Twitterrific 5

If you’re old school, Twitterrific for Mac was probably your first Twitter client.

Twitterrific for the Mac came out in January 2007. I joined Twitter in March. It was the first native Twitter app for the Mac, and I loved its small footprint, dark UI, and color-coded @replies. For a long time Twitterrific was Twitter for me.

It’s funny to look back at how I used Twitter over half a decade ago. I followed dozens of people and would often post Tweets through a Quicksilver plugin, treating my tweets as one-line “status updates” which lived on my site’s sidebar. Visitors to my blog circa 2006 and 2007 could see a “this is what the author is currently doing” message.

Obviously our usage of Twitter has changed drastically since then. Twitterrific for Mac shipped the same week Steve Jobs announced the original iPhone. Now, almost 6 years later, I primarily check and post to Twitter via my iPhone.

Six months after Twitterrific for the Mac shipped, the first proof of concept for “MobileTwitterrific” was announced in August of 2007. Twitterrific for iPhone launched on July 11, 2008, and was one of the first apps in the brand new App Store for iPhone. Before Twitterrific for iPhone, we were all using web-based Twitter apps. Remember Hahlo?

T5

Twitterrific 5

Today, Twitterrific is 5 years older and 5 versions mature. The app has gone through many design iterations over the years, but has always remained true to its roots. Additionally, Twitterrific has made many significant contributions to the Twitter ecosystem at large — it was the first native Twitter client on both Mac and on the iPhone, it was the first to coin the word “tweet”, and it was the first to implement a bird icon.

Graphics-wise, the newest version of Twitterrific is simply stunning. Without any hyperbole, I consider T5 to be the best-looking version of Twitterrific to date and one of the most attractive iPhone apps I’ve seen in a long time. Thanks in no small part to the great use of typography and color. Though this new version seems to me the furthest departure from the original design, it still has hints of familiarity and does not cast aside all design elements from past versions.

I haven’t used Twitterrific on my iPhone since 2008, which is when I switched to Tweetie. Then it was Tweetie 2, and then Tweetbot. All these aforementioned Twitter apps are not just great apps for Twitter, but they are (or were) great iPhone apps, period. The look and feel of Twitterrific 5 is, in my opinion, its greatest selling point — it has a UI design on the same caliber as what I consider to be some of the best iPhone apps ever built.

Twitterrific 5 strikes me as an exercise in simplicity with a focus on all the little details. When your UI doesn’t use gradients or drop shadows or boxes to hold itself together, all the loose elements have nowhere to hide. Any designer worth their salt will tell you that a “minimalistic” app like this is extremely difficult to pull off well. I say the Iconfactory hit a home run.

I asked David Lanham, designer at the Iconfactory, about the redesign. He said, “the focus of the redesign was to bring Twitterrific back to making reading tweets as enjoyable as possible while also applying what we’ve learned over the last few years for interface and interaction decisions to the usage of the app.”

Twitterrific’s most historic design detail is its liberal but clever use of color. Twitterrific has always used colors to signify the various types of tweets, and it’s no different in version 5:
– @replies directed to you use a yellow, orange, and red color scheme.
– Tweets which simply mention your @username use a brown and tan color scheme.
– Incoming direct messages are dark blue.
– Outgoing direct messages are teal, with an arrow pointing to the name of the user you sent the message to.
– A purple line underneath a Tweet signifies where the current tweet marker is (you can sync your timeline position via iCloud or the TweetMarker service).

Another historic design element is Twitterrific’s customizable themes. Just like in past versions of Twitterrific, T5 lets you choose between light or dark themes, adjust the font size to anything from teeny-tiny to ginormous, and more.

What’s new, however, is you now get a choice of the typeface itself. Custom fonts include Helvetica (of course), Proxima Nova, Museo Slab, Calluna, and Signika. Naturally I’m using Proxima Nova — it’s a gorgeous typeface which I think looks especially stunning on a Retina screen.

Also new: T5 can switch between light and dark themes automatically based on the time of day. Bright theme in the daytime, dark theme in the nighttime (a la Instapaper). This option is clever and fun; I had it turned on for a few days, but ended up turning it off because I like the dark theme too much.

Interestingly, popover notifications and slide-up selection buttons are not customized. So much of Twitterrific’s design is unique and customized, I was a bit surprised to see these default iPhone elements.

Direct Messages

Showing DMs right within the main timeline, as Twitterrific always has, always freaks me out. After a few days I’ve slowly acclimated to seeing a blue message and knowing blue means not publicly viewable.

There is, of course, a Messages tab, however, you cannot start a new DM thread from within it. You can view and reply to any current DM conversation you’re having with someone, but you cannot begin a new one with a new person.

The only way to start a new DM thread is to first navigate to a user’s profile, and if they follow you then you’ll see a small envelope icon. Tap that to start a new DM conversation with that person.

Alternatively, you could send a DM the old-fashioned way: “d @username Hey pal!”

A Few “Missing” Features

Being a hard and fast Tweetbot user for the past few years, there are 3 elements I instantly noticed were not features of Twitterrific 5:

  • No mobilizer view available in the in-app Safari web view.
  • No muting of keywords, tags, clients, users, etc.
  • No push notifications.

But this is something Craig Hockenberry (the man who had the idea for Twitterrific in the shower) addressed all the way back in 2008:

There will always be more than one way to solve a problem: a developer’s personal preferences will inevitably seep into the implementation. Having many choices for a Twitter client means that developers don’t need to create a “one size fits all” solution. In essence, users get to choose a developer whose preferences match their own. […]

For Twitterrific, our core function is reading.

The core function is not managing your Twitter account. Nor is it being a general purpose tool to exercise every nook and cranny of the API. It’s primary function is not to act as a surrogate for SMS messaging.

I asked the awesome gents at Iconfactory why they chose to not ship T5 with push notifications. It was a two-fold answer from both Craig Hockenberry and Gedeon Maheux.

“Twitterrific 5 is a clean slate. The visual design is obviously a fresh
start, but our code base is as well,”
Craig said. Gedeon added that if they’d included push notifications as part of T5, it would have added another 3 – 4 months to the development cycle: “So much has changed in the Twitterverse this past year with Twitter introducing new guidelines and restrictions that we felt any further delay in getting version 5 out the door increased the risk of not being able to release it at all.”

But that’s not the only reason. “When everything is new and clean, you think carefully before adding new stuff,” Craig said. “The things in this initial version are things we, as a team, really wanted to have. I know a lot of people love push notifications, but as iOS matures I find myself actively disabling notifications in apps. There are just too many and they end up being a distraction.”

I am an advocate of Craig’s stance on disabling as many notifications as are reasonable. But for me, there are many peers and comrades that I connect with throughout my workday, and Twitter DM is one of the primary ways we go about doing that. Fortunately, push notifications are in Twitterrific 5’s roadmap, they’re just not here yet.

And alas, for me, some of the “missing” elements in Twitterrific are deal breakers. Despite how fast and gorgeous Twitterrific 5 is, I do not want to give up push notifications, mute filters, or the mobilizer web toggle. These 3 features of Tweetbot are so important to how I use Twitter that I won’t be switching to Twitterrific as my one and only Twitter client.1

For the past week, I’ve been bouncing between both apps — using Tweetbot for DMs and Twitterrific for the rest. I know it’s silly to use more than one Twitter app, but the look and feel of T5 is so splendid that I’m happy to be silly for the time being. Not to mention, if you have any appreciation at all for world-class app design,2 then Twitterrific 5 is worth checking out for that reason alone.

It’s a universal app and is currently $2.99 in the App Store.


  1. Going a week with a client that didn’t mute certain keywords or user agents did make me realize that perhaps I should just re-think who I follow on Twitter. No, no — of course I’m not talking about *you*.
  2. If you don’t, then I question how you’ve survived as a regular reader on this website. Is it the coffee links?
Twitterrific 5

Fantastical for iPhone

Fantastical for iPhone is available today. You’ll probably be hearing a lot about it, and the good words are merited. I’ve had it on my iPhone’s first Home screen for the past 6 weeks. Right now it’s $2 in the App Store, and I wholeheartedly recommend it.

There are two headline features: (a) The ability to create an event using natural language. This is the headline feature of the Mac version that won me over last spring. And (b) the DayTicker, which is a clever new way of displaying the upcoming days and events.

Creating an Event

Why does it always seem that I’m in a rush, or that someone is waiting on me when I’m trying to create a new event on my iPhone? Creating new events on the iPhone has never been a particularly easy or quick task.

  • The iPhone’s default Calendar app is okay at best when it comes to entering new events, but if you’re not creating an event for the very near future, it can take many taps to get the event created.
  • Agenda (a very fine 3rd-party calendar app) has done a good job at making it easier to input a new event, but it is still a somewhat tedious task that requires many taps.
  • Siri can be great, but I still find it awkward to use Siri in a public setting, and she doesn’t exactly have a great track record of being accurate and frustration free.
  • Fantastical is, in my opinion, the easiest way to create a new event thanks to the natural language parser. But for maximum ease and speed you really need both thumbs available since you’re typing a normal sentence — Skydiving lessons tomorrow at 9 am.

Moreover, if you don’t want to type out a sentence, Fantastical still gives you the ability to create an event exactly as you would in Apple’s default Calendar app.

