Category: Mac

We’d like to say a big thank you to this 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!

• Stuf 2 – Stuf is a super advanced clipboard manager. Not only does it give you full access to your clipboard history, it lets you easily copy and paste between Macs over your wired or wireless network!
• NetUse Traffic Monitor – NetUse provides the best way to monitor your network traffic on the Mac. Utilizing the SNMP feature of any modern Internet router or gateway, NetUse monitors and collects real-time Internet usage statistics for all the computers in your home or office that share an Internet connection.
• Timing – Timing is the best way to keep track of the time you spend with your Mac. It automatically tracks which documents you are editing, applications you use, and the domains of the websites you visit. You’ll never have to worry about forgetting to start or stop a timer again!
• CheckUp – CheckUp is an awesome utility designed to help you monitor the behavior and health of your Mac in real time. Like the dashboard of a car, CheckUp gives you a quick reference for important information about your Mac.
• Box Shot 3D – Box Shot 3D allows you to render custom software boxes, book covers, magazines, CD, DVD and Blu-Ray boxes, cans, bottles, mugs, bags and much more. No 3D-knowledge is required at all and the results look very professional because of the raytracing rendering technology.

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!

Now that the iconic plastic MacBook series has come to an end, many Mac owners will be considering purchasing a MacBook Air as their primary computer. The Air is an awesome choice and will provide a user experience and build quality second to none, but those blistering SSD speeds do come with some compromise in hard drive space. The article below will guide through some steps you can take and applications you can use, to get the most out of the space you have.

Keep in mind that you don’t need a MacBook Air, or even an SSD to benefit from the tips below, as it can never hurt to de-clutter your hard drive and keep your Mac in good shape, whichever model it is.

Backup First

The following tips are not too advanced or risky and are unlikely to cause any harm to your Mac, but it’s still essential to backup your data fully before moving forward.

If you’d like to make a complete, bootable copy of your hard drive, head over to our guide on doing so using Carbon Copy Cloner. With this out of the way, let’s get started!

AppTrap

Apple decided not to include an uninstaller with OS X and most users regularly drag-and-drop unwanted apps into their Trash. There’s nothing wrong with this method (it won’t hurt your Mac), but most of the time there will be plenty of residue of data left behind by the deleted app. This usually takes the form of small preference files, but can sometimes include larger system files too, which can eventually build up over time.

There’s a few different applications which will take care of uninstalling for you and after trying out most of them, I like AppTrap the most. AppTrap is a free program which has a very small memory footprint and unobtrusively runs in the background without you ever having to worry about it. It works like this; each time you go to delete an app, AppTrap will pop up with the above window and prompt you to decide whether to remove this app fully – which means move all associated system files into the Trash, or not. The prompt will also often come on when an app updates itself, so in these circumstances you can just click “no.”

An added bonus of AppTrap is that when choosing a complete uninstall of an application, you’ll know that should you decide to re-install it at a later date, you’ll have a clean slate, as the app won’t remember your preferences.

CleanMyMac

Over time, OS X will store cache files to help it launch and run applications and services more quickly. This is a completely normal and healthy aspect of Mac computing, but over time these cache’s can grow to a significant size and, rather than speed things up, can bloat your system.

The worst offenders are typically web browsers, especially Safari, but other apps can build up cache files too. Cleaning your Mac’s cache is not something you need to do every week, or even every month, but infrequently. To perform this, I love CleanMyMac, an app with many strengths besides just cache cleaning.

CleanMyMac is a flexible and accessible application which can be a one-stop solution to all the space saving tasks covered here, with options for uninstalling applications, cache cleaning and more. Many applications come with code built-in to enable their use on older non-Intel Macs such as the iBook G4 and this code can build up to take away a big portion of hard drive space. Similarly, additional language translations are often buried into an app and this can take up a surprisingly large amount of space too.

A word of caution however: There are some programs which do not perform well after being ‘slimmed down’ in the way which CleanMyMac performs, and in order to protect against this, CleanMyMac comes with its own blacklist. I have never ran into any problems using the application on several Macs, running Leopard, Snow Leopard and Lion respectively – though as always, make sure you’ve got a backup before proceeding to slim your Mac.

Onyx

Though more of an all-round maintenance tool than confined to space saving alone, Onyx offers enough features and options related to reducing clutter that I feel it warrants inclusion here. On launch, Onyx will scan your system disk for any errors. Following this, the user can then verify and/or repair permissions, delete cache’s and find out system information. As you can see in the screenshot above, choosing the ‘Cleaning’ pane from Onyx’s main window brings up further options to purge the cache, organised by type. Head over to this in-depth review by Quintin to get a closer look at this great free software.

Replace iTunes With Spotify

Recently reviewed in full here on Mac.AppStorm, Spotify is a great music streaming service which will help save space on your Mac and give you the chance to check out new music too! Music, even when compressed into MP3, is by nature quite large and even the most modest iTunes library can take up a very big chunk of your hard drive’s real estate. By signing up for Spotify, one can have a huge repository of music, anytime and anywhere, so long as you’ve got a healthy internet connection. There are other such services of course (also check out Rdio), but at the moment Spotify seems to be leading the pack and doing so at just $5 a month or free with built-in advertising.

Though it may not be quite practical to completely replace iTunes with Spotify, even just maintaining a bare iTunes library for when you have no internet connection will save you a lot of space!

Move Your iTunes Library To An External HDD

Should you wish to keep a large iTunes library, you may prefer to move your media to an external hard drive instead. Here’s how to do this:

First quit iTunes and navigate to your iTunes folder on your Mac. This should be in User Name > Music > iTunes – then simply drag and drop the iTunes folder into your external hard drive and wait for it to copy.

Next up, you need to launch iTunes and go to “Preferences” and “Advanced”, then click on the “Change” button to choose the new library location.

Remember to make sure you have another backup before you delete your media off your Mac!

Final Thoughts

Saving space on your Mac has more to do with attitude and approach than any other factor. By running apps like CleanMyMac infrequently and only installing apps which you need to use regularly, you can help save a lot of data and keep your Mac bloat-free. In addition to this and the apps mentioned above, another method of saving space on your Mac is to look for lightweight alternatives to larger programs, replacing Pages with TextEdit, Photoshop with Pixelmator and so on.

