Category: Mac

Everyone who has ever designed for the web in Photoshop appreciates its power, but will tell you tales about how time consuming it is to export portions of a design. Usually it involves a lot of copying and pasting, and at some point you need to take a frustration break or get completely lost.

It’s amazing that only recently an inconspicous utility hit the market that helps you minimize your workload significantly when exporting PSDs for the web. Teasingly named Layer Cake, the app adds the icing to any web design project. We’ll take a look at their recipe of success.

Get Organized, Save Time

First, let’s talk quickly about what we want to achieve: we have a .psd mockup of a website and we want to export some images and slices to be used when coding the design into a finished site. While MacRabbit, the developers of Layer Cake, offer a neat help file including some .psd’s to get you started, I pulled up a really old mockup of mine to test the app under “real life” conditions. What I want to get are the three icons on the bottom, a slice of the background for the active menu (orange) and the large section in the middle with the rays, and the slider placeholder sans the blue background.

Now, if you are like me, you’ll be rather sloppy while doing the actual designing. I do name my layers and try to group them while I work, but I have to go through stuff at the end before I can hand the design to somebody to work with.

Layer Cake actually requires you to name and arrange your layers in a certain fashion so the app can understand what you want exported. For the icons at the bottom, I created a folder named “icon @1x”, indicating that it includes an icon at a normal resolution. If you want to export an image with the same name but at a higher resolution (a normal sized icon vs a retina sized icon, for example), you’d have to name it “@2x”.

Inside the folder resides the actual image, and I name it the way I’ll use it on my website later on. This is already enormously helpful because it eliminates all the renaming and shuffling that usually ensues after an export. Finally, take care to append a file extension to the name. You can choose between PNG, TIFF, JPG, or even ICNS. This is how my final layers look like:

After naming all the layers correctly, I simply dropped this entire .psd document onto Layer Cake. A funny animation later, it presented me with exactly what I needed!

Understanding Layer Order, Rectangles and Naming Conventions

Now, I have to admit that even my first try with Layer Cake was impressive, even though it didn’t immediately yield all the results I had hoped for. I got my three bottom icons fairly easily, those are set up in the original file in no time.

The slice is just a little different: You don’t need to go to the actual layer – in my case the large orange stripe in the menu – to set it up. Simply create a folder and call it “@slices” so Layer Cake knows that everything inside is a slice. Then use the rectangle tool to simply draw over the area you want to export. And that’s it, for real.

Tip: I am obsessive when it comes to keeping stuff neat so I set the fill color of the drawn rectangle to 0%, otherwise I would have had red stuff all across my design. It doesn’t affect Layer Cake; if you’d rather keep it visible, feel free to do so.

The really tricky part was figuring out just how to export the middle part but leave out the writing and the background. The rays actually reach as far as the middle of the bottom icons, so those had to go out as well.

Before, I had to either copy all those elements to a new document or create a slice and make all the other layers invisible. It was a lot of work and really annoying. Now, with Layer Cake, I simply put the ray-layers and the slider background layers into one folder which I called “Slider_BG.png”. Then I drew a rectangle over the area that needs exporting. A new layer was created, and I dragged the mask up onto the enclosing folder and deleted the layer.

It sounds more complicated than it was – you simply need to make sure the rectangle is assigned to the folder that holds all the background layers instead of it being assigned to a single layer. When you do it all properly, you get the perfect export without any of the hassle you’ve had before.

To save the files, either drag them from Layer Cake to their new destination or hit Save and choose a location.

Let Layer Cake Do The Work For You – Setting Up Repeats

By now, you should at least be a little impressed. But if you thought that the icing was great, wait until you’ve tasted the cherry: if you save exported files via Layer Cake’s “Save” dialogue, it will ask you if you want the app to repeat this action if the main Photoshop file changes.

Yeah, you’ve read right: Layer Cake will monitor the PSD and if you change a layer that is relevant to the exported files – make it invisible, change the color etc. – it will automatically update the exported images.

I’ve tried this with my mockup and while it wasn’t instantenous, the change happened within 5–10 seconds of me saving the changed PSD. Either I’m easy to impress, or this is seriously awesome.

Verdict

For everyone who works regularly with designs in Photoshop that need exporting, Layer Cake is a real time – and maybe even money – saver. It takes a couple of minutes until it becomes clear just how a PSD file needs to be set up, but once that’s done, the rest is a breeze, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. Additionally, the developers are working on some amazing features for the next releases which will further ease and speed up your workflow. If you earn money with your work in PSD or if you are a coder who is tired of having to manually export every tinsy tiny image manually, this is a great investment.

Our sponsor this week is employment:app, a great way to manage your employees and simplify HR duties from your Mac.

HR and other internal business apps are often confusing, with outdated designs built for PCs. employment:app is an exciting break from this tradition, bringing modern Mac app design to the enterprise. You can manage your employees, keeping up with detailed personal info, files, trainings, and vacations for each employee. You’ll be able to look through your database of employees and find the right person for any job based on their abilities.

employment:app is as easy to use as any other Mac app. It can sync your employee info to all of your Macs over iCloud, and sync calendar info to iCal. Then, when you need to put your data to use, you can export info in standard formats, and create advanced reports about your employees, all from employment:app.

Go Get It!

Ready to start making it simpler to manage your employees? You can register for a free trial from employment:app’s site, or you can go ahead and buy it directly from the Mac App Store for $34.99. If you’d like more info about employment:app, you can check their features and screenshots on their website, or join in the conversation about it on their Facebook page.

 

If you’ve been a Mac user for a while, then you’ve probably heard of Fluid. It’s a simple tool that lets you make websites feel like actual apps, with their own webkit-powered window and dock icon. You can customize icons, save userscripts for individual sites, and more. It’s quite the useful app if you use web apps often.

I’ve been using it more frequently lately to replace the Twitter clients I used to have on my Mac. Why, you ask? Well, there are a few reasons. Join me after the break for an example of how you can use Fluid to make your experience with Twitter and other apps on the Internet more up-to-date and smooth.

Clients Are Out of Date

First, Twitter clients on the Mac are the last things to get updates whenever the website gets a new feature. This is a pretty big letdown for people who like staying on top of things, and I’m one of those people. For Mac users, it’s actually even worse since there aren’t that many good alternate Twitter apps available. The official client is just terrible and hasn’t been updated in over a year, lacking features like pic.twitter.com uploading and support for “read it later” services. Osfoora isn’t too bad, but it has some irritating bugs that need to be fixed. Others like TweetDeck, Twitterrific, and Itsy are either too retro or lacking in features.

It sure would be nice to see Tweetbot come to the Mac and we know that’s going to happen eventually, but until then there’s really no decent client available. Twitter was supposed to update their official app on all platforms sometime, but the news of that was back in December of 2011 and we haven’t heard anything else since. Who knows when they’re going to actually move forward with the plans.

Tweets can be so much more

So what are you really missing by not using the web app? A lot, actually. The web version has been actively updated while the native apps have stagnated, so you’ll likely get a much better Twitter experience straight from their site.

