Category: Mac

CloudApp and Droplr are two apps that perform the same basic function. Both allow you to drag items from almost anywhere in OS X to a menu bar icon that instantly triggers an upload and copies a sharing link to your clipboard.

This is simply a fantastic model for effortless sharing that I personally use every day. The part that I’m not completely convinced about is which app is the best for this type of activity. I’ve used both extensively and find that they both are really solid apps with a lot going for them. Here are some of the things that they both do well: allow for several different types of uploads, let you browse an online web app of past uploads, and provide a public API for integration with third party apps.

That being said, I can easily point out areas where one is better than the other. The following are just a few of the many examples. For starters, CloudApp doesn’t put any ads on the page that hosts the shared content while Droplr does. However, Droplr generates nice short links and CloudApp generates big ugly links (CloudApp’s links are nice and short if you turn on public links). Further, Droplr has support for code sharing with syntax highlighting and CloudApp does not. CloudApp counters again with the ability to automatically upload screenshots taken with the default OS X keyboard shortcuts while Droplr forces you to memorize a new shortcut. Finally, Droplr also has an iOS app while CloudApp is only for the Mac.

Cast your vote in the poll and then leave a comment below letting us know why you think one app is better than the other. Have you tried both apps? Which features do you think are most important?

Our laptops are valuable devices. They connect us. Inform and entertain us. And yes, sometimes distract us. Dealing with a lost or stolen laptop is not typically a thought we ponder in our busy lives. The good news, there are some powerful tools out there to assist us in the recovery of a missing laptop. The better news, today we’ll take a look at Prey – a free, open-source laptop recovery system that you can begin using immediately.

The developers at preyproject.com make the claim that Prey just works. Let’s take a look at how Prey gets the job done.

Like other applications, installing Prey is a fairly straightforward and familiar process. However unlike most applications, Prey leaves virtually no trace on your computer. After the installation, there is nothing to launch or configure. It idles quietly in the background, unnoticeable even in the activity monitor. As described on the website’s FAQ, Prey uses no system memory until it is activated. So, how does it work?

Using Prey requires pairing one’s device with a free, online account. All of the settings for configuring, activating and monitoring Prey’s services are accessed through a browser interface. In practice, this makes the most sense as alerting Prey to a missing laptop and subsequently tracking and monitoring it can easily be done from another internet-connected device.

The Web Interface:

The free Prey account allows for monitoring up to three devices. From within the user’s control panel, the various security and alert settings for each device can be toggled on or off to suit one’s needs.

When a user reports a device as missing, Prey’s services spring to action. However, for the reporting and monitoring system to work, the missing device must be connected to the internet. Even a brief connection will allow for valuable information to be sent from the device back to the user’s control panel.

The Monitoring Tools:

The variety and scope of Prey’s monitoring tools are impressive. Not only can it geo-locate the device by extracting data from its wifi location, Prey will snap images from the webcam (as well as screenshots), identify local network information, report on modified files and list running programs. Email alerts will notify the user when a report has been generated and give near real-time status updates as long as the device remains connected to the internet. Should the device be disconnected from the internet and reconnected elsewhere, Prey will resume its monitoring and reporting activity. Prey also provides several security and lockdown features that can prevent access to the device or alert a potential thief (or passerby) that monitoring is occurring.

Real World Use?

There are many recovery stories that have been shared on the project’s website praising the merits of Prey. But can’t a would-be thief simply remove or disable Prey? According to the developers, Prey can only be removed with the administrator password. Without this piece of information, only the more technically sophisticated thief would consider how to begin accessing your computer and crippling Prey’s services.

I have been using Prey on a Macbook Pro for slightly over a year. Fortunately I’ve never had need to activate Prey’s services. Yet because I’m relying on Prey as my first “go to” recovery tool, I do periodically put it through its paces by reporting my laptop as missing. The results? In six test runs over the course of a year, Prey has not failed once. Each time it has perfectly performed its task, generating full-detailed reports and providing on-time status updates.

The free version offered by Prey is rock solid and will provide excellent recovery options. There are pro features that some may find useful and worth the additional cost. Whereas the free service provides up to 10 individual reports for missing devices (older ones get deleted as new ones are generated)), the pro service provides for up to 100 reports. Other pro features include auto-updates to the application and on-demand reporting. Check out the full list here.

Some Things to Consider:

• Laptops running an application like Little Snitch will need to give Prey permission to phone home.
• Of course, if someone reformats or replaces the hard drive, Prey will not perform its function.
• Password protect your user account and encrypt your data. For an added layer of security, consider using firmware password protection.
• Keep the Guest User Safari account in OS X 10.7.2 enabled and provide some contact information on your login screen. This may “lure” your potential thief or laptop rescuer into logging in and activating a number of Prey’s features.
• Any updates to the Prey application will need to be manually installed (unless you’re paying for Prey’s pro features).
• And for goodness sake, don’t leave your laptop sitting unattended at the coffee shop while using the bathroom!

The Verdict:

There are similar type recovery services on the market. The recent Find My Mac feature introduced with Apple’s iCloud service might be one to consider, though many report it has its own quirks and security flaws. Prey has a proven track-record. It has been independently reviewed, tested and recommended by users and publications worldwide. Being a cross-platform application, Prey will work with Mac, iOS, Android, Linux and Windows devices. Accessing and monitoring various devices from a single-user interface is a major asset, particularly in a panicked moment when one or more of these devices goes missing. For the no-cost added layer of protection and peace of mind offered by this little application, Prey is a winner.

Are you using anti-theft or recovery protection for your laptop?

What success story do you to have share?

As a writer, one utility that I simply can’t live without is some sort of text expansion app. These tools are simply invaluable to my workflow and save me hours of typing every month. I personally am a huge fan of TextExpander. It’s my go to text expansion app and it simply blows away the competition. I wouldn’t dream of switching.

That being said, I realize that not everyone can justify dropping $34.95 for a snippet expander. Newbies to this specific app genre might want to cut their teeth on a free app, so today we’re going to compare two such apps from the Mac App Store: xType (formerly Presto) and DashExpander. How are these two apps different? Which is the best for your needs? Read on to find out.

Aren’t They All the Same?

In the end, text expansion utilities all have the same basic format. In order to save you time, they watch what you’re typing in any app and when you enter certain key combinations, the small snippet of text is automatically expanded into something larger.

For instance, let’s say you have a crazy long email address that you hate typing out manually: [email protected]. With a text expansion app, you could set it up so that every time you type “em#”, it will be replaced with your email address.

As you can imagine, once you have a bunch of these types of macros set up, you really start to notice the benefits. This is especially true of longer snippets. I have HTML and CSS code, dummy text and even entire emails in TextExpander.

Both of the apps that we’ll look at perform this same functionality, so you might be tempted to think that all text expansion tools are created equal. Unfortunately, that’s simply not the case. Some have more powerful and advanced features such as the ability to incorporate clipboard contents and precisely position the cursor, others are implemented as a menu bar only item or even a dock only item. Even the UI between the various options can vary pretty dramatically.

For this reason, choosing the right text expander for your needs is an important decision. Let’s jump into the two apps we’re examining today to see which is better for you.

App Format

Right off the bat you’ll find a major difference between DashExpander and xType. DashExpander is a menu bar app that doesn’t appear in your dock. Any time you need it, you can just hit Option+Space to bring it up.

xType on the other hand is a normal app that sits in your dock coupled with an invisible background process. Even if you quit the app, the background process will still keep running and your snippets will keep expanding.

Winner: DashExpander

The clear winner here for me is DashExpander. I’m used to the idea of text expansion preferences residing in my menu bar and don’t like devoting space in my dock to it.

It’s also a little odd to know that even when you quit the app, xType is still going, meaning you have to bust out Activity Monitor if you really want to kill it. This format has a clunky feeling to it that I don’t connect with.

