Category: Mac

They say that necessity is the mother of invention. It would stand to reason, then, that with the emergence of the Internet, it would be necessary to have an invention that would help us cope with the massive amounts of information. Of course, the category of RSS readers has been present for some time, but it’s almost as if that isn’t sufficient enough anymore. I can set up my RSS reader to pull from several different websites, but I can’t limit my information absorption to 5 or 20 or even 100 different websites; it comes from everywhere.

Some of the other AppStorm sites have talking about Pocket, a web service formerly known as Read It Later. Pocket, and other similar services, aim to let you save various articles and videos for later consumption, rather than letting them interrupt your workflow. Today we’re going to look at Read Later, which is a Mac desktop client for both the free Pocket and the paid Instapaper. The app was originally released as ReadNow, but it’s evolved quite a bit since we covered it, so let’s see what’s new.

Saving And Reading

Using Read Later with Instapaper requires a paid Instapaper account. Since that’s not something I have, I will be testing the app with my Pocket account. Adding bookmarks to Read Later can either be done externally (my preferred method is using the Pocket extension for Safari) or through the app (drag a URL to the dock or menubar icon). Regardless of how you do it, simply click the sync button in Read Later and all of your bookmarks will instantly show up.

The main view.

The default view for Read Later includes a familiar 3-pane window, much like what we’re used to from apps like Reeder. However, the panes can be hidden or shown to form any configuration at all. This is helpful if you want to keep your bookmark list open on the side of your screen even when you’re not viewing an article, hide the sidebar to eliminate distractions while you’re reading, or anything in between.

Your bookmarks display in a very clean, no-frills format, similar to that of Safari’s built in Reader. However, for those times when you’d prefer to view the webpage, Read Later sports a built in browser.

Organizing and Sharing

This is, in my opinion, where Read Later shines. Read Later allows for a folder structure of whatever complexity you desire, and bookmarks can be drag-and-dropped between them. They can also be tagged from the Edit pop-up in the upper right corner. In addition, the bookmarks list can ben sorted by tags, title, URL, or date, and your entire collection can be searched with the magnifying glass icon at the bottom.

Change the title or tags of bookmarks for archival purposes.

While the interface of Read Later doesn’t necessarily mimic that of Pocket’s web app or iOS apps, any of the organizational changes (particularly in relation to tags and read/unread status) are reflected in those counterparts.

News is becoming more and more social, and Read Later doesn’t try to stand in the way of that. Read Later supports URL-shorteners bit.ly and j.mp, Twitter, Facebook, Pinboard, Delicious, and can even send bookmarks to Evernote.

A Few Extras

As I poked around the Read Later interface, I was pleasantly surprised at the immersive amount of customization available to the user. You can change quite a number of settings that affect the way content is displayed (including a dark setting that inverts the colors), the font style and size of the content, the highlight color in the bookmarks list, and how dock/menubar icons are displayed.

You can also change the way that the app responds to certain input. Not only can you set keyboard shortcuts a few of Read Later’s functions, but you can also change the way that multi-touch gestures are used to navigate the app.

Custom gestures.

The Verdict

I’ve never used Instapaper, and I wasn’t a Read It Later user (until it became Pocket). I can say as a new user that Pocket has implemented a very effective and attractive sense of style and layout in its iOS apps, and one that I’d like to see continued into a native Mac app.

That being said, Read Later is a very well designed, third-party, multi-service client for Mac, and is currently one of the most elegant options for the offline consumption of your “saved for later” material. It allows me to spend a dedicated amount of time in the morning browsing my RSS feeds and saving webpages that I’d like to look at later, and then proceed with my day without letting the news pester my mind. I know that everything will be waiting for me at the end of the day when I can finally sit down to read.

I’m curious to know your thoughts on services like Pocket and Instapaper. What’s your preferred method for utilizing them on the Mac?

“I finally cracked it,” Steve Jobs famously said to biographer Walter Isaacson in reference to an Apple-made television set. The elegant set-top box known as the Apple TV has been labeled as a hobby since its conception, and many are guessing that a full-fledged television by Apple would finally elevate their endeavors in television from this hobby status.

But what part of the television experience did Steve believe they “cracked”? Was it just integrating the iTunes Store and TV show subscriptions in a way that could directly challenge the cable package paradigm? Or maybe more exciting to imagine, did he have plans to revolutionize the way that we interact with the television?

Let’s look at some of the possible ways that Apple could let us interact with the big screens in our living rooms.

The Current Remote

The current Apple TV remote is about as bare-bones as it can get. It may not have revolutionized the way that we interact with a TV, but it was a radical departure from traditional TV remotes. Not only did it strip away the buttons and confusing interface that typical television remotes have, it completely ignored the paradigm of using channel numbers to reach your destination.

Apple's current remote is sleek and minimal, but could we hope for something more innovative?

I would like to think that if Apple plans to revolutionize the television, and convince people to switch from the expensive televisions they’ve already invested in, it will need to offer a more exciting way to interact with the screen. The directional pad on the remote can be slow and clunky when used for navigating through grids and menus.

Another thing to consider is that the minimal control scheme provided by this remote would really limit the potential of an App Store on this device. As we will see from the following examples, innovative control schemes could offer a whole new world of possibilities to developers, and could explain why Apple has been holding off on implementing a store into the Apple TV so far.

Siri

Some television sets released in the past few years, such as those integrating Google TV, have shipped with keyboard remotes that enable users to input web searches and other text. But as if existing television remotes weren’t intimidating enough, the extra 30+ buttons make these remotes even clunkier, and the accompanying televisions more complicated to interact with.

I don't see Apple coming out with anything like this.

A far more elegant way to input small bits of text to your television would be through Siri. Siri integration in an Apple TV is probably the most-rumored method of interacting with the device thus far. While televisions are traditionally turned off when not in use, it would be interesting if the Apple TV set were left in a sleep mode, ready to accept voice commands as soon as you enter the room.

This beautiful television in a Corning concept video has an idle mode showing time and notifications, and would always be ready to accept voice commands.

Imagine walking into your living room and saying, “Siri, what’s the weather look like for this week?” or “Siri, what movies are playing?”, and having that information quickly spread out across the large screen. You could also play specific shows or movies quickly with commands like, “Siri, play the latest episode of Big Bang Theory.”

There are already a number of products experimenting with this control scheme. For the Xbox 360, Microsoft released something called Kinect Voice Control, which allows you to control your TV with simple voice commands. Though voice control systems like this haven’t taken off yet, Apple has a history of taking existing technologies and making them mainstream, so Siri integration in the television would have the potential to cause a paradigm shift.

What would Siri look like on the Apple television?

But could voice be the only way that you could interact with a TV? If users have many apps, shows, and other media on the screen, browsing would involve a lot of navigation, and I don’t know if people would be comfortable telling their TV to scroll around all the time. Siri would be great for times when you know exactly what you want, but my best guess is that they would need to pair voice with some other method of control.

Secondary Touch Screen

Another potential method of interacting with the TV could be through a smaller, auxiliary touchscreen that users would hold. Instead of navigating through content on the television itself, users would browse menus and collections of media on the handheld screen. This screen could be the size of existing iPhones, iPads, or somewhere in between, and could be included with the television so users wouldn’t have to give up use of their iPhone or iPad when the family wants to watch TV.

Existing Airplay features may hint at the future cooperation between smaller touch devices and the big screen.

With the upcoming Wii U, Nintendo is using a similar control scheme, bundling the system with a small touchscreen remote. Just as Nintendo expects game developers to find exciting ways for the smaller screen to interact with the television, an app store on Apple’s television would open up a world of opportunities for independent developers.

Nintendo’s executives may cry themselves to sleep at night if Apple takes a stab at their console market as well.

Apple caught mobile gaming companies like Nintendo off guard when its iPhones and iPads turned into fun and affordable portable gaming devices; just imagine the impact it could have on the console gaming market if Apple gave independent developers the opportunity to bring their games to this television.

