Apple Briefs

Apple released iWork 2009 at Macworld. Two days later, I had the installation CD sitting on my desk next to my computer. It was another day before I could install it (because I hadn’t upgraded to 10.5.6 yet and I wasn’t ready to reboot my computer for the update just yet. But iWork is installed now and I am ready to talk about it. Clearly I haven’t investigated all of the new features. But there are two additions that bear mentioning because they’re likely to be important to a lot of people.

Mail Merge

Pages 2008 supported mail merge, but only from Address Book data. Address Book is a good application, but I have yet to meet anyone that keeps all of their business contacts in Address Book. It’s just not an advanced CRM application – nor is it intended to be. Pages 2009 now supports using a Numbers document as the data source. That addition opens up a world of opportunity. Virtually every CRM application, including Infusion CRM which we use, allows for exporting data as a CSV file. It’s now a simple matter of loading the CSV file into Numbers and choosing the Numbers document as a data source in Pages.

Mail merge in Pages is a little awkward at first if you’re used to Microsoft Word. But its fairly easy once you learn where the buttons and menu options are located. The only drawback I initially saw was that Pages doesn’t visually distinguish the mail merge placeholders from the surrounding text. The placeholder will appear as the name given to that field in the Numbers document. Using every ounce of my creativity, I realized that adding extra characters to the field names in Numbers would solve the problem. In other words, use ##Name## as the column header instead of just Name.

For a long time I had been using Microsoft Word for many documents simply because it was annoying to have to switch to another application to handle the mail merge. Now that Pages has this important feature, it will open the door to potentially using Pages for much more than just lightweight desktop publishing (its current role in my everyday life).

Linked Numbers Documents

The previous version of Pages supported the embedding of a Numbers chart or spreadsheet. The problem was that embedding a Numbers chart or spreadsheet in this way would make a copy of it. So any changes to the original Numbers document would not be reflected in the Pages document. I admit that I wasn’t aware of the deficiency until Macworld this year. But as I am doing more and more advanced things with Pages, I expect that I would have stumbled across this little surprise sooner rather than later. Thankfully, iWork 2009 solves this by allowing Pages to link to the Numbers document rather than simply embedding a copy.

Other New Features

There are many other iWork features that have gotten quite a bit of press. Of those, iWork.com is probably the biggest one. The Apple Blog has a pretty good review of iWork.com.

Things have been pretty busy around here lately, but I wanted to take the time to point out a great article on the iPhone 3G by John Gruber over at Daring Fireball. I especially like the first part of the article, which discusses the place of the iPhone in the Grand Scheme of Things. It’s a great read, and I couldn’t agree with it more.

SmileOnMyMac just released the latest iteration of PDFpen, its PDF-editing software. PDFpen comes in regular and Pro versions. PDFpenPro adds the ability to create forms and tables of contents. Both versions come very close to the feature set of Acrobat. PDFpen could be a very attractive solution if it can duplicate the features of Acrobat at a tiny fraction of the price (PDFpenPro sells for $99.95, Acrobat Pro – the only version available for Mac OS X – sells for $385.99 on MacMall).

So how does PDFpen stack up? I like the interface. It’s clearly a Mac application rather than a transplant from Windows. Acrobat is pretty straightforward, but there is a little bit of culture shock when using it. Looks don’t matter, though, if it won’t get the job done. And thats where PDFpen still needs a little bit of polish.

Of the PDF features I use regularly, OCR and text highlighting are two of the biggest troublemakers. I’ll discuss Acrobat first, since it serves as the benchmark. I haven’t upgraded to Acrobat 9 yet, so it’s possible (but, in my opinion, unlikely) that some of this has changed. Acrobat Pro does a good job of recognizing the text. The first image below shows the text that was recognized via the OCR. I have highlighted a portion with my cursor to better see where Acrobat found the text. The second image below shows the results of using the Acrobat Highlight Text tool on the OCR text.

There are two problems with the way Acrobat handles OCR. Or maybe a better way to put it is that there are two symptoms of the same root problem. Acrobat OCR seems to revolve around finding lines of text. When I copy the text (after highlighting it as in the first image), it shows up in my word processor as separate paragraphs because each line is treated separately. Truly smart OCR would recognize paragraphs of text. This lack of understanding by Acrobat is also evident when using the Highlight Text tool. Notice the gaps in yellow highlighting between some of the words. Acrobat again seems not to have recognized that the words are part of a continuous block of text. Still, Acrobat is serviceable.

PDFpenPro begins well, asking me when I open the document if I want to OCR the page or the document.

Unfortunately, the goodness ends there. Large sections of the PDFpenPro OCR text were filled with garbage characters. I tried OCR on a few documents with a white background and the results were much better. Clearly PDFpenPro is having trouble with the ivory paper. That’s a troubling sign and makes me wonder how well PDFpenPro will OCR a brochure or presentation.

