ATPMezineVolume16

ATPM 16.04 / April 2010 Volume 16, Number 4 About This Particular Macintosh: About the personal computing experience.™ ATPM 16.04 z Cover Cover Art Copyright © 2010 Mirko von Berner’. The ATPM Staff Publisher/Editor Managing Editor Reviews Editor Web Editor Copy Editors Elly: Webmaster Mic Beta Testers We need new cover art each month. Write? to u Lee Bennett® Chris Lawson Linus Ly® n Ritter Brooke Vacant 7 The Staff!? Contributing Editors Eric Blair!’ Ed Eubanks Jr.14 Matthew Glidden'® Andre’ Kator!® Robert Paul Leitao!” Vacant Artwork & Design lnttp://direcciondearte.com/ °mailto:cover-art@atpm.com Shttp://mjtsai.com ‘http: //www.retrophisch.com Smailto:pfatula@atpm.com Shttp://www.secondinitial.com Thttp://chrislawson.net Shttp://qaptainqwerty. blogspot.com °http://www.ritterskoop.org \nttp: //twitter.com/oharabrooks Unttp://mjtsai.com 12mailto:editor@atpm.com http: //www.raoli.com Mhttp: //www. eubanksconsulting.net 1°mailto:mglidden@atpm.com http: //andrew.katorlegaz.com ‘http: //twitter.com/NuevoSobriquet ‘Shttp://www.wesmeltzer.com 1°mailto:sroque@atpm.com 20nttp://www.tennent .co.uk °lhttp://www.symphonysound.com ATPM 16.04 Cover Layout and Design Web Design Cartoonists Simon Griffee?> Mark Robinson. RD Novo Vacant Blue Apple Icons Other Art Graphics Director Emeritus RD Novo, Robert Madill, Belinda Wagner, Ja- mal Ghandour, Edward Goss, Tom Iovino, Daniel Chvatik, Mike Shields, Grant Osborne, Gregory Tetrault, Racna Armitage, Johann Campbell, David Ozab, Ted Goranson, Andrew Kator, Charles Ross. Contributors Richard Barrett, Ed Eubanks Jr., Matt Johnson, Chris Lawson, Robert Paul Leitao, Linus Ly, Wes Meltzer, Mark Tennent, Angus Wong, Macintosh users like you. Subscriptions Sign up for free subscriptions using the Web form?®, Where to Find ATPM Online and downloadable issues are available at the ATPM Web Site?’. aTPM is a product of ATPM, Inc. © 1995-2010. All Rights Reserved. ISSN: 1093-2909. Production Tools Acorn, Apache, AppleScript, BBEdit, Docutils, DropDMG, FileMaker Pro, Git, GraphicConverter, IXTEX, make, Mailman, MySQL, Name Mangler, op- tipng, PyMesh, PyObjC, Python, rsync, Snapz Pro X, ssh, TextMate. Reprints Articles, ori; al art, and desktop pictures may not be reproduced without the express permission of the 22http://mjtsai.com 23http://hypertexthero.com *4hnttp://www.cornstalker.com ttp: //qaptainqwerty blogspot.com http: //www.atpm.com/subscribe/ "http://www. atpm.com ATPM 16.04 Matt Johnson?*, Linus Ly?> author or artist, unle: otherwise noted. You may, however, print or distribute copies of this issue of ATPM as a whole, provided that it is not modified in any way. Authors may be contacted through ATPM’s editorial staff, or at their e-mail addres vided. , when pro- Legal Stuff About This Particular Macintosh may be uploaded to any online area or included on a CD-ROM com- pilation, so long as the file remains intact and unal- tered, but all other right d. All informa- tion contained in this issue is correct to the best of our knowledge. The opinions expressed in ATPM are not necessarily those of the entire ATPM staff. Prod- ompany names and logos may be registered trademarks of their resp mpanies. Thank you for reading this far, and we hope that the rest of the magazine is more interesting than this. are reserve uct and Thanks for reading ATPM. ® Cover About This Particular Macintosh has been free since 1995, and we intend to keep it that way. Our editors and staff are volunteers with real jobs who believe in the Macintosh way of computing. We don’t make a profit, nor do we plan to. Our aim is to produce a fiercely independent magazine, with multiple formats designed for easy reading rather than showing ads. The views expressed in these pages have always been our own, and to help prove it we do not accept direct sponsorships or advertising. We do, however, need to pay for our Web site and other expenses, so we rely on minimal advertising, sold indirectly via Google and m' using our link. Yahoo, as well as the support of ATPM readers who shop at Amazon ® lnttp://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect-home/aboutthisparticu ATPM 16.04 4 Sponsors Welcome by Robert Paul Leitao, rleitao@atpm.com Welcome to the April issue of About This Particu- lar Macintosh! We know already that over the 15 years ATPM has been in continuous monthly publica- tion there’s never been a month quite like this one. It’s the month the Apple iPad is first released, and this product will revolutionize the ways in which we and consume digital content. We begin this ssue with a look at how the iPad will change what we call “the personal computing experience.” acces month’ The Medium Is the Message Those of us who are veterans of high school and col- lege journalism or media classes are familiar with the name of Marshall McLuhan. His scholarly work on new media made him an icon of the electronic me- dia industry in the late 1950s and 1960s. Hi phrase “the medium is the message” applies to the iPad today as it applied in his era to the mass adoption of the TV as a source for news and enter- tainment. The iPad is an immersive experience that will extend the reach of the iPhone OS ecosystem to millions of new users. The iPad is not an outsized iPod touch anymore than a home theatre system is an outsized boom box. The only thing that might be outsized about the iPad is the anticipated sales performance. The iPad is a home theatre packed in a mobile form factor. Would You Like an Order of Bento With That iPad? The name bento originates from a Japanese-style take out lunch packed in a box-like contain It’s no wonder Apple’s FileMaker subsidiary uses the name Bento for its lunch-sized database product. FileMaker’s Bento is designed for personal use and is offered at a fraction of the cost of FileMaker Pro, the subsidiary’s flagship database product. A version of Bento is available for the iPhone and the iPad. Moving from outsized to lunch size, the iPad is de- signed for the consumption of digital content. Unlike netbooks, the underpowered laptops with cramped keyboards and poor quality screens that have become popular due only to price, the iPad doesn’t need a full-blown version of a desktop OS to make it work. The iPad uses a custom SoC or System on Chip de- veloped by Apple and dubbed the “Ad” to deliver ATPM 16.04 stunning graphics, impressive performance, and long battery life while using the iPhone OS and taking advantage of the over 150,000 apps already available. The iPad isn’t designed to run Photoshop anymore than netbooks are designed for post-production work on feature films. But if it’s a choice between an iPad and a netbook for watching movies or viewing your fa- vorite photos, it’s the difference between a mobile the- een portable atre experience and watching a small se TV. Extra! Extra! Read All About It! Over the past 25 years, few new products have cap- tured the imagination of consumers prior to commer- cial release as the iPad. The good news is that you won't need a printed newspaper to read all about it. Newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times will come to an iPad near you. Newspaper and magazine publishers are pushing hard to deliver iPad versions of their content as soon after the iPad’s official release as possible. No more soggy newspapers that missed delivery to the doorstep, and no more ripped magazines shoved in the mailbox. iPad subscriptions to your favorite newspapers and magazines will be delivered to your screen at a frac- tion of the newsstand price. Concurrent with the release of the iPad, iTunes will open its own bookstore for the sale of books to owners of the device. The iPad may be the perfect device for catching up on all of your spring and sum- mer reading without guilt about the number of trees destroyed to supply one with the pleasure. Books of- fered through the iBooks store will be sold at prices below the cost of the same titles in paper print. The iPad Will iWork Among the iPhone OS apps that will debut with the iPad are components of Apple’s iWork productivity suite. Both Pages and Numbers will be available in lunch-size versions for the tablet device for use at work and at home. We expect developers of other productivity-related solutions to follow with custom iPad solutions soon after the April 3rd product re- lease. With the optional iPad keyboard and dock, Apple's latest creation will be at home at both home and the office. Welcome Working the Numbers At press time, Apple’s share price (ticker symbol: AAPL) was trading just above $235 per an advisory issued by Morgan Stanley anal: Huberty, it’s expected that each million units of iPads sold will add $.25 of earnings to each Apple share. It’s possible that Apple could ship 8 million to 10 million iPads this calendar year. The only real constraint on sales might be product supply. Apple is currently trading at a trailing 12-month price-carnings multiple of about 22. Multiplying 22 times $2.00 in earnings per share equals $44 in additional value added to the share price from iPad sales this calendar year alone. sing price, the iPad might move Apple’s share price about 18% higher by late January of next year. It’s an outsized gain from a handheld device. An investor holding 15 shares of Apple stock might see enough of a gain in the share price over the next nine months from iPad sales alone to buy an iPad with a few of the optional trimmings or purchase several week’s worth of a daily bento lunch. Working the News The editors of ATPM are hard at work throughout the month to craft our unique brand of news and reviews. For 15 years we have chronicled what we call “the per- sonal computing experience,” and we look forward to covering the release of the iPad and reporting on the and consume ways it will revolutionize how we acc digital content in the months and years to come. Our April i ssue includes: Bloggable: Melts in Your Hand! Wes Meltzer shares more blogosphere punditry about the iPad. Apple Talk: Flat You can tell Ang ng is excited about the iPad. His celebratory response was to purchase a Sony Reader Pocket Edition. In this month’s Apple Talk he explains why. Next Actions: Inbox Overloa: Ed Eubanks Jr. applies the GTD concept to the phe- nomenon of an individual owning more and more in- boxes. Desktop Pictures: Sunsets® Reader Richard Barrett shares some sunset and sun- rise photos taken in Costa Rica, Hawaii, London, and Florida. Out at Five” Matt Johnson’s new series, Out at Five, looks at the workplace and its boundaries from all angles, revolv- ing around many of the same characters from his for- mer series, Cortland. Qaptain Qwerty® Gaptain Querty offers tips for playing Avernum, a game reviewed elsewhere in thi: ie of ATPM. Review: Avernum 6 v.1.0.2° For fans of the adventure game genre, Avernum 6 can provide hours of exciting entertainment. Review: Commuter’? ‘A solid case that seems very protective while staying light and slender, but with a flaw we’ve seen before. Review: Defender!! Need to protect your iPhone on the engaged in extreme sports? Here’s job site or while se for you. MacMuser: CoPilot Live’s Wheels Within Wheels” Mark Tennent shares his experience with the iPhone GPS app, CoPilot Live, and also wants to know where his memory stick icon is. ne MacMuser: Losers and Winners* Mark Tennent looks at Apple’s history and the pro- gression of winners and losers from its founding in 1976 to this month’s release of the iPad. lhttp://www.atpm.com/16.04/bloggable. shtml 2http://www.atpm.com/16.04/macmuser-copilot.shtml Shttp://www.atpm.com/16.04/macmuser-losers.shtml ATPM 16.04 ® com/16. -atpm.com/16. -atpm.com/16. -atpm.com/16. -atpm.com/16. -atpm. 04/apple-talk. shtml 04/next-actions.shtml 04/desktop-pictures.shtml 04/out-at-five.shtml 04/qaptain-querty. shtml °nttp: //www.atpm.com/16.04/avernum. shtml http://www. atpm.com/16.04/commuter.shtml Unttp://www.atpm.com/16.04/defender.shtml Welcome Burn Down the Mission! You're not wrong in saying that the iPhone and iPad will appeal to casual tech users. The iPad is perfect for someone like mé, a seiior exec who travels. I give occasional presentations, and while there are always some tweaks, I don’t really need the power of a laptop to make text changes to a Keynote presentation. If extensive changes are needed, they can e-mail it to me or I can download