Category: Mac

Have you ever been frustrated by the lack of a numpad on your Macbook or Apple wireless keyboard? There’s not many good ways to put one into a laptop, and I for one like the Apple wireless keyboard’s size. But during tax season, or any other time I need to run though a lot of numbers, I sometimes wish I had a handy little numpad on the side.

Earlier this month, I got an email from developer Yi Lin, letting us know about their newest app: Numeric. Numeric is a simple calculator app that turns your Magic Trackpad into a multi-touch numpad. Just drag your mouse cursor to the app, then tap on your touchpad at the spot the number or function should be, and it’ll be entered in the calculator.

It’s not perfectly easy to use, at least at first, and I found myself hitting the wrong numbers more than not. But after a few minutes of playing with it, I found that I could reliably run through simple calculations just by tapping my fingers on the touchpad, and it definitely felt easier to use than the built-in Calculator app. It reminds me of Flutter, by using your Mac’s hardware in new and unique ways, and I definitely found Numeric fun to use.

Tweet To Win a Copy of Numeric

If you’re dying to try out turning your touchpad into a multitouch calculator, you can grab a copy of Numeric from the App Store today for just $0.99. If you can wait just a bit, though, we’ve got 30 (yes, thirty) copies of Numeric to giveaway to our readers!

If you’d love to win a copy of Numeric, just click the link below and send out the resulting tweet (or just copy and paste), then leave a comment below with a link to your tweet, just as in most of our giveaways.

We’ll close the giveaway at the end of the week, so hurry and get your entry in!

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

Alfred is awesome. Over the last couple of years this app launcher has garnered a substantial and loyal following, and its easy to see why. It’s an awesome app launcher in its own right, but as we have noted elsewhere, with the Alfred Powerpack, this app becomes much more awesome. It turns into a clipboard manager, iTunes player, file browser, and with a bit of tweaking, the ultimate notes manager.

Whether you prefer to manage notes with Mountain Lion’s native Notes app, or would rather keep notes in plain text files, Alfred has you covered. Read on to find out how to turn Alfred into the ultimate notes manager.

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Using Alfred to Manage Plain Text Notes

Many writers, students, researchers, and developers prefer plain text notes to keep track of important information and ideas. Plain text notes have many advantages including simplicity, cross platform compatibility, and, my favorite, simple integration with iOS text editors, especially if you store your notes in dropbox. There are many ways you could manage plain text notes, but Alfred makes an especially awesome tool for managing plain text notes on your Mac.

Do note: You’ll need to purchase Alfred’s £15 Powerpack to use it to manage notes. But really, it’s worth it.

Create an Interface for Accessing Your Notes

One great feature Alfred offers is the ability to set a keyboard shortcut for a wide range of functions. You can set a keyboard shortcut to open a folder in Alfred’s file navigation system or in Finder. This is a great way to quickly access and navigate the folder where you store plain text notes. Here’s how you do this in Alfred:

1. Go to Alfred’s preferences
2. Click on the Hotkeys button in the toolbar.
3. Click the Plus sign in the bottom left.
4. Go to Paths and URLs and then Folder path.
5. Click on Browse to designate the folder where you store your notes.
6. Choose if you want to view the folder in Alfred or Finder.
7. Set the key combination to pull up the interface (for me this is alt-command-n).

Using Alfred’s Powerpack features, typing a key combo quickly displays a nice interface for navigating your notes.

Create a Filter to Search Your Notes

Often a quick search of your notes is better than navigating a file system. A simple file search using Alfred will find a plain text note, but an even more streamlined option is to create a filter for specifically searching your notes folder. This limits the search results and makes it easier to find the note you are looking for. Here’s how to set up a filter:

1. Go to Alred’s preferences.
2. Click on the Extensions button in the toolbar.
3. Click the Plus sign in the bottom left.
4. Select File Search Filter.
5. Select a name for the filter and click Create.
6. Title the filter and give it a description.
7. Select a keyword. This is what you will type to activate the filter in Alfred.
8. Leave the Action as Open File.
9. Click the Plus sign at the bottom right of the File Types window.
10. Select any plain text file. This tells the file to search for plain text filenames.
11. Click the Browse button on the right side of the Scope field and select your notes folder

You can now activate Alfred, type the keyword and search your notes folder without sorting through irrelevant results.

You can use Alfred to set up a filter to streamline your note searches.

Quickly Create a New Note

Say you have a great idea you want to quickly jot down. Alfred can help you accomplish this too. This shell script will allow you to quickly create an a new note in your default notes folder.

1. Go to Alfred’s Preferences.
2. Click on the Extensions button in the toolbar.
3. Click the Plus sign in the bottom left.
4. Select Shell Script.
5. Give the extension a name and click Create.
6. Title the extension and give it a description.
7. Select a keyword. This is what you will type to activate the extension in Alfred.
8. Copy this text into the Command field: touch [file extension here]{query}.txt; open [file extension here]{query}.txt. (I got the syntax for this from a post by Roger Byrne).
9. Copy the path where you would like your new notes to be created and paste it in the appropriate spots in the command field.
10. Make sure the silent and option boxes are ticked.

There you have it. Now when you need to create a new note just type the keyword, type a title, and a new txt file is created in your favorite text editor and automatically stored in your notes folder.

Another option for quickly storing bits of information is Pedro Lobo’s extension for easily appending text to the beginning or end of a text file.

Using Alfred With the Native Notes App

Maybe plain text notes aren’t your thing. Or maybe, like me, sometimes you prefer bullet lists and rich text formatting. The native Notes app experienced a major overhaul with the release of Mountain Lion. It is now a standalone app and, in my opinion, a joy to use. If you find yourself using the native Notes app, integrating Alfred will help make your life easier.

Add a New Note to the Notes App With Alfred

You will need to download and install this handy extension written by Ken Elliot to quickly add notes with Alfred. After the extension is installed, typing the keyword note and then the string title:body of note will create a new note in the default account and folder of the Notes app.

This is an example of using Alfred to create a new note in Mountain Lion’s native Notes app.

If you enter a title of a note that already exists in the Notes app, whatever you type after the colon will be appended to that note. For example, I have a note titled scratch. When I want to append text to that note I activate Alfred and type: note scratch:appended text here.

Use Alfred to Search Notes in the Native Notes App

As I describe above, it is easier and more efficient to search notes if a filter is applied to avoid manually looking through irrelevant search results. Using this extension written by David Ferguson you can easily filter out all other search results and focus in on your notes. This is even more handy than the plain text notes filter because it searches the entire note, not just the title.

