After listening to Cortex #101: Productivity 101, I’ve finally decided to give a real task manager an honest try. Thanks to the helpful folks on the Relay FM Members Discord, I’ve settled on Todoist as the task manager that best suits my needs. My previous system involved a mix of calendar events, Due reminders (an app I’ve praised highly before), and hand-written task lists in various GoodNotes documents spanning all areas of my life. I very frequently jot down to-dos during meetings and brainstorming sessions in GoodNotes, but this method has the major flaw of my quickly-scribbled tasks disappearing in GoodNotes and never actually being completed. It’s this bit of my legacy system that need some integration with the new system centered around Todoist.
Step 1: A Template for Hand-Written To-Dos
The first step in connecting my GoodNotes task lists with Todoist is creating a standardized format for when I do jot down to-dos in a given GoodNotes document. Luckily, GoodNotes has excellent support for custom notebook templates, so I set out to modify the standard GoodNotes line-ruled notebook template for my purposes. This was simple enough — export a blank GoodNotes page to PDF, and use Graphic (or any other vector graphic app) to add an area to the document specifically to accept hand-written to-dos in a consistent format. I opted for a small bubble in the bottom left with enough space for five tasks at any given time. I intentionally chose to match the font and bullet colors with the the standard GoodNotes ruled lines, so that when I didn’t need to add any tasks that area would not be too distracting.
I also added a subtle “Date” line to my usual GoodNotes template, since I was going through all this effort anyway.
The small degree of structure added by five bulleted lines in a roundrect enclosure is an important ingredient in the success of this system (more on that in a moment) — that said, your own custom GoodNotes template may work just as well (if not better) for your specific needs.
Step 2: Tying GoodNotes and Todoist Together with Shortcuts
Perhaps a lesser-known feature of GoodNotes is its built-in ability to convert handwriting into text for saving or sharing to other apps, presumably using the same Vision framework that powers its document OCR. Using the lasso tool to select a handful of to-do items in the template we just made gives us the option to “Convert” those items into text. It ends up looking something like this:
Using the Lasso Tool to select hand-written tasks allows you to convert it to text and share it with another app...like Shortcuts.
Importantly, the generated text also maintains the separate lines we enforced with our five-bullet custom GoodNotes template — which means parsing this snippet of text with Shortcuts is a trivially easy task. All we need to get this list of tasks from GoodNotes to Todoist is a Shortcut with five actions:
Five simple actions takes my handwritten task list and sends each individual item to my Todoist Inbox.
Sharing the converted text from GoodNotes to this shortcut takes each line of text, converts it to Title Case, and add it as an individual task to my Todoist Inbox. With this simple shortcut, I can quickly convert all of my hand-written tasks from a meeting into actionable tasks in Todoist that are much harder to forget about. All I have to do is regularly triage my Todoist Inbox by adding due dates and reminders as needed to these imported tasks and sorting them into their appropriate projects. That said, the smallest of tweaks to the shortcut above lets you triage each item right away — simply change each of the parameters in the “Add Todoist Item” action to “Ask When Run”:
If you’d rather triage your tasks right when adding them to Todoist, only a small modification is needed.
One Less Point of Friction
As I experiment with Todoist and task management in general, it’s been convenient to maintain “backwards compatibility” with some of my harder-to-shake habits — like writing down things I need to do in my meeting notes document on the fly. The ability to take these quick to-dos and funnel them directly into my task management system helps keep important items from falling into the cracks, and motivates me to rely more heavily on Todoist going forward.
Since the release of Siri Shortcuts in iOS 12, and even more-so since iOS 13 opened up Shortcuts parameters to third-party developers, “Shortcuts utility apps” — apps who by their nature rely entirely on Shortcuts integration to function — have exploded in both number and quality. Apps like Toolbox Pro and Pushcuts all build on what Shortcuts has to offer with otherwise-unavailable features or useful add-ons to the functionality of the Shortcuts app. Joining their ranks today is the super-handy data visualization app Charty, from developer Rodrigo Araujo
Charting, of Course
Charty is built entirely around the goal of plotting data generated via Siri Shortcuts so you can more easily visualize your habits, health data, and other graphically-oriented information. Through a pair of crucial Shortcuts actions — Create Chart and Add Series to Chart — you can create a blank canvas to plot data generated by a series of Shortcuts action as a line graph, scatter graph, bar graph, pie chart, or donut chart. The easiest example to provide is a simple Shortcut that pulls in your heart rate data for the last month and plots it on a scatter plot.
Disregard all of those days where I neglected to wear my Apple Watch.
After plotting all of the points, you can fine-tune the settings of your chart in the Charty app itself (or automate this process too with advanced actions like Style Axis and Style Line Series). Custom minimum and maximum values for both the X- and Y-axes, the option to add a secondary Y-axis for multi-series graphs, customizable X-Axis labels when needed, as well as the ability to create stacked bar charts are all available through Charty and the power of Shortcuts. Charty also allows you to plot data imported directly from a .csv file — expanding its capabilities beyond data strictly generated by or connected to Shortcuts. Simply point your Shortcut at a .csv file and tell Charty which column headers you want plotted and you’re off to the races. I’m looking forward to see how Rodrigo continues to expand Charty’s functionality — as a researcher, I’m hoping to see boxplots, trendlines with regression equations, logarithmic corrections, and other more advanced plotting methods added in future releases.
