Home Screens - Dr. Drang

This week’s Home Screen guest is Dr. Drang (twitter). The good doctor publishes one of my favorite blogs, And now it’s all this, where he covers programming, productivity and other fine nerdery. So Doctor, show us your home screen.

What are your most interesting home screen apps?

The most interesting app, in the “may you live in interesting times” sense, is OnDeck Parent in the lower right corner. My sons swim for a neighborhood pool, and OnDeck Parent is the front end to an online database of meet results for the league they swim in. It’s an absolutely atrocious app, from its non-retina icon to its too-long name (love the ellipsis) to its scrolling toolbar (yes, it has a bottom toolbar you have to flick left and right to find its most important functions) to its tiny buttons. Everything Apple wants to see in an iOS app, OnDeck Parent isn’t.

It is, however, the only way to get mobile access to meet results, and it’s free. I think OnDeck makes its money selling meet management software and services to pools, and this app is sort of a throwaway freebie that’s probably written to be as cross-platform as possible. I think of it as a small taste of Android that reminds me to appreciate my iPhone.

With swim season over, I’ll be moving OnDeck Parent off to some netherscreen until next summer. 1Password will take its place.

What is your favorite app?

My favorite “app” (it’s just a web page, not a real app) is my homemade weather app at the end of the second row. It was sparked by Ben Brooks’ complaints about not having a weather app with just the features he wanted. I realized I felt the same way and whipped up a simple CGI script that gave me the current conditions, a brief forecast, and a radar map. It loads faster than other apps and is tuned to exactly the information I want. This is why I think learning to script is important.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

I’m older than the President and well past the stage where I feel guilty about pleasure.

What is the app you are still missing?

I still want a timer app that mutes the phone for a set period of time. I use the mute switch when I go into a meeting or a movie, but I almost always forget to unmute it when I leave. A timer would be the perfect solution. (Maybe there’s one I haven’t heard of?)

How many times a day do you use your iPhone?

Constantly when I’m on the road, to the point where I need to carry an external battery with me. I got a Sanyo Eneloop Mobile Booster for just $20 at Costco a couple of years ago, and it’s been great. A little clunky, but it holds over two full iPhone charges.

I use my phone much less when I’m home or in the office, of course, because there’s always a computer around. I am surprised, though, how often I use the iPhone instead of my MacBook Air, just because it’s right there in my pocket.

Anything else you’d like to share?

Unlike some of the people whose home screens you’ve shown, I don’t really have a system for laying out my apps. My only rule is no folders—if an app is important enough to put on the home screen, it’s important enough to be out on it’s own.

Most of my apps are in Apple’s default positions. When I use a substitute for a built-in app, I usually put it where the original app was. You see that with Agenda, Notesy, PCalc, Due, and iTalk. I find that I launch apps by position. When I want to look at my calendar, my thumb reaches for the second spot in the top row, regardless of the app’s name or icon. (And if I’m not on the home screen, I still tap that spot and end up launching something else entirely.)

Thanks Doctor.

It's All Downhill from Here

In the most recent 5by5 After Dark episode, Rob Corddry, (Dr. Blake himself) did a creditable impression of me muddling my way through a Mac Power Users episode. It just doesn’t get any better.

iPad Marketshare

There is some interesting news lately about iPad marketshare. Earlier this year, reports surfaced that Android tablet marketshare was between 20 and 30 percent. Here is an example. The problem is, these numbers appear funny. It looks like people are comparing the number of Android tablets shipped to the number of iPads sold. Gruber explains it best here.

The plot thickens. The Wall Street Journal’s All Things D now reports that of some 270,000 HP tablets shipped to Best Buy, approximately 25,000 were sold to customers. Granted HP and Android are two different operating system, I still think this all jives.

While there is no shortage of iPad competitors, they don’t appear very successful. The best evidence for this is in your local Starbucks. I’ve been making an active attempt to spot non-iPad tablets in the wild for the last month. Every time I’m in a place where tablets are present, I actively look for something not an iPad. I’ve yet to see one. While there may one day be successful competing tablets, today it seems there is an iPad market but no tablet market.

TextExpander Touch Dropbox Sync

Last night I did a little talk to the Silicon Valley MUG and was just itching to share this but I managed to keep mum. Today Smile released a new version of TextExpander Touch that includes Dropbox snippet syncing. This means all those snippets you lovingly crafted on your Mac automatically just show up on your iPad and iPhone. To make it all work, just enter your Dropbox account name and password in the settings and TextExpander Touch does the rest. I was in on the beta and have been using it several months. This will change your snippet game on the iPad and iPhone. Learn more here.

Home Screens - Gabe Weatherhead

This week’s home screen post features everyone’s favorite MacDrifter, Gabe Weatherhead (Twitter). In addition to being a PhD chemist, Gabe also has some serious IT and Mac chops. The MacDrifter is a prime example of a one-man blog with great Apple related content. Don’t miss it.

So Gabe, what is on your home screen?

What are your most interesting home screen apps?

Well, like you OmniOutliner is now comfortably on my home screen. Besides that I’ve been trying out a number of handwriting recognition apps lately. A few of them are stunningly accurate. I think that we still have considerable CPU overhead still available for all app categories other than games.

What is your favorite app?