Applying a filter makes it easy to focus search results on what you are looking for.

 Summary

Alfred is awesome. (Did I mention that before?) It’s great for launching apps, finding files, and doing so much more. Whether you prefer plain text notes or the native Notes app, Alfred can help make your note taking workflow hassle free. Thankfully, there a lot of people out there writing Alfred extensions and making them readily available, and by putting a few of them together, you can make Alfred turn into quite the little notes app.

If you’ve ever used any other ways to use Alfred with notes, we’d love to hear about it in the comments below!

Our sponsor this week is Snapheal 2.0, an incredible Mac app to fix your photos in minutes. Just after one week after the launch, Snapheal 2.0 became the top-selling Mac photo app in the USA & over 30 other countries, and has been featured in Apple’s What’s Hot category. And no wonder: Snapheal’s packed with impressive features, enough that we awarded it a 9 in our recent review. You can go ahead and try it out now with a free trial, or read on for more info about the app and its special discount and more!

Snapheal 2.0 is an impressively simple and affordable image editing app for your Mac. Snapheal removes unwanted objects from pictures, fixes skin imperfections and restores damaged photos faster and better than many expensive photo editing apps. With the new 2.0 update, it got even more cool features, including 3X faster erasing, a smart lasso for better selection, new algorithm for erasing big objects and skin healing, Clarity and 15 other new retouching tools, as well as Mountain Lion, Retina Display, and iCloud support.

Want to see how powerful Snapheal is? Check out this brief video showing how to erase objects in Photoshop and Snapheal, and you’ll see how easy it is to quickly remove objects in Snapheal, at a fraction of Photoshop’s cost. And if you want to see more of what Snapheal can do, check out the images at Snapheal’s website.

Go Get it … and get another app for free!

The best part is, Snapheal is just $7.99 for a limited time in the Mac App Store, 60% off of its normal price. If you’re ready to start editing your photos quicker and simpler, be sure to get it soon! You can download a free trial from their site, or get your own copy straight from the App Store.

Then, if you purchase a copy of Snapheal during this week’s AppStorm sponsorship, you can get a free copy of FX Photo Studio PRO for Mac also! FX Photo Studio is one of the best photo filtering apps on Mac App Store, loved by thousands photographers around the world. The pro version includes 70 photo effects & 40 stylish frames, painting with effects, 25 extra photo editing tools, and more, and also supports RAW files and images with up to 32 megapixel resolution.

To get your free copy of FX Photo Studio Pro, just purchase a copy of Snapheal from the App Store and then send a picture you’re editing from inside the app (using the Share option) to [email protected] with the email subject “appstorm promo”. The offer is valid until October 29, 2012, so be sure to hurry and buy your copy of Snapheal and send in your screenshot before it’s too late!

iTunes is probably one of the most used applications on Mac. It comes pre-installed, plays music well, and has the iTunes Store where many people shop for new music. It’s the way we manage our iPods, iPhones, and iPads, lets us watch movies, listen to music, and more. It’s priceless to many first-time Mac users, even if it does have a few flaws.

Of course, there are those who enjoy alternatives. While iTunes should still be used for syncing one’s library to an iPod or iOS device, a lot of third-party substitutes do a fine job of playing music and other content. A more beautiful way to play music is something the Mac could use — iTunes isn’t really the most aesthetically pleasing right now — and until the iTunes 11 update is released, why not take a look at the additional solutions?

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Minimal

Let’s start off with some of the simplest apps, from menu bar iTunes controllers to standalone apps that access your library. In this section, you’ll find apps that sport beautiful, yet nominal design. Features are aplenty, just not so much that the apps are as slow as iTunes can be.

Advanced

Now, on to the more complex apps that offer functionality other than playing music. Instead of searching the Internet for a song, stream it from within your iTunes alternative. Whether you want to listen to different sources like YouTube or sync your Android phone, these apps have it all.

The Usual Suspects

Some of the apps above are probably new to you, especially the betas. Now I’m going to mention a few that offer a different selection than iTunes — one that’s either free (to stream) or costs a monthly fee to use. I’ll explain why to use one over the other so you know which is best for you.

Is Anything Missing?

That’s Mac.AppStorm‘s official list of 9 iTunes alternatives worth a try, but there are more great options out there. If we’ve missed anything, let us know in the comments. We’d love to hear what you use instead of iTunes, whether it’s for playing music or managing an iOS device.

Fresh off the presses, here’s Mac AppStorm’s roundup of the very best app and Apple-related news and goings-on this week.

Happy reading!

Apple media event announced for October 23rd

Apple has issued invites to its next official announcement which is scheduled to kick off at 10 AM PST next Tuesday (October 23rd) in San Jose’s California Theatre. Under the cryptic tagline, We’ve got a little more to show you, it seems that “mini” will be the highlight of this announcement. We may see the long-awaited iPad Mini, designed to compete with the likes of the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire HD and most possibly a smaller, 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina, which has been strongly expected as well.

The cryptic announcement for Apple’s media event on October 23rd, implying that “mini” will be the key theme of the event.

The iMac and Mac Mini lines are also due for a much needed refresh (the iMac was last updated all the way back in May of last year and the Mac Mini in July) but it’s unlikely we’re going to see a Retina iMac just yet (although it would be spectacular if we did!) and there may also be another couple of surprises in there as well, such as the release of iTunes 11 and maybe Google Maps returning back to iOS, however that last one is unfortunately more of a fantasy than a reality.

We’ll have a full roundup of all the announcements and new products on Mac AppStorm soon after the keynote finishes.

Java removed from all OS X browsers

It seems that the relationship between Apple and Oracle, Java’s parent company, has been a really rocky one over the past year or so, given the influx of Java-based malware and trojans on OS X, and now Apple seems to be fighting back. An OS X update which was pushed out on Wednesday removed the Java plugin from all OS X compatible browsers. Users who visit a page with a Java script are prompted to install the “official Oracle Java runtime” from their website.

Through an OS X update, Java has now been removed from all OS X compatible browsers. Users will now have to install it manually from Oracle’s website.

This step is just one of many that Apple has taken to try and distance itself from Java, which has become increasingly more vulnerable over recent months. Hackers have found it relatively easy to exploit weaknesses in its framework and the cross-compatibility of Java (it runs on Windows, OS X and Linux) have made it an attractive target as well. Back with Lion, Apple didn’t include Java installed as default on the system and has recently issued an update that turns off Java in the browser automatically if not used for a period of time.

