The book costs $10 and we’re now taking pre-orders. If you buy it now you’ll actually receive the first half of the book! The second half will be available soon after Photos arrives in its final form, and all buyers will get upgraded to the full book when that happens.
The book is a visual guide to the new Photos app. The PDF edition is quite attractive, if you ask me. If you’re interested in this new Photos app, I encourage you to check it out.
Thanks to this week’s Six Colors sponsor, Mighty Deals, a deals site focused on web professionals. Their highlighted deal this week is Amberlight for Mac or PC, a $30 tool to create swirling patterns and light trails that’s on sale for $9.
Note: This story has not been updated for several years.
This guy just won’t stop alliterating.
We cut the cord years ago—where we live, over the air signals are good enough for the broadcast networks, and combining Netflix & Hulu Plus gave us more than enough viewing options. Even subscribing to both of those, we cut our TV bill by a little more than 80 percent. Throw in Amazon Prime, and we’re still saving money month to month.
But I was curious about Sling TV, the Internet-delivered TV service. There were a few cable channels we missed from the cable days, including Food Network.1 Their basic package—the “best of live TV,” as they call it—includes Food Network, CNN, ESPN, TBS, TNT, Disney, AMC, and a few more. That’s the $20 level. For a few dollars more—$5 per package—you can add more sports channels, more lifestyle channels, and/or international news channels. It’s part of Dish, but separate and distinct at least in terms of branding. No doubt this helps with signing channels onto the service. (And now HBO will also be available there, albeit for an extra $15 on top of your regular Sling package.)
Those who exclusively patronize Apple TV will be sad to hear that Sling isn’t available there (yet). But I also use an Amazon Fire Stick, largely for watching Sling2.
One thing I really like about Sling: Say you put on Food Network and they’re in the middle of wall-to-wall Fieri3. You can scroll backward through the schedule and watch several days’ worth of shows on demand, or time shift the entire schedule, pretend you’re on Pacific time, whatever.
So adding that $20 on top of Netflix and Hulu, we’re still paying less than half of what we had been for cable or satellite. We’re still paying for channels we don’t watch—we pretty much stick to Food Network and Cartoon Network over here, maybe ESPN during baseball season—but we have some flexibility, good on-demand options, and availability across multiple devices, even watching live. It’s still not quite “a la carte TV,” but considering the economics of cable, it’s not bad.
The one thing I wish Sling could do would be to offer a little more variety. For example, there are several Time Warner channels available4, but not the one I used to watch most, Turner Classic Movies. What if we had the option to choose three Time Warner channels from the available menu? TCM does have an iOS app, but like most such apps, it only works if you’re already a cable or satellite subscriber. Even then, it doesn’t AirPlay nicely to the Apple TV—it’s easier to watch directly on an iPad. (Heck, I’d pay a monthly fee just for a TCM app that I could use AND AirPlay.)
Of course, if I could slim down that “best of live TV” package, I would. In six weeks of using Sling, the bulk of our viewing has been Food Network with a side of “Better Call Saul” on AMC and a little bit of Cartoon Network for the 10-year-old. But that’s the dream of “a la carte.” That’s why the HBO news gives me hope.
I doubt we’ll be getting HBO—we don’t really care about “Game of Thrones”5 so we’ll pass. I can’t help but wonder if this and the Apple TV deal have something to do with the announcement that HBO and Vice were expanding their partnership to the point of developing a daily newscast… that might be worth watching.
So we’ll stick with Sling for now and see how it evolves.
Now, to get a TV with two HDMI ports…
[David J. Loehr is a writer and designer who lives in the wilds of Indiana. He’s the writer of The Incomparable Radio Theater, coming later this year to a podcast-listening thing near you.]
Oh, the cries of joy when the 13-year-old discovered a run of “Good Eats” episodes on Netflix. We watched all 25 of them in a single Sunday. He’s been an Alton Brown fan since he was 2 and thought Alton’s name was “Eats.” ↩
It’s available on Roku, Amazon Fire, and Xbox, with Nexus Player “coming soon.” You can also watch via iOS and Android apps or even your computer. I’ve tried using AirPlay to send it to my Apple TV, but it’s just easier to use the Fire Stick. Plus, it’s fun to say Fire Stick. ↩
How many hours a week can they devote to “Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives?” And then there’s “Guy’s Grocery Games.” Man’s got a thing for alliteration. ↩
Midnight’s not such a bad time to preorder a fancy new electronics device…unless you’re on the East coast, in which case you have to do the “get up at 3 a.m.” dance. Decisions, decisions.
