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My favourite iPhone and iPad app…

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…is really two separate apps in that you have to buy them separately. And in that one came out in this latest, great version late last year while the other was only a few weeks ago. But it’s already become so indispensable that I had to check the release date twice before I’d believe it was that recent.

The 2014 release was for the iPad. The 2013 one was for iPhone. There was also a 2014 one for the Mac. Are you getting it yet?

That’s OmniFocus 2 for iPad there. If I could pick only one app for the year, this would be it. If you can only afford to buy one version of OmniFocus, it’s the iPad one you should get. Both decisions are easy: it’s that good.

But for the overall best-app-ever experience, I do of course recommend you get all three editions. I used to say that this To Do manager was so good, was so important to my business and frankly my life now that I would cheerily, readily pay the cost price of all three over again. I don’t say that so much now – because I did do. The Omni Group brought out new editions of the Mac, iPhone and iPad OmniFocus and I bought the lot on the day they were released.

And I will again whenever they do OmniFocus 3.

Go take a look on the official site where you can also get the Mac version. Then head to the iOS App Store for the separate iPhone and iPad ones. Also to the Mac App

The 2nd best iPhone and iPad app of the year – as chosen by me

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I’ve been thinking about this all evening and especially since Apple announced its pick for the best apps of the year for iPad and iPhone. Apple went for Pixelmator on the iPad, which I like very much and regularly use in the production of this very site, and Elevate or Replay Video Editor (depending on whether you’re in the USA or UK) for the iPhone. And I’d not heard of that.

I think my pick beats all of them. And so does my second-place pick. Okay, I couldn’t get it down to just naming one app, I have to tell you about two, but they are both gorgeous things of beauty that are transformative in my work. The first-place winner, for me, in a mo, but now, an extremely close second place spot goes to… Drafts 4 for iPhone and iPad. Easy. It’s an apparently simple note app where you just fire it up with a tap, write anything you fancy and forget it – or send it off as email. Or a text. Or an OmniFocus task. Or an Evernote note. Or all of the above. And more.

The speed of opening and getting going with your writing is a big deal. It makes Drafts 4 far faster at entering Evernote notes than Evernote itself is. Far. I’ve reached for Drafts 4 in the middle of the night when I’ve had a dreamy idea and I’ve come back to it the next day to send on to email, Evernote – or the trash. Depending.

Drafts 4 also transformed how The Blank Screen site is written. When I’m just pointing you at an interesting article someone else has written, I can go to that, highlight a choice quote and tap a button. Drafts 4 takes in that quote, turns it into an inset block quote, appends the citation including correct link back to the main article and writes me a basic paragraph referring people to that original. One tap instead of back-and-forth to the site several times. I love it for that alone.

But please imagine you’ve just written a bit of an old note. Written it and then tapped one button. This is what you see on iPhone:

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There are ten options right there for what to do with your text and I only created two of them. But I could create two, it is possible to create your own. So the top one appends a note to a journal I keep in Evernote and the second one posts the Drafts text straight to this website. Write, tap, publish, gone.

It’s so good I could’ve made this my favourite app of the year and probably should have done because it came out in this version in 2014 whereas my real best-app-ever pick is one whose iPhone version was last released late 2013. Still, it’s best-app-ever and its iPad one was September this year. Come on. That’s up next.

 

The iPad App of the year – as chosen by Apple

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Pixelmater, an image editor, and Monument Valley. That’s actually the app of the year and the game of the year. But notice what they have in common? Both have buttons mark Open. That means I already have both of them on my iPad.

Appropriately, it was Pixelmater I used to crop that screenshot. So I do definitely agree that it’s a good choice – and I adored Monument Valley despite being far less of a gamer than you.

I’m just not sure it’s the best. I’ll have a ponder about that – and a check through my purchased items list – but in the meantime, go take a look at Pixelmater or Monument Valley plus the rest of the top recommended apps for iPad.

