If you care, you share …
Apple User Group folk are sharing people, so OMUG will update and share monthly what is impressing us in the categories below. Not everyone may agree with our picks, but we just know something below will tickle your fancy. If you know of a “must have/listen/watch/read” source that you can’t live without, please let us know in our Comments section to this article.
Podcasts:
Beaver Tales — If you are an Oregon State sports fan, you had better be subscribing to this great podcast by Josh Worden. Josh is an OSU alum and sports broadcaster/journalist, and he has an engaging style as he adds interesting Beaver athletes (and others) to each episode. He sets his podcast purpose into a Before & After mode: Most guests are given highlights from their OSU careers, but Josh wants to know what each is doing in post-OSU life, too. Josh is powered by lots of ice cream.
Remarkable People, by Guy Kawasaki — Longtime Apple fans know Guy Kawasaki. And Guy was always a friend to Oregon MUGs. Kawasaki feels his best work is this impacting podcast where he interviews a wide spectrum of people in a wide spectrum of careers. His first guest? Jane Goodall. Did he interview Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak? You bet. A recent episode featured 9 different experts in various fields on the topic of the pandemic and the value of vaccines. This is a no-brainer, subscribe. Oh. And you will laugh, too.
Explore Oregon — By Zach Urness and others from the Statesman-Journal (Salem, Oregon) newspaper staff. Most NWers are the outdoors type, in a big way. After all, the Great NW offers some of the most amazing and diverse outdoor blessings. Zach does a great job of offering what he feels are the best trails to hike or bike, best camping sites, best state parks, and he takes you along. You don’t have to own a plaid shirt to subscribe, just a love of Oregon’s great outdoors and resources to explore.
Books:
What we are reading right now:
Audiobooks:
What? You are still reading traditional books? Don’t you know how many trees they had to chop down to … Oh, never mind. We love old school books, too, but we love kicking back and just listening sometimes. Whether you get your audiobooks from Audible or Apple’s Books (or other places), it’s time to re-load and tune in:
Becoming Steve Jobs
Watching (movie, documentary or keynote):
Love Notes to Newton (documentary) — available here.
The trailer on YouTube:
Apps (iOS) impressing us:
Please note that pasted in links to apps maybe iPad-specific or iPhone-specific, but most of the time developers make ’em for both. If, for some reason, a link doesn’t work, chances are you can just do a Search in the App Store and find the recommended app by Title Name. Enjoy!
Portal
We love Portal — a beautiful scenic locations immersion with high-quality sound from points around the world. What hooked us? They have 2 portals from Oregon included! The bigger the screen the better, so it’s gorgeous on iPad (they said it’s coming to TV in the near future):
Apple Watch apps:
Need more creative or productive Watch faces, curated and posted by Watch users? Then get the free BuddyWatch:
iPhone-iPad Widgets:
HiCoffee
Hmmm. Not sure if we will keep this category, or category title, because most Widgets are just children of iOS apps. Mull, mull, mull. In the meanwhile, here’s a goody if you are mild to serious coffee drinker — HiCoffee, a caffeine tracker app (iOS app, Watch, Widget)! Not only do you get reports and charts, you get to see instantly a bar graph indicating how long those 3 cups of coffee will saturate your body, and let you see when the caffeine effect wanes so you don’t affect your bedtime, sleep quality:
