Category: Mac

Earlier this week, while chatting to someone on Skype, I reached forward and knocked a full cup of coffee straight over my Apple Wireless Keyboard. This wasn’t a minor spillage – the whole keyboard was completed drenched (I don’t do things by halves!)

As quickly as I could, I followed the advice so wisely imparted by a fellow Envato colleague. I took out the batteries, and tipped it upside down to let the liquid drain out.

Two days later and it seems that, unfortunately, the keyboard isn’t going to recover from its coffee encounter. None of the keys work (something of a problem…), and the only key that does work remains depressed constantly! Thankfully it wasn’t my actual MacBook, and the replacement cost isn’t all that bad.

Spilling something on your Mac is everyone’s absolute worst nightmare, but it happens to most of us at some point. Or does it? Maybe I’m more clumsy than most…

Have you ever spilled something on your Mac or keyboard? What was it, and did your machine recover? Let us know in the comments!

In the Mac browser wars, there are many contenders for the crown. But the big three are Chrome, Safari and Firefox. On my desktop, I found myself using Safari and Chrome more often than Firefox because Chrome looks better and I could ditch Flash on Safari easily.

But more importantly, Firefox was slow to load and didn’t offer anything better for me than Chrome or Safari, so why use it?

Now there’s a reason: Firefox 4 is out and it’s packed with new features that make it worth the download. So what are these fancy new bits that kick Firefox up a notch? Let’s take a look after the break.

For Starters

Let’s get this out of the way now. This isn’t going to be a technical review where we discuss how quick Firefox is, and post up benchmark tests of how it works. No, our mission here is to point out some of the cool new features about the browser, and we’ll leave the benchmarking to the other guys. With that out of the way, let’s move on.

The Big Stuff

The first really big thing that we noticed about Firefox has to do with the tabs, and for that, let’s use an example. Right now I’m writing this review in Firefox, in our fancy blogging web app. I also have a few other tabs open for research purposes and my Gmail account humming away.

Now, were I working in Chrome, I’d be bouncing around tabs and I could accidentally close one or two in the process. Firefox not only stops that from happening, but it does so in a cool way.

It’s called an App Tab, and it’s a way to pin your tabs to the side of the top bar. By pinning certain tabs in place — for my situation, Gmail and our blogging platform — I can’t accidentally hit command-w and close a tab as I do so often.

It also means that they’re always there, even when you close and reopen the program, which is even better if you’re working on a project but want to eliminate memory leaking. For me, this is the No. 1 reason I use Firefox more than I used to.

Grouping Tabs

Let’s travel back to the previous scenario. Say I have another window open entirely, with a whole other set of tabs in place. Maybe I’m researching for Mac.AppStorm in one window, and surfing the web on the other. Now, my problem is that I either have two windows open at one time, or I have one minimized and, of course, I’ll forget about one of them when I close the browser — and that would suck.

Firefox calls it Panorama, but you can call it tab grouping, if you prefer. This option lets you switch between windows easily by grouping your tabs in one place. Never lose track of a window again, because they’re all easily accessible. Very handy for a web junkie like myself.

Further Customization

A few other highlights stand out. First, there’s Firefox Sync, which lets you sync your bookmarks and tabs from your Mac to Firefox Home on your iPhone.

Then there’s the look of the app itself. Like many browsers, the window is customizable. Remove the navigation bar, switch off the add-on bar at the bottom, or flip around where the tabs sit. Change it up to your preferences, and make it yours.

And of course, there’s the veritable cornucopia of add-ons available at Mozilla’s website. There are a few thousand to choose from, so take your pick of extensions for whatever you want.

Final Thoughts

I like to break up my browsing duties depending on my tasks. For example, I used to use Chrome for all of my goofing off, because Flash is onboard all the time, and it’s fast. I used Safari for my blogging work, mostly because I added Click to Flash to stop Adobe from slowing down my browsing. Firefox just sat in my Applications folder, unused and neglected.

Now, I’ve switched from Safari to Firefox for all of my work needs. If I had to put my finger on why, it’s all down to the app tabs for me, because that’s improved my productivity ten fold.

I can’t tell you how many tabs I accidentally closed in my fervor to clean up my browser, and yes, I could just reopen them if need be, but it took time. Do that a few dozen times in a day and those precious seconds start to add up.

That said, it’s not perfect. It’s definitely not as slow as Safari, but it’s slower than Chrome for sure. Since it’s so new, many of the add-ons I already had on Firefox don’t work because they haven’t been updated yet. And it’s also crashed on me once or twice, although admittedly, pretty much every browser does that to me on occasion.

I do really dig Firefox 4, and I’ve recommended it to a few friends and colleagues since it was released. But it’s not Chrome, and right now that’s pretty high up on the quality list in my book. Out of the three browsers I use, I’d put it at a solid No. 2 — and with a few updates, it might just move up to No. 1.

I’d like to say a big thank you to this week’s AppStorm sponsor – Patterno. This unique app is a tiled pattern and background image generator for Mac OS X, and can be a huge time-saver for graphic designers everywhere.

Patterno allows to create various images that you may use to design your site, Twitter, MySpace or just to create a new wallpaper for your desktop.

There are 50 pre-defined templates to choose from, or you can create your own interesting effects with just a few clicks. Whatever medium you design for, this is a really handy way to easily create repeatable patterns to use as backgrounds and textures.

Patterno is available for $14.99 in the Mac App Store, or you can pick up a trial copy from the developer’s site. It’s definitely worth downloading and giving a try!

Time management is be a daunting task for many of us. I excel in writing down my appointments and time blocks into iCal, but if I don’t assign an alarm to them, I miss them. More than that, knowing that I have a lot crammed into a day discourages me to even open iCal – which doesn’t really improve the situation!

With Blotter, you can display your iCal content on your desktop and so keep an eye on your important stuff much easier – and surprisingly enough, find that there just might be time to do everything properly.

The Idea Behind Blotter

The application is aimed at those iCal users who want to keep an eye on their appointments and scheduled tasks without having to switch to an application for that permanently.

Blotter sits on top of your desktop background, but beneath everything else: your icons and open application windows are on top of the displayed dates.

Of course, you could just have iCal open at all times, but then you’d have to switch between apps, enlarge the window etc. With Blotter being in the background but always present, you can simply use the Mac’s standard keys to show your desktop and have an instant view of your appointments.

If iCal Understands It, Blotter Shows It

A lot of criticism in the App Store reviews was directed at the feature set of Blotter, especially its iCal only sync. What seems to be ignored by some of the critics is that you can integrate other calendars into iCal, for example Google Calendar – meaning that you can display those events just fine. And even the color of your calendars is correctly reflected in Blotter.

The only annoyance here is that you have to actually open up iCal for a sync now and then. Since the third-party app fetches everything from iCal, it naturally can’t display any changes you made on another device/service and which haven’t yet been synced back to the desktop application.

Beware: Blotter is a display-only app. It will be part of your desktop, you can’t click anywhere or make changes to iCal data.

Tasks & Right Now

I’m very picky about having my current tasks displayed as well – and to my pleasant surprise Blotter meets this need. Tasks which are entered into iCal have their dedicated spot.

Another helpful feature is the Right Now aspect. While the normal calendar view of Blotter shows an entire day in a 7-day week, the “Right Now” view focuses on the current day and the current time. I personally prefer the Narrow view of Blotter, where I can see all my current tasks and focus on what is happening right now (or better: what I should be doing at the moment and what is coming up next).

The display of the events scrolls ever so slowly upwards, so that your current appointments are always in focus.

Setting It Up

There are not a lot of preferences for Blotter. On the bright side – you won’t waste too much time tinkering! You can define where on your desktop you want the calendar displayed, which is very neat if you have certain windows always in a specific spot. Also, if you have multiple monitors, you can select on which one you want Blotter to work its magic.

What I particularly like is the option of setting the size of the displayed calendar. You have three options to choose from and depending on how good your eye sight is, or how well you can deal with a cluttered desktop, you can pick what works best for you.

If you select either the normal or full view, you will see seven days displayed. You can choose if you want to see the calendar week or if you’d prefer Blotter to start with the current day, giving you seven days from this moment on.

By default, all calendars are selected to be displayed. You can of course select the ones that matter most to you and uncheck others.

Areas of Improvement

I personally don’t mind that Blotter does just one thing – displaying the content of iCal on my desktop. It does so well and it helps me to keep on top of things. There are some things I’d love to see improved, though.

First and foremost, the rendering of text in the calendar views needs to be improved. Readable as it is, the fonts are just not smooth enough to look nice on the desktop. The developers are aware of this issue and are looking into it.

Another small annoyance is the difficulty to access the app preferences. As it is right now, you have to go to the dock, click the application, then move all the way to the upper left of your screen and select the preferences option from the menu bar. On a 27″ screen, that’s quite a way to travel. I pointed this out to the developers as well and they are looking into it too.

Verdict

I like Blotter. For the simple reason that it allows me to keep one more app closed (iCal) and still have a complete overview over my appointments and current tasks. It’s absolutely non-intrusive as it operates in the background, but it’s accessibly quickly enough to be of true help.

There are alternatives out there, for example Zipline, but you’ll have to let your personal style of work and taste decide for which app you go. If it’s Blotter, just make sure you’re using a nice wallpaper, so you’ll be able to read what it’s displaying!

Learning a foreign language is never an easy task. Especially for someone that has grown up speaking English his entire life (with the exception of a few Spanish classes in high school). Besides taking classes in school there are some other ways to learn another language. Books and software are the most common methods now days.

Human Japanese is one of those software methods. It is, however, much more immersive than the standard memorization method you may find in some books and other software applications. It does teach you terms and phrases but really aims to help you actually understand the language. For a language like Japanese this is no easy task, but it is essential.

I’ve taken Human Japanese for a spin to see how this application works.

Introduction to the Course

Human Japanese is essentially a language course in the from of a software application. As with any application, understanding how it functions is crucial to being able to fully take advantage of its capabilities. The first section you’re taken through is a quick three page user guide to make sure you understand how to use the software.

It’s definitely not complicated, but it is nice to get a little direction to make sure you’re not missing something important.

Introduction to the Language

Learning a new language is difficult enough for the majority of us, and learning a new language that is as different from English as Japanese is is especially scary (at least for me). Human Japanese begins its course with an introduction to the Japanese language.

If you’ve never studied Japanese this little primer to the upcoming course was very reassuring; discussing some misconceptions and also being frank that some portions will be very difficult and will require a lot of hard work.

The introduction sets the tone for the rest of the instruction and it is written in a manner that excites you go get started and also prepares you for the workload ahead.

The Course

Human Japanese is structured like a book separated into chapters, each going over either a specific lingual topic such as pronunciation, verbs and interrogatives or topics which focus the lesson around things such as clothing, friends and family, and weather.

These are nicely intermingled throughout the course creating a mix of working with the technical aspects of the language followed up by some areas that combine what you’ve learned with practical application. For example, there is a chapter dealing with clothing that follows some topics about adjectives and verbs so you’re able to see some real world application of what you’ve just learned.

You’ll also find some historical references scattered throughout where it aids in understanding some concept of the language. There aren’t a ton of history lessons, but they can help to provide a little reference to what you’re learning.

