Wow. Little did I know I was just chipping at the tip of the iceberg with this app.
Month: May 2012
Sponsor: Igloo Software →
My thanks to Igloo Software for sponsoring the RSS feed this week.
Work isn’t a place — it’s what you do.
And you might work on a lot of devices — a Mac, an iPhone, an iPad — in a lot of places. You might work on the road or maybe from home (with your AeroPress and clickity keyboard). And that makes it hard to securely use a shared drive, coordinate with clients and collaborate with your team.
Igloo offers a complete digital workplace — you get full access to all your files, project discussions and plans for world domination. The information you need to work is available anywhere in the world, literally at your fingertips.
Igloo has a space for your team. Each team gets dedicated file sharing, Twitter-like microblogs, activity streams and a host of other collaboration tools in one cloud-based platform. Plans start at just $4/user/month.
Work better, not harder.
Enter to win an AeroPress and try Igloo free for 30 days.
iCab →
This morning, when trying to unsubscribe from Twitter’s new weekly digest of toots and whatnot, I realized that I could not access my Twitter account settings using my iPad. Twitter insisted on redirecting me to the mobile version of their site and from there you cannot find a link to access your account settings.
Some folks on Twitter pointed out that you can navigate there directly by manual typing in the URL: http://twitter.com/account/settings. However, on a mobile device Twitter only shows you a mobile-sized amount of settings:
I realized that there could be a time when I am working solely from my iPad and forced mobile redirects like this could be a serious issue. In a worst-case scenario I could simply connect to my MacBook Air using LogMeIn, but it would better if I didn’t have to resort to that just to get around a website’s agent sniffers.
Dave Chartier directed me to a 3rd-party Web browser, iCab.
iCab is $2 in the app store and it is absolutely packed to the rafters with options and settings for things. And one of iCab’s features is the ability to choose your preferred user agent. I won’t use iCab as my default browser, but it’s a nice app to have as another tool in the box.
Now I have a Keyboard Maestro macro for telling Safari on my Mac to pretend that it’s Safari on my iPad (usually just so I can watch Kickstarter project videos), and an app on my iPad that pretends it’s Safari on my Mac so I can change my Twitter account settings. Computers.
The Atlantic Media’s Digital Transformation →
Josh Sternberg:
Four years ago, [Atlantic Media’s] traditional-to-digital-audience metrics were at a one-to-one basis, meaning for every traditional reader there was a digital one, according to Justin Smith, president of the Atlantic Media Company. Now, he says, on average, its digital audience is 25 times higher than the print audience.
Sternberg also notes that though Atlantic Media’s digital audience is 25 times larger than their print audience, digital accounts for only half of their advertising revenue.
If You Want to Disable The New Twitter Digest Email →
I just logged in to my Twitter account settings and lo and behold that new checkbox for me to recive that “weekly digest of Stories & Tweets from my network” was enabled by default. Gee, thanks.
This is not that I think Twitter’s new weekly digest is a bad idea, but I’m on Twitter enough as it is and don’t need an email telling me about what I likely already saw. Moreover, it would have been polite of Twitter to let me opt in to the new email list rather than requiring me to opt out.
Digital Analogs Are No Longer Sufficient →
Seth Godin:
I care a lot about using digital shadows of real world devices because we don’t have the imagination to reinvent them.
In Praise of Pixels
When it comes to pixels I can’t get enough. Ditto my need for a huge desk. I want a lot of pixels on my screen and I want a lot of space on my desk.
It’s not because I want to use these spaces to store application windows and external hard drives. Quite the opposite: I want to use this space for nothing. I work well when I’m sitting at a large and oversized desk that has little on it beyond a big glowing screen and a clicky keyboard. The same goes for my computer monitors. I like a lot of pixels available so that I can not use them.
Why this is, I’m not sure — it’s a part of my personality, but it’s also how I imagine my mind working. When the mind is clear like an open field on a blue-sky day it has absolute liberty to run and twirl and throw the frisbee as far as it can. There are no walls or hinderances or buildings that stand in the way of clear and imaginative thinking.
When I’m at my desk typing on my computer it means my mind is working. And the more open my physical and digital workspaces are then the more open my mental one can be.
