Two weeks ago, I was one of the fortunate ones to be able to pre-order the iPhone 4. I had to go through AT&T rather than purchasing via Apple, although either way, I was able to make the purchase happen. On 6/24, my two new iPhone 4s (one for me, one for the wife) arrived via FedEx.

To provide some background, both the wife and I had older generation iPhones (one 2G and one 3G). I had already upgraded the 3G to iOS4 (even without all of the whiz-bang features) just to start experimenting with the new UI changes.

Well, when the iPhone 4s were setup, I was elated. What a dramatic improvement from our older phones! Performance, performance, performance. And the retina display? Well, it is everything you have already read about – pixel-perfect clarity and extreme readability.

Of course, all of the great features are a plus (HD video recording, FaceTime, Multi-tasking, etc.). I have used them all and must say that Apple did a splendid job ensuring that the iPhone 4 works as designed.

My only complaint to date is the lack of cases available for the new iPhone. We ended up purchasing the Reveal case from Griffin. The Apple Bumper was not an acceptable choice (I needed something to protect the whole device) and the Otterbox Commuter is not yet available (2-3 months yet).

I am also thankful that many of the App developers were ready at launch with new versions of their apps. Of the ones worth mentioning:

• OmniFocus 1.7
• Twitter 3.01
• Twitterrific 3 (just can’t have enough Twittr clients)
• Twittelator 4 (see above)
• Analytics Pro 1.1.5
• WordPress 2.5
• Evernote 3.3.5
• Instapaper 2.2.4
• Articles 1.2
• Dropbox 1.2.2
• Docs2Go 3.3.1
• iMovie 1.0 (new)
• BibleReader 4.12.4

And many more!

If you are ready (and can afford) to make the upgrade from an older iPhone (or another maker’s device), I highly recommend it. I have played with many Google Phones (Evo, Droid, others) and still find that the iPhone is a superior product.

For those who use Daylite and Billings, fear not as iOS4 versions are on their way.

If you have upgraded or purchased a new iPhone 4, what are your thoughts? What apps would you recommend to take advantage of the new hardware/iOS?

Tags: Apple, Personal

At 10am this morning, my friends at DEVONtechnologies shipped v2.0 of their acclaimed document collection and management tool, DEVONthink 2.0.

I have reviewed the betas in the past, and believe it is a superior product to many other similar offerings out there. With the release of 2.0, there are tons of new features, a shiny new user interface and more.

I highly recommend this product to those who manage many types of documents, collect information from the Web and who live in a paperless office like myself.

If you buy now, you can even save an additional 10% off the list price. Lastly, I personally use the Pro Office edition given its true paperless office capabilities.

Tags: Apple, DEVONthink

The last time I wrote, I talked about my favorite applications. Well, I missed one. And, it’s a big one. I missed 1Password. This is one of my all-time favorite applications and I can’t believe I forgot it in my previous post.

Well, the guys at Agile Web Solutions really hit the nail on the head with this product. I have been using it since v1.3.1 (it was summer of 2006 – not too long after the product launched publicly.  I have used every version in between, migrated to their new Agile Key format and am anxiously awaiting the 3.0 release. I will gladly pay whatever upgrade fee – it will be more than worth it.

I constantly evangelize 1Password because of its power, simplicity and its ability for me to manage my passwords, software licenses, and more. It’s just an overall excellent application and the price is worth every penny.

And, some time ago, the folks at Agile Web Solutions released an iPhone version which enables you to sync the data from you Mac. Having passwords + any other secure information with me is just invaluable. I love being at the airport and being able to quickly get to my frequent flyer # without having to carry yet another card in my wallet.

Ultimately, there are other products out there that work similarly. However, the folks at Agile Web Solutions just hit the nail on the head in terms of usability and functionality. Stop reading this and go get your own copy today.

Tags: Apple, iPhone, Personal

A lot of my customers ask me which software applications do I use on a daily basis. I am a big believer in using both free and paid applications on my Mac. I tend to find that paid applications are better supported and have more “polish.”

So, here is my list (+ descriptions as to why I use these apps) with their respective links:

Internet/Web

• I mostly stick with the Apple apps. Including iChat (MobileMe and Google Talk), Mail.app and Safari 4. I also use Google Apps for my domain. For Twitter, I use Tweetie from Atebits. It’s user experience is very polished and I prefer its simplicity to the likes of TweetDeck or other options on the Mac.
• In terms of web site design, I use RapidWeaver from the folks at RealMac Software. I prefer its user interface combined with its plugin capabilities to manage my web site.

