solid State Drive, the long-lasting battery, the Thunderbolt connection, the slim and light form factor). It was no contest and the scales tipped heavily in favor of the bells and whistles of the new MacBook Airs. I drove to the local Apple store and bought one.

And after all that the glossy screen has proven to be a non-issue for me. What a boring end to the story, right?

There is something that I left out, however. And it’s that all my time using my 15-inch MacBook Pro, I was wishing for a version of it that copied the Air’s form factor. A lightweight, teardrop-shaped laptop that was minus an optical drive and had a Solid State Drive and 15-inch screen. To me, at the time, that sounded like the ideal laptop.

You can do well to figure out future Apple rumors by simply betting on what seems obvious-but-is-not-yet. And a 15-inch MacBook Air strikes me as just such a device. It’s not “mind-blowing” because we can all imagine what it will look like. And it’s not “exciting” because we can all pretty much see it coming — surely it’s only a matter of time.

Earlier this week 9to5 Mac posted a rumor about the what an upcoming 15-inch MacBook Pro may look like. According to this rumor, however, the new MacBook Pro would look just like the current model but thinner, rather than sporting an Air-like teardrop shape.

The biggest talking point, however, isn’t about the size or shape of the laptop but rather the pixels on the screen. The next MacBook Pro is supposedly going to have a Retina display.

The iPhone 4 was too amazing to not push that display into bigger and bigger devices. Retina display Macs have been a long time coming. Last summer, with Lion, the phrase being whispered on the air was the Back to the Mac tagline which Apple themselves used when first demoing the new operating system. That tagline continues to stay relevant, because not only is the software of iOS continually influencing OS X, but we are seeing iOS hardware make its way “Back to the Mac” as well. The Magic Trackpad is a good example, “natural scrolling” is another, and next will be the Retina display.

The idea of a Retina display on a Macintosh sounds fantastic. The words I’m typing at this moment are onto my iPad with its high resolution screen, and the text looks stellar. Retina displays rock. Sure, there are downsides and ugly bits that a Retina display Mac would bring with it — such as non-retina applications and websites — and Marco Arment does a good job of articulating those.

I have the good fortune of using applications on my Mac that are developed by bleeding edge developers. In addition to the native OS X apps I use (Mail and Safari), the 3rd-party apps like OmniFocus, Yojimbo, Coda, Transmit, MarsEdit, Byword, iA Writer, and others which are all run by developers which I have no doubt will be quick to update their Mac applications to support Apple’s new high resolution displays.

While it’s true that non-Retina apps on a Retina screen are like sandpaper on the eyes, the tradeoff is worth it to me. I will suffer ugly graphics on the Web in exchange for print-like text, sharp high-resolution photos, and all the other elements of the operating system which will have Retina assets.

I heard someone mention that it’s not unlike iOS shipping without support for Flash. There was a short period of time when you didn’t get the “full web” when on your iPhone and iPad, but now, a few years later, I can’t remember the last time I visited a website and my iPad was sent back out to the cold thanks to its lack of Flash.

I began this article talking about how fond I am of big displays with lots of unused space. Contrasted against this truth is the fact that I also enjoy working from my iPad. My iPad is the smallest screen I work from.

Not including my iPhone (I don’t work on that device) I have three work screens. Listed in order of screen size, from smallest to largest, they are: iPad, MacBook Air, and Cinema Display. But listed in order of pixels, from least to greatest, they are: MacBook Air, Cinema Display, iPad.

The smallest working screen is also the one which sports the most pixels. Surely there is a connection here as to why I prefer to work from either my extra large Cinema Display or my extra dense iPad.

Retina displays are coming to the Macintosh — it’s only a matter of time — and the sooner the better.

Last month I changed my email workflow to only allow myself 44 minutes per day for email checking — one 22-minute segment in the early afternoon and another 22-minute segment towards the end of my day. And I’ve been using Visual to budget that time. 1

There is no shortage of iPhone timer apps. iOS comes with a built-in timer, and if that’s not good enough for you, Due is a highly-recommended and splendid alternative. What I like about Visual is that the face of the iPhone doesn’t say exactly how much time I have (well, it does, in ultra-fine print at the bottom of the screen for those who just must know).

Instead visual conveys about how much time is left through the nature of the visual timer.

A countdown timer like this would never fly in a NASA control room, but for my office it works quite well.

My only two gripes with Visual are:

• The icon. I’m not sure where it came from, but it sure doesn’t seem related to the rest of the app which is simple and well designed.

• If you launch the app after the timer is done you are greeted with the “timer’s done” screen, rather than the launch screen for starting a new timer. Since you’re pretty much always are launching the app to start a new timer the app always requires an extra tap to get to the settings pane.

Visual is just a buck on the App Store. And be sure to check out the promo video, it’s pretty great as well.

That is, until recently.

I once again find myself using two computers. Except this time it’s my MacBook Air that serves as my “desktop” while my iPad is now my “laptop.” 1

And I’m not the only one. Within my circle of friends, I know several people who are also using their iPad as their portable computer. I even have a handful friends who have an iPad as their only computer.

It is not a sacrifice to use the iPad as a primary device. I wanted to take a look at some of the most compelling reasons to use an iPad as your portable, if not your only, computer.

• Battery life: When I bought my original iPad back in 2010, people often asked me what the best thing about it was. My answer was always the battery.

  The iPad is like the Kindle in that two of its greatest features are its absurd battery life and its crisp display. The iPad gets 9 or more hours of battery life without breaking a sweat. And that’s with the display around 60% brightness while using LTE data.

  Thanks to its battery life, the iPad can pretty much work or play for as long as you can. How many times have you taken your laptop to work only to plug it in as soon as you got there? Or, when you go to a coffee shop, do you not look for a table near an outlet? I used to own two power adapters for my MacBook Pro — one for home and one for my office — so that I wouldn’t have to carry one with me during my commutes to and from work.

  The iPad’s battery obviates the need to think about when and where you can next plug your device in. You unplug it when you start your day, you (maybe) plug it back in when you go to bed, and you don’t have to think about it in between.

• Size and weight: Akin to its great battery life, another fine feature of the iPad is how small and lightweight it is. You can easily slip the iPad into your bag, or carry it in a case, with virtually no regard. Even a MacBook Air is not so easily portable. And, the iPad is more rugged than a laptop. I don’t mind tossing my iPad over onto a couch cushion, or into the back seat of my car.

• You don’t have to pull it out at airports: This advantage speaks for itself.

• LTE: Having a device which is connected to the Internet no matter where you are is a huge advantage. It seems that nearly everything we do with our computers today needs an internet connection. Even when I’m doing something as simple as writing, I am working with files that are stored in the cloud, and so I need access to Dropbox and Simplenote to get at my current documents and to save whatever new work I’ve just written.

  Remember when the iPad was first introduced and everyone quipped that it was just a giant iPod touch? In some ways, an iPad with a cellular data connection is like a giant iPhone. In that it has instant access to services and information that you must have a data connection in order to get. I’ve been taking my iPad with me for errands when I’m driving around town. Times when I need maps or directions I can get faster data on a larger screen using the iPad. And, if I’m waiting somewhere, the iPad makes for a better reading or writing device than my iPhone.

• Cost of device: The entry price for an iPad is $399 (a base-model, iPad 2). The entry price for a Mac is $999 (a base-model MacBook Air).

  Though I don’t have any data to support this assumption, but my guess is that most people who buy a Mac, buy just the Mac. Whereas those who buy an iPad also buy a Smart Cover and also (for those who intend to use the iPad as their portable (if not only) device) a Bluetooth keyboard and perhaps some sort of keyboard stand.

  Of course the pricing and configuration options are virtually endless. And, at the end of the day, a well-equipped iPad is not significantly less expensive than a basic MacBook Air. But, if anything, the perceived cost of an iPad is lower. And, for those who need only the bare necessities, an iPad truly is much cheaper than a laptop.

  Another advantage to the low cost of the iPad is the replacement cost. Once you own all the extras that go with your iPad, you only have to replace the device itself if yours breaks or when you upgrade.

• Cost of apps: As of this writing, the average price of the top 100 paid iPad apps is $3.12. The average price of the top 100 paid Mac apps is $18.56.

  It’s not an exact apples-to-apples comparison to pit iPad apps against Mac apps. The latter are, generally, far more robust and feature rich. But there is something enticing about being able to buy a note-taking app or a game or a blogging app for a fraction of the price when buying it for you iPad. Especially when you may not need the robustness and additional features that the Mac versions have.

• iCloud backup and restore: One of the greatest and yet most-unsung features of iCloud and iOS are the automatic, nightly backups of your data.

  If my iPad were to get catastrophically damaged right now, I wouldn’t lose a sliver of data. I could go to the Apple store, buy a new device, log in with my iCloud username, and restore from backup. Within a matter of hours I’d be right where I left off.

• Utility and variety: The iPad, at its base functionality, is little more than a screen. Whatever you are using the device for — reading, writing, watching a movie — that is what the sort of device the iPad turns into. The oft-mentioned sentiment that the iPad becomes the app you have opened is true. And I think it is a feature of the device and of iOS.

  My computer is where I do so many different tasks. Many are personal, many are work related. I pay bills, I write, I work, I do research, I have work email and personal email, I organize and edit family pictures, and more. When I sit down at my computer, all of these tasks want to present themselves to me at the same time — I find that, for me, it takes a rigorous schedule and self-discipline to stay focused on only one task.

  The iPad, however, comes with a natural anti-distraction software: iOS itself. The iPad makes a great multi-use device because it doesn’t distract or beckon away from the task at hand.

There are, of course, many things which you cannot do on an iPad.

Two prime examples for me are my use of QuickBooks and InDesign. And then there are the things which can be done on an iPad or a laptop, but which are done more efficiently on the latter. Another personal example: email. I am much better at processing email with my laptop because of the many AppleScripts and keyboard shortcuts I use in order to file and act on my messages.

Which is why I could not get by with an iPad only. But I am comfortable traveling without my MacBook Air, and there are often times when I prefer to work from the smaller device rather than at the comfort of my Mac. The iPad is a compelling computer, and it is quickly maturing right before our eyes.

Marche writes:

Our online communities become engines of self-image, and self-image becomes the engine of community. The real danger with Facebook is not that it allows us to isolate ourselves, but that by mixing our appetite for isolation with our vanity, it threatens to alter the very nature of solitude. The new isolation is not of the kind that Americans once idealized, the lonesomeness of the proudly nonconformist, independent-minded, solitary stoic, or that of the astronaut who blasts into new worlds. Facebook’s isolation is a grind. What’s truly staggering about Facebook usage is not its volume—750 million photographs uploaded over a single weekend—but the constancy of the performance it demands. More than half its users—and one of every 13 people on Earth is a Facebook user—log on every day. Among 18-to-34-year-olds, nearly half check Facebook minutes after waking up, and 28 percent do so before getting out of bed. The relentlessness is what is so new, so potentially transformative. Facebook never takes a break. We never take a break. Human beings have always created elaborate acts of self-presentation. But not all the time, not every morning, before we even pour a cup of coffee.

This is part of the same topic that yesterday’s link to Jason Kottke’s post was about. His point was along the idea that our smartphones are isolating us. And, as I’ve written before, it also seems to be the problem that the marketing teams for both Windows Phone and Google’s Project Glass are trying to solve.

But is it the device that’s the problem? Or is it the access to apps, networks, status updates, and personal analytics that the device gives us? I think we would all agree that it’s access to the latter.

Suppose our iPhones only had apps like Simplenote, Agenda, OmniFocus, the camera, maps, and the SMS and phone apps. If that were the case, would we still be so prone to pull our phones out? How often would we reach for our iPhones if they were absent of any and all apps that are ripe for casually checking (such as email, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and RSS)?

Put another way: if our smartphones were only capable of two things — (a) direct person-to-person communication, and (b) content creation/management — would we still be pulling them out at stoplights and during commercial breaks? I think not.

In 2010, I wrote an article about Inbox Zero and how it’s all about the outbox. I’m reposting parts of it below, as I don’t think I could say it any better now than I did then:

Inbox Zero is more about how I approach my inbox than how I process what’s in it. And it’s not just the email anymore. There’s Twitter, Instagram, my blog stats, my RSS subscriptions, my Instapaper queue, and who knows what else. These are all inboxes, and they all want to be checked.

Inbox Zero means I care more about the outbox than the inbox. It means I choose to focus my time, energy, and attention on creating something worthwhile instead of feeding some unhealthy addiction to constantly check my inboxes. Pressing the Get New Mail button or refreshing my Twitter stream is like pulling the crank on a slot machine. Did I win? No. Did I win? No.

It’s not that these networks are bad. On the contrary. I get a great deal of personal and professional value out of Twitter and email. But Inbox Zero means I care more about building relationships and getting real work done than I do about my narcissistic tendencies of knowing who’s talking about me on Twitter. It means I care more about doing my best creative work than about keeping up with the Real-Time Web and being instantly accessible via email.

To be addicted to our inboxes is the path towards errors of omission. Or, to paraphrase Robert Louis Stevenson: Inboxes are good enough in their own right, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for work.

The first computer I ever used on a regular basis belonged to my tech-savvy grandfather. I’d play games on it during the weekends when my family visited, until one summer when he upgraded and my folks inherited the hand-me-down IBM. Many years and a few family computers later, I bought my own computer: a Dell laptop that went off to college with me.

After the Dell was my first Mac, the iconic 12-inch PowerBook G4. A few years later, in the spring of 2007, I bought a Mac Pro. The Mac Pro is a beast of a machine. So beastly, in fact, that it doesn’t come with a single peripheral attachment — you have to pick out your own monitor, keyboard, mouse, and anything else you may need. And so, for the first time, I got to pick my own keyboard. At the time, I didn’t know any better and so I went with an off-the-shelf Bluetooth white plastic Apple Pro Keyboard.

The white and clear Apple Pro Keyboard was perhaps the worst keyboard ever designed in California. It was dull and soft to type on, it was neither quiet nor loud, and it had a see-through casing to display all the food crumbs, wrist hairs, and dead bugs that fell between the keys.

In the fall of 2007, Apple redesigned their keyboards to the new slim aluminum keyboards they still sell today. I eventually bought one of those to go with my Mac Pro. Though the thinness of the keyboard made it seem to me like a less-serious keyboard for folks who type a lot, it looked extremely cool. And we all know how important it is to have a clean and hip-looking desk.

It turns out, however, that Apple’s slim aluminum keyboard is quite nice to type on. I’ve been typing on them in some fashion or another ever since 2007. In addition to the full-sized USB version I bought to replace my clear Apple Pro Keyboard, I also bought one in Bluetooth flavor to pair with my original iPad, and the MacBook Air I bought last summer has the slim chicklet-style keyboard built in.

Recently, when I was interviewed on Daniel Bogan’s site, The Setup, he asked me what my dream computing setup would be. My reply was that thought I pretty much already have a dream setup, the one component that I have never truly considered is that which I interface with nearly the most: the keyboard. I wrote:

I think I might like a better keyboard. I’ve never thought anything bad about the slim Apple bluetooth keyboard I use, but recently I spent some time using my cousin’s mechanical keyboard and there was a completely different feel to it. I’ve never been a keyboard snob, but considering my profession, perhaps the time to get snobby about keyboards has come.

