Category: Mac

Quickly and easily sharing information between Macs and iOS devices is something many of us need to do regularly. If you need to share a grocery list, link, phone number, library call number, or image file between a Mac and an iOS device, there are many options for getting the information on one device or the other. For example, you can email it to yourself, make a new note in one of the many cross-device syncing notes apps, or edit a Dropbox file.

But what if sharing that information were as easy as copying it to the system clipboard? The three apps included in this comparison review—CloudClipboard, CloudClip Manager, and Cloud Clip—all use iCloud to sync your clipboard between Mac and iOS devices. (Yes, it was hard to keep these straight for the review.) This can potentially make sharing that grocery list between devices much easier, but which app should you go with? Read on to find out our top choice.

Do These Apps Work?

Yes. All of these apps performed as they should in my testing. I never ran into an problems syncing my clipboard with any of the three apps—even when I tried to get tricky and copy information to the clipboard with no internet connection. When I reconnected, the clipboards would sync. Sync was also relatively fast. I would compare the speed to syncing notes in Evernote or Simplenote in all three apps. While all the apps worked as expected, each clearly had its strengths and weaknesses.

CloudClipboard

The one thing that stood out with CloudClipboard ($4.99) on both the Mac and iOS devices is the UI. Rather than just presenting a list of all your clippings, this app automatically organizes them into different categories: All, Text, Links, Web Clippings, and Images. CloudClipboard is also clearly the best looking of the three.

CloudClipboard has an attractive UI.

CloudClipboard also offered a couple of features not available with the other utilities. First, it allows users to download images to the hard drive, which could come in handy. Second, clippings can be titled. This feature combined with the categories make it possible to use CloudClipboard like an information manager in addition to a clipboard manager. Finally, you can choose to have the app include everything in your clipboard, or set a key combination that can be used to clip only certain clippings into the app.

One issue with the this app is the lack of a menubar only option—the other apps in this review both allow menubar only access. While you can close the apps window and leave it running in the dock, it would be nice to be able to access the interface from the menubar.

Update: It looks like CloudClipboard for Mac was updated today and now has a menubar option!

iOS Version

CloudClipboard’s iOS version ($2.99) has the same basic interface as the Mac app. The iOS version also allows you to manually enter text, which again gives the app functionality similar to a notes app. I also like that the iOS version notifies the user when the background session is about to end and provides several sharing options for the clippings.

CloudClipboard on the iPad

Cloud Clip

Cloud Clip ($3.99) is the most full featured clipboard utility of the bunch. Just browse through the preferences for evidence to back up this claim as several options are available for controlling and organizing your clippings. One especially helpful feature is the sharing option, which allows you to share any clipping through email, the Messages app, Airdrop, Twitter, Facebook, or Flicker. Cloud Clip doesn’t have categories for clippings, but it does allow you to star clippings for quick access. Some users are going to be wary of clipping information to the cloud for security reasons. Cloud Clip helps with this by allowing you to blacklist—i.e. ignore clippings from—certain apps.

The one shortcoming of Cloud Clip right now is the design and UI. Images are grainy and the coloring and border are not attractive in the least.

Cloud Clip is a menubar app.

iOS Version

In short, the iOS version ($.99) of Cloud Clip shares the same strengths and weaknesses as its Mac counterpart: feature filled, but lacking in the design department. Many of the same options available in the Mac version preferences are also available on the iOS version.

This is a screenshot of Cloud Clip for Mobile on the iPhone.

CloudClip Manager

The one free option in this comparison review, CloudClip Manager, does not offer a fancy interface or a plethora of features like the aforementioned apps. Users are not able to find clips by category or easily share clippings through various services. However, it is free, reliable, and has the same basic functionality as the paid apps.

CloudClip Manager’s interface is simple, but gets the job done.

One thing that may turn off some potential users is the limit on clippings. The app only stores 15 clippings at a time.

iOS Version

The iOS version of CloudClip is also free. While it is also not as feature rich as the iOS versions for the other two apps, it does have a simple and sleek interface and looks better than Cloud Clip’s mobile app.

And the Winner Is

First of all, let me say that all of these apps get the job done, and you really can’t go wrong with any of them. Deciding on which one will work best for you is going to depend on your needs. If you need to organize clippings and design is important for you, CloudClipboard is going to be your best choice. If you like options and features Cloud Clip is the way to go. Looking for something simple and free? CloudClip Manager will suit your needs.

For me, it came down to design versus function, and I chose function. Cloud Clip found a home on my menubar because of the sharing options, despite its rather unappealing UI and design.

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For people like me that hate paperwork, tax season can be a terrifying time of year. The tediousness of entering a slew of financial information and the fear of a potential audit makes the whole process one that I dread. For the past few years, I’ve been content to just dedicate a weekend to organizing my information and doing it all myself via the TurboTax website. When I saw that TurboTax offered a desktop version of their service via the Mac App Store, I decided to use it this year instead of the web app.

How does the app stack up against its own web-version and the competition?

Getting Started

The first surprise I found was the fact that the app didn’t offer to let me log in with my TurboTax account. The web app lets you import your information from previous years, but the desktop app skipped this feature the first time I opened it, (more on that later). Consequently, you may find that you need to devote a few more minutes than you might have expected to filling in personal information.

Importing data from previous years seems to work for some users but not for others.

Tax law is a dynamic area, so rules and procedures change frequently. As a result, the app automatically checks for updates as soon as you open it. I spent a few days using this app, and each time I opened it back up it had new updates. They don’t take long, and it is reassuring to know that the folks at TurboTax are staying on top of the latest information for you.

I had updates every time I opened the app. Fortunately they run quickly.

Interface

The desktop app is set up in much the same way as the web app. At the top left you get an updated count of your refund for both state and federal taxes. Below that counter is a “flag” feature, which lets you mark a section that you are unsure about for future reference. The top of the window gives you quick access to a few features that help you understand your tax situation, and what areas you have yet to fill out. There are buttons for the Help Center, as well as a slide-out for community discussion which allows you to post questions for other users to help you out with.

The navigation bar missed the opportunity to help users jump to sections with greater accuracy.

Overall, the interface is very functional and intuitive but does have certain usability drawbacks. Navigating between sections is easy using the links at the top of the window, but getting to specific parts within each section requires a bit more clicking than I would have liked. Having nested navigation would have saved me quite a bit of time.

The insight that the app offers isn’t always very visually appealing or useful.

The information you get from the Tax Data and Tax Summary is useful, though not presented in a way that helps neophytes like myself understand what all the information means. There are no charts or graphs that give any insight into your taxes, such as the bracket you are in or how much you are paying compared to last year. In many ways, the information you get ends up just mirroring what you see on many of your standard forms, such as your W-2.

