Musings about Entrepreneurship, Technology and Software Development

Accidental Technologist

Mac Tip: Quick Switch Sound Output

I’ve been an Apple Macintosh user for a long time now, but I often do things the hard way.

I work from home and mix up the work day by listening to podcasts. If the family is around I will put on the headphones as to not disturb them, but some days when I’m alone I remove the headphones and listen through the iMac speakers. 

The obvious way to switch from headphones to internal speakers and back again meant I went to System Preferences->Sound, selected the Output tab and then picked which way I wanted to hear the audio. No, not difficult but there has to be a better way.

It turns out there is (otherwise this post was completely pointless). When you go to the Menu Bar you should see the speaker icon. Clicking on it shows you the volume. Here’s the key..if you hold down the Option key while you click on the speaker icon you get a nice menu:

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There you go switch away, nice and easy.  Maybe everyone already knew this, but I doubt it. 

AirPrint Where You Couldn’t AirPrint Before

Our household has several iPads and iPhones. I use my iPad all the time to surf the web, reply to emails and view my Twitter stream, among other things.  Occasionally I find it would be nice to print from the iPad, since it has AirPrint and all, but our Canon MX860 printer doesn’t support AirPrint.

Enter handyPrint….

handyPrint™ v5 is a 64 bit Mac OSX application that allow you to print from your iPods, iPads and iPhones on printers that do not support the AirPrint protocol. v5 has been re-designed as a standard application similar to the ones you would find in the Apple App Store. You simply copy it to the Applications folder and run it from there. Once you turn the application switch to ON it will start on its own every time you login to you user account. No need to manually start the application.

handyPrint is a simple download which is a DMG, just click to install.  It’s an application needs to be running while the user is logged in on the host Mac.  I noticed there’s a Pro version that runs as a service to alleviate this requirement but this didn’t matter to me.

Once installed handyPrint is run and sits in the OS X menu bar after it’s turned on. The user interface is really simple:

HandyPrint

A list of available printers shows up and you just select the ones you enable AirPrint support.  This particular printer is actually wireless, I just happen to have the driver installed on my Mac.

Printing from the iPad is simple.  While you’re in the application you want to print from, just select Print as if you had an AirPrint-supported printer around:

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Select the printer and that’s it.  handyPrinter works seamless.

Thanks to Eric Davis for pointing it out on Twitter. 

7 Great iOS and Mac Developer Podcasts to Learn from Today

I have quite an extensive list of podcast subscriptions in iTunes these days with much of my interest on iOS and Mac development.   Considering how iTunes is Apple, there are a lot of podcasts that have just stop producing content and gone away.  There are a comparable few podcasts dedicated to iOS.

I spend time looking for new podcasts and revisiting old ones trying to find ones with good content and who produce on a fairly regular basis.  I wanted to share my favorites with you, hopefully to help them keep producing.

These podcasts are developer podcasts but there really are two audiences; some are focused on the technical details of development while others are of interest to developers running a business around iOS and/or Mac software.  I’m sure there’s overlap here.

I think each and every one of these are great and I know you will find value in them as well.

Core Intuition

Core Intuition is hosted by Daniel Jalkut, developer of MarsEdit and Manton Reece.  This podcast had been on a bit of a hiatus with sparse updates over the past year but recently they have been producing regular episodes.  Mainly a podcast produced by Mac developers with little iOS discussion, the topics are applicable to most developers in the Apple community.

Episodes run about 45 minutes and usually focused on a handful of topics like the Mac App Store, sandboxing and dealing with customers.  Top notch for sure and well thought out dialog.

Edge Cases

This podcast is relatively new and hosted by Andrew Pontious and Wolf Rentzsch.  They discuss topics appealing to both Mac and iOS developers ranging from Core Data to Sandboxing and the future of developing for Apple products.

Episodes are about 45 minutes in length and pretty rich in technical content.  The podcast started in May and they already have 8 great episodes out as of the time I write this.

Wolf is the creator of Mogenerator and other tools.

Developing Perspective

Developing Perspective is produced by solo developer David Smith who is an iOS and Mac developer.  Episodes run about 15 minutes and talk about very specific topics that all Apple developers think about one time or another.  These include the path to independence, developer’s machine and going to WWDC.

I discovered this podcast a short time ago and it is one that I anxiously await new episodes.  It seems every episodes resonates with me.   David has a great radio voice too, calm and soothing.

iDeveloper Live

This podcast is run by Steve “Scotty” Scott and company have been doing this podcast for what seems like an eternity.  Most of these shows run about an hour and cover various topics like open source, Apple (of course) and interviews with various developers known in the Mac community.  Many of these interviews cover specific topics the developer is very familiar with.

Listeners can tune into the live show and participate in the chat room as well as find updates on Twitter.  The episodes are always entertaining and full of great information.

NSBrief

Saul Mora is the creator and producer of these great interviews with Mac and iOS developers as well as people funning Apple-focused software companies.  The podcasts run almost an hour and Saul knows just the right questions to ask and knows enough about the technology to make really useful insights.

Recent episodes include chats with Jamiee Newbery from Black Pixel while on a plane.  Every episode is different and every episode contains valuable insight.

I met Saul at CocoaConf in DC a short time ago and he is a great guy doing these great interviews.

Build and Analyze

Marco Arment and Dan Benjamin host Build and Analyze, which is a bit of a different podcast.  Marco runs Instapaper and much of hour plus episodes discuss trials and tribulations of running Instapaper.  The insider view is really helpful and I pick up a lot of great tips.

I have to warn that sometimes, just sometimes, they get off on long tangents about coffee, cars and kids.  Although not directly applicable to running a application business, it can be entertaining.

NSScreencast

Ben Scheirman is .NET developer turned Ruby on Rails and iOS developer who created NSScreencast, which is not technically a podcast, but I thought it would add some good value to this list.  Although not free, at $9 a month, it is bargain.  Each screencast goes into detail about how to use a particular feature of Xcode or of iOS development in general.

Topics such as how to implement Pull to Refresh, using Storyboards, Provisioning to HTTP caching and setting up a CI server.  Each episode ranging from 10-30 minutes, perfect for those suffering from short attention span.

Finally

I listen and watch each of these and love them all.  I’ve learned a ton about he iOS and Mac developer community by just listening.