Category: Mac

One of the many perks of owning a Mac is the fact that they require so little maintenance to keep running smoothly. Our Mac isn’t infallible, however, and they are still built from the same types of components as any other computer, meaning that hardware faults can potentially occur. In these instances, it’s best to try and find out if something is wrong before it’s too late, saving you the hassle of unexpected downtime.

Micromat’s Techtool Pro has been around for many years, with Apple even offering a variant called Techtool Deluxe as part of their AppleCare Protection Plan to Mac customers. Their latest iteration, Techtool Pro 7, is a comprehensive troubleshooting app with some powerful diagnostic features that is a must-buy for any technician, though this may not be the case for the average user.

Testing, 123

Straight away, Techtool Pro provides information about your Mac, its processor and connectivity options through the use of gauges. I can’t help but find the interface for Techtool Pro a little cumbersome. While these gauges are pretty, they don’t really serve any purpose as the numbers they report are fixed and aren’t going to vary yet a gauge does give the impression that these numbers might vary. Additional information about your Mac is also provided, including information gathered from the serial number (such as build location) and what storage is attached.

The main focus of Techtool Pro is with its range of tests that you can run on your Mac to ensure that both hardware and software are running well. Each individual test, from memory to graphics and, most importantly of all, your hard drive, can be run individually or you can run them all consecutively by using the Check Computer option.

Each option is clearly described, both the purpose of the test and what it involves. The software is also smart enough to know if you have multiple hard drives attached and will automatically include additional tests for any external storage you may have connected.

Toolbox

If Techtool Pro does find any issue with your Mac, it includes a comprehensive tool kit that can attempt to repair most software related issues. Obviously, if it finds any hardware issues then you’ll need to head to the nearest Apple Store pronto, but otherwise Techtool Pro may save you the bother if it is something that it can repair.

The vast majority of tools it offers relate to the file system and data on your hard drive. While Disk Utility can perform similar tests and repairs, Techtool Pro includes far more in-depth options. There are options to defragment the hard drive and repair and rebuild the system volume. Over the years, Techtool Pro has helped me resurrect Macs that, due to a corrupt volume, would have only been repairable by wiping the hard drive and reinstalling Mac OS X.

It isn’t just repairing and finding issues that it can do, Techtool Pro also offers some useful options such as whole disk cloning and, perhaps more useful, an option to create a bootable disk for your Mac should anything happen to your Mac’s default startup disk. This eDrive provides a fallback in case anything happens to your Mac’s bootable volume.

Enhanced Protection

Techtool Pro isn’t just about running periodic checks, a helper app is available that will always run in the background to provide a more proactive way of informing you about any potential issues. The helper can provide you with an alert once your Mac’s storage space drops below a certain amount and regularly back up your directory structure so that it can be restored if a software update goes wrong.

But, by far the best feature of this is its data recovery feature by way of something called Trash History — effectively a form of undelete. Once enabled, it will “remember” what you had in the Trash for a certain amount of time after it has been emptied so that if you realise a few days later that you inadvertently deleted an important document, Techtool Pro provides a way of restoring them.

Using both Trash History and regularly backing up our directory structure allows Techtool Pro to potentially recover lost data. It’s far easier, and more advisable, to simply keep a working backup and data recovery services should never be relied upon, but it’s good to have the peace of mind that Techtool Pro is able to perform a salvage operation if your data is lost.

Technicians, IT managers and server administrators will love the background features of Techtool Pro and, should you want to run it on a server, it includes the option to configure email notifications if any errors are detected. Hardware issues on a server are a very big deal and if you’re responsible for a number of Mac OS X servers then knowing about a problem before it becomes serious can potentially save you a lot of time and money.

Conclusion

Techtool Pro is one of the most popular diagnostics and troubleshooting apps available for the Mac. Its wide range of features and ability to notify you of problems before things get too serious make it a great tool and a must-buy for technicians and system administrators alike. For the average Mac user, however, it’s need is far less compelling. With the introduction of Internet Recovery and OS X Recovery, a feature introduced with Mac OS X Lion to boot your Mac if it runs into trouble, Techtool Pro is probably overkill for your needs.

We’d like to say a special Thank you! to our weekly sponsors from September for sponsoring our site and for the great apps they make. If you would like to feature your app on our site with an advertisement, be sure to check out our available slots on BuySellAds or register for a weekly sponsorship for your app.

If you haven’t already checked out our the great apps that sponsored our site last month, be sure to check them out now!

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Amazon jumpstarted the eBook revolution with its Kindle devices and companion apps for every platform, and Apple’s kept up with the trend with its polished iBooks apps for iOS. The Mac has lagged behind mobile devices with eBooks reading, but there’s at least been the Kindle app and a number of half-way decent apps for DRM-free eBooks.

This year, though, that’s all changing. There’s the new Clearview that’s a very nice app for DRM-free eBooks, and Apple’s finally bringing iBooks to the Mac with OS X Mavericks. And for tech eBooks, the new Safari Flow web app makes it easier than ever to learn from eBooks without spending all day reading. It’s an exciting time for eBook fans.

That’s why we’re wondering how many eBooks you read per month. I tend to read at least 2 or so a month, more some months, but how about you? Leave your answer in the poll, then let us know if you’re excited about iBooks coming to the Mac this year in the comments below.

OS X is already powerful by itself, and it’s packed with a lot of built-in apps that can help you accomplish everyday life tasks. However, it’s only when you’re using something like Alfred, LaunchBar or Quicksilver that you actually unleash the full potential of your machine. Things that are already simple on your Mac turn into lightening-fast tasks with these apps.

Though Quicksilver has been available for 10 years, it’s been kept a bit too much under the radar compared to its alternatives like Alfred. By popular demand, here’s our in-depth dive into the original app that puts “Mac OS X at your fingertips”. Let’s give this gem of an app the love it deserves.

This article is the first of a new series we’ll be running about Quicksilver that will help you get the most out of this extremely feature-packed — thus maybe a bit overwhelming — program.

What is Quicksilver, Anyway?

There are several ways to describe Quicksilver. You could say it is a launcher. I don’t like this word, though, because it implies that it’s only useful to launch apps. If you’re not familiar with Quicksilver, your default reply would then be: the built-in Spotlight already does that. But Quicksilver does way more than that. As it is humorously put on the official website:

“Saying that Quicksilver is an application launcher is like saying a car is a drinks holder.”

Another way of describing it, to people already familiar with this kind of apps, is: Quicksilver is the only powerful and totally free alternative to the young-but-subject-to-hype Alfred or the veteran LaunchBar. I would personal say that Quicksilver is the best way to do everything on your Mac with only your keyboard.

As these translated words from Lao-Tze, which also used to be in the Quicksilver ‘About’ window, say:

Act without doing:
work without effort.
Think of the small as large
and the few as many.
Confront the difficult
while it is still easy;
accomplish the great task
by a series of small acts.

That just about sums up what Quicksilver is all about. For the curious, Quicksilver icon is based on the alchemical symbol for mercury, the element that’s otherwise known as quicksilver.

A bit of history

If you think Google held the record for having the longest software betas, think again. Quicksilver development started June 29th, 2003, by ‘Alcor’, aka Nicholas Jitkoff from Blacktree. It remained a free but proprietary software until 2006, the year Google hired Nicholas to work on a project largely inspired by Quicksilver: Google’s Quick Search Box. Nicholas thus took the decision to make Quicksilver open-source, the code being first hosted on Google Code before a shift to Github in 2009. From then on and as far as I can remember, though beta versions remained remarkably stable, development almost halted. In fact, 2009 was the year almost everyone thought Quicksilver had died.