Features

I have a lot of respect for people who can stare at spreadsheets of numbers all day without losing their mind, but I’m sure not one of them. I’d hate to have to stare at spreadsheets any longer than I have to when filing my taxes. Fortunately, TurboTax is able to automatically import much of the information that it needs from the financial forms your employers and investment managers send you. Using some numbers from these forms, including your Social Security number and your employer ID number, it will automatically fill in information for you. I found that this worked well, but only after making sure that I entered dashes and spaces exactly as they appeared on my forms.

The import features work very well, but you’ll have to be careful about dashes and spaces.

One of the most confusing parts of my taxes always stems from investment information. TurboTax eliminates that confusion by allowing you to enter your login info for your investment company and it will fill out your 1099-DIV and 1099-INT. If you own more than a couple of stocks and mutual funds, this will save you loads of time. I use a large investment firm, but the list seems to show support for many smaller, regional firms as well. For the most part, it seems that if your firm is supported by Mint.com, it will work fine with TurboTax.

TurboTax walks you through deductions and credits by asking you a number of straightforward questions in order to determine which ones you qualify for. I ended up having a question and clicked on the Help Center button, which redirects you to your browser. Getting good answers to your questions on TurboTax seems to be hit-and-miss, but I fortunately was able to get some clarification regarding a deduction related to my student loans.

The app will let you know what your chances are of being audited.

As you complete each section, an error checker runs to make sure you haven’t missed anything. I found it to be very accurate, as it caught fields that I had skipped several times. Once you are finished entering your information, TurboTax gives you a few options regarding how you receive your tax refund money. You can either enter your checking account information or have a check mailed to you. I opted for the electronic transfer, and used a check to get my routing and account numbers.

Pros and Cons

The whole process of using TurboTax as an application was quite similar to my past experiences of using the website. The folks who structure the questions take great care to dumb it down for people like me, and they demystify the tax code.

As you move through the application, you can always save your progress. Rather than just save your progress internally, you export the save file to wherever you’d like. This does have the benefit of giving users the flexibility to move the save file around, but it seems like having the file saved inside the app with the option to export it would be a simpler solution for the most novice of users.

As I mentioned, importing your information isn’t quite as straightforward as it could be. When I first downloaded the software, it opened right up without asking about last year. Many reviewers in the MAS also found that to be a disappointing surprise. However, after opening up the app again, a “Startup Assistant” popped up and asked about importing data from last year. I’m not sure whether this was part of those aforementioned updates that occur every time you start TurboTax, or whether its some glitch that prevents it from happening when you first launch it. Either way, you can apparently import data from previous returns, but it didn’t work for me.

What I found to be most troubling was the apparent lack of security. With the web app, I was sure to have 1Password create a long, complicated password to protect my sensitive personal information, such as my Social Security number. The Mac app oddly has no such protection. Of course, you can stick the saved file in an encrypted disk image, but this is a feature that should be part of the app.

The pricing structure is simple, but you don’t get a good sense of what you will be charged with the Mac app like you do with the web app.

TurboTax is a textbook example of how to use fine print when it comes to advertising your prices. They plaster the words free all over their website, but users quickly find out that they use that word to refer to some very basic features, and that you will almost certainly end up having to pay for something. When you use the website, they seem to be a bit more upfront about what each feature will cost you, (and push those deluxe packages pretty hard). But with the Mac version, I made it all the way to the very end before it alerted me to the cost of my state and federal tax filings.

So, while the app is free to download, it’s best to remember that you’ll likely end up spending at least $29 to file your taxes.

Conclusion

I never had much to complain about the last few years when I would file my taxes using the TurboTax website. For the most part, their Mac version of the software mimics the best parts of the web experience, especially the sense that they are holding your hand as you navigate through the many sections. However, all of the advantages that one might expect from having a desktop version of a web app, (namely, convenience), seem strangely absent here.

While it gets the job done just fine, however, when you compare the overall experience to the web app, it is hard to recommend using this.

Snapshot tells the story of a clumsy robot who finds himself lost and alone, left nothing but an abandoned world full of dangers and his trusty camera. His camera provides him the ability to photograph objects, removing them from the world completely and pasting them back into the world via that very same camera.

This ability in turn affords you the opportunity to solve Snapshot’s collection of increasingly difficult puzzles. Along the way you’ll encounter and interact with a number of objects both helpful and harmful, everything from dangerous spikes to bouncy elephants. If these adventures sound like a challenge you’re ready to take on, stick with me to learn more about Snapshot.

Shooting Basics

When you start a game of Snapshot, you’re placed in a seemingly idyllic world. Pastel colors, soft landscapes and an adorable robot? It seems too easy and the initial training levels certainly persuade you to continue thinking in this manner of simplicity. Over the first few levels you undergo nothing more than an interactive explanation of the concepts which comprise the basis of Snapshot.

Selecting a level – the very beginning.

The game appears at first to be more along the lines of a 2D platformed, as opposed to the puzzle game it is categorized as. The controls lend themselves to this belief and are appropriately rudimentary, offering simply options to move sideways and to jump. You also learn to take pictures of boxes (and later other objects) and then use the snapshots to paste the box into strategically optimal locations.

Learning the basic controls like movement and crouching.

In the first few levels the puzzles you are called to solve test no more than your ability to successfully navigate the levels, using the boxes to provide a boost when you’re not tall enough to reach a certain location. As the first levels progress, you learn to navigate with the boxes to avoid death due to dangerously large spikes. The boxes continue to teach you as you use them to solve puzzles involving stacking, climbing and even “photo-free” zones.

Solving an early puzzle – using the boxes to escape death by spike.

Advanced Photography

As you progress through the levels, you quickly realize that what once seemed a cute and light-hearted adventure is now a world full of challenges that can push you to the brink. To start, let’s revisit some of the levels you’ve already solved. You may have noticed the presences of badges, awarded based upon your performance in the three-level groupings. You likely already earned at least most of the star badges, but there are others available to win as well, for achievements like beating a certain time or taking snapshots of the collectible items.

Figuring out which badges I’ve earned (or not earned) thus far.

If the challenge of earning badges (especially the pesky time badges) isn’t enough for you, the levels quickly become more difficult as you progress. While techniques are simple in the beginning (no more than moving a few boxes for height or protection), the difficulty compounds rather quickly. New levels require the use of additional objects, precise timing and a great deal of patience. You might find yourself balancing on a small point, attempting to snap an impossible angled photograph or learn to time your movements precisely, jumping and placing an object underneath yourself, all in the split second before you land. The puzzles are always possible, frustratingly difficult as they might seem at times.

Solving a later puzzle – here I must escape a seemingly endless pit with just one small plant. What will I do?

The Final Shots

Snapshot has treated me fairly well, especially given the fact that I acquired it in the Humble Bundle, thus for a more than decent price. The game has been quite entertaining, the graphics are whimsical and the music always heightens whatever the mood happens to be. The difficulty of obstacles and puzzles increase at a fairly well-planned pace, never too much but always enough to frustrate you.