Business Productivity

• Here, I vacillate between iWork 09 and Microsoft Office 2008. I really prefer Numbers to Excel because it is so much prettier to use (I can make some very beautiful and compelling spreadsheets). I will give credit to Microsoft for their new 12.2.1 update – it did speed up Word and the other applications. However, I still prefer Pages to Word because of one key feature – the Full Screen (blackout) capability. That feature really helps to focus you when you write. Lastly, I tend to lean more toward PowerPoint than Keynote. Why? Well, I am just more familiar and I prefer the SmartArt Graphics functionality – it’s a real time-saver when building slides.
• Marketcircle’s Daylite + Billings combination. I use Daylite (and I am a Partner) for managing all of my contacts/customers, business opportunities and larger projects. I also use Daylite Touch as a companion product on my iPhone. What is critical about Daylite Touch is its ability to make phone calls (using the iPhone’s dialer) and then capturing that call as a task/follow-up. No other iPhone application can do that. It’s a lifesaver when I am on the go and need to capture business information from a phone call.
• I prefer to use OmniFocus by the OmniGroup to manage my tasks. The GTD format combined with the real simplicity of entering/managing tasks can’t be beat in my book. I then use the built-in sync services capabilities to sync my tasks to my iPhone as well as Daylite/Daylite Touch.
• This falls under hardware+software, although I can’t live without my Dymo LabelWriter 400 Turbo. This is such a useful tool for printing all sorts of labels. And, the folks at Dymo just release v8 of their software which is deeply improved and makes it very easy to create all types of labels.

Creative: Photography + Video

• I would like to consider myself a budding photographer, although that is probably way too generous a compliment. Still, I shoot with a Canon DSLR and I prefer managing my images with Apple’s Aperture rather than using iPhoto. I shoot in RAW and Aperture’s non-destructive editing capabilities really shine through over iPhoto. Further, the plugin capabilities enables me to add tools that really make photo editing powerful (Nik Software, for example) and generally negate the need for something like Photoshop CS4.
• I really only use one tool for video and that is iMovie 09. I shoot in HD using my Sony HDR-11 AVCHD camera and iMovie 09 handles the editing and creation of movies in a superb way. Yes, there are other tools, although Apple really nailed it with this latest version.

Data Management

• For my paperless world as well as capturing content from a variety of sources, the king of the heap is DEVONthink Pro Office from the folks at Devon Technologies. I scan all of my paper into DEVONthink and then use it’s advanced AI capabilities to search/match related content. Further, I also use the fantastic Clip to DEVONthink bookmarklet for capturing data within Safari and automatically sending it to DEVONthink. My favorite feature of DEVONthink is that whatever data you put into the application you can easily extract in its native format. This way, I can grab PDFs, web archives and more and know that the data is not in some proprietary format. This is a huge win.
• I recently started using Bento to manage a music collection library. I like the fact that the folks at FileMaker Inc made this simple app as well as its companion App for the iPhone. I can then take my music collection with me when I am on the hunt for new items.

Financial

• For personal finances, I am currently using iBank from IGG Software. iBank is a nice tool and it syncs to the new iBank Mobile iPhone App. I would like to see iBank have more feature parity with Quicken (support for billpay systems, better support for transaction downloads from more financial institutions).
• For business finances, I am currently evaluating both MYOB AccountEdge and Intuit’s QuickBooks. MYOB has the advantage of integrating with Daylite. However, QuickBooks is the de facto standard (and has more training offerings).

Music

• Ok, call me an Apple fanboy, although iTunes is the only real music management tool for the Mac that meets my needs for managing all of my music and movie files. To be honest, I really miss Musicmatch Jukebox – to me – it was the best music tool in the business.
• I recently started using both CoverScout and SongGenie from Equinux. Of the two, SongGenie is my current favorite as it helps me find missing track information for some pretty obscure music files.

