Category: Mac

If you travel a lot or have a job that keeps you working in different places throughout the day, a decisive factor when you purchased your computer might have been the battery life. MacBooks generally have pretty good battery run time, but in order to keep it functional for as long as you can, you might have to give your battery a little maintenance over time.

Today we’re going to present to you a free app called Battery Health that can give you tips and information regarding the battery of your MacBook. Want to check it out?

Getting Started

Apple.com

Taking care of your computer is very much like giving maintenance to a car. There’s a lot of things to worry about, more than you probably care to do. Doing fresh installs of the operating system, upgrading to the newest versions of everything, cleaning your hard drive, and doing some maintenance on your battery are all factors that might help your computer stay functional for a longer time.

While some of these measures might be a little controversial for some Mac users, we at Appstorm believe that it’s better to be cautious. We have written a few articles regarding common practices for maintaning the life of your laptop’s battery, perhaps the most important of them being on the topic of calibrating your battery periodically.

But how will you know if these practices are needed or if they are turning out well? That’s where apps like Battery Health come in.

Battery Health

Battery Health

Battery Health is a very simple app that can show you some useful information regarding your battery’s condition, especially so that you can know when to change it for a new one and when to start taking more care of it. Among some of the information Battery Health can show you are:

• Current battery charge (in milliamperes per hour)
• Battery health (current and original one)
• Estimated time remaining for the battery (in various activities like browsing, watching movies or in standby)
• Cycles (times your battery has been completely discharged and recharged)
• Age (since the battery was manufactured)
• Current battery temperature
• Power usage (in watts)
• Milliamperes usage (with a graph)

Tips

Tips

Below all the information of the app you can find a button called “Tips” that will display some basic text with some instructions regarding your battery’s health. Some of them are quite obvious, like turning down certain things like the volume and the brightness if you want to conserve battery.

However, some other tips are a bit more useful, like some very complete instructions on how and why you should calibrate periodically your battery, as well as a very interesting read on why you shouldn’t disable your CPU cores in order to decrease battery consumption.

The Competition

Coconut Battery

Coconut Battery

The most obvious direct competitor of Battery Health is the freeware, widely popular Coconut Battery. I’ve been using it since I have owned my computer and I’ve always been quite satisfied with it, even though I’m not always happy with the readings that it gives (in the first couple months my battery’s condition decreased considerably, now it has sort of stuck in the same place).

Coconut Battery and Battery Health are both free and they’re both quite similar. From my experience with each of them, they also give the exact same readings. Although Battery Health has a few more features than Coconut Battery does, like displaying the time remaining if you keep doing certain activities and the tips that come with the app.

Watts

Watts

Watts is a more complex app, as it fills a much bigger purpose than just informing you of certain details of your computer’s battery. It’s not in direct competition with Battery Health, but I think it’s worth bringing up because it might be better suited for some people looking into apps like Battery Health.

Watts can give you most of the info that you get from Battery Health, but it can also help you calibrate your battery by providing you with Growl reminders and an interactive tutorial for getting the process done each time. Even though Watts is $6.95, if you really care about keeping up with battery calibrations, it might be worth it for you.

Conclusion

I’ve read some comments in the App Store calling Battery Health a rip-off of Coconut Battery, and I can definitely see where the comparisons are coming from, the two are extremely similar (I fully expect a wave of comments on this subject). Ultimately, they’re both free and they share nearly the same set of features, with only a hadful of features giving Battery Health the upper hand. If you’ve already got Coconut Battery, there might not be enough reasons to switch to Battery Health, but if you don’t have any of them yet, I think Battery Health might be a slight better alternative.

Now, if you’re looking for something a little more useful that could help you keep track of your battery’s calibrations, then Watts might suit you better. In the end, having the information isn’t going to help much if you aren’t going to take any action with it. What do you think? Do you pay attention to the stats of your battery or do you tend to not care about stuff like that?

Lately the world of Mac software has seen quite the surge in photo editing apps, many of which are banking on the retro photo craze that helped fuel Instagram to a huge user base and billion dollar sale. This increase in the average user’s interest in photography will surely lead to a lot of questions about how to keep all of those images nicely organized into separate libraries and/or albums.

It seems like a perfect time to take a refreshed look at what Mac owners are using to keep their photographs organized. Are you a fan of the simplicity of iPhoto or do you require the professional kick of apps like Lightroom and Aperture?

Vote in the poll and let us know about your organization process in the comments. If your favorite app isn’t listed, also be sure to let us know what it is.

Perhaps no other app category changes as fast and as much as the Twitter client one. They seem to merge, disappear, lose support and come up with new ones more than in any other app category. If you are into Twitter as much as we are, you probably already know the usual popular clients like Twitter for Mac, Twitterrific, TweetDeck, Echofon, etc. We’ve covered most of them before.

But today we are here to show you some cool new Twitter clients that have either gotten popular recently, or have come out in the past few months. Most of them have a unique take on Twitter, like trying to make it a more simple and mindful experience, but you’ll also find a few clients that are in direct competition to the ones mentioned above. Jump in!

Itsy

Itsy is a free, simple and clean Twitter client that we also got to review not so long ago. Its main gimmick comes from the minimalistic approach that it brings to the category, but it isn’t missing out on great features like inline images and theme support.

Itsy does lack a few things that some users might miss, like multiple account support and viewing other’s profiles inside the app. If what you are looking for is a simple and free alternative to navigating through your timeline, Itsy doesn’t do a bad job at all.
Price: Free
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6 or later
Developer: Mowglii

Wren

Wren is somewhat of a controversial “client”, because some people argue it shouldn’t even be considered one. Think of it as a complement to your usual Twitter app, something that might help you tweet without getting too distracted with your timeline.

Wren lets you create and post new tweets from your desktop, but that’s about it. You can’t view your timeline in it and you can’t do much else other than posting tweets and saving drafts. It’s as “distraction-free” as apps can get.
Price: $4.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6 or later
Developer: Andrew Ramos and Kevin Smith

Quick Tweet

Quick Tweet is very similar to Wren in that it is only a quick way for you to post tweets without getting too invested in your timeline. The difference between it, though, is that Quick Tweet is even more simple as it doesn’t support drafts and it also runs on your menu bar. Oh, and it’s also free.