Of course, Snapshot is not without its faults. While the game itself is well thought out and the puzzles certainly challenge you to think and solve in new ways, the controls and in-game physics certainly deserve some initial consideration. While I absolutely adore many aspects of Snapshot, I’ve found my relationship as a whole to be rather hot and cold. At times, I’m so drawn into the game that forcing myself to stop playing is quite a chore. At other times, the control problems drive me to the edge, filling me with a desire to delete Snapshot and never have to open it again.

The good certainly outweighs the bad a majority of the time (or I wouldn’t bother telling you about Snapshot), but it’s definitely worth keeping in mind. What’s your patience like? Are you willing to sacrifice some of the good control options in favor of all the other benefits Snapshot has? These are questions to keep in mind as you contemplate a purchase of Snapshot.

As always, I’m excited to hear your thoughts on the game. Have you had a chance to try it out? Did you love it or hate it? Were the control issues tolerable or did they prevent you from enjoying the game? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

If you’ve been looking for the best way to go paperless with your Mac, Prizmo 2 is the app you need in your arsenal. We gave it a 9 in our recent review, and found that it was one of the best OCR apps for the Mac that we’d tried out. With a modern UI and a speedy text deception engine, plus extras like curvature correction and translation, it’s the companion your scanner has been needing.

We’ve got 5 copies of Prizmo to giveaway to our readers, and all you’ll need to do to enter the giveaway is to leave a comment below and let us know what scanner you use to get your documents saved on your Mac. You can also share the contest on Twitter, Facebook, or App.net, and share a link to your post here for an extra entry.

We’ll be closing the giveaway on February 6th, 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.

I tend to use my Mac’s desktop as a place to dump the files I’m currently working with, and as a writer and app reviewer, that means I’ve got a dozen or more screenshots and markdown files on my desktop at any given time. It works, but gets a bit messy, and while it makes it easy to drag-and-drop images into articles when I’m working in a normal sized window, it’s not so simple when I’m writing in full-screen mode.

Unclutter is a neat new app from the people behind DaisyDisk that aims to solve this this problem. It’s a rather useful little tool once you’re used to using it, enough that I kept it around even though I didn’t anticipate using it much when I first tried it out.

Getting Uncluttered

Unclutter is an interesting little app. It has three widgets: a clipboard viewer, quick file storage space, and a basic notepad. All of this, wrapped up in a app that fills the top of your screen and hides away when you don’t need it. To see anything in your Unclutter, just drag your mouse to the top of the screen, and drag down, and the window will slide down. Click outside of the window, and Unclutter will hide itself again. It feels natural once you’re used to it, but it’s unique enough that Unclutter will show you a quick animation to explain how to use it when you first start it up.

Unclutter is designed to help you keep your desktop clean, so instead of keeping everything you’re working on saved on your desktop, or having several Finder windows open, you can just drag the files you need to the File Storage area for safe-keeping. It works just like your desktop or a folder in Finder; you can triple-tap on a file or select and hit space to preview it in Quick Look, double-click to open a file, or drag-and-drop a file into any app or folder you have open.

There’s two more nifty things in Unclutter: a clipboard viewer and a mini notepad. The clipboard viewer will show a preview of what you’ve copied (including a picture preview if you’ve copied part of a picture) or the file path of a file you’ve copied. The notepad is designed to jot down stuff you won’t need to save forever, but just need somewhere quick to type. And, of all things, if you need to save what you’ve typed, just select the text and drag it to your desktop or a Finder folder, and it’ll save a .txt file with your text.

Unclutter drops down over your desktop or full-screen apps

Unclutter, the Way you Want

There’s a number of unique ways you can put Unclutter to use. It’s great for storing files that you’ll be using, especially if you like using full-screen apps since Unclutter will still work when you’re using a full-screen app. Drag the files you need into Unclutter, then drag them back out in your full-screen app. The notes app is also great for saving some quick reference things that you wouldn’t want to store in your normal notebook app.

Best of all, you can drag any of the widgets out onto your desktop, and they’ll hover over anything else you have open, which is great for keeping up with all those little things you need in your work.

Drag any of the Unclutter panes off for a floating reference window

There’s not too much to customize, but you can tweak what you need to do to open Unclutter. You can set a specific keyboard shortcut to open it, or tweak what you need to do when you hover to the top of the screen to open Unclutter. I happen to like the scroll-from-the-top default setting, but it’s nice there’s a few more ways to tweak it.

Tweaking Unclutter

Conclusion

There might be no way to keep your Mac perfectly organized while you’re organized, and Unclutter might not be the absolute best solution, but it sure is a nice little tool to have around. I’ve found myself using it to jot down those little bits of info that you really don’t need to save in your main notes app, like a phone number or the pizza order I’m supposed to be calling in. The file storage is especially useful keeping screenshots and more together for an article, and since I like editing full-screen in WordPress, it makes adding them to articles quite a bit easier.

It’s like a drag-and-drop tool like DragonDrop or Yoink mixed with a simple notepad, wrapped up in an unique UI. Best of all, it’s cheaper than either of those two apps, at only $1.99. That makes it definitely an app you should consider adding to your workflow.

“Do I need the light on or is darkness the key to my salvation?” After my latest Humble Bundle download, I spent many long, late nights pondering that question as I slowly but surely worked my way through my latest favorite, Closure. It’s is an independent puzzler that found its start as a Newgrounds flash game. Closure has since been released for Mac and is available via a Steam purchase.

In Closure the name of the game is the manipulation of light, balancing lightness and darkness to suit your needs. Will the spots of darkness allow you to pass through a seemingly solid wall or will they cause you to tumble into the abyss, falling to your inevitable death? If these questions pique your interest, stick with me to learn more about how Closure works.

Learning Closure

As soon as you begin your game, you’re plunged into darkness. You see nothing but a faceless, six-limbed creature, a ball emanating light, and instructions to press the A key. Some quick experimentation teaches you to pick the light up and carry it around, the basics of gameplay.

The first moment you experience in the game.

Once you begin to tote the light around, you learn more about the workings of Closure. It takes no time to realize the importance of light. Without light, you cannot see, touch or use any surfaces. Darkness in general means danger and death, making your small ball of light essential to your health and movement. You learn to move, to discard one ball of light in favor of another and to always strive to make your way through the final door at the end of each level.

Reaching the door at the end.

As the tutorial adds additional elements, the final techniques you must master are the various ways in which you can interact with light. You’ve long understood the ball of light you carry, but additional opportunities abound. The tutorial briefly exposes you to the swivel light which you angle about according to your needs. You are also exposed to platforms which hold the balls of light. Depositing such a ball into the platform causes the platform to move, allowing you to navigate in ways which were previously impossible.

A moving platform of light, allowing me to traverse a seemingly solid and substantial wall of rock.

The Imminent Frustration

Post struggling your way through the tutorial, the real fun begins. You’re first taken to the level selector. Here you can choose from three doors, each leading to a different world comprised of 24 levels.

