Category: Mac

Writing for the web has always been burdened by the need to format content in HTML. It isn’t enough to just write and publish content—you need to capture the reader’s attention as well.

You can’t simply write a blog post or a web page and slap it onto the site. Headers, bolding, emphasis, bullet lists, and numbering are necessary to hold down and guide your readers all the way to the last sentence. The process can be quite tedious, which is why the birth of Markdown is a huge breath of fresh air for content creators of all experience levels.

But Markdown isn’t just for those who work online. It’s a simple syntax that makes formatting and writing in plain text easier for everyone. With these writing apps, you’ll have an easier time putting your thoughts down on screen, whether you’re writing a note for yourself or a Markdown formatted file for publishing online.

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What is Markdown?

An easy-to-use formatting syntax created by John Gruber of Daring Fireball, Markdown enables the rest of us ordinary internet folk to create and format web content even with basic or no prior HTML knowledge. Markdown’s syntax, as Gruber pointed out, is simple in that it only corresponds to a basic set of HTML tags, making it easy to memorize and integrate into one’s workflow. It’s inspired by plain text email, which explains the use of “punctuation characters” and symbols, such as asterisks and brackets.

A great description can be found in the Markdown syntax documentation:

A Markdown-formatted document should be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking like it’s been marked up with tags or formatting instructions.

In other words, writing in Markdown is writing without HTML formatting getting in the way of the writing process. You’re writing in plain text, but HTML is already implemented based on the punctuation characters used in the text. Since you’re writing in plain text, you can guarantee that you can always open your document on any computing device, something that can’t be said for, say, a Word document.

Eventually, after discovering how easy it is to organize content with Markdown, people began to use it to list and organize ideas, tasks, reminders, etc. Hogbay Software’s Taskpaper is a great example of how you can use Markdown to create and interact with todo lists in plain text.

How Does Markdown Work?

Markdown’s goal is to make writing, editing, and reading web content easy for everyone. It’s pretty straightforward in that all you need to do is familiarize (and eventually memorize) the syntax to get started. Let’s break it down by showing examples of basic Markdown text editing:

Bold and Emphasis

To bold and emphasize, simply wrap text with asterisks. Emphasis (italics) is triggered by wrapping text with one asterisk on both sides. To bold text, wrap it with two asterisks.

Emphasis: *The cat ate my red polka dotted sock.*
Bold: **The cat ate another one of my red polka dotted socks.**

Links

To link text to a particular web page, wrap it with brackets. Right beside that (with no spaces in between), insert the link to the page within a pair of parentheses. Want to insert an image? Do the same thing, but put the link to the image and add an exclamation mark at the beginning.

[My Fluffy Muffin](http://myfluffymuffin.com/)

Headers

Headers are triggered either by Setext (equal signs and dashes) or atx (pound or hash symbols). You can use either of the two, but if you want to insert multiple header levels, atx is the best style to use as it supports header levels 1–6.

# This is H1
## This is H2
### This is H3

Lists

Lists are great ways to break down paragraphs with large chunks of text. To create an unordered list, you use asterisks, plus signs, or hyphens. For an ordered list, use numbers followed by a period.

Unordered list:
– Item 1
– Item 2
– Item 3

Ordered list:
1. Item 1
2. Item 2
3. Item 3

What Should You Use for Markdown Editing?

Markdown has become such a huge time saver and an efficient method of writing that a new sector has opened up in the app market: Markdown apps.

These apps are either designed or updated to support Markdown’s syntax. How these apps function in relation to Markdown vary. For instance, iA Writer supports Markdown editing and previewing. On the other hand, Marked by Brett Tepstra functions only as a Markdown previewer that enables you to see if you’ve formatted your document correctly.

The number of Markdown-supported apps for the Mac is growing steadily as people begin to learn and adopt this revolutionary way of writing for the web. As such, this article features 35 different apps that support Markdown, from text editors to previewers to a combination of both.

Markdown: Previewers Only

Learning and writing Markdown can always start with just a fresh .txt file. Simply apply the syntax to your document and you can preview the outcome by using a Markdown previewer.

Markdown: Editors

While a standalone Markdown previewer may be all you need, there are text editors that you can use to write, edit, and preview your Markdown-formatted documents. Prices and available features will vary from app to app, so take the time to read each app’s description and list of features before anything else.

Markdown: Distraction-Free

Geared towards writers in need of focus and concentration, the following are distraction-free minimalist Markdown editors designed to make writing and Markdown-to-HTML conversion seamless, easy, and of course productive.

Markdown: Professional Text Editors for Coders

Another subcategory are professional text editors that can be extended to support Markdown and MultiMarkdown editing and publishing. These are Markdown-supported apps targeting advance users who handle code and markup languages in their workflows.

Markdown: Integration with Other Apps

Finally, we have a series of apps with unique functionalities but can support various markup languages, Markdown included. These may be blog editors, word processors, site builders, and the like.

Markdown Resources

Need a bit of help learning how to write and edit in Markdown? Looking for a tutorial to help you get started? No problem!

There are plenty of articles, tutorials, and documentations available online to help you understand the syntax and how to apply the basic rules to your documents. Here are a couple of Markdown and MultiMarkdown tips, links, and resources to help you get started:

The Origins: Daring Fireball Markdown Documentation

• Markdown: The Basics
• The official Markdown syntax documentation

Other Markdown Tutorials and Resources

• Markdown cheat sheet [Warpedvisions]
• Mastering Markdown: 30 Resources, Apps and Tutorials to Get You Started [Design Shack]
• Markdown: The Ins and Outs [Nettuts+]
• Markdown: An Introduction [Simple Editions]
• Markdown Service Tools [Brett Terpstra]

MultiMarkdown

• MultiMarkdown: The official website [FletcherPenney.net]
• MultiMarkdown User’s Guide [PDF; also by Fletcher Penney]
• Writing Simple, Effective Documentation [Huy Nguyen]
• MultiMarkdown tutorials and tips on Tumblr

What did I miss?

Did I miss a Markdown editor or previewer? Got a tutorial that would go well in the list of resources? Let me know in the comments below.

And since November is NaNoWriMo month, I hope this roundup will help you find the best writing app to help you write and publish your manuscripts. Happy writing!

It’s been nearly 4 months since OS X Mountain Lion was released, and millions of Mac users around the world have already upgraded. Many of us upgraded our Macs as soon as it was in the App Store, while others were running it weeks earlier thanks to Apple’s developer program.

Mountain Lion brought many nice new features to OS X, from the Notifications Center and social network features to new apps like Reminders and Notes. Unfortunately, the new upgrade also left behind some older Macs, and many still don’t like the addition of more iCloud and iOS features in OS X.

I personally have been very pleased with Mountain Lion, and found the upgrade to be a great new change, but not everyone feels the same. That’s why we’re wondering: 4 months into the upgrade cycle, have you switched to Mountain Lion? Or are you still using Lion?

Is the cat that’s currently powering your Mac enough for your needs? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!

It’s week three of November and we’re back with another set of app deals. Featured in this edition are Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Cloud Outliner, Sketcher, SkySafari, and more. There’s even a whole section dedicated to Star Wars.

Star Wars Titles

It seems like every week, the developers of Star Wars games for Mac decide it’s time they put all their popular titles on sale. So, continuously, we’re offered impassible deals. Sadly, Star Wars Battlefront has still not made its way to the Mac, and it probably never will. That doesn’t mean we don’t have deals to offer though. Whether it be a thrilling, Retina-pleasing game of The Force Unleashed or something more strategic like Empire at War, we’ve got three of them this week.

On a side note, before you start, consider looking into Angry Birds Star Wars, another popular spinoff of the franchise. It’s only $4.99 and probably won’t go any lower than that.

Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast

It’s the dream of every Star Wars fan to become a Jedi. There’s a certain thrill to being the most powerful character in the films, with the force at your fingertips and many opponents to slice with a lightsaber. Of course, there are times when a good blaster cannon and set of thermal detonators do you good. For such things, this game will suffice. You get to use a range of weapons, from a legendary lightsaber to the aforementioned simpleton damage-inflicting tools and more. The game is now only $7.99.

Price: $14.99 » $7.99

Developer: Aspyr Media, Inc.

The Force Unleashed

Set loose your inner dark side, or join the force for good — this game does not care. The only thing that matters is your control of the game, along with your close following of the intricate story in this game. Have fun wreaking havoc with the powers at hand. Never before has the force been so close at such a price. Of course, the download size is 10.41 GB and it does require 26 GB of hard drive space, so make sure your computer meets those requirements first. Also, you’ll need a modern graphics card to run this game. Refer to the App Store page for more information on what’s compatible.

Price: $19.99 » $9.99

Developer: Aspyr Media, Inc.

Empire at War

Last up in our Star Wars section for this week is a classic strategy take on the Lucas universe. Being one of the many soldiers in a battle and surviving is one thing. Commanding the entire army and feeling the power of the Empire in your hands is another matter entirely. Wage an galactic civil war against the enemy. This game is immersive from the start, meaning that you don’t have to go gather those precious raw materials to start off your “village” as you would in games like Age of Empires. Hop right in to the battle and learn as you go — or die. This game is only a 2.14 GB download too, so you’ll be up and running in no time.

Price: $29.99 » $14.99

Developer: Aspyr Media, Inc.

Anything We Missed?

If you’ve found any other app deals, whether it’s later in the week or right now, we’d love to hear about them. Hopefully they’re still available next week too so we can include them with the deals then. See you in a week!

Death Star icon property of Artua.

Two years ago, when I reviewed Curio 6.4, I described the application as a “workshop for your creative projects.” Today I’m going to take a long look at the just released Curio 8. According to Curio’s developer, George Browning of Zengobi, the new version is “the most ambitious Curio release since its inception ten years ago.” Does Curio 8 live up to this billing? Is it a major improvement? Should you upgrade? I hope to provide those answers for you, as well as giving you an orientation to the new version that will help you better evaluate it for yourself.

Those not familiar with Curio should begin by reading my earlier review, because I’m not going to repeat the basic introduction to Curio that is provided in that article. With over 40 improvements, there is plenty to say just about the changes in version 8.

Three Into One

Previously, you could choose from one of three Curio editions: Pro, Standard and Core, ranging in price from $170 to about $40 (I believe). With version 8, there will now be just one edition, which will have an introductory price of $99. The fee to upgrade is $49.95.

Before you upgrade you should be aware that version 8 requires the Lion operating system, or newer. Curio now utilizes a new file format (more below) and will automatically update existing Curio projects from earlier editions. There is no backward compatibility, but your older files are zipped and sent to the trash, so you should be able to restore them if need be.

If you rely on the Evernote function, you will need to update to Curio 8, because it incorporates the new Oauth login API that Evernote now requires.

More than just a face lift

Version 8 of Curio is packed with new features or significant improvements to existing functions. The most obvious is the redesigned user interface, so I’m going to spend a lot of space here reviewing those changes.

By Zengobi’s own admission, the previous edition of Curio presented the user with over 100 buttons and controls. The new version looks almost Spartan by comparison. But don’t worry, all of the same functions are still at your virtual fingertips — it’s just that it might take a little time and familiarity until you figure out how to access them. Though not initially intuitive, the new interface is quite functional once you get the hang of it.

Before we take a quick tour of Curio’s new interface, recall from my previous review that Curio has five major screen areas:

• The idea space is the main work area.
• The organizer is where you can organize and access the idea spaces in your current project.
• The project center is where you organize and access your various projects.
• The shelf is where you access the tools that would manipulate the idea space or the items in it.
• And the library is the place where you accessed the externally created assets you’d used in your project.

Of these sections only the idea space and the organizer will be familiar to users of previous Curio editions.

Tooling around the toolbar

In Curio 8, the toolbar has been pushed to the bottom of the main window. There are 15 buttons or controls in the toolbar (although the last three are not technically part of the toolbar). From left to right:

• The first three allow you to access all your projects, show or hide the organizer for the current project or add items to the current project respectively.
• The next cluster of six buttons is the tools palette. It gives you access to the tools you need to add content such as text, lines, geometrical figures, and freehand drawings to your currently open idea space.
• The single button to the right of the tools cluster is the insert button, one you’ll be using a lot in the new Curio. It opens a popover menu from which you can select various figure types to insert into the idea space. These figures include familiar ones, such as index cards, mind maps, shapes and others, to some new options, which I’ll cover in more detail below. (More on the insert popover below).
• To the right of the insert button is the share button (more on this below), followed by the zoom slider.
• The final three buttons along the toolbar give you access to the cleaned up shelf in the following order: Status (for task management), Search and the re-engineered Library.

This is a sensible arrangement, but it may take a little getting used to. At least, it did for me. In the previous versions of Curio, you could add a figure (say a table) with one click. Now it takes an extra small step. At first I was a little frustrated by this, but it soon became second nature.

Inspecting the inspector

The previous inspector/shelf system has been replaced with the inspector bar, which reside immediately above the idea space. You use the buttons of the inspector bar to manipulate the various figures in your idea space, facilitated by the fact that the inspector bar is smart, changing depending upon what type of figure is selected.

You will need to become familiar with what these buttons can do for you, but understand first that a couple of them change what they are called depending on if a figure is selected or not.

The first button reveals the style inspector. Click this to change the current figure to a pre-set style.

The second button is the shape inspector (when a figure is selected), and the background inspector (for the idea space as a whole) when no figure is selected.

The third button opens the meta inspector, in which you can enter tags, due dates and other meta data. If no figure is selected, you have fewer options.

The fourth of these buttons reveals the notes inspector, which in fact is simply a mini word processor window for making notes about the current idea space or selected figures. This is a nice new feature, which I’ll cover in a little more depth below.

The fifth button opens the actions inspector when a figure is selected and the transitions selector when focus is on the idea space.

The sixth button is the for the info inspector, in which you can add a title for a figure, creation and modification dates, and restrict or allow the figure to be printed, among other things.

The seventh button is the meta inspector, allowing you to make adjustments to the size and placement of figures or of the idea space itself.

Buttons and controls to the right of the meta inspector change significantly depending upon what has the selection focus. When no figure is selected, a little Curio icon (the little planning notebook) appears. This is the project inspector, where you can make several adjustments to the overall project. When a figure is selected, several figure-specific options appear.

With several of the figure types, you can also change the inspector buttons to perform slightly different operations with a combination of the option, shift or shift-option keys while clicking. It will take some use before knowing which of these key combinations to use becomes second nature.

When you click on one of the inspector buttons, you will disclose a small dialog box, called by Zengobi a “popover,” which will allow you to manage various aspects of the figure. I don’t have the space to cover all of the options, but lets look at one to give you an idea of how it works.

Say I want to add a shadow to a photograph. I select the photo, click on the shape inspector button to open the shape inspector.

The shape inspector popover appears with four tabs along the top that allow me to access a variety of controls. To add a shadow, I need to select the Effects tab. From the screenshot above, you can see one of my minor peeves with Curio 8, which is that it doesn’t provide enough of a visual clue about which tab you’ve got selected. I’d like to see the open tab turn gray or something more obvious.

The other issue comes back to the same refrain I’ll sound over and over in this review and that is that as you’re becoming familiar with Curio 8, you’ll need to do a lot of hunting around to find the control you’re looking for, since it is not intuitive. The more I’ve used version 8, the more comfortable I’ve gotten.

My three favorite improvements

So we’ve looked at the most obvious change in Curio 8, the interface overhaul. Now I’ll review some of the other changes in the application. I can’t cover them all, but I’ll look at some of the ones I find most significant, beginning with my three favorites.

