Apple launched a new site yesterday featuring text and video help for new Mac users. It’s got me thinking about the many, many Mac-centric sites out there — the bulk of indie sites (like this one) tend to be geared towards fellow Mac geeks or, at least, those readers who are more tech-inclined.

As people migrate to the Mac platform in larger and larger numbers, there is surely a need for more basic ‘how to’ content. To this end, I’ll be exploring adding some content geared towards newer Mac users in the future.

I’m also going to get back to my long-neglected Rapid Weaver and Wordpress comparison after I complete the series on GTD-based task managers. Thanks to Google Analytics, I’ve discovered that many people are seeking out more information on this topic.

I’ve been using Omnigroup’s OmniFocus for several weeks now to prepare for my evaluation of this task management application (part of a series). It’s quite an impressive tool. I’m ready to put my thoughts together — look for it by the end of the weekend. Meanwhile, I want to comment on the iPod Touch.

I’m going to retire my battle-worn third generation iPod this weekend. Now that the iPod Touch offers much of the same functionality as the iPhone, I’m ready to ugrade. You might wonder why I’m not going to spring for the iPhone. The main reason is cost — not the cost of the iPhone, but the cost of the AT&T service plan. The cheapest plan equates to over $700 per year. Since I don’t talk on the phone that much (and my current employer provides me with a cell phone), I’ve decided the Touch is my best bet.

The only thing I think I’ll miss is the iPhone’s ability to surf the web and check email via the AT&T EDGE network when one is not near a WiFi source. But I’m confident that WiFi access points will continue to proliferate to a degree that will make it easier and easier to connect wherever I am. If I can’t connect in some locations, no big deal. I don’t really want to be connected in all places at all times anyway! When I’m on a business trip, however, it will be a particularly nice feature to be able to browse the web, get directions, and check my mail from my hotel room or at a nearby coffee shop.

The Infamous $20 Fee

Some iPod Touch owners are expressing outrage at Apple's decision to charge $20 for a major software upgrade of the device. This upgrade, announced this week at the Macworld Expo, adds five applications (mail, notes, maps, weather, stocks) to the iPod Touch — features that have been on the iPhone from the start. For those who buy a new iPod Touch as of last Tuesday, the additional apps will be included for free.

I have mixed feelings about this. I can understand why some early adopters feel like they are getting ripped off and, in effect, penalized just for being early adopters. However, early adopters bought the Touch with full knowledge that it did not have all the software features of the iPhone. Apple never said that these features would eventually be added, although many hoped for this.

It’s not surprising that Apple opted to charge a nominal fee. The real question, I think, is if $20 is “nominal”. I’ve read that a fee of some sort is legally necessary because of the Sarbannes-Oxley Act. This Act apparently states that you can’t add new features to something that you offer at a one-time fee without charging for the additional features. The iPhone is exempt from this because users pay running fees per month for this device. But what about the Apple TV? You don’t need to pay a monthly fee for this appliance, right? Yet Apple rolled out a major software upgrade for this at Macworld as well…and they’re offering it free to all, including existing Apple TV owners. Apple should better explain their rationale for the fee decisions they have made.

Still, I think it’s not that bad of a thing. If you buy a new Mac, you get Leopard and the latest version of iLife pre-installed. But if you already owned an iMac when these updates shipped, you have to buy these upgrades. I don’t see much of a difference between this and the situation with the iPod Touch. I suppose that’s easy for me to say since I’m going to get these additional apps for free.

So the question really comes down to this: why $20? Why not $5 (or whatever the minimum is to meet business/legal requirements). Twenty dollars seems a bit inflated. One thing is clear: this is a black eye for Apple. They have not offered a clear explanation to justify the upgrade cost for the iPod Touch, so people are drawing their own conclusions and forming unfavorable opinions. The impression Apple is leaving is that they may be getting a tad greedy…and they don’t care much about early adopters (faithful consumers that Apple should want to take care of very well).

Perhaps all the bad press will lead Apple to offer a discount of some sort to those who must pay this fee, as they did for the early adopters who bought the first iPhones only to see the price of the phone drop a whopping two hundred dollars just a few weeks later. Or perhaps they will simply ignore the grumbling of a few iPod Touch owners and press on.

