Sweet App: Visual, an iOS Timer

Visual is a simple countdown timer for your iPhone. Instead of showing a stopwatch-like countdown, the app takes over your whole iPhone screen with a single color. It starts out green and slowly fades to yellow and then red as your time runs out. You can pick other color pallets if you like.

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.

Thoughts and Observations Regarding Yesterday’s iPad Event

Resolutionary

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?

Why a New iOS Home Screen is a Big Deal

In his iOS 6 wish list, Federico Viticci wishes for a new iOS Home screen. Viticci has written about the problem of the iOS Home screen before, concluding that “Apple needs to tear apart the whole concept and rebuild it from the ground up.”

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.

Social Apps

A quick survey of my iPhone’s first two Home screen reveals 47 apps. Nineteen of them have a social component, a social network or their own, and/or are connected to a pre-existing social network:

• Stamped: Has its own mini-social network where you “stamp” things you like and see what others are stamping.

• Instagram: Has its own mini-social network, and it connects to Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr, where you take pictures of things and apply cheesy filters to them.

• Tweetbot: A fantastic app for Twitter.

• Flipboard: Connects with Twitter and Facebook to show you incoming articles and to allow you to share articles you find.

• Twitter for iPhone: I use Tweetbot as my Twitter app, but I do like the Connect tab in Twitter that shows all interactions and not just mentions.

• Path: Has its own mini-social network where you can share all sorts of things.

• Words with Friends: The name says it all.

• Gowalla (R.I.P.): Had It’s own mini-social network and connected to Twitter and Facebook; it allowed you to “check in” at locations and see where other people were checking in.

• Ego: Tells me my Twitter stats, etc.

• Rdio: Has its own mini-social network where you can share what music you are listening to and have collaborative playlists.

• UP: The Jawbone UP app has its own mini-social network of “teammates”.

• Decaf Sucks: Ties in with Twitter and allows you to post reviews of local coffee shops and find local coffee shops near you.

• Goodfoot: Connects with Gowalla (R.I.P.) to suggest places to eat that are nearby.

• Birdhouse: A notepad for Twitter.

• Reeder: Connects with Twitter so I can tweet about an article I read that I liked.

• Instapaper: Has it’s own mini-social network so I can see what articles my Instapaper friends have liked, and it also connects with Twitter so I can tweet about articles I read.

The iPhone has some native apps with have a social, sharing component:

• The iPhone Camera app: Using the Twitter integration of iOS 5, you can post your photos to Twitter.

• Email: Allows me to send notes and letters and pictures and movies to my friends and family members who also have an email address.

• Messages: Allows me to send a text or multi-media message to my friends and family members who have a cell phone.

Apps like Rdio, Reeder, Instapaper, Flipboard, and Instagram are not social networking apps at their core. They primarily serve another purpose, such as listening to music, reading, or taking pictures. But in many ways these apps are enhanced by their social elements because people like me enjoy sharing ideas and moments of our lives with our friends and network of peers. And we enjoy seeing what others are sharing.

Regarding the Condition of a 17-Month Old, Well-Used, iPhone 4

Yesterday on Twitter, Thomas Wong asked me about the state of the glass on my iPhone 4. After using the phone for so long, how did it hold up?

I thought this was a great question and worth mentioning briefly.

After using my iPhone 4 every single day for nearly a year and a half, the glass on the front and the back was still in near-mint condition. The only physical blemishes to the glass were some minor nicks that were only noticeable when all fingerprints had been wiped off and you were holding the phone at just the proper angle.

For some, accidents do happen, and I was lucky enough to have never accidentally dropped my iPhone off the roof of a tall building and onto a concrete sidewalk. In fact, I have never catastrophically dropped any of my iPhones.

Moreover, I refuse to put any sort of case or even a clear screen protector on my iPhone.

I’ve owned a cell phone of some sort for 13 years. My iPhone 4 probably got used more than any cell phone I’ve owned previously. And, what’s remarkable, is that after the 18 months of daily usage, none of my phones were in as good of a condition as the iPhone 4 was:

• The exterior glass was still in near-mint condition.
• The battery still held a good, full charge and would last me two days of normal usage.
• In fact, even the usefulness of the iPhone 4 actually increased thanks to software updates and the App Store.

Would it be stretching it to say that the iPhone 4 (and now, 4S) is like fine wine?

iPhone 4S Review

On Friday morning, October 7, I pre-ordered two new iPhones: a black, 16GB iPhone 4S for me, and a white one for Anna. A week later they were delivered by FedEx.

Anna’s white iPhone is the first white iPhone I have seen up close and used outside of an Apple store. And it looks great. I have always gone with black iPhones because, well, it’s black. But I really do like the look of Anna’s white iPhone — it is much more classy and well built than the white iPad.

The two phones arrived around 10:00 am. The delivery driver mentioned how we were the first to get them and he had hundreds on his truck.

About 7 hours later I was finally able to activate the phones.

Frustrations of AT&T’s overloaded activation servers aside, the activation process was incredibly simple. I activated and set up both iPhones without a single cable. My unofficial goal is to never plug my iPhone into my computer again.

After unboxing the phone, I turned it on, unlocked the screen, and followed the on-screen instructions for setup. The iPhone knew my phone number and prompted me to confirm that this was indeed the phone number I was upgrading. I then was asked to enter in my billing zip code and last 4 digits of my social security number to confirm my identity, and then let the iPhone activate.

At first the activation was unsuccessful. And so I started over. The second attempt was unsuccessful as well. I tried again, and again, and again, for over two hours. Then I just let it be and came back a few hours later. Even then, I still had no luck.

It was dinner time when iPhone was finally able to activate. I, of course, was not the only one with activation woes. I read about all sorts of people having trouble activating their AT&T iPhones. And, from what I understand, those on Verizon and Sprint had little or no trouble activating on day one.

Once I was finally able to activate my iPhone 4S, I simply restored it from the iCloud backup of my iPhone 4. The restore took less than 10 minutes altogether and all the apps from my iPhone 4 were downloaded and in place. The only missing data were all my passwords.

Aside from having to wait for several hours to get my 4S activated, this was, by far, the most seamless and easy iPhone setup I’ve ever had.

Those automatic iCloud backups are great. Every evening I plug my iPhone into the wall charger by my bed and every evening all that’s on my iPhone gets backed up to the cloud.

These backups are especially great for my wife. Of the two of us, she is probably more prone to losing or breaking her iPhone than I am. Moreover, she is certainly less motivated to plug her iPhone in and sync it to her computer. Having her iPhone backed up each night means if her iPhone ever does go missing, the info that’s on it won’t disappear with the device.

Big Picture

The iPhone 4S has three headline features which make it superior to its predecessors: speed, camera, and Siri.

• The speed is a combination of the A5 processor and the new antennae design. The former lets the iPhone 4S work and act quicker. The latter helps with better download speeds from the cellular data network.

• The camera is better and faster. More on that in a bit.

• And Siri is, well, amazing. But more on that in a bit, too.

My thought on if you should upgrade? Well, if you are at all an iPhone junkie (as in, you use your iPhone more than the maximum amount even possible) then I think the upgrade is well worth it. The speed, better camera, and Siri are all something you’ll benefit from every day (even if you’re already on an iPhone 4).

Siri

My first impression of Siri is that Siri is to the GUI what the GUI is to the command line. Meaning, using Siri is a far easier and quicker way to navigate certain tasks than using iPhone’s multi-touch user interface. The GUI is still much more powerful, but there are already things which are more efficient to do by using Siri.

The scope of what Siri can do on its is not all that striking — setting a timer or an alarm is relatively simple task. But it’s not the scope that makes Siri so darn impressive.

The practical implication of Siri is that certain things are significantly easier and faster to do by asking Siri to them. Such as: setting a reminder, creating a calendar event, getting the current temperature, setting a timer, or setting an alarm.

Siri is not the first voice recognition software to come along allowing you to make a phone call or dictate a note. But Siri is conversational and accepts a multitude of various types of requests for the same task. Which means you don’t have to memorize what you’re asking for. And because of that, Siri’s usability and convenience become exponentially more impressive and helpful.

Something else that stands out to me about Siri is how well it can understand what I’m saying. I don’t have to talk slowly and in monotone. Nor do I have to hold the iPhone right up to my face to talk directly into the microphone. In my home office I can leave the iPhone on my desk next to my keyboard while talking at a normal speed and volume, and Siri will catch exactly what I’m saying.

Another thing that stands out to me about Siri’s usefulness is that it knows if you are “hands free” or not. And if so, Siri accommodates accordingly. For example, if I have my iPhone earbuds plugged in and I ask Siri to send a message to my wife saying “Hey babe, just wanted to say I love you.” Siri will reply not only that the message was created but also read it back to me. If I were not “hands free” Siri assumes I can read my message as it’s brought up on the screen, and thus I would have to ask to review my message in order to get it read back to me by Siri.

In short, Siri is smart enough to know if I am not able to look at my iPhone’s screen and if so Siri becomes more chatty in a good way.

Talking to and using Siri could easily be maddening. If it took too long to process a simple request, or if it didn’t understand most what I said, then the friction of using Siri would slowly grind away any desire to use it. But it’s the little areas of polish that make Siri usable and enjoyable.

Using Siri in Public

I have not yet been in a large, open, public place (such as a restaurant or coffee shop) where I wanted to use Siri. If I did, there’s a clever feature Apple built in which, if your iPhone’s screen is unlocked, you can raise the phone to your ear and Siri will activate and you can interact with it as if you were talking to someone on the phone.

There were, however, a few times over this past weekend when I was around family and something came to my mind that I waned to set a reminder for. I felt a bit uncomfortable launching Siri and asking it to set a reminder for me because I knew it would interrupt the conversation happing in the next room over and draw attention to myself.

And then, as I thought about how easy it would be to have Siri set the reminder compared to setting it up manually, I decided simply to not set up the reminder at all. Lazy? Perhaps. But it’s also telling. For how many people will Siri become the only interface into their iPhone’s apps for reminders, alarms, and timers?

Phonetics

I highly recommend populating the Phonetic Name fields for common contacts which Siri mispronounces. This will also increase the accuracy of your requests to call, text, or email someone.

To set a phonetic field just go to a contact’s card from your iPhone, tap “Edit”, then scroll to the bottom and tap “Add Field”. From there you’ll find the fields you’re looking for.

Text Input for Siri

Natural language input is one of the primary benefits to Siri. This is what makes the calendar app Fantastical so fantastic. If Siri understands and parses our requests into text, why not allow us to type our Siri requests in from the start?

If I’m not in a place where I can talk to Siri, typing in my request may still be easier than doing the task manually. For example, typing the text: “Remind me to take out the trash when I get home” would still be easier than launching the Reminder app, creating a new reminder, typing in “take out the trash”, tapping on the reminder itself, choosing “Remind Me”, turning on “At a Location”, selecting “When I Arrive”, choosing “Home”.

Easter Eggs

There are a slew of easter eggs in Siri. You can ask Siri to tell you a story or a joke. There are certain phrases you can say to Siri to solicit a clever response, such as: “open the pod bay doors”, “beam me up, Siri”, or even, “klaatu barada nikto”.1

Since Siri is server-side software, it will be interesting to see how it evolves (perhaps not the best word-choice?). Will new easter eggs be added? Will new responses to the same questions be added? Beyond simply wishing for an API so 3rd-party apps can get access, how will Siri’s responses and functionality be updated in the future?

Finding friends and family members

Siri integrates with Apple’s Find My Friends app, and I think this could offer some great functionality. Especially for immediate family members. You can ask Siri things like “where is my wife”, and if the Find my Friends app has their location data then you can see where they are.

Location-Based Reminders

Surely the location-based reminders are one of the coolest “little features” in iOS 5.

Having a phone that’s smart enough to remind us to take out the trash when we get home or to not forget our jackets when we leave the office is the next step in handy task lists.

I’ve added new contacts in my iPhone for Walmart and Lowe’s, two locations we visit often. This way I can create a reminder such as “Remind me to get batteries next time I am at Walmart.”

What would be great is if a location-based reminder could contain a “group” of locations. We don’t buy batteries only at Walmart. There are a handful of stores we go to which sell batteries, and so if we need batteries I want to be reminded at any of those stores.

If I could create a group of contacts labeled shopping which contained all the various stores we regularly visit, then I could say “remind me to get batteries next time I go shopping” and then a geo-fence could be set up around all of those “shopping” locations, and would go off at whichever one I arrived at next.

And what would take that even to the next level? An ability to have shared reminders. Something like: “Remind me or Anna to get batteries next time we go shopping.”

An example of that in real life could look like this: I’m at home and realize we need batteries. I create the reminder and it syncs to my iPhone and Anna’s. Then, suppose Anna realizes she needs to swing by the store on her way home from work to get an ingredient for dinner. When she gets there a reminder pops up notifying her that we also need batteries.

Siri’s Interface Design

I think the look of Siri’s interface design is fantastic. I like the way Wolfram|Alpha results are displayed as well as custom UI elements for native things such as a reminder, an event, or a message. The look for an alarm and the timer are my favorite two designs.

Matt Legend Gemmell has a collection of screenshots on Flickr showing off the look of Siri as well as many of its functionalities.

Network Availability

There are patches of time during the day when Siri simply won’t work. In my usage, it doesn’t have to do my iPhone’s connectivity, but simply that the cloud is too busy. Its must be all those millions of iPhone 4S users.

This surely is why Apple limited Siri to be exclusive to the iPhone 4S. They sold 4 million iPhones over the weekend, but there are 20 million people who upgraded to iOS 5. If the Siri network gets bottlenecked with 4 million users, imagine if it were available to 20 million right now.

It’s one thing for Siri to need a network connection to parse and interpret the voice requests. But it would seem that Siri needs the network connection for everything it does — from the very start to the very end of any task.

I found that if Siri lost network connectivity mid-interaction, it could not complete the task. I had all but confirmed a new reminder when Siri lost network connection, and so the reminder could not be created. Even though I was staring at it on the Siri screen. After waiting about 30 seconds, Siri was able to connect and the reminder was set.

Of course, the non-connected moments are fewer and more far between than the connected moments. And when Siri does work, it’s fast. So fast, in fact, that it feels as if Siri is processing the requests right on the phone. (Part of this speed may be because I think Siri begins streaming your audio request to the Apple servers almost as soon as you begin talking.)

The A5 Processor

The iPhone 4S is significantly faster than the 4, and not just on paper.

The speed increase is especially noticeable in all the little animations and movements you see on your phone all the time. Such as the app launching animations and sliding between home screens and scrolling a list view. They are all more smooth.

Something that the iPhone is so well known for is that as you are tapping on and interacting with the interface, the response time is so good that it feels as if you are actually manipulating the interface with your finger. Well, on the 4S, that perceived manipulation feels even more real.

And, aside from the Camera app which surely has the most noticeable speed bump of all, it’s the Spotlight search results that I’ve noticed as having the most obvious speed increase.

The Camera

It’s fast. Like, crazy fast.

I had switched to Camera+ as my primary camera app simply because you could snap, snap, snap, several photos in a row. But you can now do that with the native camera app.

So, not only does the Camera app launch quicker, but the “shutter speed” is much faster as well. This is a welcome change indeed. But that’s not all. The lens of the camera on the iPhone 4S is also significantly improved. The quality of the photos is higher resolution and better image quality. I am not a photographer, but even I can notice a better depth of field and better color with the camera on my 4S.

Additional Miscellany

• The Home Button on my iPhone 4S sits differently than on my iPhone 4. The button on the 4S feels more flush with the top glass and it has a slightly more smooth transition (from the glass to where the button begins).

• The vibration alert the 4S is very different than on my iPhone 4. It’s more obvious, yet less noisy and less abrasive. It’s hard to explain what exactly is different about it, but it is most certainly different.

  The reason is that the iPhone 4S uses the same vibrator motor as the Verizon iPhone 4 does: it’s a linear oscillating vibrator as opposed to the rotational electric motor that was in the AT&T Version of the iPhone 4.

• The screen on the 4S seems “cooler”, more crisp, and more appealing to look at than the screen on my 4.

• iMessages go to all devices that are set up with your Apple ID and are running iOS 5. However, only the most-recently-used device gets the iMessage notification. So, if you are having a conversation with someone via iMessage, only the device you’re having the conversation on gets each and every notification of a new incoming message.

  And so here’s a thought: if Apple can manage which device gets notified of a new iMessage, then why not use that same logic to simmer down the calendar alerts?

Summary Statement for Skimmers

For a phone that looks so similar, there are so many things which are different. Though the iPhone 4S looks just like my previous iPhone, it sure doesn’t act like it. The 4S is a welcome upgrade for someone who has his iPhone within arms reach just about 24 hours a day.

Exciting and Ambitious

The USB cable had a good long run, but its usefulness and convenience is breaking down.

I don’t just have an iPod with songs on it any longer. I have an iPhone, an iPad, and a Mac, and all three of them have all sorts of similar content. If you use more than one computer or device, then over-the-air syncing is extremely convenient.

While browsing Twitter on my iPhone, if I come across a link I want to read later I can just send it to Instapaper. Later that evening I can sit down on the couch, pick up my iPad, and the article is there waiting for me. And this is just one of hundreds of examples of the convenience of using the cloud. Emails, photos, documents, music, notes, to-do items, and ebooks are all prime examples of things we want to share and sync across multiple devices.

The iPhone, announced in 2007, was always meant to be more than a widescreen iPod with touch controls, more than a revolutionary mobile phone, and more than a breakthrough Internet communications device.

Smartphones in 2007 were somewhat smart (they could do email and barbaric Internet), but they were not easy to use. And regular, or dumb, phones were easier to use, but they didn’t do a whole lot.

iPhone was designed to be a device that was very smart and very easy to use. Smarter than the smartest smartphone. Easier to use than the most simple dumb phone. This is a hard position to keep because the smarter (or more capable and feature-rich) a device gets the harder it is to maintain its ease of use.

The launch of the App Store in 2008 made the iPhone significantly “smarter”. That was the intention — Apple wants the iPhone and iPad to run desktop class mobile applications. The more our devices work and function as miniature computers (which is what they are), the more important it is that they work side by side with our actual computers.

That side-by-side functionality started with iTunes and the USB cable. You could plug your iPhone into your computer and sync your music, photos, videos, podcasts, contacts, calendars, notes, Safari bookmarks, and email accounts.

In 2008, MobileMe came along, and for $99/year you could ditch the USB cable at least for syncing contacts, calendars, bookmarks, and email.

But the .Mac re-brand and re-launch to MobileMe was disastrous in some ways. In an internal email to Apple employees, Steve Jobs said, “The vision of MobileMe is both exciting and ambitious.”

Over the past 3 years in its current state as “Exchange for the rest of us,” MobileMe has been neither exciting nor ambitious.

What about owning an iPhone is less exciting than having to plug it in, launch iTunes, sync the info, and then eject it every single time you want to get info in sync or transfer over new music?

But now, with iOS 5 and iCloud, we no longer need the USB cable.

In fact, if there were another way to charge the iPhone 4S, I wouldn’t have been surprised if the new phones came only with earbuds. But the cable will be there — if only for the purpose of charging the phone.

I cannot help but wonder if iCloud is what MobileMe was meant to be. MobileMe earned a sour reputation right off the bat. As they say, if you don’t like what people are saying, change the conversation. And so we now have iCloud as the MobileMe successor. It’s better. It’s free. It’s more exciting. It’s more ambitious. It still uses the @me.com email addresses.

iCloud is ambitious and exciting in a way MobileMe never was. This is the foundation, the cornerstone, the hinge, the linchpin, and the future of where Apple is headed. Lion + iOS + iCloud = Apple’s development plans. Their desktop and mobile hardware and software offerings will be unified via iCloud.

On a less dramatic tone, I am very thankful for iCloud because I am tired of plugging in my iPhone and iPad in order to sync them. In fact, I cannot remember the last time I plugged either of them into my computer. I mean, who goes through those iTunes hoops any more? Average consumers never did in the first place unless they had a specific reason (such as to transfer a new album or movie onto their iPhone), and even us nerds gave up on it a while ago.

I sit at my desk for hours every day and my iPhone rarely gets plugged into my laptop. Persnickety power users are surely the most motivated of all to plug our iDevices in and keep things in sync, and yet even we have given up on the chore of syncing.

Ever since App Store purchase became available as over-the-air downloads (regardless of what device the app or song was purchased on) I stopped having any reason whatsoever to plug my iPhone into my laptop.

If I buy an app on my Mac, my iPhone and/or iPad will download it as well. If I buy a song on my iPhone, my Mac will download it as well. If I buy an app on my iPad, my iPhone will download it.

Moreover, since I use MobileMe, my contacts, calendars, and bookmarks are synced. And several of my most-used apps use a web service to sync their data over the air across multiple devices. Apps such as 1Password, OmniFocus, Reeder, Instapaper, and Simplenote.

iCloud promises all this and more. Photos that you take with your iPhone will show up in your iPad’s photo library. Music that is on your laptop will be available to download on your iPhone or iPad. Documents that you’re working on in Numbers will be accessible on your Mac, iPad or iPhone.

“Last Century”

Yesterday I re-watched Steve Jobs’ January 2007 keynote. Something struck me about it when Jobs was demoing the phone app on iPhone he called the number keypad as “last century”. He said:

“If I want to dial the phone, if I’m real last-century, I can push keypad here, and I can dial a call.”

A few minutes later as he was re-capping the phone app and listing the features again, naming them out he again called the keypad as last century:

“Favorites, last century, visual voice mail.”

As if Jobs was annoyed that he couldn’t remove the keypad altogether.

Instead of being “last century” and dialing our calls, Apple wanted us to scroll through our contacts list. They wanted us to tap on names and phone numbers to call people. They wanted us to find restaurants and shops using Google maps and to tap on their contact info to call them. They built the best phone app on any mobile phone — it was one of iPhone’s original killer apps.

Today, iPhone’s “last century” element is the USB cable.

New iPhones will still ship with a USB cable in their box, but Apple doesn’t want you to use it. The only time you should be plugging your iPhone into the cable is to charge the battery. Apple wants you to set up your device wirelessly and let everything sync wirelessly.

What iPhone made the keypad in January 2007 is what iCloud will make the USB cable today: “Last century.”

iMessage

Even iMessages is building on the idea of synced information. Except it’s not syncing media or documents, it’s syncing conversations. You can have an iMessage conversation with someone while reading your Instapaper queue on your iPad, and then continue that same conversation on your iPhone when you’re out of the house. This is something that up until now only Twitter DMs seemed to handle (a DM thread is accessible from the iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Mac), which means the next step will be, of course, iMessages for the Mac.

What else is so fun about Apple’s new messaging service is the fact that you can have delivery confirmation, read receipts, and see when the other person is typing. Alas, for me this means that if I get a text message that I’m not ready to reply to yet the other person will still know that I’ve read it. No hard feelings, okay guys?

Notifications

Other than Siri, the new notifications system may be the most exciting and notable front-end feature to iOS. Put another way, notifications in iOS 5 rock.

For the past 4 years iPhone users have had to suffer through a sub-par notifications system on the iPhone. If a text message comes up, you’re in trouble. If you have a handful of calendar reminders, your phone becomes locked down until you clear all of them. It’s been insufferable.

The new notifications not only work much better, but they look much better as well. There are 4 new or different user interface elements:

• The single-notification window that appears on the lock screen is now black instead of blue, and it has a gradient across the very top of the box instead of the curved bezel.
• If additional notifications appear while iPhone is locked, then the notifications get smaller and form an unordered list on the lock screen.
• Notifications that come when you are using your phone “roll in” on the top of the screen for a few moments, and then roll back out. The animation is really quite nice.
• And there is an entirely new notification pane which houses all your notifications, upcoming events, current weather, stocks, and more. This is accessed by sliding down from the top of the screen.

The new notification system and its accompanying UI elements are great. I think that the look of the lock screen with a few notifications is very cool. And I love the design of the notification slide-down pane.

But a word of caution: don’t overdo it. The temptation is going to be to sneak into the Notification Settings and turn on every app. But my suggestion is to keep it clean. Keep it down to only what’s helpful to you and keep it so that the notification panel doesn’t turn into the new time sink for the Just Checks. Don’t play the notification panel.

When I first installed the beta of iOS 5 a few months ago I turned on just about every notification I could. New emails, @replies and DMs on Twitter, SMS messages, iCal alerts, missed calls, OmniFocus items, and more — all of them were showing up as notifications. I wanted my Lock screen and notification panel to be well stocked.

After enjoying it for a day or two I had to turn nearly all of them off so I could have my life back. It was fun while it was new, but now the only things which alert me are Twitter DMs, SMS and iMessages, phone calls, upcoming meetings, and location-based reminders.

Location-Based Notifications

This is where things get fun.

You can set a notification to remind you of something when you arrive at or leave a place. Set a reminder that tells you to buy some AA batteries when you arrive at Walmart. Or, set a reminder that tells you to swing by the post office when you’re leaving your house.

The update to OmniFocus taps into the location-based API in iOS 5 and you can set the same. Assign a location to a context in OmniFocus and all items assigned to that context will become due upon arrival to or leaving from that location.

Miscellany

Text Expansion Shortcuts

Under Settings → General → Keyboard → Shortcuts you can set up custom shortcuts.

So, for example, typing the letters “omw” will expand to “On my way”. It does not instantly expand like a TextExpander snippet would, but rather iOS treats your shortcut like a misspelling and offers to auto-correct it to the expanded text. Hitting the Space bar launches the expansion, hitting the “x” in the popover box dismisses it.

Faster Camera Access

Double click the Home button from the Lock screen and — in addition to the iPod controls being where they always have been — a camera icon now shows up to the right of the “slide to unlock” slider. Tap that icon and you are in the Camera app. Boom. It is a significantly faster way to get to the camera.

The New Round Toggles and Other Graphical Interface Changes

There are more new design elements in iOS 5 than any previous version of iOS.

• New look of notifications on the lock screen and the new Notification Center
• New rounded toggle buttons
• Camera icon when you double click the Lock screen
• Blue talk bubbles used for iMessage messages
• Siri microphone icon on the keyboard
• Tabs in Mobile Safari

To me, all of these new or modified elements are a welcome change.

What struck me when thinking about the new look of the toggle switches and other new elements in iOS 5 is that this version of the OS has the most new UI elements of any of its previous siblings. Though the iPhone 4S does not have any physical design changes to it, the operating system installed certainly does.

iOS 5 and iCloud mark the next chapter in Apple’s mobile operating system. The groundbreaking and revolutionary new features shipping from Cupertino this week are signposts of Apple’s course for the next several years.

Geek Dad

Today will likely be my most memorable iPhone announcement. Because, more important than what was revealed in Cupertino, Anna and I found out we are having a boy: Shawn Junior (actually, no, that will not be his name). This afternoon, instead of refreshing liveblogs, Anna and I celebrated our soon-coming little dude by having a calm, classy lunch and talking about what potential names we wouldn’t mind shouting out the back door.

As I type this Anna and I are home, the iPhone announcement is concluded, and I’ve read through the live blog update of the announcement by This is My Next. Apple’s video of the event is also available, but I have not yet watched it in its entirety (though I did watch the first portion with Tim Cook).

No doubt you too have already heard about the iPhone 4S with its faster dual-core A5 chip, smarter antennae that gets speedier download speeds, a significantly improved camera, and Siri.

As I read through and watched portions of the announcement, these are the things that stood out to me:

• Tim Cook stated that iPhone has 5% of the worldwide mobile phone market. He said:

  I could have shown you a much larger number if I had just shown you smartphones. But that’s not how we look at it. We look at the entire market for handsets because we believe that over time that all handsets become smartphones. This market is 1.5 billion units annually. It’s an enormous opportunity for Apple.

  It is not uncommon to list total iOS numbers when calculating Apple’s marketshare of the mobile platform. But Tim intentionally left out the total iOS marketshare numbers and simply gave Apple’s share of worldwide mobile phones.

  I can’t put my finger on why exactly, but this statement and its slide stood out to me as one of the most strategic and purposeful slides of the event. Perhaps it’s a way of stating the fact that even though the iPhone is selling at an astronomical rate, it still has an enormous market to penetrate. Perhaps this slide was a banner to Wall Street and everyone else saying, we’re doing great and we are nowhere close to slowing down, nor are we running out of track“.

• Sales of the iPhone 4 account for half of all iPhone sales since 2007.

  Remember how iPhone sales would wean before a new iPhone announcement, but not this year? The iPhone has become a mass market consumer’s device, not just a nerd’s, and the 4 was the phone that was present when that happened.

• The iPod classic was not even mentioned in the announcement, though it’s still for sale on Apple’s website.

• The iPhone 4 at $99 is a total steal, and the free iPhone 3GS is a shocker.

  The free iPhone 3GS is the next step in Apple’s fight for even more of the marketshare. It will be very interesting to see how these three iPhones perform against one another between now and the next year’s iPhone.

• In light of above, does this mean that in 2012 the iPhone 4 will be the free iPhone and the iPhone 5 be the new one? And thus, in 2013 will we see an iPhone 5S?

• Siri. It’s only available on the iPhone 4S, and only available in certain countries. In my link to the Siri website earlier, I wondered out loud if Siri’s exclusiveness to iPhone 4S is a sales ploy to entice more folks to get the 4S, or if Siri needs that A5 chip? Or if it’s something else?

  Reader, Kyle Deas, wrote me with an interesting theory of why Siri is only available on iPhone 4S: Since Siri also needs an internet connection, it’s possible and likely that a good amount of Siri’s processing is being performed in the cloud on Apple servers. Therefore, limiting Siri to just the iPhone 4S could be a way of throttling initial usage while it is still in its beta stages.

  If Kyle’s theory is correct then it means that Siri could potentially come to the iPhone 4, iPod touch, and iPad 2 via software updates. (Heck, maybe even the original iPad since it also sports the same A4 chip as the iPhone 4.)

  And so, what if early next year when the iPad 3 ships, iOS 5.x also ships and brings with it Siri for all supported devices? And if so, that brings up another question: how will Siri and iCloud work together?

Fantastic 4

My first mobile phone was a Qualcomm something-or-other. Later I had one those dime-a-dozen Nokias, and then another smaller Nokia that had a removable faceplate. (Remember when the cool features of phones included interchangeable faceplates?) Then there was a cool Motorola flip phone or two that I used and liked, and then I had a random Samsung candy bar slider.

Then 2007 came along and I got an iPhone. After that I got the iPhone 3G S (I held on to my original iPhone until 2009 because I thought the iPhone 3G was too ugly to justify upgrading). And then the iPhone 4.

I have now owned my iPhone 4 since the summer of 2010. And it blows all of those past phones out of the water. Sometimes I wonder if I ever even owned a cell phone before I owned an iPhone, and the 4 is the greatest iPhone to date.

Of course, a new iPhone is coming out in a few weeks. And, of course, I’ll be in line to buy it (that’s who I am and what I do). But by no means does that mean I find my iPhone 4 lacking in any way. Quite the contrary actually: the iPhone 4 is quite possibly the most amazing gadget I have ever owned or ever imagined I would own.

• I carry my iPhone 4 case free — I’ve never used an iPhone case — and it is still scratch, crack, and dent free. I keep it in my front left pocket with the front facing in. I’ve dropped it once and it only suffered a very minor scuff to plastic edging up by the camera lens.

  In fact, the back of my iPhone 4 has less scratches than the back of my 4th-generation iPod touch. The touch’s chrome backing practically comes out of the box with scuffs on it.

• On every other phone I’ve owned the battery life was part of the cost of ownership. But with the iPhone 4, the battery lasts me for 2 days. When I’m on the road at events, I usually need a charge every night because I’m doing a lot of 3G data usage. But in my day-to-day, this-is-how-Shawn-uses-his-iPhone usage, a full charge lasts me 2 days.

  On my past iPhones, when the 20% battery warning would appear it meant I needed to go into iPhone survival mode — keeping usage to a minimum to save as much battery juice as possible before I am able to charge it next. But on the 4, a 20% warning simply means charge at my earliest convenience.

• The camera is just great. In fact, it is the only camera in our house that gets any use. My iPhone is my camera. My iPhone camera roll is my photo library. The photo-editing apps on my iPhone are what I use as post-processing software for the pictures I take.

• The Retina display. Oh, the Retina display. A year and a half later and this display still doesn’t feel normal to me. It still strikes me how it looks as if the pixels are painted onto the glass and how the images and type are so crisp.

• Form factor. The original iPhone will always have a soft spot in my heart as being one of the finest looking devices I’ve ever owned. But nostalgia aside, the iPhone 4 truly is a gorgeous device. The black glass and the metal band with matching buttons are a hallmark of industrial design.

  The design of the original iPhone was great, except it hindered signal strength. The design of the iPhone 3G /S was a necessary evil to makes sure that signal strength was good enough. The iPhone 4 is finally that balance of form and function.

The iPhone 4 is the completion of what Apple originally set out to build when they launched the iPhone in 2007. This current model is the last page of this chapter, and I believe the next iPhone will be the opening of a new chapter for the iPhone.

It’s hard to imagine what the next iPhone will be. Sure it’ll have a faster processor, and a better camera, and probably a longer battery. But who knows what it will look like? Who knows what other factors — factors which are still unknown to us — that will come into play and will give reason for the next iPhone to be that much more incredible?

We are content with the current iPhone, and yet we suspect the next one will be another hallmark.

Sweet App: Goodfoot for iPhone

Goodfoot is an iPhone app that helps you find cool, nearby places. And it does so by using the Gowalla API in one of the most clever ways I’ve seen.

I came across this app while doing research and preparation for our Creatiplicty episode with Trent Walton.

Goodfoot works by taking the most popular spots on Gowalla and then sorting them by distance (walking, biking, or driving distance) from where you currently are. Then it removes all the non-interesting spots from the list (such as big-brand locations, doctors offices, grocery stores, etc.) and does a pretty good job at only showing you worthwhile locations.

As you’re looking at each location Goodfoot has its own built-in Awesometer®. Goodfoot’s Awesometrics System rates the likelihood of that location being awesome by looking at how many total check-ins the location has compared to how many of those check-ins are unique. So, for example, a place with 100 check-ins from 100 unique people is probably a tourist hotspot and thus not that awesome (unless you think gift shops are awesome). A place with 100 check-ins from 20 people is clearly a local favorite and thus more likely to be awesome.

Once you find a spot that you want to go to, you can view that site in Gowalla or use Google Maps to get the exact location and directions.

Goodfoot is just a buck in the App Store and works wherever Gowalla users have been.

Apple’s Four-Year Product Rollout

Apple has but one product: Their products. Their product lineup is, in a sense, one single product. The “walled garden” is the whole point.

It hasn’t always been like this. Their products used to be silos — they were individual pieces of hardware that ran independently of one another. You could buy a desktop or a laptop and the files you kept on those computers stayed on those computers unless you intentionally and manually did something about it.

In 2001 the iPod was introduced, and with it you could take the music that was on your computer and put it onto a portable device. And that music could still exist on your computer at the same time it was on your iPod. In 2004 your iPod could also hold photos; in 2005, video.

For those with one or more laptops or desktops then there was probably a frustrating attempt to keep them somewhat in sync. Apple offered .Mac as a subscription service which in part allowed users to keep more than one computer in sync, but it was mostly just the smaller details and data of your computer that were synced. Things like passwords, contacts, and email rules. The big items, which comprise the actual work and play we do on our computers, were not synced.

It wasn’t until 2007, with the advent of the iPhone, that it became clear Apple was trying to incorporate everything together and to build a single product.

I think that Apple is just now finishing the first step of what it began in 2007.

Up until recently, they have been selling tangible products: devices with software. Soon, Apple will be selling universal, ubiquitous access. Or: all your stuff on all your devices in any place.

The future of technology is extreme usability coupled with extreme simplicity. Up until now we have only ever known that as product silos. Look how great this divide is or that app. But the GSMA is predicting 7 internet-connected devices per person in the next 15 years. My home already has 10. And so the future of simple and usable technology will require devices that are connected. And the more simple and usable that interconnectedness is, the better.

Through this lens we can see that the past four and half years have been one single, epic product rollout for Apple:

2007: iPhone (noteworthy refresh in 2010)
2007: Apple TV (noteworthy refresh in 2010)
2008: MacBook Air (noteworthy refresh in 2011)
2008: MobileMe (noteworthy refresh (iCloud) coming)
2008: App Store
2010: iPad (noteworthy refresh coming)
2011: Mac App Store
2011: OS X Lion

The iPhone, iCloud, iPad, iTunes, OS X Lion, iOS, Apple TV, the MacBook Air, and the iMac are all Apple products. But they are more than that. In aggregate they are one single product. Apple’s product lineup is, in and of itself, a single product.

These are devices which are built to be connected. They are built to work with one another. They are built for the purpose of having all your digital media accessible on any (Apple) device at any time.

The chapter that was opened with the iPhone in 2007 is coming to a close this fall with the advent of iCloud. Mobile computing, cloud computing, simpler computing… it is all phase one of the future. And it is now upon us.

The hardware are vessels for accessing your music, movies, apps, websites, documents, and more. Pick the device you want to use at the moment. The rest is just details.

Product Development

Each of the above products didn’t start out perfect. There has been significant improvement and iteration upon the original versions, but I think that in the next few months we will see the attainment of the original goals of each of the hardware and software products that have shipped over the past four years.

• I think the iPhone 4 is the attainment of the goal that was set forth with the original iPhone.
• The iPad 3 will be the attainment of the goal that was set forth with the original iPad.
• iCloud is the attainment of the goal that was set forth with MobileMe (yea .Mac; yea iTools).
• The 2011 MacBook Air is the attainment of the goal that was set forth with the first Air.
• The current Apple TV and its upcoming software updates are the attainment of the goal that was set forth with the first iTV.

Or, put more simply: this next season of Apple product releases will mean the drying of the cement that is the foundation for where Apple is headed. The first “phase” is now complete.

Of course there will still be growth and innovation in the days to come, but Apple’s original vision for their product lineup is now nearly realized. They began simple, and they have slowly built upon each product to bring them to where they are today.

The Apple Ante

A common argument against Apple and their walled garden is that their products are too expensive. Those of you reading this likely already know the truth that that claim never actually held up. Just because Apple never sold a $250 laptop doesn’t mean their products were not fairly priced for the quality and value of the product.

But now, that argument has even less ground. Consider this excerpt from John Gruber’s review of the iPhone 3G:

“What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.” — ANDY WARHOL

So too with the iPhone. A billionaire can buy homes, cars, clothes that the rest of us cannot afford. But he cannot buy a better phone, at any price, than the iPhone that you can have in your pocket today.

It is not just for the iPhone. It goes for virtually Apple’s entire product lineup (software included).

• For $29 you can’t buy a better operating system than OS X Lion.
• For $0.99 there’s not an easier way to buy a song — regardless of where you are — than on iTunes.
• For $199 you can’t buy a better phone than the iPhone.
• For $999 you can’t buy a better laptop than the 11-inch MacBook Air.
• For $499 you can’t buy a better tablet than the iPad.

Suppose you buy the cheaper variants: some $250 Windows netbook, a $99 HP TouchPad (if you can find one), and a free Android phone of the month. Those products are silos. You’ll be able to sync your email and calendars over the air but that’s about it. You’ll have to sync them all independently of one another to have your media, and documents available on each one.

