Category Archives: Mac20Q

There are number of files within the operating system that are completely useless and a waste of space on your hard drive. An example of these types of files would be the language files, it is very unlikely that I will need to have the languages, French, Swahili, Russian or Icelandic available to me within OS X. The application CleanMyMac is great for getting rid of these files that are cluttering up the hard drive. The application CleanMyMac is going to be even more use for people that are working with a small SSD drive, but can be just as useful for someone like myself with a mechanical drive filled with lots of video files taking up valuable space.

 

Using CleanMyMac

The application CleanMyMac came with the latest MacHeist bundle and was incredibly easy to set up, as you would expect. Quite a lot of people on the social networks have been talking about the application and saying how good it is. So with these endorsements for the efficacy of the application I decided to install it and use it. Even so, if you’re using an application like this, then you really should know for sure that you have good backups already made. I had made a Superduper back up the day before so I felt quite confident in using CleanMyMac. I did a scan of the system with the application and it told me I would be able to save 32 GB of space from my hard drive. I did not use the automatic cleanup because I wanted to see, especially on the first use of the app, what was going to be deleted. There were a couple of files that I chose not to be deleted and there were a couple of languages that were scheduled for deletion, Catalan and Spanish, that I needed to keep.

CleanMyMac also cleans up the iPhoto library

On the first run of the application CleanMyMac, the version of iPhoto was not supported. I needed to get an update to the application the following day in order to be able to use this part of the app. What it does is to remove files that have been altered and the original has been kept by iPhoto. This is particularly useful with photographs that have been rotated. The photograph has not been significantly changed and if you really needed to view the photo with everything on its side, then you can still rotate the photograph again and have exactly what you started with.

Trash cleanup with CleanMyMac

Cleaning out the trash on the Mac OS X system is something which I have been leaving to the Hazel application to look after. I have it set so that once the trash folder gets to 1 GB it will delete the old stuff permanently. CleanMyMac will also monitor the trash folder for you and prompts you to clear it out when it gets too large. If you have been doing some work in iPhoto and there are photos in the iPhoto library trash, you will get the opportunity to clean that up also. I am just looking’s the application now and I can see that I have 885 MB in my trash folder. At the bottom of the application there is a nice large button entitled Empty and I’m going to press it now. The trash has been cleaned up in the blink of an eye and I get a nice musical chime to let me know the job has been done.

The CleanMyMac uninstaller

Once again there is part of the application Hazel that I use for cleaning up, after I have dragged and dropped an unwanted application into the trash, but I could also use CleanMyMac to do this job. A very useful tool within this part of the application is the ability to Sort By Last Launch Date. Then within the list, I can see that there are some applications that have not been opened for more than a year, there are some applications that have not been opened for more than six months and some that have been opened within the last three months. So it is fairly obvious that there are some applications that you are just not using and should perhaps be deleted from the computer. Sometimes we get so involved with using the new applications we can forget other good applications that we have available. I quite like looking in this list to see what I not use for awhile and sometimes I am pleased to be reminded about a great application that I have neglected.

How good is the CleanMyMac application

While there is the possibility with an application like this for you to get rid of something that you need, with CleanMyMac it is as safe as it can be made. I suggest that when you first use it you don’t use the automatic cleanup and you have a careful look through the various parts of CleanMyMac and choose exactly what you want to have deleted.

I am impressed with the quality and the design of the application. It works really well and since I have been using it I have had more space available on my hard drive. I have been able to use it without ending up crying onto my mouse mat and that must be good! Really pleased that I got it with the latest MacHeist bundle. I was so impressed that I bought a second bundle from them to use CleanMyMac on my wife’s computer also. I would recommend that you either buy the application direct or just keep an eye out for it to see if it appears in any other Mac application bundles as they become available.

At the beginning of this year I started to put more emphasis upon making videos, rather than the writing. Although it is true to say, that to a certain extent the two will go hand-in-hand. For my blog posts I have been creating videos so that readers will stay on the site for longer, this works out well for the rankings on Google. Having said that, it has been just as well that I have made more videos as Google has been less than kind to the websites. Google keeps on making changes to their search algorithms. So all I have been able to do is to concentrate on making the effort to provide interesting and useful content for the readers of Mac20Q. I hope that you have enjoyed them and have been able to get something from the articles that I have provided for you throughout the year.

Sorting out the Wizardgold websites

There have been a number of websites that I had worked on primarily to have as sites that could earn money from AdSense and these I have just decided to let them stop working completely. It is far better to spend my time on the websites covering the topics that I am more interested in. Mac20Q is the main site of course and the other one would be the Amazing iPad website. I also decided in 2012 that the Amazing iPad website would morph into NoStylus.com. This was so that I could have a site that could cover any touchscreen devices. Mostly this would be Apple devices, but if I did decide to get a Nexus 7, for example, then I would be able to justifiably write about it on NoStylus.com. I’m still not absolutely sure that it was a good decision to leave the amazingiPad.com domain name behind, as the redirect that I set up, hasn’t been bringing in as much traffic as it getting in from Google on the old domain name. In any case, I’m going to stick with NoStylus.com for the long-term.

Working with Motion and Final Cut Pro X

I keep learning more things about these two applications and I love the creativity that I can work into my video projects. Video is quite time-consuming compared to writing, but in a lot of ways it is more rewarding. Obviously I am quite a visual creative person. So it is been nice to see that the income from AdSense on my videos has been growing during the year. I now have over 250 videos on the Wizardgold channel on YouTube and most of them are tutorial type videos. VideoMagical is the website for the tutorials about anything to do with video.

