It is nice to see the initial success and interest in Sparrow, a native Mac OS X application for managing Gmail. I think a lot of developers would like to compete with Mail but are worried there is no market for alternative e-mail product when Mail.app is free. Maybe Sparrow’s success will encourage a few more developers to take a crack at it.
Every year or two, a chorus of dissatisfaction swells over the default Mac OS X Finder. The underlying problem is that the Finder really hasn’t changed much since we were all sitting behind our shiny new Macs in 1984.
When the rumors started swirling about Snow Leopard and a “brand new” Finder, there was hope Apple would take a new pass at it but, alas, we only got the same old Finder re-built using modern frameworks.
There are also several third party Finder replacements. PathFinder is my favorite. However, very few third party applications have had the moxy to fiddle with the Apple Finder. TotalFinder does.
TotalFinder is a new Finder enhancement available for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. It brings several new tricks to the OS X Finder.
TotalFinder’s premier feature is tabbed browsing in the Finder. You know those tabs you use in Safari? They are now in the Finder. This lets you display multiple Finder panes in the same Finder window and makes it easy to jump between them.
The tabs are based on code from Google Chrome and look like it. You can open a new tab with the keyboard (⌘T). You can move between tabs with a click of the mouse. You can reorder them or pull a tab into a separate window. You can close specific tabs (⌘W) or double-click one to enter dual mode (discussed below). You can also drag and drop files between tabs. The tabs act exactly as you would expect them too. This alone was worth the $15 license fee to me.
Dual mode is activated by double-clicking any tab or pressing ⌘U. It results in two finder panes side by side. This makes it easy to copy and move files between panes.
The use of tabs and dual-mode are TotalFinder’s big selling points. The developer even redrew the Finder icon, adding tabs. Many users will never stray beyond those two features. There are, however, some more tricks with TotalFinder
One annoyance I have with the default Finder is the way it mixes folders with files. I prefer, when looking at a Finder window, to have folders on top and the rest of the files below. TotalFinder does this. It can be toggled on and off (⇧⌘;) for you traditionalists. TotalFinder also adds a keyboard (⇧⌘.) shortcut to toggle display of hidden system files.
TotalFinder additionally has a system-wide Visor mode that pulls up a dedicated Finder window from the bottom of your screen. I tried this for a few weeks but in the end turned it off. If you are a Terminal.app user and like its Visor mode, you’ll be right at home. It works best with an auto-hiding dock.
There also is an advanced command-line feature, Asepsis, that helps you redirect propagation of those pesky .DS_Store files that seem to be everywhere.
The developer also plans to add some additional features including the ability to cut and paste files between Finder windows.
Overall, TotalFinder is a good investment at $15 if you frequently find your desktop overpopulated with unruly Finder windows.
You can listen to this review on the MacReviewCast.
I’m not sure when it happened, but at some point in the last several months Eddie Smith’s (Twitter) Practically Efficient blog became required reading for me. I’ve had the pleasure of corresponding with Eddie and he is a charming person in addition to a rising star. Eddie is one of the many Verizon iPhone hold outs but loves his iPad. So Eddie, show us your home screen.
How do you primarily use your iPad?
The iPad has become my favorite device for reading books, reading RSS feeds, and using social media. I also use apps like Dropbox and GoodReader for “real work.” The iPad has proven itself as a great travel companion too. It’s more portable than a laptop, has a great battery, and can keep you entertained with games.
Why isn’t your home screen full?
Honestly, I’m just odd. Moreover, I’m a big believer in minimizing clutter in workspaces. I leave nothing on my Mac desktop for more than a few minutes. I’ve basically carried this same philosophy to the iPad, which I see as more computer than phone.
My home screen only shows apps that I get into just about every day. It also doesn’t include apps that show “unread” counts (e.g. Mail, App Store). These seem to emanate an attention-grabbing gravity that I don’t want on my home screen.
What are your most interesting home screen apps?
Soulver is probably the most unique.
