Category: Mac

At school the only subjects to truly capture my attention were the sciences. I was always utterly enamoured with space, the not so final-final frontier. Today, many years later, I realise that space is far from a singular topic, but, rather, a subject in a constant state of flux further sub-divided into many schools of thought far beyond my level of comprehension. Such a vast topic can be understandably daunting—especially for young students—but everybody has to start somewhere; somewhere like the solar system.

Solar Walk utilises a fully-explorable 3D model of the solar system to make the subject interactive and informative helping to encourage seedling scientific minds. By introducing new found lovers of space to the fundamental make-up of our celestial home it can help build a solid platform of knowledge that can be used to undertake a deeper, more complex interest in the cosmos. Join me after the break to find out how Solar Walk stacks up!

Bringing the Solar System to You

Although the sciences—biology, chemistry, and physics—were by far my favourite subjects in school, the teaching methods employed were a source of constant frustration. We’re all accustomed to the uninspired classroom diagrams of the solar system drawn on whiteboards and textbooks failing to give any sense of scale or grandeur to the topic. Solar Walk is one of those apps that could potentially revolutionise teaching methods by allowing students to discover the science of space for themselves at any pace they like.

Upon opening the app, an impressive fly through of the Milky Way is initiated, complete with scientifically accurate distance estimates as you speed closer to Earth, giving a real sense of scale to the expanse above our heads. An interactive 3D model of the solar system is the focal-point of Solar Walk, allowing for planets, moons, and the Sun to be explored from any angle with a simple zoom, click, and drag. The model is automatically set to full-scale mode from the outset, meaning that the celestial objects featured are accurately positioned with true distances between them thus allowing for a great sense of scale to be experienced.

The solar system can be viewed in a true-to-scale mode or a condensed Orrery mode as shown.

Occasionally, it can be helpful to view a scaled-down version of the model to make it easy to place certain objects; to that end, there is the Orrery mode which condenses the model enough to see the full solar system in close proximity. Graphically, Solar Walk delivers a fairly good level of detail and quality, although not quite the ‘cutting-edge’ standard claimed by the development team.

The most impressive examples of Solar Walk’s graphics can be found on Venus, the Moon, and Mars with their respective craters and geographical landmarks displayed in great detail and locational accuracy; however, there is a rather unfortunate omission of the lunar landing sites, a small detail that would have been greatly welcomed.

The Moon’s surface is shown in great detail with each crater accurately located and named.

There are several other powerful features on offer beyond the base 3D model. Navigating to the app’s other features is done from four menu options positioned in each corner of the screen with the main-menu on the bottom right. Specific objects can be found by searching with the magnifying glass search tool which shows a list of all objects featured throughout the app.

The best use of the search facility can be found by looking up 3D models of satellites orbiting the Earth, including the International Space Station and Hubble Telescope. The models shown are accurate depictions of the real structures in orbit and give a small but interesting insight into the technology.

A useful search feature allows you to find any object and ‘fly’ straight to it, including satellites.

One of my favourite features of Solar Walk is the Time Machine positioned at the top-right of the interface. This remarkable feature allows the clock to be set at any time and for the exact position of any planet to be accurately shown at that point. You can also two-finger scroll over the clock to cycle through time automatically allowing for the orbits of satellites, moons, and planets to be followed as time ticks over—the faster you scroll, the quicker time flies. It’s in this area that Solar Walk really impresses, along with the ability to ‘fly’ through the solar system whilst scrolling, the app does a great job of showcasing the extraordinary size of our home in the cosmos.

View real-time orbits of the planets, their moons, and satellites with Time Machine.

Education, Education, Education

As much fun as Solar Walk can be its real value lies with education. Many apps focus too much on games and quirky animations to make absorbing information easier sometimes losing sight of the real task at hand; however, the hallmark of a great educational app lies with its ability to make the subject alone fun and engaging—regardless of magnitude or difficulty.

To that end, Solar Walk proves itself to be more than just a collection of fancy CGI’s by supplementing its interactive interface with informative content, fusing fun and education together. To retrieve the app’s informative content simply hit the top left info button when viewing any object to read the related details and technical data.

Object information can be of varying detail with the Sun featuring more complex explanations.

The educational content provided can be of conflicting detail in parts with the Sun’s profile for example giving complex jargon-filled explanations of the star’s inner-workings. In most other areas the level of detail is sufficient enough for beginners to understand and learn from; however, for the more advanced student or enthusiast the information may not be sufficient enough to advance existing knowledge. The lack of in-depth information may limit the Solar Walk’s longevity and usefulness over time, but the app is more than capable of providing the initial spark of knowledge from which a more specialist interest can be taken.

Perhaps the best educational feature of Solar Walk is the selection of movies available from the main menu. The topics covered range from the Zodiacal constellations, Earth’s seasonal changes, and a planetary size comparison, all showcased in a concisely informative manner. Despite the good quality of the movies and their level of helpfulness, there is definite room for an expansion of the topics covered with dozens of important theories and principles to showcase, perhaps something to look forward to in future updates.

The Movies section gives concise explanations to some of the important features of the solar system and the Earth.

Overall, the educational value of this app is plain to see; by making space an interactive subject Solar Walk can be an invaluable resource for showing that the topic need not be a chore to get to grips with. Although not intended as a digital textbook, this app would benefit from greater coverage of important topics like the asteroid belt, gravity, and the galaxy as a whole.

Not Perfect, But Close Enough

Solar Walk is one of those rare apps that manages to combine a well-designed and polished interface with impeccable performance; even with intensive use—fast scrolling with Time Machine, for example—the app doesn’t break a sweat. Despite having a slight information deficiency in parts, the content provided is still of a high standard for beginners and new students. The movies feature is easily my favourite section, presented in a way that can be of great use to students, and with potential to make it even better.

With the ever-increasing advances of technology into classrooms around the world, apps like Solar Walk may well prove to be the future of educational resources. Despite the sciences being in a constant state of flux, the information known about the solar system is one of the rare topics to be relatively safe from obsoletism; as a result, the app can be re-used with new students or children in the classroom or at home for years to come. I can happily recommend Solar Walk and encourage that any parents or educators give it a try, you never know, you may well encourage the next Einstein.

When you’re always looking for the greatest new app, sometimes you forget about the awesome apps that power your life. The apps you use day in, day out to make money, stay in touch with family and friends, be creative, stay informed, and more are the most important apps, way more important that that new app that might come out tomorrow and just might revolutionize your life … or not.

Funny thing is, apps that you use all the time can fade into the background, and you’ll almost never think about them. It’s easy to take for granted the apps we use most. From your web browser to tools like Dropbox and Alfred or the launcher of your choice, there are apps you use every day without thinking about it, but you’d be hard pressed to live without them.

Today’s Thanksgiving in America, which makes a great time to stop and think of the things you’re grateful for, no matter where you call home. Our team has rounded up some of the apps we’re thankful for this year, and we’d love to hear from you. What Mac apps are you the most thankful to have around this year? Perhaps an older app that’s stood the test of time, or a newer app that’s recently become essential to your workflow. Either way, we’d love to hear about it in the comments below!

Thanksgiving is already here, and as a thank you to all of our wondeful readers, we have prepared a special post with a few apps that the Mac.Appstorm staff is thankful for. Hopefully you’ll pick up a few new apps here, or at least some cool ideas for using apps that you already use. Here are the 20 apps that the Appstorm Crew is thankful for.

