I'll admit it -- I'm a notorious procrastinator.

Give me something to do and no deadline, and I'll put it off until everyone forgets about it. Give me a deadline and I'll wait until the deadline is looming before I'll get things going. This not only happens in my professional life, but my personal life as well. For example, my wife is still patiently waiting for me to complete some painting in our newly renovated laundry room. Hey, it's only been a month since I started the work!

If there's anyone who needs to follow the Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology, it's me. In the past, my To-Do list consisted of Post-It Notes scattered on my desk with lists of things to complete. A couple of months ago I thought it would work better if I organized my notes into one place, so I bought a hard-cover Moleskine and started writing listing things to do in that book. Nice, but I was out of luck when I didn't have the Moleskine with me.

I always have my iPhone with me, so it made sense for me to start using it to help add some semblance of order to my life. That's where Things, the task manager from Cultured Code, helped me out.

Christina Warren. Erica Sadun. Two Women. Two Opinions. One love of all things Macintosh. This week, it's all about iPhone Tip Calculators. Are they a waste of Apple's time and resources, along with all those Sudoko games and Flashlights, or a clever and creative way for App developers to offer a useful product?

Tell us what you think... then read on for C vs. E in the tip-top battle royale.

Kevin Rose is at it again, with a brand new round of rumors about iTunes 8, supposedly premiered next week at the big Apple iPod event. Did I miss the meeting where we all declared him king of iPod rumors? King or not, he's got what he claims is inside information, including a writeup about something called the "Genius" sidebar, which creates recommended playlists for you, a new grid view (like Delicious Library?), and a new music visualizer.

Additionally, Rose's tipster mentions HD TV shows in the iTMS, and reiterates the previous rumors of new IPod nanos and Touches. None of these things are a huge surprise -- while the Genuis system will certainly be interesting to see (and make fun of) if real, HDTV and the new iPods are old news in Rumorville by now.

Is it OK if we hope for some faster and easier iPhone syncing with a new version of iTunes as well? Whatever is coming next week, we'll find out all about it then.

The event is real, and that of course brings with it the usual flood of rumors and speculation. Latest off the rumor mill assembly line is supposedly the leaked dimensions of a new iPod Touch and nano -- iLounge has their hands on what they claim are dimensional drawings of the new iPod nano and a "Touch 2G," which, as you might guess, is an iPod Touch redesigned with iPhone 3G specs in mind. We'd say that you should make sure to take the requisite grain of salt with these, but with all the rumors Apple fans end up eating, we're kind of worried about your blood pressure by now. Better stay away from this one -- we'll know next week whether it's real or not.

We should say, though, that the nano design does look similar to the one originally posted by Kevin Rose a little while ago, which gives credence to both rumors. On the other hand, if someone was manufacturing dimensional drawings and claiming they were real, wouldn't they make them line up to the majority of the rumors so far?

Spore Origins has wriggled its way out to the iTunes store for the iPod. The game is a slimmed-down version of the early microbial stages in the upcoming PC game -- in the main game, you'll be able to take your little microbes up through the evolutionary ladder all the way up to space travel, but in the iPod game, you just guide a little cellular organism around in the primordial muck, eating what's smaller than you and running away from what's bigger.

We haven't played the iPod version, but the iPhone version, which we got a hands-on with at E3 earlier this year, is due out later this week, according to the game's creator, Will Wright. Both games pale in comparison to the creativity and polish that the full Spore game will offer -- running a creature around in the muck isn't nearly as fun as guiding it through the history of time itself, and unfortunately, as we were told at E3, online play and character transfer never made it into the final version, so the portable games have no relation to the full game at all.

So what you're left with is a little arcade game, which probably isn't actually worth the $5 it costs. There are, after all, better games out there for less.

I thought Line Rider kind of "jumped" the shark (so to speak) when they sold out to McDonald's, but apparently the little sandbox physics game is still kicking around. InXile, the company that makes it, is working on a version for the iPhone. There was a version available for jailbreakers, but apparently the company put the kibosh on it when they found out.

Not much else to say about this -- Line Rider is currently available for free online, and if you like it there, you'll probably like it on the iPhone, too. Personally, it's more fun to watch than to play -- whenever I try to make a run, my little guy always dies on the first curve. But maybe with a little more iPhone-based practice, I can finally get him to do that loop-de-loop I've been wanting.

[via Touch Arcade]

Everyone else has had just three choice Mac apps, but I'm going to claim four because two of my choices live in the Menu Bar, and are therefore very small. Only you and I need to keep count, though, eh?

Bean

This marvelous little rich text editor is an excellent tool for writing to word counts, something I have to do very often. Bean packs in a lot of great features, and the developer is responsive to feedback and suggestions.

