Mac Crunch with Ben Brooks

Hello and welcome to the first episode of Mac Crunch, a new series dedicated to exploring the Mac World via its applications, habits, workflow, and setups of Mac users from around the world.

For the readers please state your name, work, and what do you do?

My name is Ben Brooks. I run a small commercial property management company in Lakewood, WA and my free time I blog at The Brooks Review.

Why Mac and not PC ? Today the choices are plentiful, can you share a little bit on this.

Boy that is really starting off with a doozy. For me I initially made the change because I fell in love with the hardware design of the 12” Powerbook G4, which was the first Mac that I owned. I was lucky enough to go to one of the few high schools in the 90s that was all Macs, we only had one PC in the library for students to use. That experience gave me an excellent grasp of both Macs and Windows, back in the dark days when the two systems refused to co-exist and you had to convert files so that they would be readable when using them on the two different OSes.

The 12” Powerbook really was a thing of beauty (still is) and is one of the most loved Macs, one that I constantly hear people reminiscing about. When I made the ‘switch’ I didn’t go over full speed ahead. I actually went into it with an open mind as far as which OS I would use moving forward. I had been using Windows XP and Red Hat Linux (I don’t remember which version) on an old Dell that was stolen from my house in college. That lead to the Powerbook purchase and I also built a desktop PC that ran Linux and XP Pro.

About 3 days into having the Powerbook, the Desktop went completely un-used. Mac OS X looks better, runs better and is far more stable than any other OS I have used. By the beginning of 2004 I was a full convert to Macs. I still use Windows XP daily for some Windows only Applications and have tried to use Windows Vista (it really is miserable to use), but I find that nothing can compete with where Mac OS X is right now.

The best direct answer that I can think of to your question of ‘Why Mac and no PC’ is because with Mac OS X the OS gets out of my way so I can just create. It always seemed like an uphill battle with Windows.

Not to mention the fact that some of the apps developers create for Mac OS are absolutely exquisite.

Given today’s choices of applications, what are your top 5 five. I know I’m being selective but if you had to say.

Boy that is a really tough question to answer. I would have to go with:

  1. TextMate: I do all of my web coding in it and about 90% of my writing as well. It is always open.
  2. MarsEdit: All of my posts done on the Mac go through MarsEdit, it is one of those rare apps that is just really really good at what it does.
  3. OmniFocus: It is the ultimate GTD style To-Do app for any computing platform – don’t let anyone tell you different.
  4. Dropbox: Honestly, I don’t know what I would do without Dropbox these days.
  5. Safari: If I have to limit to 5 then Safari needs to make the list. Chrome is faster, and Firefox is gaudier, but Safari is just right. I have it open at all times and it is easily my most used app. One caveat: you need to install Click2Flash and 1Password to really make it shine. (See how I cheated two more apps in there?)
  6. How do those 5 fit into your workflow, albeit personal or work.

How do the aforementioned 5 fit into your workflow, albeit personal or work.

As I mentioned above I blog a lot and part of that process is constantly tweaking the template files for the theme I use, that is where TextMate comes into play. TextMate is also a huge part of my writing process because I can store the plain text files in Dropbox and get to them on my iPad to keep on writing. I also write in Markdown and even though I have WordPress setup to recognize Markdown and convert I still convert to HTML using the MultiMarkdown bundle in TextMate. I use MarsEdit to publish all my posts. MarsEdit also comes with a handy bookmarklet that I use to grab linked list posts from things I am reading in Safari.

OmniFocus is like the glue that holds my life together. It is where all my ideas, actions, projects and goals are stored. I can’t talk up the program enough it really has changed the way I work in life. I doubt that I would get as much done as I do if I didn’t have OmniFocus. I also have perspectives in OmniFocus setup so that I can view personal and work items separate – thus keeping my mind focused on what I can/need to do.