Price: Free
Requires: Mac OS X 10.7 or later
Developer: Chongyu Zhu

Echelon

Echelon is yet another minimalistic Twitter client, but its take on the category is quite unique. It’s sort of a simple way of searching for anything inside of Twitter. You don’t even need a Twitter account to use it, just search for any keyword, user or hashtag and let Echelon display to you the latest results one by one.

If you don’t have a Twitter account and would just like to be able to quickly search any given topic and get real time results from Twitter users right from your desktop, then Echelon might be of great help to you.
Price: Free
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6 or later
Developer: Giorgio Calderolla

UpdateBar

UpdateBar is an app that lives in your menu bar and allows you to quickly post new updates not just to Twitter, but also to Facebook, Tumblr and a few other services, all at the same time. It’s a nice, more complete alternative to apps like Wren and Quick Tweet, but it lacks the “mindful” aspect that those apps claim to have.

Price: $0.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6 or later
Developer: Matthew Roberts

Hibari

Hibari is a client that shines in its ability to filter your timeline through several features like muting people, keywords, or sources (like Foursquare check-ins or any other sort of automated tweet). With Hibari you can also mix searches with your timeline, see inline pics, remove specific tweets from your timeline and login with multiple accounts.

It also doesn’t hurt that Hibari’s interface is very simple and clean, and also quite accessible as there’s always a text box ready for you to jump in and write your new tweets.
Price: $9.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6 or later
Developer: Victoria Wang

Ambientweet

Ambientweet is perhaps the weirdest Twitter app included in this roundup. It’s quite different from the rest, as it just sits in your desktop quietly displaying tweets from your timeline one by one, just waiting for you to come in and interact with any of the tweets flying by. It could be interesting to try it out, if anything just as an experiment to see just how much of your timeline is worthless stuff that you don’t care about.

Perhaps the mentality behind the developer will suit some of you: “The Twitter website is great at that stuff (following people, viewing profiles, making lists, etc.), so why try to replicate it?”.
Price: Free
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6 or later
Developer: Elegant Chaos

Conclusion

Ever since the web version of Twitter revamped its interface, I’ve heard from a lot of people that have gotten rid of their Mac clients and have just completely embraced the browser tweeting ways. Personally, I use Twitter for Mac just because I have it nicely se tup and it has everything I need, even though it might not be the best client out there. I certainly wouldn’t mind using a more “mindful” client that allows me to tweet without getting too distracted with my timeline, much like Wren or QuickTweet do.

It’s definitely hard to change the app that you use to connect with your Twitter feed if you’ve already got it set up and you’ve gotten comfortable with it. We hope that the options that we’ve shown you here could work for you as a complement or an extension to your current Twitter client. Perhaps you might even enjoy switching to a different, newer client like Osfoora. It’s up to you, just let us know which ones you end up trying out!

There are many tools available for organizing bits of information on your Mac, but if your goal is to get a grip on those many images and screenshots you assembled, there’s a new player on the horizon you should check out.

Pixa is a companion app for all designers and graphic artists who scavenge the web for inspiration and images of all kinds and then lose track of them on their hard drives. With Pixa, a whole new level of organizing your image files is possible.

Pixa – The Smarter iPhoto for Image Clippings

Pixa for Mac is an image organizing app, but while it is even easier to use than iPhoto in certain aspects, it’s not really meant for your average photo library. Instead, Pixa helps you to keep track of screenshots, icons, Dribbble shots and other inspirational or creative work that you store on your hard drive.

There’s nothing that will stop you from putting your photographs in there as well, but that’s just not what the app was intented to do. iPhoto, with its importing capabilities and Photo Stream integration, or Lightroom or Aperture are much more suited to handle that.

As a designer, I quite often surf the web to get some inspiration. If I find something, I have bookmarked it until now or dragged it into Little Snapper (which is a screenshot app, originally, but can also help with organizing images), but tagging them was painstaking and not really fun. Now, I can simply drag everything into Pixa and the app, which is still in beta status at the moment, will do the work for me.

Pixa helps your organize all your image snippets

Depending on how much of a control freak you are, you can either store your snippets according to your own file structure – meaning: manually – or you can ask Pixa to organize everything for you. The “downside” of having Pixa manage your files: at the moment, they are stored in Pixa’s own file format in the library (pretty much like iPhoto puts everything in it’s library file). If you manage the location of the files on your own, they remain as they are.

Learn, Tag, Organize & Export

Don’t let that last bit of information discourage you. If Pixa is storing your images for you, it’s not garbling them – on the contrary, it allows you to export them in a variety of formats. There are three presets: .jpg, .png and the original file. Exporting is as easy as clicking the icon of the file format you desire.

Export your files from Pixa into different formats

You can also create your own preset, but that feature is a bit buggy at the moment (seing that the app is still in public beta, I’m certain it will be fixed soon). Once it will work, you can set the desired file type and set the size of the export: either original file size, specific dimensions (in pixels) or percent of the original.

But while the file is inside of Pixa, why not learn something interesting about it? The most obvious information are of course file type, size and dimensions. Additionally, Pixa displays when you added the file and where you grabbed it (it just does, you don’t need to do anything manually) from plus even more meta data. I love you being able to see everything at once instead of having to open the file inspector for every single file – it’s fast and quite efficient.

View a ton of meta information about every image

But one of the best features of Pixa is it’s tagging feature, which happens automatically in the background, with you having nothing to do. The moment you add a file to Pixa, it will be tagged according to its dimension and primary color. Additionally, you can assign your own tags.

Color and size tags are attached automatically with surprising accuracy

If tags don’t get you excited enough, files are also organized into folders and projects. Folders can hold individual files or projects; the nesting is a great way of organizing large and complex collections.

Taking A Closer Look

If you’re considering Pixa, you are probably a designer or graphic artist. Which means you’ll care about colors and details. ShinyFrog, the developers of Pixa, have taken care of that as well. Bringing up a file will allow you to zoom in and use the loupe tool to figure out pixel perfectly which color is used where. Depending on your needs, you can have the color exported in a variety of different formats (simply clicking a portion of the image while in loupe mode will copy the color code into your clipboard).

The loupe shows you every pixel of color

Verdict

Granted, Pixa still stumbles here and there, being in beta status, but if you can look past that, it’s a very promising app. It will help you keep your inspiration and creativity organized with very little input required from you.

