August 17th, 2007

iWork '08 - no Office killer 'cause it's not supposed to be

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 7:12 am

Categories: Apple iWorks, Mac, Mac OS X, Microsoft, Microsoft Office, Productivity, Software

Tags: Apple Macintosh, Microsoft Office, Apple Inc., Apple iWork, Marc Orchant

I picked up a copy of iWork ‘08, the new update to Apple’s productivity suite, the other day and have been noodling around in it since I installed it on my MacBook and my wife’s iMac. It’s a worthy upgrade for two principal reasons in my opinion: the significant improvements made to Pages (document processor) and the addition of Numbers, a new layout-oriented spreadsheet application. I’m not going to do a full, feature-by-feature review here – there’s plenty of those already on the tubes. I just want to address the notion that this signals some throwing down of a gauntlet by Apple in front of Microsoft. It doesn’t.

I thought we’d gotten past this but apparently not. Even venerable tech journalist and unabashed Apple fan Walt Mossberg fell into the trap of trying to compare iWorks ‘08 to Microsoft Office calling iWork “elegant but wimpy”. It’s a bad idea because they’re simply not the same thing. Walt goes so far off track as to slam Apple for not including an Outlook-like PIM in one sentence and them almost immediately points out that, well, Apple really doesn’t need to make an Outlook clone because, well, they already have a very nice set of applications for e-mail, calendar, and contacts built right into every Mac they ship. So why, oh why make bones over this. Why not just say so?

This, my friends, is a classic case of fomenting controversy where none needs to exist.

iWorks is not an Office “killer”. In fact, if you take Apple at their word, that’s never been their intent in producing the suite. According to a very lucid quote in an analysis piece at MacWorld from Apple’s Rob Shoeben, the raison d’etre behind iWorks is pretty simple:

“One of the things that you’ll see in some of our materials is, ‘Productivity the Mac way,’” said Rob Schoeben, Apple’s vice president of applications product marketing. “That means, ‘I bought a Mac on purpose. I bought into the idea that things should look right and be well-designed and really easy to use.’ They want to enjoy the way they work, they want their work product to look great, and [they want to be] fundamentally integrated into iLife. If you buy into all that, that’s going to be appealing.”

And if you don’t, because you need (or want) the compatibility and feature full Microsoft Office experience then you go buy Office. Office:Mac is a decent product, if a bit long in the tooth. Even though the new Universal Binary Office 2008 for Mac has been delayed until sometime next year, the current version works pretty well. And it’s very compatible with it’s cousin on Windows. If you want compatibility with Office and don’t want to go the Microsoft route, you still have options. NeoOffice, a Mac-friendly version of OpenOffice is available at the nice price (free). You can also use ThinkFree Office which comes in both web-based (free) and desktop (commercial) flavors and will soon offer real-time sync between documents in the cloud and on your desktop with their Premium offering (disclaimer: I’m an adviser to ThinkFree).

It is what it is – a decidedly different approach to constructing documents, presentations, and spreadsheets nicely integrated into the Mac OS experience. Gee. Thinking different. From Apple. Go figure.

Update: Thanks to the MacWorld review of Pages I just learned that the Track Changes feature in the new version is compatible with the MS Word feature of the same name. Because Apple does not make this clear in their marketing messages or the small manual that comes with iWork ‘08, I assumed it was a proprietary approach to change management. This is huge for me as that’s one of the gating factors for me preventing me from seriously considering using Pages in more of my work. Sweet!

August 15th, 2007

Skype release 2.7 beta for the Mac

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 7:21 am

Categories: Mac OS X, Mobility, Productivity, Software, Windows

Tags: Apple Macintosh, Skype Technologies S.A., Beta, Marc Orchant

Skype has just released a beta version of Skype 2.7 for the Mac with Chat groups, Address Book integration, auto-redial, improved file transfer, and more. Downloading it now. I live in Skype – it’s my office number and preferred IM and video chat environment. I also use Gizmo Project (especially on the Nokia N95 and N800) and a number of IM clients but the bulk of my contacts and friends are on Skype so that’s where I look first. These enhancements will make it all the more useful and bring things more on a par with the capabilities I already enjoy when working on the Tablet PC.

