Nice trick (assuming you’re not using Launch Center for this). If you do use Launch Center, this trick still works well for the iPad since LC is iPhone-only.
Year: 2012
Duncan Davidson’s WWDC 2012 Keynote Bets →
Agreed.
Brett Terpstra’s Sweet Mac Setup
1. Who are you, what do you do, etc…?
My name is Brett Terpstra. I’m married to a wonderful girl named Aditi who happens to be a Certified Pet Dog Trainer, and I live in a zoo (figuratively: a Pit Bull, a German Shepherd, three cats, a parrot and a 75-gallon aquarium… plus the dogs we take in through our Pit Bull rescue).
I have a great day job as a remote worker for AOL Tech, building blogs like Engadget, TUAW and Joystiq. By night I’m a Mac developer, working on Marked, nvALT and other mad science with Macs.
2. What is your current setup?
At the core of my anti-minimalist setup are a Mac Pro (2.8 GHz Quad-Core Xeon) and a built-to-order 2011 13″ MacBook Air. I keep a couple of Mac minis around for testing (and nostalgia).
I use an Apple Bluetooth Keyboard and a Magic Trackpad on all of my desktop machines.
The Mac Pro is my primary machine. It’s hooked up to 2 monitors (21″ and 23″, mismatched because I never get the timing right when I upgrade them). I boot it off of a 600GB Velociraptor HD, and have additional internal hard drives for multiple OS versions and extra storage. I have a Drobo with a 4TB capacity and a few more terabytes of external Firewire 800 drives hooked up. I have a cheap Buffalo NAS that comes in quite handy.
My office is in the basement (walk-out with a huge glass sliding door that overlooks the Mississippi River Valley), so I have some issues connecting to my Airport Extreme on occasion. I use a PowerLink wifi antennae to get better results, but generally depend on Zyxel powerline networking.
I keep a very paperless office. On the rare occasions that I do deal with paper, I have an Epson Perfection 4490 Photo and the über-handy Doxie scanner.
I have an array of musical equipment for dinking around with. I don’t do a lot of audio production these days, but still have an Oxygen 49 keyboard, M-Audio FastTrack, Blue Snowball and a condenser mic on a boom with a Blue Icicle. Desktop monitors, decent headphones, a couple of guitars… enough to keep me entertained. A 5.1 Logitech desktop speaker system covers the bases when I’m just listening.
I also have an iPad 3 and an iPhone 4, an AeroPress, and a bizarre assortment of old X10 home automation stuff.
3. Why this rig?
The Mac Pro is provided by my employer. I probably wouldn’t have one if it weren’t for that; my Air is a superior computing machine for a lot of my needs. I like the dual large monitors, though, and that’s the thing I miss when I go Air-only for a while.
My keyboard and trackpad choice is the result of over a thousand dollars worth of “research” in input devices over the years. I’ve tried just about everything. I actually skipped the aluminum keyboards for a long time because I was pretty sure that anything under $80 was going to be junk, and I skipped the Bluetooth keyboards because I swore I couldn’t live without a numpad. Wrong on both counts.
I went through a few dozen mice and trackballs, too. I settled on the MX Revolution for quite a while, but I started getting RSI and switched to a Kensington Expert trackball. I jumped on the Magic Mouse when it came out, and loved the idea but didn’t get into the ergonomics. The Magic Trackpad took the parts of the Magic Mouse that I liked, made it bigger, better and friendlier on my wrists. In fact, since I started using it I haven’t had any wrist pain at all.
I had used 17″ MacBook Pros for years when the Air came out. It was sexy, but I thought there was no way I could get along without my 17″ screen and extra processor power. Then the time came for a new computer purchase, and something possessed me to take a chance on one. It’s probably the best purchase I’ve made in years. The only other purchase that’s brought me as much happiness is my AeroPress. I’ll probably get another of each as their respective times come.
