The Vi editor was originally written on an ADM-3A terminal, which had the Escape key in place of the Tab key
I didn’t know this. It never made sense to me that the philosophy of VIM navigation was to keep your hands on the home row, but required you to reach all the way up there to get into normal mode.
That guy. You know who he is. Talking to himself on the elevator, at the grocery store and in the car. You have no clue whether he’s talking to you or someone else. In addition to the gold chain around his neck and the cell phone holster on his belt you’ll eventually notice the thing hanging out of his ear and then it makes sense.
Recently I became the owner of a new Jawbone Era headset and therefore something new to feel self conscious about. I never considered using a Bluetooth headset because the utility didn’t outweigh the costs. Calls sounded bad on the receiving end, weren’t loud enough on the callers end and you looked like a total chump. Fortunately (or unfortunately) this headset works well enough in a number of situations where it’s just too darn handy not to have around. You’ll probably still look like a real dweeb.
I wanted to get the headset primarily for use at my office. Last year we were all issued some fancy new Cisco phones that would work with a Bluetooth headset. I’ve been using a wired headset for a long time and really find it to be useful, especially on extended calls.
The fact that the iPhone has more advanced voice control features is also a plus and keeping both hands on the wheel has got to be safer than the alternative.
The Jawbone has pleasantly surprised me so far. It is loud, makes clear phone calls and brings the ability to listen to podcasts through a wireless earpiece. Siri performance is pretty spotty and battery life is far shorter than advertised but overall it’s a net win.
It’s impossible to not look like a dork when wearing a Bluetooth headset so you should only use it in situations where it’s clearly acceptable or you really don’t care. In your office and on the phone is fine. In the hallway isn’t. If you’ve changed clothes to prepare to go somewhere, you should leave it in the car when you get there. This headset in particular is small and doesn’t have any blinking lights to eat power and further draw attention to your sartorial ineptitude.
The Era comes with a number of earbuds in differing sizes. It’s really tough to swap these out, which is a very good thing. My Bose earbuds have a similar molded silicone earbud which has a real problem with falling off while they’re in a bag. There’s nothing worse than loosing one at the beginning of your trip at the airport.
The packaging says that it includes a USB cable and an AC adapter. Unfortunately the AC adapter still needs the USB cable to connect the headset directly to power. A charge time of about an hour through USB makes this kind of useless.
The Jawbone software can be downloaded off their website. This is exactly the kind of thing that ought to be distributed through the Mac App Store, especially since this annoying software which will probably only be used once or twice tries to become a startup item and stakes a claim in the OS X menu bar.
Oddly enough, management of software happens through the browser and only uses the desktop software to push updates. This is bizarre and lazy, but the site worked just fine in my Flash-free installation of Safari.
After running the software update I added the software which enables access to Siri and looked through the voice options. Each of the voice options is exactly the type which you’d expect to appear in the heads of the typical Bluetooth wearing jerk. I settled on the least terrible, loaded it up and moved along.
From what people tell me, the audio quality is every bit as good as mashing the iPhone against my face. The voice that announces caller names pulls from an internal set of names and number that I haven’t’ set up. If it could read the name that comes up on the phone it would be better.
Streaming audio ends up being a pretty solid feature. It’s terrible for listening to music but great for listening to podcasts. Mids and highs are clear and loud enough to hear. It’s really nice to work around the house while using this for podcasts since there’s no cord to snag.
The interaction between the Era and Siri is a bit of a mixed bag. Even with the right software installed it seems like too much is going on at once. When you push the button on the headset, it beeps then makes some kind of a warbling sound. Don’t be fooled…it’s not time to start talking yet. Eventually (nearly 4 and a half seconds later) you do hear the familiar Siri chime but probably after you’ve already issued half of a command. Sometimes you won’t even hear that. Worse than this is that Siri seems to have a hard time understanding what’s coming through the Era. This whole aspect of the experience is pretty disappointing.
The Era can pair with multiple devices at once, which it does pretty well. Getting a full day’s use out of the Era without plugging it in is pretty tough. Charging doesn’t take long though, so if it’s plugged in during a meeting then it will be fully charged upon return.
I really like having some music going while I work, but phone calls seem to keep that to a minimum. The Era’s noise cancellation feature works wonders in this regard. Music playing from an iPod dock at a reasonable level can’t be heard by the person on the other end of the phone.
