Category: Mac

Two years ago, we had the chance to talk with the CatPig Studios team about Radium. They led us behind the scenes at the inspiration behind their popular menubar radio app for the Mac, and why they develop for the Mac in particular.

The world's changed a lot in the meantime, with seemingly countless music streaming services competing to be the only way you listen to music. And yet, the Radium team has pushed on, releasing a brand-new version of Radium this year that's nicer than ever.

We got the chance to interview Kirill Zorin from CatPig Studios again this week, so here's the latest info about their work, and how they're competing in 2013's online music landscape.

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It's been nearly 2 years since we interviewed you here on Mac.AppStorm. What's changed at CatPig Studios during that time?

Lots of stuff!

We bumped into Gordon Irving completely by accident, and before we knew it he took over the entire interaction and visual design of Radium. It turned out a million times better than anybody (except Gordon, presumably) expected. Most people who call themselves designers are just good at drawing gradients in Photoshop and taking orders. (It's like they're all related, or something.) It's much better when you can work with a person who takes over a task and takes it to a place you never expected, instead of just waiting for instructions and babysitting. Anybody who's ever worked with Gordon in the past and didn't let him make major/all design decisions missed the point entirely.

Alina Y. joined us around the same time and took over curating and maintaining our entire stations library. Thanks to her, we have more stations than ever, more worldwide coverage, more song information, and we've basically elevated our stations quality to a new level. She's sharp as a tack and always working on improving Radium's content. Users should expect some very clever things in this area further down the road.

Since you've first released Radium, the market for online music has changed. Do you think traditional internet radio still has a future in the world of Spotify, Rdio, and more?

Services like Spotify are great if you want to spend your time liking/unliking/adding/removing/sharing things — that is, essentially doing the actual curation work yourself. Doing everything except actually listening to music. (Hint: If you have to click "I don't like this" in response to a recommendation, then it's not much of a recommendation.)

The two dominant approaches to content recommendation — analysis and tagging by experts (Pandora) and crowdsourcing sentiment (Spotify, etc.) — are a drop in an enormous bathtub compared to what the human brain has to go through in order to recommend a book, a movie, or anything else, really. The same mechanism that's responsible for being able to hold a meaningful conversation with a human is what's responsible for recommending stuff, and it really shows. Consider the best program that allows a computer to have a conversation with a person… the results are the same as comparing the last conversation you had with your friend with the last conversation you had with your dog.

And let's also not forget the fact that current algorithms are "okay" at taking one song/genre/whatever and recommending similar things, which creates this sort of sad party where all your content has the same overall feel. Sometimes I like just one song of a particular genre, and that's it. And I don't know why. Sometimes I feel like listening to stuff because the weather outside makes me feel a bit melancholy, or because I've had a lot of sugar and I want to listen to some trash. Anybody who suggests that his algorithm will "give you something to match your tastes" should at least throw in some snake oil, because you should look forward to doing most of the work yourself. Humans are complicated and there's no chance that any machine we have today can be made to appreciate this and deliver results accordingly.

This is why professional, human-curated music services like Digitally Imported, SiriusXM, and so on, will have better content on average than "automated" services for the distant future, because the former employ hundreds of people who use their entire life experience to recommend and curate content (and they're also continuously learning and refining their skills), and there's no chance that in our lifetime any algorithm will even come close to that. The amount of processing the human brain does in order to make a recommendation is just not available to current computers, at least certainly not to any computer you or I could afford. And that's just the beginning, considering no actual insight has been made so far by the scientific community as to what drives the human brain's decision-making process.

The biggest crime committed by human society so far was to convince the average person that his time is worth less than his money, and this is precisely what allows "crowd-sourced" services to thrive. But in reality, the only people benefitting in the long term are those who own the services.

The bottom line is that in any radio-like music service made for humans, humans will have to curate content for best results — and if the humans who run the service aren't doing it, then the humans who use the service will have to.

Ideally, a music player should play great content from the start, and the greatest amount of interaction that should be demanded of users is to press "Play". That's why we made Radium.

2 years ago, the Mac App Store was brand new, and today, Radium is exclusively for sell on it. How has the Mac App Store worked out for you, and would you want to go back to a world without the App Store?

The Mac App Store allowed us to simplify our distribution channel and spend more time on making our app great, and less time on managing registration servers, licenses, refunds, and so forth. Ultimately it doesn't matter what developers think about the Mac App Store. It's clear that the vast majority of users find it to be a convenient, integrated one-stop-shop for all their apps, available right there in their OS menu. Do we want to go back to a world where users had to use Google to find apps? No, thank you. The most important component of this equation is the users, and whatever makes their lives easier is good for us.

From a developer's standpoint, there are certainly many things that could be improved about the Mac App Store. In the meantime, we take the Mac App Store's deficiencies as an opportunity to improve the way we interact with our customers and otherwise find creative solutions to the problems we face. We believe it's a much more productive attitude than to do nothing and whine about it on various forums.

We saw a number of complaints in the comments on our Radium 3 review about its price and lack of upgrade options. What are your thoughts on offering upgrade pricing, and do you wish Apple would implement upgrade pricing on the App Store?

It would certainly have been nice for the Mac App store to implement tiered pricing, but it is what it is. The reality is that most people understand that our hands are tied when it comes to Mac App Store policies, but people who are really upset are the ones that have the most incentive to comment. This gives the false impression that most people are super-duper upset about the tiered pricing thing. Of course, these people always have the option to email us about it, and we do try to reply to all comments made on various posts to make people's lives a little easier. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Even before I was an app developer, I'd never really get upset about the lack of upgrade pricing for various software I bought. It was always pretty obvious to me that good software takes a long time to develop, and if my paying full price (again!!!) meant that some developer could put a plate of soup in front of his child for another night, then so be it. Many people seem to forget that the best way to build our society is to cooperate with each other, instead of focussing on short-term selfishness like saving a few bucks on "principle".

I originally got Radium 2 through a Mac app bundle, as I'm sure many did. How do you feel about app bundles, as opposed to traditional discounts?

When they're done properly, app bundles can be a lot of fun and benefit everyone involved. But most bundles are run by amateurs who want to make a quick buck, but otherwise have no ideas, no skills, no resources, and no taste. So we generally avoid those. It usually takes five seconds of looking at a bundle proposal and website to tell if it's a joke or not. One time we had a gentleman who offered to run Radium in his bundle, and one of the "testimonials" on the bundle's website was written by him. Next!

What was the most difficult part of Radium 3 to develop?

The hardest part was the user interface and interaction design. We knew it would be suicide to make the app feel complicated, and it was very difficult to distill it to its essential components and remove any noise. Initially we had opted for a slightly more complex UI, but thankfully we had the good sense to slam on the breaks a couple of months before its original release date and rethink things. Anybody can write a computer program that basically works (as seen on the Mac App Store), but it's much harder to create an app that's intuitive and minimal and doesn't waste the user's time with problems that the designers were too lazy/incompetent to solve.

Writing the code to animate things, search for stations, and play audio is really pretty easy for anyone who takes programming seriously; we're not working on the Large Hadron Collider here. The key to developing a great app is to integrate a set of simple things into something that's greater than the sum of its individual parts, and to use the computer to deliver a new experience that wouldn't be possible without it.

Many app developers are content with taking a real-life metaphor and just copy-pasting it into their design, without using the computer's special abilities to deliver something truly new that wouldn't be possible otherwise. For example, it would be trivial to make a shopping list app that's virtually identical to keeping your shopping list on a piece of paper — give the user a list of items with checkboxes, maybe provide a way to organize them in groups or whatever. It's much harder to deliver a shopping list app that elevates your shopping experience to a new level that wouldn't be possible anymore with paper and pen.

Too many developers forget that our job is to use the computer to automate in a clever way things that the user would otherwise have to do manually. And at the same time, every day new apps come out that contribute nothing — the same manual experience, except it's happening on a computer screen. Booooo.

OS X 10.9 should be coming out this year. As a developer and Mac user, what features would you like to see most in the upgrade?