Generally the way that I work on the videos is to create a screencast using the application ScreenFlow. When that part of the job is done, I can then put the basic video into Final Cut Pro X, so that I can fine-tune it and add the intro and outro for the video. I’m finding that the workflow that I have got now, is quite effective and efficient and I’m looking forward to making more videos for my viewers during 2013. If you have any requests for tutorial videos please send an email to Wizardgold@Gmail.com.

All of my interests

The writing and the video making are still the main interests and photography also has to be high on the list too. During the year I have also been teaching again in schools, working as an English language assistant. So during the year on the websites that are right for them, there have been articles showing an interest in the educational process. I have been looking at applications that can be used on iOS devices and I’ve also been looking at the ways that iPads and technology in general can be used in the classroom. I think it is great to see that the iPad is becoming the best solution for educational purposes, for both teachers and students. Some schools will be getting cheaper, inferior devices due to financial constraints. It has become apparent that having a one-to-one approach to using the iPad in the classroom is the best way to go. Some schools can’t afford to do this and have to work on the basis of shared iPads. There are other establishments that are worse off financially that are having to go with the bring your own device approach.

My favourite applications in 2012

DragonDictate

The absolutely most excellent and favourite application for 2012 has to be Dragon Dictate. I’m using the application right now to ‘write’ this article. What is so good about it is that I can dictate the words about three times faster than I can type them. Certainly this is excellent news for a writer with a number of websites to write for. I would highly recommend getting the full version of Dragon Dictate , as the experience of using it is so much better than using the Mountain Lion dictation. The dictation in Mountain Lion is still quite useful for short pieces of text, if I haven’t got Dragon Dictate open. Without a doubt, talking to your computer is going to be more common than it is now as the software gets better and better.

Writing applications

I use a free application called Mou that allows me to take the text that I have created using DragonDictate and continue working on it in Markdown format. I do it like this because I like to have a separate application for the editing process which I do manually using the keyboard. This is because Dragon Dictate it doesn’t like it when you combine using the keyboard along with using the voice to create your text. It gets confused.

Another application that I also use for the writing process would be Byword. This application also accepts the markdown syntax and is very useful when I have writing that I want to work on, both on the Mac and also on my iPad. The way that the documents are synchronised over iCloud is extremely useful. Byword has a lovely clean interface and is a very useful application on both of the operating systems.

Marsedit is another vital part of my workflow and it is great to have all of the access to my websites in one place. All of my websites are WordPress and Marsedit is just the job for a busy blogger. It is in this application that I do the drag-and-drop of pictures into the articles. What I would like to see is in the future would be a way to link into some WP plug-ins such as the All in One SEO and then I would hardly have to mess about going into the browser in order to fully set up the articles for the blog.

Video Applications

Final Cut Pro X is so much better to use than the Final Cut Pro Express that I was using. I like the magnetic timeline and the general ease-of-use for putting video clips together to create a finished video for YouTube. I also use Motion 5 as part of the video editing process and it works very well to round trip video elements between Motion and Final Cut Pro X.

ScreenFlow is another application that I use almost daily and I still enjoy using it, despite the latest upgrade being a little bit buggy. There were also a couple of interface changes in ScreenFlow 4 that I didn’t like and I would hope that the developers of the application would at some point in time apply some fixes.

Mac20Q looking forward to 2013

I will be continuing to have the emphasis on the YouTube video creation as that is the one for the best prospects of earning some money. I am going to continue with the tutorial videos and I might do a certain amount of vlogging and possibly try to enter the realm of comedy. I will be keeping all of these other types of videos on a separate channel, so that the David Allen/Wizardgold YouTube channel will always be about Mac and iOS stuff.

I have bought access to an online course for teaching English as a foreign language, which I will be working on during the first part of the year. Obviously I will be using the Mac and iOS as much as possible to assist me in my learning process. I fully expect that my digital lifestyle and way of working will be enhanced by using my favourite computers. Thank you very much Apple for providing me with such excellent tech and access to brilliant software to do all the stuff that I need to do.

The articles will still continue to appear on Mac20Q, on NoStylus and one or two other websites that I write for. I think I would like to aim for two articles a week on both of those websites, while the other websites will be updated a little less frequently. Many of the articles for these websites will be there to support the videos that I make for YouTube.

Onwards and upwards

Wishing all the readers of Mac20Q all the best for 2013. If you have articles that you like to see on the site, please let me know. Please join in the conversation by adding comments to any articles that are posted. Whatever you would like to say whether it is positive or negative it is welcome, it just has to be on topic with regards to the article posted. Happy New Year from David Allen at Mac20Q.

I use my iMac everyday, it is a 27 inch model with an i5 processor and it has 16 GB of memory. It wasn’t a top of the range model with the i7 processor and all of the added extra goodies that you can get, such as an SSD drive, but all the same it is still a fairly fast machine. It came with 8 GB of RAM and I bought extra from Crucial, which is one of the best vendor’s for third-party memory. A great machine to use with Dragon Dictate.

So as part of my work as a writer, blogger and video podcaster, I comment upon being an Apple user. This requires me to try out quite a lot of different applications and I’m quite happy to install of these onto my iMac. There comes a time though, when the waters get a little bit muddy due to the use and abuse of a computer, even a Mac. I think a lot of it comes down to the fact that there isn’t any perfect software, without any bugs in it whatsoever and over time, with installing and uninstalling, a certain amount of crud builds up.

During the last month I’ve experienced a few small problems with my Mac. As you would expect from us Mac users, I have been unhappy about this. We Mac users do like to have things working just right and as close to perfect as is possible. So due to the fact that there have been two kernel panics for definite and a couple of occasions where the computer has restarted itself due to unknown problems, it is time for me to do a clean install of Mountain Lion. Some people call this a nuke and pave.