Much like the Flash/HTML 5 content war, the issue with Java is that it is such a widely used language all round the web, and many websites utilise it in one way or another. However with Apple trying to distance itself from Java (and with the numerous gaping security holes that have been uncovered recently), we are likely to see a prompt fix from Oracle regarding these issues.

Apple loses a High Court appeal in the UK, forced to reveal profit margins

This week wasn’t an especially good one for Apple in front of the judge. A High Court ruling (one of the top courts in the UK) back in July declared that Samsung did not copy Apple’s iPad and that the latter has to run advertisements on UK TV and on its UK website that declare this. Apple this week lost the appeal and, unless the verdict is appealed at the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, they will have to publicly claim in the United Kingdom that their arch rivals Samsung did not copy anything in terms of the iPad design.

Furthermore a California-based judge, Lucy Koh, denied Apple’s request to keep confidential financial documents sealed as part of ongoing post-trial motions for the landmark Apple v. Samsung trial. The documents are reported to pertain to product-specific unit sales, revenue, profit, profit margin and cost data. Revealing this information would give other companies “an unfair advantage” over Apple, the company stated.

GOG.com releases many gaming classics onto OS X

For those of you longing after classic games on OS X, the wait is over. GOG.com have released a whole suite of classics on OS X and, as part of the launch promotion, some are currently 50% off.

GOG.com have released quite a few classic games for OS X, and is currently running a 50% off promotion on some games.

There are plenty of oldies in there, such as SimCity 2000 and (my personal favourite, which I managed to grab for a pitiful $2.99) Theme Hospital and it seems that all the Mac versions run absolutely fine under Mountain Lion. The games have not been rewritten in any way (and still retain their original, old-school graphics) and run under an integrated WINE emulator. With some games, however, it is advisable to go into your System Preferences, then click on Accessibility then enable access for assistive devices to ensure no interference when you are playing the game.

The promo ends around October 25th so if you’re longing after those classics, then get downloading!

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!

Tweetbot for Mac was just released and the Internet, at least the geeky parts thereof, was on fire as a result of this, but not for the reasons you would expect. Indeed, networks like Twitter and App.Net were overflowing with mentions of Tapbots’ first Mac app. In most cases, thought, the discussion was focused on the pricing of the app, not so much on its features and merits.

As of the time of writing, Tweetbot will set you back $20, an admittedly premium price for a Twitter client. But isn’t a quality app worth something, at least?

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Although Tweetbot’s price is premium, I’ve been stunned by the reactions of some people. The exclamation of many give the impression that they feel entitled to cheap software. Here, I mean “cheap” in the sense that something is worth more than its cost, not the negative connotation. A phenomenon I found quite revealing is that the vast majority of developers fully supported the price, attempting to explain the energy and time required to create such an app. Many don’t fully realize that Tweetbot for Mac isn’t a mere copy-paste of its iOS counterparts. In fact, Tapbots had to bring on a third employee, Todd Thomas, to help out with the development of the Mac app, which is decidedly different from iOS development

Sustainability

One common protest is that Tweetbot costs as much as some Apple apps, like GarageBand, Pages and even Mountain Lion. This comparison has no grounds. Do you honestly think that Apple would price their apps in such a way if they were just a software developer? First of all, their iLife and iWork suites as well as their OS upgrades enhance the Mac ecosystem. It only benefits them to price their apps attractively. Not to mention, Apple makes a ton of money in other departments which allows this approach to be sustainable.

In the case of Tapbots, they don’t have an iPhone which brings them millions of dollars in profit every year. Apps like Tweetbot are their only bread and butter. It might be wise to think of Sparrow, recently acquired by Google. As Andrew Webster elaborated on The Verge back in July, it is very difficult to maintain a sustainable business in software development. This is especially the case nowadays, with the ever-decreasing price of software. As John Gruber put it, “screw the race to the bottom.”

High Demand & Scarce Supply

Something else that people often seem to forget is that Twitter has essentially limited the amount of copies Tapbots can sell. They’ve spent months working on this app, so we can only imagine the opportunity costs incurred there. Having that limit forces them to price the app in consequence of the finite supply. Basic economics here. Hence, if you don’t want to buy it because it is cost prohibitive, then don’t. This will allow other users who are willing and able to pay to enjoy Tweetbot’s experience. If you see this as being elitist, you’re missing the point. Tapbots don’t have a choice if they want their business to remain viable, and I believe it is in our best interest as Mac and iOS users to see them remain as such.

I’m not saying that $20 for a Twitter client is inexpensive. Nevertheless, I see the value in Tweetbot for Mac and am fortunate enough to afford to buy the app. I also understand the reasons behind its price. If they were to sell the app at $20 without Twitter’s API restrictions, that would be another story and I would then hesitate to make the purchase. However, this is not the case, and supporting indie developers and designers is my pleasure.

Poor OS X. It doesn’t have Siri, even though it does have Siri’s voice detection. It doesn’t support any Minority Report-style gestures like Microsoft’s Kinect, even though it does have great touchpad gestures. It’s filled with great features, just none of those headline-grabbing features that make it look like something from the future.

It’s the App Store to the rescue again, this time with a little free menubar app named Flutter. It promises to bring some Kinect-style gestures to your Mac’s music apps, so you can walk up to your Mac, motion to start the music playing, and silence all the doubters saying that OS X isn’t the cool kid anymore.

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Flutter, the app

Several days ago, I stumbled across Flutter in the App Store. It wasn’t brand new, but it was new to me, and I figured many of you likely haven’t tried it out. From the icon, you’d assume it might be a comic book app, and the first time you launch it, you might assume you were right.

Holding up your hand to your Mac makes you a superhero? If only I’d known sooner…

Now, Flutter might make you look comical when you’re trying to use it. I won’t guarantee against that. What I can gurantee is that Flutter is a lot of fun to use.

See, Flutter is a little app that lets you control your music in iTunes, Quicktime, Spotify, and VLC using 3 simple hand motions. Hold your hand up to start or pause your music, or hold your fist with your thumb to the left or right to go back and forth, respectively, in your playlist. That’s actually all it does, but it actually does it good, and that’s whats impressive.

To start out, you’ll run through a quick tutorial that’ll help you get used to using the gestures. Just hold your hand up, thumb slightly pointing out, and you’ll skip to the next slide. Then, you’ll hold your thumb to the left and right, and skip through those sides. You’re now ready to put your newly learned skills to use playing music.

Go through the tutorial by using the gestures

If you decide you don’t want to have your webcam on, or just want to refresh your memory on the gestures, there’s the handy Flutter menubar app to your rescue. One nice thing is that you can just turn the camera off and keep the app running, if you want, so you can save battery while you’re out through the day, and quickly get back to using it that evening when you need some music around the kitchen.