As someone who writes for a living it befuddles me why I never thought to research a proper keyboard.

As a computer-nerd-slash-writer, I am always looking and advocating for the right tools. But for years, I have always equated “writing tools” with “software” — I own more text editors than I have fingers to type with — but it never dawned on me until recently that a good keyboard could be equally as important as a good text editor.

I own a dozen different writing applications, a programming application or two, an email application, and a blog-posting application. And what do they all have in common? They all get typed into via a single, solitary device: my keyboard.

A month ago I ordered a Das Keyboard for my Mac. Not because I was dissatisfied with my beautiful and trusty Apple keyboard; rather, I needed to know if life could be better with a bigger, louder, and uglier keyboard.

When I placed the order, I had no idea what I was getting into. Owning a mechanical keyboard is like owning a Jeep Wrangler — there is an unspoken fraternity amongst owners that others don’t quite “get” and which I honestly don’t think I can explain in a blog post of only a few thousand words.

Mechanical keyboards like the Das are bulky, loud, and fantastic for typing. Compared to the slim Apple keyboards, the Das is different in every way except that the end result is still the same: words get onto the screen.

How I felt when I upgraded my keyboard to a mechanical one, reminds me of the excitement James Fallows felt when changing from a typewriter to a personal computer for the first time:

What was so exciting? Merely the elimination of all drudgery, except for the fundamental drudgery of figuring out what to say, from the business of writing.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the Das Keyboard has eliminated all computing drudgery, but I would say that it has greatly enhanced the act of typing. Especially the act of typing for long periods of time, which I happen to do on a daily basis.

The construction of a mechanical keyboard is much more friendly to typing. As I discovered by taking several typing tests (the results of which I share below), a mechanical keyboard actually does help me to type both faster and more accurately. The sound of the keys clacking and the feel of the key switches clicking makes for an aura of productivity and work that fills the senses.

When using a mechanical keyboard you don’t just see your words appear on the screen as you type them, you also feel and hear them. A mechanical keyboard engages all the senses but smell and taste. Which is why you should always type with a hot coffee at your side.

The Keyboards

The sound, size, and durability of a mechanical keyboard make it a device to be reckoned with. It is a wholly different keyboard than the slim Apple ones, but that is not to say I have been turned off to the slim Apple keyboard. When I’m working on my iPad (using the bluetooth keyboard) or my MacBook Air’s built-in keyboard, I still type quickly and comfortably.

This review has been typed out using three of the most popular mechanical keyboards for Mac. They are:

• Das Keyboard Professional Model S: This is the keyboard that I started with. I pre-ordered one a few months ago for $113, and it arrived about a month ago. The Das Keyboards begin shipping on Friday, April 27 for $133.

• Apple Extended Keyboard II: Bought on eBay, the keyboard itself is circa 1990, uses Alps switches, was not made in Mexico, and cost me $31.45 shipped. I also had to purchase an ADB cable for $8.35 and a Griffn iMate ADB to USB adapter for $25. Total cost: $64.80.

• Matias Tactile Pro 3: A well-known 3rd-party keyboard that bills itself as the modern version of the Apple Extended II. It seemed unfair to write a review of Apple mechanical keyboards and not include the Matias Tactile Pro. These sell for $149, but Matias was kind and generous enough to send me a review unit.

Further down I have written more in-depth about the sound, feel, and overall typing experience of each of these three keyboards. But, before we get into that, let’s first check out some side-by-side statistics to give context for the general differences between these three keyboards.

Weight & Size

Typing Scores

They say that using a mechanical keyboard doesn’t necessarily make you a more productive typist. But based on the typing tests I took it would appear that a mechanical keyboard does improve your actual typing productivity.

I took this typing test to measure the speed and accuracy of my typing. As you can see, I typed the slowest and the least accurate on the Apple slim aluminum chicklet-style keyboard that I’ve been using for over 4 years. My fastest and most accurate test was performed on the Das Keyboard.

I typed a staggering 15 words-per-minute faster on my Das Keyboard than on my Apple slim keyboard, and at least 10 words-per-minute faster than on the Matias or the Apple Extended keyboards. And the words typed on the Das were more accurate. The difference in speed adds up to at least 900 additional words (with fewer typos) for every hour of typing.

Of course, nobody types at a constant rate, especially when the typing is creative. But nevertheless. Considering I spend nearly 6 hours a day at my computer, mostly typing, that difference in speed and accuracy is not insignificant.

Sound

Not all clicky keyboards are noisy, but I greatly enjoy the sound of the mechanical keyboards. At first I was timid about the noise coming from my home office, but I have since become acclimated and comfortable with it. Even proud of it.

Each keyboard I tried has a different sound. The Apple Extended II is the quietest and has the lowest tone of clack. The Tactile Pro 3 is the loudest and has a hollow ring that accompanies the clicks of the keys (more on this later). And the Das Keyboard has a crisp higher-pitched click.

Of the three I prefer the sound of the Das Keyboard the best. But, if I could mix and match, I would place the letter keys of the Das with the spacebar of the Apple Extended II and the Backspace of the Tactile Pro.

Here is a brief audio overview of the sounds between the Das Keyboard, the Apple Extended Keyboard II, and the Matias Tactile Pro 3:

Mechanical Key Switches

As I began researching mechanical keyboards and the different types of switches they use, I had no idea the rabbit hole I was crawling into. For brevity’s sake, I’m only going to share a little bit about the differences between the switches found in the 3 keyboards I have.

If you want to learn more about mechanical keyboards and the various switches used, then I’d start with this Mechanical Keyboard Guide. The writer of this thread wrote a well-said opening paragraph for why you want a mechanical keyboard:

For most people it’s all about the feel. With the keyboard you’re typing on right now you’ve got to press the key all the way down to the bottom to get it to register. This wastes a lot of energy and causes fatigue, as most of your effort is spent pushing against a solid piece of plastic. Mechanical keyswitches are designed so that they register before you bottom out, so you only need to apply as much force as is necessary to actuate it, not wasting any. And with as many different types of switches as there are you can pick and choose which one you’re the most comfortable with, as each one has a different feel to it. And most people who try one can never go back to using rubber domes, as they realize just how “mushy” they really feel.

As I quickly discovered, not all mechanical key switches sound or feel the same. Not only are there many different designs of switches, but some are better for typing, some are better for gaming, some have a slight snap-resistance that provides a tactile feedback as you press the key, and some give off a noisy click or clack.

Of the three keyboards I tested, they use two (yea three) different switches:

• Blue Cherry MX switches in the Das Keyboard
• Complicated white ALPS in the Apple Extended II
• Simplified white ALPS in the Tactile Pro

For reference, the slim Apple keyboards shipping today all use plastic scissor switches. Most all laptops use scissor switches because it allows for about half the travel of the more common dome switches used in most all commodity keyboards.1

Cherry Switches

The Das Keyboard uses blue Cherry MX switches. The blue Cherry MX switches have a very pronounced 2-stage travel with a very audible click that happens upon activation.

The total travel of a Cherry Blue MX switch is 4mm; the switch actuates and clicks half-way down at the 2mm mark.

This two-stage click is not nearly as pronounced on the ALPS switches, and it is this pronounced two-stage click that leads many people to consider the blue Cherry MX switches to be the best for typing. They have low resistance and a very noticeable tactical “bump” or “click” that can easily be felt when typing.

You don’t have to bottom out the key to get it to activate. Once you’ve pressed past the “click” at the 2mm mark, that is when the key switch activates and the keystroke is registered by the computer. It’s hard to explain the tactile sensation of typing on the Das Keyboard compared to using the Apple Extended or the Tactile Pro. I would say that because of the pronounced 2-stage switch, the Das has a more defined tactile feel, is less work, and is more enjoyable to type on.

ALPS Switches

ALPS switches are not only a type of switch, but also a brand. Tokyo-based Alps Electric Co., Ltd. makes the switches. You may have also heard of their brand of car audio gear: Alpine.

The Apple Extended Keyboard uses white Alps switches, as does the Tactile Pro. However, the Apple Extended Keyboard uses what is known as “Complicated ALPS” switches, while the Tactile Pro uses “Simplified AlPS.” This is because the complicated switches are no longer in production.

Over time, the complicated ALPS switches can be known to generate resistance because of dust and other elements that can build up within the switch. The Simplified ALPS switches, which the Tactile Pro uses, are less prone to this.

Based on my typing experience with both the Tactile Pro and the Apple Extended II, the Simplified ALPS switches give a bit more resistance than the older Complicated switches. The newer ones seem to have a more pronounced “click” or initial force of resistance. They are also louder. This is not necessarily a bad thing — one of the things that makes mechanical keyboards so great for typing is their click and their clack.

Apple Extended Keyboard II

Before you’ve even typed a word, the first thing you notice about the Apple Extended Keyboard II is how huge it is. The AEK is the widest keyboard of the bunch. It measures just wider than 18.5 inches. My son, Noah, was 19.5 inches when he was born. He could have taken a nap on the Apple Extended Keyboard. Who knows, he may have written something clever in the process.

With the AEK on my desk, my 23-inch Apple Cinema Display, which measures 21-inches across, now seems tinier than it used to. When I used the thin and sleek Apple Bluetooth keyboard, the cinema display seemed so large in contrast. With the Apple Extended Keyboard in front of the monitor, the screen now has a peer it must reckon with.

Next, you realize that the Home Row markers are on the “D” and the “K” as opposed to the “F” and the “J”. The latter is now the de facto standard and it takes some time to acclimate to the feel of the markers being under my two middle fingers rather than my two pointer fingers.

Lastly, the Apple Extended II uses an ADB cable. The keyboard I bought off eBay didn’t come with the cable, so I had to buy an ADB cable separately ($8) along with a Griffin iMate (an ADB to USB adapter that cost me another $25 on eBay).

I had been typing on my Das Keyboard for nearly two weeks before the Apple Extended II arrived. I expected it to sound and feel nearly the same as the Das Keyboard, but the complicated white ALPS switches are quite different than the blue Cherry MX switches. It is true that they are both clicky mechanical keyboards, but if you did not know that and you were only to type on each of these you would not classify them as being the same type of keyboard.

My Apple Extended II feels softer and sounds quieter than both other mechanical keyboards I have here. If you’re listening to the different audio tracks I’ve recorded, the MP3s may sound a bit deceiving. Sitting here, in my office, the Apple Extended Keyboard II is the quietest of the bunch. It is certainly not quiet — but it does not have the same high-pitched click. The Das is like a snap, the AEK is like a clap. The AEK has more bass to it, and the sound is more muted.

Again, I don’t know if the stark differences are because the ALPS switches in my Apple Extended II are used and 22 years old, or because they are the complicated ALPS switches. Perhaps I will never know because I don’t feel compelled to invest nearly $200 for a “brand new” 22-year-old Apple keyboard. The $32-find I got on eBay is simply the best one that was guaranteed to work and which was not assembled in Mexico.

Matias Tactile Pro 3

The Matias Tactile Pro bills itself as the modern version of the Apple Extended Keyboard II. Though the look of the Tactile Pro is patterned after the design of black-keyed Apple Pro Keyboard circa 2000, it uses white ALPS switches, akin to the 1990-era Apple Extended and Extended II keyboards. But the switches are not the exact same because those used in the Apple Extended are no longer made today.

The key switches on the Tactile Pro feel very different than those on my Apple Extended Keyboard II. The click-down on the Matias is much more pronounced than on the AEK II. Though I am not fully certain that this is because of the difference in switches rather than the age of my Apple Extended keyboard, the reviews I read online about the differences between the complicated and the simplified ALPS switches did seem to be concurrent with my experience.

Typing on the Tactile Pro is bittersweet for me. The tactile feedback of the key switches is quite pleasant, and there is a firm resistance within the switches that gives the keyboard a sturdy and hearty feel. I like the slightly higher resistance that the Tactile Pro gives.

Moreover, the sound of the Tactile Pro when typing is much louder than the Apple Extended II. I like the louder volume, but unfortunately it has a hollow sound to it that seems incongruous with the sturdiness of the switches. Additionally, there is a ringing that echoes around in the chassis of the keyboard itself.

Here is an audio recording which tries to catch the ringing that reverberates after a keystroke. You may need to turn your volume up to hear it:

After typing on the Matias for two days, as much as I liked the tactile feel of it, the sound was constantly a distraction. I asked Matias about the ring, and was informed that the noise comes from the springs in the ALPS key switches. Matias tells me they are advancing the key switches to remove the ringing in a future version of the Tactile Pro. Also, the chassis design of the original Tactile Pro is built in such a way that the spring ring is not nearly as audible.

Das Keyboard

This new model of the Das, which has the keys mapped out especially for a Mac, seems to be re-kindling the interest in mechanical keyboards. It is the first mechanical keyboard I got, and before that the first (and only) mechanical keyboard I had ever used was my cousin’s Adesso MKB-125B. Both the Das and the Adesso use the blue Cherry MX switches. It was through using the Adesso that I first began considering upgrading my typing tool.

Unfortunately, the Das (like the other 2 keyboards I tested) is big, bulky, and generally an eye sore. In fact, of the few other reviews I’ve read about it, the general consensus is: it’s ugly, but it’s great to type on. The clickety-clack quickly makes up for the aesthetic sacrifice by telling everyone within earshot that you are getting some serious work done.

The aesthetics of mechanical keyboards today baffle me. Just because it has mechanical switches, which were especially common from keyboards of the ‘80s and ‘90s, doesn’t mean it should also look like it’s been rescued from 20 years ago.

In addition to being the ugliest of the three mechanical keyboards currently in my office, the typeface used on the key caps of the Das is horrendous. Perhaps the worst offender is the single-quote / double-quote key, which rests just to the left of Return. At a glance, it looks like a period and a single-quote.

However, the Das Keyboard has two great things going for it. More than the other two keyboards, I prefer the tactile feel of the blue Cherry MX switches and the audio click of the Das. Since you don’t buy a mechanical keyboard for its aesthetics, for those looking to get a clicky keyboard, this is the one I would recommend.

Mapping the Special Function Keys

Though the Das Keyboard for Mac has custom modifier key commands drawn onto its function keys, those special modifier keys aren’t recognized by OS X. The “F14″ and “F15″ keys work to dim and brighten the display (rather than the traditional F1 and F2), but in order to control the previous track, next track, play/pause, and volume up/down/mute you have to press the Function Key which is awkwardly placed under the right-side Shift Key.

Since the System doesn’t recognize the Das Keyboard’s special keys, you can’t tell it to treat F1 like it would on an Apple keyboard without pressing that Function key. For the life of me, I don’t know why this is, but it just is.

Fortunately Keyboard Maestro is a keyboard’s best friend. A little bit of fiddling with the Macros and I was successfully able to map F6 all the way through F11 to act as the blue markings say they should act.

