Category: Mac

Organization is crucial for greater productivity and we all know the famous saying, “A failure to prepare is a preperation to fail.” On Macs, you’ve got a whole range of programs designed to help you become more productive and improve your organizational skills. You can use the traditional option of iCal, which has been given a much-needed rework in Lion, or if you prefer to have your calendar synced across all platforms, you can use Google Calendar. Facebook also comes in handy for keeping track of those house parties as well as your friends’ birthdays.

But there are times where you want to see exactly what’s happening across all your calendars without having to look all over the place. Enter CalendarBar. It’s a lightweight application available exclusively from the Mac App Store that runs quietly and nonchalantly in your menu bar and lets you view all your appointments from all your synchronized calendars with one click. The developers, Clean Cut Code, state on CalendarBar’s website that it’s a “unique way to keep track of your events”. Let’s take a closer look at CalendarBar and see whether this claim holds up.

Features

CalendarBar is a small, discreet application that runs merrily away in your menu bar and gives you an overview of all your different calendars with just a single click. For the price of $4.99, you can integrate iCal, Google Calendar and Facebook into one application and setting them all up is an absolute breeze. Your iCal events are automatically synchronized and authorizing Google Calendar and Facebook takes no time at all.

The user interface in CalendarBar is simple and uncluttered. Your events are grouped by day from all of your calendars and color-coded depending on whether they are from Facebook, iCal or Google Calendar. This is especially useful if you use different calendars or if you want to separate your work and social life!

CalendarBar places a little icon next to each event letting you know whether it is a birthday or calendar event so you’ve now got no excuse for “missing” your friend’s birthday. If your friend’s year of birth is also entered in on Facebook, CalendarBar will let you know which birthday your friend is celebrating (this obviously helps you choose a suitable birthday card!).

Clicking on any event takes you to the full entry in either iCal, Google Calendar or Facebook, allowing you to see all the information about that particular event. You can specify exactly which date range you want to see, ranging from a day to a month.

The app is also extremely customizable and allows you to tweak and tailor virtually every aspect of the program to suit your likings. If you’ve downloaded Growl (and who hasn’t?), then you can set up CalendarBar to give you a Growl notification before an event is due to start.

Practicality

CalendarBar reminds us all of why we bought a Mac. It’s a simple, no-frills application that does what it says on the tin. It provides the easiest way to view all your calendars simply and easily and without having to check all your different calendars.

It’s not full of wonderful, innovative features and yes, the user interface is very basic, but why would you want something that is complicated to use? Clean Cut Code seem to extend this principle to its other applications, and there is an version of this program available for the iPad, called Cloud Calender, which has pretty much the same features.

Conclusion

CalendarBar is a bit of a rarity. You’d expect that for such a cheap program, the developers would leave out vital features or disregard certain aspects. But every little detail in CalendarBar has been accounted for. The moment you start using it, you notice the attention to detail that has been paid, the design has been kept clean and clutter-free and that the developers have really concentrated on simplicity yet still preserve important features.

It’s really a joy to use and you certainly won’t mind parting with $4.99 for this program, a (very) small price to pay for such a useful little tool. I certainly got my money’s worth out of it and does seem that the developer’s claim of CalendarBar being a “unique way of keeping track of your events” holds up. For anyone who really wants to get organized but who wants to do it in a simple, yet intuitive way, then CalendarBar is definately a program worth considering.

Software design has made some interesting strides lately. It’s possible that we’re beginning to see Apple’s role in setting UI standards give way to the innovation of third party developers.

Unfortunately, this shift makes for a much more complicated scenario for developers and designers. Tempers rise, fingers are pointed and even users begin arguing about the difference between inspiration and theft. When trends are set by third party designers, is it acceptable to follow them?

Evolution

The arrival of OS X brought a complete paradigm shift for app designers. Realistic “Aqua” icons began replacing the old OS 9 cartoony style and brushed metal textures took over everything in sight.

Before long, everything in OS X started to look pretty similar, just as it had in previous Mac OS versions. All Mac apps “looked” like Mac apps, which was in effect a good thing. Users like familiarity because it makes an operating system easier to use.

This “Apple” look has gradually evolved over time with a few major jumps, defined for the most part, by Apple. The biggest influences were likely updated iterations of OS X (Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, etc.) in conjunction with new iLife versions. Each OS X brought large, overarching design changes that just about every developer was expected to follow. iLife on the other hand, represented Apple’s best UI suggestions for structuring your apps. Suggestions which developers eagerly took and users eagerly adapted to.

Take iPhoto as an example. iPhoto represents a quintessential UI pattern for OS X users. We’re familiar with the layout, the colors, and everything else that makes iPhoto look and feel like iPhoto. We’re familiar with it not only because of iPhoto itself, but because the same UI was then picked up and used in just about every app with an image gallery. When we have an app that contains lots of photos, screenshots, etc. we both want and expect it to look like iPhoto.

The same is true of Mail, not technically an iLife app but certainly designed with iLife shifts in mind. In OS X, Mail set the standard for apps that featured lots of text-based content that needed to be sorted through and read quickly. Email clients, database apps and RSS readers all directly cloned the Mail interface and used it for their own purposes.

A New Game Changer

Every now and then in this history, a third party app would come along and set a standard. We’re still seeing the effects of Quicksilver’s influence on launchers and Transmit’s influence on FTP clients.

One of the most notable of such events recently took place in the case of Tweetie/Twitter for Mac. Twitter apps were once a dime a dozen, but Loren Brichter came along and gave us one that shocked us in its beauty and simplicity. It struck out on its own, leaving behind standard UI rules that we had all grown accustomed to.

The impact of the interface can be seen in the sheer volume of users Tweetie still had right before it became Twitter for Mac. Despite the fact that development had seemingly gone stagnant, leaving Tweetie completely void of standard Twitter features that every other client possessed, thousands of people like myself found that we simply couldn’t switch to any other client!

Tweetie Takes Hold

We’re now starting to reach a point where others have decided to jump on board this wagon. The Tweetie interface that we knew and loved was perfected in Twitter for Mac, and is being directly applied to apps across several categories.

The image above shows Twitter, Sparrow and Reeder, three apps in three different categories heavily influenced by Brichter’s work (Brichter was even directly involved with Sparrow to some extent). I can’t name any other non-Apple UI pattern that made such a quick, cross-genre leap!

Reeder Sets the Standard

The Reeder interface shown above is a scaled down view and actually wasn’t even added until fairly late in the Reeder beta stages. Before that, Reeder was busy blazing its own trail. As with Twitter for Mac, this pattern was very quickly picked up by developers and is well on its way to becoming the new standard for RSS clients, leaving behind the tired Mail metaphor.

The Rise of the App Developer

Tweetie and Reeder represent an important piece of Mac history. They seem to mark a rise in the influence of third party developers as standard setters that don’t necessarily subscribe to Apple’s standard UI patterns.

