The Boyce Blog

Hear the Christian Boyce Macworld|iWorld Report on the Radio

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Boyce) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 04:13:00 +0000

I'll be giving my annual "State of the Mac (and iPad, and iPhone)" address this Saturday on the Digital Village radio program, hosted by Ric Allan and Doran Barons. The show starts at 10 AM this Saturday, January 28th, 2012 and in Los Angeles you can listen to it live on the radio, 90.7 FM KPFK. If you aren't within range of KPFK, listen over the internet using this link. And, if you miss the show, listen whenever you want by visiting Digital Village's Audio Archive. My part of the show will probably start around 10:20 AM but I'd tune in at 10 and listen to the whole show. Ric and Doran always have an interesting show, even when I'm not on it.

Apple's iBooks Textbooks Announcement

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Boyce) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 05:23:00 +0000

Apple's out to fix another broken industry, same as they did with music and cellular phones. This time it's textbooks, and I'll let Apple tell you why it's needed, and why the Apple solution is the right one. Here are a couple of links that tell the story: this one is a promotional video, and this one is the entire introductory event from last week.

One very interesting part of Apple's plan is that just about anyone can publish a book in Apple's iBookstore. You don't have to be a big-time publishing company, or even a small-time publishing company. You could be, for example, a Mac, iPhone, and iPad consultant with cowboy boots who wants to publish a book of Mac, iPhone, and iPad tips. You can sell your books or you can give them away (or both). It's up to you. Read all about it here.

Apple's created a Mac application to help you create beautiful books. It's called iBooks Author, and you can download it for free by clicking here. The app looks a lot like Pages, so if you know how to use that one, you're going to have no trouble making books. iBooks Author is loaded with great templates and a lot of other stuff that will help you make beautiful books with minimal trouble. You will need Mac OS X Lion to run iBooks Author, by the way.

iBooks Textbooks could be a game-changer. It's way better than a PDF, partly because PDFs can't be re-flowed when the reader changes the font size or rotates the page. It's also way better than "publishing" materials as web pages, mostly because web technologies are not suited to precise layouts and ease of use. With iBooks, you feel as if you are directly manipulating the pages, and that's way better than reading something in a browser. So, people who used to publish books as PDFs and web pages now have a better platform for their work. There's no reason to shoe-horn a beautiful book into PDF or web page form, not anymore.

It happens that I really like "real" books. But, having read several books on my iPad, I'm already seeing the value and advantages of digital books. Apple's iBooks Author is going to help a lot more people get on the digital book bandwagon. It's not the end of books as we know it but it might be the beginning of the end of textbooks as they've been for generations. File this away and let's see how things turn out a couple of years from now.

In the meantime: if you have an iPod Touch, an iPhone, or an iPad, click here to get the new iBooks 2.0 app. While you're at it, try this link for an eye-popping collection of iTunes U courses, made for the iBooks app. Don't know about iTunes U? Click here to read my article about it, and click here to read what Apple has to say. Warning: if iBooks Textbooks doesn't make you want an iPad, iTunes U will. It's that cool.

Win a Free Pass to Macworld | iWorld

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Boyce) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 06:32:00 +0000

Macworld Expo will be held January 26th through January 28th, 2012 at San Francisco's Moscone Center. This year, the show has a new name (Macworld | iWorld) which more properly reflects the show's split focus. If you're anywhere near San Francisco you ought to check it out.

I will be speaking at Macworld | iWorld this year as part of the new "RapidFire" session on January 26th. My topic is "Super Tips for the iOS Maps App" and while you may know a lot about Maps on the iPhone and iPad you might just learn something new. (You can learn a lot about the Maps app right now by reading a couple of my articles: iPhone Maps Super Tips, and The iMom Project, Day Seven (which was all about Maps).) As part of my deluxe compensation package, Macworld | iWorld provides a couple of "iFan" passes for me to distribute, with a value of $125 each, and if you email me with the subject "Macworld Passes" I will enter your name into a pool for a random drawing.

Entries must be received by 5 PM Pacific time, Friday, January 20th, 2012. Drawing will be held right after that. Winners will be notified by email.

UPDATE: the contest is over. Congratulations to Kina Casey and Larry Halme, winners of the iFan passes. Show-floor-only passes may still be available via the websites of some of the Macworld exhibitors, including beatthetraffic.com and macscan.com.

My New Favorite Keyboard Shortcut: Command-option-f

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Boyce) — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 06:00:00 +0000

I like keyboard shortcuts. I especially like keyboard shortcuts that work in multiple programs (like Command-P for Print). Recently I learned a new one: Command-option-f, and it works in seven programs. Learn it once and get seven times the usage.

I really should tell you what it does but you'll figure it out.

Safari
In Safari, Command-option-f puts the insertion point into the Google search box at the upper right (outlined here in red). So, if you're using Safari and you want to do a Google search, you can simply press Command-option-f, then type what you're searching for, and then press Return. Quick and easy.

Firefox
In Firefox, Command-option-f puts the insertion point into the Google search box at the upper right (outlined here in red). So, if you're using Firefox and you want to do a Google search, you can simply press Command-option-f, then type what you're searching for, and then press Return. Exactly the same as in Safari. Quick and easy again.

Mail
In Mail, Command-option-f puts the insertion point into the search box at the upper right (outlined here in red). So, if you're using Mail and you want to search for an email, you can simply press Command-option-f, then type what you're searching for, and then press Return.This is our third "Quick and easy." I sense a pattern.

iTunes
In iTunes, Command-option-f puts the insertion point into the search box at the upper right (outlined here in red). So, if you're using iTunes and you want to search for a song (or you want to search the iTunes Store), you can simply press Command-option-f, then type what you're searching for, and then press Return. Quick and easy number four.

Finder
In the Finder, Command-option-f puts the insertion point into the search box at the upper right (outlined here in red). So, if you're using the Finder and you want to do find a file, you can simply press Command-option-f, then type what you're searching for, and then press Return. Quick and easy-- that's five in a row.

Font Book
In Font Book, Command-option-f puts the insertion point into the search box at the upper right (outlined here in red). So, if you're using Font Book and you want to find a font, you can simply press Command-option-f, then type what you're searching for, and then press Return. Quick and easy #6.

Evernote
In Evernote, Command-option-f puts the insertion point into the search box at the upper right (outlined here in red). So, if you're using Evernote and you want to find a particular note, you can simply press Command-option-f, then type what you're searching for, and then press Return. Quick and easy-- that's SEVEN!

You might be wondering why not just do "Command-f" which is "Find" in a lot of cases. The reason, in most cases, is Command-f puts you into a different kind of Find mode than what we want here. For example, if you do Command-f in Safari, you'll be searching for a term on that page. Same thing with Firefox-- you won't be triggering a Google search, you'll be searching for something on the page you're already on. (This can be handy but it's not what we want to do here.) In iTunes Command-f won't do anything. In the Finder, Command-option-f and Command-f are interchangeable, so I like to use Command-option-f for consistency with other programs. In Font Book, Command-f does nothing at all (other than make your Mac beep at you), in Evernote Command-f will search the note you're on, and in Mail Command-f sets you up for a search-and-replace in the current email message. Nothing wrong with that but it's not what we wanted to do.

I would not be surprised to find Command-option-f working in other programs too. If you find one, send me an email and I'll update the blog.

You may also enjoy reading about the wonders of Command-L. It works in a lot of programs though it does not do the same thing in all of them.

Ten Tips for New iPhone Owners

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Boyce) — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 02:51:00 +0000

So, Santa Claus brought you an iPhone! Great news. I hope it's an iPhone 4S, with Siri. Here are ten tips that will help you take advantage of the iPhone 4S's amazing capabilities.