Moreover, since I use Rdio as my tunes source, I hacked together a rather clever if/else macro that allows me to control iTunes if I’m in iTunes, but otherwise to default to controlling Rdio from anywhere else in OS X.

With the Keyboard Maestro hacks in place, you may have trouble using your normal modifier keys on your MacBook Air (assuming you use your Das Keyboard with your laptop in clamshell mode). If so, check out this cool little utility called Function Flip.

Outro

After a month of using and testing the three most popular clicky keyboards for Mac, I am extremely glad I jumped into these waters. The sound and the feel of a clicky keyboard only takes a few days to get used to, and what follows is this intense feeling of productivity that now accompanies anything I type.

Something I like about mechanical keyboards is that each key has its own unique sound and feel. You could tell how many words someone types, and how many in-line typos they fix, simply by listening. Space Bar, Backspace, Return, and the letters — each produce a unique sound and have their own tactile feel. There is variety when typing on a mechanical keyboard. All of these keyboards are just so darn loud that there’s no ambiguity as to if I am typing or not — I know it, Anna knows it, and heck, the neighbors probably know it. When I set out to type a sentence, I am committed — it is like the typing equivalent of writing with ink.

If you too want to adorn your desk with an ugly keyboard — one with a loud personality and which increases typing productivity — then I recommend the Das Keyboard. I prefer both the tactile feel and the sound of the blue Cherry MX switches, and though I find the Das to be the ugliest of the bunch, a serious typist knows you shouldn’t be looking at your keyboard while you’re typing.

However, there are some 3rd-party applications which you can install on your Mac to enable printing from your iPhone or iPad. These apps work by sharing the printers it has access to and tricking iOS into seeing those printers as being AirPrint enabled.

If you don’t own an AirPrint-enabled printer, yet you want to print from your iPhone or iPad, you will need to install a 3rd-party app. But, which one? I found that with certain 3rd-party apps you get additional functionality and benefits beyond just being able to print from your iPhone.

Here is a quick look at some of those 3rd-party apps:

Fingerprint

Fingerprint was the first app I came across that could solve the AirPrint conundrum. And the reason I came across this application is because initially I was helping a friend set up AirPrint with his Windows-equipped office. We were searching for AirPrint enablers that worked on Windows.

Fingerprint has both a Mac and a Windows version, and so if you’re on Windows this may be the ideal solution for you.

It costs $10 and not only does it allow you to print to your printers, but it also lets you set up folders and print to a folder on your computer.

But there was one critical deal breaker for me: Fingerprint runs in the Menu Bar. I am ardent about having as few icons in my Menu Bar as possible, and therefore I kept searching for alternatives.

AirPrint Activator

If all you want to do is print, then AirPrint Activator may be the app for you. It is a free application (donations are encouraged) that does just one thing: take the printers your Mac is connected to and share them as AirPrint enabled printers.

The latest version — 1.1.3 — requires that the application be open and running in the Dock in order to work. Background utility apps like this should not require being run in the Dock. It’s even more of a deal breaker for me than being run in the Menu Bar.

The developer is currently in active development on version 2, and there is a public beta available. I gave the latest beta version a try (2.1b7 as of this writing) and it seems that AirPrint Activator can now run in the background without showing it’s Dock or Menu Bar icon.

However, this latest beta of AirPrint Activator seems finicky for me. I could get it to work a few times, but not every time. If you’re looking for the least expensive and simplest way to enable AirPrint for your iOS devices, then I would keep an eye on AirPrint Activator.

Printopia

Printopia is the app I ended up going with, for several reasons:

• Lives in System Preferences;
• runs in the background with no Menu Bar or Dock icon;
• allows me to print to my home printers;
• prints to any folder on my Mac;
• allows me to “print” directly to an application (such as Yojimbo or PDFpen);
• and it works very well, very quickly, and very consistently.

Printing to a folder is just like the “Save as PDF…” options in your Mac’s print dialog box. Using Printopia to print to a folder means that whatever it is your printing gets saved as a PDF to that folder on your Mac. You can save it to a standard folder, a Dropbox folder, or send the file to an application (such as iPhoto, Yojimbo, Evernote, etc.)

If my Mac is running, I can now send an email or a photo or a SimpleNote note directly to my computer. I’ve set up a few folders with Folder Actions that will allow me to import directly into Yojimbo and assign tags for those imports.

Though I mostly use Printopia for actually printing out documents, it’s helpful to have its additional features. If you want to read more, Dan Frakes wrote a review for Macworld last November.

11:51 am CST: With a thermos full of coffee on my desk, half a dozen Safari tabs open, and Twitter in the corner, I am ready to watch the liveblogs.

12:21 pm: Tim Cook announces the new iPad!

12:23 pm: Phil Schiller is now talking about it. Overview of features: Retina display; better camera; 4G LTE; voice dictation; and 10 hours of battery life. Wow.

12:38 pm: Phil Schiller: “This new iPad has the most wireless bands of any device that’s ever shipped.” Wi-Fi, GSM, UMTS, GPS, CDMA, LTE, and Bluetooth to be exact.

1:13 pm: Phil Schiller: “Don’t let anyone ever tell you that you can’t create on an iPad.”

1:45 pm: Schiller says that the non-Retina-optimized apps will still look great on the new iPad’s screen. I disagree. They will look blurry and poor, especially when contrasted against the apps which are Retina optimized.

1:21 pm: Apple is calling the new iPad the same thing everyone else is going to call it: “The new iPad.”

Later this year? “The new iPhone.”

1:30 pm: “Resolutionary” is a brilliant tagline. Reminds me of “Thinnovation” and “The Funnest iPod Ever”.

1:49 pm: Now attempting to order a 16GB, Black, AT&T new iPad.

2:49 pm: Make that trying to order a 16GB, Black, AT&T new iPad.

3:09 pm: Got through. But it looks like the LTE models are not available for in-store pickup when pre-ordering. I’d prefer to wait in line, but I’m not going to wait inline without a pre-order guarantee to get the right model.

Thursday, March 8

1:14 pm: Well, apparently AT&T’s map of 4G coverage (which is linked to from Apple.com’s website talking about LTE coverage) doesn’t actually mean LTE coverage.

I went with AT&T because I thought they had LTE in both Kansas City and Denver, but turns out they do not in Denver. Now canceling my AT&T order and going with Verizon instead.

2:44 pm: Just received the order confirmation email, and fortunately the new iPad is in fact expected to arrive on Friday the 16th. I’m a bit bummed that I won’t be standing in line this time. Me and two other friends were all planning to pre-order for pickup but the Apple online store didn’t have pickup available at the time and so we had to choose to get it delivered to our house.

And, I see that my time spent refreshing store.apple.com yesterday was pretty much in vain.

Wednesday, March 14

7:12 pm: Watching a few episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation with Anna while we wait for the reviews of the iPad to hit the wire.

7:14 pm: Okay, fine. While I wait for the reviews to hit the wire.

8:31 pm: Looks like the embargo has lifted. Reading the Reviews.

Using my “old” iPad 2 to read reviews about the new iPad seems like some sort of cruel joke.

11:57 pm: I dig the long-form, personal, in-depth stuff. Folks have been griping about bullet point posts for years but I read this type of writing as entertainment. I especially enjoyed Jason Snell’s review.

Friday, March 16

8:00 am: Brewing coffee and getting ready to wait out the day.

8:32 am: Just got a text from my friend who is at the local Apple store and he says there is no line. He just walked right in and snagged a 64GB Black Verizon model.

Well, in that case, why should I sit around and wait for FedEx? Moreover, I’ve been thinking about how 16GB may not be enough any more. Already my iPad 2 is maxed out and I’ve had to delete all my music off of it. I think I’m going to cruise over to the Apple store and pick up a Verizon 32GB model instead. I can simply return my 16GB later.

I guess 32 is the new 16.

9:52 am: After waiting for Noah to go down for his nap, I am now leaving for the Apple store. Anna jokes with me that she’ll sign for my FedEx iPad while I’m out.

10:04 am: I arrive at the Apple store. It’s weird to be here on launch morning but with no huge lines out front. There are the customary police officers, carts of Smart Water, big signs on easels for the pre-order line, and dozens of blue-shirted Apple employees… but only a handful of customers.

I ask the employees manning the front door how the morning has been. They say that yesterday at around 11:00 am the first person arrived and that this morning when the store opened at 8:00 there were about 80 people in line. I hope that guy who waited 21 hours didn’t stick around to see the line totally dissipate after just an hour.

10:11 am: New iPad purchased. This is the 3rd iPad (3) that I’ve bought. (!) First was the AT&T one, then was the 16GB Verizon model, and now this 32 GB Verizon. Oy.

10:43 am: Now back home and beginning setup. The first thing I notice, right away, is the weight. The new iPad is obviously heavier. I think it feels thicker, but if I didn’t know that it was thicker, I’d probably chalk it up to the fact it weighs more.

And since this is a 4G-equipped iPad it’s even a bit heavier than a Wi-Fi-only iPad 3. To get nitty gritty: according to my kitchen coffee scale, my iPad 2 weighs 613 grams and my new iPad weighs 663 grams.

10:44 am: The second thing I notice: the screen. It looks familiar and yet not at the same time. I’m not as shocked to see the iPad’s Retina display because I’ve seen one before (on my iPhone). And yet, I am so thankful that a device which is pretty much just a screen, now has such an incredible screen.

10:53 am: Doing a quick iCloud backup of my iPad 2 so I can restore from that backup to the iPad 3. Since I don’t charge my iPad 2 in on a daily basis, I don’t have a recent iCloud backup of it.

10:58 am: Initiating iCloud restore onto the new iPad.

10:59 am: 21 minutes remaining. Time to brew another cup of coffee? I think yes.

11:40 am: While waiting for all my apps to finish downloading, I set up my Verizon service. I imagine that I could use 1GB without trying too hard, so I’m going with Verizon’s 2GB for $30/month plan. but I guess we’ll see in practice. How often will I take just my iPad when out and about? And how often will I need the cellular data?

It seems Verizon wants me to set up my own account and enter in my credit card info. I was hoping they would charge me through my Apple account and so I could just enable it via my iTunes password, but I had to enter in complete billing info. If I cancel my data plan next month but want to enable it the month after that, will I have to re-enter all this billing information again?

The 4G cellular connection works different than what I thought. For some reason I thought the cellular connection would be off most of the time and if I wanted to turn that on then I would have to manually switch it on each time. But no, it works on the iPad just like it does on my iPhone — it is always connected. If it has a Wi-Fi signal nearby then it grabs that, but if not then it uses the cellular signal. Thus there’s no interruption of connectivity.

I could manually turn off the data connection but I’ve read that leaving it active has a negligible drain on battery life, so I see no point in keeping it disabled when I don’t need it.

11:52 am: The apps download in order of priority. Apps in the Dock download and install first, then left-to-right and top-to-bottom starting on the first Home screen.

Sadly, the apps did not download their latest versions. They downloaded the version I had on my iPad 2. Now go into the App Store and update them all. So more downloads

3:04 pm: FedEx finally arrives with my Apple.com-ordered 16GB iPad 3 and my Apple TV they tried to deliver yesterday. The FedEx guy looks tired.

7:25 pm: The battery was at 94-percent this morning when I first turned it on. I’ve been using surfing, reading, tweeting, and emailing pretty much nonstop since 11:00 am and it is now at 40-percent.

8:30 pm: Hey! The Retina update to Instapaper is now available. It looks fantastic. Loving Proxima Nova.

Saturday, March 17

7:42 am: Rearranging my iPad’s Home screens and apps. What else would I be doing on a Saturday morning?

8:32 am: Setting up the last of the apps that need new passwords entered and to sync their data: Rdio and 1Password.

Apps that are not updated for Retina yet don’t strike me as being as blurry as non-Retina iPhone apps were. Perhaps it’s because I am further away from the iPad screen than the iPhone’s? Or perhaps because the iPhone’s Retina display has a higher pixel density than the iPad’s?

9:10 am: Battery is currently at 22-percent. Letting it charge for a bit while I make my morning cup of coffee.

9:37 am: People on Twitter are talking about difference in color temperature between the screens of the iPad 2 and the 3. I see a color variant but it’s not a temperature difference — rather my iPad 3 is more vibrant and rich.

2:15 pm: The battery is now fully charged, but I’m not sure how long it’s been there. Based on the past few timeline notes, it seems like the iPad charges at about 15-percent per hour.

11:02 pm: Doing my first LTE speed test. It’s averaging 10Mbps down and 3Mbps up. That’s here in the south end of KC, where I live. So it’s not quite as fast as my home broadband connection, nor is it as fast as some of the jealousy-inducing speeds that some folks are tweeting about, but it still pretty impressive and nothing to complain about.

11:14 pm: Streamed an HD video trailer (Unraveled) over LTE with only one minor hiccup at the front end. The HD looks stellar on the new iPad.

Sunday, March 18

9:53 am: Decided to move the Mail app out of the iPad’s Dock. I have every intention of using the iPad more and more as a serious work device. And a serious work device needs its email application in a place where it is least likely to wiggle its way into the center of attention.

Monday, March 19

1:25 pm: After recording Shawn Today and listening to the Apple financial conference call this morning, I’ve been spending the rest of the day working solely from the iPad. Writing, reading, emailing, and linking — all from the iPad while I watch Noah in the living room so Anna can get some down time.

What I like about working with the iPad is that I feel like it’s just me and my work. Even if there are other distractions available (like Twitter) they are not present. They are in the background and in another app, not peeking out from behind the frontmost window.

I remember two years ago, when the first iPad came out, I very much wanted it to be a laptop replacement but it couldn’t be. For me, at least. When the iPad and its 3rd-party apps were still in their infancy I couldn’t properly manage my email workflow, my to-do list, nor could I write to the site or even have synced documents.

Since 2010 so much of that has changed. In part, my own workflow has simplified and can now acclimate mostly to what the iPad is capable of. But also the apps for the iPad have come such a long way, that in some regards (to-do list management, for example) the iPad is a better tool than my laptop.

4:01 pm: While visiting my sister and her husband, I thought I’d bring the iPad so I could do a speed test at Mark’s house and wow, Verizon’s LTE is much faster here than at my place. Seeing speeds around 30Mbps up and 20Mbps down.

9:07 pm: I haven’t touched the older iPad 2 in a few days. But I just now picked it up to do some comparisons of websites rendering on the different displays and it’s amazing how much lighter and thinner this thing feels.

I’ve gotten used to the thickness and the weight of the new iPad and in day-to-day it doesn’t affect its usefulness, but it still is interesting that the difference is so noticeable when picking up the iPad 2. Or, put another way, the difference in weight and thinness is much more noticeable when going from heavy to light than the other way around.

The second thing I noticed with the iPad 2 in hand was how horrid the Internet looks. Everything is fuzzy. Text isn’t clear; Retina display-optimized header graphics look just as blurry as non-optimized graphics on the new iPad. There is no going back.

