Category: Apple

cTiVo follow-up

When I got home from work today, the three movies I’d queued up to transfer from my TiVo and re-encode were all on my hard drive, apparently fully transferred. I started the process at around 7:30 am, I think, and it looks like it finished up just after 11 am, so I guess that’s not too bad for three long movies. I think the bulk of the time is the encoding process, not the actual transfer, though I’m not sure about that. I set it to encode for viewing on the Apple TV, which seemed like a good idea. There are a bunch of other settings, but I didn’t spend much time trying to figure them out.

So, bottom line, I think cTiVo is probably a pretty good tool for getting stuff off the TiVo, whenever I want to do that.

I had actually wanted to finish watching Stray Dog tonight, but there was a “Girls Night Out” event going on in Somerville tonight, and apparently “girls” like loud, blaring dance music, so quietly watching a foreign movie wasn’t really in the cards. Instead, I took a walk to the mall and grabbed a burger. Then, when I got back and found that the loud music was still going on, I watched an episode of The Flash with my headphones on, cranked up loud enough to drown out Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies.”

cTiVo

When I got my TiVo Bolt, I spent a little bit of time figuring out how I could offload shows from the TiVo to one of my computers. There used to be an official program from TiVo, but they discontinued that several years ago. I’d heard a bit about cTiVo for the Mac and PyTiVo for Mac/PC/Linux, but after taking a quick look, I decided that they were both probably too complicated to deal with at the time.

Back in March, TCM had a little Kurosawa marathon, and I recorded five movies from that. And, of course, then I just left them on the TiVo and never got around to watching them. This week, they started showing in the “going away soon” list, so I decided I should watch them, and maybe also look into offloading them from the TiVo.

So I went and looked into cTiVo again. It turns out that it’s actually really easy to install it and connect it to your TiVo. I’m having mixed success with it though. I set it to transfer Stray Dog and Seven Samurai last night. It copied Seven Samurai fine, but it only copied the first hour of Stray Dog for some reason. So I’m transferring Stray Dog again. It’s taking quite a long time to transfer and encode files, and I’m a little unclear as to whether it’s the transferring and/or the encoding that’s the issue. Well, either way, I’m going to leave it transferring some stuff while I’m at work, and see what it looks like after I get home.

yet more Apple Watch stuff

I know I’ve written too many posts on the Apple Watch recently, but here’s one more, with a few links and random notes.

First, my watch suggested a new “move” goal, as expected, this morning. So now my goal is 450 calories instead of 560. I actually did hit 560 yesterday (Sunday). I was in NYC and did a lot of walking. But I don’t think I’d ever come close to that on a normal day. The new goal is a bit closer to reasonable. I got to 400 calories today, and could have gotten more if I wasn’t tired all day. (I don’t think I slept too well last night.)

I haven’t paid too much attention to the link between the phone and the watch. I know it normally uses Bluetooth, but can also use wifi. I usually have my phone close at hand, so it’s not a problem. But today I was unexpectedly called into a meeting, and left my phone at my desk. I was surprised to see that the watch was still connected to the phone, via Bluetooth. The conference room isn’t too far from my cubicle, but I wouldn’t have thought it was in Bluetooth range. But I guess it is. So that’s a plus, if I get called into a meeting again and don’t bring my phone.

I’m still stumbling across some interesting “one year with the Apple Watch” posts, including this one from M.G. Siegler and a lengthy write-up from Ars Technica.

I’m also seeing more speculation about the next Apple Watch. I’m not sure what’s actually going to happen with that. I’ve seen some reports that the next watch will be thinner, and that’s about it. And others that say they’ll add a cellular radio. And I’ve seen speculation that it might come out in the fall, or that it might not appear until early next year. So who knows what’s going to happen there. Regardless of what they do, I doubt I’ll trade mine in any time soon. A thinner watch would be nice, but not necessary, and a cellular radio would probably mean one more monthly device charge on my Verizon account.

a little more on Apple Watch

Yeah, I know I should probably stop blogging about the Apple Watch for a while, but I stumbled across a couple of interesting links.

MacRumors reported this week on a change in Apple’s policy on developing Watch apps. I’m not sure if this will lead to better apps in the short term, but it’s interesting. And I’m curious about what Watch-related news will come out of WWDC in June. (Maybe a second-generation watch.)

And Casey Liss wrote a good blog post recently about his continuing use of his Apple Watch. I’m curious about how many people who bought a watch at the launch, a year ago, are still actively using it. Looking at eBay, watch prices are still pretty high, with the lowest-end Sport Watch still going for about $200 used, minimum.

Apple Watch follow-up

I’m just about at the end of my first week with an Apple Watch, so I thought I’d post a few thoughts.

First off, of course, Best Buy has the Apple Watch on sale this weekend. The 42mm stainless steel watch with sport band is $200 off, bringing it down to $399, which is only $50 more than I paid for my aluminum 42mm Sport. But that’s fine, since I don’t really care whether I have the aluminum or stainless steel, and I wouldn’t have been able to use my Apple Store gift card at Best Buy. But, all other things being equal, if I hadn’t had that gift card, and if I hadn’t bought the aluminum watch last weekend, I’d be tempted to get the stainless steel one this weekend.