You know how you can click on a Tweet to expand it when using the web version of Twitter? If there’s a link to an Amazon product or something in the App Store, it’ll show a preview of what the item or app is. You won’t find anything like this in Twitter clients. Instead, you’ll simply have the usual inline image support, if that is even available. In the web version, you can play YouTube videos or music from Rdio without leaving the page – it’s really, really nice to have such tight integration on a webpage.

When you think about it, you probably don’t want to leave the Twitter website just to see what a link is, so previews are a really nice thing to have. Right now, only certain sites are supported, but previews will come to more links in the future. I like the idea of staying in one single web app instead of opening a bunch of tabs since it’s a more unified and organized experience. We don’t need to make the web like our desktop computers in that they’re always cluttered with over five open apps because it’s already irritating enough. With previews, everything happens in one place, so there’s less of a need to even leave Twitter.com.

One other thing that’s really nice about expanded Tweets is the extra info that they offer. For instance, you can see the exact time something was published, the client that was used, how many retweets and favorites it got, and some of the people who retweeted it. It’s a bit limited, I’ll admit, but it’s nice to have it – and most clients don’t have any such features.

Twitter’s Site is Fast

Twitter’s website is way faster than apps that access the network’s API. I’d think that Twitter just gives the website priority with the first access to anything, but I’m not really sure. It seems odd their own native apps wouldn’t at least be as fast as the site, but they simply aren’t. One thing I do wish the web version had is true streaming that doesn’t require you to click something or send a Tweet just to see new tweets that have come in. That’s definitely a big piece of functionality from native apps that I miss.

Use Fluid

Until there are more suitable solutions the Twitter apps problem, I’ve found that the web version of Twitter works great as its own standalone app. Celestial Teapot Software’s Fluid lets you create just that with a few simple clicks and a little typing. It’s a tad more complicated than just downloading an App Store app, but there’s no command line nonsense or anything, and you can customize Fluid apps to your heart’s content.

The other day, I grabbed Fluid for free and decided to use it as a replacement for my Twitter clients, uninstalling them in the process. It’s actually worked very well so far, but I’m still getting used to the different shortcuts that the web version has. I’m probably even going to purchase the full app soon to support the developers and get the features like fullscreen mode and separate cookie storage. It’s well worth the $4.99.

Other Applications

I think Twitter was just the beginning of what I can do with a standalone app for certain websites. I’ve begun experimenting with other services like WordPress to try blogging in an app without tabs or anything. (Please note that Fluid’s browser does have tabs, but they’re not meant to be used like the traditional browser.) It’s not what I’d call the best solution out there since I could just write in Byword (as I did for this article), but it works fairly well. There are a lot of possibilities with Fluid, and I’m just getting started. You should definitely try it out sometime if you haven’t already – it might prove to be much better than actual apps.

What do you use Fluid for and would you ever consider replacing one of your actual apps with a website?

Fresh off the presses, here is Mac AppStorm’s weekly app news roundup.

Happy reading!

Tweetbot for Mac spotted in the wild

Tweetbot is one of my most requested Mac applications of all time, especially given the poor offerings of Twitter clients for OS X, and thanks to a cheeky image posted by Mark Jardine, a designer at Tapbots, on his Twitter account, we may have been given our first glimpse at Tweetbot for Mac.

Further confirmation can be found by heading over to his Twitter account, where most of his tweets appear to be coming from the Tweetbot for Mac client:

The interface of Tweetbot for Mac shares a lot in common with the iPad version, with easy access to your timeline, mentions, direct messages and so on running down the left-hand side. We may also see plenty of features on the mobile version in the Mac version as well, such as gestures (swiping left and right to view a tweet in more detail or a conversation), iCloud timeline sync, support for third-party services such as CloudApp and Droplr and possibly integration with Mountain Lion’s notification centre.

There has yet been no official word from Tapbots regarding the Mac version but given Mark’s screenshot, it’s looking like its in the final stages of development so keep your fingers crossed for the official announcement. We will, of course, keep you updated with its progress and have a full review once it comes out!

TextExpander 4 is the first victim of sandboxing

TextExpander 4 was released on Thursday of this week (check out our full review here) as a paid upgrade with plenty of new features however has fallen victim to Apple’s strict App Store sandboxing regulations, which were imposed starting June 1st and is consequently only available as a download from their website.

Seeing as the app must monitor your keystrokes in order to form your snippets (the main aim of the program), this doesn’t fall in line with the new guidelines which only allows bug fixes to existing programs – any new or updated programs must conform to Apple’s rules.

According to the developers, Smile, anyone who has purchased previous versions of TextExpander from the App Store are not exempt from the slightly preferential upgrade pricing of $15 – if you choose to download the newer version via their website the app will note the presence of the App Store version and offer you the discounted rate.

Growl will work with Mountain Lion’s Notification Centre

For those of you who don’t want to sacrifice Growl for Mountain Lion’s new notifications system then there’s good news. According to a post on their official blog, the new version, Growl 2, will integrate seamlessly with Mountain Lion notifications:

For Growl 2 we’re simply going to add a Notification Center action display as well. This is going to make it easy for anyone who wants to see notifications in Growl, and also in Notifcation Center.

The post also includes some information for developers on how to integrate their new Mist framework with Notification Centre, so that both will work at the same time.

Growl’s developers call it “irresponsible” for them to not support Notification Centre and abandon their existing developers however we’ve heard no word on whether the new version is going to be released (presumably with Mountain Lion in July).

How to hack paid upgrades in the App Store

If you’re wondering how to link back to old upgrades in the App Store then iOS and Mac developer David Smith has provided a great little guide on his blog. All it involves is navigating to:

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftwareRedownload?id=295660203&mt=8

and replacing the id bit with the ID of the app you want to re-download again (however this only works on the iPhone and iPad).

The topic of paid upgrades has been a hot one recently, especially for users who have just bought previous versions of the app and have to pay again for the new version, something which seems slightly austere (but which nets both the developer and Apple additional revenue) and David’s guide seems to be a great way to save a little money on upgrades.

For the full version, head over to his personal blog.

iTuneUp bundle currently on sale for $30

If you’ve got a dirty and disorganised iTunes library, then the iTuneUp bundle currently on sale for $30 (RRP: $50) can help you bring some law and order back to your music collection. It includes the following apps:

• Clean – a way to fix any missing song information (such as artist info or song names) by using advanced waveform technology.
• CoverUp – an automagic (trademarked) way to download missing album artwork.
• DeDuper – removes any duplicated song files.
• Tuniverse – delivers music videos, artist biographies and concert alerts based on your music collection.

And finally (in other non-related app and non-related Apple news…)

Microsoft announces its iPad-competitor, the Surface

Microsoft introduced the world to its new range of tablet computers, the Microsoft Surface range on Monday in a special announcement. Although the exact technical specifications and pricing of the new devices are currently unknown, the Surface will feature a 10.6″ screen, up to 64 GB of on-board storage (expandable via microSD) and will run the new Windows 8 Pro operating system.

The new tablet has been described as a possible “iPad killer” by some and will come in two models, the standard one which uses a Nvidia Tegra CPU and a Pro one, which uses an Intel Ivy Bridge Core i5 processor (similar to the new range of MacBooks). There has been no word from Microsoft about the release date but it’s likely that the new range will be released alongside Windows 8 this coming autumn.

