utilities
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1Password 4 for iOS offers new interface, favorites, more
AgileBits has updated 1Password for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch to version 4 with many super new changes. It's got a beautiful new look and very handy features such as favorites, a built-in tabbed browser, a brand-new setup process and even a "demo mode" for showing off to friends without presenting all of your data. I've spent a few days with 1Password 4 and am happy to report my findings. Looks As they say in Hollywood, 1Password has had some work done. The whole UI has had a major facelift, and it looks good. Right off the bat you'll notice that the lock screen is new. Enter your master password, and you're brought the favorites screen. The icons in the bottom toolbar have changed, too. In the old version they were: Logins Accounts Notes Passwords More In 1Password 4, you've got: Favorites Categories Folders Settings Browser Tap any one to jump right to it. Icons used in the settings and categories screens are clear and descriptive while notes, logins, passwords and software information are also easily identified by their familiar icons. Everything is legible, clear and immediately understandable. Good work to AgileBit's visual and interaction design teams. %Gallery-173286% Use For many, 1Password is a mission-critical utility, including myself. I use it to store all sorts of super important information such as passwords, serial numbers, registration info, identities and more. I take it seriously, and it's clear that the folks at AglieBits understand that. Some evidence of this is the greatly improved browser. With the previous version of 1Password, the browser experience was sub-par. I'd come to a site that requires a password in mobile Safari, jump to 1Password, copy my credentials, jump back to mobile Safari and past them in. With version 4 I'm happy to stay in the app's browser. It's faster than its predecessor and, best of all, makes it super easy to enter your saved credentials. To get started, swipe the browser tab on the far right of the bottom toolbar. Next, enter a URL and off you go. To enter your saved information, tap the key icon to reveal a slip. Tap the appropriate credentials and you're in. Super easy. You also can open several tabs if you need to jump between pages. This works in a manner similar to mobile Safari, so there's nothing new to learn. Favorites is another one of my favorite features. Previously, I'd have to scroll around until I found the credentials I was looking, for example PayPal or Hulu Plus. Now, I can star them as favorites, and they're available as soon as I enter the master password. Those who use the app a lot and store many passwords will see how wonderfully convenient this is. It's also possible to group your passwords, notes, etc. into folders and categories. Again, this makes things easier to find. But the other feature that gets me all bubbly inside is demo mode. To enter demo mode, first enable it in the advanced settings tab. Then, log back into the app with "demo" as the master password. Now the app displays a full set of demo data. Your real data is hidden. What's the purpose of this? On one hand, I used it to take the screenshots in the gallery above. It's also great for showing the app off to family, friends or coworkers. It also lets you get an idea of how certain features work. You're free to play around and experiment without risking your important information. There are other niceties. Swipe across any item to reveal the new action bar. Trash, favorite or smart copy right then and there. Sync options include Dropbox, iTunes file sharing and, finally, iCloud. Plus, 1Password 4 lets you view attachments, just like the desktop version. Conclusion There's a lot to like in this utility. It feels like a whole new app. It looks and performs better than it has. For those who seriously depend on it (like me), that's very good news. 1Password 4 for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad is available in the App Store now for a special introductory price of $7.99 (it's full price will be $17.99). Yes, it's a separate purchase, but definitely worth it.
Checkmark 1.1 adds recurring reminders, snooze reminders, more
Checkmark is a reminder app from Snowman that we've reviewed before. In many ways, it's faster than using Apple's Reminders app, especially once you've created favorite locations and reminders. Version 1.1, released today, adds recurring reminders, snooze reminders and more, making a handy utility even better. I'm liking recurring reminders for simple things like "go meet the school bus." Believe me, forget that once and you hear about it. I could also see using this if you have a time-sensitive medication schedule, provided that you'll be sure to have your phone with you at med time. You can schedule a reminder to recur hourly, daily, weekly or monthly. Snooze reminders let you put off a reminder if you can't do it when originally scheduled. Swipe to delay by a minute or an hour. The "Add to Map" feature has also been improved with new satellite and hybrid views. It's a nice update to a handy app. Checkmark 1.1 is available in the App Store now for US$1.99, requires iOS 5.0 or later and is ready for the iPhone 5.
