Category: Mac

We’ve collected the top four reviews, roundups and how-to articles from across the AppStorm network in February. Whether you’re interested in Mac, iPhone, Web, Android, Windows, or iPad apps, there’s bound to be something you didn’t spot over the course of the month. Now would be a good time to explore a part of the AppStorm Network you’ve never seen before!

Thanks for reading AppStorm, and I hope you enjoy looking over some of our favourite posts from last month!

Best of Android.AppStorm

Best of iPad.AppStorm

Best of Windows.AppStorm

Best of iPhone.AppStorm

Best of Web.AppStorm

Best of Mac.AppStorm

Share Your Ideas

Is there something in particular you’d like to see on the site next month? We’d absolutely love to hear your suggestions for articles, topics and giveaways. Just let us know in the comments. Thanks for reading AppStorm!

Our featured sponsor this week is Ramotion, a fantastic icon/UI design and iOS development company. Typically we reserve weekly sponsorship slots for our favorite apps but Ramotion has such an impressive portfolio that we simply couldn’t turn them down.

One of Ramotion’s primary strengths is icon design. Stop by their icon portfolio for some samples of their work along with a collection of amazing free Mac OS icons.

They also design and develop gorgeous iOS apps. Pick’n’Roll is an innovative Dribbble client for iPad, Tap & Call is a brand new way to organize your iPhone contacts, and Pitty the Conquerer is a wonderfully illustrated iOS game about a small screw traveling up from the bottom of the toolbox.

Follow Their Work!

In addition to stopping by the Ramotion website, be sure to say hello on Twitter and keep an eye on their latest projects on Dribbble. If you have any projects where you want to really push the limits of awesome design, give Ramotion a shout, they are always looking for new opportunities and would love to help you out.

I’m sure you’re familiar with the many download managers available for Mac, such as JDownloader, Leech (which we reviewed in 2010) and others. The purpose of most of these apps is to help folks who have multiple downloads keep things neatly organized and packed into one app.

JDownloader even offers a special multi-link capability that lets you paste as many links as you wish into a box and the app will automatically start downloading them in order. This stuff is great for power users, but today I’m going to show you a new app that offers the same capability in a more simple manner, it’s called SpeedTao.

Please be aware that this app is in beta and does have a few bugs, which I will fully disclose later on in the review.

Getting Started

Once you download SpeedTao, you can either drag it to your Applications folder, which is recommended, or leave it in Downloads and test it from there. When first launched, SpeedTao will ask you to select what browsers you’d like to enable the downloader on. It gives you the option of Firefox, Google Chrome and/or Safari. Next, you’ll need to decide whether you’re going to use the ED2K and torrent capabilities that SpeedTao offers. If you check disable, then you can always update your choice later in SpeedTao > Preferences > P2P by turning the P2P setting on. After you’re done with this setup process, you’re ready to begin downloading!

Features

In the features department SpeedTao is just about the same as every other download manager out there, except it tries to offer more ease-of-use than others do. It works great for power users as well as normal ones.

• Fast downloading. SpeedTao accelerates your downloads using multi-thread technology.
• Peer-to-peer support. SpeedTao supports nearly all popular P2P transfer protocols, including ED2K (also known as eMule) FTP, HTTP, and HTTPS. Sadly, the app’s current revision is lacking magnet support, but the developers are confident that it will be in a future beta and definitely in the final build.
• Simplicity. SpeedTao offers the simplest way to initiate multiple file transfers. Even though the aforementioned JDownloader also does well at this, SpeedTao seems to simplify the process quite a bit. The user interface is also much straightforward and
• Growl notification when download has finished. This is a useful feature for those of you who have other work to perform while the download is
• Speed limit. You, the user, have the ability to set a transfer limit on SpeedTao so that it doesn’t use all your network’s bandwidth and you can continue your daily activities without disruption.

Lacking features

Naturally, there must be some things that are lacking in a beta. I’m not going to mention the bugs in this section, but I will go over a few features that I’d like to see in future betas and hopefully the final release.

• Hover-over descriptions for menu buttons. When you’re using the app, it’s kind of hard to tell what the five menu buttons on the left pane even do without clicking them. (If you’re curious, the first lists all your transfers, the second your items that are currently in the process of downloading, the third your items that are currently in the process of uploading [P2P transfers], the fourth your finished downloads, and the fifth offers a search function for ED2K.) I’d like to see something like what Twitter’s native Mac client does with their hover-over menu buttons. The other buttons could also benefit from this feature.
• Better, more descriptive menu button icons. The aforementioned menu buttons may be lacking the hover-over descriptions, but the developer could help us some by providing a more descriptive graphic for each.
• Less choppy interface. Throughout SpeedTao I’ve noticed that there are a lot of rough edges, be it on the buttons or elsewhere.
• Download status on the dock icon. This would be extremely useful for those who are using SpeedTao daily. I’d like to see something like uTorrent’s little speed indicator as an overlay on SpeedTao’s dock icon — Chrome has this as well, but without a percent or transfer rate.
• Instant search. Instead of needing to press enter after searching for a download, why not integrate some sort of instant search like Spotlight has?

Bugs

You have a right to know some of the bugs before downloading beta one. I’ve tested the beta to the best of my ability, and here are the issues that I’ve found.

• Known issues for beta1 0.8 r320: open button does not always work, redownload button does not work for torrent downloads, changing download location in preference is not possible, resume/redownload hover tips are mixed.
• Quits when a download is paused and restarted.
• Doesn’t animate when a download is preparing to start — this could also be a lacking feature, but you’ll have to take that up with the developer.
• Takes an additional ten seconds to quit after user requests it.

User Interface

While there are some issues with it, SpeedTao isn’t too lacking on its user interface. The main idea is similar to that of Twitter for Mac and Sparrow — a mail client. I am partial to this design and the implementation is well done, except for one detail: the background. I really don’t like the off-white noise as a background throughout the app. For some reason it just doesn’t flow well.

In addition, when you scroll past the edges it just turns to plain white, which looks a bit strange. I’m sure this is merely a bug that will be worked out eventually. While I do love the implementation of this Twitter app-like design, one additional issue pertains to the buttons. As I mentioned above, many of them are quite choppy and don’t look very nice on my display. In addition to this, the speed limits button seems to be chopped off at the bottom, strangely.

Conclusion

For a beta, SpeedTao is doing well, even though I have been putting quite a bit of pressure on a few of its lacking elements. I hope to see many, many new features released in new builds along with bug fixes in a few areas. With this, I believe that the app will gain a lot of recognition for its simplicity and good feature list. If you like what you’ve read about, then head over here to grab the first beta now!

Hype, by developers Tumult, seems to have a rather appropriate title. There has been a great deal of talk about this web animation app since its release some months ago, and that can hardly be a surprise, given that it claims to allow the user to create “beautiful HTML5 web content” and animations with no coding required, and that it is developed by a pair of ex-Apple engineers.

Does it deliver on its promises, or does this app get too much “hype” for its own good?

The state of animation on the web

Lets be honest: unless you have been living under a rock for the past 15 years (in which case it would be surprising to find you reading this), you will know very well that Flash has been the tool of choice for most animation on the web up until relatively recently. For over a decade now it has been (and continues to be in many cases) the de-facto standard for animated content on the web. The reasons for this are many, including the wide install-base of the Flash browser plugin, and the fast that Flash as a platform has a relatively low barrier to entry, (it is possible to learn the basics very quickly for most people), and is very flexible (you can build everything from a simple button up to full, interactive, websites).

It is only within the past year or two that CSS3 has reached a stage where browser vendors have been interested in starting to support the burgeoning standard, and even now support is far from universal. The latest builds of Safari and Chrome carry the best support, with Firefox and Opera shortly behind. IE9 has added some CSS3 support, but any version prior to that will see no love for your animated creations.

CSS3 brings with it the possibility of animating elements individually using nothing but the same kind of code web developers generate daily anyway (albeit with some new syntax to learn), and these animations will work on iOS devices such as the iPad and iPhone while Flash, famously, will not.

