I recently stumbled upon a great iPad app that, as strange as it may sound, has changed the way I work with my Mac. You can read our full review of Actions on iPad.AppStorm, but in a nutshell, Actions is an app that allows you to trigger keyboard shortcuts from your iPad.
Now while this may not seem very useful or relevant, think of the amount of keyboard shortcuts apps such as Photoshop have. Now imagine being able to launch these from your iPad, visually organised in a way that makes sense to you. Or imagine harnessing the power of Automator, Keyboard Maestro or Alfred with the aid of your iPad.
Seem more appealing? Then read on for a few interesting use cases of Actions for iPad with your Mac. Since it can launch keyboard shortcuts at the tap of one finger, you can make keyboard shortcuts that’d be rather unwieldily to enter on a Mac’s keyboard, and then use them in Actions easily. And even if you don’t have an iPad or don’t want to get Actions, you’ll likely find some shortcut based tricks here that’ll speed up work on your Mac.
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Odds are, you have more devices laying around your house than ever before: a smartphone, most likely, along with, perhaps, an eReader, tablet, iPod, or gaming device. Keeping them all in sync is frustrating at best, impossible at worst. That’s where our sponsor this week, SyncMate, comes in.
SyncMate Free lets your Address Book and Calendar between your Macs, PCs, and mobile devices of all types: Windows Mobile phones, BlackBerry, Android (including the Kindle Fire), PSP, and more. You can even sync your online accounts, keeping everything synced between your Dropbox, Yahoo!, and iCloud accounts. You’ll also be able to view the messages on your mobile devices.
Then, with the Expert Edition, you can also sync iTunes media, iPhoto photos, notes, bookmarks, and sticky notes between all of your devices. You’ll also be able to sync folders in realtime between computers, and export text messages from your older Android, Windows Mobile, or Nokia phone. You’ll also be able to convert mobile media formats like .3GP to standard formats for newer devices. That might be just what you need to get everything moved from your old devices to a shiny new iPhone.
Go Get it!
Ready to make syncing all your devices simpler? Then you should go try out SyncMate. You can download the free version of SyncMate from their site, then upgrade to SyncMate Expert for $39.95 when you want more features. You can even get lifetime updates included for just $11.95 extra, if you’d like.
It's been over 2 years — and two OS X releases — since the Mac App Store was launched on OS X Snow Leopard. In that time, it's become ubiquitous in the world of Mac Apps, and most new apps we try out and review are exclusively on the Mac App Store. In fact, a good number of the apps I use daily are exclusively on the Mac App Store.
For the most part, the App Store is a great addition to the Mac, making it easier for developers to sell apps and giving us a centralized place for users to find apps and get updates. But, it's not all perfect: there's restrictions to what App Store apps can do, and some developers have backtracked from switching to the App Store, moving new versions of their apps back to exclusive sale on their own site.
As app users, it's not too often that we get the choice of where to buy apps. If developers sell on the App Store, usually the app is only on the App Store, and otherwise, it's only on their own site. There are apps that are an exception, such as the Omni Group's apps, which are sold on both the App Store and on their own site.
That's why we're wondering: When you can choose, would you rather buy an app from the App Store or from developers' own sites? Fill out the poll, and let us know why you choose what you do in the comments below.
We’d like to say a special Thank you! to our weekly sponsors from March for sponsoring our site and for the great apps they make. If you would like to feature your app on our site with an advertisement, be sure to check out our available slots on BuySellAds or register for a weekly sponsorship for your app.
If you haven’t already checked out our the great apps that sponsored our site last month, be sure to check them out now!
Pagico
Most of us need to use several productivity apps every day: one for todos, one for notes and files, and maybe another for your projects and more. Having to switch back and forth between these separate apps is a drag: it’s hard to make connections between dots, and your data is scattered all over the place. Pagico is here to help.
Pagico is like GTD with data management capability – it not only manages tasks, but also notes and files. By neatly organizing everything by projects, you can have your vacation itineraries stored right next to restaurant menus, or action items right on top of meeting notes.
PassLocker
You know you shouldn’t use the same simple password on every site online, but password managers can be so complex to setup, not to mention expensive. Perhaps you should try out PassLocker which is a new take on a password management app.
PassLocker is a nicely designed menubar app that makes it dead-simple to generate random passwords for your online accounts and save your account info in one place. You won’t have to install any browser plugins to use it, and there’s no extra features or settings to make it complex. It’s just a simple way to manage your passwords.