There are lots of Shortcuts actions and routines that generate data and could easily benefit from a simple bar graph or pie chart to provide useful insights more quickly and effectively. One example that comes to mind is graphing time-tracking data from Toggl once every week, let’s say, to see what tasks or projects you’ve been the most busy with — all without having to open the unpleasant Toggl app or the clunky web client from your iOS device. Charty is the perfect companion for those who accumulate lots of meta-data about their lives and want to frequently revisit and reassess the areas they are seeking to improve — whether that be calories burned, books read, or tasks completed, Charty plugs right into your existing Shortcuts routines and allows you to quickly turn those datasets into easily-digestible graphics. The option to create default chart format settings and custom “Export Profiles” of chart size, font size, and background color both help to add consistency in how your charts are formatted before saving them for yourself or sharing with the world.
The ability to create custom export profiles is a great way to standardize how your charts look when ready to share.
Charty also comes pre-equipped with a library of Shortcuts that serve as idea-fodder for what things you can graph as well as mini-tutorials on how to create complex Shortcuts that integrates even Charty’s most advanced actions. And, naturally, two dozen or so custom app icons and a wide variety of chart themes are pre-installed for the colorfully-oriented among us.
Charty’s custom icons, graph theme options, and extensive collection of example Shortcuts each add a nice touch.
Useful, Given a Usecase
The only major complaint I’ve had while beta-testing Charty is the sense that it just isn’t an app that I personally have a use for. This doesn’t make Charty a bad app — quite the opposite is true, in fact. Charty is an excellent app in its very niche sliver of the market. The nature of what I do as a PhD student might make you think that I am making charts and graphs all the time, but in reality the data analysis work I often need to do is well beyond what Charty (or any other iOS app I know of) can provide. Unfortunately, this is an area where I still rely heavily on my Windows PC to accomplish the things that my iPad can’t. In addition, once you are comfortable with different tools — whether it’s Shortcuts, Excel, Numbers, etc — you’ll feel drawn to the ones that give you the highest return for the least effort. I am extremely comfortable with spreadsheet software like Excel, so there were many instances while using Charty where I said to myself “I know exactly how to do this in Excel in 1/10th the time.” This isn’t a criticism of Charty; it’s understanding my own needs, my own proficiencies, and Charty’s unique place in the market of graphing tools. Let me explain what I mean with, well, a chart:
Finding where you land on each of these lines will give you an idea of how useful Charty might be for you.
Charty is an app that is tailor-made for advanced Shortcuts users who very frequently want to graph the same set of data quickly with minimal fuss over the details — things like graphing how many steps you’ve taken or glasses of water you drank in the last week. Charty is also capable of graphing much more advanced datasets with its .csv import actions...but often times when generating those .csv documents you’re already in an application far more capable than Shortcuts and Charty when it comes to handling tables and graphs. If you’re like me and are very comfortable in applications like Numbers and Excel, Charty might feel like a lot of extra fiddling for the same end results.
Pushing The Limits That Should Not Exist
Ultimately, I think there are a lot of people who will be extremely happy to have Charty integrated into their Shortcuts routines and available to quickly and repeatedly graph data on their iOS devices — and I’m quite happy for them. The developer has made a very well-designed app and an excellent addition to the growing array of Shortcuts utilities pushing the limits of what Shortcuts can do. Although I myself may not be someone who will use Charty every day, I’m always happy to see new apps that keep the pressure on Apple to continue expanding Shortcuts’ functionality and third-party integrations. Despite my own lack of uses for Charty, I still highly recommend giving it a try for yourself — it solves a set of problems I do not have, but you just might! Charty is available on the app store today for free with a portion of the Shortcuts actions and features, and the full app experience can be had for a one-time payment of $2.99 for a limited time.
Last week, I posted my first impressions of the new Magic Keyboard for the 11” iPad Pro, as well as a quick demo on Twitter of just how precisely balanced the Magic Keyboard is. What I largely glossed over, however, are some of the finer details that in many ways help justify the name of “Magic” Keyboard. Let’s take a moment to appreciate (or perhaps invent) some of the subtle hardware design choices in this device, and while we’re at it jot down some measurements for posterity.
Fantastic Details and Where to Find Them
Much of the focus in any review of an iPad keyboard-case will inevatibly fall on the keyboard and the form factor. Less attention is paid to some of the minor details worthy of appreciation. To correct that, I’ve assembled below my brief list of “Fantastic Details of the Magic Keyboard That I Assume Were Intentional Design Choices”:
The USB-C passthrough port lies on the opposite side of the iPad Pro’s USB-C port. This is a super obvious choice, but still one that greatly improves user experience when trying to charge from a power supply on the left side of your device.
Flipping the iPad Pro/Magic Keyboard combo 180° results in a preposterously perfect drawing angle (if removing the iPad is too cumbersome for you). This definitely wasn’t intentional, but I love it nonetheless.
Pressing the volume buttons on the iPad doesn’t shake or move the device an inch — doing so with the iPad in a Smart Folio kickstand was a wobbly mess.
The Apple logo on the back of the Magic Keyboard is vertical while the iPad is in landscape orientation — which makes sense, since this keyboard is intended to only be used in landscape orientation.
These two flat protrusions on the barrel hinge that seemingly only exists to protect your iPad from being scratched by the hinge (or vice versa) if it’s somehow detached from the magnets while closed. (If someone comes up with a better idea, please let me know)
The barely-detectable ridge around the circumference of the keyboard deck that prevents the keycaps from smudging (or worse: scratching) the iPad’s screen.
