Category: Mac

The market for text editors is quite overwhelming, as there are tons of  apps out there with all sorts of features and a broad range of prices. There’s markdown apps for writers, code editors for developers, simple apps to just jot text down, and everything in between. For a newcomer app to break into this market successfully is perhaps harder than with any other app market, as it would need to be exceptionally good in order to really catch our attention.

We came across such an app last year, that despite being in an alpha stage, showed a lot of promise and even made it in our top apps to keep an eye on in 2012. It’s called Chocolat, and now that it has gotten an official stable release, we thought we’d check back on it and see what has changed since the last time we reviewed it.

Getting Started

Chocolat is a beautiful, simple, and yet very functional text editor. We did a review of it back when it was in alpha, and as such it was in early stages of development but still seemed like a very promising app. Chocolat recently saw a final stable release in which many things have been added and improved.

In our previous review we’ve already covered the major details of the app, so here we’re just going to give you a quick glance at them and focus on what’s new and what has changed with the app.

Chocolat

Chocolat has all the major features that you would expect from any text editor: syntax highlighting, multiple coding language support, customizable themes, split-screen editing, VIM mode, code folding, etc. While most of these features are pretty common and will hardly differentiate it from other popular text editors, the way in which they are implemented is what makes the app shine.

Take the themes, for example. Chocolat comes with a list of around twenty beautiful pre-defined themes, and you can even play around with them and set visual styles for very specific things, like whether comments should be underlined or if numbers should be displayed in a bold font.

Just as with the themes, every feature that you will find in Chocolat is well-thought, extremely customizable and very useful.

What’s New

So, what’s new with Chocolat? What has been redone and improved? Here’s a rundown of the new features you can find in the final release.

Auto-complete

In our previous review of Chocolat we mentioned how auto-complete was not always quite functional. In the final release auto-complete now works well for the most part, especially if you’re coding in HTML or CSS. Other languages have the feature enabled, but it might not always work as you expect it to.

System Integration

Chocolat feels most at home with Mac OS, as it is a native Cocoa application. Not only is its interface simplistic and beautiful, but it also supports full-screen mode, auto-saving, tabbed navigation and a useful navigation bar for exploring folders and jumping between documents, that make Chocolat feel like a true native app.

Live Errors

Chocolat has the ability to check for errors in your code, but this feature only works when you are coding in Python, Ruby, PHP and JavaScript. If an error is found in a line of your code, the line will be marked and you’ll be able to see the details of it if you hover over the marker.

Multi-cursor Editing (Blockedit)

Blockedit lets you write code simultaneously in different lines of code. You can set multiple cursors by holding the Alt key and clicking over where you want each of them to be set. Everything you type while you have multiple cursors activated will be written everywhere you have selected simultaneously.

Documentation

Online documentation for the active language is now easily available inside the app. You can bring it up by going to View->Documentation, or if you want to look up something specifically, you can select the text and hit CMD+Shift+J to automatically jump to it.

Templates and Snippets

When you start a blank document, you will notice that a small button called “Template” becomes active on the top bar. This button can help you quickly get a basic template for starting your project, and it’s specific for each language. In Objective-C, for example, you can get a template for creating a class or a category, and in HTML you can get an HTML5 template that contains doctype, meta data, a CSS stylesheet link, and head and body declarations.

If you want to get a little more specific, there are also small default snippets of code for declaring certain things. Under the “Actions” menu, you can find these language-specific snippets for declaring all kinds of things, like basic cycle declarations or more complex stuff like conditional comments for specific browsers in HTML.

Build and Preview

Chocolat comes with a very useful Webkit-based live web preview for immediately checking out how your end result is looking if you are coding a webpage, and you can as well validate your code with the click of a button. With certain other languages, you can as well run your code in the Terminal right from the app.

Competition

It would be really hard to put Chocolat against all the options out there for text editing, just because there are so many of them and they all offer their own unique experience. Despite its impressive set of features, probably what will mark a difference for Chocolat is its price. Comparing to apps like Coda 2 ($99), Sublime Text ($59), TextMate ($52) and Espresso ($75), Chocolat’s price of $50 not only seems reasonable, but it might also be a decisive factor for anyone looking for a new text editor.

Chocolat is kind of right in the middle in terms of pricing between free alternatives like TextWrangler and paid ones like Sublime Text or Coda. Before using it, I worked with TextWrangler, because it’s a free alternative and it does pretty much just what I need even though it doesn’t feel glamorous or cool at all. Just with a few days that I’ve spent with Chocolat I’ve seen just how concentrating it is to have a clean, good-looking UI is and how useful having features like split-screen editing and live web previews is.

Conclusion

As one of our wise readers put it in a comment in the previous Chocolat review we did, “switching into a different text editor makes my head and wallet hurt”. If you are already set in your ways with a text editor, Chocolat is hardly going to convince you to switch to it. Although it has a strong set of features and its minimalistic UI certainly makes it stand out, there’s still not enough of an incentive to make you go migrating your whole workflow to a new text editor.

However, if you’re in the market for a new editor, Chocolat might just have enough to fill your necessities, and for a moderate price that’s hard to match in a market like that of text editors. For such a minimalistic-looking app, I ended up being more than impressed with everything it can do, and I intend to keep using it instead of my old text editor, which is about as good of a recommendation as I can make.

What about you?

Computers should be so smart today, and yet, it feels like we have to babysit them, performing menial tasks, instead of putting the computer’s own power to work. We’re blown away by voice command apps like Siri, and yet our MacBooks that are far faster take more effort to use. There should be a way to automate it more.

