This made me smile. I can't remember Apple having a more beloved spokescreature (human or otherwise) than Cookie Monster.
Now if only I could get Apple to do ONLY things that I love, and not things that leave me annoyed, disappointed, and baffled.
Today, thanks to Michael Tsai, I found out there's a major new release of Keyboard Maestro. I use Keyboard Maestro all day long, and look forward to checking out the upgrade when I have time.
Here are some ways Keyboard Maestro makes my day go much more smoothly:
I use the palette feature to navigate to frequently used apps and documents in exactly two keystrokes.
I have a "Preferred Window Frame" macro that sets the active window's size and position. My preferred frame varies from app to app, and the macro does the right thing depending on which app is active. Just one keystroke to remember. The macro invokes keyboard shortcuts I've configured in Divvy, but I could also have entered window coordinates directly into Keyboard Maestro.
I map ^P/^N to UpArrow/DownArrow so I can use those emacs keys to go up and down in lists, menus, and other places outside of text editing. The ^P/^N keys already work in many apps, but not all, and not in all places within the same app. By setting up this global mapping, I don't have to remember where they work and where they don't.
You can create text expansion macros. I have macros for inserting date and time, for a few phrases I type on a regular basis, and for emoji characters. I was happy using Keyboard Maestro for all this but recently moved my text expansion macros to aText, a very nice app at a very reasonable price. My reasons for switching were minor and arguably not worth the time when I had a perfectly good solution. I wouldn't and perhaps shouldn't have bothered, except I am such an obsessive yak shaver.
I sometimes use Keyboard Maestro instead of System Preferences to provide alternate menu shortcuts. I do this because Keyboard Maestro syncs my macro definitions on Dropbox, which means that when I make a change, all my Macs automatically get it.
I open Xcode's Recent Files menu with one keystroke (I use ^R) instead of three (^1, DownArrow, RightArrow).
I have a scratch macro named "Pipe Text" that replaces the currently selected text by piping it through a shell script and pasting the result. The macro has an "Execute Shell Script" action that I edit to do what I have in mind, typically a grep.
I keep a personal log in the form of daily text files. I have a macro that opens today's log file in BBEdit, after creating the file if necessary. I use this throughout the day whenever I think of something to add to the file.
I'm happy to share how I do any of the above.
Yesterday I watched the first two episodes of Fresh Off the Boat, a sitcom loosely based on the childhood of Eddie Huang. It's the first network show in 20 years starring an Asian-American family. The previous one, Margaret Cho's All-American Girl, didn't do too well, so anticipation and expectations were high for Fresh Off the Boat.
Last year when the first teasers came out for the show, viewers' reactions included some concern about the accents of the parents, played by Constance Wu and Randall Park. To me, the accents did indeed sound off-key, but based on everything else I saw, I reserved judgment. I figured maybe I wasn't familiar enough with Taiwanese accents, since I'm more used to the Hong Kong accents in my own family.
Mainly I wanted to take the attitude that I take with Apple product announcements. Whatever optimism or doubts I may have, I always reserve final judgment until I've had hands-on experience. I learned my lesson about that in 2007, when Apple shipped the first iPhone. I was excited about it but thought I could hold off on getting one. I figured I'd wait for other people to find the bugs and for Apple to work out any manufacturing glitches. But then a friend let me play with his iPhone, and I was immediately hooked. The hands-on experience far exceeded my expectations. Minutes later, my friend walked me to the Apple Store and I bought my own iPhone.
This week ABC "shipped" the first two episodes of Fresh Off the Boat and I finally got to go "hands-on". And you know what? I loved the show so much I watched both episodes twice. The show is honest about race — there's a scene in the pilot episode that I think people will be talking about for a long time — but at heart it's a funny show with some poignant moments and some moments of dark humor (though not too dark; remember, this is ABC, not HBO). The narration by the real Eddie Huang adds great depth to the flavor of the show.
I found that the more I watched, the less I cared about the accents. They might be pitch-perfect, or they might be as questionable as James Doohan's impression of a Scot. I'm still not sure, but I don't care any more because I like the characters, and I like them just as they are. I doubt most of non-Asian America will care either.
Put it this way: I find Jackie Chan's genuine accent way more distracting than I ever found Wu's and Park's simulated ones, and I still love Jackie Chan movies.
Alanna Petroff, writing for CNN.com:
It's a landmark moment for both the gay community and the business world. Tim Cook is now the first and only openly gay chief executive in the Fortune 500.
Of course, many lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered employees still struggle with discrimination at work. The executive suite also remains extremely closeted, but there are a few high-ranking openly gay businesspeople.
Not to detract from their accomplishments or their struggles, but none of these examples come close to Tim Cook in terms of power or visibility. It's like pointing out the US had prominent black politicians before Obama; not to take away from any of them, but there is a clear difference. Cook is the first openly gay CEO of a Fortune 500 company, and it's a company with a track record the other 499 would kill to have.
I remember when "Apple is so gay" was a common juvenile taunt. For all I know, it still is. Regardless, times have changed, and we should all be comfortable responding to that taunt with "You say that like it's a bad thing."
UI rule of thumb: use the biggest buttons for the most likely actions.
UI rule of thumb: Convey a sense of progression by putting a sequence of steps in a row or column, one after another.
Corollary to that second rule of thumb: Having led the user through a list of actions, don't make the last thing on the list "Cancel everything I just did", because that is very likely not what they want.
Pop quiz: How many of the above rules of thumb does Radar break here?
Extra credit: Did you think to yourself, "On iOS it's normal for the 'Done' button to be at the top right corner, so this makes perfect sense"? Or did you think to yourself, "This is not iOS"?
UPDATE 2014-09-09: Great news from Zach Drayer:
Not covered in the Keynote, but still big: RadarWeb got rid of the big “Delete Problem†button at the bottom: http://t.co/mT1eYMShAT
— Zachary Drayer (@zadr) September 9, 2014