Writing

Growing up, I lived about a block from my elementary school, and by 2nd grade, I was walking to and from school on my own each day. To get to Turner Elementary, I had to cross National St., which isn't a particularly busy road, but had enough traffic that the school hired a crossing guard. The crossing guard that year was Mr. Kenneth Beardsley, a retired letter carrier for the US Postal Service. He was a truly remarkable man and very friendly to all the kids, keeping them safe each day. I enjoyed talking to Mr. Beardsley and would hang around during his shift, chatting with him in between letting kids cross the road. At one point, he jokingly told me I was a Jr. Crossing Guard, and that made my world.

Apple wish lists are nothing new. Over the years, Apple has released better software on a pretty consistent schedule. Sometimes those releases have things we expect. Other times they surprise even fanboys like me. Most Apple wish lists cover big-ticket items. This is not that list. This wish list is a bunch of little things that I encounter in my day-to-day use of Apple products. If I’m lucky, an Apple developer will spot my list and add some of them to the next macOS and iOS release. Most likely not, but a guy can hope! Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) is just around the corner, so I figured that now was as a good time as any to share this list.

More than a few people have written about being a software architect. It's a surprisingly diverse role in the industry. The title rarely means the same thing from one company to the next. The stereotype is someone who designs stuff and then hurls it over the fence to engineers, who do the actual work of building it. If that's the only kind of software architect you've met, you've been short-changed.

I have a first world problem. Actually, I have many. One of them is moving HDMI cables around from device to device. At any given moment on my office desk I have a desktop, two laptops and an Xbox. But I only have one monitor. This means that switching between devices can be awkward, as I unplug an HDMI cable from one and move it to the other. Admittedly this isn’t so bad with the laptops because of my USB-C hub. The desktop and Xbox are a pain, in part because their plugs are on the back and getting to them is awkward. The Kinivio HDMI Switch is the answer to my problem.

I admit late to the party on this one, but PDFScanner is a must-have for any macOS user who scans documents. PDFScanner isn’t a new app, but it’s new to me. Over the years I’ve tried the native software that comes with my HP Scanner with much disappointment. I default back to using macOS Preview’s Import functionality. Most of the time it works. When it doesn’t, it’s spectacular though. Preview does little to help compress PDFs. This might not be a problem if you have a lot of storage but it is not ideal. PDFScanner is a solution to all of these problems.