Dan writes about OS X, iOS, troubleshooting, utilities, and cool apps, and he covers hardware, mobile and AV gear, input devices, and accessories. He's been writing about tech since 1994, and he's also published software, worked in IT, and been a policy analyst. More by Dan Frakes
For Macworld editors, the end of the calendar year means more than just holiday vacations and the passing of yet another end-of-the-world prediction. It’s also the season of awards. Over the past couple weeks, we’ve given you our 2012 Editors’ Choice Awards for the best Mac products of the year and our 2012 App Gems Awards for the best iOS apps of the year. Here at Mac Gems HQ, we have no official awards with fancy trophies, but I look back and pick my favorite Mac Gems of the previous 12 months—the best inexpensive-but-good apps we covered over the just-completed year.
Unlike the Eddies and the App Gems Awards, the “Mac Gems of the Year,” if you will, aren’t chosen by committee. Rather, I hand-pick them from among the over 100 Gems we mined at Macworld during 2012. (To qualify for Mac Gems, a product must be priced at $35 or less and must earn a 3.5-mouse rating or higher.) The ones recognized here aren’t necessarily the Mac Gems that earned the highest ratings from our reviewers. Instead, they’re the apps that I felt did something innovative; offered exceptional value; improved productivity above and beyond other apps; or ended up being used—by me or a fellow Macworld editor—over and over. These inexpensive applications and add-ons will help you get the most out of your Mac without blowing your budget.
Former Macworld Senior Editor Rob Griffiths founded Mac OS X Hints. He's now master of ceremonies at Many Tricks Software. More by Rob Griffiths
If you work with video, chances are you occasionally need to convert video files from one format to another. For instance, if you’ve downloaded videos from YouTube or other online video services, that content may be in Flash or Windows Media formats, which aren’t viewable on any iOS device. Or if you update web content, you may have a number of movies in H.264 format that simply won’t play in Google’s Chrome browser, which doesn’t support H.264.
There are many tools available for converting video between formats, but the one I often turn to is the free Miro Video Converter (). While its interface isn’t what you would call Mac-standard, the program does a great job converting videos. It supports a huge number of video formats, including some oddball ones, and it can output video optimized for iOS devices, as well as for a slew of Android devices including the Kindle Fire.
When you launch Miro Video Converter, you’re greeted with a large, dark, and basically empty interface. However, it’s pretty obvious what needs to be done, thanks to explanatory text that states, “Drag videos here or Choose Files.” To convert one or more video files, drag them into the window, or click the Choose Files link to use a standard OS X file-navigation dialog box to select them.
Dan writes about OS X, iOS, troubleshooting, utilities, and cool apps, and he covers hardware, mobile and AV gear, input devices, and accessories. He's been writing about tech since 1994, and he's also published software, worked in IT, and been a policy analyst. More by Dan Frakes
One of my all-time favorite Mac utilities was MaxMenus, a System Preferences pane that let you create multiple custom menus, each containing your choice of apps, files, folders, volumes, and other frequently accessed items. Unfortunately, MaxMenus appears to have been abandoned—you can no longer download it, its website is dead, and while it currently works under Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8.2), I suspect some future update to OS X will render MaxMenus useless.
I’ve tried—and quickly discarded—a number of alternatives, but one that works well is PointWorks’s $2 CustomMenu (Mac App Store link). Launch CustomMenu, and its systemwide menu icon appears on the right-hand side of your menu bar. Click this icon and choose Customize Menu, and you can choose the items you want to appear in the menu.
Glenn Fleishman writes about technology crossed with culture for The Economist's Babbage blog as G.F., and is a senior contributor to Macworld. He is the author of many books in the Take Control series. More by Glenn Fleishman
Our Macs can be chatty even when we wish they weren’t. Apps, and even the OS itself, regularly reach out to the rest of your local network and to the Internet to probe, query, and blab. Little Snitch 3 intercepts these requests and presents them to you for inspection and approval. The latest update to the software adds inbound-connection management, too. Little Snitch has graduated from being a sort of outbound-only firewall with notifications to being a full-fledged firewall product with a friendly interface that informs you about any network-related activities.
OS X’s built-in firewall, when enabled, functions based on services and applications, allowing only inbound connections aimed at particular pieces of software—for example, a connection to iPhoto’s shared-library service. But the OS X firewall can’t be configured to allow a connection from a particular Internet protocol (IP) address. Little Snitch offers this type of functionality, but it reveals this power in stages, allowing a simple approach for those who want security without fuss, while using configurable rules to provide levels of deeper and deeper access for those who want more-precise control.
A dialog explains that BBEdit is trying to reach a remote server. You have many options to control whether this connection is blocked, and for how long and to what degree of specificity.Read more »
Dan writes about OS X, iOS, troubleshooting, utilities, and cool apps, and he covers hardware, mobile and AV gear, input devices, and accessories. He's been writing about tech since 1994, and he's also published software, worked in IT, and been a policy analyst. More by Dan Frakes
With Thanksgiving upon us, it’s time for the annual avalanche of Black Friday sales—and Pre-Black Friday sales, and Cyber Monday sales, and Weekend-Before-Cyber Monday sales, and…you know the drill. But most of those sales, whether online or in physical stores, focus on hardware and gear. If you’re looking for some great Mac software, either for yourself or for your favorite gift recipient, there are currently two big Mac-software bundles, each offering a bevy of apps for one reasonable price. Even if you just wanted the Mac Gems each bundle contains, both are bargains, but each also includes a bunch of other good software that sweetens the pot considerably. (All apps included in these bundles are full versions.)
Productive Macs Bundle
The Productive Macs bundle (available until November 30) includes nine apps for a total of $30, compared to $239 if purchased separately at regular prices:
Jeffery Battersby is an Apple Certified Trainer, (very) smalltime actor, and regular contributor to Macworld. He writes about Macs and more at his blog, jeffbattersby.com. More by Jeffery Battersby
I’m a big fan of simple personal-finance applications—the kind you can use to quickly collect your purchase and deposit information and then easily reconcile that information with your bank account when it’s convenient. FadingRed’s $30 Koku, available for both Mac and iOS, hits almost all those marks, making it easy to track your financial information at your desk or on the go, as well as to get a summary of your current financial status. It falls short only when it comes time to reconcile your debits and credits at the end of the month.
Koku for Mac has a simple interface. The app’s left side, called the Library, displays a list of your accounts, a collection of pre-defined and user-created reports, Smart Lists of transactions, and folders for organizing your report data.
The Mac version of Koku shows you visual reports on your finances.Read more »
Pity the poor menu bar. It seems like just about every app you install these days wants to put a little icon up there, often to little real advantage. It’s not uncommon for that ever-expanding line of icons on the right to extend under the reach of the menus on the left. In short, the menu bar is a mess.
That’s the problem that Bartender is here to solve. Yes, it adds a menu-bar item of its own. But within that menu item you can hide other menu-bar icons that you don’t want to see all the time. The utility also lets you rearrange menu-bar items—OS X lets you rearrange only Apple’s menu extras.
). While its interface isn’t what you would call Mac-standard, the program does a great job converting videos. It supports a huge number of video formats, including some oddball ones, and it can output video optimized for iOS devices, as well as for a slew of Android devices including the Kindle Fire.
