Category: Mac

If you own a Mac, you probably know that the software on these machines is often stunningly well designed, and in particular Mac icons are renowned for being gorgeous, or even ‘lickable’ to borrow the words of Jobs.

These beautiful icons are made not only by Apple designers, but by designers from around the world, and due to the ease of replacing icons, your Mac experience can be very customizable. Icons don’t have to be for replacing current App icons, they are used everywhere in design to get the best user experience and we hope you enjoy this collection and that you find many ways to express yourself with these wicked icons.

Some of these icon sets do not permit comercial use and others may require a link back to the site, always read each set’s conditions before use

Hardware

Apple Armada

This comprehensive icon set with 12 beautiful icons cover a vast range of Apple hardware and in multiple colours with pixel perfection. Great for adding some vitality to your work.

Apple LED Display

This stunningly detailed LED Display comes in a variety of sizes, perfect for any personal project that needs some style

Bee Mac

This cute icon set has a great contrast from the original Macintosh to the new iMac. An absolute must for anyone who remembers the game changer it was (or anyone who values totally awesome design).

Front Row

These 4 icons are fantastically well designed and to such a level of detail that they would look great anywhere. They could be your replacement for iTunes or anything to do with media you are covered here.

iMac generations 2

Cute little icons of the iMac generations that would fit on anyone’s screen.

Magnus Opus

The last in our hardware section is a great and vintage collection of 270 Apple hardware icons. If you need an icon of an Apple product its almost certainly going to be in here. Need the Lisa? It’s there. Want to show you’ve got a Newton? It’s there. It’s an uber large set of delicious Apple icons.

Reference

Christmas Magic

These wonderfully designed 12 festive icons will get you ready for Christmas. They can spice up your computer and sprinkle a bit of magic over your desktop.

Clash of the Titans

Based on the original film, these 4 icons appeal to only the purest souls. With stunning designs like this, how could you not want these on your computer

 

OS X Panther

This appeals to the long-time Mac users. Remember the pinstripes of Panther? Ever wanted to return to the good ol’ days? Well this might be your best bet with this icon set based on that great OS.

Quicklook 1

The Quicklook icon set does what you would expect and gives you a bit more of a view of the application you’re about to click on. In some cases its just a bigger version of the icon, in others it reveals more details of the app’s capabilities. Good fun and with 3 icon sets you may just find icons for all of your needs.

Quicklook 2

Quicklook 3

Sketchy

 

This selection of 54 hand drawn icons may not be very professional, but they sure a fun. With icons ranging from uTorrent to Skype you’d be sure to find an icon suited to your liking.

Star Wars

No matter what your take on the controversial Blu-ray version of this great franchise, you have to appreciate these loveable little fellas. May the foce be with you.

Transformers

Ever considered replacing your entire icon set of your Mac? Well this may just be your best option. With over 60 gorgeous icons for every aspect of your Mac you can’t go wrong with this epic set.

Social

Old Bottle Crowns

These social icons are grunge and classic-themed, and with 20 of them there are more tan enough for any website design out there Pop them onto your site for that vintage look.

Furry Cushions Social

Get ready for a comfy social life with these furry icons. Use them wherever you want to add a personal touch, and plus they look cool.

 

Extreme Grunge Icons

This high quality icon set is full with 20 extremely grungy social media garments that cover the important social aspects of our lives.

Socialize part 4

This is the 4th addition in a series of social stickers that are cute and simple – give a fun touch to your social life.

Socializic

A more realistic approach to the common social media platforms, these irresistibly awesome social icons will give an edge of style to whatever you chose to you them with.

Social Media

38 high quality icons to make your site look far more modern – a perfect mix between professional and personal touches.

Stampaxx

100 awesome social icons to brand your work.

Professional

Adobe CS5

Adam Betts’ replacement set for Creative Suite 5 is a wonderful combination of the original icon design and the product box. It contains 37 application icons and 300 document icons meaning if you use any of the CS5 collection you’re covered.

Aqua X

34 beautiful and shiny folder icons for your system.

Black system

Its your Mac, but in steal-mode. These awesome icons recreate some of the classic Apple icons like iCal but also 3rd party ones like Photoshop and CandyBar altogether making this collection of 50 sexy icons very usable on a large scale – you know, if your want your Mac ninja-style.

Credit Cards

457 payment and credit card icons in multiple sizes. This will have you covered if you need to show people how to pay you, using virtually any payment method on the face of this earth – and it will do it in style with pixel perfection.

Dellipack 2

A set of 15 delicious icons for use with both corporate and professional projects.

Desktop

4 highly detailed icons to make your Mac computer look a bit more, how shall I say.. Vista-ish (like anyone would wanna do that? but here’s the option should you so wish).

Developer

These 5 translucent beauties will fit fit right in will your development project. They’re funky and clean although may be difficult to see on the wrong background.

HTML5

With HTML5 being all the rave these days here are some awesome icons to represent the wonders of the web, in highly detailed, wonderfully colourful versions, or simple, clean and black versions. Your choice.

HydroPro

Shiny. 10 blue(ish) icons to pimp out your Mac Hydro-style. Although slightly resemblant of Windows, I think you can get away without feeling like you’ve switched to the dark side.

iVista 2

Ok there;s no escaping the fact that these 4 icons will by their very name be leaning slightly on the Windows side of the line. But hey, sometimes beautiful design prevails over fanboyism.

LiveJournal

Although these 6 icons were made for LiveJournal from the wonderfully talented folks at Turbomilk, we feel these icons are just too good not to include in this roundup and they’re free for you to use as well.

Made of Wood

An exquisite collection of 19 wooden icons (including a wooden dock) to make your desktop feel like the mahogany desk you always wanted, but without the cutting down of so many trees. Win, win.

Office Supplies

9 icons that have you covered should your designs ever take you near a an office.

Pure

113 icons that are elegant and stylish enough to have been designed in Apple’s HQ.

Slika

Over 100 icons with a soft touch, in greyscale for your Mac

Snowe

Yet another very complete icon set for your Mac with over 150 icons including most file types. Really fantastic work.

