Posts tagged with "mac"

Bartender 1.2 Brings Full Mavericks Support, Drag & Drop Improvements

One of my must-have Mac apps, Bartender is a fantastic utility that helps you reduce clutter in the OS X menubar by grouping menubar icons into a single Bartender icon that can be viewed and closed at any time. From my previous coverage:

Providing its own custom bar to collect other icons from third-party apps, Bartender lets you organize your menubar apps while retaining the functionalities they come with. The app automatically finds third-party apps running in the menubar; it allows you to completely hide them, or show them in the Bartender bar. If you choose the latter option, your menubar apps will stil remain fully working with popover windows and keyboard shortcuts.

I rely on Bartender to keep a clean menubar that doesn’t show dozens of icons at once but that, at the same time, has running applications hidden out of view. There are some apps that I don’t need to be constantly looking at – such as Dropbox or Hazel – and with Bartender I can leave them running, but in an optional menubar that it’s there only when I need it. In this way, I can keep utilities that I use all the time (such as Evernote’s quick entry popup or Fantastical) in the main OS X menubar.

Bartender 1.2, released this week, adds full OS X Mavericks support and a number of minor improvements that, however, are welcome additions for daily Bartender users. For the upcoming Mavericks – set to be released this Fall – Surtees Studios added support for multiple displays and menubars, as well as reduced power usage to take advantage of Mavericks’ new power-saving technologies. I haven’t been able to test Bartender on Mavericks yet, but the app has never been a problem, in terms of performance and usage, on my mid-2011 MacBook Air running Mountain Lion, so I’m looking forward to seeing if differences will be notable on OS X 10.9.

Alongside bug fixes and improvements to the list of apps supported by Bartender, a feature that stood out to me is the possibility to correctly drag & drop files onto icons hidden by Bartender. In version 1.2, keeping apps like Droplr or CloudApp in the Bartender bar and dragging files from the Finder onto the Bartender icon will automatically reveal the hidden menubar, allowing you to keep dragging files onto the app you want. I have tested this with Droplr, and it works reliably.

I recommend Bartender to anyone who uses menubar apps and utilities on a daily basis. Keeping a clean menubar isn’t a beauty contest – I think it’s simply best to have the primary tools you’ll always need readily available, keeping those that are only seldom used out of sight, but still managed by a smart app. Bartender is smart, reliable, and on sale at $10 until September 30th. A free trial is also available from the developers’ website.

Droplr Draw Adds Lightweight Annotation Features To Droplr for Mac

Skitch is my favorite image annotation tool on the desktop and Marco Arment’s Bugshot is on my iOS Home screen, so when I saw the announcement of Droplr Draw last week I knew that it was something I needed to check out. Even if I’m a big fan of Skitch’s feature set on OS X – unlike some, I do like the Evernote integration – the app doesn’t provide the fastest way to capture, annotate, and share a screenshot, and Droplr Draw seemed promising.

Droplr Draw isn’t a separate app: it’s a feature of the Droplr for Mac app for existing Droplr Pro subscribers. Droplr Draw lets you a take a screenshot as you normally would with Droplr, add some annotations to it, upload it, and share it to Droplr. It’s essentially an extra layer between the Finder and Droplr’s cloud that instead of taking a file and returning its public URL opens an editing window first.

Droplr’s Draw view is extremely simple. There are four tools (arrow, rectangle, oval, free form) and a Text button to add annotations to an image with only one color (light blue). Annotations can be moved and resized on the canvas, but there are no settings for thickness, additional shapes, colors, or strokes. Once you’re done adding text or shapes, you can hit the Upload button, and Droplr will upload your file and copy the resulting URL in your clipboard.

The decision to launch Droplr Draw as a feature of the existing Droplr was a good call because Draw isn’t advanced enough to justify a standalone app. As I mentioned above, the app lacks any sort of settings or annotation options, making it an inferior solution to Skitch or even Apple’s Preview.

In my workflow, I have tried to annotate screenshots, coming to realization, on a couple of occasions, that I needed to adjust colors and thickness and that Droplr Draw couldn’t allow me to do that. More importantly, you can’t add images to Droplr Draw as the only available trigger is “Capture and Draw” from the menubar; if I receive a screenshot via email and I need to send it back with annotations, I’d need to take a screenshot of the screenshot if I wanted to use Droplr Draw to annotate it.

Droplr Draw isn’t a Skitch competitor, but it’s a nice addition to Droplr Pro for simple and quick annotations. It doesn’t break any new ground, but it’s a good feature to have in a screenshot sharing service. I’m looking forward to an iOS version.

Realmac Software Releases Ember - A Digital Scrapbook for Your Mac

Realmac Software, makers of great apps such as Clear, Rapidweaver, Analog, and Analog Camera, have released Ember for Mac today. Last month, Realmac detailed in a blog post what the future of LittleSnapper was and the team explained:

Over last few months, we’ve been getting a few emails asking about LittleSnapper - with some folks wondering if the app is still under development.

As it happens we’ve been heads-down-working on LittleSnapper for some time, and I’m absolutely thrilled today to dispel any rumours of the app’s demise and announce today that we’ve been hard at work on the next version of LittleSnapper: Ember for Mac.