Make your address book as complete as possible. Don't stop with names and phone numbers-- fill that thing up with email addresses, home and work addresses, and birthdays. You'll thank me later. Note that you can get to the Address Book from the Phone app so if you're already using the Phone app just tap the button that says "Contacts" at the bottom of the screen.
Sync your address book and calendar between your iPhone and computer using either MobileMe, iCloud, or directly using a USB cable. This lets you do most or all of the work on your computer, where it is probably easier to do. It also means you'll have a backup of those important items.
Learn about Siri. I have a few articles for you here, and here. Look for a microphone to the left of the space bar when you are typing-- when you see that, touch it, and start talking. Say the punctuation out loud; that is, if you want a comma, say so. Like this: "I like brisket comma sausage comma and pork ribs period". Be sure Siri knows who you are (Settings/General/Siri/My Info).
Learn about the Maps app. For starters, that little arrowhead at bottom left will show you where you are if you tap it. (If you're asked about using your current location, say yes.) Once Maps knows where you are, use the Search mode (at bottom) to search for something or someone-- coffee, ATM, your friend Joe. Or, use the Directions mode (at bottom) to see how to get from Place A to Place B. I have more about the Maps app for you here.
Dim your screen and turn off Push emails. That's Settings/Brightness, and Settings/Mail, Contacts, Calendars/Fetch New Data. This will save you hours of battery life.
Get to know the Camera. Get to the Camera app quickly (double-tap the Home button when the iPhone is asleep/locked, and look for a little camera icon at bottom right). Turn the iPhone sideways, holding it like a "real" digital camera, and taking a picture by pressing the Volume + button. Before you take the picture, tap on the part of the picture that you want in focus. That will also be the part of the picture that controls the exposure. After you take the picture, tap the square at bottom left to see the images you've taken. Tap an image to see controls for editing (at the top right) and for sending via Email and Twitter (bottom, second icon from left).
Turn the iPhone sideways. Sometimes (not always) you'll get a different version of the app you're using. This works with the Calculator, the Calendar, Mail, Safari, and many others.
Explore the App Store. You have an icon for the App Store on your iPhone already. Tap it and see if you can find an app that interests you. There are hundreds of thousands of them, many free, so there's probably one there for you.
Set up FaceTime. (Settings/FaceTime.) This will let you video-chat with people using the iPhone 4 or 4S, the iPad 2, or a Macintosh with OS X 10.6 or higher. Super-fun. When you're doing a FaceTime chat there's an icon on the screen that lets you switch to the other camera (the one you use when you take pictures). That lets you show things to the other person, such as what you're looking at now.
Learn a few shortcuts. Double-tap the Home button to see all of the active apps, and swipe left or right to see others. Tap the one you want to jump to. Hold the Home button down until you hear a double-beep to activate Siri. When on any of the Home screens, press the Home button again to jump to the first Home screen. If you are already on the first Home screen it will take you to a Search screen, where you can search for anything on the iPhone.

How to Add Color to Lion's Finder Sidebar

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Boyce) — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 06:03:00 +0000

Finally, there's a simple method for adding color the the Finder's sidebar in Lion. It comes to us from Norway, thanks to Fredrik Wiker, a 16 year old developer. Click to download his "Lion Tweaks" application. Your Finder windows will go from grey to colorful in just a few clicks.

Step 1 is to download Lion Tweaks. Put it into your Applications folder.
Step 2 is run Lion Tweaks. You will see all sorts of options. The one we're interested in here is "Enable colour in the Finder-sidebar." When you click the "Yes" button you'll be asked whether you have "SIMBL"installed already. You probably don't, so let Lion Tweaks download it for you.

Step 3 is to install SIMBL. You just downloaded it so you should be able to find it.
Step 4 is to continue the process with Lion Tweaks. You'll have to click the "Yes" button next to "Enable colour in the Finder-sidebar" again, but this time you have the SIMBL thing installed, so you can say yes all the way through. At the end, you'll see this message:

It really works. Check out the before and after pictures. Pleased to report that reverting to the original Lion grey sidebar is a simple click (and restart of the Finder). Well done, Fredrik!

More Siri Tips

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Boyce) — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 03:29:00 +0000

I've discovered some interesting Siri features that I didn't find in the manual, which isn't surprising since there isn't a Siri manual. In no particular order, here are the tips:

"Set a timer for 20 minutes." Everyone knows how to do that. But, after a bit, the timer is off the screen, as you switch to some other app or the iPhone goes to sleep. The cool thing is that you can say "Show me the timer" and it comes back to the front. Very cool. I am using that today as I cook my pumpkin pies.
"Play some music." Everyone knows how to do this too. The cool thing is that you can say "Stop the music" and it will stop. Nice.
"Make an appointment." Everyone knows how to do this too. Siri will ask "When is your appointment?" and you can tell it "4 PM tomorrow" or whatever you like. If you do it this way, Siri will make an appointment that has the title "Appointment." The cool things is you can change the title later. So, when Siri says "Here is your appointment, are you ready to confirm it?" you can say "yes"... and Siri will show it to you. Then, tell Siri "Change the title of the appointment" to anything you'd like. In fact, you can just say "Change the title to blah blah blah" and it will work. Siri knows what you're talking about because the appointment is still on her mind, so to speak.
Still talking about appointments, how cool is this: you can say "Make a haircut appointment for 4 PM tomorrow" and it's done in one shot. Very cool. Especially if you want a haircut.
Suppose you want to talk to your friend Dave Fournier, on the phone, and you want Siri to set that up. But, suppose also that you have Dave in your address book as "David." Doesn't matter: when you say "Call Dave Fournier" Siri knows out that "Dave" is short for "David" and she makes the call. Same thing with Tom and Thomas. And Chris and Christian, though I never call myself on the phone.
In some cases, when talking to Siri, you can interchange "office" and "work", and "house" and "home", and "cell" and "mobile", but not always, and especially not tonight with Siri seemingly overloaded. There are many inconsistencies in Siri, so what works when you're asking for a phone number might not work when you're asking for an address, and this may be one of the reasons Siri is still a "beta" feature. Expect this to improve and become more consistent in the future.

(Yes I am surprised that Apple put Siri out before it was fully ready. Very non-Apple-like.)

By the way, I would not be surprised to see Siri show up on Macs and iPads someday soon. Makes perfect sense.

More tips as I find them.

UPDATE: I found them. Here's a terrific list of Siri commands, from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW). Well done, TUAW.

UPDATE #2: Here's Apple's Frequently Asked Questions for Siri. Good stuff.

Happy Thanksgiving

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Boyce) — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 04:53:00 +0000

Happy Thanksgiving to one and all. I'll spend my Thanksgiving cooking a turkey in the Primo Kamado cooker on the balcony, doing a little online shopping, and keeping an eye on the key football games. Here is how I do it. You can do it too.

Cooking a turkey in the Primo Kamado
A Primo Kamado is a ceramic cooker, something like a Big Green Egg. I've cooked a lot of turkeys on my Primo over the years and they have all been delicious. Turns out that the preparation and cooking are much more important than the spices. There are probably fifty ways to cook a turkey on a barbeque but here's the one way I do it every single time.

Get your cooker going with plenty of fuel. Your turkey will cook for about three hours, maybe a little longer. Set it up for about 300 degrees F. You don't want flames to touch your turkey so put a pan down on a lower rack to block the flames or just put the coals on one side of your cooker and the turkey on the other. I have an old cookie sheet (a round one) that I put on the lower rack and it catches the drippings and blocks the flames.

Start with a nice fresh turkey. Frozen is OK but if a fresh one is available, get one. I usually pick one that's in the 12 to 15 pound range. If you go too big you won't be able to fit it on the cooker. I've cooked brined turkeys, Butterball turkeys, plain fresh turkeys, and probably some other kinds that I don't remember and they all came out great.
Take out the neck and giblets and do whatever you want with them. That's up to you.
Cut the backbone out, using heavy kitchen scissors or poultry shears. Some people call this "butterflying," some people call this "splaying," some people call it "spatchcocking." Watch this video, and call it anything you want. The video shows how to do it to a chicken but it's exactly the same on a turkey, only harder. You will need some strength. Watch your fingers. The reason you do this is it cuts your cooking time almost in half.
Cut off any extra fat and rinse the turkey off. Pat it dry with paper towels. You will need more paper towels than you thought.

Like I said, the preparation and cooking are more important than the spicing. I've made great turkeys using Dizzy Dust, Grub Rub, Texas BBQ Rub, and Bob Tallman's Ranch Rub. These are all fairly heavy on the brown sugar. You'll need a good bit, maybe half a bottle. You're going to apply rub inside and out, and under the skin, so plan accordingly. Pour a bunch of rub into a coffee cup or some other smallish container and put a spoon in it now because your hands are going to be all slippery pretty soon and you don't want to make a mess of your cupboards if you can help it. While you're at it set out another coffee cup and put an inch or two of olive oil in there. You'll need a brush to apply the oil later so you may as well get that out now.

First, run your fingers under the skin on the breast meat to loosen up the skin as much as possible. If you are careful you can get the skin completely loose from the breast. Get a spoonful of rub and put it onto the breast, under the skin. Do it again on the other side and pat it down with your fingers. You will almost always wish you used a little more rub so this is the time to do it right. Put some more in there.

Next, do the same thing with the thighs. The skin comes loose very nicely and you can dump a good bit of rub onto the thighs, under the skin. This takes a bit of time but it's worth it.

To this point you have not put any rub on the outside of the turkey. It is all under the skin, which is great because the rub you put on the skin isn't going to get into the meat nearly as well as the rub you put down under the skin.

Now put the turkey breast-down, exposing the inside of the bird. Brush the inside of the bird, and any part of the bird that is exposed in this position, with olive oil. There are three reasons for this:

It makes the skin brown up very nicely
It makes the rub stick to the bird
Olive oil makes a lot of stuff better and this is no exception.

