Category: Mac

We’d like to say a big thank you to last month’s Mac.AppStorm sponsors, and the great software they create! If you’re interested in advertising, you can purchase a banner advertisement through BuySellAds, or sign up for a Weekly Sponsorship slot.

Thank you to the fantastic applications we had sponsoring each week during the month, all of which we personally recommend you download and try out!

• Zepheer – An awesome and fun way to edit photos on your Mac. Zepheer is so easy that absolutely anyone can use it. You simply drag a photo into the intuitive, single window interface and you’re ready to start applying filters, borders, vignettes and more.
• Instant – This app brings the fun of Polaroid instant cameras to your desktop. There was something great about the old instant Polaroid cameras, an allure that still lasts to this day. Instant is an officially licensed Polaroid app that seeks to bring this timelessly enjoyable experience to the Mac by mimicking the workflow of a real Polaroid camera.
• iDraw – A fantastic vector illustration application. What Pixelmator is to Photoshop, iDraw is to Illustrator. This amazing app will blow you away in its ability to provide professional level vector editing capabilities at a price that you simply won’t believe.
• Radium – The amazing menu bar Internet radio player. We’ve been huge fans of Radium for years now. It’s the fastest, simplest way to access Internet radio from all over the world (50 countries and 100 languages!). The workflow is effortless: just type in a station name, genre or city and you’ll instantly get a list of results to choose from and can begin streaming immediately.
• Studiometry – The ultimate organizational tool for professionals. Studiometry is a powerhouse of project management that’s been serving the industry for over eight years. Whether you’re managing contacts, generating estimates, tracking work, or billing clients, this one app has you covered in a single beautifully cohesive workflow.

Finally, thanks to you for reading AppStorm this month, and for checking out the software that our sponsors create. I really appreciate it – you make the site what it is!

Time management is incredibly important for many people. We all have busy lives and the more we can get out of our time working, the more time we have for other things. With there being only twenty-four hours in a day it really comes down to being as efficient as we can with the time we have.

Time Sink is an application that helps you become more efficient. More specifically, it tracks the time you spend in different applications on your Mac and you’ll be able to see exactly where you’re spending your time. Trust me, you may think you’re operating with the utmost level of efficiency, but I’m certain the data will uncover some room for improvement.

Introduction

Let me paint a scenario for us to use as an example for this review. Let’s say you’re a new freelancer and have recently been feeling like you’re just not as productive as you thought you would be once you made the jump to this lifestyle. You feel like you organize your time fairly well and just can’t seem to nail it down, but something is up. Well, maybe you’re not spending your time on what you should be and you’re just not realizing it.

Right, I’m sure you’ve never been there. Me neither. For the sake of this review, just follow along with me. I’ve installed Time Sink to track where I spend my time while I’m on my Macbook to hopefully provide myself some insight into exactly what I’m doing. How does it work you ask? Let’s take a look.

What it Does

Time Sink is a fairly simple application that runs in the background without you ever needing to worry about it. When you download it, fire it up and it’ll start tracking right away.

Organizer

The application will track your application usage and record both active time (foreground) and time running. So for example, I use The Hit List as my task manager application and while I have this thing running just about all day I probably don’t spend all that much time with it actually active. I use a shortcut key to pop up an input task window and will refer to it periodically throughout the day for a minute here or there. In this case, the total time used would be large, but the foreground time would be much smaller.

That is really about all Time Sink actually does. Where it really becomes useful is in the customization and reporting.

Customizing

Time Sink has a fair amount of flexibility to allow you to tweak exactly what you track. If you spend a little time configuring the application right away you should be able to tune it to get just about exactly what you’re looking for.

Blacklist

If you’d like to ignore applications you can blacklist them (Time Sink does ignore itself if you were wondering). You can block entire applications or use wildcard characters to block windows of a certain name.

Blacklist

Pools

Application grouping is another way to get a little more out of Time Sink than you would with the default settings. This allows you to group applications together for whatever reason you see fit. You can then see reports based on those groups (we’ll check that out in a bit).

The pools section of the organizer

If you’re a web developer, you could put all of the applications you use in a “development” group. This way you can get a sense of the amount of time you spend working on development. On a more simple, higher level you could create a group for “work” and a group for “play”. That way you could have a high overview of the time you spend working versus playing.

Activity Report

The real value in any application like this is being able to pull out the data in a useful manner. Time Sink has a few different options to do this as well.

The Activity Report is the main method for viewing your data. It displays in a simple bar chart based upon the different applications running and also on the groups you have set up. You can view by certain time periods by adjusting the times at the bottom of the report or by clicking and dragging on the window. This acts like a zoom-in essentially and lets you view a specific time interval.

Activity Report

You can simply open up this view to look at the report. You can also view the report as your desktop background, an icon in the dock or both.

Activity Report as the background and as an icon on the dock

I’ll be honest, neither of those seem like good ideas to me, but I suppose some folks might find them useful.

Exporting

Exports of your data can be exported as a comma delimited file either manually or automatically. You’re not going to be able to export some pretty file. You’re more or less getting the raw data.

Export settings

You have some export customization options as you can see. So, as with most other portions of this application you can fine-tune its functionality.

Example of a CSV export viewed in Numbers

With a little work done upfront on your end you could really automate the data collection that Time Sink performs. An automatic export could be set along with the timers being reset. For example, you could do a daily export everyday at 11:00 pm and then reset the timers once a day as well. That will give you a snapshot of your work every day. Then if you want to get really crazy you could probably build some Applescripts to combine your data and build a Numbers chart for you. I’m not going to do that, but it’s certainly possible if you’re crazy enough about your data.

Time Sink’s main functionality is recoding and accumulating the data so the ability to simply export the data a great feature. This really opens it up for you to do whatever you’d like with that data.

Conclusion

For the freelancer, an application like this, with a little time spent customizing, could provide some really useful data. You might discover some places where you’re wasting your time, or maybe even completely the opposite. Maybe you’ll discover you should be taking more work breaks. The bottom line is that just about everyone could see some benefit from knowing this information about their computer usage.

Time Sink does a really great job of compiling the data that you want. The reporting functionality built in is pretty basic, but still, I’m guessing it’s quite sufficient for a lot of people. But the fact that data can be exported really opens up some doors to an endless amount of analysis should you want to take it further. $4.99 seems like a pretty reasonable price for the information this application can provide you. It’s not really a stretch to say that it can have a direct impact on how you live your life.