I’m sure there are more small decisions and choices that I’ve overlooked that could easily be added to this list. Many of the items above may seem trivial, but ultimately I think that its the attention to detail in certain devices that end up setting them apart as some of the best in their class — and the Magic Keyboard is certainly the best iPad Pro keyboard on the market.
Angle Gauges, Dial Indicators, and Calipers, Oh My!
There are a lot of questions (and side-by-side comparisons) about the Magic Keyboard’s hinge angle — the most popular among them being “How far back does the hinge tilt?” Well, I grabbed a digital angle gauge from my wood shop (and some calipers and a dial indicator — more on that later) to answer that question. As it turns out, the 11” Magic Keyboard has a usable range of 77° to 127° of tilt angle. 77° is the angle of the initial hard-snapping point when opening the keyboard — technically lower angles are possible (at least with the 11” iPad Pro), but really anything lower than this point is untenable. And 127° is the maximum tilt angle of the 11” Magic Keyboard. I checked the maximum hinge angle of my wife’s 13” MacBook Air and it was 141° — meaning the Magic Keyboard is about 14° shy of the Mac laptop experience.
Turns out those magnets are good for other things too.
The keys on the Magic Keyboard, however, easily replicate the experience of typing on on a laptop — they are some of the most satisfying low-travel keys I’ve ever experienced. At my desktop I use a Ducky One 2 TLK mechanical keyboard with Cherry MX Brown swithces, so I am partial to a keyboard with a lot of travel and a pleasant tactile bump. Although the Magic Keyboard obviously comes nowhere near a full mechanical keyboard in either department,
somehow it feels more responsive and bouncy than any other keyboard I’ve used in its size class. I don’t have a 16” MacBook Pro to compare the “type-feel” with, but I have tried out it’s keyboard when walking by at Costco in the Before Times™️ — for some reason, the Magic Keyboard feels better to me than the seemingly-identical scissor switches in the 16” MacBook Pro. My theory is that the thin deck of the Magic Keyboard somehow gives more spring-back to the keys when you bottom them out while typing, whereas the 16” MacBook Pro has the full thickness of a laptop to potentially dampen any such springiness.
1mm of key travel seems to be the sweet-spot for Apple devices going forward.
In addition to bounce-back and springiness, key travel and key spacing both play a big role in the typing experience of any keyboard — so I borrowed a page out of Marco Arment’s playbook and measured the key travel and spacing on a few keyboards to compare with the Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro. (Full disclosure: I was unable to measure every device in the graph below — measurements marked with an asterisk were taken from Marco’s 16” MacBook Pro review, which is really worth a read).
The Magic Keyboard’s 1mm key travel is a continuation of Apple’s course-correction first seen in the 16” MacBook Pro.
I think Apple has probably found 1mm of key travel to be the Goldilocks Zone of maximum thinness and adequate key travel for a good typing experience. I expect most Apple keyboards will stick to ~1mm of key travel for the forseeable future.
Key spacing on the Magic Keyboard has been perfectly fine for me, even for someone accostomed to a spacious mechanical keyboard.
I’ve seen some folks on Twitter saying that the key spacing on the Magic Keyboard makes the keyboard too cramped — especially on the 11” iPad Pro. But based on my measurements the spacing itself is fairly comparable to the 16” MacBook Pro. I think the cramped feeling stems from the half-sized peripheral keys (including the dash key I use so overzealously), and the fact that the Smart Keyboard Folio has more key spacing than the Magic Keyboard (although, it paid for this with smaller keycaps). That said, it’s taken very little time to acclimate to the size constraints of the Magic Keyboard; though I do look forward to testing out the 12.9” Magic Keyboard when we’re able to go to stores again.
The Sum of More Than Its Parts
After a week and a half of using the Magic Keyboard, the experience has only grown more positive — the pleasing subtleties of the details above have added to the list of rationalizations for why this device might be worth $300...even though I still think it’s still a bit over-priced. That said, I’ve felt all of my usage habits with my iPad Pro shift over the last week and a half to fully-embrace the Magic Keyboard as part of my workflow. It’s really been wonderful to be able to type wherever I want to, with a keyboard that feels exactly how I want it to. My return window for the Magic Keyboard hasn’t closed yet, so nothing is set in stone...but I think I’ll end up keeping it after all. It fits my needs well, and the price will be easier to bear once I resell the other keyboards I’ve accumulated to get “real work” done on an iPad Pro.
Today I saw this post on r/iPad from /u/jdayellow — in it, they’ve plugged one end of a USB-C cable into the iPad and the other end into the Magic Keyboard’s USB-C passthrough port (thus: “unlimited power”). As it turns out, Apple considered the possibility users might use the two USB-C ports to create a universal connector ouroboros and included a warning on the Magic Keyboard’s support page:
This warning is very reassuring.
I’m not entirely sure what the consequences of doing this would be, considering the wattage output from the iPad Pro is substantially lower than most chargers that you might plug into the Magic Keyboard’s USB-C passthrough port. Anyway, finding this support page also turned up this .gif of the Magic Keyboard being opened (sped up with some Shortcuts magic):
At the end of March, Apple announced the Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro, and iPad fans the world over rejoiced at the prospect of a first-party solution to their years-long productivity problem. Those of us who use the iPad as our primary device (the mythical “laptop replacers”) have longed for the ideal keyboard-case that brings it as close to the laptop form factor as possible without abandoning what makes the iPad an iPad. I received my 11” Magic Keyboard on Wednesday, and have been using it for the last two days to send emails, edit work documents, conduct Zoom meetings, watch Netflix, and write this post. Even in that short time, it’s clear that the Magic Keyboard is Apple adeptly striking the delicate balance between portability and performance...at an unfortunately uncompromising price point of $299.
