Category: Mac

Our sponsor this week is Radium, a lightweight internet radio player with a wonderfully retro icon! Radium allows you to listen to thousands of radio stations from around the world, right from your OS X menu bar. It’s simple, functional, and an absolutely fantastic way to listen to the radio on your Mac.

In our recent review, we gave Radium a lofty 9/10 rating. For such a simple and understated application, it packs a real functionality punch.

You can listen to all manner of subscription radio services, share songs with your social network friends and followers, adjust equalizer settings, view a song history, and use an array of useful keyboard shortcuts.

If you like Radium as much as we do, you’ll be pleased to discover that AppStorm readers can get 25% off the price of the app this week. Just order your copy from this page, and the discount will be automatically applied.

Be sure to spend a few minutes giving Radium a try today – you’ll be glad you did!

Wouldn’t you love to have a dashboard for your Mac, similar to the one in your car that alerts you if anything seems likely to malfunction? CheckUp is exactly that. From your hard drive to your OS installation, CheckUp will keep watch for anything that’s wrong with your Mac, and tell you how to fix it.

Today we’ll go into detail with every aspect of this application, and assess whether it’s a worthwhile purchase to keep your Mac running in tip-top shape.

Getting Started

As careful as you are with your Mac, sometimes things have a habit of going wrong. If there’s anything malfunctioning on your Mac’s disks, software, or hardware, CheckUp will alert you of it, as well as tell you what you can do to fix it.

For a casual user that isn’t aware of many things that could be slowing your system down, this application is a must-have. Not only is the interface pretty simple, it also has an alert system that displays notifications about any problems that crop up.

Profile

The “Profile” menu is the main one, this is where you can see all the specifications of your Mac (OS version, Serial Number, Hard Drive capacity, etc.), and also where you’ll be notified of the issues that the application detects.

These issues are accessible through a window that breaks them down into categories and gives you access to a “Frequently Asked Questions” page.

System

The “System” menu is where you’ll be able to check all your installed items. And by “installed items”, we mean your applications, fonts, drivers, widgets and login items. Next to each category there’s a number displaying how many items you have installed in that category (e.g. 90 applications, 200 drivers), and if you click these categories you’ll get a list of every item that belongs there.

Then, you can see aspects of every installed item, like its size and version, or choose to uninstall particular files.

Under this menu there is also a category labeled “Operating Systems”. In this category, you’ll be able to see all the OS’s that you are running or could run, and what it would need for you to run it.

This is especially useful for people who don’t now that, for example, you need to use BootCamp to run Windows 7.

Processor & Memory

Under the “Processor” menu, you’ll be able to see a graphical display of your processor’s activity, including a graph that informs you of the peaks of your performance. From here you can also check the temperature, type, and bus speed of your processors, as well as tweak the graph to make it go further in time (1 week, today, etc.), optimize your performance or export the data from the graph.

The “Memory” menu displays the capacity of your RAM memory and tells you what would be your “optimal configuration”. Here you can also check how much memory you are using, and run a test to find defective RAM modules.

Disks & Network

From the “Disks” menu, you can see the space you are using on your hard drive and the capacity of your hard disk. It also displays all your external disks and any errors that they could have, giving you the ability to repair them.

Then there’s the “Network” menu, that displays information like your IP address and a graphical display of your In and Out network activity (this functions just like the Processor graph). It can also help you detect any wireless networks around you.

Processes & Documents

Processes is the menu where you can see the processes that take up the most memory and processor activity. You can also sort them through different categories, quit them and pause them. Ironically, “CheckUp” is usually the heaviest process – which really doesn’t bode well…

“Documents” lets you choose a folder and it’ll display the types of documents inside it, with size information, the number of items under that file type and the application related to it. You can also use this section to automatically find duplicated files.

Notifications

This is probably the most useful part of the app. Notifications are accessible through the menu of the application, and they let you set up notifications when certain things happen in your computer.

For example, you can set up CheckUp to notify you when the temperature of your processor reaches a certain temperature and stays there for a certain period of time. These notifications allow you to get to know your computer more and identify what usage makes your computer behave in a certain way. And they also work with the memory usage, the disks and the network.

Conclusion

CheckUp is a difficult application to evaluate. There aren’t many applications that do what CheckUp aims for. There’s the iStat bundle of apps that work in the menu bar or through widgets. There are also apps that do some of the things that CheckUp does, like Onyx, that has disk-checking abilities and displays system information, but these kind of apps usually don’t pack the same level of functionality.

A close comparison here is Activity Monitor, which can easily show most of the same information – albeit in a slightly simpler fashion. If you’ll only be using the basic functionality of CheckUp, you’re probably fine just to stick with Activity Monitor for the few times you notice a piece of software hogging memory.

Equally, there’s the question to be asked as to who exactly CheckUp is designed for. Most users won’t – or at least, shouldn’t – have a need for this type of app. Your Mac is designed to “just work” – this isn’t an environment where you really need to know your CPU temperature, or receive notifications about fan speed.

If you’re the type of person that likes to dig deep into their hardware configuration and operation, definitively download CheckUp and give it a try. If not, you may find this app a little bit underwhelming. I’d be interested to hear what you think, though. Do you use a piece of software like this on a regular basis?

In today’s interview, we’re talking to Pieter Omvlee of Bohemian Coding. We’ve covered Pieter’s software extensively on AppStorm before, and I’m a huge fan of his notoriously well-designed apps. If you haven’t already, head over to Bohemian Coding and take a look at what’s on offer – particularly if you’re a designer!

Pieter has been kind enough to share a few minutes to talk about the story behind Bohemian Coding, his thoughts on iOS development, how he stays up-to-date with the Mac industry in general, and the hardware and software he uses to get the job done.

I hope you enjoy the interview!

Where did you start out as a Mac developer, and how did you come to form Bohemian Coding?

I started out as a Mac developer about 7 years ago in (shame on me) RealBasic. The first version of my application DrawIt was actually written in it. I found it difficult to learn Objective-C and Cocoa at that time so I kept going back and forth between Xcode and RealBasic. When I went to University the dots suddenly fell into place in the first programming course I took, and never used RealBasic again. First thing I did was completely rewrite DrawIt in Objective-C.

I started selling it at getdrawit.com for lack of a better name but when I got the idea for a second application (Fontcase) it was clear that I needed a proper company name and a generic website etc. Thus Bohemian Coding.

Which of your applications do you, personally, use most often?

That’ll definitely be Sketch. I do lots of UI and website mockups in it and I find it works great for that.

Your applications are notoriously well designed, and widely regarded as being a pleasure to use. Is this interface polish something that you add at the end of the development process, or start considering right from the outset?

Well thanks, that’s a big compliment. I work closely with a few interface / icon designers (Kevin Kalle and Emanuel Sá) and I never ship a feature without involving them. When I start on something new – whether it be a new feature or an application – I wouldn’t start coding before I have a the interaction and UI completely worked out in my head.

Sometimes a wireframe-like idea is enough to get coding, and the real graphics (icons or custom UI elements) can come at a later date. But at other times I feel I need a finished mockup from my designers before I code anything. It depends.

I’m currently working on a completely new version of SketchPad (the iPad version of Sketch). I’m in love with my iPad and it’s now absolutely clear that the UI SketchPad has at the moment (designed before I got my hands on an actual iPad) doesn’t work at all.

I had a vague idea of how I thought we could make the UI a lot better and I went to one of my designers with this vague idea and what he came back with was similar but at the same time an enormous improvement. So in this case the basic interaction-idea is mine but the rest is his idea, whereas in Sketch only the raw icons and custom controls were designed by them.

Tell us a little bit about your Mac setup – what hardware and software do you use to get the job done?

My main machine is an almost 3 year old 8 Core Mac Pro with one of the old 30″ Cinema Displays. I got the display from Apple because of the design award I won for Fontcase. I would never have bought that display myself. I have a first-gen Macbook Air for on the road and have thrown everything of importance in Dropbox. I love Dropbox. The Air is too slow to do any serious work on it, though.

I have a 64BG Wi-Fi iPad that I had a friend buy me in the US as soon as they became available. It’s a great device but I can’t wait to see what the next one will be like. If it has a Retina Display I’ll buy it immediately.

Your personal site mentions that you live in London . Do you feel that being based outside of the USA/Bay area is a disadvantage as a software developer?

I don’t think that’s a real disadvantage. There are quite a few Mac/iPhone developers in the UK and plenty of opportunities to meet up. That said, I’ve never been to the US or a WWDC so I might not know what I’m missing out on.

What has the experience of developing for iOS been like, and are you excited about the possibilities offered by the Mac App Store?

I’m really enjoying developing for iOS. The frameworks are much more modern and they fit better together. The iPad experience is also a lot simpler anyway. There’s so much on the Mac that you don’t even have to think about on the iPad – and that really simplifies development. Think about drag-drop from/to other applications for example. That’s simply not there and one less thing you have to worry about.

