Link

Debut of OmniFocus 2

A couple of screenshots of the upcoming OmniFocus 2 has been released, and it has been heavily inspired by the iPad app. It looks great, but I really hope that it will be easier to navigate than the iPad version, which can be a bit tedious if you have many projects and folder levels.

The new Forecast moded shows you a summary of your upcoming time-based commitments at a glance in the sidebar. You can leave the forecast collapsed to see the next several days (as in the screenshot), or expand the forecast to see an entire month in your sidebar. From the forecast, you can select any combination of days to see a detailed schedule includes scheduled tasks from OmniFocus integrated with events from your calendar.

I hope that the Forecast view will support adding calendar events in addition to viewing them. That would mean it can be a full replacement for iCal.

Philips Fidelio P9

Philips Fidelio P9 Review

3 Replies

Music is something people from all over the world can relate to and appreciate. Most people carry around their music by plugging their white earphones into their ears and pressing play on their favorite iDevice. What happens if you want that portable experience, but want to share the music with other people, like those boom boxes from the 80’s people used to carry on their shoulders? Luckily, this is the year of 2013 and technology has advanced to streaming audio over Bluetooth and having great batteries lasting for days.

The first real contact with a modern day boom box for me personally was a couple of years ago when the original Jambox from Jawbone was released. It had superior sound quality for such a small size and for that price. Times change, and Jawbone recently released a new, bigger version of their popular speaker – the Big Jambox.

This time however, other players have entered the market as well, competing for both the smaller form-factor of the original Jambox and for the larger one as well. I was convinced that there had to be something else out there with features matching, or even surpassing, those of the Jambox.

Philips recently released their new premium speaker Fidelio P9 (the link goes to the Swedish site. It is not yet available on the US site, but Google Translate may help), and it looked like the perfect portable speaker featuring natural materials such as leather, metal and wood. A lot of care and consideration has been put into not only getting a great sound, but the timeless design and smart features.

The outside

The speaker is carefully wrapped in a built-in and non-detachable leather cover, which also doubles as a stand. The detachable side of the leather flap has magnets similar to the iPad SmartCover built-in, which are used to securely fasten the cover when used as a stand. When closed, it keeps the cover firmly in place, and as a smart feature, it automatically turns the speaker off after a few seconds, just like when the SmartCover turns the iPad off.

The stand can be used in several different positions, making it easy to tilt the speaker to get the perfect speaker-to-ear angle.

The battery level can be viewed simply by touching the speaker. Four different white diodes briefly light up to indicate the current charge, and fades away after a few seconds.

The ports

The speaker does not use a standard micro-USB port for charging, but instead has an old-fashioned charger. This is usually no problem, since you will get around eight hours of battery life according to the specs, which lets you keep your charger at home, or at least in a bag.

In addition to Bluetooth audio using A2DP, the P9 speaker also includes a standard 3.5mm jack for plugging in devices without Bluetooth. There is no audio cable included in the package though, which really a bit strange for a premium product, considering that one of their main competitor, Jawbone, includes a great flat cable with their speakers.

The leather cover is not the only “smart” feature. There is a standard USB port on one side of the speaker, which lets you charge your iPhone or other USB powered device, taking power from the speaker batteries. This is a fantastic feature, and there have been reports of getting three complete iPhone charges from the speaker.

The inside

If we remove the speaker grille and take a look behind, we find four 2 inch full range woofers, and two 3/4 inch soft dome tweeters. There are in addition two passive elements on the back using Philips wOOx technology for an increased bass response.

These speakers put out 20W RMS, which is enough to fill a normal sized room without any problem.

The sound

The most important property of a speaker when it comes down to it, still has to be the sound quality – and this is where the P9 really excels. The sound is crystal clear even when turned up loud, much thanks to the separate tweeters and wOOx membranes. If you are a fan of loud music, you will not be disappointed.

The problems

The Fidelio P9 is a great product with few shortcomings, but there are however a couple of small annoyances.

From time to time, when you connect to the speaker using Bluetooth, the connection can suddenly drop and reconnect causing a skip in the music. The solution is to disconnect the Bluetooth connection from my iPad and reconnect the speaker. For some reason, it will work fine at least until the next time the speaker is connected to a device.

Another small issue has to do with the leather cover. It is fastened with screws on the speaker, but the cover is not perfectly aligned with the speaker, meaning that the center of the cover does not match the center of the speaker. It is easily visible on the edges, and the difference is at least a couple of millimeters.