4. What software do you use and for what do you use it?
So much software. I’m an app junky, and I try everything that I’m remotely interested in. Even some things I’m not. I can actually help you find a good cross-stitch pattern app because my mother-in-law asked me about it and I spent an evening trying a few out. However, what I use every day:
- Coding: I use four different text editors for various purposes (TextMate, Sublime Text 2, Espresso and MacVim). I’m currently working on consolidating most of my favorite functions from each into Sublime Text 2, but for now I use whatever is most appropriate for the job.
I use Xcode a lot. I also spend about half my computing time on the command line, and iTerm 2 is the greatest terminal app ever. CodeRunner and Patterns get plenty of exercise, and nvALT stores most of my reusable code snippets and notes. Those snippets and notes are all stored as text files, so I can grep and Spotlight them from anywhere and sync them across machines using Dropbox.
- Writing: again, multiple answer. I use Byword for shorter pieces, MultiMarkdown Composer for longer pieces with lots of linking and formatting, and Scrivener for projects requiring a lot of organization and shuffling. I’ve been working on adding better Markdown editing to Sublime Text as well, and it’s my default editor for README files and quick Markdown edits.
I often drop finished blog posts back to TextMate because I have an extensive collection of tools built there for auto-tagging, linking and publishing to my blog. Marked is almost always open because I write everything in MultiMarkdown, and it provides a preview tailored to each document’s destination regardless of what app I choose to work in. My app polygamy is essentially the reason I wrote it.
I brainstorm in nvALT and use mind maps to organize. I rarely outline outside of mind mapping, but I’m really liking Tree for stuff like that. I use Day One for logging/journaling.
- Music: For listening, I love Spotify, especially with the new(ish) apps that it has available internally. I use Simplify to control it, which works with iTunes as well to cover my music bases.
I use Logic Pro for composition, and a few iOS apps for extra keyboards and guitar effects. The current version of GarageBand is not only a great musical scratchpad, it excels at producing finished recordings to an extent that I sometimes never make it to Logic with my home recordings.
- Task management: I use a combination of TaskPaper and OmniFocus for task management. TaskPaper is for individual coding projects; each gets a TaskPaper file (which I can update and modify from the command line, use with my
nascript and sync easily with git). Day job tasks and all of my errands go into OmniFocus and sync with my iPad/iPhone. -
Communications/Other: Adium and Skype are always running, and I find I do a lot of communication over Twitter, so the “official” Twitter app is usually open as well. I’ve tried just about every Twitter app, but that one seems to fill my relatively limited needs the best.
Twitter has also become a primary source of news and current events for me, and I follow a number of (too many) feeds through Reeder.
I have a few (ok, too many) extra gestures configured with BetterTouchTool to make the most of all that Magic trackpad surface space. I run a hacked-up version of Proximity to turn my office lights on and off. At any given time I’m running three or four new apps just to test them out.
My software philosophy is “the right tool for the job.” Some of my app choices seem (are) redundant, but often one app feels right for one task while another fits in better elsewhere. My system is held together with portable plain text and Spotlight searches, amongst other tools that make it fluid to switch apps the way I do.
Dropbox, git and OpenMeta tie my multiple machines together. I’m not the person to ask about minimalism, that’s for sure.
5. How does this setup help you do your best creative work?
Maintaining a desktop workstation with a broad range of functionality and a portable setup with a synchronized subset of those apps and scripts lets me work when and where I can be most productive. My creativity tends to wane the longer I sit at the desk, so being able to pick up and go somewhere (anywhere) else is often useful in finding my muse.
Part of the reason I love the Apple Bluetooth keyboards and Magic Trackpad is consistency between those work environments. My keys are always in the same place, my gestures match between machines and the overall feel is very similar between my desktop keyboards and the Air. That removes a lot of friction when switching modes and lets me concentrate on just producing.
