NC_2023_07_19
[0:01] Hi, this is Alison Sheridan of the Nocellic-Ass Podcast, hosted at podfeet.com, a technology geek podcast with an ever-so-slight Apple bias. Today is Wednesday, July 19th, 2023, and this is show number 950. Only 50 more to go to 1,000.
The alert amongst you will have figured out that if the show got to on Wednesday, there will be no live show this weekend, July 23rd. And you'll remember that Steve and I will will be at Mac Stock over the weekend.
Some of you may not open your presents before Christmas and you're hearing this on California's Monday, so I applaud your self-control.
Now, the reason we have a show today is because of all of the no-sillicaster ways that have come out of the woodwork to make it happen.
As I mentioned, I have a lot of travel coming up in the next month and a half, and if we're gonna keep the streak alive, I need even more help.
This week's show is brought to you by Alistair Jenks, Bruce from Tennessee, Mr. Ed, Bart, and even a little bit from me.
Let's let Alistair start us off for today.
The iOS Contacts Widget
[1:00] Home screen widgets on iOS are a trade-off between instant access to many applications and instant access to useful information.
Even the small widget size displaces four potential spots for app icons.
[1:14] Because of this trade-off, I've had an on-again, off-again relationship with widgets.
I'll try out new ones offered by third-party apps, and occasionally revisit Apple's built-in ones, but often their utility does not make the grade and I remove them in favor of more app icons.
I like to keep my number of home screens minimal, so space is valuable.
[1:35] There is one widget which has kept its place the longest for me, and it's one I only discovered while messing around with the built-in ones.
If you haven't seen it, you'll probably wonder why I like it so much when I tell you what it is.
It's the contacts widget.
Sure, you might like quick access to some of your contacts, but there's so much more to what this widget does.
In the form you see it on your home screen, you get one, four or six contact avatars, depending on which size you choose.
Below each is their name and the name of their current location, if they share their location with you.
You may also see a small badge on a contact to indicate they are driving, or exercising, or possibly other things, I'm not sure what others may exist.
I have my wife, two sons and my mother on a medium-sized widget and all of them show me their location, which is sometimes meaningful. Why sometimes? Well, the whole find my treatment of location names is a little odd.
[2:33] You may know that in the Find My app, you can add your own label to certain locations.
So when my wife is at home, her location simply says Home. Same for my mum when she's at her home, and my son who is currently living with us again. When both of my sons had their own places, I named them Shayloid and Casa Jasper, just for a little variety.
[2:54] If Find My updates their locations, these labels show fairly reliably. It's what it shows when someone is on the move that is weird. More often than not I see simply Te Eka a Maui, North Island.
[3:07] This isn't any more helpful than if Alison or Steve showed as California or Bart showed as Republic of Ireland. It is a hilariously broad location. So wait, didn't I tell you this widget was really valuable? So far it sounds a bit hokey doesn't it? It redeems itself when you tap on one of your four contacts. Then you see a screen that you cannot get to any other way. It's not the contacts app. What you get is a vertically scrolling smorgasbord of useful information and possible interactions with the contact. At the top is their avatar and name. Below that are four buttons for message, call, FaceTime and mail. Tap any of those and it initiates the respective form of communication with your contact. Below these buttons is a small Find My map, which starts updating as soon as the screen opens so you're not stuck with a ridiculous generic location. The map remains live while you're on this screen. If you tap it, the full Find My app is launched with the contact selected. Below the map is a selection of recent message conversations the contact is part of, showing their last message in each. These are in a horizontally scrolling list and tapping any of them takes you to that conversation.
[4:27] There is also an associated search in app button which initiates a search in messages for their name. This will give you the same conversations, plus links, photos and more.
[4:39] Next is a list of calendar items. I'm not big on calendaring with family, or rather, they're not big on calendaring with me. As such, all I see here is their birthday from the birthday's calendar, but I would guess any shared calendar appointments would also appear.
Below that is a section for photos the contact appears in, based on Apple Photos' face recognition feature, or where their name is found in text within the image.
The penultimate section shows their basic contact information including phone number, email, address and birthday.
There's also a link to go to their entry in the contacts app.
[5:16] Finally, there's an odd one, a safari search for their name.
This is just a button to push which launches the search.
Given most of the sections above seem geared to family or close friends, this one seems a little odd to me.
I cannot think of a situation when I would use it.
Use it. If you don't tap on one of the many controls offered on this screen you can simply swipe or press the home button back to your home screen, which makes this a really useful lightweight pseudo app that is more useful than any single app it represents. I've found so much value in this widget it has lived at the top of my primary home screen for a long time now and I don't see myself removing it any time soon. When setting up a new phone for my mum recently, I added it to her home screen too.
