Giles Turnbull

Buying Guides

Buying Guides By Giles Turnbull

My favorite Mac apps: Giles' picks

Everyone else has had just three choice Mac apps, but I'm going to claim four because two of my choices live in the Menu Bar, and are therefore very small. Only you and I need to keep count, though, eh? Bean This marvelous little rich text editor is an excellent tool for writing to word counts, something I have to do very often. Bean packs in a lot of great features, and the developer is responsive to feedback and suggestions. Either TextMate or BBEdit When I'm not writing to word counts, I'm usually using Markdown to write for the web. Until last week I'd been using TextMate for this, exclusively, for a couple of years. Now, with the release of BBEdit 9.0, I'm wavering between the two. Both are wonderful, and writing with Markdown just isn't the same without one of them to help me out. I Love Stars I'm one of those weirdos who likes to keep the Dock out of sight most of the time. I don't use it for launching or switching apps, and I don't use it to keep minimised windows in either. But there are some functions that I like to have in easy reach from anywhere, and that's why I'm a big fan of Menu Bar applications. That said, there's not a lot of Menu Bar to be had on a little MacBook screen, so I'm very picky about which ones get the honor of a place up there. I Love Stars earns a spot. It does nothing but let me assign ratings to songs, but in my opinion it does it very well and, most importantly, sits in the best place for doing it. Jumpcut Another one from the Menu Bar, and this time it's a clipboard history utility that saves my backside 27 times every week. At least. It only saves text, but that's fine for me because that's what matters most in my line of work. With Jumpcut running (and it's always running), I can merrily copy umpteen things from a dozen different places and be sure of pasting them easily, and in the correct places, in the text document I'm writing at the time (see Bean and BBMate raves above). OK, that was five. Sorry.

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Space

Space By Giles Turnbull

Stargazing with Starmap

Starmap 1.1 (iTunes link) is a pocket-sized map of the sky that packs a great deal into a small package. One thing that strikes you immediately is the challenge of incorporating all the options available into the iPhone's limited UI space. The button panel at the bottom of the screen is a 3D object that you can spin round to reveal more controls. And you need them, because there's a lot Starmap can show you. Not just the stars and constellations, but also planets, expected meteors and "deep sky" objects like galaxies, clusters and nebulae. Features I particularly like include: the night-vision mode (tints everything red to minimise your iPhone's own light pollution); the fact that, by default, only objects you're likely to see are shown in lists of stars and planets (you can toggle this on and off if you'd rather see a list of everything, below the horizon or not); and the general feeling that a great deal of thought has gone into building the app from the outset. The main issue with Starmap, and it's one you'll notice pretty quickly, is speed. Right now, the app does not use any accelerated graphics and subsequently, the frame rate is 3 FPS. Dragging the night sky around beneath your finger is slow and the animation jagged; as a result, it can be a little frustrating to use. Consider this before you buy. This is a known issue, though, and work is under way on a fully optimised 3D version running at 20 FPS. It might be released as soon as October, we're told. That (and one or two crashes) aside, Starmap is a fantastic educational app and very good value for the price ($11.99). Existing users should hold out for future updates -- if they deliver what's promised, Starmap will be an almost irresistible purchase. Oh, and one other thing would be nice: a function that controls the appalling British summer weather, and clears away the almost permanent cloud cover so that we actually have a remote chance of seeing some stars.

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Apps By Giles Turnbull

Favorite iPhone apps: Giles' take

We're all taking turns at this. My turn: SMS - the built-in SMS app has changed the way I use text messaging, and for the better. My contract with O2 includes 600 text messages per month, and in the UK where everyone texts everyone about everything all the time (and no-one gets charged for incoming messages), that's extremely useful. On old phones, even using predictive text software, I found composing messages too long-winded and dull, and consequently didn't text much. Now I can compose as fast as I can tap-type, and my friends are all wondering why I've suddenly become so flippin' chatty. Cube Runner - Andy Qua's super-simple game is the only one I keep returning to time and time again. Nothing beats it for speed, simplicity, and fun. When I say simple, I mean simple: you pilot your triangle between the cubes. Hit cube, game over. That's it. There's not much that can improve it, except perhaps handlebars. Face Melter - A cheesy bit of fun, but everyone deserves cheesy fun every now and then. Face Melter just lets you mess about with images, pulling and dragging facial features into amusing shapes. Hardly a new idea, but it's great fun to have in your pocket. Good for amusing kids while waiting in restaurants, and for amusing fellow geeks in the pub. I've also been exploring its potential for experimental photography. Weather - I'm English. Need I say more? I should stress -- and I suspect I speak for all my TUAW colleagues in this respect -- that this list of faves is merely a snapshot. These faves might change within days, even hours. The App Store is still only an infant, and holds many surprises for us in the future. I'm looking forward to discovering new faves as time goes on.

