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iPad Mini and iPad Air First Impressions: Both Favorites

These two new iPads are marvels.

It’s already amazing that there exists gadgets made of aluminum and glass which weigh less than a pound and have screens that rival the resolution of a printed magazine. Now add to that the fact these devices have touch screens so true-to-life and so responsive that it feels as if you’re literally manipulating the pixels with your fingers.

And it doesn’t end there.

Pacing around the coffee table in my office, thinking about the new iPads while contemplating the big picture of things like personal computers that fit in our pockets and purses, it’s easy to get swept away in just what an incredible day and age we live in.

These devices are also connected to the world wide web — allowing me to communicate with friends, family, members, and strangers alike. A photo I took of my son using my phone has magically appeared on my iPad, and I can email it to my parents with ease; I can write words and publish them to a place where anyone in the world can come to read; I can download music and books; and so, so much more.

But then, returning to Earth, what are the brass tacks here? I’ve been sending emails for over half my life; I’ve never owned a cell phone that couldn’t send a text message; I’ve been making my living publishing to the web for nearly three years; and this isn’t my first iPad.

But yet, in a way, this is my first iPad.

The iPad Air is, hands down, the most amazing iPad I’ve ever owned. And I’ve owned several.

I bought an original iPad on launch day; I bought the iPad 2 on its launch day; and I bought the iPad 3 on its launch day. Each of those successive devices got better and better and better.

Keeping with tradition, I bought the iPad Air on launch day, too. Thirteen days later I can say, unequivocally, that it is the greatest iPad ever. The change in size and weight and speed when compared to the iPad 3 is something that must be experienced and not read about. Trying to describe the difference in usability between the iPad Air and its predecessors is an exercise which puts my wordsmithing skills to the test.

My iPads have always received quite a bit of use from me. Even from the very first generation iPad, I have toted these things with me to meetings, coffee shops, vacations to the Rocky Mountains, “business” trips to WWDC, my living room, and everywhere in between.

Moreover, I am quite comfortable using the iPad as my “laptop”. My work is such that I’m fortunate enough to be able to do pretty much everything I need from the iPad. Nearly all of my daily tasks and routines related to work or play are things I can do on iOS.

Every design and engineering progression with the iPad has been a nice, incremental, and welcomed step. Thinner and lighter, then Retina, then faster. But the iPad Air is a leap and not a step. It feels impossibly thin and impossibly light while also being extremely fast and responsive. It is quintessential.

And then, yesterday, the iPad mini with Retina display appeared. And, well, it is also the best iPad I’ve ever owned.

Here is a device that will fit inside my wife’s purse or the pocket of my peacoat. And it’s ideal for all the most common personal computing tasks of doing email, surfing the Internet, and checking Facebook and Twitter. And we all know the iPad can do so much more — there’s no reason why the iPad mini couldn’t be someone’s only computer.

And that fascinates me. Who knew that one day our uncompromising personal computers would cost a few hundred dollars and would comfortably fit inside a woman’s purse?

I’ve been using the Retina mini for just a day now, but I am confident that I could use it for all the tasks which I’ve been using my full-sized iPad for all these years. The question is not about the capabilities of the mini; the question is about my own preferences. And, at the moment, I don’t have an answer.

It’s different than deciding between an 11- or 13-inch MacBook Air, or between a 13- or 15-inch MacBook Pro. For laptops you mostly use them while they are placed on top of a desk or table (or perhaps your lap) while you sit in front of them. You mostly pick which laptop you need based on your computing tasks and needs, size plays a role in terms of portability, but once the laptop is out and on the desk it mostly doesn’t matter what size it is (unless you’re sitting in coach).

But with the iPad Air and iPad mini, computing usage is not the only factor. There’s also a tangible, kinesthetic-centric factor at play here. Because the iPad is something you hold and touch while using.

Which is better: an iPad Air that has a bigger screen and which is thin and light enough? Or an iPad mini that is very thin and light and which has a screen that is big enough? I just don’t think you can pit these two devices against one another. They are not competing — they are two of a kind.

They are both great. Both favorites.

Over the next several weeks and months I plan to use both iPads for the same tasks. It’ll be interesting to see how the dust settles and if I’ll naturally be drawn more to the smaller device or the larger one, and why.

iPad Mini and iPad Air First Impressions: Both Favorites

The iPad Without Compromise

This is the year the iPad line has reached significant, noteworthy maturity. It’s worthy of a milestone.

The iPad Air is to the original iPad what the iPhone 4 was to the original iPhone.

The iPhone 4 was the model where all the foundational components — the screen, the hardware design, the camera, the processor — came together just right to make an iPhone without compromise.

The original iPhone compromised on a lot of things: it had a lousy camera and only worked on AT&T’s EDGE network.

The iPhone 3G and 3GS compromised on their hardware design — using a plastic casing to allow better cellular reception and battery life.

The iPhone 4 left those compromises behind while also upping the ante. It had a beautiful design of glass and steel while keeping the fast (3G) cellular data and good battery life. Additionally, the iPhone 4 added a significantly better camera and, of course, the introduction of the Retina display.

Similarly, I think the iPad Air is “finally” a full-sized iPad without compromises. It has a gorgeous display, excellent battery life, it’s powerful, and, of course, it’s very lightweight and easy to hold.

The iPad Air (and Retina iPad mini) mark the end of one chapter and the beginning of the next for the iPad line. And so, now that we’re here, where does the iPad lineup go next?

The iPad Without Compromise

Airs

A year ago, when the iPad mini came out, I kept my full-sized iPad because of the retina screen. And it’s not like that was a sacrifice. I love the larger display on my full-sized iPad for writing and reading. The size and weight (which, come on, have never been that bad) have never bothered me. Sure, I can’t hold the iPad with one hand while lying down in bed, but I don’t do that anyway. For long-form reading I have a Kindle.