Calendar Views, the DayTicker, and My Visual Thinking Mojo

Fantastical has something I’ve never seen before: the DayTicker.

The DayTicker in Fantastical for iPhone

Design-wise, the DayTicker is money.

However, as pretty as it may be, I’m still not fully sold on the DayTicker. The way the 5-day ticker slides left-to-right while the event list scrolls top-to-bottom is a little bit jarring. My eyes don’t know where exactly to focus with two lists scrolling in different directions at the same time, and so I often find myself looking back and forth between the two instead of focusing on one list while looking for a specific day or event.

And yet, that’s not to say I’m convinced the DayTicker view is flawed. For me, the jury is still out on this one. And the reason is because I’m a visual thinker. When I think about my calendar I don’t think in dates, I think of a traditional calendar view and the S-M-T-W-T-F-S layout. Sunday is on the left, Saturday is on the right, and Wednesday is in the middle. The DayTicker messes with my mojo by removing the visual boundaries of a traditional calendar view.

What redeems it for me is how quickly you can switch between the DayTicker and the month-view. Pull down on the DayTicker and the month-view calendar will take its place. Pull down again to switch back to the previous view.

Having a quick and easy way to transition between list view and month view is something I’ve always loved about Agenda, and it’s equally great in Fantastical.

Using it day in and day out as the calendar app on my first Home screen for the past six weeks, I’m not ready to say it’s the best calendar app bar none. It’s still a toss up with Agenda, the calendar app I’ve been using since it first came out nearly two summers ago.

Design

What I like most about Fantastical on the iPhone is the design.

There’s no denying that the design of Fantastical is top notch. I love the overall color scheme of deep red, whites, and blacks. The app feels balanced and unique. And there are several little design details that give Fantastical a fun and polished feel.

One of the most notable of the little design details is the magnification within DayTicker. As you slide the ticker left to right, the center-most day get’s “magnified”. This is a great touch.

Another detail: when creating a new event, the words you tap in animate in to the calendar view below. This gives you a visual cue that what your typing in is getting entered into your calendar, much like it is with Fantastical on the Mac.

It’s these little things in the design that make Fantastical feel professional and refined. This is easily the best-looking Calendar app on the iPhone and it’s a welcome addition to iOS.

Fantastical for iPhone

First Impressions of the Olympus E-PL5

Olympus E-PL5 with Panasonic 20mm pancake

My Olympus E-PL5 arrived on Tuesday, and the lenses arrived yesterday. Most of yesterday afternoon I spent reading the user manual and shooting a few hundred photos.

My first impression of the camera is that it’s great. Really, really great.

Here is a Flickr set with the 31 photos I thought were good enough to share with the Internet. All the images were shot in RAW and edited a bit in Lightroom using the default presets.

* * *

  • Hardware: It’s a dense and heavy camera. Heavier than I thought it would be which makes it feels expensive. But it’s not so heavy that it’s difficult to hold or operate. With the front grip attached I can comfortably hold and operate it with my right hand.

The movable / tiltable touch screen has sturdy hinges and I don’t feel like I’m going to break it. As a feature, the adjustable screen is very welcome. I found myself frequently holding the camera at waist height to take a shot and then tilting the screen up towards me so I could see to frame the picture. It makes taking shots at or near ground level as easy as kneeling down.

  • Speed: I have two Panasonic lenses I’m trying out (see more below). Olympus cameras are known for their super-quick auto focus, and my E-PL5 lives up to its reputation. Focusing seems near-instantaneous most of the time, but in lower light it can take up to half a second to focus (even with the “slower” focusing 20mm pancake). And speaking of focus, the tap-to-focus-and-then-snap-a-photo feature of the touch screen is great. Very useful for auto-focusing on something not in the center of the frame.

Not only does the E-PL5 focus quickly, but it turns on in about one second. After I press the power button, it’s up and ready to go before I have the lens cap off. One of the reasons I bought this camera is so I could take better shots of Noah. Assuming the camera is nearby it would be ready to take a picture nearly as fast as my iPhone would be.

  • Point and Shoot (but only if you want): After my first day shooting, I felt like I got several high-quality images that turned out great and all I did was point and shoot. The E-PL5’s Automatic mode is great at detecting what sort of image your taking and what the lighting is like and then favoring the best settings. Thus this camera will allow you to take some great photos without having to do much more than frame the shot.

But it’s not all auto. The E-PL5 has priority modes and full-on manual mode — I can adjust all sorts of stuff that I don’t yet understand.

This is exactly the sort of camera I was hoping to get. It will allow me to learn how it works and learn about the finer details of photography, but not require it of me. I could give this camera to anyone and tell them to just point and click and they’d likely get a pretty decent image, if not a great one.

  • Battery Life: I took a little less than 300 pictures yesterday and the battery indicator says it’s still at full. I don’t yet know for sure how long the battery will last, but it’s obviously much longer than a good afternoon of shooting.

  • Preconceived Notions: I’m trying hard to remember what I’ve always told myself when it comes to print and web design: tools do not a designer make. In my dreams I tell myself that after 5 years of avid iPhone photography, I’ve slowly grown in my composition skills as a photographer and that I’ll pick up this new high-quality camera and instantly produce jaw-dropping photos.

While I’m sure that the photographic eye I’ve developed over the past few years is better than starting from nothing, it’s also likely that since I’ve been using one camera for so long I’m now somewhat pigeonholed into what the iPhone is and is not good at. There is now a whole world of options and styles that the Olympus and it’s different lenses will open me up to.

Simply having a nice camera does not mean my shots will be what I want them to be. And that’s okay — I’m here to learn.

  • Voice: I am as excited about editing images as I am about taking them. Just as a writer, over time, develops their writing voice, so too does a photographer. But with photography you develop your voice not just in composition but also in post processing. And those two come together.

  • Lightroom: I bought Lightroom 4 when it came out and have been using it to post-process some of my iPhone photos. Mostly to clean them up and make them pop a little bit. There is still a lot I have to learn about post-processing.

One thing to note is that Lightroom 4.2 does not support RAW files from the E-PL5. Adobe recently made available the beta RC1 for version 4.3 that does.

The shots from yesterday I took in RAW and edited with Lightroom’s stock presets. For my first day shooting and editing with what could be considered “pro” gear, I am thrilled with the results. But I’m not blown away — I know I can do better. The good news is that I feel only held back by my own skill and knowledge.

  • Lenses: Though I only plan to keep one, I ended up ordering two lenses: the Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 and the 25mm f/1.4. Because I’ve read and seen so many good things about both I wanted to use and compare them side-by-side and determine for myself which I wanted to keep as the daily shooter. The lens I decide not to keep will just be returned or sold.

Panasonic 25mm and 20mm lenses

The 20mm f/1.7 is a pancake lens, which, in terms of size, is ideally what I want. Not only does the pancake make the camera more portable, it also makes for a less intimidating camera. People who aren’t used to a fancy camera, tend to act awkward or look funny when there’s a giant camera pointing at them. A small camera that looks like no more than a humble point-and-shoot I got at Walmart may help friends and strangers alike to pay no mind and thus allow me to capture some great candid shots.

However, the 25mm f/1.4 is a bit faster and is slightly higher-quality glass. It gives a creamier depth of field than the 20mm, and it’s auto-focus is quicker as well. And so it has me wondering if the tradeoff in portability and incognito-ness may be worth it.

But it’s impossible to conjecture about which lens is the better daily driver without using and comparing the two. All throughout the day I tried to take the same shot twice — once with the 20mm and then again with the 25mm. As I was later going through all the photos in Lightroom, most of the shots which stood out to me as being better than the others were the ones taken with the 20mm. (Perhaps this is because the focal length of the 20mm seems more akin to that in the iPhone, and so I’m naturally used to framing shots in such a way that the 20mm shines more?)

Down the road I’m planning for my 2nd lens to be the Olympus 45mm f/1.8. It will make a fine companion to the pancake 20mm, and so, though I haven’t made my final choice yet, my gut instinct is that the 25mm — as nice as it is — will not make the cut.

  • Is it fun? I felt like a dork walking around with my camera and taking photos. I’ve never thought other people with cameras were dorks, but I sure felt like one. I’m just going to assume that this is something all photographers feel and that once I get over it I’ll have a lot more fun taking photos, and the quality and style of my photos will increase as well.

As they say: just relax.

* * *

My favorite two photos from yesterday are this one of Noah laughing (though that picture would have looked good no matter what camera it was taken on), and this one of Anna and Noah playing:

Noah

Anna and Noah

It is tough to say after only one day of shooting, but I’m feeling extremely happy with the E-PL5 and the Panasonic lenses. So far, it looks like I made the right choice for the best compact, mid-priced, Micro 4/3 camera.

First Impressions of the Olympus E-PL5

Review: The Kindle Paperwhite (Compared to the Kindle Touch)

It took about a week from when I bought my first iPad until I realized I would likely never buy a physical book again.

The iPad was to books what my first iPod was to music. It had been years since I’d bought a physical CD — all my music lives in iTunes and comes from the iTunes music store. So too would it now be with books. The convenience of being able to buy a book with a few taps, have it download instantly, and add it to my small-but-now-growing digital library was just too awesome of a perk.

