J2 Consulting » Tech

Guessing at iPad 3 arrival + Re: Idea Sketch

jjmarcus — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 23:18:52 +0000

Can I use Idea Sketch on my Mac or is it only a mobile app?

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/idea-sketch/id367246522?mt=8

Mobile only, but with the paid upgrade to it, you can export the project files, which are openable in OmniOutliner, an amazing and long-standing app on the Mac.

Cool. Thanks. I think I’ll wait til I get an iPad. The 3 is coming out in like March, right?

I wish we knew about the iPad, but best guess based on rumors is March. Definitely don’t buy a 2. I’m recommending those with itchy fingers should look at a used or refurbished unit, especially a 1st gen, on craigslist.org or store.apple.com.

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New Google privacy policy won’t affect Apps for business, government

jjmarcus — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:58:48 +0000

On Jan 26, 2012, bill wrote:

Twice I have had job interviews were I was presented a document that states you will be finned and fired if we find out you are using google for any services for data or email This is a very very big deal for clients that do not not want there data mined and sold. Mostly investors types and tv people.
http://arstechnica.com/#!/business/news/2012/01/new-google-privacy-policy-wont-affect-apps-for-business-government.ars

As you might guess, I’m not bothered by this, and I suspect that Google will do a bunch of clarifying like this article talks about, and maybe even plain ol’ backpedaling, before Mar 1. Regardless, I think those contracts are retarded. But I’m glad the nonprofs and the FTC are around to watch this stuff before it explodes.

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Web and email hosting

jjmarcus — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 00:41:19 +0000

I would really like to switch from GoDaddy for our email and Web hosting services. I believe you told me that Google can also handle this. Is that correct, and if so, can you point me to the Web page that will explain it?

I definitely believe that Google Apps is the best choice for email hosting. It also includes Google Docs and Calendar hosting, as well as Google Sites, for building ad hoc web sites that can be shared strictly internally or to the world. These are good for things like individual projects, or quick reference documentation.

Google does not offer conventional web hosting, but there are lots of possibilities for that. If you are going to design a new site, the go-to platform for web sites is currently WordPress, but I am building my new site in Squarespace. It’s simply fantastic.

If you are keeping your current design, I could recommend staying with GoDaddy just for web hosting. Some folks take issues with GoDaddy, regarding everything from business practices to aesthetics to animal rights and gender roles. Because of their recent support of the impossibly stupid Stop Online Piracy Act, I will likely move my own domains to another registrar such as NameCheap or Hover.

There are lots of excellent alternatives. Lemme know more about your needs.

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How to dispose of old technology

jjmarcus — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 00:43:37 +0000

How do I properly dispose of an old CPU? It has no useful info on it. I just don’t want to throw it in the trash.

You can get rid of that machine a number of ways, including:

Best Buy will take recyclable technology, requiring neither a fee nor an appointment.
You can give stuff away at craigslist or Freecycle.
You can take any non-trashable material or items — from batteries to paint to televisions — to the hazardous materials disposal depot over at Culebra and 410 (dial 311 in San Antonio for details).

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Instapaper sine qua non

jjmarcus — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 01:43:15 +0000

I’d hate to live in a world without Instapaper. It has changed my reading life, and my productivity. More than merely bookmarking an article, I put it on my reading list that shows up on all my devices. And the new version is so darn pretty. Bonus tip for nerds: check out Marco’s podcast on 5 by 5: http://5by5.tv/buildanalyze.

Instapaper

Marco Arment

Category: News

Updated: Oct 27, 2011

291 Ratings

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Can I simplify the process of writing a blog post?

jjmarcus — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 03:31:41 +0000

A conversation with Matt S. on Friday sparked a little research. The goal was to simplify the WordPress dashboard, so that new users would see only what they needed, and not be distracted or confused by the other bells and whistles WordPress scatters around the admin page.

My initial thought was to find a browser plug-in that isolated the functional part of a web page, darkening or obscuring the rest of the page. Or, failing that, to find just one easy option for authors who prefer to minimize distraction.

After meandering down a couple of paths, I concluded that:

The only browser plugins that do what I was describing only work on video or flash sites.
I tried to get Safari’s web-clip feature to do this. I had disabled Mac Dashboard a while back, ‘cos widgets hog memory. I turned it back on, and created a web clip with the “Add New Post” interface. The first two attempts didn’t work, only giving me the WP admin login page, but then I tried it again, resulting in the screenshots at the end of this article. So, that kind of does the trick, but it also seems completely random and unreliable, and thus impossible to recommend to a novice user.
I have definitely found desktop blogging tools such as MarsEdit and Blogo helpful, especially when they can accept formatting in Markdown. But I think those apps put too much remove between a novice user and their end product; the process takes time to explain, and most folks are just going to want to get started posting.
I’m not sure if Colleen P. has officially changed her mind about this, but I really love Posterous. All I have to do is send an email to post@posterous.com — with formatting, images, links, the whole shebang — and my post goes on my blog, the link to it goes on Delicious, Twitter and Facebook pull it in, etc. (If you send an email to Posterous right now, you will create a new blog.