I’m still using the Jawbone era even though the novelty has faded. It’s nicer to use than a wired headset at work and does an acceptable job making phone calls with the iPhone. Hopefully some software update will come along and make Siri more usable but even as it is right now it’s a pretty solid product.
Apply directly to the forehead.
As we pass from one year to another, I’m hoping for all the best for those folks who contributed to making my life a little more enjoyable every day.
Fellow Kansas City dweller Shawn Blanc made a big decision this year. He left his 9-5 job to write full time. His writing is top notch, and he seems to be a genuinely nice guy. He covers Mac in the same way as many others, dropping links to interesting articles, talking about the industry at large and writing some of the best hardware reviews I’ve read on a while.
Read more and subscribe at ShawnBlanc.net
I couldn’t do a post like this without mentioning Dr. Drang. I enjoy his writing because he spends little time writing about the same things you hear in the typical echochamber focusing instead on stuff that makes his Macs work for him.
Dan Benjamin has taken podcasting to a different level. The attention to detail that he’s put into his recording setup and choice of co-hosts made my beloved XM Radio almost useless in the past year. Merlin’s Back to Work is consistently funny, entertaining and enlightening.
Every year there’s something that you find that changes your daily routine in an incredibly positive way. 2010 proved to be an expensive year to accomplish that with the iPad, but this year things are different. A $25 pice of molded plastic that I’d known about for years finally came into my life and made my days at the office much nicer. If you can’t always be around decent coffee, then do yourself a favor and buy yourself an Aeropress.
2011 saw the quasi public release of TextMate 2, but it’s not a text editor that proved to be my favorite of the year. That honor goes to Alfred. The folks at Running with Crayons have put out the best replacement for Quicksilver available today. It clearly shows you what it’s capable of without being too obtrusive. It’s powerful, but doesn’t hog a bunch of system resources. More than anything, it’s as fun as any application launcher that I’ve used. Pick up a copy and buy the power pack.
A surprisingly interesting article from the local paper that outlines where we stack up on a number of city lists.
Some of these don’t make any sense (manliest?) but some others are dead on.
Best BBQ in the nation? Yup.
12th Smartest? Sure.
2nd best in driving ability? Definitely.
One of the best Downtowns? Far from it. The Kaufmann center is beautiful, but it doesn’t overcome the fact that downtown is populated by bankers and lawyers during the day and $30,000 millionaires maxing out the credit card on bottle service at Mosaic at night.
A fantastic thread over at Stack Exchange on how to work with multiple files in VIM.
This is a really handy cheat sheet to have around if you ever find yourself in VIM.
As I look more at the prospect of text editors coming and going in waves, I think it’s better to learn one great text editor that work on every platform that you’ll ever use.
VIM’s stability and ubiquity make it something to consider if you’re going to get serious about working more from the command line.
If you’re new to the Linux or Unix command line, this is a great place to get started.
So you’ve just gotten some new Apple stuff. There’s a good chance that you’ve started to get multiple Apple devices running in the same house. All these new devices will work together to make your media accessible throughout the house, but you’ve got to be more careful with your Apple IDs. Here’s how I recommend setting that up and a few other things to do depending on what you’ve recently acquired.
Apple IDs are a mess, but having everything set up properly is critical for getting all this stuff to work together. Generally you’ll want to have one Apple ID for media and apps (which I’m calling “shared” below) and one for your individual data.
Go with this option if you want to pool all of your app store and iTunes purchases between everyone in the household. This could get annoying if you choose to automatically download app store purchases and you’ve got folks that download a lot of free crap.
| Login Opportunity | Apple ID to Use |
|---|---|
| iTunes Store | Shared |
| App Store | Shared |
| Home Sharing | Shared |
| iTunes Match | Shared |
| All other iCloud Services | Individual |
This setup allows some additional autonomy with App Store and iTunes purchases while still letting everyone access the local music collection. It’s probably best if you’ve got some teenagers who eventually are going to want to be more independent with their software and music purchases.
| Login Opportunity | Apple ID to Use |
|---|---|
| iTunes Store | Individual |
| App Store | Individual |
| Home Sharing | Shared |
| iTunes Match | Shared |
| All other iCloud Services | Individual |
Download and install 1Password. It’s great. Use this to store your iCloud credentials and any notes about how you’ve got your accounts split. I recommend using a separate logins for your iCloud data and the iTunes/App Store accounts, so you can start using 1Password to keep track of that.