For a closer look at the new range, head over to Microsoft’s sneak preview on their website.

Heard Anything Else?

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

As most programmers are already aware, Git is a very powerful open source version control system. There are a handful of popular version control systems (VCS) to choose from, but most power users lean toward Git or Subversion (SVN). Schools of thought vary on which is best, but it is universally accepted that professionals of all kinds can benefit from a good version control system. Even for those who don’t write or program professionally, a good VCS can help catalog changes in all sorts of personal projects. Launching into Git for the first time, however, might not be the most pleasant experience for the average first-timer.

Tower changes that and makes Git a tool that everyone should have loaded up in their repertoire.

What is Git?

For someone to appreciate Tower, they must first understand what Git actually is. Git is a decentralized version control system. Compared to other systems, like SVN, Git does not require a centralized hub (or workflow) to utilize all of its functionality. In layman terms, Git keeps track of changes to files so that you can review, share, merge or even revert them later. It allows users to make comments on a particular set of changes creating a documented timeline for historical review. Git is lightweight and fast. That speed originates from its data management and local operation. Without the need for a network connection to a centralized server, actions within Git really move in comparison to other version control systems.

How does Tower help?

If you are new to Git, the general consensus around the user community is to learn the functionality from the command line. Although this certainly educates most users on the capabilities of Git, it can create a steep learning curve for others. Tower is a visual interface for Git. Tower is a beautiful application that is fast and incredibly easy to operate right out of the box. Tower’s visual approach to Git makes the more complex tasks as simple as drag and drop. Most users will also appreciate that Tower is actively maintained by its developers as well. I’ve never actually had to contact them for support, but regular updates to the software have kept it running smooth and problem free. Lastly, Tower has a decent help section within the application. The Tower developers explain how to use the software while mixing in the “whys” to connect the Git dots.

After launching Tower into a repository, you will conveniently see most of the common operations that you will be using. You can see, for example, modified or deleted items as they relate to the repository. You can also switch from different branches, pull or push from remote repositories, and view histories of files and their changes.

Another powerful feature of Git is its branch management. Historically, a branch within a VCS meant a headache whenever it was time to merge those changes later. Git changes all of that with its exceptional branching model. Not only are working within branches a snap, but Git actually encourages users to make use of the feature as often as they need. Tower brings a visual element to Git’s powerful branching functionality. Creating a new branch is simple, and switching between branches is done with a double-click of the mouse.

The drag-and-drop philosophy implement by Tower is almost as powerful as its visual element. For example, you can drag and drop specific changes within a staged file to build very explicit commits. This can be hard to appreciate, but being able to commit a block of code (or content) contained within a specific file is truly mind-boggling for most old-school version control users. Drag and drop operations don’t stop locally – you can even drag and drop repositories from remote locations and back again.

Having a version control system is also about storing and reviewing your changes. In team environments it becomes important to understand why a user made a particular change. Within Tower, just click on the commit tab and begin reviewing organized commits. You can see who committed what, which modifications were made, and even export those changes if necessary.

Tower isn’t without its small share of issues. To be fair, those issues pale in comparison to all of the benefits that Tower brings to the table. One thing I can’t seem to get past, is the check-in dialogue in the main status area. Filling that form out just pastes that text into a subsequent confirmation window where you then have to confirm and click commit – again. It would seem to me that you should be able to execute complete commits on that main window without a separate confirmation popup. Tower isn’t the least inexpensive Git application on the market either. Some people wouldn’t even give Tower an opportunity to shine due to its current $47.20 price tag. I would suggest that before turning a cold shoulder, new users take Tower for a test drive with their free 30 day trial.

Conclusion

Tower is clearly, as they put it, the most powerful Git client for Mac. Its features are vast and the implementation is simple and effective. Through its visualization and drag and drop features, new and power users can skip the command line and get right down to business with Git. It is a beautiful application that warrants a place in virtually every Mac toolbox.

Most of us probably have a strange relationship to Internet memes, those photos that everyone uses to make their own version of a particular joke. While we can be fond of some of the funnier Internet memes that make their way through our Facebook and Twitter feeds — not to mention the Reddit forums — we’re probably annoyed by the majority of them. Unfortunately, the people who have the time on their hands to create Internet memes just aren’t as funny as we want them to be.

But now, thanks to Meme Generator, you can stop being annoyed and start getting some skin in the game.

Overview

Meme Generator, a free app from Memecrunch, gives you easy access to the most popular images for Internet memes (or upload your own), a simple way to add the text of your hilarious punchlines, and built in sharing via Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Reddit.

How it works

Using the app is simple. The app is broken into three panes. The first is where you choose from a list of photo albums — all photos, popular photos, newest photos, custom photos, and saved photos; the second is where you choose the photo you want to use; and the final pane is where you do the dirty work of actually adding text to the photo to create your meme. When you add the text, you have options for all-caps, font size, and alignment.

Once you’ve got your Internet meme looking just the way you want it, you can save it to the Saved Photos album, save it to your desktop, print it, or share it on the social-networking sites.

It’s dead simple to use. You might even call it idiot proof, if the idiots who make Internet memes weren’t the target market for this thing.

The Use Case

I’m guessing that, like me, most of you haven’t actually created and shared your own Internet meme, so you’re wondering why you’d actually want this thing.

I was thinking the same thing. Until I downloaded it, and realized that, with a few quick clicks, I could send insults to my brothers.

That’s the way to use Meme Generator. Yeah, sure, you can use it as intended: create a Meme and share it on Facebook or Reddit or whatever. But most of us would probably be too embarassed to do that.

But making fun of your brothers? Sharing it privately over email or in a private Facebook group?

Conclusion

If you’re looking for a somewhat trendy but also very geeky way to air your opinions or publicize your infantile sense of humor — and really, who among us isn’t looking for that — then Meme Generator is perfect for you.

It’s free. It’s easy to use. It’s pre-loaded with all the latest Internet memes. And it’s got one-click sharing.

It may be a specialized app, but for what it’s meant to do, it does well.

If you use TextExpander much, chances are you don’t actually think about the app itself that much. You’ve added your own shortcuts to it over the years, and now you type them in and they’re automatically expanded without you even thinking. It just becomes another part of your Mac.

This week, Smile Software released the first full new version of TextExpander since 2010. It adds several new features, but if you’re already using TextExpander 3, a quick glance at their new features list might not even make it seem like its worth your time to upgrade. After all, when’s the last time you opened the TextExpander window, anyhow?

Turns out, there’s more than meets the eye in TextExpander 4.

Text Expanding for 2012

TextExpander, the über popular tool tool to convert little text snippets into full sentences, paragraphs, and more, is easily one of the most popular and handy 3rd party tools for Macs. I’m not even a very heavy TextExpander user, and yet it tells me that it’s saved me around 8 hours over the past year. That makes the initial purchase price not seem too bad at all.

For the past several months, it’s been available in the Mac App Store, but with version 4, that’s changed due to Apple’s sandboxing restrictions. The good thing is, if you purchased the app directly from Smile Software or from the App Store this year, you can get a free upgrade. Just download the latest version of TextExpander from their site, and it’ll recognize your old version and offer you a free upgrade.

