Category: Mac

These days, you’d be hard-pressed to find any business, freelancer or consumer who doesn’t have a PayPal account, and for good reason – it’s quick, easy, and universally used. Considering its success, however, the PayPal website is still awkward to use –

If you leave it for more than a second, it would seem, it logs itself out, and you have to waste time logging back in again. Once you’re in, it’s not all that intuitive, and you have to navigate countless dropdown menus to do anything. In short, the PayPal site is a pain.

GaragePay can take away all of that pain. It’s a PayPal client for Mac, meaning you never have to use that pesky site ever again, and instead can handle all of your transactions from the comfort of a native app.

Getting Started

GaragePay is available on the Mac App Store for $24.99 USD. Installing it from there is ridiculously easy (click “Buy”, and there it is), but if you want to go the more traditional DMG-based route, that’s just as easy, and also gives you an opportunity to try it out before purchase.

To do so, simply download the DMG (a mere 3.28MB), open up the installer, and drag the app into the Applications shortcut provided. Even the installation window looks great – You just know (or at least hope) it’s going to be a good app.

Setting up your PayPal account is pretty straightforward – Just enter your account e-mail and API details. Be warned though – For personal accounts, only certain countries have API features. If you have a Premier or Business account, you’ll be fine, but check that you can get your API details before forking out $25.

Interface

Considering that GaragePay is essentially PayPal with a different skin (albeit with a few extra features), the interface is essential to make the user satisfied. Luckily, it excels in this field. The folks at iwascoding clearly spent an awful lot of time on the design, and it pays off.

Everything is laid out for all to see – your transactions, different accounts, smart folders, and further details about the transaction when selected. Couple this with beautiful, colourful icons, and you just cannot go wrong.

The aim for all Mac interface designers is to create an app which feels like something Apple would make. This definitely does. It doesn’t try to blow you away with eye candy, but you know exactly what you’re doing at all times.

Making Transactions

Sending money is very easy with GaragePay – Just hit that big “Send Money” button, and you’ll be greeted with a Mail-like window where you enter the receiver, a subject, the amount, and a message.

GaragePay will even calculate the fee you’ll be paying as you type. If you’ve ever used Mail.app before, this will be second nature to you, and even if you haven’t, it’s not rocket science.

Unfortunately, you may sometimes get an unsatisfied client, or something similar, and you may have to refund them. This is just as easy, and can be done by selecting a transaction, and hitting refund. You can choose to refund the full amount, or just part of it, and attach a memo to your refund.

Organising Transactions

You can view all of your transactions in the main window, where you’ll quickly see the payer and receiver, the items (if a purchase was made), the date, and the amount. If you only want to see your outgoing transactions, just hit the “Outgoing” tab.

By clicking on a transaction, you see even more details about it, such as the fee paid, the transaction status, and details about the payer/receiver, if such information is available.

To further catalog your transactions and make them easier to find in future, a notes section is provided for you to insert any further details you wish.

One of the most useful features in GaragePay that isn’t in PayPal is the ability to create Smart Folders. These work much the same as Smart Folders in Finder, or Smart Playlists in iTunes – Create a folder and apply a criterion to it.

This can be a great way of organising transactions without having to manually sort them, and a life-saving feature if you deal with hundreds of transactions on a regular basis.

Exporting as a CSV

If you need to add some PayPal transaction details to your spreadsheet, but there are far too many to enter manually, then GaragePay has just the thing for you – The ability to export a list of transactions as a CSV file.

CSV files will open in just about any database app, so it’s perfect for transferring data without any conversion issues. To export as a CSV, select the folder or list of transactions you wish to export, and hit the big “CSV Export” button.

You will be asked which transaction fields you wish to include, and a number of other options, including what to separate the values with. A comma is the default option (CSV does stand for Comma Seperated Values, after all), but in some languages, the comma is used for the decimal separator, and so a semi-colon is used.

Conclusion

If you’re unsatisfied with the PayPal website (and I don’t blame you), then certainly give GaragePay a try – It is by far the best PayPal solution for Mac, and you will know exactly how to use it straight away.

It probably won’t change your life, but it’ll make it a good bit easier. The only real criticism I can offer is that the API isn’t supported in all countries, but that’s an problem with PayPal, and not with GaragePay.

If you use PayPal daily, it’s well worth the $25. For the occasional user, it may be a little much, but it’s nevertheless an excellent app with great care put into its development.

This week, I’m once again incredibly proud to have Pixelmator as our Mac.AppStorm sponsor. One of my all-time favourite apps, this is a fantastic alternative to the increasingly-bloated Photoshop for all manner of graphic editing work.

Labelled as an “image editor for the rest of us”, Pixelmator’s interface is enjoyable to use while maintaining a simple learning curve for new adopters. If you’re already a seasoned Photoshop pro, you’ll feel right at home with the familiar palette interface and similar tools.

Pixelmator is based on Core Image technology that uses your Mac’s video card for image processing. This means that it’s fast. It supports a huge range of graphics formats, and the price of $59 is a welcome change to the inflated charge for many competing apps.

Although I still use Photoshop from time to time, Pixelmator has become by go-to tool for 80% of tasks that require working with graphics. If you yearn for a faster, sleeker alternative to Photoshop, give Pixelmator a try today.

The productivity app space yields what can only be described as an embarrassment of riches these days, but is there something for everyone amongst the goods?

iProcrastinate is a productivity/to do list app clearly geared toward students.  It appears to be a one man show over at craigotis.com, but the results seem solid.  My first experience for iProcrastinate was way back before a major UI redesign, and (I believe) while the app was originally available for the first generation jailbroken iPod touch.

The app has come a long way since then, but what does it have to offer in the ever expanding sea of productivity tools?

Interface

I believe that in order for a productivity tool to actually make you more productive, you have to use it (and enjoy using it).  If a user interface is unpleasing, or difficult to use, you’re less likely to use it.  Most of these things can be attributed to personal preference, which is why different apps work better for different people, but the fact remains that design is important.

The first thing that jumps out about iProcrastinate is the smooth, dark interface.  I remember when the interface was quite unpleasant, and while it’s a significant improvement, its near-monochromatic sheen leaves some ease-on-the-eyes to be desired. 

I certainly appreciate the dark, OS X compatible theme, but I can’t help but feel like with the compartmentalized UI design, a bit more contrast would be beneficial for ease of use.

Despite the flooding darkness, the user interface really is quite nice.  It’s simple, compact, and keeps necessary information available a glance or, it some cases, not more than a click away.

Usability

I found iProcrastinate surprisingly intuitive: it took me only moments to fill it with tasks and I was able to start using it to get stuff done right away.  The partitioned UI design organizes the useful information you need and essentially hides the information you don’t. 

The left sidebar contains your smart groups (which can be entirely hidden, if you so choose) and your subjects.  The central pane contains the tasks for the currently selected group or subject, with items due today appearing with orange detail, rather than green. 

Finally, the right sidebar contains a steps pane, for breaking down your tasks, and a files pane, for attaching relevant materials that you may need to complete the task.

