Category: Tutorials

While I’ve used iTunes for the longest time, and it works pretty much as my media center; I have to come to terms with the fact that it isn’t as great as it could be. It’s heavy, slow, glitchy and at times I find it very annoying.

Ditching iTunes is especially enticing when you now have all these new options available: apps that go from streaming free music, to playing you a personalised radio with music that suit your musical tastes. iTunes is still my main music app, but it’s being quickly overtaken by some of these other options.

Radio Services

Smart radio services that use information from your library, have become the best way to find new music as you are guaranteed to find something that you like. Last.fm and Pandora are the most popular, although there are also some options for your regular internet radio listening.

 

Last.fm

Last.fm is a web app that lets you do a lot of things: store a history of everything you listen to, friend people and compare music tastes, comment on new music, join groups, check info on events, and many more things. It makes music a social experience, but one of the things that makes it so great is the radio service, which lets you listen to “stations” that are related to your music library. You can’t really choose one song and play it, you just pick a station and listen or skip whatever comes on.

The Mac app for Last.fm isn’t that complete, but it does a good job at keeping up with your “scrobbles” and it also lets you listen to the radio service of the web app. It won’t sustitute your music player, but it’s a good companion to it.

Price: Free
Requires: Mac OS X 10.4 or later

 

Pandora

I like to think of Pandora as a more serious version of Last.fm, without many of the community pieces that make Last.fm so great. I’ve never been a user of Pandora, since it is only supported in a few countries, but I’ve always felt that it is a more professional version of its main competitor. Pandora gives you access to a bigger library, and easier accessibility to it. For example, unlike Last.fm, you can play the station of an artist and hear music from the artist as well as related music to him; while Last.fm will play you anything but music from the selected artist.

Obviously, Pandora is a web service but with apps like Pandoras Box, you can listen right from your Mac menu bar. To use third party apps, Pandora requires you to be a paid subscriber.

Price: Free/$36 per year
Requires: Mac OS X 10.5 or later

Other Radio Apps

A few months back I did a roundup on radio apps, which includes a number of apps that let you listen to regular internet radio stations, and not just recommendations. Apps like Radium for example, that sit in your menu bar and let you choose a genre of music or a specific radio station as fast as you can think about it.

Streaming Services

 

Spotify

This newcomer in the U.S. had made quite a good impression for our UK fellows since it came out there a couple of years ago. Spotify U.S. lets you stream almost any kind of music that you could imagine, and it’s free (well, “freemium”). Unless you buy a subscription you’ll get a few short ads every now and then, but the amount of music available in the app is unbelievable and unrivaled by any other streaming service.

The Spotify app for Mac is surprisingly great. It has support for scrobbling, playlists, queues, and it can even play music from your iTunes library, so you can altogether stop using iTunes (which is what I have been doing since Spotify US came out).

Price: Free, $4.99/mo, or $9.99/mo
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6 or later

 

Rdio

Spotify’s most capable competitor promises you can “listen to anything, anytime, without ads”. I have not used it myself as it’s only available in the US and Canada, but from what I’ve heard the library is great and the service is even better than Spotify. The downside here is that there is no “free” plan like the one Spotify has. There are two kinds of subscription, but they are priced at $5 and $10 per month.

While Rdio is mostly web-based, you can download a Mac or Windows app that lets you stream music directly to your desktop, and it even gives you mobile streaming access (and offline storage) at its most expensive subscription, much like Spotify does.

Price: $5/mo or $10/mo
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6 or later

iTunes Alternatives

iTunes is a tool that you almost can’t avoid these days. You have to use it to sync your iOS devices, buy apps or other kinds of media, store books, etc. But as iTunes’ functionality has grown, it has become a heavy and slow app, filled with stuff everywhere. Sometimes you just want to play a few tunes from your library without having to deal with iTunes, and that’s what these apps are for. They may not sync with your iPod or let you buy and rent movies, but they will play your music just fine!.

