And so it goes, Federico Viticci continues to be unhappy with the iPad. With that article as wall as his other recent posts and podcasts and I can’t help but conclude that it’s probably time for him to move on to the Mac. Same for many of the other comments I’m seeing on Mastodon, etc. There’s also this post by Hey Scotty, a fellow micro.blogger.
And really, I don’t think it’s all that confusing. The initial iPad was meant to be a casual, easy to use device that sat between the iPhone and a Mac. Mostly for consumption but Apple also sold the Keyboard Dock and had the iWork apps available from day one (at least Pages, not sure about the others). So even then they knew it had potential.
Fast forward 6 years and the device is getting more powerful and they release the larger iPad Pro. And it just goes from there that the hardware is obviously very powerful and Apple, noticing at least a small group of users are increasingly enthusiastic about the device as a full-on computer.
From there it’s just a process of Apple protecting the ease of use for the vast majority of iPad users that want that easy, casual, non threatening computer while, at the same time, offering new features for the “power” users. Year by year adding those features pretty steadily,
The “problem” is that the tech enthusiasts tend to have the loudest voice. Thanks to his website and the many podcasts he’s hosts, Federico’s voice and opinions are greatly magnified. And over the past couple of years he’s become increasingly disgruntled. The iPad simply does not meet his very particular needs, preferences, tastes. But again, his disgruntlement is the loudest opinion.
Setting aside all of the users the iPad was originally aimed for, I’d guess that there are lots of very satisfied “pro” users of the iPad today who are actually quite happy with the device but who’s voices are greatly muted in comparison to the very opinionated guy with the bullhorn.
I really love iPadOS and the iPad form factor. I’m not conflicted or angry about the state of Stage Manager or multitasking. I’ve been watching with great appreciation as Apple has, year-by-year, increased the features found in important apps like Files, Mail, Safari, iWork, etc. For me it’s only getting better. And now, with Stage Manager and full external display support, it’s the mobile touch tablet that can be a laptop or a desktop computer in seconds. Attached to an external display I’m able to see more and do more as I’m doing in the photo above working with two Numbers spreadsheets, each of which has a lot of columns across and thousands of rows. Stage Manager on an external display makes my hours of work on these documents more efficient. It’s a huge win for me.
It’s a shame that the iPad isn’t doing it for Federico and others. For them it would seem the Mac is the better choice. That’s fine. It’s can’t be for everyone. Just as the Mac isn’t for everyone.
I just realized something about the Apple oriented “press”: I don’t think it really exists anymore. We’ve got lots of podcasts and websites… but jiminy, go to any of the big Apple oriented news websites and the content is increasingly just garbage hot takes on the latest rumors, hot deals, and general fluff designed to with the primary purpose of driving affiliate links.
Just a few minutes ago John Voorhees on Mastodon posted about the current episode of Appstories podcast was about peering “into the future to try to imagine the apps that will define Apple’s rumored VR headset.” Okay, well, that fits in with months of speculation by all of the Apple sites and podcasts that this rumored headset is coming.
My reaction was to comment back asking why they’ve not done a show on the Affinity 2.0 updates, a very real product released recently and arguably important for the Mac and iPad. Especially given the attention that Affinity has paid to the iPad I expressed my disappointment that a website/podcast known for highlighting the iPad would not have at least mentioned it. I’m not sure they’ve mentioned or discussed DaVinci Resolve or LumaFusion either. Interestingly Federico commented back that they haven’t covered it because they haven’t used it. Yet they haven’t used this non-existent product from Apple either.
Now, I’m not trying to pick on Federico or MacStories. It just struck me that the Apple news oriented press is not what it used to be. My next thought was to wonder, has MacWorld covered the Affinity apps? It’s been ages since I visited MacWorld.com so I hoped over. No. No mention of it at all that I could find using their site search. In fact, I found a 2018 review of Affinity Photo but only minor mentions of of Affinity Designer and no mention of Affinity Publisher at all.
It just got me to thinking about the Apple press of 1998 or 2000 or 2002 or 2004. I guess the decline was gradual. But what a bummer that we apparently no longer have an Apple oriented press that’s willing to actually sort through actual important news. I remember the above mentioned time period and discussions and reviews and articles about Quark and Adobe. And actual attention paid to the important software and why it mattered. Real reviews of real products. I did a search on Quark and the results from pre-2012 painted a picture of an Apple press that fits my memory. Namely that they took the issue of important software and software categories seriously.
I think TidBits.com might be one of the only remaining Apple sites that still properly covers this stuff. Are there any others?