The Mac App Store is an exciting new thing for the Mac. I think we had all been expecting it ever since the store opened on the iPhone. It certainly took them a while. As expected, the terms are pretty much the same as on iOS store and that means no trials and upgrade pricing.

I hope they’ll add that possibility, though. Trials are really important I think. I just can’t see myself buying a $50 app without trying it first. The same goes for major updates. If your 1.0 isn’t horribly broken I doubt that users will find the typical 2.0 compelling enough to spend the same amount of money once again.

The banning of private API is expected but really inconvenient. You need it a lot more on the Mac than on the iOS platform. Take WebKit as an example. Apple engineers sometimes even recommend using a certain private API.

I have submitted all my applications and they’re now waiting for approval. I’ll keep selling my applications on my own website as well and if people want a free trial, they can get it there. We’ll see how things develop. Maybe soon all my sales will come from the Mac App Store and I’ll remove my web store completely. We’ll have to see and wait.

Which websites, Twitter users, and magazines do you follow in an effort to stay up-to-date with the activities of other developers, and the Apple eco-system in general?

I get most of my Apple-related news and commentary from Daring Fireball, Shawn Blanc, The Brooks Review, and Marco Arment – those are the first that come to mind. Of course I follow the blogs of quite a few other Mac developers and other more or less random people.

I don’t follow websites like TUAW/TechCrunch/Mac Rumors because they simply post too much stuff. I don’t want (nor have the time) to read all of that. Mac Rumors is particularly annoying as they don’t put the full article in their feed. I don’t want to subscribe to feeds that do that.

I also listed to a lot of podcasts. As to the Mac-related portion of that, I’ve basically subscribed to almost all the 5by5.tv shows. I think they’re well done. I gradually unsubscribed from all the TWiT shows as their shows were getting longer and longer and the interesting content became less and less.

Do you have any interesting updates or apps in the pipeline that you can give us a sneak peak at?

I’ve already mentioned that I’m working a big update for SketchPad. Apart from that, both Fontcase and DrawIt really need a major update so that should keep me busy for a while.

The new SketchPad should bring (almost) all the stuff from the desktop version to the iPad and also make exchanging documents much easier – provided Apple doesn’t fix this themselves before I get to it. It’s a bit too early to share screenshots though.

More About Bohemian Coding

Bohemian coding produce a handful of really useful, thoughtful applications for OS X and iOS. They are:

• Fontcase – Fontcase is a font management application that provides an elegant and powerful workflow to help you organize the fonts you have installed on your system.
• Sketch – Innovative vector drawing for Mac OS X with an infinite canvas.
• Drawit – DrawIt is a vector editing application with support for bitmap-like image filters. Vector editing as well as the filters are completely non-destructive, which means that a vector layer can still be edited even after a stack of filters has been applied.
• Review – If you’re doing iPhone UI design, Review is the quickest way to judge your mockups on an actual device. Review will accurately display your mockups on both Retina and older displays.
• Sketchpad – You can just draw on your iPad with your fingers, it’s that simple. Sketchpad is designed to look as a sketch book and can be treated as such; draw with your fingers and swipe left and right to flip pages.
• Slipcover – SlipCover makes it easy to create custom case icons for all your media files. SlipCover can then easily apply these custom icons to any file, making SlipCover the only application you’ll need for cases.

Thanks, Pieter!

I hope you’ll join me in saying a big thanks to Pieter for taking the time to respond to our questions. I always enjoy gaining an insight into what goes on behind the scenes at fantastic companies such as Bohemian Coding!

There’s nothing more frustrating than getting to a destination and realizing that you have left an important file on your desktop at home with no way to access it.

Fortunately, there’s one method of avoiding this problem that can be used on your iPhone, iPad, or any web connected computer — and better yet, it’s free! It’s called LogMeIn, and not only is it available for a huge range of different platforms, it works amazingly.

Today we’ll be taking a look at how LogMeIn works, and also mentioning a few other ways to achieve similar functionality.

The Installation Process

Begin by going to LogMeIn.com and setting up an account. There are varying levels of support, but there is a free option that does all the basics.

Once you’re signed up, download the program on the computer you want to access remotely, then install it on the computer. You can do this with multiple Macs if you like, and even on a Windows machine if you have one. Once that’s done, you’re ready to continue.

Fire up the program on your computer and a window pops up that shows you all of your options. You can initiate desktop sharing if you have a friend or coworker who needs access to your computer, upgrade to a paid account, or just tweak various preferences.

There’s also a little icon that will appear in the menu bar on your Mac as well, allowing you to make changes quickly, or even turn the service off entirely.

Accessing Your Mac Via the Web

Most times that you’re stuck without access to your computer, your options are limited to whatever beige box you can get your hands on.

To access to your computer from another, go to LogMeIn.com and sign in. Next, you’ll see all the computers you’ve installed LogMeIn onto listed on the screen.

Click on the remote control option and after a little bit of Java loading, you’ll see your Mac desktop appear.

From here you can access your computer in its entirety, just as if you are in front of it. The speed can be a touch slow since it’s determined by the internet connection available on both ends, but it works in a pinch.

Mouse around and open programs like you would if you were there, and when you’re done, just close the browser window. It doesn’t get much easier than that!

Mobile Access Options

There are mobile variations of the program as well, available for Windows phones, Android, and of course, the iPad, iPod Touch, and iPhone. It’s known as LogMeIn Ignition, and although it’s a bit pricey at $29.99, the good news is that it’s a universal app for all iOS devices.

The process works the same across the board: Tap the LogMeIn Ignition icon, and then the program fires up. Log in and navigate to the computer you want to control, and just like that, it’s there.

I’ve personally done this dozens of times on my iPhone, and it comes in really handy when you forget something or want to check if an automated process has completed.

That said, the extra real estate on the iPad makes it substantially easier to work with, because even with zooming in on the screen it can still be difficult to work on the iPhone.

Limitations

As with any free program, there are some caveats. LogMeIn works great for accessing your computer, but you can’t do file transfers from the remote computer to the one you’re working on without upgrading to LogMeIn Pro.

With the upgrade you can also listen to iTunes, print documents, and do more advanced IT functions than you can with the free version.

All that said, there are some workarounds. If you want to transfer a file, just open up your e-mail and send the file as an attachment. You can edit an image in Photoshop, just know it’s going to be slow and laggy depending on the connection. And if you have a file sharing program such as Dropbox, you can just drag and drop the file into that and access it via the web on your other computer.

The Alternatives

?Want another way of doing the same thing? Here’s a few other options:

• Remote Desktop Connection for Mac 2 – Comes with every copy of Office 2011 (meaning it’s not free), and only works to connect your Mac to PCs
• Apple Remote Desktop 3 – This comes in at $299 – so it’s not cheap – and is really tailored for the IT crowd with lots of server specific features. It does, however, have a fantastic icon.
• Bonjour Screen Sharing – Free (included with OS X) and allows you to share the screen or desktop of any computer in your Bonjour network that you have the login and password to. This works remotely if you’re a MobileMe subscriber, and is called “Back to My Mac”.
• CoRD – Free, and allows you to access a Windows desktop remotely.

The Verdict

Not everybody needs a way to access their files remotely, but when that first occasion comes up, it really is nice to know that you have a way to do so. In my case, I’ve used LogMeIn to grab photos I forgot to bring with me, check on the status of running programs, and even to work on a program that I didn’t have access to on the road.

For me, I find the best option is to have LogMeIn with me always, because I never know when it will come in handy. I don’t use it often, but the few times I have it’s really saved me from a major problem — and that’s worth its weight in gold.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last couple years I’m guessing you’ve heard of Last.fm. On the off chance you haven’t, I’ll give you a quick high-flying overview. It’s a music streaming service (similar to Pandora or Spotify) that goes a little further to make listening to music a real experience and exploration.

Last.fm is a web app, and through their website you are able to access all the features of the streaming service. The website is great, a lot of fun to explore and the only way to really get into Last.fm. But there are times when you don’t want to open another web page just to listen to some music.

SweetFM is an application that functions using the Last.fm stream service without using a browser. Let’s take a look and see how it performs!

Overview

SweetFM is an open source Mac client that integrates with your Last.fm account. It allows you to take advantage of the streaming music service without the need to go to their website. SweetFM provides all the core radio functionality of Last.fm and even throws in a couple of new extras.

Last.fm provides its users a ton of directed information about music, and lets you explore a huge wealth of content – not just listen to music. SweetFM essentially pulls the player (Radio) functionality out. This leaves you with a much cleaner, more basic music listening experience.