The future of simplicity and usability in technology means connectedness. It means hardware devices that don’t operate as silos independent of our documents and media and communication channels. But that future is now upon us. Apple’s version has always been the most delightful, but now it is one of the more affordable offerings as well.

Leapfrogs

Here’s a thought: the iPhone and iPad are testing grounds for each other.

Steve Jobs said that Apple began building a touch device by first working on the iPad. But they set it aside to build the iPhone first instead. The iPad was the first idea, the iPhone was the first product shipped. The technology and operating system of the iPhone was then used as the foundation to build and ship the iPad.

The iPad was the first device with the A4 chip. Now the iPhone has it as well. The iPad now has the A5, and that is likely coming to the next iPhone.

The iPhone was the first with a front-facing camera and a Retina Display. The iPad has the former and it will soon have the latter.

The iPad has 3G data connectivity without a carrier contract. The iPhone doesn’t (yet).

The two devices keep leapfrogging each other. They swerve in and out of each other’s development cycles. Each one gets its own and different type of technology and then passes it on to the other. Sometimes the iPhone gets it before the iPad, and sometimes the iPad gets it before the iPhone.

Thoughts on the iPhone 5 Mockups

I rarely link to rumors or leaks because:

• Who knows if they’re ever true (many rumors are simply sensationalized posts pulled out of thin air in hopes to lure in some page views).

• New rumors sprout up every day, and I have no interest in playing that game and giving momentum to the rumor mill.

• Rumors have no effect on what the real product will be, when it will be released, or if it will even exist.

• Reading rumors is like shaking your Christmas present boxes and trying to guess what’s inside. Sure, there is an element of fun and mystery that comes along with trying to guess what’s inside. But if you do guess then it ruins the surprise. I much prefer surprises.

However, today there is so much flying around about the potential design of the iPhone 5 that I thought it was worth highlighting and sharing a few of my initial impressions.

Today Mac Rumors posted some 3D renderings of what the iPhone 5 might look like. They commissioned CiccareseDesign to do the renderings based on recent leaks of an iPhone case.

Also, a couple days ago this video was posted which claims to demo the leaked iPhone 5 website right on Apple.com.

As cool and polished as the video of the leaked website is, it is a fake. The Mac Rumors 3D rendering doesn’t claim to be a leak at all. In fact, I think what they did is very clever and their renderings look great.

The design of the iPhone 5 seen in the fake video is very similar to the 3D renderings that Mac Rumors commissioned. They are both, more or less, branched off of the original iPhone 5 mockup posted by This is My Next back in April.

In short, the general idea with all these various rumors and mockups is that the next iPhone will: (1) be thinner; (2) have a teardrop-shape making the top-end of the phone thicker than the bottom; and (3) implement new technology and functionality on the front where the Home Screen Button is.

What I like about the rumors of the next iPhone:

• The idea of a curved back. I think the iPhone 3G and 3G S were much more comfortable to hold than the iPhone 4 is. Though I am significantly more fond of the iPhone 4′s design — it is very classy and sturdy; the iPhone 3G S felt much cheaper.

• A thinner design. Who doesn’t want thinner and lighter mobile hardware? Though I have a hard time imagining the next iPhone to be as thin as the current iPod touch.

  I have an iPod touch and it is thin. In fact, I’d say it’s almost too thin to be a phone. A phone needs to be extremely grip-able because it’s something you are constantly putting in and out of your pocket, waving around, texting with while walking, and more. To me, the iPod touch is not as easy to hold on to as the iPhone 4.

• The matte black aluminum back. It would be so sweet looking. (But, as you’ll read in a minute, I don’t think it’ll happen.)

• A more useful and functional home button. I think we’re all agreed that the home button functionality is getting broken and that there could be a better way to quickly switch between apps, especially when there are two or three apps you are using simultaneously.

What I don’t expect to see in the next iPhone:

• Extreme thinness. The iPod touch is significantly thinner than the iPhone 4, but it comes with tradeoffs such as a lower-quality camera. Combined with the current state of battery technology, the need for a CDMA or GSM chip, and the other bits that the iPhone 4 which the iPod touch does not, and I have a hard time believing the next iPhone will be as thin as an iPod touch.

• An Aluminum back. As cool as I think it would be, the reason Apple moved away from the aluminum back in 2008 was for the sake of needing better cellular connectivity. Do you really think Steve Jobs wanted a plastic iPhone? No way. But they needed to use plastic on the the 3G and 3G S for the sake of functionality and improving cellular connectivity.

• A 4-inch screen. With a screen that big, it would no longer be a “retina” display. A 4-inch screen with resolution of 640×960 would have a pixel density of 288 PPI. The current pixel density of the iPhone 4 is 330 PPI. That would mean a 4-inch screen would suffer a 13% loss in pixel density — the same loss that’s found between the 13-inch MacBook Air and the 15-inch MacBook Pro. And if you’e ever set those two laptops side by side the difference is instantly obvious. (I even said in my MacBook Air review that the 15-inch MacBook Pro now looks comically large.)

  According to Apple, the whole idea of the Retina Display is that after 300 PPI our eye can’t tell the difference. So, according to that theory, they are technically safe to drop the pixel density just so long as they keep it above 300. If they were going enlarge the screen it would have to be no bigger than 3.8 inches.

  If they did go to a 4-inch screen, in order to keep it a Retina Display they would need to increase the pixel resolution to something other than 960×640, and there is no way that’s going to happen.

The WWDC 2011 Keynote

There hasn’t been an Apple keynote like this since January 2007.

Right now the air around Moscone Center, and in the Mac-centric community, is electric. Not unlike when Steve Jobs first introduced the iPhone at Macworld. That was a this changes everything type of moment. But it was more than that — it was an electric announcement. When Steve Jobs announced the iPhone we sort-of all knew it was coming. But we didn’t know what was really coming. It was one of those moments when what was actually announced blew past expectation.

When Jobs introduced the iPad, we also knew it was coming. And it too was a this changes everything type of moment. But, there wasn’t the same type of electricity in the air after the iPad. When we saw the iPad, we though it was just what we thought it would be. It wasn’t until you got one in your hands and began to use it that you realized how great it was.

Up until this week, a lot of people had the hunches about iCloud, the music locker, Lion, iOS 5, et al. And as in the days of the original iPhone announcement, our guesses were not just met, they were exceeded. We had no idea what was coming.

Obviously iCloud was the announcement with the most far-reaching impact. It was the one product that Steve took the stage to announce, and it was saved for last. Ten years from now we won’t remember 2011′s WWDC as the year we got Notification Center on our iPhones. We’ll remember it as the year Apple cut the cord.

iCloud is the most ambitious new product since the original iPhone.

Of course, that is not to say that the features announced in Lion and iOS 5 are chopped liver. By any means. In fact, Monday’s jam-packed keynote could have been three separate WWDCs. It was a wonder they fit all of it into just 2 hours.

Lion

Over the past year, 73% of all new Macs sold have been laptops. The iMac used to be Apple’s flagship Mac. Now it’s the MacBook. (I don’t know if this is a result of Apple’s marketing to their consumer base, or if it is them responding to their customers.)

I have this theory that Apple is building OS X Lion with one particular device in mind: laptops with SSDs.1 Even the demo computers that Craig Federighi used to show off the new features in Lion were laptops. I can’t ever remember a keynote where a desktop computer was not used.

When you take a look at some of the features in Lion — full-screen apps, version saving, session saving, and others — they are features that (a) run optimally on a SSD; and (b) look best on a laptop-sized screen.

Apps which run in full-screen mode are cool, but the bigger the screen, the less cool they are. Running one Lion’s Mail or Safari in full-screen mode on a 23-inch cinema display is just awkward. Running it on the 15-inch display is pretty good. And from what I’ve heard, those with the 13- or 11-inch MacBook Pros/Airs appreciate full-screen apps even better.

Steve said at the front of the keynote, if hardware is the brain then software is the soul of their products. A lot of thought and attention has been put in to Lion.

There are many incredible refinements which make Lion even more polished and attractive than its predecessors. Moreover, there are many new functionalities which make it even more simple and easy to use: LaunchPad, the Mac App Store, auto-saving, and more. These are all an assault against the role of the teenage son as the family tech consultant.

It’s hard to sum Lion up with a single sentence, but if you’re going to twist my arm about it then here goes:

Lion is the the world’s most beautiful and simple operating system.

iOS 5

This is not your average iOS update.

Once Scott Forstall had gone through the premier new features coming to iOS 5 I couldn’t think of one thing which I felt they had left out. That is not to say that iOS is finally perfect, but this one is jam packed with big stuff.

Usually, when an OS update is announced there are a a handful of things we were wishing for or bothered by in the old OS that didn’t make it into the new one. Not so with iOS 5. I cannot think of one thing in iOS 4 that irks me which hasn’t been addressed in this next update.

Not only were several of the biggest wants and needs addressed — such as notifications, faster camera access, and over-the-air updating and “syncing” — but many new things were added as well that we didn’t know we needed. Such as iMessage. It’s as if iOS 5 was built with 4 years of listening behind it.

iCloud

The future is mobile, and the path to that future is paved by the cloud.

iCloud cuts the USB cord between our computers and our iPhones. It “demotes” the Mac and the PC to the same plane as the iPhone and the iPad. It lets you activate and update your iPhone from inside the car when you’re on your way home from the Apple store. It is something that lets you listen to a song on your iPod even though you bought it on your work computer.

But iCloud isn’t just a way to cut the USB cable. iCloud is an exciting and ambitious vision. It is the missing piece to get mobile computing to act the way it ought to.

Dialvetica

Dialvetica is the best way I know of to find contacts on your iPhone. It’s like the whole app has been built for a single purpose: get to a contact fast.

The way Dialvetica works is that you type in letters of a name — type them out of order if you like — and you’re presented with the most relevant search results. To call my mom, Bea Blanc, I tap on Dialvetica, tap the letters B, E, and then tap her name. That’s just 4 taps from Home screen to phone call.

Dialvetica’s custom interface is designed for this sole purpose, and so is the way it works under the hood. Searching for a contact within Dialvetica is far superior to searching within the Contacts pane of the iPhone’s Phone app.

In fact, Dialvetica has its very own keyboard; built to maximize your ability to search for and find a contact quickly.

It’s a custom keyboard designed to take up the least amount of space possible so you can see more contacts in the list. Also, the keyboard acts differently than the system keyboard: it highlights each letters you’ve typed, which acts as an aid to show you what letters you’ve typed already without having to take up space with a text field. It’s quite clever, really.

Dialvetica’s keyboard is 270 pixels tall. The default iOS keyboard is 431 pixels tall. And if you use the default keyboard, Dialvetica needs a text field (which takes up an additional 78 pixels) to be able to show you what you’ve typed.

(The names above have been blurred to protect the innocent.)

If you use Dialvetica, you’re silly not to use the custom keyboard that comes with it.

But it’s not just the keyboard that has been customized. The list of the names is a little bit “tighter” than the default contacts list view in iOS. You can see 7 contacts plus the keyboard in Dialvetica with its custom keyboard. You can see 4.5 contacts in Dialvetica with the system keyboard. Comparatively, you can see 8 contacts in the iPhone’s favorites pane which has no keyboard. And in the contacts search pane of the default Phone app you can see just about 5 names when the keyboard and searching field are all brought up.

To make it a customization trifecta, Dialvetica also has its own unique function for tapping on a contact. Instead of drilling down to a contact’s card, Dialvetica gives you 3 tap targets: one for making a call, one for text messaging, and one for email. Which means calling, texting, or emailing is just one tap away. If you do want to drill down to a contact’s card, swipe on that contact’s list item.

You can adjust the “default” behavior for your preferred tap targets within Dialvetica’s settings (which are found in the settings app). If your most common behavior is to search for someone in order to text message them, then you can set the default of tapping on their name to launch the SMS app. Or if your most common behavior is to search for someone to call them, then you can set that as the default. Likewise with emailing. My default is set to text message.

If the person you are calling or texting has multiple phone numbers then Dialvetica will ask you which number you’d like to call. You can pick a number and tell Dialvetica to always use that number, or you can be asked every time.

If you contrast Dialvetica with the iPhone’s Contacts pane in the native Phone app, you begin to see just how awkward the native app can be. Calling a contact through the Phone app’s Contact pane means that once you’ve launched the Phone app you have to tap on the Contacts tab, scroll to the top of the contacts list in order to reveal the search field, tap into the search field to select it and bring up the keyboard, then type the name of who it is you’re searching for, tap their name to open their contact card, then tap which way you want to contact them (call, text, email). Altogether you’re looking at upwards of 8 taps; 6 if you’re lucky. With Dialvetica it was 4.

Moreover, if you don’t type the name in exact spelling order then you get no results or wrong results. And the results you do get are listed alphabetically rather than by order of importance. The iPhone knows I call my mom several times a week, but it still puts that other person whom I haven’t called or texted since 2008 at the top of the list.

Dialvetica, however, does weigh your search results. Over time who you call and text with the most get pushed to top of the list. After you’ve experienced the way Dialvetica handles searching for contacts, when you try to find someone through the native contacts list pane it can be downright maddening.

But Dialvetica isn’t just good at search and find. It makes a pretty good replacement for the iPhone’s Favorites pane as well because Dialvetica also weighs the default list of displayed contacts. This means that whenever you launch the app you get an auto-sorted list of contacts, and those whom you are in touch with the most get pushed towards the top of the list.

And this is where my love/hate relationship with Dialvetica comes in.

When you launch the app is when it sorts your contacts list. Which means that every time I launch Dialvetica I’m greeted with the spinning loader wheel and my list of contacts shifts around just slightly. Yes, there is a great advantage to having an auto-sorted list of names. But there is also something about the timing and shifting of the auto-sorting which makes me anxious every time I launch Dialvetica.

In part, it’s that my “favorites” list is always a little bit different. The very top few names usually end up staying where they are, but the rest of the names have more flexibility. Granted, the more you use it then the more those names settle, but it is still not a hard and fast list and thought I love it, yet it irks me a bit.

Secondly, the sorting begins after you’ve launched the app. Which is a really bad time to tell the user to hold on a minute. I don’t know if this is possible but having the list sort in the background after you’ve made a call would be much better. Then it’s ready and waiting for you once you launch the app.

Since it seems to be re-calculating all the time it feels unpredictable, and I never know what my contact list is going to look like. And that, for whatever reason, throws me off and makes me a bit anxious.

Conclusion

Dialvetica has found a place on my iPhone’s Dock, where the native Phone app use to live. Though Dialvetica isn’t a replacement for the native phone app because it doesn’t show you recent and missed calls, and it doesn’t have access to your voicemail. Which means that there is still reason enough for me to keep my iPhone’s Phone app on my first Home screen.

Since Dialvetica replaces only 3 of the 5 functions of the native Phone app (Favorites, Contacts, and Keypad) it’s still an app that has to be used in conjunction with the native Phone app rather than in its place. And that is unfortunate because there are so many things Dialvetica does better than iOS, yet you can’t fully cut loose from the native Phone app.

Cloudy With a Chance of Music

When I want to put on some music I reach for iTunes. That afternoon playlist is akin to the morning cup of coffee.

Listening to music should be fun and make you feel good. And so it’s unfortunate that some of the cloud-based music landscape is so depressing.

Amazon and Google have both recently announced that you can upload all your MP3s to their website and listen to them there, instead of leaving them on your hard drive. Pandora, is good internet radio, letting you build a radio station based on your favorite song. And then new services like Rdio and MOG provide you with access to their vast music library, but you don’t own any of the music.

I tried Amazon and it just made me depressed. Though I haven’t received my invite yet, the others who have tried Google Music have all said how pitiful it is. Rdio and Pandora are both fantastic at what they do, but the songs you listen to don’t belong to you.

Let’s take a closer look…

Amazon Cloud Player

To set up your Amazon Cloud Drive you have to sign up for it on the Amazon website. You get 5 GBs of storage for free forever (and it doesn’t just store music).

Once I signed up and was ready to add music to my Amazon Cloud Drive I had to download their uploader. Once I had done that, it made me install Adobe AIR, then scanned my laptop for MP3s and playlists, compared what was on my computer with what I may already have in their Cloud (which at that time was nothing).

Once the uploader had scanned and found all the music on my laptop it was then ready to upload it. All of it.

The default option was to upload everything. But I chose to opt out of uploading it all and I only uploaded one album. And I’m glad I did. I uploaded “Waking Up” by One Republic and it took 45 minutes. This one album accounts for 0.1 GB of my 5 GB limit. If I had chosen to upload to the max of my 5 GBs it would have taken over 33 hours. If I were to upload my entire music collection, which is around 40 GB, it would have taken 11 consecutive days.

I fear what would have happened had I chosen to go with the default and just upload my entire music collection. Would I have been automatically upgraded to and charged for the 50 GB, $50/year plan? How would I have survived for 11 days while my bandwidth was being eaten alive by the uploader?

It’s unfortunate that any albums you have purchased on the Amazon MP3 store in the past are not automatically added to your collection. We know they’ve got the files already up there on their servers, so why not just say: we see you have this album that you bought from us last month, we’ll just add it to your Cloud Drive now without making you upload it and waste 45 minutes of your time.

The reason Amazon doesn’t automatically add songs they have that are in your library to is that they cannot. Legally, since they didn’t get permission from record labels, they have to only provide a storage area for us to upload the music that we already bought. It’s like we’re simply copying it from one hard drive to another.

However, if you buy an album after you’ve signed up for the Amazon Cloud Drive then you can have that album added to your cloud straight away. And if you want to download it from there you can do that as well.

Something else Amazon is so happy to tell you is that if you buy an album from their MP3 store it does not count against your storage limit. Moreover, after your first purchase then you also get 20 GBs of storage for free.

However, these special perks are only for albums you buy after you’ve signed up. Any album you bought from Amazon before you signed up for their cloud will still count against your quota when you upload it. And moreover, the extra 20 GB is not the same as their 5 GB for free forever deal. What you actually get is a free one-year trial of their 20 GB plan.

Fortunately, the 20 GB plan will revert back to the free 5 GB plan once your year is over.

Amazon wants you to buy your music from them, but they need additional compelling reasons. Their prices are usually better than iTunes but that is not enough. The perks of buying an album from Amazon combined with the “perk” of what their Cloud Player offers, are meant to add up to a compelling reason to start using Amazon MP3 store.

But even these new perks don’t add up to much. In Safari on my laptop I’m having a very difficult time getting it to play one song after the other — especially if I want to start in the middle of an album.

Moreover, Amazon Cloud Player does not have a native iOS app, nor does it really support listening in Mobile Safari. Though you can technically get it to work, the website and streaming is next to worthless on the iPhone and iPad.

But if you want to power through and listen to your Amazon music from your iOS device, go to this URL from your iPad or iPhone: https://www.amazon.com/gp/dmusic/mp3/player/

Once there, you: - Log in - Tell them you don’t care that your browser is not supported - Enjoy trying to listen to music on a player that was not optimized for the iPhone

In theory the multi-tasking works, and you can listen to music in the background. But I had a hard time getting it to work well. Also, skipping forwards or backwards via the multi-tasking bar doesn’t work.

One of the whole points of a cloud player is so you can listen to all your music when you’re away from your main library, right? Well driving around Kansas City, streaming my Amazon music through Mobile Safari on my iPhone was just about worthless. It buffered several times, and flat-out stalled a few times. It was no way to listen to music in the car. Granted, Amazon doesn’t officially support iOS and so technically they can’t be blamed for the horrible streaming.

It’s funny though because streaming over 3G on Pandora is awesome — we especially use it at Christmas time to listen to Christmas music and drive around looking at lights. Streaming on Amazon is lousy. Perhaps those with the official Amazon app for the Android device have had a better experience.

So, why no iPhone app? My theory is that since Amazon wasn’t winning against Apple with price they’re adding cloud sync and streaming music player in hopes to sell more music. Their story is: “Why buy from iTunes when you can get the same album for less, auto-added to your Amazon Cloud Player, listen to it anywhere you like, and you can still download it to your laptop and play it in iTunes if you want?”

But I am confused as to why Amazon has completely disregarded iOS. Why wouldn’t they want their cloud player to work on iPhones and iPod touches? Either: (a) they did submit a native App and it was rejected but none of us know about it; (b) they are working on getting better in-browser player; or (c) they flat out don’t want to compete against iTunes and are just not trying.

I want to say that it’s (b) — that Amazon wanted to get their cloud player out ASAP and will worry about adding compatibility with iOS later — but my gut tells me it’s (c). Because why ship with an Android app out of the gate and not an iOS app?

Google Music (beta)

I still haven’t received my invitation to check out Google Music, but from what I have read about it, it is nearly the same gig as what Amazon is doing.

You upload your music and then you can listen to it on any web browser or Android device. But here’s the other thing: Google Music Beta is miserable.

Though you can’t take my word for it, because I haven’t yet had a chance to use it. I am still waiting for my invitation from Google. However, from what I’ve read it sounds like it’s even more frustrating to use that Amazon’s cloud player. And so we’re back at one of my first point that listening to music should be fun and make you feel good.

Rdio

Pronounced “ar-dee-oh”, Rdio is a Web-based subscription music service. You pay $5 or $10 per month and get unlimited access to their entire music library. The $5 plan gets you web-only access, and the $10 plan allows you to stream and download music to your iPhone or iPod touch.

The solution that Rdio offers is three-fold:

• Listen to all sorts of music you don’t own.
• Listen to that music anywhere and everywhere.
• Discover new music by connecting with others on the Rdio network and seeing what they are listening to and enjoying.

And I think it’s a pretty good deal. The web app is good, the iPhone app is stellar, and streaming is strong. All in all, Rdio is a top-notch user experience and worth the money.

Rdio also has a desktop app for Mac. It allows you to use the hardware keyboard keys for controlling your music, and it will scan your iTunes music directory and add all your songs to your Rdio collection automatically. However, it requires the Safari flash plugin in order to work.

I used Rdio for a while when it was in beta and enjoyed it, but I jumped ship once they started charging. There are many people I know who use it and rave about it. Since I’m on this kick of fiddling with Cloud Music Players I thought I would re-activate my Rdio subscription and scope the landscape once again.

Here I am listening to Rdio right now, in fact. As I write these words I have Coldplay streaming via the Web app which I have running in Google Chrome. (I’d like to install Rdio’s deskop app for my Mac but am not really wanting to install Flash in Safari again.)

I have nothing but good things to say about the quality of Rdio’s service, its price, or its music collection. However, there is something about Rdio that just doesn’t settle for me. And I think it’s the fact that I’m listening to music I don’t own.

A lot of people have been championing for music the trend which began with movies so many years ago: that access is better than ownership. This is Netflix’s bag: rent all the movies you want, whenever you want, for one low monthly fee.

It’s the same idea with Rdio — you are, in a sense, “renting” an album. Though you never have to return it, so long as you keep paying your monthly dues.

However, I have a different attitude towards movies than I do towards music. I will maybe watch my favorite movies once or twice a year, at the most. A great album that I love I will listen to every day for months and months.

Movies are entertaining. Music is personal.

And so I don’t know if the paradigm that access is better than ownership has the same effect on our music library as it does for our DVD collection. The music we listen to, in many ways, is a definition and extension of who we are.

All this to say, that what excites me right now is the idea of access and ownership. I want to own my music, but I want to have it available anywhere and everywhere and on each of the music-playing devices that I own.

The iTunes Locker

These are all just rumors at this point, but the “iTunes Locker” sounds like it will be Apple’s new service that allows you to store your songs and movies in the cloud. You would then be able to stream them to any computer or device running iTunes or iOS, such as your Mac, Apple TV, iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.

The reason an iTunes locker sounds appealing to me is primarily because my iTunes library is on an external hard drive up in my office and I am currently writing downstairs on my couch. My iTunes library is far too big for my MacBook Pro’s 120 GB Solid State Drive, and so I had to move it to an external drive.

At first I tried storing the music folder onto my Time Capsule so I could access it via the local network here in my house and still listen to music on my laptop no matter what room I was in. But that was a nightmare. So I put it onto an external hard drive and plug that drive in whenever my laptop is at my desk.

In an ideal world I would always have access to my whole iTunes library from my laptop, Apple TV, iPad, and iPhone. Most people solve this by purchasing a Mac Mini and setting it up as the shared media library for the house. This is a pretty good and clever solution for home media library, and would solve most of my problems. The trouble is that: (a) a Mac mini isn’t cheap; (b) if I’m not at home then I don’t get access to those songs; and (c) if I don’t use the mini for syncing my iPhone and iPad then I can’t get all the music and movies I want onto those devices.

If and when Apple opens their iTunes Locker it could potentially solve my dilemma, as well as providing some other great services.

From where I’m standing, I see 4 significant advantages that Apple will have with their music streaming and syncing service that Amazon and Google do not have:

1. Your iTunes music library will be instantly available online. This is by far one of the biggest shortcomings of Amazon’s and Google’s offerings. Because they don’t have a deal with any of the music labels they have to force you to upload your music, song by song, for day after day.

   I cannot imagine Apple not saying that “all the music and movies you have bough through iTunes are already waiting for you in the Locker.” The question is will that music bought in iTunes be free to stream or will the be an “upgrade” charge?

2. Due to a recent patent, it looks like there will be little to no buffering pauses due to combining snippets of songs stored locally with streaming of them. If you synced only the first 15 seconds of your music you could store 20 times more music on your iPod than if you were syncing entire songs.

   This would beat down one of the biggest shortcomings of streaming: the time it take to buffer. Once you “get going” then you usually don’t notice a pause in playback, but jumping from song to song (as opposed to listening to an album straight through) means you have to wait for the next song to buffer.

3. iPods are the worlds most popular MP3 players. Using Amazon or Google means you have to ditch the MP3 player you’ve been using. (I have many friends who own Android devices and/or PCs who also own iPods.) This to me is one of the primary advantages an iTunes music locker would have, in that, it is a cloud-syncing solution that is integrated with the software and hardware we already use. The Locker would be an upgrade to how we already listen to music.

4. iTunes is the largest music store in the world and is already a big part of how you listen to music. Which means with iTunes Locker your music could be available on all your Apple devices that have an internet connection. Instead of buying a Mac mini to use as a media center so your iMac, Apple TV, and laptop can all get access to your music and movies, you could just sign up for the locker instead.

There are likely going to be several things that will give the iTunes locker an edge over Amazon and Google, but the premier advantage will be its integration: integration with your current library and integration with your current music-listening lifestyle.

iCloud Predictions

Last October I wrote about the potential of MobileMe:

When MobileMe re-branded and re-launched in July 2008 it was somewhat of a disaster. In an internal email to Apple employees, Steve Jobs said that “The vision of MobileMe is both exciting and ambitious.”

In its current state as “exchange for the rest of us” MobileMe seems neither exciting nor ambitious. As a web-app, me.com is beautiful and extremely functional. But I for one never use it. Instead I use the native OS X apps. And iDisk? Well, that is also collecting dust.

What would be exciting is an open service that bridged the gap for all the data which is shared between our Macs, iPhones, and iPads. What could be more ambitious than killing the USB cable?

Software development is no longer a contained relationship between a single piece of hardware and the software installed on it. Just as people who are serious about software should make their own hardware, people who are serious about mobile software should make their own cloud.

We know Apple is serious about mobile software and hardware, and it looks like they are getting ready to prove that they’re also serious about the cloud.

There have been many rumors about an iTunes digital locker, a rebranding of MobileMe, and a major software / hardware announcement in the fall. It is exciting to think that in the next several months we may see some significant new software products from Apple.

And so, as any respectable Apple-centric blogger knows, it’s part of the job description to post wild speculations about what we think will happen and when. Below you will find my iCloud predictions.

iCloud

Here’s an unordered list of what I think iCloud will look like in 2011:

• iTunes Music Locker: Available at a subscription cost, you can use iCloud to store your songs and movies in the cloud and then stream them to any computer or device running iTunes or iOS, such as your Mac, Apple TV, iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.1

  I see this as being one of two premier features of iCloud touted at WWDC. I also imagine it will be one of the main focal points of the September iPod event.

• Syncing of 3rd-party app data: Free for everyone with an Apple ID and part of the iOS 5 SDK announced and made available on June 6.

  I see this as being the other premier features of iCloud when announced at WWDC. Because this will allow 3rd-party developers to use iCloud as a server so users can sync an app’s information between multiple iOS and Mac devices.

  It will be great for Developers and could replace what Dropbox has become for apps like 1Password and the multitude of note-taking applications that use Dropbox for sharing of text documents.

  This feature will also be huge for the average user. All they’ll need is their Apple ID and they can set up their app to sync with their other iOS devices.

• Contacts, calendar, and bookmarks: Just like it works in MobileMe right now, but it will become free for everyone with an Apple ID.

• Find My iPhone: Will continue to be free for everyone with an Apple ID, just like it already is.

• iBooks Syncing: Will continue to be free for everyone with an Apple ID, just like it already is.

• Email: The @me.com email addresses will still be available but at a subscription cost like they currently are within MobileMe. However, I suspect the cost of a subscription will be less than the current pricing of MobileMe’s $99/year.

• File-storage: 2 GB for free and meant for sharing and accessing your documents on multiple computers and iOS devices. More than 2 GB for a price.

  I don’t think iCloud will be a Dropbox killer as nerds and power users like us might think. It may be one day, but Apple is focusing on making mobile apps and data stay in sync more than they are worried about improving how nerds and power users like us move, share, and sync our large working docs.

  In short, it’s likely that we will keep on using Dropbox just like we always have been.

• Wild Card: iWork.com and the iWork suite: I have no idea if Apple will address the nightmare that is file-syncing and file-sharing of iWork documents between your Mac and iPad. I could totally see them making this simple and cloud-based as soon as Lion or as late as iOS 5, but I could also see them completely ignoring it for now.

iCloud Pricing

My guess is that there will be two pricing plans for iCloud: free and paid.

The free features, available to everyone with an Apple ID, will include the basic syncing services (contacts, calendars, bookmarks, 3rd-party apps) and small amount of file storage for sharing documents between devices.

The paid service will include the above, as well as the iTunes storage and streaming, email addresses, and extra storage. And I bet the price is dropped from $99/year to something closer to $49.

Rollout Schedule

Here are my wild guesses of when I see these features being rolled between now and the end of the year:

• June 6: iCloud announced at WWDC; new beta of Lion; beta of iOS 5 and corresponding SDK

  At the June 6 keynote of WWDC I suspect we’ll see a preview of iOS 5, an announcement of iCloud, and an explanation of how integral iCloud will be in bringing OS X and iOS together.

  It’s also likely that the iOS 5 beta will be made available for devs, and the updated SDK will allow for 3rd-party devs to utilize iCloud in their apps, and allow users to sync their app data between multiple iOS devices using their Apple ID.

• July / August: Lion Ships

  Lion is scheduled to ship this summer we may see it in July, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it shipped in early August. Apple has never shipped a version of OS X in June or July — 5 of the 7 major public releases of OS X have shipped in the fall (August, September, or October).

  I expect that iCloud will first become available to the public as part of Lion and include the basic OTA Mac to Mac syncing and perhaps OTA Mac to iPhone syncing.

  It’s probably that the iTunes locker will ship with iTunes on Lion. While it seems to make more sense that this feature would ship in September along side the music-centric iPod event, I think Apple is chomping at the bit to get iTunes streaming out to the public. Who knows, maybe it’ll come as a major update to iTunes in June.

• September: iOS 5 Ships

  Since the September iPod event is always focused around iPods and music, in some ways it makes sense that this is when the iTunes Music Locker feature is rolled out. But, as I said above, I think Apple wants iTunes streaming out sooner than the Fall.

  I think the September event will focus on iOS 5 and will be the final stage of the iCloud rollout. This is when we’ll see the iTunes streaming come to our iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches, and hopefully our Apple TVs as well.

App Emails

Developing an app is only half the battle. Once you’ve shipped it you have to sell it. And changing hats from developer to marketer can be hard.

Marketing is a very different skill set than developing. Marketing is much more than buying an ad or a sponsorship. Marketing involves storytelling, connecting with others, getting the word out, building conversation, and more.

Perhaps the biggest difference between developing an app and marketing it is this: control. When trying to market and promote your app you simply do not have the same control as you did when you were developing it.

As the developer you have 100% control of your app. The design, functionality, user experience, feature set — they are all within your control and are simply a matter of building and implementing. Some aspects of development come easier than others, but even if you hit a brick wall you at least have the confidence you can conquer it even if by sheer force and man hours.

Marketing, however, is not fully in your own hands. You don’t have that same control to get what you want or need in terms of exposure, sales, adoption rate, positive feedback, etcetera.

I remember the morning I published “Beginning” — the announcement that I was taking shawnblanc.net full time. I remember sitting there with my mouse cursor hovering over top of the Publish button for about 5 or 10 minutes. I just sat there. Because up until that moment my plans and ideas for taking the site full time had been 100% under my control; they were bulletproof. But, as soon as I made my announcement, then it was no longer under my control. It was in the hands of all the readers and potential members.

Shipping your idea is scary. Marketing can be intimidating, frustrating, and cold hearted. The best way to tackle it is with honesty and gusto. Stop worrying about what you can’t control, and go full-steam with spreading the word about your app in the most personal, thoughtful, and inviting way you can.

There are many possibilities, ideas, and dynamics that go into a successful marketing campaign for apps. So much so that entire books have been written about them.

I want to focus on just one element: emailing online media sites to let them know about your new app.

Once you’ve launched your new app, you should at least start by emailing your friends and family. Ask them to check it out, and let them know that next time they’re in town you’ll buy them lunch in exchange for them buying your app and giving it a good rating in the App Store.

The more downloads and positive ratings that your app receives from users then the better the chances of being automatically promoted from within the iTunes App Store. Also, new and potential new buyers will look at the average ratings and read the reviews before they buy.

Once your friends know about your new app, you’ll want to let blogs and online media know about it. This is perhaps the single best thing you can do in terms of marketing. And in my experience a lot of developers do it wrong.

I regularly get email from people letting me know about their new app or service. These emails can be summed up into three general types:

1. The Copied and Pasted Email

   You can spot these from 30 feet away. The biggest giveaway is how my name (“Dear Shawn,”) will be in one font and then the body of the email is in another. These emails usually are too long, too impersonal, and are wanting me to do a review.

   I understand that sending personal and specific emails, one at a time, is time consuming. But sending impersonal emails is flat out a waste of time.

2. The Personal but Shy Email

   This is from the developer who feels like they are inconveniencing me simply by emailing me. They are shy about their app and a bit embarrassed to promote it.

   To them, I simply say that it is okay to be bold and excited about your app.

3. The Sincere, Personal, and Bold Email

   This one’s just right. The email is personal and thoughtful. They know who I am (or at least have done enough homework to fool me), and they are very excited about their app.

Here are my recommendations for best practices when pitching your new app to someone via email:

Start with your favorite bloggers and podcasters. Write personal, thoughtful, and specific emails to each of them. Give them a promo code (or two — one for themselves and one for them to give to a friend). Tell them why they might like your app and give a few quick points about why. Don’t give an entire feature list, simply mention some previous articles of theirs and touch on why you think your app would be interesting to them in light of what you know they have already written about.

Don’t shy away from pitching it to the seemingly small guys. A lot of the writers and editors who work for the mega-sites (such as Macworld, Ars Technica, Engadget, TUAW, Mashable, et al.) are just regular bloggers who happen to read the smaller guys’s sites.

In The Social Network the way Facebook got adopted by Baylor was by not allowing Baylor students to sign up. Instead they opened up access to the smaller, surrounding schools and once the friends of students at Baylor were getting access to Facebook then the Baylor students wanted in, too.

Once you’ve emailed your favorite sites, find the rest of the larger, influential sites. Write them specific and thoughtful emails as well. As Craig Mod suggests:

Be thoughtful. The goal is to appeal to editors and public voices of communities that may have an interest in your work, not spam every big-name blog. A single post from the right blog is 1000% more useful than ten posts from high-traffic but off-topic blogs. You want engaged users, not just eyeballs

Which is why, at the end of the day, the single best thing you can do is make an app that people will want to use.

Good marketing gets people to show up the first time; a good product will get them to show up the 2nd time and the 3rd time.

Tweetbot’s Got Personality

Using an app by Tapbots feels like a privilege.

There is this addictive cleverness and playful uniqueness to the way Mark and Paul build their apps. The sounds, the animations, and graphics don’t feel or act like a standard app, they feel more like a toy. A toy you get to use for work.

They say a man buys something for two reasons: a good reason and the real reason. And I have always thought that with Tapbots their apps cater to that. There is a good reason to buy an app from Tapbots, but there is also another (and perhaps, more real) reason. And the real reason is that you want to play with the app. Because, like I said, to use it feels like a privilege.

For the previous Tapbots apps the function of the apps has been very niche. Weightbot is for people who want to lose weight; Convertbot is for folks who want to know how many ounces are in a liter; and Pastebot, well, Pastebot is for nerds.

These are niche markets when it comes to iPhone apps. Weight-tracking applications, unit converters, and clipboard managers are not exactly in high demand on the app store when compared to games, news aggregators, or even Twitter clients.

Today, however, Tapbots has taken a plunge by making a Twitter client amongst a pre-existing sea of them. It’s called Tweetbot, and it is everything you would expect it to be.

There are too many Twitter apps to count; what is it that makes Tweetbot better than any other? Well, in some regards you could say that nothing makes it better. It doesn’t really do anything that [insert your favorite Twitter client of choice] doesn’t already do. I mean, it’s a Twitter client, right? It shows you tweets, lets you reply to them, save links to Instapaper, upload pictures, and generally get distracted.

However, you could also say that everything about Tweetbot makes it better. Tweetbot has more personality than any other Twitter client out there. Every single pixel has been hand crafted in order to build the most custom looking UI of any Twitter client I’ve seen. Moreover, the sounds, the animations, the actions — everything has been thought through with intent, care, and fun. It all adds up to create a Twitter Experience Extravaganza.

Using Tweetbot

When I launch Twitter from my Mac, iPad, or iPhone these seem to be the most common things I end up doing or finding:

• Discover links that get sent to Instapaper for reading later
• Discover news
• Eavesdrop on conversations
• Reply to someone
• Post a tweet of my own
• Direct message people

I have been using Tweetbot since its early stages of alpha development and all that time it has been my exclusive Twitter client when on my iPhone. Now, I don’t beta test that many apps and having one find its way to my home screen and wiggle its way into my daily life is not common behavior. More often than not, when I am helping to test out an app I use it enough to provide feedback to the developer, but it doesn’t become one of my most-used apps.

There are three reasons Tweetbot has wiggled its way into my life: (1) I use Twitter far too often; (2) it seemed a disservice to nerds everywhere to not use Tweetbot when I had the opportunity; and, most importantly, (3) many of the ways which I most use Twitter have been extremely well integrated into Tweetbot.

Below are a few of the reasons why I find Tweetbot so fantastic.

Tap and hold a tweet

When you tap and hold on an individual tweet, a list of options comes up and you can instantly send to Instapaper, email the tweet, etc…

This is great because far and away I populate my Instapaper queue in Twitter more than any other place (such as my RSS reader or browsing the web). But this is bad because it is so easy to add items to Instapaper in Tweetbot that I get ahead of myself and am sending more items to Instapaper than I have time to read. And so, alas, my Instapaper queue is longer than my arm.

