On the Mac, 1Password is a perfect Swiss Army Knife of tools for the forgetful and lazy, guaranteeing that they never have type in a password, address field, or credit card number into an online form ever again.
But on iOS, 1Password has been a more convoluted thing. Lacking deep integration with other apps, 1Password for iOS has never been as good as it’s Mac counterpart. But with iOS 8, that’s about to change, thanks to a 1Password app extension that any third-party app can use.
AirDrop, the wireless file sharing technology built into OS X, is fantastic when it works for the occasional file, but it can be a bit finicky.
For power users who constantly find themselves sharing files online, we recommend Dropzone, a great little Mac App that can significantly boost the ease with which you share files between computers, and drag-and-drop files in general.
Now, Dropzone has gotten even better. With Dropzone 3, the app gains a new Drop Bar for temporarily storing files, AirDrop support, as well as integration with Imgur.
If you love Reeder 2 on your iPhone or iPad, great news: the best news reading app out there has come back to the Mac, after almost a year being MIA.
The iOS App Store gold rush might be played out for all but the luckiest developers, but there’s another part of the Apple empire where coders can find breakout success: the Mac App Store.
“Compared to iOS, it’s definitely easier to have a hit in the Mac App Store,” says Andreas Hegenberg, the creator of successful gesture-based Mac app BetterTouchTool. “I think it’s still pretty easy to develop a Mac App Store app that can feed you very well. But it all depends on how you define a ‘big hit.'”
While games rule the increasingly cluttered roost in the iOS store — with many unimaginative developers looking to get rich quick with yet another Flappy Bird clone — the Mac App Store is home to more pedestrian offerings like accounting software and productivity tools.
The Mac App Store might not mint a new millionaire each day, but the developers we spoke with said writing this type of bread-and-butter software can provide a reliable source of income. Here’s why.
MarkDrop is a new Markdown editor for the Mac that displays a minimalistic editor on the left and a preview window on the right that updates in real time. The app prides itself on a clean interface, and you can share via PDF, HTML, or print.
It’s happened to everyone. You’re typing on your Mac, and you suddenly get a phone call on your iPhone. But you only have two hands. On a deadline, you grab your iPhone, and try to talk to whomever is calling by clenching your phone against your shoulder with your chin, but it suddenly slips, and slides down your tucked shirt and into your underpants. And now, here you are, screaming at your crotch to call you back while shaking an iPhone down your pants leg. How embarrassing.
What, that hasn’t happened to you? How strange. Must just be me. Either way, though, wouldn’t it be cool if you could just route incoming iPhone calls to your Mac? Now you can, thanks to Dialogue.
Going paperless is a goal of mine. I’d love to be able to keep all my important documents, like banking paperwork and medical records, all safely and cleanly tucked away into the digital ether. And, while productivity apps are fairly common in the Mac App store, when Apple made document-organizing app, doo, an Editor’s Choice app this week, well, it certainly piqued my interest.
You can get so accustomed to swiping to unlock your iPhone and iPad, that by comparison, clicking to awaken your dozing MacBook seems so… unceremonious. Now SquidMelon brings password-protected “Swipe to Unlock” to the Mac with a new app, Lock Screen Plus.
Yep, you heard it right. Home Inventory is the boringly-named Mac app that will let you create and manage an inventory of the items in your home, using your iOS device as a photo input device. Sounds cool, right? Well, ok, but it at least sounds interesting, yeah?
Keeping track of your stuff is pretty useful, especially if you have to fill out an insurance claim or police report in case of theft. Home Inventory will keep all of it in a database, easily accessible from your Mac or iOS device via a free standalone app, the equally cleverly named Home Inventory Mobile Backup.
Skitch used to be my go-to Mac app for annotating images. Now I just use OS X’s Preview to get basic editing done in a pinch. As a blogger, I frequently deal with screenshots and images for posts. Sometimes you need to draw an arrow or draw attention to a certain part of an image. There’s never really been a good tool to do so, until Napkin.
Created by the guys at Aged & Distilled, Napkin is a new app in the Mac App Store that aims to help you with “concise visual communication.” If you’re a creative type, then this app should be in your tool belt.
Several months ago Black Pixel released the Kaleidoscope 2 for Mac beta. Today the app has been officially released in the Mac App Store and on the web.
Kaleidoscope 2 is a powerful app that compares text, images, and folders in OS X. It’s intended to improve your workflow by helping you quickly review and merge changes between files and folders.
Earlier this year, Realmac Software and Impending released Clear, a bold and innovate to-do list app for the iPhone. Despite the seemingly never-ending supply of task managers in the App Store, Clear managed to set itself apart with its unique interface, gestures and clean design.
Fast forward to today, and Realmac Software is bringing Clear to the Mac. How does such a gesture-driven app live and breathe on the desktop? On the Mac, Clear is a fresh and enjoyable way to manage tasks. It’s apps like Clear that show the convergence between iOS and OS X.
The MacHeist Bundle is a great deal of software for a great price, and it benefits great charities. This much you know, because we already told you.
Today, however, we learned that another app has been added to the run down, the $50 cooking app, MacGourmet, that developer Mariner Software calls the “iTunes for recipes.”