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Apps By Giles Turnbull

Fixtures and more from iFooty

With 237 (and counting) almost universally glowing reviews, iFooty is one app that's scoring well on the UK iPhone App Store, riding high on the Top 25 Free apps list. What it does it pretty simple -- aggregating football league data and news articles from a variety of BBC sources -- but it does it very well and with great style. As many of the user reviews [App Store link] point out, it's one of those apps that's really, genuinely, use-it-six-times-a-day useful. I should point out, for the vast American majority of readers on this site, that when I say "football," I mean it in the UK sense of the word. I suspect you know it better as soccer. But over here it's football, or just footy, and iFooty's comprehensive coverage of the uppermost football leagues in England (Premier League, Championship, League One, League Two) and Scotland (Premier League) offers something for many millions of fans. And, better yet, it does so for free. The official iFooty web site doesn't tell you much; you're better off going to the App Store for more info.

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News By Giles Turnbull

Back to School: Papers updated for the new term

TUAW's going Back to School! We'll be bringing you tips and reviews for students, parents and teachers right up until the bell rings in September. Read on for a timely app update useful for students. PDF management app Papers has been bumped to version 1.8.5, bringing what the developers claim are 100 improvements. Top on the list is a new sharing feature called Papers Archives, which lets you share a PDF file and its associated metadata with a colleague. Papers isn't for everyone. Instead, it's specifically designed for students and academics, particularly those who deal with a lot of scientific periodicals in the course of their research. It lets you search them, sort them (manually or using Smart Folders), find them on any one of 14 different online repositories, rate them, browse your library in tabs, and much more. Papers costs $42 for a single-user license, but students qualify for a 40 per cent discount.

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News By Giles Turnbull

First Look: BtBx

Here's BtBx, for the iPhone and iPod touch. I think you pronounce it "beatbox". And it's lovely. There's so much potential for music apps on the iPhone and I'm one of the people who's very keen to try them out. BeatMaker is top of the tree in the App Store right now, but there's a lot about BtBx that appeals to me. The interface is cartoon-like, but I like it that way. It works and it doesn't crash, and those things matter more to me than aesthetics. The controls might be a bit confusing to anyone who's never used a sequencer before, but there's a brief user manual built-in. The app was built by the same team that created Rhythm for the PSP. BtBx is cheap and it's simple, and simple is always good in my opinion. Right now there's no way to import custom samples (but that's on the way), nor can you save your patterns or export them elsewhere -- BtBx's greatest drawback at this time. For many people, that will disqualify it immediately. But: the limitations and drawbacks haven't stopped me playing with it, messing with the patterns to build something interesting, and that's what I like most. The simplicity encourages creativity. BtBx is a $3.99 download from the App Store.

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News By Giles Turnbull

Down with this sort of thing

Look Dougal, we've done it!Done what, Ted?We're on iTunes, Dougal! In the UK store! Look at all the happy people waving at us! Wave back!What people are you talking about, Ted?The people out there with their Apple Macs. It's not even raining, Ted.Just shut up and wave, Dougal!Are you imagining things again, Ted?What do you mean, Dougal? When have I ever imagined things? I'm very rational, you know.Well there was that time with that money...It was just resting in my account, Dougal, I've told you before...(Addendum, for the mystified: Father Ted was a hugely successful 1990s sitcom, broadcast by the UK's Channel 4, about three mad Catholic priests and their equally insane housekeeper, all living in peaceful chaos on a remote Irish island. If you've never heard of it before, just move on to the next TUAW post and pretend this one never happened. Any further questions will be answered by Father Jack: "That would be an ecumenical matter!")

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Entertainment

Entertainment By Giles Turnbull

Tate Liverpool launches first UK iPhone art exhibition tour

Tate Liverpool, one of the Tate art galleries scattered around the UK (the two main galleries are in London, another is in St Ives) has opened an experimental online exhibition tour for iPhone and iPod Touch owners, which it says is the first of its kind in the country. From now until the end of August, visitors to the Gustav Klimt exhibition will be able to browse the free guide content to their iPhones over the gallery's wifi network, or download it beforehand as a podcast. Spare iPod touches with the content pre-loaded will be available for hire for just $6 (£3). According to an article about the experiment in Design Week magazine, the guide has been very popular and upped average visit times from 45 minutes to three hours. If you want to try the tour for yourself without making the trip to Liverpool, you can enjoy it in full on the web. Thanks to Jonathan for the tip.