July 24th, 2007

Offline reading on the iPhone with Filemarks

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 7:26 am

Categories: Mac OS X, Mobility, Software, Utilities and Add-Ins, iPhone

Tags: Apple iPhone, Bookmark, Here, Marc Orchant

Here’s a great idea for iPhone users starved for offline content. Filemarks, a free droplet utility developed by Jamie Wilkinson, builds a bookmark you can sync to your iPhone (via Safari 3 on your Mac or Windows PC) that can contain hi-res images, PDFs, or other data. It’s a free download and seems to work really well. A brief description of the utility from the Insanely Great News web site (co-authors of the droplet and makers of some fine t-shirts) reads:

Filemarks let you store high res images, text files, and PDFs on an iPhone! There aren’t any good ways to do this with the built in Apple tools - you can use iPhoto to copy images, but they’ll be scaled down and become unreadable. If you want to read a pdf on your phone, you have to either email it to yourself or browse to it in Safari. Filemarks store your file’s data inside a bookmark. When you want to view your file, you open the bookmark in Safari on the iPhone and you can view it, whether your phone is online or offline.

July 16th, 2007

MacUpdate promo bundle nears finish line

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 6:18 am

Categories: Mac, Mac OS X, Software, Utilities and Add-Ins

Tags: Utility, Marc Orchant

Update: So much for my powers of prognostication. The requisite 5,999 bundles have been sold and all 10 applications are now included bringing the retail value of this bundle up to $433.82. The promotion has been extended for 3 more days so you still have time to nab a great deal for you Mac if you’re so inclined.

I’m a sucker for these bundle promotions. I admit it. Last year’s MacHeist bundle got me and so did the current (and about to end) MacUpdate promotion. This one’s quite a nice deal if you’re looking for an ecelectic but very useful collection of Mac applications and utilities at a significant discount. The bundle includes:

• Little Snitch: a firewall enhancement to monitor and restrict outbound connections.
• GraphicConverter: A legendary utility that converts between downs of graphic file formats and provides tools for lightweight image correction and editing.
• Fetch: Another legendary utility – this one for FTP and SFTP file transfers.
• iWOW: an iTunes add-in that significantly improves the quality of audio output on your Mac.
• GarageSale: an eBay auction builder and manager.
• Cocktail: a maintenance utility that provides a graphic front-end to a number of *NIX command-line utilities.
• ProfCast: a presentation recorder that allows you to integrate PowerPoint and Keynote slides into your podcasts.
• Amadeus Pro: a powerful audio editor.

and, if sales targets are hit, Intaglio (a vector drawing program) and TechTool Pro (a maintenance and repair suite for the Mac). The targets were revised downwards yesterday to make it possible for these last two apps to get unlocked. If I had to bet, I’d say Intaglio is a shoo-in but TechTool Pro looks like a bit of a stretch.

The bundle costs $49.99. Retail value (as of now with the core apps and Little Snitch having been unlocked) is $244.83. As of the time I’m posting this, there’s about 15 hours left on the promo.

July 1st, 2007

I am such a weak person - I bought an iPhone

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 10:15 am

Categories: Gadgetry, Hardware, Mac, Mac OS X, Mobility, iPhone

Tags: Apple iPhone, Marc Orchant

I know… I know… I said I wasn’t going to do this. I had all the completely valid reasons to stay of the RDF and avoid being swept up in the iPhone madness. But yesterday morning I succumbed to the iPhone’s siren song and drove over to the ABQ Uptown Apple Store where iPhones were in plentiful supply. Three minutes later (yes, I timed it) I walked out with an 8GB iPhone.

I got home, plugged the iPhone into my already updated MacBook (the latest system update to 10.4.10 and iTunes 7.3 are required to activate and sync the iPhone) and, with trembling fingers (based on some of the activation horror stories I’d been following on Twitter, Jaiku, and via RSS), began the activation process. Guess what? No problema. Picked my plan (the 450 minute bucket with unlimited data), added more SMS (1500/month) for an additional $10 and clicked the Submit button. And then, less than two minutes later (yes, I timed this too), I had a new AT&T mobile number and a fully functional iPhone. While I understand that many, many people have a had a less-than-stellar activation experience, mine was as painless as can be.

It’s an amazing device. Typical Apple OMG experience. The display is gorgeous. The performance over WiFi is every bit as good as what I get with my Nokia N95. The EDGE performance is a little slower than the 2.5G I get from T-Mobile with the N95 and a lot slower than the EVDO I had been getting with my Treo 700p (which I’m returning to my now-former employer). That’s OK. I’ve been tethering both the MacBook and Lenovo X61t to the N95 and find the performance adequate for checking mail and light surfing. With the iPhone’s widescreen display, I have less reason to need to do that for a quick info fix.

Syncing up my contacts, calendar, photos, and a bit of my iTunes library (it’s only got 8GB and I have a 30GB iPod) went smoothly. Not sure if I’ll keep the iPod. One of my kids may be getting a great hand-me-down shortly. I can probably live with shuffling video and podcasts on and off the iPhone.

