Blancer.com Tutorials and projects

My computer is a constant companion in the kitchen, it can be a bit risky, but I just love having limitless recipe options at my fingertips. Unfortunately, when I find some great recipes sometimes, they often end up jumbled among hundreds of bookmarks, where I’ll probably never see them again.

A number of Mac app developers have capitalized on the kitchen-computer connection, and developed various solutions for storing and organizing recipes on the Mac. Let’s take a look at some of the main contenders and what they have to offer!

YummySoup

YummySoup provides a slick interface for importing and organizing recipes clipped from websites. It features a built-in browser with one-click importing from 11 popular recipe sites (including my favourite, AllRecipes). Importing from other websites is also simple, you simply highlight sections of the recipe, then click on the part of the recipe card you want it to be assigned to (e.g. ingredients, directions).

Once you’ve imported a recipe, you can display it full screen on your computer using a choice of pre-defined html templates (or create your own). YummySoup also has a groceries feature, coverflow-style browsing, smart folders, full screen view,  and cloud publishing (currenlty through MobileMe).

YummySoup interface with meal planner

I found the one-click importing quite easy to use, and I appreciate the ability to customize the appearance. YummySoup covers all the basic functions you’d want in a recipe manager, but I think the price is a bit steep for what it does.

Price: $19.99

SousChef

SousChef places the emphasis on the actual cooking process, and tries to make cooking with your computer as easy and mess-free as possible. SousChef features a full screen mode designed to be read at distances of up to 10 feet, has a text-to-speech option, and is controllable via remote or voice.

It’s a great concept for a food application, becuase though organization and collection of recipes can be useful, realistically, you’re going to be spending more time actually cooking. The full screen display is pretty legible even at a distance, even on my 13” MacBook Pro. I love the remote control option, I’d definitely prefer to get the remote sticky than my keyboard. Though the voice recognition is a really cool idea, I couldn’t get it to work reliably. I’m not sure if this is an inconsistency on the part of the developer, or with Apple speech recognition.

My very professional squash soup recipe. It's pretty excellent.

The recipe organization and importing features are pretty basic, and it lacks a web importer. $30 is a bit pricey, but might be worth it if you can get the speech recognition to work. There’s a free trial, so you can see if you can make it work for you.

Price: $19.99

Paprika Recipe Manger

Paprika is a newer recipe management app featuring cloud syncing between Mac, iPad, and iPhone versions. It has a web importer similar to YummySoup, and features a polished (though derivative) interface that allows you to easily manage and organize recipes.

Paprika also boasts a meal planner and grocery list functionality, which when combined with the iPhone app, could be really helpful for grocery shopping.

Paprika main recipe listing. May seem familiar to Twitter App users.

Unfortunately, Paprika doesn’t have a full screen mode, and even the iPad version isn’t terribly kitchen-friendly. I’ve heard a lot of positive feedback on the iPhone and iPad apps, hopefully Paprika will jump on the Lion bandwagon and go full screen with a future update.

Price: $19.99

MacGourmet

I reviewed MacGourmet for AppStorm a couple months ago, and though it wasn’t a glowing review, MacGourmet might be the best option for people who are interested in cataloging and organizing a large number of recipes in flexible ways. MacGourmet features the same importing, full-screen, and shopping list features as the other apps, but includes more organization options, and has a more streamlined recipe creator/editor.

I found MacGourmet to be overcomplicated for my uses, with a pretty high price ($24.99 for the basic version, $49.99 for the “deluxe” version). Though it may have more features than the average cook requires, it is more geared towards users that are serious about creating a digital recipe database.

Price: $24.99 ($49.99 for Deluxe version)

Appstorm Review of MacGourmet

The Photo Cookbook

The first three apps on this list help you manage and use recipes, but the Photo Cookbook aims to actually teach you to cook. The app comes with 84 recipes, each with detailed, step-by-step illustrated instructions. Though seasoned cooks probably don’t need such a thorough approach, I can see this being a great resource for younger people just starting to cook on their own, or anyone that has trouble following undetailed or jargon-filled recipes.

Step-by-step recipe instructions in The Photo Cookbook

Whether or not this app is worth the $15 probably depends on whether or not the recipes are any good, which is a pretty big leap of faith for an app with no trial version. I’m on the fence about this one: on one hand, there are hundreds of blogs out there that offer this kind of step-by-step instruction for free, but on the other hand, I know people that are overwhelmed by the options out there, and would benefit from a systematic, organized approach.