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Apps By Giles Turnbull

Chandler 1.0, the open source PIM

Little noticed amid all the hubbub about Mobile Me, the App Store, iPhone killswitches and everything else, was the news from last week that Chandler 1.0 for OS X was finally released. If that leaves you only fractionally less in the dark, here's some background: Chandler is a cross-platform, open source Personal Information Manager (PIM), and project of the Open Source Applications Foundation. The vision behind Chandler and the OSAF is that of Mitch Kapoor, designer of the original "killer app" for the PC generation, Lotus 1-2-3. Chandler has been many years in gestation, but that's hardly surprising when you look at the feature set - there's a huge amount of stuff packed in there. The 3-minute guided tour (direct link to .mov file) is well worth watching for an overview. The very first thing that catches my eye is the "Quick entry bar", which looks just like the search boxes you see in many other OS X apps like Mail and Safari. This one isn't just for search, though; it's also for rapid input. You type something, hit enter, and it instantly becomes a new item in Chandler for you to edit, expand on, and deal with later. Chandler is a free download from chandlerproject.org. We'd be interested to hear what you make of it. Via MacNetJournal

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News By Giles Turnbull

Bring the Noise.io!

Noise.io is an interesting-looking synthesizer app for iPhone, due to appear in the App Store in the coming weeks. What's interesting about it is the emphasis on live performance. This is an app designed for use on stage, and comes complete with the advice: "Simply connect the sound output of your iPhone/iPod touch to the mic/lineinput of your mixer, recorder or sound card - and there you are, now you can enrich your tracks or mixes with superb sound effects." Right now, we shall just have to take the developers' word for that, because the app isn't officially released and all we have to go on are the screenshots and a single preview video that hints at what's to come. For seven bucks, it looks like it might be hard to resist.

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Apps By Giles Turnbull

pTerm released, update due soon

Newly arrived in the App Store is pTerm, an iPhone port of the PuTTY terminal emulator. It supports SSH and Telnet, among other things, and has a built-in Control key. But developer Eric Maland has been in touch with us to say that a 1.1 update is already on its way (it has been submitted to Apple and is awaiting approval). Unfortunately a handful of "major crashy bugs" (as Eric puts it) were discovered after the 1.0 release had been submitted. Planned features for future releases include multiple simultaneous connections, custom sizes and colors, port forwarding and lots more. Details on the pTerm home page. And in the meantime, if you download and experience crashy behavior, Eric's message is: be patient. The fixes are done, but when they reach the Store is out of his hands. pTerm is $4.99US in the US App Store (We haven't seen it in the UK store).

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Apps By Giles Turnbull

Goin' underground with TubeStatus

Londoners like to know what's going on in the tunnels beneath their feet. The Tube is how every Londoner gets pretty much anywhere, and when bits of it are broken, it helps to know before you walk to the nearest Tube station. The beauty of the Tube, (well, the central zones in particular) is that the lines are so intertwingled that it's often quite easy to route yourself around breakages or blockages. If the Northern Line's hosed, maybe the Piccadilly or Jubilee Lines might get you close enough to where you need to be. And if the Circle line's running slow (which is often is), you might be able to skip round the problem via one of the many other lines that bisect it. Which might explain why TubeStatus (App Store link) by Malcolm Barclay is such a good idea. Oddly, though, Malcolm had been hoping that it wouldn't appear in the App Store, while he sorted out some copyright issues with Transport for London, the body that manages not only London's transport network but also the data feeds about it that make apps like TubeStatus work. If we hear anything further on the status of TubeStatus, we'll let you know.

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Apps By Giles Turnbull

GyazMail: the mail client for older Macs

This takes me back to the 10.1/10.2 days, before anyone had invented decent webmail, the days when I still used Eudora and loved it. Passion for Eudora aside, I still experimented with alternative email clients (everybody did, right?), and one of those was GyazMail. It was actually pretty good, at the time, and a serious rival to Apple's then-still-young Mail. In recent years I'd rather forgotten about it, but lo and behold, here it is popping up with new updates. This new release kills a bunch of bugs and tweaks a few features, but what impresses me most is that the update is available for Jaguar users, with a separate (Universal Binary) version for those on 10.3 or later. That's what I call legacy support. If you have a creaky old Mac that still serves you well running one of these older big cats, and you need a mail client for it, GyazMail is well worth a glance.

