Category: Mac

We’ve probably all set an app to perform a task, convert videos or download a big file, and then walked off to do something else. When you get back, though, the worst possible thing that could happen did; your computer went to sleep, you lost all of your progress, and you have to start over.

Sure, you can change when your Mac goes to sleep in System Preferences, but you have to remember to change it back or you could end up in worse trouble. Let’s face it, though, you’re not going to remember to constantly change those preferences. You don’t have to, though, because Wimoweh is going to keep your Mac awake. Let it know what applications to be on the look out for, and it won’t let your Mac sleep. But how does it stand up to competitor Caffeine? We’ll find out!

The Lion Doesn’t Sleep Tonight

Wimoweh is an app to keep your computer from going to sleep when you don’t want it to. I didn’t get the joke in its name right off, so I’ll put it out there, in case you’re in the same camp as me: it comes from the old song, “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” Wimoweh, wimoweh… Get it? Clever!

Probably the best way to use Wimoweh is keep it always running in the background. On your first launch, find it in your menu bar and select Open at Login from the dropdown. Wimoweh is meant to be the sort of app you don’t ever think about, it just works without you doing anything, and it always helps when the developers let you keep it running from startup to shut down.

Wimoweh is a menu bar app, and there’s not much for you to do.

Next you’ll need to tell Wimoweh what apps to look out for. The way Wimoweh works, and what sets it apart, is that rather than just keeping your Mac awake for an hour, two hours, or indefinitely, it relies on your running applications to tell it when it should keep everything going and when it can put your computer to sleep. If one of the predefined applications is up and running, Wimoweh keeps your Mac awake, but if everything Wimoweh’s looking for is closed, it will let your Mac go to sleep like normal.

To set the apps that keep your Mac awake, click the Wimoweh icon in the menu bar. In the Never Sleep Whilst Running menu, select the currently running applications that just have to keep going no matter what. A check mark will appear next to each, and even if you close the apps yourself, when they reopen, they’ll still be included in Wimoweh’s watched applications. It’s not something you’re going to have to define over and over again, or worry about setting each time you want to perform a time consuming task.

Select the apps you want to place on Wimoweh’s watchlist.

Compare and Contrast

I think this is pretty cool, because without Wimoweh, you might set an application to run, expecting it to complete a specific task, and walk away from your desk only to return and find your Mac fell asleep at the wheel and all your progress is lost. I hear you saying Caffeine can do all of that, but the big difference is that you have to turn Caffeine on. Even if Caffeine launches at login, you still have to activate it, or it won’t do anything, and if you’re going to be done in two hours but your project runs long, Caffeine may have already deactivated and won’t keep your Mac awake.

Caffeine may have one up on Wimoweh, though. If you’re converting a bunch of videos or uploading a bunch of files and you want your Mac to stay awake the whole time, Wimoweh seems like a great deal, but not if you want your computer to eventually go to sleep. Set your application to perform a three-hour task just before bed, and Wimoweh’s going to keep your computer up all night, whereas Caffeine would put it to sleep when its timer was up.

Wimoweh tells you which apps are keeping it from letting your Mac sleep.

Unfortunately, Wimoweh only watches the apps you find in its Never Sleep Whilst Running list in the the menu bar dropdown. That list, you’ll find, is incredibly limited. Only open apps show up there, and not even half of what I actually had running were in there. I’ll admit, anything I’ve got open that I could possibly want to keep my computer awake for was on the list and selectable, but there’s lots of stuff I’d like to add I’ll have to open specifically to get it into Wimoweh. It’d be nice to drag and drop them or otherwise get inactive apps into Wimoweh’s watchlist, too.

Final Thoughts

Despite my annoyance at how you get Wimoweh to actually start looking out for your running applications, once you’ve got Wimoweh set up, it’s pretty much hands off from there. You won’t ever have to tell Wimoweh to keep your Mac from sleeping, as long as one of your watched applications is running. Sure, you may inadvertently keep your Mac up all night, and it’ll be all out of sorts the next day, but I never remember to activate Caffeine in the first place.

What I need is something that’s going to keep my computer going without me having to do anything. That’s what Wimoweh does. If I’m ever unsure whether it’s going to let my Mac sleep, I can check in its menu bar dropdown and see what apps are preventing it from sleeping, allowing me to either close the app if I’m not using it or briefly remove it from Wimoweh’s watchlist. If you just need an app to time when your Mac goes to sleep, Caffeine may be the one to help with that, but if you need to keep your Mac awake while you’ve got important apps open doing important tasks, Wimoweh can do the job.

Whenever working on a number of projects in tandem,  it’s far too often that I end up sinking too much time into one task and end up with not enough time to complete the others. It’d helpful to have some sort of way to keep track of how much time is being spent on each task, and that’s exactly what Snail is made for.

A simple menubar app, Snail is meant to be a non-obtrusive way of scheduling tasks and then measuring how long it took you to complete each task. It’s a totally new take on project management for the Mac, one we knew we’d have to try out.

The Interface

Snail.

Snail is simply a menubar app that gives you all of its features in a tiny pop-over window. The layout is quite clear graphically, but isn’t quite so intuitive to use at first. However, after messing about for a few moments, the workflow becomes clear. The plus icon in the bottom-left allows you to add a task to the “stack,” which is a general non-sorted list for any tasks that you haven’t quite figured out when to do.

Once you have chosen when to do a task, you can drag it upwards to include it in the daily list of assignments. It’s useful to note that any tasks in this list that are in red are overdue from past days – get to work on those first!

Timing your Tasks

Timing a task.

Now it’s time to start working on a task. Drag any task into the grey bordered area to start it – it will immediately begin counting upward to track the amount of time you’ve spent on it. You can easily click the pause button to stop the timer. I found it a nice touch that the icon in the menu slowly fills in to reflect the quantity of time spent on the currently active task.

If you navigate to the settings of the app, there is also the option to display the timer in the menubar itself so you don’t have to click on the icon every time you want to see how long you’ve been working on a project.

Detailing each Task

Viewing the details.

Double-clicking any task will open a very basic popup that allows you to add a description, schedule that task to a certain date, or mark the task as complete. This is an area in which there is definitely room for improvement. In comparison with the graphical design of the rest of the app, the popup is quite lacking. It’d be nice to have an easier way to choose what date the schedule the task for, and bigger and clearer buttons for completing or editing a task.

Scheduling Tasks for the Future

Setting tasks for tomorrow.

Navigating via the directional arrows on the top of the app allows you to switch what day you’re currently viewing. All the items in the stack are persistent and don’t move even when you change the day – this means that you can add a bunch of items into the stack then sequentially go through days and drop tasks where you see fit.

You can use the arrow keys on your keyboard to quickly shift through days, and holding down the command key and pressing the up or down arrow key will move an item that respective direction. For some reason, you cannot move an item from the stack to the current day’s list. I hope this is something the developer will change in a future update.

Real Life Usage

I decided to use Snail in place of any other productivity app for several days to see the results. After the period of time was over, my thoughts are mixed. Being able to track the time I spent on each activity is useful – it’s a feature I don’t see on many other productivity applications, no matter what platform. At the end of the day, I could review all the tasks I’d done throughout the day, and see where I wasted time and where I hadn’t spent enough time.