I rather like iOS' integrated audio stack, and I'd like to see that feature in OS X as well. Everybody's tired of writing Apple Script hacks to make their audio app respond to events that happen in other audio apps, and this is really something that should be handled with a nice integrated audio API. When you get a phone call on FaceTime, the OS should automatically pause/mute any audio you have playing, whether it's Radium, iTunes, YouTube, QuickTime, or anything else. When the phone call is over, the OS should just resume whatever was interrupted.

It's ridiculous that each developer has to try and implement this functionality separately, while on iOS it just happens automatically. Of course, there should be an option to turn off this behavior in System Preferences (for "power users"), but I believe it's something that should be on by default for the rest of us.

What Macs and apps do you use in your daily work?

I've basically given up on desktop machines and transitioned completely to a powerful laptop + nice monitor combo. So right now I'm running on a Retina Macbook Pro plugged into a nice big Thunderbolt Display, and I couldn't be happier with it, unless it simultaneously gave me a… massage.

As far as apps go, the must-have set that I'm running all the time is Emacs, Xcode, Kickoff, and (of course) Radium =)

It'd only seem natural that you'd use Radium daily for your own music, so what online radio stations to you listen to throughout the day in Radium?

I hate Radium. Just kidding. I love it. My musical tastes change over time, so right now I listen to a salad made up of Venice Classic Radio, DR P8 Jazz, Jet City Lounge, Nirvana Meditation, and the occasional splash of Paris Cafe when I'm feeling especially hipster.

I used to listen to news, but I find news cyclical and boring. Somebody outraged about something, somebody put horsemeat in somebody's burger… yawn. (I also don't understand what's wrong with horsemeat; sounds delicious!)

Does CatPig Studios plan to stay focused on only one app – Radium – or do you have plans for more apps in the future?

We've got the iPhone version to finish up, and after that we'll be concentrating on a yet-unnamed super secret project that's not related to audio at all! So the answer is yes and no.

CatPig's goal is to provide value first, and corporate growth second. We feel completely fine with shipping one or two really good apps, instead of having ten half-baked ones just for the sake of expanding our product line.

And That's a Wrap!

We'd like to extend a special Thank You to Kirill for taking the time to do another interview with us. I personally love Radium 3, and still use it regularly to listen to internet radio while I'm working. Be sure to check out our Radium 3 review, if you haven't already, and you can try out the latest version with a free trial from their site if you'd like.

Back in the summer of 2012, Slender: The Eight Pages was released on the PC and Mac, and in a short amount of time, this free, short and experimental horror game became an instant hit. With big franchises like Resident Evil and Dead Space going heavy on action rather than horror, Slender revitalized the horror genre by taking things back to basics; the simple task of walking through a creepy forest trying to find clues while being chased by an ominous figure was, and still very much is, a frightening experience.

Fast forwarding to more recent weeks, Slender’s new iteration, Slender: The Arrival, comes packed with everything that made the original so spooky while adding in a handful of new things. Unfortunately, these new things add deadweight to an otherwise impeccable experimental gaming experience.

Slender man at its best.

The Arrival keeps the same experimental formula of the first game and delivers a true horror experience to its players by having one of the most menacing enemies: Slender Man.

The way the game presents this character is so elegantly done that it is impossible not to be scared of him when you spot him. His persistence and randomness evolves as you collect pages, which only makes the game more frightening as it develops. You can’t fight him, either. You can’t stare at him or be too close to him, your only fighting chance is to run from him. This makes him much more terrifying than most game monsters out there.

The outstanding sound design that is in this game compliments Slender Man perfectly, too. Your footsteps in the forest or inside the house are spot on and only add to the immersive nature of the game – something a horror game must accomplish. Your footsteps aren’t the only thing that make you cringe, however. The static tearing of the camera your character is holding is unnerving as is the ambient soundtrack and the creepy noises you’ll hear throughout the course of the game. A good example of this is when you turn on a generator inside the mine level; you can hear the whole mine react to that generator as it powers on different sections of the mine – it immediately makes you think: “Oh, crap. What kind of evil have I unleashed?”

The anticipation that builds up by just walking through here is great.

The places you’ll visit accompany Slender Man and the amazing sound design as well. From the dark forest to the new locations like an abandoned house and a creepy mine, The Arrival’s upgraded graphics look great (whenever it isn’t pitch black, anyway) specially compared to the first game. They don’t only look good, but they feel right, too. They make the player relate to the environments around them.

So far so good, right? Sadly for a paid-for title, having these things done impressively well is not enough. Aside from the new graphics and a few fixes over the first game, The Arrival doesn’t do much to make this game feel better than its free predecessor.

Throughout the game, you will find yourself collecting objects while an enemy stalks you; this was perfectly fine for the first game, but doing this over and over on different locations makes the game feel more like DLC than a sequel.

It really doesn’t matter if you are finding eight pages or eight generators, it all feels like you are doing the same thing, and repetitiveness in a game this short is just bad.

Generator number one.

Which inevitably brings us to the game’s length. This isn’t to say that a short game is bad, but if a short game is repetitive and at times hard to beat, we have a problem.

The Arrival introduces a new enemy type known as The Proxy once you reach the abandoned mine. The Proxy is a little kid with a knife that will run at you with no remorse. It’s creepy beyond belief, but at the same time, The Proxy can be extremely annoying. On our first and second playthough, this little kid appeared out of nowhere and attacked without giving us room to react, and this wasn’t four generators in either.

The Verdict

Screen static is an excellent fear-inducing mechanic.

Slender: The Arrival is a simple take on the horror genre that delivers scares like no other game has in a while. Playing it at least once should be considered, specially if you are a horror fan. Do this while in a dark setting, with your headphones on, and you’ll be set for some really good scares.

With that said, the game has not evolved enough to be considered a complete new game – it is more like an update or DLC. The Arrival still holds too tightly to its predecessor rudimentary mechanics, and because of it, it makes the game suffer as a whole. That plus the extremely hard and at times unfair difficulty of the game may turn off some players. It’s a shame really because otherwise this is a great horror game.

If you’re like me and are completely in love with your Doxie scanner, then you’ll no doubt be scanning almost anything you can get your hands on, whether it needs scanning or not! It’s a great first step towards de-cluttering your desk and making everything as easy to find as possible. And even if you don’t have a Doxie, there’s a ton of other great scanners out there that can quickly turn all of your paper into digital documents.

But once you’ve scanned all your paperwork, what do you actually do with it? That’s where iDocument comes in. Could it be the app your paperless workflow needs?

iPhoto for Documents

iDocument works in a very similar way to iPhoto so you should feel right at home

iDocument could be best described as “iPhoto for documents”, and it’s an almost perfect description. It works with almost any common document format you can think of (and some you probably can’t) and rather than keep your documents organised in folders on your Mac, iDocument uses a library in the same way iPhoto has its own library file. Whenever you add a document to iDocument, it imports it to the library. This keeps everything in a central location and eliminates constant Spotlight searching or hunting through folders trying to find the PDF you’re looking for.

iDocument imports files into its library folder

Documents are presented in a familiar thumbnail view with access to folders (think albums in iPhoto) available in the left column, as well as tags and collections (which work like smart albums).

The library method isn’t for everyone, though. It has the same disadvantages to it as iPhoto where you’d need to move all your documents out if you decided you no longer wanted to use it. If you’re looking for something like Dropbox or Google Drive to view documents on your iOS device as well as your Mac, then that isn’t possible with iDocument. Originally, an iPhone app was available but it has since been removed and is currently “in maintenance” with no information about when it will be available again.

Similarly, accessing documents on multiple Macs would require iDocument to be installed on both. You can use the Sharing functionality that allows you to send documents to other Macs running iDocument (again, very similar to iPhoto’s sharing functionality). It isn’t as refined and rather than access an entire library, you simply send files back and forth. Since you can’t necessarily use Dropbox to sync files between Macs running iDocument then the sharing functionality is a workaround.

Sharing involves sending files back and forth between other Macs running iDocument should you need to

Search

iDocument has a particular ace up its sleeve, and that’s search. If you store documents in a folder then you’re likely reliant upon Spotlight to search them. iDocument’s search functionality is not only faster but it’s instant. Using its own search facility means, unlike Spotlight, it doesn’t get bogged down with searching for other type of files and folders.