Javascript also has a part to play in this equation, too. It is possible to leverage Javascript’s control over the page to animate elements, but for most people the code needed to do this is simply too arduous to write. jQuery makes things a great deal easier by including a framework that you can build around (basically allowing you to set end values for CSS attributes such as position or opacity and doing all the work in-between for you).

Up steps Hype

The main problem with the use of CSS3 and/or Javascript to achieve your animation goals, though, is that you have to know (and write) a lot of code if you are hoping to achieve anything but the most simple of animations. Secondly, the lack of an immediate visual representation of what you are doing will make this a difficult approach for many people. For example, you might want to move an image from point a, to point b. Point a is easy – that is probably where the image starts, but where is point b? How many pixels do you need to move it to get it in just the right place?

This is where Hype comes in. Hype is essentially a WYSIWYG front-end to all of this coding, allowing users to produce the same effects using the same techniques (and theoretically producing the same code) as described above. The main advantage with this is that it takes away the high barrier to entry that CSS/Javascript animation presents to most people. With Hype, you never have to write a line of code (if you don’t want to).

Hype will seem instantly familiar to anyone who has had even passing experience with Adobe’s Flash authoring environment. Sure, the pallettes and toolbars are different, but the essence is the same. You drag elements to a stage and animate various properties including their position and opacity using keyframes. Sound familiar? That’s because it is. Just about every time-based media application, including video editors, effects packages, and Flash itself, operate using this method, or a variation thereof.

Using Hype

Whether or not you have had any experience with animation or time-based media before, Hype should not be a hard application to pick up and learn. On the whole, the interface is remarkably intuitive. It feels rather like a cross between Apple’s Pages and a WYSIWYG web editor, which in actuality is quite similar to what it is.

The main focus of Hype’s user interface is the stage, onto which you place images, text and other elements to compose your design. Above this is the scenes strip – Scenes allow the user to compose more complex animations composed of multiple separate compositions, similar to the different shots in a video project. At the bottom of the window is the timeline, which lists all the elements in which ever scene the user is currently editing. Separate to this window is the inspector pallette, which houses all the controls and settings for the elements placed on the stage, including text formatting, sizing and positioning, color and animation.

To animate an element, it is a simple matter of placing it on the stage and creating a couple of “keyframes” to animate between. With the timeline scrubber on a keyframe, any settings you change for that element will be changed for that frame, and animated to from previous keyframes. It is a simple matter to set up a couple of keyframes and fade an element in or move it from point a to point b, or to rotate an item over time. Set your starting state with one keyframe, and your end state with another, and Hype does the rest.

You can even set a keyframe and hit the “record” button and move elements around, and Hype will record all the animation in the meantime and automatically set up the options for you. What Hype does not do, however, is offer any easing options (which would allow a user to have an animation “ease” in and out, meaning that the animation starts out and ends at a slower pace than in the middle, which often looks more natural than a purely linear animation such as those Hype generates).

After about 30 minutes playing with Hype, you will likely have a fairly good handle on the bulk of the WYSIWYG portion of the app, and you may be ready to try exporting your first basic animation. Before doing that, you should probably preview your animation in a browser, and here Hype has you covered.

If you have Google Chrome installed, Hype allows you to preview a temporary version of your composition in one click. If all looks ok there, then it is time to export your animation. It is worth noting the document settings tab in the inspector at this stage, which allows you to set your target browsers (which dictates what warnings Hype will show you when exporting).

Hype will display warnings about your content based upon what browsers you tell it you are looking for your animation to work in. This is particularly useful for the less experienced user, who likely will not know about the various capabilities and shortfallings of different browsers. Hype tests against a good range of common browsers, including Safari (both mobile and desktop versions), Chrome, Firefox and, importantly, Internet Explorer from the current version 9 down to the antiquated but rapidly dying version 6.

It is my feeling that hobbyists and beginners in the web-world will benefit hugely from the ease of use and built-in compatibility checking that Hype offers, and that helps make it a compelling choice for those users. Backing this up is an ability to dive under the hood and manually edit the Javascripts that lie underneath, allowing a greater amount of control for those who want or are able to take it.

The Problem

The problem with so much Hype is that it is often extremely difficult to live up to. This, sadly, is also the case here. Hype has a number of problems that to some may be no big thing, but to others will be deal-breakers.

First, and lets make this very clear, Hype has at most a “fleeting” relationship with HTML5: Yes, it is possible to add video to your Hype projects and this will be added using the HTML5 <video> tag, and yes, Hype will use the new HTML5 shortened doctype declaration for the documents it exports, but that is about where the relationship ends.

What Hype actually exports, on the whole, is good-old HTML4, CSS3 and Javascript. This is fine, but why tout HTML5 when HTML5 actually has so little to do with the product itself? Hype makes no use of any of the new semantic elements provided by HTML5 (such as header, footer, nav, section, article etc.), nor does it make use of any of the other useful things HTML5 allows you to do. This means no web-workers, no local data storage, and perhaps most importantly, no history API.

That Hype is lacking in ability in these areas may seem like a small concern, but the fact that the History API is totally absent means that animations made with Hype “break” the browser’s back button; Imagine you wanted to create a set of slides to go with a presentation using Hype. That’s fine, but good luck if you want to be able to link anyone to a particular slide, or to allow users to page back and forth between said slides using standard browsers controls, such as the back and forward buttons, keyboard shortcuts or mouse/trackpad gestures. None of this will work with a Hype animation unless you delve in to the script yourself and add the features in. Whilst there will undoubtedly be some potential users of this app who are skilled enough to do this, does it not kind of defeat the point of having a WYSIWYG app in the first place, if it leaves you having to fill in holes after you have used it?

Hype also makes no use of Canvas elements, meaning that each element placed in your animation will be wrapped in a div. This is not only a semantic nightmare, but fails to make use of a powerful feature available in most of the browsers that the technology Hype uses targets. I can understand not supporting new, untested, poorly supported features such as WebGL, but Canvas is supported natively by each of the major browsers at their current versions, and plugins are even available for IE8 and below to enable support there.

The final significant problem with Hype is that instead of leveraging any kind of existing framework such as jQuery or Prototype, the developers have chosen to create their own animation Javascript library. This is great, in that it places no dependency on outside scripts, but the downside is that even on a very short animation with only a couple of transitions, the Javascript weighs in at over 95Kb. That’s one large script file!

I can only imagine how this might end up with a 10-scene masterpiece with 50 animated elements in each scene. The main problem here is that this file will be served to users viewing your animation regardless of whether their browser needs it all or not. Many users with up-to-date browsers will have support for CSS3 animation, and so won’t need a lot of what is contained therein, but the server won’t know that so will serve it anyway. This has the potential to be quite a drag on your server.

The Verdict

I really wanted to love Hype because it represents an alternative to Flash that was based around technology natively supported by web browsers rather than by a plugin that, let’s admit it, has never been very good on Mac. There is no doubt that Hype is easy to use, and you can create some nice looking results relatively quickly. The interface is, on the whole, intuitive and responsive and the app itself behaves very well.

However, there are just too many shortcomings for my liking when it comes to the actual content that Hype generates. For an app that markets itself on building “HTML5″ web content, the lack of any kind of support for the history API is baffling. I understand that this is not supported by older browsers, but there are workarounds. The fact is that Tumult just haven’t implemented them. This is particularly surprising when you consider that they paid enough attention to detail to implement “old-fashioned” Javascript animation for those browsers that don’t support CSS3.

With that being said though, Hype is a perfect choice for those wanting to get started with animation on the web without the expensive entry point of Flash, or the necessity for an encyclopaedic knowledge of code. It is easy enough to pick up and use with a very limited learning curve, and does produce good results visually.

Its interface is mostly very polished, and the app itself seems very reliable. At a relatively low price point of $29.99, Hype does constitute a good entry point for most people. Experienced web professionals, though, may find the many short-fallings mentioned here more of an issue, and may want to learn to do things the hard way, instead.

As a professional web developer myself, this puts me in a quandary in trying to come to an overall opinion about Hype. On one hand, Hype is an easy, relatively inexpensive entry point to the world of animation on the web for a great number of potential users. On the other hand, I personally would prefer that the code that came out the other side was of a higher quality, and that accessibility and usability of the exported product weren’t second class citizens here. I’m a huge advocate for a better quality websites, and I have felt over the past 10 years of development that Flash is a prime culprit of exactly this kind of sin: low-quality websites produced by all because an application made it too easy.