However, I often found it difficult to remember to start and stop the timer whenever I begin or end a task. It would be nice to have a option that would display a notification every 30 minutes or so reminding the user to check the timer and update it.

As far as the task lists go, it was difficult to schedule tasks more than a couple days in the future. A prominent built-in calendar that you could drag tasks to would make it much easier to do this.

Final Thoughts

Snail is a unique application, no doubt. Whether you should buy it or not is really up to your own personal workflow. If you find yourself spending too much time in one aspect of work or aren’t sure if you’re working in an efficient manner, it might be worth the cost to better learn where your time is going. However, as a general task manager, it doesn’t have much of an advantage over applications such as Clear or Things, the former being far simpler, and the later giving you a ton more features to manage your personal tasks.

If you love reading online articles, but don’t usually have time to read them in full when you’re using your browser, then you’re like a heavy user of a reading later service. There’s three popular web apps to help you save articles to read anytime: Pocket, Readability, and Instapaper. While all these services have native apps for your iPhone and more, only Pocket has a native Mac app (one that used to be the best Instapaper app for the Mac).

So what’s an Instapaper or Readability user to do, if they want to read their articles on the Mac? There’s two new apps that are great options: ReadKit and Words App. We’d looked at Words before, but found its interface rather lacking for a full reading app. Their dev team went back to the drawing board, though, and their newly released Words 2 is easily one of the nicest ways to read longform articles on your Mac. If you didn’t try it out the first time around, you should definitely take a look at Words 2.

Here’s why.

It Starts With the Services

All your reading accounts, together

No reading app would be complete without reading services to sync with, and Words App has left no service out. You can add your Instapaper, Readability, or Pocket account to Words App, and then read articles from all of the services together. Pocket has its own app, so odds are Instapaper and Readability users will be most interested in this app, but it’s still a nice option for Pocket since it has more options and features than the official app.

There’s not much more to the settings, other than an option to manage and add folders. This is rather nice to have, since the folders do sync with Instapaper, and that gives you a simple way to keep your reading queue manageable from the app.

With that, you’re ready to start reading in Words 2′s familiar yet unique 3-column interface.  Your article will start syncing almost instantly, and you’ll see all of your articles from all connected services just as if they were from the same account. Your inbox will show the number of unread articles as well as the total number of articles in your account, and unread articles will have a lighter background in your reading list.

When you click on an article, Words 2 will mark it as read, and Instapaper will pick up on this setting, opening the article scrolled to the very end after you’ve read any of it in Words. That makes me hopeful it’ll be able to sync reading position in the future, but for now it’s a bit annoying.

A new take on reading on the Mac, with responsive text

Reading your articles in Words 2 is a very nice experience. The app includes 5 reading themes, with various font and spacing choices (oddly, including one with Comic Sans; don’t worry, the rest of the choices are nice. There’s a light and dark mode, as well as an optional multi-column reading mode. That’s very nice if you want the newspaper feel, though for the most part, I stuck with the traditional single column article view while testing Words 2. There’s also one other interesting feature: Words 2 doesn’t include font size settings, but instead uses responsive type to resize the font as you resize your window, much as in iA Writer. The effect is nice, though I did wish I could bump up the font size a bit more.

Read the way you prefer

There is one thing missing from Words 2 that was in the original Words App: a auto-generated list of keywords found in your articles, which was a unique way to look through your reading list. Though, with the new search tool, along with the radically new and improved UI, that’ll likely not be missed.

A Few Things to Note

You might have noticed that Words 2 includes very few buttons in its interface, beyond those for changing the reading mode and style. That’s because almost everything relating to your articles is handled with keyboard shortcuts. Tap A to archive an article, U to mark it as unread, F to mark it as one of your favorite articles, and so on. You can even tap your delete key to delete an article. It’s simple, just rather unexpected at first.

It’s all about the shortcuts

If keyboard shortcuts aren’t your thing, though, don’t despair. Words 2 also lets you drag-and-drop articles into folders or the archive, which gives you an easy way to move articles around. It also gives you a simple way to clear out your inbox of articles you’ve already read by dragging them directly to the archive when you’ve finished them.

Drag-and-drop articles where you want

Conclusion…

It’s almost impossible to compare Words 1 to Words 2; they’re that much different. Words 1 was the minimum you could ask from a reading app, one that was too feature-less for most of our tastes. It’d have worked if you were desperate to read Instapaper articles offline, but was far from a replacement for the Read Later app we’d just lost.

Words 2, on the other hand, is a testament to the fact that apps can do similar functions and still be unique. Its layout isn’t so much unlike every other reading app (or email app, or social networking app), but every part of the app has been custom designed to make it unique. That has its faults, including somewhat odd behavior in places that only makes sense if you’re used to it, but overall, it gives Words a uniqueness most other reading apps don’t have. Combine that with robust support for the three main reading services, and it’s a great app for reading articles on your Mac.

Words App still isn’t perfect, but it really is a nice, unique app. It’s incredible how much they’ve changed the app so far, and we can’t wait to see how the developers continue to improve Words App. For now, it offers one of the nicest reading later experiences on the Mac, one you should be sure to try out if you haven’t found the perfect reading app for your Mac yet.

… and a Giveaway!

But that’s not all. We’ve also got 10 copies of Words App to giveaway again! Just leave a comment below letting us know what reading service you’re using, and we’ll enter you in the giveaway. You can also share the giveaway on Twitter, Facebook, or App.net, and leave a link to your post in a separate comment for an extra entry in the giveaway. We’ll close the giveaway on Friday, March 15th, so hurry and get your entries in!

Also, if you won a copy of Words in our last giveaway, feel free to comment as well, and please let us know what you think of the new version of Words!

As usual, Envato staff or people who have written more than two articles or tutorials for AppStorm are ineligible to enter.

You know you shouldn’t use the same simple password on every site online, but password managers can be so complex to setup, not to mention expensive. Perhaps you should try out PassLocker, our sponsor this week, which is a new take on a password management app.

PassLocker is a nicely designed menubar app that makes it dead-simple to generate random passwords for your online accounts and save your account info in one place. You won’t have to install any browser plugins to use it, and there’s no extra features or settings to make it complex. It’s just a simple way to manage your passwords. We called PassLocker “the simplest password app” in our recent review, and found it to live up to its claims as an easy-to-use password app.

Best of all, PassLocker works great on the iPhone as well, so your passwords will be with you wherever you go. And you won’t have to worry about staying in sync, either, since PassLocker will automatically sync all of your info over iCloud. PassLocker is a promising alternative for those who are tired of complexity of other apps, or who don’t want to pay a fortune for managing passwords.

Go Get It!

Ready to get your passwords organized in a simple way on your Mac and iPhone? Then go download PassLocker today from the App Store. At just $4.99 on the Mac and $1.99 on the iPhone, it won’t break the bank, and it’s so quick and easy to use that you’ll have your accounts more secure without much trouble at all.

As a podcaster, having an audio editing tool that is simple, quick, and easy to use is priceless. So when Rouge Amoeba, the Mac developers known for popular audio tools like Audio Hijack Pro and NiceCast announced version 2 of their Fission audio editor – I took note.

Although it distinguishes itself from the crowd with the promise of “fast & lossless audio editing”, Fission still faces fierce competition from both ends of the spectrum. To carve out a meaningful niche for itself, Fission 2 needs to be a worthwhile option against the likes of professional tools like Logic Pro, and free options like Garageband or Audacity. So does it succeed? Read on to find out!