The app sets a (rather attractive) icon in your menu bar that provides a drop down menu displaying the day’s tasks, but the icon can be removed from within Preferences.  Tasks are easily editable via a pop up editor, and allow items to be scheduled, repeated, and assigned priority.

If you need to see a comprehensive view of your monthly agenda, simply click the calendar button in the bottom left to bring up a color coded month calendar.  You can show all subjects or certain subjects, as well has hiding completed items

Finally, iProcrastinate syncs with its mobile counterpart either via local Wi-Fi, or through Dropbox.  I didn’t test out the mobile version of the client, but at first glance, it seems to be contiguous with the UI and aesthetic of the desktop version. 

I will say that I appreciate the discrete pop-up sync pane–it seems as though the feature is useful yet lightweight.

Conclusion

iProcrastinate, despite a few flaws here and there, seems to be a solid productivity app.  There are plenty of students who need to be organized, and plenty of organized GTD’ers out there, but is the market strong enough for a non-GTD app designed for students?

If my personal productivity mantra hadn’t become so rooted in the Getting Things Done philosophy over the past few years, I would seriously think about giving iProcrastinate a shot at becoming my go-to productivity app. As it stands, it isn’t all that well suited for the dedicated GTD mindset.

I’m curious about everyone else’s philosophy on UI design when it comes to to do list apps.  Does it have to be visually appealing, or will you use whatever gets the job done?

iDive, which is produced by French video tool specialist Aquafadas Software, sets out to give you a way to ‘create and organize your digital video catalog’.

If you have a large collection of video files, you might want to consider additional software alongside your editing tools to organise and search your collection. There a few options to choose from, and you’ll be familiar with the concept if you have any experience with photo cataloging apps such as iPhoto or Picasa.

Read on to find out how well iDrive meets that need, and whether it deserves a place in your Applications folder!

Getting Started

You can download a free trial of iDive directly from the Aquafadas web site. Once you’ve installed it, a helpful guide screen opens on first run introducing some of iDive’s key features.

It also gives you the chance to automatically download and install a ‘demo catalog’ – a sample video clip library so you can experiment before starting on your own video clips.

Basic Concepts

To work with iDive, you need to understand its organisation model. Your videos will be organised into Libraries. Within libraries, you can create Containers which are either Events or Tape Groups.

Your individual video clips will be imported into iDive, and a sequence of clips will make up a Tape which usually corresponds to a physical tape from your camera and will be held in a library. Typically you would create a library for a set of connected tapes, e.g. ‘Work’ or ‘Family’ or for a large number of files such as ‘Summer Vacation’.

Different libraries may be stored in multiple, separate locations so it’s possible to have a library on a drive that you only mount when needed.

The iDive Interface

iDive presents an attractive interface divided into panes.

The toolbar lets you set up libraries and import and export your videos. The source panel lists the places in which your clips are organized. The clip pane shows you clips which are in your selected source (matching any search criteria you have specified), and the detail pane shows a view of the currently selected clip.

Across the top of the screen runs a timeline showing the dates of the clips in the pane below, which you can use to navigate to clips from a particular date.

The left hand pane can be switched from showing the video source to showing detailed clip information, or the find and annotation pane. These last two features are where you exploit the organisational power of iDive.

Annotation

The way that iDive makes it easy for you to find a particular clip is by letting you add and then, later, search for annotations to that clip. Thus, annotations are a form of tagging under the three categories of people, places and events. In other words, for each clip you can record details such as the place it was shot, the people who appear in it, or an event it records.

Once you’ve applied annotations to your clips, you can search on them or select them by clicking in a list to rapidly find a clip with specific annotations from a whole library.

The way of applying annotations to the currently selected clip or clips is by checking them in a pop up list. You can, of course, apply multiple annotations to a clip. To speed the process, especially if you have many annotations to chose from, iDive lists both the most recently used and your favourite annotations first.

Importing and Exporting Your Video

iDive can import video in any format that QuickTime can read, which includes popular types like MOV, AVI, DV files and Flash animations. You can use third party codecs with QuickTime to extend this range. iDive will work with existing digital video files on your computer and with can directly import DV data from your camera which you can capture and compress using the “Import from Device” menu item.

A wizard takes you through the import process and lets you set parameters such as frame sampling intervals and compression.

When it comes to exporting selected clips from iDive for use in video projects, there is support for a range of options including QuickTime, iPod/ Phone, Apple TV and iMovie. You can also export clip lists to Final Cut Pro or Express and to Avid. Again, a wizard guides you through picking the export options you need.

Printing

When you’ve completed a project, you might like to make a copy on a DVD or other physical media. iDive has built in templates to print covers and contact sheets for a range of storage such as CD, miniDV tape and DVD .

You can easily drag and drop frames from iDive to make a cover that identifies what’s on the disc.

Conclusion

Aquafadas provides a very detailed manual for iDive but frustratingly, it’s from an earlier version. The documentation lags badly behind the current version of the software and that makes it difficult to get to grips with iDive as some features are clearly no longer available while others work differently. There is support available via an online forum but some comments there suggest responses are not always speedy.

iDive gives the impression of being a potentially useful tool for people with large video collections to manage but one that would benefit from increased attention from its authors. You can make up your own mind with the full-featured a trial version, limiting the amount of data that can be processed to 3 libraries, 5 tapes, 1 hour of imported video or 200 clips.

Alternative products to consider with similar features include FootTrack priced at $49.95, and Cinematica, $24.95. It’s worth also taking a look at these before making a purchase decision!

So often, we marvel at the quality of interface design on OS X – the clean, simple layouts, and how you know exactly how to use an app when you first use it. But do you ever stop and think about why this is?

It doesn’t just happen by accident. There are UI designers working tirelessly to make an app look and feel absolutely perfect.

Chris Downer is the UI designer for Realmac Software, the company behind such OS X greats as LittleSnapper, Courier and Rapidweaver. Today, we’ll be talking to Chris about his methods, inspiration and much more.

Tell us a little bit about the Realmac team – where are you based, how many of you are there, and what motivates you as a company?

Realmac Software is a small company based in Brighton, in the UK. There are seven of us and we are motivated by our love to work hard making nice things for Macs!

How did you get into design, and specifically user interface design?

I’ve always been fascinated in design for as long as I can remember. Whether that be architecture, product design or even things like album covers and movie posters.

I really started to notice UI and icon design when bored one day, I discovered the world of ‘deskmodding’ back when I was a Windows XP user. I thought that it was pretty cool and wanted to join in, so I started making the icons that I couldn’t find a replacement for and shared them on sites like DeviantArt.

I continued this until I got my first Mac and I was blown away by how different and brilliant the UX was in comparison. That’s when I took the time to really look into UI design and research it whilst practising my skills in Adobe Photoshop – and I haven’t looked back since.

Where do you get inspiration from?

I think much of my inspiration has come from looking at a lot of various applications, both Mac and iOS, and seeing how they are designed and then looking at alternatives or improvements that can be made to them.