Search works much, much better than Spotlight

You can also tag your documents easily which means, depending on the document and tag used, it can appear in two places at once. It’s a common first world problem when we’ve got a letter from the bank – does it go in the “letters” folder or “finance”? With tags, it can be both!

Smarty Pants

If you’ve ever used Smart Playlists in iTunes then you’ll know that you can automatically search for music using certain criteria such as artist name and how many times it’s been played. iDocument offers the same functionality in two areas: Collections and Smart Rules.

Collections are the equivalent of smart playlists. You can set up a custom search based upon certain criteria. iDocument comes with a few example ones such as “iWork” and “Microsoft Office” where these rules search for documents of that type.

You can quickly filter documents based upon any criteria you set

Smart Rules goes one step further and can perform an action once the criteria has been met. The example can be used to set the document’s label to green but you could use it for almost anything you want. If you want to flag any documents that contain the word “overdue” in them, a Smart Rule will do that.

Smart rules take collections one step further

Security

You can optionally encrypt documents within iDocument. PDFs support native encryption but Office and iWork documents don’t. However, any document within iDocument can be encrypted with a “master password”. It’s a shame the password cannot be set per document but it’s still an additional level of security that you’d otherwise not have.

iDocument can encrypt any type of document it can handle using a master password

Encrypted PDFs show as a white background whereas files encrypted by iDocument have the colours reversed.

Incoming!!!

Incoming is one of my favourite features and works in a similar way to tools such as Hazel

My favourite feature of iDocument is Incoming. You can designate folders that iDocument watches and whenever it sees a compatible document that it can handle, it’ll have the option to import it. The whole process can be automated so all you need to do is tell iDocument to automatically import the file and delete the original and it will do exactly that. It’s a great feature to use with a specific folder that you can scan to as it actually helps automate the process of scanning a document and editing the information within iDocument.

Whilst it’s not quite as useful as, say, being able to directly import from a scanner, it does at least reduce the steps necessary to get those scans into iDocument.

Final Thoughts

If you’re looking for an easy way to manage your documents, especially scanned items, then you really can’t go wrong with iDocument. It’s quick, easy to use (especially if you use iPhoto) and has some great features that would be of benefit to anyone. You’ll have to sacrifice accessing documents on the move, however, and inter-Mac work isn’t so smooth with iDocument.

It’s nice for quick visual organization, but it’s not going to be what you want if you prefer to manage your documents in traditional folders.

It’s happened to all of us: you download a new app, and are all excited over its features … only to find that it really doesn’t work for you. So it lingers in Launchpad, and in all likelihood is never opened again. That is, until you one day open it by chance, and try it again. Perhaps it got an update, perhaps you were just bored, or perhaps you kept hearing people praise it and figured you missed something the first time around.

And boom, you’ve got a new favorite app. That app that didn’t work for you the first time suddenly fits like a glove. It’s perfect for you, and you wonder why you didn’t see the light sooner.

That happened to me with Alfred. I downloaded it, couldn’t get what the fuss was all about, and went back to Spotlight. Then, I tried it again a couple months later, and thought it was nice enough, so I got the powerpack. Soon, I couldn’t imagine working with Alfred, and I’m even more addicted to the awesomeness that is Alfred 2 and its workflows.

It also happened to me with PopClip, as I’ve written about before. With it, the update that added actions flew under my radar at first, but once I tried it out, I was hooked.

So, what apps grew on you over time? We’d love to hear your stories below!

About a year and a half ago Apple revealed iCloud — its cross device syncing solution. With iCloud we were supposed to be able to easily sync and edit documents on all of our devices. While iCloud has lived up to this promise in many regards, iCloud document syncing is different from other syncing solutions in that it does away with the traditional file / folder paradigm and stores documents “in the app.” While this approach works well most of the time, other times, it is nice to manage documents and folders outside of iCloud’s in app interface.

That is where Cloud Mate comes in. It’s well known that you can manage iCloud documents from the Mobile Documents folder hidden away in the Library folder, and there are also free options like Plain Cloud that clean up the messy file names you find in the Mobile Documents folder. So what does Cloud Mate add that theses other solutions don’t have? Read on to find out and see if Cloud Mate can solve your iCloud document management needs.

Cloud Mate Does iCloud Document Management Cleaner and Better

I don’t know about you, but the Mobile Documents folder drives me crazy. Because iCloud stores documents by app, there are separate folders for each app that you have enabled iCloud on, but the app names are accompanied by a bunch of iCloud mumbo jumbo that makes the folder hard to navigate.

The app folder names in the Mobile Documents folder can get confusing.

You can do a lot of document management using the Mobile Documents folder. For example, if you have a Keynote or Power Point file you want to move into iCloud, you can move or copy that file from its current place in your file system into the Keynote folder in Mobile Documents without having to open Keynote. Similarly, you can open text files in TextEdit you have stored in iCloud via iAWriter’s folders in the Mobile Documents folder.

Cloud Mate allows you to do all this and more in a much cleaner interface, where you won’t be pulling your hair out trying to figure out what everything is. Managing iCloud documents not only looks better in Cloud Mate, it is also much easier. Individual app folders are easier to find and performing basic functions are simply easier and faster due to the improved interface. Here’s a video to see how it works.

Remember that Cloud Mate is only helpful for iCloud documents, not databases. For example, the Notes app uses a database, so individual notes are not visible in Cloud Mate.

Okay, I’m Convinced It’s Prettier, but Does It Add Any Functionality?

Yes. Cloud Mate does add a couple of pretty cool features that go beyond making iCloud document management less cringe inducing. First, with Cloud Mate you can see into Photo Stream without opening iPhoto. So that photo you took on your iPad is a little easier to get to and share on your Mac—especially if you have a big iPhoto library that takes a while to load.

Cloud Mate allows users to access Photo Stream outside of iPhoto.

Another cool feature that Cloud Mate provides are the Move to iCloud and Copy to iCloud services. With these services, right clicking on any file, then going to the Services drop down menu and selecting Copy to iCloud or Move to iCloud will launch an interface in Cloud Mate to confirm which app you want to move the file to.

Cloud Mate’s file services.

This is the interface for choosing where to copy or move a file after selecting the Cloud Mate services.

Remember to enable the Cloud Mate services in the Keyboard preferences pane in the Keyboard Shortcuts window. Enable the services by checking the appropriate boxes under Services.

What if you need advanced Finder features for an iCloud file? Say you need to open a file in another app, Cloud Mate can help out here too. Just go to File and then Add iCloud to Finder and Cloud Mate will “mount” iCloud into Finder and give you all of options for files that are found in Finder, while maintaining Cloud Mate’s clean interface.

Cloud Mate can also “mount” iCloud in Finder.

Finally, Cloud Mate integrates with Mountain Lion’s Notification center to notify you of when changes are made to iCloud files or databases. In truth, I found this to be more of an annoyance than a feature because I regularly use apps that sync with iCloud and the constant updates were a little too much for me.

Conclusion

Cloud Mate’s price tag is justified if you often find yourself rummaging through the Mobile Documents folder and getting frustrated at the experience. For me, the best part of using Cloud Mate is the clean interface for managing files in iCloud. I also found the additional functionality useful. In my case, the Open in iCloud and Move to iCloud services came in handy as a quick way to get presentations into Keynote for presenting on the iPad.

What about you? How do you feel about how iCloud manages documents and sync? Could you find an app like Cloud Mate useful? Let us know in the comments.

It used to seem nearly impossible to fill up your hard drive, and a new computer used to always give you more storage space than your old one. That’s increasingly not the case, with SSDs coming standard on MacBooks. If you’re struggling to get the most out of your 64 or 128Gb of storage space, then CleanMyMac 2, our sponsor this week, might be the app you need.

CleanMyMac 2 is the latest version of the well known app for cleaning your Mac, and it brings a number of new features and a brand-new UI to the table. It’ll help you find old, large files on your Mac — perhaps an old Office installer you had in your Documents folder, or old video chunks you should move to an external drive — and also let you delete anything that old apps left behind when you uninstalled them. It’ll also surface apps you haven’t used in a long time, clean up your iPhoto library, and more, to help you get the most out of your storage space.

