Rise: My Mini-Review of an Unintentionally-Silent Alarm Clock

Rise is a new app for iOS that has a really nice design sense. This thing is gorgeous. The gesture controls are well thought out and generally it works well. That said, it does have some shortcomings concerning what you really need it for -- waking you up.

I was really excited when I picked the app up - so excited I grabbed it on release day. I've always wanted to have something wake me up besides my blaring iPhone alarm and having the potential of a replacement, especially one that looked so good, was an inviting proposition. That said, I've had little to complain about regarding the built-in iPhone alarm. It has been rock solid for me since I started using it with my iPhone 1. I've never gotten up late for work due to an alarm SNAFU which is a pretty decent track record.

Rise allows for setting up repeating alarms, progressive alarms, pleasant sound effects and alarm songs/patterns and, going through the settings, I had high hopes that it would do what I needed it to do.

Luckily, I was able to press it into service during my vacation so if I woke up late it wasn't going to be the end of the world. How did it go?

Three of the five mornings I used it, the app wasn't able to rouse me from sleep. The most prevalent problem was that there was no noise at all. In fact, I am doubtful that it caused my phone to vibrate either. Curiously, I confirmed that the app was set to "vibrate" but, if it was vibrating, it was so quiet or brief that it didn't get the job done. As a further insult, when I eventually woke up, I was met with several screens of notifications telling me it was time to wake up. Thanks, Rise...

Now, it's certainly feasible that I was doing something wrong. But even if I was, alarms need to be a bulletproof, battle-tested thing and if I should have been doing something differently, then it wasn't apparent. Remembering to put an app in the foreground and confirm everything before sleeping is something I haven't had to deal with since... well since forever, so having to do it now isn't something I want to deal with. The risk of a mess up is just too great at this point.

I realize that there are iOS development restrictions that prevent things like this from working as well as the actual iOS alarms. The hooks for the alarms have very deep integration into the operating system. That's a disappointment because Rise has a lot going for it visually. Given the downsides, I'd avoid it for now.

Tech Note: The Cosmonaut Stylus

There have been quite a few reviews of styluses (stylii?) over the last few weeks.

Until the release of 53's Paper, I hadn't devoted more than fifteen seconds to the thought of a stylus for my iPad. Before that app, I would have rather wrestled a badger than go back to hauling a stylus around. I was scarred from using a Palm Treo for many years, and then a Windows phone; both of those had very stylus-centric interfaces. Adding to my antipathy was the fact that my kids are always arguing over a lost Nintendo DS stylus.

Despite my hatred of them, a stylus was inescapable in those dark days but thankfully, in 2007, Steve Jobs saved me from the indignity of poking electronics with a stick when he introduced the iPhone touch interface. I haven't looked back at those times, except for the occasional mocking of Samsung Galaxy Note users, with their ridiculous, stylus-equipped, huge-ass phones.

But then Paper showed up on my iPad and a quiet voice in the back of my head whispered, "This might be better with a stylus." Uh oh.

It took a few weeks of convincing myself but I finally decided to take the plunge and ordered the Cosmonaut from Studio Neat.

I wish I had waited a few more days until the Verge stylus overview came out because I might have stuck with my original choice of the Bamboo. The finer control offered by the Bamboo would be welcome at times.

That said, the Cosmonaut is sturdy and has a nice, tactile heaviness to it. It feels substantial and weighty. At first I felt like I had to press too hard on the iPad with it to get a mark to appear but that feeling passed after a few minutes of serious scribbling.

As it stands now, I've gotten thoroughly used to the Cosmonaut and really like it for drawing and diagramming, especially in Paper. To be honest, I haven't tried it with any other apps because I much prefer typing for most tasks. There are many reasons for this, not the least of which is my nearly-illegible handwriting (and if it's not plain text you can't search it, or cut and paste it into an email, or edit it in nvALT, etc. etc.).

So, that said, the Cosmonaut is a great drawing implement for the iPad. If you're looking for a stylus that's not fiddly, easily lost or broken, this is the one to buy.

(yes, that is a picture I drew of our corgi, Orbit, in Paper using a Cosmonaut)

Tech Note: Twitterific

Twitterific Review

Way back when Twitter started, the first Mac client I downloaded was Twitterific. It had an innovative and rich interface even back then but unfortunately it crashed a lot. Being fairly promiscuous about my app use, I kept shopping around.

As time went on, Tweetie took up the mantle of being my favorite Twitter client. Tweetie changed its name to simply become the default Twitter client but its functionality remained in tact and it sufficed for a while.

Tweetbot was released and has been my slice of Twitter heaven since then, preferring to almost all of my Twittering on the iPhone. As I've written many times, I adore the interface and it has proven reliable through thick and thin. I think Tapbots is a great development house and I'm happy to support them.

Spending as much time as I do on my MacBook Air, I started looking for clients to use on the desktop again. The Twitter client didn't really keep pace with the functionality I had grown accustomed to with Tweetbot so eventually I settled on Osfoora as my Mac Twitter client.

Osfoora is a stellar app and had a ton of features I like but it is missing some things like gap detection and it's a little buggy with Tweetmarker (what isn't?). I ended up using it for a while until I saw a toot by Craig Hockenberry (Twitterific's developer) in my stream and thought, randomly, "Hey, I should give Twitterific a try again."

