My appearances on MacBreak Weekly at twit.tv/mbw show number 471 and the Mac Roundtable at macroundtable.com. Don’t forget to email in questions for Dr. Maryanne Garry about brain stuff. I walk you through all of the steps and tools required to make a screencast for Don Mcallister. Allister Jenks of the zkarj.me where you’ll find The Sitting Duck Podcast walks us through what he calls a non-review of Omnifocus 2 form the Omni Group (Omnifocus 2 for iOS (universal) and
OmniFocus 2 for Mac. Donald Burr gives us a Tale of Two Speaker Docks, the Sony RDP-M7IPN Lightning iPhone/iPod Portable Speaker Dock and the JBL OnBeat Mini iPad & iPhone Dock & High Performance Speaker with Lightning Connector. In the ad spot for Clarify I tell you about a tutorial I wrote for my daughter’s mother-in-law on how to ennoble iCloud Photo Library for optimized images on iOS and full res versions on the Mac. In Chit Chat Across the Pond On this week’s Chit Chat Across the Pond I talk to Victor Cajiao of Terratech at terratech.tech and @victorcajiao on Twitter with a deep dive into just a few bits of the Apple announcement.
Hi this is Allison Sheridan of the NosillaCast Mac Podcast, hosted at Podfeet.com, a technology geek podcast with an EVER so slight Macintosh bias. Today is Sunday September 13, 2015 and this is show number 540.
This sure has been a fun week! I had the great fun of being on MacBreak Weekly right after the Apple announcement. Mike Elgan hosted in Leo’s absence. Mike has a subtle sarcasm that I find delightful. He’s also a terrific facilitator, heck I actually got to talk! Check it out at twit.tv/mbw show number 471. It’s a funny tag team between me and Adam Christianson of the MacCast – he was on for the first 18 minutes and then he went off to be on Daily Tech News Show, at which point they flipped over to me. So don’t be confused and think I sent you the wrong link when you see Adam first!
Then later in the day I hosted the Mac Roundtable and we had a complete blast. After a long hiatus while she was working on yet another degree, Katie Floyd of Mac Power Users was back on the show, Dave Hamilton of the Mac Geek Gab made a surprise appearance, and John F Braun of Mac Geek Gab and Bart were both on too. I was very proud of myself because I kept that unruly crowd in control and we were in and out in exactly 60 minutes. You can listen to that show at macroundtable.com. We’re getting much more consistent about producing the show so if you gave up on us, resubscribe!
Blog Posts
What Goes Into Making a Good Screencast? target=”_blank”
OmniFocus 2 Might Help You Get Things Done
A Tale of Two Speaker Docks by Donald Burr
The problem to be solved – I like docks. See my recent review of the CableJive dock adapter for the whole storyhttps://www.podfeet.com/blog/2015/08/535/
Executive summary: Direct, wired audio connection eliminates wireless audio glitches, plus it charges your phone while you’re using it. The two contenders: Sony RDP-M7IPN Lightning iPhone/iPod Portable Speaker Dock and JBL OnBeat Mini iPad & iPhone Dock & High Performance Speaker with Lightning Connector
Let’s evaluate them! Physical appearance: The Sony is the more attractive of the two by far, Pretty small and compact, It’s tall enough to easily support even the large iPhone 6 Plus, And it has a carry handle!, Seems like a small thing but it really does matter, The JBL on the other hand is kinda short and squat, It has a slot that is wide enough to accommodate a full size iPad, of course it will fit any smaller device too (iPad mini and all iPhones), But since it’s short, it doesn’t have a “back” for the device to lean against – only a little “lip” – this kinda worries me, Winner: Sony
Compatibility: Both docks work with all Lightning devices, But not if they are in a case – for that you’ll need the CableJive adapter (which works with both docks), Winner: Tie
Power/Charging: Both docks can operate off of either AC power or battery power (AC adapter is included), Really handy if you want to move around with it, JBL has a built-in LiIon battery that they claim will give you up to 8 hours of playback, The Sony uses traditional batteries (4 x AAA) – of course you can use rechargeables, but then you’ll need to charge them separately, Both docks charge your device while they’re plugged in to the dock, and the dock is plugged into AC power, The JBL will also power/charge your device even if not plugged into AC power (as long as its internal battery has power), However, the Sony dock doesn’t supply power to your device when it’s on battery power, The JBL has one more trick up its sleeve – it has a USB port which you can use to charge any other device that charges over USB (MiFi, other cell phone or tablet, etc.), Winner: JBL, It supplies power to your device, and it can charge other devices too , Maybe you would find the Sony’s use of standard batteries appealing, I don’t