Design and UI

As a reviewer, I always try to be respectful to every app that I try, no matter how bad. That being said, I simply can’t skirt around the fact that the DashExpander interface is a train wreck.

The cat is super creepy (I don’t like his head in my menu bar either) and those thick black borders are just horrible. I can see how they might have been going for an Alfred like appeal here but I think the designers really missed the mark.

While DashExpander’s interface is extremely customized, xType once again takes the opposite route, this time to its credit. The interface uses the default Lion UI elements and doesn’t try to be fancy in any way. The result is something simple and straightforward.

Winner: xType

The winner for this one is obvious. Maybe you’ll like DashExander if you’re a cat person but otherwise you’ll probably think that xType is the better visual experience.

Setting Up Macros

Now that we know what each looks like on the surface, let’s dive in and see how easy it is to set up and browse through macros.

With DashExpander, your keyboard shortcut actually brings up a search field that lets you search through the existing snippets. If you’d like to add a new one, the area for doing so is right underneath the search bar.

Predictably, you can quickly enter the abbreviation to be expanded and the resulting text, but there are some other cool features here as well such as adding tags and choosing the location for the snippet file for easy Dropbox integration.

To find or edit a macro in DashExpander, you can either use the main search bar or the tag cloud on the left side. Both of these options will bring up a list like the one below where you can view and edit existing macros.

In xType, this process is a lot more like other apps that you’ve tried. For starters, the window for adding and browsing macros is one and the same.

To find a specific macro, you can either use the search bar or simply browse through the list. To add one, just hit the little plus button at the bottom. You can also organize your snippets into groups to keep them nicely organized.

Winner: xType

This one was a close call. I get what DashExpander is trying to do with the search-driven interface and upfront new macro form, the attempt is innovative and I appreciate it.

However, the single window format that shows you everything at once feels quicker and more intuitive in this case. There’s a reason it’s a fairly standard UI pattern: it works. Also, as much as I dig tags, I don’t think they replace a proper folder system and I really liked having this ability in xType.

Custom Functions

I’ve already mentioned a couple of DashExpander’s custom functions such as tagging and Dropbox integration. The main trick that it has up its sleeve though is placeholder functionality. This is a really nice feature that you’ll definitely miss if you choose to go with xType.

Basically, this feature allows you to insert variables into your snippets that can be decided upon at the time of expansion. These are created using a double underscore syntax. So if you insert __name__ anywhere in your macro, when you expand that macro you’ll get the option to fill in your name.

In the example above, the entire sign off is written automatically except for the name portion, which I’ve chosen to insert manually.

In addition to placeholders, DashExpander has a few really useful custom data types that can be inserted: @clipboard inserts the clipboard contents, @cursor positions the cursor, @date inserts the current date and @time inserts the current time.

xType doesn’t support placeholders, but it does support the time and date custom data types. It also has a few tricks of its own. For starters, you can format the text in a macro however you like and choose whether or not that formatting is carried over when the snippet is expanded. You can also choose whether or not the snippet is case sensitive. Another great feature here is the ability to exclude apps on a per-snippet basis. Finally, xType can insert images in addition to plain and rich text.

Winner: DashExpander

xType has a lot going for it with custom date and time macros along with rich text formatting and image insertion, but DashExpander really knocks it out of the park with placeholders and even more custom data types such as clipboard and cursor insertion point.

Who Wins?

Both of these apps work as advertised and don’t seem to have any major bugs or quirks. They both save you lots of time and expand your macros in an instant, so which should you download?

The results above are split half and half with both DashExpander and xType taking two wins. However, if we evaluate where each wins, you can easily choose the option that’s best for you.

If you want simple text expansion capabilities in an easy to use interface, go with xType. It’s much easier to look at, works like and charm and has the bonus of working with images.

However, if you want something that’s closer to the advanced functionality you’ll find in apps like TextExpander, and can get past the hideous interface, DashExpander is the app for you. For me, the placeholder and custom data type features really bring this one to the front of the race.

As icing on the cake, there’s an alternate version of DashExpander, simply known as Dash, for coders that supports syntax highlighting (Dash is free also). If the other features hadn’t snagged me, this would.

Ultimately, if I could take the features and menu bar format found in DashExpander (or even better, Dash) and insert them into the xType interface, I’d do it in a heartbeat. Given a choice between the two though, I’d probably go with the functionality boost provided by DashExpander. At least until I could no longer stand the ceaseless stare of the evil floating cat head in my menu bar.

TextExpander Is Still the King

It’s important to note that even with all of the great features inside of DashExpander, TextExpander still comes out on top. It simply has a ton of functionality: more custom data types and placeholders, stat tracking to see how much time you’ve saved, the option to choose between menu bar and dock modes, iOS apps with Dropbox sync, the list goes on and on.

What Do You Think?

Now that you’ve seen our analysis of these two applications, it’s time for you to chime in. If you had to choose one free text expansion utility, which would it be?

Would you go for the simple and straightforward xType or the super functional but aesthetically impaired DashExpander?

Sometimes the smallest things ignite the most heated arguments, this week we were all asking the question; how do you pronounce “Mac OS X”?

This is the second episode in feature series called ‘What’s Hot’ that will look to give you something interesting to chew on at the end of the week. We’ll look at any great new Mac apps (including editor and reader favourites), interesting pieces of news, and other miscellaneous artifacts…

We all know how this goes. It’s five things today…

Five Things

1. New Schedule

First off, I wanted to offer some reassurance to loyal Mac.AppStorm readers about our new schedule. We’re really excited about it, mostly because it enables us to give you more of the stuff you love!

We’re firmly keeping our focus on Mac apps, with more reviews, and interesting roundups, in addition to a few new features. Response to last week’s post was mixed, mostly reaction to the addition of news coverage, but I wanted to make a couple of things clear.

1. Our news posts will only cover important topics, and will rarely solely report on events – we look to always offer some commentary and opinion!
2. Mac.AppStorm will now publish around 4 posts per day, a number we feel is pretty much perfect! It’s never our intention to overload you, I know how difficult it is to follow a feed that publishes a whole world of content – sites like The Verge have some great content, but they often post 50 or more items a day!
3. Our focus is, and will always be, on apps!

2. Pronunciation

One of the hot topics on Mac.AppStorm this week has been the debate over the pronunciation of “Mac OS X”! Josh’s poll last week gave the consensus vote firmly to OS “Ex”, which garnered a comfortable 64% of the vote and controversially outscored the technically correct OS “Ten”.

In many ways it doesn’t matter which way you say it, although if you’re in fussy company you may get a shudder or two. What most interested me was the idea of discussing pronunciation via a non-verbal medium, all while there is a distinct and clear correct way to say the phrase…

3. Essential Apps

This week Stef Gonzaga wrote an awesome article on the 12 apps that should be in the Apps Starter Kit – well worth a read, even if you’re a seasoned veteran! There were numerous excellent suggestions made for apps that should be added, or swapped in, to the list – here are a few of the best;

• Handbrake – a possible replacement for Smart Converter.
• Sparrow – a great email suggestion by Andrew Jo.
• Dropbox – one of the first apps I get new Mac users to download.
• Pixelmator – a fantastic suggestion for image editing that is perfect for all but the most extravagant use!

4. iEducation

As the dust settles around Apple’s education announcements, it definitely worth checking out Alex’s consideredreview of iBooks Author. There’s been a lot of talk about the restrictive EULA, with some people frustrated by Apple using its competitive edge in such a bold way. It’s understandable that people were hoping for Apple to revolutionise the e-publishing industry, perhaps creating a tool that would be the Photoshop of e-book design and publishing. What Apple did was more limited in scope, and certainly more competitive – iBooks Author is an excellent, and easy-to-use, app that’s only for publishing to the iBookstore.

Combine that with Apple’s ferociously impressive financial results and you’re reminded of just how successful a business Apple really is.