Web Developer

Although, as the name suggests, this icon set is made for the world of the Web, these icons are just so beautiful that they could certainly be used on the desktop.

Xpack

Sleak and stylish is the best way to describe this icon set I believe. With 35 awesomely dark icons this is a super cool way to modify your Mac

Misc

Chocolate Obsessions

7 luscious chocolate icons for your guilty pleasure. Warning: These icons may cause severe hunger and a craving for chocolate, proceed with caution!

Concave

These 9 suave icons are just waiting to add a bit of class and some sheen to your desktop.

Drinks

8 incredibly detailed drinks in one icon set? I know right! These drink icons could be used in any project and will most likely induce thirst.

Exempli Gratia

This awesome icon set contains 100 icons of many different kinds with a unique take on original concepts. The bottom left one if the shot above for example is iTunes.

Paradise Fruit

The first time I saw these icons I knew I had to have them. These succulent fruits really are from paradise and although may be difficult to find a use for them, they are just incredible.

Heroes and Villains

David is a notoriously awesome icon designer (you may remember him from such icons as Fantastical and Coda, among others) and his 28 colourful and creepy popular heroes and villains certainly don’t disappoint.

Virtually Insane

It seems Virtually Insane may be the best way to describe this very odd, yet beautiful and mysterious icon set of 29.

Kidaubis Chinese Wind

Its not often that you seen this level of precise detail on icons. These 16 stunning icons are a truly wonderful piece of oriental artwork.

Vintage Kitchen

9 amazingly well drawn icons of retro-styled kitchen items. Again possibly difficult to find a use for, but nonetheless awesome.

Reality

Another set of icons with a unique spin on common metaphors. This set of 66 icons will certainly add some colour and vitality to your Mac.

Study

20 folder icons with a vintage style that could be great in a personal project to make yourself seem more important.

Steampunk

Yes it’s Mr Lanham again, but with these 8 magnificent icons have an attention to detail second to none. And when things look this good, you just gotta have them on your screen.

Conclusion

So there you go, 52 superb free icon sets to make your Mac feel more customized and more yours. As always, if there are any icon sets you love that we missed, share them in the comments for everyone else to see.

For the most part, Apple’s prices on its main products are fairly static (at least for individual purchasers). Students and teachers can get an education discount, and occasionally Apple will toss in an iPod or a printer for free, but generally Apple is a retailer that avoids the idea of frequent sales and discounts.

For this reason, the annual Black Friday sale is a pretty big deal for Apple fans looking to either get someone a gift or pick up a new computer for the office and score another deduction before the tax year ends. This year Apple didn’t really pull out any surprises with the sale: $101 off Macs, $41 off iPads, $21 off iPod touches; nothing too different from last year. These discounts might not seem like much compared to those offered by competitors, but for many Apple customers, it’s a rare opportunity that’s not to be missed.

According to 9to5Mac, the strategy paid off and led to the biggest sales day in Apple history. I’d definitely mark that one up in the success category! Today we want to know if you were a part of that success for Apple. Did you purchase anything on Black Friday? Vote in the poll on the right and then leave a comment below to let us know what new toys you picked up!

Our featured sponsor this week is SpyCam, the perfect utility for conducting private video surveillance with your Mac.

Security apps can be a pain to setup, but Spy Cam is so simple that anyone can use it. As soon as I opened up Spy Cam for the first time, I immediately knew how everything worked. You simply set the interval for how often you want Spy Cam to automatically record a movie using your Mac’s built-in camera and indicate how long each movie should be. From that point on, you can easily keep track of who is snooping around on your machine.

If you want to check up on your Mac from a remote location, Spy Cam has your back. It can easily be configured to save the video files to your Dropbox folder, making them accessible from anywhere you have an Internet connection.

Spy Cam is hands down one of the easiest ways I’ve seen to use your Mac for a little covert spying. At $9.99, it’s also much cheaper than many competing security apps (no monthly fees, just download the app and use it forever).

Go Get It!

Go grab Spy Cam now and start keeping a closer watch on your Mac or even your home. Anything that you can point your Mac’s camera at, you can record. Spy Cam can was just released on the Mac App Store so be sure to cruise over and check it out.

If you’ve owned a Mac for more than a couple months, then chances are you’ve been encouraged to install an app called Growl, perhaps by another user or by an app that you are installing. Growl is the most popular notifications system available for Mac, and it has recently gotten a big revision that the developers claim to be the biggest one yet.

Want to see what it’s all about? Let’s take a look at all the changes Growl has had.

Getting Started with the New Growl

You might be happy with the way the old Growl runs on your computer, and that’s fine. There’s not much room for improvement when your app is based on a simple task like displaying notifications. Still, the good people at the Growl team have found a few ways to make their app even more kick-ass. Here are some of them:

• Growl now completely runs in your menu bar.
• It now feels more like an app instead of a background process.
• “Rollup”, a feature which displays the notifications that came in while you were away.
• Notifications history
• Growl is now available on the Mac App Store
• No longer a Preference Pane

These also come with their downsides. For example, Growl is no longer free, it now costs $1.99. Sure, that’s not much, but it’s never cool when you are charged for something that used to be free; although sometimes it is necessary to continue development of certain apps, as the Growl team point out.

Also, the installation can be tricky if you have the older version. There are some instructions on the Growl page, which are using an uninstaller that you can download from their site, or deleting the old Growl PrefPane manually. These must be done before installing the new version, as there have been reportedly some issues with users that don’t do so.

The Rollup

The Rollup is probably the feature that the Growl team is pushing the most in this new version. The old version used to do something similar, but it wasn’t as organized, and it honestly was a pain to use. The new version revamped this idea and it’s now much more organized.

In the settings, you can set an inactivity time, that will be used to set off the rollup. If you have the inactivity time set to 30 seconds, after 30 seconds of inactivity every notification that comes through will be sent to the rollup, which will be shown in the center of your screen once you come back.

Inside the rollup, you’ll see a list of all the notifications, and information from each one of them like the title, icon, description and time of each notification.