Have you got any space saving techniques, tricks or tips? Let us know about them in the comments!

The past decade has been a remarkable one for Apple. They’ve revitalized and reinvented their product line several times and have even shifted a large portion of their vision and focus to devices that didn’t exist in the 90s.

Innovation has been the name of the game since Jobs took back the helm right before the turn of the century. This spirit of innovation has brought Apple back from the grave and kept customers forking out cash on major device purchases on at least an annual basis.

The Passing of An Era

Now that Steve Jobs has stepped down as CEO, speculation abounds as to where Apple is headed in the future. Popular opinion seems to peg Apple Inc. as a company that has officially been put into autopilot. Jobs spent the last decade building an empire and surrounding himself with people that could run it upon his departure, now all they have to do is not screw up what he built.

The product line is a solid one: two types of MacBooks (Pro and Air), three desktop Mac choices (Mac Mini, iMac and MacPro), three traditional iPods (Shuffle, Nano and Classic) and four iOS devices (iPod Touch, iPhone, iPad and Apple TV). This is of course in addition to the pending release of iCloud, which ties all of this hardware together with a nice cloud-shaped bow.

With all these great products, Apple is set and can now function on marketing and upgrading those products, continually offering refreshes that are just good enough to keep us reaching for our credit cards.

Cult of Mac recently published an article to this tune titled “iPod. iPhone. iPad. Why Apple is Done Inventing New Devices.” In this article, the author states, “Now that Apple has product lines that offer the best experience for creating and consuming content, both on the desk and on the go, no further product lines need to be added.” So you see, beyond claiming that Apple won’t invent any new device categories, the author seems to think that you can stop expecting new product lines altogether from Apple for quite some time.

Will Apple Really Sit Still for a While?

This argument definitely makes sense, Apple is indeed set up fairly well in its current state. However, the personal electronics industry has thrived on Apple’s innovation for so long that cutting it off cold turkey may not be a realistic solution for continued market cap growth.

DailyFinanace sees a dire outlook for this path and went so far as to say that “Steve Jobs’ departure, and the subsequent loss of his innovative leadership, may leave Apple up a creek without a paddle.”

Apple’s DNA

Forunately, the corporate culture inside of Apple doesn’t seem to be one that would even strive for keeping things nice and smooth while avoiding new product risks. I doubt that Tim Cook wants his claim to fame to be “I kept everything fairly stable for a few years.”

To put it another way, laying low isn’t what Apple does. They push the boundaries and transform niche products into household items that we can’t live without.

To be honest, we’ve reached a point where I don’t really know what Apple has up their collective sleeves. People saw the iPad coming from so far away that it was easy to know what to look forward to for quite some time, the current situation though has people stumped and they have nothing left but to suggest that we’ve reached the end of the innovative era.

If there’s one thing that I’ve learned from decades as an Apple user, it’s that just because the market doesn’t know what it wants the next big thing to be, that doesn’t mean Apple isn’t hard at work on something that we’ll line up in droves to get our hands on.

Is an iTV in the Works?

So where does this leave us? Someone else says Apple is done creating new product lines for a while, I say don’t count them out so quickly, neither seems to be a truly informed opinion based on anything but speculation. If we put our ears to the ground of the ever-churning Apple rumor mills, what do we hear?

Strangely enough, we’ve circled around to a rumor that seems to resurface every few years: that Apple will soon be releasing an actual television product, distinct from its current set top box, the Apple TV.

Rumors of the existence of this “iTV” have recently been published on VentureBeat, CNET, ABC News, PC World and scores of other tech sites. This time around, these rumors come partnered with a television subscription service which supposedly has cable companies shaking in their boots.

Is This Thing Real?

The physical television game is already an industry with plenty of fierce competitors, I don’t think it’s impossible that Apple will enter it, but I don’t necessarily see a clear reason for them to do so.

Despite the fact that they’ve yet to turn the existing Apple TV into a must-have product, it makes far more sense for them to completely rethink this product yet again than to suddenly jump into making full on televisions.

The current Apple TV connects to existing televisions, making it possible for Apple to infiltrate nearly every living room. A dedicated Apple television set would alienate lots of customers with existing expensive, large screen, high definition televisions. I suppose it’s possible for Apple to pursue both avenues or even simply partner with existing television manufacturers like Google did.

One thing is for sure, televisions are in fact evolving from dumb terminals into software-driven products and Apple has already shown that this is a market they intend on owning. This nut has merely proved much more difficult to crack than the first-try raving success than they had with the cell phone market. I’m excited to see what they have in store in this arena.

Here’s to Looking Forward

Despite popular opinion, Apple isn’t about to take a step back and stop expanding their product lines or forgo attempting to take over even more markets with untapped potential. This recipe for success has served them well and they haven’t yet encountered a reason to abandon it.

Whether it’s the iTV or something we haven’t even thought of yet, you can bet there are secret dungeons in the deep, dark Apple castle where members of that legendary R&D team are piecing together future branches of the Apply family tree. My metaphors are so confusingly mixed at this point that it’s time for you to chime in. Is apple on autopilot or hard at work on the next big thing? If the latter, what will that next big thing be?

Most people have started to cringe at the idea of installing yet another text editor on their computer, especially one that promises distraction-free writing environments and Markdown support. It starts sounding familiar to apps like iA Writer, WriteRoom and Byword.

You must keep in mind that the word processor isn’t the tool keeping you from being able to crank out that perfect novel, blog post or tweet. The writing is still ultimately up to you. These are tools and should be respected as such. Getting a better text editor isn’t going to make you a better writer- no more than a nicer hammer, guitar or paint-brush set is going to make you a better handyman, musician or artist.

With those warnings in mind, let me show you around Macchiato, a Markdown-centric text editor.

A Primer on Markdown

In case you’re a bit confused, Markdown is a special language for writing. Instead of writing in HTML, a writer can craft their file in plain text using special characters to denote certain HTML functions. For instance, using the “#” symbol multiple times around a line makes it into a header. Asterisks around a word or phrase emphasize it. In the end you’re left with a still very readable piece of text, which can be easily transformed into a blog post or other written work for the web.

