In OS X Snow Leopard, Apple renovated the age old Quicktime interface, replacing it with a newer version aimed at making the player more screen-estate conscious. Like all major changes there are many people who are unhappy with this. Here’s a shot of the new and old interfaces:

The new Quicktime X

The old Quicktime 7

Now, people are complaining about this that and the other in regards to the new interface. Personally, I like it, but I came up with this simple idea (used in other parts of OS X) to solve the issues people are having with the new interface:

Tah Dah. A tic tac in the top right hand corner; solver of everything and still rather minimalist. Appeals to those who need it, is easily ignored by those who don’t. Finder has it, Mail has it, and so do a large number of other Mac OS applications. In most cases, however, it just hides the app’s main menu bar. Nothing intuitive. In this instance, however, it would bring up this…

Quicktime X-7! Bringing back the older interface with a click of a button, so fans of the “controls underneath” look still get their fix. I think this would be a reasonable solution for most?

Evernote

Evernote, web-based note-clipper, is a cross-platform service that I use on a regular basis. It’s on my computer, my phone and the web, but one thing I don’t really know is what to do with it.
With useful features such as a webclipper, iSight note creation and so much more, I’m left with so many possibilities… It’s just that none of those features fit into my workflow, or at least not consciously.
One novel idea I had for using Evernote, however, was to log various settings for my guitar effect pedals. Using the photo, sound recording and text features, I’m able to create a note that gives me a one-stop catalogue of sounds I like, with an audible preview to remind me if I have the right sound, and photo to help me put the dials in the correct position.

Evernote for iPhone

However, a problem with this is that I can’t use it properly on my iPhone, due to the mobile version’s limitations, such as not displaying tables correctly… which probably lies partially within the OS’s limitations, and Evernote’s lack of resources.

Another thing I’ve been using it for recently is to keep track of what I have to do, with checkboxes for me to know what I have and haven’t done. This keeps me on top with my work, and also lets me see what else I can work on when I hit a roadblock.

It’s very flexible and I urge everyone to try it out. But one thing I really want to know is how other people use it. With so much you can do with it, I know I’m not using it enough. But I plan to make an effort in order to learn, as it’s a very promising piece of software!

Evernote