Split view

The new split view is a terrific feature, which allows you to reference one idea space while working on another. You can easily activate split view simply by Option-Clicking on the second idea space you want to view.

You can choose to view the secondary window vertically as in the screenshot above, or below the primary window. Split view helps make the next new feature more useful.

Organizer documents

You can now add a number of different types of files to the organizer and Curio will embed these files so that you can reference them while working. This is one of the benefits of the new file format, which writes assets like images, RTF documents and PDFs as individual files to disk, then scans and opens them when you open the project. These files remain in their native format — they are not converted to idea spaces. These non-idea space documents cannot be printed, exported or presented from within Curio. Since you can include these types of documents within an idea space, it seems to me the main advantage of including them in the organizer window is that you can reference them while in split screen.

Robust notes

One of my favorite new features is the new notes inspector which allows you to attach a rich text note to virtually any item within an idea space. Click the notes inspector button and a mini word processing window appears where you can add unlimited notes. Back in the idea space, hover the cursor over the notes icon for a popup of the note. So, for example, you can annotate the nodes of a mind map, or items in a list. The notes are included when you perform a copy as… command.

In the screenshot above, each of the nodes in the mind map has a note attached. If I select the entire mind map figure, use the copy as RTF command (from the Edit Menu) and paste the captured text into a word processor, I get the following results:

I would prefer it if the note text maintained its layout, but this result is easily editable into a useable document.

Curio can be a bit finicky at times when you try to select items. As an example, selecting an individual node within a mind map. If you use the option key when clicking on the node, it will select the node you want. In fact, Curio makes great use of the option key, so it is important to learn what it does.

The note window stays open and on top when you switch to another application. This makes it easier to type notes or cut and paste when, say, looking over a web page or other external document. Back in Curio, however, if you remove the focus from the figure that the note is attached to, the note window empties (don’t worry, you haven’t lost your notes, you just have to reselect the original figure to see the notes again). It would be helpful if you could open multiple instances of the note window, so you could be writing in one while referring to another. A small quibble.

Three other significant changes

Many of the remarkable number of changes to Curio in version 8 are incremental improvements. But others remain more significant, more quantum changes. Ones, I guess you could say, that you’ll notice. Following are three that seem most significant to me.

Inserting figures

As mentioned earlier, Curio 8 has a new method for inserting figures, something you will do frequently, so it is worth looking more closely at how the new interface has changed the way you will handle this task.

The list of the types of figures that can be inserted into a Curio idea space is long. In previous versions the options were splayed out along a tool bar at the top of the idea space. This was handy, but took up a lot of space. Version 8 has rolled up these choices into a popover menu accessible with a single button in the toolbar at the bottom of the screen.

As illustrated in the above two screenshots, clicking the figure button opens the insert figure popover. Selecting one of the figure types usually results in opening a gallery of styles to select from (although, depending on the type of figure, you might get other options). In the above screenshot, I’m inserting a table figure.

You can use a simple keyboard shortcut for inserting a figure: the “i” key combined with the first letter of the figure type, like this: “iL” for inserting a list.

I’m usually not thrilled when developers insert an extra step — even if it is just an additional click — but as this extra click is due to what feels like an overall major improvement to the interface, I can live with it.

Navigator bar

The navigator bar is a small, new feature, but seems to me to be quite handy. It resides to the far right of the inspector bar and includes access to controls for split view, book marks, tree view and arrow buttons that move you forward and backward in the organizer.

I’m especially interested in the tree view. Click on this button and you can see the entire hierarchy of your project. This allows you to jump to a different idea space (or document) without needing to have the organizer pane open. The organizer pane is very useful, of course, but on small screens like my MacBook it takes up a lot of real estate. It is nice not having to keep the organizer open to move around my projects.

File sharing in one place

This improvement may simply be packaging, but I really like the share button (next door to the insert figure button). It bundles quick access to all the ways of sharing your work with others. In the screenshot below, you can see that the options for sharing are split into three: project wide, open idea space and selected figure (which does not appear if no figure is selected).

Curio is smart enough to change the options depending upon the type of figure selected. For example, you can export a table to a CSV file.

Other changes

Figure enhancements

Several of the major figure types in Curio have been enhanced. Of course, the way you interact with the options that affect your figures has changed, but in addition there have been other incremental improvements, such as custom labeling for lists, better exporting of lists, and the ability to flip through stacks of index cards.

Task-related enhancements

Using Curio as a task management application deserves an article of its own. Suffice it to say that there have been several incremental improvements to these various functions in version 8, beginning with the revamped status shelf. I shied away from making Curio my project/task management application in the past because the interface was so overwhelming. I find the cleaned up shelf easier to comprehend.

Curio 8 makes use of iCal and Reminders that come with Lion and Mountain Lion. You will have to set these up a bit differently, depending on which OS you are using, but in either case create the calendar in the calendar application, then designate it as the sync-to calendar within the specific Curio project. I had no trouble setting the system up so that tasks created in Curio appear on my iPod Touch calendar.

Insert videos

It’s now quite easy to insert a streaming video from Vimeo or YouTube into a WebView (this is yet another figure type available in Curio). It just takes the URL and setting the size of the figure and that’s it. This solution is not without a few problems, however. Once you insert the video and it starts playing, you can’t move it around the idea space or even delete it until the video ends. After your video runs, clicking in the viewing window on anything but the video controls can result in the web page loading something new on the screen, messing up your setup.

Organizer filter bar

Click on the magnifying glass icon above the organizer to reveal options for filtering idea spaces in your project. This allows you to quickly find all idea spaces that have figures that may be labeled “needs followup,” for example, or which were modified within a certain time frame.

Under-the-hood improvements

There have been a number of under-the-hood improvements to Curio, beginning with the new file format that stores each project in a hierarchical package like so:

According to Zengobi, this change will allow for future enhancements, including project collaboration. Much of the underlying code has been “refactored” and rewritten to make Curio run faster. Simply from my own subjective experience, Curio does seem a little zippier on my two-year old MacBook Pro.

And finally, Curio is now Retina ready right down to the pens and brushes. I don’t have a Retina display, so can’t comment on how well this works.

What has been removed

A few features from Curio 7.x have been removed in this new version. Some of these may be missed more than others. I was always fond of the dossiers feature, which was a method for kick-starting projects via a series of fill-in the blanks questions. This has been removed in favor of the more integrated idea space templates, which can serve the same function. Project sections have replaced hoisting in the organizer, which I’m not entirely pleased about, as I’m a fan of hoisting (where you can focus on one idea space and its sub-ordinate idea spaces). Flashlight, Curio’s super-duper search function, is gone. And if you used jagged shapes in your earlier versions of Curio, you will find these turned into cloud shapes, because the jagged shape was too difficult to render precisely.

And one feature I’m glad is gone is the auto-hide function of the organizer. In previous versions of Curio, you could make the organizer appear by sliding your cursor to the left edge of the screen. It would then auto-hide after a few moments. This well-intentioned operation proved to be quite annoying and has been replaced by the simple toggle button on the toolbar.

Not perfect, but getting there

George Browning of Zengobi first introduced Curio ten years ago, and he has been continually improving it ever since.

Curio version 8 is not perfect. For instance, I’m still hoping for two-way Evernote interactions (currently, you can only read your Evernote notes in Curio; changes you make are not sync’d back to Evernote). Figures remain somewhat finicky, making it difficult at times to move pieces around as easily as I’d like (trying to select a cell in a table, for instance, can be a little frustrating). Nevertheless, version 8 represents a significant improvement to an already excellent program.

If you’re a current Curio user, the only reason not to upgrade is if you’re using a pre-Lion OS. You’ll have a period of adjustment once you do upgrade, kind of like that feeling you might have had if you’ve ever reorganized your workshop or your kitchen to make it more efficient. Recall how you perhaps kept pulling open the wrong drawer for a few days until the new layout finally sank in. That’s similar to the feeling you’ll have adjusting to the new Curio interface. It may be a little frustrating at first, but you’ll get the hang of it, and then you’re likely to start appreciating how much better it works.

