Category: Mac

Earlier this week we took a look at TotalFinder, a reserved but incredibly useful Finder replacement that uses a tabbed interface to augment your typical file browsing experience.

Today we’re going to follow that up with something that’s not a subtle change but a completely re-imagined file browser like nothing else you’ve ever used: Raskin. Intrigued? You should be.

Raskin? As in…

Any of you currently reading the recent Steve Jobs bio no doubt paused when you read the name of this app. It turns out it is indeed named for Jef Raskin (1943-2005), the legendary creator of the Macintosh project and one of many rivals that Jobs would create during his initial stint with Apple.

Jef Raskin didn’t directly have anything to do with the Raskin app, but his advancements and ideas in the world of UI had a major impact on this software. Jef spent his life pursuing more human friendly interfaces for computers and is largely responsible for things like “drag and drop” (which is a huge part of what makes OS X so dang usable) and ZUI or “Zooming User Interfaces,” which is what Raskin the app uses.

Enough background though, let’s see this thing in action.

Meet Raskin

As I mentioned in the introduction, Raskin is pretty much as far away from Finder as you can get. Or perhaps a more appropriate description would be that this is what would happen if Google Earth crashed into Finder.

Just like in Google Earth, you start with a very zoomed out overview that looks simple, but actually holds an impressive amount of functionality.

I have to admit, the image above doesn’t necessarily scream user friendly file browser. So what’s going on here?

Places

Raskin scraps the typical ideas that are used for file browsing, those being the basic icon grid and list views. Instead, it’s organized into several columns, called “Places.”

These places are conveniently auto-populated according to the folders in your Finder’s sidebar, but they’re completely customizable: add new places, delete existing ones, it’s up to you. I’ve narrowed mine to seven columns, each of which is a folder on my hard drive that I access regularly. By default, there’s also an “Applications” place off in the blue area to the side, but I recommend sticking to Alfred for launching apps as it’s not exactly Raskin’s cup of tea.

Getting Around

There are several ways to zoom into a place. This is one of the reasons I really like Raskin, it gives you lots of options and lets you decide how you want to work.

The simple way is to use your trackpad or mouse. The directions for this are conveniently printed right on the app’s interface.

With a trackpad, you use familiar pinching gestures for zooming in and out. With a mouse, you hold down Option and scroll. You can also easily pan around using your typical scroll actions (or use Space to activate a Photoshop-like hand tool). The more you use Raskin though the more you’ll realize that this isn’t always the best way to operate.

It’s a lot like when you first use the iPhone’s web browser, at first you do a lot of pinching because it seems cool, but ultimately you realize that double tapping to zoom in on a particular element is much faster. Raskin is exactly the same way. Instead of pinching, a quick double click will quickly zoom right into the area that you’re after.

Further, each of your places has a sequential keyboard shortcut (?1, ?2, ?3, etc.) so you’re never more than a second away from where you want to be. Bottom line, if anyone tells you that it’s hard to get around in Raskin it’s because they never explored further than the surface functionality.

Up Close and Personal

You may not think so at a glance, but Raskin’s interface is remarkably efficient. After you zoom into a column, you can see that it’s not a straight up representation of the folder. Instead, it’s a quick overview of what’s inside based on the files that you’ve interacted with most recently. It’s strange how much it limits what’s really there while seeming to somehow know whatever it is that I’m after.

Raskin is perhaps ideally suited for creative professionals and that really shows through here in the zoomed in view. What you see isn’t a grid of representative icons but an assortment of actual file previews that load in quickly even on my aging 2.16 GHz MacBook. This is particularly awesome when you have a folder full of images.

The really unique thing is that there’s no slider to control the thumbnail size, you just zoom in further to see something bigger!

From here you can hit the “display more” button if you don’t see what you want, open the current folder in Finder, hit Space to launch Quick Look or double click to launch a file. Lots of typical Finder actions are available as well such as renaming, applying color labels, copying and deleting.

Use With Finder, Not Instead of Finder

I think one of the keys for learning to like Raskin is to learn to see it as a complement to Finder, not a replacement. There are admittedly several things that I prefer to use Finder for, but it’s really nice to have the option to pop into Raskin from time to time.

The integration between the two is pretty solid. For instance, when you click on a folder in Finder, you can instantly bring it up in Raskin by hitting ?? while scrolling down or just by hitting ??R.

Who Will Hate It

Raskin is most certainly not for everyone. In fact, I can say with certainty that many users will hate it. If you want software to simply work the way you’re used to and aren’t open to learning an entirely new paradigm, then Raskin simply isn’t something you’ll enjoy.

Further, if you rarely work with images and can’t really name many shortcomings of the Finder app, then Raskin will probably just seem like it’s adding extra and fairly arbitrary complication to your file browsing process.

Who Will Love It

If you’re a creative professional who works with images all day and love trying drastically different software, then Raskin could change your entire workflow. In a sense, it’s everything Cover Flow tried to be but fell short of.

When you’re truly openminded and willing to really invest the time it takes to get comfortable with the app, then it’s a joy to use. Much like Quicksilver, there’s a lot under the hood that you don’t get from playing with the app for a few minutes. You really have to dig in and explore how it works best for you.

Conclusion

As you can probably tell, I really enjoy using Raskin. The interface appeals to me both as a photographer and a designer and really makes it easy to browse my work.

It’s not perfect, there are definitely a few things that I would love to see changed. For instance, the rendering is pretty bad when zoomed out. Some sort of vector system that displays the app interface elements smooth at any zoom level (like text in Illustrator) would go a long way. The place names are impossible to read when zoomed out so at the very least a large label that appears on hover would be appropriate to help you get oriented.

There are a few things that would make it easier to navigate as well. For instance, if I’m zoomed in on a place, hitting Option and an arrow key jumps quickly right or left, but at a seemingly random distance. It takes you to the next column, but it’s not in any way centered, making this shortcut no where near as practical as it could be.

On the whole though the app works surprisingly well. It’s a drastic idea and the implementation is honestly much better than I expected it to be. I’m definitely beginning to implement it into my permanent daily workflow and would miss it if I worked on a Mac without it.

Great news! We’ve chosen the ten winners who will receive a free copy of the MacBundler App Bundle. The Twitter users listed below will be receiving emails shortly outlining how to claim their prize.

• thebernok
• QTmose
• AlbertTCB

Didn’t Win? Get $5 Off the MacBundler App Bundle!

To everyone who didn’t win, thanks for entering, be sure to check back soon for more great giveaways. In the mean time click here to receive $5 off this amazing bundle.

Original Post

We’ve got another awesome app bundle to give away! This time we’ve teamed up withMacBundler and will be giving away a bundle of eight awesome apps to three lucky users.

The apps included are all top-notch products that you’ve heard us rave about before such as Flux and Concealer. Check out the full list for more info on each:

• Compartments
• Color Splash Studio
• Kompressor
• PDF editor
• Concealer
• Flux
• Hands off
• Back-in-time

You can take a look at the details of the bundle over on MacBundler, and then enter by following the instructions below…

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!

Typically, we run competitions for a week but this bundle will be gone soon so we’ll be choosing the winners on Friday, November 18th. Best of luck, be sure to enter while there’s still time!

It’s coming up on two years since we first took a look at an interesting Finder replacement app called TotalFinder, which was in its initial stages of development at the time. It was a little shaky back then but it has come a long way and is definitely worth another look.