In Praise of the 23-Inch Apple Cinema Display
My first Mac was a 12-inch PowerBook that sat on the wrong side of the excessive screen real-estate scale. It was the smallest and cutest computer Apple made at the time, and it had a screen resolution of 1024×768 pixels. I cut my teeth as a print designer on that tiny screen, learning the ropes of Photoshop and InDesign and giving myself a splitting headache. I constantly worked in a slouched over position, with my neck stretching forward to get my head closer to the screen.
After my first paid print job I used the funds to buy myself an external monitor: a 19-inch Somethingorother from the Tiger Direct catalog. A few years later I had saved enough for a Mac Pro and with it I bought a 23-inch Apple Cinema Display, a device that I consider to be one of Apple’s finest pieces of hardware ever.
I had spent many occasions in the Apple Retail store looking at the displays, and I read all of the famous Mac setups featured on Glenn Wolsey’s old blog. The 20-inch model was too small; the 30-inch was too big even though it entitled bragging rights; and so, by deduction, the 23-inch was just right. (I think Apple realized this as well and they cut the sizes of their Cinema Displays down to just the 27-inch monitor. This is a great size, it’s big enough to be big but not so much that you lose open applications.)
I have now been working on a 23-inch Apple Cinema Display for half a decade. I’m on my second one because my original was sold with the Mac Pro. You can’t find them as easily as you could even just a few years ago, especially if you want one in good condition.
What I like about the aluminum Apple Cinema Display is that it epitomizes what I consider to be the highest breed of products designed by Apple in California.
The front of the display is nothing more than a matte screen surrounded by an aluminum bezel. The bezel is not so fat as to distract for your attention. Nor is it too thin. Its proportions are sound.
At the bottom-center of the bezel is the Apple logo in shiny aluminum — subtle. The bezel wraps over the top and bottom of the display, and covers the whole back of the enclosure in a sheet of aluminum as well. The corners are rounded, the sides are white plastic, and the base is a hearty aluminum foot.
On the right edge are the only three buttons: one to power the display on and off, and two for adjusting the brightness of the backlights up or down. At the bottom right-hand corner of the front bezel is a small hole cut out with a white light that shines through. This light “breathes” as the old PowerBooks did when the computer is sleeping. When you turn the display on or off that small light gets bright all at once and then dims down to darkness again.
The greatest feature of all however, is what this display lacks: there is no glass panel glued to the front. The aluminum cinema display sports the great matte screens of yesteryear. And a CJ7 will always be cooler than a modern Wrangler.
What has kept me from upgrading to this next generation of displays found in today’s Apple stores has been that front glass panel. I have worked on these displays (and their iMac cousins), and I admit that they are nice and crisp and pleasing on the eyes. They pose well in pictures of our desks and they display colors and text vividly. They are also much easier to keep clean — the solid glass panel on the front makes it easy to wipe off any trace of dust and fingerprints without fear of damaging the pixels underneath.
In Praise of Retina Display Macs
My 12-inch PowerBook had a good long run. After it I bought a 15-inch MacBook Pro (the aluminum body kind that closely resembled the Power PC laptops that had come just before it). I bought the 15-inch MBP for a few reason: I wanted a laptop with more screen real-estate for the times I was working not at my desk, and Apple had discontinued the 12-inch lineup and replaced it with the 13-inch plastic MacBook which came in white or black. Those plastic laptops never appealed to me, which meant there was only one option: the 15-inch MacBook Pro.
Fast forward a few more years to the summer of 2011 where the laptop which superseded my MacBook Pro was a 13-inch MacBook Air.
Everything about the Air was appealing to me except for one thing: the screen. By the summer of 2011 I was no longer doing print design work and so I wasn’t in absolute need of the biggest screen I could carry in one arm. But my affection for a large screen remained. I was able to justify this conflict thanks to the fact that the 13-inch MacBook Air has the same number of pixels as my 15-inch MacBook Pro. Therefore it would provide me with all the same screen real-estate, just in a smaller and sharper image. I was okay with that; I have good eyes.
But there was a second drawback to the screen on the MacBook Air and that was the screen itself. Though it’s not adorned with a sheet of glass like you find on the modern MacBook Pros and iMacs, it does have a slight shine to it. It’s not matte, it’s glossy.
