Software

Software

NowDoThis and take it seriously

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There’s a new online To Do service called NowDoThis. Go to a website, type in your To Do list right there and watch it look at you. It sits there, the list on your screen in a nice font. And if you’ve included a time – such as “I will do press ups for 1 hour” – then it will also automatically include a countdown clock.

You can hit Done early or you can wait until the clock runs out but then it’ll sit there with a Time’s Up reminder and a ping. Click and you’re on to your next task and it sitting there on the screen, watching you.

If you’re wedded to something like Things, Asana or OmniFocus then it won’t work for you, it just looks you in the eye and backs away, defeated. But for fast turnaround tasks, it’s a strong prod. So long as you take it seriously and don’t do anything like this:

Screen Shot 2014-05-12 at 12.24.33

Excuse me, I’m off to make tea. I have to. It’s right there on my list. What, you thought I’d really do press-ups? You’re adorable, thank you.

OmniFocus clone on Android

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androidfocusOmniFocus – have I mentioned this To Do manager recently? Like, in the last hour? – is solely available for Macs, iPhones and iPads, nothing else. But as of this weekend, there is AndroidFocus: a completely unofficial Android version.

It’s not really OmniFocus, it’s more a quick way to enter or to see OmniFocus tasks on your Android phone. It has fewer features than the real iPhone one and you it depends on your having an account with the Omni Sync Server. That’s free but you get it when you buy a real OmniFocus. So if you are, say, a Mac user with an Android phone, this could be for you. Note that the Omni Group isn’t trying to get the clone removed but it does warn:

An app named AndroidFocus recently appeared in the Google Play Store. This app calls itself “An OmniFocus client for Android”, and can connect to an Omni Sync Server account in order to sync with the OmniFocus database that is stored there. To be clear, AndroidFocus is not an Omni Group product and we are unable to assist customers with using the app.

We believe that you should have control of your own data, and OmniFocus therefore uses an open file format just like the rest of our applications. Customers need to be aware, however, that reverse-engineering sync in the way that AndroidFocus appears to have done can make for unpredictable results. That means it’s theoretically possible that using AndroidFocus will cause data loss which our Support Humans are not equipped or able to help you recover from. For this reason we can’t recommend using AndroidFocus.

Using AndroidFocus with OmniFocus – Omni Group Support Document 

So it doesn’t do a lot and it could well break the next time the Omni Group changes anything or updates anything in the real OmniFocus. Yet still I would be buying this now if I had Android.

AndroidFocus official site and Google Play Store: £4.10 (UK), $6.99 (US)

Call it like it is. It’s crapware

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Apparently Samsung recently boasted that a feature of its latest phone (this was some minutes ago so there'll have been another latest phone since) was that it came with only 40 pre-installed apps instead of 50 or so. I don't know the details because I haven't the patience for Android – every time I see an Android phone that looks great, I use it for a mo and it feels like it'll be brilliant when it's finished – so I also didn't know how bad this crapware problem is.

Kinder people, or ones with stronger filters on their website than I have, tend to call it bloatware. It's the apps that come on your phone from the manufacturer and you can't get rid of them. I'm an iPhone user and I find it irritating that Apple won't let you delete any of the many apps it provides. Just taking a quick look now, I can see my iPhone 5 has about 22 and I'm using 12. The rest are tucked away in a folder but I can't delete them.

That's actually much more than I expected to find. I am including the Settings app plus the Phone one, the one that you use to make, like, actual phone calls. So there are ones without which it isn't a phone, I don't mind those. And I use the Camera, Photos, Mail, all sorts. But there are about 10 I simply never open. Stocks. Weather. All that.

Still, even if we said I never used any of them, that's 22 Apple pre-installed apps versus a whoo-hoo newsworthy 'only 40' Android ones. You would be hard-pressed to come up with another 20 or 30 apps that you could think a manufacturer would include but that's because you're smart and sensible. You wouldn't put, say, three text message apps on, would you?

You're not Samsung, plainly. Buy a new Samsung phone and you get Samsung's text message app. Fine. But you may also get one made by your mobile phone carrier and you definitely get Google Hangouts, which also does text messaging.