Choosing from the real levels.

When you enter a new world, Closure really starts to show its quirkiness. Your character becomes something new, whether you lose a limb, change genders, experience a costume change or grow a new face. As your character morphs, so does the world around you, placing you in challenge after challenge.

Morphing into a new character in a new world.

Of course this review isn’t complete without at least a taste of the puzzles you have in store, right? I don’t want to spoil any solutions for you, but levels include a variety of challenges. You might have to figure out how to jump through a solid wall with just one ball of light or figure out how to angle five different lights in the perfect way in order to traverse the only walkway available that level. You’ll need to collect keys and deal with light that gets fainter the closer you get to it.

The challenges are incredible in that they are all somehow quite unique. With 72 levels you might expect some monotony in puzzles. Fortunately, while concepts are expanded upon from puzzle to puzzle, each level offers a very distinct challenge not found in other levels.

Figuring out how to gain access to this seemingly blocked off door is the challenge of this level.

Final Thoughts

As I experienced (and I’m sure you will too), Closure is quite frustrating. I cursed with quite some regularity while playing through the game, and I’m sure your experience won’t be any different. At times I had to shut my laptop and walk away, to avoid my desire to throw my computer against a wall. The game kicked my butt a lot of the time, and you know what? I loved every second.

Closure is tough but never impossible. Every level had a solution I could eventually figure out and this was something I noticed from the tutorial on. Elements are added throughout the game (while the tutorial is comprehensive, it certainly doesn’t expose you to everything). The elements within the game are magnificently done. The game is as artsy as it gets, but never to a bad extreme. The sights and sounds pair perfectly with the frustration and despair you are sure to feel as you struggle to make it through “just one more level” before you finally crash for the night.

I really have nothing bad to say about Closure. The controls were a little frustrating at a few moments, but it was rarely an issue. What impresses me more than anything though is my desire to continue playing Closure. I’ve got just a few levels to beat and I don’t know what I’m going to do when the game is over.

Remember Dashboard? That area where you keep these tiny, simple widgets for converting measurements, checking sport scores and stock prices, and more? It happens to still be alive, even if you’ve likely quit paying much attention to it these days.

Is there any reason you should still use the Dashboard? Turns out, it’s still a plenty useful little Mac tool, and I’ll likely still be using it until Apple finally drops it entirely. Here’s why.

Oh Widgets.

Widgets used to be one of the hottest things in tech, and everyone had them, not just Macs. Google had Google Desktop on PCs, Yahoo bought out Konfabulator, one of the original widget engines, and Microsoft had the Sidebar Widgets in Windows Vista. Even KDE, one of the more popular Linux desktop environments, had their own widgets. It seemed you weren’t a proper tech company without your own desktop widgets engine.

Widgets were easy to make, since they were mainly based on web code, and they seemed exciting at first. They were for the most part just web code – HTML, JavaScript, CSS, XML, and some images. Almost anyone could throw one together. So for a time, it seemed that almost everyone had a widget for their service, almost like the mobile apps craze of today.

But the widget craze is mostly over. Google discontinued Google Desktop in 2011, Yahoo killed their desktop widgets in 2012, and Windows 8 dropped support for the Vista-style widgets. Apple, it seems, is the last man standing with a functioning widget system that’s still supported. But even Apple’s Dashboard support seems to be waning, at least if you base your opinion on their incredibly dated Widget gallery.

The Dashboard Widget page sure doesn’t look good today…

Seems Like Dashboard Met iOS…

That said, Dashboard still got a bit of attention in OS X Mountain Lion, enough that it seems that Apple might not be done with it just yet. Dashboard now has a ton of iOS style to it. You’ll see all of the widgets you can use on their own Launchpad-style page by clicking the plus button in the bottom left of Dashboard. You can click and hold on the Dashboard icons, and they’ll start shaking just like Apps do in iOS or on OS X’ Launchpad. What’s interesting here is that all of the icons are small squares, so they look so much like iOS apps. You can drag them into folders, or click the x to delete them. You can remove any dashboard widget except the included ones, no matter where you downloaded them from, unlike Launchpad which only lets you uninstall App Store apps.

Seems like I’ve seen that before … in iOS!

And, of all things, Dashboard works great with the latest OS X features. Widgets are sandboxed, so you’ll see the Contacts widget that ships with OS X asking permission to see your contacts, of all things. Dashboard is also integrated with Spaces, so if you swipe to the right from your main desktop you’ll see the Dashboard in its own space. Or, you can still have it open in a semi-transparent layer on top of your desktop if you’d prefer, ready to be brought forward with a keyboard shortcut.

Dashboard’s settings.

Apple’s own Dashboard widgets got a touch of iOS style, too, with the Stocks and Weather widgets looking almost just like their iOS counterparts. There’s also a few oddly redundant widgets; why would anyone want a separate dictionary widget when the dictionary is integrated so beautifully throughout all of OS X? But there’s still a few widgets that fill in a nice, niche need on the Mac that’s filled by built-in apps on iOS, and Apple seems to have decided that the best way to bring them to the Mac was with widgets. Some of the very best current Dashboard widgets from 3rd party developers are compainion apps to iOS apps, such as Delivery Status, DashNote for Simplenote, and Notefile.

That almost makes you wonder if Apple has some idea of making Dashboard into a way to run iOS apps on the Mac, or if they perhaps plan to make a way to turn Widgets into simple iOS apps. I highly doubt they’d ever have full widgets on iOS, Android-style, but turning a Dashboard widget into an app similar to the Stocks app with the Stocks Dashboard Widget … that could be very interesting.

Safari: Dashboard’s Killer App

I still use Dashboard daily to check the day’s US Dollar to Thai Baht exchange rate, the weather forecast, and today’s stock prices. It’s all stuff I do from my iPhone, and so it’s nice to have the same things on my Mac during the day. But what keeps me using Dashboard is Safari. Just open any site that you’d want to check often, right-click, and select Open in Dashboard. You’ll then get to select anything on the page to clip and turn into a live widget in Dashboard.

Safari, meet Dashboard.

It’s an old trick, one that’s been around since Leopard, but it’s still a good trick. In fact, it’s the one that got me started using Dashboard again this past fall, and has kept me using it ever since. I used it to grab a quick countdown widget of the days until my wedding from WolframAlpha, the awesome computational web app that powers much of the fun stuff in Siri. Just search for something that’ll change over time (days until a certain date, a stock price, planes currently flying over you), clip the part of the site you like, and then you’ll be able to check up on it quickly by switching over to Dashboard. No extra tabs needed.

My Dashboard, complete with a web clip

Many sites work great like this; you can keep up, say, with the top of your Facebook, Hacker News, Reddit, or any other site with a web clip. You can open a mobile or responsive site in a small window, then clip it to fit more on your Dashboard. Or, WolframAlpha gives you a great way to make more app-like widgets that give you info you might otherwise need a specialized app for. You can’t interact with the web clip, for the most part, but you can click links on the page to open them in your default browser. So, it’s best for seeing things you’d otherwise have opened a new tab in your browser to see, not for using web apps, but it can still be very useful.

