The Original iPhone
The first time I stood in line on launch day for an iPhone was the day the original iPhone came out. Strangely, that first iPhone went on sale at 6:00 PM on a Friday. So I got off work and hightailed it to the AT&#x26;T store in Franklin (the Apple store is quit a bit further away). I was joined by a good friend of mine. I was pretty far in the back of the line of course, getting there at 5:45. To my great disappointment, they sold out while I was still 10 to 12 people back (I don’t think Apple or AT&#x26;T had any idea just how hot this product would be at the time, and I mean how could you really gauge something like that when the product is just coming onto the market). But the AT&#x26;T rep did tell me there was still lots of iPhones at their AT&#x26;T store in Lawrenceburg (over an hour drive). Being the Apple nerd that I am, I decided to go. My friend decided not to but asked me to get one for him if there were still any left when I got there. Another friend called me on the way to ask the same.
Well there wasn’t anyone there buying iPhones when I got there, so I bought one (and the two others)… and promptly waited 2 days for activation. You see, AT&#x26;T just wasn’t prepared for the onslaught on their activations servers. But I did eventually get that phone activated, and loved it.
iPhone 3GS
I skipped the iPhone 3G. I upgrade every two years you see. So I next stood in line for the 3GS. I can’t remember the day of the week, but I do remember I was starting a vacation period at work that day and I was taking off from the Apple store on a trip. I got there pretty early, 5:00 AM if memory serves, and got a fairly good spot in line. But before I go on, one important detail. Apple had a system at that time whereby you would “reserve” your new iPhone for purchase and pickup at the Apple Store on launch day. I went through this process the day the 3GS was announced and got my confirmation email. Just for safety, I printed this out and took it with me this day.
Well, as it turns out, what with all the influx of orders hammering Apple’s servers, mine had gotten messed up somehow. My iPhone was not reserved. That year they had two lines, one for “reserved” customers, and one for the customers who had not reserved a phone. So I got shuffled over to the line for non-reserved customers, and waited much longer than I would have had they not messed up my reservation. I was a bit peeved, but I did get my 3GS, and activation was no trouble this time. Yet it was obvious that some streamlining needed to be done.
iPhone 4S
I got up this morning at 3:55 AM. I showered quickly, jumped in the car and was on the road for my 45 minute drive to the Apple Store Green Hills by 4:18 AM. I arrived just after 5:00 and got approximately the same spot in line that I got when I stood in line for the 3GS. This year there were no reservations. I think Apple gave that up as a bad job.
This year however, Apple reps starting making their way through the line at about 6:20 AM or so. They asked what phone we wanted, size, color, carrier, then gave us a card with a number, and indications of the specs we just described.
Not long after this, more Apple reps came with iPads having us fill out all our details, making sure we were eligible for upgrade if we were upgrading, or if ineligible, knew it would cost us an arm and a leg. I got through AT&#x26;T’s upgrade process and info easily, handed the iPad back to the rep and she moved on.
At 7:56 AM, the doors opened, Apple employees were cheering, and several at the front of the line entered. I slowly made my way up so that at about 8:25 I was greeted by an Apple rep. We went in to the store, I handed my card over, they got an iPhone, entered the number from the card, scanned the barcode on my phone’s box, and in about 30 seconds, my 3GS lost service. I selected a case for my new iPhone and a screen protector, we pulled my phone out and turned it on. It immediately registered on AT&#x26;T’s network as my phone, even while I was going through setup and iCould restore (apparently, I just beat the influx of traffic that would later this day bring AT&#x26;T’s activation servers to a grinding halt).
At about 8:45 I was walking out the door. I called my wife on my knew iPhone and made my way to work.
So the point of all this (other than the obvious geekery about standing in line, and all the fun that is) is that Apple is definitely streamlining this process. This was by far my best launch day iPhone purchase. This is why I love Apple and their products.