I thought long and hard about if I could handle working on a glossy screen. It seems like a trite detail, but if you’re a nerd then you understand. We all have our various trite details which can act as peas under our mattresses, and I feared that the MacBook Air’s glossy display would cause me to lose sleep at night.
In my mind’s eye I placed the glossy screen on one side of the scale and on the other I placed the all the rest of the hardware (the new i7 Core Duo processor, the Solid State Drive, the long-lasting battery, the Thunderbolt connection, the slim and light form factor). It was no contest and the scales tipped heavily in favor of the bells and whistles of the new MacBook Airs. I drove to the local Apple store and bought one.
And after all that the glossy screen has proven to be a non-issue for me. What a boring end to the story, right?
There is something that I left out, however. And it’s that all my time using my 15-inch MacBook Pro, I was wishing for a version of it that copied the Air’s form factor. A lightweight, teardrop-shaped laptop that was minus an optical drive and had a Solid State Drive and 15-inch screen. To me, at the time, that sounded like the ideal laptop.
You can do well to figure out future Apple rumors by simply betting on what seems obvious-but-is-not-yet. And a 15-inch MacBook Air strikes me as just such a device. It’s not “mind-blowing” because we can all imagine what it will look like. And it’s not “exciting” because we can all pretty much see it coming — surely it’s only a matter of time.
Earlier this week 9to5 Mac posted a rumor about the what an upcoming 15-inch MacBook Pro may look like. According to this rumor, however, the new MacBook Pro would look just like the current model but thinner, rather than sporting an Air-like teardrop shape.
The biggest talking point, however, isn’t about the size or shape of the laptop but rather the pixels on the screen. The next MacBook Pro is supposedly going to have a Retina display.
The iPhone 4 was too amazing to not push that display into bigger and bigger devices. Retina display Macs have been a long time coming. Last summer, with Lion, the phrase being whispered on the air was the Back to the Mac tagline which Apple themselves used when first demoing the new operating system. That tagline continues to stay relevant, because not only is the software of iOS continually influencing OS X, but we are seeing iOS hardware make its way “Back to the Mac” as well. The Magic Trackpad is a good example, “natural scrolling” is another, and next will be the Retina display.
The idea of a Retina display on a Macintosh sounds fantastic. The words I’m typing at this moment are onto my iPad with its high resolution screen, and the text looks stellar. Retina displays rock. Sure, there are downsides and ugly bits that a Retina display Mac would bring with it — such as non-retina applications and websites — and Marco Arment does a good job of articulating those.
I have the good fortune of using applications on my Mac that are developed by bleeding edge developers. In addition to the native OS X apps I use (Mail and Safari), the 3rd-party apps like OmniFocus, Yojimbo, Coda, Transmit, MarsEdit, Byword, iA Writer, and others which are all run by developers which I have no doubt will be quick to update their Mac applications to support Apple’s new high resolution displays.
While it’s true that non-Retina apps on a Retina screen are like sandpaper on the eyes, the tradeoff is worth it to me. I will suffer ugly graphics on the Web in exchange for print-like text, sharp high-resolution photos, and all the other elements of the operating system which will have Retina assets.
I heard someone mention that it’s not unlike iOS shipping without support for Flash. There was a short period of time when you didn’t get the “full web” when on your iPhone and iPad, but now, a few years later, I can’t remember the last time I visited a website and my iPad was sent back out to the cold thanks to its lack of Flash.
Not including my iPhone (I don’t work on that device) I have three work screens. Listed in order of screen size, from smallest to largest, they are: iPad, MacBook Air, and Cinema Display. But listed in order of pixels, from least to greatest, they are: MacBook Air, Cinema Display, iPad.
The smallest working screen is also the one which sports the most pixels. Surely there is a connection here as to why I prefer to work from either my extra large Cinema Display or my extra dense iPad.
Retina displays are coming to the Macintosh — it’s only a matter of time — and the sooner the better.
