Category: Mac

Tweetie has been my favorite Mac Twitter client since the day of its initial release. Unfortunately, the legendary app has been showing its age lately with a lack of updates to accommodate new Twitter features like lists and official Retweets.

I’ve tried to replace it with Weet, Nambu, Kiwi, TweetDeck, Echofon and a host of others to no avail. No matter how many times I say I’ll never go back, within 24 hours I’m right back where I started, using Tweetie and cursing my lack of willpower.

When Twitter purchased Atebits for the legendary Tweetie iPhone app, many of us thought it spelled doom for Tweetie for Mac. Highly placed individuals at Twitter have since made statements that indicated they weren’t particularly interested in pursuing a Mac client.

However, yesterday the rumor mill came alive that a new version, rebranded Twitter for Mac, would launch with today’s Mac App Store. Tweetie creator Loren Brichter made good on those rumors and today we’re taking a look at the brand new official Twitter client for Mac. Oh, and it’s free so be sure to go grab it!

Interface

Twitter for Mac is a major overhaul from Tweetie, both visually and functionally. We’ll start by taking a look at the new interface then jump into the features. Here’s a first look at the new app:

I think the new interface is downright beautiful. It’s taken the dark sidebar that made Tweetie so iconic even further by bringing it all the way to the top and adding some really nice translucency. Since I manage three Twitter accounts, this sidebar is what kept me coming back to Tweetie and I’m thrilled that they’ve maintained that unmatched multi-account experience with the little light indicators and fast account switching.

No Titlebar!?

In case you haven’t noticed, the trend in Mac application design is moving towards a borderless experience (see Quicktime). Twitter for Mac picks up this trend and strips out any semblance of that iconic Mac metal frame, including the titlebar.

Many users are crying foul at this and Loren Bricther has cleverly fielded a comment or two with witty responses. While I love the appearance of the borderless app, I do admit that it’s a little tricky to move around at first, but any awkwardness fades after mere minutes of use. The app moves just fine if you click and drag anywhere across the top or in the sidebar. I don’t think the quirk is enough to make Tweetie fans switch to something else, but it might be enough to prevent a few new users from switching over.

Tweeting

The new tweet window is located along the bottom like in Tweetie, but is a little harder to spot. I recommend just getting used to hitting Command-N as a shortcut. As you can see in the screenshot below, a few other options have been added here as well.

The tweet window shares the same translucent trick as the sidebar, this time along the bottom. I was initially concerned about the lack of a way to switch users here, but you can simply click the avatar to accomplish this.

New Features

Now that we’ve taken the new interface for a spin, let’s dive in and see what new functionality has been added. As I mentioned above, Tweetie was really starting to lag behind in the feature arena so this update was greatly needed!

Lists

You’ll notice a few new sidebar icons have been added (significantly adding to the height of the app). The first of these is the new lists tab, shown below.

This feature is pretty simple and merely gives you a gateway to the lists that you’ve created. As far as I can tell, there’s no actual list management features here, only the ability to filter your stream according to the users in a given list. Nothing spectacular, but definitely an appreciated addition.

Profile Tab

In Tweetie, you had to double-click your avatar to see your profile. In Twitter for Mac, a dedicated profile tab has been added to make this easier. From here you can view your timeline, replies, favorites and account info.

Clicking on another user’s avatar will likewise take you to their profile. At the bottom left of this tab you can see whether or not you’re following the user. Unfortunately, it seems the app has lost the ability to check whether or not a given user is following you. This was present in Tweetie but if it’s here in Twitter for Mac, I haven’t found it.

Trends

The search feature is still present and maintains the ability to save your searches. One new feature here though is the inclusion of a list of trending topics. These appear in the search tab before you’ve typed anything into the search field.

Retweets

Back when Tweetie first launched, retweeting was something that users were doing all on their own without the aid of an official Twitter feature. Twitter eventually adopted their own method of the credit-giving mechanism, which is supported in the new app. Hovering over a tweet gives you the option to Reply, Favorite or Retweet.

Alternatively, you can “quote” a tweet using Option-T. This doesn’t use “RT” or “via” like other apps but rather places the tweet in quotes with the original poster’s username followed by a colon and the text of the tweet.

Live Streaming

One feature that constantly bugged me about Tweetie is how late it seemed to get Tweets. My iPad would often notify me of an @reply minutes before Tweetie would catch up, despite manual refreshing. This problem is a thing of the past with Twitter for Mac because tweets are no longer grabbed in groups every few minutes. Instead they come in live as they’re tweeted with remarkable speed.

Tweets come in so fast now that having the app visible while you’re working can actually cause a great amount of distraction. You definitely can’t complain about progress though, it’s quite a thing of beauty to watch all that data pour in.

The tweets aren’t the only thing that got a speed boost either. The app is full of lightning fast and silky smooth animations.

Drag and Drop Tweets

This feature surprised me a little and I admit that I probably don’t fully grasp its significance yet. Tweets now respond to drag and drop actions.

The functionality is much like any text selected in OS X. When you drag it around, you get a text clipping that can be thrown on your desktop for safe keeping, inserted into a text field as plain text, or thrown into TextEdit as a fully formatted tweet, avatar, links and all. You can also drag any tweet into the compose window to quote it.

Preferences

The Preferences for the app remain fairly basic. You can set shortcuts, change menu bar behavior, add accounts, set Growl notifications/dock badges and adjust a few more standard settings.

The Big MacHeist Secret!

If you purchased the MacHeist nano bundle, you get access to a super-secret preference panel! Simply hold Control+Option+Command after your open the Twitter help menu to find the secret backdoor. From here you’ll have to insert your email address and Nano Bundle license to enable the extra panel.

Possible Improvement

So what’s missing? Brichter has really hit a home run here as far as I’m concerned but there are admittedly a few issues. For starters, you can’t adjust the font size (Brichter promises a fix soon), so users with not-so-great vision might have some accessibility issues until 2.1.

Another bug comes in the inability to post a link beginning with “www” (no http://). Links are automatically shortened with Twitter for Mac and if you try including something along the lines of “www.apple.com” in a tweet, you’ll likely get an error and you simply won’t be able to post until you add the mandatory “http://” to the beginning.