Priced by the Pound
The most noticeable trait of the Magic Keyboard is its heft. Even before opening the slim and unassuming UPS packaging, it felt like I had received a plate of lead in the mail. It’s an incredibly dense device, with much of the weight concentrated in the keyboard‘s base to offset the weight of the iPad in it’s floating cantilevered perch. In fact, the 11” Magic Keyboard weighs more than the iPad Pro it is designed to hold by ~130 grams. My wife and I tried to compare her 2013 13” MacBook Air to my 11” iPad Pro + Magic Keyboard by feel and had a very difficult time determining which felt heavier (turns out, the Air is heavier by ~270 grams). I’ve definitely struggled to get used to the substantial increase in weight from just the Smart Folio to the Magic Keyboard encasing my iPad — however, given my current lack of mobility due to COVID-19, I find it hard to assess how much this will bother me. I think I won’t really know how I feel about the added weight until I am out and about with my iPad again.
The center of gravity on the iPad Pro + Magic Keyboard is so far back that the entire keyboard can float off an edge.
Other than the physical weight of the device, the overall build quality is excellent — a firm keyboard deck with essentially no flex, a sturdy hinge that almost takes too much force to adjust, and much stronger magnets securing the iPad than those found in the Smart Folio. The USB-C passthrough port on the barrel hinge is an excellent addition to this keyboard, finally allowing us to charge our iPads without unattractively dangling a wire from the iPad’s USB-C port — not to mention that it frees up the USB-C port on the iPad for a storage drive or other USB accessory.
The Keys to Success
The main draw of the Magic Keyboard is, well, the keyboard, and I’ll get right to the main takeaway: These keys are fantastic. Gone are the somewhat-mushy, fabric-covered butterfly switches of the Smart Keyboard Folio — these are full scissor switches with backlighting to boot. Typing on this keyboard feels almost more tactile than typing on other scissor switch keyboards in the MacBook line — I only have my wife’s somewhat-old 13” Air to test with, and the Magic Keyboard’s keys feel far more resistive and bouncy (though I admit this may be due to the age of our control group). The adaptive (and manually-adjustable) backlighting is an excellent addition to what is frankly an impressive keyboard for its size and thickness. I will say that some of the periphery keys feel too cramped and small to consistently hit — count how many dashes I’ve used so far and assume at least half of them involved me missing the tiny half-sized dash key. But even after just a short time of using the Magic Keyboard, I’m beginning to acclimate to those half-sized keys and my accuracy is improving rapidly.
The Magic Keyboard is hands-down the best portable keyboard for the iPad Pro on the market.
The trackpad of the Magic Keyboard is as excellent as you’d expect from Apple — though a bit shorter than I’d prefer. The trackpad clicks mechanically across the entire surface area — no haptics, actual clicks. And the substantially improved cursor support in iOS 13.4 paired with the fluid gestures built into the hardware makes navigating iPadOS a breeze. My only complaints about the trackpad are its size (which I can get over), and that some of my most-used gestures require three fingers — like swapping quickly between recent apps. Would some customizability in the system gestures be asking for too much?
My previous iPad keyboard of choice was the Microsoft Universal Foldable Keyboard — obviously optimizing for portability. The scissor switches of the Magic Keyboard are infinitely more pleasant than the chicklet style keys you may recognize from Microsoft’s Surface line, and the complete lack of key spacing on the Microsoft foldable keyboard means the 2.75mm of key spacing found on the Magic Keyboard feels almost luxurious to me. And considering the Magic Keyboard also comes with a trackpad too, it’s really no contest. Apple‘s recent struggles with keyboard problems seem to be blessedly behind them; much like the new keyboard in the 16” MacBook Pro, this keyboard feels like a return to the durable and reliable keyboards of years past.
A Pivotal Component
The keyboard is excellent. The weight may tilt the scales, but it’s too early to tell. Now to consider the hinge. As previously mentioned, it is an impressively stiff mechanism — I almost wish less force was needed to adjust the angle of the iPad between minimum and maximum tilt. That said, opening the iPad from closed to almost the maximum tilt angle is possible with one hand (though a little jiggling is necessary to get the keyboard to flop open). Unfortunately, that max tilt angle seems just shy of what I would consider ideal for some of my go-to workspaces. It’s adequate in most positions, like on a lap and even most desks — but I’m fairly tall and also like to use my iPad while standing at counters and other places where more tilt range would be appreciated.
The integral USB-C passthrough port is a welcome addition to the Magic Keyboard’s feature list.
I have found that the lower screen angles (even at the < 90° angle the barrel hinge snaps to before tilting) have been useful when watching shows in bed with my wife. The Smart Folio has been decidedly mediocre in this task, so having a way to suspend the iPad screen at an acute angle is actually more useful than I previously thought. In fact, I think what I’ve appreciated most regarding the hinge so far is it’s overall improvement in stability compared to the Smart Folio. It seems obvious, given that the Magic Keyboard has a much larger base to rest on than the triangular origami tent of the Smart Folio, but that extra stability has really made a difference. The Magic Keyboard’s powerful magnets, heavy base, and rigid hinge make tapping on the screen or adjusting the volume feel like pressing on a wall.
