Jason Tate
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Jason Tate
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OmniFocus Adds Global Search

Apps
Jason Tate

OmniGroup have released OmniFocus 2.8 for Mac:

Happy New Year! After a quiet couple of weeks, we are back in the office today and releasing OmniFocus 2.8 for Mac, which includes one of our most requested features: Global Search.

Great new addition to the most important app I use.

HandBreak Leaves Beta After 13 Years

Jason Tate

HandBreak, one of the best video transcoders out there, has finally left beta and hit version 1.0 … after 13 years.

After more than 13 years of development, the HandBrake Team is delighted to present HandBrake 1.0.0. Thank you to all of our many contributors over the years for making HandBrake what it is today.

Best of 2016 & Rogue One (Encore Episode 139)

Encore 139
Jason Tate

This week’s super sized episode of Encore features a lengthy discussion about our favorite albums of 2016. We go through our top 10 and break down why those albums were important to us this year. The second half of the episode is all about Rogue One: A Star Wars Story — it is filled with spoilers so you can pause if you haven’t seen it yet and come back to it later. We wanted to give you a jam packed episode for the last two weeks of the year.

Hope you enjoy and have a great holiday!

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A Computer for Everything: One Year of iPad Pro

Jason Tate

Federico Viticci, over at MacStories, has a killer article about using the iPad Pro for a year and how it’s become his favorite computer of all time:

Much of the iPad’s strength lies in iOS and its app ecosystem. If Apple were to stop making iPads, I’d still prefer to work on a device that runs iOS rather than macOS. iOS is where app innovation happens on a regular basis with developers one-upping each other in terms of what software can achieve; I also prefer the structure and interactions of iOS itself. The iPad Pro is the purest representation of iOS: it’s a computer that can transform into anything you need it to be.

And:

There’s an important difference between the old iOS automation kin and the modern wonders of Workflow. Four years ago, URL schemes were the only way to turn an iPad into a passable work device for advanced tasks. Automation was an escape hatch from Apple’s limitations and the immaturity of iOS. Today, iOS is a stronger, more capable platform that, for many, is superior to macOS. There’s still work to be done, but, for the most part, iOS automation today is an optional enhancement – a way to speed up tasks and make them more accessible. In four years, and largely because of iOS 8 and iOS 9, iOS automation has evolved from a workaround into a creative optimization.

The entire thing is full of great insights and it got me playing around with some new automation techniques on iOS. I realized I haven’t been using Workflow and Launch Center Pro to their full capacity.

Review: Acceptance – Colliding by Design

Acceptance - Colliding by Design
Jason Tate

This first impression was originally posted as a live blog for supporters in our forums on December 19th, 2016. First impressions are meant to be quick, fun, initial impressions on an album or release as I listen to it for the first time. It’s a running commentary written while listening to an album — not a review. More like a diary of thoughts. This post has been lightly edited for structure and flow.

This is an album I really never thought we would be getting. A new Acceptance album basically a decade after the last one. I’ve spent quite a while listening to this one now, maybe 6 or 8 full listens (and I’ve had some of the songs unfinished for quite a while and had played them many, many times), so I’ll try and offer a little of that context with the first listen as well. I really do think that this album is best listened to three or four times before having too many thoughts on it. I think this for a few reasons:

  1. I think that following up a loved album 10 years later is going to be impossible. Expectations on the band and what the listener thinks the music should be or sound like take some time to shake off and really listen to what the album itself is.
  2. It’s a different vibe of an album as a whole. It’s … slower? more melodic … more Coldplay, Young the Giant, Tears for Fears, Mutemath at times, some early JEW sort of stuff going on. It’s a very layered album that is thick, lush, and has a sound that sounds, to me, like the band had made three albums during the last 10 years and this is the progression that comes out at the end. Basically, there’s a big leap from what Phantoms was to this. It’s not Phantoms part 2.
  3. The songs find their own footing with more listens. They separate themselves and you can appreciate the small details and what the band was going for and how they really did put a lot of thought and intentionality into this album.
  4. I liked a lot of these songs on first listen, loved a couple, but it really did take me listening to the album as a whole multiple times for me to really sink into this release and discover how much I really do love it.

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