Category: Mac

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 November, from How to Upgrade Your MacBook Pro to an SSD to The 2012 Mactuts+ Holiday Gift Guide.

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Best of Mactuts+

I love a good RPG, but sometimes I get tired of paying lots of money for a nice, playable game. I tend to not get a lot of replay value out of my games, so I generally prefer to pay less (and sacrifice some long-term playability). Juggernaut was a game that seemed to meet my criteria – only 5 bucks, and it looked like a decent game. I decided to check it out.

In the latest version of Juggernaut (Revenge of Sovering), the terrifying Sovering has taken over the land of Haradan. You play as one of 5 legendary warriors, better known as the “Scorpions.” Within your quest you must slay more than 100 evil beasts as well as complete numerous, terrifying quests. It all culminates in the final battle against a terrifying demon. Is Juggernaut worth your time and money? Stick with me after the jump to learn more about gameplay, strategy and what I really think about the game.

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Getting Started

After being introduced to the story, you must choose a character before you can properly begin the game. A variety of character choices are available. You can choose characters with incredible strength, critical blows or exceptional magical strength. You can also make decisions regarding your character based upon type of magic – e.g. ice versus fire. Unfortunately, no real customization abilities exist.

Now you’ve got a character – let the fighting begin! Juggernaut is a turn-based action game. Meaning, you strike and then your opponent strikes back. It’s pretty simple, especially in the beginning. Take a look at the picture below – my character is on the left, the computer is on the right. The glowing red and green below my opponent is my attack mechanism. Click or drag to strike from the green area. If you select the red area (the opponent’s line of vision), your opponent will block your attack. The strongest attacks come from when the red indicator is as far away as possible. Simply do more damage to your opponent than your opponent manages to do to you and you’ll win the battle. If you win, at the end you get to choose a treasure chest. The chests have various prizes, including gold coins, power-ups, gear and more.

Fighting Intensified

So those are the basics. Once you’ve started fighting, it’s pretty easy to just follow where the game likes you. Also, the in-game tutorials are super helpful – as elements are added, the tutorials come up appropriately. Let’s check out what gets added along the way.

We can’t talk about what gets added to battles without first finding more battles to participate in. After completing your first series of battles, the map opens up to you. From the map you can choose to find fights in two different ways. There are chapters available for play – these chapters get increasingly difficult, consist of a series of fights ending with a boss battle and provide more of the story for the game.

If you need to gain some XP before facing the boss, you can choose from one of the various quest style battles. Here, you have a certain task to accomplish (e.g. defeating a certain number of monsters). These quests earn you XP without forcing you to move on to a difficulty level beyond your character’s capabilities.

Once you continue on in the fighting, you’ll notice elements that are added to the fighting style to make things more difficult. First up is the ability to defend yourself from certain attacks. When the enemy uses a magic attack, you are given the opportunity to play an ever so brief mini-game, which will allow you to dodge the attack if you win. You’re either told to memorize a sequence and repeat it, or forced to rapidly click away a number of smoke bursts in order to clear the screen. The games are quite simple, and make for a fun break in the occasional monotony of a battle.

Next up is the ability to utilize magic and mana. Mana is necessary to perform magic attacks – collect it by clicking on the glowing orbs that appear during battles. Once you have stored up enough mana, you can click to cast a spell. Then, simply draw the shape shown on screen and the spell will cast automatically for you. At first, you only have the ability to perform magical attacks. With time, however, you gain the ability to collect another type of mana which allows you to perform defensive manuvers, like blocks and even recovering health. Magic is quite helpful and as you learn more you can level up spells and customize your capabilities for various opponents.

Lastly, you see the addition of a “combo-blows” feature. Shown at the right side of the screen, this indicator highlights one of the three sections of attack. If you attack from that particular section, your combo increases. Once you fill up the combo meter, you’re given a guaranteed critical hit from anywhere you choose to strike. It’s pretty easy to hit the enemy from the right section, so this feature is quite helpful.

Self-Improvement

Understanding the game is all well and good, but an integral part of your success lies in knowing how to improve your character. One easy way is just to level up – like most games, you earn XP through fighting. Once you’ve earned enough XP, you level up. This provides skill points, better stats and unlocks magical abilities and equipment. Earning achievements as you battle can also help to contribute to your XP, eventually helping you to level up more quickly.

Speaking of equipment, if you’ve got some cash on hand improving yourself is a piece of cake – just buy some upgraded gear. Better gear becomes available as you level up, and you can use your hard-earned cash to purchase the best stuff for your character. Items can improve strength, health and even your ability to collect money. Choose wisely as your combination makes a great difference in your character’s capability. You can also find equipment to use when you’re out fighting (during the rewards at the end).

Gear (and money for shopping) can also be found when you go on a treasure hunt. To treasure hunt, simply select one of your protected areas from the map. You’ll need scarabs to hunt, which are available for purchase and can also be found at the end of a fight as a reward. Hunting is simple – just look for the location which makes the scarab’s wings flap and dig. Treasure will abound, which definitely helps in the improvement process.

So those are all the ways to potentially improve yourself .. but how do you take advantage of all the things you’ve earned/purchased? Well, you have to use your character’s backpack. Within the backpack you can view any gear you own, equip what you want, sell your extras and move around inventory as needed. You can also access your character parameters from within the backpack, allowing you to apply any skill points you’ve earned from leveling up.

To Fight or Not to Fight

Juggernaut: Revenge of Sovering was a pretty fun game. From the very beginning you are thrown into the action, and while the first couple of battles are incredibly easy, it definitely picks up. The creators added additional elements to the battles at a good pace – I didn’t ever feel overwhelmed, and I stopped being bored pretty quickly. The graphics are pretty well done, and I was definitely immersed in the world while playing. There’s a decent variety of activities, and I certainly enjoyed my time spent playing Juggernaut.

That being said, I think there is a LOT that the game could improve upon. First and foremost, it’s made for a tablet or other mobile device. The controls are clearly best with a touchscreen, and the display is incredibly small compared to the size of my actual monitor (the game is just 1024 x 748). That’s easily my biggest problem, and in order to really make the game shine those problems need to be addressed.

Also, the gameplay does get a bit monotonous at times – the same type of battle, over and over. Even with the addition of elements, I got tired of the game at times. It can be a bit laggy in fights, especially when defending yourself which is a bit frustrating. Lastly, the need to pay twice is definitely a problem with the game. First, I already paid $5 to get a not entirely awesome port over from a tablet. Now, you expect me to pay extra money in order to get equipment which is definitely necessary for success in the game? No thanks! It’s asking a bit too much for the quality given.

So to sum up … Juggernaut was pretty fun. I generally enjoyed playing it, and $5 isn’t awful. Unfortunately, it’s not so much fun to play when you’re spending 3x or 4x more just to get to a point where you can continue on in the game. Juggernaut is, unfortunately, probably not worth the download. If you could more easily earn coins/gems to purchase gear, it would definitely come with a better recommendation from me.

What are your thoughts on the game? Would you play or have you already? What do you think of the game? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Changing the size or file type of your photos and other images should be a snap, but unless you’re comfortable on the command-line there’s no quick and easy built-in method in OS X. There’s many ways to resize pictures and save them in other formats — even Preview can handle that — but it takes several steps for each image.

Snap Converter fills the void. It’s a drag-and-drop image converter that can handle many file formats, resize images, add watermarks, and batch rename. Both simple and functional, it’ll handle all your basic image processing, but you may need to look elsewhere if you need more advanced tools. Let’s take it for a spin.

Easy Conversion

Converting or resizing images — whether you have one or one thousand — with Snap Converter is simple. Just drag and drop a folder or file(s) onto the Snap Converter window, or select your files from the Open dialog, tweak the settings, hit Continue, wait while it works its magic, and confirm the location for the new images to be saved.

A minimal and functional interface ensures that you can get the job done quickly and without distraction. All settings are in the one window, popping in and out of existence depending on the context — the options for a single image conversion are slightly different to that of a multi-image conversion, for instance. You can choose between seven output formats — JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, TIFF, JPEG2000, or ICNS — with a quality slider for JPEGs and an Optimize File Size option for PNGs.

You’re out of luck if you need to convert to more exotic image formats, but Snap Converter covers all the major ones. The app can read many more formats than it can write, however. Files with the extensions TGA, ICO, CUR, PDF, EPS, PSD, DNG, CRW, CR2, NEF, MRW, ARW, ORF, and EXR can all be read and converted, which may make Snap Converter a good choice for people with cameras that use RAW or a proprietary image format.

Resize, But Don’t Crop Me

Resizing can be done by percentage, maximum length of the longest side, maximum dimensions, absolute size (with or without the current aspect ratio), or fixed height or width (or not at all, of course). There’s no option for resizing the image according to a value for the shortest side, although you could probably work around this with a bit of thought. If for some reason you want to do multiple size adjustments you’ll have to do multiple conversions — there’s no way to combine these options in one process.