As Apple’s market share continues to expand, I hope they don’t lose sight of what makes them special. I’d hate to see them become more like, er, that other company that sells PC operating systems.

Dvorak users of the world scored a little victory this week. The TextExpander team at SmileOnMyMac fixed the problem with the Mac OS Dvorak-Qwerty keyboard layout, detailed in an earlier View from the Dock post.

A recap of this bug: when using the Mac OS Dvorak-Qwerty option, TextExpander did not previously work. Now it does. How did this come to pass? Me and at least one other user asked that it be fixed. And it was fixed, very promptly. I’d like to thank SmileOnMyMac for listening. I am a very satisfied customer. And here’s more unsolicited praise for TextExpander — it saves me an amazing amount of time (I just used it to add the previous Em dash). My wife is a devoted user, too. She uses TextExpander to save keystrokes on her website.

Now I am going to try to get Adobe to fix their Creative Suite. Unfortunately, I must still switch to the QWERTY keyboard layout when I’m using PhotoShop and the other Adobe apps, and I shouldn’t have to do this. Maybe it will be fixed if Apple buys Adobe!

If you do your typing on a Mac and you use Dvorak, I want to ensure you know that you can quickly toggle between Qwerty and Dvorak (or Dvorak-Qwerty, or other languages). Once you enable these option in the International Preference Pane (found under Apple’s System Preferences), you can choose to show this input menu in the Apple Menu Bar. You may then quickly toggle between the different keyboard layouts using a keyboard shortcut of your choice (I use option-command-space).

A quick reminder: if you use Windows, check out SkyEnergy’s HotKeyz. This little freeware program allows you to easily remap shortcut keys (paste, save, copy, etc.) to match the QWERTY key positions while using the Dvorak layout. It works quite well.

Finally, I want to point out a new development that is full of potential for those of us who use alternative typing layouts. I don’t know about you, but I’d like to look down at my keyboard and actually see the Dvorak layout. I may be able to do just that in the not-to-distant future. Check out this ArsTechnica report about a recent Apple patent for a dynamically controlled keyboard.

Imagine a keyboard with organic LEDs on each key. If you’re curious about the possibilities, see Art Lebedev’s Optimus Maximus (it’s available now, if you can afford it). I imagine a future Apple keyboard that displays the Dvorak keys, then dynamically displays QWERTY keys when I press a command-key combination. And I envision my keyboard dynamically changing to display game-specific commands or key combinations for shortcut-intensive programs like Photoshop or Final Cut Studio. This is surely the keyboard of the future, and I can’t wait to get one.

I've decided to get better organized in 2008, so I've been trying out task management solutions for the Mac.

What I'm looking for is a well-designed application with powerful features that cleanly integrate with the Mac operating system. I want to be able to group my varied tasks into project groups that are easy to view and are logically organized. I want tag my list items so they are easy to find and search. I want one central place where I can quickly see what I have to do today and what I have to do next. I want a central place to store everything in my head. Above all, I want to enjoy using this application. No, more ... I want an application that makes me want to use it. A tall order, perhaps, but this is what the Mac user experience is all about.

Seeking Alternatives to Apple's Mail/iCal

Unfortunately, I think Apple missed the mark with their improved Mail/iCal 'to do' management introduced with Mac OS X Leopard. Granted, it's better than what existed in Mac OS X Tiger and all other previous OS X versions (which, essentially, was nothing). But it's still not there. I tried using the 'Apple option' for a couple of weeks before I abandoned it. While the Mail/iCal solution is simple and well-integrated and may be enough for many people, it's just not working out for me. It doesn't feel right. I don't like the overly simplistic to-do list in Mail. I can't group items into bigger categories or projects. I can't tag items. I can't easily archive completed items. I don't like how it integrates with iCal. As for iCal, the to do list view is fine is you just have a few items, but it quickly becomes unwieldy and hard to read as more are added. I could go on. Suffice it to say that Apple's offerings seemed underpowered to me, so I moved on.