In case you’ve never used it, we’ll walk through what TotalFinder is and why it just might make you leave the normal finder behind for good.

What’s Wrong with Finder?

The Finder app is a large part of the OS X experience. It defines how we interact with the system and even our impressions about the overall aesthetic of current Mac software. It does all of this in an almost invisible fashion. Finder is the Helvetica of apps, you see it a million times every day but you don’t really notice it.

However, when you really start to think about it, it’s easy to find some downfalls. For instance, overlapping windows may have been a revolution in 1982, but these days UI developers tend to look to tabs to help keep things clean and user friendly. Outside of a web browser, Finder is perhaps the most natural place for tabs exist. However, despite years of user demands, Apple has yet to implement them. TotalFinder is the best attempt I’ve seen to do just that.

Is This Safe?

Replacing Finder is no easy task. You can use a third party file browsing app, but it’s nearly impossible to escape your instincts to just use the default file system. For this reason, TotalFinder actually takes over and puts itself in the place of your Finder.

This sounds scary, and to be honest, there’s no way around that. However, the good news is that it doesn’t actually modify your actual Finder app. Since TotalFinder is super easy to uninstall, you can always go right back to the way things were should any problems arise (even a killall dock command does the trick of returning things back to normal). Also, it’s important to note that the developer is a daily user of his own app, which means he’s really on top of it if an Apple update ever causes any issues!

Rebels Only

That being said, plenty of OS X users would never touch an app with such seemingly deep control and indeed Apple likely wouldn’t let it anywhere near the App Store. Personally, in a time when Apple is trying to control developers as much as possible, I think it’s awesome that we still have enough freedom to dig in and make OS X whatever we want it to be. This might not always be the case.

A Seamless Transition

When you open up TotalFinder for the first time, your overall impression will no doubt be surprise at how much everything feels just about like it always did. This is intentional, TotalFinder seeks to blend into the system by emulating Finder as much as possible while still adding improvements that users really want.

The user experience here is 100% seamless. You open new windows, browse and perform other actions just like you always would, even the Finder dock icon still functions though it has been updated slightly to reflect TotalFinder’s presence.

Finally, Tabs

TotalFinder has a decent feature set, but its claim to fame is built on a single idea: tabs. If you only appreciate one thing about TotalFinder it’ll be this.

The Chrome-style tabs are perfectly integrated into the visual interface and don’t add any unwanted clutter. They operate exactly like you’d expect. You can use ?T to open new tabs and ?W to close them, rearrange them via drag and drop and easily transfer files between them. Also, ?N still brings up a new window and Spacebar still launches Quick Look so your old keyboard shortcut habits will still function just fine.

Windows users will be glad to know that TotalFinder brings cut and paste capability to files and folders in Finder, making it easier than ever to move files around using only the keyboard.

Dual Mode

Hitting ?U will bring up Dual Mode, which merges two tabs into a side-by-side format in a single window. This is perfect if you’re doing a lot of file shuffling.

As you can see, this view allows for each column to have its own separate view mode, even the sidebar is carried over and flipped to the other side; a nice touch.

Preferences

Under the TotalFinder Preferences menu you’ll find a few more features that you can enable and experiment with. On the right below you can see the “Tweaks” tab, which contains great options like always keeping folders on top of a list, showing hidden files and forcing user actions to open new windows instead of new tabs (freelance windows).

The Visor

On the left above you can see the options for a really cool feature called The Visor, which allows you to set up a keyboard shortcut that quickly slides up a Finder window attached to the bottom of the screen. You pull up this window when you need a quick look at the Finder and it disappears as soon as you’re done with it. Even as a standalone app this would be great, built into an already great app like TotalFinder it’s just icing on the cake.

Same Old TotalFinder?

The last time we looked at TotalFinder, it was a free beta app. Now, it’s in version 1.3, will cost you $18, and the feature set is about the same as it was back then. What gives?

The thing about the TotalFinder beta is that while it was fun, it wasn’t always usable. Comparing the features above to those in the early releases, you won’t find many discrepancies, but the experience is an entirely different matter.

I used TotalFinder for a while during the beta and it was (like any true beta app) always crashing or behaving in an unpredicted way. One day it simply stopped working altogether on my Mac.

Comparatively, version 1.3 is a dream. I’ve been using it without any real hitches. It’s smooth, highly functional and is the Finder replacement I’ve been waiting for. Other apps seem so far away from the Finder that I can never quite get used to them, TotalFinder on the other hand is the same old Finder you know and love, just better!

Lion Ready

Another thing that you should keep in mind is that OS X has evolved quite a bit over the past few years, especially with the Lion release. TotalFinder has evolved right with it and is now fully Lion compatible. You’ll notice in the screenshots above that the Finder windows are styled just like they should be and haven’t lagged behind in the old Snow Leopard design.

Almost There

To be fair, TotalFinder is not 100% perfect yet, but it’s close enough for me to use daily. I have two primary complaints. First is speed. There’s a slight lag when opening a new tab that’s just enough to be annoying. It’s still quick, but not instant.

Also, while I love the idea of the Visor, every time I enable it I encounter somewhat erratic behavior that eventually leads to me turning it off. This feature still needs to be ironed out. Otherwise, TotalFinder works great and is a pleasure to use.

Conclusion

If you’ve tried other third party file browsers but keep returning back to OS X’s default Finder due to feature bloat or interface wearies, it’s time to give TotalFinder a run through. Even if you tried the beta, the latest release is worth a fresh look.

If you have any doubts about TotalFinder’s usefulness, try disabling tabbed browsing in Safari for a week and see if you don’t go nuts. This is what it’s like to use TotalFinder, you almost can’t go back to the plain old Finder once you’ve seen the light.

Digital photography has made it cheaper and easier to capture the brightest moments of life. The number of megapixels in digital cameras go up with every new model and so does the size the of images we capture. After a few months, even those who occasionally use their cameras end up with few gigabytes of images in their hard drives.

Not all the images are going to be viewed frequently, so it makes sense to burn them to DVDs or upload them to the cloud. Easy portability and plenty of affordable space to store make the cloud the ideal photo storage destination. I recently discovered MemoryCloud and unlike its peers, this photo (and multimedia) storing app focuses only on the files stored on Macs. Sounds interesting right?

Overview

MemoryCloud assists you in addressing the storage issues in your Mac by archiving large photo and video files to the cloud. What’s so different about this solution you ask? The app stores the high quality original version of the file in the cloud and replaces it with a compressed version locally.

Better yet, MemoryCloud works seamlessly with both iPhoto and iTunes, ensuring that all your favorite files are always at your disposal all the while being stored securely in the cloud.

Pricing

You can store anywhere between 25 and 250 GB of data with MemoryCloud depending on your subscription plan. As you might have inferred, even though there are three different subscription plans, the features of the app remain the same. Only the space available for storage varies. If you’re looking for a test drive, they also have a free plan that offers 250 MB of storage space.

Adding Files

Once you have created a MemoryCloud cloud account, head over to the Mac App Store and download the app. Then, log in to your account and you will land on a very empty screen. Given the somber looking user interface, it was hard to believe the app is capable all the things it promises to do! But after using it for a couple of days, I found that it actually does a splendid job.

