Our thanks to Agile Tortoise for sponsoring MacStories this week with Drafts.

Drafts is the definitive scratchpad for your iPhone or iPad. It’s the fastest way to get any idea out of your head and onto something physical. You don’t have to come up with a title, choose a folder you’re going to save your text in, or even worry about formatting. Drafts intuitively keeps a blank page open for you, and even knows when previous drafts were written so you can recall your ideas later. It can integrate with services like Dropbox and Evernote so you can take your drafts anywhere.

Drafts supports Markdown, a markup language for generating text optimized for the web. And there’s little big things like action templates that makes everything actionable. Ultimately, Drafts can be your idea napkin, or a pro-tool that integrates seamlessly with most apps.

Drafts is available on the App Store. You can grab the iPhone version for $2.99, and the iPad version for $3.99. Learn more about Drafts and other Agile Tortoise apps here.

Our thanks goes out to Smile this week for sponsoring MacStories with TextExpander.

TextExpander saves you time regularly spent writing out the same addresses, signatures, and prose when composing emails, replying to business correspondance, and helping customers. Instead of copying and pasting common replies, TextExpander becomes your magical shorthand for quickly typing out paragraphs and signatures with just a few key presses. By setting up small, text reminders and snippets, you can quickly expand bits of text into long paragraphs, addresses, symbols, boiler plate text, code snippets, and more. Inserting dates, creating statements with customized form fields, and fixing common misspellings will make TextExpander an invaluable tool as a part of your daily workflow. Plus, you can sync TextExpander with Dropbox for keeping shortcuts shared between the office and your personal devices. TextExpander is also integrated into over 140 iOS apps, giving you the option to use your shortcuts anywhere with your iPhone or iPad.

TextExpander is available for only $34.95, and the complimentary version of TextExpander touch for iOS is only $4.99. You can learn more about TextExpander and a download a free trial for your Mac here.

My thanks to Freeridecoding for sponsoring MacStories this week with DraftCode.

DraftCode is a new PHP development tool for iPad. With built-in offline PHP code execution (using standard PHP 5.4.10), DraftCode lets you build and run PHP projects right on your iPad. In addition to offline PHP execution, DraftCode also includes CGI handling and fully supports working with POST and GET forms, includes, and linking to other PHP files in your workspace. Via its built-in webkit based preview, DraftCode lets you work on javascript/AJAX, HTML and CSS in conjunction with PHP, making it a full featured workspace to develop your PHP website.

Other features of DraftCode include the possibility of sending files to other iPad apps, an extended keyboard, and an easy to use workspace for all your files.

DraftCode is available on the App Store for $8.99, and you can find more information here.

Our thanks to Smile for sponsoring MacStories this week with PDFpenPro 6.

PDFpenPro is the advanced version of PDFpen. PDFpenPro does everything that PDFpen does, such as add signatures, edit text and images, perform OCR on scanned documents and export Microsoft Word documents. It also has the ability to create a PDF form, build a table of contents, and convert HTML files to PDF.

The new PDFpenPro 6 adds document permission settings. When you share a PDF, you can restrict printing, copying, and editing of your PDFs. You can also use the new automatic form field creation tool to convert a non-interactive form into an interactive PDF form with text fields and checkboxes automatically added. PDFpenPro 6 is optimized for the Retina Display and now takes advantage of Versions and Auto Save available in Lion and Mountain Lion, which better saves your edits from accidental loss.

PDFpenPro 6 is available on the Smile Store and the Mac App Store for $100. A free demo can be downloaded on the Smile site. Find out why Macworld calls PDFpenPro “the crème de la crème of PDF editing and annotating applications.”

Our thanks to MacPaw for sponsoring MacStories this week with CleanMyMac 2.

CleanMyMac 2 is the successor to MacPaw’s award winning system utility, rebuilt and redesigned from the ground up to make it easier than ever to remove the cruft that’s taking up unnecessary storage space on your Mac. CleanMyMac 2 scans your hard drive, looking for unneeded temporary files, unused caches, forgotten files, and even cleans up application-specific trash in applications like iPhoto. It can also optimize your iPhoto library, removing original versions of images that you’ve since modified while editing. CleanMyMac 2 even helps you take care of plug-ins and widgets, while ensuring applications are completely uninstalled.

CleanMyMac 2 is free to try, and a single license is available for only $39.95. A license for up to five Macs is only $89.95.

For families with PCs in addition to Macs there’s also CleanMyPC, which brings the same easy-to-use interface to the Windows desktop.

My thanks to CrashPlan for sponsoring MacStories this week.

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CrashPlan lets you backup your data to your own computers and hard drives or friends & family with no storage limits. CrashPlan gives you the peace-of-mind that only comes with continuous, minute-to-minute backup. CrashPlan has been a favorite of the Mac community for years because of its “set it and forget it” ease of use and ability to provide continuous, minute-by-minute backup without interfering with normal Mac operations. Using sophisticated byte pattern analysis and data de-duplication to detect file changes, CrashPlan preserves multiple versions of files; if you don’t want to always use your Mac, the files you were just working on minutes ago can be accessed from our phone or tablet using CrashPlan’s free mobile apps.

Find out more about CrashPlan here.

My thanks to Apparent for sponsoring MacStories this week with Doxie.

Doxie is an award-winning scanner that works anywhere – no computer required – and then syncs to your Mac, iPad, and various cloud services. Doxie’s small and portable hardware comes in two models: Doxie One and Doxie Go. The Doxie’s scanning process is simple: just push a button and insert your sheet of paper to save it thanks to the Doxie’s built-in battery and memory chip.

I have been using a Doxie Go since January 2012. My paperless workflow consists of scanning quick receipts with the iPhone’s Camera and larger documents with the Doxie Go. The Doxie provides high-quality scans that I import with the Doxie Mac app, which provides an option to save PDFs with or without OCR; on the Mac, I then save everything to Evernote directly from the Doxie app. The Doxie Go is the only scanner I’ve ever owned and I’m very happy with it.

Learn more about Doxie here.

My thanks to IdeasOnCanvas for sponsoring MacStories this week with MindNode.

MindNode is an easy to use and elegant mind mapping app for iOS and OS X. With a clutter-free interface, MindNode lets you brainstorm and connect ideas on an infinitely expanding canvas that can hold as many ideas as you like. MindNode’s focus on simplicity allows you to easily move between “nodes” and mark the most important ones with bold text or bigger font sizes.

MindNode has been one of my favorite apps for a long time. I don’t use iCloud much, but I found MindNode’s implementation to be extremely reliable at keeping my maps in sync across my iPhone and iPad, allowing me to start jotting down thoughts on one device and finish on the other. Whenever someone asks me for a mind mapping app recommendation, I personally mention MindNode because it’s been a great tool for me.

Find out more about MindNode here.

My thanks to DigiDNA for sponsoring MacStories this week with DiskAid.

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DiskAid lets you transfer files to and from iOS devices via USB or WiFi. With support for files, folders, and complete file trees, DiskAid automatically detects installed apps and allows you to transfer music, movies, and podcasts (audio and video) to Apple’s apps, but also files and documents to third-party apps without having to use iTunes.

Among other features, you can access an iPhone’s call log, voicemail, and SMS history and export them to a Mac or PC. For Messages, you can generate a PDF of text messages, iMessages, or MMS that will include text and pictures formatted with iOS’ style.

Find out more about DiskAid here.