Escaping Modal View While Writing Full Screen E-mail

When the Mac Power Users recorded its recent Mail show, I lamented about the trouble with full screen Mail and writing new messages. Specifically, the compose window is modal and takes over the screen so if you want to refer to a prior e-mail you have exit full screen or cancel the composition.

Reader Sunit figured out a work around. While composing an e-mail in full screen, pressing ⌘⌥N creates a new mail view window. You can search, block, and copy to your hearts delight and then return to the screen with your e-mail composition.

Pixar's Goodbye

5by5: Thanks Steve

The 5by5 hosts, including yours truly, created a podcast with our memories and thoughts about Steve. It is most definitely worth your time.

Why Tim is the Right Guy

After the iPhone 4S announcement, I did the podcast circuit and talked about how Tim seemed a little wooden in his impossible job of succeeding Steve Jobs as Apple pitchman. When I said that, I had no idea how sick Steve was or how near he was to the end.

But Tim did.

Tim Cook stood up there and talked about his love for Apple while his friend was near, dying. And he announced the iPhone 4S. Everyone of those guys that took that stage knew this while we were all obsessing on wedge shapes and megapixels. Superhuman.

Go back and watch the video again. You’ll finish it knowing Tim Cook is the right guy.

This is Nuts

How to Live Before You Die

My sincere condolences go out to the Jobs family and all of Steve’s friends. Steve not only set out to change the world, he actually did it. Thanks Steve, for everything.

iPhone 4S and iCloud

You can’t swing a dead cat on the Internet today without banging into someone’s opinion about Apple’s announcements earlier today. I shared a few of my opinions on the Mac Roundtable#105 and MacCast podcasts. (There is no specific link to the MacCast show as I post this.)

In summary, there are two points in my mind relevant to all the hubub.

iPhone 4S

I think this is a fine update. The phone got faster, a better antenna, a better camera with more bazillion pixels and notable low light performance, and probably countless refinements that only come from cranking out millions of prior phones with this basic design for the past year.

Siri is also intrigueing. While I was initially obsessed with Siri on my iPhone, at some point I stopped using it and I’m not really sure why. Adam Christianson (in the above MacCast podcast) explaiend this time it will be different because Siri is now so integrated with the phone. I suspect he may be right.

I think the mainstream press makes too big a deal about there being a new body design. Manufacturing essentially the same external design for two years makes a lot of sense to me in terms of manufacturing and design costs. Moreover, I like the existing design and would prefer Apple not change it into the shape of a door stop just to be different. If you are already driving an iPhone 4, you are probably just fine. If you are still using an iPhone 3GS or earlier, it’s a great upgrade. If you’ve been waiting to buy an iPhone, now is the time. Welcome aboard.

iCloud

I think iCloud is a really big deal. I’ve written before about iGlue. I think Apple needs to nail this. Cloud based syncing and data services is the future and it is past time for Apple to prove they can deliver. For some reason, I just felt like they should have said more than, “Here comes iCloud and it’s awesome.” However, in hindsight, what should Apple have done? Shown the server schematics or provide the current bandwidth of each facility? I guess we just have to wait and see how things go next week.

Even with Apple’s billions, I can’t imagine there won’t be hiccups as they move forward with this iCloud initiative. I’m going to keep an open mind about it and reserve judgment for a few months.

If Apple makes it work, I think it will bring cloud syncing to a big group of people who have never used it before. Think of the non-geeks in your life and think about explaining to them the steps involved with setting up a Dropbox account, getting their files into a Dropbox folder and then transitioning those files to their iPad with a Dropbox app.

iCloud throws all that out. Work on a file on the Mac and then pick up where you left off on your iPad. If it works, it will be awesome. It is not much longer until we find out.

MacSparky.com is sponsored by Bee Docs Timeline 3D. Make a timeline presentation with your Mac.

The MacSparky Screencast Feed is Moving to the Country

I’m pulling the plug on the MacSparky Screencast feed. Most of these screencasts are over two years old and really showing their age. (Several of them weren’t so hot to begin with.) I plan to do some more screencasting but that will get released through the Mac Power Users feed. In the meantime, if you want any of the MacSparky screencasts, download them now. The feed dies at the end of the month.