Human Japanese is very different to a lot of books and other software applications that promise to teach you a language. It is much more than learning different words and phrases. It does do some of that, however, there is always a focus on helping you to actually understand what is going on. It is probably a more arduous way to learn a language, but the goal is to give you the tools to be able to learn more on your own.

Though the course is designed to progress through chapter by chapter you are able to bounce around to different chapters at your whim. Clicking on the Chapters link will drop down a listing of every chapter.

Interactivity

As I’ve mentioned, the course is structured like a book. Even down to the fact that you’re flipping through pages going through the course. A huge difference from the hard copy of a book is that the course is very interactive. Very regularly throughout there are clickable elements that will aid you in some way either visually or audibly.

Pronunciation

Just about every time you see a graphic you are able to interact. Some of the most helpful interactive elements are the ones that help you to pronounce letters, words and phrases. Upon clicking you will hear a voice pronouncing the letter, word, or phrase correctly. It is infinitely helpful to be able to actually hear these things out loud.

In Lesson Self-Tests

Another interactive tool used throughout the course is quick in-context quizzes in the middle of chapters. They are very simple. You’ll see a phrase written in Japanese with a show translation link below. Clicking on the link will reveal the translated phrase.

Writing

Where necessary there are some clickable animation elements as well. In the early chapters while you’re learning Hiragana and how to write it, the animations are a great help. You’re told the number of strokes and clicking on the letter will display an animation of the strokes to complete it.

Quizzes

At the end of some chapters you’ll be tasked with completing a quiz. I always loved (yeah, that’s sarcastic) to take quizzes back in my school years, so these were welcomed. Seriously, quizzes are a great tool to test your learning comprehension as you’re going through any course and they hold the same function here. If you don’t do so well, you can just hop back and go back over the sections that tripped you up on the quiz.

Search

The search bar is ever present while you’re going through the Human Japanese course. You’ll always see it in the side bar and can be used as a nice reference if there is something you can’t remember. You simply enter in a term and you’ll be presented with info about it. The nice thing is that all the information is kept in the same window and actually stays there until you perform another search even as you’re clicking through pages.

Reviews

At the end of many chapters you’ll be presented with the option to launch a review quiz. This will launch a separate window and take you through a question by question quiz about the previous section.

Again, not the most entertaining things for most of us, but there is no doubt that they are an extremely helpful tool in learning. They are of standard quiz format. Click on the answer and you’ll be told whether you’re correct or not. A running tally and percentage correct is also shown as you go through each quiz.

As with the chapters, each review can be accessed via a drop down menu at the top of the application window. This is a nice feature that enables you to go back and re-quiz yourself at your leisure.

Conclusion

I have to say I was extremely skeptical about even attempting to learn Japanese. To be honest, I thought it would be an impossible task and one that I just couldn’t do. And though I am still extremely far off from actually learning the language, Human Japanese has showed me that it is certainly possible.

A big part of learning anything is that it needs to be entertaining and engaging, otherwise it is very easy to just drop. This course does an excellent job of doing just that. It’s written in a fashion that is interesting and the overall structure is very engaging. There are so many graphical and audible elements that are extremely helpful in not only learning the language but also in just keeping you engaged with the course.

Human Japanese is currently $14.99 from the App Store which is 25% off the standard rate. For the amount of information and the structure in which it is provided I find this an absolute steal. A free trial is available in the form of a Web application that will give you access to the first few chapters so you can see how it works.

There are also companion iPhone and iPad applications. Unfortunately, they do carry an additional cost and may or may not be worth it for you.

When I started reviewing this software I expected to spend some time messing around with it, do a write up and then put it aside. This application has not only shown me that what I once thought impossible is actually possible, but it has made me just flat out interested in the Japanese language.

We’ll see how it goes, but I’m going to continue along with the course and see if I can really learn Japanese…

People want to be able to do cool stuff with their computers. It’s why they bought them in the first place, right? The promise of power, being bestowed with abilities that up to now you didn’t possess.

One category of apps that has long been ruled by high-end software is graphic creation. There’s no doubting the utility of these apps for the professional, but both their toolkit and their price tag are overkill for the average consumer.

Developers have spied an opening here, and Mapdiva have created an interesting app called Artboard. It’s directly aimed at the average consumer who’s looking to create vector-based graphics.

But while the marketing message and pedestrian price tag of $19.99 appeal to the consumer, does Artboard fulfill on their promise of “Simple. Powerful. Fun.”? What does Artboard have to offer? And while we’re at it, how does it stack up to its high-end competition?

Features

In my opinion, an app’s feature set is a misleading metric. More doesn’t always equal better. There’s little doubt that Microsoft Word has a “robust” set of features, but I’m writing this article in Hog Bay Software’s WriteRoom because its mathematically smaller feature set makes it more useful to me than Word’s.

But that can cut the other way as well. QuickTime is an adequate media player for most Mac user’s needs. But as soon as you need to play a codec it doesn’t support, you’re on the prowl for a more feature-rich player. The key is in striking a balance.

Artboard has its own manifesto:

Simple. Powerful. Fun.

Much of what Artboard is is what it’s not. Artboard is not bloated. It doesn’t cost hundreds of dollars. It doesn’t take weeks or months to learn. It doesn’t require you to remember multiple tools to accomplish a simple task.

Those are lofty goals, aren’t they? And worthy ones too. Sounds like a good plan: avoid feature bloat, maintain a small price tag, be intuitive, and present a simple and explicit toolset. But the ever-present question is: did they do it? I’d say in some respects, yes, but in others most definitely not.

