Mac Gems | Macworld

Clarify makes creating how-tos easy

Posted by Dan Frakes on

4.0 out of 5 mice

I’ve covered a good number of screenshot-related utilities in Mac Gems. Part of the reason is that we take a lot of screenshots here at Macworld. But the other part is that our readers are really interested in the topic—for example, my video on screenshot tips was one of our most popular.

I guess that shouldn’t surprise me. After all, screenshots are widely useful, whether you’re sending an image of an error message to a developer, sharing something interesting with friends on Twitter or Facebook, or explaining to someone how to perform a particular task. But the last of these examples can be a hassle, because in addition to sending an image, or multiple images, you often need to include text instructions, and possibly even annotations or other markings to make your instructions clear. You might even need to create a basic how-to document that you can distribute more widely.

Clarify (Mac App Store link) is a standout utility that makes creating such documentation easy. The program is designed, as the developer puts it, to create a sequence of screenshots and turn them into a document. Although that description is slightly backward—first you create a new Clarify document, and then you add steps and screenshots.

You create a new text-only step by clicking the New Step (+) button and then entering the desired text. But the more-useful option is the Capture Image (camera-icon) button, which lets you take a screenshot and then automatically adds that image to a new step. (Clarify also offers a systemwide menu and keyboard shortcuts for initiating screenshots.) You just take screenshots as you perform the task you're documenting, and Clarify creates sequential steps containing the corresponding images.

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screen capture,
utilities

Software

Snapseed brings its iOS photo-editing tools to the Mac

Posted by Alexandra Chang on

4.5 out of 5 mice

I’ve loved Nik Software’s Snapseed iOS photo-editing app since its release last year, and it's clear that others shared the sentiment—Apple awarded Snapseed an iPad-app-of-the-year award for 2011. So when Nik Software announced Snapseed for Mac, I was eager to test it out. What I discovered was a Mac app with features that are almost identical to those of its iOS counterpart, but with quite a few advantages thanks to the Mac platform.

The biggest difference between the new Snapseed for Mac (Mac App Store link) and its iOS sibling is the use of image-editing sliders in the desktop version. And that’s a good thing. The Mac's mouse-pointer-focused interface is considerably different from working on a touchscreen, and Nik Software has adjusted Snapseed for Mac accordingly.

Still, Snapseed on the desktop sports the same simple interface as its iOS version. When you launch the app, you’ll find all of the editing tools in the tool bar to the left. To the right is a large space that instructs you to “Drag a photo here to get started.” You can drag and drop from the Finder or even straight from iPhoto. It’s also possible to open a photo using the File-menu command and navigating to the desired image.

Once you’ve got your photo in the app, you have access to all of Snapseed’s basic editing tools, filters, and more. The editing features are divided into Basic Adjustments, which includes the app’s Tune Image, Crow & Straighten, and Details tools; and Creative Adjustments, which includes various filters, frames, and special effects.

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photo editing,
image editing consumer

Software » Productivity

Yoink offers a shelf for temporarily stashing files and content

Posted by Dan Frakes on

3.5 out of 5 mice

I previously covered Yoink 1.0, a neat utility that provided a virtual shelf for temporarily storing content. As I explained at the time, moving an item between two different locations in your drive’s folder hierarchy, or between drives, usually involves opening two Finder windows: one for the folder currently hosting the item, the other displaying the place to which you want to move the file. Mac OS X’s pop-up folders can help, but, among other drawbacks, still require that the destination folder (or at least some folder or drive enclosing it) be visible in the Finder or in the Dock. Similarly, if you use OS X’s Spaces feature, it can be a hassle to move files between windows (and programs) in different workspaces, and Lion (Mac OS X 10.7) adds the challenge of dragging files and folders to apps that you use in full-screen mode—there’s no easy way to do it.

Yoink’s shelf made such moves easier, although back in September I classified it as a Promising Prospect because of a number of limitations. The developer recently released Yoink 2.0 (Mac App Store link), and it brings enough improvements to warrant another look.

With Yoink running, whenever you start dragging a file or folder in the Finder, a small shelf slides out from the side of your screen. Drag your item onto the shelf to temporarily store its icon. (The actual item remains—for now—in its original location.) You can then navigate to the destination location, in the current Finder window or in a new one, and then drag the item’s icon off the shelf and into the destination folder to perform the actual move.

The shelf appears in every workspace, making it handy for moving files across workspaces and into full-screen apps. Just as if you’d used the Finder, if the destination is on the same volume as the original, the item is moved; if the destination is on a different volume, the item is copied.

Software » Finance

Chronicle helps you track your bills, and looks great doing so

Posted by Brendan Wilhide on

4.5 out of 5 mice

In today’s increasingly paperless society, bills come and go in the blink of an email—if you’re like me, it can be difficult to remember which bills are due when. Chronicle (Mac App Store link) is a Mac app that tracks bills, expenses, and due dates for you. Chronicle stands out amidst a sea of overly complex financial applications by doing only one thing, but doing it very well—you enter your bills and set recurring dates and other relevant information, and Chronicle does the tedious work of not letting you forget when each bill is due.

