vanderwal.net

Did I Leap on Mac Developer Beta Too Soon?

I’ve been following along with this year’s round of Apple Operating System updates (OS 27) and had jumped on the iPad and visionOS developer betas in the first round or two. With iOS and ipadOS 26 with Liquid Glass if I turned it down and turned much of it off it wasn’t horrible, but it didn’t seem like a finished product. Since some of the inspiration came from visionOS for Liquid Glass it was mostly fine. The updates to the OS 27s are solid improvements for the most part, with odd bugs (mostly in YouTube app and some Meta apps). The iPad has been far more performant on the ipadOS 27 than the ipadOS 26 and fewer odd bugs.

On the Mac the OS 26 experience was poor with bugs, performance issues, UI design decisions seemingly made by people who had no understanding of interaction nor digital design. Hot mess would be too kind. My Mac is my core beast and my backup brain. I was tired of bugs and was pestering those I know whom had jumped on the macOS 27 betas if things were fine. The one oddity I didn’t want to run into was the menubar not working with menubar managers.

Yesterday the macOS 27 Developer Beta 5 was released and I ripped through the developer notes and saw the menubar had an update and claims it should work like it did on OS 26. That was enough for me to give it a try. After updating the other two devices I put in harms way, I finished a fresh back-up of my Mac and took the plunge.

First Impressions

The macOS 27 first impressions are it is more responsive and quick like it was prior to OS 26. Also OS 27 seems like it is what should have shipped last year as it has a finish and more design cohesion and relative purpose. Things in settings have been somewhat easier to find. Nothing seems broken.

I did hit an oddity and bug in Apple Music where the sound profile for hi-res lossless tracks was noticeably different when using my usual DAC/Amp and good headphones that are open back and resolve things really well. The sound stage seemed wider and the spatial separation of voices and instruments was much more pronounced, and the resonance of metal sounds (acoustic guitar strings, cymbals, and upper register piano (like an open grand piano)) were all really pronounced and forward. Something in the equalization had changed in the upper registers. I tried the track in other apps as hi-res and they sounded as they did. I also plugged in my DAC/Amp into my iPad and Apple Music like it did the day prior before the update. So I filed a report. I also found trying to edit a playlist in a playlist by clicking “edit” would crash Apple Music, so another report filed. Other than that Apple Music is much improved, but I’m not sure it is fully on par with the iPad Apple Music, which is really well done and has music content with production notes and more, but favoriting a song or album doesn’t beach ball the app.

To Test

One of the reasons I took the leap is I like using Apple Freeform for quite digital whiteboard and quick sketching of idea and there are some features with it that have improved that I want on my Mac and not just iPad (even though I largely use it on iPad and Vision Pro).

I also want to give Keynote a solid run through as that is also one of the tools I think in. I’m doing a few things in Keynote lately around folksonomy, Model of Attraction (as I’m walking new generations of product and engineer folks through it they want to know why they didn’t know about it before as it would save time tying to work through problem sets the model frames more easily to think through) with the four InfoClouds, and various Complexity Lens / Social Lens frameworks for seeing and thinking through problem sets.

My Automations Over the Ages and Today’s View

For a few decades I’ve converted regular manual tasks into automated tasks for many things. I use short code keyboard conversions with TextExpander (TextExpander), Alfred (Alfred), Keyboard Maestro (Keyboard Maestro), Hazel (Hazel by Noodlesoft), Apple Shortcuts, and a couple other small apps and services. But, I also have quite a few scripts in python and Ruby, but a few pure bash scripts. I have a handful of apps that use Claude Cowork (Claude Cowork | Claude by Anthropic) on a schedule and used where the data is not always standard, so it aggregates and structures the data where it often later gets processed by python.

I started building and running automation scripts in the 1990s to handle tedious tasks with multiple steps, or would likely be victims for typos, and which I was handling daily. A task that would take 3 or more minutes (often longer) and had structured stable data I could search made it viable to become a script and automated. I had them to filter email to folders, filter downloads to common folders / directories, and one to turn off audio for the evening which monitored Twitter every 30 minutes for my nightly signoff (“off to read and sleep - zzzz”) and it would mute audio. I’ve had a few for audio that would capture podcasts I was on for a local copy during recording that took just one button click to set Audio Hijack Pro properly and it just worked.

Moving to the Current Adaptive Flows

The last six months (or a little more) I’ve been building aggregators to capture what I’ve done the day before (and the week prior for a manual review). I’ve also automated my morning Obsidian (Obsidian) setup, so that my daily note (or Daily Dump for my notes, in my vocabulary) templates are created for the week ahead with a python script, rather than creating a new note and use a TextExpander snippet to build the structure each morning. But, doing this I realized that I could take my daily task list and the list of potential tasks I keep at the top of my Daily Dump and script the moving uncompleted items to that day’s Daily Dump from the day prior, but also quickly run a calendar scan for the day with Claude and the BusyCal MCP to have my known items at the top of the note written directly in the note. The completed items and checked off were left on the prior day’s Daily Dump in their sections.