It’s a toss-up for me between whether to encourage users to give Hype a go and hope that it leads them to learn more about the platform they are developing for, or whether to discourage them from picking up a piece of software that could lead them down much the same road as Dreamweaver or similar WYSIWYG applications, leaving them with bad websites and no deeper understanding of how things work under the bonnet than before they started.

What do you think about Hype? Have you used it? Are you a hobbyist or a professional? Let us know in the comments!

We’d like to say a big thank you to last month’s Mac.AppStorm sponsors, and the great software they create! If you’re interested in advertising, you can purchase a banner advertisement through BuySellAds, or sign up for a Weekly Sponsorship slot.

Thank you to the fantastic applications we had sponsoring each week during the month, all of which we personally recommend you download and try out!

• Postbox – Postbox is an unbelievably great Mac email client that you just have to try for yourself. The newest version, Postbox 3, has been completely revamped with a new interface and lots of great new features like Dropbox support and gestures.
• Artboard – A truly impressive vector drawing application that’s simple enough for everyone to use. Artboard has all the features you need in an advanced vector editing app: over 20 tools for drawing and navigation, custom shapes, clip art, boolean operations, layers, advanced style creation and a lot more. And it’s only getting better!
• PhotoStyler – A fantastic and unbelievably easy way to edit photos on your Mac. With dozens of gorgeous presets, you’re never more than a click away from beautiful photos. You can also venture off on your own and leverage a powerful but simple toolset to customize the result.
• Chronicle Mini – The best free way to keep up on your bills from your menu bar. Chronicle Mini is an amazing little app that sits in your menu bar and helps you stay on top of your reoccurring bills. In just a few clicks you can set up a new bill (say a mortgage payment or a cell phone bill), create a reminder in iCal and set the bill to repeat on the first of every month.
• MailTab Pro for Gmail – The best way to check Gmail from your menu bar. If you’re hunting for a quick and slick way to keep an eye on your Gmail account, look no further than MailTab Pro. It’s never more than a single click away and it gives you full access to Gmail’s features. Check, search and send email all right from the menu bar.
• FaceTab Pro for Facebook – An easy and amazing way to access Facebook from your menu bar. I know what you’re thinking, you’ve seen menu bar Facebook apps before right? Well this one is the best. FaceTab Pro is simply packed with awesome functionality that gives you the full Facebook experience right from your menu bar, no compromises.
• Clarify – An awesome utility for capturing and editing screenshots. Taking screenshots is easy enough, but when it comes to compiling multiple screenshots with text annotations, you’ve got your work cut out for you. Clarify drastically simplifies this process and automatically creates a single document from multiple screen captures. It’s fast, easy and looks great.

Finally, thanks to you for reading AppStorm this month, and for checking out the software that our sponsors create. I really appreciate it – you make the site what it is!

Postbox 3, the latest iteration of this awesome and powerful Mail.app alternative, brings about a ton of great new features and enhancements. The interface has been completely revamped to be more slick and streamlined, great Lion features like fullscreen mode and gestures have been added, there’s better Gmail support and social integration and they’ve even added Dropbox support as an alternative to traditional email attachments.

We’re super excited to announce that we have a whopping 10 Postbox licenses to give away this week!.

Tweet to Enter

Entering is simple, all you have to do is click the link below and send out the resulting tweet (or just copy and paste), then leave a comment below with a link to your tweet. That’s it!

We’ll announce the winners one week from today on Wednesday, February 8th. Good luck to everyone who enters and thanks for reading Mac.AppStorm!

Acrylic Software is known for their beautiful and useful apps for the Mac and iOS. We got a chance to speak with Dustin MacDonald, the company’s Founder, Designer & Engineer. In our interview, we touched on a number of topics ranging from the history of Acrylic Software to their view on the Mac App Store and the interoperability between Mac OS X and iOS.

Enjoy the interview!

How did you get started with the Mac and how did you make the jump into app development?

I’ve never owned a PC, so I’ve been using a Mac all the way back since System 7, or basically as long as I can remember.

I started out by messing around with very basic creation programs like Hypercard and another similar tool called GameMaker, making really simple utilities and adventure games. The appeal of being able to create your own interactive media with these kinds of easy to use tools, something that wasn’t all that common back then, was huge. As I became interested in working on more advanced projects, I moved on to writing simple apps with things like AppleScript and REALbasic, and eventually learning Cocoa & Objective-C.
 

Can you tell us a bit about Acrylic Software?

Acrylic was started in April of 2008, the same time of the launch of our first product, Times for Mac (now called Pulp), and was more or less a one man show. We’ve since grown to developing four products, hired additional help on the engineering and support side, and work out of a beautiful office in Vancouver, Canada.

How did Acrylic Software become your full-time job?

I started Acrylic right after finishing school. I had been working on Mac apps on the side for almost ten years during that time, and knew immediately it was something I wanted to pursue full time once I was done.

You run the show at Acrylic. How do you manage being in charge as well as being developer/designer?

We’re a very small company by design, so management right now isn’t as huge of a burden as it is for some other developers. When we start working on a new project I’m focused very much on the foundational design aspects, transitioning to the engineering side later on, and by the end I am usually switching between the two endlessly.

What are some of the other challenges you’ve faced as an independent app developer?

When you’re trying to compete with companies who take millions of dollars in funding and then give away their stuff for free without any real business model, it can be tough to convince users to pay for your app and support indie software. Eventually these companies have to start plastering ads all over their stuff or get acquired, but by then it can sometimes be too late to make an impact.

Your apps are incredibly beautiful, what inspires your design aesthetic?

It sounds obvious, but I’ve always been inspired by Apple and the simplicity, elegance, and attention to detail in their products. There aren’t many technology companies out there doing what they do, and I doubt I’d even be involved in this industry without them. The world would be a better place if more companies adopted those basic principles.

How do you differentiate your apps in the face of some pretty tough competition, like 1Password and Reeder?

Our focus has always been on innovation and great design. We steer clear of feature bloat and “do everything” kinds of products, aiming instead for simple, elegant and focused solutions.

We also make sure we’re always working on new and interesting ideas. Our projects are never designed to directly iterate upon existing apps. Both Pulp and Wallet stem from my personal desire for new products & features that simply didn’t exist before. Those ideas ultimately get copied by others, but by then we’re hopefully already moving onto the next thing.

How has the Mac App Store impacted your business?

We decided early on to start selling our apps on the Mac App Store exclusively, and the impact in terms of sales and overall growth has been huge. Having the weight off our shoulders of managing downloads and license keys for both us and our customers is a big deal, and I think the Mac App Store is just a great place in general to discover new apps.

At the same time, we get burned out with really lame things like long review times, unexpected rejections, and a lack of any feedback loop with our users before they go posting negative reviews. I also think the Mac App Store would really benefit from free demo versions of apps, and the ability to have paid updates for major new releases. It’s a love/hate relationship for us that will hopefully improve in the near future.

You develop apps for both the Mac and iOS, what’s it like working with both?

iOS is easily the most interesting and exciting platform in technology right now, so it’s always fun to see the kinds of things Apple is implementing there and figuring out how we can apply them to our own apps.

At the same time, we love the Mac and use OS X every day. The foundations of Mac and iOS are very similar, so taking some of the new ideas and technologies in iOS and applying them to Mac apps can be incredibly powerful. Sometimes we even share the same code between both platforms.

What advice would you give to anyone hoping to break into the app development space?

Make sure you absolutely believe in what you’re working on and love doing it, because it can be really tough to see a project through to the end unless you do. If you’re not in it for the long haul, you won’t get very far.

What are some of your favorite apps not made by Acrylic Software?

On the Mac, I use Transmit, the world’s best FTP app, and Versions, a Subversion version control client, almost every day. I also recently discovered a simple little app called Degrees which is a well designed menubar widget for showing the weather. On iOS, I like Delivery Status Touch, a great app for package tracking.