The Mental Office →
The Home Work Podcast has become one of my favorite new shows. It’s short, and I’ve been learning a lot. About 3 weeks ago Dave and Aaron talked about what they call The Mental Office:
Working from home isn’t always about notebooks, apps and office furniture. Much of it happens in the head, between fighting distraction, staying focused and keeping things organized. In this episode, Aaron and Dave chat about leaving work at work (even when it’s in your home) and doing a mind-sweep to keep things clear.
Aaron shared a metaphor of how switching between work and home life was akin to transporting between worlds in Myst. I took some of his ideas and adapted them into my own daily routine. I now end the day by doing a brain dump into a running text file in nvALT — I jot down all the ideas still in my head, all the loose ends I didn’t tie up, all the things I may want to do but didn’t get to.
It can be hard to call it quits for the day when there are still things which could be done. And so my text file is my way of admitting that yes the day is done and yes there is still work to do, but there is always tomorrow.
It reminds me of this Hemingway quote:
I learned not to think about anything that I was writing from the time I stopped writing until I started again the next day. That way my subconscious would be working on it and at the same time I would be listening to other people and noticing everything, I hoped.
By jotting down the loose ends of my work, and then leaving things alone, it has helped tremendously to let my conscious mind not keep work at its forefront when it’s not office hours. It also works as a great way to start the next day if I don’t already have an idea or project buzzing in my mind.
Coffee or Tea Ice Cubes →
Not in a million years did I ever imagine that I’d link to a Martha Stewart article. But with Spring here and Summer on the horizon, this is a clever idea for use in iced coffee or tea:
If the ice is made from coffee, it won’t dilute your drink as it melts. Freeze hot coffee (or tea, if you prefer) in an ice-cube tray, then use the cubes to cool your brew.
I’m not a big fan of just plain iced coffee, even toddy. I like iced lattes or iced tea. And I have a killer sweet tea recipe that I make using mint we have taking over the flower bed on the south side of our house.
Dieter Rams on Good Design [PDF] →
Dieter Rams, in a speech which he delivered at Jack Lenor Larsen’s New York showroom in December of 1976:
Ladies and gentlemen, design is a popular subject today. No wonder because, in the face of increasing competition, design is often the only product differentiation that is truly discernible to the buyer.
I am convinced that a well-thought-out design is decisive to the quality of a product. A poorly-designed product is not only uglier than a well-designed one but it is of less value and use. Worst of all it might be intrusive.
That was 36 years ago and it’s as relevant as if it had been delivered this morning.
How Pixar Almost Deleted ‘Toy Story 2’ →
The story of how they accidentally deleted the film before they were done and nearly lost everything.
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.
- My reasoning behind the 44-minutes of email routine could take up an article all its own. But, in short, my reasoning is that cleaning out my whole inbox every single day is an unrealistic goal. And so, instead of allowing the amount of email in my inbox to dictate how much time and attention I need to spend there, I’ve set my own time budget for how much I’m willing to give to my email inbox. And yes, I admit that I am in a unique and fortunate position that I don’t have to check my email as part of my job. It behooves me to check my email, but I have no boss or co-workers relying on me to read and reply to email. ↵
Timing: Automatic Time Tracking for OS X →
My thanks to Timing for sponsoring the RSS feed this week. Timing is a utility app that runs in your Mac’s Menu Bar and keeps track of where you’re spending time on your computer.
I’ve been using this app for almost a year to keep tabs on my work habits. Timing runs in the background and does all the heavy lifting of tracking what apps I’m active in, what websites I’m spending time on, and more. I can bundle those apps into Activities such as “writing”, “designing”, etc. and see aggregate time spent on certain task categories.
You have to give Timing a few weeks to really get some good useful stats that you can look over in aggregate to see how you are spending your time, where you’re spending it, and if there are certain apps or websites you need to be more conscious of in order to be more focused and productive. I just recently looked back at my total aggregate stats for the past 10 months, and it gave me some motivation to continue refining my daily routine.
Right now, Timing is on sale in the Mac App Store, or you can snag the free version that shows your activities for today and yesterday.
5by5 Radio App [iTunes Link] →
The brand-new 5by5 Radio app is out. Launch it and it connects to the live stream. Set push notifications for when your favorite shows go live, and see the upcoming live broadcast schedule. Here’s a list of shows worth enabling notifications for.