We recently went over the best apps of 2011 and it’s safe to say that last year was an amazing time to be a Mac user. Not only did our favorite apps see major updates, there was a nice influx of brand new apps that were simply too good to pass up.
Today we want to reverse things and start looking forward instead of reviewing what has already come. We’ll introduce you to ten apps that are going to make big waves in 2012. Interestingly enough, most of them happen to be geared towards designers and web developers so if you fit that description, you’ll definitely want to take a look! We’ll also look at an awesome new Google Reader app, what’s in store for Spotify and even get a glimpse of the gem that 6Wunderkinder has been keeping up its sleeve.
Everyone loves getting a new Mac, but not everyone loves dishing out the requisite dough. Whether you’re looking at a $599 Mac Mini or a $2,499 Mac Pro, the expense can be burdensome. With new Macs, shopping around doesn’t typically help too much as prices tend to be fairly uniform.
However, if you’re willing to venture into the land of refurbished Macs, price tags can become much more friendly. For instance, on the Apple.com Refurbished Mac page you can typically find savings of up to almost 30%.
Today we want to hear your thoughts on refurbished Macs. Cast your vote in the poll to let us know if you’ve ever purchased a refurb, whether through Apple or someone else. After that, leave a comment below and tell us about your experience. Were you happy with your refurbished Mac? Would you recommend this route to someone else?
Our featured sponsor this week is PhotoStyler, a fantastic and unbelievably easy way to edit photos on your Mac. With dozens of gorgeous presets, you’re never more than a click away from beautiful photos. You can also venture off on your own and leverage a powerful but simple toolset to customize the result.
With PhotoStyler, you can achieve amazing vintage effects: lomo, cross-process, tilt-shift, borders and frames; all this and more can easily be applied by anyone with no photo editing experience. Then finish off with easy sharing options for Facebook and Flickr. I really love this application and am confident that you will too!
Go Get It!
Go grab your free trial of PhotoStyler from the Neatberry website. Once you realize that you can’t live without it, the full version can be purchased for $29.99.
A journal is a great tool for keeping track of daily happenings and the start of a new year is a great time to begin your new journal. Whether you are tracking progress toward achieving those resolutions you’ve just made, chronicling the important milestones in your life, or simply creating a dialog with yourself, a good journaling application will be your constant companion throughout the year.That’s why it is important to select the best option for your needs.
There are a lot of choices in this growing category. Today we are going to take a look at one of the venerable Mac-based journaling programs, MacJournal from Mariner Software. Version 6.0 was released recently, and I’ll be pointing out the significant new features as we go along. Let’s get started.
I remember from when I used a Windows machine how annoying the anti-virus apps used to be. It was kind of a “can’t live with them, or without them” relationship. If you ran a Windows machine, you had to have an anti-virus app if you wanted it to remain functional. But it was kind of like trading one thing for another, as most of the anti-virus apps were always annoying and slowed down my computer a lot (it almost felt like installing a virus that would keep away even worse viruses away from my computer).
When I made the switch to Mac, one of the big factors that influenced my decision were all the people telling me that Mac OS is safe out of the box, and that I didn’t need an anti-virus. This is kind of a difficult topic, though, and still many people don’t feel safe running their Mac without an anti-virus installed. Today we are reviewing a free alternative to the popular paid anti-virus Mac apps. It’s called ClamXav, let’s take a look!
Do you remember the last time you searched frantically for your camera to capture a moment, a landscape or something else that took your breath away? And do you remember the disappointment when you later at home saw that something – a lamp post, a person, a trash bin… – completely ruined the photo?
Now you can easily fix this problem without having to take intermediate lessons in Photoshop. With Snapheal, it’s as easy as painting over the parts of the image you don’t want and make them disappear. We’ll take a closer look at the app after the break…
Whether it’s at Starbucks, the mall or Motel 6, free WiFi hotspots are popping up everywhere. While you’re using those hotspots, you might unknowingly be giving away some seriously personal information to an opportunistic hacker or two, including your social network, email, and even your online banking account login credentials.
With personal information like that at risk, you might be tempted to stop using those free hotspots altogether, but an app called Cloak by Bourgeois Bits hopes to alleviate those risks by providing Mac users with a corporate grade VPN service built into a consumer level app. Read on to see if Cloak really is the perfect companion to public WiFi.
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, or Android 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!
Managing your various accounts, passwords, IDs and other sensitive data is a tricky situation. You want it to be both accessible and secure, two goals that are by nature at odds with each other.
Today we’re going to give you a sneak peek at Dashlane, an app that promises to simplify this process and help you manage and use your information while keeping it safe from prying eyes. It’s a tall order so let’s see if this app can make good on its promise.
Ever since the release of the Mac App Store, I’ve been waiting for one specific category to take off: News apps. More specifically, innovative and free news apps.
This expectation isn’t some fanciful dream but something that arose out of a clear precedent: the iOS App Store. Today we’ll briefly discuss what the iOS App Store has in this area that the Mac App Store is desperately lacking and whether or not we can expect this void to continue in the future.