How do you manage your graphical bits of information? Share you experiences with us in the comments.

Apple has removed the free trials for two of its most popular software packages, the photo editing program Aperture and the office suite iWork, from its website as of yesterday and instead redirects users to the Mac App Store, where they have the choice to buy the product at full price.

Apple has killed off Aperture and iWork free trials, redirecting the user instead to the Mac App Store

Any users who try to download free trials from the Apple website are greeted simply by the message:

The trial version of iWork is no longer supported. But you can easily purchase Keynote, Pages and Numbers from the Mac App Store.

The Aperture trial page sports a similar message, along with a warning that users should uninstall the trial version before proceeding to install the full version. Users are then redirected to the App Store, where they have the choice of purchasing Aperture at the full retail price of $79.99, or $19.99 per iWork application (Pages, Keynote and Numbers), a lot less than the boxed retail version but with no opportunity to try out the product before committing to buying.

The move has come as a bit of surprise and indeed Apple has declined to comment on why the free trials were removed. The company does not allow demos in its own App Store, encouraging developers rather to post any trial versions of Mac software on their own websites, with the App Store being reserved for the full (and often, paid) versions. However, the step could be seen as a preparation for the upcoming Mountain Lion launch this summer – we already know that the App Store is at the core of this release, with even mundane OS X software updates going through the App Store.

The move could also be construed as a further “iOS-ification” of the Mac. Like the Mac App Store, the iTunes App Store does not allow time-limited demos of applications, meaning that many developers have created both “free” and “paid” versions of their software, with the “free” version often lacking in functionality or offering additional features through an in-app purchase.

Were Apple Right?

The move has been seen as quite controversial by many people, and we here at Mac AppStorm would love to hear all your comments and thoughts relating to this matter. Is Apple’s killing of free trials a good or bad business model? Are they sacrificing potential customers in doing this? Share your frustration (or praise) in the comments section below.

Our featured sponsor this week is 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.

iDraw for Mac possesses all of the tools you need for a powerful resolution-independent workflow: layers, text, a bezier pen tool, gradients, brushes, masking, shape tools, versatile export options, boolean operations, and a lot more. Create beautiful works of art in an attractive and easy to use interface, whether at your desktop or on the go. iDraw for iPad is the perfect companion to iDraw for Mac and is the one and only vector editing application that I personally use on my iPad. I’ve tried the rest and nothing comes close to iDraw in providing a top notch vector experience in iOS.

Try It Today!

If you’re looking to get started in professional vector editing on the Mac, you simply have to try iDraw. Other high end options will run you in the ballpark of five hundred dollars or more, while iDraw is a mere $24.99. You simply can’t beat the value here and I can’t recommend enough that you give this app a shot.

For more information, check out the iDraw website. When you’re convinced that iDraw is for you, hit up the Mac App Store and download your copy today.

Whether you’re a developer who wants to showcase the functionality of your new software, or you’re just the person in your family to whom all tech questions are brought, being able to clearly demonstrate how to use a program can be important. That can also be a challenge, considering how small a cursor is and the difficulty of keeping up with single clicks, double clicks, keyboard shortcuts, and more.

Boinx Software hopes to solve these problems with its simple tool called Mouseposé that helps make your demos and presentations easier to follow. Does it deserve a place in your menubar?

Getting Started

After installing the app and opening it for the first time, you’ll be greeted by an audio tutorial, which is just a script that uses your Mac’s built-in speech function. Unless you’re incredibly patient and don’t mind listening to that robotic voice, you’ll want to skip that. Start with the settings window to get an idea of what the app can do, which as it turns out, is quite a bit.

The preference pane is nicely laid out and easy to use.

By default, the app sits in your menubar and your dock. From either location you activate the various features of the app, as well as bring up the settings window

The Basic Functions

There are three main features of Mouseposé, each with plenty of room for customization. The first is where the app gains its namesake: The “Mouseposé” effect, which dims the background to highlight the area around your cursor and help the audience see what you are doing.

The Mouseposé effect, seen on the right, helps the audience see where your cursor is.

Second, the mouse click highlighter will create a colorful, animated dot to show your audience whether you used a single click, double click, middle click (if your mouse has that functionality), or right click.

Click examples from left to right: Left, Double, Right, Middle

The last major feature that the app offers is keystroke displays. This means that if you’re using keyboard shortcuts, your audience can see what you’re actually typing. A translucent bar appears at the bottom of the screen with a text overlay to show exactly what keys you are pressing in real-time.

The keystroke display shows all the keys you press.

All of these features will follow you where ever you go in the system. If you want to switch between spaces or fullscreen apps, or go into Mission Control, the effects will still work.

Highly Customizable

You have lots of control over how you activate Mouseposé, as well as what the animations for the clicks and keystrokes look like. What’s great about the activation of these three effects – Mouseposé, mouse clicks, and keystrokes) – is that they can be toggled separately or all at the same time, depending on your need.

You can select whatever hotkeys you want to use to activate the click animations. However, I noticed that it doesn’t warn you if you choose a hotkey that is already in use somewhere else in the system, so be sure to use unique shortcuts. Of course, you don’t have to use shortcuts; you can always just use the menulet or dock icon.

The menu gives you easy access to all of the app's functions.

The Mouseposé options give you control over the circle radius around your cursor, the level of blur that this circle has, and the opacity of the circle. You can also control the default zooming animation that is shown when you activate and deactivate the Mouseposé effect. If you know how long you would like to show the effect, you can also set the Mouseposé effect to automatically turn back off after a set amount of time.

The mouse click effect also lets you control the radius, turn the animation on and off, and set custom colors for left/right/middle clicks. If you would like to draw extra attention to your clicking, you can also make the app play a sound. The sound is a recording of a loud mouse click, and unfortunately, you cannot customize this.

Lastly, the keystroke function gives you control over how long the display is shown, the font size (but not the font itself), and the color of the window. You can have Mouseposé give you a quick notification to confirm that the keystroke function has been activated. Perhaps the best option setting for the keystrokes is the power to set filters. If you don’t want the audience to see all the hotkeys you are pressing for Mouseposé, you can filter those out. If there are other keys that you press often but don’t need to show, you can set those individually.