After all, there’s no reason to have to skimp on what you keep on your Mac when there’s old files there that could just be deleted or moved out. Check out their feature video for more info:

We found the latest version to be an impressive upgrade in our review of CleanMyMac 2. If you’ve got a lot of old files sitting around on your Mac, you’ll be sure to be just as impressed.

Go Get it!

Ready to get your Mac clean and free up space on your SSD? Then you should download the free trial of CleanMyMac 2 and give it a shot. You can then get the full version for $39.95 to keep your Mac fresh and clean.

Then, the best thing about CleanMyMac 2 is that it’s a free update to CleanMyMac 1, so if you already have an older version of CleanMyMac, you can get the latest features for free. If you haven’t updated yet, the updated version just might be the nicest app you didn’t even know you had.

The Humble Bundle is a great way to pick up a few indie games for not a lot of cash while directly supporting developer’s and charity, too. It also serves to bring indie games to a wider audience, introducing players to titles they otherwise would have never discovered.

That’s how I came to be in possession of Thirty Flights of Loving, the first-person interactive story video game from Blendo Games. Initially released as a Kickstarter incentive, Thirty Flights of Loving has since been made available for download on its own and has received heaps of praise as an impressive evolution in video game storytelling.

Climb the Stairs

Your entrance into the world of Thirty Flights of Loving is pretty nondescript. You learn how to move around–good old WASD–and how to use your mouse to look around. There’s some stuff to see when you’re starting out but not much to do. You’re in a boring hallway, in a boring bar under a prohibition order, and everyone’s looking at you. Then you straighten a painting on the wall, and times starts seriously to pass.

The way they look at you, you know there’s something you have to do.

Everything is presented from a first-person point of view, and the game works like a point-and-click adventure. Pick up objects and interact with them, though you’ll soon find many objects are red herrings, able to be picked up and put into the player’s “inventory” but are not usable beyond that. There’s a lot to see and do, but you have very little choice in what actually happens. You’ll soon discover the eventual outcome is inevitable.

Thirty Flights is a sequel to Gravity Bone and something of a continuation of that story, but there’s no need to have played the other one first. You see the world through the eyes of Abel, an alcohol smuggler, but you’ll never see Abel. Abel’s two partners are Borges, the forger returning from Gravity Bone, and Anita, a demolitions expert. Without giving too much away, and it’s hard not to give too much away in a game this short, our protagonists are up to no good. I mean, they’re working out of a secret room hidden behind a false wall panel, so they’re not exactly girl scouts.

Meet Borges. He has a lot of jobs.

The story of Thirty Flights is non-linear, told in chunks out of order. It’s up to you to put the pieces together. Even when two story snippets are told in order, there’s often time missing between the two, like when Abel is running through the airport with Borges and then suddenly finds himself at the exit. The time jumps increase the suspense not only because it forces the player to put together the pieces of the story, but also because it keeps the player on the back foot, never knowing where the game will jump next.

An Interactive Story

Depending on how you define “video game,” Thirty Flights may not fit that definition. The player makes very few choices and cannot affect the outcome of this game. There are no right or wrong moves; there’s no game over. Everything you do pushes the story forward, because you can only perform the actions Thirty Flights allows. Thirty Flights is inevitably pushing you forward to a conclusion, and nothing you do will change that.

All events are inevitable. You’re just along for the ride.

Probably a better description for Thirty Flights is “visual novel.” A story is being told to you, and while you certainly aid in progressing events, it’s not your story and you can’t affect anything that’s happening. That’s okay, though. There’s a really good story being told here. It’s exciting and mysterious, and it’s easy to become engrossed in the interactions of the characters as you learn about what happens to them in drips and drabs.

Video Games as Art

You can’t ignore graphics when talking about Thirty Flights. Everything’s sort of blocky, especially the people. They all have giant cubes for heads, but whereas non-story characters all look pretty much the same, Anita and Borges have detailed faces with nuanced expressions that change with the circumstances. You immediately know that you belong with them, because they look at you with recognition and even warmth. It’s sort of amazing to experience a game that can evoke so much emotion with such ungainly graphics.

It’s hard to tell dream from reality.

That’s not to say Thirty Flights doesn’t look good, though. The character design of the NPCs and the way you move through the environment give the game a surreal feeling. The first two characters you meet are identical, staring back at you with blank faces and signalling that you’ve entered a dream state. The time shifts don’t detract from Thirty Flights’ trance-like state, either, giving the player the sense of waking and returning to a dream over and over. In a key flashback, all of the characters except you and Anita drift upwards as they sway around each other, blurring the lines between reality and hallucination.

Final Thoughts

For a short game, over in about fifteen minutes, Thirty Flights of Loving sure does pack a punch. You’re immediately drawn into the story and want to uncover the what happens to Abel, Anita, and Borges. Every move you make brings you closer to discovering what’s in store for our smugglers and what they mean to each other. It’s entirely engrossing, right up until the very end.

Included with the game is the prequel Gravity Bone and a version of Thirty Flights with developer’s commentary, so while short, you’ve got some bonus content to make the game worth a replay almost as soon as you’re done. Even without the commentary, you’re likely going to want to give Thirty Flights at least one more run through, just to gaze in wonder at all the stuff you missed the first time and to try to piece together the puzzle of the story. Thirty Flights of Loving really is that compelling, a sensational achievement for a such a brief experience.

And hey, it’s still in this week’s Humble Bundle for just over 30 hours after this is published, so if you hurry, you can still get it for less than $5 with 3 other games.

Alfred’s an amazing tool for increasing your productivity, but you can only make the most of it if you’re trying out all the awesome user-created workflows available for download. Sure, Alfred’s pretty sweet all on its own–Pedro Lobo thought it was pretty wonderful in the AppStorm review of Alfred 2 last month–but you need to put in a little elbow grease to get the best experience. Or, you can let other people put in all the effort and enjoy the fruits of their labor!

Since Alfred 2 was released, a ton of workflows have been uploaded and shared on the Alfred forums, GitHub, and elsewhere. I’ve gathered together sixteen great workflows to help you get more done with Alfred.

The Workflows

I’m only a recent convert to Alfred myself, so I’m looking to help those who haven’t quite figured out what the big deal is. Hopefully these workflows will demonstrate that there’s a lot more you can do with Alfred than just launch applications, though that’s pretty nice, too! Remember, if you want to download and install these workflows, you’ll need an Alfred Powerpack license on top of the free app.

Grooveshark

Spotify doesn’t have all of the music that exists, so this workflow will help you search the Grooveshark website for everything else. Unfortunately, it doesn’t integrate with the desktop app and no word yet on whether that’s going to be a feature. Still, if there’s a song you just can’t get out of your head, the Grooveshark workflow can help you find it.

Rdio

If you prefer Rdio for streaming music, there’s a workflow for you, too. This one will play/pause, check the player status, and get info on the current track. It can’t add tracks to the play queue, unfortunately, but searching for an artist will play their top tracks, so you don’t have to select tracks individually.

Dropbox Short Links

This one is a constant struggle for me. I want to share a Dropbox file with someone, but it hasn’t always been easy to get a shareable link from the desktop app, and once you did that, you still had to shorten it. This workflow will create a shortened link for any selected file in your Dropbox folder and copy it to your clipboard, easy as that.

Shorten URLs

If you need to shorten any URL, not just one leading to a Dropbox file, this is the Alfred workflow for you. Using the trigger short, paste a long URL into the Alfred search window. the workflow will give you a list of services you can use to shorten your URL. Select the one you need, and the new short URL is copied to your clipboard and ready to be pasted wherever you need it.

Send URL

This workflow grabs the URL from the topmost application or from the clipboard and gives you the option of sending it to a variety of other applications, including browsers, email applications, instant messengers, and more. You can copy the URL as an HTML or Markdown link, too.

Alleyoop

It can be difficult to check in on all of your Alfred workflows for updates, especially if you’re a power user and have a ton of workflows installed. Going one by one could take ages. This workflow makes that a bit easier by checking all of your workflows to see if they’ve been updated. It’s not universal, though, as each workflow’s developer has to sort of opt-in to using Alleyoop. Still, it’s a nice one to keep an eye on.

