Mac Maintenance Guide at the Mac Attack

I just had a chance to listen to the latest episode of the Mac Attack where my friend, Steve Stanger, spent considerable time coming up with a sensible Mac maintenance plan. Steve is Apple certified both with software and hardware and I've always founds his advice spot on.

Steve also wrote out his steps, which I will reprint below. Regardless, I strongly recommend adding the Mac Attack to you podcast list where you will undoubtedly learn even more. And if that isn't good enough, you may even hear my dulcet tones on The Mac Attack.

Steve's Mac Maintenance Plan:

General Mac House cleaning

- keep your software up-to-date (Mac OS and applications)
- back up before performing any maintenance
- before performing maintenance quit all applications

Recommended monthly maintenance

- repair system/disk file permissions
- manually run daily, weekly & monthly maintenance scripts

Recommended six month preventative maintenance

- zap parameter ram (PRAM) - hold down Command, Option, P, and R
- rebuild LaunchServices
- clear or delete System, User, Internet, and font caches

MacSparky's Macworld Wish - iTablet

I'm not going to call this article "predictions" because I really have no basis in fact to make any predictions. There is, however, no shortage of predictions out there. In fact, if you go to www.insert.any.domain.here you will probably find a list of Macworld predictions. Instead I'd like to talk about the one gadget I'd love to see Apple release even if there is little or no chance of it actually doing so.

An Apple Tablet

I actually used a PC tablet for a year and a half. It was a Gateway and while it wouldn't win any beauty contests it had a vivid glass screen that swiveled to cover up the keyboard. I thought I'd use it as a sort of ebook reader and research device but that didn't end up happening. The problem with that computer was largely its size. It was too big and too heavy. I couldn't sit and casually read on it. I had to have a desk to lean it on, preferably at an angle. Likewise it was not convenient using it in tablet mode during client meetings. The other problem was the digitizer. The ink was too thick and I couldn't take precise notes and the software was clunky. It was just too hard to use in my daily routine and before long I was back to paper pads.

In short, it was heavy as a brick and the UI felt it was designed for monkeys. I wonder what company could get the form factor right and fix the UI? Hmmmm.

Well, although there has been speculation of an Apple tablet, a lot of people "in the know" seem to think the iTablet will only exist in the land where Elvis still lives and Unicorns roam. Maybe they are right but I sure would like to see what the Apple wizards could do with a Tablet and some of the iPhone UI technology.

Just maybe they could make a device that allows me to do legal research on pdf versions of cases or straight off the web easily.

Maybe they could allow me to sit on the couch without a laptop and review email, rss, twitter and other things necessary for an information junky.

Maybe I could actually read a book and annotate it electronically.

As I write this, it occurs to me that what I really want is that pad they used to carry around on Star Trek.

The ubiquitous device that people carry around to get work done. Something that gets out of my way and allows me to do research, or interview clients, or conduct a deposition while giving me easy access to whatever information I need. It would also need bluetooth keyboard support for added functionality (and please for the love of Pete, turn on bluetooth keyboard support on the iPhone while you are at it). It doesn't have to be particularly fast, or have oodles of storage.

So there is my Macworld wish. An Apple tablet with the right UI and the right form factor could just change the world ... again.

Review - OmniFocus

Omnifocus is the Omni Group’s submission in the growing field of OS X task management programs. OmniFocus has been in development over a year. I was fortunate to get into the alpha test early and I’ve actually been using OmniFocus as my exclusive task management application since June.
I am a believer in keeping tasks lists. I would like to say this arises from some inherent sense of order and organization. In truth however, it arises from my very early realization that I am scatterbrained and often have the attention span of a goldfish. As a result, I write things down. I’m not just talking grocery lists here. If I can not do something immediately, I write it down. Since I do the legal work several companies and have other commitments with my family, my community, and macsparky, this list gets pretty long. So getting back to that part about being scatterbrained I am constantly throwing tasks into OmniFocus. When do I need to prepare for trial? When do I need to volunteer at my daughters’ school? When do I need to clean the air filter and rotate the tires? For someone like me, dumping these things into a system is liberating. Trying to track even a small percentage of these things without tools like OmniFocus could get really ugly, really fast.
So the Omni Group enlisted some very smart productivity folks and came up with OmniFocus, an application designed to hold all those tasks you are carrying around in your head and spit them out to you in small, bite sized, pieces.

The first part of any task system is input. That is, how do you get your tasks into the system? In OmniFocus, the best place for me to do this is the planning window. In it I can create folders and projects and load them up with tasks. You can customize this window to be as simple or complex as you need it. I use the fields for description, project, context, start, and due dates. OmniFocus helps you here anticipating your entries. For instance, I have a project for my fantasy football league, the Riddiculous Football League. If I type “RFL”, OmniFocus figures that out for me. It does the same thing for client projects. Likewise, OmniFocus is very smart on dates. I can list a due date by writing the month and date (like 1/15) or contextually like “4d” for three days or the monday in two weeks “2w Mon”.