Magic Mind
Do you find yourself looking for calming music or background sounds to make your day at work less stressful? Magic Mind is an app that can help you out.
You can choose from 28 background sounds, including thunder, crickets, birds and more, to help you relax while tuning out other background noises. You can custom mix sounds and adjust the volume of each individual sound to get it sounding just like you want.
Disklens
Spotlight is one of your Mac’s best built-in tools, letting you find apps, files, emails, and more in seconds. Once you try to dig deeper, though, you’ll quickly find Spotlight’s interface to be limiting. That’s where Disklens comes in. Disklens builds on Spotlight’s powerful search engine, adding a convenient user interface on top that’s aimed at maximum efficiency in the daily routine of locating information on your Mac. It’s Spotlight, supercharged.
And a special thanks to you, our Mac.AppStorm.net readers, for reading and sharing our articles. We couldn’t do it without you!
Similar to the old arcade game Snake, Nimble Quest is a new game that lets you grow your train of characters, becoming stronger with each addition. Unlike Snake, though, where you created a huge, mutant reptile that roamed the arid arcade plains in search of food to fuel its ever increasing monstrous bulk, in Nimble Quest you’re creating a party of heroes and slaying baddies.
Is Nimble Quest a fun take on a classic or just a rip off of an old favorite? We’ll take a look and find out! (more…)
A computer network exists to ease the transfer of data from one computer to another. Before networks became common in homes and offices, moving even a small file would require transferring the file to some temporary medium, often a floppy disk, taking that temporary storage to the other location, and then copying the file onto the new destination computer. It took more time and effort and moving a file to a computer in another building or location required someone to walk or drive the disk there. Now with the ubiquity of networks this task has become an almost transparent action. We routinely move files around our local networks with little more difficultt than moving files within on our computer.
This easy transfer still only holds in when the source and destination are two computers on a local network. Once you need to transfer a file over the Internet, that is to a computer somewhere else, things get more complicated. This is such a common need and over time several dedicated protocols such as FTP and SFTP arose for this task. Unlike the seemingly transparent transfers on the local network, transfers with these protocols require a specialized client such as Cyberduck or FileZilla to move files between the remote location and your local computer.
The ExpanDrive app seeks to bring the convenience of a local drive to remote storage normally accessed through FTP, SFTP, and on Amazon’s S3 service. It makes a FTP, SFTP, or Amazon S3 connection appear like a USB drive plugged into your computer and transfers to these remote systems as simple as moving a file to an external hard drive. Let’s look at how well it works. (more…)
You’ve likely used word processors like Word, TextEdit, and Pages, as well as plain-text writing apps like iA Writer and Byword. If you’re a serious writer, you’ve likely used or at least looked at advanced writing apps like Scrivener or the original Ulysses.
But you’ve never seen anything like Ulysses III. It’s a totally new take on an advanced writing app, bringing the best of Markdown-focused plain text editors together with a multi-document management system that makes sense. Throw in HUDs that make Markdown formatting easier to use than rich editing in Word, and you’ve got one serious writing app. One that must be seen to be believed.
Recently I’ve gotten interested in time management techniques and apps, and I’ve gotten to review a few Pomodoro Technique apps and even had an interview with the developer of one of them. If you’re easily distracted and have a tendency to procrastinate, there’s nothing better than a little pull on the ears to keep you on track and away from distractions, and those tools are great for that.
But what about when those tools become more distracting and harder to use than they are helpful? Having all those great features and animations can actually slow you down, as I have found. So the question is, are these tools actually necessary, and to what extent? Let’s explore a few of the ins and outs of the problem.
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I love to see new games move to the Mac, but I’m primarily a console gamer. The difference for me is the console controller, and while I could invest in a Mac gaming controller, there’s some cost involved there, and, well, I already have my consoles for games like that.
That doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes want a game controller for my Mac, but I can’t exactly plug my DualShock 3 into my USB port. My hopes haven’t been far off, though, because WJoy is a tiny app that will connect your Wii Remote and Mac, allowing you to use it as a controller for Mac games. We’ll see if it works as advertised. (more…)
And we’re back to Thursday’s News and Deals roundup!
The selection of news, deals and reads for this week looks superb, seriously. We’ve got Ulysses III coming to the Mac App Store and Reeder going free, Rdio’s new video streaming and Amazon’s cloud sync service.
Don’t miss our interesting reads for this week, because they are great! Alfred extensions, iCloud, App Store pricing, DuckDuckGo and more should give you enough reading material for the weekend.