Experiencing some Mac slowdowns

Aside from the kernel panics, I have already noticed that at times the computer can get a little slower than it should be. I do tend to have quite a lot of applications open at any one time, but then I do have that 16 GB of RAM that should take care of that. I have noticed that there have been problems with audio lately. Only yesterday, while I was working with Final Cut Pro X which had been working fine, there was a very annoying lag with the audio. I also had a similar problem using ScreenFlow.

Sorting out this problem with Mountain Lion and my Mac

The first part of the solution is to backup, backup again and then back up some more. There is no way that I’m going to lose any of my data or lose access to any of my favourite applications during this reinstall process. I have Time Machine running, so that is one backup. I have a separate hard drive toaster in which I have a 2 TB drive, partitioned into two drives. On one of the partitions I do a Superduper backup, usually once a week, but lately I have been doing it every two or three days. I do also have one other drive available and I will probably do another fully bootable backup clone drive on that. Talk about belts and braces.

My offsite backups and my Drobo

I have been moving the DMG installation files for any softwares that I didn’t get through the Mac App Store over to the Drobo for safekeeping. I will be able to use these to reinstall those applications. The Drobo is also becoming a repository for as much data from the main hard drive as I can possibly move across as copies. This gives me another backup source for all of the important stuff.

Another area of backup heaven is Dropbox and I do have much of my data stored within the Dropbox folder. Obviously anything that I have it within Dropbox on my computer is automatically sent to the Cloud and is therefore completely safe. I also have a couple of other accounts that do a similar thing and on top of that there is the iCloud service. So as you can see, I am pretty well covered for backups of my data and my system.

Migration Assistant versus a completely fresh and clean install

What I could do is to use the Apple Recovery Tool which is hidden away on the hard drive. The way that this works is that you boot into that recovery tool and you download a completely new install from your iCloud account. It is also possible to use a bootable install of Mountain Lion on an DS card and this is the choice that I will be making. I have already created a Mountain Lion installer on a 16 GB memory card. When I have reinstalled Mountain Lion on the computer I will then have a choice of using Migration Assistant or installing all of the applications from scratch.

Getting ready for a clean install of Mountain Lion

I think that if I use Migration Assistant, even though it is easier, there is the chance that I could also reinstall one of the problems that I’m trying to get rid of. It is for this reason that I will reinstall all of the applications one by one. This will be made easier by the fact that many of my applications that I use, I have got from the Mac App Store. There are a certain number of applications that I use all of the time and so will be installed straightaway. Then there are a number of other applications that can sit there either in the Mac App Store or as DMG files and I will put them on as I need them.

Looking forward to a faster rosy future with my iMac

I know that by doing this I will improve the way that Mac is working. This is especially the case, seeing is I have had those kernel panics over the last couple of weeks. And I will be happy again, or at least happier. To be totally happy I would be buying one of the new iMacs that was announced at the iPad mini event, with its sexy very thin design and with a Fusion Drive included. The next level of happiness would be that I could afford to buy a 256 GB SSD that I could put into a Thunderbolt converter or connector. With such a configuration, I would use the SSD drive as the bootup drive and put all of the data on the 1 TB drive still in the machine.

Caught by the limits of AppleCare

Another option that would be quite nice, would be to add an SSD internally to the iMac, as it is possible when buying a new one. I would also increase the 1 TB drive to a 2 or 3 TB drive. On account of the fact that, that would invalidate my AppleCare probably, I can’t really do that. I have wondered if I could ask the nice people at Apple to do the upgrades for me. I somehow don’t think that they would take kindly to me bringing in third-party items to put in to my iMac. That is why I have been thinking about the possibility of booting via a Thunderbolt connected SSD. I have heard that there are some people that have done this and it works pretty well. Seagate have a Thunderbolt type of connector that can be used.

Further Upgrades in two years time

So the long-term plan is to wait until the AppleCare has expired, by which time I will have had this computer for three years. I doubt if I will have the cash to go out and buy a new one, so the plan will be to breathe new life into this iMac. In two years time there will be SSD drives that will be cheaper that I can install into the iMac for extremely fast bootup times and the 1 TB drive can also be replaced with something larger. It may even be like having a new computer.

Saving for a new computer

One of my Mac friends on Twitter says for a new computer by buying herself gift cards. Wyld_Celtica_V is the name that she goes by and I am really impressed by her planning and financial savvy. In these difficult financial times, it is really not a good idea to max out credit cards. If you put cash aside, either into the mattress or into a separate bank account, then that money will get used by other things as they come up. So by buying gift cards, basically what you are doing is to ring fence a specific amount of money for the next Mac. If you have a regular income, what you could do is to decide how long you are going to save for and then do some working out about the amount to spend on a gift card per month. This is a genius plan!

I could have saved myself some time

I have had to spend this morning going through all of my applications one by one to make sure that I had the serial numbers and the licences where I could get at them. It has been a time-consuming operation and I’m not quite finished yet. I have now promised myself that any time I get new software that is not from the Mac App Store I will use the application Appshelf to record all of the relevant details as it happens. So for example, today I upgraded to ScreenFlow version 4 and this came with a new serial number. I have already entered all of the necessary information into Appshelf. My preference is to buy the apps from the Mac App Store where possible as this is the easiest way to take care of the apps that I use. Some people like to use the application 1Password to record all of their serial numbers and licenses and this is also a very good plan.

Here I go, into the abyss, wish me luck

When you have to do a complete reinstall like this, it can seem quite scary. Just so long as you have taken all of the steps to protect your data, then there is no reason why you should not do something like this with confidence. I have the backups, I have the information – Just let me at it! I will write another post about how I get on with the process of doing the Mountain Lion clean install when I come out of the other side.

