We’d probably all benefit from keeping better track of our money, and it’s always great to find a native Mac app to get the job done. It’s a difficult problem to solve, as we all manage money in our own unique way – budgeting, spending and income are highly individualized. As such, the selection of apps in this niche is similarly varied, with each having different feature sets and workflows.
iFinance is significantly cheaper than a lot of the other options out there, so let’s see if it can still get the job done!
I’d like to take a moment to say a big thank you to this week’s sponsor, Twitterrific. I absolutely love every application that the Iconfactory produce, and this is no exception. It’s thoughtfully designed, beautiful to look at, and a pleasure to use.
If you’re growing tired with sparse updates to the official Twitter client (or the gradual integration of ads), look no further than Twitterrific. It’s a great alternative to the official Twitter client, and performs far better in many areas.
It supports multiple accounts, multiple windows, translation, a unified timeline, themes, and full keyboard control throughout. The latest release, version 4, was a huge update which brought a range of new functionality and a clean, minimal design.
You can buy Twitterrific on the Mac App Store, download the free version, or check out our in-depth review. I’m a huge fan, and really can’t recommend this app highly enough. Go try it out!
The iPhone 4 was released this past June, and with that came a major iOS release. This new hardware and software presented some new possibilities and thus some new applications. The added front-facing camera was begging to be used in a video calling situation and Apple – being the innovators that they are – created FaceTime to utilize this new functionality.
A limiting factor for FaceTime was the fact that it was only functional for calling another iPhone 4 (or the latest iteration of the iPod touch). Last October, Apple released a beta version of FaceTime for Mac, utilising the iSight camera built into most of their notebook and desktop computers.
FaceTime for Mac recently hit the Mac App Store as a full 1.0 release, and today we’ll be taking the final version for a spin!
Alarm clock apps are a difficult topic, as some people are averse to paying for an app that does something that their cellphones and clocks do. While I don’t quite use alarm apps on an everyday basis, I do find them attractive and convenient because they put in your hands a bunch of settings and options that regular alarm clocks don’t have.
Also, they have access to your complete music library, so you can wake up every day to your latest album or playlist. Today we are presenting an alarm clock app that goes along with your Mac perfectly, as it is very pretty, and remarkably simple to use. It’s called Aurora.
People love photos. We love taking them, editing them, and most of all we love sharing them with our friends and family. From Facebook albums and email attachments to online services like Kodak galleries and Shutterfly, the options seem limitless for how we get our pictures into the hands of our loved ones. But it’s easy to get tired of sending email attachments or signing up for new sharing services.
Posterino from Zykloid software makes the act of photo sharing fun, engaging, and creative again with its easy-to-use interface and plethora of creative options. Read on past the break to find out more and give your old photos new life.
Pro photographers know the drill: plug in digital camera, import to Lightroom/Aperture, spend hours getting that image to look just right, and the results speak for themselves.
However, if you’re an amateur photographer, hobbyist, scrapbooker or just trying to make use of the camera you got for Christmas, you might find yourself less than satisfied with this complex and often time-consuming routine.
With an intuitive interface, powerful features, and speedy performance, Flare promises to give you great looking results without breaking the bank (or your sanity). Let’s take a look and see how it stacks up!
Winners Announced
I’m excited to let you know that we’ve chosen the ten lucky winners! Did you make the cut?
- Zhe
- Sébastien Lavoie
- Stefan
- Bryan
- Toby Adams
- Aeox
- Florian L.
- Quine
- Ewan
- Glyn
Congratulations – we’ll be in touch soon with your promo code!
Competition Now Closed
As well as sponsoring the site this week, the lovely developers behind Ensoul have been kind enough to donate ten licenses for our awesome readers.
Ensoul is a great application for creating and preparing beautiful iPhone backgrounds and contact images. It has a stunning interface, a simple workflow, and even handles the process of transferring the images across to your phone (you can read our full review here).
Entering the competition is really easy. All you need to do is leave a comment below, telling us how often you change your iPhone background! Is it every month? Every week? Or every day?
The competition will run for one week, and I’ll pick ten winning comments at random on Thursday, 24th March. Best of luck, and I look forward to hearing what you have to say in the comments!
With this week’s release of the iPad 2 (in the USA, at least), I know that many of you will now be sitting at home feeling ever so slightly less satisfied with the original iPad sat on your desk. It’s a strange phenomenon. Your iPad is no less amazing today than it was last week, but it feels that way…
Very few Apple fans can afford to buy each and every new product release, and the feeling of being slightly “out of date” is something that we’ve all come to accept as the norm. This isn’t exactly a bad thing. Let’s face it – a twelve month old iPad is still a long, long way ahead of any other competing device on the market.
But how does Apple’s release cycle operate, and is their approach working?
Maybe you’ve played guitar for fun since you were a kid, or you start your day by singing in the shower. You may not be a professional musician–in fact, you might not even pass for decent–but you’ve always wanted to play with home recording and see what you can come up with.
The price tags on professional digital audio workstations like Apple’s Logic Pro are prohibitive for the hobbyist, to say the least, but there are plenty of cheap and even free apps for the Mac that can help you realize your secret dream.
Generally speaking, I usually find the “insurance upsell” to be a total rip-off. Only last week I was offered the chance to insure my new kettle against damage. I mean, really? It’s a kettle…
But when it comes to Apple products, I tend to have a different opinion. I’ve bought AppleCare for two machines in the past, and both times I made the most of the extended warranty with repairs or replacements for various parts.
Although it may look like a solid, magical piece of aluminium, your MacBook is actually a very complicated piece of technology. And things do go wrong! Although AppleCare costs a few hundred extra bucks at the outset, I’ve always found it to be a worthwhile investment.
But do you feel the same way? I’d love to hear your opinion, as this is a topic that doesn’t come up all that often. Are you an AppleCare user, and if so, have you ever actually needed to use it?