Using lists as the main timeline

Tweetbot does something that, so far as I know, no other Twitter client lets you do. It lets you use a list as your main timeline. Any list that you have created or that you follow can become your main timeline. Simply tap the center of the top bar in (where it says “Timeline”) and you’ll be presented with a screen showing all the lists you have created or that you follow.

For example, I have a list of sites who’s RSS feeds are available via Twitter. I tap that list and it becomes my main timeline.

This is also a great feature as you find yourself following more and more people on Twitter. Simply create a list — funny folks; best friends; awesome writers; etc. — and set the list as your main timeline. In short, you’re curating your own mini-timeline within your larger, Master Timeline.

Every other Twitter client I have used has treated lists as second-class citizens. But, thanks to Tweetbot’s treatment of lists, I’ve begun using them and am wanting to use them even more than I already am.

Moreover, you can edit your lists from within Tweetbot via Tab Bar. The two right-most buttons are customizable and can be set for bringing up the lists editor as well as your favorites, saved searches, or retweets.

Swiping left to right for a conversation view

This probably happens to you as well. I will often “walk in” on the middle of a conversation that is happening in Twitter between people whom I follow and I want to read the rest of the conversation thread. In Tweetbot you simply swipe an individual tweet from left to right and it will load the conversation view. I do this enough that having such a simple and accessible gesture for it has proven to be extremely useful.

Similarly, swiping on a tweet from right to left will show you all the replies to a tweet.

A Few of My Favorite Things

It’s the little things that make a good app great. As you use Tweetbot those little details pop out and give Tweetbot its personality. The animations are beyond cool, and as I said earlier, every single pixel is custom. There is nothing that is not custom except the keyboard itself, and yet it all feels familiar.

Below are a few of the little things about Tweetbot that really stand out as being extraordinary.

• The falling dialog box: When you go to sign in to your Instapaper account, try using the wrong email address or password.

  (Click for full-size and more images.)

• Finding a user: When you type the “@” symbol while composing a tweet a small little user profile icon appears. Tap on that icon and you’ll be brought to a list of all the people you follow and you can quickly search for and find users.

  

  I absolutely adore this feature because I for one do not have all the usernames of the people I follow on Twitter memorized.

• Direct Messages: The Direct Message threads are top-posted like your Twitter timeline, rather than bottom posted like Instant Messenger or the official Twitter apps. (Though the Twitter website has top-posted DM threads rather than bottom-posted.)

  Technically, bottom posting the DM threads is the proper way to do it. However, I am jarred by it every time. I spend far more time in my main timeline and my @replies list than I do in the DM pane, and all the rest of Twitter has the newest tweets on top.

• Success!: When using Twitter there can be a lot going on in the background, such as your tweets being posted or your links being saved to Instapaper. Most Twitter and even RSS reader apps will have a small, somewhat opaque box that spins while the link is being saved and then gives a check box once the link is saved successfully.

  Tapbots already has their own version of this sort of feedback box that was designed and implemented in Pastebot. For example, when making edits to an image you get the little spinning lines while the iPhone processes the edits and then a checkmark and a ding once the edits are completed.

  In Pastebot a success notification looks like this…

  

  …and so I assumed that in Tweetbot the exact same element would be used for letting me know when my tweet had been posted or a link successfully saved.

  However, Tapbots rethought even this bit of their Twitter client and instead of a box getting in your way and sitting over the top of your Timeline, a notification slides down from the top letting you know that your tweet was successfully posted or that your link has been saved to your ever-growing Instapaper queue.

  

Extraordinary

For me, what makes a good app great is the little things — the small areas where attention to detail was given and where something that could have been normal was instead made extraordinary.

Is Your Site Missing its Custom WebClip Icon?

When I open up Reeder on my iPad I am always reminded by how many websites do not have a WebClip Bookmark Icon.

Fortunately, setting up a custom WebClip Bookmark Icon is quite easy. Here’s how:

1. Create a 129×129-pixel png image titled apple-touch-icon.png

2. Upload it to your website’s root folder:
   http://example.com/apple-touch-icon.png

3. That’s it.

This png file is the image that Reeder will use when listing your site in the feeds folder. And this is the image that iOS will use as the icon when saving your site as a web clip to the Home screen.

So why 129×129? Because that’s the size Apple uses. However, the exact size that the icon should be is debatable. Mine is actually 158×158 pixels (left over from when Nathan Borror suggested that size in 2008). Jeffery Zeldman’s is 120×120 pixels, Marco Arment’s is 128×128 pixels, and 5by5′s is 144×144 pixels, for example.

And, so long as we’re on the subject, here are four of my favorite WebClip Icons. Left to right it’s Zeldman, Blankenship, Kottke, and Van Damme.

Instacast

There is a problem with subscribing to podcasts on your iPhone, and it has to do with iTunes. Here’s how it works:

• You discover a podcast you like via one of many ways. Perhaps you are simply browsing the multitude of shows in the iTunes Podcast directory. Or perhaps you’ve come to a website promoting their podcast, or a friend told you about a certain one.

• Once deciding you want to subscribe to that podcast, you end up on that show’s page in iTunes and you subscribe for free.

• The show is added to your own podcast subscription list and the most recent show is downloaded onto your computer.

• You are now subscribed to a podcast.

Now, if you want to listen to that podcast on your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad, you must plug your device into your computer and sync it. Making sure that your new podcast has been hand-selected to be one of the ones which sync to your iPhone.

Up until this point it all is fine. However, the frustrating part of subscribing to podcasts on your iPhone happens once you’ve synced the podcast and its episodes to your device. Because at that point the content on your iPhone becomes static — as if podcasts are treated like albums and episodes like songs.

Treating music or movies that you’ve synced to your your iPhone as static content is fine. I listen to the same album many, many times and only have my favorite albums and artists synced to my iPhone. But for a podcast, it’s like a radio or television show — I listen to it once and that’s it. With a podcast there is always something new to add and something old to get rid of.

We don’t listen to podcast episodes over and over. We listen to new ones as they get published. Out with the old and in with the new. However, when the podcast you are subscribed to publishes a new episode there is no easy way to get it.

The two ways to get a new podcast episode onto your iPhone are either: (a) tap “get more episodes”, be taken to the iTunes app and then pick a single episode to download to your iPhone, wait for it to download, return to the iPod app and play the episode; or else (b) sync your iPhone to your computer and transfer any new episodes which have downloaded to your computer onto your iPhone.

(If you are subscribed to more than one podcast, you have to repeat step “a” for each individual subscription, and manually download each new episode.)

When at my desk working I either listen to music or silence. There are only a few podcasts which I listen to on a regular basis, and when I do listen to them it is usually during some activity which has me away from my computer. Such as driving, mowing the lawn, or working in the garage.

Since I use MobileMe to keep my contacts and calendars in sync I rarely have need to sync my iPhone. Which means that up until a few weeks ago my Podcasts were virtually never up to date. If I was in the car and wanted to listen to the latest episode of The Pipeline I either had to plan ahead and sync or just listen to the most recent version I had on my iPhone. Which meant that in reality, I just rarely ever listened to podcasts.

Now, I realize that to have already written almost 600 words may seem like a lot to simply describe the awkwardness of trying to keep a podcast up to date. But: (a) I think we’ve all figured out by now that I have an affinity for writing about these types of things in detail; and (b) I’m trying to paint a picture for why I hardly ever listened to podcasts — up until a few weeks ago there was just no simple way to keep up with them.

A Better Way

What some people may not realize is that a podcast feed is just like an RSS feed. Which means that, when it comes to podcasts, iTunes is just a fancy (and bloated) feed reader.

This also means that apps other than iTunes can subscribe to podcast feeds. Instacast is one such app.

Instacast is not the first iPhone app dedicated to managing your podcasts, but it is the first I have ever truly liked. Its most notable feature is that it offers over-the-air updating of your podcasts.

You can update all your podcasts at once, or just one subscription, or even just one episode at a time. It will update the listing of all the new shows their descriptions, length, and more. From there you can stream the episode right away or download it for listening to when you’re not online. Instacast even remembers your spot for each episode you’re listening to and you can resume where you left off — even if you were streaming.

To fill Instacast with your favorite podcast subscriptions you may want start by rescuing your current podcasts directly from your iPhone’s iPod app.

Tapping the + button at the bottom-left corner of Instacast’s home screen (the screen which shows your complete list of subscriptions) will open up the area of Instacast where you find and add new broadcasts. Tap on the iPod icon and Instacast will look up all the podcast subscriptions you’ve been syncing over to your iPhone from your computer and will then pull the feeds for those and subscribe to Instacast for you.

Moreover, you can search for a specific podcast, browse the directory of Popular1 or Just Added podcasts, or thumb in the URL of a podcast feed which is not public. Instacast even supports authenticated feeds.

Thankfully Instacast not only acts the way a dedicated podcast app should, it looks like it was designed in Cupertino. And once you use it a bit, it really begins to make the native podcast section of the iPod app look as if it was even less thought through. Meaning, Instacast not only works better than the native podcast functionality of your iPhone, it looks better too.

Side-by-side comparison of the all-subscriptions list

Side-by-side comparison of an individual subscription

After using it for a while it’s clear that it was thought through with this sole functionality in mind. Instacast has a much more elegant design for podcasts than the iPod app does, and it’s made the native iPod app feel bulky to me.

Another great feature is the price: just 2 bucks in the App Store. Which should make it a staple for even the most casual of podcast listeners.

Conclusion

I am as nitpicky about user interface as I am about user experience. There are some apps which, even though they offer a great service, I just never use because I don’t like to look at them. And on the other side you have those apps which look cute but are not very useful.

Instacast, however, is of my favorite breed of apps: one with pitch-perfect design and that does one thing and does it very well.

Verizon’s iPhone

It is, for all intents and purposes, the same iPhone that people on AT&T are using except it works on Verizon. There is no Verizon branding nor any special new features to the iPhone. Except one: the mobile hotspot.

The only software that will come “pre-installed” on the Verizon iPhone is what Verizon is calling their Mobile Hotspot app. Though, fortunately, it’s found in the Settings and not as its own app which launches from the springboard.

You can use the mobile hotspot to give internet to up to five computers (or iPads). And while the mobile hotspot is a great feature, on Verizon’s CDMA network you can’t use data and voice simultaneously. If you’re broadcasting an internet connection with your Verizon iPhone and someone gives you a call, then the connection goes dead. Like when you were online using dialup and someone called your house.

Pricing for data plans hasn’t been announced yet, but Verizon says they’ll be based on current data plans. Verizon’s current smartphone data plans are $15/month for 150 MB of data or $30 for unlimited. AT&T charges $15/month for 200 MB or $25 for 2 GB; and if you want tethering enabled it’s an additional $20 per month. My guess is that Verizon’s Mobile Hotspot will be free to use with the data plans but the data plan pricing will be a bit higher for the iPhone 4 than they currently are for smartphones.

Lastly, it appears Verizon didn’t do their homework when building their website. The Verizon iPhone info page shows an option for the white iPhone. But it also shows images of the GSM iPhone (you can tell the difference by the antenna line break just above the mute switch — CDMA has one, GSM doesn’t), and it lists the iPhone as being GSM. Whoops. Clearly these are specs and images taken straight from Apple.com. I would be surprised to see a white iPhone available on Verizon on the February 10.

And for those curious, I will not be switching to Verizon. AT&T service in Kansas City is just fine.

The Best New Mac and iOS Software of 2010

A lot of great software shipped in the past 12 months. There were many new apps for the iPhone and iPad, and many great updates to some already stellar Mac apps.

Here is my list of the best software that shipped in 2010. These are apps I use regularly and which were brand new or received an X.0 update at some point in 2010.

OmniFocus for iPad

OmniFocus for iPad was released in July. It is, without a doubt, the best of the three-app suite of OmniFocus software.

It seems to be a common practice that for apps with a strong presence on the desktop, their iPhone and iPad counterparts are portals, or lighter versions, of their desktop apps. Not so with OmniFocus on the iPad; it is the current king of the OmniFocus hill. Moreover, it is one of the most robust, feature-rich, easy-to-use apps on my iPad.

The two most-addicting features of OmniFocus on the iPad are the review and the forecast views. This app is one of the few which have justified my iPad purchase.

Reeder

Reeder for iPhone 2.0 and Reeder for iPad are my two preferred apps for reading feeds. When Reeder 2.0 shipped in March it answered all of my quibbles about what I wanted from an iPhone Feed Reader.

Reeder for iPad, shipped in June, and it is superb. I enjoy the UI and the top-notch readability it presents. By far, my favorite feed reading app for the iPad.

Canned

Canned is an iPhone app that came out in August. I had the privilege of helping Sky Balloon beta test it, and it’s been on the front of my iPhone Home screen ever since.

Canned lets you pre-write the content of those text messages you send often, and even pre-assign those to the individuals and groups whom you often send that same text to.

I used to have a folder in Pastebot for these types of texts, but Canned is much better suited for the task. The app is simple and blazing fast. Buy it in the App Store for the price of a soda.

Instapaper Pro for iPad

If there ever was a piece of software that was like a good cup of coffee it would be Instapaper. Unlike other software and services where describing the ins and outs and use-cases gives others a very good understanding of the product, Instapaper is much too simple for that.

So in short, Instapaper is the best way to read the Internet. And the iPad app (which launched in April) is the best way to read your Instapaper articles.

And, if you want to get my starred articles in your Instapaper queue, my username is “shawnblanc”.

MarsEdit 3.0

MarsEdit is one of the most-used, most-important, and most-beloved applications I own. I can’t imagine writing shawnblanc.net without it. Version 3.0, which was released in May, added quite a few features to an already rock-solid application.

A highlight feature of the 3.0 release for many was the WYSIWYG editor. However, the most notable for me was the added support for WordPress custom fields, which — when combined with this Linked List plugin — makes posting links on my site a breeze.

Simplenote 3.0

Simplenote is an iPhone and iPad app that offers a minimalistic writing and note-taking interface and over-the-air syncing. Version 3 shipped in August, and is the sort of app adored by those who pride themselves in their use of beautiful and uncomplicated software.

Simplenote is also an app for people with ideas. It’s for those who need some way to jot an idea down, build on it, and refine it until they’re sick and tired of it, regardless of where they are or if they brought their laptop.

And as a writer, Simplenote could very well be your principal writing app. It has a straightforward design that makes it effortless to use. In Simplenote there is no text formatting, it’s just plain. There is no document titling — when you create a new note, the first line is the title. There is no saving a note — you just write and your note is backed up in real time, and even synced with any other other devices you use: iPad, iPhone, and Mac.

Dropbox 1.0

The most common misconception about Dropbox is that it’s solely for file syncing between multiple computers. Well, I only own one computer and I use Dropbox all day long.

Because Dropbox syncs your files to the Web, I use it to keep all folders for my current projects. This means things I am working on at the present moment are always backed up to the Web.

Also, by using Symlinks, I have the Application Support Folder for my most-used apps (MarsEdit, Yojimbo, 1Password, OmniFocus) sitting in Dropbox as well. Which means if I didn’t back up my laptop for a week or two, chances are good I would hardly lose anything important. And if I drop my laptop out the car window on the way home from work, I for sure wouldn’t lose anything from the day.

Dropbox finally hit version 1.0 in December, adding some stability issues and, most notably, options for selective syncing of folders.

Instagram

Instagram launched in October and by the end of 2010 had over 1,000,000 users. It’s part iPhone app, part social network, all fun.

It’s an iPhone-only app that works somewhat like Twitter but with photos. You take a quick snapshot, apply a filter, and share it with your followers. You can also send those photos to your Flickr, Tumblr, and/or Posterus accounts, as well as sharing them on Twitter and Facebook.

Instagram is low friction, and high-fun. And now that Twitter displays Instagram Media inline, it’s not unlike using TwitPic to post photos to your Twitter account. You can find me on Instagram as “shawnblanc”.

iPhone’s Group Messaging in iOS 4

When the iPhone first came out in June 2007, you could only send one text message to one person at a time. No pictures, no videos, no audio. Only a Short Message (SMS).

Six months later, in January 2008, Apple added the ability for our iPhones to send an SMS message to multiple people. This was a feature of iOS version 1.1.3.

Eighteen months after that, in June 2009, Multimedia Messaging (MMS) was introduced to the iPhone as part of iOS 3.0. However, MMS was only available to people using an iPhone 3G or 3GS, and only to those who were not on AT&T. If you had an original iPhone from 2007, or if you lived in the United States, you could not yet send or receive any MMS messages.

In September 2009, AT&T released a carrier update and iPhone users in the U.S. got MMS messaging.

And the most recent update for group messages came when iOS 4 shipped in June 2010. For those on AT&T sending a group message no longer defaults to many individual SMS or MMS messages. Rather, sending a group message on iOS 4 sends it as a single MMS to many people; even if you are only sending a plain text message.

The easiest way to see the difference between sending a group message that is sent as an MMS instead of an SMS is in the top “Sending” status bar of the message’s window. For a group MMS message the bar steadily progresses until it’s done. For a group SMS message the bar progresses in spurts, as several messages are sent back to back to each individual recipient in the group.

This new functionality by AT&T is called “Group Messaging” and has some benefits for the sender:

• If you’re sending a group message to other iPhone users it means everyone in the group can see everyone else in the group and join the conversation by replying all. In essence, it’s a group chat.

• A group SMS can only go to 10 recipients. A group MMS can be sent to 100.

• Sending a group message as MMS counts as just one message sent. Whereas a group message sent as SMS means you are charged for each recipient in the group.

There really is no disadvantage for sending group messages as MMS from your iPhone.

However, with Group Messaging there can be disadvantages for those receiving your messages:

• Since Group Messaging means messages are sent as MMS no matter what, if you’re sending to people using Blackberries or non-smartphones then they have to open and download your text message as if it contained a media attachment. They think you’re sending a picture, but you simply sent some words. I’ve been told by my friends and family members who use Blackberries and non-smartphones that this is often misleading and always annoying. They were expecting to get an entertaining image from me and instead they got a bland text message. (Perhaps I should be more entertaining with my texting.)

  For recipients on Android phones it’s the same issue. They receive your message as an MMS with the subject “No Subject” (unless of course you’ve turned on the “Show Subject Field” option and you’ve written a subject line).

  And nobody sees any of the other recipients in the group you’ve sent to except for those on iPhones. It’s only a “group chat” if it’s iPhone users exclusively.

• And lastly, if by chance someone in your group message is using a phone that doesn’t accept multimedia messages at all, then they will simply not get your text. Instead they get an annoying note — sent from you but written by the carrier — that says something along the lines of, “Hi! I sent you a Multimedia Message. You can log onto a website and enter this long password to see it.” (Remember, during those years when your iPhone could not send or receive MMS messages and you would get that annoying message telling you to log in to a website to see the message?) So very annoying.

How to Turn Group Messaging Off

If you’re so inclined, your AT&T iPhone has a setting to adjust the manner these group texts are sent.

Even though these group messages are sent as MMS messages, you can still leave MMS turned on while turning “Group Messaging” off. This means: (a) you can still send media-rich MMS messages; and (b) group text messages are sent as many individual SMS messages instead of a single MMS. Consider it a favor to your non-iPhone-using friends and family who don’t like downloading your text-only MMS messages.

Simply go to Settings → Messages → “Group Messaging”.

According to the good folks on Twitter, the option to turn off “Group Messaging” in the Messages Settings is only available to iPhone users on AT&T. For example, here’s what the Messages Settings pane looks like for an iPhone on Canada’s Rogers network:

(Screenshot courtesy of Pat Dryburgh.)

Though iPhone users on the Rogers network cannot turn Group Messaging off, group messages are still sent as an MMS message just like on AT&T.

For iPhone users on carriers other than AT&T and Rogers I am not sure if group messages are sent as a single MMS message, or as multiple SMS messages. If the former, it seems as if the only way to disable group messaging as MMS is to turn off MMS Messaging altogether. Therefore forcing a group message to be sent as several individual SMS messages.

Turning MMS Messaging off in the Settings only means you cannot send an MMS message (no texting of video, images, or audio). You can still receive an MMS message from someone else.

A Few Apps You May Want to Get for That New iPod or iPad of Yours

• Astronut. I rarely play any games on my iPhone or iPad, but the funnest one I’ve bought lately is Astronut. The graphics are superb and it’s a lot of fun when you’ve got 5 or 10 minutes and need a break.

• Simplenote is a note-taking app that runs on your iPod touch and iPad. It’s free and syncs your notes over the air. I use Simplenote all the time and wrote more about it here.

• 1Password is a fantastic tool for keeping any and all top-secret info available on my iPhone or iPad, and it syncs over the air via Dropbox.

• Pastebot is a fantastic clipboard manager for your iPod touch. And it will pair with your Mac to make a dead-simple way for transfering text and images back and forth between the two. I wrote more about Pastebot here.

• Twitter is the free and “official” twitter app for your iPhone and iPad. It also happens to be iOS’s best-of-breed Twitter app.

• Reeder is a top-notch app for reading your RSS feeds. It syncs with your Google Reader account and has a clever and delightful GUI.

• NetNewsWire is also a top-notch app for reading your RSS feeds. It also syncs with your Google Reader account. I absolutely adore NNW for my Mac, and the iPad version is fantastic as well.

• ESV Study Bible + is my favorite Bible app for my iPhone and iPad. The free version is great as well, but this version comes with more content for studying, audio of the Bible, and a significantly better UX for taking notes within the app itself.

• Instapaper is the best way to read the Internet. If you’re not already using Instapaper then you can sign up for free online, then buy the pro app (though there is a free version) and all the articles you elect to read later will show up in your Instapaper app.

• Canned is an iPhone app that lets you pre-write the text messages you send often, and even pre-assign them to the individuals or groups of people whom you often send that text message to.

And if you didn’t actually get an iPad for Christmas but you got some cash and now you’re in the market, you may want to check out my iPad Buyer’s Guide.

Jorge Quinteros’ Sweet Mac Setup

Who are you, what do you do, etc…?

I’ve always found the act of introducing yourself to be very intimidating because it’s something you often wished you had practiced more before being put on the spot but either way, my name is Jorge Quinteros. I’m an avid photographer based in Brooklyn who holds a BFA in Graphic Design and is employed as a manager for a major retail company. Try crunching that title into into a business card.

I’ve always been into the Arts and enjoyed documenting life through pictures and it’s that same natural interest that’s driven me to always want to travel and explore new places. While some prefer to enjoy experiences through their own eyes, I prefer to see it through my viewfinder firmly pressed against my face.

Once you’ve established what your passion is, you’ll find it difficult not using that as a source of inspiration for everything else you accomplish, hence my humble personal photoblog. This is where I share and sell some of my favorite photographs backdropped with a narrative of what when into capturing them. Equally exciting to curate is iPad Decór which is home to photographic wallpaper for your iPad based on personal travels and random outings of mine.

If a person’s stature as a photographer is dependent upon what they can do with any camera, in making the mundane appear interesting and using their imagination, then I confidently introduce myself as a photographer despite not having an official position in the industry. It’s the drive that will get me there.

What is your current setup?

• 15″ 2.16GHz MacBook Pro (pre-unibody model)
• Apple Aluminum Wired Keyboard
• Magic Mouse
• Griffin’s Elevator Stand
• SlimKey V2 Stand with USB 2.0 Hub
• Griffin’s Simplifi. It does what the name implies. It de-cluttered the space by charging both iPhone/iPod and downloading my photographs.
• JBL Creature Speakers. The perfect computer companion for setting the mood on those days when I can’t seem to get into writing mode.

Why this rig?

The last time I owned an Apple desktop was back when they were introduced in a variety of flavors. Mine was purple by the way and since then, I’ve happily been working with different laptop versions which began with a 12″ PowerBook to what I currently own now.

Everyone loves to be part of an environment where you have options and laptops offer that choice to pack-up and relocated to a nearest coffee shop for a change of scenery. With the configuration of my setup, I often forget that my computer is a laptop but the popularity of taking your work with you is a feature I’m not willing to give up by feeling tied down to a conventional desktop.

As a a retail manager, only 15% of my role includes working with a computer which has no internet connect and that’s shared by more than 4 people. My only connection to the web in those occasions is strictly through my iPhone 4. This is more of an incentive in takin g pride and effort in sprucing up my own computer space at home.

I’m seeing more photographs of people, specifically Mac users owning more laptops than ever before and utilizing them as if they were desktops by having a keyboard and mouse. I’ve yet to see this trait in PC laptop owners but for me, it’s an arrangement that carries a feeling of sophistication and although I might have added elements to work with, it’s an arrangement that feels as if I had taken something that felt uncomfortable in the first place. It’s probably the uneasiness of using a laptop keyboard and trackpad. I’m not a fan at all although during travels, these are the working conditions I put up with.

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

Lightroom 3: The software was developed from the ground up as a tool for more serious photographers and it’s one that’s served as perfect transition when I felt that iPhoto wasn’t offering much. I think as comfortable as you’re likely to become with a camera you’ve had for a long time, the same goes with sticking with a logical workflow for managing your photographs and to not get excited when something new comes along.

Photographers have special needs when it comes to handling their images and Lightroom has been an invaluable software that’s kept me sane on those days that would have driven anyone crazy in dealing with hundreds of RAW files. As far as processing goes, it’s through experimentation that I’ve managed to generate a decent collection of custom presets that I use if it’s required.

Photoshop: Being a photographer and not owning Photoshop is comparable to a carpenter not having an assistant in that you don’t always need it but it’s at hand when you do. It’s literally used for minor touch ups on images but mostly when I’m resizing photographs to upload at iPad Decór. I almost feel like I’m cheating the software because of how rarely it’s launched. Lightroom is king for me.

NetNewsWire: Upon first learning about RSS feeds, I was entranced with the concept of having news, personal blogs, and other odds and ends instantly materialize in a standalone program and the deal was sweeten knowing that I can retrieve it all straight from my iPhone as well. Hands down a brilliant piece of software although I can’t speak highly of it’s coequal iPhone version because I prefer Reeder as a choice.

1Password: If I were held at gun point and asked to write down the passwords to all my online service accounts, I would simply fold. Who has time to memorize all of them? That’s what 1Password is for. Their slogan should be “Don’t think about it. Just buy it”.

Notational Velocity: Everything I write is written in this software. It’s widespread acceptance among Mac users could never go understated because it’s simply that good. You can’t say enough great things about it without sounding repetitive.

BBedit: I’ll admit there’s far better aesthetically pleasing coding software out there than BareBones’s BBedit. Coda, Expresso to name a few but very much like Lightroom, I’ve stayed with what I know and I haven’t found a need to retrain myself in what I’ve already grasp. I’m far from a coder but from what I recall from Introduction to Web Design in college and from pure allure, I’ve learnt the basics of what’s needed to manipulate HTML and CSS to prettify my site.

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

I wouldn’t say the setup itself induces a sporadic flow of creativeness because that type of feeling takes place when I’m out shooting, but it certainly helps translating the same comfort I have in using my camera to using my computer.

I don’t consider it something extravagant although friends would disagree but I’m finding that people who have similar configuration have one trait in common. They all have an affinity towards the arts, specifically graphic design, web design, music creation and of course photography. My response to the common question of why I use my laptop as a desktop is “It’s a creative thing.” Needless to say that among my social circle, there’s many that choose to work with what’s in front of them rather than configurate it and make it their own.

How would your ideal setup look and function?

At this point, I’ve learnt there’s no sense in believing you could have the latest of anything with regards to technology because every couple of months something smaller, sleeker and faster is released. With that in mind, I have my eye in upgrading to the newly-enhanced 13″ MacBook Air.

I’ve had my current 15″ MacBook Pro for 5 years and in the past I’ll admit that the ownership of several models of Apple’s top of the line laptop has always been driven in wanting to have the best of what they offer without necessarily having the justification to pay for all that power.

There sheer number of positive benchmark reviews from the new MacBook Air alone is what would make it an ideal setup to migrate to because it has sufficient powerful for supporting the type of work I do without having to pay extra the way I have been in the past for a MBP. I would imagine editing photographs on a 13″ screen could only be tolerated for so long so I would want to add an older generation 23″ Apple Cinema Display which I’m sure I could find for a bargain on Craigslist.

When I’m not managing my photographs in Lightroom, I’m going through NetNewsWire deciding which articles to quickly read or send to Instapaper and/or continuing to build upon the loose thoughts I began typing up on Simplenote for the iPhone to further finish in Notational Velocity while listening to some tunes.

And so, with the exception of dealing with a couple hundred RAW files, my computer usage is not that demanding that it would need a super computer. Which is why the new 13″ MacBook Air along with an external monitor would be an impeccable upgrade to what I have now.

More Sweet Setups

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

Aaron Mahnke’s Sweet Mac Setup

Who are, what do you do, etc…?

My name is Aaron Mahnke. I’m a freelance graphic designer in the Boston area. I work under the banner of Wet Frog Studios, focusing on identity and brand design, though I do a ton of print design and even a bit of web design as well. I blog sometimes at aaronmahnke.com, and share resources for freelancers on my other site, abetterfreelancer.com.

What is your current setup?

My desktop computer is a 27-inch 2.66 GHz Quad-Core i5 iMac with 4GB of RAM. I recently made the switch from the wired Apple aluminum keyboard to the bluetooth version in order to allow my Bamboo Fun (1st gen, medium size) tablet to sit closer to the center of my iMac, eliminating some unnecessary strain on my right shoulder. I’ve found that the mouse that came with the Bamboo tablet is perfect for my work style, and I can easily switch to the pen when needed.

I have a secondary work station set up beside my red reading chair that consists of a newer 2.4 GHz i5 MacBook Pro (also 4GB of RAM) and a 23-inch Apple Cinema Display. I use it mostly as a hub for three Western Digital 1TB MyBook external hard drives that contain years of video production work, as well as an external Sony DVD burner for churning out multiple copies of client work while I read in the red chair.

When I’m mobile I rely on my iPhone 4 and a 32GB 3G iPad to keep me connected and creating. The iPhone is my main device for task capture (via the Things app), RSS feeds (via Reeder) and reading (via Kindle, iBooks and Instapaper). I rarely use it as a phone, though during the work day it’s docked beside my iMac with a pair of Apple in-ear headphones connected and ready.

The iPad is a fantastic work device for me. I keep it naked at home, but it travels in a DoDoCase outside the house. It goes to every meeting with me, and I rely on a combination of SimpleNote and Penultimate for capturing the information I need. I rely heavily on the Photos app to hold my logo design portfolio and digital samples of my print design work. And the Dropbox app is the perfect tool for presenting potential clients with my logo design service information, my contract and glimpses of in-progress work.

Why this rig?

Power and flexibility are my driving motivations, honestly. I put my iMac to work every day, sometimes running Illustrator, Final Cut Pro, VMWare Fusion and a handful of smaller applications all at the same time. I am in this eternal struggle between wanting to be parked at a desk with extreme power and screen space, and being able to pick up and work from anywhere, so this setup allows me to live with a foot in each world for now.

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

The first piece of software I always tell people about is Dropbox. I have a 50GB account to hold all my design projects, which means I can work whether I’m at my desk or using my laptop away from home. The natural back-up that Dropbox brings to the table also helps me sleep easy knowing my clients’ work is always safe.

The applications I launch every day when I sit down at my desk would be Mail.app, Things, Illustrator, Numbers and Billings. On occasion I have to launch Pages, Keynote, Final Cut. Other applications are always running, though, like Notational Velocity, Yojimbo, MailActOn, 1Password, Littlesnapper and Tweetie. I have a few Fluid instances for things like Basecamp and Rdio, but prefer Propane for Campfire chats. And finally, my menu bar plays host to Droplr, which I use a few times a week at most.

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

I’ve tried my best to surround myself with tools that help me get the job done faster. I take notes in Notational Velocity, which is connected with SimpleNote, so that I never have to save, rename, or move the files again. I keep inspiration logged in Yojimbo and Littlesnapper, both of which sync across my computers. And I try my best to master hot keys to save time and effort.

Creativity is all about reducing the distance from inspiration to retention. I might not be able to react to a moment of inspiration right away, but if I can capture it properly (via screenshot, dragging into Yojimbo, or typing the idea out) I can come back to it when I’m ready. This isn’t multitasking, though. This is all about knowing your tools and having a solid system.

How would your ideal setup look and function?

Honestly, the Apple ecosystem is getting really close to perfect for my needs. I would love to upgrade the RAM in both computers someday soon, and a SSD in the MacBook Pro would be next on my list after that. I can dream about better app syncing between the Mac and iOS devices, but Dropbox really gets the job done for me. My only other “fantasy device” would be a big fat Drobo, but I think that’s because I’m an external storage junkie.

More Sweet Setups

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

Iain Broome’s Sweet Mac Setup

Who are you, what do you do, etc…?

I’m Iain Broome and I write fiction. My first novel is called A is for Angelica and is represented by Tibor Jones Associates. They’ll be sending the novel out to publishers soon and I’ll be keeping various things crossed, especially my fingers.

By day I’m a copywriter for The Workshop, a leading UK design company. It’s a little more than writing copy though. Yes, I can give you a tasty strapline or plain English paragraph, but I also work on usability, accessibility and wireframing clients’ websites.

I have a couple of blogs. Write for Your Life offers writing advice for all types of writers. It also has snazzy illustrations provided by the marvellous Matt Pearce. Broomeshtick is my personal blog where I talk about writing, design, technology and, well, more writing.

What is your current setup?

I bought my first Mac in March 2008. It’s a 20″ iMac which gets backed up wirelessly to a 500gb Time Machine, which in turn connects to an Xbox 360 in the lounge. Or at least it did before the 360′s second bout of RROD. Microsoft, eh? *spits*

I also have a 16gb iPhone 4 and, when my piggy bank is finally full, I’ll be getting a 16gb, wifi-only iPad. I intend to use the iPad for creation as much as consumption.

The idea that you can’t use an iPad to write anything of substance seems ridiculous to me. All you need is a keyboard and a blank screen. The iPad provides both and I can (will) take it anywhere (everywhere).

Finally, I have a Sony A200 Digital SLR camera. One day I will learn how to use it properly.

Why this rig?

The iMac provides all I need and more as a novelist and blogger — let’s face it, words are pretty easy to process. But I also use it to edit images, record podcasts and put together video blog entries for Write for Your Life. The iMac has all the power and storage I could ever want for those things too.

Sometimes I think I might have been better off with a MacBook or MacBook Pro, but the extra screen size comes in handy for watching movies, viewing pictures and having multiple windows open. Truth is, it’s become the hub of our home. CDs and DVDs? Long forgotten. This is streaming central.

My iPhone 4 stays with me throughout the day. I primarily use it for email, Twitter, my todo list and reading articles through Instapaper. We also use it to play music and podcasts wherever we are in the house.

Truth is, it’s the perfect techno-companion and unless something catastrophic happens, I can’t see me using anything other than an iPhone for quite some time.

Oh. I sometimes make phone calls.

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

Okay, this is the important bit. Having a Mac has changed the way I work, that’s for sure. But really, it’s down to the software.

I explained this in a recent post, which I might as well quote:

Drawn by the bright lights and Apple’s promise of all-the-cool-things-I-could-do, I expected dazzlement and wonder with every mouse-swish and keystroke.

But something strange happened. Instead of reveling in the glitz and relative glamour of iMovie, iPhoto and the multimedia posse, I found myself enjoying quiet nights in with my new best friends, strong and silent types like Finder, TextEdit and, more recently, Simplenote.

And the reason was this. I am simply a writer. I don’t need all that other stuff. Or at least, I don’t need it to do what I do best.

So once the dazzlement wore off, what I found was a computer – a word you hear less and less these days – that gave me tools to do things quicker, more efficiently, perhaps even better.

The technology disappeared and left me alone with my words. Just me and them.

That said, my novel was written in Microsoft Word. I know. But only because I had zillions of drafts and edits left over from my pre-Mac days. I use TextEdit for most other writing and have enjoyed WriteRoom on occasion.

In other news: it’s iTunes and Spotify for Music. Safari for browsing. Transmit for transmitting. Acorn for pretty pictures. Adium for chit chat. Simplenote for todo lists and ideas. Alfred for launching. Then 1Password, my trusty online bouncer.

Finally, there is DropBox. The key to it all.

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

It’s a pretty time-consuming this writing novels, running two blogs while having a full-time job for a design agency business. It means I have to do things whenever and wherever I can. My setup is designed – well, it’s evolved, more accurately – to allow me to do that. It’s all about the sync.

With DropBox, Simplenote and an iPhone 4, I can access everything I need at all times. I can edit files on my work PC at lunch and know they’ll be there when I get home. I can approve comments, make notes or catch up on some reading on my phone while I’m waiting for the bus. And again, when I get home, my Mac is up-to-date.

Novel number one was written on no less than six different computers – a combination of desktop PCs, laptops and my iMac — in even more locations, using goodness knows how many USB drives for transferring and backing up.

Novel two will be written on just my future-iPad and my iMac. That says it all, really.

How would your ideal setup look and function?

It’s just the iPad, I think. Everything else works just as I need it to. I might be tempted, when the time comes, to replace the iMac with a MacBook, but it won’t change the way I work. And that’s the most important thing.

It takes a while to get a setup that you’re happy with, but after two years together, me, my Macs and a few third-party apps are getting on tremendously.

Frankly, we don’t need no one else.

More Sweet Setups

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

The Potential of MobileMe

I am wary to touch any app that does not sync automatically between my Macintosh, iPhone, and iPad.

If you’ve got more than one computer or device that connect to the Web, over-the-air syncing is extremely convenient. While browsing Twitter on my iPhone, if I come across a link I want to read later I can just send it to Instapaper. Later that evening I can sit down on the couch, pick up my iPad, and the article is there waiting for me.

While on the couch it’s likely that I will also check my email. If I read a few messages on my iPad, the next time I sit down in front of my laptop those messages will be marked as read. When applications sync like this it means I don’t have to think about where the most recent version of a file or list is or how I’m going to get to it because, thanks to the Web, the file is always there waiting for me in the app I use.

If you just use one computer, syncing is not a big deal for you. The information exists right there, on your hard drive and is always as you left it. But once you begin using and accessing that information on more than just one computer, keeping it in sync becomes a matter of personal sanity.

With the amount of shared information I keep between my iPad, iPhone, and Mac, apps that sync by themselves are virtually a necessity. Meanwhile, apps which do not sync are becoming increasingly arduous to use and maintain. So much so that even Things, the to-do list manager of my dreams that I have been using exclusively for nearly two years, has become almost useless without over-the-air sync. To-do items get added and subtracted to my list faster than I’m able to have all my devices open and on the same wireless network. And thus my lists were seemingly in a constant state of un-synced-edness.

Because I switch contexts and machines many times throughout my day — morning writing on the iPad, afternoon email on my Mac, meetings with my iPad, errands with my iPhone — the apps I gravitate towards, and end up relying heavily on, are the ones which sync all on their own. These all-stars include Simplenote, 1Password, Instapaper, OmniFocus, and Reeder. All of these apps keep their data in the cloud. If it’s not in the cloud, I no longer want to fiddle with it.

MobileMatters

When first introducing the iPhone in 2007, Steve Jobs quoted Alan Kay: “People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.”