The question for me, today, on iPad Air Eve, is: could the iPad mini — which is cheaper, smaller, and lighter, with an even denser Retina than the iPad Air display — be just as good for how I use my iPad?

Maybe. But maybe not. Ugh.

All those who got early review units of the iPad Air are talking about how thin and light it is. Naturally. That’s the hallmark feature for which it’s named. Some wrote in their review that they will be leaving their old iPad mini for the new iPad Air, while others are not getting an Air and holding out for the new iPad Mini with Retina screen.

When I travel, I like to leave my MacBook Air at home and take just my iPad. In part because when I travel (especially vacation) I like to avoid bringing work with me. Also, there are a few days a week when I will leave my home office to go work from a coffee shop or the local library. Most of the time I like to take just my iPad on these occasions as well.

There are myriad conveniences to working from an iPad. The insane battery life; the extreme portability; super-fast LTE that’s available just about anywhere (except the middle of Kansas, fyi, in case you too happen to find yourself driving on I-70 between Denver and Kansas City); and more.

Also, the iPad comes with its own “anti-distraction software” — iOS itself. On the iPad you can only wrangle one app at a time.

But lately, when traveling or going to a coffee shop, I’ve been taking my MacBook Air with me more often than not. When I went to WWDC in 2012 I took only my iPad, yet this year I took my MacBook Air along.

As water likes to flow downward I naturally gravitate towards working from my laptop.

I’m at my desk working from my clamshelled MacBook Air right now, and I have 9 active application windows in my view: MarsEdit, nvAlt, Safari, Mail, Pages, Byword, Messages, Rdio, and OmniFocus. My MacBook Air is packed to the rafters with Keyboard Maestro macros, TextExpander snippets, keyboard shortcuts, and other scripts. It can display many app windows at once, and is generally more efficient for most tasks.

There are, of course, advantages and disadvantages to iOS’s constraints just as there are advantages and disadvantages to the versatility of OS X. Each device and its operating system have their own ways of empowering creative work as well as hindering it.

It’s often easier for me to work from my MacBook Air and sometimes I flat out need to. But I want to and will continue to work from my iPad as often as possible.

Though I’m still not 100% confident that an iPad Air will be the best iPad for me now that the iPad mini has a Retina display, the alarm on my iPhone is set for tonight at 2:00 am local time. I’ll wake up, order my iPad through Apple’s Store app, choose in-store pickup (assuming it’s an option), and mosey down to my local Apple store some time tomorrow after I’ve had my coffee.

Then, in about a month from now, for the sake of science, I’ll get an iPad mini as well.1 I don’t want an iPad Air or an iPad mini specifically — I want the device that’s the most enjoyable and conducive to use for getting work done.

Perhaps it’s with the one that has a bigger screen that will prove to be thin and light enough. Or, maybe, the one that is thinner and lighter with a screen that proves to be big enough.

I don’t yet know how the pros and cons weigh against one another. But I do know that the iPad as a computer is the future. And the entire iOS and iDevice ecosystem is, to me, the most exciting and fascinating thing happening right now.

  1. Last year I had a very good feeling that this sort of dilemma would present itself, so I’ve been saving with the expectation of buying one of each so I could use and test them both. These are the sorts of sacrifices I’m willing to take for my job. ↵
Airs

Fantastical 2 for iPhone: The Best Gets Better

The new Fantastical is the best calendar app on the iPhone. It was great before, but now, it’s, well, fantastic.

Fantastical 2 for iPhone

Let’s talk for a moment about friction, learning interfaces, and natural language parsing

I’ve always been a fan of Fantastical’s natural language parsing and it’s simple-yet-powerful design. When I say Fantastical is the best calendar app for the iPhone, I define “the best” as being the easiest to use (adding/editing events) and the easiest to read (checking schedule) for most people.

About a month ago I took a little poll on Twitter. It’s nothing scientifically conclusive, but it does provide some interesting data points to say the least. In the poll I asked people how many events they enter into their iPhone on a weekly basis.

Of 179 total responses:

  • 73% enter 1 or fewer events per day (130 people)
  • 21% enter an average of 2 events per day (38 people)
  • 6% enter an average of 3 events per day (10)
  • Less than 1% enter 4 or more events per day (1)

So, 94-percent of the total respondents use their iPhone’s calendar app 2 or fewer times per day to enter in a new event with most of those people actually using it just once or less per day.

Think about the situations you’re typically in when adding an event to your calendar using your iPhone. For me, I’m usually in the middle of a conversation with someone and we’ve just agreed upon our next meeting or a meal together. Or I’m in the lobby at my kids’ doctor’s office making their next checkup appointment, or I’m at my dentist making my next cleaning appointment. Etc.

In short, the times I’m using my iPhone to enter an event are times when I’m usually in the middle of something else. I want to add the event and get on with life.

The more we become familiar with a calendar app’s new-event interface, then the faster we can navigate it. However, as my Twitter poll hints, people entering in just one event or less per day is not much usage to learn an app’s interface.

I’ve been using my iPhone to enter calendar events since 2007, and the default new event entry sheet provided by iOS has always felt like an obstacle course. If most of us are entering one event or less per day on our iPhones, then are we ever really learning the event input interface of our calendar app?

That is why natural language parsing is so divine. Because what’s an “interface” we are all extremely familiar with? Natural language.

We say sentences like “I’m having lunch with Steve tomorrow” all the time. It’s called “natural language” for a reason — we say these sentences in our everyday conversations, emails, text messages, etc. It’s natural to us.

And so a calendar app that can understand our own natural language is one that we can use as infrequently as we want without suffering the consequences of not learning its input UI.

Fantastical has, by far and away, the best natural language input mechanics of any other calendar app on the iPhone. It is fast and smart at parsing just about any event- or reminder-based sentence, and it has easy-to-understand animations which let us know how the app is translating our words.