Matthew Guay: Editor

Pierre Wizla: Writer

Pedro Lobo: Writer

Richard Moss: Writer

Kyle Callahan: Writer

Bill Morefield: Writer

Stef Gonzaga

Reid Leamaster: Writer

Scott Danielson: Writer

Johnny Winter: Writer

Jacob Penderworth: Writer

Jorge Rodriguez: Writer

Conclusion

About a year and a half ago we prepared a post with some apps that we couldn’t live without, and we got some great response from our readers. We hope that this article works as a newer and revised version of that post, with some picks from our newest members of the staff, a few newcomer apps, and some others that still remain our favorites.

We hope you’ve found a few new apps here that you’ll enjoy. From the whole AppStorm team, Happy Thanksgiving!

When it comes to Internet radio, Pandora is the king. It’s been around since January 2000, nearly 13 years, and is going strong. Even though its stock definitely hasn’t gone anywhere good since the company went public last year, it has remained the most popular Internet radio service. On-demand streaming services like Spotify have tried to compete but Pandora holds its place well.

One of the problems with this great service is its availability. It’s always been a browser-only thing and the developers don’t care to expand it to have its own native app on anything except a mobile phone. There is an official lightweight Mac app, but it requires that you have Pandora One, a monthly or yearly subscription. It’s also not a very nice app, being coded with Adobe Air and Flash. Instead, Maha Software’s PandaBar, a native Mac app that sits in your menu bar, seems like a great alternative. Let’s take a closer look.

Introduction

PandaBar isn’t a full app, nor is it a tiny Dashboard utility. It’s a sort of hybrid between the two. If you’ve ever used the Day One quick-entry creator or Mint QuickView, you know what to expect. This is a menu bar app, a miniature version of Pandora’s Web site, only redesigned a bit.

The login screen.

When you first start the app, it will ask you to put in your username and password for Pandora. This may seem confusing because Pandora’s Web site says email and password. Just sign in like you would on the Web site and disregard this. Once you’ve put in your credentials once, there’s no need to worry about them again — they’re remembered automatically. Now, on to listening.

Everything You Need in a Small App, Including Last.fm

Listening to some good British music.

This app is only 305 pixels wide, making it a tiny addition to your Mac. It’s got all the basic things you’d expect: a play/pause button, a skip button, thumbs up and down buttons, a volume control slider, and a stations selector with a way to add new stations. There’s even a fullscreen mode, which, while seeming unnecessary, is very nice. (It is not yet available but will be included with the next update.) If you’re going to use the app for listening to music at your small business (like a café) giving it the whole screen is a good way to know what’s playing without clicking anything. The artwork is even nice and clear.

Keyboard playback buttons work as usual, so feel free to pause and skip.

Another little thing that makes this app worth using is Notification Centre integration. As with Spotify, Bowtie, and other music apps and tools, PandaBar will tell you what’s just started playing with a notification. Strangely, clicking it won’t take you to the app, but that’s okay. If you’re reading all this and have Growl, don’t worry about being left out because it has support for that too. This (notifications) is something iTunes should have had earlier this year, but will probably be saved for the new version that’s planned to release at the end of the month.

Setting up the Scrobbling feature.

One feature you wouldn’t expect to see in a Pandora app is Last.fm integration. With this app, you can Scrobble what you’re listening to; now that’s fun. Just go to the Preferences screen, click Last.fm, and check the “Enable scrobbling to Last.fm” box. PandaBar will then automatically send Last.fm all the songs you’re listening to in realtime.

The last notable feature is in an update to the app. Version 1.2.9, which should be released soon, will be including sharing features for Messages, Twitter, and Facebook and the aforementioned fullscreen mode. There’s also a Buy in iTunes button on the share menu if you’re enjoying the song that you’re currently listening to. Do be aware that the sharing features are going to be available for OS X 10.8 or later only.

Not So Nice-Looking

The little bear has all the needed features, but when it comes to design, things really start to decline. PandaBar’s layout is simple and there’s nothing wrong with that. The appearance of the entire app, however, is somewhat boring. Having the hint of green does spice things up since the rest of the user interface is grey, yet somehow it still manages to look monochrome — in a dull and uninteresting way.

Listening to Lindsey Stirling, a violinist.

Since this is one of the few native apps (Muse has a cool name, but it’s just an overpriced browser window) available for the Mac that streams Pandora, it’s okay to give it some slack. After all, competitors like Streambox have poor design as well, but at least it’s more consistent. (There is a more handsome app called Radia that looks like it’s worth a try, though I haven’t tested it out yet.) Even if PandaBar picked up an iTunes Mini Player-like interface, that’d be better than what it currently has. The current design simply hurts the app’s charm.

If you’re looking for an app with more consistent design, you could try Fury, a sort of basic menu bar app. It doesn’t have any originality to it whatsoever and requires Flash to play Pandora in a mini-browser, but it does look nicer than this native client. That’s one of the other options out there if you want something less than the full Pandora Web site.

Slight Delays, Yet No Ads

During my listening experience, everything sounded very good even though I don’t have a Pandora One subscription. Interestingly, there were no advertisements. I’m not sure how the developer is achieving this, but it’s great. If you’re willing to pay a $4.99 one time, you’ll get ad-free Pandora hopefully for life, unless the service does something about it.

I did encounter one issue during regular listening. It’s not something I had expected and maybe it’s just my 1.5 Mbps Internet connection coming back to haunt me. Whatever the case, there were some gaps between songs. It’s not always noticeable, but when changing stations there’s a definite 5–10 second delay. On occasion the gap between songs can also reach this length, but it’s typically only one to two seconds, which isn’t a problem.

Mostly Better Than the Web App

The fullscreen mode with some artwork.

This app’s main purpose is great, and the idea behind it makes it worth purchasing. However, the problem lies in its design, which is less appealing than Pandora’s Web design. That’s a disappointing thing to see in any third-party client, but the extra nifty features compensate for the lack of aesthetics. Last.fm integration, for example, is one of the main reasons a lot of people will be using this app, as strange as that sounds. Sure, it’s a competing service — that doesn’t mean Scrobbling can be done elsewhere.

As a whole, the app is just okay. Before it’s something I could recommend, the design efforts would have to be increased, and the strange gaps between songs would have to disappear. The latter may not be possible, and if that’s the case, it’s a shame, though understandable. Not having advertisements during listening is definitely an advantage, as is the Last.fm integration and Notification Centre support. Right now, this app is the best Pandora experience on the Mac, but the design might annoy you.

On Sale for $1.99 to Celebrate Thanksgiving

This app is currently on sale for $1.99, 60 percent off, for a limited time to celebrate Thanksgiving. If you like what you’ve read about it and see it as something useful for your menu bar, be sure to grab it as a bargain while you can.

Financially uncertain times require that we become better stewards of the money and resources that we have. Many who feel this way are looking toward technology to help them fill the gap. Financial software for the Mac is nothing new and there are many good options available like Chronicle and iBank. Moneybag is on version 1.0.1 and is hoping to take its competition head on.

Moneybag is a new personal finance app for OS X that allows you to monitor your spending, budget, and set goals. The app sells for $59.99 and is on version 1.0.1. The developer bills Moneybag as “the world’s simplest and best financial software.” To put that claim to the test, we will also compare Moneybag to iBank 4 in our review. Is Moneybag the best? Read on and lets find out!

Setting Up Your Moneybags

What is a moneybag? You can think of a moneybag as a big plastic container that you use to store different receipts for different items. The moneybags are categories that allow you to set budgets for them and also add transactions to them.

Moneybags

Setting up a moneybag is simple when using the moneybag creation wizard. The wizard allows you to create a name, icon, type, and savings goal. Once you have set up your moneybags, you can click on them and enter transactions.

Moneybag Creation Wizard

Cool Features

Moneybag does not allow you to scan receipts or email receipts into the service, like Lemon.com, but it does have some cool features to allow you to store more information about your transactions.