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Reviews

Reviews By Giles Turnbull

First Look: EccoNote

EccoNote is a nice little free audio recording app - one of many similar recorders available in the App Store.I use the word "little" deliberately, because EccoNote is very simple. In a good way. You can record your audio notes, you can play them back, and that's about it. There are no settings to mess with. The audio quality is very good and the controls nice and obvious.The only odd thing is that the developer's web site, as listed on the App Store, does not appear to exist (at least not as I'm writing this). Their notes in the App Store description field say that they plan to add an email-to-contacts feature within the next month, something I hope they succeed with because that would be very useful.As I said at the top, there are many other voice recorder apps available. Some for free, some for a little money. I've tried a few (not all) and this is one I like best so far. Your opinions of Ecco and its rivals would be welcomed in the comments.

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Apps By Giles Turnbull

Export your Yojimbo database to a Tiddlywiki

You've got all your iStuff inside Yojimbo (hands up who loves Yojimbo and I'll count, starting with me), but for some reason you need to get it on to another computer, perhaps one running a different OS. What to do? This AppleScript takes your entire Yojimbo library (well, everything except the PDFs) and exports it to a Tiddlywiki that you can carry around and view on pretty much any computer. I say "any computer" but iPhone users shouldn't get too excited just yet. Apparently, the standard Tiddlywiki doesn't display that well on an iPhone. But, ooh, wait: what do we have here? Thanks to Jon for the tip.

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Apps By Giles Turnbull

A better App Store

How could the App Store be made better? Some means of trying software before you buy it It's frustrating, to say the least, that the only way to find out what an app is like is to buy it, unlike the 'try before you buy' scenario that's common with Mac apps. Sure, you can read the reviews, but they can't give you a complete reflection of the app's features, nor do they always offer fair comparisons between similar and competing apps. Example: you've bought FileMagnet, then Files comes out. Is one app better than the other? Might one suit your work habits better than the other? Is one a better value, or more stable, or have better features? The only way you can find out is by buying both. (Yes, the Ad Hoc distribution system exists for, well, ad hoc distribution, but it isn't the answer for consumer-level trying-before-buying.) Ensuring reviews are fair A lot of TUAW readers have contacted us about the unfairness of App Store reviews from people that haven't actually downloaded and tried the apps concerned. Some people add reviews based on the price (or screenshot) alone. Should that be allowed? Add a shopping cart At the moment, when you tap BUY, the next option is INSTALL. How about replacing INSTALL with an alert that says the app has been added to your cart, queue, or list? Then you could continue browsing, and return to the list later to confirm your purchases -- and remove anything that got in there by mistake. How would you improve the App Store?

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Apps By Giles Turnbull

Diamond, the rich text editor that thinks different

Diamond is a free rich text editor with a difference. Lots of differences, actually, which combine to make it quite appealing. Developer Geoffrey Alexander has recently released Diamond 3, which makes this an excellent time for you to download and give it a try. How is Diamond different? Diamond windows look different. Sometimes they're hardly there. They may or may not have title bars. They may or may not hover above a background (flat color, or photographic, it's up to you) that in turn hovers over everything else on your desktop. Text inside Diamond documents flows in columns. Word and character counts float unobtrusively below the windows, as if hanging in space. If you want them to. Aspects of Diamond's differentness are yours to tweak in the prefs, of course, so you can de-weird things if you feel the need. But that takes all the fun out of it. If I'm not making much sense here, I encourage you to take a look at the Diamond gallery or download the app to try it for yourselves. As Geoffrey himself once said: "Diamond isn't for everyone, and may not even be for anyone." But I rather like it, if only because it takes the mundanity of editing text and adds a bit of life that you don't find in other rich text editors.

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Apple

Apple By Giles Turnbull

The NetShare debacle: Apple, explain yourself

Put yourselves in Nullriver's shoes for a minute: you create an app (NetShare - see TUAW passim), which as far as you can tell does not break any of the App Store rules. You submit it to Apple for inclusion. It passes the vetting procedure (so it must be OK, right?) and goes live online, for sale to real people. Then it disappears, with no warning. No explanation is given. Then it returns. For a while. Again, no explanation. Then it goes offline again. (I've now lost count how many times NetShare has been online, then offline, rinse and repeat.) And throughout all this, you get nothing from Apple. No explanation. No reason. No polite email asking you to wait. Not even an impolite email. Nothing.