Macchiato supports many of Markdown’s styling options, including bold, italics, lists, underscore syntax, blog quotes as well as in-line and blocks of code.

Processing vs. Styling

One of the few distinctions the developer has made through their very beautiful, simple website is the lack of support of Markdown processing. This application is made to write the text and directly saves out only using .md or the Markdown file format. However, this application will not process your .md files into raw HTML. It won’t even let you save the file out as a .txt format. You could say that Macchiato is a Markdown only application.

Instead of concentrating on parsing the file from the raw text imputed into HTML, Macchiato stylizes the text right in front of your eyes. As you start to use the application and enter text in Markdown format, the text appears the way it would appear online. As soon as you emphasize a word, for instance, it becomes italicized. As soon as you start a new line with the “#” symbol, it jumps to the size and weight to what a header line would be. You get a running live preview of what you’re text will look like, as your editing the raw Markdown syntax, without needing a separate window open like most programs.

Features Beyond Just Markdown Support

One of the few shocking things about this app is the lack of a preference pane at all. Hitting the typical keyboard shortcut to open the preference pane generates an annoying alert sound. Instead of giving you the customization one would expect from a text editor, it has stripped it all away, à la iA Writer.

Macchiato is very much Lion ready. For instance, it supports the Lion fullscreen mode, Autosave feature and Version history tools. All of which are wonderful to have in a text editor.

When in fullscreen mode, the application does eliminate the distractions and notifications most have built into their computers. One thing I particularly like is how in both fullscreen and windowed modes, the word count appears in the top right hand corner.

I really enjoyed using the new Find and Replace system in Lion, which is also implemented in Macchiato. The UI around the Find and Replace toolbar does break a bit in Fullscreen and wide modes though.

Some Gripes and Confusions

There are still some bugs that need to be worked out, as most near 1.0.x apps have.

For example, there are several menu options that have been disabled but still show up in the drop downs. I could never find when there would be a time that the application would let me show a toolbar or customize it for that matter.

There are some built-in options to select text, then apply a bold or italic style to them. On a single select a word-then select a style basis, it works fine. The downside is when you select bold (or italics) without selecting a line and accidentally hit it again to disable, it adds more bold inducing asterisk marks and leads to quite a bit of confusion.

One thing I’m not 100% certain about, but wanted to address, is I feel there is a slight delay to my writing. When I hit the keys there is a minuscule moment before it appears onscreen. I do have the sense that the program is trying to catch up after a while, but it is still just a tad delayed. This is incredibly frustrating and seems to get worse over time. (I did find that a quick Quit and relaunching of the application fixed the delays for a while after.)

Wrap-Up

Macchiato is a fine application for writing, and I hope that some of the bugs that I have pointed out today will be addressed in a future update. I had a fine time writing this review in Macchiato and really enjoyed the Markdown support and features built into the core of this text editor.

One downside is that Macchiato has no trial available on their website. You’re forced to bite the bullet and download it for $19.99 from the Mac App Store. I found that a bit steep and would love to see a timed trial of some sort available for those who would rather not just try this app on a whim.

I could see Macchiato becoming my go-to text editor for writing (and ousting iA Writer) in no time. However some of the bugs and the lack of .txt support have made me reconsider giving it the “prestige” of being my word processor of choice.

What are your thoughts? Have you given Macchiato some time as your word processor? Also, what are your opinions of the new standard text editor price point of $19.99? With both iA Writer and Macchiato priced about the same, which would you chose?

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

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

Best of iPad.AppStorm

Best of Android.AppStorm

Best of iPhone.AppStorm

Best of Web.AppStorm

Best of Mac.AppStorm

Share Your Ideas

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

An explanation for a task in an online world can be a tricky thing to pull off. It’s just difficult to explain how to do something on your computer without actually showing how to do it. Wouldn’t a screenshot with some notes be helpful? Or maybe a screencast to really offer a complete explanation? Jing is a piece of software that is able to accomplish the basics of these tasks in an elegant and completely functional way.

Jing takes screencast recording and screenshot taking down to its nuts and bolts. There are certainly more robust options out there (in fact, the company that develops Jing is also the developer of the insanely robust Camtasia), but Jing has found a sweet spot in my regular workflow and has been my go to tool for snapping a quick screenshot or recording a short screencast for a couple years now and I’m not sure I could do without it.

Design and Interface

As I mentioned, the actual functionality of Jing is fairly basic. At least when compared to some of the more robust tools in this functional category. The design of the interface follows suit. The purpose of Jing is to either take a screenshot or record a screencast. Each of these tasks begins with selecting an area on your computer that you’d like to record.

By default, Jing will use what it calls “the sun” as it’s launcher. This is just as it sounds. You’ll see a little sun in the corner of your display. When you hover over the top you’ll have options to select an area, view the history or look at more options.

It is also possible to switch to using a menubar icon, which may or may not be better for you. I find myself using the default sun option as I only have Jing open when I need it. If you decide to have it launch when your start your machine, the menubar icon would be less invasive. I should also mention that you can set a shortcut key combination to begin the area selection as well.

Once you’ve chosen to select an area to record you’ll be presented with a large set of crosshairs and Jing will suggest some areas to begin from. It will look for application widows and even other noticeable segments of applications as well. You can drag the crosshairs to create your own specific area if you wish. Once the area has been settled upon, you’ll see a small menu below your selection. Here you’ll select whether you’d like to take a screenshot or if you’d like to begin a screencast. There are also options to cancel or redo the current selection. You’re not presented with many options so it’s very quick to get started.

If you’ve chosen to record a screenshot the image will be snapped based on your selection and the editor will open up. Here you can make some notes on the screenshot, but as you’d expect the functionality is pretty basic and straightforward. We’ll look at this functionality in more detail shortly.

Along with being able to add notes to your screenshot, you’ll also see options to save and share your screenshot. The basic options will allow you to save it to your machine, to Screencast.com, or to simply copy the image. Again, the options are basic but very useful. We’ll also take a closer look at this aspect of Jing in another section in this review as well.