Sometimes we don’t care about the text, and OCR is just used as to be able to highlight the text for a presentation. I used PDFPenPro to highlight the same text as I highlighted in Acrobat. As you can see from the second image below, the resulting PDF was unusable. Note that, unlike with the OCR, the highlight text tool gave the same results for a white paper scan as with the ivory paper.

Acrobat’s not perfect. But PDFpen’s current problems are show-stoppers. PDFpenPro is missing some important features too. The comparison chart on SmileOnMyMac’s website shows a few of the advantages of Acrobat Pro. Conspicuously absent from that list is one of the most important features for attorneys – redaction. Until PDFpen gets reliable redaction tools, it won’t be able to replace Acrobat in my workflow.

So I am a little disappointed. As much as I like Acrobat, I was hoping that PDFpenPro would work as a drop-in replacement. Hey, I like competition! Maybe with a little more testing and a few additional features, it will finally get there.

There are many lists of the top Mac applications to be found on the internet. This website even has one. But two things keep these other lists from being a great tool for businesses. First, they usually list applications like VLC which are great, but not that useful for business. Second, they usually only go to 10. Well, this one goes up to 11.

A few words about this list. I limited it to utility applications. What’s not a utility application? Anything primarily productive. So you won’t see anything like Daylite, NoteBook, or Nisus Writer Pro on this list. I also considered plugins not to be applications. I’ve come across some interesting (and useful) plugins, but those will be reserved for a future article. Finally, I included commercial applications on the list. There’s a certain charm to lists of free applications. But businesses are supposed to make money. You should be able to spend a few hundred dollars on applications to make you more productive and help your business prosper.

The Four Mac Utilities Your Business Must Have

1Password

http://agilewebsolutions.com/products/1Password

A long time ago I realized I needed some help keeping track of my passwords. It would be absolute folly to use the same ID and password for each account, so that means I need to record them somewhere secure. My original solution (back in the Mac OS X 10.2 days) was to keep a text file in an encrypted disk image. That worked well, but it quickly grew out of control. There are several good password managers, but 1Password is the best because it integrates well with the browser – automatically filling in entire web forms. 1Password can also sync your passwords with other computers using either .Mac or Agile’s my1Password service. Your entire office can be kept in sync, allowing your business partners or employees to access secure sites without worrying about the passwords they are using. And now you can always access your 1Password database with the iPhone version.

ChronoSync

http://www.econtechnologies.com/…/chrono_overview.html

Before Leopard, I used ChronoSync for all of my backup needs. Leopard changed all that with the introduction of Time Machine, a fantastic backup solution. But Time Machine has its limits. In particular, Time Machine doesn’t handle large files well. There are lots of reasons you might have 10GB+ files lying around. For me, that reason is virtualization and I strongly suspect it’s the case for other attorneys also. Every time my virtual hard disk changes, Time Machine wants to back it up. That’s both time consuming and destructive. The destructive part comes in when my backup disk runs out of space and has to start deleting increasingly recent backups (and that happens quickly when you’re backing up a 10GB+ file every day). So there’s still a place in my Applications folder for a quality backup solution like ChronoSync. I can configure ChronoSync to backup my virtualization folder at an interval of my choosing and to keep only as many versions as I need. Perfect.

MailSteward

http://www.mailsteward.com/

It’s a simple law of physics: the more people you interact with, the more email you’re going to get. This reality can strike small business owners pretty hard. It may not be worth relentlessly organizing every piece of email that comes into your inbox. But you don’t want to delete it all, so something has to be done. That’s where MailSteward comes in. MailSteward is a searchable database for your email.

SpamSieve

http://c-command.com/spamsieve/

Networking requires putting yourself out there. One of the drawbacks is that there are plenty of spammers “out there” so you can end up receiving more junk mail. If you’re running your own mail server, there are tools like SpamAssassin that can help. But that’s not for everyone. SpamSieve runs on your computer and works with your email client to block junk mail.

The Seven Other Utilities You’ll Probably Want Too!

AppZapper

http://appzapper.com/

I am fairly promiscuous with my Applications folder. AppZapper helps clean up my computer by deleting preferences and other support files after I am done testing a new application. You probably won’t try as many new applications as I do. Even so, a program like AppZapper is still worth keeping around. There are just too many great Mac applications coming out these days to ignore.

BetterZip

http://macitbetter.com/

Once upon a time, Stuffit Expander came installed on every new Mac and most people got along just fine. But sometimes I just want to take a peek and don’t want to extract the entire archive. In short, I missed WinZip. But I still needed to be able to expand Stuffit archives (“.sit” files). BetterZip answered the call. It handles every file format I have thrown at it, including a few not supported by Stuffit. On top of that, it allows me to easily make encrypted ZIP files, something I used to resort to the command line to do. And BetterZip does all this for less than WinZip (and far less than Stuffit Deluxe).