The weather has been great this week, so I’ve been doing a lot of walking, and keeping track of that with the Activity app and Workout app. The Activity app is kind of fun. I’ve hit my 30-minute exercise goal, and the “stand” goal, every day, no problem. The “move” goal, though, got set at 560 calories, and I never hit that number. Maybe 400, tops. I think the watch is supposed to suggest tweaking that number after a week of use, and I imagine it will suggest lowering it. So we’ll see what happens there. Either way, I’m not one of those people who feels like I’ve failed if I don’t hit some arbitrary goal, so it’s fine.

I haven’t found any third-party apps for the watch that are terribly exciting. I’m using Dark Sky and Fantastical, but I haven’t found them to be that much better than the stock weather and calendar apps. I’ve also installed Drafts and Evernote. The Drafts app is basically useful for capturing a quick note via dictation. And the Evernote app allows you to do that too, and is good for taking a quick look at recent notes.

I’ve found that the watch affects my iPhone battery life a bit. If I still had my 5s, I think the watch would have just killed it, given how far gone the battery was on that. With the new SE, I’m a lot better off, but the watch is clearly draining 10-20% of the iPhone battery every day. The fact that I’ve just been fiddling with the watch and the phone so much this week may be contributing to that too. Once I settle down and stop fiddling with things all the time, maybe it won’t be that bad.

I’m still getting used to the effort required to get the sport strap on every morning. It’s still kind of awkward. Once it’s on, though, it’s very comfortable and it fits well. It’s definitely more comfortable than the Swatch Sistem51 that I’d been wearing previously.

I’m using the Modular watch face. It’s easy to read both the time and date, and I’ve added complications for Fantastical (in the large middle area), Dark Sky, Activity, and sunrise/sunset. I think that’ll work well for normal day-to-day use. I might switch to something more fanciful, like Astronomy, on weekends.

One thing I was a little worried about is that people would notice it, and I would get comments. (And that would make me feel awkward, because I’m the kind of guy that feels awkward when people talk to me…) But apparently it’s either common enough now that it’s unremarkable, or maybe the black watch with black strap doesn’t really call attention to itself. (Maybe I should have gotten a neon green strap.) I do notice other people’s watches, and I haven’t really seen a lot of people with Apple Watches, or any kind of smartwatch, so I don’t think it’s that common, but it has been around for a year now, so it’s not really new.

So, overall, I’d say that it’s more comfortable and useful than the Swatch that I’ve been wearing recently. And I can read the date on it without taking off my glasses and squinting. Of course, it requires more “care and feeding” than the Swatch, and it’s a good bit more expensive. And, given that the battery isn’t user-replaceable, it won’t last as long as the Swatch. But it’s fun, and it’s useful, and I’m pretty sure I’ll keep wearing it every day for the foreseeable future.

Apple Watch

So I gave in and bought an Apple Watch today. Specifically, I bought the larger Sport Watch, so it cost $350, minus the $150 gift card that I had. I took a walk to the mall today, since it was such a nice day, and talked myself into trying one on at the Apple Store. So I did that. Then, somehow, I got sucked into the Apple Store reality distortion field and actually bought one.

My first impression is that the Sport band is weird, and I’m not sure I’m going to get used to it. It’s a little hard to put on; you have to tuck one end under the other, and it’s a little tricky to get it done right. But hopefully it’ll get easier as the band gets broken in and I get used to it. There’s a good review on the Sport band at iMore. I’m also hoping I don’t turn out to be allergic to the material the band is made of. (If that’s an issue, I’ll probably find out soon, since I plan on wearing the watch for the rest of the day.)

In terms of functionality, I’m not sure what use I’ll really get out of it, other than the obvious one: telling me what time it is. I did just get a notice on it that it’s time for me to stand up and move around a bit, so maybe that’ll turn out to be a helpful feature.

thinking about Apple Watch

Trading in my old iPhone 5s got me a $150 Apple Store gift card. (And apparently Apple got $40 million in gold. Though I guess not just from my iPhone.)

The Apple Store has a limited product selection, so I’m not sure what to do with my $150. I’ve thought about applying $100 to getting AppleCare+ for my new phone. But I’m not a big fan of AppleCare; I’ve never been in a position in the past where I needed service on an Apple product, and AppleCare would have paid for it, if I had it. When stuff goes wrong, it’s usually either before the standard warranty expires, or well after the extended warranty would have expired.

I also thought maybe I could buy a year of Office 365 to extend my subscription, but they only sell the “personal” single-machine version, not the Home version that I use.

So I’m also thinking about maybe buying an Apple Watch. The watch has been out for about a year now, and there have been a few articles looking at how it’s done over that first year, including this one from the NY Times and another on Hodinkee. There was also an interesting thread on Reddit recently.

My $150 would get me halfway to the $300 price for an Apple Watch, so that makes the watch seem a bit more reasonable to me. I still like my Swatch Sistem51, but an Apple Watch might be kind of fun.

(Update: Apple probably didn’t get $40 million in gold from recycled iPhones.)

