I was honored (and a bit surprised) to be invited as a participant in the Six Colors 2016 Apple report card. If it’s not obvious, I think Apple is killing it with the iPhone. In other areas, well, you should read the report card. What I love about the Six Colors summary is that the responses are so diverse in what they care about. It also shows that you can be a fan without being mindless.
I still remember waiting in line for the first iPhone, nearly a decade ago. It was a reasonably long line but a casual effort by today’s standards. I had real excitement for a new device from Apple and not just an evolution of the Rokr let down. But it was also a little weird. I’d never waited in line for technology unless I was trying to return it. On that particular day my car sat in my driveway half loaded for a week long vacation to the coast of Maine.
Katie and David were kind enough to invite me on the Mac Power Users podcast. We only talked briefly about DEVONthink. It’s always so much fun talking to the hosts of a show I listen to every week.
With the huge variety of image editors available for iOS, I find myself using Annotable more with every new update. Pixelmator and OmniGraffle are amazing pieces of software on iOS but for simple edits they are just too much work. With all of the tools unlocked (a $10 IAP) Annotable can blur, highlight, draw shapes and lines, as well as add text and very nice magnifier effects to any image. A recent update for Annotable added the option to adjust magnification for annotations, which I never even knew I needed.
Most of my information is captured as plain text. I love text files. But, sometimes an image or a bit of formatting actually does help document things more precisely. Writing notes in Markdown with image links is possible but it’s not enjoyable. This is especially true when working on iOS.
In those situations I fall back to a DEVONthink formatted note. They share a lot of functionality with Evernote documents. DEVONthink formatted notes can contain images, links, and a variety of text formatting.
I’m a huge fan of DEVONthink for iOS . It’s one of my favorite apps released in 2016. But there are still some frustrating gaps and non-obvious features. Accessing favorite tags and groups takes far too much exploring and is not supported by the standard URL scheme. But, it is handled through direct item links.
Tap and hold on any document, group, or tag to access a pop-over. The item link is a URL that links directly to that place in DEVONthink and it works across platforms.
This is not new but I forget about the feature every week. 3D Touch the phone app on iOS to access favorites and other quick access features.
I’m not sure of the right way for Apple to educate users about all of these iOS features but I doubt most know anything about these little details in iOS 10.
My history with OmniFocus goes back to OmniOutliner on the Mac and the miraculous Kinkless GTD (thanks Ethan!). Those early days with Kinkless and GTD felt a bit revolutionary. Then The Omni Group released OmniFocus and set a the gold standard in task management for both Mac and iOS. The power of the perspectives and the incredible quick capture on the Mac was groundbreaking.
The transition to OmniFocus 2 killed my interest in the system.
Polarr is a very powerful photo editing tool for iOS and Mac. I was turned on to it by a friend that is a much better photography than I am but I still use it occasionally. Polarr for Mac is on sale right now for $3.
Polarr for iOS | Free with IAP
Polarr for Mac | $3
I recently enjoyed a new form of spam: iCloud calendar spam. No, it wasn’t a calendar invitation attached to an email. It appears to be from a source other than email.
Here’s the fact pattern:
A new event alarm was created in my primary iCloud calendar without my consent.
I did not accept the invitation.
There was no record of an email invitation in any of my mail folders, including spam.
