What’s up Mac?

With the poorly named Hello, Again Apple event behind, it’s now easier to take a look at what changed in the Mac lineup.

Before I share what I’m going to get, some thoughts on the new MacBook Pro’s:

Price

The new MacBook Pro’s are priced out of my range. Even the base (no Touch Bar) MacBook Air replacement model at $1499 is not an easy model to recommend: 8Gb of RAM is perfectly acceptable, but 256GB too limited imho. However, that’s a typical Apple move as this reddit thread shows:

In 2012 the newly-introduced 13-inch rMBP cost 1699$ - within half a year it dropped to 1499$ and six months later to 1299$

Further down p_giguere1 explains:

See, completely redesigned Macs usually have pretty poor production yields at launch. Making them more affordable would only make demand exceed offer, which is effectively a profits loss.

That’s why they have high prices at first, then lower them when yields are good. Some of those price reductions are associated with reducing specs on the base model. Apple could already be offering cheaper variants (13” with 128GB, 15” with iGPU) but they likely couldn’t make them fast enough.

Basically, I expect this to be fixed at some point in 2017. When the baseline model falls to $1299 it would fall again in MacBook Air pricing territory and be the clear recommendation for someone looking for a Mac.

Features

Touch Bar:

Although I initially complained about this, I’m slowly understanding that this can be a very useful improvement in the Mac’s I/O model. However, for it to be a consistent interface, it has to be available for Desktop Mode users. Not necessarily the iMac, but anyone that connects their MacBook to a monitor and doesn’t use the MacBook keyboard — which anecdotally is how most people I know use it.

Touch ID:

Lost in all the noise from the event, the Touch ID is one of the coolest things about these machines. More than anything is has to be one of the features that once you use it, it’s absence pains you. And the ability for third-party apps like 1Password to have access to it, makes me want it even more.

USB-C/Thunderbolt Ports (Lack of everything else)

I’m perfectly OK with this. USB-C is the future, and Thunderbolt is the PRO future. Yes, there’s going a painful time with dongles, but even with the current MacBook Pro and its multiple ports, I have to carry some.

If you’re confused about the USB-C/Thunderbolt dual meaning, the short version is: The conector is USB-C, and it works with all USB-C devices. But if you have a Thunderbolt device, you can take advantage of a ~5x speed increase — at about ~2x price. Best of both worlds, and a very practical solution by Apple¹.

Keyboard

I haven’t used the MacBook or new MacBook Pro keyboard a lot, but from playing with it on the store, the limited travel doesn’t bother me. While the no-clickiness of a glass screen might be too millennial for me, the reduction of key travel since the original iMac has resulted in keyboards I actually prefer.

Size, weight and design

Take my money². While not huge changes, they are noticeable if you compare against the current MacBook Pro, or even the MacBook Air 13in. For anyone that carries their computer home everyday, or travels, the small change is very appreciated.

So, which of the new MacBook Pro’s am I getting?. Sadly, I’m pretty sure none of them. With my $1800 budget, even the no-Touch Bar model would be compromised by either 8GB of RAM or 256GB of SSD space.

I’m entertaining three options, all of which are used MacBook’s³:

1. 2014 MacBook Pro 13in, 16Gb + OWC 1TB SSD Upgrade ~$1500
2. 2015 MacBook Pro 13in, 8Gb, 512gb ~$1150
3. 2016 MacBook 12in, 8Gb, 512gb ~$1200

The last two are specially compromising, and I’m mostly considering them as a temporary solution while the new MacBook Pro prices come down next year. I’m also holding hope for Black Friday — but don’t expect any of the prices to come down within my budget.

I’m switching back and forward among these options everyday, but today I’m leaning on #3. The MacBook Air 11in was one of my favorite laptops ever, and since I will only be using it for personal stuff, I may not need the Pro power — or so I tell myself.