The notes feature allows you to type anything you would like to, so that you can easily see what the transaction was about. You can also add tags, location, and date to further document your transaction. Unfortunately while Moneybag does offer the option to attach an image from either the camera or photo album, it does no OCR or recognition of the receipts and all transactions must be entered manually. This is a lost opportunity.

Extra Information

Moneybag also utilizes cloud sync to keep all of your satellite apps on iOS and Android in perfect harmony.

Cloud sync

Moneybag includes useful budgeting tools under the Analysis tab to help you visualize where your money is going. The expense tab shows you a pie chart of how your expenses are allocated. The savings and monthly tabs show bar graphs that indicate income, expenses, and savings.

Analysis

Design

Moneybag centers its design on the concept of simplicity and ease of use. The designers implement smooth gradients with bright accent colors for buttons that oozes refinement. The use of icons that represent each category allows the user to quickly identify categories and add the appropriate transactions.

Interface

At the top of the interface, you have a sliding graph similar to the one in iTunes that represents all of your account activities. This visual aid gives you a scope of what you need to change in your finances at a glimpse.

Activity Graph

In several places in Moneybag, the designers use slider pill-shaped buttons to change settings. These buttons give the settings panel a control center feel.

Settings Panel

As a small distraction and one that is interestingly missing is the currency sign. There are no dollar signs to be found. There are also no commas separating digits in numbers in the moneybags. Although it may seem nit picky, it is quite the distraction and possibly an easy fix. Overall, the app is nicely designed if you like the current app aesthetic trend from Apple, but if you like minimal interfaces, you’ll find it frustrating.

Moneybag vs. iBank 4

The $60 price of Moneybag opens itself up to some pretty heavy competitors. The personal finance app iBank was reviewed on MAS by Ian and also was pitted against two other personal finance apps as well by James. It garnered a positive review and an 8 out of 10 score. The developers of Moneybag could stand to look at iBank and at the very least, copy its features to complete their app. The ability to add credit cards, loans, and bank accounts is already built into iBank 4. IBank also allows the user to import files from other popular personal finance applications as well. While Moneybag uses a sleeker design, iBank fits in with the usual OS X design. Being that iBank and Moneybag are the same price, the obvious choice between them would be iBank 4.

iBank 4

Drawbacks

For all that Moneybag does to be simple and easy to use, it gives away good possible features in exchange. Moneybag needs to have the capability to capture and import information from receipts or digital receipts. This is a huge missing opportunity that needs to be reevaluated on the part of the developers. Another missing opportunity is the integration with banks and other financial institutions. This integration would allow for credit and debit card transaction to be automatically imported into Moneybag. Moneybag could also benefit from more detailed reports and analysis. The vague reports that the app generates really lack the information needed to make decisions.

The Bottom Line

Moneybag is a well-designed app that does not quite live up to the adage that it is the “world’s simplest and best financial software”, I just don’t see it. Moneybag needs to acquire a handful of vital features to even begin to compete with the other apps in its price range. The app does nail the design and has good basic features for tracking transactions. While Moneybag functions well with the exception of a few quirks, perhaps the pricing is a bit high.

Moneybag is in version 1.0.1 and rings in with a price of $59.99. Being that Moneybag in itself is functional, it gets a 7 out of 10. The developers need to use later version updates to include critical features in order for Moneybag to really be worthwhile.

Want to start out 2013 on a productive note? Why not get started now? For the next 10 days, the latest Productive Macs bundle is on sell for $29. It’s quite an amazing bundle for that price, including TextExpander, Path Finder, TaskPaper, Optimal Layout, and more.

TextExpander alone makes the bundle worthwhile if you don’t already have it. It’s an essential productivity tool that can help you type repetitive text quicker, fill out forms in seconds, and more. Throw in Path Finder, a utility we recently called a full alternative to Finder that “provides so many additional features that you’ll almost definitely find at least one that’s invaluable”, and you’ve got quite a productivity bundle already. That’s not to mention the excellent plain text to-do list TaskPaper, Concealer for securing your private data, Optimal Layout to help you arrange your windows in the best layout on your Mac, and more, and this is a bundle you can’t miss.

That’s quite a shelf of productive apps.

Best of all, we’ve got 2 complete bundles to giveaway to our readers! Just leave a comment here before Tuesday, November 27th, and we’ll randomly pick two winners. You can also share the giveaway on Twitter, App.net, or Facebook, then comment with a link to your post, and you’ll get an extra bonus entry for each time you share it.

And if you don’t win, you’ll still have a chance to get the bundle, or you can go ahead and pick up a copy of the bundle right now if you can’t wait. It’s sure worth it!

It’s Thanksgiving week here in the United States and even though a lot of developers wait for Black Friday to discount their creations, there are already a lot of great games and utilities available. Included in the list are Pixelmator, Bastion, MoneyWiz, BioShock 2, and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. That’s only a few of the video games (I tried to even them out a bit) — there are a lot more in the full list, so treat yourself to a good time while you’re off from work on Thursday.

Have Fun, Save Money

Hopefully these deals will quench your gaming and art-creation thirst. If they don’t, maybe you’ve found some of your own outside the Mac App Store that suffice. Share your findings for the week in the comments below so that other people can thank you for them. Have a wonderful week and we’ll see you next Wednesday!

We’ve shown you a fair share of distraction-free writing apps before, everything from markdown editing apps to other more intricate apps that can get you writing a novel by playing sounds and placing images to get you in a creative mood. However, today we’re going to show you an even simpler and cheaper alternative to all the other apps we’ve showcased before.

It’s called Imagine. Instead of just imagining how it’d be to write with, let’s take a look at it and see how it holds up to the competition.

Imagine

Imagine

Imagine is an free, simple and good-looking writing app. It only has the bare necessary things to get you out there writing: it provides a blank background with a formatted page which contains a title and the body of your text. You can write with it and do basic transformations to your fonts. There’s also a word counter always present in the bottom right corner, and that’s about it. Simple as simple comes.

The Looks

The Looks

Imagine’s preset background is a bland light cream-ish color, but you can change it to a number of other preset light colors under the preferences. There’s about 8 different colors that range from a bright pink to a somber gray, and everything in between. Under the settings you can also find a slider that will adjust the size of your fonts, and a drop-down menu where you can select your preferred font from a large list of them.

In Action

Text

Imagine works pretty flawlessly in Lion full-screen mode. That’s really where the app shines, since its “distraction-free” gimmick works best when you have only the app to focus on and nothing else.

There’s also a few things that you can do to work with text. With CMD+Alt+T you can bring up the format bar, which will come up on the bottom of your screen and will have a few buttons to work with the font settings of your text, such as highlighting text, underlining it, setting bold fonts and italics. The format bar will also show a counter with the number of words that you have in your current document.

As far as working with different file formats, Imagine can work with text (.txt) and rich text (.rtf) files. It won’t export documents to anything else, which makes it pretty much just a basic writing app and not a complete text editor like Byword and other similar apps that support markdown and exporting to HTML or other formats.

The Simple Text Processor Market

Byword

Things have gotten a bit out of hand with so many similar distraction-free writing apps out there. I am a big fan of Byword, an app that could easily be compared to Imagine, if not for the fact that it has many more features like iCloud support, Markdown editing, file exporting to many formats (PDF, Word, HTML), and a line or paragraph focus feature that I’ve found pretty cool to work with. But then, there’s also the fact that Byword goes for $10, compared to Imagine’s low, low price of free.

Sure, there are many more alternatives out there that kind of do the same thing, some of them free and some of them extremely expensive. iA Writer is a very close competitor to Byword, and it even goes for the same price. Then there are other alternatives like WriteRoom that despite being a little more expensive, have a huge following as they have been around for a while.