Apple is a software company. But they also happen to make the best hardware on the planet. The iPhone 4, for example, is equal parts physical masterpiece and software wonder. Or, as John Gruber describes the 4: “It’s like a love letter to Dieter Rams.”

However, software development is no longer a contained relationship between a single piece of hardware and the software installed on it. There is a third factor which increasingly refuses to be ignored: the interconnection between someone’s computer, iPad, et al..

And so if one were to poorly re-write Alan Kay’s quote while taking into account the advent of mobile computing, one might say something like: People who are serious about mobile software should make their own cloud.

Combined, Apple has sold about 100,000,000 iPhones, iPod touches, and iPads. And Apple also happens to have a few “cloud products” that we would assume are meant to keep these millions of mobile devices in sync: MobileMe and iWork.com.

However, iWork.com is, more or less, an collaboration website where you can publish a document for others to comment on and download. And MobileMe is, more or less, a $99 annual service which keeps our basic data (contacts and calendars) in sync without a USB cable.

I am grateful for what MobileMe offers — I use iCal every day and would be pulling my hair out if it weren’t always in sync between my iPhone, iPad, Mac — but I could just as easily get my contacts and calendars synced for free via Google. And that is precisely my point. Apple is letting other cloud services define and strengthen the relationship between our desktops, laptops, and mobiles more than Apple is.

In many ways Dropbox and Google are driving the iOS / OS X relationship more than MobileMe is. While MobileMe is syncing my contacts and calendars, Dropbox is syncing my most-dear files: the projects, articles, and notes I’m interacting with every day. What are iWork.com and MobileMe for if not for the sharing and syncing of everything between our Macintoshes, iPhones, and iPads in sync?

Ted Landau’s hypothesis on why Apple has such a labyrinthine process for syncing documents to your iPad via iTunes:

I’d be willing to bet that it all stems from Apple’s obsessive desire to keep the iPhone OS as closed as possible (a topic I have written about extensively before; check out this article for one recent example). One way Apple does this is by, as much as possible, forcing all iPad-Mac interactions to go through iTunes. Eventually, if the iPad is to truly become an laptop replacement, I believe this will have to change. The iPad will increasingly need to be able to bypass iTunes. Hopefully, Apple agrees.

Dropbox has become the way I get files onto my iPad. If I want to edit a document in Pages or read a PDF in iBooks, I drop it into my Dropbox folder on my Mac and then open it on my iPad. From there I can send it to Pages or iBooks.

Moreover, Dropbox has become the go-to solution for 3rd-party app developers who are building apps which sync between multiple devices. Apple left them no choice. It would be silly for developers to build and implement a flagship feature like syncing and then chain it to a paid subscription service like MobileMe.

Dropbox, however, is free. And although not everyone has a Dropbox account, if you’re selling an app that syncs it is much easier to ask your users to set up a free Dropbox than to pay for a MobileMe subscription (a subscription they’ll have to renew year after year if they continue to use your app).

At the moment there are more than 65 apps for iOS which sync via Dropbox. How many iOS apps use iDisk to sync data? I only know of one: OmniFocus. And even then, MobileMe is just one of several syncing options the Omni Group offers.

Dropbox is flinging wide the door for syncing and sharing of data across multiple computers and devices. It seems to me that Apple should be the ones owning this service.

I’ve got a few ideas as to why MobileMe is still not free and Apple is still not supporting over-the-air syncing of their own iWork documents (let alone the files and apps of 3rd-party developers):

• Reason 1: Apple considers 3rd-party apps as somewhat inferior and less important to iOS. And therefore they have no desire to help or encourage 3rd-party developers build apps that can sync between iPad, iPhone, and Mac.

  This would explain why MobileMe is still a paid subscription service, and only syncs the default apps. It’s no skin off Apple’s nose if someone does not sign up for MobileMe because they’ve already bought the device and they will still have and use the default iPhone apps.

  This scenario, however, does not explain why trying to sync iWork documents between your Mac and iPad is such a nightmare.

  Moreover, this scenario doesn’t fit into Apple’s advertising model for iOS whatsoever. Nearly every commercial, every magazine ad, and even the giant signage at the Apple store all proudly showcases 3rd-party apps.

• Reason 2: MobileMe is a revenue stream that Apple sees no reason to give up.

  If MobileMe were to become a free service it would not necessarily drive more iDevice sales. Those who truly care about having their data sync over the air will either use their company’s Exchange server, Google, or pay for MobileMe.

  If this is the case, it explains why iWork.com doesn’t help sync documents over the air. Apple doesn’t see the syncing type of user as mainstream. Why give up a revenue for a subset of users who have already found syncing solutions?

• Reason 3: Apple is building a syncing solution, and we simply don’t know about it yet.

  As mentioned above, the obvious advantages to Apple are slim to none. At once they would lose the annual revenue of paid MobileMe subscriptions, while simultaneously adding a large new server load from the millions of new MobileMe users.

  And assuming the new MobileMe would allow 3rd-party developers to tap in to the syncing solutions, Apple would then have to support and service the flood of apps making use of the MobileMe Cloud.

When MobileMe re-branded and re-launched in July 2008 it was somewhat of a disaster. In an internal email to Apple employees, Steve Jobs said that “The vision of MobileMe is both exciting and ambitious”.

In its current state as “exchange for the rest of us” MobileMe seems neither exciting nor ambitious. As a web-app, me.com is beautiful and extremely functional. But I for one never use it. Instead I use the native OS X apps. And iDisk? Well, that is also collecting dust.

What would be exciting is an open service that bridged the gap for all the data which is shared between our Macs, iPhones, and iPads. What could be more ambitious than killing the USB cable?

Something Like MobileMe plus Dropbox

The future is mobile and the path to that future is paved by the cloud. For MobileMe to become the premier service which bridges the air between our many devices it needs to be free, and it needs to let other developers use it as their means for syncing data. If not, users and developers will continue take the path of least resistance and greatest adoption.

Imagine if you will what a merging of Dropbox and MobileMe might look like. Something simple and completely expected, I suppose. It would be free, it would sync and share info and files, and it would let other apps use it for syncing. Imagine setting up your iPhone with your Apple ID once, and then any app that has a Mac and/or iPad counterpart would sync. Sounds like mobile bliss.

To keep some bit of a revenue stream, there could easily be a paid version of MobileMe as well. The free version could offer syncing and come a small yet reasonable 2GB of data storage. Paying for an upgrade might buy you increased cloud storage, an @me.com email address, Find my iPhone support, and that photo gallery thing which nobody uses.

The entire point of making MobileMe free and allowing developers to utilize it for their own apps would be to strengthen the overall Mac OS platform and experience. Because the greater the 3rd-party apps are, the greater the overall platform is.

Appendix: A brief survey of MobileMe and Dropbox usage amongst a group of mostly-nerdy Twitterers

Conducting a brief poll on Twitter I asked: (a) who with an iOS device uses MobileMe; (b) who had a MobileMe subscription from back in the day when it was .Mac; and (c) who uses Dropbox. The @replies:

• 85% of iOS device owners currently have a MobilMe subscription, and of those current MobileMe subscribers 69% of have had an account since it was .Mac

• 62% of iOS device owners had a MobileMe subscription back when it was .Mac

• Only 2 people that used to have .Mac no longer have MobileMe, and a few people mentioned that they had tried MobileMe and/or .Mac but never signed up

• 20% of all respondents don’t own an iOS device

• 95% of all respondents use Dropbox — the majority of which are ardent enthusiasts (based on many a hearty reply to question C)

Dave Caolo’s Sweet Mac Setup

Who are you, what do you do, etc…?

I’m Dave Caolo, a married father of two, a New Englander and a drummer. I work as an editor and writer at The Unofficial Apple Weblog. I also curate and publish 52Tiger.net.

What is your current setup?

My main computer is a well-worn, 2GHz Intel Core Duo MacBook Pro with a 15″ display. This machine has been in 5 US states and three countries; it’s missing three keys and the bottom is badly scratched. It’s also the most reliable workhorse I’ve ever owned. I’ll continue to use it until it dies or refuses to run essential software, whichever comes first.

When it’s on my desk, it rests in a Radtech Omnistand and connects to a 17″ Viewsonic display, a Mighty Mouse and an old Apple Extended Keyboard II with the help of a Griffin iMate. I back up to an external Western Digital drive via Time Machine. I also use SuperDuper! to create a bootable backup to a LaCie drive which lives in my wife’s classroom Monday – Friday, and comes home on weekends. I back it up each Saturday and send it back to the classroom each Monday. Finally, a 2nd LaCie drive holds “archive” material in cold storage.

Finally, a G5 iMac acts as a media server, storing iTunes purchases and feeding our Apple TV.

Why this rig?

It’s part nostalgia, part reliability and part being satisfied with what I have. When I bought this MacBook Pro nearly five years ago, I was darn proud of it. Just like my father with is 1989 Buick LaSabre, I feel a keen sense of pride in keeping it running. As I mentioned, it works beautifully despite the years of use and abuse, and that’s a testament to the high-quaility products that Apple produces. People balk when they see my computer, but I see an old friend.

Sure, it’d be awesome to own a 17″ MacBook Pro with an i7, but it’s not necessary.

I added the 2nd display years ago when I was spending a lot of time with Dreamweaver, and now I dislike working with one display. I typically keep Colloquy open on the left and a browser open on the right.

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

First and foremost is Safari. I’ve tried nearly every browser I could and always came back to Safari. I spend most of my day writing for TUAW, which I do directly through our CMS, Blogsmith.

Colloquy is another constant for me. My TUAW colleagues and I communicate via IRC all day, and Colloquy is my preferred client. I’ve got it running on my Mac, iPhone 4 and iPad. It’s very Mac-like in its UI and looks great on the iOS devices. Colloquy is our virtual office.

Twitter is also a necessary part of my work day. I use Tweetie on the Mac and Twitterrific on the iPad and iPhone to interact with it. It’s amazing how frequently I communicate through Twitter. It’s completely replaced instant messaging for me and nearly replaced email. When a breaking story hits that we want published right away, the fastest way for the team to communicate is IRC first and then Twitter. I’ve set things up so that direct messages are pushed to my iPhone, so I’m notified right away, even if I’m off doing something else. Email and IM offer the same “bloop” no matter how urgent or silly a message is. Conversely, when I get a push notification from Twitter, I know it’s a direct message that I ought to attend to. I certainly use Twitter for fun, but it’s also become an essential part of my professional life.

OmniFocus keeps my “stakes in the ground” as David Allen would say. I’m one of those annoying GTD guys, and OmniFocus is the project management app that best suits my interpretation of David Allen’s methods. I’ve got a hotkey combination set up to produce the quick entry window and I use it all day long. Also, the iPad and iPhone apps are stellar.

I would not want to work without David Seah’s Printable CEO forms. They’re not software, but they are absolutely essential to my daily routine. Every morning, I grab a fresh Emergent Task Planner and do three things. First, I list the tasks that must be completed by the end of the day. Next, I write “Inbox” at the top of the notes section. Any “stuff” that comes at me during the day that can’t be quickly copied and pasted into OmniFocus (like phone calls, requests from real, live people, etc.) goes there. Then I write “Support” below Inbox. This is free scratch space for me to work out problems, write down reference information (“Width on those images = 720″ for example), etc.

Finally, I write my “hours of operation” in the right hand column and track exactly what I’m doing, hour by hour, in 15 minute increments. That sounds insane, but it helps me identify when I’m efficient and when I’m slacking. At the end of the day, I can see that it took me much longer to complete a certain task than it should have, and I can analyze why. Too much goofing around on Twitter, perhaps?

David’s Task Project Tracker is another essential form that I use daily. I subscribe to David Allen’s notion that a project is anything that takes more than two steps to complete. The Task Project Tracker lets me break a project down into its component steps, track how much time is spent on each, tick them off as they’re finished and monitor my progress towards completion.

I often joke that the 8 years I spent as a special needs teacher prepared me for GTD. Part of my role as a teacher was to break educational goals down into empirical, concrete tasks that could be observed, measured and built upon until a new skill was learned. For example, a shoe tying lesson might include steps like place foot inside the shoe, grasp the tongue with one hand, pull the tongue until taut, grab one lace in left hand, grab one lace in right hand and so on.

The work I do today can be broken down much the same way. For example: acquire software, install software, test x, y, and z, compile notes, outline post, write and review. David’s Task Project Tracker, and GTD, is perfectly suited to this.

I also use Simplenote as storage for reference material and Yojimbo to keep research material in one place. Finally, Billings keeps track of any client work I do.

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

I trust it. When you’ve got a trusted system in place, your mind stops bugging you about “we ought to be doing [X]” and lets you focus its resources on the task at hand. I know that OmniFocus and the Printable CEO forms will capture anything important so that I won’t miss it. With that off my mind, I can get down to writing.

How would your ideal setup look and function?

I’m less concerned with the look (as my keyboard indicates) than I am the function. What’s most important to me is to reduce friction. When I’m working on “Task A” and something new demands my attention, I want to capture it with as little disruption as possible. I needn’t attend to every little thing upon arrival once I trust that I’ll be able to retrieve it easily when the time is right.

I also enjoy a quiet, tidy room. I rarely work with music playing. If I’m writing I want quiet. If I’m doing something that requires less creative thought, I’ll listen to a movie soundtrack. Clutter distracts me and I can’t have it on my desk. This is making me sound like Felix Unger, isn’t it?

More Sweet Setups

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

Mike Rundle’s Sweet Mac Setup

Who are you, what do you do, etc…?

I’m Mike Rundle, a designer & developer living in Raleigh, NC. I’ve been designing for the web since before people used CSS and am currently a User Interface Architect for a marketing software company in Durham, NC. For the past 2 years I’ve been working on Mac and iPhone apps in my spare time and am the designer & developer of Digital Post, a news app for the iPad.

What is your current setup?

I have a 24″ aluminum iMac (bought it right when they came out), a 15″ 2.53Ghz MacBook Pro, an iPad, a first-gen iPhone and an iPhone 4. On my desk at work is a 27″ Core 2 Duo iMac which is the best computer I’ve ever owned. I’ve got a Logitech MX Revolution mouse which is fantastic, and under that is an XTracPads HAMMER mousepad which is gigantic and totally awesome. I highly recommend it. I also own a Rain Design mStand laptop stand which is built as if Apple made it. It’s the best laptop stand out there, hands down.

Why this rig?

The 24″ iMac replaced my aging PowerMac G5. The iMac is a great computer, but I just don’t use it anymore now that I have the MacBook Pro. When I work on my iPhone apps at night I’m usually on the couch so the MacBook Pro is just more versatile. I’m currently planning to sell the iMac that I don’t use and buy a new 27″ Apple LED Cinema Display for when I need extra space that a laptop can’t provide. I’m also planning to buy a new Apple Magic Trackpad to replace a mouse at home but I want to try one first.

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

I have Adobe CS4 at home and CS3 at work; I actually prefer Photoshop CS3 due to how it handles windows and its speed on Snow Leopard. For web coding my tool of choice is TextMate, the finest text editor on the Mac right now. For Cocoa development I use Xcode 3 but have recently been playing with Xcode 4 since it’s the new kid on the block. The new interface is really nice but there are still some quirks that I’ll have to get used to. I use Bjango iStat Menus 3 for putting interactive graphs into my menubar and CloudApp for sharing screenshots and shortening links to post to Twitter. For email I’m a Gmail guy and have been a Mailplane user for awhile, also I use Safari 5 for web browsing.

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

TextMate is really the key part of my workflow when working on the web. I have dozens of macros that help me write HTML, CSS, Javascript and PHP faster. I actually do something quirky with TextMate: I wrote a macro that maps the 7 key to the Escape key so I can access code completion faster without moving my hands from the main part of the keyboard. I also mapped Ctrl-7 to output the normal 7 key in case I actually have to use it. Crazy, but it’s great!

How would your ideal setup look and function?

My ideal setup would still involve my MacBook Pro but it’d have 2 fast SSD drives in a RAID-0 configuration plus maxed-out RAM. I don’t have a terribly ergonomic office chair so an Aeron would be a must. I have typography and design posters all over my walls so I’d probably just buy more and more till there’s no more paint showing.

More Sweet Setups

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

David Chartier’s Sweet Mac Setup

Who are you, what do you do, etc…?

I am David Chartier, an Associate Editor at Macworld. I write about all things Apple, its products, and the third-party ecosystem that helps to make its products great. I also write about tech news and culture at onefps.net, and tweet at @chartier.

What is your current setup?

My primary machine is a late 2009 27-inch 2.66 GHz Core i5 iMac that could eat small family pets alive if left unchecked. I have a wireless Apple keyboard and a Magic Trackpad which is probably going to replace my Magic Mouse. My iMac’s partner in crime is a mid-2009 17-inch 2.8 GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro. I have a 64GB iPad WiFi + 3G that I am increasingly using to write pieces (like this one), and an iPhone 4 that is almost never out of my arm’s reach. I also have a 2TB Time Capsule, an 802.11n AirPort Express, a 160GB Apple TV, a Logitech G9 mouse for gaming, and my wife has my old late 2008, first-gen aluminum unibody MacBook (before they went “Pro” and got an SD slot). I know, we’re the shrink-wrapped Apple family. I’ve had to find a way to live with it.

Why this rig?

I love screen real estate. I rarely full-screen apps, so when I’m writing I’ll give my browser, word processor, a chat window or two, any e-mail I need for reference, and other things as much balanced screen space as possible so I don’t need to switch between them to move information back and forth. Some techie friends consider the 17-inch MacBook Pro to be the aircraft carrier of Apple’s portables, but I love having all that space on-the-go when I need to use all those resources for pseudo-multitasking.

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

I have a ton of third-party apps, many of which I use infrequently for tasks like video transcoding or uploading photos to multiple services at once. But if I had to start with the fundamentals for writing at Macworld, I use MacJournal for almost every post, Skitch and Acorn for editing photos, and Safari. For communication I use Mail with MobileMe and Macworld Google Apps accounts, Adium for when I’m not slingshotting back to iChat (until I give in and want to use Facebook or Yahoo chat again), and Propane for the Macworld chat rooms that run on 37signals’ Campfire.

To keep track of story ideas and leads I use a mix of OmniFocus (after my nearly finished exodus from Things), Evernote, and Mail. I also have a few menubar utilities, though I’m trying to be a little more discerning about those lately. I use LaunchBar for lots of productivity stuff like launching apps and creating new e-mails and iCal events, CoverSutra for controlling iTunes, and Divvy for keeping all my windows in their places.

I’m trying to work LittleSnapper into my Macworld process so I can keep original images around for when editors need them for print. I use Time Machine to backup my Macs and my wife’s MacBook to the Time Capsule, ChronoSync to backup key files and media to a secondary external 2TB drive, and CrashPlan as a third layer of remote redundancy.

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

I love to look at the big picture whether I work at home or on-the-go, which is why I keep lots of resources available at a quick glance and why I use MacJournal. It’s the only Mac word processor I can find which lets me draft in rich text, but copy to the clipboard as the perfectly formatted, plain HTML that most CMSes want. Lots of my peers pen in HTML or Markdown, but I don’t like to look at code or URLs when I write. To me, code is code, and prose is prose. I want to draft, re-read, and continue drafting a piece as the reader will see it, watching for things like the visual flow of text and too many concurrent links that can weigh a paragraph down.

With a desktop, a notebook, and now a tablet, I have a good array of choices between power and portability. I can bang out work and pseudo-multitask at home with my iMac and on-the-go with my MacBook Pro. Or I can bring my iPad out for the day and weekend getaways and focus on one task at a time while lying on the couch or in the middle of Millennium Park.

How would your ideal setup look and function?

I hope this doesn’t mean that I fail the Shawn Blanc Geek Test, but excluding my desire for the latest and fastest hardware, I’m not itching to make major changes. However, now that the 15-inch MacBook Pro has a higher resolution display and can switch graphics cards on the fly, I’m going to downsize and save some weight. I had a Mac Pro with dual Samsung displays for a couple years (22-inch and 24-inch), and while that was a sweet setup, I find that I like having one large, high-res workspace better.

As for the iPad, OS 4.0 and multitasking cannot arrive soon enough, but it really needs at least 512MB of RAM, if not more. I’ll probably upgrade immediately when (but only if) Apple revs the RAM (though possibly at a smaller storage capacity; I’m barely pushing 32GB on this one), because I’m not that desperate for a camera.

Speaking as a reformed mobile phone junkie, the iPhone 4 is the first phone I’ve been thoroughly happy with in years. The antenna thing doesn’t really bug me because I don’t hold it that way. The iPhone 5 will have to have some serious unicorn tear polish to get me to upgrade.

The only other changes to my setup would be more gear mostly for pleasure, not business. Mobile is exploding right now, so I’d love to pick up some Androids and Pres so I could learn a lot more about what they’re up to, but mostly for curiosity and work purposes. I’m also a frequent PC gamer, so I hope to build a dedicated PC again in the next few months. Boot Camp is wearing on me, and Steam for Mac seems like it’s going to need some time to pick up… momentum.

More Sweet Setups

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

All You Need is Simplenote

Simplenote is a note-taking app for your iPhone and iPad that syncs with the Web. It is the sort of app adored by those who pride themselves in their use of beautiful and uncomplicated software.

It is also an app for people with ideas. It’s for those who need some way to jot an idea down, build on it, and refine it until they’re sick and tired of it; regardless of where they are or if they brought their laptop.

As a writer, Simplenote could very well be your principal writing app. It has a straightforward design that makes it effortless to use. In Simplenote there is no text formatting, it’s just plain. There is no document titling — when you create a new note, the first line is the title. There is no saving a note — you just write and your note is backed up in real time, and even synced with any other other devices you use: iPad, iPhone, and Mac.

This humble application began a few years ago in response to two big needs of iPhone users: (1) the need for a notes app that synced over-the-air; and (2) the need for a notes app that didn’t use Marker Felt.

In some respects the app has barely changed since 2008. In fact, arguably the most obvious changes have been to the icon. The original icon was as a yellow sticky note taped to the front of a locker. That changed into a grey note card resembling a garage door, which then changed to a white notecard with a blue wi-fi bubble, which changed again to what you see today.

To say the app has barely changed since 2008 is, of course, not to say that Simplenote is the same as it was two years ago. It has been refined, polished, and updated with taste. Only a handful of new features and UI improvements have been added over the years, with many of the most notable changes just recently emerging in version 3.

Compare for a moment Simplenote to Apple’s two text and note-taking apps for the iPad, Pages and Notes. Pages was one of the first apps I bought for my iPad. It was touted as having most of the features of Pages for Mac, but on the iPad. For me, after a bit of use, Pages was quickly relegated to nothing but a full-screen typing app. It is a great showcase for what sort of apps the iPad is capable of running, and for those who need to edit Pages documents on their iPad it is a necessity. But it is somewhat difficult to get documents in and out, and the document syncing process is flat out ridiculous.

Notes is Apple’s other in-house note taking app. It ships with iOS and is quite simple (in fact, much of the foundational user experience that Simplenote has is parallel with the built-in Notes app). As it is with Pages, the biggest downfall with Apple’s built-in Notes app is, again, sync. Though the system for syncing in Notes is better than in Pages (your notes sync into your IMAP email account), nobody I know actually uses the IMAP sync.

The Simplenote developers actually beat Apple at their own game. They made an app with a better design (Helvetica!), better functionality (over-the-air sync), and they proved that less (compared to Pages) is, in fact, more.

Version 3

The latest update to Simplenote sports a slew of new toys. But, as Charlie Sorrel said in his review on Wired, “if you don’t want them, you won’t even notice.”

The most notable for me is the full-screen writing environment on the iPad app. When writing on the iPad I prefer to use Simplenote. But at times, I may want to see just the page with no list of notes next to it. Up until now, I would copy my text out of Simplenote and paste it into Pages. But now there is a subtle, full-screen button at the bottom-right corner of your note — tap that and Pages on the iPad all but becomes obsolete.

Perhaps the most clever of the new features is sharing notes with others. When in a note, tap the icon that resembles a phone with an arrow pointing out. From there you can enable note sharing and email the person whom you want to share with. This is a great way to empower team collaboration and keeping others in the loop with information and ideas.

One of the many thing I keep in Simplenote is meeting agendas — especially talking points for 1:1s. Now for my 1:1s I can share those talking points in a note with the other person I’m meeting. This way he or she can see what’s on the docket, and even add items of their own. Furthermore, with the addition of version history, we can drill down within the same note to see what last week’s agenda items were.

Additional cleverness comes in to play here: if my friend doesn’t have Simplenote installed then I’m going to bug him to get it. And I’m going to bug him to use it so that our collaborating is actually useful. Which means not only is sharing notes useful and helpful for users like me, it is indirectly word-of-mouth marketing for the Simplenote crew. Nicely done.

This is just one example of how the more you use Simplenote the more you find new ways you to use it. People are using it for recipes, ideas, lists, blog posts, chapters of books they’re writing, and more. And for all those power users who are finding themselves with a list of notes longer than there arm, a way to organize may be in order. But a folder structure could slightly hurt the simplicity of Simplenote. Tags on the other hand are a great way to add structuring to your notes if you want.

And one way that I see tags as coming in especially handy is in regard to the aforementioned shared notes feature. Since Simplenote does not label who is sharing a note with you, you can tag that note using their name. Which means someone you’re sharing a lot of docs with, you can see them all at once using a tag filter.

What’s in my Simplenote?

So what do I actually have in my Simplenote at this moment? All sorts of things. Some are notes of importance which I want synced on all my devices. Others are completely trivial and are in Simplenote by sheer virtue of it being my note taking app of choice.

• Meeting agendas and talking points: mostly for upcoming 1:1s. These meetings are usually informal and quick. And, in fact, the very point of a 1:1 meeting is so the two of you only have to connect and meet once a week — saving all your conversation topics for that one meeting. Being able to jot down questions, ideas, and the like using Simplenote has long been my workflow.

• Ideas for businesses, software projects, and other things.

• A list of gift ideas for friends and family.

• Blog posts in all stages: I usually write them in Simplenote or Notational Velocity, and finish them in MarsEdit.

• Recipes: well, actually only one recipe: Grilled Artichoke with golden mustard dipping sauce.

• Reminders of things to order next time I’m at a restaurant I don’t regularly visit.

• And other simple notes: such as cool quotes, shopping lists, miscellaneous data, and the like.

For a wider look at what is in other people’s Simplenote, check out Patrick’s community listing on Minimal Mac.

Other Reviews

If you liked this review of Simplenote, there are more like it here.

An Interview with Neven Mrgan

Neven Mrgan is a designer, developer, and writer. He works at Panic, Inc., writes a popular weblog (or two), draws video game graphics in his spare time, and his last name is a bit of a mystery.

In this interview Neven and I discuss graphic design, life at Panic, and other miscellany.

The Interview

• Shawn Blanc: Until you joined Panic in 2008 you mostly did freelance work building web apps, correct?

• Neven Mrgan: I did freelance design and development work — mostly on the web — for a few years, and I had more or less interesting day jobs that time as well. I worked as an engineer on very straight-laced business web apps until 2007. This wasn’t terribly fun, and to be honest, I wasn’t too good at it either. Early in 2007 I decided to start sticking to graphic design and UI design, since I was never going to be a kung-fu-grade developer.

• Shawn: Your job with Panic seems like a perfect match in the sense that you fit right in as another clever, funny, nerd. But on the flip side, now you work in a team setting with a company that builds desktop software as opposed working solo on web projects. What led you to take the job with Panic?

• Neven: Regarding desktop software, it was somewhat new to me indeed. Sorry to bring up iPhone this early in the conversation, but it was a big catalyst for me in several ways; it was the first time I was doing non-web UI design. That was the roundabout route I took to designing desktop software.

  As for Panic, the fit was just ridiculously good. They build excellent software, and they do so in a genuinely friendly, likable way. That combination is very uncommon. I was a recently married and ready-to-settle-down old fogie of near 30, and was big on leading a comfortable, quality lifestyle, and working on solid, long-term projects. Panic has those same goals.

  Working on a team was a change after a year of clicking around in our home office. It’s hard to complain about the freedom of that arrangement, but I’ll do my best: a chair in your own house can be a pretty inert environment. It’s a bit of a bummer on a purely social level, and it can make your creative muscle slack as well. That’s been my experience, anyway. I’m happy to be surrounded by really smart folk as I click around now.

• Shawn: Do you ever miss working from home?

• Neven: I have that option currently and I don’t believe I’ve taken advantage of it more than three times (and even then, only because I had to be home for some reason). I can’t emphasize enough how much I like the vibe at my office. It reminds me of how I’d go to my high school’s super-awesome computer lab on the weekend, in the evening, and whenever else I could. I love what I do, projects and people and desk and all — it’s my job and my hobby.

• Shawn: You’ve got a lot of projects running — your couple cool weblogs, The Incident, your full-time job at Panic, and more. What does a day in your life look like?

• Neven: I half-wake up around 7:30 and remain in a hazy, floating, brain-puree state for about half an hour. This is when I get all of my stupidest ideas (like you know how some restaurants menus have a little V next to vegetarian items and maybe a clipart chili for “spicy”; what if they put an F next to “foodie” items? “Can the salad be made foodie?” -”Certainly; we can make it with Pouligny-Saint-Pierre and shave a black truffle onto it.”). Stupid ideas are excellent springboards, boosters for your thought and your daily mood.

  I then check my email and RSS in bed; if it takes longer than five minutes, I save it for after I’m dressed. To do that I pick a Panic t-shirt from the stack I was given when I started (“your employee uniform”) and put my socks on in front of the computer. I briefly chat with whoever is online – usually only Matt Comi, my partner on The Incident. I take the bus to work; twenty minutes of book-reading on the ride, ten minutes of iPod while I walk.

  I work ten to six. The morning is usually time for catch-up, unfinished business from the previous day, or quick production of ideas pickled overnight. Lunch is important because it brings the office together. It’s our most regular team meeting. The afternoon means serious work — Photoshop and Coda — and a snack break around four. I drink Coke Zero and endorse Nuvrei pastries.

  Most days, I try to cook at least one meal; if there’s time to make dinner after work, I’ll give it a shot. If not, Portland has an embarrassment of excellent restaurants. Either way, I eat early and spend the evening working on whatever side projects I have going on. I go to sleep disgustingly late —midnight or 1 am.

  This isn’t a schedule I make it a point to stick to. It’s just how things typically play out.

• Shawn: What are your favorite pieces of software?

• Neven: Photoshop, Coda, and Birdhouse.

  I know, I know — give me a chance to explain.

  I complain about Photoshop. Lord, do I. But it’s not only the essential tool for what I do, it’s a great tool also. I’ve done my best to give the competition a shot, and the truth is just that they don’t allow me to make the things I want to make (yet). Photoshop is internally and externally inconsistent, it’s bloated, it’s slow, and it crashes. But I use it more than I use my pants, and for that I love it.

  Coda is an app I work on, so feel free to consider this a shameless advertisement. You’ll have to take my word for it: I used it before I started at Panic, and if I found a better app for web development, I’d promptly switch to it. Life is too short and the web too demanding to be a slave to cheap loyalty. It’s a great app.

  Birdhouse is the only not-preinstalled app on my iPhone about which I have zero complaints. I use it regularly, and I don’t remember it crashing, slowing down, or confusing me once. You could argue that it does a tiny thing, but it does it well.

  Sometimes I think that if this whole computer thing turns sour — if Apple becomes monstrously evil, if the Internet collapses, if I get old and stop grokking new technologies — I’ll switch to farming or cooking or poster design and be just as happy. Maybe that’s true. Some not-so-small part of me would, however, miss the wizardry I discovered some time in 1985 or so as I typed BASIC into my C-64: I can make a screen do things, and do things that do other things, and do different things depending on the things I do back to it. It’s a wonderful game.

• Shawn: Other than for your lack of development skills, why did you begin doing work as a designer and developer?

• Neven: Two beliefs: 1) Things should look good, and 2) Computers are cool. For the rest of my life I’ll be coming up with complicated explanations which boil down to those motivating principles.

  So, I’ve really always wanted to be doing this or something like this. This or drawing comics, which I quickly learned was kind of not so hot.

• Shawn: Was it a lack of drawing skills that led you to computer-based design? (And do you have any old comic book drawings you’re willing to share?)

• Neven: I’m very happy with my drawing skills!

  I decided to stick with computers because they could do things the real world couldn’t. I’m all in favor of creative restrictions — yay Twitter — but pen and ink’s lack of an Undo function doesn’t challenge me to do better work. It just makes me frustrated.

  Now here’s a really out-of-context panel done some time in… 1998 or so, maybe?

  

• Shawn: If I ever want a future in art and design it will have to be with a computer. I can never get pen and ink to translate into what I want.

  You’re not alone in with the belief that things should look good and computers are cool. But everyone has their own definition of what looks good and what the best tools for the job are. How do you define when a design looks good? Has that definition changed since seriously began sticking to graphic design and UI design?

• Neven: One thing I’m learning quickly is to evaluate designs and design ideas in terms of interaction: how they behave under what circumstances, how they work with other elements. That’s sort of new to me, though designing for the web has always been about flexible, unpredictable layouts and such.

  A thing looks good to me when I fall in love with it; that’s test #1. Test #2 is, ok, that’s sweet – what is it? Does it say something, mean something, is it an “it” or an “It”? Test #3 is the more ponderous goatee-rubbing over how the design scales and translates, whether it’s too trendy or too dated, etc.

  Sometimes I learn to eventually accept designs as excellent solutions even if they didn’t hit me right away. And sometimes designs I greet with a WOW bore me very quickly. But it’s very rare that I will love and cherish a design if it has to be “explained”.

  It’s not important that I love everything I design. But hopefully it happens pretty often.

• Shawn: How would you recommend someone with no facial hair go about completing test #3 as a part of their own design critiques?

• Neven: There are a number of question you can ask about a design once it’s grabbed you.

  • Will it scale, not just physically, but across cultures, age groups, platforms, ideas? Will your icon idea make sense to a busy person working in a dark room?
  • Can any part of your design be abstracted and used elsewhere? Would anyone want to steal it? (You better wish they would!)
  • If you’re breaking an established pattern or convention, are you doing so with good reason? With what are you replacing what you’re destroying?
  • What if the things you, yourself, like to use were designed in this way? Remember Kant’s categorical imperative, “Act only on that maxim which you at the same time wish to be a universal law.”

  You will add more questions to your list over time; you will also drop some as times change and as you develop your own priorities (the point is not to be able to answer “yes” to every question on the list).

  Now here’s the important thing: DO NOT write down the list. Don’t put checkboxes next to questions and save it all as a file. Don’t print it out. Don’t ask people you work with to start using it. This way lies madness; or at least boredom, burn-out, and blandness.

  My feeling is that many creative endeavors are like this; you should learn specific techniques and aesthetic guidelines, but ultimately you will want to simply do a lot of work and let the aesthetic judgment become a second nature. A good musician can, for the most part, “let their fingers play” instead of focusing on translating each sound-idea into a specific finger movement. A good baker will measure things, but they will only make consistently awesome bread when the dough “feels” right under their fingers. There’s no magic, destiny, or talent at work here, just a gradual process of practicing until the back of your head can do most of the work, not the front.

  So, long answer short, learn as much as you can about the principles of design, about its history, and about other people’s work. But try to let it all soak into your brain through constant creative and functional use, not through cramming or some sort of workflow standardization.

• Shawn: How much, then, do you suppose good design sense boils down to talent versus practice?

  Can tools and rules, in and of themselves, produce a quality designed product?

• Neven: I just realized I’ve been harping on the 90%-perspiration thing without going into why the remaining 10% — “the squishy bit” — is important. It’s frustrating to even think about it because it leads me to a mildly fatalistic state where I just throw my hands up and decide that if good design is a matter of talent and destiny, then it isn’t worth doing since most people won’t even know it when they see it. Which is true, in many ways. Why does a designer spend any time deciding between Helvetica and Univers? Most people won’t know or care either way. Or maybe they will, on some unreachable level — maybe Helvetica will appear more generic (at least today it will), Univers more technical; the former, more “design-y”, the latter, more “informative”.

  A designer will obviously have far more opinions of this sort about the minutiae of design. Now, partially these will be a product of the designer’s education and work experience. Maybe they once read Univers was a good choice for signage, or a teacher told them it was a modern classic. Maybe they’re sick of Helvetica.

  But given enough time, these opinions will become more than restatements of other people’s attitudes. Different aesthetic prejudices — sometimes clashing ones — will come together in one head to create a unique taste and signature.

  A great trick I learned from the science writer Matt Ridley: in debates over nature vs. nurture, remember that one is a function of the other, so it doesn’t make sense to say talent “contributes 30%” or some such thing. They’re linked in a much more complicated way.

  To answer the second question a little more directly: no [tools and rules, in and of themselves, cannot produce a quality designed product].

• Shawn: You’re right that most people won’t know good design when they see it. But in the context of UI design, that’s the point.

  Jeffrey Zeldman wrote a great definition of Web design in an article, “Understanding Web Design“. He said:

  “Great web designs are like great typefaces: some, like Rosewood, impose a personality on whatever content is applied to them. Others, like Helvetica, fade into the background (or try to), magically supporting whatever tone the content provides.”

  Like you said, Neven, the vast majority of people won’t even notice your design. But the very act of them not noticing is (usually) the proof of a good design. On the flip side, of course, are times when the people should notice the design. It’s the Form Versus Function debate that UI designers are faced with every day. The mark of a great designer is one who knows when to chose which side of the issue and how find the balance between both sides.

  The reputation for Panic when they come to a form-versus-function hurdle is to find a simply stellar solution (like Cabel’s 3-Pixel Conundrum). Has Panic developed any official guidelines for working on UI design? Have they ever conflicted with your personal preference?

• Neven: I work under surprisingly few constraints as far as what must or mustn’t be done. We’re pretty aggressive about staying ahead of the curve, so we insist on certain not-yet-widespread widespread technologies (resolution-independent graphics, for one). We love a good visual metaphor — Coda’s taped pages in the Sites view — but it has to make sense, and it can’t be realistic at the expense of usability, or to the point of sickening cuteness.

  If we’re adding a feature, we almost never go “ah, there’s already a standard control for that, we’re set.” We might just end up using the existing design, but not before we poke it within an inch of its life. Why does this menu look like this? What if we had never seen it before — how would we build it?

  As Cabel has mentioned, we’re big on weenies: elements that make a design stand out immediately. There’s nothing wrong with a simple metal window, but there’s nothing great about it either, and more things should be great!

  This is the designer’s nastiest temptation — over-designed, needlessly custom chrome which neither fits nor improves the platform. This is the land of Windows Media Player skins. Often we try to “fit the OS better than it fits itself”, if that makes sense; if we think an Apple widget betrays the hand of an intern, we’ll draw our own, better one. This is the thing people notice the least, but it’s a great personal victory.

  To get back to rules and guidelines, nothing is off the table, really. I realize that when I say that I’m excluding things obviously off the table: round windows, animated toolbars, blue chrome, scripty type. Part of this intangible, complex, wavelength-syncing soup we as a team live in is the baseline of quality and aesthetic we all appear to share: let’s not do Thing X, ever.