Think about it, here we are faced with Lion, a brand new operating system with widespread UI implications across the board and yet I’m writing about how the App Store is looking more and more like Tweetie and Reeder every day! This is a major shift from events surrounding previous OS releases.

We can trace this back to the iPhone and its revolutionary App Store. The iPhone not only reinvigorated software development, it brought it to new heights. Developers are rockstars like never before and that has spilled over to the Mac. These days, it’s almost as if Apple is looking to what’s popular in app design and basing their new design decisions on that rather than the other way around!

The Problem

With this shift, a huge problem arises in the form of intellectually property. When Apple sets the standard for app design, developers are actually expected to follow suit. No one suggests that LittleSnapper “ripped off” iPhoto, instead we write reviews about the “gorgeous iPhoto-inspired interface.”

This is not the case when the trend setter is a third party developer. If we post a review of anything that looks remotely like Reeder, commenters immediately cry out for the blood of the offending designers, longing to see them hanged for their crimes.

The thing that needs to be decided is, where do we draw the line between theft and the widespread adoption of a new and better UI pattern? Throughout the history of software, the masses have duplicated the efforts of the innovators. But what incentive is there to innovate if any successes are immediately cloned and occasionally even improved upon, making the innovator’s app anything but unique?

What Do You Think?

This article is merely meant to point out a trend and the resulting problem, not offer solutions. Frankly, I don’t know the answer. However, I’m quite curious to hear what your solutions are.

If Sparrow really is a better way to structure an email client, at what point should competing apps meet user demands and adopt everyone’s new favorite structure? If the Reeder model has improved upon the email UI we used to use for RSS, should other developers maintain the old system or join the revolution?

Eventually, standards have to be set. You can’t really make the argument each and every app developer should create unique interfaces. Imagine if every app on your Mac presented you with a drastically innovative UI. Wouldn’t that crush usability? Don’t we love Macs because of the consistency of the design and experience? So, who should set the standards and how do we know when something is a new standard and when it is intellectual property that shouldn’t be duplicated?

I have something of a confession to make – I’m very particular when it comes to computers. While I can walk around with two week’s beard growth or drive in a mud splattered car for most of the summer without a care, my Mac has to be ‘just so’. After all, my Mac is what I work on, it’s what I record my music onto and, since I don’t want a television in the house, my Mac is what I tend to digest most of my entertainment on too.

In order to keep everything as I like it, my Mac must be organized perfectly with a system of folders, colour coded files and, above all, a clean Desktop. Despite my best efforts however, this isn’t always practical, as there are no amount of temporary folders which can replace the speed and usefulness of using the Desktop as a place to temporarily store files for later categorising and/or deleting.

That’s why clutter-cleaning applications are so useful, affording the user the best of both worlds. Here’s some of the best available at the moment.

Clean Slate

Not to be confused with the popular Windows restore utility which goes by the same name, Clean Slate is developed by Old Jewel Software. As with each of the clutter cleaning programs covered here, Clean Slate is able to sit in the Menu Bar, accessible with just a click or two, though it does not do so by default.

Clean Slate is a visually pleasing app to use and is the most slick I’ve come across in its class. With options for activation via a keyboard shortcut, it can also replace your Desktop background with a custom image and several high quality images are included with the app.

It may be worth noting for those who are considering running Clean Slate on an older Mac, or one short of RAM, that Clean Slate used up approximately 45MB on my Mac running Lion when using a custom Desktop image. Hardly a cause for concern for the majority of users, but a little more memory intensive when compared to the some of the other methods covered here today.

$1.99

Camouflage

Developed by Briksoftware, Camouflage is a more lightweight application compared to Clean Slate and seems to run a little lighter on memory too, hovering around 12MB RAM when I used it. Though in its basic use, Camouflage sits in the Menu Bar and is able to hide desktop icons with a couple of clicks, the app brings a small but useful twist to a category of apps which seems to offer less scope for experimentation.

Accessible via Camouflage’s options menu, the user has the choice of integrating the app with OS X’s Finder. How it works is this: When hiding icons is selected, a double-click anywhere on the Mac’s Desktop brings up a Finder window showing the files. This mixed approach appears a rather minor point for Camouflage but I found it surprisingly handy in day to day use, thus pushing Camouflage ahead of the competition for me.

I did come across some reports of a bug in Camouflage which occasionally resets Lion wallpaper to default but was unable to reproduce it in tests on my Lion setup, so it may have been updated

$1.99

Desktop Curtain

The final of the three clutter remover applications here, Desktop Curtain is released by developers Many Tricks and has an immersive approach to hiding desktop icons. As the name suggests, Desktop Curtain masks your desktop with, quite literally, a curtain – though it should be pointed out that it also has the ability to hide icons in a more typical fashion, with options for both the system default wallpaper or custom ones too.

As with Clean Slate, Desktop Curtain uses approximately 45MB RAM in OS X Lion. Despite its excellent design, I didn’t take to Desktop Curtain’s graphics as much as Clean Slate or Camouflage, though it’s likely just a matter of taste and you may find yourself enjoying the apps novel approach.

while Desktop Curtain requires an Intel processor, Power PC users are supported with the free Desktop Curtain Classic, available here

$1.99

The Command Line Alternative

If you don’t want to use an app for something which can be covered with some light Terminal use, then here’s a slightly more technical method of hiding your Desktop icons. There shouldn’t be any issues with the method outlined below, but as always when using the Terminal, be careful, make sure you’ve backed up and use at your own risk. It’s also important not to follow the steps while Finder is actively performing a task such as copying files.

To begin, launch Terminal and then copy and paste the following text into Terminal’s window (as you can see in the above screenshot) and press Return:

defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool false


Next up you need to relaunch Finder. Despite the slightly ominous sounding ‘killall’ command shown below, all that actually happens is that Finder is quit and then automatically relaunched. Copy and paste the following:

killall Finder


Now hit Return and you should be all set. If you wish to return to normal and show Desktop icons again, relaunch Terminal and insert:

defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool true


Then repeat the ‘killall Finder’ command.

Conclusion

The above applications are the best I’ve yet come across for temporarily hiding desktop clutter but if you’ve got any other tips, tricks or recommended software for hiding desktop icons and cutting down on clutter in general, I’d love to hear about them in the comments!

The beloved Mac OS dock has been around for ages. Before Alfred, Spotlight or even Quicksilver, the dock was our solution for quickly launching applications. In fact, seriously old school Mac users will remember Launcher, a similar utility dating back to before OS X and the dock we know now even existed. In fact, maybe Launchpad is just Launcher resurrected, but I digress.