Many of the apps that have inspired me the most are usually Apple’s own, just because such a large majority of them are very well designed so you can always take inspiration from them.

I’m also very much inspired by a lot of things I see in everyday life, especially the little details. I often think that when these are converted into skeumorphic UI design, they can add really nice touches into an application and this familiarity can genuinely improve a user’s experience.

How do you approach a new project?

Starting a new project is a very exciting time with a lot of ideas being thrown around. I usually start by writing a lot of things down, just to get all my thoughts on paper. These things can be UI ideas, things that could lead to possible features, and weighing out the pros and cons a certain direction could take.

Once I have scribbled down everything that came into my head, it’s time to start wireframing how I think something should look, going through alternative ideas, and combining and consolidating what I think would work best. After this, it’s time to start mocking it out in Photoshop.

I think that everybody is bound to come across even small hurdles that they have to overcome along their way, as the project is constantly evolving. But that, in my opinion, is one of the many things that makes designing UI so fun.

Apple are starting to introduce iOS-based interface elements to the desktop – Is this a good move, in your opinion, and one you will follow?

This is something that I have mixed feelings on. I do love iOS, and I think it’s great, but I feel that there are various elements that don’t belong on a desktop.

But there are also iOS elements that I am definitely going to welcome, and have done so already including popovers and switches, let alone gestures which we have also been promised in Lion.

I do think it’s a good move as I believe Apple are ultimately trying to merge iOS and OS X into one and there is already plenty of evidence to suggest this.

When designing interfaces, especially for OS X, is there a sense that you should stick to what people have learnt to expect, as it will be easier to use, or do you feel you have freedom to innovate as well?

I think it all really depends on the project in hand. If the application you are designing is for a vast audience, then you would want to stick to what people to know, but you will also want to try and include new things that’ll set the app out from the rest to make it unique.

If the application is for a specific audience who may be more proficient or experienced than your average user, then I feel that gives you a bit more leverage to innovate, knowing there is less of a chance of the user being confused by something.

Regardless of your audience, you will want to ultimately design an application that looks great, feels unique and is a pleasure to use.

Why do you think that the Mac has such a wonderful standard of UI design compared to other platforms such as Windows and Linux?

Without sounding too much like a fanboy, I do really think it’s down to the people who work at Apple. Steve Jobs in particular, who has recognised the importance of high standards of design and it’s something that Apple can pride themselves on.

I’m sure that designers on the UI teams of Windows and Linux for example are very talented and passionate about design but I don’t think their companies really “get it”, which means ultimately, and rather sadly, their standard of UI tends to be lacking. Especially in comparison with that of the Mac.

What’s your set-up like? Do you try to keep your hardware up-to-date?

At work, I’m lucky enough to have an awesome 27″ iMac, which is just perfect for designing on. I’ve got this set up with a Magic Trackpad, which I do all my designing with. I definitely prefer using it over a mouse. I find it really fluid to use and more accurate for intricate work.

At home, my set-up is, rather shamefully, a lot less impressive. It’s currently a 13″ first-gen unibody MacBook Pro. It’s badly in need of an update, but I guess I’m just holding off until Apple announces brand-new models which will hopefully be this summer.

What apps do you use for interface design work, and what is your general workflow when crafting a new interface element?

For UI design, I purely work in Photoshop. On occasion I need to delve into Adobe Illustrator too, but luckily that’s not very often.

My general workflow is usually to assess what is needed, sketch out a few ideas on paper, work out the pros and cons something would take, and once I’m happy with it, I’ll add it to the mockup.

When it has been added to the latest build of the application, I’ll test it out to make sure I’m really happy with it, making a few changes if necessary and then move on to the next thing.

Sometimes there are things that you really need to use to test them, although the idea could seem great in the mockup which is why I find testing them so important. If it doesn’t fit or work well, then I need to go back a few steps and try something different.

For someone interested in interface design, where would you suggest they start?

I think it’s best to begin by really looking at user interfaces. Try and understand why the designer may have made that particular decision, or think of any alternatives that could have been made.

When I was starting out, I thought a good interface was the one that looked the best, instead of looking under the surface, getting to grips with Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines and how people will interact with it from a UX/psychological point of view.

With the theory, there is also the practical side of things in Photoshop or whatever app you find best to use. The best way to go about this is simply by practicing. As it is with many other things in life. You’ll continually improve with each thing you make.

I think it’s also very important to try and get as much feedback as you can over sites like Twitter and Dribbble for example. I know this helped me improve greatly.

Can you reveal anything about future Realmac products in the pipeline?

Sadly there isn’t too much I can reveal. We’re working on so many awesome projects right now and I can’t wait for them to be announced. You may have already heard from our blog that LittleSnapper 2 is one of the projects in the works, and I can tell you that it’s going to be great!

Thanks, Chris!

Many thanks to Chris for talking to Mac.AppStorm and sharing his tips, experiences and opinions. We really appreciate his contribution, and wish him all the best with Realmac and future software.

So, next time you see a well-designed app, think about how much time and effort went into the creation of its interface – Countless hours of tweaking and perfecting, planning and wire-framing.

It can be easy to forget about the people behind these apps, but they’re the ones that make your lives so much easier and your operating system so much nicer!

We all remember journals as a childhood thing. They are usually identified with learning to write and it’s something that most adults aren’t used to doing. Journaling, however, is a great way to keep track of the stages of your life and the important events you go through.

It is always nice to go back in your journal and recall feelings, people and events from the past. It’s something that you can use to show your children your travels and adventures. But keeping a physical paper diary has become fairly inadequate, now that we have pretty much everything in digital form.

The app that we are reviewing today is called Day One and it does a great job at helping you keep a journal in the most simplistic manner in your Mac. Read on to find more about it!

We’ve also posted a review of the iPhone version of Day One in conjunction with this article. If you use an iPhone or iPod touch, it’s definitely worth reading what we have to say about the mobile version!

Getting Started

Day One launched recently, and it is only sold in the Mac App Store for $9.99. When you first open it, you’ll have the option to store its main folder in your Dropbox folder for syncing purposes.

This is to make sure that you can use the app on both your Mac and your iPhone, and keep both of them synced up. This is becoming something of a trend in app syncing, and it seems to work well!

The Interface

The interface of the app is very simple and pretty, with a very “mobile” feeling to it. This might as well be an app that you could find on your iPad, since most of its interface is graphical and all the buttons used are big and easy to interact with.

Towards the left, you have the menu buttons that allow you to see your history, starred notes, add new journals and modify your reminders (more on them later). The main area of the app is pretty big and this is where you’ll write and classify your entries, as well as read your past ones.

Adding New Entries

On the bar on the left there is an option called “New”, where you are able to add new entries to your journal. In this menu there will be a big text box where you can fill in whatever you’d like to write about.

Right on top of this text box there is a bar showing the info that this entry will be stored with. Here you can change the date of the entry, trash it, save it, and star it.