Either TextMate or BBEdit

When I'm not writing to word counts, I'm usually using Markdown to write for the web. Until last week I'd been using TextMate for this, exclusively, for a couple of years. Now, with the release of BBEdit 9.0, I'm wavering between the two. Both are wonderful, and writing with Markdown just isn't the same without one of them to help me out.

I Love Stars

I'm one of those weirdos who likes to keep the Dock out of sight most of the time. I don't use it for launching or switching apps, and I don't use it to keep minimised windows in either. But there are some functions that I like to have in easy reach from anywhere, and that's why I'm a big fan of Menu Bar applications. That said, there's not a lot of Menu Bar to be had on a little MacBook screen, so I'm very picky about which ones get the honor of a place up there. I Love Stars earns a spot. It does nothing but let me assign ratings to songs, but in my opinion it does it very well and, most importantly, sits in the best place for doing it.

Jumpcut

Another one from the Menu Bar, and this time it's a clipboard history utility that saves my backside 27 times every week. At least. It only saves text, but that's fine for me because that's what matters most in my line of work. With Jumpcut running (and it's always running), I can merrily copy umpteen things from a dozen different places and be sure of pasting them easily, and in the correct places, in the text document I'm writing at the time (see Bean and BBMate raves above).

OK, that was five. Sorry.

Update: Belkin reps have contacted us to say that the JoyPod, while a fascinating idea, is not a product they have in development. Oh well!

I guessed that we'd see a more official iPhone controller sooner or later, but I didn't think it'd be this much sooner -- Touch Arcade has unearthed this photo of a Belkin-branded game controller/case for the iPhone and iPod touch called the JoyPod. Looks pretty slick, though as Engadget points out, the ratios don't really work out -- odds are that the final product will have to be a little longer to fit the iPhone in there.

Very interesting, though -- now I'm curious to see if Apple really will support stuff like this. Supporting a third-party controller would seem to go against His Jobsness' suggestion that a multitouch screen could be used for anything (even typing on an awkward non-tactile keyboard), but clearly there's a demand, from consumers if not from devs themselves, to move game controls off the screen and onto buttons you can feel while pressing. How else will you be able to "exprimir al maximo tu iPhone o iPod touch"?

A few weeks back on the Talkcast, we had an interesting little discussion about just where Apple's boundaries were on the App Store -- so far, you really only get kicked off if you charge too much, if your apps vibrate wrong, or if you steal someone's copyright. Oh, and there's that one more little exception: if you provide folks with the ability to tether the iPhone's networking ability to your own Mac.

But now the rumor mill says that last one might just have been removed because Apple is planning a tether solution of their own. Gizmodo claims that one of their readers is corresponding with His Steveness himself (a fact we find obviously dubious, but hey it's Friday of Labor Day weekend, so we'll give 'em a pass). You'd think that Steve Jobs would reveal the fact that AT&T and Apple were trying to offer a tether solution through a slightly better venue than a quickly jotted "Sent from my iPhone" email, but remember how we first heard about the SDK -- the man knows how to stick important pieces of news in strange places.

The original emailer mentioned tethering for the fee of an extra $30 a month (which seems exorbitant considering that Netshare did it for a one-time charge), but then again, AT&T's networks are going to get even more waterlogged should something like this come down. So odds are if Apple does work out a deal, it's not going to be cheap.

For my shot at iPhone favorites I'm going with three apps I find myself returning to over and over.

Zenbe Lists (iTunes link) - this is the third-party app I find myself using most often. It's basically a TO DO list manager, but with a big difference: online syncing. The Zenbe iPhone application interfaces with the online lists that you can manage from your desktop at lists.zenbe.com (free account required). But unlike some other iPhone apps that are front-ends for online services, Zenbe on the iPhone caches all your data locally. That means that you can access and edit your lists even when you can't get online (e.g. on a plane) and then sync when you get back online. With the absence of notes syncing on the iPhone I end up putting all kinds of things into Zenbe: shopping lists, travel info (flight schedules, etc.), various ideas that come to me on the go, and much more (free).


Moonlight Mahjong (iTunes link) - games are naturally a matter of personal taste, but this 3D implementation of mahjong on the iPhone is first class. It utilizes the standard iPhone gestures for zooming and panning, as well as automatically recognizes device orientation. The full version includes 19 different tile layouts for a very reasonable $4.99; there's also a free lite version (iTunes link), which will give you a good taste the gameplay but is limited to 3 tile layouts. Moonlight Mahjong does not include sound, but that makes it perfect for listening to your own tunes, which I much prefer.