Entering new projects and filling them with tasks is easy enough this way. However a lot of time I think of tasks when I’m not even in OmniFocus. For this, the application has a very handy quick entry panel. So I can be in Safari and be inspired to add a task to some project of mine. I’ve mapped a key combination that allows me to open the quick entry panel which also recognizes all of the project and date shortcuts you get inside OmniFocus. It takes just seconds to create.

Another feature for task entry is clippings which allows you to select text inside your browser or mail program and with a simple key combination create a quick entry task item with the text attached. Speaking of mail you can also preface emails to yourself that OmniFocus will read as new tasks and input them automatically.

Once the tasks are in you can add notes and attachments to them. I scan most important documents that come my way and drop them into OmniFocus as an attachment to their corresponding tasks so when it comes time to get to work, I don’t have to go searching for the related documents.

Once you’ve got your tasks inside OmniFocus, you can organize them by project or context. But that is really just the first step. OmniFocus has a series of filters you can apply to these modes to sort by folder, due date, start date, durations, flags, and several other criteria that you may, or may not, care to use. Once you have a set of filters set up just the way you like you can save that as a Perspective. You can save all of your favorite Perspectives and access them with just one click. I’ve set up several Perspectives on my system and jump between them as I go through my day.

The print dialogue also gives you several options if you want to make a hard copy which is nice if you are going to be away from your mac. Another trick I use is to print portions of my task list to pdf and then email the pdf to myself so I’ve got it on my iPhone.

OmniFocus also has a robust syncing system with iCal. I used it for awhile but found iCal’s task management system so anemic that I just turned that feature off. Now I just manage tasks in OmniFocus and have no complaints.

Using all of these tools together is what makes OmniFocus really shine. I usually spend about 15 minutes every morning planning things out and prioritizing as necessary. I then spend the rest of the day checking off items and adding new items as projects and tasks present themselves. I’ve got a lot of plates in the air and OmniFocus has really helped me keep them from smashing to the floor.
OmniFocus was not developed as a "kitchen sink" application. By this I mean the developers had a clear idea of what they wanted and did not include every conceivable feature. For instance it does not support numerical prioritization like some task management applications do. I thought I would miss this feature but I haven’t. The application does allow you to "flag" certain items and that is enough for me.

OmniFocus also does not allow you to easily synchronize between multiple Macs. I read in the forums that some users accomplished this by keeping their data on a thumb drive but a .mac sync solution would be very nice. Likewise, a way to easily sync and amend this data on my iPhone would be great. Fortunately, this is just a 1.0 release and the Omni folks have stated their intention to tackle these problems with future updates after Apple releases the iPhone SDK.

OS X is very fortunate to have a variety and ever growing set of task management applications. Having tried a lot of them I find OmniFocus to be perfect for my particular needs. It is scaleable and can grow (or shrink) depending on how busy things get for you. A license will cost $79.95 which is not cheap, especially in light of the fact many competent alternatives are free. You can get $20 off if you already own an OmniOutliner Pro license. Regardless, if you spend as much time managing tasks and projects as I do, this investment is well worth it. The people at Omni Group just deliver. Every day I find myself using their products and being more productive, efficient, and just looking better to my clients. In that respect OmniFocus is entirely what I expected: reliable, efficient, and helpful. You can download a free trial at OmniGroup.com.

You can listen to the above review on The MacReviewCast Episode 142.

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Airport Extreme Printing

Our printer died. It was a really nice little HP inkjet printer that had an ethernet networking port built in. This allowed me to plug it into an ethernet port on the Airport Extreme and start using it. That pretty much did it for set up.

One of the reasons it died is because my wife uses it for her internet business and runs it all day printing out invoices, purchase orders and the like. She bought so many black ink cartridges for the thing that she had her own parking space at Staples. But I digress.

I actually had another little inkjet printer that I thought I may use in my home office and we decided to buy her a laser printer since she uses it so much. We ended up getting an HP black and white laserjet P1006 which only cost about $170 but does not have ethernet built in. No problem .. I can just get a USB hub for my Airport Extreme and plug it in and go. Right?

Well I got it all set up and tested the printer via usb cable directly to her Macbook but could not get it to work from the Airport Extreme. After an hour of scratching my head I realized it was really quite obvious. You need to enable printing in the Airport utility. Of course this would have taken 2 minutes if I bothered to Google the issue but there you have it. Learn from my mistake. Be smarter than the printer.

Twitterification

I must admit I've never really jumped on the twitter bandwagon. I set up an account, "macsparky", and logged in a few times but most of the stuff I do during the day is for clients and confidential and I don't think anyone really cares whether I ate grape nuts or granola for breakfast so I've never really got it.

Since I'm going to be in Macworld next week I'm thinking now is the time to get a bit more serious about Twitter since folks seem to use it to communicate a lot in those big halls. After doing a bit of interweb research I've installed Twitterific on my Mac and set up hahlo.com on my iPhone.

I have also managed to track down several of my friends and favorite Mac gurus and added them to my Twitter feed. I even found a specific feed set up by the Macworld folks .. or perhaps someone pretending the to be the Macworld folks.

Now that I'm more or less set up I'd like to solicit advice as to how in the heck to use this technology. Drop me an email or post a comment if you are a Twitter expert.