When using this part of the app, you’ll see an area of “quotes” near the top. Most of these are inspirational, and do a good job at getting you to write something. They also give you tips on writing, along with random ideas such as weight-loss tips, as well as questions that are supposed to help you fill out your diary.

Exploring Old Entries

A diary is nothing if you can’t go back and read it, right? That’s why two of the menus of the app are called “Days” and “Starred”. Under the “Days” menu, all of your entries will be sorted by date. Here you can check which year you’d like to see entries from, and browse a timeline of all your old entries. You can also go into any entry and star it or edit it.

On the “Starred” menu, you can check the entries that you have marked as important. I don’t see much use for them in a diary app, but I’m sure some people could take advantage of this feature.

Reminders and the Menu Bar

Day One supports a pretty cool feature called “Reminders” that has the potential to maximize the frequency of your writing. These reminders give the app sort of a Twitter-esque thing where it will remind you at different times during the day to write down your thoughts quickly through short messages.

This is all done through the menu bar, where a little icon of a bookmark is always shown to give you quick access to the app.

You can set the reminders to go off at any given frequency – from every 15 minutes to just once per week. When a reminder goes off, the menu bar icon will automatically open, exposing a few buttons and a text box where you can write what you are thinking.

If you are busy when the reminder goes off, you can always “snooze” it through the 10 minute snooze button on top of the text bar, or simply skip the reminder. The menu bar icon can also be used without the reminders, just click it and type away.

So, What’s the Point?

I guess it’s kind of hard describing the functionality of this app as it sort of fits the space between note taking apps like Evernote, and journal apps –which are still a pretty new and unexploited category– that can take in all of your activity during the day and file it under its file system so that you can have a log of your activities and thoughts.

These apps also bring up a lot of comparisons to personal blogs, as much like them, they give you the ability to write whatever you feel at any given time, except privately.

Sometimes there are things that we’d rather keep to ourselves instead of posting them all over social networks, and this is why I think these kind of apps are useful. They give you an outlet to keep a log of your thoughts without having to worry about other people hearing about them, so that you don’t have to wonder whether a tweet or post is appropriate for your family to see.

Conclusion

I personally would love to keep using this app on a daily basis. I might not use the reminders, as I consider them to be a bit intrusive and distracting, but I’ll definitely keep using this for at least a couple weeks to see how much use I can give to it.

I suggest you do the same. Journals are popular for being a great way to purge yourself from bad emotions, and also to record your adventures and thoughts for posteriority. I think the price is easily justified if you can also find the time to use it.

We’ve also posted a review of the iPhone version of Day One in conjunction with this article. If you use an iPhone or iPod touch, it’s definitely worth reading what we have to say about the mobile version!

We have another great competition for you this week, offering the chance to win one of five licenses for the excellent ColorSchemer Studio!

ColorSchemer Studio makes it fun, fast and easy to find the perfect palette for your next creative project. Whether you’re designing a web site, magazine layout, picking wedding colors, or painting your living room, get your colors right the first time with ColorSchemer Studio.

It’s a really versatile piece of software, and one that we reviewed last year. ColorSchemer is well designed, fun to use, and it takes the anxiety out of coming up with effective and professional color combinations.

Entering the competition is really easy. All you need to do is leave a comment below, letting us know what you’d like to design a colour scheme for!

The competition will run for one week, and I’ll pick five winning comments at random on Thursday, 31st March. Best of luck, and why not take a look at ColorSchemer Studio on the Mac App Store while you wait for the results?

When running your own business, it can be extremely helpful to have a system for keeping track of progress, tasks, documents, contacts, etc. There are many apps available that help facilitate project, client and customer management like Daylite, Elements, or Outlook.

These apps fall into a category called CRM, or Customer Relation Management apps, which is a fancy way of describing the management of people and projects in a business.  Relationship from Jumsoft aims to help organize projects, team members and customers with a powerful feature set in a native Mac app environment.

Another way of looking at apps like Relationship is as a local project management app — where you can keep track of who is doing what for what project, without having to rely on input from your collaborators.

No matter what kind of business you’re in, when you’re working on projects with others, you’re probably going to use various apps for things like email, task management, calendars, contacts and notes, as well as a keeping track of a slew of related documents and bookmarks.

Relationship is an attempt to bring all this functionality together into one cohesive app, so that when you’re working on a project, you don’t need to go back and forth.

Interface

Relationship boasts the kind of clean, attractive interface that Jumsoft is known for, with a sidebar navigation style and two or three column layout. The sidebar has a “Library” which displays various aspects of your business or work individually.

Contacts, Projects, Tasks, Events, Emails, Bookmarks, Stickies and Notes are each almost like their own application within Relationships, except that information within each can be linked. When using Relationship, you’re most likely going to be dealing with all these elements as related to Projects, such that each task, sticky, bookmark etc. is linked to a project.

The “Relationships” in Relationship function as links between different pieces of information. For example, when you add a new contact, you have the option to “link” this contact to other contacts, to projects, tasks, and so on. This works between all different information types – you could link an event to an email, a task to a project, or a bookmark to a contact.

You can choose to view all information of a certain type from all projects by selecting sections from the left sidebar, or you can see these items for specific projects in the project pane.

Contacts

Contacts are the bread and butter of Relationship. No matter how you use the app, you will probably primarily organize everything in terms of either contacts or projects.

Relationship syncs both ways with Address Book, and you can import all your contacts in their groups when you first open Relationship. Adding contacts is identical to Address Book, with the added option of linking contacts to each other or companies. When you click on a contact, links to other contacts are displayed below, and links to projects, tasks etc. are listed in the sidebar.

You can organize contacts in normal Address Book groups, which sync with Address Book, or create groups that only show within Relationship called “Relationship Groups”. You can also create smart groups with rules for who gets included.

Projects

The Projects section is a central command for active projects. Each project has a “dashboard” that displays an objective, assigned contacts, upcoming events and linked information about the project. In the third column, you can choose to display each type of information (e.g. tasks) by itself.

Tasks

The task manager in Relationships is pretty straight-forward and familiar. For each task, you can add a deadline, assign contacts, and assign relevance.

One small gripe I have about the task manager is that you can’t see who is assigned to a task without clicking on it, and even then clicking on the contact’s name doesn’t bring up their info. It would be nice if you could see an overdue task, who’s responsible, then click the name and send an email asking what’s up.

In the third column of the task manager, you can narrow the focus of tasks by project, deadline or priority.

Events

The events calendar in Relationship is pretty much identical to iCal, and works in almost exactly the same way. There seems to be some syncing ability, but I couldn’t find any documentation in the manual.

Events added to Relationship show up in iCal, but not the other way around, which I guess makes sense if you only want to focus on business-related events.

Relationship also shows dock icon notifications for upcoming events and tasks, along with a count in the application sidebar.

Emails

The email client in Relationship is, again, much like Mail.app, but missing a few features: there’s no autocomplete for the “to” field, and you can’t select recipients from a list of contacts, which seems like a pretty big oversight to me.