These are of course in addition to the issue I mentioned above regarding the loss of the “follow back” status from Tweetie 1. Overall, these issues are extremely minor for such a big release and most or all of them will no doubt be fixed by 2.1. The biggest possible exclusion I see here is the apparent lack of any sort of sync with other versions of Twitter. Now that there are several official Twitter clients (iPhone, iPad, Mac, etc.), I’d like to see them all play nicely together regarding replies and DMs that have already been read.

Closing Thoughts

Twitter’s strategy of breaking into the app world has already been discussed at length, but this marks yet another decisive blow to the third party app developers that have helped make Twitter the huge success that it is today.

Twitter for Mac is a beautiful, lightning fast client with almost every feature you could want and it’s available completely free of charge with zero ads. This will make it extremely hard for other Mac apps to compete. You can see this at work in the recent decision by Tapmates to scrap their upcoming Twitter client.

Less competition is ultimately a bad thing for users because the variety and quality can suffer in the long run. Hopefully developers will continue to rise to the challenge of keeping Twitter apps innovative and fresh.

With all of that said, I’m thrilled about the update. We’ve waited far too long for a new version of Tweetie for Twitter to come along and screw everything up by gobbling up the company that created it. Fortunately, Twitter’s acquisition of Atebits hasn’t ruined our favorite client at all, in fact, it has probably made it better than it could’ve ever been without inside access into the world of Twitter inc.

There will still be plenty of column fans that stick with TweetDeck and no shortage of syncing fans that stay with Echofon, but this Tweetie fan will most certainly not be switching to anything but Twitter for Mac any time soon.

With the initial download issues surrounding the launch of the Mac App Store slowly being cleared up (a reboot seems to fix most problems!), it’s time to dig around and see what new software is available to download.

In this post, we’ll be taking a look at some brand new apps now available, along with a few important updates that have launched to co-incide with the App Store. We’ll also showcase a few fantastic bargains that you should take advantage of while they’re still available!

Read on to find out about the most exciting Mac software updates you’ll have seen for quite some time…

While we’re on the topic of graphics apps, Pixelmator has taken a dive in price to just $29.99. This is a bargain for such a powerful piece of software.

What Are Your Favourites?

So which software have you been particularly impressed with? These are the new and interesting apps that have stood out of the crowd for me, but I’d love to hear which software you’ve really enjoyed using over the past few hours.

Feel free to share your thoughts on the Mac App Store in general as well!

Everyone expected an announcement at some point today, and it seems that it’s come a few hours ahead of the anticipated time of 9am PST. I’m really excited to let you know that the latest OS X update (10.6.6) is now available for download through Software Update.

The main addition is support for the newly released Mac App Store, that allows you to quickly find, download and update software on your Mac. It’s a revolutionary new way to handle the process of finding and downloading desktop software, and has received a warm reception from many popular Mac developers.

Read on to find out more about how to install and navigate around the all-new Mac App Store!

Having problems downloading software through the store? Just click Store > Sign Out, reboot your Mac, and you should be good to go!

Download and Install

Weighing in at just under 115MB, the update downloaded and installed quickly for us with no problems at all. After rebooting, you’ll be presented with a new icon in your OS X Dock that looks something similar to the following:

Clicking it will launch the new Mac App Store, and showcase some of the new applications available to download and purchase. We’ll be looking at a selection of these in greater detail later today, so stay tuned to read about some of the best new software available in the Mac App Store shortly.

Featured Software

The Mac App Store streamlines the process of browsing for and downloading software, and splits this process up in a similar way to the existing iTunes Store for iOS devices.

After launching the app for the first time, you’re presented with a page of featured downloads and popular apps:

I’m impressed by the range, number and quality of software that’s already available through the store. Over 1,000 applications are available to download right now – a surprisingly high number, and one that will no doubt give you hours of fun flicking through different pages of the store.

Top Charts & Categories

There are two other ways to browse new applications: through the “Top Charts” page, that showcases Top Free, Paid and Grossing apps, or via the breakdown of different Categories:

Experiencing Download Issues?

Many people are reporting problems with downloading software at the moment, and up to this point, I haven’t been able to succeed with this process on either the US or UK App Store. This could be due to congestion over at Apple servers, or just the process of the whole system gradually scaling up to meet initial demand.

It’s worth downloading the software update purely to browse the Store at this point, even if it’s going to be a few more hours before you can actually download and install new software through it.

Picking Up Your Existing Software

On the whole, it seems that the Mac App Store does a fairly poor job of determining which software you already have installed on your system. I’m a proud user of many of the apps available through the store at launch, but most of them (with the exception of Apple’s own software) do not show up as already installed.

This is understandable to some degree, but it’s a problem I had hoped Apple would be able to find a solution to. Frustratingly, it means that we won’t be able to use the automatic software update service unless an app has specifically been purchased through the App Store.

What Do You Think?

So, after downloading and trying out the new Mac App Store, what do you think? Is it going to be the new way to purchase and download all your new software, or are you still wishing that it had never been announced?

I think it can only lead to good things for Mac software developers, and the general application ecosystem. I can’t wait to download some of the new software that has been announced today, and rest assured we’ll be bringing you all the latest news and updates as we find out more!

Family trees are a great way to visualize the trajectory of your own family, but most people relate them to “that thing they used to do in elementary school for homework”. They are actually a great way to find out more about your own heritage, and they can make you appreciate your family history to a greater extent.

Today, we are reviewing MacFamilyTree, an app that can help you make family trees as in-depth as possible. In fact, it goes beyond the family tree maker description, to become a full fledged family history record app.

Let’s find out how it works!

Getting Started

MacFamilyTree is quite a veteran app, it has been developed for more than 12 years, and it is still receiving regular updates. Version 6 is a pretty hefty app and it might take you a while to download it. After opening it for the first time you’ll be presented with a “Welcome!” window, where you’ll be shown a few tips and features of the app in a section called “Tutorials and News”.

From this window you can also open new, old or recent trees, as well as import GEDCOM files (Genealogical Data Communication), the official format for genealogical information or family trees.

The Interface

MacFamilyTree has a very colorful, fun interface, but it doesn’t go that well with the Mac theme. While it seems simple, there are way too many features and the app can get confusing if you are just getting started with it.