It's the same with many others and the argument in favour of it all is that you get choice. Bollocks. The apps are there because of deals and contracts that benefit the makers and not the customers. I've nothing against the makers getting benefits: if they don't, they cease to be companies. But at least let me swear at you once on the day I buy your phone and spend an hour deleting all the crapware.

Time magazine says:

Users aren’t completely powerless to fight back, at least. If you’re bothered by bloatware, you can go to Settings > Applications (or Apps on some phones), then swipe over to the “All” section. Tap on any app you don’t want, and press “Disable.” Ignore the message that says it may misbehave if it’s a built-in app. As long as it’s an actual app, represented by an icon in your app tray or on your home screen, you shouldn’t have any problems. But even this isn’t a perfect solution, because these apps are still hogging space on your device, and removing them is still a chore.

Friday Rant: The Ever-Sorrier State of Android Bloatware – Time magazine (9 May 2014)

Reportedly there is likely to be a special version of Android that is sold without bloatware. You'll have to pay extra, naturally. Wasn't there a version of Windows that came without the crap too? It is a funny world where the absence of something is a unique selling point and you get charged extra for it.

At least Android phones don't come with all those stickers on the front.

Scrivener on sale for 50% – but hurry

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I sound like an advert there. But hurry – stocks can’t last forever! Before I say “but you do have to be quick”, remember that Scrivener has gone on sale before. Usually only through bundles or other deals as it has today with MacUpdate, but it has gone on sale.

So presumably it will again and I loathe how the words “but hurry” work on our minds: a company sets a completely self-imposed deadline and it works. But every firm does that and this one has a great product which is briefly on sale. At time of writing you have one day and about 13 hours in which to buy Scrivener for 50% off.

 

scrivener-logo

 

Here’s what it is:

Scrivener is a powerful content-generation tool for writers that allows you to concentrate on composing and structuring long and difficult documents. While it gives you complete control of the formatting, its focus is on helping you get to the end of that awkward first draft.

Literature and Latte, makers of Scrivener

That’s a “yeah, but” kind of description: it does tell you something but it doesn’t convey much. It’s also a “yeah, and” kind of description because it doesn’t convey why you would want such a thing. So let me have a go, with one caveat.

I don’t have Scrivener.

I bought a copy for my wife Angela Gallagher and I tried it out with her. At first it felt like just another word processor but then its way of letting you throw thousands of things – text, articles, websites, images, anything – together into a project and sort it out was really impressive. I’m working on a book with someone and after lots of oddities in our email conversations where some chapters just wouldn’t arrive she’d have to resend them and it’d be out of order. Or often she rewrote some parts and sent me the new versions. I was really struggling to get a grip on what had been written and what was ready, what hadn’t and what wasn’t. Scrivener let me piece it all together in the right sequence and have an actual book at the end of it.

I’d have gone upstairs to my office iMac and bought my own copy there and then.

Except.

I am still working on this book. We are still working on it. Chapters go back and forth plus, the day I was doing this compiling of materials, I was doing it because I was going to stay with the writer and we needed to go over a lot of things.  You can’t collaborate in Scrivener. I had to take everything out and put it into Word so that we could work together and I could track changes. Actually, I put it into Word for her and Pages for me, but it couldn’t stay in Scrivener. Actually II, it was Scrivener that made it particularly easy to output the work to Word and Pages. Without it I’d be copying and pasting to this day. With it, the whole process felt relaxed and enjoyable.

So much so that I know I will buy Scrivener for my next project. But that’s not here yet.

All of which was by way of explaining to you why I feel I can enthuse about Scrivener as much as everybody else does, even though I haven’t got it. I was going to tell you all that and then go into why Scrivener is so good. But I think I’ve told you now.

So go take a look at the deal while the clock is running, okay? The regular price is £31.99 UK, $44.99 US so if you get in before the MacUpdate deal ends, you’ll have it for about £15.99 UK, $22.50 US. But you have to go now and you have to go via a deal on MacUpdate here.

Notability app briefly free

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Not only is Notability Apple’s App of the Week, it’s now free. These facts may be related but let’s go download it right now for iOS. 

UPDATE: it looks like I got this news very late – the app has been free for most of the week. Seriously, stop reading and go get it. We can find out together whether it’s worth the rave reviews it always gets.