Select, drag and drop a file or folder to the MemoryCloud user interface. Be very sure when you are ready to drop files into the app. As soon as you drop the files, the upload process begins. Use the Pause button at the top left corner to bring it to a temporary halt. The progress indicators help a lot in knowing how far the upload has come along and how much space is recovered by way of compression.

After the upload is complete, each uploaded file is compared to the original. Once the app determines that the files are identical after verification, the local version is swapped with a compressed version. So, the chances of losing your data by way of the file swap employed by MemoryCloud around zero.

Retrieving Files

Keep in mind that this is specifically for media files, MemoryCloud rejects all other file types (I tried in vain!). All files compressed by the app bear a MemoryCloud watermark (which is quite annoying). If you ever need the original one back, there are two ways to get it. First, you could locate it in the library and download it. Or you could just drag and drop the watermarked image and wait for the original file to download by itself automatically. Apparently the watermark bears details about the original image and dragging into the interface triggers the download of the original file. Smart thinking indeed!

Incidentally, the app can handle only one process at a time. Meaning, if you start an upload (or download) and try to download (or upload) another file, the latter process is queued until the former is complete. Also, information about the estimated time to complete the upload or download will be very helpful when handling large files.

Final Thoughts

MemoryCloud is awesome and is an app to watch out for. It addresses the problems of local storage and remote backup of media so effortlessly. I will have to admit that I can’t tell for sure if their pricing is reasonable or a bit too high. To be sure, a lot of other cloud storage services offer much more space (some even offer unlimited storage) at the same price point (or less) and support not only multimedia, but all kinds of data.

But do they all offer a fabulous Mac app to manage and upload multimedia files, all the while compressing the ones stored locally? Nope. Obviously, whether or not you should go this route depends heavily on your specific needs and preferences.

Regular apps and menu bar apps always get all the glory. They’re always there with you, always visible and grabbing your attention. But what about the more discrete apps, the ones that perhaps change the behavior of your computer or make something cool happen behind the scenes?

Today we’re doing a roundup of the most interesting Preference Pane apps that we could find (they are those little icons that reside on the bottom of your System Preferences). You’re bound to find some useful utilities that you’ve never come across before.

Tinkertool

TinkerTool is a PrefPane that opens up a bunch of “hidden” settings in your OS. With it, you can do things like mess around with Finder, disable the Dashboard or even add a stack of recent items to your dock. You can review all the settings it makes available here.

Even though the developer says that it is safe to use and nothing can go wrong with it, I’d rather not mess with shady settings that may slow down my machine even more or cause unexpected things to happen. But to each his own, and I might even try some of these myself!

Price: Free

Requirements: Mac OS X 10.6 or later

Developer: Marcel Bresink

MagicPrefs

MagicPrefs aims at making your Magic Mouse or Trackpad a lot more functional, by allowing you to create gestures which activate things like the Dashboard, or whatever you want it to do (even Tweet!). But it doesn’t stop there, it also lets you increase the speed of your pointer beyond what is allowed by default, among some other features.

I’m a supporter of a similar app called jiTouch which I really like, but when I heard about all the things that this one can do, and for free, I seriously thought about switching. And I might.

Price: Free

Requirements: Mac OS X 10.5 or later

Developer: Vlad Alexa

Hazel

Hazel is a very handy and unique PrefPane that allows you to set conditions for certain types of file actions. These are very flexible and you can do with them whatever you want. For example, you can make a condition that makes all the files of a certain type or with a certain extension move to a specific folder. Or you could find a million other creative ways to use this app, like applying labels to files that include a certain keyword in their name. You can read our review of it here.

Price: $21.95

Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4 or later

Developer: Noodle Soft

Total Finder

Although it is managed through a PrefPane, TotalFinder goes beyond that. You know how many people complain about Finder’s functionality? Well, I’m not one of them, but I could definitely use a few tweaks to it, like tabbed browsing. TotalFinder brings some extra features to your native Finder, making it a lot more easy to use. But it doesn’t stop at tabbed browsing, you can also see hidden System Files, using dual-screens, or even having a quick-access full screen button. You can read more about it in our review of it (the app has improved a lot after that review, by the way).

Price: $18

Requirements: Mac OS X 10.6 or later

Developer: Binary Age

HyperDock

Another app that does much more other than just being managed through a PrefPane, HyperDock makes your Dock more functional by adding some useful extra features to it (I’m starting to see a trend with PrefPane apps). It’s a little similar to Windows 7′s way of handling the main bar, as it makes your dock show previews of each open window once you hover through an app. That’s the main thing it has going for it, but it also does some other stuff, like keyboard shortcuts to handle your open applications, and window snapping. If only it supported tabs and not just windows (outside of Safari), this app would be perfect for me.

Price: $9.95

Requirements: Mac OS X 10.6 or later

Developer: Christian Boumgart

Magic Launch

Magic Launch is a PrefPane that lets you associate certain file extensions to the app that created them, instead of a default app that it may open in. It also lets you modify the default app for each extension and add some rules to them. But it doesn’t stop there, you can look at some other creative uses for this PrefPane in this review that we did about it.

Price: $19.95

Requirements: Mac OS X 10.6 or later

Developer: Metakine

Clusters

Clusters is the PrefPane that intrigues me the most, as it has the possibility to solve a problem that I have and hate. Clusters is advertised to “compress and optimize” files, as somehow it manages to compress the files that you tell it to, but also make them faster to access. I’m not sure how well it works as I’ve never used it, but I might give it a try to see if it really does work. And you should too if you have a small capacity hard drive disk, like me.

Price: $12.95

Requirements: Mac OS X 10.6 or later

Developer: Late Night Soft

GeekTool

GeekTool is a popular PrefPane that lets you display information on your desktop through certain plugins that it has. It has three plugins, that let you display files, scripts, or system information. You can do some very cool things with it, but you need to know what you’re doing (get started here). I guess it is very accurately described by the developer, “not an app for general Mac Users”. Even the name says it.

Price: Free

Requirements: Mac OS X 10.6 or later

Developer: Tynsoe

Growl

I probably don’t need to describe what Growl does for you, but I will anyway. Growl is the most popular notifications system available for Mac. It pretty much has universal support from almost every Mac app out there, and yes, it is pretty cool. It also is (or used to before it hit the Mac App Store) managed through a PrefPane that lets you tweak the themes and settings of the notifications.

Price: Free/$1.99

Requirements: Mac OS X 10.5 or later

Developer: Growl

Choosy

It recently became a big realization of mine that many people use more than one browser, at the same time. Everyone has different reasons for it, but it’s usually because certain browsers perform some tasks better than others. Choosy is a PrefPane that can help those people by letting them have more control over which browser opens their clicked links, whether it is based on which one is running, or by letting you choose which one to open your link with.

Price: $12

Requirements: Mac OS X 10.5 or later

Developer: George Brucklehurst

Default Folder X

Default Folder X is a PrefPane that adds a toolbar on the side of the Finder windows that open when you are trying to save a file. This toolbar puts at your disposal some quick access buttons to recently opened folders, favorite folders, current active Finder windows with folders in them, and much more. It also adds some extra keyboard shortcuts and a menu bar item. In general, it just does a great job at making it easier and faster to save files.

Price: $34.99

Requirements: Mac OS X 10.5 or later

Developer: St. Clair Software

JetLag

JetLag is a simple PrefPane that automatically changes your Mac’s timezone depending on the location. It uses local wifi networks to pinpoint your location so that when you move between different areas, your timezone is always up to date. It also notifies you through Growl about when your timezone changes.