After you've brushed everything you can reach with the turkey breast-down, sprinkle rub all over the bird, knowing that you are later going to roll it over and do the other side. Give it a good healthy sprinkling. Like I said, you will usually wish you'd used more.

Now you are almost ready to cook. Hopefully your cooker is ready to go. Put the bird onto the cooker with the breast up.

It will look something like this:

You can see the rub under the skin on the breast.

Take your olive oil and brush everything you can reach. Sprinkle with rub. Yes, the fire is going but it won't be so bad. Work fast.

Your turkey will look like this when it's olive oiled and sprinkled with rub.

Close the lid to the cooker and let time do its magic. A thermometer with a digital read-out outside the cooker will be very handy so get one of those if you can. Put it into the thigh and in a few hours have a look. When it's 170 degrees in the leg your turkey is done. In my experience that's going to take somewhere around three hours. That is probably less time than you expected but that's the whole point of spatchcocking.

It will look something like this when it's ready to come off. I use tongs to lift the turkey but be careful as the legs will be pretty loose and might come off.

Put it on a rack in the kitchen and let it sit for ten or fifteen minutes. It's impossible to carve when it's super hot, so let it cool down a bit. Then, carve it following these instructions. This is the finishing touch and it makes all the difference. Forget about carving it at the table. Carve it in the kitchen and bring out the cut-up meat. Everyone will be impressed and it will be a million times easier to serve.

Here's what it looked like when I'd carved one breast for transport to a friend's house.

Notice that the breast meat is cut much thicker than what you're probably used to. That's the right way to do it. Note that this kind of cooking does not result in a smoky flavor. What it does result in is a juicy, delicious turkey that looks and tastes great.

Practice on a chicken (cooking time: about an hour) and be an expert by Christmas.

Online Shopping Tips
My sister likes to get up early on the Friday after Thanksgiving and get deals at the stores. I like to sleep in and do my shopping online. Here are a couple of tips that will save you money while letting you shop from home.

Visit www.dealnews.com. Set up an account and have them send you emails when items you want are on sale. I devoted an entire blog post to them and here is the link. Hint: sort the list of deals chronologically. That way, when you check the site a second time, you can quickly see what's new since your last visit.
Visit www.retailmenot.com before buying something online. RetailMeNot finds discount codes which you can use to save money on your online purchases. This should be part of your routine. Find the item you want to buy online, then make a new browser window (File menu) and go to retailmenot.com to see if there is a discount code for what you're about to buy. I wrote about this site a bit ago and here is the link to that.
Visit Amazon.com and see what's cooking with their Gold Box specials and also their Black Friday specials.

You'll probably save money with these tips and you'll definitely get more sleep. For some people, the thrill of the hunt makes getting up in the dark and driving to the mall worth it. If that's you, tell me about it sometime after 9 AM.

Keeping Track of the Football Games
You're probably thinking "turn on the TV, silly." Turns out that I don't have a TV, so I keep up with the games in other ways. First, there's the ESPN ScoreCenter app for the iPhone and for the iPad. This keeps you up to date on the scores of the games. Next, there's the Watch ESPN app, for the iPhone and for the iPad. This one actually lets you watch the games right on your iPhone or iPad, with some restrictions based on your internet provider. I also use the Watch ESPN website to watch games live, but also to watch games I've missed, on my Mac. It is very cool to be able to jump to the 4th quarter of a game, or to rewind a game in order to see a key play. Even Monday Night Football can be seen this way.

I also use Yahoo's Sportacular app on the iPhone and on the iPad. These apps do a great job of keeping up with scores and they also provide written play-by-play, so you can keep up with a game without really watching it. Very handy stuff. With several key games this weekend, college and pro, you need all the help you can get.

So there you have it: turkey, shopping, and football. If that's not Thanksgiving in a nutshell I don't know what is. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone and thanks for visiting the blog.

Apple Airport 7.6 Update

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Boyce) — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 04:50:00 +0000

Apple put out a firmware update (version 7.6) for its Airport wireless routers. It helps with AirPlay (that amazing feature that lets you show your whole iPad 2 or iPhone 4S screen on your TV, provided you have an Apple TV), and with network performance. Apple doesn't say much more about it, but I've installed it here on two Airports and so far so good.

Airport base stations check weekly with Apple for updates. When there is one, like this 7.6 update, your Airport base station's light will flash orange, on and off, and you are likely to get a message on your Mac's screen that there is "a problem" with your Airport. That's overdoing it-- they shouldn't call it a problem-- and you shouldn't be worried that there is something wrong. All you have to do is let the update take place, which it will do automatically if you simply click "Continue" when the box pops up, telling you about "the problem."

You can easily do this yourself. You're supposed to. Note that your internet will go down for just a moment after the update, as the installation requires restarting the Airport and while that's happening, you're offline. It won't take more than a minute or so for the restart, and less than five minutes for the entire process. So go for it.

(If you want to get straight to doing the update, locate the Airport Utility (in the Utilities folder, in the Applications folder) and do the update from there.)

Super-cool: you can update your Airport using your iPad or iPhone. Get the official Apple Airport Utility app and you're on your way.

Tap one of the Airports and you get a bunch of info, including an option to update firmware. So neat.

iPhone 4S: First Impressions

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Boyce) — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 06:30:00 +0000

I've had my iPhone 4S for a couple of weeks, long enough to know what I like and don't like.

What I Like

It's fast. I didn't think my iPhone 4 was slow, and it isn't, but the iPhone 4S is faster.
Siri is handy and fun. I use it all the time, especially to make reminders and to set timers.
In general, I like iOS 5, which comes pre-installed.
I really, really like the over-the-air software updates. This works extremely well.

What I Don't Like

The battery drains very quickly. iOS 5.0.1 came out yesterday and is supposed to fix "most" of the battery problems but my iPhone 4S still seems to drain more quickly than I'd like. The biggest problem is the inconsistency. Sometimes (tonight) the battery hardly drains at all. Other times it drains 5% an hour just sitting on my desk.
Some iPhone 4S screens have a yellowish tint. My previous iPhone (the iPhone 4) has a cool blue screen, which to my eye is nicer. This seems to be a problem specific to some of the AT&T iPhone 4S devices.
The sound quality for phone calls ranges from superb to terrible, without changing locations. Sometimes the sound is so great it's like having the other person right there in the room. Later, in the same call, the sound can be so bad that I can't continue the conversation. Hanging up and redialing solves it, but geez man. This has to be fixed.

Odds and Ends
Siri is beta software, and it shows. There are so many things that seem not-quite-ready. For example, Siri can read your text messages to you, but it can't read an email. It can tell you that you have an appointment at 9 AM tomorrow but it can't read that to you either. Here's an interesting conversation I had with Siri about it:

Siri requires an internet connection, something that wasn't made obvious in the promotional materials. When the internet is slow, Siri is slow. The slowness is a drag, not because I'm in a rush, but because when Siri is fast, it's indistinguishable from magic. When it's slow, the magic goes away.
Reminders are cool. But the Reminders app is harder to use than it ought to be. And why isn't it part of the calendar app? Reminders and To-Dos are pretty closely related. I think the Reminders functionality ought to be part of the calendar.
Notifications are also cool. However, Notifications are a lot of work to set up, and for some reason different apps have different notification methods by default. Some use the banner across the top of the screen, some use the larger "alerts" in the middle of the screen. There's no explanation why you'd want one app to show notifications at the top of the screen and others in the middle. Why not make them all the same, or at least give me that as an option?

Conclusions and Advice
It seems to me that the iPhone 4S, and iOS 5, were a little bit rushed. That's sort of funny to say, considering that many industry people believe that the iPhone 4S came out three or four months late, but I still think it was rushed. Siri's in beta (and that's the first time that Apple's released anything with a "beta" label), and there are battery issues, and there are sound quality issues, and there are more than a few clunky interface issues. If you're looking for pre-purchase advice, I'd say wait until Apple puts out iOS 5.0.2. Hopefully, that update will solve the rest of the battery problems, and maybe solve the sound problems too. The lines will be shorter then anyhow.

iOS 5.0.1 update-- I like it

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Boyce) — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 21:14:00 +0000

Apple released iOS 5.0.1 today. It supposedly fixes the issues that the iPhone 4S has with the battery draining much too quickly. As such, it is just what I've been waiting for. I installed it through the air via Apple's new iOS software update system:

1. Go to Settings
2. Tap General
3. Tap Software Update

You will get a warning about doing this without the iPhone being plugged in to power, but my updates (on an iPhone 4S and an iPad 2) went perfectly even without being plugged in. They devices went down about two percent during the update. If you have more than 2% battery left, go ahead and get the download through the air.

The update took about 10 minutes (Time Warner cable modem). There are no options, no choices to make except at the very end of the download when you can either "Install" or do it later.

Considering how buggy iOS 5.0 is, updating to 5.0.1 is a no-brainer. Go get it.

