If you are searching for good apps at the Mac App Store, chances are you’d take a look at the featured app categories on display.
I’m talking about the “Apps for Writers,” “Get Stuff Done,” “Better Together,” and “Great Free Apps” categories where apps similar to one another are grouped together and given a snazzy section of their own. More importantly, these categories help you cut search time by providing unique gateways to apps that can contribute to your productivity, help you stay fit, or make work easier for you.
One of my personal favorites is the “Apps Starter Kit,” which welcomes new Mac owners with a set of 30 apps that can enhance user experience further. Although the suggestions are pretty helpful (I see a few of my favorites in there), it’s pretty limited. There are a handful of other apps at the Mac App Store that deserve a cozy spot in this category too. So in this post, I’ll share 12 apps that should be in the Apps Starter Kit as well.
Apple today has announced its Q1 earnings for the fiscal year 2012 – and the results are certainly not to be sniffed at. Q1 has been Apple’s best quarter ever with a reported $46.33 billion in revenue posted. The data, which is available for download from Apple’s corporate website, breaks down this pretty much incomprehensible sum into individual sources.
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One of the best, and perhaps most undervalued features of Mac OS X is one that was introduced in 10.5 Leopard: Time Machine. As Macintosh users, we often forget just how good we have it when it comes to matters like this. I was recently discussing backup options with a Windows using friend of mine and none of the options we could find for him came even close to the ease of use and painlessness (not to mention the system level integration) of Time Machine.
Nevertheless, after I started using Time Machine in Leopard, I quickly found one major drawback. Every hour, regardless of what you are doing, Time Machine starts a backup. It slows the system down, if you back up to a Time Capsule as I do, it slows the network down, and it’s unnecessary. I really only want one incremental backup per day, but this isn’t possible by default. This is where TimeMachineScheduler comes into play.
One of the first few apps I downloaded was the popular Alfred launcher. Being able to launch apps, open files, shutdown and restart my laptop with just a few taps on the keyboard intrigued me, so I decided to give it a shot. And hey, who can resist that adorable black bowler hat?
Months after, Alfred is now one of my favorite Mac apps and the most commonly used in a day. Moreover, there is this nifty upgrade called the Alfred Powerpack that contains features that enable me to do so much more with Alfred—features that will surely boost time efficiency and productivity better than ever before.
The Powerpack is definitely an upgrade many Alfred power users enjoy. In my case, my favorite Powerpack feature is the ability to extend Alfred, and it is in this post that I’ll explain briefly what extensions do as well as share a list of 20 really cool Alfred extensions you should download and try.
This week’s poll digs up a Mac user argument dating back over a decade. Upon seeing that the current operating system is spelled out with the Roman numeral “X”, many users pronounce the system’s name OS “Ex”. Others however, prefer to follow tradition (OS 8, OS 9) and always say OS “Ten”.
Today we want to test your Mac knowledge to see if you know which way is correct. Cast your vote in the poll on the right and tell us how you personally pronounce it on a day to day basis.
Which Way Is the Right Way?
After you vote in the poll with your personal preference, if you’d like to know the official correct way to say “OS X”, you need only to ask your Mac! Open up Terminal, type “say OS X” and hit Enter. It’s difficult to argue with the answer! If you’re still not convinced, you can also check out this Apple Support document.
We all know from experience that Mac users can get pretty nasty when this topic is brought up. Feel free to leave a comment below, but let’s all be nice polite adults shall we?
Beyond the hype and fanfare of last Thursday’s iBooks Author launch, some wannabe authors have been left with a sour taste in the mouth after delving into the terms and conditions of Apple’s new app designed to help newbies create textbooks for the iPad. Anyone who creates a textbook with Apple (and who charges a fee for it) must distribute it solely through Apple and agree to a wide range of extra terms and conditions, including the fact that you are required to enter into a separate agreement with Apple itself before any distribution of your work takes place.
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Our featured sponsor this week is Postbox, an unbelievably great Mac email client that you just have to try for yourself.
Postbox 3
Postbox 3, the latest iteration of this awesome and powerful Mail.app alternative, brings about a ton of great new features and enhancements. The interface has been completely revamped to be more slick and streamlined, great Lion features like fullscreen mode and gestures have been added, there’s better Gmail support and social integration and they’ve even added Dropbox support as an alternative to traditional email attachments.
All of our old favorite features are still present as well. Reply chains are absolutely gorgeous and clearly organized, search is a breeze, and the built-in file browser makes attaching files effortless.
I’m personally extremely picky about email clients and won’t use just anything. That being said, I absolutely love Postbox. It really nails that fine line of being simple enough to pick up and use right away while being considerably more powerful than any of its rivals. If you haven’t tried Postbox in a while, it’s time to give it another look.
Go Get It!
Go grab your 30-day free trial from the Postbox website. Once you realize that you can’t live without it, the full version can be purchased from the Postbox Store.
If you’re a web developer, then you know that manually creating image sprites is a pain. Even worse is the process of trying to position those sprites just right within your CSS. It’s a necessary evil, but don’t you wish you could skip it?
Today we’re going to take a look at a Mac app called SpriteRight that promises to completely automates this process. Will it successfully turn sprite creation into an easy and even enjoyable task? Read on to find out.
You may have noticed some changes here at Mac.AppStorm this week…
It’s an exciting time to be writing, and reading about, Mac apps and Apple – to this end we’re pushing forward with a brand new, and wholly invigorating, publishing schedule! You can look forward to double (that’s right) the number of posts you’re used to here on Mac.AppStorm – consisting of plenty more of the hearty posts you love; Reviews, How-To tips, Roundups, and Opinion pieces. In addition to lots of delicious new content to get stuck into!
This is the first of a feature series called ‘What’s Hot’ that will look to give you something interesting to chew on at the end of the week. We’ll look at any great new Mac apps (including editor and reader favourites), interesting pieces of news, and other miscellaneous artifacts…
Have you ever wondered why your Mac slows down after a couple months of use with no maintenance? Well, one of the reasons is because sometimes temporary files, which are supposed to be deleted, are kept without receiving any real use anymore. That, and of course, all the stuff that you have probably installed lately.
Luckily, we have a few apps that can help you keep a clean computer and a garbage-free hard drive. One of the newest options is an affordable alternative called CleanGenius. Is it any good? Let’s see!