The good news is that there are an overwhelming number of third-party task management applications out there for the Mac user (there are also a number of plug-ins available to enhance Mail and iCal task management and a host of web-based solutions to help manage your life). That's the great thing about the Mac - the third-party developers who make applications for Mac OS X are unmatched on any platform. I truly believe that.

 

The bad news is that it's hard to know where to start because there are so many choices. My solution? I chose to focus on a peculiar subset of task management applications based on a system called Getting Things Done. Why? Because many geeky mac users that I respect are oddly enthusiastic about this model, and have been for quite some time.

Getting Things Done on the Mac

If you follow the mac community buzz, you may have heard of David Allen's 'Getting Things Done' framework for, well, getting things done. Over the course of the past year, it seemed I couldn't escape the chatter about this revolutionary way to manage one's daily and long-term tasks. Intrigued by the noise, I checked out an audiobook of 'Getting Things Done' from the library. Allen's ideas are indeed innovative and clever.

In essence, GTD is a systematic way to organize your thoughts that begins with dumping out the contents of your brain in an 'inbox,' then organizing those things along the lines of when you plan to get to them (e.g. today, next week, someday), in what context you will do these things (e.g. at the computer, at work, on the road), and how you group these things (into different projects). GTD is way of capturing all these little bits of 'things I want to do' and 'things I need to do' so you don't have to worry about remembering them all. Once you get all those thoughts down, GTD offers up a nifty way to organize it in a meaningful way over time.

At some point, Mac developers who adhered to the GTD model began creating clever applications and scripts to capture this process. While I haven't closely followed the evolution of this development, I noticed that it seemed to really get going in mid-2006 ... and this most certainly had something to do with organization guru Merlin Mann of 43 Folders, whose tireless efforts helped to popularize this system, particularly on the Mac platform.

Over the course of 2007, I came to associate GTD with Mac task management as more and more applications based on this model began to appear. Over time, I've watched as available mac-based GTD programs evolved from the relatively simple (see kinklessGTD) to the increasingly sophisticated (see OmniFocus, iGTD).

The 2008 showdown

As the options continue to evolve and refine, I think we're heading for a final shake out in 2008. My prediction: this will be the year for the Killer Task Management Application for the Mac, and that application is going to be based on the GTD model.

This will be the year when a small handful of really great Mac-based task managers vie for the mainstream — you may never have heard of GTD, but if these task managers are successful, you won't need to know anything at all about David Allen's system. All you'll have to do is pick your favorite and start getting organized.

Here are the applications that I will compare: iGTD, Cultured Code Things, Midnight Inbox, coalmarch Park and OmniFocus from OmniGroup.

As the dust settles over the next year, I think that one application will stand out above the rest. I've made my choice, but I'll save my opinion for the end of this series.

How I will review these apps

To keep things simple, I evaluated these power organization apps with a few questions in mind:

 

• Could I figure out how to use the application with minimal fuss (preferably without referring to documentation)?
• Was I still enthusiastic about using the application after a week of use? 
• How well does the app integrate into the Mac OS? 
• How well could I manage all of my tasks (work, home, play, etc.) 
• How did the program 'feel?' How 'mac-like' is it?

 

This last point may need a little clarification. You may have heard or read that a particular program is 'mac-like.' What this means is this: Apple software is generally renowned for simplicity, consistency, lack of clutter, and a great user interface. A 'mac-like' application, then, exemplifies these qualities. I also consider a program to be 'mac-like' if the interface is instantly familiar and obvious because it's similar to other Apple programs I use, such as the Finder or iTunes. Last but not least, a good mac application should integrate seamlessly with the rest of the Mac OS.

In the next post, I'll begin the comparison.

I encountered yet another Dvorak bug today. For the benefit of those (ok, probably all of you) who do not know what Dvorak is, it’s an alternative keyboard layout. It’s generally considered faster and more efficient than the standard QWERTY layout.