Design and Interface

While professional tools can generally get away with “function over form” approach, Fission 2 manages to walk that line nicely with a mix of relatively robust functionality packaged inside a beautiful app. The real wonder of the app, though, is its ability to achieve that functionality within a pretty minimalist interface.

When I first opened Fission, I was surprised at just how few options there were. The top toolbar includes basic controls for trimming your audio as well as options to “Fade In”, “Fade Out” and “Normalize” your audio; all of which can be moved around or deleted from the system standard “Customize Toolbar” menu. In an age where many developers are moving away from standard controls – this is refreshing and especially useful for users looking to build specific workflows around the app.

Also of note is the somewhat unique “Inspector” pane, unlike many apps which push the inspector out into a separate window, Fission’s is attached to the window, making it essentially a single-window interface. Again, I’m going to err on the side of the advanced user here and say that, after getting used to it, this actually a nice interface tweak to help keep things simple.

Fission features a pretty simple user interface.

Inside the Inspector, you won’t find any audio editing tools as I expected, but rather some tools that let you edit the ID3 tags of your file. At first glance, it’s funny not to put these options in the save or export dialog, but after working in the app, I liked being able to work on the tags as I went along. Being a recently released app, Fission also includes some much appreciated support for basic trackpad gestures like zooming in and out on the waveform while editing.

The app also includes a “Light” theme, which is ugly and I can’t really see anyone wanting to use it. On the whole, if you stick with the far more attractive and functional “Dark” theme, Fission is pretty appealing, making use of subtle animations when doing things like the aforementioned pinching to zoom. Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the app icon; in short, it’s not pretty. It’s bright yellow and black, and would, truth be told, look much more at home on the dock of a Mac from 2004 or 2005. It’s not a deal breaker by any means, but a nice app icon really goes a long way.

Functionality

Many audio professionals could’ve skipped over the Interface and Design section completely, as the functionality is really the bread and butter of the app. But to understand where Fission fits in, you’ll need to first understand that it isn’t really a replacement for Logic Pro, or even GarageBand, really. Rather, Fission really excels as a tool to make quick and easy edits to your audio files. Since it’s a lossless editor, any MP3, AAC, Apple Lossless, AIFF, or WAV files you edit within the app won’t have to be decompressed or re-encoded, giving you the two-fold advantage of not losing any audio quality while editing and allowing for quicker exports and saves.

Still, its lossless capability does come at a somewhat high cost; the extent of the app’s audio manipulation ability is essentially a few trimming and fading options, and little more. Moreover, you won’t find any audio effects support in Fission (VST, AudioUnit, and more), which Rouge Amoeba says are unable to support lossless editing. One feature which I did appreciate was the “Normalize” function, which essentially evens out your audio, at little cost to its quality and without adding much noise.

Fission features robust ID3 tagging tools.

There’s also amazing support for editing ID3 tags in the app, allowing you to add or change things like artwork, lyrics, and artist information. As a podcaster, that capability, alone, makes Fission a compelling option. Still, I wish there were some way to set presets for the ID3 data, so I don’t have to input the same file information every time I edit a podcast. Also on the features front is a “Smart Split” option which analyzes a file for silence and splits it up, which is useful for things like LP or DVD recordings.

Fission also shines in its exporting capability, allowing you to export to MP3, AAC, ALAC, FLAC, AIFF, and WAV formats, with three quality presets, and the ability to manually change the Maximum Bit Rate and Sample Rate. Finally, Fission includes the ability to export directly to SoundCloud, the popular online audio sharing tool. This feature should be especially useful when SoundCloud launches their long-awaited podcasting accounts.

You’re given some advanced control over the exported file.

Wrap-Up

As a simple tool for editing audio with lossless quality, Fission is in a league of its own. Against other options like Garageband and Audacity, though, many users may find it hard to justify spending $32 on an app that arguably does less. Still, for users such as myself, with generally basic editing needs, who put more value into speed and quality than in quantity of features alone, Fission is a home-run. The ability to make on-the-fly edits to my podcasts without the dread of opening up a larger and clunkier audio editor has made this app worth its weight in gold.

If there’s one enduring set of apps that’s practically a requirement to use in most business and education settings, it’s Microsoft Office. Love it or hate it, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are the de facto standards for their categories.

On a Mac, you’ve got a ton of options these days. You could obviously use Office for Mac, though it’s often a bit behind its Windows counterparts despite coming out for the Mac before Windows was even around (though sometimes it does seem ahead of the Windows versions — see the Publishing layout options in Word for Mac). Then, there’s Apple’s iWork apps, though you might end up with some compatibility issues if you have to regularly share heavily formatted documents (but, for most purposes, iWork really is fine, while being nicer to use than Office. Really). There’s also OpenOffice and its new counterpart LibreOffice, though they come with their own slew of issues. You could also use web apps for free these days instead, from Google, Zoho, or even Microsoft itself.

Or, you could use Office for Windows on your Mac, either in Bootcamp or in a virtual machine. That way, you could use Office 2013 today on your Mac, or stick to an older-and-trusted version of Office in an old XP virtual machine. I personally have Office 2010 in a Windows 7 virtual machine, as well as an Office 2013 trial in a Windows 8 virtual machine for testing and more. We’d love to know if you use Office for Windows on your Mac. If so, we’d love to hear how you use it, and what version you’re using in the comments below!

You’ve probably already got a great notes app with syncing for moving chunks of text around, but what about the other stuff? Let’s face it, when you’re sending stuff from your Mac to your phone, you’re mostly just trying to get the directions to your cousin’s wedding or send the link to that awesome Harry Potter fanfic you’re halfway through.

BeamApp, a lightweight menu bar app, has you covered. With simple sharing to your iPhone, you’ll wonder what you ever did without it.

Beam Me Up

You’ll need to first add BeamApp to your other devices and connect them. Right now, BeamApp only works with the iPhone and other Macs, but that’s still pretty cool. To add a device to BeamApp, click the menu bar icon and then the plus sign. BeamApp will give you a PIN and a QR code, and you can use whichever is easiest to add your device.

Use the QR code or PIN to add your device.

Once you’ve gotten your device added, you can start sending yourself stuff, but whatever you beam from one device to another has to already be present on the second device or accessible via the internet. No shifting PDFs or JPGs from your Mac to your iPhone. What you can send are URLs, map locations, and music. Pretty sweet. That’s about all you can send, but it’s probably all you really need to send at the end of the day, anyway.

To send an address, just type it up, select it, and copy it, sending it to your clipboard. It will be available in BeamApp as not just text but as a map location. If you’ve searched for a location and have pulled the address up in Google, you don’t have to copy it this time or do anything else; just find it in your list of things to send in BeamApp. You’ll have the option of either sending the address to your iPhone or sending the URL.

Send an address or all sorts of information.

Directions work similarly to searching for an address in Google. Find your to and from address and plot your course, though don’t bother customizing your route as that information will get lost when the directions are sent. Once you have your origin and destination addresses set, head back to BeamApp in your menu bar. Again, you can select to either send your directions or the URL to your phone, whichever you prefer.