Our featured sponsor this week is Zepheer, an awesome and fun way to edit photos on your Mac.

Zepheer is so easy that absolutely anyone can use it. You simply drag a photo into the intuitive, single window interface and you’re ready to start applying filters, borders, vignettes and more.

Zepheer has over fifty effects divided into five categories: cameras, artistic, abstract, style and vintage. All effects take just a click to apply and are fully customizable. No matter what style you’re going for, Zepheer can help you get there in seconds flat. Once you’re finished, sharing to your favorite social networks is only a click away.

Try It Free!

I’m sure you’re just itching to get your hands on Zepheer to try it for yourself. Well you’re in luck, because there’s a free demo on the developer’s website.

When you’re ready to make the jump to the full version, you’ll find Zepheer on the Mac App Store.

With features like voicemail transcription, a master number for all your phones, free text messaging, and custom greetings based on who’s calling, Google Voice has become a wildly popular service for cell phone users. I’ve been using Google Voice for years, and for the most part I’ve found it to be a near-perfect communication tool.

The Google Voice iPhone app is decent, (the Android version is understandably better), but as long you’re sitting at the computer, it’s simpler to use the web interface to access voicemail and send text messages. GrowlVoice eliminates the need to open your browser to use Google Voice, and adds very convenient Growl notifications. How well does it perform?

The Basics

In case it wasn’t already clear: You need to be a Google Voice user to use GrowlVoice. If you’ve never tried it, I’d recommend giving it a shot. It’s free, so you can go try it out with no strings attached. I personally use it for the unified number, which means when people call my Google Voice number, it rings all my phones I’ve set up with forwarding, so I don’t have to give people my work number, home number and cell number. It also creates a good privacy barrier, because you can avoid giving out your real numbers. If someone is calling you too frequently, you can easily block them. Google’s experience with Gmail has made them good at identifying spam, and that expertise has carried over into screening for spam calls.

GrowlVoice is a simple yet powerful menubar app that attempts to free Google Voice from your browser, giving you access to all these features (and many more) right from your desktop. While it gets its name from the ever-popular Growl, this app actually has many more features than just pushing Google Voice notifications to your screen.

Growl

Let’s start with the most obvious feature: Growl integration. Say you are sitting at your computer and your friend texts you. Your phone will buzz in your pocket, and a Growl notification will pop up with their name and the full message at the same time. It may sound somewhat lazy to enjoy a feature that spares you the simple task of pulling your phone out of your pocket, but if you get a lot of texts, it quickly feels like a fantastic luxury.

An example of a text message notification via Growl

Now that you’ve gotten the notification, you can click on it to open up GrowlVoice’s menu that will display the message and let you respond. As good as you may have gotten over the years at typing on your smartphone (or dumbphone), most of us will always be faster typing on the computer. Now I can respond to text messages as quickly as emails.

Your text messages display like a conversation in iChat

The convenience of these notifications extends to calls as well. Any incoming calls pop up with your contact’s name and picture. GrowlVoice gives you the option of using photos and contact information from either your Mac’s address book or Google address book. You will also get notifications for missed calls, new voicemails, and voicemails that have been transcribed.

Calling

Another convenient feature is the ability to initiate calls from the app. When I say initiate, I mean you can select a contact to call, and Google Voice will call your phone. When you pick it up, it will call the person you are dialing. Most smartphones make looking up a contact pretty easy, but I found this feature to be great for my landline phone that just has the number pad, so I didn’t have to type in any numbers.

The call initiation feature may seem unnecessary, but I love it.

Unfortunately, despite offering free VoIP calls from within Gmail, Google doesn’t allow you to use their service for calls outside of the browser. It would be nice to be able to use GrowlVoice to make calls directly from the menubar, but until Google changes its policy, we’re out of luck.

Main Window and Preferences

When you click on the icon in the menubar, you get a menu that pops up. This is where you’ll find messages and call history. Google Voice works like Gmail in that you have an inbox, but you can either save everything via the archive button, or delete it permanently. You can also mark messages as unread, and “star” messages to flag them for later reference. All of these commands are available to you from GrowlVoice’s menu.

Right clicking on a message gives you information about the person who sent it, as well as the ability to archive, delete, star, and mark it as spam

GrowlVoice gives you extensive control over the app in the preferences window. You can select sounds to play when you send messages and get notifications. These notifications can either be Growl, or the built-in system from the app. You can turn certain types of notifications off, (if, for instance, you only want to be alerted to new text messages but not missed calls and voicemails).

The preferences also cater to power users. You can select customized keyboard shortcuts for common actions, such as creating a new text or placing a call. You can even have windows automatically class after you send a text. Little touches like this make the app feel very polished, and if you send a lot of texts, you’ll appreciate that.

Negatives

The one issue that I’ve run into with GrowlVoice is stability, but this isn’t actually the developer’s fault. Google has a habit of changing the API suddenly and these changes break apps like GrowlVoice. However, I have found the developer to be extremely quick about fixing the app when these situations arise.

There are no major bugs that I’ve come across. One minor problem is that contact photos don’t always appear in the Growl popup. The photos always work in the menu, though.

Another potential negative to consider is getting too many alerts. Using GrowlVoice will add to that seemingly endless cacophony of beeps, buzzes and chimes from your devices whenever you get a notification. If you use push email like I do, I get a beep on my phone and computer at the same time, and now the same is true of text messages. I personally don’t mind it, but it’s worth being aware of.

Conclusion

I’ve used this app for almost a year, and I love it. It has evolved over that time from a basic, ugly, and buggy app into a clean-looking, well-performing tool that I use daily. I’ve never liked typing on my iPhone, and the ability to send text messages from my laptop is by itself worth the price of GrowlVoice. I don’t throw 10/10 ratings around often, but GrowlVoice is perfect.

I’d love to see Apple consider bringing the iPhone and Mac closer together with some sort of integration like this. Maybe when your iPhone and Mac are on the same wireless network, you could use the forthcoming Messages app on Mountain Lion to send messages to your iPhone, and then out as a text message to your non-iMessage using buddies.

This week has been pretty full up with all sorts going on in the Apple world, in particular the official announcement of WWDC 2012 (where we are probably going to see the proper launch of OS X Mountain Lion, a new and updated iMac range and maybe even a sneak preview of iOS 6) and the fact the tickets sold in a mere 2 hours!