You can set rules for file naming on batch conversions — be they incremental counters, prefixes, suffixes, or replacements. This should cover just about everybody’s systems for naming, except perhaps those who like to name according to image content (which wouldn’t exactly lend itself to batch processing and so may be a moot point). If it’s a folder, or folder of folders, you can preserve the directory structure and specify whether or not to include images in subfolders. You can also overwrite the existing files, if you so desire.

You can’t crop images with Snap Converter. The app doesn’t even include basic cropping functionality, whereby you enter pixel coordinates for where the new sides/corners should be. For an app that prides itself on image conversion made easy, this seems like an oversight — especially now that it’s at version 2.0. If you need to crop your images as well as change their overall size or file type, look elsewhere (or introduce Snap Converter alongside another app or script specifically for cropping).

Watermarks

Adding watermarks to images is very straightforward. You can choose between a text and an image watermark. Either of these can be positioned in one of nine points on the image, offset by a set number of pixels (four to the left and four up, by default). This means that you can put the watermark anywhere on the images, and you can make it consistent no matter what the size and dimensions.

Text watermarks can be colored however you desire. You can change the font to any font installed on your computer. An optional drop shadow adds depth to the watermark, with an opacity slider and blur radius to strengthen or weaken the effect. The text also has an opacity setting, should you prefer your watermarks heavily transparent or completely solid — or anywhere in between.

Preserving Metadata

Serious photographers will be relieved to know that Snap Converter 2.0 can preserve EXIF data (earlier versions did not) when the output file format is either JPEG or TIFF. This means that technical information stored in the original photo’s metadata — such as focal length, exposure time, device model, and F number — will be saved in the converted image. The caveat here is that you have to check a box that says Preserve Metadata — the behavior is not enabled by default.

My testing indicated that not all data is preserved every time, however. With the same settings, repeated exports occasionally resulted in different metadata — usually the EXIF data carried over in its entirety (well, almost — a standard sRGB IEC61966-2.1 color profile was often changed to “Generic RGB Profile”), but a few times it didn’t get saved. I’m not sure what caused this, but take care that there could be minor reliability problems when preserving EXIF data.

Snap Conversions

Using Snap Converter is a breeze. You can quickly and easily convert any number of images to a different file type or create smaller versions of them, or even add a watermark. It doesn’t have the flashiest of interfaces, but it’s clean and simple and focused on functionality. If you need to do more advanced batch image operations such as cropping, adding borders, adjusting colors, or applying visual effects, Snap Converter is at best a helper app and at worst a waste of money. But if you need something simple to make all your photos the same size and format, perhaps with a consistent naming structure and a watermark on every one, the app is perfect.

To most of our readers, our love of Alfred should be immediately apparent. It is one of those apps that is an integral part in so many of our workflows. I for one feel naked and lost working on a Mac without it. Therefore, it should come as no surprise to hear that I was giddy with the news that version 2 will soon be knocking on our eager doors.

In a recent blog post, Vero goes into a little detail, stating that version 2 has been secretly in the making for the past six months. The app has been rewritten from the ground up keeping very little of the original codebase and promises to be even more powerful, flexible and efficient. Vero also reassures Veteran users that they will still feel right at home in the new iteration of Alfred. Developers on the other hand, will have to tweak most of their existing extensions for them to work in the new version.

Details are still a little sketchy at this time but the team behind Alfred has promised to tantalise our senses in the coming weeks with sneak peaks of the new features. A beta of the new version is slated to be available sometime in January 2013, but it will only be available to Mega Supporters. If you haven’t yet bought a license then this would be the perfect time to do so, or alternatively you can upgrade your existing license and be part of all the fun when beta testing begins.

In the mean time, why not peruse some of our previous coverage of Alfred, where we delve into ways of making the best of it, or turning it into a top notch Notes Manager.

In theory, I love the idea of being able to easily take handwritten notes and have them stored on my computer. I’m going back to school and taking a bunch of math classes, so it would be nice to be able to handwrite equations and insert them in my notes, rather than using a dedicated equation editor. I could try to do the handwritten style notes on my iPad and take regular notes on my computer, merging them after class, but that seems unnecessarily difficult. Unfortunately, I kind of need something that doesn’t seem to exist quite yet, so in the meantime I’ve been exploring various apps to take handwritten notes directly on my computer.

PenJournal was my latest trial – it’s a simple program made to take handwritten notes, primarily using a graphics tablet. You can take notes, draw simple images, import/annotate PDFs and much more. Obviously, using a graphics tablet is not ideal for taking notes in class (my desk in class isn’t big enough for all that), but it’s still a program worth taking a look at. Stick with me after the jump to learn more about the features of PenJournal and how it stacks up to its pricier competitors, and how it works both with and without a tablet.

Basic Features

When you open up PenJournal for the first time, take a moment to examine the various tools in the toolbar at the top of the screen – you’ll see drawing tools, shapes and some unfamiliar elements (don’t worry, we’ll talk about those later). First, take note of the pen tool. It’s obviously going to be your most used tool (it is in the name, after all). You can select it and adjust the width using the slider for easy drawing and writing. You can also use the dash tool if you need a different line type.

Next to the pen and dash tools is the eraser – your second most used tool. It’s not exactly the easiest to understand, at first. Basically you just draw a line with the eraser tool over any elements you want to erase. Easy enough if you use a lot of large lines – significantly more difficult when you’re trying to erase a multitude of small lines. The eraser has caused me a lot of difficulty, but you’ll get the hang of it with time.

Shapes are the next option. You can easily add rectangles, circles and straight lines in varying widths and colors. The shapes are easy to use and help add some variety to any notes you might take. It can be quite frustrating to utilize PenJournal and see how well developed some tools are, while others (e.g. the eraser) are insanely difficult to use.

You can also insert images into your notes – another handy feature, especially when you’re doing any sort of annotation. You can drag and drop in images, or insert a background image. Once they’re in, just click on the image and use the slider to easily scale the image to the necessary size.

Last but not least, an important basic feature to note is the ability to change the background style. Under the format menu you can find the option to choose a plain background (the default option), a ruled background or even a grid. I love this feature, as it makes it significantly easier to take neat notes.

Advanced Usage and Annotation

So the features above allow you to make anything you want from the initial blank note you’re given – of course, that’s not all you can do in PenJournal. One task that the program is really made for is PDF annotation. To get started with an existing PDF, just use the import option under the file menu. Then you can use any of the basic tools listed above to help annotate the PDF as needed.

In addition to working with the pages contained in the existing PDF, you can also insert additional pages into the document. Note that this applies to all creations in PenJournal, not just annotating existing PDFs. Use the insert, add and delete tools to add and take away pages as needed, both at the current location or at the very end of the PDF.

A small feature worth mentioning is the ability to bookmark pages within your document for easier searching and to make certain pages stand out if you export as a PDF. Speaking of, after you finish up the PDF annotation, exporting is a simple process – just use the export option under the file menu.

Lastly, it’s worth noting that you can easily customize the toolbar. Simply use the customize toolbar menu to add/delete tools, rearrange as needed or reset your toolbar back to the default layout and contents. It’s quite nice to be able to easily drag and drop the tools I use the most into the most convenient spaces, a feature you don’t always find.

Tablet vs. Trackpad

PenJournal very specifically markets itself as an app made to utilize a graphics tablet and stylus when taking notes. It says this very specifically in the app description, however the program doesn’t seem to work as well with the graphics tablet as it should. I tried writing first with my tablet … It was fine, don’t get me wrong, but it just didn’t seem as fluid as it should in a program made for a tablet. The writing was laggy and hard to produce at times.

Additionally, none of the features of my tablet work well with PenJournal. I have a pretty new (and popular) Wacom tablet. Given the popularity of the tablet type, I just assumed that I would be able to use the tools on my tablet, e.g. the ability to adjust the width of the pen tool using the tablet. Unfortunately, this was not the case and utilizing PenJournal with a tablet quickly became rather cumbersome as I constantly switched between the trackpad and the tablet.

Granted, the trackpad isn’t any better (as you might have guessed). Using a trackpad to try and write handwritten notes is nearly impossible, and anything you make will likely be a mess. The tablet is the clear way to go, I just wish it were better incorporated into the program.

Final Thoughts

To be perfectly blunt, PenJournal will not continue to reside on my computer after this review is complete. There are definitely better programs out there, programs that work better for many tasks. PenJournal is frustrating to use – it doesn’t play well with my tablet, the eraser never seems to work and it could stand to include a few more tools (perhaps the ability to also type notes, rather than just handwriting?).

There is some good to the program – it’s pretty convenient for drawing on documents you need to annotate. It’s got a nice setup to add your own notes to PDFs you are working on, and I appreciate the ability to add additional images to annotate. Unfortunately, these features definitely don’t make up for the shoddy features found elsewhere in PenJournal. This is not the app to get for handwriting notes on your computer.

To help me in my search, what programs would you recommend as a better alternative? Or do you actually like using PenJournal and have some good words to say about it? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

There are lots of RSS readers in the App Store, and with each release, it seems they’re each more feature-rich and impressive. What if you don’t need all of the bells and whistles and the sometimes hefty price tag? What if you just need to know when the sites you’re interested in get an update?