Interface

The interface is clean and simple. It is purely and simply a music player, and the interface reflects that. While the Last.fm website can be a bit overwhelming – with almost too much information at times – SweetFM is a nice alternate to that method of listening to the streaming service. The player is small and definitely won’t take over your desktop.

SweetFM opens to show eight ways to listing to your Last.fm music:

The functions of the player are accessible by clicking icons across the top of the window. These become active when they can be used.

Overall, it is a really nice interface. It’s aesthetically pleasing and functional. It really doesn’t feel like you’re listening to streaming music – which I guess is the point.

Functionality

As I mentioned above, SweetFM offers you eight different ways to begin listening to music. You’ll notice the familiar options (from the Last.fm interface) to listen to your library, recommended songs, or search by artist as well.

You can also search by multiple tags to create a station. Last.fm allows its listeners to tag music, and SweetFM will create a station based on multiple tags. There isn’t really anything different from the Last.fm radio interface.

Player

Once a station is chosen, the actual music player will appear. You’ll have all the main interactive features of Last.fm available to you within the player. You can “love” a track if you’d like, tag it, or attach a message to it as well. The stop and next track buttons are also in this area.

And if you’re curious, the connection with your Last.fm account makes SweetFM completely in sync with what you’d see if you logged into the site.

You’ll see all of the songs and stations you’ve recently listened to, along with things like playlists, loved songs, and updates to your listening stats.

Equalizer

One cool feature that SweetFM boasts over the Last.fm website is an equalizer. For some people, this probably doesn’t matter, but for others (like me) it is a very welcome feature. There are 22 presets to choose from and you can also make manual adjustments.

The quality of streaming services is pretty good, but not as good as you would get from an MP3 in your iTunes library – so having an equalizer available to make some audio adjustments is a really solid feature.

Information

All of the info you see in the player is interactive. What I mean by this is that you can click on the artist name (for example) and a Last.fm page will open with all of that artist’s information. The same goes for track and album name. So there is a quick way to jump to more information on the Last.fm website if you feel the need.

The album cover art within the player links you to the iTunes Store. Clicking it will open iTunes, and take you to the store where you can purchase the album if you’d like.

It’s a nice feature – and really a big part of streaming music services in general – so it’s good to see that functionality remain in a desktop application like this.

Controls

One of the frustrations I’ve had with browser based streaming music services is that you can’t use the controls of your Apple Remote or keyboard. SweetFM allows the use of those controls to stop and skip to the next track.

The application aims to make listening to streaming music more of a desktop type (i.e. iTunes) experience and this is one of those features that helps it take a big jump in that direction.

Pricing

SweetFM is a free piece of software. You do, however, need to be a subscribed user of Last.fm to gain access to their API. So there is some cost, but it certainly isn’t a ridiculous amount.

For $3 a month you can take advantage of some cool subscriber features within Last.fm itself, and also tie it to your SweetFM player. Not a bad deal.

Additional Notes

In the process of doing this review I did a bit of research and it seems as though SweetFM used to have some additional functionality that I’m not seeing – most notably the ability to record or export to your iTunes library.

I just can’t for the life of me find this functionality in version 2.0.3. I even found that specific function listed as a feature on the SweetFM GitHub page readme file. Maybe it has been recently removed… I really have no idea.

I wanted to make note of this feature being gone (unless it’s just me) as it seems like a significant one. I will say that it does seem like it could have the potential to be something that Last.fm wouldn’t particularly like.

Conclusion

Last.fm is a super robust streaming music service. In fact, I’d argue that it is actually far more than a simple streaming music service. It provides a wealth of information about the music you’re listening to and makes recommendations based on that information. The space to wander around checking out new music is almost endless.

I’ll be honest, I was a regular Last.fm user up until around two years ago, and have only recently gotten back into it. SweetFM really makes the experience far more enjoyable.

Now with all that said, I will say that the fully immersive Last.fm experience isn’t always what I’m looking for. It can be a bit much, and sometimes I just want to flip on a few of my favourite tunes.

SweetFM is a perfect companion to the full blown Last.fm service. It pulls out and perfects the core part of the service… listening to music.

Whether you’re a power-email-user, or just occasionally jump into Gmail to grab your personal messages, Postbox is a stylish and functional email client worth considering. Recently updated to version 2.0, it’s a powerful alternative to Apple’s Mail.app, and keeps improving with every release.

Today we’re going to take a quick look at some of the features launched in the latest release, and explain how you can get your hands on a free license!

Read on to find out more…

What’s New in Version 2?

Unified Inboxes & Account Groups

One of the main complaints in previous versions was the lack of a unified inbox across all your email accounts. Not only Postbox now support unified inboxes, but you can create groups of them. So you can combine your work accounts into one group, and personal accounts into another, and then unify the inboxes for each group.

Not only are the inboxes unified, but so are special folders such as sent, archive, drafts, trash, etc.

Focus Pane

This helps to break your inbox into more manageable chunks by allowing users to group messages by common theme, including topics (tags), contacts or dates.

Improved Conversation Views

Postbox Conversation Views are more powerful, actionable, and easy to read. This enables users to quickly bring themselves up to speed, and to jump into discussions with more information, context, and insight.

New To-Do View

Version 2 provides a simple and lightweight way to use email messages to track To-Dos. Easily tag messages as To-Do, create new To-Dos, and combine them into a dedicated To-Do view.

We’ll leave you to decide whether your inbox is the best place to do this – there’s lots of arguments against using your inbox/email program as a task manager, but it might work perfectly for you!

Quick Actions

The new version adds several new actions to make message handling faster, including Quick Reply, Quick Move, and Quick Folder Switch, in addition to a ton of new keyboard shortcuts for functions and navigation.

Win a Copy of Postbox!

If that sounds good, we’re sure you’d love to win a free copy! Entering is really easy. All you need to do is retweet the following message, and leave a comment on this post with your Twitter username!

Just entered a competition to win a Postbox license, courtesy of @macappstorm: http://bit.ly/9rirFJ

Click here to tweet the message and enter!

Best of luck! We’ll be picking the winners in exactly one week, on Thursday the 25th November. Thanks for taking part!

With the release of iTunes 10, many people suddenly realised that iTunes really wasn’t that great, and might be starting to suffer from a major case of feature bloat. The interface is starting to become messy and hard to navigate, the icon is atrocious, and Ping just clutters everything up further.

But if your main priority remains to simply listen to music, what alternatives do you have?

Songbird will do everything you want your music player to do, and more. The Songbird developers realised that you don’t want an app to handle most of your media needs, you want an app which handles all of your music needs.

But how does it stack up against iTunes, and is it really a viable alternative? Read on to find out…

Getting Started

The installation process in Songbird is very easy. Simply download the 20mb DMG (a quarter the size of iTunes), and install it as you would most apps, by dragging the icon into Applications.

Opening Songbird for the first time is not, like many media apps, a daunting experience. If you have music in your iTunes library, Songbird will import them for you, and if not, you can just get started importing music manually. It will also import any iTunes playlists you have, so you won’t have lost any hard work you’ve done on iTunes.

Interface

If you’ve used iTunes before, you’ll have no problem getting used to Songbird. The interface layout was obviously based pretty much entirely on iTunes, which is not a bad thing, as it means you will already know where everything is. This can be advantageous if you’re trying to bring it into your natural Mac workflow as quickly as possible.

As Songbird is designed for Windows, Mac and Linux, it doesn’t have the feel of a native Mac app – but it is by no means ugly either. There are several ways of customising it to suit your needs too, which we will cover next.

Customization

This is where Songbird starts to show a few similarities with Firefox. It is, after all, based on the Mozilla engine. One of Songbird’s main selling points is that you can install add-ons to make Songbird work just the way you want it to. These include “Feathers” (Skins/Themes) to make it look nicer, media views (Coverflow, etc.), music discovery tools, and much, much more.

These plug-ins can be downloaded from your normal browser, or in Songbird itself. When you install them from Songbird, it’s as simple as clicking once and restarting Songbird to see them take effect, similar to the Firefox add-on installation process.

Music

Songbird is a music player, so it does music very well. However, there’s not much there to differentiate it from iTunes, as it is very much based on how iTunes handles its music library. It would appear that Songbird has more of an emphasis on rating songs, and it is much quicker and easier to do so than in iTunes.

If you’re one of those people who likes to edit every little bit of metadata possible, you might not be too impressed with Songbird. The metadata fields are much more restricted than in iTunes, but it still handles all of the important ones.

Video

If you have a large video collection too, Songbird claims that it can handle videos, and it can, to some extent, although it does fall behind significantly there. iTunes is pretty bad at handling videos – It will handle MOV, MP4 and H.264, but not much else.

Songbird is no better. It too will handle MP4 and H.264, and some MOV files, but not all. In reality, you’d be much better sticking to Quicktime or VLC, which can handle video in a far more powerful fashion.