ControlPlane is an open-source context-sensitive automation application. In short, what this means is actions can be triggered based on where you are, what you’re doing or when you’re doing it. There’s a vast number of ways you could put it to use, and its and limited only by your imagination. So if your curiosity is already peaked, read on while I take you on a small tour.

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The Building Blocks

ControlPlane can be thought of as having two main blocks: Contexts and Actions. A context can be a place, a time or even a running application. It all depends on what your needs are and what rules you later define. Actions are what is executed once a context is triggered.

Once you get to know it, ControlPlane is rather simple and easy to use. However, it does have a few “moving” parts that will help to break it down into it’s various components. Let’s take a look first at all of the main features and parts of ControlPlane, and then we’ll look at ways you can put it to use to simplify your own life.

Contexts

Creating a context is a simple matter of deciding upon a name, and hierarchy if so desired. Click the + and type in a name. Drag to reorder or nest to create a folder-like hierarchy. Once created, you use Evidence Sources and Rules to define when they are activated. It is possible to have more than one context active at the same time, thus allowing for great granularity in terms of triggering actions.

Evidence Sources

There are many available Evidence Sources with which to define rules and due to constant updates by the developer and community the list of both Evidence Sources and Actions keeps growing. Having said that however, it is possible to disable Sources you don’t need or use in order to unclutter the list of available options when creating new rules (Owners of Macs without FireWire can disable that source, for example). Another advantage of disabling Sources that aren’t needed or used is that ControlPlane won’t “scan” them looking for context triggers which should lower the performance hit (which is already very minimal).

Rules

Rules are how you tell ControlPlane what,where or when your context is. You can use any enabled Evidence Source to define a Rule. Simply choose what type you wish to create, fill in the available configuration parameters, choose the context and finally the confidence level. A Context is only triggered when the Confidence Level is higher than that of the threshold defined in the General tab. One rule can have a very high Confidence Level (say Current Location, provided by Apple’s CoreLocation) while other rules may have a lower Confidence Level (assigned IP for example).

Actions

Actions, as the name rightfully implies, this is where all the action takes place. This is where you define what you want to happen when a specific Context is triggered. At the time of writing, there are over 30 available actions, one of which is the ability to trigger scripts (AppleScript or shell) vastly increasing what can be done with ControlPlane. The full list is available on the site but here’s a little glimpse of what’s possible:

• Change the default printer
• Change the display brightness
• Change Incoming/outgoing servers in Mail.app
• Mount/Unmount external and network drives
• Open any file, including starting Applications
• Run a script, such as AppleScript or shell script
• Change Time Machine backup destination
• Enable/Disable Notification Center (Mountain Lion only)
• Enable/Disable Bluetooth
• Enable/Disable WiFi
• Start or stop a VPN connection

To create a new action, click the + and choose the action you want. Depending on what type you choose, the configuration parameters will vary. There are however a few that are global to all actions, namely:

• Context that should trigger the action;
• When you want to trigger the Action, on Arrival, Departure or Both;
• Delay before triggering the Action;
• Description for your Action.

Putting ControlPlane to Good Use

Now that you know the building blocks and how they piece together you can start putting this to good use. You may or may not be feeling overwhelmed or not quite sure what you could do with this so I’ll give you a few personal examples to get you started.

My Time Contexts

I’m fortunate enough to be a telecommuter and therefore, some days I work from home and some days I work from the office. Regardless of where I am though, during the weekdays I always have a set few apps that I need for work.

That’s where my “Weekdays” Context comes into play, opening all apps I’m going to need for work. Now if I so happen to use my MacBook on the weekends, none of these apps open up and bother me.

A “Work Hours” context opens my Work Tasklist in TaskPaper and an “After Work Hours” Context opens my Projects & Hacks Tasklist. Having this automated is a boon for focus because until it opens I know it’s all work and no play.
Although I’m a user of F.lux I also have a “Late Night” context that automatically dims the display brightness so as not to strain my eyes when working late hours.

My Places Contexts

As said earlier, I move around a lot and this is where my Places Contexts shine. A “Work” context sets my default printer to the one closest to me at the office, turns off Bluetooth and Wifi (no need for either at work) and finally connects to my most used network drives.

A “Home” context sets the default printer to my own and turns on Bluetooth and Wifi. It also changes my Adium status message so that my colleagues know immediately that I working from home that day.

Final Thoughts

As you can see from these few examples, the granularity that I mentioned earlier allows for a great deal of customisation with regards to actions. You can mix and match Contexts to fit your needs. You can find other interesting ways of using ControlPlane on it’s Wiki Page.

I’ve been using this application for quite some time now and have yet to have had any problems. Having said that, when bugs are found, the developer and community are quick to come out with bug fixes and new features. While not as feature rich as apps such as Keyboard Maestro, you can’t beat the price and feature set it already has.

If you enjoy automating and tweaking your system then I strongly urge you to give ControlPlane a try. I’m confident you will be thankful you did.

Let me know in the comments what interesting ways you’re using ControlPlane and how it’s changed your workflow.

We’ve collected the top four reviews, roundups and how-to articles from across the AppStorm network in September. Whether you’re interested in Mac, iPhone, Web, Android, Windows, or iPad apps, there’s bound to be something you didn’t spot over the course of the month. Now would be a good time to explore a part of the AppStorm Network you’ve never seen before!

Thanks for reading AppStorm, and I hope you enjoy looking over some of our favourite posts from last month!

