If you’ve been around twitter for a while now, I’m sure you’ve seen Ollie in many places (though it should be noted, he’s used quite often without consent from his creators). Ollie is the mascot and icon of Twitterrific, the popular twitter client for the Mac and iPhone from The Iconfactory.
Twitterrific pioneered twitter clients on the Mac (where it has unfortunately stagnated, but I’ve been told by Ged from Iconfactory that they are diligently working on a stellar update). It was also one of the first native iPhone twitter clients, and won an Apple Design Award.
Ollie has branched out from software in the past year, as he now adorns a t-shirt (which I own) and now the above pictured collectible figurine. Ollie is made of vinyl and comes in two flavors — straight vinyl or flocked. The flocked version is fuzzy. I opted for the straight vinyl Ollie as I figured he will likely sit on my desk, and the flocking may attract dust.
Overall the build quality is fantastic. It’s neat to see a 2D icon become a 3D figure. And hey, now I have my own Ollie to stare me down with his beady eyes until I check Twitterrific.
You too can have your very own Ollie at the Iconfactory Store. The regular Ollie is $19.95 and the flocked Ollie is $26.95 (you’ll also find that Ollie t-shirt there).
Before I started college, I read a lot of books. I remember one time I was so engrossed in a book that I read all 1,000+ pages in two days. But then, when I began college, my passion for reading books faded as I needed to read more and more dull textbooks.
(Seriously, textbooks are rather dry.)
Sad to say, I haven’t read many books for fun in the past 6 years.
Naturally, I had been intrigued for quite some time about eBook readers. But I’d been leery of dropping so much money on something I had never seen in the real world. I’d read plenty of reviews of folks praising their Kindle, but I wasn’t even sure if it would inspire me to read. So I put it to the back of my mind.
Things were stirred up again when Barnes & Noble announced their Nook eBook reader. I thought the industrial design was superior to the Kindle, and it actually looked like something that may come from beloved Cupertino. But once reviews of the Nook started rolling in, well, things didn’t look as pretty as the pictures. But everyone still loves their Kindle.
For Christmas, my parents gave me a Kindle. (Okay, it’s also for my wife, too.) (But it’s mostly for me.) I have to say, I’ve read nearly every day since then. It’s easy on the eyes, easy to navigate, light yet sturdy, and overall just a great experience.
I have the 6-inch Kindle with international wireless. The text on the e-ink display is crisp and extremely legible. The battery life is amazing. Page turns take no longer than if you were turning a physical piece of paper. I also find it to be a great size for holding while relaxing in a chair or lying on the bed. I actually prefer it to holding a paperback book. Or hardcover, for that matter.
In the “Welcome to Kindle” letter on the device when I turned it on initially, CEO of Amazon Jeff Bezos said that one of Kindle’s goals was to get out of the way and let you experience a book. I believe the Kindle does exactly that, and it has, pardon the pun, re-kindled my enjoyment of reading.
If you decide to give Kindle a shot, there’s a handy link in the sidebar to go buy one. Using that link fills my pockets with filthy lucre. So buy a couple, okay?
I’ve been using 1Password by Agile Web Solutions for about a year thanks to my friend Samantha gifting a license to me during Agile’s Thanksgiving gifting program last year. Well, for the past 9 months or so, the team at Agile has been giving 1Password the biggest overhaul in the software’s history.
Since late August I’ve been beta-testing 1Password 3, which I am glad to tell you has been released for the masses today. If you are a Mac user, 1Password is a must-have application. It generates secure passwords for your web presence, and stores them all in a secure database that can be unlocked by your, well, one password you’ll never forget.
Too often I see people that use a word that can be found in the dictionary as their password (which means easily hacked) and then they use it everywhere. Even for their financial accounts online. This is a terrible practice that I even used to use.
Well, 1Password 3 has refined the user interface greatly from previous versions. Now everything is separated into different vaults, so you can easily access your logins, accounts, identities, secure notes, software licenses, and wallet. This program tracks everything for your digital life.
What I have found to be the most helpful is the web browser plugin. Whether you use Safari, Firefox, Camino, etc. (Chrome is in the works) you can easily have the plugin fill in user and password fields for you. Or if you need to fill in your credit card and billing address info for a merchant, the plugin will do it all in a couple clicks. The credit card info is very helpful for changing your info for many merchants when you receive a new card every couple years.
