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My Two Weeks with Keyboard Maestro

I’ve been intrigued by Keyboard Maestro since I first heard about it on Daring Fireball years ago, but never installed and tried the app because of a somewhat widely shared notion that it’s “too difficult to use”. Recent Keyboard Maestro coverage on Brooks Review, ShawnBlanc.net and MacDrifter took my curiosity to a whole new level, so thanks to the Productive Macs bundle, I pulled the trigger and got a copy of Keyboard Maestro, which was later upgraded to version 5.0 for free with the same license.

There’s no easy way to describe Keyboard Maestro, but I’ll try: Keyboard Maestro is a trusted and powerful assistant for your Mac. When you don’t know how to do something, or how to make an existing menu or functionality faster and easier to use, you can turn to Keyboard Maestro and start building your own way out of options third-party developers or Apple didn’t think about.

Keyboard Maestro empowers you to take existing apps, menus, keyboard shortcuts – anything your Mac can perform – and mix them together to achieve something that fits better your workflow.

Keyboard Maestro isn’t strictly about tweaking. The app’s real power lies in how it puts the focus on discovering and building what’s better for you, and sticking with it. It’s no toy, but it’s fun to use once you get the (easy) hang of it.

Writing a review of Keyboard Maestro it’s like asking someone to “write a review of Apple”. The subject is so broad, the offer so variegate and ever-changing, it makes almost no sense to go into every single feature and over-analyze it with no context. Rather, I’d prefer to provide a more empirical look at this app in that I’ll share some of the tricks and functionalities I’ve come to learn and use in the past weeks.

A simple way to understand Keyboard Maestro is this: you tell the app to do something for you automatically, in the background, whenever you want, and all you have to do to start such sequence is a trigger. The trigger can be a keyboard shortcut, something you typed, a system event – you choose the trigger and there’s plenty of options to look at when deciding which action should initiate a process. Read more

The “Apple TV Set”


Jean-Louis Gassée notes how the “Apple television” that’s been long rumored among Apple fans and the tech press will have to face two problems: architecture and implementation.

As many imagined, the device would look something like this:

Imagine a true plug-and-play experience. One set with only two wires: power and the cable TV coax. Turn it on, assert your Apple ID credentials and you’re in business.

But then it would come down to getting cable channels into the set:

Large carriers, such as Comcast, are known as Multiple System Operators, MSOs, with an emphasis on the “M”. They’re a patchwork of acquired systems that have never needed to be compatible. This would either restrict the TV set to a small number of carriers, or make the product more complicated and prone to more bugs — and more field tech visits.

And on top of that, Apple would have to solve the problem of easily troubleshooting a 50-inch screen, or simply figure out a way to get people to upgrade to newer models of “Apple TV set” every couple of years:

We’re willing to upgrade our laptops, smartphones, and tablets every year or two because Moore’s Law keeps improving the CPU and other electronics at the rapid rate that made the computer industry’s fortunes. An integrated Apple TV set wouldn’t benefit from better electronics as naturally as an iPhone does…unless, of course, the tiny iOS computer is implemented as an easily accessible plug-in module.

I’d argue that the television market is so variegate, and potentially lucrative, that there’s more to figure out and correctly implement than U.S. cable providers and MSOs. Looking at Apple now, it’s hard to see a company willing to disrupt a market with a brand new, premium device…available exclusively in the United States. Even the Apple TV, “not part of the stool” and still considered a hobby, was released in the United States and Europe last year. Then look at the iPhone. It took almost four years to get there, but as it turns out the majority of profits now come from regions outside Americas (and iPhone is “key driver” of Apple’s revenue in Greater China – more context here and here).

The problem with the Apple TV set isn’t an “American cable company” (you name it) – it’s the television market as a whole. If we take in account the segments and population that can afford an HDTV nowadays – assuming it falls somewhere in between the $500 - $3000 range – it’s easy to see how Apple will have to make a product that ultimately just works with any television content provider in the United States, Europe, and Asia. Why would they ignore those markets?