Keyboard Maestro and the automation mindset
Keyboard Maestro always sounded like a useful app, but I wasn't sure how I would ever use it. Now that I have it, I keep finding new ways to use it. I think Keyboard Maestro is perhaps one of the more difficult apps to explain, because how I use it might vary greatly from how you use it, but once you get to know how it works and some of the things it can do, maybe you'll see how you might use it. Some simple use cases for Keyboard Maestro At its simplest, Keyboard Maestro can do things like TextExpander where you type a few letters and have it expand to a much larger message, but that's really a narrow view of what it does. In fact, I prefer to use TextExpander for those sorts of uses. I use Keyboard Maestro for more complicate situations. For example, have you ever tried to add a bunch of iOS apps to an iTunes library, only to have iTunes warn you that some of the apps already exist? If you have, you know what follows. Each time iTunes finds a duplicate application, it will stop everything and ask if you want to replace the app until you press "OK" and then it will continue. Keyboard Maestro can wait until iTunes asks and then answer for you. I once left iTunes running like that and went to lunch, letting Keyboard Maestro do the menial work for me. Keyboard Maestro can trigger events to happen when an app quits or when it launches. For example, when SuperDuper launches, Keyboard Maestro automatically unmounts my Time Machine backup (because I don't want Time Machine to interfere with SuperDuper). When SuperDuper quits, Keyboard Maestro unmounts the SuperDuper clone (otherwise Spotlight tends to find apps and files on both drives) and remounts my Time Machine drive. When I am using Microsoft Word and have an open document, Keyboard Maestro automatically saves the file for me every 3 minutes, so I never have to worry about losing work. Mac OS X supports customizable keyboard shortcuts for menu items, but they have to include the Command key (⌘). With Keyboard Maestro, I can assign any keyboard combination I want, and if I accidentally use the same keyboard combination twice, Keyboard Maestro will pop up a menu and let me choose between the two of them. Putting several steps together As I mentioned, the key (no pun intended) to using Keyboard Maestro is to start getting into the mindset of thinking "Could I automate this?" whenever you find yourself doing something repeatedly. For example, I access a database of journal articles that are available to download as PDFs. I recently discovered that if I email those articles to myself, the database will include all of the citation information necessary. But emailing them is a bit of a pain. Each time I find an article I have to click on the 'email' button, which triggers some JavaScript which reveals a place where I can enter my email address. I have to type my email address, then I have to copy the title of the article into the Subject: line, then I have to check the box to say that I want the email to be "plain text plus the attachment", then I have to hit the 'Send' button. Once it is sent, I have to click 'Continue' to dismiss the alert that tells me the email was sent, and then I have to go back to the previous page in my browser history. All told there were twelve steps involved for each article, and some of those steps had multiple keystrokes involved, such as 'type my email address.' (Actually I was typing my Send To Dropbox email address, so the PDF and the email body with the citation would also get saved.) With Keyboard Maestro, once I decide that I want to save an article, I simply press one keyboard combination, and it does all of the necessary steps. It even brings me back to the previous page so I can continue searching. Not only does Keyboard Maestro do these s steps approximately 100 times faster than I could, it never accidentally misspells my email address, or hits the 'tab' key three times instead of two times, or forgets to check the box that says 'Yes, include the PDF in the email.' The end result is that I have more time to spend doing what I want to do (looking for interesting articles) and don't have to spend any time or mental energy on the boring, repetitive, easy-to-make-a-mistake parts. Do you install a lot of applications? As someone who tests a lot of software, I find myself running Installer.app a lot. Anyone who does this a lot knows that there are usually about 5-6 different screens that you have to go through from start to finish. Click install Click Continue Click Agree (to the EULA) Click Continue Installation Wait for it to finish Click Close If you've done that often enough, you know that you can press 'Enter' and 'Tab' (or Shift + Tab) to get through those, but it's a lot faster to have Keyboard Maestro do it for you. (You'll still have to enter your password manually, so don't worry about accidentally opening an installer and having something bad happen.) Do you make backups? I make backups of my calendar and contacts information every week. Well, at least I always intend to. But, well, if it relies on me remembering to do it, I probably won't do it. With Keyboard Maestro I can schedule this backup to happen automatically. So now, every Monday at 9:00 a.m. I get a Growl alert which says "Backing up Contacts" (which alerts me that it's about to happen so I don't accidentally interfere with it), then the Contacts app opens, and Keyboard Maestro selects File » Export » Contacts Archive... presses 'Save' when prompted, and then quits Contacts app. Then the entire process repeats with BusyCal. The whole process takes a few seconds, and all I have to do is wait. (Speaking of automation, I won't even mention that those backups are automatically saved to a particular folder using Default Folder X, and that once they are saved, Hazel automatically zips them and moves them to Dropbox. Oops. Well, maybe I'll mention it just a little.) Automation reduces annoyance Computers are great, but sometimes we have to do things that are repetitive and boring. Computers should be doing those repetitive and boring things for us. Keyboard Maestro makes it easy to get your computer to do some of those annoying things for you. All you have to do is figure out the parts that can be automated, and then sit back and watch as your computer works for you. OK, so Keyboard Maestro isn't exactly a robot butler, but it's still a step in the right direction. A demo is available from the Keyboard Maestro website, a full license is US$36. While that may seem like a lot to the "Apps should be $1! Or free!" crowd, those of us who value our time and satisfaction will see it as money well spent. Download the trial and spend some time with it. Don't dismiss it because there's a learning curve. Start small and figure out some little ways to use it, and then watch as you develop the automation mindset. Once you get used to thinking this way, you'll wonder why it took you so long.