It’s not immediately obvious, but you can link emails like anything else in Relationships, you just have to select the email and click the “link” icon at the bottom left of the email pane. The email client also has an integrated RSS reader.

Bookmarks

Relationship has a built-in browser with a bookmarks bar much like that in any web browser, the difference being that you can link bookmarks to any other information by selecting the bookmark in the right-hand column and clicking the “link” icon.

I’m not a huge fan of this approach. Personally I dislike in-app browsers, and would prefer if it just listed bookmarks and opened them in my default browser when clicked.

Stickies

I’m starting to sound repetitive here, but the stickies function in Relationship is pretty much the same as the Stickies app that came with your Mac, again, with the exception of being able to link stickies!

Documents

I think this is one of the more useful features of Relationship, because I’m terrible at keeping my documents organized in the Finder. You can browse (or drag and drop!) to add relevant documents to a project, and when clicked they open up in the appropriate application.

Documents in Relationship are organized by “shelf” – where each project has a shelf – but you can also add custom shelves with any name.

Conclusion

If you’ve been following, you may have noticed that Relationship is basically just Address Book, Things, iCal, Mail and Stickies all rolled into one application. I’m a bit on the fence as to whether I like this approach. None of the features really add any functionality beyond the native Mac apps, with the exception of ability to link everything together.

This linking is what makes Relationship unique – though the separate apps you would use for the same tasks do the job just as well (if not better), it can be tough to keep everything together.

While the most obvious way of organizing all your information in Relationship is by project, you aren’t limited to this, and can literally link anything to anything. Business very often is about relationships, so it makes sense to have an app that helps you see everything as it relates.

That being said, I think Relationship perhaps tries to do too much. The email client and the browser/bookmarks are certainly overkill. It would work just as well if when an email address was clicked, a new message opened in your default client, and emails could be linked without having to be displayed in the Relationship client (for example, many task management apps allow you to link emails to tasks).

The browser is superfluous too, I imagine most people are like me and like to do all their browsing in one place, and also don’t have the screen real estate to maximize relationship so as to see the full browser window.

Businesses can be tricky to organize digitally – all your information is on the computer, but it takes a lot of time and patience to maintain an immaculate Finder where everything is in its proper place. To that end, I think Relationship is a great idea, and I find myself tempted to use it for my own freelance business, but I’m too attached to the system I already have.

How do you organize your small business? Do you feel an app like Relationship is necessary, or is it just overkill?

If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably long forgotten about iTunes Visualizers. Right now you’re trying to remember what they are aren’t you? For whatever reason they were something that we thought were great at one point, but they have since lost their luster.

They aren’t directly useful but can be a great addition to a party, or just something cool to look at while listening to some tunes!

There aren’t many folks out there dabbling with Quartz Composer churning out new visualizers so they are a little tough to come by these days. They aren’t the most popular feature of iTunes by any stretch, but it is a pretty fun feature and there are some amazing ones out there. I went searching for some of the best.

Screenshots don’t really do this visualizers justice. The only way to really get the full picture is to download the plug-ins and give them a try. It’s easy, each one listed below even comes with an installer.

High Particles

This visualizer is fairly basic, but sometimes that can be an endearing quality! The best way to describe it is that there are particle bursts all over the screen. It does match up with the music quite well – at least it throws more bursts out during the loud, more intense portions of songs!

There are a couple versions of this one. One displays the song playing in the corner with the band name and album name floating around, while the other omits the text all together.

Download High Particles.

Fountain Music

Fountain Music has a really interesting interaction with the music. It is essentially a fountain of particles that look like the are bursting out of water. They change colors and burst patterns depending on the music.

It is about the most visually minimal visualization here, but it is pretty great to watch and can be quite relaxing actually. One of my favorites.

Download Fountain Music.

One Day

This visualizer is very serene and peaceful. It gives you a sense that you’re flying around in the sky – and even into space. This changes depending on the pace of the song. You’ll be soaring through the day sky with the sun in the distance during a quicker paced song.

A slower song will take you on a night time flight with the moon in the distance. Other than that there isn’t a ton of interaction with the music.

Download One Day.

Cubism

The easiest way to describe this one is to say that is is a three-dimensional equalizer bar, floating around in space. It is a really cool one and has as much musical interaction as any of the other visualizers – it really does look like an equalizer.

The bars shift up and down and change colors depending on the song. A nice touch is that you’ll see a block with the cover art of the current album floating in the middle of the equalizer. Pretty basic look to it, but a really fun effect.

Download Cubism.

Aeon

Aeon is a bit different in that there are customization options available. You can adjust the scene that is shown and then set the interval that it switches to a new one. There are further options to toggle within each scene as well.

I was only working with the trial version and the range of possible combinations is pretty impressive. The paid versions will unlock more options. You’ll also see notices pop up letting you know that it is a trial version (if you go that route).

With a paid version it would probably be safe to say that you wouldn’t need another visualizer.

Download Aeon (all versions).

Whitecap

Here is another customizable visualizer. The options with Whitecap are even greater than Aeon. There are backgrounds, shapes, and colors to chose from. And even more customizations from within those areas. Again, it is staggering to think about the variety of possible combinations.

<p.The general idea does carry through all the different customizations. The wave shapes to interact with the music very closely. This makes for a very interesting visualization. Again, I was working with a trial version, so there are limitations and also notices to make sure you know you're using a trial version.

Download Whitecap (all versions).

G-Force

Another commercial visualizer, but this time the trial doesn’t come with any customization options. The visuals do interact with the music quite well and produce interesting effects even in the trial version. You can tell that there are an insane amount of different shapes and colors and combinations available.

The trial version basically just cycles through all of the different possible shapes and views. The paid version of G-Force even comes with its own toolbar. I’ve seen this one dubbed as “the only visualizer you’ll ever need”.

Download G-Force (all versions) here.

Figure

This visualizer is noticeably different from the others discussed here. This one will display the album cover and song information floating around the screen in a three-dimensional grid arrangement. It is pretty visually interesting to watch and it’s great having that album and song information available in such an interesting way.

The movement does have some connection to the music, but it isn’t too noticeable. The normally white background will fade to black in-between tracks.

Download Figure here.

AquaFlow

There are more exiting visualizers available, but AquaFlow is certainly one of the most mesmerizing ones available. As the name would suggest, there is a definite “flow” to it. Lines move fluidly across the screen which gives you the feeling that it is moving.

The “flow” action is slow and smooth, and even though it doesn’t seem to have much connection to the music playing it is still very interesting to watch.

Download AquaFlow.

Dragon

I’ve saved the most interesting one for last. You might also call it the creepiest one as well… Dragon will show what looks like a dragon slithering around. You never see the full dragon. You just see a close up view sliding and twisting around in front of you.

This one is very different from any visualizer that I’ve seen. I’m not sure it would last on my display for too long, but definitely worth checking it out. It is pretty darn cool!

Download Dragon.

We’re very proud to announce the release of Freelance Confidential, Rockable Press’s newest book on freelancing. This book aims to provide the hard numbers on the biggest issues of freelancing and advice on how experienced freelancers can improve their business.