Though I’m definitely more prone to turn to Alfred these days for my app launching needs, I still like to maintain a nice dock: a handful of apps, neatly categorized and separated with spacers, zero magnification. I have a close friend who is the opposite. His dock is positively overflowing with apps set at the smallest size with a large magnification on hover.

Today we want to know about your dock-related tendencies. Use the poll on the right to say how many apps you keep in the dock and then leave a comment below about your setup. Are the apps organized? Do you use spacers or magnification? How about custom artwork?

It seems like there’s been an influx of RSS reader reviews here on AppStorm recently.  With great new (and sometimes novel) readers like Pulp or Reeder, we can’t help but get excited about them.  However, every now and then an RSS app comes out that doesn’t dabble with novel formats or unique interfaces.  They set out to achieve the simple goal of utility, and do it well.

MobileRSS is a Google Reader client that has long been popular on iOS devices, and now comes to Mac.  How does the desktop version hold up?

Interface

While I mentioned that MobileRSS doesn’t try to reinvent the way we read our news with novel interface features, I won’t hesitate to say that it does look damn good.  The interface is graphically sharp and uses great color contrast between the feeds and the viewer in the three-pane layout.  This layout choice makes using MobileRSS feel a little like using the iPad iteration of the same app (which was a joy to use, in my opinion). 

MobileRSS does a great job of incorporating all of the standard Google Reader features.  The sidebar gives access to your feeds, your home list (with all of your noted, shared, liked, and starred content), and a list of feeds from people you follow.  The buttons in the upper right corner are article-contextual, and allow you to keep an item as unread, “like” the current article, star the article, or share it to your followers.  The last button gives you access to connected services, allowing you to share content via Twitter, Delicious, or any number of other services, as well as opening an article in your browser.

My only interface-related problem with these buttons is that hovering over them doesn’t reveal tool-tips, which can be confusing to people new to Google Reader.

Usability/Functionality

In addition to all of the social and sharing functionality that accompanies Google Reader, MobileRSS includes a few handy readability features.  Similar to the Magic Reader in Pulp or the Readability feature in Reeder, MobileRSS allows you to set per-feed preferences on downloading full content for feeds that only publish summaries by default.  The “Download Full Post” button can be used to download a single post on the spot, then allowing you to switch between the full post and the summary.  The default preference, however, can be set in the Preferences window, forcing that feed to download full posts for all future articles.

The display layout buttons on the right side of the bottom toolbar switch between list view and image view.  I found this to be pretty neat in theory, but image view seems to have some inconsistency when pulling images from posts (I’m no programmer, so I concede that the Google Reader API may share some of the blame for this).

The image view layout changes the way that you move between articles, eliminating the  list pane and allowing you to move directly to another article from the same feed.

MobileRSS will also keep track of several Google Reader accounts.  The Preferences window provides access to account management, as well as allowing you to set an update schedule, full-post download preferences, whether or not to display the Unread Count badge on the dock icon, and a global shortcut for showing/hiding MobileRSS.  I find that most of the applications I use in my daily workflow are accessed via global hotkeys (Quicksilver, The Hit List, Twitterrific…) and it’s definitely helpful to have this feature built in.  Finally, the Services pane of the Preferences window allows you to configure all of your outlets for sharing content.

Conclusion

Aside from a few minor performance issues, I found MobileRSS for Mac to be a rock solid aggregator without all the bells and whistles of more novel readers.  The interface is clean and to-the-point.  While I certainly love the format readers like Pulp and Reeder,  I found that simpler reader like MobileRSS did wonders for my productivity.  As a result, I may leave Pulp for pleasure reading and use MobileRSS for news during my workflow.

What’s your favorite RSS aggregator?

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

After tracking, just drag and drop activities into projects. Sophisticated graphs show you how you spent your time each day and which projects consumed most of your time.

Reasons to Love Timing

Avoid Procrastination
Timing mercilessly shows you which activities are hogging your time, like browsing the web and playing games.

Properly Track Work Time
Don’t worry about forgetting to start or stop a timer for billing your clients. With Timing, all the tracking happens automatically.

Document-based Tracking
Timing tracks the path of every document you view or edit.

Safari and Chrome Support
Domains of websites you visit are also tracked.

Date Filtering
Watch your productivity plummet during the holidays.

Projects
Drag your activities into projects to categorize the time you spent.

Go Get It!

Only this week, Timing is available at a 30% discount off the regular price of $19.99. Get it from the Mac App Store today!

The popularity of online bill paying simplifies our lives in many ways (not to mention the tree savings), but without a solid piece of mail arriving at the door, it can be tough to remember the due dates for the many bills we pay each month. While you could set up repeating reminders in iCal, and keep track of what you’ve paid on spread sheets, the developers of Chronicle promise an easier way to keep track of bills for the memory-and-math-challenged.

Unlike many other finance apps, which try to do everything from creating budgets to tracking transactions, Chronicle is dedicated solely to helping you pay the bills. Find out if this simplified approach can prevent bill-related anxiety in today’s review!

David Appleyard reviewed Chronicle 2 a few years back, but the latest version boasts new features, a redesigned interface, and has made a quick climb to the top of the financial category in the App Store. Let’s see what’s new!

New Features

The developers boast that Chronicle 4 has been completely re-written to be much faster and more user-friendly, with some much-needed new features:

Tagging

You can now add tags to your bills, and use them to filter from the overview panel. Tags could be useful for things like splitting up work and home expenses, or dividing bills between two people.

Balance and Interest Rate

In addition, Chronicle now allows users to calculate the percentage of a payment that should be applied to the interest by inputting the interest rate and balance. This is an especially useful feature for those of us with less than stellar math skills.

Dropbox Sync

Chronicle 4 gives you the ability to sync your bills across multiple Macs with one click, by automatically moving the database folder to your Dropbox folder. This is a handy feature if you have more than one Mac, but it would be even better if it synced to iPhone as well!

Adding Bills to Chronicle

Adding a bill to Chronicle is pretty straight-forward, you just have to select an icon, name, and date. All of the other fields are optional (you can set bills to repeat monthly, weekly, bi-monthly, quarterly or annually). There are basically two kinds of bills to add: the kind that repeats at regular intervals, or a bill with a large balance that is to be paid off incrementally. For the former, add the monthly bill amount to the “amount due,” for the latter, add the total amount due to “total balance.” You can also add a URL for bills that are paid online, so that you can get to the website you need from within Chronicle.

Reviewing Bills

Once you’ve added a bill, you’re taken to the bill inspector view, where you’re given an overview of when the next payment is, the amount due, payment history, and then statistics displaying either the remaining balance or a comparison between this year and last year.

The payment history graph is pretty useful for fluctuating bills like phone bills, while the pie chart is really useful for larger bills being paid off. It doesn’t really seem practical to display a comparison between this year and last year as a pie chart, as one isn’t really understood as a fraction of another. Perhaps a bar graph would be more effective.