What does your current desk setup look like? What computers do you use regularly?

I’ve actually recently migrated to solely using a 13″ MacBook Air with a 27″ Cinema Display set up at my desk. Having the sheer portability of the Air and a giant display at hand when I need to do some serious work is a great combination. The new MacBook Air is finally powerful enough now to do just about anything, although I’d really like to see a 15″ model.

Can you give us a peek at what’s next for Acrylic?

I can’t talk much about our next big project, but we do have some interesting updates coming soon for Wallet and Pulp, specifically if you use iCloud. Stay tuned!

Thanks, Dustin!

I’d like to say thank you to Dustin for taking the time out of his busy schedule to answer our questions, and offer a little insight into what goes on behind the scenes at Acrylic Software. If you haven’t already, head over to the Acrylic Software website to check out their latest Mac and iOS projects. I guarantee that you’ll like what you see.

You’ve just moved to a new apartment and you’ve set up your wireless router. You think you’ve done everything correctly, but you’re just not getting the coverage and rates that you should be. Maybe there is some interference from some other WiFi hotspots nearby? But how do you know?

Enter NetSpot. It’s the WiFi network survey tool for anyone. It claims to be dead simple to set up with the reports generated being super helpful. And all of this for free. It sounds pretty great, but does it actually work? I took it for a spin and here’s what I found out.

The Map

NetSpot will essentially create a survey of the WiFi coverage for any defined area. One slightly tricky aspect to this (at least for me) was the initial creation of the area to be surveyed. NetSpot needs some sort of a map to create the survey from. An example map is provided for you to take a look at, but one that is actually structured like the area you’re surveying would obviously work the best.

It is possible to create the map within the application itself. There are some basic tools that can be used to draw the map. It’s not too terribly difficult, but it’s not exactly lightning fast to create anything too elaborate.

If you have the capability and ability, it’s best to create the map in an application your more comfortable working with and that is maybe a little quicker for you to work with. I just did a quick map outline of my apartment using Illustrator. I was just going for a rough map, but the alignment tools were helpful to quickly getting the map created.

On the initial screen after the application is launched you’ll see options to load a map, draw a map, start with a sample map, or start with a blank map. Loading a map that you have is going to present you with the best results in the end, but drawing your own is certainly an option and starting from just a blank map can also work. I’ll make some notes about this as I continue along through my process.

Loading your own map is easy enough. Locate the file and load it. If NetSpot doesn’t think the map is orientated correctly it will suggest that your rotate it. After this step you’ll see your map on the screen. Next, the application needs some frame of reference with regard to distance. It’ll ask you to input the actual distance between two points on your map. It’s pretty straight forward. Click on two different places on the map and enter in the actual distance between in either feet or meters. Once that has been done you’ll be able to click the next button to move forward.

The entire process works like this. At each step you’ll see the directions for that particular step at the top of the screen. On the bottom of the application window you’ll find any input space that is required as well as the navigation buttons that allow you to move the process forward along with a little feedback. If you’re not giving the application what it needs you’ll be notified there.

The last set up portion before we can actually begin the site survey is that we need to define the boundaries for the area we’re working with. I stumbled a bit with this as my apartment is a bit of an odd shape. The instructions tell you to put a marker in each corner, when basically what you’re doing is defining the boundaries of the space you want surveyed. NetSpot will help walk you through the process by showing you any overlaps (which it does not like). Once your area has been defined on your map you’re ready to get started on the survey.

The borders of your space don’t need to be perfect. Obviously the closer you can get the more detailed your results will be. I mentioned earlier that there may be some merit to choosing a blank map as a starting point. If you have a straight-walled space this would obviously be the easiest method, but it could also be used to just do a really quick survey of an area. You just drop in the dimensions of the entire space and don’t define any borders. Defining specific areas of your space (more on that in the next section) may be more accurate, but you can still get some decent information about you WiFi coverage without them.

The Survey

Now we’ll start surveying the space we’ve defined. NetSpot will ask you to walk around to locations in your space and click on the map to show where you are.

As you click on the map a survey will begin of that small location. You essentially wander around your space clicking where you are physically standing. Once you have a few points marked on your map you’ll begin to see WiFi networks being detected.

As you drop location markers you’ll see a green circle after that spot has been defined. The idea is to get as much of your space covered in green a possible. This will provide you with the most accurate survey. I just walked around my apartment dropping markers wherever I could. As I mentioned, my space is a bit oddly shaped so I had to make quite a few location marks to get full coverage.

You’ll see the path that you’re taking while your dropping markers. This seems rather pointless to me and it can be toggled off. As you can see from the screenshots I had to do some back and forth stuff to make sure I was getting the space covered properly. As far as I can tell, the path you take really doesn’t make any difference in the results fo your survey.

After you feel like you’ve defined the area sufficiently you’ll simply press the stop scan button at the top. It’s time to check out our results.

Survey Results

This is where you’ll begin to see the fruits of your labor. There are a handful of reports that can be generated and exported and each of these can be viewed prior to doing so. A drop-down list at the top of the application window allows you to quickly change what report you’re looking at. As you switch from one to another you’ll notice a short delay while the report is being generated.

You are restricted to the visual options available. There is no creating of custom reports. It is however possible to toggle which networks that the survey picked up are being factored into your reports. Hovering over a network name will also give you some additional information about it which can be useful. You could pick up a channel conflict more easily perhaps.

You’ll see your home wireless router displayed on your map. I appears that NetSpot will attempt to display its actual location without any intervention. I didn’t have an exact map of my apartment, but the location ended up quite close. You’ll also see two devices listed for my network. This would be my main WiFi network and my guest WiFi network.

A lot of great information can be seen from this view right within the application, but sometimes you may have the need to show someone else what you’ve found. Maybe you need a little leverage to get a repeater in your area. An export to PDF option is available as you’re viewing any of the visualization options. Export a couple of these and email them to your boss. Proof of your shoddy WiFi network.

The export packages all of the information available to you as you’re working in the app in a really nice format. You’ll have a tabular view of all of the networks detected along with all of that extra info for each. You’ll then see the visualization at the bottom with a key. They are quite nice and require zero effort past pressing a button to generate.

Conclusion

NetSpot is a really cool application. Is it something that I’m going to use every day? Absolutely not. But there are definitely scenarios where it becomes incredibly handy. Setting up a new WiFi network or just troubleshooting why a current set up isn’t working properly immediately come to mind. It may be something I just decide to do periodically in my current space to make sure something out of my control hasn’t changed.

The amount of information you can receive about your WiFi network is impressive. It’s even more impressive given that the application is free and so simple to use. With that in mind I haven’t seen anything comparable. With the amount of money you pay for your Internet connection it make sense to spend some time making sure you’re taking full advantage of it and a simple utility like NetSpot is a great way to help you do just that.

When you take the plunge and purchase a brand new Mac, you’re receiving far more than simply a beautiful computer wrapped in svelte packaging. The modern Apple computing experience is complemented by various online services, features and products which Apple offer exclusively to their customers, in the hope of compelling Mac users to stay within the cozy confines the Cupertino company’s ecosystem.

All that’s needed to delve right into this ecosystem is an Apple ID, so let’s get started on this third part of Mac 101, which will take a look at creating an Apple ID and using it to maximum effect.

Creating An Apple ID

Your Apple ID is like a digital passport into the world of Apple and it can be used for all kinds of things, such as purchasing songs from the iTunes Store, logging into iCloud or making a reservation at an Apple Retail Store and more.

It’s quite probable that unless you’re completely new to all things Apple, you’ve already got an Apple ID lying around somewhere, even if unused and long forgotten. That said, if you’ve somehow managed to avoid creating one, or would just like to start afresh with another, head over to Apple’s My Apple ID page, from which you can create your Apple ID. The same page on Apple’s website also has provisions to help you try and hunt down that old ID if you’re not sure whether you have one or not.

iTunes

Since its original launch as simple music player, iTunes has evolved into the premier digital location to both consume your existing media and purchase new media too, whether you’re looking for music, movies, audiobooks, TV shows or iOS apps.