Not long before the event was due to start, it came over the Twittersphere that Apple would be broadcasting the event through the Apple TV. There must have been a lot of Apple live bloggers that groaned and got all upset, but for many of us, being able to see the events live was just spot-on.

The big problem of course was that the event started at 7pm my time, which is when the wife likes to watch the Australian soaps. I duly requested television time, there was much wailing and screaming, rolling on the floor, beating of fists and feet on the floor and crying, but eventually she said yes I could watch the television. Thank goodness there are always repeats of the “Home and Away” Australian docu-dramas (Soaps).

Numbers, lots of big numbers

In the buildup to the announcements of the actual devices, Apple like to do a bit of trumpet blowing as per usual. Lots of big numbers with billions of iOS applications having been sold, but I think that the amazing number was that Apple boasted of having sold over 100 million iPads. Here in Spain, I only see the iPad out in the wild once in a blue moon. Unfortunately I didn’t see any in the school that I was working in, during April and May. It must be something to do with the crisis (financial) and I don’t suppose you will see too many in Greece either.

Upgrades to the Apple desktops and laptops

A MacBook Pro with Retina

The MacBook Pro got an update and was given usual treatment of being lighter, smaller, thinner and the retina display that was previously only available on the 15 inch model. It also got USB 3 ports and I noticed it also got a HDMI port. Of course, the MacBook Pro also has the Thunderbolt ports. It looks a very nice laptop computer and I expect it will be very popular.

The skinny iMac, the anorexic supermodel of computers

There is now a new iMac and the edge of it is extremely thin. To a certain extent it must be a little bit of an optical illusion, because the centre part of the computer must still have a bit more thickness than that. It did look rather nice though and very impressive indeed. One of the reasons that they were able to make it so much thinner at the edges, was that they dumped the optical drive. This makes sense, as who uses an optical drive these days.

The Mac Mini

There were upgrades to the Mac Mini and it was nice to see that this excellent little computer got some of the upgrade love. More memory as standard and options of SSD drives as well as larger standard hard drives. The server version of the Mac Mini is also still available. The Mac Mini is still a very good computer to use for video work as well as being a good first Mac for switchers. Both the standard version and also the server version often finds itself thrown into a rack along with hundreds of others for collocation work.

The Star Trek Fusion Drive

This is a new drive that has been invented by Apple which has 128 GB of flash storage along with either a 1 TB or 3 TB spinning drive. It looks like it is available as an extra and gives a huge performance hike to any computers that it is used in. The system software goes to the solid-state part of the drive, as well as the pre-installed Apple software. Over time as the system gets to see which applications are used the most, there seems to be some sort of automatic migration of these Mac applications to the much faster SSD. For those of us that have fairly new Macs on our desks already but would like to be able to have faster performance, a Fusion Drive could be just the thing to get.

The iPad generation 4 – What a Surprise!

The room went quiet and all of the rumour mongers and Apple pundits were taken by surprise by the announcement of the iPad generation 4. It was not a huge change to the specifications of the iPad, only a new processor that is faster than the previous version and the addition of the lightning connector. This upgrade to the iPad came in underneath the radar of the Apple bloggers and podcasters, because all of them were so fixated on the highly leaked information of the iPad Mini. I hope you enjoyed by joke post from yesterday in which I claimed that the new smaller iPad would be called the Little iPad.

The announcement everyone was waiting for – The iPad Mini

The iPad mini seems to have all of the attributes and functionality of the previous iPad, although Phil Schiller spent a lot of time comparing it to the iPad 2. The comparison with the iPad 2 was because of the screen resolution of 1024 by 768, which was chosen so that all of the applications that are available at present will still be available for the new iPad Mini. That decision makes a lot of sense and could even be a stroke of genius. I still have to look at the details for the technical specifications of the iPad Mini, but it does look very nice and very usable. Smaller, thinner, lighter, sexier and you’re able to hold it with just one hand. Unless you have very small hands of course.

Comparisons with an Android device

There was also quite a lot of time spent with Phil Schiller comparing the new iPad Mini with an Android device. That device was probably the Nexus 7 and of course the iPad was better in just about every way. In terms of screen space the iPad had more because of being the same format as the iPad but not 16 x 9. So this gives more space to be used when doing things like checking email and viewing webpages. Watching a movie will be the same size as on a Nexus 7, but there will be a little bit of letterboxing. It looks like the the iPad Mini gives you the best of all worlds. The iPad mini will be more expensive, but for most people it will be worth spending a little bit more to have the Apple device rather than the inferior Android tablet.

Something for everyone at the iPad Mini Apple event

Well almost everybody, the new iTunes 11 was not announced as many expected. It still could turn up in software update over the next couple of days. However, there was the announced update to iBooks and iBooks Author. I will be downloading these two bits of software soon as I am able to. I can’t wait to see what new things are available in the iBooks Author application. There didn’t seem to be too big a change with the iBooks application for iOS, in the main it seemed to be the single page scrolling text being the single update. I think I like the page turning thing that is like a dead tree book.

Cannibalisation of iPad sales

When people go into the Apple Store to buy themselves a new iOS device it is going to be a difficult choice as to which one to get. The new iPad Mini is not much more expensive than the latest generation iPod Touch. Between those two devices, I would most likely get the iPad Mini although am I still likely have to wear spectacles to get the best use out of the iPad Mini. The next decision that people will be making is whether to go for the iPad Mini or the iPad 2. To a large extent, as you might expect, there is a ladder of prices to try and suit as many pockets as possible. Just the same as there is stepping stones in terms of the specifications and functions available within the product range. Whatever decisions are made by the customers in the Apple stores and on the Apple Store online, we can be sure that Apple will be selling boatloads of all of these devices, especially with the holiday season coming up. Expect to see some queues lining up around the shopping centres containing the Apple stores on November 2nd.