Paying Bills

When you’re ready to record a bill payment, you can select “Log Payment” and enter the details or attach a receipt. Once you’ve paid a bill, it gets added to the “all payments” list, where it can be edited by double-clicking.

Overview

The overview screen displays a list of your bills and shows the average amount paid each payment date as well as the remaining balance for larger bills. The “Month at a Glance” screen displays a handy calendar which shows each bill as an icon with a monthly summary of what has been paid, what is due, and a list of bills due soon.

At the bottom, Chronicle displays your monthly income as you enter it and subtracts what you’ve paid so far this month. I don’t really bother with this feature, because a lot of my expenses aren’t bills that I’d track in Chronicle, so the “remaining balance” line isn’t meaningful to me.

iCal Integration

When you add a bill to Chronicle, it adds each due date to iCal in a new calendar called “Chronicle.” Chronicle also adds iCal reminders up to 7 days before bill due dates.

What Chronicle is Good For

Chronicle is very useful for keeping track of regular monthly bills, especially if you need to be reminded each month. It’s also handy in helping you get a quick overview of all your recurring expenses, and an understanding of how individual bills have increased or decreased. If you’re paying off a bill in increments it also offers an easy graphical representation of your progress.

What it Doesn’t Do

If you’re a religious iCal user that doesn’t have a whole lot of difficulty keeping track of monthly bills, you might not find that Chronicle adds much functionality; the graphing features are nice, but not very flexible or powerful. Chronicle isn’t a complete financial management application, for something more fully featured, check out apps like iBank or Money. However, a lot of people (myself included) find that these apps require too much input and attention to be effective.

Conclusion

There’s a lot more Chronicle could do, like graphing all bills together, or allowing more flexibility with the way data is displayed. Chronicle does what it claims to do well, and it’s definitely a useful application for anyone that needs help keeping track of their bills.

Is it worth $15? Well I guess that depends on how much help you need. Personally, I think I can keep track of bills using iCal and my GTD app-of-the-week (or just wait for email reminders), but I don’t pay a lot of separate bills each month. If you own a house, a car, or just generally have a lot of bills to pay off and keep track of, I highly recommend Chronicle, and $15 will probably pay for itself if you haven’t been paying your bills on time. However, if you need more powerful report and record-keeping functionality, there are a lot of other apps out there that offer more complete feature sets (generally for a higher price).

How do you keep track of your bill payments? Do you think an app like Chronicle is necessary, or is it just another dressed-up spreadsheet?

If you scan the features page on the Adobe Photoshop CS5 website, you’ll find descriptions for almost 70 different features, everything from “Automatic lens correction” to “Fluid canvas rotation” to “Puppet warp.” But anyone who’s ever used Photoshop knows that 70 features is just the tip of the iceberg, and when you start to add the various options for each of those features, you’re talking about such a beastly bit of software that it sinks the hopes of any amateur who dares open it.

That’s where the Mac App Store comes in. With the Mac App Store’s democratization of the Mac software market, image-editing amateurs like me have access to a whole new range of “one trick ponies,” niche software that will do the one thing you’re looking for, and not a darn thing else.

Colorize is one such one-trick pony.

Overview

Rather than try to explain Colorize in a single sentence, I’ll just show you what it does.

Colorize turns your full-color photo into a grayscale canvas so you can “paint” your selected colors back in. You can’t add any color information that isn’t in your original photo; all you can do is paint the colors back in.

Getting Started

When you launch Colorize, you get a friendly, hand-sketched sign that asks you to either drop your image onto the sketch or import a photo from iPhoto or Aperture.

I was pleasantly surprised by this sign because it signaled that the developers at iApe had gone the extra mile. The developer could have just used a standard-style “Open” or “New” dialogue box, but no, they put time and effort into crafting something welcoming instead.

Anyway, as a good Mac user, I chose to drag and drop my images. The biggest image I used was 2048 x 2048, and Colorize loaded it in less than a second on my Macbook. Most users should be able to open pretty much any image they want.

From the user’s perspective, the loading process is basically one step: Colorize takes your photo and turns it grayscale. That’s when the fun begins.

Colorizing Your Photo

The Colorize interface is reduced to a single toolbar with seven tools, three of which (Save, Undo, and Redo) will rarely be used by anyone with a keyboard.

The other four tools you’ll use a lot. The first, Colorize, is what you’ll use to add your color(s) back into the photo. The second, Uncolor, is how you’ll clean up the edges of the things you want colorized. The third will adjust your brush size, and the fourth will zoom in or out on the photo.

You can anchor the toolbar to either the top or bottom of your window, and depending on where you’re at in the colorizing process, you’ll adjust it often.

Adding color back in to your photo is as easy as selecting a brush size and dragging your mouse across the screen.

Read that bit again, because it’s key: Colorize does not magically discover the colors in your photo and allow you to choose the objects that remain in color; you have to actually “paint back in” the color(s) you want. This is annoying, until you realize it’s fun.

Anyway, when colorizing, you can make your brush smaller to do the edges of each object, then make the brush bigger to color “between the lines.” Or you can use a big brush to colorize the general area you want, and then use a little brush plus the “Uncolor” option to uncolor around the edges.

After playing with a few photos, I preferred the latter option. I found it easier to see the colors I didn’t want than to find the edge of the colors I did.

Add more than one color

Because Colorize is just adding back in the color information that’s already there, you can add back more than one color.

I think it’s more difficult to make the colors “pop” when you work with more than one, but with the right photo and the right colors, I’m sure someone better than me could make it work.

Some Flaws

As much as I enjoyed playing with Colorize, it does have a few annoying flaws. The first is that closing the window closes the whole application. In most instances, this probably won’t be a big deal, since you’ll usually only be colorizing one photo, but if for some reason you get on a colorizing roll, this “Close to Quit” feature gets real annoying right around the third photo you’re trying to colorize.

Another little annoyance I found was that just clicking with my brush didn’t do anything; to get the color to show up (or uncolor), I had to click and drag. Again, this isn’t something you’ll notice very often, but when you’re working on the edges of your object and you get your brush lined up just right, only to click and find nothing happen, which means you have to move your caffeine-shaking hand just a hair before the color appears (or uncolors), well, it can make you want to scream.

Some Suggestions

Besides fixing those annoyances, the developers could make Colorize an even better app by adding some kind of “smart brush” that can automatically detect the edges between two colors. This would make it easier for amateurs like myself — people who aren’t gifted (or cursed) with a graphic designer’s sense of perfectionism — to have nice, colorized edges in our photos.

While the above suggestion might take a hefty bit of programming to implement, my next suggestion should be simple enough: add basic keyboard shortcuts for zooming in and out of the photo. The zooming function works with the standard “Pinch to Zoom” gestures on the trackpad, but mouse & keyboard users like me are forced to use the toolbar. It’d be nice if the developers implemented some standard zooming shortcuts for us.