In other Apple-related news this week…

Pixelmator updated to version 2.0.3

Pixelmator, the popular low-end alternative to Photoshop for Mac computers received a slight update on Tuesday, bringing it up to version 2.0.3. Notable features include a reduction in the program’s memory footprint (meaning that it will run faster on older systems), a fix for the exporting to web feature and general bug fixes.

Pixelmator 2.0.3 was released on Tuesday with general improvements and bug fixes all round.

The developers of Pixelmator have also listened to user requests to bring back the old Deselect shortcut – in this new version the shortcut is (as in previous versions) Command (?) + D. There is also a Terminal fix for Lion users who want to turn off the Autosave feature – simply open up a new Terminal window and enter the following command:

defaults -currentHost write com.pixelmatorteam.pixelmator "disableAutosave" -bool YES

To get the new version of Pixelmator, head over to the program where it should be waiting for you. If you haven’t got it yet, then you can download a 30-day free trial from their website.

Google Drive and SkyDrive for Mac released

It seems like this week has been the battle of cloud-based storage, with Google releasing its new service Google Drive and Microsoft releasing a Mac client for its service, SkyDrive.

Google Drive was released this week, with 5 GB of free online storage and a Mac client

Google Drive provides users with 5 GB of storage to start off with (beating Dropbox’s introductory 2 GB of space) and you’ll have to have an active Google account to be added to the waiting list (there’s currently quite a long waiting list, however Google will email you when your drive is ready). A Mac client has already been developed and Google promise clients for iPhone and iPad are coming soon. Gmail users also had a choice to rejoice today as due to the launch of Google Drive, their storage space was bumped up to 10 GB, one of the largest space offerings for a webmail client.

To find out more about Google Drive and SkyDrive (and to sign up to them), head over to their websites by clicking on the links above!

Mac App Store cracks the 10,000 app milestone

The Mac App Store, which was bundled in the OS X 10.6.6 release, has finally hit the 10,000 app milestone, with the game Deus Ex: Human Revolution celebrating the achievement. Although a sizeable sum, it is still a fraction of the number of apps available for iOS devices (around 585,000 in March 2012) however given the practicality of purchasing and downloading apps straight onto your computer, this number is sure to rise in the near future.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is available for immediate download (around 15.5 GB in total) from the App Store and is priced at $49.99.

Second update to Office 2011, 14.2.1, released

A mere two weeks after Microsoft released the second Service Pack for Office 2011, the company has pushed out a further update to rectify issues reported by several users. According to the official Office for Mac blog, the previous update was pulled because of:

issues that affected a small percentage of users.

Many of the issues were due to Outlook however some users reported problems with Word and Excel as well. The update is recommended for everybody and can be had by either going onto Microsoft AutoUpdate in any Office 2011 program or off Microsoft Support, where a full detailed change log is listed.

Send to Kindle for Mac released

Amazon has released the Send to Kindle application for OS X, meaning that Kindle owners can send documents straight to their Kindle directly from their Mac.

It is now even easier for Mac owners to send documents to their Kindle with Send to Kindle for Mac

The app, which is free, is an improvement over the old system, whereby users would have to e-mail any documents to their Kindle e-mail address, where they would be converted and downloaded automatically onto the user’s Kindle. Send to Kindle also features great OS X integration as well, such as the ability to select multiple documents in Finder, right click on them and click Send to Kindle or from any Mac application that can print as well.

You can download Send to Kindle for Mac directly from Amazon’s website by clicking here.

Apple still 10 years behind Microsoft on security

The CEO of one of the largest internet security software developers, Eugene Kaspersky, made some rather chilling comments this week regarding Macs and their internet security. According to an interview he gave to CBR, Kaspersky believes that, “Apple are still 10 years behind Microsoft in terms of security” and draws light on the recent Flashback trojan which, according to a new study, is still lurking on 650,000 Macs worldwide, despite Apple having officially addressed the problem.

Kaspersky goes onto to say that:

Cyber criminals have now recognised that Mac is an interesting area. Now we have more, it’s not just Flashback or Flashfake. Welcome to Microsoft’s world, Mac. It’s full of malware.

The question of security is a big issue for Mac owners – traditionally they have been seen as pretty much invincible against all viruses (as Apple proudly claims on their website about why you should switch to Mac) – but the new wave of threats against OS X has shown that it certainly is not immune to all viruses, a stark wake-up call for many Mac owners.

If you create apps in addition to using them, then you know that it can be a real pain to optimize your artwork for various devices. Prepo is a free application that aims to make the task of converting retina display artwork to ‘normal’ app artwork less tedious.

Does it succeed in making the conversion process quick and pain free? Read on to find out.

What Is This For Again?

As a designer, it’s important that your application looks great on both the retina iOS displays and the older, non-retina displays. To do this you have to have two different versions of the same graphic.

For example, in order to have an application’s icon look decent on both retina and ‘normal’ displays, one would have to have a version of the icon, aptly called Icon.png, at 72x72px and a retina display artwork, entitled [email protected], at 114x114px.

Many applications on the App Store contain hundreds upon hundreds of different images making up their interfaces and all the different elements of the application, so when the retina display was announced, developers had to work tirelessly to convert their artwork to double the resolution of what it originally was. This is where Prepo comes in and tries to help out.

The purpose of the Prepo is to make that task easier and to make developers more efficient by saving them time by letting Prepo convert their artwork; eliminating the need of the developer to manually resize and save the original artwork as something like a Photoshop document alongside it.

Prepo goes to work when the user drags and drops their retina artwork onto the main window (for this article, we’ll use a [email protected] at 200x200px). The app resizes the image and renames it so that iOS knows which is the retina artwork and which is the non-retina artwork.

In this case, Prepo would resize [email protected] to 100x100px and rename the file to Button.png. This is in contrast to the developer having to modify the retina display artwork’s canvas and image size, removing the “@2x” suffix from the end and saving a whole new file. Sure, this doesn’t sound all that time-consuming, but as I said, many apps can contain hundreds of images so it can potentially take vast amounts of time to convert them without the aid of something like Prepo.

Working with Icons

A terrific feature of Prepo is that you can convert your icons to work with all of iOS’ different icon formats, including the icon that would be used within the built-in Settings app as well within iOS’ Spotlight functionality.

