Review: The New Day One

Day One

Day One

Twenty years from now, what will you remember?

Last week, a friend of mine found an old MP3 player in her drawer. Upon recovering the contents of the device[1], she synced its music back to her iPod nano, and then she gave it to me. It was full of songs we used to listen to years ago. If songs can be associated with certain moments or periods of your life, than that MP3 player was like a photo album in sound form. Memories. Old emotions and melodies coming back to life, not a distant echo anymore. It felt like grabbing the headphones of 16 year-old me, today, with the knowledge that those moments won’t be coming back, but the experience of someone who cherished them will.

But what do I remember?

In twenty years, I’m not sure I’ll be able to remember the songs I like today, or the faces of people that I care about now. I don’t even know if I’ll be around in twenty years. But I do know that I want to do everything I can to make sure I can get there with my own memories. We are what we know. And I want to remember.

Where the human mind can’t get, I think software can help. In the connected and post-PC era we’re living in, I believe the devices and apps we use play an important role in enabling us to create memories. But just as relevant as “content creation” has become to this discussion, we have to ensure the memories we create today will be preserved digitally for the future.

For the past few months, I have been using a new version of Day One to build an archive of my life. Released today, the new Day One goes beyond the previous version’s support for text entries and adds photos, location, and weather information in an app that, for me, has become more than a simple journaling utility.

Developed by Bloom, Day One went through a remarkable evolution to get to the major updates published today. Last year, I took a look at the app and noted how it was helping me build an “archive of my thoughts” thanks to its simple and elegant interface:

There’s one thing I never really considered storing in a digital archiving app — memories. I’m talking about things like “what did I enjoy doing today” or “I decided to take a walk with my girlfriend” — specific moments that matter in life, that are important, but which our brains often blur and forget after some time to make room for new data to process and maintain.

And then again:

I try to enjoy every moment, but there’s so much the human brain can remember and it’s perfectly normal if something will get lost in the process of assimilating thoughts and processing them to turn them into memories and experiences.

If 2011 Day One was the TextEdit of memories, the new Day One is their Evernote. With support for photo attachments, location data, and improvements to sync and Mountain Lion, today’s Day One wants to overcome the limitations of text to become the window into your past life.

Day One is visual memories. Read more

Apple: About Power Nap→

Apple: About Power Nap

Last week, Apple published a support document that provides more details on Power Nap, the technology Apple introduced with OS X Mountain Lion to manage certain updates even when a Mac is asleep.

Firstly, Apple notes that, aside from the features explained on the OS X webpage and the System Preferences app, Power Nap also supports Spotlight Indexing and Help Center updates when a Mac is plugged into an AC outlet. The “other iCloud updates” mentioned in Power Nap’s settings include Find My Mac, so you’ll be able to track a Mac’s location even with its lid closed; VPN connections (with certificates) for corporate email and configuration profile updates are supported as well.

Power Nap can be rather confusing for new users, as all of its capabilities aren’t fully explained in System Preferences and the Help Center. Apple’s document also details the frequency of Power Nap updates, so make sure to check it out here. [via @applespotlight]

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July 2012 In Review

July was an interesting month for MacStories as we covered the launch of the latest version of OS X, Mountain Lion, and launched our first eBook. Containing all our Mountain Lion coverage from the site in addition to exclusive articles, the book was a challenging but immensely rewarding project. With the exception of some advice from a few trusted people, we handled the book’s creation entirely by ourselves and are very proud of the end result. If you haven’t grabbed a copy yet, it’s not too late to change that — and remember that 30% of all proceeds will go directly to the very worthy cause that is the American Cancer Society.

Besides Mountain Lion, the other notable pieces of news were Google’s acquisition of Sparrow, and the all-but-confirmed rumour that the next iPhone and iPad mini will be announced on September 12th. Apps-wise, July was a quiet month as developers readied theirs for Mountain Lion, but we did see the release of the Tweetbot for Mac alpha along with Rovio’s new franchise, Amazing Alex. For stories, we had two great interviews, an excellent piece on discovering and making music on the iPad, talked about the apps and tools we use to write more efficiently, and created some hands-on examples of what the rumoured 7.85” iPad would look and feel like.

Jump the break for the full month in review, and feel free to read previous ‘Month in Review’ editions from 2012.

Read more

Safari 6.0 and Google Search URLs→

Safari 6.0 and Google Search URLs

Brent Simmons writes about the lack of URLs for Google searches in Safari 6.0:

I asked on Twitter. One way is to drag the magnifying glass into whatever text I’m editing. Another way would be a bookmarklet that gets the current page location. A third way would be an AppleScript script.

I ended up writing a Python script.

From my Mountain Lion review:

That said, there is one aspect to the new smart search field I don’t care for: it no longer displays Google Search URLs after you’ve used it to search for something. So if you want to share a direct link to a Google Search, you’ll need to copy it from the share sheet in either Messages or Mail.