As Dr. Drang pointed out, Fantastical’s animations do more than dazzle:

The animations are providing instant feedback on how Fantastical is parsing your words and, more important, they’re teaching you Fantastical’s syntax.

What’s New in Fantastical 2?

In a sentence, it’s faster, it’s built and designed for iOS 7, it has Reminders integration, light and dark modes, and there’s a swell new week view if you flip your iPhone on its side.

Let’s dive in.

Landscape Mode’s Week View

Flip your phone into landscape mode and Fantastical shows you your week view with the time plotted on the calendar (not unlike Calendar shows you on the Mac).

Fantastical week view in Landscape mode

I’m a fan of this view because it’s a great way to visualize what blocks of time I’m booked for during the day and what blocks of time are open.

Moreover, from this weekly view you can drag and move events very easily. You can adjust their start and end times. And if you tap and hold on an empty spot, you can create a new event
(which also means, by the way, that Fantastical now supports the landscape keyboard for creating a new event or reminder).

Speed

Pulling down on the day ticker and/or the month view is how you transition between one or the other. This animated transition is smoother and faster in the new version of Fantastical.

iOS 7

Updated with a 64bit architecture, background updating, and dynamic text. New events and reminders you add via your Mac or iPad or any other app beyond Fantastical still will sync to Fantastical in the background.

Reminders Integration

You can add a reminder by typing “Remind me to…”, or you can manually tap the toggle on the new event creation window that will switch Fantastical between new calendar event and new reminder.

Custom keyboard row

If you’ve got an iPhone 5 or 5s, above the QWERTY row is a 5th row with numbers, a forward slash, and a colon to help enter in calendar data faster. In my time testing the app over the past several weeks this row has proven to be immensely helpful.

Auto-import your settings

Your Fantastical 1 settings auto-import into Fantastical 2.

This seems like a non-trivial thing, right? We’re used to updating our apps and having our settings persist through the update.

But with developers releasing new, iOS 7-only, paid updates to their apps, a paid update like this is actually like installing a new app. Of course your calendars sync right up, but your app-specific display settings — such as having weekends highlighted, if days with no events show up in the day ticker, etc.. — are imported from Fantastical 1 into Fantastical 2. It’s the sort of thing you’d only notice if it didn’t happen.

So?

If you’re not satisfied with your current calendar app, Fantastical is just $3 on the App Store.

Fantastical 2 for iPhone: The Best Gets Better

1Password and iCloud Keychains: How They Work Together

I’m posting today’s episode of Shawn Today here to make it available for everyone.

With Mavericks support for storing passwords and credit card info in Safari, combined with the iCloud keychain syncing of that info to our iOS devices, I wanted to share about how that impacts my favorite password manager, 1Password.

In short, I wanted to talk about why I still consider 1Password to be vitally important and useful.

On today’s podcast episode I share how I’ve been using the new iCloud keychain in both Mavericks and iOS, how I use 1Password, why the two make a good pair, and why 1Password is still important and useful.

Direct download link. (09:01)

Note: In the show is that I didn’t know if you could look up individual passwords from within iOS (to do things like fill in the UN/PW information for an app). It turns out you can look up password information if you go to the Settings app → Safari → Passwords & AutoFill → Saved Passwords. (You can also find your Saved Credit Card info here as well.)

1Password and iCloud Keychains: How They Work Together

The New Tweetbot for iPhone and iOS 7

Long have I been a fan of Mark Jardine’s heavy-handed design aesthetic. The dark grey industrial materials, the gradients, noise textures, and the playful graphics and icons. These design elements have been inextricably tied to the signature and brand of the Tapbots app lineup.

Today, that all changes.

The new Tweetbot is a ground-up re-design and re-thinking of what is one of the most popular Twitter clients out there.

Tweetbot 3 for iOS 7 - Account Screen

This is the new Tweetbot, for iOS 7. As you can see the design is very new. It’s a starting over, not only for the app itself, but for the Tapbots’ brand.

For this new app, Mark and Paul had to out-Tweetbot Tweetbot. And I think they did just that.

Tweetbot 3 for iOS 7 - the main timeline view

This new version has all the underpinnings of what has made the app great since its 1.0 release in April 2011. It has fast and smooth scrolling, it has clever animations all throughout, swipe or tap-and-hold to act on a tweet, etc.

But, be it familiar, it is still an all new app.

Save for the icons, the new Tweetbot is a radical departure from the look Tapbots has become world famous for. The main timeline view now sports circle avatars and a white, gradient-free background. Tapping on images blurs brings them up full-screen while the background goes blurry. This app has all the design elements of a native iOS 7 app, but with a unique twist all its own.

It’s not all just a new coat of paint. The new Tweetbot supports background updating in iOS 7, which means that when you launch it your tweets are already there waiting for you. (This feature alone is worth the price to upgrade.)

Also, Tweetbot uses dynamic text from the size you set in the iOS system settings. Personally, I find this to be unfortunate. I prefer my system text (such as for emails and Safari’s “Reader mode”) to be just one notch above the tiniest. However, I find that size of text to be too big in Tweetbot. Even at the very smallest setting for dynamic system text size, it is still too big for me in the Tweetbot timeline.

When it comes to whimsy and personality, though the heavy-handed design aesthetic is now mostly gone, there are fun animations and bounce effects to nearly every element of the app. One of my favorites is tapping the profile image up to to bring up the account switcher — the individual account pictures and names slide in from the right and bounce off the left margin.

When you launch the new Tweetbot for the first few times, there is certainly a bit of shell shock at just how different it is. But, as you use it, you realize that it’s still a Tapbots app at heart. It’s just as delightful and just as powerful as its siblings, but it marks the next generation of Tapbots apps. And I’m looking forward to what’s next.

The new Tweetbot is a paid update for all users, and is on sale right now for $2.99 in the App Store.