It’s basically a mash-up of a note app and a calculator, but it also has the qualities of a word processor and spreadsheet. You can write in natural language and intersperse math expressions. It’s ideal for taking notes when numbers are involved. Soulver does all the math for you and shows the result in a side bar.
What is your favorite app?
I can narrow it down to two: Kindle and Simplenote. Together, they form a very cool duality that, to me, is the true essence of the iPad’s magic. Kindle is pure consumption while Simplenote is pure creation. Kindle is a deep well of all that has been; Simplenote is a canvas for all that can be. The iPad is like a scale that balances these, although it definitely tips more toward consumption most days.
The Kindle app’s interface is very clean and uncluttered. I can focus solely on the current page. Even a paper book is more cluttered than the Kindle app because, in Kindle, the page numbers are hidden — a simple nuance of e-reading I’ve come to appreciate.
As for Simplenote, I really can’t get over how well it syncs text. The fact that I can write blog posts, articles, and notes in Notational Velocity on my Mac and have them instantly available in Simplenote on my iPad is stuff not of the world I occupied just a year ago. It makes the physical location of your words irrelevant.
Which app is your guilty pleasure?
Definitely StumbleUpon. I discovered StumbleUpon in the last year, and I initially had it on my desktop browsers. Productivity fail. It has been exiled to my iPad along with most of my other social media things.
How many screens have you filled?
Five. I’m actually amazed that I’ve occupied that many. I like experimenting and trying apps, but I also try to get rid of ones that I don’t think I’ll ever use again.
What is the app you are still missing?
I can’t wait for OmniOutliner to arrive on the iPad. I would also love to see a quality, standalone personal finance app that isn’t 100% cloud-based. I think the iPad provides an enormous opportunity for making the chores of money management easier.
How many times a day do you use your iPad?
On a typical day, my iPad gets used a lot. In the morning, it’s a radio while I’m getting ready for work (mostly Pandora). Almost every evening, it becomes a newspaper (Reeder and Instapaper), a book (Kindle), and a social media hub (Osfoora HD and Tumbleroo). It also comes out regularly at odd times when I want to jot something down.
What is your favorite feature of the iPad?
Definitely its instant-on nature. I suppose it’s a simple aspect of the iPad, but I think it’s revolutionary. I think the instant-on-ness of the iPad is slowly waking up mainstream consumers to the idea that a large screen device need not take minutes to come on. (Those of us with Macs already knew that, but most folks don’t.)
If you were Steve Jobs, what would you add to the iPad?
Flash. Kidding — I’m quite content without it.
I would add two things. Now that we’ve been shown the magic of FaceTime, I would love to see a camera added. With a camera, I think the iPad could connect family and friends like never before. Christmas mornings would change forever.
More technically, I would like Apple to make sharing services (e.g. Twitter) more “global” in the OS. It’s one of the few things I like about Android over iOS — being able to share pretty much anything in any app regardless of whether the app developer added sharing services.
Anything else you’d like to share?
Of course. I could talk about the iPad for hours, but I’ve said too much already!
Thanks Eddie!
When I read that Marco added a subscription service to Instapaper, I immediately logged in and subscribed. I use the service every day. It is my own personal magazine full of articles interesting to me. It is, in my case, the killer application on my iPad. Whether or not Marco adds any additional exclusive subscriber features, for dollar a month, I’m in.
David Sparks
To learn more about using Instapaper, read Practically Efficient’s encyclopedic Instapaper post that went up today.
In episode 35, Katie and I catch up with listener feedback and vamp on financial software, OmniFocus for iPad, Dragon Dictate, and the book. Get it on the Web or in iTunes.
Patrick Rhone (from MinimalMac) did his first screencast this week about creating a Text Expander snippet for Markdown links. Like Patrick, I write everything in Markdown (although I use the MultiMarkdown variant), which lets me export to nearly any format and write on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac without friction. I wrote the whole book in MultiMarkdown.*
Anyway, Patrick’s video got me thinking. Patrick puts his links right next to the linked words. I use Markdown’s reference links. The advantage of using referenced links is that the text is much easier to read. You can also use the same reference more than once. Reference links can be set anywhere in the document. Some folks do it at the end of the paragraph. I do them all at the bottom.
