Category: Mac

We’ve scoured the Mac App Store and the web in search of the very best calendar apps for OS X. Some serve as full on iCal replacements while others are must have companion apps that extend iCal far beyond what it currently offers.

We found apps that put calendars on your desktop, in your menu bar, on a screensaver and just about everything else you could want. If you’re in the market for a new calendar utility of any kind, this is the roundup for you. I’ll even help you cut through the clutter by pointing out my favorite app of all!

Featured App: Fantastical

Some people love app roundups, they provide you with a quick glimpse of the best options available in a given market and allow you to decide for yourself what is worth pursuing further. Other people however are overwhelmed by so many options and just want to know which is best.

For the latter of these groups, I chose to single out Fantastical. It’s my absolute favorite calendar utility and as far as I’m concerned, if you only download one thing on this list, this should be it. Fantastical is so much more than every other menu bar calendar I’ve tried. It’s a full on scheduling and reminder assistant.

The interface is super slick and the feature set can’t be touched. The thing that I like best is that Fantastical uses natural language for input. So to insert my upcoming dentist appointment, I simply entered “Dentist on Tuesday at 11am” and the app automatically created an iCal event called “Dentist” for the upcoming Tuesday at 11am.

The developers have really thought through how users would want to use Fantastical. For instance, I like having reminders for iCal events, but I hate setting them up with every new event. Fantastical lets me choose to automatically add reminders as events are created, so I’ll get a notification one hour before my dentist appointment even though I didn’t manually go in a create a reminder.

Don’t use iCal? No problem Fantastical works with Google Calendar, Yahoo! Calendar, Outlook, Entourage, BusyCal and more. Check out the free trial and you’ll be hooked in no time.

Price $19.99

Other Top Picks

QuickCal

If you like the natural language aspect of Fantastical but aren’t crazy about the price tag, check out QuickCal. It’s not really a calendar app so much as it is a quick and easy way to add events. Just hit a shortcut, then type in the event using natural language and it will be added to iCal. You’ll likely want to pair it with one of the menu bar calendars below.

Price $2.99

Today – Daily Calendar & Task Manager

A simple but effective app that doubles as a calendar and todo list. It’s perfect if you like to take one day at a time rather than being overwhelmed with everything for the week or month. Today syncs with iCal and allows you to both view and add events and todos to iCal.

Price $9.99

BusyCal

While most of the apps in this list serve to supplement iCal, BusyCal seeks to replace it. Dedicated users often say that BusyCal is everything iCal should’ve been. Notable features include a non-modal Info Panel for easier data entry, to dos that display in the calendar and auto-forward until completed, repeating to dos, customizable calendar views including a list view and scrolling month and week views, adjustable font styles and sizes, live weather feeds, moon phases, graphics, and sticky notes. If you like iCal but wish it did a lot more, BusyCal is the way to go.

Price $49.99

Alarms Express

Alarms Express is the menu bar calendar completely rethought. It’s a really fantastic application that pops out an interactive timeline that makes it easy to set up alarms for specific dates and times. You can even drag in items like contacts, URLs and files to associate with the Alarms.

Price $7.99

Menu Bar Calendars

CalendarBar

An attractively styled list of all your upcoming iCal and Google Calendar events and tasks. Rather than focusing on the calendar like the others, this interfaces places the emphasis on the list of pending items.

Price $4.99

Calendar PA

Another simple menu calendar that shows your upcoming events from iCal. One bonus here is that you can use the menu bar item to show both the time and date, which means it serves as a great, more functional alternative to the default OS X clock menu item.

Price $4.99

Calendario

Yet another menu bar calendar that shows your iCal events. This one has a very minimal interface with almost no extras.

Price $2.99

Desktop Enhancements

DateLine

DateLine is a really slick way to put a calendar where you can actually see it: on your desktop. The number line format is clean and attractive, which should appeal to the design conscious among you. The functionality is actually pretty impressive as well, with nice little notification windows for events and tasks and double-click access to iCal.

Price $4.99

Blotter

If you like the concept of DateLine but want even more functionality, check out Blotter. This app takes all your calendar information and overlays it beautifully onto your desktop. It’s not just passive, you can conveniently add events through the menu bar item. Fans of GeekTool and similar utilities will definitely love Blotter.

Price $9.99

TimeWorks

TimeWorks displays your iCal events right on your desktop in a timeline similar to the one in iCal. You can choose to show the events all the time or only when you press a shortcut. As a cool alternative, you can place the timeline in a screensaver instead of on your desktop.

Price $9.99

Zipline

Zipline is a way to place important information in a little ticker on your desktop. You can grab iCal events and todos, RSS feeds, social network notifications and more.

Price $9.99

CrisCalen

Why have a one month calendar on your desktop when you can have five months? CrisCalen places up to five calendars on your desktop with a nice little inset bezel look.

Price $1.99

Specific Use Calendars

iStudy Calendar

iStudy Calendar is a calendar specifically tailored to helping you get organized with your homework. It’s lacking a bit in functionality but it does have basic support for dates, notes and subtasks.

Price $1.99

Bills

Bills has a quirky interface that you’ll either love or hate. It definitely provides a unique way to track upcoming bills so that you can stay on top of your expenses. It’ll also help you figure out where you’re spending too much and how to cut back.

Price $9.99

Nifty Niche Utilities

Calendar Cleaner

Calendar Cleaner analyzes, reports, and fixes problems that result from iCal syncs gone wrong. Quickly and easily fix duplicated events as well as invalid calendar dates and alarms. If iCal has gotten away from you, it’s time to clean it up!

Price $4.99

Dupe Devil for iCal

Just like the previous utility, Dupe Devil helps you recover from messy sync remnants. Quickly spot and remedy duplicate entries, alarms, etc. It also allows you to easily merge two calendars while automatically handling duplicate events.