I can certainly type quite fast and, since the Dvorak keys are not in the same place as the QWERTY keys, I learned to type without ever looking down … it wouldn’t help anyways. Never needing to look down is a plus in my book. Anyhow, it turns out that TextExpander does not support the Dvorak-Qwerty keyboard layout. Dvorak-Qwerty is a Mac OS option (available via the International/Input Menu preference pane) that allows one to type in Dvorak but still access the command shortcut keys in their designated QWERTY positions. That means that I can type in Dvorak, but still use the QWERTY Command-C/V/Q etc. The tech support guy (who responded to my query very quickly, I should add) said that the add this support to the feature request list, although he was not authorized to say if it would or would not be fixed to add this support.

So what’s the bug? When the keyboard setting is DQ (that’s short for Dvorak-Qwerty), TextExpander cannot expand text. You type in the short cut, and your shortcut is replaced by … nothing. You just get an empty string where your expanded text should go. This is frustrating. Sometimes I feel like I’m the only Dvorak user out there, though I’m sure I am not. A great feature of the Mac OS is the built in Dvorak support with QWERTY command keys. While Windows supports Dvorak as an option, it does not (and apparently will never) support the QWERTY command function.

Even though I use this alternate layout, I am a slave to Mac keyboard shortcuts (the QWERTY style shortcuts). The Mac OS has long supported this, recognizing the need amongst mac users to have command-C map to the ‘C’ character printed on the physical keyboard, even though it’s not the ‘C’ character in the Dvorak layout is located where the I character is printed. Make sense? Windows does not have this. I was using a freeware program called Hotkeyz on my Windows (work) machine to remap my keys. This solved the PC problem beautifully. But, alas, my IT staff made me take it off because of my workplace ‘no shareware or freeware policy.’ Blah.

Anyhow, most mac programs work fairly well with Dvorak-Qwerty. Except for TextExpander, and except for Adobe CS3 (actually, I don’t believe Adobe products have ever supported Dvorak-Qwerty … and except for Mac MS Office (which I don’t use - iWork handles Dvorak quite well). What this means for me is that I have to turn Qwerty on when using Photoshop, because Command-C otherwise does not work. I could re-learn the shortcuts for the remapped Dvorak keys, but I don’t want to. I like the shortcut keys mapped to what’s printed on the keyboard. Besides, I’m so conditioned to type the Command key shortcuts that it would take major reconditioning to learn the alternate locations. The bottom line for me is this: I know there aren’t many of us out there, but there are people out there that rely on Dvorak-Qwerty. The combo, exclusive to the mac, is one of those little things that makes my mac experience better than my work-a-day PC experience. I can’t imagine it would take much of a code fix to support this feature … it is built in to the OS, after all. So, Adobe and Smile on My Mac … please support the DQ keyboard layout!!

By the way, I found this nice little freeware app that fixes one annoying DQ layout problem - the inability to use command+shift in DQ

With the advent of Mac OS 10.5 Leopard, backup is now easier than it’s ever been. Using Time Machine is a simple process: you’re asked if you want to use it on an external disk as soon as the disk mounts. You choose ‘Yes.’ Then, you choose which folders to exclude from the backup (which is not very intuitive — you have to add folders to subtract them from the back up). At any rate, that’s about it. You’re done. The only thing you have to remember to do, if you’re using an external drive, is to turn it on (that’s if you don’t leave your computer and external drives on when not in use to save power). That’s nice. That’s easy. Time Machine, as you likely know, allows you to go back in time to recover lost files. This is a welcome addition to my backup scheme.

But it’s not the end-all of backup for two reasons:  it’s not a bootable clone and the backup is stored on a local drive either inside or next to your primary mac. The bootable part is important if you want to be able to keep on working if your primary drive dies. Having your most critical data stored somewhere other than home is important because fires, floods, and terrible things can happen.