The syntax for reference links in Markdown works as follows:
First you type some [Link Text][Reference]
Then more text … yadda yadda yadda
[Reference]:Web URL
The Link Text is the text that shows up on the page. The Reference is an index. It can be a number or words. The Web URL is the link you are pointing toward. Here is concrete example.
This is one [nerdy Mac site.][1]
Really, the guy just won’t shut up.
[1]:http://www.macsparky.com/
So I decided to take a page from Patrick’s playbook and create my own TextExpander snippet to create referenced links. It’s not that hard.
If you are thinking ahead while you write, you can do this all in one step. This snippet, upon activation, asks you to insert the Link Text and Reference and then creates a Reference entry on the next line using the Web link from your clipboard. Finally, it puts the cursor back at the end of your link text. Fire up TextExpander and follow along.
Create a new snippet and start with two sets of brackets. The first will hold the Link Text and the second will hold the Reference. The Snippet should now look like this:
— Begin Snippet Code —
[][]
— End Snippet Code —
Next, create a Fill-In blank for the Link Text. These are blanks that Text Expander will prompt you to fill when the snippet runs. To create a Fill-In blank, insert the cursor between the first two brackets and select Fill-In from the Cursor drop down shown below.
— Begin Snippet Code —
[%fill:name%][]
— End Snippet Code —
Next, create a second Fill-In blank in the second set of brackets. This will be the blank for the Reference. When you create this second FIll-In blank, change the text from fill:name to fill:reference. This name is a variable. If you use the same name twice, TextExpander will copy it into both places. You will use this later.
— Begin Snippet Code —
[%fill:name%][%fill:reference%]
— End Snippet Code —
Next you’ll create the reference. First add a few carriage returns and then create the reference syntax, which is a pair of brackets and a colon.
— Begin Snippet Code —
[%fill:name%][%fill:reference%]
[]:
— End Snippet Code —
Add a Fill-In blank in the brackets and rename it fill:reference. This duplicates the reference used above so you only need to type it once.
— Begin Snippet Code —
[%fill:name%][%fill:reference%]
[%fill:reference%]:
— End Snippet Code —
Next, add the Web URL. Place the cursor after the colon and select the Clipboard option from the cursor drop down shown in the figure below. This step dumps your clipboard in as a link. In order to make this work, you must first select and copy the link you want to use before activating the snippet. (You can do this in Safari by navigating to the desired page, pressing Command-L and then Command-C.) Alternatively, you could also make this a Fill-In field and type the URL in manually.
— Begin Snippet Code —
[%fill:name%][%fill:reference%]
[%fill:reference%]:%clipboard
— End Snippet Code —
Finally, move the cursor back to the top line at the end of the link and select Position Cursor Here from the Cursor menu. This resets the cursor back in your text so you can continue typing.
— Begin Snippet Code —
[%fill:name%][%fill:reference%] %|
[%fill:reference%]:%clipboard
— End Snippet Code —
I named this snippet Markdown Link and use the keyboard combination .[ to set it off.
Here is a picture of it in action.
And here is the resulting code.
The above workflow assumes you think of creating the link while you are typing. If you want to add a reference link later, I created two more snippets.
The first takes highlighted text in the body of your text and sets up the text and reference number. Here is the TextExpander snippet code. I use .] to activate this snippet.
— Begin Snippet Code —
[%clipboard][%fill:reference%]
— End Snippet Code —
The second snippet creates the reference link. I use .: for this one.
— Begin Snippet Code —
[%fill:reference%]:%clipboard
— End Snippet Code —
Are you a Markdown nerd and using TextExpander? Let me know or, better yet, leave a comment and describe it for everyone.
One of the best new friendships I made at this year’s ABA TechShow, was Ernie Svenson (Twitter), a.k.a. Ernie the Attorney. Ernie is a New Orleans-based attorney as well as an established technology blogger and podcaster. Ernie is also a very charming guy and jazz aficionado.
So Ernie, what is on your home screen?
What are your most interesting home screen apps?