Price $0.99

Calendar Notes

This app is a little like a journal/calendar hybrid. It allows you to easily add notes, images and even documents to your day. It might serve as a decent way to track your work in a given day.

Price $0.99

OddCal

OddCal is a really interesting utility that helps you add duplicate events that appear in an unpredictable pattern. So let’s say you’re putting on a show with ten event dates that appear at seemingly random intervals over the course of the next few months, OddCal makes it easy to quickly add these to iCal without the hassle of copy and paste.

Price $1.99

Date Calculator+

Calendars are weird, some months have 31 days, others don’t, then leap year jumps in and really complicates things. For these reasons, performing math on dates can be quite difficult. Date Calculator + helps you calculate the gap between two dates without making your head explode.

Price $2.99

OneThingTodayX

OneThingTodayX isn’t a todo app but a way to help you accomplish your goals. Instead of creating a list of items that you want to get done every day, you focus on only one goal that you want to complete for each day. It helps you get things done without overwhelming your already busy schedule.

Price $4.99

Week Event

Some people need to frequently access the current week number, whether for invoicing or other purposes. This app helps you out by placing the week number in your menu bar as a convenient little icon.

Price $0.99

ClipDateTime

If you frequently enter the current date and time into forms, spreadsheets, timecards or anything else, then ClipDateTime can save you loads of time. Simply open the menu bar item and click on the format you want to copy it to the clipboard. If the format you want isn’t built in, you can set up a new one with custom options.

Price $9.99

iPlanner

If you’re not really into the whole digital revolution, tree saving thing, iPlanner will let you print your iCal data as day planner pages. The price seems awfully high for the fairly limited functionality but other similar utilities share the same price point so it seems fairly standard.

Price $29.99

Miscellaneous

Caliander

Caliander is a unique looking iCal replacement that shows your items in a horizontal timeline that’s very different than the iCal interface in that it places more emphasis on items in the near future. Like some of the other apps above, it uses keyboard shortcuts in conjunction with natural language so you can add and schedule new events at lightning speed.

Price $18.99

Opus Domini

I’m personally not a fan of the interface but I have to admit, this app packs a serious punch of functionality. Weather, goals, planning, master tasks, subtasks, repeating tasks, and password protection are just a few of the awesome built in features. If you’re looking for an all in one solution to plan your daily life and can get past the cheesy book metaphor, this may be your best bet.

Price $8.99

TimeTable

iCal makes for a great way to track your time at work, but extracting that information into an invoice can be a pain. Enter TimeTable, a great little application that calculates the hours spent on specific tasks and exports the information to invoice and spreadsheet apps.

Price $19.99

Free Apps

Calendar

A super useful free menu bar client that shows you your upcoming iCal and Facebook events. It’s definitely not as fully featured as some of the other alternatives but you can’t beat the price.

Price: Free

RememberOn

Want a faster way to create iCal reminders without forking up any cash? RememberOn quickly adds events and alerts to iCal in a very basic interface. As with the previous app, it’s certainly no award winner but since it’s free you should check it out and see what you think.

Free

Google Notifier for Mac

This is Google’s free menu bar utility for keeping an eye on your Gmail and Google Calendar accounts. As you would expect from Google, the functionality is fairly limited but functional.

Price: Free

Organized

Organized is probably the best free utility on this list. It’s an awesome dashboard widget that serves as a calendar, todo list and world clock. The design is very attractive and the developer is iSlayer (creator of 1Password and iStat Menus) so you know it’s a high quality utility. I doubt that it’s actively developed anymore but it still works great.

Price Free

Which Is Your Favorite?

Now that you’ve seen our roundup of other thirty awesome calendar apps, it’s time to chime in and tell us your favorite. Tell us which apps above you’ve tried and what you thought of them and also be sure to point out any that we forgot!

As of 1 March, 2012, all new apps/updates submitted to the Mac App Store will be forced to implement a security feature called sandboxing. In brief, sandboxing limits the scope of each application by restricting how much of your system that app has access to. Developers will have to go through Apple and request specific entitlements in order to receive permission to stretch the limits a little further and give their apps access to certain information.

The benefit here is obvious, your system will be much safer given the restricted access that apps will have. The downside though is a big one for seasoned Mac users and developers of particularly powerful utilities as this restriction has serious potential to limit features. As Techworld.com reports, Alfred’s developers have hesitated to submit the Alfred Powerpack to the Mac App Store for this very reason.

Back in June, I wrote and published an article titled“1984 and the Future of Mac Software” containing a fairly gloomy outlook on the future of the Mac should it continue down its current road towards heavier developer regulation. It seems fairly obvious that Apple wants control over every aspect of what does and doesn’t make its way onto your Mac. That’s not inherently a bad thing though, iOS serves as a great example of a successful system (that users love) which happens to be very tightly controlled by Apple.

Ultimately, whether or not sandboxing is a good thing is completely up to you. We want to hear what you think. Vote in the poll above and leave a comment explaining your answer.

Hat tip to SmileyKeith 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 FreeSpace, a lightweight utility that helps you keep an eye on your disk space.

FreeSpace is a menubar utility that can show you how much space is available on all local, connected, network drives, and disk images with a single click. All the partitions and drives are grouped into their own categories. FreeSpace also allows you to eject all connected drives by 1 click on the menu, or eject individual drives by clicking an eject icon next to each drive name. FreeSpace comes with mount and eject indicator, which flashes on the menu bar when mounting or eject is complete.

There’s a lot to love about this little gem. It’s awesome to be able to manage your drives so easily right from the menu bar. My favorite feature is the ability to eject discs without switching to the desktop. FreeSpace also works great with Time Machine. When the Time Machine drive is plugged in, the free space is immediately shown on the menu. When Time Machine backup is complete, Free Space flashes an eject indicator to show that the drive has been safely ejected by Time Machine.

Go Get It!