Show Us Your Stuff!

If you’re a power user, you’ve probably run into a few of these already, but hopefully you were able to find something new to make Alfred do more for you. This is by no means an exhaustive list, and there are lots of different ways to get the same thing done in Alfred. Do you have a favorite workflow that’s not listed here? Or have you created workflows for Alfred yourself? Let us know in the comments, and don’t forget the links!

I’m in desperate need of a good photo editor, but I don’t want too many bells or whistles. Being honest, the reason I need a photo editor is the same reason I need a simple editor. I’m not that great at making my images look good, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still want to show off all my amazing snaps to my friends.

Recently released Fotor may be my saving grace. It’s simple enough that I can make my way through it without turning all of my family photos green, but does Fotor have the goods to make my photos great?

Say Cheese!

Scenes is sort of an autocorrect tool for images. You may already be familiar with some of these filters from other photo apps, either on Mac or iOS, but they may not act exactly the same. Expect filters like Backlit, Darken, and Cloudy. You can click through each to see which works the best for your image.

You have a surprising amount of control in the Adjust tools.

Adjust is where the color tools live. Change your image’s exposure, brightness, contrast, and saturation. You can also refine your image with the blur and sharpen sliders or adjust the temperature and tint. If you’re working on a photo that looks a little off kilter, straighten it up here, too.

Effects gives you a bunch of colorful filters and is sort of the image tool you’d get if Scenes and Adjust had a tool baby. This one will look pretty familiar to anyone who’s ever used Instagram or seen Instagram or knows Instagram exists, so it will be familiar to everyone. Here, though, you can adjust the intensity of the Effects filters, giving you a lot of control over the final product.

Adjust the intensity of Effects.

Borders and Tilt-Shift will probably be your last stops as you edit your image. The borders feel a bit tacked on to me, especially the more cartoony, but some will love them, and who am I to deny a person a photo border? There are a few I could see myself using, paired with vintage Effects filters. Tilt-Shift will bring a section of the image into focus and leave the rest blurred out. There are lots of neat ways to use these blurring filters, and I can tell by the filters’ names that they’re referencing a fancy camera technique that’s far beyond me but that I’m happy to have at my disposal in Fotor.

Select areas to remain in focus while the rest of your image is blurred.

Even More Great Tools

The crop tool is pretty fantastic, and I’m not sure why I’d ever crop in any other application ever again. There are lots of ratios programmed in, things I would never think about, like the Golden Ratio. Fotor also has all the cropping ratios you’re going to need to print or move your image to another device. If none of those quite work for you, you can always just crop freeform or enter a custom width and height.

Each tool has Undo and Redo buttons, located at the bottom of the tool’s settings. Not sure if you want to get rid of your edits? Click Compare at the bottom to see a before and after of your image. But if you want to burn your changes to the ground and salt the earth beneath so that nothing will ever grow again–or just revert to the original file–click Reset All. This will get your image back to its pre-Fotor state.

Share your image or review the Exif data.

When you’re finally all done and you’re sure you won’t be undoing anything, there are two ways to get your image out of Fotor. The first is Export, which works like Fotor’s save, but it gives you more file format options, including JPG, PNG, TIF, and the oft-overlooked BMP. The second way to get your image out of Fotor when you’re through is to share it. Fotor only connects to Twitter and Facebook, which is a little disappointing for an image-editing app; I’d like to see Flickr and Instagram, too.

Final Thoughts

Fotor was much better than I was expecting from a free photo editor. It’s simple and easy to use, and I don’t have to know anything about photography to create beautiful images on my Mac. Which is great, because I don’t really know anything about photography but I want my pictures to look like I do. There are way more features than I’d hoped for, and I love the ability to undo and even reset my image, so I’m completely unafraid when trying out new filters.

That said, there are a few things missing. You can’t print from Fotor, but I’ll admit this had to be pointed out to me, since I’d never print an image from home anyway. It’s also lacking some pretty key sharing options, like major image services and Messages, which is one I did pick up on my own. Even so, it’s so spot on everywhere else, I have trouble getting that upset over a couple of missing features. Fotor’s brand new, too, so this may even get addressed in a future update. If not, it’s still a fantastic photo app.

Hello again, readers.

Here we are trying to make the weekend closer for you. In this edition you’ll find out about the Aereo problems, the folding of the Ambrosia Software development team and the rumored roadmap for the upcoming Office releases. Then, of course, we’ve also got the best deals of the week for you to spend your hard-earned cash wisely. Don’t miss our reviews for the discounted apps, which are linked through the favicon right next to them.

Have a nice reading!

News from the World of Apps

Apple’s Pandora-like iRadio Service to Launch in 2013?

Rumor? Kind of. It has been reported previously that Apple was in negotiations with major music labels aiming for a satisfying pay-per-play cost. ITunes is among the main sources of digital music in the actual world and this next step from Apple is definitely a success by anticipation. If you use a music streaming service like Pandora or Spotify, would you move to the rumored iRadio?

News Corp. to Take Fox Off Air If Courts Back Aereo

First you ask: What is Aereo besides the newest headache to TV broadcasters? Long told shortly, it is a tiny antenna that receives live TV on your devices for a fee. The issue is that the broadcasters don’t see a penny since Aereo works under the sheets and they did what they do best: went to court. And lost. Now News Corp., which owns 27 TV stations in 9 of the biggest U.S. cities, and countless affiliates all over the US, flinches and threatens to make Fox cable-only if the courts don’t stop the service.

This is the Aereo antenna that allows users to stream broadcasting waves.

Former Apple retail chief Ron Johnson out as JCPenney’s CEO

Ron Johnson is the guy who created the concept of an Apple Store. He did so well at Apple that he left in the lookout of new challenges. Unfortunately, he failed at the department store, as reported by the NY Times. What is really interesting is that Apple has an opening perfectly fit for Ron to join the Cupertino team again as SVP of Retail, empty since last October.

Roadmap suggests that a new Office for Mac is only coming in 2014

Everybody has been talking about how this roadmap reveals that Office for iOS and Android is only coming at late 2014, however, it also unveils the release for brand-new, touch-based, OS X versions with the metro-style UI which became so common. We’ll hear again in next October, when Microsoft is expected to release the new version for Windows. We’d appreciate the sneak peek (and OneNote for Mac).

Will we ever have OneNote for Mac? Maybe next year.

Ambrosia Software lays off its developing team, has reportedly folded

End of an era, so long and thanks for all the fish, ambrosia. On to the next adventure tweets a developer from Ambrosia, company responsable for Snapz Pro X, iToner and WireTap Studio, along more concerning reports from its development team, what seems to be a dismissal of the company. We’re still waiting for an official confirmation; however, future seems dark for the company. Best of luck to the developers.

Bungie’s Pathways Into Darkness comes back to Mac for free

Once upon a time, 20 years ago, a company called Bungie released a revolutionary first-person shooter called Pathways Into Darkness. Years later, the same company released Halo (which was planned as a game for Mac). Almost as a celebration, the game was recreated from scratch and is now available for free download at the AppStore.

Pathways Into Darkness is pure nostalgia hitting the Mac App Store.

RunRev ships first version of LiveCode

LiveCode is a successful Kickstarter campaign to improve LiveCode into an open-source tool for everyone to create apps for several platforms. Did you ever had an idea for an app but no clue how to code it? This promises to be the solution. You can download the first release for free at their website and learn a bit more about it.

The Best App Deals for Your Mac

Hey, just a quick note on the Deals section: you’ll notice the Mac.AppStorm favicon sitting besides a few of the apps listed here, click there and you’ll be taken to our review of the application. You’re welcome, just trying to make your life easier.

Win a Free Copy of Radium 3 from Mac.AppStorm!

Get all the internet radio in your menubar

Solar Walk $9.99 > $4.99 

Koku $29.99 > $14.99 

Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing (NEW) $24.99

MacJournal $39.99 > 19.99 

Mariner Persona $49.99 > $24.99 

Give real depth to your characters with Persona.