The Bottom Line
It’s pretty apparent that this is the best iPad typing experience on the market that still preserves the iPad’s portability and flexibility — switching from “laptop mode” to “tablet mode” is as easy as grab-and-go. The set of tradeoffs presented with the Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro are, in my estimation, a precise threading of the needle. It’s heavy, but not too heavy. The iPad remains solidly grounded when typing, yet fluidly freed when needed. And the value added by the backlit scissor switch keyboard far exceeds the cost of weight, thickness, and managing form-factor transitions...
...However, I’m not sure the value exceeds the monetary cost of the Magic Keyboard. Retailing for $299 (+tax!) in-essence means this keyboard case is worth nearly 50% of the iPad it holds, and almost twice as much as the Smart Folio Keyboard it ostensibly replaces. My purchase was largely rationalized by Apple’s currently-extended return policy due to the COVID-19 pandemic (and I seem to have persuaded others with this logic), but I’m still unsure if I plan to keep the Magic Keyboard or not. In my opinion, this product should have retailed at $199 and the Smart Folio Keyboard should have slid down to $129 — the price floor to have an excellent typing experience on the excellent iPad Pro is just too high. This is a fantastic keyboard, and very nearly every aspect of its design and function is praiseworthy — I just wish that it came with a less discouraging price tag. Since the debut of the iPad Pro, many have discovered how capable and enjoyable the "iPad lifestyle" can be — Apple should prioritize reducing the monetary barrier to entry to what I consider their highest-potential product line.
On Episode #5 of Adapt, Federico challenged Ryan to find two apps capable of searching very large PDFs using Optical Character Recognition (OCR for short). OCR is a really handy tool for reviewing long manuscripts that are often in PDF form — I use OCR in one form or another quite often, and it has saved me a hefty amount of time.
In the episode, Ryan set himself a rule: He didn’t want to spend any money on this challenge. In doing so, he found two scanner apps that allowed him to complete the challenge by way of 30-day free trials. I also didn’t want to spend any money on this challenge, but unlike Ryan I remembered that I already paid for an app that supports PDF search using OCR: GoodNotes.
An OCR App With Built-In Note-Taking
If you haven’t heard of GoodNotes, suffice it to say that it is perhaps the best note-taking app available on iOS (Notability is it’s equal — aesthetic preference is often the only tie-breaker) — custom templates, fluid handwriting, and extensive features like automatic shape drawing set it apart from nearly all its competition. But did you know that GoodNotes can make a 900+ page PDF searchable in mere minutes with OCR?
GoodNotes has long had a search feature in its app that allows you to quickly find text in individual notebooks (and now across all notebooks) via OCR. It works blazingly quickly, and I use it often to find specific details in my handwritten meeting notes or in annotations on lecture slides. However, if you combine this OCR search with GoodNotes’ support for both scanning and uploading PDFs you can easily turn large documents into searchable PDFs using OCR.
GoodNotes was able to index all 974 pages of the Affordable Care Act using OCR in under two minutes.
For my testing, I wanted to go a little bigger than Ryan’s ~400 page PDF — I figured more than doubling the page count with a copy of the 974-page Affordable Care Act would do the trick. Even with such a large document, going from import to searching keywords took under five minutes using GoodNotes’ built-in OCR. Perhaps more impressive is that GoodNotes apparently does all of this magic using Apple’s native Vision and Natural Language Parsing tools, because I ran a test while in Airplane Mode and got the exact same speedy results.
More Than Just PDF Search
Beyond the already-useful feature of creating searchable PDFs, GoodNotes has some extra tools to give you even more flexibility when working with OCR’d documents. Highlighting OCR’d text not only allows you to easily copy and paste snippets from the PDF, but GoodNotes allows you to highlight or strikeout the OCR’d text as well. In addition, GoodNotes supports character recognition in 17 languages, expanding access to this feature across the globe. Lastly, GoodNotes seemingly allows you to export an editable version of this PDF (optionally including your annotation if needed), which in theory means that you can revise the PDF document in a program like Adobe Acrobat or the like (though I have not been able to test this).
Highlighting and adding strikethrough to OCR’d text, full PDF export support, and support for 17 languages makes GoodNotes an excellent OCR app.
Adapt #5 Challenge, Evaluated:
Although I didn’t adhere to Federico’s requirement of finding two OCR apps, I think I accomplished the spirit of this challenge by finding a new use for an app I already use daily. Working primarily on an iPad sometimes requires you to use the wrong app in an unexpected way to get something done — GoodNotes will probably be my go-to app from now on for using OCR on large PDF documents (while remaining my favorite note-taking app as well!), even though that isn’t the main purpose of the app. You might say I’ve adapted it to my needs.
Editor’s Note: You caught me — I’m skipping some of the Adapt Challenges. I’ve decided (partially from getting so behind on the podcast) that I’ll try to accomplish the ones I find are the most useful as learning tools for the average iPad user (especially students).
As ambient noise machines find their way into more corporate offices, retail spaces, and infant nurseries, ambient noise apps have also grown in popularity. Joining that list today is Dark Noise for iOS — an excellent ambient noise app developed by Charlie Chapman.
Why All The Noise?
Ambient noise machines and apps like Dark Noise have numerous uses and benefits. Some people find that they or their infants sleep better when playing ambient noise. Others, myself included, find that ambient noise helps them to focus on the task at hand, or remain productive in a noisy environment (for the nerdy: here is one of the many studies highlighting the cognitive benefits of ambient noise).