Notification Hacking with Scheduled Notifications utility
A while back, Matt Gemmell wrote a great little US$3.00 utility called Sticky Notifications that merged Mountain Lion's notification center with sticky notes. It allows you to pin reminders to your desktop. Now, Jeremy Tregunna has released a time-triggered twist on the idea. His Scheduled Notifications utility lets you specify when you want to be pinged. "I was using Sticky Notifications to remind myself to do a couple things at a time," he writes, "These were things which i didn't need to do now, but in 10 or 30 minutes. They were eating up space on my screen and covering my inspector panels in Xcode." He wanted to be able to fire them up, but have them trigger at a specified time. So he got to work and put together a utility that would use real-world formatting (like "tomorrow at 5PM") and an easy-to-fill-out form. The result is Scheduled Notifications ($2.99), which he will distribute both through his own site and, once he gets through Apple's hoops, the Mac App Store. I gave the app a try and found it easy to use. You can schedule notifications and then preview what notifications are coming up. It does have a few quirks, as you would expect in an early release. For example, new notifications don't always show up properly in the upcoming (Command-U) list. That said, it's a simple, friendly utility that many OS X Mountain Lions users will find helpful -- and being sold at a price that won't break the bank.
Razer Game Booster enters closed beta, ready to fine tune your rig (video)
Normally we associate Razer with hardware. Gaming mice, keyboards and headsets are the company's bread and butter. It even has a laptop geared expressly towards the serious pixel pusher. But, you might be surprised to learn it's also in the software business. The latest member of its burgeoning application family is the Razer Game Booster. Based largely on IObit's app of the same name, the new downloadable utility will crank your rig to 11. There are three basic features, the most important being Game Mode which, with the click of a button, shutsdown unessential services and programs to keep your PC focused on the task at hand. (We assume that involves killing something or other with a large weapon.) There's also a calibration guide that ensures your drivers are up to date and your essential gaming files are properly defragged. Last is Share Mode, which allows you to take screen shots or capture live audio and video to preserve your accomplishments. For now Razer Game Booster is in private beta, but you can request an invite at the source link. And don't miss the PR and video after the break.
SlimBatteryMonitor a better menu bar battery monitor
One of the annoyances of Mountain Lion has been the loss of the option to have the remaining battery time shown in the menu bar. Fortunately I can offer you not only a solution, but a better option, all for the low, low price of $0. I have used SlimBatteryMonitor instead of Apple's menu bar battery monitor for several years, because it is much more flexible than what Apple has ever offered. For example, I have never liked using "Time Remaining" while I'm on battery power, because I find that the estimate has always been unpredictable. So when I am using the battery, I prefer to have the "Percentage Remaining" displayed. However, when charging the battery, I like to have the "Time Remaining" shown, because I want to know about how long it will take before the battery is fully charged. If the battery is fully charged and I am using AC power, I don't really need to see the battery status in the menu bar at all. Even before Mountain Lion, those various options would have been hard to maintain using Apple's battery menu bar item. Sure, I suppose I could have gone into the settings and changed the preferences each time I went from battery to AC to fully charged, but we all know that was never going to happen. SlimBatteryMonitor has separate preferences for each of the three states I mentioned above: on battery, charging, and charged. Here's how I have mine configured: You can have it show the time or the percentage (either with or without a battery icon), or just have it show the battery icon (which you can assign different colors for each state). When the battery is charged, SlimBatteryMonitor can even "hide" itself, meaning that it will not show any menu bar icon at all. (Because it is still running, it does stay in the menu bar, there's just nothing shown and the width is reduced to a few pixels. You probably won't even notice it unless you look for it.) The developer has a very detailed page explaining configuration options. The app is free. Donations are accepted but there's no limitations or nag screen. The current version (1.5) hasn't been updated for a few years, but I've used it on Snow Leopard, Lion, and Mountain Lion with no problem. Those of you still hanging on to Mac OS X 10.3 or 10.4 can even use the 1.4 version of SlimBatteryMonitor. Download from Orange-Carb.org. #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }
Put colorful Finder icons back in Mountain Lion
OS X Lion introduced greyscale Finder icons in the side bar of Finder windows. They look nice, but many think their colorful counterparts were nicer. SideEffects lets you replace them. This simple Mac utility installs components that enable color Finder sidebar icons in both Lion and Mountain Lion. SideEffects is donationware and a beta, so if that makes you hesitant you can skip over it. Otherwise, enjoy the pretty icons!
