Month: April 2013

For the first time in a while we had some picks on the show this week and with one in particular being time sensitive it made sense to follow up with a picks post.

Macheist
MacHeist is one of the better known Mac bundle providers and while some of the latest bundles around the web have been less than great the latest nano bundle from MacHeist is excellent. For only $9.99 you get the following apps:

• xScope – tools that are ideal for measuring, aligning and inspecting on-screen graphics and layouts.
• iStopMotion – create stop motion animations frame by frame
• Totals – create stylish invoices although many have moved to cloud services for these features
• Clarify – a tool for capturing and annotating screenshots. Looking forward to trying this.
• AirServer – AirPlay receiver for your Mac – watch videos on the Mac that are stored on your iOS devices. Who needs an Apple TV?
• Fantastical – a calendar app that you will enjoy using.
• CleanMyMac 2 – keeps your Mac clean and tidy. Includes an app unistaller and scheduler for cleanup and maintenance.
• Little Inferno – new game from creators of World of Goo and has had great review.
• Path Finder – supercharged Finder alternative which I’ve used for years. Lost without it on a new Mac. This is currently locked until there have been 30,000 bundle purchases but with the number bought sitting at over 25,000 this morning it’s safe to say that this will be unlocked for everyone.

Out of that list I use Path Finder, Fantastical and AirServer and recommend them highly. I’ve picked up the bundle for xScope and Little Inferno. As AirServer was added only yesterday and there is one window (with icon hinted at) still available on the homepage I’d expect another app to be added prior to the deal closing but hurry – this bundle is only available for another two days.

Instashare
Airdrop was introduced in Lion and allowed you to easily share files between Macs without joining wifi networks, configuring your Mac or using USB sticks. It works really well but I was always baffled as to why iOS never joined the party. Step in Instashare. Install the free Mac and iOS clients, run the Mac client and launch the app on your iOS device. You can then quickly and easily drag files between the devices.

The app is well designed – drag an image on your iOS device and drop it on the Mac you want to send it to. A couple of seconds later and it’s there. To send to iOS, make sure Instashare is running on your iOS device, drag a file to the Instashare icon on the Mac toolbar and drop it on your iOS device. It will then be transferred to your iOS device and from Instashare you can view the file or easily send it to an application on your device. It works really well and I use it so much for grabbing images or quickly throwing text or docs onto the iPad or iPhone.

Yahoo Weather
My last pick is a bit unexpected. Yahoo Weather is a new free weather app for iOS. What’s unexpected is how well designed the app is – it’s gorgeous.

Launching the app you can use your current location as a source or easily add multiple locations around the world. What makes this app fairly unique is the use of Flickr images as backgrounds to indicate the current weather conditions. So instead of a set of stock images you get local photo’s taken by Flickr users of your current locations. Some of them are great and really make the app stand out. The animations and icons used by Flickr are also nice and of much higher quality than I expected. The only negative is the fairly ugly app icon but thats a small gripe. If you are currently using the stock weather app on iOS do yourself a favour and grab Yahoo Weather instead.