User Interface

Artboard’s introductory UI belies the use case that Mapdiva expects – creating something, and then printing it. Artboard comes with a wealth of template options, but there’s no place to create a document of your own dimensions.

I find this to be a major failing if the user is looking to produce something through vector means with a final destination of the screen. But if you look at it from the perspective of the average user, if they’re bothering with vector graphics in the first place, then they probably are planning on printing their creations – resolution independence is the biggest reason most people use vector graphics.

Once you’ve decided on your document size, you’re presented with the main UI.

Honestly, this didn’t blow me away. It’s pretty much standard Cocoa interface elements. If you’ve ever used Mail.app, then you’ve seen this layout. Two columns of content, a toolbar button across the top, and floating panels of options hovering around your screen.

Personally, I’d like to see something a little more daring, a little more different. Why not a one window interface? Is there a way to show users what kind of tools they have at their disposal without using a floating box with icons inside? Floating windows get messy, they get confusing.

And there are portions of the UI where Mapdiva didn’t even try to innovate. They’re using the standard, system-wide color picker and font browser. Two core features of a graphics app weren’t given personal attention and care. Maybe in future updates these are some areas the developers could address.

If you’re coming at this from a different perspective, perhaps this is the first time you’ve used a graphics program before, then I guess Artboard’s UI isn’t too bad. It’s still got a learning curve to it. Big bold icons and descriptive labels help, but at the end of the day, a graphics program is going to be a tricky thing to use.

It’s a complicated piece of software, designed to let you do a multitude of things. Paring down the interface and sticking to relatively universal UI metaphors is a conservative way to try and lower the learning curve. I’m not sure if it’s the most successful one though.

Tools

Artboard offers 22 tools in two different categories, Selection and Graphics. Most of the basics are there. You can create rectangles and ovals, irregular polygons and regular polygons. They have both a round rectangle tool and a round-ended rectangle tool. The reason for the duplication baffles me, though duplication does seem to be a theme.

They have both a straight line tool and a Bezier line tool instead of one unified Pen Tool. I’m not sure if they created this duplication by accident, or in the name of simplification – presenting the user with shortcuts to commonly used tools – but I find it cumbersome in practice.

Moving on to how the tools work in practice we see both achievements and failures. If you’re building a graphic that’s composed of full, regular shapes – squares, circles, rectangles, etc. – then Artboard really aids you. The tools to build those shapes are intuitive.

Once you’ve created something like that, you can switch over to the Selection Tool and adjust scale, rotation, and radius (in the case of rounded rectangles). The handles for those tools are overlaid on the shape, and the adjustments are made in real-time, giving the user immediate visual feedback.

It’s when you jump to the more “freeform” tools that things start to fall apart. The most glaring issue for me is that, when you create a shape with the Bezier Tool, you can plot points, adjust the curves in a smooth manner, but when you move to close the shape – you can’t! There’s no way to close a shape using any of the pen-like tools!

This is just shocking to me. How can you expect to create clean graphics if you aren’t able to create closed paths? Not to mention that you can’t add or remove points on a previously created path with the Bezier Tool. Nope, you need to use the Add Points Tool or the Remove Points Tool, adding more friction to the user experience.

I think it’s safe to say that I’m not exactly satisfied with the toolset that Artboard provides. But it wouldn’t be fair for me to leave this review here. Because I haven’t gotten to one of Artboard’s clutch features – a robust symbol and swatch library.

Symbols and Swatches

Artboard has a Styles and Clip Art window. Its a floating panel that’s visible by default, but can be controlled by a toolbar button. It sports a vast library of swatches, styles, symbols, pictograms, and clip art. And it’s quality stuff too.

I think this is exactly the kind of feature that a consumer-minded vector graphics app should have. Big kudos to Mapdiva for including this with Artboard.

Actually swatches are a stepping stone to the one professional caliber part of Artboard – the Style Inspector. This panel lets you compose layers of styles onto a shape or path, and then save them to your personal library.

If you spent a little time tweaking the available controls, and added a splash of creativity, then you’d be able to create some pretty cool things. I highly recommend exploring the built-in styles with the Style Inspector.

Conclusion

Well, I haven’t gone easy on Artboard, that’s for sure. I really hope that the developers at Mapdiva know its because I see so much potential in apps in this space. I know first hand how much work goes into developing an app – and I want the fruits of that work to be successful.

If you don’t have ambitions of being a vector-based artist, you just want something to lay out your business cards in or make a yard sale flyer, then Artboard’s for you. If you are looking for something that you can grow into, something you can use to express your creativity in a little more freely, maybe Artboard isn’t what you’re looking for.

There’s no doubt though that Artboard is an app with a strong future. While the current version may have come up lacking a little in my estimation, it does have a complete current feature set for basic vector graphics. The way Artboard is designed seems to have the average consumer in mind, and in a lot of ways they succeed in appealing to that user base.

But they have room to grow – don’t we all – and if they analyze the areas where they can improve, and put the thought and effort into growing the product, they’ll be well on their way to being a perennial hit.

After reviewing ScreenFloat earlier last week, the developers have been kind enough to offer ten free licenses for us to distribute to a few lucky readers!

ScreenFloat is a simple piece of software that can help you take screenshots and keep them on top of any other window. It is good for any type of work that requires you to go back between two windows to copy the content of one to the other. Entering the competition is easy, and requires two steps:

1. Like Mac.AppStorm on Facebook

This is as simple as clicking this little box, and means that you’ll also receive our updates and content on Facebook in the future!

2. Leave a Comment With Your Facebook URL

The next step is to leave a comment on this post with a link to your Facebook profile page. That’s it!

The competition will run for one week, and I’ll be selecting the ten winning entrants after Thursday April 28th. Best of luck, and be sure to check out our review of ScreenFloat for more information about the prize on offer.