MacHeist 2

The latest MacHeist is live. The bundle includes one of my absolute favorite Mac applications, 1Password. I already own a few of the applications but it still may be worth it for me, especially if they unlock Pixelmator. Twenty Five percent of the proceeds go to the charity of your choice. It is such a good deal that it makes me wonder if there is anything left for those hard working developers? Anyway, if you are interested head over to Macheist 2.

New Mac Pros and Other Things Shiny

Today Apple announced an upgrade to the Mac Pro line making the eight cores standard. That is one screaming machine. (Of course I said the same thing about my 512k Atari ST about 20 years ago so it is probably all relative.)

Anyway, I'm not so excited about the Mac Pro since I run solely on my laptop. However, the fact that Apple would announce these new machines the week before Macworld leads me to believe there must be several other things shiny and new to share. Hmmmm.

More Love for Scrivener

I've been neck deep in work the last few days but in catching up with the news I noticed my favorite Mac word processor, Scrivener, got some nice press in the New York Times. Virginia Heffernan explains:

Our redeemer is Scrivener, the independently produced word-processing program of the aspiring novelist Keith Blount, a Londoner who taught himself code and graphic design and marketing, just to create a software that jibes with the way writers think. As its name makes plain, Scrivener takes our side; it roots for the writer and not for the final product — the stubborn Word. The happy, broad-minded, process-friendly Scrivener software encourages note-taking and outlining and restructuring and promises all the exhilaration of a productive desk: “a ring-binder, a scrapbook, a corkboard, an outliner and text editor all rolled into one.”

Ring, scrap and cork sound like fun, a Montessori playroom. But read on — and download the free trial — and being a Scrivener-empowered scrivener comes to seem like life’s greatest role. Scriveners, unlike Word-slaves, have florid psychologies, esoteric requirements and arcane desires. They’re artists. They’re historians. With needs. Scrivener is “aimed at writers of all kinds — novelists, journalists, academics, screenwriters, playwrights — who need to refer to various research documents and have access to different organizational tools whilst aiming to create a finished piece of text.”


For loyal readers however, this should be old news since I already reviewed Scrivener right here.

Animator vs. Animation - Very Click-Worthy

If you need a laugh, click this link. Alan Becker created an ingenious little animation where the animator draws a stick figure with the intention of torturing him. Unfortunately for the animator, the stick figure has different ideas.

Review - VoodooPad

As much as I like Pages and Scriviner for word processing, sometimes I just want a down and dirty text editor. For this purpose I have been using OS X’s built in text editor.

I know there are some very powerful text editor replacements out there that are very helpful to code jockies but I’m not sure how useful those applications would be to someone like me who writes a lot more documents than programs. Furthermore, I often use text files to dump ideas as I explained in one of my Quicksilver screencasts. Not to be dissuaded from my never ending quest for shiny new software I decided to give Flying Meat’s VoodooPad a try as a possible text editor replacement.

While VoodooPad is a text editor, it really is much much more. In essence it is a personal Wiki that allows you to to create links on the fly as you type. For instance I have a page in VoodooPad called Mac and on that page I have created several links including things such as MacSparky article ideas, MacWorld packing list, and a few other lists and resources that don't really fit anywhere else on my system. VoodooPad can automatically number the lists or make bullets. In addition to letting me create the lists, VoodooPad allows me to link them together and search them.

This just doesn't work for text though. You can also drop in URL's, images, pdfs, and you can even draw your own pictures using a tablet or (if you are really skilled) a mouse. This system becomes almost viral in nature. In the month I've been using it I've created over a hundred pages including research for my clients, gift ideas for upcoming birthdays and even potential titles for my MacSparky business cards.

Regardless, it is all easily searchable once inside VoodooPad. Some other nifty features includ LinkBack which allows you to paste content from a linkback enabled application and reopen it with just a few clicks. I was very pleased to discover this works for both OmniOutliner and OmniGraffle. It also allows a form of tagging by assigning categories and supports scripting and allows you to publish directly to the web. It has a feature to export to iPod notes but this does not work with the iPhone which is too bad.

To be honest I really didn't know what I was getting into with VoodooPad when I started using it. It is similar in nature to Yojimbo yet not quite. I'm not sure if it fills a different niche or is just a different way to work. The interface is much more stripped down. I'd almost call it old school. Black and white and a lot of text. Those of us that remember Macs that used to say "hello" will appreciate that. The fact that it is stripped down does not impact efficiency though. It actually improves it.

I've been using VoodooPad as a notebook replacement. It is stable and lightweight. The feature set is well crafted and not overdone. I still haven't figured out how it fits in with my other data collection programs but while I sort it out my VoodooPad seems to just collect more and more data. You can download VoodooPad from Flying Meat Software which is Gus Mueller's company that makes other great Mac applications such as Acorn and Fly Sketch. They sell three versions with increasing feature sets. The lite version is free, the standard version is $29.95, and the pro version is $49.95. This review was of version 3.2.3 of the VoodooPad Pro

This week on MacSparky I blogged several new software updates, MacWorld and some of my favorite Menubar aplications. Stop on by and check it out.