Book Review: Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Boyce) — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 20:43:00 +0000

I'll keep it short: Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs (titled, simply, "Steve Jobs") is disappointingly shallow. It reads like a high school history book, touching many topics, but going into depth on none. The book serves as a good introduction to Steve Jobs, but given the countless articles that have been in circulation for years, didn't we already know this stuff? The story of Jobs recruiting John Sculley, hiring him, changing his opinion of him, and eventually losing a power struggle with him, isn't anything new. Same with Apple buying NeXT, same with Jobs being "mercurial" and "difficult" and adopted, and a vegetarian. Oh, and he had pancreatic cancer. And he liked Bob Dylan a lot.

The main trouble with this book is that it doesn't dive deep. Isaacson relates story after story (told to Isaacson by those who knew and worked with Steve Jobs), but the stories are just who-what-when-where. No "why." It may turn out that Steve Jobs, despite his amazing contributions, may not have been all that deep, and that may explain why Isaacson doesn't try to explain "why," but I have a feeling there probably is quite a bit of depth to Jobs, and it would be interesting to read a biography of Steve Jobs written by someone who really knew him-- perhaps his wife Laurene Powell Jobs, or Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, or Apple's lead designer Jony Ive. (Interestingly, while I came away wanting to know more about Steve Jobs, I also came away wanting to know more about his wife, and Wozniak, and Ive, among many others. They are given cardboard-cutout treatment in Isaacson's book but appear to be among many fascinating people who are mentioned.)

The book shows signs of being rushed, which it probably was. The same people are introduced in multiple chapters, the same topics are covered in multiple chapters, and each time it's as if it's the first time. Taken on a chapter by chapter basis, there isn't a problem, but when you read the book straight through, the lack of careful editing is apparent.

Finally, there's a necessary technological slant to much of Steve Jobs' story, but Isaacson's impressive background doesn't include much tech. Thus, he tends to parrot technical prose verbatim, not realizing that sometimes it needs explaining. For example, when describing what NeXT's system could do, Isaacson writes: "It offered protected memory, advanced networking, and preemptive multitasking"-- and then moves on, as if the reader has any idea of what any of that means.

In the end, "Steve Jobs" is an easy read, partly due to Isaacson's skill, and partly because he tells the reader things he already knows, challenging the reader not at all. That's too bad. I'd hoped for more. Of course, this will not be the last book written about Steve Jobs, and with luck we'll soon get one written by someone who's able to reveal something new.

Those looking for additional info on Steve Jobs today would do well to visit www.allaboutstevejobs.com, a site I've just discovered but am enjoying immensely.

iPhone 4S: Siri

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Boyce) — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 19:42:00 +0000

My iPhone 4S arrived and of course I had to start experimenting with Siri.

Here are some tips:

You have to turn Siri on! Siri is initially switched off. Settings/General/Siri.
Hold the Home button down until the iPhone beeps twice-- then start talking to Siri. You can also pick the iPhone up, hold it to your ear as if you were on a call, and listen for the two beeps. I like pressing the Home button better. (If, when you try to trigger Siri, you see "Voice Control" instead of the Siri microphone, Siri has not been turned on yet.)
Teach Siri who your mother and father and sister and brother are. Simply say "Edward Boyce is my dad" or "Darlene Boyce is my mom" and from then on, you can say "Send an email to my dad" or "Call my mom at home" etc. Very handy.

On the left: Siri is off. On the right: Siri is on.

Here are some of the things that I asked Siri to do for me (and they worked):

Check my email.
Do I have any emails from Zach?
Call Joe Smith at work.
When is my next appointment?
Show me my calendar.
Make an appointment for Saturday, 4 PM: UCLA football game (puts it into the calendar)
What time does Mom arrive? (I had a calendar item that said "Mom arrives" in my calendar)
Show me directions to Union Station in Los Angeles (shows it on the map, with directions from current location)
Remind me to buy tickets to the UCLA game (puts it into "Reminders" app)
Wake me up at 6:30 (creates an alarm for 6:30 PM, which is not what I wanted)
Cancel that (it cancels the alarm)
Wake me up at 6:30 tomorrow
Make a repeating alarm for 6:30 AM (perfect)
Set a timer for 10 minutes

Turns out that there is a lot that Siri can't do-- not yet. It can't read your emails out loud to you, it can't launch applications for you, it can't go to a website directly (but it can search for it, and it will be the first item in the search results). I have a feeling that you'll eventually be able to do all of these things in time, but not now. For now, Siri's a little bit limited, but it's definitely good enough to use.

If you find a cool Siri feature, send me an email and let me know.

"He Cared the Most"

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Boyce) — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 05:50:00 +0000

Apple's posted a video of the company's recent celebration of Steve Jobs' life. It's beautiful, and moving, and I recommend watching it all the way through. In it, Jony Ive (lead designer on Apple products including the iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad) absolutely nails what made Steve Jobs so great.

Here are the essential four words: "He cared the most."

Here's the link.

Use Google to Search One Website

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Boyce) — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 03:32:00 +0000

Right when you think you know everything, you learn something new. At least that's what happens to me. Yesterday, I learned how to restrict my Google searches to a particular site. This can be very handy when you know that you read something on the internet, and you are sure you know the name of the site, but you just can't find the article. The technique is also handy if you are wondering whether a particular website has covered a particular topic.

For example: let's say you're looking for an alternative to Quicken, because you're moving up to OS X Lion and you know that Quicken 2007 is not compatible with Lion. Let's say you hear somewhere that the website www.maclife.com did an article on the topic. You set out to look for it, using Google.

Here's what you get when you search for "alternatives to quicken maclife" using Google. It's not bad, but there is a lot of stuff here that isn't on www.maclife.com.

So now you try searching for "alternatives to quicken maclife.com" and while the results are better, they aren't restricted to articles on www.maclife.com. And maclife.com articles are all you're looking for this time.

Turns out there's a way to do what you want. What you do is put "site:" in front of the site you want to search.

Like this: alternatives to quicken site:maclife.com. You can put in www if you want. But you don't have to.

Works like a charm. Try it.

First Look: iOS 5

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Boyce) — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 06:06:00 +0000

Apple released iOS 5 October 12th, 2011 and I installed it here on an iPhone 4 and an iPad 2 right away. It works great on both. You can read quite a bit about the new features on Apple's site. Here, I'll point out some key features that are especially important.

Let's take it from left to right in the picture above (Apple's own graphic, showing us what THEY think is important).

Notifications.
The new Notification Center is not a typical app in that you don't launch it by touching an icon. Instead, you swipe down from the top of any screen, and a whole bunch of notifications appear. In addition to Mail, Calendar, and SMS, you can show notifications for a bunch of built-in Apple apps (Stocks, Weather, Phone, Reminders) and also a ton of 3rd-party apps (too many to list). Anything that put an alert message up on the screen in previous versions of iOS now is handled by the Notification Center. It takes some setting up (Settings/Notifications) but it's worth the initial trouble. I have the Notification Center showing alerts from the Weather, Stocks, Phone, Messages, Reminders, Calendar, Southwest Airlines, and Mail. Super-handy to have them all in one place. If a notification pops up while your iPhone or iPad is locked (black screen) you can unlock the device and go straight to the notification all in one swipe. It's pretty neat.

Interesting Tidbit: the weather notification bar shows the local weather. Tap it to go straight to the Weather app.

Messages.
Messages sent to another device running iOS 5 don't cost anything. That's cool. So, if you can talk your friends and family into getting iPhones running iOS 5, you can save a few bucks by not paying your cellular carrier $20 for unlimited texting. I'm sure that they'll find a way to get those $20 from you anyway. Maybe they'll start charging $5 a month if you actually use the phone to make a phone call, borrowing Bank of America's technique of charging extra for when you actually use the service you're paying for.

Messages can be sent back and forth to anyone with an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch, even if they don't have a phone contract. That's cool too. So, if your kids have iPod Touches, and there's a wireless network they can connect to, and they want to send messages (which can be text or pictures or videos), they'll be able to do it, for free, with iOS 5. Of course you can continue to send and receive messages with non-iOS people. Apple makes it easy to tell whether you're using your cellular carrier's messaging or Apple's own free messaging-- cellular carrier messages are green, and Apple's groovy new free ones are blue. You can send a message to a group of people all at once, and you can tell when someone's read your message. All in all, pretty handy stuff.

Interesting Tidbit: iOS 5 lets you create "typing shortcuts" and those really come in handy when texting (though they work anywhere you enter text, such as in Mail). For example, I made a shortcut that is the letters "cb." When I type "cb", the iPhone expands it to "Christian Boyce." How nifty. I made another that is "ty" (expands to "thank you"), and another that is "gbs" (expands to "Go Bears!", handy when texting Mom, or Spencer the Nephew).