the latest version. If I can surf and read e-mail and load a Keynote application, I'm set. The rest is just a great bonus: e-reader, movies, music, and apps. It looks pretty perfect; I'll be buying two. —jbelkin BusyCal 1.2? ; S a Contact component ASAP! Their version of “Address Book Pro.” —Charles The killer feature for me is modeless editing of event info. Why Apple insists on modal editing in both iCal and Address Book is absolutely beyond me. That alone makes iCal a horrible, horrible, awful, horrible user experience. But there are many other tweaks that make BusyCal so superior that it is easily worth the cash. —Spiny Norman Making Your Mac as Smart as Its Owner® Excellent! Thank you very much. I agree about the easy way to add metadata. I think I’ll look at trying Automa- tor or a script to facilitate that until Steve and com- pany decide to make it an official “feature.” Thank you again. Terrific writing! If I had a “Thumbs Up” I’d send it to you. —Bob Browning Thanks for the positive feedback. There might be some room for a future follow-up article if | can fine enough creative uses for these features. lhttp://www.atpm.com/16.03/bloggable. shtml http://www. atpm.com/16.03/busycal. shtml Shttp://www.atpm.com/16.03/smart-folders.shtml ATPM 16.04 I'm also wondering about using Automator for this task. | hadn't thought of AppleScript for this. My skills in that area leave a lot to be desired. Keep us posted with any solutions you concoct, and | will do likewise. Surely there must be something out there to handle this task. —Sylvester Roque My First Mac! My first “home computer” was also a TRS-80, al- though I never was lucky enough to get an Apple II. I stuck with the Tandy and later got an Atari 800 instead. Skipped the 8-bit Apples and went straight to Mac. (You can read my Mac journcy® in a past issue of ATPM.) I don’t think the CP/M card gave you 80 columns on the Apple, although I could be mistaken. I'm guessing the card put a Z80 CPU in your Apple to run CP/M. Ironically, the Z80 is the same chip for our TRS-80s! If you're missing typing in programs (Love those Hex listings! Not!) all you need to do is just. pick up any modern computer language book (say, Objective- C) and type in all that text! You don’t even have to worry about renumbering line numbers any more! (You know, writing about this stuff is supposed to make me sound old, but I feel just the same. Com- puters and geek stuff is still cool, and I still love video games. The games just seem to get better and bet- ter! And the computers seem to cost around the same except you get more! Weird!) —Angus Wong Photoshop: A Tutorial on Resolution® Hey there, this is excellent. Very good explanation and comments. You were very thorough and helped me out a lot! Thank you so much. —Stephanie D-H FileMaking: Thave been us : Incremental Progress’ ing FileMaker Pro Advanced (8.5) Mac for about six months, having come from Microsoft’s Access. -atpm.com/16.03/e-mail.shtm1, -atpm.com/9.09/hello.shtml -atpm.com/13.08/photoshop.shtm1 Thttp://waw.atpm.com/14.11/filemaking. shtml E-Mail I originally purchased the Missing Manual for FileMaker Pro and, using that and the FileMaker Help menu, I have learnt enough to create several FileMaker databases. However, when I found the a ® of your series on FileMaker, it enabled me to go back to basics to learn the correct way to design and implement them. This series is so carefully structured and simple to follow that I have thoroughly enjoyed it. —Glo Brown Datahand Professional II° Just thought I'd post to say the Datahands are still working great. I've sent them in for repairs on sev- eral occasions, and while shipping is expensive from Canada, they are always fast and courteous. They somewhat fragile, and I’m somewhat abusive, so is- sues have been my fault. Here hot of the latest datahand workst: tion. The Datahands are stuck to the La-Z-Boy via double-sided carpet tape, and an extender cable is used to connect the two sides. With the 1080p pro- sound I’ve been able to keep cranking jector and nic out the code. Recommended for heavy typists, of course. (Saw Contact!" in HD last night. There glimpses set of Datahands in the circular pod with Jodie Foster.) —Andrew Taylor re brief Crabble iPhone Stand’? I bought one recently, and I think it’s great. I wonder how long the hinge will last, but at this price if it’s replaced every 18 months I won’t complain. Highly recommended. —guppy We'd love to hear your thoughts about our publication. We always welcome your comments, criticisms, suggestions, and praise. Or, if you have an opinion or announcement about the Macintosh platform in general, that's OK too. Send your e-mail to editor@atpm.com. All mail becomes the property of ATPM and may be edited for publication. ® Shttp://www.atpm.com/Back/filemaking. shtml °http://www.atpm.com/7.05/datahand. shtml \nttp: //benow.ca/misc/datareclinerv2.png Unttp://www. imdb. com/title/tt0118884/ http://www. atpm.com/15.09/crabble-iphone-stand.sht ml ATPM 16.04 E-Mail Bloggable by Wes Meltzer, wmeltzer@atpm.com Melts in Your Hand Perhaps you haven't heard that April 3—just two short days after you'll get this issue of ATPM—is the launch date of the iPad. T'll let you go order one. Or two. [Cue hold music, playing Kenny G’s “Classics in the Key of G.”] OK, now you've gotten that out of your system. In honor of this month’s big announcement, we're having an iPad-alooza at Bloggable: two fun segments on the iPad, plus the iPhone vs. Nexus One and Droid. How Slavishly Should iPad Software Mimic Real-World Objects? The iPad is a lot bigger than an iPhone—it’s larger than the palm of your hand. That puts it in the same general category as a lot of other physical objects for which there are clear physical analogues: books, magazines, e-readers (e.g., Kindle). Because there are so many physical analogues, a lot of people, which includes developers, have varying expectations of how closely the software interfaces on the Kindle should hew to real-world objects. Should a book application involve physically turning the page? (Apple’s answer: at least in demos, yes.) Would the pages of a magazine application be laid out like text on a computer screen, flowing in one long, dynam- ically resizing column, or would it be laid out with the same care and static physical form as a printed magazine page? We could dig deeply into our Rudolf Arnheim, Jakob Nielsen, and Edward Tufte books all day to look for the answers, but to the developers of iPad applications this is a problem with a little urgency. Marco Arment is a terrific developer whos Instapaper? is a life-saver for anyone who reads on the train or keeps three computers like me. He’s been working on an iPad version of Instapaper, and he started a lively debate over just how much software interfa should hew to their real-world counterparts. lnttp://www.instapaper.com ATPM 16.04 He observes that he didn’t want to try too hard to preserve real-world fidelity to books? when he was writing Instapaper, which includes pagination of text—that he didn’t add pagination because books have it, he did it because it seemed clearly superior to scrolling. And Arment also cites the difference between the Calculator application that comes included with your Mac, which is basically identical to a physical calcu- lator, and a Mac OS X calculator called Soulv which is more like a Unix command-line than a phy: ical calculator with buttons. (For what it’s worth, I’m a religious PCalc user, which is a conventional calculator but supports RPN just like my grandfather's old HP.) So this is all to drive home the point that, some- times, software tries too hard to be like real-world hardware. Arment is at his best with a pithy quote: Nobody should need to perform a full- width swipe gesture and wait two seconds for their fake page to turn in their fake book. That's the jumping-off point for Chris Clark, an interface designer for Black Pixel. He writes at Re- lease Candidate One: iPad apps have a high visual fidelity to real-world objects but retain the sensible interaction design one would expect from Apple. iBooks doesn’t force you to swipe its pages side-to-side; you tap on a page* to advance to the next one, and the page- turning animation is done in a fraction of a second. I agree with Clark that the key isn’t whether a user interface is loyal to the original, physical obj or not, so long as it’s useful. Here I return to PCale— I think it’s a superior calculator to any software cal- culator, and I’m not enough of a mathematician to °http://www.marco.org/441168915 Shttp: //www.acqualia.com/soulver/ 4nttp: //releasecandidateone.com/211:overdoing the_i nterface_metaphor Bloggable: Melts in Your Hand adopt a command-line interface for math. And yet it’s still laid out like a phy But Clark and Arment may be oversimplifying the Apple’s forte i ing interfaces that rely on real- world knowledge without being too slavishly devoted to the original. His example is the OS X scroll bar®, which looks like an icicle mounted in a sliding chan- nel. Mrgan has a nice equation: Familiar + satisfying + fun vs. limiting + illegible + awkward And he says, “The left side giveth value, and the right side taketh away. Neither one delivers a deadly blow.” Mrgan hits the nail on the head of Apple’s apps, and what he says other developers should strive foi “[alpps should mimic the warmth of real-world ob- jects, not their literal design.” Speaking of Physical Objects. . . The guys at Omni Group have been busy getting their software ready for the iPad. Because iPad developers weren't given advance copies of the iPad to test their software on, they’ve been going old-school with their prototypes: making mock iPads® out of stuff. For their OmniGraphSketcher application for iPad, they’ve hacked up a bunch of ways of proto- typing this: cutting custom graph paper down to size using a table saw, and even a 3D printer-made model their CEO put together. It’s quite impressive—they have paper cutouts of all of their user interface elements, dialogs, pop-up , and the writer (Linda Sharps) recounts encounter with one of the developers in menus, et a hilarious trying to use the “fauxP: Robin: “So let’ point from a would you do? Me: “Bubhhhh. Dur. I touch i you want to turn this cle into a square. What Robin (soothingly): “Okay. You see a lit- tle blue circle around the element. Then what do you do?” Me: “Uhhhhhrrrr. I'd. ..maybe I'd press real hard. Like this.” smoosh Robin: “Um. logue that s okay. You get a dia- copy?.” itp: //mrgan.tumblr . com/post /441478284/how-real http://www. omnigroup.com/blog/entry/Designing_ Omni GraphSketcher_for_the_iPad_/ ATPM 16.04 Me: “OH GOD NO THAT’S WRONG ISN’T IT MY HEAD MY HEAD MY HEEAAAD.” Robin (brisk clap): “Okay then! What say we try this again later.” Go to the link. Seriously. You have to sce these photos. It’s incredible the lengths some people go to—and yet, at the same time, it’s admirable in Omni Group’s devotion to getting it right. More on Companions to the iPhone We've been down this road before: comparisons of the iPhone to its competitors. But two terrific tech writ- ers, Jason Snell of Macworld and Harry McCracken of Technologizer, take a stab at comparing the iPhone to the mobile OS that Stev is the greatest competitor of them al! Android. Snell thinks there are good lessons for the iPhone from Google’s Nexus One, the Android phone sold by Google for T-Mobile’s network, and McCracken com- pares the iPhone to the Droid, which is Motorola offering for Verizon. To start off, Snell suggests the highlights of what Apple can learn from Google®: Higher screen resolution The Nexus One's sc! is 480x800, vs. the iPhone’s 320x480, and shows, most especially in the playback of videos and photos and in the Nexus One’s crisp te: choose ; to y application cation button More flexible Home screen “You which apps show up on the home bring up a scrollable list of eve on your phone, you tap the app! at the bottom center of the screen. . .the Nexus One lets you save shortcuts to important con- tacts, phone numbers, map dir and even items from third-party apps. can cre ons, Better notification “To see your notifications, you can pull down the menu bar at the top of the screen. It’s easy to see all the notifications at a glance, and you can tap on one to go to the relevant application.” Combined