Price: Free

Requirements: Mac OS X 10.5 or later

Developer: Oompha

Teleport

I have not used this as I do not have more than one Mac, but if I did and I had to deal with them simoultaneously (like say, using my laptop at the same time as my desktop computer), I would be totally psyched to use this PrefPane. Teleport lets you configure several Macs so that you can control them with the same mouse, switching from one to the other by going to the edges of the screens. But not only that, it also lets you transfer files and synchronize the pasteboards!

Price: Free (Donation-based)

Requirements: Mac OS X 10.6 or later

Developer: abbysoft

Witch

Witch is based on the assumption that window switching on Mac OS is slow and inconvenient, and there are many things to improve in it. When you install its PrefPane, it implements a quick-access window switching interface, similar to the Cmd+Tab one, but much improved with features like window previews and the ability to see more than one window of each app open. Along with this there are many, many other features that Witch brings to your computer, especially all the keyboard shortcuts that it has.

Price: $14

Requirements: Mac OS X 10.5 or later

Developer: Many Tricks

Automatic

Automatic is another way of reading RSS feeds. It gives you a fast and easy way to subscribe to any RSS feed in a very unique way, as once you subscribe, Automatic will continuously check for feed updates and download them right to your download folder, where you can get to them whenever you want. It might not be as convenient for blogs or any type of written content, but it is a very good idea for getting podcasts and TV shows right to your download folder, without even having to worry about dealing with annoying apps like iTunes.

Price: $19.95

Requirements: Mac OS (Universal Binary)

Developer: Coding Curious

Desktopple Pro

Do you have a constant struggle to keep your Desktop free of useless files that just ruin your wallpaper and make you less productive? Desktopple is a nice menu bar app that quickly hides all of these icons with the click of a button. The Pro version of Desktopple, along with a bunch of other features, gives you the ability of running the app from a PrefPane instead of the menu bar, and activating it from a keyboard shortcut.

Price: $17

Requirements: Mac OS X 10.5 or later

Developer: foggynoggin

Glimmer Blocker

GlimmerBlocker is sort of a install-it-and-forget-it ad blocker for Safari. I say this because it is advertised as an ad blocker that will never break or slow down your browser, and also because of the way it is setup, it won’t be affected by the updates that Safari gets. Now if only it were available for other browsers…

Price: Free

Requirements: Mac OS X 10.5 or later

Developer: Peter Speck

Smart Sleep

SmartSleep is a PrefPane that gives you more control over how your computer goes to sleep. It differentiates “sleep” modes by calling them sleep (where the content is kept on the RAM, consuming more battery) and hibernation (where the content is saved in the HDD and battery is preserved). It will let you choose between either, but it will also give you the ability to turn on “Smart Sleep”, which will choose which one is better for your computer depending on the current battery charge.

Price: $3.99

Requirements: Mac OS X 10.6 or later

Developer: Jinx

Perian

Perian is a free Quicktime video component that resides as a PrefPane in your Preferences. Once you install it, it will add support for many, many file formats including AVI, DivX, FLV, MPEG4, and a bunch of other formats that you probably haven’t heard of.

Price: Free

Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4.7 or later

Developer: Perian Project

Widget Manager

Widget Manager is a free Preference Pane that does exactly what it says: help you manage your widgets. With it, you can remove, disable, and inspect any Widget that you have installed, even the Apple default ones. It will also show you handy information for each widget like the size and the updates

Price: Free

Requirements: Mac OS X 10.5 or later

Developer: Downtown Software House

PasteBot Sync

Pastebot Sync is a PrefPane companion to an iPhone app called Pastebot. It lets you automatically sync copied items from your iPhone to your Mac and viceversa.

Price: Free

Requirements: Mac OS X 10.5 or later

Developer: Tapbots

Precipitate

Precipitate is a very, very cool PrefPane that synchronizes your Google Docs, Bookmarks and Picasa with Spotlight, so that you can make searchable all of your information from those services, right from your handy Cmd+Spacebar shortcut.

Price: Free

Requirements: Mac OS X 10.5 or later

Developer: Link

Dictionary Cleaner

While the developer’s page is not working anymore and the app is probably not getting past the 1.5 update, you can still get this app from a few sources. It’s a simple PrefPane that lets you add and remove words from the built-in dictionary of your Mac, even in multiple languages.

Price: Free

Requirements: Mac OS X 10.5 or later

Developer: Two AM Software

StartUpSound

This is a PrefPane that lets you control the volume of the sound your Mac does when you start it. It lets you disable it, or make it play at a lower volume than the current output sound level of your Mac.

Price: Free

Requirements: Mac OS X 10.6 or later

Developer: Arcana Research

Preference Cleaner

Preference Cleaner is a PrefPane that does exactly what its name suggests: it lets you get rid of Application or System Preferences that may be corrupt or that you may no longer need.

Price: Free

Requirements: Mac OS X 10.5 or later

Developer: Echo Mist

Air Display

It isn’t exactly a PrefPane app, but depending on where you install it from, it can be used as a PrefPane. AirDisplay lets you turn any of your Apple devices into a monitor for your Mac. You can use your iPad or iPhone, or another Mac as a second screen with this app.

Price: $9.99 iOS / $19.99 Mac

Requirements: Mac OS X 10.6 or later

Developer: Avatron

Flip For Mac

Flip For Mac is a PrefPane Quicktime plugin that makes your Mac compatible with WMV formats, not just to play them but to convert them, import them and export them. It works with a number of apps, like browsers, iWork apps, and of course, Quicktime.

Price: Starts at $29

Requirements: Mac OS X 10.6 or later

Developer: Telestream

jiTouch

jiTouch is one of my favorite apps. It runs as a PrefPane and it makes a whole new world of multitouch gestures available in your Mac. It even lets you tweak them and change the functions that each of them performs. It works with trackpads and Magic Mouses, and you should definitely try it out.

Price: $6.99

Requirements: Mac OS X 10.6 or later

Developer: jitouch

Conclusion

Before getting into this article, I didn’t really understand the appeal of Preference Panes, as I had pretty much had no experience with them except for Growl and JiTouch. But as I started researching these apps I realized how many of them are out there and how useful some of them are. There was stuff that I didn’t even know I needed, and ended up really liking some of these apps, like TinkerTool.

What is your take on Preference Panes? Do you think, maybe a couple of your menu bar apps could work better as PrefPanes? I think they’re a great way of having the functionality of an app without having it be intrusive all the time. I like how some of these apps make the PrefPanes work along with the menu bar. What do you think of them? Which ones do you use, did we miss any? Discuss!

One of the features that people seemed most excited about getting their hands on in Lion was fullscreen apps. Plenty of apps jumped on this trend well before Apple built in support for doing so, but for the most part, having a distinctly fullscreen mode is a fairly new development to the Mac app world. Even with Lion’s release being months past, many developers are only just now starting to adopt this feature. Odds are most of your apps don’t yet possess a fullscreen mode.

Today we want to know if the reality lived up to the hype. Do you enjoy using apps in fullscreen mode? Vote in the poll and tell us how many you currently use this way, then leave a comment below and let us know which apps specifically you like to operate in fullscreen.