The layout itself is very Mac-like: there is a sidebar column where you can navigate the different tabs, and above are four sections that you can click through; “Edit”, “Views”, “Reports” and “Exports”. There’s also the main window, where you can see your trees and edit information.

Finally, a small toolbar across the bottom of the main window performs basic functions like saving and printing and there’s also access to other functions, depending on the tab where you are located.

The “Edit” Tab

Under “Edit” you can view and edit information such as a person, family, or place. Once you get your family, or your person set up, you’ll be able to organize them into families and even add places to them, like their place of residence and/or birth.

The places work through maps and they are a pretty cool feature to have, as you can see visually where your family is located around the globe. You can also see other things here, like the sources that you use to get the information from your family, the media that you use to identify people, and your family tree to do’s.

There are also some web-connected features here, like searching for your family on the internet and uploading your tree to FamilySearch.org. Of course, your tree can’t work without actually having people in it, so we’ll get to that next.

Adding New Members

Under the “Edit” section, you can add new members through the “Persons” tab in the sidebar, or directly in your family tree. I find it easier to do in the tree, because you can just click one person and the app will show you all the relatives you could add.

The description of every person can get very specific, as you can add everything from suffixes, events, media, facts, places (you can even add them on a map), and “to-do’s”, which are basically reminders of expanding someone’s info.

Under “Events” you can set up pretty much anything you can think of; birth and death dates, baptisms, adoptions, illnesses, etc. The personalization doesn’t stop there, you can also add facts (like skin and eye color), labels, notes, additional names and sources to anyone in your tree. These features are especially useful for the reports, which we’ll get to next.

The Other Sections

There’s a section called “Views” in the app where you can print your family tree in any of the nine different views available. Most of these are simple “map” views, but there’s also a 3D one, a timeline one and a few others.

Once you select a view, you can edit it through an assistant, but it’s not that great. Afterwards, you can print or save views, although a sharing feature through email or social networks would be great.

Another helpful section is called “Reports”, and here you can view a complete history of any person or family in your tree in a very neat manner. In the Person Reports, you see a page full of useful information like date and place of birth, events, a small tree, relatives and every other piece of information you’ve collected for that person.

There’s also a bunch of other reports that aren’t very useful, but the one that I liked the most is called the “Birthdays Report”. This essentially gives you a list of all the people in your family along with their birth dates. Just like with the Views, you can save or print these.

The last section is the “Export” one, and in it you can export “websites” to your hard disk, a CD or DVD, MobileMe, MacFamilyTree’s website, or their iOS app. There are a lot of options that you can choose before exporting, like the theme and specific charts.

Conclusion

MacFamilyTree is much more than just a genealogical tree builder; it can be the ultimate chronologic book of everything in your family, from events to places. MacFamilyTree also makes sure that you’re able to perform useful operations and work with the data after entering it all (reports, exporting to a website etc). It can be a bit confusing when you start using it, but it becomes familiar quickly.

I have mixed feelings about this application. The app is very well done and I like it, but I am never planning on using it, and I can’t imagine there are many people that really “need” this app, especially for its price.

That said, there must be some people that would invest time into building their full family log. I don’t think that I’m one of them at the moment – Are you?

Automator is a handy utility built into Mac OS X that allows us to automate tasks. Many new Mac OS users are unware it exists, and if they do know about it, they are unsure about how useful it can be.

This post aims to give you a quick look into the potential of Automator by creating some very simple and actually quite handy workflow applications of your own. Many of these applications will take a matter of seconds for you to create, but could save you much more time in the long run.

Automator is certainly worth spending some time getting know. I hope creating these basic automations will give you a view at the potential for some much more complicated and incredible time saving automations that can be created.

Let’s dive right in!

Rename a Group of Photos

We’re going to start off with a fairly simple task. I like to take photos, and I’m not always the best at organizing them. This becomes a bit of a problem after a while. A simple thing (that I often avoid, because I just don’t want to deal with it) to help in the organization would be a simple file naming convention.

For this workflow I’m going to create a folder action. The action will initiate and act upon any files that are dropped into the folder. When you create a new Automator workflow you’ll be asked what type you’d like to create. Choose Folder Action and proceed.

You’ll be presented with an empty workflow navigator. What I’m looking to do is to give myself the option to change the name of the files and append the date created. I think that should help out with my photo organization.

First, you’ll want to choose the proper folder where this action is assigned to. At the top of the workflow window you’ll see the space to do this.

Every action we’ll need for this one will be filed under Files & Folders. The first thing we need to do is to rename the files. To do this drag the Rename Finder Items over to the workflow window. It’s going ask you whether you’d like to copy the original images or not (do what you’d like…I’m going to choose to copy). The Copy Finder Items action will be automatically added to the beginning of the workflow.

On the Rename Finder Items action select the Make Sequential option. Choose the option for a new name as well. Feel free to customize the other options as you wish.

Next, drag in another Rename Finder Items action. This time select the Add Date or Time option. Adjust the options as you’d like.

That’s it. Drag a group of photos and drop them into the folder we’ve just assigned this workflow to. You’ll be prompted for the name. That name, along with a number and the date created will now be the name for each photo.

Resize a Group of Photos

Following along in the photography vein, this one will quickly enable you to resize a group of photos. We’ll create an application for this one. From the new menu select the Application option

We are looking to resize photos here, but let’s think about the actual steps that are going to be involved and walk through our workflow. The first thing we will need to do is to be able to select the photos we want to resize.

Under the the Files & Folders section you’ll see Ask for Finder Items at the top of the list. Drag that action to the workflow window. This will prompt for the files needed. Customize the start point if you’d like and make sure to check the option to Allow Multiple Selection.

I want to keep my original photos and just create copies to resize. To do this add in the Copy Finder Items action to the workflow.

So far we have our photos selected and copied. Next comes the actual guts of this application. Navigate to the Photos section and locate and drag in the Scale Images action. You may select a default size here. What I’ve done is to enable this action to prompt for the size as I would like the option to adjust this setting as needed.

Now the last thing we need to do is find a place to put these resized photos. From the Files & Folders action group, locate and drag in the New Folder action. I’ve also checked the option to prompt for a name here so I can customize this as I see fit.

