Author: Blancer

These days, there are a vast number of apps that aim to help you handle your tasks and get things done. Most of them, however, have far too many features that nobody would ever use, and cost too much for the ordinary consumer. People don’t need a huge interface full of icons, they just want a quick way to jot down their tasks for the day.

Todoozle could well be the solution. With a simple and intuitive interface, it couldn’t be easier to use. But does too much simplicity compromise its functionality, or is less really more? Read on to find out.

Getting Started

Todoozle is only available on the Mac App Store, so your installation process is very easy – Just click the “Buy” button, and it’ll hop right into your dock. Open the app, and you can get straight into adding tasks. There’s no need to go through any tutorial, introduction or help, everything is dead easy – You’re not going to get much more minimal than this.

Interface

If there’s one good thing I can say about this app, it’s that it has a great interface. With something simple like this, the designer doesn’t need to worry about fitting all kinds of icons and buttons in, and they can focus on how it looks and feels.

Laid out in a simple vertical stack of tasks and input fields, it feels very intuitive – You know exactly where everything is, and there’s no chance of finding a hidden feature anywhere.

You can also choose from four different themes in Preferences, all beautifully designed, and which feel like they fit into the OS X style perfectly. Which style you decide is up to personal choice (after experimenting, I found the default “Todoozle” theme the nicest), but whichever one you go for, you won’t be disappointed.

Organising Tasks

As with pretty much everything in this app, adding and organising tasks is very straightforward – Simply type your task into the “What do you need to do?” field, hit enter, and you’re done. You might want to disable the sounds in Preferences, as a sound every time you enter a task can get repetitive, and, quite frankly, very irritating.

You can organise a task into different categories, which is also very easy. Pull up the Categories window and add as many categories as you need. It would have been nice to just see the Categories appear in a tab, or sliding out, as opposed to a separate window, as having loads of windows open can make it hard to find the one you need.

It’s not all that quick to put something into a category. It would have been nice to just drag a task into the category to assign it to that category. Even a simple drop-down menu would have been nice.

What you have to do instead is right-click, and you’ll be given a list of all your categories when you hover over “Assign Category”. This isn’t hard, but it can be a little time-consuming if you have to do it in bulk!

You can view your individual categories, which is nice, but there’s no way to see all your tasks organised by category. A failure to be able to add a colour to a task means that it can be pretty hard seeing what task is in what category quickly, especially if your categories have a similar number of letters (“Home” and “Work”, for example). In short, sorting your tasks is pretty much useless in Todoozle.

When you’ve completed a task, just tick the box to the left of it, and you’re done. It won’t remove tasks when you’ve done them, so you’ll have to clear the completed to-dos every once in a while (which isn’t too hard – Just hit Shift-Command-Backspace).

Is “Minimal” Just Not Enough?

Sometimes, you want something simple, and too many features just becomes hard to handle. But there’s a thin line between “Minimal” and “Feature-less”. Todoozle is missing a few features which would be very much appreciated.

The first is simple – Adding notes to a task. More often than not, one line isn’t enough to detail everything you need to remember about a certain task. If I want to phone Steve to tell him about a meeting, I need to be able to access his phone number, the time, date, and location of the meeting too – “Phone Steve” just isn’t enough.

Secondly, and a very important feature in my eyes, is recurring tasks. If I check my e-mail one day, chances are I’ll want to do it the next day too. But having to enter “Check e-mail” every day is more effort than checking my e-mail.

The third feature that has yet to be added is a dealbreaker for me – a lack of cross-platform support and synchronisation. I don’t spend my entire day at the same computer, so want to know what I have to do at all times during the day, on any device I have.

At the very least, an iPhone, and an iPad version would be handy. If building two whole new apps is too daunting, a web app would be acceptable – Anything where I can see what I need to do, anywhere.

Conclusion

I love a bit of minimalism – It makes everything much less complicated and easier to use. But when you have to sacrifice essential features in the name of “Clutter clearing”, then that’s gone too far.

Unfortunately, Todoozle has gone too far. If you want a completely minimal to-do experience, this isn’t bad – but at a price of $4.99, it’s just not worth it. I can think of at least five minimalist apps that do the same job, better, and for free. Personally, I’ll be sticking to Wunderlist!

It’s time for another “Ask the Editor” post today. A big thank you to everyone who sent in their questions – it’s great to have the chance to help you out with your Mac-related queries and quibbles.

Today I’ll be offering some advice about ripping dual-layer DVDs, whether it’s worth upgrading to Snow Leopard with the imminent release of Lion around the corner, and suggesting a few utilities for “window snapping” tools.