Utilities

• I use a few utilities to improve my productivity on the Mac. In terms of which one I use the most, I would say that Path Finder from CocoaTech is my primary app. Path Finder is such a powerful tool, it really makes the Finder itself a lame duck.
• I also use QuicKeys 4 from Startly. I am a very keyboard driven person, so having an “accelerator” tool really helps to automate tasks. And, the latest version from Startly was just released with tons of new features as well as a vastly improved UI. One of the biggest new features is QuicKey’s abbreviations. QuicKeys 4 can import TextExpander or other abbreviation app’s data. I am honestly surprised it took the folks at Startly so long to have this competitive feature, but at least it is finally out there.
• For system-wide and application notifications, I use Growl. It’s free and it really can’t be beat. I just wish more applications supported this amazing tool.
• Lastly, another key tool in my utility shed is Default Folder X from St. Clair Software. This tool enhances the open/save dialog boxes with tons of useful features (too many to list). I would argue that Default Folder X should be built into the OS, as the one complaint some users have is app compatibility. Thankfully, I have not seen any issues myself (across 100 apps on my iMac).

Backup

• Apple provides us all one of the simplest and most comprehensive backup tools in existence: Time Machine. I use Time Machine with my Time Capsule to ensure each computer in my household has a recent backup on an hourly basis.
• For complete offsite backup, I use BackBlaze. This tool is indispensable, as it backs up my local hard disk as well as any attached hard disks to the cloud. For $50/year that includes unlimited space, this service is a steal.
• I use Personal Backup X5 from Intego to automate weekly backups of specific files to my iDisk. Granted, this is redundant with Backblaze, although one can’t be too protective of their files!

Was this list helpful to you? Which apps do you use? I would love to hear your recommendations. Please feel free to add comments/feedback below.

Tags: Apple, Daylite, DEVONthink, Personal

Mid last week, the folks at Marketcircle released v.3.9.3 of Daylite. This release fixes quite a few issues. You can see the release notes here.

Tags: Apple, Consulting, Daylite, Personal

From Macworld Magazine. I am a reseller of this phenomenal online backup service and highly recommend it for your personal and professional backup needs.

Tags: Apple, Macworld

This week, I wrote another article on TheAppleBlog about syncing to Google services (Apps For Your Domain, or GMail/GCal). The crux of the article is that if you need to live in a world of synchronized data, there are software vendors who make excellent tools.

The tough challenge in writing this article is that I have relationships with both vendors that I reviewed. The first, my friend Charlie Wood of Spanning Sync, I have known for about three years. Charlie and his team at SS are very smart folks indeed. And, they build a great product.

The second, John Chaffee is an old friend from my Mac days in the early 1990s. His company, BusyMac, builds a fantastic small-office calendar synchronization tool for the Mac. This tool is called BusySync. John has been in the Calendar business for almost 20 years – he was one of the original developers on Now Up-To-Date.

It was a tough call on which product I eventually chose to use for myself. Hopefully, the review will help you make the right decision for your business. Please take a read on the article. It has some valid points if you are considering syncing your Mac’s Calendar (and other) data with Google services.

Tags: Apple

As I mentioned previously, I write for TheAppleBlog, a fairly prominent weblog about the Macintosh on the GigaOM Network.

Today, three new articles were posted about printing in Small-office/Home-office (SoHo) environments. Because making sure you have the right equipment in your office is critical, please take a read.

• SoHo Printers On a Moderate Budget
• Printer Review: Canon Pixma 7600
• Printer Review: Epson Artisan 800

Tags: Apple

Twitter is really a very useful multi-way communication distribution mechanism. I engage with Twitter using these two products: Eventbox and Tweetie.

Eventbox

Eventbox is a Mac application. Its user interface is similar to iTunes, so you can configure it to view the relevant tweets that mean something to you.

Eventbox also aggregates your Facebook, Flickr, Google Reader and Reddit information.

Lastly, Eventbox integrates with Growl so you can see any/all notifications from the services you use.

Tweetie

Tweetie is an iPhone app and is probably the best-looking and easiest-to-use iPhone app in the Apple App Store.

I highly recommend using both of these applications. However, I have heard that the future roadmap for Eventbox is to have an iPhone app as well. So, stay tuned as to which iPhone app will stay in my stable.

Concluding Thoughts

There are many applications for using Twitter. Multi-channel communication, direct communication – similar to IM or SMS and you can reply to many without “spamming.”

I use Twitter to monitor discussions about topics of interest as well as to follow my friends and what they are doing. Twitter helps to me to think about other communication possibilities. I recommend checking out the service and giving it a try. Besides, it’s free.

Tags: Apple, Twitter