One thing I’d like to point out that is very handy to consider when just getting started with Automator, is that you’ll notice triangles connecting these actions together. What one action creates is applied to the next. Not all actions will have this link, but a lot do.

You’ll want to save the application so that you can run it whenever you’d like. I’d suggest a folder within your Applications directory where you can save all your Automator applications. These applications will behave just like any other application. So, for example, you could drag them into your Dock if you’d like just as you could with any other application.

Open Multiple Webpages

My thought process here is that I end up often opening up the same group of web pages each morning to start out my day. Why not create an application to open up all those pages all at once. Not a huge time saver, but it’ll save you a few clicks.

Create a new application and navigate to the Internet section of the Library. Drag over the Get Specified URLs into the workflow window. Here you’ll be able to add in the web pages you’d like to load. Next, add in the Display Webpages action and you’re all set. This is the action that actually launches your default browser with the specified URLs.

Extract Text from a PDF

This is a pretty straight-forward, yet very handy, use for Automator. It will allow you to pull the text out of a PDF document. We’ll just jump right into building this application.

Open a new Application and navigate to the PDFs Library section. Drag the Extract PDF Text action into the workflow window. You’ll see several options you can set.

Now, you can fully automate this process and make all the selections in advance, or you could check the option to show this action when the workflow runs. With that checked you’ll be prompted with all of these options when you run the application.

Drop a PDF right on your new app to run the workflow. If you picked to be prompted, you’ll see that window, otherwise it will just run.

Archive Files and Folders

This workflow will allow you to pick a file or folder (or both) and create an archive. This could be used to save some space on your hard drive, or maybe you need to zip up some items before attaching them to an email.

Open up a new Automator Application. First, we’ll want the task to ask for what items we’d like archived. To do this we’ll use the Ask for Finder Items under the Files & Folders Library section. Drag that task into the workflow window.

Next, add in the Create Archive from that same section. Notice the two tasks will link together. This indicates that the input from the first action will be acted upon by the second action.

One possible variation to this would be to enable the Create Archive action to prompt when it runs. This will allow you a bit more control in naming the archive file and also to specifiy where it will be saved.

Combine PDF Documents

Combining PDF documents isn’t necessarily that difficult to accomplish, but we can create a small Automator application to make it even easier and quicker.

I’m going to create an application that I can run for this workflow. First, we’ll grab the Ask for Finder Items action from the Files & Folders section. Drag that action into the workflow window. This will prompt the user to select the files that we want to combine. You can select the starting point if you’d like.

You’ll want to make sure you select the option to to select Files and also check the box to allow for multiple files. If we’re looking to combine files we’ll need multiple files right? Otherwise, this thing wouldn’t be too effective…

Next we’ll add in the Combine PDF Pages action from the PDF section into the workflow window. This is the piece that actually does the work, and we have the option to either select to append pages or to shuffle them. In this case we’re going to pick to append.

Lastly, add in the Open Finder Items action from the Files & Folders section and leave the default option to open the folder in the default application. This will open the new PDF using your default PDF reader.

Quit All Applications

Sometimes you may get to a point in your work when you realize your workspace is completely cluttered and you’ve lost track of what you have open and what you don’t. It’s time for a fresh start. Wouldn’t it be nice to just quit everything with a click of the mouse? Let’s make a short Automator application to take care of that for us.

This workflow only requires one action. Create a new application and add in the Quit All Applications action located under the Utilities section into the workflow. It is possible to add some applications that will be exceptions and stay open when the application runs. Maybe you want to keep your email client open. Add that application to the list and it will stay open.

Put this application in your Dock and run it whenever you need to refresh!

Automatic Backup

If you’re not currently performing regular backups (or even if you are), here is another really simple method for automatically backing up some important items.

This applicaiton will use iCal to trigger the copying of a specified file. Create a new workflow, but this time use the iCal template as a starting point. By using iCal we’re able to trigger this workflow to run based on a calendar entry.

All the actions will come from the Files & Folders section for this workflow. First, add in the Get Specified Items action. Add in the folder you’d like to backup to that action.

Next, add in the Get Folder Contents action. This will grab the files in the folder you’ve selected. The last action you’ll need is the Copy Finder Items action. Select the folder you wish to use as the backup location. For this “backup” action choose a loction on another drive if possible.

When you save the workflow, you’ll be asked to name it. Then iCal will open up and allow you to schedule the action to run automatically. The real power to this workflow is scheduling it as recurring event. I know this still isn’t the most elegant backup solution, but it is automatic and costs nothing other than a few minutes of your time.

Create Clipboard to a Text File

When this application runs it will take whatever you have copied to your clipboard and create a new text file with that information in it.

We’ll create a application for this workflow and begin by adding in the Get Contents of Clipboard action from the Utilities section to the workflow window. This will do just as it says, grab the contents of the clipboard.

Next add in the New Text File action. You’ll notice a connection appear with the first action. This means that the information the first action holds will be applied to this action.

I chose to check the option to show the action when it runs. This will allow us to name the text file whatever we’d like and also pick a location to save. If you want to quicken things up a bit more just set these options and don’t show the action when it runs.

Turn Text into an Audio File

There could be several instances where this may come in handy. This application will take text that has been copied to the clipboard and create an audio file. This will allow you to actually listen to a document, for example. This could be very beneficial for the visually impaired.

Create a new application and locate the Get Contents of Clipboard action under the Text section. Drag that action over into the workflow window. Next drag in the Text to Audio File from this same section.

You’ll see some options for you to customize. You’re able to select the voice that will be reading the text to you. I’m going to check the option to show the action when the workflow runs again so that I can have the ability to name and save each file as I see fit. Again, this is something that can be set, but as you’ve probably noticed I do like a bit of control over my automation!

Conclusion

I hope this post gave you some nice examples to not only better learn Automator, but also to help improve your current working process and maybe give you some ideas for your own workflows. Automator is a very powerful utility that we all have access to and really should take advantage of.

It is very beneficial to spend some time learning how it works. A bit of time learning the utility and building a handful of workflows could save you immense amounts of time in your day to day work!

I would like to mention that Josh Johnson wrote a more in depth Automatortutorial here on Mac.Appstorm a while back that will take you through all the ins and outs of the utility. It’s an excellent place to start if you are completely new to Automator or just want a bit more information than is provided in this post.