5. Is iOS the Future of the Mac?

This debate starts itself, read Anna’s fascinating article and ponder over what using a Mac in five years time might be like…

Rogue Amoeba’s Audio Hijack Pro is an application which promises to perform a seemingly simple function that’s actually more difficult to execute than one might imagine – to take complete control of your Mac audio card and capture any audio from any source, whether from applications like iTunes, Skype or the Mac’s built-in microphone.

Audio Hijack Pro combines this control with a genuine wealth of options and features, shoehorning just about anything that an audio user could fairly wish to see in an application of its type. Read on to find out more.

Intuitive Audio Control

There have long been options for those Mac users who wish to record audio from their Mac’s audio input jack, USB or Firewire. However, if one wishes to capture audio from an application, there was previously only a single popular choice, at least as far as this author is aware – Cycling 74′s rather nice SoundFlower, a capable application indeed, but perhaps more aimed toward those with an existing digital audio workstation environment to plug into.

Therefore, I feel that there’s a definite need in my own and other audio users computers for an application like Audio Hijack Pro, one which can provide some of SoundFlower’s features and expand on these, while also offering an increased usability and keeping resources down by doing all this within a lightweight application.

With Audio Hijack Pro’s increased control over a Mac’s audio input, it enables the easy digitisation of vinyl and cassette collections, in addition to various useful utilities such as the removal of the restrictive DRM copyright protection which hobbles some legally purchased audio files.

Getting Started

Audio Hijack Pro is available as a free trial from developers Rogue Amoeba and one is able to use all the software’s features, albeit for a limited period of just 10 minutes before the app automatically places noise over a captured recording. It’s a reasonable solution to providing users with an opportunity to test the application while still maintaining a compelling reason to purchase a license if one finds the software useful.

On installing Audio Hijack Pro and launching it for the first time, the user is presented with the above screen, from which it is possible to begin to choose the various features which Audio Hijack Pro offers and there are handy shortcuts for recording audio from Skype, Safari, iTunes and more, while recordings are stored in the Recording Bin for easy access.

Using Audio Hijack Pro

Some developers choose to focus on a limited number of features and options in favour of getting those few things as right as possible, while others simply throw everything in there in an attempt to cater to each need which could possibly arise – Audio Hijack Pro is definitely in the latter camp and is none the poorer for it.

The application is akin to a software Swiss Army Knife and for this reson its place on the hard drive of many Mac audio power users seems assured, with abilities ranging from podcast creation to ripping audio from your browser – so without further ado, let’s take a closer look at some of Audio Hjack Pro’s most compelling features.

Recording from Skype

As someone who has had several meetings on Skype only to forget half of what was discussed on hanging up, I can see a definite utility for recording the popular VIOP software. Audio Hijack Pro makes this simple and also offers clever options, like starting a new audio file after a given length of time, so that your captured audio is not all in one unmanageable file, in addition to more typical choices such as audio quality and file type.

On testing the Skype recording feature of Audio Hijack Pro with a short call, I found it worked flawlessly and the software picked up both sides of my test conversation, providing a finished file in the Recording Bin.

Recording from Safari

While the only reasons one might wish to rip audio from Safari which spring to this author’s mind are of questionable legality, such as ripping audio from Youtube videos, there’s bound to be several situations where recording audio from Safari would be of use.

To test Audio Hijack Pro’s handling of this, I visited my own Bandcamp page and used the software to rip the audio as I played music via the onscreen music player. Again, the application had no problems and handled it with ease.

Selecting other audio sources

Audio Hijack Pro is more than merely an application to rip audio from Safari and Skype and this is highlighted when the user steps outside of the presets and selects other sources. The application offers an easy to understand interface which can be further scrutinised to uncover extra options such as the triggering of custom AppleScripts.

Conclusion

The features which Audio Hijack Pro offers the user are too technical to make it an application that everyone should rush out and buy, but if you have the need to take control of your Mac’s audio, then Audio Hijack Pro is certainly an excellent solution.

Most applications leave much room for improvement but I cannot think of any real area in which Audio Hijack Pro is lacking and it seems one of those few cases where we witness a software developer taking the time to think of literally everything its user base could possibly want – Audio Hijack Pro does many things and does them well and while the price tag of $32 cannot be said to be overly cheap, the functionality which it affords makes the software more than worth it.

When I used an iPad for the first time, I couldn’t help but think that it felt like the future of computing. The iPad not only impressed me with its beautiful interface, but also delighted me with an effortless user experience. No matter how much I used the device, it never became cluttered or disorganized like my Mac. Apps launched quickly and I never had to spend time fiddling with window sizes or knowing what apps were running. Everything simply worked.

Apple has touted OS X as the most advanced operating system, but with iOS revolutionizing many computing paradigms, it is beginning to feel outdated. If Apple is to truly make the Mac the personal computer of the future, we will need to see some bold changes; changes that may eliminate some of the staples of desktop computing that most of us can’t imagine living without.

I think that Apple can, and will, successfully transition us to a future where iOS runs across all of its hardware. Read on for my take on why our computing world is headed this way.

It’s All In The Name

After a decade of OS X versions named after big cats, we finally find ourselves with Lion. Apple definitely made a strategic move in naming OS 10.7 after the proverbial “king of the jungle”. It is pretty difficult to imagine using a lesser cat for a future operating system (Lynx or Ocelot? No way). And it is unlikely that Apple could ever gracefully move on to an operating system called “OS XI”.

Apple also tipped its hand a bit when it changed the name of iPhone OS to iOS. Of course, a name change was necessary once the iPod Touch and iPad joined the ranks. But if it were meant to remain solely a touch operating system, it could have been named something like Touch OS. With a name like iOS, Apple made a statement: this is the OS, the future of all of their products.

Lion Was a Transition

Lion’s tagline is “OS X meets the magic of iOS”. I would say that so far, it has been a fairly awkward meeting. It was clear when Lion was unveiled that it was really just OS X with some iOS features tacked on. I don’t know anyone who uses Launchpad on a regular basis, and fullscreen mode just feels like a hack on top of the operating system.

Sure, Lion tried to give us a taste of the magic that makes iOS so enticing, but in the end, it did not make any bold enough changes to truly revolutionize the Mac experience.

How Will iOS Revolutionize the Mac?

iOS is about changing paradigms. In particular, it is about simplifying the computing experience by taking away choices that the user has to constantly make in order for things to run smoothly. Here are some aspects of computing that iOS on the Mac could change forever.

No Visible File System

For most of us, the visible file system has been a staple of the computing experience since we first used a personal computer. With a visible file system, the user can explore all of the files and folders contained on a hard drive, move them around, and delete them.

On Macs, the beloved Finder has served us well since it was introduced on the very first Macintosh computer. Finder has been such an icon of Mac computers that when Steve showed off the iPhone, some may have expected to see a little Finder in iPhone icon form. But with the first iPhone OS, Apple eliminated the user’s ability to directly see the file system of the device.

So how exactly does iOS avoid having a file system? Basically, everything on iOS is app-oriented. This means you can never find a file and open it as you might on OS X. Instead, in iOS you must open an app first, which will then present you with the files it handles, whether they be Pages documents, music files, or photos.

Why get rid of the visible file system? Quite frankly, because users make a mess of it. If someone asked me what my least favorite part of the computing experience is, I would say cleaning up my desktop and Downloads folder. I let them get overrun for weeks, until finally I can’t handle it anymore and go on a deleting rampage. Instead of a desktop covered with folders and files, we might see the iOS home screen with a grid of apps, emphasizing apps as the main focus of the user experience.

No Need to Manage Windows

Since the graphical user interface first appeared on computers, we have really only known them to have overlapping, resizable windows. And we often find ourselves fiddling with these windows. We adjust them to our desired size for the content, try to fit two or three windows side by side, and have to deal with a ton of windows after a busy day of work. I would like to think that 10 years from now, we will not spend nearly as much time or energy getting our windows the way we like them.