But just like a phoenix, Quicksilver never really dies. As of the end of 2010, a collective of developers known as the QSApp team decided to launch a new home for Quicksilver on the web, simply named QSapp.com, teasing the relaunch on their blog with some mystic posts. Finally, as both a final point and the beginning of a new, epic journey, Quicksilver got out of its almost 10-year long beta with the release of 1.0 version on March 25th, 2013. As I write these lines, version 1.1 has been released a few weeks ago. It’s finally come back to reclaim its spot as the OS X launcher tool of record.

How quicksilver Works

There is no better way to learn Quicksilver than just start using it. It’s flexible enough to let you do things the way you want. However, understanding a few basic concepts might help you find your way through this incredibly powerful and versatile tool. If you want to go deeper and unleash the full potential of Quicksilver, I strongly encourage you to dig into the manual or the wiki (with a new version coming soon).

Basically, doing something with Quicksilver involves 4 quick steps:

1. Open Quicksilver with a keyboard shortcut of your choose (I use CMD+Space, which is Spotlight’s default shortcut)
2. Type to Search
3. Tab to Act on
4. Enter to Execute

Before being able to find something with Quicksilver, you first need to make sure it is in its catalog. Quicksilver does not use Spotlight indexing. The good thing is you can browse folders from Quicksilver even if they’re not in the catalog, and then adding them to the catalog can be done from within the app itself. With that bit of setup behind, it’s time to dig into the app itself.

Fuzzy search

Once the Quicksilver window is opened, start typing to match something you want to use. This can be a file, a folder, an application, an external hard drive, a browser bookmark, the name of a contact, a mathematical operation, or just some text. While you’re typing, the powerful fuzzy matching algorithm of Quicksilver both starts to match and offers a default action for what is being matched.

Say you want to reach for your Downloads folder. Start by typing “down” and Quicksilver will both select your Downloads folder in the first pane on the left and offers the default “Open” action in the second pane on the right. If you really wanted to Open your Downloads folder, you just have to press Enter and you’re good to go: your Downloads folder opens in a new Finder window.

If you just type “do” and wait for a few seconds, you’ll notice a drop-down list appearing underneath the left pane. This gives you the choice to browse all results matching “do” including the Downloads folder, but also, for instance, the Dock preference pane from System Preferences, your Documents folder, your Dropbox folder, the Dropbox application, and so on.

Getting the Dock, Downloads, Documents when typing “do” is no surprise. Getting Dropbox, though, is a little bit more than what you probably expect. This is where the magic of Quicksilver and its fuzzy search engine kicks in: you can match any letters from any word. You might type “dwn” to reach your Downloads folder. Or you could type “db” or even “dx” for your Dropbox. If you’re so inclined, you might even type “xd” to reach Dropbox — though, in this special case, you will need to teach Quicksilver first, because the x is not before the d in the “dropbox” word.

This fuzzy search thing is the first example of the incredible flexibility of Quicksilver. Also, Quicksilver learns from your habits, and the more you use something, the less you’ll have to type next time to reach it. For instance, after typing “down” for your Downloads folder a couple of times, chances are the next time you type “do” or even just “d”, your Downloads folder will come first.

A few keys to do almost everything

Here are the few keys you might want to use:

• Down arrow lets you browse the result list for the active pane.
• Tab navigates to the next pane (and consequently, Shift-Tab to the previous one).
• Right arrow lets you browse through what is selected in the pane: if it’s a folder, browse its files and subfolders; if it’s a contact, get contact details; if it’s a text file, browse its content, line by line; if you’re in the action pane, display a list of other possible actions, etc.
• Enter will execute what Quicksilver is showing in all of its pane.

The 3-pane Thing

In most cases, Quicksilver interface will show two panels:

1. a left pane containing something you want to act on,
2. and a right pane corresponding to what you want to do with what is selected in the left panel.

In some cases, however, you will see a third pane. There are actually three kinds of things you will use in Quicksilver:

• Objects you want to act on are in the first, left pane
• Actions to be taken on objects are in the second, middle pane
• Arguments needed by some actions are in the third, right pane

Here are a few example cases where Quicksilver shows a third pane. Suppose you want to open a file with an application that is not the default one, say open an image with Pixelmator. In the left pane, start typing to match the file, press Tab, then start typing to match “Open With” instead of the default “Open” action. As the “Open With” action is selected in the second pane, Quicksilver automatically adds a third pane. Press Tab again to put the focus in this third pane and start typing “pix”. Once Pixelmator is selected in the third pane, press Enter, and your file will be opened with it.

This is quite a mouthful to describe, but for real you do this with just a couple of keystrokes. Try [whatever letters match your image name here], Tab, “ow” (for open with), Tab again, and finally “px” then Enter. Done.

Another example of the third pane is when you want to send a file to someone by email:

1. In the first pane, search for the file,
2. in the middle pane, type whatever you want to match “Email (Compose to…)” (try “emc” for instance),
3. and finally, in the rightmost pane, type a few letters to match the name of the contact you want to send this file to, then press Enter.

This way, Mail opens up with a new Compose window, where the selected file is already added as an attachment and the email address of your contact already filling up the “To:” field.

What makes Quicksilver special

You should now have a really quick overview of what you can do with Quicksilver. However, if you’re a frequent Alfred or LaunchBar user, you might be tempted to think that Quicksilver offers nothing new. That would completely overshadows that the free Quicksilver app is incredibly more flexible and complete than its two commercial counterparts (Alfred requires you to buy its PowerPack to unlock all of its power user features). Below you will find some of the ways you can customize Quicksilver to suits exactly your needs.

Flexibility in using the app

Let’s get back to our second example of the third pane of Quicksilver: sending a file to a contact. Actually, with Quicksilver, you can either:

• search for the file in the left pane, choose the “E-mail to… (Compose)” in the middle pane, and select a contact in the third pane
• or you could do it the other way round: first search for the name of the contact in the left pane, choose the email action in the middle pane, and search and select a file to send them to in the third pane.

You choose the way you want to do things, you don’t have to learn how Quicksilver works: it simply adapts to your workflow, your way of thinking.

Also, although Quicksilver is designed so that you never need to reach your mouse or trackpad anymore, you’re not forced to abandon it completely. You can for instance search for a file with Quicksilver then drag it to an icon in the Dock. Or else, drag something onto Quicksilver interface to select it in the first or third pane. Again, flexibility is one of the key aspects of this app.

Full UI customization

Quicksilver’s interface is completely customizable. This means two levels of personalization:

• You can choose the colors and transparency levels of all panes, texts and lists
• but you can also choose a completely different interface if you don’t like the default “Bezel” one: there are interfaces for everyone, from the sophisticated Cube with its 3D rolling dice effect to the minimalistic, pre-Lion Spotlight-like “Flashlight” interface, to name just a few. And of course, for each of these interfaces, you can customize colors as well.

HotKey Triggers

If you’re not satisfied enough by the time Quicksilver already makes you save, you can speed up things further by adding “HotKey Triggers”. Want to use the Cmd-Alt-Shift-D shortcut to open your Downloads folder in a new Finder window, whatever app you’re currently using? This is possible.

I’ll get into details with Hotkey Triggers in another article.

Plugins

You can add new features to Quicksilver by installing plugins, which is as easy as ticking a box in the Preferences. In fact, when you run the app for the very first time, the setup assistant even suggests some recommended plugins to install right from the start.

