This week’s roundup of new Mac apps includes an app that helps you keep up with your favorite musicians, an app that can batch-convert your photos to different file formats, and an app that helps you calculate fractions (so you don’t have to!).
Smith Micro Software’s $40 Anime Studio Debut 10 ( Mac App Store Link) is a complete animation package that lets you create and export your very own cartoons.
Not only is this a great tool for having some fun and being creative, but it’s also great for sprucing up your business presentations. The app can manage different characters and backgrounds, synchronize audio and video, and export your animation to several video formats.
Follow your favorite musicians with Metason’s $6 ArtistInfo ( Mac App Store Link)—a new way for fans to track everything from albums to connections to other stars.
The app has a database of 750,000 artists and more than 2 million songs, so you can have all kinds of information at your fingertips. It even uses cool graphics to show you how your idols are connected to each other.
9Labs’s AudioMate ( Mac App Store Link) replaces OS X’s simple audio controls with an advanced panel that gives you full access to all of your outputs.
The app—which is free and open source—shows every device available on your system, and allows you to manage every setting, from master volume to channel balancing.
Lifeware Solutions’s $2 Deluxe Moon HD ( Mac App Store Link) gives you a thorough look at Earth’s satellite without having to look out the window—perfect for moon gazing in inclement weather.
The app tracks the moon’s phases, and provides a complete lunar calendar that you can use to peek back at the moon’s history and look ahead to see future phases. As an added bonus, the app can be accessed from Yosemite’s Today view.
If fractions aren’t your thing, you’re in luck! Palasoftware’s $1 Fraction Calculator ( Mac App Store Link) gives you a handy way to double check your calculations right from your desktop.
The app supports both negative and positive values, and makes quick work of converting numbers between fractions and decimals. Plus, its elegant interface looks right at home on Yosemite.
Thorsten Lemke’s $40 GraphicConverter 9 converts images between a wide variety of formats, letting you work with the image in whatever format you need.
The venerable app, which has graced the Mac app scene for more than a decade, supports just about any graphic file under the sun, including many specialized formats used in professional applications, and can convert images from one file type to another, adding optional effects in the process.
Dealing with dull pictures just got a little easier, thanks to HumanSoftware’s $8 InFocus ( Mac App Store Link).
The app allows you to add selective focus effects to your photos using a simple interface, which can handle everything from bringing a subject to the foreground to condensing your panoramas without losing any context.
Spring is just around the corner, which means that, for many of us, it’s time to plan this year’s spring cleaning and home renovations—and Planner 5D’s $15 Planner 5D makes this an easy and fun task.
The app allows you to virtually set up every space in your house just the way you like it, complete with furniture, appliances, and the layout of your choice. You can then visualize it in either a traditional 2D view from above, or in a 3D view that you can rotate to take a look from any angle.
If, like us, you’re still baffled by the fact that OS X doesn’t come with a pre-installed timer app, you will at least be happy to hear that one isn’t hard to acquire.
Case in point, MacFanr’s $1 Stopwatch+ gives you a handy way to track time right on your Mac, complete with lap support and an easy-to-use start, stop, and reset button. It doesn’t get much easier than this… and that’s exactly the way software like this should be.
Author: Marco Tabini
Marco Tabini is based in Toronto, Canada, where he focuses on software development for mobile devices and for the Web.