512 Pixels

Tamara Warren:

“If it wasn’t for Back to the Future, would we recognize the DeLorean DMC-12? In the first film, the DeLorean’s acceleration to the magic speed of 88 miles per hour marks the moment when everything changes: Marty McFly and Doc Brown leave 1985 and land in October 21st, 2015 for the sequel’s opening scenes in the future, where we find ourselves today.

In its time, the DeLorean Motor Company was an epic failure, but its sole enduring product has earned more pop cultural cachet than any other vehicular flop of the 20th century. Out-of-business automakers Packard, Tucker, and Studebaker have nothing on the DeLorean brand power. History is made from these instances of perfect timing — and perhaps the DeLorean’s offbeat resonance had something to do with a car stumbling upon its time.”

Happy Back to the Future Day!

Don’t forget this step:

Start up from the Software Restore disc or use the Extensions Manager control panel to start up the computer with the Mac OS All 9.x extensions set. If OK, troubleshoot extensions. If the pointer doesn’t move, replace the mouse.

Myke is on a plane, so it was just me and Ticci this week:

This week, Stephen and Federico talk about iWork, Notes and HomeKit before being greeted by Federico’s plumber.

Come for the show, stay for the creepy image in the show notes.

My thanks to these sponsors:

• PDFpen 7, from Smile: The ultimate, all-purpose PDF editor.
• lynda.com: An easy and affordable way to help individuals and organizations learn. Free 10-day trial.
• The Freelancer’s Guide to Escaping Taxes, by Andrew Carroll

I’ve used Apple keyboards for as long as I’ve had a Mac. While I never owned one of 2000’s Apple Pro Keyboards when it was new, the keys felt way better to me than the keyboards that shipped with the iMac G3 family of machines. The 108-key keyboard shipped in both black and white, and featured a foot that could adjust the height of the keyboard.

It looked super cool in black with the G4 Cube:

The next keyboard was released in 2003 alongside the eMac and shipped more famously with the iMac G4. It only came in white, and lacked the adjustable foot from the previous model. In its place, Apple put a large slab of clear plastic that would show off the little bits of junk that would work their way into the keyboard over years of usage. I used one of these in college, but never fell in love with it, mostly due to the height and pitch of the keyboard. A subsequent wireless model didn’t address these issues, however.

In 2007, alongside the first aluminum-clad iMacs, Apple released its first aluminum keyboard. With a low profile and low-travel keys, I quickly became a fan, despite my love-affair with the Apple Extended II keyboard that ended after an operation on my elbow made it uncomfortable to use.

The Magic Keyboard is the smallest change we’ve seen between keyboard generations in a long time, and that’s okay by me.

As you’ve no doubt read by now, all three of Apple’s new input devices use Bluetooth and charge via Lightning port. They can also be paired with a Lightning cable, bypassing OS X’s clunky Bluetooth Setup Assistant. Plug a new keyboard in and boom it’s paired instantly. I can’t believe we used to pair things manually.

Equally old-fashioned is the pile of dead AA batteries left in the wake of the old Bluetooth keyboard. Having an internal, rechargeable battery makes a ton of sense.

I do wish the thing had a backlight. I assume that didn’t make it due height and power constraints, so I’ll keep holding to that hope for the next keyboard.

The body is slightly smaller than the old keyboard, taking up less space on the desk. I like to have my mouse as close to the keyboard as possible, so any saved width is welcome here. I ditched keyboards with numberpads years ago for this exact reason.

More importantly, the new keyboard is both shorter and flatter now. This means I don’t have to hover my hands as high to type comfortably, which is a win for my wrists.

The keycaps are a little bit larger than last time around, and with noticeably less travel. Word on the street is that these keys have 1 mm of travel. That’s not as extreme as the keyboard found on the 12-inch MacBook with Retina display, but it’s inching in that direction big time.

The traditional scissor mechanism under each key are still there; the butterfly subframe from the MacBook is still relegated to just that machine. That said, the keys do feel more precise than the older model; bottoming out with a louder, nicer click than before.

In my few days of using the keyboard full-time, I’ve already learned to back off the pressure with which I type. That’s a good thing, as smashing these keys into the aluminum beneath them is going to be hard on me and the keyboard long term.