If you haven’t tried Curio before, now is the time. The price is lower (at least at the time of this writing), and it works better than ever. You can download a 25-day free trial to give it a whirl before purchasing.

With the advent of the shift to a Paperless world, OCR has gained even greater importance. It’s the often overlooked detail that you may take for granted. That is of course until you try and search a PDF you scanned and realize it’s just an embedded image. Chances are that you may already have a good document scanner that does OCR. If, however, you don’t, then Prizmo 2 may just be what the doctor ordered.

Now I could just say that Prizmo does OCR with style, but the truth is that it does so much more. Read on after the break to find out what I mean.

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Interface

Prizmo is a beautifully designed app. The developers have paid great attention to detail and that reflects in every aspect of interaction with the app. All the app’s tools are accessed by means of popovers with smooth and discreet animations, making the app a pleasure to use.

Although Prizmo is rather intuitive and easy to use, clicking the small ? available on many of the popovers shows some help and additional information pertaining to that particular feature. This makes learning to use the app a breeze and something that happens quite naturally.

It’s not all good though. I found the lack of an ok or apply on the popovers unintuitive. In order to accept changes made you simply click the tool button a second time or alternatively close the popover.

Capture

Prizmo really goes to town on capture. I won’t bore you with details about the usual suspects, drag and drop, Open Image File and Browse Image Library. Instead I’ll focus on the various aspects that I think make Prizmo shine in the capture department.

The least obvious, and one I initially dismissed as being a sales gimmick without much use, is the ability to OCR a section of your screen. Clicking the menubar icon immediately dims your display and allows you to select a portion of your screen, choose the desired language and finally copy the OCR’d text. This may seem pointless at first, but I assure you it’s not. Ever tried to copy a description from an app on the Mac App Store? Or maybe some text from a remote machine when the VNC client doesn’t support the clipboard? Now you can!

Moving right along, we come to my favourite method. Capture from connect devices. Selecting Import From Camera or Scanner slides down a panel showing all your connected devices from which you can import files. It even has support for Wi-Fi connect scanners. If you have an iOS device connected and take a photo, Prizmo detects this and immediately imports that photo. Another great feature that worked flawlessly with my testing was capture from a tethered camera. If you have a modern Canon or Nikon DSLR connected, you can easily capture images from within Prizmo with the click of a button.

Prepare Your Image

Depending on your capture method, you will need to do more or less pre-processing work in order to achieve good readable text for OCR. If you’ve used either a document or flatbed scanner, then chances are you won’t need any extra steps and can immediately press Recognise.

Prizmo is smart enough to detect if your image is upside down and automatically rotates it for you.

There are however many instances when you will need to perform some pre-processing before Prizmo can OCR your image. Thankfully along the bottom of the window you’ll find all you need to achieve the best possible end results each time.

The Tools.

• Crop – You can use the crop tool to either select just a portion of the image to OCR, or alternatively, if you’ve captured the image with a camera or smartphone you can use the crop tool to select the document, leaving out the background. There is a button that will try and auto-detect the page borders but when that doesn’t work you can simply drag the guides to match up with the page borders. The crop tool doubles also as a straightening tool allowing you to correct perspective and even compensate for the curvature of open books.

• Dimensions – This allows you to define the size of your capture and to what size or page format it should be adjusted to. If Prizmo detects that the image resolution is not optimal for OCR you will be presented with an option to automatically resize the source for optimal results.
• Lens Correction – Lens correction does just that, it allows you to compensate for any lens distortion. If Prizmo has no calibration profile for your device you can easily create one following the calibration wizard and then saving it for later use.
• Adjust – This seemingly humble popover hides all you will need to perform color corrections such as brightness, contrast and saturation. You can adjust the sharpness and normalise the image choosing the white point and black point. This is fundamental to achieve a good enough contrast so that Prizmo may easily recognise the text on your image.
• OCR – Here you can finally get a feel for what Prizmo will see. You can bump up the resolution and increase readibility until the text becomes clear.
• Language – Finally but not least important is the language selection. Although Prizmo has support for over 40 Languages, you can fine tune the active ones so as not to clutter this popover with unneeded languages.

The File Types

There are essentially three types of files that you can process with Prizmo. Depending on what type of file you’ve chosen, the tools available and the end result will vary somewhat.

1. Text – All the previously mentioned tools are available for this document type. Prizmo will perform normal OCR and allow you to export to various online services such as Evernote, Box, Dropbox, Google Drive or any other WebDav location.
2. Business Card – As with the previous case, all the tools are active and at your disposal. Prizmo will perform OCR and try to correctly identify the various fields after which it will create a new contact sheet with the processed data.
3. Image – For image type document, the app will hide any tool related to OCR. Furthermore the Recognise button will be replaced with the option to Export, usually only found after having OCR’d and image.

Process Your Image

Once your image has been properly prepared it is finally time to process the text. Clicking Recognise, Prizmo will start to perform Optical Character Recognition. Once complete you are presented with a whole new range of tools with which to fine tune the resulting text. Prizmo will identify 3 types of Regions: Text, Numeric, and Image.

Any change you perform on a region automatically updates the recognised text. Add, Delete, Reorder and Merge various regions to suit your needs. If you find that some text was not properly recognised simply adjusting the readability slider on the OCR popover may produce better results. You can also change the recognised text’s language.

You can translate the active region’s text and from my limited testing it functioned pretty well forming legible and cohesive sentences (at least for the languages I could understand and read). Prizmo also has text-to-speech, allowing you to hear out loud the recognised text.

Once you’re finally satisfied with your text you can export your results to various image formats, PDF, PDF (Image + Searchable Text), Rich Text and Plain Text. For the Business Card type, you can save the result as a new Contact, email or save the vCard file. For the Image Type, export options are obviously limited to images and PDF

The Pro Pack

While I’m not much of a proponent for in-app purchases, I feel that the developers found a good compromise in this case. Instead of pricing the app extremely high, full of bells and whistles that the casual user will have little need for, they provide a Pro Pack as an in-app purchase.

The Pro Pack adds Batch Processing of multiple similar documents, an Automator Action and the ability to integrate Prizmo in more complex enterprise workflows through the use of AppleScripts or shell scripts. The Automator Action is particularly useful for those attempting a Paperless workflow. Simply setup an automator workflow to watch a folder, drop in an image and Prizmo does its magic.

Conclusion

Given its array of features, even those with a dedicated OCR app can benefit from Prizmo. From the simple menubar tool to capture difficult text to the translation and text-to-speech, Prizmo is sure to have something to fit your needs. Those requiring the power and flexibility of automation are not left out in the cold while those with more humble needs are catered to with great elegance.

The attention to detail mentioned earlier goes to the point of the developers providing the user guide in the form of an interactive iBook that is a pleasure to read on the iPad. There’s little more you could ask from a modern Mac OCR app, and Prizmo is an app we highly recommend if you want to do advanced OCR on your Mac.

Our sponsor this week is Jaksta Music Miner, an app that makes it incredibly simple to record streaming audio on your Mac. If you’ve ever wanted to record audio from a live conference or an online radio broadcast, you’ll love Jaksta Music Miner.

Jaksta Music Miner makes it incredibly easy to record any audio you come across online. Just start Jaksta Music Miner and set it to monitor your audio. Then, start playing the audio you want to record in your browser, and Jaksta will automatically recognize it and save it to your computer. It’s that easy.

Once your audio is recorded, Jaksta Music Miner will automatically tag the audio with relevant metadata and save it to your iTunes library. Now, all you’ll have to do is sync it with your mobile devices or play it directly from your Mac whenever you want to listen to it again.

Go Get It!