Using Dragon Voice Recognition to control your computer

When you first get Dragon Dictate, your first thought will be how you can use it to dictate (Obviously) and have it convert your speech into text. It does take time to train the application to recognise your voice. It also takes time for you to get used to speaking in a way that works best for dictation using DragonDictate. DragonDictate is quite a large application and there is a lot to learn when you first get started. So concentrating on the main use or feature of the application, which is dictation, is going to make sense. I would be inclined to recommend that every now and then, you choose an application that works with DragonDictate, such as Finder and see what else you can do.

 

Starting off by navigating around DragonDictate

Aside from the actual conversion of your speech to text, you want to do things like moving the cursor to the beginning of the document, or to the end. There are commands that you can use to make these things happen very easily, by using them a few times they will soon work their way into your memory. It is even possible to do a copy and paste using DragonDictate. First of all use the commands to select the text and it is possible to select portions of text and not just one word. In fact you can use the command to Select All and to either cut or copy that into the clipboard. All you have to do then is to get the cursor to where you want that text to go, this could be within the Dragon Dictate window or even within another application.

The DragonDictate Windows

The status window

It is possible for you to either show or hide the status window. This status window shows you what is happening within the application, you get a meter which shows you the volume of your voice as well as various icons to clue you up on what is happening with the application. It shows you whether you are in spelling mode, dictation mode, number mode, or command mode. I find that most of the time I will be in dictation mode with the occasional excursion into spelling mode.

The Available Commands Window

This window is really useful when you are learning to use DragonDictate, both within the application and with other external Mac applications. It does what it says on the tin – Showing you the commands that are available for what you are doing, wherever you are doing it. The commands are split up into three sections, 1. Dictation, 2. Global, 3. Dragon Dictate. Just looking within the commands available within the dictation list you will see that there are a ton of possible commands that you can use. It is easy to see why you need to spend time and effort in learning how to properly use DragonDictate. Well worth the effort though to use Dragon Voice Recognition and get all Star Trekky in the way that you work.

Within the global list you will be able to see commands that will let you either quit or activate other applications. Also within that list you will see that you can do things with your mouse or keyboard commands. So for example you could tell it to press Cmd, Shift and F10 and your Mac will do whatever you have assigned to that hotkey setup. It is pretty bloody amazing really. There is even a command that you can use to do a screen capture.

The Recognition Window

The Dragon voice recognition window is something that you will want to have open most of the time when you are dictating. When the application is not quite sure of what it is that you said, it will offer you alternatives and you can say the word choose followed by the right number. Most times this will give you the phrase that you actually said and when it doesn’t, you can use the word edit followed by the number for the phrase you want to edit. This way you can do some corrections on the phrase which is closest to what you actually said. At the bottom of this DragonDictate recognition window you also see a drop-down for Related Commands. This just gives you five of the commands that you are most likely to use at that point.

Operations on your computer that you can control with DragonDictate

You can issue commands that will switch you to another application, so if for instance I want to use the Finder on my Mac, I just have to say “Activate Finder”. Or I might be in another application already and I want to quit it, so I just have two say “Quit MarsEdit” and that application will close down. And the same sort of thing again with any of your applications such as Evernote or Skitch.

Quite often when you are using your computer you will get dialog windows pop-up in which you will need to either press cancel or press OK. Dragon gives you commands that you can use to do these things without having to reach for the keyboard. It is true that you do need to know the exact words required for the command, but practice and constant use will reinforce these things into your memory.

Working with applications that are not fully supported by DragonDictate

There is something within DragonDictate which is called the Express Editor and this is a window which pops up above the application which you are trying to put text into. You dictate your text in as per normal and then when you are finished you use the command “Transfer the Text” and that text is inserted into your application. This facility is not one that you are likely to have to use very often, but it is nice to know that it is there if you need it.

 

Actually using documents and data with iCloud

Since we got the latest version of Mac OS X and iOS 6 and iCloud working properly with document data between the two operating systems, we finally have an iCloud that works. Whereas before you could create Documents on your iOS device, but then you would have use a clunky web interface to be able to get those iPad documents onto your Mac, now it all works a little bit more seamlessly. There are one or two small caveats, the main one being that you really need to think about working in one app. That is, not wanting to work on a text document first of all in perhaps TextEdit or Daedalus and then access the same document in a different application such as Byword.

Getting started with iCloud and documents

I would imagine at this stage you have already sorted yourself out with a free iCloud account, if not there is plenty of information around to help you set up a new account on iCloud. Even if you have already set yourself up with an iCloud account, you will also have to make sure that you have activated the Documents and Data setting in your system preferences. Of course you will have to do this both on your iOS 6 devicesand also within Mac OS X. Once you have got all of this organised you will be held to use iCloud compatible applications, such as Byword and any other applications from the iWork 09 suite.

At the moment there are not that many applications that are able to store their data within iCloud. This is probably due to the fact that there has been some confusion about how to organise this in the developer community. Not only that, but developers got used to using other solutions such as Dropbox. Using Dropbox did actually become the de facto standard because it worked well and you know what they say, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. But there is always the race to make apps better and for new features to be added to make the applications more desirable. So it is only a matter of time before iCloud will be added to most of the top applications in iOS and Mac OS X. It is all part of the way of thinking in the Apple universe to have all of our documents everywhere.

Nitty-gritty of using documents and Data in iCloud

If you are using an application like Byword on your Mac you have the choice of whether you want to have that document stored locally or on iCloud. Initially when you do your first save, it will ask you where you want to save it and it will be somewhere on your hard drive. After it has been saved then you can use the drop-down menu that you see in the top of the window. If the document is not on iCloud you will have the option of moving the document to iCloud. If the document already is on iCloud, then in the drop menu you will just see an option to Move to.