In order to run the scheduled python scripts I need my laptop to be awake in the background (but it still the screen remain locked) so to run early morning tasks. I found PMSET as the key to handle the wake-up for the first run and have a python script handle the remaining wake-up processes for that day.

I now have a mix of Claude Cowork Skills (which if I sort out the data is stable enough I convert them to python for consistency, speed, and sustainability) and python scripts that pull my prior day’s files created and worked on list, my items in a feed of the prior day’s additions to Instapaper, Pinboard, and a list of new items in DevonThink as PDF (with links to the PDF as well as a working URL to the source of the item), a list of Readwise articles and video transcripts, and videos I liked and sent to my personal instance of Slack. These lists are in markdown and placed into the directory Obsidian watches over. Most of them a little later in the morning are transcluded into my Daily Dump note for the day where I read through them.

Morning Process

My morning process is to read through what was done the day before and edit them to add links to other resources in Obsidian and write notes. Often I have some entries that will turn into that day’s list of things to do or one of the “potentials” list. I will take items that need to be their own item note or be included into a concept note. This keeps the items fresh on my brain and connecting things to where I can get back to them more easily.

I write this today, as this morning I found my morning automation hadn’t fully run properly, because my Sunday evening script to create the week’s Daily Dump notes didn’t run as it was a cronjob and I was cooking with the laptop asleep so the job didn’t kick off. This morning I converted the cronjob to a launchd task instead and to run on Sunday during another automated wake open window.

Weekly Aggregation

Sunday’s I also run a weekly wrap-up, that pulls everything done for the week. I’m finding this is a bit too much information for a quick review and a manual assessment for the week where I aim to map out things for the upcoming week. It is a bit too much information overload. I don’t know what I’m going to do about it. Now that I have things automated and aggregated I need to rework my human side of things.

The Value of the Automation

The goal of my automations is to give me time back and remove the manual and grunt work so I can do the thinking work. I’ve done this with personal life and work life (and large systems and projects). The current round of automation and aggregation surfaced that I am doing more than I thought I was doing. Another goal is to give more time to do the human thinking and the projects and work needed. I do this so I can do the creative human work and the human thinking work (I find large errors in summarization in nearly all generative AI and creative work so I keep that at bey and use it for grunt work that I check). The scripted automations don’t need the hand holding and I have some occasional test run to check on them to see if they need attention and honing.

Podcast Interviews and Presentations the Last Few Years

The last few years I’ve been on a handful things that have been shared out, but I’ve not posted about them. I’ve started to add them to my homepage, about page, and an old media pages. Posting things here, sometimes slips my mind.

The first two are for a company I’ve long been a fan of The Omni Group as I’ve used OmniGraffle and OmniOutliner around the time I picked up my first Mac for myself in 2001. The two products may have been included with the purchase of Mac and were great apps that have been a have been a central part of "the tools I think in" and communicate using. They asked if I would be on to talk about my use.

OmniGroup Podcast

In 2023 I had an invite to talk about my over 20 years of use of OmniOutline and OmniGraffle for the Omni Group’s podcast. (I also have used OmniFocus heavily, but haven’t been using it for a while due to work limitations and I got out of the habit and I haven’t restarted the habit). The interview by Andrew J. Mason with me talking about, How Thomas Vander Wal Uses Omni Software. I really enjoyed this interview as I’ve deeply enjoyed and used OmniOutliner and OmniGraffle for a very long time. I have my full set of Complexity Lenses and sub-elements (Complexity Lenses – An Overview – Personal InfoCloud) (there are now over 100 lenses with over 1,500 nodes altogether). I use OmniGraffle a lot for explanations, diagrams of systems and processes, but also quick graphics to put into Keynote presentations.

OmniGroup Podcast 100th Episode and 30 Year Celebration

100th Episode Celebration with Ken Case - In this I have a short snippet to offer thanks and congratulations to the 100th Episode of the podcast, but also to Ken Case for 30 years of OmniGroup. I was deeply honored to be asked to contribute to this and to be included with so many other wonderful people whose work I’ve deeply appreciated as well for many years.

Seeing Clearly Through the Fog of Complexity - on the Complexity Lounge

In February 204 I did a two hour presentation and Q&A with the The Complexity Lounge to present my Seeing Clearly Through the Fog of Complexity talk. This is a good group and having this available to share is a wonderful asset to have. This is a decent intro to the Complexity Lenses and contains around 12 to 14 lenses touched on during this talk.

Sustainable AI That Has Our Backs interviewed by Jane McConnell

Also in February of 2024 I was interviewed by Jane McConnell for his Imaginize World podcast talking about sustainable AI - Sustainable AI That Has Our Backs — Thomas Vander Wal | Full Podcast Episode - YouTube. This touches on the balance of assistance it can offer, but also some of the troubling areas around it. I started working with AI/ML (along with NLP) in mid–2008, and that background comes into this discussion.