I’ll cover what you can do with some plugins in much more details in forthcoming articles. In the meantime, here’s a short, non exhaustive list of apps whose features can be accessed within Quicksilver (it’s up to you to install any or all of the 100+ plugins available, all for free):

• iTunes
• Mail
• your favorite web browser (Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Opera…)
• iPhoto
• Calendar
• Calculator
• Terminal
• 1Password
• BBEdit

Another plugin lets you perform web searches with any search engine. With another one, you get access to Clipboard history, etc. And with the User Interface plugin, you can even access the menus and windows of running applications. As you can see, this app has many tricks under its sleeves; in fact, when using Quicksilver, your trackpad might accumulate dust more than you expect it to.

Text Mode

Quicksilver is also, as far as I know, the only app in its category that gives you a real, full-fledged text box: it’s called the Text Mode (and you can open Quicksilver with the Text Mode ready using a Hotkey Trigger, for instance).

So, Are You Convinced Yet?

You’ve just get a tiny overview of the incredible sense of power you get when using Quicksilver. Covering everything about Quicksilver will require other articles, as it can show several layers of complexity (you can for instance chain or even combine commands).

The only advice I’d like to give you right now is: just give Quicksilver a try. It’s free, powerful, and utterly flexible. What else? And if you fall in love with this wonderful tool, you might even donate to support its development.

Have you ever tried Quicksilver? If not, what’s keeping you from trying it? What would you like to be covered in the next weeks? Please let us know in the comments!

‘Tis the season for design-friendly web tools, with Google making a free Web Designer app and Hype 2 making it simpler than ever to create beautiful HTML5 animations. But several weeks ago, a preview of an app caught my eye with its attempts to make normal web design simple for anyone with an eye for design: Macaw.

Advertised as an app with the flexibility of an image editor but designed for making clean CSS and HTML code, Macaw looks like the web design tool we’ve all been waiting for. It’s the simplicity that tools like Frontpage advertised years ago, but with the clean, modern code that otherwise would take hours in a text editor. Pulling off such an auditions project, though, isn’t so simple, which is why they started a Kickstarter campaign yesterday to fund their efforts to make Macaw and bring it to the Mac and PC.

Macaw is designed around graphical design, and built for today’s responsive web. You’ll build sites on a fluid canvas automatically, and Macaw will make sure everything works for you automatically. It’ll let you reuse elements across your design — like layers in Photoshop — and changes in one element will replicate across the other copies of that element in your design. It’ll then turn your design idea into clean code that’s easy to edit, and even give you a style guide for your site based on your design.

Apparently we’re not the only ones who wanted a simple way to design beautiful websites like this, because the project has raised just shy of $500 less than their Kickstarter goal of $75k in just one day of fundraising. That means Macaw will almost definitely be made, and we can’t wait to try it out.

For now, though, if you want a part in building Macaw, go check out their Kickstarter campaign where you can make sure you’ll get an early copy of Macaw with a $99 backing, or some other project swag with smaller (or larger) amounts.

Macaw is going after the same market that Adobe Muse is designed for, but we’re sure hoping their team can do even better than Adobe’s Muse. It’ll be exciting to see — hopefully by January ’14!

When you’re a small business or freelancer, keeping track of invoices and estimates ensures an easier time for both you and the taxman. What’s more, poorly designed invoices can deter clients, both existing and potential, from future business. While Pages and Microsoft Word are certainly ways to create better looking invoices, there are more suitable apps available. One such app is Billings Pro, a tremendously popular app that takes invoicing to a whole other level. However, the app is subscription-based, something that isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.

Enter GrandTotal, an app that offers much of the same functionality at a one-off cost. Despite its rather bland interface and seemingly overwhelming array of options, GrandTotal isn’t your traditional invoice generator. It’s a fully fledged invoice and client management app that not only creates some great looking paperwork but lets you keep track of payments and outstanding balances, as well as managing an inventory.

Overview

GrandTotal starts by displaying a summary of your invoices, providing information regarding any outstanding invoices and a running total for the month, quarter and the year of income generated. Provided you create all of your invoices within the app, you can easily see how your business is doing.

A comparison for this time last year is also displayed to show you how well business is doing year on year. There doesn’t appear to be any way of changing the scale so if you want a monthly comparison rather than annual one, it isn’t possible.

Open invoices are all grouped together so you can see who owes what, as well as easily mark them as paid once you’ve received payment.

There are some reporting tools that provide excellent ways of breaking down your revenue. A very useful tool is a way to monitor payment behaviour and, provided you’re on the ball with updating your invoice status whenever payment is received, you can see an average of how long it takes for each client to pay you. This may not sound like much but if you’re continually sending reminders to clients who take their time in paying, it can certainly help when renegotiating terms.

Client Invoicing

As invoices are assigned to clients, GrandTotal provides a client management function, allowing you to add clients manually or from Mac OS X’s Contacts app. These clients can then have unique criteria configured, such as payment terms, tax conditions and even which template to use.

Each client will list any documents that have been associated, such as estimates and invoices, providing an easy means of tracking a client’s history.

Projects can be associated within the client, providing a means to keep regular clients easily organised. Projects can’t have any custom settings beyond a title and note, so if certain projects have different payment terms or requirements then you’ll need to make sure to keep a note of them separately.

For each client, a new invoice or estimate can be added either directly or under a project that is associated with them.

These invoices can be printed, emailed or simply saved as a PDF. Criteria such as payment terms and invoice number can be added at the last stage and once an invoice is printed or mailed out, it becomes active and open, ready for you to mark it as paid for when you receive payment.

Catalog

Editing these invoices are very easy and you can either add items manually or make use of the Catalog feature that lets you add items to an inventory. There’s no stock control but if you’re often providing consulting services, it can save you a lot of time by simply drag and dropping instead of typing it in every time.

Each item can have a range of options customised to suit, including additional fields for options such as size or weight.

Layouts

One of GrandTotal’s best features is its powerful template editor for invoices and estimates. Unlike other apps that require some knowledge of HTML and CSS, GrandTotal offers a true drag-and-drop editor. Editing templates is almost as easy as putting something together in Pages, with elements easily placed and dragged wherever they need to be. Additional elements, from PayPal buttons to QR codes for bank information, can be included — something that other apps still don’t yet provide.

There are a number of built-in templates that can be used as a starting point and each can be used for specific invoices or clients. This can be very useful if you’re managing two businesses simultaneously or need to include different banking information for each client.

Shortcomings

GrandTotal has a lot of options to customise and the app felt, at times, overwhelming. It’s an easy-to-use app but you’ll need to spend some time going through all of the preferences and options to ensure it’s customised to suit your needs.

In terms of the app’s interface, it’s rather dull. Granted, it certainly looks like any decent Mac OS X app but the lack of any colour makes the app seem rather grey and a little bit boring. There are animations of each window sliding when you select another section of the app which is nice at first, but become pretty irritating after a while.

Conclusion

For anyone looking for an invoicing and client management solution for the Mac, I’d highly recommend GrandTotal. While it may not be the most glamorous app, it is extremely customisable and has an array of powerful features that would work for almost anyone. The ability to easily edit invoice templates, manage an inventory and keep track of your clients make it a serious contender to some of the big names in the same genre.

Thanks to an expansive set of features, robust security, a comprehensive list of browser extensions, and cross-platform compatibility, 1Password has become a powerhouse security app. We all know that we should be using unique, complex passwords for all the sites and services we use, but remembering them can be as frustrating as it is impractical. 1Password, as the name implies, has helped users create and securely store login information while only requiring that you remember a single password.