Hot on the heels of our recent roundup of blockbuster Mac games, I thought it would be interesting to see just how many of you do use your Mac for gaming on a regular basis.

In recent months, I’ve actually found my iPad to be the go-to choice for trying out new games and killing time. Although there are a vast array of games available for the Mac, I often find the high price point to be too much of a barrier. If I can instead pay $5 or $10 for a fun iPad game, I’m more likely to go for it.

Consoles certainly still rule the market when it comes to gaming, but more and more Mac users are finding that their machine is much better suited for gaming than they originally thought.

I’d love to hear what you think, so be sure to fill out our weekly poll and leave your own thoughts in the comments. Are you a regular Mac gamer, or do you prefer to stick to a dedicated console?

Even after the most recent UI refresh, Twitter on the web is far from optimal to consume the tweets & mentions from our friends and followers. The meteoric rise of Twitter’s popularity and adoption is attributed mainly to the third party apps – both on desktop and mobile. These apps made Twitter “cool”.

For a long time now, Tweetie has been the leader in the Mac and mobile apps market. After getting acquired by Twitter, new updates are hard to come by and people are waiting for the next killer indie app. Enter Weet for Mac.

After the jump we will take stock as to whether Weet has got what it takes to be the ultimate Mac Twitter companion.

Overview

Weet for Mac comes from the the house of Raptor Apps, the makers of the popular Twitter client that goes by the same name. Weet for Mac is currently in beta and is free to use till then. While there is no official homepage yet and no official download links have been put up, you can find the download link from here.

The version available for download is a bit old, but after installing you will be notified of any new updates. If not, you can upgrade to the latest one from Weet ->Check for Updates from the menubar.

Installation & Set Up

After a simple single click installation and updating to the newest version, a login credential submission page shows up. Once you enter the login info, the app gets down to business right away and all tweets, mentions and direct messages are populated.

If you have new tweets or messages, the appropriate section gets a blue dot over it to draw your attention. For those of you who haven’t got a mention or message in a while, don’t get excited if you see blue dots since the app considers older tweets as newer ones upon first launch.

The interface is clean and refined. At first glance, one can be sure that Weet for Mac is not a Tweetie clone but a very refined version of it. First, the user interface is more streamlined and compact  than Tweetie for Mac. For instance, the sidebar navigation of Tweetie has been ditched for that of  a navigation with buttons. The design is minimal and the blue & white color theme is soothing.

Timeline & Tweets

The timeline display is standard, with a profile pic and the tweet displayed side by side. Options to reply to it, add it to favorites and retweet it are available on the top right corner of every tweet.

A nicely designed and thoroughly compiled profile page is displayed if you click on the profile pic of an account. All the vital stats you were looking for – followers & following count, number of tweets, URL etc. are shown. If the user is or isn’t following, that is also shown as well. All the tweets, mentions and favorites of the user can be accessed from the respective tabs.

After a while, if you find an account to be too noisy or tweeting irrelevant things, you have the option to mute them from the tweet stream. Alternatively, you can just block them if needed.

Lists

Weet for Mac gives access to your existing lists or. if you don’t have one, lets you create a new list from the app itself.

List creation works the same old fashioned way, give a name to the list and start adding accounts to it. It took some time for the list creation to complete though!

Saved Searches & Trends

The search tab is home to saved searches and trending topics. To create and save a search, start exploring the results by searching for keywords. Once you find the right keyword that brings in perfect results, come back and hit the + button to save it. Multiple searches can be saved in the same manner.

Weet for Mac shows the list of trending topics and hashtags in real time. While tweets related to the topic were displayed neatly, I could not see them updating in real time like tweets in my timeline did.

The tweet compose section allows you to add an image from the desktop. If you have lengthy URLs in the tweet, Weet for Mac will shorten it for you as tiny bit.ly URLs. Links open up in the default browser and there is no support for Instapaper or Read it Later yet.

Final Thoughts

While the Weet for Mac icon on the dock shows the number of unread tweets, the one on the menu bar doesn’t. This could be considered a bit of an inconvenience if you have a hidden dock like me, though equally you might prefer not to have a constant reminder of new tweets anyway.

Also, notification alerts — like those offered by many desktop apps — might be a welcome addition in future releases. There were a few crashes and connection errors while using the app but considering the fact that this a beta app, it was very bearable.

I guess the inspiration for developers of Weet for Mac is “What Tweetie would have been had it not been acquired?”. And to their credit, they have gotten a lot of things right. If Tweetie adopts a rapid development schedule to play catch up, this space will definitely heat up – to our delight!

I’d like to take a moment to say a big thank you to this week’s sponsor, LittleSnapper. This is a wonderful application for collecting, organising, and sharing inspiring snippets and images you come across on the web.

LittleSnapper really does make this whole process incredibly simple and, if you’re the type of person with screenshots scattered across your desktop, it can be a huge time-saver. I love the design of the interface as well, which feels really intuitive to use.

Editing your screenshots—adding arrows, boxes, and text—couldn’t be easier. And I don’t think I’ve ever come across a more beautifully designed arrow…

When you’re done editing, sharing is versatile and fast, with support for FTP, Flickr, exporting a file, or Realmac’s very own Ember web service.

If you’re a visual person, and like the idea of a central repository for all the inspiring design work you stumble across online, you absolutely have to give LittleSnapper a try. It costs $39, but a completely free trial is available.

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

Thanks for reading AppStorm, and I hope you’ve had a wonderful holiday period!

Best of iPhone.AppStorm

Best of Web.AppStorm

Best of Mac.AppStorm

Share Your Ideas

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

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

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

• RapidWeaver 5 – Released just a few weeks ago, RapidWeaver 5 is a worthy upgrade to an already stellar piece of web design software for the Mac.
• Pixelmator – One of my all-time favourite apps, this is a fantastic alternative to the increasingly-bloated Photoshop for all manner of graphic editing work.
• Courier – This fantastic piece of software makes it easy to quickly share files, images, photos, movies, and more with all your favourite online services – including Flickr and Facebook.
• Yellow Media Group – This innovative company offers a telephone support service for Mac developers, making it easy to add an extra level of support to users without spending 24 hours a day by the phone.

