Category: Apple

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.

waiting for my iPhone SE

I will hopefully have my new iPhone SE tomorrow.

Figuring out the logistics of getting this phone has been a bit of a task. When I ordered it from Apple, in-store pickup would have been easiest for me, but wasn’t an option. Next-day shipping was free, but they didn’t say which carrier they’d use. It turns out they’re using UPS, which complicates things a bit for me.

There was an option (via Apple) to waive the signature requirement. If I did that, then UPS would probably have left the phone for me today, and I’d probably have it. But there would have been a non-trivial chance that someone would have stolen it, and waiving the signature requirement means Apple and UPS take no responsibility for that. So I kept the signature requirement.

Once I got the e-mail with the tracking number, I was hoping I could tell UPS to hold the package at their office in Bound Brook, so I could just pick it up. But you can’t do that with just a tracking #, unless you’re in their “My Choice” program. Which I can’t get into, since they think my address is commercial and not residential. I spent some time on the phone with them last year trying to straighten that out, but didn’t really get anywhere. And I checked last night, and the issue still hasn’t been fixed.

So I had to wait for them to make a delivery attempt and leave an info notice. Which they did today. With the info notice number, I can have them hold the package at their office. So I did that, and I can probably pick it up tomorrow. Of course, the office is only open from 8:30am to 6pm, so if I want to pick it up in the morning, I need to come into work late. And if I want to pick it up after work, I might not make it in time, if traffic is bad. Maybe I’ll go over on my lunch break. (And they’re not open on the weekend, so if I don’t get it tomorrow, I’ll have to wait until Monday.)

It’s kind of funny how many hoops I have to jump through just to get this package. But hopefully it’ll be worth it!

iPhone SE

I ordered myself an iPhone SE today to replace my old iPhone 5S. I ordered it from Apple (rather than Verizon), for no particular reason other than that the Apple Store website is nicer than Verizon’s.

It should show up at my home on 3/31, but it might turn into one of those things where the FedEx or UPS guy won’t leave it without a signature, and I have to go pick it up, in which case I probably won’t get it until 4/2. (I was hoping I could choose in-store pickup, but that’s not available yet.)

The iPhone SE is pretty much exactly what I want: a new phone that’s exactly like my old phone, only with a new battery, more memory (64GB instead of 32GB), Apple Pay, and a few other minor bells and whistles. I don’t want a bigger screen or that fancy 3D touch stuff. Heck, it should even fit in my old case (though I might buy a new case anyway.) And it’s been getting good reviews.

I’m planning on trading in my old iPhone, but I’m not sure whether I’ll go with Gazelle or Apple. It looks like Gazelle will give me $85 for it, while Apple might give me $150. Either of which is pretty good. (Verizon was only going to give me $15.)

I’m paying for the new phone at full price ($500), which is the first time I’ve done that, I think. Buying it on contract is apparently still an option for me. It would have cost only $50 that way, but my monthly bill would have gone up $20, so doing the math on that over two years, it would be slightly more expensive than buying the phone outright.

I keep thinking about leaving Verizon for another carrier, but I decided against that. My only real complaint about Verizon right now is that I’d like more than 3GB of data per month, or at least to be able to roll over unused data. But with more memory on the new phone, I can download more music to it, so maybe I won’t feel as tempted to use up all my data on streaming music, which is my usual problem.

Mac ransomware

I panicked a bit when I read about the ransomware that was attached to a recent version of Transmission, a Mac BitTorrent client. Thankfully, I hadn’t updated (or even launched) Transmission on my Mac in a while, so I’m not affected. I only use BitTorrent occasionally, usually to download a Linux ISO or books/comics from a Humble Bundle.

After realizing that I wasn’t affected, and calming down a bit, I started thinking about what I can do to prevent being affected by one of these things, both on my Mac and my PCs. Ransomware is a big problem, and has affected many individuals, companies, and even hospitals. As long as even a handful of people pay up, the bad guys will keep putting this horrible stuff out there.

For this specific Mac issue, there’s really not much I would have been able to do to prevent it. It wouldn’t have been detected by any Mac malware scanner initially, and it was signed by a valid Apple developer key. Transmission is an above-board, well-respected open source program that’s used by many people, so it’s not like I was using some sketchy adware-infested BitTorrent client.

