Category: Mac

There are two kinds of Mac users: those who use apps like Alfred, LaunchBar or Quicksilver, and those who don’t. If you fall under the second category, I greatly encourage you to try one of those apps: you have not unleashed the full potential of OS X until you get your hands on these gems. And while we’re talking about trying one, why not go for the only one that’s completely free: Quicksilver? If you’re not sure, go read our review first.

Already convinced Quicksilver can help you in your everyday tasks? Perfect! We have crafted in-depth tutorials so as you can get the most of it, either for replacing the Finder or browsing your contacts and sending emails. The series keep on rolling today with some basic — and more interestingly, advanced — ways of controlling iTunes with Quicksilver.

The Basics

First things first, you need to install the iTunes plugin if not already done. Just check the box left to iTunes plugin in Preferences > Preferences > Plugins and you’re good to go.

There are three different catalog entries for iTunes:

• iTunes Playlists
• iTunes Controls
• and iTunes Equalizer Presets

I suggest you go to the Catalog of Quicksilver Preferences, open the info drawer by clicking on the round i button in the bottom right of the window and click on Contents to have a sneak peak at everything listed.

Keep in mind that the info drawer is useful when you want to know whats stored — thus, actionable — in the Catalog of Quicksilver. Here, the iTunes Controls list contains some self-explanatory actions.

The iTunes plugin comes with some preferences of its own (Preferences > Preferences > iTunes). I won’t describe them here because they are pretty self-explanatory. Moreover, the built-in documentation, which can be accessed for instance by clicking the round ? button in the bottom right of the window, is detailed yet concise enough to get you started.

Clicking the round ? button in the bottom right leads you to an in-depth documentation about controlling iTunes.

I won’t describe in details how to use obvious actions like:

• searching for tracks/albums/playlists, which is very similar to the way you browse your hard drive
• controlling the playback or adjusting the volume : Play, Pause, Stop, Next, Previous, as well as Increase Volume, Decrease Volume and Mute are not difficult to understand and use.

Instead, there are some advanced use cases I’d like to show you now.

Advanced Tips

Show Playing Track

If you don’t use something like Bowtie and want to know what the currently playing track is, use the Show Playing Track > Run action. It should be obvious if you’ve scrolled through all available iTunes Controls as seen in the Catalog. What you might not know, however, is that there are — at least — three ways of displaying the result. While the Quicksilver window is displayed, press Command-comma and have a look at Preferences > Preferences > Handlers > Notification. You can choose between Notification Center, Quicksilver (Built-in) or, for the geekiest of you, the good-old Console. If you select the built-in Quicksilver handler, the track info shows up in a nice popup centered on your screen.

The built-in way of showing the currently playing track might fit your tastes better than Notification Center.

Playing with iTunes Equalizer Presets

Each iTunes equalizer preset included in the Catalog can be directly applied right within Quicksilver. While playing a track, try typing just baboo then hit Enter to run the Bass Booster Equalizer preset > Set EQ Preset command, for instance.

All existing iTunes Equalizer Presets are included in the catalog of Quicksilver by default once youve installed the iTunes plugin. You can check this in the Content tab of the related info drawer.”

If you issue the Toggle iTunes Equalizer > Run command (togg then Enter is enough with my Quicksilver configuration), you won’t see any feedback confirming this worked. But believe me, it works. If you’re playing a track, just give iTunes a few seconds and you’ll start noticing the difference. Even if you’re not playing a track — and even if iTunes is not running — it still works: it will silently launch iTunes in the background and toggle the setting.

What the Toggle iTunes Equalizer > Run command does, from a GUI (Graphical User Interface) point of view, is checking/unchecking the box next to On in the Equalizer window of iTunes. See it for yourself: open iTunes, show the Equalizer window (menu Window > Equalizer or its Alt-Command–2 keyboard shortcut), then issue the Toggle iTunes Equalizer > Run command in Quicksilver.

Here Ive just toggled the EQ off. Issue the Toggle iTunes Equalizer > Run command again and it will be back on.

Keep in mind that this command does not change the selected preset itself, just its on/off state. So if the Flat EQ is selected and the Preamp parameter set to zero dB, you won’t hear any difference, of course. But combined with the ability to switch to a different EQ preset by directly typing its name in Quicksilver, you have a pretty fine-tuned control of equalization in iTunes.

The Comma Trick in iTunes

Remember what Merlin Mann calls the Comma trick? I showed you you can use it to select multiple Finder items. Well, the Comma trick lets you select multiple iTunes items (albums, artists, tracks, genres…) as well, so you can play them or add them to playlists.

Change Rating Gradually

In my humble opinion, creating HotKey Triggers for playing/pausing a track, going to the next/previous one or adjusting the volume is not really useful, since you already have dedicated media keys for this on all modern Mac keyboards.

However, if you frequently rate tracks while playing them, I’ve got a trick for you. Because the iTunes Controls Catalog entry gives you six different Set Rating to [x] star(s) actions (where x is a number between 0 and 5), you could of course assign six different HotKey Triggers for each of them. Or… you could benefit from an under-exposed feature: the Repeat every parameter. Here’s a step-by-step guide:

1. Invoke Quicksilver and type Increase Rating or whatever abbreviation matches it
2. Press Tab to go to the second pane, but instead of hitting Enter, hit Control-Enter: this combines the first two panes into one that reads Execute Increase Rating
3. You should still be in the second pane. Search for the Add Trigger action, then press Tab to reach the third pane.
4. Type h in this third pane. This should replace the default Group object by HotKey.
5. Now, hit Enter. The Triggers pane of the Preferences opens up, with your newly-created Execute Increase Rating HotKey Trigger already selected and the info drawer opened up.

Congrats! You’ve just added a new Quicksilver thing using Quicksilver itself. Let’s call that “Quicksilverception”.

Control-Enter is the way of combining the first two panes to chain actions.

Now to the second part:

1. Click in the Hot Key field in the drawer, under the Settings pane, and while the Set Keys text is blinking, press whatever system-wide keyboard shortcut you want to use to increase the rating of the track currently playing in iTunes. I use Control-Alt-Command-Up arrow.
2. Under Activate, check Repeat every and specify a number of seconds, say 1. Later on, you might experiment to find whatever repeat delay suits best for you. If you also check the Show Window option next to Display, you’ll see the iTunes icon displayed in a Quicksilver popup window each time you press the keyboard shortcut.

