At Work On a Mac

Wow, Apple launched the iPad. I was traveling but managed to watch it “live” (blog) on Gizmodo in GMT+1, thanks to Jonathan. It’s fun to let the dust settle after such an important product announcement. Personally, I never liked previous tablets that have surfaced every blue moon over many years. I always thought they provided an awkward user-experience, had poor graphics and were pointless (no pun). Not anymore.

I know there is plenty of criticism, all from people who have not used the product as it will only be available in a month or so. The gist of the critics are: no Flash, no phone, no multitasking, no OSX, no HDMI, no camera, no battery replacement and overpriced Flash memory storage options. The Apple bashing runs havoc in the forums, PC people thinking Steve Jobs has delivered yet another promised land sermon to his followers. You know you’re on to something when you’re being attacked rather than ignored. You know you’re on to something when a Macromedia Flash incompatible device (iPhone) is overselling all other smartphones.

I’ll tell you why I will be buying one. Because I’m addicted to my iPhone and this is an iPhone on steroïds. Besides, because it uses the Apple App Store, I will most likely be able to set up a VoIP softphone on it… More choice.

There’s a fundamental difference between wanting a device to do everything (especially things it was not intended for) and owning a device by design, because it fills needs. I read email almost in real time. This device will improve this user-experience or at least widen the reading opportunities.

I watch (read) movies in bed. This device will improve this experience.

I read books and magazines. This will make them more accessible. It is an extension of the paper reading experience. Not a replacement.

I read and edit spreadsheets. This device will allow me to take this necessity to different, new locations and settings.

It is not a laptop. It is not a phone. It is certainly not a PC tablet running Windows. It is an iPad: a reading device like no other.

Productivity iPad

I had to migrate my data and applications to a brand new MacBook Pro a while ago. It made me realize how essential some of these applications are to a traveling new media person who loves to be able to be productive with technology and who does not necessarily have a pocket geek to bring along on all these trips.

Here is a compilation of my must-haves for 2010. Let’s do it in in a countdown fashion so you’ll finish reading with the best applications in mind. I also throw in an attempt at David Letterman’s presentation format to make it more entertaining.

Here are the top 10 reasons for owning these best apps or online services.

10. Because not everyone understands limitless mailboxes and huge presentations are so much more appealing. There is YouSendIt for that.

9. Because things that move on your screen are people too. They need to be saved. Why is it so easy to capture stills natively? Multimedia, video, motion and animation. YouTube anyone? Are all part of taking the office on the road without a techie.
SnapZ Pro X provides a perfect remedy to an inherent system discrepancy.

8. A Swiss knife equivalent for Web site programming? You never know when you will need to edit HTML, PHP, CSS. You better have CODA with you then, even if you know.

7. Because files need to be saved, shared, exchanged and edited somewhere away from home (replace home by office as they have become synonyms in this day and age). Transmit is the best FTP client there is for the Mac.

6. Because picture editing, morphing, blending, adding and retouching all rhyme, we need Pixelmator.

5. Because there is never enough video codecs, alternatives and options. Thank the community for VLC.

4. Because the more experience you gain, the more contacts you gather. Contactizer Pro offers the best price-quality ratio in the contact management category.

3. Because data has a tendency to get lost. Invest in Time Capsule.

2. Because The Office is a TV Series you cannot replace with an Open one. Yes you need Microsoft Office no matter what you have heard, there is simply no replacement for this ubiquitous software suite. It is so well integrated that you often think that Word is Excel without a grid. Or is it the reverse? Good luck to OpenOffice.org nonetheless.

1. Because Google is a monopoly that works.
Google Docs, Google Search, Google Mail, Google Wave, etc.

But, please Google, invest in user interface design, user-friendliness, user-experience, and style in 2010. Design? What’s that? It’s about all qualities that have more to do with function than engineers think and make functionalities so much more attractive and enjoyable. The quintessential difference between PC and Mac mentalities? Google, eat some Cocoa, Quartz and Aqua. The text based interface has outlived its purpose.

