Author: William Gallagher

Prototypr for Mac (briefly) free

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You know how when you need something, it seems to be everywhere? I’m going to be working on an app and so everywhere I look I am reminded of this.

Sometimes it’s useful, as in references on various podcasts. Sometimes it isn’t, as in Community season 5, episode 8, “App Development and Condiments”.

Look out for it.

And then there are times when it’s handy. As in tonight, when there’s a Mac app called Prototypr that has briefly gone free. Usually retailing for £6.99, it’s for building a kind of demo version of your app idea: showing the screens and what it will look like without it actually being able to do anything.

It means you can try things quicker and get to the design you need sooner.

Have a look at Prototypr. I’ve not used it, but while we were talking, I was downloading it.

What to do when your computer slows down during a job

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Buy a Mac. Sorry, couldn’t resist.

Whatever type of computer you have, there comes a moment when you need to quickly do this particular thing or other and it is taking ages. I don’t know what happens now with Windows, but with a Mac it’s when you get that spinning beach ball.

Given that I keep saying you shouldn’t multitask, am I really going to say you should stay looking at that beach ball instead of going off to do something else?

A little bit.

Partly because, yes, multitasking is that bad for you. The time it takes you to switch over to a different task, mentally, is equal to the time it takes you to switch back and both times are huge. Much worse than you imagine.

So I would stare at the beach ball for a fair while before I’d be better off doing something else.

But there is another reason. Very often, if our computer is slow saving a Word document, say, then we’ll nip over to Mail on it. And now that’s slow. So we just open that graphic that we need to tweak in Photoshop. And what do you know, dammit, now Photoshop is slow.

Whatever was causing the original slow down, we are compounding it by turning to different tasks on our computer. So if we’d just stood sitting there, we wouldn’t be distracted, we wouldn’t be slowing down our computer and we wouldn’t therefore be getting frustrated at how everything seems slow now.

I just don’t know how long to give that.

I do know that sometimes I should really restart the whole machine and that if I do, things will work better. Taking the time to restart is hard but it can be worth it, you can repay that time soon.

But in the meantime, here’s a shorter answer to the problem: try a little patience, it’s worth the effort.

The Not-We

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If you should stop beating yourself up when you fail to get as much done as you planned, you should certainly pat yourself on the back for doing stuff. We don’t do that and if you want to really appreciate how important it is, how much it matters, then work with someone who fails.

Last month I did a thing that I reckoned would take me an hour’s research and up to two hours writing. No more. There are lots of reasons why I took it on, including that it was fun, but the fact that it would be swift was a big factor.

It wasn’t swift.

It required working with another writer and I thought I was ready for this. Even when they failed the first time, I shrugged: I knew what would happen. Sure enough, I got the predictable excuse email when they hadn’t done the work, the one you read going yeah, yeah, so when am I going to get it? The thing with predictable stuff is that they’re not surprising so I was narked but not surprised.

The nark/surprise ratio did not improve.

I don’t care about the excuse – if it were that someone had died, okay, but this wasn’t even at the level of pets chewing pages. I can well imagine that the writer has more important things to do. I can well agree too. She is far more important to the project than I am, far more, and she has more jobs to do in it than I ever will.

But all I see is that her job is to do what she agreed to do.

I think that’s simple and if you can’t do it, don’t agree. If you agreed but then can’t do it, say so.

I wasted a lot of time on that project and it was true waste: the waste where you are left waiting with nothing to do. It was brilliant for every other project I was working on, but I could’ve been working on those straight through if she’d just said.

All the stuff we do about being creatively productive is meant to help us, ourselves, we. You and me. We work better, we handle things better, we do more things better. But it also helps other people enormously when we do what we say we’ll do and we do it when we said we would.

And last month I was other people. I’ve left it five weeks in order to cool down about it and to make it so that I can convincingly say “no, no, it was this other project” if anyone from that gig reads this. I’m still not cool about it but no, no, it was this other project.

Photo Reminders for iOS (briefly) free

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What is this, sale night?

Actually, what is this? Photo Reminders for iOS is now (say it with me: briefly) reduced to free. But I’m not sure what it does. Maybe you have to be more visually minded than I am to appreciate it. If so, draw me a pitcher some time. Meanwhile, this is what it says it does:

Voice memos + Photos + Text
Ideal application for those who value their time.

“Photo Reminders” is the opportunity to make a reminder quickly and clearly about any event: a meeting, a birthday gift purchase, a concert, an important call or simply an evening walk with your pet.

It’s enough to * Choose the photo from the Photos app, * Make a photo or * Record a voice message”.

