If you frequent the AppStorm sites, you know that we love apps. We love writing with them, designing with them, coding with them, and so much more. Our prime directive is to share our love of apps with you. In this occasion, however, we will support our love for apps and design by giving you a sweet roundup of some of the most amazing templates for your video projects.
If you are currently working on a summer-themed wedding video, or a simple intro for a business, this list should help you if you need a refreshing touch of summer on your projects. You can use these files with Final Cut, iMovie, Adobe Premiere, After Effects, or whatever you use to edit your videos.
Let’s not keep you waiting and let’s check out these fantastic files from VideoHive, AudioJungle, and GraphicRiver, marketplaces run by our parent company, Envato.
Sports games have always been rare on the Mac, owing largely to the economics of development — such games are expensive to make, so you need a big audience to justify it, and the Mac install base has never reached the critical mass for sports titles. Golf games are something of an exception, however, with several Tiger Woods, Links, and Jack Nicklaus releases for the Mac on the commercial end, coupled with a dozen or so shareware titles in the past 15 years.
Nova Golf fits more in the spirit of the low-budget shareware games of old, and it comes at a time when the only other real options for a golf simulation on a Mac are the latest Tiger Woods Cider port, World Challenge Golf 2011, or GL Golf — Nova Golf’s award-winning predecessor. It’s a solid game, but it’s also disappointing in its current state. (more…)
Our giveaway is now closed, and congrats to Dimitrios Savvopoulos, timlou, and Rafta for winning a copy of Scrawl! Be sure to stay tuned for our upcoming giveaways in the future!
We’re always looking for better ways to take notes. There’s so many things to think about, Post-it notes just don’t cut it, and even Mountain Lion’s built-in Notes app doesn’t fit what most of us need. We need a simple place to put notes and quickly find them again, no matter where we’re working.
Scrawl is a great app for that. It’s a note taking app that lives in your menubar, one we were excited about when we reviewed it earlier this year. Since then, it’s gotten even better, with iCloud integration, native keyboard shortcut and Share Sheet support, and more. It’s a great way to quickly jot down notes in your menubar and find them whenever you need them.
Scrawl normally costs $1.99, but we’ve got 3 copies to giveaway for free to our readers. If you’d like to win a copy, just leave a comment below telling us why you’d love to start using it. For an extra credit, share the giveaway on Twitter, Facebook, or App.net, and then include a link to your update in your comment, and you’ll get two entries in the giveaway.
Our contest will close on midnight Monday, September 3rd, so hurry and get your entry in!
Envato staff or people who have written more than two articles or tutorials for AppStorm, however, are ineligible to enter.
Here at AppStorm, we review many games throughout our various networks. From Mac games to iPhone and Android games, we can’t help but to give some love to the gaming culture. With the recent addition of Game Dev to the Tuts+ network and our own Gaming Month here at Mac.AppStorm, we decided to review an app that isn’t a game, rather, a game creator: GameSalad.
GameSalad is an application that allows you to create games for a variety of platforms. So in essence, this app can help you create your first game in no time. If you are an indie game developer or someone interested in creating a soon-to-be iOS smash-hit, GameSalad is probably the best and easiest way to get your hands dirty and let your creativity run wild.
eBooks have become an important part the tech world these days. Many of us have dedicated eBook readers or tablets with eBook apps. I personally read more books than ever, but just a couple weeks ago purchased the first paper book I’ve purchased in years. Today, Amazon’s making more from Kindle books than hardcovers and Apple’s even had the DOJ inquiring into its eBook business practices. It’s an infant industry, but one that’s growing by leaps and bounds.
Today, you can buy almost any book you can think of and read it on your Mac or other devices in seconds. The Kindle app is ubiquitous thanks to Amazon’s extensive library of titles, but many indie publishers sell DRM free eBooks that you can read in Preview or apps like Calibre. Apple still hasn’t brought iBooks to the Mac, but many of us hope they’ll release a Mac version of it eventually.
I personally read PDF eBooks in Preview and Kindle books more than anything on my Mac, but I’m curious what you use to read books on your Mac. We’d love to hear your thoughts about your favorite book apps in the comments below!