NewsBee, more or less just a menubar app that links to your favorite sites, may be the answer. It’s not really an RSS reader, since you can’t actually read anything in NewsBee. Instead, it aggregates the titles and links of all the most recent posts of a particular site. But is NewsBee just enough for a menubar RSS app or not even close?Like the article? You should subscribe and follow us on twitter.

What’s the Buzz About?

You’ll find NewsBee comes complete with several news feeds out of the box. The default on launch is Ycombinator’s Hacker News, a collection of tech news and culture articles from all over. Also on offer are Google News, Mashable, LifeHacker, and Reddit, among others. It’s a good mix of tips, entertainment, and old fashioned news of the world, so if you don’t really want to go any further with NewsBee, you’re still on good footing.

But why not go further? Hovering over Preferences in the dropdown menu and selecting General brings up the Site Information window. This is where you can add (or remove) NewsBee’s feeds. It’s simple enough to get rid of a feed; if you just can’t bear to look at one of those default feeds any longer, select it and click the minus sign. That should get rid of it for good.

Adding a feed may be a bit more work, but not much. Hit the plus sign, and name your new site feed. Then visit the website and find its RSS link. You’re going to need both the feed URL and the site host. The site host may be the same as the URL for the site, but it may be something like “feeds.feedburner.com,” and NewsBee will just keep popping up errors if you don’t get it right. Once you do have everything entered correctly, though, it will be available alongside the rest of your feeds.

The favicon of the site you’re currently reading will appear in your menubar; when you’ve finished, that favicon stays in your menubar until you choose new site to browse. Click on NewsBee, and you’ll get a dropdown list of the most recent posts to that blog or articles on that news site. If you want to access a different RSS, hover over Preferences, and a menu of all of your sites will pop out. Choose the one you want, and it will replace the current selection.

Hover over an article link for a quick preview, if available. When you click a link, it opens in your default browser. Again, you can’t read anything inside of NewsBee, but it will keep track of everything you’ve read elsewhere. Once you’ve clicked a link in NewsBee, you’ll see a check mark appear next to that article title. Read all of the articles in a feed, and you’ll see an entire column of check marks.

Form or Function?

NewsBee isn’t much to look at, and the favicons don’t do a whole lot for the overall aesthetic of my menubar, but NewsBee isn’t trying to win any beauty contests. In fact, it’s about as trimmed down, including trimmed of all design, as an app can be. It falls into that category of “one thing well” apps, in that it sets out to perform a single function and isn’t really interested in accomplishing a whole lot else, and that includes looking good.

While I certainly admire an adherence to simplicity, and as a menubar aficionado, I always enjoy moving any function from my Dock to the top of my display, it’s possible to be stripped down and look good at the same time. I wish NewsBee had taken a little more care with its design, especially with that of the menubar icon, so I’m not stuck looking at the logos of Mashable or Google or Feedburner or, worse yet, some backwoods blog with even worse design that NewsBee.

Conclusion

I’ve tried a couple of feature-rich RSS readers and have one languishing in my Dock right now. My trouble is I never seem to use them; they’re too much for me. I have to set aside time to use them, and there’s just too many cat videos on the internet waiting to be watched for me to remember to check all the great blogs I keep subscribing to and forgetting to read. Even if they’re cat blogs.

So I like having something in my crowded little menubar that’s both simple to use and easy to access whenever I have a free moment. That’s where NewsBee fits in. If I have a moment switching between projects, I can open a link or two from NewsBee and catch up with a couple of blogs. Just a few minutes is all I need; it’s the omnipresence of NewsBee as a menubar app that works.

There are lots of people who don’t rely on menubar apps as much as I do, and there are plenty of people who want more features from an RSS reader. NewsBee isn’t going to be for them. For users who are willing to give up a few extraneous features for a bit of added utility, though, NewsBee may be just right.

Back in July of this year, I reviewed a highly rated Mac App Store app called “Photo Album” and found it to be very disappointing and lacking quite a few basic features. FlippingBook, the developers, has just released version 2.0 with new and improved features that hopes to bring their score up and become open to a new set of users. I will be looking at the new version and comparing to the original, and will also provide a fresh perspective.

The goal of Photo Album is to allow users to take all of their photos and transform them into stunning photo albums that they will share with family and friends. As a promotional special, Photo Album 2 is 25% off the regular price. Will version 2 erase all of version 1’s shortcomings? Read on to find out!

Setting Up

To get all users adjusted to the interface of Photo Album, the app has a built in guided tour that will familiarize you with all the ins and outs. As with the last version of Photo Album, the app is nothing without the integration with Albm.com. This web service is where all of your albums will be hosted once you finish your creations.

It is very easy to sign up for Albm.com, all you need to do is visit the website to sign up and use those credentials in the Photo Album app.

When you want to publish your albums to Albm.com, all you need to do is click the publish button and then you will get options on how you would like your album to appear. You can choose your “online scheme” which is a preselected look for your page.

You can also create a custom scheme using your own images to add that extra custom flair.

Features

While the core function of Photo Album is to arrange your selected photos into albums, the app still has extra features to allow users to have more control. Photo Album not only gives you access to your iPhoto library and Pictures folder, it also gives you connectivity to online services.

Picasa and Flickr integration is built in and you can access your different albums and pictures right within Photo Album. All you need to do is sign in from within the app and then you can start your selection process.

Although version 2 is much improved, I still would like to see more editing capabilities within the app. The extent of the album editing capabilities is only changing the layout to another built in layout. There is no way to actually grab a picture frame and place it where you want it, as I would like. Also, this app has no built in photo editing functions. It would be nice if there were a way to add simple filters to photos or add different borders and frames.

Look & Feel

Since version 1, the design of the app has matured to an understated elegance as opposed to jarring hardwood patterns shooting out at different angles. Instead of looking like the interface is a mix match of all the different styles Apple uses in their built in iOS apps (i.e. linen, hardwood bookshelves, and etc.), Photo Album now possess a cohesive styling that promotes the feel of thoughtful design.

While flipping through your photo album in design view, the app uses simulated page turns to accompany that flip. I find that this is a little unnecessary for edit mode and it also slows down your production ever so slightly; however, some may never think it to be a problem.

Photo Album’s interface is divided into three main sections: the main view window, the album pages slider section, and the libraries window. At the top you have buttons to publish your album to albm.com and print. On the bottom you have “+” and “-“ buttons to add or subtract album pages.

Overall, the interface has received much needed refinement and is cohesive as far as the styling of the main sections are concerned.

Missed Opportunities

While this update to the app is much needed and a good revision, I feel like I am yearning for some other features to make this a “one stop shop” app for photo albums. The primary user of this application is not one that will touch up photos in Photoshop or add filters with other apps; these users want their pictures to look good and easily have them integrated into a sharable album. Photo Album has the photo album part done pretty well, but I would like to see some very minor photo filters and adjustments that can be made inside the app. I understand the primary goal of the app is to create photo albums, but it seems that this functionality would be a pretty good addition to the app.

Also, I would like the ability to customize my album beyond the point of scaling a picture and choosing a preset page template. Photo Album would benefit from allowing users to freely move images to place them where they see fit and not only where the developers saw fit.

The Verdict Is…

Photo Album version 2 is a healthy and substantial update to the original that did not score as well with me. Photo Album 2 has changed the interface and made it more cohesive in design. Also, the app has a great variety of themes that compliments most users’ needs. The problem comes in with the lack of minor photo filters and lack of template customization. Overall, the app is now recommendable and with a few minor updates it will be just right.

As it stands now, I give Photo Album a 7 out of 10. By making the minor adjustments I suggested, it could really be an 8 or perhaps even higher. Photo Album 2 was just released and can be found in the Mac App Store. It is priced regularly at $19.99 with a 25% discount for a limited time.

December has arrived and Christmas is now not far off. As we know, there will be many deals towards the holidays, but right now we’re focused on the early days of the month. This week in Mac App Store deals, we have an app to tell you if it’s going to snow soon, another that’ll enable you to read RSS feeds in a stylish way, and a most useful one that can save your passwords for nearly everything.

In fact, we have more deals this week than we have had in a while, so let’s get started.

But There’s More?

It’s the end and we’re still not finished. 1Password is still on sale this week, even though the developer claims it’s a 30 percent sale for Thanksgiving. If you hop around Web sites and devices often, it’s perfect for keeping everything in sync, but do remember keeping everything in one place is how it can get stolen.

And that’s it! Let us know what apps you bought this week, and we’ll see you again in about seven days.

Our sponsor this week is Studiometry, the ultimate organization tool for professionals. The newly released version 10 brings over 150 new features to the already feature-packed program. If you’re team’s been looking for an app that can bring all of your business info together on the Mac, Studiometry might be just what you’re looking for.