Read on for plenty of handy Mac knowledge, and I hope you’ll find most of it useful for your own situation as well!

Is there an easy way to rip a dual-sided DVD. I would like to back up a few of mine to my iTunes Library and Handbrake doesn’t seem to support dual-sided DVDs…

– Jonathan

The best way to approach this is most likely to rip each side individually to your Mac, and then combine the two video files together afterwards. I used to use a fantastic app called VisualHub for this, but unfortunately development has now ceased (and it’s tricky to figure out where to download it…)

Another option is to use the slightly more technically-focused ffmpegX. The interface and usability is unlikely to “wow” you, but it will get the job done.

There’s a tab within the app called “join” which should let you accomplish what you’re after:

The other way to do this is using Terminal, and the following section of the FAQ from the ffmpeg X website.

What is the best way to upgrade the memory and hard drive space of your Mac?

– AK

As you’d expect, this process differs for every Mac model. The best place to start would be with either of the extensive guides we’ve posted on this subject:

• How and Why to Upgrade Your Mac’s RAM
• How and Why to Upgrade Your Mac’s Hard Drive

Depending upon the type of Mac you have, this process can be remarkably easy, or impossible in a few cases. For most MacBook models, iMacs and Mac Pros, you’ll be absolutely fine. Apple provide decent guides for each of these – such as this one on upgrading your MacBook’s memory.

Certain Mac models (such as the MacBook Air) don’t allow you to upgrade the memory at all – it’s soldered on to the logic board. For these, it’s obviously important to consider your needs a little more carefully when customising your order at the outset!

I’d like a utility that will snap a window to the edges of the screen when they get near it – I haven’t found anything like this for the Mac.

– Phillip Jacobs

You’re in luck. Quite a few of these have popped up recently, and there are a several applications you can choose from. I’d recommend giving the following a try:

• Divvy – Divvy is an entirely new way of managing your workspace. It allows you to quickly and efficiently “divvy up” your screen into exact portions.
• SizeUp – SizeUp allows you to quickly position a window to fill exactly half the screen (splitscreen), a quarter of the screen (quadrant), full screen, or centered via the menu bar or configurable system-wide shortcuts (hotkeys).
• BetterSnapTool – BetterSnapTool allows you to easily manage your window positions and sizes by either dragging them to one of your screens corners or to the top, left or right side of your screen.

We’ve also posted a “head to head” review covering a couple of these apps, which you may find interesting.

I’m currently using Mac OS X Tiger and I’m noticing that more and more apps are discontinuing their support for my OS. Would it be better to buy a new Mac once Lion comes out or just purchase one now?

– Tim Smith

There’s rarely a perfect time to buy a new Mac, and you’ll almost always find that there’s something just around the corner that you could wait for – a hardware upgrade, OS release, or discount (to name a few!)

OS X Tiger will be starting to show its age a little by now, and you’ll be missing out on a handful of new features such as the Mac App Store that are really worth upgrading for.

We don’t yet have a specific release date for Lion, though it’s slated for sometime this summer. Apple has a history of holding back on major OS updates until they’re completely satisfied with the finished result, so it wouldn’t be unusual to see the release date slip towards Autumn rather than “just after WWDC” as some sources are predicting.

After a big OS update, Apple has historically offered recent hardware buyers the chance to upgrade their OS for a nominal fee (around $5 to cover shipping). This is worth considering as it’ll likely cover you just in case you upgrade your Mac within a month of the OS X Lion release.

If I were you, I’d consider Apple’s hardware release cycle to determine when the best time to upgrade is. Hardware is the most important thing to consider when splashing out $1,000+ on a new Mac, and you can always upgrade the OS at a later date if you decide to!

Didn’t See Your Question?

If you asked a question but didn’t have it answered today, don’t worry! I’ll do my best to get to it in a future week. I love a challenge, so feel free to ask some weird and wonderful questions…

If you’d like to submit your query, you can do so here:Online Form – AppStorm > Ask The Editor

Thanks for reading, and let me know if you agree or disagree with anything I mentioned today!

RSS — “Really Simple Syndication”. It’s the Web’s answer to staying up to date. There are a myriad of RSS readers out there, from native apps for nearly every platform imaginable, to web apps that promise cross-platform synchronization and consistent UIs. Today we’re going to look at an app that promises the best of both worlds — native and web.

If you’re familiar with the hip web scene, you’ve probably heard of Shaun Inman. He’s the guy behind Mint, pioneered sIFR, and recently started development on an epic iOS platform game called Mimeo. He also created a unique solution to the RSS Reader conundrum — Fever.