With iOS, the user is never given the option of resizing, minimizing, or closing windows. Instead of having to deal with windows, every app takes up the entire screen, and you cannot create multiple windows of an application.

We know that fullscreen apps work well on the smaller screens of iPhones and iPads. However, Lion already has fullscreen functionality, and I don’t find myself, or many people I know, using it often. In order to make the best use of real estate on the larger screens of Macs, Apple needs to provide an intelligent way to let multiple windows share the screen space at once.

As for the best way to do this, we may have seen a hint of what the future holds from one of Apple’s competitors: Microsoft. With Windows 8, Microsoft has similarly rethought window management. Rather than letting the user resize and overlap many windows, it instead lets you snap windows side by side, filling up the entire screen.

This works particularly well if you are multitasking with two apps at once; say for example, working on a document in Pages and looking at a to do list, or browsing the web and chatting with a friend on the side.

Automatic Process Management

A common problem that new Mac users face is expecting OS X to function as Windows does, where closing all of the windows of an app will quit it. My parents, for example, make their Macs slow down to a crawl because they don’t know how to properly quit apps. But users can’t entirely be blamed; Apple doesn’t exactly make it easy, since you either need to go through the menu bar, right-click the Dock icon, or use a keyboard shortcut to quit an app.

With iOS, this problem was remedied with automatic process management. In this system, the user never has to quit an app or decide which apps need to be running. The operating system takes care of this busy work, suspending apps when necessary to free up memory, and automatically resuming them when the user needs them. iOS’s multitasking system handles everything for the user, and generally keeps the device from running sluggishly.

If iOS is one day powering our Macs, there will be no more running lights under apps in the dock, and no more quitting applications. The user will simply switch between apps as needed, and the operating system will do the dirty work for them.

The End of the Menu Bar As We Know It

Let’s face it, the menu bar probably doesn’t get used extensively. It is mostly there for overflow; to hold all of the features that developers couldn’t easily fit into the app’s interface. Menu items like “File” and “Edit” are vague terms that hold features that are either unused, or that users have learned to perform with keyboard shortcuts, like saving, copying and pasting, undoing and redoing, etc.

Macs need to lose the menus that have been around since the days of the Apple Lisa, and embrace the sleek, black title bar of iOS. Granted, there are some features from the menus that will need to find a new home. For example, “Bookmarks” in browsers, like Safari, and “Filters” in Photoshop are frequently accessed, and will likely need to be relocated to the app’s interface. We can see this already in the iPad version of Safari, which has a button you can press to see a drop down of your bookmarks.

A Unified App Ecosystem

If iOS comes to the Mac, will it run existing Mac apps, iOS apps, or both? The reason Macs can’t easily run iOS apps—and developers have to therefore rewrite a lot of code to port their iOS apps to the Mac—is because OS X does not support a framework provided to iOS developers called UIKit. In order for developers to easily port their iOS apps to the Mac, Apple would need to bring support for the UIKit framework to the Mac.

If iOS apps could run on the Mac, there would no longer be two separate App Stores—the iOS App Store and Mac App Store—there would simply be the App Store, a grand unified ecosystem of apps for any of your Apple devices. Currently, you can buy Universal apps for iOS, which run on both iPhones and iPads. In the future, you could buy a Universal app that supports the iPhone, iPad, and Mac all at once.

Once iOS apps can easily run on the Mac, it is hard to say how existing Mac apps will be supported. Users have spent a lot of money and become dependent on the vast body of software that has been created for the Mac the last 11 years, since the introduction of OS X. Some people could not live without 3rd party software such as Adobe’s creative apps, Microsoft’s Office Suite, and other big name and independently developed apps.

However, getting Mac apps to live side by side with iOS apps considering the aforementioned paradigm changes—no visible file system, no menu bar, drastically different window management, etc.—would be no easy task. Apple would need to announce the changes far in advance and give developers a transition period to get their Mac apps ready for the new frontier.

This unification of apps across devices would also be the perfect time for Apple to finally make a move that some long time users have been dreading: requiring developers to distribute all software through the App Store. Apple controls all app distribution on iOS devices, and likely plans on making the switch to this model on Macs one day. As more and more developers bring their apps to the Mac App Store, it becomes easier for Apple to one day pull the plug on downloading and installing apps from the web.

Still, some apps that have long existed for the Mac wouldn’t even be allowed in under current rules. People have tolerated the lack of torrent apps on current iOS devices, but would they be willing to give up torrent software on their Macs, or would Apple have to make some exceptions to the rules to prevent too much rebellion from users? There might be a day when people need to jailbreak their Macs in order to gain some of the freedoms that would be lost in this transition.

Let’s Talk About Hardware

So far, I have been painting a picture of iOS running on existing Mac hardware. After all, millions of people currently own iMacs and MacBooks, and it wouldn’t be a good idea to alienate these users by forcing them to upgrade hardware if they want the latest software.

However, iOS has only appeared on touch devices so far, and it is possible that the Mac hardware may evolve to enable more touch interaction. Steve Jobs famously said of touchscreen Macs, “We’ve done tons of user testing on this, and it turns out it doesn’t work. Touch surfaces don’t want to be vertical.”

I believe the key to that statement is “vertical”. If touch screens don’t work on vertical surfaces, it is possible that Apple is going to come out with laptops and desktops where the screen can be repositioned at more convenient angles. Indeed, the patent for such a design has already been filed for what is essentially a tiltable touchscreen iMac.

This layout would easily allow the user to switch between touch and cursor-based interaction. Allowing both modes of input would be useful, because while touching a screen can feel more natural, it is not well suited for selecting specific parts of text or doing professional work that involves precision.

Interestingly, the company Lenovo recently released its IdeaCentre A720, which as many have pointed out, closely resembles Apple’s diagrams.

Lenovo also recently showed off its new IdeaPad Yoga, which combines the traditional laptop with a tablet through a flipping keyboard. While this is an intriguing design, flipping the entire keyboard back and forth might feel cumbersome, and leave the keyboard exposed to damage when in the tablet mode. Perhaps a better method would be having the keyboard slide out, as some mobile phones have long done.

Time will tell if these alternate form factors appeal to users at all, but one thing is sure: Apple has undoubtably been testing many different prototypes over the years, and won’t release a product unless they are convinced it is the future.

Conclusion

Apple got the chance to design an operating system UI from scratch with its touch devices, and they made many bold design choices that paid off. While users might fear drastic paradigm shifts coming to the Mac, a computer that has been so reliable so many years, I believe it is necessary in order for Apple’s technology to remain modern. If the speculations in this article are true, it will certainly be exciting to witness the transition to a radically different Mac experience.

Many thanks to Tyler Murphy, who provided vision and mockups for this piece.

In Norse mythology, Sleipnir is the gray, eight-legged steed that Odin rides to Hel. In the world of technology, it’s an amazing web browser that you just have to try.

Though you may have never heard of it, Sleipnir has been around in various forms for years (it’s also on just about every operating system around). The latest version, Sleipnir 3 offers a truly unique and streamlined browsing experience optimized for OS X Lion. Join us as we dive in and check it out.

Meet Sleipnir

When you open up Sleipnir for the first time, you’ll notice right away that it has a very content-centric approach. The UI elements have been kept to a bare minimum to let you focus purely on the web content you care about.

I’m always hesitant with new browsers for one specific reason: I love Webkit (this comes mostly from a developer’s perspective). Fortunately, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the Mac version of Sleipnir 3 is indeed built on Webkit. This means that all of the developer tools and CSS3 support should work just like they do in Safari and Chrome and anything that looks good in either of those browsers will look great in Sleipnir as well.