The MacHeist folks have thrown the covers off to reveal all the Mac software that you’ll get if you purchase the latest bundle for $29. In addition to this insanely good deal on some fantastic software, you’ll be gifting a charity of your choice (from a list provided at the site) with 25% of the proceeds. If all 1.5 million MacHeist members end up purchasing the bundle, that’s a lot of extra cash for the many worthwhile organizations in the charity list.
Remember how I was talking recently (like, umm, yesterday) about getting good tools in your toolkit? Apps that you might not need right now, but you’ll certainly need later? Not to mention that the apps (or bundle) are at a great price. Right. Well today is another of those times/deals—The Web Dev Power Pack Bundle: Get Three Mac Apps + 1,001 Design Assets That Will Turn You Into a Master Web Developer.
You get three solid apps plus a ton of clip art (don’t think for a moment that you won’t need some clip art at some point) for $89. It’s a nice, and inexpensive, way to get a solid dev environment started.
Mint.com, the slick and extremely useful financial tracking website, also has iOS and OS X apps to natively keep an eye on your finances. The Mac app came out in early July of this year, and was updated to version 2.0 at the end of August. Today, however, it has gone from being a free app to asking for a cool $4.99.
Tapbots, the company behind Tweetbot for iOS and Mac, has announced that the Tweetbot for Mac Alpha is no longer available as a public download. Tweetbot for Mac has been gearing up to enter the public beta stage before its official release in the Mac App Store, but Twitter’s new restrictions have forced Tapbots to remove the download link for the Tweetbot for Mac Alpha.
Several updates have been pushed out to Mac users running Tweetbot since Tapbots released the alpha on July 11th. Existing users can keep using the app, but everyone else will be left out in the cold until the app goes on sale in the Mac App Store.
Over the weekend I noticed that the Tweetbot for Mac Alpha was no longer working on the Tapbots website, and today’s news reveals the reason.
Earlier this year I praised Skip Tunes as a simple, gorgeously designed Mac menu bar app for controlling music. The best thing about Skip Tunes is that it can control not only iTunes playback, but Spotify and Rdio as well. Verizon 2.0 of the app has arrived in the Mac App Store, and the update packs some nice features.
The Tweetbot for Mac public Alpha has received a significant update today that packs several new features, including the ability to edit a profile. Borrowing from the popular iOS version of Tweetbot, users can now setup muted keywords on the Mac. Many of you will be happy to learn that animated support for .gif images (like these) have been baked into this version as well.
The latest Cult of Mac Deals offer delivers something that ensures you can create (and publish) your own professional-looking websites without having the skills of a professional web developer. That’s because MacFlux 4 makes it so easy – and we’re offering it for 50% off at just $50!
What is MacFlux 4?
MacFlux 4 is an advanced HTML5 website design application, capable of creating stunning sites completely from scratch. This powerful Mac web design software is a creative design environment rather than a template-based solution (although it does include free website templates to help get you started). And if you’d rather not create HTML5 websites, MacFlux 4 can handle standard HTML, PHP, Ruby, JSP, and more…no coding required.
When worlds collide – this is ostensibly an iOS tip, but it involves a Mac App, which should technically be an OS X tip, but hey – you probably know how to print from your Mac. It’s more likely that, like me, you have a printer that you use with your Mac and it isn’t one of them newfangled fancy AirPrint ones, neither. While AirPrint protocol has been around since iOS 4, I still haven’t bought a printer with it built in. Hey, mine works just fine, still!
If so, you can print from your iPhone or iPad to the printer connected to your Mac, using Printopia 2, a $20 Mac utility available from developer eCamm.
Popular keyboard shortcut launcher Alfred has been updated with several new features and improvements. Version 1.3 of Alfred for Mac integrates with Apple’s Quick Look in OS X to let you see previews of files inside Alfred. A neat feature called file buffer gives you quick access to app and file placeholders above Alfred’s main search window.
The developers of Alfred have also added numerous other improvements and bug fixes in this 1.3 update. We’ve got the full change log.
Evernote had released a new update for its Mac app that brings stunning Retina graphics and a new feature called Activity Stream. Version 3.2 of Evernote for Mac is available now on the web and soon in the Mac App Store.
The new Activity Stream acts as a notification hub for your Evernote account that is automatically updated within the Mac app. This latest update from Evernote also includes a few other improvements.
The guys at Tapbots released the highly anticipated Tweetbot for Mac today with a catch. The app is available for free, but it’s in alpha form. This means that the developers are still working furiously to iron out the kinks and create the complete, public version. But for now, those who feel so inclined can download Tweetbot for Mac 0.6 and give it a go.
I’ve been playing around with the app, and for an alpha release, Tweetbot for Mac is very good. The app has already become my default Twitter client on the Mac for a few reasons.
The day has finally come. Tapbots has released its highly anticipated Tweetbot for Mac application. After releasing an acclaimed iPhone app in April of 2011 and a native iPad app back in February, Tweetbot for Mac is now available to complete the family… albeit in alpha form.
The new Twitter client comes with stunning graphics for the new MacBook Pro with Retina Display, and the app’s design borrows heavily from the iOS interface. Tapbots designer Mark Jardine leaked a screenshot of the Mac app a few weeks ago. We’re all excited that it’s finally here!