The finer points of managing your iTunes media and the more advanced (and very cool!) aspects of the application, such as iTunes In The Cloud, should probably be revisited at some point in a subsequent Mac 101 article, but for now let’s just take a look at the very basics.

Before you dive in, be sure to take a glance at the various tutorials which welcome the new Mac user on first launching iTunes.

Adding Media

To add media to iTunes, we can follow the same basic process for whatever media it is that we wish to add. However, for the sake of simplicity, let’s assume its audio-based. Within iTunes, click on File > Add To Library and then navigate to the audio files in question. All being well, they’ll be imported into the correct place and still have their names, artwork and other assorted data. If not? Well, that’s what the following section is for.

Organizing Media

When importing audio media into iTunes that isn’t music, such as an audiobook for example, it’ll often show up in the wrong place, with iTunes mistaking it for music. Similarly, iTunes may import an album but not tell you who the artist is. To fix this, we can take manual control over the way which iTunes organizes our media.

To do this, let’s start by making sure that we’re on the same page, so to speak. Click on the ‘Music’ tab on the left pane of the iTunes window and then navigate to View > As List (don’t worry, you can bring back the far more attractive Grid view later by looking in the View menu again). This done, you can now easily highlight several files, whatever they are called and right-click to sort them and rename if required.

For further organizing, head to the ‘Options’ pane and from there you can choose the Media Kind, handy if you’re importing podcasts or audiobooks and want to ensure your iPhone remembers where you left off.

For advice on moving, restoring and syncing your iTunes media, check out this great article by Quintin

Purchasing Media

To begin spending some money in the iTunes Store, simply click on the tab of that name which is located on the left-hand pane of your iTunes window. Once there, you’ll be able to browse through several categories which include Movies, TV Shows, Music and the App Store – not to be confused with the Mac App Store, this particular App Store is for iOS software only.

iCloud

iCloud is the latest in a long line of attempts by Apple to provide a seamless online suite of tools to complement the Mac OS X computing experience, a quest which goes all the way back to the turn of this century and the company’s initial foray into the cloud, iTools. While iCloud only achieves its full usefulness when one owns multiple Apple devices or computers, the great thing about iCloud is that Apple offers the service free of charge and so there’s no real reason for Mac newcomers not to dip their toes in the future of Apple’s cloud-computing.

Providing your various devices are properly configured with iCloud, you can move iWork documents seamlessly between machines and sync bookmarks, contacts and calendars too. In addition, iCloud is accessible via a web browser so that your data is accessible even on non-Apple computers.

The Mac App Store

While you’re completely free to acquire your software the old fashioned way, the Mac App Store is a great place to find much of the latest and greatest Mac OS X apps at a great price, or even free, with the additional benefit that it’s easy to keep track of needed updates too.

To start doing some online shopping, just launch the Mac App Store application and you’ll be presented with something that looks a lot like the above screenshot. Depending on when and how you created your Apple ID, you may have to enter it in, along with your password. Your account can be managed from the main page (under the ‘Account’ tab) and newly downloaded apps will be added to Launchpad and they can also all be updated through the App Store’s interface.

iChat

iChat has been with Mac OS X users for a decade now and the popular instant messaging service can make use of text messaging, in addition to support for audio and video calls and screen-sharing. While iChat is exclusive to the Mac platform, it can be used with AIM, Yahoo and Google chat accounts, to talk with users on other operating systems.

To get started with iChat, launch the app and then add your Apple ID and any other accounts you’d like to use.

FaceTime

Unveiled alongside the launch of the iPhone 4, FaceTime has been subsequently rolled out to the other iOS devices and Macs too. Indeed, recently released Mac computers come with a newly upgraded high definition iSight camera to make the most of FaceTime.

While detractors may fairly point out that FaceTime offers basically the same functionality as the already existing and far more popular cross-platform app Skype, what FaceTime lacks in ubiquity, it undeniably offers a very special user experience. Getting started with FaceTime is easy, just enter your Apple ID!

Conclusion

That concludes our Mac 101 introduction to the Apple ecosystem, I hope that you’ve gained some additional knowledge about how each of Apple’s products are designed to work together and offer an additional functionality which goes beyond the hardware that Infinite Loop sell, or even the operating system which they design to run on it.

In the next Mac 101 article we’re going to be looking at the ten Mac apps that every new user should rush to get installed their new Apple computer as soon as possible.

A while ago I introduced Snapseed to the readers of iPhone.Appstorm and Apple honored the photo editing app with the App of Year 2011 award. For good reason: Snapseed took full leverage of the intuitive gestures on mobile devices and made editing a breeze.

Now Snapseed is available for the Mac and of course the question arises: does the app stay true to it’s clean interface and ease of use? I have taken Snapseed for a ride and will let you know after the break if the experience for Mac users is as awesome as it is on mobile devices.

Hello Familiar Interface

Those of you who have been enjoying Snapseed on their mobile devices will be happy to find that the Mac application looks just like it. Those of you who are new to the app will have a really easy start because everything is minimalistic and quite fast to understand.

Adding a photo is a matter of a single drag & drop. That’s the most convenient way, but of course you can always go through the File menu as well.

Snapseed plays nice with all standard image formats. I went a step further and threw RAW formats from DSLR’s at it (.nef and .cr2) and it handled those perfectly as well.

The main part of the app is dedicated to show your photo with all adjustment options neatly arranged in a left pane. Don’t be put off about “only 10″ buttons to press; there are a lot more options once you’ve selected an adjustment. I think that’s one of the strengths of Snapseed: not throwing everything at you at once but showing you only what you need at a particular moment.

Speaking of seeing only what you need: by pressing the spacebar you can zoom into your image instantly. A navigator window appears and lets you find your way around quickly.

Working with Basic Adjustments

Before we dive into creative manipulation, let us take care of the most basic things that can already help improve your image. Selecting any of three options brings up a more detailed pane of settings. If applicable, Snapseed will provide you with a number of presets which can be applied with a single click. Or you can use the sliders to manipulate the effect to your liking.

Whenever you chose a preset or use the sliders, the effect will be applied to the entire image. But what if you want to have the effect only on a specific part of the image? That’s where Snapseed steps up: by adding a control point (or multiple points) in the Tune Image section, you can specify exactly where an effect gets applied.

A white circle will appear on your image and you can do all the things which the help screen above details: adjust brightness, contrast and saturation by simply clicking on the respective tiny button and sliding right and left. Furthermore, you can adjust the area that will be affected – and when you resize it, a red overlay will show you where the effect will be applied.

Get Creative

Once you’ve made all the basic adjustments it’s time to get creative. Snapseed offers seven settings:

• Black and White: convert your image to b/w and apply color filters to achieve different effects
• Center Focus: blur parts of the image to focus the eyes of the viewer on a certain spot
• Drama: liven up any image
• Frames: present your image the right way
• Grunge: use textures to distort your image
• Vintage: apply filters to age your image
• Tilt-Shift: change the perspective by adding depth

Let’s take a closer look at some effects. Take the first, b/w. It will drain your image of all color. That in itself can already help to bring the message of your photo across. But when you use color filters, the corresponding colors of the image will be enhanced, even in b/w mode and you can achieve some amazing changes.

When you get to Center Focus, you might ask yourself: what is the difference between this effect and tilt-shift? After all, they both blur parts of the image. With Center Focus, you blur everything outside the defined space evenly. You can also add a vignette (darkening towards the photo edges) to strengthen the effect.

But as is quite obvious, you just blurred parts of the image to focus the attention on another part. With Tilt Shift, you try to change the perspective. If applied correctly (and my example image sucks here because it doesn’t have that much stuff to show it properly) things may appear further away or smaller/bigger than they really are. To properly set the effect, Snapseed offers amazingly detailed adjustment settings right on the image.

As for the other effects, they work pretty much as the others. You have presets to apply changes quickly or your can give the effect your own touch via the sliders.

Be aware that you always have to hit the Apply button on the lower left of the adjustment pane to actually have the effect stick to the image. You can also opt out of the changes by simply hitting the cancel button and return to the overview pane.

Once you’re done with everything, you can either save the image as a .jpg file, export it directly to iPhoto or share it via multiple options.