For the rest of us, you can buy a new copy of TextExpander 4 for $34.95, or you can upgrade from TextExpander 3 for $15. One nice thing is that you can purchase the upgrade in a dedicated browser right in the app, so you won’t even have to copy and paste the license key. The only bad thing is that TextExpander offers to install the latest version as an automatic update, which is not such a nice choice if you’re not keen on upgrading.

Wait: Should I Upgrade?

TextExpander 4 does include a number of substantial updates, though like most tools that you won’t look at all day, the advances are easy to overlook. Most noticeable is the new Lion-style icon scheme, with grayscale icons and Retina Display-ready graphics. The new style does look more professional than the previous version, though again, you’ll likely not spend much time in the app itself. The worst part of the upgrade, in my opinion, is the new Statistics screen, which adopted an Office 98-style graph that frankly looks out of date on any computer in 2012. Overall, it’s the same old TextExpander we’ve known and loved, and it can be forgiven for still having some old parts sticking out here and there.

If that was all that had been changed, it’d hardly be worth considering upgrading. To see the real changes, click the Insert button on the bottom of the Snipped edit pane. Here, you’ll see that the Fill-in option has been turned into a Fill-ins menu, offering single and multi-line fields, popup menus, and optional sections. Now, more than ever before, you can use TextExpander to create complex documents, emails, and more with only a few keystrokes, even if you want the things you’re typing to be fully customized for what you’re currently doing.

Fill-ins

TextExpander’s clipboard and Apple Script integration has already made it incredibly powerful if you take the time to make snippets that fit your needs, and even the Fill-in feature isn’t 100% new. In previous versions of TextExpander, a Fill-in let you enter text specific for what you were doing, letting you, say, have a premade email where you could enter the name of your contact in a text field before TextExpander pasted it into your email app.

The new Fill-ins give you tons of new options to take it even further. When you enter a fill-in, you’ll see a modern OS X popover where you can add the options needed for that fill-in. You can make multiple choice selections, or choose to insert text fields that are as long as you expect you’ll need for that snippet. Or, you can add extra sections that you can turn on or off at will, say an apology for replying slow that you hopefully won’t need to use every time. No matter which of the fill-ins you’re using, TextExpander does a good job at hiding the complexity of creating them. Just click the %filltext: section you need to edit anytime later, and the editor popover will come back up so you can tweak it the same way you originally made the fill-in. And, they work great with standard text, formatting, and other TextExpander features, just like you’d expect.

Once you’ve made your advanced text snippets, just enter the TextExpander abbreviation you selected as normal. You’ll see the new fill-in form open, complete with all the fields you selected. It works great, and you can quickly pick the info you want and be on your way. It’s especially nice that you can choose the default value for multiple-choice options. The fill-in form is functional, it is far from the prettiest sight on your computer. It looks more like something you might have hacked together in Visual Basic in highschool than a window from a modern Mac app. However, you’re using it to save time, so the looks shouldn’t matter so much.

There are two actual usability problems, though, for those of us looking to save time. First, there’s not always an easy keyboard way to finish filling the form. If you only choose single-line text entries or multiple choice options, you can just press your Enter key and the text will go to the app you were writing in originally. However, if you have a multiple-line text entry field, you will have to go back to your mouse or trackpad and click Ok, or tab further to the OK button and hit enter. It’d be much nicer if it just supported hitting CMD+Enter right from the multiple like entry form.

Then, while Smile Software says the fill-in form should work still even if you switch to another app to find info and then come back to it, in reality it was a bit hit-and-miss if you move around. You’ll need to be especially careful if you’re using it to fill in online forms, and if you switch to another browser tab to look at something while filling out a fill-in, be sure to switch back to the original tab before hitting Ok in your fill-in form.

Conclusion

TextExpander is still one of the best ways to speed up your typing, and with all of its features, it’s no wonder is such a well-loved app. TextExpander 4 is a worthy upgrade, but if you’re content with standard text expanding and don’t need the new fill-ins, you might do just fine with your existing version. It’ll keep running in the background as before, and you’ll likely never think twice about not upgrading. We gave it an 8 because TextExpander itself is so great, but the upgrade doesn’t add quite as much to it as we’d have expected.

If you’d rather get the new UI or would like to save extra time with advanced fill-in forms, then there’s no reason not to upgrade! The new fill-in features can be nice, though we do wish they were a bit more polished. On the whole, it’s a solid upgrade to a classic Mac app, and we’re sure it’ll continue to be the most popular way to expand text on a Mac for years to come.

Plus, don’t forget: if you bought TextExpander on the App Store or directly from Smile Software this year, you can get a free upgrade. Just download the new version, and it’ll find your old key and activate itself.

Although many developers are porting or even rewriting applications designed for Windows to the Mac, many these days still find the need to run Windows on your Mac. I find that need every single day at work.  While there are three main ways to get the job done, Parallels has always been my favorite.

Parallels Desktop 7 is a dramatic improvement over the previous version, and brings along a few cool new features. If running alternate operating systems on your Mac is a priority, read on as we dive into the latest version of Parallels Desktop!

Getting Started

Getting started with version 7 of Parallels Desktop is a familiar, but different experience. You first will need a copy of your operating system of choice along with a product key, if needed. Also if you lack of an optical drive or physical installation disc, you can purchase Windows 7 directly from inside Parallels.

Parallels 7 includes a download center to offer a convenient solution for purchasing and downloading Windows, Ubuntu, Google Chrome OS, and Fedora. You can also migrate from your existing physical Windows computer and import virtual machines from VMware Fusion.

Interface & Design

The design of Parallels Desktop 7 while running your virtual machine is almost unchanged. Your VM is still allowed to take up most of the screen real estate. The screened view in Parallels is simple and unobtrusive, with all essential functions needed to control the settings in the bottom bar. After you install Parallels Tools, you will be able to resize the window, and your VM will automatically set the resolution to match. Or, you can use OS X native full screen mode, using Windows in a separate screen that you can swipe between like other full screen apps. That makes it much easier to use a virtual machine along with your other Mac apps.

Along with full screen mode you can use coherence mode. Coherence mode allows you run your Windows or virtual machine applications as individual windows in your Mac environment. It’s almost like natively running Windows applications right inside OS X.

Unfortunately, your start menu is left floating over your Mac windows and your content, which could pose a problem for some with cramped screen real estate. Also, when in coherence mode, your menu bar may become cluttered with little icons from your VM. I’d rather not have those excess icons cluttering up my already overcrowded menu bar, so its frustrating Parallels doesn’t have an option to help reduce the clutter.

If the taskbar at the bottom in Coherence mode is a deal killer for you, you might want to check out VMWare Fusion instead. It keeps Windows hidden a lot better in its Unity mode, fully hiding the taskbar and giving you control over tray icons.

Functionality

While it is quite obvious that Parallels allows you to run other operating systems on your Mac, it may not be obvious that you can also run another installation of the Mac OS. It is possible to run server editions of OS X; this is a great feature for those in the enterprise.