Thanks Alistair, that's a really interesting use of iOS widgets.
You know, like you, I've been kind of reluctant to give up the screen real estate, except for one single widget.
The widget I put on my home screen is the Stacks widget, and then I can keep a couple of widgets in there, but it only takes up that one square.
I put the Tesla widget in the Stacks since I use it to do things with my car, see our solar panels and battery status, and it turns out it's a great way to find out where Steve is when he's away from home. You see, it updates much more quickly than the Find My Network.
I also have a weather widget in there, but let's be honest, the weather here isn't all that interesting. I've now added Steve's contact to the stack, too, so I can do even more to to see what he's up to.
DTTO 12.9" iPad Pro Case and iClever BK08 Bluetooth keyboard — by Bruce from Tennessee
[6:43] Hi, this is Bruce from Tennessee with a combination review of the Ditto 12.9-inch iPad Pro case and the iClever BK08 Bluetooth keyboard.
[6:55] Since this is an oscillocast, let's start with the problem to be solved.
To be fair, I don't really have a problem other than I like gadgets.
But one of the gadgets I use in a variety of different ways is my 12.9 inch iPad Pro.
I use it as an e-reader with several different apps.
I use it for singing from sheet music with the Fourscore app, as I described back in January on Ocillocast episode 924.
I use the Apple Pencil a lot, both with Fourscore for marking up sheet music and with Notability for taking notes.
I use the iPad to watch videos while I'm working out on treadmills and ellipticals.
And particularly when I'm traveling, I use the iPad for writing, including emails and writing reports.
[7:47] So there are times when I really want a keyboard. There are times when I absolutely do not want a keyboard.
I want the iPad protected, preferably with something over the screen when it's in my bag and I'm going through airports.
I want something that will lay flat on treadmill and elliptical consoles.
When I'm standing and singing, I really want a solid weight to hold the iPad in one hand while I'm singing, as that helps a lot with good singing posture.
There are times when I use the Apple Pencil and I want it securely with the iPad and fully charged.
Then I want things that are reasonably lightweight and compact.
[8:29] The answer I've settled on is the combination of the Ditto iPad Pro 12.9-inch case and the iClever BK08 Bluetooth keyboard with touchpad. The case was about $40 when I bought it a year ago, but I'm seeing it for $20 in some places now, and the keyboard is $57 on a few different sites.
I got the case in a neutral brown, but it's available in a variety of colors. Links are are in the blog post and show notes, though the iClever site was giving me an SSL error at the time this article was written.
So I've also provided links to the Ditto case on Amazon and the iClever keyboard on Amazon and Newegg.
[9:12] The Ditto case by itself meets a lot of my needs. There's a spot for the Apple Pencil that holds it very securely in place and keeps it charged, but it's easier for me to get the pencil out when I want to use it as there's a push through from behind.
The hand strap works very well for holding the iPad when I'm singing, and it's comfortable for sitting and reading.
The case looks nice, has all of the necessary cutouts, and it has the magnets to put the iPad to sleep when the cover closed.
And there's an elastic strap to hold the cover closed if I want.
So what to do about a keyboard?
I could travel with the Apple Magic Keyboard for the iPad and just move the iPad back and forth when I need a keyboard, and I did that for a while.
It's not too hard to get the iPad out of the ditto case, though I do wind up with a screenshot I need to delete, every single time I take the iPad out of the case or put it back into the case.
Now, the Magic Keyboard is a really nice keyboard. I can touch type on it with absolutely no issues.
[10:20] But the Magic Keyboard case is heavy. It adds a pound and a half to my gear.
And if I take the iPad out of the ditto case, and the Apple Pencil isn't held in place, then it seems to want to just wander off all on its own.
So for me at least, the pencil gets lost when it's just held on with magnets.
So sticking it to the iPad with the Magic Keyboard just doesn't work for me.
So about six months ago, I discovered the iClever BK08 Folding Keyboard with trackpad.
It's very compact, folding up into a package it's about 6.5 inches by four inches by three quarters of an inch and weighing just seven ounces, more than a pound lighter than that Apple Magic Keyboard.
As shown in the photo above, the ditto case has some indents that keep the iPad at some nice angles when in landscape mode.
And the keyboard fits very nicely on that case lip, particularly on the detent that keeps the iPad closest to upright, as shown in the photo in the blog post.
The case is stable enough that I can set everything on my lap and type, and it does work better on a flat surface.