Final Thoughts

If you are an amateur photographer who does little more than point and shoot and upload, then Colorize probably isn’t for you. But if you spend any time editing photos in iPhoto or messing around with Instagram filters, then Colorize will be a welcome addition to your image-editing toolset.

Colorize is easy to use, and with only one trick up its sleeve, you’ll know exactly when to use it.

Do you ever wish you could set up an app’s preferences, then create another profile with a completely different set of preferences?

rooSwitch is a unique app that does exactly that. Read on to see how you can put this incredibly useful app to work.

What Does It Do?

The concept here is something that I think lots of Mac users will be able to identify with, I know it certainly caught my attention right away.

You’ve spent valuable time setting up your various applications just the way you want them and almost never change anything because of the pain of returning it to the way it was. What if there were an easy way to save the current state of your preferences for any app, then launch a completely new preference profile with different settings?

That’s what rooSwitch sets out to do. Simply drop in an app, create a new preference profile and you’re off and running and can switch back to the old one at any time.

This may sound a little abstract and meaningless so let’s jump into some typical use cases so you can get a feel for how amazing this app really is.

rooSwitch & Sparrow Lite

Sparrow is everyone’s favorite new email client. The problem for many cheapskate users though is that the free version of Sparrow only allows you to have a single account. What if you have a work email account that you want to use during the day and a home email account that you use in the evenings? Enter rooSwitch (though rooSwitch is itself a paid app, so you’ll need more justification to use it).

Here’s the screen that you see when you launch the app:

There are a couple of important things to note here. First, notice the little “32 Switches Left” message at the top right of the window. rooSwitch is a $19 application, but you can download a free trial version, which allows you 32 total “switches” to decide whether or not the app is worth purchasing.

Next, notice how completely easy the workflow is: just drag in any app. Serious nerd Mac users like myself could probably handle copying and replacing preference files manually, but it’s definitely a pain and far beyond the scope of what your typical user knows how to accomplish. With rooSwitch, anyone can juggle multiple preference files with ease.

Once you drop on Sparrow, a “default” profile is created. Hitting the little “+” button at the bottom allows you to essentially reset the app and start over with a new user account. Now you can launch Sparrow and setup your home account and easily switch between the two in rooSwitch!

Double clicking on a preference profile will allow you to see which files are affected and apply a custom name to each collection of settings so that you can keep them nice and organized.

rooSwitch & WriteRoom

The reason I found rooSwitch was that I was looking for a way to manage multiple color settings in WriteRoom, my minimal writing app of choice.

In WriteRoom, the default interface is very dark and reminiscent of an old school DOS terminal. I liked this a lot at first, but once I began using WriteRoom on a daily basis, this color scheme really started to cause some eye strain. Fortunately, WriteRoom is highly customizable and made it easy to switch to a lighter color scheme that is much easier on the eyes. The downside is that I’m forced to completely reconfigure the app manually every time I want to switch to a different scheme.

As you can see, with rooSwitch thrown into the mix, I can manage as many color profiles as I want and easily switch between them. Sure, I’d love for this functionality to be built into WriteRoom but rooSwitch is so easy to use that it’s definitely an acceptable alternative.

Worth $19?

As you can see, rooSwitch is a highly practical utility. Further, the app functions in true Mac fashion in that it simply works, no fuss necessary. I fully expected the app to be a pain to use and half expected it to totally mess up the apps that I wanted to use it on. Instead, rooSwitch performs exactly as promised without a single hitch.

I love that there’s no awkward plugin system, since most Mac apps work the same, rooSwitch works on most Mac apps, even those built with AIR!

In my experience, there’s probably not one single rooSwitch use that will make me want to fork out the $19. However, when I consider all the implications of having this utility, it easily becomes worth the cost. Almost every app on my machine suddenly has the potential for having multiple user accounts and the ability to quickly swap between multiple complex configurations! That’s a beautiful possibility.

Conclusion

As more and more developers jump on the gold rush brought on by the Mac App Store, truly “unique” apps are quickly becoming ancient history. However, I’ve never seen an app quite like rooSwitch and thoroughly enjoyed testing it out. I give it a perfect score for identifying an actual widespread problem and offering a simple, elegant and highly functional solution.

If you’re looking for a way to easily swap out preferences in any application, be it to change color schemes or manage multiple users, give rooSwitch a download and let us know what you think.

These days we have so much information that needs safe keeping. With so many reports regarding identity theft breaking on a daily basis, security of digital items is as important as your physical goods. Alleyways across the Internet are at times darker than the real world, and all it takes is a tiny malware in your computer to transfer all your digital data to a basement dwelling hacker.

SecretBox allows you to store all sorts of information – Credit Card details, SSN numbers, Software Licenses, account login credentials, and much more. Let’s check it out.

Setting Up

While there are so many things on the launch screen, Open File or Create a new file are the only two that will get you going instantly. Open a file is for importing a Secretbox database, but I went the other way and decided to create one from scratch. After assigning a name and location for the file, you will have to set up a password to protect the file from prying eyes.

As a welcome addition, there is an option to add the password to the Apple Keychain. This is convenient and will allow the app to autologin so you don’t have to enter the password every single time. However, if you are sharing your Mac with others, keep in mind that enabling this feature may likely defeat the purpose of having Secretbox in the first place.

User Interface

After a snazzy visual effect, Secretbox will unveil your new secret database. The database will come with a bunch of example accounts preloaded to help give you an idea how useful the app can be. If you are not a fan of pre-populated databases, that is fine too, simply choose Create an empty file option when creating a file.

In my experience, I have always found apps that come with sample data to be extremely useful. So I was naturally delighted that I did not have to spend a lot of time figuring things out on my own through trial and error.

The three column layout of the app is not very visually appealing. Still, considering the flow of the app, this is justifiable. Next up, icons. Similar to the layout, the icons tend to be aesthetically displeasing. Fortunately, for those individuals who really need an icon changed, there are a few alternatives available to choose from.

To change an icon, simply double click on the category and select the preferred icon from the Settings window that pops up. While you are on this screes, you can also change the name of the category and the fields associated with that template, or use the drop down to select a new template altogether.

Adding a Secret

Adding a secret is as effortless as clicking the + icon in the center column. If you have opted for a template category, say Credit Cards, the form comes pre-populated with standard fields like name, card number, CVV, expiry date, etc. A detailed note can also be attached to each entry to ensure that all relevant information is recorded. Alternatively, there is an option to attach files to the entry. This means that you can safeguard things like credit card information along with copies of your credit card statements.

Adding a new custom field to each entry doesn’t take much time either. Hit the + symbol below the last entry and add as many as you need.

