Colossus — A brief review

November 2, 2015
by Riccardo Mori
Software

About a month ago, when I upgraded to Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan, I found out that one of my favourite system/network monitoring tool, MenuMeters, was not compatible with the latest version of Mac OS X. I had been using MenuMeters since Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, mostly for monitoring network throughput because my wireless home network has been experiencing periods of high instability. Having the ability to just glance at the menubar and see the network activity and throughput is quite handy, and once you get accustomed to a monitoring tool such as MenuMeters, you can’t fathom being without one.

So I immediately looked for alternatives, and the first two solutions that were recommended to me — as mentioned in my previous article — were iStat Menus 5 by Bjango, and Colossus by Sparkfield. Later mentions included Monity by Lukasz Kulis, and MenuBar Stats 2 by Fabrice Leyne. And finally, I was notified by email that Yuji Tachikawa has written a port of MenuMeters to work under Mac OS X 10.11.

As I wrote previously, I quickly opted for iStat Menus because I’m already familiar with Bjango’s products, and I appreciate the high level of customisation iStat Menus provides. Then, a few days after publishing my article, Saxby Brown at Sparkfield, developer of Colossus, contacted me and kindly provided me with a copy of the app. The least I can do is talking about it a bit more.

I have used Colossus for the past couple of weeks, sometimes instead of iStat Menus, sometimes along with it. I think that Colossus is a very nice application that does its job quite well. If you don’t need all the features and customisation options provided by iStat Menus, you should consider Colossus as a valid and more affordable alternative. Brown said to me: I know that iStat Menus has more features but I tried to keep Colossus clean and simple, and I’d say he’s done a good job in that department.

Colossus can display information about CPU, memory, network, battery and storage. You can customise what kind of information you want displayed on the menubar, and more, by entering the Preferences panel:

Colossus Preferences 1

At the top, in the Menubar Widgets area, you can see a preview of how the widgets you choose will look in the menubar. The Add Widget drop-down menu lets you choose which kind of widget you want on the menubar, and how it should display the data:

Colossus Preferences 2

If you’re feeling minimalist, with Colossus you can even choose to remove all widgets from the menubar, and just have the Dock icon display two different sets of data in a more fuzzy, analogue way. Just choose from the drop-down menus in the Dock Icon area of the Preferences.

One last feature worth noting is Clean Memory, a quick way to free and release unused memory.

Once you have everything set up, no matter which widgets you chose to have in the menubar, when you click on any one of them, you’ll see a comprehensive info window listing all data Colossus is monitoring (see the screenshots on Colossus’ website for an example). 

I’ll say it again, if you’re looking for a solid replacement to MenuMeters that works seamlessly under Mac OS X 10.11, you should definitely check out Colossus.

Colossus is available on the Mac App Store at the very reasonable price of $3.99.

No ‘inverted T’? No thanks

October 29, 2015
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

Sometime ago, not long after the 12-inch retina MacBook was released, I had the chance to carry out a thorough test of the machine by using it as intensely as I could over three full days (thanks to a kind soul who graciously lent me the MacBook). I was looking forward to this MacBook as my next Mac, but the experience was disappointing, and the single point of disappointment was the MacBook’s keyboard. As a writer and someone who types a lot and all the time, the keyboard for me is even more important than CPU speed or GPU capabilities or storage capacity. My experience with the MacBook’s keyboard has led me to abandon the idea of considering this machine as a possible candidate for upgrade.

In my ‘First impressions’ article about the MacBook, I wrote:

Finally, another new design choice that I really found off-putting in the new MacBook’s keyboard is the shape of the new arrow keys:

Macbook retina arrow keys

The enlarged left and right arrow keys really screwed up my muscle memory while using the MacBook. I constantly thought I was hitting the Command or the Option key, and I found myself looking at the keyboard more often than I liked. There are some who don’t love the small size of the arrow keys in the usual ‘Inverted T’ design, at least on laptops, but the space above the left and right arrow keys really helps to ‘find’ them without looking, and also helps when you’re quickly moving around a software program’s interface using the arrow keys (positioning an object in a graphics application, moving your character in a game, etc.). I found their new design in the retina MacBook’s keyboard to be too ‘crowded’ and my fingers didn’t move as easily when tapping on them. 