The Interface

As with many other Lion apps, the UI for Sleipnir is confined to the top portion of the window with the web content bleeding right to the edge. The top bar looks quite different from other browsers you’ve seen though. Here’s a closer look:

As you can see, everything is very nicely confined. Even the location bar, which is typically the main feature on browsers, has been minimized and pushed off to the side. To bring it into focus, simply click on it or hit ?L.

The Good Part: Tabs and Gestures

If Sleipnir were simply Safari in a slightly modified frame, I wouldn’t be that impressed with it. However, it has some really cool tricks up its sleeve. The two most impressive areas are the tabs system and gesture integration, which are actually tightly intertwined so we’ll go over them both at once.

Instead of focusing on the URL or location bar, Sleipnir makes a risky but ultimately very solid choice of focusing on tabs. As a result, the tab system that they’ve developed is hands down the best that I’ve tried on any browser.

In the middle of the bar at the top, you’ll see little cropped thumbnails of your tabs. This is a really great idea as its easier to identify the tab you’re hunting for than pure text and doesn’t eat up as much room as the full thumbnails in Omniweb and others. Also, the title is still there on hover if you need it.

Just like with other browsers, you can open a new tab either by clicking the little plus or hitting ?T. You can also click and drag to reorder the tabs.

Switching tabs is a breeze, in addition to clicking on the specific tab that you want you can simply swipe left or right on your trackpad or Magic Mouse to go to the next tab. I find this to be much better than Safari’s behavior of using these same gestures to go backwards and forwards in your history.

TiledTab

Now for the best part: TiledTab. This is the feature that really makes Sleipnir a joy to use. To access this feature, you can click the button shown above, pinch your trackpad, or hit ??T.

The TiledTab interface will show you all of the tabs that are currently open in a nice thumbnail grid. Beyond that, you have at your disposal six tab groups, shown at the bottom of the window.

You can name each of these groups and designate them to your own purposes. Clicking on one of the pictures along the bottom will swipe the screen to that tab group. Within a tab group you can easily create new tabs (?N), bring up existing tabs in browser mode (double click) or click and drag a tab to a different group.

This beautifully simple and useful tab organization system virtually eliminates the need for multiple windows. In fact, you can’t even open another unique window in Sleipnir (it takes some getting used to but it works). Back in the browser view, you can switch between tab groups by hitting ??[ or ??].

Worth a Download?

Sleipnir makes for a truly enjoyable browsing experience. The interface may seem a little strange at first, but I quickly adapted to it and definitely appreciate its thoughtful design.

As I mentioned above, the tabs are where this browser really scores high points in my book. Combined with intuitive gestures this is a killer feature that you’ll miss in other browsers after you’ve used Sleipnir for a day.

One potential downside is that you can only have six tab groups. I honestly never found myself needing more but I’m sure some users won’t appreciate the limitation. One thing that did slightly bug me was the inability to rearrange my tab groups. I’d also like to be able to Option-drag tabs to copy them to a different group and Shift-Click to select and move multiple tabs.

These are fairly low level complaints, overall I really enjoyed the experience. Sleipnir is super fast and surprisingly doesn’t slow down a bit when you’re juggling all those tabs. I will definitely be using this browser more in the feature.

What Do You Think?

Sleipnir is a great browser and you should definitely give it a shot. You can find other versions on iOS, Windows, Windows Phone and Android. You can even sync your bookmarks between the various versions with Fenrir Pass.

Head over to the Sleipnir website and grab the free download today. Give it a test run and let us know what you think with a comment below.

Having discussed the very basics and some of the apps which come bundled with OS X Lion in part one of Mac 101, let’s now delve in a little deeper with the aim of getting a better idea of how to properly tweak and organise the latest and arguably greatest of Apple’s OS X. We’re going to get to grips with how one navigates the OS X file system using Finder, in addition to minor tweaks like setting up a custom background, or wallpaper.

Relatively speaking, this early part of Mac 101 will still cater toward the inexperienced Mac user but, with luck, even experienced users of Apple computers will learn something new!

Navigating The OS X File System

Rather than skirting around the issue, let’s start off this second part of Mac 101 by tackling the one aspect of computing which many computer users struggle to come to grips with fully: Correctly organizing, managing and searching the file system.

Without wanting to get too bogged down in the finer details, Mac OS X is based on a system of computing called Unix and thus, like Linux which is also based on Unix, OS X enjoys a very robust and secure file system which will behave in a predictable manner. All you need to do is learn the the basic rules behind the OS X file system and you’ll find it forever easy to travel around any properly organized Mac’s hard drive to find whatever you need.

Finder

We’ve already alluded to the Finder, so it’s about time we discussed what it actually is. Put simply, Finder is the application that one uses to navigate through OS X, and owing to its status as a very important core application, it can neither be deleted nor removed from the Dock and always has the small light beneath its icon to denote that the application is running.

To access the OS X file system, click on Finder’s icon and you should see a window very similar to the one shown above. First, make sure to notice the ‘All Files’ tab on the left hand pane, clicking on this will bring up, quite literally, all the files you have created, modified or downloaded recently.

Below ‘All Files’ you should see relevant folders for keeping Documents, Pictures, Music, Downloads and Movies within. For convenience, you may add other folders into or out of the left hand side pane.

It is important to refrain from any attempts to rename or delete OS X’s default folders, such as Documents and Downloads and so forth, as it can cause potential instability issues if they are successfully removed.

Clicking on the Applications pane will present OS X’s Applications folder and it is here where your applications actually reside, rather than the Dock or Launchpad, which are merely shortcuts.

To add an application to the Dock for quick launching, simply click on an application’s icon once and drag it into the Dock. To delete the application, one must merely drag it into the Trash, also located on the Dock, or right click and select ‘Move To Trash’ – though beware that it is unwise to delete OS X’s default applications like iCal and Mail as re-installing them can prove to be a serious hassle.

While it may seem pedantic, getting into the habit of always storing your movie files in Lion’s Movies folder, documents in the corresponding Documents folder and so forth, will go some way to ensure that your files are easily found.

Spotlight

As mentioned in part one, Spotlight is located in the top right corner of your screen, sat atop the Menubar and accessible by either clicking on the Spotlight icon or hitting the keyboard combination of Command and Spacebar at once. Once one has brought up the Spotlight search prompt in this manner, beginning to type will bring up instant results.

For example, if I type ‘App’ (without quotes) into Spotlight, OS X presents results which include the Mac App Store and the Applications folder, in addition to several folders and documents concerned with my writing for AppStorm and elsewhere. Spotlight also finds some assorted songs with ‘App’ in the titles and there’s a whole host of files which are intelligently listed in order of what OS X thinks you’re looking for.

There are several alternatives to Spotlight and some, like Alfred, are beloved by many of us here at Mac.AppStorm, but Spotlight nonetheless remains a compelling OS X feature and one which is well worth you spending some time getting to know.

Personalizing OS X Lion

I think that most Mac users would agree that OS X Lion looks pretty great right out of the box, but that said, it can be nice to make some small changes in order to make it suit your own tastes more fully. With this in mind, let’s take a look at some tweaks that we can make in order to customize Lion’s appearance. All of the following tweaks can be made in Lion’s System Preferences, found in the Applications folder.

Colour Scheme

Within System Preferences, clicking on the ‘General’ preference pane will bring up choices for Appearance and Highlight color, in addition to options for changing the behaviour of the scroll bars. These can all be altered without worry, so feel free to experiment and find a look you like.

Dock

While the default placement of Lion’s Dock is on the bottom of your Mac’s screen, it can be easily changed to reside on the left or right side of the screen, vertically. Simply click the ‘Dock’ preference pane within System Preferences to get started making changes.

In addition, one can set the Dock to auto-hide, turn on Dock Magnification and adjust the size of the Dock, plus some other smaller tweaks like the type of animation which Lion uses when opening apps.