It might not be the most useful thing on your Mac, but it’s useful enough to keep me using Dashboard. And even if the iOS app aspirations fall through, I hope Apple keeps Dashboard around if nothing else than for web clips.

Conclusion

It’s tough to say if Dashboard is here to stay. Apple could always cut it out in the next version of OS X, or leave it half-neglected. Either way, the newer iOS style widgets and web clips are enough to make it useful for me, and I for one am glad it’s still in OS X. And if you’d like to make your own Dashboard widgets, here’s a quick tutorial from our friends at Mac.Tuts+ on how to do just that!

Do you still use the Dashboard? If so, I’d love to hear what widgets you’re using!

We love learning about the work that goes into making the apps we love. We got a chance to talk to Marcelo, the developer behind Should I Sleep, an app that we’d reviewed and ran a giveaway of recently. He provided some insight into their development process, and how they get the ideas for their apps.

Join us after the break to learn more!

Could you tell us a bit about yourself and your development work so far?

I started developing software in 1982, for the largest Brazilian printer and disk manufacturer. From mail merge to supply chain management it was incredible what we could achieve with an Apple IIe, its 64Kbytes RAM and lots of 5,25″ floppy disks. From there, I moved to CP/M, DOS and Windows. In 1990, I joined Symantec (publisher of Think C and Norton products) to manage their local technical operations. It was the golden age of utilities and antivirus software. In 1995 I founded my own company, AnySoft, and have been working with Open Source CRM software. Recently, I moved back to developing for Apple devices and started to analyze opportunities for development.

The Should I Sleep Team: Alexandre, Fernanda, Marcelo, and Rodrigo

Why do you choose to develop for the Mac?

Apple has been all about innovation and design. I was used to a world where the top priority was the number of features. An app should do everything possible, no matter how complex it would become. I was immediately attracted by the simplicity of the Apple’s environment: solve a single problem, in the most innovative way. One step at a time.

Your app Should I Sleep was pretty popular with our readers so far. Could you tell us what inspired you originally to create the app?

I always found myself forgetting to enable, disable or adjust energy settings, and was caught in the middle of a presentation with the display shut-off on my audience. Computers should solve problems, not create them. If a computer can do so many wonderful things, how can it not manage itself better in such a basic task? So, I started wondering, how can the computer “sense” me?

I find it neat how many sensors you managed to create for the app to detect if one’s using their Mac. How did develop those ideas?

So, now I had a single problem and a innovative way of solving it: mapping all daily situations where the display dims, check what I was doing, and analyze technically if there was some way for the computer to be aware of that. The first and most common case was when I was reading something on the screen. By staring at the screen for a while, I could finally see it… the camera!

From then on, I’ve been mapping situations and possible sensors. The second one I thought of was the external display sensor, which would solve the annoying presentation problem. Then naturally I found situations that could be covered by sound, motion, network traffic, processor usage, and more.

How difficult was it to make each of the sensors, especially with the limitations of sandboxing in the App Store?

Sandboxing does bring protection by not allowing apps to automatically do unsafe operations without the user wanting it. But it does impose lots of restrictions for developers. My apps can’t, for example, read information from another app or track their internet connections to prevent sleep depending on what is being done with the app. We had a hard time creating the Download Monitor, and are still deciding on the best way to create an Application Sensor that will prevent sleep depending on the open/active applications or windows.

But we don’t do workarounds. It must work flawlessly and according to the rules, otherwise we won’t do it.

We try to avoid apps that use in-app purchases that can be used up (i.e. coins in games) by default, since we find them to be not very honest to users. However, you seem like you’ve hit a nice balance by selling app features with in-app purchases. How has that worked out for you so far, versus just selling the app for one price?

That was a hard decision. Do we create lite and pro versions? A single version with everything included, or go the in-app purchase way? And what would be free and what would be paid? I swear that, at first, it broke my heart to think about going with Face Detection for free. It is definitely the most effective sensor and I thought no one would buy the additions.

But then I thought “this is all about reputation”. I’ll only sell anything if the user has a good first experience. As for the sale model, it’s kind of clear to me that the new in-app purchases is the Apple way. It is more future-proof and easier to manage since it’s a single product release, marketing, support, etc. The only thing that upsets me a little is that some users do think apps with in-app are scams just trying to lure the user for the paid functionality.

iOS apps can already seem very “smart” thanks to the many sensors in mobile devices. Macs aren’t endowed with quite as many sensors, but do you think there’s still a big potential for Macs to be more “aware” of their surroundings and seem smarter?

Yes. Instead of thinking about software features, we need to think about daily user situations. It is like filming each and every user action and environment, playing it slow-motion and checking how the computer can “sense” that.

Apple Goodies!

Macs do have lots of sensors, for example, motion, ambient light, location. Why isn’t there an app that changes its UI or functionality based on ambient light, for example? We have them all in our Should I Sleep roadmap. Of course, we still need in-depth analysis, especially regarding sandboxing.

What Mac do you use for development, and what Mac apps do you use in your daily workflow?

As a small company, we currently have 2 MacBook Air, 1 White MacBook, and 1 iMac. We also have 4 iPhones, 2 iPads and 1 iPad Mini, since we also have plans to enter the iOS market.

If you could pick one thing that the next version of OS X would include, what would it be?

I’m not sure if this should be part of OS X or the App Store system. But certainly I’d like to see a more effective way for users to contact developers (and the other way around). The current system almost invites users to post reviews that are, in fact, support requests. Developers cannot answer those reviews and do not have access to users email addresses. But I think users do not know that.

We do not have a single unanswered email and, after 7 releases in 90 days, all known bugs were fixed and all feature requests were either implemented or are on the way. We feel sad every time there is a review with not enough information for us to implement. We spent hours and hours trying to track down reviewers (by their nicknames) on forums and social networks just to try to help them. We were successful in several cases, but some nicknames are so common that make impossible for us to take any further action.

Can you share any upcoming features you’re planning for Should I Sleep, or any new apps you’re planning on releasing in the near future?

As I have suggested, there will be more sensors. The most important one would be a Profile Manager, which will be location and/or time based. The idea is that if you only use a group of sensors at home and another at the office, for example, you’ll be able to completely customize all settings and sensors, save it and Should I Sleep will automatically do the switch. At university it may activate “External Display” and “Sound Activity”, at home “Face Detection”, “Camera Motion” and “Download Monitor”.

We also have plans for Calendar Events (such as meetings), the Application Filter (mentioned on a previous answer) and even a Script Runner, that will run an Applescript/shell script and prevent sleep based on its result. As for a new app, yes, we have plans to create a revolutionary benchmark app as well.

The Should I Sleep team, keeping busy

Thanks, Marcelo!

