Chris is a former Macworld editor who has turned to a life of crime. More by Chris Holt
Editor’s note: The following review is part of Macworld’s GemFest 2013. Every day (except Sunday) from mid-July until late September, the Macworld staff will use the Mac Gems blog to briefly cover a standout free or low-cost program. Learn more about GemFest in this Macworld podcast. You can view a list of this year’s apps, updated daily, on our handy GemFest page, and you can visit the Mac Gems homepage for past Mac Gems reviews.
Noted 1.1.0 (Mac App Store link) is a note taking application that is less powerful than your typical word processor, but much better organized. Noted bills itself as so intuitive that you already know how to use it, and that’s largely true—the UI resembles the modern Lion OS, complete with folders.
Ray Aguilera is a writer and editor who has been working on Apple computers since Apple was doomed. When he's not slaving over a hot laptop, he can be found hunting vinyl records, or hanging out with a really rad dog. More by Ray Aguilera
Editor’s note: The following review is part of Macworld’s GemFest 2013. Every day (except Sunday) from mid-July until late September, the Macworld staff will use the Mac Gems blog to briefly cover a standout free or low-cost program. Learn more about GemFest in this Macworld podcast. You can view a list of this year’s apps, updated daily, on our handy GemFest page, and you can visit the Mac Gems homepage for past Mac Gems reviews.
Chances are, your Mac is full of movies and TV shows—and your tags are probably a mess. IDentify 2 (Mac App Store link; note that the Mac App Store version is listed as 521) is a snazzy little utility to help organize your content.
Marco Tabini is based in Toronto, Canada, where he focuses on software development for mobile devices and for the Web. More by Marco Tabini
Editor’s note: The following review is part of Macworld’s GemFest 2013. Every day (except Sunday) from mid-July until late September, the Macworld staff will use the Mac Gems blog to briefly cover a standout free or low-cost program. Learn more about GemFest in this Macworld podcast. You can view a list of this year’s apps, updated daily, on our handy GemFest page, and you can visit the Mac Gems homepage for past Mac Gems reviews.
Does your desktop look like a war zone, with icons and documents scattered all over the place? You’re not alone, and Desktop Groups 1.4.1 (Mac App Store link) is a great way to keep your files organized.
Dan is Macworld's Executive Editor and, thus, the senior Dan on staff. More by Dan Miller
Editor’s note: The following review is part of Macworld’s GemFest 2013. Every day (except Sunday) from mid-July until late September, the Macworld staff will use the Mac Gems blog to briefly cover a standout free or low-cost program. Learn more about GemFest in this Macworld podcast. You can view a list of this year’s apps, updated daily, on our handy GemFest page, and you can visit the Mac Gems homepage for past Mac Gems reviews.
The inconvenient truth is that, while saving energy on your Mac by automatically dimming its screen or even sleeping the CPU is good and all, it can sometimes be a pain in the neck. When you’re giving a presentation, for example. Or when you’re watching a gripping YouTube video and the screen goes dark because you haven’t touched your mouse in half an hour.
Dan has been writing about all things Apple since 2006, when he first started contributing to the MacUser blog. Since then he's covered most of the company's major product releases and reviewed every major revision of iOS. In his "copious" free time, he's usually grinding away on a novel or two. More by Dan Moren
Editor’s note: The following review is part of Macworld’s GemFest 2013. Every day (except Sunday) from mid-July until late September, the Macworld staff will use the Mac Gems blog to briefly cover a standout free or low-cost program. Learn more about GemFest in this Macworld podcast. You can view a list of this year’s apps, updated daily, on our handy GemFest page, and you can visit the Mac Gems homepage for past Mac Gems reviews.
The number of employees who work outside an office has only increased in the last decade; those of us who don’t go into the workplace rely on technology like virtual private networking (VPN) to connect with our office networks. While OS X’s built-in VPN tools are fairly robust, networking is inherently an unreliable beast to certain extents.
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
Editor’s note: The following review is part of Macworld’s GemFest 2013. Every day (except Sunday) from mid-July until late September, the Macworld staff will use the Mac Gems blog to briefly cover a standout free or low-cost program. Learn more about GemFest in this Macworld podcast. You can view a list of this year’s apps, updated daily, on our handy GemFest page, and you can visit the Mac Gems homepage for past Mac Gems reviews.
We’ve long been fans of Objective Development’s $35 LaunchBar, an app-launching, file-managing, data-accessing, do-everything utility. We’ve even published a couple videos (part 1 and part 2) on getting more out of LaunchBar. The latest version, 5.5, is better than ever.
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
The Mac platform boasts an abundance of free and low-cost software, thanks in no small part to the convenience and popularity of the Mac App Store (though the concept of great, inexpensive apps long predates the store). It seems we’ve never had so many low-cost apps to choose from. But how do you know which are worth trying—which are the good ones, and which are the truly great ones?
Here at Macworld, we call apps that give you great functionality for a low price Mac Gems. We review a couple of these products each week here on the Mac Gems Weblog, but at two per week, we can’t keep up with everything that’s out there. So each summer, my fellow editors and a number of regular Macworld contributors pitch in on a Gems-review marathon. The result is our annual Gems event.
Today marks the start of this year's event, GemFest 2013 (also known as the Summer of Gems). Continuing through late September, we'll review a new Gem every day except Sunday. As with the software we normally cover in Mac Gems, some of the apps will be delightfully simple, while others will be more complex. Some will be specialized and have narrow appeal, while others should be useful to nearly everyone. Each and every one will earn the Mac Gems label.
