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.
Making your Mac more productive can be as easy as getting the right app. So we’ve rounded up four of the best deals on some great software, from a useful screen capture tool to a speed reading helper, an intuitive data syncing tool and a powerful PDF editor. Each one is already discounted, but you can save an extra 15% off when you use the promo code MERRYSAVE15 at checkout.
Pixelmator Pro, an increasingly popular macOS photo-editing program, has a new tool its creators say will let you blow up an image and maintain detail and sharpness “like they do in all those cheesy police dramas.”
ML Super Resolution lets users increase the resolution up to three times without the muddy, pixelated mess normally associated with upscaled images.
Compared to an iPad, even the new 16-inch MacBook Pro runs pretty hot. In my first impressions post about the latest Apple laptop, I noted that the fans went crazy pretty much any time I switched it on. That has stopped now, thanks to two things: One is that my photo library is fully indexed, and the other is that I have disabled Turbo Boost.
But how?
macOS 10.15 Catalina is ruthless about launching unknown apps. Unless your app comes direct from the App Store, or the app’s developer got the app notarized by Apple, it won’t launch. Double click on it, and you’ll see a warning — and nothing else. There’s no option to say you trust the app and launch it despite Catalina’s warnings.
But you can still launch those apps. It’s just that Apple hides the controls in the hope that you’ll give up. It’s petty, and it shows a lack of respect for you, the user. However, it’s also dead easy to fix this problem. Let’s see how to launch any app on macOS Catalina.
Your Mac is only as good as the apps on it. So if you’re looking to boost the utility, productivity, and fun you get out of your Mac, this bundle of 13 top Mac apps is an easy and affordable way to do it.
This week we import photos from SD cards straight into Lightroom for iPad, make loops with L7 Looper, find the next bus or subway ride with Transit for Apple Watch, and more.
How time flies. In the blink of an eye, Black Friday and Cyber Monday have come and gone. If you’re still looking to scoop up some great deals on gear and gadgets, we’ve got four of the best from Cyber Week for you to review.
Mac owners won’t want to miss the awesome bundle of heavily discounted apps, and everyone should get a charge out of the other deals.
This Mac utility post is presented by CoreCode, maker of MacUpdater.
Keeping all your installed apps up to date can be time-consuming and annoying, unless you’re that one person who manages to never use any apps, or that other person who exclusively downloads them from the Mac App Store. But if you’re a typical user, MacUpdater is the easiest way to keep your Mac apps up to date effortlessly, no matter how many you have or, to some extent, where you got them.