Putting away the Flutter for the day

Putting Flutter to Use

So how does it really work? Not perfect. But really, it’s pretty good at recognizing the hand motions. For an app that runs with just your built-in web cam and doesn’t really tax your Mac that bad (it uses about 12% of the processor time on my 2012 MacBook Air, but never was enough to kick in the fan in normal use), it did far better than I expected.

Funny tying is, you’ll likely not be impressed if you try it out sitting down at your desk with earbuds on. Try unplugging your earbuds and scoot back a bit , then try out the gestures. I found they worked much better if I was about 3 feet away from my MacBook. It worked almost perfectly just walking up and holding up my hand to stop music, but was less likely to work if I held my hand up straight from the keyboard.

The nice on-screen popovers when Flutter controls your music

That makes it especially great for movie night. Just open a movie in iTunes, Quicktime, or VLC, set your Mac on the coffee table, and lean back on the couch to enjoy. Better yet, have your video streamed to your TV with an Apple TV and AirPlay Mirroring. Then, when you’ve got to pause the movie to grab more popcorn or answer the phone, just hold your hand up to tell your Mac to wait. That feels like the future (well, the future would really be when your Mac knew you were watching a movie and sent your calls straight to voicemail, and then would keep you from seeing the voicemail until the next morning. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.).

The Future

For now, that’s really all you can do with Flutter: pause, play, and skip through your music with hand gestures. The exciting thing is, the Flutter team promises more to come. They plan to support more apps, such as Keynote (imagine standing, facing your MacBook, and gesturing to switch slides during a presentation rather than holding a remote), and also plan to support web apps such as Youtube. They also plan to add more gestures, such as volume up and down controls and mute. That should make it even more cool, and if they continue improving the gesture detection in the mean time, it could become a serious tool.

For now, it’s more fun than anything. There’s a reason it’s in the Entertainment category of the App Store instead of the Productivity category. But still, it’s fun to use, and that’s hardly a bad thing.

Conclusion

So, is Flutter perfect? Nope. Is it the easiest way to control iTunes? Likely not. But is it the coolest way to control music on your Mac? Absolutely.

Go grab it from the App Store, take a few minutes and figure out the gestures, then call someone else into the room. Then hold your hand out to your Mac, and start your music playing. Chances are, the first thing you’ll hear is “Cool”.

Yup. The Mac is cool again.

This post is part of a series that revisits some of our readers’ favorite articles from the past that still contain awesome and relevant information that you might find useful. This post was originally published on July 7th, 2011.

The Finder and I go way back: from my family’s ’96 Performa to my MacBook Pro, I’ve used it to navigate my Mac for well over a decade. Since the initial transition from OS 9 to OS 10, I would argue that the way we use the Finder has changed very little, and a lot of what has changed is purely aesthetic. Though I now have the option to browse through my files with Cover Flow or create smart folders, I still use the Finder in pretty much the same way as I did 10 years ago.

I’ve been very disappointed to see that the Finder hasn’t seen any major improvements in recent versions of OS X, but that doesn’t mean 3rd party developers aren’t hard at work to continue where Apple has left off. Cocoatech’s Path Finder has been around for quite some time and ambitiously tries to replace the Finder altogether to create a more modern, usable means of navigating your computer. Find out if Path Finder successfully replaces the ubiquitous Finder after the jump!

Interface

The Path Finder interface looks very familiar: it has the same layout as the Finder, with the addition of Safari-style tabs and a whole lot more buttons. You can navigate through Path Finder exactly as you would in the Finder without learning anything new, or you can take advantage of Path Finder’s alternative navigation elements, such as bookmarks, breadcrumbs, and tabs. Path Finder brings all the best elements of an Internet browser right to the Finder, so there is pretty much no learning curve: if you’ve used the Finder and Safari, you’ll feel right at home in Path Finder. Path Finder adds more interface tweaks and features than I can cover here, but I’ll go over the most prominent.

Tabs

I think tabs are pretty much the best thing since the graphical user interface, and dream of a day when all apps have tabs (I’m looking at you, iWork and MS Office). Having tabs in your file browser is incredibly handy, not only can you always see which folders you have open and easily switch between them, you can also drag and drop files between tabs. I used to drive myself crazy trying to clean up my folders with multiple Finder windows open, repositioning them all over the screen for optimal drag-and-drop efficiency. Tabs simplify file browsing immensely, and I’m actually better at keeping my downloads folder and desktop uncluttered with Path Finder.

Tabbed file browsing

Another cool feature I just learned about (after using Path Finder for months) is tab sets. Tab sets are like custom work spaces, you can save a layout of related tabs and re-launch them at any time. For example, if I’m working on a project, I might want to have quick access to related folders, applications, and maybe downloads. With tab sets, I can have all the tabs I need appear just as I had them last time.

Saving a tab set

Options for tabs, file navigation and bookmarks are accessed from a small arrow at the right side of each toolbar.

Drop Stack

The Drop Stack simplifies the process of moving files to new directories, especially when you’re not sure where you’re taking something. The Drop Stack is like a temporary holding place, where you can keep files as you’re moving them, very handy for tasks like cleaning out a downloads folder.

Some files in the drop stack

Dual-Pane View

Path Finder’s Dual-Pane view splits your window into two, so that you can see two folders at once. This view is especially useful for comparing folders or moving files back and forth. Each pane acts as its own file browser, complete with tabs and breadcrumb navigation. You can activate Dual-Pane view from an icon at the bottom-left of the window.

Dual-pane browsing

Modules & Drawers

Modules and drawers allow you to display additional customized information either within the browser or in slide-out drawers. Selecting the modules icon adds a two-panelled division to the bottom of the browser that displays customizable information about the selected file or various functionalities. The default modules are info and preview, but you can use modules to view attributes, hex, iTunes browser, cover flow, permisisons, processes, recent documents or folders, selection path, shelf, sidebar, file size, subversion or a terminal window. Drawers have the same function as modules, but slide out from the browser, either to the left, right, or bottom.

Attributes and info modules

Features

In addition to interface additions and tweaks, Path Finder adds a number of utilities and features that extend its functionality.

Filters and Selections

Path Finder includes powerful filtering and selection features to help narrow down and manage your files. You can filter files by keyword, extension or type from the search box at the top right of the window (which can also be toggled to do spotlight searches). If you’d like to select files based on certain filtering parameters, click the selection icon from the toolbar at the top (I have no idea how that icon represents “selection”, but it looks like a white box with blue lines). You can then select files from a folder based on name, extension, attributes, kind, and date. The selections feature is a bit like making a temporary smart folder to locate the files you’re looking for.

