Author: William Gallagher

Enough already: Omni Group also updates OmniOutliner

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omnioutliner
It’s a small update compared to the OmniFocus and OmniGraffle ones announced today but also I use OmniOutliner so I’m going to be getting this when it drops too.

Wait. Makes a mental note:

1) Get iOS 8
2) Get OmniFocus 2 for iPad
3) Update OmniOutliner for iPad
4) Update TextExpander for iPhone and iPad
5) Install TextExpander keyboard for iPhone and iPad
6) Update 1Password

I’d best get on with some work before iOS 8 drops then, hadn’t I?

For once there are no more real details about the OmniOutliner for iPad update: I found out via a tweet that just said it “will fix compatibility issues with iOS 8 and restore ‘Dark Mode'”. (Ken Case, @kcase, 17 September 2014). But you can read much more about OmniOutliner on my review covering the iPad and Mac versions or you could horse’s mouth it on the official site. With videos.

John Gruber on the Apple Watch

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When the prices of the steel and (especially) gold Apple Watches are announced, I expect the tech press to have the biggest collective shit-fit in the history of Apple-versus-the-standard-tech-industry shit-fits. The utilitarian mindset that asks “Why would anyone waste money on a gold watch?” isn’t going to be able to come to grips with what Apple is doing here. They’re going to say that Jony Ive and Tim Cook have lost their minds. They’re going to wear out their keyboards typing “This never would have happened if Steve Jobs were alive.” They’re going to predict utter and humiliating failure…

And then people will line up around the block at Apple Stores around the world to buy them. I think Apple Watch prices are going to be shockingly high — gasp-inducingly, get-me-to-the-fainting-couch high — from the perspective of the tech industry. But at the same time, there is room for them to be disruptively low from the perspective of the traditional watch and jewelry world. There’s a massive pricing umbrella in the luxury watch world, and Apple is aiming to take advantage of it.

Apple Watch: Initial Thoughts and Observations – John Gruber, Daring Fireball (16 September 2014)

I read a comment the other day that the technology press is an oddly conservative group. I think so. It feels as if every time something new comes out it either gets slammed or exalted and then later positions quietly reverse. I’m thinking of when the iPhone came out and Apple was mocked; you don’t see so many technology sites mentioning their initial reports now. I’m also thinking of the fairly countless times a Microsoft or Samsung or Dell or generic Android device has been lauded and now you can’t even remember their name. And you didn’t buy them.

Gruber has a long piece examining the Apple Watch and in a small part about how it will be seen by this tech press. I think he’s actually quite down on the watch; for all his praise, he’s clear that he expects it to do more than Apple has announced so far or “Apple is in deep trouble”.

I like the watch more than he does. I like it a lot, I’m impressed, I’m buying.

But Apple’s always claimed to be at the intersection between technology and the arts, a spot and a phrase I rather like, where Gruber makes a case that it’s somewhere else. Somewhere more. The intersection of technology, arts, fashion and watches. With technology more in the background. I don’t know that I’m persuaded, I don’t know that it matters, but I think he’s right that it will be most visible in the pricing of the Apple Watch when it finally comes out.

Launching today: OmniGraffle 2 for iPad

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Seriously, every time I see the name I wonder what Graffle means. I’m not certain I can really explain what the app does, I think it’s the kind of software that you know when you need it – and then when you use it, you understand why it’s so acclaimed. But here’s the official description:

OmniGraffle can help you build anything — from a rough draft of a new app idea to a gorgeous presentation for executives’ eyes. Create impressive, best-in-show Graffle documents with mounds of useful gizmos and gadgets inside the app. Use layers and canvases, shapes, lines, pictures; anything to get your point across.

OmniGraffle. Diagramming worth a thousand words – The Omni Group

I don’t have it and I’ve not used it.

I just tend to be rather pro Omni apps because of how extremely good OmniOutliner and superbly extremely good OmniFocus is. I also like their OmniPresence, though partly just because I love the name.

Take a look at The Omni Blog, though, for details of the new OmniGraffle 2 for iPad which launches as soon as iOS 8 does. If it is to diagramming what OmniOutliner is to outlining and especially that OmniFocus is to task management – and if you need to make diagrams – then it’s probably right up there in the must-buy category.

Launching today: OmniFocus 2 for iPad

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I lied to you. I said that the instant, the instant that OmniFocus 2 for iPad is out, I’m buying it. My heart was telling the truth: OmniFocus 1 for iPad has been that useful and the version 2 releases for the Mac and iPhone are great, I will be buying.