URLs are about the simplest thing to send. All you need is to have a browser window open, and BeamApp knows what to do. If you’ve got multiple tabs, though, BeamApp is only going to recognize the active tab. Click out of the browser window, and BeamApp can’t do anything with it; BeamApp is only looking at the active application.

You can even send a phone number. Your iPhone will dial!

I’ll confess that I’m sort of over actually typing out phone numbers on a keypad. Sure, my fingers are probably going to fall off from disuse, but every time I have to type out a phone number, I make an audible, “Ugh!” I know some of you are with me on this and wish when you searched for a business on Google there was just something you could scan to dial the numbers for you. BeamApp is almost just as good. Select and copy to the clipboard anything that sort of looks like a phone number, and it will offer to beam it to your iPhone and dial it for you!

Pros and Cons

BeamApp is supposed to be able to start and stop your music as you move among your devices, and it sort of does this, in that it will start and stop your music. It should be able to pick up your playlist where you dropped it as you move from your computer to your iPhone and back again, though, and as far as I can tell, it didn’t do this once. BeamApp never picked up the playlist as described on the BeamApp site when the song was over, it just played the next song by the artist, the next songs in my iTunes queue, or stopped playing music altogether.

Your music will pick up where you left off, but the playlist won’t keep going.

Okay, so the music thing didn’t work, but I found something really cool by accident. Without realizing Evernote was my active application, I clicked BeamApp, and it offered to open my selected note in Evernote on my iPhone! I don’t know how many other applications BeamApp’s compatible with, because on the website, it says it will only do about three or four things, and cool Evernote tricks isn’t one of them. My advice is to keep your eyes open, because there may be more of these neat little tricks up BeamApp’s sleeve.

There are a few things worth mentioning with BeamApp, and I just want to lay it all out there. While the app recognizes a Googled address and will open that in the Apple Maps app on the iPhone–sorry, it’s all defaults for BeamApp–it doesn’t jive with Bing. If you prefer Google Maps or want to use Bing, you’ll have to beam those URLs to yourself and open them in Safari. It’s also best to have your iPhone unlocked and awake for BeamApp to work.

Final Thoughts

I’m really blown away by how useful BeamApp is. When I sat down to try out the app, I didn’t expect it to become so essential to how I use my iPhone. Sure the music thing doesn’t really work, but how much aggravation is saved by having my computer autoplay my iPhone’s music? Not a lot. Give me an app that save me having to email myself URLs or directions, the number one and two things I seem to email myself, and I’ve been saved a lot of aggravation indeed.

BeamApp is absolutely going to become one of my must-have apps. If you find you’re shifting a lot of URLs betweens your Mac and your iPhone or even between two Macs, definitely give this one a try. You’ll never know what you did without it.

MacTuts+ is the superb new site dedicated to teaching people how to use their Mac, and OS X, more effectively. We’ve got you covered for apps, but combine that with an in-depth knowledge of OS X and you’ll be unstoppable, limitless!

This is a quick roundup of the best tutorials from MacTuts+ in February, from Use Your Phone to Automatically Lock Your Mac When You Walk Away to How to Move Your iTunes, iPhoto or Aperture Library to an External Drive.

Best of Mactuts+

Puzzle games are a dime a dozen, and to set itself apart, a puzzler is going to have to be pretty special. More than just exchanging pigs for birds or coins for jewels, a great puzzle is more than a gimmick. It challenges how you think.

A great puzzle game will also challenge how you see games, and that’s what the developers at Cipher Prime are working on. Their newest offering, Splice, isn’t just a great puzzle, but it may also change your definition of what a game can mean. Don’t get me wrong, all of the great puzzling fun is there, but it’s more than a place to sink a few minutes. Splice will create an experience that frustrates you but also surprises you with its beauty and genius.

Splicing Cells

Things start off really easy in Splice. You only seem to have a few moves, or splices, but there are only a few cells you have to shift, and the strand structure looks pretty simple. No big deal. Your microbes get a lot more complex very quickly, though, and even the simple ones are wrapped in sometimes difficult puzzles.

You’ll find that more than figuring out where to put individual cells, Splice is about pulling apart strands. The game will present the user with the outline of a finished strand and a chain of cells that probably doesn’t resemble the outline at all. Strands have a certain gravity to them, and as you pull them apart and put them together, you’ll see they don’t just remain in place, static, but that they’ll fly around. If you pull a chunk of cells off the left side of an unfinished chain, chances are that it’s going to fly off to the right. Reattach the cells, and you’ll pull everything back to the center.

While Splice may seem easy at first, even early levels will give you pause.

There are a few rules to Splice, accessible via a help section, but there’s no tutorial. You’re left to figure out the mechanics on your own. If you aren’t able to pick up the hows of Splice pretty quickly, you might end up staring at your computer screen, scratching your head, wondering why some moves work and some just don’t.

I’ll give you the inside scoop, though. Each cell can make three bonds. That’s it. A cell will already have a single bond by default, holding it onto the chain, so that means you can connect it to another two cells, its children cells. Until you get the hang of it, you’ll be trying to stitch an extra child cell onto the bottom of a strand as you move chains around and feeling frustrated when it just won’t stick. Get everything into just the right place, though, and the strand seems to come alive as a microbe, and you’ll move on to the next puzzle.

I mean, what am I supposed to do with that?

Cell Specialization

As the difficulty ramps up and the puzzles become more mind-bending, Splice introduces new cells, specialized cell, sort of like real biology. There’s a cell to add new cells to the end, a cell that performs something like mitosis, and a cell that destroys all of its children cells. After you’ve got the hang of using those different cells, that’s when things really get complicated.

Each cell is introduced more or less independently, and you’ll have some time to get used to how the cells works and how to use it. Once you’ve had some practice, Splice starts combining the different kinds of cells, so you’re having to build them and bust them and move them around, all in the same puzzle. The order in which you move cells and activate the special cells becomes very important, as activating a cell buster too soon will leave you with too few cells but waiting too long too add cells will leave you with too many.

Let’s create some cells!

The Ghost in the Machine

Like all Cipher Prime games, Splice looks and sounds beautiful. The design was similar to previously reviewed Fractal, but scaled way back and more minimalist, if that’s even possible. There really isn’t a whole lot to say once you find out it’s by Cipher Prime, actually, because they’re known for making some nice stuff and aren’t likely to start putting out stinkers anytime soon. That said, Splice may be their most lovely game to date. The music is soothing, which is nice when the puzzles can be so frustrating, and it drew me further into the game and made me want to spend more time in the environment. All of the interstitial screens between puzzles were presented in such a way as to not jar the player from the contemplative state achieved by playing several puzzles in a row.

It’s always about carefully placing the cells, even when those cells are being destroyed.

The background colors that create the theme for each level move from dark to warm to cool and back again as the player moves through Splice, and it almost feels like chromatherapy, soothing and meditative. The way the strands snapped back into place could be jarring if I was unprepared, but when I had completed a puzzle, the strands bounced around fluidly, as if floating, and added to the overall sense that I wasn’t just playing a game but was engaged in meditation. The end result was that Splice felt as much a piece of interactive art as it did a game.

If you are the kind of person that enjoys keeping and showcasing a beautiful and clean desktop, you may be interested in finding out how you can inject some life into it with a simple application.

If so, let us introduce you to Live Wallpaper. Live Wallpaper is a small application that gives your wallpaper added functionality. Granted, it may not be as intricate as other applications like it, but let’s take a look at how it fares on its own.