Lining Up - My Experience Buying iPhones

The only iDevice I have which is compatible with iOS 5 is my 3GS, my wife’s 1st generation iPhone (formerly my iPhone) not being capable of running an OS newer than version 3. The 3GS is two years old now, but I still find it to be acceptable (though truthfully I’m looking forward to upgrading to a 4S as soon as I can pull together some green stuff).
iOS 5 runs acceptably well on the 3GS and as far as I know does not have any feature limitations that differentiate it from iOS 5 running on an iPhone 4 (neither the 3GS nor the 4 will have access to Siri, that will be a 4S only feature).
Notifications
My vote for best new feature is hands down the new notification system. I have lamented before the state of iOS notifications. Apple neglected this area of the OS for far too long and it was the one area where I genuinely felt Android had an edge on iOS. Admittedly Apple’s solution does look quite familiar. But if something has been done, and done well, why reinvent it. So we gained two major, MAJOR improvements.
<ol>
<li>Banner notifications</li>
</ol>
This is Instead of the disruptive modal pop-ups which required some action from the user, either close the notification, or open the offending app. The new banners, on the other hand, don’t get in the way (much), offer you a 5 second or so preview of the notification, then quietly dismiss themselves.
<ol>
<li>Notification Center</li>
</ol>
This is an area where notifications that haven’t been acted upon are kept. If you are busy playing Dead Runner, Brick 3D, Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Monkey Ball, RAGE… well anyway, whatever you are doing, should you choose to ignore the notification, you can come back to it later by placing a finger at the top of your iPhone screen and pulling down. Notification Center drops down and shows you ignored notifications. You can clear them from here, or you can tap on one to go to the app from whence the notification came, which will also clear it (or, if you see a badge on an app from the home screen, and visit the app from there, the notification will be cleared).
Camera
Runner up for best feature is accessibility to the camera from the lock screen. I often found before that when I wanted to capture a moment with my camera, by the time I got the phone unlocked, got to the correct home screen, located the camera app and launched it, that I had missed my opportunity. In iOS 5, double clicking the home button causes a camera button to appear next to the “slide to unlock” area. Tap the camera button and you are ready for action. I suspect I’ll be using my iPhone camera a lot more now.
iMessage
I have several friends that updated to the Gold Master of iOS 5 early as I did. We have been enjoying iMessage. And, as advertised, it just works. When you go to text someone, iOS checks to see if the recipient has iOS 5 as well. If it does, the “send” button changes from green (SMS) to blue, and the text field says “iMessage” in it. This means it will not be sent via SMS using your carrier’s network, but will instead be sent via Apple’s free iMessage service. I sent more <del>texts</del> iMessages to these friends in a week, than I’ve ever sent in a month before.
So I’m loving iMessage. I only hope that Apple will also integrate it on the Mac, possibly with iChat.
Wi-Fi Sync
It’s pretty awesome to be able to sync my phone without the need to rummage around for my cable. And that’s pretty self explanatory so I shall move on.
iCloud
Yeah, iCloud probably deserves it’s own write up, but it’s also a big part of iOS 5. Unfortunately I don’t have much to say because I have only just this evening migrated my MobileMe account to iCloud. But in theory, it’s all the features from MobileMe I actually used, for free. And then adds documents in the cloud. So in theory I love it.
Week View
It’s a small thing, but orienting your iPhone to landscape while you are in calendar gives you a week view. This is a VERY good thing.
Stability
This is definitely the most stable any version of iOS has ever been at launch. If anything it feels more stable than iOS 4 was already. Things seem faster, animations seem less likely to lag, Safari seems faster, I haven’t had to restart my phone in days (something that seems necessary every other day with iOS 4 due to general lagginess after a couple days).
Gripes
My biggest gripe with iOS continues to be that I don’t think it’s nearly aggressive enough in it’s memory management. The user is not supposed to need to worry about closing apps or any such thing. In theory, if iOS needs memory, it closes apps starting with those that haven’t been used in the longest period of time. As I say, in theory, this is great because it means that the last couple apps you launched will be frozen in the background, in RAM, waiting for you to come back and use them. Since they haven’t actually closed, but were just frozen, they resume almost instantly when you reactivate them.
