MPU 334 - She Can’t Take It Anymore, Captain!

On this month’s live episode of Mac Power Users, Victor Cajiao joins us to discuss all the steps of producing a modern music album. We also help troubleshoot an accidentally reformatted hard drive, discuss password schemes, using a ScanSnap for photos, share listener feedback on our Special Event and Keynote shows, and discuss options for Evernote.

Sponsors include:

  • 1Password Have you ever forgotten a password? Now you don't have to worry about that anymore. 
  • Gazelle Sell your iPhone for cash at Gazelle! 
  • Marketcircle They'll help small business grow with great Mac, iPhone and iPad apps including Daylight and Billings Pro.
  • Sanebox Stop drowning in email!

A Few Rumors and Speculation Concerning Apple's Fall Lineup

Apple’s Fall Lineup I expect we’ll see a lot from Apple in the next few months. If history is any indicator, we’ll get new iPhones next month but that’s not all. The MacBook Pro is long overdue and rumored to be coming out by the end of the year and yesterday AppleInsider broke a story about the Apple Watch 2 by the end of the year with GPS, a barometer, and better water-proofing.

If there will be one missing product from the “new and improved” category, I’d guess it is the iPad. The iPad Pros are still pretty new and I’d not be surprised to see any new iPads pushed to Spring 2017. Also, did you notice how the iPod has completely dropped out of the narrative when talking about new Apple products?

Either way, if you’re looking to upgrade some of your Apple hardware, the next few months could get expensive.

Mac Power Users on Keynote Uses and Amazon

We've published a few Mac Power Users episodes since I last checked in:

MPU 332: Other Uses for Keynote

Keynote is a great app for giving presentations but it can do so much more. This episode explores many uses for Keynote beyond presentation day.

MPU 333: The Amazon Lifestyle

There are so many different services and features available from Amazon. Who can make sense of them all? We do in this episode.

1Password Subscription Plans

In recent months 1Password has added subscription plans for families and teams. It’s only natural that now they’ve added one for individuals. Dave Teare from 1Password made a post at the 1Password blog that gives all the details. For $2.99 a month, users get access to all the 1Password apps plus their cloud services.

As 1Password explains in their blog post, subscribers get all the 1Password features plus:

  • Built-in automatic sync across all devices
  • Data loss protection
  • Web access to your data on 1Password.com
  • Item History for restoring deleted or changed items
  • Secure Document storage
  • Brand new multi-factor security model

I get in hot water every time I write this, but I’m okay with productivity app makers adopting subscription plans. Upgrade pricing isn’t realistic anymore and Apple doesn’t even provide for it the the iOS and Mac App Stores. If you want good productivity software, productivity software makers have to stay in business.

With 1Password’s plan, you’re getting all of its apps plus the above features for $36/year. Purchasing 1Password licenses (which is still possible) has always been (and remains to be) quite a bit more expensive than that. Moreover, if you get in on the launch special, you get six months for free.

I’d recommend subscribing to 1Password. It’s a great service and will keep you more secure in an increasingly insecure world. Learn more at 1Password's blog.

Disclosure: 1Password has been a sponsor of Mac Power Users for years. I’ve been a 1Password customer even longer and happily currently pay $5/month for my 1Password family plan.

New MindNode Screencast Series

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I like to use mind mapping to plan out projects. For several years now, my weapon of choice for mind mapping has been MindNode. MindNode, for me, is the right balance of features and ease-of-use. MindNode’s easy to pick up, syncs over iCloud, and I use it all the time. I’ve done a set of five screencasts using MindNode explaining the why and how of mind mapping from my perspective and you can watch them all over at the MindNode website. Below is the first video. Enjoy.

In this introduction video, David talks about why you should mind map and whom mind mapping is for. He shows how mind maps are non-linear and visual, just like our thinking. And how intuitive and easy it is to create order from chaos by unleashing your brain with MindNode.

OmniFocus Video Field Guide Updated

The new version of the OmniFocus Video Field Guide (v1.1) is now available for download.

The new version includes several updates for new features that have been added to OmniFocus since version 1.0 shipped. There's also an additional 40 minutes of content on OmniFocus Automation.