Elegance is welcomed

Live Wallpaper Overview

Created by the team who brought us Lock Screen Plus, Live Wallpaper is an application that allows the user to add some bits of functionality to their desktop. Things like time, date, weather, and custom text can be added within the wallpaper area in a very simple fashion.

The many sexy themes available.

Like Lock Screen Plus, you can pick from a variety of official themes available within the app as well as other custom themes created by users (like the Matrix Rain theme).

The developers support Live Wallpaper by adding more themes (for free) every chance they get, so it is nice to see that there is ongoing support for this app with no additional fees.

Playing with Live Wallpaper

Live Wallpaper’s appearance settings.

Using Live Wallpaper is pretty simple; once you set your location and pick a theme, you are set to go. Unlike Lock Screen Plus though, you get more control over the appearance and layout of your wallpaper. This is good because that is what these kinds of applications should focus on: user customization.

With Live Wallpaper, you not only able to pick what elements show up on your desktop and what kind of wallpaper the app uses, but you can also enter Edit Mode.

Get creative with this.

Edit Mode is Live Wallpaper’s way of letting you place its elements wherever you want them to be. While this does not work with all elements in some themes (which wouldn’t make sense with some themes, anyway), it is so nice to have the ability to place and arrange elements wherever you want – specially if an element isn’t very legible on a certain region of your chosen wallpaper image. (This is something that the developers should bring to Lock Screen Plus.)

Live Wallpaper Limitations and Concerns

Live Wallpaper’s support for multiple screens – cool, right?

Along with Edit Mode, there are other cool features like multiple monitor support and multiple spaces support that make Live Wallpaper a good solution for your wallpaper customization needs; however, it is good to note that this app is not Geektool.

As many of you may know (and will probably comment on), the level of customization you get with Geektool is much, much greater than that of Live Wallpaper’s, but for the person who isn’t script/geeklet/shell savvy, Live Wallpaper is the perfect choice for them.

With that said, Live Wallpaper could evolve one day and let its users add other elements with ease without having to deal with scripts. That’s for the bucket list, though.

On a different note, Live Wallpaper isn’t a memory hog (at least not that we know of). Not that Geektool is, but if you fill Geektool up with a lot of different things, you are bound to use some of your RAM. Of course, Live Wallpaper will use some, but it’s pretty light on resources.

Verdict

The 99 cents price point isn’t that drastic, but ultimately, it really comes down to whether or not you want a simple experience with ready-to-go themes instead of dealing with intricate pieces of code.

Live Wallpaper comes with beautiful and creative themes that you are able to use with one click and then edit them with ease. It is as simple as that.

We’re back!

After a long hiatus, we’re back with a weekly news and deals update, along with some extras that’ll make our weekly news post the one you won’t want to miss. We’ve even thrown in the best longreads and podcasts from the world of tech, to give you something extra to add to your reading list this week. It’ll be brought to you weekly – each Thursday – by our writer Phillip Gruneich, and should be a great sidekick to our normal slate of reviews and roundups.

Grab some popcorn, then dive into this week’s best news, deals, and longreads!

News from the World of Apps

Twitter shuts down Tweetdeck

After the API changes that cut loose most of third-party developers, Twitter discontinues its support for the mobile and AIR versions of Tweetdeck to focus on their web and Chrome apps. Not long after we lost its official client for Mac, Twitter underlines its objective to funnel its users into their main website. They also dropped support for Facebook from their web app, making it only really good as an advanced Twitter app for managing multiple accounts online. It’s a disappointing – but not entirely unexpected – change. But at least for now, you can still use the TweetDeck native Mac app and web app, though it’s doubtful if the Mac app will be kept around much longer.

Twitter has pulled the plug on TweetDeck. What’s next?

Project Amy integrates App.net with OS X Messages

While one hand takes away, another one gives. App.net has embraced the orphan developers from Twitter, and has been prolific with its support of new app releases. Project Amy is one of the latest App.net apps, and it integrates the private message feature of App.net into the Messages app that ships with your Mountain Lion. If you’re interested in App.net, you should read our review of its newest client for Mac, Kiwi, and check out our Web.AppStorm articles about App.net to get more info about the service.

Evernote gets hacked and implements a service-wide password reset

2013 kicked off with a wave of security breaches at several major services, like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Twitter. Evernote, unfortunately, also became a target of the attacks. As a precaution, Evernote’s instigated a mandatory password reset, so if you’re using Evernote on your Mac, you need to login to the Evernote web app and reset your password. According to Evernote’s investigation, no stored content or payment information was accessed, however, the hackers still found their way to some users’ information, like email addresses and passwords.

Evernote is the new target of hacker attacks.

Apple blacklists old Flash Player in Safari after recent attacks

Not only have web sites themselves been targeted so early this year, as several vulnerabilities have been found on Flash and Java, making it possible for your computer to be compromised by a Flash or Java applet on a site. The respective companies have quickly released updates to cover these major flaws, and Apple has already blacklisted older versions of the plugins in OS X.

After the last attacks, Apple blocks older versions of Flash and Java.

Dropbox CEO criticizes Apple cloud lock-in

In 2011, we learned of  Steve Jobs’s attempt to purchase Dropbox. iCloud is the direct answer to the negative given by its creator, Drew Houston. More than a year after the release of Apple’s cloud service, Houston warned about lack of ways to manage your files on iCloud and the omen of a lock-in at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week. Most of us are still using both Dropbox and iCloud, since they essentially serve similar yet different purposes, but only time will tell if Dropbox gets more like iCloud or iCloud gets more like Dropbox. The competition should be interesting to watch.

Apple censoring iCloud emails and attachments

You probably heard about the case of a certain phrase completely blocked from iCloud emails. The issue is still not fixed and strikes even when the phrase is included inside zipped PDF files. It prompts a bigger problem question: who knows how many sentences are blacklisted by iCloud’s filter? Also, do we really want Apple – or anyone – censoring our emails without our knowledge?

Apple is listed as Fortune Magazine’s most admired company

It doesn’t matter how much Apple is criticized or its stock price falls, it’s still kept its reputation intact. The most profitable company in the last quarter of 2012 – yes, Apple – was ranked at the top of Fortune Magazine’s list of most admired companies, in front of Google, Amazon and Microsoft. That’s one ranking we sure agree with.

Apple is the most admired company of 2012, according to Fortune. Image: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

New Versions of ReadKit and Words App, both with new designs

If you get excited about read-later services, there’s two new Mac apps that might be for you: ReadKit and Words App. ReadKit has been polished for some time, and just introduced new reading themes, monochrome or colored icons in the sidebar, and the option to automatically adjust the article width. Words App got a full new redesign, one that’s totally unique in the world of reading apps, and also has new responsive typography. Check our review of ReadKit and the older version of Words App.

The Best App Deals for Your Mac

This is quite the week for deals for your Mac, with 5 huge bundles – two of which with more than the usual share of awesome apps – and a number of apps on sale. And there’s even a few free apps in the mix. Hurry and grab them before the deals run out!