Other Features

The second most important feature is also one that’s been there for a while, but is now better than ever. It’s the menu bar component, and it now plays a much bigger role in Growl than it did in the past as it’s the controller for the whole application. Inside the menu bar icon you’ll find settings like showing the rollup, pausing and quitting Growl, opening the preferences, and at the bottom, it will display your 5 most recent notifications, which will be opened inside the “History” tab in the settings if clicked.

The “History” settings is where all of your old notifications are now kept, for as long as you tell the app to store them. It can be disabled too, and it will show all of the usual information from each notification. The customization is still there, and you can use the same themes that have always been there or download some from Growl’s Style site. In the settings you can also disable the rollup, change the default position for the notifications, connect with other computers that use the new Growl, and choose which applications you want Growl to work with.

Is It Worth It?

If you take a look at the reviews on the Mac App Store, most of the complaints are price-related. Two dollars isn’t much, but it might be hard to pay them when you are basically getting the same thing that you used to get for free.

You can keep using your old free Growl, but soon it might not be compatible with newer apps, especially apps that come from the App Store. The Growl team justifies the new price saying that they need it to keep people working entirely on developing Growl, which is understandable if they continue putting out great features for the app.

Also on the downside is the fact that many people are experiencing problems with the new Growl, especially getting it to work with older apps that aren’t updated. When I first installed it, it didn’t work with any of the apps I had until I rebooted my system, but since then it has been working great. Still, the reviews on the Mac App Store aren’t doing Growl any favors, so you might want to wait until it gets updated to switch to the new one, if you haven’t done so already.

Conclusion

Honestly, I think I’m over using notification apps. Lately I’ve found that I work much better without things distracting me. Ever since Notify (my email app that used Growl to announce new emails) broke, I’ve found that not having notifications can be good, and you can get things done more quickly if you aren’t distracted or interrupted every second of the day.

Twitter and Bowtie are pretty much the only apps that I use with Growl, and I’m seriously considering stopping using Growl with them and just keeping it for maintenance apps and other types of apps that aren’t as intrusive.

Still, I know a lot of people appreciate notifications in every one of their apps, and for them, Growl will continue being the leader of this market. The developers have done a good job at updating this app, for the most part. They have truly taken Mac notifications to another level.

What is your opinion? Do you still use notifications? What do you think of Growl becoming a paid app? What about the new features? Discuss!

Today we’ll be looking at a wonderfully simple app that’s basically the result of a collision of a notes app and a calculator. The result is a simple and friendly way to take notes with basic built-in support for automatic mathematical functions.

The app is called Numeric Notes and if you’re in the market to upgrade your basic calculator, you might want to take a look.

Spreadsheets Suck

I’m a graphic designer, photographer and writer. In other words, my mind is fairly skewed towards the creative side of life. This has obvious ramifications in the software that I choose to use. I’ll spend all day in Photoshop, just don’t make me use Excel.

Spreadsheets are beyond boring and the apps that create them are understandably complicated. Unfortunately, I actually really like the calculation functionality that you get in a spreadsheet. You have so much freedom to write notes and insert whatever you need while still having access to automatic totals and the like when you need them.

That being said, I see plenty of room for other sub-genres to emerge that represent much simpler ways to perform calculations that are beyond what a typical calculator can do but much more basic than a spreadsheet.

This is where Numeric Notes comes in. It’s more than a notes app and more than a calculator, but pleasantly much less than a spreadsheet.

Meet Numeric Notes

When you launch Numeric notes, you’re greeted with a very simple, sticky-like interface that allows for text entry. The UI is perfectly simple and very welcoming. There aren’t really any options and the menu is scarce, all that you can really do is begin typing!

Once you begin to type, your text will appear in a bold, easily readable sans-serif font. The string of words you’re working on is shown surrounded by little arrows.

Numeric Entry

As I mentioned, this app is specifically created for running quick calculations and is especially good for creating lists that need totaling.

Now, notice that I actually included a number (2011) in my initial entry, but because it’s inside those little brackets, it’s not being acted upon. Check out what happens if I start a new line and hit my right arrow key to exit the brackets and then type a number.

Now I can continue to list my items on the left and I get a nice column of numbers on the right.

Performing Calculations

Now, if this app were only good for making lists like the one above it would be pretty lame, but fortunately it can also run calculations for you.

Here I’ve separated my items into two distinct lists, each of which has an automatically calculated total. It took me a while to figure out how to do, but it turns out to get an automatic total you have to hit ?= or go to Edit “Insert Sum.”

Here’s an example from the website that shows some of the various functions. Notice that it allows you to follow the number with the type of unit you’re using (inches, days, etc.).

Unlike the Spotlight mathematic functions on your Mac, Numeric notes also allows you to use parentheses to control the order of operations.

That’s It?

Believe it or not, that’s about all there is to it. Normally I would never dream of reviewing an app this simple but this one is so charming that it caught my eye. Like WriteRoom or IA Writer, it actually benefits from simplicity.

That being said, there’s a fine line between keeping things simple and offering up the features users need. I personally think Numeric Notes is off to a great start, but it needs to go further.

For instance, I need a way to reference other lines. So if I’m on line five and want to know what 100 times whatever the total on line one was, I should be able to reference that value. Instacalc is a web app that handles this functionality particularly well (it also has an awesome variable system). There should also be built-in support for more complicated math functions for things like square roots.

Conclusion

Overall, this is a great little app that I find quite useful. It has the freedom of a notes app with the usefulness of a calculator and that’s a powerful combination.

It’s available for $5.99 on the Mac App Store. Honestly, I think the developers are reaching a little with that price point. The limited functionality seems more in the range of a $1.99 app. That being said, I’ve seen plenty of super basic full-screen text editors running for $10 so it may not be such a bad deal after all. Try it out and let us know what you think.

SSD’s or Solid State Drives are a popular upgrade lately due to the very significant difference they can make to even an older Mac’s performance in real world use. Unfortunately, SSD’s are also still prohibitively expensive for those of us who wish to keep large quantities of media on an internal hard drive.

There are a few workarounds for this, but most rely on an external drive or cloud storage. Alternatively, the following guide will show you how to install an SSD and make use of a larger, standard hard drive in the SuperDrive bay. As far as non-standard upgrades go, it’s not too difficult, but is perhaps not best suited for complete novices and may well void your warranty.