Web Browsing

Another great feature of Songbird is the ability to browse the web inside of it. This can be particularly useful if you want to check details about a song, singer, or simply only have one app open instead of two. It works using tabbed browsing, so you can quickly switch between your music and your internet. Admittedly, the internet isn’t quite as fast as your standard browser, but it’ll certainly do the job.

The ability to easily connect to the web makes it great for internet-based music services, such as Last.fm, which it integrates seamlessly with. Also, if you visit a webpage which has several MP3 files on it, it will make a playlist out of them, which is an excellent feature if you frequent music blogs.

Not a feature for most people, but good if you’re a real music fanatic!

Purchasing

The iTunes Store is a huge selling point for iTunes, and one of the main reasons that people stay there – It’s one of the best ways of getting music these days. Songbird comes with built-in fuctionality for the 7Digital store, so you still have an easy way for getting music.

In terms of pricing, 7Digital is a little bit more expensive than iTunes, but not much – Around 20c per song, and $1 per album. Unless you buy loads of music, then it shouldn’t be a huge reason to stick with iTunes.

Songbird also integrates with Songkick, which is a great way of finding concerts and buying tickets. But rather than having to trawl through hundreds of artists that you haven’t heard of, it can only show concerts for artists in your library in a particular city.

For me, this is a brilliant feature, and works a lot better than Ping’s concert feature.

Devices

Unfortunately, this is where Songbird loses some major points. It has no built-in iPod syncing, and will not even recognise your iPod if you plug it in. There is an add-on which is supposed to give iPod support, but that has been adandoned and no longer works with the current version of Songbird.

If you use your iPod a lot, this will be an immediate point against Songbird, and for many people, may even rule it out completely – You certainly don’t want to have to bring all your new music back into iTunes every time you want to put it on your iPod, and if you use podcasts regularly, that’s even more of an inconvenience.

Conclusion

I started this review looking forward to learning about what should have been a great application. By the end of the review, I was very disappointed with it overall. Sure, it can handle your music very well, the web browsing features are excellent, and add-ons allow you to tweak Songbird in various interesting ways.

Unfortunately, it’s let down significantly by a lack of iPod support, video playback, and a slightly sub-par interface. To top it off, it runs quite a bit slower than iTunes.

If you use music blogs often, or constantly want to find out information and lyrics whilst listening to your music, then maybe Songbird is for you.

If you just want to listen to your music, videos, podcasts, both on your computer and your iPod, then you would probably be better off sticking to iTunes.

I remember five years ago when I got my first Mac. Soon after, I had a .Mac account (the old version of MobileMe) in hopes I’d be able to enjoy some of the features of cloud storage and syncing.

Fast forward into today’s culture. Cloud storage is even easier to acquire (even for us Mac users) and syncing online has become an omnipresent feature with services like Dropbox. Today, I wanted to take a look at why people have moved away from MobileMe and give a few possible alternative solutions to avoid paying $99 a year.

From iTools to MobileMe

As Apple pushed into the foray of the internet, they launched the free iTools service in 2000 which included a @mac.com email address, electronic greeting card service, personalized webpage, online file storage, and a few website directories.

.Mac, announced in 2002, acted as a pay-for successor to iTools with an expanded feature set, adding online backup, with occasional updates like Back To My Mac and .Mac Web Gallery. Hundreds of thousands of Mac users subscribed to .Mac within the first year, even after outrage over the cost of the service.

In July 2008, MobileMe was released, timed to co-incide with the iPhone 3G launch. It included expanded online storage, a transition to the @me.com e-mail addresses, push iCal/Mail/Contacts/Bookmarks, and eventually would support both Find My iPhone and a slicker online experience. Unfortunately, the transition to MobileMe wasn’t as Apple-like as anyone would have hoped. In the transition process, a small percentage of users lost access to e-mail and for many, sync services were extremely unreliable.

It was too bad Apple decided to launch MobileMe, the iPhone 3G, and the App Store within the same day. It quickly overwhelmed the company’s servers and infrastructure, leading to rolling e-mail blackouts and massive iPhone activation failures.

Syncing Horror Stories

The MobileMe mess slowly improved, but not without the occasional horror story. A month after launch, MobileMe threw a surprise deletion party on my Mac. I opened my Address Book to find that no contacts existed. None. I checked on me.com’s copy of my contact data – it was gone. As was the copy on my iPhone.

Essentially, it had forced a sync that deleted my contacts across all of my devices, and then pushed that ‘empty’ contact update across all of my devices. Simply put, I was extremely upset.

I remember having long conversations with AppleCare support (who could do nothing, as apparently, MobileMe was handled by an outside company). I learned not to trust syncing services to act as a solid backup.

The second story was from before the me.com days. As an avid listener of MacBreak Weekly, I remembered everyone’s internet pal Merlin Mann talking about his monthly ritual of preforming a ‘Nuclear Reset’ on his .Mac data. Crazy to think that it was necessary to do such a thing. However, I quickly learned the power of such a reset to decrease sync times, CPU hang-ups as well as general preventative maintenance on losing data.

I guess I never understood the need to ‘reset’ everything on a regular basis for a service that was used by millions of users. However, knowing how to do such a reset is important should things get ‘wonky’ within your MobileMe account.

The Famous Nuclear Reset

If you decide that to get everything back in order with your MobileMe account has come to the Nuclear Reset, ensure you have a recent data backup of everything that is being synced. Just in case.

Hop into the MobileMe panel in System Preferences, and select the ‘Sync’ subtab. Under ‘Advanced…’, select ‘Reset Sync Data’.

This is the critical moment. You can select which categories, if not all, need to be reset as well as the direction of the reset. Make sure the arrow is going in the correct direction.

Heading away from the Mac will take everything from your Mac and upload it to MobileMe. The reverse will download the current version of the MobileMe data and reset all the local data. Remember to take an extra second to ensure this is necessary and is in the right direction.

iDisk and the Pinwheel of Death

While not as bad as the ‘Gray Curtain of Doom‘, and with many more names (Rainbow Wheel, Spinning Beach Ball of Death, Pinwheel of Futility, the list goes on), whenever you try to save a file into iDisk, open a document, transfer anything at all- the little rainbow wheel appears as your Mac sends a request to the iDisk server.

For faster iDisk action, enable iDisk Sync. Sure, it will take 20GB of your computer space, but your Finder speed will greatly increase by keeping a local copy of the iDisk data.

This is one of the reasons that it never made any sense to use iDisk as any sort of reliable, fast backup or file storage. Even if it synced across your various laptops and, now, iOS devices.

The Dropbox Revolution

Our by-far favourite online service, Dropbox, has begun to replace MobileMe as a tool to sync and store data. From 1Password to text documents syncing to your iOS device, Dropbox features collaboration that makes fun of your iDisk public folder, a super solid Amazon S3 backbone, instant change sync, versioning and integration across all platforms imaginable.

If you haven’t signed up yet, do so now. I’ll wait!

I never imagined that Dropbox would grow to support so many users, and be integrated into nearly every content heavy iPad and iOS app. Back in the day, the only real way to synchronize settings and files between two or more Macs (especially when the Macs were not on the same local network) was .Mac.

After using Dropbox for a year now, I happily pay for their expanded storage service. Both in hopes to support future development and for the ability to store nearly anything I can think of on their servers. Unfortunately, to fill a 100GB Dropbox, you will need 100GB of matching storage on your Mac and any other connected computer.

While Dropbox doesn’t offer the Photo Gallery, One-Click Web Hosting, or Me.com e-mail service, there are very simple and cost effective ways to transition away from MobileMe but retain this functionality.

Replacing MobileMe

While you won’t get that lovely @me.com email address (or the traditional @mac.com option), you can replicate the push syncing calendars, e-mail and contacts with Google Apps. With your Gmail and Google account, you can set up Google Sync, which acts as an exchange folder to sync to nearly everything MobileMe would.

To fill in the rest of the gaps, namely bookmark syncing and iPhone geo-location, we’ll use two services: Xmarks and Undercover.

Xmarks is a free bookmark syncing tool with an iPhone app. You could also use a service like Delicious or Pinboard with a similar supporting app.

To track your phone should you lose it, Undercover is an easy option at $5. It allows you to send push notifications that help you find your phone should a thief have it. For instance, you can write a fake bank account alert that pushes the thief to log into your account by clicking ‘Ok.’ At that point it grabs the phone’s location. You can even have it buzz or make noise to attract the attention of a passerby.

Between using Dropbox, Google Apps, Google Sync, Xmarks, and Undercover you can replicate MobileMe on the cheap! There are a few downsides, though. Dropbox accounts over their included 2GB aren’t free. That upgrade alone will push your budget above a MobileMe account unless you spend time recruiting other members to expand your space through referral bonuses.