If you’ve selected to record a screencast a similar process follows. The video recording begins and you’re given a countdown until the recording begins. You’ll see some options below your selection to allow you to control the screencast. Once completed you’ll see options to save and share your screencast.

The available functionality is dynamic and changes based on where you are within the application. It essentially walks you through each process and I would say that it is actually kind of difficult to get lost or confused along the way. The developers of Jing have successfully cut down the process of recording screenshots and screencasts down to the absolute basics.

Screenshots

A screenshot can be useful in a variety of situations while working on your Mac. This portion of Jing has come in handy for me more times than I can count. The two main situations I find this useful most regularly is for taking screenshots for application reviews or to use in guides and also for taking quick snapshots of things I want to remember. For example, before I make some DNS changes on one of my client’s websites I’ll take a screenshot of the current settings. That way I can easily refer back as needed.

To take a screenshot, you’ll begin by selecting the area you’d like to take record. Again, this is the first step you’ll take whether you want to do a screencast or just take a screenshot. Once you’ve selected the area you’ll need to select the option to use that selection as a screenshot. Once this has been done the editor will open.

Editor

Many times the screenshot itself is all you need. But sometimes it is helpful to add some notes on top of your screenshot to better explain yourself. The Jing editor doesn’t provide a ton of options for doing this, but you’re able to make some basic annotations rather quickly.

There are for items you’re able to use for marking up your screenshot. You can add arrows, text, boxes or highlights. Changing the color of all those items is also possible. This doesn’t seem like a whole lot of functionality, but I’ve spent some time with more full featured screenshot editors and find these core features are completely sufficient for me. Very seldom do I need to do anything more and if I do it is probably time to turn to a tool such as Photoshop. There’s no fumbling around trying to figure out how it all works. You select an item and add it where you want. Simple as that.

Screencast Recording

If a picture is worth a thousand words than a screencast is worth ten thousand. I use screencasts a lot to help to show clients how aspects of their website functions. Recording a screencast with Jing is incredibly easy.

As with the screenshot, you’ll begin by selecting your recording area, except this time you’ll select the option to record a video. The recording window of your selection will open and you’ll see a countdown to give you a moment or two to prepare yourself. The recording begins and off you go. You’re able to record a microphone input if you so choose and this can be toggled on and off in the controls of the recording below your selection. You’ll also see buttons to finish, pause, redo, and cancel the recording.

As you’re recording you’ll see a progress bar above the controls. You are limited to a five minute recording. When I first started using Jing I thought this would be an issue. I just broke up recordings as needed and after some usage I found that the shorter, more focused recordings were actually more helpful. Anything longer than five minutes and people start to become overwhelmed and attention can be lost. So this limitation I’ve found to actually be helpful. I just do short recordings on specific tasks and then group them together later on. Those specific tasks are much easier to digest as well as refer back to.

After you’ve finished your recording you’ll need to decide what you’d like to do with the screencast. You can save it to your machine or save it to Screencast.com. It is also possible to configure other instant share buttons that would allow you to share to Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter or an FTP site.

There is no editing of recordings. This could be an issue for some folks, but for those that are doing more serious, in-depth recordings a more robust application, such as Jing’s big brother Camtasia, may be the way to go. For brief recordings I haven’t found the need to do any editing. If I don’t like how something came out, I’ll just re-record.

History

One of the main functions you’ll see is viewing your history. This will show you all of the screenshots and screencasts that you’ve saved. You’ll be presented with a thumbnail of the media and hovering over each will give you some meta data about the item. You’ll see information such as the name and location along with the dimensions and file size. You’ll be able to open each directly from here or delete items if you’d like to clean things up a bit. There is also an option to share the screenshot or screencast on Screencast.com. So if you’d previously just saved a recording to your computer and you’d like to share it with someone else, you can select that option and the video will upload to Screencast.com. You can then just send someone a link to view the recording.

Storage and Sharing

Recording a screencast or snapping a screenshot is only half of the battle. You need to be able to store this media and a lot of times you need to be able to share it as well. Jing has thought of this and gives you a few different options to store and share your images and videos. You’ll always have the option to store to your computer. The files created are not proprietary to Jing. Once you save them to your Mac you’ll then be able to do whatever you like with them. This is a perfect solution for many people who just need the tool to create these things. For other folks, having a central place to be able to share from would be a huge asset.

By signing up for Jing you also sign up for a Screencast.com account. This gives you access to some free storage space out there on the Web. By default you’ll see many options throughout the application to upload directly to Screencast.com. This is handled quite seamlessly by Jing. You select the option to share via Screencast.com and you’ll be notified once the file has been uploaded and ready to share. A link to the file will even be copied to your clipboard. Paste that in an email or IM and you’re sharing. It’s that easy.

It is also possible to manage the files you have loaded to Screencast.com. You can create folders to better organize. You can share folders or specific files straight from the web interface. I’ll often group together several screencasts into one folder and then share the folder with someone. That way they have everything in one space. I won’t get too deep into the web interface of Screencast.com, but I will say it is fairly robust and quite useful for managing and sharing your files. I use it regularly.

Free vs. Paid Version

Jing is available as a free version or as a paid version ($14.94 per year). The added features of the paid version include the ability to record as different video file types, the ability to upload directly to YouTube and record video from a webcam. With the paid version the Jing branding is also removed.

I have been using the free version for about two years now. My original intention was to try out the free version and then eventually upgrade to the “Pro” version, but to be honest I’ve found the free version completely sufficient for my needs. $14.95 for an entire year certainly is not an outrageous cost, I’ve just never felt the need for those specific features that are only included in the paid version.

Jing can be thought of as a bit of a gateway application as well. If you eventually feel the need to create much more elaborate screencasts and screenshots, the developer (TechSmith) has you covered. They do offer SnagIt for screenshots and Camtasia for screencasting. I’ve spent some time with both of these applications as well and can say that they are fantastic, but just overkill for me in nearly every situation.

Conclusion

Visual aides can be incredibly useful for illustrating a point whether it be for instructional purposes or simply for your own notes. If the tool that you use to create these images and videos is quick and easy to use you will be more apt to use it. I think Jing really takes much of its value from being easy, simple and quick. I can be recording a screencast within 30 seconds from the time I have the idea and I can be sharing it a couple minutes later. Now that is handy.

