Giles Turnbull - page 22

In a pre-Christmas post, we asked Cult of Mac readers to vote for their favorite new Mac OS X app of 2010. As usual, by “new” we mean a brand new app, or a major update to an old app, that’s been released during the previous 12 months.

This years winner, by a considerable margin, was email client Postbox 2.

For those of you who’ve not tried it, Postbox is a feature-packed email client which combines some of the best ideas from web-based email and local email services. It’s an excellent tool for people who live and die by email, and who manage a large volume of messages across many different accounts.

Other apps that got a lot of mentions included Alfred, Sparrow and Reeder.

Thanks to everyone who contributed their comments. I’m already looking forward to all the new treasures we might discover during 2011 – and the new means we will have to discover them, the Mac App Store, which should be live in just a few hours from now.

Word Lens is the app making jaws drop all over the internet this morning, thanks to this appropriately jaw-dropping demo video:

The video says it all, but you might be left wondering: is it a hoax? Can it really be as good as that?

Around this time every year we ask you, our lovely Cult readers, to tell us which new OS X desktop applications have caught your eye over the last 12 months.

Last year’s winners (by a hair) were Google Chrome and OmmWriter.

What do we mean by “new”? Ideally, we mean brand new applications that were launched for the first time this year. But we’re prepared to be flexible, so “new” can also mean major updates to existing apps. And don’t forget, we’re talking OS X desktop apps here, not iOS apps.

A few suggestions to get you started: Scrivener 2, Postbox, Office 2011, iLife 11, iTunes 10, Reeder, Kiwi, Transmit 4, Lightroom 3… the list is long.

The comments box is yours. Tell us what new software you loved most in 2010. The application with the most mentions is declared the winner, and will be featured in a follow-up post next week.

Apple has just issued a press release saying that the Mac App Store will open for downloads on January 6 2011.

“The Mac App Store will be available in 90 countries at launch and will feature paid and free apps in categories like Education, Games, Graphics & Design, Lifestyle, Productivity and Utilities.”

I have a feeling some developers aren’t going to get much rest over the Christmas break this year…

Wyse has just released a free version of PocketCloud for iOS, giving you wireless access to remote computers from your iPad or iPhone.

The free version carries adverts, and lacks some features (video streaming and external monitor support) that you’ll find in the paid version.

Hazel is software genius. It’s one of those tools that looks so simple to start with, but after a while, you realise just how powerful and flexible it could be.

British iPhone owners who enjoy foul-mouthed comedy will be delighted to learn that there’s a new, official Malcolm Tucker iPhone app to download for a mere four fine English pounds.

Tucker is the brutal, thuggish political spin doctor character in UK comedy show The Thick Of It. His adventures in swearing are legendary.

“Foul-mouthed” hardly does him justice, to be honest. If there’s a %^&@ way he can think of to @*(! your day and shove your @*($@$@% through your @£[/*$ until you’re bleeding £!*++ out of your !&@*, Tucker will say so.

And now he’s on your iPhone – or you’re on his, so to speak. The Missing Phone app pretends to be Tucker’s phone, and you’ve just found it. I’ll leave you to guess which four-letter passcode might unlock it, and discover the top-secret emails and text messages stored within.

Remember that old Mac you had? That beautiful iMac. It was lovely. Still works, but these days it doesn’t get used much.

It was a G5. One of the 17 inch models. You think. Wait. Or was it 20 inch? Damn, have to get it out and measure it now. It had a 1.83GHz Intel. Or was it a 2.33GHz? Dammit. You really can’t be bothered to boot the thing up just to check. But now you want to know.

Chrome started life as a browser, now it’s an OS. Well, sort of an OS. If you’re only running one application, you don’t need much OS.

The Chrome Notebook is Google’s very early foray into the world of hardware – backed, of course, by its extensive existing online software products. Here’s an overview video:

The Chrome Notebook has a full size keyboard, 8 hour battery life, a built-in webcam, and both wifi and 3G connectivity. You log in with your Google Account. The Chrome browser treats webapps the way the iTunes Store treats iOS apps: you can browse them, and “install” them. Each app runs in a separate tab.

Want one? You’ll have to apply like everyone else. Good luck.

Skitch, the screenshot and image editor that’s been in beta since the day your parents were born (OK, since 2007), has finally reached 1.0.

If you’ve not tried Skitch before, now’s a good time to give it a spin. The emphasis is definitely on screenshots – taking them, and adding text, arrows, annotations and other fun stuff. It’s an app much beloved by writers of Mac blogs, who’ve made much use of it over the years for making quick-and-easy illustrations for their posts. Guilty as charged, Your Honour.