Best of Android.AppStorm

Best of iPad.AppStorm

Best of Windows.AppStorm

Best of iPhone.AppStorm

Best of Web.AppStorm

Best of Mac.AppStorm

Share Your Ideas

Is there something in particular you’d like to see on the site next month? We’d absolutely love to hear your suggestions for articles, topics and giveaways. Just let us know in the comments. Thanks for reading AppStorm!

This week has been another fairly quiet one in terms of app news but we’ve still managed to find a couple of stories to keep you ticking over till next week.

Enjoy!

Apple may be moving away from Intel chips?

We don’t often report on rumours here on Mac AppStorm but this one seemed so important that we felt it criminal to abandon it. According to a profile on the company by Bloomberg Businessweek, there is a desire within the company to shift away from Intel chips in future Mac models, replacing them with a different kind of technology (Apple were in talks back in 2010 with AMD about switching over to them). This change is certainly quite soon, as Apple only in 2006 transitioned all their computers from the ageing PowerPC architecture to the new chipsets.

The move back then was extremely successful and warranted a revived interest in the Mac computer and its showcase in more mainstream life, as applications could be more easily written for the new platform. It also made Macs able to run Windows natively without any kind of emulation. Although the move isn’t imminent (mostly due to the logistics of migrating all Macs to a new processor architecture), it would allow Apple to distinguish its products further from competitors that run Intel’s chips and Microsoft’s Windows software.

We’ll keep you updated on this story if anything updates.

Amazon Cloud Drive update adds easy iPhoto uploads

The latest Cloud Drive update has brought not only support for the service to Italy and Spain but also a new “Import from iPhoto” option, allowing users to import their photos directly from their iPhoto library to their cloud drive. This option is fantastic for users who want an easy backup option of all their iPhoto albums, which are often squirrelled away within your home folder. You can also select from multiple iPhoto albums before uploading to Cloud Drive as well.

The update can be grabbed directly from Amazon’s website by heading over here.

Tweetbot for Mac submitted to the App Store

After remaining in both alpha and beta stages for several months, the final version of Tweetbot for Mac has been submitted to the App Store, according to a tweet by Tapbots, the developers of Tweetbot. If it is approved then it will fill the gap left by Twitter for Mac, which apparently is no longer in active development. Tweetbot for Mac will also be one of the few Twitter clients on the Store that is also optimised for the retina display on the new MacBook Pro.

We will have a full review of Tweetbot when it comes out on the App Store.

Supplemental updates to Mountain Lion and Lion released

Apple has pushed a couple of “supplemental updates” to both Mountain Lion and Lion which bring along fixes for three issues, according to the support documents. The version 1.0 Mountain Lion update addresses a couple of issues within Mail and Safari and for Lion it addresses an issue with Time Machine that may speed up the time of very long backups. As usual, the updates can be downloaded from Software Update and require a restart to be installed.

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!

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 September, from How to Launch Any App with a Keyboard Shortcut to Awesome Reader Submitted Mac Tips and Tricks.

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Best of Mactuts+

This Week in Mac News is a new column we’re now publishing each Saturday, rounding up the latest Mac and Apple news. Just the fact here; no rumors. See, rumors are expensive, so we’ll stick to the facts.

Welcome to the first edition of This Week in Mac News. There’s so much going on in in the world of Apple, beyond just regular app updates, we wanted to be able to help our readers stay a bit more informed about what’s going on without having to trace down every rumor and Apple press release. That’s why we’ve started this new column, and we hope you enjoy reading. Let us know your thoughts about it and if there’s anything we’ve missed in the comments below.

With that out of the way, let’s get started with this week’s news. Briefly, Apple released a OS X 10.8.2 and 10.7.5 supplemental update with bug fixes, the company’s fourth quarter earnings will be announced on October 25, and Ping closed at 11:59 p.m. September 30. Keep reading for full coverage of these topics.

OS X 10.8.2 Supplemental Update Released with Bug Fixes

OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.2 received a supplemental update on Thursday, October 4. It includes fixes for an issue that prevented Japanese characters from appearing correctly in the Mail app, an issue that didn’t allow Macs with 64 GB or RAM or more to start up properly, and fixed a bug that caused the DVD Player app to crash. One major fix was for the operating system’s default Web browser: Safari now allows secure Web sites to be accessed when parental controls are enabled. The full list of changes is available on Apple’s official support page for the update.

To download the OS X 10.8.2 Supplemental Update, either click the apple in the top left of the screen and click Software Update, head to the Mac App Store and click the Updates tab, or download it directly from Apple’s support Web site. OS X 10.8.2 may also be available if you didn’t download it when it was released in the third week of September.

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OS X 10.7.5 Supplemental Update Released with Two Bug Fixes

Early Thursday afternoon, Apple issued a second update to OS X, this time for the older 10.7.5 Lion. As with the Mountain Lion update, it’s supplemental and not a full incremental version increase. This update fixes a bug that hinders Time Machine backups from completing in a reasonable amount of time and fixes an issue with Gate Keeper’s Developer ID function that didn’t allow signed apps to launch. The full list of changes is available on Apple’s official support page for the update.

To download the OS X 10.7.5 Supplemental Update, either click the apple in the top left of the screen and click Software Update or download it directly from Apple’s support Web site.

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Apple Inc. (APPL) Q4 Earnings to Be Announced October 25

On Monday, October 1, Apple Inc. announced that it will be announcing its fourth quarter earnings on October 25. (Apple uses a fiscal year, which means that its fourth quarter ended on September 30.) The earnings will be announced in a conference call with the CEO and other executives. It will take place at 2 p.m. Pacific time and a live webcast is available on Apple’s Web site.

After launching the iPhone 5 and subsequently selling out its initial preorders at the end of its fourth quarter, the earnings are expected to be high, if not higher than last year. Tune in at the aforementioned date and time to find out.