In fiddling with Keyboard Maestro, I built a super-quick macro that grabs the URL of the frontmost Safari window through AppleScript. You can download the macro here, or check out the AppleScript itself if you want to create a system Service with Automator.

As pointed out by user @jaydisc on Twitter, some Apple apps on Mountain Lion can receive the copied search terms as clickable URLs in rich text format. In my tests, only Mail was able to receive search terms in RTF and, apparently, this is a known bug.

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Gmail 1.3: Faster, but Still a Web App

Gmail has a small update out this afternoon, promising all around smoother animations and scrolling, the ability to save picture attachments to your photo library, and bug fixes that squash some annoying issues.

Gmail 1.3 on iOS is certainly a bit speedier: scrolling through the Inbox and revealing the panel feels as smooth as a native app, although Gmail’s sliding animation to a message can still display lag here or there. However, the speed improvement doesn’t change that Gmail is a web app, with the Gmail splash logo being displayed at startup, network complaints when strained for bandwidth, and some “this doesn’t feel right” moments when composing email.

A new feature added is the ability to save pictures to your photo library, but it’s clunky, awkward, and not obvious. To save an image attachment, you have to open the image attachment in Gmail’s browser, then tap and hold on the picture to bring up the dialogue to save your picture to your photo library. Oddly, you can print from the message view, but you can’t save a photo (you have to open it first). I think the Gmail for iOS team would be better off replacing the Safari icon in their browser with a sharing icon, letting users Open in Safari, Save to Library, Open in App, or Print from a more familiar and traditional list of actions.

Composing email still feels awkward, with the compose window being relatively finicky and jumpy, but bug fixes have at least solved one annoying selection issue. Before, I couldn’t drag the cursor before the first letter of the first sentence in Gmail for iOS, but this is remedied in today’s update.

Gmail is passable as an app (it’s certainly not Sparrow) and it’s slowly getting better, but its flaws as an email client in a web view still show in the most important places, such as when working with attachments and composing a message. If you’re inclined on being in Google’s ecosystem, Gmail is free on the App Store.

Mac App Store: “Not Too Soon To Be Concerned”→

Mac App Store: “Not Too Soon To Be Concerned”

Following Marco Arment’s recent thoughts on the Mac App Store and the consequent debates on the future of Apple’s storefront, Macworld’s Lex Friedman talked to some third-party developers to have a better understanding of the issue.

On one hand, Arment says:

The iOS App Store’s restrictions work (“for the most part”), Arment says, “because the platform has grown around them. They mostly don’t get in the way. But on the Mac, the App Store policies are being retrofitted into a well-established environment that they’re fairly incompatible with.

I agree. As I’ve written before, the problem is that Apple let certain apps into the Mac App Store, and is now forcing developers to rethink their strategies. This has effects on those developers’ business, and the customers.

On the other hand, though, it’s important to keep in mind the advantages of the Mac App Store. James Thomson from TLA Systems says:

We’ve had PCalc in the Mac App Store since it opened, and we’ve seen noticeably higher sales from the App Store than through other channels. So, from a visibility and ease of purchase point of view, it would seem that [the Mac App Store is] a success.

Visibility and higher sales are often mentioned by developers as the reasons behind the need to stay on the App Store. But customers, too, like some aspects of the Mac App Store and, it turns out, Sandboxing. As written by Joe Macirowski:

When you think about it, the apps that don’t get along with sandboxing are doing things I now realize I don’t want my apps doing.

Ultimately, it comes down to trusting the developers you install apps from. Maybe Joe doesn’t like the fact that, theoretically, TextExpander could log every keystroke; personally, I trust the guys at Smile to be providers of a great tool for productivity, and not criminals.

As Neven Mrgan wrote, “it’s good for us Mac users that we don’t have to limit ourselves to apps from the Mac App Store”. However, it’s not good for developers that the Mac App Store can’t be trusted for the long term, and that’s not good for Apple either.

Clark is proposing an interesting solution for the future: subscriptions.

It’s becoming clear that the Mac App Store (MAS) is targeting casual software the way the iOS store (IAS) does. This means that, much like traditional pop music through the end of the 20th century, you’ll have a few hits that make most of the money. The problem is how to make money outside of that pop software market.

For my thoughts on Apple, the Mac App Store, and third-party software, read the “Mountain Lion and the Power User” section in my Mountain Lion Review.

It’s too early to tell how the issues mentioned above (sandboxing restrictions, Gatekeeper’s existence, Mac App Store vs. third-party sources) will play out in the long term. We shouldn’t ignore them either: some developers are currently struggling to keep their apps on the Mac App Store, and others are figuring out their own solutions to implement features that Apple demands remain exclusive to it. While the power user will always know how to work around Apple’s default settings, ignoring the complaints and doubts from the developer community would still be shortsighted. Instead, we should consider these issues, reflect on the questions developers pose, and hope that Apple is listening.

As usual, I prefer to wait and see what happens.

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