Stirred and Shaken in the Manual

Shaken vs. stirred: The ultimate cocktail showdown – The Manual

I mentioned in Sunday’s Serial that I prefer a stirred Martini over a shaken one. The Manual does a nice job of explaining why, but rounds out the discussion of when shaking is preferable.

The truth is that most experts would strongly agree that a martini should be stirred, not shaken. Shaking a martini will give you a watery, cloudy, and frankly rather sad drink, while stirring it should result in a crystal clear, elegantly proportioned drink.

Shaken vs. stirred: The ultimate cocktail showdown – The Manual

iPad Pro M4 13”: Surfing the Interstices

I’ve been using an iPad M4 13” for about two weeks now, and thought I’d share my experience thus far.

iPad in the Denim Smart Cover

A storied test for me is the one-handed-reading-in-bed test: make an L with my thumb and index finger, and hold the iPad up while reading in bed. Almost every iPad improved on this test over the years as they lost weight, even when gaining some surface area. The 2018 12.9” was an unsurprising exception, so I often would use and older iPad for reading in bed.

iPad M4 Pro

The M4 Pro passes.

The places in which I use an iPad are the same, save one, as when I might use a laptop:

  • In the office
  • At meetings
  • Observing Staff
  • Working or reading on the sofa
  • Reading in bed

I do not, nor have I ever, read in bed on a laptop.

I like to take an iPad to meetings and observations; I don’t like to carry a bag around with me once I check in at the office. My MacBook Adorable was the only Mac that I ever found light enough to port around this way; I’d pinch the clamshell between my thumb and index finger and carry it from place to place. Its replacement, an M1 MacBook Pro, never felt small enough for this kind of duty. To this end, I like to keep the iPad in an Apple Smart Cover, which Jason Snell rightly describes as “the unsung hero” of the iPad peripherals world, when traveling around. So no keyboard on the go.

iPad Pro M4 Next to a MacBook Air M2

Here’s the thing about meetings: I’m increasingly annoyed by typing at meetings. I fully support digital note-taking in meetings, but I’ve seen (and committed) my fair share of doing email or other work during them. In my more recent zeal for handwriting on screens, I find that writing in Apple Notes during meetings, with the device flat on the surface before me, is a warmer, more receptive way to conduct myself during meetings.

And that brings us to the Apple Pencil Pro. While this iteration of the famously expensive stylus is not revolutionary, it is a welcome evolution of a solid product. The barrel tap of the previous Pencil has been replaced by a squeeze gesture; where the former was inconsistent and vexatious for me (I was never able to reliably toggle between writing and erasing), the squeeze works reliably. It is, in its way, full of delight and whimsy in a way that only Apple is ever capable of: from the radial menu that appears near your pencil point when you squeeze, to the drop shadow on your “paper,” the Pencil is delightful to use.

Recent updates to Notes in iPadOS 18 include Smart Script, which for me changed my digital handwriting from a messy simulacrum of my normal handwriting to a more composed version of my recognizable script. I really enjoy writing in Notes now, and delight in the small details available: summoning the ruler and underlining titles, watching my handwriting straighten out when I lift the Pencil, and switching tools and colors. iPadOS has vastly improved the note-taking experience on iPad.

iPad Pro M4 with Magic Keyboard Case

My intention was to use the iPad in the Smart Cover while moving around, and then dock it at the office using my Magic Trackpad and Magic Keyboard. I like this setup at the office a lot, and use it exactly that way. On my 11” M1 Pro at my last job, I did have the Magic Keyboard Case, but realized fairly quickly that it made the device not only larger and heavier than I wanted in a portable device, but that I often wanted to snap it out of the case and use it as a proper tablet. So swapping out the keyboard case for the Smart Cover was a frequent move. Still is.