6. How would your ideal setup look and function?
Equipment-wise I’m generally always happy with whatever I have, and don’t spend a lot of time wishing things were different. I could probably always be happy with just a terminal, a keyboard and a big screen, as long as I’m able to create the things I want to. I do wish I could keep my workspace cleaner…
As far as “ideal” goes, though, I would love to have a Minority Report/Tony Stark setup. Three-dimensional gesture-based computing is mostly the realm of Sci-Fi at this point, but the technology is rapidly becoming reality. I’m looking forward to the holograph-based iPad being available in time for me to design my Iron Man suit.
More Sweet Setups
Brett’s setup is one from an ongoing series of sweet Mac setups.
Furiously Typing on the PlayBook →
In this week’s action-packed episode of The B&B Podcast, Ben and I talk about grilled cheese bacon burgers, shooting at cats with automated paintball rifles, what does “GTD” mean anyway, the craziness of Apple rumors leading up to WWDC, traveling with only an iPad, and using a Mac mini as a server.
Brought to you by Igloo Software who is giving away an Origami iPad keyboard case.
Why LTE Won’t Dictate a Bigger iPhone Screen
A few days ago David Pogue wrote that if the next iPhone is indeed bigger and comes with a 4-inch screen, it could be out of necessity due to LTE:
I’m guessing that the iPhone’s upsizing will be equally necessary to accommodate a bigger battery, so that Apple can solve the 4G/dead battery issue.
Meaning: We all know that LTE chips drain cell phone batteries → thus the iPhone needs a higher-capacity battery → thus the iPhone needs to be physically bigger → thus, why not slap on a bigger screen while you’re at it?
There are two assumptions about this premise that I don’t like: (1) that Apple won’t find a way to implement LTE without also putting a significantly larger battery into the iPhone; and (2) that Apple would allow LTE implementation to dictate significant hardware design changes, especially changes that affect the screen.
The first may be true, but the second I just don’t see happening.
If we take the new iPad as an example of a Retina display device with LTE, we see that the LTE chip Apple is using in the iPad is nothing compared to the screen’s drain on the battery. Matthew Panzarino wrote in March:
LTE on the new iPad accounts for roughly 10% of the battery’s capacity. The rest of the increase can be attributed to the more powerful processor, screen and bump in RAM. This is remarkable on its own, because its far less than most 4G phones require, indicating that Apple has worked with Qualcomm to intensely tweak the chip for power consumption.
Did you know that if you use the new iPad as an LTE hotspot with the display turned off, the battery will last over 25 hours? As AnandTech pointed out in their iPad 3 review: “If you want to use the new iPad as a personal hotspot, you’ll likely run out of data before you run out of battery life.”
Today’s iPhone already has a battery strong enough to power its Retina screen. And though the next iPhone may indeed have a larger screen, a higher-capacity battery, and LTE connectivity. Assuming that happens, we may never know if LTE forced a bigger phone, or if a bigger phone allowed for LTE. Apple will never say which new component was the “most important” component to the hardware design team. But actually, we do know: it’s the display. It’s always been the display and always will be.
- Apple, at its heart, is a software company. And, using some text from my iPad 3 review, the other side of the coin to iOS is the Retina display. Meaning, iOS is the software and the screen is the hardware and that’s pretty much it. That is the device. It’s a screen that becomes whatever pixels are lit up underneath.
On a laptop you have three user interface components: the keyboard, the trackpad, and the display where you watch the user interface. On the iPad and iPhone you have one user interface: the screen. And you touch and manipulate and interact with what you see on that screen.
I love the way Ryan Block explained why the new iPad’s Retina display was such a big deal:
The core experience of the iPad, and every tablet for that matter, is the screen. It’s so fundamental that it’s almost completely forgettable. Post-PC devices have absolutely nothing to hide behind. Specs, form-factors, all that stuff melts away in favor of something else that’s much more intangible. When the software provides the metaphor for the device, every tablet lives and dies by the display and what’s on that display.
Ever since 2007, one of the hallmark engineering feats of iOS has been its responsiveness to touch input. When you’re using an iOS app it feels as if you are actually moving the pixels underneath your finger. If that responsiveness matters at all, if iOS matters at all, then so does the quality and realism of the screen itself. The display is the central hardware component.