My most used app is probably Simplenote but my favorite is OmniFocus. The interaction design as well as attention to detail is unequaled on iPad. It’s just a pleasure to use. The OmniGroup has a team of iOS design masters. I realize they are taking their lead from some Apple designs but they really nail some hard problems.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

I love the idea of games, but I just don’t have the time or patience to stick with them. But if by “guilty” you mean the app that I waste a bunch of time in, then it’s a toss up between Tweet Library and Zite. Tweet Library is the most practical and useful Twitter client I have found, however there is still some debate for me as to whether Twitter is actually useful. Zite, on the other hand, gives me news tailored to my interests. In one Zite “issue” I can find articles about the iOS 5 features, interesting arguments for changes to the tax law, custom beer-brewing hardware and the latest kerfuffle over Arsenic based life forms.

What is the app you are still missing?

Up until a few weeks ago, I would have said OmniOutliner. Now I would just like real syncing in OmniOutliner. One of the killer features in OmniFocus is the syncing between all of the different devices I have. OmniOutliner is much closer in nature to OmniFocus than it is to OmniGraffle (which lacks sync). I have high hopes that the Omni Group will take advantage of the upcoming iOS5 cloud sync features with the rest of their products. 

I’d also love to see something like nvALT on iPad. Simplenote feels a little too simple now that nvALT has shown what low friction notes should look like. I recently jumped over to WriteRoom for iOS and it’s close to being what I want for a Simplenote client (except it uses Dropbox). I prefer the Simplenote syncing since it feels instantaneous in comparison with most Dropbox based text editors. Again, this all comes back to a dearth of sync options with iOS. It’s rather embarrassing that iOS 4 still needs to rely on Dropbox so much. It was obvious the first day the AppStore opened that these devices need to sync data. Hopefully we will finally get ubiquitous syncing with iOS 5. 

How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?

I use may iPad all day to track tasks and meetings. So, probably at least 50 times a day. More specifically I probably use it for 4 hours a day total time. That number looks stunning when I see it written out. However, my day jobs supports exchange mail on my iOS devices, so rather than being a slave to Outlook on my Windows machine, I just leave mail on my iPad and respond when necessary. It definitely reduces the Pavlovian response to reply immediately. So in a way, my iPad allows me to ignore Outlook more, which overall is a good thing. I gave up one master for another, but I feel more productive, which is what matters.

I also do almost all of my reading on the iPad. I read everything from eBooks, to RSS feeds, to Instapaper articles. Reading and writing are my two primary uses of iPad. It’s the first thing I pick-up in the morning and the last thing I put down before the lights go out.

What is your favorite feature of the iPad?

The iPad has encouraged application designers to forget that horrible user experience that has evolved with the mouse and file system. Because there is no such thing as a mouse hover event or contextual menu, UI design must be intuitive and app features easy to access. iPad just feels more natural and I can easily pick up most new apps without instruction. My 3 year old daughter, 60 year old mother and I can all effortless interact with the device and make it do wonderfully complex things. I can’t think of any other thing that has that kind of experience profile.

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?

That’s a tough question. Since Apple appears to be exceeding all expectations and inventing the future of technology I’m not sure I could add much. I would like to see them buy Dropbox and give everyone there a huge raise (and tighten up security a bit). The utility of iPad without Dropbox and Simplenote would be greatly diminished. Apple is missing the device connectivity that will be the future of mobile computing. As the desktop moves into the cloud, instant accessibility and transportability of data will be crucial. That does not exist in stock iOS devices today.

I am anticipating the full integration of voice recognition in iOS and the Mac OS. If I were in charge, I would push full steam ahead on integrating the Nuance technology at a low level. I believe voice control of rudimentary device functions is the next abstraction for user interaction. Instead of directly manipulating virtual controls through a touchscreen we should signal our intent as we would to one another through spoken words.

Anything else you’d like to share?

I’m a pretty big David Lanham fan for my Apple device backgrounds. While my lock screens are always photos of my daughter, my background images are always David Lanham art. I also have several of his prints hanging around my office and my daughter has this one in her room.

OmniFocus iPhone Update

If you use start dates to manage tasks in OmniFocus, you are going to like the most recent iPhone app update. You now can view tasks by start date in the forecast view. This matches the feature currently available on the iPad version and explains why I do most of my OmniFocus planning these days on iOS devices.

Macworld Article on Text

When Macworld asked me to write for them, my answer wasn’t just yes but hell yes. Today my first Macworld article published. I’ve always considered Macworld to be the gold standard for Apple related journalism and am thrilled to contribute. Expect more.

LonelySandwich on FastCompany

Here is a nice piece on Adam Lisagor at FastCompany. Adam is this weekend’s Mac Power Users workflow guest and absolutely endearing. I’m thrilled for him.

The Most Valuable Public Company on Earth

Who would have thought this 10 years ago? Nutty.

Backing up iTunes

Kirk McElhearn explains how-to. This is one of the most frequent problems I hear about from readers and friends. It goes something like this:

1. Big iTunes library goes on external drive (Not Time Machine);
2. External drive goes up in smoke;
3. Tears.

Once you put your iTunes library on an external drive, outside your normal backup regime, there be dragons. You need to have a second drive (at the minimum) and routinely make a copy of your iTunes library. I do this once a month. I figure I can deal with losing a month of play counts and new content. I know there are some online backup solutions but still can’t get over the idea of how long it would take to upload a 1TB library.