Reeder for Mac

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Reeder is my favorite RSS reader for iOS, and it is finally out of beta for the Mac. I've been using the betas for months, and couldn't imagine a better experience across all my devices. The Mac version feels like a hybrid of iOS and OS X, and where that feels a bit out of place on Snow Leopard, I have a feeling it will be right at home on Lion next month.

It's $10, and featured over on the Mac App Store. I also recommend the iPhone/iPod touch version and iPad version.

¶ Lofty Promises

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Apple has a habit of changing our lives. They did it in the 70's with the Apple I & II, by aiming to make computing available to everyday people. That same focus leaped forward in 1984 with the advent of the Macintosh. The original iMac mitigated the intimidating aesthetic of computers, breaking up some of the presumptions of everyday folks that computers were beyond them.

Then Apple started creating a bond between our computers and ourselves. They truly started to become personal when Apple heralded the idea of the digital hub. Your computer suddenly became the keeper of things most precious to you: your photos, your music. The video of your child's elementary school play.

The iPod came, giving you a medium to carry a copy of your digital hub everywhere. First, it started with music, something that can move the passion within our souls. Then it added photos, so we could show our friends and family a favorite picture. Then videos were integrated. Iteration after iteration brought more and more of our personal lives with us everywhere.

Then another leap — the iPhone. The ability to remove an abstract interaction with these precious digital memories — no more keyboard and mouse, no more click wheel. You simply touch, swipe, pinch, tap. A natural interaction that a two year old can learn, and also the elderly who were too afraid of the complexity of computers.

The iPad expounded that dream even more, and whether you like the catchphrase or not, something magical did indeed happen. To quote John Gruber:

It’s a shame, almost, that we squandered the term “personal computer” 30 years ago.

How true.

A Digital Divide

Somewhere along the line, amongst the magic, some of the smoke and mirrors that the audience is never supposed to see became apparent. It became too difficult to maintain the illusion of these multiple devices working simply and with little maintenance. The digital hub became the digital burden.

It became too much for a person with multiple devices to remember which device had synced back to their digital hub on their computer at what time and with which content. Complexity tainted the promise of simplicity.

A Lofty Solution

Monday, Apple changed the game. Where the computer served as the digital hub for the last decade and, for a time, worked well, the new hub belonged somewhere else. Technology finally allowed for the rest of us to have something special. A hub that exists in the lofty domain of the "cloud".

Apple's forthcoming iCloud serves as the new hub, and your computer is just another device among your iPhone and iPad in this new vision.

The promise of iCloud takes something that happens on your iPhone — a new photograph, for instance — and effortlessly transmits it to iCloud, which then pushes it to your other devices. The same goes for a new music or book purchase, a bookmark, a freshly composed document. It all happens in seconds, and the user never has to think about what is stored where.

A lofty promise, indeed.

Commitment to the Promise

This isn't the first time Apple has attempted cloud services. I vaguely remember iTools in Mac OS 9. I was young and didn't care enough at the time. I also remember .Mac throughout the better part of my life as a serious Mac user, though I never had a need to subscribe. MobileMe is the most current release of iTools/.Mac, and it was this iteration that finally lured me into Apple $99/year subscription.

The promise of MobileMe was push email, contacts, calendars, and bookmarks. It also provided access to iDisk. For me, MobileMe has been a solid investment. It accomplishes the email, contacts, calendars, and bookmarks syncing between my mac, iPhone, & iPad. That is what I bought it for, and it lives up to the promise for me. iDisk, however, is a disaster. I don't use it for much, and Dropbox is what I turn to for that functionality instead.

Many other folks I know or follow think differently of MobileMe. They hate it. It doesn't live up to the promise in their eyes. Apple itself thinks of it as a failure. Steve Jobs even poked fun at it in the keynote.

It was this juncture in Jobs' keynote that we see that where MobileMe was a bolt-on product that Apple put just enough effort into, iCloud will be a first-rate service that Apple will put everything it has behind.

The commitment was revealed in iCloud's availability and pricing. Where MobileMe was adopted by a small percentage of Apple's user base due to its $99/year cost, iCloud is intended for all users to adopt with the low price of free. This fact alone shows that Apple must be committed to iCloud's success. Apple can't afford to have it fail. Apple's reputation with all its customers will be tarnished if iCloud doesn't live up to its promise.

I, for one, look forward to iCloud with great anticipation. I had a very good run with MobileMe, and if it worked that well without Apple truly focusing on the service, then iCloud should be astounding.

The New Mothership

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Last night at the Cupertino City Council meeting, a handful of mere mortals were granted an audience with Steve Jobs. Apple has always referred to its campus as the mothership, and this new one they plan to have completed by 2015 certainly fits that. The entire video is worth watching.