Adobe prototypes Photoshop for audio

Craig Stewart:

Demonstrating the software, Jin took a clip of speech and by simply typing new text into an edit box was able to add that text into the speech, in exactly the same voice. In other words, he ‘redubbed’ what the speaker has actually said.

This is amazing. Fascinating that they claim to be working on the watermarking to identify fakes at the same time. That’s how good the technology is going to be.

Castro 2 podcast player

I have been using Castro 2 a lot over the past two weeks. Don’t know if I’m completely switching over from Overcast — my main podcast app for the last two years — but I haven’t opened it in a while.

What I like most about Castro is how you can have a stream of feeds (called inbox), but only download/queue that ones you’re interested in. This makes subscribing to a lot of podcast a better experience.

I’m sure you can approximate this behavior with Overcast and other podcast players, but there’s something very clean about the way Castro does it.

There’s two things I miss from Overcast: 1) trim silence, 2) the ability to subscribe to podcast from the web.

Subsisting on Soylent for a Month

Martin Cizmar, a food critic Willamette Week on Soylent:

For a month, I mostly subsisted on it. For 30 days in September and early October, the period where we do the bulk of our Restaurant Guide magazine, I consumed Soylent for my meal unless I was reviewing a restaurant. […]

And I felt great. I rarely craved “real” food, I lost a few pounds, I had lots of energy and I was rarely hungry.

Good approximation to my experience, with the exception that he liked Coffiest.

MacBook between the lines

Tomorrow Apple is set to have a Mac event. New MacBook Pro’s have already leaked, and there’s rumors of an updated MacBook Air.

While the 13in MacBook Pro is sure to capture my heart, I hope the updated in between MacBook Air has a chance to make its case.

What I want: 13in Retina MacBook with 16gb and a 1TB SSD.

This is a machine that I could have gotten today, but upcoming version greed and price have gotten in the way. I’ve been toying with the idea of the ultra minimal MacBook, but with Robie, my Photos library has been growing exponentially — and I want my library in my personal Mac.

I really need want a personal MacBook again. I’ll be happy tomorrow if there’s a Retina/16gb/1TB tomorrow in the Apple Store in the $1,799.00 range. Otherwise I’ll be doing some soul-searching on ebay.

Judging a book by its content

One my favorite audiobooks this year was Scott Adams’ How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big. Which led me to start reading his blog — which was fine, until politics came in.

Can’t say he’s right or wrong about his point of view, I just know I disagree with him. Also, in my mind’s eye, he went from someone I enjoyed listening in the audiobook, to someone I kind of dislike.

Same is the case with Orson Scott Card’s and his anti-gay views. Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead are among my favorite Sci-Fi books, but I find it sad that in later books I feel watchful to catch an agenda.

But don’t burn the books. Writing is about expressing something. You don’t have to agree with it, or even less, be persuaded by it automatically.

Reading stuff that you don’t agree with — from someone you share a passion — is great way to fight sampling bias in twitter, blogs and other stuff you read online.

The joy in boring weather

Hurricane Matthew strolled past Miami yesterday. A day in stressful preparing and wondering completely wasted in a non-event. And I couldn’t be happier.

Coffiest fails at everything Soylent 2.0 succeeds - Updated.

Soylent’s breakfast drink came out just as I was running out of my first Soylent 2.0 box. I was already adding cold brew coffee to half a Soylent 2.0 bottle for breakfast, so it seemed like a great time to tried.

First, a Soylent 2.0 review

I love Soylent 2.0. It delivers on everything I was looking on a meal replacement drink: price, ingredients¹, simplicity and taste.

A note on taste: Soylent 2.0 doesn’t taste good, but it doesn’t taste bad. It has an absence of taste, which I appreciate after trying many shakes that either fail at faking a flavor, or do taste great — which is explained when you check the ingredients.

Soylent 2.0 flavor is inline with what it is: a meal replacement meant to simplify your life. You’re not drinking it to suppress hunger with a peanut butter flavored shake, you’re eating a balanced lunch quickly to get back to work and leave early.

