Apple | Mac
Eltima’s Black Friday Sale runs through December 3 and includes 8 of their most popular apps (regularly $339.72) for just $39.95.
Read more “8 useful apps for $39.95 – Black Friday Sale runs through Dec 3”
Resources
When you want to show off your app or other visuals meant for specific devices, it’s always best to show them in the context of how they’ll be used. PlaceIt takes your images and app screenshots and places it within an environment for a final photo that can be used as marketing collateral. There are tons of environments, or stages as they call them, you can place your image in, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktops, outdoor boards and more.
You simply choose the stage you want, upload your image to PlaceIt, and bam, you have a clean image showing off your screenshot as it will be seen by potential viewers.
The small comp images (400×300 pixels) are free, with larger images costing $8 to $80 depending on size and usage. That may seem expensive, but when you consider the cost of buying a stock photo, and the time it would take to mask out the image area and drop your image in, it’s well worth it.
Apple | Mac
Last week, I gave you part one of my list. Today I offer you part two of my list of OS X apps I can’t live without. Some I’ve used for quite a long time, some are a recent discover, but all of them have found a permanent home on my Mac.
Rename
There are plenty of file renamer apps available, but if you only need to use a tool like this once in a while, it’s a shame to spend $10 to $20 on it. Rename offers the most important features that more popular bulk file renamer apps have, and is free of charge. I don’t use it often, but when I do I’m glad I found this little gem.
AppCleaner
After all these years, you would think Apple could come up with a way to make it easy to delete an application and ALL its associated files. Until that happens, AppCleaner does the job extremely well – and it does it automatically. Drag an app to the Trash and AppCleaner pops up a window asking if you want to delete any files it finds that appear to be related to that app (prefs, configuration files, etc.) If you download and install a lot of different apps, AppCleaner is something you’ll want to have around, and it’s absolutely free.
TrashIt!
If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s when a file refuses to be deleted. The Finder somehow believes I don’t have permission, it’s in use, or whatever stupid reason. TrashIt! to the rescue. I keep the icon in the Finder window toolbar so it’s only a click away when I need it. TrashIt! simply asks for your admin password to delete any stuck file. It beats having to launch the Terminal and typing the command to delete a file. TrashIt! is free, and has saved me from throwing large heavy objects through my office window many, many times.
Apptivate
Get instant access to files & folders, or launch apps and scripts with a quick keyboard shortcut. There are tons of file launchers available today, but Apptivate is simple and works extremely well. I particularly like the ability to assign a sequence of key shortcuts to activate items in Apptivate. It also allows you to overwrite system shortcuts with a pref setting. Apptivate is free.
Yoink
Drag & drop is fantastic. I use it constantly. But if you use apps in Full Screen mode, have apps in separate spaces, or have a hard time motivating yourself to hold the mouse button down while you navigate from one place to another in order to drop the file in the right spot, then it’s probably not a lot of fun. I found Yoink to be a real life-saver, popping-up a window when you start dragging a file and allowing you to “store” it there until you’re ready to drop it somewhere else. I love it because I can drag multiple files into the window one at a time from various Finder windows, then drop them all at once in an email. Yoink is available in the Mac App Store for $3.99.
Onyx
Onyx is the one-stop-shop for tweaking your Mac, and keeping it running smoothly. With the ability to run maintenance routines and customize the Mac OS, it offers something for everyone. It’s updated frequently, and best of all, it’s absolutely free. This is one of those apps that I can’t believe everyone doesn’t already have installed.
1Password
For creating, storing, and entering passwords for websites, there’s simply nothing better. And when you add in the ability to store credit card info, and software license info, 1Password is one app I can’t live without. $50 will get you a single-user license, while $70 gets you a family license (5 users). 1Password is available via the Mac App Store or directly from the developer.
Suitcase Fusion
Every designer needs a font manager. There are only a few options available, and Suitcase is the king of the mountain. Every new version brings useful features for designers, updates for new versions of Adobe’s Creative Suite are timely, and it’s been rock-solid for me for years. In particular, Fusion’s Quick Match feature is invaluable. Fusion costs $100, with upgrades priced at $50.
Tweetbot
There are a ton of 3rd party Twitter applications available, but none of them come close to Tweetbot – which strikes the perfect balance between features and usability. Tweetbot isn’t cheap. At $20, it’s not for the casual user. But if you spend a lot of time on Twitter, it’s worth every penny!
Apple | Mac
“When it comes to utilities and applications for my Mac, I must admit I’m a bit of a whore.”
I’ll date lots of them, and toss them aside just as quickly as I come across them. But there are some that just seem to stick around. I absolutely love them, and can’t imagine my Mac-using life without them. Here is part one of my list of OS X apps I love: Read more “Apps & Utilities for Mac OS X I can’t live without: Part 1”
General
To quote Charles Barkley:
“People are stupid.”
Apigee has released the results of the 2013 Mobile App Behavior Survey of smartphone owners across France, Germany, Spain, the U.K. and the U.S.
Survey respondents reported some fascinating country by country differences:
When asked the age at which it’s appropriate for a child to receive their first smartphone, 75% say somewhere between the ages of 12 and 16. However, 2% of Germans say a one-year-old child should have a smartphone, 8% of Americans say the right age is 10, and 6% of people in the U.S. and Spain say parents should wait until kids reach the age of 18 before giving them their first smartphone.
53% of drivers across the world admit to using apps on their smartphone while behind the wheel. Some countries have made more headway than others at curbing this behavior, but the numbers of respondents saying they do this is consistently high: Germany (64%), France (61%), Spain (56%), U.S. (49%) and UK (30%).