What you wish for may turn out a bit meh: Word is free on iPad

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I’m not a fan of Microsoft. It’s been years since the problems and the failings of Microsoft Word outweighed all its benefits for me but it did and it does have those benefits. Microsoft Excel is and always has been very good. PowerPoint – well, let’s not do that. No need to be rude.

So for years my only interest in whether Microsoft would bring its Office software to the iPad was a kind of business fascination. It used to be that Word was so big, nothing else breathed at all. You can be certain that there were people in Microsoft who believed that keeping Word and Excel off the iPad would kill Apple’s tablet. Be certain of that. Because they were.

And, demonstrably, they were wrong. I think they were wrong enough that it has damaged them. Not because selling Microsoft Word for iPad on day one of the iPad would’ve brought in a lot of cash and kept on doing so for all these years. But because refusing to do it meant people had to find other word processors and other spreadsheets.

Once millions of people found they really, really did not need Word, they recognised that they really, really did not need it. Microsoft may have believed people would avoid the iPad because it wouldn’t run Word and being wrong there would’ve been bad enough. But being freed of Word on iPad means free of Word anywhere.

There are other factors that have made Word stumble and I don’t know what they are. But it’s now getting on for eight years since Microsoft switched Word over to the .docx format and still people send you the old .doc ones. Nearly a decade and people have not upgraded.

In The Blank Screen book I mention discovering after a month that I hadn’t got Word on my MacBook. And a little while ago I thought I was going to write you a news story about how Microsoft Word, Excel and the other one are now available for free on iPad. But instead, I’m thinking about how tedious it would be to switch to Word again.

Let me explain one thing. You have been able to download Word and Excel and the other one for some months now and you could read documents, you just couldn’t create or edit any – unless you paid a subscription.

As of today, not so much. You still can and you still get benefits from having that but you can use Word without it. All you have to do is sign for a free Microsoft account and off you go.

I signed up and off I went. And I also linked my Dropbox account so I could get to a lot of my current and recent documents here on the iPad. It was a chore looking through them all for documents I could open and in the end I just wrote a new one.

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Microsoft Word for iPad is good. It feels better than the PC and Mac ones. But it’s too late for Word to be anything other than a curiosity to me now. I wondering whether that’s the case for most people.

Go take a look for yourself: Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and Microsoft The Other One are all on the iOS app store now.

Microsoft updates OneNote for iOS

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I’m an Evernote user so I have little experience of Microsoft’s equivalent but I did work with a guy last week who has the most impressive use of it I’ve seen. And he uses it on a Surface, so it took some impressing. If I weren’t so comfortably settled into Evernote with several gigabytes of data in it, I’d look at OneNote, especially as Microsoft seems to be updating for iOS pretty promptly these days.

Since I don’t use it, here’s someone who knows it better enough to tell you what’s new:

Microsoft has pushed out updates for its OneNote client on both iPhone and iPad, adding support for new features added in iOS 8 and a design that’s optimized for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.

Users can now password protect sections of documents directly from mobile devices (a feature that used to require a Windows PC). Those with an iPhone 5s or newer will also find that they can now unlock password-protected sections of documents using Touch ID. That feature isn’t mentioned in the iPad change log, so users on the iPad Air 2 or iPad mini 3 might need to wait for a future update to enable it.

Microsoft OneNote for iPhone and iPad updated with iOS 8 support, iPhone 6 design, and more –Mike Beasley, 9to5Mac (28 October 2014)

Read the full piece.

It’s the little things

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I’m spending today running a workshop for the Federation of Entertainment Unions: that means I’ll have people from the Writers’ Guild, the Musician’s Guild, NUJ and Equity. It’s a day-long workshop version of The Blank Screen and I’ve done it many times but it is always different.

I don’t mean because every person is their own special little snowflake and the day runs in different directions, though it does so I suppose they are. I mean it’s different because I change it.