And now, the Coffiest disappointment

Coffiest also doesn’t taste good, but the coffee with a hint of chocolate flavor is not subtle. So basically you end up with most disagreeable cold mocha you have every tried. To make matters worse for me, unlike Soylent 2.0, Coffiest seems to have an aftertaste.

Now, being clear that my objectivity is blown, I also experienced some stomach discomfort with Coffiest that I didn’t had during the previous month with Soylent 2.0. But this could be a nocebo effect, so YMMV.

Even though Coffiest is not for me (and I can’t recommend it) I will continue to buy Soylent 2.0 — as soon as I struggle through the remaining 9 Coffiest bottles.

Update: Emailed Soylent about returning my remaning 9 Coffiest bottles and exchanging for Soylent 2.0. In a few hours they emailed back saying that they will refund the order and:

Feel free to keep the remaining Soylent with our compliments, or you can share it with interested family and friends.

And that’s how you make a customer happy.

Sold my Apple Watch

With the new Apple event on the horizon, I sold my Apple Watch Sport last week on Swappa before it depreciates further.

I expect Apple to announce new Apple Watch’s, and keep the old Apple watches at a $199/$249 price point. My guess is the original Apple Watch will receive a minor silent update of the internal components to fix any number of issues of the original design.

In truth, the main reason I sold it was because I wasn’t using it. For about 3 months I choose the Pebble Time over the Apple Watch. It got even more consistent when I took up swimming again and I was surprised how well the Swim.com Pebble app worked — even compared to my Garmin Swim watch.

I’m sure I’ll be drooling over the new Apple Watch next week. But the I think the upcoming Pebble Time 2 (which I preordered) is going to be closer to the original Apple Watch in build quality, which is the one area it really doesn’t even compare.

At $199/$249 and with WatchOS 3, the original Apple Watch may make some sense for more people, but it continues to be my least recommended of the Apple devices I’ve owned.

Review: Star Trek Beyond

Ana’s parent are visiting so we did a mid-week movie night. Heard so many bad things about Suicide Squad that I settled for the new Star Trek.

5 word review:

Good Sci-Fi setup and… boom.

What I’m always disappointed with these movies is with how dumb they end being… and they can’t help tacking on ending after ending.

By dumb, I mean how everything is spelled out. I don’t think Star Trek needs to be Inception, but it can at least have a little of Wall-E.

In any case, if you’re a Star Trek fan, this is another fun adventure in the universe. Not the best, not the worst. For the rest, if/when this makes it to Netflix, it worth a mid-week date at home.

Twelvety — Back to One Master TaskPaper File:

I know, though, that the attraction of that app for me is to have a perfect relational database of tasks. The flaw in that idea is that a perfect task structure may help get things off your mind, but it can be so perfect that you go numb to it and just gaze at its perfection.

Phil Nunnally is talking about Todoist here (great app), but he crystallizes my procrastinating habit with all productivity tools.

It reminded me of my mindset when I wrote about broken workflows being a good thing… which I should circle back to more often.

Cheeseburger hosting

One of the reasons I like my current blog host so much is the price. At $20 a year it comes out at less than $2 a month — that’s about the price of 2 basic cheeseburgers at most fast food chains in the US.

I’m currently looking at helping two projects that need a quick and nice looking site. It used to be that I’d host them at one of my servers, but experience¹ has taught me that projects need their own infrastructure so they can move on without you.

The typical setup for a simple website is always a Wordpress blog, but the bottom price for a reliable host is around $6 a month. Yes, that’s low, but it does add up.

Even with the ability to use Google Cloud, or Amazon Web Services, the basic budget starts at $5. For all the talk about the web democratizing content creation, that’s still too high for the next 2 billion people.

It may be that content managers like Wordpress require resources that cost $5, but then we’re doing content hosting wrong. If you only pay $1 for gigabytes of podcast downloads in S3, then text content should be less.