MacSparky Members Only - DevonThink Power Use Overview

I did a deep dive on my DEVONthink use, which I’ve used since 2003 and now has roughly 180,000 objects (in one database) with David Sparks for one of his groups in MacSparky Labs. I don’t have access to it, but it is out there as well. Since 2003 I have tucked away anything I think I may have potential future interest to me in into DevonThink. I’ve been amazed that DevonThink’s incredible search on what is in its database is still solid and quick. But, its most amazing feature to me is the “See Also” tab in its insights button, which when looking at a document it will show you other documents related and its strength of confidence on that relationship. This See Also is incredibly good and has not only found things I wasn’t looking for, but it has drawn connections to things that have been massive lightbulb going on moments and started new idea and paths of exploration.

Hiding Music in Plain Sight

As I was working on something today and had music going in the background I went to switch gears and I swore Apple Music had experienced a stroke and when I clicked to this song:

I clicked play and it fit the EDM style of music I appreciate and it sounded like an artist / DJ I liked, but couldn’t place it. But, I was deeply thrown by the type as it was well outside a Latin character set. Not only was the song and album in this outside the usual character set, but the artist name and label were too. I used the UI and clicked where I should be able to get the artists page in Apple Music and it was the same. But… the information about the artist unlocked it is Four Tet - Four Tet.

The downside is I don’t know how this is searchable, but a friend found a link to another Four Tet album that has used the same character set on the web. But, once I searched for Four Tet I found this Pitchfork review that explained much of of the “why” behind the characters - Pitchfork - Four Tet - Wingding - review. That led to finding it on Wikipedia Wingdings (album) - Wikipedia (James found it about the same time).

I loved the backstory and the reviews, but I still can’t freaking understand how to search for it easily. I have thrown it on a couple playlists, even started a new one with (so far) just it on the list.

Weeknote - 15 March 2026

I thought this week was going to fully turn the corner on a cycle of sinus tears, light infection, better, and then start it over again. It has been messing with sleep and having a clear head. I’m hoping thing are sorted.

Am I back posting weeknotes regularly? I love reading other people’s weeknotes and have a handful of favorites. I also miss getting things of interest shared out somewhat regularly.

Watched

Mission Impossible is Sort of Wachable

The tail end of last week I watched what I thought was the last (latest) installment, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One - Wikipedia. I started watching late and I hadn’t looked at the length before I started. It was decent and enjoyable. I found it to be one of the better of the Mission Impossible series. I really liked the first movie and some along the way I have found to be decent, but some are a slog. I enjoy the travel and some of the film production, but the scripts are think and acting meh (I really am not a fan of Tom Cruise). But this 7th in the series was decent entertainment. As it ended I realized there was the actual “final” installment and given I thought the 7th was enjoyable there may be hope. I was not right, it was a slog with story segments far too long and with that there were logical gaps.

Seven Dials is Rewachable

Later in the week there was a quiet evening and I needed a break and opted for Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials - Wikipedia on Watch Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials | Netflix Official Site. I wasn’t expecting much as one of the Agatha Christie shows that Netflix had done in the last few years was not really watchable. Seven Dials was more than watchable, I found it to be quite good and a good interpretation. The Seven Dials is a Agatha Christie mystery that leans into a serious nod to P. G. Wodehouse, which I found to be well done (as well is something I was in need of). The main characters were really enjoyable.

Work

Search Me

I did a little tweaking around blog search for here, but not fully pulled it into this blog. It is sitting the Search from the Lab for vanderwal.net. I updated the database engine and switched to InnoDB to get search for 3 letter words and larger working.

I then had the issue of old blog entries where I didn’t have a title and the title is what I make linkable from search. I thought I only had a few handfuls of posts that lacked titles, but it was a few hundred. While adding titles is a good background repetitive task, I moved to adding a permalink under the body of the post snippet in the search results, but also added the post ID as a proxy header to give some consistency.

Category Tweaking

Through searching my posts across 25 years I would click to read a post and go to click a category that I believed would take me to other related content, I found I had categories missing. I added in about 5 or 6 categories and went back and searched and added the categories to posts.

Personal InfoCloud Posts

I have a few posts for the Personal InfoCloud site brewing. There are many things I have thought I have posted there over the years that are just written out in my notes and not edited nor posted. I have one I’m reworking a little.

I have also been going back through many Model of Attraction focussed posts and ones around the InfoClouds (Personal, Local, Global, and External) and sorting out what is posted and not. Related is sorting out what posts I have relate to the roughly 100 Complexity Lenses (at the top level - has also used Social Lenses as its main label in the past, but there is so much more in there than social) and the more than 1,500 nodes in all.

I also have a few posts around software development and product development around subjects that people, teams, and organizations seem to be continually missing or tripped up by.