9:51 pm: It strikes me that the Retina display is the other side of the coin to iOS. Meaning, iOS is the software and the screen is the hardware and that’s it. Those are the two sides to this coin. On a laptop or desktop computer you have three user interface components: the keyboard, the mouse, and the screen where you watch the user interface. On the iPad you have one user interface: the screen. And you touch and manipulate what is on the screen.

I love the way Ryan Block explained why the new iPad’s Retina display is such a big deal:

The core experience of the iPad, and every tablet for that matter, is the screen. It’s so fundamental that it’s almost completely forgettable. Post-PC devices have absolutely nothing to hide behind. Specs, form-factors, all that stuff melts away in favor of something else that’s much more intangible. When the software provides the metaphor for the device, every tablet lives and dies by the display and what’s on that display.

Ever since 2007, one of the hallmark engineering feats of iOS has been its responsiveness to touch input. When you’re using an iOS app it feels as if you are actually moving the pixels underneath your finger. If that responsiveness matters at all, then so does the quality and realism of the screen itself.

Highly-responsive software combined with a dazzling and life-like screen make for the most “realistic” software experience available.

I don’t know how this relates exactly, but it makes me think of how I would flail my hands and the controller of my Nintendo Entertainment System when I was trying to get Mario to jump over a large pit. As if, by moving the controller around I could give Mario that extra boost of speed for his jump. Have we always had that natural tendency to relate our physical actions to the manipulation of pixels on a screen?

10:12 pm: My only disappointment with the new iPad’s display is that it’s not laminated to the glass the way the display of the iPhone 4/4S is. The iPad’s screen is significantly larger than the iPhone’s, and so there is an epic element in that regard, but there is a unique beauty to the iPhone’s Retina display that the iPad does not have.

Tuesday, March 20

1:30 pm: Putting Noah in the car seat to take him to his one-month doctor checkup.

1:38 pm: I need a sleeve for this iPad because, already, taking it out on its own is becoming more common.

This X Pocket iPad case from Hard Graft looks absolutely stellar, but do I really want only a sleeve? If I’m going to be leaving my Air at home it’d be nice to have an iPad bag. My beloved Timbuk2 is already the smallest size they make and though it’s perfect for holding my Air, iPad, keyboard, and other little peripherals, the iPad alone seems to swim in it.

Another option could be this sweet bag from Hard Graft, but it may be just a little bit too small because I’d want to be able to fit my bluetooth keyboard in there as well. My pals Ben Brooks and Brett Kelly both use Tom Bihn’s Ristretto, but I prefer cases that are horizontal rather than vertical.

2:09 pm: Did a quick speed test here in Overland Park before going in to the pediatrician’s office. The LTE service here is faster than by my place, but nowhere near the speeds it was seeing at my sister’s home.

You know, all these speed tests keep me thinking about what I’ll do if and when an LTE iPhone comes out. Will I cancel my AT&T contract and switch to Verizon, will I stick with my 4S for an extra year and move to Verizon when my contract expires, or will I stick with AT&T and get one of their LTE phones?

2:13 pm: Anna’s looking at me like can we go in now?

Wednesday, March 21

12:13 pm: I remember when the iPad was a luxury item and I was embarrassed to use it in church or the local coffee shop. But now? Now it seems everyone has one. I walk into the coffee shop and half of the people here are reading or working on their iPads.

Two years ago, we didn’t know where the iPad fit in. It was a $500 luxury item that went somewhere between a smartphone and a laptop. But now, people are using iPads as their main computers. As a $500 computer replacement the iPad seems sensible, not extravagant.

10:48 pm: Whoa. Turn a page in iBooks.

Thursday, March 22

9:58 am: I have figured out how to properly classify the three generations of iPads: * Vintage * Old and Busted * New Hotness

Friday, March 23

12:45 pm: Ugh. Hit with the stomachs flu; I’m taking it easy today. But while I’m upstairs in bed, trying to relax, I’d like to do some work on my development site. Surely I can do this from the iPad, no?

I search the App Store for “FTP” and come across two apps which allow me to access and edit FTP files: FTP on the Go PRO, and Markup. However, asking for recommendations on Twitter yields a single answer: Textastic.

1:28 pm: Coding on the iPad is a much more delicate process than coding on my Mac. When on my Mac I have at least a few Safari tabs open with the site launched, and Coda going with 3 or 4 or more tabs worth of documents I’m working in. On the iPad it’s a bit more uni-tasky, and you can’t see as many lines of code all at once on the smaller screen.

While I don’t see myself ever doing large-scale coding projects solely on my iPad, it’s nice to know that if I need to jump in and make edits or changes to my site I could do so. Also, it’s nice to be able to make small tweaks to current back-burner projects.

Saturday, March 24

8:37 am: Downloading songs for Anna on the iPad 2, and again I’m reminded of how thin and light this device is compared to the new one.

It is an interesting juxtaposition of the senses to hold the iPad 2 after getting used to the new iPad. The older hardware feels superior according to the physical senses — eyes closed (or screen off) and you would assume you’re holding the latest and greatest iPad. However, one look at the screen and your mind wonders how it was that your hands could have deceived you. How can this lighter and thinner device have such a vastly inferior screen?

John Gruber describes it well:

Apple doesn’t make new devices which get worse battery life than the version they’re replacing, but they also don’t make new devices that are thicker and heavier. LTE networking — and, I strongly suspect, the retina display — consume more power than do the 3G networking and non-retina display of the iPad 2. A three-way tug-of-war: 4G/LTE networking, battery life, thinness/weight. Something had to give. Thinness and weight lost: the iPad 3 gets 4G/LTE, battery life remains unchanged, and to achieve both of these Apple included a physically bigger battery, which in turn results in a new iPad that is slightly thicker (0.6 mm) and heavier (roughly 0.1 pound/50 grams, depending on the model).

The trade off is worth it. After a short while of using the new iPad I quickly acclimate to its size and weight. And who among us would vote for a new iPad that didn’t have 4G LTE, or that didn’t have the Retina screen, or that didn’t have 10 hours of battery life and was instead as thin and light as the iPad 2? Not me. And, well, if you did vote for that, then you can just buy an iPad 2 and even save $100.

11:12 am: Anna’s friends are over for brunch to celebrate her birthday. One of them is currently in nursing school and we all get onto the subject of studying, textbooks, laptops, and iPads.

Her school is excited about the soon-coming transition to when textbook money will be a part of the tuition cost and it will be used to buy the student a new iPad and cover the cost to load up that iPad with the course-necessary electronic textbooks.

But these girls are not excited about that. They don’t want textbooks on iPads because they can’t write in them, can’t highlight them, can’t spread them all out and reference multiple pages simultaneously. And they don’t like the idea of needing a laptop and an internet connection either because it means you have to study at home or at a coffee shop or library, and you can’t go somewhere outside and away from it all.

Sunday, March 25

7:29 am: Checking my iPad to see when the latest iCloud backup was, and yes: the iPad automatically backed up to iCloud last night. This has got to be one of the most underappreciated features of owning an iDevice. Automatic iCloud backups are like Time Machine but better. All my apps, all my settings, all my pictures, backed up to the cloud while I sleep and while my iPad charges.

Remember when we had to plug into iTunes and manually sync? Ew.

Monday, March 26

11:27 am: Finally able to pair my Apple Bluetooth keyboard to the new iPad. In short, this keyboard seems to only want to be paired with a single device at a time. I had to tell my MacBook Air to forget the keyboard (plugging in my Apple USB keyboard instead). Though I like this keyboard more for typing, I had been using the Amazon iPad keyboard with the iPad 2 and, though it is a great and inexpensive Bluetooth keyboard, it isn’t quite on the same par as Apple’s.

Coincidentally, this Apple Bluetooth keyboard is the same one I bought two years ago when I bought an original iPad. I always intended to use it with the iPad but it ended up becoming my desktop keyboard instead.

12:05 pm: Was planning on heading out for the afternoon to field test the iPad some more, and to wrap up this piece, but Noah is having a rough and fussy afternoon. I’ve opted to stay home and give Anna some time off. So hey! I’m “field testing” in the backyard.

I’m in my camping chair out on the back patio, a baby monitor by my side, my lunch shake resting in the cup holder, and the new iPad resting on my lap in its InCase Origami Workstation.

It’s unfortunate that the iPad’s glassy screen doesn’t do well outdoors. If the screen is light and the text is dark, it works pretty well, but only so long as you are away from sunlight. And I notice that there’s virtually no difference of increased visibility between 50- and 100-percent brightness.

12:15 pm: The thing that bothers me the most about promoting the iPad to a more regular work device is that it still doesn’t fit my email workflow. On my Mac I have many rules in Mail that process and file away those “bacon” emails that I want but never want to see. Also, I get a lot of receipts via email, and most of these are for tax-deductible items that I need to keep and process. I can’t do that on the iPad because I use AppleScripts and Yojimbo…

Hmmm. What if there a way to send an email to a Dropbox folder?…

Doing some research reveals there are a few options. Send To Dropbox looks to be the best. It’s a service that connects to your Dropbox account and then gives you a unique email address. It will store any attachments as well as store plain text or HTML version of your emails. Sounds ideal.

12:35 pm: The sun is creeping over to my shaded spot. I may be forced to move inside.

1:02 pm: For the past 30 minutes I have carried on a couple of iChat conversations (thanks to Verbs App app), researched some ways to send an email to Dropbox, worked on this article, and changed a certain baby’s dirty diaper.

However, my backyard is now completely bathed in sun and I have no choice but to move back inside. Noting that the battery level is currently at 68-percent; about an hour ago it was at 82.

1:21 pm: Since I am “field testing,” I’ve been using LTE instead of my home Wi-Fi. This morning I checked my Verizon data plan and it reports 307MB used since the 16th. Today is the 26th, and so that averages out to 31MB per day so far. My plan allows me 2,048MB per month, and that averages out to 66MB per day — twice what I’ve been averaging so far. I think the 2GB plan will prove to be just right.

3:11 pm: Now taking that field trip and driving to the Roasterie.

3:23 pm: The weather is so nice today that everyone else thought they’d head over here as well. I could sit inside, but that’d be a disservice to the weather.

So here I am on a sidewalk bench down by Le Creuest, some kitchen accessories store. This is where the oddity of using an iPad in public comes in to play once again. Sitting on a bench in front of a kitchen store drinking an Italian Soda and tapping away on my new iPad. I’m too timid to bust out the Origami Workstation in this environment.

3:29 pm: Alas, I cannot connect to the coffee shop’s Wi-Fi from way over here on this bench, and Verizon service seems to be poor on this side of town. Ah well, I am mostly only writing and therefore Internet speeds are inconsequential to me at the moment.

You know, it’s funny. I bought a 4G iPad and signed up for a data plan so that I could take the iPad anywhere and still be able to use it with an Internet connection. In some ways the data plan is a safety net — if I find myself in a place with poor or no Wi-Fi, then no problem because I can use my data connection. But in some ways the data plan is a permission slip — if I’d rather go work at the park instead of a coffee shop I can.

In my mind I imagine the permission slip mindset as being the more exciting and freeing option. I mean, that is one of the great advantages to cellular data and it’s certainly the main reason for why I bought the 4G model. Yet, I find myself too timid to take advantage of it in fear that I’ll use up my data plan too fast and then not have it when I need it, or pay unnecessary overage rates.

Tuesday, March 27

11:13 am: Checking the Verizon data usage and today it reports a total of 350MB used. So yesterday, while on the field and using my data connection what seemed like a lot, I only used 43MB. That is still under my daily allotment of 66MB.

3:49 pm: Finished setting up my Send To Dropbox workflow, and I now have a Folder Action and an AppleScript working on my MacBook Air so that any receipts I get via email I can simply forward on from my iPad or iPhone and they’ll safely land in Yojimbo.

And, relatedly, thanks to Printopia I can also now print from my iPad (since I don’t have an Air Print-enabled printer).

All these tricks and workarounds and 3rd-party services that make my iPad work better with my Mac strike me as an odd necessity for a “Post-PC Device”. In some ways it makes the iPad seem more like a thin client rather than its own, stand-alone computing device. Perhaps it’s not a fault of the iPad so much as it is my own desire to fit the iPad into my particular and age-old workflows that I’ve long since gotten used to on my Macs over the years.

Yet, even with my workflows aside, I suppose the iPad is still, in a way, a thin client — a thin client to the World Wide Web. How many of the apps on my iPad have need of an Internet connection? How many of the tasks I do on the iPad require an Internet connection? How often do I front load Instapaper and Reeder before getting on an airplane?

The answer is: a lot.

Because the iPad works best when it is connected to the Web. It is intended to be connected.

Having an iPad with a cellular data connection instantly raises the overall utility of the device. Because it takes it from a device that works best in the comfort of a home or coffee shop Wi-Fi connection and turns it into a device that works virtually anywhere your feet will take you.

This tablet is extremely portable. And its software makes it usable as a work and entertainment device. These are the things that excite me most about the iPad. And I don’t mean this specific new iPad that I am using to write these very very words. I mean the iPad as a product category — as the next generation of devices where things are versatile, robust, and yet simpler.

About a month ago I wrote about the iPhone app QuickShot and how I use it to take pictures of physical receipts. QuickShot uploads the picture I take into Dropbox, and I have a Folder Action script set up on my Mac to automatically toss the pictures of the receipts into Yojimbo for me. This is especially wonderful for when I’m on a business trip, or just out and about.

One thing that has always bugged me about my Yojimbo system is that it breaks down when it comes to email on my iPhone and iPad.

Until yesterday I knew of no way to get receipts out of my email inbox and in to Yojimbo except for when I was at my Mac. Therefore, if I was checking email on my iPhone or iPad, I had to deal with the receipts in my inbox twice. First when I came across them on my iPhone or iPad, and then again when I sat down at my Mac and remembered to go back to those emails and then toss them into Yojimbo.

Moreover, this meant that I couldn’t truly do all my email work from my iPad. I could only do some email management from my iPad and had no choice but to do the rest from my Mac.

Yesterday I came across a web service that will take any file you email to it and save that file into a folder within your Dropbox account. The service is called, appropriately, Send To Dropbox.

Send to Dropbox is like QuickShot and DropVox but for emails.

Send To Dropbox is free, and when you sign up you get a unique email address. When you send an email to that address the service saves the email in a Dropbox folder. The service can save the email message itself as HTML or plain text, and it can also save attachments and even un-zip ZIP files.

I set it up yesterday using the same Folder Action AppleScript I use for QuickShot and it works perfectly. Now if I forward a receipt from my iPad or iPhone it will end up in Yojimbo where it belongs and with all the proper tags.

To become a subscribing member, click here.

If now is bad for you, you can sign up for a membership any time you like. The members-only perks carry on year round, and whenever it is you sign up you’ll get instant access to all the archives of every episode of Shawn Today and every previous Members Journal.

But, if you become a subscribing member before Sunday night, then your name will be in the hat to win something awesome.

If you have been sitting on the fence, wondering if you should sign up for a membership or not, I say go for it. You’ll be directly supporting the writing I do here, you’ll get access to Shawn Today and The Members Journal, and you’ll be entered to win something cool.

