As always, here are our picks of the best deals on the App Store for this week.
Happy downloading!
Notable
If you’re learning to play an instrument then knowing how to read sheet music is an absolute must. Notable, by the Swedish software developers Trivato (who have also written other quiz software such as Flagable and Vägmärkan), helps you learn the individual notes as well as the different clefs (treble, bass, alto and so on) with three different difficulty levels: easy, medium and hard. You can challenge your friends if you feel up for it and the app keeps a detailed statistics log, showing you what you need to work on!
Price: € 1.59 – free
Developer: Trivato
App Store link: Notable
SCOTutor for Mac
If you’ve just bought a new Mac and can’t be bothered trawling through all the user manuals to find out how to use it, then SCOTutor is for you. It helps you learn the basics for your Mac through a range of video tutorials which cover pretty much all subjects, from the Desktop and Dock on OS X to more complicated tasks such as sharing your Mac on a local network. The videos are embedded directly in the program, requiring no extra software and are available in several different languages, all with subtitles. For new Mac users (or existing ones who just want a quick reference guide), this program is indispensible.
The developers are also running the same promotional offer for SCOTutor for iPad, a similar program designed to help you to get to grips with your new iPad and iOS 5.
Price: € 9.99 – free
Developer: ScreenCastsOnline
App Store link: SCOTutor for Mac
iProperRest
iProperRest is great for students, programmers or anyone who spends a long time in front of their computer. It’s a simple little utility that reminds you to have a break every so often in order to rest your eyes. Parents can also set up the program (with a password) to ensure that their children don’t spend too long on the computer and don’t miss their bedtime, either!
Price: € 0.79 – free
Developer: Xu Danny (link in Chinese)
App Store link: iProperRest
DiskDiet
DiskDiet is one of quite a few different hard disk drive cleaners out there for OS X however none come quite as simple as this. This little utility will help you recover space on your disk by clearing out unused caches (such as Safari and Firefox), deleting unused language settings in programs (which are notorious space hoggers) and any temporary files not used by the system. Ever since I’ve started cleaning out my Mac regularly, I’ve recovered over 40 GB in space so if you’re close to filling up your drive, or you just fancy a spring clean, then go ahead and grab it whilst its free. The results can be surprising.
Price: € 1.59 – free
Developer: Tunabelly Software
App Store link: DiskDiet
Sequoia
We’ll finish off this week’s roundup with something a bit more fun – a game that is probably one of the simplest yet most addictive on the App Store. The idea of Sequoia (which calls itself the smallest game for Mac!) is to create coherent squares of four by four blocks without touching the edges. It’s simple, it’s free and it’s incredibly morish.
Price: € 7.99 – free
Developer: Julian Meinold
App Store link: Sequoia