My enjoyment for reading digital books evolved even more when, last year, I purchased my first Kindle. My reasoning for buying the Kindle Touch was mostly business. I wanted to review it, to get some experiential knowledge of what e-ink was like, and I wanted to compare the size and weight of the Kindle Touch to the iPad.

It took all of 10 minutes of reading on the Kindle Touch for me to regret the money I’d spent in the iBookstore up until that point. For long-form reading, the Kindle was obviously leaps and bounds better than the iPad, and now I was thinking about all the digital books I had bought on the iBookstore and how they were no good on the Kindle. The few books I was currently in the middle of reading on my iPad I bought again on the Kindle store and the rest is history.

Reading a book on a Kindle truly is a more enjoyable and relaxing experience than reading one on the iPad. There are the obvious, tangible advantages: the Kindle is easily held for long periods of time with one hand and the e-ink display is easier on the eyes. But there are also the less obvious, intangible advantages: when you’re holding a Kindle there are no other apps, no other options of things to do, no distractions sitting impatiently behind the text before you, no notifications, or any of that.

The Kindle is a single-serving device. It’s meant to offer all the niceties of reading print, enhanced by all the luxuries of a digital device. It’s as light as a paperback book, the screen looks like printed ink on paper, but it can hold a massive library and you can buy a book with just a few taps without even getting up from your chair.

The only significant quibble I had with the Kindle Touch was its non-illuminated display. I do most of my reading in the evenings on the couch and/or in bed. Often when reading in bed the lights are out, and thus I’ve become a regular user of the Kindle app for my iPad.

Which is why, when the Kindle Paperwhite was announced, I ordered one immediately.

What’s Great

Not all the gadgets I buy to review continue to get used after I’ve written about them. But my Kindle Touch proved to be something I use all the time. After a month with the new Kindle Paperwhite, I consider it to be superior to its predecessor in every way.

The Kindle Paperwhite

For one, the Kindle Paperwhite just looks cooler than the Kindle Touch. It’s the most attractive Kindle to date. The front of the bezel is a semi-gloss black plastic with nothing but the Kindle logo centered in silver.

The Kindle logo used to be on the top-most bezel, and on the bottom-most bezel is where there used to be a Home button. The Kindle logo has now been moved to the bottom and the Home button has been removed. It’s obvious that Amazon was going for ultra-simplicity in the design of the Paperwhite; it’s a shame they didn’t remove the front logo altogether.

(I will say that the missing Home button hasn’t bothered me one bit. It is quite easy to get to the Home screen through the software menu, and for how infrequently I visit the Home screen of my Kindle I’m fine with an even simpler front bezel design.)

On the bottom edge you’ll find the only port and the only button: a micro-USB port and the power/wake/sleep button. On the Kindle Touch, the very bottom also sported a speaker. I never once used that speaker except during testing, and so I’m glad to see Amazon removed it on the Paperwhite.

The back of the Kindle is black and sports a matte, slightly-rubbery, grippy plastic which bends around the side and top edges and meets the front bezel with a single seam. There are no screws or clips on the whole device. It’s lightweight, easy to hold, and built very well. It is the nicest non-Apple “tablet” I own.

But the refinements to the hardware are only the beginning. The higher-contrast screen with its higher DPI looks better than previous Kindles. And, best of all, the screen is now illuminated. This was the whole reason I popped for another Kindle despite the fact I had a perfectly good one that was less than a year old. Because, as I mentioned above, the Kindle Touch’s lack of an illuminated screen was actually a hindrance to me using it as often as I wanted to.

Moreover, the Paperwhite’s screen itself sits closer to the rim of the bezel. Or, put another way, it’s not sunken down into the device as much. And even the touch responsiveness is faster. Perhaps this is due to hardware upgrades to the internals, or perhaps it’s due to the software that the Kindle Paperwhite is running. It’s probably a combination of both.1

In addition to being more responsive, the new version of software running on the Paperwhite is easier to use. The new cover view on the Home screen is so much nicer than the list view. Also, you can now view the books you have on your device and all the books you’ve ever purchased, but that are in the cloud and not currently downloaded.

All these little changes really add up to a great device. But, of course, the Kindle Paperwhite is not perfect.

What’s Not So Great

  • No Page-Turn Buttons: I have never actually used a Kindle that had the physical page-turn buttons, but I suspect I’d love them. And why shouldn’t this version of the Kindle have them?

John Gruber, in his review of the Paperwhite wrote:

To remain relevant in an iPad (and Kindle Fire) world, a single-purpose device like the Kindle Paperwhite needs an obsessive focus on the reading experience. Page-turning buttons would make that experience better.

Another disadvantage of the Kindle Paperwhite’s lack of physical page-turn buttons is that you cannot rest your thumb on the screen. If you tap the screen on accident you end up turning the page. If you leave your thumb resting on the screen then you end up highlighting a word.

In the countless hours I’ve spent reading on my Kindle, a touch screen seems so obvious. It makes highlighting passages and looking up definitions a breeze, as well as navigating the Home screen and other menus. The inability to rest my thumb on the screen is only an issue when reading while lying down on my back. And so to me it’s worth having the touchscreen of the Paperwhite than the non-touchscreen of the Kindle 5 (especially since the Paperwhite now has a crisper, illuminated display).

Ultimately, my ideal Kindle would be smart enough to know when I’m resting my thumb on the screen and when I’m trying to highlight a passage or define a word. And it would have physical buttons for turning pages.

  • The Illumination Spotlights: By far, my biggest complaint agains the Kindle Paperwhite is with the way the lights illuminate the bottom of the screen. Underneath the bottom bezel of my Kindle are four LED lights, shining upwards to light up the screen. Yet they shine like spotlights, and it’s not until about 3/4 of an inch up the screen that their light beams blend into one another and you get a soft, even lighting.

The Kindle Paperwhite

This is common. All the Paperwhites have it and nobody likes it. The darker your reading environment, the more pronounced the uneven lighten is. It’s unfortunate for sure, but it is what it is and by no means is it a deal breaker.

The Kindle Paperwhite

  • Text alignment: Nearly all books are aligned with full justification. I say nearly all because the Tom Clancy book I’m reading right now actually has a ragged-right text alignment; surely it’s not the only one. Kindle books are notorious for having odd typos here and there (like the numeral “1” in place of a capital “I”). And so, in a way, it seems like we’ve just come to expect sub-par layouts with our Kindle books. But why should we?

There’s no reason Amazon can’t offer ragged-right text alignment. I second John Gruber’s vote for Amazon to hire a world-class book designer and put him on the Kindle product team.

  • Poor Access to Previously-Highlighted Passages: I highlight passages like it’s my job. It’s how I revisit a non-fiction book. Unfortunately, there’s no great way to access my highlighted sections of a book other than within the Kindle itself.

Right now, the only way I know of to get a highlighted passage from my Kindle to my Mac is to share that passage via Twitter and then copy/paste the passage onto my Mac. It’s unfortunate that I cannot access my Clippings via the Amazon website, nor can I email a highlighted passage to myself.

Update: Thanks to everyone who has let me know kindle.amazon.com/your_highlights should show me all my highlighted passages. Alas, it lists nothing for me. I’ve contacted Amazon Customer Support to see about that. In the meantime, I also learned that if I plug my Kindle in and put it in USB mode then in the device’s Documents folder there is a My Clippings.txt file. (Thanks, Scott!)

The Kindle Paperwhite

  • Special Offers: I suppose technically the special offers are not that great. But for me it’s not worth the $20 to get rid of them.

Last year I bought the version of the Kindle Touch with Special Offers and I never paid the $20 to turn them off. The ads don’t bother me much — I usually just have the Kindle resting face down — and there have been a few times where there’s a deal that I’m actually interested in and I get a book for a buck, or something like that.

The End

The Kindle is in the same category of gadget as my Apple TV. Both are great gadgets that I use often and seem like a steal at their relatively inexpensive prices.

The Kindle Paperwhite has a lot going for it: the e-ink screen, million-year battery life, illuminated display, improved software, the iOS Kindle apps that sync with my iPad and iPhone, and the lightweight yet rugged build of the device hardware. The biggest compliment I can give the Kindle is that thanks to it, I read more books and I read more often.


  1. Amazon seems to have shown their hand with future Kindle updates in that software and hardware updates are coupled together. The most recent version of the Kindle Touch software is version 5.1.2; the Paperwhite is running version 5.2.0 which (in addition to support for the illuminated screen and the missing home button) sports a refined menu a Home screen layout.

    I emailed Amazon to ask if the Kindle Touch would get the 5.2 software update but I got a non-reply about how Amazon has made no announcements for future firmware versions of the Kindle.

Review: The Kindle Paperwhite (Compared to the Kindle Touch)

The iPhone is Here to Work

Noah was finally asleep. Sitting in the center seat, my wife was holding our 7-month-old son as he slept on her shoulder. The three of us were flying back home from a week in Colorado, and Noah had spent the first half of the flight fussing. Anna and I — as well as our fellow travelers — were relieved that he was finally resting.

Noah likes to be held but hates to cuddle. It’s such a rare occurrence for him to fall asleep in our arms that I had to document the rarity (and cuteness) of the moment.

The seats on a 737 are not exactly spacious. I reached into my pocket to retrieve my iPhone 5, and in the process the back edge of my phone had an encounter with the metal frame that held the seat’s arm rest in place. My iPhone was a couple weeks old, and the slate black body was, until that moment, still unscathed.