Pandora (iTunes link) - Pandora has long been my favorite streaming music site, so much so that I run the dedicated Pandora client PandoraJam on my Mac. So I was thrilled when the iPhone version was released with full access to your custom stations. Unfortunately, Pandora is facing problems these days so there's no telling how long the service will remain up. But for the time being Pandora is my go to app for streaming music (free).

Picking my favorite iPhone apps was pretty straightforward. I went with three apps that save me time. The first one wows me because using it sort of feels like magic, and the other two are great mobile companion applications to wonderful Mac-based programs.


Shazam [iTunes link] Free

When I say using Shazam feels like magic, I'm not kidding. Shazam can listen to any music that is playing using the iPhone's microphone, and based on an acoustic fingerprint of the music can tell you the name of the song, artist, and album. It takes only seconds to listen, then a few more to look up the song and return results. Conveniently, Shazam maintains a list of songs that you've looked up (tagged, in Shazam's parlance) so that you can easily go back and follow up on the songs later. It also includes links to purchase the songs you've tagged from iTunes, as well as links to music videos for tagged songs if they exist on YouTube.

OmniFocus [iTunes link] $19.00

I have a particular preference for software that is available in desktop versions as well as mobile versions, particularly if they contain a solid synchronization function. While it can be somewhat of an acquired taste, OmniFocus on the Mac is arguably one of the most capable to-do list applications, particularly if you subscribe to the GTD methodology. Imagine my delight, then, when OmniGroup announced there would be an iPhone version of OmniFocus that synchronizes to the desktop version. What's even better is that the iPhone version isn't simply a clone of the desktop version, but includes iPhone-specific functionality such as being able to determine what context to display based on your physical location using GPS. As with all software that relies on remote synchronization, it can be a bit slow when starting up, but that's a hit you take to have the convenience of synchronization, it seems.

Evernote [iTunes link] Free

Evernote has been around for a long time as a capable Windows-based note taking product, but if ever there was an interesting story of a company re-inventing their product, this is it. Evernote in its modern capacity is a note-taking powerhouse, available on Mac, Windows, on the web, and on the mobile web. But even better, it also has an iPhone version. The beauty of Evernote is in its ability to capture various types of information easily, then make it searchable and easy to reference. Everything you store in Evernote is stored in an account for you on Evernote's servers, allowing them to apply advanced optical character recognition to your images and documents to make even non-text documents searchable. Like OmniFocus, Evernote can be a bit slow to start, and it's disappointing that Evernote's content is not stored locally on the iPhone, but is pulled down from their servers every time you access it. But for its ability to allow you to off-load important information to a secondary brain, Evernote is invaluable.


Honorable Mention

Given my attachment to synchronization apps, how can I not give a nod towards the iPhone version of NetNewsWire, which complements the entire stable of free NewsGator RSS clients, including NetNewsWire on the Mac. NNW would have made this write-up, had Steve not grabbed it first. But who can blame him?

Christina Warren. Erica Sadun. Two Women. Two Opinions. One love of all things Macintosh. This week, we take on iTunes rentals. Are they the next best thing or a waste of your money? We'll start the discussion and you judge the smackdown winner for the week.

Erica: Totally hot! No commitment, less than it would cost in gas, time and popcorn at the local second-run theater. Plus (bonus!) no used bubblegum under the seats. Why wait weeks for Netflix? You can watch on demand for three or four bucks with at most an hour or two of download time. Plus there's that 99-cent special each week.

Sure, I'd prefer the rental to go for 48 hours instead of 24, but it's really convenient to watch movies that I'd otherwise never get around to seeing. Rock on, iTunes Rentals.

Christina: Erica, you ignorant slut! Hey, I'm always up for new ways to watch movies, but the only real reason I can see renting from iTunes is laziness or random 3 AM rental attacks. And I haven't had random, "Ooh, I want to watch Fletch at 3 AM on a weeknight" moment since college. Weeks for Netflix? More like a couple of days -- I often get my queue replenished in 24 hours. And then I can bask in the joy of extra features, like director commentary, surround-sound, and if it's an older film, I can make sure I'm getting the latest/digitally restored print and not some digital export of a 10-year old print that was just cheap LaserDisc to DVD hack-job back in 1997.

Really though, what saddens me is how many films are available to buy, but are NOT available to rent. I can find new releases at Blockbuster, On-Demand or catch them on any of the premium movie channels, but its the catalog titles that have real potential. The Movie Store baits me by featuring Secretary on its "What We're Watching" section, but when I try to get my Spader-fest on, I find out my only option is to buy the movie. If I'm going to do that, I might as well get the DVD and watch Sex, Lies and Videotape (which is not in the store, to purchase or rent) from my own collection in the meantime.