Montage $49.99 > $24.99

Contour $49.99 > $24.99

MacGourmet Deluxe $49.99 > $24.99

Paperless $49.99 > $24.99

Mental Case $29.99 > $14.99 

Cut the excuses and study efficiently with Mental Case.

Pathways into Darkness (NEW) FREE

StoryMill $49.99 > $24.99

WhatSize $14.99 > $1.99

Hider $9.99 > $1.99

OCRKit $49.99 > $29.99

Interesting Reads for the Week

Visceral Apps and You

Material Honesty On The Web

Wrangling email: How I keep my inbox under control

Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell on “Finding The Next Steve Jobs”

Did We Miss Anything?

That’s all of the news, deals, and interesting links for this week, but if there’s anything you think we missed, be sure to let us know in the comments below. Otherwise, check back next Thursday for more Mac news, deals, and more!

If you’re in the tech support business or are even the designated “family tech support representative”, then you probably know how frustrating it can be to try and resolve a computer problem over the phone with a user who isn’t very computer literate.

Enter TeamViewer, a remote support tool that’s more than just simple screen sharing. It’s free, doesn’t require Java, and actually works great. Let’s take a look.

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Deceptively Simple Support

TeamViewer (available for OS X, Windows and Linux) is a complete remote support tool that’s primary focus is ease of use. There’s no network configuration, no ports to forward and you can even use it without installing it – just download and run. Unlike other support tools, you don’t need to log in to a website to start a remote session and it isn’t dependant on Flash or Java.

A Quick Support tool allows remote users to get support without needing to do anything complicated

Supporting a user is easy, they simply download the TeamViewer app from the TeamViewer website and launch it. TeamViewer then displays a 9 digit ID that is unique to that computer (it doesn’t change) and a randomly generated passcode.

Once you have the user’s 9 digit ID and passcode, you can then connect

As the support agent (that’s you), you’ll also run TeamViewer and enter the 9 digit ID and the passcode that’s displayed on their screen. Enter the 9 digit ID, the passcode that’s generated and that’s it – you’re now sharing the user’s screen!

Once logged in, TeamViewer will temporarily hide their desktop background to reduce bandwidth usage

If you manage a number of different computers on a regular basis, whether it’s several friends or family members or you’re the support guru for your company, TeamViewer lets you save those ID numbers in a favourites list. You just need to ask the user for the passcode that’s generated. You can take this a step further and use the option of specifying a custom passcode by installing TeamViewer. This means the passcode is permanently set so it doesn’t change, meaning you can remotely log in whenever needed without user interaction. If you need to manage a number of different computers or servers, it makes accessing them quick and easy.

You can keep track of different computers, including if they’re currently online, by adding them to your favourites list

TeamViewer’s screen sharing requires far less bandwidth than apps such as Apple’s Remote Desktop (not to mention far less setup) and even iChat / Messages. Skype does offer screen sharing but the user would still need to register for an account, with TeamViewer there’s no registration needed.

Beyond Screen Sharing

One of the most common tasks when you’re in tech support is updating software and drivers. Most of the time, you can download the driver onto the user’s computer whilst screen sharing, but what if you have a specific file that isn’t available online?

You can send and receive files via the TeamViewer app which means transferring urgent files or drivers is a piece of cake!

TeamViewer also includes a fully functional file transfer facility that again, requires no additional setup, it’s all baked right in. You can select any file from either your Mac and send it to their computer – or vice versa – navigate their filesystem and receive a file from them.

The File Transfer window could be a little more refined as it looks more akin to an FTP client such as Fetch but as TeamViewer is designed to work across different platforms (such as OS X, Windows and Linux), some limitations in the user interface are expected!

Keep in Touch

There’s a chat facility which makes remote support much easier. Sometimes it can take a good 10–15 minutes to complete a task so asking the user to stay on hold whilst you do that isn’t the best way to keep them happy! However, asking them to keep watch on the screen for any messages you might leave or instructions to follow means they can still keep working on other things whilst you resolve their issue.

You can chat via text, voice (using VoIP) or even video call

The Chat facility is two-way, so if they have a question then they can ask you too. Just keep in mind that if they start using the chat box then that will stop you from using the keyboard.

Add to this the built-in VoIP service so you can directly talk to your user without making a separate phone call as well as being able to use video chat too.

Different Versions for Different Uses

There’s three different versions of the app that you and your users can download.

• Full Version – For starting and receiving support
• QuickSupport – A simple “run-only” version that only allows incoming connections
• Host – Useful for servers as you can specify your own passcode and it runs in the background all the time, allowing for unattended support (since there is no user to start it)

Pricing

For non-commercial use (such as supporting friends and family), it’s completely free to use. For commercial use, the costs do jump considerably.

A standard business license costs from £439 for a single license to make connections. So if it’s just you as the support person then that’s the total upfront cost. There are no recurring fees though paid upgrades are available when new major versions are released (but you don’t have to upgrade straight away).

If you’re looking after a team of support people then the costs can spiral considerably if you want each of them to be able to make connections simultaneously. However, there is no limit to how many computers and users you can support. Whether you want to support 50 or 500 computers, you only pay for a commercial license and per support person.

The pricing structure of commercial use can skyrocket depending on your requirements so it may not work out economical, but if remote support is something that could make support more efficient for you and your team, especially if you’re supporting a large number of computers or users, then it might be a small price to pay.

Wrapping Up

TeamViewer makes support incredibly easy to do. For personal non-commercial use it’s an absolute no-brainer. It’s far quicker than Skype or Messages, requires no setup other than running (or installing) the app and to get started requires no registration whatsoever.

For business use, it’s not so clear-cut. Whilst there are definitely many features that would make user and unattended support easy for any company, the high upfront cost may be enough to deter the powers that be who wield control over the IT budget. It’s still worth remembering that there isn’t a recurring fee and some competing services such as GoToMyPC charge for each user or computer you want to support – TeamViewer doesn’t.

It’s been three years since making the big switch to the Mac, and within those thirty-six months I’ve tried numerous apps that have significantly changed the way I work. I’ve gotten my hands dirty with a variety of productivity tools, finance software, utilities, and photo/image editing apps of various shapes, colors, and file sizes that it’s taken me a while to actually find the apps that I can settle down with.

I’ve pretty much filled up fifteen pages of purchase history, but I’ve managed to find a couple of apps that have become integral to my workflow as a writer and an avid user of the web. These apps have won my loyalty, and I’m glad to be able to shine the spotlight on them in this week’s The Apps We Use feature.

Pages or Microsoft Word

Pages ’09 and Word 2011

I’m always caught in between Apple’s Pages ’09 and Microsoft’s Word 2011 when choosing a word processor for a project. On one hand, I’ve used the latter for as long as I can remember, so I like the familiarity of Word’s interface, formatting, and features.

On the other hand, I’m attracted to how convenient it is to upload and open documents with Pages via iCloud on the Mac, iPhone, and iPad. The best part is being able to use it while on the move, so I can always take my documents with me, revising them as new ideas come to me.

Price: Pages ’09 ($19.99) and Office 2011 (Starting at $139.99 or $9.99/month with Office 365)
Requires: For Pages, OS X 10.7.4 or later. For Word 2011, Mac OS X version 10.5.8 or later
Developer: Apple Inc. | Microsoft Corporation

1Password

There’s only one password to remember.

We all know that 1Password is one of the best password managers for the Mac, but the real deal for me is 1Password’s extension for Google Chrome. Besides unlocking 1Password via the browser, I can easily open and log in to a website or service by just typing “1p” and selecting the website of choice in the address bar.

Price: $49.99
Requires: OS X 10.7 or later, 64-bit processor
Developer: AgileBits Inc.

PopClip

PopClip is one of those apps that make you feel you’ve struck gold. It’s a nifty productivity app that allows you to perform certain tasks when highlighting text from a web page or a document.

Popclip in action.

The main attraction is PopClip’s extensions, wherein you download selected extensions from the Pilotmoon website to add more functionality to the app. My favorite is Paste and Match Style which pastes text stripped of any HTML formatting.

