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You’re the oddball. There’s that one built-in Mac app that everyone else replaces, and yet, you love it. It’s built-in, works great, and you can’t figure out why everyone else doesn’t love it. But they don’t. They rave about the alternate apps, and act like Apple didn’t even include any app that could possibly do that thing.
All the while, you’re being productive each day with the built-in app you got for free, and you’re wondering why everyone else is wasting their time and money on alternates.
For me, the built-in amazing app is Preview. Everyone’s always looking for a great PDF app, or simple image editor, or annotation app … and here’s one of the best, built-into OS X for free. For our writer Pierre Wizla, it’s Mail.app, and he’s showed us how to turn it into the best email app.
So what’s your favorite built-in app in OS X, one you love more than alternates and think is a hidden gem in OS X? Looking forward to the discussion below!
It’s old news now that Google Reader is being shut down on July 1st. It’s also old news that finding the perfect news reading apps for your Mac and iPhone is a bit harder than you’d think at first. There’s a ton of options, but if you just want an easy way to get your news fix and keep your read status and subscriptions synced between your devices, it’s not so simple.
Most of the best options today are new web apps, some of which sync with native iOS apps but few of which have native Mac apps. Stalwart Mac RSS apps like NetNewsWire and Reeder are working on their own syncing solutions which will hopefully come before the July 1st deadline.
But NewsBar, a simple Mac and iOS RSS reader, has its own native RSS engine and can keep your subscriptions, read state, and favorited articles synced between your Macs and iOS devices via iCloud. Today. We’ve looked at NewsBar before, but let’s take another look and see what a year — and iCloud sync — has brought to the equation.
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Ever wanted a great way to keep track of your family’s heritage, with all the info, pictures, locations, and more that touched your relatives? How about all of that in a beautiful interface you’ll want to show off to your family and more? Family Tree, our sponsor this week, is exactly what you’re looking for.
The Family Tree app has everything you need to keep track of everything you know about your family, and more. You can include personal info about everyone in your family, complete with photos, documents about them, and more in an intuitive interface. You can track where everyone lived on a map, connect everyone’s relationship in a beautiful tree view, or switch over to the chart view to see your family info in a circle graph.
Best of all, the Family Tree app is designed for Retina Displays, so everything will look great no matter what Mac you’re using. It also includes iCloud support, so you can sync your family data between all of your Macs and perhaps work together with your family on collecting data. Then, starting with the next version, it’ll support GEDCOM import and export, so you can import data from other family tree apps or share data from your family tree with others using different apps.
Go Get It!
Ready to get started plotting your own family tree? Then head over to the App Store and get your own copy of the Family Tree app for just $11.99, and enjoy discovering more about your family and keeping track of everything you find!
We’ve all been there: you copy a link or an image that you wanted to share with someone, but then you forget about it and accidentally copy something else over it. Sounds familiar? Yeah, that’s why you need an app to remember what has been in your clipboard.
There are plenty of apps that do just that: keep a history of the contents of your clipboard. Seriously, just search the App Store for “Clipboard” and see for yourself. That’s why today we decided to bring you an update to our previous clipboard roundup, with some of our newer favorite options for improving your clipboard. Want to check them out?
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At this week’s Adobe MAX event, the firm behind the leading creative apps for Macs and PCs announced that Creative Suite is now dead. Its replacement? Creative Cloud, the new subscription version of Adobe’s apps. They’re still native Mac (or Windows) apps, like you’ve used for years, only this time, you buy them via a $50/month subscription instead of paying hundreds or thousands upfront for a full suite.
That’s not all bad news; if you used to upgrade every year or so to the latest Master Collection, you’ll likely save money with Creative Cloud. But if you used the same version of Photoshop for years without upgrading, it’ll be much more expensive (over time, at least) to upgrade in the future.
Then, though, on the Mac, it’s rather easy to skip Creative Suite these days. There’s amazing image editors like Pixelmator and Acorn, vector apps like Artboard and Sketch, Apple’s own Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro for video and Audio, PDFpen and Preview for PDF documents, and more. There’s even Adobe’s own more affordable Photoshop and Premiere Elements if you need just the basics of what Adobe offers.
If you’ve switched, we’d love to hear what apps you’re using instead of Adobe’s staple apps in the comments below!
Are you a movie buff that loves keeping track of your favorite movies, those you own and those you’ve seen at the theatre? For movie lovers and collectors alike, Coollector Movie Database, our sponsor this week, is your personalized movie database and video collection manager, all in one!
Collector includes a whole encyclopedia of more than 100,000 movies and series in its download. By rating the movies and persons, you’ll remember what you’ve seen and how much you’ve liked it, and you’ll highlight your favorite actors and directors. This personalization, combined with the IMDb rating and the Youtube trailers, will allow you to quickly estimate if a movie is worth watching or adding to your wish-list.
Coollector Movie Database will also take care of your DVD collection: you’ll keep track of the DVD technical details, their location, and which ones you’ve loaned out to your friends. Finally, if you have video files on your computer, the program will automatically scan them and you’ll be able to launch them by clicking the play icon.
Go Get it!
Ready to keep better track of your movies? You can download Coollector Lite for free from the App Store, and keep track of up to 50 movies with it to try it out. Then, you can get the full version of Coollector for just $14.99 this week, 25% off its normal price. But hurry: the special discount price is only available this week!