More than just another single person’s view on freelancing, Freelance Confidential contains contributions from the Editor of FreelanceSwitch, Amanda Hackwith, a panel of 10 expert entrepreneurs, and 3,200 freelancers worldwide.

If you’re a Mac-using freelancer, read on for a little more insight into what the book includes!

Last winter, we asked readers of FreelanceSwitch to contribute to a global survey on freelancing–over 3,200 responded! Get those statistics and you’ll learn the real numbers on the biggest questions which revealed some surprising new trends for the freelance industry. Did you know…?

• Fewer freelancers live in large urban cities than did three years ago. What are the benefits?
• New referrals from advertising and cold calling has dropped significantly. What’s the best new source?
• Freelancers with former experience as an employee report the highest level of satisfaction and happiness. Why is that?

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What’s Inside

More than just a stats book, Freelance Confidential compares survey numbers to the 2007 survey to see what’s changing. We’ve also interviewed ten amazing success stories like Ed Gandia of International Freelancer’s Academy, James Chartrand of Men with Pens, FreelanceSwitch’s own N.C. Winters, an exclusive interview with founder Collis Ta’eed, and many more.

You’ll learn the current trends and insights on big questions:

• Where do you find new clients? You’ll be interested to see what source has grown over the past three years.
• How much do you charge? Think hotshot consultants are able to charge the most? Think again.
• How do you raise your rates? The numbers show it’s not a steady climb to retirement.
• How do you stabilize your income month to month? Our experts were unanimous on two necessary steps for success: diversity and marketing. We’ll walk through the best advice for both.
• Is social media really worth it? Forget the hype, get real and get focus.
• How to make a successful start? Envato founder Collis Ta’eed talks about what he’d do if he had to start from scratch all over again.
• And much more on clients, passive income, security and trends for the future!

Still undecided? Check out the Freelance Confidential launch page to download free sample pages and see what others have to say about the book.

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Buy Now & Save

We’re really excited to offer Freelance Confidential in four great formats:

• Buy the digital download in DRM-free mobi, epub, and pdf formats. Book release sale for early buyers! Buy the digital version in the first five days and receive a special sale price–now available for $24, normally $29. As always, all digital downloads come with Rockable’s 100% satisfaction guarantee.
• Buy a full-color print copy on Amazon for $34.99! Bonus: email your Amazon receipt to the address listed inside and receive the digital versions for free!

Let us know what you think, and thanks for taking the time to check out our latest book!

Although many people are perfectly happy using Gmail on the web, I’ve never particularly enjoyed the experience. I spend quite a bit of time reading and replying to email, and prefer to have an appealing interface in which to do so – Gmail might be functional, but it certainly isn’t pretty.

For the past five years or so, Mail.app was my preferred client of choice. It did everything I required from an email client, and synced well across my various devices. But development has slowed in recent years, and little has changed in the app since the release of Leopard.

I’ve recently made the move across to Postbox, and couldn’t be happier. It’s a fantastic piece of software, and one that I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend. If you’re tired of Mail.app (or your webmail interface), Postbox is definitely worth giving a try.

Of course, there are plenty of other alternatives. Take a look at our roundup of 8 Awesome Alternatives to Mail.App on Your Mac for some inspiration.

I’d be interested to hear what you think. Are you content with firing up Gmail.com, or do you prefer a desktop email companion? Let us know in the comments, and don’t forget to vote!

We’d probably all benefit from keeping better track of our money, and it’s always great to find a native Mac app to get the job done. It’s a difficult problem to solve, as we all manage money in our own unique way – budgeting, spending and income are highly individualized. As such, the selection of apps in this niche is similarly varied, with each having different feature sets and workflows.

iFinance is significantly cheaper than a lot of the other options out there, so let’s see if it can still get the job done!

Getting Started

There are two ways to get started with iFinance: importing data from another source, or starting from scratch.

Importing

You can import data in CSV, MT940, or Quicken Interchange Format. CSV files usually come from spreadsheet applications, like Excel, Numbers, or Google Spreadsheets. Some banks and online apps (like Mint.com) also export transactions in .csv format.

MT940 (.sta) format comes from some banks, and contains info about transactions and balances.

When you import data, iFinance will give you the option to assign categories to each column to the best fit. I tried importing data from my mint.com account, which seemed to work, but the balance was off, so I think perhaps I ought to have payed more attention to the starting value. You might have to do a bit of math to get the numbers to match up.

The Quicken importing option will please PC converts, and is a feature lacking in some comparable applications.

Starting Fresh

If you’re starting from scratch, iFinacne will ask you to create a new database, which you can name whatever you like. Once you’re into the main interface, you’ll notice a familiar iTunes-style design, with drop-down menus in the sidebar, a main panel, and an info display at the top which graphs the data that you’re looking at, sort of like the iTunes equalizer.

The first thing you’ll want to do is probably delete some of the sample data: it has a $200 computer budget set up and the Apple stock tracked.

Transactions

Next, add your first transaction. You should probably make this your ‘starting point’ – a salary or savings amount from which purchases and payments will be subtracted.

Next you can start adding any other transactions. iFinance suggests you set up a series of ‘accounts’ to keep track of different cashflows. It has ‘cash’, ‘bank account’ and ‘credit card’ already set up for you. Feel free to add or delete accounts, or rename them how you like.

When adding transactions, you can assign a category, or add more categories to the list. You can designate transactions as one-time, recurring, or as a transfer between accounts. The transaction panel also lets you add notes for reference, such as check numbers or beneficiaries.

You can also tag transactions, which is useful for quickly seeing what eats up a lot of money, and they come in handy for assigning budgets.

Transactions can be split between categories, so you can separate receipts or invoices appropriately. Some other transaction features are reconciling, where you can specify whether a transaction is open, closed or pending, and currency conversion.

Making Budgets

One of the handier features of iFinance is the simple budgeting. Select ‘new budget’ from the sidebar, then you can determine the amount for the budget, and which transactions to assign to it.

You can assign transactions via account, categories or tags, so for example any transactions in the category ‘groceries’ or with the tag ‘coffee’ would automatically be counted in your ‘Food/Beverage’ category. You can set monthly, quarterly, weekly, or yearly budgets, or set a manual period.

The status of each budget is displayed in the sidebar, with a positive or negative figure that shows how you’re doing. The info bar at the top also shows an overview of your allotted, spent and remaining money for a budget, and the iTunes-like graph shows weighted category breakdown of the budget.

Charts

iFinance has pretty comprehensive charting abilities, it gives you a couple of automatic charts to start off with, and also provides the ability to create your own based on the parameters you’re interested in.

You can select a couple of options for each chart, like fine-tuning period, combining values, whether to include transfers and whether to include future transactions.

Reports

Similar to the charting function, iFinance can also create comprehensive reports. Reports display information in lists, such as top expenses by category, tag, week, year, etc. You can make reports of income, expenses, income/expenses, profit/loss etc.