As if writing on a chalkboard, I could feel the frame of the phone shudder ever so slightly as it slid across that metal surface. Once out of my pocket I looked down at the back edge. Sure enough, part of the slate coloring had been scratched away revealing the silver-looking aluminum.

In that moment, while appraising my phone’s new scar, I was unexpectedly reminded of why the iPhone is special.

The iPhone is an uncanny amalgamation of beauty and utility — it’s a design and engineering marvel. Our western culture tells us that when you own something this nice, you protect it. Your sports car sits in the garage all winter; that painting belongs behind a sheet of glass; the silver flatware is kept in a box in a drawer; the mobile phone goes in a protective case.

The iPhone, however, prefers not to play by these rules. Though exquisite in design, it was not born as art to be put on display. It belongs in our pockets. It is a tool. A utility. A gadget of gadgets.

The iPhone is here to work.

It’s beautiful enough to be put on display. Simple enough to be used by your grandmother. Powerful enough to be used by CEOs. Popular enough to be made fun of on network television.

And this is why the iPhone is so incredible. Because it is equal parts niceness and usefulness.

This blows my mind. Here I have this gorgeous object of industrial innovation, and yet its proximity to my life is not due to my above average affinity for fine gadgets. No, the iPhone has earned its place by virtue of usefulness. The curiously-thin slab of glass and aluminum that I carry around in my pocket is my camera, my jukebox, my map, my newspaper, my phone, my email, my photo album, my schedule, my to-do list, my notebook, my Internet, and so much more.

“[Design is] not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” — Steve Jobs

* * *

After snapping a few photos of our sleeping boy, I turn the phone around so Anna can see the screen and browse the images I’ve just captured. I think to myself how it’s unfortunate my iPhone is no longer mint. And yet I wouldn’t trade that scrape for a case or a cover, and certainly not for a lesser device where scratches seem less intrusive.

The iPhone is Here to Work

The Hidden Radio

Nearly a year ago I backed the Hidden Radio project on Kickstarter. The device looked great and the reward level seemed very reasonable for backers who wanted to get a device when the project was complete.

I had been considering a Jawbone Jambox, but instead decided to back the Hidden Radio. It seemed like a win-win situation: I would be able to help the project happen, and in return I’d get a clever Bluetooth speaker that looks cooler than a Jambox, gets twice the battery life, and costs less.

Last week, the first round of Hidden Radios began shipping. Mine arrived on Thursday evening. Anna and I have been using the speaker around the house as much as possible all weekend long. Below is my review of the device.

Hidden Radio, Jawbone Jambox, and an iPhone 4S for Context

The Concept

The design and idea of the Hidden Radio is brilliantly clever. I mean, it’s basically just a giant volume knob. As Gilbert Lee wrote, when concepts of the Hidden Radio were first sent out back in the fall of 2008 (the same time the Google Chrome public beta was released): “The entire product is the UI!”

After several years of R&D, it wasn’t until 2011 that John Van Den Nieuwenhuizen and Vitor Santa Maria were ready to mass produce the Hidden Radio. They turned to Kickstarter in November of 2011 and raised just short of a million dollars over the course of their 60-day campaign.

And now, a year later, the Hidden Radio is a reality.

I received a white version and it’s altogether beautiful.1 When closed, the device is about the size and weight of a thick, double old-fashioned glass. Anywhere you put it, the Hidden Radio looks like it belongs there.

As mentioned above, the device is entirely UI. The Hidden Radio is designed to work as simply and beautifully as it looks. Alas, this is only in theory. In reality, the manifestation of the UI is difficult and thus frustrating.

Controlling the Volume

The Kickstarter concept video shows people casually reaching over to their Hidden Radio, placing a few fingers on the top of the device, and turning up the volume with ease (cut to 00:50 of the video to see what I’m referring to).

Unfortunately it just doesn’t work that wonderfully. Turning the volume up requires a fair amount of downward pressure on the unit in order to keep friction between the speaker’s base and the table top. But that same downward pressure also causes friction within the housing itself, thus making it extremely difficult for the shell to twist upwards and reveal the speaker grill.

There are a few surfaces in my house that have enough friction with the Hidden Radio’s base that I don’t need to apply too much downward pressure and thus could successfully turn the volume up using one hand. However, most of the time turning the volume up — and turning the device on — requires two hands.

The device is little more than a giant volume knob with a speaker inside, and yet, ironically, it’s the most difficult-to-use volume knob in my home.

It’s hard to know if the volume adjustment become easier over time. Perhaps after regular use of the Hidden Radio’s cap will eventually loosen its grip, making it easier to adjust with one hand. Or perhaps this is something the Hidden team will resolve in the next iteration of the Radio.

Turning the volume down is easily done with one hand.

Connectivity Issues

Perhaps the most maddening shortcoming of all is the Hidden Radio’s irrational desire to power off.

This can happen when you least expect it, and usually when you least desire it. My Hidden Radio powers itself down after about 60 seconds of inactivity. And so, if I pause the music on my iPad in order to take a phone call or have a conversation, I have to turn the Hidden Radio off and back on before resuming music playback.

What’s worse, on Saturday evening the Hidden Radio refused to play music for longer than 15 minutes at a time. A handful of songs in and the speaker would simply disconnect its Bluetooth connection. I would then toggle the inputs (there’s a switch underneath that toggles between Bluetooth, audio-in, and FM radio) to get the Bluetooth to reconnect.

(For some owners, I’ve heard this mid-music shutoff happens as often as every couple of minutes.)

What’s interesting is that the mid-music shutdown was only happening on Saturday evening. Since then it hasn’t been an issue.

Sound Quality

For a small speaker that majors on portability, wireless connectivity, and battery life, you know there are going to be tradeoffs. Even with that in mind, and even after the 8-hour “break in” period for the speaker, the sound quality does not impress me.

At best it sounds a bit like a cheap boombox. At worst it sounds like a muffled, cheap boombox.

When turning the sound down, not only does the volume output of the internal speaker decrease, but as the grill gets increasingly covered up, the sound becomes more and more muffled.

The sweet spot for the Hidden Radio’s sound is somewhere around 75-percent open. This is quiet enough to keep the bass from distorting and open enough to not sound muffled.

Worth it?

After 4 full days of jamming out to my Hidden Radio I find it to be a trophy of design and a failure of engineering. It is, unfortunately, the most textbook case of gadget form without function I’ve ever seen.

As a backer of the Hidden Radio on Kickstarter, I got my device for $119. They are now currently on pre-order for $150, and will then sell for the regular price of $190. At that price, I do not consider the Hidden Radio to be worth it.

If you’re going to spend $150 or $190 on a Bluetooth speaker, get the Jawbone Jambox.

I ended up ordering the Black Diamond Jambox to have some context to compare the Hidden Radio. The Jambox costs the same price and is so much better of a speaker.

The Jambox sounds fantastic — it is much louder and fuller than the Hidden Radio with richer bass and no distortion. Moreover, it is easier to control (how ironic), and its dimensions seem more portable to me. There is, however, one clear advantage the Hidden Radio has over the Jambox: Battery life. 15 hours versus 10, respectively.

The Jambox is certainly not as clever as the Hidden Radio. Nor is it as complementary to the decor of its surroundings. But the Jambox works and sounds better — and that’s what matters.


  1. I’m pretty sure I got the white one due to a glitch in their fulfillment processing somewhere. The white ones are actually more expensive.
The Hidden Radio

iOS 6 and Every-Day Life

Remember in 2010 when Apple held an iPhone 4 Press Conference as an answer to the “Antennagate” hubbub?

After his presentation, Steve Jobs was joined by Tim Cook and Bob Mansfield. They all sat on barstools at the front of the room and had a Q&A with the press in attendance. John Gruber asked if any of them were using cases on their iPhones. All 3 of them held up their iPhones to show no case. Steve even demonstrated how he uses his phone (by holding it using the infamous “death grip”) and that he has no reception issues.

What these guys also showed was that they’re using the same phones we are. Three of the top leaders at Apple sitting in a room full of writers and broadcasters, and everyone’s got the same phone in their pockets.

We like to think that Cook, Mansfield, Ive, Schiller, Forstall, and the rest of the gang are walking around with private versions of the 2014 iPhone and its corresponding (though surely buggy as all get out) version of iOS 8.

Everyone knows Apple is an extremely organized and forward thinking company that puts a lot of thought and energy into the planning and testing of its future products. But Apple is also riding on the cusp of its production and engineering capabilities.

After Apple announces and demoes the latest iOS at a WWDC event, most developers wait for the first few rounds of updates to ship before installing the iOS beta on their main devices. And it’s far more likely that the hardware prototypes for the next iPhones are locked away in some design vault, and the software roadmap for the far-future versions of iOS is still mostly on the white board. Meanwhile the folks at Apple are using the same daily driver iPhone and the same operating system you and I are.

Today, right now, we’re using the same mobile operating system with the same apps as the guys in Cupertino who dream this stuff up and make it happen.

And it seems to me that there are several things in iOS 6 which reveal just that. This version of iOS is not full of any one amazing new jaw-dropping feature that will have our minds spinning. Instead it’s filled with dozens of little things that will get used by real people ever day. And it will make our lives a little bit nicer and a little bit easier.