For those who frequently use the Secretbox app to search for and find the Credit Card details, login credentials, etc., the Quick Access feature will be immensely helpful. As soon as you select the Quick Access icon in the top right corner of the app, a hovering search window appears. From there, you can search for the data you are looking for. In Google Instant style, results start showing up with each character you type. In addition to this Quick Access option, there is a conventional search field in the app as well.

Securing the App

Do you tend to wander away from your Mac without locking it? Or, do you allow others access your beloved Mac and often worry they might get their hands on your private data? Secretbox allows you to extensively lockdown the app and the database from other users. From the Preferences screen you can set a timer to lock the database and to hide the displayed password after a preset time of inactivity.

Clearing the clipboard is a great practice and you can either set the app to clear it when the file is locked or when the app is closed. You do not want to be second guessing yourself when it comes to backing up the sensitive data you have stored. So, set your backup schedule (anywhere from hourly to monthly), sit back, and relax while Secretbox does all the grunt work of backing up everything you have stored. The backup process begins as soon as the app is closed.

Security

It is natural to wonder about the security of an app like this. So, for those of you who find yourself pondering about the security level of Secretbox, the app uses 256 bit AES algorithms to encrypt the files. In case anyone doesn’t quite undertand what that means, it is the standard used by the military to secure data. So, rest assured that the data you store with Secretbox is absolutely safe. In fact, as an additional security measure, Secretbox decyrpts only the files that you open instead of decyrpting all the files at once the way many other apps do.

Final Thoughts

Secretbox is a rock solid app for protecting sensitive information. For those who want to access the data stored in Secretbox while on the go, there are companion apps for the iPhone and the iPad that sync with the desktop app. While a visual revamp would take the app a long way, it seems to have a perfect set of features and is a steal at $9.99. Go grab it from the Mac App Store!

Since the dawn of home computing, those in the know have measured a machine’s worth with a look at the system’s specifications: A Sinclair Spectrum ZX which sported 128K of RAM was better than the 48K version and, likewise, a 500MHz iBook G3 was naturally superior to its clamshell ancestor, which housed a 300MHz processor. Once you understand the terms and the math, it’s simple. Or it was, anyway.

In more recent years, the picture has become a little muddled – is a 2.2GHz AMD CPU superior to its Intel rival? Throw in multiple cores and a choice of video card and a confused mess becomes positively Byzantine. Then there’s Apple, who as usual do things their own way.

Performance Over Processor

While each major computer manufacturer bring their own features, flaws and quirks to the table, it seems reasonable to state that Apple are currently at the top of their game. This is all the more remarkable when one considers that the Cupertino based team refuse to get sucked into spec-chasing, instead focusing on build quality, user experience and seamless software. A good example of this is the previous model (2010) MacBook Air, which sports a specification sheet which appears underwhelming at first glance:

• 1.86GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor
• 2GB RAM
• Either a 128GB or 256GB hard drive

However, despite the specs above, actually using one of the previous model MacBook Airs dispels any concerns about the ultra-portable notebook not being up to the task of a general use, every day computer. Part of the horsepower ‘deficit’ seen in the MacBook Airs is made up by the employment of super-fast SSD’s. Because much of our time on computers is spent performing relatively light tasks, processor-wise, the bottleneck of speed is often seen in the computer’s hard drive, rather than processor. This means that Apple can employ cost and energy efficient chips to great effect, without a noticeable cost in performance

One could also point toward Apple’s iOS devices, which can often be seemingly underpowered when compared to their competitors. The first iPad was not thought of as a powerhouse upon launch, yet it was a huge hit nonetheless. Whichever the product, Apple have gone a long way to relegating hardware specs to a less important place when considering a purchase.

Personal Computing For The Masses

Whether one sees this trend of Apple making things easier on potential customers as a positive move or not, they have long signalled a clear desire to do so. One of the first computer companies to implement a ‘point and click’ Graphical User Interface to enable users to execute simple tasks without the need for lines of code, there seems to be a driving force behind Apple to save their customers from needing to learn tech nomenclature when choosing the right computer for their needs.

They have a point, too. Buying a new computer is a complicated and challenging process for the non-nerds among us, even with a whole staff of Apple Store helpers in place to help technophobe customers choose the right Mac for them. Until recently, Apple’s efforts to convince users that they can forget Gigabytes, RAM and hard drive space had been met with firm resistance, a resistance that is now falling away with increasing speed.

Conclusion

Power users and those of us who take an interest in such things will continue to pour over Geekbench scores, processor speeds and performance charts for some time to come.

For the rest of Apple’s user base however, it seems that the people working at Infinite Loop are successfully taking steps to make specs irrelevant – the primary question which now needs to be considered by the average new Mac customers is whether to choose a portable or desktop model.

The Mac App Store has brought about a whole mess of new utilities that make your Mac more functional than ever.

Today we’re going to dive and find thirty particularly useful utilities that you’ll definitely want to check out and consider downloading.

Performance

MiStat

MiStat shows detailed information for your CPU, memory, disk usage, disk activity and network activity.

Though we might not see iStat Menus in the App Store any time soon, the same developers have whipped up this very similar tool. Instead of a menu bar utility like iStat, this is a full on desktop app that allows you to keep a close eye on all of your most important processes. It also happens to be gorgeous so you’ll be happy to have it running on your machine.

Price: $4.99

MemoryFreer

MemoryFreer is a little menu bar tool that has a single-click function that frees up unnecessarily used memory on your machine. When you’re starting to feel bogged down, just click the button!

There are several of these types of tools on the App Store, all of which have nearly identical functionality and receive mixed reviews from users. If you don’t understand more powerful utilities with lots of options like Main Menu, this may be a dollar well spent.

Price: $0.99

DesktopMonitor

Like MiStat, this tool monitors various performance aspects of your machine, everything from CPU usage to fan speed. It’s more like GeekTool though in that it prints the information in simple text that sits on top of your desktop image.

Leave DesktopMonitor running in the background and you can always check out what’s going on with your system in a quick glance at your wallpaper.

Price: $1.99

Network Logger

Network Logger records URL response times and graphs key facts about the uptime and performance of your web sites and creates an internet connection outage log.

For any of you network nerds out there, this is a great hub for all your network information; great for troubleshooting!

Price: $0.99

Washing Machine

Washing Machine cleans up files created by web browsers and other programs that access the Internet.

Bookmarks, caches, cookies, download histories, and browsing histories, all of these can collectively eat up significant space on your hard drive. Use washing machine to check out how much space these files are eating and clean them out with a quick click.

Price: $9.99

MainMenu

MainMenu has been around for quite a while and is a very well known and trusted utility for performing maintenance functions. With MainMenu you can free up disk space, clean your workspace, secure erase files and fine-tune your Mac.

Every action is quickly accessible from your menu bar so you’re never more than a click away from a cleaner, quicker OS X experience!