To be clear at the start, Chronicle doesn’t actually pay your bills for you. Rather, it tracks your bills by due date and reminds you to pay them. It also provides a record of payments, and it can track spending over time if you manually enter past payments.

Chronicle stands out with a distinct visual style that separates it from the drab and boring grids and lists found in most finance apps and, dare I say it, almost makes entering bills fun. Large, color-coded pie charts and a calendar view make it easy to track bills, and charts and graphs track everything from year-over-year spending to the interest rate and remaining balance on a credit card you’ve yet to pay off. You can track bills by category type, with the option of using custom tags, and there are plenty of small touches throughout the app that illustrate the time the developer put into creating Chronicle.

The other standout feature is ease of use. Chronicle makes it dead-simple to enter your bills; you can even attach scanned receipts to individual bills. The app then uses iCal to provide reminders before each bill is due, and offers one-click access to each vendor’s website (provided you supplied the URL when entering the respective bill). Chronicle can optionally store its data in iCloud or Dropbox, with the latter option especially useful if you wish to sync your data across multiple Macs.

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financial,
business

Software » Utilities

Promising Prospect: Clipboard Cleaner strips clipboard formatting

Posted by Dan Frakes on

Have you ever copied text from a webpage, formatted document, or PDF and then pasted it into a document of your own, only to be frustrated that all the original formatting—font, size, bold, italics, what have you—is pasted, as well? Similarly, have you ever selected items in the Finder with the intent of pasting their names in a document or email, only to have the items’ icons—or, worse, the actual files and folders themselves—pasted instead?

Some Mac apps, such as TextEdit and Bean (), include a Paste & Match Style option, in the Edit menu, that ignores formatting and copied files and images. Microsoft's Office programs provide a Paste Special command that lets you choose to paste just unformatted text. But wouldn’t it be handy to have a single format-stripping command that works across all apps?

That was the appeal of Plain Clip, which I most-recently covered in Mac Gems in 2009. Launch Plain Clip with formatted text on the clipboard, and you’re left with just simple text; if you copied items in the Finder, you’re left with just those items’ names. (Plain Clip can also perform a few other text-munging tricks.) But you have to launch Plain Clip each time you want to use it, whether you do that using the Dock, the Finder, or a utility such as LaunchBar (). As I explained in my most-recent review of Plain Clip, there are ways to automate this process, but they’re likely too advanced for many users.

An alternative is Clipboard Cleaner (Mac App Store link), which is even simpler than Plain Clip. The only thing it does is strip all formatting and non-text content from the current clipboard contents. Just copy content to the clipboard, choose Clear Formatting From Clipboard from the systemwide Clipboard Cleaner menu, and paste. Even easier, you can enact this cleaning by pressing Shift-Command-X.

Software » Publishing Software

Marked excels at previewing Markdown and HTML documents

Posted by Dan Frakes on

4.5 out of 5 mice

Here at Macworld, we’re big fans of Markdown, a nifty markup language that lets you write for the Web using plain text and a simple formatting syntax. In fact, many of the articles you read here on Macworld.com were written using Markdown and later converted to XHTML for publication. Why do we like it? It’s easy to write in Markdown; it’s easy to read the code (especially if you use one of the many text editors that include Markdown syntax highlighting); and because Markdown files are plain text, you can use any text editor or word processor, on any platform.

But the topic of today’s Mac Gems review isn’t Markdown. Rather, it’s Marked (Mac App Store link), a standout utility that provides live previews of Markdown-formatted files—in other words, it shows you what such files will look like when converted to HTML or XHTML. (Marked also supports text, HTML, and MultiMarkdown files. MultiMarkdown is an extension of Markdown that offers more-complex formatting and additional output/export formats.) Suffice it to say that if you don’t use Markdown, or if you aren’t at least interested in it, today’s Gem isn’t for you; I’ll see you on Friday. If you are a Markdown user, or if the first couple paragraphs here have piqued your interest, read on.

Drag any Markdown-formatted document (or, again, a text, HTML, or MultiMarkdown document) onto the Marked icon in the Finder or the Dock, and Marked opens a window showing a preview of what that document will look like when rendered in HTML. Regardless of which app you're using to edit that document, whenever you save changes, Marked automatically updates its preview to reflect those changes.

So far, Marked probably doesn’t sound much different than the built-in Markdown-preview feature of a growing number of Markdown-enabled OS X text editors, such as BBEdit and iA Writer. But Marked’s previews are much more flexible and customizable, and Marked provides a number of writing-focused tools for analyzing your documents and for exporting their content.

Software » Utilities

PopClip brings iOS-like text-editing options to Mac OS X

Posted by Dan Frakes on

3.5 out of 5 mice

Ever since Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) was released, there’s been controversy over the obvious influence of Apple’s iOS. From gestures to scrolling to the overall interface, a good number of Mac users have complained that the Mac OS has become too similar to iOS. At the same time, there are people who wish OS X was more like iOS—or at least the good parts of it.