Selecting with filters

To make a selection based on more than one parameter, check the “extend selection” box in the selection pane.

Utilities

Path Finder includes some additional tools to perform common tasks from within the browser without opening any other apps or utilities. These utilities include a text editor, basic image editor, application launcher, and Stuffit-powered file compression. If you’re like me and always have too many applications running, it’s nice to be able to avoid opening TextEdit, Archive Utility and Preview all the time!

Built-in text editor

Path Finder as a Finder Replacement

I’ve used Path Finder as my primary file browser for several months, and it saves me a lot of time and frustration. I work from my Mac, so anything that can streamline my workflows saves me time, and Path Finder completely eliminates the time-wasting caused by looking for and organizing files. You can set up Path Finder to basically take over for the Finder, and even get it to quit the Finder for you (but you still can’t get rid of the dock icon). There are a couple of integration issues with “reveal in Finder” dialogs from some applications, for example, files downloaded from Google Chrome. I don’t know if this is fixable, but it does make it a little harder to completely replace the Finder.

Dropbox

Like many Appstorm readers, I frequently use Dropbox to back up and share files. Unfortunately, Path Finder doesn’t integrate with Dropbox as nicely as the Finder does. Path Finder doesn’t display the syncing badges on file icons, and doesn’t show the Dropbox contextual menus by default in Snow Leopard. When you update or add a file to your Dropbox, the Finder will be launched instead of Path Finder. Cocoatech has submitted a request for support to Dropbox, but unfortunately that’s all they can do, it’s on Dropbox to allow integration.

Dropbox folder sans badges

You may be able to get Path Finder to display Dropbox contextual menus by manually copying Dropbox.app/Content/Resources/DropboxPlugin.plugin to ~/Library/Contextual Menu Items, then restaring Path Finder. It worked for me!

Alternatives

Finder replacement isn’t a crowded field, there really aren’t a lot of options out there for those of us dissatisfied with the Finder. The options that do exist are quickly aging. A couple of years ago, Josh Johnson wrote a round-up of Finder alternatives, including Path Finder. He mentions a couple of free options that have some of the same features as Path Finder, but also lack some key features and suffer from clunky interface design. If you’re looking for a geekier option with a focus on speed and multiple file system support, check out Xfile, it’s a bit pricier than Path Finder at $59, but offers a lifetime “test drive” with reduced functionality.

If you’re only interested in adding tabs to your Finder experience, take a look at TotalFinder, an enhancement that brings Chrome-like tabs to Finder.

Conclusion

Though other Finder alternatives are worth checking out, in my opinion, none of them come close to being as fully-featured and seamless as Path Finder. Path Finder gives you everything you could want in a file browser, if you’ve ever wished the Finder had feature x, Path Finder probably has it.

After a hard drive failure and forced wipe of my entire laptop, I was forced to go back to the Finder while waiting for the Internet to be installed at my new apartment (it was a rough week), and I was amazed at how much I’ve come to rely on Path Finder for all the frequent tasks I have to perform on my Mac. Path Finder is not just an “enhanced” Finder, it’s a much more powerful replacement.

Going from Path Finder back to the Finder is like going from downgrading from Firefox to Internet Explorer 6: you can perform the same basic tasks, but everything takes longer and is way less convenient. Though the lack of Dropbox integration may deter some, I still say its worth checking out if you’ve ever found yourself frustrated at the Finder’s lack of functionality.

I really do hope that Apple some day takes a cue from Path Finder and seriously updates the Finder, but until that day, Path Finder is a fantastic alternative.

Ever since the first, bug-riddled alpha version was released back in July, fans of the popular alternative Twitter client Tweetbot have eagerly been awaiting its proper release on the Mac. Today, the waiting game is over. Tapbots released the full version in the App Store after submitting it to Apple at the start of the month, and it’s extremely impressive.

The Timelime view of the full App Store version of Tweetbot for Mac.

Although the interface hasn’t been given a significant overhaul since the public alpha and beta versions, a lot has gone on under the surface. With these versions, we saw a very good third-party Twitter client, but one in the making and although some bugs persisted and some key features were missing (such as iCloud timeline sync – we summed them all up in our review of the initial alpha version), it was still a very useable client, albeit with a few creases. Now, all those creases have been ironed out and what we’re left with is an outstanding third-party Twitter client for Mac.

The slightly overhauled tweet view in Tweetbot for Mac.

The new version brings far greater third-party account support for pictures and videos (including Droplr and Cloudapp) and also custom URLs via API endpoints. There’s also full support for the Notification Center in Mountain Lion (for some reason, my beta version never worked – I got the default OS X Twitter notifications but none from Tweetbot) and the most important feature (in my opinion anyway), iCloud timeline sync if you’re using Tweetbot on either your iPhone or iPad (although this is still a little hit and miss at times and you’ll need to be running Mountain Lion as well).

The new version is priced at the handsome sum of $19.99, which to some may seem a little extortionate for just a Twitter client (and judging by some of the complaints I’ve seen on Twitter, it is!) however Tapbots put this down to Twitter and its cap on the number of users (for their full statement, click on the link). For now, it’ll surely entice those who have had their appetite wetted by the alpha and beta versions and since the development of Twitter for Mac may have ground to a halt, it is a worthwhile option for the serious tweeters out there.

To grab this new version, head over to the App Store.

It’s always exciting to come across new, upcoming apps that seem exceptionally promising. That’s exactly what Records for Mac is. It’s an upcoming database app for the Mac that aims to make databasing much more accessible to everyone, with a graphical app that lets you quickly add and sync data, and more. That’s quite a lot to pull off, especially since most databasing apps are far from simple to use, so we were eager to learn more.

We were excited to get a chance to interview the Push Popcorn team about their work on Records, and what we can expect from it. Keep reading to hear about their workflow, the Macs and apps they use to build Records, and more.

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Thanks for taking the time to do this interview with us! Could you tell us a bit about your Push Popcorn team? Also, where did your name come from?

First of all, we want to thank you for this opportunity: we are glad that Mac.Appstorm decided to help and support our project with an interview. Thank you!

About us, Push Popcorn is a really small software house based in Italy, with a simple focus: developing Records for Mac, a new personal database “for the rest of us”. The team is composed by me, Andrea, lead developer and graphic designer, and Gabriele, for marketing/PR and copywriting. We are also honored to tell you that we are closely working with Icon Factory for the app icon and some awesome other UI elements.