You can get fine-tune control of your HotKey Triggers within the Settings pane of the info drawer.

You can now press the Esc key to close the Preferences window of Quicksilver and start using this HotKey Trigger. I suggest you repeat the whole procedure with Decrease Rating as well, assigning for instance the Control-Alt-Command-Down arrow HotKey to it.

Now, if you hold Control-Alt-Command-Up arrow for 3 seconds, you’ve just increased the rating of the currently playing track by 3 steps, with just one key combo. The geekiest among you should now see stars in their eyes and think of Keyboard Maestro-like tricks.

What You Can’t Do… or Can You?

I think of two iTunes features Quicksilver can’t do directly for you, i.e with dedicated actions:

• toggle Repeat
• create new playlists

However, you can achieve this with the User Interface plugin that I’ll cover in a forthcoming article (or with AppleScript and/or Automator, probably, too). In fact, I’ve yet to find something that can’t be done with Quicksilver!

What Next?

If you’re following our series from the start, now you know how to use Quicksilver for manipulating files and folders, sending emails with attached files, and controlling iTunes. In the forthcoming weeks, you will learn how to control your web browsers, perform web searches, use Quicksilver as a clipboard manager, manipulate text and images, and do some geekier stuff.

In the meantime, should you need more info on some iTunes-related topics, feel free to ask anything in the comments section below.

For a brief moment on June 10th, it seemed like Apple was going to support notification syncing between your iPhone and your Mac. It seemed like they said if you got, say, a New York Times push notification on your phone, you could get it on your Mac as well. That feature turned out to be just Safari Push Notifications — an option to let websites push notifications to your Mac the same way mobile apps push notifications on your iPhone. A nice feature still, perhaps, but nothing that’d bring the iOS and OS X synergy we thought was coming.

And yes, Safari Push Notifications are a good idea and a nice new feature, to a degree. But at the same time, they can be one of the most infuriating, in-your-face new features on the Mac. Here’s why.

The Good

Notifications, in general, are a good thing. Mac users fussed over their Growl settings for years, and yearned first for push notifications and later for less intrusive push notifications on iOS. And now, we’ve got all the notifications we’d want, and more. There’s simple drop-down notifications on iOS, and similar notifications on the Mac — and Growl even joined the native Notifications game. For those who like to stay informed, you can’t escape staying informed these days, no matter what platform you’re using.

And yet, there’s a problem. Everything imaginable has a mobile app, but on the Mac and PC, websites still rule the roost for information-heavy resources. The New York Times and your favorite blog aren’t going to make a native Mac app, even if they have a mobile app complete with push notifications. There’s really no need to push beyond the browser for most stuff, when one web site can meet the needs of all computers and really most tablets at once. But there’s no push notifications.

So, Apple introduced push notifications for Safari. You visit a site that supports it, and you’ll see a popup that lets you opt-in to receiving push notifications. Then, when that site pushes a notification (say, of breaking news or a new message in your chat web app), you’ll get a familiar push notification that’ll lead to the content in question. Notifications will still come through even if Safari isn’t running, just as you’d expect from your mobile devices’ native apps. It just works.

If you’ve ever wanted a simple way to stay informed by some sites — the aforementioned chat apps are a great use case, say, or breaking news notifications for your favorite newspaper, or notifications when you win auctions from eBay — then it can be good.

The Bad

Perhaps you like getting notifications from a few sites, and you’re enjoying having Push Notifications around. That’s nice. But you’ll quickly get frustrated if you subscribe to a site that’s too chatty and sends you notifications all the time. Worse, still, is that sites with older traditional notifications (ones that’ll come through only when you have that site open in your browser) will show up right alongside sites with newer push notifications (that come regardless of whether or not the site is open or Safari is running), so you just might end up missing out on notifications when you’d assume they’d come in automatically once you’re used to push.

Then, you’ll have your pick of tweaking each site’s notifications individually from your main OS X Notifications settings, where you can tweak each site’s settings just like you would an app’s notifications, or from Safari’s settings, where you can simply allow or deny each site’s notifications. And, yes, every site you’ve ever visited that’s offered notifications will show up in the settings.

And, of course, if you’re not watching the top right corner of your Mac all day long, you’ll likely miss some notifications. That’s not so bad — except for the fact that Notification Center is usually a mess of old notifications, and nearly 80% of us don’t regularly check it according to our poll last week. That means those notifications that were supposed to keep you informed are just as likely to be forever alone.

The Ugly

The worst thing about notifications is that they’re noisy, and take your focus away from what you’re doing. That’s bad enough. But with Safari Notifications, they also will take you a second of thought every time you visit a new site that offers them. You’ll see a drop-down alert pane asking to allow or disallow notifications the first time you visit a site that offers Safari Notifications, and that’s incredibly annoying. Say, for instance, that I wanted to receive notifications from your site, but I just heard of it 3 days ago. I might want to enable notifications today, but I definitely didn’t want to enable them 3 days ago when I stumbled across your site thanks to a Google search. Asking right off the bat with a option pane that can’t be simply ignored is a step too far.

Perhaps a better way would be to show a dismissible bar at the top of the web page, similar to App Banners on iOS that link to a site’s native app. It’d be extra clutter, perhaps, but at least it wouldn’t take an extra second of your time to dismiss.

But then, somehow, I can’t escape the feeling that Safari Push Notifications are, in general, a bad idea for the web. Instead of building a new way to take advantage of existing web tech — such as the way Firefox supports “Live Bookmarks” from a site’s standard RSS feed — developers will have to build new server-side infrastructure to support Safari Push Notifications, and add code to their sites that only helps one subset of their users: Mac users who use OS X Mavericks and have Safari as their default browser. It doesn’t push the web itself forward, and doesn’t add something that can help everyone.

In many ways, it reminds me more of something Microsoft would try, as they have with IE 9′s Pinned Sites and IE 11′s live tiles for sites on Windows 8. Both of those, along with Safari Push Notifications, can be nice, but at the end of the day they’re one extra thing web developers will have to add specifically for a small subset of their users. And typically, it’s features like that which get killed off the first, both by the platform providers and 3rd party websites themselves. It’s hard enough to support the open responsive web, and throwing in extra platform-specific features on your site is a tough sale.