There are greater issues to solve and differences to consider in the international TV market. Just a few examples: Italy still switching from analog to digital TV, satellite’s popularity in many areas of Europe, or some ISPs’ offerings with Internet/ TV packages. Supposedly, Apple will have to come up with a solution to work around these, in several countries. Italy may not be Apple’s finest source of revenue, but Europe/Japan/Asia-Pacific combined made for $14.94 billions of revenue in Q3 2011. I’m just assuming some of these Apple customers would also be interested in a TV set from Apple.

We don’t know what Apple has in mind, we can speculate on the company’s margins for such a device – we can only imagine that there is a market to disrupt because the current television sets are too difficult to configure and troubleshoot, with different user experiences and fragmented interfaces, store fronts, or even remotes.

I believe the question isn’t what will the TV set from Apple look like, as we can make a pretty accurate guess about that. Rather, I’d speculate on how many markets Apple is willing to enter at once, and its timing.

Apple’s Bold Move: iTunes Match and Streaming

With the launch of the first iTunes Match beta for developers last night, Apple unveiled the last piece of the iCloud puzzle that was originally previewed at the WWDC in June, when Steve Jobs announced that iTunes Match would be available this Fall at $24.99 per year for 25,000 songs, allowing customers to download songs stored in their iCloud accounts. Because iTunes Match scans a user’s iTunes library before uploading files, songs compatible with Apple’s iTunes Store catalogue are automatically upgraded to 256 Kbps (even if the original copy was of lower quality) and “matched” with the copy on the server, whilst the ones not found on Apple’s servers are manually uploaded to iCloud. This happens for two reasons: first, Apple cut deals with several music labels and publishers to enable this “scan & match” technology that compares songs on a computer versus the higher quality copy on the servers, and doesn’t upload the original file; second, Apple wanted to eliminate the need of having to wait days for large uploads to finish – something that has affected “cloud locker” services from Google, Amazon, and many others.

The iTunes Match that was announced back in June, however, and promoted on Apple’s website up until today, made no specific mention of “streaming” songs matched/uploaded to iCloud; the way Apple originally explained it, Match was a clever way to fill an iCloud account with songs and albums to later download on iOS devices or a Mac. For as much as the technology behind it seemed intriguing, many were disappointed to find out that Apple couldn’t find a way around streaming songs without having to download the full copy first. Other services like Rdio and Spotify allow users to stream songs they don’t own by hitting “play” and waiting a few seconds for the stream to start (depending on the Internet connection’s speed). iTunes Match is actually a service for songs users own and decide to store in iCloud at $24.99 per year, so many assumed streaming required a different kind of licensing deal that Apple couldn’t make in time for WWDC.

Last night, as developers started subscribing to the first beta of iTunes Match, it turned out that, even in this first version, Apple is allowing for both downloading and streaming of songs, both on the Mac and iOS devices. The interface makes it easy to match and listen: once a music collection is built in iCloud (e.g. iTunes has scanned, matched, and uploaded songs to your account), music will be available on the Mac in iTunes’ Music tab, and on iOS 5 in the new Music app. Once iTunes Match is enabled on iOS it replaces the local music library, and you can tell the difference by a small iCloud icon next to each song.

Whereas Apple’s announcement at WWDC implied users would have to push a button to download songs, and build a music library off a master collection in the cloud, this first beta actually delivers more: users can still hit the button and download songs locally, but they can also tap on songs and start streaming them without a download.

The process is detailed in two videos posted by Insanely Great Mac. Streaming can occur both on the desktop and iOS, and it doesn’t look any different from a local iTunes library except for the aforementioned iCloud library. With this first beta, Apple isn’t accepting iTunes LPs and Extras, some file types aren’t supported and, for testing purposes, Apple will periodically delete developers’ iCloud music libraries to increase iTunes’ performances and reliability.