 

Vox

Vox is a lightweight iTunes alternative. It can access your whole library, but without slowing down your computer or the app itself. Unlike iTunes, it has support for a bunch of formats other than the usual MP4 and AAC; and also unlike iTunes, Vox lets you tweak sound and mess around with a number of settings.

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

 

Miro

Miro is perhaps the most complete competitor for iTunes. Not only can it play your music: it also has built-in support for Amazon’s MP3 store, video support (with way more formats than iTunes), support for Hulu and YouTube and many, many other things. Although the music part of it isn’t that great, it is certainly worth it to check it out just because of all the features that it has to offer.

Price: Free
Requires: Mac OS X 10.5 or later
Developer: Participatory Culture Foundation

Conclusion

The music industry is, probably more than any other industry, in constant evolution. Personalized radio services (like Pandora) used to be seen as the newest and coolest way of listening to music, but with new streaming services like Spotify and Rdio, this is now debatable. These services make the concept of buying music a thing from the past, and they offer such accessible prices that you just can’t help but feel attracted to what they offer.

However, there’s also the need of keeping up with music libraries not only on your desktop, but also in your mobile devices. In my opinion, that’s what’s keeping music stores like the iTunes one afloat. Streaming services may be the future, but they still have some shortcomings to resolve.

Which service or app do you use? Are you still buying music from the iTunes or some other store? My music listening process is really divided nowadays: I keep up with everything I listen to on Last.fm, I listen to a lot of new music on Spotify and I keep the music that I really like on iTunes or by buying the vinyls. I should say though, I barely even open the iTunes app anymore, since Spotify lets me access my library from the app. What about you?

Ten years ago, the single most used argument I heard against Macs was the lack of available games. It used to be the case that PC gaming was almost entirely dominated by Windows machines with Mac users being much more likely to be found running Photoshop than Half Life.

These days it’s quite a different story. Between browser-based games, the now Mac-friendly Steam network, the Mac App Store and the widespread acceptance of Macs among college aged individuals, the world of Mac users is quickly becoming positively full of gamers of all types: from casual pig smashing bird throwers to hardcore RPG addicts.

Today we want to know if you’re riding the Mac gamer revolution. Vote in the poll on the right and tell us how often you play games on your Mac. Afterwards, leave a comment below and let us know your favorite games. Also, if you answered “never” tell us why not!

Essentials is an interesting and useful app that takes almost every type of information you could want and makes it only a keyboard shortcut away. It doesn’t impose structure on you but instead gives you a broad use utility that you can use however you want.

What can you do with Essentials? Read on to find out!

Getting Started

When you launch Essentials, you’ll see the icon pop up in your menu bar to let you know the app is active. From here, you simply hit your defined shortcut, Command-Space by default, to bring up a resizable black box.

Essentials

If this is starting to look familiar, you’re probably thinking of Jumper, a similar Mac launcher that’s been around for a few years. This isn’t a mindless clone though, it’s a different take on a similar idea. Both apps have their own unique strengths and weaknesses.

As you can see in the image above, the interface is divided into two main areas: the groups on the left and the content within the groups on the right. The Default group just has a few basic folders and works about like you’d expect: double click a folder to launch it in Finder.

There’s only one group to start and I was initially quite confused as to how to add a new one as there are no visible controls in the interface. It turns out, a double click in the sidebar does the trick.

Now that we know how to make groups, let’s see what we can put inside them.

Applications

The first folder I made was one for Applications. Once again I wondered how to get stuff into here, especially since this time a double click didn’t work. It turns out there are two ways, the first is the most obvious: simply drag items into the group. Alternatively, you can right click in the empty area to bring up the following options:

Add items with a right-click

I chose to go the dragging route and before long I had a nice little group of applications that I could quickly access from anywhere in OS X just by bringing up Essentials.

Apps are just one of many things you can keep in Essentials

Not a One Trick Pony

At this point, you’re likely rolling your eyes at yet another run of the mill launcher. After all, how many utilities do we need just to launch an application? Fortunately, Essentials can handle a lot more than apps and folders, let’s look at some of the other things it can do.