General Posts

I posted the other day about Adding a Museum Category - Off the Top - vanderwal.net in relation to the IndieWeb Carnival - IndieWeb that James is running this month on museum memories - IndieWeb Carnival March 2026: Museum memories | James’ Coffee Blog. When James mentioned this a while back I was thinking I had a couple or small few museum memories I could post, but started a short list. That list turned into more than 30. There may be more than one post for sure. It may be a series or collection (hence added the category). But, I also have some broader theme posts that are growing on the subject.

My blogfodder list is rather long. But, modifications I’ve made to my workflow and blog management process in Obsidian
(I’ve been using it to sit over my nearly 30 years of text and markdown notes for the last 6 years and finding it really valuable) are making it better to get notes moved to blogfodder, and honed enough to post.

Productivity

Going Back to Bartender for Menu Bar Management for a Bit

I’ve been using Ice for my menu bar management on my MacBook Pro M4 since Bartender was sold and became questionable. Ice has not been updated since macOS 26 has been out (I don’t want anything Liquid Glass added) and with many apps getting a bit unstable on macOS 26 (particularly if they convert to Liquid Glass) and I’m trying to get things sorted.

I saw Bartender 6 had some recent updates and listing of changes and are now being more transparent. I also saw a quite reasonable upgrade price so went for a test of it and did the upgrade. It has been good and not all that different from Ice, but it doesn’t have the small bugs Ice had with the hidden menu bar displaying in odd locations under the menu bar.

Grammar Checking

Trying Harper for Grammar Checking

I stumbled onto and have tried Harper: The Private Grammar Checker, a medium capability grammar checker for English. It has an Obsidian plug-in, which I tried. I realized running a grammar checker on my rough notes isn’t a great match for that part of my workflow. It is easy to flip on an off in Obsidian and often notes turn into something more and that is where Harper may provide assistance. Harper is OpenSource and available on GitHub as well, which means I can run it through DeepWiki to get a decent overview of Harper - Automattic/harper - DeepWiki.

Often my writing and planning starts as rough notes in Obsidian. Since everything is in markdown and markdown is great example of Small Apps Loosely Joined where the file can be picked up in various different applications and use the apps to their best. I pick up the note and initial rough pass in iA Writer to flesh things out more. iA Writer has some light grammar checking and in prep sharing the writing out I use Marked 2, which also has some grammar checking. I’ve been looking for something with a little more assistance. I’m going to try Harper in some other of its options.

In grad school I and for long after I used Grammatik as part of WordPerfect and I really liked both and miss both. Grammarly has never fully been a fit for me and with its recent issues it still isn’t going to be part of my consideration. I’m not a fan of AI involved in my writing process.

I Have Webmentions Working

I have had a partial setup for Webmentions for a few years. I have had getting it properly sorted on my to do list for a few years. In the last week ArtLung ~ Joe Crawford was on a call and started asking questions about it and two or three questions and adding one element to my headers completed the cycle. I now have webmentions enabled, but I receive them in my RSS feeds and am not (likely may not) exposing them.

I Have Webmentions Out Going working with Omnibear

A month or two back I joined a call to look at updates and testing for Omnibear, mostly to learn more about it. But, in about an hour i was running Omnibear as an extension in Firefox and I’m authenticating through my Micro.blog account and site as the foundation for sending replies to others through Webmetions. I really like Omnibear as it shows if a site has enabled to receive a webmention and allows comments, bookmarks, and favorites. Having this in the sidebar (well sidebar in my Zen browser where I use it most) is really nice.

Swan Song's AR Design and Creation

I have a serious soft spot for the movie Swan Song (which stars Mahershala Ali and Glenn Close that is set in the near future in the Pacific Northwest. I was a fan of its soft and deep thought invoking exploration of life and replication, but also its near future view of technology. While others have been excited by the Minority Report’s manic augmented reality (AR) interface, the design and use of near future AR as part of work and personal life was really good. To say I was fascinated, may be putting it lightly. Swan Song (2021 Benjamin Cleary film) - Wikipedia was released in 2021 and Apple had yet to have announce Apple Vision Pro with its visionOS and really good graphics and workable interface. The visual and interaction design of what the main character (Cameron) worked in was incredibly good. Once Apple Vision Pro was out it felt like Cameron’s interfaces and interactions were part of the future road map.

The Design Studio Behind the Digital Interfaces and Interaction Design

Being that Swan Song movie was part of Apple Studios - Wikipedia I was believing Apple had a part in the creation of the user interfaces and interaction design of the AR in the movie. But, poking around in Vimeo I stumbled on the design reel for Swan Song - Territory Studio, so I finally found the studio that created the AR and digital design elements in the film.

Territory Studio’s Design Overview

Territory Studio’s page for the high level design overview of what they created for Swan Song is really good. I had been feeling like Swan Song’s design and AR team were more closely tied to Apple as their AR interaction design is very much like Apple’s sensibilities, with a more muted palette from a calm future. A lot of things that are in Apple Vision Pro’s user interface and interaction design patterns seem to have been hinted at, if not felt like they were previewed in Swan Song. But, I’m not so sure of the connection or how specious it may be.