After releasing 1Password 4 for iOS earlier this year, AgileBits has updated their original Mac app to v.4 with new features and a refined interface. In terms of the number of times I access it on a daily basis, 1Password is undoubtedly my most-used app, and I have been anxiously awaiting this update. The wait has been well worth it.

1Password, Revisited

Before we look at what’s new, let’s take a moment to review what 1Password is. When you create a password online for a site or service, that password is frequently the only line of defense for your data against hackers and other nefarious agents. Using the same password on all of those sites means that if one password is compromised, then so too are all of your logins. Strong passwords are not only full of a mix of letters, numbers, and symbols that make them hard to guess, but they are also unique from each other.

1Password acts as way to not only create random and more secure passwords, but also as an encrypted database to store all of them so you don’t have to memorize anything, (except, that is, for the password you use to access the app). In addition to logins, you can store anything you want, like credit card and bank information, secure notes, and much more. Along with a great set mobile apps and extensions for the web’s most popular browsers, 1Password ensures that you always have access to the login information you need. And you can rest assured that your data will stay safe, as 1Password 4 now uses 256-bit Authenticated Encryption and other major security enhancements to keep your data safe in the post-Snowden world.

Interface Refinements

For the most part, users who upgrade won’t encounter a redesign that comes with a steep learning curve. Most of the same information you had at your fingertips is still available, but a number of changes have been made to make the app feel more modern and in line with current design trends. You are still presented with a basic three-column tiered layout, with the main window displaying your currently selected login or secure note.

Much of the design is bigger and bolder, though. Graphics have been redesigned to be more detailed, and the list of logins in the second column now has a larger font and richer icons. The icon for the app itself has been redesigned, and now resembles the iOS version. The issues that I encountered with these new icons are not the developers’ fault, but I thought them worthy of mentioning.

As the icons are taken from the favicons on websites, they are generally not very high resolution. It would be nice if you could pick and choose what gets displayed, (or better yet, have 1Password automatically determine if an icon is at an acceptably-high resolution).

On the left, you still have folders (now called lists), tags, previously generated passwords, a category listing to organize things like bank accounts and WiFi passwords, and a trash can. Rebranding folders as lists is of little consequence, as the logins stored within each is still presented to you in the same fashion.

Perhaps my favorite interface improvement is the way that you can sort your logins. The previous version allowed you to create new columns in the same way as you would in Finder, and then click on that column’s header to sort in ascending or descending order. It worked fine, but 1Password 4 now fixes a problem I didn’t realize I had; I used to have a few columns configured, and that meant that I had to scroll horizontally to find columns that I wanted to sort by. Now, clicking on a new icon next to the search field pulls up a menu that integrates your choices.

The sorting advancements have carried over into the search function. In the search field, you can now access the search options feature, which allows you create more detailed parameters, similar to those found elsewhere in OS X. This means you can add any combination of specific search filters to help narrow results. Plus, finding what you’re looking for doesn’t even require opening the app.

The new menubar utility, dubbed 1Password Mini, offers quick access to some of the most important features, such as the password generator, search field, folders, and more. Having quick access to your “favorites” folder even makes the menubar app a bit like a quick bookmark launcher, as selecting a favorite loads the page and enters your credentials. It also makes password entry nicer in Chrome, where previous versions couldn’t let you launch a new site from 1Password directly from a new tab.

Other changes to the new main window are notable because of what was subtracted, rather than what was added. The previous version would clip a screenshot of the webpage for which your selected login was created. It was a neat feature, but in my experience, it was slow and unreliable. Apparently I wasn’t the only user with that experience, so they nixed the screenshots in lieu of richer website icons.

New Features

While most of the interface refinements are merely evolutionary, AgileBits has introduced a number of features that add an incredible degree of functionality and convenience. Perhaps the most substantial of these additions is the multiple vault feature. Whereas you once had one bucket in which to throw all of your logins, you can now create separate libraries.

As a basic example from the developers, you might choose to organize your logins by your work and personal life. Additionally, they recommend creating an archive vault to store logins that you don’t use anymore but aren’t comfortable deleting.

There are several websites for which I use multiple logins. For example, I have couple of Google accounts (one I use when signing up for sites to avoid spam). This proved to be a slight inconvenience when using 1Password 3, as searching my database for “Google” returned multiple logins. Now, 1Password combines multiple identities under a single file.

On a related note, you can also add multiple websites for a single login, meaning if you use an email and password combination that is the same at two different sites, these can be combined. This feature is a bit of a head-scratcher, though, as it undermines the a fundamental principle of 1Password, which advocates unique login information.

Keeping with the trend of integrating sharing features into just about every facet of our digital lives, 1Password now allows easy sharing of login information via email and Messages. Fortunately, sharing sensitive information isn’t done in plain text, but rather as an encrypted link. The user on the receiving end must also have 1Password installed, and can add the login information or other data by clicking on the link. You can share a full database — a great use for those multiple vaults — or individual logins as you need, perfect for keeping track of team accounts.

One of my favorite new additions is the “security audit” feature. At the bottom of the navigation panel, 1Password can shame you by pointing out your weak, duplicate, and old passwords that need to be updated. Previously, you were able to see the strength of a password by selecting it, but the audit feature makes finding these weak links in your database a simple proposition.

The browser extensions have also been updated. One of the more welcome improvements in this area involves the way these extensions deal with password change forms. Previously, when you accessed a webpage to change your password, you would be prompted to save the new file. However, this would involve creating another entry. Now, the app recognizes that you are changing a password, rather than creating a new login, and updates the password accordingly. There’s also now a browser extension for Opera, for those of you who are still using the Norwegian browser.

The iCloud Keychain Question

Let’s deal with the huge, wave-surfing elephant in the room. Apple’s latest operating system, OS X Mavericks, will introduce the iCloud keychain security feature. This will help you create, store, and fill-in unique, randomly generated passwords across the operating system and sync with iOS via iCloud. On the surface, that sounds like devastating news for AgileBits, as it is a native solution that seemingly removes the need for an app like 1Password. The reality, however, is that 1Password still has a very important place for both power-users and casual Mac users alike.

The most important point to consider when choosing between 1Password and iCloud Keychain is compatibility. AgileBits offers users a way to access their logins on just about any device, be it a Windows, Mac, iPhone or Android device. Unless you’re entrenched in Apple’s ecosystem, 1Password will remain the better solution.

Syncing is another differentiating factor. Whether you are unimpressed by iCloud’s speed and reliability, or you just like having easy access to backup files with services like Dropbox, 1Password offers more appealing sync options. You can sync over iCloud, Dropbox, or over any other syncing service you want if you’re not syncing to iOS — and you can securely view your passwords from the browser via Dropbox if you want. You can even now sync over WiFi, if you’re worried about entrusting your passwords to a cloud storage service.

Then, the organization that’s available with 1Password goes well beyond what’s possible with iCloud. Even the simple “Favorites” feature, originally introduced on the iOS version and which now syncs to the desktop, strengthens the case for 1Password’s sync flexibility.

There is little doubt that iCloud Keychain is a welcome feature that will be used by millions. For that particular family member whom you are constantly reminding needs to start using better, unique passwords, the Keychain will be more than enough to help these casual users stay better protected. However, if you require even the slightest upgrade, 1Password is almost certainly worth the cost. If anything, iCloud Keychain is the perfect stepping stone to get people protecting their password but then wanting more that 1Password has to offer.

Pricing

At $49.99, 1Password is not an impulse buy. You have to decide whether or not this is something you need, and that you will commit to using it for all of your passwords. Personally, this is one of the most expensive pieces of software I personally own (after a handful of Adobe programs), but for how much I use it, it has been a bargain.