Remember the original Ember? It was a great webapp (saved screenshot) that let you browse and add images to collections for inspiration: I used it all the time before Dribbble became so popular. Back in June of 2011, the Realmac team shut down the service and it was a major bummer for me – but it was understandable. Today, Ember is back as a Mac app, and it works great. Users of the old LittleSnapper are going to love Ember because it’s much more than a simple name change, but rather more like a ‘Pro’ version of the old software.

LittleSnapper users can easily import their libraries upon launching the new Ember app. The only thing you need to do to prepare for Ember is to make sure you’re using the most recent version of LittleSnapper, as only LittleSnapper libraries opened with LittleSnapper v1.8.5 can be imported into Ember. After that, Ember will be populated with all your goodies (Ember also supports importing multiple libraries if you need to do so).

Ember is a great place to store photos, images, drawings, websites, app screenshots, or just about any image that inspires you. Just drag, snap or import the images that you want to keep, then organize them into your own relevant collections. Ember lets you annotate the images you need to give feedback on with drawing and text tools that allow you to give feedback / edits on images; if you need to, you can rotate and crop your images so they are correctly sized and aligned.

Images can be shared via AirDrop, Messages, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Flickr, and CloudApp. In terms of library organization, tags help you sort and projects keep them all neatly organized, while smart projects work just like OS X Smart Folders – you can set the parameters on what they filter and collect.

If you’re looking for inspiration and items to add, Ember has a few options. You can use the built-in web browser (it’s responsive!) and snap from there with built-in tools; the browser has a smart element detection that automatically suggests areas to snap as you roll over a webpage. Under the Subscriptions tab, you can subscribe to a site’s RSS (like Dribbble’s popular feed) and the app will refresh the feed on launch (or manually). Ember has browser extensions that will import snaps from Chrome and Safari there is a menu bar tool for quick and easy snaps from anywhere on your Mac.

Ember can also auto-detect iPhone and iPad screenshots. Drag the PNGs from your iOS device and Ember will automatically sort them into “Phone” and “Tablet”. Preferences let you set your image and text editor of choice, plus snap shortcuts, among other things. Ember will let you open images in your default browser, use Notification Center to let you know when you have new subscription images, and many more nice little touches.

When discussing Ember’s release, Federico asked me what I thought about the lack of sync an/or iOS apps and I answered: “For me, it doesn’t come into play at all with this app because I can import iOS screens. Most of my inspiration/design browsing is from my desktop computer and, if I really need to snap a screenshot from iOS, I can save it to Dropbox so when I get home I can import it into Ember. In a way, that’s like having sync.” Now, I do think syncing ember data across Macs (via Dropbox or iCloud) would be nice but that’s not yet available but could be in a future update.

Ember is a very polished app with a fantastic UI, slick animations, full-screen mode and it’s simply a fun app to use and organize images with. If you’re a digital creative person and want to organize your screenshots, inspirational images and reference files, Ember could be what you need. Ember for Mac is available today via the Mac App Store for $49. The price may be a little steep for some, but Ember is powerful, sexy, smart, and worth every penny.

Enhancing Reminders with AppleScript and Macros

As The Omni Group keeps working on OmniFocus 2 for Mac and Apple continues seeding new betas of iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks to developers, I have been reconsidering Reminders’ simplicity and enjoying the built-in iCloud sync, which, unlike other types of iCloud, is working fine for me. However, two things I miss from OmniFocus are the possibility to integrate the app with a web browser through bookmarklets and the system-wide Quick Entry panel; I use both tools on a daily basis to easily save a browser’s tab into OmniFocus’ Inbox, or to bring up a text field where I can jot down an idea and know that, no matter the app I’m using, it’ll be saved into OmniFocus. Luckily for me, Apple’s Reminders app comes with a good AppleScript Dictionary, which is likely something that Reminders’ core mainstream audience won’t ever care about, but that we can leverage to extend the app’s capabilities and input areas beyond Mountain Lion’s leather-and-paper window.

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Automating Mail Signatures and Senders with AppleScript and Keyboard Maestro

Mail Keyboard Maestro

Mail Keyboard Maestro

I’m aware of the fact that it’s a common trend to call email a “nightmare” these days, but the truth is – email works for me. I have multiple addresses set up, I have my filters and smart folders to automate the process of filing and finding emails, and I’m enjoying the renewed interest of iOS developers in building email apps that solve old problems in new ways. But there is one thing I don’t like: Apple’s Mail app and how many clicks it takes to switch between configured accounts and signatures. As you can guess, I came up with a way to automate the process using AppleScript and (optionally) Keyboard Maestro.

I receive several messages every day to different email addresses, but I always want to reply with the same address and the same signature. Apple’s Mail app makes it easy to see all messages sent to all accounts with the unified Inbox, but it makes it surprisingly hard to set default accounts and signatures that should always be treated as, well, default ones. I don’t want to click on menus for accounts and signatures: I want to hit ⌘R and receive a new Reply window with the account and signature I want already set. Read more

Apple’s Desktop Pictures→

The public unveiling of each new version of Mac OS X has brought a new default desktop picture, and a new hunt to find a full-res copy of that wallpaper before the official release. The introduction of OS X Mavericks was no different, only this time instead of a space-themed galaxy or nebula, Apple decided to bring Mac’s default look and feel back to earth.

Thomas Brand takes a look back at Apple’s history with Mac OS and OS X default desktop pictures.

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