Meanwhile, Apple introduces the Magic Keyboard, which, although it doesn’t feature the same butterfly mechanism of the 12-inch retina MacBook’s keyboard, it has a similar key travel and, most importantly, the same ridiculous design for the arrow keys.

I was glad to read that Brett Terpstra feels the same as I do. In his recent A Magic Mistake, he writes (emphasis his):

I’ll be able to get used to the key profile, eventually, but there’s one thing that’s absolutely killing me: the configuration of the arrow key cluster. The seemingly small change in the size of the left and right arrow keys to full height has made it nearly impossible for me to use.

Wireless Keyboard Before and After

When my right hand travels to the arrow cluster, my index finger feels for the top of the left arrow key, and my middle finger assumes that the down arrow is to the right of it, and the up arrow is above it. This is the way every keyboard I’ve ever used is configured.

With the new key size, when my index finger hits the top edge of the left arrow, my middle finger hits the shift key above almost every time. The ridge between up and down has also decreased, and my fingers are large enough that even if I can feel it, hitting both or the wrong one is happening frequently.

[…] I really want to love this new keyboard, but I’m at a point where I’m not sure it’s going to happen. Arrow keys are kind of important.

Getting used to poor design

Note how many of the people who reviewed the Magic Keyboard, speaking of the arrow keys design, have said something along the lines of Oh well, I’ll get used to it or I’ll adjust to it. Susie Ochs, reviewing the Magic Keyboard for Macworld, writes:

I find the full-size right and left arrows a bit harder to find with my fingers than the half-size arrow keys on my MacBook Air and Wired Keyboard. But I can adjust to that.

Jason Snell, in his review, writes:

The major key differences are the left and right arrow keys, which are now full-sized—I used the empty space around the arrows to orient on the keyboard, so occasionally I find myself completely at sea when typing and my text editor will get xinikerejt xibdyaws. (I’m sure I’ll adjust.)

Of course, what else can you do? Apart from returning the keyboard, there’s no other option than adjusting to the new arrow keys design. I’m absolutely baffled by this change, because it’s simply poor design. It impacts usability, it goes against the majority of keyboards out there, it seems completely unnecessary and arbitrary, something like Let’s fill up all the space because the empty areas above the left/right keys don’t look cool. Something users have to take time and adjust to for no justifiable reason.

I’ve only seen a design like that on small keyboards, like folding Bluetooth keyboards and pre-iPhone smartphones with physical keyboards, where the design of the key arrangement is dictated by the need to save space. On full-size keyboards like the Magic Keyboard and the MacBook keyboard such arrangement is unnecessary. 

You may think I’m making a big deal out of a minor detail. It’s that I utterly dislike arbitrary design impositions such as these. Sure, one may get used to that arrow keys arrangement eventually, but if you — like me — usually type on more than one keyboard, and all the other keyboards you own have the traditional ‘inverted T’ design, good luck getting used to the other design while you switch from the Magic Keyboard to another and back.

When it was just the 12-inch retina MacBook, I thought the new arrow keys design was somehow dictated by a change in the particular manufacturing process for that Mac, but now that the same design has appeared on the Magic Keyboard, I suspect that’s the new direction Apple is going with this, and that when the time comes to fully refresh the MacBook Air and Pro lines, they’ll get this new, questionable ‘innovation’ in their keyboards. I really hope my previous-generation Wireless Apple Keyboard and Wired Apple Keyboard will last for a long time, otherwise I’ll have to use third-party keyboards, or maybe buy other units of older, better designed Apple Keyboards such as my beloved Apple Extended Keyboard II, which for me is still unparalleled for long writing sessions.