Option 5, however, might be the best place to start: There are a few WordPress plug-ins that simplify the WP Dashboard. I have already heard good things about Fluency Admin [pictured above], and this Easy Blogging thing looks OK (though there’s a fee to that one that makes me skittish).

I guess that’s where it stands at the moment. There are also a couple of iOS apps that making blogging easy. Certainly emailing to Posterous works well enough from anywhere. I need to see how mobile blogging from Squarespace will happen.

See the full gallery on Posterous

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Discover the Dictionary

jjmarcus — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 05:13:43 +0000

By Glenn Anderson

It’s just an application in the Applications folder, but there are lots of quick ways to get at the deep information stored in the Mac’s Dictionary.

There are two ways to view Dictionary: as a pop-up panel, an unobtrusive semi-transparent window with basic information; or as a normal application with a full-fledged window. Use it either way.

There are two ways to access Dictionary: through a contextual menu, which is what you get when you right-click on items; and through Dictionary’s main window, like any other application.

Try right-clicking on a word in a web page or a text document. You’ll see Look Up in Dictionary in the contextual menu. Choose it, and whammo! You’ve got your definition. It’s that easy.

You can improve on that little definition, however. Open the Dictionary application, then go to its Preferences (in the application menu, to the right of the Apple menu:

Check the boxes for all the sources you want information from when you look up a word. (I’ve got them all checked.*) Selecting individual sources in the list sometimes gives you more options: for Dictionary, for example, you can choose which pronunciation you want displayed.
(10.6 and earlier) In Contextual Menu, below the list of sources, choose whether you want a panel or a full window to open when you right-click on a word.
Choose a font size as well. There are buttons for enlarging and reducing text size in the main window so don’t think too hard about this setting now.

Close the Preferences window and you’re done!

Power Tips

Ctrl-Command-D on any word in almost any Mac app, including browsers. (Yet another benefit of ditching Microsoft Office!)
Lion Users: try a 3-finger tap on a word to get a definition. Sweet.
When reading in Dictionary, you can click on words to get their definitions too. It’s a great way to delve further. Use the forward and back buttons like in Safari and Finder.

*If you have languages besides English enabled on your Mac you might have the option of a language dictionary too.

What specs should I choose for my new iMac?

jjmarcus — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 21:06:07 +0000

We are choosing a new iMac, and don’t know what processor to pick: do we just go for the 3.1MHz i5 or the i7, or…? And how much memory?

First off, everyone should buy a new Mac with 8GB of RAM (memory). You can also buy it after-market for a bit less, from http://macsales.com/ among others, but you want to get it pretty soon after purchasing the machine.

And with regard to screen size, if you do photos or videos, or just want to increase productivity by having a few windows visible simultaneously, certainly you want the 27″ screen. Then it’s just about the processor, and here’s the scoop: For most operations, you wouldn’t notice a difference between the i5 and the i7. But once you start in on iPhoto or iMovie, the i7 will be noticeably faster. And the faster machine will have a bit longer lifetime, accepting new upgrades to OS X farther into the future. I say “a bit,” because for some people, the extra cost won’t be justified by that extra longevity. If you went for the i5, go for the speedier version (e.g. 3.1 MHz is faster than 2.7). Thanks for inspiring this post!

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No full-screen Finder

jjmarcus — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 12:48:05 +0000

I’ve got Lion. I’m in Finder. I look for “full-screen.” Computer says no.

Apple has made a whole lotta hoopla about all the full-screeniness of Lion. But no love for Finder. What’s the deal?

I’m trying to work out something about that Finder icon, that innocuous cubist grin that was the face of Mac for 18 years.

When Apple got rid of the Happy Mac at startup, it caused such a fuss. The amount of reverence inspired by that Happy Mac is stunning. Why?

Macheads had for decades relied on that smile to tell us, “Whatever else might be wrong, your Mac is healthy and ready to go.” And once everything had started up, we would see the Happy Mac throughout the system — inviting, reassuring.

Then, with the arrival of OS X 10.2 Jaguar in 2002, the Happy Mac was gone. The only remnant on the system is the Finder icon in the dock.

Is this, or isn’t this, the face of the Mac?