Dark Noise caters to these needs with a comprehensive list of over 30 sounds to choose from, and a simple UI that lets you pick a sound and get back to what you were doing — be it sleep or work. While beta testing Dark Noise, I have experienced first-hand the productivity benefits of ambient noise; Dark Noise has quickly become one of my most-used apps.
Integrations and Customizations
Although at its core Dark Noise is just a list of looping soundbites, it supports many useful features and integrations that satisfy the needs of power users as well. As you might expect, Dark Noise has an optional sleep timer with both countdown and fixed-time support, a Favorites feature to keep your most-used sounds easily accessible at the top of the list, and AirPlay support (with full AirPlay 2 support on the way).
Beyond the basics, Dark Noise also has a customizable widget that allows you to quickly start any noise from the Widget page (or perhaps the iPadOS home screen). In addition, each sound in Dark Noise has its own action in Siri Shortcuts, allowing you to integrate Dark Noise into any number of your Shortcuts routines. I myself have used the Shortcuts actions to incorporate Dark Noise into my simple Bedtime shortcut, kicking off ambient Campfire noises before I head to sleep.
Sleep timers, Siri Shortcuts support, and a customizable Widget each add a useful way to interact with Dark Noise.
Not Just Nice on the Ears
A good ambient noise app has a quality selection of sounds to choose from — a great ambient noise app has a beautiful design to match. This is where Dark Noise distinguishes itself from many other apps in the category — the developer has invested so much time and care into the artful details of this app that you can't help but appreciate them. Dark Noise has eight custom Themes and 22 custom app icons (many of which are creative takes on some of my favorite podcasts' artwork), and the developer doesn't seem eager to stop adding new ones any time soon.
All eight of Dark Noise’s custom themes, with no signs from the developer that the list will stop growing.
However, it's the little things that I've appreciated most about Dark Noise's design. For example, when favoriting a sound the Favorite heart is filled with a subtle but whimsical animation. Each sound has a unique minimalist icon designed by Charlie himself — but by far my favorite details are the animations on the Now Playing screen. Each of the custom-designed icons also have custom animations that move almost rhythmically as the sound plays in your ears. I only wish iOS supported animated lock screen thumbnails so I wouldn't have to leave my phone unlocked to enjoy them.
Each sound icon has its own custom animation that pleasantly loops on the Now Playing screen.
Wishlist and Outro
I can't overstate how much I've enjoyed adding Dark Noise to my workflow (and sleepflow!), and I'm looking forward to some of my wishlist items making it into future releases. For example, an upload feature for adding my own sound files to the app would be a welcome addition. Folders and/or collapsible sound categories would also be a nice touch to clean up the main table view, especially as the list of out-of-the-box sounds naturally grows with each update. Perhaps my most wished-for feature are some spooky dungeon sounds to use as ambiance during D&D sessions — the moment I gave Dark Noise a try I knew it would be a killer addition to my Dungeon Master toolkit.
Dark Noise is a simple and elegant ambient noise app that strikes just the right balance between beauty and function. The developer has also done an excellent job at communicating with his beta testers and incorporating that feedback into the app — foreshadowing similar responsiveness as the app is pushed out to a public audience, which I find incredibly valuable. Dark Noise has been an incredible addition to my home screen, and has single-handedly refocused my attention on many pressing projects over the last few weeks — perhaps it could have the same effect on your productivity. Dark Noise is available today for $3.99 on the app store.
Like most students, on any given day I have a long list of to-do items related to my coursework, research goals, and life in general. In the past, I have used the stock Reminders app on iOS for my many to-do items — but the problem I ran into was that I didn't actually complete the tasks after the reminder popped up. I found that I often read the notification and quickly went back to whatever activity I was doing at the time, completely disregarding the thing that I needed to do. That is, until I found Due.
Due's Distinguishing Feature
Due is a reminder app with a unique feature that sets it apart from its competition: persistent reminders. When you set up a reminder in Due, not only do you set the time you want to be reminded, but you also set up an Auto-Snooze time — the time interval you will be re-reminded of the task. In other words, Due reminders pester you until you acknowledge them in some way, either by actually marking the task as complete or snoozing it to a later time. This feature has significantly reduced the number of reminders I get a notification for but then immediately forget about on my lock screen.
Due’s key feature is that reminder notifications repeat until you snooze or complete them.
The nature of Due's pestering notifications means that I tend to use it for time-sensitive reminders or reminders for things I really don't want to do, and less for general tasks and events (which tend to wind up in Fantastical, my calendar app of choice). For example, I often use Due to remind me when an assignment for a class needs to be submitted online so I don't accidentally space it off — this has saved my bacon on more than one occasion! Full support for repeating reminders in Due also means that daily, weekly, or monthly reminders like taking my morning allergy pill or paying our rent don't slip through the cracks.
The Fine Details
Beyond its full support for typical functions like repeating reminders, Due also offers a wide variety of customizations and other useful features to its users. For example, Due uses natural language processing when creating reminders rather than relying entirely on date and time scroll wheels like many other apps. I have found that adding reminders with natural language processing is far faster and intuitive than scrolling through three different wheels to set a reminder for a specific time.