While Guy Kawasaki might be able to get 36 hours of standby life out of his iPhone 3G, many of the rest of us are struggling with having enough power to make it through a day.

Mike Davidson, CEO of Newsvine in Seattle, came up with a great idea for any iPhone developers in the TUAW audience. He'd like to see an iPhone power miser application that could turn off 3G, location services, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and push e-mail with one tap (low drain mode), then turn on all of the same services with another tap (full power mode).

Davidson explains that it currently takes him 15 steps to disable the power-hungry features of his 3G, and another 15 steps to turn those features back on. Whether or not those features are something that the average NDA'd iPhone developer can actually control is one big question; if they aren't, this would be a great app for Apple to develop -- quickly!

Me? I'm waiting for "The Clapper" version of the power miser app -- "Clap On! Clap Off!"

A spate of bad news surrounding Mobile Me and iPhone 3G quality problems paired with renewed vigor from competitors Microsoft, Dell, and Nokia has Apple running out of slack from the normally fawning press (TUAW certainly not withstanding).

Forbes has a story about why Apple seems to have lost its luster recently. The New York Times is waxing nostalgic with a retrospective article titled Apple Imperfect. The National Post cites TechCrunch's Michael Arrington saying Apple is "rotting" and "flailing badly at the edges."

Consider the parable of the friend. Say you have a good friend, who's trustworthy, reliable and generally happy to be around you. If that friend suddenly isn't glad to see you anymore, swears at the elderly and starts drinking cheap bourbon from a hip flask in meetings, you'd say something, right? At least you'd worry that your friend was on the wrong path.

That's where we find Apple today: A friend on the wrong path. Many have noted that a lack of transparency in admitting its mistakes is hurting its credibility. The fact that it's making mistakes in the first place is generally forgivable, but we've been spoiled by Apple's pristine track record of consistently delivering quality. As consumers, we want the quality back. If anything, our expectations are even higher now to properly correct the various perceived injustices we've suffered.

Taking the long view, Apple will pull out of its funk. Knowing Steve Jobs, it will do so in a spectacular fashion, too, with new products, product improvements, or both. Apple isn't suffering from a lack of talent or innovation. It's suffering from management problems that any company of its size faces on a daily basis: scheduling new products, preventing employee burnout, and managing logistics.

We're nowhere near Apple's nadir under Gil Amelio, over a decade ago. In fact, investors don't seem to be fazed at all, with stock prices rebounding to their levels in May. Apple may already be back.

Picking just three favorite Mac applications was harder than I thought it would be. I decided to forgo anything that was either built-in or part of a major productivity or creative suite and just focus on applications that make my Mac computing experience unique and complete.

Coda

Even before this week's 1.5 update, Coda had a permanent spot on my "favorite app" list. For me, when it comes to developing or maintaining a web project, Coda is just the best. Sure, TextMate (which I'm using to type this post) might be superior if you're looking for just a source-code editor. CSSEdit might be a better CSS editor, Panic's own Transmit is a more robust FTP client. Coda is still the best all-around web development app for my workflow. It lets me access all the files for a project, locally or on a server, make the changes or additions I want to make, preview how it will look in Safari (or with one click, open it in Firefox, Opera, Camino or OmniWeb) and immediately execute any changes. And now I can use it as a Subversion client too. Even better, it is a distinctly "Mac" application. Every UI detail reminds me why I love the Mac and why OS X is the best platform for software around.

Aperture 2

While Lightroom 2 is really, really nice (and I prefer it for some types of retouches), Aperture 2 is simply my favorite photo editing and photo management tool. I'm not a professional photographer, I don't even have a high-end DSLR -- just a tiny 8 megapixel Nikon that fits in my purse or the back-pocket of my jeans -- but I still want my photographs to look their best. iPhoto is great, but I need more precision. Aperture 2 lets me fine-tune my images, whether from my digital camera or scanned in from some of my older SLRs, crop them, adjust noise levels and color and just generally make everything prettier. The Photo Book I made for my mom for Mother's Day this year, using Aperture 2, was amazing and brought tears and smiles to both of my parents' faces. Their reaction was worth far more than the price of the software.

MarsEdit

Although I can't really use it for most of my WIN blogging, MarsEdit is the tool I use to publish to any of my other sites. My personal site runs on WordPress, and while I love the software, I detest its write interface. I know plenty of people like it, I just don't like composing everything in a web form. MarsEdit's Preview mode is a great way to see how something will look before it's published, whether I use HTML or Markdown or Textile. If I need to edit an old entry, I don't have to worry about sifting through the "visual" or "code" view, inadvertently breaking something if I change a URL. Integrating media from Flickr or uploading new images is seamless. MarsEdit just makes my life easier.