Streaming is a big deal for Apple, and not just because it increases iTunes’ functionalities to avoid manual downloads and waiting times. With iTunes Match streaming, Apple could directly compete with services like Spotify (recently landed in the U.S.) and Rdio, which let users stream songs over WiFi and 3G and even cache them for offline access. However, as of this beta, Apple’s iTunes Match comes with a unique spin on streaming: it doesn’t need downloads, and it’s based on music libraries made from songs users own. With the combination of local copies (the library), scan & match, iCloud, downloads and streaming, Apple could build a music service like no other in that it’s a combination of “owning your music”, and paying a yearly fee to get online access to it. Spotify is often criticized for being a streaming service that doesn’t let you “own” your library; most recently, the company added the possibility of importing local files and playing them in Spotify, but it’s not the same of being able to take local files and mirror them to the cloud. Reports citing streaming with “iTunes in the cloud” from May are now starting to make more sense, and let’s not forget Apple has patented a technology to make streaming effortless and faster by syncing small bits of data locally.

Still, many questions are left unanswered with this week’s iTunes Match beta. Was iTunes Match supposed to get only song downloads, with the current streaming implementation being just a glitch? Or are we in for a streaming surprise come Apple’s next keynote? Moreover, will Apple further tweak iTunes and iOS 5 to put the focus on streaming, allowing for advanced iCloud-based playlist creation? And how will music labels react to the news that iTunes Match is capable of streaming, too? Perhaps this is already part of Apple’s grand iCloud plan, and music labels knew all along that iTunes Match would stream songs, as Businessweek suggested in May. Or, streaming came unexpected to them as it did to everyone else in this first beta. But more importantly, will iTunes Match be available outside the U.S. once iOS 5 and iCloud are publicly released? Early signs pointed to “no”, with sources claiming the UK wouldn’t see iTunes Match until 2012. Currently, iTunes Match is a developer-only beta (closed at the moment with more openings “over the next days”) that requires a U.S. credit card (not just regular iTunes credit – e.g. promo codes and gift cards) for automatic billing. It’s unclear whether or not Apple will open the final version of iTunes Match to any kind of U.S. iTunes account, or if they’ll keep it exclusive for U.S. iTunes customers with a credit card on file.

As usual with betas, things can change before the final release. There’s a fragmented market out there, and Apple has a chance to disrupt it with iCloud and iOS 5. As it stands now, iTunes Match looks like Apple’s boldest move in the online music space since 2003.

Update: AllThingsD now weighs in writing that, according to an Apple spokesperson, iTunes Match still isn’t streaming. What looks like a stream is actually a simultaneous listen and download, although Apple isn’t providing additional details on the technology behind iTunes Match. AllThingsD speculates that Apple may be using some sort of caching mechanism for when users don’t “download” songs from iCloud, though that’s just an “educated guess”. From the videos posted this morning, indeed it looked like an iPhone was capable of streaming songs off iCloud.

AllThingsD also reports that Apple has the licensing rights to streaming, but they’re not implementing it due to a design choice – Apple apparently doesn’t believe mobile networks are advanced enough to allow for streaming of large music libraries. Check out the full report here.

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Times and Titles

[image via]

We all knew today’s news of Steve Jobs resigning as CEO of Apple was coming. Sooner or later, we – geeks, Apple watchers, fans, journalists, the Apple community as a whole – knew that Apple would announce a change of roles that would see Jobs go, initiating the execution plan that has been carefully planned internally for a long time. And that day has come. But it shouldn’t be seen for what it’s not: a change within the company. It is a change, technically, with Steve Jobs becoming Chairman of the Board, director, and Apple employee, and Tim Cook elected as new CEO. But it’s not a change in perspective – the spirit that has driven Apple’s innovation, attention to detail and need for great products won’t disappear as Tim Cook takes the reins.