Google Apps and Google Sync aren’t perfect options as they are not quite as reliable and don’t keep your calendar colors the same (which may annoy some).

Xmarks/Delicious/Pinboard aren’t integrated with the iPhone, which means you’ll need to launch a separate app to grab that site you forgot the URL to. Also, Undercover, while a great option at $5, does not let you track your phone unless someone clicks that pop-up message. If the phone is on silent mode, no sound will be made. With MobileMe, you can always view the location of your phone as well as make a sound at any time.

Right now, I doubt I’ll be dropping my MobileMe subscription anytime soon. However, I have moved away from using most of its primary features. I’d love a MobileMe ‘Lite’ account that only synced my Calendars, Contacts, Bookmarks and offered Find My iPhone, but I won’t be holding my breath.

It really comes down to your budget. Can you afford an extra service to sync your data, and how reliable does this service need to be? Either way, I cannot stress enough the importance of backing up your data. As often as possible. With push syncing, you can lose everything before you have time to reach for that iPhone or iPad.

I can’t say I came to any newfound conclusion. I’m still going to use Dropbox for file storage, backup and syncing. My MobileMe account remains a personal e-mail and exchange server. I’m okay with that, and considering how helpful Find My iPhone is, I can’t imagine a world without it!

Are you all planning to switch away from MobileMe, or have you already done so?

“The Mac is geared towards creatives.” That’s what you hear most often when a discussion turns to the benefits of operating systems. But what exactly are those fantastic apps that appeal to us creative folks?

Other than the well known giants of Adobe Creative Suite, there are many other software gems with plenty of functionality (and a far lower price tag). Today I’ll be showcasing the giants in the design software world, and a few alternatives that may actually suit you better.

Read on for a showdown of the essential Mac design software – whether it’s for the web, bitmap, or vector design (and I’ve thrown a few apps for developers in for good measure too!)

Mac Web Design Software

Strictly speaking, we are talking about web development apps, since these help you to create a fully functional website, inlcuding the necessary code. But many of these apps mix design and coding functionality, appealing both to beginners and advanced users.

Let’s take a look at what should (or could) be on your hard drive if you’re serious about creating websites.

iWeb

Yes, you read right. iWeb might be scornes by serious developers, but it comes pre-installed on every single Mac and can open the doors to the wonderful world of web development for folks who previously had nothing to do with it.

iWeb’s graphical interface is very easy to understand, and the wealth of included templates allows for the quick creation of visually appealing web pages. If your sole goal is to set up a web site to showcase a couple of videos or photos, share some personal family moments or the memories of the last snowboarding trip with your friends, iWeb is a handy solution.

For those who – rightfully – complained in the past that iWeb was too much of a closed system, this was rectified with last year’s update of the iLife suite. Now you can also add YouTube videos, Google Maps and Adsense, RSS Feeds or HTML Snippets. These extensions will appeal to advanced users who want more control over their website, but most iWeb users will be satisfied with the included options.

Verdict: iWeb comes free with every Mac and is the perfect solution for people who don’t know anything about web development but are looking for a way to create a small personal site to share moments with friends and family.

Dreamweaver

Originally a Macromedia product, Dreamweaver is now part of the Adobe family of products. It may very well be the most powerful web editor available. It not only comes with code completion and subversion support, but it also allows for CSS validation with a few clicks and, as of CS5, Dreamweaver also supports authoring and testing of content management systems like Joomla or WordPress.

The complete feature list of Dreamweaver is way too long to be listed here, but it will be hard to find something that this editor can not do (apart from serving you breakfast in bed and cleaning your house).

Obviously, this wealth of options comes not only with a steep price tag, but also with quite a learning curve. The ability to both code and use the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) visual editor will appeal to many people, but there are less expensive alternatives that can do almost as good a job.

Verdict: Dreamweaver is still hailed as one if not the one most powerful web editor. If you can spare the cash (at $399 Dreamweaver is the most expensive of the development apps), have the hardware to run it smoothly, and the time to get know all the features, why not use it?

But before you decide to buy it, take a look at the alternatives listed below – you might be surprised to find cheaper apps that can give Dreamweaver a run for its money.

RapidWeaver

RapidWeaver is another WYSIWYG editor, right in the same category as iWeb. You don’t have to worry about code and all the cryptic stuff – all you need to do is click and drag and drop.

The app comes with over 40 pre-installed themes which can be adjusted to your liking (to a certain extent). Also, there are many free and commercial plugins to extend the functionality of RapidWeaver and make even seasoned coding veterans consider an affair with this editor (after all, why not chose the easy route from time to time?).

Verdict: If you feel limited by the abilities of iWeb but still don’t have the experience to code directly, take a look at RapidWeaver. It’s easy to extend and fits in well into the Mac environment. RapidWeaver is priced at $79.

Flux

The closest Mac equivalent to Dreamweaver might be Flux by The Escapers. It also offers the choice to design in either code view or the WYSIWYG editor. The interface is very sleek and, once the basic principles of the app are understood, professional websites can be quickly created using both editing environments.

It requires some time to learn since it also comes with a wealth of features and even supports Coda plugins, but it only costs a fraction of the better known Adobe cousin.

Verdict: If you are looking for an app that allows you to develop both in visual and code view but can’t afford Dreamweaver, give Flux a try. Set aside some time to truly discover all the potential the app has to offer, and you will find it a very powerful tool in your workflow. It’s priced at £69.99.

Espresso

For the coding junkies out there, meet Espresso. It won’t fuel you with caffeine (sorry, folks!), but it will give your creativity a good kick and gear it into action. With a wonderfully minimal interface, Espresso surprises with powerful features like CodeSense (a.k.a. code completion), an extensible core, smart snippets library (why type the same stuff again and again?), code folding, tab support, live preview and a built-in project manager as well as an FTP client.

Verdict: For just $79.95 Espresso should be at the top of your web design apps to check out. It’s sleek, fast, reliable and a pleasure to use.

Coda

Another one for coding evangelists. Coda by Panic is on the same level as Espresso and it’s down to personal preference as to editor you chose. I myself have licenses for both, but ended up using Espresso for most of my coding projects just because I liked the interaction with the app better.

Personal taste aside, Coda has a fantastic site/project manager, offers free Subversion support, has a truly amazing find and replace function – not to mention the live preview and the ability to visually edit your CSS.

And have I mentioned that you can actually build up a library of reference books right within the app? So, whenever you need to look up some Javascript, jQuery or CSS definitions, it won’t matter if you have an internet connection or not.

Verdict: A little pricier than Espresso, Coda is still an amazing deal for $99. A free trial version is available and you should compare it thoroughly with Espresso and Dreamweaver to find out which code editor suits your needs best.

TextMate

Many professional coders swear by TextMate. They consider it the most powerful coding solution currently available. It is incredibly adaptable and brings powerful snippet support and macros as well as a wealth of other features.

Verdict: It might not have the eye candy of Coda or Espresso, but for coders who like to adjust their coding environment to their specific taste, TextMate offers just what they need at very reasonable price tag of $55.

Sandvox

Yet another editor aimed at beginners and intermediate users who do not want to code manually. With Sandvox, you have the choice to edit your code (Pro Version); the basic version supplies you with Pagelets that allow you to extend the functionality of your site with photos, a contact form, social site integration like Flickr, Delicious or YouTube and much more.

Just like iWeb and RapidWeaver, Sandvox comes with a bunch of themes that you can use out of the box or build upon.

Verdict: As with the professional editors, it will be up to your personal workflow and taste which WYSIWYG editor will power your site. At $57 Sandvox is slightly more affordable than RapidWeaver, but it might not be quite as slick.

Mac Vector Design Software

Ever wondered how some graphics can be scaled to crazy dimensions without starting to pixellate (they won’t become blurry)? That’s because they are vector graphics, which are not drawn (strictly speaking) but rather calculated from a mathematical information.

By resizing the image, the lines are simply recalculated and therefore you can scale such an image to fit a huge poster or a web preview – it will always stay sharp. Let’s have a look at the apps that allow you to do that on the Mac.

Adobe Illustrator

Once more, the Adobe product leads the line. Adobe Illustrator is the industry standard solution for vector work.

Illustrator’s features are too numerous to mention, but here are some that set it apart from the competition by being unique or much easier to use: perspective grids for easier drawing shapes in different perspectives; editing within panels (quicker than selecting many separate controls one after another); great gradient and transparency control and – not to forget – a huge community that comes up with extensions to Illustrator.

Verdict: Of course, such a powerful app takes some time to learn, but it is time well spent. You’ll master the industry standard, and you’ll have the peace of mind that your files should work with any professional agency out there. At $599 the investment hurts at the outset, but if you want to earn your money in this field, the cash will be well spent. If that’s too high a price, check out the competition.