Here are a few additional steps (in addition to using Time Machine)  I take to keep me covered for almost any scenario. First, I ensure I always have a bootable clone. I use SuperDuper, the popular little backup app that allows you to make an exact mirror copy of your primary drive. Because SuperDuper makes your backup bootable, and because it’s an exact replica of your drive, you can keep on working if your main drive dies. (note that SuperDuper is not yet Leopard-ready as of the time of this post)

If you have more than one mac in your home, the bootable backup is even handier. Say that you have to send your iMac in to get repaired after a hard drive failure. It’s gone for two weeks. But, during this time, you need to keep working with the applications and files that were on that computer. No problem. All you need to do is plug in your external drive to one of your other macs and boot up from that drive (Preferences: Startup Disk). It’s not going to be as fast as using your primary mac, and the cloned copy might be a few days old … but, trust me, it beats the alternative. Alternatively, if you’re in the middle of some critical work that you must finish and you don’t have a second mac, a bootable clone allows you to keep on working on that machine. When you’re done, then you can send in your imac for repair. Of course, if you have a macpro, then you probably have more than one internal drive and you can fix your dead drive all by yourself. The key to backup, of course, is frequency and consistency. You need to do it often and on a set schedule.

That’s why I paid for SuperDuper instead of using the free built-in Disk Utility or the free Carbon Copy Cloner. It has a ‘Smart Update’ feature. Those other two do the job well, but the don’t have this feature. This means that SuperDuper only replaces what is needed to make your backup identical to your source disk. you’ll appreciate this feature immediately if you have a lot of data. For me, it means each backup takes about 15 minutes for 120GB of data. A full Not-Smart update, by contrast, can easily take an hour or more. As an aside, SuperDuper is popular for other reasons as well: it is beautifully and thoughtfully designed, it does one thing and does it extremely well, and the application’s instructions and explanations are very easy to understand. And do you know why it’s called ‘SuperDuper?’ It only occurred to me yesterday that the Duper is short for Duplicate. That may have been obvious to others, but it only just occurred to me. Now let’s just hope the SuperDuper team get the Leopard-ready version of their software working very soon.

So, now you have Time Machine and SuperDuper. Should you put them both on the same drive? Not if you can help it — you can easily do this with disk partitions, but if that one disk goes, you’re going to lose the whole disk … not just one partition. Having said that, I did place my SuperDuper and Time Machine backups on the same drive. My reasoning? I never worried about having only one disk when I only used SuperDuper … so I’ll take my chances and place them on the same disk. The odds of that disk and the internal drive of my iMac both dying simultaneously are, I like to think, pretty remote. I am using a 500GB Lacie d2 Quadra with two partitions. For SuperDuper, I alloted 200GB. My iMac drive is 230GB. I figure if I get up to 200GB of data on this disk, it’ll either be time to think about archiving some stuff or deleting some apps/files … or it’ll be about time for a new mac. So 200GB is big enough. I used the rest of the disk space for my Time Machine partition. Instead of using Time Machine to back up the entirety of my iMac internal drive, I only set it to back up the user folders. This setting should give me a lot of space to go pretty far back in time for my files only. For the apps, if I have to restore them, I’ll use my SuperDuper clone.

But what happens if you have a fire, flood, theft, etc. and you lose your external drive backups and your mac? You’re screwed. Unless, that is, you employ some sort of off-site backup scheme. While there are now a slew of online companies which offer external backup locations for your stuff (for a modest monthly fee), you may ask yourself if this is secure. (There is a good wrap-up of current services in the December 2007 issue of MacWorld, by the way). It very well may be secure and I’m sure this is a viable option, but I haven’t ventured to try this yet. My current solution is a bit convoluted, but I think it keeps my data pretty well distributed. My main off-site strategy is this: I bought a tiny little 160GB Iomega external drive. Not only is it quite small, but it purportedly has some patented bump-and-drop protection built in, which can’t hurt. I back up all documents and photos from all my macs onto this drive using the free SilverKeeper backup software — just the things I absolutely, positively would be devastated to lose in a worse-case scenario. I then take this disk off-site and store it securely at work. You might also consider storing it in a fireproof/waterproof safe at home, but I’m not crazy about that idea. In the case of a fire, this safe could get quite hot. While the papers inside may not mind, I think a hard drive would. You might also consider storing it with a trusted friend or family. Note that I don’t back up my iTunes library to it — it’s huge … and it’s already backed up to my iPod (always with me) and my Time Machine and SuperDuper clone.