And even with that great big 12.9 inch iPad, the package is small enough that I can and have used it in coach seating on an airplane with the passenger in front of me having fully reclined their seat.
[11:48] It wasn't great, but it did work. The iClever keyboard is Bluetooth and can pair with three different devices.
The buttons to switch devices are above the trackpad in the photo above.
And I only ever use it with the iPad, so I can't speak to using it with other devices.
It did come with a stand that would make using it with a phone or an iPad mini more reasonable, but an external keyboard with my phone is just not a thing for me.
So my daughter found some uses for that stand and all is great.
[12:22] I've used the keyboard for a couple of full days at a conference and still had plenty of charge.
The charger is USB-C, so Podfeet won't need any additional vocals.
I don't use the trackpad a lot, but it's worked just fine for me.
[12:37] The only downside is the keyboard is small. If I line the Q key up on the iClever with the Q key on my Magic keyboard, the P on the iClever is lining up just a bit inside the O key on the Magic keyboard.
So it's a little bit more than a key narrower.
That makes it a bit tough for me to touch type.
I can do it, but I'm making a lot more mistakes, particularly in the first 30 minutes or so.
I can get used to it and get up to maybe three quarters of my normal touch typing speed after that 30 minutes.
[13:13] But that's still way better than what I can do with the on-screen keyboard.
In doing some research for this review, I found the iClever BK03 keyboard, which doesn't have the trackpad. Looking at the write-ups on a couple of sites, it looked like the keyboard was maybe larger. Since I don't really use the trackpad, sacrificing that wouldn't be a big deal.
So in the interests of science and a more useful review, I ordered the BK03 keyboard.
The last one, I actually got my hands on the BK03 and compared it with the BK08.
The keys are the same size on the two. There's just more of the non-alpha keys to the right-hand side of the BK03 keyboard. So some of the special keys would be easier to get to, but it's not really going to help my typing speed. So.
[14:07] I've returned the BK03. I'm sure the BK03 would have done just as well for me as as the BK08 and been about $15 cheaper.
But I bought the BK08 six months ago and it sat outside the return window, so back to BK03 went.
[14:24] So to wrap things up, the combination of this Ditto iPad case and the iClever keyboard gives me a way to use my iPad with a keyboard when I want one, and in multiple different ways without a keyboard.
It keeps my Apple Pencil very close at hand either way. I'm extremely happy with the Ditto case, and I'm satisfied with the iClever keyboard, recognizing that I could have a different set of compromises if I was willing to carry that extra pound for the Apple Magic Keyboard.
I hope you found this interesting. Peace, and may you find beauty in the world around you.
Oh, and for those who are interested, the iPad lock screen is a photo I took of Canterbury Cathedral when I got to go there in 2015.
[15:11] So, as always, there's a link in the show notes to Bruce's blog post, and that's where you can see that beautiful picture.
Now, this is an interesting solution, Bruce, because I do carry the Magic Keyboard with my 12.9-inch iPad Pro, and it's super heavy.
To give you a little bit of perspective, the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, including the Magic Keyboard, weighs 3 pounds 1 ounce combined. The 13-inch MacBook Air only weighs 2 pounds 11 ounces.
That means the iPad Pro with the Magic Keyboard weighs 14% more than the real laptop.
Now that said, I always use the keyboard on the iPad Pro, and it is a delightful keyboard.
It holds up my iPad as a stand for viewing as well. I only occasionally find myself using the iPad out of the case, but when I do it's super easy to pull off. It's kind of cool though that there's these different solutions for people use them in different ways. I wish the iClever keyboard you talked about did have better spacing on the keys. I've tried typing on keyboards where the keys are too close together and it's just so aggravating I can't stand it. So if it did have bigger keys it would make a great companion keyboard like for an iPad mini. They could have easily eliminated the trackpad and made the keys full size and still had it fold up and small like like you showed that the one that they have already does.
So that's a little disappointing. I wonder if anybody can find a keyboard like that, that folds up nice and compact, stick it in a bag, but actually has full-size keys.
Thanks again, Bruce. This was really cool.
Merlin Bird ID by Cornell Lab - by Mr. Ed
[16:38] Hi, this is Mr. Ed with a review of the Merlin Bird ID app from Cornell University's Lab of Ornithology.
First, I want to set the stage for how I came across this app.
I just recently took a vacation in Washington, D.C. and Virginia, where we spent half the vacation in the city and half the vacation in the mountains of the Shenandoah National Forest.
While in the forest, I was sitting out on the back porch of the lodge just soaking in all the quiet until I was disturbed by a whole bunch of noise from birds chirping.