For updates of this size, most developers would try to get existing users across the board to buy the app again (at least at a discount). Much to my surprise, AgileBits has made the 1Password 4 update free for existing users, provided that they bought it through the Mac App Store or through AgileBits’ store in 2013. If you bought it outside the App Store or before 2013, you can buy an upgrade from AgileBits today for $24.99 this week, and if you’re new to 1Password, it’s on sale for launch week for just $39.99.

Conclusion

After a web browser, 1Password is perhaps my most widely used app on a daily basis. I have collected hundreds of entries, stored copies of my drivers license and passport, kept all of my credit cards (and used the browser extensions to speed up online checkout), and saved countless other sensitive pieces of information from my life. An app update like this takes what is already a leader in the category and only makes it more appealing.

Quite frankly, I didn’t even cover some of the smaller improvements and refinements, because the list is so expansive. This is as extensive of a redesign as avid 1Password fans could have hoped for, and I cannot recommend it enough.

Adobe and Microsoft — along with Evernote, Wunderlist, and other web app companies — think the future of software is subscriptions. Apple seems to think the future is lower priced pro apps without upgrades on the App Store, and free bundled apps for everything else. Game developers think the future is free apps with in-app purchases. And traditional developers with paid apps and discounted upgrades are being pushed to the side.

Is paid indie software doomed, perhaps by the very App Store that pushed so many developers to prominence?

Paying? Who Would do That?

Paid apps are over, says Marco Arment of Instapaper fame, at least on iOS. In his blog post published over the weekend, he restated what developer David Smith had discussed earlier on his podcast: normal people don’t pay for apps.

It’s a common refrain anymore. People paid for apps when the App Store launched, enough so that Apple’s paid out over $10 billion to developers since the App Store launched, but the paid train has left the station. It’s go free or go home these days, and no one wants to pay a cent for apps, especially not up front.

Here’s the thing, though: that’s nothing new. Take a look at the average consumer’s Windows PC, and see what paid apps you can find. Chances are, the most you’ll discover are Microsoft Office, a paid security app, and perhaps a few paid Adobe apps and games. Windows is practically devoid of paid indie apps — you simply just don’t see them. There’s free apps, ad supported apps, and the really big paid stuff like Office that people can’t imagine life without — and even the latter is seeing its marketshare eroded by free online alternates and simpler tools like Evernote.

That’s average people. They buy a computer, and expect it to accomplish the stuff they need, no more purchases required. If they’re going to purchase anything else, odds are it’ll have to be something preinstalled — hello again, Office and antivirus — or something they’ve heard of through normal (non-tech) media — say, games.

The Mac owns the higher end market for computers, and thus has a much wider majority of tech enthusiast users. Many of us that buy apps couldn’t imagine life without indie apps, and the constant flow of new high-quality apps is something you just can’t get anywhere else. We’re willing to pay for quality, both for our devices and our apps, and it shows.

And when the iPhone — and later, the iPad — first came out, it was that same techie, early adopter market that snatched them up. Sure, they also appealed to people simply wanting a fashion or status symbol, but by and large the people who got the iPhone wanted it for the stuff it could do. When the App Store opened, it was this market that was quick to snap up the latest and greatest apps, and was more than willing to pay for them.

The iPhone’s not rare anymore, and neither is the Mac. I’m sure the enthusiast crowd continues to grow, but the broad consumer market is growing far faster. There’s a lot more Mac users today than ever before, but the percentage of those who are excited to spend money for new apps is very likely dropping simply because it’s not just Apple geeks who buy Macs anymore. And even among our own AppStorm readers, who obviously love discovering new apps, over 17% of our responders to a recent poll said they don’t pay for apps and 55% said they pay $10 or less per month for apps and services. That’d sure make the complaints I’ve heard from numerous developers about app sales make sense.

Sounds like indie devs had better find another job.

Yet People Still Pay

And yet, it’s not all doom and gloom. There’s still a huge market for paid consumer software — remember that $10 billion number? Sure, a decent chunk of that must go to the certifiably horrible in-app purchases in games like the inexplicably popular Candy Crush, but there’s still enough people buying honest-to-goodness paid software to move the needle. Businesses like the Omni Group can release a fully new version of OmniFocus for iPhone, charge $20 for it, and still hit the top revenue charts on the App Store, and the 1Password team keeps growing by selling quality software. Obviously, people are still paying for software.

And it’s not just über-geeks that pay for software, either. David Smith used his wife as the example, so I’ll use mine. My wife the other night, without thinking, was looking through the App Store and commented on how expensive some of them were — when the most expensive one in the lineup she as looking at was $5. But even she was more than willing to put down $8 for GarageSale for iPad to help her run her eBay business, and $5 for iPhoto for iPad to touch up her pictures. Those apps solved a real need in her life, and she was more than happy to pay for them.

Even geeks that love indie software aren’t crazy. I pay for a decent amount of software, but skipped upgrading VMware Fusion this year because the updates simply weren’t anything I honestly needed. But when iA Writer came out a couple years back with its incredibly simple Markdown writing experience, I gladly paid for it because it made my work nicer. It was the app I always switched back to, no matter what other apps I tried — that is until Ulysses III came out, which with its brilliant document management, export tools, and writing experience quickly paid for itself and became the main app in my daily workflow. The same goes for Transmit, OmniFocus, Sparrow, and a number of apps I pay for — even Buffer, a service that feels a tad expensive for my tastes, solved a need in my life and was worth paying for. Michael Jurewitz found in his in-depth dive into Mac App Store pricing that average developer tools can still sell for $30 in today’s Mac App Store, and business tools on average cost nearly $50 — numbers that easily show that we’ll pay for apps that solve a need in our lives.

Make quality apps that uniquely fill a need in our lives or are exponentially better than their free competition, and people will pay. That’s why Sublime Text has built a business from people who used to swear by free text editors like Vi and Emacs, and Rockstar Games made $1 billion in 3 days of GTA 5 sales while everyone’s been saying free games with in-app purchases have killed the market.

The early adopters — the traditional Mac market — are easier to convince to pay for quality. But normal people will pay too, if you make something that improves their lives, solves a problem, or is simply fun to use. Free software has pushed the bar incredibly high, where you have to do something amazingly great for people to even pay attention if there’s a price tag in front of your app. But it’s absolutely still possible to build a business from paid apps. We can argue all day whether Apple should add free trials and paid upgrades to the App Store — I think they absolutely should add the former and am torn on the latter — but what you can’t argue is that there’s no way to get people to pay for software today.

What is very, very true, though, is that first movers have made so many todo list, focused Markdown writing apps, social networking tools, podcast apps, and more that it’s really hard to differentiate yourself in that market. You’ll have to really think out of the box to compete against the apps already out there — or make something brand new to fix those remaining problems that software hasn’t fixed yet.

We’re waiting, and we’ll still buy your apps if they solve our needs in far better ways than anything before. Promise. We’re just not likely to be in the mood to pay for a simple reskinning of your app, or Retina Display support, or some other small feature addition.

By now, you are probably bored of reading so many reviews of text editors that more or less do the same thing, with the few odd feature that gives a gimmick to the app.

Today, though, we’re here to present to you a very different kind of text editor, though. One that deconstructs how you work with HTML documents and also brings us a powerful and comfortable solution for making the whole process easier and much more visually appealing. It’s called TypeMetal.

What Is It Exactly?

TypeMetal is a unique HTML editor that combines the live preview of your HTML code with the actual coding itself. It hides all the HTML syntax from you, but it makes the results of it visible by giving you a live preview of your document using Webkit.