Done – $4.99 -> Free

Sketchpad – $2.99 -> Free

The Cave – $14.99 (NEW)

Meetings – $19.99 (NEW)

Name Mangler 3 ? $9.99 (NEW)

Eggscellent – Free (BETA) (check our interview with the guy behind it)

Gemini: The Duplicate Finder – $9.99 -> $4.99

CleanMyMac 2 (check our review of the new version) ? $39.95 -> $19.97

Bundleecious Bundle (5 apps plus 3 months of Backblaze online backup) – $9.99

The Humble Bundle with Android 5 (6 cross-platform games) – Pay what you want

MacUpdate March 2013 Bundle (10 apps, including Parallels Desktop, DevonThink Pro, Prizmo, Motion Composer, and more) – $49.99

MacLegion Spring Bundle 2013 (10 apps – including Roxio Toast and LaunchBar – plus Trickster for the first 5000 purchases) – $49.99

The PickABundle Bundle – $49 (check our review for this offer.)

Pick only the apps you want and save a lot of money in great apps.

Interesting Links

Last but not least, we’ve got some extra links you might like to add to your Instapaper or Pocket for some weekend reading. Or, if listening is more your thing, we’ve got an interesting podcast episode you’re sure to love.

Text Editors and Plain Text (podcast)

Open and Shut

Because Of Steve Jobs’s First Public iPhone Call, Starbucks Still Gets Orders For 4,000 Lattes

Why doesn’t anybody copy Apple?

The Lightning Digital AV Adapter Surprise

Stuxnet Missing Link Found, Resolves Some Mysteries Around the Cyberweapon

Did We Miss Anything?

That’s all 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!

When it comes to purging caches and improving your Mac’s performance, there’s nothing like MacPaw’s CleanMyMac. The utility has been around since the summer of 2009 and has been the most reliable way to keep your Mac running like it’s new.

On the 5th of March, a brand new version of the app released with many changes and improvements. I’ve been using the new CleanMyMac 2 since late January, and here’s what I’ve observed.

The New Design — It’s Stunning

An older version of CleanMyMac.

The biggest change in version 2.0 is the completely redesigned user interface. The old version with its light and dark themes was lovable, but this facelift is a very nice change. It really compliments the features of the app with true aesthetics, and that’s exactly what you’d expect from MacPaw, a company who focuses on great design.

The redesigned interface of version 2.0.

CleanMyMac’s layout hasn’t changed much, though there’s no bar at the top of the app anymore. Instead, everything has been moved to a unified sidebar and the Preferences window is available in the menu bar or by pressing CMD+, on your keyboard. The developers moved unnecessary complications out of the way to make sure you get a worry-free experience, not one that an advanced user would need. I’ll talk more about how the functionality was impacted by this change later on.

The app is now designed to look great on Retina displays, and even the icon has been given a slight facelift, from the pink screen with a wiper to a darker purple-tinted one. It’s definitely nothing more than light polish on the outside, but when you click the app you notice a great difference in appearance. The main screen, for example, has been polished with some sparkling streaks behind the iMac. And now there are some completely new graphics in tabs like System Cleanup, which has a beautiful vacuum as a visual representation of the feature.

Even the little things look nice.

When you start cleaning something, you’ll notice some minimal, yet appealing and effective, transitions that give the app much more of a natural feel. Switching from one tab to another also uses a nice sliding animation. The best one of all, however, is found when you start cleaning. Once Scan is pressed, the main screen will slide out of the way to reveal an examination, which also slides away when finished. Even the little info bubbles (move your mouse around and look for the “i”) pop up nicely.

The Eraser.

The only complaint I have about the user interface is the trash can icon in the Eraser section. I think the icon was designed well, but it looks like there’s a bit too much blur in the fragments of paper. The idea of motion blur makes sense and it would be fine if I didn’t always think my vision was going bad because of it. A bit too much fluff there might cause users with Retina displays to think the app isn’t optimized in one area. (I’m only using a MacBook Air.)

Automatic Cleanup Makes It All Easy

Results for an automatic scan.

CleanMyMac is much more than a shiny interface, and that’s what’s really important. Originally, CleanMyMac used a full system scanning process that would tell you what was available to clean and then ask you if you wanted to do so. Now things are much quicker. When you launch version 2.0, the main tab is Automatic Cleanup. It will perform a full system scan for you, confirm that you want to remove all the usual caches and iPhoto files (more on these later), and then finish. It’s a one-minute process if you have an SSD.

The automatic scan will offer to remove extra language files by default. That can break some apps, so we’d recommend turning that off in the preferences before scanning.

Cleaning files manually.

Now you’re probably thinking “Oh no, now I can’t clean the places I want to. It does it all for me.” Don’t worry, when you finish Automatic Cleanup there’s an option to remove whatever you wish from the system. You can even uncheck the boxes and the app will let you skip straight to Manual Cleanup. Thankfully, the developers haven’t forgotten power users.

You might want to cut your sound a bit first, though: sound effects play when a scan or cleanup session is complete, and there’s a fancy opening animation with sound when you first start the app.

Automatic Cleanup is performing a full system scan.

I really like Automatic Cleanup because it’s so quick. In the previous version of CleanMyMac, scanning took a long time and the logs section always slowed it down for some reason. Now there’s no such problem — everything completes in a few minutes so I can continue my work without interruption. That does make me wonder why sound effects are necessary, since I won’t be scanning in the background.

System Cleanup Takes Things a Step Further

System Cleanup results.

If you just want to skip straight to cleaning your entire system, the System Cleanup tab is perfect. It scans for caches, universal binaries, language files, logs, iOS software updates, broken login items, and more. Since it only takes about six seconds to scan (that was in my case, and it found 592.4 MB of files), I’ve found it the best way to get everything sparkling. It’s also very nice to have a small graph that shows what items were found, organized by size. If that’s not enough, you can go into detailed results to see what the app “safely” cleans.

Sometimes authentication is required to clean system caches and logs.

Large & Old Files: Never Forget to Delete Something

I import thousands of photos from my camera each month. Since they’re all RAW CR2 (Canon) files, they take up over 20 MB each. Add that up and my little MacBook Air is in need of a new hard drive fast. Since I typically move them to my external drive, though, everything is fine. That is, until I forget about it. CleanMyMac has a helpful reminder for those archaic files of yours.

Some photos were found in a Large & Old Files scan.

In the Large & Old Files tab, you can scan folders — your home directory is the default one — for old files. Any folder that hasn’t been opened in over a week and is sizable will be shown in the results. It’s handy for the days your Mac is out of space. Unlike Automatic Cleanup though, you need to check which folders you want to delete. You can securely delete them as well.

Uninstall Anything

Uninstaller’s results for an app.

Something Macs need is an easier way to completely remove apps. Launchpad’s method doesn’t always throw away all the preferences and they’re left somewhere deep in the OS. Instead of worrying about such things, you can open CleanMyMac and find the app you want to uninstall. It’ll search for all the related files and remove them safely.

Enabling trash monitoring — in two senses — here.

If that’s too much trouble, the app has trash monitoring. When you switch it on, the app will ask you if you want to properly uninstall an app when you put it in the trash. With that you don’t have to worry about remembering to uninstall things fully because the app will do it for you.

Finding old app files.

My favorite feature of the Uninstaller is its Leftovers tab. Since I sometimes forget to uninstall things correctly and don’t like to have monitoring on, fragments of the apps are left behind. Thanks to this feature, they can be removed with a few clicks. I don’t recommend removing everything on the list without taking a look first because some of the items may still be in use. By default, Leftovers organizes the files by the last time the app was opened, so the top will have things you probably haven’t opened in a long time. Still, make sure before deleting stuff.

