Bokeh Review Giveaway – Concentration For You and Your Computer
Back in February, we reviewed an application called Freeze Frame, from Elgebar Studios. A few days ago, a program by the name of Bokeh (which is replacing Freeze Frame) was released by Ollie Wagner and Geoff Pado. While we here at MacApper have have reviewed apps that cause a computer or a person to complete tasks faster, we have never reviewed an application that can do both. Bokeh is that program.
The premise behind Bokeh is similar to that of Freeze Frame. When you are working and you find that you have many applications fighting for processing power, clicking on one applications name will freeze that app, or clicking on “Focus” will freeze all apps except for the one currently active. Bokeh takes that a step further though, by also blurring the background when you focus on an app (hence the name ‘Bokeh’). When Bokeh is activated, it becomes easy to use any program without getting distracted. Whenever I write, I am always distracted by some of the silliest things going on in the background of my computer. Bokeh literally blurs out all of these distractions making it easy to accomplish the task at hand instead of getting distracted with unimportant ones. This app can give any program a distraction free environment. I guarantee you will find Bokeh useful in your daily computing.
Bokeh’s usability and functionality combines the features of many applications before it like CunningFox and WriteRoom. It sits in the computers menubar making sure that its user can do what he wishes in a timely matter. A great example of where Bokeh becomes useful, is when using powerhouse apps like Adobe Photoshop CS3. When a 3D filter is applied, the CPU usage percentage goes up 100 fold, and before now, there was no way to decrease the time spent on this process. According to benchmark testing, Adobe Photoshop CS3 can run as much as 12.9%+ with Bokeh.
While it is true that you can accomplish more with Bokeh, this program will also allow your computer to do more. Bokeh lets you essentially cut off an application from using any processing power until you restore it’s functionality. This app saves time when working with programs that steal the CPU for themselves. At most times during the day, I have open iTunes, Safari with several tabs, Photoshop, iChat, and Word. All of the programs enjoy hogging the CPU, so using Bokeh on the app I am using at the moment allows each program to act like it is the only one open. With this functionality, Bokeh allows older computers running Leopard to work faster than they were meant to work.
Bokeh works phenomenally with my work flow allowing me to accomplish things quicker. Now homework is a breeze without distractions, and Photoshop runs smoother than ever. I strongly suggest giving Bokeh a try no matter what your needs are. Furthermore, both Ollie Wagner and Geoff Pado have been generous enough to give us 10 licenses to give away to our devoted readers. For a license, please share with us what you would like to see added to this application and the winners will be selected randomly.
Are there some auto-detect settings? If not, that would be nifty for another version. Say you have a preference that says if the background apps exceed a certain CPU%, to freeze them.
Or something like that.
I think a hand feature to have would be the ability to black out the screen. So you could make everything blurry OR you could just hide everything under a background of black (or other solid colors) similar to applications like “Think”.
Also a global shortcut to toggle focus on and off would be nice to have.
If it doesn’t already, it would be fantastic if the program allowed users to switch focus by traditional methods. For example Command+Tab (or simply clicking another app) would bring a currently blurred app into focus and blur/freeze the others.
Ok, now generally when I’m doing something intensive like handbrake or photoshop i’ll just close most of the other stuff, does this give me much of a benefit over that? or is it primarily for just stopping whatever else you’re doing? if it’s the former throw me in the ring, if it’s the ladder i guess i don’t really have any need to steal it from someone who has more use
Apart from an option for a plain background as tuteken has said, the first thing that came to my mind when I tried this earlier was the option to turn off the blur. It’s a cool effect, but I think it should be optional.
This post is actually a request for a bug fix, not a suggestion. I noticed that after a while of using Bokeh, if you initiate Expose, you get these weird invisible windows. They go away once you quit and restart Bokeh.
I bought this program a couple of days ago through MacZOT, and it’s great. I use it for movie rendering (Final Cut Express, iMovie, and iStopMotion), and it has sped things up for me (or at least it seems to be that way). I definitely recommend it.