About our story, I will be very brief: Gabriele and I worked together in the same company, and we had a lot of things in common. In few months we decided to start this new adventure, “living the dream” of running our own business, developing great Mac and iOS apps. Then, our company name it is based on a catch with “Push” and “Pop” actions available in iOS UINavigationController: nerds’ stuff. We were searching for a funny name, not too trivial but easy to remember.

The Push Popcorn team at work

We’re excited about Records, your upcoming database app. What was the inspiration that got you started making Records?

We love collecting and organizing stuff: from invoices for our work, to our catalog of movies and books. Before we started thinking of Records, we used several different tools for each different scope. Basically, we were using different apps that all were “small databases”, and that gave us the inspiration: we could build a single powerful but easy-to-use application to organize everything more efficiently. The idea was that easy: let’s build a “personal database”, very powerful under the hood, but extremely user friendly, so that almost everyone could use it for both hobby and work.

We decided to make the all development process public, so we started a blog and we share news and updates about Records’ development. We would like to involve other Apple users to become part of the project and share their thoughts and ideas with us.

Why did you choose to make apps for Macs, instead of mobile devices, the web, or even PCs?

We love Apple and its products, and we are Apple users too: Macs, iPhones, and iPads are part of our daily workflow. Starting with a Mac app was an easy decision: we want a powerful tool with a good number of features and options, and OS X is the best platform for developing a sophisticated app like Records. I’m now enjoying my new MacBook Retina, and it’s awesome. Seriously. Gabriele switched to a MacBook Pro in 2007, and he is actually very proud of his MacBook Air 13’’, light and incredibly fast.

Honestly I can’t remember when I used a PC last time since I started using a Mac when I was at school. I also took part at the 2008 MacWorld (during the keynote of the first MacBook Air – amazing!) and I have never missed a WWDC in last few years (or at least I tried to buy a ticket before they get sold out). Honestly I’m packing my bags, because we would like to make a trip to next year’s MacWorld/iWorld and I’m sure it would be an awesome experience.

Access is almost universally used for databasing on Windows. What’s your view of databasing on Macs, and how Records will fit into the picture?

Records will be an easy-to-use but extremely powerful tool, something different from Access and Filemaker. They’re both powerful but not that easy to use. We are focusing most on “prosumers”, people who want to use apps for both productivity and free time. We are actually not interested in developing a professional database app, so we don’t consider Filemaker or Access apps that can inspire or lead our project. At least, for now.

In this scenario, as we pointed out, we think that there are several specific apps nowadays and only few are really complete as Records will be. We are developing an app that will let you organize anything you want, in a visual way, with a gorgeous UI. Records will perhaps be considered  similar to Bento, the most known “personal database” for Mac out there. We consider Bento as the most analogous app to Records in the OS X ecosystem, but we want to raise the bar and develop something better that goes beyond other apps’ limitations and known issues.

That’s why we hope that other users will help us with their feedbacks. We want to make an amazing app, based on users’ needs and workflows.

Can you share a bit about how Records will work? Will it integrate with standard database formats?

The Records database engine is built on top of Apple’s Core Data framework, and it works really fast. It will be able to import data from standard file formats, like CSV or TXT, so everyone will be able to import and export database files. Later, we hope to add other supported formats. We want to make the import/export process really smooth, and we are thinking of all the possibilities to make it really simple, in a few easy steps.

A sketch of the concept for Records

Tell us a bit about your workflow. What Macs and apps help you make Records?

I am actually developing Records on a MacBook Pro Retina Display, and I love it. I use my old MacBook Air to test the app everyday, so I can be sure that the app will perform pretty well on older Macs too. Gabriele is working on a 13’’ MacBook Air, but it’s a different model from mine: it’s great, and he loves it. Currently we don’t have any office, as you can see from the picture, so we work on the go, sitting in the park or in a café, and our laptops are perfect for that.

We use iMessage to chat almost every day and Kickoff to keep things and to-dos well organized. On the iPhone, we keep in touch with Verbs and Mail. Of course, I develop with Xcode and I use GitHub for managing repositories. A special mention goes to Squarespace, the platform we use for our website: we love it!

Do you plan to ship Records on the App Store? What’s your view on the restrictions in the App Store right now?

Yes, we’ll ship Records on the Mac App Store, but we will probably let users directly buy from our store too, via Fastspring. The Mac App Store is great, that’s for sure, and we think that current restrictions will only affect few, specific apps. We can’t actually find any negative point in it with Records. But, we’ll want to offer it directly from our own site also, so users can choose the best solution for themselves.

Apple probably should work to address some Mac App Store limitations, and we’d love to see paid upgrades or trial versions added in the future. In order to support indie developers like us, we think that these elements are necessary for a long-term business: subscriptions could be useful too for some specific kind of apps, as seen on the iOS App Store.

If Records for Mac is a success, would you plan to make accompanying iOS apps?

Absolutely. iOS apps will let everyone update or create databases on the go, and fit perfectly with our vision of Records and the future Push Popcorn. Honestly, we are thinking of an iPad app as soon as possible and, later, an iPhone version too. We always try to reach perfection, because we’re exigent and careful to details, and iOS apps will be available only in a second time, when we could be totally focused on that.

So what’s next after Records? Do you plan for it to be your main work for years, or do you have other apps you want to make?

Our main project is Records, and we are totally focused on it. We want to make it extremely powerful, easy to understand and to use and, of course, always better and faster. So, we are not actually thinking of any other kind of app, and probably we won’t for a long time. If you want to help us with this project, we’d be glad to hear your ideas: you can use our blog to post a comment, drop us a line to our email address or simply sign up to our newsletter to be among the firsts to receive significant updates and alpha/beta versions of Records app.

Records for Mac coming together, bit by bit

Thanks, Gabriele and Andrea!

We’d like to thank Gabriele and Andrea for taking the time to do this interview with us. We’re excited about Records, and can’t wait to try it out ourselves!

Apple introduced FaceTime on June 7, 2010, and released it with the iPhone 4 later that month. Later that year, Apple announced a Mac version of the service, but put it in beta and the final version was released in February 2011. People didn’t know what to think of this new way to communicate. Video chat was nice, yes, but most people use Skype, so what was the purpose of Apple’s own solution? To connect all Apple users with video chat, apparently.

The aim of FaceTime seems too simple, too limited. There wasn’t a lot of hype surrounding its launch because most people didn’t see themselves using it on a daily basis. What was this service lacking and what could it benefit from gaining? A few suggestions are available after the break.

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Why FaceTime Needs More Features

“There can only be one.”