Sometimes I’m just changing the presentation and the workshop plan because something new has come up and I might do that any time between these days. But there is also one thing that I don’t write and don’t change until the morning, until just before I leave.

It’s just this. I spend a lot of time in the workshop talking about To Do lists and how to make them something you use and that you enjoy using rather than something dreaded that you avoid. And I feel obligated to include my real To Do list. So I do, I add in a slide that (today) has this:

What I like very much is the simple thing that is doubtlessly complex yet I don’t have to care, I can just relish it. This. I added that To Do list image and I made various twiddles to the presentation on the 27in iMac in my office. I present from a MacBook Pro. And as I turned from the iMac to set up that MacBook Pro, my new presentation was already there. It was already on the MacBook and I didn’t do anything. Didn’t AirDrop it across, didn’t use a USB thumb, didn’t email it.

I wrote it on the iMac and it is on my MacBook as if I wrote it there.

And here’s another thing. I’m writing to you in Drafts 4 on my iPad and that image above of my To Do list comes from my iPhone. I didn’t send it over to my iPad, didn’t copy it, didn’t do anything. It’s just there where I need to use it.

As I say, this is doubtlessly complex stuff behind the scenes but to me, it’s just that everything I need is where I need it, when I need it. I think that is heady and gorgeous stuff.

Am I dumb or what? Why Fantastical dropped its price

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Short version: the calendar app Fantastical dropped its price as a launch offer to promote the new features it has for iOS 8. Thick William here just saw the price drop and reported that.

In my defence, the first word I had of it was an alert about the price drop and that didn’t mention new features. I even went into iOS 8’s Notification Centre to see if Fantastical had added anything and it hadn’t. But later that same day, an update to Fantastical 2 appeared and it has Notification Centre stuff, it has sharing stuff, it has all sorts of goodies. So on the one hand I will let myself off for missing what wasn’t there at the time, but on the other I’d now like to hand you over to someone who didn’t miss a trick:

Fantastical 2.2, available today on the App Store, brings iOS 8 features that allow the app to be more easily integrated with iOS workflows thanks to a share extension and that extend the app beyond its silo with actionable notifications and a widget.

Before iOS 8, I never turned on Fantastical’s notifications because they couldn’t have the same level of integration found in Apple’s native Calendar and Reminders apps. I enjoyed the ability to mark reminders as complete or snooze them from Apple’s notifications, and I didn’t want to miss that kind of shortcut with Fantastical notifications.

iOS 8 allows Fantastical to send interactive notifications that are (mostly) on par with Apple’s. In my tests, I turned off Apple’s notifications and activated Fantastical’s for events and reminders. For events, Fantastical can show banners that, once swiped down, reveal a Snooze button to postpone an event. Tap the button, and Fantastical will open showing the selected event with a popover for snooze shortcuts and manual controls.

Fantastical 2.2: Interactive Notifications, Share Extension, and Today Widget – Federico Viticci, MacStories (22 October 2014)

Read the full piece. And then go get Fantastical 2 for iPad and for iPhone.

Small but good price drop for the excellent Fantastical 2 for iPad

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I still use Apple’s Mail, iTunes, Maps, Camera, pretty much everything: I’m not much of one for ditching the provided apps in favour of replacements by other companies. I get it and I do try them out, but those Apple apps I keep are good and usually I don’t find alternatives to be compelling.

Except Fantastical 2.

That has replaced Apple’s Calendar on my iPhone and iPad. It’s the way I can type “Lunch at York’s Bakery with Bert next Tuesday from 12 to 3 /a”. (The /a at the end adds the appointment to my joint calendar with Angela. It just needs that first letter to know which calendar I want.) And it’s also now, right now, this moment, talking to you, that I like it for how it detected that lunch example. I wanted to be sure I wasn’t steering you wrong, that this slightly more complex than average line would still work. So I copied it, went to Fantastical 2 for iPad and was going to paste it in but didn’t have to: Fantastical popped up a little note saying that it had detected an event in my clipboard, did I want to add that?

