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My 10 Favorite Apps To Share Content Between iOS and OS X

Let’s face it, if you’re a Mac user who also happens to have an iPhone, iPad, or both, chances are you’ve been there before: with two devices in hand and a computer on your desk, how do you share stuff between them? What are the apps that enable you to share content across different devices, simultaneously and perhaps over the Internet as well?

In this post I’ve collected 10 iOS apps that are making my workflow more streamlined and connected on a daily basis, but before I delve deeper into the list I think I should define the “content” from this page’s title and the kind of “stuff” I want (and need) to share. With Lion approaching its final release in July and iCloud set to deliver a state-of-the-art OTA experience for users and developers alike, it seems like Apple has taken the necessary steps to free iOS devices from the need of a cable, building new features aimed at easing the process of sharing content between different machines and devices. Take Lion as an example: AirDrop, a new menu baked into the Finder, will allow Mac users to easily share files and documents with computers (and thus friends) nearby, over a WiFi network. Or, perhaps more importantly, the new iCloud APIs with instant push and cross-platform sync will enable developers to build better applications that take advantage of the cloud to keep their data synced and always up to date with the most recent changes. Whilst services and apps have been syncing content through their own backends for years, it’s the promise of a free iCloud infrastructure from Apple that’s convincing developers to ditch third-party solutions like Dropbox to rewrite their software with iCloud in mind. We’ll see the first result in September.

So what’s the content to share? What’s the stuff I find myself needing to share across devices every day? Links, photos, screenshots, PDFs, notes – you name it: as OS X and iOS become more intertwined on each software update, data needs to easily get out from one app to another. And in spite of an iCloud on the horizon, there hasn’t been a universal solution to share anything between a Mac and an iPhone.

In this article, I take a look at 10 iOS apps and services with some sort of Mac counterparts that have helped me over the past months in getting data out of my iPad and iPhone, and onto my MacBook Pro, iMac, and the cloud in general. Read more

Why the $100 gift card is better than an iPod

This year, Apple isn’t offering an iPod touch with the purchase of a new Mac. Instead, Apple is handing out a $100 gift card, advertising that the extra money is best spent on apps from the Mac App Store. You could argue that a $229 iPod touch is more valuable since you can resell it, but that ends up being a hassle as you have to buy the device upfront, mail in a rebate, and receive a check from Apple at a later date. Some might want the free iPod touch, but you could argue that a majority of senior high and college students already have one (or an iPhone), and wouldn’t benefit from an additional model. Apple no longer needs to make the iPod touch popular. By giving students a $100 gift card instead of offering a physical device, Apple is getting students to invest in the future. While the past decade was primarily about the iPod, this decade’s focus is shifting towards apps and Apple’s iCloud.

Apple is leveraging this year’s Back to School promotion to make the Mac App Store popular. While the credit can be spent in the App Store, iTunes Store, or the iBookstore, Apple wants you to load up your Mac with new software. In a matter of minutes, students can open their Macs, create an Apple ID, and download the entire iWork suite with little effort. Developers should be incredibly happy about this: Apple is giving potential customers money to spend on their applications. I would be coming out of my socks right now if I was the developer of Smartr or iStudiez Pro. This is a huge win-win for everyone involved. By handing out a $100 gift card, Apple accomplishes three things:

  1. Students have the opportunity to load up their Macs with paid software at no cost from the Mac App Store.
  2. Apple is aiding developers in the sales of their apps.
  3. Apple takes a 30% cut of each app downloaded.

By teaching students to purchase apps from the Mac App Store, Apple can lock new customers into their ecosystem, and get people used to the idea that software doesn’t come on a disc. Developers will be getting a lot of exposure during the duration of this program, although I think Apple will benefit again when the iWork suite will likely be the first thing students download. The beauty of handing students $100 worth of credit for apps, music, and books is that Apple will eventually make thirty percent of that credit back if students spend the entirety their cards in the Mac App Store or otherwise. Apple is investing in students to use their products, in developers to develop new apps on the Mac, and in their own ecosystem in one fell swoop. This is a great marketing strategy by Apple.