inbox For those of us who read both personal and work e-mail on the iPhone, this a big one. Snell: “The main screen of the built-in Mail program lists all your e-mail ac- counts and, above it, a combined inbox (along one “http: //www.nytimes .com/2010/03/14/technology/14bra wi.btml Shttp: //www.macworld.com/article/146788/2010/03/nex us_one_iphone.html 10 Bloggable: Melts in Your Hand with options to view starred mail and any drafts you might have). It’s not perfect—some indi- cation of which mail came from which account might be a nice feature convenient than doing the iPhone tap dane but it’s much more Multitasking, a.k.a. background applications “Android lets apps run in the background. If you aren't paying attention, you wouldn’t no- tice most of the time. Using the Nexus One, I never ran into a situation where I needed to find and quit apps in order to speed things up...if I want to drain my battery listening to Pandora, or receiving notifications every time anyone mentions me on Twitter, I’d like to be able to make that decision [on my iPhone].” s where there’s not a Snell also lists some pla clear better or worse, like the Nexus One’s removable battery, having a camera with flash, and the App Store: [If] the App Store is a bit like a rigor- ously managed chain retailer—Target or Walmart, let’s say, though I’m sure Ap- ple would prefer I liken it to Nordstrom— then the Android Market is a bit like an open-air bazaar. There are featured apps, yes, but once you start searching things get really weird, really fast. I kept run- ning into apps that demanded that my phone be “rooted,” the Android equiva- lent of jailbreaking. Other apps required specific phone models (Droid, for exam- ple) or specific versions of the Android software. Real geeks won’t care about any of that, maybe, but it’s a terrible experi- ence for regular consumers. Sometimes I wonder if Android Market is actually a victim of the App Store back- lash. Quite honestly, I think Android would better serve its users if it began to follow Apple’s approach, rigorously testing apps and approving only a tiny fraction for the Market, as well as provid- y specific filters so that users of a non-rooted Nexus One don’t run into search results full of apps requiring a rooted Droid. ing some ve (I would add here that I think the right model for Google is Ubuntu, the popular Linux distribution. It’s possible to install any application you want, but ATPM 16.04 11 so an application that only searches into a database of tested, approved software.) All in all, it’s a good read and a good ana disagree with Snell on a few things—for ins I were the guy responsible for sorting out multitask- ing, I disagree strongly with Snell’s vision. I would allow only one background application, and it would have to draw an icon in the menu bar like the iTunes and phone applications, and be accessible tapping the menu bar or something equiv But reasonable people can disagree. I think Snell has great food for thought here. McCracken tried the same thing but switched to a Droid for a month—to use Verizon's superior network—and lists the ten things he likes best and least about it. He calls it “The Good, the Bad and the Bizarre.” He lives in San Francisco, so I can see wanting to get away from AT&T like the Black Plague. But just as Snell found, he says there are upsides and downsid to life with a better network and a much less polished mobile OS. Big pluses to McCracken: Verizon network, mul- titasking for IM and Slacker (or Pandora), having a back button, and the aforementioned status notifica- ance, if ia double- lent. tions. He also points out one terrific feature, and I’m not sure if it’s an Android feature or specific to the Droid: Facebook integration into the OS. He write: You can choose to have the Droid syne all your Facebook friends into its Conta list. You get access to phone numbers and e-mail addresses from Facebook, and when a Facebook friend calls you, you see his or her photo as the phone rings. The intermingling of Droid and Facebook info seems to work perfectly; if I go back to the iPhone, this is the single OS feature I'll miss most. Big minuses: strange click behaviors, low-quality third-party apps, lame hardware keyboard. Oh, and: Ican live with an OS that’s not as elegant as Apple’s...but there are times when I wonder if anyone at Google, Motorola, or Verizon has even used the Droid. If you’re in portrait mode and go to the setting that lets you adjust screen brightness, the necessary slider appears to be missi until you notice a sliver of a scroll bar on http: ‘/technologizer .com/2010/03/22/droid/ Bloggable: Melts in Your Hand the right side of the dialog. Who ever heard of a dialog box that scrolls? We're with you, Harry. What’s Left When You Divide Three and Two? « A debate from Technologizer on the future of Windows!” between a bunch of tech journalists, technology futurists, and former Microsoft employees. It’s a good read: Kara Swisher, Ed Baig, Robert Scoble, and Richard Brodie, ct al., who are all at the vanguard of technology revolutions. They may disagree on the specifics, but they all think that Windows—real Windows, not Windows Mobile—needs to play more of a role in our personal lives. And almost all of them think Microsoft needs to keep up the Windows- for-every-platform strategy MS is starting to cook up. Speaking of Windows Mobile, the new Windows Phone 7 will not support copy and paste!!, Do you remember all of the Sturm und Drang be- fore the iPhone had copy and paste? I have to say, I only use copy-paste on my iPhone once or twice a week, so I could get by without it. But it’s especially funny to sce the tables turned. (As a former Windows Mobile 5.5 user, I pre- fer the iPhone’s copy-paste implementation. . .it was always hard to trigger the paste in WinMo.) Copyright © 2010 Wes Meltzer, wmeltzer@atpm.com. ® \nttp: //technologizer .com/2010/03/08/future-windows / Unttp: //www. engadget .com/2010/03/16/windows-phone-7 -series-wont-have-copy-and-paste/ ATPM 16.04 12 Bloggable: Melts in Your Hand MacMuser by Mark Tennent, http://www.tennent.co.uk CoPilot Live’s Wheels Within Wheels Dawn and I are the only Mac users in the office. We struggle with Windows, trying not to fight it. stead, we attempt to engage with a different operat- ing system. After all, its interface was ripped off from Apple many years ago, so it can’t be that different? Can it? Nevertheless we both spent a frustrating hour try- ing to find the memory stick she had just plugged into the USB port. There in front of us is the desktop with icons for the main hard drive and networked servers, so where is her memory stick? Surely it should mount automatically and appear as an icon on the desktop, just a double-click away? We gave up going round in circles and asked Deb- bie, our office administrator, to show us. She went: straight to the Control Panels and clicked on some- thing (My Computer?). Up popped a window for the memory stick. This was obviously one part of the Mac OS that Microsoft forgot to copy. Or is it just that Mac users have different expectations? In- CoPilot Just Got Better. ..for Free CoPilot Live! for the iPhone has had me going round rcles recently, just past my old clients at Parexcel, circling the series of roundabouts in Uxbridge. Luck- ily, the street names are clearly marked-otherwise, Debbie and I would have been heading off for good- ness knows where. We were en route to see the new Lotus Notes database we shall be using shortly. As Debbie is currently in New Zealand and I am off to France, April Ist as the start date is looking like a joke. Most, if not all, satellite navigation devices can get caught out by fast changes of directions. Our Garmin does, just as regularly as our daughter’s Tom- Tom. We once circled the Saga building in Folkestone half a dozen times as the Garmin tried to get its bear- ings. CoPilot Live, on the other hand, has become our first-choice sat-nav, especially after it was up- dated in the past few days. The iPhone’s assisted GPS means it can find your location quickly by using cellphone information, even indoors. in lnttp://www.alk.com/copilot/iphone/ ATPM 16.04 13 If you have an iPhone, this is one of the best value for money applications available at the iTunes Store. It is every bit as good as a dedicated sat-nav and a lot cheaper and easier to carry outside of a vehicle. The improved iPod and weather screens mean you don’t need other single-use applications. Updates are free as well, so it makes sense to get the whole new CoPi- lot Live rather than update a map or speed camera database on your dedicated sat-nav. Keeping Streets Ahead The new and improved Live elements to Copilot are especially worth the money. Live Traffic information is the only extra Copilot charges for, and that is at a reasonable $30 or thereabouts per year. Apple’s iPhone interface is streets ahead of any other touch- screen sat-nav device, and CoPilot Live makes good use of it. My only complaint is that you can’t buy indivi ual maps. When I bought CoPilot Live, I acciden- tally clicked on the UK and Ireland version, costing $40, instead of the Europe version. This leaves me the choice of buying a whole new version of CoPi- lot for Europe, costing $75, or just France maps at $38 to add to my existing CoPilot Live. Choosing just France will be as costly as buying the whole of Europe but will be missing all the rest of the maps. Oh well! Copyright © 2010 Mark Tennent”. ® °http: //www.tennent..co.uk MacMuser: CoPilot Live's Wheels Within Wheels MacMuser by Mark Tennent, http://www.tennent.co.uk Losers and Winners That Apple Computer, what a bunch of losers! Hold on, this is written with the best of intentions, so hear me out. Back in 1976 Steve Jobs, Ron Wayne, and Steve Wozniak had a moment of brilliance and created Ap- ple Computer. Within a year, their turnover was $174,000, and they asked a venture capitalist, Mike Markkula, to help them. The next year they made $2.7 million. $7.8 million followed in 1978. Mean- while Ron, for whatever reason, became Apple’s first loser as he sold his shares back to Steve Jobs for $800—a decision he would probably prefer not to talk about. Apple may have captured the computer market, but in the process it lost Steve Jobs when John Scul- ley, whom he had lured from being Vice President for Pepsi Cola, led a boardroom coup that ousted him. Jobs left Apple to start NeXT and developed an inno- vative operating system and hardware combination. Meanwhile back at Apple, things went mad. They had three incompatible computer systems, the Mac- intosh, the Lisa, and the Apple II. The Mac won, and the others were dumped—some literally into land- fill. Apple then captured the desktop publishing mar- ket due to PageMaker and Apple’s PostScript laser printer. At the same time, it lost the most important legal battle of its life and ceded the GUI operating system to Microsoft and others. A decade of turmoil nearly finished the company. The old Macintosh operating system lost its lead and was overtaken, in some areas, by IBM’s OS/2 and Sun’s Unix. Apple joined with IBM and Motorola to try to create hardware and software far ahead of Microsoft and the PC, which had become a threat to them all. Runner Up CEOs came and went and one, Mike Spindler, even tried to hive Apple off to IBM, Sun, or Philips. Luck- ily, he lost to new CEO Gil Amelio, who arrived with a track record of getting to the heart of a problem. He cut costs, workforce, product lines, and ties with IBM and Motorola. Instead he tried to buy BeOS, an off-the-shelf operating system from ex- ATPM 16.04 14 Apple employee Jean-Louis Gassée. Another loser because he asked $75 million more than Apple would pay. Instead Amelio bought NeXT, which came with Steve Jobs. Jobs had learned a lesson or two while away from Apple. He ousted Amelio, who lost in another board- room coup. He made a deal with Bill Gates. Mi- crosoft agreed to continue developing Internet Ex- plorer and Office for the Mac, as well as buy $150 million of non-voting Apple stock. While Steve Jobs was missing from Apple, it did have some su: the first PowerBook in 1991 set the form factor for laptops and sold a billion dol- lars worth in its first year. The world’s first PDA, Newton, was developed by Apple in 1989 but never became a commercial success