Body

When I think of using the body to interact with a screen, two things immediately come to my mind: the Xbox Kinect and Tom Cruise’s computer in Minority Report. Both examples are somewhat famous for demonstrating the potential of body-based interaction with user interfaces.

Would it be possible to pull off Tom Cruise's advanced gestures from the living room couch?

When announcing the iPhone, Steve said that it would utilize the best pointing device in the world: our fingers. Just as the iPhone eliminated peripheral tools needed to interact with portable devices, maybe Apple could perfect the remote-less experience of interacting with a television,

As demonstrated by the Kinect, there is a limit to how much precision you can have when moving your arms around to interact with a screen several feet away; gestures have to be fairly broad. Has the Xbox Kinect tapped into the full potential of using the body to interact with a screen, or could future innovations, such as projecting your fingertips on the screen and enabling intuitive gestures, improve our accuracy when interacting with a television in this way?

?Projecting the user’s fingertips onto the screen could assist in precision and performing gestures like grabbing, pinching, and rotating.

Pointing Device

The most successful example of a television pointing device has to be the Nintendo Wii’s remote. Nintendo made a bold move by adopting a radically different control scheme, and has been rewarded with success as the console reaches entire new audiences of gamers. If using your body to interact with a TV is not accurate enough for Apple’s tastes, using a pointing device could offer a greater level of control.

The Wii's pointing device offers more precision than the Kinect.

Apple would surely make a very sleek pointing device, perhaps one that looks like the existing Apple TV remote. Just as the Wiimote projects a large pointer finger on the screen, this pointing device would probably have some kind of cursor that you could use to select items on the screen. As evidenced by the variety of innovative games produced for the Wii over the years, this control scheme would be very conducive for an app store as well.

Touch

I find this method of interaction to be the least likely. Touch screens this large would be expensive and less practical, considering we generally watch television from several feet back. That being said, a lot of science fiction movies depict a future in which all screens have some touch capabilities, and this concept video by glass company Corning shows how the touch screen might be beneficial.

Would it be too much to ask for a 46", touch capacitive, retina display?

The man walks up to his screen in order to read text from news and emails clearly, and to quickly tap items he wants to view. A touch screen this large would also have huge value in educational and business environments, where it could be used as a virtual whiteboard. Interactive whiteboards from companies like SMART are becoming popular in schools around the country, but have to be calibrated often and have low quality displays. A large, precise, high quality touch screen would be popular in a number of professions.

Conclusion

What did you mean, Steve, you sly devil?

It was certainly uncharacteristic of Steve to reveal Apple’s future plans for a television in his biography. He must have known the effect that this small leak of information would have on the press and enthusiasts. It’s exciting to think that there is a high-security room in Apple’s headquarters likely filled with dozens, if not hundreds, of prototypes for televisions.

They have likely tried most, if not all, methods outlined in this article, and Steve seemed pretty confident that they had found the right pieces to make this television a truly revolutionary product. Hopefully, we will find out in the coming year or two.

Many thanks to Tyler Murphy for providing mockups for this piece.

I love Apple products, and have been using OS X fairly exclusively for nearly seven years. Now and again, however, I have use Windows to get various chores done, and a feature that Windows 7 has down pat is the ability to snap windows around on the screen.

There are a couple of tools for OS X that attempt to replicate this, but the best one I have used so far is called Windownaut, from Binary Bakery. It makes arranging and snapping windows a breeze, and also has some extra powerful features that I’ve never seen before!

Window Snapping

Main preference window for Windownaut.

Windownaut’s primary purpose is to enable flexible and powerful window snapping on a Mac, and has a lot of options to boot. It runs as an unobtrusive background application, and allows you to “snap” a window to any side of your screen either through dragging or configurable hotkeys. And you can go beyond the typical left/right/maximized options that Windows 7 gives you too: Windownaut allows you to pick any side, any corner, maximized, centered, or even moved to another Spaces screen. Talk about options!

Custom keyboard shortcuts can be assigned to any particular window snap option, so I have mimicked the typical Windows 7 left/right/max choices with the Option+Cmd+arrow keys, and it works wonderfully. Dragging to an edge to snap works well too, giving a nice semi-transparent block to show where the window will end up. Windownaut also works well with Spaces, if you have them enabled. Dragging windows between different spaces in Snow Leopard for example will first show the snapping animation, but then move the window to the next space without interference.

One area where Windownaut could improve its snapping behavior is in returning a window to its original size and position after you’ve snapped around to a couple of different orientations. Windownaut will remember the last size and position, but not necessarily the original, unsnapped one. This causes me to do a little more clicking and dragging to resize and reposition windows than I’d hope, but perhaps that will be added in future versions.

Window Button Enhancements

Add functionality to the traffic lights in OS X with Windownaut.

But wait, there’s more! Windownaut can also add extra functionality to the red, yellow, and green window buttons in the top left of every window, often referred to as the traffic lights. By either adding a right click or a modifier key, each of the buttons can perform new actions. For example, you can assign a right click of the red button to quit the application, instead of just closing the window. Option-clicking the yellow button could allow you to show the currently open document in the Finder. You can also choose to display the layout selector to snap the window to a certain position, or force quit the application.

This may seem like a departure from typical OS X behavior, but I’ve been surprised how often these additional options have come in handy for me. Hopefully more options will be available here in the future as well for even more powerful shortcuts.

Compatibility

An important thing to note is that Windownaut dives deep into how OS X functions in order to work its magic. There are other tools that perform in a similar manner (BetterTouchTool, etc.), but every time I’ve tried one of these apps I always end up experiencing problems clicking and not having the system respond as it should.

The developer of Windownaut, Hisham Khalifa, has worked extra hard to remove these types of bugs, and he seems to have nailed them all. Since the official release of Windownaut I have not experienced any hung clicks or stuck buttons, which is a major accomplishment.

Availability

Windownaut is available for purchase from the Binary Bakery website for $9.99 for use on up to two Macs, or in a three-pack for $16.99. There is a 14-day trial so that you can try it before you buy. If you are looking for a way to recreate Windows 7’s window snapping functionality with a lot of added power, I would definitely recommend trying out Windownaut.

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 May 17th, 2011.

The “utility” software niche is one that is extremely active in the Mac application community. There is an abundance of fantastic utilities currently available, and that list is ever changing. We love this type of software at AppStorm, regularly reviewing different apps that let you tweak and tune your computer.

With the area changing so fast, we decided to take a look at some of the best and most useful Mac OS X utilities that are available right now. What you’ll see here is by no means an all-encompassing list, but rather a collection of utilities broken up into some basic groups that I found to be very useful to a lot of people.

I hope you discover some applications that will be helpful for you!

System Utilities

Mactracker

Mactracker is a simple appliction that will provide you with about all the information about your Mac, iPod, iPhone or any other Mac piece of hardware for that matter, you’d like. This can be really useful information for purchasing software or hardware upgrades. Sometimes finding all the info you need isn’t that easy and Macktracker makes that process extremely straight forward.

Price: Free
Requires: Mac OS X 10.5.0 or later
Developer: Ian Page

DesktopMonitor

This application aids you in monitoring your Mac’s performance. You’ll be able to track things like fan speed, CPU/GPU usage and memory usage. An application like this can be helpful in tracking down hardware and software problems with your Mac.

Price: $1.99
Requires:
Developer: Buick Wong

MiniUsage

MiniUsage is an application that will essentially take all of the information avaliable through the Activity Monitor and place it in a quickly accessible place in the menu bar. You’ll see a running CPU percentage and, when clicked, you’ll see all of the other activities being monitored.

Price: Free
Requires: Mac OS X 10.5 or later
Developer: sekn

Cockpit

Cockpit calls itself the “missing Mac control center” and that fits the bill quite well. This application will automate many system tasks. These can consist of Automator workflows, AppleScript, or shell scripts. Easy to use for the novice and very extensible for the power-user.

