How to add Pixelmator’s new Retouch extension to Photos

Pixelmator has added an extension that enable you to retouch photos using Pixelmator tools inside of Apple’s Photos app. The new feature lets you use Pixelmator’s image editing engine to improve images without disrupting your Photos workflow. Pixelmator 3.5 was released this week, and the update is available to download from the Mac App Store.

There are a lot of great changes in 3.5, including a new smart Quick Selection tool, new Magnetic Selection tool, efficiency and performance improvements for El Capitan and much more. New retouching tools work with Apple’s Photos app.

Photos’ support for third-party app extensions lets you to make changes to your photos without leaving the Photos app itself. The functionality you get is a subset of the full app, designed to help you make quick changes to your photos without disrupting the Photos workflow. Pixelmator already had extension support, but the new Retouch extension adds Repair, Clone, Light, Color, Soften and Sharpen tools.

Retouch

Apple leaves you in control of extensions’ connectivity to your Mac. Even after you’ve updated Pixelmator, you still need to tell your Mac you want it to use the new features. Follow these steps to activate the new functionality.

To enable Pixelmator extensions in OS X

  1. Download and install Pixelmator 3.5 or later from the Mac App Store (link above).
  2. Click on the  menu.
  3. Select System Preferences.Sys pref
  4. Click on Extensions.Screen Shot 2016 05 26 at 9 02 46 AM
  5. Underneath All, make sure the Pixelmator Retouch extension is checked (you can check the other ones if you want too).Pixelmator extensions
  6. Close Extensions. When you open Photos, you should see the new Retouch extension available. (Pixelmator already supported Distort). Click the checkbox to enable the new feature.

How to update your AirPort networking hardware

If you have an Apple AirPort Extreme base station, an Apple Time Capsule or an AirPort Express networking device, you should probably check to make sure it’s running the latest firmware. Apple this week released new firmware for all of its 802.11n and 802.11ac-based network routers – that goes back 7 years. The update “improves the stability and performance of your base station,” according to Apple.

Specific changes include: 

  • Fixes an issue which may prevent communication between clients on the same network
  • Improves performance with an extended guest network
  • Addresses potential naming conflicts with Bonjour Sleep Proxy

Not sure if your AirPort Extreme, AirPort Express or Time Capsule is up to date? Here’s how you can check using your Mac.

To check your AirPort base station firmware

  1. Click the Spotlight icon in your menu bar (it looks like a magnifying glass).
  2. Type “airport utility.” Spotlight will find the AirPort Utility. Double-click to launch the app. (Alternately, find AirPort Utility inside the Utilities folder on your Mac.)
  3. If a firmware update is available for your device, it should pop up with a notification badge to let you know. Click on the device’s icon to get more information.Update
  4. Click on the Update button to download the new firmware and begin the update process.Updatebutton
  5. During the update, the network device will be unavailable. Click the Continue button to proceed.Continue

The update should download and install, and the device should reset automatically.

Feature bloat and the tyranny of choice: Why I like distraction free writing tools

Research has shown over and over again that people want more options but then don’t want to deal with having to choose more options. This explains why app developers encumber their products with “feature bloat” and why we complain about it. Why we continue to abuse ourselves is a different story entirely, of course.

I admit to occasional cantankerous social media rambling about the good old days, when I play the role of the cranky old fart who preferred it before computers and smartphones were ubiquitous; when the home computer market largely catered to hobbyists, most of whom were “in the biz” in their day jobs. It’s an act, or perhaps more than anything, a punchline to a joke. Because I really don’t believe we were better off 30 years ago.

Things were simpler, of course, and the pace wasn’t quite as crazy as it is now, but ease of use and sophistication of tools, communications, operating systems, and other ancillary systems have improved so dramatically that it’s pretty incredible. The things I can do with my current computer and smartphone would be unimaginable to the 15 year old who fired up a 512K Mac all those years ago.

A few weeks ago I spent a bit of time running classic Mac OS and application software in emulation on my current Mac. It was a challenge and a lot of fun. My goal was to reacquaint myself with my favorite old-school Mac word processor, T/Maker’s WriteNow. WriteNow was developed for the original Mac and was a favorite of early Mac users straight up until the Mac’s transition to the PowerPC architecture. I’ve written about it before.

WriteNow

Working with WriteNow helped me understand one modern trend a bit better: “Distraction free” writing tools. I spend most of my time these days in Ulysses, which has the added benefit of some nifty iCloud sync features and multi-platform support that lets me run it from any device I happen to have at the moment. I also frequently dabble with 71 Square’s Focused (which started life as Typed before Realmac reinvented Typed as a blogging service). They and other similar apps enable the writer to enforce some discipline by offering an environment that simply encourages a focus on the act of writing. If you find modern word processors like Microsoft Word and Apple Pages to be too cumbersome and intrusive, as I do, distraction-free writing tools can be of enormous benefit.

