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Daily Mac App: Appalicious
We usually feature Mac apps on the Mac App Store in this series, but Appalicious is an exception. While not available on the MAS, it helps you browse the store in various ways that make the experience much more efficient and even fun. If you're a bargain hunter you'll find digging through sales and freebies has never been easier. Appalicious is a front end to a database for searching, sorting and filtering apps. The toolbar at the top features preset searches and sorting methods. These alone are worth the price of admission (which we'll talk about in a moment), because you'll easily be able to find the latest and greatest apps, on sale or otherwise. You'll also find a handy Recent menu and easy access to your store favorites. One wonders why Apple doesn't do these things in the official store already. Also, as data is pulled fresh from the App Store, searching in Appalicious is often better than browsing around the actual store. All of these searches and sorts can be customized, and you can even build advanced filters to further hone in on exactly the apps you want to see. For example, within seconds I was able to find a business card app that was on sale and in English. A handy right-click menu allows me to add the app to my wish list, which also exists as a drop-down menu. Appalicious has plenty of different ways to nail down exactly the app you want, all of which make it easy to use and quite powerful. Another drop down menu, for example, allows you to see everything about the currently selected app, including take you to their web site or support page. That's quite handy. While you can download Appalicious for free, the service itself (downloading the fresh database) costs money after one week. After that free week, you'll have to pay $12.95 per year. The site notes a $5 discount by using the code "INTRO," but check here to see if it is still available. Also check out the training videos to see if Appalicious is right for you. TidBITS has a more thorough description of the database advantages. If you rarely buy Mac apps, perhaps Appalicious isn't worth it. But if you love finding bargains (easily done, given the ability to search by price and even monitor app prices over time), it pays for itself rather quickly.