For its price, I’d say Imagine works as a low-end distraction-free writing app. It doesn’t have the bells and whistles that similar apps in the market do, but it’s considerably cheaper than most of those and it most certainly does well what it should: provide a clean environment for writing without distractions.

Conclusion

The Imagine developer wants you to think of it as a simpler and faster alternative to Word and TextEdit. I’d actually say it’s more similar to apps like Byword and iA Writer, but with a few less features. It’s also a lot cheaper than those apps, which makes it a great alternative to them if all you’re looking for is a pretty, clean and simple writing environment and you don’t care much for features like diverse file exporting and markdown support.

I won’t make a case for minimalist writing apps, we’ve covered that before and I think we can all agree that whether they work for you or only slow you down is entirely up to you to decide. These apps won’t do your work for you, they will just provide for a cleaner and more enjoyable experience for doing it. But like we’ve said before, if you’re spending more time looking up apps like this when you should be writing, then you probably need to prioritize your time and this app won’t help you do that.

Personally, I like these kinds of apps as I find them very easy to focus on. If you are like me and you think you could benefit from an app like this, give Imagine a try. It might not have big features like other similar apps do, but for the price it’s pretty nice and it’ll get you writing.

Outliners are handy for a lot of different things: task lists, outlining longer manuscripts, or note taking to name a few. For some users, bullet list functions available in your standard work processor or note taking app are all you need, while other users prefer the functions provided by dedicated outlining apps.

If you are—or think you might be—in the latter category, read on to for a review of three of the top outlining apps. We’ve taken Scribe, Tree, and OmniOutliner Standard for a run and compared their features in-depth, so you can find the best Mac outlining app for your needs.

The Basics

The three apps considered in this review—Scribe, Tree, and OmniOutliner (Standard)—all have the essentials you expect in an outlining app. All three allow for collapsable levels, which makes it easier to focus on certain sections of the outline at a time. Importantly, all three work with the OPML file format, which ensures cross platform compatibility. For me, the most important aspect of an outlining program is ease of use. An outliner should make outlining easier, not more complicated. Simple keyboard navigation is a must. At the least there should be easy keyboard navigation for:

• Creating new items
• Indenting items
• Rearranging items up or down in a list
• Expanding and collapsing levels

Scribe, Tree, and OmniOutliner all meet these criteria. They also take advantage of OS X goodies available since the advent of Lion including full screen viewing mode and document versions.

Scribe

Scribe ($13) is on the simple end of apps included in this review. It is also the prettiest to look at. Let’s take a look at the strengths and weaknesses of Scribe.

Strengths

Scribe’s simplicity and elegant design are its greatest strengths. Anyone could open up the app and start using it without any trouble. Simplicity also helps with focus. The lack of options can actually be a good thing for getting down to actually completing an outline.

Scribe is streamlined and easy to use, but does lack a couple of features most would expect out of an outliner.

Despite its simplicity, Scribe offers one option that is not available in the other two apps. Using a keyboard shortcut or a button in the toolbar, the user can start recording audio that can then be controlled from within the app.

Another look at Scribe with some different viewing options.

Weaknesses

As of right now, Scribe does not support checkboxes. However, the Scribe developers have informed me that this feature is currently in the works. Most outliners allow for notes to be added to any item, but this feature is conspicuously missing from Scribe. For some users, this may well be a deal-breaker. Scribe also does not have a dedicated iOS client.

Although Scribe and Tree do not have dedicated iOS clients, you can still construct outlines in these apps and then export them in OPML format to a Dropbox folder. There are a couple of iOS outlining apps that integrate with Dropbox and allow for editing OPML files. Try Outliner or Thinkbook.

Tree

If Scribe is the trim distance runner of this group and OmniOutliner is the bodybuilder, then Tree ($15) is the 800 meter runner—not as bulked up with features as OmniOutliner, and not as streamlined as Scribe, but a good combination of both.

Strengths

With Tree you can have multiple outlines open within the same window using document tabs, this has come in handy for me a couple of times as I have needed to switch back and forth between two or more outlines. Another handy feature is item labels. Labels can be easily applied to any item and the names of labels can be changed in the app’s preferences.

This is one of Tree’s more simple viewing options.

Perhaps the most unique feature of Tree, and the app’s namesake, is the horizontal tree view. As you can tell from the screenshot above, tree view allows users to view their outlines horizontally, or in a combination of both horizontal and vertical mode. I find this useful for outlines where it makes sense to think in terms of “process” rather than a list.

Tree’s unique horizontal view.

Tree also has just the right amount of customization options. The default font, background color, inclusion of check boxes and outline style (Harvard, bullet list etc.) are all customizable.

An example of some of Tree’s options including check boxes, Harvard outline style, and customizable background colors.

Weaknesses

I had to think hard to come up with a weakness for this app. One thing that I would like to see is the ability to assign different font characteristics by level. For example, I sometimes make the first level of my outlines bold and increase the font size so that they stand out a little more. This is one feature included in OmniOutliner that would be very useful in both Scribe and Tree.

Although Scribe and Tree do not have dedicated iOS clients, you can still construct outlines in these apps and then export them in OPML format to a Dropbox folder. There are a couple of iOS outlining apps that integrate with Dropbox and allow for editing OPML files. Try Outliner or ThinkBook.

OmniOutliner (Standard)

OmniOutliner ($40) is an outliner on steroids, keeping with the athlete analogy above. The higher price tag adds up to a more extensive feature list.

Strengths

OmniOutliner is much more powerful than both Scribe and Tree. As far as customization goes, the options are seemingly endless. There is even the option to include a background image for your outlines. The customization options are topped off by ability to make outline templates.

Columns in an outliner? Yep. With OmniOutliner you can create columns. This means that any outline can actually function as an outline / spreadsheet hybrid. Still not impressed? OmniOutliner also allows for attaching files and images directly in the outline.

OmniOutliner comes with tons of powerful features like columns.

You can insert images and other files into your outline with OmniOutliner.

Finally, OmniOutliner is the only app in this review with a dedicated iOS app ($20 iPad only). Many of the features, such as columns, are also available in the iPad app.

Weaknesses

Because of the sheer power of this app, it can be a little intimidating and clunky. For most outliner users, I suspect many of the features that add up to the higher price tag are not going find much use.

The Verdict

After using all of these apps, it is clear to me that Tree is the best of the bunch. I find myself coming back to this app after trying many different outliners. While impressed with the overall feature set of OmniOutliner, after the initial awe, it became clear that many of the features would remain unused for my purposes. Scribe is a joy to use, but for me the lack of a note function made it less useful for my purposes. If future development adds a couple of key features, Scribe could become the outliner to beat.

How do you use outliners? Do you use an outliner not mentioned here? Let us know in the comments.

The critically-acclaimed iPhone task manager Clear just came to the Mac earlier this month. Even though it received a lot of great support from reviewers across the Internet, users responded harshly to this release. Some claimed that it “doesn’t live up to its hype”, others that it was merely a start, and some went so far as to bash every living feature of its being. For the price, can you get more? Jimmy Do, developer of Mochi, thinks so.

Do introduced the app in August, put it on sale for 99 cents last month, and then updated it with printing and bug fixes and raised the price back to normal. In other words, it’s been around for a few months and the developer cares about updating it — two good signs. Mochi takes the same simple approach as clear, only with a bit more detail in the areas that count. It’s not to be considered a competitor to the colorful task manager, but rather an alternative. Does it live up to such expectations?

“Mochi” is a short-grained, sweet, glutinous Japanese rice.

Leave Gestures to Another App and Focus on the Task

All those Clear gestures get tiring, don’t they? Some people like them, others find from swiping left to right all the time to be a redundant thing, especially with a trackpad. It does feel a lot more natural on a touchscreen, that’s for sure. Mochi doesn’t even touch gestures though, surprisingly. The developer took a different approach here and decided to go with the more handled controller: the keyboard.