Due’s natural language parsing allows for quickly creating a reminder via text alone
The Notification Snooze menu seen when tapping a Due notification can be customized to your heart's content, allowing you to set up multiple custom snooze durations as well as set times of day that the current reminder can be postponed to if needed. The Auto-Snooze duration (i.e. how long until each reminder pesters you again) can also be set for all newly created reminders, or manually adjusted for each reminder as you create them.
Due’s settings menu allows easy customization, while it’s notification snooze options allow for quickly triaging new reminders.
Due natively supports syncing its reminders via iCloud, and can also pull its list of reminders from specific lists within the native Reminders app. Lastly, custom sound effects, haptic feedback controls, and a Dark Mode toggle are excellent user experience options baked right into the app.
Final Thoughts
Overall, Due is an excellent iOS reminder app that can be finely tailored to your preferences, and uniquely solves the problem of ineffective reminder notifications. Since I started using Due, I've missed fewer deadlines, more consistently journaled at night, and less-often kicked myself for forgetting my allergy medicine in the morning. Due is the perfect reminder app for procrastinators and "space cadets" like myself who need a little extra prodding to actually do the things on our to-do list — I certainly would be far less productive without it. Due is $4.99 on the App Store.
On episode two of Adapt, both Ryan and Federico had a challenge that they each had to report back on — Ryan had to use a third-party HomeKit app to control his smart home devices, and Federico had to write and publish an article entirely using Apple Notes. Given the fact that A. I do not have very many smart home devices, and B. the Apple Notes challenge seemed more interesting to me, I decided to only tackle that challenge for the purposes of this article.
Typically, I write my posts in Markdown using Ulysses — I find its minimalist interface combined with its live Markdown preview to be very useful when adding links or formatting to a post. Apple Notes, however, does not support Markdown in its text editor — you either need to write using rich text or enter the Markdown formatting manually in plain text in order to get the results you expect. For a moment, I considered writing the post using rich text (since I use Microsoft Office so often, this is just as natural for me), but ran into an issue fairly critical to writing a blog post: links. To my knowledge, there isn't an easy way to give a URL a title in Apple Notes — a non-starter in a medium that thrives on in-text links. So, manually typing out the Markdown was the way to go.
Manually typing out Markdown syntax turned out to be easier than dealing with Rich Text while writing an article in Apple Notes.
Once I was set on manually typing out the Markdown syntax in Apple Notes, writing the article actually wasn't so bad. As it turns out, most text editors can handle most of the text-editing you throw at them. Yes, I did miss the live Markdown preview that Ulysses provides, but if you spend enough time commenting on Reddit you get pretty accustomed to looking at plain text Markdown and translating it. In addition, Federico was kind enough to provide a universal Preview Markdown Shortcut that takes anything written in plain-text Markdown and preview it with HTML in a pop-up web view. This gave me the option to at least check my work, in case I had misplaced a bracket or parenthesis while typing.
Using the Preview Markdown shortcut that Viticci shared allowed me to find small typos in my text — like the missing space after my Title header!
Using Apple Notes also didn't impact the way I embed images in my posts. I use a custom Shortcut to upload image(s) from my Cameral Roll, add alt text and a caption, and generate HTML text that ultimately displays the image on my website. This works just as well in any text editor, since what I insert is plain-text anyway.
Federico also mentioned an issue he ran into with the way Apple Notes deals with URLs — specifically, Apple Notes can show you a “card” of the URL rather than the plain text URL needed for Markdown links. I did not run into this problem while copy/pasting links into my Notes document. One theory I have is that this “card” view only occurs when you drag and drop URLs from an app into Apple Notes. I probably avoided it since I habitually tap the Safari URL bar to manually copy the text anyway.
Between a Rock and a Squarespace
Although I didn't have any problems writing the post itself in Apple Notes, the challenge dictates that I also have to publish from Apple Notes as well. Federico accomplished this using a Shortcut tied into his WordPress back-end — a logical approach, considering how well-integrated WordPress is with so much of the web. Unfortunately for me, Peer Reviewed is a Squarespace site, which significantly limits my options for automating a blog post. The only streamlined way to publish a blog post on a Squarespace site is using a bookmarklet they provide — which really just opens the typical blog post menu and doesn't help me publish from Apple Notes. So, this is where I failed this Adapt challenge. However, in the spirit of Adapt, I still published the article entirely on my iPad using the Squarespace app (which was significantly improved just in time for Safari on iPadOS to render it useless).
Publishing a post to Squarespace from their iOS app has significant limitations, but gets the job done.
Transferring my Markdown text from Apple Notes to Squarespace's Markdown editor was easy enough, but the settings menu for the post was lacking in features I've grown to expect on the desktop site. The post URL did not follow my site-wide URL format and had to be manually modified, and I was unable to add any Tags or Categories that didn't already exist in my list. Other than those gripes, the article did get published so at least the Squarespace app could manage that.
Adapt Challenge #2, Evaluated
Although I failed this Adapt challenge, it still got my wheels turning on improvements to my writing workflow (and my website hosting choices). I'm already pondering Shortcuts that might streamline the publishing process even more for future articles, and may do some write-ups on them another time. That being said, I'm already back to writing in Ulysses and relegating Apple Notes to grocery lists and "notes I might need in a year".
Editor's note: At some point while writing this article, the Universal Foldable Keyboard has been removed from Microsoft's online store. I think they may have discontinued the product, though you can still find used ones online.