Final Draft storm

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logo-finaldraft-wb_lo-res

Final Draft is the closest thing to an industry standard for film and television script writers: it’s a word processor that takes a lot of the repetitive formatting drudgery out of writing in this particular form. “Just add words” is the company’s strapline and most films you can think of the last very many years will have been written in Final Draft.

But.

You should see this software. For all its power, it looks ancient and I do very much believe that you’re going to be face to nose with an application for twelve hours a day, it would be good if you liked looking at it. If it just looked like it could do all you need. Then the company irked me beyond all reason with its iPad version. From my own book, The Blank Screen (UK edition, US edition):

I like Final Draft but it lost a bucket of brownie points with me for Final Draft Reader: after years of everyone waiting for an iPad version of the app, they released that. More, they said it was because this was what we wanted. Sure, if you ask someone whether they’d like to be able to read their Final Draft scripts on their iPad, they’re going to say yes. Ask them if they’d prefer to be able to read and write them instead, you get exactly the same answer yet that yes is 100% different. That spin and some bugs in the first release put me off. But I do have it on my iPad and I do use it.

The Blank Screen: Word Processors – William Gallagher (UK edition, US edition) 

I don’t use it very much. But then I don’t use Final Draft on my Mac all that much:

I do like it on my Mac. I turn to it to write scripts far faster than I ever do Pages or Word because it does make the job easier. If you don’t yet write scripts, you won’t yet get why that’s even possible. But, for instance, when you’re writing a very strong exchange of dialogue between two characters, it is a boon to be able to hit Return after one speech and immediately start the rejoinder and know that Final Draft will pop the right character names in for you.

I first bought a version of Final Draft a good fifteen years ago and I’ve probably only written twenty scripts in it – my Doctor Who work has to be delivered in Word so I tend to write it there or in Pages – but I stick with it because I have it and what I like about it, I like a lot.

I have version 8.something.or.other and the reason I’m telling you about this today is partly because version 9 is out. It’s partly because version 9 doesn’t add anything that makes me want to upgrade. And it’s mostly because Final Draft is getting a lot of criticism for not adding much, for being such an old-fashioned application, and for costing £154.99 (Amazon UK) and $178.68 (Amazon US). I’ve put Amazon links there rather than directly to FinalDraft.com because the savings are substantial: the US one is officially $299.99.

It’s specifically got a lot of criticism on Scriptnotes, a podcast co-hosted by Craig Mazin and screenwriter John August. He also develops a rival to Final Draft called Highland (£20.99 UK, $29.99 US in the Mac App Store but you can get a trial version if you go via the official Highland store). You would expect August to be critical of Final Draft: not so much because it’s a rival to his own software but because he developed that software to replace Final Draft in his own work. August wrote Corpse Bride, Charlie and the Choccolate Factory, Big Fish, the Charlie’s Angels movies and more. He should be the prime target audience for Final Draft but he and Mazin have been critical enough of it that Final Draft’s CEO Marc Madnick and product manager Joe Jarvis came on the podcast to discuss the software.

It did not go well.

Marc: Hey, we made a lot of bad decisions over the years. You live and learn. This is what running a business is. We’re 40 people. There’s not an office really in the world that has 40 people dedicated to one thing. And that’s screenwriting and screenwriting software. And, quite frankly, we listen every day. We service our customers. We listen every day. We love the good comments and we listen to the negative ones. Believe me, we take them to heart.

Craig: Do you think I’ve had any interesting or reasonable criticism for your product, or you think it’s all just a bunch of bunk?

Joe: I read every single podcast.

Craig: I’m not asking if you read it. I’m saying do you agree with me?

Joe: I want to absolutely know. Do I, well –

Marc: Sure, yes. Yes, some of your criticism is warranted.

Joe: I can’t think off the top of my head.

Marc: I don’t remember those. I remember the ones that aren’t warranted.

Craig: I think that’s weird. I would remember the ones that are warranted.

Marc: Hold up. This is our business.

Craig: Yes.

Marc: We know exactly, top to bottom, what the customers want, what they need, and we listen. You have to make business decisions on how you do it, when you do it, how you implement it, not implement it. It’s really what it’s all about. But we know. We’re engaged. And we understand. And we hear the criticisms. And some of your criticisms are warranted. And some of them are, I feel you might be misinformed.