But OmniFocus 2 for iPad requires iOS 8 and until you have that, you can’t even see it in the App Store. I don’t know if it’s there yet: I can’t see it because I don’t have iOS 8.

The new iOS 8 is coming today and is likely to drop around 6pm UK time. By when I’ll be off working for the evening.

So let me amend all this to say that the instant, the instant I’m back from the work I’m doing, if iOS 8 is out then I’m getting that free upgrade immediately and if OmniFocus 2 for iPad is therefore revealed in App Store, I’m buying that instantly, instantly.

Not as pithy as my original line, is it?

While we wait, there are more details on The Omni Group blog which says in part:

Beyond its new design, OmniFocus 2 for iPad offers two great new iOS 8 extensions, interactive notifications so you can immediately complete or snooze a reminder, improved searching, and background syncing. And, of course, all of the great features pioneered in the original iPad app, such as the built-in Forecast and Review perspectives.

OmniFocus 2 will be available for just $29.99, and its Pro upgrade will be available as an optional in-app purchase for $19.99.

For those of you who purchased the first version of OmniFocus for iPad, we have a very special deal: we appreciate the support you’ve given us through the years, and we’re showing our appreciation in a very concrete way by giving you the $19.99 Pro upgrade for free.

Introducing OmniFocus 2 for iPad – Ken Case, The Omni Group (17 September 2014)

I do like how well this company treats its customers: the upgrade pricing is unnecessary, given that I would still just buy it, but obviously very welcome.

Small but gorgeously formed: OmniFocus gets Extensions

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If you have an iPhone or an iPad, just look at this:

New_OmniFocus_extensions_-_iPhone

One of the good things about OmniFocus is that you don’t tend to spend all day in it. You don’t go in, look at your next task, do it and then pop back for the next. It’s like you stock up your head with the things you need to do today and then you toddle off. But it’s handy to be able to check quickly and that’s what is going on there.

That’s the notification screen you get from swiping down on an iPhone. You can swipe down without unlocking the phone so it’s pick up phone, one swipe, read your OmniFocus tasks, done.

This Today view, as Apple calls it, has been around since at least iOS 7 but I can’t be certain when it started because I use it so rarely that I’ve forgotten. This is going to change now.

More details on The Omni Group blog.

Get this right now, right now: 1Password for iOS goes free

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I believe this is unheard of and I believe you should be getting it now rather than reading this. Get it now. Hurry.

1Password-4-LogoLook, I got my copy in a sale several years ago and it was a bargain price but it was still a price. When I learnt that it was free, I actually didn’t believe it. You know how the App Store doesn’t show you a price after you’ve bought something? It only and forever shows the word ‘Open’? Often I like that, especially if the app was expensive and has now dropped a lot in price. But it means it’s quite difficult to check these things out to be sure that they’re true.

Listen to me, I sound like I still don’t believe it. To put this in one perspective, free is just a £6.99 drop. But to put it in another, I’ve used 1Password a minimum of once every single day – every single day – since I got it around 2009.

It’s a password manager that creates strong passwords and then securely enters them for you. So on the one hand you’re never going to use ‘123456789’ as your password. And on the other, going to websites and logging in to them is now very fast. One tap and I’m at the BBC Radio Previews website, 1Password is popping my username and password in, and I’m off to the races.

That’s a feature that is going to get even better in iOS 8, which arrives today, and the new version of 1Password which will arrive at about the same time. That’s going to be a free upgrade for me, as an existing user, and it will be a free upgrade for you as an existing user – if you go get this bizarre free offer while it lasts.

Very nice: Microsoft OneNote adds superb iOS 8 feature

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The new iOS 8 for iPhone and iPad – which will be available for free from tomorrow – includes a new feature called Extensions. And one Extension is a Sharing one that Microsoft has leapt on for its OneNote app.

If you use iPhone or iPad at the moment, you know that there is usually a Share button somewhere on the screen: it looks like a rectangle with an up arrow coming out of it. When you tap that, you get the option to share whatever is on your screen with anybody you like via email, for instance. Or AirDrop. If you’re looking at a photo you can Share it to your own photo library.

Now you will be able to share it right into OneNote. See something, write something, watch anything, tap and pop it straight into OneNote. It is a great feature from iOS 8 and it is really well adopted by Microsoft.