Effortlessly drag your iTunesArtwork.png (512x512px) icon to Prepo and then check whether you want your new icons to be compatible with iPhone and iPad, then press Export, choose a location for the files to be saved and then an additional dialogue will appear that tells you all the different outputted icon files that have been exported and what they correspond to.

Additionally, there’s a supplementary button at the bottom of the new dialogue, “Copy plist”. What this does is copy the names of each icon file and puts them into a Property List format (under the CFBundleIconFiles key to be exact), which you can simply copy into Xcode and then each of the icon files will correspond correctly with your application and inside iOS.

Working with Icons

Interface

Prepo’s interface, like its functionality, is simple and clean and features only a heads-up-display dialogue telling the user that their artwork will be reduced by 50%. When you drop your artwork onto the application, the artwork appears within the application and then you’re able to click the Export button.

Prepo then prompts you and asks where to put the resized file to be saved. After this, the application saves not only the new file with the correct naming, it also duplicates the native retina file in the same location for convenience.

Prepo's Main Interface

Weaknesses

In spite of the fact that Prepo is a considerable application and something that I can see saving many developers lots of time and effort, I believe that it does somewhat lack settings and customization.

For instance, you’re not able to customize an automatic path in which your exported files will be saved. This would be handy and especially useful for large projects in which you’re using the app constantly. At the present time, the user has to keep specifying the output path.

Another issue I’ve found is that the heads-up-display dialogue can become tiresome to manage because every time you close the window then you have to navigate to the Window menu and open a new one. Something else that doesn’t really sit right with me about Prepo is that each of its windows are on top of all other windows, so you cannot simply have Prepo open in the background because it will stick to the top and appear above all other applications, making it a nuisance.

Unretiner

Unretiner is another application that aims to aid developers in making their artwork compatible with both iOS screen types and despite the flaws I just mentioned, Prepo is definitely the superior application in the way that it features the icon conversion. Regardless of that, I believe that Prepo should take a leaf out of Unretiner’s interface-book and go for something slightly more conventional. Unretina, like Prepo, has a disappointing lack of settings and customization – maybe it’s just a retina-app conversion trend – but it’s something that needs to be improved.

Unretiner (top) and Prepo (bottom)

Conclusion

Overall, Prepo is something that I’d definitely recommend you downloaded from the Mac App Store. After all, it can save you a heck of a lot of time and doesn’t cost anything as it’s available for free. Mother Ship Software (the developer of Prepo) also say on their website that there’s plans for Prepo to be made open source in the near future so it will be interesting to see what others addonce the source code is available.

Until then, developers rejoice at the fact that no longer do you have to save multiple Photoshop documents for multiple artwork sizes. Let Prepo take all the drudgery out of screen resolution optimization.

These days, there’s literally an app for everything: keeping recipes, managing projects, invoicing customers, and managing one’s finances. Money management is an especially popular app category now that people can simplify budget tracking and analyze both earnings and expenses all in one window.

We’ve reviewed some of the popular Mac finance apps in the industry in the past, such as Koku, iBank, and Moneywell. These apps are known for their handful of features and innovative UIs, all of which are geared towards informing you exactly where your money goes, where it comes from, how frequent your spending has been for the past few months, and of course what is left in your account. But for today’s review, I’ll be taking a look at another finance app that takes on a simpler route: Savings.

The Savings official website

Savings answers the call for a personal finance app that isn’t intimidating and difficult to use. It removes the extra bells and whistles and maintains a clean and straightforward design. With only the bare necessities for you to use, you can tell that this is an app built for users who are new to personal finance management or who are looking for a simpler solution to their money tracking problems.

There are nine key features built into Savings, the most notable being importing and reconciling transactions from your bank, charts for a comprehensive view of your progress, scheduled transactions, budget tracking, and multiple accounts. All these are on an simple user interface that makes it easy for anyone to navigate and use.

For the purpose of this review, I’ll be using both the sample database and my own account in order to see how Savings works, particularly with a relatively extensive bank account history.

Setting Up Your Accounts

When opening the app for the first time, you’re greeted with a welcome box that invites you to get to know Savings before actually using it. Once you get the feel of what Savings does, click on the “Start Using Savings” button at the bottom. You can also uncheck to disable the welcome box to start at log-in.

There are two ways to add accounts to Savings: add a single account or an account group. An account group— signified by a blue folder icon—can group several accounts under one category. This keeps things organized and the data as accurate as possible.

Import your bank activity to Savings

One of Savings’ main features is importing bank activity in a .QFX (Quicken), .OFX (Microsoft Money), or .QIF file format. This not only adds previous transactions to your account but also reconciles transactions entered automatically. This feature is useful and convenient if your bank provides downloadable bank activity and history; if not, you’ll have to start from scratch and manually type in all of your transactions into your computer.

One issue that users who go with the manual method may encounter is that transactions will automatically be marked as “pending” since it doesn’t have the bank information needed to reconcile the transactions. But if you can ignore the red flags and simply see them as ordinary transactions, this might not be an issue for you.

Items as earnings are marked as green while expenses are in black.

One problem with manually adding transactions on Savings is how the app recognizes the nature of the item. Unlike Jumsoft’s Money app, in which categories indicate if a transaction is an expense or income, Savings automatically places a minus sign before entering the amount of a transaction. This means transactions are marked as expenses by default. You’ll have to press Backspace to delete the minus sign and to add income into your account. Even after changing the category to Income, the minus sign still appears and the transaction still marked as an expense.

How transactions are displayed.

The actual layout of the transactions list is pretty straightforward. You have the reconcile status at the very left, followed by the date, the description and the note below it, the category, and the amount. The menu at the bottom is where you can add a new transaction, make transfers from one account to another, import your bank activity, and adjust the settings of the said account.

The list of categories is pretty limited with only the most common available by default (e.g. Clothing, Dining, Groceries, Household, etc). If you’d like to add a category or a category group, you can do so by clicking on the Category drop down menu and the Edit Categories option at the very bottom of the list. Apart from categories, you can also see a list of currencies where you can choose your “home” or default currency for your transactions.

Schedule Your Transactions

For monthly payments and earnings received, you can use the Scheduled feature for Savings to automatically add these transactions into your account. You can set the next due date of the transaction, the frequency, amount, and category. Assign it to an account and set the reminder for the transaction.

Schedule transactions easily.