Studiometry includes everything you need to manage your projects from start to finish. It’ll let you manage your project with professional Gantt charts, to-do lists, and time tracking. You can use it to keep track of your business contacts, and can create estimates and invoices quickly using your own templates. When it comes time to do your accounting, you can manage all of your payments, balances, client statements, and more inside Studiometry. It’s everything you’ll need to manage your business so you can focus on your work.

The latest version, Studiometry 10, lets you add roles for your employees, as well as weekly timesheets to make it easier to visualize the work you’ve entered. You can add custom data for specific clients, and take advantage of Mountain Lion notifications, in addition to over a hundred other new features and updates.

Best of all, you can use Studiometry wherever you work. It’s available for Windows in addition to OS X. There’s also a dedicated Touch version for your iPhone and iPad, and all of your Studiometry installs will stay synced thanks to Studiometry server.

Go Get It!

Ready to get started with Studiometry 10? You can download a free 30 day trial from their site, then purchase a copy of Studiometry for $199.95. If more than one user on your team will be using Studiometry, you can take advantage of their discounted multi-user packs, or purchase a site license. Or, if you have an older version of Studiometry, you can upgrade to Studiometry 10 for just $59.95.

Yup, that’s right: we’ve got another awesome Mac bundle to giveaway this week! The MacBundler team is back at it with an awesome bundle, this time with over $500 worth of software for just $45. The bundle includes a number of apps you’ll want to put to work in your workflow.

It includes Rapidweaver 5, a great app for designing websites quickly from templates, as well as MotionComposer, a great app for making HTML5 and Flash based animated content for the web. Along with that, you’ll get iFinance, Screenium, DEVONsphere Express, and more!

It’s a great value at $45, but best of all, we’ve got 5 copies of the bundle to giveaway to our readers! Just leave a comment below telling us what app in the bundle you want most, then optionally share the giveaway on Twitter, App.net, or Facebook and share the link to your post for a bonus entry. We’ll close the bundle giveaway on Saturday, December 8th, 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.

Sometimes it’s good to know what’s going on beneath the hood of your Mac. Keeping track of memory and processor usage helps you manage open apps and current tasks, ensuring that your computer never grinds to a halt because you’re doing too much at once.

iStat Menus is one of the more popular apps to help you keep tabs on your Mac, with its advanced monitoring of memory usage, processor usage, network bandwidth, hardware temperatures, and much more. It just got a major new version upgrade, with a slew of new features — including history graphs, calendar events, and an improved interface — so we thought we’d take a look to see how this new release stands up.

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Wait: What is iStat Menus?

iStat Menus offers several monitoring systems for checking up on how your Mac’s running. You can see CPU usage, how much free space is on your hard drive, how much RAM is in use, what temperature your hardware components are at, how much data you’re transferring on your network, and much more. The best part is that each of these sits in your menubar, with at-a-glance information that can be expanded at the click of a button. You can have graphs or numbers (or both) for the key data in the menubar, then a breakdown of usage in the drop-down menu.

All told, you have eight menus that can be toggled on or off: CPU/GPU, Memory, Disks, Network, Sensors, Battery, Time, and Combined (which combines the individual menus into one). The Time menu serves as a great replacement for Apple’s default menubar clock, with a selectable calendar that shows events (finally) and a world clock (for seeing what time it is in other parts of the world), while the Battery monitor similarly improves upon Apple’s own offering. All of the others tap into information that you’d otherwise have to juggle multiple apps and windows to monitor.

iStat Menus has been around for years now — we first reviewed it back in May 2010, when the third major revision was released. Back then we praised it for its detailed stat-tracking of nearly every all of your computer’s resources, with the added bonus that you could pick and choose just the information that’s important for your menubar. Let’s see what the new version brings to the table.

What’s New?

iStat Menus 4 adds history graphs, more stat-tracking, and a new layout. The changes in design are subtle and of mixed effect — information in the menus, which has been slightly re-ordered and given better contrast, is now clearer and easier to digest, while the Preferences have been streamlined. The app is now more user-friendly on the whole, but there’s strangely no option to bring up the Preferences, Activity Monitor, or Disk Utility direct from a menu.

History graphs for the different monitoring systems give a much better indication of usage over time. For CPU, memory, network activity, and sensors, these graphs come in three flavors: one hour, 24 hours, and seven days. Load averages and disk activity add a fourth graph for the past five minutes. Most of these graphs are hidden from view — only the one hour memory, network activity, and CPU graphs show up when you click on the relevant menu item.

To display them, mouse over the relevant information. Most menus hide information within submenus attached to their elements. The Sensors menu has a different set of history graphs for every single component being monitored. There’s an abundance of information available for the curious or obsessed. But it stays out of the way for more at-a-glance style monitoring. This seems like a good compromise — the extra detail you may sometimes want is there, but you won’t notice it unless you go looking. (And really, does anyone obsessively monitor graphs of the same information over time scales? Surely one graph is enough 90% of the time?)

The few days I’ve been using iStat Menus 4 haven’t given me enough data yet to see any reliable patterns or trends, but these history graphs should be a great helper in keeping my computer running smoothly and diagnosing unusual activity.

Doubly so in the case of network activity, since the new version adds per-process bandwidth monitoring. The five most recent processes to transfer data on the network show up at the bottom of the Network menu, with their current transfer speed displayed alongside the process name. Unfortunately it doesn’t offer tracking of total usage per process, or display upload transfer rates — either in the current session or long-term. Little Snitch is still the king of serious network monitoring, but this is great aid to doing quick checks of at-this-very-moment bandwidth usage. If there’s significantly more network activity than you expect, you’ve now got a good chance of identifying the culprit with a glance at iStat Menus.

GPU monitoring was added in the 3.16 update, but it consisted of just a bar indicating VRAM usage. There’s now also a frames-per-second counter, which is sure to please (or displease, as the case may be) the nerdy among you. There’s no graph to go with this one, however.

Sensing a Change

As before, you can set up rules that dictate the minimum speed your fans spin at in different scenarios. You still can’t automate this according to the temperature of a component, however. The addition of history graphs for each component negate this somewhat by enabling you to fine-tune your settings. If your CPU is running consistently hot, you’ll see it clearly on the 24-hour and 7-day history graphs, and then you can adjust your rules accordingly.

With this new version of iStat Menus, it’s easier than ever before to notice anything untoward with your computer. But, as before, you’ll only be able to use it for monitoring — it’s an aide in any diagnoses of problems, and a great help in lots of little inconsequential things, nothing more. Mostly it’s useful for battery monitoring, checking the time elsewhere in the world, and quickly looking at your calendar — the other monitors are nice to have, but hardly important to the majority of users’ workflow.

Should You Upgrade?

It’s easy to get lost in the excitement of new bells and whistles without thinking about whether you need them, and in this case it comes down to your use cases. If the graphs don’t excite you, there are probably just three things to consider: The new Time menu, per-process network monitoring, and Retina graphics (which it has, by the way).

The changes to the Time/Calendar menu make iStat Menus one of the best menubar calendars around, while the per-process network monitoring — as rudimentary as it is — offers quick and useful insights into data transfer rates as they happen. iStat Menus 4 is the same menubar monitoring app I’ve come to know and love, made better — with more features, an improved layout, and further integration into the Mountain Lion ecosystem. But if you don’t need history graphs, the price of an upgrade may be a little too steep at this stage.

To the untrained eye, Alfred may seem like just another simple frontend to spotlight, allowing you to launch apps and search your Mac. However, beneath its seemingly humble facade lies a dormant beast. A powerful and flexible beast, that is, that with a little knowledge can be woken from its slumber to bring your productivity to new heights.

Join me on this epic quest as we set free the beast within Alfred and have it do your bidding.

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First Things First

It should go without saying, but the first and most essential tip is: Get The Powerpack! Alfred without the Powerpack is like Arthur without Excalibur, like Merlin without his magic, like… you get the idea. My point is that the key to unleashing Alfred’s true power is, well the Powerpack.

For that very reason, from here on out, most if not all tips will assume you have the Powerpack installed. This will of course cost you roughly $24. One thing to note, though, is that the Powerpack will not work with the Mac App Store version of Alfred, so be sure to download Alfred directly from its site.

Search

Search is at Alfred’s core, and therefore knowing your way around it is fundamental. What may appear to be a trivial affair, has in fact many intricacies that can seem daunting at first, but bear with me while I introduce you to your new best friend.

Keywords

Finding files and folders is a cinch once you’ve mastered a few keywords and the subtle differences between them. The keywords find and open are similar in the respect that they both search for files and folders based on their name. The main difference being that find will reveal the file or folder in finder, whereas open will do just that — open the file or folder.

Summoning Alfred and pressing space or ‘ is the same as using open.

You can type in as many words as needed in your query to refine your search until you find exactly what you’re looking for. For example:

• To find all text (.txt) files with Alfred in the filename type:
  open txt alfred
• To find all pdf files with the word expense and 2012 use:
  open pdf expense 2012

These two quick examples should set you on your way to refined search results. There will be times however when you’re not sure of the filename but know a word in the file. This is where the use of the in keyword comes into play. This will search the content of a file for the specified query. I use multimarkdown metadata in almost all of my text files and a quick way of searching it is using the in keyword.