Price: $3.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6 or later
Developer: green&slimy

Wallpaper Wizard

With Wallpaper Wizard you’ll be able to have a fresh wallpaper just about whenever you’d like. You can set the application to automatically change your wallpaper and even customize the types of images it cycles through. It is also possible to add your own images into the mix if you’d like. With over 100,000 images in the database you’ll have plenty of variety.

Price: $9.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6 or later
Developer: Coppertino Inc.

Caffeine

Caffeine is a super simple application that solves one problem. It will allow you to prevent your Mac from automatically going to sleep or dimming the screen. This is a menu bar application so it is easy to turn on and off.

Price: Free
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6 or later
Developer: Lighthead Software

SmartSleep

Another sleep management application here with the difference being that you’re able to customize how your Mac goes to sleep. You can set different sleep settings based on the battery level, or also just keep it awake permanently. This application adds a whole new level of sleep and power management customization.

Price: $3.99
Developer: Patrick Stein

Shuttie

Shuttie is a basic scheduler application that will give you the capability to set times when you’d like your Mac to shutdown, restart, sleep, or log out. It proves itself very handy in certain situations.

Price: $1.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.5 or later
Developer: Kuko.sk

MacPilot

MacPilot gives you access to easily enable and disable hidden features in Mac OS X, optimize and repair your system, and perform lots of other routine operations all without needing to use Terminal. There are many many features that can be enabled and disabled with the click of a button along with maintenance tasks that are easy to initiate.

Price: $19.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later
Developer: Koingo Software, Inc.

Cocktail

Cocktail calls itself a general purpose utility for Mac OS X. This application basically simplifies many complex UNIX functions. Performing certain maintenace tasks regularly can make a world of difference for your OS X experience and Cocktail makes those tasks dead simple to perform.

Price: $19.00
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6
Developer: Maintain

OnyX 2.2.1

OnyX is a free Mac OS X utility that allows you to verify the Startup Disk and the structure of its System files. It will also run all sorts of maintenance tasks. OnyX has got you covered.

Price: Free
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6 or later
Developer: Titanium’s Software

AppleJack

AppleJack allows you to run some maintenance tasks from single user mode. This is extremely handy when you don’t have your OS disk handy or can’t load the GUI at all. A utilitarian application for sure, but a handy one that can really bail you out.

Price: Free
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6
Developer: Kristofer Widholm

Geekbench 2

You’ve just made some hardware upgrades to your Mac and now you want to know how much better your performace will be. How do you do it? GeekBench is an application that will measure your Mac’s processor and memory performance so you can really see if you’re getting the gains you had hoped for.

Price: $12.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later
Developer: Primate Labs

NovaBench

NovaBench is a benchmarking tool as well, but this is a free one. You may not get quite as much detail from this application, but you will get some really solid system performance information. Kick it off and in a couple minutes you’ll have your results.

Price: Free
Requires: Mac OS X 10.5 or later
Developer: Novatech Network

Drive Management Utilities

MacCleanse

MacCleanse is a tool that will give your Mac a good “clean”. It will run through a range of tasks for you to free up some hard drive space. It does things like erase caches, logs, cookies, histories among other things. You’ll get detailed information on everything the application did.

Price: $19.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.4.4 or later
Developer: Koingo Software, Inc.

Smart Drive

Hard drive failures suck. If you’re vigilant about your backups, it’s not a huge deal, but they always come at unexpected times which creates more problems than you want to deal with. Smart Drive is an application that will analyze your hard drive’s health and allow you to predict when things are going bad – before they really go bad.

Update: Smart Drive appears to be a dead project, you may want to try Disk Warrior instead.

Price: $2.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6 or later
Developer: Lestat Ali Productions

DaisyDisk

Running out of drive space is often a frustrating issue, and Daisy Disk puts a fresh spin on managing your storage. It will display an interactive visual map of the files on your machine. You’ll be able to see exactly what the space hogging files are, and even access them directly from the app. It’s a great tool to clean your drive of files you don’t need and didn’t even know you had.

Price: $9.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6.0 or later
Developer: Software Ambience Corp.

Space Gremlin

Space Gremlin has a similar functionality to Daisy Disk, but uses a different method of visually displaying your files and the space they are occupying. It arguably isn’t quite as pretty, but it is functional nonetheless and I would venture a guess that some folks would even like this style even better.

Price: $3.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6 or later
Developer: 10 Million Apps

Carbon Copy Cloner

Carbon Copy Cloner is an application that will allow you to clone your hard drive, and you can create a bootable backup if you’d like. It is also a very handy tool for migrating to a new hard drive. Backups can even be scheduled so you don’t have to remember to run them. A really great tool for a variety of situations.

Price: Free
Requires: Mac OS 10.4 Tiger (10.4.8 or higher), Mac OS 10.5 Leopard, Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard
Developer: Bombich Software, LLC

File/Folder Management Utilities

TotalFinder

TotalFinder really makes the OS X finder what it should have been in the first place. It makes Finder just flat out more useful and easier to interact with. It’s one of those applications that just blends right into the OS. The 30-day trial will certainly hook you. Give it a try, I dare you.

Price: $18.00
Requires: OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard)
Developer: Binary Age

Telling Folders

Telling Folders is a little utility that lets you customize the look of your folders. Drag an image onto the folder and you’ll see the custom icon. A handy undo fuction will bail you out if you make a mistake.

Price: $1.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later
Developer: omz:software

The Unarchiver

This application is a simple tool to extract about any file type you can throw at it. It claims that it is the only unarchiving program you’ll ever need. A good one to have in the toolbelt.

Price: Free
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later
Developer: Dag Agren

Cloud

Cloud is an application that works in conjunction with the CloudApp web application. It is a tool that allows you to quickly share files. Drag a file onto the menu bar icon and a shortcut link to the file is placed in your clipboard ready to share. A really helpful application for sharing things with your team.

Price: Free
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6 or later
Developer: Linebreak

FileShredder

This application will allow you to quickly and securely delete files from your Mac or an external USB drive. It can be added to the Finder toolbar to allow for quick removal of files.

Price: $3.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6 or later
Developer: VoidTech Inc.

FileSorter

I’ve have a folder where I throw things that I’m not sure belong any other place. It’s a “catch all” folder, essentially. Sometimes there are things I need to keep from there, but it’s tough to figure out what is what. FileSorter simplifies the file sorting process and allows customization by creating rules and assigning actions that are taken on the files.

Price: Free
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6 or later
Developer: Clemens Schulz/a>

Singlemizer

Singlemizer will sift through your files and find duplicates. I’m sure we’ve all got multiple copies of the exact same files occyping disk space on our machines. This application offers a quick and easy way (that also guarantees 100% matching) to clean up those unneeded files.

Price: $9.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6 or later
Developer: Minimalistic Dev.

Blast Utility

Blast is a menu bar utility that aims to help you be more productive. It keeps track of all the files, folders, and applications you’ve recently been using. I know we’re all supposed to be super-organized, but sometimes you can remember exactly where you saved that Pages document you were working on last night. You’ll see it in Blast and open right from there. You can even save your favorite folders for quick access.

Price: $9.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.5 or later
Developer: Apparent Software

Security and Virus Protection

PwGenerator

As you may have guessed from the name already, PwGenerator is a utility that creates passwords and Wi-Fi keys for you. Customizations in characters used will allow you to tweak the passwords generated. You’ll also be able to see how secure the password you just created actually is.

Price: $1.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later
Developer: devserahug

1Password

1Password is really the mother of all password utilitiy applications. It can generate and save passwords in a secure and easy to organize way. Browser plugins aid in password completion for you as you wander the Web. Accompanying applications for mobile devices make this utility even more useful. As complicated as the online world is today, this utility is one that can do great things to keep your info secure and make your life easier.

