Apple Lovers Hammered by Notifications

Iphone notification

I use the expensive, but essential Omnifocus on my iPhone, iPad and various Macs, with the database synchornised using Dropbox. It’s fantastic in every way, except one. During the evening, I have OmniFocus triggering a notification with corresponding alert sound on all my gathered devices. It’s like World War 3 breaking out. I have all my devices with me, practically all the time.

I don’t think there is a simple way around this. Geolocation doesn’t have the resolution (and besides, won’t work on the iPad and Mac all the time anyway). I suppose the easiest way is to have it only on my phone, but during the evenings, I like to use the Mac and leave the phone a metre or so away.

Another option would be to have a flag in the Dropbox sync file that tells me which devices are currently checking in and if I’m stationery (check the iPhone GPS) for more than say, 5 minutes, and the Mac is on and OmnFfocus running, it would display a Growl notification on the Mac only. If the Mac were not on, and the iPhone GPS were showing me as stationary for 5 or more minutes, it would notify me on the iPad only. If the iPhone GPS indicated movement of more than say 20 metres a minute, only the iPhone would notify me.

It would perhaps be an over-clever solution that would trip up over some really trivial test cases, when the real answer is to have a better notification system at OS level. Even that isn’t going to be a panacea.

And no, I haven’t done my pull ups, despite being reminded three times, by three different devices.

Focus and the Zen of Table Tennis

I found intense focus this evening. Like a glassy lake, reflecting nothingness in mirror-image perfection. It was deep, it was lucid and it was present. I don’t remember the last time I felt such total focus. Nothing was entering my mind, not even what I was doing. I was just doing, and I felt as alive, as essential, as vital as a cat, even if I don’t move like one.

In case you hadn’t noticed, “distraction-free” is the meme of the day. I write this in iA Writer on the Mac. Some call productivity software porn for procastinators. One can get so caught up in this stuff, that nothing of any consequence actually gets done. Whenever I have problems with output and I need something for mental constipation, I take two browses of an App Store and see my banker in the mroning. I’m usually a few quid lighter and my latest writing app sits in a folder unused.

It is extraordinarily hard these days to find focus and to retain it. What is the next thing to be done? Why that and not something else? Where is my career going? Shall I listen to music, or some talk? What’s on Twitter? ADHD is on the climb in our kids and they’re popping Ritalin like vitamins. It’s no wonder, with all the distractions available, all of them pressing our dopamine-junkie-hotspots.

So where did I find focus this evening? Table Tennis played with some good friends on our breakfast bar. The table is utterly tiny, the equipment spartan, but for an hour or so, it was the most focus I’ve experienced in years. For those of you struggling to get anything done, I totally recommend a game that requires physical hand-to-eye coordination, and few things beat table tennis for that.

I’ve played it a few times at work with a colleague over the last week, on a full-sized table of course – he’s been handing me my ass, but it has been the highlight of my day whenever we’ve managed a quick round or three. And now, instead of looking forward to work, I’m looking forward to going to the office and getting to the afternoon so I can get my focus fix. It’s a blissful escape from ADHD, that’s for sure.

 

 

Car UI

I don’t talk about this much, but Dr. Drang (I wish that was his real name, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t) has what is probably one of the most usefully geeky blogs out there, with a particular focus on Apple products. He was the reason I started to plot my weight into Simplenote on the iPhone using a TextExpander keystroke snippet to insert the date in the format I wanted.

He talks about Calvetica’s UI and is spot on when saying that the week view is wrong.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with going row-by-row, but conventions should be adhered to unless there’s a very good reason to break them. My favorite example is the brake and gas pedal layout in a car. That the brake is to the left of the gas is merely a convention, but it’s a convention a car maker would be an idiot to break.

I found that interesting, because I’m not sure something as important as the placement of the brake and gas pedals was accidental. I think somebody thought about it. I might be wrong of course.

My response was that I doubt the placement of the accelerator pedal to the right is just convention. We spend more time on the gas than on the brake. The gas is easier to hit and your legs are in a more comforable configuration that way.

Then there’s the body language – gas = open posture, opening up, expanding, accelerating etc., brake = closed posture, closing down, contracting, you can see where this is going.

I also think that in an emergency, you will be applying the brake, and your body closes down in an emergency, going from an open posture to a closed posture is more natural than the vice versa.

Acorn 3

I use both Acorn 2 and Pixelmator. Now the latter is a truly beautiful piece of software. I don’t know if there’s a better looking piece of Mac software out there and I want to use it more than I do, but when I need to get something done, and fast, I fire up Acorn. It doesn’t look like much, but don’t you know? Minimalism is in.

So it was with interest that I saw the Chairman mention that Acorn 3 is out for $30 on the Mac App Store, at a temporarily reduced price of $30. I headed on over to the Flying Meat site and noticed that an upgrade from version 2 is actually only $20. Sadly, the Mac App Store doesn’t offer upgrades from existing versions. I wrote to Flying Meat and got a response from Gus Mueller in no time. It never ceases to impress me just how responsive the Apple Development community is. Look how large it’s become and yet it still retains that small community feel. One only has to look at the insane demand for the WWDC to see that. Apple has the good sense not to increase the size of the conference.

Back to Flying Meat’s response, Gus wrote:

 

It isn’t possible to buy the upgrade via the MAS, sorry. Apple doesn’t allow us to do variable pricing. We’ve reduced the price by $20 from the normal price however, to help folks out moving over.

 

I’d already said that $10 won’t kill me, but hey, $10 is $10. So the bottom line is that the upgrade is well worth $30 and the new features look great. I’ll be buying it, just as soon as payday arrives. I’m also very happy to support such an excellent developer with such a great attitude towards its customers.