If you ask me, from above it kind of looks like a Stargate.

[via TechCrunch]

WWDC11

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Yesterday Apple announced a lot of new things at WWDC. Frankly, it has been a lot to process and figure out what the highlights worthy of discussion are. So I thought I'd share some (hopefully) brief thoughts on OS X Lion, iOS 5, & iCloud.

OS X Lion

Apple showed off a lot of the same things it did during the first preview months ago and also on its website since. Chief among those are things like Multi-Touch Gestures, Full-Screen Apps, Mission Control, Launchpad, Auto-Save and Versions.

The Lion part of the keynote was really just a recap to show off some polish, and give details on its release. I was very happy to see the price tag of $29.99, and that it will be distributed via the Mac App Store in July. I honestly was a little surprised to see Apple killing off the optical disc this aggressively. I knew it would happen sooner rather than later, but I expected it for the next iteration of OS X.

My only curiosity with the whole thing revolves around whether or not we'll be able to make some sort of bootable recovery, whether on disc or USB drive. I mean, what if your hard drive goes kaput? We'll find out in July.

I do highly recommend you peruse Apple's extensive information about OS X.

iOS 5

There were two things I have been wanting built into iOS recently, and those have been a better notification system and a ToDo List that would sync over the air with my Mac and iPad. I had bought a few apps to accomplish the latter, but none work as seamlessly as I expect out of my Apple devices.

Thankfully both of those items and more came to fruition.

Notification Center

Notifications have, honestly, taken a cue from Android. They pop in briefly from the top while you are doing something and quietly disappear for later inspection within the Notification Center, which can be accessed by dragging a finger down from the top of the screen. Here, notifications can be acted upon, left alone, or dismissed. Another nice touch regarding notifications is how they stack on the lock screen, and can be acted upon straight from there by sliding your finger across a particular notification, which unlocks the device and pops you into that app.

Reminders

Reminders is your regular old task list, with a twist. It has the ability to use geolocation as a way to alert you to a task, when you either arrive somewhere, or leave. For instance, you could set a reminder pick up dinner when you leave your office. As you are walking to your car, your iPhone alerts you. It looks like everything I could want and more.

Camera

The improvements to the Camera app have me fairly excited. There will be a software button you can tap from the lock screen to jump immediately into the camera. From there, you can now pinch to zoom, tap & hold to lock auto-exposure and auto-focus, and even use the volume up button as a shutter release.

After you take a shot, you can also do basic editing, such as rotation, cropping, red-eye correction, and an automatic touch-up process.

iMessage

iMessage is a new, free service, that allows you to send text, pictures, video, contacts, location data, etc to another iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad. It will be the default system in the Messages app, with SMS/MMS being a fallback if the recipient isn't an iOS user. This is definitely huge and I am sure the carriers aren't happy about Apple sucking away their precious overpriced texting plans.

Independence from Computers

By far the biggest announcement for iOS is tethering via USB will no longer be needed to sync and make backups. Heck, iTunes isn't even needed to set up your iDevice out of the box anymore. Just take it out, run through a set-up dialog, and you're on your way. This will be great for upgrading to a new device, and even more so, those buying an iPad as their only device.

Another perk is iOS updates will now occur over the air, and as delta updates. Delta updates are just the changes. Up until now, iOS updates have been the entire OS, which is kicking around 600+ MB these days.

iOS 5 is set for release this fall (I'd guess September). Check out the new features and a video.

iCloud

iCloud is a new service from Apple that moves the focus of syncing off of iTunes and onto a server. Jobs said, "The cloud is the truth", meaning that all your devices — Mac, PC, iPhone, iPod touch, & iPad — will be communicating with iCloud as their main source of information.

iCloud will store email, contacts, calendars, iTunes, App Store, & iBookstores purchases, documents, photos, and backups. The idea is that you make a change on one device, and it uploads to iCloud, and then is pushed to the other devices.

For example, take a picture on your iPhone, and it is on your iPad and within iPhoto on your Mac in mere moments.

iCloud looks to be a big deal, and it will be available this fall alongside iOS 5, free for everyone.

I was very glad to see iCloud is free, and MobileMe accounts are being rolled into it.

Like I said, it's a lot of information to absorb. The implications of iCloud are staggering, something I'll expound on in a later post. I am excited to get Lion in a month's time, and find myself impatient, as always, for the next version of iOS.

¶ On the Eve of WWDC

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Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference is tomorrow, and I think it may be one of the biggest game-changing events from Apple since the introduction of the iPhone.

Apple has already told us three main points of focus for the keynote address: Mac OS X Lion, iOS 5, and iCloud. We know a fair bit of Mac OS X Lion already from a previous demonstration and leaks from the developer community. Its focus is to take what Apple has learned from iOS back to the Mac. Things like Launchpad and expanded gesture support via trackpads will be the foundations to bridge the gap between traditional computers and touchscreen devices.