Price: $4.99
Requires: OS X 10.6.6 or later
Developer: Pilotmoon Software

Honorable Mentions

While I’d like to leave it at this, I’d like to throw in a few more apps that I’d use during the course of the work day:

• Alfred 2 – a great launcher that summons files and apps, and performs specific tasks through workflows.
• Tweetbot – Tapbots’ Twitter app for the Mac, which I bought after testing their iPad app.
• Wunderlist 2 – my favorite app for beautiful, no-nonsense task management.
• Snapheal – a fun app to use if I need to remove certain elements or flaws from my photos.
• Cloud – for quick and easy file sharing. I’d use this whenever I need to send screenshots of bugs to app developers.
• Byword – after using several distraction-free writing apps for the past year, I went back to using Byword at Menlo 14pt. The good thing is that it’s Markdown-compatible, so I can use it if I don’t feel like writing in Markdown Pro’s dual view.

Conclusion

So guys, how many Mac apps have you bought and/or downloaded? Which ones are your favorites and those that you’ve somehow lost interest in? Name a few in the comments below.

There’s so many ways to enjoy music on your Mac these days, but one of the old standbys that still works great is internet radio. There’s online radio stations of every genre and style, and radio is still a great way to find new music when you’re tired of playing your iTunes songs on repeat.

And if you want to listen to radio on your Mac, you just about can’t do better than Radium 3, the newest version of the popular internet radio app. We called it a sleek menubar radio app in our review, and it’s the way I personally listen to online radio throughout the work day.

Radium is a rather cheap utility at just $9.99 (or $6.99 during its still-running Easter sale), but we’ve got something even better for our readers this week: 3 free copies of Radium!

All the internet radio you want, right from your menubar

To get your chance at one of our 3 free copies of Radium 3, just comment below and let us know your favorite internet radio station. You can get an extra entry by sharing our giveaway on your favorite social network, then leaving another comment below with a link to your post.

We’ll close the giveaway this Friday, April 12th, so hurry and get your entry in!

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

Dropbox is nothing short of incredible. When the whole world thought file sharing had to be complex and kludgy, a MIT student who forgot his flash drive showed us all that file sharing could be simple enough that we’d all want to do it. You’ve got to trust it with your data, and be willing to pay to store more than several gigs of data, but beyond that, there’s little to make you question using Dropbox. It’s ubiquitous for good reason.

That doesn’t mean it’s the be all and end all of file syncing. There’s Google Drive, Microsoft’s Skydrive, and Amazon’s new Cloud Drive sync. But one new competitor, AeroFS, is taking on Dropbox directly with its own private sync solution, in an app that might be the absolute closest competitor Dropbox has seen yet. It’s fresh out of beta for individuals and teams, so let’s take a look.

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What, what’s AeroFS?

Dropbox sure took some explaining at the beginning, but almost everyone — techie or not — is used to it these days. It uploads your files to the Dropbox server and syncs them with your other devices, or with your friends and colleagues’ computers via shared folders. Simple.

AeroFS is almost the same, with a small catch: there’s no central server. It’s peer-to-peer sync that works almost just like Dropbox. You can sync files between your own computers, or share folders with friends and colleagues, over the internet or inside your own network when you’re offline. You’ll still need an account for authentication, but after that, you don’t use the AeroFS servers at all.

It’s Dropbox, decentralized.

So close, you might miss the difference

And that’s not an inapt description: AeroFS feels very similar to Dropbox. After signing up for an account online, you’ll download a small app to keep your files in sync. That is, the files inside your AeroFS folder, since everything you want synced with AeroFS has to be in that folder.

Choose where to store your one AeroFS folder

Next up, there’s a walkthrough of how AeroFS works. That’s nice … but it’s identical to Dropbox’ walkthrough. I understand taking cues from the way Dropbox works, and making your own unique product that’s in some ways similar, but a tutorial that’s almost precisely the same is a bit too much.

Wait: haven’t we seen this before?

The good thing is, AeroFS does work almost as good as Dropbox. If you’re used to using Dropbox to store everything, and just need to keep stuff synced between your computers — and don’t need files stored online to access if, say, your computer died suddenly — then it might be perfect. You’ll just have to add your files to your AeroFS folder, and setup AeroFS on your other computers, and it’ll likely work fine. The cool thing is, it’s 100% free, and there’s no storage limits beyond the size of your own hard drive. If you want to keep 500Gbs of documents and media synced between your computers, it might be the perfect app for you.

AeroFS in action

In my tests syncing AeroFS between my Mac and a Windows 8 PC on the same network, syncing was almost instantaneous. Syncing online was slower, but it seemed to be nearly as fast as Dropbox syncing in my non-scientific tests. You likely won’t notice the difference in real-world use.

The only major problem I had is that AeroFS is more resource intensive than Dropbox; it used 3% of my CPU and around 100Mb of ram all the time it was running, even when it wasn’t actively syncing files. AeroFS is Java powered, so that may be the culprit, but it definitely might eat into your battery life and computer performance.

Sharing and Saving

Now, sharing is one of the best things about Dropbox; it lets you easily send files to your friends and colleagues’ computers by just saving them in your shared folder. AeroFS lets you share files in much the same way. You can right-click on any folder inside your AeroFS folder and invite people to it. Once they’ve accepted, everything in that folder will be synced between both of your AeroFS accounts.

Add folder collaborators simply

Sharing folders worked great in my tests, just like syncing files between computers connected to your own account. What can get messy, though, is if both of you are editing the same file at the same time. Then, you’ll end up with a sync conflict. The conflicted file will have a yellow fork-in-the-road icon on the bottom to let you know there’s a problem, and from the AeroFS menu you can choose to view your local file, the conflicted copy from your collaborator’s computer, and then merge the changes or choose which version to keep.

Hey files, quit fighting!

There’s also file versions saved for everything you sync in AeroFS, whether between your own computers or with others. You can jump back in time and catch changes, and quickly restore the old version. That’s nice to have; I use the previous versions tool in Dropbox quite often. However, it can use up extra disk space, so you might want to keep an eye on that.

Hey there, ye old files.

Your Whole Team

You might have noticed that I said shared folders can be shared with one other person. That’s actually one of the limitations of a free AeroFS account. Free accounts can share folders with one other person; you’ll need to make a new shared folder for each person you want to share files with. Free accounts also can have up to 3 teammates, which we’ll dig into in just a bit.

If you want to share folders with more than one person, or have more teammates, you’ll need to upgrade to a Team account, which costs $10/teammate/month. If you just want to share your own folders with multiple people, it’ll cost you $10/month, and the people you’re sharing folders with can still be using a free account.

There’s one final piece to the puzzle: the AeroFS Team Server. This is an extra app you can download to let your computer store all the files from each of your team’s AeroFS accounts (thus, the teammates). Alternately, you can have the Team Server store the files encrypted in Amazon’s S3 storage, giving you a way to — essentially — build your own Dropbox.

Send your AeroFS files to S3

If your company has a server running the AeroFS Team Server, then anyone on your team can sync files between their computers even if their other devices are turned off, since they’ll sync through the server. They’ll even be deduplicated and compressed. That makes it much more like Dropbox, and makes it much more interesting for teams. It also can make it more interesting for individuals; you could run Team Server and the normal AeroFS app at the same time to centrally backup your family’s AeroFS files to Amazon S3. I only wish the S3 options were built into the individual app itself; that’d make it a much more compelling tool for individual users.

Conclusion

On its own, AeroFS is a neat tool, one I’m sure I’d have loved to have around before Dropbox. But it’s a different world today. There’s Dropbox for free or $10/month, then alternates from Microsoft and Google that are even cheaper storage. They all let you keep your files synced, and stored online, too. That’s a huge advantage for most of us; I’ve used Dropbox and Skydrive both to get files I needed when I was away from my computer, something I couldn’t do with AeroFS. They also have mobile apps on iOS and Android, where AeroFS currently only has a limited Android app, one that only lets you view files from your computer.

For teams, the advantage is clearer: you can run your own AeroFS server, keeping everything under your roof, with no storage limits. But that’ll still cost you $10/user/month, where Dropbox for Teams would only cost you $10-$13/user/month, depending on your team size, and it comes with unlimited storage and more.