Price: $14.99

File Management

TrashMe

Did you know that dragging an application to the trash isn’t the best way to delete it? This almost always leaves various preference and library files stranded in random places on your Mac.

There are quite a few app deleting utilities that have been around for years but TrashMe is a newcomer to this market and features a slick, Twitter for Mac style interface and plenty of powerful features.

Price: $6.99

DupeZap

After a few years of use, your Mac’s file system can become quite redundant, eating up unnecessary space on your drive. With DupeZap you can automatically and quickly locate duplicate files to trim the fat from your machine and free up some much needed space.

In addition to searching files and folders, DupeZap will take a look at your iTunes, Mail, iPhoto and Aperture libraries and find duplicates to trash.

Price: $14.99

BetterZip

Your Mac comes with basic archiving abilities but power users always need to boost this functionality. With BetterZip, you can perform a wide array of powerful archive functions.

Example features include the ability to archive and unarche a ton of different formats, extract individual files located within a larger archive, search for a file using the iTunes-like interface, and protect your data with a password.

Price: $19.99

Singlemizer

Singlemizer is a slightly cheaper and simpler alternative to DupeZap above. All you do is drag files, folders, drives, etc. to the window and the app will scan and highlight and duplicates.

Get results fast. Unlike other duplicate-finding applications, you don’t even need to wait for a scan to finish before being able to delete duplicates.

Price: $9.99

FolderWatch

FolderWatch is like the opposite of a duplicate finder. Here the goal is to keep to folders perfectly in sync, perfect for backing up files or keeping files a web server updated with local changes.

I recently wrote a full review of FolderWatch and absolutely loved the app. Many apps make syncing two folders an unnecessarily complicated task but with FolderWatch you get all the functionality you need in a super easy workflow that you understand immediately.

Price: $11.99

Desktoday

Desktoday is a really cool application with fairly unique functionality that provides an elegantly simple solution for Mac users who tend to clutter up their desktops unintentionally.

Desktoday is a menu bar utility that clears the files and folders that get scattered on your desktop and puts them into a folder with today’s date: nothing more, nothing less. It’s pretty simple but it’s also free so why not give it a shot and see if you can fix your messy tendencies?

Price: Free

iCanCut

One frequent complaint that I hear about Macs is that you don’t have cut/paste actions in the Finder. Wouldn’t it be nice to hit a shortcut to cut an entire folder full of files and then another to paste it into different directory?

With iCanCut, you can do exactly that. Just hit “Command+C” and “Command+V” like you would in any other application and you’ll have yourself a great new way to move files around.

Price: $4.99

Tiny Expander

Tiny Expander doesn’t have a lot of bells and whistles, it doesn’t have a big fancy interface that performs tons of functions, it does one thing: extracts archived files.

Once again, your Mac comes with fairly limited features on this front and it’s often the case that you simply can’t open a file that you’ve downloaded. Tiny Expander comes to the rescue by providing support for 25 different formats, and it’s free!

Price: Free

Disk Tools

Disk Diet

You Mac is full of files that you don’t need: support for languages that you’ll never speak, outdated legacy code for applications, old caches and more.

With Disk Diet you can clear all of this fluff out in a few clicks and free up space on your drive for more important files. It’s easy, fast and works great!

Price: $1.99

Disk Inspector

If you need a little more power and freedom than Disk Diet offers, check out Disk Inspector. This utility allows you to visualize your data and quickly identify any files that are eating up the most space.

Disk Inspector is quite attractive and features gorgeous visual representations of your drive similar to those in DaisyDisk.

Price: $8.99

Jettison

Jettison is another extremely simple and practical utility. Your MacBook sits on your desk with various external drives plugged in, making it quite the process when you walk in and try to grab it and hit the road.

With Jettison, you just close the lid and the app will automatically eject your backup drive, iPod, or whatever is connected so you can safely unplug them, greatly simplifying your rush out the door in the morning!

Price: $1.99

System Enhancement

Boom

Boom is an awesome app that just about everyone with a laptop should have. The story is a typical one: you’re watching Hulu and straining to hear everything that’s said. Your MacBook’s volume is already cranked and you wish you could just get more out of those tiny speakers.

With Boom, you can easily fix this. Not only can you boost the volume on your Mac and access a system-wide equalizer, you can also boost individual song and movie files so they will play louder on your iPhone, iPad and other devices.

Price: $6.99

Contacts Cleaner

If your’e anything like me, your Mac’s Address Book has roots dating back to syncs with a second generation iPod. It’s a mess of duplicates, poorly formatted names and other countless issues.

With Contacts Cleaner, you can automatically spot and address these problems instantly and get back to a fresh, clean Address Book that’s actually useful!

Price: $4.99

Lingon

With Lingon you can schedule things to happen automatically on your Mac. It’s a simple but powerful application with endless possibilities.

You can run a script or launch an application at a given time or even watch folder and perform an action if anything changes. Basically, it’s a nice and simple visual interface to the over-complicated launchd utility.

Price: $4.99

Folders Factory

If you’re not a designer with extensive training in professional graphics software, designing your own custom folders might sound like an impossible task. Enter Folders Factory.

With this incredibly easy to use app, you can apply your own graphics to folders to create a variety of different effects. Create a nice embossed emblem or slap a snapshot on the folder cover. A few days with this app and you’ll love how customized your Mac begins to feel.

Price: $2.99

Watts

If you own a MacBook, you need to keep an eye on the health of your battery. Do you know how many charge cycles it’s been through? How about what its original capacity was versus its current capacity?

Watts will help you stay up to date on the life of your battery and even walk you through the steps to recalibrate your MacBook battery for more accurate readings.

Price: $6.99

SmartSleep

Did you know your Mac has multiple sleep functions? Do you know the difference between sleep, hibernate and a combination of the two?

SmartSleep gives you complete control over how your Mac goes to sleep. You can easily set up different options for sleeping based on battery level and choose from five different sleep modes. This is a really great utility that provides functionality that OS X really lacks by default.

Price: $3.99

ScreenNinja

OS X now comes with built-in screen recording functionality, but what about those actions that are too long to record in real-time? ScreenNinja allows you to easily create time lapses for particularly long tasks.

It also features normal screen recording and screenshot functions and can even instantly hide the clutter on your desktop so your Mac looks shiny and clean.

Price: $4.99

Menu Eclipse 2

Do you ever wish you had more control over your menu bar? Menu Eclipse allows you to dim, colorize and scrub the menu bar on your Mac. Make your menu bar your own!

Menu Eclipse is a safe utility that doesn’t hack or tamper with system files and uses almost no CPU resources.

Price: $2.99

Focus On

There are a million apps available that help your focus on a single window or area of your screen with the goal of increased productivity. This one is simple and free, try it out before you go and pay for a fancy one.