My brain tells me iOS 5 will just add on a few more features to what we currently know as iOS, but part of me can't help but feel that something really big may come with the latest version. A lot of talk is swirling around the topic of Apple moving away from the USB sync cable in a big way. Personally, I'd love to see day-to-day syncs occur over my home network, updating music, photos, movies, and apps without needing to physically connect to my Mac. However, for iOS updates in and of themselves, well, that's something I don't think I'd mind still needing the cable for if need be.

Where I think the big news for both Mac OS X Lion and iOS 5 will really be is iCloud. We don't know much about iCloud. What can be said with a fair amount of certainty is iCloud will be able to stream your iTunes music purchases. Apple's recent deals with music publishers have all but guaranteed that.

I'm hoping iCloud will be more than just music. I want it to take the promise of MobileMe to the next step. I want iCloud to be the new syncing hub for my iDevices, and to take much of that weight off of iTunes. MobileMe currently does a nice job of handling my personal email, and syncing my contacts, calendars, and bookmarks. The area MobileMe still lacks in is handling my files. iDisk is terrible. Contrast this with Dropbox, which is seamless and amazing.

I'd like iCloud to be Apple's Dropbox. One place I run into this desire is iWork. It is so hard to keep a Pages document up to date between my Mac and iPad. Both integrate with iDisk, but crudely just makes duplicates of the file. The user has to keep track of which one is the newest. Throw in iWork on the iPhone now, and it is an even bigger mess.

It'd be great if a Pages document could be put into iCloud, and that one file can be accessed from my Mac, iPhone, and iPad, with changes saved to iCloud automatically. And giving the file versioning support would be even better. Just. Like. Dropbox.

I really think iCloud will be the defining announcement tomorrow. The clock is ticking.

"We Are South Dakota"

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[…] I am a South Dakotan, we are South Dakotans. We don’t give up. We always keep fighting because we don’t know it any differently.

Heather has been a friend of mine since kindergarten. We've known each other most of our lives. And now she is a journalist for my hometown paper. In case you haven't been following along, my hometown is about to undergo its first flood in 59 years.

I am proud to be a South Dakotan.

Pixelmator 2 Sneak Preview

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My favorite image editor, Pixelmator, debuted a sneak preview of their next major release, Pixelmator 2. There is a lot of amazing stuff happening in this release that brings it closer to a Photoshop replacement for many users. At the very least, I think Pixelmator 2 will certainly seal the deal on surpassing Photoshop Elements.

Pixelmator 2 adds a ton of new and improved brushes. The crown jewel among new features looks to be Content-Aware Fill, which is something that the world first saw in Photoshop CS5. Like I said, Pixelmator 2 will probably satisfy most people's need for Photoshop, at a fraction of the price.

Speaking of price, Pixelmator 2 will be a free upgrade for those who have purchased Pixelmator in the Mac App Store. If you owned Pixelmator previous from the pre-Mac App Store era, I would suggest moving over to the Mac App Store version now, as the price is $30 once again for a limited time to encourage folks to get on board with the Pixelmator team's decision to sell only via the Mac App Store. After a little while, the price will return to $60.

Also, if you don't currently have Pixelmator, but think you may want it, it'd be a good idea to pick it up now.

iWork Apps for iOS Go Universal

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Apple updated its iOS version of the iWork suite with new file management and iPhone & iPod touch user interfaces across the board. I currently only have Pages, so I installed the newly universal app on my iPhone 4 to give it a whirl.

Let's just say it's bittersweet.

Pages on the iPhone looks very nice and operates well given the constraint on screen real estate. That said, I'm not going to write a novel on my iPhone. Heck, I'm not going to write a full page document on my iPhone unless the situation were critical.

This all being said, Pages will be handy for the occasional edit. And that's where I think this app fits on the iPhone. Creating very brief documents to send out on the go, or making quick edits and sending them out.

I like Pages on the ipad and find it very usable for brief document creation. The iPhone interface should be a nice companion.

I can't speak for Keynote or Numbers, but just from the screenshots, Keynote on the iPhone looks like it could be handy in the same capacity as Pages. The Numbers screenshots look downright atrocious on the iPhone.

For $10 each, the apps are a bargain, especially if you find you only need one or two of them.

"Logical Punctuation".

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Slate Magazine details the rising popularity of logical punctuation. To be honest, I didn't even know such a thing existed until today. It just so happens that I often write using logical punctuation, then question myself, look up what is supposed to go inside quote marks and what goes outside. Let's face it, American style is inconsistent and slightly befuddling.

I'll be using logical punctuation from now on.

{via Daring Fireball}