A big thanks to Scott Danielson for submitting this poll idea via Twitter. Shoot us a tweet at @MacAppStorm with the hashtag “#appstormpoll” if you have a poll idea you’d like to see published.

Our featured sponsor this week is Raven, an innovative new web browser that turns your favorite sites into apps.

Our full review of Raven outlines how much I thoroughly enjoy using this amazingly unique site-specific browser. The app’s Smart Bar allows you to effortlessly switch between your favorite websites and web apps in a way that makes them feel almost native. There’s even a dedicated AppStorm Raven App!

Although the new Raven web browser is only in beta, during the past four weeks they have introduced 50 new apps into their Web App Shop and are about to surpass 175,000 web apps installed into the Smart Bar. This means that a Web App is added to the Smart Bar by someone every 15 seconds!

Grab the Free Download!

Raven is changing the way people interact with the web. With it, you’ll love using Facebook, Twitter and your other favorite sites in a whole new way. If you haven’t already, it’s time to jump on board and head over to the Raven Website to grab your copy of this awesome and completely free utility.

While we have all of this information and inspiration at our fingertips, it’s often a little difficult to pull quantitative data from what we’re seeing. Mac OS X has some built-in measuring abilities, but they’re fairly limited and stuck inside the screenshot function. Fortunately, there are some third party tools available in the form of browser plugins and stand alone applications that aide in acquiring some actual data that can be useful when working on your own project or just to quench your curiosity.

Many solutions are often a little odd to use or just not there when you need them. PixFit aims to remedy that situation. PixFit is a very quick and simple menubar application that lets you measure anything that is displayed on your screen.

PixFit is a tiny application that runs in your menubar that will help you do some measuring as you’re exploring the Web and other applications. I do a little web development and have had to teach myself the different technologies involved and a big part of that learning is checking out what other developers have done and how they’ve made certain things work. Layout and alignment are very important aspects to any website or application design and I’ve found that finding measurements on the sites or applications I’m exploring to be more difficult that I think it should be.

Let’s Take Some Measurements

PixFit makes measuring anything that is being displayed on your screen incredibly simple. The application runs from the menubar and is very quick to load and just run in general. The application isn’t difficult to use. It’s function is relatively simple and it’s evident that that was taken into consideration when PixFit was designed and built.

When PixFit is active you’ll see the icon in the menubar. Clicking on that icon will present you with a dialog box and just a few options to choose from, find dimensions, preferences, or quick PixFit. We’ll take a quick spin through the preferences here shortly, but for now we’re trying to find the dimensions of something.

One Click Measurement

As I’ve mentioned, PixFit is able to present you with the dimensions of anything that is displayed on your screen. Measurements can be taken a couple different ways. First, just clicking around on the screen will give you some measurements. In this situation you’ll get vertical and horizontal measurements and PixFit will attempt to figure out what you’re trying to measure in between.

This works pretty well. The application does a good job of figuring out what you’re trying to measure. A little clicking around will typically get you to the measurement you’re looking for. I’ve found this works a lot better when working on layouts of web applications or native applications. Website layouts are little less decisive so it is more difficult to take measurements this way. With applications it’s accuracy is fantastic.

Drag Measurement

Another way to take a measurement is to drag over what you’re looking to measure. This is pretty straightforward, but essentially once you activate the tool you’re presented with some crosshairs. You’re then able to click (like we just talked about) or you can also drag and create areas to measure. A semi-transparent box will show as you’re dragging and as soon as you release the dimensions of the area you just selected will be shown.

Using Measurements

Taking measurements is all good and well, but actually being able to put those measurements to good use would be helpful as well. Lucky for you PixFit has a handy way to paste the dimensions measured to your clipboard for use elsewhere.

There are a couple different formats that the measurements can be copied to your clipboard. You’ll have CSS and standard height and width options to choose from. It is also possible to customize how this functionality works exactly in the preferences which we’ll talk about next. Pressing the spacebar after you’ve taken the measurement will initiate the copy to your clipboard. From there you can past into your stylesheets or wherever you’d like. It’s a handy feature, especially for web designers and developers.

Preferences

There isn’t a ton of customizing and changes that can be made to PixFit, but there are a few that are worth mentioning.

The first thing that you’ll probably want to change is to add in a global hotkey to activate PixFit. This will save you a couple clicks each time you want to use the application. If you haven’t sold out to hotkeys and keyboard shortcuts in general you really should. They’re fantastic.

It is also possible to change the overlay color. This can be helpful depending on the color of what you’re measuring. It is also possible to set up an alternate color here as well. This way you can swap between a couple different colors on the fly without needing to go back into the preferences.

As mentioned earlier you’ll be able to alter what format is copied to the clipboard upon pressing the spacebar. You’ll also be able to set up an alternate copy here as well. Not a ton of customization capability here, but it’s a pretty simple feature so a tweak here or there seems like about all that is really necessary.

Conclusion

PixFit was designed to solve a specific problem and that problem is measuring things on your computer screen. If you’ve ever been in a situation where you needed to do this, I’m sure you quickly realized it can be a bit of a pain. PixFit is an unobtrusive, quick, simple application that is designed to perform one specific function and it does so very well.

This application does have a fairly narrow target user group that would use the application regularly, but it really is a pretty handy little application to have in those random situations when you just need to quickly measure something on your screen. The price point of $5.99 is about in line with applications in this vein give or take a dollar or two. PixFit is a very easy to use, well built, useful application so if you have a need for measuring on your screen it is very much worth checking out.

Journals or diaries are a great way to look back on things that you’ve done. You probably think that you don’t need to write down what you experience because you will remember it in the future, but if you try to look back now on anything you’ve done, I can guarantee you there’ll be some spots where your memory will fail you.

That’s why taking pictures when you’re traveling and just keeping a daily journal is a great idea if you care about having it there for posteriority. There are quite a few apps for the Mac that seek to simplify and improve that process, and today we’ll be reviewing one of them called “Chronories”. Let’s take a look!

Chronories

Chronories is quite different from the competition because it does something pretty incredible: it automatically keeps track of everyday stuff like the music that you listen to (from iTunes), the weather on a certain day, the time you spent on certain apps, the emails you’ve received and even the RSS headlines for the day.

That is, of course, coupled with the information that you can put in. The main field for any day is the “Journal Entry,” but there are also fields that you can fill in like your mood (which you can select from a bunch of smileys), the places you visited, the interesting topics for the day, the photos you’ve taken, and a few more.

This info is neatly displayed as a handy personalized graphic under each separate field. That way, you can easily check on your average mood, the weather on the last month, a “cover flow” of your screenshots, the applications that you use the most, and tons more stuff.

The Interface

Chronories does a good job at looking like a native Mac app, but it still looks a little bit too loaded with elements. You have the main panel, where your information for the day will be displayed and available for you to change it. There’s also the left sidebar, which is divided into two parts: one with a calendar so that you can jump between days; and another where the graphs or “diagrams” that I talked about before are kept, and your searches and bookmarks are displayed. On the top bar you’ll find some buttons to quickly switch between days, the search bar, and a “Quick Jump” drop-down menu where you can quickly look up any category of the journals.

The background of the app is customizable, the default one is a light wood background which I’m not a huge fan of. Everything else is pretty neatly organized, for example: the categories for each entry have little icons that can help you identify them more easily; but I can’t help but think that it still looks a bit too loaded.