Sketch

A new player – and one that has quickly garnered the attention of professionals – is Sketch. It offers an infinite canvas, slice export options, multiple pages to a document, a wealth of shapes to reuse and a library function to store reusable objects. Additionally, you can easily group and rearrange objects and perform boolean operations on them.

Sketch is very easy to use. Everything is stored away neatly to let you focus on your work, but you can access all palettes quickly and not get lost in a ton of options you don’t need.

Verdict: If you do not need the full capabilities of Illustrator but would rather have a less expensive yet powerful dedicated vector app, take Sketch for a test drive. At $40 it is very reasonably priced and the development continues, adding more and more functions and implementing user requests.

Draw It

The developer of Sketch also brings DrawIt to our hard drives. The two apps are comparable to a point, but the biggest advantage of DrawIt over Sketch is that it allows for bitmap-like image filters to be applied to objects.

You can still create vector objects, group, and layer them, but you can also stack effects to give your drawing that little extra to make it stand out. You don’t have an infinite canvas as with Sketch and in DrawIt, if you zoom in, you can actually see pixels whereas in Sketch you will always have smooth lines.

Verdict: Depending on your needs, the effects and stacking capabilities of DrawIt might just what you need. At $37 it’s reasonably priced and should fit into a designers or amateur’s budget.

Eazydraw

Eazydraw claims to be simple enough for a beginner, yet powerful enough for the professional. If offers layer support, user libraries, and it plays nicely with a large number of file formats.

Verdict: At $95 for a full license, EazyDraw is on the expensive side of the vector apps. It has an interesting pricing model though: you can purchase a 9 month license at $20, giving you more than the customary 30-day trial period to really get to know the app.

Inkscape

The first free app in this rundown, Inkscape is an open source vector editor that can hold itself up when compared to Adobe Illustrator. Something that makes Inkscape stand out is the use of the open SVG (Scaleable Vector Graphics) format which is a W3C standard.

Verdict: While development might not proceed with the same speed as with paid apps, the Inkscape project is alive and offers a respectable number of features for free.

VectorDesigner

Another paid app is VectorDesigner, which in my opinion stacks up with Sketch (which I found easier to use). VectorDesigner offers the use of filters and Quartz compositions to shapes and images, and it also brings a Flickr browser to the canvas to make the search for images, colors and shapes easier.

Verdict: Whether or not you’ll like VectorDesigner will depend a lot on your personal preference. The inspector windows are much like the ones found in iWork, so if you like that kind of GUI, check VectorDesigner out at $69.95.

Lineform

Another affordable vector app is Lineform with freeflow text support (type text within shapes), morphing arrow functionality, powerful bezier editing and even boolean operations. Moreover, you can preview your images in CMYK color mode, preventing unpleasant surprises after you get your files back from a print shop.

Verdict: Lineform offers rich functionality for a very reasonable price of $79.95 and it should at least warrant a try when you check out vector apps.

Acorn

Surprised to see Acorn in here? Yeah, the little app actually offers vector support. It is not a dedicated vector drawing application, but you can add basic shapes and lines to your images and change their properties later on as well. If that’s all you need and you already own a copy of Acorn, rejoice.

Verdict: Since it is not a dedicated vector app, Acorn can only serve for very basic needs, but if those are all you have, why invest the time to learn a complex vector app? At $49.95 Acorn has lots of other functionality that you might come to appreciate when working with images, so you’ll have one editor for many purposes.

Mac Bitmap Design Software

Now that we’ve covered vector and web design apps, let’s take a look at the bitmap design apps that will – or should – be on everyone’s hard drive who is interested or serious about design.

Adobe Photoshop

By now it shouldn’t be a surprise that another Adobe family product leads the line up, but for professional design purposes, there is just no getting around this powerful application. While it might be argued that hardly any single person ever uses the full extent of the functionality offered by Adobe Photoshop, those needed functions are all there if you need them.

No matter if you’re doing web layout, photo manipulation, or extensive graphic creation – Photoshop just has the tools for all your needs. Add to that the huge community that comes up with brushes, gradients and other extensions to enhance the app further, and you have all the graphic power one can wish for at your fingertips.

Verdict: Yes, at $699 Photoshop truly is a huge expense, but for professional users, that money will be repaid quickly since you can compete with everyone out there. It’s only a tool, though – you’ll need to bring the talent to the show.

Pixelmator

Quite a young application in the vast market for image editors, Pixelmator has nonetheless acquired a huge following among Mac users already. For those who either can’t afford Photoshop or who simply don’t need all the tools, Pixelmator is a slimmed down yet still incredibly powerful app that can satisfy most editing needs.

It supports filters and layers, imports Photoshop brushes … basically you have slightly less than Photoshop but a ton more functionality than Photoshop Elements. Since it’s GPU powered, a powerful Mac can really enhance the experience.

Verdict: Pixelmator is an amazing product and I have come to rely on it as my editor on the fly. It’s fast, easy to use, and if you are not in need of all the things Photoshop has to offer, you won’t find better at a bargain price of just $59!

Acorn

Yes, I have mentioned Acorn already in the vector app section, but it is also a very nice editor for bitmap graphics. Just thought I’d mention it!

Seashore

Meet Seashore, an open source image editor, with layer support, boolean operations, gradients, brushes and transform tools. You can even apply filters and use effects. If your needs are more basic, for a private or team page, you will probably be more than happy with the feature set that Seashore provides.

Verdict: Non-professional users and those with no budget will find a handy tool in the free Seashore app which comes with many pro app features.

GIMP

Of course, we cannot miss out GIMP, the image editor aiming to providing a free alternative to the all powerful Photoshop and which has been around for ages.

It offers – for a free app – an astonishing number of features such as painting with brushes, pencil and airbrush, gradient editors and blend tools, advanced image manipulation with channels and layers, a wide variety of selection tools and extraction tools, animation support, and support for a large number of file types, including PSD.

Verdict: As a freeapp, GIMP is very well worth a look. The downside is that it still requires X11 to be able to run on OS X and it might scare non-tech-savvy users off.

Conclusion

That was our round up of essential graphic and web design apps for the Mac. Apart from the well-known giants of the Adobe family, I hope that we’ve opened your eyes to some of the other fantastic software available for the platform.

If we’ve missed anything out (I’m sure we have, somewhere!), please let us know in the comments. And feel free to share which software you use for your own needs as well.

Thanks for reading, and happy designing!

Office 2011 brings plenty of improvements over previous versions, but it’s still far from perfect. And despite the overwhelming dominance of Microsoft Office across Windows and Mac, it certainly isn’t the only suite of office-style tools available.

Personally, I’m a huge fan of the iWork suite. After a sluggish and frustrating first release, I think that it has improved in leaps and bounds. I use Pages and Numbers almost exclusively for all my word processing and spreadsheet work (though I prefer to write in something simpler most of the time).

Another alternative is the excellent OpenOffice, which recently celebrated its 10th birthday. This has really become a viable contender in recent years, and version 3 felt considerably more “at home” on OS X. If you’ve never used OpenOffice before, it’s definitely worth taking a look at.

So, which suite of “office” style applications do you use? Like me, are you an iWork fan? Or do you think that Microsoft Office still leads the way in this area? Share your thoughts in the comments – I’d love to hear what you think!

For years, the mind mapping software market has been perceptually dominated by FreeMind. I say perceptually, because it seems more people have been recommending it than actually using it. Despite its ubiquity on free software alternatives lists, FreeMind is an awkward fit in the OS X environment. It’s cross platform, which often means “looks sub par everywhere”. It’s Java based, so performance is unpredictable.

And, most importantly, it’s not MindManager.

MindManager was never born as a FreeMind alternative. It’s existed on Windows since 1994, and on OS X since 2006. This is mind mapping with a totally native interface, and a novel idea for system integration. Let’s see how it performs.

Initial Use

MindManager is an application based strongly on templates, giving the user a multitude to choose from upon starting the program. There’s a template for meetings, one for decision making, one for resume writing, one for to-do lists, weekly planners and writing projects. I chose the blank template, and started mapping.

The project window is notably spartan – in this case meaning “stock standard”. Icons dot the toolbar with varying degrees of visual consistency, and a floating inspector box, easily my least favourite part of Windows ports from companies such as Microsoft, hovers to the side.

However uninspired the interface appears, it’s at least unobtrusive:

Easy and Intuitive – Mostly

Once the central node is named, adding topics is as easy as clicking and renaming. Subtopics aren’t quite as simple to manipulate, requiring a haul of your mouse cursor to the toolbar.

It’s hardly an elegant system, especially if you find yourself getting intricate with your sub levels, but it’s not a UI disaster.

Templates for Every Scenario, And Then Some

If you’re looking for something more focused than the blank canvas approach, MindManager’s templates may be of use to you. There’s 16 templates built in, but most seem like a superfluous use of the mind map format.