Newsstand.
Yawn. This one is not such a breakthrough. What it does is group your various newspaper and magazine subscriptions into a little bookshelf, a lot like the iBooks app. However, Newsstand is not even an app. It's a special folder, with one special button: a "store" button that takes you to a special "Newsstand" section in the App Store. Yay.

Interesting Tidbit: none.

Reminders.
This is really neat. At first it looks like simple to-do list. On an iPad, that's about what it is. You can put in as many as 1,000 reminders, and if you want a little message to show up on your iPhone reminding you to do something at a certain time and date, Reminders is just what you need.

When you run Reminders on an iPhone or an iPhone 4S, it gets more interesting, because on those devices you can set something called a "location reminder." These reminders get triggered when you're either arriving at, or leaving, a specified location. Locations can be where you are currently, or any address in your Contacts list. (This is another reason to maintain a really good and complete Contacts list.) It leads to a whole new way of thinking about your to-do list: now you can be reminded to get bird seed when you arrive at the hardware store, or to order a pizza when you leave work. It is also possible, by the way, so set reminders that have a date and a time AND a location. Maybe you only want to order a pizza when you leave work on Friday, for example.

Interesting Tidbit: the whole thing.

Twitter.
Well now. I guess that Apple's thinking that Twitter is here to stay because Twitter is integrated into iOS 5, in a big way. (I have a feeling that if they could have made the proper deal, I might have been writing about Facebook integration too. But no.) Sign into Twitter in the Settings on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch. You can "tweet" photos, web pages, maps, and videos, and you don't have to go to the Twitter app to do it. You'll find the option to share via Twitter in other apps (Camera, Photos, Safari, Maps, and YouTube) when you click the "Action" button (used to be called the Share button). Look for it. But don't use it too often. The world's noisy enough already.

Interesting Tidbit: if you click the Update Contacts button in the Twitter settings, the iPhone will look up the Twitter usernames of the people in your Contacts app and put those usernames, and photos if available, into your Contacts. Allegedly. It has not worked for me yet.

Camera.
Camera, you're wondering? Haven't we had a camera all along? How can iOS 5 improve the camera, you're wondering? Well, yes, we've had a camera all along. But now it's easier to take pictures, and easier to take better pictures. For example... there's an optional grid that you can display, for you Rule of Thirds people. High Dynamic Range (HDR) is easier to turn on and off than before. You can get to the camera in a jiffy when the phone is locked (double-click the Home button, and then touch the little camera icon). And, you can turn the phone sideways and use the Volume + button to take a picture, which makes it feel a lot like a real camera. You'll have to try it to appreciate it. I like it a lot.

Interesting Tidbit: you can do a little bit of editing (cropping, rotating, "instant enhancing," and red-eye reduction) right in the Camera app. Just touch the Edit button at top right when you're looking at a photo you just took. Controls show up across the bottom. Sort of handy.

Odds and Ends That I've Come Across So Far

The Calendar app is better on the iPhone and on the iPad. Turn the iPhone sideways to see a week view. Turn the iPad sideways to see a year view. Turn pages on the iPad's calendar as you would with a book (swipe).
The Contacts app is better on the iPad. You can easily tell that you're in Edit mode, so it's harder to make mistakes and mess things up.
The Maps app is better on the iPhone and on the iPad. First, the routes "to here" and "from here" are nicer to look at. Second, they give you alternate routes and you can choose one by tapping it. Easy as pie.
You can assign custom sounds to just about everything-- incoming texts from certain people, phone calls from certain people, notifications from certain apps, etc. You can also create your own vibration patterns (Settings/Sounds/Vibration Patterns/Vibration).

Some Thoughts on Steve Jobs

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Boyce) — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 22:53:00 +0000

Steve Jobs is dead, and the tributes are everywhere. I've read as many of these tributes as I could and at the end of this article are links to some of the best. I've especially enjoyed reading personal recollections from people who knew him, though I'm not sure that I've seen any from anyone who claimed to know him well.

I never met Steve Jobs. I thought that someday I might, but I never did. Yet, twenty-five years as a full-time Macintosh consultant connect me to Apple and Jobs in a way that most people haven't experienced, and that gives me a perspective on Steve Jobs that is a little different from most. I hope my thoughts on Steve Jobs add a little something to your overall picture of the man.

I have a couple of stories. As Steve Jobs said in his commencement speech at Stanford, you can only connect the dots looking backward.

Dot #1: When I first met Mac.
In 1985 I was a graduate student at the University of Texas. As an engineering student I knew something of computers but I wasn't interested in them. I had a bunch of other interests, including my schooling, and if a computer could help me with them, great. Otherwise, no thanks. I was not what you'd call a computer geek.

My academic department at Texas had a small computer lab that I could use, and in it were three IBM PCs and three Macintoshes. The IBMs had the computer on the bottom, and a monitor on the top. With the IBM, word processing (a new term to me) meant seeing my document in green letters on a black background, and some codes to signify bold and italic.

Original IBM PC

Printing went to a dot-matrix machine and was an adventure since what came out of the printer didn't look much like what showed on the screen. There was a bit of a learning curve before you could do anything with the computer at all. In short, the IBM PC looked like something that was going to make my life harder (at least at first). Not what I was hoping for.

The Macs were of one piece, friendly little machines where word processing meant black letters on a white background-- same as in "real life" with a typewriter. On the Mac, if you made a word bold it showed bold right on the screen. And it had a mouse, which to my way of thinking was a million times easier than using arrow keys on the keyboard. (Pythagoras knew what he was doing when he proved that it's shorter to go diagonally, which you can do with a mouse, than to go over and up, which is what you have to do with arrow keys.)

Printing was essentially an exact match to what you saw on the screen. "It's like electric paper," I thought. I could use it right away. And so I did, using MacWrite and later Microsoft Word (version 1.05) and Excel (version 1.0) to produce great stuff for my graduate school classes (and some rather fancy letters to those back home).

Original Mac.

Close-up of original Mac screen, showing the word processor "MacWrite"

To me, the IBM PC made MORE work for me. The Mac helped me do the work I already had on my plate, and it helped me to do it faster, and better, and neater. At the time, Apple called the Macintosh "The computer for the rest of us" but to me it felt as if they'd made it just for me-- a smart guy who wanted some help getting stuff done. I had this image of the Mac's designers having people like me in mind as the user of their computers, hoping that the user would understand what they were trying to provide. I felt like telling them "I get it! I totally get it!" to let them know they'd succeeded. At the time, I didn't know that I should be thanking Steve Jobs-- I just thanked the Mac's design team-- but of course Steve Jobs was the leader of the Macintosh group, so looking back it's clear that "Dot #1" was made in that computer lab at Texas.

Dot #2: The start of something big.
After grad school I took employment as a rocket scientist (really) in Southern California. One evening I attended a meeting of the Los Angeles Macintosh Group, a "Macintosh club" that brought Mac users together for social and educational purposes. The speaker onstage-- a Microsoft representative-- was showing how to make calculations and charts with Excel. The guy sitting next to me jabbed me with his elbow and said "I could run my whole business with that program! Do you know how to use it?" I did know how to use it, and as I was used to helping fellow Mac Group members, I told the fellow I'd be glad to show him how to use it too. He asked "How much would you charge for that?" and I told him something like "You have to be kidding, this is a computer club, we help each other, each one teach one," something like that. He looked at me as if I was nuts and said "You're not from around here, are you. Around here, no one gives anything away." I said OK, gave him a three-hour lesson the next Saturday, came home with $60 and my eyes doing the cash-register thing like in the cartoons. A business was born. Four years later Macintosh consulting became my full-time business. Incredibly, I was being paid to do stuff I would have done for free. Thank you, Apple, and by extension thank you Mr. Jobs.

Dot #3: MacWorld San Francisco, January 1997.
The story of Steve Jobs hiring John Sculley to run Apple, his subsequent disagreements with Sculley over the direction of the company, and his eventual ouster from Apple is well known. The company was able to move along without Jobs but failed to continue to innovate, and by 1996 the rest of the world had more or less caught up to Apple. Apple's Macintosh used an operating system that was very crash-prone and Apple's management had spent years trying to create a new, "modern" operating system that was better. Each attempt was abandoned (I personally know of three). With time and money running out, Apple decided to buy an operating system from someone else. "Someone else" turned out to be NeXT, the company that Steve Jobs started after leaving Apple. But Apple didn't just buy NeXT's operating system-- they bought the whole company. Including the people. And that meant, of course, that Steve Jobs was coming back.