However, I have always found in iOS 4, that if I never manually closed applications, my phone would get almost unusable pretty quickly. Things get laggy, keyboard gets unresponsive, apps take a long time to reactivate, things crash. In short, it seems to me that iOS is just not closing applications in the background as readily as it should. I will sometimes see how long I can go without closing apps, and it doesn’t take long at all. So I usually stay in the habit of simply opening the app tray, and closing apps when I am sure I am done with them.
And I am sad to report this does not seem changed at all in iOS 5.
It’s kind of a small thing, but it’s irritating because Apple’s official line is, “don’t worry about closing apps, iOS will take care of it for you.” But it just doesn’t seem to work that way for me.
In Conclusion
But in closing, iOS 5 is a great upgrade and I’m quite happy with it. As far as I’m concerned, while iOS 4 was already better than Android in most ways, iOS 5 blows way past Android and takes a major lead.
Now, let’s get the rumor mill started on iOS 6! <img src="wink.gif" alt="wink">

iOS 5 (on a 3GS)

So I’m just going to jot down some thoughts on using Lion for the first time in an actual work environment as I have them.
First of all, some background on my installation of Lion.
I almost always choose to reformat my hard drive to install new OSes. The one time I did an upgrade install I did wind up reformatting and re-installing later just because I could tell it wasn’t a completely clean system. However, I do think I’m a special case. I am what most would call a power user. I drag massive files onto my hard drive, I drag them off, I move stuff, I install stuff, I try stuff, I mess with stuff. Over time, the preference files get left lying around, system tweaks get incompatible with new OSes, permissions get messed up and Disk Permission repair doesn’t always seem to be able to fix it. As I say, I’m a special case and I think most users can and should do the standard upgrade install. But I chose to clone my disk to a Disk Image file, reformat my HD and clean install Lion (and yes, this is still completely doable, not going to go into how here, but it’s not hard at all).
So I started with a clean install, and brought my data over from my disk image backup… I’m working with a completely clean system here. And it is very nice. I’m not sure if an upgrade install would have been any different, but in most cases my computer does feel faster. And where it doesn’t seem faster seems to be related to bugs (as any new OS will have).
Pages
I’m typing this article in Pages (so much better a word processor than Word by the way), but I am one version behind so I did not expect there to be Full Screen support. I was surprised then to see the full screen button in the top right of the Pages window. I clicked it and sure enough, Pages jumped to it’s own space in full screen mode. But I was surprised to see that it has a different full screen layout than any other app in Full Screen I’ve used thus far. Here’s a screen shot of what this document looks like in Full Screen mode:
<a href="/assets/uploads/pages-fullscreen-lion.png"><img src="/assets/uploads/pages-fullscreen-lion-thumb.png" alt="pages-fullscreen-lion-thumb"></a>
(<a href="/assets/uploads/pages-fullscreen-lion.png">click to embiggen</a>)
As you can see, there is no linen texture (as with every other Full Screen app so far), everything around it is black. What you can’t see in that screen shot is that I’m using dual monitors. My second monitor is to the right and is completely black. Now, in most applications I’ve used Full Screen on dual monitors, the app simply does not take advantage of the second screen at all (this is very bad). But in this case, I’ve opened up a bunch of floating pallet windows and have them all on the second screen. I actually like Pages in Full Screen mode very much.
(edit: it turns out I do have the current version, I just thought Apple released a version since the version I have…)
Dual Screens
But speaking of Dual Screens in Lion, for the most part, Full Screen apps are useless in a dual monitor environment. It’s not like I’ve lost any functionality from Snow Leopard, so I suspect I’ll just continue to use everything in Windowed mode on one Dual Monitor desktop (unless the app makes good use of the second screen in Full Screen mode like Pages does). But what I would really love to see Apple do with Full Screen and Dual Monitors is somehow let me have Full Screen apps side by side, one on each monitor. How this would be executed exactly I don’t know, but this is Apple, they can figure it out. Are you listening Apple? Go and do!
Mission Control
Mission Control feels exactly right. In previous iterations of OS X I tried to use Spaces but it just felt awkward. The whole grid layout was cumbersome for one thing. And then, being a moderate Exposé user, Spaces became even more cumbersome because Exposé would not show me anything in another space. Mission control feels much more natural and useful for handling all of this!