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Ping Bids Users Farewell

September 30 marked the end of Apple’s social music network, Ping. After just over a year, the iTunes-based service was not used enough to support, so its retirement was imminent. If you ever used Ping, it was probably for sharing what you just bought. Most users didn’t even know they had it and every time they purchased or “Liked” something on the iTunes Store, it would show up as activity in Ping.

The hopes for this network were good, but Apple clearly didn’t see a future in it. The corporation’s CEO, Tim Cook, said that ”the customer voted and said ‘this isn’t something that I want to put a lot of energy into’” during the D10 All Things Digital conference in June. With that news, the death certificate of Ping was signed, but not dated. Apple then announced that Ping would be removed from iTunes at the end of September. Interestingly, iTunes 11 is slated to include native OS X sharing, so you can share your purchases and more on Facebook and Twitter. For most of us, that’ll be much more interesting than Ping sharing.

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That’s It for This Week!

With Ping out of iTunes, that marks the end of this week’s Mac news. It’s worth noting that Steve Jobs died a year age Friday (October 5). The Apple.com main landing page paid its respects to the entrepreneur with a dedicated video and page in which Tim Cook memorialized his influence on Apple and all of us. If you missed getting to see Apple’s tribute video, you can watch it again in full at this link,

If you’ve found any other interesting Apple news, tell us about it in the comments. Until next week, then? See you on the 13th.

Markdown is kind of a big deal right now. It’s one of the most popular ways to turn plain text into formatted text, and it’s showing up everywhere from blogging tools to note apps to comments online. The App Store is filled with text editors built around Markdown, each priding itself on having a minimalist interface that makes it easy to write in plain text. It’s hard to know the best one to use.

We’ve covered more then a few markdown apps in the past, and the list of Markdown apps is constantly growing. In this stage of the game, app authors need to create an app that stands above the pack to be competitive. Is Markdown Pro one of those, or just another editor in the pack?

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Markdown in 60 seconds

If you’re unfamiliar with Markdown, I’d recommend taking a look at John Gruber’s (of Daring Fireball fame) introduction to Markdown. I couldn’t possibly go in to that much detail, and as always it’s best to get your information from the source… seeing as he’s one of the brains behind Markdown. In a nutshell, I do everything in Markdown. It’s incredibly useful for note taking (not for the faint of heart), email formatting, creating HTML without actually knowing HTML syntax, and documentation writing, to name a few use cases.

With the numerous use cases out there, you can see why the Markdown app market is so competitive and constantly growing. Lets move on to see how Markdown Pro stacks up.

A Look at Markdown Pro’s Features

Lets start from the top: Markdown Pro’s gorgeous. Markdown apps, good ones at least, are designed to stay out of your way and let you do what you came here to do, write. Markdown Pro does this exceedingly well. With the toolbar closed you’re left with a window with either a text editor, preview pane, or a split window with both.

The toolbar, when visible, gives you options to change the view, text size of the editor window, find text or a few useful functions such as export to PDF, print and the very useful syntax reference help menu for newbies. The quick access to the help menu has been a godsend, even though I’ve been using Markdown syntax for a few years.

Below the editor window there’s a handy word count and template selection dropdown. Markdown Pro comes with 10 preinstalled templates and while some are quite readable and useful others… not so much, but maybe to some. Exporting documents to PDF or HTML uses the template you have selected and does so quite well. Both the HTML and PDF exports look identical to the preview window and the HTML passes the W3C Markup Validation Service.

All the Lion/Mountain Lion features are present as well. If you’re a full screen aficionado, well, full screen away. Versions are available if you need to roll back, auto saving, and if you write in middle eastern languages full right-to-left support is present. For Retina display users, text is displayed in full retina resolution, but a few icons haven’t been updated yet though I wouldn’t call this a deal breaker, especially if you leave the toolbar hidden.

The 90 lb. Mou in the Room

Joshua Johnson wrote a review of Mou back in November 2011, and the similarities between these two editors is unmistakable. Mou adopts the two pane editing, has the Lion/Mountain Lion features, Retina Display support, and an awfully nice price tag of $0.00 (while in beta) verses Markdown Pro’s $9.99 Mac App Store price. If Markdown Pro was made by Apple, and Mou by Samsung, these two would be in court in seconds. Fortunately for us, neither of these apps is likely to get blocked by the courts.

Thoughts & Conclusion

If these two applications are so similar, Aaron, why would I spend the $9.99 on Markdown Pro over a free Mou? Polish. That might be a tough sell for (most) everyone. Mou is a fantastic markdown editor, and can do 95% of what Markdown Pro can but that other 5% is where I constantly go back to Markdown Pro. Most notable is the templates: Markdown Pro has 10 templates where Mou has 4, or 2 variants of 2 themes rather. The Github v2 template on Markdown Pro is identical to Github’s markdown theme, where Mou’s differs slightly. That in itself makes it nicer to use.

I’d find it a hard sell to say that Markdown Pro’s $10 price tag is justifiable over a free Mou, but according to the author, Mou won’t always be free. Like I said opening up this article, there’s more then just these two markdown editors out there, so I’d suggest taking a long hard look at the options available to you before making a decision. Just remember: you can’t go wrong with either of these best-in-class editors, in my opinion.

The old days of Mac OS 8 and 9 are now far behind us, but there are certain features I — and many of my fellow veteran Mac users — still miss. Besides the fabled WindowShade, and Finder windows that behaved predictably, I long for the flexibility and power of the Control Strip, Launcher, and Application Menu. These have all been replicated in OS X to some degree, but sometimes the Dock and the new Apple Menu just don’t cut it.