Price: $49.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard)
Developer: Agile Web Solutions

Padlock

Padlock is a very simple utility that fills an oft-lamented gap in Mac OS X. It allows you to start your screensaver or put your system to sleep with a single keystroke. This can be accompanied with locking your machine so that you can quickly secure your Mac should you need to step away for a few minutes.

Price: $2.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later
Developer: Mizage

ClamXav 2

Virus and malware isn’t necessarily a prevelant problem with Mac OS X at this time. That doesn’t mean there aren’t threats out there, so it may still make sense to take precautions. ClamXav is an open source virus scanner that is actively supported. Being free, easy to use, and actively updated makes it a no brainer to have on your Mac.

Price: Free
Requires: Requires at least Mac OS X 10.4
Developer: Mark Allen

VirusBarrier Plus

There are not a lot of full featured antivirus and anti-malware utilities available for Mac OS X out there, but this is one of them. It will offer some added functionality over ClamXav in a little nicer interface. With that does come a cost, but it is still very affordable.

Price: $9.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later
Developer: Intego

Desktop/Workspace Utilities

XMenu

XMenu is a handy little utility that adds one or more global menus to the menu bar for quick access. Quickly access your most used directories and even insert text snippets or web addresses into email messages or Pages documents.

Price: Free
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6 or later
Developer: DEVONtechnologies, LLC

MenuStrip

This utility will allow you to create custom menus that will either live in the menu bar, or as a separate menu strip that can be placed anywhere. Tons of customization options are available to make this a very useful utility. It can even place a menu strip on a secondary monitor.

Price: $9.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6 or later
Developer: Indeeo, Inc.

Clean Slate

Clean Slate is a utility that will quickly clean up your desktop. “Clean” maybe isn’t the right word. It will hide everything on your desktop. This could be really handy for folks that do a lot of screencast recordings, demonstrations, or presentations using the Mac. You can keep your desktop as messy as you’d like and just keep that to yourself!

Price: $1.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6 or later
Developer: Old Jewel Software

CalendarBar

iCal does have some shortcomings, but is overall a decent calendar application. CalendarBar extends its functionality by allowing you to see calendar events in the menu bar. It will also show events from Facebook and Google Calendar. iCal todos are also supported.

Price: $1.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later, 64-bit processor
Developer: Clean Cut Code

Contacts Cleaner

Contacts Cleaner is a utility that will analyze your Address Book and report any potential problems back to you. A contact list can easily and quickly get out of control and unorganized unless we give it some attention. This utility automates that tedious process.

Price: $4.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later
Developer: Spanning Sync, Inc.

Tembo

Tembo is a robust search tool for your Mac. Spotlight is pretty great at doing quick basic searches, but Tembo takes that functionality up a few notches. It does context searches, filtering and also groups certain file types together to help you more easily find what you’re looking for.

Price: $14.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later
Developer: Houdah Software

Alfred

I suppose you could call Alfred a launcher utility, but it really is much more than that. The developers describe it as a “keyboard-driven productivity application” which is basically right on. I’m an avid Alfred user and can say that it is one of my most used apps and one that certainly does save me a lot of time and frustration. This is one of my favorites on the list.

Price: Free
Requires: Mac OS X 10.5 or later
Developer: Running with Crayons Ltd

Hyperspaces

Hyperspaces works with OS X Spaces and allows futher customization of that utility. Customization if the name of the game here. You’re able to make each space noticeably different from the other. Spaces is a really powerful way to organize your workspace and Hyperspaces just adds a little extra goodness to it.

Price: $12.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later
Developer: The CocoaBots

DockView Lite

If you’re a big Dock user this one will be really useful for you. It displays a preview window of what applications are currently open when you hover over the correlating Dock icon. I should note that the free version will only display one window. The full version carries a $7.99 pricetag.

Price: Free
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6 or later
Developer: Kapeli

Moom

Resizing windows to optimize your workspace can be a pain in OS X. Thankfully there are some utilities available to help us out with this. Moom is one such utility that will allow you to resize windows to predefined and custom sizes and locations using the keyboard or mouse.

Price: $4.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later
Developer: Many Tricks

Divvy

Divvy is another window management utility, but it is more robust than any others you’ll see in this list. It essentially lets you divvy (who would have guessed?) up your screen between applications to take full advantage of all available real estate.

Price: $13.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later
Developer: Mizage

iSnap

iSnap is a window management utility that works a bit differently than the others in this list. By dragging windows to various sections of your screen you can optimize the available space. Keyboard shortcuts can also be set to accomplish the same things.

Price: Free (on sale now)
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6 or later
Developer: T-bone

Cinch

Cinch allows you to organize windows by dragging windows to pre-defined hot zones. Drag a window into the zone and you’ll see the space it will fill. Release the window and it will take up the defined spaces. Pull it away and it will go back to its original size. Simple, but handy window management.

Price: $6.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6.5 or later
Developer: Irradiated Software

Final Thoughts

As I mentioned, this is by no means a complete list, but I do think that these are some of the best – and most useful – OS X utilities available right now. Hopefully you’ve discovered some applications you weren’t aware of that can be helpful to you.

This developer community is so active that I’ll guarantee we continue to see more and more incredible utilities as the days go by. If you think I missed some important apps, or one that you find especially useful, please mention them in the comments below!

There are so many options out there – freeware and shareware – that it’s often hard to find the quality applications. Some applications luck into a great deal of publicity, but too often great apps do not get the attention that they deserve.

This article has five utility apps that I use just about every day but haven’t ever read or heard much about. The apps range from a screenshot application to a great touchpad tool that I love. Read on to learn about five of my favorite free apps that you should check out today.

PixAM

The first application is an all-in-one screenshot taking, editing and sharing application. If I use PixAM on my computer, the shot I take is automatically synced to the cloud for access on my computer, iPad or iPhone. You can utilize the application for immediate editing with a variety of tools and colors. It even provides a URL with every screenshot to share the shot with friends or co-workers via email.

Price: Free
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6 or later
Developer: Sergey Bolshedvorsky

Pix.AM

Desktop Curtain

Desktop is a simple tool that allows you to hide your desktop. It’s useful if you need to hide the desktop clutter during a presentation. I personally like to use it if I need to take a screenshot on a clean background if I’m writing a review. It’s a fantastic, free utility and offers every feature I need from it. However, there is a paid version available on the App Store that offers a few more features, such as a hot key.

Price: Free
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later
Developer: Many Tricks

Desktop Curtain

Better Touch Tool

I used to be (and still often am) a huge fan of keyboard shortcuts. I had a shortcut for virtually everything that I did. Then, I got a MacBook Pro and realized the beauty of multi-touch gesture support. Better Touch Tool was my app of choice to start really taking advantage of the trackpad. I also love that the app allows you to utilize the ability to snap windows to either side as that was one of the only things I missed about my Windows computer. With this app, you’ll enjoy a huge amount of new functionality available to for free.

Price: Free
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6 or later
Developer: Andreas Hegenberg

Better Touch Tool

EasyFind

EasyFind is an application that can either replace or supplement the Finder and Spotlight. If you’re doing a simple search, the Finder might work just fine. However, if you need features like boolean operators, searches that don’t require indexing, or the ability to find invisible files, then EasyFind is what you need. EasyFind is a great app that takes little to run and does an awesome job.

Price: Free
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6 or later
Developer: Devon Technologies

EasyFind

What Free Hidden Gems Do You Use?

These are, of course, just a small selection of the great free applications out there. I definitely think these five are worth a download. You will find they fit into your workflow quite nicely and soon you’ll wonder why you hadn’t heard about them sooner.

These are five applications that I think should be extremely popular. As always, I’m curious to know what your choices would be. What free apps do you think deserve more publicity? Share your thoughts below.

If there’s one game genre I’m all for, it’s board games. I love the feel of the dice in my hands, the touch of crispy play money, the thrill of running after the hourglass, and the exhilaration knowing that I’ve trumped my fellow players.