The deal with Skitch 1.0 is simple: you can still use the app for free if you like (“YAY!” cry the Mac bloggers), but if you shell out about $15 a year, you can get all sorts of sexy extras like no ads, more image formats, SSL encryption and more more more.

(Via delicious Brett at TUAW, oh yeah.)

Smoking Apples has published a lovely post extolling the virtues of an ancient iBook G4, which given a little TLC and a wipe-and-install has been reborn as a perfectly functional household computer.

The Swiftmouse is an innovation from New Zealand that aims to offer a decent mousing experience in a very small unit.

In that, they’ve certainly succeeded. Swiftmouse is absolutely tiny. measuring just two inches from front to back, an inch and a half tall, and the same distance across.

Tiny, but sculpted. The contours of the mouse have been carefully designed to fit the tips of your curved fingers, so that it nestles in place. Despite its size, it feels comfortable to hold in the hand and is well weighted.

The guys at Evernote have just unveiled some new goodies in Evernote 2.0 Beta for Mac.

First up is sharing, and this includes some sweet new features. You can share any notebook, either with named individuals or with the entire world. These public notebooks have a URL (which you can keep to yourself, or tell the world – and search engines – about), and an RSS feed.

Software bundles are a great way to get lots of apps for cheaps, but quite often you end up paying for apps you have no need of and no interest in.

That’s where Give Good Food to Your Mac is different. In a style similar to the MacBundles we mentioned a couple of weeks ago, the Good Food deal is flexible.

You get to browse the list of apps on offer and pick out the ones you like the look of. The more you buy, the better the deal and the more money you save overall. Buy more than seven applications and you get 60 per cent off.

There’s a decent selection of apps on offer including lots of games. The store closes on December 10th. Happy bundle shopping.

It’s Education Week on CultofMac.com. How’s Apple doing in schools these days? What are the best education apps? Is iTunes U worthwhile? Join us as we learn more about Apple in Education.

Cedars School in Greenock, Scotland, has become the first school in the world to deploy an iPad to every child in the age groups it serves (roughly 5 to 16 year-olds). We’ve mentioned this effort before, so Cult of Mac decided to check in on the project again for our Education special and see how they’re doing.

“The iPad has become far more embedded in our school day than I ever thought it would become,” Fraser Speirs, the architect behind the project, wrote on his blog.

Over at his site The Brooks Review (which has been publishing a lot of good stuff recently), Ben Brooks wrote up his thoughts on a variety of writing applications for Mac OS X.

Don’t you hate it when you’re watching some streamed video in your web browser, and just when it’s getting interesting your screen dims, or the screensaver activates?

It happens because your computer doesn’t consider video playing in the browser to be “activity”. It doesn’t care what the browser is showing; if it thinks you’ve wandered off to make some coffee, it will do what you’ve told it to do in the Energy Saver preferences. Hence those mid-stream dimming moments.

Caffeine is a tiny utility that solves this problem in a single click. It sits in your Menu Bar, doing nothing until you need it. When you start watching some video and you want the screen to stay alive, you just click the Caffeine icon. Now your screen will stay bright no matter what, until you click Caffeine again to put things back to normal.

The aptly-named Caffeine gives your computer a temporary boost, keeping it alert enough so you can watch your video uninterrupted. It’s free, it’s great, and you should go get it now.

(You’re reading the 21st post in our series, 50 Essential Mac Applications: a list of the great Mac apps the team at Cult of Mac value most. Read more.)

Here’s a secret: OS X has a password generator built-in, but many people will never even see it. Here’s how to make it easier to get to.

You might not remember his name, but when you see his pictures, you’ll probably recognise the work of Eadweard Muybridge.

TextWrangler is a well-named application. It’s there to do a particular job, and that job is wrangling text.

It’s natural to assume that iTunes is a monolithic one-window application, because there’s no obvious way to view your vast database of music, videos and apps in anything other than just that one window.

No obvious way, but it is there.

A few days ago, computer company Sophos released a free anti-virus application for OS X.

According to the experts at Sophos, your Mac is vulnerable to malware – it’s just that there isn’t very much of it around. Yet.

But as Macs and OS X get more popular, that might change. So Sophos thinks it’s time you protected your computer.

So what does Sophos Anti-Virus for OS X do, exactly?

So you’ve got your iPhone 4 and you know it has not one, but two cameras inside it.

“How I wish it could take pictures with both of them at once,” you cry.

Well, your plea is answered in the form of 2Side Cam, a $1 app for iPhone 4. In “2Side” mode, it takes two photos – first one with the outward-facing camera on the back of the phone, then a second later another with the user-facing camera.

Men! Pay attention!

BeardTracker! Yes, BeardTracker! Rrrrrrrrr.

Now you have a Mac, what’s the easiest way to remember people’s birthdays? Apple thought of that, and built a useful tool right in.