and was left to wither away over the next ten years. However, two Newton employees formed Pixo and wrote the operating system used on the iPod. Newton’s handwriting recognition was also rolled into Mac OS X as Inkwell, which appears in System Preferences if a graphics tablet is connected. Turnaround The millennium ha: temmed the losing streak from Apple, which instead has grabbed the music down- loading and digital audio player markets with the iTunes Store and the iPod line. As well as setting up online sales, Apple opened retail stores around the world before moving into the cell phone market and arguably capturing the sales of smart phones with the iPhone. The jury is still out on the iPad, and until we can get to hold and use one, we won’t know whether it is for us or not. One thing is for sure: Apple could be on the verge of creating a whole new business. The iPad could be just the device to make the world move away from printed media and into electronic publishing. Dennis Publishing has made inroads into this with the amazing iMotor! magazine, which has mu- sic, video and other attractions, as well as the text and photographs of printed media. Waitrose, Marks ‘http: //issue. imotormag.co.uk/car-reviews-car-news- car-videos/1P4b69992883a39012. cde MacMuser: Losers and Winners and Spencer, Virgin, BBC, and others? have made spec s of their magazines and catalogues. Currently these need Flash, which means Apple could become a loser again if the Ceros system for online electronic publishing becomes the norm. On the other hand, the iPad could release us from the tyranny of the telly. In the future, we will choose to watch and read electronic publications which also include TV shows and active links to subjects they cover. Watching the Pad won’t be a strictly linear process, as it is with TV, moving from Star Trek to Clarkson to CSI. Instead we'll stay with Coast or one of Attenborough’s wildlife extravaganzas and be ex- ploring a dimension of the show we want to know more about. We'll be able to pick and choose from film, TV, news, books, and magazines and display them all on one flat panel. Our current laptops cover this to a cer- tain extent, but they get hot and noisy and are ham- pered by small screens and short. battery life. The iPad could be just what we need. Copyright © 2010 Mark Tennent* ® °http://www.ceros.com/page/clients Shttp://www.tennent .co.uk ATPM 16.04 15 MacMuser: Losers and Winners Apple Talk by Angus Wong, http://www.anguswong.net Flat Line To celebrate the announcement of the iPad, I went out and got a Sony Reader Pocket Edition. No kid- ding. I know I often write with sarcasm to make fun of, say, Microsoft, but this time I’m serious. I went and got the Sony Reader primarily because of two things: E Ink, and library books. Now, before you go all Windows on me, let me say that there’s nothing mutually exclusive about owning an E Ink reader and an iPad. But anyway, more about that later. First, let’s talk about the Sony Reader I got. For those of you who haven’t yet seen an E Ink reader up close and personal, I urge you to. You can probably find a real demo unit at your local elec- tronics retailer. (I’ve seen some here in the States at Target and Office Depot.) I say “real demo unit” because some of them have a faux plasti simulates E Ink, but the point is for you to see E Ink in action. Preferably under sunlight. By the way, I type E Ink with capitals because that’s actually a product brand name, from the self-named company (E Ink Corporation) and, while we're being specific, I’m actually talking about Vizplex, which is the same E Ink display used by aders, including Amazon’s updated Kindle E Ink Corporation says “Vizplex is the latest generation of E Ink’s microencapsulated ink imaging film.” (Incidentally, I'm not writing this article a view of e-readers. I’m primarily using these exam- ples to talk about the general state of the industry, as you'll see.) So, to understand how compelling E Ink is, you have to see it in person. But even if you don’t, you'll have to just accept the popular opinion that it makes text super readable. After all, it’s the killer fea- ture for these e-readers. Everything else pretty much sucks about all the readers, except for the E Ink part. If it weren’t for E Ink I wouldn’t even bother think- ing about any of these gizmos. Ironically, the iPad doesn’t use E Ink, so that’s why I say there could be an opportunity for the market to have owners of both categories of products (i.e., iPad and an e-reader of your choice). een that sa re- ATPM 16.04 16 Reading e-books is nothing new to the world, or to me. I've been reading e-books since the days of Palm OS, and I’ve read a ton of them over the years. Whenever I talk to anyone about this, I often hear comments about how hard it is to read on the tiny screens. Yup, that’s true, but it still didn’t prevent me from consuming probably a hundred e-books to date (maybe more) on tiny screens. On the iPhone, I’ve used the Kindle application to buy and read books, but Amazon's Kindle policy has drawbacks. First, you have to pay Amazon to convert your own files (such as text or PDF), which is not only a hassle and costs extra money for a fairly trivial task (for the modern computing age) but also is a deal breaker for business confidential stuff. So, strike one for Kindle. Strike two comes from not being able to read bor- rowed library books. Yup, for those of you who have access to a public library, many of them are offering DRM-protected book loans. (If your library doesn’t have this, or you find the selection meager, I encour age you to hound your library officials to get with the Internet age.) So I have three sources of reading material now: purchased from Amazon for the Kindle platform (cur- rently, just the Kindle application on my iPhone), my own text and PDF files, and borrowed library books (that automatically expire when the rental period is up). The library selection is relatively limited, but there are still some good books I can borrow. Where justified, I'd buy Kindle books. And when I do get an iPad, I'll hopefully be able to use the Kindle ap- plication on the iPad and view the books in full page format (despite not having E Ink). This full page thing is not trivial either. A number of books are poorly formatted for the smaller readers (such as mine), and to see WYSIWYG means the font size is almost too small to read. If you increase the font size, the Sony Reader sometimes doesn’t even bother rendering the stylized fonts (even if it was only italics), so a word could be missing. Doh! So this is where I get into the nitty gritty of the Sony platform. I write about it to illustrate how hugely different: the paradigm is between Sony, Apple Talk: Flat Line a mega consumer electroni and Apple, another mega consumer electronics company, and state yet again how I think Apple really is just going to steamroll over these laggards. (Am I sounding like I regret my Sony Reader purchase? That’s not at all the case. I'll explain that also, in just a moment.) The Sony devic nice to hold. It looks fairly cool. It’s not a touch screen. To get a touch screen, I need to shell out more for the, ah, “Touch Edition.” No thanks. You see, my strategy was to spend tle money as possible to get an E Ink reader, so I ¢: have my library books and my personal documents, and have money left over to put toward the budget for an iPad. That was the rationale all along. Kindle? Td love a Kindle DX, but the file conversion thing and the disconnect from the library content were deal breakers. So with the Sony Reader Pocket Edition, I have a nice-looking gizmo that I can load primarily text- based content (images are unwieldy on the small screen) and carry around town fairly easily. I can read in bed before going to sleep, or during the daytime at a coffee shop, even under direct sunlight. Unfortunately (and here’s where it’s interesting), you'd think that a company with the resources of Sony could refine the product: before release. Maybe work out the bugs. Well, no. Sony took a page (pun intended) right out of Microsoft’s playbook and re- leased a buggy, sluggish, immature product to the market. Again, don’t forget: I bought the thing only because I found it a cheap deal to get an E Ink reader. I didn’t pay suggested retail price. I bought it at huge discount at Office Depot. Even the “cover with light” that I bought was heavily discounted. So, I feel I got a remarkable deal. Would I have bought it without s compan the discount? No way. I'd just have waited to get an iPad and sucked it up not having E Ink, and hope I don’t miss it (but I would have So my whole point for this arti day, even right this moment, with the industry know- ing how powerful Apple is, how well it can make prod- ucts and, most importantly, how well it can sell prod- you still have companies such as Sony creating sed offerings for the market. It’s crazy. is that, even to- half-ass I'm not just aying there are features I would like on my Sony Reader. I’m saying there are bugs! That poor font rendering (actually, not rendering at all) is already a huge gotcha. Another problem is that the desktop syne software (runs on both Windows and Mac) is also buggy. (It reminds me of the bad days of Palm with the lousy Mac version of Palm Desktop). ATPM 16.04 17 The syne software usually works, but sometimes doesn’ tall and reinstall it (or if that even helps). It’s nothing we've , and I am not even sure how to uni not seen before, especially when using Windows, but Sony can do better. Sony should have learned many lessons from the Palm days (when it tried to wallpa- per over the Palm OS with its own user interface, to sell its Clie devices), so I don’t give them a break at all now, secing as it had a decade to refine its R&D philosophy. So to wrap up, you've got compan ch as Ama- zon and Sony who really can do much, much better, and they (like the Kindle) so you have to jump hoops to do still either deliberately cripple their devices something (convert basic files) or they are basically lazy and offer the market a buggy product like the Sony Reader. Heck, I even had problems browsing Sony’s bookstore. Sony likes to plaster its branding over everything—such as integrating the bookstore into the desktop software, pasting crap over the Palm interface, and loading horrid add-ons to its Vaio se- ries of Windows PCs. It’s just sad that it’s not doing a good job. Of course, the iPad is much more than just an e- just for the e-books aspect, you can already see how far behind these other industry players are. And let even bother talking about the slew of Window table’ sickening how everyone waits for Apple to announce something (iPhone, iPad) and then copies it (and not even doing a good job either). Don’t these guys feel embarrassed? I do, for them. As a tech industry observer, I'm really disap- reader, which is why I’m going to get one. But j that are, supposedly, coming out. It’s pointed that quarter after quarter, it’s almost always only Apple that’s innovating. T industry. Apple product (and stock) owners are happy, of course, but in the greater scheme of things, I'd love for more solid competition to appear. Right bad for the now, I don’t see very much of it, and it makes me afraid for Apple. One day, it might get complacent, just the same way Microsoft did. Microsoft used to make great products, back in the 1970s. Its BASIC language implementation was sort of an industry standard. Then, after DOS, it got rather lazy when the arted to roll in. I gue you can say the same thing about Sony and ev Research In Motion. And, of course, Palm. Appl always innovated, since the days of the garage, all the way to iPad and the monumental Ad chip. It’s amazing, but it’s also sad. ash s Apple Talk: Flat Line The only thing I’ve seen that has been somewhat impressive, in the computing arena of late, is the up- coming Ubuntu version code named Lucid Lynx. It’s version 10.04 of Ubuntu Linux, and something in my gut tells me that’s actually gearing up to be a more significant threat to Apple than any of these other half-assed distractions going on in the world. In a way, I think it’s probably a good thing. Copyright © 2010 Angus Wong. Angus Wong is a technology business development professional. To read more of his offbeat industry commentary, follow him at http://twitter.com/anguswong* ® ‘http: //twitter.com/anguswong ATPM 16.04 18 Apple Talk: Flat Line Next Actions by Ed Eubanks Jr. Inbox Overload Italked about what to do with a full inbox! early on, and how to automate inbox processing? a year ago. But how about the ever-increasing number of inboxes that many of us have? As Meghan Walker recently remarked at GTD Times, the list of digital inboxes seems to be growing ever-longer. Meghan hem?: + Email + Text Messages Instant Mes: wes « Blog Comments: your own blog, blogs you contribute to, or posts you are monitoring « Twitter: people you are following, Greplies, direct messages * Yammer: Yammer is a private ver- sion of Twitter, often used inside companies. ({Walker’s] company is experimenting with this right now.) + Social Bookmarking: e.g. Delicious « RSS Feeds + LinkedIn: Updates, Answers, Group discussions + Facebook: Friends you are following, Comments, Messages « Discussion Boards and Forums * Google Wave: My brain is melting... * Google Buzz: My head has ex- ploded. [Meghan Walker, Inbox Creep’, @TD Times March 21, 2010.