I hope not to be turning in an old guy for having to clarify that I’m talking about the web: accessible to all, backwards and forwards compatible as it can be. It’s great that you can post in Twitter, Medium, Snapchat and Facebook for free, but these are just like doing a graffiti in a neighbors wall, you shouldn’t be surprised if your content disappears. It’s your graffiti, but it’s their wall.

I’ll keep looking for a solution before breaking down and paying the $5, but something doesn’t add to me.

Google’s Gboard

After trying the Gboard keyboard for about a week, I’m a bit disappointed with it. I had first thought its multi-language implementation was going to be like SwiftKey or iOS 10; the ability to have two languages at the same time. No dice, it works like current iOS 9 where you switch between the two languages.

The way it works kinda forces you to have Gboard as the only keyboard configured, otherwise you have to go through all keywords before arriving back to the second language.

I set it up as my only keyboard, but the speed improvements never came. It was useful to have Google search right from the keyboard, but not enough overcome my slowness typing either it.

As I wait for iOS 10, going to give SwiftKey a try again. My friend Christian likes it, a Microsoft is probably working on some cool stuff for it.

Date: 2016-08-09 15:32

A traffic light without green

As Venezuela falls deeper into a disaster movie scenario, the Electoral Board threw another obstacle in the path to a referendum this year — saying there might be a pre-referdum step by late October. This implies no referendum until next year, which would mean that Maduro could be revoked, but the VP would finish the term¹.

I can only explain the frustration with an analogy:

Imagine you’re waiting for your turn at a traffic light, and the lights keeps switching from red to yellow, and immediately back to red. The traffic moves forward sometimes, but not always. You’d be awed by the injustice — if you’re Venezuelan you’d likely comment it with a laugh with the cars around you. But after enough turns, you’d start to get pissed.

Every time the cycle skips green again, you’re more likely to disregard the light altogether. But fear of the police/military in the corner and some common sense holds you back. Someone in twitter keeps saying that a green light is our right and some are talking to the traffic cop.

How does this bad analogy end? your guess is as good as mine. I trust the guy in Twitter. But each time the green light is skipped, scenarios become more complex, and the likelihood of people getting hurt approach certainty.

Stranger Things

Finished Stranger Things last night. It’s among the best TV shows I’ve seen in a long time.

While I’m not a fan of the 80’s horror genre, the series is light on the horror and heavy on the 80’s — which works great for me. Give the first episode a chance if not into scary moments, the show is so much more than that.

Also worth mentioning how well made and amazingly acted the show is. Probably since Battlestar Galactica I hadn’t felt as connected to characters and their lives.

Highly recommended.

The “Apple” one

After 7 months with the Apple TV, I’m a little disappointed to say that it’s the streaming box you should get if you want the Apple one.

I’ve grown to accept the remote¹ — but had to get a case for it. The UI is fluid, the box itself is un-intrusive, and Apps are good for some fun. Overall the Apple TV 4 is the best streaming box for me, but just like the Apple Watch, I struggle to recommend it to anyone who already doesn’t want one.

The above is the high bar this version of Apple TV misses. It’s the streaming box for the Apple ecosystem, but it falls short on both features and price to become the box everyone one wants to have.

The golden age of Apple fanboism where the answer to any consumer device question was: go to the Apple Store, is now a nice recent memory. On the summer of 2016, the answer to any question not regarding a smartphone, tablet or coolest laptop, is either depends or I’d wait a bit.

★★★★★

Seveneves by Neal Stephenson

I stayed late every night this weekend finishing the last third of Seveneves. Although being tired on a Monday is not a great productivity plan, it was worth it.

Neal Stephenson books have been hit and miss for me. I loved Cryptonomicon ¹, enjoyed Snow Crash, and have abandoned Quicksilver twice. So his sometimes dense writing is not an instant win with me. I think he may have dialed down in Seveneves, or maybe I was thirsty for some complex sci-fi.