The Territory Studio page has highlights of their visual / virtual design language, personal UIs, home office AR, AR home gaming, speculative hardware, smart watch UIs, and virtual mimoji. I really would love an even deeper dive, as this is much of the virtual interactive world I’ve been waiting for, and been hoping to see come to life for years prior to the film.

There is a whole lot in Swan Song that I loved from the time it was released, which was a couple years or so ahead of Apple Vision Pro being released. The headset-less AR and interaction design is one piece. But, I also was deeply taken by the whole story, cinematography, and feelings the film evoked, but also the keep thinking and consideration it evoked.

Swan Song Demo Video from Territory Studio

The show real from Territory’s work on Swan Song is in Vimeo: Swan Song Breakdown Reel - Vimeo

Strong Opinion About Slide Over on iPadOS

I should say up front, I’m deeply appreciative of Apple and all the products, OSes, services, and applications they make, as most everything is done with care and craft with and eye and understanding of detail. Having interactions with develop support and internal developers now and over the years, I’ve always been impressed in their focus on getting things right and doing thing better. Nearly every interaction with Apple from customer support, sales support, Apple’s developers, and people inside Apple has been fantastic and from people who aim to do their best and look to make really solid products and services for their customers.

Apple Announces the New ipadOS

At this month’s Apple WWDC 2025 they made the announcements about the new ipadOS 26, which seems like it may be a good step forward with the new windowed interface, that moves it into looking and acting much like a Mac. There are many other updates and improvements.

Subtraction of Productivity is Far from an Improvement

But… subtraction of one prime productivity advancement that the iPad has had for many of its iterations is that of Slide Over, which if you aren’t familiar (it seems Apple isn’t), is the ability to have an app that will slide in from the side of the screen and hover in a narrow mode, while the other app (or apps, as two apps on screen has been around for a while as well) is still in view.

This meant, with one flick and (in Steve Jobs’ parlance) boom! you have a note app (my strong preference has been for Drafts) that allows me to capture ideas in markdown quickly and then (or later) push the note out elsewhere - Twitter, Mastodon, note directories that Obsidian sits over, Messages, etc.) then flick it back out of the way. It is simple, quick, efficient, and productive, which is what Apple always seemed to put as a priority.

I often have Drafts and PCalc sitting one flick (two for PCalc for the second flick), which is ONE STEP to get a productivity app of my choice in place to divert my focus from a video I’m learning from, reading I’m wanting to capture a note or to do from, a quick calculation, or whatever I want to need at the ready and then get back to focussing. This is a super power that iPad has enabled. It is what separates an iPad apart from Mac and other devices in a big way.

The New ipadOS 26 is Four Large Steps Backward for One Element of Productivity

This new window model on ipadOS 26 is nice and could be helpful, but trying to do the same quick productivity action is at minimum four steps. That isn’t a productivity gain or enhancement. That is four large steps backward Apple. Four anti-productivity steps backward. If I wanted to lose productivity like that, I would switch to Windows.

The corner quick swipe from the corner of the iPad isn’t available unless I’m using the full window interface for finger use and only getting access to Apple Notes (a really nice product, but for various reasons isn’t my first choice, nor second choice). In the new interface the quick corner access is available with Pencil swipes. The full window interface you can add a finger swipe.

But, going from a window I’m working or learning in and want to get a Drafts up and ready, if I have it in my dock it is a tap to open, get it out of the way (often two moves for placement and then narrowing it, if not also adjusting the window I’m also using, and then typing in Drafts) and that is the quickest way. Spotlight is the other option, which adds a step.

It Is an iPad not A Mac

Apple, this device is the iPad it isn’t a Mac, it has special super powers, which include the ability to help focus and be productive. With this new ipadOS 26 new functionality and capabilities are added that are helpful, but don’t take away the iPad’s strength as well. It may be those leading iPad don’t live with it as a core device and don’t care about its strengths and super powers, or they don’t understand productivity so they slipped up.

The windowed world of ipadOS 26 could easily have Slide Over and keep the super power of one flick for productivity. I’m hoping the fall release of ipadOS 26 still includes the productivity super power that sets the iPad apart and allows its users to have super productivity powers that help set them apart with the partnership of Apple’s products helping them be their best.

Delicious Library Shut Down

Will Shipley who created Delicious Library, a personal book collection tracking app for Apple’s Macs (It started there and then moved to iPhone / iPad as well), announced on Mastodon, Delicious Library Removed from App Store - Will Shipley. Shipley also took down the site for Delicious Library. The unsentimental background for Delicious Library can be found at Wikipedia - Delicious Library - Wikipedia.

You Don’t Know Delicious Library?