The World’s a Noisy Place

Safari’s a great browser, one that’s faster than ever in v.7 with OS X Mavericks, and its Webkit core has done more to push the standards-compliant web forward than almost any other project in recent years. That’s a very, very good thing. And yet, the new Push Notifications are, in my opinion, a bad direction for the browser. It used to have great RSS support, but that’s been lost along the way, now to be replaced in part by a proprietary notifications system that only works in Safari for Mac. That doesn’t mesh well with the original Webkit that’s empowered others to build standards-compliant and fast browsers for every platform on earth — one that pushes the open web forward, and doesn’t tie it down to one platform.

Of course, that’s perhaps making a mountain out of a molehill. At the end of the day, if you like getting notified when major things happen on your favorite sites, a number of them are already supporting push notifications and you can add them and stay informed with little effort. That’s good. I just hope Apple finds a way to make them less intrusive, or gives us an option to turn them off globally.

Simple file sharing services are great for sharing all types of files — from code snippets to short notes to ready-to-publish PDFs — but most of the time, they’re only used for sharing images. That’s a shame, though. Most of us often need to share text that’s longer than a tweet but that’d make no sense to put into a blog post, and simple file sharing apps are great for that.

Except, they still make it rather difficult to share text. You have to write it in an app, save it to a file, the drag it to your sharing tool of choice. Plus, there’s no way to edit your text once it’s shared, without deleting the original share, editing your original text on your Mac, then re-uploading and re-sharing the text.

Sharing text should be far simpler, which is why Levi Nunnink from the Droplr team just built the brand-new MarkDrop app. It makes sharing text via Droplr — and editing text you’ve already shared — as simple as saving a document in iCloud. It’s brilliant.

Simple Writing. Simpler Sharing.

MarkDrop looks like your standard split-screen Markdown writing app at first glance — there’s your plain text with Markdown formatting on the left, and a formatted preview of your work on the right. What’s different is the beautifully simple UI, and a Droplr slider on the top. For MarkDrop isn’t just a writing app — it’s one designed specifically for sharing your words on Droplr. Tap CMD+S, and by default MarkDrop will instantly upload your document to Droplr, with a simple bar loading animation on the top of the window. You can then copy the link to your clipboard from the square icon, or share it with any of the default OS X sharing services right from the app. It’s the simplest way to get text online.

The default editor view is rather nice, but there’s also a dark theme for writing and a half-dozen preview themes, including two inspired by GitHub’s Markdown rendering. Then, there’s options to export your formatted document as PDF, print your document in Markdown or with your selected preview theme, copy your Markdown text as HTML, or save the document locally on your Mac if you want. And, of course, there’s integration with OS X’ text features you’d expect like spellcheck, a full-screen mode and option to turn off the live preview, and a word/character counter at the bottom of the window that can be turned off.

It’s everything you’d expect from a Markdown writing app, but with the addition of simple Droplr saving. That’s what makes it truly unique. You can edit the document name from the top of the window — where you’d usually set your file name and add tags in other Mac apps — and can save changes even after you’ve initially uploaded the document.

Droplr — Your Public iCloud

Markdown writing and live preview and simple sharing are all nice, but what are you to do once you’ve already pushed your document to Droplr and want to make changes? Turns out, MarkDrop can edit existing documents on Droplr just as easily. Tap CMD+O, and you’ll see a beautifully simple iCloud-style dialog that shows all of your Droplr text files ready for editing. Select any of them, and you can edit them live on your Mac then upload the changes to Droplr with a simple CMD+S.

It’s just as easy as editing a local document — and almost as quick — but your documents are saved on Droplr and can be quickly shared. And it works so great, I have to wonder if Droplr eventually could be a direct iCloud competitor for file sync, in addition to its great public-facing sharing.

Conclusion

Now, serious Droplr users will know Droplr for Mac includes a basic notes tool for uploading plain text or Markdown formatted text to Droplr for quick sharing. I’m easily excited by new writing apps, so MarkDrop looked appealing to me at first glance, but I still couldn’t see at first how it’d be that much better than just using Droplr with your favorite writing app. That is, until I taped CMD+O and saw the open options for editing Droplr files directly in MarkDrop, and saw how easy it made quick publishing and editing. That sold me on MarkDrop.

MarkDrop is a seriously neat writing app that’s even neater for sharing text. And that’s something brand-new to the market. For your longer tweets — or blog posts without a blog, or blog drafts for semi-private editing by your friends — it’s the perfect writing companion.

One more thing…

We just closed our giveaway — congrats to our winners bishless, loeffler, Willem, tremil, and Fraser!

MarkDrop’s on a launch-day sale for just $3.99, and if you think you’ll use it a lot, be sure to pick up a copy. But we’ve got something else: 5 copies of MarkDrop to giveaway to our readers today only. Just leave a comment below to let us know your thoughts about MarkDrop to enter the giveaway, and share it on your favorite social networks and share the link in a second comment for an extra entry in the giveaway.

Hurry and get your entry in — we’re closing the giveaway tomorrow!

Envato staff or those who have written more than two articles or tutorials for AppStorm are ineligible to enter.

There’s hidden beauty in your pictures, even those that look too dark to see any details. You just need a tool that makes it incredibly simple to bring out the best in your photos, and that’s exactly what Macphun’s new Intensify is for. It’s the app that’ll help you discover the beauty in details.

Intensify is designed to help you bring out every detail in your photos with precise control that lets you tweak your photos exactly like you want. You can use the dozens of settings to intensify any part of your photos, while Intensify is smart enough to keep out artifacting and noise in your edited images. You’ll be able to reveal hidden details, make your colors richer and more vibrant, tweak the sharpness of micro details in your images without adding extra noise, and so much more. All of your edits are done in layers as well, so your original photo is still intact. It’s everything you need to make your photos beautiful, enough that pro photographers are already adopting it in their workflows.

There’s two versions of Intensify, so everyone can use it to get the most out of their photos. There’s the cheaper Intensify from the App Store that’s a standalone app with all the power you need to tweak your photos, and then Intensify Pro from the Macphun Store that integrates directly in your professional photography workflow. With Intensify Pro, you can run Intensify inside Photoshop, Lightroom, Aperture, and Photoshop Elements directly as a plugin, open layered PSD files in Intensify for editing, and speed up your workflow with advanced shortcuts and extra tools to make tweaking your photos even easier.