Conclusion

There is certainly no shortage of screencast app options available for the Mac, and they have many of the same features of Mouseposé. Whenever I do a screencast, I use Screeny, which is cheaper than many pro-level screencasting apps, but even it lets you highlight mouse clicks. However, Mouseposé has far more customization options than Screeny and other recording apps when it comes to highlighting your actions.

You can certainly use Mouseposé in conjunction with your favorite screencasting app, but it is flexible enough to be used in many other scenarios. I could imagine using this at conference where you’re showcasing your own app. If you are an instructor that shows classes how to use a piece of software, your students could definitely benefit from Mouseposé.

Perhaps the most compelling reason to add this to your toolbox is the price. At $1.99, it’s worth trying out and seeing if it deserves a place on your computer. All in all, I loved using this app. It performs great, is easy to use, and I’ll certainly be taking advantage of all of its features in the future.

As always, here’s Mac AppStorm’s weekly roundup of news and this week, it isn’t related to Facebook’s purchase of Instagram. Enjoy!

Apple patches up Flashback trojan with official fix

Since Apple officially recognised the FlashBack Trojan back at the start of the month (and simultaneously releasing a patch for OS X to shut up any security holes), a new Java security update was released on Thursday which removes all common variants of the virus. The patch is available through the OS X Software Update and is highly recommended for all Mac users with Java installed.

Apple released Java for OS X 2012-003 on Thursday, fixing and removing the FlashBack trojan.

The update also rectifies the Java website plug-in and stops Java applets being automatically executed (from now on, a pop-up request box will appear asking if you want to execute a Java applet on a webpage). This can, however, be disabled in the Java preferences pane if you want to execute all applets automatically.

Apple’s official response to the problem has come a little late according to some people, especially seeing as Oracle (the developers of Java) recognised and fixed the problem back in February and since FlashBlack was discovered, third-party developers have released their own tools to find out whether your Mac is infected with the FlashBack virus as well as automatically removing it for you. For OS X users without Java installed, Apple has also released an official utility which will detect and remove any variants of the bug.

To find out more about the update, head over to the official post on Apple’s support website. If you’re an OS X user sans Java, click here to download the FlashBack removal tool.

iTunes 11 with iOS 6 support and improved iCloud in the works

Apple is reportedly working on the next major update to iTunes, version 11, which is said to include bank-end code improvement, support for iOS 6 devices, increased iCloud integration and support for a revamped iTunes store.

Apple is rumoured to be working on iTunes 11 (image courtesy of 9to5Mac.com)

The new version of iTunes will apparently focus less on interface changes (such as those seen in previous updates to iTunes such as version 9) and will concentrate on providing under-the-hood improvements which should optimise performance, however it is possible that some UI improvements are seen to integrate with the upcoming release of OS X Mountain Lion this summer.

There is the promise of improved iCloud integration as well including a preference panel to control features such as iTunes in the Cloud, iOS backups over iCloud and iTunes Match, a new subscription service which allows you to sync any existing songs on your hard drive with all your iOS devices. Owing to Apple’s recent acquisition of Chomp back in February, a new way of discovering apps based on categories, this feature may also find its way into iTunes 11.

Apple usually stick to a yearly product release cycle (iOS 5 was announced back in June and released in October) so we can probably expect iTunes 11 to be announced at Apple’s annual WWDC conference this June. However the company is known for pulling out some surprises (look at the announcement of Mountain Lion) so really anything is possible. We’ll keep you posted on this one.

Office 2011 SP 2 released

Microsoft has released Service Pack 2 for Office 2011 for Mac, which fixes a number of key bugs as well as provides an overall improvement in performance. The most notable of these are improved sync performance with Exchange servers, performance improvements whilst deleting multiple items, improved displaying and sending of email content and improved IMAP account sync, which will come in useful to anyone who uses Outlook 2011 with Gmail or another IMAP client.

Office 2011 SP2 brought with it a lot of improvements and bug fixes

Although the updates have mostly focused on Outlook (which still doesn’t match up to the Windows version in terms of performance), the whole range of Office programs have been updated to feature greater compatibility with the fullscreen mode on Lion (a little late, in my opinion!) and SkyDrive integration (similar to Apple’s iCloud) has also been improved.

You can grab SP2 either from Microsoft’s website or via AutoUpdate in Office 2011. For the full list of improvements, head over to the Office 2011 SP2 page on Microsoft Support.

Nuance releases Version 3 of its popular PDF converter software

When it comes to professional PDF editing and converting, Adobe Acrobat has pretty much been the de-facto option…up till now. Nuance has just released the third version of its PDF Converter for Mac software which, according to the company, is designed to compete directly with Adobe Acrobat Pro.

The new version features improved and more accurate Word to PDF conversion, built in cloud services allowing you to edit and save PDFs directly from the app either through Evernote or through Nuance’s own PaperPort Anywhere service as well as compliance with PDF security encryption protocols, such as 128 and 256-bit AES encryption. 

PDF Converter also makes it easier to fill out PDF forms with the new, built-in FormTyper service, meaning that the user can convert a non-fillable form (even on paper if it is uscanned in) and convert it into a fully fillable one with a few mouse clicks, which can then be converted, saved and emailed. There is also greater cross-platform compatibility with PDF forms as well with text fields, checkboxes and radio buttons. 

Nuance PDF Converter version 3 is priced at $99 (a fraction of Acrobat Pro, which retails at $449) and is available for instant purchase and download from their website.  If you’re not convinced, you can download a 30-day trial as well to test some of the features before buying. 

With apps like Instagram and services like Facebook, it seems everyone now is taking pictures and submitting them out to the world via the Internet. Taking pictures is just one part of the equation though. Those who want a perfect picture know that editing typically follows the capture. Manipulating light and color temperatures can really enhance the artistic quality of your photographs. To a small degree, Instagram began making regular people think about enhancing their photos with filters, but it needs to go farther than that. There are many very expensive tools to edit photos and some that are not even worth your time.

What is needed is an app with the perfect balance of features, price, ease of use and performance. CameraBag 2 may just be the perfect app to fit the bill. Follow along as we take a journey through the mystical lands of photo editing with CameraBag 2 and compare it with iPhoto to see if it has what it takes to earn a coveted spot in your collection!