If you purchased the OmniFocus Field Guide already, you should have received an email last night with a fresh download link. 

Below is a little sample of some of the new automation materials. Check it out.

Here's a sample of the automation updates with the release of the OmniFocus Video Field Guide version 1.1. Learn more at MacSparky.com/OmniFocus

Sponsor: Track Your Time Automatically with Timing →

My thanks to Timing for sponsoring MacSparky this week.

Have you ever spent all day in front of your Mac, just to wonder where the heck all that time went?

Or tried to bill a client, but couldn’t reconstruct how many hours you spent working for them?

You could use a time tracker.

But to be honest, manual time tracking sucks.

You have to start and stop timers, enter what you did, and so on.

And if you forget that, you are back to square one.

This is where Timing comes in. Instead of making you do all the work, Timing automatically tracks how you spend your time. It logs which apps you use, which websites you visit, and which documents you edit. You can easily categorize activities into projects.

 

Also, your data is not uploaded to anyone’s server. It stays safe on your Mac at all times.

Still not convinced? Download the free trial now and on Friday review all the gory details of what you did this week. But don’t blame the Timing team when you see all those hours wasted on Facebook and elsewhere…

I bought this app a few months ago and I've been running it. I actually find the data quite useful not only for tracking how much time I spent in Microsoft Word on a contract but also how much time I burned in Twitter. It's good feedback and because Timing is a local app, it's for your eyes only.

You can purchase a copy via the Mac App Store or from their website at timingapp.com. The app is $29, but if you buy direct with coupon code MACSPARKY, you can save 20% this week - that already pays for itself by recovering just half an hour of unproductive or unbilled time! (And the Timing team promise you will save much more time than that!)

∞

OmniFocus Video Field Guide Update Coming Sunday

I’ve been working the last few months on an update to the OmniFocus Video Field Guide. I’ve updated it for several new features and gone deep on the iOS Automation and URL linking. I'm making final edits and additions over the next few days and intend to publish it sometime Sunday (probably late). The update will be free for people that have already purchased the field guide. However, please note that for new buyers the price is going up to $19.99. So if you want to get in on the current $9.99 price, do so between now and Sunday afternoon when it goes up.

The Perils of Your Own Mail Servers

I was at a professional gathering recently when the subject of email security came up. I was surrounded by a group of lawyers that knew next-to-nothing about technology and it made me curious about their thoughts on email servers. Going around the room, I found that just about everyone was maintaining their own email servers because they felt it was “safer”. There is this bias when it comes to data that somehow privately owned servers are safer despite the fact they are connected to the same Internet populated with the same bad guys everybody else is facing.

While I think there may be some private servers out there that are as well protected as the more reputable email providers, I think that is the exception, not the rule. My impression is that most of these private servers are instead on aging Dell box in a closet connected to the Internet that may (or may not) have the most recent security patches installed and may (or may not) have an IT person baby-sitting it once in awhile. I think there is this impression that despite this lackluster security, they are somehow safer than email services that have full time professional staff holding the barbarians at the gate 24/7. As the Democratic party found out, they’re not.

Yesterday, John Gruber linked to an article by Josephine Wolff that agreed.

“The DNC is never going to be the equal of these companies employing thousands of engineers and managing millions of email accounts when it comes to security, so perhaps it should stop trying and let the experts take over.”

If you’re running your company’s email on a private server and haven’t been compromised (or at least not aware of being compromised), there’s a good chance that the reason for your good fortune is not because of your security but instead the fact that you are not as juicy of a target as the DNC. Maybe it’s time to reconsider.

Wireless Keyboard Security Vulnerabilities

Bastille Networks ran an experiment where they tried to intercept transmissions of some wireless keyboards. This would let the bad guys capture a user’s keystrokes from a remote computer and even inject their own keystrokes on your device. It all comes down to poor encryption. They’ve got a list of keyboards they were able to intercept and it’s pretty spooky. Apple’s not on the list but there are several recognizable vendors.

Sponsor: SaneBox

I’d like to thank SaneBox for sponsoring MacSparky.com this week. Connecting SaneBox to your email account is like giving it super-powers. SaneBox adds a host of additional features to any email account and works with exchange, Google mail, or IMAP accounts. Because it’s all server-based, you can get the benefits of SaneBox no matter which email clients you use.