FreeSpace is available in the Mac App Store for a mere $0.99! The developers could easily justify charging double or triple that so this price is really a steal. Stop by to grab your download today and instantly take control of your external drives.

As we move to more and more things becoming digital, it’s not surprising that we can now have cookbooks as eBooks and even as apps on our Macs. And thanks to integrated technologies cooking apps don’t have to simply hold a recipe, but can include detailed photos of ingredients and step-by-step tutorials.

The Photo Cookbook makes it deliciously easy, to fix any kind of dish and it does so with beautiful images and easy to follow instructions. Learn after the break how this app can bring you on your way to be the chef in your kitchen.

Choosing is the Hardest Part

As the headline implies, selecting a dish to prepare will probably be the hardest part in the entire cooking process. There are oodles of recipes and they are presented in an easy-to-grasp grid.

First you should notice the four buttons on top, which will let you select a certain cooking style. Each style in turn holds four categories of dishes with about 15 recipes each (which will equal out to 240 recipes in total – that will keep you busy for some time).

Leveraging the features of OSX Lion, there is no scrollbar at the side, but simply move your cursor over a column and make the scrolling gesture and even more recipes will be revealed to you. If you prefer to see them all at once, you can make a sidebar viewable which holds all available recipes of a given category.

Getting to Know Your Ingredients

When you’ve chosen a recipe and click on it, you’re presented with a gorgeous overview of all the ingredients, beautifully arranged and in the state you’d use them for your dish. Everything is also listed, ready for your shopping list (I’ll come back to that in a minute).

If you’re unsure as to what image is what exactly or how to prepare an ingredient properly for the dish, simply hover of the image and click on the tiny icon that appears on it. You’ll get a beautiful explanation.

Now, you have all the ingredients within the app, but if you don’t happen to own the mobile version of The Photo Cookbook (for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch), it would be quite cumbersome to write down everything.

Of course, the developers being my German countrymen, they have been meticulous and thought of a very easy way to have everything at your fingertips: simply hit that email button on the upper right and the entire list of ingredients can be mailed and taken with you (or printed, if you prefer that).

Cooking Like a Chef

Once you’ve got everything ready to roll, simply start. First of all, you prepare each ingredient as needed – chopping veggies, slicing meat, or mixing spices. As mentioned above, everything is explained in pop up boxes if you hover over an ingredient.

After that it is as simple as following the steps in the numbered images included in each recipe. The instructions are to the point and the accompanying image shows you how your food should look like by now. And that’s pretty much everything

Areas of Improvement & Verdict

The Photo Cookbook is a joy to use and look at. The high quality photographs of the dishes, ingredients and cooking instructions just instill the urge to pick up a cooking spoon and start – it doesn’t even matter what dish you pick.

Due to the way the recipes are presented, it is understandable that you cannot add any recipes of your own, so if you’re looking for an app to do that, The Photo Cookbook isn’t the way to go. Even though, I hope that down the line the developers will offer some sort up updates or enhancements with extra sets of recipes (being German, I really hope for some traditional dishes from my home country).

Another thing to remember is that The Photo Cookbook for Mac does require you to have a Mac in the vicinity of your kitchen. Unfortunately, you can’t print out an entire recipe (except using screenshots), so you need your Mac around to follow the steps.

This is, in my eyes, a small disadvantage if looked at the overall picture. The Photo Cookbook is exactly what it promises to be – a wealth of recipes for the ones who love to cook or who want to learn how and it presents its content beautifully. So if you’re aspiring to be the adored chef in your dorm or your house or if you want to impress someone – look no further. Happy cooking!

We’ve discussed, on several occasions here on Mac.AppStorm, the niche of apps comprised of consumer-grade imaging and design software. It is still a fairly young app space with huge potential for hobbyists and part-time designers that may not have the funds (or the feature requirements) for the professional tools like those developed by Adobe.

I like to dabble a small bit (emphasis on “small”) in vector art, and with a brother who is a graphic designer by trade, I’ve had my time to play with the big guns like Illustrator. Not only is it way more firepower than I’ll ever need, but I’m also not willing to shell out the required cash for what amounts to a part time hobby for me. Today, I’ll take a look at iDraw, a vector drawing app by Indeeo with a more reasonable price tag and a less immensely overwhelming feature set for the small-timers like me.

Interface

First things first: I can’t say enough good things about the interface of iDraw. The tools are clean and easy to navigate, and they’re presented to you on a set of dark-colored palettes and toolbars. This makes the artboard and any color and contrast in your work really pop. Working in iDraw proved to be a very visually enjoyable experience.

Now I very recently (as in, a few days ago) purchased a new MacBook Pro with Lion, so I may still be geeking out over full-screen apps. But aside from your general file commands, just about everything the app has to offer as far as creating and manipulating your work can be found on the toolbars to the left or the series of palettes that you can show/hide with ease. I found using iDraw in full screen mode exceptionally pleasant, allowing you to focus on your work and leave that menu bar hidden.

Tools & Functionality

iDraw has all of the standard functionality you’d expect from a graphics creation program. The rulers, artboard, layers manager, and object management tools are certainly all up to snuff. The pen tool, as one of the most crucial tools employed by a vector artist, is satisfactorily implemented in the app. Layers and grouping/arranging are powerful enough to give you convenient control over your objects without giving you a bunch of flow-breaking fine-tuning controls to worry about.

The palettes above are the extent of the floating windows in iDraw, and can be shown/hidden as needed, viewed individually, resized, and docked together. There is a bank for shapes can all be edited and saved for later use. This is handy, as the iDraw webpage points out, for mockups, such as a mockup of an iPhone app you might be working on.

iDraw has a powerful gradient editor, as well as all of the most useful pathfinding options for unifying, clipping, and creating compound paths. The brushes and styles banks are also editable and savable for later use, and, as expected, any brushes applied to paths maintain their malleability.