So I did and it worked perfectly. That’s impressive and I thank you for it, I hadn’t seen that before.

I’m glad of it because I like there being specific things I can point to that are good. For me, the reason to stay with Fantastical 2 is more a general, nebulous, comfortable one. I like the design, mostly, and when I go back to Apple’s one I’m missing the look and the feel of Fantastical.

I like it enough that having used it on iPad, I bought a copy for iPhone. I don’t like it so much that I’ve also bought it for my Mac, but I keep thinking about it.

Along the way of thinking about the iPhone version and whether to buy it, I did find that during my trying out of alternative apps, I had at some point bought and discarded Fantastical 1 for iPhone. I tried using it again and I couldn’t see why I’d chucked it away before. I think in the end the reason I spring for a new app with Fantastical 2 is that I liked it so much on the iPad that I wanted to reward the makers a little. A very little: Fantastical 2 is cheap.

But it’s now that little bit cheaper. Fantastical 2 for iPad is down from £6.99 to £5.49 (and if you like, from $9.99 to $7.99 which does seem like more) and you can get it here.

The iPhone version has also dropped from £2.99 to £1.99 and from $4.99 to $2.99. It’s here.

And because I don’t think I’ve conveyed the benefits of Fantastical 2 very well, here’s a video from the makers, Flexibits:

Apple’s iOS 8.1 is out and adds some goodies

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I’ve a friend I like a lot who doesn’t have an iPhone. I know. But when she texts me, I can be knee deep in my Mac or on my iPad and I’ve got to get out my phone and send her a reply from there. I know, crazy.

As of now, in fact as of about midnight last night, that ends.

With iOS 8.1, when she texts me in her ordinary texting way, my iPhone will get it in its ordinary way but will automatically, unthinkingly, un-setting-up-ily pass that text on to my Mac and iPad. She’ll be there in amongst everyone else I exchange iMessages with.

And I’ll be able to reply to her from there.

So, yes, I’ll type at my Mac and it will pass the text over iMessage to my iPhone and my iPhone will text it out to her but you are reading the only time I will ever have to spend even this long thinking about it. It’ll just be what happens.

You can get iOS 8.1 on your iPhone and iPad now. Open Settings, General and tap on Software Update.

Handiest. Thing. Ever. Make and take phone calls on your Mac

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If you’re the kind of person who leaves your iPhone in a pocket or purse placed inconveniently across the room, you’ll appreciate the ability to answer an incoming call with your Mac. You can also initiate calls from your Mac—to the other person, the call will look like it’s coming from your iPhone, but you’ll be chattering away with your Mac’s built-in microphone and speakers. For this to work you have to configure both your Mac and iPhone.

How to make and receive iPhone calls with your Mac – Christopher Breen, Macworld (17 October 2014)

This is the thing I think I am most looking forward to using now that I’ve moved from the OS X Yosemite beta to the final release. In theory it worked before but I had problems and put them down to the beta nature of it all. Plus I just put it down, decided to do it again some day.

That day is now. Or it would be if I were back at my office. I’m away with my iPad and I have already used that to make and receive calls. The audio quality is subtly different but receiving calls sounds great and making calls sounds fine. I love how it just happened, too. I’d left my iPhone in my office and was reading something on my iPad somewhere else in the house when the phone rang – and then so did my iPad. One tap and I was taking that call. Gorgeous.

So I know I’ll use that again and I know that I’ll use it when my Mac is doing it too. Maybe even more so: I do a lot of phone interviews so I’m assuming I will be able to use Audio Hijack Pro to record these. This could even transform my biggest problem of prevaricating before phoning people. When they are one tap away, I’m going to tap.

If you’re using iOS 8 on an iPhone and an iPad, those two already work together, you’re set. If you want to do it with your Mac too, you need to do a couple of things. Read this full piece on Macworld for exactly how to do it.