We’d like to say a special Thank you! to our weekly sponsors from April for sponsoring our site and for the great apps they make. If you would like to feature your app on our site with an advertisement, be sure to check out our available slots on BuySellAds or register for a weekly sponsorship for your app.
If you haven’t already checked out our the great apps that sponsored our site last month, be sure to check them out now!
doo
doo is the one app for all of your documents. It brings together all your documents, wherever you keep them: in folders on your Mac, or in Dropbox, Google Drive, Skydrive, email accounts, and more. It then automatically generates intelligent tags for individual categories such as Companies, Document Types, Filetypes, People, Places and more, to help you quickly sort through your documents. It also seamlessly integrates with scanners and your smartphone’s camera, and uses OCR to let you search for text even if it’s in an image or scan.
Download doo free from the App Store and try it out for yourself!
Money
Money by Jumsoft presents a powerful, comprehensive, and intuitive system designed to help you keep control of your financial life. Oversee your account balances, track investments, keep budgets, and manage your bank accounts, credit cards, loans, investments, assets, and cash. And do it all in a straightforward and stylish interface.
You can try Money out for free, or purchase Money from the App Store for $38.99.
CleanMyMac 2
CleanMyMac 2 is the latest version of the well known app for cleaning your Mac, and it brings a number of new features and a brand-new UI to the table. It’ll help you find old, large files on your Mac — perhaps an old Office installer you had in your Documents folder, or old video chunks you should move to an external drive — and also let you delete anything that old apps left behind when you uninstalled them. It’ll also surface apps you haven’t used in a long time, clean up your iPhoto library, and more, to help you get the most out of your storage space.
CleanMyMac 2 is a free upgrade if you already have CleanMyMac 1, or you can try it out with a free trial. Then, you can get your own copy for $39.95.
SyncMate
SyncMate Free lets your Address Book and Calendar between your Macs, PCs, and mobile devices of all types: Windows Mobile phones, BlackBerry, Android (including the Kindle Fire), PSP, and more. You can even sync your online accounts, keeping everything synced between your Dropbox, Yahoo!, and iCloud accounts. You’ll also be able to view the messages on your mobile devices.
Then, with SyncMate Pro for $39.95, you’ll be able to also sync iTunes media, iPhoto photos, notes, bookmarks, and sticky notes between all of your devices. You’ll also be able to sync folders in realtime between computers, and export text messages from your older Android, Windows Mobile, or Nokia phone. You’ll also be able to convert mobile media formats like .3GP to standard formats for newer devices. That might be just what you need to get everything moved from your old devices to a shiny new iPhone.
And a special thanks to you, our Mac.AppStorm.net readers, for reading and sharing our articles. We couldn’t do it without you!
It’s been a long time since Mac users had to wish that leading apps would come to their beloved platform. If anything, it’s the opposite today, and has been for some time. When I used a PC regularly, I’d wish there were apps like Things and Transmit, Pixelmator and — of all things — Preview (really).
But as many great apps as there are on the Mac today, there’s still some programs that haven’t made the leap over to our favorite platform. Whether it’s games that are still PC only, ancient DOS based business tools, or drivers for an old scanner that’ll only run on XP, many of us still run Windows regularly to be able to use legacy stuff — and some not so legacy stuff. After all, even though Macs have Office, Access has never made the leap, either.
It’s not just PC apps, either. I for one would love some popular iOS apps on my Mac. First off, iBooks: I’ve stuck to buying books in Kindle simply because I can read them on my Mac, too. Then, I’m sure a ton of other iPad apps would be more than welcome on the Mac.
So, if you could pick, what apps would you want to see brought over to the Mac first? We’ll look forward to hearing your comments below!
If you are in need of custom branding or UI elements for your next project, Microlancer might just be the answer.
Envato (the company that runs the AppStorm network) has just launched a new digital marketplace where you can connect with freelancers who offer services to help you get your projects off the ground. Microlancer puts you in touch with those who can provide logo design, app icon design, branding elements, UI features, web design and a whole lot more – easily, affordably, safely and transparently.
Why is it different to other freelance sites?
- You don’t need to set up a project and review bids
- You can review providers by the type of service you need
- You can review their existing work, website and compare them to others
- Prices, turnaround time and revisions are all presented up front
- Envato reviews all providers to provide peace of mind
We’ve just closed our giveaway, and would like to extend our congrats to our winners: Salim, Smash, Juan, Poporin, and Michael!
Sometimes planning a vacation can be so much work that it feels like more trouble than it’s worth. You’ve got to remember everything to pack — from sunscreen to extra space for souvenirs. You’ve got to budget your money to have a great time but end up broke halfway through your trip. You also should likely plan ahead for where you’ll stop on the way, and how you’ll spend your time so you’ll get the most out of your trip. And you’ll likely end up with ideas for new trips you’ll want to take in the future, and will want to keep up with them as well.
YourtTrip is the app your Mac needs to make this vacation season more fun. It can handle all of this and more, in a newly redesigned interface that makes it better than ever.
YourtTrip usually costs $19.99, but we’ve got 5 copies of the new YourtTrip to giveaway to our readers this week! Just leave a comment below and let us know where you’re planning on traveling this summer to enter our giveaway. Then, share our giveaway post on your favorite social network, and share a link to your post in a new comment below for an extra entry.
We’ll close the giveaway this Friday, May 3rd, so hurry and get your entry in!
Envato staff or those who have written more than two articles or tutorials for AppStorm are ineligible to enter.