TextExpander revisited

Since my previous post about TextExpander, they’ve revised their plans a bit. They’re going to keep the current (non-subscription) version around for a while, and they’ve changed the upgrade pricing so that, if you switch to a subscription, you get a lifetime 50% discount instead of just a one-year discount. So that’s pretty cool, but, at this point, I’ve set up all of my snippets in LaunchBar, and they’re working out OK, so I’ll probably drop TextExpander anyway.

There is an interesting blog post about TextExpander, and subscription software in general, at MacDrifter, from before the announced change. It’s got a lot of good info and links in it.

One of the reasons why I was thinking about moving away from TextExpander anyway is the way it handles “secure input” fields. Basically, whenever you’re in a secure input field, TextExpander can’t see what you’re typing, so it can’t expand anything. Which makes sense, and isn’t their fault. But they insist on popping up a notification telling you that, every time you’re in a secure input field. So that’s a bit distracting, and sometimes gets in the way of something that’s behind the notification. And there’s no option to turn off these notifications.

With LaunchBar, you’re not really doing general-purpose text expansion; you need to hit the special key combo to bring up LaunchBar any time you want to expand a snippet. So that’s a bit of a limitation, but it’s also an advantage, since that key combo works wherever you are, so there’s no issue with secure input fields. So I’m probably going to stick with LaunchBar for snippet expansion and give up on TextExpander.

TextExpander subscriptions and related software

I just read the news about TextExpander’s new subscription model. I use TextExpander on my Mac and my iOS devices, and I think it’s good software, but I can’t really see spending $5 per month to keep using it. (Technically, $2 per month for the first year, with their upgrade pricing for current users. But only for the first year.) They have said, in a follow-up blog post, that the old version will keep working for a while longer, so I don’t need to be in a hurry to switch to something else, but I’ll need to switch to something else eventually.

I’m a little worried, as I’ve seen a number of other software vendors take tentative steps toward switching to a subscription model. In many cases, a big part of this is switching from using iCloud or Dropbox for syncing, to a proprietary sync model. That, in itself, is a little worrying too. With Dropbox or iCloud, I have local access to my data, and have it automatically backed up to a reliable cloud provider.

Day One 2 switched from using Dropbox or iCloud to using their own sync service. But they haven’t switched to subscription pricing. (The new version required a new purchase, though, on both Mac and iOS.) The nice thing about the new sync service is that they can offer stuff like IFTTT integration and (at some point) a web front-end. I’m using Day One on a semi-regular basis now, but if they switch to a subscription model, I’ll probably just switch over to using Evernote for journaling, since I’m already paying for Evernote. (Speaking of Evernote, I don’t mind paying for that. I’m getting a lot of use out of it.)

1Password has also started moving towards proprietary sync and subscription pricing, introducing a team plan last year, and a family plan this year. I’m still using the regular single-user version on iOS, Mac, and Windows, and I’m fine with that, and hoping that they don’t move to a subscription model. But, if they do, there’s a fair chance I’d pay for it, since it’s such a valuable piece of software.

Getting back to TextExpander, I’ve been looking at alternatives. On Windows, I use AutoHotKey, which is free open-source software. I’ve been using that for a long time, and I’m really happy with it, so I don’t need to make any change there.

On iOS, I do use TextExpander, but I really don’t get much value out of it. iOS doesn’t really allow an app to grab all the keyboard input on the phone, for obvious reasons, so TextExpander on iOS has to rely on two mechanisms: (1) built-in support for it in certain apps, and (2) a custom TextExpander keyboard. The app support is good, but it’s not in enough apps. (Specifically, Evernote and the Apple Mail app don’t have it.) And the custom keyboard is useful, but it’s missing a lot of capabilities of the regular system keyboard, so I don’t want to use it full time, and it’s a bit of an inconvenience to switch back and forth between keyboards. So, really, I think I can drop TextExpander on iOS and just not bother with text expansion, outside of what I can do with the built-in iOS text expansion.

On the Mac, I do get a good bit of use out of TextExpander. But there are a number of alternatives to it. In particular, I’m thinking about switching to LaunchBar snippets. I’ve already paid for LaunchBar, and I know I’m not using more than maybe 20% of its capabilities, so I’m going to look into it.

Also, this blog post from Craig Pearlman goes over some of the same ground I’ve covered here, and mentions Typinator as a possible alternative. I wasn’t familiar with Typinator, but it looks like it might be a good alternative.

my new iPhone SE

I successfully picked up my new iPhone SE from UPS yesterday. Weirdly enough, everything went smoothly with that. (I have a history of problems with this sort of thing…) I used these instructions to transfer everything from the old phone to the new one, and again everything went smoothly.

So now I have a phone that looks almost identical to my old phone, only with better battery life, more memory, and a few other improvements.

I’m now working on getting the old phone ready for trade-in. It took three tries, but I finally managed to get through the process on the BrightStar site, Apple’s partner that handles trade-ins. (They really don’t have the whole usability thing figured out.) I just need to wipe it and pack it up now, and I should get $150 for it. That $150 will be Apple Store credit, though, so I’m not sure what I’ll do with that. It would be enough to pay for half an Apple Watch, though I’m still not convinced I need one of those.