You also have a choice whether to mark a transaction as paid automatically or not. Once a scheduled transaction is close to the due date, a reminder will pop up. Unfortunately, reminders are only displayed as notifications (no Growl support yet) and the app has to be open and running for them to show up. It would be nice to have email notifications sent to one’s inbox to prevent missing out on scheduled payments.

Breakdowns and Trends

The second section of the Savings menu is the Charts where you can see a breakdown of your earnings and expenses and the trends of your balance. You can choose to break it down over the course of the month, the entire, year, or in the last 12 months if you started using Savings in the middle of the year. When viewing the trends of your account, you can choose either to view both expenses and income or each separately.

The Breakdown chart

The feature I like the most in this section is Breakdown as it shows you not only how much you’ve spent or earned in a month but how much you’ve lost or saved. The bar graph shows which category you spent the most on or from where you got the most income.

And Finally, Budget Tracking

Lastly, Savings enables users to create budgets to help you manage your money depending on the duration of your choice. You can decide to create a budget for one, three, six, or twelve months. Choose a start date and a title for your budget.

Create monthly or yearly budgets

Afterwards, it generates your budget based on your transaction history. To edit the estimate, just double-click the category and enter the estimate you have in mind for a particular category. The colored progress bars show you how much you’ve spent or saved and a Today Line tells you where you stand in that it shows you if you are spending too fast or earning too little.

All these data give you a clear idea of where you earn or spend your money, if you’re spending too much, or if you’re earning too little based on the estimates you’ve indicated.

Conclusion

Savings is a personal finance app that tells you exactly how much you’re earning and spending without features that get in the way or that complicate the process of managing your personal finances. The overall design, while not as eye-catching as Koku or Money, is pretty user-friendly in that it’s easy to navigate through.

Although it gets the job done, there are a few shortcomings to the app. Users who can import their bank activities will find Savings more convenient than those who have to settle with manually entering transactions. Because of this, the latter (myself included) may be vulnerable to forgetting to enter a transaction, resulting to inaccurate data.

Apart from this, the simplicity Savings aims to maintain may prove to be a limitation as well. In other words, you can’t expect more features as these will complicate the app’s functionality. So if you need comprehensive reports, investment tracking, budget plans, and the like, this is not the app for you.

But overall, Savings is a nice option for those who only want the basic features of easy-to-use personal finance software for the Mac. While it promises to be hassle-free and simple, I hope to see at least a more polished design and an iOS app for convenient synchronization. And at $9.99, it’s more affordable compared to the more feature-rich finance apps in the market.

We all love Macs. Otherwise I wouldn’t be writing here and you wouldn’t be reading. I especially love my 27″ iMac with its shiny and huge display, which even lets me display all my Photoshop work including an insane number of palettes. It’s awesome, but there’s one drawback: sometimes, I have trouble seeing all the details. Not just in my design files, but finding buttons, reading text or sending a detailed screenshot can be challenging. Simply sitting back comfortably removes me so far from this enormous screen that even normal text becomes nearly illegible.

The obvious solution was to make everything bigger: to zoom into my design files, to increase the font size in the browser and my text editors – but it was tedious at times when I only needed a portion of my screen enlarged. To my delight, I stumbled upon Zoom It by Appatic Inc, a handy little tool that turns your mouse cursor into a highly customizable loupe. Read on to find out what I experienced with Zoom It.

System Preference vs. Third-Party App

I know what a lot of you will be thinking right now: why should you buy an extra tool if your Mac already has a zoom functionality built in? For those of you who didn’t know, yes, there is an option to zoom your screen and you can activate it in your System Preferences via the Universal Access panel.

Activate zoom in Mac's system preferences

Personally, I’ve tried it and it never seemed to work right for me. For starters, having a non-US keyboard layout, it’s rather difficult to use the keyboard shortcuts. Also, the behavior of the zoom isn’t really what I wanted. I don’t need the entire screen to be zoomed in, I usually just want a certain portion enlarged and keep an overview of the rest. There’s probably an option to customize the system preference better, but considering the average user, it really seems a bit tricky.

In that light, using an affordable third party application becomes quite attractive

Take a closer look. No, closer!

Now, during my research for an app that could accomplish what I wanted, I found Zoom It. Simply said, it behaves like a virtual magnifying glass, enlarging certain parts of your screen that your mouse hovers over.

Zoom It allows you to take a closer look – at everything

It doesn’t matter what you are trying to see: whether it’s text, the layers paletter in Photoshop, or even a video. Zoom It will allow you to see more than you did before. The magnifyer is always centered around your mouse cursor and it’s very snappy. There’s no lag when moving the loupe around and you can type, click or draw with your mouse while the loupe is active.

Of course, you can customize Zoom It to fit your specific needs. The app lodges itself in the menu bar from where you access several settings and the options window. If you’re more a fan of keyboard shortcuts, you’ll be delighted to see that Zoom It not only has quite a few of them, but also that they are fully customizable! If you choose to, you can have the Welcome Screen of Zoom It appear at every start of the app (for example when it’s launched at login). It will display all the shortcuts – and if you changed them, the screen will reflect that. A very handy reminder of the power at your fingertips.

Adjust the keyboard shortcuts to what you like them to be

As you can see, you have the option to have the loupe active the entire time or only when you need it, depending on the work you’re currently doing. Also, you can increase or decrease the level of magnification (how far you zoom in) and the size of the loupe itself (its diameter).

If you’re trying to read a lot of small text, it’s useful to have a larger loupe so you won’t have to move around your mouse too much. If you’re trying to point out that tiny shadow in your design to a programmer or draw your audience’s attention during a presentation, increasing the level magnifciation will help you get your point across. This also works perfectly when trying to show stubborn parents that there is indeed a button for certain actions, even though they keep denying that it’s there!

With increased magnification, you can see really pretty much everything

Additionally, the shape of the loupe can be switched from a circle to a rectangular shape – I think a loupe needs to be round though, but if a rectangle is what you want, you can take that route.

Prefer a rectangle over a circle? Zoom It has you covered.

Verdict

I was pleasantly surprised with Zoom It. Considering the price, I had not really expected a lot from the app, but it didn’t just do exactly what I wanted, it also offered customization options to make it fit my personal needs. I love keyboard shortcuts and to be able to activate the loupe and control it without having to resort to my wacom pen and tablet is a huge advantage in my book.

Have you ever had the need for a loupe tool? If yes, what solution did you find? Let us know in the comments.