Siri’s fuzziness and friction

October 21, 2015
by Riccardo Mori
Handpicked

At the end of Fuzzy User Interfaces, Nick Heer writes:

I implore you to not misread this; this is not a condemnation of Siri, Google Now, or any other contextually-sensitive or “personal assistant”-type software. It’s far better than it ever has been. But it will take continued patience from us and regular, noticeable improvements from the teams building this software for us to feel confident in its abilities.

I have criticised Siri in the past (here, for example), and while I certainly think it’s a useful tool — it may be of great assistance to disabled people, as I have witnessed myself — I have lost all my patience with it. I am multilingual, and I have repeatedly tried to use it in English, Spanish and Italian. The interactions have been mostly disappointing in all three languages. I’ve given Siri another chance every time I read or heard someone point out that ‘Siri has improved’, but it has always been a hit-or-miss scenario. 

I am somewhat reminded of the infamous handwriting recognition of the Newton. There was fuzziness in that, too. The handwriting recognition drastically improved in NewtonOS 2.x as opposed to the truly hit-or-miss recognition when writing on a NewtonOS 1.x device, but with that interface I was more willing to be patient and adapt my handwriting to facilitate recognition because the whole process, despite the bouts of frustration, had less friction overall. Correcting the Newton while you’re writing on it with the stylus isn’t that much different than correcting yourself when you’re writing with a pen on paper and you mis-write or misspell a word. 

Both with the Newton handwriting recognition and the Graffiti system in Palm OS, there’s a bit of training involved. With Graffiti, being a simpler method, you simply learn how to write the shorthand for each letter, number, symbol, and you’re reasonably certain that the Palm device will understand you. After minimal training, I can write on my IBM WorkPad making virtually no errors. With the Newton, things are more complicated, and over time I’ve learnt a few tricks in how I trace the letters so as to significantly reduce recognition errors. Today, 98% of whatever I write (in English) on my Newton MessagePad 2100 is correctly recognised. The fuzziness, the little unpredictability of this pen-based interface, is tolerable. At least it is for me. The advantage is that you reach a point where you’re writing on a Newton device at a speedy pace and in a natural way, and what you write is transcribed and digitised quickly enough.

But with Siri it’s different. Siri’s fuzziness, as an interface, is unacceptable. Siri’s raison d’être is assisting, is being helpful. And indeed, Siri is the kind of interface where, when everything works, there’s a complete lack of friction. But when it does not work, the amount of friction involved rapidly increases: you have to repeat or rephrase the whole request (sometimes more than once), or take the device and correct the written transcription. Both actions are tedious — and defeat the purpose. It’s like having a flesh-and-bone assistant with hearing problems. Furthermore, whatever you do to correct Siri, you’re never quite sure whether your correcting action will have an impact on similar interactions in the future (it doesn’t seem to have one, from my experience). Then, there’s always what I usually consider the crux of the matter when interacting with Siri: the moment my voice request is misunderstood, it’s typically faster for me to carry out the action myself via the device’s Multi-touch interface, rather than repeat or rephrase the request and hope for the best.

I don’t know the details of how Siri works behind the scenes. What would be great, in my opinion, is some kind of initial training, just like with handwriting recognition. In iOS 9, there’s a modicum of training when setting up ‘Hey Siri’. I think it would be interesting to develop a more extended training stage where, for example, you get to repeat certain phrases containing key phonemes, or the most common requests, so that Siri can better ‘understand’ how you talk by associating the sample words and phrases with the speech feedback you provide.

The question I keep returning to when thinking about the current state of Siri, however, is this: Is it worth all the effort on the user’s part? Nick writes:

One of the biggest challenges that the software must overcome in order to become better — where by better I mean can be used with confidence that they will not confuse “two” and “too” in a dictated text message — is that we need to keep using them despite their immaturity. And that’s a big request when they do, indeed, keep confusing “two” and “too”. The amount of times that Siri has butchered everything from text messages to reminders to even the simplest of web searches has noticeably eroded my trust in it.