1Password 3 offers many enhancements for users of version 2, and is inescapably attractive for new users. This should be the first download for any Mac.
1Password 3 is available for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and 10.6 Snow Leopard. It costs $39.95 for a new license and users of version 2 may upgrade for $19.95 (until Nov. 30, 2009, then the price raises to $29.95).
For a complete list of what’s new, check out this page.
A week and a half ago, Apple refreshed some of its product lineup for the holidays. The changes included new unibody plastic MacBooks, gorgeous 21.5” and 27” iMacs, updated Airport Extreme and Time Capsule base stations, an aluminum Apple Remote, and the multitouch Magic Mouse. The Magic Mouse instantly became the object of my desire, and I placed an order for one as soon as the store was updated with the new merchandise. Today, it arrived.
This is purely a thing of beauty.
This has to be one of the sleekest designs to ever come out of Cupertino. The bottom is aluminum and the top is a curved blade of plastic. The top shell does depress physically for button clicks, but otherwise buttons do not exist.
The top surface is multitouch enabled. It detects when you want to perform a primary click or secondary click (aka right click) by how your fingers naturally interact with other mice. This function can be reversed via software if you mouse with your left hand.
Scrolling is achievable with a soft flick along the surface. The new software for the Magic Mouse even gives scrolling the visual feedback of momentum, much like the iPhone. (Please, Apple, enable momentum when I scroll with the multitouch trackpad built into my MacBook Pro!)
Swiping two fingers left or right allows you to move backward or forward, respectively, between web pages in a browser, or pages within a document, or items in Cover Flow view in Finder or iTunes.
Inevitably, comparisons must be made to the Magic Mouse’s predecessor, the Mighty Mouse. First of all, the Magic Mouse is only available with wireless bluetooth, whereas the Mighty Mouse had wired and wireless varieties (Apple still sells the wired Mighty Mouse, yet it has been rebranded as the Apple Mouse).
The Magic Mouse is much lighter and thinner than the Mighty Mouse. In fact, even though both contain two AA batteries, the Magic Mouse is on par with the light weight of the wired (thus without batteries) Mighty Mouse.
One stupendous benefit is the lack of the dreaded scroll ball. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the function of the scroll ball, but only when it actually functioned. Due to a poor design decision, there was no way to clean the scroll ball, and it would often gum up and stop working. I managed to sort of clean it with a cotton ball and some water, but cleaning it was at least a twice-weekly event. Scrolling with a touch sensor is much nicer.
Speaking of the scroll ball, here is one nagging difference where the Magic Mouse is lacking. On the Mighty Mouse, depressing the scroll ball acted as a third button, which I had set up to activate Exposé. Also, there was a fourth button on the side that you could squeeze, which I had set up to enable Spaces. The Magic Mouse lacks these buttons, or even a way to access any tertiary function. Perhaps Apple will be able to add in more gestures through software updates. One can hope.
Honestly, I rarely used the squeezable fourth button on the Mighty Mouse, but I used the tertiary button under the scroll ball a lot.
Thankfully, if you have a Mac notebook manufactured since late 2007 or any of the aluminum external keyboards, there is an Exposé button on the F3 key.
All in all, I am actually enjoying the lower profile of the Magic Mouse, as my wrist doesn’t have to bend at all for my hand to conform to it. Clicking is easy, and scrolling feels more natural than ever. The two-finger swipe is a bit tricky yet, but I think I just need to develop the muscle memory for it, like I did with the multitouch trackpads.
The only things lacking are the ability for at least a tertiary function, and I kind of wish the pinch/zoom gesture were available.
I highly suggest giving the Magic Mouse a try at an Apple Store. If you currently use a Mighty Mouse, I’d say overall it is an upgrade.
I’ve embedded some “unboxing” photos in the slideshow below.
Since my second year of college (which was 5 years ago) (crap, I’m getting old), I’ve been using an AirPort Express base station for my home wireless network. Recently, I’d noticed my household was beginning to stretch its limits.
Between several Macs, an iPhone, iPod touch, TiVo, XBox 360, Wii, etc etc and so forth…things were getting crowded for the little AirPort Express, which supports a maximum of ten clients. Also, the AirPort Express just wasn’t transmitting enough to reach the places like the kitchen and bedroom.