The deal was made in late 1996 but there wasn't a lot of fanfare. A few weeks later, in January 1997, Apple's then-CEO Gil Amelio gave the keynote speech at MacWorld Expo San Francisco. I and two friends had snuck into the invitation-only event, possibly by walking backward into the exit so the guards would think we were leaving (a trick I learned from my father). The keynote was long, dry, and dull-- nothing like the ones Steve Jobs would give in years to come. The crowd was super-restless. Then, finally, out of the blue, Amelio said something like "And now I'd like to bring out Steve Jobs." Jobs walked onto the stage and in an instant the place went wild, several minutes of standing ovations that came in waves-- as it started to die out it would start up again, over and over, as Jobs stood on stage and beamed. Eventually, Jobs was able to get us to stop. As I recall, he said simply "Thank you. I look forward to helping to bring Apple back." But that was enough. Suddenly, for Mac fans, there was hope. Steve Jobs was back. Everything would be OK.

(This was particularly good news for me. Under the rudderless leadership of the CEOs who'd run Apple in Jobs' absence, the company had nearly gone bust. (Michael Dell famously suggested that the best thing to with Apple would be to dissolve the company and give the money to the shareholders.) Those of us who understood the specialness of the Mac, the ones who "got it", were irritated, saddened, frustrated-- even angry-- that that the people running Apple didn't get it. With my livelihood dependent on Apple, I was directly affected by "the lost years," more than most. Now, with Jobs on board (as a "special advisor"), we could throw "rudderless" out the window. Jobs didn't just "get it." He invented it.)

I slept better after that. And so, I call that "a dot."

Dot #4: The times, they are a-changin'.
It wasn't long before Jobs went from special advisor to "iCEO" (the "i" stood for "interim"). He put his own guys (from NeXT) into key management positions, making me wonder whether it was actually NeXT who bought Apple (with Apple's money). And little by little, under Jobs' leadership, Apple began to come back. I'm not sure when you could say that Apple was all the way back, but let's just say the progress was steady-- and relentless. The new operating system (OS X) was a success. The iMac was a breakthrough machine, completely different from anything we'd seen before. The iPod, which many of us didn't appreciate at first, turned out to be a game-changer. Apple was starting to roll. But something didn't seem to fit, and that something was Jobs' salary.

Jobs was taking $1/year in salary from Apple. I spent a lot of time wondering about that. I knew that he received other benefits, including an airplane, but if a guy is working for $1/year, he's obviously not doing it for the money. Maybe he had something to prove, that he'd been right about the Mac all along, and that under his guidance it would not have turned into a niche player. But maybe it was something else. Looking back, I'm sure it was something else. I think Jobs wanted to give the world "technology done right," technology that empowered people to do great things. I think Jobs thought he could still do that. Being the "iCEO" of Apple provided Jobs the resources to change the world, resources he couldn't get otherwise. And man, did he ever take advantage.

In 1985, Jobs said this about the personal computer market:

"...it really is coming down to just Apple and IBM. If, for some reason, we make some giant mistakes and IBM wins, my personal feeling is that we are going to enter sort of a computer Dark Ages for about 20 years. Once IBM gains control of a market sector, they almost always stop innovation. They prevent innovation from happening."

I came across the quote a few months ago, when Jobs stepped down as Apple's CEO. Turns out he was right about those computer Dark Ages. Apple did make some giant mistakes, IBM did win, and the IBM PCs and their accompanying Microsoft Windows software completely dominated the computer business from the mid-1980s to the mid-2000s. Many, many people had to endure a demonstrably second-rate user experience every single time they used a computer. Long before Jobs came back to Apple the battle with IBM (and the clones, and Microsoft's Windows) had been lost. A lot of people thought Apple should keep fighting, but Jobs saw that as a waste of time and resources, and instead took the best thing Apple had going-- the Mac-- and rode that as far as he could, looking to make a difference later, with another product, as soon as they figured out what that would be. In a sense, the original iMac and all of its subsequent iterations were buying time for Apple and Jobs to come up with the Next Big Thing, and man, did they hit it out of the park. What they came up with, of course was the iPhone. Talk about "technology done right."

Dot #5: The iPhone.
Watch the iPhone introduction, remembering that there'd been no mention of an Apple phone before its introduction, no rumors, no nothing. Listen to Jobs say "This is a day I've been looking forward to for two and a half years" and realize that hey, this stuff doesn't happen overnight. Listen to him talk about how lucky one is to be able to do even a little bit of important work in a career. And then try to remember what you thought when the iPhone was announced. I know what I thought: very cool, but who needs another cell phone, and especially who needs one that costs $500 and runs only on AT&T? It would be fair to say I didn't "get it"-- but I bought one anyway, because I knew my customers would be asking me for help with theirs. And as soon as I got it, I "got it."

The iPhone, as everyone knows, was an immediate hit. Turns out that a lot of us agreed with Jobs' assertion that "smart phones" weren't all that smart, and they weren't so easy to use. My iPhone became a constant companion, allowing me to get email on the go, to take pictures and send them to friends, to check in for an airplane from the front seat of my (parked) car. I used my iPhone to plot a route from Appointment A to Appointment B and I used it as an alarm clock. All of this was easy stuff, in stark contrast to my existing Samsung phone which could do a lot of the above but only if I had the manual open. (I used to wonder whether the Samsung guys ever actually used the stuff they designed. I don't think they did.)

Looking back, the iPhone is a "dot" for me. It made it plain that Steve Jobs was all about technology done right. In terms of usability, the iPhone was so far ahead of every other phone that it made it look as if "the other guys" made their design decisions based on economics rather than on any real thinking. With Jobs, the attitude seemed to be "think it out, do it right, and the economics will follow." With the other guys, it seemed to be, "we have a lot of keyboards left over from our current smart phones, so let's design our new phones around those keyboards."

I think that the iPhone saved us all from 20 years of a horrid user experience with so-called "smart phones" from Palm and Blackberry and Nokia. Once again, I'm grateful to Steve.

Dot #6: The Dream.
I've been studying iPhone programming for a couple of years. Usually my studying's done at night-- not because I'm all that smart at night but because I am busy providing Mac and iPhone (and iPad) support during the day so nighttime is all the free time I have. And with iPhone programming being the last thing I do most nights, sometimes it sneaks into my dreams.

A few months ago, I had a dream about the iPhone. I'd come up with a revolutionary idea and the idea was so good, I contacted Apple about it. Someone at Apple thought it was good too, and they arranged to have me come to Apple's headquarters and explain it. In the dream, I arrived at Apple was about to start discussing my idea with a couple of Apple employees, when much to my surprise, Steve Jobs walked into the room. Jobs looked at me and said, "I hear you have a great idea. You have two minutes, tell me all about it."

I froze.

For two minutes I tried to remember my great idea but I couldn't. I tried and tried. I felt like those people on TV game shows who don't know the answer to the question, so they slowly repeat the question ("The longest river in Argentina is... ") hoping that saying it out loud will build up "momentum" and the answer will automatically follow. It didn't work for me either. Jobs left. I went home.

Not a happy dot, but a dot nonetheless. It reminds me to be ready. Some chances you don't get twice.

Connecting the Dots
When you connect the dots, you sometimes get a picture. Here's the picture I get of Steve Jobs: he wanted to change the world, he knew he could do it-- and he did it. Yes, he turned out to be a great businessman, but think about how that happened: he insisted that Apple make great stuff, and what do you know, focussing on making great stuff was exactly the right thing to do. And think about why he insisted on making great stuff. It wasn't about the money-- he had plenty. It wasn't about the fame-- by all accounts, he didn't want fame. Truly, I believe that Steve Jobs cared enough about his fellow humans that he dedicated himself to providing "insanely great" devices that helped people with the tasks they had, and enabled them to do things they'd never dreamt of. The alternatives are all around us-- clunky, awkward devices whose manufacturers wasted the chance to do it right. With Apple's devices, the devices themselves fade into the background, so the user thinks only of the task. With an Apple product, you don't think about "operating a computer" or "operating a phone"-- instead, you think about writing your Master's Thesis or taking a picture at the beach and emailing it to your Mom. That's the way it should be. And that's what happens when you care enough to do it right. With Jobs at the helm, everyone at Apple cared enough to do it right (or found a new place to work). It will be interesting to see what happens moving forward.

It's odd to be so moved by the death of someone I never met, even though I sometimes jokingly referred to him as "Uncle Steve." Maybe it's because I know my life would be very different if not for him. More likely it's because I know that all of our lives would be very different if not for him. No matter the reason, I keep coming back to that $1/year, and what Steve Jobs did, and why.

My favorite Steve Jobs links
Playboy Interview, February 1985. Long, meaty interview with Steve Jobs, at the time head of Apple. Fantastic reading. Three months after this interview was published, Jobs was out of Apple, fired from the company he started.

MacWorld Expo Boston, Summer 1997 Keynote Speech. Jobs is back with Apple, thanks to Apple's acquisition of NeXT. Gil Amelio (the Apple CEO who oversaw the acquisition) is out, and Apple is operating without an official CEO. In his first big public speech since his return, Jobs outlines his plans for bringing a reeling Apple back to health. He is particularly gracious in giving thanks to the outgoing Board members for working hard under difficult circumstances. Watch and listen as Jobs alludes to "the crazy ones" that Apple makes computers for (soon to be the theme of some very memorable ads). Great stuff throughout.

