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Indie Mac Gift Pack offers discounted Mac software for the holidays
A crew of well-known independent Mac developers has banded together to offer a pretty good deal on some Mac software this holiday season. The Indie Mac Gift pack is offering six great Mac apps (Acorn 2, Delicious Library 2, MarsEdit 3, Radioshift, SousChef and Sound Studio 4) for just $60, a savings of more than $200 if purchased separately at full price. That's a phenomenal deal -- in fact, the only reason you probably wouldn't want to take advantage of it is if you already own a few of these apps, which you might already, given that they're pretty darn good. But if you haven't yet picked these up to use in the past, the gift pack is a nice little bonus right before Christmas. The sale's going on for over two weeks (right through the holiday season), so you've got plenty of time to head over there and both get some great software and support some of our favorite indie Mac devs.
The iPhone app I saw at WWDC but still can't show you: Bon App
I guess you could say I'm an armchair foodie. Strangely enough, once I started working at home I rarely got the chance to cook a proper meal. It doesn't help that my kids have typical kid palates, and attempts to "get fancy" with the ingredients are met with wrinkled noses and frowning faces. So when I see an app that looks like it'll make my cooking life simpler and better I'm very, very excited.Bon App looks to do just that -- it simplifies the entire cooking process, from planning to shopping to cooking. All on the iPhone (or iPod touch). What really has me excited is the way it does this. Any blunt object can bash a nail. I mean, there's a reason Mac users have higher standards, right? I like to think we appreciate ease-of-use and quality design. Bon App has an extensive feature list, yes, but it looks darn good doing what it does, and the developer spent serious time thinking about how you interact with the app.While I can't show you any screens (the developer was adamant that I not record video), I tell you about a few things I saw. One nice touch: when selecting a particular dish to cook, an icon of the recipe bounces down into a menu bar, indicating where to go next (shopping list, if I recall correctly). I don't remember the shopping list feature well, but the cooking features are exceptional. The app shows you a visual indication of how long each dish will take along a bar graph. This helps you plan what to cook and when. As anyone who has played Hell's Kitchen will tell you, timing is critical. You don't want hot side dishes and a cold entree. It was the first time I'd seen that on an app, and was indicative of the thought put into the app's flow.The final pieces hadn't been put together when I had a look at the demo. The developer was still thinking through the last phase (cooking, which can be tricky, as trying to prep a meal isn't as straightforward as you might think) and tweaking the interaction. I'm also not sure how recipes get into the app. If you're looking for a desktop cooking app that syncs with the iPhone, about the best I've found so far is Avenio's MacGourmet. But I will certainly be keeping an eye out for Bon App. Even though I'm very happy with Sous Chef, the detail and design of Bon App has me wishing I could pre-order now.
First Look: SousChef stores your recipes, allows Mac to cook
There are plenty of recipe applications for the Mac, and at first glance SousChef is like most of the others. However, it does have some fine-tuning and refinement that sets it apart from the pack. The thing I like most about SousChef is the ability to use your Mac to view recipes while cooking, without ever having to waste paper printing each individual recipe. This is accomplished through a Front Row-esque interface that lists your ingredients, and the cooking instructions -- It will even read your instructions to you while you are cooking. You can control the speech through a heads-up display that appears when you mouse over the bottom portion of your screen. You can also control this "10-foot mode" with your Apple or Keyspan remote. SousChef interacts with an optional online database of other SC users to allow you to share your culinary creations. Each time you enter a new recipe, it can be sent to the database where others can look it up and create the same dishes you do. If you have a collection of secret family recipes, you can turn off sharing. It would be nice if this were available for each recipe, instead of affecting your entire library.You can search through your recipes by ingredient; this allows you to find only the recipes that you can execute using the items you have on hand, without a trip to the store. You can search using multiple ingredients, and if you find an ingredient that you don't have, you don't need to make another shopping run -- just use SousChef's built-in substitutions. The application ships with several substitution suggestions, but you can also add your own in the preferences. %Gallery-33908%Read on for more ...