Note: This story has not been updated for several years.
Having multiple Macs sometimes feels like juggling. For the most part, I manage to maintain access to the files and data I want on both my MacBook Air and iMac using a combination of Dropbox, iCloud Drive, and cloud-based services. But in cases where I need to move very large files–say, for example, podcasts I’m editing in GarageBand–very quickly, I turn to a more manual approach involving gasp cables!
Right now Thunderbolt remains the fastest port on both my 2011-era iMac and my MacBook Air from 2014–even if it can’t reach its full speed of 10Gbps (or 20Gbps in the case of Thunderbolt 2), it can still transfer a multi-gigabyte file from one machine to the other in a matter of seconds. But using it to transfer files does take a few steps.
While you could use Thunderbolt Target Disk Mode, which essentially lets you boot one of your Macs as an external drive, I generally don’t feel like shutting down my computer just to transfer a file. Fortunately, there’s another option: Thunderbolt can converse via the same Internet Protocol (IP) used by Ethernet. It just takes a little quick configuration.
Fire up the Network pane of System Preferences. If there’s not already a Thunderbolt option in the list on the left-hand side, click on the Plus (+) button at the bottom, choose Thunderbolt Bridge from the Interface dropdown in the pane, and click Create. If necessary, repeat those same steps on the other Mac you’re using. Once those steps are done, you should never need to do them again.
To actually transfer a file, connect your two Macs via a Thunderbolt cable. After a moment you should see an IP address appear in the Thunderbolt section of the Network pane. (Make sure you leave “Using DHCP” selected.) It should be in the range 169.254.xxx.xxx, which signifies that it’s an IP address the computer has assigned to itself, rather than one assigned by your router.
Now for the slightly tricky part. In order to ensure that I connect over Thunderbolt, rather than my Mac’s default network interface of Wi-Fi, I manually note the Thunderbolt IP address of the Mac I want to connect to. On the other Mac I go to the Finder and choose Go > Connect to Server, then type afp://169.254.xxx.xxx (the x’s of course being replaced by that IP address you noticed earlier).1
When that connection goes through, a Finder window showing the computer you’re connecting to will open up as normal, but you should reap the benefits of the super-speedy connection. When you’re done copying your files, eject the volume as normal, unplug the cables, and you’re done.
Transferring files over Thunderbolt might seem like an extra hassle rather than just sending them over a wired or wireless Ethernet connection, and depending on your situation, that may indeed be the case. But next time you have to dash out of the house and realize you’ve forgotten to copy over your gigantic presentation or that season of TV shows you want to watch on the plane, you may be glad the option’s there.
You can in theory circumvent some of this by making Thunderbolt the top priority interface by clicking the gear icon at the bottom of the list, choosing Set Service Order and dragging Thunderbolt to the top; then you can connect via your Mac’s Bonjour name. But in my experience it takes a little bit of time for Bonjour to recognize and switch to the Thunderbolt IP. Using the manual IP is more cumbersome, but faster. ↩
[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors, as well as an author, podcaster, and two-time Jeopardy! champion. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His next novel, the sci-fi adventure Eternity's Tomb, will be released in November 2026.]
Doctor Who is celebrating its tenth anniversary of being back on the air, and the BBC has teamed up with a rather unusual partner to celebrate the fact: BitTorrent.
BitTorrent the software is, of course, largely known for the illicit acquisition of content, including TV shows, but the company behind the creation of the technology has been trying to shed those associations, moving in to areas like data sync.
Now, in conjunction with the BBC, BitTorrent is offering thirteen episodes of the last decade of Doctor Who, packaged along with video introductions by current Doctor portrayer Peter Capaldi. It’s a good way to relive many of the series’s most iconic episodes including “Rose,” “The Girl in the Fireplace,” and “Blink.”
Nice to see BitTorrent and content producers playing nice for once, and for a great show.
There are a handful of tickets remaining for Yosemite by CocoaConf, the upcoming conference—April 20-23—in the spectacular setting of Yosemite National Park.
As I just experienced at Úll in Ireland, these sorts of conferences are truly special. It’s a chance for a small group of people who share an interest in Apple and related technologies to spend a few days together. They’re always a blast, but add in the unique setting of Yosemite National Park and this one promises to be that much more amazing.