“…it’s one of the best photo editing apps for professionals.”
Nathan Snelgrove in our AppStorm review of Intensify Pro

Intensify Pro impressed us when we tried it out for our review, where we found it far more powerful and useful than its price tag would indicate. It’s the tool that award-winning photographers like Urs Buhlman and Lucas Gilman choose for their work, and we’re certain you’ll love it as well. It’s the one tool you need to make every detail pop in your photos.

Get Your Copy of Intensify!

You can get your own copy of Intensify from the Mac App Store for just $29.99. Or, if you want the most power and want to use Intensify inside Photoshop, Lightroom, and more, get Intensify Pro from the Macphun Store for $59.99 — a steal for all the tools it includes. And, if you purchase Intensify from the App Store and then decide later you’d like to upgrade to Intensify Pro, you can purchase an upgrade from the Macphun store for just $24.99.

In the search for the best new email app, one comment we frequently get is that many people still love using Gmail’s web app, and find it far more intuitive than any of the competing full-featured email apps for the Mac. And for good reason: Gmail has great keyboard shortcuts, is fast and responsive, and all of your emails don’t have to take up any local storage space on your Mac. What’s not to love?

Well, Gmail.com will only get you so far. It lives in a browser tab, acts like a web app, and doesn’t use all of your Mac native keyboard shortcuts like CMD+N for a new message. Managing multiple accounts is annoying at best, and using your native Mac Contacts.app email addresses will require copy/paste. It’s not perfect. That’s what Mailplane seeks to solve. It’s a native Mac app that turns the Gmail you love into something much more like a standalone app, complete with offline support, Mac keyboard shortcuts and Contacts integration, simple multiple account support, and more. The latest version even makes it simple to keep up with your Google Calendar in the same semi-native interface that gives you the best of the Mac and the web at once.

Mailplane 3 usually costs $24.95, but we’ve got 3 copies of Mailplane to giveaway to our AppStorm readers this week as an early holiday gift. To enter the giveaway, just leave a comment below and let us know why you’d love a copy of Mailplane — then share the giveaway and leave a second comment with a link to your post for an extra entry.

Hurry and get your entries in — our giveaway closes on Friday, December 13th.

Envato staff or those who have written more than two articles or tutorials for AppStorm are ineligible to enter.

Apple’s brought a number of iOS features back to the Mac, and some of them are really great. I happen to love the new iBooks for Mac (even though, oddly enough, I preferred the old version of iBooks for iOS), and both Reminders and Notes are a nice little addition even if they’re not the apps I use for their respective functions. But some of the new features just aren’t as useful on the Mac — Game Center, for instance, is likely an app you never open on the Mac.

But there’s another OS X addition that’s both useful and not at the same time: Notifications and their home, Notification Center. I like the native notifications for OS X and rely on them throughout the day, and the new interactive notifications are a rather nice addition even if they’re not something I use that much. But Notification Center is simply something I have to clear out every so often since I’m a neat freak. I never go there to check for things I missed, and the few times I accidentally open it I notice dozens of long-past notifications that just need cleared out. Usually, I’ll see a Mac notification and it gives me the info I need, so there’s no reason I’d need to click on it for it to do its job. And yet, that unclicked notification will end up in Notification Center waiting for me to clean it up.

So I wonder: do the rest of you use Notification Center? Do you check it regularly, or would you be just fine with only plain notifications and no Notification Center to keep track of missed ones? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!

From an incredibly successful Kickstarter campaign early last year to its initial release as a web app with a dark, bubbly plastic design last year to a streamlined, lighter and brighter iOS app earlier this year, Mail Pilot has had quite the journey so far in its short life. And now, that journey has finally brought it to the Mac in a native app that brings another hint of what an iOS 7 redesigned OS X could look like.

At every step, the core idea was still at play: your inbox is filled with things you need to do, so why not treat it like a to-do list? You could then check off emails you’ve completed (say, just read the message and noted the info, or replied if that’s needed), schedule emails to clear off later, and keep a list of messages you’ll need to come back to. It’s designed to simplify your email, and is now ready for you to try on your Mac.

Checking Off Your Emails

Mail Pilot looks much like you’d expect an email app to look these days, with a standard list of messages on the left and your email in full view on the right. It’s got a clean, iOS 7 style UI, but that’s also almost to be expected in brand-new apps. What’s unique about Mail Pilot is the way it treats emails. Instead of prominent delete or archive buttons in the UI, there’s a simple check mark on the left of each message to cross it off. Emails don’t show as read or unread, but as uncompleted (completed ones are sent to the archive). You can complete your inbox directly, set aside emails to come back to later (while still leaving your inbox clean) or schedule emails for a specific date so you’ll remember to reply to them then. There’s still keyboard shortcuts to archive emails to folders or delete them, but the main purpose of Mail Pilot is to make you quit treating emails as files in folders and start treating them as tasks to complete.

Pair it with the iOS app, and you’ve got quite a great way to manage email if you’re willing to think of your inbox as a task list as you can see in the video below. It’s not perfectly seamless when playing with other apps — emails aren’t marked as read in Gmail’s web app, for instance, and the Today or Set Aside messages show up under special tags/folders in other email apps — but put the two together, and you’ve got something that can change the way you think about email. It’s still in beta, of course, so proceed with caution, but the Mail Pilot team says that it’s stable enough for general use right now.

Share Your Thoughts

Email’s a rather competitive space right now, with Airmail an incredibly popular email app that can be customized to work the way you want, the new Unibox trying to make email more about the people you talk to, and MailMate raising funds to make a better email app for those with the most extensive email needs.

Which approach seems to work best for you, and what do you really want from a new email app today? We’d love to hear your thoughts about it in the comments below, and would be especially interested in how Mail Pilot works for you if you try it out.

We’re apt to think that just another app will solve all of our problems. Apple’s “There’s an App for That” campaign sounds all too perfect: we’ve got problems in life, and there’s an app out there that can solve it.

That’s quite the tantalizing solution, but there’s one problem: it won’t work.

Apps are Only Tools

The first thing most of us think about before starting out a new project is “What apps do I need to do this?” If you’re asked to design a glossy flyer, you’ll go figure out how to use InDesign. Surely TextEdit wouldn’t be enough to write the text for it, so you go install Word or Pages. But hey, they’re so cluttered, you’d better go get a focused writing app. And then, you’re going to need a notebook app to keep track of all your thoughts, maybe a mind-mapping app to make all your ideas make sense, and of course TextExpander to speed up your typing. Don’t forget to have Dropbox installed to backup your files, and……

Time’s gone by, and you’ve been busy — and likely blown your app budget for the month — but you haven’t really gotten anything done. You’re just collecting tools.