Menu Bar Component

One very cool thing about the app, and probably my favorite feature, is the menu bar complement which always sits there and once brought up, it will let you do a number of tasks right from your menu bar. As soon as you open the menu bar component, your iSight will turn on and the camera will be displayed in a frame. There will also be some other frames where you can take screenshots of your computer, select your mood or write a journal entry.

The menu bar icon also doubles as an indicator, telling you how many of these four things you have yet to do for the day. When you open the app, the frames of the stuff that you haven’t completed yet will be displayed in red.

Other Features

Having Chronories keep up with so many other apps can get pretty nasty and slow your computer down, so it gives you the option of disabling certain categories, like keeping track of your emails received, under the settings. There are also some security settings that can help you set passwords to keep your information safe.

The “Searches” feature works as sort of a bookmark for saving searches that you might use a lot, like searching for a certain place or person within your entries. And then there are the bookmarks, which are basically days that you can save and mark as important in your sidebar. You can also add new searches, bookmarks, and diagrams through a little “+” sign that sits on your left bottom corner.

Conclusion

Chronories is a great concept for an app. Personally, I like to keep track of everything I do so that I can look back, and this app provides just that. You can keep track of everything you do everyday, without even having to write anything. But there’s just something about the app that doesn’t convince me. I think I would find it hard to keep up with it after a while, I feel like it just would become a burden. I like the menu bar part and I think it’s great for quickly writing and capturing daily events, but I’m not so sure about everything else. Even though I appreciate the extra features, I think I would like this app more if it was a little bit simpler.

I can’t help but compare it with Day One, which is another journaling app that I got to review a while ago. Day One didn’t have any of these shiny nice features, but it just really inspired you to write something as it was very clean, simple and empty. It also had an iOS app, and it was a lot cheaper, which are both big pluses. But then, these are both very different beasts. Day One can’t really keep up with your pictures or any of the other data that this app does. I guess it’s a matter of preference, which one do you like better?

TeX is one of the lesser known ways of creating documents as it has mostly extremely specialized uses. The typesetting system was designed and written (mostly) by Donald Knuth during the late 1970′s and is a popular choice for typing documents for two main reasons. The first is that documents are standardized across all computers and the results do not change with time. Despite the fact TeX is an old system, the documents still look (relatively) up-to-date, albeit a little lacking in color and design.

The second reason why TeX is so popular, especially in the academic world, is the way it renders maths and mathematical formulas. The range of formulas that can be constructed using TeX is vast and far more flexible than the offerings of other programs (for example Word’s built-in equation editor). The only hindrance to typing up your documents in TeX is that there a very steep learning curve associated with it. TeX is more like a code, with commands and functions and it’s not as easy as simply loading up Word and tapping away.

However, there is now a way to write in TeX without having to learn the whole coding procedure before hand, and it comes in the form of a freeware program called LyX. It is a very flexible program and allows you create a wide range of documents easily and quickly.

Let’s have a look at it in a bit more detail.

First Points

In order to get LyX running on your Mac, you will need to download two items: the program (which is available here – version 2.0.1) and the MacTeX package, which renders the documents. The MacTeX package is around 2 GB in size and takes a while to install and update itself, so set aside an afternoon for the installation.

Once you’ve installed LyX and MacTex and start it up for the first time, you’ll be greeted with an empty document where you can start typing straight away.

The important thing to remember about LyX is that it is a WYSIWYM system (What You See Is What You Mean) unlike traditional word processors such as Microsoft Word and Apple Pages which work off the WYSIWYG system (What You See Is What You Get), whereby what you see on the screen is (ultimately) what the final document will look like. LyX allows you simply type away without worrying about formatting as this is done when you render the document.

Creating A Document

The basic document format (known as classes) in LyX is the article, which creates a basic-looking document with a title, subtitle, sections and so on. LyX comes, however, with a wide range of different classes built-in, allowing you to be flexible in your creations.

You can assign different headings to your document (which vary in typeface and style according to the individual document class) and LyX will simply render them. You don’t even have to worry about paragraph settings either, LyX will automatically justify your paragraphs and make your documents look neat and coherent.

Editing your document is simple, seeing as LyX features pretty much everything you’d expect to see in a standard word processor. You can insert pictures, tables, references and so on, it’s even got a built-in spell check system. You can choose between two standard LyX fonts (serif and sans-serif), however if you enable XeTeX or LuaTeX then you can incorporate a much wider range of fonts into your documents. This is done via going to Documents > Settings > Fonts > Use non-TeX fonts.

Once you’ve finished typing and editing your document, it’s time to render it and view the finished result. LyX will automatically add in all headers, footnotes, page breaks and so on, so even if your document looks a mess on the page, it will look neat once it’s rendered (remember, what you see is what you mean). The rendered document pops up in Preview (or your default PDF reader) where you can save it, print it or e-mail it on.

Mathematical Formulas

One of the main advantages of using TeX to format documents over other methods is the way it renders mathematical formulas. This is the reason it is so popular in the academia world, and LyX makes creating mathematical formulas in TeX simple and straight-forward.

LyX features a fully-fledged equation editor, which can be brought up by pressing ?M. The maths toolbar pops up along the bottom of your screen and allows you to create even the most advanced of formulas quickly and easily.

If you know a bit of TeX, then you can input mathematical formulas straight into LyX using TeX code, which can sometimes be easier than using the in-built formula editor (which is a bit cumbersome). If you use an external program (such as MathType), then you can enter formulas straight into LyX as well.

Final Thoughts

LyX is such a flexible program and it allows you to create documents with the minimum amount of effort. You don’t have to worry about the formatting and look of your final document as the program does it all for you, and for anyone who writes a lot it is a real bonus.

The sheer range of documents you can create using LyX is unbelievable and it needn’t be restricted to academic and scientific usage. Although the program is a little more difficult to use than, say, Word or Pages, if you spend an afternoon getting acquainted with it you’ll find that it pays off in the long run. I write all my essays and reports for my university course in LyX and I can guarantee you that it takes me less time than if I were to write it in Pages.

The fact that LyX is completely 100% free is just the icing on the cake. For such a feature-rich and flexible program, you’d expect to have to pay something for it. Even if you are not sold just on this review, it is worth downloading and having a play around with it – the features mentioned in this review are just a small part of what LyX can really do.

Steve Jobs has been nominated to be the 2011 Time Person of the Year. Join us as we take a brief look into why he’s being considered, who nominated him and the interesting history he has with this very title.

A Fallen Hero

The passing of Steve Jobs hit the tech community hard. The heroes of the modern computing revolution are largely still living and even though Jobs went far before his time, this event serves as a harsh reminder that the young, crazy hotshots who changed the world thirty years ago are becoming old men.

That phrase, “changed the world” isn’t hyperbole, especially when it comes to Jobs. In fact, Mario Batali recently went so far as to say (in the context of a Jobs conversation), “I’m definitely of the belief that smartphones, the cell phone with photographic capability, has changed the world as much as the Bible has.”

Though that’s taking this idea uncomfortably far, I see what he means. Every home and indeed every pocket in the developed world has been affected by the achievements of this man.

Steve Jobs: Person of the Year?

Batali made that statement in light of a recent nomination that Jobs received for the Time Person of the Year, given by NBC anchor Brian Williams.