Think of text editors like Chocolat, that use Webkit to give you a live preview of your HTML content, but in two separate windows. Your code is in one side, and the preview of how it will actually look on a browser is on the other. With TypeMetal, both of these exist in one single place. As you write, you’re both structuring your HTML as you are previewing how it will look. I know, it all sounds very confusing, so let me delve deeper into the app…

Writing The Content

On first glance, TypeMetal looks like any regular text editor, but as soon as you get to write your HTML you’ll notice how the app jumps up to fill the backend for you and it just shows you the end result based on a given style sheet. At the forefront of the app is your previewed content, but there’s much more behind the app.

As a visual aid, there’s a bar on the bottom of your document that shows you the path of the element that’s currently selected. This way you won’t get lost when you are creating new tags or inspectioning how all the elements are nested. There are a few more tools to inspect your code, but we’ll get to them later.

Auto Complete

Typing the ‘<’ character will immediately invoke the HTML autocomplete, which will show you a huge list of elements that you might be looking for. Type a few more characters and your autocomplete list will be refined to the matching elements. Choose your element, type whatever will go inside it and press Tab to exit the element, all without having to interact with any tag directly. Quite a timesaver, isn’t it?

Source Loupe and Blocks

If at any moment you get confused with the structure of your document and you want to have a peek at the HTML code, there’s an option called the Source Loop that acts as a pop-up window which will display the code of your selected piece of text. It’s not directly editable, but it will give you a good idea of how your elements and tags are structured.

Blocks are another tool that can help you get a better idea of how the structure of your element is being arranged. Turning it on will give a visual representation of how your divs, paragraphs and other relevant elements are nested.

CSS and HTML Snippets

Since TypeMetal is centered around showing you all the time how your content will be displayed in the target site where it will be hosted, you can of course load your own CSS sheets into the app, so that your content is previewed inside the app exactly like it will look once it’s posted online.

Snippets are another useful feature that the app has. It’s quite self-explanatory: just save any piece of text as a snippet and the app will create code sets that you can then invoke just like you would with any other HTML attribute. For example, you can use these to automatically invoke elements with given classes and id’s.

Keyboard Shortcuts

TypeMetal implements keyboard shortcuts for pretty much any task that you can imagine. Want to create a heading? There’s a shortcut for immediately creating one of any size. Opening elements, creating attributes within them, exiting them, creating lists and hyperlinks; it’s all available through a keyboard shortcut.

Does It Work?

Although the concept of the app looks attractive enough, I found it very hard to get used to it, and it was a little frustrating at times not having the ability to just modify the HTML code directly.

TypeMetal creates its own type of twisted markup, but in the end, although I appreciate the idea of the app, I can’t help but wish I was working with markup when I’m using it since it’s more versatile, simple and transparent, and just like TypeMetal, it isn’t as visually demanding as plain HTML. Although, for structuring bigger projects which may include a lot of blocks and coding that goes beyond markup’s capabilities, I can see TypeMetal being very useful. It’s just a matter of getting used to it.

Conclusion

TypeMetal parts from the assumption that a clean structure makes up for more focused writing, instead of getting lost and confused in HTML structures or Markup syntax. It definitely delivers on that concept, and its live preview of your HTML document surely saves you the steps of later translating your content into the correct structure. You can have your writing done as well as your code structuring at the same time.

Overall, TypeMetal presents a great and unique idea, but the app still needs some more work done before it can compete with any of the regular text editors. There are a few bugs and some quirks in the functionality that keep it from being perfect, but it looks very promising and we’ll keep our eyes peeled to see how it evolves over time and what the developer can turn it into.

YouTube apps seem a bit unnecessary, especially when it’s pretty easy to just go to the website and navigate around their pretty decent interface. But what if this kind of apps actually brought some incentives, such as simpler browsing and a better viewing experience that resembles watching a TV channel?

We agree that there’s very little a YouTube app can do to make it necessary and more convenient to use than the website. We found an app called MiniTube that seems promising, but is it up for the task? We’re reviewing it today, so let’s find out!

Getting Started

I get it, using an extra desktop app for viewing YouTube sounds limiting and more of a hassle than it is convenient. But there is a niche for this type of apps out there, and if they can actually get to a point where they are more suitable and faster to use than the website, they just might justify their existence.

MiniTube knows this and they found a way to differentiate itself from just being an app that mimics the YouTube website. In fact, MiniTube simplifies the viewing experience and provides a platform for making video playlisting and watching easier. Let’s get into it.

Interface

MiniTube’s interface is pretty clean, and it does a good job at simplifying the YouTube experience by removing unnecessary menus, buttons and comments, to bring you a simple experience that’s a breeze to navigate through. I can imagine MiniTube being great for setting playlists at a party or setting up in a projector.

In the top navigation bar, there are playback and volume controls always accessible, as well as a time bar and a search field. In the status bar on the bottom, there are a couple buttons for switching out resolution and displaying information on the selected videos. The rest of the space is dedicated for viewing videos and browsing playlists or categories.

How It Works

The navigation is broken into three sections: Search, Browse and Subscriptions. The search section provides a clean and fast interface for searching keywords or accessing specific channels. The search is pretty smart and it does a great job at giving you surprisingly precise and useful predictions as you type. This is especially true for directly accessing channels, which is something that YouTube’s search doesn’t really succeed at.

On the other hand, “Browse” provides easy navigation between different categories of videos such as Most Popular, Top Rated or Comedy. There are about 20 different categories and they can be sorted based on location. Subscriptions is the last of the navigation menus, and it’s where you can quickly access the channels that you have previously “starred”.

Keyboard shortcuts for pretty much any task make it easy to navigate around your playlists and throughout the app. There are options for directly sharing videos, copying their links, opening them in the browser, receiving notifications on new videos, and of course, using the app in full screen, which really makes the MiniTube experience shine.

Playback

When you choose a video for playback, the view will change to acommodate the playing video in the majority of the screen, while keeping a small sidebar where the related videos are listed and queued. The content of this list of videos will depend on how you chose the current video: if you found it through a channel, the next video from that channel will be queued, and if you found it through a keyword search, then the next related video will be in the list.

This generated playlist can be tweaked easily. You can sort upcoming videos by date, relevance or popularity, as well as configure what videos will be chosen by parameters such as the date they were added, the resolution, date or duration. Speaking of resolution, a cool thing that the app can do is force YouTube to play all videos at a certain configurable resolution, so if your internet connection is acting up, you can easily lower the maximum allowed resolution to something less demanding like 360p.

The Downsides

I get that MiniTube’s whole gimmick hinges on being a lightweight YouTube app, but there are a few missing features that keep it from being the perfect YouTube companion. First off, there is no way to link your Google account with MiniTube, so there’s no way to import your subscriptions or mark videos as seen when they are watched in the app. If you want to keep up with any channels through MiniTube, you’re going to have to “star” each channel, one by one through the app.

The implemented navigation gets the job done, but it could use some improvements to make it more fluid and smart. Playlisting, while much better than YouTube’s, could be more dynamic and work better for searching and adding videos while the current one is still playing. Making a smart playlist out of every related video is very cool, but it’d be nice if this could also work along with search or channels without interrupting what’s currently playing.

Conclusion

When I brought up MiniTube for a review, I was pretty skeptical about reviewing a YouTube app. Now that I’ve spent some time with it, I have to say I’m impressed and I can see myself using this app in the future instead of YouTube’s website, especially for quickly setting up playlists while I’m doing other things in the background or perhaps for hosting YouTube parties.