Siri’s scope is still rather limited. What is the reward for my continued use of this technology despite its immaturity? That sometime in the future it’ll be able to properly write a text message or a reminder? Time is too precious a resource for me to keep trying to have Siri understand simple requests. Not only does the friction in interacting with this particular fuzzy interface have to disappear, but the scope, applications and usefulness of Siri must expand as well — it has to offer enough flexibility and reliability to engage the user. It has to offer more, to provide an advantage over performing the same tasks manually. Otherwise, I think it’s difficult to expect users to invest time and energy in something that still feels non-essential.

Some notable paid iOS podcast apps

October 17, 2015
by Riccardo Mori
Software

We should support developers who work hard to create great iOS apps, and every now and then we should try to avoid encouraging the race to the bottom in app pricing by taking into consideration paid apps instead of free alternatives.

I’ve quickly assembled a list of a few podcast apps that are considered the best in their category. The apps I chose to include are recommended by reviews and user comments you can easily find on the Web. This list is just a starting point and certainly doesn’t pretend to be exhaustive. It’s meant to be used as a quick overview for those who aren’t satisfied by the built-in iOS Podcasts app and want to look for good-quality alternatives that provide more features and flexibility. The ‘Features worth mentioning’ bit is simply a selected subset of those features I consider somewhat unique to the app in question, but bear in mind that there’s a lot of feature overlapping among these apps anyway. The ‘Features worth mentioning’ are taken directly from the App Store description.

If you think I’ve made some glaring omission, feel free to contact me and let me know. (Remember though, it has to be a paid app.)

Downcast

Website • App Store link • Mac App Store link

iOS app (universal) is $2.99. It also offers an Apple Watch App.

Features worth mentioning:

  • Browse and download older podcast episodes
  • Settings for auto-download and episode retention
  • Import and export podcast feeds via OPML
  • Import supported audio/video media files
  • Create and edit “smart” playlists
  • iCloud Syncing with other iOS devices or Macs (Requires Downcast for Mac)
    • Podcast subscriptions, Playlists, Settings, Episode information
  • Playback control from external devices
    • Bluetooth devices, Headphone remote controls, Devices connected via Lightning/dock connector
  • Google Cast™ Ready

Requires iOS 7.1 or later

Downcast for OS X is $7.99, and requires OS X 10.10 or later and a 64-bit processor.

Pocket Casts

Website • App Store link • Web Player

Available for iPhone & iPad, Android, Windows Phone, and also has a Web player.

iOS app (universal) is $3.99

Features worth mentioning:

  • Cross Platform Syncing: Sync your subscriptions, playback and filters between iOS and other mobile devices as well as Pocket Casts Web.
  • Storage: Set how many episodes of a podcast you want to keep. We’ll clean up the rest. News mode added for the contemporaries among us.
  • Filters: Want a list of every unplayed episode? Right here. How about sorting your episodes by custom categories? Done.
  • AirPlay & Chromecast: Cast your episodes straight to your TV with a single tap.

Requires iOS 8.0 or later.

On the website you’ll find direct links to Pocket Casts for Android and Windows Phone.

iCatcher

Website • App Store link

iOS app (universal) is $2.99. It also offers an Apple Watch App.

Features worth mentioning: the staggering amount of features and customisation options the app offers is a feature in itself. Seriously, read the full App Store description.

Requires iOS 6 or later. (Nice if you want to use an old device, like an iPhone 3GS, as podcast player.)

Castro

Website • App Store link

iOS app is $3.99 [Update, November 2015: Now the app is free with patronage options.]

Features worth mentioning:

  • Sleep timer for listening in bed. Still awake when the episode pauses? Just tap play again on the lock screen or headphone remote to extend the sleep timer.
  • Intelligent storage management — you set the size limit and Castro will delete old episodes as necessary to keep within it.
  • Supports streaming and offline playback.
  • Ability to play episodes without subscribing to the podcast.

Requires iOS 7.1 or later.