Being naturally curious, I wanted to know who was causing all the ruckus.
So I decided to download the Merlin Bird ID app.
I want to say for the record, I am not an ornithologist, nor have I anything more than a passing interest in flying animals.
However, I did want to know who was disturbing my peace and quiet.
So I guess the problem to be solved is how do you identify birds by their sound.
[17:39] When you first open the app, you have to go through all the standard process of giving it access to your microphone and so forth so it can listen to the bird sound.
It also asks if you want to sign up for membership in the Cornell Labs, which allows you to get access to more detailed information about the birds and to submit the birds you discover.
You don't have to sign up to use the app though.
On the start page, it has four buttons, Sound ID, Step-by-Step ID, Photo ID, and My Sound Recordings.
I mainly use the Sound ID, but I want to explain the other ones first.
The Step-by-Step ID takes you through a set of five questions about the bird you saw to help you identify it.
Question, where did you see the bird? Here you enter your zip code, city, or click a button for your current location. The second question is, when did you see the bird? The current date is automatically selected for you, but you can change that.
Question three is, what size was the bird? It offers a four bird scale representing a sparrow, a robin, a dove, and a goose. It uses radio buttons below each with ones in between the birds to let you accurately describe the size.
[19:02] Question four is, what are the main colors? Here you can select multiple colors from a color swath to describe what colors the bird has. The last question asks, what was the bird doing when you saw it? The options are, eating from a feeder, swimming or wading, on the ground, in trees or bushes, on a fence or wire, or soaring or flying.
After you select one and click on next, you are given a list of birds with their details that meet that criteria.
The photo ID is more straightforward. If you took a picture of the bird, you upload it from your photos and it uses a specialized bird image database, and deep learning to help you identify the bird.
Again, it presents you with a list of possible candidates.
[19:57] In my mind, the sound ID is the most fun. On this one, you record the bird sounds around you, you know, the ones that were disturbing your peaceful serenity.
The app displays on a spectrograph showing the frequency spectrum over time.
As the app detects the specific frequency signature that it recognizes, it puts the demon's identity on a list. Chipping Sparrow.
Barn Swallow.
American Robin. And Great Crested Flycatcher. These were some of the varmints I had to endure.
As you identify the birds, you can submit them to the eBird database to help train the system.
System. The app is free and there is an option to download bird databases for your area or for the whole continent so that you can identify these suckers even when you don't have any internet access. All in all, I think it is a very interesting app even though it did nothing to restore my peace and quiet. Hope you give it a try. Well, Ed, while your use case of Merlin Bird ID to identify the demons may offend the true birders amongst the nocilla castaways, you certainly did a great job of explaining how the app works and how nifty it is. I'm definitely going to try Try it out, and I love this review.
Support the Show
[21:13] Have you noticed that you never hear any ads in the NoSilicast, Chitchat Across the Pond, or Programming by Stealth? Well, it's not that it doesn't cost money to bring you all of this yummy goodness, it's because I've chosen to go with a purely donation-based business model.
This means if you pledge even a dollar a week through podfee.com slash patreon to show the value you receive from all of these shows, you're doing a lot to support the work we do here.
I hope you enjoy an ad-free experience and will consider joining the other fine folks who helped make this possible.
Bear 2.0 is Even More Beautiful and Packed with New Features
[21:43] Just a little bit over six months ago, I told you why I replaced the note-taking organization app Ulysses with Bear from bear.app.
Now don't worry, I'm not abandoning it for something newer and shinier.
I'm here to sing the praises of Bear 2.0, which was just released.
As you may recall, I chose Bear out of a host of other options because it has a simple yet very elegant design.
It syncs across by Mac, iPhone, and iPad, and most importantly, it supports text expander on all of those devices.
The price of $15 per year made it less than half of all the other contenders.
I'm not quite sure when it changed, but the price is now $30 per year for the Pro version, but they do still have a free version with some limitations.
While $30 is double what I was paying, the price is still under the competitors I tested.
Ulysses at $40, Craft at $60, and Obsidian at $120 per year.
[22:36] Now, Behr was already clean and elegant, but somehow they've managed to make Behr 2.0 even cleaner and more elegant.
I'm not sure how to quantify it, but everything is prettier.
The new version isn't just a new paint job, though. We've added and improved a lot of features.
I don't normally read release notes, but when I heard that Bear 2.0 was released, I wanted to learn about every new feature. I won't go through every feature in detail for you here, but I do want to talk about the improvements that really blew my dress up.
[23:05] Bear is a great app for writing in Markdown, the simplified, plain text way to write for the web.