We’d like to say a special Thank You! to Marcelo for taking the time to talk with us about Should I Sleep and his work at making Macs know more about what’s going on. If you haven’t tried out Should I Sleep, we’d recommend giving it a try; it’s pretty neat how nicely it works.

Oh, and if you haven’t seen it yet, check out our roundup of apps that use your Mac’s hardware in unique ways. Should I Sleep is an impressive example, but there’s a ton more out there, too!

It’s been 29 years since Apple unveiled the original Macintosh, long enough that the Macs most of us use today would seem like science fiction compared to the original Macintosh. But the story of Apple doesn’t start with the Mac.

8 years earlier, Jobs and Wozniak demonstrated the Apple I, the computer that started it all, at the Homebrew Computer Club. Then, a year later, the Apple II was demonstrated, and it soon became one of the first computers to be released that was a mass success. The Macintosh came along, but it was still years before the Apple II computers had fully disappeared from Apple’s lineup.

My own first Apple computer (of sorts) was decidedly not a Mac. Instead, it was the one Apple device that seems to be the early predecessor of Apple’s real future as a mobile device company: the Newton.

So did you ever use an original Apple computer? If so, we’d love to hear about it in the comments below.

And if you’re curious what Macs your fellow AppStorm readers are using, our giveaway from last week turned into an impromptu poll about that!

Did you know your MacBook Pro has a motion sensor? The hardware in your Mac – no matter which Mac you own – has some great features that you might have not even ever realized. We keep coming across fun apps that show some of the more unique ways you can use your Mac’s hardware, so we decided to put them together in a roundup.

Before we start though, we would like to point out that there are a couple handy articles throughout this roundup. These articles will help you enhance and customize the way you use some hardware features on your Mac. The rest of the roundup is filled with fun and useful apps that can make your Mac even more useful. With that, let’s begin!

The Fun Stuff In Your Mac

No matter what Mac you have, you’ve at least got a hard drive or SSD, a processor, and memory. You’ll have an iSight or Facetime HD camera, unless you have a Mac Mini, and will likely have a multitouch trackpad unless you’ve opted for a Magic Mouse. Most MacBook Airs and MacBook Pros’ keyboards have a backlight. If you have a MacBook or MacBook Pro with a traditional hard drive, you’ll also have a Sudden Motion Sensor (which Apple refers to as SMS in its documentation, so we’ve done the same here). You’ll also have a microphone built-in.

Is all this enough to have fun with? Absolutely.

Multi-touch Gesture Apps

Sudden Motion Sensor Apps

iSight Apps

Other Apps

Conclusion

You are waving your MacBook around, pretending it is a lightsaber, aren’t you? No, it’s okay. We get you, really. Lightsabers and possible Macbook slips aside though, it’s cool how much you can do with your Mac, beyond actually getting stuff done. And hey, at least a few of these tricks are actually useful.

If you have any hidden gems that utilize your Mac’s hardware in interesting ways, let us know in the comment section below!

I never liked OS X’s Spaces. Even in Snow Leopard, before Apple overly simplified their implementation of multiple desktops, I felt that something was missing. I could never make Spaces work the way I wanted, and it only got worse when Lion removed the option to arrange spaces in a grid.

Then I tried TotalSpaces, and suddenly multiple desktops became integral to my workflow. Let’s take a look at how it won me over, and why TotalSpaces is what Spaces should have been.

Grid-Based Layout

The most common gripe people have with Spaces in both Lion and Mountain Lion is that all of your desktops and full-screen apps are lined up in a row. Switching between them proves annoying and time-consuming as you either bring up Mission Control and peek at the tiny thumbnails to see which Space you want, or you run through them individually — carousel style — until you reach the desired Space.

Mission Control’s not so great for managing a lot of Spaces and apps.

You can tell OS X to rearrange spaces so that the most recently-used are made earlier in the sequence, but that gets confusing pretty quickly. You can set up keyboard shortcuts for each desktop (though not full-screen apps), but that’s less elegant than the standard Control-arrow key shortcut.

TotalSpaces replicates all of these options, but it also lets you put each of your spaces in a grid. For whatever reason, grids are conceptually so much easier to handle than continuous lines. Instead of remembering that iTunes is in the fifth space from the left, you need only recall that it’s in the top-right space — or whatever your arrangement entails. Or, if you’d like to mentally separate full-screen apps from your desktops, you could have a vertical row of spaces and a horizontal row of full-screen apps.

Arrange your spaces in a grid. Additional full-screen apps appear to the right of the top row.

It’s easy to customize your layout, with maximum grid sizes of 6×2, 5×3, or 4×4 accompanied by any number of additional full-screen apps appended to the top row. Full-screen apps can be assigned to a place in the grid, too, so long as one is available. Best of all, these spaces can wraparound — circulating such that top joins to bottom and right is connected to left (either in the same row or the next one).

If you prefer the hard edges of a strictly-defined box, it’s still super easy to switch quickly between non-adjacent spaces. Just tap Control-Shift-Space — or whatever you use for a hotkey — to bring up an exposé-like overview grid and click the one you need. While you’re in the overview you can drag windows between spaces, too. I have saved so much time with this — it means that in a four-space setup every space is always a single swipe or key press away.

Dragging a window from one space to another in the spaces overview.

It’s frustrating that you can’t try other, grid-like but non-grid shapes, and that you can’t have the grid expand according to some pre-defined ruleset when you add additional full-screen apps (such that instead of going out in a single-file line to the right, as is the Mountain Lion behavior, they might expand rightward in a two-ply line, or even amass around the edges of your grid). But then, that’s not the worst problem ever.

Assign Apps to Spaces

The built-in Spaces app gives you some freedom to assign apps to specific desktops, but it’s a bit wonky and requires that you first move to the relevant Space then bring up a contextual menu on the app’s icon in the Dock. TotalSpaces simplifies the process with a Settings panel from which you can assign any app to any or all desktops. It’s such a little difference, but it makes the mental barrier of getting spaces set up so much easier to overcome. (Now if only there could be a way to assign specific windows from each app to different spaces without things occasionally going haywire.)

Manage which apps are assigned to which desktops easily in the Preferences.

Change the Transitions

I’ve saved my favorite feature for last. Apple’s transition between spaces gives me a headache. I get queasy as my eyes try to focus on text and interface elements that judder and sputter across the screen, even on my speedy new quad-core iMac. It’s also painfully-slow, forcing you to wait as the desktop traverses the last few pixels at a glacial pace before finally locking in place.

I’m not a fan of Spaces’ sliding transitions.

TotalSpaces lets you change the speed of transitions, swap the sliding animation for something more palatable, or disable them entirely. There’s a slider for adjusting the speed, and six transition types to choose from. The default is Slide — Apple’s Spaces transition.