Bundled with every new Mac is the iLife suite of apps. iLife promises an exciting and fulfilling digital experience, one that integrates your Mac into your day-to-day life. But having the program is only half the battle – the hardest part is knowing how to use it!

Today’s screencast overview will walk you through using iMovie for the first time, how to create your first project, and how to import in your video. Let’s get started!

Watch the Screencast

As my three-year-old 15″ MacBook Pro starts to show its age, I’m starting to think that I’ll soon be in the market for a new Apple notebook. It’s been a fantastic machine to own, but after three years of lugging a 15″ portable around, I’ve decided that a laptop this big isn’t particularly… portable.

Last year, Apple released a series of new MacBook Air machines that have received rave reviews – both in the major press, and from those equally in the know. The big dilemma here is whether an 11″ or 13″ screen makes the greatest sense. And are either of these really adequate to replace a 15″ display?

What Are the Options?

Before coming to any decisions or making a recommendation, let’s take a look at the full range of options available:

• 11″ – The smallest Apple notebook available, but still surprisingly capable and complete with a full-size keyboard. Available only in the MacBook Air.
• 13″ – The de-facto laptop size, widely accepted as the most common form factor. Available in the MacBook, Air, and Pro.
• 15″ – A slightly larger alternative that gives you more desktop space, but becomes more or less unusable on an airplane. Available on the MacBook Pro only, and it’s also worth noting the $100 option to raise the resolution to 1680×1050.
• 17″ – Something of an unusual outlier that isn’t particularly portable at all. Again, this is only a MacBook Pro option.

The Super-Fine Advantage

Both MacBook Airs offer unusually high resolution displays for their size. These go a long way towards compensating for the small form factor, meaning that a 13″ Air is equivalent to a 15″ MacBook’s standard configuration resolution, and the 11″ Air is equivalent to a 13″ MacBook resolution.

Immediately, this removes some of the worry about buying a super-tiny 11″ model – you’ll still have plenty of desktop space to fill with clutter. That said, the 11″ model may still feel a little vertically cramped, particularly if you are accustomed to a 15″ display.

The downside of this super-fine resolution is that everything on the display becomes very small. There are ways to combat this – such as increasing the font size in your apps – but I’d prefer a fine resolution over a larger display any day.

This jump forward in technology means that both MacBook Airs are eminently usable, providing you’re happy for the smaller details on your display to be tiny!

The Performance Consideration

Of course, the decision you make as a notebook buyer isn’t entirely about screen size. With a larger screen comes faster performance, and (usually) more connectivity.

In the MacBook Air lineup, for instance, if you opt for a 13″ model you’ll also receive an SD card slot, a 0.46GHz jump in processor speed, and improved battery life. It’s a similar story for the MacBook Pro, adding bigger hard drives, faster processors, and more connectivity as you move up in size.

This means that your decision on size has a major impact in the speed of your machine as well.

Is 17″ Really a Portable at All?

You may be wondering why I haven’t yet gone into detail on the 17″ MacBook Pro. Well, this isn’t really a notebook – not in any useful sense of the word. It’s a desktop computer with an in-built battery, that would be a burden to carry around anywhere. Apple continue to make these because it’s possible to include connectivity and technology that wouldn’t fit into the smaller models (such as a ExpressCard/34 slot).

This model is billed as “the ultimate mobile studio”, and that’s exactly what it is. Designed for people who need a desktop level of performance, but still like to have the option of taking their machine home with them. Perfect for some, but overkill for the majority.

Help Me Out…

If you’re a notebook user, I’d be interested to hear what your preference would be – or which you have chosen in the past – and hear a few opinions on the matter. My immediate thought would be that 11″ is simply too small for day-to-day use when not connected to an external monitor.

Which MacBook fits the bill for you, and what sacrifices are you happy to make for a smaller, more portable machine? Is a pocket-sized laptop your main consideration, or would you find yourself craving a faster processor?

Steam is perhaps the best platform for buying and playing games online and for enjoying a social gaming experience. Although there isn’t exactly a great deal of competition, Steam has proved to be a reliable platform for gaming on both the PC and the Mac.

Last year it was announced that it was headed for the Mac OS, and since then we’ve seen many releases on our favorite platform. Here are some of our favorite games available on Steam for your Mac.

Portal

Portal revolutionized the gaming scene when it first came out way back in 2007. It changed what a “puzzle” game is supposed to be with its quirky mechanics and outrageously fun story. Portal is a puzzle-FPS (first person shooter). You have a gun that can shoot up “portals” which allow you to do unimaginable things, and the game really pushes for you to think differently while you are playing it in order to advance through it.

Portal 2 is coming out on April 19th, and it looks very promising. If you weren’t one of the lucky ones that got the first edition of the game for free on the Steam for Mac launch, you can still pick it up for $10 on Steam.

Left For Dead 1 & 2

Left For Dead is a co-op inclined survival first person shooter, where you are supposed to go around several towns, trying to survive the zombie apocalypse with your other 3 buddies.

Left for Dead 2 is the continuation to the very popular first game by Valve, and it improved on it by adding more guns and more maps. They both came out in 2008 and 2009, respectively, and they achieved critical and commercial success.

They both go for $20 on Steam, and we’ll guarantee you’ll get more than your money’s worth with any of them!

Counter-Strike: Source

Feeling old-school? Source is one of the most popular, if not the most popular first person shooter and – even though it came out 7 years ago – it still has an amazing following. CS:S is a very conventional, but fast-paced shooter game, and what it made it so great was the mods available for it and the huge community behind it.