Maniacally cuckoo for Mountain Lion: App Store checker shell script
In the spirit of Tim Cook's maniacal excitement about upcoming Apple products, I bring to you the shell script you can run repeatedly from the command line to check the App Store to see if Mountain Lion is ready for purchase. This is what I used last year to check for Lion; it worked. This year, I update the search string to "Mountain Lion" instead. As presented, it employs a 10-minute time-out, so you can run a repeat command with it. #! /bin/csh curl -silent -A "iMacAppStore/1.0.1 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6.7; en) AppleWebKit/533.20.25" 'http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewMultiRoom?fcId=489264329&mt=12' | grep -i "mountain lion" > /dev/null if ($? == 0) then echo "Available" say "MOUNTAIN LION MAY BE AVAILABLE" else echo "Nada" endif sleep 600 Ready to improve the script? Have at it, campers! Update: Looks like the URL changed from last year. Updated via Mark (mcackay).
Checkmark for iPhone now available, simplifies reminders
Checkmark for iPhone, a new reminder app from Snowman, is now available. The app was teased earlier this month and is in the App Store for an introductory price of US$0.99. As I said before, Checkmark makes it easy to create location- and time-based reminders. Here's a look at Checkmark for iPhone. Looks Checkmark presents two main screens: Where and When. The former is your starting point for location-based reminders. It offers a 3x3 grid of icons representing your oft-visited locations. It's greyscale and the custom icons are easily recognized. You can re-order them as you wish with a function similar to "jiggle mode" in iOS. Tap and hold on any icon and they start to shake. Flip the Where screen over to view outstanding vs. completed tasks, or tap the location icon in the upper right-hand corner to add a new location from the map, your current position or from among your contacts. What's very cool is that Checkmark keeps your location-based tasks sorted by distance, starting from your current location. So, as you move through town, you can see which tasks you're closest -- geographically -- to completing. The When screen provides a list of time-based reminders, sorted by due date. Again, it's legible and you can flip between outstanding and completed tasks. My only complaint is due to an old habit. To exit Checkmark's "jiggle mode," you tap a Done button. I often hit the Home button, exiting the app. A little practice will cure that behavior. Use As I said, you can create two types of reminders with Checkmark: location-based and time-based. Let's start with location-based. But first, tell me if this scenario sounds familiar. "Hey honey, go to the post office after you get the kids from the bus." "Yep, no problem." Later, at the bus stop: Angry Birds Talking with neighbors Greet the kids Discuss macaroni jewelry, pros and cons Deflect requests for playdate/candy Get in car, drive home, with no recollection of promise to visit the post office Trouble Apple extended a hand to forgetful folks like me in the form of location-based reminders. Its developers figured out to put a "geo fence" around a location and trigger a reminder once a user's phone moves beyond it. It's brilliant. Siri is the obvious front end for Apple's Reminders app (though not the only one), and I find that, for whatever reason, Siri dislikes my voice and transcribes my speech incorrectly more often than not. I can create a reminder manually, of course, but Checkmark is so much faster. After dropping a pin on the location of the bus stop and naming it "Bus Stop," it's always available. Now I can simply tap the icon, add "check mail" upon departure, hit Save and I'm good. Of course, there's more. A notes filed let's me add task-specific information (like "Ask about packages" or "Buy commemorative Hello Kitty stamps") and a timer offers precise control over exactly when the notification will trigger: 5, 10, 15, 30 or 60 minutes after arrival or departure. That's pretty cool. You can even give Checkmark a radius to work with. For example, alert me when I'm within 100 feet of the destination. Other options include 150, 300, 800 or 1,600 feet. Creating a time-based reminder is just as snappy. Hit the "+" to begin, add your title and any notes and then choose the date and time. Click Save and you're done. There are a few settings to be aware of. You can choose between miles and kilometers and adjust sensitivity, or "accuracy" of location services. By default, Checkmark uses Normal accuracy. By flipping the switch to Best, you get a more precise reading but at the cost of additional battery drain. In my testing, Normal works fine and I suggest keeping in there. Finally, you can switch reminders, alerts, text alerts and badge counts on or off. Conclusion Checkmark is a good way to go. It looks good and niceties like icons, the timer and control over the size of the geofence are super handy. Those of you who, like me, depend a whole lot on receiving timely reminders would do well to check out Checkmark. Get it now for the sale price.