An app that was opened five minutes ago.

I did have one problem with the Uninstaller. It’s supposed to show when you last used an app as a way of helping you choose what to remove, but this feature didn’t work properly. For some of my apps, it says I haven’t used them in over six months. However, I open one of them (GrowlVoice) every day to send text messages with Google Voice. The same goes for iClip, which I just opened yesterday.

CleanMyMac’s problem is that it says “launch date”, but really means “date last modified”. Since some apps store their files in different directories, the .app itself was not modified at all when you opened it last. Now, they might record the launch data somewhere else, but I wouldn’t know where that is. The main point is that this feature is broken and should be reading the correct launch information so I don’t go deleting an app I use everyday.

Extensions Manager Helps You Find Unnecessary Plugins

Easily remove or disable plugins like Adobe Flash.

Last, but not least, is the nifty Extensions Manager. It will help you find old plugins that you may not use any longer. My Safari extensions, for instance, were full of old ones that I never used, mainly because I haven’t been using Safari lately. Most of the plugins found were enabled and belonged to the system, so I didn’t touch them, but some Internet ones like Amazon MP3 Downloader had duplicates I needed to purge. This is a much easier way to find such files than searching around in Finder, that’s for sure.

When in Doubt, Use the Tutorial

A tutorial for the Eraser feature.

The one thing I really love about MacPaw’s apps is how user-friendly they are. You wouldn’t expect a cleaning utility to be something for every user, but this developer makes it just that. There’s a ? in the bottom right corner of the app and when you click it, you’ll be shown a tutorial for the tab you’re currently using. They’re written very well and have details on everything you’d want to know about the app’s functionality.

On top of that, there are little “i” buttons everywhere that tell you about each little feature. If you like to question things, just click one of these when you next see it and find out exactly what the app is doing with your files. This kind of openness and user-education is very nice to see in an app.

A Good Utility Becomes Great

The beautiful icon.

CleanMyMac 2.0 is the epitome of Mac optimization. Onyx may be free, but it’s worth spending $19.97 for MacPaw’s app. You won’t find something of equal strength in the field. There just aren’t as many caring developers out there. The effort MacPaw has put into this app is shown everywhere, from the tutorials to the beautiful new user interface and fullscreen mode to the usability. There was only one major problem, and it was with the Uninstaller’s launch date readings. If that’s fixed, this app will be perfect. Even still, it’s quite the essential tool that keeps your Mac running just like it did out of the box.

Giving up iTunes is a tough sell. It’s the music app we love to hate, and with every update, it seems we find new reasons to both cherish and recoil at what for many of us is our default music player. Because iTunes gets the job done, though, most of us don’t go looking elsewhere for a better choice.

Clementine, with lots of options and even more ways to play your music, may be the music app we all didn’t know we were looking for. Integrating with lots of music services and giving you plenty of ways to create playlists and control your music, Clementine is a fresh take on something we all take for granted. Is that enough to displace the mighty iTunes?

Bust a Move

First you need to get all of your music into Clementine. Luckily for your Mac’s storage, you don’t have to actually copy all those files into a new music library. Instead, Clementine can use your existing iTunes media as its source. The first time you launch Clementine, you’ll be prompted to add your music, but you can also get back to there anytime you want in the future by selecting Music Library in the application preferences. Just browse for the folder containing all your iTunes music.

Add as many folders to your Clementine music list as you like.

In fact, you can tell Clementine to scan as many folders as you like. Each time Clementine opens, it will scan the folders you’ve listed for new music files and add them to your Clementine library. I’m used to having to manually import any music I don’t actually download in iTunes, and that doesn’t always happen the same day or even the same week, so I think that’s pretty cool. You’re also not tied to just one folder, so if you want to keep media anywhere other than in your iTunes or Music folder for that matter, Clementine’s on top of that.

That’s great and all, but with a few minutes effort, you’d have all of your music into iTunes anyway. Clementine is just a more citrus-themed place to be, right? Wrong. Clementine doesn’t just stop at the music you’ve got on your computer. You can add music that’s not on your computer, too. Wait up, hold the phone, how does that even work?

Add music streaming services to Clementine, too.

Clementine allows you to sign into music streaming services, like Spotify, Grooveshark, Last.fm, and others. You may need a premium account to make some of these work, such as Spotify, but for others all you need is a login to get your music into Clementine. If you’ve got music files stored on Google Drive, Clementine will add those to your music library, too. That’s a pretty sweet deal if you mirror your Google Drive files on your Mac hard disk and don’t want to double up on any media files by being forced to keep them in a specific media folder.

You’ll get lots of bonus info.

Break It Down

I’m going to be upfront and let you know I’m a full on hermit. If I want to know what’s happening in the outside world, especially the news of the day, I’m looking to podcasts. While there are lots of music players, and sure they can play your podcasts, too, not all of them will sync your podcast subscriptions. If my main music app doesn’t sync podcasts, it’s almost not worth it to me, because I’m going to end up back in iTunes all the time anyway.

Admittedly, the interface isn’t pretty, but the app functions great.

Clementine will do all that, though. You’ll need an account with gPodder.net, but you can search for and subscribe to all of your podcasts. In Clementine’s preferences you’ll log into your gPodder.net account, just like any of the streaming services, and Clementine will have access to all of your subscribed podcasts as they’re updated.

If you have a mobile device and want to sync your music, you can do that with Clementine, too. There’s lots to love about browsing the iTunes store on your Mac, and you won’t find that in Clementine, but if you get apps and updates over Wi-Fi or data anyway or don’t even have a iOS device and just need to sync your music, Clementine’s on top of it. The one caveat is that you’ll need iTunes installed if you want to transfer music to an iOS device, but iTunes can’t be removed from OS X 10.8 without making your Mac freak out, so you most likely have some version of iTunes present.

Final Thoughts

I’ll just come right out and say that Clementine doesn’t look all that great, and there aren’t any skins available to change up the interface. That may lead you to think Clementine is an outdated or abandoned project, but its most recent update, which included podcast support, was only a few months ago.

Clementine brings a lot of features to the table that aren’t available in other music players, most notably iTunes, such as support for popular music streaming service Spotify and others and integration with Google Drive. I love trying out new applications, but if I can replace two or more apps with one that works just as well or better, I’m a happy camper. And Clementine is a music player that does just that, replacing a ton of music I apps I have crudding up my Dock and Applications folder, simply and effectively managing my music library and the rest of my music, too, even if all that music isn’t actually on my Mac.

Kyle Kinkade is the man behind Monocle Society, and has worked with other popular development teams such as Tapulous and Monster Costume. He’s responsible for an app called Pomodorable, that brought the Pomodoro Technique to your Mac in an understandable and fun way.

Recently, the app had to be taken down due to branding problems. We had the opportunity to talk with him about what happened, what’s next for the app, and what his thoughts are on the market for productivity apps.

Pomodorable

Since being released in late 2012, Pomodorable gathered quite a considerable number of loyal users. What’s the deal with it being taken down?