Getting Started

CameraBag 2

Getting started with CameraBag is not complicated. To purchase CameraBag 2, you can visit the Mac App Store or visit www.nevercenter.com/. If you would like to try the app first for thirty days with no commitment, you must visit their website.

Once you have CameraBag, the process to get a photo in to start editing is simple; all you have to do is drag and drop your image onto the blank area and it will load. Now that the photograph is in, we can start working on our masterpiece!

Features

To be useful, an app must have the right combination of features to the other components, and CameraBag 2 certainly delivers on features! It comes with dozens and dozens of filters and built in styles, which we will cover shortly. Along with the prebuilt filters and styles, you also have manual control over image adjustments.

To start, you have your basic crop, exposure, contrast, and saturation tools. Along with those standard options, you get some tools not normally included in apps this price. For instance, curve controls for RGB and luminance, controls for shadows and highlights, and in depth color adjustment tools. All of these are here to help you make the most of your photographs.

As icing on the cake, you get various borders thrown in to complement the extensive set of tools. Have a look you like? No problem, you can save it to your favorites and it will always be just a click away. When it comes to features, CameraBag is stacked and there really is not much more that you could ask for from an app like this.

Adjustment Tools

Interface & Design

Unlike programs like Photoshop, CameraBag 2 takes a minimalistic and clean approach to its design. It creates a soothing gray palette along with the now infamous Apple fabric or cloth background. The design is one that fits with the latest wave of iOS and Mac applications using the same styling ideas.

If there is one negative to the design it would be the color. The palette of gray is overdone and I would have liked a little more color or an option to change to a clean white interface along with this dark gray UI. Instead of many different boxes and tool trays, CameraBag uses a unique interface that allows the tools to be hidden from view and makes the photo the main attraction.

Main Interface

Running along the bottom is a tray where all of your active filters, presets, and adjustments sit. If you do not like a certain filter or adjustment, simply use the handy “X” to delete it from the image. CameraBag 2 does not destroy the original image, it stays in tact.

Effects Tray

Filters & Editing

Let’s talk about the filters in CameraBag 2 and actually edit a photo to show you the before and after. CameraBag has its version of filters, which are called “styles.” These styles put together a certain look and add it to your photo. Once you have selected a style, you can alter the amount of the effect or remix it.

You can also stack the styles and mix and match to find your perfect look. Once you are done with the styles, shimmy your way on over the the adjust tab. Here you can fine tune the look of many different options and tailor make the effect.

Editing

Editing and coming up with a specific look was simple and easy. Since I am not destroying the original image, I can just go nuts without fear of losing anything. At any point, if I do not like the look, I simply remove the unwanted effect. Below are the results of my work. Remember, these were quick photos I took with a regular point and shoot camera around my neighborhood in the Financial District of New York City. Take a look, I love the old world charm it has. I have applied 11 different styles and adjustments.

George Washington NYC Original

George Washington NYC

CameraBag 2 v. iPhoto

Everyone who has purchased a Mac in recent years has iPhoto, it comes bundled as a standard along with iLife. So many may be tempted to think of this as a replacement. The short answer is if I had to choose between the two products, I would choose CameraBag 2. Of course that answer is only taking photo editing into consideration. iPhoto is more than photo editing as it is also a hub for all of your pictures. For the sake of this comparison, I will only be comparing the editing capabilities.

iPhoto is good with straight forward operations such as cropping, red eye removal, and small color changes. When it comes to further processing, it really cannot hold a candle to CameraBag 2. CameraBag 2 has a wealth of filters and in depth adjustments that give ultimate control over your image’s look. That is over the other basic features the two share in common.

The best way to look at CameraBag vs. iPhoto is to think of the two as complementary products rather than substitutes. Use iPhoto for storing and organizing your images, then take them into CameraBag 2 to process and edit them. This way you get the best of both worlds and you do not have to compromise. So the winner of this battle is a tie, they both win in their own areas.

Conclusion

CameraBag 2 is a show stopper. At only $23.99, it’s a worth while addition to your app library. CameraBag 2 performs like a champ and uses little of your computers resources. With its wealth of filters, it allows you ultimate control over the art side of your photographs.

Along with the filters you get amazing manual control with 25 different tools. The layering of the effects allows you to easily remove unwanted results without destroying the photo. One of the big cons for me is the design. The gray color scheme may work for some but for me, I would like a lighter, more diverse design that is easier on the eyes. Other than the minor design quirks, CameraBag 2 is a solid app that brings the maximum bang for the buck.

If you’re reading this article then in all likelihood you spend a significant amount of time on your Mac, whether for work or play. However, while the increasing digitization of the modern world has led to real tangible benefits such as unparalleled communication, the easy spread of ideas and, of course, Lolcats, there is a more harmful side to heavy computer use and that is the effect it can have on our health.

These health risks often present themselves with issues such as back pain, RSI (or repetitive strain injury) and an increased risk of cardiovascular problems. In an ideal world, we’d simply not work so much and go outside and enjoy some exercise but since this is not always possible, there’s Time Out Free.

All Things In Moderation

Clearly, too much time spent using a computer is likely to impact your health eventually, but when deep in concentration and tapping away at the keyboard, it’s difficult to emember to take a breather and an app like Time Out Free, which prompts such a break, can be very useful. Designed by Dejal, Time Out Free takes a two-pronged approach to ensuring you have that all important rest, making use of both Micro Breaks and longer Normal Breaks.

Micro Breaks

Time Out Free's Micro Breaks ensure that even the busiest amongst us can remember take a momentary rest

Time Out Free’s Micro Breaks are an interesting take on the problem of finding time to take a break, the basic premise being that even a very short twenty second rest will encourage a change of position and allow ones muscles to adopt a different posture, thus helping to minimize some of the worst effects of RSI and a myriad of related maladies.

By default, the breaks are scheduled as shown in the above screenshot but this is as easy to change as heading to Time Out Free’s Preferences and selecting the Micro-Break preference pane. Though the breaks seem to come quite quickly when getting stuck into some work, I didn’t personally find them too distracting or annoying, in part due to the ability to reschedule or skip inconvenient breaks with the press of a button.