DragThing

http://dragthing.com/english/about.html

Some people hate the Mac OS X Dock. They don’t dislike the Dock, they really, truly hate it. I’m not in that camp. I spent long enough using Windows to develop a profound hatred for the Windows taskbar. So I love the Dock. It fixes all the things I hate about the Windows taskbar. But if you’re like me, and you use your computer for productive things as well as fun things, the Dock isn’t enough. I have at least 15 applications that I use on a daily basis, and probably more. Sometimes I even use more than one of the same kind of application (for example, I still use three word processing applications regularly). DragThing helps me organize it all. I have two DragThing docks, each with six tabs. Every application that I might conceivably want to use is sitting there right on the edge of the screen. Fewer icons in my Dock means that the icons can be larger. In addition to looking sharp, having larger icons makes switching between applications much quicker.

Leap

http://www.ironicsoftware.com/leap/index.html

After suffering for years with search on Windows XP, the release of Spotlight was a real “Wow!” moment for me. But after two OS X releases, Apple is still struggling to make the interface as powerful as the underlying technology. A basic Spotlight name search usually yields way too many results. Additional filters are available (by clicking the (+) button) but they are limited and require many extra steps. For anyone who uses their computer for more than just email and family photos, Spotlight is something of an ergonomic disaster. Leap takes advantage of Spotlight capabilities and adds a much more useful search criteria and search results interface. The combination of search filters, tags, and large preview icons sets Leap apart from the other Finder- and Spotlight-replacement applications.

Name Mangler

http://www.manytricks.com/namemangler/

In the practice of law, I receive many files from a variety of sources. Usually the files are not named the way I would like them to be. Rather than change their names individually, it is often more convenient to save the files into one location and perform a bulk renaming operation. Name Mangler does everything I need it to do, and I don’t have to pay extra for features that I don’t want (it’s shareware, so you only have to pay what it’s worth to you).

Service Scrubber

http://www.manytricks.com/servicescrubber/

The Services menu is quite powerful but also probably one of the most under-used features of Mac OS X. The Services menu works by allowing an application to extend its functionality to other applications. Services tend to be time savers more than anything else. For an example, highlight a URL in a document and then select Open URL from the Services menu. The web page at the URL you highlighted should open in the Safari. It must be pretty easy to add services because I ended up with quite a few. The result was that I didn’t want to use my Services menu because (1) it was difficult to find what I wanted quickly and (2) I cringed every time I looked at the menu. Services Scrubber helps clear the clutter by allowing me to disable unused services and organize the ones I do care about.

Speed Download

http://www.yazsoft.com/

I first started using Speed Download to get better download management. Speed Download provided great download performance and supported resuming of interrupted downloads much better than Safari or Firefox. The browsers have improved, but I still rely on Speed Download for downloading large files. Lately, Speed Download has begun taking over my other file transfer tasks as well. Speed Download includes an FTP client, iDisk integration, and secure file sharing with other Speed Download users. Normally I like to pick the “Best of Breed” application for each task I need to perform. But in the case of Speed Download, one application does everything well enough for me.

My first impressions of Apple’s new offerings are a mixed bag. I really like the iPhone 2.0 software update. I have only downloaded a few apps, but I foresee many more in my future. So far, my favorite has to be WeatherBug, which has all the weather information I need with an attractive presentation. I have also downloaded OmniFocus, but I haven’t had a chance to spend much time with it. I plan to download Things as well, but I am waiting for the promised sync feature.

In contrast to iPhone 2.0, MobileMe has been something of a failure. The “web 2.0” interface is nice, but I haven’t seen anything compelling. I thought push email would be compelling, but there are two problems with that. First, there is apparently no “push” from your desktop (or laptop) to MobileMe. Second, push kills my battery. I can normally surf and call to my heart’s content, but turning “push” on nearly drained my battery by itself. Apple is going to have to fix that if they want to be a serious enterprise email contender.

The other problem with MobileMe is that Firefox can’t handle it. I use Firefox as my normal browser on Windows, but MobileMe kept bringing Firefox to its knees (making it sluggish and often unresponsive). Switching to Safari solved the problem, but MobileMe should work with any browser, not just Apple’s. I don’t like Safari on Windows. It’s too dark and just doesn’t fit in.

I don’t have plans to get a 3G iPhone, but that doesn’t mean I won’t window shop. There are a couple of nice reviews (with plenty of pics) over at Electronista and Ars Technica. I like the look of the new iPhone, but I am still happy with the clean lines and metal finish of my first generation iPhone.