  As for my personal preferences, I’m probably more conservative than the team as a whole. I’m seeing that (slight) difference as a learning opportunity, so I’m happy to report there have been no freak-out arguments over shades of green. You’ll just have to take my word for it, our tastes are creepily aligned — if we weren’t such motormouths, we’d get along fine with an occasional nod or frown.

• Shawn: Has the process of completing a design project changed for since joining Panic? Is there a boss or an Art Director who signs off on your work?

• Neven: “Sign-off” is, like most things with us, a matter of conversation and feeling out people’s reactions more than a structured process. I’m the sort of person who has to get total agreement from others before I’m fully happy, so I usually gauge everyone’s feedback as I work, and this hopefully results in a universally accepted design by the time I’m done.

• Shawn: I have done freelance work from my home as well as being a designer working with a team in an office environment. When I freelanced I had a handful of creative friends whom I could send drafts of my work to and ask for their feedback. Ultimately if my client liked it and I liked it, then it was a done deal.

  In the team dynamic, I enjoy having the ability to tap a friendly co-worker or two on the shoulder to get instant feedback and dialog about the project I’m working on. But there can, at times, be a downside to that setting insofar that more people need to sign off on the finished piece — it’s not just me and the client anymore.

  I prefer the team setting significantly more because it helps me stay more productive, more creative, and more dynamic in approaching problems. But (and maybe it’s just me. But) it can be frustrating when there is not universal head-nodding approval for every project I’m working on or leading.

• Neven: I find that a team of our size — about a dozen — is a really good middle ground between the isolation of working alone and the tar-pit indecisiveness and slowness of focus groups, market research, surveys, and gigantic corporate meeting fests. I am constantly getting new ideas from the team (while bouncing them off everyone). At the same time, I don’t have to sit and wait for a design to make the rounds and get approved by a chain of people.

  Other than company size, a few other things about Panic help make this possible. We’re close in age, interests, and general attitude about life and work. Everyone is great at their job, and this makes it very different from working for clients. The client’s preference and criticism may or may not come from actual knowledge of the product, the audience, and the technology we’re talking about.

  Here at Panic, I know I’m getting feedback from a tech-savvy person smarter than me who is also a regular user of the product. If they have a complaint — and I should also mention they’re good at knowing what matters how much when it comes to design — it means there’s likely a real problem I should solve. Maybe there’s something I forgot; maybe the design should be a little more polished. Or maybe my idea was crap to begin with. I am far less likely to defend the design by simply saying “I think it’s good”. Keep in mind that this often happens when working for outside clients, and it’s not good for the designer. Not letting yourself get challenged will keep you from exploring new ideas. The trick is to be challenged by knowledgeable people you like and respect.

  I don’t know of any online resource for those, though, so… Your parents/karate instructors were right: there are no shortcuts, it’s going to take time!

The End…

Thank you, Neven.

For more interviews with extraordinary designers, developers, writers, and web nerds, visit here.

John Carey’s Sweet Mac Setup

Who are you, what do you do, and etc…?

My name is John Carey. I am a photographer moonlighting as a live audio engineer or the other way around depending on what day you ask me. I also run the website fiftyfootshadows.net on which I provide many images from my photographic work as wallpaper imagery for my readers. I have done this for somewhere around seven or eight years now and I feel it is just starting to pick up momentum. There is a significant update to the site currently under construction which I hope will help it grow beyond where I have taken it to this point, but more on that when the time comes…

I started out with drive to become a designer, but over time my desires shifted toward photography. I love the honest nature of it, the compromises within it, and the fact that I can bridge a very tangible art form using traditional film cameras with a highly digital one using digital cameras and computers to create images and share the world as I see it with others. I have grown very passionate for the art of photography and the places it takes me, and I am anxious to see where I end up with it next.

My secret double life as a live audio engineer is equally fulfilling and rewards me with the same sort of satisfaction photography does in the way that I am using both analog tools as well as digital ones to get the job done. I love my work and often wonder if I could live without either of these sides of my professional life because they fulfill my lust for adventure in such unique ways.

What is your current setup?

I have been a Mac user my entire life. Honestly, I have been using them since the Apple II days and every iteration they have come out with along the way. I remember shooting with an old Apple Quicktake digital camera along side an old film Canon when I was just starting to get into photography and design. I followed the digital photography revolution very closely as it crept into the minds of skeptical photographers.

My current set up is simple and built from a combination of necessity, luck, and (like any self-respecting geek) an unhealthy desire for new tech.

That said I currently have an old black MacBook which at home is paired with a Cinema Display, bluetooth keyboard, Magic Mouse, Griffin laptop stand, 8 or more hard drives, and a pair of powered studio monitors because I simply need a nice pair of speakers around for my sanity. I also use a 64GB Wi-Fi iPad, and a 32GB iPhone 4.

If anyone is interested in what I shoot with, I use a Canon 5D paired simply with a 35mm f/1.4L lens, a Hasselblad 501cm with its standard 80mm lens, and a Voigtlander R3M 35mm rangefinder with a 40mm f/1.4 Nokton Lens.

Why this rig?

The core of what I use revolves around the MacBook, the last generation of the black plastic bodied ones. At the time it was the top of the line and it has proven itself to be more than capable through its years of use and certainly the most stable and dependable Mac I have ever owned. I will admit that it’s probably seeing its last good year in use and may need to be replaced sooner or later simply to keep up with newer tech and the demands of the work I do.

But the question is WHY. Yes… well, the true nature of my life is pretty nomadic as I am constantly on the move either traveling for work or traveling for pleasure around the world whenever possible. My office is anywhere and everywhere it needs to be so my portable tools are as important to me as the modest space I have at home for computing. My real office is carried in bags with me wherever I go, at times two or three even. I always have my cameras with me, if not all of them at least one, and I usually carry my laptop for work but also simply out of necessity because much of my blogging and internet life I squeeze into down time at work or while traveling and so I often need to have these key things with me wherever I go.

Also I have a small bunch of tools that I always carry for work, as well as a blank notebook or two and a couple nice pens (because nothing beats pen and paper for sketching out ideas, no matter how many apps you have for it) and other sorts of little things depending on what I need on any given day.

My bags of choice are made by an amazing bag company called Spire. I swear by them and their amazing customer service — you really can’t go wrong with those guys. I’m looking forward to seeing what they come up with next, their bags have traveled the world with me.

When I do set up office away from home I have my iPad to handle more and more of my day-to-day internet shuffle, and I will have to admit at this point the 3G option sure would have been nice at times. It has allowed me to leave the laptop at home more often which is nice. I use a wonderful little stand, the Compass, and it has been more than helpful in giving my iPad a home while out on the job or in a coffee shop working on ideas.

To protect the iPad while out I use a simple fabric sleeve I had a friend make for me to my specifications including a thin piece of wood to protect the screen which was sewn into the fabric and padding. (I actually do this to my laptop bag as well, a worthwhile customization for anyone wanting to really protect their screen.) I also have a Speck candyshell case for it which I use while I am on job sites to keep it safe.

The last piece of the puzzle is my iPhone 4 which I admit I bought into because of the camera and display. Its a wonderful device and the controversy surrounding is just way out of control. It’s a brilliant phone plain and simple, and it holds all the little things in my life together.

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

My favorite applications on the Mac which I use most often are:

• Aperture: I love Adobe’s take on raw photo management as well as Lightroom being faster overall in its performance, but I greatly prefer the workflow of Aperture — both in file management and editing. I find it is easily worth the compromise.
• Photoshop: It’s just unavoidable in my photo and occasional design work really. I have been using it since version 3, just before layers came on board and changed everything. My use of the program is admittedly very minimal as I have long since moved beyond my days of over manipulating images (it just got old after a while).
• Illustrator: I have been using Illustrator for what seems like forever as well. I remember messing about with it when I was very young, making overly complex blends between objects that the poor old computer running it at the time took forever to render. I use it for layout mostly — this and many other design needs. It’s just as relevant to me as Photoshop really.
• CSSEdit: I love working with websites. I have been making them since the late ’90s to share my design and photography, but the problem is I never REALLY learned how to do it. My knowledge of making websites has been pieced together out of necessity. And I learn as I go, so an application like CSSEdit that helps me simplify editing style sheets is a wonderful thing indeed.
• Espresso: Any HTML or PHP editing I have to do I reach for Espresso simply because I love its approach to interface design. Simply brilliant.
• Things: Again with the interface design. I looked for years to find an elegant solution to handle my task list and notes, and this hit the nail on the head. It’s the glue that holds my ideas and projects and jobs together. Now if they would just hurry up and get cloud syncing in there!
• MarsEdit: The newest member of the family. MacJournal was my go-to, local blogging tool for a long time, but it started to get frustrating with its half-way support for uploading. So I made the switch that was a long time coming.
• The rest: Then there are all the other in-betweens. iTunes, CoverSutra, DropBox, DeskShade, Safari, Mail, Transmit, and not to mention the iPad and iPhone apps that have made their way into key parts of my workflow. I also create electronic-fueled music with a good friend of mine and have for years. And for that I use Reason and Ableton Live, whereas he uses countless other applications as he is more the musician that lives and breathes electronic music.

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

Well, as I mentioned, my life is always on the move and these tools allow me to easily and elegantly glide between tools needed to accomplish the many projects I juggle at any given moment. It can be stressful trying to do so much at once and being able to quickly and confidently jump between tasks allows me to focus less on messing about with my computer and focus more on simply getting things done. For me the tech I use should actually make my life easier to manage, not get in the way of the process. I am not a super geek by any stretch of the imagination, I just learn the tools I need to know to accomplish what I want to.

It’s amazing the amount of mileage I have gotten out of this simple old MacBook over the years. It’s not always necessary to constantly have the latest and greatest unless you really have a need to. I do my best to stay relevant in this unbelievably demanding world we live in, but most of the time less is defiantly more.

How would your ideal setup look and function?

My money-is-no-object, ideal setup would be a large 27″ iMac at home for all my heavy lifting and data management, then a MacBook Air for travel. Only I want one that Apple has yet to make — one slightly more capable, and who knows if that will ever see the light of day. This paired with an iPad for presentations and casual use and my iPhone simply because it easily syncs information together with the rest of Apple’s universe.

The last addition would be a hefty RAID Server for hard drive/data management. It’s exhausting having to juggle all of these hard drives!

Also, an oversized desk with plenty of workspace would be nice. One that I could build a light table into. I like the idea of having a lot of extra space… breathing room for my mind.

More Sweet Setups

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

Go Gowalla

Several months ago I began checking in to places on Gowalla.

What first turned me on to Gowalla was its design. The website and mobile apps are beautiful, and Gowalla’s use of cute icons and graphics throughout makes for a great experience.

But it’s not just the design that I like about Gowalla. It’s fun, and it’s meant for people who like to get out, whatever the reason. Errands, dates, local events, road trips, and the like — if you like to get out you might like to Gowalla.

And this focus on travelers (adventurers?) is what makes Gowalla so interesting and fun for me. I don’t have to have a metric ton of “friends” on to make it worth using. And though I suppose it would be more fun to use if more of my friends Gowallad, chances are good that even the 30 friends I do have aren’t paying much attention to where I check in. And that’s okay. Because what is most enjoyable about Gowalla is the cataloging of your own journey.

I just returned from a two-week vacation in Colorado. On the first day of our trip I put the Gowalla iPhone app right on my home screen and decided that while I was traveling around the Colorado Front Range and the Rocky Mountains I would check in at every spot I could.1

Also, in preparation for my Colorado vacation I created a Gowalla trip called “Classic Castle Rock“, which features some of the premier spots around my home town. I built most of the trip on the Gowalla website before I even left Kansas City. There were a couple spots I wanted to be a part of the trip that weren’t created already, so once I got in to town last week I spent one of my mornings driving around and creating the final few spots.

It’s unfortunate that creating new locations and checking in at spots is limited by my connection to the internet. If I’m not connected I can’t check in. And this is particularly unfortunate because some of the most fabulous, visit-worthy locations are in areas with no cell service and no wireless internet.

For instance, my family and I spent a few days in Pine Grove staying at my grandparent’s cabin. It’s an old, red cabin that sits right by Elk Creek. And a half-mile upstream is the Bucksnort Saloon, home of the Buck Burger. We also spent one morning in Bailey to have breakfast at the Cutthroat Cafe and visit Coney Island’s new location. Sadly, my AT&T-connected iPhone couldn’t get a lick of signal at any of these fabulous spots.

It just so happened that on The Big Web Show last week, Jeffery and Dan interviewed Josh Williams, the founder of Gowalla. And they discussed this very issue of mobile connectivity versus spot check-in and creation. Josh is hoping that the Gowalla team will find a way to store GPS location data on your phone even when you don’t have cellular service. Then, once you’re connected to the internet again, you could use that stored GPS location data to check in and/or create the spots you were at.

This would be a great solution considering the situation, but ultimately we just need better cellular coverage. You see, it’s one thing for me to be able to create the Bucksnort Saloon 48 hours after being there, but that won’t necessarily help someone in the area use Gowalla to find the Bucksnort when they’re out in the middle of No Network Land looking for great burger joints.

It has taken me a while to decide how I use Gowalla (though I’m still not sure exactly what that is). At first I had to check in as soon as I arrived at a spot — as if I was punching in on a time clock. If I didn’t check in right away, I wouldn’t check in at all.

Now I check in when I have a few spare minutes. But there are some people who check in to spots they don’t even walk into but that they just walk by and notice. Is that breaking the rules? What are the rules, even?

For me, I prefer to only check in at places I’ve actually walked into and spent at least a little bit of time. But even then there are times I am on the go and don’t have a few spare minutes to check in with Gowalla.

And this is perhaps the most frustrating part of using Gowalla. It usually takes at least a minute or two to fully complete the check-in process on my iPhone. And that’s assuming the spot I’m checking in to has already been created, and I have good 3G coverage. It takes an extra couple of minutes if I also need to create the spot I’m at.

I would love to see a part of Gowalla’s future solution for checking in at places where you don’t have service to also include a way to check in quickly, or even in the background. If my wife and I are out on a fancy date you bet I want to check in at J. Gilbert’s. But giving my wife the attention she deserves is significantly more important. Which is why I want Gowalla to let me check in for my hot date at the best steakhouse in town while also letting me ignore my iPhone and have a great evening out.

Coming back to my question, I don’t think there are any rules. Much of what makes Gowalla so cool is that it’s still being defined and discovered by its developers and users. Every day I seem to discover a new use for Gowalla, and as it grows the more useful and fun it will be.

Life at Home Without Wi-Fi

On Saturday my 2-year-old Time Capsule had a melt down. If you own a Time Capsule you know how hot they can get. And for some models (like mine) the power components eventually begin to melt inside. Then one day the thing just shuts itself off and if you try to reset it and plug it back in you’re greeted with a high pitch squeal followed by the device turning itself off again.

I never buy AppleCare. But fortunately Apple is freely replacing mine and other certain Time Capsules which are experiencing this squealing melt-down effect. (Which, ironically, only affirms my resolve to not spend money on Apple Care.)

And so the past few days I have been without wi-fi at my house. I’ve actually been enjoying the simplicity of having just one computer connected to the Internet and not having the distraction of being able to get online at any time, in any room, with any device.

By plugging the ethernet cable directly into my MacBookPro it has been nice to have an instant network connection when waking my laptop from sleep. Some people plug in because it’s “so much faster” than Wi-Fi. Which is true. But unless I’m downloading big fat files I really don’t notice the difference in connection speed. I prefer to have less cables.

Syncing my Things apps across devices is even more arduous now because I have to create a network with my laptop and then join my iPad and iPhone to it. (I realize that I could use my MacBook Pro as a wireless router and constantly be sharing its internet connection, but that would defeat the experience of being without wireless for a few days.)

Now that I’m on the $15/month 200MB data plan with AT&T I am annoyingly conscious of my iPhone data usage. Without wi-fi, a casual check of Twitter or email on my iPhone means I’m paying for those bits of data.

But it’s not just my iPhone I’m using less. I’m using my iPad a lot less, too. I have always assumed that the 3G version would not be much better for me because I always have wireless internet wherever I am. Which is true. But knowing that I won’t be connected to the internet has made me less eager to grab the iPad. Even for non-Internet tasks, like reading an ebook.

From Five Bars to Four, to Three, to Two, to One

Fraser Speirs posted a video demonstration of the reception on his iPhone 4 dropping down, bar by bar, when holding it incorrectly. This is exactly what I’m experiencing on my iPhone 4 as well.

Cameron Hunt has created a website which documents the incorrect ways to hold the iPhone 4 as demonstrated by Apple itself.

John Gruber, who’s lucky enough not to be having any problems, guesses that “the issue pops up in areas with spotty 3G coverage”. But I experience the left-handed signal drop regardless of my location — well, anywhere I’ve been since yesterday: home, my office, and church — and Kansas City has fantastic 3G coverage. (I can count on one hand the number of dropped calls I’ve had with AT&T since June 2007.)

At home where I have full signal, holding the phone in my left hand will cause the bars to drop down to 1. Though I am still able to retain enough connection strength to make phone calls, browse the web, and even stream Pandora.

My office, however, has poor reception. And yesterday if I held the iPhone 4 “incorrectly” it was literally unusable as a phone. I never had this issue on my 3GS. Even with poor 3G reception at my office I could always establish a connection and have a phone conversation.

This morning I installed Marco’s antenna booster, and it actually does seem to help a little bit. Using it at home the signal only drops to 2 or 3 bars instead of 1. I have not been in to the office yet to test it there.

Also, here’s a chart of 11 consecutive speed tests I did on the iPhone 4. The drop in bars does mean a worse connection.

A Brief Review of iOS 4

iOS 4 is now available, and it is fantastic. But as a long-time iPhone user some old habits die hard.

The unified inbox is great. But I still find myself tapping the “Mailboxes” header on the Inboxes view in attempts to go back one more screen, despite the fact there is no button there.

Folders are great. But I now have to re-learn where my apps are. I used to know where on the screen they were located, now I have to remember which folder I put them in.

Multitasking is great. But double tapping the Home button doesn’t get me to Phone favorites anymore — a function I have used dozens of times a day for the past three years (I’m one of the few who uses my iPhone to make phone calls). In earlier iOS betas you could at least double tap and hold the home button to launch favorites. But alas, that function didn’t make it into the Gold Master.

But eventually I will acclimate and the above quibbles will be non-issues.

Apple’s new mobile OS is the most feature-rich and robust one to date. Just as the iPhone 4 is the biggest leap forward for the hardware since the original iPhone, iOS 4 is the biggest leap forward for the software.

iOS 4 is packed to the brim with features and functions we only dreamt about in 2007. Yet in spite of all the new, nearly everything about this OS is expected. Not because we’ve seen pre-release demos, but because the features are implemented so naturally. There are no new features that require much, if any, explanation. And, save but one, no new features do anything mind blowing.

That is exactly how Apple rolls. The implementation of a feature is just as much a feature as the functionality which it provides. Apple didn’t just add the ability to now create folders, they built the best possible user experience around that functionality that they could.

Current iPhone and iPod Touch users who are able to upgrade to iOS 4 will have no trouble using all the new toys found in iOS 4 without missing a beat. Even the most “hidden” of the new, highlighted features, fast-app switching via the Tray, is easily discoverable to the average user since activating the Tray is now tied to one of the most common functions of double tapping the Home Button.

The New Look

Every major update to the iPhone’s operating system has mostly only provided feature enhancements. iOS 4 is the first to sport a significant change in the look. And it’s beautiful.

Earlier this year I jailbroke my iPhone to install a different GUI and add a Home screen wallpaper and custom icons. But many of the graphical changes in iOS 4 negate my reasons for wanting to jailbreak. From what I’ve noticed, all of the new graphical elements are fantastic. Well, all but one: the default water drops wallpaper is bizarrely ugly. I’m currently using the fun but unobtrusive Pictotype Purple wallpaper from Veer.

I was never, ever, keen on the 3D Dock introduced in Leopard, but on the iPad and iPhone it’s great. For one, it’s much more open than the ‘grid’ Dock in previous iPhone OSes. This makes for a cleaner looking, more simple Home screen. Secondly, the square icons don’t look at all awkward while sitting on the 3D dock, which is not always the case in OS X.

Additionally, I’m a big fan of the scratched fabric texture which shows up in the background when drilling into a folder or when fast-app switching via the Tray. It’s a darker version of what you see behind the Google map if you click on the bottom-right page curl. And it’s the same background Reeder uses for its iPad app.

Folders

Folders are swell, but I suck at naming them.

Choosing a proper and usable name for a folder is proving to be more difficult than I thought. Also difficult is remembering which folder has which apps.

Thanks to folders, my first Home screen now has the apps which used to occupy my first two home screens. These are the apps I use daily or weekly. And the OCD in me decided it would be best to name each folder with names that were five characters long. So: Tools, Photo, Stats, and Sweet.

On my second Home screen, I have seven folders: Rare, Reference, Utilities, A Games, B Games, Misc, and Tools. But off the top of my head I couldn’t even tell you what apps are in each of those folders.

The Rare folder holds all the apps which previously lived on the very last Home screen wasteland. A Games and B Games are just that — except I hardly ever play games on my iPhone so I don’t really know which games are the more or less favorites. And the difference between Reference, Misc, Tools, and Utilities is (embarrassingly) a bit lost on me. I chose those names because I was trying to avoid having four folders with the same name, Utilities. But unfortunately my current solution is just as confusing as the alternative.

Once I’ve nailed down some proper names, my only gripe with folders will be the spacial arrangement of the individual apps. As Lukas Mathis points out, the placement of an app’s icon is in one location in the folder’s icon view, but it’s in another location when you open that folder. (Similar to the same spacial issues the iPad has when you rotate the device from landscape to portrait.)

The Tray and Multitasking

But Apple doesn’t really intend for users to navigate through folders for the apps they use regularly. Instead, they’ve given us the Tray and multitasking.

It used to be that when you were done using an app and you pressed the Home Button you were quitting that app. Some app developers were smart enough to build state persistence into their app. Which meant when you came back to that app, it would load itself at the same spot you left it, but it still had to load.

Now you are no longer quitting the app when you press the Home Button. Instead the app is put into the background and its icon gets slotted into the Tray. You access the Tray by double tapping the Home Button and from there you can swipe through all the apps you’ve recently used. But the computer-savvy geek in me wants to quit out all the apps that I’m not using. It pains me to see an app in that tray which I know I only use once or twice a month. That app is taking up precious memory.

Neven Mrgan wisely advises:

This is not the multitasking you’re used to. The sooner you accept this, the better.

And so I’m learning not to play the Tray because iOS 4 is clever and responsible enough to quit apps on my behalf. The least-recently-used app gets the boot once the system actually begins to run low on memory. And with iPhone 4 rocking twice the memory my 3GS has, there will be even less reason to manually monitor which apps are running in the background.

John Gruber explains the new multitasking quite well:

The new model [of multitasking], [...] is that apps are not quit manually by the user. You, the user, just open them, and the system takes care of managing them after that. You don’t even have to understand the concept of quitting an application — in fact, you’re better off not worrying about it.

The Tray and its fast app switching are just one element of multitasking in iOS. There are also a handful of background APIs which 3rd-party apps can now take advantage of. The most heralded have been the APIs for background music, location, and VoIP. Respectively: Pandora can play music while in the background; GPS apps can give directions while in the background; and Skype can host a phone call while in the background. I don’t use Pandora, GPS apps, or Skype, so these new features, while great, do not really change my life for the better at the present moment.

The API which I am most thankful for, in that it affects my day-to-day usage the most, is task completion. Now I don’t have to wait while Twitter uploads my latest tweet or Simplenote syncs my latest note. But unfortunately, the other side of the coin to task completion, background updating, is not baked in to iOS 4. When you open apps like Simplenote, Twitter, or Instapaper, even if they’ve been running in the background, they will not have been able to update. They still have to wait until they are the frontmost app before they can download any new data.

Which Device for Which Task?

With a cup of hot coffee, most work days begin with combing through email, scrubbing my to-do list, and prepping for any meetings.

No two days are alike. Sometimes it’s all I can do to keep on top of email and put out fires. Occasionally I’m in meetings back to back to back to back. And then some days I am able to do some work of my own. Unless it’s a meetings-only type of day, I need my MacBook Pro to get work done. But regardless my iPad and iPhone are usually close by.

And so I was curious to look at how frequently I use each device for certain tasks I may do on a given day. Secondly, if my preferred device isn’t around, how well do the others fare at completing that same task if and when they have to?

How Frequently I Use a Device for Certain Tasks

A good example of where quality has affected frequency is with RSS feeds. I rarely check my feeds on my iPhone anymore because checking them on my iPad is just so much better. The same goes for Instapaper — reading things later on the iPad is so fantastic that I practically refuse to use my laptop for it.

Now, if my preferred device isn’t around then how well do the others fare at completing that same task if and when they have to? Here is a chart rating each device’s ability to handle the task at hand.

Device’s Ability to Handle My Regular Tasks

The ratings are not necessarily based on the scope or limitations of the device. Some of the ratings are due to limitations of the app, or are simply because of my own established workflow.

For example, the only reason Things is poor at managing my to-do list on my iPad is because it doesn’t fully match my work flow. The iPad app, in and of itself, is fabulous. But I can’t map email messages to my to-do list like I do on my laptop, and there is not yet over-the-air syncing. Functionality issues like that make it difficult for me to easily manage my to-do list. (There are times when I email myself a to-do item from my iPad or iPhone because I need to remember it as soon as I return to my laptop.)

What the Charts Don’t Say

Looking at how regularly I reach for my laptop, and how well it handles nearly everything I do all day, it would seem as if my iPad were simply a luxury. Quantitatively, yes. But qualitatively, it’s a different story. Because the scope and feature checklist of the iPad (and iPhone) alone do not accurately convey the value added.

Perhaps a more accurate comparison of devices and tasks would not be based on tasks at all, but rather on context and use-case scenarios. My laptop is what I use at my desk. The iPad is usually with me when I’m on the go or in the living room. One device is not relegated to one type of task. All are for work and, and all are for leisure — the quantity and quality depends mostly on the context.

What the charts don’t say are things like how useful my iPad is on a day full of meetings (I can carry it lightly from one place to the next, and it’s battery is a non-issue). Or how I’m less distracted when using it. Or that I read so much more now.

The only thing missing is how well the three devices work together. As my MacBook Pro, iPhone, and iPad learn to share the same information at the same time, their usage will become even less task-driven and more context-driven.

iPhone 4 Miscellany

The Battery

With every other gadget I’ve owned keeping the battery charged is one of the costs of ownership. The iPad, on the other hand, has an incredible battery. It’s battery is one of the best features of the whole device, and usually is the first thing I say when people ask me what I like best about my iPad. “The battery,” I tell them. “This thing will run for 12 hours.”

The iPhone 4 boasts virtually the same battery life as the iPad. Imagine then what you can still do after the the 20% power warning. The 4 will still have enough juice for a 90-minute phone conversation, an entire movie, 2 hours of surfing the web, or to just be left sitting around for another two and a half days.

When the 20% battery warning comes up on my 3GS it means I go into iPhone survival mode, keeping usage to a minimum to prolong death before I am able to charge it next. But on the 4 a 20% warning will simply mean charge at my earliest convenience (the same way it is for the iPad).

The Glass

Putting glass on both sides is a great move. I have never put a screen guard on any of my iPhones, and I usually place my 3GS face down because the glass front is more scratch resistant than the plastic back.

The original iPhone was well-built. It felt good and looked good. But it was a bit slippery and had poorer cell reception compared to the 3G and 3GS. But what the 3G-enabled models gained in function they lost in form. The plastic back is not nearly as classy.

And so by putting helicopter-grade glass on both sides the iPhone 4 now gets the best of both worlds: a phone that feels good, looks good, and get’s good reception.

The Screen

I’m afraid of the 4′s new display in that it may cause every other device I use (Apple Cinema Display, MacBook Pro, iPad) to look like pixelated crap.

That Wallpaper

The water drops wallpaper which is set as the default in iOS 4 baffles me. I’m not running the iOS 4 beta, nor have I seen the wallpaper in display on an iPhone 4. But in the promotional shots of the new iOS and phone the wallpaper looks tacky to say the least.

My only guess is that the water drops image was used because it was an ideal image for being the Home Screen wallpaper and showing off the Retina Display hotness. Regardless, I expect to be using something more minimal.

Marketing FaceTime

The FaceTime commercial and its section in the iPhone design video both use classic, emotional music. The show all sorts of happy, real-life scenarios, and really pull you in to the emotion of watching real people connect.

Apple is telling a story about the iPhone through FaceTime. It’s not just a device for fun, games, and work. It is something which can add value to your real life. It’s a story wrapped with families and loved ones connecting like never before.

Gina Trapani says:

That’s the thing about Apple marketing. They don’t talk about how many gigabytes of memory or how many CPU cycles or how many apps (much). They aim for your heart, and show you how technology can make your life better during its most important moments.

It’s this feature alone that makes me want to buy my wife an iPhone 4 as well, instead of giving her a hand-me-down.

AT&T

I was with Verizon for almost 9 years before I bought an iPhone, and their service was great. But AT&T’s service in Kansas City (where I live) and Denver (where my family lives) is also great.

I can count on one hand the dropped calls I’ve had since June 2007. My phone always has solid 3G reception and very speedy data. Moreover, whenever I’ve had to deal with AT&T’s customer service it’s been easy and pleasant.

Two other things I love about AT&T: (1) They subsidize my iPhone upgrades more frequently than every 2 years; and (2) they let me change my plan for just a month or two (when I know I’m going to have a talk-heavy event) without making me renewing my contract for another 2 years.

My AT&T Wireless Data Usage

Here is a look at how many megabytes of data I have used in the last seven months.

I expected December to be high since that is when we host the onething conference. Everything gets progressively more erratic during the last few weeks leading up to onething, and flat out ballistic once the four-day event starts. But I am shocked to see October as my highest month of usage. That was the month Anna and I took a week-long vacation to the Ozarks and my phone was literally turned off for seven days.

Being able to tether my iPhone to my laptop, as cool as it is, is not worth the more expensive plan and the $20 a month tethering fee. So I won’t be keeping my current “unlimited” plan and will instead be downgrading to the 200MB for $15 plan. Even if I do need an additional 200MB on occasion it will still just be equal to the $30 I’m paying now.

Here is a roundup from Macworld on the new data plan changes. Here are directions for how you can create your own iPhone data usage report. And here is Neven’s report, from whom I was spurred to post my own.

Network Speed Tests on my Three Devices

Sitting at my desk which is about seven feet from my wireless router I ran the Speed Test on my MacBook Pro, iPhone 3GS and iPad. My cable internet provider is Time Warner. I ran the test five times on each device and averaged the times. Here are the results.

* My MBP is the early 2008 model with a 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, “Penryn” processor and 4GB or memory.

Since the above info is pretty unexciting, be sure to check out Craig Hockenberry’s iPad benchmarks for native app and website javascript performance compared to the 3GS and original iPhone.

An Initial Miscellany of the iPad

Early this morning I drove to Kansas City’s Apple retail store with two of my friends. One of whom is quite nerdy and the other who is quite not nerdy. We stood in line to buy an iPad. Well, technically I stood in line to buy an iPad — my friends came along because I convinced them it’d be fun.

When we arrived at 7:30am there were about 75 people in line already. The first few folks had arrived the night before around 8:00pm, the next group came at 2:00am, and all the others began trickling in around 6:00am.

While waiting in line we were awkwardly interviewed by a young college student, given the opportunity to order breakfast from the California Pizza Kitchen, and had awkwardly-geeky conversations with those in line around us.

The store opened at 9:00am and our line (which had grown to about 200 people by then) was directed to split in two: those who had pre-ordered their iPads and those who had not. Those of us who did not pre-order outnumbered those who had five to one. However, those in the pre-order line were served by the Apple sales team about four to one versus those of us in the non-pre-order line.

Once the line began moving rumors kept murmuring amongst our line that the store was already approaching sold out status, and that all of us who had come so early to buy our iPads would have to come back at 3:00pm to pick up the leftovers, if there were any.

After three hours waiting in line I finally made it into the store. A nice old lady named Linda helped me gather my order and she checked me out on her iPhone. I bought the 16GB iPad, Apple’s black fitted case, and a bluetooth keyboard. Linda had me sign for the purchase using my index finger, and the receipt was emailed to my Mobile Me account. Amazing.

I had a lot of people ask me why I didn’t pre-order mine. Well, three weeks ago I wasn’t entirely convinced that I wanted one on day one. Secondly, I knew that if I did want one I would have no trouble standing in line at an Apple Stores in Kansas City. And lastly, I did not want to hope in UPS to deliver an iPad to my home first thing in the morning.

After a day of using the iPad not only is the battery still not dead, but this thing is what I have always wanted my iPhone to be. The iPad is an easy, fun-to-use device for the day-to-day at my job (which on many days is comprised mostly of emails, instant messaging with my team, attending or leading meetings, and writing).

I am very much looking forward to how the iPad will affect my day-to-day life at work. Or perhaps, how my day-to-day will be affected by the iPad. This little tablet is so different than what I was expecting that really I haven’t found the words for it yet. That doesn’t mean, however, that I don’t have at least a few words to write about my experience with the iPad so far…

Setting it up (iTunes)

Unexpectedly, after unboxing my iPad, I found it was already powered on. Clicking the home button showed you the “connect to iTunes” image.

You can’t do anything until you connect it to iTunes on your Mac or PC. Once you do, you can then begin registering it in iTunes and simultaneously fiddling with the iPad itself.

I didn’t realize how persnickety I am, but I was more distracted with getting the right apps, songs, and photos installed first than I was to start fiddling with the actual device. Since I already knew what I wanted on there (practically down to what apps in what places), to fiddle with it before I had it set up felt like trying to ride a bike without the handlebars put on yet.

Thoughts on the Hardware

It’s what’s inside that counts, and the haters are wrong: this thing does have flash. It’s called Apple’s A4 processor. Oh. my. word. This thing is so smooth and so fast. Combine that with the longest battery ever for an Apple device and you’ve got a machine that was built to be used. Thank you.

But it’s not just the guts that make the iPad so fantastic. I mean, the shell is just as clever as the pieces it holds together. Although the form factor is smaller and heavier than I thought it would be, it feels just right. And yes the bezel looks large and awkward on all the pictures, but it is the perfect size when holding in your hands (if anything, there could be more bezel).

The aluminum back is beautiful, but it’s also that same slip-friendly metal that was on the first-generation iPhone. And since it’s a bit heavy, I am somewhat nervous about dropping the sucker. Though Jony Ive says the iPad was designed to be tossed around:

If it works beautifully, it should also work robustly,” he says. “It’s made for people to chuck onto the car seat and thrust into luggage without thinking. It’s not to be delicate with.

And so it’s true: the iPad is tough. And honestly, my concerns with dropping it have more to do with how it would interrupt my workflow than if it would break the darn thing.

My only quibble with the hardware is that I wish you could set the double click home button to more options. On my MacBook Pro i have multiple keyboard shortcuts to get to apps and settings that I frequently use. To be able to have a super-fast way to launch Mail or Notes or something would be lovely. (Perhaps this is a software quibble and not a hardware one. But regardless it’s a quibble.)

Accessories

I picked up Apple’s iPad case and a Bluetooth keyboard. The keyboard can be usable for much more than just pairing to the iPad, and the Apple case is useful for much more than propping the device up slightly for better typing.

The case is fantastic. I have never had an iPhone case or screen cover, but the iPad case is great. It allows for a better grip to the iPad, and makes it much easier to use when on a table or on your lap. And like I tweeted this morning, about 9 out of 10 folks coming out the Apple store had this Apple case in hand along with their iPad.

Thoughts on the OS and Apps

There is so much good on this device when it comes to software. I am looking forward to see what sorts of UI and UX settings from the iPad also end up in the next major OS release for iPhone and iPod Touches. For instance, home- and lock-screen rotation based on device orientation would likely be excruciatingly annoying on an iPhone.

What irks me the most is the springboard spatiality which Lukas Mathis wrote about a few days ago. Unless you have your home screen completely full with icons there will always a randomly-displaced app icon, and the only one ever in the same location is the top left one.

And the only bug I came across in the OS was that two times today I found myself “stuck” in an app. For instance in the photo album when trying to adjust the size and placement of a picture of my old Jeep, Champ, I got stuck in a spot where all i could do was pinch and zoom the image — no other controls were available and i had to quit out to get back in.

Similarly, when I clicked on a music video that came with a John Mayer album i got stuck on music videos section with no way in the UI to get back to the iPod main controls without quitting and then going back in.

Mobile Safari

My first thought was that the iPad actually is the best way to experience the Web. Safari is so fast, and navigating around with your fingertips is so natural.

As far as the UI of Safari, the thing I’m most thrown off by is the design of the navigation and address bar at the top.

It’s a logical choice to move the navigation, bookmarks and etcetera buttons to the top address bar area on iPad’s mobile safari, rather than having it sit on the bottom. In iPhone’s Mobile Safari the address bar disappears when you scroll down a web page. On the iPad it doesn’t.

I frequently found myself wanting to go to the navigation buttons based on where they would be on the iPhone. While many apps (such as the App Store app) maintain a similar navigation structure as on the iPhone some apps redo it altogether. Just enough to make sense in context, yet still be a bit confusing to a dude who’s been using his iPhone for nearly three years.

Safari on iPad includes a built-in bookmarks bar, just like the on you see in Safari on your Mac. But many of my synced bookmarks in the bookmarks are not usable on my iPad. Six out of the nine aren’t website bookmarks but are javascript bookmarklets, and two of them don’t work with my iPad (MarsEdit and Yojimbo).

Things (to-do app) for iPad

Things for iPad is, by far, the most attractive iteration of Things yet. It looks very much like an iPad app with the papery-texture added to the UI. And it acts very much like an iPad app: you can pinch open a project to peek at its tasks just like you would to pinch open a photo album to peek at its images.

And the latest update of Things on the Mac (1.3.3.) adds smart syncing if you have multiple devices (like an iPhone and iPad) all with a copy of Things on them. I tested it out by adding or checking off different to-do items on my iPad, iPhone, and MacBook Pro and then launched the apps all to sync. And it worked like a charm.

1Password

The genius of 1Password never sank in for me until I began using its iPad version today. It is like a pre-meditated version of Yojimbo for your iPad. You can safely slot all your vital info into it and have it available whenever you need it. There have been more than one occasions when I’ve need access to my license plate number, bank routing number, etc., but wasn’t at my computer and didn’t have the info committed to memory.

Many of those items are encrypted in my Yojimbo library but if I’m not at my laptop I’m out of luck. 1Password does way, way more than keep website login information. It keeps helpful and necessary information, and it keeps it safe. (Thanks, Dave!)

iCal

Once a meeting or event is added to iCal on the iPad then, just like in iPhone, you cannot change the calendar it’s in. This is always frustrating for me because in have a couple calendars that are synced to my assistant’s iCal and a few that are personal. If i make a meeting in the wrong calendar my assistant won’t see it unless I delete and start over, or remember to change it on my MacBook Pro.

NetNewsWire

Arguably the best feed reader on the iPad. Not that there are many, but NNW on the iPad is very much in its element. I adore NNW on my Mac and using its iPad counterpart feels like home.