If Apple is to do anything with FaceTime — not just let it slowly die like Ping — it will want to compete with the other services out there. Skype, for instance, is the largest Voice-over-Internet Protocol service on the Internet. It was purchased by Microsoft, Apple’s chief competitor in traditional desktop and laptop computers, last year, and has been integrated into Facebook, which already integrates with Microsoft’s Bing services.

On the other hand, there’s Google, Apple’s rival in the mobile market. The search engine has its own social network, Google+, and it offers “Hangouts”, voice or video chat sessions that support more than two people at once, recording, YouTube playback, and much more for free. While Apple has nothing close to this, nor even anything that close to Skype, both Google+ and Skype work great on iOS devices and Macs.

So, if Apple does want to keep or attract users in this area, it should be developing FaceTime, and absolutely shouldn’t be putting it on the back burner. To do that, here’s some of the features it needs:

Multi-User FaceTime

Google Hangouts (left) and FaceTime (right).

Many people transitioned to Google+ for one simple reason: it had free video chatting with more than two participants. Skype allows free voice chatting with as many people as you want, but video conference calls cost money. If Apple took the initiative and picked up this market, users would be pleased. Instead of talking with one family member, they could see them all and actually “hang out”, as Google would put it.

Keeping things one-to-one is limiting the amount of true users. People don’t want to use the service if it lacks features that another has, especially if they need those features. Businesspeople once used WebEx for conference calls, but now they’re transitioning to Skype. Since many have Apple devices already, the company could gain a lot of enterprise users by offering a solution of its own, even if it starts off as a paid service.

Voice and Text Chat, Not Just Video

The biggest problem with FaceTime is its focus. As the name implies, this app lets you talk face-to-face with a person. Sometimes, however, people want to just talk, not video chat because it’s more bandwidth-consuming or distracting. It’s understandable, and yes, people do still speak to one another with a telephone. Google offers voice chatting, as does Skype, so why not Apple as well? Right now, the company offers no way to simply voice chat using its own services.

Another method of communication popular with most Internet users is text chat. It all began with this, and many people still enjoy instant messaging with Facebook or text messaging with a traditional phone. Right now, the only OS X app that offers this service is Messages. This is great since it’s Apple’s own way of instant messaging across its devices. However, there’s no way to connect the two, FaceTime and Messages, to make a more complete service.

Full Messages Integration

The solution to Apple’s problem is to fully integrate FaceTime into Messages, or the other way around. Separately, these apps aren’t doing the end user any good. They perform very similar functions, yet an extra space is wasted in Launchpad. Messages already has a video chat feature for users of AIM and Google Chat, but nothing that can be used to communicate with other Mac or iOS users. There isn’t even a shortcut to FaceTime.

Apple’s Messages promo image.

Full integration of FaceTime into Messages would include text chat via iMessage, video chat via FaceTime, and hopefully voice-only chat using FaceTime’s servers as well. A screen sharing option would also be great since both Skype and Google+ offer it. There are also other features like recording, quality, and more options for the app overall. FaceTime has a lot of room to grow.

Find Friends with Facebook and Twitter

Connecting a Facebook account to Mountain Lion.

Last, but not least, is social participation. Apple recently added Twitter to OS X, followed by Facebook in the late summer. The OS can use these both a lot more than it does right now, starting with FaceTime. What if you have a lot of friends who you want to connect with on Facebook or Twitter? To FaceTime them, you have to add their email address or iPhone number to your contacts list. Wouldn’t it be a lot simpler to use a social network instead?

Run Everywhere

Then, there’s the 900 pound elephant in the room: Skype is cross platform, Google+ works from any browser, and FaceTime is only on iOS and OS X. Sure, Apple’s devices are selling better than ever, but most of us still have plenty of friends, family, and colleagues that use PCs, Android devices, and more. FaceTime will have the best chance of really becoming a standard if it runs on Windows, at least, and if it was on Android as well, it’d have a much better shot at being the next Skype. Apple’s made iTunes and Quicktime for Windows for years, so there’s at least some precedent for making FaceTime a cross platform product.

What Else?

Now that you’ve read my thoughts on what FaceTime could use in the future, it’s time for your input. What do you think the service needs in order to survive? What would some cool features be, even if they aren’t that big of a deal to most people? Let us know in the comments and spark a discussion about the issue.

In today’s day and age where mobility is essential, we’ve seen a huge proliferation of increasingly smaller laptops, led by the MacBook Air’s success. With smaller laptops come smaller screens. While this is great for mobility it does come with a cost. Screen real-estate!

Not everybody is fortunate enough to work on a big beautiful 27″ iMac or a shiny new Retina MacBook Pro (I know I’m not). Most, whether by choice or necessity, work on small screens, and more often than we realize find ourselves jugling windows around or Alt-Tabbing between them.

Thanks to SnappyApp, a delightfully simple app that’s proven to be oh so useful, this has mostly become a thing of the past for me. Read on to find out why.

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Capture

SnappyApp is a small menubar app with a simple goal: quickly capturing an area of the screen. The resulting window or Snap floats above all other windows until you close it. The snap is basically a static screenshot of anything you’ve seen, so you could clip an image of a site, but a video playing in it wouldn’t keep playing in the snap. You would, however, still see any info in the snap for your reference.

There are two ways of capturing a Snap. Choose Take Snap from the menubar, or by triggering the keyboard shortcut (the default is ??2, but you can change that in the preferences).

SnappyApp’s menubar where you can access all the apps features.

Once activated, your cursor will change into a crosshair. Drag over the area you wish to capture, release, and you’re done. The selected area will seemingly pop off the screen with a message informing you to Double click to close the snap (these help messages can be disabled in the Preferences). You can now drag your Snap anywhere on screen. Now, change to whichever app you choose, and your snap will remain visible.

You can have multiple Snaps open at once, placing them side by side or even overlapping. The last Snap will always have the highest z-index, and will thus float above the previous Snaps. This way, you can grab all the info you need from other windows or tabs, and keep it visible while you’re working in another app. With a quick double-click, the snap will disappear, and your workplace will be clean again.

Share

One great feature of SnappyApp is that you are able to share your Snaps. You can send them by email, share on Facebook, pin it to Pinterest, or share them via Snappy’s site. Email and Facebook are pretty straight forward so I won’t delve into that, but the Snappy sharing is worth taking a closer look at.

SnappyApp’s Sharing options activated from context menu.

When you choose to share via SnappyApp, your Snap is copied to their site and a private URL is placed on your clipboard. A FAQ on their site states that snaps are “stored on the Snappy servers for a while, after which they are deleted and the URL is no longer available”. This information was a little vague for my taste, so I contacted the developers. They were kind enough to elaborate on how long a little while is:

Currently, snaps are kept on the server for 30 days.