Mail 5
I love the new look and feel of Mail. In the past I’ve hacked it to have a vertical 3 panel view, but it was hacky (as indicated by the fact that I hacked it). Even more recently, I used Sparrow quite a bit, but found that sometimes it just didn’t have quite enough power to do some of the things I needed to do (like someone sends me an email to my personal account that’s work related and I need to move it to my work account for proper filing, can’t do it in Sparrow).
But the new Mail seems to be everything I liked about Sparrow, but with the power of Mail. Native vertical 3 panel view by default. Proper conversation threading with related messages view (meaning it will show my replies to conversation threads in line). It’s genius!
Auto Correct
I’ve seen people griping about the iOS like auto correct when typing… However, I’m loving it. There is visual feedback as it happens if you don’t like what it did you can fix it, and 99% of the time it just works.
Finder Dragging Animations
For the most part I’m happy with the new animations in Lion. Most new animations convey some information to the user in some way that was not communicated before. Or at the very least they are harmless (such as new windows opening from the center very small and enlarging to the place they wind up, it’s a cute animation and takes about .3 seconds).
But the new Finder Drag animation is extremely unwieldy and conveys no necessary information to the user. For instance, when dragging a folder or file from a Finder window to the desktop, as you move to the desktop, the items you are holding with the cursor seem to grow and move. My first response when this first happened was to let go of the mouse button, dropping the files wherever my cursor was. It was not pleasant and I wanted to find the developer that thought this was a good idea and choke him.
I have not warmed up to the animation at all since that first initial encounter. Icons should not move around, shift, or change size once the user has grabbed them. That they do so tells the user that something is happening without their input and, at least in my case, the impulse/initial reaction is to stop and figure out what is going wrong. It’s dumb, and I hope that they remove the animation in subsequent updates, though I doubt they will.
John Siracusa <a>said it best</a>:
<blockquote>
Cocoa in Lion gives developers more control over the image displayed when an item is dragged from one place to another. The Lion Finder uses this control to transform multi-item selections from the usual ghostly image of the source into a compressed, realigned, list-view representation. This transformation happens a moment or two after the drag begins. While this is a fine demonstration of a new API, the experience is a bit off-putting. Imagine taking a dish out of the dishwasher and then having it start flopping around like a fish in your hand. This is a rare case of Apple losing sight of what’s important in real-time interaction design. Stability and responsiveness lead to comfort. A transformative animation (instability) that happens after a short delay (the appearance of unresponsiveness) does not make for good experience. I wonder how many novice users will instinctively release the mouse button and inadvertently terminate the drag operation the first time this animation is triggered.
</blockquote>
iCal
No, I’m not one of the haters of the new leather look. I don’t mind my applications having their own personality.
But…
I really miss the dedicated calendar sidebar. The popover just isn’t working well for me. I really like to be able to turn calendars on and off from the current view. Like I don’t need to have my daily scripture reading visible when I’m at work trying to figure out what’s on the calendar. The pop-over makes it a 3 click deal instead of one click (one click to open the pop-over, another click to turn off the calendar I don’t want to see right now, another click to make the pop-over go away). Please Apple, at least bring back the sidebar in such a way that we can turn it back on if we want it!
Address Book
I’m pretty sure that this new Address Book is a huge step backward. The old one was so much easier to use. I’ve tried to determine if I’m just rebelling because it looks different, but I don’t think so. Still, it’s not unusable, and maybe I’ll get over it.
Gestures
The gestures used on the trackpad feel so natural that I find myself going to my trackpad to use them rather than the Magic Mouse I have connected. Don’t get me wrong, when I’m doing serious design work or video editing, the Magic Mouse is essential for precession, but the trackpad gestures are well done. The limited number of Gestures for the Magic Mouse, though I do use them, are not quite as natural, and as I said, a bit more limited.
My favorite trackpad gestures are:
<ul>
<li>Four Finger Swipe Up - Mission Control</li>
<li>Three or Four Finger Pinch Open - Show Desktop</li>
<li>Four Finger Swipe Across - Switch Spaces</li>
<li>Three Finger Drag - place cursor over window and drag it around</li>
<li>Two Finger Scrolling - We’ve had this for a while, but it really is great!</li>
</ul>
Additional Note on Mail
I put the “Move” button in my Mail Toolbar. I’ve been using it A LOT today. I love it! It’s a drop down menu that lets you move the selected message or conversation to a folder.