Probably the worst-case scenario here would have been if the ransomware had scrambled all the stuff I had on OneDrive, and then the contents had replicated from my Mac to my two PCs. (And let’s also assume that the ransomware had scrambled my Time Machine backups too.) That could have left me with a lot of lost files. I should probably figure out a good way to make offline backups of my OneDrive files on a regular basis. (I miss the days when I could back up all my key files to a single 100 MB Zip disk.) And this also reminds me that I haven’t done a full backup of my new desktop PC yet.

Day One 2

I’ve mentioned Day One before on this blog. I bought the iOS version in December 2014, when it was on sale. Then, I bought the Mac version in December 2015 (again, when it was on sale). I really didn’t use the iOS version at all in 2015, other than to play around with it a little. But, after buying the Mac version, I’ve started to use it regularly over the last month. I’m not doing anything really amazing with it; just jotting down some random notes and thoughts. I still use Evernote for all my organized note-taking, reminders, and GTD stuff.

Well, of course, now that I’ve paid for iOS and Mac versions, and started using them regularly, they’ve gone and released Day One 2, which is a new app for iOS and Mac, and has no free or paid upgrades from the old version. But they are offering both for 50% off this week: $5 for the iOS app and $20 for the Mac app.

MacStories has a review of the new version. Most of the currently-implemented new features aren’t useful for me: multiple journals, multiple photos in a single journal entry, and stuff like that. But some of the stuff that they’re planning on implementing soon could be interesting, specifically IFTTT support. There are currently a few ways to hook up Day One to IFTTT, but they’re a bit kludgey.

And one slightly alarming new “feature” is that the only supported sync method is Day One’s own sync service. They no longer support storing your journal in Dropbox or iCloud. I completely understand that storing everyone’s journals on their servers is the only way to implement good IFTTT support or (for instance) a web client. But there currently isn’t much information available about how secure their sync service is. (In their blog post, they say “Day One Sync is comparable security-wise with iCloud and Dropbox,” but they don’t elaborate on that at all.) They have private-key encryption on their roadmap, but no target date for it. So about the only thing we know for sure at this point about their security is that there currently isn’t any private-key encryption.

Personally, I haven’t written anything important or incriminating in my Day One journal. Mostly, it’s stuff like “just got my oil changed” or “started reading The Windup Girl today”. But I’m sure a lot of people have private information in there that they’d like to keep secure, and I think Day One needs to make more information public about how they’re storing people’s data.

Having said all that, there’s a fair chance I’ll spend the $25 to get the new version for Mac and iOS both. It’s pretty good software, and I’ve been using the old version pretty consistently over the last few weeks.

random stuff

I noticed in my “On This Day” sidebar that I’ve written a lot of blog posts on January 20th. I’m not sure why, but I feel like I should keep up the trend and write one today too.

But I have nothing in particular to write about, so I’ll just dump some random stuff out of my head. Which will probably be helpful to me, but maybe not to anyone else.

First, I have a cold, I think. And, whatever it is, it’s been hanging in there since Christmas. I keep thinking it’s just about gone, then it comes back. I’m quite frequently sick at this time of the year, so I shouldn’t really be surprised. All this ridiculously cold weather this week isn’t helping either, and we’re getting ready for a possibly major snowstorm this weekend. I’d really like to take off for a week or three and go to Florida, or San Diego, or anyplace warm, really.

After several months of not touching any novels or non-fiction books, and reading only short form stuff and comics, I’m back on a long-form book kick. I’m currently reading Thunderer by Felix Gilman and First Things First by Stephen Covey. I’m enjoying the Gilman book enough that it’s putting me in the mood to read more stuff like it. Maybe some China Miéville or Paolo Bacigalupi. (I honestly don’t know enough about either of those guys to know if it actually makes sense to group them together with Gilman, but for some reason, I think it does.)

On an unrelated subject, I stumbled across a great article on MacDrifter today about Drafts. I’m using Drafts a lot now, much more than I used to, but I’m still not really using it to its full potential. Of course, I don’t really use my iPhone or iPad for writing much; I stick with a “real” computer for that. But Drafts is great for some stuff, including quickly dumping notes into Evernote. It’s just faster and easier than opening up the Evernote client itself, which is a great app, but kind of slow to start. Drafts opens quickly and lets you start typing right away.

I’ve also noticed that Things for Mac is on sale for $25 right now. I own the iOS version, which I bought a while back when it was on sale, and I tried the Mac version, but I couldn’t talk myself into using it regularly. I might go ahead and pay for the Mac version, and give it another try. I’m keeping track of stuff largely in Evernote these days, but it might be a good idea to use something more structured for some stuff.

