Protocol Mac

Patrick's Twitter experiment:

I decided to take a look at what apps the following tech pundits put on their iPhone homescreen and tally the results of this improvised survey.  

Surveyed Population:

- Patrick Rhone  - Stephen M. Hackett - John Gruber - Shawn Blanc - Craig Hockenberry - Dave Caolo - Ben Brooks

Patrick the champion of TextEdit on his default window setting:

Andy Ihnatko on how he resets himself after a bad start to his day:

Sometimes the stink of failure is a physical thing. Wash it off. No kidding. Brush your teeth, wash your face, change into a clean shirt. Move to a different workspace. Once you’ve left behind all of the sights and smells of your Ungodly Unproductive Morning, your brain restarts and reboots.

Shawn Blanc's excellent analysis on his future Mac purchase:

The 13-inch MacBook Air has everything I do need, nothing that I don’t, and even a few additional features such as being light weight and having a thinner form factor. Which means that for me, going from a 15-inch MacBook Pro to a 13-inch MacBook Air will be an upgrade.

WHAT IF THERE ARE 15-INCH MACBOOK AIRS? WOULD I BUY ONE OF THOSE? As I mentioned above, I would rather have the smaller size over the larger screen. 

Randy Murray on his bag protocol:

As an aside, here’s a tip for using any bag: load it before you leave, unload it when you return. Keep only the barest essentials in the pockets. If you do this, you’ll load only what you absolutely need for the specific trip and when you return you can load items into your inbox, as needed, for processing. This will train you to pack and carry less.

This really is an amazing deal.  

I've been waiting to pull the trigger on TextExpander and Keyboard Maestro separately, but when I saw that I could have both (and more) for less than the price of either one alone, I was sold.

I've got all of Ben Brooks posts on Keyboard Maestro queued so that I can learn from his experience on reducing the waste on repetitive tasks.

If you've been itching to snag Keyboard Maestro or TextExpander, grab it here!

In the latest installment of the Evernote Podcast, a listener asked how to protect tax returns that he wanted to save and store in Evernote.  

Ben Brooks on Jeff Atwood's SSD Failure:

I haven’t seen one of mine fail yet, but even if mine failed I would still be and SSD fan — the performance is just too good not to be using.

I'm really into my computing experience, but seriously, a new drive every year at $525 seems a bit steep.  At that estimated rate of failure, the cost to operate that drive is about $43/mo.  That's more than double the depreciation rate I incurred to own Macbook Pro.  

I've been considering a SSD for my Macbook Pro for some time, but I was always under the impression that a SSD would be less prone to failure than a spinning disk.  Good to know that's not true.  

My friend bought a Porsche recently and it's an amazing machine.  However, the oil changes alone are $125.  That's a bit steep for me.  Though I love exotic cars, realistically I'd choose a luxury performance car where the cost of maintenance is more closely aligned with the performance benefit. 

I love GoodReader for getting files off of Dropbox onto my iPad, but apparently there is so much more. By making a few adjustments, GoodReader can become the bridge that takes your iPad to the next level of productivity.

Listen in on the latest from David and Katie to learn on how they integrate GoodReader into their iPad workflow.