Just for grins, here is a screen shot of my Mail 5 toolbar:
<a href="/assets/uploads/mail5-toolbar.png"><img src="/assets/uploads/mail5-toolbar-thumb.png" alt="mail5-toolbar-thumb"></a>
(<a href="/assets/uploads/mail5-toolbar.png">click to embiggen</a>)
Gray-ish sidebar icons
Mail, Finder… any native sidebar has gone pretty much grayscale with the icons. It’s really growing on me. It seems much classier and I don’t have any trouble at all identifiying the different icons.
The Look
Now remember, I’m just writing down stuff as it comes to mind.
So, Lion’s new take on Aqua. I’m liking it so far. But first, a look back from my perspective. I remember when I first saw OS X (10.2, Jaguar, if you care), after having known only Windows, I thought OS X looked mighty slick. I mean there were candy looking things everywhere. The gumdrop looking traffic light buttons stood up off the title bars, inactive window title bars were semi-transparent, and pinstripes (yes those awful pinstripes…shudder), they were everywhere. And indeed, my frame of reference was the eyesore called Windows XP (remember though that the frame of reference for Windows users when XP came out was the Classic Windows look, Windows 2000, ME, 98 etc.). Windows XP was so overdone.
But now, looking back on OS X, Aqua was also WAYYYYY overdone. Way to garish. The OS got in the way, called too much attention to itself.
Jaguar was my first look into the Mac world and OS X, but my first Macintosh came with Panther. It was definitely toned down from Jaguar. The pinstripes were muted to be barely discernible, the transparencies were toned way down, buttons no longer looked like they were floating on top of their title bars and so on. In general the garish look was being refined, polished into something more elegant. Each release of OS X has had this more polished, more muted feel. Lion accelerates this, and I’m glad for it. I have long been feeling that Aqua was just a bit too garish, the most egregious exampling being the blue pill shaped scroll bars. And thankfully, they are gone! Scrollbars only appear when you are scrolling with a trackpad or magic mouse (muted looking scroll bars do permanently appear if your only input device has no means of scrolling built in, but that’s rare these days). Buttons are more squared off and not lozenge shaped, and they don’ look like they are standing off the item they are embedded in. Everything in genearl is more muted and it’s a welcome change.
Window Management
This is really just more of the Mission Control stuff, but it’s worth saying again, window management has taken a huge step forward in Lion. I’m very happy with it.
Safari 5.1
It’s very fast and has a bit more polished feel to it in general. It’s hard to define. But it is certainly fast.
Login/Lock screen
Sometimes it’s the little things that delight me. The much more polished and modern looking login in screen, and lock screen are nice!
About this Mac/System Information
This is one of those seemingly unimportant areas that received some attention in Lion. The new System Information app (that replaces System Profiler) is very nice looking and not nearly as intimidating as the old look. Though System Profiler gave a lot more information, System information gives the most basic information one might need, and does so in a way that looks nice and is easier to understand. However, if you really need to dig into the nitty gritty of Lion, the same old System Profiler looking view is available by clicking “More Information.”
General stuff
I would say Lion is probably the most stable .0 release of any OS X release I have ever used. Though it’s not without it’s bugs.
One bug that was pointed out to me (I don’t think I ever would have caught it myself since I rarely do this) is one that affects Safari. To trigger it:
<ol>
<li>Put Safari in Full Screen Mode</li>
<li>Open two tabs</li>
<li>Drag one tab off to create a new full screen window from that tab</li>
<li>From the menu bar choose “Window > Merge All Windows” and watch the ensuing chaos as Safari “seems” to think it’s still in full screen mode, but has actually moved to the nearest desktop.</li>
<li>Now in an effort to restore sanity, choose “View > Exit Full Screen”</li>
<li>Now watch Safari crash</li>
</ol>
Pretty fun to see this glaring bug having got through Apple’s testing. Like I said, I would NEVER have discovered this on my own, that’s just not the way I use Safari.