This tradition (formerly known as Man of the Year) dates all the way to 1927 with Charles Lindbergh taking the first slot. Other notable recipients include Gandhi, Franklin D. Roosevelt (three times!), Winston Churchill, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Keep in mind though that this award isn’t always granted as a confirmation of positive achievements but is meant to reflect influence. Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin are both former Men of the Year. However, if Jobs were to win, this would in fact be the first time the title is given posthumously. Voting for the Person of the Year has yet to take place, we won’t know who won until around the middle of December.

Familiar Ground

Surprisingly enough, Steve Jobs has never been the Time Person of the Year, but he has come fairly close according to Walter Isaacson’s recent biography on the life of Steve Jobs.

The tale is a sort of tragedy though and did not turn out well for Jobs (spoiler alert). According to Isaacson, Jobs actually believed that he was slotted to be the Man of the Year in 1982, and looking back many would say that he deserved it for the work he was doing at the time on the Macintosh. In fact, he had already graced the magazine’s cover in February of that year for an article about a new breed of risk takers who were “Striking it Rich.”

Jobs brought a Time reporter by the office and enthusiastically encouraged employees to give interviews. In the book Jobs recalls excitedly seeing that specific issue of the magazine for the first time and expecting to find himself on the cover. Instead what he discovered was that Time had thrown everyone a curve ball by generically choosing “the computer” as the “Machine” of the Year.

When Steve opened up the magazine, he saw that it got much worse. Accompanying the cover story was a very personal profile of him heavily focused on some of his more negative and eccentric characteristics such as publicly crying at meetings and fathering an illegitimate and forsaken child (Lisa). Jobs admitted that the article was so bad that it made him cry.

The Rest of the Story

For Steve, this particular run in with the folks at Time turned out to be a disaster, but it’s not the end of the story. Jobs went on to appear on the cover of Time seven times while he was living and (thus far) once after his death. It seemed he was always coming up with some great new device to change everything (the Macintosh, iMac, iPod, iPad, etc.) and Time was more than happy to highlight those accomplishments.

Obviously, we AppStormers are rooting for Jobs to win out over the other candidates (such as “angry people” and Elizabeth Warren). As I mentioned above, given his work to bring the personal computer to the masses, he likely deserved the title in 1982. Now in 2011 as we look around our world, it’s nearly impossible to imagine it without the ripples of his influence present in personal computing, digital music, even animation.

What do you think? You’re obviously a biased audience given that you’re reading a Mac blog, but we still want to hear your opinion. Should Steve Jobs be the 2011 Person of the Year? Do you think he will be?

SideWriter is a simple but extremely helpful mouse-activitated utility that sits off the side of your screen. Just like with the dock, SideWriter is gone when you don’t need it and appears in a flash when you do. Just move your mouse to the side of the screen, take a quick note and get back to what you were doing!

We’re super excited to announce that we have 10 SideWriter codes to give away this week!

Tweet to Enter

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

We’ll announce the winners one week from today on Thursday, November 17th. Good luck to everyone who enters and thanks for reading Mac.AppStorm!

We last reviewed WriteRoom way back in 2009. It is arguably the app that launched the fullscreen minimal text editor craze that seems at its height right now. In a time when text editing apps were becoming more and more bloated with features in order to stay competitive, WriteRoom was a breath of fresh air making a very convincing argument for what it called “distraction free writing.”

WriteRoom recently hit version 3.0, and we think this major overhaul makes it the perfect time to take a fresh look. If you haven’t seen this app in a while, you’ll want to check it out!

Simple Text Editing Gets Even Simpler

WriteRoom 3 isn’t so much about new features as it is the complete restructuring of how the app works. The thing that has always really set WriteRoom apart from the competition for me was that, despite its simple exterior, it is loaded with power.

Unlike other minimal text editors, WriteRoom has always possessed a ton of customization options and features. The preferences allow you to tweak almost every little piece of the editor so you can truly make it your own.

For instance, many users, myself included, were drawn to the app for its full screen mode but quickly found that the glowing green terminal text on a dark background wasn’t the easiest combination for your eyes to stare at for hours on end. This didn’t matter much though as you could completely customize the color scheme to your own tastes.

However, this power came at a price. The preferences menu was quite complicated and contained several tabs loaded with various options. It all made perfect sense but could be intimidating to newcomers. WriteRoom 3 has done a fantastic job of reworking all of these options so dramatically that it has done away with the preferences window completely. I was skeptical of this at first but after a couple of weeks with the new system, I’m embracing the improvement. Let’s see how it all looks.

Roaring with Lion

Before we launch into the structural changes, it should definitely be noted that WriteRoom has embraced the Lion style of application building. It was years ahead of the game on things like disappearing scroll bars, autosave and full screen mode but it has overhauled these features to the familiar format that we’re seeing on all new apps (Versions support is present as well).

As you can see in the screenshot above, it picks up the slick borderless window style of Lion and sports a new theme that seems to take a nod from iA Writer, a similar competing app that has always had a much more friendly default theme. Speaking of themes, let’s take a look at how WriteRoom has improved this system.

Themes

My favorite new feature in WriteRoom is the overhauled theming system. It’s always been the case that you could customize WriteRoom’s appearance, but once you got it set there was no easy way to save alternate styles. You simply built a single theme and stuck with it.

The new system allows you to quickly and easily switch between different themes via keyboard shortcuts or a menu command.

A few prebuilt themes are included (crazy terminal green is no longer the default) and the app allows you to automatically alter a theme depending on whether its in windowed mode or full screen mode. For instance, the default light theme is shown in the first screenshot above but as soon as you enter fullscreen mode it changes to a dark theme.

I still prefer a light theme when editing in fullscreen but that’s the beauty of WriteRoom, I’m free to make it look however I want by creating my own themes.

Creating and Editing Themes

Choosing to edit or create a new theme brings up the window below. Here you can add sounds to various actions, customize the colors, you can even choose to use a background image like in Ommwriter.

Other Options

So what happened to all that stuff that used to be in the preferences window? It’s been rearranged, trimmed down and placed into the menu options at the top of the screen. For instance, the “View” menu now contains options such as which insertion point to use, line highlighting, etc.

Similarly, if you want to change the text associated with a given theme, you now look under the “Format” menu. Here you can choose a font, adjust your line height, etc.

Sessions

For those who like to track their work, WriteRoom goes beyond Versions and introduces a feature called “Sessions,” which can optionally record specific data about a given document that you’ve been working on.

Sessions records your writing session start and stop times in addition to other relevant information and throws it all into a CSV file that you can open in Excel, Numbers or any other spreadsheet app.

My Thoughts on Version 3

These days fullscreen writing apps are a dime a dozen. Apps like WriteRoom laid the groundwork for a very successful genre and others quickly jumped on board. Some of these apps, like iA Writer, quickly raised the bar for excellence and have only served to improve this market through healthy competition.

Through all this, WriteRoom has remained my standard writing app. It has a prominent position in my dock and is indeed where I spend most of my week. I love this app. As I mentioned above, I was hesitant to accept all of the new changes but I quickly saw that the new options system is far better and has actually made WriteRoom much simpler to use.

No matter what you’re looking for in a fullscreen writing app, chances are WriteRoom has it. Rich text, plain text, custom themes, word count, reading time estimation, spelling and grammar, current line highlighting, full screen and windowed modes, Versions, Sessions, autosave; it does it all with seamless finesse. It manages this while walking that perfect balance between simplicity and power that sets it apart from the rest.