I like the Foodspotting app, which is in my ‘food’ folder. People take pictures of dishes at local restaurants and upload them to Foodspotting, so with the GPS ability of the iPhone you can find nearby eats based on delectable pictures. In New Orleans I find this to very helpful because there are so many great places to eat.
What is your favorite app?
I LOVE the Siri app. It is the perfect example of advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic. I can’t believe how easy it is to find local businesses and then call them. Dragon Dictation and Shazam are probably on equal footing in the same way.
Which app is your guilty pleasure?
Words with Friends, no doubt. I don’t like to play games, but this is Scrabble in a way that enhances social connections. No one seems to have time to play a real game of Scrabble but almost everyone I know has been playing Words with Friends and loves it.
How many screens have you filled?
Before the folders feature arrived it was 9 screens, but now I’ve got it down to a manageable 4 screens. I’m a sucker for the promise of a new app, but I find that there are only about 15 apps that I rely on regularly.
What is the app you are still missing?
I really don’t think I’m missing anything. I’m amazed at the apps that I would never even have thought were possible. I used to have a guitar tuner, but I found an app that does the same thing and just as well as a dedicated tuner. So I got rid of that. I also no longer have a point-and-shoot camera.
How many times a day do you use your iPhone?
I use it constantly for things like checking the weather, reading Twitter posts, searching for information, monitoring tasks, text messaging and of course phone calls.
What is your favorite feature of the iPhone?
I don’t use it every day, but I love the feature that lets me hold down the home button and then tell my phone to call someone or to play one of my iTunes playlists. Once again: total magic.
If you were Steve Jobs, what would you add to the iPhone?
A light saber laser for carving holiday turkeys.
Anything else you’d like to share?
Just that, if folks don’t know about my friend Jeff Richardson’s excellent blog iPhoneJD.com, that they should check it out. Jeff does an outstanding job of covering useful apps for the iPhone. The focus is on things that help lawyers, but most of what he talks about would be useful for anyone.
Thanks Ernie!
I’ve received several e-mails complaining about how posts have slowed down at MacSparky.com. I am finally able to explain why. A few years ago I realized that while a lot of people are carrying Macs to work, very few of these Mac workers are taking full advantage of the goodness that is OS X. So, I decided to write a book. After several fits and starts, I signed a contract with Wiley Press and have spent my nights and weekends for the last five months writing 90,000 words.
The book is called “Mac at Work.”
This project has been my passion for the last two years and I’m excited to finally share it. The book is intended as a reference and filled with recommendations and workflows. It includes 24 chapters covering all of the most common topics you’ll run against when using your Mac to get work done. Each chapter is self-contained and intended as a reference on its particular subject. For instance, there’s a chapter on synchronizing your Mac with your office network. Likewise, there are chapters on running Windows on your Mac, managing PDF files, preparing presentations, and tackling e-mail. The list goes on; You get the idea.
The process of writing the book was my own nerdy epic adventure. For the first month I was convinced I’d be getting a call any moment from Wiley Press explaining they were very sorry but green lighting this book was obviously a big mistake. Thankfully, that call never came. I look forward to sharing the details of how I went about writing a book in future posts.
The book is now nearly done. It’s full-color and the layout is gorgeous. It will be in bookstores and the Apple iBookstore. The book is 350 pages (or thereabouts) and will release on January 17, 2011, a week before Macworld. It will go up on Amazon before that and you can trust that I’ll have links here when that happens.
There is no other book like this. As a result, the publisher wanted me to stay quiet until now. Looking forward, completion of the book means that I’ll be able to devote more attention to MacSparky.com. If you are a Mac worker or know a Mac worker, stay tuned for more details.
David Sparks
Gang,
Thank you for the very kind words and encouragement. It’s overwhelming. To answer a few of the questions,
iBookstore and International
I’m told the book will definitely be in the iBookstore. I’m not sure about international versions but hoping they can at least publish an ePub version for sale that you could install to your iPad no matter where you live. I’m working on it.
Scrivener
Did I use Scrivener? You bet I did. I’ll write more about the workflows and other nerdy parts later.
