The Week in Mac Apps: Frozen in time

This week’s Mac app roundup comes to you with a bit of writing flair, enough desktop wallpapers to last you a couple of lifetimes, and a trip down nostalgia lane.

Metaclassy’s $10 Byword ( Mac App Store Link) is a Markdown text editor built with focus in mind. It provides a distraction-free writing environment that allows you to concentrate on your writing, while providing complete support for everything that Markdown has to offer.

Recent versions of the app also include support for publishing to popular blogging platforms; it’s available as a $5 in-app purchase.

Finely InTouch’s $5 Cuptakes ( Mac App Store Link) brings a collection of great looking desktop wallpapers designed with an artistic flair.

The app features over 400 images, all available at native resolutions for most Macs, and features monthly updates of original art.

CompanyLine’s Hall ( Mac App Store Link) is an instant-messaging app designed for business. It allows team members to organize their conversations in arbitrary channels, provides one-on-one private chats, and features excellent security.

Hall, which is free, also supports video chat, screen-sharing, cross-company communications, and file-sharing.

ThinkTime Creations’s $2 Instant ( Mac App Store Link) brings the look of old-school Polaroid instant photos to your Mac.

Simply drop a picture on the app, and out comes a fully, uh, “developed” Polaroid, complete with washed-out look (from one of 30 filters), white borders, and even your own customizable text.

Investoscope Software’s $60 eponymous Investoscope ( Mac App Store Link) helps you keep track of your investment portfolio by automatically downloading the latest stock prices, currency exchange rates, and market trends.

The app can import transactions in a variety of standard formats, supports several accounting methods, and provides a host of great reports.

TripWare’s $10 MyGPS can read, edit, and convert GPS track data collected from a variety of sources in one of several standard formats.

The app allows you to render your trails and paths on a map, highlighting speed and direction over time or changes in altitude.

TheKeptPromise’s $10 Subtitle Edit ( Mac App Store Link) is the ideal app for movie buffs who like to view content in its original language and want complete control over its subtitles.

The app allows you to quickly synchronize audio and closed-captioned data, scrubbing through video and outputting everything to standard formats.

ZeoSpace’s namesake app makes it easy to share your files in a jiffy; all you need to do is drop them on the app’s icon and it immediately gives you back a URL that you can send to your friends or colleagues via the communication medium of choice.

ZeoSpace supports files of arbitrary size, can handle groups of document and entire folders, and is completely free.

D3i’s $7 Stache ( Mac App Store Link), which lets you capture and categorize all your favorite webpages, has received a minor update that improves performance with large bookmark collections and adds support for importing data from Pocket.

AgileBits’s $50 1Password ( Mac App Store Link) password manager is now at version 4.4.1, which comes with dozens of bug fixes and a handful of new functions, including support for the WhiteHat Aviator secure Web browser.