Price: $15.99

Bonus: Evernote

Though it’s not specifically a cooking app, Evernote is what I usually use to store my recipes. I use the web clipper for Safari, add some tags, and add the clip to my recipes notebook (it also automatically adds the source URL to the note). I don’t find I need too many organization options, because it’s easy to just keyword search for the recipe I’m looking for.

I often look up recipes when I'm at my parents' place using the Evernote web interface

Though it would be nice to have a full-screen recipe mode, recipe scaling, and a proper recipe importer, Evernote does the basic job of keeping track of your recipes – and keeping them synced across all your devices – for free.

Price: Free

Conclusion

Most of these apps feature similar basic features like web importing, organization, and full-screen modes, and most of them (except MacGourmet) have similar price tags. None of the applications in this category really stood out as exceptional, but I didn’t get to try Paprika or The Photo Cookbook (the Mac App Store has put an end to free trials), both of which look promising to me.

I’d like to hear your thoughts, especially if you’ve used Paprika or The Photo Cookbook, or if you’ve gotten SousChef’s voice recognition feature to work effectively. Do you cook much with your computer, and if so, do you keep track of the recipes you find, or do you just Google them again next time?

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

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

• Studiometry – Studiometry is a powerhouse of professional organization tools that’s been serving the industry for over eight years. Whether you’re managing contacts, generating estimates, tracking work, or billing clients, this one app has you covered in a single beautifully cohesive workflow.
• Live Interior 3D – A powerful and intuitive home and interior design application that lets you build the house or office of your dreams right on your Mac.
• Studiometry – Studiometry is a powerhouse of professional organization tools that’s been serving the industry for over eight years. Whether you’re managing contacts, generating estimates, tracking work, or billing clients, this one app has you covered in a single beautifully cohesive workflow.
• Disk Drill – Disk Drill recovers data from HFS/HFS+, FAT, NTFS & other file systems right on your Mac. It helps you undelete Mac OS files using its two powerful Mac recovery methods: Quick or Deep scanning. Disk Drill data recovery for Mac OS X locates and recovers deleted files from any mountable media like your main drive, external hard disk, memory cards, iPods Classic, etc.
• Drive Genius 3 – Drive Genius 3 is the ultimate tool for whipping your drives into shape. Whether you want to free up space with the super easy DriveSlim feature or are looking to perform some maintenance, Drive Genius 3 has you covered.
• Finch – Finch is an app that takes all the effort out of time tracking. If you can open it, you can use it! With virtually zero configuration, Finch sits quietly tucked away in your menu bar and collects data throughout the day. It monitors what windows and apps are active on the screen at any given time.

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

AppleInsider recent published an interesting article that doesn’t bode well for Mac Pro fans. Supposedly, diminishing sales of the Mac Pro have led to considerable discussions at Apple over whether or not it will be profitable to continue the line further.

Though there will always be users who need more processing muscle than your average Mac owner, iMacs have become such powerful machines that many users are more than happy forgoing the Mac Pro’s high price tag when shopping for a workstation. It’s not a giant leap of logic to see the Mac Pro today as the Xserve of yesterday. The question is, will it reach a similar fate?

Vote in the poll and let us know what you think will happen to the Mac Pro. Is this overhyped doom and gloom? Is the Mac Pro here to stay? Or will it disappear, perhaps in favor of an even more powerful iMac? Let us know what you think and leave a comment below telling us why!

Our featured sponsor this week is Live Interior 3D, a powerful and intuitive home and interior design application that lets you build the house or office of your dreams right on your Mac.

Live Interior 3D is amazingly easy to use. 3D modeling is typically a painstaking process that takes years to master, but with Live Interior 3D I was setting up and tweaking rooms in my house in minutes. The intuitive drag and drop interface allows for absolutely anyone to quickly spec out a floor plan and begin adding walls, furniture, lighting and more. The result is an unbelievably realistic fully 3D render of your home that makes it easy to plan and experiment with changes, whether you want to move a sofa or knock out a wall!

Go Get It!

You’ve really got to try Live Interior 3D for yourself to see how incredible it is. Be sure to download the free trial and give it a test drive.

Live Interior 3D comes in two flavors: Standard and Pro. Both are super powerful and come with completely free tech support so you can be sure that you’ll achieve complete satisfaction and stellar results.