Flexibility

iDraw supports the import of several different image formats into your project–useful for tracing and text masking just to name a few. It also has adequately powerful dimensioning features. A useful tool for floor-planning, dimension lines append an auto-populated dimension bubble to the path.

Finally, and perhaps most usefully, iDraw plays well with others. It supports PDF and SVG as export formats, which means that (even if you’re using the iPad version) iDraw doesn’t have to be the only graphics editor you use. You can sketch something up here and then send it off to a heftier app, or you can even import it into another app altogether for use on a different project.

Conclusion

For those of us that remain classically un-trained in the art of graphic design, iDraw’s interface and easy-to-understand tools streamlines vector drawing without bombarding the user with complex information or finicky tools.

As I mentioned before, the writers here at Mac.AppStorm have tested and discussed many apps in this category of consumer-grade graphics. I have tried a great majority of them, and iDraw is without a doubt my favorite. Assuming they continue development and pay attention to the user feedback that they invite, I think that the folks at Indeeo have written an app that comfortably sits among the frontrunners in this market.

iDraw has a companion iPad app (which I haven’t tested) that appears to have much, if not all, of the same functionality as it’s desktop counterpart. The mobility an flexibility of iDraw give it the potential to find a permanent spot among users who have a requirement for an app like this.

Have you given iDraw a test drive? Let us know how you like it and how it stacks up compared to other vector drawing apps you’ve used.

Quicksilver. For seasoned Mac users that word instantly draws up fond memories of an app that was once at the top of every list of must have utilities. The beloved launcher has been out of the game for years though, an unceremoniously abandoned project that went before its time.

It seems though that the story doesn’t end there. The open source Quicksilver project, housed at QSApp.com, is alive and kicking and recently released a major update for Lion users. Intrigued? Read on!

Once Upon a Time

The very first article that I ever published on AppStorm way back in May of 2009 was about an application called Quicksilver (even then it was long past doomed). This Swiss army knife of a utility appeared to be an application launcher on the outside, but when you opened it up you found so much more.

Tucked away in a corner of the Preferences window was a huge collection of plugins waiting to be activated. These enabled the user to perform amazing tricks: converting units, definining words, mouse-activated gestures, pie-shaped menus for navigating the Finder, almost anything you could dream up, Quicksilver could do. Figuring out how it all worked took some dedication, many never made it beyond simple launching, but for the few dedicated souls who ventured further, great things awaited.

Quicksilver was an unbeatable command center for your Mac that made it popssible to perform a plethora of complex actions in a few simple keystrokes. In short, it was my favorite app. It wasn’t long before Quicksilver was so ingrained into the way that I used OS X that I couldn’t imagine using the latter without the former. I swore I’d never switch to anything else. There were other impressive contenders, but none with the appeal of QS and certainly none that offered so much for free.

Quicksilver is Laid to Rest

Then something happened. Blacktree, Quicksilver’s developer, abandoned us. It was unthinkable. So much time and effort had obviously been put into this project and yet the developers gave up before it even really achieved mainstream acceptance. Sure, there were always whispers that development was still active, and we’d occasionally see the beta number go up as new versions of OS X mandated slight updates, but ultimately, Quicksilver was stagnant, an unfinished thesis collecting dust as its author moved on to other projects. In fact, as early as 2007, Quicksilver’s impending doom was clearly spelled out by its creator in a Lifehacker article.

It was said that Google had recruited Nicholas Jitkoff, the original developer of Quicksilver, to head up the GQSB project, a fresh start that would become everything we wanted from Quicksilver. Even with Google behind the project though, nothing really materialized that could even begin to match what Quicksilver had been.

Alfred Saves the Day

I actually really enjoyed using GQSB, it showed a lot of promise. However, there was simply too much in Quicksilver that I couldn’t leave behind. Despite being a long abandoned project, Quicksilver remained at the top of my most used apps for a long time.

It wasn’t until the arrival of Alfred, whose upcoming 1.0 release is something we were proud to exclusively break earlier this week, that I found a worthy replacement. Finally, I could let go. In its early stages Alfred lacked the depth of QS, but it made up for it in charm and promise. Further, Alfred is an active project. The development is racing along at breakneck speeds, new features are being added monthly and with the recent arrival of extensions and global shortcuts, it’s quickly becoming everything that QS once was and more.

Alfred is now the app that I use countless times per day. Its developers are rockstars in my book, super nice people dedicated to creating amazing software. Quicksilver was where I got my taste for rapid fire system wide control, but Alfred has officially taken the abandoned throne in this arena.

Quicksilver Returns

While most of us moved on to other launchers, a dedicated team of fans was determined not to let Quicksilver die. The project went open source and has been quietly seeing some incremental improvement. For the most part, there hasn’t been anything major, just slight improvements and bug fixes.

Recently though, the site LoveQuicksilver.com announced a big breakthrough. Quicksilver had officially made the jump to Lion. It sports a new icon, a sharp new theme and over forty other additions, fixes and changes.

Needless to say, this seemingly dead project just got a major kick in the pants. But is it enough? Can this app rise from the grave and return to its former glory? Is the Mac world about to see a resurgenece of Quicksilver users?

It’s possible. Despite its age, Quicksilver is still by anyone’s standards one heck of a powerful launcher. Now that many of the old plugins have been updated and are functioning again, Quicksilver is once again packing a serious functionality punch that’s hard to beat.

Too Little Too Late?

I downloaded the most recent build of Quicksilver and gave it another spin. The nostalgia definitely made me smile, but I simply don’t see myself going back. It’s definitely a little rough around the edges and doesn’t seem to have that instant, smooth feel that it once did. Plus, despite being quite grateful to the hardworking folks who have brought QS back to life, the app’s future still doesn’t seem as solid or promising as that of several competing launchers. And I don’t just mean the newcomers like Alfred. Long time contender Launchbar is still the favorite of plenty of Mac owners and has been fairly actively updated for years.