Parallels has also stepped up and taken advantage of iOS as well. While your iPhone or iPad can’t directly run Parallels with a virtual machine, Parallels has made it easy to access your virtual machine apps from your iOS device. You can run Windows applications, watch flash video, listen to audio, controll your Mac, transfer text to your VM, and more!

Performance

Perhaps the best feature of the new version of Parallels is its speed improvements. From the very beginning, the biggest struggle people have with using virtual machines is that they’re usually woefully slow. On Macs with low amounts of ram and slower CPU speeds, this has been a problem that has kept many I know from utilizing virtual machines.

Parallels Desktop 7 has turned totally 180 degrees in the speed category. Speed has been refined and it is an obvious improvement. Not a single function that needed speed improvements has been left untouched! Starting my Windows Vista installation takes only 30 – 45 seconds, which is faster than in the previous version of Parallels. Along with boot up improvements, you will also notice subtle improvements in pausing and resuming your VMs.

Video and graphic problems have also plagued various virtual machine solutions for years. Parallels 7 tries to alleviate that problem by allowing you to choose to allow your VM to use more video memory. The improvements to increase performance of gaming and video are really subjective based upon your computer, and having a discrete graphics card in your computer will really help increase your performance the most. With that in mind, you will still see an improvement with Parallels 7, it just might not be enough to allow you to play 3D games on it. You will also see better performance if you host your virtual machine file on your local hard drive and not an external USB drive, though it is nice that Parallels lets you store virtual machines on external drives if your main drive is cramped for space.

Conclusion

Parallels Desktop 7 is a worthy upgrade to version 6. It offers great and noticeable improvements in speed and a few cool compatibility updates as well. Parallels offers an intuitive and unobtrusive user interface and design that allows the content and your VM to shine. Parallels Desktop increases functionality with new apps for iOS mobile devices. Out of 10 possible points, Parallels Desktop 7 gets an 8. If you already own a previous version of Parallels, version 7 is a worthwhile update.

What is your favorite virtual machine application? Will you upgrade? Do you agree or disagree with this review? Let your voice be heard in the comments below, we love to hear your thoughts!

Have you ever admired how professionals get stuff done so incredibly fast on their Macs? It’s often hard to follow what they’re doing because they never stop to grab their mouse or use their tablet. They keep hammering away on their keyboard, controlling apps via shortcuts in a way that makes us wonder how they ever memorized them all.

If you want to take your skills on the Mac to the next level as well, a tiny utility will now help you find you all the shortcuts you need to be a pro. Readers, meet CheatSheet.

The Challenge We Are Facing

The most difficult challenge – next to memorizing shortcuts – is finding them in the first place. There are the usual suspects like CMD+S for saving or CMD+C for copying, but those apply system-wide and are not application specific, so you’ll find them much easier to memorize.

To find out what makes Sparrow or Pixelmator or Chrome tick, you usually have to go to the menu bar and click through the menus to see the available options. Next to the actions you will – sometimes – find the shortcuts.

Now, that might be ok to use once or twice, but remember, you still need to grab your mouse to get to the menu in the first place. Kind of defeats the purpose of being more efficient. Plus, there are often shortcuts that are not associated with a menu bar entry. You’d be missing out on those.

Up until now you might have wandered over to Google to find out if some action had a shortcut. That costs time, is frustrating, and above all, if you forgot the shortcut, you had to start the entire thing all over again.

Not anymore.

Know Your Way Around With One Keyboard Stroke

Here’s where CheatSheet comes in. The tiny utility by Swiss developer Stefan Fürst doesn’t do a lot, but what it does is priceless. Really.

All you need to do is start it up and then long-press the CMD key on your keyboard. It can take a couple of seconds until you see anything, but then you’ll see a light popover window that shows you all available shortcuts for the app running in the foreground. If you have no apps open, you’ll see the keyboard shortcuts for Finder. You have to keep the CMD key pressed until you’ve found what you are looking; once you release it, the window vanishes.

Tip: If you keep pressing the CMD key and nothing happens, quickly switch between applications (CMT+tab) and then return to the app you want the shortcuts displayed for. Sometimes CheatSheet becomes unresponsive, but it’s easily fixed this way.

Now, this in itself is already pretty decent. As you can see above, I have the shortcuts for Sparrow and Photoshop displayed. I’ve also tried CheetSheet with Chrome and Pixelmator, and CheatSheet pulled those information as well. (Do note: I only used the loupe to enlarge the screenshot portions, there’s no loupe in CheatSheet. Also, in real life, you’ll only see the shortcuts for the one app you’re using at that time.)

But wait, it gets even better! If you were wondering why there are only a few shortcuts shown for Photoshop, which is one of the few applications that has about a gazillion combinations of keystrokes to do stuff, do not doubt: the screen above depicts what is available to you right after you start Photoshop. Once you actually start working on a document, obviously there will be more actions that you can take. And CheatSheet reflects it. These are the shortcuts available while working in a (very simple) PS file.

It’s quite clear there are more available now than there were before. It’s amazing that CheatSheet actually differentiates between just having an app open and working in it. Very smart. It does this by showing all active shortcuts from the file menu, helping it be dynamic based on what the app exposes to the system. And, obviously, it’ll only work with apps that actually provide shortcuts.

Tweak Your System To Take Full Control

Now, some app actions don’t have keyboard shortcuts associated with them by default or they are really difficult to type if you don’t have a standard English keyboard (yeah, I’m looking at ya, Photoshop: rotate, scale, save for web…). That puts you in a dilemma: you might want to quickly execute a task, but there’s no shortcut and therefore CheatSheet won’t show anything for it.

There are solutions for this problem which are quite easy and can be implemented quickly. In Photoshop (and the other Adobe apps), go to Edit –> Keyboard Shortcuts. The window is a little confusing at first, but you can assign a shortcut to pretty much everything (best of all, if your chosen keyboard shortcut is already taken, you will be warned). Once you set those shortcuts, CheatSheet will happily display them for you.

The other option for adding keyboard shortcuts is in the Keyboard tab of your System Preferences. You can change shortcuts there to something more easily typed or remembered and even enter completely new ones. The only problem, these likely will not show up in CheatSheet, as they didn’t in my tests with Byword, so you’ll have to memorize them on your own.

Verdict

When I first discovered CheatSheet on the App Store, I didn’t realize the full potential of the app. I just downloaded it because it was free. But after I worked with it for just an hour – mostly in Pixelmator and Byword – I wondered how I ever could have done without it. I am a keyboard junkie, so I hate having to grab my pen tablet to control something. I want to do it all from one place. Now I can, and so can you. Give it a try, and you’ll be amazed at what it will do for you.*

* You’ll still have to memorize the shortcuts yourself, though.

Editor’s note: I’ve been using CheatSheet for the past week myself, and have used it extensively in Sublime Text 2 and Photoshop, and it’s worked great. I was skeptical at first, but it’s already become indispensable to me. If you want to always have it available, you can add it to your Login Items under your User Account in OS X so it’ll automatically launch when you run your Mac.