I’ll be there, along with people like Jim Dalrymple, Serenity Caldwell, Andy Ihnatko, Michael Lopp, Christa Mrgan, Guy English, Duncan Davidson, Neven Mrgan, Brent Simmons, Laura Savino, Dave Wiskus, and Jaimee Newberry.
My iOS Twitter app of choice, The Iconfactory’s Twitterrific1, was just updated to version 5.10. With this update, the app gains a few nifty new features.
The company has enhanced its “muffle” feature—it was like a mute, except you could still see grayed-out indicators that an item was hidden based on the rules you’ve set—by allowing you to make a filter that mutes or muffles. With a mute, of course, you never even see an indication that the tweet was ever there.
Even better, Twitterrific’s filters now support regular expressions, so you can write more complex patterns in order to get junk out of your timeline.
Other features in Twitterrific 5.10 include support for drafts, the ability to use smart quotes, and the return of preview URLs when you’re in a share sheet. The app is free with a $4 in-app purchase to enable all features.
I think it’s great that you like Tweetbot instead. Isn’t choice wonderful? ↩
Along the way, the Apple team landed upon the Watch’s raison d’être. It came down to this: Your phone is ruining your life. Like the rest of us, Ive, Lynch, Dye, and everyone at Apple are subject to the tyranny of the buzz—the constant checking, the long list of nagging notifications. “We’re so connected, kind of ever-presently, with technology now,” Lynch says. “People are carrying their phones with them and looking at the screen so much.” They’ve glared down their noses at those who bury themselves in their phones at the dinner table and then absentmindedly thrust hands into their own pockets at every ding or buzz. “People want that level of engagement,” Lynch says. “But how do we provide it in a way that’s a little more human, a little more in the moment when you’re with somebody?”
This is exactly what I want to hear from Apple. The Apple Watch is not about creating another device to distract us; it’s meant to organize, clarify, and reduce the distractions we get from our smartphones. We’ll see soon whether this first iteration delivers.
Programming note: Moltz’s computer crashed and lost his recording and we had to use the Skype track so if the audio isn’t up to our normal high standards we apologize.
This week we talk about Periscope and Lex even records one live which is not live by the time you’re reading this (http://www.buzzfeed.com/mathonan/meet-periscope-twitters-new-live-video-app).
We even figure out how to monetize it with Square Cash (http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/23/8277007/square-cash-business-cashtag).
As we were talking, Amazon announced a whole new way for you to buy crap from them (http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/31/amazons-new-dash-button-hardware-offers-instant-orders-for-staple-products/). We don’t like it.
The iPhone 6c may be coming (http://9to5mac.com/2015/03/30/iphone-6c-rear-shell/), a plastic iPhone with 6-level internals.
The New York Times is rolling out one-sentence stories for the Apple Watch (http://www.nytco.com/the-times-rolls-out-one-sentence-stories-on-apple-watch/) and it doesn’t look that great.
Here’s a handy how-to for drawing Hitler that you’ll want to keep around for when you get your Apple Watch and want to send someone a sketch: https://instagram.com/p/H2MCQkIpOi/.
If you don’t need your extra Apple Watch band (each comes with two), you can use BandSwapper (http://bandswapper.com).
Our thanks this week go to Harry’s (harrys.com). Harry’s sells premium shaving products for much less than those crappy blades that you have to get someone to unlock from a cabinet. The starter set is just $15 and with promo code “REBOUND”, you can get it for $10! Don’t wait, get the shave you deserve.
Our thanks also to WealthFront, the automated investment service that makes it easy to invest your money the right way. It automatically rebalances your portfolio and re-invests your dividends, all commission-free. Visit https://www.wealthfront.com/rebound to get your first $10,000 for free.
That symbol is just one of a very large number of new emoji introduced as a part of Unicode 7.0. But of the dozens of new symbols defined by that update, only a single one has been added in recent Apple OS builds. (It’s viewable in the system but does not appear in the emoji keyboard.)
I assume this is a tribute to Leonard Nimoy, and it’s wonderful. No doubt someone at Apple is dutifully working on all these new emoji symbols, and they’ll eventually debut in a future OS update, but in the meantime, Spock’s salute has gone to a strange, new world: emoji.
Calling myself a 1Password zealot might be overselling it a tad: I love the app, though I’m sure I don’t even take advantage of half of the features it has.