The irony is that, since the very beginning, the Finder has been the single worst, most uninspiring, most gripe-attractive application ever written for the Macintosh. (All due respect to the creators, who giveth homes to all good documents.) Apple has made OS X the most advanced and stable OS on the planet, replete with security and useful eye candy and productivity enhancers… but Finder has just never evolved. To this day, so many of the people we work with, as comfortable as they have gotten with their Macs, don’t have any solid idea where their stuff lives on their computer.

Perhaps in Lion, Apple made the biggest changes ever, moving the hard drive and other devices to the bottom of the Finder sidebar, and leaving volumes off the desktop by default. These items were cues to confusion: a user saw them, and was immediately reminded of how much they don’t know about their computer. What the heck is a “Macintosh HD”? Why does it say “Macintosh” when I own a “Mac”? What does the “HD” stand for? And when I open “Macintosh HD,” what the hell is a “System” or a “Library”? (Coincidentally, Microsoft’s own file browser has had an even more ugly lifecycle, made no better by the recently announced Windows 8.)

Ewww.

Apple has given priority to showing people their “Places,” a name I have issues with because it further abstracts the situation. My Places are in my Home but when I want a new Place, I go to File > New Folder? Shouldn’t that be New Place? And is a File a Document?

So why don’t they just lose Finder altogether? I don’t know if it’s out of neglect, nonchalance, or fear.

Or loyalty. It could be loyalty. A tiny acknowledgement of the devotées who recognized, from Day 1, the personality and love that went into Apple products.

Maybe Apple feels that files and folders are an arcane idea. The iPhone and iPad are successful because their users don’t have to think in files. They think in contexts, locations: “I go there, to get to that.”

But the laptop and desktop computers that Steve Jobs called “trucks” still work in the old file-and-folder mode, no matter how much Apple is trying to friendly that mode up. Perhaps that Happy Mac still works on people. “Don’t worry about what you don’t know. I’m your friend. We’ll get through this together.” (It is funny that the new iPhones have a voice that actually responds to you in a tone that, while helpful, is not exactly friendly.)

Without question, if they took Finder away right now, I’d be way ticked off. But I’m starting to think that maybe they should be honest with us. Apple doesn’t want to be your friend, and they don’t want the Mac to be your friend. They want you to have an assistant to help you get things done.

I’m reminded of the movie Dave, when Dave meets his lookalike, the American president, who tells him, “Just get rid of that grin. You look like a schmuck.”

So maybe it’s time to say goodbye to my old nemesis Finder, and likewise to my dear old friend the Happy Mac. Apple could give us a new starting point for productivity. And it should probably have full-screen mode.

Are Macs compatible with PCs?

jjmarcus — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 03:34:06 +0000

Have you ever had trouble with compatibility between your Mac and PCs? I work with Word a lot. Will I have to use Windows? I have learned that you can use it and Mac’s own operating system.

We Mac nerds have been fielding those concerns for a long time, but it wasn’t until 2006 that we could completely, confidently, and unreservedly say, not only that a Mac can now do anything a PC can do — because a Mac can become a PC — but that a Mac can do even more than a PC, because it can actually run Windows at the same time it’s being a Mac! It really opened up our digital world. And by now, it’s so smooth as to be easy and smooth for any user of any experience. I have dozens of clients using it every day, for QuickBooks and other software that doesn’t have a good analogue on the Mac.

But much, much better than that: there is very little you can’t do on the Mac itself. There’s a wealth of software out there, almost always designed better and with more care than its PC counterparts. And it’s all really easy to get to. Apple recently built an App Store into the Mac that works just like the one on the iPhone: tons and tons of apps, many very cheap or free, that install with a click. Updates are also a snap.

Finally, to address your specific need, all one need know is this: Microsoft wrote Word and Excel for the Mac long before it had versions for Windows. The Mac versions have always been able to share docs with Windows. We have not one single client running Windows on the Mac to use Office.

But I want to put a new thought in your head: Microsoft Office is history. The future is in online software such as Google Docs. If you haven’t seen it, when you are next in your Gmail, look up at the top of the page for the Documents link. Click it, and… Welcome to the Evolution. You can create word processing docs, spreadsheets, and presentations; access them from any computers; and collaborate on them with multiple other people simultaneously.

Once you start using Google Docs and its ilk, working on files that are imprisoned on your computer will start to feel limiting, and maybe even archaic. It has its own strengths and limitations — I may download a doc to my Mac to take it into Apple’s Pages or Numbers to pretty it up if that’s appropriate. But 99+% of my docs live on Google’s servers.

In case you were wondering, this is an example of what some folks now call “working in the cloud.” Fly the friendly skies!

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