That’s right, AppStorm is now on Pinterest!

Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web, and we’ve already got a few pinboards up for you to check out! Browsing pinboards is a fun and visual way to discover new things, head over to Pinterest now to see our collections;

• Beautiful App Icons
• Gorgeous Games
• Amazing iPhone Accessories
• Awesome iPad Accessories

Follow AppStorm for app-related goodness!

We will be adding more as time goes on, and the editorial team gets inspired, but feel free to suggest any great ideas you have for pinboards in the comments!

These days, many people may do freelance work and regular contracting or business that requires invoicing. Getting paid is undeniably one of the most important parts of any business and invoicing is a key component of that process. Long gone are the days of handwriting invoices and mailing them. Now we have awesome ways to invoice through email and on the computer. Totals is an easy and elegant way to create invoices on your Mac.

Totals is elegant and simple. It also includes easy ways to manage your clients and create reports. If you are a company who keeps inventory, you will be happy to know that Totals helps track that too! Read on as we discover all of the ins and outs of Totals.

Setup

After purchasing Totals via the Mac App Store or the Kedisoft website, you can get started with the setup process. Upon opening the app for the first time, you will see several set up screens. On the first screen, you will have to enter your personal or business information.

Totals Setup

After that you can choose your preferred payment type and currency. Also, you can select your Country and State/Province to select the correct tax information if adding tax is a must for you. Of course, these options are not set in stone; all of the options and more can be changed in preferences.

Features

Totals is like heaven for many people who create invoices. Totals allows you to create clients and add them to your database. When you add clients, you can give them client id numbers, enter whether they are a company or supplier, add special notes, indicate if they need tax added, and include relevant bank information. This keeps you from having to enter a ton of information each time you create an invoice.

The invoices come with a default layout. The cool thing is that Totals has a layout button which takes into a layout editor. Here, you can change the position of the name, address, and other info. You can also change colors, alignment, background, stroke, logo, and much more. You can completely customize the look and feel of your invoices, easily.

Layout Editor

After you have created invoices and sent them out to your vendors, customers, and individuals, now you would like an easy way to track and see invoices from a certain period. Well, Totals includes that in what they call “reports.” Reports allows you to choose a certain time period and generate reports. The reports have the client id number, debits, credits, and notes. Then you could save or print the report.

Reports

If you service multiple clients, you can create multiple databases that can handle them. If you are a warehouse or supplier, you might have inventory. If you do, you are in luck! Totals has an “Inventory” tab that allows to input inventory. You can name it, add SKUs, unit price, gross, cost of good sold, tax, currency, label color, and custom fields.

Inventory

Interface & Design

The interface in Totals is easy to use and refreshing. The app uses a few different ways of organizing features. The main components are located on the right in a sidebar. The sidebar is easily labeled and allows access to the most important features. Colorful icons are representative of their responsibility. You can look at a glance and tell what the categories are.

Sidebar

To change views (overview, report, and layouts) and access other central functions (ie. creating a new document, client, or project), Totals has a top icon bar with colorful icons. These icons allows you to change and do different functions without needing to access the menu bar and use contextual menus.

Iconbar

Personally, I love the design of Totals. It is better and simpler than many of the other invoicing programs I have used in the past. The way Totals is designed and interfaced, you can only use the program for simple invoicing and then if you want, you can use to track inventory and cater to multiple vendors and businesses. If you do not want to see the more advanced parts of the program, simply twirl the triangle and hide it. Totals hides other functions related to certain items with pill buttons that only come up when you select items. This way you are not bombarded with information that you do not need to see.

Totals

What’s The Competition Like?

This is where Totals really meets what I think is its downfall. There are many other apps available for Mac and on the web that either have a more robust feature set or are more affordable. For those times where you need advanced accounting and invoicing, along with expense tracking, of course, you will spend the extra $100 to get Quickbooks. If you really only need simple invoicing, you can get Express Invoicing for free.

As far as the web, Freshbooks and Sage billing are my favorite. The best part about online services is how you can send invoices right to customers through the web without saving and attaching. These different competitors really make suggesting Totals a little bit harder.

Is Totals for Me?

The answer to this question is a little difficult. I would say that if you are an individual or a small business, this program is for you. Do not get confused that this can also double as accounting software like a program such as Quickbooks, it cannot.

While it can do an adequate job at inventory, it is nothing spectacular. The thing is, Totals does an excellent job at doing the basic invoicing and allows you to handle multiple clients and make reports. When it comes to more small to medium business level inventory, accounting or reports, Totals is not as impressive as other alternatives. It can be capable, it would just need a little updating to make it more feature complete.

For what I do, which is simple invoicing, it allows me to keep track of everything. Totals is $39.99 and out of 10 stars I give it a 7. With the competition and many free alternatives that could do more or less the same thing, the developers of Totals will really have to step up their game in order for it to really have a place in this market.

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 April 28th, 2011.

We’re all familiar with the Finder, but what if we could have access to our most used documents and personal folders at the ‘flick of a wrist’? Enter Sidefolders, an application that aims to give you quick and easy access to your recent, and regularly used, files and folders.

It’s a great concept, and one that has a lot of potential. But how well does SideFolders execute the idea? Read on for more information, along with a quick screencast overview of the app.

What is SideFolders?

Simply put, Sidefolders puts the Sidebar in the Finder withine easy reach. Move the mouse to the side of the screen and Sidefolders will jump out. This works exactly as you’d expect:

SideFolders Main Window

Within your Sidefolders, you can place your most accessed files, and by default it will show you your most recently opened and downloaded files. If you’d like, you can create your own folder and drag files inside Sidefolder to keep for easy access.

This gives you a manual way to “pin” a file to your sidebar, and easily access it with a single click – a useful alternative to putting a file or folder in your Dock.

Adding Your Own Files

See SideFolders in Action

This Seems Familiar

If this feels like deja-vu, it might be because there are already a handful of apps that let you store your most used and recently accessed files for quick access. For instance, remember Fresh from Ironic software or Blast, in one of my past reviews? Both of these are useful alternatives, and worth checking out in addition to SideFolders.

Whether you like SideFolders will depend upon whether it offers a solution to a problem you have. If you never find yourself wanting faster access to oft-used files, then this probably isn’t for you. On the other hand, it could be a great time-saver if this is a piece of functionality you’ve been yearning for.