Normal Breaks

Normal Breaks enable one to take a proper break from the computer

In addition to frequent Micro Breaks, Time Out Free also recommends that you make use of Normal Breaks, which by default are set to enable the user to work for fifty minutes out of each hour, with the remaining ten minutes taken up with a break which one can use to get up, stretch, go and make a coffee or whatever else you might do when not working. This default setting was a little too much for my liking, so I instead changed the work schedule to fifty five minutes with a break of just five minutes.

Help Or Hindrance?

Time Out Free's timeout screen is simple and functional, allowing one to skip a break if desired

The very nature of an application like Time Out Free ensures that it’s going to rub some people the wrong way and serve to irritate, rather than relax. However, though at first I found Time Out Free interrupted my workflow, I soon re-adjusted to the regular rhythm of short Micro Breaks and longer Normal Breaks until I even the routine helpful and conducive to good concentration over a longer time frame.

Idling unobtrusively in the background while you work, after the set period of time, Time Out’s whiteout screen will slowly fade-in over a number of seconds and thus allow the user to anticipate an impending break and finish off any incomplete sentences or images. Once fully visible, the Time Out screen prevents you from working, but crucially still allows the break to be skipped or rescheduled for one minute, five minutes or ten minutes, depending on the type of break.

Dejal have included several well thought out options for the user to get stuck into in order to more fully customize several aspects of the Time Out Free experience. These include options for setting the app to launch automatically on login, the ability to exclude Time Out Free when a certain app is in the foreground (handy to ensure uninterrupted Minecraft playing, for example) and the playing of music, in addition to launching an AppleScript for the more technically inclined.

A small quibble is the absence of a menubar icon or being able to banish Time Out’s Dock icon, though this functionality may well eventually find its way into future updates of the app.

Conclusion

Time Out Free is not an app which will be useful for everyone, but those who do find it helps wrangle their workflow into healthy and creativity-helping chunks will, like me, consider it indispensable. For this reason, in addition to it being offered free of charge (with no advertisements), I feel that it warrants a very high score.

Dejal appears to have some big plans for Time Out and a look at the developer’s website offers some details which include three separate editions of Time Out 2, configured especially for OS X Lion and Mountain Lion – two of these will be paid apps, while Time Out Free will continue to be offered free of charge.

Chances are pretty good that up until now, you had no idea that there is a built-in application on Macs that is capable of pretty decent handwriting recognition. The application, called Inkwell, is built into the Mac operating system and is shown only if you have a graphics tablet plugged into your computer.

Inkwell, more commonly referred to as “Ink” allows users to input handwriting via the graphics tablet for use in just about any program that accepts text inputs. The program also allows users to create quick sketches, useful for communicating information via image, chart or map. Read on to learn more about what Ink can do and how well it works.

How to Use Ink

Ink only shows up in your system preferences when a graphics tablet is plugged into your computer. Once your tablet is plugged in, just click on over to your system preferences and click on the Ink icon to quickly enable the program. At this point, it is easy to enable the handwriting recognition and open up the Ink window or menu bar icon to begin using the program.

The general application settings found in system preferences.

Tip: Make sure the “write anywhere” or “allow me to ink in any application” option is selected or the program is limited to use of the popup window.

The Ink window provides easy links to many of the functions of Ink. By utilizing the Ink window you can toggle the “write anywhere” option, do handwriting or drawing, use basic text commands and access the settings. This is the hub of all of the Ink functions, and while the window is intrusive at times, it’s definitely the easiest way to utilize the application’s functions.

The window and hub of all Ink functions.

Handwriting recognition is easy to use. Just open up any program that accepts text input (I tested it out in Pages) and then make sure the type cursor is located in the program. Then, just touch the pen to the tablet and start writing. Every time you stop writing, Ink automatically inserts the text you had written into the document you are working on.

Trying out the handwriting recognition tool. Easy to use!

Advanced Features

In addition to basic English handwriting recognition, Ink has a few other features. First, it is also able to recognize French and German writing and text. It’s easy to change the language. Just go to System Preferences and change the language settings for Ink. You can also tell the program to recognize any Western European symbols commonly encountered in the handwriting.

Languages available for recognition.

Handwriting recognition is nice but quite annoying if you have to switch back to the keyboard for spaces, punctuation and even the simplest corrections. Ink provides a decent gesture based system that pairs the mouse-like function of the pen and tablet with some simple written gestures to allow for most editing to be done without the use of the keyboard. Some gestures include space, return, escape and clear to name just a few.

Gestures available to use in the program.

Finally, you are able to access a simple drawing tool via the Ink popup window. Just switch from text to drawing at the very bottom of the page and you can whip up a quick sketch. This is handy for demonstrating simple concepts or sending quick images to friends via a program like iChat.

A quick drawing to send along.

My Thoughts on Ink

Ink does a pretty decent job of recognizing handwriting, at least the couple of handwriting styles that I tried. It even did a pretty good job of recognizing my roommate’s nearly unreadable scrawl. It’s easy to open up and write/draw in, the gestures work decently well, and the language selection is adequate. All of the good features aside, I doubt I will hardly ever use Ink again for the same reason I don’t use any handwriting recognition program on my computer, and that is that my typing speed is so much faster than my handwriting speed.

Ink does a perfectly fine job of basic recognition and is somewhat efficient to use, but I don’t think I will open it up very frequently. It might be convenient for occasional use if I am focusing on graphics tablet work and don’t wish to switch to a keyboard, and it was nice to utilize in iChat, but the speed of my handwriting and the uncomfortable method and difficulties of writing via the tablet make it an application I don’t foresee myself using in the future.

What are your thoughts on Ink? Have you used it or did you not even realize it exists? Do you foresee yourself opening up the application in the future or do you think handwriting recognition for common use on a computer is unnecessary?

I don’t think we can necessarily say something like "yoga is all the rage these days" anymore, but it is safe to say that yoga has become a fairly steady, mainstream workout activity for many people.

We have resources all around us and make no mistake about it, there are plenty covering the wide variety of yoga disciplines. And as you would have guessed, the next progression is to venture into applications. There are many applications that are available on multiple platforms that either walk you through a yoga workout or help to teach you yoga. I searched for one in this category and decided to give All-in Yoga a try.

I’ve had a bit of an interest in learning more about yoga for quite a few years. I’ve tried a couple books and wandered the Web for information, but I’ve come to realize it’s not an easy thing to actually learn on your own without little guidance. Many people turn to classes for this, but my situation hasn’t always made that option a possibility. Being the Mac nerd that I am my next logical place to look is the App Store.