Background

There are several ways to change your Desktop background, or wallpaper. A right click (or option click) anywhere on the Desktop should provide a prompt which directs one to the Desktop & Screen Saver preference pane, or alternatively it can be navigated to via the System Preferences panel. From here, a series of alternative OS X wallpapers can be chosen, or if desired, a folder can be added and any pictures from that folder can be used. Each Desktop background in Lion can be changed, so feel free to customise heavily!

There are many great websites where one can find backgrounds on the Internet, but one of the better resources is Simple Desktops

Launch Apps On Login

Almost all OS X Lion applications are well-behaved and give you the option of whether you’d like them to launch automatically on switching on your Mac, but it’s still useful to know how to control this behavior, if only so that you can get rid of any pesky self-starting apps, should they appear.

To gain control over which applications launch when Lion itself loads, head over to Users & Groups (within System Preferences) and then the preference pane titled ‘Login Items’. From here, one can use the – button to remove an application or hit the + button and then navigate to an app you’d like to be launched.

Conclusion

That’s it for part two of our OS X Lion themed Mac 101. I hope that some new Mac users have gained additional knowledge of how the OS X file system works and that you’ve also had the chance to successfully tweak Lion to look just how you’d like it to.

In the next Mac 101 we’re going to delve right into the Apple ecosystem and all that it entails, including setting up an Apple ID and using that ID to purchase apps from the Mac App Store, music from iTunes, iCloud and more.

MailTab Pro for Gmail is an awesome app that allows you to enjoy the complete Gmail experience right from your menu bar. With MailTab Pro you can check your email, send and receive messages, and anything else that you would do from your browser. You can also choose between the full and mobile versions of Gmail and even activate a stealth mode that reduces the opacity of the window so you can sneakily check your email without catching anyone’s attention.

We’re super excited to announce that we have 20 MailTab Pro for Gmail codes to give away!

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 on Wednesday, February 1st. Good luck to everyone who enters and thanks for reading Mac.AppStorm!

It seemed like 2011 was the year of lawsuits both for and against Apple however 2012 is looking to be no different. In a fresh wave of legal attacks against Apple from its restless competitors, it’s now Motorola that is suing the Cupertino-based company on 6 counts of patent infringement in a Florida-based court.

According to the resubmitted claim filed by Motorola (the original claim was filed back in October of last year for 18 counts of copyright infringement), in which Motorola claims that they have “suffered irreparable harm and will continue to do so”, Apple have infringed 6 of their US-filed patents, specifically:

• U.S. Patent No. 5,710,987: Receiver having concealed external antenna
• U.S. Patent No. 5,754,119: Multiple pager status synchronisation system and method
• U.S. Patent No. 5,958,006: Method and apparatus for communicating summarised data
• U.S. Patent No. 6,008,737: Apparatus for controlling utilisation of software added to a portable communication device
• U.S. Patent No. 6,101,531: System for communicating user-selected criteria filter prepared at wireless client to communication server for filtering data transferred from host to said wireless client
• U.S. Patent No. 6,377,161: Method and apparatus in a wireless messaging system for facilitating an exchange of address information.

This recent action on Motorola’s behalf has been brought about due to the fact that the court in Florida originally conceded not to extend the original complaint to the 6 patents named above. Motorola’s filing is targeted specifically towards two of Apple’s products: the iPhone and the iCloud service, released in October of last year along with iOS 5.

An Action with Google’s Blessing

According to the British newspaper The Guardian, Google specifically gave permission for Motorola Mobility to file this new lawsuit against Apple after an analysis of the two companies takeover agreement, in which Google plans to purchase the struggling mobile manufacturer for an estimated $12.5 billion. Part of the takeover agreement includes a clause which states that Motorola Mobility cannot instigate any new lawsuits over intellectual property (i.e. exclusive rights) without prior approval from the “parent” company – which is Google of course.

Motorola also has pending litigation in the European Union (specifically in Mannheim, Germany) against Apple for the European patent equivalent to U.S. Patent No. 5,754,119, with a decision due next Friday. And it’s not only them that are having a legal spat with Apple. Samsung and HTC are also involved in similar lawsuits, again mostly due to copyright infringement. Back in August last year, Apple accused Samsung of copying the physical design of the iPad 2 for their new tablet device, the Galaxy Tab 10.1. The accusation even caused the temporary banning of select Samsung products in the European Union and in Australia, until the ban was uplifted owing to suspect evidence.

We’ll keep you up-to-date with this story as things progress. For more information, head over to Florian Müller’s (an independent patents analyst) blog, Foss Patents.

In the meantime, feel free to share your comments about what you think about this lawsuit. Is Motorola taking it too far? Or are they just upholding their creative assertion? All comments, views and thoughts are most welcome.

While it’s no secret that iBooks hasn’t been a runaway success as Apple had hoped, the company is trying their hand at revolutionizing the book industry once more -but this time they’ve shifted their efforts towards the education market. Along with the new iBooks 2, Apple introduced iBooks Author, their simplistic, yet feature-rich solution for creating textbooks, cookbooks, and just about any other kind of book, for the iPad.

In making the app both user-friendly and free, Apple is clearly striving to make publishing available “for the rest of us”. Although the app is free, many will argue that the price of staying within the Apple ecosystem is too high for the budding author. So do the benefits outweigh the negatives? Read on.

Interface

Anyone familiar with the look and feel of the iWork suite of apps should feel right at home in iBooks Author. It shares the same user customizable toolbar, inspector based toolkit, and menu options as iWork, with functions custom tailored to ebook publishing. The standard sidebar seen in iWork is replaced with an outline function which works well as a solution to quickly skim the contents of your book.

Much of the new iBooks Author interface is based on drag and drop functionality: you are able to drag in pages of text, images, videos, Keynote presentations, and even widgets. This approach works seamlessly, especially if you already have parts of your book drafted in another app such as text in Microsoft Word or images in Adobe’s Photoshop. The included rulers and sizing guides are a welcome translation of a stellar iWork feature which allows for precision alignment of all objects on a page. Anyone comfortable working on a Mac should really feel quite at home in iBooks Author; Apple has managed to really simplify the difficult process of ebook publishing, all while adding a selection of killer features.

Writing your Book

Historically, publishing an ebook was no easy task. The ePub format is not for the faint-hearted, and as a result, it turned many people away from ebook publishing. Luckily, iBooks Author changes all that. The app gives you the option to compose your book in two ways, the first being within the app itself and the second is by importing .doc and .pages files directly into your book.

While composition within the app works great, iBooks Author really shines in its ability to import and restyle .doc and .pages files to the look of your book. For many people this feature is indispensable, as they likely have their books already composed in a standalone word processor. The auto-formatting capability is obviously not flawless, but for the most part, it eliminates the hassle of styling your book by hand. Once you’ve imported your files into iBooks Author, you can fool around with the fonts, colors, etc. and edit it as you would any other text.

Other elements such as pictures and widgets can be added to your book with your text dynamically reflowing to accommodate it. This creates a professional style that would be near-impossible to replicate in the ePub format. I don’t think it’s any stretch to say that composing a book in iBooks Author is simply delightful. Its feature set and formatting capabilities make it a best in class solution for authors.

Designing your Book

Apple products are nothing if not for their paramount style, and luckily, iBooks Author is no exception. Admittedly, the built in templates are bland at best, being created almost exclusively for textbooks, but since the program is so flexible, creating a beautiful design should be the easiest part of the publishing process. As with many products, iBooks Author won’t make a beautiful book for you, but Apple has included a plethora of features such as the “Styles” menu which go a long way towards streamlining the formatting process in general.

As mentioned before, the built in templates are really meant just for textbooks, so while you could repurpose them, if you want to make the next great digital cookbook, you’re going to need to invest some time into the design process.