As far as third party apps go, I used Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Coda, Transmit, and VMWare Fusion all day today without any problems save the occasional 10 second or so beach ball with Photoshop (I don’t recall it happening quite as often in Snow Leopard), but nothing unusable.
That’s pretty much all the thoughts I had today. I may have more later.

Lion, day one in actual working environment

<a href="http://reederapp.com/">Reeder</a> is a an RSS application that syncs with <a href="http://google.com/reader">Google Reader</a>, and it is available for iPhone, iPad, and now OS X (<a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/reeder/id439845554?mt=12">via the Mac App Store</a>). I bought the iPhone app some time ago because I was simply blown away by it. I have one minor little quibble with it, namely that when turning into landscape mode, it hides the iPhone status bar, making it impossible to quickly scroll back to the top of a long article by tapping…
But this article is more about the release of Reeder for Mac. I have been using the betas of Reeder for Mac for quite some time now (I actually discovered the Mac beta before I discovered the iPhone app). In fact it has become quite essential to my RSS reading. Even in beta, the app felt very polished in a lot of ways (though for most of the beta period, subscription management was not available, and had to be done through Google Reader’s web interface, but even so quite a joy to use).
You can read my original review of the beta <a href="http://appleuserpro.com/home/reeder-a-review">here</a>.
All of it is still valid except for the one bug I mentioned (application hanging occasionally), which was squashed a couple betas ago. Reeder is a great app and the $10.00 fee is well worth it!

Reeder for Reader

I went all out last week…
I bought a brand new MacBook Pro… the day the new models came out.
I had actually been delaying my upgrade, knowing that new models were due any day. And I was not disappointed.
My upgrade cycle goes something like this:
<ul>
<li>
Buy the most top of the line new Mac laptop I can get my hands on
</li>
<li>
Get as many years out of it as I can, run it until it feels dog slow compared to all the new comptuers (4 to 5 years is preferable)
</li>
<li>
Buy the most top of the line new Mac laptop I can get my hands on…
</li>
</ul>
Rinse and repeat, etc.
I didn’t quite make it to 4 years with my previous MacBook Pro. I’ve been known to say that Apple Computers outlast most PC vendor’s computers, and I still believe that’s true. But boy have computers leapt forward. This new MacBook Pro is FAST. I did a video file encode test with HandBrake, same file on both my previous laptop, and the new laptop. On my old laptop (2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo) the file took 1h 40m. On my new laptop (more specs in a minute, but it’s a 2.3 GHz Quad Core i7) it took just 7 minutes. This thing is crazy fast.
I purchased the 17” instead of the 15” as my old Core 2 Duo model was the last of the line to include the Express/34 Cardslot in the 15” version. I have to have the Cardslot (for now) as a video professional. I always considered myself a 15” laptop kind of guy, but I am actually finding that I enjoy the 17” a lot more than I thought I would. The screen real-estate is just phenomenal, and I have yet to be in a situation where I wish it was smaller.
Battery life is also tremendous, aided by the auto switching between the more and less powerful dual graphics cards. It’s not like I’m going to need all the power of the discreet graphics card when I’m not plugged in anyway. When I need that kind of power, I’ll be plugged in. I have gotten as much as 7.5 hours of medium light to medium use.
Speaking of Graphics, both cards have better performance than the one discreet Nvidia card in my old Core 2 Duo. I sure did/do hate that 9600m GT. The performance, and the tearing were simply awful. This just solidifies in my mind how bad Nvidia really is. From now on it’s <del>ATI</del> AMD graphics cards for me!
So here’s the nitty gritty specs. It’s the top of the line 17”
Processor: 
Intel Core i7 - 2.3 GHz - Quad Core (Hyper Threading Technology)
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB 
L3 Cache: 8 MB
Memory: 
4 GB DDR3 - 1333 MHz (upgrade to 8 GB is in the mail, on it’s way to me!)
Graphics: 
1. Intel HD Graphics 3000, VRAM 384 MB (integrated, lower power consumption)
2. AMD Radeon HD 6750M, VRAM 1024 MB (discreet, higher power consumption, much higher performance)
Computer switches between the graphics cards automatically on the fly depending on whether you are connected to a power source or not. Though you can disable automatic switching if you so desire.