The New Tweetbot for iPhone and iOS 7

Best in Class, Built to Last

With some exceptions, Apple has announced just one major update to the iPhone and the iPad per year. Some say this one-per-year pace is too slow for such a competitive industry where consumers want to buy only what’s new, newer, and newest. But for anyone who is already an Apple customer, once a year can sure come around quickly.

When I’m able, and when it makes sense, I prefer to spend more on an item and get something high quality. The tools and toys I use the most should be as close to perfect as possible. I want something built with care and quality, that is enjoyable to use, and will last me a long time.

Apple, its products, its surrounding ecosystem all sit in this market.

There is an aura of craftsmanship and attention to detail that presides over most of Apple’s hardware and software. And this same care for product development attracts 3rd-party developers and engineers who have the same ideals and commitment to excellence. The Apple ecosystem is home to the best hardware and software in the world.

One of the reasons I spend my money on Apple products is because they’re innovative, cool, capable, and delightful. But also, they hold their value and their usefulness for a very long time.

Best in Class, Built to Last

The Rough Elements of a Successful Creative Business

creative business chart

What is a successful creative business? I think there are two elements: Creative freedom and financial stability.

I’m defining success as having the ability to do creative work we’re proud of and to keep doing that work.

There is no exact recipe for this stuff. It’s a little bit different for each person and changes with all sorts of factors like skills, passion, and even geographic location.

But this chart is a pretty good starting point to give a grid for what, more or less, makes up a successful creative business.

Let me explain the chart.

  • 75-Percent of a successful creative business should be spent on the art itself — the “content”. This is the hard and frightful work of actually making stuff. If you’re not spending the majority of your time actually making something, you’re doing it wrong.

  • Next, the 75-percent “Content” section of the chart is divided into three equal parts: Consistency, Talent, and Obsession. A huge part of making art online and growing an audience is centered around how often you show up, how good you are at what you do, and how narrow your focus is and how “weirdly obsessed” you are about it.

  • The remaining 25-precent is split between “brand” and “hustle”.

  • By brand I mean having a professional-looking website, having a cool iPhone theme, having an awesome user-experience for your eCommerce thingamajig, etc.

  • By hustle I mean (a) getting out there and promoting your work to others, and (b) contributing to the conversations happening in the circles you run in.

Here are some common excuses for why people assume they will fail:

“I don’t know how to promote my own work.”

“I can’t start putting my work out there until my website’s theme is just right.”

“My skills as a writer / podcaster / photographer / illustrator are pathetic.”

Good news, if you can at least show up every day and focus on a topic your obsessive about, then you’re already half-way there.

P.S. There’s additional good news: the more often you show up and do the work then the better your skills will get. And the better you get the more people will begin to promote your work for you.

The Rough Elements of a Successful Creative Business

Weather Line

Weather Line is a cool new weather app from Ryan Jones. Ryan sent me a copy of the app earlier this month and I’ve been using it for a bit.

When I launched Weather Line for the first time my initial impression was that it’s not a general purpose weather app. I assumed it was more niche, with a focus on forecast data rather than current conditions.

But that’s not the case at all.

As you can see from the screenshot, the primary element of the app is its line graph (the “weather line”) which shows the temperature forecast.

Weather Line

When you launch Weather Line, or navigate between the Hourly, Daily, and Monthly tabs, the left-most temperature animates itself with a sort of balloon effect. This instantly grabs the attention of your focus and draws your eye to the current temperature.

So, Weather Line is, in fact, a nice general purpose weather app. And, as I’ve been using it, I have come to enjoy the quick view I get of the current conditions right now and how they will change in the next 8 hours.

However, I do have two quibbles with the app:

  • All the navigation is up top. To navigate between locations you swipe on the location name; to navigate between Hourly, Daily, and Monthly forecasts you tap on those respective tabs. But on an iPhone 5/5s these tap targets are just out of reach for my thumb and it makes the app a little bit difficult to fully navigate one handed.

  • No radar view. Though Weather Line does use the Dark Sky API to give the 60-minute precipitation forecast, it does not have an actual radar view. Ryan, the man behind the app, said the reason there’s no radar view is because he can’t find one that is beautiful enough for him.

In an email, he said to me, “Our app takes ugly boring data and uses beauty to make it easily understood, we want the radar that does the same thing.”

I appreciate Ryan’s commitment to excellence, but for me, a weather app without radar is an incomplete weather app. My two favorite weather apps — Perfect Weather and Check the Weather — both have the standard radar views and I’ve never thought them to be ugly.

So, is Weather Line the best new general purpose weather app you can buy? I don’t think so (because of its lack of radar). But it is a fantastic app nonetheless.

Weather Line is simple, delightful, and very responsive. It feels right at home on iOS 7. And the icon is fantastic — it’s one of the best weather app icons on my iPhone. Just $3 bucks in the App Store.

Weather Line

Revisiting All My Past Product Reviews and Recommendations: What Stuck and What Didn’t?

I’ve been writing about hardware and software for years. Some things I review because I think they’re awesome and I want to recommend them. And then some of the things I link to or review are things I find noteworthy for one reason or another.

But things change over time — things like my own workflow habits, my software preferences, and even the software itself.

This site’s design puts the most emphasis on that which has been most-recently published. But what about that review of MarsEdit I wrote back in 2008? How can you know if I am I still using that app (if you ever even read the review in the first place)?

This is something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. It can be easy to write a positive review of a cool new app or gadget, but how does that product hold up over time when the newness wears off and the routine of life settles back in?

There are a lot of apps that I’ve endorsed after a few weeks or months worth of usage, but am I still using them years later?

Well, over the past three days I went through every single review and recommendation I’ve written in the past 6 years in order to take inventory of which products I still use and which I don’t.

(I encourage all of us who write about, review, and recommend products to do something like this. Especially when we highly recommend something, it would be a great benefit to come back to that review in 6 months or a year and let our readers know if we are still using that product or not.)