Even though iBooks Author doesn’t have much included in the way of styles, you can still paste in your favorite elements from iWork apps seamlessly. Try mixing and matching to create a style that’s truly unique.

Lastly, iBooks Author has a few nice tricks up its sleeve that should help add a bit of flare to your book such as the ability to add an intro movie and some creative snap tools. If you’ve finished designing your book and you’d like to test it out on an actual iPad, hitting the “Preview” button will do just that. The iPad will need to be connect via USB, but the book will appear almost instantly in its full-featured form.

Adding Widgets

If iBooks Author was to have a single killer feature, it would most definitely be widgets. These bite-sized bits of content allow you add unprecedented interactivity to your book in seconds. Their functionality spans a wide range, from a simple interactive image to a full-fledged HTML web snippet. In addition to being immensely useful to the reader, they are also extremely easy to implement within iBooks Author.

When inserting a widget you are given the ability to choose between a Gallery, Chapter Review, Interactive Image, HTML Snippet, 3D Object, Keynote presentation, or a more general media player. While some of these options are decidedly simple, the ability to add a Keynote presentation or an HTML snippet can go a large way towards ensuring that your book can really fulfill the full potential of the iPad. Finally, as with all other elements of your book, the widgets can be dragged, dropped, and formed are text, allowing it to flow around the widgetized area, creating a rather professional aesthetic.

Publishing your Book

Sadly, publishing is where the dream of iBooks Author can fall apart. If you plan on charging for the book you have created, the iBooks Author terms of service strictly prohibit you from distributing your work in any way except through Apple. Quite frankly this is a huge drawback to the app as a whole, as it means that you really can’t use it to create books for the Kindle, Nook, or anything else Apple hasn’t ordained. For many, though, this is a null point, as the interactive features in the book would be iPad specific anyway, regardless of Apple’s terms of service.

In any case, if you plan on using iBooks Author to sculpt your next masterpiece, you’ve got to be content to essentially sign away its publishing rights to Apple, but that’s the price you pay for such an amazing app. If you are content to have an iPad specific book, getting it published really isn’t as easy as it could be. While the app begins the process for you, you’ll still have to wait through a long approval process with no guarantee or guidelines for success from Apple. Without a doubt, publishing is iBooks Author’s fatal flaw.

Conclusion

The appeal of creating your book inside of iBooks Author is undeniable. Beautiful animations, customizable widgets, and a powerful feature set are all available free of charge, packaged in an amazingly user-friendly app. In the long run, though, what you get in features might not be worth what you’ll undoubtably lose in freedom as an author. You’ll be unable to publish your book outside of the Apple ecosystem, and there is no guarantee that it will even be approved in the first place. Make no mistake, iBooks Author is a powerful tool, but until Apple loosens their restrictions on your publishing rights, you might want to look elsewhere.

For only $20, Pages for the Mac offers the same user-centric UI, albeit without the multimedia functionality, and the ability to export in standards compliant ePub and PDF, making it much easier to recommend to the budding author. Still, iBooks Author is a compelling experience that could be taken as a serious threat to both the ebook and textbook establishments.

Are you looking for a good way to have fun on your Mac but don’t really consider yourself a gamer? Perhaps you’re nostalgic for the days when playing a game involved a couple of dice, a colorful board and some interestingly shaped pieces to move around that board.

Well you’re in luck because there are a ton of board game apps out there for Mac. You can stick with the classics (there’s at least one version out there of every big name board game you can think of) or you can try some board games that you might not often find in physical form. Those are less common, but I’m going to take you through the classics and then point you in the direction of some you might not have seen before.

The Classics

Which Is Your Favorite?

So, there you have it. 30 board games for Mac! And this is only the tip of the surface. You’ll find literally thousands more out there, from originals to knock-offs and everything in between. What’s your favorite board game to play on your Mac?

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 April 19th, 2010.

GeekTool is a really neat preference panel that allows widget-like functionality on a highly customizable level.

Unfortunately, if you aren’t particularly geeky, this app can be a bit confusing to get up and running. Luckily enough, here at AppStorm there’s definitely no shortage of geeks such as myself to help you out! I’ll take you step by step through finding and installing scripts to make your desktop the envy of the office.

Final Result

Just to get a feel for where we’re going, here’s a preview of the final result.

As you can see, this is a simple setup that utilizes only two scripts: date and time. These scripts run live on top of your desktop, automatically stay behind any active apps, and are not selectable and therefore don’t get in the way. It really is just like having an active wallpaper image.

The text that you see is live and updates automatically based on intervals you set. Despite the odd setup, it really is fairly easy to get something up and running so don’t worry if you aren’t at all familiar with scripting. You don’t need to write a single line of code, as long as your copy and paste abilities are intact you’ll do just fine.

Before you start, it’s a good idea to setup a fairly solid desktop background so you can easily see what’s going on while you’re working.

Getting Started

The first thing you’ll want to do is grab GeekTool. It’s a free download and only takes a minute to install.

Once you’ve run through the installation, you might be tempted to turn to your applications folder but remember that this is a preference panel and not a standard application. Open up System Preferences and click on the GeekTool icon to bring up the following windows.

On the left side of the main window you should see three icons representing the three different options for “Geeklets” that you can implement: File, Image and Shell. This article will focus mostly on the shell option as it is both the most powerful and the most complicated to figure out on your own.

Groups

On the right side of the main window you’ll see the options for managing groups. These are extremely useful in that when you find a setup you like containing various Geeklets, you can save it out as a group, then experiment in a new group without losing your preferred setup. Alternatively, you could have a work group and a home group, a weather focused group and a social media group; you get the idea.

Checking and unchecking a group will allow you to activate it and checking the “Show in menu bar” option will make it easy to change groups on the fly.

Geeklet Settings

To create a new Geeklet, drag one of the three icons out onto the desktop; in this case, we’ll choose a script Geeklet.

After you release the icon on your desktop, an empty box should appear, and the Geeklet properties window should come alive with various options for customizing the Geeklet. There are five distinct sections in this window: General Settings (name, size, position), Groups, Command, Status Feedback, and Style.

The General Settings and Group sections are fairly straightforward, these allow you to assign a group to the Geeklet and give it a title. The Command section is where you will input the code for the Geeklet. This section also contains options for the refresh rate and timeout interval for the Geeklet. Finally, Status Feedback allows you to implement pictures notifying you of whether or not a Geeklet is working and the Style section is where you will format text.

How It All Works

The basic idea here for all non-script writers is that you go can online and look for cool GeekTool scripts. When you find one that you like, simply copy and paste it into the Command section of a Geeklet and the use the Style section to customize it to your liking. Many of the scripts are pretty simple and easy to figure out even if you have no coding background, others are more complicated and therefore harder to customize if there is something you want to change.

Basic Starter Scripts

Below is a list of fairly basic scripts that will allow you to create a simple time and date setup. To insert these into your Geeklet, just copy and paste the colored code snippets.

• Long Day:

  date +%A

  (Result = Saturday)

• Short Day:

  date +%a

  (Result = Sat)

• Long Month:

  date +%B

  (Result = April)

• Short Month:

  date +%b

  (Result = Apr)

• Long Date:

  date +%D

  (Result = 4/17/10)

• Short Date:

  date +%d

  (Result = 17)

• Time:

  date +"%l:%M %p"

  (Result = 5:00pm)

• Calendar:

  cal

  (Result = A basic calendar of the current month)

Combining Scripts

Keep in mind that each script that you find doesn’t have to stand on it’s own in a separate Geeklet. Combining scripts gives you a much wider range of options. Consider the following example:

As you can see, by combining the three of the available date scripts, we were able to make one complete date string.

Putting scripts into action

As stated above, to implement a script, drag out a Geeklet and paste the code into the Command section. For instance, we’ll start by pasting the code date +”%A %b %d” into the command window.