Price: Free

Security

VirusBarrier Plus

Do Macs really need virus protection? It’s a hotly debated topic, but you can be that the ever increasing ubiquity of Apple is sure to increase the number of attempts to exploit our favorite operating system.

VirusBarrier Plus protects Mac from viruses, Trojan horses and other types of malware. VirusBarrier Plus also detects Windows malware, so you don’t pass on infected files to Windows-using friends.

Price: $9.99

ClamXav

Better safe than sorry right? If you’re thinking that you may need to take steps to protect your Mac but aren’t sold on dropping $10 or more to do it, check out ClamXav.

ClamXav is a free virus scanner for Mac OS X. It uses the very popular ClamAV open source antivirus engine as a back end and has the ability to detect both Windows and Mac threats.

Price: Free

Password Tote

I’m not sure how I feel about this one. I included it because it’s a free an easy way to store your passwords. However, it looks like you’ll have to subscribe to a service to use it, which cancels out the free aspect. Definitely check it out but you might be better off in the long run purchasing a more powerful solution like 1Password or using a more robust free option like LastPass.

Price: Free

Hider

The concept here is something everyone can identify with: there are some files and information on your machine that you simply don’t want everyone to be able to access or even find.

With Hider, you can easily protect sensitive data in an attractive, organized and easy-to-use interface. Even if you don’t know a single thing about how to protect your files, you’ll be up and running with Hider in minutes.

Price: $9.99

FileShredder

While Hider protects the sensitive information while it’s on your machine, FileShredder steps in when it’s time to delete those files.

FileShredder pops up when you right-click on a file in the Finder so you have a quick and easy way to shred anything you want.

Price: $3.99

Conclusion

Thanks for checking out our collection of awesome utilities to boost your Mac’s functionality! I hope you found several must-have apps that will make your Mac experience that much better.

Leave a comment below and let us know what your favorite Mac utilities are. What couldn’t you live without?

In Lion, the Spaces feature has been replaced by Mission Control, one central location with some major window management capabilities (Exposé shortcuts are still available).

We recently published an article on Making the Most of Mission Control and would love to know how you’re getting along with the new system.

I think the best way to judge your acceptance of Mission Control is by noting how much you actually use it on a day to day basis. Is it a novelty feature that you forget exists (Dashboard anyone?) or is it something that you use constantly and couldn’t live without?

Cast your vote in the poll and then leave a comment below about why you love or hate it and if you miss any functionality from Snow Leopard.

We’d like to take a moment to say a big thank you to this week’s sponsor, 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. It monitors and detects hardware issues, keeps an eye on your processor and network performance, gives you stats about your files and storage, shows you a history of recent crashes and a whole lot more.

The application itself is gorgeous and conveniently sits on the side of the screen in a dock until you need it. You’re never more than a click away from all of your important information.

Here are some more reasons to love CheckUp:

• Optimized and build for recent Macs
• New core completely rewritten for Snow Leopard and Lion
• More than 100 new features planned for version 3.1 in September
• Available in 5 languages
• All updates always free for life

Go Try It Out!

CheckUp 3 is available for $29.99 on the Mac App Store. Alternatively, you can stop by the CheckUp website and try the free trial version.

Galcon Fusion is a strategy game sometimes described as “Risk, in space, in real-time.”  Players begin with a planet that generates a certain number of ships per minute (based on size), and must strategically use those ships to overpower the forces of opponents in order to seize control of all planets on the map.  When moving ships between planets, you can choose any percentage between 5% and 100% (in increments of 5%) that represents the size of the fleet leaving the planet.

As a long time fan of gaming (real-time strategy games, in particular), I was excited to get my hands dirty with the Mac/iPad follow-up to the popular Galcon for iPhone.  Galcon Fusion carries on the same concept as the original, but bringing it to the bigger screen, along with several new game modes.

Game Modes

In addition to the classic play style, the game adds a series of additional game modes that can be played at 10 difficulty levels ranging from Cabin Boy to Grand Admiral (this is also the scale used for your win-rank in multiplayer, more on that later).  In Vacuum, you are the only player, and the object is take over all of the neutral planets on the map before time runs out.  I find this is good practice for learning to manage your units.

Beast is a game mode in which your opponent begins with control of many small planets that each have a few ships, while you control two large planets with many ships.  The idea is to effectively manage your fleet sizes to take over all of the planets before your opponent gets the opportunity to build a fleet large enough to overpower you.  3-Way is a relatively self explanatory game mode in which 3 players (you and two computers) fight to be the last man standing.

Stealth, Billiards, and Crash are all close variants of Classic gameplay.  In stealth, your opponent’s ships will be visible when leaving a planet, but other than that are hidden from view, so their destination is unknown to you.  In Billiards, the planets shift around in space and bounce off of each other, dynamically changing the playing field.  Crash is played identically to Classic, except that fleets of ships will do damage to each other during travel, making the tactical movement of your units much more important.

Finally, Assassin is a 3 player game mode in which you must destroy the marked opponent before he destroys the non-marked opponent.  This game, I find, tends to have a very cyclical nature to it.

Multiplayer

Most of the game modes available in single player are available in multiplayer, though competitors in games other than Classic may be kind of sparse at the moment.  Playing online will require you to create an account on the Galcon Fusion website.  Once created, your online settings (such as default fleet size and preferred player color) will be preserved in the client.  Also to note is that game settings can be changed in multiplayer lobbies (such as number of planets and game speed), a luxury not afforded to the single player mode.

As with most games that contain both single and multiplayer elements, the multiplayer brings an entirely new level of play into the game.  I will be the first to admit: I’m not very good at this game, and some of the talent I’ve seen in multiplayer matches is quite impressive.  As I mentioned before, your multiplayer record is monitored, and you’re given a rank (Cabin Boy – Grand Admiral) based on how many games you’ve won.  I found it helpful that game lobbies were accompanied by an icon displaying the approximate average skill level of the players within (keeping me from joining a lobby of players who have far greater skill than I).

Gameplay

Part of the success of the original Galcon was the touch interface of the iPhone.  Admittedly, that magic is lacking in the Mac iteration, as you control by clicking consecutive planets (or clicking and dragging) in order to send ships from one planet to another.  I found this interfacing somewhat clunky, but after a bit of adapting, not terribly intrusive.

One of my favorite features of Galcon Fusion is the ability to play in what is called Retro Mode.  Pressing F10 during a match will switch the graphics to Retro Mode, requiring the use of keyboard input (letters and numbers label the planets) in order command ships between planets.

Final Thoughts

The iPad version of Galcon Fusion is nearly identical to the Mac version (aside from Retro Mode, of course) and I feel compelled to say that the touch interface actually makes the game feel more fluid and intuitive.  Aside from these minor tactile issues, however, Galcon Fusion provides a satisfying real-time strategy experience.