The only apps that haven’t worked great with it are those in the Microsoft Office suite, which unfortunately don’t integrate with as many OS X features as most Mac apps. You’ll see a few shortcuts in, say, Word, but the vast majority are still hidden for you to learn the old fashioned way.

You’ve got to move quick on this one! We have two BundleHunt Productivity bundles to give away, but the competition ends tomorrow.

Here’s your chance to get your hands on iStopMotion, LittleSnapper, TotalFinder, Typinator, Default Folder X, Keyboard Maestro 5, PhoneView, the Smashing Magazine Super Bundle, Glyph Ocean Icon Set, 4 ThemeFuse WordPress themes, and Picons Ultimate+.

Read on to find out how to enter…

Check out the BundleHunt site to find out all about the Apps in the bundle!

How to Enter

To enter, simply follow us on Twitter and leave a comment on this post with your username. We’ll choose the winners at random tomorrow! Good luck!

Do you have an app or website that you need help promoting?

We’ve got a simply awesome competition for you! The wonderful people at Wyzowl are offering up four free promo videos to AppStorm readers, one each for Mac, Web, iOS, and Android. Get a slick video to show off your iOS app, exhibit your Android app in its full glory, or make an impact by concisely demonstrating why your web app is completely invaluable!

Just read on to enter the competition and have a chance at winning a promo video for your site or app worth $475!

Wyzowl have generously offered to give away four promo videos, a Website video for Mac.AppStorm and Web.AppStorm and a Mobile video for Android.AppStorm and iOS (iPhone.AppStorm and iPad.AppStorm).

• Website App video: Web videos show visitors how your service works. This saves them reading text and helps them understand your site before they dive in.
• Mobile App video: Short videos to demonstrate and show off your mobile app. This is a great way to show users how your app works before they download or buy it.

Check out the great videos they made about Wunderlist, Instagram, and Zite!

For more information Wyzowl simply head to their site, or check out the full range of packages on offer.

How to Enter

To enter the competition, all you need to do is:

• Click the link below and send out the resulting tweet (or just copy and paste).

• Leave a comment below with a link to your tweet.

Wyzowl will choose the best three entries for each category – Mac, Web, iOS, and Android – and the relevant site will run a readers poll to select the winner. You have two weeks to enter the initial competition, and the subsequent polls will run for one week each.

Good luck!

As more of our documents get moved off our local drives and into the cloud, it can be difficult to stay on top of them all. I keep stuff scattered around in my Gmail account, Dropbox folder, and laptop, among many other places, and can have a hard time remembering where a particular item is.

The developers of Found recognized this problem and created an interesting solution. Using a search concept similar to Spotlight, Found searches not only your local machine but also common cloud services. Any app designed to help you find files needs to do so quickly, using an intuitive interface. How does Found fare under these important conditions?

The Basics

Found is essentially a way to search for files across your Mac, Dropbox account, and Google services including Gmail and the new Google Drive. You activate the sidebar window that slides out from the side of your screen, type in your search, and you get access to the results. Selecting an item from the search results gives you a preview of the file, and double-clicking opens it.

Setting Up Accounts

Found will, by default and without going through any configuration, search your local drive. Since Spotlight can do that already, you’ll want to connect some accounts. The version that I reviewed was rather light on supported services, though I imagine the developers will being adding more in the future.

The setup screen is simple and free from extraneous inputs. The local search window, unfortunately, is limited in this release. A window lists the folders that Found searches in, but a disclaimer at the bottom states that custom folders are not yet available.

Dropbox and other cloud services can be connected quickly by entering your login credentials. Again, custom searches would be nice for users with larger Dropbox accounts. I never found the speed of my searches to be slow, but indexing is a bottleneck on speed that could be limited by excluding unnecessary folders.

There is support for multiple accounts, so if you use two Gmail accounts, for instance, you can easily add both.

Performance

As I mentioned, Found will index your folders just as Spotlight does. If you’ve ever dealt with sluggish performance due to the “MDS” process on your Mac, you know that indexing can sometimes have an adverse effect on your system’s speed. Found never slowed down my system, but it did take more than half an hour to index all my accounts. While this is happening, you’ll see an animation in the Found window, though no details on the overall progress are displayed.

Once indexed, Found does everything with lightning speed. You can either click on the menubar icon to activate the Found window, or double-tap the Control key. For some strange reason, you cannot assign your own shortcut, so you’re stuck with this set up.

Once the window slides out, your cursor is already in the search field and ready to go. Below that you’ll see the services you’ve connected to. Once you begin typing, these populate in real time, much like Google’s instant search. The results are organized by service, and you get the file type’s icon, the file name, and file path. When you select a search result, you get a Quick Look at the file. I was very impressed by this app’s speed, as all of this happened very fluidly and without any hiccups.

Criticisms

The first and most irksome issue I ran into was the lack of anchoring for the window. I found that I would sometimes want to have the search window stay open while I navigated to a different Finder window, but clicking outside the Found window automatically hides it. There is no icon anywhere that lets you temporarily force it to stay open.

I’m a big fan of apps that use the menubar instead of the dock for utilities like this, but I don’t like it when you can’t hide it if you choose. Found won’t let you hide the menulet, which would be alright if it had some functionality beyond just launching the window. Utilities like Alfred let you hide both the dock and menu icons, and I’d like to see Found do this as well.

Of course, the biggest deterrent for many users will likely be the lack of support for more services. Granted, Dropbox is very popular and Gmail is one of the most popular email services, but there are dozens of other cloud services that people use to store their files. I assume Found will be including more in the future, but at this point, if you are a Sugarsync, Box.net, Amazon S3, SkyDrive, or any other cloud service user, you may not find this app particularly useful.

Conclusion

While Found is limited by its support for other cloud services, the search performance for Dropbox and Google are lightning fast. The ability to get a quick preview of the file before opening it makes this app worthy of being your primary Spotlight replacement.

Still, it is clear that there is ample room for improvement. Fortunately for the developers, none of the problems I had with Found are things that a single update can’t fix. They have already laid the groundwork for a robust yet easy to use app that has the potential to be the ultimate file search utility.

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. Though, over the past year, a few things have changed, so check for the updates below, too.

This post was originally published on June 21th, 2011.

Like most Mac users, I have mixed feelings about the Mac App store. For app users, the App Store makes it easier to find and manage apps all in one place, but largely eliminates the flexibility of free trials. New developers probably enjoy the increased visibility of being in the App Store, but likely lament about the slow acceptance process and numerous restrictions.

Though it seems like most Mac app developers are following the crowd to the App Store, there are still some real gems out there that haven’t made the switch. In this round-up, I’ll go through an incomplete list of fantastic apps missing from the App Store that are worth straying to the browser for. (I’m not including free apps or popular, well-known software like the Microsoft Office or Adobe Creative Suites.)

iStat Menus

iStat Menus is a powerful system monitoring app, which makes realtime status information about your Mac easily accessible from your menu bar. iStat menus is highly customizable, letting you control exactly what information you want displayed, and how the information will look in your menu bar. iStat Menus can monitor CPU usage, battery, memory, disk usage, network activity, hardware temperatures and more. Personally, I use it to keep track of CPU usage from the menu bar, so I can quickly find out which processes are slowing down my computer and how demanding my apps are on my computer’s resources.