Snippets

The next thing we’ll do is create a folder for snippets. By taking advantage of that right click trick from before, we can then make a new text snippet inside of our Snippets folder.

Adding a text snippet

In here you can place any sort of text that you want and it will be saved as a little snippet icon in your folder. You can then either drag it somewhere or right click on it to copy it to the clipboard.

Colors

Here’s a weird one that I thought was pretty cool. Essentials lets you save colors. Using the default Apple Color Picker, you simply choose a color that you want to remember and title it to save it in your group.

Adding a text snippet

As a web designer, I find this to be a very useful feature. For instance, I could save groups of color schemes for different projects that I’m working on, then quickly copy the hex values to my clipboard for quick insertion into my code.

Other Functionality

The functionality doesn’t stop there, Essentials can hold pretty much whatever you want: your favorite files and images, Terminal commands that act as droplets (quite handy), scripts, URLs, etc. You can even Quick Look files right inside of Essentials.

A Good Start

For less than ten bucks, Essentials is a really hand app that could conceivably change the way you use OS X and speed up your workflow in a number of ways.

In its current state, I found it to be quite useful, but I have to admit that I would change a lot about it if I could. For instance, the biggest problem is the overall UI, which is pretty much driven by right click contextual menus. We’re all used to these being an option for navigating an app’s various settings and actions, but it seems bizarre and unintuitive as the primary way to accomplish anything. Some minimal icons for basic functions would go a long way.

Further, some of the default actions seem a bit off. One example is that I have to double click an application to launch it. The problem is, the app feels so much like the dock that you expect a single click to get the job done.

Finally the workflow to add items could use rethinking. Currently adding a new text snippet inserts a blank snippet, which you then have to right click on and choose to edit. What should happen is that creating a new snippet brings up this edit dialog by default.

Basically, I think the app is great, but I recommend that the developer hire a UX expert to come in and rethink a lot about how it functions.

Conclusion

If you’re looking for an affordable way to dramatically increase the speed at which you can access files, folders, text snippets, URLs or even colors, Essentials is definitely a great place to start.

It’s a solid little utility that’s not quite to that “refined” Mac app stage but is definitely still well worth the modest price. The key to this app, as I mentioned in the introduction, is that it’s quite versatile. Find ten of its users and you’ll likely find ten different ways to use the app!

Our sponsor this week is Translate Tab, an awesome way to access Google Translate right from your menu bar.

Translate Tab is a super slick menu bar implementation of the popular Google Translate service. You can translate words, phrases, paragraphs or even entire sites into 57 different languages without leaving your desktop.

If you frequently work with or communicate in several languages, you simply can’t beat the speed and convenience of having one of the most popular translation services right in your menu bar. It’s really nice to be able to open Translate Tab quickly from any other app, grab your translation and get back to what you were doing without even messing with a browser.

Go Get It!

This great utility is available on the Mac App Store for a mere $1.99. If you’ve been looking for a faster and more convenient way to get translations on the fly, download Translate Tab today.

Desktop clutter is a popular discussion topic for many computer users, and our AppStorm community here is no different. We’ve had a lot of discussion on the merits of keeping an organized digital workspace, as well as tools that will help you do it. OS X has built-in functionality to help you hide desktop files that you don’t need to see all the time, but that can lead to some confusing organization, since you’ll need to constantly be aware of the files you have hidden. So what’s a Mac lover to do?

Skedaddle is an app exclusively for hiding desktop content, and it is one of the most lightweight and efficient apps that does so.

Interface

The hideout interface. Rockin' that Tiger wallpaper.

This is possibly the simplest app interface I’ve ever examined. Skedaddle’s Preferences make it possible to hide the dock icon, and with the optional menu bar icon disabled, you’ll hardly even notice that the app is running at all. Once activated by the global shortcut key, a portion of your desktop background slides out of view with a nifty animation, revealing Apple’s standard “behind the app” fabric-like backdrop similar to what is found in iOS’s Folders.