Once upon a time, physical media sales ruled the music landscape. Wal-Mart thoroughly enjoyed its reign as the largest seller of CDs on the planet. Then iTunes came along and took online music distribution from a niche to the most popular way for people to buy music.

Now a new breed of businesses are beginning to fill the landscape. Instead of offering single songs or albums, they give customers the freedom to listen to any combination of songs or albums they want, either completely free or with a low monthly fee. Are these services merely enjoying rapid but short-lived growth or do they represent the future of how we consume music?

Streaming Is Here to Stay

With the release of iCloud, you probably thought the rumors surrounding Apple launching a streaming service were finally over, you were wrong. The problem of course was, it didn’t seem that Apple was really launch a streaming service at all but was instead providing us with a much appreciated way to keep our music, apps and files synced across various devices.

My initial reaction was that this was Apple’s way of boldly staying out of the streaming game. Let Amazon and Google figure out their streaming services while Apple takes its own route and to help you listen to your music with your actual files, no streaming necessary.

However, now that we’re seeing the sneak peeks of iTunes Match, it becomes clear that there is indeed a streaming component. Not only can you download and sync files across devices, you can instantly stream all of the music that you own to your Mac or iOs device without downloading.

Even this though may not really mark the end of the Apple streaming discussion. What about music that you don’t own? A different model for music streaming is starting to make leaps and bounds in popularity and even more than Amazon’s cloud service and Google’s Music Beta, this one could represent a serious threat to iTunes’ music sales and even its core business model.

The New Kids on The Block

This new threat doesn’t seek to sell individual songs or even albums, instead they’re selling freeform access to a database containing almost every song ever recorded. For a small monthly fee you can listen to whatever you want, whenever you want (as opposed to a Pandora-like station where your influence is limited). Create a playlist with a few hundred songs, listen to them all for a while and then ditch it for a new list of completely different content. If you listen to a new album and hate it, switch to something else instantly without wasting a dime.

These apps look and feel like your personal iTunes library, the main difference being your personal library is nowhere near this expansive. With millions of choices all available instantly, there’s very little to not love about this new system.

Previously, Rdio largely owned this strategy in the U.S. but Spotify has finally hit our shores and is gaining ground fast with a free, ad-powered plan that is quite enticing to users who don’t want to dish out $5 a month to Rdio.

Both Spotify and Rdio are awesome services earning high marks from their customers. Both represent a fundamental shift from the old way of buying only the music want towards the new way, which instead lets you subscribe to all the music you could possibly listen to and more.

Will Apple Respond?

The biggest question I have about these new services is whether or not Apple will perceive them as a threat. The most dangerous part about being the leader in any tech sector is that you can easily get comfortable and wake up to find that the industry has innovated past you. After all, this is precisely what Apple did to the physical CD sales of retail giants like Wal-Mart.

The music industry seems to be willingly signing up for this new form of music access which could possible hold more potential for continual profits than mp3 sales or radio. As a happy customer listening to Spotify as I write this article, I can honestly say that I don’t feel a pressing need to actually purchase an album from iTunes any time in the near future.

As cool as iCloud is, in its current state it’s a response to a completely different question than the one we’re posing. However, I would wager that the folks at Apple aren’t so easily outmaneuvered. You can bet that they’re at least looking into the pros and cons of a streaming subscription plan. It’s entirely possible that iTunes could actually improve its monthly income with the addition of a Spotify-like streaming plan.

Testing the Streaming Waters

Apple recently made a tiny move in this arena and it perked up the ears of every tech blog on the web. The Red Hot Chili Peppers just came out with a new album and before it was officially released, iTunes offered customers an exclusive opportunity to stream the entire album once to check it out.

This is definitely a new trick for Apple to pull out of its proverbial hat and it has us all wondering what else they’re cooking up. The move is a full-on admission that the possibilities for streaming and iTunes together haven’t been explored anywhere near their potential.

What Do You Think?

Personally, I hope that Apple is indeed exploring options for streaming. As I’ve mentioned before in previous articles, I have little need for services like Google Music Beta, which seem geared towards letting me hear the music that I own when I’m not at my own computer or in possession of my iPhone or iPad, which is pretty much never.

However, I find the freedom of services like Rdio and Spotify extremely liberating. If my friend tells me about an artist that I might like , I can instantly pull up every album they’ve ever recorded and listen to them from start to finish at no additional cost than what I’ve already budgeted for the month. It’s as if this was how music was always meant to be.

I think if Apple is going to continue to rule music sales, they need to keep a close eye on innovations like these services and make sure that they don’t represent a significant threat to mp3 downloads. If they do, it’s time to plan the next major evolution of the iTunes store. If the Spotify business model works, it could be applied to music, movies, books and more in iTunes. An enticing thought to say the least.

Ultimately, all of this is pure conjecture at this point. Your guess is as good as mine as far as if these services are remotely a threat to iTunes and how/if Apple will respond as a result. Leave a comment below and share your thoughts on the future of music enjoyment. Will individual song and album purchases reign for years to come or will streaming subscriptions begin to replace an old and tired music consumption model?

It’s kinda crazy to think, but our little internet startup, Envato, has been on the air now for five years. We started back in 2006 as four very enthusiastic and totally green entrepreneurs with a shoestring budget and a love of the web. Fast forward five years and while we’re hopefully a little less green, we’re still incredibly passionate about Education, Marketplaces and the web! It’s been an amazing time and we’d like to share a look inside our Melbourne HQ offices, some stats about Envato and a big thank you to the community.

Behind the Scenes

With such a big milestone, we thought it might be good to give an inside glimpse into our Melbourne HQ offices and some of the people that work here. So we invited a Melbourne film crew called Compulsive to come in and shoot a 3 minute video about Envato. I hope you enjoy it!

As you may know, we also have a large remote team working around the globe on our sites. Next year we’re hoping to gather all of Envato and as much of the community as possible for an epic meetup, but in the meantime if you’re curious to see who’s who, you can check out this little video from our remote staff meetup last year in Chicago.

