13" MacBook Air in the Wild

This is best real-world review I’ve seen of the new MacBook Air yet.

OmniFocus the Sledgehammer

Sean Blanc gives OmniFocus the full treatment.

Saying Goodbye

My 81 year old sweet mother, Jeannie Sparks, passed away this week and I wanted to take a moment to reflect on just how amazing she was. She started life when cars were still novelties and yet was the generation that powered the moon shot.

During the depression, she lived in a cabin where my grandfather fed his children by trapping fox in the Massachusetts backwoods and selling their pelts. Throughout her life, my mother took a practical “whatever it takes” attitude toward any challenge she faced, even when she had to stay up hours on end teaching her dense son to read.

Mom lived through the greatest technological revolution in history (from the radio to the internet) and nothing phased her. Even as she laid in intensive care, she smiled as she flipped through family pictures on the iPad. My mother was an amazing woman who taught me, not by lectures and scoldings, but instead by example and she will always live in my heart.

Update on Wednesday, November 3, 2010 at 11:42AM by David Sparks

Thank you everyone for the kind comments and e-mails. I nearly didn’t make this post but now am so pleased I did. You can not know how much the outpouring of love and support means to me.

D

Mac Power Users 36: Traveling iPad

Mac Power Users episode 36 is now live. In it Katie and I explain how to travel with your iPad and leave the Mac at home. We talk about workflows, best software, and limitations. You can catch it on iTunes here or on the web right here. Enjoy.

Refreshing the MacBook Air

As a former MacBook Air owner, it looks like Apple solved the two most vexing problems with the original.

Memory

Two gigabytes wasn’t enough. Not then and certainly not now. If you are lining up to get yourself a new MacBook Air, pay the extra $100 for 4GB Ram. Forego Starbucks for a few months or sell blood. You won’t regret it.

4200 RPM

The original MacBook Air had a 4200 RPM hard drive. This was a remarkably slow hard drive. Sometimes I just wanted to reach in and start spinning it with my finger to speed it up. By making everything SSD, the new machine will feel like a screamer despite its lackluster CPU. My Apple spies are already telling me this is the case.

In addition to solving the above problems, the long life battery, instant on, and increased screen resolution don’t hurt either. It will be interesting to see who buys the 11” versus 13” models and how they get used. Regardless, those who thought an Apple sub-notebook was beyond hope (especially after the release of the iPad) can now rejoice (and go to their nearest Apple store). If I was in the market for a new MacBook, I’d be looking long and hard at those new MacBook Airs.

Home Screens - Dave Caolo

I’ve always enjoyed Dave Caolo’s (Twitter) writing at TUAW. When Dave started his own site, 52Tiger, it immediately went in my RSS feed. I particularly like the way Dave puts out the occasional long form piece. In addition to writing about the Mac, Dave loves his iPad and agreed to share his home screen here.

What are your most interesting home screen apps?

Among those shown above, I find Flipboard and NPR to be the most interesting. The idea of a customized digital magazine is compelling and perfect for the iPad. In fact, Flipboard has become my preferred way to interact with Facebook. With just a few clicks, the content I’m interested in looks like it’s been published in a high-end design magazine. It has become one of the apps I use to show off the iPad.

NPR is a cross between an app for reading and an app for listening. Scroll vertically across three categories — news, music and arts & life — to find a sotry you’re interested it. From there you can read the story, listen to the NPR interview, create a custom playlist and share the article with friends via Twitter, Facebook or email. It’s easy to browse the other stories within a category as well. It’s so well done that it’s become a part of my evening routine.

I should note that those apps — the ones I’ve deemed “most interesting” — aren’t the apps I use most often. That list would be Instapaper, Twitterrific, Flipboard, Colloquy and OmniFocus.

What is your favorite app?

My answer to this question changes often. Lately I’ve been enjoying Netflix for streaming movies and Gourmet Live for reading. I’m very interested in the development of Gourmet Live, as its unique among Condé Nast titles: the only title that exists as an iOS app only. I know that the team behind it is totally dedicated and I’ve loved every update issued so far. The idea to let readers “unlock” certain content by reading is a lot of fun and something I haven’t seen outside of games.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Angry Birds, of course, and Yahtzee HD. My entire extended family are rabid Yahtzee fans and I use the iPad app to “stay sharp” for our next get-together. Plus the game’s adventure mode is fun.

How many screens have you filled?

I’m at four screens with 6 apps in the dock.

What is the app you are still missing?

Carcassonne! This was easily my unofficial iOS app of summer, 2010. I just can’t stop playing it and while it doesn’t look too bad when pixel-doubled on the iPad, I’m more than ready for an optimized version.

How many times a day do you use your iPad?

Honestly I couldn’t count. Both have become important parts of my workday. I use Colloquy all day to say in touch with my co-workers at TUAW. OmniFocus keeps me on top of things. Twitterrific lets me chat with colleagues and friends. The iPhone makes all of this incredibly convenient buy putting all of these apps and services in my pocket.

The iPad is simply my favorite computer. In fact, I’m composing this post with it. I can accomplish nearly anything I want with this thin, comfortable slab of metal and glass. I still marvel at how futuristic it seems; it’s like something out of a Ray Bradbury novel.

What is your favorite feature of the iPad?