Things like Do Not Disturb mode, and the slide-up options you can act on when you get an incoming call, and VIP emailers, are all things that were thought up by guys who uses this device day in and day out and says to themselves, man, I’m tired of always declining phone calls when I’m in a meeting, texting the person back, and then forgetting to call them when I’m done with my meeting. (Or, perhaps, man, I am tired of getting text messages from my crazy uncle at 2 in the morning, but what if my mom calls and it’s an emergency?)

With that said, here are a few of things in iOS 6 that I am most glad about:

Open Browser Tab Syncing via iCloud

The browser tabs you have open on all your devices are now shared via iCloud. Had a website open on your Mac but then had to jet out the door, no problem. You can open it right back up from your iPhone or iPad.

If your Mac is running Mountain Lion, click the cloud icon in Safari and you’ll see the list of tabs open on your iPhone and iPad. And from your iPhone or iPad, tap the bookmarks icon in Mobile Safari and the drill down into the iCloud Tabs bookmarks folder.

Do Not Disturb

Another one of those features that is so simple and obvious, and yet has a significant impact on the day-to-day usability of our phones. You can activate Do Not Disturb mode from the Settings app.

You can turn it on and off manually (like Airplane mode), and you can set it to automatically start and stop at pre-defined times. (Not unlike Glassboard or Tweetbot allow you to set sleep options for when you do not want to get a push notification.)

To fine tune your Do Not Disturb schedule, and who you’re willing to allow to get through, drill down through the Settings App → Notifications → Do Not Disturb.

The Slide-Up Options on Incoming Calls

This has become my main “show off” feature.

When a friend asks me what’s cool about the new iPhone software I ask them to call me. Then I demo the slide-up menu for incoming calls and watch as they “get it” instantly. We’ve all been in that situation — whether it be a board meeting, dinner, a movie, or whatever — where we have to decline an incoming call from a friend or colleague. This is a feature that makes perfect sense and makes you scratch your head a bit about why it took so long to get here.

Pull to refresh in Mail

We were all doing it out of habit anyway. Now it actually accomplishes something.

Notifications for VIPs

I have worked in places were emails are sent like text messages. I often would get an email asking for me to come to a spontaneous meeting that was starting in 5 minutes.

Or how many times do you watch for that email from your boss or assistant or whomever? There are whole conferences centered around the idea of how checking your email every 5 minutes is a massive productivity killer (and it’s true). But that doesn’t mean the fact remains: a lot of workflows and company cultures are still very much dependent upon people being near-instantly-reachable by email.

VIP emails — and, more specifically, the way iOS (and OS X) are helping us to set them apart — are a great example of how iOS is becoming increasingly usable in real life.

High-Resolution Spinner on shutdown

I mean, finally, right?

Folders shown in Spotlight

After 4 years worth of App Store, some Home screens (including the one on the iPhone that’s sitting here on my desk) are getting unwieldy. There are apps I know I have, but I don’t know where they are. For those I have no choice but to use Spotlight to get to them, but say I want to move them to a more prominent spot?

Now when you use Spotlight to launch an app, if it’s in a folder Spotlight will tell you the name of that folder.

This is one more (of what feels like a) bandaid fix towards a better way to launch and mange apps.

Launching Apps using Siri

Siri is becoming the way of “ubiquitous capture” on the iPhone. It’s the quick-entry popup of OmniFocus on the Mac. Assuming Siri can connect to the servers, she is the fastest way to get sports scores, directions, set a timer, log a reminder, and now launch an app that’s not on your first Home screen.

* * *

The mobile phone industry has is no shortage of impressive, whizbang features which sound great and make fun ads but which rarely get used by real people in their day-to-day lives.

The niceties shipping as part if iOS 6 are great because they’re the sorts of little things that will play big, unsung roles in our everyday lives.

iOS 6 and Every-Day Life

Review: Tenkeyless Clicky Keyboards

Mechanical keyboards are addictive.

I think I have a problem. But I’m quitting now. Once you’ve acclimated to the tactile feedback and the clickety clack, typing on anything else doesn’t feel (or sound) the same.

Earlier this year I spent a nerdy amount of time testing and comparing the three most popular Mechanical Keyboards for the Mac. I landed on the Das Keyboard as the winner and my preferred keyboard for typing.

My Clicky Keyboard conclusion ended thusly:

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

I’ve been typing away on the Das every day for the past 6 months, but there has always been one thing in particular which bugs: the size.

Every time I’d reach for my Magic Trackpad I was reminded of how big the Das is. Aside from improved aesthetics, the only thing that could make the Das Keyboard any better would be the removal of its number pad — a tenkeyless Das would be a dream.

Last month, at the recommendation of several readers, I bought a tenkeyless Leopold with Blue Cherry MX switches. These are the same switches in use by my Das, and though the Leopold is technically intended for Windows use, a bit of tweaking in OS X’s System Preferences has it working fine with my Mac (see below for more on that).

The Leopold

I used the Leopold for a month, and as a keyboard I liked it pretty well. I especially liked having the Magic Trackpad back in the same zip code as the rest of my rig.

But when compared to the Das Keyboard, however, I find the Leopold to be slightly inferior in certain areas:

  • The Leopold has an ever-so-slight ring from a few keys that you can hear if it’s quiet in the room and you’re really pounding away. I hardly ever notice it, but sometimes my ear catches it.

This was perhaps my biggest gripe with the Matias Tactile Pro. It was a fine keyboard and felt great to type on, but nearly every key press brought with it a slight ring. The Das Keyboard does not ring.

  • The Leopold’s key action is not as “quick” or “snappy” as my Das. Technically this is not an issue of inferiority at all — it’s just a difference. But I’ve grown used to (and apparently fond of) the way the Das clicks.

However, there are things about the Leopold which I find to be superior to the Das, not least of which being the smaller footprint:

  • Obviously the Leopold is smaller because it is tenkeyless, but it’s smaller in other ways as well: (a) the bezel around the whole keyboard is thinner, and (b) the keyboard has a slightly shorter stature (that is to say, the top of the space bar is closer to the top of my desk).

  • The Leopold is cheaper by about $35. But you cannot return it unless you get a DOA unit.

I suppose the best way to compare the two is that when using my Das I was frequently bothered by how far away the Magic Trackpad was. However, when using the Leopold, I rarely ever think about how it types differently.

The Filco Ninja Majestouch-2 Tenkeyless

Not being completely satisfied with the Leopold, I decided to give one more keyboard a try. (After trying and testing 4 mechanical keyboards so far, what’s one more? Right?)

And so I ordered the Filco Ninja Majestouch-2 Tenkeyless.

It’s “Ninja” because the key caps have the lettering on the front side instead of the top, which I think looks awesome. And I made sure to get the one with Cherry MX Blue switches.

Filco has a great reputation for their keyboards. Part of the reason I didn’t go with the Filco over the Leopold in the first place was because a few of the reviews I’d read said the Filco rings a bit. But there is no ring. At least with the model I bought.

The Filco has a high-quality build and the same “quick” typing action like the Das. Moreover, it has the small footprint and thinner bezel like the Leopold (the Das looks like a boat when pulled out next to the Filco). It’s the most expensive of the three (about $20 more than the Das and $50 more than the Leopold), but it’s worth it — the Filco Ninja is superior in every way that’s important to me.

In short: the Filco Ninja is the best keyboard I’ve used yet. This is my new keyboard, and I’m done trying others.

Aside Regarding the Windows Keys

Part of the reason I didn’t originally review any tenkeyless keyboards was because (so far as I know) there are none made specifically for the Mac.

Both the Leopold and the Filco are Windows keyboards. Basically all this means is that the Command and Option keys are flip-flopped — both physically on the keyboard itself and within software.

Swapping the physical keys is easy. The Filco comes with a key cap puller; Elite Keyboards sells one for cheap. This little tool makes it a piece of cake to easily change any key on your keyboard.

Swapping the Filco Keys

And flip-flopping the keys in software is easily done from System Preferences → Keyboard → Keyboard → Modifier Keys.

Adjusting the Modifier Keys in OS X System Prefs

* * *

So, which mechanical keyboard should you get? It ultimately just comes down to the question of the number pad.

  • If you want a number pad — or if you don’t care either way — go for the Das. It’s Mac-specific, high quality, and a bit cheaper than the Filco.

  • If you don’t want a number pad, go for the Filco Ninja. It’s the best-looking of the bunch, it’s of equal quality as the Das, and it’s easy to set up to work on your Mac.

Review: Tenkeyless Clicky Keyboards

The Espro Press

Since I’m caffeinated, I’ll get right to it: The Espro Press makes an amazing cup of french press coffee.

These things are finally starting to show up for sale, so it’s time to review the one I got from Kickstarter back in April.

The original Espro Press is an 8-ounce single-serving press pot. I’d never even heard of it before I saw their project on Kickstarter, where their aim was to build a 32-ounce version. Since I am genetically predisposed to back any coffee-related project on Kickstarter, I pitched in my $85 and “pre-ordered” one of the large Espro Presses.

Their project was funded (more than five times over), and in early April of this year I received my 32-ounce (1,000 ml) press.