Delicious Library was an utter gem of an app. It was wonderfully designed and looked like one’s bookcases, with the book covers facing out. The metadata for the book, which it could support an abundance of, was easy to use and it could pull some of the metadata from Amazon through its API. The rest was up to the user of the app. If you enjoyed books and well crafted apps,

Delicious Library was the gem that people raved about and love to tell their friends about. The product was one of those apps in the mid–2000s that stood out, not as an Apple related app, but a great one across all platforms (others were Skitch and Apple’s own Keynote). Delicious Library when it was open and others were around, people would ask what it was and to show them how it worked. Great apps excel at not only filling a need, but also bringing delight, as well as showcasing a platform.

Wired has a great review and overview of the app and the people behind it and the response from users in a 2005 article - Monster Fueled by Caffeine.

I still was feeding my Delicious Library app, but in the last few years with my use of Obsidian and the book search plug-in (it pulls its metadata from Google’s Books API) I log all my new books in there. But, the ease of data entry and fun and legacy collection of books I have in it I still feed Delicious Library. The ease of use the last, maybe, 10 years or so was just holding up the book’s barcode on the cover or dust jacket so Delicious Library’s use of the Mac’s camera could read it and pull in the data from the Amazon API. That was so simple.

The End Came Quickly, Then Slowly

The end of Delicious Library came when Amazon pulled access to their API without warning nor discussion (very much in Amazon’s usual form). This broke the core ease of functionality and Shipley (who has been an Apple employee for a while now) who doesn’t have the time to rework Delicious Monster to use another source (like the excellent Google Books API, but Google is also wildly erratic with what is continues to offer as services and products).

You can still manually add data to your Delicious Library and it still functions rather well. But, it is a slow movement into the sunset for a wonderfully delightful product.

Mac Touchpad Dragging

I bought a Mac laptop for myself in 2001 and largely have been using the same version of the same set-up since then across 5 or 6 Macs since them (with one or two full nuke and repaves in there, but with those I pulled in my the applications and modification / customizations from preferences). In the past few months, I’ve been using a brand new Mac that is supplied by work / project and not only does it lack my outboard brain, but it doesn’t work like my heavily modified Mac.

The one thing that has been driving me crazy is I haven’t been able to sort out how I have a three finger drag on my personal MacBook Pro so I can have it on my one for work. It is frustrating as I go to click on an object to then drag it with three fingers to where I want it, or I go to the top bar of an app and place the cursor over it and use three fingers to drag the window to where I want. I do similar things to resize windows. I have looked in Better Touch Tool, thinking I had set it up there. I looked in Preference Settings for the touchpad, but no. Today I opened a lot of customization apps I have on my personal Mac and nothing.

I was looking in the Preference Settings in the Accessibility settings and found what I was looking for, the three finger drag. I would have never thought it would be in Accessibility. Given that my current personal MBP has a touchpad that the left half needs a lot of force to click on something and do usual tasks it does make sense that having a light touch manner of dragging things would be in Accessibility. Now I know how to fix one more thing on a work Mac to get it to my own personal Mac set-up so it gets closer to being an extension of me and less a tool I have to think about how to interact with rather than thinking about the work I am doing.

Animoji Trains Future Interaction Interface

In the September 2017 Apple iPhone 8 and iPhone X announcement Keynote they demonstrated the Apple ARKit driven face emoji, Amimoji. This is similar to other platform’s and service’s offerings.

But, there is something I think a little different about what Apple is doing. One piece is the face identification system that Apple has in the iPhone X and the 30,000 dots it uses on people faces to ascertain an identity, which makes it difficult for someone to use a photo or mask of a person to gain access. The other piece is people interacting with their screens and the live face scans of muscles and facial features moving.

It is this second piece, the live interaction where I have a strong hunch Apple is seeding things for the future. People are learning to interact with a facial scan interface for fun and learning the capabilities so to be comfortable with it. This seems very similar to Microsoft’s using the Solitaire game in early Windows to provide a fun interaction as a means to train people how to use a mouse and get comfortable with it.

Look out a few years and start to see not Animoji, but people talking to Siri to bring up an app on their wrist, car heads-up display, or (rather banal) iPhone and use facial interactions to swipe, scroll, sort, etc. feature options and light contextual information options for simple / calm interfaces. A raise of the eyebrow could scroll up options, a side smile left moves to preferred options and side smile right moves to next screen.

I know nothing other than a hunch, but playing around with this idea for years, I’m seeing the potential could be around the corner. Finally. Maybe. Come on Apple, lets take that step.

Mac and iOS Tagging with Brett Terpstra

If you are still following along here it is likely in hopes of something related to tagging or folksonomy (I have a stack of folksonomy and tagging things piled up, but not written-up) so today you win.

This week’s Mac Power Users is an interview on tagging with Brett Terpstra. This episode digs deep into what is coming in iOS and current state of tagging on Macs. While things are mostly tagging standards based, the implementations are still a bit on the manual and geek scripting side of things.