However, if all that is still not enough, I have but one final tactic to see if I can convince you: a picture of the cutest and newest Blanc in town.

The icon size for the new iPad’s Home screen is 144×144 pixels. Up until last week my site’s Web clip icon was 158×158 pixels (Apple.com’s was, and still is 129×129). I’d been using 158 because of Nathan Borror’s suggestion from way back in 2008 — it was a size that seemed scaled well on both iPads and iPhones.

Even though 158 is still big enough so that a Web clip icon on the new iPad’s Home screen doesn’t get scaled up, it is not, however, big enough to fill the space allotted in the new Retina-version of Reeder for iPad.

Reeder for iPad uses an icon size of 241×241 pixels to display the images for individual feeds.

If you’ve got a Web clip icon linked-to within in your site’s header, or uploaded to your site’s root folder, then Reeder will find and use it. If it’s big enough then it will fill the space, if it’s not big enough then Reeder will center it and it will have a white border. If there is no Web clip icon at all, then Reeder will use your site’s favicon and that will be small and pixelated.

A few days ago I updated this site’s Web clip icon to be 300×300 pixels.

It looks great in Reeder, and it looks good as a Home screen icon on new and old iPads and on the iPhone 4/4S.

There are two (yea, three) ways to upload your Web clip icon and make it discoverable:

• Upload a PNG file titled apple-touch-icon.png to your site’s root folder. So: http://example.com/apple-touch-icon.png

• Upload a PNG (you can call it whatever you like) and reference it directly from within your site’s header code:

<link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="http://example/apple-touch-icon.png" />

• Or, if you don’t want iOS to automatically add that glossy half-circle effect to your icon, you can reference it as being precomposed:

<link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" href="http://example/apple-touch-icon.png" />

You can read more about application icons and custom Web clip icons on Apple’s HIG pages here.

If you do a lot of writing, I see no reason not to find an application that has been built to best suit your needs as a writer. Sure, you can scribble something down on the back of a cocktail napkin using a mechanical pencil, but why torture yourself like that?

What I find so compelling about these simple writing applications is that they are custom tailored for writing, especially if you’re writing for the Web. In contrast, I never write in Pages.

Off the top of my head I can think of half a dozen or so minimalistic writing apps, and I’ve tried them all. Writing is my job, and it behooves me greatly to find the best possible writing app that I am comfortable in and that keeps me moving the cursor to the right.

Over time, the writing apps that have stuck for me are: - Simplenote + nvALT combo - iA Writer - Byword

Preferring Byword over other similar apps is not to objurgate or even criticize them. As water naturally flows downward, it seems that I naturally gravitate toward Byword. I like it so much, in fact, that it tied for my favorite new Mac app of 2011.

I am also a fan of iA Writer. I love that big blue cursor and the elegant way it stylizes my Markdown-riddled writing. But even still, Byword usually wins my writing attention due to its basic typographic options. Writer, on the other hand, is famously free from any and all settings. The only option you have in Writer is to use the app or not.

Byword, by comparison, is rich with preferences. However, compared to your standard-issue text editor or word processor, Byword is slim in this area.

On the Mac, Byword’s settings pane looks like this:

You choose a typeface and size, a column width, and decide on light or dark. I write mostly in Menlo at medium width, and it seems I flip between light or dark mode depending on the weather or time of day. Springtime morning? Light mode. Rainy afternoon? Dark mode.

I’ve been using Byword since its debut last spring. But for any and all documents which I want to have available on my iPad or iPhone I’ve used the nerd’s common Simplenote+nvALT combo of apps. However, a good audit of one’s workflow is often in order and I’d like to start using a single text editor for my article drafts rather than spreading them out across multiple apps and folders.1

Therefore, with the advent of Byword for iOS and its iCloud document syncing, I’ve decided it’s time to evaluate and upgrade my writing workflow.

This isn’t a spontaneous decision. More and more I have been wanting to promote my iPad to a stronger work device. If I need to get “serious” work done I rarely turn to my iPad. I think that could change, and I think I could be the better for it.

For my trip to Macworld this past January, I took the Apple nerd’s three standard-issue gadgets: my MacBook Air, my iPad, and my iPhone. For the first time I can recall, I didn’t even use the Air. Nearly all of the reading, writing, linking, emailing, and tweeting I did was via my iPhone. And the rest of the reading and writing I did was on my iPad.

It’s one thing to look at a spec sheet, nod in agreement and say that yes the iPad has most of the tools I need in order to do my day-to-day job. But it is another thing entirely to actually put that into practice. And so my time at Macworld, working almost solely from my iPhone, was a bit of an eye opener for me.

The linchpin for me to use the iPad for work is the ability to write from it. But this is a bigger issue than just needing a text editor — the iPad is not in want for writing apps. What’s important is that whatever article I’m writing be available to me on my Air, my iPad, and my iPhone.

Enter Byword

Today the Mac app I write from so frequently was updated to accompany the launch of the its iPhone and iPad siblings. What’s new in Byword for Mac is little more than integrated iCloud support. With the new iOS apps, Byword now ships out of the box with the ability to sync all your documents via iCloud or Dropbox.

The iCloud integration is, as with most other apps, painless and quick. I’ve found that apps which sync their documents through iCloud are quicker and more reliable. However, what I don’t like about using iCloud syncing is that it is application-specific. And so, in a way, an app becomes a silo of my work. There are definite advantages to using Dropbox instead of iCloud (and I’m not just talking about Byword here), but the latter is new and still feels novel.

In addition to the new iCloud support, here are a few things about Byword for Mac that have always been there:

• QuickCursor support.

• Exporting of your markdown as HTML. Meaning, you write with Markdown and then copy and paste, but when you paste it’s been converted to HTML. I have a WordPress plugin that converts my Markdown to HTML when I publish, but there are times when I need an HTML formatted page (such as a Craigslist listing) and so I write it in Byword and then just export. Handy.

• In-line stylizing of Markdown syntax. This has become standard practice for minimalist writing apps, and I like the way that Byword and iA Writer do it best — though they are somewhat different in their styles.

• All the other Lion-specific features, such as versioning, auto-saving, and glorious full-screen mode.

Byword for iOS

Byword on the iPhone and iPad has a very distinct, subtle design to it with very low-contrast buttons and a monochromatic look throughout. All the interface elements and popovers are custom drawn to fit into the “style” of Byword, and yet they are still familiar and follow standard conventions of a familiar iOS app.

When Apple began introducing monochrome icons to OS X I rejoiced. I prefer the more simple look that’s now found in the iTunes and Finder sidebars, and I like the simple and subdued look found in Byword for iOS as well.

It’s this custom yet simple design aesthetic seen in the app that carries throughout the whole of the app.

Custom but Simple

Obviously the main feature of Byword is the writing window. And, I’m pleased to say that it’s pretty much just a single text entry window. Unlike Byword on the Mac you cannot adjust the width of the text column, nor can you choose between light or dark themes.

The features and highlights of Byword on iOS include:

• Typography: There are four typefaces to choose from. Two familiars — Georgia and Helvetica — and two custom fonts from the M+ outline family.

  The Byword default typeface is “M+ C Type 1″. It’s a nice sans serif with monospace overtones, and I like it. The other custom typeface, “M+ M Type 1,” is a monotype font that I do not like. The other two, Georgia and Helvetica, I consider great for reading but I do not prefer to write with them.

• TextExpander support: This is stellar. I have quite a few custom snippets I use in TextExpander on my Mac. The TextExpander iOS app can sync all your snippets via Dropbox so that whatever abbreviations and shortcuts you use on your Mac can also be used on your iPhone and iPad. And, though it’s not a system-wide availability on iOS like it is on the Mac, TextExpander for iOS can be utilized by other iOS apps if they wish. Simplenote takes advantage of this, as does Byword. And so, my TextExpander library is available to me when typing in Byword on my iPad or iPhone.

• AirPrint: If you have an AirPrint-capable printer you can print your Byword document. If you don’t have an AirPrint printer, check out Printopia.

• Word count: To give a little bit of breathing room at the bottom of the text-entry window there is a small footer. In the footer by default it displays the word count. Tap it and you can see character count instead. Tap it again and you get words + characters.

• Custom Soft Keyboard Keys: Swipe the footer and you get a custom set of keyboard buttons. Including brackets, parens, and shortcuts for inserting Markdown links, images, headers, etc. As well as one-character-at-a-time cursor navigation.

  Those familiar with iA Writer know that custom keyboard buttons are not a new idea. However, I’ve found that I don’t use Writer’s custom buttons all that often, yet they take up the full size of an additional row from the on-screen keyboard. And so I like the way that Byword has implemented its custom on-screen buttons because they are smaller, more subtle, and easily forgettable if you are not using them at the time (this is especially true of the iPhone app, where screen real estate is at a premium). But they are there when you need them. It’s good to see a useful feature like this implemented but re-thought out.

  

  Worth noting is that the custom soft keyboard keys are not available when a Bluetooth keyboard is in use. When you’ve got a full-blown keyboard you don’t exactly need custom soft keys for inserting common Markdown syntax like brackets, asterisks, parenthesis, or pound signs, but it would be nice to have quick access to the link or image formatting.

• Automatic list continuation: This is nice, and it’s something that bugs me when I’m typing in Simplenote, TextEdit, or iA Writer. When you start an ordered or unordered list in Byword then the next line is auto-formatted for the next list item. You don’t have to continually re-enter a new asterisk, dash, or number for each list item.

A Trick and Quibble Wrapped Up in One

There are a few quibbles I have with the iOS apps, and though I dedicate an inordinate amount of space to it in the below paragraphs, this is something I’m confident will be worked out in a near-future version of Byword.

The way Byword is designed, the settings button doesn’t show when the on-screen keyboard is brought up. This is because the entire top menu bar is intentionally hidden when you’re typing. This allows the most amount of space to be dedicated to your typing field as possible. Which is as it should be because when you’re working on a screen the size of an iPad, and especially the iPhone, you need as much space as possible to see the text you’re working with.

However, this makes for a bit of a quibble to get to a document’s settings, as well as being able to get to the list of documents.

On the iPad the only way to access the in-document settings is to hide the keyboard. When the cursor is active in the document then the Title Bar is hidden; when the cursor is not active the Title Bar is visible. On the iPhone there is no native key to hide the on-screen keyboard. Fortunately Byword provides one within the custom keyboard keys that are built in to the app. However, those custom keys are only visible if you swipe the word count over to the side to reveal the customized software keys.

Why not simply bring up the document’s Menu Bar (and thus the settings button) when the user taps within the text field?

Moreover, I discovered (while in the process of writing this review) that it can be quite tricky to get at the in-document settings when you are using a Bluetooth keyboard.

Since the Title Bar is hidden when you’re typing, you cannot “hide the keyboard” to disable the cursor. Thus, when typing with a Bluetooth keyboard, the only way I’ve found to get to the in-document settings is to swipe on the document from left to right. This will slide the active document over to the right and un-hide the document list. In the process the document’s Title Bar returns to views. Next, just tap the “3-bar” icon and the document will re-enter full-screen mode, but with the Title Bar still in view, and from there you can now see and tap on your current document settings.

This left-to-right swipe trick also works well as a shortcut on Byword’s iPhone and iPad apps even when not typing with a Bluetooth keyboard.

The Final Word

This review was written and edited exclusively in Byword.

I began this article on a Tuesday night from my iPhone around 11:30 pm while my son, Noah, was up for his late-night feeding. On Wednesday morning I picked up where I left off by opening Byword on my MacBook Air while in my office. After lunch, I grabbed my iPad and a Bluetooth keyboard and visited my favorite local coffee shop where a latte accompanied me as I finished the article.

This is exactly the sort of writing workflow that I’m looking to adopt.

That’s not to say I will always be writing articles in an assortment of locations and on a plethora of devices, but it’s nice to have a text editor on all of my gadgets that I enjoy using, and it’s nice that all my currently-working-on articles are now synced and easily accessible from within that application.

Over the past week a handful of prizes have been added to the giveaway:

• Photography prints from Joel Zimmer.
• Mac or Windows licenses of 1Password.
• Mac and iOS combo codes for Day One.
• Signed copies of Patrick Rhone’s upcoming new book, Enough.
• A Fusion Ads Burst campaign.
• Some Symbolicon bundles.

The complete list of prizes is here, along with all the info about who’s eligible to win, and how to put your name in the hat for a particular prize if you’d like.

Reminder About The Members Journal

The first edition of The Members Journal went out today and I think it turned out great. It was lighthearted, fun, and had dozens of promo codes to four top-notch iPhone apps.

For members who want to get The Members Journal (you have to sign up because it is an opt-in list) you can do so on the members info page. Your password for that page can be found in the info email you received from me after signing up for your membership.

Reminder About the Executive Membership

Last week I introducing a new subscription level that gets you all the same benefits as the $3 membership but for $12/month. This is for those who have offered to or who are glad to pay more for their membership.

There are current members who have “upgraded” their membership to an Executive subscription. If you want to do the same then you can cancel your current subscription and sign up for the new one.

Reminder About How Awesome You Are

As always, to all the current members: a million thanks for your support. And to the readers who continue to show up day in and day out: thank you for your time.

I regularly come back to my own daily schedule to re-evaluate it and see if it is serving me as well as it should be. Because schedules, like finances, make excellent slaves but horrible masters. I should be the one who sets my schedule and budgets my time just like I should be the one budgeting my finances. A schedule, like a budget, is there for the purpose of serving my goals so that the minutes don’t get away from me and I end up squandering my time.

What I like about Ben Franklin’s daily schedule was how open it was. It was a rigid routine but it was very forgiving for all the nuances and variables that each day’s tasks and priorities seem to bring.

He had only six blocks of time scheduled each day:

• 3 hours for getting ready for his day (shower and breakfast, personal study, and prepare for work)
• 4 hours for work
• 2 hours for review of current projects and to eat lunch
• 4 more hours for work
• 4 hours for dinner and rest and wrapping up the day
• 7 hours for sleeping

This is a similar approach that I’ve been trying to take with my scheduling as well. In that, I set a routine for my day of when I get up, what blocks of time are set aside for what types of tasks, when I should stop working, etc. And then, when it comes time to work I begin to go through my inboxes (Instapaper, email, and/or OmniFocus) or else I work on a current project or article that has arrested my attention.

One big myth about creativity is that it cannot be harnessed. It is silly to believe that a creative person should live without routine or accountability or discipline.

Sure, inspiration often comes to us when we least expect it, and so by all means, let us allow exceptions to our schedules. But sitting around being idle while in wait for inspiration is a good way to get nothing done. And worse, it is also a way to let the creative juices get stagnant.

Michael Lopp wrote an inspiring article along the lines of scheduling, entitled “A Precious Hour“. He writes:

My deep-rooted fear of becoming irrelevant is based on decades of watching those in the tech industry around me doing just that – sitting there busily doing things they’ve convinced themselves are relevant, but are just Faux-things-to-do wrapped in a distracting sense of busy. One day, they look up from their keyboard and honestly ask, “Right, so, what’s Dropbox?” [...]