Design

In general, the activity of yoga carries with it an aura of peacefulness, reflection and relaxation. So an application that looks like iTunes would probably not have the right tone from the start.

Luckily, All-in Yoga is about as far from iTunes as one could get. Its purple gradients on top of a wood texture feel just about right for trying to create a yoga environment on your Mac (as impossible as that may actually be). On top of these, the smooth background music that accompanies workouts along with the subtle voice helping you through your workouts add to the overall experience.

Checking out my saved programs

Cards set on top of the wood textured background denote different workouts and recessed areas and gradients help to separate the interface and differentiate what’s clickable and what isn’t. In short the use of these tools works really well to allow you to dive right into the application. The learning curve is pretty darn low.

As I mentioned, I don’t think it’s particularly easy to create the yoga atmosphere in this situation, but I’ll say that All-in Yoga comes about as close as I think you could get with a computer application. Let’s take a look at how it actually works.

Interface

The interface does very much remind me of an iPad application. Large buttons and clickable areas make navigating around the application completely obvious.

In many portions of the application the display is divided into sections with one-third allowing for some navigation or additional information and the remaining two-thirds showing the content.

All-in Yoga really is a breeze to navigate. There are no groundbreaking or new techniques being used, which is probably a good thing for most people. I should also mention that you can take the app to full-screen mode when you’re doing a workout if you’re operating on OS X Lion.

Quick Recipes

Many people would prefer not to have to do a whole lot of preparation for a yoga workout and like be led through a prepared routine. Quick recipes are perfect for these users.

Quick recipes

There are 25 ready made "recipes" separated into four categories: beginner, intermediated, advanced and guru. The workouts range from 23 minutes to 99 minutes depending on the type and difficulty level.

For the average person using this application, I’m guessing this is the place where you’d spend most of your time. It essentially requires no thought as the workouts are already built for you. Building a proper yoga routine from scratch isn’t necessarily a simple, straightforward task so this is a nice feature.

Checking out a quick recipe

Checking out the details of each workout is done be simply clicking on the one you’d like to try. On the left side of the display you’ll see the details of the workout and the list of the included poses. Clicking on a pose will present you with more information about that specific pose on the right side of the display.

Viewing a pose video

You’ll see the actual name of the pose and then the easy name along with a description of how the pose is done. You’ll also see a photo of someone doing the pose and an image of the muscle groups it is hitting. Both of those can be enlarged. You’ll also see a video that shows someone actually doing the pose. You’re provided with a lot of information about the workout and each pose included. It’s pretty simple to learn how to perform the poses correctly and I guess it’s even possible to learn their traditional names if you’re so inclined.

Personal Yoga Teacher

"Teacher" is maybe not exactly the correct term for this portion of the application. What it does essentially is pick a workout for you. You see a form where you enter your age and weight along with your expertise level and what you’re looking to get out of it (i.e. balance, leg strength, stretching, etc.). You press the "find a program button" and off it goes.

Yoga teacher

You’ll be presented with one program that meets the criteria. There are possibly more that would fit, but this essentially takes all the decision making process away from you. So it really goes one step further than the quick recipes in that you just enter in the information and then a workout that fits what you’re looking for is provided. Zero shopping.

Fast Mode

This is arguably not the greatest title for this section either, but once you see how it works, it’s pretty self explanatory.

Here you’re presented with the database of available poses. You pick and choose the ones you’d like to include in a workout. You’re starting from scratch to craft a custom yoga workout.

Fast mode

There are may be more experienced folks out there that would enjoy this functionality, but it’s not a feature for everyone (definitely not me). There is a flow to a good yoga workout and some decent knowledge of poses is needed to successfully pull that off. But I will say it is a pretty great feature as it allows for total control in the creation of any workout you like. These custom workouts can of course be saved for continued use later.

Pose Base

The pose base is just that. It’s the database of all the poses available to you in All-in Yoga. This is the area where you’d go if you want to learn about and browse specific poses.

Pose base

It really does overlap every other section in some way, but I guess it’s nice to be able to jump right into the pose database if you need to.

A Program

Once you’ve gone through and found the yoga program you’d like to do, clicking on the routine will bring you to a start screen of sorts. You’ll see some items that you can customize before starting along with the time, name of the pose and an accompanying photo.

You are also able to view additional information about the pose as well as the video on it. You can toggle the sound and change the soundtrack in mid-routine if you wish.

In the middle of a program

It is also possible to click through a pose should you want to move on faster than the given program as prescribed. All of this can be distracting when you’re trying to go through a yoga session so thankfully, if you’re able to get by on the photos and or names of the poses you can essentially just hit start and follow along. It’s a pretty good experience and about as good as I would expect coming from a computer application.

From a beginner’s perspective, it is nice to be able to check out a quick video if you can’t remember how to do a pose right in the middle of the program.

Conclusion

Yoga has been something I’ve been intrigued by for some time, but for one reason or another, I’ve just never spent the time to learn. All-in Yoga isn’t necessarily the magic bullet for this scenario. It isn’t going to make you a yoga master. But it will provide you with a pretty solid base from which to build. I think it’s probably near impossible to learn as much as you would from an in person teacher but this application has to come pretty close.

All-in Yoga costs $4.99 in the App Store. I think this is a fair price given the amount of information it includes. If you’re looking for a home yoga companion, this application will certainly be capable of keeping you company for a long time. There are a lot of ready made routines to choose from and if you get bored of those you can always make up your own. There is also a free version that doesn’t include nearly as many programs and poses as this, but it will at least give you a sense of how the application works. In short, if you’re looking for a yoga workout pal then All-in Yoga is a solid choice.

There are plenty of deals to be had on the App Store, however with such a huge number of apps, it is impossible to scout out the best ones without a bit of help. Well, that’s where we come in! From now on, Mac AppStorm will be publishing every Wednesday a weekly roundup of some great deals on the App Store, such as apps that are free or reduced for a certain time.

Enjoy!

This post is part of a three-part series of roundups dedicated to finding apps for your home and family life. Today, in part two, we’ll focus on fun and useful apps that your grandparents might enjoy. Reread part one here.