Speedy resembles the old Control Strip, with a narrow bar of icons that each contain a separate menu, but it functions more like a Launcher and Application Menu combined. It offers a list of all running apps and open windows, quick access to your favorite files, folders, or recent/favorite web pages, clipboard snippets, workflows handling, and more. I’ve fallen in love with it. Allow me to explain why.

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Quick Access

It’s right there in the name: Speedy. The app is for fast and easy access to files, folders, apps, windows, and other areas of your workflow. You can use it as either a menubar item or a small bar that floats over other windows. I use the bar, so this review will refer to it in that form. There are nine icons, each bearing a drop-down menu. From left to right, there’s Settings/About, Files, Folders, Apps, Shortcuts, Web Pages, Clipboard, Workflows, Open Apps/Windows.

The magic is that you have both recent and favorite choices, and where applicable these get sorted into groups. Files are grouped according to the app that would open them by default; web pages get moved within a submenu for the website that they are on; clipboard items get split into plain text, rich text, images, and links. It’s the most elegant mouse-based system I can recall seeing.

Snippets

I use copy and paste a lot. Links, email addresses, images, tweets, quotes, names, articles — I’m such a serial copy/paster that I make routine use of Briksoftware’s CuteClips to keep multiple things in the clipboard. But Speedy’s implementation of clipboard support has weaselled its way in as the backup tool.

It remembers the most recent ten clips (switchable to five or 15) in each category, along with any commonly-used favorites that you set, making it the perfect go-to for when you want to use an old clip. To bring up the contextual menu of clips with the keyboard, press Command-Option-Control-v (you can change this shortcut in the Settings).

First-in, Last-out

By default, Speedy lists your ten most recently-used folders, apps, websites, and file types. I say file types and websites — not files and web pages — because it actually hangs onto more than ten altogether. Suppose you’ve been creating and editing a lot of images in Photoshop, then exporting them to Preview, while also coding HTML or writing documents. Altogether you’ve got some 20-or-so files across the three or four apps. Speedy will list the recent files for each of these apps, sorted into submenus.

The same principle is true for web pages. Up to ten recent web pages will show up in a sub menu on each of the ten most recent websites, allowing potentially faster traversal through recent history than in the web browser itself. This functionality will integrate with your default browser, whatever that is — you don’t have to be a Safari user for the recent history to show up.

You can customize the order of your favorites list in each category, while recent lists get sorted according to time last used.

Workflows

The second icon from the right unlocks one of Speedy’s most powerful features. You can add Automator and AppleScript workflows that make life easier, with five included by default (Create a New Folder, Eject Disks, GoWeb!, Hide All Applications, and Quit All Applications). This is incredibly useful once you get used to it, with powerful shortcuts available with just a couple of clicks. I use it to open my “work” apps — the apps that I currently need to do the majority of my writing work.

Bringing Back the Application Menu

I’ve saved what I see as the killer feature for last. Mission Control is handy for seeing every open window and app, but I already know what they look like, and if I have many things open I can’t just glance to find what I want — I instead have to laboriously scan across and down the screen. For this, it’s much easier if you do away with thumbnails and just give me a drop-down menu listing the names of every open window. That’s how it used to be done, before OS X, and that’s how Speedy does it.

With a single click, I can see at a glance what’s open — with the list for apps separated from the list for windows. These are sorted according to most recent use, however, which may be consistent with the rest of Speedy but is more of a burden than a boon for this function. I know what my apps and folders are called, so I want to easily glance at the alphabetical point in the list; instead I have to keep track of extra information or accept the extra second it’ll take to skim through the list. I hope a toggle option appears in the Settings of a future update.

Not for Keyboard Lovers

If you like to keep both hands on the keyboard, or you’re set on using keyboard shortcuts to speed around your workflow, Speedy probably isn’t for you. It has keyboard shortcuts, but you need to use the mouse to unlock its full potential. For the keyboard and macro worshipping, Spotlight replacements like Alfred, Quicksilver, and LaunchBar can handle most of Speedy’s features with gusto (and a whole lot more).

For the rest of us, Speedy quickly establishes itself as an essential system add-on — with touches of the old Mac OS packaged in a slick OS X shell. I wholeheartedly recommend giving it a shot.

It’s really hard for me to find a personal finance app that draws me in, as I think it probably is for most sane people. So when our previous articles about popular personal finance apps were overrun with comments about You Need a Budget (commonly shortened to YNAB), I knew I definitely had to give it a try. The love that Appstorm users have for YNAB was overwhelming … and boy am I glad I gave it a try!

YNAB is a fantastic app which helps you to create, track and maintain a budget based upon their four simple rules of saving and spending. The software, which syncs between the computer and mobile apps, is wonderfully designed and incredibly intuitive. If you buy into the premise of the app, you can see incredible results. The constant reader plugs for YNAB now make complete sense to me – stick with me after the jump to learn why.

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The Premise

In order to get the most out of YNAB it’s important to understand that, initially, it requires a bit of a commitment. I’d recommend starting out by reading up on the history of the app and the basic premise (the four rules). If you don’t want to read up right now, here are the basic rules:

1. Give every dollar a job.
2. Save for a rainy day.
3. Roll with the punches.
4. Build a buffer.

Really using YNAB means committing to this system, much like using Omnifocus effectively means using the GTD method. YNAB is set up in such a way that the program really isn’t useful if you aren’t striving for the goals set by the maker – that is, budgeting everything, saving money, and making it so you are living on the previous month’s income, rather than the current month’s income. They’re pretty simple and straight forward and really make a lot of sense – it’s not a bad thing to commit to.