There’s no denying reading the initial Reuters Twitter headline about Jobs resigning brought my heart to a full stop. But as I quickly rationalized and processed the news, later confirmed by a series of press releases, I realized that was the turning point I was expecting all along. The change that we, the community, feared and filed away in the imaginary drawer of things that are too far away to even consider as a fact. Yet, in spite of many people’s best hopes, it is a fact. And I’ll say this again – it is sad to see a man slowly taking steps back from the company he built because he’s no longer capable of meeting others’ expectations.

So let’s look at history in the eyes. Steve Jobs won’t be replaced iconically, he will be replaced as a company executive. Steve Jobs’ vision, charisma, stubbornness, willingness to build products people love and engage with on a personal level – these things will live on within Apple no matter the title the Board gives him. Steve is not Apple, but Apple stems from Steve’s ideals. And ideals, history has taught us, don’t die. No matter the bureaucracy, the speculation, the market strategies, the corporate espionage – no matter from what angle you look at it, true ideals live on. They are symbols of evolution, but they survive change.

This is what we believe. Technology alone is not enough. And from my personal angle, this is the mantra that CEO Steve Jobs has best implanted since 1997 in Apple as a company, a team of executives and designers and engineers and employees – Apple as a vision and a statement. A hundred years from now, people will look back at Jobs’ career as CEO of Apple, and wonder how he did. In this very moment of time, we do know how he did. And we applaud Steve Jobs for his achievements in the past decade.

But at the same time, we also applaud his team and we look forward to more great products born under and developed with Steve Jobs’ taste as a Chairman, and Apple employee. Once again, let’s look at the facts – Jobs is still there, only taking a different role and executing the “succession plan” any respectable company that operates at Apple’s levels has. Those who predict the premature demise of Apple and speculate on the failures of future products due to Jobs’ change of title clearly don’t understand how Apple works. I don’t either, but at least I’m not looking into a crystal ball. It will be interesting to keep an eye on Apple’s operations in the next two years for sure, but saying the company without Jobs the CEO is now doomed is a long stretch.

A change of titles – a new Chairman here, a CEO there – won’t transform the way today’s Apple works and makes money. Yet we, the community, are inclined to taking this on a personal level, because let’s face it – a little part of the Apple fan in us died today. Not because of the sadness, the desperation, or the aforementioned predictions of Apple’s upcoming “problems”. Not even strictly because Steve Jobs is a geek’s favorite hero and it’s sad to see him “go”. It’s a much more subtle feeling running through the veins of the Apple community. It’s that feeling of times changing, of you and your friends growing older and perhaps with a better understanding of things – it’s watching what you took for granted be upgraded to something new you think will be fine eventually, but you’re still not completely used to.

Steve Jobs’ greatest accomplishment is not the iPad, the App Store, the iPhone 4 and the device coming out next year. It’s not even the company taken as a bunch of executives and employees around the world, for as much as that’s an impressive work of management and planning. Rather, Steve Jobs the CEO should be proud of the philosophy he’s instilled in Apple’s vision of a product maker for all kinds of people. Because, really, that’s what Steve Jobs the CEO set as a goal for Apple: making people happy using their products.

In these past 14 years, Apple’s former CEO turned around an industry, changed its face, and taught us that technology alone is not enough.

And we thank you for that, Steve.

A Trusted System

Over the past few months, I’ve noticed a trend emerging in my daily app consumption and workflow: as the App Store gets populated by thousands of new applications every day and developers struggle to get noticed in the sea of iPhone and iPad releases and “promotions”, I increasingly tend to rely on “a trusted system”, rather than constantly tweaking my home screen or dock to accommodate new apps from “indie devs” to try out, and perhaps replace with something else entirely the week after.

More than a trend, people who know me well might argue that I have a problem: I switch between apps less, and thus I am becoming that kind of guy that doesn’t care about what’s new in spite of my professed interest for innovation and good software.

But that’s my point exactly, and there’s an important difference between caring about new apps and trusting only a few selected ones for my work that I’d like to point out in this article.

