Minimal Mac: Archive

I wanted to take a moment out to give a warm thanks to Don at ScreenCastsOnline for being this weeks RSS Feed Sponsor.

ScreenCastsOnline is the place to go for full, detailed, and comprehensive video training on all aspects of the Mac and iOS including any of the third-party applications you can think of. It has been an essential and affordable resource for me and my business. Sign up and I’m sure you will feel the same.

Mar 30, 20122 notes

The simple and smart feed reader that filters the slowly updated feeds from your feed subscriptions and keeps them from getting lost in the fast river of high volume blogs and news.

Interesting concept and approach. IPhone only for now. The app store link on the page is non-US. The US version of the app is here.

Mar 29, 20122 notes

Dragging and dropping is a great way to get stuff done on your Mac, but DragonDrop makes it even better. DragonDrop lets you set down what you’re dragging, leaving you free to find your destination without worrying about keeping the mouse button held down.

I mentioned DragonDrop a few weeks back on Minimal Mac and it got a rave response. Only one problem, I was premature. It had not been approved by Apple.

Well, it is out now and it is great. I have been using this several times a day for weeks. This is the sort of feature I could easily see Apple building into the OS in the future. It is so much more useful. Just check out the video on the site to see for yourself.

You can download a trial version to check it out , and if you like it, you can unlock it for just $4.99.

Mar 29, 20126 notes

It sound so obvious, but I remember being shocked to use a Mac, and somehow have this sense I was having a keen awareness of the people and values of those who made it.

I think that people’s emotional connection to our products is that they sense our care, and the amount of work that has gone into creating it.

This wonderful interview with Sir Jony came out around the time I was deep into dealing with other things. I just now got around to getting into my Instapaper queue to read it. So, so, good.

Also, It seems like this is the secret cause to almost anything. If you care about something enough, and pour your heart and soul into it, others will as well.

Mar 28, 201213 notes

Neat tip if you use iCal.

(Submitted by Max K)

Mar 28, 201211 notes

We’re all busy. We’ve all taken on too much. Saying yes to less is the way out.

Hell Yeah!

If you sense a theme happening here you are probably correct.

Mar 27, 201219 notes

Every so often this post I wrote in September of 2010 about digital calendar paradigms pops back up. (It features a horrible design mockup of a calendar app I would like to see for my Mac.) This go around I think I am going to blame Patrick Rhone for the article’s resurgence.

Yep. Mea culpa.

No, there’s still no perfect OS X calendar app — hell not even a good iPad one — but we are getting damned close on the iPhone. This near perfection comes in the form of one app and one iOS system level service working in harmony: Agenda and Siri.

I don’t have Siri on my phone so I can’t comment. That said, while I love Agenda, it too suffers from a problem that was also pointed out almost two years ago now by Marco Arment:

I don’t care about present-and-future items with equal granularity. I wouldn’t mind seeing today in an hour-by-hour view, but I don’t need the same granularity when showing events three days from now.

We are still dealing with the same tired old idea even in Agenda. That being, that all events are equal. I would argue, as Marco does, that they are not. Marco also points out another problem I agree with which is:

I don’t care about the past.

Bingo. In all calendar month and week views I have seen, you get the current month or week. I would like, instead, to see one week or month starting from today. The closest I’ve seen to this idea being executed well is 37 Signals built in Basecamp and Backpack calendars which show you six weeks out starting with the current week. I’m amazed that no calendaring app I have seen has implemented this or something very similar.

So, therefore, I must disagree with Ben that we are close. Perhaps on the input side things have gotten better for those that have Siri. But on the output side, things are much the same as they always have been.

In fact, I really surprised that no one, NO ONE, has taken the final idea seed Marco planted two years ago and run with it:

The ideal view1 would contain today’s events in great detail, then events from the next few days in less detail, then an overview of events in the next 3-5 weeks.

Seriously. Developers. Build this.

Mar 27, 20129 notes

What was that? I thought I heard you say you were looking for a cloud based library for all of your DRM free ePub books. One that would allow you to read them on just about any compatible browser including iOS and Android. One where the books operate in much the same way when loaded in said browser as they would in iBooks or Kindle. Oh, and you said you wanted to be able to download these things for offline reading too?

OK, great. Got it. Click the link above and you can have all of that and more.

(HT Garrick van “Awesome!”)

Mar 27, 201227 notes

ScreenCastsOnline produces and delivers new video tutorials every week covering a wealth of information and applications about both Mac and iOS.

My job as a Mac Consultant is to stay up to date on the latest features and many applications that my clients use. My membership to ScreenCastsOnline has more than paid for itself. There are litterly hundreds of tutorials covering just about any Mac related subject you can think of. The past week alone has given us everything from MobileMe iDisk migration strategies to a iPhoto for iOS two parter a three part master class on iBooks Author.

With membership plans starting at only $2.60 per month, it’s an affordable value with genuine returns. If there is anything you have been looking to learn on your Mac, quickly and deeply, this is the best way to do it.