On January 7, 2003 Apple introduced two new apps, both of which proved to be significant steps for the still young Mac OS X platform. The apps were a surprise to the public and press and were important steps in a much larger process of Apple building it’s own ecosystem of applications which it continues today.
Of the two, Safari was likely the most significant. Apple’s press release:
MACWORLD EXPO, SAN FRANCISCO—January 7, 2003—Apple® today unveiled Safari™, the fastest and easiest to use web browser ever created for the Mac®. Safari’s highly-tuned rendering engine loads pages over three times faster than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer for the Mac and runs Javascript over twice as fast. Safari’s innovative features include Google search capabilities integrated directly into the toolbar; SnapBack, a new way to instantly snap back up to search results or the top level of any website after browsing down one or more levels; a completely new way to name, organize and present bookmarks; and automatic “pop-up” ad blocking.
Safari began it’s life at Apple with the WebKit project which was a fork of the open source KHTML layout engine. Don Melton started the WebKit project at Apple on June 25, 2001. He’s got a great post about Safari on his blog, published 2013.
I remember being very excited as I’m sure many were. The significance of Apple releasing its own web browser was pretty clear to Apple users. My take-away at the time was that Apple didn’t want to depend on Microsoft for what was becoming one of the most important apps on a computer. 20 years later and Safari continues and is now the second most used browser largely due to the introduction of the iPhone and iPad. While I tried various browsers over the years Safari remained my primary browser and today is the only one I use for day-to-day browsing.
But their big app announcements for that day were not finished.
The other significant surprise of the day was the release a new presentation application: Keynote. This release seemed to further underscore Apple’s intention to become more self-reliant in it’s app offerings. As a user of the Appleworks suite of applications I was very excited at the new release as it filled a gap. Though we were unaware at the time it would prove to be the first of a new suite of applications that Apple would release over the next few years called iWork.
The app was originally designed as presentation software for Steve Jobs, Keynote originally retailed as a stand alone application for $99. Pages was added in 2005 and Numbers in 2007. While Microsoft continued to provide its Office apps, Keynote quickly became a favorite of Mac users due to the ease of use and quality of the presentation. I’ve used Keynote many times over the years and it’s been a pleasure to create presentations with it.
“Using Keynote is like having a professional graphics department to create your slides,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “This is the application to use when your presentation really counts.”
Keynote includes 12 Apple-designed themes featuring coordinated backgrounds, fonts, colors, bullets, tables and charts. Users can change the theme of their presentation any number of times, modify an existing theme to their liking, or create custom themes to give their presentations a totally unique look.
Freeform, the new kid on the Apple block In first use I immediately felt a comparison to Apple’s Pages, Keynote and Numbers would be in order as Freeform seems a natural companion to those apps. In fact, one of Apple’s own marketing images demonstrates a potential use of Freeform as a collection point for digital assets including Pages and Keynote documents. In this marketing image a Freeform document is being used to organize an issue of a school newspaper and contains various embedded documents including PDF, Pages, Keynote, web links and images. It’s clear that Apple intends Freeform to be used a collaborative collection point of not just ideas or process, but of project resources.
Like many others in the Apple ecosystem I’ve been using Pages, Numbers and Keynote for many years. In general, the formatting and style features are just a small subset of what’s available in the other Apple apps like Pages and Keynote. Given this is the first version of the app it’s not too surprising that there might be some missing options. Here’s a sample of what’s missing:
Cannot customize drop shadows or add them to shapes
No gradient fills
Text cannot contain a link
Oddly, without a hardware keyboard I can only style text at the block level. If I want to style text within a block (sentences, individual words, etc) I have to use a hardware keyboard.
While Pages, Keynote, and Numbers all have a standard, uniform UI for design and formatting tools, Freeform deviates from the other three in small ways that seem unnecessary. Why not stick to the same UI? Of particular note is the lack of a complete formatting palette. It’s possible that the more basic options are just the fact that it is a version 1 of the app.
Attached File Considerations It’s worth noting that attached files are not links to originals but are copies that are embedded. One can view them without editing and in this QuickLook mode copy text. In that mode there is a button to open the file in the native application but doing so will result in a duplicate document being created in that application’s file storage space. Edits can be made but are in the new document and are not copied back to the file being stored in Freeform. So, if multiple people are sharing in Freeform it’s worth mentioning that editing of embedded documents should be done carefully so as not to result in mix-ups of edits/document versions. Any time a user makes edits to the embedded original they’ll need to manually attach the new version to the Freeform document.