The simple, streamlined interface makes it very easy and quick to navigate around videos, and it’s quite clean and friendly. Not that YouTube’s website isn’t, but Minitube makes the whole viewing experience feel more at home with the Mac. At $9.99, it isn’t easy to justify paying for this kind of app, but if you are a YouTube fiend like myself, I think you’ll appreciate the commodities that it presents.

We’re used to Google launching free new web services (and shutting them down) on a whim, so it was rather odd yesterday to see that Google had released a new free desktop app: Google Web Designer. Designed for Mac and PC, without even a version for Google’s own Chromebooks or perhaps Android tablets, Google Web Designer looks like an Adobe app and feels like a blast from the past.

Actually, though, it’s intended to blast away a technology who’s time is long past: Adobe Flash. It’s free, and it’s called a Web Designer, but it’s directly designed to help you make animated and responsive HTML5 ads for Google’s DoubleClick ad platform, presumably both to cure the web from the last vestiges of Flash and to help ads on Google’s platforms get clicks on mobile.

But hey: it’s also essentially a basic free version of Hype that you could use to make animations for your site, even if you’re not advertising with Google.

It’s fairly easy to use — though it may drive you nuts on a Mac with its in-window File menu that makes it look like it’s a Windows app running in Fusion or Parallels. You’ll start off by selecting the type of document you want to make, where you’ll be reminded that this is first-and-foremost an app for making ads for the web, not so much unlike Apple’s iAd Producer. But, in this case, you can choose to make a normal webpage instead.

Once you’ve got a document started, you can create CSS-based vector-style shapes and lines, drag-and-drop in your own images and other media, add text areas that use any font in the Google Font library, and arrange each each element with full-featured alignment tools for pixel-perfect layouts. Throwing in animations is simple too: just arrange the elements like you want them to appear at the beginning, add another frame, and move the elements to the spot you want them in that frame. Repeat that until everything’s perfect, and the app will automatically fill in the animations. Or, you can switch to the Advanced Mode to hand-customize each part of the animation.

It’s funny enough that Google made another desktop app outside of Chrome, but what’s even funnier is that it’s essentially a packaged web app, with the full Chromium runtime inside the app bundle. Perhaps it’s too large (at ~26Mb) right now to distribute as an offline web app in Chrome, but I’d happen to think that eventually they’ll bring the Web Developer app to the browser.

Either way, though, Google Web Developer a decently nice way to make quick web animations on your Mac or PC for free. It exports fairly clean code that you can edit in the app, uses HTML5 Canvas, CSS3 Transformations, and WebGL for your animations, and lets make nice enough animations with next-to-no effort. There’s even a decently detailed tutorial online to take you though the app’s features and help you get started. That’s not bad at all.

Mac app bundles are a great way to get a ton of apps on the cheap, but usually they’re filled with aging apps that are ripe for an update. Not this time. Paddle’s Cheaper by the Dozen bundle this week includes 4 debut apps that just launched — and you can get them and the other apps in the bundle for just $34.99 right now, or possibly for free with our giveaway.

This bundle includes Bluetail, the brand-new vector app we gave an 8/10 last week, and the just-launched Marked 2 that’ll help you proof and export your Markdown writing that’s nice enough to get a 9/10 in our review. You’ll also find the somewhat older Raskin for viewing your Finder files in unique ways, MenuMate to make menus more accessible in your apps, the new GoodDay that brings mobile web apps to your Mac’s menubar, and the beautiful EarthDesk to turn your Mac’s background into a stunning dynamic image of the Earth. And more!

Best of all, we’ve got 5 copies of this great bundle for our readers. For a bundle with this many great apps, though, it’s going to take a tiny bit more effort to enter the giveaway. You’ll need to signup for the Paddle team’s email newsletter first at paddle.com/signup, and then leave a comment here letting us know what app you want most from this bundle. Finally, for an extra chance to win, share the giveaway post on your social networks and leave a second comment here with a link to your social post for an extra entry.

Hurry and get your entries in; the giveaway closes on Friday, October 4th!

Envato staff or those who have written more than two articles or tutorials for AppStorm are ineligible to enter.

For every Microsoft Word, there’s a Pages — a lightweight option that dispels with a couple of professional features, but still manages to find users because of what’s often described as a superior user interface and compelling ease-of-use. In the case of Photoshop, those options are Acorn and Pixelmator (with Pixelmator being my weapon of choice).

Apps like these aren’t necessarily matching Photoshop feature-for-feature, but they do capture enough of those tools at bargain-bin prices to make them valuable assets to anybody’s digital arsenal. When compared to Adobe Illustrator, iDraw is the Mac-exclusive beautiful-but-bargain-bin competition — especially compared to the often-despised steep subscription fee for Creative Cloud. Read on to find out if iDraw wows me in the same way Pixelmator and Pages do.

The Elephant in the Room

Let’s cover some of the basics here: while Photoshop and Pixelmator are vying for attention in the photo editing arena, Illustrator and iDraw are duking it out in the vector category. Both apps support a ton of features to make illustrating for print or for the Web as easy as possible. But I’m painfully aware that what matters most isn’t what you can do with iDraw — it’s what you can’t also do with iDraw.

The easiest way to break this down is like this: Are you a professional designer already earning good money (as in, self-sufficient with some extra cash to spare)? Are you a student at a fine arts school specifically for graphic design? If you already own a copy of Illustrator, would you take Beyoncé’s advice, put a ring on it, and walk it down the aisle?

If any of those three options ring true for you, you need to know iDraw won’t be a complete replacement for you. Think of iDraw as the sort of app you could use for a first draft and Illustrator for the rest of the heavy lifting. I think iDraw’s Mac-focused design is lovely and a clear improvement over Adobe’s program, but I still don’t recommend ditching the original do-it-all app completely.

With that said: for the rest of us — those of us without design degrees or people who design for fun or make less than half their income on design work, iDraw is well worth the money. With that out of the way, let’s take a look at what iDraw can offer you.

Vector, Vector, Everywhere

If you’ve never designed anything before, or this is your first experience with an illustrating program, then iDraw is a great place to start. The app’s opening pane includes an option to check out iDraw’s User Guide on the Web. (You can download the PDF from there if you want a local, searchable copy.)

The User Guide is one of the best I’ve seen, and I’ve seen quite a few in this line of work. If you’ve never used a vector drawing app before, it will get you started in no time and you’ll learn a ton of handy things along the way. This is one of the few User Guides worth reading for anybody who downloads the program — not just newbies. Design veterans might walk away inspired, and newbies will learn valuable things about how to go about the task.

The app also comes with another huge perk. It integrates with iCloud so your work can be picked up on an iPad and continued. Although this isn’t the place to review an iPad app, it’s worth noting that the app is very well done and worth the extra money for the convenience (although I do look forward to some interface tweaks for iOS 7). When you add the price of the iPad app to the price of iDraw for Mac, it’s still under $40. That’s incredible.

iDraw’s Capabilities

iDraw supports all sorts of vector tools with ease. Of course, there’s all sorts of tools for pure illustration and tons of different brushes. Shapes, lines, and many gradient tools are built into the app. In fact, for anybody but the most serious of professionals — as I noted prior — this app covers every necessary base that Illustrator had.

Of course, a lot of this was covered in our previous review. I’m more interested in noting some of the more recent features.

First, SVG import and export has been significantly expanded over the past several updates. I think the app is getting closer to the point where even the strictest of professionals will find the vector export can suit their needs. You can also import layered Photoshop files, and iDraw will keep the layers intact.