Seveneves is basically three books in one — or more accurately, a trilogy in one book. This is not only in length (it’s 881 pages long) but in structure: you get 3 good sci-fi books that together make a great one. There’s 1) a disaster sci-fi, 2) near-future space sci-fi, and 3) far-future space sci-fi.

As usual with Stephenson, his sci-fi is heavy on the Science. But unlike some of his recent books, you can skim a little if you get bored with the engineering advanced course, and not miss a critical plot point. I was surprised of how few times I took shortcuts on Seveneves — maybe like Cryptonomicon and cryptography, my interest in Seveneves space travel backdrop helped me not loose my attention. YMMV.

If you liked Cryptonomicon and enjoy sci-fi, read Seveneves. It has all the ingredients of classical sci-fi I love: epic story, characters with dimension, open questions that force you to think a bit, and wonders of technology that seem like magic but are explained.

Trello scrum board labels

Trello Scrum Labels

When you’re in charge of a team board, you usually get a chance to set the rules for your domain. I’ve struggled a bit with labels, since there’s a tendency to make them very specific. This is counter-productive because it becomes more difficult in active boards to group tasks via filters.

After a few projects, I’ve narrowed down my list of default labels to:

• Feature
• Urgent
• Bug
• Blocker
• Improvement
• FrontEnd
• BackEnd

Although Trello sorts them by color, they are somewhat related to each other:

1. Type of Task: Feature / Bug / Improvement. Shouldn’t be more than one. Labelling tasks correctly will help in sprint planning if you want to balance a release among the three kind of tasks, or if you want to focus in a specific one.

2. Level of importance: Urgent / Blocker. Most tasks should have neither. Urgent is top-down red flag. Blocker is typically a bottom-up signal. Both of them at the same time… it’s a fire.

3. Layer: FrontEnd / BackEnd. The separation is a bit arbitrary and it’s mostly to have an idea which team the task involves. It’s possible to also involve both, but shouldn’t be that common.

Remember: A task/card should not have more than three labels. If that’s the case you actually have more than 1 tasks, and should split them up for clarity.

The One Big Thing / 1-3-5 task list

I had forgotten where I had seen this tweet, and had been looking for it:

New technique for time management: 1 big thing, 3 medium things, and a few little things to accomplish each day. pic.twitter.com/4qBhfYhtnC

— John Zeratsky (@jazer) July 30, 2014

Not earth-shaterring, but powerful in its simplicity. I’m all over the place right now with my productivity organization, but have been gravitating towards Trello as my repository of tasks — with a post-it note with what needs to be done for each day.

As usual, I’m a sucker for some sort of framework… so will giving this a try for a few days. And of course, there’s an app for it.

Palette and colors links

I usually hide my lack of fashion sense and design skills with simple greyscale colors — black is always the new black.

But for those times that you must add some colors, here are my kaleidoscope web tools:

• Palettable: when you don’t what you’re looking for.

• Color Hunt: when you need a quick solution.

• Color Supply: when you are ready to go down a color rabbit hole.

• Adobe Kuler: when you’re almost there.

A summer project: Colofón Podcast

Colofón Artwork

On Tuesday I published the first episode of Colofón — a new interview podcast in spanish about setups and general getting things done ’ness.

Since we stopped recording ñerds, I’ve felt a lack of geek creed. Or maybe it was a lack of geek creativity. Colofón is my attempt to get out of my comfort zone, both personally and ability wise, and create something during the summer slowdown.

Hope everyone subscribes and gives it a try¹, I really enjoyed the first episode with Mauricio, and I’m excited about the ones lined up:

• RSS
• iTunes.

Last call for Evernote

Evernote announced this week more limitations to its Basic plan, and increased prices for Plus and Premium.

This was expected. Even with the annoying main screen customization restrictions, the Basic account provided little incentives for many to upgrade. The loss of OCR on the Plus plan ($3.99/month) stings a bit, since Premium goes up to $7.99/month.