With that said, I found myself curious of what it’s like to play a digital board game after spotting Ticket to Ride Online on the New and Noteworthy section of the Mac App Store. The icon, the screenshots, and the uber-friendly conductor convinced me to check the game out, plus the fact that its iPad version has garnered numerous game awards in the past.

Will the Mac version of Ticket to Ride Online stand just as tall as its iOS counterpart? Let’s find out.

Overall Gameplay

Ticket to Ride Online is the online version of Alan R. Moon’s popular cross-country train adventure board game, Ticket to Ride. The game’s setting and the classic map used during initial gameplay are set in North America during the industrial era when trains, locomotives, and railroads were the main modes of transportation, and saloon music filled the air.

The goal of Ticket to Ride Online is to complete train destination tickets given at the beginning of the game. To do this, you need to complete railway routes using train cards until you are either able to connect two or more destinations together or you run out of trains. Each player (up to five players can join) is given 45 consumable trains to use, and for every completed route your trains decrease in number.

The description sounds easy enough, but to win the game takes strategic planning, patience, and a bit of luck. You can win in two ways: complete the most tickets and/or claim long routes for bigger points. You’d be more inclined to complete all of your tickets, because if you’re unable to do so, your score is deducted depending on the value of the unfinished ticket.

The Basics

At launch, you’re greeted with fun background music, a hooting steam engine, and Gerry the Conductor. Gerry welcomes you with two options: Play the game or visit the train station for other options, such as the settings, game rules, and the online games arena where you can play with other players.

Sign up for a free Days of Wonder account via the app’s settings or log in to your Game center account to have your scores and ranking listed in the scoreboards.

You begin the game with the classic US map with the choice to either play under Tutorial mode or not. The Tutorial mode is a good starting point if you’ve never played the game before. Otherwise, simply switch off Tutorial mode before pressing the green Play button. There are other maps available with new rules, trains, and challenges, but you’ll have to pay for these as in-app purchases. We’ll go into that later.

As soon as you’ve chosen your first train destination tickets, you can make your first move. When playing against the bots or AIs, you’re always the first to begin. Your train destination points are highlighted in glowing green to help you build and claim your railway routes. By clicking on a ticket, the destinations instantly glow to tell you where to begin and end.

At the end of the game, the overall points are tallied. The points earned from completing tickets are added to the points earned from claiming railway routes. The player with the longest route wins a bonus of 10 points, a deciding factor on who wins the game.

Getting the Feel of the Game

While the goals of the game are clear, the app description claims that one can learn the game in just three minutes. It definitely wasn’t that easy or quick to learn.

Despite playing on Tutorial mode, it took me five consecutive games until I understood exactly the mechanics and memorized the rules. And to see the effectiveness of the tutorial, I let a couple of family members play the game, all of which have never heard or played Ticket to Ride before. It took them about two to three games to get the hang of it as well. Of course, for those who’ve played the board game, the learning curve may not be as steep (or none at all).

One thing is for sure though, I found Ticket to Ride Online to be fun and surprisingly addictive. Prior to writing this review, I played the game three to four times in a day not only to test out all of its features but to top the scoreboards and play with other players around the world. It may take some time to get the feel of it, but once you know how to play, you might just find yourself playing for hours on end.

Graphics, Music, and Performance

The best features of Ticket to Ride Online are the graphics, music, and the overall performance of the game.

When playing against the AIs, I never experienced lags, crashes, or freezing. The graphics are superb and fun to watch, giving me that same thrill after completing a railway route. I’d also enjoy listening the music and the sound effects, especially when picking up a ticket or a train card. I never turn the sounds off despite the fact that my opponents (the same family members) can hear if I’ve completed a railway route.

Choose and buy different maps as in-app purchases.

I mentioned earlier that you can buy extra maps as in-app purchases. This is also a problem-free feature of the app. I bought the Ticket to Ride Europe and 1910 maps to add variety to my gameplay, and all I had to do was to confirm my purchases with my Apple ID and password.

The prices for the extra Ticket to Ride online maps for the Mac is way, way cheaper than the maps sold on the iPad. Ticket to Ride Europe and Switzerland are $1.99 on the Mac, but $4.99 on the iPad.

Playing with Others

There is one aspect of Ticket to Ride Online that needs improvement, and that’s playing with other Ticket to Ride players.

To play with others, you’ll need to go to the More menu and click on Online Games where you’ll find Marcel the Waiter. Upon entering, a large organizer is displayed with two sections at the top (Games and Players) and three sections at the side: Lobby, Buddies, and Ignore. Lobby is where you will find players logged in to the game. You can select a username and invite to play or add as a buddy. Those who accept your invitation to be a buddy are then found in your Buddy list.

Play with others from around the world.

At this point, I bought the iPad version of the game ($6.99) to be able to play against my family members. In the process of inviting them to play, I encountered a bug in that the players invited do not appear at the game table even after accepting their invitations. I’d have to go back to the Lobby, click on their names in my Buddy list, and invite again. There are times when even numerous attempts wouldn’t work, so we had to leave the Lobby and enter again to log back in.

When we are able to connect and are now sitting at the game table, that’s when the lagging occurs. The game would hang a couple of times while playing, and it would sometimes take about 20-30 seconds before the move made by other players would reflect on my side.

The Internet connection could be a cause for this, so if you experience the same, try playing where the Internet source is closest to you. Hopefully the developer/s can improve this aspect of the game, as it can get in the way.

Final Thoughts

While nothing beats playing a board game with the family, Ticket to Ride Online is a great train adventure board game to play with family, friends, and with people from all over the world. The game exercises your mind, pushing you to think of all the possibilities that could lead you to victory over your opponents.

If paired up with the iOS versions, it makes a great digital board game to play during family nights. It’s definitely won a spot in my favorite games list in my Applications folder, and I’m sure others looking for a high quality game to play on the Mac would love it too.

Have you tried playing Ticket to Ride Online on your Mac? What are your thoughts about the game? Share your experiences in the comments below.

Hot off the presses, here’s Mac AppStorm’s weekly picks of the best (and free) deals on the App Store for this week.

Enjoy!

Amoneon

A drawing tool and social network for neon paintings? Sure, there have been wackier ideas – I’ll give you that. Amoneon allows you to create the perfect neon painting either from an existing image or on a new canvas and has plenty of tools, brushes and shapes built in to keepyou busy. The icing on the cake for me, however, is the spirograph function, so you can create those weird geometric shapes like I used to do when I was younger. Pure genius – and free.

Price: € 4.99 – free
Developer: EMitte Digital Limited
App Store link: Amoneon

cmdQuit

One of my pet hates on Mac is the fact that when you click on the little red button of a program, it doesn’t quit automatically and sits open in the background hogging system resources (this is probably still the Windows user in me). cmdQuit is a great little utility which can automatically close down all open programs with one single click, freeing up your computer’s resources.
Price: € 0.79 – free
Developer: Diego Arraez
App Store link: cmdQuit

Easy Screen Record Lite

If you’ve ever wanted to make a screencast for either a tutorial, a review or simply just out of fun, then Easy Screen Record Lite is the app for you. The program supports high quality audio either from your Mac system or via an external microphone (if, for example, you want to add your own audio track such as a description) and you can record either full-screen videos or just the area you choose. The Lite version only records videos of up to 300 seconds and if you need longer, then the full version is currently on offer at $4.99 (regular price $8.99).

Price: € 0.79 – free
Developer: GoodLuck
App Store link: Easy Screen Record Lite

With the arrival of CS6, Adobe is trying out a new business model. Instead of you forking over a huge chunk of your hard earned cash once every few years to stay up to date on the latest industry standards in professional creative software, you now have the option to subscribe and pay a monthly fee.

For an introductory price of $49.99 per month, Adobe will let you download and use any CS6 application, store your work in the cloud, and automatically receive any updates that come along.