Even though it’s old, it is still widely played by many people around the globe, probably because it’s so great and it has only improved with time. You can get it for $20 on Steam.

Sid Meier’s Civilization V

The Sid Meier’s Civilization series has been a very popular and long-running one. The latest installment of it came out in late 2010 and it’s called Civilization V. If you’ve never played these games, they’re strategy-based and you play as if you were the leader of a civilization that must build up your cities and conquer your enemies to become the ruler of them all.

It’s similar to another popular game called Age of Empires, except Civ is turn-based, and in my opinion, more complete and fun. Civilization V has been called the best Civ game yet, and it goes for $49 on Steam.

Half-Life 2, HL2: Episode One and HL2: Episode 2

Half-Life is a massively popular franchise, and it has a very devoted following behind it (deservedly so!) It is a first person shooter with a twisted but interesting story mode that borders on sci-fi and very solid gameplay. Half-Life 2 came out in 2004, Episode One in 2006 and the Episode Two in 2007.

While you can get all of them separately for around $26, I recommend you get the Orange Box, which is a package that includes Portal, Team Fortress 2 and all the Half Life games presented above for $20.

Team Fortress 2

Team Fortress 2 is a class-based multiplayer-only game that gained a lot of fame back when it came out in 2007. In it, you get to play as different classes like Pyro, Spy, Medic, Engineer, etc. and all of them give you a different perspective on the game, as you have to adapt to what your character is good at.

Team Fortress 2 is as fun as multiplayer games go, because it doesn’t take itself very seriously. It’s also available as part of the Orange Box package, but you can get it separately for $12.

Braid

Braid is a platformer/puzzle game with a very fun twist to it: you can manipulate time. You have to use this in your favor to get through a bunch of levels and rescue the abducted princess.

The game does a great job at immersing you into its gimmick, and when you finish it, you’ll start thinking of time differently (at least I did for a while). Braid is a game for anyone, as it’s easy to get into it and it doesn’t require a lot of time. You can get it for $10 on Steam.

World of Goo

World of Goo, just like Braid, is a casual game that is a lot of fun and is easy to pick up and understand. It relies heavily on physics, and has a puzzle mechanic to it. You have to get through a series of levels while building structures with the “goo” balls that you are given.

World of Goo goes for $10 on Steam, and while it may seem a bit childish, it’s a ton of fun.

Peggle Nights and Peggle Deluxe

Peggle is a game that has had success on multiple platforms, and now you can play it on your Mac. It is a very arcade-ish game where you have to go through a series of levels and clear all the “pegs” in order to advance.

The game is simple but fun, and coupled with the trophies available for it and the different characters, it will last you quite a while. Both Peggle Deluxe and its follow-up, Peggle Nights go for $10 each.

Assassin’s Creed 2

Assassin’s Creed is a popular adventure franchise that has had massive success on consoles as well as on the PC. In the second installment of it you play an assassin that must take revenge for his family during the Renaissance in several cities of Italy.

While the follow-up to it (Brotherhood) came out a few months ago, the second one still is a great game if you haven’t played the others. It goes for $30 on Steam.

Machinarium

Machinarium is an odd-looking puzzle game based on a world populated by robots. You play as a robot who must save his girlfriend, and to achieve it you have to solve a bunch of puzzles and mini-games spread out across the game.

While I’d never heard of it, it seems to have been pretty popular with the critics, and it definitely seems like it’s worth a try. Machinarium is made by indie developers and it goes for $20.

Conclusion

Most of these games aren’t new releases. Most of them are at least one year old, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Steam hasn’t really been out long enough for the Mac, and for the time it’s been around, this is a pretty decent list of games.

Also, let’s take into account the fact that more and more games are coming out for the Mac at release date, like Portal 2.

It seems like finally we can have a platform that is taken seriously by game developers, with the potential to become a great source for gamers in the future.

Whatever profession you’re in, there’s a strong chance that as a Mac.AppStorm reader you occasionally need to delve into a FTP client. Whether that’s to transfer a file to someone, update your website, or access a service such as Amazon S3 – there are a multitude of reasons why an FTP app might come in handy.

Personally, I’m a big fan of Transmit 4. It’s a beautiful app with a very thorough feature set – two selling points that make it hard to ignore. In fact, it was one of the apps that originally made me want to switch across to the Mac (along with everything else designed by Panic at the time…)

There are plenty of other contenders, though – Forklift, Interarchy, and YummyFTP to name a few!

These all have their own unique selling points and features – you’d be amazed at how much scope there is for individuality in such a theoretically mundane niche of software. From disks that mount on your desktop to Automator support and “Droplets” – software can actually make FTP fun!

I’d be interested to hear which application you use – feel free to share your thoughts in the comments. Which FTP app do you use, how often do you need to open it, and why?

If you’re into social networking, you will know the importance of sharing content with others. Sharing content helps you gain a loyal following and engage people in conversations. Even during the course of a pretty uneventful day, there might be quiet a few things in our mind to share with our friends and followers. Often these thoughts are fleeting, and some things might go unshared.

What we need is an app that can help us consolidate the items we want to share with our social network. Social Clipboard is a Mac desktop application that allows you to copy any text, picture or screenshot and share it via social networks (or upload it to Dropbox for later access).

Let’s see how it stacks up!

Setting Up

Social Clipboard automatically detects whether this is your first launch and offers to set up your social network accounts.

From the lower left corner of the window, choose the social network of your choice. Currently Facebook, Twitter and Dropbox are supported. Sadly though, you cannot add multiple accounts to track in the app at the moment. For those who plan to skip this step to checkout the Social Clipboard user interface before jumping in, you can always come back and add the accounts from the Preferences screen.