Stanford Commencement Address, 2005. Twenty-two minute video (counting the introduction by Stanford's President John Hennessy). Jobs' pancreatic cancer had been diagnosed the previous year, and the perspective it gave him is evident throughout the speech. Highly recommended.

Original iPhone introduction, MacWorld Expo 2007. "This is a day I've been looking forward to for two and a half years." Steve Jobs at his very best. Part 1 here. Part 2 here.

Signatures of the original Mac team, inside the case, where almost no one would ever see them

Super article by John Lilly, titled simply Steve Jobs.

Great article by MG Siegler: Here's To The Crazy One.

UPDATE: I had two "Dot #4"s. Discovered by Mom (a math major). Fixed.

iPhone 4S Introduction

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Boyce) — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 08:35:00 +0000

In case you spent the day in a cave, let me tell you about the new iPhone that Apple introduced today. They call it "the iPhone 4S". You could call it a disappointment because it's not an "iPhone 5," whatever that was imagined to be, but it would be better to call it a refined and polished iPhone 4. Apple similarly refined and polished the iPhone 3G to make the 3GS, and that worked out very well indeed. Let's hope it turns out as well this time.

(Watch the keynote video. Watch more about the iPhone 4S here.)

They're keeping the iPhone 4 around in a minimal configuration of 8 GB, for $99 with a two-year contract. Spend another $100 and you get a 16 GB iPhone 4S. To me it's a no-brainer: for $100 more, get the 4S. In addition to double the storage, you get a faster chip (so everything is snappier), a better camera, a lot of invisible-but-important improvements, and maybe best of all, "Siri."

Now you're probably wondering what (or who) Siri is. Siri is software that lets you control your iPhone by voice, a feature that's been around a little while, but not to this extent. Previously, voice control was limited to "Call Christian Boyce" or "Play Music." With Siri, you can do a lot more, and you can speak to Siri in a fairly natural way, like so: "Set up an appointment with Christian Boyce on Friday." It takes an enormous amount of processing power to do voice recognition properly, power that's available only in the iPhone 4S. If you don't have an iPhone 4S, you don't have Siri. Sounds like a commercial.

Watch this video for a brief intro to Siri.

The iPhone 4S comes in black and white and looks nearly identical to the iPhone 4. I don't know if we'll be able to use our existing iPhone 4 cases but I do hope so-- I just got a good deal on a glow-in-the-dark iPhone 4 case from Marware. You can get the 4S in 16 GB, 32 GB, and 64 GB models, and you don't have to worry about buying "the Verizon one" or "the ATT one" because this time, one phone does it all. Apple's calling the iPhone 4S a "world phone" which means that the exact same phone can be used with a lot of different networks. You'll still have to choose a network, same as now, but if you decide to change carriers down the road you won't have to buy a new phone. By the way, the iPhone 4S works on the Sprint network too. I think the word "finally" is in order.

And now you're probably wondering when you can get one. The answer is "soon." You can order one online starting October 7th, for delivery "starting October 14th." Or, you can take your chances at an Apple Store in person, starting at 8 AM October 14th. Here's a good page on Apple's website telling you what you should bring with you when you come in to buy an iPhone 4S. It also has a "check your eligibility" thingy that lets you see whether your existing wireless plan qualifies you for an iPhone 4S at the lowest price.

I think the iPhone 4S is going to be a great phone, and a big hit.

Personal note: there was no mention of Steve Jobs in today's announcement, and the keynote was duller than dull. In a way, that's good: the iPhone 4S had to impress us on its merits alone, not with help from the famous Steve Jobs "reality distortion field." I'm not so sure that Apple won't scale back these product introductions a little further yet, because without Steve Jobs delivering the news these things just aren't as much fun.

UPDATE: it appears the management team presenting the iPhone 4S knew, before the presentation, that Steve Jobs was down to his last hours. No wonder they were a little down.

CORRECTION: Even though Apple's iPhone 4S can run on Verizon, AT&T, or Sprint (and other networks), if you're planning to run it on a CDMA network (Verizon, Sprint), you have to specify that when you buy it. This doesn't make a lot of difference to most people because you buy the phone with a two-year contract with a particular carrier. But, it does make the statement above, "if you decide to change carriers down the road you won't have to buy a new phone", pretty much incorrect. Just order an iPhone 4S already and pick the network you like, please.

Great Deals on New and Closeout Macs

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Boyce) — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 20:32:00 +0000

MacMall is having a 72-hour sale on Macs (MacBook Pros, MacBook Airs, iMacs). Check it out and save a pile of money. Contact me if you need help with choosing a model.

If you're choosing one for ME, I like the 21.5 inch iMac with the 3.6 GHz Core i5 for $1099.

Automatically Open Multiple Websites, Part 2: your own AppleScript

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Boyce) — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 21:06:00 +0000

Last time, we saw how we could open multiple websites with a single click. Problem is, the websites that we opened with one click were the ones I chose. So, now we're going to learn how to specify which websites get opened.

We're going to write an AppleScript, and we're going to use Script Editor to do it. You can find Script Editor in your Utilities folder, which is in your Applications folder. Bonus shortcut hint: click on the Finder in the Dock (or the Desktop, or some other Finder window so as to bring the Finder to the front). Click on the Go menu and slide down to "Utilities." Presto.

Find the Script Editor in the Utilities folder and double-click it. You'll get a blank window. Copy the text below and paste it into the blank Script Editor window.

set the_URL_list to {"http://www.apple.com", "http://www.christianboyce.com", "http://macrumors.com"}

repeat with a_URL in the_URL_list
open location a_URL
end repeat

The result will look a lot like this:

Click the Compile button and it will look like this.

(Compiling checks for mistakes and prettifies the script. Your script could look different than this but don't worry about that-- unless you get an error. In that case, go back and be sure you copied and pasted the right stuff.)

Just for fun, click the "Run" button. You'll see three web page load: www.apple.com, www.christianboyce.com, and www.macrumors.com.

Assuming that the script works and that you got three web pages when you clicked "Run," it's time to customize it to open YOUR websites. You can probably tell that the place to do it is right at the top. Go in there and do it! Just remember these rules:

Each website must be surrounded by double-quotes.
Separate the double-quoted websites with commas.
No returns please. Let the Script Editor wrap the text for you.

There is no limit to the number of sites you can enter. Try a couple, and then click Compile, and if you don't get an error, click Run. Add the rest of the websites that you want to open, and Compile, and then Run. If it works, you're ready to save it. Here you have to be just a little careful, because there are various ways to save your script, and only one of them is the right one for our purposes.

What we want is to wrap this script up in a double-clickable application that does its thing automatically. So, when you go to Save As..., change the File Format to Application. Name your script anything you'd like, and put it somewhere that you can find it. For now, let's put it on the Desktop. Now you can quit the Script Editor, because we're done with it.

Look for the script you just saved. Here's what it will look like:

(Yours might have a different name. That's OK. But the icon should be like this one.

Technically, you're done. When you double-click the script it will launch your preferred browser and load up your web pages. That's two clicks, and that's not much work. But, we can cut that work in half by putting the script into the Dock. So do that. Remember that putting something into the Dock doesn't mean you can throw away the original. Put the original-- your script-- somewhere safe and that's that.

Automatically Open Multiple Websites, Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Boyce) — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 08:28:00 +0000

(There's nothing I like better than saving people time and trouble by showing them a better way to use their Macs. These simple AppleScripts will save you time and trouble day after day after day.)

I am willing to bet that you have a bunch of websites that you look at every day.

Let's pretend that every morning you have a look at Time Magazine, Google News, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. Even if you use a bookmark for each site there's enough mousing around that just opening the sites takes a measurable amount of time. It might not be much, but it all counts. And, you actually have to do the work-- it doesn't happen unless you do the work.

What if you could click a single item in your Dock and have all four of your news websites open, each in its own window, in a nice neat stack on your screen? Wouldn't that be cool?

Of course that would be cool. And, it's totally doable. In fact, I've done it for you, along with two variations (one for Mac-related news sites, and one for sports news). I did it with AppleScript, a very powerful feature of the Mac OS, available on every Mac.

Click to download the AppleScripts. You'll get a disk image. (If you're using Safari the disk image will probably open automatically. If not, or if you're using Firefox, look in your Downloads folder for something called "URL_AppleScripts.dmg" and double-click it.)

Eventually you'll see the three items shown below. They're AppleScript Applications. Double-click each one to see what it does. Drag the ones you like to your Applications folder. Then, from there (that is, from in the Applications folder), drag them to the Dock. Now a single click in the Dock will trigger a multi-page masterpiece.