Finally, I employ a few odds-and-ends backups. I use a simple automator script to ‘sync’ calendar, address book and mail to an external server where I host my websites. This Lifehacker.com post will show you the basic idea. If you subscribe to .Mac or use a different synching application, this wouldn’t be necessary. But this is a cheaper way to go and it gets the job done. I also selectively backup some files to my gmail account (you could also use an external server for this) just for convenience - my wife’s Rapidweaver backup, for instance, and some writing projects that I may want quick access to on the go.

So, putting it all together, this scheme isn’t too complicated. Time Machine is automatic. SuperDuper clones are automatically scheduled for every other day (or will be, once the shareware is Leopard certified). Automator synching is manually done once a week (I just need to click a button to sync — Chronosync might also be an easier way to do this. I’ve heard great things about it, but I don’t have any experience using it). Once a month, I update my off-site Iomega disk. This certainly isn’t the easiest methodology, and I’m sure it’s not the best methodology, but hopefully it will give you some points to consider to develop your own backup scheme.

So, I talked my wife into accompanying me to the Ala Moana mall in Honolulu yesterday for the Leopard launch. No, I didn’t actually buy Leopard (see last post - plus, Amazon.com has it for a cheaper price with no tax). I did, however, get a nice Leopard T-shirt (as did my wife), and I picked up a LaCie d2 Quadra 500GB external drive and iLife'08. We only waited for about an hour and a half. Was that worth a free Leopard T-shirt? Yeah, sure. Of course, there are already people selling their shirts on Craigslist and Ebay. Last I checked, they were going for between $30 and $50 … but I’m keeping mine.

And here are a few photos from the opening. It was a lot of fun. There were probably about 200 people in line at the opening bell at 6pm (although I couldn’t actually see the end of the line, so it may have been more) and enough security to manage a sizable rock concert. It was a bit disconcerting as we entered the store. We were about 20 or 30 deep in the line, so as we were part of the first group to enter, we were greeted by a sea of Apple employees clapping and ecstatically cheering for us. Very energetic. Disconcerting. I couldn’t believe how many Apple employees they squeezed into this little store.

I was impressed, though, by the organization of the event. As I walked in, I was asked if I was there to buy Leopard. I said no, but I wanted a hard drive … and my escort pointed to the back of the store and said, ‘John will take care of you.’ Sure enough, there was John at the back of the store, grinning and waving at me to come on down. Now that’s customer service. Three Apple people tried to grab me on the way out to explain how Leopard worked, but I declined. I’ll come back when there’s more room to hang out.

I will not upgrade to Mac OS X Leopard until the first maintenance update is released. I typically try wait for a few months to upgrade to the next OS iteration for the sake of letting others find the first wave of bugs ... and it's always a battle of the will. Especially when the in-depth coverage begins on the new release, and everyone is talking about the new cat ... and I'm still looking at the old cat.

The longest I've waited to upgrade was during the OS9 to OSX transition. The shortest time I've waited was for the upgrade to Tiger, which worked flawlessly for me from the start. Leopard, though, will be easier to wait for. In fact, this is the first OS release that is not filling me with anticipatory glee. For one, I don't feel that any of the new features are mind-blowing or urgently needed/wanted. Second, Adobe said that CS3 reportedly won't be Leopard-ready for a while longer ... even though I expect that the CS3 apps I run would probably work fine. And SuperDuper and DiskWarrior I hear are also not quite ready.

Lastly, Leopard came later than expected because of the iPhone and heavy, concerted marketing for it started really close to the launch date, which left me with the feeling that perhaps this OS might be heading out the door a little more quickly than it should ... perhaps I'm just being paranoid. That perhaps even Apple wasn't certain that an October release date was going to happen. That's the impression that I got, anyway. At any rate, it's a good goal to wait a bit ... as many people will tell you, if you absolutely, positively can't afford to suffer downtime, better to wait to upgrade and let the early adopters work out the early bird bugs. What's different this time is that I am waiting with far more patience. In the meantime, I am going to prepare for the upgrade and do some spring cleaning.