Now, if you're not a Markdown user, Bear is still a great way to write in plain text, but I'll be focusing a bit more here on using Markdown with Bear.
[23:19] There. Markdown is great because instead of giant, gloppy HTML syntax like A-H-Ref and weird brackets and such for URLs, you just put the text you want people to see in square brackets followed by the URL in roundy brackets. It's much more readable and less distracting for you when you're typing, and if anyone else needs to read it later, it's cleaner for them, too. That was just one example. Things like bold and italics and underline, all those things are just so much cleaner and prettier in Markdown.
Tables are incredibly annoying to create and read in HTML.
While they're much simpler in Markdown, they're still kind of difficult to type.
It's a lot of pipes and dashes and colons to designate a title and cells and justification of text inside the tables, and to make it look pretty and make it all lined up, you do a lot of faffing about to make it look good.
I usually Google for a Markdown table generator website whenever I need to make one.
With Bear 2.0, they added a button to create tables. It creates a two column, two row table with the first row being a heading.
If you hover over any of the cells, it gives you a slew of options to add more rows, add more columns, and to change the text justification for that column.
Bear also formats it into a pretty table while you're working, but when you export the table, it's full markdown syntax so you can use it on the web.
[24:35] Now you have to have lived through typing in tables by hand to appreciate this enhancement, but you can expect to see more tables my blog posts from now on.
[24:44] While Markdown is much more pleasant to look at than HTML when you're writing, even Markdown is a little bit distracting. For example, the level of your heading is designated with the same number of hashes. So, for example, a heading level 1 would be one hash, heading level 2 is two hashes. In Bear 1, if you put one hash before the title, it would change to show h1 to the left of the heading. Now, that's not super ugly and intrusive, but Bear 2.0 gives you the option of hiding your markdown, so you just see a big bold title for a heading level 1 and a slightly smaller version when you get to heading level 2. Now the nifty way they did this is that if you click in the heading, the markdown reappears so you can easily change it if you want to. With markdown hiding, linked text to URLs just shows the text in red with a little pencil icon next to it instead of the full markdown I just finished describing with with the square brackets and roundy brackets.
It's just beautiful. It's simple and elegant, but you have full control over the markdown.
Now, the new fad in URLs these days is to have link previews.
That's a rich media thumbnail of the linked website.
Apple Mail added it recently, and I think it works really well to give people context for URLs and emails.
Bear 2.0 adds the link preview option as well. Now, for my needs in writing blog posts, I don't really need the feature, but it's a setting so everyone can see their links the way they want to see them.
[26:06] Now, for some reason, Bear used to only have six fonts to choose from.
To be fair, it's a plain text editor, so why do you need all those fancy fonts?
Well, it's because we like fonts, okay? That's the only justification we need.
The good news is that Bear 2 now allows you to choose from all of the system fonts.
The other nice thing about Bear 2 is it gives you different fonts for text, headings, and for embedded code snippets.
That last one might not be interesting for normal people, But a lot of no-sillicast ways write code and it's super nice to see it in a font that makes you happy when you're writing.
For the same reason people like fonts, people like themes. Bear2 adds six new themes to their library bringing it to a total of 28, if my cyphering is correct.
I only embed images in my Bear documents as placeholders because I like to do fancy pants things with my images for my blog posts. I use a big ol' pile of HTML and styles that Helma helped me create to make them look nice. I define the exact size in pixels, I make them part of what's called a figure, which gives me a nice little border around them and a title that's in italics. You can definitely thank Helma for all of that.
[27:13] But if you like to put in images in what you write in Bear, you'll be happy to know that you can now crop and resize images in the app after you've placed them. If you click on an image you placed, you'll see a little triangle with dots on it in the corner. If you drag the image, it resizes.
Now, I said that you can crop images too, but for the life of me and all my testing with holding down option, shift, command, control, and trying to drag the corners and edges, I haven't figured out how to do how to actually crop an image, but it says in the release notes that you can.
I'm sure it works, but even referring to the support pages, I wasn't able to figure out how to do it. Let's see what else. Bear 2 added the ability to actually search in images. I know.
[27:53] That's becoming commonplace, but it tickled me when I tested it in Bear. In Bear 1, if you hovered over the bottom right of the window, a quill pen icon would magically appear. Selecting the quill would reveal a list of formatting things you could do and their corresponding keyboard shortcuts.
From changing heading levels, to bold italics underlined, to different kinds of lists and code blocks, it would all show in this pop-up menu. But when you let go of the pop-up menu, it was gone, and so was the quill. Bear2 makes it ever so much easier to discover and use those formatting options.