Some Stats

Looking back at five years of exciting and sometimes exhausting Envato work, I put together some stats about Envato from our time online so far. In five years we have:

• Published over 10,000 tutorials and articles helping people learn everything from Photoshop to Freelancing
• Hosted over 300,000 items for sale on our marketplaces from WordPress themes to Stock Photos
• Showcased over 12,000 items of inspirational design, photography and a host of other creative mediums on Creattica
• Listed over 8,000 jobs on our freelance job board
• Reviewed and rounded up over 3,000 apps on our AppStorm network
• Launched 9 marketplaces, 11 tutorial sites, 9 blogs, 18 books, 7 bundles, 4 Regular Podcasts, and more social media accounts than you can poke a stick at
• Accumulated close to 1 million RSS subscribers and twitter followers
• Signed up almost 1 million marketplace members, 90,000 Creattica members, 50,000 FreelanceSwitch members, and 40,000 Tuts+ Premium subscribers
• Served up well over 1.5 billion pageviews across all our sites since inception

Holy toledo batman!!

Thank You

I can’t say thank you enough to all of you for supporting Envato all these years. Whether you are long-time user of the Marketplaces, Tuts+, AppStorm, FreelanceSwitch or Creattica, or just a casual visitor, we’re really proud that you stop in and use our sites. If you’re one of the thousands of contributors, authors, writers, and subscribers, we’re honored and humbled that you have helped us build this company and filled these sites with such amazing content. And regardless of who you are, we hope that we can continue to provide value and service to you for many more years to come!

On behalf of the whole team, thank you all!
Collis
CEO, Chief Tea Drinker and Web Designer Who Doesn’t Get to Design Anymore
Envato

P.S. If you’re not all video’d out, you can check out this video of one of our early Envato staff

Platform games were among the first games to be designed (after, of course, the simplicity of Pong). Ever since, people have been playing platformers for their low learning curve and, in many cases, their sheer addictiveness. Just because some of the best platform games are more than two decades old (I’m looking at you, Super Mario Bros. 3) doesn’t mean that developers aren’t still doing some impressive and innovative things with the genre.

Today I’ll take a look at eight platform games available on the Mac App Store that are either traditionally rock solid, or bringing something entirely new to the table.

Conclusion

It’s important to note that several of the games on this list were originally iOS games. Data is already surfacing indicating that iOS devices may be one of the biggest competitors in the mobile-device gaming space, and with many of those games being ported to Mac and even improved on, I no longer think it’s a long shot to expect the popularity and quality of Mac gaming to increase in the coming months.

What is your favorite platform game for Mac?

Last week Steve Jobs announced that he was stepping down as CEO of Apple Inc. and passing the torch to his successor, Tim Cook. To put it mildly, Mr. Cook has some pretty large shoes to fill.

The last time Jobs left Apple, his replacements nearly ran the company into the ground. Profits were in the red, Microsoft had won the marketshare game and Apple’s stock price was at an all-time low. Steve came back as interim CEO in a sort of temporary fourth down Hail Mary that proved so successful that he stayed in the position for another fourteen years. Steve put Apple back on the map, made it the highest valued company on the planet and completely revolutionized a few industries along the way.

Fortunately, this time Steve was very active in surrounding himself with extremely talented people, such as former COO Tim Cook. Most industry experts see a positive outlook for Apple in the next few years, confident that people like Cook, Schiller, Ive and Forstall are more than competent enough to continue Apple’s reign.

Today we want to know what you think. Will Tim Cook, who has actually been filling in as CEO for quite some time, be able to lead Apple into a prosperous and exciting future or will we see a repeat of the 90s?

We’d like to take a moment to say a big thank you to this week’s sponsor, Stuf 2.

Stuf is a super advanced clipboard manager. Not only does it give you full access to your clipboard history, it lets you easily copy and paste between Macs over your wired or wireless network!

Share With Anyone

Stuf stores your clippings and can share them with any other Stuf users, even in a different country, with your permission of course. Stuf can use any network drive to share clippings, but we really recommend you use DropBox.

Stuf stores your clippings in simple folders, so DropBox can easily mirror them to your other computers, keeping your clippings synchronized.

Easy to Use & Lion Ready

Stuf is easily accessed through a user definable global shortcut or an always accessible menu on your menubar. You can access shared clippings just as easily, through the menu, or the easy to use new user interface.

Stuf 2 has been rewritten from the ground up, it’s faster, leaner and designed for Lion.

Go Get It!

Check out Stuf on the Mac App Store and start clipping smarter today! If you want to give it a test run first, head over to the Stuf website for a 30 day free trial.

Our Macs are capable of so much: we can play games, design graphics, record music, the list is near endless. So why is it still so awkward and time consuming to convert video and audio file formats? The answer lies with both the various proprietary licenses which each format brings to the table and the significant processing power needed to perform such tasks.

As a musician I know all too well how difficult it can be to convert your AIFF files to lossy formats such as MP3, and videos are a whole headache in of themselves, requiring the correct encoding per device. What I need is to be able to bounce my media into whichever format I desire, whether a song from the studio, an audiobook on my iPod, or a movie for iPad, and I want all of this without worrying about codecs, DRM, or screen resolution settings.

Smart Converter promises to help out with all the above, read on after the break to see if it delivers.

Stepping Up To The Plate

There has long been a place for a Smart Converter type app in my digital life, because though I use Handbrake and VLC for my video needs, the process is more time consuming and involved than I would like and not the kind of seamless, intuitive experience I’ve come to demand from my Mac. For audio, I’ve long been a fan of the slightly obscure but very capable XLD. I have no complaints with XLD but if Smart Converter can handle both my audio and video needs and do so with less hassle, then all the better!

“Lossless” audio refers to high-quality audio, resulting in a large file while “Lossy” concerns compressed formats, such as MP3, which offer significantly reduced file size, with a resulting reduction of quality

Converting Audio

Smart Converter is a very simple to use app. In fact, it is the most beginner-friendly of its type that I’ve yet to come across. On launch the user is presented with the main window featuring presets for Apple TV, iPad, iPhone & iPod, Android Phone, Android Tablet, Music, and Other. The latter has a drop-down list of several more options such as XBox.