Accounts and Transactions

Once you’re familiar with the rules, you can start to take a look at the app. You’ll notice from the beginning that YNAB really helps you through every step. In addition to the in-app tutorials the first time you use it, there are online tutorials and great service from the YNAB team. It can be an intimidating program at first, but if you take advantage of the resources you can get a lot out of it.

Setting up your first account is a piece of cake. You just enter a name, balance and date. Then select from a variety of account types – they range from basic checking and savings accounts to credit cards, mortgages, investment accounts and more. You can even add a PayPal account – the first time I’d seen that. Lastly, make sure you choose whether or not the account affects the budget. Likely, you want it to affect the budget, especially for your first account.

You can also add transactions to your account from the accounts page. Adding a transaction is easy as well – Just add the date, payee, category and any necessary memos. Then put the amount into inflow or outflow, depending whether it’s income or expense. Choosing a category is extremely important – that’s what affects your budget and ensures that you make sure your dollars are going to the right place. One incredibly handy (and rare) feature is the ability to split an expense across categories – e.g., your grocery store bill might be 80% groceries and 20% home goods. This feature ensures your ability to make sure your dollars go to the right place.

To gloss over a few other features worth noting on this screen – you can use the search function to go through all of your expenses in one go. You can input transactions manually or you can download and import a .ofx, .qfx or .qif file. You can set recurring transactions and transfers at intervals and dates of your choosing. Lastly, you can easily reconcile your account with your bank statement using the account reconciliation tool.

Budgeting

Ok, so you’re all ready to take the next step – giving every dollar a job, aka creating a budget. With YNAB, the eventual goal is to be living off of the previous month’s income, and the budgeting system is geared towards that. On the screen, you can see three months at a time – the goal being, of course, that you get to the point where the money you’re earning is budgeting for two or more months down the line.

At the top of the screen, you see an overview for each month. You can see the amounts owed from last month, the amounts you have leftover from the previous month, the income for that month and the amount budgeted for the month. This section helps you keep on track when planning budgets for future months and also allows you to get a quick overview of how well you’re covering your expenses in advance.

Below this section, you see the categories. This is the most important part of the budget, and it’s good to take the time at the beginning of your app setup to make sure the budget is accurate and truly fits your needs. The app comes preinstalled with a bunch of categories, but it’s easy to add and delete as necessary to make sure your budget suits your needs. Once you’ve got the appropriate categories set up, estimate how much you’ll spend per category. Don’t forget about things like saving, credit card payments, and of course some fun money!

YNAB also makes it incredibly easy to track and adjust your budget from month to month. Any over or under spending is highlighted and carries over from month to month. It’s up to you to adjust as needed when setting the budget for the upcoming month. Once you get through the initial set-up, it’s easy to continue on from there. Each month should take just a minute or two to adjust.

Reporting

The last section to cover is the reports section. It’s important to keep up to date on how you’re doing – whether you’re over or underspending, how you’re spending your money and so on. Luckily, YNAB offers a pretty great report section. Within the section you can choose to view reports about spending by category or payee, income v. expense and net worth.

The reports are a great way to track how well you’re doing – and an amazing way to get a swift reality check when you first start utilizing the application. You can view the reports within the app, as well as print and export them. Don’t hesistate to take advantage of these valuable tools.

Worth the Investment?

In a word – yes. I think YNAB is absolutely, hands down a solid $60 investment. I’ve not found myself previously excited about a personal finance app like this. YNAB exceeds my expectations in many ways. First, the premise is solid. The four basic rules are something I can really buy into. They seem practical, achievable and a great way to get my 22 year old finances in order, now that I’ve been on my own for over a year. It’s about time I stuck to a budget.

So what else is great about YNAB? The design is amazing. It’s cute without being cutesy, appeals to a wide audience and somehow manages to make a finance app look not frightening. Rather than ugly color schemes and hard to read numbers paired with a confusing user interface, YNAB has bright colors, noticeable labels and directions to guide you every step of the way. The budgeting system is easy to use from month to month. Most importantly, YNAB really helps you to feel immediately empowered – more so than any other personal finance app that I’ve used.

Lastly – the support for other devices is good and improving. YNAB offers an iPhone and Android app which allows you to access your budget on the go. Everything syncs via Dropbox, ensuring that you won’t lose your valuable financial data. It all plays well together, and at $5 the app is fairly affordable.

Even The Best Isn’t Perfect

Are there things to improve? Certainly. I hope that at some point, YNAB is able to integrate directly with my bank account information so that I don’t have to manually input transactions or download/sync the transaction file from my bank. Is it a big deal that it doesn’t? Not really.

There’s also a whole lot of set up at the beginning. It’s absolutely frustrating – but totally necessary. Same with the learning curve. It’s a bit steep, but necessary and totally worth it. Even if you find yourself getting frustrated, power through. It’s worth it. It’s a definite negative, but one that I don’t really see a way around.

In order to help eliminate disappointment, you also need to keep in mind what YNAB is made for when considering whether or not to try it. If you find yourself in debt, struggling to stick to a budget or just don’t make a lot of money and like detailed spending plans, YNAB is going to likely be right up your alley. If you make more money, live well within your means and have lots of savings/investment type accounts to track, then YNAB probably isn’t right for you. Make sure you consider what you’re looking for in your finance app of choice. All in all, however, if you think YNAB is right for you in any way, go grab the trial. Right now.

Your Thoughts?