However, it isn’t perfect. The most prominent exclusion happens to be an area where iA Writer shines: Markdown. There is currently no Markdown support in WriteRoom and from what I can tell we shouldn’t expect it any time soon. If this is a deal breaker for you, WriteRoom isn’t your app.

If however, you’re not a Markdown user, WriteRoom is priced at $9.99, right in line with competing apps while outperforming them in power and versatility. Version three has restored WriteRoom to its place as a clear market leader.

It’s time for another “Ask the Editor” post. A big thank you to everyone who sent in their questions, it’s always a pleasure to help out the awesome community of Mac users.

Today I’ll be offering some advice about moving libraries to external drives, password protecting folders, and finding a solid TeX editor. Read on and see if you learn anything new!

I’m looking for a simple/easy/minimalist note taking app that I can launch with a hotkey, work with and then quickly hide.

– Andy H

I shortened Andy’s question a little but you get the gist from the passage above. Essentially, he’s set on having a very simple note app that doesn’t have a lot of fancy features and distractions. One that he can get in and out of instantly and without much effort.

The first thing that comes to mind is a helpful and affordable little app called SideWriter. Instead of being activated by a keyboard shortcut, SideWriter hides quietly off the side of your screen activates on hover just like your dock. Saving is automatic and you can both drag notes in as well as export them. It’s super simple and extremely convenient. I think it may be just what you’re looking for.

An alternative that I personally use every day is JustNotes. This awesome utility is free and lives in your menu bar, but can also be activated via a keyboard shortcut. The interface is simple but still very attractive and it has just enough features: tags, search, Simplenote sync, etc.

Some more great options for simple note apps include Notational Velocity and its more powerful cousin nvALT, both of which are free, minimal and high on the list of Mac user favorites.

How do I password protect individual folders on my Mac?

– Richard Benson

This is a great question. Mac OS X has lots of built in features for creating different users with different permissions, but as far as grabbing individual folders and files and throwing a password on them, there’s a huge feature gap. I personally think this is a pretty basic task that should be super easy, but amazingly enough it just isn’t.

The official solution that you’ll hear most is to use Disk Utility (located in the Utilities Folder) to create a secure disk image from a folder. To do this, open Disk Utility, go to File>New>Disk Image From Folder. Then grab the folder that you want to password protect, select your encryption and choose a password.

Once you’ve made the disk image, opening it will require your password. This will then mount the folder as a drive and you will have access to its contents.

Call me crazy but I think this process sucks. It’s a pain to work with and is really just a workaround and not a true answer to the problem of password protecting folders. For this reason, I can’t recommend the app Hider enough. This app couldn’t be simpler: drag in files and folders and you’re done. The app will then keep these files hidden away from prying eyes make sure that if anyone does find them, they can’t get into them.

At $9.99, some complain that this app is overpriced, but I say that’s a bargain for keeping your private information safe. They could easily charge twice that and it would still be worth it.

I noticed that there are tons of different front-ends for TeX and I got a bit confused. TeXShop, Lyx and Scribo seem to be the most popular choices but I would like to know if you can recommend any of these or other apps for editing LaTeX documents on the Mac?

– Christoph

I must admit that a few months ago I had no idea what TeX was, but these days I hear more and more about it all the time. For those who don’t know, TeX is a typesetting system that dates all the way back to 1978. In function, it’s a lot like a markup language such as HTML or Markdown. To use it, you type in plain text while inserting little code snippets that serve as special formatting indicators. Once you’re finished, you “render” the document, which turns the plain text and code into a great looking, nicely formatted document. TeX is mostly used for technical documents and writing. In fact, one of its main benefits is the ability to render nicely formatted mathematical formulas.

Your question comes at a perfect time because it just so happens that we have a review of Lyx coming up in just a few days from AppStorm author James Cull. Lyx is completely free and packed with more functionality that you’ll know what to do with. It’s currently at the top of our recommendation list for where to start with Tex editors. Check back soon for the full review!

Didn’t See Your Question?

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

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

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

Despite how much everyone hates it, they simply cannot eliminate email from their personal and most importantly professional lives. It’s the ideal form of communication because it’s instant, unintrusive, good for both long and short form communication. And it’s very economical – often times it’s free. So, email isn’t going anywhere.

Folks use various email clients to tackle email overload and the choices in that front are aplenty. I’m not new to Postbox. I have tried it since version one and revisit the app every time there is a new version. So, when there was an opportunity to take a look at the impending version 3.0, I jumped in to get a glimpse of all those new exciting features. And boy, there are so many. Come, join me to take a sneak peek!

Interface Changes

Since we have reviewed the app every step of the way over the years, I thought I would stick to mentioning the new features alone. But before delving into them, I have to rave about how snappy the app has become – right from launch to pulling emails from the server. In under two minutes I got my entire Google Apps account loaded and all I needed to do was to submit the email id and password.

Immediately after installation I noticed that the icons are more refined in the new version and are of the same color, making for an elegant look. The status bar at the bottom has been done with and you can toggle between multiple views using the row of icons at the top. Oh, and the OS X Lion fullscreen mode is so exquisite!

Better Gmail

Postbox integrates more tightly with the crowd favorite email service, Gmail. You can now use the same keyboard shortcuts in Postbox as well. Messages can be labelled simply by pressing the L key. Mails from the Priority Inbox (if you have it enabled) are marked with a special tag, just like in the Gmail web app.

More Social

You cannot sell anything these days without having a big, bright label screaming social. Postbox now pulls in profile photos from LinkedIn and Gravatar (in addition to Facebook, Twitter, and the Address Book.) And if it isn’t already there in the address book, the company name you work for and the job title are imported from LinkedIn as well.

The dev team has successfully managed to add the right amount of social ingredients without adding to the clutter or making the app a bloatware. Kudos!

Dropbox Integration

This is a brilliant idea. Now that everyone and their cat has a Dropbox account, why locate and upload files as attachments or copy and paste links? Just drag and drop files from the Dropbox folder to your compose window and the app will automatically insert the relevant links. The recipients can click and access the files the same way they do normal hyperlinks.

There is also support for sending message content to Evernote, which is a great way to save any long-term information you need to remember.

That’s not all..

For those who have a tiny screen, there is the option to hide the left pane. This is located in the all new Favorite bar which also can be used to access folders and accounts that you use the most. Right click on the folder or account and choose add to favorites to move it to the bar.

The Compose window side bar is another helpful little elf! From the sidebar, you can for addresses, files or images from the conversations you have in your mailbox. You can either filter files shared with a particular contact or from the entire pool. I bet this is one feature everyone is gonna fall in love with!

Final Thoughts

The Postbox team has done a fabulous job and I could just go on and on. They have polished the app to perfection and have added a whole lot more productive features. I found it surprising that features like canned responses and date detection were introduced only in this release. But after going through the laundry list of new and improved features in 3.0, I guess it’s all in there!

I constantly switch between Windows, Mac and iOS platforms daily and even before this juggling act, I have been a loud proponent of web apps. But, that has changed to a large extent thanks to the dynamite native apps of the iOS ecosystem. Mail is still one area that is sacrosanct and is largely web only. But that is going to change on Mac, right now.

Postbox 3.0 can be purchased from their online store for $29.95. If you already own version 1 or 2, the upgrade will set you back by just $9.95!