Mar 26, 20123 notes

With all of the book excitement this week, I forgot to mention this.

Basil is a new cooking app from my friend Kyle at TightWind. As the head cook at my household, I can’t even begin to explain that value of a good cooking app to me. I’ve been using it for a few weeks now in beta and I’m here to report that Basil is fantastic. Here is the basic idea:

Basil is for saving recipes from the web, organizing and cooking them. You can save recipes from the biggest sites with one tap, and your recipes are always organized, because Basil auto-tags them with the main ingredients and makes it quick to add the meal and cuisine type, too. That way, you don’t have to waste time categorizing your recipes. You can spend it doing what you really want to do—cook.

It is full of thoughtful little touches that make it extremely easy and fun to use. The text is big and readable from a distance. There is a built-in context aware timer feature (so if a step mentions that something takes a certain amount of time that phrase becomes a timer). You can easily sort and search through your saved recipes. And lots more.

It is clear that Kyle designed every single detail of this app for practical simplicity. It is quite clear that the goal was to make something that gave a home cook only what was needed, in the best way possible, and then it gets out of the way of the work.

It’s only $3.99 on the app store which is a steal for such a handy app if you ask me.

Mar 25, 20127 notes

I just wanted to take some time out on this beautiful Friday afternoon (at least it is here) to thank PopClip for sponsoring Minimal Mac’s RSS Feed this week. It’s the faster, easier way to work with text on your Mac. No need to wait for more cats, bring a bit of iOS goodness to your Mac today.

Mar 23, 2012

Mar 22, 2012215 notes

The Farmer

I was on a flight to Washington DC. This was the first leg. Minneapolis to Milwaukee. I was rushing out, last minute, to be with my father. A medical emergency. His heart had decided to fail. The doctors were unsure why. He had been admitted for further testing and, well, to keep him alive. Not my best day at all.

My row mate was an attractive young lady. Early thirties would be my best guess. Long dark thick hair pulled up and back to keep it out of the way, lest the strands have their way with the frame of her face. And that face! Sturdy. Midwestern. A lesson in beauty through strength. I could see the glimmer of stories unfold before she even began to tell them.

Small talk ensued. I told her about the reasons for for my trip to DC. She offered her heartfelt concern. I wished not to dwell and asked her about her trip — as much out of distraction as interest. I’m glad I did. She too was headed out to DC.

“What is bringing you out to DC?” I asked.

She explained that she was a Farmer. Had been all her life. Like her Father. She lived in a small town she was certain I had never heard of. In the northwest corner of Iowa. She worked a piece of her father’s five hundred acres. She belonged to an independent farmer advocacy group and was going out to DC as part of this to talk to legislators about various issues. This was her first time doing so. She was excited about the trip and experience.

I said, “Wow. That’s awesome. I never would have pegged you as a farmer but I have tremendous respect for it. What do you grow?”

She explained they had decided to start experimenting with organics on her portion. They had some preliminary success with a couple of crops and were expanding this year to more. She explained in laypersons terms the various challenges and why it is so different yet exciting. That her father had even started experimenting a bit with the animals he raised too.

“I don’t pretend to know much about farming but I have read a bit and know what tremendously hard work it is.”, I stated. “I mean, especially as an independent family farmer. From Big Agra to diminishing returns you must be beset on all sides. What keeps you doing it?”

“You gotta love the land.”, she said. Her whole tone of voice and body language changed when she said it. There was an unassuming yet palpable passion behind every word. “Not just the way it looks. The way it feels to be in it. To be a part of it. I wake up before sunrise every morning just itching to get up to my neck in it. The smell too. I smell like shit all day but that shit is part of the land and the land needs it as much as it needs me. I go to bed each night broken, exhausted, yet thankful. Not just thankful for the three showers I need to wash it off me but for the chance to do it all over again tomorrow. I love the land and my place within it. You have to.”

“You have to love the land…”

This farmer realizes that the relationship with her work, like any good relationship is, and should be, reciprocal. That the work, the land, would not be as good without her commitment to it. And, in turn, it returns that commitment to her. And, because of her intimacy with it, it returns that much more.

This. This passion. This love for what we are born to do. Whatever that is for each of us. Like her, our days should be filled with it. Every moment. We should wake up each day inching to get up to our necks in it. To be covered with it. To be a part of it. To be intimate with it.

As a writer, I have to love the words. I desire to wake each day and get up to my neck in them. I want to be covered with their stench. I want to end each day broken and exhausted from them yet anxious in the anticipation of my return to them tomorrow. And, by loving the words, they return that commitment to me. I have to love the words…

How about you? How about your land? Do you love it? Do you need it as much as it needs you? Why? Why not?

Want to know what you should be doing with your life? Find the shit you want to be covered in. Start there.

Minimal Mac

April 2012

38 posts

March 2012

38 posts