Getting Started

The following guide should not be too difficult if you’re confident with opening up computers and competent with a screwdriver, but of course it’s always possible to do something nasty to your Mac while it’s opened, so proceed with caution and at your own risk!

You may be wondering why we bother moving the larger hard drive into the SuperDrive bay instead of simply placing an SSD in there. Well, this was indeed my original intention but it turns out that there’s a lot of people on the Internet that have found out that MacBook’s have issues waking from sleep when OS X is placed in the SuperDrive position. Thus, we move the hard drive.

If you’re going to be installing OS X Lion on your SSD and are thinking of doing a clean upgrade, you may wish to take a look at this guide on making your own OS X Lion boot disc to save time and space.

Choosing An SSD Size And Model

I scoured the Internet trying to find an inexpensive alternative to Crucial’s SSD but didn’t have much luck. Most of the good ones were almost the same price, with comparatively poor performance. Unless you happen across a good deal for one of the alternative brands like Kingston or OCZ, I’d recommend sticking with Crucial as they offer excellent service, quick shipping and an easy way of finding the right SSD for your needs.

I like to keep a very lean installation, so Crucial’s 64GB SSD was more than enough, but your results may vary.

SSD Enclosure

Unfortunately, it’s not simply a case of opening up your Mac and placing a hard drive in the SuperDrive’s empty bay, you’ll first need an enclosure to make it fit. If you wish to go the safest, best known and most reliable route, I recommend you purchase the MCE Optibay for $99.

I didn’t want to spend $99 on what basically amounts to a piece of rectangular shaped metal and a connector, so after extensive research, I settled on an enclosure sold on eBay by a China-based manufacturer/seller named ‘Nimitz’.

Now, to be clear: I’m not vouching this eBay seller in any way and don’t accept responsibility if something goes wrong – all I can offer is my own experience in the hope to save you some money. After paying $23 including postage, the enclosure was delivered from China within a week and worked perfectly.

Carbon Copy Cloner

I felt that I may as well make a fresh install of OS X for the SSD since it encourages a lean install by jettisoning unused applications but if you’d rather not install a fresh OS X system, then you could simply backup to Carbon Copy Cloner then restore your fresh SSD to that backup, no reinstalling applications, no fuss!

Read here for a guide on using Carbon Copy Cloner.

Opening Up Your Mac

The Mac I’m choosing to upgrade is a mid-2010 13″ Unibody MacBook Pro, but other models of Unibody MacBook should be very similar.

Make sure to power off your Mac and let it cool down if necessary, then remove each screw with a small screwdriver and be sure to keep them safe if you don’t want to spend over half an hour of your time searching the floor for that one missing screw, as I invariably do.

Next, touch some metal part of the MacBook’s casing to discharge any static electricity. Since this is a Unibody, we won’t need to remove the battery.

Remove The Existing Hard Drive

Removing the existing hard drive is a very simple procedure:

The hard drive is located in the bottom left corner of the above photo and should be quite distinctive to spot. To remove the HD, we merely need to remove the two screws holding it in, then slowly lift the plastic strip holding it in place.

Now, slowly remove the hard drive, making sure to disconnect the ribbon as you do so. This would be a good time to put your hard drive into your enclosure if it’s the one you’ve decided to use.

Installing Your SSD

Installing your SSD is equally simple, just place it in the now empty bay and plug it into the ribbon connector, before screwing in the housing again. Once this is done, take care to put your MacBook’s bottom lid on properly and tighten each screw slowly.

Now, if you’ve got a Carbon Copy Cloner backup to restore from then go do that (remember to format your SSD). Alternatively, insert your OS X disc and head to Disk Utility to format your SSD and proceed to install OS X as normal.

Putting A Hard Drive In The SuperDrive Bay

Okay, so now we should have a fully functioning and blazing fast OS X installation on the SSD. Assuming all is well, it’s time to put a standard HD into the SuperDrive bay. This step is more tricky so it would be worth working extra carefully.

Open your MacBook again, following the previous steps to ensure it’s cooled down and you discharge any static. Now locate the SuperDrive bay – on my Mac it was directly above where the SSD is now installed.

There is also a ribbon connector plugged into the SuperDrive so remove this now if it’s not too difficult, otherwise do so later. There are three screws which affix the SuperDrive to the Mac’s casing and these need to be removed. I’ve highlighted their approximate location in the screenshot below with yellow circles – the green circles are a couple of extra screws I also had to remove, but you may not need to, as reports I’ve read online seem to suggest it depends on your model of MacBook Pro.

The two screws to the left of the SuperDrive (highlighted in yellow) are in an awkward position so use a magnetic screwdriver in order to make sure you don’t lose them.

It took me a good few minutes of nudging to remove the SuperDrive as it’s a tight fit but you should not use too much force. If you’re having trouble getting the SuperDrive out, then make sure you haven’t left a screw in somewhere.

Now place your ‘normal’ hard drive in the enclosure you bought and it should slot neatly into the empty SuperDrive bay. Again, be prepared to spend a few minutes to get it snug and all the screw holes lined up, ensuring to plug in the hard drive to its ribbon connector.

Don’t worry if your ribbon connector comes off the motherboard, it does clip back on, I just didn’t advise you remove it because I’ve had bad experiences with such clasps on other computers

If both your SSD and HD are now nice and snug, put the bottom lid back on your MacBook, insert the screws and power on the Mac.

Conclusion

I’ve tested my MacBook Pro for a few days and have had no issues whatsoever, keeping all my media in the secondary hard drive, while OS X and all my applications reside on the SSD for an impressively quick Mac.

For some space saving tips, check out this guide which also details how to move your iTunes Library to another drive. In addition, if you’d like to make use of your SuperDrive, then it’s possible to purchase an enclosure to enable its use with USB – this is a very easy and inexpensive job.

I’ve been fortunate enough to work with several time tracking applications in my time here at AppStorm (such an app can be indispensable for a freelancer). Some of these apps are nothing more than glorified spreadsheets, some place timers in your menubar that need to be activated at precisely the right times, and still others promise to sit quietly in the back of the room and make a note of your every move.