Pages

Currently Pages is the top paid app in the iPad App Store. No doubt it’s due to promotion by Apple and simply from people wanting to know how a word processor works on a touch device. “If this tablet is going to replace my laptop I’d better have a word processor on it.”

I downloaded it. And yeah, Pages is a very clever and usable App. But the touch interface is not nearly as robust as having one hand on the mouse and one hand on the keyboard. Moreover, I’m a keyboard Junkie — I use keyboard shortcuts like they’re going out of style(!).

Something else in Pages which throws me off is that there is not a save function. By no means is this a bad thing; I’m just so used to saving regularly (and manually). While typing with my Bluetooth keyboard I kept hitting command+s regularly (Partly because I kept thinking I would get interrupted by a phone call (on the iPad).).

Universal Apps, HD Apps, and Standard iPhone Apps

You can identify a universal app by the little plus symbol (+) parked in the top-left corner of the price of an iPhone or iPad app. A universal app is one that has a working version of itself for both iPhone and iPad.

For example: Instapaper Pro is universal, so all you have to do is buy it once and install it on both devices. Things however has an iPhone version and an iPad version — if you want it on both devices you have to buy both apps (which I did).

It is these iPhone apps which have also been built for the iPad that are now the best version of themselves. Twitterrific for iPad is the best version of Twitterrific on any device.

If the next iPhone is going to be called the iPhone HD and ship with a 640×960 screen, what will the App Store be like with all these current iPad apps coming out with names like “Cool App HD” and combined with all the newly-designed-for-iPhone-HD apps which will also be called “Cool App HD”?

Yikes! I think “Cool App for iPad” is a better name — it tells you precisely what it is (an iPad app) and precisely what you’re getting (an app for your iPad). Say what you mean and mean what you say.

And finally, when using iPhone apps on the iPad there is a nice bezel around the edge of the app, and a bar in place where the status bar normally is. But that is just about as far as the joy goes.

Most of my iPhone apps (even many of my favorite ones in all the world) suck on the iPad. Especially when pixel doubled.

I get that the graphics would have to be pixel doubled, but text too? Is that really necessary? It’s the text-based apps that are totally unusable on an iPad. Some of my favorite iPhone apps, like Birdhouse and Simplenote, are virtually useless on the iPad.

There are some other apps though that survive pixel doubling just fine, like FlightControl. It looks a little pixelated but is totally usable and still quite addicting. And Canabalt looks great as a matter of fact. Its finely-drawn pixel art blows up quite nicely.

If an iPhone app doesn’t support landscape mode then it won’t rotate its orientation with the iPad. Even at 1x size they won’t flip to be right-side-up if you’re holding the iPad upside-down.

Additional Miscellany

• Wallpapers: I love that you can set different wallpapers for the lock screen and the home screen.

• The delete key is in a different place on the iPad keyboard than it is on the iPhone’s. It’s in the place it should be, but it throws me off.

• My wife is going to steal this thing.

• Reading an iBook: It is ingenious how you can see the ink through the back of a page as you’re turning it in an iBooks book.

• Mute: Hold the volume rocker button down for two seconds to mute the iPad (Via Twitterrific.)

• Setting the viewport for your website: In my site’s header I used to have the following code to get it to render properly on an iPhone:

  <meta name="viewport" content="width=780, initial-scale=0.4, minimum-scale=0.4" />

  But it wasn’t filling up enough of the iPad’s screen when browsing. So I updated it to this:

  <meta name="viewport" content="width=800” />

• “Multitasking”: I have never been frustrated by iPhone’s lack of “multitasking” and on the iPad I actually prefer to be restrained to one thing at a time. (It helps me focus and stuff.) Just so long as apps have state persistence.

• Apps currently in my iPad Dock: Safari, Notes, Mail, Calendar, Things

The apps that were on the iPhone which have now been re-built and designed for the iPad feel as if they belonged on the iPad all along. Even the apps that originated on the iPhone (such as Instapaper) now feel much more native, and all around more fantastic, on the iPad.

The iPad is not a giant iPod Touch. If anything, my iPhone is now an iPad Mini.

iPhone’s Missing Feed Reader

I spend a prodigious amount of time reading on my iPhone.

Half the apps on my iPhone’s Home screen alone involve reading as a predominant, if not exclusive, feature. Mail, Messages, Safari, Tweetie, Instapaper Pro, Simplenote, and Reeder: these are my most-used apps, and each one is used for reading in some way or another. And yet the app which serves no other purpose than to read, seems to be the most frustrating to use for said purpose.

• In Mail I read and reply.
• In Messages I read and text.
• In Safari I read and surf.
• In Tweetie I read and tweet.
• In Instapaper I read and drink coffee.
• In Simplenote I read and write and edit.
• In Reeder (or any other feed reader app, such as Byline, Fever, Google Reader, NetNewsWire, NewsRack, MobileRSS, etc.) I read.

The predicament with feed reading apps is most certainly not in the quantity of the selections; rather, the quality. This is not to say that most of the legitimate feed reading apps on the iPhone have not been developed with care — but as agents of delivery for my favorite authors, and as contrivances meant for enjoying lengthy bits of text, I prefer a simple app that does less and does it better.

In total fairness asking for the “best feed reader app” is like asking for the “best shirt”. Just as John Gruber so aptly laid out last April when writing on the the UI playground of Twitter clients. John said:

[D]ifferent people seek very different things from a Twitter client. TweetDeck, for example, is clearly about showing more at once. Tweetie is about showing less. That I prefer apps like Tweetie and Twitterrific doesn’t mean I think they’re better. There is so much variety because various clients are trying to do very different things. Asking for the “best Twitter client” is like asking for the “best shirt”.

It is my safe assumption that readers of this website also prefer apps which do less, but do it well. And so read on for a high-level look at some of the more popular iPhone feed readers, what I find good and not-so-good about them, and my suggestions for amelioration.

Reedie

As of this writing the iPhone App Store has nearly 4,000 apps in the News category. This is where all the RSS reading apps are listed. If you search for just “RSS” you’ll get over 700 results, or roughly 18% of the 4,000 news apps. Searching for “RSS Reader” nets you 203 results, and if you get even more specific and search for “Google Reader”, you get 50 apps.

But now compare this to the Social Networking category. It has 2,600 apps, and searching for “Twitter client” returns only about 65 results. There are over three times as many RSS reader apps than there are Twitter Clients in the App Store (based on search results).

Of the 4,000 news apps, the most downloaded are the dedicated apps provided by popular news sources such as the New York Times, USA TODAY, the Associated Press, NPR News, Wall Street Journal, and etc. The first RSS feed reading app you listed amongst the most popular News apps is “Free RSS Reader“; with NetNewsWire Free right on its heals. Surely “Free RSS Reader” is the most downloaded RSS reader by virtue of name alone.

In the most popular social networking apps, the first Twitter client listed is the free version of Twitteriffic. Over its life in the App Store it has received 139,000 reviews, mostly positive. Now compare that to Free RSS Reader which has about 17,000 reviews (mostly negative).

And thus we find a conundrum: the amount of RSS readers for the iPhone that of Twitter client apps, and yet the tables are turned when it comes to quality.

According to a small poll I conducted via Twitter, the app people spend the most amount of time reading from while on their iPhone is Instapaper, followed closely by Tweetie and then Mail.

Tweetie and Instapaper are two classy apps. They are easy to read from, easy to get around in, and a ton of fun. But tweeting and reading things later should not be the only place where all the action is. I would love to see a top-notch, Tweetie-level, RSS reader for the iPhone…

Reedie.

Why? Because when Tweetie 2 blew every other Twitter client out of the water it also sunk a few apps that were in a different part of the pool, and it’s time for a comeback.

There are tons of nerds who were using Twitter way before Ashton was and who have been riding the RSS train for years and years. And since nerds are the pickiest of all when it comes to usability and interface design, they are the ones most in need of a great feed reader app for their iPhone.

Secondly, what Twitter has done for Twitter clients, so has Google Reader done for feed reader apps. As Loren Brichter said during his interview with Macworld:

One of the fantastic things about Twitter clients is how easy it is for users to jump from one to another. Just type in a username and password and off you go. It’s possible for anyone to write a Twitter client nowadays and have the opportunity to completely blow everyone else out of the water.

Granted, the initial set up of a new Twitter account is really simple compared to the same for Google Reader. Twitter asks for your name, desired username, and password, and then you’re free to follow friends and strangers at will. A process significantly more straightforward than creating a Google account, activating Reader, and then finding and populating it with RSS and Atom feeds.

But the type of people that would use a feed reader (nerds!) are also the types of people who already have Google accounts (we’ve been beta testing Gmail since 2004), and who are even more likely to have an OPML file sitting around ready to be imported.

Up until today, all of my software reviews have been about programs which I find fantastic. But today I’m trying to get out there that I see a chance for improvement in the iPhone App market. But the only way I know how to pinpoint the opportunity is to highlight those who are trying to meet it, and (in my opinion) not quite hitting the mark. It’s not that I have only negative things to say about the following apps, it’s just not all moonbeams and rainbows. Also note that I hold Brent, Sean, Milo, and the other developers all in the highest regard. They are busting their butts to make great software; thank you, guys. Please keep it up.

Google Reader (Mobile Web App)

The online RSS feed reader that took over the world. It was a big day when they began offering public APIs for developers to sync to and from G-Reader, and it was a smart move for NewsGator to abandon their home-brewed syncing platform to allow NetNewsWire (on desktop and iPhone) and FeedDemon to sync via Google Reader.

The mobile version of Google Reader is not too shabby. More than one well respected nerd uses it instead of any number of native iPhone apps which sync to it. And I actually prefer the mobile version over the full web version. However, the mobile version doesn’t support many of the favorite features found in a native iPhone app such as emailing articles and links, saving to Instapaper, and a few others. But it is a classy, speedy mobile web app. And it’s free. Hello.

Byline

Version 1.0 came out in July 2008. It cost a whopping $10 and sported a much more Mail-like UI. Three months later Milo release Byline 2. Then version 2.5 came out in July 2009, and now 3.0 is due for release soon (and will be free for existing users).

Version 3 will finally support Instapaper and Twitter, as well as a few other cool new features and UI refinements. But for the most part it will still look and feel just like the most current version. If you’re not already sold on Byline, version 3.0 will surely not be Just What You Always Wanted. But for the many, many fans of Byline that already exist this next release is sure to be a home run worth waiting for.

There’s quite a bit to like about Byline. For starters, it’s been around for nearly two years — it was one of the original iPhone feed reading apps and has continued to see forward movement. What makes Byline stand out is its caching of your feeds. If you do a lot of offline reading (or if you live in New York or San Francisco) a huge motivation to use Byline may be its ability to store the text and images of your feeds, as well as linked-to Web pages, right on your iPhone. It will also remember stars and unread/read state, and it all syncs back to Google Reader when you’re next online. (The 3.0 version will even have the ability to cache your feed content while the screen is locked.)

However, my biggest quibble with Byline is the GUI. I know that Milo has to develop graphics that look good on many different generations of iPhones and iPod touches, and that he is proud of the look and feel of his app. But in my opinion the heavy gradients used throughout the app are too much, and give an overall impression of immaturity to the app. If it’s not a delight to look at and read from, it’s less of a delight to use.

Since most people voted that if they were reading, chances are they were in Instapaper or Tweetie, I thought it would be interesting to contrast the heavy gradients used in Byline to the subtle gradients used in Tweetie to to the complete lack of gradients used in the iPhone’s Mail app:

(FYI: Even though Instapaper won the “most read from app” question, since it uses the same no-gradient design as Apple’s own Mail, I chose Mail for the comparison so as to have a native Apple app in the mix.)

NetNewsWire

Though NNW is arguably the best desktop RSS reader on the planet the iPhone version is not quite as mind blowing as its older brother.

NetNewsWire for iPhone is quick, reliable, and just the right balance of feature-richness versus simplicity. One of its most clever feature by far is the option to choose which feeds are downloaded and synced by your iPhone. Especially handy for those crazy folks that like to sit right in front of the RSS fire hydrant. However NNW feels more like a utility program built for accessing feeds, rather than a contrivance for enjoying them.

Mobile RSS Pro for Google RSS

Here is a clever app. Clearly the developers have put a ton of time and thought into this. And though a few of the features are simply re-works from some of Loren’s popular Tweetie 2 user interactions (such as swipe to reveal options below a listed item, and pulling down a list to refresh), they’ve got some additional great things going for them:

• MobileRSS Pro saves state perfectly (better than any of the feed readers listed here).
• It’s fast.
• It’s got a good-looking, ‘dark’ theme (it’s called “Black” but it’s actually blue).
• The way they implemented the unread badge count for each feed as a little tag that hangs over the edge of the feed list columns is very cute.

But despite all this, the app just doesn’t feel right due to a handful of little things which make it feel unbalanced:

• Such as the way my gmail account in shown large type at the top.
• The large vector icons for “All items”, etc…, contrasted against the small favicons for the each feed.
• I only have one folder, and at the bottom of the root screen it says, “52 Feeds, 1 Folders” (oops).
• On the item view list of any given feed it has my gmail account name crammed into the ‘back’ arrow, with the title of the feed somewhat off center, and then a little ‘info circle’ icon pushed to the right-hand side.
• It uses the familiar “share” / “export” icon at two different places in the app, yet for for two completely different things: (1) when viewing an individual article, tapping the icon brings up options to email the article’s link, save it to Instapaper, or etc…; (2) when viewing an entire feed with its list of articles the same icon is there, and tapping it in this context gives you the options to sort by oldest/newest or to mark all as read.

With a little bit more polish and attention to detail, MobileRSS Pro could be a much more classy app.

Fever

Shaun Inman’s Fever is the best dressed web-based feed reader out there. (I wrote about it at length when it first came out last June.) And the mobile-optimized version of Fever is just as great. It is a delight to use, easy to read from, and is always in sync with itself (duh!).

The downside to Fever’s mobile version is the same as any other mobile web app: no state saving, no caching for offline reading, and little to no sharing/saving features.

I stopped using Fever about four or five months ago when I took a break from RSS feeds all together. Through the holiday season I hardly ever checked my feeds. Similar to the olden days I would visit individual sites on occasion by typing the URL in by hand; and I was happy.

So happy in fact I decided to slash my OPML and only subscribe to that small handful of sites which have a history of enriching my day.

I wanted to keep Fever fully loaded so as to make use of the Hot list on occasion, but I didn’t want the bloat of loading all those feeds in a browser every time I wanted to check RSS. So about six weeks ago I came back to NetNewsWire on my desktop and populated it with only 25 time-worthy feeds.

Now, my current RSS setup is Reeder on my iPhone and NetNewsWire on my Mac — all synced via Google Reader.

Reeder

Reeder’s approach to their app design is brilliant. They’ve sought to bring back some of the nostalgia of reading while on a digital device by virtualizing the look and feel of an old, trusted book. And they did this without sacrificing the ‘touchability’ of a well-designed iPhone app.

The custom GUI goes beyond just the torn-paper markers and off-white background. The pop-up menu for sharing an item unique, being more akin to what you may see on Android OS instead of using the standard buttons on iPhone OS. And there are a few custom, intuitive swipe gestures which can be used to mark individual articles as read, unread, or starred.

In his review of Reeder on Download Squad, Nik Fletcher aptly wrote: “Reeder balances the familiar with custom elements, and as a result the interface looks great when browsing (and reading) content.”

So yes, Reeder is more unique than any of the aforementioned feed reading apps while still feeling familiar and friendly. It is by far the best feed reader app available in the App Store right now. Yet some of its cleverness feels too clever, and since Reeder is so close to being beyond great, its shortcomings seem so much shorter.

For instance, the status bar takeover is neat, but is it necessary? I find myself distracted by it every time open the app. It always makes me think of the stoplight countdown before a Super Mario Kart race begins: Beep. Beep. BEEEEEEEP!1

Secondly, the GUI is not contrasty enough. I love the texture and the vintage, off-white coloring, but it can be difficult to quickly see the difference between a read and an unread item, as well as the lighter colored text which makes it not quite as easy to read on. But this is a subtle quibble…

My primary gripe is the lack of saving state. Regardless of where you are in the app when you quit out of it you will always start back at the beginning when you re-launch it. Compare this against the convenience of state saving found in Instapaper. Instapaper actually saves two types of states: (1) those of individual articles: if you are reading an article and then return to the item list view, and then come back to that article later, it will open in the same place you left it; and (2) overall state: upon a re-launch of Instapaper you will always find it just as you left it.

Reedie

A good feed reader is quick, reliable, and readable. But a great feed reader has to be all of those and more. It has to be clever, very polished, and, of course, fun.

My ideal feed reader app would look like some sort of marriage between Tweetie 2, Instapaper, and Reeder. It would have the sounds and UI elegance of Tweetie 2, the typographic and state saving bliss of Instapaper,2 and the uniqueness of Reeder. (For bonus points it would swipe the swipe-top-navigation-bar-to-go-home feature from Tweetie 2.)

I don’t want another iPhone feed reader, I want a better one. Because apps like Tweetie, Twitteriffic, Birdhouse, and Birdfeed are all outstanding Twitter clients — each one is clever, polished, and fun. And who says feed reading can’t be as enjoyable as tweeting?

The Self-Proclaimed Lame Mac Setup of Sean Sperte, but I Think It’s Pretty Sweet

Sean is a graphic designer and web developer at The City Church in Seattle, WA. He’s been making websites since the early 90’s. He’s an Apple (and technology) enthusiast, and writes a website called Geek & Mild. He’s married to Casey and has a baby daughter named Lucy.

Sean’s Setup:

1. What does your desk look like?

2. What is your current Mac setup?

At work I use a 15-inch MacBook Pro (mid-2008), outfitted with 4GB of RAM and a matte screen. I use the Griffen iCurve and plug into a 23-inch Cinema Display. I also use the Mighty Mouse, and despite its reputation, really like its design.

At home and on the go I use my personal 13-inch MacBook Pro (unibody, SD card slot), also equipped with 4GB of RAM. I don’t have a desk at home (yet) so I usually setup wherever I can find a flat surface — which is sometimes just my lap.

I carry the Magic Mouse with me, and use it whenever the MacBook Pro’s trackpad isn’t enough.

For backup I have a Drobo with two drives in it, as well as an external (bus-powered) hard drive that I carry with me. I plug into the Drobo at least once a week, and run Time Machine. The external drive serves as my photo library vault, and duplicates my iPhoto library.

3. Why are you using this setup?

I used my work laptop as my primary computer until purchasing the 13-inch MacBook Pro last fall as my personal computer. The 15-inch is heavier and bigger, and I found that carrying it in my bag caused back pain and fatigue. When the need arose for me to have my own, personal computer, I opted for the smaller laptop over, say, an iMac, because I wanted to remain mobile. My job requires a level of flexibility in that regard.

I don’t yet have a desk to work from at home because I haven’t found the perfect one.

I keep both Macs in perfect synchronization with Dropbox. I’m even able to run local development environments on both computers with the same files using MAMP and VirtualHostX.

4. What software do you use on a daily basis, and for what do you use it?

• Safari — my web browser of choice
• Adobe Photoshop — graphics creation
• FontExplorer X Pro — font management
• Dropbox — file synchronization and backup
• Things — task management
• TextMate — development, text editing
• Coda — quick development and file transfer
• Mail — email
• Tweetie — Twitter
• iTunes — music, podcasts
• MAMP — development environment

Honorable mentions (not daily uses, but still valuable in my workflow):

• Droplr — quick file/link/photo sharing
• Transmit — heavy-duty file transfer
• VMWare Fusion — Windows emulation
• Fission — audio editing
• HandBrake — video conversion/transcoding

5. Do you own any other Mac gear?

My 32GB iPhone 3GS is always with me. I also have an older AirPort Extreme and carry an AirPort Express in my bag.

Also in my bag and worth mentioning:

• A Nintendo DS (which I hardly ever play anymore)
• A Canon SD450 point-and-shoot camera
• A couple AppBooks from Vol5, and .38mm Pilot G-2 pens
• Starbucks VIA

6. Do you have any future upgrades planned?

A few extra drives to keep the Drobo fat and happy.

More Sweet Setups

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

An Amalgamation of Predictions and Questions Regarding the Apple Tablet

I think the rumored Apple Tablet will be a thin, unibody touchscreen device with a locked OS. My guess is that it will be more like a MacBook Touch and less like an iPhone Pro. And though I think its introduction to the world will be less full of “WOW” than the iPhone’s was in 2007, I still think the Tablet will be awesome and maybe, just maybe, reinvent our approach to personal computing.

Regarding the Hardware

Apple is serious about their software. So serious in fact they build their own hardware to run the software on. When introducing iPhone and iPhone OS Steve Jobs quoted Alan Kay: “People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.”

I have no doubt that Apple is going to be very proud of the software that will run on their rumored Tablet, and so I also have no doubt that they are also going have an equally beautiful and though-through piece of hardware to run that software.

What will the design be like?

The enclosure surely won’t be thicker than a MacBook Air — and without a physical keyboard or USB port to thicken it up, I’m guessing it won’t be any more than one half-inch thin and will weigh less than three pounds. I wouldn’t be surprised for it to be a unibody, aluminum enclosure. If it’s designed as a larger iPhone, perhaps it will be more akin to the original iPhone design than the current one.

And assuming the Tablet sports similar hardware simplicity as the iPhone or MacBook Air do, my shot in the dark is that it will come with a headphone jack, an iPod Dock connector, a screen lock button, a “home” button, volume buttons, and speakers. But no camera. And perhaps a flashing LED for when the screen is locked?

As for the internals my money is on something similar to an iPod Touch: bluetooth, Wi-Fi, accelerometer, and flash storage. But no 3G connectivity.

Could it be a Dockable Tablet?

I love Tim Van Damme’s take on the docking tablet rumor. I, for one, would most certainly use that type of setup.

Like Pat, my current setup consists of a MacBook Pro with an Apple Cinema Display at home and one at work. Whenever I’m at home or work my MacBook Pro is plugged into the external display, keyboard, and mouse — effectively simulating a desktop computer.

When on the road I actually don’t use my laptop that much. I usually just use my iPhone to answer email, read feeds, or check Twitter. Having a computer that still gave me the horsepower I need when plugged into an external monitor at work, yet was more travel friendly and versatile while out and about would be a dream.

But the intersection where Tim’s great idea and my wish list meet, there is a red light called the Tablet OS and App Store. Assuming the Apple Tablet has its own, tablet-friendly operating system and a similar solution to third-party apps as the iPhone, there is no way it would work as a one-stop solution for a guy like me who’s whole professional (and a great deal of his personal) life revolves around his computer.

What will the default orientation be?

Landscape or portrait?

No doubt the Tablet will come with an accelerometer, but what the default orientation of the device is will say a lot about how Apple sees it. Simply put: if the default orientation is portrait then the Tablet comes across as an oversized iPhone; if landscape, then as a touch-screen laptop.

Moreover, what happens when you reorient the device? Will the orientation its Home Screen (or Desktop) be fixed like it is on iPhone OS? Currently if you hold the iPhone in portrait mode the Home Screen remains in portrait mode. If we find that the Home Screen is not a fixed orientation, perhaps iPhone OS 4.0 will support position-relevant Home Screen layouts.

(This makes me think about how fun it will be to watch ways that software and hardware development on the Mac, iPhone, and Tablet will play off one another in the months and years to come. Both internally by Apple, and externally by third-party software and hardware developers.)

What will the input methods be?

Technically this should be a software question, as I doubt the Tablet will have options for a physical keyboard.

I wonder if the average person spends close to the same (if not more) time typing on their cell phone than they do on a computer. On more than one occasion — after reading a well-written, lengthy email — I’ve been surprised to see a “Sent from my iPhone” or “Sent on my Verizon Wireless Blackberry” signature. (No doubt the average person spends more time on their computer than on their cell phone, but a lot of that time is likely spent browsing and reading various media, not typing.)

My point being that millions of people are comfortable with non-standard keyboards. If and when the Tablet ships without an optional keyboard like Andy suggests, some people will pout and some will be indifferent. But most will think the touchscreen keyboard is cool will get along just fine by it.

Does the Tablet really need a physical keyboard? I don’t think so. In fact, if it were no better than the current iPhone keyboard but just scaled up I think it would be more than adequate for the vast majority of users.

But just because I think most people will get along fine with it, doesn’t mean I’m not concerned about the text input methods. If the software keyboard leaves something to be lacking for certain situations, and there is no hardware keyboard, then what’s left? Voice recognition and styli…

Will it use a stylus? No way. (Though there are speculations about a possible “Multi-Touch Stylus” of some sort.)

When introducing the iPhone Steve mocked the idea of a stylus. Nobody wants a stylus — the finger is the best input device in the world. But what about on a tablet computer? What about for that computer which may very well replace the one you currently take to all those meetings? What do you do in those situations where “thumbing something out” isn’t fast enough and talking to the speech recognition software isn’t quiet enough?

Using my iPhone, I reenacted a scenario of myself being in a high-paced marketing meeting while taking notes on my “Tablet” using my index finger as a stylus. This is the unreadable result:

The nearly-indecipherable text above says:

Mktg Mtg / 1-11-10
–––––––
Imagine I’m in a
meeting & hurriedly
trying to write
notes w/ my
index finger.
This stinks.

Granted the iPhone’s screen is small compared to the rumored 7- or 10-inch screen of the currently nonexistent tablet, but the point is not how cramped the above chicken scratch is — the point is how impossible to read it is.

Dan Moren’s guess regarding text input is that there will be a split-up version of the iPhone’s soft keyboard which you would use your thumbs to type on while holding both edges of the tablet. Something like a virtual version of the Apple Adjustable Keyboard, or one those v-shaped ergonomic keyboards my cousin Nate loves so much. While I certainly think that’s a possibility, I personally wouldn’t rule out a full-width software keyboard that you touch type onto with all ten of your digits.

Regarding the Software

It all comes down to software.

While Patrick Rhone and John Gruber think the Tablet may be nothing short of the reinvention of personal computing, I’m with John Siracusa, who thinks the software will be so obvious it’s boring. Meaning: it will certainly be awesome, but not as breakthrough as the iPhone was.

And the vast majority of the breakthrough wizbangery that the iPhone blew us away with was all software related. Though it certainly is a looker, iPhone wasn’t nearly as much of a hardware revolution as iPhone OS was a software revolution.

In essence, iPhone is a small, handheld touch-screen device. Not unlike other small, handheld touch-screen devices. Ultimately, iPhone was, and is, different because of the software.

Take the new Nexus One as a comparison. The Nexus One has great hardware when compared to the latest iPhone: faster processor, more RAM, gorgeous screen, better camera. For all intents and purposes it should be the best smartphone in the world. But it’s not because it runs second-tier software.

When Steve Jobs announced the iPhone he said he’d been waiting two and a half years for that moment. He also boasted the iPhone OS as being “5 years ahead of any other mobile software.” And after three years so far he’s still right. It’s amazing that even an original, 3-year-old iPhone is still one of the most advanced, powerful, and user-friendly mobile phones available today.

What will be the Tablet’s primary Function?

Unlike the Kindle who’s primary function is to read things, I’m certain the Tablet will not have just one function.

The iPhone was billed as a new iPod, a mobile phone, and a breakthrough internet device. What three power plays will Apple use when describing the Tablet? I honestly have no idea.

Who will use it?

For those who are not interminable computer users, will the Tablet be able to serve as their only machine? My wife, for example, though she uses her computer daily, still uses it a fraction of the time I use mine. She mostly answers email, listens to online classes, and reads and takes notes.

Right now she’s using a 5-year-old 12-inch PowerBook G4, and it works great for her needs. But if and when the PowerBook breaks the cheapest Apple computer I can replace it with is a $1,000 plastic MacBook. ($900 if I get a refurbished one.)

The Tablet will most likely be cheaper than a white plastic MacBook, easier for my wife to carry around (And safer: a solid-state hard drive helps against any accidents that involve gravity and the floor.), and it just may be more user-friendly for all those non-nerds who don’t need high-octane primary machines that plug into enormous external monitors.

So perhaps, a Tablet from Apple would be ideal for the average email answering, internet surfing, news reading, Facebook updating individual.

How will you get Applications onto it?

I’m in complete agreement with those that predict the Tablet will be a locked OS like the iPhone, and that third-party apps will have to be installed via an App Store (also like the iPhone). But that raises more questions about the Tablet App store. Such as, will it be its own App Store, or will it be blended with the iPhone App Store somehow?

Having a whole new store and whole new class of apps for the Tablet seems absurd (three different types of Mac OS X apps!?) and logical (I wouldn’t put it past Apple) all at the same time. I wonder how easy it may be to port apps from the Mac and/or iPhone to the Tablet?

And a tablet device leads the obvious usage of reading. And but so if there are now books and periodicals available via a Tablet App Store (like the Amazon Kindle Store) will you also be able to buy those books and periodicals for your regular Mac and/or your iPhone? (Books you buy for your Amazon Kindle only work on a Kindle (or the Kindle iPhone App).) And how will you publish them?

Furthermore, I can’t help but wonder if the Tablet’s app store will be a step towards Apple’s solution for Application installation on OS X. For the average user, installing an app on their iPhone is incredibly more simple (and safe) than installing an app on their Mac. Despite the fact there are headaches galore with many iPhone app developers regarding the approval process, for the end user it couldn’t be better: pick the app you want, tap “Install”, enjoy.

Though I can’t fathom Apple taking all indie app development for OS X in this direction, it will be interesting to see how the Tablet App Store works, and what sort of precedent that sets (if any) for future app installation on the Mac OS.

Will the Tablet sync with other computers via iTunes?

Or will it be able to stand on its own? Or, most likely, both?

And if it does sync, will it be able to sync with Windows machines like iPods and iPhones can? And what if you only own a Tablet and an iPhone — can you sync your iPhone to your tablet (or the other way around)?

What will it be called, and where will it be positioned?

Your guess is as good as mine. I think Marco is right that it won’t be the “iSlate”, nor will it have “Tablet” or even the “i” prefix in the name.

Andy Ihnatko doesn’t necessarily have a prediction, but he does describe Apple’s approach to their product lineup perfectly:

Apple sees its product line as a cast of characters, through which they tell a single story. If two products seem to do the same job, then one of them needs to go.

For that reason, any concept you might have of the [Apple Tablet] as “an alternative to a notebook” or “a super-big iPod Touch” has to be dismissed, unless you can make a case for why Apple will stop selling the $999 MacBook or the iPod Touch.

I think Andy’s spot on, and I have no idea how Apple is going to position this thing.

But if I had to bet, my money would be on MacBook Touch, and here’s why: In general, everyone is already assuming the Tablet is basically an iPhone with more pixels. If Apple names it something like iPhone Pro it would only confirm the assumptions that the Tablet is just like the iPhone yet weighs 10 times more and costs three times as much. If, however, it’s a MacBook Touch (or something like that) then it not only comes across as a lighter, cheaper, and cooler computer, it also positions the thing properly in case Apple does decide they’re want to shift the paradigms of personal computing as we know it on January 27.

Jailbreak Addendum

After yesterday’s post on jailbreaking there was quite a bit of response via email and Twitter. I received quite a few tips and links, but for the most part the feedback was either, welcome to the club, or, now I’m gonna try it. Also after yesterday’s post I had renewed vigor to geek out a bit more with my jailbroken iPhone, and so I spent some time surfing for icons and fiddling with new apps. Through all of which I’ve discovered a few things worth sharing here.

Regarding Icons and Themes

• This afternoon I spent some time gathering properly styled icons for the Matte Nano theme that are not currently included in the Cydia install package. What I couldn’t find online I created in Photoshop.

  Altogether, these include: Tweetie 2, Things, Fever, Pastebot, Birdhouse, Blimp, Ninjawords, Boggle, Orbital, Mill Colour, Mint (stats), Mint (money), Simplenote, Dropbox, Ego, Canabalt, Settings, and Tilt Shift Generator.

  If you are interested, I’ve zipped these icons — along with the Matte Nano icon template PSD file — and posted them for download here.

• When adding or replacing icons in a theme, the png filename is case sensitive, and has to exactly match the name of the app as it appears on the springboard.

• Just Another iPhone Blog has more info on how to change or add icons to a theme. Like Thomas says, “it’s all just a matter of knowing which folders your image files are in, and then replacing the particular icons you’d like to change.”

Regarding Apps

• I never realized this until today, but there was no need for me to delete the OpenSSH app to avoid possible hijacking. It can easily be enabled / disabled via SBSettings.

• ProSwitcher: If you are using Backgrounder to keep apps running in the background, then ProSwitcher allows you to view and go to those apps with a UI very similar to the way Mobile Safari presents multiple Webpages. (Thanks to reader John Rust for the tip.)

  After a day of use, the concept of ProSwitcher seems a lot more exciting then its actual usefulness. Especially on my iPhone 3GS where apps launch so quickly, and quitting out of one and starting another is almost faster than using ProSwitcher to switch between them. Usefulness (to me, at least) aside, the design and functionality of ProSwitcher is top notch — perhaps this is the most native-feeling, jailbreak app I have.

• Unfortunately, Pastebot does not work as you wish it might if you set it to continue running in the background. So far as I can tell, Pastebot is programmed to copy in what’s on the iPhone’s clipboard at the time of startup, not at any time a new item is added. Thus, if you leave Pastebot running in the background it does not continue to collect all copied bits of text and images from your iPhone (or Mac if synced).

Jailbreak

Due to a few false assumptions I never saw the point in jailbreaking my iPhone.

1. I assumed it would make my iPhone unreliable, glitchy, and slow.
2. I assumed there was no way the iPhone UI could be improved upon so why bother? (And lord knows I don’t want this as my new UI theme.)
3. I am already on AT&T, so what’s the point of a jailbroken iPhone if I’m not going to also unlock it for use on a different carrier?
4. I assumed I would only be able to download and use jailbrake iPhone apps, and not apps from the iTunes store or apps that I was beta testing.

I was wrong on all assumptions. And so six weeks ago I jailbroke my iPhone. I backed it up knowing that in the the worst-case scenario I could simply erase it and restore from my last backup. I downloaded Blackra1n, ran it, and followed some instructions. The whole jailbreak process took about 60 seconds, I have had no trouble since. And now I have a slightly more unique iPhone.

After jailbreaking, I made a few adjustments to the UI and added a few jailbreak iPhone apps:

• Winterboard: This is the app you use to manage UI themes and changes to your iPhone. As seen in the screenshots above, I’m using the Matte UI theme, and the Matte Nano icons, though I did have to adjust the Pastebot, Simplenote, Things, and Camera icons myself. These themes are available for free on Cydia and are, by far, the my favorite reason to have a jailbroken iPhone.

  (Some other popular themes seem to be Suave, Radiance, and iElemental.)

• OpenSSH: This is how I transfer icons and themes from my MacBook Pro to my iPhone. Even though I changed the default password I rarely use SSH, so I simply delete it from my iPhone after using it so as to avoid even the slightest risk of being “held hostage“.

• SBSettings: For one-swipe access to toggle Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and more, as well as a secondary ‘dock’ where I’ve placed the jailbroken apps like Cydia and Boss Prefs.

  SBSettings is is by far my most-used jailbroken package. It is especially useful for those times when you want to switch Wi-Fi off (or on) while in the middle of using an app. For example: when trying to post a tweet at a coffee shop that has an open Wi-Fi signal but not free Internet access. The iPhone grabs the signal but can’t actually connect to the Web. But instead of quitting Tweetie to turn-off wireless, I simply swipe the top status bar and SBSettings slides down for me to turn off Wi-Fi and Tweet from 3G instead.

• Boss Prefs: All sorts of additional system preferences — such as enabling tethering, and hiding default icons which you can’t otherwise remove (like the Compass and Contacts apps).

The biggest problem with installing themes that come with custom icons is that unsupported icons are left as-is. This makes for either a very horrid homescreen with mis-matched icons, or you’re forced to put all your new, custom icons on one screen, and all your other, non-custom icons onto another screen.

However, there are two workarounds for this icon dillema:

1. If your theme sports smaller icons (like the ones in iMatte Nano, or Suave) the standard sized icons will be resized if you install them while running the theme. This goes for website bookmark icons, too. For apps that are already on your iPhone if you delete them and re-install them from iTunes they’ll come back re-sized.

2. SSH into your iPhone and add properly-sized icons to your theme’s icon folder, found in: /Library/Themes/THEME_NAME.theme/Icons

Since jailbreaking my iPhone I have had no trouble using it as I always did. I’ve successfully bought new iPhone apps from iTunes (on the iPhone and on my Mac), upgraded current apps, installed beta apps and their Ad Hoc Profiles, bought and synced music, and more. If you pop the hood on your iPhone, keep in mind that it’s still a hack, and your milage may vary.

Pastebot: A Copy and Paste Playground

The best way to describe the handsome apps from Tapbots is as half tool and half toy. Mark and Paul have taken three straightforward utilities and converted them into three delightful apps for your iPhone. This third and most recent app, Pastebot, is perhaps the most useful and most delightful so far.

Pastebot is more powerful and versatile than its siblings, and it comes with all sorts of tricks and surprises floating around. To get the most out of it requires a minimal understanding of how the app works. When you first launch Pastebot you are guided through a cute and succinct tour. Later, when you find yourself in various screens within the app, little help tips will pop up to point out functionality.

Using and mastering Pastebot borders on entertainment.

Daily Usage

Other than the clipboard history in LaunchBar, I have never used a true clipboard manager. My ‘clipboard manager’ is Yojimbo. That’s where I throw random bits of info, web clippings, text, images, PDFs, and more — some to be stored indefinitely, some to be deleted when I don’t need them anymore, and some which will no doubt be forgotten.

Using a clipboard manager on your iPhone for boilerplate management is an obvious solution. At times it can be easier and quicker to copy and paste a canned response to a text or email than to thumb one out. And this is what most clipboard managers in the app store boast about: their ability to store text snippets for quick access. But very few brag about their ability to capture bits of info from your iPhone…

An app that auto-populates itself with the contents of your clipboard is surely the simplest way to throw bits of info into an app on the iPhone. Which is why a clipboard manager is, in my opinion, a foundational functionality for an attractive, capable Anything Bucket app for the iPhone. And Pastebot is the closest I’ve seen for this type of app.

On my Mac, the key to a good anything bucket is its ubiquity — that at any time, in any application, you can throw something into it. On the iPhone however, you can’t run 3rd-party apps in the background. Which is why the most important feature of Pastebot is launch time. In my usage with a mostly-full clippings folder littered with text, images, and other paraphernalia, Pastebot loads (and pairs with my Mac) in less than a few seconds.

Once running, whatever you last copied on your iPhone appears at the top of the Clipboard list. And if you’ve got the Pastebot Sync utility installed, anything you copy on your Mac pops right into the Pastebot app while its open.

From there it’s a copy and paste playground. You can sort, edit, add, delete, use, transfer, and more.

Miscellaneous Observations From Copying and Pasting Various File Types Between my Mac and my iPhone Using the Pastebot Sync Utility

• Text: Even thousands of words copy over quickly, and text is the only data type that you can copy from one mac and past to another using Pastebot as the middle-man.

• Images: Copying a photo from within iPhoto will send the actual picture. Though the title of the image from iPhoto does not transfer.