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News By Giles Turnbull

What happened to NetShare? - UPDATED

It was there. And now it's... gone. What happened to iPhone 3G tethering app NetShare?For a while it was live on the App Store, for a meagre ten bucks. Then it vanished. And now, it seems to have vanished from Nullriver's web site, too. Their news page has no mention of NetShare.This smells of lawyers. NetShare was designed to let you share your iPhone's connectivity with your computer. Wireless freedom for all. And quite possibly something the telephony service providers in various countries would be alarmed to see on offer in the App Store, ten bucks or no. But wait -- the App Store is vetted, isn't it? Something like this couldn't just creep in through the ventilation shafts. This couldn't just be a ghastly mistake, could it?You can't make software just disappear from everywhere. There must be some TUAW readers who managed to get hold of a copy before it disappeared. What do you make of it? Is it working?For the record, we have asked NullRiver for comment, but not heard back from them yet. As soon as we do, we'll add an update.UPDATE: And here it is. No word directly from NullRiver yet, but one of the NullRiver team pointed out in the comments that they did not have a web page for NetShare in the first place. Also, the following text has now been posted on the NullRiver home page (a fact that was also noted in the comments):"We're not quite sure why Apple took down the NetShare application yet, we've received no communication from Apple thus far. NetShare did not violate any of the Developer or AppStore agreements. We're hoping we'll get some feedback from Apple today. Sorry to all the folks that couldn't get it in time. We'll do our best to try to get the application back onto the AppStore if at all possible. At the very least, we hope Apple will allow it to be used in countries where the provider does permit tethering."AGAIN UPDATE: NetShare has now reappeared in the App Store, at least in the US, the UK, and the Netherlands, and probably in many other places as well. You can download and play with it to your heart's content. Thanks to all the commenters and tipsters who alerted us to this.AGAIN AGAIN UPDATE: Now we've had a reply from NullRiver, as follows: "Hi, NetShare is back on the Apple Store, hopefully for good this time! We're not quite sure why Apple took down the NetShare application yet, we've received no communication from Apple thus far. NetShare did not violate any of the Developer or AppStore agreements to our knowledge. It is unknown how mobile phone carriers may react to using the program. Or if they are even in a position to tell. My personal advice is to not go NUTS just yet by downloading tons. Also be aware that contracts/carriers vary in what they offer from country to country, please be careful your service doesn't have a metered limit, that if you go over may incur extra costs for you."Odd, is it not, that despite all the ups and downs their app has experienced during the last day or so, NullRiver has not heard anything at all from Apple? What's that all about? Thanks to Zoli + everyone who sent this in.

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Apps By Giles Turnbull

TUAW Tip: a shortcut to the Character Palette

I'm not the world's most patriotic Englishman, and I'm also not keen on allowing icons to fill up my Mac's menu bar unless strictly necessary. That's why I don't let the Input Menu flag hog space up there; one of the first things I do on a fresh Mac system is remove it (by unchecking the "Show input menu in menu bar" box in the Input Menu tab of the International preferences pane). That said, there are occasions when I wish I had quick access to the Character Palette - which can normally only be reached via the Input Menu. Grrr. Which is why I dug around online to find a script that would call up the Character Palette for me, and saved it as an application, and Bob's your uncle. Now I can get to the Character Palette, via Spotlight, by typing "Command+Space CHAR return". Excellent. You can get the script from this page on Mac OS X Hints. Click the "Get this script" thingy and it will open in Script Editor. Click Compile, then Run, just to check it does what you want - then Save As... an app, or a script if you prefer.

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News By Giles Turnbull

The wrong kind of 1%

MobileMe account holders trying to contact Apple's email outage chat support service have been promptly and brutally cut off if they're not on Apple's list of the "1%" of users affected -- and in one case, even if they are.Some TUAW readers have been in touch to tell us that when they tried to get chat support for MobileMe email, they were quickly given this automated (or hastily pasted-in) response:"I'm sorry, according to our records, you were not one of the members affected by the email outage that began on July 18th. MobileMe Mail 24-hour chat support is a temporary measure designed specifically for users whose accounts were affected by that outage. For help, please visit http://www.apple.com/support/mobileme/ww for access to all of our support resources. I apologize for any inconvenience."But one of our correspondents was doubly displeased, because he insisted he had been one of the 1%. But here was Apple telling him he hadn't -- and not giving him any chance to argue the matter.It's that "according to our records" bit that seems to be the problem. What if Apple's records are wrong?Thanks to Bill and Dom for the tip.