If you move your cursor anywhere on screen, at the top of every window you'll see a button that says BIU for bold, italics, and underline. If you select the BIU button, a formatting bar appears at the bottom of the screen, and it stays there. This is the same information we saw in the pop-up for Bear 2, but I really like having it visible, especially because it has a button to embed a table right there. As I was playing with these features, it occurred to me to test Bear in and voiceover on the Mac.
I'm afraid it's a hot mess. I couldn't find a single button that was labeled, so they all say button.
Navigating to the list view of notes, it didn't even read them.
I switched to the iPad hoping it would work better, but I was soon disappointed.
Unlabeled buttons weren't the worst of it. It actually read things out incorrectly.
For example, when I selected an article, instead of reading it, it read me the name of the embedded images and PDFs.
[29:19] In my recent article called how I test apps for accessibility with VoiceOver, I explain that when I find an app that isn't, accessible, I send feedback to the developer in hopes of prodding them to do better. I, wrote to the folks at Shiny Frog, the makers of Bear, telling them that I'm in love with 2.0, but that I want all of my friends to be able to enjoy it.
Konstantin wrote back 17 minutes later with this response. He said, Thank you so much for your support and love. You are totally right. While the first release of Bear was fully functional with voiceover, version 2.0 lacks this support. Unfortunately, we couldn't test Bear for voiceover before 2.0 simply because of lack of time. Full voiceover support is indeed planned and will be integrated as soon as the launch bugs are all squashed.
I will personally take care of this. We always strive to have the most accessible app possible and I must confess that I feel ashamed of the current lack of voiceover.
[30:15] I told you in my article that I almost always get a good response from developers, and here's proof of what I was talking about. While ideally voiceover support built into the release would have been a far better decision, this response comes in a pretty close second.
If you're a voiceover user and you're using Bear 1, do not upgrade to version 2. I verified with Konstantin that you cannot downgrade from Bear 2 to Bear 1, so don't even think about testing it, trying it, there's actually a basic change in the database, so you can't go backwards. Again, alert, alert, alert. Do not upgrade to Bear 2.0 if you're a voiceover user. I asked Konstantin to make sure I'm on distribution for when they do come out with an accessible version, and he said he would add me to his list of people who've asked that same question.
[31:03] Now, back to the good stuff. One of the features I really like about Bear is that it tells me how how long it will take to read an article.
This is important to you as one of the listeners to the NoCillaCast because it's how I gauge whether I've created enough content for you for the week.
I've never gotten a complaint about the show going too long because I guess you can just turn it off if it's too long, but I have heard a comment here and there if the show is too short.
The info pane in the upper right of Bear 2 shows the identical information as it did in Bear 1, but it's somehow ever so much more readable.
This is a good example of what I said at the beginning of the article.
It's more visually pleasing.
It still shows me the number of words, characters, paragraphs, and read time in my article, but in Bear 2, each piece of information is in this nice, light gray, rounded rectangle box, somehow making it clearer and easier to read.
Now, in my usual method of poking things to see what they do, I figured out that if you poke one of these statistics, like, say, read time, it keeps the read time in a little box at the bottom of the window next to the formatting bar.
Now it's probably a really bad idea to constantly be watching these stats as you write, but I do like having instant access to the information.
[32:13] The info panel in the new version of Bear has two new tabs. If you write with headings, as I've described, you get this sweet table of contents.
And I say sweet because not only does it show you each of your headings, you can click on a heading in this little drop-down menu, and you jump right to that heading in your document.
An interactive table of contents can really help when working on long-form documents.
As a reminder, one of the really good reasons to use headings as a semantic element for your text is that this is how our screen reader friends can more easily navigate a webpage.
If you just make the text big and bold, they can't navigate that, but if it's a heading, they can jump from heading to heading to find the content they want.
Speaking of headings, Bear 2 lets you fold up heading sections so it's easier to scroll through your document.
As an example, if I click on the heading for search images in this article, I can see the heading level three icon and a right click on that lets me choose to fold it up.
When I do choose to fold up a heading, It shows three dots to the right so I know it's a folded section.
I can tap the three dots and it folds back open.
You can also choose to fold up all sections, which can make it super efficient to jump to one section and get to work.
Now, the one thing I discovered the hard way is that if you export the markdown text while any sections are folded up, you'll get some markdown glop for that section in the export.
[33:34] Now, if you're a serious writer, you can now add footnotes in Bear 2, and it's super easy.
Set your cursor where you want the footnote to be, click the three dot menu in the formatting bar at the bottom of the bear window and select footnote.