The Preferences window (accessible via a button in the hideout) also allows users to move the hideout to the left, right, or bottom of the screen. If, like me, you have your dock’s hiding functionality turned off, I wouldn’t recommend placing the hideout on the bottom edge of your screen, because of where Skedaddle moves the “Close” and “Preferences” buttons.

The Preferences window lets you choose hideout positioning.

The hideout can be resized by grabbing the handle in the corner, as you would expect. Shrinking the hideout may cover up some files, but it behaves much like a Finder window, in that if items are located beyond the boundaries of the hideout, you can scroll over to find them.

What It Is

Skedaddle is a bit like having a shoebox under your bed for your Mac desktop. It isn’t necessarily the best way to keep your belongings safe, nor is it the best way to organize your files, but it is a good way to keep your things out of sight when you don’t need them, while remedying the “out of sight, out of mind” effect that might come with using OS X’s hide functionality.

With a global hotkey-activated hideout behind your desktop, it’s as easy as opening up the drawer, throwing in some desktop items, and closing the drawer. Say you have a handful of files that you need quick access to. As a freelancer, this is common for me–I always have PDFs, text files, folders, notes, and rough drafts floating about on my desktop. I would prefer not to have to dig through my typical file hierarchy to find them, but they do cause an unsightly amount of clutter. Skedaddle is a perfect solution in this scenario.

What It Isn’t

Skedaddle isn’t a file vault. The hideout can be password protected, making it effective against prying eyes. Or, say you’re working on a family computer, and you want easy access to your files but don’t want to have to worry about a youngster getting into them. Simply drop them into the hideout and password protect it. However, there’s no file encryption taking place. Skedaddle is not a substitution for any encryption software you might use on sensitive information.

The hideout in motion. You can not appreciate how tricky this was to capture.

Skedaddle also isn’t just a fancy folder. The app does a great job of hiding things, but presently isn’t capable of opening files from within the hideout. You can Quick Look, however, which can be useful for determining which file you might want without needing to drag everything out, locate a file, and then drag everything back in.

Last Words

One thing I would caution against is uninstalling Skedaddle while files are still hidden in the hideout. I know, it’s strange to mention the uninstallation process in a review that endorses an app (I do endorse it, by the way), but if, for whatever reason, you decide you don’t want to use Skedaddle anymore, this is important information to note.

I became curious about this, so I created some dummy files to place in my hideout before uninstalling. As I discovered, removing the application from your computer will disable your ability to open the hideout, exiling your files to forever float in the aether behind your desktop.

That being said, Skedaddle is a lightweight and efficient way of hiding desktop clutter, or perhaps stashing some files on a multiuser machine, as long as you’re aware of it’s capabilities–and incapabilities. I rarely give an app a ten out of ten, but with the simplicity and elegance in execution, MuffinStory didn’t miss one single mark with Skedaddle.

If you have any tried-and-true methods of dealing with desktop clutter, we’d love to hear about them in the comments below.

As a student, I know exactly how boring studying is. You spend all day locked in your room, poring over a textbook thick enough to stop a bullet at 30 yards, and trying to concentrate on those printed words while resisting the temptation to let your mind wander.

Sound familiar? I’m sure every student has been in this situation at least once and I can tell you now, it isn’t a fun one to be in. But studying doesn’t have to be a daily slog through endless sheets of notes and lifeless, black-and-white textbooks. There are plenty of ways to rekindle the ever so slight spark of fun in your studies.

Everyone has their own different study techniques, but I find that flash cards are a useful way of memorizing information quickly and easily. However, going down to Staples and buying a pack of note cards is a bit too 20th-century. In this digital age, we want something more modern and “flashy”.

This is where Smartr comes in. It is a small, lightweight flash card application for Mac OS X that helps you easily compile flash cards and test yourself on the computer. This avoids the need for hundreds of note cards lying around everywhere and saves you the time it takes to write them all out by hand.

Let’s take a look at Smartr in a bit more detail to see if it can really make studying less of a chore.