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News By Giles Turnbull

PerversionTracker returns

Oh yes. The site that hates Mac software -- all of it, without exception -- is back to hate some more. PerversionTracker has returned after a long, long hiatus, and now it has iPhone software in its sights. (For the uninitiated, the old PerversionTracker took Mac apps and ripped them to pieces while screaming with joy.) No word on whether the folks at VersionTracker are irked, peeved or fuming.Why has it returned now? What could possibly have got those hate glands working again? After all, everything in the App Store has to be approved by the gods of Apple before it goes live. There won't be anything worth hating. Will there?UPDATE: The PerversionTrackers got in touch to remind me that they don't hate all Mac software. Only the bad stuff. My apologies for the misrepresentation, and thanks to the 'Trackers for their laid-back approach to correcting over-excited journalists.

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By Giles Turnbull

Flickr Find: the Fluid icons pool

The team down the road from me at Carsonified have been doing it, and you can do it too. Fluid is a fantastic free app that turns any web site into a self-contained application on your Mac. If you want to keep your webmail outside your normal web browser, Fluid is what you need. Thing is, all the apps it creates need icons, just as any app in your Applications folder does. By default, Fluid grabs the .ico files it finds on web sites and uses them as icons, but they don't scale well. Where can you find decent alternatives? The answer is the Fluid icons pool on Flickr, where a busy community of Fluid users have been busy making a selection of beautiful icons that work perfectly with any Fluid SSBs (Site-Specific Browsers) you've created. The icons in the pool might look weird to start with, but that's because the PNG originals have been converted to JPG format by Flickr's brain. To make use of an icon you like, make sure you view and download the full-size original, which will be the PNG file you need.

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News By Giles Turnbull

Silverback now available

UK web development team Clearleft has released its web site usability testing application, Silverback.In short, Silverback turns a Mac into a portable usability testing laboratory. What used to require a complicated and cumbersome set up involving several computers, a video camera, and lots of time, can now be done much faster and with less hassle. You only need a Mac with a built-in or attached camera, and a copy of Silverback.The application records video footage of the user, and combines it with recorded footage of their activity on screen. Clicks, inputs, pointer movements and the user's speech and facial expressions are all combined into a single video file that can be quickly exported. One nice touch allows the test facilitator to add "bookmarks" during a session by clicking a button on the Mac's Apple Remote. Nothing distracting will show up in front of the user, but the bookmark is still recorded invisibly in the background.The only thing that doesn't appear to be included - at least in this initial release - is the ability to edit the output video file before exporting. Even so, it looks like it could be an invaluable tool for anyone who makes software or web sites for a living. If you want to find out more, watch the five-minute demo video, which is a useful summary of aims and features.Silverback is Tiger and Leopard compatible, sells for $49.95 and can be used as a fully functional demo for 30 days. As an added bonus, 10% of all profits generated will be donated to the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.

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Reviews

Reviews By Giles Turnbull

First Look: FileMagnet

FileMagnet (mentioned briefly by Dave in his iPhone apps I actually use post yesterday) is a low-cost wireless file transfer tool for iPhone and iPod Touch. It requires you to install a companion desktop application, also called FileMagnet, which acts as the conduit for file transfer. Usage is simple enough: drag files you wish to copy into the desktop app's window. Then open FileMagnet on the iPhone, and as long as the two machines are on the same WiFi network, they will find each other over Bonjour, and wirelessly connect. Then your files are smoothly and wirelessly transferred over. Transfer will also happen every time you sync the device, if the desktop app happens to be running. FileMagnet is a handy place for reference materials, such as Word docs, spreadsheets, PDFs and images, that you're likely to need to carry at all times. It handles entire folders full of files, too. There are a few problems right now, all of which are addressed on the official FileMagnet FAQ, mostly with a promise that they'll be fixed soon: FileMagnet cannot display iWork files (yet) The desktop app requires Leopard (but a Tiger version is on the way) You can't email files, or indeed do anything with them except view them (an email feature is coming) Like a lot of iPhone and iPod touch apps, it's in its early days. Some features are lacking, or not as perfectly functional as you might like. But the developers are aware of the limitations and working on fixes and new features, and personally I think it's a decent value application with bright prospects for future development. I'll be watching out for updates with interest. FileMagnet is $4.99, and available through the App Store. UPDATE: Joshua Keay from Magnetism Studios has been in touch to say that that FileMagnet supports Tiger right now. He added that support for rotation and more file types is on the way in the next build, which will be a free update.

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