The one use case where that all kind of falls apart is at home, where I do in fact want to use the iPad as a laptop, and the Magic Keyboard is absolutely the best tool for the job. Not only can you use the iPad with a keyboard on your lap, the cantilevered design pushes the screen closer to your face, which makes it better than a MacBook or other laptop for sofa use. It’s a strange middle ground to occupy, but there it is.

iPad Pro M4 13" with Smart Cover

iPad Pro M4 Smart Cover

Happily, Amazon was selling the white version at a more palatable price this week. I would probably not have gotten the white keyboard save for the sale, but I was curious enough about it to consider it. I’m pretty happy with it, and while having a silver keyboard deck is, for me, reminiscent of a bygone era (I prefer the darker metals Apple makes theses days), it’s the first time my iPad keyboard case has been anything other than a shade of gray.

The first Magic Keyboard surfaced quietly during the COVID quarantine; I just checked DayOne and learned that mine arrived on April 22nd from Best Buy. I remember the day, in fact; Rhonda and I were enjoying a walk during the quarantine, as we were wont to do at that time.

On May 13th of the same year, I updated DayOne, calling it “a dream to type on” and also:

If I have one complaint, I’d like to be able to tilt the iPad back a hair more. I feel like I’m always trying to bend it back another few millimeters and it won’t quite stay where I want it to. This is on my lap.

I would say that this has been achieved in the 2024 update to the keyboard. While the Magic Keyboard still keeps the screen closer to your face than a laptop screen, this new keyboard pushes the iPad’s naked robotic core back a smidge. It’s more MacBook-like, but not exactly so.

Back to the iPad: It’s super thin and light. It’s incredibly fast; save for the first generation iPad I purchased back in 2010, where RAM usage caused a lot of apps to quit without warning or notice, though, I’ve never found an iPad to feel slow. The display is bright and crisp, and although I’ve been spoiling myself using ProMotion displays since 2017, the refresh rate is similarly buttery and a joy to use.

Having moved between sizes, with a 12.9” in 2018, and then an 11” from work in 2021, I’d say returning to the larger form factor was the right move. I just love the big iPad. It’s great to use on your desk, in a keyboard, or naked in your hands on the sofa. I could easily live with either size, but it’s good to know the big one is out there.

The M4 iPad Pro 13” is certainly the nicest iPad out there now: fast as fast can be, thin and light, mated to a glorious screen. There’s nothing not to love about the device itself. It’s really a question of whether you need one. And if you already have an Apple Silicon-powered iPad, the answer is probably no.

Due to iPadOS, iPad still occupies a weird liminal space between being a giant iPhone, but with a size and form factor that begs for more Mac-like use cases.

Apple Buys Pixelmator

Much has been written this past week about Apple buying Pixelmator. Pixelmator Pro is a fantastic tool on the Mac, and Pixelmator on the iPad is great, too. The questions are whether Apple will continue to develop the product, subsume its features into the Photos app, or something else.

There are a good number of options available on both the Mac and iPad for munging photos, including Acorn on the Mac, and the Affinity suite on both platforms. But I would sorely miss Pixelmator on iPad.

I do wonder if some indie and smaller developers are nervous about a Sherlocking, though.

Sunday Serial: Belkin iPhone MagSafe Continuity Camera Mount, Endgrain Coffee in Pitman, NJ, and Stirred Martinis

Here’s this week’s list of things to check out:

  1. Belkin Stage iPhone Mount with MagSafe for Mac Desktops and Displays: I was lucky to inherit an M1 iMac at my new job, and thought this would be a good time to try out the Continuity Camera feature on macOS during Google Meets and Zooms. The iPhone attaches to the mount via MagSafe (no charging), and you can mount it atop your computer and swap the built-in camera for the much higher-spec rear camera on your iPhone. Works pretty seamlessly in my experience. Bonus: When you’re not video conferencing, the mount makes for a nice Standby setup on your desk.

Belkin Stage iPhone Mount with MagSafe for Mac Desktops and Displays

Belkin Stage iPhone Mount with MagSafe for Mac Desktops and Displays

  1. Endgrain Coffee Roasters: This roaster is not far from my office, and I try to stop when I can to get some beans for my office Chemex. I’ve had the Oops! All Naturals East Africa Blend, Columbia Finca la Esperanza, and the Sawmill. The East African has been my favorite thus far.