You don’t really want to have copies of the same document scattered all over the place unless you really mean to do so. That is why you are given the opportunity of moving the file rather than copying the file. It could become confusing and lead to potential disasters if the file gets split into two places. If you do need to have a snapshot or a version of a file, then you can use the duplicate command. OK – So you have first of all saved the file and given it a name and then you can move it into iCloud. The next part of this process is when you want to edit the same file on whatever iOS devices.

Accessing the same file in Byword in iOS 6

This synchronisation from your Mac to iCloud does work fairly quickly. When you’re in the view where you can see your list of files in Byword on your iPad, you may not see the file straight away, but if you look at the bottom of the list you will see that you can tap to sync. You may even need to give it a minute or two, depending on how long it is since you’ve sent the file to iCloud. As I am writing this, using DragonDictate, of course, I have the Byword open on my iPad and I can see that every couple of minutes the file is being updated. At the same time that the file is updated, I see in the top bar of the window that the word Edited disappears. The fact that the file is continually being auto saved can be incredibly useful in case something goes wrong. At most you are only ever going to lose five minutes of work. Best of all is the fact that you don’t have to think about it and that it happens automatically. Mind you that automatic saving happens whether the file is being stored locally or whether it is on iCloud. It is still possible to do a Cmd S or click on Save to manually force a save.

What to look for when you are opening documents in iCloud enabled applications

When using Byword on the iPad and I want to open a document I have a choice of where to get those documents and data from. I can use iCloud of course, there is Dropbox and On My iPad for the locally stored files. I have just pulled down the list of files to reveal the search facilities and a choice as to whether the files are sorted by date or name. It is really very easy to use and to set up, so that you can have your documents in whatever place works best for you. If you have your documents stored within iCloud, then you will have an extra copy of those on your iPad as well. The option where the files are stored locally means that it is just locally and not on iCloud at all. It seems to make good sense to utilise the iCloud service.

Bridging the gap between iOS 6 and Mac OS X

This is what iCloud was made for, so that we could have our documents everywhere. What about, when you are working with application on your Mac and it doesn’t have a iOS brother or sister application. Well the best answer for that really is to choose one iCloud enabled application and stick with it. Byword works great for me and it is going to be a better option for most people than TextEdit. This is because when you save a file to iCloud in TextEdit there isn’t a text editor on the iPad or iPhone that you can use to get to those files. The only way around the problem would be to save those files into something like Dropbox.

Using iCloud and sharing documents

Well, to a certain extent you are sharing documents for yourself between your Apple devices, iOS and Mac OS X. What about if you want to share documents on iPad with other people. In Dropbox this is easy to do by using a public folder and you can share out the URL to whatever it is you want to share. Not quite the same if you’re using iCloud though.

Sync Documents iCloud or use Dropbox

There are options, you could make a duplicate and send it to Dropbox for sharing. You could share out in the traditional ways by sending out in an email. With Byword you get the option to send out in a few different formats, including rich text, plaintext, HTML attachment or as a PDF. This will work and is not necessarily more difficult or worse, but is different and you just need to understand how iCloud works and what it can do.

Document security and iCloud

The iCloud service really is designed for home users and not really for the enterprise or business requirement. This is because business users may be more paranoid about the fact that they don’t have control over the security of documents stored in the cloud. It may well be that the cloud based storage is perfectly safe in normal use, but certain business situations could be best served by not using cloud storage at all. I have been talking mainly about text apps here but the image manipulation app Pixelmator uses iCloud.

The Mac20Q verdict on iCloud

Personally, I am quite happy using iCloud, but I’m still going to be using Dropbox. There are still many applications that I like to use that are not iCloud documents & data enabled and I’m not going to give them up. I don’t mind that I have some files in one place and some other files in another. This can even work well in terms of making best use of the cloud services available and the amount of space that each of them give you for free. The only thing about using some applications for iCloud and some applications with Dropbox, is that I have to remember which way round I have setup. Generally this is no big deal. I believe that iCloud mobile documents finally have come of age and become useful and will probably get better in further iterations of the product. We now know how to store documents in iCloud.

Dragon Dictate for Mac review

After having some problems with getting the upgrade from Nuance the makers of DragonDictate, this evening I was able to download the 2 GB of DragonDictate application. First of all, I made a backup copy of the installation file. I was also able to register the software with DragonDictate without any problems. So then I could start using the software to dictate an article. Pleased to see that the new version recognised the voice profile that were created in the previous version. This saved me from having to retrain DragonDictate to my voice and my accent. If you have seen my YouTube videos or have listened to my podcasts you will have noticed that I have an accent from the centre of England. It is not a very strong Birmingham accent, but is probably enough to confuse untrained dictation software. Nothing wrong with being a Brummie, in fact I think it is ‘Bostin’.

First impressions of DragonDictate version 3

Dragon Textmate Problem – One of the first things I wanted to do was to try dictating into Textmate or Writeroom. This is because in the previous version, I always had to dictate into the DragonDictate supplied windows. If I tried to dictate into any other application, after about 2 to 5 minutes the dictation would stop working properly. Usually what would happen is that individual letters of words would not make it to the text, even though DragonDictate had actually recognised my voice properly. The only other application I could dictate into was the journalling application called Day One. Having upgraded to Mountain Lion even dictation into Day One didn’t work right.