Regardless of what I’ll be using on a daily basis, I’m still stoked to see this beloved app striving for a comeback. Leave a comment below and let us know what you think. Are you once again using Quicksilver? Will you give it a shot after reading this article or do your loyalties lie elsewhere?

Way back in my unenlightened days as a Windows user, I spent a great deal of time using various PDF editors. In an effort to avoid conflict with our friends at Windows.AppStorm, allow me to clarify: I don’t hate on Windows simply to hate on Windows–and indeed there are a lot of great Windows apps out there. But I think that even they will agree with me when I say that there are a lot of poorly designed PDF manipulation apps floating around on the Internet.

As an unrelated product of circumstance, my need for PDF manipulation apps has decreased since I became a Mac user. However, all of those frustrating memories came rushing back when I was given the opportunity to check out PDFactory from the folks at Appthology. An app that promised to be the perfect balance between the power of Adobe Acrobat and the slim-profile native glory that is OS X’s very own Preview had to be worth a try, right? Hit the jump to find out exactly how PDFactory holds up!

Interface

The PDFactory interface, while simplistic, is quite nice. I have, on at least one occasion, voiced my partiality to the fabric-like texture that serves as a backdrop in several Apple apps, and it is used to a satisfactory effect in this app.

The screenshots included in this review were all taken in full-screen mode, but rest assured the only difference in windowed mode is the window control buttons in the upper left.

The controls in the toolbar cover almost all of the functionality the app has to offer, and the functions not found in the toolbar are available via contextual right-click menus (such as “Insert Blank Page”). I’ll discuss the functionality a bit more later.

PDFactory sports, aside from the toolbar, three main areas. The top bar displays all of the different PDF documents you’re working with. The usefulness of being able to work with multiple documents in PDFactory cannot be understated. Your documents will be lined up in a row in this area of the window, and will facilitate page-rearrangement as if your documents were folders in a Finder window.

The area that takes up a majority of the app’s screen real-estate is where the pages of your selected document are displayed. You can click and drag pages around the document to reorder them, or select groups of pages to move or delete in bulk.

Finally, the bar at the bottom of the screen offers two separate controls for ease of use. The first is a thumbnail slider. This familiar tool allows you to resize the thumbnails in the field above. The dark-colored field that is, by default, displaying the text “Select Pages” allows you to select pages by number. You can separate numbers by commas to select multiple pages, or use the built-in presets to select all even or odd numbered pages.

Features

The meat of PDFactory is in its ability to handle document construction and manipulation. As I mentioned above, most of this functionality is available via the toolbar at the top. I’d like to note here that from what I’ve found, PDFactory does purely non-destructive edits. This means that whenever you execute a command that would otherwise reduce the number of documents that you’re working with (such as “Merge Documents”), the app will create a new document with the desired properties instead, leaving your original documents in-tact.

The second button on the toolbar is “Split.” Clicking this button gives you a placeable divider that you can drop in between pages. This will set the split point, and create a second document with all of the pages afterward. It’s as simple as that, and just as with the Merge command, Split creates two new documents rather than destroying your original.

The toolbar also contains some standard commands, like Rotate and Export, as well as the ability to copy all text on a selected group of pages to the clipboard. But one last feature I want to draw attention to is the “Slim Down” button. Slim Down lets you adjust the quality of your document in order to create a smaller PDF file. This is particularly useful if you have a habit of scanning and archiving large paper documents like magazines or instruction manuals.

There is some confusion when it comes to saving your documents that should probably be addressed in an update. There is currently no File > Save feature for new documents created with PDFactory, but when you close a particular document, it will prompt you to save. Functionally, this isn’t a big issue, but searching for a “Save As” option was a little bit frustrating at first.

Conclusion

As I stated before, I currently don’t use PDFs very often–as ebooks and an export format for email almost exclusively. However, I do know what it’s like having to work with PDFs on a daily basis, and if you have the luxury of doing so on a Mac, PDFactory is a swell little utility that can ease the tedium. The ability to work with multiple files at once is probably the strongest selling point that the app has, but that feature alone gives the other features that that can be found in apps like Preview even more value. And at $1.99, PDFactory packs in a ton of value.

If you work with PDFs on a regular basis, we’d love to hear what you use to manipulate your files. If you’ve tried out PDFactory, let us know what you think!

We recently published an in-depth look at a completely unique new web browser called Raven. This site specific browser focuses on improving the way you use web apps with a super slick and convenient interface.

We were surprised to learn that the developer has created a dedicated AppStorm app for Raven! Read on to see what it’s all about and how you can get it!

The AppStorm Raven App

Like all of Raven’s apps, the AppStorm app will appear in your sidebar as a great looking icon. Clicking here will instantly expand your options, which include shortcuts to our Mac.AppStorm, iPhone.AppStorm, iPad.AppStorm and Web.AppStorm sites. What could be more convenient than AppStorm access built right into your browser? It’s the perfect way to stay up on all the most recent content.

How Do I Get It?

Step one is to go download the awesome free browser revolution that is Raven. From there you follow the link to the Web App Shop shown below.

Once you’re inside the Raven Web App Shop, scroll down to the “Expand Your Horizons” section. The first app you should see is the best one of all! Simply click the install button and you’re ready to go.

A huge thanks to Kevin Milden, Raven’s creator, for spending the time and effort on making Raven a great new way to experience AppStorm. Download both Raven and the AppStorm app and let us know what you think!

What’s better than winning a free app? Winning ten free apps! StackSocial has just launched a Fall 2011 Mac SuperBundle, and I’m pleased to announce that we managed to snag one to give away to our readers.