Stocks

I admit I’m a little out of my element here, I don’t have any investments, so I’m not the ideal candidate for judging the stock management in this app. The set up seems extremely straight-forward – just put in info about the stock and the amount you have purchased, and it tracks gains and losses in a neat little graph. When I checked the example (Apple) it was accurate and up-to-date according to Google.

Expense Tracking On-the-Go

iFinance advertises its iPhone app as the mobile expense tracker to compliment your desktop app. Despite this emphasis on its expense tracking abilities, it actually takes quite a few steps to get to the stage of adding a new transaction, and the options are not at all intuitive.

I wasn’t very impressed with the iPhone app overall, but it does work as advertised, and syncs with the desktop over Wi-Fi.

Conclusion

For its price, iFinance has most of the features you would need in a financial management application. It lacks a bank-syncing feature, though this only works with some institutions in other apps. Now that mint.com can connect all to my accounts, however, I miss having my electronic transactions uploaded automatically.

Overall, as with many financial management apps, there really isn’t all that much functionality that couldn’t be achieved with an Excel spreadsheet. However, Excel itself is expensive, and the learning curve can be pretty steep. iFInance offers a much cheaper, user friendly solution.

In comparison to more expensive apps like iBank, and Money, iFinance is comparable in terms of features (except for the aforementioned bank info importing), and workflow, though the workflow is a little bit clumsier (requiring an extensive manual).

The interface design seems slightly less polished, but it works. I’m not really a fan of the big, bright labels, but they do get the point across.

If you’re looking for a cheaper, yet equally functional option for tracking income and expenses, iFinance could work well for you. I still don’t feel like I’ve found the perfect solution for money management, because an ideal app would also integrate with my bank accounts and have a more intuitive and straightforward iPhone companion app.

As I said before, money management is highly personal – let us know what works for you! Have you found the perfect solution?

I’d like to take a moment to say a big thank you to this week’s sponsor, Twitterrific. I absolutely love every application that the Iconfactory produce, and this is no exception. It’s thoughtfully designed, beautiful to look at, and a pleasure to use.

If you’re growing tired with sparse updates to the official Twitter client (or the gradual integration of ads), look no further than Twitterrific. It’s a great alternative to the official Twitter client, and performs far better in many areas.

It supports multiple accounts, multiple windows, translation, a unified timeline, themes, and full keyboard control throughout. The latest release, version 4, was a huge update which brought a range of new functionality and a clean, minimal design.

You can buy Twitterrific on the Mac App Store, download the free version, or check out our in-depth review. I’m a huge fan, and really can’t recommend this app highly enough. Go try it out!

The iPhone 4 was released this past June, and with that came a major iOS release. This new hardware and software presented some new possibilities and thus some new applications. The added front-facing camera was begging to be used in a video calling situation and Apple – being the innovators that they are – created FaceTime to utilize this new functionality.

A limiting factor for FaceTime was the fact that it was only functional for calling another iPhone 4 (or the latest iteration of the iPod touch). Last October, Apple released a beta version of FaceTime for Mac, utilising the iSight camera built into most of their notebook and desktop computers.

FaceTime for Mac recently hit the Mac App Store as a full 1.0 release, and today we’ll be taking the final version for a spin!

Overview

iChat is the current proprietary video calling application for the Mac. The future of iChat is somewhat under debate as it does still have some other non-video features, but it appears as though FaceTime will be the de-facto video calling application for the Mac and Apple devices going forward.

Apple is pushing video calling via mobile devices now (especially with the recently updated iPad 2) and bridging that gap between mobile and desktop just makes sense. The FaceTime for Mac application is the link that makes it all possible, bringing the simplicity of FaceTime video calling to the desktop.

Setup

FaceTime can be downloaded from the App Store, and the setup process is as simple as entering your email address (which other people will use to call you). You will need to verify the email address you select, and this can be done right from the FaceTime interface. It is possible to add multiple email addresses that others can call. Each, however, will need to be verified.

From starting the download to completing the setup process, I’d say it took all of about five minutes to get the application ready to make or receive a call. Needless to say, it is quite simple to get FaceTime going.

Address Book

I’ll talk a little more about this shortly, but it should be noted that the Mac Address Book is where FaceTime looks for your contacts. If that is your primary address book tool, then you’re all set. If you’re like me and use something like Google Contacts, little intervention is required.

Luckily there is an option to sync the Address Book with Google Contacts so that was a really quick fix for me. If you’re using something that isn’t sync-able with Address Book you may be stuck doing some manual entry.

Interface

In true Apple form, the interface of FaceTime is extremely clean and simple. It is very reminiscent of an iPhone or iPad application.

The feature set really isn’t that large, so the interface has a minimalist feel almost by necessity. It is a pretty barebones type application so there aren’t a lot of bells and whistles to clutter up the interface.

Functionality

As I mentioned, FaceTime is a pretty basic application. It has essentially one function and that is video calling. Some users will long for more fancy features you may expect in an application such as this, but you will not find any of them here.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. By stripping out all of the non-essentials, Apple has built a very quick and simple to use video calling application. From my testing it fit my needs perfectly and I didn’t need to waste any time trying to figure out how to do something I didn’t really need anyway. It is designed for video calling and it does it very well.

This is a new application, and to use it you do need to have another FaceTime user on the other end – so testing was a bit of a problem for me. Believe it or not, I don’t have a ton of friends that are Mac users (I know…terrible isn’t it?). I thought the best way to get the real feel for FaceTime would be to take you through a scenario of a call with a friend of mine.

Making a Call

Making is call is very simple. You’re able to make a call to another Mac that is also using FaceTime or you could also call an iPhone or iPod as well as long as they are also using FaceTime. When you first open FaceTime, you’ll see a window with a video of your camera along with your contact list.

I want to call my friend Dan’s iPhone, so I’ll scan through the contact listing to find his name. As I mentioned earlier, this contact listing is pulled directly from Address Book. Edits made to the contact list in either application will be immediately reflected in the other.

To call an iPhone you do need to call the phone number of the iPhone (email will not work). A FaceTime call to an iPhone number will initiate a video call.

Dan will be notified that he is receiving a FaceTime call from me, with the option to accept or decline the call. He answers and the FaceTime call begins.

The call will default to portrait mode. You’ll see a window showing the incoming video with a picture-in-picture view of yourself or what your camera is showing. It has a very similar feel to a QuickTime X video window.

When you hover over the video window, you’ll see the controls that are available to you and – as I said earlier – there aren’t very many. You’ll have the ability to end the call, mute your microphone, change the view mode (portrait or landscape), or expand the video to full screen.

Above is an image of what the call looks like just sitting on my desktop in landscape view. I should also point out that if the iPhone’s orientation is changed the video orientation seen on the Mac changes as well. The window can be resized or can be taken all the way to full screen.

The quality of the call was excellent for us, but as with any video conferencing this will largely depend on your Internet connection. The cameras are perfectly capable of producing high quality video, so the potential problem area will be your network connection.