My list below contains about 50-or-so apps and gadgets. Surprising (to me, at least) is that only 13 of them are products which I no longer use.

Which means I’m still using about 75-percent of the things I’ve reviewed and recommended over the past 6 years. So either I’m incredibly lazy, or I have excellent taste.

What Software am still using?

  • OmniFocus: I’ve been using the OmniFocus suite of apps (Mac, iPhone, and iPad) for over three years now. Sometimes I wonder if they are overkill for me now that I’ve somewhat settled into a grove with my work-from-home schedule. But I just can’t quit them because it’s a task management system that I trust. I know that if and when an important task becomes due, then OmniFocus will show it to me.

  • Simplenote: Gosh, I’ve been a hardcore Simplenote user since I first learned of it back in 2008 (thanks to John Gruber). Recently I even went looking for alternatives to Simplenote, but I just couldn’t quit it. And, I’m a big fan of the updated Simplenote app for iOS 7, and the Mac app, too, has become a daily driver for me as. In short, I put a lot of text into Simplenote and am happy to do so.

  • MarsEdit: This, my friends, is quality software. It’s hard to believe I’ve been using this app just about every day for 6 years.

  • Rdio: Access trumps ownership, or so they say. Anyway, I am an avid fan of Rdio. And I still use Airfoil to adjust the EQ of Rdio’s output and to send the audio to my nicer sound system that’s hooked up to the Apple TV if I want.

  • Keyboard Maestro: I haven’t written any formal reviews of Keyboard Maestro because I don’t know where I would start, and once I did start reviewing the app I don’t know how I could stop. I’ve been using Keyboard Maestro for years and it does just about everything. About a year ago, Ben and I recorded a Tips & Tricks episode of the B&B podcast (RIP) giving some use-case scenarios for Keyboard Maestro.

  • LaunchBar: Another critical app that I haven’t written a review about but have long been an advocate of. This is my application launcher of choice. Also, there’s a B&B podcast Tips & Tricks episode about LaunchBar in the archives as well.

  • Hues: When I’m designing a website, Hues is always running. Been using it for a few years now.

  • Coda 2 and Diet Coda: I’ve been using and loving Coda since it shipped years ago. I’m not a developer, but I do know enough HTML, CSS, and PHP to build and maintain my own WordPress websites. And when I do need to update, create, or fix something I do so in Coda 2 (or Diet Coda if my Mac’s not nearby).

  • Editorial: I’ve only been using it for 2 months, but it’s splendid.

  • Byword: On the Mac, I do almost all of my longform writing in Byword. I then keep all my “in-progress” articles in a folder in Dropbox. If/when I need to access them on the iPhone I use Byword on the iPhone (the iOS 7 update is splendid, by the way). But on the iPad I use Editorial.

  • Reeder: Reeder has long been the best RSS reading app on iOS.

  • ReadKit: This app is good enough. So far as I know this is the only Mac app that syncs with Feed Wrangler. The app has seen a lot of consistent development and improvement over the past few months, but I still consider it pretty slow at updating my feeds and it’s not extremely easy to navigate using the keyboard.

  • Tweetbot: Still my go-to twitter client on the Mac, iPhone, and iPad. I talk often of how awesome Twitterrific is — it’s beautifully designed.

  • Riposte: I think Riposte is more than just the best ADN client for the iPhone — it is one of the nicest iPhone apps, period. I find it very easy to use; it’s fast, clever, well designed, and it has a slew of killer features.

  • Feed Wrangler: This has been my post-Google Reader sync service of choice and after several months I’m still quite content with it.

  • 1Password: Gosh. I’ve been using 1Password for several years, and the more I use it the more I’m glad I use it. Such a well-done and valuable app.

  • Transmit: It’s the best FTP client for the Mac, so why wouldn’t I still be using it?

  • TextExpander: No official review of this fine utility, just many links to it over the years. You bet I’m still using the OS X and iOS versions.

  • Backblaze, SuperDuper, Arq, and Dropbox: This is still my backup strategy, and I’m quite happy with it. Though (thankfully) I have yet to encounter a time where I needed disaster recovery of my data, so it’s hard to say exactly how it would all pan out were my laptop and external HDDs all destroyed or stolen.

  • Day One: This is certainly the best journaling app out there. I keep the iOS apps on both my iPad’s and iPhone’s Home screen and write in them often. I have the Mac version as well, but don’t use it nearly as much. Probably because journaling is something I don’t tend to do when sitting at my desk. And also, a lot of my Day One entries are photos I take with my iPhone.

  • Fantastical and Agenda: These are the two calendar apps I’ve written about over the years. I still use and love Fantastical on the Mac, and up until recently used Agenda on the iPhone (the latest iOS update to Agenda is quite nice).

However, there’s a new website project I’m working on that has me doing a lot of digging and testing with iOS calendar apps right now. Calendars 5 is a new entry to the iOS calendar market and it’s pretty amazing. And so, honestly, I don’t know which of these three (Agenda, Calendars 5, Fantastical) are my favorite on iOS. They’re all great in their own way — the jury is still out.

  • Junecloud’s Delivery Status app: still use this to track shipments. It’s great.

  • Droplr: I’ve been using Droplr since it was in beta back in 2010, and I still use it every single day.

  • Checkmark: Checkmark does location-based reminders better than iOS does, in my opinion. It’s faster at setting them up and more accurate at reminding you. Though I don’t set reminders like this very often, when I do I still use Checkmark.

  • Breaktime: This app is helping me live longer. It’s sitting in my menu bar right now, reminding me that in 21 minutes I need to stand up again and walk around for a bit.

  • Bartender: My goodness I am so thankful for this app. It cleans up your Mac’s Menu bar. Still highly recommended.

  • Quickshot: Still using this to take photos of receipts (for tax purposes) and then upload them to Dropbox. A Hazel rule then moves them to my receipts folder.