The bundle includes ten amazing apps worth $365! All of them are top name titles and are sure to prep you for a long, cold winter spend indoors huddled over your Mac. Check out the included apps:

• Camtasia for Mac
• Fantastical
• CleanMyMac
• DiscLabel
• HoudahSpot
• MacHider
• Ensoul
• Audio Converter Pro
• Font Explosion Volume I
• Enigmo 2

You can take a look at the details of the bundle over on StackSocial, 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 4th. Best of luck, be sure to enter while there’s still time!

Are you sick of reading reviews for the same old Markdown text editor under different titles? Me too. Don’t worry, Mou is genuinely different.

Join us as we take a look at how Mou takes a unique approach to Markdown editing and how it may be exactly what you’ve been looking for.

In Search of Perfection

I was a latecomer to the Markdown craze. This wasn’t so much the fault of the syntax, which I quite enjoy, so much as it was the shortage of tools available to infuse Markdown into my own personal workflow.

Don’t get me wrong, there are a million Markdown text editors, but none of them have really grabbed my attention and held it. No matter what I tried, I usually wound up back in WriteRoom’s wonderful fullscreen mode writing in plain old HTML.

When I thought about what I really wanted in a markdown editor, I found that I had a bit of a plurality regarding the situation. I like my plain text editing, yet I want to see the end result as well. For this reason, I really liked some of the online editors like those from Jon Combe and Ctrlshift.net because they have this awesome daul window interface but I’m not a fan of doing all my work in the browser where an unexpected crash can kill hours of hard work.

Long story short, I had very specific requirements for a Markdown app and literally nothing on the market seemed to fit. That is until Jeffrey Way of NetTuts+ fame recommended that I try Mou. Finally, I had found what I was looking for.

Meet Mou

Mou bills itself as “the Markdown editor for web developers”, and though I still use it for writing, this emphasis might be exactly why I like it so much.

As you can see in the screenshot above, Mou has that nice splitscreen view that I liked so much in the web-based editors. All of the editing is done in the left panel and the right panel automatically updates to show you the ultimate output. To someone that isn’t familiar with web writing, this may seem like a seriously screwed up and roundabout way to write, but I simply love it.

The layout is fully flexible, meaning the two panels can be adjusted by dragging the little dividing line. There are also some quick menu shortcuts for setting up specific ratios and even an option for a stacked view.

Markdown and Text Editing

If you’re familiar with the Markdown syntax, you’ll be happy to know that Mou offers full support with the awesome addition of syntax highlighting. You’re free to use HTML, simple text, Markdown or any combination of the three as you write. It’s a completely flexible working environment that allows you to work the way you want.

The menu provides a few quick shortcuts for common actions like inserting images and links, bolding or emphasizing, and even selecting an entire word or line. Another especially helpful addition is the auto-complete function that pops up when you hit escape. It’s nice that this feature isn’t intrusive, it’s only there when you want it to be.

Once you’re done with your work you can either copy the contents to your clipboard as HTML or export it as an HTML document with optional CSS.

Full Screen and Themes

Fullscreen writing fans rejoice, Mou has a Lion style fullscreen mode that helps you focus entirely on the task at hand. For the design conscious users there’s also a theme system that allows you to customize your experience. You can choose from the handful of slick built-in themes or create your own via a simple text document where you enter custom colors.

Worth a Download?

You can already tell by now that I love this app. I’ve been thinking for quite a while that I’d like to use Markdown more but none of the products really resonated with me, that is until I tried Mou.

This app is the perfect combination of simple and powerful, structured and flexible. I wrote this very article in Mou and have indeed performed all of my other work this week in the app. What better endorsement can I give than to say that I’m using it over the dozen other text editing apps on my Mac?

That being said, keep in mind that Mou hasn’t yet hit 1.0. It’s always tricky to review a beta app as if it were a finished product, because it’s admittedly not. However, I don’t really have any major problems. Mou seems very polished and is absolutely worth downloading and using in your work today.

Conclusion

To sum up, if you’ve tried several Markdown editors but still felt that they were coming up short in the areas that mattered most, it’s time to check out Mou.

The split screen workflow is exactly what myself and others have been looking for in a native Mac solution and there isn’t another app that implements this idea in a more solid and functional manner.

Give it a shot and let us know what you think in the comments below.

Big news, our favorite launcher is finally about to hit version one! It’s hard to believe that the app has received so much attention and good press while in a fairly experimental state but the simple truth is that Mac users simply can’t get enough of Alfred’s perfect combination of depth and simplicity.

Read on as we take a renewed look at what Alfred can do along with some awesome new features you can look forward to in the 1.0 release!

This is an advance look at some of the awesome new features soon to be in Alfred 1.0 – it should be going to general release around the end of November!

The Alfred Core

Alfred has come an incredibly long way since its humble beginnings as a somewhat simple launcher. The amazing thing is, despite its amazingly deep current feature set, that simplicity is still at the forefront of the Alfred experience, ensuring that absolutely anyone can use the app with ease.

Let’s take a brief look at some of the amazing things you do with Alfred and a few quick keystrokes.

Launching

As I just mentioned, it all starts with app launching. This is Alfred’s core feature and it does it with ease. Just hit your designated shortcut, begin typing the name of the app you want and Alfred will instantly pop up results that refine as you type. Hit enter or choose from the list to launch the app. Alfred even learns which results you choose most often and modifies its behavior accordingly.

It doesn’t stop here though, Alfred can launch a lot more than apps. Try typing in “find” and then a filename and Alfred will search your hard drive for the file you’re after. You can also hit the spacebar right after launching to search for and open files.

Reference Actions

Alfred isn’t content with merely opening things, it also finds information for you. Want a quick definition? Just type “define” and the word you want.

Similarly, Alfred can help you with your homework. It responds much better than Spotlight to complex math problems.

The Web

Alfred plays well with the web too! If you want to open a specific web page, just type it into Alfred exactly like you would in Safari or any other browser. This will launch the site in your default browser.

If you need to search for something, there’s built in functionality for searching Google, Wikipedia, IMDB, and a bunch of other popular sites (Powerpack users can edit the default offerings).