Usability – Good But Without Gestures

Being a huge fan of Snapseed, especially on the iPad, I enjoyed the same interface as on the mobile app. It makes it much easier to find stuff when you already know where it is (and it doesn’t get confusing when you switch between devices).

And while making adjustments is really easy and comfortable, I wish Snapseed for Mac would allow for gesture based input. For example, when utilizing the power of the control points in the Tune Image section or adjusting the size of an effect in many of the other options, I wish I could just pinch and zoom on my Wacom tablet (or on a track pad, for those who have one available). That, in my eyes, was the incredible strength of Snapseed – that I could manipulate the image with my fingers directly on the image instead of having to go through sliders and other controls outside of the image.

That doesn’t mean that the current mode of control isn’t good. By all means, it’s easy, fast and gets the work done perfectly. But it would really have rocked if the Mac app would have allowed for the same “touch” controls as the mobile app.

Verdict

My criticism above should be seen just as that: a user’s wish for future improvements. And I think the only people that will come up with that wish are avid users of the mobile app. But no matter if you are new to Snapseed or an experienced user, it delivers. It’s clearly structured, effects are easily applied and cover a wide range. It’s certainly more than iPhoto, which is shipped with every Mac, offers you.

Snapseed is not going to compete with Pixelmator or Photoshop, but it’s not aimed at those users. Snapseed is for the casual user who wants to spruce up their photos without the hassle of any learning curve at all and who are on a budget. If you are in that category, give Snapseed a try.

After spending the last couple of months in the testing stage, the third update to Mac OS X Lion has finally been released to the public through Apple Software Update. OS X 10.7.3 is a recommended update for all Lion users and features a small number of tweaks and fixes aimed at smoothing out those niggling creases in Apple’s core operating system.

Apart from Safari 5.1.3, the update has provided support for more languages in Lion (including Catalan, Greek, Thai and Ukrainian), fixed a graphics performance issue in iMacs that utilise ATI graphics and sorted out a couple of other issues, such as WiFi connection issues and smart card authentication issues. OS X 10.7.3 also fixes “compatibility issues with Windows file sharing” (some Apple users have been waiting for pretty much since Windows came about) and adds RAW image support for a select handful of digital cameras.

Apple also quietly released a security update for any users still on Snow Leopard, although the change list for this has not yet been published.

To grab the new version of Lion then head over to Software Update where it should be ready and waiting for you. Always remember to back up your machine before updating should anything go pear-shaped, however!

The full change log is available on Apple’s website here.

This post is part of a series that revisits some of our readers’ favorite articles from the past that still contain awesome and relevant information that you might find useful. This post was originally published on Feb 2nd, 2011.

There’s a huge range of amazing paid software out there, but more often than not there is some form of free alternative. For those of us who can’t afford to spend up on every great app we desire, gathered here are 15 great free pieces of software that achieve much the same purpose of a popular but paid application.

Of course – nine times out of ten you get what you pay for, and the paid applications are usually going to do the job better, look nicer, or have more features than any free app. But that doesn’t mean free applications are worth overlooking, as they will often be more than functional enough for your needs.

Join us after the break for a look at some great examples!

Photoshop Alternative: Seashore

Photoshop is without question a brilliant piece of software, but at a whopping $700, most people looking for a general photo editing application might want something a bit more modest. Pixelmator is well worth a try at $29, but as far as free photo editing apps go, Seashore might be perfect for those on a tight budget.

This open source image editor is based off GIMP, but runs in a clean and simple interface with enough features to keep modest users happy.

Seashore handles layers, alpha channels, and has a decent tool set.  Within the Menubar are a number of effects and image editing controls to play with including basics such as contrast and hue sliders.  These sliders fade after each adjustment, which is a convenient feature to see the effects of your changes. Well worth a look.

AppZapper Alternative: AppCleaner

AppZapper ($13) is a great application for properly deleting applications, widgets, preference panes and plug-ins. When you drag an application to AppZapper, it finds all the files that relate to that app so that you can delete the whole application without leaving odd bits scattered around your hard drive.

AppCleaner from Free Mac Soft is an incredibly similar application, but it’s free.  Like AppZapper, cleaning up apps is as simple as dragging one from the Finder to the AppCleaner window.  Once dragged, AppCleaner will instantly identify all the files that the application has created across the system, which can all be trashed by clicking ‘Delete’.

Files can also be found from within AppCleaner under three different categories and searched for.  There is a bug within the application which means that as you search, the list updates live but the icons remain where they were which can cause a bit of confusion.

AppCleaner boasts a few features that AppZapper doesn’t have.  A very nifty feature is ‘SmartDelete’, which means that when you drag an app to the trash, you will be asked if you would like to also delete related files.  This even works when AppCleaner isn’t open.

You can also drop in specific apps to protect from deleting with AppCleaner. Of course, AppZapper has its own special features, including a license and serial storage space for your own apps and stunning animations.

Parallels/Fusion Alternative: VirtualBox

For those of you on Mac who still need to run Windows, the first names that you’d hear would be Parallels and VMware Fusion (each $80), both of which are powerful and highly praised Windows virtualization tools.  But there’s also a third player out there which you may not have heard of; VirtualBox.

VirtualBox is an open source application which, whilst missing some of the features and performance of the commercial apps, stands up very well for those looking to use Windows for tasks which don’t tow too heavily on the processor.  VirtualBox is definitely a viable alternative to Parallels and Fusion if you’re happy to put up with what it lacks in comparison.

Also don’t forget Apple’s own Boot Camp, which comes pre-installed on Macs, but requires you to reboot the computer each time you want to change operating system.

Linkinus Alternative: Colloquy

Linkinus ($20) and Colloquy are IRC (Instant Relay Chat) clients which allow you to connect to a chat room on a certain topic to chat with like-minded people around the world.  Both applications do a great job, but as an open source app Colloquy is well worth a look and has a great user base.

Colloquy is a reliable and well designed application which can be customized to suit your style.  It has a great range of features (including growl notifications) and has plenty to play around with inside the preferences. I also personally really like the set of sound effects included for the various alerts.

I’d recommend giving Colloquy a go if you’re looking into an IRC app that works well and is easy to use, but with plenty of more advanced features for regular users.

Transmit Alternative: Cyberduck

Transmit ($34) would be one of the most popular and publicized FTP clients for Mac, and for good reason.  Cyberduck may not pack the same feature set and flair, but it is a great open source alternative.

From my experience it always works perfectly for connecting, uploading and downloading files from FTP servers.  Of course it doesn’t only support FTP and can connect to a whole heap of different servers, as well as letting you edit any text files directly from the server.

The interface of Cyberduck is easy to use and navigate for those with little experience surrounding FTP, and it’s certainly worth checking out.

Concentrate Alternative: Isolator

Concentrate ($29) is a fantastic application to help you get rid of distractions on your computer so that you focus on the task at hand. It can do a whole heap of tasks such as quitting applications, setting chat statuses to ‘away’, running AppleScripts, and blocking websites such as Facebook.

Isolator is a free application that aims to solve the same problem, but does so in a completely different manner. Basically, it ‘isolates’ the current active application and dims everything else in the background.  Isolator sits in the menu bar and can be activated by keyboard short cut.

Within the Isolator preferences, you can adjust a whole range of settings.  In terms of appearance, you can change how opaque the background is made, and even blur out the background windows using a number of effects.  This app also works seamlessly with Spaces.

InDesign Alternative: Scribus

InDesign ($700) is a professional page layout tool for designing print projects such as newsletters.  If you gawked at that price then it might be a good idea to take a look at Scribus, an open source desktop publishing application.

The interface leaves a bit to be desired, as it is a little confusing at first. To counter it’s interface though, Scribus has all the features you’d expect and a few more for good measure, such as vector shapes. It comes with fantastic documentation which walks you through all the things it can do, and the website has a wealth of more information and tutorials.

If you’re prepared to give Scribus some time then it could be a great desktop publisher for you.

Pages Alternative: OpenOffice

Pages ($20) is the word processing part of the iWork bundle from Apple. It is a brilliant application for writing and basic page layout, but it too has a completely free, open source alternative; OpenOffice.