Screen Shot 2016 05 25 at 11 09 18 AM

In some ways, they’re a real throwback. Using that emulated Mac Plus with WriteNow provided me with an almost purely distraction-free environment. The small screen, streamlined feature set and limited operating system capabilities enforced a discipline of use. You couldn’t meander off and surf the web for a few hours, hop on Facebook or send instant messages.

It’s a bit like the punchline in the Simpsons episode Homer vs. the Eighteenth Amendment: “To alcohol!,” says Homer. “The cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems!”

Constantly evolving and improving technology has changed the way we use computers – we’re at once able to do enormously more sophisticated things with them than ever before, but that comes at a price of increasing intricacy and complexity in a way that makes the technology no longer as user-friendly as it was before.

Fortunately, developers of distraction-free writing tools understand that sometimes less is more.

Apple’s internal style guide makes the news and we’re dumber for it

Apple VP Phil Schiller made tech blog headlines for a recent tongue in cheek discussion with journalists on Twitter about how to pluralize Apple product names. It’s no surprise that Apple has an internal style guide it uses to make sure that references to its own products are consistent; it’s also no surprise that in a system filled with individual human beings that use their own interpretation of language to communicate, that even Apple is occasionally inconsistent in its implementation.

I got kind of fed up and posted this on Twitter:

I watched this story unfold with a fair degree of irritation, and it finally struck me as to why.

It’s because my role as a tech journalist, I lost track of the number of times that a well-meaning, inevitably junior PR rep would contact me to let me know that I’d misused their client’s name or trademark: it’s intercapped, or it’s all capitalized, or the i at the start, in the middle or at the end is always lower case, etc.

As a blogger and magazine writer, I’m beholden to my publication’s own style guide – or whatever style standard we’ve agreed to (like AP or Chicago), before whatever mishigas your marketing department has come up with.

How (and why) to rotate disks with Time Machine

Apple’s Time Machine makes it easy to restore from a catastrophic drive failure, and also gives you a way to restore deleted files or older versions of files you’ve been working on. The vast majority of us using Time Machine have a regular hard drive to back up to.

We all know that hard drives fail, unfortunately. What can you do? One solution is to rotate your backup disks. (Another, of course, is to use a cloud backup service like Backblaze.)

Time machine multiple drives

Time Machine handles multiple drives pretty easily, but just in case you’re confused about how to do it, I recently posted this step-by-step guide to help walk you through the process.

How to use multiple hard drives with Time Machine

A trip down memory lane

David Gewirtz recently posted a link to an old television interview with Game of Thrones creator George R.R. Martin. The fantasy author swears by his DOS-based computer running WordStar 4.0, a word processor that was released in 1987. It seems anachronistic, but many of us, not just writers and other creatives, display really obsessive compulsive tendencies when it comes to their tools of choice.

I’ve adapted to the modern age – I write most of what I’m working on in Markdown-compatible text editors these days, and really love Ulysses – an app from The Soulmen which runs on iOS and OS X, and makes it really easy to sync between devices via iCloud. But just for fun, I spent a bit of time this morning getting refamiliarized with my favorite word processor from the “classic” Mac OS days: WriteNow.

Published by T/Maker, WriteNow is a contemporary of Martin’s WordStar 4.0 – it came out in the mid-1980s after the Mac was introduced. Anyway, I got WriteNow working in emulation on my Mac this morning and took it for a spin.

WriteNow

What’s amused me the most is how hard-wired my muscle memory is. It took all of about two minutes to get reacquainted with the keyboard commands to do everything I need to. It tempts me to get started on that ten part space opera book series I’ve been planning. I mean, if a three decade old word processor is good enough for the Game of Thrones guy…

Download Word Flow for the iPhone and type faster

One of the best third-party keyboards for iOS is from Microsoft. Yeah. Microsoft. Go figure!

It’s called Word Flow, and it’s downloadable from the App Store for free. Word Flow is already available for Windows phones, but Microsoft has developed an iOS version that you can grab. The effort is the work of a group within Microsoft called Garage, the company’s experimental apps group. (Readers have pointed that at least for now, Word Flow seems to be a US-only release. Sorry, international folks!)

I use an iPhone 6, and I often find it unwieldy to type with one hand, using my thumb, as so many of us like to. It’s simply too wide for the radius of my thumb, which requires me to compensate by holding the device with two hands. Word Flow offers a clever adaptation it calls “Arc Mode.” The keyboard can be set on the lower right or left edge of the screen, in an arc, to make it easier to quickly tap keys with your thumb. Word Flow also lets you “swipe” to type words (sliding your thumb between “a” “n” and “d” will cause Word Flow to type “and,” even if you don’t lift your thumb between each key).

IMG 0565

Word Flow is also customizable; you can color it with different themes or even create your own. 

So why wouldn’t you want to install Word Flow? Privacy is the main reason. Like all third-party keyboards for iOS, Word Flow’s predictive text requires you to turn on “Full Access,” which lets the app store data about your keystrokes to help improve the app’s predictive text feature. Apple offers some more details about how third party keyboards work in this support document.