0. Because you always need more than 10 applications to do anything whilst away from the office and that a countdown hopefully goes to zero. There are Keynote (iWork), iChat, Skype, Eyebeam iTunes, and, and, and..

I wish you a very productive 2010 and good health!

Productivity 10 top apps applications

So we all know and love Spotlight. Ever since it’s appearance in OS X several years ago, it’s been a great way to find files and even to launch applications. As an app launcher, even though it works pretty well, Spotlight has a few shortcomings compared to applications like Launchbar. For one thing, it doesn’t support abbreviations and it can be quite a bit slower to use since it indexes everything.

There is however a few things you can do. First, open the Spotlight preferences in System Preferences and disable everything you don’t care about. I never search for fonts for example, so I always disable that. The key here however is to make sure Applications are at the top of the list.

While you certainly knew about this first tip, you might not know about the second one. Other than filename and content, Spotlight also searches each file’s metadata and one that always exists and is accessible through the Finder is the “Spotlight Comments” field where you can type anything you want.

For the apps you use the most, find their icons in the Finder and type CMD-I to open the Get Info panel. There, you’ll find the Spotlight Comments field. The key here, is to add something unique to make the search fast. I suggest adding “aa” in front for application followed by a few letter. Firefox for example could be aaf. You can then “Cmd-Space” to open spotlight followed by your 3-4 letters abbreviations (“aaf”) followed by enter. The search is almost instant!

This unfortunately doesn’t work with system apps in 10.6 since those are locked when using the Finder. If you have PathFinder, you can actually change them from there.

Productivity macosx, osx, Spotlight, tip, tips, trick

Intro
I just finished installing Parallels 5.0 on my old faithful iMac because I need to install State from xtranormal (ODPCI: obligatory divulgation of potential conflict of interest, I work for them ). Since this ol’ thing (3 years) is running XP and that I haven’t had any reason for using Windows for a while (using IKEA’s kitchen software was the “oldest” motivation I can recall), I was 54 Windows updates behind. Add to this ordeal the conversion of my previous Parallels virtual machine install (circa 3.0) and the new State install and you will understand why OS X is a must have and that there should never be a reason to go back once you go Mac.

Development
Well it is just amazing. In a nutshell, this preferred approach to running Boot Camp, had always been plagued by speed issues. Not anymore. While I have not had time to give it an extensive run for its money, I notice a huge difference in Windows start-up, program call up and reactiveness as a whole. Everything has been simplified. It is just seamless and blends perfectly with OS X. It now supports dual monitors. It has an iPhone free application to run virtual machines remotely from the palm of your hand.

Coherence or the ability to blend Windows with OS X was just taken to another level with a “Crystal” mode option that makes the few remaining boundaries disappear. Your are literally running Windows in OS X. If that wasn’t made clear before, this is the utmost advantage over running Windows in a Boot Camp.

Conclusion
I highly recommend Parallels for people wishing to carry Windows (it supports Windows 7) around for the few remaining instances whereby you would be required to run a native PC application on your Mac.

Productivity

Well, finally got an iPhone. As always, I will extract every Yottabytes out of it. For a start, nobody should leave home without a SIP account and a VoIP Softphone. It just does not make sense to be victimized by roaming and long distance charges on any given business trip.

I recently installed Acrobits’ Softphone (a Prague based company) and it really delivers the goods.

The interface is intuitive (like most iPhone Apps, what an OS!) and it installs in a jiffy. I just joined their Beta testing group and will have a sneak preview at upcoming features. When it comes to VoIP, we never have enough features and options.

First, aside from the obvious advantage of extracting calls out of one’s data plan with a WiFi connection, there is also a conversation record feature and push notification. You can put yourself and the other party on separate audio tracks on the .wav saved file. You can access your conversations through Safari and Bonjour by specifying the listening port and allowing web access in the application’s settings.