If Alfred doesn’t search a site that you want it to, you can easily set up custom searches for almost any search function on any site! Be sure to check out our full tutorial on this very topic.

The Alfred Powerpack

The free version of Alfred is something that no Mac user should be without. The Powerpack takes Alfred to new heights by adding deep integration with your system. There are a ton of amazing features that come with the Powerpack, some of which are brand new to version 1.0. Let’s take a look.

Control iTunes

One of the Powerpack features you’ll absolutely love right off the bat is the iTunes Mini Player. Alfred gives you an impressive scope of control for iTunes including basic track commands, searching, album art previews and more.

File Commands

Terminal fans will enjoy Alfred’s ability to quickly perform a number of file actions. Just hit “~” to launch the file navigation window. From here you can navigate your hard drive freely and even perform actions of files such as move, copy and email.

Extensions

Extensions have changed the game for Alfred and opened up an endless world of possibilities. Create your own or browse the extension gallery for some awesome goodies. I recently installed an extension to quickly shorten links with Google and another that turns Alfred into a todo list!

Email and Address Book

The Powerpack links Alfred closely to your Address book. You can search for a contact and even launch an email to the person of your choice.

Make It Your Own

Alfred’s default color scheme is super friendly and easy on the eyes but if you dig customization then you can tweak or completely overhaul the colors in an easy to use theme editor.

New and Improved

The newest version of the Alfred Powerpack has some awesome improvements and new features that make it more powerful than ever.

Clipboard History and Snippets (Improved)

If you’re on the lookout for a solid clipboard manager, look no further. Hitting Command-Option-C in Alfred will launch an improved clipboard manager that gives you access of recent clips. You can also save frequently used snippets for quick insertion. Just type “snip” and the name of your desired snippet to insert it. The snippets editor now allows for searching and sorting.

Alfred Never Forgets (New!)

You might or might not know about Alfred’s ability to recall recently opened items, well 1.0 adds to Alfred’s superhuman memory by adding a feature to remember recently visited URLS for quicker searching.

Global Hotkeys (New!)

This is my favorite new feature, Alfred now allows you to set up global shortcuts to launch an app, script, extension or anything that you want. Simply navigate to the new “Hotkeys” tab inside of Alfred and set up shortcuts for all your favorite actions.

Lots More!

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Alfred 1.0 ships with a whole mess of improvements. To name a few, hitting Command-C now copies the result’s path or URL, clipboard and snippets are now independent, generic icons have been added for many filetypes, iTunes search has been improved, extension parameters are much more flexible; the list goes on and on.

You’ll also be happy to know that the Alfred team now accepts direct Credit Card and Paypal payments.

Absolutely Essential to the Mac Experience

This update is so positive that it’s probably starting to sound like a sponsored post, it’s not. We AppStormers are simply so fond of Alfred that we think every Mac user should give it a shot. We’ve followed the development closely since day one and are super excited to finally see the Alfred team hit 1.0.

If you don’t see yourself using all of the fancier features, download the free version and discover the wonder of launching apps instantly without the hassle of the Applications folder or Launchpad. If you’re the kind of user who likes control, the Powerpack turns Alfred into an unbelievably convenient and useful assistant that covers almost every aspect of OS X. Give it a week or two and you’ll likely be unable to use a Mac without Alfred going forward.

My computer is a constant companion in the kitchen, it can be a bit risky, but I just love having limitless recipe options at my fingertips. Unfortunately, when I find some great recipes sometimes, they often end up jumbled among hundreds of bookmarks, where I’ll probably never see them again.

A number of Mac app developers have capitalized on the kitchen-computer connection, and developed various solutions for storing and organizing recipes on the Mac. Let’s take a look at some of the main contenders and what they have to offer!

YummySoup

YummySoup provides a slick interface for importing and organizing recipes clipped from websites. It features a built-in browser with one-click importing from 11 popular recipe sites (including my favourite, AllRecipes). Importing from other websites is also simple, you simply highlight sections of the recipe, then click on the part of the recipe card you want it to be assigned to (e.g. ingredients, directions).

Once you’ve imported a recipe, you can display it full screen on your computer using a choice of pre-defined html templates (or create your own). YummySoup also has a groceries feature, coverflow-style browsing, smart folders, full screen view,  and cloud publishing (currenlty through MobileMe).

I found the one-click importing quite easy to use, and I appreciate the ability to customize the appearance. YummySoup covers all the basic functions you’d want in a recipe manager, but I think the price is a bit steep for what it does.

Price: $19.99

SousChef

SousChef places the emphasis on the actual cooking process, and tries to make cooking with your computer as easy and mess-free as possible. SousChef features a full screen mode designed to be read at distances of up to 10 feet, has a text-to-speech option, and is controllable via remote or voice.

It’s a great concept for a food application, becuase though organization and collection of recipes can be useful, realistically, you’re going to be spending more time actually cooking. The full screen display is pretty legible even at a distance, even on my 13” MacBook Pro. I love the remote control option, I’d definitely prefer to get the remote sticky than my keyboard. Though the voice recognition is a really cool idea, I couldn’t get it to work reliably. I’m not sure if this is an inconsistency on the part of the developer, or with Apple speech recognition.

The recipe organization and importing features are pretty basic, and it lacks a web importer. $30 is a bit pricey, but might be worth it if you can get the speech recognition to work. There’s a free trial, so you can see if you can make it work for you.

Price: $19.99

Paprika Recipe Manger

Paprika is a newer recipe management app featuring cloud syncing between Mac, iPad, and iPhone versions. It has a web importer similar to YummySoup, and features a polished (though derivative) interface that allows you to easily manage and organize recipes.

Paprika also boasts a meal planner and grocery list functionality, which when combined with the iPhone app, could be really helpful for grocery shopping.