I don’t know about you, but my music gets really old sometimes. When I’m looking for new music, I often struggle with what app to use. I tend to default to web apps, but I really wanted to find some various Mac apps that I can use to find new and exciting music. I tried a number of different applications and found a pretty decent variety.
Some apps on the list are simply a way to utilize a web app via the desktop. Others are completely unique applications which allow you to discover new music in unique and innovative ways. The list includes just a few of the many applications out there, as I tried to stay away from including too many applications which simply provide a way to play an online service via a desktop application. Follow me beyond the jump to learn more about some of the cool apps I found to discover new music.
When it comes to choosing a personal finance app for your Mac, you’ve got quite a range to choose from. We even did a roundup of 15 of the best candidates a couple of months back and picking one can be quite difficult owing to all the different range of features in each one.
Well, we can’t look at all 15 individually (otherwise we’d be here until the end of the year!) but instead we’re going to look at three of the most popular in a bit more detail, Moneywiz, iBank and Money, comparing the features and, most importantly, which out of these three is the best personal finance app for you.
The folks at Humble Bundle continue to ship the finest game bundles the ‘net has ever seen, and this week, their third Android bundle is on sell. Even if you’re a dedicated Apple customer who would never dream of owning an Android device, this Humble Bundle includes copies of each game for OS X, Windows, and Linux in addition to Android.
Our friends over at Android.AppStorm have written in-depth reviews of each game in this Android Humble Bundle. If you’re a Mac user that also uses an Android phone or tablet, now’s the time to check out the reviews and see which of the games you’d love to get for you’re device. Or, if you’re just looking for some new games for your Mac, you can check out the reviews to see what the games are all about before downloading to play on your MacBook!
The third Android Humble Bundle is only available for a little over a day longer, so if you’re looking for a cheap way to pick up Fieldrunners, Spirits, SpaceChem, Osmos, and more, be sure to grab a copy before it’s over! It’s a great way to get some great games and support indie devs, ones that support Mac gaming at that! Plus, since we’re nearing the end of our August Gaming Month here at Mac.AppStorm, it’s a great time to get a great deal on some Mac games, even if you can’t put the Android versions to use.
I love writing articles on my Mac. It’s easy, fullscreen mode is convenient, and there are a lot of great apps available for the platform. Overall, the experience is a quality one. But when it comes to choosing what app to write with, I have some trouble. Every month there seems to be a “new” writing app on the Mac App Store that’s really just a reiteration of the existing apps available. I like to remain loyal to a single app, but sometimes it’s fun to explore.
The other day, I was browsing the Mac App Store in search of anything new and significant. I came across Free, a distraction-free writing app by Michael Göbel that, comically enough considering its name, is not free. Its purpose is the same as that of WriteRoom, iA Writer, and the many others in this genre: to create an environment that is the most straightforward it can possibly be so that you can focus on writing and not the app’s functionality itself. My purpose, however, is to take a look at how well an app performs its job, so instead of assuming this app is great, let’s submerge ourselves in all the little appealing ounces of Free. (more…)
Our sponsor this week is Chronicle, a great app for keeping track of your bills and paying them online. A single late payment can cost $30 or more, and cause your credit score to plummet by up to 100 points. That’s why anyone who pays bills needs Chronicle. Chronicle reminds you to pay your bills, even when it isn’t running.
With Chronicle, all you’ll have to do is enter the bills you have and their due dates, and it’ll automatically remind you to make sure they’re paid on time. It’ll then let you set recurring bills so you can setup your payment schedule and never have to worry about it again. Combine that with detailed statistics about your bills and a built-in browser so you can pay bills online from one interface, and it’s quite a powerful app for keeping up with your bills.
Chronicle has been a great app for keeping up with your bills for years, but the newly released Chronicle 5 makes it even better. It now features beautiful retina graphics, along with a redesigned interface and a faster backend that’ll make it a joy to use. It also now supports native OS X Notifications, so you’ll never forget about a bill again.
Go Get It!
If you’ve been looking for a better way to keep track of your bills and make sure you never incur late fees, you should give Chronicle a try. You can download a free trial from their site, or purchase it from the App Store for just $9.99, 30% off its normal price celebrating the release of Chronicle 5.