And tools are great. I can’t imagine writing without iA Writer or Ulysses, or coding without Sublime Text, or finding files without Alfred, or clearing out my inbox without the help of TextExpander. These are all tools that help me get work done, and they’re great. But honestly, you could still get stuff done without a perfectly curated set of tools. It might be a bit less efficient, but it’ll still work.

The important thing is the work, not the tools. You’d be far better off to do the things you need to do with the tools you’re already used to using — so, perhaps, design that flyer in Pages if it doesn’t have to be that professional, or code your next site in the text editor you already use without worrying if other editors are better. Perhaps you’d type faster with TextExpander, but worry about that another day. For now, do the work.

Finding the Best Tools

But then, it’d be silly to not work at your most efficient when there’s app out there that could speed you up. That’s why we’re constantly reviewing and comparing apps, and trying to help you find the best tools to use. There’s a wealth of amazing Mac apps out there that seriously can improve your work and life, and obviously it’d make the most sense for you to use the best app for the purpose.

So let’s assume you have an app that currently works for you. Say, you’re still using Sparrow for email, or gasp Outlook. The cool kids have all moved on, and you’re wondering what the other apps will hold for you. Honestly, they might be great. But in reality, it’ll cost you productivity to move to another app right now. So don’t. If it still works for you, and you’re too busy to test out an app, stick with what works for the second. Then, when you’ve got time to try out a new tool, give it a shot. See if it fits. If so, hurray — you’ve got a nice new tool that works better than the old one. But if it doesn’t work better for you, don’t worry. Perhaps the old tool just fit your needs better. You’re not wrong to still use it.

One thing’s for sure: for almost every common job you’ll do on a computer, there’s no app that’ll magically let you do what you otherwise couldn’t do. If you don’t know the first thing about architecture, a shiny copy of AutoCAD won’t be of any use to you. Blender’s a free download, and yet I still can’t make animations in it without knowing how to make animations. Sublime Text won’t make your website work better without you knowing how to code better. A focused writing app won’t actually help you get words written down.

All apps can do is perhaps speed you up at what you can already do, or make the job a bit nicer and a bit more fun. And that’s great. But they cannot magically help you do something that you otherwise can’t do.

And hey: I’m as guilty of this as anyone. I love apps as I might be able to tell from my writing, and love finding new tools that are fun to use. But no number of apps is going to help me publish a book like I want to. It’s sad, but its true.

It was common knowledge until earlier this year that Apple was going to kill the Mac Pro — and then, they stunned us all with the reinvented new Mac Pro at WWDC ’13. We were equally prepared to accept that Apple wasn’t really focusing on its iWork apps, since they hadn’t received a major upgrade since ’09, and were delighted to catch a one-sentence promise of a new iWork during the same keynote. Combine that with OS X Mavericks’ new power user features, like tabs in Finder and better multiple display support, and it’d be easy to say that Apple finally was focusing on power users again.

And then, we got the new iWork apps, and they each had features cut out. Mavericks, even, crippled Mail.app’s Gmail integration. And so the pendulum swung back again: see, Apple doesn’t care about power users at all.

Leave it to Cupertino to push the pendulum back yet again by announcing that they’re bringing features back to iWork over the next few months, and they’ve already fixed Gmail integration in Mail.app. And yet, that shouldn’t be surprising all: it’s how Apple works.

Begin Again

The Apple II was great. So let’s throw it out. (Macintosh image via Wikipedia)

Apple’s never been afraid to reinvent themselves — at least, under Steve Jobs’ reign. The Apple II kept the company going for years but was obviously not the future of computing, and the Lisa was overpriced and again couldn’t redefine computing for normal people, so Jobs spearheaded the Macintosh. Then Jobs came back to a company making far too many Macs, so he cut them down to just 4 different models — a tradition Apple hasn’t veered far from even to today. Those Macs were still too much like beige-box PCs, so Apple redesigned them in candy colors before switching to aluminum. They used PowerPC CPUs as long as they made sense, and perhaps just a bit longer, but eventually moved to Intel even when that meant leaving behind legacy PowerPC Mac users.

In the mean time, they aggressively cut features that were no longer considered relevant, and added the features that future proofed their machines. The floppy was first to go back in the late ‘90s, when it was unimaginable to not have a floppy drive, but the writing was on the wall and Apple was just the most aggressive to cut. The CD/DVD drive has faced a similar fate in Apple’s latest machines. But at the same time, Apple was adding wireless tech before other companies were, along with advanced sensors and touchpads and more that made Macs have more features others couldn’t match while they lacked features that seemed essential at the time for the competition’s machines.

Cut, cut, cut. Reinvent when necessary in the most forward-focused way you can. Then build up from there in ways that give you the advantage over the competition. That’s the mantra.

And it’s not just with hardware. Apple’s done the same with software. AppleWorks was killed, but then reinvented to a degree by iWork. No, it didn’t bring back everything, but it had the stuff Apple thought was most important for the day. And then, most infamously, Apple reinvented Final Cut Pro in Final Cut Pro X much to the chagrin of existing users — but the new magnetic timeline was considered a major innovation, and Apple’s since brought back many of the missing features everyone complained were missing at first.

Here again, Apple decided to strip down to the minimum, rebuild with the future-focused features, then add back what’s missing if needed. They’d rather disrupt themselves than sit aside and have someone else disrupt their businesses.

Thinking Beyond the Box

iCloud makes zero sense, until it makes perfect sense.

But perhaps the best example is iCloud. Apple’s struggled with online tools for years, starting with iTools, then .Mac and most infamously MobileMe, before finally releasing iCloud. In the mean time, Jobs courted Dropbox, presumably to build its file-sync tech directly into Apple’s machines. They wouldn’t sale, so Apple pressed forward and reinvented their online services offering as iCloud.