Starting at the beginning of February, I made a change. Each day I blocked off a precious hour to build something.

Lopp’s aim brings to mind this convicting quote from Ray Bradbury at the intro of Martian Chronicles:

I did what most writers do at their beginnings: emulated my elders, imitated my peers, thus turning away from any possibility of discovering truths beneath my skin and behind my eyes.

If you don’t make time to shut off the outside world and think and build and create on your own then you’ll only ever emulate and imitate.

On this map, AT&T makes no differentiation between their HSPA+ network and their LTE network. Both are simply classified as “4G”. Which means someone looking to buy a new iPad with 4G LTE connectivity, who clicks on the link from the Apple website, is taken to this map where they see that AT&T has 4G coverage all over the place. There is no reason for someone to assume that the 4G connectivity Apple is referring to on their website is different from the 4G coverage that AT&T is displaying on their map.

For example: the two cities that I want 4G LTE coverage in are Kansas City and Denver. I know that there is 4G LTE in Kansas City because I see the AT&T billboards around town and I get the junk mail delivered to my house. And, when looking at this map on AT&T’s website I can see that not only does AT&T have 4G in Kansas City but they also have it in Denver.

Based on the information in this map, I bought an AT&T iPad on Wednesday.

I chose AT&T because the pricing of their plans is better and for the times that 4G LTE is not available and the iPad falls back to their HSPA+ network, it is a faster data connection than Verizon’s 3G.

On the map’s legend is a link for “4G”, which takes you to a popup page describing terms used in the legend. The definition for 4G is as follows:

4G: The areas shown in darkest blue represent AT&T owned HSPA+ network with enhanced backhaul. AT&T’s HSPA+ network is capable of delivering 4G speeds when combined with enhanced backhaul. Learn more about 4G.

Clicking to learn more takes you to AT&T’s 4G LTE info page. (If this is starting to sound confusing that’s because it is.) On this info page there is another coverage map (click the “coverage” tab at the bottom) which lists the actual cities that have 4G LTE. Ugh.

As you can see, a 4G LTE city is denoted by an orange dot. There are far fewer 4G LTE cities than there are “4G” areas. And so, according to this map, Denver does not have AT&T 4G LTE service.

It wasn’t until Thursday that I discovered this (thanks to Ben). I felt tricked and taken for a fool. I cancelled my AT&T iPad and ordered a new one that connects to Verizon. Because Verizon does have LTE service in both Kansas City and in Denver.

We already know that AT&T will not be changing their “4G” moniker for HSPA+. It is bad enough that Apple has given in to AT&T at some measure by now displaying “4G” as the connection type for AT&T iPhones running iOS 5.1.

But at the very least Apple should be linking to AT&T’s coverage map which shows AT&T’s actual 4G LTE cities. The currently-linked-to map is deceptive and misleading given the context. How many people buying a new iPad will purchase an AT&T model based on the assumption that there is AT&T 4G LTE coverage in their city when it’s actually just HSPA+?

Favs (pronounced fayves, I presume) is a nifty little Mac app that collects all your “favorites” and “likes” and into one place. It’s interface is not unlike an RSS reader, and it pulls your favorites from nearly 20 different services.

The app was in public beta for a while and so I’ve been kicking the tires on it for the past several weeks and like it quite a bit. It hit the Mac App Store just a few days ago — it’s polished and useful and definitely worth 5 bucks.

For a more in-depth review, check out Federico Viticci’s article.

Favs is $5 on the Mac App Store.

Apple is calling the Retina display the most advanced display you’ve ever seen. It has 3.1 million pixels — a million more than are in my HDTV.

I’ve had a Retina display iPhone since the 4 came out last summer and it is still amazing to me. I have no doubt the new iPad’s display will be absolutely stunning. My question though is if it will it be as stunning as the iPhone’s display? The iPad is a bigger display — 9.7 inches compared to the iPhone’s 3.5 — but also worth noting is that the new iPad’s display has less pixel density than the iPhone does. 264 PPI and compared to 326 PPI respectively.

Will a 66 PPI difference make a difference? I don’t know. And my guess is that it won’t. Ryan Block’s comments on the new iPad’s Retina display make it sound just as stunning as (if not more so) the iPhone 4/4S. Jim Dalrymple seems to agree.

I use my iPad for reading more than anything else. And so I’m greatly looking forward having a tablet device that sports a (nearly) print-resolution screen — as if reading Instapaper and Reeder, surfing the Web, and browsing Tweetbot on the current iPad wasn’t already great enough.

Moreover, for websites, breaking out of the standard Georgia and Verdana fonts means your site will look fabulous on an iPad.

4G LTE

My original iPad and my iPad 2 were both Wi-Fi-only models. In the two years I’ve been using my iPads I’ve never felt the need to have 3G connectivity. However, this time around I still chose to order the 4G version. I did so for two reasons:

• In part because it’s a new technology for Apple — this is their first 4G LTE device — and I think 4G devices are a really big deal. Android phones with 4G LTE are a big deal but their battery life is abysmal. Apple touts that when using 4G data the battery life is only dinged by one 10-percent.

• Secondly, I have a hunch that owning a 4G connected iPad will prove to be far more useful than I thought. But this is something I won’t know for sure until I’ve got it. Like Marco discovered when he went from his Wi-Fi-only original iPad to the 3G-enabled iPad 2:

  I went Wi-Fi-only on my iPad 1 and regretted it, so I got 3G on my iPad 2. In practice, I found that I brought the iPad 2 more places and used it more because it was always internet-connected. This greatly improved the value of the iPad for me. If you see yourself bringing the iPad outside of your house very often, it’s definitely worth considering the 4G option.

Over the past two years, if and when I’m going somewhere to work and I have to pick between taking my Wi-Fi-only iPad or my MacBook Air then I take the Air. But if the iPad were guaranteed connected (with a speed that rivals broadband) then who knows if I’d take the iPad instead.

There is little left that I can’t do on my iPad that I can do on my Air. From my iPad I can read, browse the Web, answer email, check Twitter, even write and post articles and links to my website. But without an internet connection my iPad feels slightly less useful. It’s a device that is meant to be online.

When I went to San Francisco for Macworld I didn’t crack open my Air one time. I did very little writing on that trip, and nearly all the work I did do (reading, email, posting links to the site) I actually did from my iPhone. But if my iPad had been Internet connected then I would have done a lot more work from it instead. My next trip to San Francisco (for WWDC) it’s likely that I’ll leave the Air at home.

To sum up, though I’ve gone sans-3G on iPads for two years in a row, I bet that a few months from now I’ll be very glad I went with the 4G iPad.

Sans-Siri

Sadly the new iPad doesn’t have Siri. Though it does have voice dictation. This will making typing easier (I wonder how much you can dictate before maxing out the service?) I would love to see Siri come to the iPad.

On my iPhone I use Siri quite a bit (assuming it’s available), and it’s primarily to send text messages, and set reminders. As the iPad grows more and more into a work machine, it will be nice to have the ability to quickly create appointments, send an email, set up a reminder, create a note, search the web, etc. No doubt it is simply a matter of time until Siri does make its way to the iPad — if that will be with iOS 6 or with the 2013 model of the iPad I don’t know. Perhaps the only thing holding Siri back right now is that it’s a service with is still very much in beta, and Apple isn’t ready to expand to further devices.

The $399 iPad 2

This is a huge deal if only for the fact that now the entry-level price for an iPad is $100 less than it used to be. Apple is driving the prices down on a device that they don’t need to drive prices down on. As usual, they are going for mass market share. Could the iPad reach as large of a market-saturation point as the iPod has? Remember how iPod growth curve flatlined because pretty much everyone already owned one?

The Apple TV

In the Blanc house we have one of the current little black Apple TV boxes and we love it. We don’t have cable and so anything we watch is via Netflix or iTunes (or Redbox on occasion if we can get it on Blu-Ray).

But I ordered one of the new Apple TVs because to me it’s worth it get the upgrade to 1080p iTunes and Netflix content. For $99 I think anyone with a Mac and a television should own an Apple TV.

What I Ordered

Black, 16GB, with 4G via AT&T.

• Black, because obviously.

  (Though I do imagine the White iPad looks much better now with the new Retina display. Something I never quite liked about the white iPads was that the screen felt even further from the glass than on the black models.)

• 16GB because I’ve always purchased the base model devices and have never once maxed out an iPhone or iPad. And I wanted to spend my extra money on 4G rather than getting the 32GB version.

• 4G because of the reasons stated above. I went with AT&T because they have fantastic 4G and 3G data service in Kansas City and Denver (the two cities where I spend most of my time). Verizon has great 4G coverage here as well, but if and when the iPad doesn’t have 4G connectivity and it needs to fall back to 3G, AT&T’s network is much faster than Verizon’s.

Additional Miscellany

• Apple is calling the new iPad the same thing everyone else is going to call it: “The new iPad”.

• The new iPad has Wi-Fi, GSM, UMTS, GPS, CDMA, LTE, and Bluetooth connectivity. During the presentation yesterday Phil Schiller said, “This new iPad has the most wireless bands of any device that’s ever shipped.”

• Being thicker and heavier is surely a direct result of the battery.

• What is Condé Nast going to do with their magazine apps? Their current issues (which use images even for text) are going to look horrible on the Retina display and if they start making their files 4x bigger then the downloads will get even more ridiculous — growing into the ballpark of an 800 MB file. At that size, after few back issues of The New Yorker and Wired your iPad’s storage will be maxed out.

• Since you can’t see the beauty of a Retina display if you’re looking at pictures of it on a non-Retina display, it seems the only real way to try and compare a non-Retina display against a Retina display is to pixelate the “non-Retina model” so it looks a bit blurry by design. This is what Apple is doing on their side-by-side comparison of the screens on the iPad 2 and the new iPad.

• Phil Schiller said: “As you’ll remember, when the iPhone 4 went to the Retina Display developers didn’t have to do anything to make their applications run on the Retina Display. Everything will still look great, but if developers take a little time, as with the iPhone, they can do stuff that looks amazing and incredible on the new iPad.”

  But that’s not true. Text will look sharp and native API elements will look sharp but the rest will look very grainy. Non-Retina optimized apps look worse on a Retina display.

• In the presentation yesterday Tim cook called iOS, “the world’s most advanced operating system and the easiest to use.”

• Also from Tim Cook: “Our post PC devices made up 76% of our revenues. We have our feet firmly planted in the post PC future.”

• Yesterday’s was the first iPad event with no armchair on the stage.

• It’s a bit hard to be surprised when you already knew something was coming. Yesterday’s announcement contained nearly everything we expected. We pretty much knew there’d be a new Apple TV, iPhoto for iOS, and all the main specs about the new iPad. However, being savvy to a spec sheet and feature list is much different than using a device.

  If you’re like me, you too have yet to get used to the iPhone’s Retina display. And so, though it won’t be until next Friday that I am able to start using my new iPad, and it won’t be for another few months before I know how often I do (or don’t) use the 4G, I suspect this new iPad will be amazing for the long haul.

  Could the new iPad end up being the finest device Apple has made yet? And it raises the question: what’s in store for the new iPhone?

• Macworld: Jason Snell and Dan Moren make a dynamic duo and I prefer to read what they say. But the Macworld liveblogs are usually semi-skimpy on photos.

• The Verge: Lots of photos, quick updates, etc.

• Engadget: The custom liveblog website technology (is that a thing?) they’re using is pretty stellar — I liked it a lot at the New York educational event when Apple introduced the new iBooks stuff.

• GDGT: Ryan Block is doing great, too. More photo updates than even The Verge.

And I’ll probably post a few comments on my personal Twitter account.

Yesterday I kicked off this years Membership Drive by introducing a new members-only perk (The Members Journal) and a new subscription level (the Executive Membership), and recording a new video.

For all the new members who signed up in the past 24 hours: thank you. To all the current members who have kept their membership going or who have upgraded to an Executive Membership: thank you. And to those who are about to join: thank you, too.

Members contribute nearly 50-percent of this site’s income. Needless to say there is no way I could be writing here as my full-time gig without the generous support of the members. It means the world to me that readers are directly supporting the work I do here.

Ideally, you are signing up to become a member because the value and enjoyment you get from shawnblanc.net is worth it to you, and the members-only perks are a nice bonus of course. But my job is to try and sweeten the deal as much as possible. And so, I’ve arranged for some things to be won if you sign up to become a member.

For those of you who have not yet signed up to be a member, there is, as they say, no time like the present.

The 2012 Membership Drive and Giveaway

Anyone who signs up for a membership before midnight CST on March 25 will be entered to win one of the prizes listed below. Current members who have signed up over the past year are also entered to win, so long as their membership is active.

There are a metric ton of top-notch prizes, all donated by friends of the site, with an aggregate value in excess of $4,200.

The List of Prizes

• Jorge Quinteros photography: Two 20×30 prints (winner picks which prints).

• Joel Zimmer photography: Two 11×14 prints (winner picks which prints).

• Doxie: 2 Doxie Go scanners.

• Idea Cafe: An Espresso Bundle and a Cappuccino Bundle.

• Smile Software: 5 licenses each of TextExpander and PDFpen for Mac.

• Fantastical: 7 licenses.

• Haystack Software: 5 licenses of Arq

• Reeder: 10 license each of the Mac app, the iPhone app, and the iPad app.

• Alarms App: 10 licenses.

• Red Sweater: A license each of MarsEdit, FastScripts, and Black Ink.

• Omni Group: A license of OmniFocus for Mac and a license of OmniGraffle Pro.

• Studio Neat: 5 Glif+ kits and 5 Cosmonauts.

• Typekit: 5 Portfolio Accounts (one year long).

• JetPens: A Portable Writing Kit, including: Field Notes Color Cover Memo Book, Red Blooded 3 Pack; Uni-ball Signo (DX) UM-151 Gel Ink Pen – 0.38 mm – Black; and Uni Kuru Toga Roulette Model Auto Lead Rotation Mechanical Pencil – 0.5 mm, Gun Metallic Body.

• Flickr: 5 subscriptions to Flickr Pro (one year long).

• Summermoon Wood Fired Coffee: 1 bag Velvet Blaze, 1 bag Inferno, and 1 bag Tri Roast. (Courtesy of Seth Goldberg.)

• Cuvée Coffee: 1 bag Las Trancas, 1 bag Dead Fingers Espresso Roast, 1 bag Espresso Medici. (Courtesy of Seth Goldberg.)

• 1 bag David Lynch Signature Cup Organic House Blend. (Courtesy of Seth Goldberg.)

• AgileBits: 10 licenses of 1Password from the Mac App Store (Windows license also available).

• Enough: 2 signed copies of Patrick Rhone’s upcoming new book.

• Day One: 5 sets of Mac and iOS app codes.

• Fusion Ads: A one-week “Burst” campaign spot. (Winner must have a relevant product / service to promote on the Fusion Ad network.)

• Symbolicons: 5 licenses for these icon bundles.

• Writing Kit for iPad and iPhone: 10 licenses.