Receiving a Call

Now we’ll look at this scenario in reverse. This time Dan would like to make a call to me from his iPhone. He can pull up his address book and view my contact information. He’ll see a camera icon next to the email addresses I have verified for FaceTime.

He initiates a call to one of those, and the FaceTime call request has been sent. I’ll receive a notification on my desktop with the ability to accept or decline the call just like he did on his iPhone. In fact, it looks a lot like what you would see on the iPhone.

FaceTime doesn’t need to be running for someone to call you. Once you have the application installed, someone can make a call to you. Of course, you don’t have to answer it if you don’t want to. It makes your Mac function kind of like a telephone. People can call whenever, answer if you’d like.

This is a big difference from the iChat video calling feature. For a call to be initiated, the iChat client needs to be running. Not the case here. This is a different feature, but very welcome. It simplifies the application and the process just a bit more.

With the iPhone, Dan is able to toggle between the view from each camera on his phone. He can switch between the front-facing or rear-facing camera with the press of one button. The same feature would be available on the iPad 2 as well.

I underestimated how cool this feature would be. Actually seeing it work in person is quite something. I’ve done a lot of video conferencing and this really adds an entire new element to the experience. This is an exciting feature that is only possible because of the interconnectedness of FaceTime with mobile devices and the Mac.

Conclusion

Overall, I think the experience of FaceTime is excellent and I find it especially exciting for two reasons. First, is the fact that it feels less like an application and more like just an added feature of OS X. iChat definitely feels like an application, but FaceTime is so unobtrusive it just blends right in. Even when you’re using it it feels this way. Some may not like the minimalistic feel, but that was something I really ended up enjoying.

Secondly, the fact that FaceTime can be used on mobile devices along with the Mac is really a fantastic thing. This article is focusing more on the Mac side of FaceTime, but looking at the concept as a whole, incorporating mobile devices with their multiple cameras really brings about some exciting communication possibilities.

The real big limiting factor, that actually is no different from iChat, is that you’re only able to call other FaceTime devices. For those of us that do need to make video calls to non-Mac users sometimes we will still need to rely on some third party video calling software.

But as more and more people purchase new iPhones, iPads and iPods and install FaceTime for Mac the ecosystem grows and we’ll have more people that we can call. FaceTime versions for other platforms would be very exciting, but any news in that category is just a rumor at this point so we’ll have to wait and see what happens on that front.

FaceTime will come installed on all of the latest compatible Apple hardware and the upcoming version of Mac OS, but those of us with older Macs need to pick up a copy of FaceTime from the App Store for $0.99.

I know there has been some griping about having to pay for this application at all, but let’s be honest, $0.99 isn’t going to break the bank. I’m not exactly sure what Apple had in mind for charging that amount, but whatever the case I don’t think its a huge deal and to be quite honest, it is completely worth it!

Alarm clock apps are a difficult topic, as some people are averse to paying for an app that does something that their cellphones and clocks do. While I don’t quite use alarm apps on an everyday basis, I do find them attractive and convenient because they put in your hands a bunch of settings and options that regular alarm clocks don’t have.

Also, they have access to your complete music library, so you can wake up every day to your latest album or playlist. Today we are presenting an alarm clock app that goes along with your Mac perfectly, as it is very pretty, and remarkably simple to use. It’s called Aurora.

Getting Started

To be honest, I never even knew there was a market for alarm clock apps on the Mac until I did a roundup on them, where Aurora fared pretty well. It stood up as one of the priciest options, yet the one that felt the most “Mac native” and surely the prettiest and easiest to use.

It has also come down on price since then, so now is the time to give it a try if you haven’t. Aurora is now on the Mac App Store at an introductory price of $9.99.

Proper Use

The first time you run Aurora you’ll get some advice on how to use it. This includes a few pointers:

1. You shouldn’t close the lid when you have an alarm active. Aurora wakes your Mac up to run the alarms, and some Macs won’t wake up if the lid is closed, so if you want to be on time for work, leave your lid open.
2. If you use external speakers, make sure they are turned on. It’s pretty obvious that if the speakers are off, the alarms won’t make a sound.
3. Leave the power cord plugged in. Just like with the lid, some Macs won’t wake up if the power cord isn’t plugged in or if the battery is low.
4. Use Auto-login. If you choose to turn off your computer instead of just putting it to sleep, then make sure Auto-login is active so that Aurora can run the alarms properly instead of getting stuck in the “Choose a User” screen.

Follow these steps correctly, and you’ll always be woken up in time, and in style…

Setting Up an Alarm

Aurora is probably the most customizable and easy-to-setup alarm clock you’ve ever used. When you add a new alarm, you have the option to make it recurrent and choose the days where it should repeat.

You can also make it wake your computer, choose the volume and fade-in, the music that you want it to wake you up to, the duration of the alarm, and a few other options that you probably don’t need. Aurora can use the music from your iTunes library, and you can set it up to use playlists or just to shuffle through your library. You can have different options for as many alarms as you’d like.

You can even set it up to play your podcasts when you wake up, great for a lazy weekend morning in bed. Give one of these awesome podcasts a try to get your Saturday geek on!

When An Alarm Goes Off

As I mentioned, your lid needs to be open in order for Aurora to work properly. I couldn’t get it to work when my lid was closed, but it worked flawlessly when I had it open.

One thing I hate about my current alarm clock is that it doesn’t fade-in, it just starts playing music at the loudest volume possible. This is pretty annoying, and usually scares me instead of waking me up! That’s why Aurora has a fade-in option. It can actually slowly start playing music, which is very pleasant.

When an alarm goes off, Aurora will wake your Mac up and it will start playing whatever you told it to play. It will show you the information and the artwork of whatever is playing and you’ll have a few buttons there to skip the song, stop the alarm, or snooze it.

The snooze time is a setting that is pretty well hidden under the preferences, and it can not be applied to each different alarm. You’ll need to specifiy one snooze setting across the board.

The snooze button works just like you would expect it to, it wil pause your alarm for a specified amount of time. Once you are ready to go, you can just stop the alarm with the “Stop” button!

Falling Asleep

Aurora also has a “Sleep” Function. It can make your Mac go to sleep after a certain action is done. For example, you can set it up to go to sleep after a number of songs have played, or after a DVD or video is done playing (or you could just tell it to go to sleep after a certain time).

Here, the options that you have are fade-out, reducing the brightness of the display, and turning the computer off or logging out after the action is completed, instead of just going to sleep.

I guess this is useful if you like to play music from your computer before you go to sleep. I can’t really see much of a use for the DVD and video functions for myself, but maybe some people could take advantage of them.

Conclusion

Aurora is a very useful app, and I’m sure it will fit all of your needs. But are you willing to pay for it? There are, of course, plenty of free options available on the market that – while not as pretty or feature-packed – can do the job of waking you up!

I’m sure you won’t regret paying $9.99 for this app, as I’m certain it will fill every need you have for it. But let us know what you think! Is this too pricey for an alarm app? Do you still use alarm clocks? What is your favorite alarm app?