A couple days ago I picked up a dual-band AirPort Extreme for our cozy little home. This was quite the upgrade for our network, as we had never realized the 802.11n capabilities of our computers. So now I am running simultaneous 802.11n and 802.11g networks. The iMac and MacBook Pro run on the 5GHz n network and everything else runs on the 2.4GHz g network.
I was curious how well syncing app data from Mac clients to iPhone clients (think 1Password) would work, since the different spectrums appeared as different networks to the Mac. I’m happy to report that the AirPort Extreme allows devices on both networks to interact with each other as if they were on the same network. Everything is absolutely seamless.
It took a grand total of about ten minutes to set up the g and n networks from the unboxing to being up and ready to go.
I even noticed quite the improvement in download speed on the 802.11n network. As illustrated in the image above, I tested my MacBook Pro on both the 802.11g and 802.11n networks using Speedtest.net. The speed difference was just under 7.5 Mb/s! I had never seen results come in above 16.3 Mb/s.
Needless to say, I am very pleased with upgrading to the dual-band AirPort Extreme. It’s a little spendy compared to other dual-band base stations from D-Link and Linksys, but I much prefer to use AirPort Utility to manage my base station than a web browser.
I’d recommend this even to Windows users, but it’s a no-brainer for a Mac house.
Update Oct. 24, 2009: Sure enough, I bought my AirPort Extreme on Saturday, Oct. 17 and Apple goes ahead and updates the darn hardware on Tuesday, Oct. 20. Well, my local-ish (it’s 40-minutes away) Apple Store finally got the new ones in. And thankfully, Apple has a policy where if they update the hardware you just bought within 14 days, you can exchange it.
Since only 3 days had passed, I was golden. I stopped there last night with the now-old-generation Airport Extreme all boxed in its original packaging with the receipt, and the guy helping me did a flat-out exchange. I had been told when I called earlier that I would be charged a 10% restocking fee, but looking at the new receipt, that didn’t happen.
There isn’t much different about this one and the one I picked up last week. In fact, externally, they are identical. Apple says the antenna has been re-engineered. So instead of being a 2x2 antenna it is now a 3x3 antenna. Apple claims this allows 50% better performance and 25% greater range. I ran Speedtest.net again and I had marginal improvement in download speed at 23.02 Mbps, and upload of 0.97 Mbps.
I doubt I’ll realize much difference, but I figured if I am going to have this router for around 5 years or more, I might as well take advantage of getting the latest and greatest since I had the opportunity.
Also, make sure to actually use the disc in the box to install a new version of AirPort Utility. I had v. 5.3.2 from Snow Leopard, but this new base station requires v.5.5, which Apple has not pushed through Software Update yet.
If you’re considering purchasing an AirPort Extreme, flip the box to see the bar code label and look to make sure the part number is MC340LL/A. That’s the freshly re-engineered one.
On Friday, August 28th Apple released Snow Leopard into the wild to feast upon Macs everywhere. Mine arrived via FedEx about 2:00 pm. I’m guessing that with the $29 price point, many users are upgrading, as the FedEx driver who delivered my new kitty said he had over 1,000 boxes from Apple on his truck, and there were easily over 10,000 Apple boxes in the Lincoln, NE facility when he arrived earlier that day. And that’s just in Lincoln, NE, folks.
I set about installing Snow Leopard on my MacBook Pro immediately, as I had already backed up in anticipation. I also upgraded any software I could to latest versions (many of which already were sporting Snow Leopard compatibility). I chose to do the standard issue upgrade from the installer, knowing that if it was super glitchy I had a backup I could do a clean install from. The upgrade process of dusting some Snow on Leopard took about 35 minutes.
And I am happy to report that the upgrade process was flawlessly smooth. The benefits of going to Snow Leopard are simply staggering. The chief attribute that stands out above all the rest is speed. This is one fast cat. Booting up is faster, going to sleep is faster, many apps run much faster (CandyBar is a great example. I’m used to opening it then checking Twitter while it loads all the system icons. It takes only a couple seconds on Snow Leopard), and even shutting down is faster (5 seconds by my clock).