AeroPress, Espro Press, and classic Bodum french press

Seven days a week I brew a cup of coffee. Most days it’s with my AeroPress, but once or twice a week I like to make french press. People often ask me what makes a better cup of coffee — AeroPress or french press? Well, they both make fantastic coffee with their advantages and disadvantages. I enjoy both for different reasons; they’re both favorites, really.

So what is it about the Espro Press that makes it so much nicer than my Bodum french press? Two things:

1. Double-walled Steel Vessel

The pot is durable and rugged. And it’s heavy. Since it’s stainless steel, the best way to keep it clean is to hand wash it. But I’ve been putting it in the dishwasher since I got it and there are no rust spots.

The double-walled steel construction helps keep the coffee hotter for longer. Normally after brewing a pot of french press I would pour it into a vacuum thermos. Now I just bring the press downstairs to my office with me. Though the Espro Press doesn’t keep the coffee piping for 3-4 hours like my vacuum thermos does, it does keep it hot enough for over an hour (about how long it takes me to finish a pot) and it means one less vessel to clean.

Time (min.) Temp (F)
41 168°
10 166°
15 162°
30 156°
45 149°
60 144°

Since the press rod and lid are metal, they conduct a good amount of heat. Which means some heat is lost through the rod and lid, as well as the fact that the lid gets very hot to the touch. But it also means they are built to last — a tradeoff I’m willing to accept.

Double-walled stainless steel french presses are not a new thing. For example: the $100 Frieling french press has a high-quality double-walled stainless steel carafe, not unlike the Espro Press. But the Frieling has the same basic steel mesh filter that you’ll find in a common Bodum french press.

What makes the Espro Press the Espro Press is the filter.

2. Double-Layered Micro Filter Basket With Rubber Seal

Breakdown of the Espro Press filter (image courtesy of Espro Press website)

It’s a double-layered micro filter basket with a rubber lip seal. It’s unlike any other press pot filter I’ve seen, and it makes a great cup of coffee.

The filter basket is designed to keep as much of the grit out of the brewed coffee as possible. Here’s a comparison of the grit left at the bottom of a cup of coffee by an AeroPress, an Espro Press, and a classic french press:

Grit comparison between an AeroPress, Espro Press, and French Press

Obviously the AeroPress wins the “keep as much grit out as possible” competition because I used a paper filter.2 The Espro Press, however, has far less grit than the classic french press. And since the Espro uses a micro filter, you don’t lose any oils to a paper filter. (Though I don’t know that I’d even be able to tell the difference.)

I drank all three of the now empty cups of coffee you see above. Comparing the Espro Press to the French Press side by side like that I realized just how superior the Espro Press is. The classic french press coffee was noticeably more acidic and bitter (not horribly so) than the Espro Press coffee.

I’ve always loved the rich and bold coffee that a french press makes, and the Espro seems to make the best version of it.

Cleanup

The Espro Press, despite having a much more complex filter than your average french press, is still just as easy to clean.

Removing the filter basket from the pot, I simply rinse off the grounds from the sides of the basket, rinse out the pot itself, and then put the whole thing into the dishwasher.

The basket can be easily separated so as to clean out the middle zone of the double walls. Until today, I had yet to do this. Here’s a is a shot of the grit that accumulated inside the middle filter wall after 30 or so uses of the Espro Press (and, for the record, I intentionally didn’t clean the inside wall of the basket, because I wanted to see how dirty it would get over an extended period of time):

Grit caught inside the middle of the Espro Press filter

There’s no reason to let even that much grit accumulate. Taking apart the filter basket is quite simple (it easily twists apart), allowing you to easily separate the outer and inner baskets every time you put it in the dishwasher.

Deconstructed Espro Press filter basket

The Best Recipe

The Espro Press carafe can hold 1,500 ml of water. But that leaves no room for any coffee grounds or the filter basket. You can brew up to 1,000 ml of coffee, but I’ve found that the best recipe is when you brew 750 ml.3

The reason I shy away from brewing the full 1,000 ml capacity is that large filter basket gets in the way when you are brewing that much liquid. About 230 ml of liquid are displaced into the basket and thus don’t fully brew with the rest of the water.

Therefore, when brewing 1,000 ml of coffee I do 70 grams of grinds instead of the recommended 60. This causes the water below the basket to brew stronger, and then be diluted a bit once the basket is pressed down and the previously displaced water rejoins the brewed coffee.

The recipe I prefer is the one that Espro recommends for a 3/4 pot:

  • 45 grams of coarsely ground coffee
  • 750 ml of hot water
  • Pour most, stir, pour the rest, wait 4 minutes, press

Now, if you’re looking for an iPhone coffee app, I can recommend one of those as well.


  1. For comparison: I brewed a Bodum glass french press alongside the Espro Press. At the 4 minute mark, just after pressing the grounds, the Bodum coffee temperature was 158° — a temperature it took the Espro nearly 30 minutes to reach.
  2. This is one reason I love the inverted AeroPress method with a coarse grind. It’s not unlike brewing a pot of french press, but thanks to the paper filter you keep all of the grit out of the brewed cup.
  3. For reference: the classic Bodum french press has a maximum brewing capacity of 750 ml.
The Espro Press

Review: Day One

When my Great Uncle Howard passed away, they found a shoebox in his closet that was full of journals. They were those thick, index-card-sized, 5-year diaries that allot just a few lines of space per day. He had 8 of them, and they were all filled with what the weather had been that day. 40 years worth of Uncle Howard’s daily local weather report.

I’m not as regimented or peculiar as my Great Uncle Howard was, but I have been keeping a personal journal for the past 20 years.

My journals have always been logged with pen and paper. I very much enjoy the time when I leave my standard-issue Apple nerd gadgets in the other room and sit down with the analog to write about what’s currently on my mind.

In a way, perhaps I am more regimented than my Great Uncle Howard was. Through Twitter, Instagram, Path, Stamped, email, and other such apps, my days are meticulously logged with over-filtered pictures of the sandwich I ordered for lunch and tweets about the friends I’m out to coffee with. But how many of my tweets or Instagram photos are worth revisiting 40 years from now? Some of them, but surely not all of them.

And this is where I see the difference between the deeply personal issues that I write about in my Moleskine and the memories that I log on my iPhone and iPad. The former have great value to me now as it’s a way to help me process the current season in life, and the latter have great value to me in the future as they are a way to look back on memories and significant events.

For a few months I tried to use Path as a way to capture the little memories. Path is a beautiful and fun app that makes it easy to check in at places, snap photos, shoot videos, and write notes. But as a “journal” Path has a few shortcomings. For one, what gets logged in Path stays in Path (Is this an app that will be around in 20 years? I doubt it. How then will I get my data?). Secondly, the app is iPhone-only. And lastly, Path is a social network and not a personal journal — something that in and of itself causes hesitation when considering posting a personal memory.

Regarding Day One

Then there is Day One: a Mac and iOS journaling app. Day One shipped in March 2011 as a Mac and iPhone dynamic duo, and a few months later the iPad version was added to the line up.

Day One Icon

I bought the iPhone and Mac apps when Day One first shipped. In part because I’m a sucker for a good looking app. And, to be sure, Day One is extremely well-designed. The color scheme, typography, and the overall design are all clean. No detail is left wanting, no pixel out of place.

Additionally, Day One supports Markdown, it works with TextExpander on iOS, it syncs via Dropbox or iCloud, it has a passcode lock, and it will export all your entries as plain text.

For a classy journalling app that works on all your devices, I don’t think you can do better than Day One.

But despite its ubiquity and style, Day One never stuck for me because it only allowed text entries.

A text-only digital journal is too much like a replacement to my Moleskine. And I don’t want to replace my analog journal, I want a compliment to it. And if it’s going to be digital, I want all the benefits that digital provides. And so the text-only limitation was something that kept me from using Day One on a regular basis.

That is, until about two months ago when I was fortunate enough to get early access to the current version of Day One.

Day One’s Big Update

Day One now supports adding images to entries. Also your current location and the current weather (Uncle Howard would be proud) are automatically added to your entry’s metadata. These seemingly small changes make Day One an order of magnitude more appealing to me.

Over the past few months I have been using Day One regularly and enjoying it. Many of my entries have been nothing more than a photo and perhaps a quick descriptive sentence. That, combined with the automatic location and weather logging, and I’m creating worthwhile journal entries with very little effort on my part.

Day One Entry

Day One has nearly all the advantages that Path had for me, but with none of the disadvantages. I can use my Mac, iPhone, or iPad to log pictures, notes, and locations. I can know what the weather was like that day, I can know where I was when I wrote that entry, I can export my entire journal as a Plain Text file that will be readable 20 years from now, and I don’t have any friend requests to wade through.1

As a long-time Mac nerd, something I appreciate about Day One is that it’s both simple and geeky. It’s easy and fun to use, it sports a clean design, and yet it has a lot of under-the-hood horsepower that you can use to do a lot of nerdy stuff with.

For example:

In a day and age where an app like this could have easily justified a heavy-handed skeuomorphic design, Day One keeps it clean. Normally I would say here that Day One is very Mac-like, but Mac design has been getting more and more skeuomorphic these days. (Sigh.)