The others are worth trying out if you do like having a bit of animation to your transitions. Cube does a fancy 3D rotation, while Swap looks kind of like pieces of paper in a pile being reordered. Flip flips the display like a card, revealing another desktop on the other side. Reveal pulls the current Space away to reveal another beneath.

Customize transitions to your heart’s content, with any of six core animations to choose from.

I favor the sixth choice, Fade, however. While the others draw your eyes quickly from one place to another (or, in the case of no transition, confuse you with the suddenness), Fade gently fades one desktop to white while the other pops in beneath it. Adopting this transition actually reduced my eye fatigue from long stretches at the computer. It turned me from reluctantly trying multiple desktops — because I know it’ll help my workflow — to a spaces power-user. I didn’t even realize how much I hated Spaces’ sliding transition until I saw this Fade animation for the first time.

Whatever transition you prefer, switching from one Space to another also triggers an icon that displays in the center of the screen. This icon show a small grid, shaped like the one you have set up, with the destination Space highlighted in white and an arrow pointing to it from the source Space. Believe it or not, this is a killer feature. Why? Because it ensures that you can always see where you are in the grid, and where you’ve just come from, without having to think about it.

I know where I’m going, and where I’ve come from.

Spaces Made Better

There’s only one more thing I wish TotalSpaces could fix: Full-screen apps on dual monitors (I had no problems running dual monitors with the app, aside from the OS X frustration whereby full-screen apps make one display unusable). But that’s an issue I understand is much deeper in OS X than a third-party app could hope to resolve. In the meantime, TotalSpaces at least makes dual monitors more usable with multiple desktops — thanks to its grid layout, custom transitions, and quick overview option.

If you miss the way Spaces worked in Snow Leopard, you owe it to yourself to grab a copy of TotalSpaces. It fixes every issue that Lion and Mountain Lion broke or made less usable. And it throws in a few cool new features for good measure.

With gesture support, grid layouts, custom hotkeys and transitions, app/Space management, and much-needed flexibility over full-screen apps, it’s everything that Spaces should be.

Like the Humble Bundle’s pay what you want bundles? Then you’ll love Macbundler’s latest bundle: the Pay What You Want Bundle!

This bundle is similar to the Humble Bundles, since you can pay what you want for the bundle, starting at $1. That’ll get you the first two apps: the game Destination: Treasure Island, and Imagericks Pro, a simple image editor using Core Image filters. Beat the average price that everyone else has paid, and you’ll also get Data Guardian, a secure database for your Mac, Cockpit, the missing control center for all your apps, and Thoughts, a great way to keep your info together on your Mac.

Best of all, with every purchase you can give to the two charities that the bundle is supporting: charity: water and StandUp To Cancer. So what are you waiting for? Go get your own copy of the Macbundler Pay What You Want Bundle! It’s only available through Friday, so don’t wait too long.

Right now, you can get the first two apps for $1, or pay more than $7.90 to get all of the apps. Or, donate even more and help make sure everyone can get the bonus extra app that’ll be unlocked when $10,000 has been raised for charity!

If you happen to get the bundle, be sure to come back here and tell us what app you liked the most!

After Sparrow dropped its steady development, many users included a new item to their wish lists: a replacement to the dear mail client. The spotlight was turned onto projects that pledge to revolutionize the way we work through our inbox, using existing apps or brand-new apps. However, revolutions take time.

Airmail is a mail client that retains the simplicity which made Sparrow such a appreciated application. Because, sometimes stripping a resource to the bone is the real shake-up we need.

Early Impressions

Setting up your first email account looks intimidating, however, unless you must pick a different service, the drill is the same as in Sparrow.

Setting up your accounts is easier than it seems.

When the main window pops up we can almost feel at home already. You’ll notice the additional column; Airmail doesn’t keep the icon sidebar integrating your accounts and their main folders, it splits in two screens. If this doesn’t please you, you can easily merge both functions in a single column as in most email clients by clicking the icon at the bottom of the application.

Airmail also has a beautiful menubar icon, but unfortunately, it doesn’t display your unread messages as in Sparrow. I can only hope there’s more to come for that pretty thing.

The main window definitely raised our expectations.

When accessing a single mailbox, Airmail lists your labels right below your folders. It integrates beautifully with Gmail and the other services it supports, bringing your additional folders to your menu. Airmail also provides the Gmail’s shortcuts, so the most avid users will adapt in a blink.

Airmail displays a lot of information for your emails in a clever way that won’t clutter the description. If you’re checking your Unified Inbox, each email has a thumbnail in the right corner indicating its enclosing mailbox. Hovering over it will also show an arrow to view the available options for the message, so you may avoid a right-click.

Sending a message just doesn’t follow the expectations

Sending a new message opens a window much closer to the default mail application than Sparrow. All options are displayed right in the window.

Airmail integrates with your Dropbox, allowing you to save your attachments in a dedicated folder and send links to the shared file. This process is not as fluid as in Sparrow or Postbox, and you may only share files this way if you click the Dropbox icon. Dropping a file anywhere will create a regular attachment.

What are you gonna miss?

As you check everything Airmail has to offer, you won’t find a way to link your social accounts as most email clients do to include the picture of your contacts. Postbox even goes further and allows you to send messages to your friends in Facebook, for example.

Airmail allows you to import the contacts from Address Book and you can synchronize your social networks there. However, be careful as it’ll fill your contacts with @facebook emails most of the time and they’re sort of useless.

Social integration is missed, but importing your contacts is easy.

Two other features to miss are Quick Replies, which allow you to reply to your emails without opening the New Entry window, and support to a server other than IMAP, which means users of POP services won’t appreciate Airmail pretty much.

What it brings to the game?

If there’s one thing Airmail overcomes the competition, it’s bringing together a nice set of default filters within its minimalistic approach in design. You’ll find these options in the bar crossing the bottom of your screen. It lets you only view starred messages, those containing attachments, or only conversations. You may reverse the order in which your emails are arranged and use multiple filters to narrow your search even further. As you have a message selected you may only display the emails received from that contact.

Using the Unread filter you can get an empty inbox.

But what really stands out is the Unread filter. It works just like the notorious smart mailbox from Mail.app and only shows messages you haven’t checked yet. This means that every time you open Airmail you don’t have to face the messages you’ve already dealt with. Besides, there’s nothing more minimalist than an empty mailbox.

Airmail also presents several themes to customize your client the way it pleases you most. At the moment, there are five options that manage to differentiate from each other while maintaining the minimal layout.

Choose the theme that better fits your workflow.

Regardless of its features, the best thing about Airmail is a very active development. As you join its beta, new versions will be sent to you almost daily, with bugs being fixed and options being added. The world of email clients nowadays is up to the top with promises and, as results aren’t shown, it’s imminent that users will lose faith. Airmail is a step back into the reality. It might not be a Sparrow alternative, nevertheless, it is a much needed option in the emailing world.