Search Scopes And Filters

Alfred uses search scopes to refine and limit your search. In Features>Default Results the Search Scope is rather limited and although you can change this, fewer paths will render more accurate results. File searches are another matter altogether and here it’s best to broaden the scope choosing Everything in File Search>Exclusions & Scope. This is also where you can define what types of files you don’t want to appear in the search results.

Search Filters – This is another place where you’ll find search scopes. To create a search filter, click Extensions and choose Search Filter. Give your filter a Name, optionally fill in your name and website and then click Create. Most fields are self explanatory but I’d like to focus on three in particular:

• Action – The default action is to open the file, just as would happen had you used the open keyword. You can also choose to reveal in finder simulating find. But here you will also see something new, the ability to pass the selected file to an extension (more on extensions later). This opens a whole new realm of possibilities since you can pass files to scripts or automator workflows or even open them in a particular app.
• File Types – Here you can limit what types of files Alfred will search for. If you have a constant need to search for a specific file type, rather than use the method described earlier, simply create a search filter and save a few key strokes.
• Scope – You can further refine the limits of your search by choosing a narrow search scope.

Web, Custom, URLS And History

Out of the the box Alfred includes over 30 web searches from sites such as Google, duckduckgo, twitter and Amazon to name just a few. However, in the off chance that a search you can’t live without (say, of Mac.AppStorm for example) doesn’t exist, creating a custom search is easy enough.

1. Navigate to the desired site and perform a search with an easy to identify query;
2. Copy the resulting URL, sans your query;
3. Open Alfred Preferences and navigate to Features>Custom Searches;
4. Click + to add a new Custom Search;
5. Paste in the URL you previously copied followed by {query}, fill in the remaining fields and you’re done.

You can include your custom search as one of the Fallback Searches.

While on the topic of URLs, it’s important to mention that Alfred feels right at home with URL schemes. The use cases for this little trick are limited only by your imagination and of course URL scheme support.

Interact With The Mac App Store

• To navigate directly to the Updates Page open Alfred and type:
  macappstore://showUpdatesPage
• To navigate Directly to your Purchases Page use:
  macappstore://showPurchasesPage
• Show your Hidden Purchases without having to go through account details:
  macappstore://se.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStoreElements.woa/wa/purchases?cc=pt&filtered=false&l=en&mode=HIDDEN&mt=12

Quick Access To Remote Systems And Shares

You can use Alfred to quickly access a remote server or shared folder by means of URL schemes. A few of the many possible options are: ssh://, vnc://, rdp://, smb:// or sftp://

As you can see from these brief examples, URL schemes can be extremely useful in speeding up your daily workflow. Combine this with the ability to search Alfred’s history and even assign URL schemes to a Global Hotkey and access to a frequently used file, note, or remote server is a keystroke away.

You can use an app such as RCDefaulApp to see which apps have URL schemes and even change which apps are triggered by certain URL schemes.

It’s The Little Things

Often it’s the little things that reveal a developer sweat the details and Alfred is no exception. It’s full of small and simple utilities that make mundane tasks on your Mac so much easier.

Calculator

• Need to perform a simple calculation? Open Alfred and type it in. The result will be displayed below and if you action the item (hit enter) it will copied to your clipboard.
• By ending your equation with an = the result will be copied back to the query field thus allowing you to effectively reuse the result.
• You can perform rather complex calculations (based on the GCMathParser) by preceding your equation with =.

Dictionary

For anyone that writes a lot, the dictionary is a vital resource. Whether it’s to view the correct spelling of a word, or lookup its definition or a synonym, Alfred can help!

• Use the keyword spell followed by a word. Alfred will show you the correct spelling. Action the item and it will be copied to the clipboard (alternatively you can also choose for the word to be pasted immediately);
• Use the keyword define and Alfred will open OS X’s dictionary with the correct word selected, from where you can see its definition or choose a synonym from the thesaurus.

Address Book And Email

It’s no secret that OS X’s Contacts app is far from great. There isn’t much love for the app from users in general, and that has opened the way for others such as Cobook (which is a great app). Fortunately though, you can quickly lookup a contact with Alfred. Type your contacts name action the item and you’ll see his/her contact card. From here you can easily action any of the items.

• Choose an email and your default mail app will open with the email populated;
• Choose any other info and it will be copied to the clipboard;
• Choose an IM item and open the app ready for messaging (using URL schemes once again).
• Customise the respective actions in the preferences and don’t forget that you can also choose to pass the relevant information to an action (extension).

Another way of sending out a quick email is by typing the email keyword followed by your contacts name. If the contact has more than one email address then you’ll be presented with the contact card to choose the correct one.

iTunes Mini Player

There is a barrage of iTunes alternatives out there, but this is not one! You will still need iTunes open in the background for Alfred’s Mini Player to work. What this brings to the table though is a quick and intuitive way to get to your music… FAST! Even if you don’t have iTunes open already, Alfred will open it for you. The default to activate the Mini Player is ???

• Open Mini Player and type ?5 to quickly choose a random album;
• Open Mini Player and type ?4 to jump to playlist, type the name of the playlist and off you go;
• Open Mini Player, start typing an artist’s name, album name etc. Hit enter and choose a song or play all.
• You can use the mouse on the Mini Player to control tracks, assign ratings etc.

1Password

With so much more of our content and personal information online, it’s crucial that we adhere to strong security “Best Practices”. 1Password has been for a long time the standard when it comes to online security. No surprise then to see Alfred integrate 1Password, turning yet another tedious task into mere child’s play. Now, in one fell swoop you can navigate to your desired site and securely login with 1Password.

• Type 1p followed by the bookmark name. Once actioned, your browser will open on that page and prompt your to type in your 1Password password if needed.

You can also save your 1Password bookmarks by dragging them to the bookmark bar.

Clipboard

OS X’s clipboard leaves a lot to be desired, driving most users to look for other alternatives. While there are many good options out there, Alfred already has you covered, and in a great way. Alfred’s Clipboard is one of those little gems that once discovered, quickly becomes indispensable in most productive workflows.

Alfred can keep your Clipboard History stored from a day up to 3 Months, choose which works best for you in the preferences. There are 2 ways in which you can access your clipboard history:

1. Open Alfred and type the keyword clipboard;
2. Use the viewer hotkey, default is ??C.

Once in the viewer, you can search your history by typing in a query. Unlike searching for files however, here you can’t use a fuzzy match. What this means is that you can’t type import alfred to find the entry in the screenshot, but rather type important text.

Another insanely useful feature of Alfred’s Clipboard is the ability to Merge copied items. How often do you find yourself going through the tedious cycle of copy, alt+tab, paste, alt+tab, copy… when you need content from various sources in your document? Fortunately now you can simply Merge every bit of information needed and then paste in your document.

Hold ? and double tap C to append the currently selected clipboard item to the previously copied text in the clipboard history.

Snippets

Provided you don’t already have a full fledged text expander such as Text Expander For Mac and your needs are humble, Alfred’s Snippets could be a perfect fit. What makes it less useful though is the fact that you’re not able to bind a snippet to a hotkey or have it triggered automatically. Instead, in order to use a snippet you have to either:

• Summon Alfred, type snippet followed by the keyword you assigned to your snippet;
• Activate the Clipboard Viewer using the hotkey, type the keyword you assigned to your snippet or view all snippets.

Before you can use a snippet though, you need to create it:

1. Access Alfred’s Preferences, navigate to Features>Clipboard;
2. Choose Snippets;
3. Click + to create a new snippet;
4. Give it a name, keyword (will be used to later access your snippet) and then type the snippet text.

Conclusion

As you can hopefully already see, Alfred is one of the rare apps that you can get a lot out of just fine using the bare minimum. However, if you dare delve in a little deeper, you will surely find new and interesting ways of working with it and boosting your productivity. Although we’ve reached the end of the journey today, don’t think for one minute that this is all there is to Alfred. Stay tuned for the next instalment to discover even more tips and tricks.

Have a tip or trick I missed in these topics, let us all know in the comment…

It’s been a good week for Mac users this week what with the (slightly delayed) release of iTunes 11, the next reincarnation of Apple’s default music player, back on Thursday. If you haven’t already done so, make sure you check out Jacob’s detailed review and critique of all the new features in this release.

Otherwise, it’s been a fairly quiet week but we’ve still found a couple of stories to keep you ticking over until next week.

Firefox 18 Beta features Retina support

The latest beta for Mozilla‘s popular open-source browser, Firefox has finally added retina support for the new MacBook Pro models, following Google’s example from a few months back. If you don’t own an MBP, then there’s still some improvements in there for other users, such as improved JavaScript handling and preliminary support for WebRTC, which will eventually allow video and voice calling from within your web browser, without the need for a standalone program.

For the full changelog then head over here, otherwise click here to grab the Beta for yourself. Remember that with all pre-release software there may still be some bugs lurking around in there somewhere, so it won’t be entirely 100% stable!