The first version had a few bugs and niggles, but the latest release has gone some way toward ironing these out. You can now browse folders within SideFolders, and the popout delay can now be configured to a value that suits you best.

Conclusion

SideFolders definitely falls into the same boat as Fresh and Blast. Unfortunately it doesn’t quite have the same design aesthetic of these apps, and offers a slightly less “unique” feature set”.

That said, SideFolders is a cheaper alternative to both of these apps, and $5 might not be a particularly high price to pay for saving a few minutes each day.

All systems are go, people. Apple has announced the official dates for their annual Worldwide Developers Conference and internet forums and Twitter feeds are already alive with predictions about what exactly is going to be announced. WWDC ’12 (with a slightly cryptic tagline It’s the week we’ve all been waiting for) will take place on June 11 – 15th in the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, a favourite venue for Apple several years running.

WWDC 2012 has been announced by Apple today and tickets for the event sold out within 2 hours

Tickets went on sale for $1,599 and sold out within two hours after going on sale, breaking a new record (in comparison, the tickets for WWDC ’10 sold out after a week) and any visitors to the WWDC section of Apple’s developer website in the hope of grabbing one are now greeted simply by a simple sold out message. Preliminary reports are suggesting that Apple has netted an instant $1.3 million in ticket sales, though nothing has been confirmed as of yet. WWDC ’12 is also one of the first events that Apple is offering a so-called “student scholarship“, whereby hopeful young app developers have the chance to submit their application in order to gain a seat at probably the most anticipated technology announcement of the year.

Apple is known for its secrecy and hype-building however we can all take a pretty educated guess at what is going to be announced. Given the fact that Apple quietly mentioned Mountain Lion back in February (and registered developers have seen several previews since then), we can rest-assured that the official announcement will be coming. The long-awaited iMac and MacBook Pro refresh may also be in the works (with those retina displays we’ve all been dreaming about) and we’ve also been hearing some chatter about Apple scrapping the 17-inch MacBook Pro and redesigning the whole line to tie them in with the MacBook Air.

No matter what will be announced, it surely will be something exciting and there’ll surely be something in there for all of us. Let the countdown begin.

We’ve all done it. We bring home our shiny new Mac and we fire up all of the standard apps. We get our iChat account set up, link Mail.app with our mail accounts, and start putting dates into iCal. We import our music into iTunes and sync it up with our iPhones so that everything stays in order. Once we’re all set up, we launch Safari and we’re off.

But tucked away in the Applications folder of every Mac is a collection of gems that many users may never even notice are there: the Utilities folder. There are several applications in the Utilities folder, many of which likely won’t appeal to you. Today, however, I’ve selected a few of the most useful utilities with which to get acquainted. So let’s get started.

Airport Utility

After much deliberation, I’ve opted to discuss Airport Utility first. After all, if you’re like me, your computer turns into a shiny aluminum brick if the Internet goes out.

Airport Utility got a iOS-esque interface redesign somewhat recently.

Airport Utility, for most people, will run once you get the Internet set up and will rarely (or never) get launched again. However, it’s important be aware of some of the power packed into Airport Utility in case you ever need it. You’ll want to visit this app any time you want to set or change the password for your wireless network, change the name of your wireless network, or add a device (such as an Airport Express or a Time Capsule) to your network.

And of course, as with most apps on this list, Airport Utility packs a whole host of features for the more network-inclined users.

System Information

Another utility that I deemed worthy of a spot near the top of the list, System Information catalogues all the specifications for the machine you’re using. You’ll want to be intimately familiar with this information if you ever need to get over-the-phone technical support.

System Information catalogs the more technical information about your machine's hardware and software.

Not only does System Information give you excruciatingly detailed data on the hardware inside your machine, but if you scroll down in the sidebar a bit further, you might be surprised at how much information you can learn about your network or the software installed on your computer as well. Do some exploring and see what you can find out about your Mac!

Activity Monitor

Activity Monitor is one of my favorite apps in the Utilities folder, as it can be extremely useful when trying to pinpoint a problem on your Mac. If things are running sluggishly, or if your computer is exhibiting some annoying behavior that is out of the ordinary, there is likely a rogue process to blame. And Activity Monitor will help you find it.

Activity Monitor is like all of those hospital machines that monitor your heart rate, blood pressure, etc…but for your Mac.

In addition to listing all of the processes being executed (and being able to sort them in various ways), Activity Monitor is also capable of giving you detailed in formation on CPU usage, disk usage, memory usage, and network behavior.

Keychain

Keychain is one of those apps that might only be useful to you once in a very long while, but I promise you, if you think to use it, you will be very relieved.

A repository for all of your secure data keys.

Keychain is where your operating system stores of all of those passwords and keys that you need to have, but don’t necessarily need to use every single time you use something. For example, your iChat login credentials will be here, as will the password for your secure wifi network.

The relief to which I’m referring above came to me like this: I had a friend visit from out of town for the weekend and he brought his laptop. After getting settled, he opened up his computer and asked me “What’s your network password?” I panicked. I knew that my password was a complex alphanumeric key, but I hadn’t the slightest idea of what it was. My computer remembers it, so I rarely have to know it off the top of my head. And of course, like a fool, I hadn’t written it down anywhere. I took to Keychain to find the password for my wifi network, and the day was saved.

Grab

This little guy deserves a mention on this list, despite it’s downfalls, which I’ll cover in a moment. First, the short version: Grab is a screenshot utility.

But this is pretty much all of the functionality that Grab offers.

Now, even the most un-savvy user is likely to be aware of our shift-cmd-3. As Mac users, it’s our Print Screen key. And we’ve even got shift-cmd-4 for capturing a section of the screen as an image. Grab, however, gives you some (but not much) more functionality when taking screenshots (such as the ability to include a cursor).

I work with screenshots on a daily basis, so I’ve gone ahead and invested in a decent set of tools for managing them. However, not all users would find that a cost effective option, on the rare occasion that they might need a bit of extra “oomph” in their screenshots. For those users, knowing that Grab is there can definitely be very handy.

Terminal

Ah yes, Terminal. I’m no command-line ninja, so I won’t be giving you the ins and outs right here, but it’s definitely worth noting that Terminal will give you access to your system in ways that your graphical interface can not.

The terminal is a powerful tool for those who know how to use it.

We recently kicked off a series of posts detailing how to use Terminal, so check it out here if you’re interested in learning more.