Though Day One has been updated across the Mac, iPhone, and iPad, it’s the iOS version that I think shines the brightest. In part because of the iOS app’s ability to include location and weather data to your entries (more on that in a bit). And also because I find the iPhone version to be the best version of the 3-device suite. (Similar to how I find OmniFocus on iPad to be the best version of its 3-device suite.)

Photos, Location, and Weather

When you open up the new Day One on your iPhone, its main menu screen (or the sidebar on the iPad) which used to feature just a “+” icon, now features a camera icon as well.

Day One Main Menu Pane

This encourages you to consider that creating a new journal entry using a photo is just as legitimate as a text entry. And, as I mentioned above, it is this feature that turned Day One around for me and I’ve been using it ever since.

But it’s not just that you can slap a photo into a journal entry. Day One is very smart when it comes to adding photos. Say you snapped a picture yesterday when you were out to lunch with some friends. If you use that picture to create a new journal entry then Day One will ask you if you want to use the date and geolocation data from the photo (even the past weather for that time and place is added to the entry). Thanks to this cleverness, it’s as if you created the journal entry when you were out to lunch rather than the next day.

Moreover, If you have Camera+ installed on your iPhone, then Day One takes advantage of its API so you can edit your photo and add cool effects and stuff.

If being able to add photos is Day One’s killer new feature, the icing on the cake is the automatic adding of location and weather data to your journal entries. For example, in a previous version of Day One, if I wanted to make a note about how Macworld throws a classy WWDC get together, it would have been text only, and I probably would have just skipped it.

But now, that same entry can include a snapshot of the party, a quick caption, a map showing where the party was, and the info about what the weather was like.

Day One - Macworld WWD Party

All this is added with little or no effort, and it makes the entry far more valuable. (Note that when creating a new journal entry on the Mac version, automatic location and weather data are not yet supported.)

Typography

Previous versions of Day One offered broad-stroke typography options — you could chose between Serif, Sans, or Monospaced. The new version gives a more granular choice of typefaces (though it still doesn’t open up the whole font library that you have on your Mac).

Day One Typeface Prefs

And on the Mac Day One now includes Avenir, a typeface that ships with Mountain Lion and will ship with iOS 6.

Markdown

Speaking of typography, Day One has long supported Markdown. In the latest update to the iOS app there is now a Markdown formatting bar that rests at the bottom of the text entry box.

Day One Keyboard Extras

Adding a custom row to the on-screen keyboard isn’t new, and many fine apps have their own take on it. Compare and contrast to the custom keyboards of Byword, iA Writer, Scratch, and Writing Kit.

But the Markdown formatting bar in Day One isn’t just for quick access to common Markdown syntax. Swipe the bar left or right (a feature which several of the aforementioned apps also support) and you’ll get options for adjusting the metadata of your entry: You can change the date and time, add a photo, share the entry via Email or Twitter, delete the entry, open a new entry altogether, launch into “full screen writing mode,” and more.

Basically everything you need for that journal entry is a swipe and a tap away.

Reminders

If you want to be regimented about your Day One entries (as opposed to writing whenever the mood strikes you), Day One can remind you to punch in.

These reminders can be as often as every 15 minutes or as infrequently as once per week. If, like my pal Chris Bowler, you use Day One as your daily work log or the place for your end-of-day brain dump then setting a daily reminder just a few minutes before the work day is done could prove helpful.

Day One for Mac, Reminders

And hey, if you’re not ready (or if you’re still not in the mood to type something), then you can snooze the entry or just skip it altogether.

Day One Menu Bar Quick Entry Window

Full-Screen Writing

The iPhone and the Mac versions both have a nice Full-screen mode. (For whatever reason, the iPad does not.)

The iPhone version removes the system status bar, the top navigation bar, and the Markdown formatting buttons. Presenting you with as much screen real estate for your words as possible.

The Mac version doesn’t need to take up the entire screen (especially if you’ve got a large external monitor), so its custom full-screen view sports a dark textured background with subdued controls on the left-side and a focus on the writing space.

Day One for Mac, Full-Screen Mode

* * *

As a writer, I believe journaling on a regular basis is critical. It’s writing that will never be judged. It’s writing that doesn’t require an editor. It’s the only place where I am completely free to write for my truly ideal reader: a future me. I have my own inside jokes, my own running story arc, my own shorthand. I love the freedom to write whatever I want, however I want, with no need to make it tidy or clear or concise. And I have no doubt that it makes me a better professional writer.

As a new dad, my latest hobby is the incessant documentation of every cute thing Noah does.

Over the years, most of the major, monumental milestones of life were documented in my Moleskine. But not all. And that’s why I’m glad to have an app that let’s me easily and joyfully add a snapshot or a quick note about an important or memorable event. These are the things my family and I will look back on 20 and 30 years from now with great fondness.

You can get Day One for $10 on the Mac App Store and $5 on the iTunes App Store.


  1. Worth noting is that images are stored in their own folder within the Day One backup folder. When exporting your Journal Entries as plain text images are not included. Ideally I think an HTML or PDF export would be nice in addition to the plain text. That way images could be embedded inline with entries, and the location and weather data could be formatted.
Review: Day One

Mountain Lion Miscellany

As a card-carrying member of the Apple Fanboy Brotherhood™ it’s my unspoken responsibility to write something nerdy about the Mountain Lion. And so here are a few of my favorite changes, updates, and nit picks which are to be found in OS X 10.8.

(My article about Mountain Lion and the simplification of OS X is here.)

In Safari

  • The blue progress bar that loads in the Address Field has a faded out right-hand edge instead of the sharp edge. Once the page has fully loaded the blue progress bar shoots across the remainder of the Omni Box and then it all fades out from dark blue to light blue to white. And since the “Reader” button is blue, it’s as if the loading bar fills the Reader button up with color.

Interestingly, it was the animation of the blue loader that first attracted me to the Mac and OS X back in 2004. And even now it’s one of my favorite “little things” about the operating system.

  • The Syncing of iCloud Tabs is great. I only have one Mac so it’s currently of no use to me, but I’m very much looking forward to when it will sync my tabs across all my devices including my iPhone and iPad.

  • The RSS button in Safari is gone completely. If you come across a site and you want to subscribe to its RSS feed you’ll need to either have your own bookmarklet that adds the site to Google Reader or Fever, or the site will need a link to its RSS feed.

  • Click and hold on a bookmark’s name in the Bookmarks Bar and you get the option to rename it.

  • Rocking a lot of tabs? Do a pinch on the trackpad (or View → Show All Tabs) and all the tabs will turn into their own mini-window within the current window and you can scroll through them. It’s pretty great.

Safari Tabs

Regarding Notification Center

  • Without some fine tuning Notification Center could prove to be a bit distracting. While I love the implementation from a design and functionality standpoint, I’ve found that more often than not the notifications waiting for me inside Notification Center are irrelevant by the time I look at them. If it’s not showing me emails I’ve already read then it’s showing me Tweets I’ve already seen, or calendar events that are already over. While I love the growl-like pop-up notifications, I think I’m still learning how to get the most out of Notification Center itself.

  • You can define a system-wide keyboard shortcut to show/hide Notification Center by going to: System Prefs → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts → Mission Control → Show Notification Center.

  • You can also launch Notification Center from your trackpad by sliding two fingers onto the trackpad from the right-hand edge. And then, a two-finger swipe from left-to-right will hide Notification Center.

  • With Notification Center showing, if you scroll to reveal the top then you’ll discover a preference to not show notifications. When this is enabled, the icon fades to gray and all alert popups and banners are hidden. If a calendar reminder goes off while Notification Center is set to not show alerts and banners, then your Mac does not alert you to the event. You can also enable this by simply Option-clicking on the Notification Center icon in the Menu Bar.

  • Notifications for new emails only appear when Mail is running. So Notification Center doesn’t get new email messages on its own.

In Mail

  • New layout of the email message window: The date sent is in the top-right corner, next to an avatar of that person (If there is one. And since Mountain Lion can link your Contacts with their Twitter profile, you may start seeing some people’s email avatars as being the same as their Twitter avatars.).

  • Deleting an email takes you to the one below or above the current in-view message based on which way you were previously navigating the message list. I love having the next-below message come into view as, in my opinion, it’s better quickly processing through emails.

  • New options for emailing links from Safari: when you hit CMD+SHIFT+I to send the current web page you can send it as just a link, a PDF, the text-only version, or the whole website embedded within the email body. I always opt for just a link:

Mailing a Web Page

AirPlay

The “Display Preferences” icon that used to sit in the Menu Bar has been changed from its old Cinema Display-like icon to the AirPlay icon found also in iOS.

With AirPlay you can now mirror your Mac’s display and audio to your Apple TV. However, the system sound only channels through the HDMI cable of the Apple TV. And so, if, like me, you have video piped to your TV via HDMI but audio piped to a separate sound system via the optical audio cable, then the sound system does not receive the audio signal when doing AirPlay mirroring from the Mac.

But fortunately, if you AirPlay a video using the iTunes option (found in the lower-right-hand corner of iTunes) then the audio will go through the optical audio port.

RIP: “iCal”

iCal is now called “Calendar”. If, like me, your LaunchBar habits die hard, did you know you can tell LaunchBar that you want “ic” to be the abbreviation for Calendar.app? Yeah. Just type “Calen” (or whatever it takes until Calendar is selected), then Control click on LaunchBar and choose “Assign Abbreviation”.