I should also note that I’ve not actually shared a Freeform document yet so I can’t say for certain what happens with embedded documents in that case. What I would hope for is that in any embedded document, particularly any embedded Pages, Keynote or Numbers document, iCloud sharing with participants would be automatic. That the embedded document would become a shared iCloud document. I doubt that’s the case currently but I’d hope for that in the future.
Will I use it? I tend to work with individual clients but I immediately thought of one use I’ll have with one client in particular. I manage his website as well as design promotional postcards and posters. Add to that various graphic and document designs during the year as needed. Typically he sends requests for edits, new pages, new documents via email or Messages. About a 50/50 mix and that’s always worked pretty well. Sometimes its just text, other times it’s a Pages document with text and images to be used. The main downside to using Messages is that over the course of a busy day or days, it can become a bit tricky following a thread of files intermixed with commentary about those files.
Freeform is going to be a great solution in this case. I’ve already created a new Freeform document. I’ve created 4 initial landing zones to keep it organized. I’ll add new sections when or if they are needed.
This client’s business is primarily based on Spring/Fall workshops so I’ve created a section for the upcoming schedule that get’s added to the events page of the website/postcard/poster.
A section to place his Pages documents for new or updated event pages.
A section for the links to the pages so that he can review previous year’s event pages as well as the new or updated pages before we make them live.
A section for miscellaneous documents such as the postcards, posters, etc.
I plan to use Sticky notes for commenting back and forth on the specific elements/documents/pages etc as needed. As changes are made we’ll both be able to view everything in one space. I’ll use a green check mark from the clip art gallery as an indicator that I think something is finished and if the client needs a new change he’ll either remove it or we’ll add in another clip art indicator that a revision is needed.
Hopes for future Aside from the above mentioned critiques and hoped for changes I would add the following:
Just as Apple Notes provides checkboxes I’d hope that we’ll get a checkbox list type. This seems like an obvious feature for an app designed to help people with project tracking and creation.
More Pencil options. Currently it works just as a drawing tool. As a drawing tool it would be good to have the ability to draw a square, arrow, triangle, etc and have the app straighten the lines into a perfect shape is it does in the Notes app. Also, have as an option to use the Pencil to select/drag to move objects.
Serif recently released the long anticipated major updates to its Affinity suite of creative apps bringing them up to version 2.0 and adding in a new Publisher app for the iPad bringing it up to full parity with the desktop app suites.
I’ve used Affinity Publisher for the iPad for a week during which time I’ve imported several of my regular, client projects, mostly, newsletters. And yesterday I just finished off a marketing one sheet and a newsletter. For the newsletter importing from the Mac version of Publisher 1 was easy, no issues. Importing from a pdf also worked very well with various images, text, shapes, etc mostly intact. Exporting the final pdf was fast and as expected. Exporting a Publisher package also went without a hitch with the expected folder of linked images, fonts, and the package file.
Publisher on the iPad works exactly as it does on the Mac with the exception that instead of the top level menu the iPad has the touch, optimized tools and what Affinity refers to as “Studios” on the right side of the window: Layers, Pages, Colors, Text, Stock Photos, Assets, Text Wrap, etc.
Using the “more space” option in the display settings on the 13 inch iPad Pro has the effect of making some of the touch points fairly small, even in full screen. Fine for using with a trackpad or Apple Pencil, but a little bit difficult with the fingers when, for example, selecting layers.
Somewhat surprising to myself is that I did most of the two projects yesterday in tablet mode using the Apple Pencil and my fingers to select text from documents provided by client to place or paste into the publisher document. It works very well and I am reminded why I enjoy using the iPad so much for this kind of work. It’s a very smooth and quick experience alternating between a pencil and fingers as needed to select, move, copy, drag and drop from Files, est. Oh, and notably, moving between pages, and using touch to zoom in and out of details on a page was super smooth just as it’s always been on the Photo and Designer apps by Affinity.
Looking forward to trying it out on an external display when 16.2 is released. I tried the trackpad a bit while importing and updating some of my other projects and it also works very well (as expected).
Not too much of a surprise for a new app there are a few issues. In my case I noticed a few font issues which others are also reporting. I also had a few app crashes though I’m using Stage Manager so it’s possible that might have been related. With the next project I’m going to use it without SM to compare. Oh, and the top toolbar is hampered by Apple’s 3 dot window dropdown widget which gets in the way of any button underneath it. Hoping I do find that 3 dot window widget useful but hope Apple increases the window chrome just a small bit at the top of windows because it’s something I accidentally tap far too often in many apps. Guessing I’m not alone there. So, not really an Affinity app specific problem.