Deciding to begin with what I know best, I navigate my Mac’s hard drive to some high quality uncompressed 24bit WAV audio files which were taken straight from a recent studio master. Dragging and dropping into Smart Converter’s window as shown above, the app doesn’t balk at my questionable musical abilities but instead presents me with the screen below:

Smart Converter offers a help file of rare utility and clicking on the small question mark brings up a file entitled “Why Smart Converter Is So Smart”. It is a very good document which gives a better understanding of exactly what is happening and why, offering information in a succinct manner.

Now ready to convert my file, I simply hit “Convert” and Smart Converter did the job, without any questions on format, bitrate or the like – here lies an important point with Smart Converter, it is definitely unsuited to power users or audiophiles.

Taking a look at my newly converted MP3 file and bringing up OS X’s “More Info” pane, it was apparent that the MP3 had been converted to a low bitrate of just 128kbps. Without wanting to get too sidetracked on the merits of MP3 as a music format, 128kbps will produce a significant drop in sound quality and one does not need to be a snobby audiophile to demand something better.

Delving into the “Other” option did bring up an option for Apple’s own AAC format but this was again set to a low bitrate. In addition to this, you can only convert one audio file at a time, which would make converting an album a tedious task.

So, though it is indeed simple and easy, as an audio converter I’m afraid that Smart Converter leaves a lot to be desired. Still, Smart Converter does not really bill itself as a music converter, it is video that most users are interested in, and happily the app is not found to be lacking in this department.

Converting Video

Smart Converter is much more adept at handling video. I decided to convert my pre-ripped digital copy of horror cult-classic Sleepaway Camp 2 for scary late night iPad viewing. To start, I repeated the drag and drop maneuver previously outlined, this time offering Smart Converter an avi to wrangle with. I was now given a warning that the conversion would be taking place at “Slowest” speed. Once again clicking the “Convert” button, I went to make a cup of tea and waited. Then waited a while longer…

The video ended up taking quite a while to finish up in the end and I decided to test Smart Converter against Handbrake and found the results to be enough to matter. Smart Converter clocked in at 1 hour and 4 minutes, while Handbrake took just a shade under 50 minutes on my mid-2010 MacBook Pro.

This test was somewhat unscientific as I continued using my Mac as normal while converting both files, so results may vary.

Who Should Use Smart Converter?

My previous issues with audio quality aside, Smart Converter is nevertheless capable of converting video and it is for this purpose which I feel this free app should be judged.

While Handbrake will continue to be the choice of tech-savvy users, Smart Converter should still be very useful for those who either don’t want the added complexity of other apps, or else would prefer a more streamlined method of use – at this it excels.

If you’re like me, Wikipedia isn’t just a resource, it’s a source of entertainment. I spend hours clicking through articles, learning everything from topics that concern me (music and social media) to niche subjects that could not be further from my field of expertise (Alexander the Great and Narcissus). While I do spend quite a bit of time on it, I have struggled to find a suitable desktop Wikipedia experience.

Today we’ll take a look at Wikibot, a simple and straightforward app that brings Wikipedia browsing to the desktop.

Interface

The first thing to note about Wikibot’s interface is that it very much looks at home on your Mac. The design is similar to standard OS X apps such as iCal and Address Book. The only buttons reside along the top toolbar, and they include Back and Forward buttons that maintain a congruent navigating experience to that of a web browser, as well as a sidebar on the left that lists the ‘table of contents’ for quick navigation of a particular Wikipedia article.

A search bar is prominently displayed front and center. Through the use of right-click menus, Wikibot even allows you to open multiple articles in tabs.

The main viewing pane formats content from Wikipedia in an easy to read layout. It is customizable from the Preferences menu, allowing you to choose one of six fonts, in seven sizes, and 37 languages. You can also select a color theme (standard, sepia, and night). Still, while the interface is clean and easy to use, it could certainly use some sprucing up. I personally think those big orange navigation buttons are somewhat unsightly!.

Wikibot also includes an image viewer, accessible by clicking on an image from an article. The images are zoomable, and can be played in a slideshow.

Features

Now you’ve got a desktop Wikipedia reader right on your desktop. It works just like the webpage, right?  Wrong. What makes Wikibot shine (aside from it’s really slick icon) are the three important features that make a dedicated desktop client worth having over a bookmark in your web browser.

As a big fan of using a current article to branch out and learn about something new, I have to note the “Categories” list in the sidebar. Chances are, the article you’re looking at belongs to a series of categories of Wikipedia pages. Simply click on one of the Categories in the sidebar, and a pop up window will show you a scrollable list of articles in that same category for your knowledge-expanding pleasure.

The second feature that is definitely worth discussing is the Favorites menu, which is more of a subset of features than a feature in itself. The Favorites menu (obviously) allows you to save articles as favorites, but that’s only the beginning. It can also give you access to your viewing history, as well as a bank of articles you’ve saved for future reading. Right clicking in an article (or on an article link) will give you a menu option to “Read Later.”  These articles are saved to the subcategory in the favorites menu.

One of my favorite features of Wikipedia is the random article link on the homepage. In fact, I enjoy this feature so much that I have a bookmark for it in my browser and I use that as my main link to Wikipedia in order to learn something new. The reason I bring this up is because I think it’s an important function that the folks behind Wikibot thought to include. Right on the menu bar is a random article button, loaded with all of the surprise education goodness of the link on the web page.

Conclusion

Wikibot is a fresh take on Wikipedia browsing. The interface could use some spiffing up, but it brings enough unique and useful features to the table beyond ease-of-access.

With a verbal community of users (at least on the App Store), I am confident that the developer will continue to improve what is a great concept. While most of the Wikipedia clients out there are desktop widgets or simply portals to the webpage, Wikibot has the potential to find its way into my arsenal of research tools.

There are plenty of ways to open and switch apps. There are app launchers, the dock, Spotlight, Mission Control, the Launchpad, and the Cmd+Tab app switcher. We all use a different method, all of which have their own strengths and weaknesses. For the most part, I simply use the dock, but one thing that I’ve never liked about it is that it’s very difficult to organize.

What if the dock could get some sort of feature that would make it more organized? Say, something like tabs that divide your apps into categories? Well, today we’re reviewing an app called Tab Launcher that does just that. Let’s take a look.