Migration Assistant

As the final entry on our list of Utilities you should know about, I offer up Migration Assistant. Our PC-using friends will find this utility especially helpful, as Migration Assistant will make it a breeze to transfer data from their Windows machine to a Mac (or from Mac to Mac!).

Of course, you can also transfer data from your old Mac to a new Mac.

Basically, if you buy a new Mac and need to copy over any data from your old machine, this should be your first stop.

There You Have It

As I said before, these are only a handful of the apps in your Utilities folder that I thought you might find useful. There are several others that you might find right up your alley, so poke around* and see what you find!

*Please exercise caution, as certain apps (like Terminal and Console) have the capacity to make potentially dangerous changes to your machine if you don’t know what you’re doing.

With a stable Internet connection, we need not be physically present in order to control a computer, access its files and run applications. By making use of VNC (or Virtual Network Computing) technology, it’s possible to remote control not just other OS X machines with your Mac but other platforms too, such as Windows or Linux. However, VNC has never been the most seamless or intuitive software for non-geeks to get started with and perhaps this is has held it back from being adopted by the average user – which is where iTeleport comes in.

Having already garnered a strong reputation with a superb iOS app, users were clamouring for iTeleport to make a proper Mac app and thankfully the iTeleport team stepped up, bringing many of the user-friendly innovations from iOS to OS X. Let’s take a look at the resulting application.

Initial Setup

Without wishing to overstate the difficulty of configuring a typical VNC setup (it’s not too daunting to the experienced computer user), there is certainly a learning curve involved, doubly so if you wish to access a computer which does not reside on your local network.

One of iTeleport’s most compelling features is that the whole process is sidestepped by making use of a Gmail account. Naturally, some users will balk at the thought of handing over their main Gmail account and those concerned with privacy can either create a new Gmail account used specifically for iTeleport (with a unique password) or forgo the entire Gmail configuration process and perform the setup manually.

For the purposes of this review, I decided to focus on using iTeleport to allow my MacBook Pro (the client) to connect to an older MacBook (the host), which my partner owns, which should prove useful next time I’m called upon to troubleshoot a computer issue.

On the host MacBook, I downloaded the free iTeleport Connect app from the developers website and installed it into my partner’s Applications Folder. On launch, the following screen was presented, requiring a Gmail address and password.

iTeleport will actually connect to any computer using the standard VNC protocol and the iTeleport Connect app is merely a shortcut to save non-power users any setup headaches

Gmail integration helps the user skip tricky VNC configuration but this step is optional

This done, it’s time to switch computers and move to the client computer, my MacBook Pro. After downloading iTeleport from the Mac App Store, the first launch brings up the following login screen from which one enters the relevant Gmail username and password.

We once again enter the relevant Gmail details

Using iTeleport

iTeleport's login screen shows all available machines

With iTelport Connect running on the host MacBook which I wished to control, I fired up iTeleport: VNC on my own Mac and, following the entering of my Gmail details, was presented with the above screen which shows a list of available machines. Selecting a machine brings up the twirling portal graphic which will be familiar to those with experience of the iOS app and I was immediately transported into the MacBook.

Once control was taken of the desired Mac, I found the responsiveness to be excellent over my Airport Extreme-powered local WiFi network, even in an old cottage with very thick stone walls. Indeed, the lack of lag gave a performance which was very similar in use to running a virtual machine, with the aid of VMWare Fusion.

Browsing the Internet from another Mac running Safari was swift and responsive

Providing your Mac has a multitouch trackpad, the iTeleport screen can be pinched and pulled to resize and all data is sent encrypted to provide the required level of security which one demands in such applications. The one drawback to iTeleport is that, while applications can be fully controlled, the audio from the host machine will not be heard on the client Mac. I believe that this is due to limitations within the VNC standard and is not unique to iTeleport, but such an ability would certainly have been the icing on the cake of this great app.

Beyond The Basics

Controlling a PC running Windows 7 within iTeleport for Mac offers remarkable smoothness and speed

Of course, while using iTeleport to control two Macs is very useful indeed, many users will wish to take control of a Windows or Linux box using their Mac, thus allowing one to get work done while remaining in the comfy confines of Mac OS X. Unfortunately, my only dedicated Linux machine was in need of repair while writing this article but I did have the opportunity to put iTeleport through its paces by controlling a PC running Windows 7 and found iTeleport to offer just as responsive, reliable and useful user experience when used between the two platforms.

iTeleport: VNC doesn’t care if you’re controlling a computer a few feet away or on the other side of the world, as long as there’s an Internet connection

Indeed, while there may arguably be more affordable and more flexible options out there for power users and network ninjas, I found that iTeleport offered the most consistent ‘Mac-like’ user experience, whatever I threw at it, whether on a local network or accessing my Mac from a friend’s house. The implications of this are obvious and I would feel comfortable relying on the software for ‘mission-critical’ tasks like troubleshooting friends and family’s computers and performing work tasks remotely. It is this very robustness and reliability which ensures that iTeleport be considered an indispensable app and one which I envision myself reaching for regularly.

Conclusion

iTeleport successfully reinvents the VNC wheel by offering a seamless, intuitive and graphically pleasing solution to remote controlling computers and, while I may not be network-savvy enough to confidently report on more advanced features, I can nonetheless confirm that the software does everything one could ask of it from a general user’s standpoint.

With its dedication to simplicity, reliability and offering a uniquely intuitive user experience, the iTeleport team have created a compelling system of remote control with iOS and Mac apps which demand closer attention from those who feel the need to access their computer remotely.

Remember Dashboard widgets? Long before the iOS app gold rush, there was another little burst of developer activity in the Mac community: Dashboard Widgets. These mini-apps used to be all the rage with waves of new widgets hitting Apple’s featured collection every week. These days though, despite the fact that Dashboard is still an active OS X feature, the development of third party widgets seems to have crawled to a near stopping point.

I think Apple needs to do one of two things: drop Dashboard completely (like the did with Front Row), or once again make it worth using by revitalizing the widget market. One way to do this would be to create a special section of the Mac App Store specifically for Dashboard widgets. Giving developers a central point to distribute and earn income from widget development would no doubt help give this market the boost it needs.

What do you think? Should Apple allow Dashboard widgets in the Mac App Store or would this just create a mess of low quality, barely useful clutter? We want to know your opinion! Vote in the poll and leave a rant below in the comment section.