All in all, I think Serif has done an excellent job and, with Publisher on iPad, my full workflow is now possible on that device. My Mac will be officially retired to file/media server backup. For Mac users I have no doubt that the 3 new Mac apps are all solid upgrades. And I expect Serif will be fairly reliable in releasing bug fixes for all the platforms as they’ve done so in the past. For a one-time purchase it’s a fantastic deal if you’re someone that needs these kinds of apps.
The Universal license provides access to all the V2 apps on all the operating systems: Mac, iPadOS and Windows is 40% off for a few weeks, only $100. A bonkers good deal!
A few months ago I posted about my switch from FileMaker Pro to Numbers for my client invoice tracking. It’s worked out very well. Recently upon opening the iFinance app where I track my banking I was greeted to a message that there was a new version available. The amount is not too much but my current version works fine and browsing through the changes I didn’t see anything new that I needed. But it brought to mind that it would mean that the current version wouldn’t be seeing any more updates. Not a problem for now but perhaps in the future with OS updates. So, I had a similar thought, why not try to move my banking to a Numbers spreadsheet?
My needs are pretty basic. I wanted to mimic iFinance. I exported each account to a CSV and imported into Numbers. Then I created a master account file and set-up multiple sheets, one each for the various accounts. So, for example, Cash, Apple Cash, bank, PayPal, credit card, etc. Each is a simple line-item ledger that keeps a balance along with the usual: date, description, payee, category and note if needed.
The table for cash on hand. Different accounts are visible in the top row of sheet tabs.
The first sheet, Account Overview, consists of a series of simple 1 row, 2 column tables each showing the balance of each account. At the top is a table that calculates the total balance of all the accounts. Last, I added a simple bar graph showing the total amount in each accounts.
The Account Overview shows the current balance of each account as well as a bar graph.
It’s fairly simple but works exactly as I hoped and only took a couple hours to create. I can open with any of my devices and I know that because it’s based on Apple’s own Numbers app, it’s likely to be supported for years to come.
I’m currently experimenting with a new host and may move this blog there at some point in the near future. The address for the experimental blog is: http://beardystarstuff.blot.im.
This current blog is hosted via WordPress and while it’s not a bad system it’s got a lot of accumulated cruft and posting can sometimes take longer than it should. I don’t need much of what WordPress offers. By comparison is Blot.im is lighter on code, fewer features, fewer options for themes but, frankly, wonderful. Once an account is set-up it’s simply a matter of dropping files into a folder on DropBox or Google Drive and they’re published. That’s it. Drag, drop, published. I’m using markdown but html also works. Any image can be dropped in and be published directly or added to a text post.
Blog.im requires DropBox or Google Drive for hosting files but beyond that the cost is only $4/month. Really, a fantastic deal. If you’re looking for a blog host, I recommend it. This is especially true if you’re starting from scratch with a new blog.
In regards to social media, I still have a Twitter account but I’m using it less and have been redirecting most of my attention and effort to a mix of Mastodon and Micro.blog.
“As a user, you appreciate that you’re not constantly accumulating clutter, you’re not cleaning things up, you’re not managing where things are, you just do what you want to do. And it’s there. And it’s, it’s all managed for you,” says Federighi on their approach to Stage Manager’s design. “It’s clean and focused. Traditional windowing environments are the opposite. They are mess making by default, everything you open contributes to clutter. Everything involves you having to kind of manage where things are and how things might cover each other up and so forth. And then you’re responsible for sort of cleaning up after yourself the whole time.”
I won’t be using it until the first public beta but the more I look at images and videos the more I think this is going to work out very well for those of us that use iPad Multitasking. There’s a lot being said at the moment about the M1 system requirement as well as certain aspects of how it’s currently implemented. I’m not sure I have much of an opinion just yet.
Been a week since WWDC 2022 and I’ve still not put together a proper post. For now I’ll just say, while I’ve been very happy with iPadOS as it is, I’m also excited about Stage Manager and extended desktop support coming in iPadOS 16.
I began using FileMaker around 2001. I developed a handful of databases for clients but in recent years I’ve just been using it for my invoicing system and for personal projects. This past fall it occurred to me that it might be time to move on. I was thinking in terms of future updates, cost, simplicity and easier access to data from multiple devices. So I started looking around at possible small database apps as well as the possibility of using Apple’s Numbers app.
I’ve been a long-time user of Apple’s iWork apps and honestly, I love them. Pages is the one I’ve used the most but I’ve also spent a good bit of time in Numbers and have really enjoyed using it. Could Numbers replace FileMaker for my invoicing? It’s not something I’d ever considered as FileMaker is ideally suited to this purpose and my FileMaker invoicing is a database I’ve been using and evolving for over a 15 years. It’s perfect for me and works well on my iPad with FileMaker Go. Why in the world would I ever switch to Numbers? It’s not really the best app for this kind of task.