- Secondly, of the millions of iPhones that Apple will sell all around the globe, how many will be to people who live in an LTE city? The new iPad’s LTE chip works only with carriers in the US and Canada. There are LTE bands all around the globe that the iPad does not support. While it’s possible the next iPhone will be more versatile in its LTE offerings, and thus be available on more 4G bands than just USA and Canada, it’s no guarantee.
Looking at LTE coverage just in the United States, AT&T has 39 LTE-equipped markets which cover 79 million people (or 23% of the US population), and Verizon has 258 markets covering 200 million people (or 65% of the US population).
My point being: 100-percent of iPhone 5 buyers will use the iPhone by holding it in their hand, touching the screen, and plugging it in to charge. But, for one reason or another, less than 100-percent will be able to connect to an LTE network.
The iPhone’s display is its preeminent hardware feature — everything else is secondary. If the next iPhone has a bigger display it will be because Apple decided bigger is better. As awesome as LTE is, it isn’t awesome enough to be the feature which dictates significant hardware changes to the iPhone.
Upload to Amazon S3 Using Hazel →
This script from Gabe has significantly improved my daily workflow.
I just plop a file into a Dropbox folder (doesn’t have to be Dropbox, really) and the script will upload that file to my S3 Bucket and then copy the URL path onto my Mac’s clipboard. It took me a bit of fiddling to get everything working just right with my different S3 buckets and folder structures within those buckets, but once set up it’s fast and works like a charm.
Apple’s Hardware “Dilemma” →
Kontra:
One of the key ingredients of Apple’s spectacular success over the last decade has been the inability of its rivals to distinguish hardware from product.
Smart piece on why Apple is making money hand over fist on their “disappointing” products.
Pre to Postmortem: The Inside Story of the Death of Palm and webOS →
Fascinating and heartbreaking. Chris Ziegler tells the whole epic story and timeline of how Palm began work on webOS, their 2009 CES announcement, being left high and dry by Verizon, the acquisition by HP, the competition for hardware parts against Apple’s buying power, and the eventual sunsetting of the hardware and open sourcing of the software.
Video of The Venus Transit →
Watching Venus zip past the sun is just as amazing as the solar flares. And space.com has a stellar collection of photos.
Ray Bradbury Passes Away →
One of my favorite Bradbury quotes: “Love is the answer to everything. It’s the only reason to do anything. If you don’t write stories you love, you’ll never make it. If you don’t write stories that other people love, you’ll never make it.”
WWDC 2012 Banners Going Up in Moscone West →
“Where great ideas go on to do great things.”
A Newspaper for the Web →
Kyle Baxter:
The newspaper was a powerful medium because they could be a deep window into the world. They provided readers with a clear understanding of what’s going on in the world that’s worth knowing, meaningful insight to what’s important about each of those headlines, and the opportunity to learn about topics readers never would have sought out themselves. Coverage, insight, serendipity. All in one place, consistently.
Coincidentally, news on the web has a huge problem: the abundant supply (which eroded the newspaper’s business model) creates an overwhelming amount of noise.
Great, great piece by Kyle.
It’s All About The Data →
Greg Bensinger, for WSJ:
[T]he amount of time spent making old-fashioned voice calls [from cell phones] has fallen every year since Apple Inc. the iPhone in 2007.
The average cell phone call is now about half the length it was in 2006. My wife and I are on the smallest AT&T voice plan available and we still have rollover minutes coming out our ears.
An Honest Review of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus →
My cousin has been using an Android phone for as long as I can remember. Recently he upgraded to the Galaxy Nexus, and after using for a while has posted this review on Amazon:
These type of polish issues become especially frustrating when you consider that the Nexus line is supposed to generate Google’s “reference phones” for Android. […]
As annoying as it is to admit, Apple is showing that they are the only company with enough attention to detail to merit the patronage of discerning customers.