Today we want to know what you think of this strategy. Will you continue to buy CS versions outright or do you like the idea of subscribing? Once you’ve voted in the poll, let us know whether or not you like this direction for the industry as a whole. Would you subscribe to MS Office or iWork? Why or why not?

Thanks to personal finance applications, managing and tracking budgets, expenses, cash flows, and potential savings is easier than ever and far less time-consuming. We’ve covered quite a few finance apps for the Mac in the past few months, which shows a growing interest in this category.

We did a round-up of 7 finance software for the Mac two years ago, so I thought it would be interesting to refresh things and take a look at today’s choices for personal finance software. If you’re wondering what’s new, popular, and consistent in the money management category, check out the apps below!

Most finance apps are higher in price range than productivity apps or games. Visit the developer’s website and see if they have free trial that you can download before making the purchase at the Mac App Store.

New Additions

Let’s begin with a couple of additions since our last finance app roundup.

Looking Back

Now that we’ve covered the newer additions, let’s take a look at what has changed or improved for the older batch of finance apps for the Mac.

MoneyWell

Moneywell, the popular envelope-style budgeting app, is now one of the most recommended finance apps in the industry. It’s got a shiny new icon, a slick interface design, faster synching, and is fully operational on OS X Lion. There’s a wide range of new features as well, such as event-based budgeting, interactive reports, smart filtering, and many more. Read how Moneywell works in this in-depth review.

Price: $49.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.7 or later, 64-bit
Developer: No Thirst Software

How Do You Manage Your Money?

We’ve seen a couple of great Mac apps for personal finance management. Some have improved over the years while others have take on different strategies and approaches to managing money.

This goes to show that there is a thriving need for great finance software for the Mac. Hopefully, we’ll see plenty more that can help us manage our finances effectively.

About a month ago, the world learned of one of the first malware threats to do real damage to a large swath of Mac users. Known as “Flashback” because it masked itself as an update to Adobe Flash, the trojan reportedly infected over half a million Mac users. Once the trojan successfully installed itself in a user’s system, it harvested user names and passwords from the web browser and sent them back to who knows where. It took Apple about a week to respond to threat, issuing a software update that removed “the most common variants” of the trojan, but that’s still a lot of user names and passwords that got compromised.

Prior to Flashback, Macs had been largely regarded as virtually free from malware. After Flashback, many Mac users might want to start thinking about getting themselves some security protection. With that being said, Mac-directed malware is still a bit of a rarity. Which is why, if you’re going to add third-party protections to your Mac, you might want to start your shopping with a price comparison. That’s where BitDefender Virus Scanner comes in. It’s a virus scanner at the perfect price: free. The question is, will you get what you pay for?

Overview

After downloading the latest definitions from the Bitdefender servers, Bitdefender Virus Scanner can scan your Mac for all known malware, including malware for PCs (to help prevent you from inadvertently spreading them to your PC-using friends). It can find all sorts of malware, including:

• Adware
• Keyloggers
• Viruses
• Rootkits
• Spyware
• Trojans
• Worms

If it finds any malware, Bitdefender Virus Scanner can send the offending file into Quarantine, which prevents it from be executed or read. Once in Quarantine, the file can either be restored or deleted from the system.

Using Bitdefender

The program is as easy to use as can be. The window gives you four buttons to choose from. You can scan “critical locations” (which means all the Home folders of the various users of your Mac), your entire system (including any connected disks), just your running applications (including the files they access), or a specific item (such as a file, folder, or volume).

Once you click the button you want, you’re basically done. The software starts doing its thing and you can go do something else. The first time I ran the program, it took about 10 minutes for the software to download the latest malware definitions from the Internet over my DSL connection. The second time I ran it, it took about a minute to check back for new definitions. Once it had the latest info on all the stuff the bad guys want to do to my Mac, it set about scouting all of my files for traces of their mal-intentions.

With two user accounts on my Mac, it took Bitdefender about 25 minutes to scan my “critical locations” and come back with a clean bill of health (which was a good thing, since my Mac had been one of the 550,000 computers infected with Flashback).

Once that was done, I set it to work on my whole system (which includes two external hard drives to go with my internal drive), and this time, I wasn’t so lucky. While scanning my Mail library, it found a four different trojans in my gmail account. Sure, the trojans were directed at PCs rather than Macs, and yes, they were actually in my SPAM folder, so there was zero chance of me sending them to anybody, but still, they were there and Bitdefender found them and quarantined them. It also, to my delight, straight-up deleted one of them. Take that, bad guy!

But here’s the semi-downside. It took Bitdefender hours and hours and hours to scan my whole system. So if you’re gonna scan your whole system, do it before you go to bed. If you’re lucky, it’ll be done when you wake up.

Oh, and on a semi-picky note, once the elapsed time went over an hour, it became virtually impossible for me to figure out how much time had elapsed. If you look at the screenshot above, you’ll see that 00 hours, 04 minutes, and 42 seconds had elapsed between the time I clicked scan and the time I took the screenshot. Easy enough, right?

Well, check this out. During my whole-system scan, the elapsed time displayed the following: 02:147:-7063, with the the next second being 02:147:-7062. Now, I might not be the sharpest tool in the woodshed, but I’m not exactly the dullest either, and I can’t for the life of me figure out what those numbers refer to or understand why they’re using negative numbers counting towards zero.

While this is just a user-interface bug rather than an issue with the core purpose of the app, it still makes you wonder. If they got this part wrong, what else might be going wrong that I can’t see? Of course, this is a free app, so maybe they put their focus on the important stuff and left these little UI details to sort out later. At least, that’s what we can hope is happening.

Some Added Bonuses

One of the neat things about Bitdefender is that it uses drag and drop, so if you download something questionable from the Internet, all you need to do to scan it for malware is drag the file out of your Downloads folder and drop it on the Bitdefender icon. A few seconds later, voila!, you’ll know if it’s virus free.

Bitdefender also comes with an online account called “My Bitdefender,” where you can get free access to all kinds of services, including protection of your Facebook and Twitter accounts, scans for possible identity theft, parental controls and more. They’ll try to upsell you to some premium services as well, but you can ignore those pretty easily and just get the free stuff. With the Facebook and Twitter protections, you’ll be able to stop worrying about what stupid apps are trying to take over your status updates.

Final Thoughts

With Flashback confirming the reality of the malware threat to Mac users and the growing user base enticing more malware programmers to attack our beloved platform, it’s starting to make sense, for the first time since the arrival of Mac OS X, for Mac users to protect themselves above and beyond Apple’s pre-installed security measures. Unless you’re super paranoid, however, I don’t see why you’d shell out any real money for the protection, especially when Bitdefender Virus Scanner seems to do such a capable job for free (even if it doesn’t know how to count time).

In short, it seems to me that downloading this free software from the Mac App Store is a no-brainer for any Mac users who care half a whiff about defending their systems.

With only 4 weeks to go until Apple’s annual WWDC conference, it seems like the Cupertino-based company can’t keep the lid on that constantly bubbling rumour pot. Today, strong rumours emerged concerning the new MacBook Pro, which is rumoured to be announced on June 11th along with a refresh of the iMac range, OS X Mountain Lion and iOS 6.

According to the report from the supply chain, the new MacBook Pro will have a 15-inch retina display, a USB 3.0 port, allowing for potential transfer speeds of up to 5 Gbps, which although is half the transfer speed of Apple’s Thunderbolt offering, it is supported on a wider range of devices, including portable hard drives and some newer smartphones.

Although only a mockup, the new MacBook Pro range has a slimmer form factor and no SuperDrive (available as an optional extra)

The new model has also received a significant design revamp, with a new thinner form factor similar to that on the MacBook Air, no CD/DVD drive and a new Power Button on the keyboard, replacing the old Eject button. A rumoured mockup shows the new MacBook Pro having three USB 3.0 ports, a Thunderbolt port, two audio in/out jacks and an SD card slot.