Alternative Ways To Add Actions Into OmniFocus

It is no secret I’m a big fan of The Omni Group’s OmniFocus for Mac and iOS, as over time it has become my “trusted system” (as people like to call great applications you can rely on nowadays) to organize actions (tasks), contexts and, in general, stuff I have to do and don’t want to forget about. If you’ve been reading MacStories in the past few months, you know we care about the latest OmniFocus updates and new features implemented by the developers, but more importantly we, like many others, have fallen in love with the iPad version of OmniFocus, which contrary to expectations has turned out to be a great portable counterpart that retains most of the functionalities of the desktop OF without sacrificing usability – actually adding new intuitive schemes, navigation options, and more. With an update to the iPhone app around the corner and a major 2.0 update for the Mac coming out sometime in the next months, there’s plenty of features to look forward to.

Over the past weeks, however, rather than reading tutorials on how to get the most out of OmniFocus or learning about other users’ setups (something that I usually love to do, by the way, as my Instapaper queue can prove), I decided to play around with tools and utilities provided by The Omni Group to customize the way you can get actions into OmniFocus without actually using OmniFocus. That’s an interesting concept: as OmniFocus can be integrated with OS X, accessed to from a web browser or even linked to by other apps, there are ways to quickly get items into it without following the usual pattern of opening the app + writing down a new action, or launching the desktop Quick Entry window manually. And as much as I love the iOS versions of OmniFocus, there’s always something that bothers me when I’m in a hurry but I need to get some actions saved quickly: as others have outlined before, I think I’d really enjoy a “mini OmniFocus” that’s exclusively aimed at entering tasks in seconds without loading the entire database. Or, there could be a way to send an action quickly to OmniFocus’ cloud server, without having to open OmniFocus at all. While this is not possible today – but I have a pretty good feeling The Omni Group is considering it for future updates – there are ways to quickly create tasks outside of the main OmniFocus environment and save them in seconds.

After the break, I take a look at some of the tools I’ve been using to add actions in my OmniFocus using an iPhone, iPad, or Mac. Read more

“iCloud Is The Operating System”

The conversation my friend Francesca and I were having in front of a good cup of coffee ended when she concluded that iCloud was the operating system.

At first, that silly statement didn’t make any sense to me. I laughed, and tried to explain her that it’s not the operating system – the one you have to download and install on your computer or device – rather, I told her iCloud was a new way to keep all her content stored somewhere else she could access at any time. But the more I went on to illustrate the advantages of pushing media from the Internet (“the cloud”) to devices without a USB cable, the more she kept asking why would that be any different from having the operating system on the Internet, “doing stuff for you automatically.” Read more

iOS 5: 8 Other Features We Love

Since Apple’s official presentation of iOS 5 at the WWDC keynote on Monday and the release of the first beta to developers, lots of things have been said about Apple’s new modus operandi based on watching the community, seeing what developers and jailbreakers are building to improve the OS and answer the needs of hardcore iOS users, and going back to the drawing board to take inspiration from what the ecosystem has created to offer a native solution, designed from Apple, in most cases better than the competition or third-party solutions. If you followed our keynote coverage and WWDC ‘11 roundup, you know what’s new in iOS 5 and what we’re referring to: the new notification system is heavily inspired by jailbreak tweaks like LockInfo and Mobile Notifier (which were inspired by Android’s notifications); the new Reminders app will likely eliminate the need of simple to-do list application from the App Store (but not complex GTD software like OmniFocus); the iMessage solution built by Apple sounds like RIM’s BlackBerry Messenger, it’s exclusive to iOS 5 users and keeps your messages in sync with iCloud.

With hundreds of new features, there’s a lot to discover in iOS 5, and more will come with future betas and the final release this Fall, we’re sure. The way I see it, Apple didn’t “kill” anything as several pundits are claiming: it’s called progress. Whilst the term “killing” implies a voluntary action of willing to do something against someone, with iOS 5 Apple doesn’t want to “kill” Remember the Milk, Dropbox, or Boxcar. Apple sees where the platform is going and skates to where to puck is going to be. I agree with our editor Cody when he says it’s not really about copying, as much as it’s about improving existing solutions to provide a better experience for everyone. Nothing’s really new nowadays, but there’s still room for innovation. It’s a subtle difference.