I remember when Dropbox was announced and watching that little demo screencast they had. I was blown away by how well it worked and I just had a doubting feeling in my gut that it would work that well in practice – yet a lot of people use it everyday and it works even better than what was shown in that little video. I keep all active items in Dropbox for access on all my devices and for an immediate backup of everything I am working on. I particularly love the fact that so many iOS apps have begun to integrate Dropbox in them for syncing over documents from your Mac.

I also use a Dropbox folder that is watched by my home media center. That folder will start a download on that home machine if I add a Torrent file into it. This is just one of those nice little conveniences that is aided by the wonderful Hazel.

If OmniFocus is the glue then Safari really is the workhorse of my computer. I can’t really think of anything that I do on my computer that I couldn’t do in just Safari if needed. It has become very fast and very stable over the years. We would be here all day and my fingers would fall off if I tried to detail out everything I use Safari for, honestly it is the tool that connects me to the world.

What’s your current setup ?

I currently have a MacBook Pro which I believe is a late 2008 model – it is the first generation of the Unibody MacBook Pros, the ones with the Expresscard port in them. It is the 2.8ghz model and I have 6gb RAM stuffed in it with a super fast OWC Mercury Extreme Pro SSD drive. At my office I pair it with a 24” LED Cinema display that I absolutely love.

If I had one upgrade to recommend to people it would be that they need to buy an SSD drive. A few months ago I was thinking of getting a new computer, more specifically I was thinking about going to an iMac at home and a Mac mini at work. I just didn’t have the money to do it at the time I decided that I needed to table it for a year or so. When I made that decision I started looking at how I could improve the performance of my MacBook Pro and that is when I bought the SSD drive. I doubt I will need to upgrade this machine for at least another year from now. At which point I will probably use the MacBook Pro at home and get an iMac or something for work (I am tired of carrying it to and from work).

Can you share your thoughts on iOS and how its revolutionizing the mobile world?

I go back and forth all the time on whether it is iOS, iPhone, iPad, App Developers or Touch interfaces that is really the revolution. Or is it just the next evolution of computing? I can’t decide what is really going on right now – it is like recessions and depressions in the economy – you don’t really know what you have on your hands until it happened. The problem is that this revolution is still happening.

I think what we are seeing right now is a bunch of mobile devices that have come at precisely the right time. That is if the mobile devices we had today (iPhone/iPad/Android) had been introduced back 2004 I don’t know that they would have been as successful as they are today.

Remember back in 2004 the landscape looked like this:

  • Battery life was terrible on all but the most basic devices.
  • 3G data wasn’t around.
  • Facebook was an infant
  • No Twitter
  • No Dropbox
  • Flash memory was crazy expensive

The fact that iPhone came out at a time when all of these things were just starting to go mainstream and really improve is incredible timing. The iPhone would have been crap if you could only put 1gb of music on it and the battery died after a few hours. The apps would not be what they are today if there was no Twitter (many Twitter apps are on the bleeding edge of Mobile app design).

What all these devices have really changed for me is a constant feeling of being connected to the larger world. If I think back to how small my world, my circle, was in 2006 it is amazing to look at what it is now just 4 years later. That is in large part due to the iPhone.

This new breed of mobile devices has changed the following for me:

  • An actual desire to use Twitter (I never liked the web interface)
  • Made it easy (simple even) to respond to email away from my computer.
  • Made a standalone GPS system irrelevant.
  • Made portable gaming and media devices irrelevant.
  • Given me the the ability to know anything at anytime.

That is revolutionary if you think about it, especially the last bit. I remember being in grade school having to go to the library and look at books published 10 years earlier to find out information. If I wanted to learn about the Berlin Wall for instance (I remember doing a report on it) it would take me hours of reading and searching at a library. Now days it is minutes looking at Wikipedia (not a stalwart of accuracy, but you get the idea of what happened). Not to mention the fact that this is minutes looking at it on my phone – in the middle of a forest.

That still amazes me.

Which iOS devices do you currently own? Lay it on us, old or new.

What I currently own? Original iPhone 8gb, iPhone 3G 16gb, iPhone 3GS 32gb, iPhone 4 32gb, iPad WiFi 16gb. I only use the most recent two iPhones and the iPad. The iPhone 3GS is used as an iPod and remote for VLC on our ‘media Mac’.