So how did we get on with dictating into Textmate? I had only dictated only few sentences and the same problem that I had with version 2.5, reared its ugly head once more. Shortly after making a start, I saw that there was a couple of words missing the letter ‘i’, then the whole application crashed. I had to do a force quit of the Dragon Dictate application. As you might expect, I thought this was a very inauspicious start. No crashes since I started on this article

DragonDictate 3 In use

When you are dictating into Dragon Dictate, you will see a recognition window and in there, you will see a list of alternatives. So in your document you’ll see the sentence that DragonDictate thinks is closest to what you said. Then there will be between two and nine alternatives to choose from. In this new version of DragonDictate, there is also an explanation of how to use this recognition window. Not only that, but when I used a number, I was offered the opportunity to set a smart rule. DragonDictate said that I could have all numbers or I could have the numbers as a words. I thought that was quite impressive really. Also in this recognition window in the top right hand corner there is a button with a little picture of an ear. When I click on this button, it plays back the audio of your latest sentence. It is also clever enough to turn off the microphone during this playback, so that it doesn’t try to record itself.

Related commands in the recognition window

In the lower part of the recognition window there is an area for Related Commands. If you don’t see your choice you can give the command “Spell That” or you can edit the first option with the command “Say That”. I still have to work out exactly how this functions, but it seems that it is giving better options to get DragonDictate to give you the text that you actually said.

There are occasions when there is a word that I say, and I might say it over and over and DragonDictate is unable to work out exactly what that word is. With the previous version I would then go into spelling mode and use the international verbose alphabet to spell the word out. So I would use Echo, Alpha, Romeo in order to spell out the word ‘ear’. Now I can do that in the recognition window without having to specifically change to spelling mode. That is a good improvement and I like it.

DragonDictate is much more usable in version 3

First of all, it is good that no longer I have to be bothered by a message to say that it doesn’t work well with Mountain Lion. DragonDictate is top quality software with a price to match that and the upgrade was not much cheaper than what was paid for the software initially. Mind you, I did get the initial software package cheaper by buying it from the Amazon US site. Even so, I expect to see some functional improvements in version 3, to feel I have got my money’s worth. So far what I have found is that there are improvements to the way that it works, that are certainly worth having. It is easier for you to get the words into your computer document. Obviously this will improve your overall dictation speed. I reckon that using Dragon Dictate is three times faster that ordinary typing. The only time I consider typing this much text now is late at night and I can’t make too much noise in the room next to my wife sleeping in the bedroom.

Mac20Q Verdict on Dragon Dictate 3

At this stage of having dictated approximately 800 words into DragonDictate I can say that overall I am pleased with it so far. To be sure that I can give the definitive word on DragonDictate version 3, I will need about a week of daily use before giving my verdict. I do have the impression that the dictation engine does work a little bit faster in getting the speech converted into text. Not only that, but it may actually also be slightly more accurate generally.

Why do you need Dragon Dictate on your Mountain Lion Mac?

There is the speech to text functionality on Mountain Lion that is handy to say the least. You just hit Fn twice and talk, but you only can speak short amounts before it is sent off over the internet to come back quickly as text. You can usually do a couple of sentences at a time and often that is enough. Dragon Dictate on the other hand does not require an internet connection to work. You can work more fluidly and so it is much better for the longer pieces of work. Being able to do corrections with Dragon Dictate is vital in terms of usage and helps you keep the fingers off the keyboard for longer. I wonder does Dragon work with Scrivener?

Looking back at using version 2.5 of Dragon Dictate

I use the speech to text of Mountain Lion and it is great for a quick tweet or Facebook update. For a long article then Dragon Dictate is the tool to use. Have a look at Dragon software for iMac. I will do a test soon with Dragon Dictate and Scrivener and report back. Will you try out the Dragon dictator after reading a Dragon Dictate review. Keeps your eyes open here as I intend to do some how to videos to follow this dragon dictate mac review. The Dragon,   Mac versions are as good as the Windows versions of Dragon Dictate.

Last week I made a mistake of upgrading the clipping application called Skitch to the latest version. Skitch was the best screen capture tool with the old version and a whole lot less than that as a screen capture program after the “upgrade”.  I should have known better because I did see on twitter that some people were complaining that there were things missing from this latest application update. The main comments seemed to be centred around the lack of the paint can for creating a colour fill. There were one or two other complaints, but I do like to have the new and shiny and I went ahead anyway. There were some people such as Don McAllister, who went back to an earlier version almost straightaway, that’s how bad things were. I know I should have listened and maybe what I really need is a checkup from the neck up.

All the bad stuff in Skitch and Evernote

Evernote bought Skitch not that long ago and this new version made the integration between the two applications much tighter. Instead of Skitch having its own web server space for your images that you have captured from your computer, all of the images were being thrown into Evernote.

I found pretty soon that my monthly upload allowance into Evernote was totally eaten up by this synchronisation from Skitch into Evernote. You would have thought that they could have just brought my old images into Evernote without counting towards the monthly upload figure. There was an option to not bring the old images in, but I didn’t choose it as I did know what a bad effect this synchronisation would give me.

With the new version on Skitch installed and running, every time I clipped something from my screen, I got a message to say that I had already used up my upload allowance for the month. The only way that I could get around this if I wanted to save an image, was to export that image out. This quickly became very tedious compared to having the option of clicking on one button to save a picture to history.

Skitch facilities and controls

Instead of having five sizes of line available or five sizes of text available, the new version had only three. This is not what you would call an improvement. The paint can for filling the area with one single colour was no longer available at all. One of the things that I often used, was to rename an image from the automatic clip name to one that made more sense. This was available in a small box at the bottom of the Skitch window. The new version did not let me do this, I would have to do a file naming when I exported the image out. This added more work, because then I would have to go and find the image in Finder to be able to drag and drop in the place where I wanted it.

Skitch – Badly thought out design

In the old version when I wanted to change the size of an image, I could easily click on a button and enter a number of pixels in a dialog. This would proportionally reduce the size of the image, or increase if I wished. This was replaced with a simple slider that was just about impossible to fine tune to a specific size. The slider was too short so that any small movement of the finger on my magic trackpad gave a big change of size. Not only was there a problem with the use of this slider, but there was no way to enter specific numbers.