New iMac now available to purchase via the Apple Store

Ever since the new iMac was announced back at the end of October, Apple fans have been salivating over its amazingly thin and sleek design along with its beefed up feature and spec offering. Now, the new iMac is available to purchase via the Apple Store in the United States, Australia, Canada and a few European countries.

The 21.5 inch 2.7 GHz is at the time of writing expected to ship between 7 and 10 business days, with the 2.9 GHz model expected to ship even quicker: a mere 1 to 3 business days. Things change, however, if you want to splash out and get the 27-inch model: delivery time here is around 3-4 weeks, so don’t buy it as a Christmas present for anyone if you want it delivered in time!

The new iMac features a radical new, ultra thin design and a new display which reduces reflection by 75%, along with the latest Intel processor and NVIDIA graphics technology. Prices start for the 21.5-inch model at $1,299 (2.7 GHz) and $1,799 for the 27-inch model.

Apple fires the head of iOS 6 Maps

Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president, has reportedly fired Richard Williamson, the executive in charge of overseeing Maps in iOS 6 after users reported a whole slew of problems, including mislabeled towns and cities, wonky bridges in satellite view and out-of-date business listings.

Cue is drawing on the expertise of other mapping technology experts in order to fix the problems experienced by the so-called “Mapsgate” fiasco and to try and claw back some of the lost reputation of iOS 6. TomTom, who provides some of the mapping data for Maps, has also been encouraged to “fix landmark and navigation data it shares with Apple”.

The fixes may well also be to prepare Maps for release on the rumoured OS X 10.9, which popped up on weblogs a couple of weeks back. The new version is most likely to feature Maps and native Siri integration, alongside other features.

Heard Anything Else?

If you’ve heard anything else exciting that’s happened this week then go ahead and post a link to it in the Comments section below for the benefit of our other readers!

2Do has been a mainstay among iOS task managers for quite sometime. Previously, editing tasks in 2Do was limited to using Toodledo’s web interface—for many users this is a less than ideal experience. Consequently, many 2Do users have been anticipating a desktop app for sometime. That day’s finally come, and 2Do for Mac is finally here.

How did this popular iOS app transition over to OS X? Pretty well I would say, as you can probably tell from the title. In this review I’ll compare 2Do with two popular competitors, Appigo’s Todo and The Hit List, and we’ll see how it holds up.

A Cross Between The Hit List and Todo

To me, 2Do feels like a combination of two task managers: Appigo’s Todo and The Hit List (THL hereafter). They’re both very good in their own right, but also each have some weak points. I have used both THL and Todo in the past, but have stopped using both for various reasons. 2Do takes the best of these apps and amalgamates them into, in my opinion, a truly great task manager.

Great Features Shared With Appigo’s Todo

2Do includes an impressive feature set, as does Apigo’s Todo app. Many of the best features of Todo are also in 2Do (wow, that’s confusing if you are having this read to you). For example, 2Do uses list colors to differentiate tasks by list regardless of which filter you might be using. This visual cue might seem like a little thing, but is actually very helpful.

2Do also features the same handy little calendar for scheduling and viewing tasks. Rescheduling multiple tasks is as simple as selecting them and then dragging and dropping to the appropriate date. Viewing tasks due on a certain date or date range is also possible by selecting the date(s) you want to view on the calendar. If you find yourself rescheduling multiple tasks or needing to know which tasks are due on certain days in the future, this feature is sure to save you some time.

For me, a todo list or task manager must have reminders. With 2Do you can set reminders that will come through notification center in both iOS and OS X. Reminders are easy to set with a keyboard shortcut.

2Do, like Todo, allows for multiple syncing options. You can choose to sync with Dropbox, Toodledo, or iCloud. Each option has its advantages and disadvantages—all explained in detail in 2Do’s extensive user manual. One of the syncing options for 2Do is through iCloud. This means that users can add tasks through Siri on an iDevice and the task will show up on 2Do for Mac.

Great Features Shared With The Hit List

The Hit List is a dream come true for users who prefer the keyboard to the mouse. Keyboard shortcuts in THL are intuitive and there is a shortcut for everything. 2Do also provides a plethora of shortcuts. While the keyboard shortcuts in 2Do are not as intuitive or well-implemented as THL—for example, after entering the shortcut to make a task repeat, you still have to reach for the mouse to complete the action—they are certainly a welcome addition and help the app’s usability.

Few things are as frustrating / disrupting as looking at a huge list of tasks to be done on a certain day with no option to sort them or group them together. With 2Do a list can be sorted by due date, priority, list etc. Unlike THL, 2Do can sort with or without headers.

There you are working through your task list for the day and notice a task that requires work on a file. So you navigate through finder or pull up the file with Alfred. An even better workflow would be to have the file attached to the the task itself. This is one great feature 2Do shares with THL (although 2Do will only allow for a link to the file not an actual attachment).

After using THL for quite some time, one feature I came to value is the hierarchical list organization. 2Do also offers this type of organization. Each list is collapsable, with projects nested within lists. Perhaps the biggest problem with Todo is that projects are sometimes hard to find within lists. With 2Do, all projects are accessible from the sidebar.

What 2Do Does Better Than Both Todo and THL

Successful app companies are diligent in working out bugs and ensuring their apps are easy to use and understand. Even with all that working going on in the background, bugs are going to pop up and some people are going to have usability issues. That is why before purchasing an app that fulfills an important function, it is important to look into how well the app it supported and how much a company communicates with customers. As far as I can tell, Guided Ways has a good record on both counts.

If you find yourself viewing your tasks with the same combination of tags or date ranges, over and over, you can create a smart list with 2Do.

Additionally, 2Do offers two options that do not require a syncing subscription and will not limit the app’s functionality. THL is going to cost you $20 a year to sync, and Todo withholds some features if you do not purchase their pro service at $20 a year, although it does offer other sync options for free. If you need to collaborate with a team, you can always purchase Toodledo’s pro subscription and still sync with 2Do.

Features Not Included in 2Do

Before concluding thoughts, there are a couple of things Todo and THL have that 2Do does not. Powerful apps with a lot of features can often look cluttered, and 2Do is no different here. In this area, Appigo’s version does a better job with several viewing options to cut down on clutter. It also sports a task zoom feature, which allows users to control how much information is shown for each task. THL does a better job integrating with Mail and other OS X apps through context task entry, which automatically adds emails, contacts and files to tasks depending on which app is in front when adding a task through the context quick add menu.

Conclusion

In this review, I compared 2Do to two competitors and basically argued that it does a good job of combining some of the best aspects of both of these apps. Now to answer the question posed in the title of this post, is 2Do the best task manager yet? Well, I did not include a couple of other competitors for this title in my review—Things and Omnifocus are the obvious ones, both of which I have tried. Although there are a couple of web apps I might actually rank ahead of 2Do, I would have to say yes. Even as a first version, 2Do is the best task managing option out there for me, and certainly worth a try if you are in the market.

 

Jelly Belly rang this morning, saying they wanted their selling point back. While I do enjoy their delicious sour variants and assorted flavours always have been quite delicious, iTunes 11 also matches this little catchphrase. Take its new icon, which is conveniently sitting just above this paragraph. It appears to be bubble-like, does it not? In fact, it looks like the designer took the iTunes 10 icon and added a few layers to it in Photoshop to give it a more 3D look.

That’s not why we’re here though. iTunes 11 is a big release and it shouldn’t be reduced to the size, or design, of its icon. All proportions aside then, I’d like to take you on a ride into a different kind of Apple. Whether this is just something the company will be doing with iTunes or we may be seeing it in other OS X apps, the 11th edition of a Mac music player is a big deal. Let’s see what the company decided to change.

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What’s New

Brace yourself for a big section about every little detail that Apple has changed in this massive release. If we happen to skip over something, do tell us all about it in the comments below, but not before you’re done reading. Now, on to the features.

Different Navigation

The first and most important thing about iTunes 11 is the way you find your way from place to place. There used to be a sidebar on the left that held playlists, podcasts, music, the Store, purchased items, and a good many other things. The developers have removed that to replace it with a window that takes up the whole screen when you’re browsing. Don’t fret: there’s still sidebar functionality, but it’s hidden in different areas of the app. Also, if you want the original sidebar, just go to the View menu and click Show Sidebar. It’s not everything you might expect though.

Selecting content is the main thing you’ll be doing, so let’s start with that. In the top left corner, just below the controls, you’ll see a drop-down menu that says Music by default. Click it to find your new destinations for media: Movies, TV Shows, Books, Apps, and Tones (if you have them). There will be more, depending on how you have things customised. If you want to add your podcasts or something, go to Preferences, click the General tab, and check whichever box you want to appear on the menu.

Since Music is a tab I’ll go through extensively below, I’m going to move on to the Movies tab. Here you will find all your films, or video files that you’ve imported to iTunes and not bothered to categorise. If you click one, surprise! Much more info will appear in a themed way (more on this far below). You can read the description, view the runtime, find out who’s in that particular film, and so on. If you want a different one, just click the x in the top left corner and continue browsing.