Visual Changes
Visually, there are very few things different than Leopard. All the menus within the Dock are now black with white text and a stunning blue highlight (like the Spotlight search bar, not Aqua). Personally, I think these new black menus look very wonderful. I wish they were persistent throughout the system such as contextual menus or menus from the menu bar, which are still translucent gray.
Exposé
Exposé has been one of my favorite features of Mac OS X since it debuted with 10.3 Panther. I can’t think of a day using my Mac since that I haven’t invoked Exposé at least once. However, it is also a feature that hasn’t seen any (user-visible) improvement since its origin. That has changed in 10.6 Snow Leopard. Exposé has received a bit of an overhaul in how it displays windows. It used to be that windows scaled to fit the screen in an inconsistent way. Some windows were quite large, some were quite small, and they ended up in various areas of the screen without any rhyme or reason. Now windows scale to a near uniform zoom level and arrange themselves in a grid. Hovering your cursor over a window while using Exposé then pressing spacebar activates QuickLook to enlarge the window briefly, so you can make sure that is the window you wish to select.
Exposé is a great feature that is now married to another great feature of OS X – The Dock. By clicking and holding on the icon of an open app in the Dock, Exposé is triggered to show windows from only that app. Similarly, if you click and drag a file from the Finder (or wherever) and hold it over an active icon in the Dock, Dock Exposé kicks in, showing windows for that app, which you can then drop the file into the desired window. Making Dock Exposé spring-loaded was a great idea. Props to whoever at Apple coded that.
One last thing about Exposé – if you have minimized windows, those show up as well. They appear as smaller windows beneath a thin line separating minimized from non-minimized windows. It’s a nice trick.
(Note concerning minimized windows: you can now choose to have minimize windows behind the app’s Dock icon instead of piling up in the right side of your Dock. Problem is, there isn’t a visual cue that windows have been minimized to the app icon aside from Exposé.)
Stacks
The list view of Stacks gains the same black theme as other menu items in the Dock. Fan view looks exactly the same. However Grid view received some new-feature-love in Snow Leopard. Grid view now supports the ability to drill down into folders. Clicking on a folder in a Grid view Stack now shows the contents of that folder, and places a back arrow (very similar to the back arrows in the iPhone’s user interface) at the top left of the open Stack. If the number of contents of a Stack in Grid view exceed the visibility of the Stack interface, a scroll bar now appears. These enhancements actually make the Grid view useful, though I still prefer List view for Stacks with many items.
There are a few other nuances of the user interface that have been refined, but I should leave some stuff for you to discover on your own.
QuickTime X
Apple drastically revamped QuickTime. The user interface is now black with inline controls that fade in and out as needed (along with the title bar). The result is a playing video that just floats in the middle of your screen. Hardcore QuickTime 7 Pro users will outcry at the lack of some very high end features, but QuickTime 7 is an optional install that will reside in the Utilities folder. For me, QuickTime X does it for me. The ability to do minor trim edits (anything else I can use iMovie for) is fine. The big seller for me is the ability to do a screencast recording. If I am unable to do a screen share via iChat to help out friends and family, I can record a quick tutorial video and send it to them. Perfect.
Under the Hood
It’s no secret that the majority of Snow Leopard’s enhancements are under the hood. Consumers won’t notice these enhancements outright. The only way mere mortals notice these things is through perception – such as “speed” and “stability.”
As for the perception of increased speed, many refinements and optimizations to Mac OS X as a whole contribute a lot towards that. However, within a few months, I believe users will notice vast speed improvements as third-party developers update their applications to take advantage of new “under-the-hood” technologies in Snow Leopard. Chiefly I am talking about Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL.
Grand Central Dispatch will allow developers to easily split up tasks in their apps between the different processing cores in our modern-day Macs. This was achievable in Leopard, but it was extremely difficult. Now this can be achieved much easier now that Apple has laid down a uniform path for all developers.
OpenCL allows developers to access the extreme processing power that is often idle in our graphic processors. Applications that require a lot of computational processing power will now be able to call upon the GPU to churn through data faster. I imagine in the near future, apps such as Photoshop will take advantage of this and be able to complete tasks like PhotoMerge much faster.