However, the iOS app does have an absolutely killer extension that makes filling in passwords on Safari a breeze.1 AgileBits just added a bunch more features that kick the extension up a notch, including filling in personal information, filling in credit cards, and creating a new login for the site you’re on, if for example you’re signing up for a new service. (That’s a screenshot of the extension above, not the app itself.)
It’s hard to believe that anybody reading Six Colors is not already a 1Password user, but if you’ve been holding back, well, why?
Honestly, I’d expected to see more extensions developed for iOS after the release of iOS 8. 1Password’s remains, in my opinion, the example par excellence.↩
Note: This story has not been updated for several years.
Busy day today at the Úll conference, and the Úll talk show—hosted by Guy English and yours truly in an encore performance from a year ago—is yet to come. Busy day.
Also today, Myke Hurley and I recorded and released a new episode of Upgrade that discusses our reactions to the first half of the new Steve Jobs book, the value of meeting people in person, and whether I’m embracing the iPhone 6 Plus during my extended use of it in my travels in this part of the world. So if you’re missing my voluminous writing on the site, listen to my voluminous talking instead. (Tomorrow we’ll record an extra Clockwise and I’ll probably guest on the iMore podcast as well.)
It’s been a long trip and I’ve still got a few more days to go. I’m definitely missing home, but Úll has been great so far, and you can watch live sessions if you follow the @ullstream Twitter account. The location, in Killarney in county Kerry, is spectacular. It’s rainy and windy and the different patterns on the surface of the lake right outside the hotel are beautiful to watch. In other words, just another day in Ireland…
As Six Colors’s Chief Espionage Movie Correspondent1, it is my duty to direct your attention to the first trailer for Spectre.
It’s clear that Spectre picks up on where Skyfall left off, with a shot of the ruined MI6 headquarters at Vauxhall Cross and an allusion to a secret in Bond’s history discovered at Skyfall itself. And, of course, there’s that last voiceover from a distinctly shadowy Christoph Waltz, playing a character named Oberhauser (rumored to be…something more), who appears to be connected with the titular organization.
Also, I was remiss in not linking the Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation trailer, so let’s call this a two-for-one deal.
Jason’s in another country, so I figure that gives me license to make up whatever title I want. ↩
My thanks to Doxie for sponsoring Six Colors this week. The Doxie Go mobile scanner scans your paper automatically, with no computer required—it’s got a built-in rechargable battery, memory, and Wi-Fi. Then it syncs back to the Doxie app running on your Mac or iOS device, letting you save scans, share them, or send them to the cloud.
The IRS has even gotten with the program: It accepts scanned receipts. So there’s never been a better time to overthrow the tyranny of paper.
We could be looking at a new Apple TV this fall (http://www.buzzfeed.com/johnpaczkowski/new-apple-tv-set-top-will-debut-this-summer-with-app-store-s#.fsPjk8dY4).
If you’re really desperate to see what the Apple Watch might look like on your wrist, there’s now an app for that (http://www.popsci.com/try-virtual-apple-watch-app).
But don’t get an Apple Watch because it’ll definitely give you wrist cancer (http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/18/8252087/cell-phones-cancer-risk-tumor-bilton-new-york-times).
Moltz likes the game TouchTone (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/touchtone/id962133182?mt=8), a puzzler full of intrigue.
TIME TO PANIC AS APPLE WATCH YIELDS MAY BE LOW (http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20150325PD209.html), oh, it’s DigiTimes, forget it.
Then we talk about the war going on over the Steve Jobs legacy (https://medium.com/backchannel/the-war-over-who-steve-jobs-was-92bda2cd1e1e). This prompts Dan and Lex to fondly remember iSteve (http://www.macworld.com/article/2035456/review-funny-or-dies-isteve-will-tickle-apple-fans.html).
If you want to pay an extra dollar for the new Steve Jobs book, get it on iBooks (https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/becoming-steve-jobs/id936502684?mt=11).
We talk about Meerkat, but now you can get Periscope (http://www.buzzfeed.com/mathonan/meet-periscope-twitters-new-live-video-app#.saxxEk1lN).
Our thanks to WealthFront, the automated investment service that makes it easy to invest your money the right way. It automatically rebalances your portfolio and re-invests your dividends, all commission-free. Visit https://www.wealthfront.com/rebound to get your first $10,000 for free.