TV Shows is identical to Movies, just with seasons and episode information. Books hasn’t changed at all, really. Then there’s Apps, which has been expanded. There’s a little number in the view selector that shows how many updates you have for your apps and once you go to that tab, you’ll be able to download them by clicking the applicable button in the bottom right corner — just as in iTunes 10. Apps really isn’t anything fancy now, but it does have a different colour when you select one and there are five tabs at the top for sorting: iPhone/iPod touch, iPad, iPod Games (yes, they still make these), and list if you want something minimal.

Overall, navigation has been completely rethought, and we haven’t even gotten to the iTunes Store yet.

Revamped Search

One of the most notable additions to iTunes in version 11 is the new search. When you’re trying to find something in your library, just start typing it in the search bar to the top right. You can filter it, depending on whether you’re in the Music pane or another, by such things as composer, title, album, and so on by clicking the search icon’s down arrow and then checking only the boxes you want to search. After that, you can opt to search the entire library or just the part you’re currently browsing. There’s no need to press enter because searching is now instantaneous and results appear as you type.

The new way that results show up is much better than before. Everything is larger and more self-explanatory. When you find something to your liking, click it to go to the artist page (for music). The weird thing about this is it doesn’t automatically scroll down to where that album or song is; instead, it lets you find it yourself. That’s not really search, but it might just be a bug.

New search’s best feature so far is the + button beside media. If you click it, that song or album will be added to your current setlist, or as Apple calls it, “Up Next” menu. (I’ll get to that in a few minutes, by the way.) I’ve found this incredibly useful when shuffling my entire library because I can continue to do that and also add a song I want to hear at the moment without disrupting anything.

The Grid and Flowing Covers Disappear

You remember all the view options in older iTunes versions, don’t you? There was Cover Flow, which is still used extensively in OS X, grid, and list. The first one was very popular when it first released in late 2006 with iTunes 7. It was the iconic feature of iTunes, and it even came to iOS devices so the question is, why did Apple remove it from the latest version of iTunes?

That’s right, the legendary Cover Flow is nowhere to be found in this edition of iTunes. You’re wondering the same thing as I: what would cause them to remove it? It’s hard to know, but maybe users just didn’t use it enough, or Apple wanted to unify the view of things with artists and albums. Whatever the case, it’s gone. In fact, Apple also removed another popular viewing mode (grid) from everything but the Albums tab, which is very disappointing.

Artists Tab View Changes Dramatically

Another major redesign in the music department is Artist view, which now looks like all individual artist pages have been put on the same page. It bears resemblance to the column browser of iTunes, just a bit more rearranged. No one expected Apple to remove the grid view from everything but the Albums tab and I’m very sad to see it disappear from the Artists one because they had a good thing going there. Even the Genre tab looks just like the Artists one — no more is the fun sparkly artwork that Apple created for specific genres.

Luckily for those who did like the old Artists tab, there’s a way to get half of it back. Even though the Albums tab looks to be organised by title, it’s actually sorted by artist name (alphabetically) and then by album title after that. If you are sad to see the old Artists tab go away, this new hybrid might help you make do.

Slightly Redesigned MiniPlayer

Apple has redesigned the MiniPlayer (and renamed it, as you can see), but only slightly. It has the new iTunes 11 look and buttons along with Up Next integration, which can be triggered the same as in the regular window. You can even search in it, which is something you wouldn’t expect to see in a 305-pixel wide window. All the features here are just like the ones in the app itself; click the + button to add something to your queue or double-click it to start listening now.

Overhauled iTunes Store

The entire iTunes Store, from browsing to previewing to reading reviews, has been completely redesigned. First, accessing it can be done by clicking the iTunes Store button in the top right corner instead of going to its tab in the sidebar. Right away you’ll notice that there’s now a pleasant grey noise pattern (meant to look like paper) as a background around the whole store.

When you’re looking at a potential app for your home screen, reviews are no longer shown on its main page. Instead, you must click the Ratings and Reviews tab just like on an iOS device. It gets stranger with the Related tab, which in a way is a redundancy. If you scroll down on a main app page (Details), you’ll get the Customers Also Bought section, which, while buggy, shows what the title says. When you head over to the Related tab though, the same thing appears along with the top apps in the selected one’s category. That’s a bit unproductive.

Getting used to the new iTunes Store shouldn’t be too hard since it’s not much different from the old one. There are now arrows that go right and left in the featured slideshow of each page and the new user interface polish like the drop shadows on New & Noteworthy and other side-scrolling categories makes things look nice. Some pages are really media-heavy though and even my MacBook Air from this year stuttered a little when scrolling. There are clearly still some bugs to be worked out.

Unfortunately, one big thing has not been added to this new Store: swipe gestures for navigation with an animation. If you’ve used the Mac App Store, you’ll know what I’m talking about. It’s nice to have that page-like feel that’s realistic, but not so much that it has an iBooks aroma to it. You can still swipe and it will function just as you’d expect, but not with that nice-looking overlay. Leaving something like this out shows that Apple could have polished the Store up more.

Artist Gallery and “In the Store”

Another new feature comes from the Artists tab, of all places. In addition to changing the layout of things, Apple added three new buttons to the top right of artist profiles: Songs, Gallery, and In the Store. The first shows their songs and is the default tab when you open an artist in the sidebar. The second is some of their photographs, but it’s unclear where they’re from as Apple does not give a source. You can click one of them to expand it and then use the arrows in the new window to navigate this gallery.

This is a great feature to have in iTunes, but it’s very limited at the moment. There are no captions to say where Apple obtained the content from and the About screen does not mention it, and that’s a major problem. The company should have partnered with Last.fm or another popular service that has photographs of major and minor bands because right now, even Coldplay has three images in its gallery.

The last tab in an artist’s page is for browsing the profile of that group or musician in the iTunes Store. It shows all the basics, from new releases to top songs to albums and recommended songs, the last of which are better when you use Genius.

iCloud Purchases Show by Default

Apple has been pushing its new cloud computing and storage service iCloud a lot lately. In iTunes, it wasn’t integrated too much until Match released just over a year ago. The $24.99/year service offers storage of up to 25,000 songs and automatically upgrades your quality to 256 Kbps VBR audio that Apple uses in many iTunes Store items (some are “Mastered for iTunes” and are higher quality). It was a good start, but now Apple’s taken things a lot further.

Even if you’ve had iTunes 10 installed for a while and used it extensively, right when you start up you’ll see some albums with iCloud icons in the top right corner of them. This means they’re available to download from the cloud, which is a hint that you already own them but don’t currently have them on your hard drive and should download them again. This might get annoying, so feel free to just hide it by clicking the Hide Music in the Cloud button in the View menu.

New Downloads Window

There’s a new way to manage your downloading items in iTunes 11. If you have something that’s been put on hold or waiting to be downloaded, it’ll show up in the top right corner with a progress bar just like in Safari. When you click it, a new window will open showing everything you’re currently downloading, along with the usual pause buttons and checkboxes. And if you have something you haven’t downloaded yet, click the [number of] iTunes Download(s) Available button to grab it from the servers.

Along with the loss of the sidebar comes the loss of the way you are used to doing things, like downloading something and finding out how long it takes. One thing that Apple could have done to make this an easier transition is use an actual pop-out download indicator like Safari has. It’d be more user-friendly and easy to pick up since people are used to Safari’s way of handling downloads. As for finding out how fast it’s downloading, just click the icon in the Downloads window, as usual, and it will show the transmission speed.

Syncing is Also Redesigned

Plug in that iPod or iOS device and you’ll be greeted with, well, nothing for once. Instead of automatically opening the device tab for your little music player or tablet, iTunes 11 moves straight to syncing it automatically. You’ll still see the progress in the top bar and if you don’t, click the up or down arrow until it shows up. To go into more detail, locate your device in the top right corner of the screen (above) and click it. (There’s also an eject button if you want to remove it safely.)

The sync screen didn’t receive a complete refacing like many of the other areas of iTunes, but it did get some upgrades. It’s now laid out differently, and every tab has a much wider appearance than before, taking up over 1200 pixels on average. It really seems like a waste of the screen in the Tones tab and others, but Apps makes better use of things.

There are now Remove buttons beside any software that’s installed on the device, though you can still manage your apps using the x buttons on the home screen browser. The bottom bar has been changed up to take up nearly the whole width of the window and it now makes your device, no matter how little the storage, appear to be large as ever. When you hover over a section (Video, for instance), it’ll tell you how much space it’s taking up on the device.

All the way to the right at the bottom, there’s a Sync button to start the transfers and Apply and Revert buttons will also appear if you modify anything. When you’re finished wasting screen space, click Done to return to where you last were in the real iTunes.

Know What’s Playing Soon with Up Next

Apple bought a DeLorean that can go exactly 88 MPH and they’re giving it to you for free. Well, in a way. There’s a really nifty new feature in iTunes 11 that was, to be honest, stolen from Sonora (a few other apps use it too), my favourite iTunes alternative that recently died of shame. (It actually had a very similar appearance to iTunes 11.) All that was due to iTunes 11’s imminent release, which the developers knew would heavily affect their alternative. In the end, yes, Apple does win, but it’s sad to see little independent apps burn out so fast.