This premise may sound creepy, but consider for a moment the value of such data. First, it can provide valuable insight to how you spend (read: waste) your time on your computer. Second, it can take a lot of the headache out of invoicing for freelance projects, allowing you to tally up a very accurate number of hours that you spent on a given project.

Today I’m going to look at Time Track Pro, a time tracking app from the folks at Bloop that proves very useful in both of these regards.

Tracking Time

The lack of operational interface, I think, is precisely what makes Time Track Pro so easy to use. Download it from the Mac App Store and launch it–and that’s it. The app will drop an icon in your menubar from which you can access The Report, aside from which any traditional form of interface is essentially nonexistent.

The amount of time I spend with an app before I review varies, but in this case, I decided that Time Track Pro needed a pretty substantial amount of time to gather data so we would have something to work with. So while we wait, I’ll cover some of the other aspects of the app.

The first stop on the tour is the drop down from the menubar icon. Your first option is to View Report, but we’ll get to that later (no peeking!). Next up is a manual refresh, and the Preferences menu, which we’ll also get to momentarily. Perhaps the most useful function of this menu, however, is the at-a-glance time tracking information, telling you instantaneously how much time Time Track Pro has monitored so far today.

Finally, the menubar drop down provides a few quick access links to Bloop’s social media presence, as well as to the Time Track Pro webpage.

The Preferences window provides several options for customizing the way Time Track Pro works. This is only for use in rare circumstances, in my opinion, as I found the app to do a bang-up job right out of the box.

The big things to note here are the Log Time, Blacklist, and App List tabs. Under Log Time, you can turn app logging and web logging on and off independently of each other, as well as whether or not Time Track Pro will keep a log file on hand for either list. The Blacklist tab lets you choose which websites the app ignores (for example, I may have felt better about myself if I blacklisted Reddit…). Finally, the App List tabs lets you customize the apps that Time Track Pro keeps track of, similar to the Blacklist tab for web pages.

The other tabs are pretty self explanatory: providing support, allowing you to import data, and to reset the entirety of the logs, respectively.

The Report

This is it, the moment you’ve all been waiting for. This is the big reveal–where we find out exactly how you’ve wasted your time. Have a seat, take a deep breath, and select “View Report” from that menubar drop down.

The first thing that I noticed upon viewing the report was how much different (cleaner, mostly) it looked from similar apps. After a bit of tinkering, I realized that it was because a lot of other time tracking apps, with regards to web tracking, note every unique URL you visit, whereas Time Track Pro seems to only catalogue top level domains.

On the left side of the report you’ll see a list of the apps you’ve been running, and a breakdown of how long you’ve spent using each one. On the right side, you’ll see a similar list accounting for your web usage. In the middle pane of the report is a more visual breakdown of the day, displaying a list of document usage, as well as comparing your overall usage to your daily averages from the last 7 days.

If you switch over to month view (via the toolbar button at the top), you’ll see a similar readout to the previous, but for the past month instead of just the past day. You’ll note in the screenshot above that my hour totals are much higher, and a comparison chart is provided for the past 30 days rather than the last week.

Conclusion

Time Track Pro is an elegant time tracking solution that lowers the bar of entry for such apps. With virtually zero setup and easy-to-absorb data reporting, I can confidently say that this app is most likely (out of the apps I’ve tried thus far) to actually have an impact on my app/web usage, as well as the invoicing process for certain projects.

There are, as with most apps, ways to make the app a bit more streamlined and reliable, but on the whole, Time Track Pro gets a recommendation from me. What is your favorite time tracking app?

Over the past week or so we’ve been on a mission to help you improve the experience of file browsing by introducing you to interesting Finder alternatives. We started with TotalFinder, which boosts your Finder’s natural functionality by adding tabs. We then moved on to Raskin, which dramatically redesigns the entire file browsing process.

Today we’ll wrap up this series with an incredibly useful and unique utility called Default Folder X, which helps you navigate your file structure at lightning speed when saving or opening files.

Before Default Folder X

To start this review off right, let’s take a brief look at how the open/save file browsing process currently works. From a given application, hitting ?O will bring up a window something like the one below.

To be honest, this isn’t a bad start. In fact, I’ve never really thought enough about it to have any issues with this window. You’ve got a customizable list of favorites running down the side, a quick way to see a folder’s path at the top, a filetype filter and even a search bar. What more could you really need?

After using Default Folder X for five minutes, I realized that the answer to this question is, “a lot.”

Meet Default Folder X

Now that we’ve seen the old way of doing things, let’s take a look at the same window when Default Folder X is activated.

As you can see, Default Folder X keeps your original file dialog 100% intact while surrounding it with a darkened bezel with some additional options. Let’s briefly look at these one by one so you can get a feel for all the awesome tools this app has to offer.

Utilities

We’ll start with the strip of buttons that appears to the right of the default dialog. Clicking the top button reveals a basic set of utilities and commands that come built-into the app.

As you can see, there are quite a few helpful commands in here. You can reveal/open the selected folder in Finder, rename it, trash it, zip it, and more.

You can also set the folder as the “default folder,” which means every time you open or save a file, the current folder will be the starting destination. This is extremely helpful if, like me, all of your various work projects are housed in a single folder.

Disks

Next up is the little icon that looks like an iMac. This is the Disks menu. As you can probably guess, it serves as a shortcut to internal and external disks attached to your Mac in addition to providing extra access to your home folder.

One of the main things that makes file browsing so fast with Default Folder is the folder hierarchy menus can be drilled down into instantly via hovering over them. This saves you from clicking your way through ten different folders in the dialog.

Favorites

Next up is the Favorites shortcut. Just like your default dialog’s sidebar, this lets you choose special folders that you access often. The primary difference being that you have the bonus of flying through the folder hierarchy in the manner we just discussed.

Recent Folders

Perhaps the most useful feature in the whole bunch is the list of recently accessed folders, indicated by the clock icon.

My favorite feature in the app is the little shortcut that you see at the top of this menu. Hitting Option and the down arrow immediately takes you to the most recently used folders. After having this app for a little over a week, I now use this shortcut several times every single day.