I’d say that I can only hope Evernote does the same thing but there is more to it than hope: you can be pretty sure that Evernote will. My Share button is going to get crammed with this stuff.

Not including OneNote. I don’t use OneNote. But it’s good touches like this that would make me think about it. Have a look at all this in action in Microsoft’s video.

Staring at my iPhone and iPad screens waiting for tomorrow to start

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Tomorrow sees the public release of iOS 8. I’m actually blanking on why I’m so keen; it’s ages since I saw what it would bring – wait, there’s one definite thing, there’s a great change to Siri that I want.

Specifically this: when I’m driving and the iPhone is plugged in, I will be able to talk to Siri without pressing a button first. I talk to Siri a lot. I mean, a lot. It’s like I have no friends.

Or at least no friends in the car with me who will also remember everything I tell it to. I add reminders to OmniFocus via Siri about once a minute when I’m driving. I think that driving just frees up part of my brain and let’s these things out.

Now I’m thinking that I’m not very safe on the roads.

But I’m also thinking of OmniFocus. It’s been confirmed that the new version for the iPad has been approved by Apple and will be released on the App Store tomorrow.

So just as it was with iOS 7 and OmniFocus 2 for iPhone, I will be updating to iOS 8 and instantly going to the App Store to buy OmniFocus 2 for iPad.

I’m just telling you this because I’m enthused and I’ll alone, not even Siri to talk to. Sob..

Love at first iteration: gaming your way to a partner

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I adore dating companies because they are so fascinating: if a dating business does its job well, it immediately loses two customers. I’m a nut for romances anyway so on the one hand you have the delicate tinderbox of when two people meet but then on the other you have a business that might have to fail in order to succeed. Or even survive.

Then with online dating there’s the fact that it was once something you wouldn’t admit to. (You’d go on ITV’s Blind Date and be matched up by Cilla Black, fine, but you wouldn’t admit to using online dating, nooo.)

Plus online dating seems a bit geeky, somehow. I know it isn’t and we all know how deeply personal and intimate technology can be – friendships are made and lost on Twitter – and as writers it can’t shock us that the typed word can have so much power. But the notion of ticking boxes and saying your ideal partner must have GSOH, it’s geekily clinical.

Amy Webb, who I just realise has quite an appropriate surname given how she’s written about using the web to find love, has, er, written about using the web to find love. But Brain Pickings describes her as “mathematically-driven” and Webb went full-on, geek-out analytical:

After a series of bad dates following a major heartbreak, [Webb] decided to take a quantitative approach to the playing field and started systematically recording various data points about her dates, revealing some important correlations. After one particularly bad date, she decided to formalize the exercise and wrote down everything that was important to her in a mate — from intellectual overlap to acceptable amount of body hair — eventually coming up with 72 attributes that she was going to demand in any future date. She then broke down these attributes into two tiers and developed a scoring system, assigning specific points to each. For 700 out of a maximum possible 1800, she’d agree to have an email exchange; for 900, she’d go on a date; for 1,500, she’d consider a long-term relationship.

Love in the Age of Data: How One Woman Hacked her Way to Happily Ever After – Maria Popoca, Brain Pickings (31 January 2013)

The full piece on Brain Pickings includes a page from Webb’s handwritten notes (which curiously includes a bit saying “year: 2050” and also “have to get military experience” which all feels like a different story altogether). And it recounts how Webb could’ve stopped there but instead took the next logical approach and analysed herself.

She also analysed the statistics of women on online dating and, actually, some of that is really depressing. I’m a man and statistically I am supposed to prefer blondes, I’m supposed to be turned off by powerful women. I don’t like this bit. But I really like how Webb ripped all this online dating apart to get the guy of her dreams – and, spoiler, she did it – and in doing so really revealed a lot about us.

Online dating firms claim to have these great personality-matching algorithms but Webb shows how they can of course only go by what we tell them. And, worse, what the other person tells them.

She found ways to get around that artifice, perhaps by creating artifice of your own but still. She broke down online dating into what works – and as you read what she concludes, you’re going to be thinking about yourself. Specifically, about yourself on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus and all the rest. Never mind dating, what she’s found is alternately useful and eye-opening about the image we unconsciously present of ourselves.

Do read the full Brain Pickings piece for, as ever, Popova has written a really good article about all this. But then go read Webb’s book: Data, A Love Story: How I Gamed Online Dating to Meet My Match.