If you’ve been looking for a great way to record streaming audio on your Mac, then you should definitely try out Jaksta Music Miner. You can download a free trial, which will let you record 10 streaming songs to your Mac. Then, when you’re ready to purchase a copy, you can get it for just $14.95 this week, 25% off its normal price, with the coupon NOV-JMM25. Just enter that coupon code in the Source Code field on the order form, click recalculate, and you’ll see the discount applied to your order.

When the Mac App Store opened on Snow Leopard, the very first thing I downloaded was Angry Birds. I didn’t own an iPhone, but I heard about the game all the time and was excited to see what all the fuss was about. Since then, my life has been filled up with a few more iDevices, and I own Angry Birds on all of them.

When I heard that a new Star Wars themed Angry Birds was being developed, I was prepared to throw some more cash at Rovio. How did the latest release turn out?

News broke recently that George Lucas was selling Lucasfilm (and, consequently, the Star Wars franchise) to Disney for a hefty sum of cash. Disney doesn’t really do science fiction well (I’m looking at you, John Carter), so fans like myself were not particularly pleased to hear this. However, one thing will not change about Star Wars, regardless of who owns it: licensing it out for toys, costumes, lunch boxes, and a whole slew of other stuff. Thus, Star Wars Angry Birds.

The premise of Star Wars video games are always hit and miss, and sometimes just flat out strange (e.g. Lego Star Wars?). Infusing Angry Birds with Star Wars actually works rather well, if only because, like the rest of the Angry Birds franchise, it doesn’t take itself too seriously.

Getting Started

If you’ve played Angry Birds before, learning how to play this version won’t require any time. For the uninitiated, the premise is simple: You use a slingshot to fling birds in order to kill a bunch of pigs. You need to kill all of them on each level to advance, and scoring is dependent on how many of your birds you use, as well as how much damage you inflict on the environment in which the pigs are hiding.

Luckily, No Jar Jar

Just as in previous versions, you have a few different types of birds at your disposal, and each represents a character in the movies. You start on Tatooine, and not the young Anakin Skywalker Tatooine – this is Episode IV. Like other versions of Angry Birds, the story is loosely told with simple pictures rather than video, but the designers essentially just draw up scenes from A New Hope to get you started.

The most basic “bird” is a red Luke Skywalker. After getting launched, a tap of the mouse activates his light saber and helps him inflict extra damage just before impact. The Obi Wan can use the force in a similar manner. Han Solo can fire his blaster in bursts of three. R2D2 can shock nearby pigs (who, fittingly, are various Empire bad guys, like Stormtroopers and officers). C3PO is probably the most disappointing of the characters, as he can only disintegrate into smaller pieces, but at least he does so without his trademark whining from the films. A generic rebel pilot takes the place of previous versions small blue birds, capable of splitting off into three. Lastly, Chewbacca is the big, heavy bowling ball version that can inflict higher levels of damage.

The sounds are a creative blend of Angry Birds’ iconic cheerful battle cries and smug snorting, all with a touch of Star Wars. The R2D2 bird screams as he flies in a remarkably accurate way, and even the Han bird comes across as arrogant as he shoots his blaster. The cut scenes, while simplistic, are full of entertaining references that Star Wars fans will certainly appreciate.

Easier, Yet More Complex

Angry Birds Star Wars uses the same ranking system for each level. Depending on your score, you get either one, two or three stars. You typically are given enough birds to solve each level, but I found that getting three stars required a bit more effort than I have been used to in previous versions. There were very few levels that I could not complete in the first couple of tries, but I enjoyed the challenge of getting three stars more in this version.

The destruction that you deal with your birds is more satisfying here. Rather than basing most of the levels on wood structures, the building materials explode and crumble more often.

Angry Birds Star Wars requires a bit more chess-like planning. You will find yourself attacking each level more aware of what types of birds you have, and considering how to use the environment to your advantage. Some of the Stormtrooper pigs have blasters of their own which fire periodically. If your flying bird gets hit, it will get rendered powerless, and sometimes get flung back at you. However, you can use the enemies’ weapons against them; if you can nudge a pig and change his firing angle, he can do your work for you by killing other pigs. Blasts also bounce off metal, so you may need to bounce Han’s shots in order to get around corners.

Since this is Star Wars, you will be spending some time in space. If you have played Angry Birds Space, then you will be familiar with the altered physics of these levels. Asteroids are surrounded with gravity that you can use to your advantage. There is nothing radically new in these levels, but all the new characters will be at your disposal.

Gameplay

What adds to the complexity of the game is not just the more detailed levels but also the way you use some of the birds. For instance, Han Solo and Obi Wan birds can use their blaster and force powers omni-directionally. You need to click in whatever direction relative to their position you want the blast or force to go. Consequently, I found using the trackpad on my MacBook Pro to be a tad frustrating, as timing and accuracy are important. Using a mouse, however, solved the problem. Ultimately, this might be a game that is best on touch devices if you don’t own a mouse.

Angry Birds has never had performance issues, but it is worth noting that I heard my fans spin up a little faster than usual with this version.

Conclusion

Rovio has developed a reputation for making quality games, and Angry Birds Star Wars only strengthens that reputation. While some may complain that slapping a theme like Star Wars onto an aging game is a sign of laziness, it is important to recognize how much Angry Birds has evolved with this release. The birds aren’t just redrawn to resemble cartoonish versions of the films’ main characters, but they have new abilities that add new dimensions to the gameplay.

It’s clear that a great deal of time went into perfecting the details. The backgrounds are great representations of scenes from the films, and Rovio got clever with how the pigs portray various roles for the Empire. If you’ve been waiting to jump on the Angry Birds bandwagon, it turns out this is the version you’re looking for, not how matter how addicted (or not) you are to the Star Wars franchise.

Here at AppStorm, we consider our keyboards to be one of the most vital tools a writer can and should have at his or her disposal. While, yes, we often take our keyboards for granted, sometimes we remember why the keyboard is such a paramount instrument to our day-to-day operations heck, this article was written thanks to one great keyboard.

What keyboard is that, you ask? Well, It is Logitech’s k760 Wireless Solar Keyboard. This baby is Logitech’s answer for having one keyboard for all your devices, be it your Mac, iPhone, or iPad. But. Should this keyboard be your next? After receiving a review unit from Logitech, we had to find out for ourselves.

Editor’s Note: We don’t usually cover hardware and accessories, but some (like the Doxie) seem like they’re worth checking out further in an AppStorm review. Hope you enjoy this review!

k760′s Main Features

Powered by light: The most prominent feature of the k760 Wireless Solar Keyboard is of course the solar aspect of it. Without it, you would just have a normal wireless keyboard. While that is perfectly fine, it would defeat the purpose of this keyboard.

The advantages of this ability are plenty: You don’t have to worry about looking for batteries, you don’t have to worry about buying batteries, you don’t have to worry about the keyboard dying on you (because more often than not it will be completely charged and ready to go), you don’t have to worry about charging it every once in a while, and you don’t have to think about any of the things above: just type.

Easy Switching: Another of k760′s awesome features is the power to switch between devices flawlessly with the push of a button, and as advertised, this feature works like a charm.

To switch from a paired Mac or iPad, all you have to do is press one of the three Bluetooth buttons. The blinking blue light will indicate that the keyboard is attempting to connect to your Apple device. Once the key is solid blue (for a few seconds), you’re ready to use the keyboard with the selected device.

This process takes about three seconds and it is painless. Also, the keys are extremely accessible, but you won’t be pressing them by mistake, so worry not. At the end of the day, if you want a keyboard that works on all your Apple devices with the ability to effortlessly switch between three different Bluetooth machines, this keyboard has your back.

k760′s Aesthetics

Because Logitech built this keyboard to be used with Apple products, they decided to stylize k760 to match other Apple peripherals. This decision is both a hit and a miss.

This keyboard has an plastic surface that looks like aluminum, with white keys, and a white back. It all matches how other Apple keyboards are styled, but if you take a closer look, you will notice where Logitech missed.