I have a soft spot for Evernote. I started using it on Windows on my first job in 2004, and it was installed in all my computers (later devices) ever since. The feature creep made me try the Apple Notes last year — and I haven’t switched back.

At the same time, Google Keep continues to improve¹. Its OCR is as good as Evernote ever was, and the design is cleaner.

Here’s hoping this is a one-two punch: price increase now, and after the noise dies down, and updated Desktop version with a simplified interface.

I suffer from placebo effect with new productivity tools, but Tunnel Vision was noticeably useful today:

See your next available Trello tasks every time you open a new tab.

Currently only for Chrome, but a Safari beta is in the works.

Find your own quote

I’ve been playing with the concepts of the five minute journal, and one of the elements is the daily inspirational quote. Of course I quickly went down a rabbit hole of automating a daily quote among the many available sites.

But for the next week I’m going to try finding my own quotable thought from something I’ve read.

Just one day into the exercise, I like where it’s taking me. It changes the way I skim articles during the day, and makes me more selective on what I’m reading if I haven’t found today’s quote.

With that said, here’s the one for today:

[…] there are dot-com people and there are web people.

Megnut — I’ve been thinking a lot

What’s my meta-theme?

Michael Pollan talked about his meta-theme or topic on a podcast with Alec Baldwin.

He mentioned realizing his arch-theme on all books was about human’s relationship with nature.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot since I heard it last week. My simplistic theme has always been about being geek. But there’s more to it — probably related to digital tools and how to use them efficiently.

Will struggle with it some more to get at something more coherent.

Sonos Lock-Screen and Now Playing support

Seems I joined just in time so wouldn’t have to wait for lock-screen and now playing to be introduced.

With just a few days, the lack of easy play/pause/next from the iPhone screen was a bit uncomfortable. Never mind that it didn’t allow the Apple Watch to control the music¹.

Today’s update makes the muscle memory of going to the lock-screen or pulling up control center to act on music useful again.

★★★★★

Abomination by Gary Whitta

Very surprised how much I enjoyed this book. Unlike Sci-Fi, fantasy is very hit-or-miss with me, but Abomination was a page turner.

I was skeptical about gruesomeness some mentioned on the reviews, but it played its part and didn’t distract from the story.

If you like fantasy and want a fun summer weekend read, you won’t get bored with Abomination by Gary Whitta

Father’s day surprise: Sonos Play:1

Ana and Robie surprise me with a Sonos Play:1 today… and boy does it sound great.

Sonos Play:1

Knowing the extremely picky tech buyer I am, Ana also made it clear that we can return it. Been playing with it all afternoon, it really is a well designed and great sounding speaker.

Will play with it a few weeks, but it sure looks like a new member of the family¹.

Gotta teach them while they’re young…

https://twitter.com/rmateu/status/744200714033954818

We bended the rules a little and watched some TV during lunch today¹.

Using the iPhone naked

This week I used my iPhone 6s naked. I obviously was feeling brave because my iPhone has AppleCare, but I still got some weird looks — almost like I was practicing the other kind of nudity.

Up until my iPhone 5s I’d never used and case on my iPhones. Part was school of thought (Jobs used his naked, so of course…), but I also didn’t like how it looked and felt on the devices.

After a year with the 5s, when I decided that I was not going to buy the iPhone 6 ¹, I followed Nav’s steps and got a black Apple Leather Case. It looked really good, but also felt great.

A month later when I received my iPhone 6 — don’t judge, I’m weak— I immediately got a black leather case, which lasted into my iPhone 6s this year. I never considered not using a case, since the 6/6s are as slippery as an almost consumed bar of soap. When the leather case surface started feeling sticky, I switched to a silicone case, which had the same great fit but seemed more resistant.

Brett Terpstra’s post about the Lizzytape made me want to try it out (it arrives this weekend) but in the meantime; I wanted to compare the iPhone au natural before and after the tape.