Hard Drive: 
750 GB
And now we come to the really cool part, but the one I have not yet been able to make use of. This laptop includes <del>Lightpeak</del> Thunderbolt!
Now, it’s going to be a while before there are any peripherals for Thunderbolt, but the technology is, I think, going to revolutionize the industry. It’s very fast, it can support up to 6 devices via daisy chaining, and it’s adaptable. And this is why I said earlier that I needed the Express/34 Cardslot *for now.* At some point I expect there will be an eSATA adapter for Thunderbolt, at which point my Cardslot will no longer be necessary. Believe me when I say I am very excited to see where Thunderbolt technology goes.
So anyway, I’m enjoying my new laptop on all levels.

In which he just goes nuts!

<a href="http://reederapp.com/">Reeder</a> is perhaps one of the best app purchases I’ve ever made for my iPhone at just $2.99 (<a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/reeder/id325502379?mt=8">available on the App Store</a>). I’ve tried a number of RSS apps that sync with Google Reader, and even tried using just the web app in Safari. None of them hold a candle to Reeder. But I actually discovered Reeder by trying the Mac beta a few weeks back and I was hooked.
Since the Macintosh application is where I started that’s where I will start the review (<a href="http://madeatgloria.com/brewery/silvio/reeder">link to the beta</a>).
First of all, I think web applications can be good, and Google Reader on the web is one of the best. But in my experience there just aren’t any web apps that do as good a job as a platform native application for anything where such an app exists. And I’m glad the Google Reader web interface exists, I still use it. But I use it much less now that I have Reeder.
First, Reeder for Mac syncs everything with Google Reader. Folders, Subscriptions, Shared Items, Starred Items, everything. The three position button slider at the top allows me to switch between three basic “view filters” as I’m calling them here. Starred Items, Unread Items, and All Items (read, unread, or starred). And the beauty of this over the web interface is that even in the Starred view, items are still shown in folders and feeds. This took care of a major gripe I had with Google Reader and Starred items. I could not before view my starred items by feed and folder.
Secondly, Reeder for Mac uses all the same keyboard shortcuts that I used in the Google Reader web interface. “S” for starring an item, “K” to page up to the next item, “V” to open an item, and “J” to page down to the previous item. I think there are other keyboard shortcuts that it shares with Reader on the web, but those are really the only four I ever use(d).
While I’m here on keyboard shortcuts, it should be noted that using the “V” shortcut, or clicking on links opens them right in the Reeder application which can be nice. However, Reeder does have one other shortcut that I use a lot, maybe even more than “V” and that is “B” to open the item in your default browser. You can set in the preferences for links opened in the browser to open in the background, which setting I have activated. This is nice because you can open an item and keep right on going through your feeds until you are ready to switch to Safari and take a look at the item you opened.
Third is integrated sharing. There are no other app I have used that gets this right. You can share, or share with note right through Reeder’s slick interface, and you can see your friends shared items, and who shared it, and whatever note they may have shared it with.
Fourth, Starred Items and folders/feeds. I’ve already mentioned this, but it’s so good it’s worth mentioning again. You see, a lot of times I’m just trying to get through my feeds quickly while I have 5 minutes or something. I like to keep my reading list marked as read so that it’s more manageable. A lot of times the way I do this is simply add a star to items of interest so I can come back and read it later, marking everything else as read (because it’s boring or whatever). One thing I always abhorred though is that all my sorting of feeds into folders, and even just viewing by feed was lost when it came to Starred Items, because the only place in Google Reader that you could view you Starred Items was in the single Starred Items tag over on the left side of Google Reader. This just shows you ALL your starred items in one big list. Well Reeder lets you view starred items per folder and Feed, even viewing only Starred Items that you have starred from Friend’s Shared Items. It is probably the coolest feature of Reeder in my opinion.
