The Omni Show

Full transcript and show notes at theomnishow.omnigroup.com Reid Callan — Scout’s and Keiko’s human, basketball player, yeller-at-friends — joins the show to talk about OmniFocus, particularly the work this summer which is all about supporting new features in iOS 13. Reid started at Omni in 2015 as an intern, then left to finish his last year of school, and then returned to Omni as an employee — where he landed on the OmniGraffle team, before recently moving over to OmniFocus. When Reid’s not working on OmniFocus, he’s playing basketball. Or Destiny. You can find Reid — well, not Reid, but his dog Scout, a good and helpful boi — on Instagram at scout_tails. Some other people, places, and things mentioned: iOS 13 WWDC 2019 Jim Correia OmniFocus Siri Shortcuts Tim Ekl Git Subversion OmniGraffle Harvey Mudd College Kristina Sontag Liz Marley Curt Clifton Pomona College Claremont Consortium Robert Ludlum Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology Basketball Harlem Globetrotters Scout Keiko Portland Destiny Asteroids

Full transcript and show notes at theomnishow.omnigroup.com Anne Johnson talks about doing support, including phone support and social media, at The Omni Group. Anne is particularly adept at OmniPlan, but, like all our humans, she helps support all our apps. We discuss the challenges of arriving at common names for things when talking to customers — and of using words to describe a visual user interface. And along the way we talk about the Potatotron, The Big Lebotski, and OmniWarble. Anne, when she’s not at work, is a singer with the Puget Soundworks chorus, and she was formerly with Seattle Women’s Chorus. Does that mean we end the show with a song? We do! Some other people, places, and things mentioned: OmniFocus OmniPlan Aaron Kwong Interbay Capitol Hill, Seattle St. Louis Fayetteville, NC Fort Bragg South Lake Union Ballard Seattle Women’s Chorus Puget Soundworks Chorus Eric Lane Barnes Joey by Concrete Blonde

Full transcript and show notes at theomnishow.omnigroup.com OmniGraffle 7.11 for Mac is a very important update — it includes significant performance improvements. There’s no silver bullet for making an app faster: there is only figuring out which things are slow, figuring out how to speed those things up, figuring out how to measure progress — and then making sure no new bugs were added. It’s a lot of work! In this special episode we have two separate interviews. The first is with OmniGraffle engineers Rey Worthington and Shannon Hughes. The second is with Ken Case, CEO; Tim Wood, CTO; and Dan Walker, OmniGraffle PM. These interviews were recorded while the work was in progress but pretty far along. We talk about how we found the slowdowns, how we fixed them, and how we wrote tests to make sure we know we’re making OmniGraffle faster.

Full transcript and show notes at theomnishow.omnigroup.com Jim Rowland — whose career has included driving frigates, placing things in Earth orbit, and graduating from both the Naval Academy and law school — is, to the best of everyone’s knowledge, not related to Kevin Rowland of Dexys Midnight Runners, and he won’t suggest, but should, that it’s time we stopped asking him. Jim talks about testing OmniPlan and OmniFocus — and then we talk about his time catching satellites and, later, attending law school, taking the bar exam, and finding a home at Omni. You can find Jim on Twitter @usna92. Some other people, places, and things mentioned: Come On Eileen OmniFocus OmniGraffle OmniOutliner OmniDiskSweeper OmniWeb OmniPlan Greg Titus Tom Bunch OmniFocus for the Web Naval Academy Medal of Honor Wyoming Dick Cheney Malcolm Wallop Alan Simpson Top Gun Empire State Building Faraday Cage G.I. Bill Denver, CO Dungeons and Dragons Tacoma, WA Foghorn Leghorn Barney Fife Cleocatra Fergus (formerly Declan) Tiki drinkers Eve Online

Full transcript and show notes at theomnishow.omnigroup.com Ken Case, CEO; Tim Wood, CTO; and Tim Ekl, OmniFocus Engineer join the show to talk about what we learned at WWDC. What’s cool? What’s amazingly cool? What’s useful? And — the annual question — just how much work do we have to do this summer? Among the amazingly cool things are SwiftUI and other improvements to Swift and to Foundation. Work this summer will include things like supporting Dark Mode on iOS 13. And there’s plenty more to talk about — listen in for all the details. You can find Ken Case on Twitter @kcase. You can find Tim Wood (Tim the elder) on Twitter @tjw. And you can find Tim Ekl @timothyekl on Twitter or at timekl.com.