When you chose to replace your laptop with an iPad Pro, you are instantly faced with additional decisions to make and trade-offs to weigh. One such decision is what keyboard you plan to use with your iPad, and the trade-offs involved are many. Do you favor the slimness, portability, and feel of Apple's Smart Folio Keyboard? Do you prefer a more stationary yet more beautiful option like Matt Gemmell's favored WASD mechanical keyboards? Personally, part of why I enjoy using the iPad Pro as my primary device is its slimness and portability, which means those factors weigh heavily on my choice of keyboard. However, I can't stand the Smart Folio Keyboard. It's keys feel like mush to me, and the way the new design looks while folded — keys facing out for the world to see? Disgusting.
My current keyboard of choice is Microsoft's Universal Foldable Keyboard. I had never heard of this product until I saw a fellow student in a lecture hall using it with his iPad Pro, and immediately knew I had to give it a try. At the time, I was using Apple's Magic Keyboard as my daily driver, so I'll be primarily using that as a benchmark in this review.
Prioritizing Portability
As you might guess, the very fact that I am using a foldable keyboard means that I’m a big fan of compactness — and the Microsoft's Universal Foldable Keyboard really hits this mark. It takes up an incredibly small space for what unfolds to be a full-sized keyboard, all while compromising very little on overall quality of life. While folded, the Universal Foldable Keyboard is about the same thickness as the larger side of the Apple Magic Keyboard — but with half the footprint. In addition, this unique folding design also allows for a unique pairing system: Unlike the Magic Keyboard (which needs to be physically turned on and the keys mashed to pair), the Universal Foldable Keyboard is automatically powered-on and paired when you unfold it. The logic behind this is so obvious when you think about it, but the best comparison I have for this intuitive implementation is the same magic that AirPods have — the action of taking the device out automatically gets it ready for use.
The Universal Foldable Keyboard is about as thick as the Magic Keyboard when folded, but takes up half of the space.
The crucial design element that enables its compact form factor is a split keyboard layout. There is a physical gap between each half of the keyboard (between 6 and 7 on the number line) that creates a crease where the thin leatherette material can fold in half. This design choice significantly changes how you type while using the Universal Foldable Keyboard, and it really does take a while to get used to. When I first purchased the keyboard and gave it a test run, it felt like I was back in 2nd grade learning how to type using the home-row. However, after a few days of frustrating practice with the split layout, I was back to my usual typing speed.
Design and Build
Overall, the Microsoft Universal Keyboard has excellent build quality. The chicklet keys feel very much like the ones on Microsoft’s Surface Pro line, and even in this slim design have excellent key travel and tactile feel. The leatherette exterior lining of the keyboard is pleasant to the touch and claims to be “moisture resistant” (though I can’t say I have tested this myself). According to Microsoft, the battery should last three months of regular use, comparable to the Magic Keyboard's quoted battery life. Unfortunately, the Universal Portable Keyboard charges via MicroUSB, adding another cable to my every-day-carry.
Microsoft’s Universal Foldable Keyboard includes media control keys and a toggle between two paired Bluetooth devices.
The keys themselves are full-sized, with very little spacing between them — habitual users of the Magic Keyboard might initially notice that the keys feel cramped in comparison, but I quickly got used to the tightly packed arrangement. As this is a universal keyboard, Microsoft includes an “Alt/Option” key, a “Fn/⌘ Cmd” key, and a toggle that allows you to indicate which operating system you are using (iOS, Android, or Windows) — which, importantly, impacts what keyboard shortcuts are recognized by the device you are using.
Of note, the Microsoft Universal Keyboard can be simultaneously paired with two devices at once via Bluetooth, and has hardware keys dedicated to toggling between each device. This is especially useful when multitasking with both my iPad and my iPhone — I can by writing an article in Ulysses on my iPad and quickly toggle the keyboard to my iPhone to respond to an iMessage conversation without lifting my hands from the keyboard. I could easily see many users pairing this keyboard to both a Mac/PC and an iPad to eliminate the need for two keyboards at a desk.
The keyboard also comes with hardware Home, Search, and Lock keys; though I typically use ⌘+H for Home and ⌘+Space for Search on my iOS devices. The Lock key aside, I would much rather this real estate be dedicated to what this keyboard is lacking, specifically a hardware Siri key (like the popular Brydge Keyboard has) and the “Eject” key found on Apple’s Magic Keyboard. I can hardly fault Microsoft for not integrating Siri directly into its universal keyboard, but I do sorely miss the Eject button when I am using the keyboard and want to quickly bring up a software keyboard like Yoink or the Emoji keyboard. Although Ctrl+Space does allows you to scroll through software keyboards on iOS, I’ve had mixed luck with this command actually ejecting the keyboard on the screen. My current solution (when I’m feeling lazy) is to use the Bluetooth device toggle to disconnect the keyboard from my iPad, resulting in the software keyboard ejecting as expected.
Final Comments
Overall, I’ve greatly enjoyed switching to the Microsoft Universal Foldable Keyboard as my go-to device for working on my iPad. The nature of my workflow means that portability carries a high premium, making the small size of this keyboard a huge win. What I enjoy most about the iPad Pro is its flexibility — in one moment it can be a glass slate for capturing ideas with the Apple Pencil, and in another it can be propped up with a folded Smart Folio and instantly paired with a keyboard I just slipped out of my bag. Although the Magic Keyboard allowed me to do this as well, the small reductions in friction allowed by the Universal Foldable Keyboard’s unique pairing strategy combined with being 50% the physical size makes it an easy winner, even in spite of my minor complaints.
