A subscription service might not sound like a great way to get your apps, but don’t sell it short. Many folks find subscribing to Setapp is an easy and worthwhile way to get more than 200 apps that help with a variety of tasks — and that someone else has already curated.

After all, the main alternative is diving into the vast app ocean of the App Store. Good luck finding just what you need in there before you drown.

In honor of World Productivity Day — that’s right, at least try to look busy on June 20 — we take a look at some of Setapp’s great tools.

This week is all about showing the Mac a little love. From a kick-ass utility for managing windows to an all-in-one customer management system Mac app, there’s plenty to put your Mac to work.

An innovative new “branching narrative” TV app is being launched by HBO and Academy Award-winning movie director Steven Soderbergh, which will let audiences make active decisions that will help shape the story’s outcome.

A linear version of the show, Mosaic, is set to debut on TV in January 2018. However, the app version isn’t just a bit of advance promo, but a fully-fledged part of the experience, which reportedly took three years to develop.

There is a slight soapbox on which I stand sometimes when I write about photography. Nothing too high-minded, but when the topic allows, I will gently remind people to print out their pictures from their iPhones and computers.

Today, I stand before you, not on a soapbox, but on a short stack of photo books. The books are designed with iPad apps from pictures I made on my smartphone. I chose three companies I liked for ease of design and the final product.

All three – Cleen, Mosaic and ZOOMBOOK – have apps that allow you to quickly design a 20-page book from your mobile device and have a tracking number for shipping all within 10 minutes. In four to 10 business days, a hardcover book arrives in the mail that you can neatly shelve.

Great news for Lightroom users who both own iPads and love the Java runtime: The Mosaic app can now do two-way sync with Lightroom on your Mac, letting you load photos onto your computer and then sit down in your favorite easy chair with a cup of coffee to rate and reject your pictures using the iPad.

Everpix – already the best slightly-confusing service for keeping all your photos ever in one place – has updated to add support for Mosaic. And lest you – like me at 2AM this morning – go searching through the app’s settings to find some cool new grid view, let me tell you now that Mosaic is a separate service for printing photo books.

With the holidays coming, maybe there’s no such thing as “too many photobook makers.” At least, that’s probably what Mixbook is banking on with their new Mosaic app, which lets you quickly create a hard-cover photobook for $20.

This one’s a little different though: Not only can you create and order your photobook with your iPhone, but the books are created with an unusual effect where photo thumbnails peek through windows in the book’s cover. Definitely  attention-grabbing.

What if I told you there was a plugin for Lightroom which would mirror the latest edit of every photo in library in the cloud, and make it available in a neat, iPad optimized browser view right away?

You’d probably just call me a liar, skip to the next post and maybe take a sip of your coffee, muttering “That idiot Sorrel is doing it again. I’m writing to hi damn editor this time.”

Well, you’d be a fool. Instead, let that coffee cool a little and come take a look at Mosaic.