The start screen.

Keyboard shortcuts are used by many, so why not keep the tradition going? (Clear isn’t an outcast because it uses gestures, it’s just a different kind of app.) With Mochi, you can do just that. If you navigate your Mac with many a CMD + Space and open Alfred for all the basic actions, you’ll enjoy creating tasks in this app. All it takes to make a new note (the bubble titles you see to the left) is CMD + N. Type a title and press tab to begin making your list of tasks.

Optionally, you can give the note a description before beginning your task list. When you’re ready, press Return and type a + followed by a space to make a new task. Alternatively, you can use the shortcut CMD + T, which comes more natural if you haven’t been doing mathematics on your computer lately. When you’ve checked off all the tasks in a list (either by clicking or by shortcut, which I’ll discuss below), it will be hidden from the Only Notes With Tasks (CMD + 2) list.

If only there were an easier way to scroll though tasks with shortcuts. Right now, you can press Esc to move to the notes list and then use the arrows to eventually make your way to a task. After that, pressing Return will bring up the cursor for your editing needs. Moving it over a task and pressing CMD + D will complete it. All this seems like a bit much, doesn’t it? Welcome to the world of the keyboard. That’s why Clear is popular. It doesn’t mean Mochi can’t be though: more advanced users will find additional keystrokes welcoming.

Nice Minimal Interface

The aforementioned Only Notes With Tasks section.

Clear includes that “brilliant” multicolor user interface — exactly what you would expect after using the iPhone app. That’s all good and well, until you look at the boring old top bar of the app: it’s OS X’s default one. At least Mochi takes things a step further with a different color. If you think white, black, and shades of gray make for a colorless and dull app, go look at other minimal designs out there.

This app is optimized for the Retina display.

The developer took the most basic approach he could with this design, and it shows, but that’s not a bad thing. It’s better to have plain old white with a single crisscross pattern on some buttons than 24 shades of the same grayscale color. If you think Clear is too flashy and annoying, this app will be perfect design-wise. The bouncy animations when you make a new task with the + key also help the aesthetics. It’s the perfect counterpart to the dramatic design of Color.

Like Cheddar, Only More Textual

Searching for something.

Nothing Magical’s Cheddar is, for some, the epitome of digital lists. It manages them perfectly, looks beautiful, is accessible on iOS devices, Mac, and the Web. People use it for shopping, tasks, and as an alternative to Apple’s Reminders app. Unfortunately, if you compare Mochi to Cheddar, it doesn’t quite hold up. Organizing your lists, for instance, is something Mochi can’t do as well as Cheddar.

In Cheddar, you can drag items up and down to create an order for your tasks. Mochi doesn’t have this. Instead, since it’s text-based, you must copy and paste items to move them. This seems extremely unproductive and forces you to create a task list in the correct order the first time. If you don’t, have fun re-editing it.

Rich Text, But No Markdown

So many indie apps today have Markdown support, because the world is slowly learning how to use the simple markup language. Once you begin to grasp the concept, it’s easy to remember and it becomes useful for many Web, Mac, and iOS apps. Mochi, just like iCloud Notes, does not use Markdown, but rather OS X’s rich text formatting, which can be triggered with a series of menu actions or keyboard shortcuts (CMD + B makes text bold).

Demonstrating the three types of rich text supported: underlining, bold, and italics.

To stay with the times, this app really should integrate the latest in text editing. Obviously it wasn’t built to primarily be a text editor or note-taking app, though there are several hints that it’s a sort of hybrid. The whole Notes feature is one of them, and it doesn’t make sense why the developer even bothered to include this. “Why not just tasks?” you say. Because Mochi can also be used to take notes, just in a different way than expected — with no Markdown.

Such a note-taking and task management merge makes this app desirable to students who are taking notes in class but also have homework. It’s perfect for an all-in-one app instead of hopping from Reminders to TextEdit and back. Unfortunately, the lack of Markdown still makes this unworkable for some. The code comes natural, so what are you supposed to do when it’s not turning into anything? Wait for an update.

No iOS or Web Companion

As with all apps like Mochi, it’s nice to have access to the data anywhere. Right now that’s not possible because the only app available is for Mac. I asked the developer what his plans for an iOS app were and he said, “We don’t have a specific date yet, but we do plan to make an iOS version next.” It’s good to know that a companion is in the queue and hopefully it’s even better than the Mac version.

A Different Purpose Than Clear; Still Just Okay

A list of some of this app’s pros and cons.

The developers of Clear probably thought their app would receive unanimous praise. That didn’t happen though. With Mochi, it’s going to be the same way. This app isn’t aimed at the same crowd as Clear, nor Cheddar. During its three months residence at the Mac App Store, Mochi has attracted a certain set of users. Even with its price point — one that seems high to some people — the app has still found a comfortable home in the Launchpad of some.

Overall, it’s hard to say that this app is “great” or “revolutionary” as, even though it does have a great set of features, it’s not the most promising of apps. But that’s how things are with niche software. You win some users over because they think the screenshots for the app make it look great, while others continue browsing because the app looks dull or useless in their eyes. To the people that see potential in this app, it’s worth $9.99. In the end though, it’s a good ways from making it to the mainstream task management market.

Have you ever wanted to save websites to PDF or image files in bulk? Then you’ll like our sponsor this week is W3capture, which is an app designed to make it easy to save websites in the format you want.

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Back when I first made the switch to a Mac, part of the appeal of both the OS and the hardware was the minimalist approach that Apple takes. I always hated having to delete the trial software that Microsoft lets other companies dump into their systems. Apple lets you start with a clean slate and enjoy your new machine from the second you turn it on. Unfortunately, though, Macs are just as prone to getting cluttered as anything else over time.

Even if you aren’t a digital neat-freak like me, chances are the available space on your drive shrinks a little bit more every day. If you aren’t proactive, you’re going to run out of space. If you’ve gotten a newer Mac with an SSD or replaced your Mac’s hard drive with an SSD, chances are you’re dealing with less storage on your Mac than you would have expected in the past. While SSD prices are falling, the price-to-capacity ratio still means that space is at a premium, and you’ll need to start keeping better tabs on what is eating up space. Luckily, there are a number of options for cleaning up the clutter, and we are going to take a look at a few that I’ve used in my battle to keep my laptop lean.

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Diagnose the Problems

Before we get cleaning, it’s nice to get a sense of what exactly is on your drive. When I was considering cutting my laptop space in half (swapping the 500 GB drive for a 256 GB SSD), I started by seeing what I could get rid of. I tried DaisyDisk first.

Getting started with DaisyDisk is extremely simple.

DaisyDisk is a diagnostic tool that merges clean aesthetics with powerful analysis. After selecting the drive you want to investigate (either your internal drive or an attached one), DaisyDisk will scan all of your files and give you a visual approximation of what is taking up space. The different colors represent file types, such as music, movies, documents, and more. Rolling your cursor over each area gives you some information about that file type. DaisyDisk also moves beyond merely diagnosing problem areas, by allowing you to drag and drop files to be cleaned up.

DaisyDisk gives detailed information in a beautiful way.

Great care was taken by DaisyDisk’s developers to make the app beautiful, but you may consider the $10 price tag to be a silly amount of money to spend on a simple utility. If you are looking for a cheaper alternative, you may want to consider Disk Inventory X.

Disk Inventory X isn’t as visually-appealing, but has much the same functionality as DaisyDisk.