Thanks for reading AppStorm this month, and for checking out the software that our sponsors create. I really appreciate it.

It used to be that if you wanted to buy a game for your Mac, you had to dig into the crates at your local CompUSA and find a version of Tetris that might work on OS 7. But now, Mac gamers are starting to be taken seriously, and there’s a whole world of to programs to buy.

If that wasn’t cool enough, we also have the Steam platform, making it simple to purchase games on the fly. But enough about that, let’s get into the good stuff. After the jump, check out some great, blockbuster games that are available to download and play on your Mac right now!

What’s Your Favourite Mac Game?

Although our humble platform isn’t quite ready to go toe-to-toe with an XBOX 360 or Playstation 3 just yet (at least not in terms of the range of games available), support for OS X gaming is forging ahead in the right direction.

We’ve picked out a range of great games above, but I’d love to hear your favourites. Which blockbuster Mac games have you enjoyed over the last year?

Although we recently took a look at some major players in the word-processing world and marveled at their fancy features, if you’re into having a minimalistic work environment and making the best of what you’ve already got, then it will interest you to know that TextEdit, OSX’s native text editing application, is a lot more powerful than you might have given it credit for.

If it’s actual word processing we’re after rather than document design, then what functionality do we actually expect? Text wrangling with fonts, styles, and justification? Check. Tables, charts, and images? Check. Spelling and grammar checking? You bet.

As it turns out, there’s a lot of power under TextEdit’s hood, so let’s open her up and introduce you to some of the lesser-known features.

The Basics

Before we delve into the more powerful and obscure features, it might be worth breezing through some of the obvious but crucial functionality of TextEdit for those who dismissed it entirely as being able to do nothing but wrangle snippets of formatting-free text.

Text Formatting

Changing typefaces, fonts, and justification is a cinch — just open up the Format menu and go to town. Besides the core formatting options, you can also tweak kerning, define ligatures, change the baseline, insert special characters, and mess with colours. While most of these are accessible from the Format menu, you’ll need to check under Edit for the special characters.

Though perhaps little more than a gimmick for us English writers, there are several languages that will make good use of the text direction feature in the application. Navigating to Format -> Text -> Writing Direction will allow you to switch from our familiar left-to-right direction to right-to-left, which is necessary for proper transcription of certain languages.

And for those who are annoyed, as I am, by having your text spill off the borders of your window and go stretching off into oblivion, do yourselves a favour and hit Shift + Apple + W to wrap text to page.

Charts, Lists, and Links

Besides basic typographic fiddling, you can also make use of TextEdit’s ability to produce formatting that includes standard lists (numbered or otherwise, with nesting capabilities). Accessible via the Lists dropdown menu in the main toolbar, lists can be created and modified in a flash.

If you like, you can also access a Lists tool window from the Format -> Text menu area, which is also where you need to go to access tables. The Tables tool window is a straight-forward interface for defining your table parameters and adjusting how they integrate into your document.

One last thing from that Format -> Text menu: TextEdit supports hyperlinks, so if you highlight a word, or phrase, you can define an address by using the Link option and typing or pasting in the desired destination.

Under the Hood

Now it’s time to delve into the less obvious features of TextEdit and discover why it has the potential to become your main text editing tool.

Media Support

We’ll ease into the more obscure stuff by pointing out some other fairly basic functionality that just isn’t as evident when you first open the application. For starters, as you would expect from a fully-featured RTF editor, TextEdit allows you to insert various forms of media into your document. Copy/pasting will allow you to toss in everything from simple images to audio files and even video.

The latter appear in an integrated QuickTime player and are fully functional. Note that you won’t be able to adjust the size of the media from within TextEdit so you’ll have to tweak it to fit before dragging or pasting it into your document.

File Formats

Besides the usual suspects — .TXT, .RTF, and .HTML — TextEdit can also open and save as .OTD (Open Text Document) and even Microsoft Word’s .DOC and newer .DOCX formats! You won’t get the fancy print view that you do in something like Word, but you’ll have full access to the actual content so you can make a quick adjustment on the fly even when you don’t have the original application handy.

The only things that TextEdit doesn’t reliably interpret are special features like tables of contents or footnotes — those will often show up bizarrely.

Proofreading Power

Because TextEdit is powered by OSX’s internal text editing engine, it has access to the full suite of proofreading tools. This means the usual spelling and grammar checking as well as the built-in dictionary and thesaurus that you can pull up by hitting Apple + Control + D with any word under your cursor (you don’t even have to highlight it).

And by the way, that dictionary trick works in most OSX applications too, not just TextEdit.

Auto-Complete Text

Following up on the proofreading tools, you should also be aware that TextEdit can help you out when you’re typing by offering an auto-complete system not entirely unlike the one on your iPhone. To call up this well-hidden feature, simply start typing a word and hit Esc. Immediately, a dropdown list appears with all the words in OSX’s dictionary that begin with the letters you’ve typed.

You use the arrow keys to navigate up and down the list, and if there are too many options then you can freely type in more letters and just hit Esc again to refresh the list and narrow down your choices.

Pretty nifty, and definitely helpful when you’re in a hurry.

Styles

If you take a look at the top left of the application window, you’ll notice a Styles dropdown menu with a fairly unexciting collection of pre-defined styles. The list is extremely misleading because at a glance you’re likely to think it’s just a fast way to access text bolding and italics options. If that’s all you’re using it for though, then you’re ignoring a lot of power that is especially valuable for longer form documents.

Essentially, the Styles menu allows you to define not just text styles but full paragraph styles, just like in your major word processors. This means you can set up typography, spacing, alignment, and any other attributes you need and save it as a style that you can later call up and apply to any text. Spending some time setting up Styles for body text, headings, and callouts can save you a lot of wasted formatting time when you’re working on big documents.

Conversely, if you’ve grabbed some styled text from somewhere and want to quickly remove all formatting, simply hit Shift + Apple + T to clear all formatting and make plain text out of your selection.

Background Colour

This is a quick but potentially useful feature that’s worth mentioning. Along with modifying text colour, opening up the Font menu will let you change the colour of your document background too via the fourth button from the left in the top of the Font window. Incidentally, you can also add shadows to your text, which can really make things pop out nicely in combination with the right background colour.