Features: Both docks play audio from your device connected directly to the Lightning port, Both docks also have AUX inputs (so you can use them as speakers for other devices, e.g. MP3 players, laptops, etc.), However the Sony also has a remote control!, Can control all major functions, play/pause, next/previous track, volume, etc., Unfortunately there is no built-in place on the dock to store the remote, so it could get easily lost, Winner: Sony
Cost: Sony = $51, JBL = $59.95, Winner: Sony (by a nose)
Finally the most important category – sound quality: Winner: JBL, no contest, Sound is full and rich, with deep (but not overpowering) bass, The Sony on the other hand sounds flat and kinda tinny (not enough bass, a bit too much treble), The JBL can also get quite loud without distortion, the Sony starts sounding kinda crappy when you turn the volume up high, Sony would be OK if all you’re listening to are audiobooks and podcasts, but since I actually like to listen to music on occasion, it was not for me
So what about the JBL’s downsides? Lack of physical support for the device – just be careful with it, Lack of remote control – not really an issue now that I have an Apple Watch, Not looking as nice as the Sony – just deal with it! For me it was a no brainer – even with its minor annoyances, the JBL’s really superb audio trumps the Sony’s good looks and features. But maybe you have a different opinion – it’s nice that there are many choices out there. Check them out at the links in the show notes.
Also check out Otaku no Podcast if you’re at all curious about Japanese animation (anime), comics (manga), food, travel, culture, etc. Help support us on Patreon!
Clarify
While I was camping this weekend with Lindsay’s new family, her mother-in-law asked me to help her with her photos on her iPhone. She said it was driving her nuts that she’d try to delete a photo, it would reappear, sometimes she’d lose the 1001’th photo from Photo Stream, the big mess you all remember from before iCloud Photo Library. I told her about how all these problems would go away if she turned on iCloud Photo Library but since we were sitting around a campfire, it wasn’t exactly the right place to whip out my MacBook and show her how to set it up for originals on her Mac and optimized images on her iOS devices. Not that I didn’t have my MacBook stashed away in my tent…
On the drive home I started to write her an email walking her through what to do. I went to take a screenshot, then realized I’d probably want to do an annotation on it, and the annotations built into Mail now aren’t awful, they’re way too hard if you have to do more than one. I opened up Clarify and took a bunch of screenshots of the Mac System Preferences, then I sent myself some from the iPhone (Air Drop failed of course, I had to mail them to myself).
I drew arrows pointing to important buttons to press, boxes around things to tap, blurred out my Apple ID, and then wrote some good descriptions of why I was telling her to do certain things. None of this took very long so I decided to get fancy and indented sections, made the steps numbered, and when I was done it was a beautiful document. I realized that I couldn’t keep it just for her, I published it as a tutorial over on podfeet.com. This way if you haven’t done it yourself, or you want to show someone else how to do it, just send them the link and everyone can be happy!
If you like to help people like I do and you don’t have Clarify, head on over to clarify-it.com and check out the free trial for Mac or Windows or both! Be sure to tell them Allison sent you.
Chit Chat Across the Pond
On this week’s Chit Chat Across the Pond I talk to Victor Cajiao of Terratech at terratech.tech and @victorcajiao on Twitter. We do a deep dive into just a few specific things from the Apple announcement. We start by talking about the new 12MP camera in the iPhone 6s family and try to understand what they meant when they talked about “deep trench isolation” and how it will allow so many pixels on a small sensor provide better color with less noise. We walk through our assumptions on what Live Photos will be – are the a photo? are they a video? What format will they be? We talk about 3D Touch on the phone vs. Force Touch on the Apple Watch and new track pads. We switched gears to talk about the AppleTV, what we think of the interface and the remote, and how sad I am at least that there’s no HomeKit announced yet. Finally we try to justify why we NEED the iPad Pro. It’s a very fun discussion with a very fun and brilliant friend.
That’s going to wind this up for this week, many thanks to our sponsor for helping to pay the bills, the makers of Clarify over at clarify-it.com. Don’t forget to send in your Dumb Questions, comments and suggestions by emailing me at [email protected], follow me on twitter @podfeet. Check out the NosillaCast Google Plus Community too – lots of fun over there! If you want to join in the fun of the live show, head on over to podfeet.com/live on Sunday nights at 5pm Pacific Time and join the friendly and enthusiastic NosillaCastaways. Thanks for listening, and stay subscribed.