Pod Wrangler

Website • App Store Link

Technically, the iOS app is free, but offers a $1.99 In-app purchase. It also offers an Apple Watch App. 

From the App Store description: Feed Wrangler subscribers get automatic access to the full feature-set of Pod Wrangler. The app comes standard with ability to subscribe to up to 5 shows. A simple in-app purchase unlocks unlimited subscriptions, removes ads and enables push notifications.

Requires iOS 8.0 or later.

RSSRadio Premium

Website • App Store link

iOS app (universal) is $3.99. It also offers an Apple Watch App.

Features worth mentioning: 

  • Silence removal for downloaded audio podcasts, saves hours per week for the average listener
  • Clearer audio with equaliser, compressor / limiter and volume boosting DSP effects (on video, streaming and downloads)
  • Keep multiple devices in Sync with iCloud or Dropbox
  • Fully supports password protected podcasts, including 1Password support

Requires iOS 7.1 or later.

PodCruncher

Website • App Store link

iOS app is $2.99.

Features worth mentioning:

  • Continuous playback, edit Up Next on the fly
  • Gestures for play/stop, fwd/back, next/previous
  • Adjustable skip intervals for fwd/back buttons
  • Control remotely while driving or exercising
  • AirPlay support, Bluetooth audio and controls

Requires iOS 7.0 or later.

Cheap options at a high price

October 15, 2015
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

Just a few days ago, I was musing about which path to follow for my next (Apple) hardware upgrade:

All things taken into account, the rational decision is to consider two Macs as possible candidates:

  • The (hopefully forthcoming) smaller iMac with retina display.
  • The 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro, the mid-tier model with 256 GB flash storage ($1499/€1649).

A 21.5‑inch iMac with retina display wouldn’t be a bad desktop choice. I could attach to it the current 23-inch external monitor I use with the MacBook Pro. It wouldn’t have the same resolution and density of the iMac’s screen, of course, but I could use it as a secondary screen for applications and information I only need to glance at every now and then, or for palettes and toolbars when using graphics applications. I expect the price to be slightly higher than the current non-retina 21.5 iMac, so maybe something around $1400/€1600 — which would be in the same league as the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro above.

Now the 21.5‑inch 4K retina iMac has shipped (all the iMac line has been refreshed, by the way), and apart from the obviously gorgeous retina display, there are aspects of this new iMac I find underwhelming. Mostly two, and it’s difficult to talk about them sequentially, for they are rather interconnected from my point of view. The best summary is perhaps the title I chose for this article: Cheap options at a high price.

I will primarily focus on the base model of the retina 21.5‑inch iMac. For $1,499, you get:

  • CPU: 3.1GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 (Turbo Boost up to 3.6GHz)
  • RAM: 8 GB
  • Storage: 1 TB 5400rpm hard drive

You can read the rest of the technical specifications on Apple’s site. Let’s assume I’m interested in this Mac as a possible candidate for upgrading my current workstation, a mid-2009 15-inch MacBook Pro. The CPU, despite not being the latest Intel generation of processors, is definitely enough for my somewhat modest needs, and future-proof enough that such an iMac should last me several years. The amount of RAM is adequate, but I’d certainly take the option to upgrade it to 16 GB sooner rather than later. A quick check on the Web, and thanks to iMore I learn that Unfortunately, you can’t change that post-purchase, so make sure you configure your maximum RAM during purchase.

Bummer. No, wait. The true bummer is that 5400rpm hard drive. Seriously, in late 2015, you introduce a new computer with an internal component that is essentially the same technology you could have in a PowerBook G4 more than ten years ago (to my knowledge, the DVI Titanium PowerBook G4, introduced in April 2002, was the first with the option for a 5400rpm hard drive — of a much smaller capacity, sure, but a 5400rpm hard drive nonetheless.)