Unfortunately, Paprika doesn’t have a full screen mode, and even the iPad version isn’t terribly kitchen-friendly. I’ve heard a lot of positive feedback on the iPhone and iPad apps, hopefully Paprika will jump on the Lion bandwagon and go full screen with a future update.

Price: $19.99

MacGourmet

I reviewed MacGourmet for AppStorm a couple months ago, and though it wasn’t a glowing review, MacGourmet might be the best option for people who are interested in cataloging and organizing a large number of recipes in flexible ways. MacGourmet features the same importing, full-screen, and shopping list features as the other apps, but includes more organization options, and has a more streamlined recipe creator/editor.

I found MacGourmet to be overcomplicated for my uses, with a pretty high price ($24.99 for the basic version, $49.99 for the “deluxe” version). Though it may have more features than the average cook requires, it is more geared towards users that are serious about creating a digital recipe database.

Price: $24.99 ($49.99 for Deluxe version)

Appstorm Review of MacGourmet

The Photo Cookbook

The first three apps on this list help you manage and use recipes, but the Photo Cookbook aims to actually teach you to cook. The app comes with 84 recipes, each with detailed, step-by-step illustrated instructions. Though seasoned cooks probably don’t need such a thorough approach, I can see this being a great resource for younger people just starting to cook on their own, or anyone that has trouble following undetailed or jargon-filled recipes.

Whether or not this app is worth the $15 probably depends on whether or not the recipes are any good, which is a pretty big leap of faith for an app with no trial version. I’m on the fence about this one: on one hand, there are hundreds of blogs out there that offer this kind of step-by-step instruction for free, but on the other hand, I know people that are overwhelmed by the options out there, and would benefit from a systematic, organized approach.

Price: $15.99

Bonus: Evernote

Though it’s not specifically a cooking app, Evernote is what I usually use to store my recipes. I use the web clipper for Safari, add some tags, and add the clip to my recipes notebook (it also automatically adds the source URL to the note). I don’t find I need too many organization options, because it’s easy to just keyword search for the recipe I’m looking for.

Though it would be nice to have a full-screen recipe mode, recipe scaling, and a proper recipe importer, Evernote does the basic job of keeping track of your recipes – and keeping them synced across all your devices – for free.

Price: Free

Conclusion

Most of these apps feature similar basic features like web importing, organization, and full-screen modes, and most of them (except MacGourmet) have similar price tags. None of the applications in this category really stood out as exceptional, but I didn’t get to try Paprika or The Photo Cookbook (the Mac App Store has put an end to free trials), both of which look promising to me.

I’d like to hear your thoughts, especially if you’ve used Paprika or The Photo Cookbook, or if you’ve gotten SousChef’s voice recognition feature to work effectively. Do you cook much with your computer, and if so, do you keep track of the recipes you find, or do you just Google them again next time?

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

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

• Studiometry – Studiometry is a powerhouse of professional organization tools that’s been serving the industry for over eight years. Whether you’re managing contacts, generating estimates, tracking work, or billing clients, this one app has you covered in a single beautifully cohesive workflow.
• Live Interior 3D – A powerful and intuitive home and interior design application that lets you build the house or office of your dreams right on your Mac.
• Studiometry – Studiometry is a powerhouse of professional organization tools that’s been serving the industry for over eight years. Whether you’re managing contacts, generating estimates, tracking work, or billing clients, this one app has you covered in a single beautifully cohesive workflow.
• Disk Drill – Disk Drill recovers data from HFS/HFS+, FAT, NTFS & other file systems right on your Mac. It helps you undelete Mac OS files using its two powerful Mac recovery methods: Quick or Deep scanning. Disk Drill data recovery for Mac OS X locates and recovers deleted files from any mountable media like your main drive, external hard disk, memory cards, iPods Classic, etc.
• Drive Genius 3 – Drive Genius 3 is the ultimate tool for whipping your drives into shape. Whether you want to free up space with the super easy DriveSlim feature or are looking to perform some maintenance, Drive Genius 3 has you covered.
• Finch – Finch is an app that takes all the effort out of time tracking. If you can open it, you can use it! With virtually zero configuration, Finch sits quietly tucked away in your menu bar and collects data throughout the day. It monitors what windows and apps are active on the screen at any given time.

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

AppleInsider recent published an interesting article that doesn’t bode well for Mac Pro fans. Supposedly, diminishing sales of the Mac Pro have led to considerable discussions at Apple over whether or not it will be profitable to continue the line further.

Though there will always be users who need more processing muscle than your average Mac owner, iMacs have become such powerful machines that many users are more than happy forgoing the Mac Pro’s high price tag when shopping for a workstation. It’s not a giant leap of logic to see the Mac Pro today as the Xserve of yesterday. The question is, will it reach a similar fate?

Vote in the poll and let us know what you think will happen to the Mac Pro. Is this overhyped doom and gloom? Is the Mac Pro here to stay? Or will it disappear, perhaps in favor of an even more powerful iMac? Let us know what you think and leave a comment below telling us why!

Our featured sponsor this week is Live Interior 3D, a powerful and intuitive home and interior design application that lets you build the house or office of your dreams right on your Mac.

Live Interior 3D is amazingly easy to use. 3D modeling is typically a painstaking process that takes years to master, but with Live Interior 3D I was setting up and tweaking rooms in my house in minutes. The intuitive drag and drop interface allows for absolutely anyone to quickly spec out a floor plan and begin adding walls, furniture, lighting and more. The result is an unbelievably realistic fully 3D render of your home that makes it easy to plan and experiment with changes, whether you want to move a sofa or knock out a wall!

Go Get It!

You’ve really got to try Live Interior 3D for yourself to see how incredible it is. Be sure to download the free trial and give it a test drive.

Live Interior 3D comes in two flavors: Standard and Pro. Both are super powerful and come with completely free tech support so you can be sure that you’ll achieve complete satisfaction and stellar results.