Still a beta

If you need an immediate substitute to Sparrow, you’d better not hold your breath just yet. Airmail still crashes and malfunctions a lot and several of its functions often conflict with each other and display the wrong information. If all you demand is a nice way to read and reply to your emails, it is quite good to pick, but for more serious work you may expect some issues.

Airmail has a great feedback support for its crashes

This review didn’t evaluate most of the concerns related to Airmail that were directly related to its beta status. It is not as fast as its competition and its design could certainly receive some improvement, but is getting there.

It’s the world of testing, after all, and being part of the development of Airmail is your chance to shape a promising application to better suit your workflow.

Conclusion

Every minimalistic email client these days will face the shadow of Sparrow, inevitably, but what makes Airmail a great project to follow is that it can stand by itself. Great integration with the available services, Dropbox integration, multiple themes and its well-thought filters will finally let the Sparrow’s orphans sleep peacefully.

Airmail is not only the single real option at the time to fill the gap left by Sparrow, neither the candidate to keep its legacy alive. Airmail is growing to become an email application on its own. Don’t be surprised if after its release, no one will compare it to that email client you once loved and lost in the way.

Don’t throw away your actual email application yet. Just yet. In case you’ve missed, though, you may apply as a beta tester for Airmail right away.

About a year ago we published a review on a up-and-coming web browser called Sleipnir, giving it a great score and calling it a browser you just have to try. Recently a new version of the browser for the Mac has come out, and when we saw that the developer was calling it “the most advanced web browser yet”, we knew we had to take a look at it once more.

In our previous review, we praised Sleipnir for its sleek, clean cut design and its innovative tab navigation. How does the new one fare in these categories, and what’s new in it? Let’s check it out.

Sleipnir 4

Sleipnir

Sleipnir is a Webkit-based browser with a super sleek and minimal design, as well as some pretty awesome features that you likely haven’t seen on any other browser. Version 3 is the one that we reviewed a while back, but today we’ll be taking a look at Sleipnir 4, which just came out a few days ago.

The most noticeable change in the new Sleipnir is the design. While the old version stood out for its simplicity, this new one has even less elements and everything is more organized and tightened up. What exactly am I talking about? Let’s take it by parts.

Thumbnail Tab Navigation

Thumbnail Tab Navigation

The improved thumbnail tab navigation, which is a trademark of the browser, is easier on the eye and ideal for working with a large number of tabs. Instead of shrinking your tabs as you open more of them, Sleipnir makes a cover-flow-like scrollable list of your thumbnails while displaying the original size of each of them, making it easier to identify your tabs even when you’re dealing with a lot of them. The title of each tab is hidden, but it will be shown under the thumbnail as you hover over your open tabs. This is one way Sleipnir keeps its design clean while not regressing on its functionality.

Portal Field

Portal Field

Portal Field is the name that the navigation bar receives in Sleipnir. It doubles as a search bar and it is kept discretely on the top right side of the browser, only slightly coming into attention by expanding to the center when activated.

The best part about it is its lightning-fast predictor which is also pretty smart and organizes your predicted results in a very neat way. For example, instead of showing you a billion results from your history of the same site, it will only show you one line with the title of the site, which you can then expand to view the pages that you’ve visited in it. Portal Field also has the ability of sending search queries directly to customizable sites, like Amazon or Wikipedia.

Address bar

The current tab’s address is separated from the Portal Field, as it is located right above it in order to save space. Only a few characters of the address will be displayed, but if you click on it, you can get a full view of the address and copy it or modify it.

TiledTab

TiledTab

TiledTab is similar to Safari’s Tab View, but on steroids. Not only does it give you a view of every tab you have open, but it also gives you 6 “spaces” where you can keep a number of different tabs. This way, you can have a space for procrastinating and social networks, another for serious work, and so forth. I found this really useful, as staying on one space with only a few tabs open makes it harder to lose attention while working by switching over to a time-wasting site. These spaces marked a line between the sites I should be and shouldn’t be spending time on.

Spaces

This also makes it easier to work with a big number of tabs. I tend to leave everything open for use later, so I started using one my spaces as a “temporary” folder of links that I’d like to get to later, just to get them out of my way when I’m doing something important.

Minor Details

Recommendations

Sleipnir also has a few minor things that I found really nice. For example, everytime you select text, a little menu (similar to PopClip) will pop up next to your cursor with a few buttons to search, define, or copy your selection.

The app also has its own syncing service called Fenrir Pass, with which you can sync your Sleipnir settings across multiple devices, and access certain web services. It also implements its own homepage which will include a few links that might be of interest to you based on what you normally browse.

Gestures

Sleipnir Gestures

One of my favorite things on my Mac is the many gestures that I have set up. I use a very handy app called jiTouch, that implements multi-touch gestures system-wide, and I have one for pretty much everything. Quitting apps, closing windows, switching between tabs, you name it.

Sleipnir, as well, has its own gestures for navigating, but they are much different than jiTouch’s. While jiTouch’s gestures are all based on finger taps and swipes (combining two or three fingers to create a large list of possible combinations), Sleipnir’s are all based on swipe gestures that you can do with two fingers, making you pretty much draw certain shapes to trigger actions.

Two-finger swipes to the right or left will switch your current tab (unlike the back-forward actions that they trigger on Safari and Chrome), and you also have some more complex gestures for closing tabs, re-opening them, and reloading them. They’re also more interactive, as they are accompanied by animations that announce when a gesture is triggered. These are easier to remember, but less convenient to use than Jitouch’s, and if you have them both activated, things can get pretty confusing.

A Few Bugs

When I first started using Sleipnir, it kept crashing on me while I was trying to import my contents from Chrome. I tried it a few times and everytime I did the import, it crashed. Same with Safari’s content, so I had to do a clean install of the app. When I finally got it to run, it turned out all of those imports actually did work (therefore I had around 5 of them), it was just the importing window that was crashing on me.

I also experienced a few crashes while using the app to browse around. These all appeared to happen while in the tab tile view, and weren’t too frequent, but they do speak a lot about the stability of this release. Just as well, working with pages that hold sessions (like WordPress) turned out weird and confusing, as Sleipnir kept reloading the pages as I was working, and not always saving my work. This was, as you might imagine, very frustrating.

Conclusion

Using Sleipnir feels exciting, like using a new cool gizmo or something. Sleipnir’s devs have deconstructed the concept of a web browser and kept only the visual bare minimum to keep a focused and pleasant browsing experience. It’s certainly a very pretty app, and it has some great features that I hadn’t seen anywhere else, like its unique thumbnail tab navigation.

Unfortunately, I can not say that I would keep using it. The absence of extensions is still a big problem, and that’s where much more established competitors like Safari and Chrome beat this app. Maybe I’ll keep using Sleipnir for certain specific tasks, but I can’t imagine it right now becoming my main browser. It feels very close, but it’s not yet quite there.

But what about you? Have you tried Sleipnir? If you haven’t, I’d suggest you at least give it a peak just to see what’s out there. Maybe it’ll grab your attention.