There is no OAuth or FBConnect and you will have enter your login credentials manually into the app. That’s when I hit the first road block. I use LastPass to generate and store strong passwords and I don’t remember any of my passwords. So I copied the password and tried pasting it in the login screen.

But unfortunately, Social Clipboard copied the password to the app and cleared the clipboard – therefore I wasn’t able to paste the same into the password field. So, I had to manually type in all the characters of the password one after another (it’s a pretty lengthy strong password). It was such an annoying experience.

Ease of Use

Still not clear what Social Clipboard can do? It acts as a clipboard that holds everything that you copy on the desktop. If you have used Pastebot on iOS you will find that the app pretty much does the same, but adds the ability to post them to your social stream.

Social Clipboard has a very straight forward design and workflow. Be it an image, text file etc., it’s just a case of copying something for it to automatically show up in the Social Clipboard repository. It’s just not the files from the desktop (like the password info from LastPass Vault) – you can even copy from the Internet. For example I copied an image from a Mac.AppStorm article and it showed up right away in the app. Impressive!

Social Clipboard has got a bunch of Notification options as well, to alert you of the status of the upload, save and shortening of a URL. You can also set animated and audio alerts to notify when the content from the clipboard is copied to the app.

Sharing Content

After saving the content to the clipboard, select the appropriate social network icon to share it with your friends and peers. I chose to tweet the image I copied. Twitpic is the default image uploading service, and you start by giving the image a title. As soon as you hit OK, the image will be uploaded and you will be given a Twitpic link to the same.

From here, it is more or less the same way you compose a tweet. Add a few words of comment, add a link and share the tweet with the world. If the URL you are sharing is quite lengthy, use the Shorten URL option to prune it. Bit.ly is the default URL shortening service.

Once the tweet is successfully sent, you will get a notification. However, if you want to double check whether the tweet has made it or not, you will have to access your social network account from a client of your choice.

Saving to Dropbox

The usefulness of Social Clipboard is two fold. First it acts as a clipboard for your social networks and second, it acts a desktop intermediary for moving content to your Dropbox.

Just like the way you share the content on a social network, hit the Dropbox icon to initiate the transfer. All images are uploaded to the public folder of your account, so if you are sharing sensitive content, exercise caution. A short URL linking directly to the image can be obtained as well.

Final Thoughts

I thought I would be able to keep up with my Twitter stream from the app, but I couldn’t. That would have been a solid addition, as would the ability to copy content from the social stream directly to your Dropbox account.

Social Clipboard was my first paid Mac App Store purchase, and hence I made sure it is a decent app to start with. Social network dwellers will definitely find the app very handy.

The idea and execution of helping users copy and share things from their social stream is quite good. But it is the Dropbox integration that makes the app particularly unique.

This week’s wonderful AppStorm sponsor is a new Mac application called Hearts. For the past decade or so, the card game “Hearts” has been a staple time sink for Windows user, but there hasn’t been a great equivalent for the Mac.

With the recent opening of the Mac App Store there have been several attempts to bring this classic card game to Mac users, but many of these have been somewhat half-hearted (if you’ll excuse the pun).

This is one of the first solid Hearts games on the Mac App Store, and it’s great fun to play. You can check out a video demonstration at the developer site, and submit your requests and feedback for future versions.

If you’d just like to give the app a try (it’s only $4.99, after all), you can head straight to the Mac App Store and take a look!

Mac OS X ships with QuickTime X, a powerful media player that most people will find fits their needs pretty well. However, there is an abundance of media players, managers and encoders available on the Mac App Store if you want a taste of something different.

MPlayerX is a multi-format, multi-touch, multi-monitor multimedia player. MPlayerX plugs it’s application as a powerful media player that fuses the power of ffmpeg and mplayer, allowing for faster decoding of almost any file format. And clearly, MPlayerX was heavily inspired by Apple’s moves both in software and technology.

Interface

MPlayerX has an interface that’s similar to Apple’s stock QuickTime X. In fact, it’s almost indistinguishable from Apple’s counterpart, complete with fade out interface upon hover out. In it’s most simple form, MPlayerX is just a media player with the standard controls you’d expect: play/pause, volume, scrubbing and full screen toggle. You can also control volume with the hyphen and equal keys.

The first step would be to venture into the playback menu, where you can enable auxiliary controls. These allow you to change additional variables in your video such as speed, audio delay and sub delay to numeric values with ease.

MPlayerX automatically loads your video at its native resolution (if possible on your display). However, in the view menu one can increase or decrease player size with ease and it can be stretched to any aspect ratio. Changing the aspect ratio in the player itself can then be locked so further scaling maintains a specific aspect ratio.

There’s a selection of options in the preferences menu. One of these is the convenient ability to keep the video window on top during a number of circumstances – such as during play. The interface can also be manipulated with controls to change the opacity of the hover-over controls.

Compatibility and Files

MPlayerX advertises itself as a player that is capable of opening almost any file format, which it does, mostly. I could open an mp4 file with ease and the same applied to most other file types, including Windows’ WMV format. The player would also launch and play audio files in the same way with no problems.

MPlayerX will also handle subtitle files with relative ease. Options in the preferences menu also allow you to modify text font, size and colour for changing subtitles to suit your needs.

Listed on the player’s website suggests the application also works alongside Apple’s hardware remote which offers an easier way of controlling media playback, especially from afar when your Mac is connected to a larger external display such as a TV. Unfortunately, I was unable to test this feature due to my MacBook Air not having a built-in IR sensor.

Another advantageous feature is continuous playback, which plays files in succession automatically without any additional user interaction. Therefore, a series of TV episodes or album of podcasts will all play away while you do other things.

