Currently Browsing
General
MacTuts+ is the superb new site dedicated to teaching people how to use their Mac, and OS X, more effectively. We’ve got you covered for apps, but combine that with an in-depth knowledge of OS X and you’ll be unstoppable, limitless!
This is a quick roundup of the best tutorials from MacTuts+ in February, from Use Your Phone to Automatically Lock Your Mac When You Walk Away to How to Move Your iTunes, iPhoto or Aperture Library to an External Drive.
We’re back!
After a long hiatus, we’re back with a weekly news and deals update, along with some extras that’ll make our weekly news post the one you won’t want to miss. We’ve even thrown in the best longreads and podcasts from the world of tech, to give you something extra to add to your reading list this week. It’ll be brought to you weekly – each Thursday – by our writer Phillip Gruneich, and should be a great sidekick to our normal slate of reviews and roundups.
Grab some popcorn, then dive into this week’s best news, deals, and longreads!
Kyle Kinkade is the man behind Monocle Society, and has worked with other popular development teams such as Tapulous and Monster Costume. He’s responsible for an app called Pomodorable, that brought the Pomodoro Technique to your Mac in an understandable and fun way.
Recently, the app had to be taken down due to branding problems. We had the opportunity to talk with him about what happened, what’s next for the app, and what his thoughts are on the market for productivity apps.
(more…)
Today, we are excited to announce a new site dedicated to Tuts+ Live Workshops and two fantastic new workshops; Professional Photo Retouching with Photoshop and An Introduction to Adobe InDesign. If you’re keen to take your Photoshop or InDesign skills to the next level, this is the best way to do it!
Tuts+ Live Workshops are presented live by experts in their field with a talent and passion for teaching. And don’t worry, we record every workshop. So even if you can’t make it to the live workshop, you won’t miss out. We have two exciting new workshops available, and more on the way, so be sure to join the Tuts+ Live Workshops mailing list to stay posted on upcoming workshops.
For both of the new workshops we’re offering a special price of $49 for early takers. Places are strictly limited and the early bird tickets for our first workshop sold out in 48 hours, so act fast to make sure you don’t miss out!
If you’re looking for a great deal on Mac apps this week, then we have quite the deal for you: the PickABundle! This all new Mac app bundle that lets you pick 10 apps for your own bundle, all for the low price of $49.99, no matter what you pick.
There’s 30 apps you can pick from for your own bundle in PickABundle, enough for everyone to pick from. There’s web development tools like Rapidweaver, Hype, Flux, and Lucid. There’s Mac tools like Awaken, Hands Off!, and Blu-ray Player. You’ll find Tembo for searching through files, DEVONThink Personal to keep your information organized, Swift Publisher to create beautiful publications, MoneyWell to keep your finances organized, Boom to make videos and audio louder on your Mac’s speakers, and more. Then, as a bonus, every bundle will get a free copy of NyxQuest, an adventure game to top off everything else you’ve already gotten.
If you’ve wanted to pick up a copy of any of these apps – and yes, a number of the apps such as Rapidweaver, Hype, and DEVONThink are worth more than the price of the bundle on their own – then you’d better hurry and pick up a copy of the PickABundle with the apps you want. The bundle is running until March 18th, so you’ve got just under 2 weeks to get your copy.
Best of all, we have a special for Mac.AppStorm readers. Everyone who purchases the PickABundle gets entered in a random drawing for a free copy of Pixelmator, Analog, My Wonderful Days, Scribe, and other great apps that aren’t already in the bundle. If you purchase the PickABundle after clicking the link in this article, you’ll be entered in the random drawing exclusively with other Mac.AppStorm readers, so you’ve got a much higher chance of getting one of the extra apps!
If you do buy the PickABundle, we’d love to hear what apps you got in the comments below.
We’ve collected the top four reviews, roundups and how-to articles from across the AppStorm network in February. Whether you’re interested in Mac, iPhone, Web, Android, Windows, or iPad apps, there’s bound to be something you didn’t spot over the course of the month. Now would be a good time to explore a part of the AppStorm Network you’ve never seen before!
Thanks for reading AppStorm, and I hope you enjoy looking over some of our favourite posts from last month!
Most of us need to use several productivity apps every day: one for todos, one for notes and files, and maybe another for your projects and more. Having to switch back and forth between these separate apps is a drag: it’s hard to make connections between dots, and your data is scattered all over the place. Pagico, our sponsor this week, is here to help.
Pagico is like GTD with data management capability – it not only manages tasks, but also notes and files. By neatly organizing everything by projects, you can have your vacation itineraries stored right next to restaurant menus, or action items right on top of meeting notes. Things can also be stored by contacts, allowing you to keep track of person-specific stuff. Best of all, since your projects, tasks and contacts are stored in one place, you can cross-link everything: task-to-person, task-to-note, note-to-files, project-to-project, project-to-person … you get the idea.