Why should I buy the latest to-do app for iPhone or the next RSS reader for the iPad? Why should I constantly tweak and fiddle when the trusted system I’ve built is serving me so well? Some people, including me, are big advocates of App Store discovery and innovation: you never know what hidden gem the Productivity category might hide beneath hundreds of “wallpaper customizers”, and therefore it is an app lover’s job to navigate the App Store with the sole purpose of discovery in mind. With half a million apps to choose from, those who set out to explore the intricate App Store maze are the Magellans of the digital distribution era. Yet, I believe app discovery should be the reason behind good information and curiosity, not the ultimate goal towards getting things done or simply enjoying iOS devices.

We, as geeks, want to be – or at least “feel” – productive with our iPhones and iPads. Whereas we look at “the average user” and justify our expenses saying that unlike those people, we actually do stuff with Apple devices, the other end of the spectrum is equally true in my opinion, but we often don’t see it: all kinds of people (“the users”) are now serious about iOS, and whilst for some buying an iPhone will always be related to the status symbol, more customers than we, as geeks, usually think of are starting to look at iPhones and iPads as productivity platforms. It’s not just for the nerds or the fashion victims anymore. And as people get serious about iOS, they develop the “trusted system awareness” in that they start looking for apps to rely on without hesitation on a daily basis.

For me, the trusted system has become a synonym of great software developed by people that are serious about the bits and Xcodes they work with. Software from people that have something to lose if things go south. Apps from developers that are deeply invested in the platform – apps from people that often do this for a living but that are also users of their own creations. And this synonym has led me to trust the smaller, indie devs less, because I always fear the app I’m showing interest in will be discontinued tomorrow and never come back to support my needs.

It’s not like this hasn’t happened before. Too many times I’ve decided to fit an app in my workflow, only to find out months later the developer had no willingness whatsoever to maintain it or at least come clean and say “look, it was just an experiment”. And I can understand that point of view, really. I’m not saying garage developers and seven year-olds shouldn’t take their first steps in iOS development and see what’s like to gain popularity in the App Store. Not at all. I’m looking at us, the users who are serious about iOS, and deconstructing the difference between being curious, which is legitimate, and not getting anything done because of the constant tweaking, which is poisonous.

We need to separate work from leisure and app discovery. If we’re really committed to proving that iOS devices can be fantastic replacements for trucks, we need to get serious and understand that switching between apps and feverishly mining for the latest productivity goldmine won’t make you smarter or “more productive”. On the other hand, developers need to understand that just because they’ve released a new Google Reader client or GTD app, they shouldn’t expect thousands of users to jump on board and hit Buy.

iOS users have come to the point where the trusted system is more important. They know what developers and “names” to follow in the long term, and they’re happier when said developers provide an ecosystem for their apps that will make spending money on three different platforms less painful.

From personal experience, I see myself “trusting” people like The Omni Group, Evernote, The Iconfactory, Agile Bits, Edovia, Smile, Acrylic Apps or Tapbots more and more every day. I know I can get actual work done by using their apps, I know I can look forward to great customer support and shoot them a tweet when I’ve got a question – I can spend $50 bucks knowing that the work and enjoyment I’ll get in return will be greater.

But that’s not to say I’ve stopped giving the benefit of the doubt to “new kids on the block”, or that I’ve given up on trying to find the hidden gems in the App Store caves. Those who read this site know that I’ve started using Mr. Reader and Grazing Browser on my iPad and iPhone – apps from two relatively less-known developers that, however, have showed outstanding support, commitment to their software and a steady flow of software updates in the past weeks. To me, these seem like people who are serious about what they do. And I’m willing to trust them even if they haven’t been around for 10 years like others in this industry. More apps like Prowl, Notesy and Notely also come to mind.

iOS devices are now playing an important role in our lives, and we shouldn’t stop exploring all the ways to make them better with new apps, and different workflows. But I believe no one can blame us for choosing the trusted system when it’s time to work, and stop tinkering.