“Photo Reminders” enables to create reminders instantly, without spending time for the description of the forthcoming event, which is also convenient while driving.

How does “Photo Reminders” work?
For example, walking around the city, you can pay attention to the poster: premiere of the long-awaited movie. You get the phone, take a picture by the means of this application – at the necessary moment the program will inform you that it is time to buy tickets. The application remembers everything for you!

And here’s where you get it for (briefly) free.

Forget Con Air, this is AirCon

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I relish the details behind things we take for granted and this story is about how air conditioning is replete with details and history:

But when air conditioning was first invented in the 1800s, hardly anyone actually wanted it. It took more than 100 years for AC to really catch on. This innovation took a long road, which Salvatore Basile explores in his new book, Cool: How Air Conditioning Changed Everything.

“I think there were many people who thought, ‘God made bad weather so you should just put up with it.’ And I think the idea of dealing with heat was to ignore it,” Basile told me in a recent phone interview.

Eventually, air conditioning did win out and ended up changing a lot — from where people live in the United States to the architecture of our buildings to even the evolution of computers. The interview with Basile is below:

How air conditioning changed America forever – Susannah Locke, Vox.com (9 September 2014)

By the way, look at the address of the full feature. It’s “www.vox.com/2014/9/9/6124321/the-history-of-air-conditioning-is-more-interesting-than-it-sounds-i”. Apart from that errant i at the end, what I like is that this was almost certainly the original headline on the story. “The History of Air Conditioning is More Interesting Than It Sounds”. No surprise that it was changed to “How air conditioning changed America forever”.

Here’s the Salvatore Basile book.

MyScript Smart Note free (briefly)

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That’s script as in handwriting, not script as in coming soon to a cinema near you. MyScript Smart Note is for handwriting on iPads and I’ve no compulsion. Again, I enjoy typing.

But this isn’t really a sale as I think for it to be called that, the maker has to be selling it for something. And at the moment, MyScript Smart Note is free. Take a look on the App Store.

Talk to the Mac: Dragon Dictate on sale (briefly)

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I haven’t used it in centuries but those who do tell me that Dragon Dictate is very, very good. Not only in the way I would’ve imagined – that you can, you know, dictate into it – but also in that you can control it by voice. Nip up a paragraph, skip to the end of a page, right a bit, left a bit, fire.

I’m still not going to get it because I really enjoy typing but if you’ve been thinking about it, go get Dragon Dictate now for half price. Cult of Mac has a deal running where it costs $99.99 instead of $200.

…and one sad

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After 30 years, the original US version of Macworld magazine is to go out of print. It will continue online and the UK version is unaffected, it will still publish a print edition, but Macworld US is gone.

I’ve never written for the US one but I did have a column for a spell in the UK edition. It feels like another me from another life but it was there. So strange to think of that now.

Back when I was in computer magazines for a living, there was always rivalry between Macworld and MacUser. What I didn’t understand until right now when I looked it up – or maybe I’d just forgotten, it is a long time ago – is that MacUser began as a UK title. The title was then licensed to a US company and later, when that firm got out of the magazine business, another firm took it on. But they had also taken on Macworld and they weren’t going to keep both running. So whatever was Macworld US and whatever was MacUser US merged operations together and became Macworld.

But I worked for that US company. Ziff Davis. Long gone from magazines, which in some ways now seems prescient, it had a big advantage that even as I worked in the London office, I could request a copy of US magazines. I would request the US MacUser.

Back then, it was such a good read that I’d request it and I’d keep it. I remember moving house and having to decide the fate of many years’ worth off MacUser issues.

I can scare remember the days of having to wait a month for news and there is no magazine now that I regularly read.

I miss that experience. And as sad as I was when I learnt that my old mag, PC Direct, had closed down, tonight I am just that little bit sadder because MacUser as was, Macworld as it became, was just a damn good read for a long time.

One silly paper-based Apple story…

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I’ve been leaning toward the larger phone because I’m really curious about how a bigger screen would change my relationship to my iPhone. I really like my iPad and if I had some of those features in my pocket at all times, I may really like that. I’m so curious that I’ve made a mock-up with this template from Ars Technica. I printed the page, folded it around the 6 Plus size, and taped a stack of index cards to the back to give it the approximate thickness of the actual phone. I’ve carried it so far in my fancy work pants and my jeans. It fits fine in my pocket.

6 or 6 Plus? – David Sparks, MacSparky (10 September 2014)

Here’s the Ars Technica link if you really, really want to do this daft thing. I saw that they’d done it, I just didn’t think anyone would use it.

Sparks, who I might mock for this bit otherwise think is an interesting guy, explains more in his full piece and mentions the ribbing he’s had today.