You see, on top of the plastic surface that gives you the illusion of aluminum, other parts of the keyboard are not as well designed as Apple’s own keyboards. Don’t get me wrong, it is a sturdy keyboard with good looks, but it could be much better.

For example, the white back surrounds the surface leaving an ugly border around the keyboard. Also, the back has a detachable side that basically breaks the previously mentioned border in half; it looks as though the keyboard is broken or cracked.

k760′s Perks and Ergonomics

This review can’t go on without mentioning how cool it is to have this keyboard, and if you are a lazy person, this keyboard is a laziness enabler. Just think about it: you have one keyboard to control all your machines while you’re comfortably sitting in one place instantaneously switching from one device to the next.

That is not all though. This keyboard is geared towards Apple machines, but if you want, you can also pair it with a PS3 (and most likely other Bluetooth gadgets). Currently, the keyboard used to write this review is paired with a Macbook Pro, an iPhone 4, and a PS3. This means that laziness is in an all time high. One could sit on their desk magically type on their computer, and in the next second, they could browse Netflix on a PS3 without having to move or switch to the PS3′s DualShock 3 controller. Magic.

This keyboard also contains Mac-centric keys that let you control volume, Mission Control, and other OS X features. Sadly, not all keys are perfect. For example, the F6 and F7 keys (brightness controls) don’t work out of the box on this machine (a 2007 Macbook Pro). This has to do with OS X settings, though.

In another note, the feel of the keys themselves are less springy than your standard Apple Keyboard. They also feature a concave finish that while it may work for some, it may throw others off. Someone with an older Macbook Pro with concave keys will most likely enjoy this keyboard.

Verdict

The k760 Wireless Solar Keyboard is perhaps one of the most hassle-free, “it just works” keyboards for all of your Apple devices. Although this keyboard isn’t perfect, it’s hard to think that bad of it, considering it’s so handy with no batteries and instant connectivity to multiple devices. If you’ve ever tried to pair your Apple wireless keyboard with another device other than the one you use it with primarily, you’ll know how handy that feature can be. The good more than outbalances the bad, and if you’re looking for a new wireless keyboard, it’d be wise to give this one a consideration.

Hot and fresh off the presses, here’s Mac AppStorm’s weekly news roundup.

Enjoy!

Parallels Desktop 8 update brings enhanced Windows 8 support

Parallels have released a major update to their popular virtualisation software, Parallels Desktop which brings along enhanced Windows 8 support, including access to Windows 8 tablet gestures when the operating system is running virtually under OS X and the ability to add Windows applications to the Launchpad.

There is also better support for retina displays, including the new MacBook Pro (13-inch) and full USB 3.0 support for faster connections to peripheral devices. The update is free to all existing Parallels users and can be grabbed via the application itself.

OS X 10.9 may already be in development

Although (yet) unannounced by Apple, several Apple-based websites are already seeing the new operating system “OS X 10.9″ popping up in their weblogs, suggesting that Apple may be internally testing the new version of OS X. Apple Insider reported this on Tuesday of this week and the Czech website Letem sv?tem Applem also noticed a spike in the number of visits from machines supposedly running OS X 10.9 as well (the report is in Czech).

Although these statistics may not be true, it does fit the timescale quite well. In February of this year, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion was announced quite unexpectedly, so with Apple beginning beta testing now in November, it does tie in with a possible February announcement of the new version. Let the rumours begin…

Apple considering transition away from Intel chips

Since we reported back at the start of October that Apple may be considering moving away from Intel chips, there have been fresh rumours, this time from Bloomberg (who cited people that are familiar with the company’s research and development processes), that the planned transition is still under consideration. Engineers at Apple are confident that the company’s own range of A-series chip designs (such as the Apple A5, A6 and A6X which power most of the company’s iOS devices) can be used in their own computers as well.

The move is still a few years off yet as Apple is currently tied down to Intel products however a shift to their own proprietary chip designs is inevitable, especially given the success and power of the chips in their iOS devices. Apple reportedly also has a dedicated team to the transition with engineers that envision a lineup of machines that share a common chip design, much like the current iPhones, iPods and iPads.

Borderlands 2 available on November 20th

The game that was described by the developers as a “four-player cooperative shooter-looter that combined intense first-person mayhem with role-playing gameplay”, Borderlands 2, will be released onto the Mac on November 20th, after previously being released on Steam for Windows and the Xbox 360 back in September. The game has received rave reviews and has been called a “winner” by the British newspaper The Guardian.

There has been no official word on pricing however we can presume that it will be priced similarly to the PC version, which currently retails for $59.99. Borderlands 2 will also allow you to play online with drop-in, drop-out capabilities and will be released in both a digital download and physical (i.e. a DVD) format.

The release of Borderlands 2 for the Mac also heralds a new age of Mac gaming, and shows that the platform certainly isn’t underrepresented with regard to big games. Now, given the rise of popularity of Macs, developers are now writing both PC and native Mac versions of popular games, rather than simply porting the game to the platform.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom now enhanced for retina displays

This week, Photoshop Lightroom became yet another Adobe app to add retina display support, along with a number of bug fixes and support for new cameras (including the new Nikon D600). Strangely enough, there has still been no chatter about the Creative Suite being updated for the new retina display – Adobe is presumably waiting until the devices increase in popularity before committing to the update.

RIP, Windows Live Messenger

OK, so it’s not really Apple news but seeing as I was a big user of the service until Facebook Chat came along, I thought that it was worth mentioning here. Microsoft has revealed that it will retire Windows Live Messenger (previously known as MSN Messenger) at the start of 2013, except in mainland China where Skype is blocked. Users will have until the first quarter of 2013 to merge their Microsoft account with their Skype account, and users can still communicate with their contacts via Skype (the update to version 6 a couple of weeks ago).

Over the past couple of years, Windows Live Messenger has declined in popularity – mainly due to competition from other instant messaging protocols, such as Skype (which is in turn owned by Microsoft), Facebook Chat and smartphone-based services such as iMessage and WhatsApp. I will certainly be quite sad to see the service retiring, especially as I spent so much time on it when I was younger but it seems that Windows Live Messenger was inevitable to die sometime, especially given the tough competition.

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!

We’d like to say a special Thank you! to our weekly sponsors from October for sponsoring our site and for the great apps they make. If you would like to feature your app on our site with an advertisement, be sure to check out our available slots on BuySellAds or register for a weekly sponsorship for your app.

If you haven’t already checked out our the great apps that sponsored our site last month, be sure to check them out now!

And a special thanks to you, our Mac.AppStorm.net readers, for reading and sharing our articles. We couldn’t do it without you!

When you’re looking for a good way to introduce a product, create a trailer for a film, or even edit a photo, Apple has some good software to offer its Mac users. iMovie, iPhoto, GarageBand and other members of the iLife suite are included with OS X. Many users really enjoy these and think of them as prime benefits of owning a Mac. However, there are more professional versions of such software available from Apple. Final Cut Pro, for instance, is a truly professional way to edit a short picture or even a full independent film; Logic Pro brings every single audio tool to your fingertips; and Aperture is nearly on par with Photoshop, just aimed at a different price range.

The product we’re interested in today is Motion, a companion to Final Cut Pro. It’s designed to help you create motion graphics, moving versions of brochures you’d already have designed in Photoshop or Pixelmator. This software can help small businesses create advertisements for their new products at beautiful high definition. However, not everyone wants to create one of these from scratch, so what about a template for it? Our parent company Envato’s VideoHive now offers a section for just that. But there are currently 35 templates available, so which one is best for you? Let’s take a look at eight of the most well-designed.

Blinkers Project

We start off the roundup with a template by Sebiche. Blinkers Project is perfect if you’re looking to advertise a product at a small press conference or show off some new features of your mobile app. It’s a full HD (1920 x 1080) template and doesn’t require any plugins or pre-renders to use. The download is 13.5 MB and should only take a few minutes on a broadband connection.