Reeder for Mac is still beta and a few things are missing, such as feed management. I still have to visit the web interface of Google Reader to manage my feeds. But I don’t have to do this very often so no big deal. And I do occasionally observe a temporary application “hang” when click to a feed that contains a flash video. Other than that Reeder really doesn’t feel like a beta to me.
So after spending a couple weeks with Reeder for Mac I realized that I needed the iPhone app. And I have been most impressed. Reeder for iPhone does everything that Reeder for Mac does, only formatted for iPhone. Of course it doesn’t utilize keyboard shortcuts as the iPhone has no physical keyboard, but it has a nice little services menu invoked at the bottom right side of Reeder for iPhone that is completely customizable. You can choose what you want to see in the services menu.
And it does indeed behave the same as it’s big beta brother in terms of syncing, folders, feeds, and Starred Items.
I am very happy with Reeder and will gladly pay a small fee for the Mac application when it leaves beta, provided that fee is reasonable. And it certainly strikes me as just the type of application we may see in the Mac App store.
<a href="http://reederapp.com/">Reeder Website</a>
<a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/reeder/id325502379?mt=8">Reeder on the App Store</a>
<a href="http://madeatgloria.com/brewery/silvio/reeder">Reeder for Mac beta</a>

Reeder, a review

<a href="http://extensions.apple.com/">Safari Extensions Gallery →</a>
Wait, you can’t search extensions? What on earth???
Seriously! The first thing I tried to do was search for some extensions. So I started hunting around for the extensions search field. Then I started going, “Hey, where’s the search at?” And that’s when I started realizing that there is no search for all these extensions (remember iPhone OS 1 where there was no search in the contacts? Yeah… it kinda reminds me a little of that. I’m still shuddering at the nightmare being reminded of THAT caused!).
So then I tried the Apple Website generic search field up at the top right of the Apple Website. I started by searching for an extension that I knew to exist in the extensions gallery to see if the Apple Website generic search would search Safari Extensions… It doesn’t.
FAIL!
But moving on from that.
Being the geek that I am, I have been using Safari Extensions since Safari 5 came out. It wasn’t that hard to enable extensions, and several websites cropped up pretty quickly for Safari Extensions in the temporary absence of the official extensions gallery. However, I have noted that some of the extensions I am using are not available in the gallery (yet). But that could be because the developers just haven’t submitted them yet. We shall see.
Here are some of the Extensions I have been using:
<a href="http://safariadblock.com/">AdBlock</a>
Yes I’m one of those evil geeks that tries to block obnoxious adds!
<a href="http://dbergey.github.com/">Invisible Status Bar</a>
I really liked this about Chrome, and in Safari I always before had the status bar enabled. Always sitting at the bottom of the browser taking up space. This is much better!
<a href="http://rafeed.me/safari-extensions/">GReader</a>
Sits in the Safari Tool Bar and tells me how many unread RSS feeds I have in Google Reader.
<a href="http://www.cyberhq.nl/">FullScreenYouTube</a>
This is for YouTube’s HTML5 beta that “doesn’t support” full screen right now, but actually works for any HTML5 video I’ve seen so far, including Vimeo. It will let you make HTML5 video go full screen. It’s quite handy.
<a href="http://homepage.mac.com/drewthaler/jsblacklist/">JavaScript Blacklist</a>
This is one of the better plugins I use! I really hate it when random words turn into links on a webpage, or text is inserted into a copy function, copying more than selected into my clipboard. I am currently blocking scripts from tynt.com, intellitxt.com and snap.com, which is the default.
<a href="http://pedrocc.com/safari">Google Reader Compact</a>
Has a couple of minor cosmetic defects, but I like it because it takes better advantage of my screen real-estate.
And One More
There is one more thing I use on Safari, but it is not an officially sanctioned extension. In fact, it doesn’t install as a Safari Extension. It has a regular old OS X installer package. And I’ve been using it for quite a while (well before Safari 5), and I find it essential. It is <a href="http://clicktoflash.com/">ClickToFlash</a>. This plugin does not allow any flash to load on a page until I specifically click on it. Unfortunately blocking flash entirely still isn’t completely possible, so being able to load it on click is a great option to have! And I can add specific site to the whitelist as well. This literally revolutionized my web browsing experience.

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