Disk Inventory X’s reports aren’t nearly as visually-appealing, but they are as revealing about what’s on your drive. And for the low price of free, it’s tough to complain about that. Personally, until DaisyDisk gets its price slashed, I recommend trying out Disk Inventory X before dropping $10 here.

Sweep it Under the Rug, or Throw it Out?

I’ve tried a ton of different apps that all claim to save you space on your hard drive. Now, it is important to understand that this is a broad goal, and there are a number of ways to accomplish it. You can either compress files so that they remain on our computer but take up less space, or you can just eliminate them altogether. I’m not a huge fan of compression, because if there is a file that I might need later but don’t want taking up space, I’ll just throw it onto an external drive and worry about it later. But if you have large files that you want to compress and leave on your internal drive, I can recommend Clusters.

Clusters lets you keep your files but will compress them to save space.

With Clusters, you simply let it know which folders to watch, and when anything new gets placed into those folders, it automatically compresses them. It exists as a preference pane, and from there you can control the whole program. I’ve used Clusters for a while now, but wouldn’t recommend using it on too much of your system. In my experience, it can hamper your processor if it has too many folders that it has to work on.

Let’s Get Cleaning

If you choose to eschew compression for straight up file cleaning, you have a lot of options. Let’s start with Disk Doctor. I reviewed Disk Doctor a few months ago, and found it to be generally well-suited for quick cleaning sessions. However, it isn’t particularly robust, and doesn’t exactly get into the darker corners of your drive.

After doing a quick scan, Disk Doctor lets you choose what you want to clean. The available categories are caches, application logs, extra languages, the trash can, downloads, and mail downloads. While some of those options are self-explanatory (e.g. downloads), others may be new terms for Mac neophytes (e.g. caches). Disk Doctor gives a quick explanation about what each of these means, in case you are hesitant to check the box.

Disk Doctor makes it clear what you are about to delete, and gives you a decent amount of information about your current disk usage.

Frankly, even for the least tech-savvy users out there, it seems silly for any app to sell the ability to empty the trash can as being a feature. The true value here is the ability to clean harder to reach files, such as application caches and extra languages. Now, whether it is really necessary to delete caches is debatable. Caches help commonly used apps run faster, and deleting these files may only give you the illusion of saving space, as those apps will likely just recreate those files the next time you use them. Extra language files, though, are probably more valuable areas for cleaning. I personally only need English and Spanish on my system, so I have no problem dumping the dozens of other languages that OS X comes with.

If you are just looking to trash the extraneous language files on your system, check out a free option called Monolingual.

Disk Doctor’s scan found 989 MB that it could free up. Rather than hit clean, let’s see what how some competitors match up. First, I ran Disk Diet, from Tunabelly software. It gives you pretty much the same interface, and just about the same available categories to clean up.

Disk Diet looks for pretty much the same stuff as Disk Doctor, but has a slightly less appealing design.

The gauge across the top of the window that gives you an idea of how much of your drive is full isn’t quite as clean, and lacks basic information that Disk Doctor gives, (specifically, what you are using and what your total capacity is). In addition to Disk Doctor’s categories, Disk Diet also lets you clean up legacy code. As OS X evolves, fewer developers are including legacy code in their programs, and fewer users have antiquated programs on their computers. In my case, Disk Diet found a negligible amount of 16 MB. All in all, Disk Diet found 849 MB of files to clean up, which is a tad less than Disk Doctor, but still pretty good.

DriveSlim’s search is more comprehensive, and is mixes features found in some of the previously mentioned apps.

Next, I ran DriveSlim, part of Prosoft’s Drive Genius collection. DriveSlim can do what the previous two apps can, but with some additional functionality. It searches for caches and expendable files, as well as duplicates and large files. After scanning for all of these, you can compress large files, and delete duplicates and caches. DriveSlim found an impressive 3.16 GB worth of space to save, more than triple what the others found.

If you want an app that can scan your system for duplicates, take a look at Gemini from MacPaw.

Despite the increased space found, there is a significant downside to DriveSlim. It isn’t quite as quick and easy of a process as Disk Doctor and Disk Diet, due to the scope of its search. Each of those took me about 3 minutes from scanning to cleaning. But since DriveSlim finds so much, you probably will want to go through everything and check what you want it to work on rather than give it free reign.

The top search result is from a shared Dropbox account, and that is not something you would want to alter.

For instance, it found files that are in shared folders of my Dropbox account – I wouldn’t want to alter those in any way, as other users need access to them. Ultimately, despite finding a large number of candidates, I erred on the side of caution and left many files alone. And when it comes to compressing your files, DriveSlim doesn’t behave quite the same way as Clusters. Rather than compress the files in place, DriveSlim moves them into a separate disk image. This isn’t as convenient, but may be appealing to those who want to stick their bulky, unused files in a different place (like moving Christmas decorations to the attic).

CleanMyMac doesn’t find as much, but has a few key features that make it one of my favorite utilities.

Lastly, I ran CleanMyMac, which I’ve used for about as long as I’ve owned a Mac. It does pretty much the same thing as Disk Diet and Disk Doctor, but with a few added benefits. You can do secure erases, in case you have sensitive data that needs to be permanently wiped. You can have it monitor the trash can and it will popup and run automatically when it reaches a level that you define. Perhaps most interestingly, it can do full uninstalls of apps that you wish to get rid of. Typically, uninstalling an app on OS X just means moving it to the trash can, which makes the whole process much more straightforward than I ever found it to be on Windows. However, some apps may create files elsewhere in your system, such as in Application Support in your Library folder. CleanMyMac makes sure that the application you are uninstalling is deleted fully. After scanning, CleanMyMac found 584 MB to delete, which is significantly less than the previously mentioned apps.

Mac OS X has the ability to do secure erases built-in. Click on the trash can, then from the menubar, select Finder > Secure Erase Trash…

Which One Wins?

So now that we’ve taken a look at a few of the apps I’ve tried that help clean up your drives, it would be a natural question to ask is which one is the best. Unfortunately, that is tough to answer. No two are the exact same, and the prices vary. Personally, I use Clusters to compress a few folders, CleanMyMac to uninstall software, and DriveSlim to find duplicates. However, I only use DriveSlim because it is part of a larger collection of apps that I use to monitor my drives called Drive Genius 3, which goes for the tough-to-justify price of $99 (I got it from my job).

Drive Genius 3 has a ton of great features, including hard drive health monitoring, but it is expensive.

If I was looking for an app that just found duplicates, I would stick with Gemini. If I was just looking for an app to clean up my caches, I would stick with Disk Doctor. If I just needed to see where my space is being used, I would stick with Disk Inventory X. What complicates your decision is the fact that for each of these apps, there is a clear jump in price that is commensurate with the added features that each brings over the competition. So, making a recommendation here is tough, because it all depends on your needs. An ideal program would do all of the functions I’ve discussed, but none are perfect.

The best thing you can do is to be vigilant in your daily use of your computer. Don’t save files that you will never need again. Don’t go around installing apps that you won’t ever use. And my best advice is to stick to a consistent, easy to understand naming scheme for your documents. That way, when you do get around to cleaning up, you won’t have to guess what that file called “My New Document 6″ is.

Occasionally, you may run across a product or service that you didn’t really know you needed until you were introduced to its existence. These Eureka! discoveries are quite satisfying as they usually make life easier or more streamlined. PhotoBulk, an app from Eltima Software, plops itself directly into this camp.

If you’re a “photo bug” or interested in giving your photo library a professional feel, you’ll most definitely want to check it out. Let’s talk about its appeal after the jump!

Using the App

PhotoBulk is a fairly tiny app. When you open it, what is displayed is simply a charcoal-grey box asking you to drag-and-drop some images onto it. Once you’ve added some images, you decide which of PhotoBulk’s three features you want to employ: watermarking, resizing, and/or optimizing PNG or JPEG files.