I didn't regret it.

The app has made many improvements since the early days. The interface has had numerous refinements and tweaks and the functionality exceeds that of most Twitter clients. Best of all, its extremely stable.

While I'm not a huge fan of the "one window per account" motif, preferring tabs or a sidebar approach like Tweetbot for iPad, you can arrange the multiple account windows and they'll stay put, which actually works quite well. Between selecting the dock item, ⌘-~ or using Expose, you can quickly navigate between the windows. I'm starting to prefer it. At the very least, I am getting used to it.

Tweetmarker seems to behave well with Twitterific and going back and forth between Tweetbot on the iPhone and Twitterific on the Mac results in fairly decent synchronization (which might be the best we can hope for right now).

Graphically, Twitterific is sleek and attractive. Each of the elements, from the icons on the top of each account page, to the details of how each toot is arranged within the rectangular frame. There's enough "padding" so keep things from getting crowded but enough density to avoid excessive scrolling.

I've been using Twitterific for a few days now and it has fit into my workflow. Given my flightiness with Twitter clients, I assume I will go back and see how updates are improving Osfoora now and then, but for now I can see using Twitterific as my weapon of choice.

Notes on the New iPad

So far the new iPad has been pretty amazing.

I'm not going to go into the same level of technical details and statistics about the number of pixels that make up its admittedly-incredible screen.

Instead I want to talk about two things about the new iPad that make it a different experience from the iPads that came before it and touch on some of the disappointments I've encountered in my time with the product.

Mostly About Consumption

Since it was released in 2010, I have used the iPad, in general, to read. It has replaced my Kindle, which now sits collecting dust on the shelf unless someone (who isn't me) decides they want to read a book I bought on Amazon and charges it up.

The addition of "night time" modes on Instapaper, the Kindle app and the much-improved iBooks app make reading at night in bed, in the dark, not only feasible but enjoyable. Since that is how I do much of my reading, the device fills the niche perfectly.

In an effort to make my reading time with the iPad even more book-like, and also because I expected my old iPad case to no longer fit, I ordered a DODOcase a few weeks before the new iPad launched.

It arrived a few days ago and so far, I'm very happy with it. The craftsmanship of the thing is really nice. It feels elegant without being unwieldy. The color is great -- a soothing gray. The bamboo frame which holds the iPad into the case is cut out in all of the right places, allowing easy access to all of the buttons and ports. Highly recommended.

The screen definitely makes a difference with most text (notably absent in that bucket would be the New Yorker which, frankly, looks like shit). The biggest impacts have been felt in Instapaper (with the new fonts and no visible pixels, it really is great), Kindle and iBooks, but for other apps like Calvetica with its high-density of information, Comic Zeal with its nice interface and excellent comic book presentation, Byword, Tweetbot and OmniFocus, the iPad becomes a gorgeous pane of clarity and light. It is hard to describe. You just have to see it in person to believe it.

The battery life has been nothing short of a miracle. Since I use the iPad on WiFi most of the time, the battery seems to take barely any hit in normal use. In fact there are times when I'll spend some time reading and, as I close the case to turn off the device (yes the DODOcase does this admirably well), I note that the battery has barely dropped.

For instance, I've been using the device on and off since yesterday morning both at work and at home and the battery is at 87%. The iPad 2 was no battery slouch, but this seems like it is a far stretch better just from my non-scientific observations.

The Dark Side

I have very few complaints about the device itself.

One minor thing is that it takes a lot longer to charge the new iPad. It is to be expected, given the huge increase in battery size. Generally, I try to stay on top of it because if the battery gets low, you're facing some serious charging time to get it back to full capacity.

The "heat issue" (air quotes) that many have reported are not an issue at all. I have my iPad in a gorgeous DODOcase and I never feel any temperature difference, no matter where I touch my device. Hardly the "penis iron" that the many hyperbolic idiots have "reported" (I will link the offending article here but be forewarned that it may be the worst piece of technology writing I've ever had the displeasure to cast my eyes on).

Another "con" is that there is no LTE where I live, in rural Southeast Pennsylvania. I have had the new iPad since its launch and have never had an LTE symbol show up. Realize that I bought the LTE for the potential, knowing that most of the time I would be using this tool using WiFi.

~~~

Overall, the combination of the new iPad and the DODOcase have me using my iPad a lot more than I used to. I wish I had a better way to make use of it in meetings since I don't really use it to take notes anymore (that job has been taken over by OmniOutliner on my Macbook Air). Still, sometimes it'd be nice.

Yes, yes, I know there is a version of OmniOutliner for iPad but I have some issues with it which will be the subject of my next post, coming soon.

Echo: Keyboard Maestro

Not to be another echo in the echo chamber or anything, but this [Keyboard Maestro](http://www.keyboardmaestro.com/main/) thing really works. If you're thinking about buying it, taking advantage of [Mac Power Users'](http://5by5.tv/mpu/64) discount code ("MPU") will save you 20% on a tool that does what I had hoped Automator would do (but doesn't).

I created a few fairly complicated macros to do things that have been nagging me for months

On a more important note, it has the worst icon I've ever had to stare at all day. I actually [replaced it](http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2493?viewlocale=en_US) because I hated it so much. Sad but true.