How to Win, Etc.

• Anyone who signs up for a membership before midnight CST on Sunday, March 25 will automatically be in the runnings to win something.

• If you are already a member with a current membership, you are eligible to win.

• You do not have to live in the United States to win — international members are most welcome and most eligible (though some prizes are not available outside the US).

• The drive ends at midnight CST on March 25, and the drawing will be held sometime around last week in March. It will be random and I will email the winners at their PayPal email address.

• If there is a certain prize in particular that you’d like to win over another, please fill out this form. I will check it once the winners are drawn to try and get people a prize they prefer. You do not have to fill out the form to win, only to request a particular prize.

The article was my announcement that I was taking shawnblanc.net full time. So long as that article stayed in my Drafts Folder, then things could continue on as they always had. But once I hit publish, I knew that I was committed.

Publishing that article was like announcing that I was jumping off a cliff and hoping to make it to the other side. And my only hope to make it was to humbly ask that you guys — the readers — be willing to support the site directly by becoming members.

I have been shocked and humbled by the incredible response to the membership — thanks to the direct support from the readers, I’ve been able to write this site day in and day out for the past year. It has been fantastic. And I’d very much like to keep writing.

Current Members

For those of you who have signed up for a membership in the past year: thank you. With no exaggeration, I mean it when I say I am honored and humbled by your support. As your membership renews I hope you will continue to stay on as a direct supporter of this site.

Two points of note for current members:

• Current members who want to subscribe to The Members Journal: it is an opt-in list. If you’d like to sign up you can do so on the members info page. Your password for that page can be found in the information email you received from me after signing up for your membership.

• Regarding the Executive Membership: I’m introducing a new subscription level that gets you all the same benefits as the $3 membership but for $12/month. This is for those who have offered to or who are glad to pay more for their membership.

  If you want to switch to the Executive Membership you’ll have to cancel your current subscription and sign up for the new one.

New Members

Excluding last year’s membership drive, I have done little to promote the membership over the past year. Primarily because, in my opinion, storing up all the attention of the membership for a big annual membership drive is more fun.

And so, for those of you who are new to the site, or who perhaps are long-time readers, but have not signed up for a membership, this is the time of year where I humbly ask that you consider signing up for a membership.

The direct support that comes in from readers makes up for nearly half of this site’s income. I literally could not continue to write here full time without the support of subscribing members.

Membership Perks

The primary membership benefit is that you’re allowing me to spend my full attention working on this site.

There are of course, some additional, members-only perks:

• Shawn Today: The member’s only broadcast. It’s short, uncut, fun, and often involves coffee. It’s intended to be a daily show, but it averages out to about every-other day (in the past 12 months since starting Shawn Today, I’ve recorded over 175 episodes).

• The Members Journal: This is a new-in-2012 perk that I’ve just launched. The Members Journal is an email sent out on occasion. It’s not a regular email (as in every week or every month) because I don’t expect to regularly have content for it. But, when it does go out it will contain things such as:

  • Giveaways and promo codes for apps (developers often send me these to give away to the members).
  • Links to apps, articles, videos, and other things which never made it onto the home page of shawnblanc.net for one reason or another. This is affectionately known as The Cut List.

If the value and enjoyment you get from shawnblanc.net is worth that to you, then I would love to have your support as a subscribing member.

A membership is just $3 a month — like a good cup of coffee — and you can sign up here.

Being a new dad is filled with wonder and joy. Right now there’s nothing I’d rather do than hold my little boy and tell him how much I love him and how proud I am of him even though all he knows how to do is eat, sleep, and poop. Oh, and look cute:

I agree. I think Apple does intend to rebuild the iOS Home screen from the ground up. I also think their intentions for the new Home screen are exciting, ambitious, and will prove to be a big deal.

Not until recently have we felt much of a need for a revamped home screen. Since 2007 iOS has evolved significantly in both its functionality (i.e. multitasking and Notification Center) and in the amount of available apps (thus folders, and multiple Home screens). After five years the Home screen is feeling cramped and outdated.

If I were a betting man, I would wager that the iOS Home screen as we know it today is not Apple’s long-term plan. My hunch is that the Home screen is still the way it is because the long-term ramifications of what it could be are huge.

A reimagined springboard is a prime opportunity for significant innovation. And significant innovation takes time.

Rebuilding the Home screen isn’t just about increasing usability. It is also about innovating at that “front-door interface” of how and where we get to the stuff on our devices (you can hardly do anything on your iPhone without going through the Home screen). Moreover, the ramifications of a reimagined Home screen go beyond iOS. As we are now learning via Lion and Mountain Lion, innovation on iOS is a setting of the stage for innovation on OS X.

During a recent episode of The Talk Show, John Gruber talked about how OS X is stuck with the “Desktop” whether they like it or not. Twenty years ago the Desktop as a folder for quick access to your files and your file system made sense. But that was when people predominantly interacted with files first before launching an app. Apple is now steering people away from the need to interact with the file system. With iCloud, automatic and in-app document saving, and versioning, we are seeing a shift in personal computing where people interact less with files first and more with apps first.

Khoi Vinh recently said:

Right now the most interesting [design] thing happening on the desktop, by far, is Apple’s iOS-ification of OS X. They’re clearly in the process of upending a decades-old paradigm for thinking about desktop software, and whether it’s successful or not is going to be very interesting.

A new iOS Home screen is Apple’s chance to get the “front-door interface” right. When they change the Home screen it’s going to be a big deal, and it will become a core part of iOS for the next decade.

Another reason why a new Home screen is such a big deal is because what Apple does to reimagine it on iOS will impact OS X and the Desktop and Dock (or perhaps the next evolution of Launchpad).

Put another way: I don’t see Apple just stealing ideas from Android and Windows Phone and implementing “live widgets” onto the iOS Home screen. When they update the Home screen they’ll have skated to where the puck is going to be.

I’m Dan Frommer, based in Brooklyn NY, but always a Chicagoan at heart.

My main gig since 2005 has been writing about technology news, particularly from a business angle. My most recent project is SplatF.com, a site I started by myself in July, 2011, and hope to be working on forever. Right now it’s a mix of news analysis, reporting, data mining, chart porn, and link aggregation. In the future, who knows what it’s going to turn into. (I’m also, more recently, Editor at Large for a larger tech site called ReadWriteWeb.)

Before that, I helped start a site called Silicon Alley Insider in 2007: A New York-centric tech site that kept growing and morphed into Business Insider, which is now a huge and popular general-purpose news site. I started writing professionally at Forbes, writing about Internet infrastructure and telecom. I’ve also been a part- to full-time web designer since 1995, and I helped work on a few now-defunct Mac sites in the mid-to-late 90s.

What is your current setup?

I work mostly from a home office in Brooklyn, but I do a fair (and increasing) amount of travel. My main rig is a 2009 quad-core iMac, 27 inches, with an old 24-inch secondary Dell screen (not pictured) that we use to watch videos on from a different angle. I prefer a wired keyboard to wireless (same for mice when I used them) but I’ve gotten used to the Magic Trackpad. My desktop image is an aerial photo of lower Manhattan that I shot out of the window of a plane a few years ago.

I also have a 13-inch MacBook Air for cafes and travel and an old Mac mini hooked up to my TV in the living room. Around the house, I also have a bunch of old Macs collecting dust, including my “Windtunnel” G4 tower (dual-DVD drives!) from 2003 and some old PowerBooks. And an Apple II floppy drive that Steve Wozniak autographed for me.

As far as post-PC living… I have an old iPad 3G, which I’ll be replacing with the new iPad whenever it comes out. And my current smartphone is a factory-unlocked iPhone 4S, which I bought to experiment with overseas SIM cards during my travels this year.

Oh, I also have one of those fake-plastic-grass charging stations, which I mostly use to add some color and life to my desk. Love it.

Why this rig?

I bought the 27-inch iMac soon after they first came out because the screen was just amazing. (It still is.) On most days, it’s still fast enough that I haven’t felt the urge to replace it. Though having the SSD boot drive on my Air has really changed my perception of how quick a Mac should be, so maybe this year I’ll pick up a new iMac with an SSD boot drive, depending on how things go. (I’m in no hurry.)

I started with the 11-inch Air but gave it to my wife after I spent a little time with the 13-inch model. The extra screen size and battery life on the 13-inch is well worth the extra bulk to me, especially considering how light it is relative to my old 13-inch plastic MacBook. The MacBook Air is really the laptop I’ve always wanted but never had: Light enough to take everywhere and not secretly hate it for making my bag heavy. I was so excited about the 12-inch PowerBook G4 when I got it in 2005 but it was always so heavy that I never really took it anywhere. The Air is really magical.

What software do you use and for what do you use it?

I was really into little hacks and automation and shortcut-type stuff in MacOS 8 and 9, but after switching to OS X in 2001, I’ve tried to use as much of a stock install as I can. It’s nice to keep things simple, I think.

Most of my work is in Chrome, using WordPress for SplatF and Movable Type for ReadWriteWeb. I also use TweetDeck almost all day (the old, Adobe AIR version; like it more than the new one so far). I have Photoshop Elements, Fireworks, and Acorn for graphics stuff, but I don’t do much that’s more elaborate than cropping and resizing images, and maybe adding a little text to them. For photos, I mostly use Image Capture and the Finder to organize them. I do a lot of charts for SplatF, and almost all of that is done in Numbers from the Mac App Store. Other than that, I use Adium for IM and Mail for email.

I’m still running Snow Leopard on my main iMac — haven’t felt the need to upgrade — but have Lion on my Air. It’s… okay.

The old Mac software I miss the most was an app called Hotline, which was most popular around 1998-1999. It was a cool mashup of FTP, IRC, and newsgroups, and there was a great community. I spent hundreds of hours on Hotline in high school, and then a lot of time on Carracho, a Hotline successor. But I don’t think any of that stuff still exists.

How does this setup help you do your best creative work?

My main job is to find and sift through endless streams and piles of information, so being able to have 2 or 3 windows open at the same time, large enough to see a bunch of data, is why I love the big iMac so much. At Business Insider, I had a second 24-inch screen open to TweetDeck all day, but I don’t really like multi-screen setups. I’m really big on symmetry. During baseball season, sometimes I’ll prop up my iPad next to me to keep the Cubs game on, because the iOS version of MLB’s stream is better than the Flash-based web version.

How would your ideal setup look and function?

My desk is pretty big, but once I move in a few months I might investigate some sort of hybrid sit-stand system. I really like standing, and feel like a jerk sitting around all day. Other than that, I’d just like to always have the biggest screen that makes sense to have. If Apple made a 42-inch iMac, I’d probably buy one.

I like having separate desktop and laptop computers so that I can leave my desktop on all the time (acting as a home server of sorts) and keep a subset of my data on my laptop. Most of my work is on the web so I don’t really care about syncing.

I’m blown away by how efficient, quick, and quiet Macs are these days. When I was home over the holidays, I booted up my old IIci and my old Performa, and the CPUs were both so big, so heavy, and so loud for the little processing power they provided.

More Sweet Setups

Dan’s setup is just one in a series of sweet Mac Setups.

• The 3rd iPad
• Mountain Lion
• iOS 6
• The 6th iPhone
• Significant update to the MacBook Pro lineup
• A television (?)
• And who knows what else (such as iMac, Mac Pro, and or iPod updates, iCloud enhancements, etc.)

A few years from now, I suspect we will look back at 2011 as having been the year Apple’s foundation was done being laid. From the introduction of the iPhone and iOS in 2007 to the shipping of Lion and then iCloud in 2011 — it was all just one long product rollout.

Apple spent the previous several years getting their mobile devices, desktop hardware, and operating systems all right where they want them. The foundation has been laid, and starting in 2012 they’ll be building on that foundation.

It sounds dramatic and even a bit cliché, but this is the beginning of the future for them. Apple isn’t slowing down any time soon.

Though I am not a speedy or avid reader — I read about one novel per year, and a few other books — I very much enjoy reading. After purchasing an iPad in 2010 I swore I’d never buy a physical book again if I could help it. The convenience of having all the books I was reading or planning to read available on one device was just too awesome.

When I bought the Kindle, I didn’t know if it would actually replace my iPad as my go-to reading device or not. I purchased the Kindle primarily so I could review it and so I could have experiential knowledge of E-Ink displays and just how light the Kindle is and how it compares to the iPad as far as a reading device.

However, 90 days later, the Kindle has yet to become a gadget collecting dust in the Blanc household.

The Kindle’s E-Ink screen is so much better for reading than the iPad’s backlit display. However, what I appreciate even more than the screen is the Kindle’s size and weight. The iPad is not comfortably held for long periods of time and is nearly impossible to use with one hand. The Kindle blows the iPad out of the water in this regard.

I got the device with “Special Offers” and though they bug me a bit, they don’t bug me enough to pay to disable them. Most of the ads seem to be for current Amazon ebook specials. Though at one point there was an ad for a Twilight movie that I felt uncomfortable with, so I just kept the Kindle face down when not in use. Actually, I pretty much always keep the Kindle face down when not in use.

When going on vacation, the Kindle makes a great companion if only because it draws less attention than an iPad. It feels more socially acceptable to curl up on the couch with the Kindle for several hours rather than the iPad. But if I don’t take the Kindle for whatever reason, then that’s okay because the iPad’s Kindle app stays in sync with my actual Kindle and makes it easy enough to continue reading on my iPad and vice versa.

In the three months I’ve owned the Kindle Touch I have charged it twice: once when I first got it and then again about three weeks later. After that second charge the battery has been going and going and going. And that is with Wi-Fi enabled, and I leave the Kindle in “sleep mode” when I’m not reading, rather than turning it off. I usually read on the Kindle about twice a week for an hour or two at a time.

A few weeks ago, Amazon released an update to the Kindle Touch software that greatly increased the device’s response time as it relates to navigating menus and turning pages. Ignorance had been bliss before the update, and now, after it, I can heartily recommend the Kindle Touch as a fantastic device.

And so, after 90 days with the Kindle Touch, I am still using it on a regular basis. The device makes a fine companion to the iPad even if you are not an avid reader. I have stopped buying books from the iBookstore and now buy all my books from Amazon instead.

For me, a good list app needs to be both fast and available. Clear is both of those while also managing to be unique and quite unconventional.

As any reader of this website knows, I am an avid user of OmniFocus. Any list I may jot down will eventually work its way into OmniFocus. But the biggest caveat with OmniFocus is its speed. It takes more than a few seconds to launch the iPhone app and enter something in. New OmniFocus items beg to be given contexts, projects, start dates, and due dates. While this is OmniFocus’s greatest strength, but there are moments when this is also OmniFocus’s greatest weakness.

And so there are two things I like about Clear:

• As a list app it is fast to use and to navigate. It launches up very quickly, you can enter in a slew of items in no time, and you can get to a particular list very quickly as well.

• As a man who simply has an affinity for fine software, Clear stands apart as a very unique and clever app. I dive into this a bit more in my review below, but even if you are not in the market for a new list app, Clear is worth checking out if only to experience its unique design and user interface.