  • DropVox: This app is extremely dated, but it still works and I still use it to record Shawn Today episodes whenever I’m away from my Mac. And, so far as I know, there are no other apps which take a voice recording and pipe it to Dropbox.

  • Timer: The guys behind Timing were sponsors of the site a few times in the past, but I’ve also personally had this app running in the background since it came out in 2011. And even though I use it, I don’t really make use of the data it tracks — I have a hard time parsing it all myself. I’ve been considering setting up an account with Rescue Time instead, to see if the reporting there is better and more useful.

What gadgets am I still using?

  • Mid-2011 MacBook Air: Stilly gutsy, still glorious, still using it every single day.

  • iPad 3: I still use my iPad as a laptop replacement (though, to be honest, I do leave the house with my MacBook Air a bit more often these days).

  • Last Year’s Kindle Paperwhite: Still love it. I wouldn’t mind getting the new one, but I don’t think it’s worth paying to upgrade.

  • My Clicky Keyboard: After a whole lot of fiddling and typing on mechanical keyboards (both big ones and tenkeyless versions) I picked the Filco Majestouch-2 Ninja with the Cherry MX Blue switches. I’ve been typing on this keyboard for over a year now and still love it. And, as a matter of fact, I’m typing on it at this very moment. Click! Clack!

  • Uni-ball Signo DX 0.38mm: Still the greatest, inexpensive, fine-tip gell ink pen in the world.

  • Audyssey Computer speakers: Earlier this year I bought these white Audyssey Bluetooth speakers because their sibling version (which are black and non-Bluetooth) were recommended by The Wirecutter. I don’t use the Bluetooth connectivity, but I think the white is much better looking than the black and the price is actually cheaper. The Audyssey’s are bigger than they look in the pictures, and they sound absolutely fantastic. Very full, rich, and crisp. For $145, you can’t go wrong. I’m jamming out with them as I type this very sentence.

  • E-PL5 mirrorless camera and Panasonic 20/1.7 pancake lens: It has been almost a year since I got this camera and lens and I am still very satisfied. While I do wish it had more dials for faster manual adjustment of the aperture and other settings, I have never felt frustrated or constrained. If I were buying a mirrorless camera today, I’d probably go with the new E-P5.

  • Doxie Go, Hazel, and my Paperless Office: Still using this setup and workflow every single week to keep my office paperless. Of course it’s a chore, but one that’s easy enough I don’t not do it. (See also my review of the Doxie Go.)

  • Origami Workstation for iPad: I’ve had this thing for a few years now and still use it near daily. What I wrote in my review still stands. One thing I’m noticing is that the velcro on the tabs that holds the flaps together is starting to lose a bit of its grip strength. My guess is that in a year or less I’ll need to replace the velcro somehow.

  • AeroPress: You know I’m still brew coffee with it just about every single day (if I’m not brewing with a Clever or a v60).

  • Blue Yeti: Still use (almost) every day to record my Shawn Today podcast. I also used it to record all the interviews and the audio book version of Delight is in the Details.

  • My gray-market 27-inch IPS LCD: I bought this display last fall when my 23-inch Apple Cinema Display died. It’s great for the price, and I’ve been happily using it for over a year. But a very faint shadow has appeared across the bottom of the screen. I am crossing my fingers that Apple will update their Thunderbolt displays later this year so I can upgrade.

What I am no longer using

Here are apps and gadgets that I’ve recommended and said I liked but am no longer using today.

  • The Jawbone UP: I thought it was so cool at first, and I still do love the idea of it, but the bracelet never got comfortable for me. Over time I just tired of charging it and syncing it and wearing it in my sleep.

  • Triage: This is a very clever email app for the iPhone. But when I installed the iOS 7 beta onto my iPhone 5 earlier this summer, I wiped the phone and started fresh. Triage just never got installed again.

And, so long as we’re on the subject, no 3rd-party email client has ever stuck for me beyond the stock Apple email apps (on iOS and on OS X). I’ve tried Postbox, Sparrow, Mailbox, Triage, and probably a dozen others, but I always just come back to Apple’s email apps.

  • Writing Kit: This is a great iPad writing app, and it was my favorite until Editorial came along.

  • NetNewsWire 3: This was one of the best. It would still work as a standalone RSS reader, but I use Feed Wrangler to sync my feeds and the old NNW doesn’t sync with anything any longer.

  • Recall: Another really cool app that just never stuck for me.

  • Yojimbo: I raved about this app for years, and I still consider it to be one of the finest Mac apps I have ever used. But alas it didn’t scale well for my needs, and I ended up moving to a few individual applications and services.

  • Nexus 7 tablet: I think I’ve got it sitting in the bottom of a drawer around here somewhere.

  • Visual, iOS timer: I used this for a while as a way to keep my time spent on email to a minimum. But it never became habit and the app never stuck for me.

  • Instacast: Instacast is great, but I just don’t listen to podcasts any longer. And with a toddler, I no longer queue podcast episodes up for road trips — instead we listen to white noise or music.

  • Pastebot: Some apps you just slowly stop using, and Pastebot was one of those for me. It’s neat, but I no longer use it for the things I used to use it for. And with the ever-increasing number of apps and services which sync, I don’t have as much need to copy/paste things between my Mac and iPhone.

  • Fever: I have Fever running on a server, but never ever check it these days.

  • Mint: I would still be using Mint, but something in its database farted out on me a few months ago and MySQL is something I know nothing about. So I signed up for an account with GoSquared, which is nice but I don’t love it.

  • Things: I stopped using things because I really needed a to-do list app that synced over the air. So I switched to OmniFocus in 2010. But then, even after Things got OTA sync, I kept using OmniFocus because the iPad app and the review function are just so, so great.

Revisiting All My Past Product Reviews and Recommendations: What Stuck and What Didn’t?