As is expected, MPlayerX will remember the position during the video so, if you come back to it later, the video launches directly from the same point. This works nicely and even adds a few seconds buffer so, should you start playing mid-sentence, you are quickly recapped on the immediately preceding events or dialog.

Video Tuning

An innovative feature of the player is the ability to tune a playing video in a number of ways. Once a video is playing, it can be manipulated with sliders in a similar way to performing such modifications on a photo.

The video tuning popup allows items like brightness, saturation and gamma which are all applied in real time to the video. They act more like a “skin” over the video and the results are evident immediately after the user modifies them.

Noise reduction and even sharpness can both be modified straight from within the same window with the same ease as the previous options.

Audio aficionados can use the built in equaliser to modify the currently playing sound too, if they so wish. Both visual and audio edits can be easily reset with the click of a button which is a great feature!

Multi-Touch

So you’ve got a movie playing on your MacBook Air, or maybe on your Mac Mini home theatre system, and you want to use that big trackpad (either built in or wireless) to control your media. Sure, you have the good old cursor to navigate through the controls. However, the developers of MPlayerX have added a number of multi-touch gestures on top of the player.

A two fingered scroll in the player will allow for easy audio adjusting. A three-finger swipe to the left scrubs the video back by ten seconds. Pinching the trackpad will also increase (or decrease) the overall player size up to a screen-filling dimension.

After recently seeing a video review of TwelveSouth’s Magic Wand product, it became apparent to me that, for home theatre setups, a combination of Apple’s wireless keyboard and trackpad is actually great. The multi-touch gestures in this particular app just heighten my positive views of this particular type of setup.

Final Thoughts

A combination of both QuickTime X (for personal files) and iTunes (for store downloads) is a very attractive offer, especially as they both come built right into your Mac as soon as you open the box. Naturally, this is the first setup you’ll try as a new user. However, it’s pleasant to see the different offerings available to Mac users in the App Store.

MPlayerX feels much like a lightweight clone of QuickTime X. The interface has an uncanny resemblance to its Apple-made counterpart so there isn’t much in this respect to prefer. However, the real strength is beneath-the-hood where files of foreign formats (such as those with a Windows origin) can be played back seamlessly, just as if they were in an Apple-supported format.

For me, the video tuning and equalisation options are quite nice just to have there – but they could be really useful to some. This can be especially important if the average user encounters a file which really needs an alternative contrast (for example) to enhance the viewing experience.

Personally, I loved the multi-touch gestures such as window resizing with pinch-to-zoom. However, vital issues such as protected file playback let the application down considerably. It just seems like, for the majority of users, the stock QuickTime X will be fine for them.

Although the app is executed very well, it doesn’t offer a huge improvement to QuickTime X unless you crave those video tuning options and multi-touch gestures…

Do you often find yourself switching back and forth between windows just to check back on a particular piece of information? Do you want to be reminded of something that you’d like to do by keeping an image of it handy? Well, this and other problems could be easily fixed with an app, right?

The app that we are reviewing today is called ScreenFloat, and it is meant to bring new functionality to screenshots by making them visible at all time. Keep on reading to find out more about it!

Getting Started

ScreenFloat is a simple piece of software that can help you take screenshots and keep them on top of any other window. It is good for any type of work that requires you to go back between two windows to copy the content of one to the other.

That’s the use for this app that I imagine most people would find handy, although I’m sure you could find many more creative means for it…

How It Works

ScreenFloat needs to be open for you to take advantage of it. I was expecting this kind of app to run on the menu bar, but it actually runs like any other app on your dock. Once you have it open, you can take a screenshot by pressing Cmd+Shift+2.

A small pointer cross will appear, and you’ll be able to select any area on the screen that you’d like to take a screen grab of. Once you select it, your screenshot will pop up, floating above any other windows that you have open, so that you never lose sight of it.

Working with Screenshots

While the app is very simple to use, you can also dig a little deeper and explore the settings behind each window. From these settings (which can be found at the right top corner of your screenshot), you can tell your screenshot to stop floating and behave like a normal window, or send it to another app, among other common features like copying, deleting and hiding your screenshot.

You can also move your screenshot by clicking on it and dragging it, or close it with the button on the left top corner. When you close a screenshot, it will not be lost forever – it’s stored in the app’s library.

Storing Screenshots

As I mentioned, instead of deleting your screenshots when you close them, ScreenFloat will save them for you in its library. In this library you can add tags to your screenshots and even arrange those tags into smart albums.

From here, you also have access to the information of each of your screenshots and can send several of them to another app like Evernote or an image editor.

If you double click any of your stored screenshots, it will once again pop up as a floating window, so that you can go back to working with it. You can also delete any screenshot from here, if you’d like.

A feature I found pretty handy is that you can make any of your files a floating screenshot without having to open it and taking a screenshot of it yourself. Just go under the “File” menu and choose “Make New Shot From File”. Also, there’s a “Work Mode” feature under the settings that makes your floating screenshots hide when your pointer goes over them.

Is It Worth $7.99?

Maybe. It depends on how much use you think you’d have for it. If you just want a conventional screenshot tool, you might want to take a look at a little tool called “Grab” under your utilities folder.

If you often find yourself going back and forth between apps to refer to a piece of information, then you might find this app to be a fantastic time saver.

Personally, I can’t think of many occasions when I’d have a specific need for ScreenFloat. I usually just take advantage of the app switcher (Cmd+Tab) for quickly switching between windows to copy information from one window to the other, but it’s usually distracting having each window pop in and out while you are working.

The idea for this app is great. ScreenFloat itself is also very well designed, offering plenty of features while still keeping the interface simple. Do you think you could find an app like this useful? Would you be willing to pay for an app like this? Share your opinion in the comments!