Mac App Store vs Buying Direct
Jonathan ‘Wolf’ Rentzsch wrote a great article on Mac App Store vs Buying Direct, positing that application sandboxing tips the scale in buying direct.
I always prefer to buy direct because (using his words):
More Money Goes to the Developer: For a $10 application, only $7 goes to the developer when you buy it through the Mac App Store. For a direct purchase, it’s more on the order of $9.
The fact more developers weren’t encouraging customers to buy directly is a testament to how much Mac developers care about User Experience — they’re willing to forego the extra profit of selling direct to make things easier for their customers.
The Last of the Workstations
I started this post a few days ago, before WWDC 2012, before Jim Dalrymple’s famous ‘No’ to whether it will be discontinued (see Marco’s note), when I felt that Apple had finally given up on the Mac Pro. I’m posting it now because I really do love true workstation performance, and hope that the Mac Pro product line continues this tradition.
Is the current Mac Pro the last of the true workstations? I hope not. Apple has not updated this product line for years now, yet there is nothing else on the market today that provides the Mac Pro’s badass performance and expandability in the true workstation space.
Using Mission Control Desktops
In order to reduce distractions while I am working, yet still have the benefit of having these applications running, I use multiple Mission Control desktops on my Macintosh computers. In short, I work, with focus, on Desktop 1; respond to email on Desktop 2; IM and Tweet from Desktop 3; and manage my time and activity on Desktop 4.
Here’s why and how it works.
Each desktop has a purpose
Desktop 1 is my work desktop. I only want the applications I need to perform the current task running on this desktop. So I use my Application Context Pack macros to launch and terminate the application packs I need for the task that I am performing.
Project Specific Data
One of my personal workflow bugbears has always been managing project specific data. Data like project specific contacts (who to call for what for a given project); IP’s, logins and passwords (for servers, VPN’s, specific applications, client LAN’s); and account information (hosting, third party vendors and project specific subscriptions).
I have finally nailed a way to do this that works just great for me and my markdown flow (See The Markdown Mindset). I create project specific wikis using VoodooPad 5 from Flying Meat Inc written by the great Gus Mueller (Blog: The Shape of Everything, Twitter: @ccgus).
The Missing Feature Fallacy
If I had a dollar for every time a potential customer told me that they would buy my product if it just had this one missing feature, I’d have enough to pay rent, in a penthouse, in New York, with a view, for a year.
The assertion is that the customer would buy the product if I would implement the specified missing feature. The counterpoint assertion is that the customer perceives the product as useless without this missing feature, and the product becomes useful only because of the missing feature.
Old Farts Know How to Code
Nick Bradbury nails it in Old Farts Know How to Code:
“Old farts” are often excluded from that (Ed: startup) culture, not because we’re lousy coders but because we won’t put up with that shit. We have lives, we have families, we have other things that are important to us. We’re not about to sleep at our desks and trade watching our kids grow up for the promise of striking it rich. Especially when the people who really strike it rich aren’t the ones writing code.
Please Learn to Write
Michael Lopp, writing in Rands in Repose, counterpoints the current meme of “Learning to Code” in Please Learn to Write, great article. Love how he compares writing to programming:
Writing appears more forgiving because there is no compiler or interpreter catching your its/it’s issues or reminding you of the rules regarding that or which. Here’s the rub: there is a compiler and it’s fucking brutal. It’s your readers. Your readers are far more critical than the Python interpreter. Not only do they care about syntax, but they also want to learn something, and, perhaps, be entertained while all this learning is going down. Success means they keep coming back - failure is a lonely silence. Python is looking pretty sweet now, right?
Stylizing my Services Agreement
I believe that everything that a person or company delivers to another should reflect their image, style, nature, professionalism and character. Which is why the look of the Noverse Professional Services Agreement drove me mad.
Don’t get me wrong. My attorney and his team are absolutely brilliant. The contract content is the best, it’s well written, well balanced, contains all the right terms and conditions for both sides, and my clients are all very happy to sign it as is. Between the content of the agreement and the great advice, the legal side of my business is well taken care of.
Distributed Note Taking
I have switched over to and finally locked in on a new distributed note taking process, using Elements on the iPad, Dropbox synching, TextExpander file naming and nvAlt on the Mac. Here’s how I got to this point, and how it works.
Going electronic, the old way
Since I switched over to the iPad from a paper notepad about two years ago, I used Penultimate and a stylus to scribble notes. I thought this would be a great process. I can scribble quite quickly, I can draw pictures (I have a visual mind) and I can save the PDF’s of these notes and refer back to them. Something like this:
Zombie email
So, I decided today to archive my old emails, and that meant connecting to the Google Apps holding pen for my last hedge fund which closed in 2009. This is a zombie email account I have not looked at in more than two years.
There were a lot of emails in it.
None of which I wanted or needed.
Surely by now, everyone knows that the company is gone and the email address is defunct.