Another way to reduce the size of an image with the old version would be to move the edges to crop. Not only could you crop, but you could also move outwards and to increase the size. This would add extra whitespace around the original cut area and was a useful tool within Skitch. In this new and certainly not improved version, the cropping and resizing was moved to another area. It was not possible to increase the size of the image by adding extra in the crop tool. When you used the crop tool you got quite a nice way of changing the size by moving the blue dots at corners in the new version. Even though this really was a little bit of an improvement, it by no means makes up for all of the other disasters.

Did the developer of the app ever use it himself?

In the old version when you did a crop you would see some numbers which would tell you the size in pixels of the area you are clipping. So you would see some numbers that would give you the horizontal size and the vertical size as you moved your cursor. The developer person in all his wisdom change this so that instead of seeing those numbers denoting the size, you see the absolute position in pixels where the cursor is on the screen. This information is absolutely no use whatsoever and should be changed to back the way that it was.

It can only get better – Possibly

There is absolutely no way I will upgrade to any later version of Skitch, unless all of the problems I have been ranting about are fixed. I will let other users dive in there first and suffer the consequences of upgrading. I will let them report back to me. It is quite unusual for me to have a rant about updated software, but as you can tell from the length of this article, Skitch had me quite miffed. I am even tempted to write to Evernote directly and tell them that they really should do a whole lot better. With this stupid upgrade I was very pleased to have the facility of using Time Machine, to get back to the way it was before. I suppose I should complain too much as it is a freeware screen capture application. Now, I would be totally miffed if I had paid for it.

I had hoped to to have got the Apple TV on Friday but the couriers service missed me. Today I have it in my grubby little hands and had a quick play with the Apple hobby product. You would think I was a proper Apple Fan Boy with getting one of these to go with all of the other Apple toys I have, I do have good reasons for getting one though. Not just because I want one or need for leisure purposes, but could even be a business purchase.

The Apple TV for education

Mirroring of the iPad to the Television via the new Apple TV is getting quite popular in schools. The wire is cut between the front of the classroom and the white or blackboard. No longer do teachers have to hope that the kids will behave when you turn around to write on the board. When you use the iPad as your whiteboard you can be standing at the back of the class with the numbskulls or the kids that want to hide and still be presenting to the whole class.

 

Teaching English as a foreign language with tech.

I have enrolled in a course to be able to do this. I was working in a school in Banyoles in April of this year and enjoyed it. I think it would be rear to get more of this work and maybe even set up my own English school. There are schools teaching English already but I.could be unique in have a distinctly tech approach. I like the idea of teaching in a 21st century way and use iPads with my students.

I can see me using Evernote for keeping track of my own notes and documents and to send out work to the students. The students can also use Evernote to keep there own digital learning record. Great to have a full set of notes that can be us for revision and learning later. The notes can even be collaborative in nature. No reason why some notes can’t have been worked on by a pair working together, a small group or team or even the whole classroom.

Web resources and iPad apps

I saw a cool web application that more than one person can work on at a time that would be great to use to conduct sentences. The white space has notes that can be put on and the moved to create sentences. You could even make it a competitive thing with the students have to try and see who completed the sentences and had the.m making sense first. Often it is good to make a game of things, learning while having some fun. So that is how I justified the iPad I have and also the Apple TV. In fact I also got the Airport Express product so that I could have a 802.n wifi that would work fast enough to do all those wireless things effortlessly.

Airport Express Setup

I set it up with the iPad and it was a piece if piss, as they would say on a building site. Really easy and gave me no problems. I just named the network I created new and Winterfell seemed like a great name for it. I gave it the eight digit password that was required and I was done. It took me no time at all to set up the Apple Wifi router. I did wonder if I needed the Airport Extreme, but it seems that the Express version was the right choice. I have a gigabit network and I was able to connect up to that. I now have my wife’s MacBook Pro connected as well as my iMac, two iPads and an iPhone. All working on the 802.n connecting to the dual band fast wifi.

Connecting the Apple TV to the wifi network.

Don’t know why but it took a couple of attempts to connect up to the wireless network with the new Apple TV. One I had it though, I was sending video and audio from both the iPad and the iMac to the TV. I will no longer need to have the Mac Mini under theTV, it was a G4 and really not up to the task. It was the first Mac I bought all those years ago, after all.

Up to date with Wizardgold

I will be quite pleased to web finished with the summer work so that I can get moving with the TEFL course. I am dying to bash on with the making of videos for YouTube and for embedding on my website. Nice to have some faster money though as the income is only a trickle from writing and the video so far.

I will be really busy when I have stopped working at the campsite for the summer. I will be able to make great use of the OmniFocus app for the iPad that I just bought. I like the way that it works and could get quite well organised with using the GTD process.

The Wizardgold day

I have a short break during work and today I used it to work with the iPad and the MiFi is super to connect to the Internet while sitting in my car. I did click on the button on the iPad to see if I could get a wifi hotspot going with it, but just got a message to connect to the mobile phone service provider. I doubt if I will be bothered to do that though, as I expect it would be a lot of hassle. It could even cost me more money too.

When I got home for my 2 hour lunch break that disappeared with opening up the boxes containing the Apple TV and the Airport Express and eating of course. Later when I got back home at 7pm I was just too cream crackered (knackered) to do much apart from lie on the sofa after connecting up the Apple TV with the HDMI cable I bought on the way home. It cost me €10 Euro and I could have got one cheaper probably wbut it was easy to buy in the supermarket along with some cheese. Wensleydale with cranberries embedded into it type of cheese.