I am deeply excited about iOS getting tags that come over from Mac, which is why I have been tagging things for the past few years. I have been playing the long game with MacOS tagging in hopes that it would also sync to iOS. Years back I was really certain (the kind of certain driven by hope, more than knowing) Mac was going to provide a tag only option, which was going to be really good, as files have multiple contexts and tags can adapt for that reality (which is far closer to life than nested folders).

While we never got the world I swore was going to be the next logical step, or at least as an option, we do have something interesting now. It will be more capable and usable in the next few months with the iOS 11 and the next MacOS update, High Sierra. If this is your thing, give Brett’s sit down with MacSparky and Katie a go and you are more than likely going to find one or more tip to up your game, if not get much more out of it.

Interview with New Steve Jobs Biographers is Quite Good

On Friday I saw that John Gruber had interviewed the authors of Becoming Steve Jobs as part of Apple’s Meet the Author Podcast series. I had been reading snippets and reviews about the book for a couple weeks, with Steven Levy’s “The War Over Who Steve Jobs Was” and Rick Tetzeli’s Fast Company except “The Evolution of Steve Jobs” and found them interesting and much more inline with the many books I read over the years about Apple and Steve Jobs, than I did the Walter Isaacson book snippets I read.

This morning I watched the iTunes podcast of Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli: Meet the Author and it more than lived up to expectation. It was incredibly good. So good I bumped the book to the top of my wishlist.

Why this book?

I have read quite a few books about Apple and Steve Jobs with Alan Deutschman’s “The Second Coming of Steve Jobs”, Steven Levy’s Insanely Great, and Adam Lashinsky’s “Inside Apple” standing out from the many others I read and all the Silicon Valley history and culture books I have read along the way. They stood out as they grasped the lore, debunked it as well as extended it. They filled in the gaps with new stories and understandings. But, under it all they looked to only tell the stories of what, the place setting, and how, but they get to the why.

This book seems to fit why I liked the others with filling in the background and understanding the lore. This book seems like it will fit well in my underlying interest.

My fascination with Apple and Steve Jobs has to do with influence and foundation setting. In particular its early-ish influence and foundation setting with me.

I was born in the Bay Area, but grew-up up and down the whole of the West Coast in and just outside the major cities until my second year junior high when my parents moved to the California’s Central Valley. Being back in Northern California and a little over and hour from San Francisco we got San Francisco stations. This meant in the late 70s the personal computer was being talked about a lot. My dad was a systems and operations guy in the health insurance industry and there were always magazines around with computers in them. His fascination and work with computers rubbed off.

But, being in Northern California meant television and print news also covered computers and technology. This hippy guy with long-ish hair and a scruffy beard was continually on talking about what was happening today and in the near future. It was Steve Jobs. His near future visions influenced my perception of reality and how things should be. Our family’s first computer came in 1983 and it was an Osborne Executive, which I learned to use and copy code (copying small software that was handed out in local user groups) and play around with to see how things worked until they broke (then I swore and did it again).

But, in 1984 the Mac came out and that changed my whole perception of things. Not only did I have computer envy for the first time, but I also began to understand the future of where things were headed and was (then) thankful I didn’t go into computer science as a major as things became much easier to use (what I sorted out a few years later is much of what I wanted to do would have been aided by having a formal CS background). But around this time I also was meeting people who worked at Apple and they loved what they did and loved their jobs. Many at college had Macs and our newspaper my last semester not only was set up with Macs, but we got a new type of software, desktop publishing, for Mac from Aldus, called Pagemaker. It was so new we got a lot of training as part of the deal. We sort of had a digital newsroom (with a fully functional sneaker net).

After Jobs left Apple I followed what he was doing and had deep interest in Next. During this time I still had Macs around with most jobs and in grad school a couple students had Macs, but they weren’t as prevalent as they were in the late 80s in California. Often jobs I had would have a Mac around for creatives or testing, but by the mid–90s they were buggy. When Jobs came back to Apple as advisor as part of Apple purchasing Next in 1997 I still knew a few people at Apple and they were quite happy to see him back in some capacity. The shifts and changes at Apple fascinated me as the guy who influenced a lot of my belief in personal computing, what is was doing and could do, and how it should be done (with a focus on the user and ease of use - this was a “no duh” for me in the early 80s as I was making and breaking things on my Osborne).

Around 1999 I started cluing into the Steve Jobs keynotes again and in 2001 I picked up my first Mac, a PowerBook G4 Titanium, lovingly known as a TiBook. I got it because my laptop I was using, a light Toshiba, was tied to my project I was on and I left that project. I missed having a laptop, but I really wanting power, good screen, and ability to have UNIX / LINUX as well as a major consumer OS. In the TiBook I had UNIX as the core of OS X with command line ability, OS X, Classic Mac, and importantly a Windows emulator that allowed me to use Visio and MS Project (those needs would dwindle and become tiresome the more I got used to the Mac and its ease of use and its “it just works” approach to things - these do not always hold up). But my needs for the 4 OSs on one device that was powerful and relatively light eased into the background as the lack of needing to spend regular time maintaining things turned quickly into me just doing my work on the device.