Bjango has decided not to offer their apps for download from the Mac App until it overcomes what they perceive to be significant shortcomings. Their position is cleverly outlined in their timeline of a hypothetical app released through the app store. It’s an interesting, well-argued article, check it out!

Ian Tromp’s Review of iStat Menus

Price: $16
Developer: Bjango

1Password

Now in the App Store!

1Password can keep track of all your login information for the myriad websites and services you sign up for, and makes them all accessible through one master password. I’ve been using 1Password to keep track of web logins, software licenses, bank information and more for the past six months or so, and couldn’t be happier with it. In addition to the copy-and-paste interface, 1Password integrates with your browser (it plays better with some browsers than others, but it’s pretty seamless in Chrome and Safari) so that you can fill out forms and passwords with a few clicks of the mouse, without having to rely on your browser’s own less-than-secure password storage. Agile Bits also created an iPhone version of 1Password that syncs with your Mac, but I personally haven’t found myself using it much.

I got my mother a 1Password license for Christmas, and she never stops telling me how much time and frustration it saves her!

Originally, 1Password couldn’t be featured in the App Store because of the way it integrates with browsers, but today its in the App Store and even complies with Apple’s new sandboxing requirements. Best of all, if you buy it from the App Store today, you’ll get a free upgrade to iPassword 4 when its released.

Quintin Carlson’s comparison of 1Password and Wallet

Price: $49.99
Developer: Agile Bits

CleanMyMac

CleanMyMac is a handy utility that scans your Mac for any unnecessary files and data, and makes it easy to delete anything you don’t need. CleanMyMac eliminates unnecessary language files, universal binaries, caches, logs, and more. You can pick and choose what you want to keep and delete, and it makes sure you delete files permanently and securely.

One of my favourite features of CleanMyMac is the uninstaller: when you drag an application to the trash, CleanMyMac pops up and asks if you want to delete all the extra files that accompany it, so you don’t have any leftover junk from your unwanted apps.

CleanMyMac might not ever show up on the App Store because they offer a 6-month license option for half the price of the lifetime version, and I don’t see Apple supporting that kind of pricing plan at the App Store. Plus, it requires far too much access to your system to comply with the App Store’s requirements. CleanMyMac’s developer did make a simpler app, CleanMyDrive, that’s on the App Store and can clean external drives of junk.

David Appleyard’s review of CleanMyMac

Price: $29.95
Developer: MacPaw

Alfred Powerpack

Here at Mac Appstorm, we frequently extol the many virtues of Alfred, the powerful Spotlight replacement that lets you search your computer and the internet, launch applications, do calculations, and (way) more. The Powerpack extends Alfred with additional, powerful features that take Alfred one big step further. The Alfred Powerpack lets you perform actions on the files you find, like copying, moving, emailing or opening, in addition to it acting as a mini iTunes controller, allowing you to search recent documents and clipboard snippets, launching terminal controls and commands, and more.

The Alfred Powerpack lets you do many of the common tasks you perform on your Mac without lifting your fingers from the keyboard or navigating through the Finder. The basic version of Alfred is an indispensable tool for casual and power users alike, but the Powerpack adds a whole extra level of geeky productivity that makes Spotlight look archaic.

Alfred is available for free in the App Store, but so far the Powerpack is only available for download through the website, and the App Store version can’t be upgraded to Powerpack. Alfred’s developers have promised to make the Powerpack available at the App Store in the future.

David Appleyard’s article about Alfred Powerpack Tips

Price: £15 (around $23.50, depending on the current exchange rate)
Developer: Running with Crayons

TotalFinder

Since tabbed browsing has become the standard in web browsers, I can’t help but think tabs should be everywhere. In my opinion, any app in which you often have multiple windows open should have tabs (iWork and Microsoft Office, I’m looking at you). The Finder certainly falls under this category for me, and though a tabbed Finder seems like the next logical step to me, I was disappointed to see no Finder improvements at all in Lion.

TotalFinder is an attempt to correct this oversight, bringing Google Chrome-like tabs to the finder. The basic functionality is pretty much what you’d expect: the tabs work like they do in Chrome, and you can easily drag-and-drop between them.

In addition to the tabbed browsing, TotalFinder also offers a split-window mode, cut-and-paste, system-wide Finder access through keyboard shortcut, and finder organization.

Matt Longman’s review of TotalFinder

Price: $18
Developer: Binary Age

Path Finder

Like TotalFinder, Path Finder brings tabs to the Finder. However, Path Finder also packs in a heap of additional features and is marketed as a fully-featured Finder replacement. Path Finder adds pretty much any feature you wish the Finder had, like dual pane browsing, sorting and filtering, and breadcrumb navigation. My favourite feature of Path Finder is the “Drop Stack” which is like a temporary folder in the sidebar where you can place files as you relocate them.

I used Path Finder for a long time, but recently switched to TotalFinder because Path Finder doesn’t support Dropbox, which is a total deal-breaker for me.

I don’t know if apps like TotalFinder or Path Finder will end up in the App Store, I’m guessing they probably tweak the OS a lot more than Apple is comfortable with.

Joshua Johnson’s round-up of Finder replacements

Price: $40
Developer: Cocoatech

HyperDock

Now in the App Store!

HyperDock brings Windows 7-style window previews and snapping to OSX, showing you a preview of open windows when a dock icon is hovered over, and snapping windows to corners or sides of the screen. HyperDock’s window preview feature is handy, but personally I think it needs a bit more work.

Like I said before, I think tabbed interfaces are key, and HyperDock only shows you the different windows open in each app. I rarely have more than one window open at one time in an app, but usually have a fair number of tabs going in Chrome, Photoshop and Coda.

HyperDock does support tab previews for Safari, and the developer says support for other browsers is on the “to-do list.” I switched from Safari to Chrome a couple months ago, but the HyperDock integration with Safari is really slick, and I could see myself using this app a lot more if it worked with more browsers.

HyperDock also features window snapping, similar to apps like Cinch or BetterSnapTool, which works intuitively and just as well as Cinch for basic window management, but doesn’t have quite as many customization options as BetterSnapTool.

As it turns out, HyperDock made it to the App Store after this article was originally published, though it is slightly more restricted. Good thing is, you can choose if you want to buy it directly from the developer for more features or get the App Store’s convenience.

Conor O’Driscoll’s comparison of DockView and HyperDock

Price: $9.99
Developer: Christian Baumgart

Kaleidoscope

Kaleidoscope is a powerful application that allows you to compare documents and review changes easily and quickly. Kaleidoscope works with pictures and with text files, and uses different comparison methods for each. When reviewing a text file, the app highlights changes, deletions and insertions in different colours, allowing you to easily see how a file has changed. This feature seems aimed at developers, with support for version control through Git, Mercurial and Subversion.

I’m not much of a developer, but I found the text file comparison really useful for writing and editing purposes. Rather than using Word’s “track changes” feature, which shows changes all in one document, Kaleidoscope highlights changes in a much more understandable way, with both documents side-by-side.

You can also compare images in a number of ways, but I found the most useful comparison method was the “split” view, which lets you control the angle the images are “split” at, allowing you to compare whichever portions of the image you wish.