Speech

Even without accessibility options enabled on your system, a quick visit to the Edit -> Speech menu will enable you to start OSX reading your document back to you. You never know when you need your document read out loud.

Word Count

Okay, so I’m cheating a bit with this one since it’s not technically built in, but if you’re missing a word-count feature before you can consider TextEdit a truly viable go-to word processor (I know I did), then you’re in luck. One enterprising coder has fashioned NanoCount, a simple utility that integrates into TextEdit and lets you track word or character counts as well as set a writing goal and define how often you want the count to update (in case it distracts you to have it in realtime).

Quick Open

If you keep TextEdit on your dock (which I hope you’re feeling more compelled to do by now), then you’ll find that it’s great for quickly grabbing snippets of text from the web or elsewhere. Simply select a block of text from your browser or from a PDF document and drag it onto TextEdit’s icon and a new document containing your text, including its original formatting, will pop up immediately. This is awesome for when you need to manipulate some text but don’t feel like waiting for your bulkier word processing beast to rouse from its slumber.

Two Terminal Tips

Peeking into the really advanced realm, here are two quick tricks you can use in conjunction with the Terminal utility. The first uses Terminal to allow TextEdit to open locked documents. This can be useful when you need to make a change to an important system file but don’t want to go through the trouble of changing permissions before opening or using a specialized utility.

Before I go further, it goes without saying that you should not go mucking about in important locked system files unless you know what you’re doing — you can seriously and permanently damage your system. That being said, if you know what you’re doing then open up Terminal (Spotlight is the easiest way to find it), and type in the following:

sudo /Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit

Once you hit enter, you’ll be asked for your administrative password to execute the command. The advantage of using this method is that you can quickly edit the files in question without having to change permissions back and forth. Since all you’re basically doing is giving TextEdit a higher clearance level, the actual file permissions remain intact throughout the process, meaning your computer’s security never falters.

The second tip allows you to pull text from the Terminal for quick editing in TextEdit. It’s actually very simple, and can be accomplished with just the following syntax:

command | open -tf

“Command” in this case can be any standard Terminal command; you can try it with “help”. The text can then be edited and saved as you please, which is useful for debugging script or tweaking syntax.

Conclusion

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is not-so-humble TextEdit for you! Whether or not you decide it’s worthy of replacing your current word processing or text wrangling solution, at least you can look at TextEdit with some renewed respect.

If you learned something or have your own TextEdit tips, let us know in the comments so we can bring together all the best tidbits for this utility. And while you’re at it, you may as well let us know if TextEdit is your main word processor or if you have a different application that you prefer!

If you’re anything like me, this is the time of year when you start planning all the resolutions and achievements you want to try and reach in 2011. It’s always an exciting process, and something that often leads to an unusual brainstorming process of weird and wonderful things you could try in the New Year.

Well, why not add another idea to the pile? We published our first AppStorm book a few months ago, iPhone App Entrepreneur, which explains everything you need to get started in the wonderful world of iPhone (and iPad) software development. It isn’t as difficult as you may think, and could definitely be something to explore next year.

We’re giving five copies of the eBook today, to help you on your way. All you need to do is leave a comment on this post, sharing one idea for a New Year’s Resolution. It could be anything at all…

We’ll be picking the winners in one week – best of luck, and I hope you enjoy the rest of your holiday!

Improving the scrolling experience on your Mac might not be the first thing you think of doing, but it turns out that a few tweaks and changes can actually make scrolling around much easier and more efficient. Smart Scroll from Marc Moini offers an abundance of features to make scrolling a better experience, and after using it for a few days, you might not want to go back.

A big feature of Smart Scroll is smooth scrolling – a feature now implemented by default in new MacBooks and the Magic Mouse, but a must have for users of older hardware. It’s also packed with other useful features for those of us already up to date with smooth scrolling.  Read on to find out more!

Overview

Smart Scroll is a preference pane application, meaning it runs in the background without cluttering your dock or menu bar. To adjust the settings of Smart Scroll, you simply fire up System Preferences. The different features of Smart Scroll are sorted across tabs, which I will cover in more detail below.

Super Scroll

The first tab of Smart Scroll is the Super Scroll feature (pictured above). This creates the smooth scrolling effect found on the iPhone, new MacBooks and the Magic Mouse. If you don’t have a new MacBook or Magic Mouse then Smart Scroll is worth it just for this feature alone. It really does make the scrolling experience that much better.

You can adjust the coasting amount and scroll speed, and a very useful feature is the ability to hold the ‘Option’ key while scrolling to travel 4x or so faster.

Auto Scroll

Auto Scroll is great, most of the time.  It allows you to open up a Safari Reader page (by clicking the Reader icon in the right of the address bar) and scrolls through the page automatically, allowing you to simply sit back and read hands free, at whatever pace you like.

Unfortunately, it also claims to work in Quick Look which did nothing for me, and it would be great if this could work in other applications too such as Preview.

Hover Scroll

I really like this feature.  It allows you to scroll around pages simply by placing the curser near the edge of a window.  The closer to the edge you move it, the faster it scrolls.  This is really useful for myself when using a tablet and would also come in handy for scrolling sideways if your mouse could only scroll vertically.

Grab Scroll

Enabling Grab Scroll means that you can ‘grab’ and drag the page around when holding down a button such as the middle mouse button.  It’s nice to see that most ways of scrolling offer the ability to speed up the process, as scrolling through long documents is often a longer process than it should be.

When using Grab Scroll, scrolling can be sped up by dragging from the top or bottom edge or by holding a specified key.

Scroll Keys

I don’t quite see the benefit in these, but if you need them Smart Scroll offers Scroll Keys which give you universal controls to scroll using keyboard shortcuts.  You are limited to modifier keys though which is a bit awkward and I find that spacebar/shift+spacebar, and the arrow keys serve fine in most apps I need it in.

It seems a shame there is no shortcut key for the top and bottom of page, since the ‘home’ and ‘end’ keys have now been chopped off of most Mac keyboards.

Did you know that you can quickly skim to the top or bottom of a page in OS X by pressing Command+Up Arrow, or Command+Down Arrow? Worth remembering next time you open a huge document!