Open Finder Windows

Another extremely hand option is the ability to quickly navigate to any folders that are currently open in your Finder.

As you can see, the three Finder windows that I have open appear as options in this menu, the top and bottom of which have associated keyboard shortcuts. Additionally, you can simply click on any Finder window in the background and Default Folder will automatically jump your open/save dialog to that folder.

Additional Information

In another area situated below the default open/save dialog you’ll find a menu containing five different tabs:

This gives you lots of functions and information, such as permissions and meta info, that you normally have access to in the Finder but not in a dialog such as this. You can even go beyond Finder actions and assign tags to files, which makes them far easier to target in a search.

Menu Bar and Preference Pane

The features in Default Folder X are pretty great, don’t you wish you could have access to them outside of an open or save dialog? Well you’re in luck, because the app also comes with a menu bar icon that allows you to quickly browse through folders, preview files and grab what you’re looking for.

For additional control over all the various aspects of Default Folder X, you go to the included preference pane. Here you’ll be able to easily setup your favorite folders, add and exclude applications for Default Folder to work with and even define custom default starting folders for different applications.

My Thoughts

To be honest, when I first opened Default Folder X, I wasn’t crazy about all the extra stuff that suddenly floods my screen when I open a file. However, I quickly realized that I could turn off that extra information window at the bottom when I don’t need it, which just leaves the fairly minimal button strip to the side.

I didn’t expect to be really taken with this app but I have to say, after using it for a week, I’m completely hooked. In fact, as an experiment, I tried to turn it off and found that I was lost without it. You really get used to using the extra tools to navigate the file hierarchy quicker. As I mentioned above, the recent folders menu and shortcut have become quite ingrained into my workflow.

Since Default Folder is all about reducing the time you spend in dialogs, it would be useless if it didn’t work at lightning speed. Fortunately, this app does exactly that. It’s really fast and responds to your every whim in an instant.

This is one of those rare utilities that you have no idea you need until you try it, then you’re so dependent upon it that you almost don’t want to use a Mac without it.

Conclusion

Whether or not you think there’s anything wrong with the current open and save dialogs in OS X, you should download the Default Folder X free trial and spend some time getting to know the app. Give it a few days of intentional use and you’ll no doubt find yourself with a greatly improved file navigating workflow.

All praise aside, the one place where I’m not completely convinced regarding this app is the price point. It’s a really useful utility, but it’s also more of a “nice to have” add-on than a standalone app, which makes the $34.95 a lot harder to justify. Like it or not, the Mac App Store has driven down our expectations for app prices. Intensely developed and wildly popular standalone apps like Pixelmator seem like a bargain at $30, but many system add-ons like Growl are selling for under the $2 mark (though that’s a poor example given that it used to be free). Regardless of app pricing arguments that consider the entire market, I think Default Folder X might find a more welcoming audience if they reign the cost in to under $10.

As we enter into the holiday season and approach the close of 2012, Apple continues to make headlines all over the world. Join us as we take a quick look at a few prominent stories that cropped up this week.

Apple’s Black Friday Sale

In the U.S. this week, Thanksgiving will grace us with its delicious gluttony-inducing dinners, famous parades and must-watch American football games.

For the shoppers out there, the real fun starts the day after Thanksgiving, when stores everywhere discount items so heavily that they can instantly turn a nice, minivan-driving soccer mom into a crazy adrenaline-driven member of a rioting mob.

Black Friday is such a big event that even Apple can’t resist jumping into the pandemonium. A teaser recently went up on the Apple site announcing a “one-day shopping event” on November 25th. No word yet on exactly what’s coming but they claim it will include iPads, iPods, and Macs. Previous years indicate discounts of somewhere around the $100 mark for Macs and $40 mark for iPads.

Steve Jobs Had More Money In Disney Stock Than Apple Stock

Bloomberg recently posted an interesting article discussing the idea that Jobs’ Heirs should sell some or even all of his stock as a means to diversify and avoid a fat $867 million in capital gains taxes.

I’m not convinced that Jobs’ family is going to up and sell all of his stock but regardless, I found the most interesting part of the article to be the revelation of just how profitable the Pixar Disney deal turned out to be in the long run.

According to Bloomberg, Steve owned 5.55 million Apple shares worth $2.05 billion. We Mac and iOS fans tend to see Apple as Steve’s most major asset and venture, but it turns out that his 138 million Disney shares more than double his Apple holdings with a value of $4.74 billion.

Will Apple Become the Largest Computer Manufacturer?

Forbes is predicting that Apple could soon take the top slot away from HP as the leading computer manufacturer on the planet.

The long-time Apple geek in me has to stop and marvel at this. This headline would’ve been an utterly ridiculous suggestion ten years ago. I’m so used to Mac users being a sort of counterculture insurgence that I completely forget that we’re no longer rooting for the underdog.

People that owned Apple products used to be infamous for thinking that they were somehow better than everyone else, the products they used were superior to that mainstream crap that you used and you were crazy to think otherwise. These days though the Apple customers are the everyone else, so much so that it’s hard to find a household without at least one iPod or iPad laying around.

While Apple’s marketshare hits a 15 year high, everyone from The Washington Post to PC Magazine is constantly churning out stories about Apple’s continual success and whether or not anyone can bring them down. In fact, CBS News recently posted a graph showing how Apple’s revenue has not only caught but far surpassed that of the seemingly unbeatable giant Microsoft ($17 billion for Microsoft vs. $28 billion for Apple). It’s enough to make any pre-OS X Mac addict get misty eyed.

Conclusion

That does it for interesting Apple headlines this week. Leave a comment and let us know what you think of the stories and opinions above. Did you hear any other interesting Apple news? Let us know!

If you love apps, gadgets, and great deals on software as much as we do at AppStorm, and you haven’t had a chance to sign up for the AppFanatix newsletter yet, then you’re missing out! AppFanatix is a classy fortnightly email newsletter that distills the very best content from around the network and will regularly bring you:

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I love my new Mac, but I still enjoy using old hardware too and there’s nothing quite like playing retro games in the environment they were intended for. Assuming you have a PowerPC Mac lying around, there’s nothing stopping you from installing either OS 9 or OS X’s ‘Classic’ emulator and turning that aging Mac into a retro gaming rig!