The very best use case for AeroFS right now is keeping larger amounts of files synced between your own computers on your own network. If you don’t need to access your files online, and want to sync more than Dropbox will let you, then it’s a great free option. If you have a VPS and want to sync files between it and your Mac, it’s also a great tool for that. AeroFS is also a great option if you want the added security of not having your files on a 3rd party server, something many businesses may appreciate. Still, it’s a tough sell in today’s crowded collaboration and file sync app market.

I recently stumbled upon a great iPad app that, as strange as it may sound, has changed the way I work with my Mac. You can read our full review of Actions on iPad.AppStorm, but in a nutshell, Actions is an app that allows you to trigger keyboard shortcuts from your iPad.

Now while this may not seem very useful or relevant, think of the amount of keyboard shortcuts apps such as Photoshop have. Now imagine being able to launch these from your iPad, visually organised in a way that makes sense to you. Or imagine harnessing the power of Automator, Keyboard Maestro or Alfred with the aid of your iPad.

Seem more appealing? Then read on for a few interesting use cases of Actions for iPad with your Mac. Since it can launch keyboard shortcuts at the tap of one finger, you can make keyboard shortcuts that’d be rather unwieldily to enter on a Mac’s keyboard, and then use them in Actions easily. And even if you don’t have an iPad or don’t want to get Actions, you’ll likely find some shortcut based tricks here that’ll speed up work on your Mac.

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The Tools

While it’s possible to accomplish many of these actions with Automator alone, I’ll often make use of a few other apps I’m partial to, namely:

• Moom ($10)
• Keyboard Maestro ($36)
• Alfred 2 (requires the PowerPack £15)
• Automator (Free)

Working With Windows

Actions has the ability to move and resize windows so that they occupy either the left, right, top or bottom half of the screen. While this is great in itself, it is somewhat limited. An app such as Moom allows for greater flexibility.

Window Snapshots

Window snapshots are a great way of achieving a consistent work setup.

1. Arrange a few windows in a manner that suits a particular need;
2. Click on Moom’s menubar and choose “Save Window Layout Snapshot”;
3. Assign a Global keyboard shortcut to your new snapshot;
4. Optionally give your snapshot a meaningful name and then close Moom;
5. Now on your iPad, create a new Actions touchpad with this shortcut.

A Window layout activated by a global keyboard shortcut.

Note: There are two types of shortcuts in Moom. Restricted shortcuts which only function when Moom’s keyboard bezel is active and global shortcuts. In order for this to function with Actionsyou must always use Global shortcuts.

In case you prefer to use Moom in faceless mode, here’s a quick Alfred 2 workflow that will allow you to Save and Replace/Merge Snapshots

Window Sequences

Another Great feature of Moom is that it allows you to tie a series of window actions together. For instance, you may wish to have a sequence that will resize a window and then center it, or maybe move a window to a secondary monitor and then arrange or resize.

1. Open Moom and navigate to custom;
2. Create a new action, ex.: Resize a window;
3. Assign a global shortcut;
4. Create another action, ex.: Center Window;
5. Assign the same global shortcut as the previous action and choose to “Assign Sequence Hotkey”;
6. Setup your new shortcut in Actions as in the previous example.

A rather simple sequence yet they can be as complex as needed.

Working With Mail

I was an avid user of Sparrow but jumped ship when they were acquired and started using Postbox. After reading Pierre’s great piece on Mail.app I, like so many others, was inspired to give it a try. One thing that I missed though was the ability to manage messages via the keyboard. At the time, I created a quick Alfred 2 workflow but now have opted to handle moving/archiving with Actions and a little help from Keyboard Maestro.

I opted to create a new macro group that would only be triggered in Mail avoiding any weird behaviour in other apps.

Moving Messages

This allows you to move selected messages from their current mailbox to a different mailbox (defined in the script).

1. Click + to add a new macro;
2. Give the macro a descriptive name, for example “Move Mail to Friends”.
3. Use a hotkey to trigger the macro. Here you can choose a very complex hotkey, saving simpler hotkey combinations for another situation;
4. Add a new action of the type “Execute AppleScript” and in the script place the following:

tell application "Mail"
set msgs to selection
if length of msgs is not 0 then
repeat with msg in msgs
move msg to mailbox "[Gmail]/Friends" of account "Gmail"
end repeat
end if
end tell


1. Now simply setup a new touchpad in Actions;
2. Repeat steps 1–5 for every mailbox to which you would like to move messages.

What the macro looks like.

Note: Remember to change the script to meet your needs, namely the mailbox and account.

You can also create a simple Alfred 2 workflow that manages the same results. Add a hotkey block tied to an action block (Run NSAppleScript) with the code above.

Navigating Mailboxes

While it is possible to setup favourite mailboxes and then use the hotkey ?+N (where N is a number from 1–9), there is another way that doesn’t limit you to 9 mailboxes:

1. Click + to add a new macro;
2. Give the macro a descriptive name, for example “Go to Friends”;
3. Use a hotkey to trigger the macro;
4. Add a new action of the type “Execute AppleScript” and in the script place the following:

tell application "Mail"
set selected mailboxes of message viewer 1 to {mailbox "[Gmail]/Friends" of account "Gmail"}
end tell


1. Once again setup a new touchpad in Actions with the chosen hotkey combination;
2. Repeat steps 1–5 for every mailbox you would like quick access to.

Once again, here’s the final macro.

You can group each of these shortcuts or rather, Touchpads into Subsets to keep them logically organised.

Working With Files and Folders

Most of us spend a great amount of time working with files and folders on our Macs, therefore it only makes sense that we optimise this experience as much as possible. Actions can help here too.

Moving Files

If you find yourself constantly needing to move files to a certain location, then your best bet would be to automate that task:

Using Keyboard Maestro

1. Create a new macro and name it something descriptive;
2. Choose to trigger the macro with a hotkey;
3. As an action, choose a For Each action;
4. Set it so that it loops through item in a collection and as a collection add The Finder’s Selection;
5. Now add two Get File Attribute actions. For the first choose to get the Parent Path and for the second get the Filename. Assign each to their own variable.
6. For the final action, select Move (or rename) file. Carefully observe the following image in order to better understand what goes where:
7. Now, as with previous examples, you can setup a touchpad in Actions for this macro.

The values that need to be used in order for this to work.

This Keyboard Maestro Macro was shamelessly stolen from Gabe Weatherhead over on Macdrifter and slightly modified.

Using Automator
Oddly enough, this whole process is a little easier with Automator:

1. Launch Automator and create a new service;
2. Change the settings so that the service receives no input;
3. Now add two blocks, one for Get Selected Finder Items connect to a Move Finder Items;
4. In the second block, choose to where you want to move the files;
5. Save the service with a descriptive name;
6. Open System Preferences, click Keyboard then Keyboard shortcuts;
7. Under Services > General, you should find your new service. Assign a keyboard shortcut to it;
8. Finally create a touchpad in Actions.

A very simple Automator Service.

Getting Around Finder

There are keyboard shortcuts for Finder’s main locations such as Documents, Downloads, Desktop etc. What happens though if you want quick access to a folder buried deep inside finder by means of a keyboard shortcut? Once again, Automator, Keyboard Maestro or Alfred can help, but I’ll focus on Alfred this time around:

1. Create a new workflow or use an existing one;
2. Add hotkey trigger and assign a shortcut;
3. Add a Launch Apps/Files action and then add a folder or file;
4. Now create a new touchpad in Actions and that’s it!

Summing Up

While this is in no way exhaustive, it should hopefully illustrate a few useful things that can be accomplished with Actions. You may point out that it’s possible to use all these shortcuts without resorting to Actions, and you’d be right. The benefit however of using this app is that you’re able to assign very complex keyboard shortcuts, thus leaving the simpler ones for more frequent actions. The fact that it’s possible to group touchpads in any way you desire allows you to create excellent and efficient workflows. If you haven’t done so yet, read the review of Actions on iPad.AppStorm and see what other great things are possible with this unique app.

What other interesting use cases can you think of and how would you put Actions to use?