So with iOS 5, we have lots of innovations, new features, improvements, and all of the above. You’ve probably already read everything about the most important functionalities in our roundup, so here’s what we’re going to do next: rather than assembling a list of every single screenshot of what’s new in iOS 5 beta 1, we’ve collected the 10 best new things (some of which you may not have seen yet) we’ve found in iOS 5 beta. Read more

The MacStories Team: What We Want from WWDC 2011

WWDC 2011 starts in two days, and all of us have our own hopes to be crushed, wishes to be granted, and features to drool over once we finally see Lion, iOS 5, and iCloud in action. We’ve all got something we want most out of the upcoming announcements, whether it be iOS compatibility with AirDrop, or seamless iOS updates through iOS 5, and we’ve decided to publish our wants from Apple’s big three for your viewing pleasure. In return, we expect you guys to tell us in the comments what you want to see on Monday. In the meantime, we’ll get the ball rolling! Read more

Apple, Location Services & The “Improved Traffic Service”

In Apple’s official response to the location tracking issue uncovered by security researchers last week, an interesting tidbit seems to confirm that the company is seriously committed to delivering improved mapping and navigation software to iPhone users by focusing on building a new “traffic service” to roll out publicly in the next couple of years. From the Q&A:

What other location data is Apple collecting from the iPhone besides crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data?

Apple is now collecting anonymous traffic data to build a crowd-sourced traffic database with the goal of providing iPhone users an improved traffic service in the next couple of years.

The wording of the statement isn’t clear (some suggest “traffic” may be related to “internet traffic” according to specific locations), but let’s just play along and assume it’s linked to the turn-by-turn navigation software and new mapping features for iOS devices Apple has been rumored to be working on for a very long time. If “traffic” is related to navigation and mobile maps, there’s plenty room for speculation after today’s press release: in the past years, several job listings on Apple’s website hinted at open positions in the iOS team for map engineers and navigation experts, suggesting that Apple was working on its own proprietary solution to ditch Google Maps on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. The acquisitions of mapping companies Placebase and Poly9 in 2009 and 2010, respectively, gave some credence to the reports that pointed at Apple willing to become the next major player in the mobile mapping scene. Read more

Why A New iPhone In September Makes Sense

I’ve been thinking about this for a while now, but after seeing Apple’s terrific financial results for the second 2011 quarter it became clear to me: a new iPhone in September makes perfect sense, in spite of all the reports claiming it would be a bad choice for the company to “delay” the release of the next-generation to the Fall skipping the usual June / July timeframe. Of course Apple hasn’t confirmed any of this speculation, but if rumors and reports from well-sourced Apple journalists like Jim Dalrymple are of any indication, it really looks like we’re going to see a new iPhone in September, not this summer. And here’s why I think it’s a good plan. Read more

Switching From MobileMe to Google Sync

As you might have read if you follow me on Twitter, my MobileMe subscription expired last week. In the past year, I’ve relied on MobileMe’s services (but not the webapp) for syncing all my contacts, calendars, emails and bookmarks from the desktop to the cloud and back to iOS devices such as my iPhone 4 and iPad. But when the subscription was nearing its expiration date (Apple notifies you weeks before with a series of emails and a brief note on Me.com), I was left with a question: should I renew? Considering all the rumors about MobileMe being completely revamped and going free we’ve heard in the past months, I was skeptical about a renewal because I didn’t want to pay for a service that is likely going through some major changes and won’t no longer be supported (at least in its current iteration) a year from now. And even if I still have access to some sections of my old MobileMe account (mail, contacts and Find My iPhone), I decided that renewing wasn’t simply worth it and it was time for me to find an alternative – even a temporary one until MobileMe is updated to include new features and pricing schemes. That alternative is Google Sync, and here’s my experience so far. Read more