Play around with everything and watch some of the videos that are posted at Apple’s website.
When you move all your documents and stuff over, think about signing up for a Dropbox account. It’s glue for getting your stuff everywhere and keeping it backed up. Be careful with personal or sensitive data that you put on here.
Sign into iCloud to get all your contacts and stuff synced. It’s great. Hopefully you also got some iTunes gift cards so you can drop some coin on some apps. Don’t be cheap. Development is hard and the nicer apps are worth it in the long run.
Sign up for Instapaper and buy the app. Here’s a video that explains a little of how it works.
Sign into home sharing so that you can stream your full music collection when you’re at home.
When you finish getting everything set up, download and install the Remote app. It’s super cool and makes things much easier than dealing with that tiny remote. Get your iPhoto library and Photostream hooked to your Apple TV too. This is one of the most fun parts of the whole deal.
Get everything set up and download Instacast and TuneIn Radio. Both these are great for getting non-music stuff to your iPhone or iPod.
This is the most important part. Each of these little devices can be linked together and tweaked a bunch. For now, just get in and have some fun.
iCloud was one of the most exciting things announced in June and it’s been slowly rolling out ever since. Just as the word “cloud” is a fuzzy marketing term for just about anything that doesn’t live on a local hard drive, iCloud is somewhat of an overarching term for a number of different parts.
At this point iCloud is impressive, but still rough around the edges. Some of the services are ready to use now, others with some caveats and others are nearly impossible to find.
The ability to keep contacts and calendars in sync between multiple devices isn’t new. I’ve been doing this through the paid MobileMe service since I got my first iPhone. It’s great. Clean up your Address Book and turn this on.
Photostream is incredibly cool. When you take a picture on your iPhone it shows up everywhere else. Right now, you can’t delete things from your Photostream so you might end up with things like screenshots or saved pictures in there. It’s also a problem if you don’t want certain pictures to be shown on your Apple TV when the parents are visiting. This should be fixed soon. I love this. Turn it on.
I don’t use the iWork applications on my iPad or iPhone and the desktop versions of the same aren’t used all that much either. These are currently the only things that really support iCloud so I couldn’t tell you how well it works. It certainly hasn’t broken anything for me at this point so I guess it’s working just fine.
Turn it on…I guess.
Being able to get to an entire music collection at all times has always been quite a chore. iTunes Match is supposed to fix that. Match gives you access to all your purchased music as well as music you’ve acquired through other places. It will either just give you access to download if the song lives in the iTunes store or it will upload it.
It seems to handle metadata in a sane fashion. All your metadata is retained and distributed. This is great for those albums that you’ve cleaned up, put into sane genre buckets and set ratings for. This is terrible for stuff that’s poorly tagged (it may not get uploaded at all) or that you’d love to have someone fix for you.
There are a surprising amount of single tracks from albums that don’t show up. This pretty annoying.
I set match to run overnight and when I woke up in the morning everything was ready. I fired up my iPad and connected it. The Music app on the iPad is terrible enough, but Match makes it incredibly slow. I’m not sure why…perhaps it’s trying to download album artwork.
It’s great to be able to access these tracks, but if you think you’re going to get to the song quickly you’re in for a different experience.
Where Match does seem to work well is between a desktop and a laptop. I don’t carry a lot of music on that laptop and it’s all duplicative of what’s in my main library. This meant that I could blow away the old library and start with a new one. The library showed up quickly and it was really cool to build some smart playlists that will now sync between machines.
Wait for a while before you turn this on.
Management of Apple IDs is a disaster, especially for families who want to share a common pool of media and apps. There are a couple approaches that you can take in dealing with this. My recommendation is something like this:
Chances are, you’ve made all kinds of Apple IDs over the years without knowing that it would become such a mess now. Take the time to look at iTunes and each device to figure out what’s using what and try to make them uniform.
If there’s one place where Apple ought to really think through and fix in the coming year, it’s this.
Overall, iCloud is nice but still rough around the edges. The existing MobileMe services (calendar and contact sync, Find my iPhone, etc.) appear to be the most stable. Newer services either aren’t deployed (Documents) or are still rough (Photostream and iTunes Match).