This does not mean that Word Flow is a keylogging application, and it does not mean that Microsoft or Apple suddenly get a full transcript of everything you’ve typed using the application. But Apple’s scare warning and its lack of communication about what Full Access actually does is enough to make some people not want to install third-party keyboards on their iOS devices. You can leave Full Access off, but Word Flow won’t be nearly as efficient at predicting what you’re typing.

Apple’s support for third-party keyboards is begrudging at best. So you’ll often have to tap the keyboard icon (which looks like a wireframe globe) a few times before you see Word Flow pop up.

Having said all that, it’s a free app, and if you’re having trouble with the built-in keyboard on an iPhone – especially a larger one, like a 6 Plus or 6S Plus – this might be exactly what you need.

Should I use an external drive for backup?

With cloud services like Backblaze, iCloud Drive and Dropbox readily available, is it worth it to continue to use an external hard drive for backup? This is a question I tackle in a recent piece at Backblaze.

Blog external drive

Really, there’s no mystery here: A combination of onsite and offsite (cloud) backup provides you with the best possible coverage. So I take a look at something we call our 3-2-1 Backup strategy and how that applies here. The 3-2-1 plan encourages you to consider having two onsite copies of your data and one offsite copy. The two onsite copies include your original and a backup, such as a Time Machine archive, and then one offsite copy can be your Backblaze backup, or backup via another cloud service, backup via iCloud or Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, or anywhere else you care to use.

I need an Calendar app that nags me more effectively. Any ideas?

I have a problem I’m hoping you might be able to help me with: I constantly overlook reminders that I’ve set on my devices.

As a baratric patient, I have an entire calendar dedicated, for example, to keeping me on track with the medicine and dietary supplements I’m supposed to take in order to maintain my health. Optimally it should be done on a fairly strict routine, so I’ve got it mapped out – take my multivitamins at this time, take my iron supplement at this time, then take my calcium supplements, etc.

It’s great, My watch buzzes me to remind me. Here’s the problem: I often glance down at the reminder, then go back to doing what I was doing. “I’ll get up in a minute,” I’ll say to myself. Then I won’t.

I’m wondering if anyone’s come across an app for the iPhone – preferably something with an Apple Watch app too – that might be a bit more of a noodge. Something that will nag me into actually getting up to take my pills.

Look, I own my behavior: I really need to start getting up as soon as the watch and the phone tell me to. But I could use a poke in the right direction that I’m not getting from my current setup. If this has happened to you, how have you dealt with it?

Happy 32nd birthday, Apple IIc

For some of my teenaged peers, like my best friend, the Apple II and more specifically, the Apple IIe were the machines to get. The first Apple II I ever got my hands on recently celebrated its 32nd birthday last weekend. I’m talking about the Apple IIc.

Apple IIc with monitor

In the years before Macs and before the IBM PC, Apple IIs ran all the coolest games, and they were such popular systems among hobbyists that you could readily find magazines and books with code to program your own software too. While I had a computer of my own at home (I was one of the very lucky ones), the Apple IIc was the first computer I ever used in school. The Apple IIc was introduced in 1984, the same year the Macintosh made its debut.

The IIc was a downsized version of the Apple II, with a built-in floppy disk drive and a peripheral expansion port, all designed in a much more compact chassis that took up a lot less space on the desktop. It had less internal expandability but less need for it, since Apple integrated much of what had been installed on expansion cards right on the computer. More than three decades later we still see Apple iterating and shrinking its hardware the same way, albeit on a very different scale and different level of sophistication.

The IIc was the perfect computer for a computer lab, which is exactly what my high school did with theirs. I remember having to pass a Keyboarding class as a prerequisite to use them. I did, though just barely, with a D. The class was taught by an old-school typist on IBM Selectrics. I could competently input text on a typewriter, but I’d taught myself to type on computer keyboards. So I didn’t do it the way the teacher wanted.

The Data Processing class was when I first got my hands on the IIc. The teachers taught us the ins and outs of using computers – how to start them up, how to put in discs, how to run software. It was basic stuff at a time when using computers was still largely a novelty. For my friends and I who were already ahead of the rest of the class, it became an opportunity to help the teacher, help the other students, and hopefully have some time to play with the computers ourselves without being burdened too much by the curriculum. Oregon Trail, anyone?

The teachers of that class, Mr. Bernier and Mrs. Ledwith, recognized that I was an enthusiastic computer user. Mr. Bernier  took a shine to me and recommended me for my first summer job: Duplicating software for a nearby financial software developer. I’d parlay that experience into getting more clerical work as an office temp with experience on the Mac, and that ultimately led me down the career path I find myself on today.

So thanks, Apple IIc, for being so awesome. You gave early generations of computer users great service, made it a pleasure to use computers in school, and didn’t take up too much space on the desk, either. And happy birthday. (And thanks also to Mrs. Ledwith and Mr. Bernier for helping to give me my first chance to earn money using computers!)