Checkmark is a handy new reminder app for iPhone
Checkmark is a new reminder app for iPhone from Snowman. I've been using it for a while now, and can tell you that it's faster than Apple's Reminders with unique, useful features. Checkmark builds on location-based reminders. What's nice is that you can create buttons for oft-visited locations (and choose a custom icon) for super-fast reminder creation. I've got my kids' schools, the post office, grocery store and less concrete spots like the bus stop and what I call "my neighborhood." Events can be triggered when I arrive, depart or, get this, within a certain time after arrival or departure. For example, "Remind me [X] fifteen minutes after I arrive at the library." Once things are set up, a reminder can be created with three taps. That beats Reminders and is a heck of a lot faster than Siri's hit-or-miss dictation translation. Snowman has teased the app today, and we assume it will launch before too long. When it does, we'll post a full review. It's a sweet little app. Checkmark – Coming soon to the App Store! from Snowman on Vimeo.
Nest partners with Texas utility, offers intelligent thermostat to energy-conscious households
What's next for an energy-efficient thermostat designed by ex-Apple engineers? A limited promotion with a utilities provider to make it even more legit, that's what. Now that Nest has broached online mega-retailer Amazon's virtual shelves, the next stop on its trendy household domination tour's taking it to Reliant, a Texas-based electricity company. Bundled into the utility's "Learn & Conserve" plan, qualifying residents that sign-up for a two-year rate will receive one of the stylish, WiFi-enabled units, making the business of managing their energy settings a stylish and remotely controllable (via Android or iOS app) affair. Of course, you don't need to be a resident of The Lone Star state to call one of these your own -- Best Buy, Apple and Lowe's will also eagerly claim your cash in exchange for this home-monitoring wündergadget.
Perian posts end of life notice. Mac video enthusiasts weep.
Perian has been a steadfast friend on my computer for years. With Perian, nearly any video format I throw at QuickTime simply works. Perian has been a wonder. It supports AVI. It supports DivX. It supports MKV. It's been one of the best and most useful tools I have had access to and invariably the first thing I reinstall after any upgrade. And now, according to a statement by its devs, it's reaching the end of the road. Today, the Perian dev team announced that the software will no longer be updated. They will release all the source code to Google Code or Github, but the team is moving on. We here at TUAW give them a well-deserved round of applause for the excellence of their effort, and their contribution to the OS X community. Perian will be missed. Thank you to Chris "Growl" Forsythe, Graham "Adium and Fire" Booker, Alexander "ffmpeg" Strange, and Augie "mecurial" Fackler, as well as everyone else who contributed in the past. For now, Perian continues to work with OS X Lion. From here, however, it's unsure whether it will make the leap to Mountain Lion. Check out NicePlayer, which remains in development. The dev team is no longer accepting contributions and requests that you send any money in their honor to Ronald McDonald House, Child's Play, or the EFF. Goodbye Perian. You were amazing.
Alfred updated with new themes, drag-and-drop support
Alfred for Mac (our review from last year) has been updated to version 1.2. Alfred is a utility that's part app launcher, part navigation tool and part web service. This updated adds two new themes: Dark and Smooth & Pistachio (I prefer the original). There's also support for large type which my aging eyes appreciate as well as an option to drag results out of Alfred an onto the desktop, into an email message and so on. That's pretty handy. There are also lots of improvements and you'll find the full list here. Alfred for Mac is free but the optional Powerpack (£15) adds a lot of additional functionality.