And yet, iCloud was no Dropbox — it’s enough different that most of us continue to use the two side-by-side. But that doesn’t mean iCloud is bad. Instead, it’s aimed at something else: the future. It’s about simplifying the traditionally complex file management that confuses all but the most advanced computer users, and makes it to where your data simply shows up in the apps you’d expect when you’d expect it. Sure, it’s not perfect, and Apple needs to continue to improve it and build on that foundation if it truly wants to win the future in data storage. But it’s a truly different idea in file sync that’s prompted Dropbox and others to add similar app sync features of their own.

Another oft-complained about Apple tech with a similar approach from Apple is the App Store. It’s made it possible for anyone to sale Mac and iOS apps to anyone across the world incredibly easily, and yet developers continue to find its restrictions and review issues and more a source of frustration. They’ve begged Apple to add traditional upgrade pricing, free trials, and more.

Apple, in the mean time, has set its sights on what it thinks the future looks like. Not traditional upgrades, but lower priced full-versions of apps, perhaps accompanied with in-app purchases to unlock extra features. It may or may not be the best approach, but it is different from the past, and it is what Apple’s set its mind on. And now, it’s building on that framework to add volume purchase features for businesses — something that’s great for businesses and developers alike, but decidedly not what everyone has said is the most important thing for Apple to tackle.

Somehow, though, I happen to think it’ll make more sense looking back, when traditional upgrade pricing seems like a long-forgotten oddity of the software market.

The Next Big Thing might kill the Last Big Thing

So then, there’s this year’s confusing moves from Apple. They stunned us all with the brand-new Mac Pro — a machine that’s beautiful, totally unique, and decidedly future-focused on what Apple sees as its core pro users. That means the death of the last real “desktop tower” Mac, along with its huge chassis and internal expandability, dropped in lieu of a whisper-quiet machine that’s expandable by USB3 and Thunderbolt. Apple’s betting the future of pro computing on it — while at the same time, making MacBook Pros and iMacs that are more than powerful enough for almost every other possible need.

And then, there’s iWork. The original suite that seemed focused on page layout, presentation, and simplicity was fully redesigned. It’s simpler than ever for new users to understand, and free with every new Apple machine, which makes it an obvious up-sale for most people. And yet, it lost power-user features that many of us loved — ones, in many cases, that made iWork better for us than Microsoft Office. Apple has, of course, announced that they’ll bring back many of the features we’re all missing, but the wound is still there. Why on earth would Apple cut out features we all loved?

John Gruber wrote two years ago that, in response to a crisis, Apple will “measure twice, cut once”. I’d argue that Apple does that with everything they do. iWork was great, but they saw a feature-compatible iWork suite on iOS, Web, and Mac as greater. So they cut to the bone, built a new suite, and can now build up from there. The old Mac Pro design was dated at best, so they threw it out, reinvented what pro computing could look like today, and made the only desktop computer anyone will remember from 2013. Both moves affected pro users the most — they showed us that Apple isn’t just an iOS device company, and that they do still care about doing real work with Macs, but they also hit us with Apple’s relentless drive for what they see as the future.

Apple cares about power users, but they care more about making sure they aren’t left behind. They’ll disrupt themselves before competitors have time to catch up to Apple’s previous disruption. “Sometimes to take a major step forward, you have to completely change direction.”, the new Mac Pro marketing site reads. Usually, those changes look obvious in hindsight, but for now, they can sting.

I happen to bet Apple’s planning to slowly surprise us with both iWork and the new Mac Pro going forward. And whenever they deeply reinvent MacBooks, say, or the iPhone, it’ll feel odd at first. But it’ll make sense later.

There’s screenshot tools, and then there’s screenshot tools. There’s the apps that let anyone quickly grab something off their screen, mark it up to show what they mean, and share it simply. Then there’s the apps that help you capture anything, organize it, sort the shots into detailed libraries, and much more. I’m currently writing a comparison between the best pro screenshot library tools for the Mac, but truth be told, that’s not what most people need. Indeed, even for those of us who do need more advanced screenshot and image tools, it’s still the quick and simple tools that are often the most valuable even if they’re the cheapest.

So, whether you’re on a Mac or PC, or a Chromebook even, here’s the very best tools for simple and quick image annotations — the apps to circle something and add some text, and save without a hassle, whether you’re annotating a screenshot or any other image. These are the best image annotation apps for getting the job done quickly.

The Built In Option: Preview

It’s really, really hard to argue with a built-in free tool that comes with your Mac, especially when it’s as good as Preview. Preview’s claim to fame is being the app that keeps us from having to install Adobe Reader, but it’s so much more than a PDF viewer. Just take a screenshot with the built-in Mac keyboard shortcuts (CMD+Shift+3 for a full-screen shot, CMD+Shift+4 to shoot a selection), then open it in Preview and select the pencil-in-a-box icon on the top right of the toolbar. That’ll unveil every annotation tool you could need, including (surprisingly) mask options that’d let you easily delete something based on its color. But there’s the more practical stuff in there too, like text annotations, arrows, and while there’s no blur tool, you can delete anything. Plus, there’s nice resizing built-in to get your shots in the size you want.

Preview continues to be the way I do simple annotations, and it really is one of the best built-in tools on a Mac. You can get something similar done on a PC with Paint, but really, if you need to do annotations there, keep reading for info on Skitch. But on the Mac, Preview makes it almost unnecessary to even try the alternate apps. It’s that good.

Further Reading: Preview: The Best App for Simple Image Edits and Annotations, Period.

The Cross-Platform Option: Skitch

Skitch was app that defined simple image annotations. Everyone loved it. And then, Evernote bought it out, released the brand new v.2, and everyone hated it. What had been the simplest image annotations app was turned into something far more basic that was confusingly tied into Evernote. It just didn’t make sense.

But never fear: the Skitch of today is not the original Skitch, and not the 2nd Skitch, but something far better. It’s regained its annotation features, trimmed down the Evernote integration, and made simple annotations and file sharing as simple as it was supposed to be all along. You can open an image in Skitch or take a new shot directly from the app, add the annotations you need and quickly blur out sensitive info, and then drag the file from the bottom of the app to wherever you want — an email app to send it as an attachment, Droplr to share it online, or just to Finder for safe-keeping.

Skitch is free, simple to use, and works on Macs and PCs. What more could you ask for?

Then, best of all, Evernote has brought Skitch-style annotation to the web with its latest Evernote Web Clipper for Safari and Chrome. It’s still mainly designed for snipping sites and articles to your Evernote library, but you can also annotate screenshots of web sites and apps with built-in Skitch tools and share it directly from the tool. It’s Skitch’s simple annotations on the web, and they work better there than you’d ever expect.