When I first downloaded GeekTool, I became quickly frustrated that I wasn’t seeing a result upon pasting in my code snippet. After giving up and coming back months later to give the app another shot I realized that I simply wasn’t seeing the result because the default text color is black and my desktop at the time was also black!

So the first thing we’ll want to do after pasting in the code is to change the color of the text to something that clearly stands out on your background. We’ll also change the size to make it nice and large.

To do this, click the button in the Style section that says “Click here to set font & color…” That should open up a basic font palette with options for size, color, shadow, etc. Set the everything to match the screen below (adjusting for your personal taste and wallpaper).

Now drag out a new script Geeklet and add the following time string: date +”%l:%M %p”. Line it up on the right side of the date and apply the font settings below:

That’s basically all there is to it! If you really want to go nuts you can option-drag a Geeklet to duplicate it and play with increasing the size and reducing the opacity. This will give you similar results to the image at the beginning of this post.

File and Image Geeklets

If you want to use a File or Image Geeklet, the process is pretty much the same. Simply drag them out onto the desktop and customize the preferences. For both of these you’ll simply need to choose a local path to grab from.

For the Image Geeklet you can either choose a single image or an entire directory to scroll through. The File Geeklet comes in handy if you want to display a quote or something similar on your desktop. Just create a text file containing the word or phrase you want and link to it in the Geeklet properties. Then you can customize the appearance just as with the Script Geeklet.

Where to Find More Scripts

The single best source I’ve found for scripts is the Geeklets section of Mac OS X Tips, a handy blog that you should definitely add to your reading list.

The Geeklets site is packed with scripts for all kinds of purposes and continues to grow. Alternatively, you can check out the posts below for some more Geeklet goodness.

• Mega Roundup of Geektool scripts + inspiration gallery: Francesco Mugnai
• How to GeekTool your Mac to Awesomeness: Smoking Apples
• Geektool Scripts: Flickr
• GeekTool Shell Scripts: Cattail.Nu

Conclusion

In this post we briefly discussed the functionality of GeekTool and how to get some basic scripts up and running. We also looked at a few great resources for finding tons more scripts to increase the functionality of your GeekTool setup.

After you get yours setup, be sure to upload a screenshot to Flickr (or any image sharing service) and share it by leaving a link in the comments below. Also,be sure to paste in any neat scripts you come across or write yourself!

Keeping up with music can sometimes feel like a chore, especially if you aren’t in your younger years of exploration anymore. Currently, with the Internet providing us with the opportunity to meet so many new artists from around the world, we have so much music at our disposal, and we’re bound to like some of it more than other.

That’s why there are services like Last.fm and Pandora, which use your previous history of listened music as a tool to bring you music that fits your tastes. Today we’re reviewing something similar that bundles the functionality of many music services into a simple and cool-looking Mac app called Discovr Music.

Getting Started

Discovr Music has the best of many worlds. Instead of having to visit one site to find out the names of artists you might like, then visiting another site to find out about them and finally another site to buy their music, here you can have it all in one very cool app. It can recommend you artists based on artists that you like, it can tell you all of the information you need to know about them and it can give you a ton of resources to find out more about them.

To get you started with the app, you are shown a few artists from your iTunes library on the bottom. These are displayed as a bar on the bottom of the interface, and each artist is represented by an image of them. You can click any of these to access the navigation system for him, which is where you get started discovering and it’s also where we are going next.

Interface and Navigation

What’s most interesting about this app is perhaps the way it is setup, and the way the navigation works. It tries to be pretty characteristic and original, and for the most part it succeeds beyond similar apps like Aweditorium (for the iPad).

Basically, when you see or look up any artist, it will appear in a circle in the middle of the app and with the name and a picture of the artist. Surrounding it, there will be some connected similar circles displaying the artists the app thinks are similar. If you click once in any artist, it will create more circles with his batch of alike artists. If you double click the artist, you’ll be brought to his page, which brings us to our next topic.

Artist & Album Pages

Pretty much every artist has his own page with a lot of useful information and related media about them. The way these pages are structured, you have a horizontal video reel on the top, and below it you have three rows with the biography, albums, and interesting links for said band.

The videos are not played inside the app, if you click any of them it’ll be shown to you in a new window in your browser. The bio section will show you a brief introduction about the band (this is pulled from Last.fm’s database, from what I can tell). The links part is kind of a link aggregator for the most recent blog posts, reviews, and relevant links related to the band. The albums section is nicely structured, and you can easily see the name, release date and cover of all of the band’s albums. You can click any of them and see the track listing, as well as hear 30-second snippets of each one of the songs.

Extra Stuff

The real negative thing about this app is that it only lets you listen to 30-second parts of each song. But the developer fixes this by giving you the option of opening songs in Spotify, iTunes, Rdio, MOG or Rhapsody; and they all work pretty well. You also can tweet and post to Facebook what you are listening to, and you can even queue songs (although there’s not much to queue, unless you like listening to song previews).

What Should You Use It For?

You could say that this is an app for music lovers, but I actually think that’s not quite the case. A real music lover that knows his stuff will not find this app to be powerful enough to meet his tastes, at least not in the recommendations department. I say this because I consider myself an avid fan and even I could tell that the recommendations are not exactly precise, at least not as much as a user-powered service like Last.fm has.

Not being able to listen to full songs by the band is also kind of a bummer, especially when we have awesome services like Spotify, thesixtyone and many more that allow you to do just that. I understand that music licensing is a really tough topic, but it would be nice if the devs of this app pulled their music from a source different than iTunes (like Aweditorium does with thesixtyone). Some users might find this app useful for their musical exploration, but I find it much more convenient to listen to a simpler radio service like the ones I’ve previously mentioned. Again, that’s just me and I’m not going to take credit away from this app.

Conclusion

Overall, Discovr Music is a nice, simple way for people not really invested in music to easily discover new artists to buy music from (in iTunes). Instead of having information spread across several different websites, here you can have it all displayed in one page. The description from Last.fm, the library information from your iTunes, and the resources of dozens of blogs and critics. Most importantly, it will give you artists that you might like based on what you already know, although it won’t provide you with a way of listening to them.

Whether you’ll like this app is a matter of personal taste. I know everyone has his own ways of finding new music, and they are hard to change. I know I already have my system setup in a combination of Spotify (for listening to albums that I hear about on blogs), Last.fm (for recollecting info on what I listen to, for the radio/recommendations, and the community) and iTunes (for syncing with my iPod).

What is your system for listening and finding new music? Have you used apps like this? Have you found them useful? Share your opinions!

If you are searching for good apps at the Mac App Store, chances are you’d take a look at the featured app categories on display.

I’m talking about the “Apps for Writers,” “Get Stuff Done,” “Better Together,” and “Great Free Apps” categories where apps similar to one another are grouped together and given a snazzy section of their own. More importantly, these categories help you cut search time by providing unique gateways to apps that can contribute to your productivity, help you stay fit, or make work easier for you.

One of my personal favorites is the “Apps Starter Kit,” which welcomes new Mac owners with a set of 30 apps that can enhance user experience further. Although the suggestions are pretty helpful (I see a few of my favorites in there), it’s pretty limited. There are a handful of other apps at the Mac App Store that deserve a cozy spot in this category too. So in this post, I’ll share 12 apps that should be in the Apps Starter Kit as well.

A Bigger Apps Starter Kit

The Apps Starter Kit is a great place to start when choosing apps to buy and/or download for your new Mac. Here are other apps that should be on this category as well:

What Else Can We Add?

There are certainly many other apps that deserve to be in this category, including those that aren’t sold at the Mac App Store. Some of the non-MAS apps I’d throw in would be Dropbox, CleanMyMac, Postbox or Sparrow for alternative mail clients, Concentrate and Watts.

I’m sure you have more apps to add to the Apps Starter Kit. List down apps that you think spanking new Mac owners should download as soon as they boot up their computers for the first time.