Disk Art visualizes hard drive space usage
When an email from the Clean Cut Code, the makers of Disk Art, showed up in our inbox yesterday, I jumped at the chance to take a peek. I'm a huge fan of Grand Perspective's space visualization software and am always happy to try out another app to see how it compares. Disk Art, which is launching at US$0.99 (regular retail $4.99), aims to provide a "colorful and interactive map" of your drive, help you find "large unwanted files." On the positive side, Disk Art is quite pretty to look at. Its drive/folder selection screen (following image) is especially eye-catching. And while I wouldn't quite call the disk presentation "art" (see the screen capture at the top of this post), it's pretty enough with block patterned layouts. The problem with Disk Art is that it's not terribly good at performing the task its meant to complete: detecting disk use so you can identify and remove unneeded files, especially big ones. That's because Disk Art uses a hierarchical presentation. You have to navigate up and down the file system to find those large files. Compare and contrast with Grand Perspective which shows all the files at once, regardless of where they are in the file hierarchy. With Grand Perspective, you see what's big and unwieldy because the larger items immediately catch your eye. Everything is out there, so you get that sense of, forgive me, perspective. With Disk Art, you're looking at Folders much more often than you're looking at files. You can see which folders are taking up more space, but it's hard to detect the outlier files -- the ones most ripe for deletion. Admittedly, Disk Art does make it easy to collect files for deletion. It provides a handy drag and drop area, so you can add files that you want to mark as ready-for-trash. Grand Perspective's take on this is to reveal items in Finder, letting you drag them directly to the trash, plus a handy Rescan option lets you take a second look after you've deleted an item so you can pick the next most-ready target in your clean-up. Both apps let you scan either folders or entire disks. And here is where Disk Art does succeed better. Its scanning progress window (towards the top of this post) is much prettier and glossier. It's a pity then that the rest of the app just doesn't feel as functional to me.
Facebook inks partnership with Opower, looks to socially compare home energy usage
Google passed, and Microsoft reckoned it had better things to do, but Zuckerberg's Castle is seemingly willing to pick up where those two left off. In what may go down as the strangest Facebook decision since the rejection of Valentina Monetta's video as best in the whole wide world, the company is launching a new social energy app that'll tap into technology from the National Resources Defense Council and Opower. Initially, the app will reach some 20 million households, and it's designed to help eco-curious Earthlings compile and benchmark usage data to see how their home stacks up against others. Within territories with utility participation, people can connect their utility account directly to the app to track progress and share energy saving accomplishments with friends. Unfortunately, the whole process looks rather manual for now, and privacy overlords will no doubt question the motives for requesting even more information from Facebook users; that said, it's totally possible to engage in the Opower tracking sans a Facebook account. To get going, give those source links a look.
Daily Mac App: DragonDrop provides a Finder caddy for your drag-and-drop files
Sometimes there are problems you didn't even know you had -- and solutions that make your life so much better. DragonDrop is one of those solutions. You know when you have to drag items between folders and you end up juggling multiple Finder windows? It's such a pain getting both windows on-screen so you can grab a file from one and drag it into the other without the first window obscuring the second one. Enter DragonDrop. It creates a little virtual "caddy" where you can hold onto your file. Just wiggle the cursor while dragging the file and it appears. Drop the file onto it, and find your destination. Then drag the file from the caddy onto the target folder. Changed your mind? Just close the small floating palette window. We here at TUAW are not amused by "hit the tiny target" while dragging and dropping. Nor do we much appreciate the "drop items onto partially obscured non-focus windows." DragonDrop fixes that for us. Unfortunately, Apple passed on allowing DragonDrop into the Mac App Store, so you'll need to purchase via the website. Developer Mark Christian explained the situation via email. He writes, "The final verdict from Apple is that they will unequivocally not accept DragonDrop so long as the shake-to-activate gesture exists. They claim that it modifies Mac OS X system behaviour, which I feel is more than a little disingenuous. DragonDrop only appears when you perform the shake-to-activate gesture, and even when it does activate, it's just a window popping up - it doesn't prevent normal operation from proceeding. "The gesture itself can also be deactivated, so overall, I don't feel like they're justified in their decision. If you'd like, I'm trying to urge interested people to write to Apple at appreview@apple.com and ask that they reconsider their decision on DragonDrop (App ID: 499148234)." Having used DragonDrop for several weeks now, I can testify that the app is unobtrusive and handy. I personally think Apple should reconsider. In the end, all proceeds from the sale of the app will help fund the wedding of Mark and Nathalie, the developers who are pictured above. The license is liberal, so you can install it on all your personal Macs. DragonDrop is now available for purchase for $4.99 and I give a hearty thumbs up. It's a great utility if you do a lot of dragging and dropping of files on your Mac.