Back to the feature: Up Next. There’s now a little list icon beside the now playing area of iTunes which, when clicked, will open a nice menu (identical to Sonora’s) that shows the next 20 songs in your current queue. Apple doesn’t call it a queue though, just Up Next. The keyboard shortcut is Command + Option + U if you want to pop it up really quick without moving your hands. Even though this is a stolen feature, it’s very nice to have and I’m sure you’ll enjoy it when listening to big albums or playlists. And as I said before, you can add some songs that will play next.

One of the other apps that has integrated this feature nicely is Rdio. It’s a music streaming service, yes, but it has been using the queue idea for a while now. This is one of the features that sway a lot of people toward Rdio instead of Spotify or other competitors, and it definitely helps keep things the way you want them, not the way the music plays.

Lots of New Colours in the Album Tab and Movies

I hope you like a colourful day, because you’re really going to have one with iTunes 11, provided you don’t have a bunch of dark or lacking album artwork. The app now pulls in the colours in your artwork and builds a nice appearance for them in the Albums tab. As you scroll through, try clicking on one (but not double-clicking as that would play it) to expand the view to something more pleasant.

This is also available in the Movies tab, providing you’ve added information and artwork.

The most present colours of the album artwork will then be stretched over across the screen and Apple’s algorithm automatically contrasts them with a different track number and time colour that’s also from the album artwork. If that sounds very confusing, just have a look at the screenshot above. It looks really cool and is almost something you wouldn’t expect from a piece of Apple software. (It’s an indie thing.)

It’s like Pioneer’s Mixtrax with extra development. It’s also undoubtedly the best feature of iTunes 11.

The Problems

Now you’ve reached the section containing all of Apple’s mistakes. If you already like iTunes 11, don’t ruin it by reading these. If you’re debating whether to upgrade or not (as if it’s not inevitable after a while), be sure to give these items a thorough read.

Cheesy Icon and Questionable User Interface Elements

Some will love it, others will hate it. Unfortunately for Apple, the response to its new music player’s icon is both uneven and unhappy. As I read my Twitter feed this release day (this is being written at noon Pacific time on 29 November), I see people’s complaints about the change, the features, the icon, and the app overall. The thing that stayed with me most though was the icon. I didn’t even look at anyone else’s opinion, at Twitter for that matter, after downloading the update, yet right when I saw the icon in my dock my heart saddened.

Why would Apple change the icon to one that doesn’t even fit the new user interface? It looks like one designer worked on the icon and the other on the every being of iTunes except that. People complained about the iTunes 10 icon too though. It was designed by one Louie Mantia, who now captains Pacific Helm with two other designers. As with all change, his nice-looking icon was met with much criticism and controversy because the disc had been removed. Everyone knew iTunes as the music player that imported CDs, but everything has its time.

With the new icon in iTunes 11, more controversy and whining is likely to ensue. I personally don’t like this icon that much because it has an iOS feel to it — in a more bubbled way. The main problem is that it just doesn’t mix with the rest of the items on my dock, even though some of them are Apple’s own default apps. That’s a problem the company should have solved after a month of release delays, but alas it’s still present.

As for the user interface as a whole, Apple has changed quite a few things. The new downloads icon, for instance, doesn’t fit the rest of the screen very well and its high contrast looks out of place. The same goes for the sudden darkness you get in some of the iTunes Store pages. If you’re used to that light interface and it drops to something black, it looks weird. In other areas, Apple did fine with contrast. It’s just those little things that make you wonder.

White is the New (and Only) Black

Do you remember the whole black and white colour scheme of iTunes 9? Apple first released the ninth major version of the software with a new white background that was set by default. Users erupted on the Internet, saying that the white was blinding and downright ugly. When you’re going through your library in low light, this is true. So, Apple took to releasing version 9.0.2 not far after to appeal more to the legacy users. Everything then settled back down and complaints ceased. Until now.

Welcome back the white background, this time for good. You can go to Preferences and scour for that selector, but it’s not there. Apple has completely removed the option to change the background and it’s unlikely that it’ll reappear in an update — unless users really do get angry. At least you can look through albums and whatnot in the sun.

Album Layout is Confusing at First

Fancy colours that look good beside your artwork are one thing; organisation is another. It’ll take you a while to get used to the new album track layout in iTunes 11 because it only shows six tracks per line on average (most albums don’t exceed 12 tracks — it’s an industry standard.) If you have a large album like the one above, it’ll still organise it evenly, but the position of each track is confusing. Once you reach the bottom of things, you have to scroll back up to find them again. It’s like reading two pages side by side and it will take a while to get used to.

Artwork Goes Small

In iTunes 10, you could click the album artwork, which was previously displayed in the bottom left corner, to give it a window of its own with controls that fade in and out on mouse hover. This is still available, but something tragic happened: all my artwork displays in a standard 500×500 window, which is a third of the resolution almost everything in my library has. (I like it to look crisp on my iPad’s Retina display.) At first I was fearful that iTunes had resized everything. Luckily that was not the case.

For some reason, all artwork, no matter its original size, now appears at 500×500 by default. You can drag the bottom right corner of the window out to make it larger and that will stay as the default size for whenever you open it again, no matter what album. It’d sure be nice if the default resolution just stayed there or if Apple made this artwork music play its own separate thing. More on that in a minute.

While I’m still on the topic of album artwork, it’s important you know that you can no longer adjust its size in the one remaining grid view of the Albums tab. There’s not a slider to do so and even though the Artists tab has a five-point slider for its artwork, the View Options window for Albums only has two sorting selectors. If you have a large iMac or enjoy AirPlay Mirroring at a big resolution on your 4K television, don’t even try iTunes unless you’re prepared to be three feet away at all times.

It’s Too Focused

With the removal of the iTunes sidebar, navigation of this app has been jumbled. It’s going to take people a while to get used to the new interface and once they do, it’s unlikely they’ll see it as “simplified”. If anything, it’s over-simplified. I admire Apple’s move to minimalism and it’s hard to argue that some of the elements in this app are enjoyable to use, but overall it’s a big jump into something completely different than the previous version.

The best example of Apple’s focus in this app is the new app pages in the iTunes Store. Instead of being scrollable and full of information, they require the user to click things in order to move around. In the previous version of the Store, it was much simpler and everything was on one quick-loading page. Now it looks like Apple is changing the priorities of things. This may be good for developers (people won’t look at ratings as often) but it’s terrible for users.

All throughout the app there’s this feel of priority. Apple wants you to do one thing at a time, clearly. Multitasking isn’t something that’s frowned upon by many, but Apple must think otherwise with this. Focus is a good thing in some cases — just not this one. It’s overdone.

The funny thing is, with all this focus, Apple neglected to add one thing that would have been nice: a fullscreen player with artwork and a few simple controls like the iPad Music app. It’d be even nicer if Cover Flow was re-integrated to create a music player in which the cover moved when a new song came on. Swiping from right to left would skip too. It’s a shame the developers didn’t think about that.

No Notification Centre Integration

Before OS X Mountain Lion, I used Growl for all my notifications throughout the operating system. It worked well and the themes available for it were great. I was satisfied. Then Notification Centre released and everything changed. Growl now costs, integrates with Notification Centre if you want it to, and just doesn’t work like it used to because Apple has innovated. That’d be fine with me if Apple actually used its own notifications system.

With Growl, I could get now-playing notifications with artwork, the song title and artist’s and album’s name. Apple doesn’t have this for iTunes 11. I would have expected it too because users would enjoy this feature.

Really Cool, Really Annoying

Change is never easy, especially when it’s in a piece of software that you use daily. Users are going to whine about this because that’s what they do. It doesn’t matter if Apple releases an app that I consider perfect; someone will still have a completely different view on it. In light of that, this app is, objectively, not bad. It’s hard to get used to, so don’t expect to just jump right in, and it’s definitely not as simple as it could be in many areas.

If this is Apple’s new direction of design and coding, it’s a good one so far, but I’m giving it a lot of leniency because it’s so new. I mentioned the problems with this app — there are many of them — and that shouldn’t stop you from wanting to go try it out. As for using it full time, it’ll take some getting used to. The biggest problem is its amount of focus and lack of anything even remotely related to multitasking. That’s going to hurt a lot of users’ productivity and even the new fancy features can’t compensate for it

Editor’s Note: Here’s some food for thought about iTunes 11. In the Windows world, many people would say that the current version of Office looks like the next version of Windows. It often feels like Microsoft tests new UI styles in Office before bringing them to Windows, and its held true many times. For Apple, iTunes is their Office for UI tests, at least in my opinion. It’s a good one: it’s the only Apple app most PC users will touch before switching to the Mac, and it’s often shipped on its own deadlines aside from OS X. iTunes was the first app to lose colored icons in the sidebar before Apple took that to the whole OS. It’ll be interesting to see what iTunes 11 features and design styles make their way into OS X 10.9.