A huge update to iThoughts for Mac and iOS is out today. We now get new map layouts, Scapple import, and complex relationship maps. The new relationship maps are quite nice looking and have a lot of formatting options. There’s a very good description of the feature on the iThoughts Web site. I’m just learning the value of summary and relationship maps but I already love the control that iThoughts provides over the details.

Interesting breakdown of political spending by tech companies. To understand Apple’s efforts at persuading legislators of various issues, I compiled a measure of political footprint which combines a company’s own federally registered lobbying expenditures from 2015 with the campaign contributions they made during the 2013-14 election cycle from their corporate PAC as well as any employees who made campaign campaign contributions (and listed their employer). This data comes from the Center for Responsive Politics.

From Apple: We have great respect for the professionals at the FBI, and we believe their intentions are good. Up to this point, we have done everything that is both within our power and within the law to help them. But now the U.S. government has asked us for something we simply do not have, and something we consider too dangerous to create. They have asked us to build a backdoor to the iPhone.

I’ve been a Mindmeister subscriber for a few years and a “Business” level subscriber since we started work on TapCellar for iOS. It’s one of my favorite collaboration tools because multiple people can work on the same map and the integrated task management is nice when you share a deadline. This is an extraordinary deal. Mindmeister is normally $120 per year for a “Pro” account so $35 for two years is a huge savings.

While splurging on a piece of rubber, I was pleasantly surprised by a new method of buying items through a web page. In addition to using the normal options of credit cards or Paypal, Cozy Industries also offers Apple Pay. After clicking the Apple Pay button I was asked to enter my cell phone number to receive a text message. The text message contained a link to open the purchase in an iOS app called Checkouts.

From AppAdvice: Instead of navigating the on-screen keyboard, the tvOS beta offers you one more way to enter your login information. You can dictate your username and password, one character at a time, which makes logging in much easier. The service works well for me, but you do have to speak slowly and clearly to avoid mixing up like-sounding letters such as “f” and “s.” This was a bewildering omission in the new AppleTV.

I’m still a big fan of Feedbin. Just when I think they are starting to coast they add something new and awesome. Now I can subscribe to email newsletters in my RSS reader. I really don’t understand the rise of email newsletters from the consumer side. I work very hard to keep things out of my email. Now that I can use RSS instead I’m much more likely to signup for some those listed in the Feedbin post.

Do you remember “Remember the Milk?” There was a time that I lived in their web and iOS apps. It was the best. Then it sat, relatively unchanged, for years while other apps leaped ahead or sprang into existence around them. Today is a bright new day for the service and all of its apps. The new service fills in most of the egregious gaps. Here’s just a taste: Sub tasks with their own due dates and tags Drag and drop assignment of tags, priorities and due dates Improved smart add with due date parsing START DATES Task sharing RTM has always nailed the advanced search operators so don’t let the cuteness fool you.

I have three primary reasons to use an Apple Watch.1 The first one is to tell time. The second one is to get notifications from my wife. The third reason is to talk to a little app called Drafts.2 The Apple Watch is not good at email. It’s never in sync with my phone and reading back my latest message through the watch is a long road to disappointment. It’s only moderately good at calendars, given the limited space to show a busy schedule.

Did you know you can long press on the zero key to access the degree symbol on iOS? Why would you? Who has the time to long press on 97 keys just to figure out how to access a the ‰ key on iOS? 1 Somehow we’ve become stuck in the old model of keys anchored to a fixed point on a keyboard. Long pressing on a virtual key and switching keyboard layouts has lost its novelty for me.