I started Pomodorable as an app for myself a while back, as I was a user of the technique for getting things done. I decided to launch it and I was surprised by the great response it got. Soon after, we heard from FC Garage (Francesco Cirillo’s team) in the form of a takedown notice from Apple. Trying to contact them proved fruitless and I was essentially forced to remove it or deal with more serious legal matters. I like the Pomodoro technique and I respect the people there, while I find the approach they chose to contact me and others interesting, obviously I’m going to do my best to respect it.

This is the first time I’ve had an app removed from the App Store, and the first time I’ve had an app that has to deal with that kind of negative publicity. I could have very well kept the app to myself, but it was also working well for a lot of people, so I decided to have it rebranded. Their claim was that anyone who has a productivity app that uses a tomato is at risk of being taken or pulled down from the store. This meant I had to completely redesign the app in order to keep it from infringing copyright. That’s how Eggscellent came about.

Eggscellent Beta

How did the redesign work? Are you still using the basic principles of the technique?

I’m going to be using essentially the same principles, although there were always things that I wanted to do with the app but couldn’t because I had to stick with the rules of the technique. When I freed myself from the whole Pomodoro technique, I was given a lot of liberty to think how I wanted the app to work. I’ve implemented smaller features, like pausing a running timer, which would normally go against the technique.

The thing is, the Pomodoro technique came about decades ago. Some of the ideas don’t necessarily apply anymore. For the most part, we need to work undistracted, but we have enough tools that enable those distractions. When the technique came about there weren’t any smartphones, the possibility to track things across different devices that we now have with the cloud wasn’t there. I’d like to explore the possibilities of this, we can do larger scope things that enable how people really work today. Integration with mobile phones, tracking information like analyzing your distractions, and other fun things that we could use to engage people. I see this as an opportunity to examine the productivity community and tell them, hey here’s a tried and true practice, how can we change it for our generation?

And how do you keep your app from feeling “stale” after a while? How do you exactly keep people engaged?

I like the feedback and the reward aspect of game mechanics, that’s what I’m gonna be focusing on. I’m used to working with the game community, and so working with the productivity community has been pretty interesting because they are very particular about certain things. I’m expecting some people to say, “I want the tomato back”, and I understand that, but things have got to change. I’m open to listening and adding new features between the final release and the beta.

Pomodorable had some notable bugs when it first came out. Did you use a beta test for it? How are you planning on preventing this for Eggscellent?

With Pomodorable I did have a team of 90 testers and I tested as much as I could with the feedback from the community. For the most part it was all good until we launched it and there were a number of issues that I couldn’t possibly have foreseen. Like someone who disabled all fonts on his machine besides a really obscure one, which caused a crash. You’d think it would only be one guy but I had about 20 people experience that.

Integration with Reminders, Things and Omnifocus also had some strange edge cases out there, people use their apps very differently and it can get pretty complicated. Pomodorable had a pretty rocky release, which put me down since I put a lot of care into releasing anything that I do. This time around I’m doing an open beta which will help prepare a more stable first release. As far as integration, I went back to the drawing board and rethought the way I was doing it.

What are your thoughts on the need for productivity apps? How do you guarantee that they won’t be more distracting than they are helpful, or that it’ll become a chore to use them?

If you take a piece of paper and a pencil, they will be as useful as most productivity apps. Apps shouldn’t be used just for tracking things, since you could do that with anything. I think it has more to do with feeling rewarded and keeping it fun to reward people for using it. I try to approach this by asking myself, “How can I make this fun?”. It’s not enough to just keep people organized, you actually have to find the way to make people want to be organized. That’s the question I’m trying to answer.

Monocle Society

When did you decide to leave Tapulous and do your own thing?

When I realized I didn’t want to keep doing Justin Bieber: Revenge. Seriously though, I had a great time at Tapulous and I’m very happy for those that stuck around after their buy out from Disney. They’re continuing to do good things, but I had other plans in mind. In order for me to do them, I kind of had to start my own thing. I first released an interactive children’s book called Bartleby’s Book of Buttons with the Monster Costume team, and it was heavily featured on the App Store and very well praised. We did that because we wanted to see how children’s books could work on the iPad.

My approach with making apps is to take certain categories of software and think, how would I do it? I’ve done it with productivity apps and with children books, and I’m eyeing other categories to take on. I’m currently working on an Eggscellent iOS app and I already have some ideas for it, although I won’t put a release date on it.

Will you continue to put out your apps through the App Store, or what’s your take on it?

The App Store is certainly a great distribution medium, but I’ve had my share of problems with it. With Pomodorable I had to wait up to 28 days to get some bug fixes up, just because the approval process can take that long. It has certainly made me rethink how I want to distribute this app. I might end up doing the App Store as well as my own independent distribution.

Thanks, Kyle!

We’d like to thank Kyle for taking the time to talk to us. Don’t forget to try out the beta of Eggscellent, which is available for download for free right now!

Today, we are excited to announce a new site dedicated to Tuts+ Live Workshops and two fantastic new workshops; Professional Photo Retouching with Photoshop and An Introduction to Adobe InDesign. If you’re keen to take your Photoshop or InDesign skills to the next level, this is the best way to do it!

Tuts+ Live Workshops are presented live by experts in their field with a talent and passion for teaching. And don’t worry, we record every workshop. So even if you can’t make it to the live workshop, you won’t miss out. We have two exciting new workshops available, and more on the way, so be sure to join the Tuts+ Live Workshops mailing list to stay posted on upcoming workshops.

For both of the new workshops we’re offering a special price of $49 for early takers. Places are strictly limited and the early bird tickets for our first workshop sold out in 48 hours, so act fast to make sure you don’t miss out!

Professional Photo Retouching with Photoshop

Do you love using Photoshop? Do you want to improve your photo retouch skills and jumpstart your career as a photo retoucher?

In this new workshop you will learn all the most advanced photo retouching skills you need for professional work in several fields in the industry. The photo retouch techniques we cover in this special workshop are used by high-end fashion photo retouchers, digital artists, professional photographers and graphic designers. Join Martin Perhiniak, Adobe Design Master Instructor for five intense but fun workshops if you want to learn how to use Photoshop for professional photo retouching and jumpstart your career as a photo retoucher!

Learn more about Professional Photo Retouching with Photoshop

An Introduction to Adobe InDesign

Do you want to learn to work with Adobe InDesign quickly and painlessly? If you always wanted to work on magazines, books and brochures this is the right place to start your career!

What is InDesign? InDesign is the best tool for designing for print and digital publishing. It is a very powerful application with lots of great features and this is your best chance to learn everything you need from this online workshop led by Martin Perhiniak, Adobe Design Master Instructor. This is the ultimate InDesign how to, so sign up now, learn how to use InDesign, and become an expert!

Learn more about An Introduction to Adobe InDesign

Grab a Ticket During the Early Bird Period

For both of the new workshops we’re offering a special price of $49 for early takers, once those are gone the workshop will be $99 – still great value as an amazing investment in your future career!

If you’re interested in future workshops then definitely join the Tuts+ Live Workshops mailing list to stay posted on upcoming workshops and get notified as soon as they’re available, the early bird tickets for our previous workshop sold out in 48 hours so it’s worth getting ahead of the game!

We’re really excited about our two new workshops, Professional Photo Retouching with Photoshop and An Introduction to Adobe InDesign, but places are strictly limited so act fast to make sure you don’t miss out!