If you have an iPad, what are your favorite things to do on it? Do you mainly use it to consume information ie. RSS, Twitter, etc or are you creating content as well.

I use my iPad for a ton of stuff. During the normal course of the work week it serves as my eBook reader, task manager, Instapaper reader, RSS Reader and email response machine. During the weekends and for travel it becomes my everything machine. I have never hesitated to write on the iPad and I bring it to any and all meetings that I attend.

I think it is silly and shortsighted when people look at the iPad as just for consumption, it really is for anything you want it to be.

I love what you’ve done at The Brooks Review with your iPad Life Interviews. Following that thread which are you top 3 apps on the iPad and how happy are your with its current limitations.

Reeder, Instapaper and OmniFocus. I use those three constantly on the iPad. The iOS version the iPad came with is just OK, I have been running iOS 4.2 beta ever since it was available for developers and it is going to be really great upgrade for every iPad user.

What I love most about the iPad is that I can only be using one app at a time, I can’t side by side or see more than one app at a time. That is great. The iPad provides one of the most focused computing environments that we can use today.

You mentioned above you have several iPhones and no iPod Touch, why? Also how do you integrate these into your Mac ecosystem.

I have an iPhone and never saw the point of owning both an iPhone and iPod touch. I use my iPhone for very little phone functions these days. Most of the time I am texting or using Twitter on it, my iPhone really has become my Twitter hub. It is also my go to device for getting ideas out of my head quickly, whether it is popping them into Simplenote (which syncs back to my Mac) or jotting tasks down in OmniFocus (again syncing back to my Mac). My iPhone continues to be the one device that I constantly bring with me – the camera is one of the nicest parts of the new ‘4’ model and has lightened my bag considerably (I used to carry a Canon G9 everywhere).

Do you “Things” or do you “Omnifocus”

As mentioned above (several times knowing me) I am a huge OmniFocus guy. I think I have tried just about every ‘major’ Mac to-do list program and while OmniFocus doesn’t meet 100% of my needs it meets 100% of the important needs that I have. For me Things just felt too forced and always felt more like a toy than a serious tool. I guess it is the difference between a hammer that you would see an upper-class-suburban-husband owning verses the hammer that a rough-gruff-carpenter would own.

Some buy tools because they look good, and others buy them because that tool will help them do their job. OmniFocus helps me do my job, and it helps a lot. OmniFocus is not just where I store tasks, I store ideas, and goals in there as well.

Where do you see iOS4 devices in the near future, let’s say 5 years.

Five years from now we will look back at our current crop of iOS devices and wonder how we ever got anything done. Just look back to the first computer you ever owned, mine didn’t have networking and I still thought it was an awesome tool. Remember track-feed printers, yeah I hate them too. At the time though they worked a lot better than the alternatives (typewriters). Look back at the original iPhone – gah – I can’t imagine using that full time, yet when I got it I couldn’t imagine life without it.

I don’t know where iOS is going to be in 5 years time, but I am confident that it will be nothing like what it is today. I would imagine the the integration between ‘full-size’ computers and iOS devices is very tight in 5 years time. I would also guess that the devices would no longer be limited by their hardware much like where today’s computers are. We rarely worry about processing speed on our Macs any longer, and for most people having enough storage space on their computer is a non-issue. I would guess that we will get there with iOS devices in the near future.

Other than that I would guess that even Steve Jobs doesn’t know, though he most certainly has a better idea of where the devices will be than I do.

Ben, thanks for sharing your story on Mac Crunch, it was my pleasure.

Folks you can check out Ben’s “The Brooks Review” → here for a nicely curated and mac flavored site. Thanks to Twitter-landia we can keep up with the latest news also via its → twitter feed, and last but not least, Ben’s personal tweets are → here for your mac delight.

Once again, thanks Ben for sharing your insights and inaugurating Mac Crunch.

Jorge Ledesma