I’m enjoying the new keyboard. I feel like I’m still in the learning curve of how much pressure I need to use, but I haven’t had any pain while getting adjusted to it. I like the clicky, precise nature of it; even using the built-in keyboard on my MacBook Pro feels sloppier, somehow. Coupled with the new built-in battery, refreshed form factor and clever pairing system, I’m looking forward to using this thing for years to come.

Benjamin Mayo:

The new Apple TV includes several choices of screensaver, including Aerial, an exclusive set of slow-moving HD video of various landmarks and places in the world. What’s most interesting is that the displayed video actually changes over time, as the Apple TV downloads new videos periodically from an online location.

He’s parsed the data coming from Apple, hijacking it to show on this page instead of an Apple TV. I love that someone at Apple has the job to source these things. Beautiful stuff.

via Paul Mayne

The Philips Hue White and Color Ambiance Starter Kit is a fun little product.

In short, it’s a set of three LED bulbs and a bridge that allows them to connect to your home network. Once the dead-simple setup is compete, the Hues app allows you to select pre-designed “scenes,” control the lights individually, or even design new scenes based on photographs. Want to re-live your Tahiti experience? Load the photo into the app and you can be back in that magical place.

The lights aren’t bright enough to take over for other fixtures — for me, at least — but do a great job at changing the mood or feel to a room. I have all three of my bulbs in a floor lamp in our den, and it’s fun to add some color to things.

Thanks to HomeKit, the lights an be controlled via Siri, reminders and even geofences, but I’ve had real mixed luck with the HomeKit features so far.

The Starter Kit is $199, which is expensive. I hope Philips can get the price down, because right now, this kit just isn’t worth it. It is fun, though.

Eternal Storms Software provides these Mac and iOS applications crafted with care: Yoink, a Mac app that simplifies and improves drag and drop; Glimpses, an app that turns your photos and music into stunning still motion videos; ScreenFloat, an app that lets you keep a floating image reference to just about anything visible on your screen; Transloader, an app that lets you start downloads on your Mac remotely from your iPhone or iPad and flickery, the flickr desktop client for Mac.

The best way to advertise on 512 Pixels is via RSS sponsorship. Exclusive for one week, sponsored posts come with a whole pile of benefits. I have a bunch of dates open for the rest of the year; get in touch if you’re interested.

I joined the gang at The Incomparable to talk more about The Martian:

We all went and watched “The Martian” at movie theaters and then came home and joined together to talk about it! From Vicodin-topped potatoes to shiny zoomy space stuff, we work the problem to provide something a bit more informative than a Tumblr full of sad pictures.

Joe Rossignol at Mac Rumors:

Apple has issued an internal notice about a new Quality Program that addresses anti-reflective coating issues on MacBook and MacBook Pro models with Retina displays. These issues include the anti-reflective coating on displays wearing off or delaminating under certain circumstances.

Go check out the photos at Mac Rumors. My old 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro had this problem, and it was super annoying very quickly, even though the damage to my display was restricted to the top-left corner.

I was uncertain if Apple would cover it under the machine’s AppleCare warranty, but they did. The Genius Bar replaced the display clamshell assembly without any fuss at all.

This program isn’t listed on the company’s support site, but Rossignol goes on:

Apple will replace affected Retina displays at no cost for MacBook or MacBook Pro models with Retina displays within three years from the date of original purchase, or one year from October 16, 2015, whichever is longer. Affected customers that have already incurred out-of-warranty costs may be eligible for a refund through AppleCare support.

Affected customers can book an appointment with a Genius Bar or visit an Apple Authorized Service Provider to determine if their MacBook is eligible for coverage. Apple will not be posting the new Quality Program publicly on its support website, but should contact some potentially affected customers directly, according to sources.

Clearly, Apple doesn’t think this is a widespread issue, but I sure wish they’d publish information like this. Apple simply can’t know where all these machines are, and how to get in touch with all customers with the issue.

