The Song

I love Apple’s holiday ads. When is the rest of the industry going to figure it out? Talking about gigabytes and clock-cycles doesn’t mean anything to 99% of the world. Showing how you can take a few pieces of technology and rock your grandmother, however, is an entirely different story.

Sponsor: Dropzone 3




This week I’m welcoming a new sponsor to MacSparky.com, Dropzone 3. Dropzone is a productivity tool that enhances drag and drop on your Mac. Drag files onto the menu item and a beautifully designed and animated grid of all your actions opens. Share with services such as AirDrop, Imgur, FTP, Amazon S3, Facebook, Twitter and many others. Move and copy files, launch applications and even develop your own actions using the powerful Ruby based scripting API.

Dropzone 3 is a huge update to the app that takes Dropzone to a whole new level. You can now add actions to your grid faster thanks to the new quick add menu or by dropping folders or apps onto the ‘Add to Grid’ area. Quickly reorganise your actions using drag and drop and delete them by holding the option key. The new in-grid progress bars let you keep track of task progress. Also see how tasks are progressing at a glance in the new animated menu item.

Drop Bar is another great new feature – Drag files you know you’ll need later onto the Drop Bar area of the grid to stash them tempororily. Drag stacks on top of each other to combine them. You can even drag a stack onto another Dropzone action.

In Dropzone 3, the developer API has undergone a major overhaul. You can now duplicate existing actions and tweak them to your liking. A new bundle system lets you distribute needed libraries or tools along with your action. Actions can now be auto-updated as they are improved. With a little Ruby knowledge you’ll be thinking of your own uses in no time – check out the developer documentation here.

A major update for Dropzone 3 has just been released that brings full support for OS X Yosemite and adds new features such as the ability to activate Dropzone by dragging files directly to the top of the screen and the ability to upload videos to YouTube. There are also many bug fixes and improvements, such as completely rewritten and improved Amazon S3 uploading and an enhanced developer API.

I’ve been using Dropzone for awhile. I’ve got actions to move files to specified folders and AirDrop to my other devices. Also, as a frequent full-screen user on my laptop, I use the DropBar all the time. Since I’m already reliant on this application, when the developer contacted me about sponsoring the site, I jumped at it. Learn more here.

∞

Home Screens: Mark Pouley


One of the first friends I ever made at Macworld Expo many years ago was Mark Pouley (Twitter). Mark is a photographer that lives and works in the Pacific Northwest, one of my favorite parts of the United States. Mark is a wonderful guy and has a great eye for photography. Mark’s complete portfolio is available to view at twinlakesimages.com. You really should click on that link and check out some of Mark’s shots. I’m thinking about hanging this one in my office. Alright Mark, show us your home screen.


What are some of your favorite apps?

On the phone I use Downcast daily to listen to podcasts on my commute.

Tweetbot is always running and is the app used most on the phone.

I love The Photographer’s Ephemeris (to determine where and when the moon and sun will line up in my location) and I use it very often when I’m out shooting landscapes with my DSLR to line up shots and know when to be in a location.

I shoot with the phone, but edit on my iPad with my favorite photo processing app is Snapseed.

I’m slowly integrating Lightroom Mobile on the iPad into my work flow, but that has been a slow process. I’d like to see a few more upgrades to the app before I think it will be really useful.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Intellectually I know the app shouldn’t be on my phone. I know I shouldn’t even have an account. I agree with all the reasons people hate it, but Facebook is my guilty pleasure. It’s how I keep in touch with family and friends and I’ve reconnected with high school friends I haven’t seen or talked to in years. 

It’s okay Mark. No. Really. -David

How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?

Even though I have a post graduate degree I don’t believe I can count that high. It is a very, very big number.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

The best feature of the iPhone is the portable power. It is remarkable to me that I can do so much computing and real photography with a small device that fits in my pocket. I take it for granted, but I can’t imagine what life would be like now without it. The iPad has to be its convenience. Whether I’m viewing photos, reading, checking mail, playing games, it is so easy to carry around and flip open to get to work quickly and easily. The phone and pad have changed the way I work and spend my leisure time.

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?

I think it is coming, but not soon enough. I would integrate the Beats music streaming service with iTunes match and offer the service at a killer subscription price. I can’t wait to have my entire music collection combined with on-demand streaming on my phone. I was slow to join the subscription streaming band wagon, but I now use Spotify daily, and love it, but I also own a huge library of music. I want seamless integration of all of my music at a great price. 