  Copying a whole slew of images from iPhoto gives Pastebot a datatype that it doesn’t recognize:

  

  However, it still maintains the data. For example, I copied 9 images from iPhoto, they showed up in Pastebot as unknown Mac data, but from there I was still able to paste them onto my Desktop.

  Also, copying an image from Preview will get the full image onto your iPhone and allow you to use it on your iPhone. But copying the image file from the Finder only sends the file-type icon.

• Audio and Video: Copying an audio or video file from iTunes sends the metadata to Pastebot. But it’s metadata based on where in iTunes the file was copied from. For example, trying to copy Star Trek to Pastebot from my Recently Added playlist sends this info:

  Star Trek 2:06:47 J.J. Abrams 11/18/09 7:48 PM

  (The same info that is shown in the playlist’s columns: Name, Time, Artist, and Date Added.)

  But trying to copy Star Trek from the Movies playlist sends this:

  Star Trek 2:06:47 Sci-Fi & Fantasy 2009
  The greatest adventure of all time begins with Star Trek, the incredible story of a young crew’s maiden voyage onboard the most advanced starship ever created: the U.S.S. Enterprise. On a journey filled with action, comedy and cosmic peril, the new recrui
  Star Trek – iTunes Extras Sci-Fi & Fantasy

  On the other hand, if you copy an audio or video file from within the Finder it sends that file’s relevant icon to Pastebot. And if you then paste that icon back to the Finder, it will paste the audio or video file; pasting it when in a plain text document will paste the filename; pasting it in a rich text document or an email will attach the file; and trying to paste into iTunes does nothing.

• Folders & Zip Files: You can copy an entire folder or zip file. It shows up in Pastebot as a folder or zip icon, but pasting it back to the Finder the whole folder, with all its contents, shows up unscathed.

  You can email a file that Pastebot itself doesn’t recognize but it gets sent as an icon file. Sending a ZIP file you copied into Pastebot will only send the 512×512 icon titled as filename.zip. Similarly, sending a folder sends the icon of a folder named after the folder you had copied.

  

• PDFs: Copying a page of a PDF document from within Preview will send that actual page. You can then paste it into the finder and you’ll get the page as if it were dragged out from Preview.

Transferring Data from one Mac to another using Pastebot and the Pastebot Sync utility

Using Pastebot Sync you can pair Pastebot on your iPhone with as many Macs as you like. But as far as I can tell, the only data you can transfer between multiple Macs using Pastebot as the mediator, is text clippings. If any file or image originates on Mac #1 when it gets copied into Pastebot, it won’t paste to Mac #2.

Although anything that was added to Pastebot from within your iPhone can be pasted to any synced Mac.

They say a man buys something for a good reason, and the real reason. You buy an app from Tapbots because it does something useful, but in truth, you just wanted to play with it.

What to Get for That Nerdy, Design-Savvy, Coffee-Loving, Snowboarding, Person in Your Life

Nerds are hard to shop for. We know precisely what we want, but we’re curiously passive about letting you know. Instead, we want you to know what we want without us having to say anything. Furthermore, the trick to being a great gift giver is to get someone the thing that they didn’t even know they wanted until they open it. Therefore, you’ll find below a list of gadgets, trinkets, and power tools.1

Except for that iPhone dock you see below, and the classic thermos, I own and use everything on this list. Each of these are great gifts, and I’d be proud to give any one of them to my other nerdy, design-savvy, coffee-loving, snowboarding friends or family members.

Nerdy

1. Wooden Log iPhone Docking Station: $68

2. Twelve South BookArc: $50

3. Star Trek (2009 DVD): $21

4. Media Temple Web Hosting: $100

Design-Savvy

1. Pilot 0.40mm Gel Pen: $16 / dozen

2. Levenger Circa Notebooks

3. 1-Year Subscription to HOW Magazine: $30

4. Field Notes Colors Subscription: $129

5. Gotham Typeface: $199

Coffee-Loving

1. Chemex Coffee Maker and Filters: $50

2. A few pounds of Peets: $15

3. Stanley Classic Thermos: $34

4. Breville Conical Burr Grinder: $100

Snowboarding

1. Ride Concept Snowboard: $750

2. Burton Lifeline Snowboard Mitt in Mocha: $80

3. Spy: Zoe Black Gloss Sunglasses: $140

Miscellaneous Stocking Stuffers

1. The Little Red Writing Book: $10

2. J Crew Magic Wallet: $22

3. Dewalt Heavy-Duty Compound Miter Saw: $210

4. J Crew Argyle Socks: $15

5. Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations: $32

6. Ticket to Ride: $38

7. WoodWick Candle: $15

Upgrading to the 3G S

Upgrading to the 3G S

And tweeting about it.

iPhone 3.0 OS Walkthrough

iPhone 3.0 OS Walkthrough

Rene Ritchie asks:

“Need a handy link to send your friends who may have questions?”

Why yes, I do. And may I also suggest Dan Moren’s excellent and winded review of the new iPhone software update on MacWorld.

(Via DF.)

Walt Mossberg Says the 3G S is Super Speedy, Too

And Walt Mossberg Says the 3G S is Super Speedy, Too

From the Wall Street Journal:

To me, this is the most important feature of the new iPhone 3G S. In fact, the “S” in the name stands for speed. During my week of testing, the new model proved dramatically snappier in every way than my iPhone 3G. Its processor is 50% faster than in the prior model, and it sports a new graphics chip. Applications opened much more quickly. Web pages loaded far faster. The camera was ready to use almost instantly. And I never once saw the occasional, annoying iPhone behavior where you strike a key while typing and it sits there, seemingly stuck, before you can continue.

Though I thought for sure the “S” in the name stood for Shawn.

Gizmodo’s iPhone 3G S Review

Gizmodo’s iPhone 3G S Review

Jason Chen on Gizmodo says, “once you start using it, the speed of the iPhone 3GS will amaze you.”

Funny, because on the aforelinked review by Engadget, Joshua Topolsky wasn’t all that excited about the speed jump. Saying, “the additions of video recording, a compass, and a speed bump just don’t seem that compelling to us.”

Not only that, but Gizmodo’s review of the 3G S’s battery life says it is what Apple claims it to be: better. Joshua’s review on Engadget said that the new battery is virtually the same as the original 3G.

Apparently, results may vary.

Engadget’s iPhone 3G S review

Engadget’s iPhone 3G S review

iPhone 3G S and 3.0 OS reviews are all over the place today and a lot of them are pretty fantastic, too. Here is a great overview by Joshua Topolsky which includes lots of details, photos, and videos.

AT&T Offeres Best Upgrade Price to iPhone 3G S for 3G Owners

AT&T Offers Best Upgrade Price to the iPhone 3G S for 3G Owners

From the AT&T Newsroom:

We’re now pleased to offer our iPhone 3G customers who are upgrade eligible in July, August or September 2009 our best upgrade pricing, beginning Thursday, June 18. [...] If you’re one of the customers who benefits from this change, and you’ve already preordered from an AT&T store, we’ll adjust the price of the device when you pick it up. If you benefit from the change and you pre-ordered from AT&T online, we’ll send you an e-mail and issue you a credit.

(Via @film_girl.)

“Trust, Hostility, and the Human Side of Apple”

“Trust, Hostility, and the Human Side of Apple”

Marco Arment on the iPhone app approval process and WWDC’s odd session on App Store publishing.

For an iPhone, By an iPhone

For an iPhone, By an iPhone

A new website by yours truly. It’s a gallery of iPhone wallpapers shot with my iPhone Camera.

(You can expect the nerdy details on the unique differences between designing an image-based website and a text-based one in the near future.)

The Ideal iPhone

Last summer, when iPhone 3G was announced, I took future Sean’s advice and did not upgrade.

Happily, I stuck with my 1st-generation iPhone. Most of all because of the design of the 3G’s shell and the boosted cost of AT&T’s monthly plan for 3G customers. Even in the midst of reviews and testimonies about how much the speed of 3G smokes that of EDGE, my ignorance has been bliss. And to date, I have been happy to compromise cellular network speed for the sake of a better form factor and a tighter budget.

Another reason I held out last summer was in anticipation of the 3rd generation iPhone that is now just around the corner. Leap-frogging iPhone upgrades makes sense for two reasons: First is Apple’s subscription-based accounting for iPhone sales. This means they report the income for that phone sale as spread evenly across two years (or eight quarters), and is why iPhone owners get free software upgrades. When the two years are passed, iPhone owners will (presumably) have to begin paying for software upgrades, just like iPod Touch owners.

Secondly, when you sign up for, or renew a 2-year contract with AT&T you get to pay the subsidized cost ($199 / $299) of your new iPhone. If you purchased an iPhone without signing up for a new contract, or were to upgrade while still in the middle of your current contract you would have to pay full price for the phone ($599 / $699). Meaning, if you were to buy the latest iPhone every single year, you would only be able to pay the cheaper, advertised price every-other time, with the rest of the upgrades being at full price.

All that to say, it’s been two years and there is a new phone and a new OS on the horizon.

Below is an unordered list of the features and upgrades that would either (a) bring me the most joy, or (b) relieve me of the most irritation. My ideal iPhone, if you will. Some of these were already announced at Apple’s March 17 event as part of the 3.0 OS. The rest are rumors or simply my own pipe dreams.

• A Faster Processor and More RAM: Primarily for the sake of quicker app launching and faster web page loading. But also for the sake of less frequent “sticky keyboard” situations. John Gruber’s commentary on the processor is that the boost in speed and memory will make the phone feel more like you are switching between apps rather than quitting one and launching another. That is quite a difference indeed. Think of how quick it is to switch from one open app to another on Mac OS; it is significantly faster than launching a new app. I am so used to the 5–10 seconds of wait-time for an app to load on iPhone that I can’t imagine such a significant boost in performance. If those rumors are true, I may actually have time to call people back.
• A Hardware Design Based on the Original Metal Shell: As mentioned earlier, I do not like the 3G’s shell. It’s not necessarily ugly, but it certainly is not as attractive as the metal-cased design of the original iPhone. Even though the 3G feels better, with its less-slippery back which contours to fit the hand, it also feels cheeper with that fingerprint-hungry plastic case. And that thicker frame around the screen really irks me. Who knows why Apple redesigned the iPhone shell. Perhaps to cut their costs, perhaps to help users keep it in their hand better (the original iPhone sure is a slippery little sucker), or perhaps it’s because of all the new 3G and GPS technology that’s in there. Interestingly, if you compare original industrial design of the iPhone to the rest of Apple’s current product line, you find many similarities. The new MacBook and MacBook Pro lineup, the new LED Cinema Displays, and the new iMacs all have designs which include a brushed aluminum shell, a glass display, and elements of black plastic… Just like the original iPhone.
• A More Intuitive / Less Annoying Auto-Caps Feature: I don’t know how many times I’ve mistyped a password because of annoying auto-capitalization function. Although the automatic engagement of the shift button is 90% correct, the 10% time that it is not really irks me.
• A Native Tip Calculator: Just kidding.
• Not All Glass is Created Equal: After twelve months of use, my first iPhone still had no scratches. When that one began to act wonky during a trip to DC, a Mac Genius replaced it for me. But after less than nine months of use with this second phone, it already has a decent amount of scratches (not too bad, but bad enough in the right light). I assume this is not so much an issue related to the overall hardware design as much as it is simply the luck of the draw.
• MMS: Not so much a feature I want, as much as it is a feature my friends want. They are dying for me to be able to take pictures of funny things and send them via text message along with witty and hilarious commentary. Apple has taken what my friends want, and added even more functionality. In addition to photos, the new messages app will support the sharing of audio, contacts, and even locations. Unfortunately, due to hardware restrictions, the MMS functionality won’t be available on the original iPhone.
• An Easier Way to Add a New Phone Number While Talking On The Phone: On my old Motorola, if you were talking to someone on the phone and punched in a number, it would get saved automatically as a note (or something). On the iPhone, if your having a phone conversation and you need to save a number to your phone there is no easy way to go about it. If you tap the number onto the phone’s numeric keypad you’ll lose the digits once you hang up. If you type it into the Notes app, you still have to remember it in order to dial and call the number. If you want to type the new number into your phone and have it easily accessible after you hang up, then you are in for a long and awkward conversation:

  “Oh, you’ve got the number ready? Hold on, let me tap to the contacts app. OK, just a second now. Let me open a new contact. OK, now let me tap in their first name, OK, last name, OK. Let’s see… tap on ‘Mobile’… Alright. Now, what is the number? Yep. Uh-hu. OK, Great! Now wait. Just another second here. Let me save this… Aaaaaaaand, got it! Thanks. Yep. Oh, and tell your mom I said ‘hi’, too.

  This could easily be solved if the numeric keypad kept any numbers punched into it, rather than clearing them once you hang up.
• Search and Spotlight: Not only is an in-app search function going to be added to MobileMail, Messages, Calendar, iPod, and Notes, but a system-wide search engine, called Spotlight, will be added as well. Spotlight will sit as the left-most home screen, and is marked with a clever magnafying glass icon, rather than the standard little white dot. From the Spotlight screen you can search your whole iPhone — including contacts, emails, notes, songs, videos, apps, calendar appointments, and more. A much easier way to launch an app that’s buried on screen 10, or to quickly find someone’s cell phone number to give to your friend.

Thoughts on the Additional Features (Official or Rumored) of the 3rd Generation iPhone and the 3.0 OS Which I’m Not Totally Geeking Out Over

The irony isn’t lost on me that what may be the most sought-after new features to the next generation iPhone and the 3.0 OS are also the features that I am looking forward to the least. Not to say that these aren’t great new additions that I am excited about, but I have gotten on fine without them so far.

• Notes Sync: In theory I love the idea of being able to sync notes with my laptop, but in reality, how helpful will it actually be? I am curious what app in OS X the notes will show up in? Will they sync as rich text files into a pre-designated folder? as some sort of message in Mail, alongside to-do items and RSS feeds? or something else altogether? And what about people running Windows? My guess is that synced notes will show up in the iTunes library alongside Music, Movies, Applications, etc. But if so, will they be editable? Because right now the content in the iTunes library is read only.
• A Video-Capable Camera: Considering that I am just now regularly taking pictures with my iPhone, a video camera doesn’t fully light me up.
• Cut, Copy, and Paste: Though I have no doubt that once in use I will wonder how I ever lived without it, this unordered-list mention is already more thought than I’ve given to the feature in the past two years.
• The Landscape Mode and Keyboard in Primary Apps: In addition to MobileSafari, the ability to read and type text in landscape mode will be added to MobileMail, Notes, and the Messages App. In just a short amount of time we will be putting our previous type-speed tests to shame, and wondering how we ever lived with just the portrait-mode keyboard for so long.
• More Storage: Without trying, my 8GB iPhone currently has just barely over 7GB worth of music, photos and apps. My point being, I’m not dying for more storage. However, a bigger hard drive will certainly be a welcomed addition when it comes to voice memos and (rumored) video recording capabilities.

Still Amazing

It is notable that after two entire years on the open market, iPhone continues to be, by far, the most advanced, responsive and beautiful mobile touch-screen device and software available. It is one thing for iPhone and iPhone OS to have been as ground-breaking and incredible as they were in 2007 when they debuted. But to still have that edge two years later? That’s amazing.

A Broad Array of iPhone Keyboards

iPhone keyboard layouts come in threes.

Regardless of where you are entering text, there are almost always three different keyboards available to you. Each one with unique characters. But not all these keyboards are created equal — their contents and design usually change based on the type of the input field you are entering text into.

The three basic classifications of keyboards are:

• The “ABC” Keyboard: The first keyboard you’re presented with when the keyboard slides up. You can only toggle to the “123″ keyboard from here.
• The “123″ Keyboard: Contains numbers and common characters, and can be toggled to via the ABC keyboard.
• The “#+=” or “@123″ or other Keyboard: Contains additional, and less-common characters not found on the “123″ keyboard, and sometimes contains numbers as well. It can only be toggled to via the “123″ keyboard, but from here you can toggle back to the “123″ or the “ABC” keyboard.

Depending on which type of input field you are entering text into — and which app that input field is in — the contents, and in some cases even the design, of the three keyboard layouts vary compared to another type of input field.

Most of the iPhone keyboards are very similar in their layout and contents, with only slight changes to their design or contents for the sake of the input field’s context. Added up, there are 12 unique keyboard layouts.1

Additionally there is the landscape keyboard, which is currently available only in Mobile Safari.2 The landscape keyboard has the same character placements as the vertical keyboard in Mobile Safari, but is 160 pixels wider since the phone has to be held sideways to use it. Meaing, its contents are the same, but its design is different (wider).

Adding in these six unique layouts of the landscape keyboard, iPhone has 18 unique keyboards as part of its native OS.

Below is a small and brief chart of the 9 most common keyboards. Click on the image for a full-size PDF of all 18 keyboards.

Video Spot by Apple on Cultured Code’s Things App

Video Spot by Apple on Cultured Code’s Things App

Very cool to watch the progression of the app’s design and development. And while you’re there, the Smule, Demiforce, and AOL videos are also worth viewing. I love how Steve Demeter took his app from idea to demo in just ten days by coding 12 hours a night in-between his 9–5.

(Via Ged)

Birdhouse — A Notepad for Twitter

Birdhouse — A Notepad for Twitter

It is a simple idea made great by putting a twist and a story to it. The twist is that “Birdhouse was built to give you more control over writing for Twitter.” Cameron and Adam built an app that applauds the idea that Twitter can be better if you aren’t constantly telling people simply what you’re doing. Even first dialog box you see when you open the app says, “Birdhouse requires you to have a Twitter account and something to say”.

Birdhouse is the first iPhone app I’ve seen that launched with a story: the demo video had a plot; the pre-published tweets from @camh and @lonlysandwich; and then that same tweet waiting for you to publish once you set up Birdhouse.

This app not only has its own personality, but it helps its users to have one too.

iPhone’s Misplaced Decline Button?

I have now owned my iPhone longer than any other mobile.

Over the past decade or so, I’ve gone through a slew of pagers and cell phones. None of them sticking around as long as my iPhone. They each got boring or broken or sold on eBay. The iPhone, however, still feels brand new to me even though it currently holds the longest tenure of any other phone I’ve owned.

After 18 months of daily use, I’ve develop quite a few habits and familiarities. Such as the position I hold the phone when talking on it; or the direction it goes into my pocket; where I place in my car; the way I spin it when I’m bored; or how I hit the Lock button to end a phone conversation.

There is one thing that I still have not gotten used to: the location of the ‘Decline’ and ‘Answer’ buttons when there’s an incoming call and the phone’s screen is not locked. This throws me off every single time.

My screen is nearly always locked; it’s another one of my habits. I always lock it when I’m done with it, even if it’s sitting on my desk. Leaving the screen unlocked is like leaving the top off a bottle of Coke — it just feels wrong. And besides, it wastes the battery.

And so, when my phone rings, it usually looks something like this:

But inevitably there are the times when I get an incoming call and, for whatever reason, the screen is not locked. (Usually because I’m using the phone for any number of reasons other than talking on it.) And when that is the case, the incoming call screen looks a bit different:

The reason you have to “slide to answer” an incoming call on a locked screen is so you don’t accidentally reach into your pocket and answer a call you didn’t want to. But if the screen is already unlocked you are given a different way to answer. You now have the option to simply tap a button to answer or tap another to decline.

The locked versus unlocked options make sense. If you’re in the middle of using your phone and someone calls but you want to decline, it doesn’t make sense to wait 15 seconds for the thing to finally stop ringing, or be forced to lock your phone. The feature here isn’t the ease of answering a call — tapping the Answer button is just about as simple as sliding — rather, it’s the ability to quickly decline the call and get right back to what you were doing.

The trouble happens if you do want to answer the call. Now you’re dealing with the fact that iPhone offers two different locations to touch in order to answer an incoming call. If answering from a locked-screen state, you touch the bottom-left corner and slide to the right; if answering from a non-locked-screen state you touch the bottom-right corner.

If my screen is not locked and I answer an incoming call by muscle memory alone, chances are good I will accidentally decline the call when what I wanted was to answer it. Usually what happens is I press the area of the screen where the Decline button is by habit, but then realize I’m pressing ‘Decline’ and not ‘Answer’. So I hold my thumb down and slide it off the Decline button and then tap the Answer button.

If you do push the Decline button, and slide over onto the Answer button nothing happens because the Decline button is activated on release. Unlike the single-tap-hack for the period button before the 1.1.1 software update, you can’t answer a phone call by starting on the Decline button, sliding over to Answer and then releasing (a gesture that would duplicate the “slide to answer” action).

Furthermore, there are times that I press the Decline button, but realizing I pressed the wrong one, panic by letting off quickly and (in this case) sending my sister straight to voicemail. (Sorry Sis.)

If your standard response to an incoming call is to answer it, then the standard location is actually not where you’re used to it being—the bottom left corner.

On the other hand, if your standard response to an incoming call is to not answer it, this still doesn’t justify the placement of the Decline button. When locked, if you want to decline the call you can (a) ignore it, or (b) press the Lock button on the top of the phone two times (one press to silence the ringer and another press to send the caller to voicemail). You can still do this if the screen is unlocked and the Decline button is there, though it will interrupt your previous task.

This flip-flopped button placement doesn’t end here…

On the Visual Voicemail screen, the green Call Back button can be found on the bottom-left.

During a phone call, if you navigate to the keypad, the red End Call button is the one on the bottom-left of the screen, whereas the “continue-type” button (‘Hide Keypad’), though not green, is on the bottom-right.

Finally, the default location of the Phone App’s green icon is the bottom-left corner of the iPhone’s Dock.

Context vs. Consistency

As Jason Fried pointed out regarding the seemingly strange, right-hand alignment of the iTunes icon in the iPhone OS 1.1 update, button placement is not always done for the sake of consistency. Sometimes it’s for the sake of context.

They didn’t put it where consistency tells you to put it. That would be on the left side. They put it where context tells you to put it. On the right side right above the iPod icon. Even the icon’s arrow points right down to the iPod. [...] I love that Apple favored context over consistency in this design decision. Consistency is the easy choice. Context is the thinking choice.

Although the flip-flopping placement of iPhone’s “initiate a phone conversation” buttons is not consistent, they may be rightly placed given each one’s context.

On iPhone, standard movement between screens means that to get more detailed, or to “drill down” within an app, you should move to the right. Getting less detailed, or “drilling up”, means you move to the left.

In context to the “slide to answer” button on a locked screen, the thumb moves from left to right — in essence, drilling down to the next screen which is, in this case, a live phone conversation.

If this is truly the case, then the Decline and Answer buttons on a non-locked screen — though opposite in terms of consistency — are accurate in terms of context. To “drill down” to the next screen (which is the live phone call) you should be led to the right. Thus, the placement of the Answer button on the right-hand side.

But wait…

Even though drilling down to more detail means moving to the right, and drilling up means moving to the left, those directions are almost always led by the buttons on the top of an application’s screen, not the bottom (i.e. Mail, Text, Settings, iPod, Notes and others).

On a phone with physical buttons there is no choice but to design by consistency because the buttons are always in the same place. Since iPhone’s screen has no physical buttons, the placement of each screen’s buttons can also be designed to be relevant given the context of the current screen. Thus, there are times when a design decision can be based on more than just consistency — it can also include context.

When writing about my MacBook Pro in early 2008, I wrote about the implementation of multi-touch on the trackpad, saying:

Just like on the iPhone, the multi-touch gestures make perfect sense in context. Which means I don’t have to think about them. Once I settled that three fingers swiping from left to right means “next” I find myself naturally using it in places I hadn’t even thought about, without thinking about it. It already feels natural. In iCal the three-finger swipe takes you to the next or previous day/week/month in your calendar. In Apple’s Mail the swipe takes you to the next email message. In Preview, you get the next page. And it’s the same with pinching: On the desktop, pinching enlarges or shrinks your icon sizes. In Preview, it enlarges the image or document.

My point being: when you are designing by context the user is best served when they do not have to stop and think about how to make the choice they’re being presented with.

Consider context verses consistency in a car. When driving forward, turning the steering wheel to the left turns the car to the left. When driving in reverse, turning the steering wheel to the left turns the car to the right. Imagine if auto engineers decided that turning the steering wheel to the left should always steer the car to the left rather than the wheels. If that were the case, the front wheels may react completely opposite to the steering wheel’s input depending on what gear the transmission was in.

There are times when designing by context is better than designing by consistency alone. Though the placement of the Decline and Answer buttons may make sense in context, it is so far from consistency that, in this case, it is the wrong decision. And after 18 months of use the dumb thing still throws me off.

A Review of Two Things: One For the Mac and One For iPhone

How many task-management apps have you used in the past six months?

Finding that single piece of software which does exactly what we need when we ourselves don’t actually know what it is we need can be a pain. It’s a Tinkerfest.

Task-management apps are multiplying faster than you can say “get this done.”1 And the nerds that use them are moving to each new release in hopes of relieving the clutter and stress that is their life. It’s also a Switcherfest.

I don’t think the new spins on productivity software are because we have yet to witness the creation of the Ultimate App and Workflow. These unique and diverse apps are being written because people are unique and diverse.

Each of us has our own way of dealing with responsibility and our own expression of productivity. Tinkering and then switching is usually not the fault of the software. We’re not looking for the best app, but rather the best app for us.

Chris Bowler wrote, “One cost of consistent tinkering is that you never spend the time digging deeper in an application.”

I am not a GTD guru, but I do take being organized seriously. I have been using Cultured Code’s task-management apps, Things, for quite a while, and I have had nothing but fantastic user experiences and have witnessed un-anticipated scalability.

Also I am an evangelist of great software. If I have to use it all day every day it had better not be crap. And Things is not crap.

I Used to Just Worry About my Comic Book Collection

When I was a kid my cousin used to visit every summer, and our first job was working at a greenhouse.

It was my parent’s greenhouse so Nate and I got paid a very generous four dollars-per-hour. In cash (we didn’t have bank accounts), which was convenient so we could leave immediately after work to buy comic books and rare coins.

In those younger days we had just two things to be responsible for: (1) Be to work by 9:00, and (2) keep out of trouble the rest of the time.

Wow. It’s not like that anymore. But I wouldn’t want it to be…

In Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography, he says, “When men are employed, they are best contented; for on the days they worked they were good-natured and cheerful, and, with the consciousness of having done a good day’s work, they spent the evening jollily; but on our idle days they were mutinous and quarrelsome.”

Having responsibility can be fantastic. When there is a job that needs accomplishing, it makes a person want to get out of bed in the morning. It’s good for the soul.

When you are in charge of your own self, there are many things that need to get done simply to keep up with the pace of life. It’s not the same as when you were 12. It’s also not the same for every person.

Some people only need 10 minutes in the morning with a cup of java, a pen and a piece of scratch paper. They think for a moment, then they jot down all that needs to be done that day. And that’s the end of it.

For others of us the things we place on our to-do list carry all sorts of intricate details. We don’t live our life one day’s to-do list at a time. We have multiple projects, jobs, and responsibilities all spinning at once. They span over weeks, months, and years. They involve multiple people and multiple areas of life.

A system for Getting Things Done is much more than just a place to dump the multitude of tasks and responsibilities as opposed to absorbing them until you explode. David Allen knew that responsibility is good for you but that it can also totally stress you out. But with a cool head, a good tool, and some focus, you too can live a stress-free and productive life.

Things

Things came on the scene when Version 0.8a was released as a private alpha to 12,000 users on December 10, 2007. It later went public beta, until the spit-and-polished version 1.0 was released at Macworld on the 6th of January 2009, and went on to win the Macworld Best of Show award.

If you missed some of the development process of Things along its journey, I highly recommend you read through Cultured Code’s weblog archive. Some fantastic stories of how key features came about (such as the repeating task dialog box, or the iPhone app’s UI). And if you really want to geek out, you can peruse the release notes for versions 0.8a right on up to the latest.

Something that makes Things such a great task management tool is that it seamlessly scales to suit any person’s productivity.

From his interview with MacApper, Jürgen Schweizer, the president of Cultured Code says:

Right from the beginning we wanted to create a tool that was easy to pick up yet powerful. It is no exaggeration, with Things it is possible to manage thousands of to-dos, but Things is also the application with the most modest learning curve.

Things not only scales horizontally — working transparently for the light GTDer and the guru alike. It also scales vertically, easily allowing you to create massively-long lists, multiple projects and detailed notes. Or, if you prefer, very few.

When I first began using Things, I only had a handful of to-do items each day. I had no projects and only a few areas of responsibility.

Currently I have 8 projects, 6 areas of responsibility and close to 100 individual to-do items logged. 16 of the to-do items are in my Today list and there is one straggler task waiting in my Inbox.

As my dependance on Things has increased over the months, I have yet to hit a learning curve. Not once did I stop and reassess what the heck I was doing with the thing. It just flowed. And it’s as helpful and organized for me now as it was when I had much less to do.

The reason I’ve grown so fond of Things is that it helps me to set it and forget it.

A Forgetful Task App

For better or for worse, I am a naturally organized person, and my brain is always thinking things through. Which means I don’t very much want a task management app for the sake of remembering something, but rather for the sake of forgetting it.

I need a place to dump all the ideas, projects and to-do items that come my way so I can happily live in the here-and-now rather than in the what’s-to-come. And Things’ ability to handle vast amounts of tasks while keeping them in order with lists and notes is better than any other app I’ve used.

Since I am always thinking things through, the most important feature for me has to be an easy and ubiquitous way to input my thoughts. This is common practice for productivity, so Things isn’t breaking the mold here. But the way it helps you capture your thoughts are smart and out of the way.

On the desktop version there is the HUD interface. Like Quicksilver, the HUD can be brought up at any time, in any application, via a keyboard shortcut (so long as Things is running in the Dock).

On the iPhone version there is a plus (+) symbol that lives in the bottom left-hand corner at all times (unless the on-screen keyboard is active). Regardless of what screen you are, on adding a new task is only a tap away.

Both of these core features shout, you can jot down that pesky to-do at any moment it strikes your mind.

Notice how these two identical features have a completely different implementation? It’s a testimony to how well each individual app was thought through and developed. Not only are the two applications parallel to one another, they also hold their own as individual apps and are best-of-breed for their respective platform. But more on that later.

Ubiquitous capture is a great start, but it is just the start. Things also needs to work with me as I process and organize those tasks.

Using Things

Other than the quickies, entering in a task usually involves three parts:

1. The Task Title. No rules. I jot down whatever is on my mind so I can get it out of my mind.
2. Task Notes. Many of my daily responsibilities revolve around sending and replying to emails, so I get a lot of action items via my email inbox. Often there are files attached to the email, or other valuable info which may be relevant for when I get to that task. The email gets linked in the ‘Notes’ box of the task, and then moved to the Action folder in Mail. Links to email are dynamic, so if you drop the email link into Things while the email is in your Inbox, but then you move it to another folder, the link in Things follows the email. Even to the trash.
3. Due Dates. I don’t want to leave all upcoming projects in the Inbox, nor do I want them in the ‘Today’ view. But it can be easy for a few important tasks to get lost in the sea of all the other tasks. Especially if it’s not related to a current project. I usually assign a due date to the task and then drop it into its area of responsibility or the project it belongs with. If it’s a loner task, I pick the due date based on my schedule and current priorities for my job. There are a few times in my week that I have large chunks of time blocked out with no set agenda. These are my “Open Work Times” and they are when I work on my to-do list. Usually. By setting due dates, I know that my own computer will bring the task back to my attention by shooting it into the “Today” list at its appointed time. And if the task becomes a priority before the due date I gave it, I have no doubt someone will be sure to let me know.

The elephant in the room that I continue to ignore is tags. Not because I don’t see the use for them, but because I never felt that bothering with them on the front end would prove useful to me on the back end.2

Using tags in Things could make a lot of sense if my day was constructed in such a way that I could sit down at my desk for 30 minutes with a single focus of, say, returning phone calls. In this situation bringing up all the tasks pinned with the ‘Phone’ tag (ha!) would be genius. But I don’t work that way in real life. So I don’t bother with tags.

One way I might see myself using tags for would be to mark priority. However, priorities are relative. What may be a priority today, may not be a priority tomorrow. And vice-a-versa. Thus, I rest my case.

Quick Entry HUD

About 90% of my tasks get put into Things via the quick entry HUD; even when Things is the forefront window already.

I have the keyboard shortcut set as SHIFT+COMMAND+SPACE. Since it’s the second most used keyboard shortcut for me I set it to be nearly identical to Quicksilver’s (CMD+SPACE), which is the first.

Inbox Management

I don’t worry about keeping my Things inbox at zero.

There are rarely more than a handful of tasks sitting there at any given time, and it’s usually because I don’t have a spot to put them yet. Or because it has been a long day.

Usually they are not something to be done today and just need some info and a due date before I slot them into a current project or area of responsibility (both of which will also add the task to the master ‘Next’ list).

If it is a very contrite task it gets left as-is and put into the ‘Someday’ list. About once a week I peruse through the ‘Next’ and ‘Someday’ lists to see if anything needs doing. I usually take care of one or two tasks just to feel good about myself.

This process is nearly the exact same way Chris Bowler cranks through his Inbox as well:

The great feature that I feel separates Things from other task management applications is the differentiation between projects and areas (areas of responsibility). I receive a lot of tasks that are not projects. And they fall under one of my areas I am responsible for. Things makes this a real ease and pleasure to document. Seventy percent of the time I add items to Things, it is done through the Quick Entry panel and added to the Inbox. So I usually organize these tasks once a day, near the end of the day. Tasks are dragged to specific areas or added to existing projects. And when needed, new projects are created.

Moreover, when processing a task there is a clever feature which comes in handy if the task you wrote down should have been a project. By dragging a task out of its list, into the sidebar and dropping it over “Projects” will take the name of the task and create a new project automatically.

This is very handy feature indeed. Especially if you’ve created a single task which you realize may need to be broken down into multiple, smaller tasks…

Projects

Benjamin Franklin, a productivity and time-management mastermind, said, “Little strokes, fell great oaks.”

When building a task-list for a project, keep each task bite-sized. Each task should be something with a clear and tangible goal, helping lead to the end of the completed project. A good comparison is a tried-and-true technique my father-in-law teaches for those seeking to get out of debt — technique Dave Ramsey refers to as the “Debt Snowball”.

You gather all your debts, and put them in order of amount owed. Nothing else. While paying the minimum on all current debts, you focus all extra money to pay off the debt with the smallest balance first. Once that debt is paid, you take the left-over money you’re not putting towards it and apply it to the next smallest. And so on until all your debts have been paid.

It’s great financial advice, and it has practical application in other projects beyond financial.

Breaking down a project into easily definable steps (“little strokes”), you are able to work with focus on a single goal at a time. Procrastination is easier to avoid when there is no ambiguity, which makes completing the project (“great oak”) on time with less stress a reality.

Printing a List

To keep the memory of old-fashioned lists alive, Things offers the ability to print your to-do list.

This can actually be very helpful if a project has multiple to-do items that need to be reviewed with your team and then farmed off to the poor sap who decided to sit in the corner.

Unfortunately, the printed version of a task list doesn’t look nearly as pretty as the screen version. Though I don’t want (or even expect) all the fancy UI elements to print out, I do want the list to be well-formatted. A cleaner layout, use of a serif and more white space would be a good start.

Things on iPhone

I use both versions of Things, and am very impressed at how much the two apps work and feel identical to one another. This may seem like a “well duh” observation, but think about the back-room thought that had to go into developing the iPhone version of Things.

When creating an iPhone version of a desktop app you can’t just drag and drop the code and click the “iPhoneitize This” button. You have to completely start from scratch. In this situation, the result was a fine-tuned, highly polished iPhone app which doubles as a fully functional, stand alone GTD tool. Not bad for one month’s worth of work.3

Those who use both the desktop and the iPhone version may not have considered that the iPhone version of Things had to hold its own since many of its users do not own a Mac or do not use Things on their desktop.

There are two dynamics to successfully building two versions of the same app onto two unique platforms (one for iPhone and one for the Mac).

1. Both apps need to feel native on their respective platform. The iPhone version needs to feel like it belongs on the iPhone app, and the desktop version needs to feel like it belongs there. This doesn’t just mean the GUI should be different. It also means the layout and display of core functionality, along with the flow of navigation and the user interaction within the application all have to pull together to form a well developed iPhone app that still has striking familiarity to its desktop counterpart. It’s like the difference between Clue the board game, and Clue the card game. Same game, completely different implementation and interaction.
2. Both apps need to feel like they are the same app. Meaning, the Cultured Code team had to reconcile the two-fold need for their iPhone version of Things to feel like a native iPhone app while also feeling like the very same application they made for the desktop.

Reconciling these goals was the same issue Apple had to tackle with their own programs such as iCal or Mail. iPhone’s Calendar app feels great all by itself. But if you use iCal on you Mac as well, you don’t feel like you’re working with two different programs. They are simultaneously the same and different.

And Cultured Code did it…

The desktop version of Things is very much Macintosh-esque. A great piece of software in terms of functionality and design. Mac users have high standards for their software beyond just that they work.

Similarly, the iPhone version of Things is very iPhone-y. All the functionality of a fully loaded task management app married to the ease of use of what feels like a native iPhone app.

In and Out

Things on the iPhone is only about as good as it is fast.

The sheer virtue that Things for iPhone is an app used on a mobile device means it will be used mostly by people when they are on the go. This is why the ability to create a new task from anywhere in the app is so important.

Something clever with Things on iPhone is that the “plus” (+) icon is dynamic. Meaning if you open up the task entry screen from the main window, the default location for that new task is the Inbox. But if you are working within an area of focus and tap the “plus”, then the default location for that new task is your current area of focus.

What I also like about adding new tasks to Things on the iPhone is that the keyboard slides up automatically and instantly, when the “New To Do” screen is launched. Though unfortunately it is not quite as refined as Mail on the iPhone where after tapping to create a new email message the on-screen keyboard slides up at the very same time as the blank email.

If you want to add a new task to a particular list or area of focus rather than the Inbox it is best to tap into the list you want to add the new task to first, and then create the task. Rather than creating the new task from the main screen and then selecting your desired location.

Choosing to create a new task from the home screen that you want to end up in the “Someday” list, the order would go something like this: (1) Tap the plus to invoke the New To Do window; (2) type in the task name; (3) tap the “Create In” box; (4) select from the lists, and finally; (5) Save.

That’s five total taps, not including the amount of letters and spaces in your task’s title.

If you add the new to-do from the already appropriate list you save yourself one tap: (1) Select list; (2) tap the plus symbol; (3) type in task name; (4) save.

Ubiquitous

I do not use Things on my iPhone to manage my shopping list when out on errands. I use it almost exclusively as my parking lot. Regardless if I’m in a meeting, at Wal-Mart, or waiting for the oil to be changed, there is no way to tell when a thought will pop into my head. When it does, I need a place to drop it.

I used to jot those thoughts onto the palm of my hand.

Then I bought a Palm Pilot. Then a pocket Moleskine, then a notepad. But through all that, the only thing I ever had with me all the time was my cell phone. I’ve had a mobile device of some sort ever since my first pager in 7th grade. It’s 2nd nature to check my pockets as I walk out the door. Keys. Phone. Wallet. Let’s go.

Once I owned a cell phone that sent emails too, I had two spots to drop my ideas: one was my to-do list manager of choice at the time, and if that wasn’t handy I would send myself an email. Then later, the email would get turned into a to-do item.