Even though things are organized in projects and contacts, deadlines won’t be overlooked as Pagico presents all your schedule data in a visually intuitive flowchart. It’s like having a bird’s eye view of your schedule.
Pagico also syncs via the cloud. You can have your data available on all your computers and iOS devices. Or, you can also set up Workspaces for your team and share data among your colleagues.
Pagico for Desktop 6 is a major update. It’s fast, Retina-Ready, GTD-compliant, and its built-in cloud sync is specifically designed for personal sharing (data sync across multiple computers and iOS devices) and small team collaboration.
Go Get It!
Pagico 6 is an incredibly exciting step forward for the app, and whether you’ve never tried it before or are already using an older version, you should definitely try it out. You can download a free 15 day trial of Pagico to try it out, then you can purchase a copy for your Mac for $50. Best of all, you can run it on your Windows or Ubuntu PC, too, so you can keep your info together with Pagico even if you’re away from your Mac.
We’d like to say a special Thank you! to our weekly sponsors from February 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!
Studiometry
Want to manage your whole business directly from your Mac? Then Studiometry might be just what you need. It’s been trusted by Mac users for nearly a decade, and its 10th version is better than ever. The latest version, Studiometry 10, lets you add roles for your employees, as well as weekly timesheets to make it easier to visualize the work you’ve entered. You can add custom data for specific clients, and take advantage of Mountain Lion notifications, in addition to over a hundred other new features and updates.
NotesTab Pro
There’s so many things we all need to remember. That’s why you need a robust notes app that works the way you do. NotesTab Pro is a great notes app that runs in your menubar and has enough features to make it terribly useful but not enough to get in your way. NotesTab Pro lets you quickly take notes and sync them to all of your devices, right from your menubar.
We called it “The Best Note-Taking App in Your Menu Bar” in our recent review of NotesTab Pro, and it keeps getting better with new updates, most recently adding indenting and auto-hyperlinking support.
Live Wallpaper
Looking for a way to make your Mac’s background a bit more exciting? Then you should give Live Wallpaper a try. It’s been the #2 paid app in the US Mac App Store, and is still the #9 top paid app today, months after getting released. Live Wallpaper lets your Mac showcase more than just a pretty picture. It lets you see the date, time, weather, and custom text, integrated into a beautiful picture or animated background.
MacOptimizer
Is your Mac running slow? Are your applications crashing? Are you running out of space on your Desktop? Get your Mac back in shape with an incredibly fast disk utility that will optimize and clean your hard drive, speed up Apple Mail, free memory, organize your Desktop, and more. That utility is MacOptimizer, which its developer describes as a “must have app for every home and business”.
We found it to be a solid app that did what it said it would without causing problems in our recent review, and you’ll likely find your favorite use for it once you give it a try. It’s a polished way to get your Mac working the way you want.
And a special thanks to you, our Mac.AppStorm.net readers, for reading and sharing our articles. We couldn’t do it without you!
Our sponsorship is now closed, and congrats to our winners: Eric, Ozan, Mohamed, Blake, and Costee!
Our recent sponsor Live Wallpaper is a great way to make your Mac a nicer place to work. It comes with dozens of beautiful themes that can make your Mac even more beautiful than it already is, and it can keep you up-to-date on the weather and more without having to switch over to Dashboard.
At $0.99, Live Wallpaper is a rather cheap addition to your Mac, but if you’re really pinching pennies, we’ve got something you might like: 5 copies of Live Wallpaper for our readers! Want to win one? Here’s what you need to do: take a screenshot of your desktop (just tap CMD+Shift+3), then upload the picture (CloudApp and Droplr are great tools for this) and share a link of it in the comments below. Then, share the giveaway on Twitter, Facebook, or App.net, and add a new comment here with a link to your post for an extra entry in the giveaway.
We’ll close the giveaway on March 6th, 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.
Last year, Adobe launched their Creative Cloud subscription service along with the newly released Creative Suite 6. Creative Cloud lets you download every one of the full apps from Creative Suite Master Collection to your Mac or PC, and share creative files online for $49/month. That’s still pricey over time, but a huge savings over the initial cost of buying Creative Suite Master Collection outright for $2,599.
If you already have a copy of Creative Suite, though, upgrading to the latest version often still works out cheaper if you have a smaller edition. I had Creative Suite 5.5 Design Standard, and upgraded to CS6 Design Standard for far less than a Creative Cloud subscription would have cost me. Another option is buying a one-app version of Creative Cloud, which is one way, say, to get Photoshop for $19/month.
Creative Cloud apps get updates more often than their traditional Creative Suite counterparts, so Photoshop users especially already have new features over those of use with Creative Suite. It’s one of the many ways Adobe is trying to push us all over to the subscription side.
About 15% of you said you plan to get Creative Cloud in our poll last year, and more said you’d consider it. That’s why we’re wondering how many of you actually use Creative Cloud. Has it worked out good for you, or are traditional upgrades still your preferred way of getting Adobe apps?