Endgrain Oops All Naturals East Africa Blend

  1. Stirred Martinis: Rhonda and I have taken to having Manhattans every night; it’s rare to never that I make a martini these days. I nevertheless remember exactly how I prefer to make them, and one central conceit is that I stir them. I will gently agitate the shaker to approximate a stirring motion when lacking a bar spoon, but I will not, as a rule, shake a gin martini (vodka martinis be damned). We have found occasion, however, to order them at our local restaurants when we step out for dinner, and while they have been routinely good, there’s always an alarming amount of attention-seeking shaking that precedes our drinks’ arrival. I would gently ask that my drink be stirred, could I find the temerity and good time to do so, but until then, I can always pontificate here.

Gin Martini at the Greenview Inn

More Notes on Notes

While writing up my thoughts on what a notes app is, I had a thought about my own genesis of where and I why I developed this predilection.

My first portable device was a Handspring Visor. I did have a laptop at the time as my main machine, but wifi was anything but ubiquitous, and the notion of typing notes in class (I was in grad school) never really occurred to me. in fact, at the time, it was sort of odd to see someone using a laptop in class.

I really enjoyed using the Visor; it was small, kind of hot at the time (everyone was into Palm Pilots and Handsprings and shortly after, Compaq and Dell handheld PCs). It synced with your Mac, so your calendar events and contacts and to-dos were always with you. Assuming the sync went as expected, of course.

The issue with the Palm handheld was the alphabet you had to learn to enter input into the device. Called Graffiti, it was a modified version of English print that required you to write individual letters without lifting the stylus from the screen.


Palm’s Graffiti Character Set

This was hard for two reasons: first, you had to learn new gestures for characters you had been writing to everyone’s satisfaction since elementary school. Second, even when the letter or character was gesturally identical to the printed alphabet you knew, you sometimes had to learn a new way of transmitting it to the screen. So for example, Z was basically still Z, but A? A missed the crossbar between the legs, and you just wrote an upside-down V. Super weird. And let’s not forget the handwriting input area: you had to write letters to the left of a subset of the screen, not directly on the page where you would eventually see the notes, and numbers to the right. And never the twain shall meet: Palm’s OS didn’t recognize alphabet characters on the numerical side, and vice versa.

Palm did replace Graffiti with a previously competing product called Jot, which allowed for multiple strokes in a character, and did not object to the stylus lifting off of the screen. What’s more, you could write anywhere on the screen, obviating a third of your digitizer in favor of a more natural handwriting process.

I had actually purchased Jot, because using regular Graffiti was crazy-making. Jot was immediately better and “right” in a sense. Palm rebranded it as Graffiti 2, making it a bit simpler than Jot, but it was a marked improvement from the original.

Me, being curious about technology, started peeking around on eBay in 2002 at Apple MessagePads (aka Newtons). I was able to get a fairly worn out MessagePad 2100 as my first device of that make and model. I opened the box when it arrived and attempted to apply my Jot/Graffiti 2 skills to the screen, and initially concluded that the Newton must have been broken: the digital recognizer made odd lines and marks on the screen, and then attempted to interpret my handwriting, but my message was not getting across to this newish device.

I learned by watching the tutorials on device, though, that you just used your natural handwriting. And it got better as you used it; you could tell NewtonOS what you meant to write, helping it learn your particular version of print or cursive (yes, cursive was supported too), but it would make guesses about what you were trying to convey as well. My impression of the device went from “this is broken” to “this is amazing.” It was truly remarkable to write with, and like coding up a page and then seeing it rendered in your web browser or spit out of LaTex and into a PDF, its own brand of satisfaction seeing your handwritten words converted into digital text.

Newton OS did another cool thing: interpreted what you wrote into other kinds of data. If you wrote “Lunch with John at noon on Thursday” in the notes app, the MessagePad would offer to create a calendar event for you in the calendar application. It did the same with tasks. While these features often worked and made for a great demo, they could be fiddly and not always work the way you wanted them to.

I remember being so excited about the possibility of using this device, and the handwriting support and translation features, that I wrote up a quick note of what I thought “Newton 2.0” might look like were Apple to resurrect the idea of a handheld computer again in the new millennium. That, of course, didn’t happen, although there was a brief moment there where the “iWalk” device rumors and fake images started popping up on the internet. I was really excited about the possibility of an iWalk.