Take the “meeting” template. There are subtopics for the time, place, and agenda – but I can’t fathom what advantages are gained over formatting this information in a simple text document, or as part of normal meeting minutes. Especially since adding new subtopics is so annoying.

iCal Integration

Mind Manager also boasts a novel idea of one way iCal integration. iCal events can be added into the MindManager document as dynamically linked subtopics using the “smart calendar topic” option. It works well, picking up this week’s events by default.

New subtopics can created as calendar events, but there’s no obvious way of converting existing subtopics to a calendar event. I question the necessity of this feature as a whole, since I can’t see myself using MindManager as a life planning tool – but it’s a welcome piece of functionality to have.

Export Options

Finally, the strength of an application like this lies in it’s exporting capabilities. MindManager provides a multitude of options, and you’re fairly spoilt for choice in this department. Static options such as a PDF, or the usual image formats, are available as you’d expect.

The SWF export creates an interactive Flash file, but it would have been great to see support for SVG as well.

Despite these niceties, I began finding some aspects of the software that took a while to come to terms with.

A Focus On Presentation, Not Brainstorming

Mind mapping software is ideally unobtrusive, providing a funnel for your thoughts to travel through, and hopefully exit in a logical fashion.

Mind Manager’s system is different. Upon selecting a template, all options and routes are mapped out, thus making a mind map feels less like an unstructured thought process and more like a ticking boxes on a government form.

This format has it’s advantages and disadvantages, and I had to be sure I wasn’t just disliking it because it was different. In the resume section, for example, including all the feasible sections would no doubt be a boon to first time job applicants unsure of where to start.

But it makes me wonder, who is this marketed to? The power user? Someone who needs a reminder checklist for their upcoming holiday?

Of course, these templates are just there to act as an example. You’re not forced to use them, but I can’t help feeling restricted when I do.

Pricing

As I worked my way through MindManager, I started to see it as something as useful application to have in my productivity workflow, or at the very least, something I could rely on when I needed it. Then I remembered the price. $249.

MindManager is certainly a powerful application, but I can’t see myself paying that much for mind mapping. Then again, perhaps I’m not their market. Businesses may find the meeting planning tools indispensable.

Ultimately, whether the MindManager premium is worth it to you depends exactly on how often you’ll be launching the program on a daily basis.

Conclusion

If you’re out to create mind maps on a regular basis, and need a powerful, dedicated utility, Mind Manager does that very well – despite my odd niggling complaint.

MindManager is designed both for the novice user and the productivity guru, despite being priced out the range of most novice mind map creators.

A few weeks ago, Apple gave a sneak peak of the next version of Mac OS X, 10.7 Lion. Not a whole lot was revealed about the new operating system beyond a new way to access applications dubbed Mission Control (Dashboard + Expose + iOS-style application launcher).

One of the bigger announcements was the introduction of an App Store for Mac OS X. The same way you browse the App Store for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad applications, you can now purchase, download and install applications for your computer.

With the overwhelming success of the iOS App Store, an App Store for the Mac seems like a natural progression. Not only will it provide a seamless way of browsing and installing applications for the end user, it allows Apple to snag a piece of Mac application sales.

Many things have already been said about the Mac App Store since it’s announcement. Questions have been asked and answers have been speculated. No one really knows how it will turn out, we can only guess based on the continuing success of the iOS App Store and the recently released guidelines.

There are certainly a number of benefits to such a system, for both the user and the developer. There are certainly a few things to be wary about as well…

Repeals and Rejections

I am not a developer of any sorts, but anyone with a bit of interest in Apple and iOS devices has surely heard the controversies surrounding the iOS App Store.

Steve Jobs likes control, plain and simple. Applications have been let into the App Store, only to be promptly removed on a whim. Applications have been forced to change names, adjust descriptions, remove certain references or adjust functionality to meet Apple’s strict App Store demands. Some applications are turned away simply because they do not offer anything valuable to the user.

It is this control that made my initial reaction to the Mac App Store announcement unfavorable. Overall my experience with the App Store has been a pleasant one, and I have no real reason to think a Mac App Store would offer anything less. In fact, to most consumers, an easy-to-use place to discover software for their computer is great. It’s the control factor that puts me a little on edge.

Betas, Trials, and Tribulations

My initial concerns were: Am I limited to only use officially sanctioned software from Apple going forward? The only applications I can install must first obtain Apple’s seal of approval? Not that I have much questionable application content, but I can’t see Apple giving the okay to a BitTorrent client (for the occasional TV shows that aren’t online or on-demand, of course).

One of the Mac App Store guidelines states that the software must not be “beta”, “demo”, or “trial” software. I am not sure about you, but I have not purchased any desktop software in a long while that I didn’t get to first try out on my system.

It’s fairly standard for desktop applications to offer a 14-to-30 day trial period. This allows the user time to get a feel for the application and work it into their work-flow, by the time the 30 days have ended, you’ve already come accustomed to daily use of the application and fork over the money.

Without a trial period, purchasing software requires a bit of a leap of faith. This isn’t such a big deal when it comes to iOS apps where most of the applications are under $10. It’s a bit of a concern when you start talking desktop applications that typically run $50 and up.

The no “beta” tag worries me a bit as well. I use Chromium as my main browser, I’ve been using the Alfred beta since the day it was released and I always run the latest version of Adium. Three of my most-used applications all carry the “beta” tag, as it currently stands.

Am I now forced to use official release versions of these applications (if one is even available)? I can obviously understand the reasoning – the average consumer does not need to deal with crash-prone in-development software – but for the more bleeding-edge crowd, what does that mean?

I should state now that standard application distribution isn’t going away. Apple isn’t going to prevent users from downloading DMGs and manually installing applications the way we currently do. This is how the power-user will still have access to the betas, but perhaps trial periods will become a thing of the past.

I can’t see the average consumer browsing the App Store for software, finding an application and then leaving the store, navigating to the developer’s website, looking for a free trial.

This also means that developers have a choice of distributing their applications via the Mac App Store or distributing them independently, as they currently do, or both. Unfortunately, the guidelines state that no applications can contain copy protection, license keys or update mechanisms.

This is unfortunate, simply because the developers will have to maintain two different versions of the applications, should they choose to distribute with Apple and independently. I imagine that as the App Store picks up, many developers will forgo their own store fronts, trial periods and public betas and simply use Apple.

Apple is going to take a 30% cut of application sales – the same as the iOS App Store. With the price of desktop software being significantly higher than mobile applications (typically), Apple could be taking a sizable chunk out the developer’s profits. I can’t imagine pro-sumer software applications – such as Adobe Creative Suite, whose price tag can reach a few thousand dollars – willingly allowing Apple to dig into their pockets. Will those applications remain outside the App Store?

Pursuing the Positive Side

Clearly, not everything about the impending Mac App Store is negative. In fact, the majority of it can be seen as positive. Sure, Apple is going to take a percentage of sales, but the simple exposure can potentially rocket the application sales well beyond numbers the developers are seeing now.

As it stands, I install new applications based on actively seeking out and reading software blogs. I get exposed to a lot of cool applications that the average will user will never even hear of because they aren’t exposed to them – and don’t care enough to seek them out.

When packaged up and presented nicely, with a one-click purchase, download and install process, the average user is much more likely to purchase an application. My mom has an iPad, my dad has the iPhone 4 – both of which have a few pages of applications, ranging from games, news and sports apps to grocery list apps.

They’ve been Mac users for a number of years, well before becoming iOS users, and the only applications on their desktop computer are the ones I’ve installed for them over holidays or required work applications. A Mac App Store will certainly have them exploring new software – which is a huge win for the developers.

Apple is going to allow purchased applications on the now-standard five authorized machines. This one area that has me excited. I’ve had some computer trouble over the past 10 months, leaving me with two dead machines and a new MacBook. When my first MacBook died back in February, I had the machine for over three years. There were tons of applications on there.

As I migrated to new machines, I am certain there are applications on that old MacBook that I have yet to move to my new machine simply because I can’t remember them (and it won’t power on, for me to check).

When I moved computers, I immediately began re-downloading my essential applications. The process was time-consuming and tedious. With the App Store, I’ll have a central place containing all (well, maybe not all) of my applications for easy re-installation.

That’s my hope at least. The reinstall process may not be quite this simple, but regardless it’s a central directory that holds the necessary information – without any extra work from me.

Our Unanswered Questions

There are still a lot of unanswered questions regarding the App Store. Will Apple allow competing web browsers in? Apple does want applications that mimic the feel of native Apple software, but as Mac users know, most software for the OS borrows heavily from Apple’s design standards – creating a unified look across all apps, native and third-party.

This is one thing that makes Mac applications so nice to use. Will applications be forced to remove their iTunes/Finder-esque sidebars? Will Adium make the cut, as it provides the same functionality of iChat? Will Apple no longer offer software for sale in their retail stores? Will open-source software be allowed in the App Store?