You'll see the markdown syntax for a footnote, which is just a pair of square brackets enclosing a caret symbol and the number for the footnote.
At the same time, it inserts that footnote annotation. It puts the same annotation at the bottom of your bear note with a placeholder text that says footnote text.
I'd never done a footnote on a webpage before, so I tested it, and sure enough it works.
[34:09] Now along with people caring about fonts and themes, people seem to really like changing their app icons. Bear 2 comes with 15 different options, one of which is even an adorable rainbow bear. Well the bottom line is that the upgrade to Bear 2 adds some really useful capabilities, and I haven't even told you about all of them. They've managed to make a clean and elegant interface even cleaner and more elegant and easier to use. There is one caution. You remember I said you can't downgrade from Bear 2 to Bear 1 because of a database change. It turns out if you upgrade to Bear 2 on one device but not on another device, the two stop syncing. The Bear 1 device basically gets abandoned and frozen in time until you upgrade it to Bear 2.0. So when you're ready to go, upgrade them all and it works just fine. So I did it, I did it separately because I wanted to be able to keep track of the changes so that I could really see what was different between Bear 1 and Bear 2.0. As soon as I upgraded that device to Bear 2, everything started syncing again.
[35:10] Now, if you want to get a feel for the playfulness and beauty that is Bear, go over to Bear.app and watch the delightful line art video they posted on the home page.
I'm telling you, it'll bring you joy whether or not you decide to try the free or paid version of Bear. It's gratifying to see that the money I've spent on my annual subscription is going towards all the great new features.
More Cool Third-Party Apple Watch Bands – by Bart Busschots
[35:58] Castaways a little bit of money as they all went out to buy the Tefeca band I recommended.
So I figure I may as well come back and cost you some more money. Twice as much I think.
Basically I always, I think I've discovered that I don't do fashion in shoes, I don't do fashion in clothes. I do one thing in fashion, Apple Watch bands. I have 30 something of them. So yeah, I do Apple Watch bans. Anyway, I have two new ones to talk about since last we spoke and I like them both so why not share so that I can waste some of your money too.
Anyway.
It's just been June, which is Pride Month, and one of my favourite Pride bands to look at is Apple's Solo Loop Pride band from a few years ago. I think it was the 2021 band.
And it's that braided Solo Loop style with the rainbow colours and it's absolutely gorgeous.
And I hate wearing it because I think the Solo Loop is a fundamentally flawed design.
I measured my wrist so carefully and when it arrived, I noticed how difficult it was to get it over my hand. So I definitely didn't order too big of a one.
[37:16] But even then, it doesn't really stay on my wrist nearly as well as I'd like. Now, I know I do a lot of exercise and a lot of moving about, so maybe I'm harder than your average person or whatever, but it didn't stay put.
And so I do wear it, but only if I'm going out to dinner or something.
I never wear it if even if I'm going to be going out for a walk or whatever, like any amount of exercise, it just keeps sliding down my wrist.
[37:42] It's just. It's just not snug enough, even though it barely fits across my hand, so it's beautiful and I do wear it sometimes, but never liked it.
So I was delighted when I saw I think it was a review, might have been an ad on one the many Apple websites I follow for a very, very similar looking band from a company called SwitchEasy. And I recognized the brand name immediately because a few months ago I bought a magnetic band off them. It's a rubbery magnetic band and it's beautifully infinite fitting and.
[38:22] Yeah, it's really nice actually. So when I saw the brand Switch Easy and I saw how pretty this band was, I figured it was worth having a look. So it's the candy braided nylon Apple Watch loop in pride colors. And it's well, it's also it's only thirty five dollars. Now it is designed to slip over your hand like Apple's own solo loop. But unlike Apple's solo loop, it is also infinitely adjustable. What it has is that sort of adjustment style that you would normally see on the strap on a backpack or something. So you adjust it once and then from then on you use it like a solo loop. But you get to adjust it so you don't have to measure carefully and hope you got it right. You can adjust it to whatever you want. And I have it adjusted to its tightest so I can still get it over my hand. And it's better than Apple's one. So I actually will wear it to work and stuff, but it's still not up to exercising. So I think the concept of a springy band that will both fit over your hand and your wrist, I don't know they can ever be snug enough to be perfect, but this is so much better than Apple's one. It's every bit as pretty looking and it's cheaper.
That's just thirty five dollars.
Now, I know Pride Month is a year away, but maybe now it's extra cheap to pick up a nice band for next year's Pride Month or you could just wear it all the time. I guess.
[39:48] So the second band I got is very is both pretty and nerdy. I get bonus nerd points for wearing this band.