Getting Started

The first time you run the app, you’ll be greeted with a “Welcome” screen describing what the app does and how you should use it. Because of the nature of the app, I expected the installation process to be tedious, but it almost seems to be non-existent. You just buy it and open it.

Now, basically this app works as a dock, but organized in tabs. You could pretty much get the same effect by using folders on your dock, but Tab Launcher makes it much easier and more intuitive to organize your apps.

The Interface

By default, the app will show a few tabs peeking out of your right side of the screen, and if you hover your mouse over them, the “dock” will appear, allowing you to browse through your current tabs, one at a time. You can also arrange the apps and launch them, of course.

The dock and tabs are by default in different tones of purple, but you can change them as we’ll see later. As for the look of the app, it is pretty much identical to the dock, although you can change the transparency through the settings, and it’s a bit more colorful.

Working with Tabs

The Welcome screen will teach you that you can drag-and-drop tabs to arrange them in the order that you want. You can keep them together, or spread them over the screen. This also works with the apps, and even with the dock itself, which you can change between the right, left, and bottom side of the screen.

By right clicking inside of a tab is where you get technical. There you have all the configuration settings: adding new tabs, renaming old ones, changing colors, adding separators, even changing the font color of tabs.

Adding New Apps

The most effective way of adding new apps to the Launch bar is by opening your Apps folder and dragging and dropping apps into your preferred tab. You can have as many tabs as you want, so you can also go into as deep of a categorization as you want to.

You can also switch any app from tab to tab, but what you can’t do is have one app repeated in two different tabs. You can delete any app from the dock by right clicking it and selecting to delete it, or by simply dragging it to the desktop.

How Was It?

I admittedly expected this to run quite slowly and to severely affect my productivity (I have a white Macbook, speed isn’t its strong suit). But it actually runs surprisingly smooth and fast, even more than the normal dock. There aren’t many things to complain about with this app. It’s cheap, and it does exactly what it advertises. It works fast and doesn’t seem to have any noticeable glitches. It’s biggest downfall is that the problem it solves isn’t exactly a problem that most people have.

It would be nice to be able to completely hide the app, although I guess the main concept is that the tabs are always visible, making it easier and faster to select any app without having to hover over the dock to open and read the categories.

Don’t expect it to be very different from your dock. If you are happy with your dock, then keep it, you don’t really need this app. All it does is bring a different sense of categorization and order to the apps in your dock, but in some ways it could even be perceived as slower for your productivity, since you don’t really ever have a full quick view of all your open apps.

I’m not quite sure how you are supposed to use this app. Do you use it as a complement to the dock, or do you use it as a replacement for the dock? I guess it’s a matter of choice, and if you are interested in Launch Bar, I would suggest you try it for a few days in conjunction with the normal dock, just to see how much you really need it.

Conclusion

I thought this app would be overshadowed by Lion’s Launchpad, but it actually works very differently. Yes, the Launchpad is probably prettier and gives you more of a modern mobile feel, but the Tab Launcher is easer to set up and faster to browse and bring up.

The idea for this app is good, in fact, it’s great. But I don’t think the developers got the timing right by releasing this app just a few days after we got Launchpad with Mac OS Lion, which pretty much fills the same purpose as this one. Just like always, this is a matter of opinion and seeing what works best for you and your needs.

It’s time for another “Ask the Editor” post today. A big thank you to everyone who sent in their questions – it’s great to have the chance to help you out with your Mac-related queries and quibbles.

Today I’ll be offering some advice about apps for creating and managing bibliographies, keeping track of your finances and setting up advanced alarm actions. Read on for some awesome tips and tools to make your Mac experience even better.

I’m looking for a free Mac app that strictly helps you create citations and compile a bibliography, nothing fancy.

– Renee

Great question Renee! Bibliographies are something that countless students and writers are cursed with creating daily. There are so many rules involved and alternate styling guides that formatting mistakes are bound to happen if you do it manually. Not to mention it can take forever!

Back when I was in college, I always used KnightCite or some similar free web app, but there are some native options for this too.

For starters, both Word and Pages can help you generate and manage citations. Check out this page for a screencast straight from Apple on working with Citations in iWork. For Word, this process varies quite a bit from version to version, check here for a guide on citations in Word 2011.

Even with these options, there is still plenty of need for a simple, dedicated bibliography app like the one you mentioned. Fortunately, there’s BibDesk a free, open source Bibliography manager for Mac.

BibDesk will keep track of both the bibliographic information and the associated files or web links. Given your requirements, I think this is the perfect app for you!

I like the simplicity and aesthetic of iOS apps like Budgetbook, Saver and MoneyBook. Why aren’t there any Finance apps like that for the Mac?

– Sean

After a thorough investigation, I’ve decided that you’re right. There are a ton of really gorgeous finance iPhone apps but those for Mac tend to just borrow the standard OS X interface. They also tend to be quite cluttered and complicated. It would be great to see developers start to translate the experience of apps like Moneybook to the Mac.

In the mean time, you’ll have to make due with what’s available. The Mac finance app that I always recommend is Money, it’s simply one of the best options around for managing your finances on your Mac.

In the simple and attractive finance category the best is probably Koku. It’s very straightforward and easy to use and the reports are pretty snazzy. Check out our dedicated review here.

Is there an app that will act as an alarm, that will vocally indicate the weather, time and/or other things?

– John Holmes

Right out of the box, your Mac can speak the time. All you have to do is go to Date & Time in System Preferences, click on the Clock tab and activate “Speak Time.” Here you can set the interval and voice. I warn you though, it’s quite startling and a little creepy to hear a robot voice unexpectedly begin talking to you once every hour!

Unfortunately, there’s no option in that preference for speaking the weather. For this type of functionality, you should check out a little utility called iAlarm. For less than two bucks, you get a ton of functionality, including the ability to speak the weather, play a podcast or playlist, run an AppleScript or speak a custom message at times that you specify.

If you want to do even more with alarms, check out Alarm Clock Pro. At almost $20, it’s a little pricey, but for good reason. It can control nearly every aspect of your Mac that you could hope for and perform automated functions at a given time.

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!