Macs are powerful machines, but the right software can vastly expand their capabilities. This bundle of apps offers a bunch of new media-related abilities, from music management to video conversion and ringtone creation.
Twitter is rolling out a new “continue thread” feature that lets you easily publish follow-ups to previous tweets. Simply pull down in the compose window to see recent posts in one place.
There’s also a new update for the official Twitter app on Mac that fixes an annoying notifications bug.
Cyberpunk 2077 from CD Projekt Red is one of the most anticipated games of 2020, and thanks to Nvidia GeForce Now, you’ll be able to play it on your Mac the same day it launches.
Making videos on Mac is easy, if you have the right tools. But subscriptions to creative software suites are expensive, and can take up a lot of space. Often, they’re too complicated for casual users.
Not so with Filmage Screen, a single app that offers a one-stop shop for all your HD video needs.
Lockdown, the open-source firewall app for iOS, is now available on the Mac. And just like the iOS version, it blocks all kinds of connections to trackers and other unwanted snoop-ware.
Mac users already enjoy good options when it comes to privacy apps, so how does Lockdown match up?
This week we dock apps with SwitchGlass, convert photos from Aperture to Lightroom with Avalanche, rip music to shreds with Scatterbrain, and more.
This Presidents Day, instead of thinking about presidents, why not upgrade the apps in your iOS and Mac devices? We’ve rounded up some awesome deals on great software, from half off to as much as 94% off of VPNs, website builders, task managers and more.
SwitchGlass is a handy new Mac app from John Siracusa. It’s like a superpowered dock, conceptually honed from the regular macOS dock by removing some annoyances, and adding some extra subtleties. It’s certainly not the most powerful dock-replacement app out there, but if your needs align with Siracusa’s, then you’re going to love it.
StatusBuddy is a brand-new app for macOS that lets you quickly check on the status of various Apple services in just one click.
The app sits in your Mac’s menu bar where it’s always accessible and displays a red badge when an Apple service is running into issues. It pulls information from Apple’s official status pages so you don’t have to go hunting for it.
Do you still have all your photos stuck in an Aperture library? Aperture won’t even launch in macOS Catalina, so you’re going to have to do something about that. The long-time answer has been to move to Adobe’s Lightroom, but then all your carefully crafted RAW edits are lost, or at least frozen into JPGs, never to be reversed.
Avalanche is a new Mac app that can convert your old Aperture library into a Lightroom library. What’s more, it uses machine learning to reverse-engineer your edits, and then does its best to redo those edits in Lightroom. It seems amazing. And because it doesn’t need the Aperture app installed on your Mac at all, you can use it even if you’ve already upgraded to Catalina.
One Switch isn’t a new app, but it does look like one of the handiest Mac apps for anyone who follows our Cult of Mac how-tos. The app puts a drop-down list in your Mac’s menu bar, offering instant access to all kinds of great hacks and tweaks, from toggling Dark Mode to connecting AirPods.
BlackHole is a free, open-source tool to route audio anywhere on your Mac. You know how the audio from YouTube in Safari comes out the speakers or headphones of your Mac, and that’s about it? Well, with BlackHole, you can intercept that audio. Then you can record it, redirect it to another app or do basically anything you like.
Macs are powerful tools, but they’re also weapons of mass distraction. It’s just so easy to endlessly scroll Twitter or putz around on Fortnite instead of working. This app will help you stay on task and productive.
This week we type on our Apple Watches, scrapbook everything into Notebooks, flex our brains with MoneyBall and more.
Twitter now lets you add Facebook-style emoji reactions to direct messages.
There are currently seven to choose from — one more than Facebook offers — including the familiar thumbs up, laughing face, and love heart. They help Twitter keep up with rival messaging platforms, such as iMessage.
One of the easiest ways to make any photo pop is to process it with High Dynamic Range, or HDR. Basically, it combines high and low exposures so that your photo represents a wide spectrum of light and color. HDR gives you a ton of creative options, which you can easily explore with the three Mac apps and plugins in the Photomatix Pro Plus Bundle, which we’re currently offering at an unbelievable discount.
This week we trim our SSDs, make PDF statements from our Apple Cards, and drown everything in delicious, springy reverb. These are the apps that got us buzzing this week.
Upgrading your Mac doesn’t have to mean downgrading your bank account. These four Mac utility apps are among the best you can get, and right now you can grab each one for less than $20. Whether you want powerful dictation software, a superior iTunes alternative, an iPhone ringtone creator or a YouTube video downloader/converter, these great Mac apps deliver the goods — at big discounts!
A new version of the Microsoft Edge web browser based on Google’s Chrome starts rolling out today for Windows, of course, but also macOS.
Among the most notable benefits is support for Chrome extensions.
There’s no end to the reasons you might want to build a website, but there’s also no end of challenges in getting one off the ground. But with the right website builder, you can get a sleek, responsive website up and running without a single line of code.
This week we create music-synced video art with Glitch Clip, import music to our iPhone with Doppler 2, take proper control of Shortcuts with LaunchCuts, and more.
If you’re at your Mac, go ahead and click a window for another app (don’t forget to come back right away). Clicking an app’s window brings it to the foreground, of course. But did you notice that only the window you clicked came forward. If that other app has any other windows open, they will stay hidden. It wasn’t always this way. In pre-OS X days, the default behavior was to bring all those windows to the front. And now, thanks to a new app called Front and Center, from John Siracusa, you can get this behavior on a modern Mac.
Using a computer means working with PDFs, one of the most common document formats around. But just because they’re common doesn’t mean they’re easy to work with, especially when it comes to editing. With this PDF editor, that changes.
For my job at Cult of Mac, I test a lot of apps. But of course, I also use a lot of apps, for work, for recreation, and for making music. I thought I’d make a short list of my most-used apps this year. Few, if any, of these apps are new this year, although some of them received major updates in 2019. But all of them are excellent, well-made apps, well worth checking out.
So, let’s get started.
This week we boss a metronome around with only our voices, let a music app write our songs for us, and create beats and tunes like little children might. Yes, the only good new apps I’ve seen this week have all been music apps, so try to enjoy it.