There's been a good amount of discussion about Siri on the new iPhone 4S. I for one, can not wait for better voice recognition. It's unclear if Siri will be available on the iPad 2 even though it contains the same A5 processor as the iPhone 4S. My guess is that the iPhone 4S has more than just an improved processor and RAM to handle Siri. I'm betting (and could easily be wrong) that the iPhone 4S comes with improved microphones and audio processors.
David Sparks' book is officially official. I’ve had mine for about a week and it’s great. If you thought paper books were dead, this book proves otherwise. It’s printed on high-quality paper with full color images. There are QR Codes to look-up any apps he mentions. Even if you’re Scott Forstall, get the book just for the high-quality content. I plan to give this as a gift to several people this holiday.
Beer Tracking Trilogy Episode 4
See this post for the introduction and ground rules
Bento I started this project in Bento. A couple of years ago, I created a Bento database for cataloging beers I drank. The purpose was to know what to buy again, and what to avoid at all costs. Bento worked moderately well but had some frustrating rough edges.
Bento on the Mac has two different views into the data.
As I have mentioned, my dear wife is now a full time OmniOutliner user. She started on the iPad and eventually migrated to the Mac. One major advantage of using OmniOutliner on the Mac is that you can design templates that automatically handle formatting based on context. The Omni Group provides some tutorials and some specific demos of styles but I decided to whip up a little tutorial for my wife and I am presenting it below.
As my last post revealed, I’m now thinking a bit more about a variety of use cases for outlining as a form of note-taking. One thing that I’ve discovered is that lawyer-ly folks love 'em some OmniOutliner. There’s almost a cult following around the application. Maybe that’s where everybody’s favorite Power Users got their start with Omni products.
Here are just a few links I have discovered while figuring out how a new Law student might take advantage of OmniOutliner:
My wife recently started on her 3rd degree. She has B.S. in Biochemistry and Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry. She is now starting Law School. She is obviously a great student but things have changed in the, uh-hum, several years since she was in a classroom. She begrudgingly[1] asked me for advice on note-taking options for law school. It took me about three seconds to recommend OmniOutliner in both of it’s incarnations, Mac and iPad.
Another great update for iThoughts HD on the iPad. This app just keeps getting better and better. Not just little needless tweaks either. They keep improving the core functionality and responsiveness. iThoughts HD on the iPad beats pretty much every mind-mapping application I've ever used on a desktop machine.
Just look at this list of ways to get data out of the app:
And just check out the fantastic looking email export if you use the new task settings in a mind-map:
Ken Case schooled me about OmniOutliner for iPad so I updated my last review. At least we both agree that we can't wait for better file syncing in iOS5. Oh yeah, and he confirms that it is coming for OmniOutliner!
I tried Paprika (Mac AppStore link) awhile back on the iPad but I did not like their paid syncing solution and there was not a corresponding Mac application. Both of those issues are now gone. Syncing is free and the application is available across iPhone, iPad and Mac. It’s a lovely looking app and has some nice features like meal planning and shopping lists.
On the recent episode of the B&B Podcast, Shawn and Ben had a lengthy discussion about the optimal home computing setup. They got pretty close to what I settled on a couple of years ago. I think this post describes my ideal setup until Thunderbolt is ubiquitous. At that point a MacBook Air could instantly connect to an array of devices through one cable and replace my desktop. I would still keep the MacMini server though.