Price: $15 for regular license, $150 for commercial

Developer: Sebiche

Magazine Presentation

Perhaps you’d like to show off some information in a nice format, need to show your portfolio to a school in an elegant manner, or possibly want to give readers a different look at your content. Whatever the case, Magazine Presentation’s portfolio approach is perfect. It’s a fully customizable template with 14 drop zones, text holders, two main logos and also includes a help document. There’s even a soundtrack. The ZIP file is 27.5 MB.

Price: $20 for regular license, $200 for extended

Developer: Kicor

Business Screening

From VideoMagus comes a template fit for most any occasion. It’s fully customizable and includes 50 drop zones, 25 for the framework screening and 25 for the sequential screening. Do be aware that it’s a 435 MB download, so don’t expect it to be ready in ten seconds.

Price: $20 for regular license, $200 for extended

Developer: VideoMagus

Motion Logo Reveal

When you watch professional YouTube videos, they usually have the creator’s logo appear for the first few seconds. That’s a great introduction, so why can’t you do it? Because you don’t have the Motion Logo Reveal template by Ouss. The electrifying template shows off any logo you choose to put into it, and it even includes sound effects for an impact. The template is 68.1 MB.

Price: $8 for regular license, $80 for extended

Developer: Ouss

Lights Logo

This simple, also from Sibiche, template holds text and one flare pre-render. There’s a wooden base to the whole scene with lights hanging over. It’s perfect for introductions and that’s all there is to it, though the template is an 80 MB download.

Price: $8 for regular license, $80 for extended

Developer: Sebiche

Simple Lower Thirds Template

LaurentiuDorin’s creation is perfect for a business presentation that lists the names of people who will be doing a certain job. It’d also look good on a charity television, looping. This one has a lot of great applications if you have the imagination. It’s only a 27 MB download too, so get cracking.

Price: $8 for regular license, $80 for extended

Developer: LaurentiuDorin

School Chalkboard

This education-themed template brings a simple schoolroom into light, with a chalkboard you can write on, four placeholders for photos and video, and seven for text and a logo. It’s a 27 MB download.

Price: $8 for regular license, $80 for extended

Developer: LaurentiuDorin

Portfolio Presentation

Now the pièce de résistance, a portfolio slideshow of polished beauty. It’s perfect for photographers, videographers, and even graphics designers. There are 16 drop zones, two main and eight description text holders, and a render. Also included is an elevator music-esque soundtrack. This template is 23.1 MB.

Price: $20 for regular license, $200 for extended

Developer: Kicor

Conclusion

So there you have it: 8 of the best Motion templates from Envato’s Graphics River. Hopefully you’ve found something that’ll be perfect for your next video design project, or perhaps you’ve gotten inspired for a project you’ll design on your own. Either way, if you use Motion and have a project you’ve made that you’d like to share, we’d be excited to see it!

Clear, a minimalist to-do listing app, was launched to almost-universal acclaim for iOS in January this year. Utilising a very simple UI that resembled a heat map of priority, Clear offered a viable alternative to the recently-shipped stock Reminders app and a simpler competitor to rivals in its category.

We’ve been using Clear for Mac, which launched Thursday, for a couple of days now and, in this article, we’re going to investigate how it stands as a Mac app and alongside its iPhone counterpart.

Getting Started

Clear for Mac is simple in all senses of the word. Upon first launch, the app runs you through a tutorial of its basic  — nay, its only — features before throwing you straight into a default list of tasks that again go over how to manipulate your task list.

Just like in Clear for iPhone, you can manage multiple separate lists of tasks in Clear for Mac; new ones are added by simply right-clicking. When viewing your list of lists, Clear for Mac shows a nice numerical indicator of how many tasks are left uncompleted in each list.

Once you’re into a specific list, the app is fairly easy to navigate, even if there’s no actual buttons to click. To create a new item, users need to merely begin typing while the app is in focus in OS X. To complete a task, simply select it and press the space bar. This is a little bit tricky, however, since clicking will actually allow you to edit, and therefore pressing space then actually adds a space to the item’s text.

Items can be re-ordered by dragging and deleted by swiping to the left. Navigating between a list and the list of lists can be achieved in a number of ways too: by pinching on a trackpad, scrolling up/down through the full lists or clicking the app’s single button in the top-right.

You can also pull out individual lists by dragging out their item in the “list of lists”, creating a multi-window setup that shows more lists at once, something certainly not possible with the iPhone app. However, that feature is pretty much the only non-iOS function in the Mac version.

Overall, the app is pretty simple. An outlier in a world of apps still dominated by ones featuring actual buttons, Clear is different, but is easy enough to use once you’ve committed the full control set to memory.

Gestures, Gestures, Gestures

Clear is very heavy on gestures. Without the aforementioned traditional use of buttons and menu items, Clear can take a while to get used to. Ultimately, it feels like the iOS app being emulated for OS X, rather than an app that’s had significant consideration into the differences in UX between touch and mouse/keyboard. The same minimalist style could easily have been achieved without such an unfamiliar control convention.

However, once the controls and gestures that Clear uses are memorised, it does end up being a pleasant experience, on trackpads especially.

iCloud

Clear for Mac syncs your tasks and lists with iCloud, meaning users of the iPhone version (and/or multiple Macs) will be able to keep all their tasks completely in sync with a new update.

However, this is a feature long available in Reminders, the stock and, importantly, free app in OS X. It’s also an app available for iPhone, where Clear is not available unless you run the iPhone edition in 2x mode. As we’ll discuss in just a moment, Clear for Mac has a hefty price tag and isn’t able to boast any substantial features that Reminders doesn’t have, aside from an interface that most will pass on in order to save a significant amount of cash.

Final Thoughts

Clear for Mac is a nice app, and the minimalist interface combined with a notable simplicity will appeal to a lot of users who don’t want to spend a lot of time in the app they’re using to organise their time for more important causes.

There are some usability concerns but enough exposure mitigates these. The big issue here, though, was never the app. After introductory pricing, Clear for Mac comes with a $14.99 price tag, a significant increase over the $1.99 price for an iOS version that is OS X’s is essentially ported from. Something about this doesn’t seem right, especially with a number of significant cheaper and free alternatives being available, including the one you already have installed on your Mac by default.

The app itself would probably get a strong 8 or 9 out of 10 if it were cheaper, especially for those looking for a simpler experience. However, price is a big factor here and it’s not something that can be ignored.

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 October, from How to Set Up and Use VoIP on Your Mac to Making Your Mac’s Desktop Better with GeekTool, we’ve got you covered.

Like the article? You should subscribe and follow us on twitter.

Best of Mactuts+

Through the MacBook Air, Apple has pioneered the everyday use of flash storage as an alternative to traditional hard drives. With the inevitable discontinuation of the pre-2012 MacBook Pros, Apple’s MacBook lineup will go completely flash-based and it looks as if the desktop Mac is going that way to… well, kind of.

At their October special event, Phil Schiller announced Fusion Drive, a new storage technology available for configurations of Apple’s late 2012 Mac Minis and iMacs. Fusing together flash and traditional storage, Apple aims to create a faster storage medium that still offers up a large capacity. In this article, we’re going to run through the basics of Fusion Drive, the technologies behind it and what it means for the future of storage on your Mac.

What is Fusion Drive?

Essentially, a Fusion Drive from Apple has two parts: a flash storage drive and a traditional, higher-capacity hard drive. To the user, these are presented as a single logical volume with no visible distinction between what is flash storage and what is the slower, more traditional medium.

Hybrid drives are nothing new but they do differ to Apple’s Fusion Drive. Hybrid drives generally work by caching items stored on a hard drive to flash storage, mirroring them for to the quicker drive for faster access. However, Fusion Drive is different because the software dynamically moves more popular content to flash storage, leaving less frequently-access data on the hard drive.