Although there’s currently no concrete information on the quality of the new retina display, it has been quoted as “jaw-dropping” and “definitely the most important Mac innovation in years”, according to 9to5Mac. We have already seen evidence of the fact these kinds of displays are coming to the Mac with high-resolution icons in both the Mountain Lion Developer Previews as well as the latest update to OS X, 10.7.4.

The new MacBook Pro range is rumoured to feature a high-resolution retina display similar to that on the iPhone 4/4S and new iPad

The new MacBook Pros are also rumoured to run off Intel’s new range of Ivy Bridge processors, providing quad-core architecture as well as support for that beefed-up display. Although they have not yet been officially confirmed (and are unlikely to be until the official announcement), leaked Geekbench benchmarks show that the new MacBook Pro scores a very commendable score of 12252 (2.7 GHz processor with 8 GB of RAM).

Although not confirmed, the new MacBook Pro scores a very high GeekBench score of 12252 (2.7 GHz with 8 GB of RAM)

Of course, these are nothing but rumours but the evidence is all there. We will, of course, have to hold on to our horses for a month to see what really does surface out of Infinite Loop. But given all these clues, plus the fact that rumours that surface just before an Apple announcement tend to be true, we can be pretty sure what they’ve been cooking up.

Are You Excited?

Have these rumours stirred up your interest? Are you going to buy a new MacBook Pro when they are announced? What other features do you think they’ll have? Share your thoughts and opinions in the Comments section below!

Our featured sponsor this week is MindNode Pro, an easy and flexible brainstorming tool.

With MindNode Pro, you can collect, organize and outline your ideas into attractive mind maps. Most of us don’t think in bullet points, instead ideas come to us in a scattered, organic fashion that challenges traditional note-taking methods. With MindNode Pro, you can capture your ideas as they come to you in a way that helps you make sense of the complex nature of brainstorming.

MindNode Pro is incredibly easy to use. You create nodes right in place on the canvas without any trips to the menu bar. Use branches to connect directly related ideas and cross connections to show a relationship between any two nodes on your map. You can even link your nodes to files and images, with built-in QuickLook functionality.

If you’re looking for a stellar mind mapping application, then you’ve found it. MindNode Pro is a joy to use and I’m confident that you’ll enjoy it as much as I do.

Try It Today!

If you’d like to give MindNode a try, you can grab the scaled down free version. This will get you acquainted with the workflow and interface, then when you’re ready to move up to the awesome features we mentioned above, grab MindNode Pro from the Mac App Store.

Also be sure to check out MindNode Touch, the best way to create beautiful mind maps on your iOS device.

In the Apple universe, certain developers are rockstars – from the OmniGroup to Panic, their apps are high-quality, beautiful, and full of personality. So when developer Marc Edwards and his team at Bjango released their latest app, Skala Preview, the Mac community had high expectations.

Is this tool for designers a follow-up hit from the team who created iStat, or is Bjango just another one-hit-wonder? Read on and find out!

Overview

The Mac app and it's iPhone companion.

If you’re interested in Skala Preview, you’re probably a designer; and as it’s only use is to send interface previews to your iOS device, designers are just about the only people who need apply. That being said, for designers of iOS applications, Skala is an invaluable tool.

In the words of the developer, Skala Preview is “the fastest way to send pixel perfect, colour perfect design previews from your Mac to your iPhone or iPad”, and that’s really what the app excels at. To send images using Skala Preview you can either connect the app to Photoshop or drag-and-drop images from Finder. The Mac app only costs a few bucks ($5 at the time of this write-up) and it’s iOS companions are free so Skala preview would seem to be a pretty obvious choice for most designers.

Interface Design

If there’s one thing that Bjango can really pat themselves on the back for – it’s great UI design. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that Skala Preview is one of the most beautiful apps on the Mac today. That being said, the interface is pretty barebones – much like the app itself.

The majority of the app is reserved for a drop zone for your images, and there’s not much else aside from a few settings menus and a help link that kicks you out to the website. Moreover, there’s no way to open an image from inside the app, and as the “File” menu is all but blank – you’ve got to drag your image into the drop zone or the app icon. But while the interface is simple, I found myself questioning its purpose as a stand alone app – it seems like a menubar applet would be better suited for such a simple utility.

Functionality

Skala also works great on the iPhone and iPad.

Skala works great 99% of the time, with only an occasional hiccup which might even simply be network issues on my end. In order to use Skala Preview, you’ll need to have the Mac and any companion devices on the same network, so keep that in mind.

That being said, unless you use Photoshop Skala doesn’t really make much sense, as you could theoretically accomplish even more with a simple Dropbox folder. With all that in mind, I wonder why the developer couldn’t just have created a Skala Preview folder on your Mac where you could save images from other apps which would automatically be beamed to your device using Skala. In addition, such an approach would really eliminate the need for anything more than a menubar app.

Despite such a major shortcoming, Skala Preview still has quite a bit working in it’s favor. For example, its color-blindness testing feature allows you to see your image from the eyes of someone who is colorblind – allowing you to ensure that interface elements don’t blend together. To be honest, that feature alone might make Skala Preview worthwhile for many designers. In addition, Skala’s images are color-perfect, which is good, but I couldn’t really tell the difference between an image sent with Dropbox versus Skala.

Skala Preview also allows viewing on multiple devices, meaning that if you’re wondering how your design will look on an iPhone 4, iPhone 3Gs, and an iPad, it can all be done without a hitch. Finally, Skala can capture images from your clipboard allowing you to quickly preview it’s contents on your iOS device.

What’s Missing

What’s missing in Skala Preview? Honestly, quite a bit, but for $5 most of it’s shortcomings can be excused. First off, Skala Preview is only properly integrated into Photoshop. Moreover, the way the app connects to Photoshop isn’t available in other apps, which means fans of apps like Pixelmator and Acorn are out of luck for the forceable future. The other major omission from Skala Preview is version history. As a designer, being able to go back and compare designs to older versions is priceless, so I really felt the absence of this feature. In addition, since there’s no “Skala Folder” on your Mac, having to drag-and-drop images into Skala Preview can get tedious to say the least.

Wrap Up

In short – Skala Preview is functionally almost perfect, but only with its admittedly barebones feature set. If you’re not a designer who lives in Photoshop, Skala Preview probably isn’t your cup of tea. But if you do – it will probably change your life, or at the very least – your development workflow.

Cutting out the hassle of exporting images and uploading them to Dropbox or emailing them to yourself simply to preview them on an iOS device is well worth the measly $5 that Bjango is asking. So while I’d like to see features such as a dropbox style folders or version history, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Skala to any iOS designer who uses Photoshop. For users of other applications, that quick-and-dirty Dropbox folder just might do the trick, although you’ll lose the color-blindness-testing capabilities as well as the clipboard integration. So, in the case of Marc Edwards and Bjango, lightning has struck twice.

Author’s Note: After writing this review, I got a chance to have a quick chat with the developer and he assured me that version tracking is definitely on the radar. With that in mind, Skala preview is really shaping up to be a must-have app.

This week has been a busy one in the world of Apple-related news so without further ado, here’s Mac AppStorm’s weekly happenings roundup.

Happy reading!

Microsoft trying to persuade iCloud users to switch over to SkyDrive

Not wanting to be undermined by the competition, Microsoft has set up a page on their website trying to convince iCloud users on why they should switch over to SkyDrive. Microsoft touts the fact that SkyDrive users can access files anywhere (rather than only with programs that are compatible with iCloud), the tight integration with Office and the ability to share notes created in OneNote with SkyDrive.

The post on Microsoft’s website, persuading iCloud users to convert to SkyDrive

The competition, although friendly, is great for consumers as they are the ones who get the best of both worlds. For now, there’s no clear winner – both systems have their advantages and disadvantages – but given the tight bond between iCloud and OS X, as well as the fact that the upcoming Mountain Lion release features even better integration, Microsoft’s attempts might not be enough to woo hardcore Apple users to convert. Not yet, anyway.