Though I originally bought Things for my iPhone based on the novelty of having a to-do list app that worked on both platforms and would sync between the two, I have found that I rarely use its full features. It has primarily become my input collector, which I then just sync to my Mac.

Syncing

To sync Things on your iPhone with Things on your desktop simply make sure they are both on the same wireless network, then launch them both. If they have not yet been paired, a you’ll be asked to enter a 4-digit pin onto your phone. It is a cinch to set up and virtually no trouble at all to keep the two in unity.

When a sync is in progress your iPhone goes into “don’t touch me I’m syncing” mode, with a large black screen and a spinning “ticker-wheel”. At the same time, on the Mac, this progress bar appears:

If you want to force a sync, simply open the preferences pane on the desktop version, select iPhone and click “Sync Now”.

I find it interesting that the only way to sync Things’ iPhone library to the desktop’s is through a wireless network. You can’t plug it in to sync, and there is no cloud server offering over-the-air syncing like MobileMe does.

If you are not near a wireless network, you can still sync by using your computer’s airport card to create a network. Click the airport menu icon, and choose “Create Network…” Then join that network on your iPhone, via the Wi-Fi menu under Settings.

Additionally, Things does not currently sync between two desktop Macs. Trying to use the iPhone as a mediator or carrier of info between two computers is doable, since each Mac must be paired to the iPhone individually for over-network syncing.

Since I only use one computer, this is not an issue for me. But for those of you who do use multiple Macs, Cultured Code has documented a work-around which uses Dropbox to keep your Things library in sync, and which many people seem to be doing successfully.

More Reviews

This is just one of a handful of winded and entertaining software reviews.

Keynote Remote App for iPhone

Keynote Remote App for iPhone [iTunes Link] -

Apple’s third app for iPhone let’s you control your Keynote presentation. You can swipe to go to the next or previous slides, thumb-type your talking points for each slide, and view the next and current slide by tilting to landscape mode.

Only costs $0.99 and gives you an excuse to hold up your iPhone in front of the room.

Outpost – Basecamp App for iPhone

A New Basecamp App for iPhone -

Outpost [iTunes Link] is a new iPhone app from Morfunk which lets you manage your Basecamp account, even offline.

From what I can tell you have virtually complete access to all Basecamp project features other than file uploads and downloads including the creation and editing of messages, todos, milestones and comments.

It rings in at $12.99 which makes me a bit hesitant to pick it up, since I’m too confident I would actually use it on a regular basis. Based on the screenshots and demo videos it does seem like a polished, thought-through app but will it actually be useful in real life?

iPhone vCard Sharing App

iPhone vCard Sharing App -

I kid you not, just yesterday I was wishing there was a way to send vCards to people from my iPhone when I stumbled across Conceited Software’s $0.99 app, vCards. It’s a simple and affordable solution.

‘Get Your iPhone Into the Christmas Spirit’

‘Get Your iPhone Into the Christmas Spirit’ -

The red-and-white-and-snowflakes-all-over images I made last year.

Stocking Stuffer 2.2

Software updates are a lot like stockings on Christmas morning.

Stocking stuffers are never as exciting or expensive of presents as the wrapped ones under the tree, and you can usually see most of what you’re going to get before you even dump out the sock.

But a present is a present, and there is always the hope that at the bottom of the stocking there will be a few unexpected surprises. Such as a fix to that one pesky bug I keep noticing, and maybe, just maybe, a snappier OS.

The bug I was hoping to see fixed was in the SMS app. Before this software update my text messages had been intermingling with one-another. When I got a text message from someone, that message would often display inline with my most recently opened SMS conversation. Moving up one level to the top-level list in the SMS app and then opening up the conversation would fix the problem. Fortunately, since the update I haven’t noticed it at all.

In hopes of a snappier OS, there is the rare occasion in which you can clearly tell that the OS is faster. But usually, minor software updates are more like placebos regarding response time—some people swear the thing is lightning fast now, and others can’t get over how darn slow it got.

And now, in good old-fashioned unordered listery, here is a short handful of thoughts on the actual software update:

• After the update my screen was noticeably more dim. I went in to adjust the brightness meter, anticipating the phone had set the level at 10% for some reason, but oddly the level was set at the same place I normally have it (around 70%). Moving the bar up to nearly 95% now gets me the same level of brightness as I previously had. My first concern is if this will affect my battery life.
• Streaming a podcast via the Edge network works great for me. What threw me off when streaming a podcast, is not that it continues to play even if you leave Mobile iTunes, but that the stream is not controlled via the iPod app. You have to go back into Mobile iTunes to pause or stop it.
• I am a big fan of the Home button’s new ability to get me back to the Home screen. That was a clever idea, for sure. It’s amazing how many things they can get just one button to be capable of doing.
• The feature I am most glad about? Better audio quality for voicemail. Seriously. I don’t know what happened but one day all my voicemail messages began to sound like they had been recorded in a tin room by a robot. Thank goodness I’m getting messages from the real world again.

CoffeeBreak

CoffeeBreak -

If only it had a mug for “Best Local Coffee Shop in Town”.

[Via the Longboard]

ESPN’s Mobile Website for Fantasy Football

ESPN’s Mobile Website for Fantasy Football -

For those with iPhones who want to check their ESPN Fantasy Football scores. The site is a little rough around the edges, but it’s optimized for easy navigation and speedy loading.

What Happens When You Let a Complete Stranger Hold Your iPhone

A couple days ago I was at a prayer meeting. I was sitting in a blue chair, and had strategically reserved an empty chair on my left and one on my right so I could have my space. There was live music and I wanted to read.

My iPhone buzzed, and I pulled it out to read, and then reply, to a text message. A few minutes later it buzzed again. Reply. Buzz. Reply.

By the third text, a 30-something Asian lady, sitting two chairs over (and who I’m nearly positive had never seen an iPhone before), asks me what sort of phone I have. In very broken English. In a room with live music. Two seats over from me.

At first, she asked me to show her how it worked. I held it out and used my thumb to slide back and forth between splash screens, and I pulled up the contacts app and showed her the keypad for the phone.

After my 10-second demo she asked if she could check her email really quick (which I knew was surely just an excuse to fiddle with the phone). I put it back in my pocket and told her that only my email works on it, because you have to set it up.

But her eyes had already been lit up, and I knew for sure she had never seen one before, because she pulled out her Fat ‘Lil Notebook and asked me to write down what it was and what it does.

I wasn’t quite sure how to fulfill her request, so I took a pen and wrote:

• Apple iPhone

• Make calls
• Get text messages
• Check email

She then asked me to write down where she could go get one. So I cleverly wrote:

• Apple Store

If anyone was watching us it must have been a hilarious sight. I was clearly in an awkward situation, and this lady was oblivious to it. She was enthralled and apparently had no pre-conceived notions about social boundaries.

As I hand her notebook back she finally works up her confidence and flat-out asks me to hold the thing.

I very much wanted to say ‘no’, but I like to think of myself as a nice guy; sharing is caring, you know? I slowly pull it out of my pocket and as I’m hesitantly passing it over the empty chair my first thought was, “Is she going to steal it?”

But my second thought was, “If she does try to run I could totally take her.”

I pass it off, and she plays with it for (not kidding) 30 minutes. Every couple minutes she leans over and asks me how to “get back to that one screen,” or “make the things stop wiggling,” or “open up Google”.

Once I was settled that she was innocent and harmless I relaxed a bit. At the 25 minute mark I leaned over and ask if she was done with it.

“Umm… No, not yet.” She replied.

Finally I just had to ask for it back.

The awkwardness was totally worth the great story I got out of it. Plus, it was a hoot to watch someone discover the iPhone for the first time.

Usually, when someone who hasn’t had a hands-on experience with an iPhone asks me to look at it, they will unlock it, stare at the home screen, maybe click on Safari and then hand it back. But this woman was dedicated; she was determined to fiddle until she was done.

And finally, to top it off, today I opened up Mobile Safari to see what sort of web-browsing she did. The four new browser windows she loaded?

1. A Google search for Tom Cruise Movies
2. The Official Jet Li Website
3. www.finalfantasy.com (which doesn’t exist)
4. Totally Obfuscuated

Michael Mistretta’s iPhone Review

A Macintosh in Your Pocket -

Michael Mistretta is from Canada, and waited a year to get an iPhone. His 4,500 word essay on the iPhone 3G is comprehensive to say the least. It’s a blast to see the excitement and awe of an avid Apple fan who is blown away by the sheer “other than-ness” of the iPhone.

Towards the end he makes a point about the possibility of users eventually choosing their iPhone over their PC:

Think about it, the iPhone + the AppStore could be a major paradigm shift in how people look at “computers”. For many people, the iPhone can be the only computer they need. Why do I need a big beige box, or a laptop anymore? I’m not talking about the geeks. I’m talking about normal people: my mom, a teenager, the cashier at Wal-Mart. How do these people use their computers now? Email. Web browsing. Facebook. A bit of IM. Maybe some Youtube. Music. And a couple games. What if 1 device the size of a deck of cards could do all of that? It fits in your pocket, gets Internet anywhere, and costs $200.

The fact that this topic is even being addressed is a massive accolade to the iPhone.

Michael’s point is that the iPhone could replace the need for a computer, which is true. And I am sure many people will begin to use it much more than their home PC. But I cannot imagine the iPhone ever fully replacing the need for a computer; not even to the non-professional consumer.

Lately I have been asking various friends which they would pick if they had to choose between their iPhone/Blackberry or their laptop: all chose the laptop. I’m in the same boat. Although the iPhone is remarkable, and I can take care of nearly all my core daily needs with it, it still is just an extension of my laptop; not a replacement.

And maybe it’s because I’m old school, but if I was forced to choose between always being reachable on my iPhone (phone calls, SMS, email) or sometimes reachable on my laptop (email, IM) I’d take the latter.

iPhone 2.0 OS Addendum

A few additional notes from my post last week on the iPhone 2.0 OS. Thanks to those who passed these on via email.

• The .com button, when held, now offers three other TLDs: .net, .org and .edu.
• If you’re composing a message in Mail and press the home button to look something up, the save draft dialog doesn’t interrupt you any more. Instead, when you return to Mail, your message is still open for editing.
• You can now turn Wi-Fi on while in Airplane Mode.
• Password fields on iPhone only show the last letter typed for a short while, and then convert it to a dot. So my previous example of ••••w would only appear that way for a second or two, until being changed to •••••.

Add or Edit a Contact While On the Phone

Add or Edit a Contact While On the Phone -

You know when you call someone to get someone else’s number, and they give it to you but you have nowhere to put it? You had to open up Notes to type it in, feverishly try to memorize the number and continue your conversation, or ask the person to text the number to you.

Now you can navigate to the dedicated Contacts app, and edit or add a contact while talking.

Thanks to Nate Bird for pointing this out. The inclusion of the Contacts app on iPhone 2.0 OS suddenly became a bitt less head-scratchy.

iPhone 3G Screen Has a Yellow Cast

iPhone 3G Screen Has a Yellow Cast -

It’s not just “different”; it’s quite objectively more yellow.

Neven, I hear it helps with visibility in the sunlight.

Upgrading from Unofficial iPhone 2.0 Firmware to Official 2.0 Firmware

Upgrading from Unofficial iPhone 2.0 Firmware to Official 2.0 Firmware -

Mac Rumors:

Today, Apple released the official 2.0 Firmware.

iPhone App Store and 2.0 OS Initial Miscellany

An un-ordered list of observances regarding iPhone OS 2.0 and the freshly-launched iTunes App Store.

MobileMe, Exchange and Push Data

• When composing an email there is now a CC/BCC/From field in Mail. Tapping it, expands the fields, from which you can not only select recipients to be CC-ed or BCC-ed, but (assuming you have more than one email account set up) you can also select which account you’re sending the email from. Regardles of which account you were in when opening a new email message.
• Pushing contacts, calendars and email currently only work when initiated on my phone. In Mobile Mail I can delete an email and within seconds it is deleted on my laptop. The reverse is not true. The speed only works for my Exchange email account. My MobileMe calendars, contacts and mail do get over-the-air syncing but not instantaneously yet. Emphasis on the “yet”, considering the .Mac to MobileMe switch has been over a 24-hour process. (Lord knows how much coffee has been consumed at the MobileMe HQ in the past day.) U P D A T E : MobileMe is up (for now), but my MobileMe related info is still not pushing. My guess is the servers are slammed.
• Selecting to push calendars over MobileMe only sent me my MacBook Pro’s native iCal calendars. Unfortunately, those which I’m subscribed to (National Holidays and Basecamp Milestones) are no longer in my iPhone.
• Setting up my work’s exchange account was incredibly simple. Much, much more simple that before. The exchange support seems to be flawless. I now have push email for work, which I honestly don’t know is a good thing or a bad thing.

The App Store

• Initial impression of the the iPhone’s app store is that it is first-rate. It’s easy to navigate, and too easy to buy stuff in.
• You can download apps from WiFi or EDGE. The apps I downloaded over EDGE downloaded pretty quickly.
• There are 52 productivity apps (8 of which are for “getting things done” and use a check-mark icon. The Abacus app boggles my mind.
• Clicking a link to the desktop version of the iTunes App Store from Mobile Safari doesn’t open the iPhone’s app store. Instead you get an internal server error from Apple.
• Some apps, like AIM and PayPal, have additional settings which can be accessed in the System Settings menu, at the bottom.
• Re-Downloading an App Store App. John Gruber notes:

  If you accidentally delete an app you’ve bought, you can re-download it for free. The App Store UI doesn’t make this clear, but Apple describes it in this KBase article. What you do is act like you’re buying it again — tap the app’s price, and the App Store will recognize that you’ve already purchased it and ask if you wish to download it again. You can also do this from iTunes, to re-download an app to your computer that you originally purchased on your iPhone.

Other Miscellany

• My iPhone now has the iPod Touch’s Contacts App. It is the exact same as opening the Telephone App and clicking Contacts. If I am scrolled half-way down in my Phone’s contact list and then quit out and open up the Contacts App, it will refresh itself to match, and thus it too will be scrolled half-way down. Curiously though, the reverse does not work. Meaning if I scroll back up to the top in the iPod-version Contacts App, the change is not reflected when I go back to the Contacts list in the iPhone’s telephone app. Oddities aside, I’m assuming the app is there because I downloaded the unofficial 2.0 OS update yesterday. Why it would be part of the official iPhone 2.0 OS is beyond me. I have a feeling when the official 2.0 OS update is released later today (presumably) that my iPhone will want to update itself. UPDATE: I re-installed the “official” 2.0 upgrade, and the Contacts App is still there. So now it lives in the back corner of the 3rd screen, next to its new friend Stocks. UPDATE 2: Nate Bird points out that with the dedicated Contacts app you can now add or edit a contact while talking on the phone. It’s true.
• iPhone can now take a screenshot by pressing (not holding) the home and lock buttons simultaneously. The screen fades to white, fades back in, and the screenshot is now in your camera roll.
• Apple’s Remote App is brilliant, and I can only imagine how much more I would enjoy it if I had an Apple TV setup. I noticed is that when selecting an artist or album to play in iTunes via Remote, a new playlist appears in iTunes titled “Remote” and it has the album you’re listening to in it. When switching to listen to a Podcast or watching a movie the playlist is deleted.
• Fortunately Mobile iCal (or whatever it’s called) now supports multiple calendars. Using the same colors as your Desktop iCal and MobileMe Calendar. Unfortuntely, no matter what the color is for an event, the text is white – making light-colored calendar events nearly impossible to read.
• When typing in a password you now see the last character you entered. Just before saving it, an 8-character password which ended with the letter “w”, would look like this: •••••••w.

Twitterrific for the Apple App Store

Official Announcement of Twitterrific For the Apple App Store From the Iconfactory -

Over 2,100 downloads since the App Store went up this morning.

Cream of the App Store Crop

Cream of the App Store crop. -

Sebastiaan de With:

A lot of great apps are already available, and I wanted to share my selection of fantastically designed and useful apps that you can grab when you update your current iPhone.

Try not to spend all the money you’ve been saving for the iPhone 3G at the App store today,

Why Wait?

• iPhone 2.0 software update is available for bootleg download. More info on MacRumors.
• MobileMe system update is aviailable for bootleg download. More info on GearLive.
• The iTunes App store is up, though not announced. You can find it by searching on iTunes for an application, or through an iTunes App Store link – like the previous one, or this one for Super Monkey Ball.

I’m installing the 2.0 software now, and so far so good. Also, the MobileMe update ran fine, but the Apple servers are still off-line.

What are the apps I grabbed already?

• Mobile Twitterrific
• NetNewsWire
• Super Monkey Ball
• Remote
• Weather Bug

Investing Strategies for iPhone Customers

Investing Strategies for iPhone Customers -

Khoi Vinh:

Take a look at the price of Apple stock over the past year, and note that the value of my iPhone is now way less than just one share of AAPL.

So does that make the Stocks app on the iPhone like lemon juice on an open wound?

WWDC 2008 Keynote

All iPhone, all the time

Steve Jobs’ WWDC 2008 keynote address.

Refreshing the iPhone Tips & Tutorials Page

Since last July I have loosely been maintaining a tips and tutorials page for the iPhone. The page is basically a categorized list with some helpful links to popular web apps, how-tos, articles and hardware accessory stores — all for the iPhone.

In light of tomorrow’s rumored “iPhone! iPhone! iPhone!” keynote announcement, and the upcoming release of OSX iPhone 2.0, I figured it was time to update the page. But with your help please.

If you know of a link or two (or three) that you think would fit in, please send it on by emailing me at sbnet@mac.com.

Thanks in advance.

— Shawn

Hahlo 3

Hahlo 3 -

Hahlo has always been my iPhone Twitter client of choice. On my way to work yesterday I discovered that version 3 is out, and it’s very slick. Nice work, Dean.

Brent Simmons: ‘The Coming Gold Rush’

The Coming Gold Rush -

Brent Simmons shares his thoughts on iPhone app development.

I don’t know about you guys, but I have been having a blast reading articles by many of the most fantastic indie Mac developers as they share their thoughts about this new frontier.

It’s the Software, Stupid

It’s the Software, Stupid -

Brett touches on exactly how I felt yesterday after watching the application demos at the SDK announcement:

And all this will be available to the entire installed iPhone base. No one gets left out. You do not have to buy another $500 device to get a few new features if you have an old model — just get the new software. [...] This seems so simple. But in the phone industry, this is revolutionary.

After watching the apps get demonstrated I had this “my iPhone is a sleeper agent” sort of feeling. Realizing there is way more under the hood which I, as a user, haven’t fully had the chance to experience yet. And, like Brett says, I don’t have to buy another $500 phone.

The first version of the iPhone may very well be the greatest 1.0 gadget released in history.

Apple March 6 Event

Apple March 6 Event – The Quicktime video of Steve’s presentation from today announcing the iPhone SDK. I’m just now watching it.

Weather on iPhone

Weather Underground has a very nice, iPhone optimized webpage. You can find out humidity, dew point, visibility, sunrise, sunset, detailed forecasts and warnings. It even has the large iPhone “slider buttons” for some of the settings such as animating the radar.

Another smart element is the #id links at the top of each section: “Current”, “Radar”, “Forecast” and “Warnings”. Not only can you can skip around between the sections, but each perspective’s section is identified by their title being in yellow (even if you scroll down to it).

I usually just use the Yahoo weather widget to check what the temperature will be and if I can wear flip-flops or not. But I’m adding this to my home screen for when I ever want to check anything more than just temperature.

Workaround for Lame WebClip Icons

Override Lame WebClip Icons -

Smart little workaround by Matt to avoid lame WebClip Icons on your iPhone. I imagine that all this hububb about WebClip Icons will be mute in a very short time. But so goes the blogosphere, eh?

Mint WebClip Icon

Mint WebClip Icon -

Most people have Mint in a subdirectory like /mint. This is a problem if you want to set an iPhone favicon for your root domain, but change the favicon in subdirectories because the iPhone looks in the root directory for the favicon.

A joint effort over Twitter between Cameron and I to hack Mint to display the Mint Icon on your iPhone instead of a picture of your Mint page or the default WebClip you have uploaded to your root directory.

By “hack” I mean slightly edit, and by “joint effort” I mean I resized the 3 different colored Mint Icons to 57×57, and Cameron figured out the edit and wrote the tutorial.

UPDATE: If you’re still stuck with your site’s root folder’s WebClip try “Red X-ing” out of your Mint browser window, restarting your iPhone and then re-navigating to your Mint install.

Updated: iPhone Tips & Tutorials

iPhone Tips & Tutorials: A semi-comprehensive link list -

Just updated. Now with 57 links to iPhone Web Apps, Tips, Tutorials, Articles, and more.

Create WebClips Icons

HOW TO: Create WebClips Icons -

I’m always happy to link to Brett’s site. Not to mention he posted it first.

orderedlist iPhone Wallpaper

Perhaps my favorite iPhone wallpaper.

The Early Adopter Paradox

(I wanted to link to Brett’s article yesterday when I read it but I couldn’t think of a reason why and I didn’t want to just quote something. But when I read Cameron’s reason for linking I realized that’s exactly why I wanted to link to it. So, with out further adieu…)

Brett’s Article is here: The Early Adopter Paradox

And Cameron Hunt said: “Good article by Brett Peters about non-techies as the best iPhone salespeople. It’s really amazing, and I’ve seen it happen as well.”

iPhone Christmas Wallpapers

Get your iPhone into the Christmas spirit.

You can take your favorites, or download a zip file with all five here.

After One Week With an iPhone

On June 29th I followed Twitters, read blog posts and saw flickr images as thousands of people stood in line and bought their iPhone.

Although I would have loved to been a part of the fun, there were three reasons I wasn’t in line that day: (a) I have never been an early adopter, and have always waited for at least the second generation product. (b) $600 was too much for me to spend guilt-free on a cellular telephone. And (c) I still had 80-some-odd days left in my current non-AT&T contract.

Now that the iPhone was on the shelves Paris Hilton started to get pushed down as iPhone screamed across all the headlines, Diggs, and permalinks. Everyone who had or hadn’t doubted the hype, they were all discovering that it was more amazing than they anticipated. It really was that cool.

Then – two months later – Steve dropped the price by two Benjamins. That very day I went to the Apple store and bought a first generation iPhone. Unfortunately I had to wait for 16 days for my current contract to end so I could port my number fee-free upon activation.

I used to take my PowerBook everywhere and have used it virtually every day since I bought it nearly three years ago. Last week it got the least amount of attention ever.

Now, after a little over a week of iPhone usage I would like to say that my life really has changed. I have always said I just want a phone that makes calls and does TXT, but after having access to my Calendar, my email, my music, the Web and beyond. I am shocked at how much fun it is to be productive and not always stuck in my office.

The iPhone is more than I had thought it would be. The way it works, thinks and feels is incredible. In no particular order, here are the things I like, dislike, am confused by or have noticed about my iPhone in some capacity.

• Visual Voicemail: For years I have been horrible at checking my voicemail. I always just call the person back without listening to their message. (This is partly due to the fact that most voice messages go something along the lines of, “Hey Shawn, this is Hank. I was thinking we should really meet up sometime to go get steak. On me of course. I’m free next Thursday at Noon. Friday at 5. Saturday at 2. Or Sunday at 3:30. Also, do you know a good place to get my transmission fixed. It’s been acting funny. So call me back, OK? Talk to you later. Oh, and my number is 555-5555.” Then you have to listen to the whole thing again to catch the phone number, only to call them back and have the same conversation again just as it was on the voicemail. They should just say “This is Hank. 555-5555. Let’s get steak. Call me back.”) Back to the voicemail problam. Eventually I will accumulate 8 – 10 new voicemails only to have the last one be an important one with a feeling I ought to listen to it. I then suffer through 7 non-applicable messages to get to the one I thought would be important only to discover it wasn’t. Visual Voicemail eliminates every one of these problems. I can listen to my voice messages out of order. I can tap and drag for fast-forward or rewind to any part of the message. I can delete without listening, etc. This is one of my favorite features. In fact I love Visual Voicemail so much I keep a few old messages on my phone simply for the sake of demoing Visual Voicemail to others.
• The Keyboard: I wish landscape keyboard was supported in more than just Safari. Primarily in Mail. It is much easier to type on, although it does take up most of the screen making it hard to see the text field your typing in. I am still getting used to a tactileless keyboard, but the iPhone is doing an outstanding job at learning words I commonly use (like “shawnblanc”) and common mistakes I make. Having a QWERTY keyboard has made texting a blast.
• Hahlo: My online Twitter client of choice. Its smart and fast – even over EDGE.
• SMS: The iPhone is my first camera phone. Something I have always looked forward to in a camera phone was sending picture text messages. I’m still waiting. The iPhone doesn’t send or receive images over SMS. What a bizarre omission.
• EDGE: As long as you’re not on driving on the highway, EDGE is not that bad. According to the iPhone Network Test I average around 175kb/sec in Kansas City. A mere pittance compared to the 700 – 800 I get at home, but often times EDGE is faster than my network at work. Having the ability to check email, twitter, and waste time on the internet from nearly anywhere I want surely must be a milestone in the history of our planet.
• The Screen: 160 ppi is incredible. Pictures are sharp and crisp. Text is clear. White is bright. I’m curious if anyone else with an iPhone noticed that the cleaning cloth doesn’t really clean. It sort-of pushes around the finger-prints and oil? The best way I have found to clean my iPhone screen is with my jeans. Seriously.
• The Inter-Application Workflow: Is amazing. The way the phone works with itself. I am still telling stories about the first email I got with a phone number in it asking me to call someone and how I just had to click on the number to make the phone call. Clicking on a YouTube opens up the YouTube app. Etc. It is all just incredible. The iPhone really is a joy to use. I don’t mind that I can’t whip-flip through everything without looking. I want to hold the phone and tap on it.
• The iTunes WiFi Music Store: Very cool. Very easy to spend money.
• The Nod: When I see someone else with an iPhone I want to say ‘hi’ to them and show them my phone. But I haven’t figured out a way to do this without imagining that I’m coming across as lame. So instead I just say, “Hey. Nice iPhone.” But I try to say it in such a way as to sound different from all the people that say that to them who don’t own iPhones, and to sound like someone who does own an iPhone. But it never works. Oh well. Life goes on.

There are surely more than a dozen other little details I have noticed which prove the inteligent design of the iPhone. But most importantly, the iPhone has taken my work life and my home life and seamlessly merged them into an enjoyable environment that actually has made me live with less stress throughout my day.

WordPress iPhone Admin Plugin

I just discovered, downloaded, and am currently using, the iPhone admin interface plugin for WordPress.

For what it is, it’s a great plugin; the hinderances are the input device. Total functionality for posting and editing, but a pain to type any code.

My Unique iPhone Update Experience

A bit of back-story is required for my update experience was unique. And I’ll tell you now that it’s not all that exciting. However – you will definitely appreciate it if you, like me, have your iPhone away from the home office computer that you’ve got it synced with.

I have been rocking my PowerBook G4 for almost 3 years now, but fianally upgraded to a Quad Core Mac Pro about two months ago. Since then, the Mac Pro has (obviously) been my main machine.

Having two macs necessitated a subscription to .Mac, which in turn made my .Mac username the Chief Potentate of all my accounts with Apple – including iTunes. And I haven’t bought a song of iTunes using my PowerBook since I got the Mac Pro and changed everything over to my .Mac account.

On Thursday, Apple released the next big software, firmware and feature update for iPhone. However, I am currently out of town toting around my PowerBook which is not the computer I used to setup, activate and sync my iPhone with.

Also, many of the songs and videos on my iPhone are not on my PowerBook and it would be a shame to sync, and lose them for the weekend. However, I decided to go for it anyway and see what would happen.

I connected my iPhone to my PowerBook and opened iTunes. I have automatic sync turned off so nothing would start without my permission. Without manually syncing the iPhone I simply clicked on “Software Update”.

The new update – 1.1.1 – downloaded and installed itself seamlessly without ever syncing my songs, videos, photos, etc…

Now that I had access to the iTunew Wi-Fi Music Store I tried to buy a song, however my iPhone was set-up with my old iTunes username with no way to change it from iPhone’s settings.

Realizing that I probably still had that username logged in on my PowerBook I logged out and re-logged-in with my new username. Then, I only had to plug in my iPhone, let iTunes see it, eject it and wala. The username was updated on my iPhone.

I never had to sync, or authenticate, or anything. Just plug it it and let iTunes do the rest. And that, my friends, is good news for anyone who doesn’t like to wait for things.

Aqua Wallpapers for iPhone

I took some of the stock Aqua wallpapers from OS X and cropped them down to 320×480 pixels to fit the iPhone screen.

You can grab them from this post, or download a folder with all 5 here.

Why I have an un-activated iPhone sitting on my desk

On June 29th, I – like thousands of others – went to the Apple store. I didn’t wait in line though because I knew I wouldn’t be buying the highly anticipated gadget of the year. Since the Apple store was open until Midnight that day, a friend and I went down later after the crowd was gone.

After a couple minutes hands on with the display phone I was blown away. Even though I walked out of the store holding two 8GB models I didn’t buy one for myself. Those two phones flopped on eBay, and I took them back a week later.

Why I didn’t buy an iPhone on June 29th

1. I have never bought a first generation product before. Doesn’t matter if it’s a car, phone, computer, etc. The first gens are always twice as buggy as the second. I would rather be a late adopter and a headache-free, long-term enjoyer. (Is enjoyer even a word?)

2. On June 29th I still had 84 days left with my current (non-AT&T) service provider. The $599 iPhone price tag coupled with a $175 cancelation fee was too much.

However … by September 4th I had overcome both obstacles mentioned above.

After a conversation with Sean I realized that all the quirks and issues are software related – not hardware. Thus my main concerns about the first generation iPhone were relieved.

Secondly, I was able to pick up a few side jobs that would pay me enough to get a 4GB refurbished phone. (A note to married guys: Never buy an expensive gadget without your wife’s concent. If you do she’ll be mad instead of jealous. Thanks to the side jobs, my wife happily let me budget money for an iPhone.)

So there I was on September 4th – sitting in front of my monitor looking at the Apple Store’s refurbished iPhone page trying to make decision.

If I bought a refurbished 4GB iPhone then, I was sure to get one. What I wasn’t sure about was how things would look in 24 hours.

The next day Apple was going to make an announcement. I was afraid Steve would bust out the 2nd generation iPhone and then hide all the 1st gens and keep the same price tag, thus forcing me to continue using my Samsung hunk of junk until the 2nd Generation iPhone showed up on the refurbished page.

After mulling it over a bit I decided to wait and see what would happen at the press conference the next morning.

September 5th was my June 29th

Conveniently I was at home during the keynote furiously refreshing Engaget just like the rest of you.

As soon Steve made the price drop announcement I was out the door and on my way down town. I walked in and bought a brand new 8GB model.

Why I have an un-activated iPhone sitting on my desk

I still have one more week before I can freely port my current number to AT&T. And yes, I could run the Jailbreak hack to mock-activate my iPhone, (and believe me, I thought about it) but that’s not the way it was intended to be set up.

My iPhone is un-tampered-with for the same reason I don’t read articles in NetNewsWire. And the same reason I drink pop out of the can and am always the best dressed at weddings:

I want the full experience. Nothing less.

The September 5th Tweets (and the Words ‘iPhone’ and ‘iPod’ Thrown Into the Title for Good Measure)

I had a blast reading through Twitter reactions to the Apple announcement today, and I wanted to share the joy.

Please enjoy a completely random compilation of the tweets that stuck out to me today for no particular reason.

Merlin -

Liveblogging the Gettysburg Address: “Ok, we’re starting…Abe looks tired…opens with historical reference…no mention of iPods yet…”

Dunstan -

I am ashamed by my constant reloading of Engadget’s Apple Event coverage. Ashamed.

Daniel -

Think of it more as a $100/month “early access” exclusive membership fee.

Craig -

iPhone doubter prediction: “APPLE IS LOWERING PRICES BECAUSE THEY ARE HAVING PROBLEMS SELLING IPHONES!!!11!!”

<a href=http://iconfactory.com/software/twitterrific”>Zeldman -

@chockenberry, the doubter prediction was inevitable. If Apple brought world peace, it would be a sign that iPhone sales were sluggish.

Aaron -

Shutting off Twitter for the day. I can’t handle the Apple orgasms

Sean -

It’s clear that Apple has become more infatuated with their products than their users.

<a href=http://twitter.com/panache/statuses/249677522″>Dave -

people complaining about the iphone price drop haven’t paid attention to how gadget tech/pricing has worked for the last two decades.

Dave -

why don’t they just make zunes the free prize in boxes of Apple Jacks?

Scott -

why do people think the Beatles will make online distribution of music legitimate? Apple has sold 3 billion songs online… that’s legit.

Neven -

I wonder if all these iPhone price drop haters go down to the store and spew insults when there’s a 2-for-1 special on cereal

John -

Twitter’s going to be offline for a couple of hours tonight. You know what that means – WE’RE ALL GETTING iPHONES! WHOOOOO!

John -

Some might say the iPod Touch home screen is half empty. Others might say it’s half full. Me? I say, “Ooh, new icon for Calculator!”

Shawn -

On my way to the Apple Store for an iPhone.

The Nod

The Nod

…you don’t see Vista users doing it. You don’t see many cell phone users doing it. But I suspect it’s only a matter of time before you get your first iPhone nod.

Another good one from Brett.

Nobody Wants A Styl.us

Nobody Wants A Styl.us

Tips for using the iPhone by Brett Peters.

Now, instead of styluses, we’re going to have to use a whole new vocabulary: Swiping. Tapping. Flipping.

Just discovered this site. Favorite post so far: Travel Movie Platform.

Official iPhone Tool

The Official iPhone Tool.

I happen to have 200 third party iPhone tools. Available for $4.99 each.

What Apple copied from Microsoft

Jeffery Zeldmen’s article about the power the iPhone has had on his work life is simply outstanding.

My iPhone has made me stop using calendar, contact, and e-mail applications I’ve used day and night for over a decade, and switch to the free — and in some ways less capable — applications that come bundled with Macintosh OS X. [...] Changing years of work habits is not easy. Migrating data, in some cases by hand, takes time I don’t have to spare. Yet I’m making these changes of my own will, and happily.

I think I’ll read it again tomorrow.

iPhone Tips & Tutorials: A semi-comprehensive link list

NOTE: If you know of a link or two (or three) that you think would fit in here, please send it my way: sbnet@mac.com.

Ever since June 29th, 2007 there has been so much development happening for the iPhone it’s crazy. For archive’s (and sanity’s) sake I’ve compiled a list of the iPhone web-apps, developments, tips, tutorials, helpful tid-bits, articles that stand out to me, and more.

This page is a perfect one-stop shop for two types of people:

1) Those who currently have an iPhone and want in on the discoveries and web-apps being published but don’t have time to surf the internet like crazy.

2) Those who hope to get an iPhone some day, don’t want to miss out on the developments taking place right now and are not particularly looking forward to digging through archives.

Apps

• Leaflets – iPhone Apps that grow on you.
• Mojit – Web App Launcher
• 17 Powerful Bookmarklets for your iPhone
• PocketTweets – Twitter for your iPhone
• FlickIM – Chat and media sharing on your iPhone.
• iGTD on your iPhone – Read the TUAW writeup here.
• Box.net – for your iPhone. (duh).
• SeeqPod – Play the internet’s hidden music on your iPhone for free.
• Filemark Maker – Store high res images, text files, and PDFs on an iPhone.
• iTweet – Another Twitter app
• Media Temple Account Center – Custom interface for the iPhone
• iPhone Apper
• Native IM Client
• installer.app – Install iPhone and update apps over wi-fi
• Lights Off – The Game
• The .Mac RSS Reader – Arguably the best one to use
• Hahlo – My Twitter client of choice.
• Frenzic – The Game. It’s addicting.

Tutorials & Tips

• How to put DVDs on the iPhone
• Updating your “Sent from my iPhone” email signature
• Spam-free email for the iPhone
• Saving iPhone applications inside data URLs
• Getting photos from Lightroom to your iPhone
• Telekenesis – Controlling your Mac from your iPhone
• iPhone Scrolling Tip – Use two fingers
• 9 Hacks To Make You Master of Your iPhone – Some lame, some helpful.
• iFuntastic – Modding your iPhone for mere mortals.
• NewsGator Mobil – Your RSS feeds on NewsGator & NetNewsWire optimized for your iPhone. Read on your iPhone and it syncs with your NetNewsWire app on your home computer. Read NewsGator’s post here.
• How to Restart, quit frozen apps and Reset iPhone
• 25 iPhone Power Tips – Mac Life
• How to encode movies and TV shows – To help save valuable space
• iPhone vs. Panera Bread’s Free WiFi – How to get past the splash screen. By Mr. Shaun Inman.
• Install Apps – Easily with no hacking skills required
• How To: Create WebClips Icons – So when someone saves your website to their springboard, an icon is used instead of a cruddy screenshot of your website.
• One Line of Code – Want to make your site look better on the iPhone with one line of HTML?
• Apple’s Guided Tour – Finger Tips and more…

Wallpapers

• iPhone Wallpapers – Greg is my hero
• Mint Wallpapers – For your iPhone. Courtesy of our beloved Shaun Inman.
• Orderdlist iPhone Wallpaper – Perhaps my favorite iPhone wallpaper.

Hardware Accessories

• Better Headphone Adapter for the iPhone
• iPhone Gear – Cases, Screens, cleaners, etc…
• Traditional Leather Case

Articles and Reviews

• TUAW’s iPhone Page
• A Week With the iPhone – A review by Mike Davidson.
• Apple’s iPhone Battery Page – Get some info right from the horse’s mouth.
• The Power of Good UI Design – Phil’s 1 year old masters the iPhone. FSJ wept.
• Engadget’s iPhone Review
• The New Frontier – Macworld article by John Gruber
• Leave Your Laptop Behind

Miscellaneous

• iTrapped – The new way to do iPhone contacts
• Hide-a-Pod – iPhone anti-theft device
• Will it Blend?
• AT&T Marketing Settings – How to adjust your account so you don’t get spam from AT&T.
• iPhone Pepper – Single Column viewing of Mint on your iPhone
• A Mint Button – For faster viewing of your Mint stats

iPhone in Depth: the Ars Review

iPhone in Depth: the Ars Review

a.k.a. “The Mother of all iPhone Reviews”, for those who just can’t get enough.

O2 not selling the iPhone

According to this report (you’ll need a translator to read it) O2 has not signed a contract to sell the iPhone after all.

O2 have to no agreement distribute the iPhone of Apple in the United Kingdom.

Translation: 12 Million depressed O2 customers.

I am with Verizon, so I know how they feel.

Gruber’s 1st Impressions

John Gruber’s 1st Impressions of the iPhone

Overall day one impression: the iPhone is 95 percent amazing, 5 percent maddening. I’m just blown away by how nice it is — very thoughtful UI design and outstanding engineering. It is very fun.

This is why people read Daring Fireball — John stayed up all night putting together that article so it’d be fresh off the press for everyone.

iPhone First Impressions

TUAW’s First Impressions of the iPhone

After 15 minutes of hands-on ‘research’ in the Apple store these are my sentiments exactly.