Update on Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 8:36AM by David Sparks

There were a surprising number of people upset by me shutting down the screencast feed. So I have a plan B. I’ll be posting the screencasts that are still relevant to Vimeo shortly and give links then. All of the new screen casting (including my OmniFocus trilogy) will remain in the Mac Power Users feed. Thanks everyone.

iPad at Work On Sale Now

My most recent book, iPad at Work, is now available on Amazon and the iBookstore. A Kindle version is due any day. Moreover, the book has wide distribution in brick and mortar booksellers, including Barnes and Noble. Indeed, this evening I stopped by a local Barnes and Noble and saw my book on the shelf. It was one of the most rewarding moments of my life.

iPad at Work is 344 pages of the how and (more importantly) why of getting work done on your iPad. The book includes 24 chapters of app recommendations, tutorials, workflows, and advice. I poured my heart into this nerd opus. Here is the chapter list:

1. iPad Fundamentals
2. Useful Utilities
3. Security
4. Internet
5. Cloud File Storage
6. Email
7. Contacts
8. Calendars
9. Video Conferencing
10. Remote Access
11. Travel
12. Enterprise
13. Writing
14. PDFs
15. Reading
16. Notes
17. Brainstorming
18. Presentations
19. Task Management
20. Calculators and Spreadsheets
21. Graphics and Diagrams
22. Databases
23. Project Management
24. Time and Billing

There is also an appendix with specific app recommendations for education, law, medicine, construction, real estate, and information technology. I put a lot of time and effort into these 110,000 words and I’m very proud of this book. Merlin Mann wrote a very kind (and humbling) foreword.

I applied several lessons from Mac at Work to this new book. iPad at Work makes extensive use of QR codes so you can jump to App Store links and websites with little trouble. I’ve also included my own workflows in this book. If you want to read the book electronically, the iBookstore version includes tapable links to the App Store and websites. (The Kindle reader does not support this feature.)

I did a series of podcast interviews about the book. The first released this weekend on my friend Victor Cajiao’s Typical Mac User podcast.

My sincere thanks goes to everyone for supporting my efforts to write iPad at Work. I hope the book scratches your itch.

Update on Tuesday, October 4, 2011 at 3:22PM by David Sparks

Answering some of the subsequent questions:

Applicability to Original iPad

This book is just fine with the original iPad. Surprisingly little of the book includes iPad 2 only features. (Primarily the video conferencing chapter.)

Kindle eBook

I’m told it should go up today.

Thanks everyone for the very nice feedback.

Home Screens - Yuvi Zalkow

I first discovered Yuvi Zalkow (Twitter) when he made a remarkable screencast about writing tools on the Mac. Yuvi has a unique take on writing and technology at YuviZalkow.com. Yuvi is also a novelist with his first book, Not in My Lifetime, coming out next year. Yuvi explains the book was rejected by 29 literary agents before he got a publisher. And that, ladies and gentlemen, makes Yuvi awesome.

So Yuvi, show us your home screen.

What are your most interesting home screen apps?

Well lately I’ve been fascinated by apps that take advantage of useful iPhone gestures. iCatcher and Tweetbot are two apps that I love and have good gestures. With iCatcher, I can swipe in various ways to go backward/forward five seconds, 30 seconds, and two minutes. With Tweetbot, I can hold my finger on a link in a tweet for a second and then tap on a button to quickly send it to Instapaper. (mmm… Instapaper.)

What is your favorite app?

Wow. Tough one. I think my writing app is my most critical app. Two essential qualities in a writing app for me are TextExpander support and Dropbox support. I honestly, really, truly work on my novel on my iPhone via Dropox (syncing it to the fabulous Mac app, Scrivener). I’ve used many cool writing apps (e.g. Notesy, Elements), but my current favorite is WriteRoom. I like WriteRoom’s customizability. I try not to be too fiddly about these things, but every few months I like to tweak the look & feel to get a fresh perspective on my writing. Even just a small color tweak can help me see a difficult scene in a fresh way.

And if I can cheat and name another app, I would mention OmniFocus. I love it. Very smart design that makes it easy for me to enter new actions and quickly check off existing actions.

What app is your guilty pleasure?

I don’t play games these days — just too strung out between family life, day job life, novel writing life, and presentation-making life. So my guilty pleasure is dipping too deeply into either Twitter (via Tweetbot) or into my RSS feed (via Reeder).

What is the app you are still missing?

I do long for text-to-speech inside my text editor. I know that functionality already exists, but I’d love it seamlessly embedded inside a great text editor. I use text-to-speech as a critical tool when editing my writing — there’s nothing like a detached, unemotional, computer voice to test whether the writing stands on its own.

How many times a day do you use your iPhone?

How many times a day do you breathe? Divide that number by 3.25. And that’s about my iPhone usage.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone?

It may not seem so shocking these days, but I’m still amazed by the coolness of syncing text files between all my computers and devices. I can no longer fathom how I wrote before this era.

Anything else you’d like to share?

Well I’m currently experiencing a calendar-related dilemma. Which one should I use? You’ll see two of them on my home screen!… I love that continuous week view of Agenda and I love how quickly you can enter events in Calvetica. Help!

Thanks so much for letting me participate in your home screen series! I’ve been a fan for a while.

Thanks Yuvi

Want to see more home screens? Clicky here.