PopClip (Mac App Store link) is sure to appeal to those in the latter category, although after testing it, I think even Mac traditionalists might be tempted. With PopClip running, any time you select text, in any application, you get an iOS-like popover with options appropriate for the context.

For example, if you select read-only text (such as in a Web browser, in a PDF document, or in an incoming email message), the popover offers options to Search that text in your default search engine, to copy the text, or—if you’ve selected a single word—to get the word’s definition. If the text includes one or more URLs, a single email address, or a file path, you also get an option to open the links in your default browser, send an email to the address, or reveal the file in the Finder, respectively. And if a selected word is misspelled, you can bring up a popover filled with suggested replacements. Click on any item in the popover to perform its action.

Software

Favorite Mac Gems of 2011

Posted by Dan Frakes on

The end is drawing nigh…well, the end of the year 2011, at least. Which means it's the time of year when we take a look back at the best products of the previous twelve months. We’ve given you our annual Eddy Awards for the best overall products of the year and our App Gems Awards for the best iOS apps. Which leaves me with the best Mac Gems of the year.

Unlike our Eddy and App Gems awards, the favorite Gems of 2011 weren’t chosen using a grueling process involving the entire Macworld editorial staff. Rather, these 15 products were hand-picked by me—it's one of the perks of the job—from among the roughly 120 Mac Gems we uncovered over the past year. (To be eligible for Mac Gems, a product must be priced at $35 or less and earn a 3.5-mouse rating or higher.)

Whether a product earned five mice or three and a half, these are the ones that I felt truly stood out, either because they did something new and innovative; because they offered exceptional value; or simply because I found myself using them over and over. From managing windows to opening apps, from tweaking Lion to perfecting photos, these inexpensive applications and add-ons will help you get the most out of your Mac without blowing your budget.

Eddy-winning Gems

This year, an unprecedented four Mac Gems were Eddy-Award winners. To some extent, you can thank the influence of the Mac App Store for this, as the store has driven down the price of Mac software. The result is that great Mac software is less expensive than ever—indeed, more Mac Gems were under consideration for Eddy Awards this year than in any previous year.

Software » Productivity

iA Writer is a solid no-distraction writing tool

Posted by Kirk McElhearn on

4.0 out of 5 mice

Imagine a word processor where all you can do is type. Where, while using the program, there’s nothing to fiddle with, no options to change, no preferences to tweak. A text tool designed to force you to focus on your writing, and to prevent you from worrying about anything else. iA Writer (Mac App Store link) is that tool—no settings, no toolbar, nothing but a blank virtual page on which to type.

The philosophy of iA Writer is simplicity. As the company’s webpage says, “thought goes into writing, not using.” For example, Just as Henry Ford would sell a car in any color the buyer wanted as long as it was black, iA Writer lets users type in any font they want as long as it’s Nitti Light. It’s an attractive, monospace sans serif font, and it’s available in one size, with preset line spacing, unjustified lines, 64 characters per line, on a light-grey background.

Of course, this approach works only for those who buy into the concept. Writer’s display works well for me—with my aging eyes, I generally use large font sizes, wide line spacing, and a non-white background when I work. But people who prefer different types of fonts, or different sizes, or—especially—proportional fonts may be put off by a text editor that imposes such conditions.

The enforced-simplicity concept extends to two features of Writer that allow users to focus entirely on their writing. The first is full-screen mode, which is common in a number of writing tools these days. In this mode, you see nothing on your computer screen but the text you’re writing on the grey background. There are no windows to distract you, no tweets, no emails, no webpages. Writer's full-screen mode is excellent, allowing you to block out the main distractions on your Mac’s screen.

Software » Music and Audio

Piezo records other apps' audio easily

Posted by Dan Frakes on

4.0 out of 5 mice

I’m often asked for an easy way to record audio playing on your Mac. While there are a good number of programs (such as previous Mac Gem TapeDeck) for recording audio sources connected to your Mac, there aren’t many simple ways to record audio from other programs, such as a Web browser, a streaming-audio client, an audio-chat app, or DVD Player. You could use a combination of the free Soundflower and either QuickTime Player or Garageband, as described by my colleague Christopher Breen, but that’s a bit of a kludge. Ambrosia’s WireTap Studio and Rogue Amoeba’s Audio Hijack Pro are designed specifically to record audio from other applications, but at $69 and $32, respectively, and with lots of advanced features, they may be overkill if this isn’t a task you perform frequently—or if you want something that's one-click easy.

Rogue Amoeba recently released a simpler and less-expensive sibling to Audio Hijack Pro called Piezo (Mac App Store link). Designed for people who don’t need all the capabilities of Audio Hijack Pro, Piezo is a great little program for recording virtually anything you can hear on, or connect to, your Mac.

The company describes Piezo as “charmingly simple,” and it’s tough to argue with that. The program’s compact, retro-design window shows only a few elements: left- and right-channel level meters, a pop-up menu for choosing the audio source, a flip-clock-like recording timer, the name of the current recording, and a large, metal-and-red Record button.