Further Reading: Evernote Brings Skitch to the Web

The Browser Option: Awesome Screenshot

If you’re doing a lot of online screenshots, though, you might want something a bit more full-featured and designed to the web. That’s what Awesome Screenshot is for. It’s a browser extension for Chrome, Safari, and Firefox that regularly shows up on our roundups of favorite browsers extensions, and before Evernote added the Skitch features to their Web Clipper, it was the only great way to take screenshots online without a native app. And still, it’s got its advantages. You can take a shot of a full-length website, add simple annotations including blurs, text, shapes and more, then share the annotated screenshot directly or save the image to your computer. It even works with offline sites — a great way to add quick annotations to a local copy of the site you’re working on with your colleagues to let them know what you’re thinking.

The Pro Option: Napkin

Everything we’ve talked about so far is free — well, if you don’t include the fact that you have to buy a Mac to get Preview. And then, you’ve got Napkin. At $39.99, it’s far from a free app, and yet its annotation tools are so great that if you have to spend any significant amount of time tweaking screenshots to explain stuff to people, you’ll be tempted to spring for a copy. There’s all the normal annotation tools you’d expect, though with a finesse that you’d expect from a more advanced graphics app complete with arrange tools and more. Then, there’s the rather awesome canvas that lets you add as much stuff as you want to one graphic to tell your own story with annotated images, and the call-out tool that makes it easy to highlight what you’re talking about in a more elegant way than just drawing a circle around it. If you’re left feeling like you want more than just Preview and Skitch, but don’t want to fire up Photoshop to tweak screenshots, Napkin is the app for you.

Further Reading: Napkin: The Simplest Way to Sketch Your Thoughts On Your Mac

Your Call

There’s dozens of other simple screenshot and image annotation apps, but those are the best ones in my opinion — and there’s one for almost every need you could think of just from this small selection. But if you have a favorite simple annotation tool — not a full featured image editing too, or a screenshot library app — that’s not on this list, then we’d love to hear about it in the comments below.

Now that your images are annotated, you’ll need to share them — so be sure to check out our comparison of Droplr and CloudApp, as well as the new Jumpshare. And, of course, there’s tons of other quick file sharing tools as well.

Happy annotating and sharing!

Ever wanted to show off your iOS apps on the big screen, or stream Airplay content to your projector without an Apple TV? Or want to record a screencast of your iOS apps in action? Then you need an AirPlay server like the new X-Mirage.

X-Mirage turns your Mac into an AirPlay server that can mirror multiple iOS devices to your Mac at once. You can show off an iPad and iPhone app side by side, stream iTunes movies or Radio to your Mac over AirPlay, and more without having to install anything on your iOS devices. Just run X-Mirage, and you’ll see your Mac in your AirPlay settings on your iOS devices automatically. Seconds later, you’ll see your iOS apps in full quality on your Mac, and can record them in action in one click.

X-Mirage has everything you’ll need to put everything from your iOS devices on the big screen, record them in action, and more. Best of all, its one-click record and play/pause buttons make it equally great for recording your apps and just using X-Mirage to play media from iOS on your Mac. It’s simple, and works great.

We loved it in our recent review, and are sure you’ll love it as well.

Get X-Mirage 38% off This Week!

X-Mirage usually costs $16, but this week we’ve got an exclusive discount for our readers. You can get your own copy of X-Mirage for just $9.92 with the coupon code xm38deal. But hurry: the deal only is valid this week!

What better way to celebrate the internet’s own shopping holiday than by giving away a ton of apps? We’re already running a one-day-only giveaway of 50 copies of Airmail — be sure to enter that giveaway if you need a new email app. But how about another giveaway with a whole bundle of great apps?

Yup, that’s exactly what we’ve got. The StackSocial team is running a Black Friday Mac Bundle, with $419 worth of apps including tons of apps we recommend and use ourselves for just $49. There’s MotionComposer for making animated sites, PopClip to bring iOS-style text editing popovers and more to the Mac, Gemini to find duplicates on your Mac, iStats Menus to keeps tabs on your Mac, Numi to simplify calculations, and more!

We’ve got two copies of the Black Friday Mac Bundle to giveaway — and once again, the giveaway is today only. Just leave a comment below and let us know which app you want most. Then, share the giveaway on your social networks and leave another comment with a link to your post for an extra entry in the giveaway.

Hurry and get your entry in — the giveaway closes midnight EST today!

Envato staff or those who have written more than two articles or tutorials for AppStorm are ineligible to enter.

The internet already had quite an amazing Black Friday, with incredible deals on Macs, apps, and more. But today’s Cyber Monday, and we’ve got something even better for you: 50 free copies new email app Airmail.

Airmail’s shot up the paid apps list on the App Store, and for good reason. It’s the most configurable email app on the Mac today, with themes that’ll fit every style, and the OS X Mavericks features you’d expect today like interactive notifications.

And, thanks to the generosity of their team, we’ve got 50 copies to giveaway today. As normal, leave a comment below to enter, then share the post on your favorite social networks and leave a second comment to get an extra entry. But hurry: we’re closing the giveaway at midnight EST Monday, December 2!

Envato staff or those who have written more than two articles or tutorials for AppStorm are ineligible to enter.

We’d like to say a special Thank you! to our weekly sponsors from November for sponsoring our site and for the great apps they make. If you would like to feature your app on our site with an advertisement, be sure to check out our available slots on BuySellAds or register for a weekly sponsorship for your app.

If you haven’t already checked out our the great apps that sponsored our site last month, be sure to check them out now!

And a special thanks to you, our Mac.AppStorm.net readers, for reading and sharing our articles. We couldn’t do it without you!

Turkey Day 2013 is over, and now it’s time for the biggest savings of the year: Black Friday and its close cousin Cyber Monday. And, as usual, there’s more than enough incredible deals to go around. There’s Apple Store gift cards if you buy a new Mac, steep discounts on App Store apps, and much more. Best of all, the majority of them are open to anyone, anywhere — even if you’re not in the US, there’s plenty of Black Friday offers for everyone!

Here’s the very best deals for apps and gadgets we love and recommend — but hurry, most of the deals are only for today or this weekend!