Review: DSPTCH Sling and Wrist Straps

The shoulder strap that came with my Olympus camera was a turd.

To connect it, you had to thread the strap’s ends through the hooks on the sides of the camera. It wasn’t meant to connect and disconnect on a regular basis.

Once attached, even at it’s longest, the strap was just long enough to hold the camera around my neck and in front of both my shoulders, helping me complete my New York tourist motif perfectly.

I considered how I expected to use my camera, and decided that I wanted a wrist strap as the main strap. I ordered a leather strap from Gordy’s and it was fantastic.

Gordys Camera Strap

Each strap from Gordy’s is custom made with your choice of colors for the leather and twine. I ordered a dark brown leather strap with red leather twine.

The strap hooks on to the camera’s lug mount using a keychain ring. And, like the shoulder strap that came with the camera, Gordy’s straps are not meant to be connected and disconnected.

After a few more months of use, I still wasn’t completely satisfied. Most of the time I was glad to have the wrist strap attached. However, there were regular times when I wished I had a shoulder strap instead.

And, through the summer months when I was often going out to the park or the city with family and friends, I was taking my camera with me. But I wasn’t wearing a big coat with pockets that could hold the camera — I needed a shoulder strap in those situations.

Basically, I needed a shoulder strap and a wrist strap that could each be connected and disconnected easily.

Since I already had a standard black sling from DSPTCH, I got an olive wrist strap to replace my leather Gordy’s strap.

I’ve been using both of the DSPTCH straps for quite a while now and they are fantastic. The build quality and materials used are just great; they are comfortable; and DSPTCH uses interchangeable connectors to attach their straps to the camera’s lug mounts. This makes it easy to connect and disconnect the shoulder strap and the wrist strap — swapping them out takes about 20 seconds, and the connection is quite strong.

DSPTCH wrist strap connected

The wrist strap is made of military-grade nylon cord (the same kind they use for parachutes), braided, and with a steel clip that slides on one end, tightening the strap via the weight of the camera.

DSPTCH wrist strap

The sling is adjustable up to 4 feet. I have it just the right length so I can hang the the camera over one shoulder and then around and across my body. It’s long enough that I can then lift the camera up to eye level and shoot without having to readjust the strap or bring one arm though the loop.

Getting the two straps from DSPTCH runs about $80. Not a bad deal considering their usefulness, quality, and versatility. Definitely recommended.

Review: DSPTCH Sling and Wrist Straps

1Password 4 and Duplicate Passwords

One of the premier benefits to using 1Password is how it empowers you to use a unique password for every single one of your website logins.

Instead of having all your passwords memorized, you just install the 1Password extension in Safari or Chrome, and then when you are logging in to a website, you simply let 1Password log in for you. With 1Password, there’s no reason not to have unique and strong passwords for your bank, your weblog’s admin panel, your Flickr account, your Twitter, Facebook, Adobe, etc.

Then, when one of the websites or services you use gets hacked, and your username and password are both compromised, it’s far less of a risk to the rest of your logins because the hacker has a password of yours that was unique only to the website they hacked. Therefore they can’t take that username and password and use it to log in to your email account, bank account, or anything else.

In 1Password 4 there is a brilliant new section called Security Audit. In the sidebar it shows you tabs for finding weak passwords, duplicate passwords, and old passwords.

1Password 4 Security Audit and Duplicate Passwords

Clicking on the Duplicate Passwords tab gives you a list with every single login item that has a duplicate password. If you have any items here then you can begin working your way through each account, by logging in to the site and changing your password with a new unique one and saving that into 1Password.

(Side note: in 1Password 3 you can create smart folders that search for a common term. If you’ve got a few passwords that you know you use for most of your logins, then do create some smart folders for that password and boom, you’ve got a good list of all your duplicates.)

If you’ve been using 1Password for a while then it has no doubt collected most of your login details, making it easy to identify which accounts have duplicate passwords.

If you’re new to 1Password, it won’t yet know your various website login credentials until you enter them in. I’d suggest starting with the handful of websites you visit most often, your email address(es), and your bank’s website — changing your password in each of them to be something unique and saving that login info to 1Password. Then, over time, as you log in to the sites you visit less often, 1Password will automatically save your login credentials. And so, maybe in a month from now and then again in 6 months from now, re-check your duplicate passwords and update them.

1Password 4 and Duplicate Passwords

iCloud and Its Storage Limits

Nik Fletcher:

Much as Apple is offering free versions of iWork with a new iOS device, it’s time to stop tying backups to a storage quota and simply say: “We’ve got this. Your iOS device – no matter how much you’ve got on it – will be backed up”. iCloud Backup likely started people automatically backing up their devices for the first time – a great achievement in and of itself. It’s time to make these backups invisible, “just” a part of the service and reflect Apple’s multi-device ecosystem.

Agreed. Instead of free downloads to the iOS iWork apps, I’d much rather get a free boost in iCloud storage when I buy a new iOS device. Or at least a free boost for 24 months (the “average” upgrade cycle for iPhone owners).

Apple sells 64GB iPhones and 128GB iPads. If you own one or both of these, and fill them up with photos and documents, you literally cannot buy enough storage to back up even one of them in full — iCloud’s largest tier of storage maxes out at 50GB.

Automatic nightly backups of our iOS devices is one of iCloud’s greatest features. And restoring from an iCloud backup is a piece of cake (albeit, a piece of cake that takes a few hours to eat).

One of the awesome things about buying a new device is how you can just log in with your iCloud ID and watch your new device restore itself to the same state as your previous one. All your apps download and then place themselves in the same spots you left them with their data all there; your photos, music, movies, background wallpapers, all just set themselves back in place.

iCloud restores just work. But only if you’ve got a recent iCloud backup.