Assigning a Custom Abbreviation in LaunchBar

Contacts

  • The application formerly known as Address Book threw off the horrible page-turn functionality from Lion.

  • You can send someone an iMessage from within Contacts. I hope LaunchBar adopts this functionality. It’d be great to pull up someone’s contact info and then fire off an iMessage to them all from the keyboard.

Sending an iMessage From the Contacts App

The Other Two New Apps

Believe it or not, I don’t use Reminders or Notes. I use OmniFocus and nvALT with Simplenote.

The Finder and Overall OS Miscellany

  • In a Finder window, if you choose to sort by kind, then your files and folders are, well, sorted by kind. And as you scroll, the file-type header stays at the top. Like in iOS when scrolling a list, such as Calendar and how the date sticks to the top until you scroll through to the next date and so on.

  • While downloading a file from Safari, you see a progress bar within the file icon itself and a time countdown:

Downloading a File in Safari

This in-context progress bar is for several things, such as transferring or copying files and folders.

  • A couple new Menu Bar icons: Notification Center and AirPlay. If you like to keep your Menu Bar as sparse as possible, Apple is making it an uphill battle.

  • The keyboard shortcut for “Save As” is back, but it’s different. Apple says: Use Command-Shift-Option-S to save a document using a different name and location.

Mountain Lion Miscellany

Thoughts and Impressions of the Nexus 7

Over the past few weeks I’ve read a dozen or so of the early reviews of the Nexus 7. They were nearly all positive.

What seems to be the prevailing statement about the Nexus 7 is that it’s the best Android tablet by far, and that it’s the best $200 tablet by far. While that may be true (and I think that it is), I don’t know if it’s saying much.

It’s praised for two primary reasons: (1) the hardware has a surprisingly high-quality build for how inexpensive it is, and (2) Jelly Bean has proven to be a significant update to the Android operating system.

As Jerry Hildenbrand points out in his review of the Nexus 7 on Android Central:

Jelly Bean is like Ice cream sandwich, with all the features we wanted Ice Cream Sandwich to come with. It’s fast and smooth (like buttah), full of the latest and greatest APIs for developers to do all sorts of magic with, and there’s a level of polish we’ve all been waiting for.

* * *

My Nexus 7 arrived on Tuesday. It is the first Android tablet I’ve ever used, the first 7-inch tablet I’ve ever used, and the first $200 tablet I’ve ever used.

The small form-factor of the Nexus 7 is quite nice. My iPad has become my laptop and most of the time when I am out and about the size of the iPad is perfect for me. But when using it around the house for reading or surfing the Web, there are times when the iPad feels a bit too big. My biggest gripe being that the iPad cannot be used with just one hand. Extended reading on the iPad requires that it rest on a couch cushion, your lap, or your chest.

But with the Nexus 7, its size, weight, and rubbery-back make it easy to hold with one hand. It seems silly to buy such a capable tablet for the sole purpose of easier couch surfing and extended reading, but to me that is the Nexus 7’s strongest suit.

But what then? Is the fatigued iPad reader meant to buy another, smaller tablet with the intentions of keeping it on the coffee table or at their bedside? Perhaps. But that seems a bit extreme to me. Surely there are other benefits and advantages to the Nexus 7 beyond its size.

To be true, the Nexus 7 is a fine tablet. Anyone awaiting a quality Android tablet will be pleasantly surprised. And anyone in want of a tablet that costs less than $399 would do fine with the Nexus 7.

As some are wont to say, the iPad is a device meant for consumption only (if you’re reading this site I have no doubt you roll your eyes at that statement too). Well, if the iPad is not meant for content creation, then the Nexus 7 certainly is not. For two main reasons: its screen size (and, thus its keyboard size) and its app store.

Typing on the Nexus 7 in portrait mode is not unlike typing on the Galaxy Nexus in landscape mode. It’s easy and quite doable with two thumbs.

However, typing on the Nexus 7 in landscape mode is pretty much a joke. The keyboard is too big to easily type with your thumbs while holding the device, and yet it is far too small to type home row style. Moreover, with the soft key system buttons resting just below the spacebar it is extremely easy to tap on one of them instead of Space.

If you do expect to type a lot, the Nexus 7 pairs easily with a Bluetooth keyboard. I was able to pair my AmazonBasics keyboard with the Nexus 7, and even the iPad-intended modifier keys worked.

Price and hardware aside, I find that my overall sentiment towards Android remains relatively the same from my week-long excursion with the Galaxy Nexus last Winter. On a technical level, Jelly Bean is noticeable improvement over Ice Cream Sandwich. But I still do not see the appeal of an Android device over an iOS device unless your motives for using one are based solely on price, screen size, or a vendetta against Apple Inc.

For me, when it comes down to it, software will always trump hardware. When I’m using a device like the Nexus 7 I want to know where the details are. Where is the magic? The fun? The incredible 3rd-party apps? It is because of these elements that the iPad is more than the sum of its parts while its competition continues to remains less than.

Thoughts and Impressions of the Nexus 7

Review: Checkmark for iPhone

Checkmark is an upcoming reminders app for the iPhone. And it is awesome.

For some folks, Apple’s default apps are not powerful enough or feel absent of features. As such, many 3rd-party devs have made a name and a living for themselves by building “pro” versions of the apps that already ship on the iPhone. A few examples:

And now: Reminders → Checkmark

Apple’s Reminders app is relatively simple. Your to-do items (a.k.a. reminders) can be viewed based on the list they are in or the date they are due. These to-dos can be triggered to go off at a particular time or when leaving or arriving at a particular location. Or they can have no trigger and simply be an item which needs to be done.

For me, the Reminders app on my iPhone has but one interface: Siri. Though my go-to to-do app is OmniFocus there are often times when setting a quick and simple reminder via Siri is easier.1 Especially when those reminders are location based, such as: “Remind me to swing by the post office and buy stamps when I leave here.” Or: “Remind me to take out the trash when I get home.”

There are, however, two quibbles I have with Siri and Reminders:

  • Oftentimes I am in a situation where I can’t or don’t want to use Siri. But setting a location-based reminder manually is a surprisingly arduous task. And if it’s for a location other than my current one, then there is much scrolling to find the entry in my contacts list. Not to mention, if the location is not already in my list of contacts then I cannot add a reminder to trigger based on that place.
  • Once a reminder for another location is set, Siri often proves to be unreliable at reminding me. For example, in my contacts I have cards for my local Walmart and Lowe’s, but asking Siri to remind me to buy batteries when I get to Walmart does not always work. The next time I go to Walmart it’s hit or miss that the reminder will actually trigger (why this is, I do not know).

Like Reminders+

Checkmark solves the aforementioned Siri and Reminder shortcomings and then some.

In terms of reliability and ease of use, Checkmark beats the built-in Reminders app in several areas (especially if you are manually tapping in a time or location-based reminder — Checkmark is leaps and bounds faster at this). And, as mentioned above, on more than one occasion the built-in Reminders app has failed to trigger a location-based reminder. With Checkmark, not a single one of my reminders have failed to trigger.

Checkmark’s biggest downside is its current inability to work with Siri.2 Of course Siri and the Reminders app have a few downsides of their own. And so I find myself using a combination of both apps.

What I’m using Siri for:

  • Quick reminders based on “here”. It’s easiest to let the iPhone set a quick geofence around wherever I am and then remind me of something when I leave that fence (“remind me to swing by the grocery store and pick up a gallon of milk when I leave here”).

  • Trivial, time-based reminders (“remind me to check the brisket in 45 minutes”).

What I’m using Checkmark for:

Where Checkmark truly shines is with location-based reminders that trigger on arrival. It’s fast and totally reliable.

This is something that Siri should be able to do, but in practice I’ve found her to be unreliable at reminding me to get AAA batteries next time I’m at Walmart. Which is one reason I’ve found Checkmark to be far superior to the built-in Reminders app for these types of reminders.

When you launch the app there is a “home screen” with icons for each of your saved locations. I have 7 commonly-visited places set up in Checkmark.

Checkmark's Home Screen

Tapping on a pre-saved location takes you to the list of reminders which are set to trigger around that place. From there you can tap to add a reminder. Checkmark gives you options to trigger the reminder or arrival or departure and even to time-delay it.

Checkmark: Add a Reminder

It takes a whopping three taps (one of which is launching the app) to get to the screen for adding a new location-based reminder. Put simply: Checkmark is fast. I use it for all my location-based reminders. I only wish I could set a repeating location-based reminder (such as one that reminded me every time I went to the bank to log the miles in Trip Cubby).

Also notable is Checkmark’s conservative battery usage. Nearly all location-based apps that I try seem to drain my battery like its their job. But I have no qualms letting Checkmark run in the background.

On top of its reliability and ease of use is a pixel-perfect design. Checkmark is, in this writer’s opinion, of the best kind of apps: thoughtful, useful, and attractive.


  1. OmniFocus for iPhone has the clever ability to look at the items in your Reminders list and add them to your OmniFocus inbox. Thus, enabling you to add items to OmniFocus using Siri. You can set this up in OmniFocus’s settings.
  2. Ryan Cash, one of the guys behind Checkmark, told me they are working on the best way to integrate the app with Siri.
Review: Checkmark for iPhone