Notes From An iOS User On Vacation

I came back from what I’d like to think of as a well-deserved vacation earlier this week and, unlike previous vacations at the camping I’ve been spending most of my summers in for the past 15 years, this time I went there with my friends and a specific goal in mind: I didn’t have to write anything, but I should have been able to do so and check on MacStories if my attention was needed. Last year, I went on vacation knowing that I would have ended up writing for the site anyway. Not this year. Yet, I told myself, if something happens – or really, just to make sure I could at least read the news – the devices I work with every day should be capable of letting me get things done quickly, and efficiently.

I went on vacation for roughly ten days, bringing an iPad, an iPhone, my new MacBook Air and a slew of other iOS accessories and cables with me. My girlfriend brought her iPhone, too, as well as her MacBook Pro and iPad. All my iOS devices managed to fit in the Tom Bihn Ristretto bag I’ve been using for the past months, whilst the MacBook Air snugly fit into a new sleeve I bought two weeks ago. I did not bring a digital camera because the iPhone 4 is the best camera I’ve ever owned, nor did I choose to unplug those external drives from my desktop iMac and AirPort Extreme. If we ever decided to watch a movie, we’d buy it from iTunes and stream it over 3G. The MacBook Air wouldn’t have been capable of backing itself up to SuperDuper!, but I had a feeling I wouldn’t use the Air much.

As I set out to drive to the camping and think about how I would keep up with MacStories news and updates without actually working on them, I had a feeling iOS and the great apps I had installed on my devices would help me go through the task without much effort.

They absolutely did. Read more

iCloud Storage: International & Competitor Pricing Comparison

Last night, Apple launched a first developer beta of iCloud.com, a set of web apps based on the iCloud functionality originally introduced in iOS 5 beta that mimic the appearance of Apple’s Lion desktop apps like Address Book and iCal, or the Mail app for iPad. The new web apps, seen as replacements for MobileMe’s existing web offerings, have been completely rewritten to take advantage of iCloud’s faster and invisible sync of content between devices, and they also include a new web-based version of iWork that, however, isn’t live yet. Screenshots (and videos) of the iCloud web apps have surfaced online and partially on Apple’s website too; early screenshots of the login page had been leaked ahead of the WWDC in June.

The iCloud web apps provide an alternative to their iOS and OS X counterparts – being entirely web-based, they can come in handy “if you happen to be away from home without your computer or one of your iOS devices” so that “you can access your mail, contacts, and calendar — ad-free — from any computer at icloud.com”. Read more

Apple Store Observations on the New MacBook Air

I checked in at 11:35. Late for my 11:15 appointment, the Apple Store representative offered to fit me in at 13:00 for a brief MacBook repair. I could replace the fan myself — which unfortunately wasn’t rattling that morning as it had been in previous days — but there’s too many screws to remove and I wanted an excuse to test out the MacBook Air. For an hour I visited with the both 11“ and 13” MacBook models, getting a feel for the weight and size while opening every app I could, playing music or fullscreen videos, and getting to know whatever neighbors who casually stopped into the Apple Store to check out Apple’s latest machines. You could say the MacBook Air is pretty great (there’s no denying that), but I found the people to be much more interesting.

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All You Need To Know About Quick Look In Lion, Plus Some Handy Tips And Tricks

We briefly touched upon the improvements to Quick Look in our Lion review last week, speaking of the improvements made to it in broad strokes. But we felt as though it was worth a second look because there have been quite a few improvements, including many that are subtle but really nice touches.

New Look
The biggest change is of course the refreshed look, which Cody described in the review as “painted in a new white lacquer compared to the smokey previews in Leopard and Snow Leopard”. The reaction to this change has been both positive and negative, but broadly speaking we think it’s a good change, it feels cleaner and more refined – gone is that thick and wasteful bar at the bottom of the Quick Look window.

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