Who doesn’t love a good world domination game? I mean, a good game is one thing. And a good fighting game is another. But a good fighting game where the goal is to take over the world? And with robots, no less!

Independent game studio Hexage fills this precise opening with a game called Robotek. Robotek is a turn based combat game in which you aim to reclaim the world from the evil robot uprising that caused the fall of humanity. Intrigued yet? Hit the jump to find out more!

Aesthetics

Have you ever played a psychedelically-colored space domination game like Galcon Fusion or Geometry Wars? Robotek achieves a similar art style, with constantly-shifting backgrounds consisting of neon polygons, and imposing silhouetted characters (robots) dueling in front of you. The game is visually pleasing, to say the least.

I, for one, welcome our new robotic overlords.

In addition to the gorgeous art style, the game is set in a post-human world where a machine uprising has left the planet volatile–essentially a war zone for robots. Now seems like a good time to mention that I’m a firm believer in the make-or-break capabilities of the “little things” in apps, and in games in particular. Robotek isn’t notably story-heavy, but there are a few blips of background information that effectively set the mood for the game.

A brief bit of grim story sets to mood appropriately.

I’ll discuss the specifics of gameplay a bit further down, but as you’ll see, the interface during combat and on the map screen is bold and bright. The game is turn-based, so you’ll have plenty of time to decide what you’re doing, making touch-pad control a completely viable way to play the game.

Gameplay

Robotek is essentially played on two fronts: there’s the combat part of the game (which I’ll discuss in detail later) and the metagame.

Metagame and World Domination

When you begin playing Robotek, you assume the role of a robot in the post-human world, attempting to reclaim the fallen world from the Empire of Machine. To achieve this, you’ll fight your way through a series of “nodes” located on the world map. Each node is rated with a difficulty rating (in stars) and a Power value (noted with a lightning bolt symbol). Power is the resource that you’ll be trying to accumulate by fighting and defeating your enemy robots. Alternatively, you can support the developers and the free app by giving yourself a boost and in-app purchasing additional Power with your dollars.

The app is free, but supported by in-app purchases.

The map screen provides a view of the world map and all of the nodes that you have/have not conquered. When beginning the game, the map gives you a brief pointer for getting started that was simply too good not to share here:

To our friends in Canada: I'm sure it's nothing personal.

The view itself is relatively simple: there is a large display showing your overall Power, which goes up and down according to your wins and losses. Winning gives you the number of Power points on the node’s tooltip, while losing takes that amount of Power away. Also on the map screen is an experience bar, which goes up with each fight, regardless of whether or not you win or lose.

Today: Canada. Tomorrow: the world!

Combat

Clicking on a node on the world map and then on the flashing green arrow will take you into a fight.

The varying degrees of power your abilities can exhibit.

Combat in Robotek is turn-based, which is a simple enough concept to grasp. However, the way a fight plays out is determined by a roulette system, which I found to be the most challenging part of the game to figure out. Each turn you’ll spin the slots in the corner of the screen (by clicking the green button), and then try to stop the first slot on your desired move (by clicking the green button a second time). The number of slots that match after the roulette has stopped spinning determines the power of that outcome. The window in the screenshot above is just one example showing how the strength of an outcome is determined.

When you take your turn, you may spin the roulette in one of three categories. You can try to summon companion robots, you can go on the offensive, or you can take defensive measures (such as summoning shields). What confused me the most was the fact that no matter what you spin, you’ll get whatever shows up. If you’re attempting to summon a Drone, for example, and you roll 2 Drones and a Tankbot, you’ll receive an advanced Drone and a normal Tankbot. If you roll 3 of anything, you’ll not only get the most powerful version of it, but you’ll also get a bonus turn.

The main goal of combat is to use these abilities to drain the enemy’s HP, denoted by the the bars at the bottom of the screen, before he drains yours. I won’t go into detail about all of the abilities you can use, but let it be known that I was surprised by the level of complexity a given battle can reach.

Combat gets pretty hectic sometimes.

Last Words

Let me level with you: When I downloaded this free app from the Mac App Store, I wasn’t expecting a game that was this fun. I wasn’t expecting as much depth and complexity, and I certainly wasn’t expecting the level of visual polish that Hexage lacquered on. It certainly isn’t the most innovative or complex game I’ve ever played, but it still provides a great deal of fun. And, of course, my motto is “you can’t go wrong with the low, low price of free.”

Have you bested the robots of the world and rescued the planet? What do you think about Robotek?