I have to say… while still slippery as hell, forcing myself to use the phone without a case is very nice. It’s so much easier to get in and out of my pocket, and feels much more sleek in the hand. I also enjoy being able to reach the screen borders for easier gestures. It has made me use the 3D Touch of the left corner to switch apps much more natural than before.

However, if the Lizzytape doesn’t work out I’m probably going back to a case. The 6/6s is just too easy to drop at any time. I’ll update in a week.

Given the reviews, it seems like the OnePlus 3 is the Android phone to recommend for the summer.

Looking forward to seeing one live, but it does look nice enough. The price is also extremely competitive at $399 with features that are comparable to the Galaxy S7 and HTC 10.

Every year after Google IO the curiosity to try an Android phone bites me, but I still don’t get the 5.5-inch screen sizes¹.

But for any Android user thinking of upgrading, I’d seriously consider the OnePlus 3. Specially after the disappointing Moto lineup this year.

I’m starting to reap the benefits of journaling after a year of consistent¹ writing. However, what really got me finally started was my failure to start a meditation habit.

I negotiated with myself that on the days that I didn’t meditate, I would at least write something on Day One. A few weeks later, a habit was born.

While mediation is still something I want to get into, I feel a daily entry covers a few of the same areas: introspection and reviewing the day.

If you’re restless at the end of the day; for whatever reason, I strongly suggest you drop a few lines somewhere. I garantee you’ll feel better.

Helium: A floating browser window for video on macOS OS X

On the of the seven features demoed yesterday for macOS Sierra was Picture in Picture for videos. While this is a productivity catastrophe, it’s a cool feature.

If you don’t want to wait until October for this feature, give Helium a try. It works great with YouTube videos, by taking over the whole window.

Helium

There’s a life cycle for cool apps becoming (easier to use) features in the OS, this is one of those cases.

5 word WWDC Keynote 2016 review

• macOS: Old faithful still has it.

• WatchOS: They realized it was broken.

• tvOS: So sorry we are late.

• iOS: The millennial is growing up.

WWDC 2016 Keynote wishlist

That time of the year again, when good boys and girls await to be told why our toys are better that everyone else’s — and if we’re lucky… we even get expensive new ones to buy!¹.

Here’s my wishlist for tomorrow’s event:

Software:

• macOS 12: I like the rumored new name, OS X / Mac OS X / MacOS X / 10.12.x was always very geeky.
  • More Window Management options: Allow 3+ apps in fullscreen, and not only vertical tiles.
  • Spotlight: Siri integration.
  • Notes: Speed improvement and easier creation of notes — let me add notes by dragging text jezz.
  • Photos: Bring more basic iPhoto functionality, especially automatically grouping by event.
  • iOS Apps: At least some easier path for iOS developers to brings their apps to the Mac.
• iOS 10:
  • Siri for 3rd parties.
    
  • Useful lock-screen for TocuhID: figure out a flow where I don’t have to touch home button with nail if I just want to see recent notifications.
  • Customisable Control Center.
  • Keyboard: two simultaneous languages and new autocorrect UI.
  • Photos: Google Photos level search.
  • Stable 3rd party keyboard APIS.
  • No autocorrect for hardware keyboards.
• watchOS 3:
  • Rethink the UI.
  • Custom watch-faces.
  • Less graphics, more speed.
  • Always on time.

Hardware:

• MacBook Pro
  • Faster, thinner, lighter.
  • 13in with 16GB of memory and 512GB of storage for $1799
• Siri Speakers
  • Great sound.
  • Modular: add additional speakers easily.
  • Apps: don’t have to AirPlay everything
  • Less than $200.

Likelihood of getting everything I want is very low, but wishing anything less wouldn’t be in the spirit of WWDC.

On keeping a life GPA

Over the past few weeks I’ve remembered something Martin Short mentioned on his book regarding keeping a score on all areas in your life.

