It’s been 229 days since Apple’s last public presentation. Today is WWDC 2013’s keynote, and we’ll be seeing iOS 7, OS X 10.9 and hopefully new Macs (maybe even an Apple TV SDK). The best place to follow along will be from Apple itself.

Grab the stream here: http://www.apple.com/apple-events/june-2013/

10AM PST.

Link: Why Vesper will Succeed

A new iPhone app was released today. That’s not big news, but the big news is that three of the biggest names in the Apple sphere conspired to bring it out.

I’ve seen some of the demos of Vesper and while it looks really cool, I think that Trevor hits on the real reason it will be a success. These guys are well known and the app is getting attention because of who they are.

Please don’t hear me saying that its not well deserved, but rather getting the word out on your app is just as important as making it great.

Definitely give Trevor’s post a read.

I listen to a lot of podcasts. My collection seems to expand and contract based on new and increasing interests at any given point, what shows are new and interesting and which are losing my attention and need to go away from me. Through these seasons, one thing remains: all my podcast listening happens with Instacast.

Instacast first came out for the iPhone, then the iPad, then a universal app for iPhone and iPad and now for the Mac. While I’ve really enjoyed it on my phone and iPad for a while, it really has sprang up to be one of my favorite apps in the recent months with the Mac version. I listen to podcasts while I work (it seems like I’m one of the rare breed of developers who can do this, but sometimes I do have to turn them off) and have clamored for a Mac version for a long time. Now that it’s here, I’m so glad that I’ve stuck with Instacast all this time.

The thing that seals the deal for me is that Vemedio (Developers of Instacast) built their own cloud sync service that launched with 3.0 for iOS back in December. It’s been rock solid, way better than their iCloud sync that worked occasionally. That maddening inconsistency meant that I had to remember my playback position when switching from iPad to iPhone and back. And that sucked big time. Now, I can start a podcast on my way to work, pause it when I get there and resume right where I left off at my desk on my Mac. It’s seamless and brilliant.

On the Mac, I love the integration with the media keys on Apple’s keyboards. If I’m listening to something and need a break from it or someone comes in to my office I can tap a button and the podcast stops. It’s a far cry from my prior solution which was to have my iPad playing, need to double tap the home button and press the playback button on the lock screen.

If you listen to podcasts on your Mac, iPhone, iPad or any combination of the three you definitely can’t go wrong with Instacast. Check it out today.

Instacast product page

$4.99 for iPhone or iPad

$19.99 for Mac

Link: 512 Pixels Titanium PowerBook G4

I wrote a post for 512 Pixels, run by good guy Stephen Hackett. His site features lots of nerdery around Macs new and old.

The idea came to me last week and wouldn’t go away. So I spent a few hours researching the Titanium PowerBook G4 and this is what I came up with. Enjoy!

If you look down the page just a post or two, the dates on them might stand out. I haven’t been writing much lately. That has been an increasing trend here and in the journal I keep on Day One. Part of it is that I’m not sure what I should put here. Do I publish things that I’m studying, grappling with or have created? Do I re-post links to things that I find interesting (but I’m sure everyone else has seen)?

I know that there have been some promises I’ve made to write more and I didn’t. I also blew my prediction of what Apple would call the iPad Mini and didn’t follow up on that. That’s my bad. I tried writing more about The Dark Knight Rises, but it felt forced and I didn’t like what came out. So I bagged it.

I like the idea of publishing things that I’ve been working on, but the problem that I have with that is it seems kind of vain. I don’t want to put it out to the world in a way that comes off as smug and “look at what I’ve done”, but rather in a way that can hopefully be of use to someone. I’m still grappling with what this all looks like. In all likelihood it will be a couple posts about my development of FileMaker Pro apps for work using common modules to handle things like navigation. I’m really happy with how those things have turned out, and am working on making it a script-only thing (with inspiration from Tood Geist’s Modular FileMaker Project).

I’ve got another post that will be showing up tomorrow, re-starting the Apps I love series. I also submitted a guest blog post that I’ll definitely share if it gets published. I’m not going to make any promises about quantity of the content here. In the end this is a site that I hope will become reflective of me, what I’m interested in and what’s going on in my life. Hopefully you’ll stick around.

EDIT: Actually my new post in the Apps I love series will be coming online on Tuesday. I’ve got something special to post tomorrow instead.

Hanging out watching the biggest tv this side of Dallas with 20,000 of my closest friends (and my best friend @emilysorge)

I’ve definitely felt more than a bit overwhelmed lately. I’m in a season where there are lots of areas that I’m trying to learn things that seem brand new to me in development from Objective-C to CSS to MultiMarkdown and general scripting. I’ve found lots of new resources for productivity tips and tricks and scripts, ways to tweak my workflows and be “more efficient.” There is a downside to all of this, though: my brain has felt really cluttered over the past few months.

I start digging in on a problem that leads to other things I don’t know and pretty soon I’m 3 layers deep and trying to figure out regluar expressions. That doesn’t seem like a recipe for success to me. Another thing that is problematic is my proclivity to try out new apps. My default is to at least look into most of the new apps that cross my way.

Instead of figuring out what I want my end result to be and working backwards to the apps that will help me best accomplish those things, I see how everyone else does it and lose sight of what I’m trying to do.

The newest example of this is text editors. At work, I started using a text editor for doing code on our website when I took that job over. Then I moved to Coda which is phenominal but then also wanted to start using plain text instead of Evernote for my note taking. So I started using TextMate (partly the fault of listening to Build and Analyze), and then tried both Sublime Text 2 and Chocolat before settling on Chocolat. The maddening thing is that I don’t even know all of what a full text-editor can do. I really want to learn because I’m enjoying it very much, but I also think that I’m wasting the capabilities of such a full app.

All this as a setup for a post that I loved on Michael Schechter’s wonderful A Better Mess site. The post is called The Error of The App Mentality, and part that struck me was right here:

The right applications can help you mitigate several of your own shortcomings or enhance your strengths, but their potential will only ever be realized if they are coupled with the right systems and methodologies. Sadly, finding the right tools is a process that takes time and often includes several wrong turns, but when the endgame is a unified workflow, I believe that any time wasted is time well spent.

As much as I love tinkering and using new things I often lose sight of the bigger reason of why I’m investigating any given new thing. If it’s merely because it’s new and shiny then I’m just going to muddy up the waters of reasoning in my mind. If it’s something that could tie in with my end goals and help me accomplish them, then pursuing the new thing is worthwhile.

Supreme Court is in session. Happy Felix Day!

A couple weeks ago I changed my 1Password master password to something longer and more secure. What I didn’t do was make sure that sync to my iPhone and iPad didn’t break. Today I created a new account on the iPad that I wanted to use on the iPhone and it didn’t show up. I got a little scared when 1Password made me reset my sync. Thinking that I would lose the new account I copied the password to my clipboard as a safety.

How wrong I was!

The sync was flawless and I lost nothing. If you don’t have 1Password, you’re missing out.

Baptized.