That’s sufficiently bothersome as it is, but what makes it particularly annoying is the fact that, outside the U.S., the same base model of the new 21.5‑inch retina iMac is much more expensive. Here’s the pricing in some European countries, with the dollar equivalent in parentheses (exchange rates updated October 13):

  • Ireland, Portugal: €1,749 ($1,991)
  • Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium: €1,729 ($1,968)
  • France, Germany: €1,699 ($1,935)
  • United Kingdom: £1,199 ($1,823)
  • Sweden: 16,495 SEK ($2,025)
  • Czech Republic: 46,990 CZK ($1,972)
  • Denmark: 12,999 DKK ($1,983)

I know there are tax-related reasons behind the different pricing, but the end result is that the same exact machine acquires a price that makes it jump to a higher tier and gives it a value that feels quite different than a $1,499 machine, if you know what I mean. If you look at the list above, you’ll see that in Europe, a base model 21.5‑inch 4K iMac essentially ends up costing much like the mid-level 27-inch 5K iMac ($1,999). Taxes or not, I think it’s rather unfair. And frankly, a base model 21.5‑inch 4K iMac at that price, with an outdated 5400rpm hard drive as default option, stings even more — it almost feel disrespectful towards the customer.

And what about that 1 TB Fusion Drive option? Certainly better than a lousy hard drive, but it turns out it’s another ‘cheap trick.’ From the Ars Technica review:

The good news is that entry-level 1TB Fusion Drives are now a $100 add-on, though that comes with caveats. 1TB Fusion Drives now pair just 24GB of flash storage with a 1TB hard drive, not 128GB as in previous generations. This is going to be enough to speed up boot times as well as launch times for built-in apps and some frequently-loaded apps and files, though you may notice the system hitting the hard drive more often than it would with a 128GB SSD.

The next step in this awful downward spiral of price differences, has been simulating a purchase of the base model 21.5‑inch retina iMac by adding the options I would prefer so as to have a speedier, more future-proof Mac. Starting at a base price of €1,729 and simply choosing:

  • 16 GB of RAM (+ €240)
  • 256 GB of Flash storage (+ €240)

The result is €2,209, which is slightly more than $2,500. Doing the same in the U.S. online Apple Store, I’d spend $1,899. The most striking difference in the customisation options during purchase, price-wise, is the 512 GB Flash storage: $300 versus €600. (As Peter Emery suggested on App.net, at this point it’s cheaper to buy an external Thunderbolt SSD and run the iMac from there.)

Such price differences are simply unjustifiable. Offering a plain old 5400rpm hard drive in such a Mac is inexcusable. You’re just driving customers towards pricier choices rather blatantly. My friend Fabrizio Rinaldi said on Twitter that it’s the equivalent of the 16 GB iPhone option. I’m inclined to think it’s even worse than that. It’s like not equipping the older iPhone 6 Plus with enough RAM. 

Putting a hard drive in an otherwise fast Mac is like driving around in a sports car with the handbrake on. It’s a performance dampener. My MacBook Pro, which has a 5400rpm hard drive, takes about four minutes to boot up. Current MacBook Pros with SSD drives or Flash storage, boot up in 30 seconds or less. That’s a very telling, real-world benchmark. 

Quoting again Andrew Cunningham from Ars Technica:

The 2010 MacBook Air made SSDs the default storage option five (!) years ago, but all of the iMacs still ship with 5400RPM rotating hard drives by default. I’ve been using the base model iMac as my primary desktop for a few days now. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve gotten used to my 2012 iMac’s Fusion Drive over the last three years or if El Capitan is just better optimized for SSDs than HDDs, but it. Is. Excruciating.

Buying a Fusion Drive or SSD for a new iMac in 2015 should not be considered an optional upgrade, especially since it’s so difficult to add your own after the fact. Not everyone will notice the move from a dual-core to quad-core CPU. Not everyone will notice the move from 8GB to 16GB of RAM. But everyone, no matter how they use their computer, will benefit from having some solid-state storage in their computers.

I’ll reiterate: in a ‘base model’ iMac that costs €1,729 without any add-on, I’d expect at least the low-price 1 TB Fusion Drive option as the default, not old hard drive technology.