The free 5GB of storage that everyone gets has become too small many, especially those of us who own more than one iOS device. Apple’s best customers — those who own multiple iOS devices, who use iCloud email, take lots of photos, and buy and use apps that use iCloud storage and sync — are the ones being boxed in, and even penalized, by iCloud’s storage limits.

Many iOS users will elect to cease backing up their devices rather than pay $40/year to upgrade to the next plan. And of those who do pay to upgrade, some can’t buy a big enough plan even if they want to.

iCloud is one of the paramount services to a great iOS experience, allowing us to keep apps and photos in sync, perform automatic backups, easily set up our new devices, and more. Yet all “magic” of iCloud is at risk from something as silly as a measly storage limit.

iCloud and Its Storage Limits

A Beginner’s Guide to Pinboard

On Friday, May 4, 2012, I signed up for Pinboard, a website that lets you bookmark URLs.

My move to Pinboard was prompted when Yojimbo, unfortunately, got too big for its britches. In Yojimbo I had more than 600 bookmarks, plus hundreds of other notes and files and things. Alas, because Yojimbo doesn’t weigh its search results by relevancy, it became increasingly difficult to find what I was looking for. In short, the more I was adding to Yojimbo, the harder it became to find what I was looking for.

A good filing system is one where you can find whatever you’re looking for in less than a minute. As of this sentence I have 2,334 bookmarks — I use Pinboard to collect any and every URL that is or was interesting to me — and I’ve never had trouble finding what I’m looking for when I go to search for a particular bookmark.

I wanted to share a few of the tools and services I am using with Pinboard. If you are wanting to get more out of Pinboard, then hopefully this will help you out.

Why Pinboard?

Pinboard is a great bookmarking service because it lives on the web, and so many of the apps and services I use every day can send bookmarks to my Pinboard.

For example: any article I “like” in Instapaper gets bookmarked to Pinboard; if a tweet that I “fave” has a URL in it, that URL gets bookmarked to Pinboard (you can configure this yourself in your Pinboard settings). And because Pinboard connects with IFTTT, you can set up a gazillion other ways to bookmark URLs.

In a nut, it’s very easy to add bookmarks into Pinboard. And it’s equally easy to find those URLs later by searching or by tag lists.

A Smarter bookmarklet

Beyond going to the Pinboard website itself and clicking the “Add URL” button, the most basic way to save a URL to Pinboard is through a bookmarklet.

I use Joel Carranza’s “Particular Pinboard” bookmarklet to save links when I am on a web page in Safari.

Joel’s bookmarklet is a bit more clever than the default ones found on the Pinboard website. It does some cleanup to the tile of the web page, populates the description field with selected text or else with the page’s description from the header, and will auto-add tags you use if they are relevant to the article based on keywords.

There is one thing I changed in Joel’s bookmarklet, and that is the height and width of the popup window. At the end of the javascript I changed the width from 610 to 700 and the height from 350 to 550. For some reason the default dimensions were causing the popup window to display without a status bar and without a window shadow. The slightly larger dimensions fixed that for me.

A Tag-Specific Quick Bookmark

Let’s say there is a tag you use often in Pinboard, and you want a way to save a URL using that tag with the least amount of fuss possible.

Then use this bookmarklet.

This will take your current Safari tab and save it to Pinboard using a pre-defined tag that you chose, all without showing you a pop-up dialog window or anything.

Tab collections

You know when you’re doing research on something and you end up with about 30 open tabs and then you don’t know what to do with them all?

Pinboard Tab collections are your friend.

This Safari extension will grab all of your open Safari tabs, organize them by windows (say you’ve got 3 windows with several tabs each) and then let you save them as a set.

Sometimes it’s nice to use this as nothing more than a placebo bookmark, when all you want to do is quit out of Safari and save your work for later (maybe).

Mac Apps

There are some Mac menubar and desktop apps, but I don’t use any of them. I think the Pinboard website is very easy to use and so Safari is my go-to place for accessing Pinboard from my Mac.

Search via LaunchBar

If you use LaunchBar you can set up a custom Search Template for Pinboard that lets you enter your search query from within LaunchBar and then search the Pinboard site.

Bring up LaunchBar, click the “gear” icon that’s on the right-hand side, then go to Index → Show Index. Or hit OPT+CMD+I when LaunchBar is visible.

When the LaunchBar Index is up, click on the Search Templates label in the sidebar. Click “Add”. Name your Search Template something like “Pinboard”, and then place this code as the Details:

https://pinboard.in/search/?query=*+&mine=Search+Mine

 

Now, bring up LaunchBar, type “Pinboard”, hit Space Bar, type your search query, and hit Return.

Search Pinboard with LaunchBar

iOS Apps

I actually have two favorite iOS apps for Pinboard.

  • Pushpin: It has a clean interface, it’s a universal app which works on iPhone and iPad, it lets me browse through my list of bookmarks, tags, and notes, and it offers access to Pinboard’s Popular list and more.

  • Pinbook: This app has a more narrow focus than Pushpin does — Pinbook excels at search. Searching your bookmarks in Pinbook is fast, and you can search by Title, Tag, or Description. So if there is a particular tag you want to pull up, just search by tag.

Both these apps have URL schemes, so you can send bookmarks to them from other apps. Here is the Javascript bookmarklet I use to add a URL from Mobile Safari to Pushpin. It’s based on the very same Particular Pinboard bookmarklet mentioned above.

I realize it’s a bit nerdy to have two Pinboard apps. If I had to pick just one, it would be Pushpin. If you don’t want to spend $10 on a Pinboard app, and you just want a nice way to add and find your bookmarks from your iPhone and iPad, get Pinbook. You won’t be disappointed with either.

Using Pinboard

Pinboard is like Birdhouse was — there are many like it, but each person’s is their own.

To get the most out of Pinboard it helps to have easy ways to save bookmarks, and then to know that you can search them when you need. Hopefully what I’ve shared above gives you some ideas for how you can use the service better.

A Beginner’s Guide to Pinboard