Once you’ve set it up and tried it out, come on back. Let me know what you think. Or share what you already know … have you tried YNAB? Are you an avid user? Do you absolutely hate the app? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

The Mac App Store is rife with price cuts this week, so come take your bounty from Mac.AppStorm’s deals.

More Deals Next Week

We’ll be back on track for deals on Wednesday (not Tuesday) next week. Be sure to check in for more great apps at better prices. If you’ve found any deals, tell us about them in the comments and we’ll be sure to add them to next week’s post.

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 16th, 2011.

When I was a kid playing around on my first Mac, I always thought it was loads of fun to have the computer read out whatever I’d written in KidPix (remember KidPix?). On my grown-up Macbook, I sometimes set up spoken alarms and alerts, so that I can imagine Stephen Hawking is telling me what time it is.

However, if you want to convert longer passages of text to speech, you might be in for some quality time with the command line (more on that later). There’s a decent amount of professional text-to-speech software out there, but it’s generally expensive, and mostly intended for business use or for people with disabilities. Today we’re going to go over some free and inexpensive options, and learn how to convert text to speech using TextEdit or the Terminal.

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1. Software

A quick Google search reveals fewer free options than I expected, given that text-to-speech is a native mac capability. Some of the highlights:

TypeIt ReadIt

TypeIt ReadIt is a free application with a simplistic interface aimed at the visually impaired, with a font-size slider and text-viewing options. This app is also useful for quickly making text more readable by changing color, size, and fonts, and offers 1-click conversion to .aiff.

None of these apps are going to win any awards for interface design, but despite it’s unattractive appearance, TypeIt ReadIt was my favorite app of those I looked due to its extensive keyboard shortcuts.

Read4Me

Read4Me is an app recently available at the Mac App store, and is by far the most Mac-like application I found. Like similar apps, Read4Me is basically just a graphical interface for what your Mac can already do, but does offer a more pleasant experience than some of the other options.

In addition to reading text and exporting .aiff files, Read4Me has a “Coach” feature, which lets you add markers to the text to “help” the reader read more accurately. These features were a bit confusing to me, and I don’t think a lot of them worked. However, I was able to add pauses, mark passages to be read more quickly or slowly, and change the pitch of the voice (which almost always ends badly). Some of the other options seemed to either do nothing or just cause the reader to spell out words instead of reading them.

Read4Me can also open .txt, .rtf, .doc and .docx files and read them out loud. At $4.99, it doesn’t do a whole lot more for your money, but I’m sure some people will find that the few extra features are worth a couple of dollars. My primary complaint here is the lack of keyboard shortcuts.

2. Web Apps

I looked through a bunch of web apps and lists of web apps, but I couldn’t find a good one that allowed you to easily export to a sound file. If you’re just looking to have a couple lines of text read out loud, try the AT&T text-to-speech website, cepstral.com, or vosMe which allows you to download mp3 files of your text.

Text to Speech on the Mac

Mac computers have had advanced text-to-speech technology called PlainTalk built in since System 7, and the voices have improved quite a bit in the last few releases.

Snow Leopard introduced the “Alex” voice, which is much more natural sounding than any previous system voices (“Vicki” is the most natural female voice, “Fred” is the sci-fi, Stephen Hawking-like voice).

Select the “Alex” voice for the most natural-sounding reading.

3. Using TextEdit

To enable the “add to iTunes as spoken track” action from the services menu in TextEdit, open up System Preferences/Keyboard pick Services in the left column, and tick the checkbox for add to iTunes as spoken track under Text. Now when you select text in TextEdit, the option will be there under TextEdit/Services, and will ask you to name and save the file, then open it in iTunes.

Additionally, you can have TextEdit read any text file or selection to you by selecting Edit>Speech>Start Speaking from the menu.

4. In the Terminal

My new favorite Terminal command is “say,” sometimes my roommate and I creep each other out by cranking up the volume on our MacBooks and telling Terminal to say things when it’s really quiet. To get your Mac to say anything, just type “say” and then whatever you want.

say Hello World

To have a text file read out loud, just navigate to the directory and type “say -f” and the file name (the file must be UTF-8 encoded).

say -f text.txt

To convert a text file right into a .aiff file, type “say -f” then the file name, then “-o” and the path to the file you want to create.

say -f text.txt -o audio.aiff

Conclusion

While researching for this article, I was pretty surprised both by how powerful my computer’s native text-to-speech capabilities were, and by the lack of free or cheap third-party options. Though it’s pretty easy to convert text to speech using TextEdit or Terminal, you’d think that someone would have made a nice graphical interface for those functions, since they’re already built in.

There are a lot of much more powerful, expensive options out there, with more advanced speech rendering and exporting options, but for the average user, OSX ships with everything you need.

Do you think it’s worth $4.99 to do what your Mac already does a bit more conveniently? What do you use text-to-speech for? Has anybody created a simple AppleScript or Automator action to convert text to audio quickly? Let me know if I’ve missed any free or affordable text-to-speech options!

Almost everyone loves going on trips and getaways. Whether it’s for business or for pleasure, it’s nice to experience new places. Whilst it can be remarkable seeing different cultures and experiencing different ways of life, it can be daunting and overwhelming just trying to plan your trip.

YourtTrip aims to simplify the process of preparing for a trip and aims to help you plan out where you’re going, what you’re going to pack, budgets and also helps you make an itinerary. Let’s take a look.

Creating Trips

When you create a trip, simply click the Add button and you’re presented with a rather simplistic view asking for the basic details of your trip, including a duration, description, location, names of travelers and a name for your trip.