Thanks to everyone who sent me feedback about my article on Notes.app. Here’s some stuff I wanted to share more broadly:

• Jason Burk sent me an email pointing to a blog post in which he outlines the workflow he used to move from Evernote to Notes.
• Jason and others also sent me a link to Notes Exporter, a free Mac app that can export your Notes as plain text files. I ran it this morning, and got a pile of .txt files, as promised. The app didn’t do anything with my attachments, but I didn’t expect it to. There is some weird formatting in some of my files, but it’s nothing that couldn’t be cleaned up.
• I got a lot of suggestions for Dropbox iOS text editors. I’ve tried most of them, but a few were new. If I end up back in that space at some point, I’ll have more apps to try.
• I got an email from someone wondering if the font size in Notes.app could be adjusted at the .plist level. I tried that in writing my review, and couldn’t get anything to work. If you have some magic up your sleeves in this area, get in touch.

I’ve had an on-again, off-again thing with Evernote ¹ for years. I like having attachments associated with my notes, but dislike almost everything about the service itself. ²

That said, there’s a lot in Evernote that I don’t use. ³ I don’t have IFTTT routing any content in, and I don’t ever forward emails to the system. I occasionally use the web clipper to save webpages to Evernote, but it’s nowhere near vital to my workflow. ⁴

The nerd in me really likes having my notes saved as text documents, written in Markdown. I’ve used Brett Terpstra’s excellent nvALT for years, too. My biggest problem is that I can’t ever seem to find a Dropbox-powered notes app on iOS that I like. Additionally, going text-only means I need to store assorted attachments elsewhere.

I’ve lived with this tension for years, migrating content back and forth between the two systems several times.

(I’ve also spent a lot of time in Simplenote, which I’ve liked for years. It’s fast, lightweight and reliable, but the lack of attachments means it has the same core problem as plain text.)

When Apple showed off iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan, the built-in Notes app got a lot of attention. Gone was the old, let’s-sync-via-IMAP-and-hope-for-the-best system. In its place, a more modern backend — powered by CloudKit — to an app with a lot more features than before.

The new Notes app allows users to style their text easily, add checklists, photos and even hand-drawn sketches. But is it any good?

In a word, yes.

First of all, sync has been rock solid in my experience. New notes and edits show up on my other devices within moments. All content is saved offline automatically, and with the app’s extension, its easy to save content from anywhere in iOS or OS X.

While the app doesn’t mind if I write in Markdown, its built-in formatting tools are pretty good. Not everything is preserved when content is copied out of Notes into other apps, but it does a way better job than Evernote at this.

Being able to mix content types is nice. Often, my notes are part text, part outline, coupled with a photo or screenshot of some type. Notes handles all this really well, and the application has a view in which you can see all attachments, across folders and notes for quick access. This is present on both the Mac and iOS apps, and I already really like it.

It’s not all good news, though.

The new app still sports a textured background, and its text still has a slight shadow to it. It’s gross and makes the text a little harder to read than I’d like. The Mac app’s default font size is too small and there’s no way to bump it up across all notes.

If you want to share notes or collaborate with others, you’re out of luck. I guess Apple’s solution for this type of work is iWork for iCloud, but you may die trying to figure out how that thing works. Proceed with caution.

Notes can be viewed and edited at iCloud.com, but it’s not great. All the text-editing functionality is present, but there aren’t any folders, and sketches are downloaded as .drawing files, which are basically useless:

Having folders is great, but notes themselves can only be sorted by the last date edited. Not having my notes in alphabetical order has taken some getting used to, and I still don’t like it. I know that the way Notes does it can be faster, but I really wish a future update would bring more options here.

Oh, and Notes doesn’t have any type of tagging system.

My last problem with Notes is more philosophical than anything else. While I use iCloud for my personal email, contacts, calendars and a lot more, I’m not in love with the fact that my notes are locked away in a weird format. My notes are in here somewhere, but I can’t get to them if something terrible happens to the Notes app:

Even with Evernote, I could clean up their weird-ass HTML formatted notes without the app.

These issues aren’t going to keep me from using Notes.app, because at its core, the app does what I want: mixing text and images in my notes easily, without nagging me about features I don’t care about. The sync is great, which is also important, but I wouldn’t mind Apple modernizing the UI on both iOS and OS X, and giving users more control over things like note sorting and font sizes.

There’s always next year, I suppose, but for now, Notes is enough for me.

Update: Follow-up can be read here.