Anything else you’d like to share?

My switch to using Macs in 2007 is what kicked off my journey into photography. The computer was so easy to use it really kick-started my creativity. I feel like the iPhone and iPad are instrumental now in the work I do, but I also think it is still the early days of what we are going to be able to do with portable computing and I’m excited to see what is coming around next corner.

Thanks Mark.

Workflow: iOS Automation

I’ve been teasing the Workflow app on Mac Power Users for too long. Now you can buy it (iTunes). Given the way Apple’s been so wibbly-wobbly about iOS lately, I’d recommend buying it right now.

Imagine OS X’s Automator on your iPhone and iPad and you are pretty close to Workflow. It has a series of actions it can perform that can be stacked (yes, like LEGO) that allows you to create some pretty powerful workflows. There are a lot of available actions. In fact, there are too many to list here. As an example. Here are the text based actions.


In addition to building these workflows, you can activate them through the Workflow extension or Launch Center Pro. For awhile I’ve been wondering, what is the next Drafts? What is the next app that will completely change the way I use my iOS devices. Workflow is a contender for this title. If you’ve got any interest in automating iOS, this app will solve a lot of problems for you. 

If you’re not an automation geek, the app ships with a nice collection of prebuilt workflows that can do things like share your availability, make a GIF image, upload your last photo to Dropbox or AirDrop a screenshot. It can also give you your ETA to home or walking directions to the nearest coffee shop, read a QR code or calculate a tip. There is also a mechanism to share workflows so I suspect we’re going to have even more interesting user workflows in the not so distant future. The app is 40% off for a limited time so go get it.


Wibbly-Wobbly Apple

There has been a lot of news lately about Apple reversing course with various apps using  extensions and widgets in iOS 8. At WWDC a few months ago Apple (or more precisely the engineering branch of Apple) announced a lot of new toys they’d thrown in iOS 8 to make it easier for developers to extend the experience of their apps to notification center, other applications, and cloud based storage. To me, and a lot of other people, it felt like exactly what iOS needed. 

Then a group of smart developers started building things with these new tools We got Today View widgets that could open apps, calculate a tip, and otherwise increase the functionality of our iThingies. More developers dug in on the cloud accessibility with, perhaps one of the best new apps being Panic’s Transmit which gave us the ability to move files between different cloud services at will.

Apple approved these apps, put them up for sale, and, in some cases, even featured them. We paid money for the apps and now a bunch of them are being required to remove the innovative features we bought them for at risk of being pulled from the App Store.

So how did Apple get so bi-polar on extensibility in iOS? I’d argue they’ve always had warring factions over this issue but the battles have always been behind closed doors in Cupertino. Now it’s public. Now we actually see some really great functionality only to have the carpet yanked from under us. If Microsoft or Google were changing its mind publicly like this, all of us Apple geeks would be giggling about it.

There is no doubt in my mind who should win. I think the extensions mentioned above only make iOS better. They are all in applications that users must download and extensions that users must enable. I can’t see how the “this will confuse users” argument holds any weight since these all require action by the user to enable. If I found myself sitting at Tim Cook’s desk, I’d say let them through. I’m sure developers are taking the iOS 8 tools to places the iOS development team didn’t anticipate. However, I think this is something to celebrate, not restrict.

There is a separate, equally troubling question arising from all of this. How is this all happening in public? Regardless of whether or not Apple agrees with me about what developers can and can’t do, somebody needs to decide, predictable standards should be identified, and we should move on. Let’s hope the days of wibbly-wobbly changes like this are nearly over.

Sponsor: MindNode


This week MacSparky is sponsored by MindNode. If mind mapping sounds like hippy-nonsense to you, you’re wrong. Especially with these gorgeous displays in modern Macs and iThingies, mind mapping is a great way to visualize that stuff rattling around in your brain. 

Moreover, MindNode is an excellent place to get started. It has a simple, clean interface and syncs over iCloud with zero hassles. Using MindNode, I can start a mind map on my iPad, polish it up on my Mac, and then add a few nodes over lunch on my phone all without any file management. I keep MindNode in my iPad dock and spend time in the app every day as I plan ideas and big projects. Because everything syncs so easily I can noodle on these projects at any time from any device. Jumping into MindNode for little bursts of brainstorming allow me to properly cook all these ideas and projects before I start digging in on them. I’ve written about MindNode before. MindNode is an essential tool for me and if you haven’t got on the mind mapping bandwagon yet, go get yourself a copy and try it for yourself.