} In addition to Meghan’s helpful strategies, I wanted to look briefly at a couple of solutions for managing these (or some of these) rabbit-like mul- tiplying inboxes. And T'll bet there will be plenty -atpm. com/13.06/next-actions. shtml .atpm.com/15.04/next-actions. shtml -gtdtimes .com/2010/03/12/inbox-creep/ -gtdtimes .com/2010/03/12/inbox-creep/ ATPM 16.04 19 of commenters who can suggest even more solutions (bring it on!). Work the System Many of the digital inboxes listed above have built- in methods for making all of this at least a little bit easier. Some of the many examples include: + Many blogs allow comments—and even com- ments for particular posts—to be followed via RSS and/or e-mail notification. If you com- ment on blogs, get in the habit of turning these on when you post your comments, then forget about it. You'll be reminded if you need to be looped back into the conversation. ¢ Social networks like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook all have at least some notification settings, whereby you will receive an e-mail if you get a direct message, a comment on your wall, or some such. Some networks have a robust set of options here. Poke around in the settings of your social networks and see how much you can get sent to your inbox, in order to reduce the number of times you must sign in just to check another inbox. « Some social networks have other ways of re- ducing the number of inboxes, or at least including them into already-existing ones. For example, if you find that you chat fre- quently through Facebook’s chat client—and you use instant messaging through other services, such as MobileMe/AIM—here’s a simple way to set up iChat or Adium to handle Facebook chat as well®. Also, it’s possible to set up your Twitter feed to auto- matically post to your LinkedIn or Facebook status, and vice-versa. The bottom line: while there are many social net- works, and the number doesn’t seem to be shrink- ing, there is more overlap and openness between them than there used to be. Think outside the box a bit http: //www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20100 211130853507 Next Actions: Inbox Overload for how your s another, then al networks might bump against one f you can find an existing solution to make it happen (or develop it yourself, and be- come the latest entrepreneur to make a small fortune on social networking!). Get Your Social On If you find that multiple social networks your attention, perhaps a tool like Se serve you well. Socialite Facebook, Digg, and Flickr all into one single reader. You can also include RSS feeds via Google Reader or use Socialite as your primary feed reader. You can post to these also through Socialite, add comments, respond, ete. Socialite therefore culls down several east in terms of how they are accessed mpete for ite® would able to consolidate feeds from Twitter, and manage Socialite is well-done and includes a number of helpful side-features (like a “profile pecker,” which lets you glimpse Twitter profiles without leaving the main screen). It’s $20 from Realmac Software, the same folks who make RapidWeaver and LittleSnap- per. If Socialite a little overkill for your social network usage TweetDeck’s’ features might hit the spot. De another Twitter client (one of many); but unlike most, TweetDeck can also access Facebook, once again allowing consolidation of two (or more, if you have multiple Twitter accounts) inboxes into a single one. Well, not quite a single one in th TweetDeck’s system let’s you view them side-by but in separate windows/boxes. Maybe it isn’t receiving the feeds from socie works but posting to them that frequently ei on your time. In that case, check out Ping.fm’ vice that allows you to post to multiple soc! system supports every so- cial network I’ve ever heard of, and a bunch that I hadn’t. It also has a great mobile/iPhone Web app. isn’t quite what you need—maybe it’s then Tweet- is free networks at once. Ping’s Many Mailboxes. . . I’m one of those who uses multiple e-mail accounts. I use them to manage how I receive e-mail and who gets what level of ac I also prefer to mail address with a domain related to the context of the message (@eubanksconsulting, when correspond- an e- Shttp://www.realmacsoftware.com/socialite/ Thttp://www.tweetdeck.com Shttp://ping.fm/ ATPM 16.04 20 ing with a consulting client, etc.). With multiple counts, e-mail can easily become an inbox nightmare. I've read about, and worked with, people who used many accounts and spread them all about—they used Entourage for one account, Mail for another, a Web interface for a third, etc. This only seems to mul- tiply the nightmare scenario, in my view. When my consulting clients are inclined toward this approach, I quickly explain to them the likely loss of productivity (and sanity) that will result from it—not to mention the frustration of trying to find messages (“which ac- count did I send that one from?”), archiving, and even sing efficiency from having multiple ‘ations open for the same function. This is unnecessary. Mail and Entourage (and for that matter, any number of other e-mail clients) can handle multiple e-mail accounts capably and make it possible to receive, proc sspond to, and archive all e-mails from multiple accounts at the same time in the same place. Look for a future Next Actions to deal with some serious e-mail-fu. About the List e only new addition this time is TeuxDe' besides having a name that requires tion for it to work (it should be pronounced , is a simple but nicely-designed online mis- “tuh-duh” task management Web app. One more thing worth mentioning here: the folks who developed Tasks for iPhone (and iPod touch)! have created a syne utility for their application called is available for Mac OS X and Windows, and will syne Tasks with iCal—perfect for folks who are content with iCal on their desktop (or laptop) but have longed for a solution to syne with their iPhones. T always welcome any feedbac estions for additions. I don’t al on my list or sug- ge ys add every sug- gestion, but I'll look at them and evaluate whether they fit with my goals for this column. http://www. teuxdeux.com \0nttp: //web.mac.com/philipp. brendel/Software/Tasks. html Next Actions: Inbox Overload Locally Installed GTD Applications EasyTask Manager'! Developer: Orionbelt.com Current Version: 2.1 Price: $20 Development Status: Release iCal Syne: Yes QuickSilver Plug-i Web-app Syne: Yes Print Lists: Yes iPhone Presence: App (free); Web App (free) OS Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4 Required Applications: None Distinguishing Features: Windows version avail- able; automatic advance of uncompleted due tasks to today. News: None Yes Frictionless'? Developer: Twin Forces Current Version: 2.0d18 Price: Free, open-source Development Status: Release iCal Sync: No QuickSilver Plug-in: Yes Web-app Sync: No Print Lists: Yes iPhone Presence: None OS Requirements: Mac OS X 10.5 Required Applications: None Distinguishing Features: Quick-entry box; fuzzy repeated actions. News: None ‘/wwa.orionbelt .com/ 12http://www.twinforces.com/frictionless/ ATPM 16.04 Ghost Action'* Developer: Ghost Park Software Current Version: 1.3.2 Price: $20 Development Status: Release iCal Syne: Yes QuickSilver Plug-in: No Web-app Sync: No Print Lists: Yes iPhone Presence: Sort of—a non-syncing applica- tion ($10) OS Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4 only!+ Required Applications: None Distinguishing Features: .Mac iCal running); PDA/iPod iCal syncing. News: Version 1.3.2 improved Snow Leopard com- patibility. neing (without two-way syncing; iCog'® : Ar Pace Developer: HensPace Current Version: 1.90 Price: Free Development Status: Release iCal Syne: No QuickSilver Plug-in: No Web-app Sync: No Print Lists: Yes iPhone Presence: None OS Requirements: Unknown Required Applications: Python 2.4 or later Distinguishing Features: Compatible with any OS running Python (including Windows); simple text-only utility. 13http: //ghostparksoftware.com/front/ghostaction Mhttp: //ghostparksoftware.com/front/support#leopar ‘http://www. henspace.co.uk/ikog/index. html Next Actions: Inbox Overload News: None mGTD'* Developer: Jeff Fisher Current Version: 1.3 Price: Free Development Status: Pre-final iCal Sync: No QuickSilver Plug-in: No Web-app Sync: No Print Lists: Yes iPhone Presence: None OS Requirements: None (Mori template) Required Applications: Mori 1.6.11 Distinguishing Features: Expands Mori (digital notebook) functions to include GTD principles. News: None Midnight Inbox'* INI Developer: Midnight Beep Softworks Current Version: 1.4.4 Price: $35 Development Status: Release iCal Syne: Yes QuickSilver Plug-in: No Web-app Sync: No Print Lists: Yes iPhone Presence: App coming soon OS Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4 Required Applications: None Distinguishing Features: Action tim quick- note and quic ail compati- ble; automati ction hot key: data collection. /apokalypsesoftware . com/products/node/2664 ‘http: //www.midnightbeep.com/ ATPM 16.04 News: None OmniFocus'* Developer: Omni Group Current Version: 1.7.5 Price: $80 Development Status: Release iCal Sync: Yes QuickSilver Plug-in: Yes Web-app Sync: No Print Lists: Yes iPhone Presence: App ($20) OS Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4.8 Required Applications: None Distinguishing Features: Mail compatible Spotlight compatible; simple interface with powerful view features. News: A new Web site (or at least, a reorganization of the old one) certainly makes things easier to find, and more information available about OmniFocus. Also, Omni Group has promise port all of their applications to the iPad, ing with OmniGraffle and OmniFocus news if you’re a user of OmniFocus and plan- ning to buy an iPad in a couple of days (or ever). and Pluto menubar'® Developer: MOApp Software Manufactory Current Version: 5.1.1 Price: €16 (about $24) Development Status: Release ‘http://www. omnigroup.com/applications/omnifocus/ 19nttp: //createlivelove.com/applications/pluto/pluto -btml 22 Next Actions: Inbox Overload iCal Sync: Yes QuickSilver Plug-in: Yes Web-app Sync: No Print Lists: Yes iPhone Presence: None OS Requirements: Mac OS X 10.5 Required Applications: None Distinguishing Features: This is a menu-bar ap- plication, but don’t be fooled—it is a very fully featured GTD tool. There is a lot to see here, and you won’t find any of the standard features you're looking for missing. Note the full-screen . and priori- editing, searching, tags, conti ties. News: None Ready, Set, Do!?° Ready-Set-Do! Developer: Todd Vasquez Current Version: 1.4.4 Price: $30 Development Status: Release iCal Syne: Yes QuickSilver Plug-in: Yes Web-app Sync: No Print Lists: Yes iPhone Presence: None OS Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4 Required Applications: None Distinguishing Features: A very different ap- proach using a set of AppleScript routines to impose organization and communication across a computer’s entire file system; productivity 20nttp: //homepage .mac .com/toddvasquez/Ready-Set-Do!