OpenOffice runs natively in OS X, (rather than in X11 like it used to) and is smooth and fast. It’s easy to use and looks more or less the same as any other word processing app. Like most free vs paid apps, it may not pack all the bells and whistles that Pages, or even Microsoft Word has, but OpenOffice should fit the majority of peoples needs.

OpenOffice is actually a full office suite and includes Presentation, Spreadsheets, and even Drawing applications alongside the word-processor, so can replace the entire iWork or Microsoft Office suite.

CoverScout Alternative: Album Artwork Assistant

CoverScout ($30) is a wonderfully designed application that makes applying and editing album artwork in your iTunes library a pleasure. Album Artwork Assistant doesn’t have the same wow factor and features, but if you’re looking for something free to apply album artwork to your music without doing everything manually, this might be just for you.

Album Artwork Assistant isn’t completely automated.  You have to go into iTunes and select all the tracks from albums that you want to add artwork to.  Then AAA will load those tracks up and as you click on each album, it will do an image search across the internet for artwork.

You can Quick Look images, and even browse the web if AAA doesn’t yield the right pictures.  Once you’ve got the right one, you just click ‘Add Immediately’ and it will be applied to the iTunes tracks.  It can be a little buggy in selecting tracks to search but overall is worth giving a go.

Also, you may not be aware that iTunes has a built in Album Artwork finder.  It will only work for tracks with the correct labels and only if iTunes has them in it’s store, but here’s how to go about that… Within iTunes, click ‘Advanced’ in the menu bar, then ‘Get Album Artwork’.

CoverSutra Alternative: Bowtie

CoverSutra ($5) is an app which gives you easy access to search and controlling iTunes, as well as displaying album artwork and information directly on the Desktop.  Bowtie is a very similar, but is a free application which also does a great job.

Bowtie places a small Album icon on your Desktop which you can drag around and place where you like.  Clicking on it brings up song information and iTunes controls including ratings.  The themes can be customized, and more can be downloaded from an ever-growing selection.

Last.fm scrobbling is supported, and you can set up a huge variety of keyboard shortcuts to control Bowtie and iTunes.  A really nice app to use to enhance your iTunes experience.

MainMenu Alternative: IceClean

MainMenu ($19) is a great system maintenance tool which sits in the menu bar.  IceClean performs many of the same functions as MainMenu for a zero dollar price tag.

IceClean contains an abundance of features stored throughout various menus, which include repairing disk permissions, routine maintenance scripts, clearing caches, looking up network info and force ejecting CDs/DVDs.  This utility is well worth a download if you’re an advanced Mac user and understood what all the features above meant!

DaisyDisk alternative: DiskWave

DaisyDisk ($20) offers a beautiful visual representation of where your hard drive space is being used up, so that you can then go about and free up space by deleting large and unimportant files.

DiskWave lacks the charm and visual charts of DaisyDisk, but if you’re looking for a free, functional application to discover what is hogging up all your space, it could be all you need.  You start off by selecting a drive to scan.  Once it’s finished searching through your drive, all of your files will be displayed as they are in the finder, but ordered from largest to smallest and color coded based on size.

It’s then fairly straight forward to work your way through the layers of folders to find troublesome files, which can be deleted from within the app by pressing the ‘Delete’ button.  There are also buttons to Quick Look the files or reveal them in the Finder. DiskWave is still under development according to it’s site but is fully functional as it is.

Illustrator Alternative: Inkscape

Illustrator ($600) is the go-to drawing application for vector work, and it works wonders.  But as with all Adobe products, the price tag is a bit frightening for many.  Luckily Inkscape, an open source vector drawing application exists.  Inkscape is easy to use, especially if you’re familiar with Illustrator, and packs a great range of features that will get you through most projects.

Unfortunately it is not a native Mac application and requires Apple’s X11 app to run but this is only a small downside.  If you’re wondering if Inkscape is capable of producing stunning looking work, you only need to take a peek into the Inkscape DeviantART page to see what it’s users are creating.

Inkscape also has fantastic support for importing Illustrator files and I was very impressed at how even complex files were imported flawlessly, ready to be edited. If you can’t afford to fork out big bucks for Illustrator, Inkscape is well and truly worth a look and may suit you perfectly.

TextMate Alternative: TextWrangler

TextMate ($55) is a powerful text editor, which is great for editing all sorts of code such as HTML.  A wonderful free alternative to TextMate is TextWrangler, from Bare Bones Software.  This application packs a huge selection of features, mostly tucked away in its menu.

It excels in areas such as find and replace, syntax coloring for many various coding languages, code folding, FTP opening and saving, and much much more.  TextWrangler is very straight forward to use and the interface is simple and clean. It’s perfect for programmers, but also serves the needs of basic text editing as well.

Coda Alternative: Aptana Studio

Coda ($100) is a wonderful web development app from the team at Panic which brings all the main elements of website creation together into one window.  The interface looks great and is a joy to use, but if you’d like an app which can do much of the same stuff for free, Aptana Studio is a great place to start.

Aptana Studio is excellent for editing HTML, JavaScript, and CSS and offers Live Previews in any web browsers you have. There is outline view of all elements, and full validation is included.  There’s also support for FTP access and publishing. Overall, it has a very sturdy feature set – so much so that the Preferences are somewhat of a nightmare to work through!

Aptana Studio is cross platform so not specifically designed for Mac, but it is a very powerful web development application that is definitely worth looking into whether you are an aspiring or experienced website developer.

Conclusion

Hopefully you’ve discovered a few new apps, free of charge, which can replace other, more popular apps which cost money! There’s a lot of great stuff out there for the Mac which developers kindly release for free.

Of course, whilst we’ve been throwing the word ‘free’ around a lot in this article, many of the developers of these apps ask for donations. If you use and like a free app, be sure to support the developers who put their time and effort into making it.

Let us know what you think of any of the free applications mentioned above, if you think there is a better alternative, or any other great free software that replaces popular paid applications out there!

The Mac has long been the homestead for effective and easy video editing, graphic design, and video compressing for many professionals and novices alike. If you are at all interested in getting your creative juices flowing, video wise, you will absolutely love this roundup. Many people know the big video apps for Mac, while other smaller and still great apps out there remained a mystery. So as a professional video editor and cinematographer, it is my mission to let you in on over thirty of the best video apps around.

Many of these apps are free and others are paid. Bang for your buck is very important when choosing what to spend your hard earned money on, so rest assured that all of the apps listed are in fact worth every penny. Lets dive right in and get creative!

What Did We Miss?

I hope you’ve found this collection of thirty video apps to be helpful. Whether you’re a serious professional or a causal hobbyist, there are quite a few apps above that you’ll want to check out for yourself.

Now that you’ve seen our suggestions, it’s time for you to join the conversation. Which video apps have proved invaluable to your workflow? Have you tried any of the apps above? Which apps would you add to the list?

Audio recording and editing on the Mac can seem like an pretty daunting task. Many of the available tools are extremely powerful, but as a result, too complex for the average user. Piezo, the little brother of Audio Hijack Pro, a favorite among podcasters and broadcasters, hopes to change that by focusing solely on recording audio from any application on your Mac, forgoing any addition features. With its extremely simple interface, invaluable utility, and affordable price tag, can it be the David to the audio recording Goliaths? Read on.

Interface

Let’s face it, Piezo looks and feels amazing. It is one of a growing number of Mac apps that looks like every pixel has been perfectly sculpted to fit the aesthetic. Every button click or keystroke triggers beautiful, subtle animations that remind you just how much care was put into the creation of Piezo.

The interface is pleasantly minimal, with a VU Meter, audio source drop down menu, a recording timer, and a big red record button -that’s it. There’s nothing to configure and you can get started recording right away. Compared to its professional-grade alternatives, this should be a welcome change to the average consumer. There’s a growing trend of affordable single-purpose apps these days, and Piezo fits in wonderfully. In fact, I sometimes find myself leaving the app open, only because of how nice it looks.