Still need convincing? Read on after the break to take a look at my pick of 9 great retro OS 9 games.

Conclusion

While modern software and hardware capabilities have doubtlessly brought many great games into fruition, there’s often no beating the classics. Not all of the above choices are OS 9 only and many will run under emulation or have a more up to date version on OS X, but OS 9 offers the chance to play the titles as they were often originally envisaged.

The above 9 games reflect my own preferences and I can imagine that I’ve probably missed lots of great games. Please let us know in the comments if you’ve got any recommendations for great OS 9 games!

By now many or even most of you have gotten a chance to really dig into Apple’s latest operating system: OS X Lion. This update was a significant one and brought about tons of changes from both a visual and functional standpoint. With this in mind, we already can’t help but to look toward the next iteration and wonder what’s in store, not just from a new feature standpoint but regarding which existing features Apple will decide to refine.

Today we want to know what you would like Apple to take another run at designing. Whether it’s a brand new feature like Mission control or something that’s been there since the beginning like Finder, which piece of OS X are you really hoping will see a major facelift next time around?

Vote in the poll and then leave a comment below telling us what you would change and why.

Our featured sponsor this week is PopClip, an awesome utility that brings iOS style copy and paste functionality to your Mac.

On an iPhone or iPad, selecting text immediately brings up controls that allow you to perform functions on the selection such as copy, paste and define. As you can see in the screenshot to the right, PopClip brings this exact functionality to text selection on a Mac. It’s a great idea and the implementation is solid. I really love having these controls appear right in place and specifically find the define and spellcheck functions to be quite useful.

PopClip even goes beyond this functionality by providing search and link functionality. Clicking the magnifying glass will immediately search the selection on Google and clicking the link icon will open any links included in the selection in your default browser (or mail client if it’s an email address). Another feature that I really like is the ability to exclude PopClip from certain applications, so it’s only there when you want it to be.

Grab the Free Trial!

This is one utility that you can immediately appreciate the very first time you use it. To see for yourself, head over to the PopClip website to grab the free trial. Once you’re convinced, the full version can be purchased on the Mac App Store.

As a web designer, I spend a significant amount of time creating graphics and interfaces in Photoshop. Like other designers and artists, I love the power and limitless possibilities it offers, while at the same time, I grow increasingly frustrated with high prices, feature bloat, and the myriad little quirks that seem designed to drive us insane.

Photoshop’s lack of competition is partly due to the large scope and flexibility of the application – it is used by web, graphic, and interface designers, digital artists, photographers, and more. I doubt Photoshop’s reign as the king of multi-purpose graphics software will end any time soon, but developers have been chipping away at its supremacy in individual fields.

In the more artistic fields, Pixelmator has long been a popular Photoshop alternative, loved for its speed and simplicity. Despite these advantages, Pixelmator could never quite match Photoshop in terms of sheer power – until now. Pixelmator 2 was recently release with an impressive list of new features, find out if it can really compete after the jump!

What’s New

For a rundown of Pixelmator’s basic functionality, you might want to take a look at David Appleyard’s review of Pixelmator 1, in this article, I’m going to dive right in to what I think are Pixelmator 2’s most exciting new features.

Interface & Lion Features

Pixelmator 2 features a readjusted interface that is both refreshing and familiar – it’s the same basic dark, slick look, with some added polish. It has some great little touches that make Pixelmator a pleasure to use: an unobtrusive pop-up that tells you what you’re undoing, subtle animations, and large icons to highlight active tools. One gripe is the lack of foreground/background color display, you’re pretty much left to guess what color you have selected if you don’t have the color panel open. I’m also a bit disappointed that Pixelmator doesn’t use tabbed windows, which are key when working with a small display.

This new release comes with the welcome integration of some of the more useful Lion features, including full-screen view and versions. I’m a huge fan of versions/autosave in my writing applications, but I honestly never thought I’d see it in a graphics application. I wasn’t expecting my MacBook Pro to be able to handle versions in Pixelmator, but I was pleasantly surprised by its speed and reliability.

The interface now also features a contextual tool options bar at the top of each window, which changes depending on the tool you’re using. The downside of having this at the top of each window is that some options are hidden on narrower images, so remember to stretch out your window if you’re missing options.

Vector Graphics

A lack of vector graphic tools was likely a deal breaker for a lot of potential Pixelmator 1 users, so this version introduces a rudimentary vector toolkit, including a pen tool, a freehand drawing tool, and a vector shapes tool. Vector shapes are handled similarly to in Photoshop, with each shape getting its own layer. You can adjust fill and stroke for your vector objects, and even add a drop shadow.

I’m no pro in vector graphics, but I found Pixelmator’s implementation a bit unintuitive. I miss Photoshop/Illustrator options like “convert point” and “direct select,” and I might have missed something, but it seems like the bezier handles are not individually editable. I’m hoping this feature will be more fleshed out in future updates.

Healing tool & Content-Aware Fill

A lot of people were excited when Photoshop introduced its new Content-Aware fill feature in CS5, and for good reason: it promises to be able to seamlessly erase elements from an image without spending time clone-stamping. Though the technology can’t be applied in all situations (and rarely works as smoothly as in the demos), it’s still a time-saving tool, and now available in Pixelmator.

There isn’t a specific Content-Aware fill tool, rather it’s a technology used by the healing brush tool (and an option when you select a region). Unlike Photoshop’s healing brush, the Pixelmator healing brush ‘erases’ objects from an image, replacing them with an interpolated background. It works quite impressively, I don’t have CS5 at home for a comparison, but it seems to work just as well.

Dodge & Burn Tools

Dodge and burn are easily two of my most-used features when I’m working with photographs, and they’re a very welcome addition to Pixelmator. Dodge and burn work just as you’d expect, with a full range of options allowing you to select shadows, midtones and highlights, select brushes, and vary exposure.

You can use the same trick for non-destructive dodging and burning as in Photoshop: create a new layer, set the blending mode to overlay, and fill it with 50% grey.