/ Personal93. html ATPM 16.04 scoring; help with files and tasks related to meetings; multiple language support. News: Thanks to Todd Vasquez who chimed in with a comment on the last list to mention some lesser-known features, and a new graphic. TaskPaper! Developer: Hog Bay Software Current Version: 2.2.1 Price: $19 Development Status: Release iCal Sync: No QuickSilver Plug-in: No Web-app Sync: No Print Lists: Ye: iPhone Presence: None OS Requirements: Mac OS X 10.5 Required Applications: None Distinguishing Features: New version addresses some bug fixes, as well as adding several commands—mostly improving navigation and handling of tasks. The Hit List?? Developer: Potion Factory Current Version: 0.9.3.18 Price: $50 (pre-order) Development Status: Beta 2lhttp: //www. hogbaysoftware.com/products/taskpaper 22nttp://www.potionfactory.com/thehitlist/ 23 Next Actions: Inbox Overload iCal Syne: Yes QuickSilver Plug-in: No Web-app Sync: No Print Lists: No iPhone Presence: No (but indicated as “coming”) OS Requirements: Mac OS X 10.5 Required Applications: None Distinguishing Features: List view view; task timer; system-wide quick-entry: allow good project management; Apples support; tags and prioritization of tasks. News: As a commenter mentioned in the column, development here has been slow-to- nonexistent in recent months. Although I just added it to the list a couple of months ago, it is worth noting that nothing has been done with The Hit List publicly for a year or more. It still looks promising, and for all we know the developer could announce a completed version in a week (though that would indicate and ript last less-than-optimal market savvy). Still, proceed with this caveat if you decide to dive into The Hit List. Things?* Developer: Cultured Code Current Version: 1.3.1 Price: $50 Development Status: Release iCal Sync: Yes QuickSilver Plug-in: No Web-app Sync: No Print Lists: Yes = App ($10) : Mac OS X 10.4.11 ; Tepeating network and multi-computer operation; and import/export options News: A semi-major update came with 1.3.1 (from 1.2.x), which brings support for what the °3http://culturedcode.com/things/ ATPM 16.04 24 Things folk: all “mixed projects”—task items of various types (both scheduled and uns uled/“someday” tasks, for example). Also some bug fixes and under-the-hood improvements. thed- Thinking Rock** Vii ThinkingRock Developer: Avente Pty Ltd Current Version: 2.2.1 Price: Free, open-source Development Status: Rele iCal Sync: No QuickSilver Plug-in: No Web-app Sync: No Print Lists: Yes iPhone Presence: None OS Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4 Required Applications: None Distinguishing Features: Cross-platform compat- ibility through Java; interactive collection and processing; can be run off of a flash drive. News: Version 3 is now available for purchase for $40. Learn more about the difference in the versions here”®, The Thinking Rock folks have also upgraded their Web site, and it’s now much easier to find your way around. What To Do”® Developer: Objective Satisfaction Current Version: 1.3.2 Price: $29 Development Status: Release *4nttp://www.thinkingrock.com.au/ ‘/waw.trgtd.com.au/index.php?option=com_conte articlesid=148 2Shttp: //www.objectivesatisfaction.com/what_todo/ Next Actions: Inbox Overload iCal Syne: No QuickSilver Plug-in: Yes Web-app Sync: No Print Lists: Yes iPhone Presence: None OS Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4.9 Required Applications: None Distinguishing Features: Drag-and-drop sive for easy reorganization; .Mac syncing for multiple computers; XML export. News: None inten- Locally Installed General Task Managers Anxiety?” Developer: Tom Stoelwinder, Model Concept Current Version: 1.0 Price: Free/Donationware Development Status: Release iCal Syne: Yes QuickSilver Plug-in: No Web-app Sync: No Print Lists: Yes (through iCal) iPhone Presence: None OS Requirements: Mac OS X 10.5 Distinguishing Features: A menu-bar ut gives a HUD-like interface to iCal task: calendar; Mac OS X 10.5 only. News: None Chandler* Developer: The Chandler Project Current Version: 1.0.3 Price: Open Source Development Status: Release iCal Syne: Yes QuickSilver Plug-in: No Web-app Sync: Yes Print Lists: Yes (through iCal) iPhone Presence: None OS Requirements: Mac OS X 10.3 Distinguishing Features: A good integrated cal- endar makes this one a fairly full-orbed PIM. News: None ‘/awa.anxietyapp.com/ °Shttp://chandlerproject.org/ ATPM 16.04 Check Off? Developer: Second Gear Current Version: 4.1.1 Price: $13 Development Status: Release iCal Sync: No QuickSilver Plug-in: No Web-app Sync: No Print Lists: Yes iPhone Presence: None OS Requirements: Mac OS X 10.5.2 Distinguishing Features: A menu-bar utility that manages basic task ; synes with iPods; a -Mac Backup QuickPick is provided. News: Latest version brings better a sibility sup- port, improved stability, and some bug fixes. Dejumble*® Developer: Thinking Code Software, Inc. Current Version: 1.3 Price: $19 Development Status: Release iCal Syne: Yes QuickSilver Plug-in: No Web-app Sync: No Print Lists: Yes (through iCal) iPhone Presence: App ($8) OS Requirements: Unknown (would assume 10.4 or later, due to presence of Spotlight functions) Distinguishing Features: A simple yet powerful menu bar-style task list manager, with tags, groups, notes, and a handful of other options News: None Docket*" Developer: Surprise Software Current Version: 1.3 Price: $20 Development Status: Release iCal Syne: No QuickSilver Plug-in: No Web-app Sync: No Print Lists: Ye °nttp: //www.checkoffapp.com/ SOnttp: //www.dejumble.com/ Slnttp: //www.surprisesoftware.com/docket/ Next Actions: Inbox Overload iPhone Presence: None OS Requirements: Mac OS X 10.1 Distinguishing Features: A neat list- management application. A Windows version basic is also available. News: None Dolt*? Developer: Jim McGowan Current Version: 2.6 Price: Donationware Development Status: Release iCal Syne: Yes QuickSilver Plug-in: Yes Web-app Sync: No Print Lists: No iPhone Presence: None OS Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4 Distinguishing Features: .Mac support and Ap- pleScriptability. Also supports file attachments and categories for lists. Skins are available for customization. News: None FlexCaf* Developer: flexgames Current Version: 1.14 Price: Free/Donationware Development Status: Rele iCal Syne: Yes QuickSilver Plug-in: No Web-app Sync: No Print Lists: Yes (through iCal) iPhone Presence: None OS Requirements: Mac OS X 10.5 Distinguishing Features: A task and event cre- ator for iCal—something of a collection bucket for GTD users. News: Recent update brings 64-bit support and some minor fixes. Hot Plan’ Developer: Intuiware ttp://www. jimmcgowan.net/Site/DoIt html http: //flexgames .com/flexcal/?p=1 S4http://www. intuiware.com/Products/MacOSX/HotPlan/ ATPM 16.04 Current Version: 1.4.3 Price: $20 Development Status: Release iCal Sync: No QuickSilver Plug-in: No Web-app Sync: No Print Lists: No iPhone Presence: None OS Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4.9 Distinguishing Features: Tracks a amount of information about a given task, including completion status, priority, and time remaining; supports tagging, color coding, and locking of tasks. Also allows collection of URLs and files. News: Bug fixes and Snow Leopard compatib' fixes in the recent minor update. substantial iClock Pro* Developer: Script Software Current Version: 1.1 Price: $20 Development Status: Release iCal Syne: Yes QuickSilver Plug-in: No Web-app Sync: No Print Lists: No OS Requirements: Unknown Distinguishing Features: Offers a based method of managing task lis vncing. ion 1.1 brings bug fixes for installation and, curiously, version-numbering schemes. Life Balance*® Developer: Llamagraphics Current Version: 5.1.1 Price: $65 ($80 bundled with Palm version) Development Status: Rele iCal Syne: Yes QuickSilver Plug-in: No Web-app Sync: No Print Lists: Yes (through iCal) OS Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4 ttp: //www.scriptsoftware.com/iclock/ Shttp: //www.1llamagraphics.com/LB/index.php 26 Next Actions: Inbox Overload Distinguishing Features: Gives “meta-feedback” about tasks: how much time are you spending in different areas of your life (ie., work, family, hobbies, etc.), and are you keeping it balanced? Palm and Windows versions available. News: None NoteBook*" Developer: Circ Current Versio: Price: $50 (academic and family pack pricing avail- able) Development Status: Release iCal Syne: Yes QuickSilver Plug-in: Yes Web-app Sync: No Print Lists: Yes OS Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4.11 Distinguishing Features: Highly customizable system with project management built-in works well for heavy day-to-day GTD use. News: None also Organized** Developer: iS Current Version: 1.11 Price: Donationware Development Status: Release iCal Syne: Yes QuickSilver Plug-in: No Web-app Syne: No Print Lists: No iPhone Presence: None OS Requirements: Mac OS X 10.5 Distinguishing Features: Dashboard widget with calendar events, tasks, notes, and world clock. News: None Qu-s*® Developer: Urban Design Limited Current Version: 1.5 Price: $17 Development Status: Release ‘/www.circusponies.com/ /islayer com/index. php?op=itemkid=64 S°nttp://www.qu-s.eu/flash/index.htm1 ATPM 16.04 iCal Syne: No QuickSilver Plug-in: No Web-app Sync: No Print Lists: No iPhone Presence: None OS Requirements: Mac OS X 10.5 Distinguishing Features: Allows lists (and other things) to be created as an editable part of the desktop. Good for simple lists. News: None Stapler Developer: The Blue Technologies Group Current Version: 1.1 Price: €7.50 (about $10) Development Status: Release iCal Syne: No QuickSilver Plug-in: No Web-app Sync: No Print Lists: Yes iPhone Presence: None OS Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4 Distinguishing Features: A combination notepad and to-do list manager, with creation dat notes, and a check box for completed items. Tasks can be color-coded based on a low-level preference set-up. News: None TaskMate** Developer: Ryan Conway Current Version: 1.2.1 Price: Free Development Status: Release iCal Syne: No QuickSilver Plug-in: No Web-app Sync: No Print Lists: No iPhone Presence: None OS Requirements: Mac Distinguishing Feature > task list: remaining tasks in a simple completed tasks in a drawer (which can be hidden). Tasks are just single-line descriptions with a check Could be right for the super-simplified box. life. 40nttp: //waw.blue-tec.com/stapler/ 4lnttp://gettaskmate.com/ 27 Next Actions: Inbox Overload News: None Today" Developer: Second Gear Current Version: 2.1 Price: $22 Development Status: Rele: iCal Syne: Yes QuickSilver Plug-in: No Web-app Sync: No Print Lists: Yes iPhone Presence: None OS Requirements: Mac OS X 10.5 Distinguishing Features: A window interface for quick reference and entry to iCal events and tas s ts for viewing and creation of new tasks and events. News: Version 2.1 added support for Mac OS X 10.5 (a new one for me—adding backward- compatibility is a good idea, but not something I’ve seen frequently in the software world!). It also fixed a handful of bugs and improved the user-interface. ToDo X** Developer: Omicron Software Systems, Inc. Current Version: 2.3 Price: $15 Development Status: Release iCal Syne: Import from iCal only QuickSilver Plug-in: No Web-app Syne: No Print Lists: No iPhone Presence: None OS Requirements: Mac OS X 10.2 Distinguishing Features: Offers categories, prior- ities, and attached notes. News: None ZooDo"* Developer: InterfaceThis Current Version: 1.0 http://www. secondgearsoftware.com/today/ ‘3http://www.nomicro.com/Products/ToDo/ 44http://interfacethis.com/zoodo/ ATPM 16.04 28 Price: Free Development Status: Rele iCal Sync: Yes QuickSilver Plug-in: No Web-app Sync: No Print Lists: Yes (through iCal) iPhone Presence: None OS Requirements: Unknown Distinguishing Features: A basic task creator for iCal, serving as a collection bucket. News: None Browser and Web-based GTD Applica- tions 30 Boxes'* Price: Free Description: Lean and fast, including a calendar, task list, and limited Gmail interaction. Also RSS and iCal feeds, SMS, and sharing. Nice interface, too. 43 Actions*® Price: Free (donations get extra features) Description: Specifically designed as an iPhone Web app, it’s light and lean for EDGE network optimization. Submit inbox items via e-mail, Twitter (with donation), Jott (with donation), and the usual features. GTDAgenda“’ Price: Free Description: Another Web version of a GTD