But today’s article isn’t about Fever. Fever is a web app, and you can read a nice review of it on our sister site Web.AppStorm. This is a review of the app Chill Pill for the Mac — a Cocoa-based Fever experience. Read on to see how it leverages OS X to heighten the Fever experience.

Chill Pill’s Purpose

Chill Pill is designed as a native app version for Mac OS X of the web app Fever. The developers sum things up quite nicely on the Chill Pill site:

Chill Pill allows you to enjoy Fever’s rich RSS experience while taking advantage of Cocoa and all of the other modern technologies in Mac OS X.

That’s a common goal, translating a web experience into one native to a certain platform. It’s been done with Google Reader in apps like Gruml and Reeder for OS X. But when that happens, you become stuck between two UI designs. Do you retain the conventions of the web app? Or do you switch to one more at home in the desktop environment?

In my opinion, you should utilize the native platform you’re building on to the full. Native apps have advantages that the web can only dream of at this point. And that creates a niche for your app to live in.

Features

Chill Pill can be found in the Mac App Store for $1.99. Right there are two important features.

The Mac App Store is the hottest place to buy software right now. It’s got the weight of Apple behind it, and it shows no signs of slowing down. Being on there is an important feature for new Mac apps today.

The $1.99 price is also a feature. While some may look at that as a worrying sign of downward pricing trends in the App Store, I see a different reason for it. Chill Pill adds an additional $2 price tag to Fever. Fever costs $30 alone.

Already that’s twice NetNewsWire, one of the most popular Mac RSS readers. Chill Pill knows that it has to hit impulse purchase price, and I think it has.

From the outset, there aren’t a ton of obvious features that Chill Pill offers, beyond Fever itself. Across the bottom of the screen is a toolbar of sorts. In the left hand corner are three buttons — add, remove, and settings. In the right hand corner is a search box.

While the add feed and remove feed buttons are new additions to Fever’s feature set, the settings and search are prominent features of Fever’s current UI, and are still in the main Fever area of Chill Pill.

It seems to me that if they want to be “taking advantage of Cocoa and all of the other modern technologies in Mac OS X,” then they would be replacing Fever’s features — or at least their UI — with their Cocoa counterparts, rather than duplicating functionality.

If there’s a way to access Settings through Chill Pill that is superior to the way Fever natively does it, then why leave Fever’s way intact?

So, on the surface, Chill Pill doesn’t seem to add much to the Fever experience. But cracking open the Preferences gives us some more to play with. You can set Chill Pill to open articles in their built-in article viewer, a Webkit-based in-app browser which is nice.

You can set Chill Pill to display a Growl notification when new items appear, and Chill Pill also offers the ability to apply custom user stylesheets to Fever. They say you can customize it however you want.

See, this begs the question to me, if they have this kind of control, why don’t the utilize it to customize Fever themselves, removing that duplicated functionality I mentioned earlier?

Where To Grow

Ok, so maybe I’ve been a little harsh on Chill Pill. But, everything I’ve said has been in good spirit. Desktop clients to web services really need to justify their existence if they’re going to take off.

Look at the Twitter client market: Twitterific’s UI keeps people coming back, TweetDeck’s power and customization draw people to it. If Chill Pill wants to succeed, it has to really do what it claims, leveraging all the modern technologies of Mac OS X.

They’ve started. Growl integration is nice. Custom stylesheets are cool too, especially for the clientele of such an app. But there’s so much room to grow.

Chill Pill needs to take a look at Fever’s weak points and strengthen them, while making its brightest features shine even more. Fever’s built on a unique concept of grabbing the “temperature” of the news you’re interested in. That is — and rightly should be — the first thing you see when you crack open Chill Pill.

But once you move past “What’s Hot”, the experience of reading individual blogs could be better. Perhaps they could take that as an opportunity.

I think the biggest thing Chill Pill needs to do is expand the Cocoa integration of the app. Rather than layering on some buttons at the bottom of Fever’s current UI, they need to make more of the UI Mac-like.

Create a better navigation area for starters. Turn as much as they can from web technologies into Cocoa UI elements. If they can present an even better UI than Fever’s original, then they’ll justify their reason for being here. And they’ll win themselves a lot of fans.

Wrap Up

The bottom line here is — I do like Chill Pill. I think for anyone who uses Fever on a regular basis, it’s a steal at $1.99.

The basic feature set that it currently sports isn’t enough to entice a wide enough array of customers though. If they come back with a strong update that integrates Cocoa UI elements and features into it, they could take the Fever community by storm and carve themselves a well-earned niche.