Pixel Tool

If you’re creating icons or other graphics with pixel-level detail, you need to be able to edit pixels individually. I’ve never been really happy with Photoshop’s pencil tool, but the Pixelmator pixel tool works just the way I want it to (except that it’s not in the toolbox – you have to hit P).

What Else?

There are more new features than I can go over in detail, but here’s a quick overview of some other handy additions:

• Smudge Tool: works pretty much as you’d expect it to.
• Sponge Tool: this is pretty handy, it lets you spot-saturate or desaturate colors using any brush.
• Eyedropper Tool: new magnifying eyedropper tool lets you zoom in on colors you want to use.
• Info Bar: shows you RGB values for any spot in your document, as well as X and Y coordinates.
• Type Tool: improved type tool features more advanced typographic features.

What’s Missing?

Inevitably when discussing a graphics editor, there are going to be comparisons and complaints of missing features. It’s important in this situation to determine the intended scope of the application, and not complain that we’re missing things we shouldn’t expect to have. That being said, there are a couple features that I’d really like to see.

If Pixelmator wants to compete as powerful graphics manipulation software, it should really have something similar to the warp tool: anyone used to using this feature in Photoshop will really miss it.

Pixelmator also doesn’t feature the same kind of non-destructive editing workflow people might be used to. Adjustments are applied permanently, though they are applied to individual layers.

Conclusion

Despite these few limitations, Pixelmator 2 is a very powerful image editor that makes impressive advancements over the previous version. When I first started learning Photoshop, I did a lot of graphics and photo manipulation, and I think Pixelmator 2 would have definitely been powerful enough for my needs. Most of the everyday tasks I do at work, tasks which would generally fall under the category of “Photoshopping” (“remove the garbage cans from this photo,” “get rid of her nose ring,” “put that woman in front of some trees,” etc.) could now easily be done in Pixelmator.

It’s not going to displace Photoshop for large-scale professional uses (though I’m not ruling that out after future updates), but it’s not just for beginners or casual hobbyists any more.

One of the most appealing features of Pixelmator is the price, but that’s still up in the air as I write this. Right now, it’s a steal at the introductory price of $29.99, but there’s no confirmation on a final price. Whatever it is, I’m certain it will be a lot more palatable than $700 for Photoshop, and there is a free trial available from the website.

It’s hard to switch to a new application after putting so much time into learning another, but I recommend you give it a shot if the features suit your needs. Pros will definitely notice the faster performance, and beginners will find it much less intimidating than other software. What are your thoughts on the topic? Will Photoshop always be ubiquitous? Have you made the switch?

For many users, a computer’s desktop quickly turns into a headache. If you are anything like me, you use it to keep temporary files that you might only use once, but that need to be saved somewhere temporarily. I sometimes keep items there to remind myself of things that I need to do. It is also always filled with .dmg files from installed apps, among other things.

Whatever it is that I’ve used my desktop for recently, it is usually filled with a number of items that I probably don’t need at that moment and that just distract me. Sometimes you need a clean desktop to do a presentation, or sometimes you want to quickly hide everything that is there to take a quick screenshot (like if you are a writer for a Mac app website and you need to take a lot of screenshots of running apps).

That’s why we are reviewing today’s app. It’s called Desktop Tidy and it claims to fix this problem with a few features you don’t typically see in competing apps. Does it succeed? Let’s see!

How it Works

When you first install and open the app, you’ll be greeted with a short screenshot tutorial that will pinpoint every feature in the app and show you in general terms what the app does. After this is over you’ll have a chance to check over a few settings.

Desktop Tidy will let you set a periodic time when it will check with your desktop to see if there are any recent items. If there are, it will move them from the Desktop to a folder inside the menu bar app, where you can have quick access to them without having them be intrusive all over your desktop.

The drop-down you get when you click on the menu bar icon will show you a few fields where you can access the settings and check when the last cleaning was made, among other things. One section of it is called the “Shadow Desktop,” and is where you can see all of the files that the app is storing for you. In it, the files will be displayed with a small image that displays their file type, and the folders will be shown as sub-menus where you can access their contents.

Features

The main feature, of course, is that it can move files from the desktop to a hidden folder inside the app. But this app can do much more than that. For example, it will show you the size of all the files you have accumulated in the desktop folder. It will also notify you through Growl every time it moves files.

Also, you can use keyboard shortcuts to achieve different functions when you click an item inside the app. Use shift to delete the file, Control to bring it to the desktop, and Alt to show the file in Finder.

Then there are the organizing tools. The “Quick Filters” let you see your items arranged by file type, folder or alphabetic order. And the “Organize” menu lets you hide files, delete all of them, restore them to the desktop and arrange your Quick Filters.

Under the settings there are a ton more goodies. Other than modifying the usual settings that you’ll find in any other app, here you can also modify the Quick Filters and add types of files that fit into them, as well as add files that should be ignored by the app and left in the desktop no matter what.

Shortcomings and Alternatives

For the most part, I’m impressed with this app. It does a delicate task (as it basically changes the way you interact with a very vital part of some user’s workflow), but it does it in a very original and organized manner. If anything, I find it a bit annoying that if you use the app, you have to give up drag-and-drop like you can do with items on your desktop. It would be great if they implemented that, or at least a keyboard shortcut like the ones I mentioned earlier, but for copying files.

When I first heard about this app, I immediately thought of a similar product called Desktopple that goes for free and has been available for quite a while. Eventually it became pretty clear that they are very different apps. Desktopple is just a simple solution for making all of your desktop files “invisible,” while Desktop Tidy is a much more elaborate app that can help you not just keep a clutter-free desktop, but also maintain the functionality of keeping files in an easily-accessible place.

Conclusion

I like this app, and if you have ever found yourself annoyed by how much stuff you have on your desktop, then you will also find this app useful. At first I thought it was going to be just another app that hides your desktop files, but it turned out to be a well-designed app that almost mimics the functionality of your desktop while keeping it clean and giving you quick ways to delete the files that you no longer use.

I guess everybody has different uses for their desktop, and so some will not find this app ideal for them. Instead, if you’re looking for a much more simple way of just hiding everything for a quick screenshot, then you could check out the freemium Desktopple. Let us know what you think about this app and your desktop!