tool, with the standard features. Plus, addition of Goals, checklists for recurring tasks, schedule management, and an iCal-compatible calendar. A mobile version is also available. GTDInbox"* Price: Free ‘/waw.30boxes .com/welcome .php ://43actions.com/ ‘/waw.gtdagenda.com/ 4Snttp://gtdgmail.com/ Next Actions: Inbox Overload Description: A Firefox extension for GTD integra- tion with Gmail. Prepackaged labels, a Re- view pre specialized searches within Gmail, quick-entry for tasks, and printable. Works well in conjunction with RememberTheMilk. Cur- rent version, 2.0.8.4, is open source; requires Firefox. GTD-PHP"” Price: Free Description: A PHP solution designed to be locally installed. A simple tabbed interface for the cap- ture and pr stages; weekly review. Cur- rently at version 0.8. Neptune®® Price: $10/year Description: Includes text or project ta inactive proj a collection inbox and con- sk viewing panes, as well as and tasks. Daily e-mail re- new tasks can be added by export. e-mail; data Next Action*! Price: Free Description: Use a lean, b s Google Gears and Firefox; has interface with multiple-list man- agement capability. Works with or without a network connection. Nexty*? Price: Free Description: PHP-based, so it installs locally and runs in your brows minders. supports contexts and re- Nozbe** Peep SOnttp Slnttp http Sheep ://www.gtd-php.com/Main/HomePage ://www.neptunehq.com/ ://code. google .com/p/trimpath/wiki/NextAction ://nexty .sourceforge-net/ ://www.nozbe .com/page/index ATPM 16.04 29 Price: Free Description: Has markers for which action will be next and a time estimation for tasks. Contexts are visible and identifiable; easy to collect and ; iPhone-ready. SimpleGTD** Price: Free Description: Tabs actions. projects, and drag-and-drop organization; easy undoing of tasks. for next contexts, done actions; Task Writer’® Price: Free Description: Easy keyboard navigation, good use of calendaring for tasks, and a useful set of at- tributes for tasks, as well as the ability to auto- hide unneeded list views, help Task Writer to stand out a bit. Toodledo*® Price: Description: Has a Firefox plug-in and a Google gadget for easy collection; also supports e-mi voice mail, and traditional entry for colle Free tion. Includes a good overview of GTD in co-operation with its tools, as well. iPhone- optimized. Tracks*” Price: Free Description: A Web server that runs locally or hosted through tracks.tra.in. pretty, it offers calendaring and a multi-user component. Currently at version 1.6. Fast, lean, and Vitalist®* -simplegtd.com/ -taskwriter.com/ -toodledo. com/info/gtd.php -Tousette.org.uk/projects/ -vitalist.com/ Next Actions: Inbox Overload Price: $5/month (premium) « Tweeto74 Description: Is a wide-scale GTD tem: tion, project management, recurring actions, and tickler files. Includes a mobile edition, iCal and RSS feeds, and e-mail and SMS reminders. An iPhone-speci available. A premium (paid) ve urity GTD and Task Management Wikis encryption, collaboration, file attachments, and lendaring. ic version on also includes « D3” « GTDTiddly Wiki Other Browser/Web-based Task Man- 79 agers 2 ¢ MonkeyGT. 5 © Pimki8° * Backpack®® Pimki iPhone Applications (not Web Apps) « CoMindWork®! + Actions*? © HiTask®2 Hileske © Chores*? + Hiveminder® + Dejumble® « Jo ’s Goals®4 DoBot ToDos** * Mojonote® « EasyTask Manager®® -R ber the Milk®® Firetedt:®® « Firetask*® « Scrybe®? os ¢ Life Balance’? «< Serle pbiouRNE . by MobilityWare’® é Tynsoe.org®? « Matalot by dPompa®’ « My Lists®? 74nttp://www.tweeto.com/ % http: //zenlists.com/ 7Shttp: //www.zenbe.com/welcome http://www. backpackit.com/ TT http: //www.dcubed.ca/ nttp://www.basecamphq. com/ *Shttp: //nathanbowers . com/gtdtw/index. html lnttp://www.comindwork.com/ 7nttp: //monkeygtd.tiddlyspot .com/#MonkeyGTD http: //hitask.com/ S°nttp: //pimki. rubyforge. org/ °Shttp://hiveminder.com/splash/ Slnttp: //ghostparksoftware.com/ S4http://www. joesgoals.com/ 82http://www.tapeshow.com/chores/ http: //mojonote.com/ ae ://waw.de jumble. com/#iphone 66 ‘ ‘ http://www. rememberthemilk.com/ http://dobot .us/ °Thttp: //iscrybe.com/main/index.php one ://waw.orionbelt .com/productMac.php 68 buttp: . http: //sproutliner.com/ http: //www.firetask.com/ http://www. taskfreak.com/ SThttp: //www.llamagraphics.com/LB/iphone/walkthrough Tnttp://crowdfavorite.com/tasks/ /index.php Thttp://www.tasktoy.com/ SShttp: //www.mobilityware.com/iphone/Default .htm http: //teuxdeux.com/ ponte: //projects. tynsoe. org/en/lists/ T3nttp://todoist.com/ http: //dpompa.com/ °lnttp: //pazeinteractive.com/iphoneapps/mylists ATPM 16.04 30 Next Actions: Inbox Overload « OmniFocus®? ¢ Outliner by CarbonFin®? o4 as Checklis * Things « ToDo by Appigo®” « To Do by Erica Sadun® * To-Do List by Concrete Software”? * To-Do Lists by Tapku! * ToodleDo™ « Zenbe Lis 102 Copyright © 2010 Ed Eubanks Jr. http: hone/ Shep: 4hetp: http: 95; html Gpeep: SThetp: Shttp: ://www. concretesoftware.com/iphone/tdl. shtml 10n¢tp: 10lnttp: 1W2nttp: nttp //waw. omni group.com/applications/omnifocus/ip //carbonfin.com/ //web.me.com/tapp1/tapp/Tanjas_Checklist .html //web.mac.com/philipp.brendel/Software/Tasks. //culturedcode .com/things/iphone/ //www.appigo.com/todo/ //ericasadun.com/AppStore/ToDo/ //tapku.com/to-do_lists html //waw.toodledo .com/info/iphone. php //lists.zenbe.com/ ATPM 16.04 31 Next Actions: Inbox Overload Desktop Pictures by Richard Barrett Sunsets We need new desktop pictures each month. Write! to us! This Month’s Desktop Pictures” ATPM reader Richard Barrett shares some sunset and sunrise photos that he took in Costa Rica, Hawaii, London, and Florida. View Pictures* “http://www. atpm.com/16.04/sunsets Contributing Your Own Desktop Pictures If you have a picture, whether a small series or just one fabulous or funny shot, please send it to editor@atpm.com and we'll consider publishing it in next month e. Previous Months’ Desktop Pictures Pictures from previous months are listed in the desk- top pictures arch’ Downloading All the Pictures at Once Some browsers can download an entire set of desktop pictures at once. Safari Use this Automator workflow‘. iCab Use the Download command to “Download all linked files in same folder” and configure the limits to download only the linked images. OmniWeb Choose “Save Linked > Images. the File menu. .” from Imailto:editor@atpm.com °http://www.atpm.com/16.04/sunsets/ Shttp://www.atpm.com/Back/desktop-pictures. shtml ‘http: //automator.us/examples-02.htm1 ATPM 16.04 Placing Desktop Pictures Mac OS X 10.3.x Through 10.6.x Choose “System Preferences...” from the Apple menu, click the “Desktop & Screen Saver” button, then choose the Desktop tab. In the left-side menu, select the desktop pictures folder you want to use. You can also use the pictures with Mac OS X’s built-in screen saver. Select the Screen Saver tab which is in the “Desktop & Screen Saver” Sys- tem Preferences pane. If you put the ATPM pictures in your Pictures folder, click on the Pictures Folder in the list of screen savers. Otherwise, click Choose Folder to tell the screen saver which pictures to use. Mac OS X 10.1.x and 10.2.x Choose “System Preferences...” from the Apple menu and click the Desktop button. With the pop- up menu, select the desktop pictures folder you want to use. You can also use the pictures with Mac OS X’s built-in screen saver. Choose “System Preferences. . . from the Apple menu. Click the Screen Saver (10.1.x) or Screen Effects (10.2.2) button. Then click on Cus- tom Slide Show in the list of screen savers. If you put the ATPM pictures in your Pictures folder, you're all set. Otherwise, click Configure to tell the screen saver which pictures to use. Mac OS X 10.0.x Switch to the Finder. Choose “Preferences...” from the “Finder” menu. Click on the “Select Picture...” button on the right. In the Open Panel, select the desktop picture you want to use. The panel defaults to your ~/Library/Desktop Pictures folder. Close the “Finder Preferences” window when you are done. ® 32 Desktop Pictures: Sunsets Out at Five by Matt Johnson, mjohnson@atpm.com Bob’s Organizer ATPM 16.04 33 Cartoon: Out at Five Rebranding MAJOR BRANDS LIKE NIKE AND APPLE HAVE TAUGHT US THAT YOU DON'T NEED SUPERIOR PRODUCTS OR GOOD CUSTOMER SERVICE. T = T 6 SEE AS FARASICAN SZ. TELL, THERE'S NO PART WE HAVE ANEW LOGO, NEW CORPORATE COLORS. AND ANEW LAYOUT FOR THE WEBSITE AND, PRINT MATERTALS. Meeting E-mail — pf HEY BRODY, WHY WERENT YOU AT THE ‘THE MEETING I E-MAILED YOU ABOUT AN HOUR AGO! ATPM 16.04 34 Cartoon: Out at Five Spit Take Out to Lunch THAT'S AFINE WORK ETHIC, GOING OUT TO ATPM 16.04 35 HE HEDGES HIS BETS ‘AND DATES MORE THAN ONE. AT A TIME, SO IT'S MORE. LIKE A GANTT CHART. Cartoon: Out at Five Pizza Time Salt Eri! LEH Copyright © 2010 Matt Johnson ATPM 16.04 (OF COURSE, THAT WAS LONG BEFORE. IS THIS KETCHUP ‘AND OREGANO? 36 Cartoon: Out at Five Qaptain Qwerty by Linus Ly, http://qaptainqwerty.blogspot.com IT 1S NOT TRUE THAT ONLY PRIESTS AND SORCERERS CAN CAST THE "CALL BEAST" MAGIC SPELL. SOLDIERS CAN CALL THE BEAST AS LONG |AS THEY HAVE THE RIGHT TELECOM EQUIPMENTS. TIPS AND TRICKS POR A CHANGE OF PACE, OUT-OF-GENRE EXPERIENCE, IN THE TOWN OF GNASS, BEHIND ETHSSYN'S SHOP, GO INTO THE BASEMENT TO PLAY |A MINI VERSION OF JETS 'N GUNS OR AIRBURST EXTREME - MOSTLY MINDLESS BLASTING WITHOUT % HAVING TO REMEMBER TOO MANY DETAILS. Ps Copyright © 2010 Linus Ly* lnttp://qaptainqwerty. blogspot .com/ ATPM 16.04 37 Cartoon: Qaptain Qwerty Software Review by Linus Ly, lly@atpm.com Avernum 6 v.1.0.2 Function: Roam RPG world, peace. Developer: Spiderweb Software? Price: $28 Requirements: Mac Universal Feature-limited (10% of world, cheat codes disabled) restore OS X= 10.3.9. VERY NICE Trial: For me, computer gaming is limited to only two ge res: shoot ‘em up, where you mow down almost am thing in your way; and puzzle, be it hidden object types or word games. Playing on the computer means quick actions with the fingers or lazily matching three or more items in a row. When I play computer games, I do not want to have to memorize too many details about the games. Therefore, the game genre of ad- it is just too much work to have to remember who is venture or role playing game never attracts me carrying what or has what powers. Still, from time to time I want to expand my horizon and do some- thing out of my comfort zone. When I learned about Avernum 6, the latest in a series of adventure games from SpiderWeb Software, I took the chance. Let’s Go on an Adventure Avernum is a huge underground world that was once used as a penal colony by the Empire. Over time, the colony gained independence and other settlers moved in. Avernum had its share of prosperous, peaceful times and was also ravaged by wars with other speci The latest catastrophe involves a disease that de- stroys the mushroom used as the main diet of people and beasts alike. Amid the catastrophe, you, rep- resented by four lowly guards at a food depot, get ordered to various tasks, such as the ridding of rats in the bowel of the depot and hunting goblins in an abandoned mine. Along the way, you gain magical powers, learn how to teleport, and more. One thing leads to an- other, and before you know it you are on your way to solving the big mystery of how the mushroom dis- ease came about. If you choose to, that is, as there lhttp://www.avernum.com/avernum6/index.html °http://www.apple.com/universal/ ATPM 16.04 38 are many side stories you can pursue. The plac big, and there are many things to do; you can spend hours with the game. You Are in Control While your characters in the game have orders to carry out and are not always in control of their des- tinies, you have much control over the game and can adjust it in many ways to suit your taste. At the start, you can choose from Casual, Normal, Hard, and Torment. Next, you decide the humanoid species for your four characters, choosing from human, slith- zerikai (lizard-like), or nephil (cat-like). On the same screen, you can also select the characters’ appear- ances through their sex, clothes, build, skin color, and more. Finally, you can even adjust the char- Ambidextrous, Deadeye, and Nimble Fingers. it Your Party i a Ex Z There are many choices of images to select for your four characters. As you roam about minding your adventure, there are many items to pick up along the way, some of obvious value and others not so obvious. Swords and other weapons are no-brainers, and I personally like to outfit my gang to wield weapons in both hands. Medicine and energy potions are useful for healing your travelers after a gruesome fight. Other items, such as bars of iron and jewelry, make good bartering materials. I still don’t know what a piece of trash can be used for, but Avernum is a big world. Maybe I will Review: Avernum 6 v.1.0.2 come acro’ pie omeone or get into a situation where the e of trash can be useful. It is entirely up to you who gets what. You can make one character too powerful while the others lack sufficient protection; but, of course, the team will fail if one character expires. By interacting and learning from certain characters, you can improve your adven- turers’ magic or battle skills. 