As for the reliability of Mac OS X overall, things are very promising. Instead of adding “300+ new features” to OS X like in Leopard, Apple introduced very few features. Instead they went through OS X with a fine tooth comb and did a massive spring cleaning. This is reflected in that many users will regain around 6 or 7 GB of hard drive space (I’ve heard reports of up to 20 GB). Apple threw out a lot of cruft, and good for them. One of those pieces of cruft was support for PowerPC legacy machines. My grandfather is actually affected by this, as he bought an iBook G4 about a month before the Intel MacBook was released to replace it. He is stuck at Leopard unless he buys a new machine. But the last PowerPC Mac was released nearly four years ago. It’s time for OS X to move on.
Conclusions
So far, my Snow Leopard experience has been delightful. Everything is snappier, all of my apps work correctly (as far as I can tell), and I’ve only encountered one slight bug (with the 4-finger Exposé gesture on my MacBook Pro’s trackpad). One flagrant bug. That’s about 39 fewer flagrant bugs than when I went from Tiger to Leopard. The refinements are wonderful. The price tag was perfect. $29. You can’t beat that. If you have Leopard, you’d be silly not to upgrade to Snow Leopard (unless a critical app you use isn’t compatible yet).
Overall, I’m very glad Apple sat this round out for adding loads of new features. I believe Snow Leopard has laid the groundwork for Apple to build an amazing next generation of OS X.
Yesterday Apple finally approved the first substantial feature update to my favorite Twitter application for the iPhone – Twitterrific. The app had been sitting in the approval queue for quite a few weeks. The new version brings a flock of new features. I’ll go over my favorites here. The colossal list of all the changes can be found at Twitterrific’s version history page.
First and foremost, I had started with Twitterrific since the opening day of the App Store. But version 1.x lacked many advanced features, especially when Tweetie came on the scene. I had resisted Tweetie for quite a while, but when I started managing a second Twitter account, I ended up on Tweetie out of necessity.
I switched back to the blue bird when version 2.0 came out and was instantly won back. Over time though, I did find that the new blue bird was missing a few features that Tweetie had that I really loved. Twitterrific 2.1 has taken care of all that, and is reigning supreme yet again.
Here’s what Tweetie had that Twitterrific now has:
New “Load More…” button to retrieve older tweets in the timeline.
Added a photo viewer for images on yfrog, Twitpic, and Twitgoo. (This is instead of just loading the web page for the photo, as Twitterrific had always done. This is MUCH faster.)
Tap on the avatar in the author info view to view the avatar full size.
Added following and followers buttons to author view.
Granted, these are not drastic things that I couldn’t live without, but they round out the experience of the app. Possibly my favorite is the custom image viewer, especially for Twitpic. The old method of loading the whole Twitpic web page was time consuming and cumbersome, as you’d have to zoom to see the image every time. Now you get a wonderful fullscreen image that loads quickly. Nice.
Some other new features that I am loving is the “Address Book” view (signified by a rolodex card), a YouTube videos play within the in-app browser, the built-in web browser supports landscape view, in-app email support, and the ability to translate a tweet to your native language.
The “address book” is a wonderful feature. From either the timeline view or posting view, you can bring up your followers, who you’re following, and a search area to view an account and create a mention or direct message. Very nice.
Utilizing the in-app YouTube viewer and in-app email in OS 3.0 is nice. An app’s experience is greatly improved when you don’t have to leave the app all the time.
For iPhone 3GS owners, you getting some special attention and love, too! You can record, post, and view video from yfrog and TwitVid. The developers note that for yfrog, you need to activate the video setting on yfrog.com.
Also, apparently Twitterrific 2.1 is “optimized for the iPhone 3GS.” Whatever that means. (Not that I’m bitter that I don’t have a 3GS.) (I’m just messing with you all.)
Overall, Twitterrific 2.1 is a solid feature upgrade that really gives the blue bird some new pluck. Twitterrific 2.1 is available in an ad-supported free [App Store] version and a $3.99 ad-free Premium [App Store] version.
P.S. ~ It’s not a bad idea to follow @Twitterrific on the Twitter. App specific news is regularly pumped out there and helpful hints and tips for the app are offered as well.
There are plenty of times that I want to convert one value to another. For some reason, it usually involves recipes. My wife and I have many recipes that are scaled to feed an army. We’re a three person family. And our just-over-one-year-old son doesn’t exactly eat a large portion.