There is a lot you can do with SaneBox to tame your email. One of my favorite features is SaneVacation. The SaneBox vacation filter is something you can turn on when you go on vacation. Then SaneBox snoozes your emails until you return. When you turn it off, SaneBox does its usual bang-up job of putting your email where it belongs

Learn more about all of the features of SaneBox over at SaneBox.com. If you sign up using the links in this post, you get $10 off. If email is giving you trouble, give SaneBox a try. You won’t regret it.

 

Better Item Selection with iOS Pixelmator

It's remarkable to me how I do nearly all of my photo processing these days on iPad. Along that theme, the Pixelmator team just released a nice update with a focus on selecting objects.

Quick Selection Tool
Just swipe over an area to select it. This works better than you'd think. There's a video below.

Magnetic Selection Tool
This is a long time Mac feature that now exists on iPad.
Learn more at the website or on the App Store.

Learn Drafts this Weekend

Got an hour this weekend? Why don't you master the Drafts app? I did an entire series of screencasts on Drafts and it is a really handy app. Drafts let's you quickly capture text on your iPhone and iPad and then perform actions on that text with just a tap. There is nothing else like it and Drafts replaced the paper and pencil I used to always carry in my pocket. Anyway, below is the introductory video and you'll find the rest of the series (15 videos!) at the Drafts website. It's like getting a MacSparky Video Field Guide for free.

Drafts, where text starts on iPhone and iPad. This is one in a series of screencasts on getting more out of this powerful quick-capture note taking app. To learn more about Drafts, visit: http://agiletortoise.com/drafts For more screencasts, checkout the Agile Tortoise Vimeo channel: https://vimeo.com/agiletortoise For more from David Sparks (@MacSparky), visit http://macsparky.com

MacSparky 2016 T-shirt Campaign

It's been nine years since I launched MacSparky and I figured it was about time to have an official shirt. So here it is for a limited time. Studies indicate that wearing this shirt will make you more attractive and smarter. You can get it either as a T-shirt or baseball shirt. It's a short campaign so get in there if you want one.

2016 MacSparky Shirt - Front.png

What About That Potty-Word on the Back?

There's a bad word on the back of this shirt, "Badass". I know that some readers have children or just don't want to wear a shirt with that word on it. If that's you, I understand and don't mind. The reason I'm including it is because when I self-published my first book, the Paperless Field Guide, I explained that the purpose of the book was to turn readers into "Badass Wielders of Technology." It was fun putting that in a book after having been at the yoke of traditional publishing and it still makes me smile. So this shirt gets a "Badass".

Scrivener for iPad and iPhone

In searching the archive, I found my first review of Scrivener on MacSparky in 2007. That's right. … 2007. Scrivener was my original “White Whale” app for the iPad. Within an hour of using my first iPad, I remember thinking, “Now I need Scrivener.” How badly did I want Scrivener? So much so that I acted as errand-boy for the Scrivener developer and bought an iPad (with his money) and mailed it to him. (At the time, the iPad wasn’t available in the UK.) I was hoping he’d get addicted to the iPad and immediately put all effort into developing an iPad application. So I guess you could say I’ve been looking forward to seeing Scrivener on iOS for awhile now.

To be honest, that’s not entirely true. Initially, I had all sorts of bizarre workarounds where I could edit and work on my Scrivener files on iPad ranging from weird partial text syncing to VNC but none of them were really that good and as the years went by and Scrivener did not show up for iPad, I moved on. I’ll call those my wild years.

During the wild years, I started using several alternative apps that are iPad friendly. Most notably is Ulysses, which is similar to Scrivener but also different. While Scrivener is once again my weapon of choice for big writing projects (particularly those including research), there are still some projects for which Ulysses is the right choice. I'm currently outlining an episode of Mac Power Users on big writing projects and we’ll be comparing and contrasting these two apps so stay tuned for more on that.