He said that when his work wasn’t that great or fulfilling, he would work extra hard on his home life. The way you’d keep your GPA high even if your work grade was low.

Sometimes you have less control than you’d like on some areas in your life, but rather than affect all the rest it should give you the incentives to be able to concentrate on the ones you can accept.

Work right now is feeling somewhat repetitive and without a clear needle to move. But I’m very happy with how I’m able to share with Ana and Robie at home. Health wise, I feel good with my diet, just need to add some exercise to improve. And writing here gives a satisfaction that given the level of effort makes it a very cheap and easy way to get a good grade on an easy subject.

Movie: The Nice Guys

For our first night out since Robie ¹, we went to the movies — and Ana let me choose.

I absolutely loved The Nice Guys. It reminded me a lot of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, which is one of my favorite movies, so it’s in really good company.

For me, this is the sort of movie worth a ticket (and a babysitter now): it’s funny, smart and very well acted.

As any buddy movie it has some clichés, but they’re not overused don’t feel forced.

Highly recommended.

Today’s biggest tech news by far, Uber will soon allow book cars in advance. In my list of top 100 #firstworldproblems, scratch one and still 100 to go — there’s always another problem that gets added because, like, it’s literally the worst.

Two long articles today from Phil Schiller interviews about the upcoming Apple App Store policies.

This gives some much needed fresh air to developers. Subscriptions are clearly the way to go, and the ability of doing longer intervals (3-6 months) pegs this closer to a continued upgrade cycle.

The Search Ads don’t bother me much. I rarely explore the App Store via search, since I mostly rely on recommendations.

Also interesting is how this comes before the WWDC keynote next week. Could it be really be that full of announcements?

Dear new Nest CEO

I really wish your predecesor hadn’t bought Dropcam, but you’re right, lets not dwell in the past. Let’s have a quick chat about the present, and the current mess of features in the Nest Cam:

1. Notifications per camera and not per account.
   We give access to Robie’s crib camera to the grandparents. They love it. They check every morning and afternoon. Your recent update to allow family members made this easier, but you still don’t allow to have different notifications. So if I setup to have a sound/movement alert go off, you drive our parents crazy¹.

2. Nest paid plans are by camera.
   $10 a month, for-each-camera. Here’s the thing, I’ve been pissed at this from the start because I read it wrong when we bought the Nest Cam. I thought it was for each account… my bad. But please, make it $10 a month for 3 cameras and suddenly I have more incentives to buy more than 1. I know video storage is not cheap, but your parent company might know a bit about cloud stuff.

3. No AppleTV app.
   I’m not even going to whine about not having an Apple Watch app, but AppleTV? One big screen where I can see in HD all my cams? Who would want that…

4. Flash only video on website.
   I have three letters for you: OMG.

Good luck, and I really hope Google Alphabet didn’t hire you to sell Nest, because then we’re really screwed.

MacBook Pro rumored OLED keyboard screen:

https://twitter.com/markgurman/status/739886080560766981

I’m excited because I can’t really see the use-case for a dynamic keyboard, so I’m expecting to be surprised. For me, looking down at the keyboard is an UI failure: either the keyboard shortcut assignment is not logical enough, or I can’t find the feature on-screen.

The simplest explanation is that it’ll be app aware keyboard shortcuts. Which seems like a cool-looking feature, but not that useful.

I really do hope it has nothing to do with the Dock or notifications. They would be a trying to do a hardware feature to fix a window management limitation — an area where both Windows and ChromeOS have been more innovate than OSX in recent years.

OmniDiskSweeper

OmniDiskSweeper is really great at what it does: showing you the files on your drive, in descending order by size, and letting you decide what to do with them. Delete away, but exercise caution.

I was helping a friend find where the space on her MacBook Air had gone, and realized I hadn’t recommended OmniDiskSweeper yet.

A previously paid App by The Omni Group now free. Still works perfectly, and is the best way to find what’s eating up your space. Can’t recommend it enough.