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If you work regularly with an editing program of any sort – be it Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere, Avid, or other advanced programs – chances are good that you understand how truly important your personal preference files are. From keyboard shortcuts to import/export presets to installed plugins, preference files can incorporate a lot in a good editing program. In fact, without the proper preference files in place, an experienced editor’s productivity can completely disappear.
This brings me to the focus of the article – why it is important to always backup your preference files. If you are a serious editor, you probably already know why you should backup the files, and you might even be doing it already. If you don’t yet understand why you should backup the files or simply want to learn an easy way to backup the files with a convenient, free program called Preference Manager, then read on after the jump.
Wouldn’t it be great if Apple released an app that we could use to customize the look of the operating system? Just imagine that for a bit. Think of how you’d tailor your experience. Think of the abundance of different themes that people would post on the internet for everyone else to use. Hey, think about how many roundups we would write up!
Sadly for us, the ability to theme our system’s interface has never been an easy or flawless task. Sure, we had Manifique and a few apps like it, but now they are gone. That’s why icon customizers are still interesting, since tweaking icons is one of the best ways you can still tweak your Mac experience.
iCondubber is dubbed as the “definitive icon/theme manager”, and while it probably isn’t the “definitive” icon manager, it is without a doubt a helpful and useful tool. Let’s take a look, and see if it’s worth trying out. (more…)
It’s a huge pain having to constantly juggle multiple windows and apps to get the information I need to reference for the task at hand. Whether on a tiny MacBook Air or a spacious two-monitor desktop setup, I often have to rapidly switch from text editor to App Store to any of a dozen browser tabs while I work on an article.
With ScreenFloat those days are now largely behind me, as I can float screenshots of the pertinent information atop other windows. It’s easy to use, surprisingly versatile, and a huge time saver. And it lives right in my menubar (although there’s also an option to show the Dock icon instead, if you’re out of menubar space).
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Do you remember when you changed a file, saved it absentmindedly and then started to look for it frantically? Yeah, I know, it happens to me more often than I care to admit. I usually create a new file in the same app and go to the save dialogue to see which path is set and where my sought-after file could be.
Of course, there’s Spotlight and the wonderful Alfred to help you out as well, but if you can’t remember a file name, you’re in trouble. Well, there’s a fix for that and it’s called Trickster. Read along to get to know the nifty little utility.
There are times when we import photos from our cameras or iDevices, and we dump them in a folder in order to leave them there until we have time to rename them all to something that actually makes sense — you know, instead of a bunch of numbers. Perhaps you just downloaded some music from who knows where and you want to rename those tracks, or maybe you just work with a lot of files throughout the day.
Well, if you are looking for something that’ll take care of that for you with ease, you’ve come to the right place. Better Rename 9 is here to help you with those renaming tasks in a variety of ways. Albeit not free, Better Rename is a great tool to have.
Many of us have noticed that our work is increasingly finding itself coming home with us. Plenty of times we transfer our files from one computer to the other, but what happens when we forget some? Will we have to turn around and go back? Or what if you need to use an app that’s not on your home computer?
Using multiple computers in different locations is a reality many of us face today, and the problem has always been accessing the one away from you. What you need is an elegant solution that can connect you, and that is where Remotix comes in.
Today I will be reviewing Remotix, the ultimate VNC and ARD client. Remotix, which is developed by Nulana LTD, is a new kind of refined VNC app for Mac. Nulana was kind enough to send us a copy of Remotix to review, so let’s take a look and see what it offers.
Firstly, I must start this review with a confession: Even as an experienced IT professional, and despite the advice I frequently give out to friends and relatives, I don’t back up my data anywhere near as much as I should do. I have an Apple Time Capsule at home, but that has ended up being used more as a central data store for my home than anything and, whilst I know it is important for me to back up regularly, I just don’t seem to get around to it all that often.
Then, the inevitable happens, and a disk fails to boot or mount one day, sometimes even without warning. In these cases, sometimes Apple’s own Disk Utility can help, but more often than not if the problem is serious, it just won’t cut it. Disk Utility is great, but when there are major problems on a drive, it generally spits out some cryptic error message and does nothing to help you fix the problem.
I experienced exactly this problem with a media drive connected to one of my Macs at home some time ago, and so it was with great interest that I discovered Alsoft’s DiskWarrior. The drive had been misbehaving for some time, occasionally losing files that had been added the day before, but now the drive wouldn’t mount at all, and I was worried. There were some irreplacable photos and videos stored on this drive, and I wanted to try and recover them the best I could.
I have almost completely given up on organizing the files and folders on my hard drive. There are just so many files that accumulate before I have a chance to clean up and organize them. Certain folders, like my Desktop and Downloads folders, are always filled up with stuff that I don’t even remember putting there.
That’s where Folder Tidy comes in handy. As you can probably guess by its name, it is an app that can help you organize your existing files neatly into folders. How does it do it? Let’s take a look!
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We’re big fans of apps which reside in the Menu Bar here at Mac.AppStorm. Personally, at least two of my most essential Mac apps live up there in the top right hand corner of the screen. However, with the proliferation of useful, lightweight Menu Bar apps, things can begin to get a little crowded in no time at all.
Well, for this admittedly niche problem, there’s an elegant solution in the form of Surtees Studios’ Bartender. Its a utility which promises to give users about as much control over the Menu Bar as one could reasonably hope to have.
As most programmers are already aware, Git is a very powerful open source version control system. There are a handful of popular version control systems (VCS) to choose from, but most power users lean toward Git or Subversion (SVN). Schools of thought vary on which is best, but it is universally accepted that professionals of all kinds can benefit from a good version control system. Even for those who don’t write or program professionally, a good VCS can help catalog changes in all sorts of personal projects. Launching into Git for the first time, however, might not be the most pleasant experience for the average first-timer.
Tower changes that and makes Git a tool that everyone should have loaded up in their repertoire.