(Don’t worry, I’m sure he’ll eat us out of house & home when he becomes a teenager).
Now, there are other times I’ve needed to convert various values. My go-to place for such a thing has always been Google. See, if you go to Google and type in 48.5 ounces to pounds Google will tell you 48.5 ounces = 3.03125 pounds. Handy, huh?
Great thing is, that even works on my iPhone via Safari.
But I love great design and user interfaces. Heck, I use a Mac, right? How could I not have an appreciation for those? Well, it just so happens that there is an app for that. And it belongs on your iPhone.
I’ve had my eyes on Convertbot [App Store] by Tapbots for quite some time now. It is a gorgeous little app that lives to serve your every conversion whim. It has a wonderful robotic-inspired user interface, complete with sound effects that just makes the experience gush with gadgetry.
And this little app does a lot. Currency, Data Size, Length, Mass, Speed, Temperature, Time, Volume, and Area are the main categories, with many denominations in each one. There is a nice demo video over on the aforelinked Tapbots site. The app normally sells for $1.99.
However, as of this publication, Convertbot is FREE for a “very limited time.” So skip the demo, go make sure it’s still free on the App Store, and add it to your iPhone’s utility belt!
UPDATE: I just discovered there’s is a virtual ton of extra measurement categories that can be enabled in the app’s preferences! They include Angle, Data Rate, Force, Fuel, Illuminance, Power, Pressure, Radioactivity, SI, Typography, and Work.
If you’ve ever had to do any amount of web design — no matter how basic — you’ve likely had to match colors for sidebar widgets or some other material. I know any time I add a new widget to the sidebar of this blog, I have to pull out a color picker.
Back in February, my best buddy from Britain, Samantha, wrote an article about a little utility named Pipette. Pipette allows you to use a eyedropper tool to sample a pixel of an image and then grab the hex code so you can easily color-match on the web.
However, I did have a gripe with Pipette — and it is a snobby spoiled Mac user gripe. It’s ugly. The pallette is boring, the icon is 128-pixels when the rest of the Mac world has long since moved to 512-pixel icons. Also, it’s annoying that the window disappears when the app isn’t selected, meaning I can’t just leave it over on the side of the screen for easy access.
But it served a great purpose. And it did its job very well.
And then I stumbled upon Colors by Matt Patenaude. Colors does everything Pipette does, but does it with some modern Mac OS X gloss. The icon is gorgeous and so is the UI.
It also has a couple more tricks than Pipette. Not only can you grab the hex code (#rrggbb) but you can also grab #rgb, rgb(x,x,x) and rgba(x,x,x,x,). Also, you may choose whether or not to include the # sign.
In my book, Colors trumps Pipette in form and function (though I only see myself using hex code). Enjoy.
Neven Mrgan, a designer for Panic Inc., has cooked up a pretty sweet little web app for users with iPhone OS 3.0 on their iPhones and iPods touch. Yes, you did just read a sweet little web app. Remember web apps? That was Apple’s solution for third-party developers before the iPhone SDK and App Store.
This is where Glyphboard comes in. Now, clicking that link on a Mac or PC won’t help you much, but if you view it on an iPhone or iPod touch running Software 3.0, you can do something cool. By adding that page to the Home Screen, it will create a standalone web-based application.
In Software 2.x, web apps ran in Safari, and if you scrolled up enough, you’d see Safari’s address bar. One of the cool new features of iPhone OS 3.0 is the ability for web designers to make their web app completely standalone. Essentially, adding Glyphboard to your homescreen is quite like installing a Dashboard widget on OS X.
Glyphboard allows you to copy and paste many special characters from Glyphboard to other apps. It’s quite slick.
Bonus: because it is a web app, it can be updated at any time, without being held up in the App Store approval process.
I believe this is an essential web app for anyone using iPhone or iPod touch Software 3.0. A few screen shots below. Enjoy.
If you’ve been around twitter for a while now, I’m sure you’ve seen Ollie in many places (though it should be noted, he’s used quite often without consent from his creators). Ollie is the mascot and icon of Twitterrific, the popular twitter client for the Mac and iPhone from The Iconfactory.