Scriptnotes, Ep 129: The One with the Guys from Final Draft — Transcript

I am so impressed that this podcast has a transcript every week. I read it because listening was proving a bit painful. I don’t have Highland, I do have Final Draft, I’ve not listened to John August before, I have seen some of his films. The headline summary from this Scriptnotes was that the Final Draft people came across as not listening.

Craig: But I can now purchase an entire new software program for half the cost of what you’re charging for an update that has a few features thrown in. And that to me seems out of whack. That’s where I just say, look, I’m not saying that it’s right or wrong. The market doesn’t have right or wrong. It’s just a market.

Marc: You are in the minority. Fact.

Craig: Well, I’m in the minority now. But, I guess I’m just sort of surprised that you guys are sort of going, “And you’ll always be in the minority. We don’t see a problem. We don’t see any icebergs.”

Take a listen to the podcast here. It was actually recorded and aired in February but that episode caused enough of a flap that the next edition was about the storm it caused too. Then apparently another, different podcast took up the story and this week MacPowerUsers did too. That’s how I heard about it, I regularly listen to MPU.

So I heard about it there as MacPowerUsers interviewed John August – not just about this story – and then I went off down a rabbit hole of following the links and uncovering more. MPU linked to Scriptnotes linked to the next episode linked to the transcripts. It’s been a weird little storm took so long to reach my shore but now it’s here, I keep thinking about how Final Draft handled it and how the software itself feels like an embodiment of its makers. All software does yet you can’t always feel it as clearly as you do here.

The Scriptnotes podcast and many of the places that have followed made the analogy that Final Draft may be the QuarkXPress of its day. Quark was the page layout software that every magazine you’ve ever heard of used – until every magazine you’ve ever heard of switched to Adobe InDesign. That was partly because InDesign is just better but also Quark was fatally slow to respond and its responses were inadequate. It takes a lot to get people to switch away from a particular piece of software but once they’ve gone, you can’t get them back.

I’m not buying Final Draft 9. I haven’t regularly updated it, I think I skipped versions 6 and 7, for instance. So maybe I’ll be back for version 10. But it’s not as compelling or appealing as it once was.

Free today: face-detecting automatic camera app

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It’s called FaceSnap and it reminds me of films like Mission: Impossible 4 where whizzy glasses pop a green square around the face of everyone in sight and then run some spy algorithms to do some spy stuff. Snap just puts the green box around the face and takes a photo.

And takes a photo. And takes a photo. It’s probably handy while running through somewhere but there is also an element of how in the dear god can I switch this thing off now?

Especially if you have the sound up and this making faux camera shutter clicks every time.

I’m off to see if I can quieten it down. May I recommend that you go download it? It’s for iPhone and it is free today.

Be all you can be, you complex little soldier you

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I like quotes. I am genuinely inspired by certain quotes. There’s this one from Steve Jobs –

Great artists steal

Though actually what I find inspiring about it is that Jobs stole it from Picasso.

Then there’s this from Cervantes:

Translation is like reading the back of a tapestry

Though actually what I find most inspiring about this one is that Cervantes presumably said it in Spanish.

What I don’t like are quotes that seek to inspire. That seek to be a touchstone for your life. I’ve written before about the worth of finding a line that encapsulates the piece you’re writing – such as a sentence about its real theme so you don’t keep wandering off – and as ever and always, what works for you works for you.

So maybe you’ll take this new free app more seriously than I do. Maybe you’ll find it helps. In which case, go grab it: Daily Productivity Quotes is out now on the iOS App Store. It’s an iPhone app so it looks a bit ugly on an iPad but I’m not very likely to be opening it often.

Finally – work offline with Google Docs

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Previously on Google Docs and spreadsheets: you really had to be online to use them. There was a Google Drive app that let you work on this stuff in, say, your Dropbox account. But from today, you can get Google Docs and Google Sheets for iOS and work whenever you like.

I'm not a fan of Google Docs: I revise my opinion every time I see the price – it's free – yet I've found it clunky to use. And clunky to have online all the time.

This could change my mind – and I am shocked at you for making the connection that Microsoft Office for iPad just came out. Total coincidence.

Get Google Docs here and Google Sheets there. A presentation app is reportedly coming soon.

As ever, by the way, do go via these links to get the apps: going straight to the App Store and searching for them by name does not find them. Ridiculous and hopefully changing soon, but true.