Using Piezo

Apps like Logic Pro, Audio Hijack Pro, and even GarageBand can be overkill for many people, they’re big, bloated and feature-rich. In contrast, Piezo’s lightweight approach is a stellar solution for anything from recording lectures, to podcasts, to music. As with any capturing app, you should be conscious of your area’s copyright laws as well as any limits the app your recording from may set (e.g. recording Rdio music for public use is frowned upon, to say the least), but all that aside, and as long as you use proper discretion, Piezo is really set it and forget it.

Recordings from my MacBook Pro’s built in Microphone were on-par with any other recording solution, so Piezo should work fine for recording lectures or notes. If you plan on recording anything worth distributing publicly, a nice microphone is a worthwhile investment -regardless of what you use to record. Rdio recordings sounded superb, as did recording Skype calls, although, since there is no option to auto/record or stop when a song plays or a call is initiated, you’ll likely want to look elsewhere if this is something you plan on doing on a regular basis. Piezo can record in 128/256 MP3 and 64/128/256 AAC file formats which is noticeably limited compared to other solutions, but should work fine for 99% of users.

Why You Need It

If you plan on just recording audio from a microphone you likely won’t see any need to use Piezo, as QuickTime is completely free and handles those jobs just as well. Most people will want to use Piezo for what it is -a stripped down version of Audio Hijack Pro. You’re able to capture the sound directly from nearly any application with ease -and if you see a need to do that, Piezo works perfectly.

The simplified settings and customization options force you to focus less on the app itself and more on what you want to record. We’ve tested it with Rdio, Safari, Google Chrome, and Skype and the output sounded great across the board. In addition, Piezo is a great companion to the Internet radio feature in iTunes, allowing you to record songs or talk radio quietly in the background without much hassle. I now keep Piezo open whenever I use my Mac, just in case there is some recording to be done.

Where it Falls Short

Piezo’s minimalist interface is still missing some features that could make it a truly stellar product that’s more than worth your ten dollar investment. Perhaps the most glaring omission from the app is any sort of sharing capabilities. With its consumer-focused design, I excepted the ability to share my recordings over the Internet, especially with the newfound popularity of services like SoundCloud and Tumblr.

Next, if you want to record multiple audio sources at once, let’s say the built in mic and Safari, you’re out of luck. Piezo is single source only. In addition, if you plan on recording a favorite radio show, you’ll likely want a more advanced app as Piezo has no way of scheduling audio recordings. Finally, if you plan on producing music with Piezo you’ll likely be disappointed, as there is no option for adding Album Art or meta-data of any kind beyond the basic title and description. This is undoubtably a lengthy list of restrictions and if you can’t live without anything listed about you’ll want to look into Audio Hijack Pro, which is far more feature inclusive.

Conclusion

Piezo does a great job of finding a middle ground between professional programs like Logic and the basic audio recording feature built into QuickTime on every Mac. With its ability to capture audio from any application Piezo can expand the functionality of your Mac exponentially.

Since Piezo does what it says, and what it does it invaluable to many users, I can say that it’s a great buy as long as you can live within its glaring limitations. It’s stable and priced well considering the cost to functionality ratio. In short, Piezo represents a sort of PhotoBooth of audio capturing apps: it’s simple, beautiful, and fun.

Back when the Mac App Store launched we gave you a roundup with all the great games available in it. Things change pretty quickly, and tons of new games have been added since then to the App Store. So, we decided to give you a second iteration of the roundup. Here we’ll cover everything from casual games, to more in-depth hardcore games.

11 more awesome games available on the App Store that you should play!

Grand Theft Auto: 3, San Andreas & Vice City

We probably don’t need to remind you what GTA is, but we will anyway. GTA is pretty much the pioneer in “sandbox” or “open-world” games, where you can basically do anything you want inside a city. We won’t go into detail as to how explicit those things can get, you get the idea.

Now, the trilogy that rebooted the series in the 2000′s is back on the Mac so that you can relive the epic crime story lines and the iconic parodies of pop culture and city life. If you’ve never played a Grand Theft Auto game and are old enough to do so, please grab one of these games ASAP. And if you’ve played them before, then this is a great excuse to revisit them!
Price: $14.99 each
Developer: Rockstar Games

Assassin’s Creed 2

Assassin’s Creed is a franchise by Ubisoft that brings you to remote eras uncovering crazy historical conspiracies. The second installment of the series brings you back to the Renaissance, where you play the part of an assassin called Ezio that must avenge his family while being involved in something bigger than he thinks. If you’ve ever wondered what it would feel like to do parkour with blades in Renaissance Italy, this is the game for you.
Price: $37.99
Developer: Ubisoft

Batman: Arkham Asylum

Arkham Asylum is a recent, and very critically acclaimed game based in the Batman world, where you get to play the bat in a mission to try to find out what’s going on in Arkham Asylum (a prison where all of Batman’s enemies are being held). The game recently got an even better received sequel called “Arkham City” where you get to revisit the same mechanics of the successful first game with a few cool additions.

If you ever wanted to play a (good) game where you could use all of Batman’s cool equipment and face off his iconic enemies, then this is your chance to do it in your Mac. Arkham Asylum, unlike many superhero games, sticks loyally to the Batman world and makes it fun to be in it.
Price: $39.99
Developer: Feral Interactive

Monopoly

Sometimes you just want a break from complex, demanding games to relax and play something familiar. I know I do. You can do just that with EA’s version of the popular board game Monopoly. Play with up to 4 players and have everything that you always loved about the original game, but much more interactive.
Price: $4.99
Developer: EA

Limbo

Limbo is a super weird and creepy, but equally awesome game where you have to help a little kid get through diverse obstacles in an obscure world. It is a simple platformer, but the scenery, the mental challenges and the whole experience of playing with the elements of the game makes it quite a unique game unlike anything that I’d played before.

It’s short, but it’s also very hypnotizing and very cheap. You simply have to play Limbo, especially on a big screen at night, if you can.
Price: $9.99
Developer: Playdead

Civilization V

Here’s a game for the strategy fans. Civilization is a franchise that has spanned many sequels, the latest of them being the fifth, which you can find on the App Store. In Civ5, you can lead a civilization from nothing to ruling the world, passing through many different eras like the beginning of mankind to the space age and facing many historical empires along the way.
Price: $39.99
Developer: Aspyr

Machinarium

Machinarium is a game that comes up a lot in this type of roundup. Probably because it has been released on pretty much every platform out there, but also because it is an amazing game. It is a puzzle sort of game where you play a little robot that has to uncover a conspiracy, and to do so you must face a bunch of challenges and brain-teasers that are as challenging as they are entertaining.

Machinarium has been out for a few years now and it has gotten great reviews all over the place. If you’ve never played it before, you can get it in the App Store for a very reasonable price.

Price: $9.99
Developer: Amanita

Angry Birds Seasons

We’ve got you covered on the casual side, too. Like most people, we also like to have one of those time-wasting games that you can just play for a few minutes but get addicted and keep coming back to. If you don’t know what Angry Birds is, then please stop reading my articles, mom.

“Seasons” is sort of like an extension of the first version of the game that follows the same mechanics but with seasonal themes. Aside from that, it’s the same birds that you know and (probably) love.
Price: $4.99
Developer: Rovio

Plants vs. Zombies

Plants vs. Zombies is a very popular tower-defense game that has been released on many platforms over the years. In it, you command an army of crazy plants that must keep zombies from getting to their side of the lawn. The rest you probably know already, as you get the usual tower-defense mechanics that you’ve played in countless iOS games. Stunning graphics, a twisted setting, and some good addictive gameplay make this game a must-have.
Price: $9.99
Developer: Popcap

Conclusion

We hope that we have provided you with enough options for any type of gamer out there. This is just a selection of the most acclaimed games that we at Mac.Appstorm recommend to our variety of readers. If you are a casual gamer, you might enjoy something like Angry Birds or Monopoly, but we suggest you also give a try to more immersive experiences games like Machinarium or Limbo. And if you like your games a little more elaborate, then you probably have already played Arkham Asylum and beat all of the GTA games over and over again.

Why don’t you give us your recommendations? Maybe even from Steam, like we did before? Would you like us to revisit that Steam roundup just like we did with this one? Let us know in the comments!