So when I dress informally, I really like the tactical style band.
Right. I always buy the big Apple watch and it's a big watch.
So rather than trying to hide the fact that I'm wearing a big watch, I actually like to lean in and wear a big chunky strap, which is why I was so drawn to the Tafika strap I reviewed a few weeks ago that I love so much.
And I have a couple of other straps of a similar sort of aesthetic, and the first one I bought of that aesthetic was from a company called Urban Armor Gear UAG.
And I'm convinced that when I bought it many, many years ago, they called it their surf band.
And I've had a look on their website and I can't find a surf band for sale anymore.
But I did find a band that looks, as best as I can tell, identical to what I have and have had for many years, which is now called the Active Band, and it has a big little shiny thing on it saying it's new.
So I guess they slightly refreshed what was the surf band to make it into this new active band. It's about $70.
So it is not a cheap band, it is more expensive than the Tafika band and indeed than the band that I'm going to tell you about now.
[41:13] But I have been wearing it for many, that's probably my longest band that I wear regularly.
So, you know, I do want to just give Urban Harbour a little honorary mention here and just to say that their new active band is out.
Maybe of interest to people who like these kind of tactical bands, but anyway, what did I actually buy that I actually really like?
Well, again, this was an, I can't remember if it was an ad or a tip, but anyway, it was Somewhere on my Mac surfing I came across a link to a band from a company called Mifa, which they call their Leather Sports Band.
But it looks like a tactical band to me.
[41:53] And it comes in many different colours and in a special edition version with a NASA badge on it.
And I managed to get mine in what I presume must have been a limited edition because it is gone from their website. But I have the NASA patch on the leather sports band with, an orange band, which is brilliant. It's a lovely orange colour. Perfect for when I'm cycling so as I don't get splattered. So really like it. Now, as I say, I can't find the orange on the website anymore, but they do have a green sort of an olive green variant at the moment, which is almost as pretty as the orange. Almost. So if I was, you know, recommend, if I were buying one today, I would go with the green one. If you prefer less shouty colors, there is a stayed black one, which is all black apart from the NASA logo, which is obviously blue and red and white and all those colors.
Right, so hey, it's not an expensive band, if you live in the United States, I guess.
[42:58] It is, what is the price? It is $32.99, which is not bad. Unfortunately, they will only ship to the United States of America. So unless you have a Pudfeet who is prepared to jump through all sorts of hoops to help you get your NASA band from MIFA, I'm afraid to say it's only American in a silicone castaways, you can play ball here.
But as I say, thanks a lot of help from Alice and I got one and I am extremely happy with it is a shadow of a doubt.
My second favourite tactical style band and only just. It is the prettiest of my tactical style bands.
Gets me a lot of compliments when I wear it. And people notice it, I guess being luminous orange does help.
But the NASA badge helps and people really like the band. I really like the band.
And it's almost as good as the Tafika band.
In fact, it's slightly lighter, so it actually feels lighter on the arm.
But whatever magic material they made that Tafika band out of to make it so comfortable, this Mifa band is not quite as comfortable.
It's close, but not quite comfortable.
[44:11] But for the price, again, that's a cheap band, it's half the price of the Urban Armour Gear 1.
Very, very similar look and nice materials, easy to light, easy to take on and off.
Photo in the show notes, since I can't actually link to the orange one for sale anymore, since it isn't for sale anymore.
So if you're in the states and you fancy an uber nerdy Apple Watch band I would definitely highly recommend the Mifa Nylon Leather Sports with NasaBand.
Ok well I've whittered on for long enough about my Apple Watch bands and you're fed, up of hearing about bands do let me know and I'll start reviewing them.
But if I don't hear from you and I end up buying some more, which is quite likely, I will definitely let you all know.
But of course, until next time, remember to stay subscribed.
Well Bart, even though your Apple watch bands are inexpensive, if we listen to all of these, it sure starts to add up because so many of them look awesome.
To the audience, I got Steve the NASA band that Bart talked about as well and it looks great on him and he loves it.
[45:20] Well that's going to wind us up this week and did you know you can email me at alison at podfee.com anytime you like.
In fact, if you've got something you're going to review, please send it on over as soon as you can so I know what I've got so I can start moving things around.
I have a few more reviews, but I can definitely use more.
If you have a question or a suggestion, just send it on over as well.
You can follow me on Mastodon at podfeet at chaos.social.
And remember, everything good starts with podfeet.com. If you want to join in the conversation, you can join our Slack community at podfeet.com slash slack, where you can talk to me and all of the other lovely no-sillicaster waves.
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Thanks for listening.
[46:15] Music.