While simple, you have you admit that PhotoBulk is a good looking app.

Click each option on the main bar opens up a corresponding drop-down pane. The watermark pane splits the photo into nine sections, allowing you to choose the best place for your tag.

The PhotoBulk menu is not flush with options, but it’s not necessarily trying to reinvent the wheel.

If you’ve dragged multiple pictures onto the main pane (kind of the point), then the watermark will be added in the same location for all the photos. The fonts available for the watermark are those found in your Fontbook so if you have added any third-party fonts, they’re all here. You can also choose the color and opacity of your watermark.

Here’s a sample of the PhotoBulk-applied watermark using a third-party font. Not bad eh?

The other panes are much simpler. The “Bulk Resize” pane does as its name implies, but only allows you to change either the height or width, thereby cornering you into keeping the original photo’s aspect ratio–probably not a bad idea in general.

PhotoBulk keeps resizing idiot-proof by forcing you to keep the aspect ratio. Now you don’t have to worry about distorting your photos.

The optimization pane preps your photos for the Web, either as PNGs or JPEGs (or both!). When you’re good to go, click the eye icon on the main bar to get a brief preview. If your photos are ready for primetime, the green Start button on the main pane will proceed with the magic and output the photo to the folder of your choice.

Criticism

Before I write any more, let me acknowledge that there are other apps that can do what PhotoBulk does. Adobe Photoshop, for example is capable of automatically adding watermarks via its Action Scripts feature. Apple’s own Preview app is able to resize multiple photos at once. And both can optimize for the Web. I think the crux of the consider for PhotoBulk is its ease of use and lean, mean, speed.

I threw some large wallpapers from OS X Mountain Lion at PhotoBulk but it happily spit them out in seconds as newly optimized and watermarked images.

I really like the simplicity, but I did find myself wanting a few more features. If a future iteration kept its beauty and ease-of-use but added a few more photo tweaks like automatic color correction, red eye removal, and/or cropping, it would replace iPhoto (for me at least).

Pricing

The other factor to consider when eying an application like PhotoBulk is price. At first glance, you may recoil at the stout price of $9.99 for the ability to tweak a few photos, but for the right audience, purchasing PhotoBulk will make sense. To its credit, other apps cut from a similar cloth are at least $10: Photo Batch is $14.99; Adobe Photoshop is 30 times that price; and even though Preview is free, it doesn’t watermark photos.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, is PhotoBulk right for you? Well, it depends who you are. If you want to add a professional watermark to your photos without paying for Photoshop, then you may find exactly what you’re looking for. I’ll say this for the app: it’s a lightning fast utility with a snazzy UI. I’ll leave the decision to you.

But hey, would you like to try PhotoBulk for free? If so, we’ve got 10 copies of it free for our readers! Just leave a comment below and tell us why you’re excited about trying out PhotoBulk, and optionally tweet a link to this article and comment with a link to the tweet for an extra entry. We’ll close the giveaway on November 24th, so be sure to hurry and get your entry in!

In recent iterations of iOS — Apple’s mobile operating system for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad — and in recent versions of OS X on the desktop, you will undoubtedly have noticed a move towards visual elements that mimic real-life objects. The ruled, yellow notepaper for the Notes app, the torn-paper effect at the top of the stitched, leather-bound Calendar app, and more are examples of this.

These software design elements mimicking real world objects have introduced a new word into our vocabularies: skeuomorphism. Such effects have, however, divided opinion, and it is just possible that we will see Apple shift away from these elements in future.

What, Exactly, is Skeuomorphism?

Skeuomorphism is commonly understood to be, according to Wikipedia, the “design element of a product that imitates design elements that were functionally necessary in the original product design”, and here comes the important bit, “but which have become ornamental in the new design.”

That is significant. Skeuomorphs are merely eye-candy. And a lot of people dislike design elements that are not necessary to the function, not just you (perhaps?) and I. If you have been reading the Apple press, lately, it is widely reported that Sir Jonathan Ive similarly dislikes skeuomorphism.

How has Skeuomorphism Become so Divisive in the Apple World?

If you have ever wondered why your Mac Book Pro, iMac, Mac Mini or Mac Pro was the epitome of cool — with its sleek, minimalist, brushed aluminium surfaces — yet the software it runs is a mishmash of stitched leather, torn paper, linen textures and green baize, then you are certainly not alone.

Skeuomorphism seems to be one of those ‘Marmite’ phenomena: you either love it or you hate it!

The designer of your Apple hardware, Sir Jonathan Ive, is reportedly against skeuomorphism. His industrial design language, that draws inspiration from the function-determining-form minimalist approach of Braun’s Dieter Rams, certainly seems to suggest so.

The Braun T3 Pocket Radio inspired the iPod. (image credit CultOfMac)

Your software – OS X, on the other hand, has in recent years been drawing inspiration from Apple’s handheld devices that run iOS. Scott Forstall, until recently in charge of iOS, is said to be a huge proponent of skeuomorphism. Indeed, Steve Jobs himself has also been reported to favour such design elements.

This makes sense, in a way, since Apple continues to welcome an ever increasing number of Mac owners whom had their introduction to Apple devices through an iPhone, iPad or iPod. It makes OS X friendlier, familiar too, to those transitioning from Windows on PCs. Hence the convergence of ideas from mobile to desktop.

For long time Mac owners, however, these unnecessary design flourishes detract from the understated, functional and thoroughly-thought-through design for which Apple is highly regarded. For some such detractions becomes distractions that jar.

Skeuomorphism Can Help Computer Operators

Well, yes and no.

It is certainly the case that replicating real life objects can help the computer operator make sense of the interface.

Take settings, for example, where the user interface design of software might use switches to toggle between on and off. This is quickly and easily understood and, when employed correctly, is a sensible approach.

Time Machine uses a switch metaphor to convey its status: ON or OFF.

Remember, though, that skeuomorphs are the visual design elements that are superfluous to the function. They are a design indulgence that adds no more to the function of the software interface. They have no use and little purpose. They have gone to far. Skeuomorphism is just gilding the lily.

In essence, visual metaphors are good. Skeuomorphs, less so.

What Next for the Future of The OS X Human Interface Design?

With the recent board-level shake-up at Apple, Scott Forstall (pro-skeuomorphism) has gone and Jonathan Ive (anti-skeuomorphism) is now to be overseeing software, as well as hardware, design.

With this change it is now widely thought that the increasingly indulgent design direction of OS X software will be reversed and be brought into line with Apple’s approach to its hardware.

Skeuomorphism in action in Calendar app.

This has to be a good thing. Whilst the Notes app mimics a pad of ruled paper, the stitched leather of Address Book and Calendar and the torn-paper effect is not necessary for functionality. By the time we get to the dark wood and green baize of Game Centre (I presume to be reminiscent of gaming tables) then the visual assault is so severe as to render the application functionally confusing and counter intuitive.

To continue on a skeuomorphic approach to interface design inherently means a confused approach with inconsistencies in function and expectation across all apps within OS X.

The omission of skeuomorphism, on the other hand, doesn’t necessarily mean bland human interface designs. Look no further than Mac apps such as Tweetie that introduced a design that was clean and elements that were functional.

Sure, when Twitter bought Tweetie to become their official Mac client they did screw up much of the app, but Tweetie itself was influential. The developers of Sparrow, originally a Mac app for Gmail email, drew very heavily on Tweetie for inspiration. So much so, in fact, that they approached Tweetie’s developer beforehand.

That pull-to-refresh element that is prevalent in many apps, including Apple’s own Mail.app, …yep, that came from the developer of Tweetie, too.