Winclone tool for Boot Camp imaging comes back as paid app
Say the word "Winclone" to any Mac-centric IT person and you'll likely get a wistful sigh in return. The original Winclone utility, which provided a handy GUI wrapper around CLI tools such as the open-source NTFSprogs, did a spot-on job of backing up and restoring the Boot Camp partition of a dual-boot Mac. After Mike Bombich's NetRestore was EOL'ed, Winclone became a de facto standard; it made it into the workflows of enterprise desktop management systems like JAMF's Casper. (The NTFSprogs project, by the way, lives on as part of the NTFS-3G code and the commercial Tuxera NTFS driver for OS X.) Something so useful and free besides: it was bound to end, and so it did when the original developer of Winclone ceased work on it some years ago. Subsequent system updates broke the tool, and although third parties patched some of the underlying scripts to keep it limping along with Snow Leopard and Lion, it just wasn't all there. There are other tools, of course (like the open-source and powerful DeployStudio) but Winclone was so simple and straightforward. We missed it. I bring you good news, though, you toilers in cross-platform support land: Winclone is back, baby. New owner Tim Perfitt has revitalized the app and the twocanoes.com domain, and is now selling an updated and Lion-ready Winclone version 3 for a modest $19.99. Yes, it used to be free; yes, you could still muddle through with the hacked older versions -- but for anyone who's using Winclone in a professional environment, I strongly urge you to pony up for a license and support the resurrection of a vital Mac imaging tool. Hat tip to John Welch.
Buzz Contacts for iPhone offers fast access to contacts
Buzz Contacts from Savvy Apps (US$0.99) is a fast way to reach contacts from your iPhone. Organize them into groups for one-tap access to phone calls, text messages, email or FaceTime sessions. The UI is about as clean and tidy as one can get and conveniences like pre-written text messages are quite helpful. Here's my look at Buzz Contacts for iPhone. UI The no-frills, utilitarian look of Buzz Contacts is appropriate for a handy utility. Once you've set up some groups (more on that later), they're laid out on a 4 x 4 grid. Each contact is listed by name and an icon depicts the action associated with each button (phone, text, email or FaceTime). If a group contains more than four members, a swipe to the right reveals the next grid of four while a swipe to the left produces a list view. A toolbar pops up from the bottom of the screen allowing for group actions, so you can send an email or a text, for example, to everyone at once. The large buttons are hard to miss, so the risk of unintended taps is nominal. Use It's easy to create a group. I made one called "Family" which includes my wife, mother, father and two sisters. To begin, swipe to the right and tap "New Group." Next, tap the title to customize it and then tap the icon in the upper right. A list of your contacts appears. Tap the one you'd like to add and chose the method of contact. Keep adding contacts in this fashion until "Page One" is filled, meaning you've added four contacts. You can re-arrage the order in this screen as well. Make as many groups as you like, swiping to the right to toggle between groups. From there, you simply launch the app and tap the appropriate block to initiate just the type of communication you want: FaceTime with your sister, iPhone call to your co-worker, text message to your son or daughter. It's speedy and a time-saver. Buzz Contacts also lets you call those not in a group from the dialer. To use the dialer, swipe to the right again and tap Dialer. A keypad appears. Start tapping a number and Buzz guesses which one you're after. Give it a tap and you're off. There are a few thoughtful niceties in the app. Tapping a contact set up as an email or FaceTime session asks you to confirm your intention before placing the call, so you won't place accidental phone calls. Also, there's a list of pre-written text messages to choose from, like "Running Late. See you soon." and "On my way." Combine that with a group text message to send a lengthy message to the whole gang with little effort. I love useful utilities and Buzz Contacts is one. Since I pretty much only call the people in my family group, I've replaced the phone app in my iPhone's Dock with Buzz Contacts. It's definitely worth a try at $0.99.