When asked if they had plans for any further integration and sharing options they said:

We plan to submit a new version to Apple, including new sharing options and other freshly-coded, coolness-packed features by the end of the month. Generally speaking, SnappyApp has stayed in the review process for 8–10 days, so we expect the new version to be available in the AppStore mid-November.

To be clear, some of the proposed options are Twitter, Flickr, and Picasa sharing.

Reuse: Snaps From the Past

Once you close a Snap, it may seem as though it’s lost forever, but fortunately that is not the case. You can open Snaps From the Past straight via the menubar, where you have access to all your previous Snaps.

Once you amass a large number of Snaps, the many filtering options will come in handy. These let you filter snaps by when a Snap was taken, Snaps shared on a specific network and finally which app it’s from (referring to the frontmost app at the time of the Snap).

SnappyApp’s Snaps From the Past. View as list or thumbnails, filter by app or time.

There are buttons on the titlebar that allow you to Quicklook, Delete and Get Info on a Snap. These options are also available from the context menu as are the others previously seen. The only thing new here is Open Snap, which simply makes the selected Snap float once again, efectively allowing you to reuse Past Snaps.

It is possible to change the title of a Snap from the Get Info panel. This is particularly useful if you intend to search by Snap Title to find Snaps

The Good, The Bad and Final Thoughts

As I’ve already stated, SnappyApp’s sharing features are great. Sure you can accomplish similar tasks with apps such as CloudApp, Droplr, or Skitch, to name just a few sharing apps, but that fact that you can share something you previously “floated” is a great timesaver. The default filters available in the Snaps From the Past browser really make finding things a breeze and turn and unruly mass of Snaps into something manageable.

However, in my use of SnapyApp I’ve found a few aspects lacking. Namely that there is no simple way of reusing a Snap in another app. You either have to copy and paste or drag from the Snaps Browser into another app. Speaking of the browser, the fact that the only way to reopen a Snap is from the context menu, when there are buttons to Quicklook, Delete and Get Info, is a huge oversight.

While not perfect, it’s a great free alernative to ScreenFloat, providing most of the same features and adding new ones. I for one am looking forward to the next release in anticipation of the goodies promised.

What are your thoughts?

Our sponsor this week is Yate, the Mac audio tagging app for serious taggers. If you want an easy way to add more info to your music files than you can in iTunes, it’s an app you should be sure to check out.

Organizing and tagging your audio files can be very tedious and time consuming. Yate aims to make it much easier. It lets you import audio tagging info from MusicBrainz or Discogs, and can help you quickly add missing album art info. It lets you add more metadata to your songs than you ever could with iTunes or OS X’s File Info. Then, you can add these changes to all of your songs at once with Actions, saving you the time of manually updating each song in an album.

Best of all, Yate integrates with iTunes, and was recently updated to work with the latest iTunes updates, so it can automatically sync your song tags with your iTunes library. You can use it to tag all of your mp3, m4a, and FLAC files, and keep your library up to date at the same time. If you ever need to change or revert tags you’ve added, Yate can take care of that, too!

Go Get It!

If you’re ready to start getting serious about tagging your music files, be sure to download Yate and try it out. You can test it for free for 14 days, then purchase a license for $30 to keep using all of its features. And if you have any trouble getting it going, be sure to get in touch with the Yate team; they’re great at making sure their customers can get the most out of their app, as we found while writing our review.

Welcome to this week’s issue of App Deals. There are a lot of great apps floating around the sales racks, including Boom, Typeli Notes, and Quake 4. Keep reading for the full list of deals.

The MacHeist Bundle

Then, there’s the the new MacHeist Bundle running for the next 10 days that gives you 15 apps for just $29. It includes Scrivener, Courier, Radium, a year of Evernote Pro, several games, and more. It’ll even include Firetask and Bioshock 2 once enough bundles are purchased. That’s easily the best deal of the week!

And one more thing…

Our friends at Ondesoft are giving away their clipboard extender, ClipBuddy, for free for the next 2 weeks if you signup for their newsletter. Be sure to enter your info and snag a free copy before the end of the month!

Is That All?

That should cover everything for this week, but the week is not yet over. If you find any awesome deals, be sure to let us know about them in the comments. If not, we’ll see you next Wednesday!

Earlier this year we reviewed Gemini, the duplicate finder, and came to the conclusion that it was a pretty great app. It worked incredibly well at finding any duplicated files on whatever disk you threw at it. That’s not to say it didn’t have its faults, but the folks at MacPaw have worked hard on flattening out the creases and have produced a great free update to their beautiful app.

Let’s take a look at the new features in Gemini, and see why it’s still one of the best ways to clean up duplicate files from your Mac. Plus, we’ve got 5 copies for our readers, so keep reading to see how to enter our giveaway!

The New Gemini

Showing the Folder section of Gemini

The most notable lacking feature was that Gemini could find the duplicated in Apple’s own apps, like iTunes and iPhoto, but it couldn’t remove them. If one of the duplicates was elsewhere (i.e not in iTunes or iPhoto) then this wasn’t a problem, but if you found dozens of duplicated of photos and they were all in the aforementioned apps then Gemini could not remove them. This issue was rectified, so any duplicates you have can now be totally removed, without the need to manually jump in and select the ones to keep and the ones to delete.

Update: Then, we initially ran into trouble since iPhoto was recently updates to version 9.4 and Gemini didn’t support it, but the MacPaw team has just fixed this issue, so you should have no trouble integrating Gemini with your iPhoto library.

Not supporting any versions above 9.3 of iPhoto

This update brings various much welcomed additions to an already great app, such as full retina support, so those with Retina Display MacBook Pros can now use this app how it was meant to be viewed. There is also support for Mountain Lion, localisation in German, Spanish, Italian, French and Russian, as well as several improvements in the search algorithm and performance.

All together this update is akin to Mountain Lion: not much that makes you’re mouth salivate with desire, but rather a continual upgrade towards a more perfect piece of software.

Tweet To Win a Copy of Gemini

With new features, bug fixes, and more, Gemini remains one of the best ways to clear out duplicate files from your Mac. We’re excited to have 5 copies of Gemini to giveaway to our readers, thanks to the MacPaw team. If you’d love to win a copy of Gemini, it’s easy to get your entry submitted. All you have to do is click the link below and send out the resulting tweet (or just copy and paste), then leave a comment below with a link to your tweet. That’s it!

We’ll announce the winners on Saturday, October 20th, so hurry and get your entry in!

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