Switching to a Mac-centric household can be hard on certain members of your family, particularly the ones who might tend to be a little more traditional in their technology usage: your grandparents. Fear not, though, for today we present you with a list of 10 apps, both useful and entertaining in variety, that may be just the thing you need to ease any old-fashioned users of any age into using your fancy new computer. Hit the jump to read on!

Games

Reading & News

Lifestyle & Finance

Last But Not Least…

Wrap Up

So there it is. A list of apps that I would set my grandparents up with (if they bought a Mac). But we might have missed some. Let us know what your grandparents (or you, if you’re a grandparent) use on the Mac!

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 19th, 2011.

Steam is perhaps the best platform for buying and playing games online and for enjoying a social gaming experience. Although there isn’t exactly a great deal of competition, Steam has proved to be a reliable platform for gaming on both the PC and the Mac.

Last year it was announced that it was headed for the Mac OS, and since then we’ve seen many releases on our favorite platform. Here are some of our favorite games available on Steam for your Mac.

Portal

Portal

Portal revolutionized the gaming scene when it first came out way back in 2007. It changed what a “puzzle” game is supposed to be with its quirky mechanics and outrageously fun story. Portal is a puzzle-FPS (first person shooter). You have a gun that can shoot up “portals” which allow you to do unimaginable things, and the game really pushes for you to think differently while you are playing it in order to advance through it.

Portal 2 is coming out on April 19th, and it looks very promising. If you weren’t one of the lucky ones that got the first edition of the game for free on the Steam for Mac launch, you can still pick it up for $10 on Steam.

Left For Dead 1 & 2

Left For Dead 2

Left For Dead is a co-op inclined survival first person shooter, where you are supposed to go around several towns, trying to survive the zombie apocalypse with your other 3 buddies.

Left for Dead 2 is the continuation to the very popular first game by Valve, and it improved on it by adding more guns and more maps. They both came out in 2008 and 2009, respectively, and they achieved critical and commercial success.

They both go for $20 on Steam, and we’ll guarantee you’ll get more than your money’s worth with any of them!

Counter-Strike: Source

Counter Strike Source

Feeling old-school? Source is one of the most popular, if not the most popular first person shooter and – even though it came out 7 years ago – it still has an amazing following. CS:S is a very conventional, but fast-paced shooter game, and what it made it so great was the mods available for it and the huge community behind it.

Even though it’s old, it is still widely played by many people around the globe, probably because it’s so great and it has only improved with time. You can get it for $20 on Steam.

Sid Meier’s Civilization V

Civ V

The Sid Meier’s Civilization series has been a very popular and long-running one. The latest installment of it came out in late 2010 and it’s called Civilization V. If you’ve never played these games, they’re strategy-based and you play as if you were the leader of a civilization that must build up your cities and conquer your enemies to become the ruler of them all.

It’s similar to another popular game called Age of Empires, except Civ is turn-based, and in my opinion, more complete and fun. Civilization V has been called the best Civ game yet, and it goes for $39 on Steam.

Half-Life 2, HL2: Episode One and HL2: Episode 2

Half Life 2

Half-Life is a massively popular franchise, and it has a very devoted following behind it (deservedly so!) It is a first person shooter with a twisted but interesting story mode that borders on sci-fi and very solid gameplay. Half-Life 2 came out in 2004, Episode One in 2006 and the Episode Two in 2007.

While you can get all of them separately for around $10, I recommend you get the Orange Box, which is a package that includes Portal, Team Fortress 2 and all the Half Life games presented above for $20.

Team Fortress 2

Team Fortress 2

Team Fortress 2 is a class-based multiplayer-only game that gained a lot of fame back when it came out in 2007. In it, you get to play as different classes like Pyro, Spy, Medic, Engineer, etc. and all of them give you a different perspective on the game, as you have to adapt to what your character is good at.

Team Fortress 2 is as fun as multiplayer games go, because it doesn’t take itself very seriously. It’s also available as part of the Orange Box package, but you can get actually play this one free!

Braid

Braid

Braid is a platformer/puzzle game with a very fun twist to it: you can manipulate time. You have to use this in your favor to get through a bunch of levels and rescue the abducted princess.

The game does a great job at immersing you into its gimmick, and when you finish it, you’ll start thinking of time differently (at least I did for a while). Braid is a game for anyone, as it’s easy to get into it and it doesn’t require a lot of time. You can get it for $10 on Steam.

World of Goo

World of Goo

World of Goo, just like Braid, is a casual game that is a lot of fun and is easy to pick up and understand. It relies heavily on physics, and has a puzzle mechanic to it. You have to get through a series of levels while building structures with the “goo” balls that you are given.

World of Goo goes for $10 on Steam, and while it may seem a bit childish, it’s a ton of fun.

Peggle Nights and Peggle Deluxe

Peggle Nights

Peggle is a game that has had success on multiple platforms, and now you can play it on your Mac. It is a very arcade-ish game where you have to go through a series of levels and clear all the “pegs” in order to advance.

The game is simple but fun, and coupled with the trophies available for it and the different characters, it will last you quite a while. Both Peggle Deluxe and its follow-up, Peggle Nights go for $10 each.

Assassin’s Creed 2

Assassin's Creed 2

Assassin’s Creed is a popular adventure franchise that has had massive success on consoles as well as on the PC. In the second installment of it you play an assassin that must take revenge for his family during the Renaissance in several cities of Italy.

While the follow-up to it (Brotherhood) came out a few months ago, the second one still is a great game if you haven’t played the others. It goes for $20 on Steam.

Machinarium

Machinarium

Machinarium is an odd-looking puzzle game based on a world populated by robots. You play as a robot who must save his girlfriend, and to achieve it you have to solve a bunch of puzzles and mini-games spread out across the game.

While I’d never heard of it, it seems to have been pretty popular with the critics, and it definitely seems like it’s worth a try. Machinarium is made by indie developers and it goes for $10.

Conclusion

Most of these games aren’t new releases. Most of them are at least one year old, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Steam hasn’t really been out long enough for the Mac, and for the time it’s been around, this is a pretty decent list of games.

Also, let’s take into account the fact that more and more games are coming out for the Mac at release date, like Portal 2.

It seems like finally we can have a platform that is taken seriously by game developers, with the potential to become a great source for gamers in the future.