Clear

Clear is a list app for the iPhone like no other. When you’re in the app you only see your color-based lists. Clear is an app without chrome or buttons or menu bars or metadata. Each item holds just 30 characters of text, and there are no due dates or notes or projects.

It has the underlying simplicity and ease of use that an app with just a white background and an unordered list of items would have. And yet, through the use of color and actions and gestures, clear has a surprising amount of life to it.

Clear is literally just pixels and gestures. But combined in just the right way to make an app that is a unique and clever blend of simplicity and spunk.

Action-Centric

Clear relies heavily on the use of color and gestures to navigate. It is very action-centric. Nearly all the gestures that you normally do on the iPhone — swiping up and down, left and right, pinching open and closed — are the ways that you navigate the app. The way Clear works is quite unconventional compared to other list apps, and yet all the actions feel natural because they are common gestures for anyone that’s used an iPhone for longer than their lunch break.

When you’re in a list, you pull the whole list down to create a new item at the top of the list. Or, if you want the new item inserted somewhere other than at the top you can pinch open the list and insert a new item anywhere you like.

Swiping left-to-right completes a task, swiping the opposite deletes it. Swiping left-to-right again on that task un-completes it. Pulling up on your list clears out all the crossed off items, and pinching the list closed takes you up a level to see the menu of all your currently active lists.

In addition to pulling down or pinching open, you can also add a new item to the list by tapping in the blank space underneath your list. A new list item “drops down” and you can then fill in its contents. If you want to quickly add a series of new items, then pull down from within the item creation pane. This is actually an extremely quick way to add new items to your list as fast as your thumbs can tap them out.

Even though Clear relies heavily on the iOS pinching gestures to navigate within lists and for adding new items, the app was still designed so that it can be used one-handed. For example, when pulling a list to add a new item, if you continue to pull down you will get an option to switch lists:

You can navigate through the whole app this way.

Despite its extreme reliance on gestures and actions, I found Clear to be surprisingly discoverable. And if that’s not enough, a brief pre-launch tutorial guides you through the first time you launch the app, and you’re even presented with a list of pre-populated to-do items which inform you how to use the app.

Colorful

Like I said, Clear is just pixels and gestures. The lists are color-based with the darker colors at the top to signify greater importance.

You can re-order items by tapping and holding to move them. And as you navigate through the different hierarchies of the app the colors change as well. The default color scheme has “red hot items” as the individual list pane, cool blue items as the pane showing all your lists, and then a cooler slate grey for the menu.

You can change your color scheme in the menu. There are red, green, pink, grey, and black themes. Also there may or may not be some easter eggs to be found in the app related to themes. But that’s all they’ll let me say.

Hierarchy

One of the things that instantly struck me was the spatial stacking that Clear uses to convey hierarchy.

A typical iOS app has a hierarchy that goes left to right. Meaning, the left-most pane is the highest level and the right-most pane is the furthest drilled down into the app. For example, in Mail if you hit the back button enough times your left-most pane will be the list of your mailboxes; as you move deeper into Mail it takes you to the panes that exist on the right until you get all the way into an individual message.

For Clear, the hierarchy goes top to bottom as you can see in the image above. Also worth noting is that Clear’s bottom-most pane is an individual list — you can not drill down to an individual item. Further emphasizing the forced simplicity of Clear.

This spatial stacking is different than the way most apps work, but because of Clear’s gesture-based navigation it really works well. When you are pulling down to add a new item, the bar for that item “folds up” as if coming from underneath. Likewise, when you pinch open for a new item in a list, the item folds open. The animations are quite clever and fit in well with the unique hierarchy structure of the app.

Clearclusion

For the connoisseurs of fine iOS app or list apps alike, Clear is definitely worth checking out. And it’s just a buck in the iTunes App Store.

Most are stories written with little or no research done. They’re written as quickly as possible. The faster the better. Most are just rehashing information that spread by some other means. But that’s great, it means stories can be written without any burden beyond the writer having to read a little bit and type words fast. Many are written without the writer even having to think.

Siegler concludes by saying that those who do put thought and time into their work will eventually be out of a job or else be forced to start feeding the pageview machine in order to get enough advertising income to support their writing.

Federico Viticci and Matt Alexander each responded with optimistic articles stating that thoughtful writing does still and will continue to have a place online. I, too, want to add a positive take on what Siegler is talking about.

It has been nearly a year since I took this site full time, and I think it’s fair to say that shawnblanc.net is proof you do not have to feed the pageview machine to generate a full-time income from your website. Nor do you even have to be a prolific, “A-list” blogger.

Compared to prolific writers, A-listers, or team-published sites, my website receives just a modicum of traffic. I average 150,000 pageviews in a month and have a daily audience of 12,000 RSS subscribers. In the 5 years that I’ve been writing here, none of my article have hit the top of Techmeme, Hacker News, Reddit, or even Digg. I don’t have any sources inside Apple, I don’t get invited to press events, nor do I get pre-release review-units of the coolest gadgets.

And yet, here I am, writing this site as my full-time gig. How so?

It’s because I have an incredible readership. Or, in the words of Kevin Kelly, I have 1,000 true fans. Half of this site’s income is from its membership base. And since I am fortunate enough to have readers who are willing to sign up as members and directly support this site, I am not fully dependent upon advertising revenue.

This is, of course, not to say that a membership model like mine would work for every website. But it works for this one, and it’s proof that readers are willing to directly support writers who don’t post link bait.

There are enough people reading on the internet that you don’t have to be mainstream to have a substantial enough readership to support your writing.

As I wrote last summer, my business model for this site is to give current readers — you guys — a first-class site that you want to read every day. My idea of SEO is to write with passion, and my idea of link bait is to publish stuff that you guys love.

Thus, everything I write and everything I link to is for the sake of the current reader. To all the members and readers of shawnblanc.net who’ve made that possible: thank you.

I found this iPhone app by spying on David Barnard’s Home screen. You use QuickShot to take a photo and it will then upload the image to Dropbox for you. It uploads in the background too, so you just snap a pic and close the app.

David explained how he uses the app to take pictures of all his tax-deductible, business expense receipts when on the go. When I read that, I thought to myself, what an extremely clever idea.

I keep my business receipts in Yojimbo, and so I’ve set up a folder action on my QuickShot Dropbox folder to run the below AppleScript. What the AppleScript does is: when I take a photo of a receipt using QuickShot the image will be tossed into Yojimbo with the tags “receipt” and “viaDropbox” and then the original image is deleted from my Dropbox folder.1

on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving these_items
    repeat with x from 1 to the count of these_items
        set theFile to item x of these_items
        set theTags to {"receipt", "viaDropbox"}
        try
            tell application "Yojimbo"
                set newItem to (import theFile)
                add tags theTags to newItem
            end tell
        end try
    end repeat
    tell application "Finder"
        delete these_items
    end tell
end adding folder items to

QuickShot is universal and just $1.99 in the iTunes App Store.

And I can think of no other Twitter client that has received more polarized praise and criticism than Tweetbot. People seem to love it or hate it; very few are just “meh” about it.

I check Twitter on my iPhone an order of magnitude more than on my Mac and especially on my iPad. It’s no secret that I love Tweetbot. I’ve been using the iPhone app as my main Twitter client since late 2010 when the app was still in its early beta days.

Up until recently I have always used the “official” Twitter for iPad app. It always struck me as odd that an app on my iPhone (Tweetbot) could serve as a better twitter client than one on my iPad (Twitter). But now Tweetbot has an iPad version. And it rocks.

The most obvious differentiator between Tweetbot and other Twitter clients is that Tapbots-style of design. It permeates all of their apps and it is a part of their brand. But design for the sake of design is never enough.

No doubt that the vast majority of those who read this site are familiar with form-versus-function commandment: thou shall not let form trump function. The way an app works is far more important than the way an app looks.

Tweetbot is that rare bird of an app that carries an extremely strong and unique mix of both form and function.

Every single pixel is completely customized. The Tapbots color pallet of blue and black and grey with textures and gradients is prevalent throughout. So too, every sound is unique with the playful robotic sounds of clicks and swooshes.

But it doesn’t stop there. The amount of custom design in this app is only surpassed by the amount of functionality and usability tucked underneath those pixels.

Tweetbot, even with its extremely custom design, is still an app with greater function than form. Though the first thing you see is the custom designs done by Mark Jardine, and these are the pixels which are always before you when you use the app, what makes the app great is how functional it is.

Over time I’ve become so very used to Tweetbot’s functionality that it’s an app which has stuck on my iPhone’s Home screen since its beginning. And now it’s stuck on my iPad’s Home screen as well.

If you love Tweetbot on your iPhone, you’re going to love it for iPad. It carries all same power-user-friendly bells and whistles that the iPhone version has.

Here are a few of the iPad app’s features which stand out to me:

• Tweetbot for iPad still treats lists as first class citizens. This is one of my favorite bits about the iPhone app and I am glad that on the iPad it is still easy to set lists as your main timeline view.

• Reading articles via the in-app browser is fantastic. You get a full-screen browser along with that same awesome Readability / Instapaper mobilizer toggle that the iPhone app when in the in-app browser. Just flip the switch and you get a text-friendly layout of the site you’re on:

  

• Tapping an Instagram or other linked image in your timeline darkens out the background and expands the image:

  

• Composing a new tweet is a lot more spacious than the official Twitter client, and has the same quick-access buttons that Tweetbot for iPhone does:

  

Tweetbot for iPad is a power Twitter user’s best friend. It’s an ideal app for those who make good use of lists and who follow folks who post a lot of links to articles. You can still apply filters to mute certain users or hashtags, you can see your favorites, and retweets, and more.

I’ve been using it for the past several weeks and the more I use it the more I like it. Highly recommended.

Here’s the iTunes App Store link.

• Canalys:

  Apple, after reporting stellar results, became the leading worldwide client PC vendor in Q4 2011. Apple shipped over 15 million iPads and five million Macs, representing 17% of the total 120 million client PCs shipped globally in Q4.

• Wikipedia (from the definition of “Personal Computer”):

  A personal computer (PC) is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator.

• Webster (from the definition of “Personal Computer”):

  a microcomputer designed for individual use, as by a person in an office or at home or school, for such applications as word processing, data management, financial analysis, or computer games.

• Ken Fisher:

  I consider the iPad a PC because, in my view, a PC (Personal Computer) is just that: a personal computing device.

  In my Big Sky view, the PC is best understood as a bundled trajectory of technologies, of which the iPad is a significant plot point in the development of mobile computing. That is to say, I view iPads in the same vein as laptops, believing that for 98 percent of the world, the iPad is equivalent to a laptop, in terms of intended uses. When we fast forward 15 years, I expect that today’s laptop will seem most antiquated to us, having been replaced by tablet-based experiences. I do not think the home PC will feel quite so antiquated.

• Don Reisinger

  Although the tablet doesn’t look like a PC or act like a PC in the simplest sense, it is a PC. From its functionality to its design, there is simply no reason people should look at the iPad and think it can’t hold up against desktops, notebooks and netbooks.

• Harry McCracken:

  I think it’s possible to use an iPad as one’s primary device for professional-level content creation. Actually, scratch that. I’m positive it’s possible—because I’ve been doing it for the past three months, and I’ve been having a really good time.

• Chuck Skoda:

  The iPad was the first computer built to meet you on your terms. It brings the last 35 years of digital technology into the physical world in a way so natural, not only do grandmas and toddlers get it, but so do kittens and lizards.

• Terry Lucy:

  When Apple released the iPad, I would argue that it actually released the first, truly personal, computer.

• Graham Spencer:

  So if you are excluding the iPad from the personal computer category, does that mean there is some checklist of requirements for a device to be a PC? Does it need a keyboard, or perhaps a trackpad or a mouse, or does it just have to be able to install any application you want (without the approval of a gatekeeper such as Apple)? All of these ‘requirements’ are completely arbitrary — with no practical reason as to why they are required to be on a PC.

• Matthew Panzarino:

  Look, tablets are PCs, get over it.

• Andy Faust:

  It’s replacing people’s needs for traditional computing environments in the home and office, and people are buying it in record numbers.

• MG Siegler:

  All you need to know about the “is the iPad a PC?” argument: are people buying them instead of traditional PCs? Sure looks like it.

Nay

• Patrick Moorhead:

  The way technology is headed in the future, calling the iPad a PC will set precedence that will only lead to even more confusion and misinformation. [...] Let’s stop classifying the iPad as a PC, it only serves to confuse people.

• Adrian Kingsley-Hughes:

  I agree with Moorhead, it’s time to stop the madness. If tablets are classed as PCs then why not smartphones? Or smartfridges? Or digital watches?

• Eric Grevstad:

  People are using tablets for e-reading, Web surfing, and movie viewing. And—at least for now, at least if you focus on real-world usage patterns—I say Canalys is wrong to count tablets as PCs.

But are We Asking the Wrong Question?

I can’t help but think that asking if the iPad is a PC or not is to ask the wrong question.

Shouldn’t the question be: are consumers buying iPads and other tablets instead of traditional personal computers?

I suppose that the answer to that question would also answer if the iPad is a PC or not, but focusing on the latter seems to be missing the point.

To re-quote MG Siegler:

All you need to know about the “is the iPad a PC?” argument: are people buying them instead of traditional PCs? Sure looks like it.

That is exactly the point. There will come a time when the majority of consumers who are in the market for a new personal computer will consider (and buy) an iPad or other tablet rather than a laptop or desktop computer. And when that time comes, the debate about the iPad being a PC or not will be over.

The market will decide that the iPad is a PC by buying them instead of laptops and desktops.

It seems that those arguing against the iPad being called a PC are really trying to make their own point that, for them, an iPad could not replace their PC. When they say the iPad is not a PC what they mean is that either: (a) there’s no way I would or could give up my PC and use an iPad instead; or (b) the iPad is not yet a PC, but it probably will be soon.

The reason this discussion about “if the iPad is a PC or not” is interesting is because the iPad is already proving to be disruptive to the PC market.

Horace Dediu writes:

The impact of the iPad is not specific to any single vendor (Apple included). It competes for time and purchase decisions across all computing alternatives and though many times it’s additive, it is also substitutive and will become increasingly so.

Backing away from the minutia of what the true definition is of a PC, we see that millions of people are buying iPads and using them for all sorts of purposes. And why shouldn’t they? The iPad is relatively inexpensive, it is fun, it has incredible battery life, it is extremely lightweight and portable, you don’t have to get it out of your bag for airport security, and it does most all the same basic tasks your laptop or desktop can do.

The fact that: (a) such a young device could be such a smashing success; and that (b) it could disrupt the decades-old PC market, are both interesting topics for discussion. And that discussion is manifesting itself as: “is the iPad a PC or not?”

It’s fascinating that such a small and inexpensive tablet device actually has a shot at replacing someone’s large and expensive desktop computer. But what else is fascinating is that the device and the market are less than 2 years old and people are already starting to make that transition.

For millions of people, an iPad is a perfectly good replacement for their laptop or desktop. They just don’t know it yet.