Introduction

Smartr, from the Swedish developers Barefoot Hackers and Ocean Observations is a small, lightweight application available for the tidy price of £1.99 (around $3.40) in the Mac App Store. Installation takes no time at all, and once the program is up and installed, you are greeted by the nice, uncluttered home screen.

The home screen of Smartr

Features

Smartr has plenty of features packed into its simple interface.

You can mix the different kinds of flash cards described below in one stack.

Question & Answer Stacks

Stacks are your lists of flash cards. To create one, you simply click on New Stack and type in your question and answer.

Creating a flash card in the Question/Answer mode

You can create as many question and answer flash cards as you please, entering any extra information you may require in the Notes box.

Pictures

If you have to learn something about pictures during your study session, Smartr can help you with this as well. You simply drag a picture into the box and add the relevant description as well as any important notes.

You can create flash cards with pictures as well

Vocabulary

Trying to nail that enormous list of French vocabulary? Why not put all your vocabulary lists into Smartr and make it a bit more varied? You can add the word, the relevant translation, a description of the word (e.g. its type or gender), and a sample sentence to make remembering your vocabulary words a little bit easier.

A vocabulary flash card in Smartr

Kanji/Hanzi

If you find yourself studying Chinese or Japanese, Smartr can help you as you prepare to learn all of those tricky characters, thanks to its built-in Kanji/Hanzi mode. You can add the Roman version of each word or character along with the meaning, the type, and a short sample sentence.

The Kanji/Hanzi mode in Smartr

Study Mode

Once you’ve created all your flash cards, you’ll want to start studying of course! To do this, you simply click on Study in the top-right hand corner. The app goes into full-screen mode (to avoid any distractions) and your created flash cards pop up. You then have to enter the correct answer using the keyboard.

The full-screen study mode of Smartr

If you are not sure of the answer (or you simply want to cheat) you can click on Show Answer which reveals the answer and asks you whether you got it right or not.

Be honest now…

Unfortunately there is no way of tallying up how many you got right or wrong (you’ll have to do this on a piece of paper) but the app does recognize which cards you have already looked at and revised, which is especially useful if you are constantly adding new ones.

If you have already looked at all your cards, then the app will give you an option to either Cram or take a well-earned break and carry on with your review later (I think I know what most people would say to this).

The agony of choice

Conclusion

Smartr is a lovely, well-designed program that exhibits absolutely pure functionality in a simple and cheap application. It will prove itself a valuable tool for many students due to its wide range of features, low price tag, and overall design, which can help bring a bit of enjoyment to a normally mundane chore.

Now stop reading this review and get back to studying! Just remember to buy Smartr first.

9to5Mac recently posted an article titled, “Does Apple have to kill the iPod?” that has a lot of people talking. Though I definitely don’t agree with all of the logic presented, the overall topic is one that I’ve been considering myself for quite a while.

The entire line of iPods seems to be in a state of uncertainty. Read on too see why I think that iPods aren’t going away anytime soon but are indeed ready for some major changes.

Why Apple Won’t Kill the iPod

The term “iPod” is synonymous with digital music. When we think of one, we think of the other. Sure, there are plenty of other personal digital music players but, all Apple fanboy biased aside, the world bulks these players into two categories: iPods and everything else.

As the first (and perhaps only) digital music player most of us ever owned, the iPod changed the way we listen to music. I’m not saying this so we can all hold hands and sing songs to the wonder of Apple, I’m merely pointing out that there is in fact a serious legacy associated with this device, one that is still profitable enough that Apple won’t be killing it any time soon.

People love iPods, and as long as that statement holds true, Apple will keep the assembly plants churning them out. They’re simply not about to killing this long-running cash cow, but that doesn’t mean that some serious thought isn’t being given to just what the future of the iPod will be.

The official iPod Family Shot, note the exclusion of the iPod Classic

The iPods: A Family Stranger Than Yours

One this is for sure, the iPod is definitely undergoing a major identity crisis at the moment. This isn’t localized to one device but is spread across the entire line of iPods.