TUAW Best of 2011: Vote for your favorite iPad utility app
The nominations are in, and the poll is ready to go! The TUAW Best of 2011 awards are all about you -- the readers -- and what you think is the cream of the crop of Apple or third-party products and software. To vote, select one entry from the top nominations made by readers. We'll be announcing the winner in just a few days. Vote early and often! Happy New Year, TUAW readers! If you're not struggling with the after-effects of too much partying last night, TUAW would like your votes for the best iPad utility app of 2011. The nominees in our penultimate TUAW Best of 2011 category are: 1Password Pro (US$14.99), the amazing cross-platform app for securely storing all of your important secret information and passwords Presentation Clock ($0.99), a simple but useful app for those who give presentations or do training, to make sure you're on track. Apple's AirPort Utility (free), useful for setting up and maintaining Apple Wi-Fi networks. Photon Flash Web Browser ($4.99), which allows Farmville addicts to get their fixes from an iPad. Living Earth HD ($1.99, currently on sale for $0.99), a beautiful 3D simulation of Earth with world time, weather, and forecasts. You have a couple of days to vote, and the winners will be announced on January 5, 2012. Let the voting begin! %Poll-72451%
Daily Mac App: FlashMount quickly mounts disk images
DMG files are often used when distributing Mac software outside the Mac App Store. While DMGs can be confusing to new users, I like them because they allow me to keep an original, unmodified version of whatever program I have downloaded. About the only drawback for me is that some DMGs come with an EULA which has to be accepted before the DMG will be mounted. If the EULA window gets covered up, it can be frustrating to try to figure out why it has not mounted. EULAs can also make DMGs unreliable to mount in shell scripts. While looking for a solution, I came across references to an application called "FlashMount" which was designed to do exactly what its name implies: mounts disk images (dmg, iso, etc) in a "flash." It also automatically accepts any EULA which is presented. OK, sure, we all know we are supposed to read them first. If you do, feel free to skip this app. FlashMount also skips the verification of disk images before mounting. That sounds bad, but in reality, if the disk image is corrupted or incomplete, it probably won't mount anyway. The only time I have ever seen a corrupted DMG, it was an incomplete download. Some disk images don't even have a checksum to verify against, but depending on the size of the DMG, verification can take a long time. On a 1.2 GB DMG, verification takes almost 3 minutes on my MacBook Air. Without verification, I can mount that same disk image in two seconds. Still, if that's not a risk you're comfortable with, this probably isn't the app for you. Otherwise, FlashMount is fast, handy, and free. Download After reading about FlashMount, I was sold on the potential usefulness of this app, but there was one problem: all the download links I found were broken. The articles which talked about FlashMount linked to "www.liquidnexus.com" which was the original site where the app was hosted by its developer. However, sometime in the past few years, the domain registration must have lapsed and been re-registered by a domain squatter (which is why I have not actually linked to it here). Eventually I found a site which had mirrored the download on their own server. Warning: linked website is fairly awful. If you'd rather avoid that, you can download FlashMount 1.5.2 (188K, MD5 sum = 43522f417ae5ccf4f883fc049c8fd0c1) from my personal website. A one page PDF overview is also available. The good news is that the app seems to work perfectly under Lion. I've made FlashMount the default app for opening DMG and ISO files on my Mac, and if I run into any trouble with a particular file, then I open it with DiskImageMounter. However, I found an even better solution if your goal (like mine) is mounting DMGs in Terminal, even if the DMG has a EULA and needs to be mounted by a non-interactive script. Here's where things get nerdy While I was investigating the app, I realized that the whole thing was basically a wrapper around a simple shell script: #!/bin/sh -f echo "Y" | /usr/bin/hdid "$1" #if ($status != 0) exit% I was not familiar with hdid (I had always used hdiutil for mounting DMGs on the command line) but it worked. Sending echo "Y" tells hdid to accept the EULA. (It's important to note that you are not subverting, bypassing, or avoiding the EULA, you are doing on the command line what most people do with the mouse: accepting it without reading it.) I started building on that and made my own script, which I called flashmount.sh. It uses the same echo "Y" trick as the original, but it adds some extra error checking. It also adds an option to verify disk images if you use the '-v' flag, like this: flashmount.sh -v foo.dmg which is handy for those times when you do want to verify an image before you mount it. If the disk image successfully mounts, the script will output the mounted path, which will be something like "/Volumes/Flashmount/" or similar. You can download my flashmount.sh if you want. You could even wrap it up as an app with Platypus if you don't trust the FlashMount.app. FlashMount isn't going to change your life, but it can make one part a little easier and a little faster.