The story behind getting Scrivner on iPad could probably be the subject of its own interesting novel but this week, after so many years, my beloved Scrivener found its way to the iPad and iPhone.  I’ve been using it and syncing my book files between the two platforms and it sure is nice to be home again.

So why do writers get so excited about Scrivener? I’ve written about it before but Scrivener is the first application that I used as a writing tool, as opposed to word processor. With Scrivener, I can take on big writing projects in a way that I simply couldn’t before. It lets me organize blocks of text and it keeps track of my progress. One of its killer features for me is the ability to hold my research data in the same file as my scrivenings.

Scrivener can take just about any file type you throw at it (including PDFs, images, and Word documents) and make those available for review while working inside the application. So when you are working on a big project, using Scrivener you can have all of your research in the same file as your words. This is really handy as it saves you the trouble of digging in the Finder, Evernote, or wherever else you use to keep support documents for big projects. This convenience is even more notable on iOS where getting documents out of cloud storage isn’t alway easy.

Now that Scrivener is on the iPad, I can show up at a coffee shop and work on my latest legal brief or book and know confidently that I have access to all the resource documents I need for the project. That’s the magic of Scrivener. It not only allows you to write and organize your words for your big writing project, it also holds your research as well. And now Scrivener is on the iPad and iPhone.

You can get Scrivener in the iOS App Store for $20 (App Store)(Website). The application is universal and works on both iPad and iPhone. One of my big concerns about creating a version of Scrivener for iPad was striking the right feature balance. There are a lot of features in Scrivener for Mac. The question was how many of those features need to get over to the iPad to make the application useful while at the same time not making it overwhelming. Scrivener for iPad and iPhone does nicely in striking this balance. Indeed, I was a little surprised at how many features did make it over for the first version.

Research, which is one of my most important features in Scrivener, syncs over just fine. That, for me was going to be the make-it-or-break-it feature in bringing Scrivener back into my life. I will acknowledge, however, that's a relatively low bar but the developer got it right. You can put both research and text on the screen at once and I've been writing legal briefs and working on a new book in this new version of Scrivener with no problems. 

Scrivener for iPad and iPhone isn't a simple port. A lot of effort went into determining what features work best on iOS and where accommodations need to be made. The iOS keyboard adds additional rows with Scrivener-specific features and the interface is much cleaner than Scrivener on the Mac. Indeed, I prefer the interface on the iPad over that of the Mac even though it doesn't have every bell and whistle you find on the Mac.

While there were some features cut, Scrivener on iPad is fully functional for the hard work of moving the cursor on big writing projects. The text editor is absolutely up to the task and you can organize your buckets of text on Scrivener on the iPad and iPhone just as you would on the Mac. I was particularly impressed with the keyboard shortcut support, which makes sense because a lot of people will use this tool with an iPad and external keyboard. 

One feature that made it over from the Mac is color coding document sections. This is easy to implement for a writer and super-useful. Color coding makes it easy for going back later and making edits or re-writes.

When you're done, you can synchronize your data back to your Mac using Dropbox. Synchronization with Scrivener for iOS, however, deserves some further discussion. Scrivener documents are, in essence, package files that hold the research and various bits of text that you're preparing. Scrivener does not use iCloud but instead Dropbox. (I don’t know for certain but am guessing this has something to do with the synchronization of the research files.) Either way, you save your Scrivener file to the Dropbox destination of choice and then you can access it from Mac, iPad, or iPhone. 

When you first boot up Scrivener on your iPad or iPhone, you are asked to synchronize data with your Dropbox folder. Then digital wheels grind and synchronization takes place. When you're done editing your document on your iPad or iPhone, Scrivener again prompts you to synchronize back up to Dropbox. (You can also manually trigger synchronization.) 

This system works. The only time I was able to break it in testing was when I was deliberately trying to by opening files too soon (before Dropbox caught up with me). Nevertheless, the whole process feels a bit fragile. I'm not sure if there is a better way given the different types of data Scrivener synchronizes but I will warn you to be deliberate about syncing when using Scrivener on iPad and Mac at (or around) the same time.

After hacking my way into Scrivener from iOS for so long, it sure is nice to see the Scrivener icon on my iPad home screen. This is exactly what I was looking for so long ago when I started using my original iPad.