Tomorrow will be my three-year anniversary at SHI. I don’t have too much to say about that, other than that it’s been a pretty stable job, without a lot of drama or stress, and I seem to be doing well there, based on my performance reviews. I’m occasionally tempted to shake things up and find something new and interesting, but for now, I’m content with what I’ve got.

Apple TV follow-up

I used my new Apple TV to watch a few older Doctor Who Christmas specials last night, and to watch the new one today, so I thought I’d post a follow-up to my last post about it. I have to say that finding individual episodes of Doctor Who through the Apple TV interface is pretty frustrating. I had hoped that Siri would help, but asking for “Doctor Who Christmas episodes” just gets me the standard “I don’t understand” answer. And even giving the specific episode title doesn’t help. It just doesn’t seem to be very good at exactly the one thing it should be really good at: finding already-purchased iTunes video content in the user’s library.  It can tell me the weather, or what time it is, which is nice, but I could just look at my phone for that. Well, anyway the new Doctor Who special was pretty good, and certainly worth the $5 I paid for it.

Oh, and I’ve stumbled across one interesting app: Pluto TV. It’s a service airing a number of channels, including one that’s showing MST3K 24/7, apparently.

Apple TV 2015

A friend bought me a new Apple TV for Christmas this year. I was perfectly happy with my old Apple TV box (the previous generation), so I wouldn’t have gone out and bought myself a new one. But it’s a cool new toy, so I’ve been playing around with it. (My friend also bought me a Nimbus game controller, which is kind of nifty, but I haven’t done anything with it yet.)

My main use for the Apple TV has always been to watch iTunes content, specifically Doctor Who. I don’t get BBC America, so I buy Doctor Who from iTunes and watch it through the Apple TV box, usually. For that simple use case, the new Apple TV might actually be a little less convenient than the old one. I’ve found the interface for browsing through purchased content is usable, but slightly less convenient than the old interface.

The new remote is interesting, but so far I don’t find the touch surface to be any more useful than just having buttons like on the old remote. The Siri functionality works well, though I feel weird talking to my remote, and I’m not sure how often I’ll use it. And I’m also not sure how I feel about having a rechargeable battery in it; it’s a nice idea, and maybe necessary to support the touch surface, but I’m wondering how often I’m going to have to recharge it. (And I’m wondering how long before it wears out, since it doesn’t appear to be user-replaceable.) With the old remote, I just had to stick a new watch battery in it once every couple of years.

The app store is a good thing, and I hope to see some interesting apps show up there, but so far, there’s not much I’m interested in, aside from stuff that was already available on the old Apple TV. The Netflix app is fine, and there are apps for the usual networks, like PBS, Disney, Comedy Central, and so on. I did use the Disney XD app yesterday to binge on a bunch of Gravity Falls episodes, and it worked well.

I haven’t tried playing any games on it yet, but I’ll get around to that eventually. I hear that Alto’s Adventure is pretty good, so maybe I’ll pick that up.

Sleep

I’ve decided recently to try to work on my sleep. It sounds weird saying that. Sleep doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you can “work on.” I have trouble sleeping occasionally, and I know there are some things I can improve. I’ve read a lot about good sleep habits, and the best things you can do to help get a good night’s sleep. And I’ve already done some of them. I use f.lux on my Mac (and my PCs) to tone down the color on my screen before bedtime. I try to limit my caffeine intake in the afternoon and evening. And I generally go to bed at 10pm and get up at 6am, so I’m in bed for a full eight hours. (Though I’m not always perfect about that. Or the caffeine thing…)

I decided this weekend to make one more change: I started to use an alarm clock app called Sleep Cycle that (supposedly) tracks your sleep so that it can wake you up while you’re in a light sleep phase. I have to admit that I’m a little skeptical about how accurately it can track my sleep; it uses the microphone to pick up the noises you make in bed, and tries to figure out your sleep cycle based on just that. So I’m not sure if it’s really doing anything useful or not. But I’m going to give it a try for a week or two at least. The basic version is free, so there’s no real down side. (Unless it turns out to be buggy, and just doesn’t wake me up at all, and I miss work.) Their FAQ says that it takes a few days to calibrate itself, so we’ll see how it goes.

On another front, I’m starting to think about buying a new mattress. My current mattress is about ten years old, so it’s time. I did a little online mattress shopping this weekend, though, and came away more confused than anything else. There are a lot of options and a lot of opinions out there. I may give up and just go back to Sleepy’s, where I got my last mattress, show them the receipt for it, ask for something similar, and hope for the best.