Hardware Deals

The very best deal today is Apple’s Black Friday sale — which is available today only — which is offering a $150 Apple Store gift card with the purchase of any new MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, or iMac directly from the Apple Store. That makes a new 11″ Air essentially only cost $849, an especially good deal if you’ve been needing a new laptop with insanely great battery life. There’s also a similar offer for the iPad, with a $75 Apple Store card with any new iPad Air. Do note, though: that’s an Apple Store gift card, not an App Store gift card — you can pick up an iPod, Apple TV, or perhaps a new case with that extra money, but you won’t be able to stock up on apps with it.

And, of course, you may find better deals in local stores — the older iPad Mini and iPad 2 are both seeing quite good deals in many brick-and-mortar stores. Those deals aren’t in every country’s Apple Store, but you’re likely to find a variation of that sale in your local Apple store in most countries.

Then, for some other great hardware deals:

• Doxie, the scanner company, is offering $50 off their Doxie One (which makes it just $109) and a free case with a new Doxie Flip. That’d make a great gift for yourself or anyone else going paperless next year.
  
• Google Chromecast is just $29.99 on Amazon, and it comes with $6 of free Google Play credit. The Chromecast isn’t perfect, as we found in our review, but it’s a pretty nice — and very cheap — way to make any TV a little smarter.
• The amazing folks at The Wirecutter have rounded up the deals on their favorite hardware products this year, and you’ll find deals there on everything from a Samsung TV to a number of headphones and camera lenses
• The Paddle team is giving away an iPad Mini Retina Display plus $500 of Paddle store credit — it’s not exactly a deal, but sure is worth entering!
• I know, I know: it’s Mac.AppStorm here. But if Windows 8.1 has your interest too, or you just want a super-cheap tablet for web browsing and Office, Microsoft has the original Surface on sale for just $199. That’s rather crazily cheap.

App Deals

Software is our forté at AppStorm, and there’s even better deals to be found in the world of apps than you could ever hope for in the world of hardware. Honestly, there’s so many deals, if you’ve been eying an app on the App Store you might as well go check and see if it’s on sale today — it really might be. There’s too much to cover every discounted app, so here’s the best apps on sale of the stuff we really recommend. Seriously: every app listed here is apps our team uses and loves, and we’re certain you’ll love them too. (Note: app names are all in bold and link directly to their purchase page, while the links in the descriptions go to our reviews of the respective apps)

• Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom CC are just $9.99/month forever if you signup before December 2nd, 2013. If you’ve held out on Creative Cloud but actually use Photoshop, now’s the time to subscribe. That’s really a good deal, and 50% less than Photoshop CC’s individual app subscription on its own usually costs.
• ReadKit, our favorite new RSS and reading later app, is a steal at just $1.99 — 70% off its normal price.
• TextExpander 4, the best app to speed up your typing, is just $15 — 50% off its normal price
• VMware Fusion 6, my favorite way to run Windows on the Mac, is 35% off for just $38.99 or $32.49 for an upgrade.
• Reflector, the Airplay app for Mac, is 25% off this week with our exclusive coupon code macappstorm25
• TaskPaper, the great plain-text todo list app, is just $9.99 — 60% off its normal price
• DaisyDisk, the incredible app for finding what’s taking up space on your Mac, is just $4.99.
• Unclutter, the app to keep your desktop free of random files and notes is just $0.99
• LilyView, the easiest way to browse your photos, is just $0.99.
• Kaleidoscope, the best app to compare versions of files, is just $34.99 — 50% off its normal price.
• Paprika, a great recipe app for the Mac and iOS, is just $9.99
• Boom, the app that boosts your Mac’s volume to make movie watching without external speakers actually nice, is just $4.99.
• Voila, the professional screenshot tool, is just $9.99 — 66% off its normal price.
• Phlo, the simplest way to search across a ton of sites, is just $1.99
• Money by Jumsoft, the great app for managing your finances, is just $19.99, 50% off its normal price
• iTeleport, a great VNC app for the Mac, is $19.99, 30% off its normal price
• Billings Pro, the invoicing app, and Daylight, the project management app, are both 20% off with the coupon code BLACKFRIDAY
• DEVONthink, the most popular bucket app for the Mac,  and the other DEVON apps are all 25% off
• Prizmo 2, the incredible scanning and OCR app, is just $24.99 — 50% off its normal price
• Macphun has an incredible Black Friday deal running, with 20% off each of their Pro apps (Snapheal Pro, Intensify Pro, and their Creative Kit) plus a free 8GB SD card with each purchase. Their App Store apps — Snapheal, Intensify, FX Photo Studio Pro, and ColorStrokes — are all 40% off as well.

Hat tip to our own Pedro Lobo for rounding up a number of these deals — be sure to check his site for more iOS app deals

And then, there’s the bundles and extended sales for Mac apps and more:

• The Parallels Bundle is easily the best deal this week: for $69, you can get Parallels Desktop 9, Snagit, CleanMyMac, Boom, mSecure, and more.
  
• If you’re a gamer, you can’t miss Steam’s Autumn Sale, which is offering a ton of daily deals on games through December 3rd.
• Paddle has three bundles: the Mac Freebie Bundle includes Numi, Deal Alert, MacBlu-ray Player and more for the low price of free, the Paddle Holiday Bundle with Dropzone, Throng, iResizer, Moneybag and more for $39.99, and the Productive Macs Bundle with Dayspring, X-Mirage, The Archive Browser, and more for any price you want!
• Ondesoft is giving away its screen capture app this weekend, and offering 50% off its X-Mirage app
• If you’re building a new WordPress site, WooThemes is offering 35% off all their themes with the coupon code blackfriday2013
• Keynotetopia, the set of Keynote and PowerPoint templates for prototyping apps and more, is 50% off.
  
• DigitalOcean, the new VPS provider that we’ve recommend for building a new Ghost blog, is offering $50 in credit to new users with the promo code BLACK50
• The complete A Book Apart Library, some of the very best short books on web development, copywriting, freelance, and more, are 35% off through December 2nd.

There’s more!

That’s far from all of the Black Friday goodness you’ll find out there. There’s tons more discounted apps and hardware — this is just the best stuff that we really recommend and think you’ll definitely want to buy. So why wait? Head to the App Store, pick up some discounted apps — or go get a new Mac from the Apple Store — and then leave a comment below letting us know if there’s more amazing Black Friday deals we should know about!