Kaleidoscope has gone in and out of the App Store as noted in the comments, but it doesn’t seem like it’s coming back now. The good thing is, you can still get it from the developer!

Joshua Johnson’s review of Kaleidoscope

Price: $39
Developer: Sofa

Concentrate

Concentrate is an interesting little app: it helps you eliminate distractions by letting you set various actions to be excecuted while you’re “concentrating.” Actions include launching and quitting apps, blocking websites, opening documents, running scripts and setting off various reminders.

When I was in school I used Concentrate frequently, and my favourite features were the spoken or Growled reminders: I had it set up so that a Stephen Hawking voice would berate me every half hour or so, and a Growl message would remind me to save changes every few minutes.

Some of us need to be forced to concentrate, and can’t be trusted to stay away from distractions, and Concentrate really helps keep you on track. Though I’m not in school any more, I still launch Concentrate every once in a while when I really need to get something done without the constant temptation of the internet.

Henry Bennet’s review of Concentrate

Price: $29
Developer: Rocket

Papers

Another academic app, Papers helps you find and organize academic papers with ease. Papers is designed for anyone with an overflowing digital library of research papers, studies and the like, using automatic metadata detection or manually added information to organize your papers.

I used Papers in school to keep track of endless anthropology articles and assignments, and it was a lifesaver when it came to writing research papers. Mekentosj recently released Papers 2 with some fantastic new features that I haven’t really had a chance to delve into, like support for many different document types, unified search, coverflow interface, word processor integration and more. Papers is a brilliantly handy app for students, and I imagine it would be indispensable for researchers.

Ian Tromp’s review of Papers

Price: $79 (Student discounts available)
Developer: Mekentosj

Conclusion

Though this roundup is far from exhaustive, it shows how many great apps can be found outside of the App Store. Some of the developers of these apps have held back from releasing App Store versions because of their own negative opinions of the platform, others wouldn’t be able to get their apps approved, but they’re certainly still worthwhile apps, and their lack of inclusion in the App Store in no way reflects lesser quality.

What are your thoughts on App Store distribution? Do you think these developers have made mistakes by not taking the platform seriously? With the number of apps in the App Store increasing every day, can these developers still compete?

I’ve got a bit of an OCD issue: I hate cords and cables of any kind. So naturally, when Apple announced AirPlay I was ecstatic, and ever since I’ve been an avid user of this awesome wireless streaming tool. Unlike many of Apple’s other products, AirPlay is both relatively open and extremely easy to hack.

That openness in the AirPlay platform has led to a whole host of cool and unconventional uses for the technology.  In this article I’ll show you five different things you probably didn’t know you could do with AirPlay; and you’ll see that AirPlay is no longer just for iTunes videos.

Conclusion

Apple is serious about AirPlay, it might very well be the key to the future of the Apple TV. With that in mind, it’s great to see that developers have already started creating great tools to get the most out of your AirPlay experience. While this article was really just an introduction to the wide world of AirPlay tools, hopefully it will help you get that extra bang for you buck out of your devices. As always, if there’s anything I missed, feel free to add it in the comments below.

While this article is a great place to start exploring AirPlay’s functionality, Wikipedia keeps a great list of 3rd party AirPlay solutions right here.

I don’t know about you, but whenever I’m working at writing a new article or any other kind of work, switching windows and doing something else makes me lose focus on what I was previously doing. This problem usually interferes with another thing that I love doing while working, which is listening to music.

Most of the time, switching albums or artists while I’m working gets to be quite distracting and time-wasting. I jumped at the opportunity to review today’s app, Tracks, because it provides a very quick and distraction-free way of managing iTunes, among a few other things. Want to check it out?

Getting Started

Tracks works as multiple things. At its core, it’s a quick way for you to browse through your iTunes library, right from your menu bar. But it also does a few more things, like providing you with keyboard shortcuts for switching tracks, giving you notifications for the tracks being played and a few other more things that we’ll get to later.

The one downside of it, is that Tracks only works with iTunes, so if you use any other app to listen to your music library, this won’t be of much use to you. Tracks goes for $2.99 on the Mac App Store, and given its full set of features, we think the price is justified well. But how about you see it for yourself?

Features

Tracks steps into the territory of several other apps, and puts a few features of them together to create quite a complete app with an impressive list of features:

• iTunes library navigation
• iTunes Store navigation (including previews)
• Last.fm Scrobbling
• Growl Notifications for what’s currently playing
• Keyboard shortcuts

Some of these don’t really need an explanation, the Last.fm integration works pretty much like it does with any other app (you just need to connect and authorize your account), and the Growl notifications are also just a matter of getting them turned on or off. We’ll get deeper into the other set of features though.

Navigation

Since you can get the rest of the features from a bunch of other, cheaper apps, what really makes a difference with Tracks is the library and store navigation features. I’m glad to say that for the most part, they are really well done. The search is not as fast as Spotlight, but it gets the job done and it’s very well organized.

You can search for any given term and get shown all kinds of media from your library, even if it is a TV Show, a podcast, or just music. You can search for any given term, although some fields might be given priority on the search results (in fact, Tracks gives priority to results that have good ratings and higher play counts in your library).

Your search results are shown in sections, usually divided by albums in which the matching results lay. Navigating with your keyboard or cursor to any result and activating it will get it to play immediately in iTunes.

Other Features

As we’ve mentioned previously, Tracks can also help you implement customizable keyboard shortcuts for controlling your iTunes library. These include showing the app’s search component, pausing/playing iTunes, showing iTunes, skipping tracks, managing iTunes’ volume, and rating songs.

Also, there’s the iTunes Store navigation. It works a little bit different than library browsing. To use it, once you’ve got a search going on, you’ve got to go to the end of the results and activate the “Search in iTunes Store” field. Then the results from the iTunes Store search will be displayed to you just like if you were browsing your own library. Activating any of the results will open iTunes and bring you to a page where you can purchase the item.

Related Apps

There are quite a few apps that can do somewhat similar stuff to what Tracks does. One example is the free and very popular app Bowtie, which at its core is an app that can display what’s currently being played in iTunes on your desktop; but it also does a few more things like notify you via Growl on what’s playing, give you customizable shortcuts for controlling iTunes, and also scrobble your played tracks directly to Last.fm.

Likewise, you may find better or cheaper alternatives in apps like the free Last.fm Audioscrobbler (for scrobbling), and the more expensive CoverSutra (for everything Tracks does, plus a cover-display system similar to Bowtie).

Conclusion

Tracks generalizes the market of several apps into one, and at a moderate price. If you’re going to use Tracks for its main feature, which is its iTunes library navigation, then I’d say few apps could rival it. Its algorithms for displaying results are quite accurate, and overall the navigation is very well implemented and serves its purpose of changing music quickly.

However, if you’re not too sure if you’re going to use the navigation feature and instead you’re looking into Tracks because of its smallest set of features (scrobbling, keyboard shortcuts and Growl support), then I’d say you might be better off going for a smaller free app that can do all those things, like Bowtie.

In the end, it all comes down to your needs as a user for an app like this. What do you think?