Apple’s Rumored “iWalk” Device

There has never been an iWalk, but there was an iPod, and shortly after that, of course, the iPhone. As Steve Jobs famously quipped about the iPhone’s competitors, though, “if you see a stylus, you know they blew it.” I didn’t share his dismissal of the stylus at all; I liked the idea of pen-based input, but did understand why the technology’s execution wasn’t as good as its promise.

And the size of the original iPhone didn’t lend itself very well to handwriting. But the iPad? That seemed like a no-brainer. A number of styli leapt into the void that Apple left in not supporting pen-based input on iOS, including the Studio Neat Cosmonaut. But writing on the screen with a capacitive stylus never felt like Newton OS’s implementation, and it was frustrating to know that the technology existed in Cupertino but languished on a digital shelf.

Handwriting support on the iPad has iterated slowly but steadily in the intervening years. Apple eventually supported digital conversion of inked text into typewritten text across the OS, which was a neat first step. But using handwriting that way never really jibed with my evolving preferences, and wondering if the text would be rendered correctly was (and remains) additional cognitive overhead in something that should be effortless and natural: taking handwritten notes.

Apps like Notability and GoodNotes were better than Apple’s own Notes app for a long time regarding accepting handwriting. Notability put a good inking experience at the forefront of their app, while GoodNotes focused more on conversion. I got to a point where I felt that perhaps the best way to take notes, with my first iPad Pro with a 120 Hz refresh rate, might just be Notability. That phase was short-lived, because text input was so far in the rear view for that app that I didn’t like it. I wanted to be able to print, but I also wanted to be able to type when that made the most sense. And in many cases, I wanted something that supported mixed usage: I’ll write on the go with the Apple Pencil, but when I’m seated at my desk or doing something more long form, I’ll type. If I saw a passage online that I wanted to copy, I wanted to select the text and copy/paste, not reprint.

I still really like Notability, but I don’t use it. I would still be using OneNote, were it not for Smart Script. That feature alone puts an iPad+Pencil+Apple Notes in the top spot for me now. In fact, I’d prefer a Surface Pro and OneNote were it not for Smart Script. It just makes writing more enjoyable.

There are still features that Newton OS offered that the much more powerful iPad doesn’t do. The Notes app doesn’t function as the central experience of using the iPad, where that was more the case with the Newton. And that’s not necessarily the right thing for the iPad; it’s a very serviceable laptop when that form factor is most appropriate, for example.

But that’s where so much of my hope in the potential of the iPad lies: the old technology found in the Newton. I loved using the device, but was often flummoxed by its limitations.

So, too, I suppose, with the iPad. And Notes.

What is a Notes App?

For a long time I used to type my notes. I can remember the moment when I decided that I would work this way: I was attending a professional development session, and wanted to learn how to use OmniOuliner. It had come pre-installed on my new Mac, a PowerBook G4. I quickly fell in love with OmniOutliner.

I have continued to enjoy outlining when I think and plan. I tend to write in outlines, using a pen and index card. These are dead-simple lists of notes destined for later consideration (or delegation, in the happiest cases).

Following my interest in outlining, though, I went through a long phase of markdown-flavored notes: SimpleNote, nvAlt, iAWriter, Bear, Dendron… you name it.

Markdown notes are fun to take. They’re fast, too. And often, you can just move a folder full of markdown notes into another app and try something new.

But the left-to-right, top-to-bottom style isn’t really how I think. I really like handwriting. Or I should say, I like to be able to handwrite. I also like to be able to drop in tables. I like to drop screenshots into my notes. Sometimes I want to type.

Handwritten Notes in Notes
Handwritten Notes in Notes
It took farting around with OneNote to realize how much this version of note taking meant to me, how central it was to my thought process. OneNote’s a good app–a little weird, but good on Windows. It’s a great Surface Pro app for sure. Possibly the killer app for that device.

Apple’s Notes is the same on iPad. Notes is perfectly serviceable if you only type your Notes, but it’s probably not the most compelling: I’d give that nod to Craft. If you move between a Mac and and iPad–and tend to prefer the iPad for jaunts and note-taking–Notes is hard to beat.