Text input is easier than my T9 fumbling on the N95 (I suck at T9 even though I’ve tried hard to get used to it). The predictive text is already learning my favorite words and I’m getting the hang of sliding my relatively big fingers when I initially touch the wrong letter to hit the one I was aiming for. The rotational function for iPod and Safari usage is fantastic – I wish it was available for all apps as it’s a lot easier to enter text on the wide onscreen keyboard.

I’m weak. I have no impulse control. My wife and my son are looking at me like I’ve taken complete leave of my senses. And I have yet to face the scorn of my daughter who will most likely roll her eyes and scathingly dismiss me as a complete geek. That’s OK. Their scorn will pass. I’m grinning like an idiot and having a blast with my new shiny bauble.

I’m off to San Jose for a quick overnight trip. I’ll post about the on-the-go experience with the iPhone in the next couple of days.

June 21st, 2007

iGTD just keeps getting better

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 9:38 pm

Categories: Mac OS X, Productivity, Software

Tags: Folder, Task, Integration, Marc Orchant

I’ve been using iGTD for some time and am planning a review of how I’ve integrated it, MailTags, Mail Act-On, and a few other tools into a very powerful GTD system on my MacBook. But I’m on vacation in Telluride right now at the Bluegrass Festuval and that will have to wait. For now, I thought it worth mentioning that a new release has just come out with a number of great new features and integration with other popular Mac applications. Here’s the list of what’s new in version 1.4.5:

New features:

• F-key integration with PathFinder, Yojimbo and MacJournal
• cutting and pasting tasks support - use it to move your tasks between contexts and projects (it works great with new type-ahead feature, see below)
• Quick Tags feature: you can define your favourite tags with key shortcuts Alt+1…9
• you can also access the Quick Tags via a popup menu (use the button near the Tags field)
• tasks with tomorrow’s due dates are marked orange
• contexts/projects containing tasks with today’s/tomorrow’s due dates are marked red/orange - you won’t miss them!
• better integration with Apple Mail - you can send yourself an e-mail with subject like ‘todo: @home wash the dishes’ and it will be pushed to iGTD (read more)

Keyboard improvements:

• type ahead feature for all folders: type first few letters to switch between contexts, projects, smart folders and archive categories - no matter where the focus is (I love it!)
• type-ahead for tasks: you can activate it in preferences
• by default, the tree gets collapsed before switching between folders with type-ahead - you can change this behavior in preferences
• hit Shift+Return to add a new task or archive item - works like Cmd+N
• hit Shift+Return to add a new context, project or archive category on the same level as selected item - a totally new feature
• hit Shift+Alt+Return to add a new subcontext, subproject or archive subcategory for selected item - works like Cmd+Shift+Alt+N :-)
• left arrow key collapses the current tree branch both if the parent item or if any of its children are selected - like in OmniOutliner

Fixes:

• colouring the tasks with today’s due dates works OK now
• broken smart folder filters for due dates fixed
• View menu ‘Refresh’ action works again
• sorting smart folders works in case-insensitive mode
• ‘Include sender in task names’ MailTags option works fine if checked off
• Return key start the edit mode for selected smart folder’s name

iGTD is donationware right now.  A Pro version is in development and a special discount is planned for people who have made a donation.

June 16th, 2007

Is Safari a honeypot for the iPhone?

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 8:13 am

Categories: Mac OS X, Mobility, Software, Web Apps

Tags: Apple iPhone, Apple Inc., Marc Orchant

I love a good conspiracy theory as much as the next person. I came across the interesting notion that Apple chose to release the Safari for Windows beta to have the hacker community expose and document holes in the browser in advance of the iPhone release at the end of the month. Macenstein has a good theory on this. Sounds pretty plausible to me.

With the iPhone’s launch a mere 2 weeks away, this got me to thinking. The iPhone has a “full version” (minus Flash support, apparently) of Safari running on it. Apple has repeatedly said it does not want developers writing “real” apps for the iPhone due to security risks for cellular networks.

Is there a chance Apple is hoping that by releasing a beta of Safari for Windows, it can let the hacking community do its QC work for it?

Update: Oooh! Another conspiracy! At Hardware 2.0,  Adrian thinks Steve Jobs seeks to eliminate Firefox and be the “other white meat” in the browser wars. Far-fetched? Perhaps. But he makes a great case based on Jobs’ recent WWDC keynote and is absolutely correct in his observation that nothing the Steve does is accidental or unintended.