There are a thousand questions you can ask and a thousand different ways you can try to analyze the App Store – it could go on forever. I certainly haven’t touched upon everything, but I’ve rattled off a handful of the thoughts that have been floating around my mind since the store’s introduction. Soon enough, we’ll have our answers.

It’s Set to Flourish

The Mac App Store will almost certainly be one riddled with controversies as Apple irons out the wrinkles.

You’re bound to hear stories of applications being rejected for strange and/or seemingly insignificant or questionable reasons. You’re bound to see contradicting application rulings. You’ll no doubt see developers posting to Twitter “app is submitted to Apple, now we wait!”

This will all happen, as it has with the iOS App Store. Apple has relaxed their restrictions with the mobile App Store and there’s no doubt that the desktop App Store may need to be even more relaxed. But to the average user, none of this matters.

To the average user, they are going to know exactly where to go to find that piece of software they need. They will already know how to purchase it, and they won’t need to know how to install it.

Simplicity and familiarity are key. Not only to an enjoyable software purchasing/installation, but also to developers seeing their bottom lines shoot through the roof.

The Mac App Store will flourish.

I’d like to take a few moments to say thank you to our weekly sponsor, Billings Pro. Every time I ask Mac users about the software they use for managing clients, projects, and time tracking, one name always comes up. Billings.

The basic version of Billings is perfect for freelancers and small companies – but if you run a larger organisation, it’s definitely worth taking a look at Billings Pro. This advanced version offers powerful time tracking, synchronization between different computers, and the ability to review and approve invoices. It’s a powerful beast.

I know that I’m not alone in thinking that Billings is one of the best tools available to the Mac-using freelancer, and the Pro version takes the functionality on offer to a new level. Check out the full overview, and go download a trial to give Billings Pro a try!

Satellite radio has come a long way since its creation many years ago, and now the two main companies – Sirius and XM – have merged to become Sirius/XM Satellite Radio. There are many ways to get this content in your car or home, but getting it on a Mac can be problematic.

Fortunately, there’s Pulsar, an application by Rogue Amoeba that makes streaming satellite radio to your Mac easy. Once you’ve made the switch to Pulsar, you’ll never want to listen to satellite radio on your Mac any other way again.

The Setup

Before buying or installing Pulsar, make sure that your Sirius or XM package (yes, for some reason even though they’ve merged they have two separate plans) includes Internet radio by checking on their respective websites.

Without a streaming package, Pulsar can’t do its job and you’ll be wasting your time. Fortunately, Sirius and XM offer streaming packages for $2.99 a month, and Sirius even has a free trial for the service as well.

After installing Pulsar on your Mac, open up the program. The initial setup guides you through the process, and allows you to either sign in with your existing Sirius or XM account, or create a new one.

Once you’re logged in, the program opens and you can start selecting your favorite stations. That’s it – there’s nothing more complicated to do.

The Interface

If the basic layout of the program seems familiar, that’s because it takes many of its styling cues from iTunes. Click the plus button and a list of available channels displays on the screen, in either list or graphical view.

As an added bonus, each station displays what song they’re currently playing, making it easy to know if you want to switch to another channel based on what’s running at the time.

To select a channel, just double click on the name or icon and, after buffering for a few seconds, audio will begin to play.

Now it’s time to pick some favorites. Everybody has a few stations that they prefer over others, and Pulsar makes it easy to pull those out into their own directory.

From either the list or graphical view, click on the dark star located in the box or to the right of the currently playing song. When the star is illuminated, you’ve successfully chosen a favorite station.

To view all of your favorites in one place, click on the star symbol to the right of the main Pulsar display. Now you can choose which station out of your favorites to play, as well as see the song playing currently.

The Icing on the Cake

Although Pulsar was cool when it first came out, version 2.0 added some excellent features that really make the program a must buy for satellite radio subscribers.

First is the pause feature. Let’s say you’re a big fan of Howard Stern, but you don’t always have time to catch every second. While the music is playing, just hit the pause button located just to the left of the display.

In my experience, Pulsar keeps the music paused for two to three hours before the buffer fills up. That means you can pause for a lunch break, come back and catch up on your favorite program, or just rewind to replay that song you haven’t heard since the fourth grade.

Better yet, once you have a few minutes of buffer in store, you can fast forward through songs or talk as well.

The program still has more to offer. You can minimize the app from the desktop and control it through the Dock icon, which helps get rid of clutter.

Growl support can show you what song is playing when it starts, which is always handy if you want to know who’s on the radio for future reference. And if you want to add even more features, you can purchase Audio Hijack Pro from Rogue Amoeba to record the audio, or AirFoil to send it to other PCs, Macs, or iOS devices. If you buy one of these programs first, you can even get Pulsar for free.

The Final Word

The web interfaces on XM and Sirius’ sites aren’t worth the code they’re designed with, and make streaming your music difficult from your Mac – even at the best of times.

I’ve been using Pulsar for over a year now, and I’ve never once had a problem with playing what I wanted to play. In fact, it’s one of my favorite buys for the Mac, and I recommend it to every satellite fan I meet.

It’s affordably priced at $20, and it even can be free with an accompanying purchase. As far as satellite on the Mac goes, it’s the only way to fly!

Mail.app is fabulous, fast, and dependable for every-day email communication needs. But now that many of us use Gmail for personal and professional use instead of an IMAP or POP account, Mail isn’t necessarily the perfect solution any more. A lot of Gmail’s productivity-enhancing features aren’t available on the desktop.

This isn’t just the case with Mail, but a lot of email clients lag behind when embracing Gmail. How awesome would it be to have a native Gmail client that goes above and beyond the competition? Read on to find out how close the newest Mac Gmail client, Sparrow, comes to fulfilling your dreams of email nirvana.

Getting Started

Head over to the Sparrow homepage to get hold of the latest version of the app. Since it is in Beta, Sparrow is a free download.

After downloading the app and performing a smooth one click installation, you’re asked to enter the login credentials of your Google email accounts. While it is being widely promoted as a native email app for Gmail, Sparrow also supports Google Apps accounts.

After entering your username and password information under a name of your choice, select whether you want to make Sparrow your default mail app.

Sparrow – as of this moment – does not support any other email services, so exercise caution if you are planning to choose it to be the default mail app.

Design and Interface

Sparrow pulled my emails fairly fast from the server – in my case, it took just under a minute or so. At first glance, Mac users will notice that how closely Sparrow’s user interface resembles that of Tweetie for Mac.

Just like Tweetie, we have a two pane layout with a smaller left pane hosting an array of icons and the right pane displaying the emails. A row of icons and a search box sit at the top of the app.

The icons in the left column are for folder management, while those at the top are for individual email management.

Accessing Emails

Double clicking on an email opens a new window displaying the message in its original format. Threaded conversations are supported and can be viewed from the same window too.

It is pleasant to browse and follow up with email conversation from this window, thanks to a great layout and neatly placed Reply and Forward buttons. There’s also an “Info” button if you need to access the email header information.

You do not have to double click on an email every time to read it. Use the slide out preview icon at the bottom right corner to read and reply the email.

The compose window is a simple affair, offering all the usual features and auto-completion for the To, Cc and Bcc fields.

While reading an email, you can tag it as important by marking it with a Star just like in Gmail. All Starred emails can be accessed from a dedicated icon on the left pane.

Talking about the left pane, icons for viewing sent emails, trash, drafts and all emails (including the Starred items) are neatly stacked one above the other.

Multiple Inboxes

Multiple Gmail accounts can be added from the Preferences pane. The steps involved for associating a new account are the same, except that here you can also edit the signature that gets appended to every sent mail.

After adding the account, all the emails from the new inbox aren’t merged with the existing one. On the contrary, your profile picture is displayed as a thumbnail in the left pane and selecting a profile image displays the emails belonging to that account.

Team Sparrow should be credited for seamless switching of multiple Gmail accounts in just a single click.

There aren’t any important Preferences to be set, except for options to enable/disable Growl notifications, and set the new email notification sound.

Final Thoughts

Sparrow gives every other native mail app a run for its money with a minimalistic and gorgeous design. However, it falls short in two key areas. First, the absence of support for any other mail service – including the good old POP & IMAP protocols. The Sparrow team promise that IMAP support is on its way, so let us wait and see how fast it arrives.

Second is the conspicuous absence of support for Gmail filters. Also there is no way to access existing folders or the ability to at least move the emails from the inbox into other folders. Given the fact that Sparrow is a dedicated Gmail app, this is frustrating, and something I hope to see added soon.

Considering the fact that Sparrow is a free download, I would definitely recommend downloading it and taking it for a spin. But don’t pull the plug on Mail.app just yet!