The App Store. With a few clicks and a few bucks, the iPhone and iPad can become whatever I want them to be. Weather station, GPS receiver, magazine, cookbook, novel, game…anything. The iPhone and iPad’s killer app is the potential. Apple has handed a clean slate to thousands of gifted developers and said, “Here. Make something awesome.” That have and continue to do so. Their work is inspiring, satisfying and a huge part of the device’s incredible bottom line.

If you were Steve Jobs, what would you add to the iPhone?

That’s so difficult to answer because I don’t believe anyone else thinks like Steve. I can tell you that I’d add more RAM to the iPad in a second, but I’m not sure how I’d alter the iPhone if I were Steve. Part of the fun of using Apple’s products is being delighted by unforeseen niceties.

Anything else you’d like to share?

I’d like to thank you for the opportunity to complete this interview. I appreciate it tremendously, and hope your readers found something here interesting.

Thanks Dave!

Adding Tasks to OmniFocus with E-Mail

One of my few complaints with OmniFocus for iPad in my review is its inability to process tasks directly from the mail application to OmniFocus. On my Mac, I often blitz through my inbox creating future tasks with daily e-mail. That is not possible on the iPad, or is it?

Reader Pierre sent me a note to remind me about OmniFocus’s ability to process e-mails into your task list. OmniFocus lets you send yourself specially formatted e-mails that will process directly into your OmniFocus inbox.

To set it up, use the OmniFocus Mail preference pane and select the Add Mail Rule to create OmniFocus actions checkbox. You can have OmniFocus look for any messages that have +omnifocus before the @ sign in the destination address, as in david+omnifocus@macsparky.com. If everything goes to plan, the message will arrive in the correct mailbox as if the plus sign and the extra word were not there and the message gets delivered to your OmniFocus inbox. Alternatively, you can provide a special code for the the message subject line. I use three dashes. Next, you can instruct OmniFocus to file the received message. I dump them in my Archive, as shown below.

The Allowed From addresses list is automatically filled with any email addresses on the “Me” card in Address Book. This way, everyone who reads this post can’t contribute to my task list by sending me an e-mail beginning with three dashes.

I find simply getting the messages in my inbox is enough. I then process and categorize the messages from inside my inbox on OmniFocus for iPad.

If you want to add more data to the new task item, the syntax is powerful. Here is the breakdown from Omni’s help file:

The subject and body of the message are joined into a single block of text. The first line and any other lines starting with — (double-hyphens) become new actions. Other lines become notes for the preceding action.

To specify a project, use > (greater-than sign) or :: (double-colons), followed by a project name or abbreviation. The colons are nicer for the iPhone because they are on the first shifted keyboard rather than the less-accessible math keyboard. The project string is matched exactly as if it was entered in a project cell in OmniFocus.

To specify a context, use @ (at sign), followed by a context name or abbreviation. Like project names, the context name is matched exactly as it would be in OmniFocus.

To enter start or due dates, use # (number sign), followed by some date expression. The same expressions you use in OmniFocus (tomorrow, 9-30-2008, 2w, and so on) can be used in mail messages. If there is only one date, it becomes the due date. If there are two (each with its own number sign), the first becomes the start date and the second becomes the due date.

To enter a time estimate, use $ (dollar sign—time is money) followed by some duration expression (like 5m, 1h, and so on); you can use the same duration expressions that you use in OmniFocus.

To flag the action, use ! (exclamation point) at the end of the action title. You can also add a note on the same line as an action title by separating them with // (double-slashes). Anything after the double-slashes becomes a note, but double-slashes in a URL like omnigroup.com don’t count.

As you can see, you could really go nuts. The only downside to this feature is that in order for it to work, there has to be a Mac somewhere in the universe running Mail and OmniFocus at all times to process the tasks for you. If your laptop remains in your bag, nothing is going to happen.

For the daily grind, I continue to process my inbox at then end of the day and use the OmniFocus Clip-o-Tron 2000 to send new messages to tasks. However, if I am flying solo with the iPad for more than a few days, I’ll go activate this mail rule and leave Mail and OmniFocus running on my home iMac so I can continue to process mail.

Tools for Serious Creative Writing

Here is a nice little screencast about creative writing tools on the Mac by Yuvi Zalkow.

Speaking at Macworld 2011

I’m speaking again at Macworld. This year my session will be about Syncing your Apple Life. No Matter what concoction of Macs, iPhones, iPads, and iPods you carry, I will show you how to make them all play nice. If you’ve never been to Macworld, make sure to get there. I always find my trip to Macworld one of the highlights of my year. See you there.

Back to the Mac? We never left.

After a long period of relative silence concerning the Mac, this week was full of news. Apple announced a special event next week to give us a peek behind the curtain on Mac OS X 10.7 (presumably called “Lion”). Furthermore, people who keep track of statistics like how many computers are out there are reporting that the Mac has now jumped to over 10% market share.

I have always felt that the market share statistics underreport Apple’s actual market penetration. Big companies and enterprise purchasers (who buy computers by the truckload), almost never purchase Apple products. As a result, the total market share is always skewed against Apple. For a better idea of Apple’s market penetration, walk in to your local Starbucks or Peet’s Coffee and look around. In Orange County, California, usually about half of the computers are Macs.

My point is, that while Apple has been pre-occupied with its mobile market share land grab over the past few years, that is okay. Mac users have been quietly using a very stable platform and getting work done. Although my appreciation for the iPad seems to only increase with time, I still get a lot of work done on my Mac. While Apple’s focus may be coming back to the Mac, for most users, we never left.