Full transcript and show notes at theomnishow.omnigroup.com Lanette Creamer — tester, speaker, cat enjoyer — joins the show to talk about testing OmniGraffle. Her previous experience includes testing Adobe InDesign, where she first met Liz Marley, then a tester at The Omni Group, when Liz presented an elaborate prototype iPad made from a cardboard box. Lanette gives talks and workshops at various conferences, and you may well have seen her speaking already. If not, you still have a couple chances later this year. One of her upcoming talks uses the metaphor of applying makeup: how much time do you have, and what can you do given that amount of time? What should you prioritize? You can find Lanette on the web on her Linkedin profile. You can also find her cat Navani on the web. And here too. Some other people, places, and things mentioned: OmniGraffle OmniFocus Bellevue, Washington Sumner High Bellingham Pagemaker Adobe InDesign Chris Parrish Liz Marley Kristina Sontag Renton, Washington Game of Thrones MTV Billy Idol Billy Joel Agile Conference Tesla Model S The Final Countdown Bon Jovi New Seattle Tunnel Navani, the kitten Navani, the character from The Stormlight Archive

Full transcript and show notes at theomnishow.omnigroup.com Tim Ekl — who is unburdened by a lengthy signature — is part of the team that makes OmniFocus. He’s been at Omni for seven years, and came here straight from college — where his professor was Curt Clifton, formerly of Omni and now at Apple. Tim helps organize Seattle Xcoders, and his hobbies include running servers and cheering for the Seattle Sounders. He is apparently on a quest to have a taste of every single beer in the world. We hope that this will keep him busy. You can find Tim on the web: @timothyekl on Twitter and on his website timekl.com. Some other people, places, and things mentioned: Jim Correia Evan McNulty OmniFocus WebDAV SQLite XML WWDC Tim Stringer Terre Haute, Indiana Linked list Omni open source Tim Wood Ken Case OmniBase Chicago Gus Mueller Mukilteo Shoreline Mac LC III Hal Mueller Liz Marley Shannon Hughes UIKonf David Hoang GitLab Docker Untappd Dirty Couch Brewing

Full transcript and show notes at theomnishow.omnigroup.com Tom Bunch has been working on OmniPlan for 13 years, and he’s been at Omni for 24 years — and in this episode he reminisces (dryly, because that’s Tom for ya) about the old days as employee #9. We also talk some tech stuff — like what happens to your brain after you’ve switched to automatic reference counting? — and then we get into counting virtual salmon, rock climbing, and woodworking. You can find Tom on the web @tbunch on Twitter. Some other people, places, and things mentioned: Greg Titus Rey Worthington Omni Roadmap 2019 Ken Case Tim Wood Automatic Reference Counting (ARC) Abraham Lincoln Molly Reed Capitol Hill University Village Interbay South Lake Union NeXTstation NeXTcube NeXT OS Wil Shipley WebObjects Objective-C Java Cocoa Java Düsseldorf Mark-and-sweep University of Washington Center for Quantitative Sciences Columbia River Normandy Park Burien Kennedy Catholic High School Gantt Chart Rock climbing Squamish Woodworking Yosemite Scuba diving Cook Islands Fiji

Full transcript and show notes at theomnishow.omnigroup.com Evan McNulty, a tester on the OmniFocus team, answers some listener questions, talks about testing OmniFocus for the Web (including API testing), and recounts his history from the Bay Area to here. He also talks about losing weight — now 235 pounds lost — and how that’s helped him. Hint: it’s not all about losing weight, and it never was. And finally we talk about his Safari Extension that helps people use smile.amazon.com. You can find Evan on the web @theevanshow on Twitter and at evanm.net. Some other people, places, and things mentioned: Rose Orchard Josh Hughes OmniGraffle Pacman Ryan Dotson Jim Correia OmniFocus Omni Sync Server OmniFocus for the Web VMWare Ubuntu Paw Stenciltown Macintosh SE/30 PowerMac 6100 Stanford OmniOutliner Comic Life Seattle Pacific University Ballard Technology Black Pixel Ubermind PGP Corporation Macworld Expo Fairmont Hotel Taco Bell Taco Time Tacos Chukis Loseit! Rumba Hotel Albatross Devil’s Reef Tiki episode SmileAllDay Safari Extension Acorn

Full transcript and show notes at theomnishow.omnigroup.com Anette Fuller joins the show to talk about storytelling, writing, and helping people — her passions. Her dog Conan does not join the show, but we’ve met him, and he’s awesome. Annette’s previous experience includes police dispatcher, suicide hotline volunteer, jewelry captain at a World Market, and a Masters of Fine Arts degree. She moved to Seattle from California — and she loves the rain! Take that, rain-nay-sayers. You can find Annette @rainyday_writer on Twitter. Some other people, places, and things mentioned: Rainbow Dash Ravenclaw My Little Pony Harry Potter Slytherin Gryffindor Hufflepuff World Market iFixIt SupportDriven Masters of Fine Arts Degree His Dark Materials Island of Misfit Toys Philip Pullman Jacqueline Carey Garth Nix Celtic Wicca Norse gods Neal Gaiman American Gods Good Omens Borders Books Jamba Juice Where to Park Your Broomstick Marvel Universe Scarlet Witch Thor Chris Hemsworth DC Universe Wonder Woman Captain Marvel Iron Man Iron Man 2 Robert Downey, Jr. Johnny Depp Joss Whedon The Cabin in the Woods Buffy the Vampire Slayer Conan (the best dog) Bernese Mountain Dog