Fusion Drive gives users the best of both worlds by offering faster speeds but with more overall storage. Plus, among other reasons, combining the drives rather than using the flash storage as a mere mirror offers users a combined capacity of both drivers. So, a 1TB hard drive combined with Apple’s standard 128GB of flash storage means users have a total of ~1.12TB of space to use. The 128GB flash drive can be combined with a either a 1TB or 3TB hard drive at launch.

Importantly, OS X handles everything automatically. Mountain Lion can intelligently work out which files are used more often and move them to the flash storage, relegating less-used data to the slower hard drive. Of course, the operating system is stored on the flash drive too, providing fast start up times and other advantages.

What Fusion Drive Is Not

Before Fusion Drive, there was two generally popular ways of increasing drive performance. The first is the aforementioned method of caching data from a hard drive onto a flash storage medium which is similar to Fusion Drive but means that users don’t get access to the combined capacities of both drives.

The other is RAID — redundant array of independent disks — drives, combining multiple drives into a single volume. There’s multiple methods of creating RAID drives and without writing a whole article on this technology alone, there are some minor similarities to what Fusion Drive does and performance benefits achieved with such a setup.

The Future of Storage?

In notebooks, we’re slowly getting used to using lower-capacity flash storage, with Ultrabooks and machines like the MacBook Pro with Retina Display leading the charge against slower storage. As component prices go down, so will the cost to consumers. Eventually, we may reach a time where solid state storage is affordable in capacities similar to what we enjoy with more traditional means.

With a lot of consumers invested in a two-machine system (such as one laptop and one desktop), the need for higher-capacity storage on a MacBook is lower than it is on desktop. We want the speed of flash storage but the capacity of a hard drive? Fusion Drive seems like the perfect solution.

Pricing and Availability

Chances are we won’t see Fusion Drive in MacBooks, especially due to the very size constraints that played a major factor in Apple opting for flash storage versus traditional hard drives in these latest designs. However, Apple’s desktop lineup for the holidays supports Fusion Drive well with all but the ageing Mac Pro having the option to configure a Fusion Drive.

The late 2012 models of Mac Mini and iMac use hard drives as their default storage option, but Fusion Drives are configurable on all models of iMac and the 2.3GHz quad-core Mac Mini. The Mac Mini and 21.5″ iMac support a Fusion Drive with a 1TB hard drive, whereas the 27″ iMac has the option for a Fusion Drive with a 3TB hard drive too.

Prices for Fusion Drives on the new lineup of iMacs are unavailable as they are not yet available to order. However, supported Mac Mini can be ordered with a 1TB Fusion Drive for a $250 premium. That might seem costly, but comes in at just $50 less than the option of 256GB of pure solid state storage. Although, those wanting no more than 256GB of storage might be better suited to paying the extra $50 and going pure flash.

Final Thoughts

Fusion Drive was a surprise announcement last month, alongside Apple’s insanely thin range of new iMacs. Apple is finally attempting to move flash storage, or at least the advantages of it, to the desktop. However, like when solid state storage first came to the Mac, it’s likely Fusion Drives will continue to sell at a premium but leave a few years and it might just become the standard.

Until we get to a point where pure flash storage is an affordable possibility, Apple’s Fusion Drive signals a pleasing solution in the meantime.

Panoramic photography has become wildly popular in recent years, due in no small part to the smartphone market getting flooded with devices that have the functionality built right in. These sorts of shots have never been a staple of professional or amateur photography, but they can help give a broad perspective on interesting scenes.

Stitcha, by Florian Denis, gives you the ability to merge several different photographs or video clips into a single wide-angle shot. This simple app aims to keep the process as straightforward as dragging and dropping.

As Single-Feature As They Come

There has been an explosion of very focused, single-feature apps on the Mac and iOS stores in recent years. While this shift has been met with criticism from some, I personally prefer to keep things simple. I enjoy the way even OS X has moved towards fullscreen apps, because of the concentration they offer. Perhaps the most appealing part of these single-feature apps is that they tend to be more stable. Adding features means adding new levels of complexity and more places for a bug to exist.

Of course, when a developer chooses to pare down their app to a single function, then the sole feature of the app better work correctly.

Stictcha is as basic of an app as I’ve ever seen. There is no preference pane or any sort of options you can choose. The menu bar doesn’t even show the nearly ubiquitous “File” or “Help.” All you get is a window with the stoplight buttons, and a few words to get you started.

Let’s Get Stitching

There is no import button (for better or worse), so you’ll need to drag some photos or a video onto the window to get started. I went to an eerily-empty park in the wake of Hurricane Sandy to snap a few shots with my iPhone. I got home, opened iPhoto, and accessed my Photostream.

Since there is no import feature, you may find the task of dragging out of iPhoto or another photo management app to be a challenge if you prefer running things at fullscreen. I personally prefer using Finder to import stuff into or export out of apps, so as to avoid having to move windows around.

I dragged almost 20 different shots onto the window, and it started working. You get a progress bar across the top of the window that lets you know what it’s doing. First, it analyzes the photos, then matches them to find where the seams should meet. Then, it “computes image decompositions,” which I assume means it is determining what gets cropped. Lastly, the layers are merged.

The whole process took a couple minutes, and the processor on my MacBook Pro never seemed to get too worked up.

Results

Once the stitching process has completed, you are left with your final photo. You’ll get a thumbnail in the window, which you can drag wherever you’d like. You also get the ubiquitous Mountain Lion share button, with the option to send your photo via iMessage, email, etc. I would have liked to have some control over the output resolution or be able to choose from jpeg, png, or another image format.

Overall, the photos that Stitcha has produced for me are underwhelming. The seams generally look good, as you can’t really see any lines indicating where two photos were merged. However, the shapes of objects such as buildings get warped and distorted a bit more than if you use the iPhone’s built in panorama mode. The best results come when you all the photos you use have a relatively uniform level of brightness, so as to avoid the color-blending problems.

Using Stitcha for videos had slightly more disappointing results, but I believe the shortcomings have more to do with the nature of using video in the first place to create panoramic shots. Videos obviously use lots of individual frames that flow together to create movement, but when you look at a single frame it can appear blurry, and this translates into blurry shots when stitched together. For better results when using the video function, I would recommend moving very slowly to minimize the blur.

I reviewed version 1.1 of the app, and I experienced a few annoying bugs. The first had to do with the thumbnail of the final product disappearing a couple times when I tried to drag it out of the window. I clicked and tried dragging, and when the thumbnail disappeared, I let go and thought I had lost it. After moving the window around for a second, it re-appeared. I used Stitcha to create 5 panoramas, and it crashed on me once about halfway through the rendering process.

Verdict

I don’t really take photos anymore with anything except my phone. Saying that just a few years ago would have meant I like taking terrible pictures. But as the quality of smartphone cameras converge with point-and-shoot cameras, using your phone as your primary camera is increasingly more appealing. Considering that most smartphones, such as the iPhone and many Androids, not to mention many standard point-and-shoots, already have built-in panorama modes. Something like Stitcha makes slightly less sense if you only take photos with your phone.

However, Stitcha becomes much more appealing if you are a DSLR user and want to make panoramas. The only issue with using a DSLR in this situation is that taking a series of high-quality photos with a professional camera, only to use an app like Stitcha that degrades the quality of the photos, essentially negates the app’s utility.

At a penny under five bucks, it is hard to complain about some of the app’s downsides. There are superior alternatives, such as ArcSoft’s Panorama Maker, but that will cost $80. Then, Photoshop has a very nice panorama tool, but it’d hardly make sense to buy Photoshop just for that. I wasn’t particularly happy with the final product that Stitcha creates, but if you are just looking to create a quick, easy panorama from pictures or videos, it works well enough. You may want to wait for a couple updates before jumping onboard, as the bugs that I experienced were enough to make it frustrating to use.