Conclusion

After using the speaker for a while, I have to say that I am very satisfied with it. It works great and sounds fantastic. I have been using it with everything from romantic dining music to Friday night parties, and it has worked great in every instance I have tried it.

The only thing missing is the 3.5mm audio cable which is not included in the package. Without it, I can not test the speaker when playing games such as Call of Duty, since the slight delay would cause things to become terribly confusing.

Link

The OmniFocus Mail Drop

We call this new feature the “OmniFocus Mail Drop”. Unlike previous mail-processing features, we wanted a method that wouldn’t require any of your devices to be present in order to add items to OmniFocus, we wanted to add the much-requested better attachment support, and we wanted to reduce the amount of extra work you had to do in order to get your items into OmniFocus as much as possible.

This has the potential to completely change how we deal with the inbox in Omnifocus. There is more information in the official thread, including instructions for signing up for the service.

Link

1Password 4 for iOS released

A new major version of 1Password for iOS has just been released, and it is a major overhaul of not only the application design, but new features such as a tab for favorites and an improved browser. Get it now for more than 50% off.

ultrathinkeyboardcover

The Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover for iPad

2 Replies

The iPad is great for so many things, yet many people believe its primary usage is media consumption, in contrast to creating content. A bare iPad does not have the exact precision of a pencil, nor the same touch typing experience of a regular keyboard, making those points undeniably valid.

There are however things you can do to augment your iPad, and achieve a reasonable precision when drawing, and to get that special touch type experience you only get from a physical keyboard.

Impressions

I recently purchased a Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover for my iPad 3. Its backside resembles the brushed aluminum back of the iPad, which makes them go perfectly together. The keyboard side is made from high-gloss plastic with matte keys, and the groove where the iPad rests feels solid and will not break easily.

The keys feel firm and has a good resistance to them when pressed, and can be compared to the keys on a Macbook Pro. The keys are only marginally smaller, with the exception of the Nordic layout which have the special characters å, ä and ö pushed together next to the enter key. After a few minutes of typing though, you will get used to them and it will not bother you.

The Smart Cover magnets

The iPad has magnets to hold the Smart Cover in place. The Logitech Keyboard Cover uses these magnets to latch on to the iPad, preventing it falling off when the keyboard covers the screen.

When the iPad is docked in the keyboard groove, the magnets will latch on to the bottom, which is a great reassurance if dropping the iPad is a big concern. You can even pick up the iPad, and the keyboard cover will still hang on firmly.

It does only work in landscape mode though, since there are no opposing magnets on the portrait side of the iPad. It does work fairly well in that mode as well though, as long as the keyboard is resting on a flat surface.

Vim and escape

One of the main reasons for using the keyboard cover is to access remote servers using SSH in addition to typing articles and documents. I mostly use a combination of Diet Coda and Screen to attain some level of productivity.

The main problem however, occurs when using vim to edit files. It extensively uses the escape key, which poses a great problem since the escape key is conveniently mapped to the home button. This means that every time the escape key is pressed, the application closes and one is taken back to the home screen.

The only solution I found is to double-press the escape key, making the multitasking bar appear on the iPad, and then tap it again to get back to the application. Other than that particular gripe, things have been working very well.

Battery life

I was very skeptical when reading the specs indicating six months of usage from a single charge. This was supposed to be possible because of the magnets, which automatically powers the keyboard on and off when it is attached to the screen.

I was wrong.

I have not charged it since the unboxing, and it is still going as strong as ever. Even with it being powered on for entire days at a time. It charges using a micro-USB connector, which is right next to the power and sync buttons.

Conclusion

Having used the keyboard cover for about a month, I have found both good things and bad. I do not regret getting the keyboard and will continue to use it daily.

One issue with the keyboard cover is that it basically doubles the thickness of the iPad, making the iPad feel a bit bulky when you are carrying it around.

The main problem however, occurs when you want to use the iPad for reading, browsing or some other activity not using the keyboard. Where do one put the cover? The original Smart Cover would just fold around, but the keyboard has to be placed somewhere.

On a more positive note, writing has been a breeze and everything from instant messaging and using ssh to connect to remote servers, to writing articles and just browsing the web has become a lot faster and easier. It almost feels like typing on a real Macbook, with the exception of not having a trackpad.

iPad Mini

Looking forward, I am not sure what to do once I get the iPad Mini (the cellular version has just been released in Sweden and is out of stock). On one hand, the iPad together with the keyboard cover makes for a great workstation when on the go, but on the other hand, the iPad Mini is just too perfect to pass up. Would a similar keyboard cover for the iPad Mini work, or would the keys be too small?