There are currently four iPods: Shuffle, Nano, Classic and Touch. Let’s start with the Nano, which has perhaps gone through more identity troubles than any other Apple device. The form factor of the Nano has fundamentally changed so many times that I’ve lost count. It’s been tall and thin, short and squat, square and everything in between.

The Nano’s identity used to be wrapped up in its tiny size, but the Shuffle came along and challenged that idea. Then it was a great device for watching widescreen video. Next, this idea was taken even further and Apple decided that the Nano should be a device for actually recording video, so they threw a video camera in it, which interestingly enough wasn’t even capable of snapping a still photo.

This idea apparently failed because it was immediately scrapped in the next iteration in favor of the non-widescreen, no camera, square touchscreen device we now know as a Nano. Will Apple stay in this form factor for a few years or continue to completely rethink what the Nano should be?

In its current form, it’s an awful lot like the Shuffle, only with a screen, which leaves us wondering why the Shuffle even needs to exist since the Nano is so small. Fortunately though, perhaps more than any other iPod, the Shuffle has a pretty clear identity. The size and shape keeps changing, but ultimately it’s the cheapest, simplest and tiniest way to own an iPod. At $49, it’s an iPod you can afford to break and lose, which lots of people definitely need. If the Nano gets any cheaper though, the two will butt heads. It’s easy to imagine Apple merging these two lines if they can’t come up with a way to differentiate them more.

Next up is the Classic, the closest thing we have to that big white brick that Apple gave us in 2001. Fundamentally, it’s the truest “iPod” and yet Apple seems to be subtly abandoning it. As Weintraub pointed out in his article, when Jobs said that “the entire line” of iPods got an update, the Classic was left out completely.

The Classic’s biggest problem is of course that 40,000 songs in your pocket for $249 is becoming somewhat of a niche market. Why go overboard with storage you don’t need when you could go after the much more impressive, App Store compatible iPod Touch? Which brings us to the best iPod on the market, which ironically seems headed the way of the iPod Mini.

The iPod Touch: A Doomed Product?

The iPod Touch has the most interesting story of any iPod. The fact is, it’s a fantastic product that’s well-loved by consumers. Getting an iPod Touch for Christmas is hitting the motherlode, it’s a music player, gaming device, camera, computer, and television all rolled into one.

The major problem with this of course is that the iPhone is also all of these things. The iPod Touch was once a way to get most of the benefits of the iPhone in a cheaper form that wasn’t tethered to a carrier. I myself bought a first-gen Touch in favor of dropping Verizon to go for an iPhone.

However, economies of scale have paid off. iPhones are not only better than ever, they’re cheaper than ever. Further, the proverbial nail in the Touch’s coffin seems to be the fact that the iPhone is on the precipice of being carrier-independent.

When the iPhone costs a couple hundred dollars, does more than the iPod Touch and doesn’t require a cell contract, where does this leave the iPod Touch? What advantage is there to buying an iPod when you could simply get the phone?

Many are suggesting that the iPod Touch will soon have 3G capabilities, but this only compounds the problem! If Apple takes this move, then it’s simply one step closer to turning the iPod Touch into the iPhone.

For this reason, ever since day one of the iPod Touch, many of us have been wondering how long the product could hold up in the years to come as a truly independent product that isn’t just an iPhone in a different box. The simple fact is, Apple needs to either find a new way to seriously set the iPod Touch apart or drop it completely in favor of one device that is capable of being an iPhone, an iPod Touch or both. Again, it’s a successful product so don’t be surprised if Apple has a few new tricks in its long-term plan before giving up on the iPod Touch.

What Is an iPod?

This article holds only problems, not answers. The point is simply that iPods as we know them are in an incredibly interesting state of flux. None of us knows how many products will be in the iPod line this time next year, what they will look like, or even what they will do!

The term “iPod” has become so fuzzy that none of us really know it means. Is it a music player? An all-in one entertainment device for everything from photography to gaming? Something to slap a watch band on and wear on your wrist?