Misc

The Misc settings hide a few good features.  If you’re noticing ripples in the display while scrolling you can smooth it out.

I was impressed to see support for scroll tools included in Wacom tablets, as this essentially stops working with Smart Scroll enabled, but ticking the compatibility mode springs it back to life.

You can also reposition the scroll arrows more than normally possible and improve scrolling in AppleWorks and FireMaker Pro. Smart Scroll also allows you to set up different scroll settings for individual applications if need be.

When it Doesn’t Work

I have to admit that I have run into a little bit of trouble when using Smart Scroll.  The biggest issue is that it seems to have a problem scrolling within frames inside of a webpage; for instance the ‘mutual friends’ window that pops up in Facebook.  The only way to scroll these with Smart Scroll enabled is to drag the scroll bar, which is a bit of a nuisance.

I also find Apple’s implementation of smooth scrolling to often be a little more responsive, but for those that don’t have the new MacBooks or Magic Mouse then it is still much better than no coasting at all.

Also as mentioned above, Auto Scroll didn’t work for me in Quick Look.

Conclusion

All up, Smart Scroll is a must try for those who don’t already have smooth scrolling, and offers faster and more comfortable ways to scroll for those who do.  There are some issues that need to be sorted out, but otherwise it’s an impressive and feature packed scrolling enhancer.

Smart Scroll is free to try, and $14 for a single license.  Give it a scroll and let us know what your thoughts are in the comments.

Do you ever wish there was a single place you could keep all your notes, web clippings, voice memos, and incredible ideas for screenplays? Somewhere that synchronised your notes across all your various devices and made them fully searchable by their content or tags?

Introducing the uninitiated to Evernote – a single place for all the things you need to remember! Is it worth the money you ask? Well it’s free so we should probably have a look…

Remember, Remember

When considering a universal note taking app, it’s of vital importance that it warrants its place as your one and only! Fortunately Evernote makes a great stab at covering all the bases by including a myriad of different note taking options:

• Type a text note
• Clip a web page
• Snap a photo
• Grab a screenshot
• Upload a voice memo

One thing that sets Evernote apart is its ability to comprehensively search your notes, which it does by automatically indexing your notes and making them searchable. If you want to go a step further then you can simply give tags to your notes or arrange them into different notebooks!

Tags are a great way to track your notes – remember that you can give your note multiple tags if it fits in several different categories!

As you dig deeper into Evernote, you’ll find that the number of notes you take increases dramatically as you familiarise yourself with its extensive capabilities. This is where the ability to search comes into its own. You never have to worry about organisation when adding notes on-the-go, as you can quickly find them later. Using OCR technology, Evernote even makes printed and handwritten text inside your images searchable too! (and if that isn’t worth an exclamation mark then what is?)

Using Evernote

Getting started with Evernote is easy. You simply go to the Evernote website, sign up for a free account, and download the Mac app. In this review I’ll focus on the nature of the Evernote Mac app, but it is worth noting that it has a great iPhone companion and the Web App can come in very handy – for those (rare?) occasions when you’re in dire need of your notes and away from your Mac.

Once downloaded, Evernote allows access to all its functionality through a single interface – it’s simple but powerful. It has three possible layout settings but doesn’t faff around with further customisation that you simply don’t need. I hardly need to go into the use of Evernote’s interface as it manages to be consistently intuitive, with everything where you would expect it to be.

The left column has your notebooks, tags, attributes, and saved searches, while the centre column lists your notes and the right column displays each individual note as you select it. I like the way the left column allows you to quickly narrow down the notes you are looking at by selecting a tag, previously saved search, or attribute such as:

• When it was created
• When it was last modified
• What kind of information it contains
• The original source

One of the best things about Evernote is the way in which in syncs across all platforms. Whenever you open or close the app, it synchronises all your ideas, snapshots, voice memos, and notes so that they’ll never be forgotten! It’s also possible to force a sync if the note you’ve just uploaded is just too valuable to risk a crash on…

Premium?

The choice of whether or not to go premium will entirely depend upon your personal use of Evernote and whether the extra data storage is worth it (500mb per month as opposed to 40mb on a free account). Personally I don’t find that the small adverts are particularly bothersome – they mostly seem to want me to buy an Evernote t-shirt!

It’s worth noting a couple of criticisms before I hit the bottom line. It’s slightly strange that Evernote allows you to take iSight snapshots but doesn’t allow you to record voice memos from within the Mac App. The iPhone App lets you do this and it’s an odd omission from an otherwise feature-packed Mac counterpart.

Another criticism would be that Evernote lacks the capabilities to be an adequate cloud based file manager – while you can email PDF files (and the like), the lack of a standard folder structure will frustrate the organised.

It is clear, however, that Evernote was not built for file management and it actually does what it does extremely well. If you do need a cloud based file manager then stick to an app that does that well, like Dropbox.

Evernote 2.0

As I was writing it appears the development team at Evernote have been bravely slaving away on their Evernote 2.0 beta and have released the full version! I’ll briefly look at the impact of the two key additions, sharing and stacks.

As you can see above, sharing adds a new tab at the top of the notebooks sidebar that switches between your own Evernote account and those notebooks that have been shared with you. There are a vast array of options including sharing your notes with individuals, groups, and even making them publicly available! Premium account holders gain even more value from this update as they can now edit others’ shared notes, make their shared notes open for editing, and see the history of a particular note – invaluable for group collaboration!

The other major new addition is the inclusion of notebook stacks, in response to the requests of its users for a good way to further organise notebooks. Simply put, stacks allow you to group notebooks together and keep Evernote tidy!

Evernote 2.0 also includes some smaller additions that, overall, make Evernote even better! It’s great that the Evernote team are clearly committed to their users and the future of their App.

Final Thoughts

Evernote is a brilliant app with some incredibly useful features for helping you keep track of almost everything. The main selling point is definitely its ability to cloud sync across almost any device, and its fully featured search functionality – it still amazes me that it manages to index some of my scrawly handwriting!

With very little not to recommend, and a development team who appear determined to support and expand Evernote, the future is bright. If you struggle keeping track of things or just want a single place for all your thoughts, ideas, and notes then I’d urge you to give Evernote a try. Sign up for a free account, download it on all your devices, and see whether it makes your life easier!