Conclusion

As we have discovered, skeuomorphs are design elements that mimic real world objects but contribute nothing to the function. They are ornamental, merely a designer’s indulgence. We have also seen that human interface design elements that draw on real world objects can be useful metaphors that help the computer operator to understand the interface.

Moving towards a cleaner, functional human interface should mean less confusion, greater consistency across different apps which, in turn, aids understanding and efficiency of use. Perhaps Apple was in danger of developing bloatware full of eye-candy and, whatever the reasons for Scott Forstall’s departure, Apple can turn the tide of crass interface designs for something that is truly befitting of the design masterpieces that are the Macs that you and I use day to day.

Looking for the best way to make static HTML sites on your Mac? Hit the nail on the head with Hammer – the newest addition to the web developer/designer’s (devigner’s?) toolbelt. Hammer is a brand new auto-build tool from Riot intended to make a developer’s life easier by speeding up the design-code-test loop. It speeds up your process of converting CoffeeScript to Javascript and SASS/SCSS to CSS, while keeping the build folder clean of trash and various dependencies.

Join us as we hammer our way through a demo of this App Store newcomer and show its features in all their glory. We’ve got two copies to giveaway to our readers as well, so keep reading to get your chance to enter.

When we compare the olden days of web design and development in the early 1990s and the web today, the leap we’ve made as a technologically obsessed species becomes staggeringly apparent. We’ve lived through the rise and fall of WYSIWYG editors, witnessed countless design trends and changes and argued over browsers, operating systems, continuously evolving programming languages and, these days more than ever, design and development on mobile devices.

With so much time spent actually developing cross-browser, cross-OS and cross-device, one can really use a tool which speeds up the actual design-code-test loop, saving valuable hours which we can then toil away on arguing about standards, as we tend to do.

Note: this review is done with a pre-release version of Hammer, and some options may differ slightly in look and functionality in the final release.

Let’s see what it can do

The TL;DR version is – Hammer automatically builds your SCSS, SASS, CSS, JS, CoffeeScript and HTML files into the Build folder inside your project. This means it automatically optimises and saves new versions of your code, without forcing you to run external programs like, for example, Compass, in addition to having an active CoffeeScript to Javascript compiler. It’s an all-in-one tool for rapid design and front end development.

Installing is, of course, as simple as ever. Simply dragging the app to your Applications folder handles everything and as soon as we run it, we’re greeted by a welcome screen.

Hitting Create new Project will let us pick a location, and will automatically create the folder. We’ll call this one “demo”.

Hammer will then build the initial project, set up some starting files and tell us it’s ready. Near the top of the window that opens next, to the left of the “Build” folder icon is an empty application placeholder. Use this to select a default text editor. I’ll use Sublime Text 2 in this case (as evident in the screenshot below). When set up, if you click this text editor icon the entire project will open in it.

The other two icons near the top of the window are also interactive – the left one, “Project Files”, opens the project folder (in my case ~/Sites/demo), and the rightmost one titled “Build” will open the Build subfolder inside our project folder (~/Sites/demo/Build).

To the left is our list of available projects (currently only one), and in the centre of the right part of the window is the build status, reporting what Hammer did, on which files, and how it went. Hammer rebuilds all files on every file save, but you can also initialise the Rebuild process manually by clicking the Rebuild Now button or hitting ?R. Clicking “index.html” will open it in your browser in all its magnificence.

You can open your files for editing, publish them, open them in the browser and open their containing folder directly from Hammer

The bottom-most part of the right side of the window, “Publish to hammr.co”, is especially interesting — when your project is ready for deployment (for example, you’re designing a site for a client, and you’re ready to demo it), you can deploy to hammr.co — for free! You get a minified link to your demo which you can send to your clients, and every new publish gives you a new link, which means you can even give your clients different versions of your design.

Includes

After opening the project in our editor by clicking the editor icon, we immediately notice some odd “include” comments in `index.html`. This is one of Hammer’s primary features — it allows you to define html fragments you can use in multiple pages without copying the same block of code over and over again, and without resorting to a server-side solution like PHP to handle the includes. Have a header you need included on all pages? No problem!

Includes help you include a common html fragment in one or more other html pages

Another immediately noticeable thing is the fact that includes do not require a file extension — just the file name is enough — nor do they require full file paths to be specified. Hammer automatically searches your project folders when building and locates the necessary files, so you can even move them around and nothing will break as long as they still have the same name. Hence, in the index.html file,
"@include _header" was enough, and there was no need for "@include /includes/_header.html"This is due to the Clever Paths feature which works in includes, image sources <img src="<!-- @path mac.png -->" /> and even in CSS background-image: url(mac.png).

Inclusions extend to assets as well, and you can just as easily embed your JS and CSS (or CoffeeScript and SASS/SCSS) into the html. Typing something like <!-- @javascript app --> will not only look for the app.js (or app.coffee) file in your entire project, it will also generate the required <script> tags. Likewise for CSS — using <!-- @stylesheet style --> will include the file through the appropriate <link> tags, and using something like <!-- @stylesheet assets/css/* --> will include every stylesheet file found in the entire assets/css folder, one after the other.

Variables

Hammer also supports declaring variables. They are similar in syntax to PHP variables and declared thusly:<!-- $title My New Title -->
This declares the `title` variable and allows you to use it all over the current document, like so: <title><!-- $title --></title>In case a page does not explicitly re-declare a variable, you can use a default value: <title><!-- $title | This is a title --></title>.

As you can see, variables are a powerful tool in any developer’s arsenal as they make refactoring data on a page significantly faster.

Variables enable data-reuse, and can even be used as a way to demonstrate internationalisation in your project

Automatic Reload

Including a @reload tag in your file tells Hammer to reload the page in the browser every time it builds, i.e. every time you save the file.

This provides you with the responsiveness of a WYSIWYG editor in the comfort of your browser. Edit CSS and markup in one window/monitor, and watch the changes as they are applied live in/on another. This saves additional time that’s usually wasted on switching to the other window and hitting Reload, and you’ll quickly get accustomed to it.

Navigation helpers and Clever Path

Last but not least, two more features deserve a mention.

Clever Path, which we’ve already mentioned above in the Includes section, is realised through an @path keyword. Using @path prints out the path to the html file in question, so <!-- @path _header --> in our demo app would produce /includes/_header.html.

Clever path will load the first file it finds, so if there are multiple files of the same name, be more specific by adding a full path route or file extension

Using this type of pathing in your navigation links (see _nav.html) will enable Hammer to figure out the page it’s currently on, and if what it figures out matches any of the anchor tags rendered with `@path` on that given page, it automatically gives the anchor tag the “current” class. If the anchor is inside a `<li>` element, it too is given the `current` class.

For example, if we’re on the `index.html` page and said page contains the following:

<a href="<!-- @path index -->">Index</a>
<a href="<!-- @path about -->">About</a>

The first link will automatically be given a current class and will appear in the Build folder like so:

<a href="/index.html" class="current">Index</a>
<a href="/about.html">About</a>

This allows us to use the exact same navigation element on every page we use – without having to customise each page to have its own current element, further making refactoring easier and saving time.

Nav helpers rid developers of having multiple nearly-identical html fragments manually pasted into every one of their pages.

Conclusion

As a newcomer to the App Store, Hammer hit the ground running. The features it offers are a worthwhile addition to any developer’s arsenal, so go ahead and give the trial version a go. Additionally, if the price tag is too much but you end up falling in love with the app as one tends to do, Riot and Appstorm have teamed up for a promotional giveaway of two Hammer licenses to you — our readers!

Just leave a comment below letting us know what you want to use most in Hammer, and optionally tweet about the giveaway and leave a link to the tweet below for an extra entry. We’ll close the giveaway on November 24th, so hurry and get your entry in!