On top of that, there is a keep alive function that allows you to close the application and receive calls nonetheless. Finally, you can set up multiple SIP accounts. Can’t wait to be on the road again, working off a cyber café’s WiFi aroma. I learned that Apple may soon lift the ban on softphones’ ability to access 3G networks. That would be awesome, carrying everywhere multiple phone lines at all times on one device in uninterrupted bliss (unless your parking space is three floors down).

And, I also installed what I think is a glimpse at the future—Ustream or the individual as a live witness or participant. Broadcast yourself. It’s far from being perfect but portability and instantaneity overshadows the set backs. You create an account and you broadcast live from your iPhone. Hey James, time to update Q.

Productivity

I’ve been getting into photography a lot lately (you can see some of my amateur work on my smugmug gallery) and one of the decision I’ve had to take early on was to choose between the annually-updated iPhoto and Apple’s “pro” software Aperture to manage my library. I ended up with Aperture partly because of my desire to use a lot of plugins which Aperture 2 supports very well but the problem with the software is that iPhoto is updated every year and Aperture isn’t. iPhoto can export photos to Flickr and Facebook directly, it can recognize faces of your friends and can map the photos on a map.

To say that I wouldn’t mind having those features around is an understatement. There’s also a lot more I wish Aperture would do, including perhaps native export to some of the popular online sites to host photos (other than of course Flickr). SmugMug would be welcome in my case but there are others. We live in such an interconnected world now with medias being uploaded all the time, it makes sense to have native support for those online destination.

Hopefully we’ll see a new version announced in the new few months.

Productivity

To the surprise of absolutely nobody, I ended up waiting in line all night again this year for the launch of Apple’s iPhone 3Gs in front of Montreal flagship Rogers store. And when I say it wasn’t a surprise for anyone, I do mean it. 4 people that night recognized me from last year.

The 3Gs is much like Mac OS X 10.6, it’s a mostly minor upgrade in this case focusing on a few highlights (Speed and Camera). A lot of people have been wondering if the upgrade is worth it from the original iPhone or from the 3G. After a few days using the phone, I can’t answer for everybody but I can say it was totally worth it for me.

The camera is great and I think that the touch to focus will make its way to pro cameras in the future. That’s a brilliant use of the touch screen and overall, the 3Gs takes very good pictures. It doesn’t have the N95/N96/N97’s camera (5MP+), but the autofocus, automacro and auto whitebalance go a long way in making good pictures.

The phone is also much faster. If you had both a 3G and an iPod Touch, you had probably noticed the Touch was much faster than the 3G and the 3Gs is now faster than both of them. Combined with the excellent (and free) 3.0 OS upgrade, it makes for a very speedy and very responsive phone. 3G games in particular got a big boost and once they start using OpenGL ES 2.0, it’ll be an even bigger difference.

One thing that really surprised me was the speed of the network. Here in Canada we are lucky enough that Rogers actually supports the new 3Gs “7.2Mbits” capability. Using USB tethering, I was able to download Firefox at 544KB/s, a very impressive speed. Given that tethering is free until at least december with a 1GB+ data plan, it’s an awesome feature for us in Canada.

What makes it all worth though is that more and more apps will make use of the better camera, the integrated compass and the voice control (through future APIs I expect to be part of an SDK update). The compass might seem like a useless feature, but look at the Augmented Reality apps on Android phones and you’ll see just how powerful it can be. 3.2 megapixels camera might not seems like a big deal, but a camera that can focus as close as 10CM can be very useful for scanning smaller stuff like barcodes.

Voice control already controls the phone and the iPod (and it certainly isn’t perfect yet — Apple still has some work here) but I can foresee a future where I’ll be able to tell my phone to read me the last received SMS or to control a game using my voice (“attack unit”, “defend base”, etc.)

Overall, much like the 3.0 OS update, it’s what the phone enables in the future that’s the most interesting. The 3.0 OS update will make apps much better because of the thousand new API and the new phone will also do its part with its added power and features.

It’s not a critical update by any mean, but it’s a very sweet phone. If you’re still on the original iPhone, it’s a no brainer update. If you’re on a dumb phone, run, don’t walk.