Interestingly, “pride” emerged as the top reason that people stay with the mobile platform of their choice. Americans emerged as the most proud of their chosen operating system at a surprising 37%. However, overall iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Windows users say it’s pride that keeps them from switching.
Spain ranked as the most app-reliant country with 93% saying they can’t go one complete day; while half (50%) of U.S. residents saying they couldn’t last just four hours without apps. And the amount of apps people say they use each day is significant: 72% say they use as many as 10 apps per day, and 2% in the global survey even claim they use more than 50 apps per day.
[zilla_alert style=”yellow”] Note: I received this information via an emailed press-release, and have NOT seen the actual report. But if what you see here is any indication, it’s got to be a great read. [/zilla_alert]
Apple | Mac
With Instagram, Facebook chose to allow it to live-on for now – but I suspect it will eventually get fully integrated into Facebook’s brand apps. Unfortunately, Google has not been as kind. They’ve made it clear that they have no intention on adding features to it in the future. It’s dead. And while Facebook only hired the developers and not purchased the apps themselves, they’re essentially dead as well.
I’m not suggesting that you should not buy apps from independent developers. They’re what makes the Apple community great. And I absolutely do not blame any developer for selling their company for large sums of money. They worked hard to create a great app or service and they deserve the rewards.
But you should take these recent acquisitions into consideration when you purchase your next app that may be a mission-critical one. Let me give you an example. Read more “Recent acquisitions should make you wary of buying new apps”
Apple | Mac
If you have a lot of items in a music playlist and you want to check or uncheck them all, you can save yourself the time and trouble of doing it one-by-one simply by clicking the checkbox of any song in the playlist while holding the Command key down. Doing so will check or uncheck all the items in the playlist at once.
Apple | Mac
If waiting for all those startup utilities, helpers and applications annoys you every time you boot up/restart your Mac, rejoice in the fact that their is a simple solution.
While you could spend the time to set up an Automator Applescript to set the order and delay time between apps launching, it’s far easier to use DelayedLauncher to do the job.
Delayed launcher allows you to set the order your helpers, utilities and apps launch at boot time, as well as set a delay between each one. This can be quite helpful because OS X attempts to launch all the items in the Startup Items list (in your System Preferences/Accounts tab) at one time – thereby slowing the time until you can actually use your Mac down. In some cases, it can bring your entire system to a crawl until they’ve all launched.
Apple | Mac
Over the years I’ve installed a lot of commercial software, shareware and freeware on my Macs. I love trying new apps. That being said, most of what I install gets used once or twice, then discarded. But there is a small collection of apps and utilities for Mac OS X that I’ve found to be extremely useful and kept around for the long haul.I have no set criteria for deciding what stays and what goes, but for the most part the app has to serve a particular need, look good, and work as advertised. The following is not a complete list of what’s installed on my Mac, but it represents what applications and utilities have stood the test of time, and what I use the most.
JustNotesThere are lots of note-taking apps out there, but when I set out to find one that was dead simple, had a Mac and web client, and synced with my iPhone – I found only one that worked for me. JustNotes uses the SimpleNote service and syncs with all my Macs, my iPhone. It offers a menubar item for quick access, a few keyboard shortcuts, and not much more. It’s exactly what I was looking for, and it’s free.
Note: SimpleNote offers a web client, as well as iPhone app by itself – so you only need JustNotes (or other compatible app) if you want a Mac client.
Read more “30 Mac OS X apps and utilities I love: Part 1”
Apple | Mac
New and experienced iPhone and iPod Touch users can always use a another site for news, app reviews and commentary, and I’ve gathered a few great ones for you to bookmark.
By far, the best site I’ve come across for iPhone apps is AppShopper. When you want to read descriptions, reviews, and price watching, AppShopper is the place to go. It’s also the best looking and most organized site of the bunch. The site also offers a free iPhone app to complete the mobile experience.
The original iPod/iPhone site, iLounge, is still one of the first places people go for news and reviews on all things iPhone. In particular, the quality of their reviews of various iPhone/iPod Touch cases cannot be touched by anyone!
FreshApps is another app review site. The site doesn’t have nearly the amount of content as some others, but the layout is clean and I like the quality of content so far.
iPhone Alley isn’t one of my favorite iPhone sites, but it does contain quite a bit of good content, so it’s worth bookmarking.
148Apps is one of the more popular iPhone sites around, and for good reason. App reviews contain useful ratings, reviews and screenshots. This is one site you’ll want to check out when you’re considering purchasing an app. In particular I like the Price Drops section, where you can quickly see which apps have lowered their price or gone free.
General
I often see comments on Mac OS X feature-related articles from users who feel that Apple should include this or that feature. No matter how obscure the feature request is, they’re convinced that the whole world could use it.I normally ignore such fluff, but this past week I managed to come up with a list of a few things that I think Apple should build-in to Mac OS X to make me happy. Because you know if I want it, chances are that everyone else on the planet does too, right?
For starters Apple, since I’m smarter than your average rock and managed to set up my Mac’s user account with administrative privileges, can you please stop asking me for my God-foresaken password every time I want to install something? Please! I get it, security and all that. But I’ve set myself up as an admin user for a reason. Can you at least offer the option of not asking me for a password? I know, enabling that feature will require me to enter my password, but that’s ok this one time!
Wait Apple, don’t run off just yet, I’ve got more. Read more “Hey Apple, give me what I want (cause surely the whole world wants it to)”