Of course you are probably thinking it would be even better if the sites that opened were the ones YOU liked, not the ones I like. That's easy to do, and I'll write that up sometime soon. If you're in a hurry, tell me and I'll help you out right away.

In the meantime-- isn't this neat? One click opens four websites, neatly, quickly, efficiently. Who could ask for more?

Papa's Got a Brand New Bag-- from Kensington

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Boyce) — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 19:27:00 +0000

I bought this Kensington Contour Roller bag in January 2006 to carry my laptop (at the time, a PowerBook G4 15 inch), and some CDs, and a bunch of floppy disks(!). It had pockets all over the place, so I also put in some pens, some business cards, some cables, and a bunch of other stuff. It was a fantastic bag and I used it every day in my travels to customer locations. The collapsable handle has been really handy, especially in airports.

Five and a half years later, the stitching on one of the handles is starting to come loose. Turns out that the bag has a limited lifetime warranty, and when I contacted Kensington about it they shipped me a new bag, free of charge, no questions asked. Incredible. The new bag is here now, ready to go into service tomorrow. I was willing to buy another ($99 list, less than that at Amazon) because I felt I'd gotten my money's worth but wow, they replaced it for free! I could hardly believe it.

I love the bag, but I especially love the customer service. Way to go, Kensington. "I feel good."

Here's a link to Kensington's site, with more info about the bag. (Their link to "Buy from online retail partners" doesn't get you a very good price though-- use this link instead.)

Accept Credit Cards on Your iPhone, with Square

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Boyce) — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 18:47:00 +0000

Being able to accept credit cards is good for business. It's convenient for customers, and it's fast for the vendor. Unfortunately, for the small businessman, accepting credit cards has been an expensive hassle. Not anymore-- thanks to Square.

Square provides, for free, a credit card reader that fits into your iPhone's headphone jack. Use the Square iPhone app to enter the amount of the bill, swipe a card through the Square reader's slot, and you're on your way to getting paid. Start by going to Square and signing up for an account. All you need to provide is a US-based mailing address, a US-based bank account, and a Social Security Number. You can sign up as a business or as an individual, and even without the card reader, you can accept credit cards by manually entering the credit card's number. The card reader will arrive in a few days and at that point you'll be all set. There's nothing else to do.

The Fees
Square's fees are simple: no set-up fee, no monthly fee, no monthly minimum, no variable rates. Just 2.75% on every scanned credit card, and 3.5% + 15 cents for every manually-entered credit card. (For those new to this credit card stuff, a scanned card number is less of a fraud risk to Square than a manually-entered card number is, so they charge less for that.)

Why Square?
Square's fees are competitive with those from other "merchant services" companies, so price isn't really the reason to use them. Where Square really shines is in ease of set-up, ease of use (iPhone app), clear reports, and excellent customer service. It could not be easier to set up, the iPhone app is super-convenient, the reports tell you everything you need to know, and when you need help from Square it's easy to get, and fast.

Here are a few screenshots taken from my iPhone. This one shows some work that I'm going to charge for.

If I'm on-site, the customer gives me a credit card and I scan it. The customer then signs her name with her finger, right on the iPhone. It's wild. One more touch and the card number is sent to Square (so yes, you need to have internet access, either WiFi or through your iPhone's cellular data network). Approval is immediate (assuming it's a good card) and a receipt is emailed to the customer. The whole affair is fast and fun, even for the person paying.

Here's how it looks when you don't have a card to scan. Just type it in and Authorize.

Here's a stock photo from Square themselves showing the signature screen. Yes, they compute tips for you, if that's what you'd like.

Here's a screenshot showing how nice and clean the Square iPhone app is. If I tap the Sales History button I can see how I've used Square, right on the phone.

It's not blurry when you look at it on the iPhone.

The money gets to your bank account in about three business days. First it goes to Square's system, then it's sent to your bank, and then it's in your account. There are a couple of holds and delays along the way but it ends up in your bank account in about three days.

I Know What You're Thinking
"That's nice, but I have no need for that." Oh no? Wouldn't it be cool to be able to accept credit cards at a garage sale? Or at a bake sale? Or at some other kind of fund raiser? Of course it would. Wouldn't it be nice if your pool man or plumber or the neighborhood kids who cut your grass and wash your car accepted credit cards? Tell them about Square and they can. Yes, they'll need an iPhone (or an iPad, or-- ugh-- certain Android devices), but that's hardly a bad thing. They can read The Boyce Blog (or play Angry Birds) on their iPhones when they're not scanning credit cards.

As long-time readers of The Boyce Blog know, we only recommend things that we use ourselves. We switched to Square six months ago and we've been thrilled with it ever since. I highly recommend Square.

This, by the way, is my 300th blog post. How about that.

Save Money on Your AOL Bill

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Boyce) — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 01:57:00 +0000

(This one is for AOL users. If you are one, read on. If you aren't one, read on anyway. I'll bet you have at least one AOL-using friend that can put this information to use.)

Actually, I could have called this "Eliminate Your AOL Bill." Keep reading.

Once upon a time, AOL (America Online) was the Number One way for people to get online. AOL provided software, an email address, and a phone number with a modem at the other end that would answer your dial-up call and put you on the internet. That was a long time ago.

AOL charged for that. It makes sense that they did; if nothing else, all of those phone lines and modems cost AOL real money. So you paid, maybe $19.95 per month, maybe $14.95 per month, and if you have an AOL account that is more than a couple of years old, you probably are still paying. But you don't have to.

Turns out that AOL will give anyone a free email address. And, if you already have an AOL address, you should check to see whether you're paying for it or not. If all you want from AOL is an email address, follow this tutorial and quit paying them. It's really easy.

Step One: use Safari (or Firefox, or whatever) and go to www.aol.com. (You can do this on your computer or your iPhone or iPad. Even the PC people can do this, so tell a friend. Your friend will thank you.) If you're already checking your email on AOL, look for a tiny "AOL" link at top left. That'll do it.

Step Two: click where it says "SERVICES" The red arrow shows you where. You're not going to click and hold and slide down the menu that drops down. You're just going to click on "SERVICES" and let go.

Step Three: in this screen, click where it says "Account Updates." It's nice and bold, at the top left. Red arrow, man.

Step Four: you'll have to sign in (if you haven't already), and you'll have to supply the secret answer to your secret question. I can't help you with those things-- that's why they call them "secret." Once you've done that, you'll see this screen. Click where it says "Change My AOL Plan."

They'll ask you whether you need a dial-up connection or not. Hopefully, you know the answer to that. (If you're not sure, contact me and I will help you find out. Hint: if you're one of my customers, you do NOT need a dial-up connection. You have a high-speed connection already.)

Step Five: Now for the fun part. They'll tell you at the top what your current plan is. If it says anything other than "Current Plan: $0.00/month" you're about to save some money.

Here's what you might see:

Scroll down the page and you'll find the Free AOL plan. That's the one for you. Click the big orange "Get This Plan" button and that is that. You'll see something like this when you're done:

So... what are you missing by going with the free plan? Just a couple of things, which you probably don't need:

No "live" technical support
No dial-up access (but so what-- you have your own high-speed connection, yes?)
No McAfee security (also, so what-- the version AOL is "giving" you isn't compatible with Macs!)

In other words, you're not missing anything. So get rolling here and save yourself some money. You'll keep your email address, and your email will keep right on working, without interruption. You just won't be paying for it anymore. Even a few bucks a month add up.

If a few bucks a month don't matter to you feel free to click here, or use the PayPal button below. Heh.

Favorite Steve Jobs Links

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Boyce) — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 06:51:00 +0000

I thought I'd put a few of my favorite Steve Jobs links here, all in one place. Enjoy.

Playboy Interview, February 1985. Long, meaty interview with Steve Jobs, at the time head of Apple. Fantastic reading. Three months after this interview was published, Jobs was out of Apple, fired from the company he started.

MacWorld Expo 1997 Keynote Speech. Jobs is back with Apple, thanks to Apple's acquisition of NeXT. Gil Amelio (the Apple CEO who oversaw the acquisition) is out, and Apple is operating without an official CEO. In his first big public speech since his return, Jobs outlines his plans for bringing a reeling Apple back to health. He is particularly gracious in giving thanks to the outgoing Board members for working hard under difficult circumstances. Watch and listen as Jobs alludes to "the crazy ones" that Apple makes computers for (soon to be the theme of some very memorable ads). Great stuff throughout.

Stanford Commencement Address, 2005. Twenty-two minute video (counting the introduction by Stanford's President John Hennessy). Jobs' pancreatic cancer had been diagnosed the previous year, and the perspective it gave him is evident throughout the speech. Highly recommended.

Original iPhone introduction, MacWorld Expo 2007. "This is a day I've been looking forward to for two and a half years." Steve Jobs at his very best. Part 1 here. Part 2 here.