Productivity

I have a 250 Gig hard disk that I pushed to its limits. Since I’m using Parallels and I have given it 42 Gigs of space, there is not much left… I also have two external drives of 500 Gigs and 250 Gigs that I use for back up and acrhives.

It was time to clean up the biggest files. There are two neat litlle programs to quickly find the biggest files on your Mac system: Whatsize and GrandPerspective. They have very different approaches. Whatsize is much more elaborate, allowing multiple views of the data.

But GrandPerspective is free and offers a very innovative view of the largest files on your hardisk. I guess the keyword is free.

Productivity

There are a lot of Customer Relation Management (CRM) solutions out there to help you conduct business on a Mac. Some of them tap on Address Book others run a database or simply provide cloud computing, Software as a Service (SaaS). I’m really impressed by three of them for different reasons. In terms of price and ease of use, I recommend CONTACTIZER by Objective Decision. Be patient, this software is not bug free although none of the bugs are dramatic since it is in fact talking to Mac run applications (Address Book, iCal, Mail, etc.).

One of its most impressive feature is its mass mailer capability with email templates. The templates accept HTML and txt and conveniently include customizable fields that can be programmed to read your contacts to personalize your email. You can also set categories for your contacts and separate them in groups.

If we move up a notch we have to recognize Elements SBM by Ntractive. This is by far one of the best designed software I’ve seen in years. But are you and your organization ready for cloud computing? If the answer is positive then this is the one to buy.

Finally comes Daylite by Marketcircle, a cross between both solutions. A bit of a power horse and a power price. I guess it’s the price to pay for a very mature solution, seamlessly integrated to mail.

I also experimented with XTuple to no avail. Never succeeded in installing it. It looks promising but its interface is sort of dated and “PC” inspired.

Have fun contacting and keeping track of your marketing efforts.

Productivity

I wanted to buy Adobe’s inDesign CS4. This has been one of the most painstaking buying experience ever. And believe me, I have been on the web since the beginning of times…

First the online store was slow, confused and plainly put, out to lunch. With perseverance and constant browser refresh, I finally got PayPal approval to talk to the archaic ColdFusion Adobe store which seems to have been programmed before CSS were invented, ignoring least path of resistance online buying concept and user-friendliness. Had I not needed inDesign CS4 to produce a magazine and had not Quark Express been so overpriced, I would have quit immediately.

Are you still with me? It’s not over it only gets worse. Then, I received a lame email basically saying that my order was being processed and that I would receive a download link eventually. This, after PayPal had approved the transaction! After 2 days of wait (order was placed over the week-end and everybody knows servers don’t work week-ends), I decided to call support. I had to wait 10 minutes to finally talk to a nice person with an Indian accent who told me the store was undergoing overhaul and was experiencing problems. Understatement of the year.

After this call, I finally received a confirmation email with a link to download asking me to login to start downloading. A dated Java application looking like it was part of the original 1984 Mac OS, started “managing” the over 1 Gig file transfer. Much to my surprised, the download got stuck on 86% and I had to stop it and restart it to finish off the 9 minute portion of this ordeal (it had been downloading all night!). Praise download management, all together now “It ain’t automatic and a human had to intervene to make it work”.

And to top it all, after all this I’m back to square one. After having received a second email confirming my serial number that is apparent on the web page where you actually download the application, I had the pleasant surprise of finding out that the installer does not accept it. SUPPORT, SUPPORT and SUPPORT again. Hey Adobe get your act together you’ re leaving money on the table… How many have resigned in front of such a disappointing online buying experience? When will it be resolved?

Inventory
Product is not showcased immediately on the storefront, i.e. you have to find it.
ColdFusion store should be dropped, it just does not cut it, too many steps and slow refreshes.
Why send an email to verify a transaction that has been approved?
Why such a long week-end wait time?
Why do we have to call support to obtain results?
Why send a second email for the link that does not contain the serial number?
Why send a third email with a serial number when the download page already includes that serial number?
Why is the serial number not working!

Who is minding the store? Let me know when you open…

Productivity