5 spl a Pick up stuff as you roam about to outfit your characters with weapons and protection. Use coins, interact with other characters, etc., to improve your various skills. Mouse or Keyboard As a decent typist, I love Avernum’s keyboard sup- port. Most of the many icons and buttons on the screen have keyboard equivalents. You can try to memorize a handful for tasks you perform often, but you can also press the Tab key to show all the avail- able shortcuts. Dialogs can be dismissed with either the Esc or Enter key. Series of questions can be posed by pressing the numbers matching the questions. ATPM 16.04 However, when it comes to moving the charac- ters, I find using the mou direction keys actually work in referen ¢ 3D landscape, whereby up means north, left west, down is south, and right is east. How- ever, you can easily be confused into thinking the keys work from the character’s perspective, e.g., turning left would be done by pressing the left arrow. There- fore, my preference is to use the mouse—just point and click the location you want the quartet of war- riors and wizards to go, and they get there in a hurry. to be more natural. The with the iso- Typists should love Avernum’s extensive support for keyboard shortcuts. Pressing Tab reveals them all. Sound and Vision At number six in the series, the latest Avernum has support not only for the latest hardware. Older ma- chines can use the options for thousands of colors and minimal graphics, while newer Mz color and graphics. I would not want to mis graphics. While the landscape is not very organic and somewhat fits too nicely into the 3D grid, it is still very nice. You have forests, wasteland, bodies of water, and man-made structures such as buildings es, all drawn with lots of details. I like the sound effects even more, though. You have a choice of No Sound, Quiet, or Normal. I alway As you roam about the vast cave, you can hear the wind howling and dripping water for a very chilling effect. can use full the and min ys use Normal. Help Is Everywhere It is easy to feel overwhelmed by all that needs to be done and remembered. It is just the nature of the game genre. Luckily, Avernum offers many forms of help. The Journal is the most obvious one. As you are assigned tasks, they are entered in the Journal so 39 Review: Avernum 6 v.1.0.2 you can go back to it whenever you forget what it is you are supposed to do. As you talk to the characters in the game, you can also save the conversation in the Journal. You have the big map of the entire Avernum to give you a sense of where you are; there is also a small map overlaid on the game screen. On the small map are stars to indicate people you should meet or places you should visit. You also have online help as well as a PDF version. If you do not like reading documen- tation, you can try to use the forum on Spiderweb Software’s Web site. Lastly, Spiderweb Software of- fers a hint book for $10. There is much to do, and you must talk to other characters to get answers or directions. The Journal automatically saves your mission instructions, but you can also take notes as you interact with other characters. Draconian Measure. . .Not! The registration process for Avernum could use some help itself. When you get the demo you are assigned a registration code. When registering the software, ATPM 16.04 40 you get a key code to let the program know that you have registered. Allis well until another account on the same com- puter launches the game. Alas, that account gets a different registration code, not one that matches the key code you already have. You can contact Spird- erweb Software for a new key code, but it’s an extra even if it takes a few hours to complete. T regularly buy software online via demos and al- ready find it annoying enough that I usually have cr the software for different accounts on the ame computer. Only Snapz Pro X and one other picce of software offer to register the software for all Avernum goes the s a little bit worse. > same machine. and makes thin; Although I found myself spending a few nights stay- ing up late wandering Avernum and trying to com- plete some tasks, I still do not like the game genre itself. It is too much work and not relaxing. How- Tam sure any fan of RPGs will like Avernum. a vast world with many characters to interact with, whether to engage in battle or to get help. There are plenty of things to find to equip your characters with, and they can also improve their skills through learning or trading. If you want, you can carry out side tasks while you try to perform your duties. The graphics are good, though perhay too dark and e pecially with the bac sounds. The registration pro It may feel like reading a complex novel at times, but there are many forms of help at your disposal to figure things out. If there is one adventure game I want to play, it has to be Avernum 6. Reviewing in ATPM is If you're interested, write to us at Copyright © 2010 Linus Ly* open to anyone. reviews@atpm.com. Smailto:1ly@atpm.com Review: Avernum 6 v.1.0.2 Accessory Review by Chris Lawson, http://chrislawson.net Commuter Function: Case for iPhone 3G/3GS. Developer: OtterBox" Price: $35 Requirements: iPhone 3G/3GS. Trial: None VERY NICE OtterBox has been building rugged cases for years, so it seems only natural that it would a variety of options for the iPhone. Probably the most attractive of its several iPhone case offer- ings is the Commuter, a rubber-and-plastic case that provides better protection than most soft cases while remaining reasonably slender. hav OtterBox's Commuter requires some assembly. The Commuter case is composed of three pie: ilicone-rubber layer, a hard plastic shell, and a thin clear screen protector. The inner rub- ber layer is available only in black, but the plas- tic shell comes in seven different colors (including black). This makes for some amusing combinations — the white shell lets the iPhone do its best imitation of a Gateway product, while the yellow or green would be very much at home on an endcap display next to the DeWalt or Hitachi power tools at a big-box hard- in. (The green might be equally appealing to hardcore Kawasaki—the motorsport company, not the former Apple evangelist—fans.) an inner s ware cl lhttp://www.otterbox.com/iphone-cases/iphone-3g-3gs -cases/iphone-3g-3gs-commuter-case/ ATPM 16.04 41 The Commuter looks similar to many other cases fully assembled. takes a bit of finesse, as the Assembling the casi plastic shell isn’t particularly flexible and the thin rubber strip above the dock connector tends to stick out a bit. (You can coax it into place with a finger- nail.) Put the silicone liner on first, then slide the bottom of the shell in place before snapping the top on. This way, you'll likely avoid fingernail gymnas- Review: Commuter This flexible cover does a great job of keeping gunk out of the dock connector. Protection against drops and bumps seems quite good. The silicone layer is reasonably thick without being bulky, and it covers almost everything other than the screen, home button, and silent: slider. Everything, that is, except a nickel-size area of the back case centered on the Apple logo. OtterBox, like ZoFunk?, seems to think that customers who are willing to spend $35 on a protective case to prevent scratches and other damage are also too narcissistic to cover up the Apple logo. Well, news flash, guys: some of us actually care about protecting the phone and don’t give a rat’s nether regions about showing off the logo on the back. Form should follow function. http://www. atpm.com/15.06/zofunk-cases.shtm1 ATPM 16.04 Hello? McFly? Some of us buy cases to protect our phones, not to show off the Apple logo. | can show that off without a case. Exposing a lot of sticky silicone rubber on a can be a recipe for trouble. The ZoFunk Grip Sleeve, to cite one example, is nearly impossible to remove from a jeans pocket without turning the pocket in- side out. OtterBox’s own Defender* caught on pockets in even loos the Commuter’s design seems to between tacky and Teflon by covering up much of the rubber with textured plastic. It’s also much slimmer than the bulky Defender. lance Shttp: //www.atpm.com/16.04/defender.shtml 42 Review: Commuter One of the best aspects of the Commuter is that it adds little bulk to the phone while still providing a great deal of protection. OtterBox includes a clear screen protector, too, which is a nice touch. You will need to replace it, at a cost of about $10 or so, when the adhesive starts to wear out and dust gets in around the edges, but that goes for pretty much any of the adhesive screen protectors out there, and not everyone includ reen protection with cases that otherwise provide none. ATPM 16.04 43 As with the cover over the dock connector, this tight-fitting flap over the headphone jack keeps dust and dirt from fouling up the jack Another nice touch is the tight-fitting flaps over the headphone port and dock connector. The latter, in particular, can be kind of tricky to hold out of the way as you're plugging in a USB cable, but it’s very nice to have protection there. Most other cases cither don’t provide any protection at all for the dock connector or block it entirely so you're left removing the iPhone from its case to syne or charge it. The truest test of a case, to my mind, is whether I keep coming back to it after using other cases. The Commuter is one of only two I've put back on my iPhone after taking it off to test others. If OtterBox would make the back of the case solid, without that silly logo hole, this might be my favorite iPhone yet. Heck, it might be anyway. ase Copyright © 2010 Chris Lawson’. is open to anyone. Reviewing in ATPM If you're interested, write to us at ® reviews@atpm.com. 4nttp://chrislawson.net Review: Commuter Accessory Review by Chris Lawson, http://chrislawson.net Defender Function: Rugged case for iPhone 3G/3GS. Developer: OtterBox’ Price: $50 Requirements: iPhone 3G/3GS. (An iPhone 2G version” is also avail- able, but there are no iPod touch—compatible models.) Trial: None ting in our break room recently, listening to ss the relative merits of their iPhone cases. Judging from some of the complaints I heard from them about how easy it is to drop, damage, abuse, and otherwise maltreat a cell phone—at one I was co-workers dis point, the phrase “I drop mine every day” passed someone's lips—a lot more people ought to be buying cases like the OtterBox Defender. lhttp://www.otterbox.com/iphone-cases/iphone-3g-3gs ~cases/iphone-3g-3gs-defender-case/ °http: //www. otterbox.com/iphone-cases/iphone-defend er-case/ The Defender in black-on-black, the most attractive color combination to my eye. You can see one of the “blobs” just above the Calendar and Calculator application icons in the top row. About the only thing the Defender won’t, er, de- fend against is a direct fall into standing water. It’s basically impossible to engineer a watertight case for a telephone in which you can still use the phone, and to ask a $50 consumer-grade device to do that is pletely unfair. So don’t expect the Defender or any other case to save your iPhone from a thorough dunk- ing in a pool, a lake, your favorite trout stream, the ocean, ete. m- ATPM 16.04 44 Review: Defender With that caveat out of the way, how well does the Defender work as a case, and how well does it protect against other assorted traumas of the non- liquid variety? The Defender is a big, rugged case, with empha- sis on “big” and “rugged.” The iPhone is already a r