Rumour: Mountain Lion may be released earlier than expected

According to AppleInsider, an unnamed source claimed that Apple’s European arm has already been training its staff to answer questions about the upcoming release of Mountain Lion – something which the company has traditionally avoided in the past in order to minimise the risk of information leaking.

The availability and release schedule of the Developer Previews of Mountain Lion may also hint towards an earlier-than-expected release date. Unlike Lion, the Developer Previews of Mountain Lion were available to registered developers with Apple up to 25 days earlier than those of Lion and if Apple follows the same schedule as it did with Lion, then the gold master of Mountain Lion would be ready on June 6, with the final product going on sale to the public around June 25 – a mere 10 days after WWDC ’12 is due to end.

This is, of course, pure speculation and Apple is known for its tight secrecy and hushed attitude towards any possible speculation but the clues are there, so we may be treated sooner than we think. The official announcement, however, is likely to come at WWDC ’12 so until then, we’ll just have to wait and see what’s in store.

More Evidence of Retina-Enabled Macs in OS X 10.7.4

Although it was touted as a fairly standard release with a few security patches and bug fixes, the latest release of OS X, version 10.7.4, has even more evidence hinting at upcoming retina-enabled Macs. AppleInsider reported that the icon for Apple’s default text editor application, TextEdit has been increased to 1,024 x 1,024 pixels, double that of the previous version Lion at a mere 512 x 512 pixels, with its size jumping up from 209 KB to 1.7 MB.

The new TextEdit icon in OS X 10.7.4, with a higher resolution of 1,024 x 1,024 pixels

This doubling of the icon’s resolution puts it in retina-quality territory and is another strong hint that Apple is planning to equip some of its computers (maybe even the whole iMac and MacBook series) with higher-quality displays similar to those on the iPhone and new iPad. It does seem that Apple has had this idea for quite some time – the first release of Lion included high-quality versions of the App Store and Launchpad icons and more evidence was found in the various Developer Previews of Mountain Lion however given all these signs, we can be pretty sure that Apple have been planning this for some time and the official announcement will surely not disappoint.

Adobe Lightroom 4 available on the App Store

Lightroom 4, which was announced back in March, is now available on the Mac App Store, making it the fourth Adobe title on the App Store already alongside Photoshop Elements 10 Editor, Premiere 10 Elements Editor and Adobe Revel (formerly known as Carousel). It is priced at $149.99, which is the same price as if you bought it directly from Adobe but seeing as you can get a discounted ($99) version if you buy Creative Suite 6, it doesn’t really seem that much of a deal.

Lightroom 4 on the App Store is priced at $149.99

Lightroom 4 from the App Store clocks in at 388 MB and you’ll need to be running OS X 10.6.8 or higher to be able to use it. Another interesting fact is that although Adobe is a massive company, Apple still charges them the same amount of commission per download, meaning that each copy of Lightroom 4 purchased from the App Store nets them a cool (and easy) $45.

Spotify client refreshed with playlist-based radio and Tumblr support

Spotify’s desktop client received a major update to it on Friday which brought along playlist-based radio, support for the blogging service Tumblr, instant search results and embeddable Spotify Play buttons for use on web pages.

The new Playlist Radio feature in Spotify, which suggests similar songs based on the one you are listening to

The playlist-based radio allows you to listen to similar music based on the song you are listening to by clicking on Start Playlist Radio and the new Instant Search feature means that search results are rendered instantly in the main window.

The update is rolling out to all Spotify users gradually however if you don’t want to wait for it then head over to the Spotify website to download the latest version.

Browsing around online and trying to figure out which app to buy can be difficult. So many developers offer app demos and they provide a cool glimpse into the workings of the app. This is great for customers and developers alike.

If you are a developer you probably would love a way to showcase your app online. Online demos are the wave of the future and that is exactly what Sound Stage helps you create. Is Sound Stage the perfect solution? You will have to read on to find out!

Getting Started

Getting Started with Sound Stage is not as straightforward as one would think, it requires a lot of moving parts. Aside from purchasing the app from the Mac App Store and installing it, it would be in your best interest to get the iOS SDK from Apple. While New Leaders, the developers, maintains that the SDK is not “required”, Sound Stage would be next to useless without it.

So to install the SDK you will need Xcode. Xcode was included in all versions of OS X from Snow Leopard 10.6 and back. In 10.7 Lion, Apple removed it and it is available in the Mac App Store as a download. The latest Xcode, when downloaded from the Mac App Store, includes the latest iOS SDK. If you have a previous version of Xcode installed, you may need to download the latest SDK to get started.

While being pretty much forced to have the iOS SDK and Xcode installed may seem like a hassle, most who use Sound Stage would already have them installed anyway. Using the SDK, Xcode, and the iOS Simulator in combination with Sound Stage delivers the best results.

Features

The main objective of Sound Stage is for you to have the capability to record demos for your iOS apps. However, Sound Stage has a few extra features that will incentivize the process and make it a little more fun!

Quite possibly my favorite feature is backdrops. A backdrop allows you to add a background of your choosing to accompany your app demo. So you can choose patterns, logos, or photos that might match the look and feel of your app.

Backdrops

To further add to the quality of your finished product, you can easily add a voice over or a soundtrack. It is really easy to drop in the audio. The only bad part about the audio feature is the lack of control. I cannot control microphone levels or soundtrack levels. Sound Stage just goes on whatever the computer sound defaults are, this is really inconvenient.

It is very nice that Sound Stage includes a direct YouTube upload feature within the app. This way you can just finish and upload to your possible audience within minutes, all within one app.

YouTube

Performance

There is quite a bit to be said about Sound Stage when it comes to performance. Wow, it is just a plain resource hog. It will severely bog down your system, especially when processing. The longer you are recording, the more it slows down your computer. The slowdown is instantaneous when you press record, and is very noticeable. I have used many other screen recording apps that were recording the whole screen, not just a small iPhone simulator screen, and I almost couldn’t even tell they were running. You can’t blame it on the HD recording either.

As proved by the picture below, Sound Stage used 90% of my computer’s resources just to export an 18 second clip. Astonishing! Just imagine the agony of rendering something longer than 18 second’s worth. I did not have to imagine it, as I experienced it first hand. The computer was jammed and almost un-usable. This is a 2011 model iMac that Sound Stage is being used on and it still does not help.

Performance

Usability

There are many little quirks and problems with Sound Stage that affects its usability. The first of which is the pre-requisite of having Xcode and iOS SDK installed. This could add several hours to your install time. Sound Stage also does not support retina display iPhones. So when you are creating a retina app for the iPhone and try to record a demo in Sound Stage, you will get a zoomed in interface where items are obscured (see below) and it is ridiculous.

Sound Stage Retina Problem

Along with no retina support there is also no iPad support. So you simply lose out if you have an iPad app that you want to show off. There are also no built in editing features. If you want to perform editing, you must go and use yet another product. If that were not enough just try to use Sound Stage in landscape, you can’t!

Landscape

Along with those big usability aspects you must also consider that it produces files that are absolutely too large. An eighteen second video was 100mb and a one minute video was 340mb. It could easily get into the gigabytes when recording several minutes worth of video. As a result of such large video sizes you might run into problems when uploading to YouTube or on your own website. It creates a problem when it takes the video an unusually long time to load. As a final gripe, the processing time gets very excessive for even short video times.

Conclusion

My experience with Sound Stage was rather disappointing. The interface is very minimalist and there really is not much to talk about. Sound Stage has severe performance issues that could literally leave your computer frozen and slowed to a crawl. Sound Stage also requires additional software that you may or may not have. Sound Stage also lacks support for the iPad, Retina display, and landscape view. There are many issues and gripes I have with Sound Stage and without an update, I just cannot recommend it unless you fall into their very limited use case.

Do you have an opinion you would like to share? Do you know of a better app? Well I would love to hear from you in the comments below, let us know what you think!