When adding where you’re going, YourtTrip gives you the ability to add multiple places and presents a map in which you can search for your locations and add them, YourtTrip allows you to add multiple places. When adding the names of travelers, YourtTrip doesn’t utilize your address book, it simply takes people by name. Furthermore, I have found that YourtTrip crashes periodically when attempting to input the names’ of various travellers.

Preparation

YourtTrip provides three means of preparing for your trip: creating an itinerary, plan what you’re going to pack and also the ability to specify your budget.

When creating an itinerary, you’re presented with a simple view to add events and the ability to specify a contact number, location and add notes. This is especially useful if you’re planning to go on various trips and visit different places. The itinerary can really give your trip that much needed structure and YourtTrip takes a minimal approach to creating an itinerary.

Packing is arguably the most important part of getting ready to go away and also can be the most devastating when you don’t pack something. Luckily, YourtTrip makes packing easy and conveniently splits your packing into different categories in hope of not overwhelming you and then makes it easy to export, check and manage your list with other people.

When specifying a budget, you can divide your money into different categories and then specify sub categories. Then, YourtTrip presents this data in a nice pie chart and you can include a reservation budget. Within the preferences, you can specify your currency so you’re not just limited to USD, there’s about two dozen different currencies to choose from.

Once you’ve planned your trip, you can then export each of the different sections into a PDF document in which you can email, share and print.

Interface and Performance

One thing that does let YourtTrip down is its interface; it’s that of minimalism and, frankly, the interface seems as though it’s not yet complete and still in need of some work. This is evident as soon as you open up the application. The application features Apple’s classic linen texture, not to provide depth but appears to be used simply to add some contrast to the interface of the app.

Furthermore, the app has also crashes countless times and it’s a given that YourtTrip will crash if you attempt to edit the default category name within the Budget section. Overall, YourtTrip just appears as though the developers haven’t given it the time nor the attention that is deserves as it does have the potential to be a useful and handy app for many people, it’s just a shame the the interface and general stability of the application aren’t up to scratch.

Kayak

One strong competitor of YourtTrip is Kayak Explore, this application definitely appears to have been given more care and attention and it doesn’t looks as though the developers have just thrown it together. Furthermore, Kayak also has the ability to find fights and hotels whereas YourtTrip does not have any third-party resources that would allow you to plan a whole holiday within the application.

Although Kayak’s main purpose isn’t to create an itinerary, it does allow people to plan their flights, accommodation and trips and despite the lack of features such as budget and packing management, it’s still a much better application in my opinion.

Conclusion

Finally, YourtTrip can be used but, to be honest, it’s disappointing. Its lack of finish and polish has the tendency to make one feel as though the application was thrown together and despite having some pretty solid, useful and handy features, the lack of refinement that comes with the interface bares the question of whether of not the developer was actually ready to release the app to the App Store. This also applies to the amount of crashes that are evident throughout the application and also bares the question, did the developer give the app enough care and attention and test the app enough to ensure it would provide the best possible experience for the user? I’m thinking not.

At the astonishing price tag of $19.99, it’s hard to justify paying such a high price for, what seems to be a rushed, buggy application. My advice would to be simply wait or find an alternative. YourtTrip does have the features and foundation of what could be a great application but until it’s given some tender loving care, best to stick to a good old of TextEdit document or find something else to you.

When Mactuts+ first launched, we gave $1,000 to the person who submitted the best Mac Quick Tip screencast. Only one person could win (props to Joseph Darnell for snagging first place), but we received a ton of really good submissions. We’ve tossed them all onto YouTube and rounded them up for your enjoyment and education. Take a look, you’re sure to learn something cool!

Head over to Mactuts+ to read more!

Creative pursuits are getting easier and easier to go after these days, especially ones involving technology. For a long time, expensive software with steep learning curves has been prohibitive for newcomers to the world of digital creativity. Animation has long been a field affected by such problems – software from companies like Autodesk and Adobe runs hundreds if not thousands of dollars. This is certainly not something the amateur animator is going to be excited to invest in.

Luckily, a number of developers over the past couple of years have put out some great software for amateur animators. These programs allow you to make simple animations, stop-motion videos, time lapses and much more. The apps I’ve included are all under the $50 benchmark, with many available for $10 or less. Stick with me after the jump to learn about the great variety of software available for the home animator.

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Conclusion

Creating animations on your own is a great way to satisfy your need for a creative outlet. For a long time, animation was not accessible to the amateur. With the onslaught of simple and cheap animation software, however, the world of animation is newly opened up. These are a few of my favorite apps to experiment with. I can make a pretty great variety of stuff, and it’s a great way to explore my creative side without dropping a lot of money. Grab one of these programs to get started on your animation journey today.

So do you enjoy creating some amateur animations? What program do you use? What app gives you the best bang for your buck? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Meet the Mega Fall Bundle – the latest bundle from BundleHunt. It features 11 best-selling Mac apps and design goodies. At AppStorm we’re excited to offer you two chances to win one of the bundles!

The Mega Fall Bundle features an awesome selection apps that collectively retail for $1209, with BundleHunt you can get them for a mere $49.99, with AppStorm you get the chance to walk away with one for free!

The Mega Fall Bundle, their latest bundle, includes a variety of top-quality apps, including;

• Kinemac
• Moneywell
• Printopia
• Mailtags
• PDFclerk Pro
• Garagesale

Head over to BundleHunt to read up on the details!

Read on to find out how to enter!

How to Enter

Entering the competition is really easy. All you need to do is:

1. Post a link to this competition on Twitter, mentioning @macappstorm.
2. Leave a comment below with your username.

Best of luck, and I’ll be picking the winners in a week – giving you a few days to get your hands on the bundle if you don’t win one!