That magical time of year is here when Apple once again tells us what “iPod” will mean for the next 360 days or so. I can’t guarantee what Apple will give us, but I do know one thing: no matter how much we love or hate it on announcement day, the crazy things will be on the top of all our holiday shopping lists within a month.

I don’t think that I’m alone in the annoyance I feel when I’m asked to sign something over the Internet. This usually means having to to print PDFs so that I can sign them, after which I have to then re-scan them. Even though it’s a situation that we don’t encounter too often, it still happens from time to time, which means from time to time, we want to pull all of our hair out. For example, as a freelancer, I sometimes have clients who ask me to sign contracts in order to begin work for certain old-fashioned websites.

Today we are reviewing an app called Signature. The makers behind this app want to help you sign these documents without having to print or scan anything. How does it do it? Let’s see.

Getting Started

Getting Started

If you can get past the unfortunate icon and pay the reasonable price of $2.99 for the app, the first time that you run it you’ll see a small window pointing you in the direction of your menu bar, which is where Signature will live. Unfortunately, there are no real instructions on how to use the app, nor is there any information about the different features that it has. It’s not that the app is complicated, but a few hints on how to use it would be useful initially. The only useful information I found on how to use the app is buried deep in the “Help” menu. This information should point you in the right direction so that you can get those documents signed.

Signing documents

Alright, so let’s say you get emailed a PDF that you need to sign. How would you go about using Signature to help you with this? Clicking the menu bar icon will show you a menu with a handful of options such as, “Sign It” and “Sign It – Advanced”. The first of these will let you simply sign something and that’s it. However, the advanced option gives you a lot more choices, like picking out colors and sizes for the brushes.

Whether you choose the advanced or normal mode, the processes will be essentially the same. You will be able to digitally make a resemblance of your written signature by clicking and dragging inside the Signature window. If you’ve ever tried doing this -with a mouse or a trackpad- you will be familiar with the final results: stiff hieroglyphics that look nothing like handwriting at all. Still, and that’s not really the app’s fault. The description of the app on the Mac App Store says that you can use “pens” as well as the mouse/trackpad. Obviously, users with drawing tablets will fare much better.

After you are happy with your signature, you can press “Enter” to save the current image on the window to your clipboard. You can then paste the image and even resize it to fit any document you would like. You also have the option of saving it as a .png file.

“Active” Mode

There is one very useful (although it is very hard to get used to) feature that is not advertised under the “Help” menu or on the description of the app. It is called “Active” and you can activate it by double clicking the window in which you sign. A sign saying “Active” will pop-up, and if you click it your cursor will disappear. After that, any gesture that you make will be counted as if you were signing. So, it’s basically a way of signing without having to keep the trackpad/mouse clicked while you move your finger or mouse around. While it may not sound very impressive, this feature is very useful, especially if you are using a trackpad.

The Shortcomings

As far as shortcomings go, the first thing that must be mentioned is the unsightliness of this app. From the icons, to the fonts and backgrounds, everything looks fairly unprofessional. It’s not that attractiveness is the most important part of an app, but beauty is a standard in most Mac apps. In addition, the few instructions that you find within the app tend to be written in poor English. Again, this is a drawback that is not relevant to the functionality of the app, but it does throw off a little bit.

Now, outside of the aesthetic flaws, there are some small, yet important, details that are missing from this app. If added, I believe these details would help the app become more useful and efficient. For example, some sort of line-smoothing feature would be very beneficial. Lots of iPad drawing and handwriting apps do this and it helps immensely with readability accuracy. Support for formats other than .png would also be useful for some people. Other than these few small details, I can’t imagine a way to improve this app.

Conclusion

Overall, it’s important for you to know what you are getting into when you buy this app. It isn’t a new amazing way of creating “real” signatures on your computer. It does nothing that simple image editors like Gimp or Paint can’t do.

What it does do is give you easy and quick access to creating a “drawing” that resembles your signature and copying it somewhere else with ease and speed. Whether you are comfortable paying $3 dollars for that is entirely up to you. Personally, I think the app is a great concept, but it could have used better execution.