FileMaker, while a fantastic app, is really more than I need. It’s expensive (for what I do with it) and new versions of the desktop development versions as well as mobile versions are released fairly often. But I don’t actively work on FileMaker projects for clients these days and my only use in-house use is invoicing. And while my slightly out-of-date versions of the mobile and Mac apps get the job done I don’t know when they won’t be supported on my devices in the future. Even now, I’ve recently switched to the M1 Mac Mini and I’m not sure the version I have will run natively. I haven’t even installed it on the new Mac. I have not opened it on the 2012 Mac Mini in a year or so. On the iPad, where I use it the most, I’m at least one version behind. Various reviews of the most recent version of FileMaker Go for iPad indicate that it’s buggy so I’m not interested in updating.
Not only is there the cost factor, there’s also the simple fact that I don’t need the growing power and complexity of FileMaker. My invoicing needs are fairly minimal and in recent years it’s largely remained the same with the exception of a few visual design changes I made a couple of years ago. With FileMaker, a database, especially a multi-table database, can begin to feel like an app in and of itself. Thanks to the power and flexibility of FileMaker, it really is an app to develop systems that begin to resemble applications themselves with a multitude of layouts and interfaces.
I briefly considered a few database options such as Airtable and Tap Forms but decided to try Numbers first. My reasoning was that Numbers likely has a stable development future and comes free with every Apple device. It’s an app I’m familiar with and, though a spreadsheet application rather than a database app, I expected it would be enough for my needs.
Simplicity in use is another aspect of what I was considering in this move. With a switch to Numbers I am getting seamless sync between devices. With FileMaker I was using FileMaker Go on the iPad most of the time and just copying that over to the Mac as a back-up or to make changes to the design of the database where the Mac is a requirement. iCloud makes copying unnecessary and all changes can be done on the iPad, Mac or iPhone for that matter.
So, with the intent of exploring Numbers as an alternative to FMP for invoicing I began to tinker. My first effort resulted in a sort of dashboard file with two tables. One table was to record line items date, client, description and time worked. The second sheet would be an overview of invoices with totals and paid status. Then, each client would then get their own, separate Numbers file, each new invoice would just be a new sheet with the date for that invoice. So, I’d have an Invoices folder with Invoice Dashboard.numbers and then ClientName.numbers for each clients invoices. When it was time to send an invoice I’d do a quick filter for client name to get all of the unpaid time slips for that client, copy the rows then paste into a duplicated invoice sheet for that client. One benefit to this would be that if, at any point, I wanted to have a quick view of a particular client’s invoices they would all be accessible in that one file, organized by date in individual sheets.
I think the above method would have worked fine but before I could really test it I came across a macmost.com tutorial on creating a single file numbers invoice and that seemed a better way to go. I downloaded the sample file and began making a few customizations. I concluded this method would be a better solution. It consists of three sheets, each with it’s own table. The first sheet is for adding clients and their contact info. The second is for line items/consultations, I just add the client ID then the date, description, rate time. The third sheet is the invoice. After watching the video a couple times I think I have a pretty good idea about how some of the more complex features work and I see the logic of setting it up this way. With this method the “Invoice” sheet is an invoice template that uses the Lookup function and present the data for the client ID number provided. All of the associated/related line items for that client that are not marked with a paid date will appear in the invoice. Then I just export the invoice as a pdf to email. Once an invoice is paid the date is added to the paid cell for each of the line items in that sheet.
Clients Sheet
Consultations/Line Items
Invoice PDF Template
After four months of use I think this will work well as a long-term replacement for FileMaker.
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As a follow-up, part two of this story, a couple of months after I transitioned to this new system, one of my website/design clients asked me for advice on setting up a system for tracking/creating invoices and various other bits of data for his retreat which provides courses, lodging, etc. I’d just assumed he had a proper system in place as he’s been running his business for 20ish years. No, not so much. He’s gotten by with a patchwork reservation/invoicing system but concluded that it was more work than it needed to be. We went over the various options and I explained my recent transition from FileMaker to Numbers.
Within a day or two I further modified my invoice system with new features and sheets to cover his more complicated needs. What I’ve learned is that Numbers is far more capable than I ever realized. Over several years of casual use I’d gotten a lot out of it but I knew I was just scratching the surface of what could be done with this app and now I’ve gotten yet another glimpse of what’s possible.
Obviously, Numbers is not FileMaker Pro, it’s not a relational database and there are limits. But I find it is very enjoyable to use, fairly easy to learn as I go