First, there’s the handwriting support. iPadOS18 introduced Smart Script, which smooths out your handwriting. It’s fairly remarkable: the device studies your handwriting, and learns to smooth it out on screen. As a sloppy writer, it’s fun to see a device fix what’s behind the chicken scratch.

Second, the sync: it’s nearly instantaneous. You can take handwritten notes on your iPad while dropping screen shots into the same note on your Mac. It’s a great user experience.

Watson and the Origins of “Sherlocking”

I mentioned Apple’s obviating a beloved early Mac app when they introduced Sherlock on Mac OS X. It was such a phenomenon that the word “Sherlock” became a euphemism for any time Apple did this. The app, Watson, was published by the excellent Karelia software. At the time, Mac OS X was new and lacked many of the built-in solutions users needed. And to some degree, the web was still new, and Watson integrated web-based information into an app on your Mac.

Watson offered a feature set that existed in no other place on the Mac. And Watson was better than Sherlock… until it stopped working. Users vary in their willingness to purchase software, and in the case of good-enough free tools bundled with their device, probably will accept the reduced feature set.

This still happens, too. Apple likely tried to do the same thing with Masimo’s pulse-reading tech, a feature I am able to enjoy on my current Apple Watch, but which would disappear were I to upgrade my watch for some time until there’s an agreement between the two companies:

Masimo claims Apple held meetings with them about potentially incorporating Masimo’s pulse-reading technology onto iPhones. When the discussions broke down, Apple hired two executives away from Masimo and introduced a service that Masimo claims illegally duplicated its technology. Apple denies this.

I imagine the makers of password manager apps experienced a similar shiver when Apple announced their password app (although as Bradley Chambers points out, AgileBits is moving in a direction that Apple likely won’t follow).

Sunday Serial: MindNode, Mr. Bar-B-Q Lump Charcoal, and Powderpuff Football

MindNode: Of all the note-taking and writing tools I’ve tried over the years, the one that has never really stuck for me is the mind map genre. I have a license for Mind Node from a while back and I opened it up and, once again, started thinking about how I might be able to use it for brainstorming or planning. Mind maps are a much more spatial version of note taking or outlining, although what’s interesting especially about MindNode is its outline view… it lays bare to you that, for however spatial they might seem, your mind maps definitely can be expressed in outline form. In any event, I was able to sign up for a generous free six-month trial period of MindNode Plus, which is replacing the standalone license.
Mr. Bar-B-Q Natural Lump Charcoal: I used this most recently to sear off some sous vide pork tenderloin I made. It does the job. It’s no Royal Oak, though.
Powderpuff football: Aaron was a cheerleader for his class (seniors) at Friday’s Powerderpuff game. Rhonda and I went and got to see some of the game and of course the big half-time show. One of Aaron’s friends is into choreography and dance, and he directed their production. It was a lot of fun and laughs, but a couple of things hit me. First, what a fun celebration in an otherwise serious endeavor. How much do we neglect when we fail to celebrate within our professional domains? There’s a lot you can write about Powderpuff: a beacon of flexibility in a society with rigid notions of masculinity… or maybe an event that, however playfully, reinforces the same norms? But I wasn’t there to overthink it. Got some great pics too.

MindNode Mind Mapping Software

Mr Bar-B-Q Natural Lump Charcoal

Better Spotlight

Before Spotlight on the Mac, there was [Sherlock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_(software), a file search utility that existed on the Mac back in OS 8.5. One version of it so incisively eviscerated a beloved shareware app that “Sherlock” became a verb: to wit, when Apple obviates your product by building its functionality into the system.

Spotlight functions perfectly well as a file search utility and even an application launcher. Over the years, Apple has added many features to the service, including a dictionary, calculator, and even web searches.

I’ve welcomed Spotlight’s evolution over the years, but recently found the order of search results skewing away from file search results–what I typically use Spotlight for–and web search results. I dug into the Spotlight settings in System Settings and found that while you can’t set the order of the search results (a reasonable request), you can turn categories off.

I turned off off fonts, tips, and websites. I can’t say tips and fonts were bothering me, but it’s great to have spotlight acting like its old self again.

Spotlight Category Options in macOS Sequoia