Smart Guides are also a fantastic new feature, one which I rely on in Pixelmator as well. The idea is that items you’re moving around can snap to a grid, so it’s easy to line up multiple different objects without having to strictly count pixels. It’s not quite as nice as Pixelmator’s implementation of the feature, which is a bit more robust and can snap to multiple points on a grid in relation to any object, but iDraw’s initial implementation of the feature is worth praising.

The app has also been updated for the Retina displays from top to bottom, so if you’re like me and have one of those ridiculous 15″ MacBook Pro beasts, you’re going to feel right at home. Speaking of which…

The Interface

As far as iDraw’s aesthetic appeal, this is an app designed from the ground up for Mac. I’ve heard a lot of people say that the app looks like it could fit right in with Pages and the like, but I’m more inclined to say that iDraw and Pixelmator are in leagues of their own. Their apps are dark in colour, which some people will find distracting or garish. That being said, black coats of paint do for software what black clothing does for people — it makes the software look sleeker. When an app has as much functionality as iDraw, I think the black aesthetic helps it look less cluttered.

That’s not to say that iDraw looks cluttered. The is smartly and efficiently designed for both smaller displays with its fullscreen mode and larger Cinema displays, where it would fit right in with tons of room to spare. One notable feature is tabbed files. Instead of working with multiple canvas windows, all of them are collected via tabs. It makes iDraw look more like a web browser, and I think it’s great — I prefer to avoid having my display cluttered.

I do wish the app had some additional keyboard features, though. I’d like to be able to map the Appearance/Properties/Shape Library/Styles windows to keyboards, so I could hide them or make them visible with the click of a keyboard combination.

Final Thoughts

iDraw has another huge perk over Illustrator: it’s updated very frequently. Indeeo is constantly innovating and incrementally improving their product, and I have the absolute confidence in it. With Adobe, I’ve always felt that they built great software, but often ignored users or updated their programs only when it was convenient to them. Indeeo, on the other hand, has tremendous respect for their customers, and it shows. (Note that there is no demo available; this is one area where Indeeo could show their potential customers some more respect.)

With iDraw, what you get is an app that’s perfect for basic-to-complex vector work. It’s tantalizingly close to replacing Illustrator, but those who love Adobe’s products need not apply. Those who are looking for an alternative, especially in the world of Creative Cloud, owe it to themselves to try the software. iDraw is frequently refined and consistently excellent. Highly recommended.

Update: We should have mentioned Sketch as well. It’s a vector design app that’s in a class of its own — good enough to replace Adobe Fireworks and more. If your needs extend beyond what Illustrator traditionally has offered, it’s the app to check out. If you’re wanting to directly replace Illustrator, though, iDraw is a great alternate.

I’m a big fan of UI customization, and I’m always trying to make my desktop look just so. I’ve spent hours searching out just the right icons to match whatever wallpaper I’m using, and a big part of that is finding the perfect set of folders.

That can be a big pain, though, and it can be just as aggravating to switch out all of those folder icons, too. That’s why I jumped at the chance to try out Folder Factory, which promised to be a simple way to not only switch out my folders, but to create new looks myself.
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Tour the Factory Floor

Folder Factory doesn’t create new folders from scratch, so I needed a folder ready to go when I popped the application open. Because Folder Factory completely changes the look of the folder, though, it may be best to try it out on an unimportant folder, not something specific to OS X, especially since there’s no built-in mechanism to revert the folder back to its original look.

Drag the unembellished folder onto Folder Factory. The easiest changes to make are to the folder’s color. Pick a color and set its intensity using the color slider. I can also fiddle with the folder’s opacity, and I’m sure there are reasons to make an invisible folder, but I’m coming up short when I try to think of any. Yeah, I can drag it down to 80% opacity or so, but after that, things just seem to start getting weird. The folder’s color seems to matter less the more transparent it gets, so keep that in mind.

Slap any picture onto the folder, too. Drag an image file into Folder Factory, and then you find a lot of the same controls as before when you were adjusting the color. Set the size for the image, and add a color overlay using the Color Intensity slider. The Opacity slider makes a lot of sense here, as I could make the picture look more a part of the finished object and less like I decoupaged my family snaps onto OS X’s interface. Unfortunately there’s no way to wrap the image to match the folder shape, though, so the picture just sort of sits on the folder and will overhang the edges if it is sized too large.

Text is the last embellishment, and it may be the most useful, after the color adjustment, of course. Enter a single line of text, and hit the flower icon to add iOS-style Emoji. Folder Factory let me choose from any of the fonts on my Mac, and I can set the text size myself, too. Folder Factory wouldn’t let me enter line breaks, though, so if I wanted to enter a longer title or description for my folder, I had to get really small with my text.

No Take Backs

Clicking Apply Changes does just that, and the icon for the original folder is replaced with the Folder Factory creation. When I wasn’t happy with what I’d done, and it happened quite a lot that I didn’t like the finished product when I was starting out with Folder Factory, there wasn’t any way to go back or undo anything. I couldn’t revert to my original folder, at least not with Folder Factory.

There are a couple of easy ways around this. Hopefully you, like me, are only using Folder Factory to edit folders you’ve created, and not special folders created by OS X, like the Documents or Downloads folders. To get rid of the new folder icon, select the offending folder, hit Command + I, select the folder’s icon above Spotlight Comments in the Get Info window, and just tap the Delete key. The folder should revert to its original look. Perhaps even simpler, just create a new folder named the same thing and copy the contents of the less than attractive folder into the new. Trash the uggo, and it’s done.

Still, I would have liked an undo function. There were a few moments of desperation on my side of the computer screen as I tried to figure out how to rid myself of the hideous creations I’d unleashed upon my desktop. Cooler heads prevailed, but there are users who won’t realize their problems can be solved quite so easily, and, let’s face it, this is an app made for people who need an extra helping hand figuring out their UI.

Final Thoughts

Adding text is a nice bonus if I want to differentiate folders, but they’ve already got names, so it’s almost superfluous. The images can be fun, especially if I wanted to put in the effort to create specially edited images with transparencies that look just great on my folders, but if I had the skills to do all that, I’d probably just make my own folders from scratch, bypassing Folder Factory completely.

Folder Factory is going to be most useful when creating a unified OS X theme. I’ve spent hours hunting down icons to suit whatever look I was going for at the time, and a simple app to customize the color of my folders would have been a huge help. Knowing that it’s an easy task to back out any changes I make, though I can’t do it in the app, I’m even willing to throw those special OS X icons in, too. Folder Factory finds its greatest utility as an app for creating quick and easy UI changes with very little effort.

YouTube’s started letting you queue videos for offline viewing in their mobile apps, but if you want to watch YouTube videos on your MacBook or a non-smart device when you’re offline, you’re going to need more than what Google offers you. That’s why you should download a free copy of 4K Video Downloader this week.

4K Video Downloader is the simplest way to save videos from YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, and more to your Mac. Just copy the video’s link from your browser, paste it into 4K Video Downloader’s app, pick the quality and format you want to save, and start it downloading. Minutes later, you’ll have a full-quality copy of the video for your offline video viewing pleasure. It’s like Instapaper or Pocket for the videos you want to watch later.

There’s more, too. If you want to download Instagram pictures to your Mac, extract audio from any video file, or turn your photos into a slideshow, there’s a free 4K app to help you out. Every one of the 4K apps are free, open-source, and run on OS X, Windows, and Ubuntu, so you can use them wherever you work — and if their free tools become an important part of your workflow, you can contribute to their development and make sure there’ll be free tools for you to use whenever you need them.