Over the years with my Mac and increasing interest in Apple and how they do things and frame things, I got to know even more Apple folks as friends went to work there and I gave a some talks inside Apple. I was also running into people who had managed at Apple and I enjoy interacting with them as they think and work differently, which often fits how I like working and approaching things.

It is this trying to understand why my Apple tools and software (mostly) work really well for me and how I enjoy working with Apple (and ex-Apple) folks (I also have this enjoyable fit with McKinsey folks, but for very different reasons). It is trying to understand the what, how, and why of the fit with Apple, but as well as they “this is the way things should be” that was seeded in my head in the late 70s and was feed and groomed through life, that has me interested in understanding Apple and Steve Jobs.

OmniOutliner Counts to Four

One of my favorite applications that a lot of my work and workflow lives in and through, OmniOutliner, updated today. OmniOutliner 4 finally was released today. Its interface becomes a little easier to use for more advanced functions, but if you use the iPad version the new Mac version now looks and works a little more like the iPad version (I think this is a good thing for consistency and ease of use).

I have been using OmniOutliner since version one. I learned to think and organize in outlines and I loved in the old days of WordPerfect the start a document in an outline and then start fleshing it out allowed me to work in the same manner I learned in the fourth grade in Mrs. Norman’s class at Raleigh Park Elementary. This seemed natural to prepare writing this way and once WordPerfect went missing from my workflow other writing tools faked outlines and I looked for good outlining tools to be that foundation. OmniOutliner filled this void. But, once I found OmniOutliner I found other fans who had scripted it to do really helpful tasks, like capture web site maps and dump them into OmniOutliner to annotate and arrange them, then use a script to push into OmniGraffle to visualize. Doing this in 2003 (or so) was pure joy. Not only was was OmniOutliner easy to use, it was really powerful because it was well structured and scriptable.

OmniOutliner is Where I Think

About 2003 I was asked by friend Jesse James Garret, “What tool to you think in?” At that point my answer was OmniOutliner. OmniOutliner was my capture tool that allowed for easy structuring and arranging of order. In years to come with OPML becoming the glue to connect many things in my workflow, I would would move my outlines from OmniOutliner to a mind mapping tool and back and forth. This moving the outline into a mind map allowed me to see it and see relationships spatially and to identify order, modify structure, and make connections between nodes in different branches of the mind map. From the mind map I could take all the modifications and move them back into the outline and tweak a little more. From this point it was moving into writing or into a Keynote presentation (also with a script that would take the OmniOutline and convert it to a presentation to flesh out visually).

The Initial Foundation of What Became OmniFocus

With OmniOutliner I went through the early productivity layer for it that later turned into OmniFocus. My old business started and was kept on schedule in that precursor to OmniFocus that Ethan Schoonover cobbled into and on top of OmniOutliner that was called Kinkless GTD (or KGTD for short).

I still think in OmniOutliner. I have all of the (now) 54 elements of the social lenses tucked in there with their hundreds of sub-nodes. This outline is what became the initial foundation for the four days of walk through of them with Dave Gray for what would turn into the Connected Company book. The collection of similar outlines are all within easy reach. I have a saved Spotlight search in the Finder sidebar that aggregate all my OmniOutliner files for one easy view across everything.

OmniOutliner 4 Offers Even More Potential

I really look forward to how OmniOutliner 4 becomes a new part of my world and workflows. The AppleScript looks robust (I didn’t try it in the many months of beta, but look forward to it now). With scripting and the structure there is a whole lot that is possible.

Pear Note Updates to v3 Now with Skype Support

This morning’s email notification that Pear Note, a note taking and recording app for Mac OS, updated to version 3. I’ve used Pear Note for meetings to record the audio and take note and the text syncs to a timestamp in the audio, which is incredibly helpful and reduces the notes I have to take so I spend more time listening.

The best part of the news of this update for me is that it can now grab Skype recorder. I use Skype recorder a lot so I can pay attention to the conversation and not focus on note taking. Now having Pear Note tied in I can mark quick annotations on the Skype call and then go back later and fill the notes in (if you are listening to the recording while updating your notes it will continue to timestamp).

Pear Note 3 is now optimized for Lion, includes higher bit rate audio recording and HD 720p video recording. This is paired with the updated Pair Note for iOS, which updated today as well.

Skitch Update Includes Evernote Posting

Skitch updated its Mac OS software today and now include a direct posting (or sync in their terminology) to Evernote. This past year Evernote purchased Skitch and its team and brought them into the Evernote fold.

I have been waiting for this posting to Evernote since they were purchased. While I like the Skitch hosted web dashboard and its hosting of one’s own Skitch images it didn’t fully fit into my workflow as easily as Evernote has. Skitch dashboard works well to share images and drafts out with others and provides a nice interface for seeing what is private/secret and what is public.