This app is really nice as it is!
Maybe I’d like to see the ability to select two apps to focus instead of one.
Great app, been hoping for such app!
How about profiles, like autp freeze some app where exceed said 30% of CPU usage, or like sharing between few apps, instead of freeze them all by selection.
I would like to specify how much CPU to use
Great App!
I’d like to see even more visual focus, such as tinting the background black.
In my version, an app that was focus would for some reason defocus without me doing anything. In the future I’d like to see a version that fixed this problem.
I think that it should take focus to the next level and provide various different background interference masks, such as opting to black out the background for example. Blur is nice, don’t get me wrong, but it’s like looking through a stained glass window, one is encouraged/curious to see what is happening beyond the blur. Curiousity kills concentration.
Allowing a user specified nice level would be good. Also the ability to have “process groups”. I may want 3 out of my 7 applications to split the CPU still in a nice manner, while completely freezing the other applications not in the “group”.
A feature to define that if “App A” launches then everything else freezes until “App A” quits or gets released.
i would love to see an option to automatically focus on the active app, so just clicking the dock/alt + tab/quicksilver would switch it…that way I could use bokeh without interrupting my workflow at all.
also, can freezing an app while its in the middle of a process (eg a long rendering) disrupt it and cause app to not respond, or will it always resume smoothly?
I got a copy of freeze frame via MacHeist and it’s a very useful tool. Makes working with parallels way more enjoyable:-)
I still don’t get the difference between freeze frame and bokeh… apart from the name.
V
Ah, what I would like to see in that app: an auto-unfreeze handling when activating a frozen application.
V
@Veit: Bokeh is basically the new version of FreezeFrame (the same developer who created FreezeFrame worked on Bokeh with another dev), just under a new name.
I am using the trial version of Bokeh. While it is very nice in both usability and functionality wise, I wish it could focus on more than one application at a time. I love listening to music when I am working in Photoshop, but Bokeh simply pauses iTunes; hence no music.
I like the overall concept but I really don’t need to focus on one app very often, even at a professional level.
If you could select a group of applications to “auto” focus on that would be something.
For example, let’s say I’m going back and forth between Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and Bridge. I could select these 4 apps and choose an auto focus mode where Bokeh would focus on the app I am currently in, but as long as I switch directly to one of the other apps it would then become the focus app.
I would like Bokeh to use profiles for different tasks e.g. “Photo edit mode”: allow photoshop, ilife etc to have full cpu whilst freezing everything else.
Then after finishing with my photos in one click i could activate web browser mode etc. This would make it easy to pause apps based on my current workload.
I’d love to have Bokeh switch an app to full-screen mode where no other app/dock/growl can interfere, i.e with all things but the menubar and app appearing on screen with a black background like e.g. writeroom.
I’d like to see some more customization in regards to how the background is blurred.
It’d also be cool to make rules for specific apps (always unfrozen, etc.)
Sounds like a solid app. Just… in the next version, it would be cool if the paused applications turned ‘greyscale’, along with being blurred.
Developer here.
Nick C, Steve Mayer: This was actually a feature we’d planned (and implemented) for release, but we cut it because we just couldn’t get the interface to look friendly. If you could come up with a cool way to create and edit these groups, we’d love to implement it later.
MVAI, pacheco: Pausing an app when it reaches above a certain CPU level sounds like a great idea in theory, but checking the CPU of all open applications every so often causes Bokeh to become one of the biggest CPU hogs, negating the point. Open Activity Monitor and notice how quickly it rises to the top of its own CPU list.
Jeff P: Heh. The “racoon complex” strikes us all. Rest assured, though — nothing happens beneath the blur. Everything’s frozen, remember?
Geoff,
My idea (at least at the interface level would consist of two new menu items. Down at the bottom of your existing menu (around Preferences or something like that) would be “Manage Groups”. This would be an entry point to a sub menu that would consist of the existing groups and a “Create New Group” item. Clicking on the “Create New Group” item would bring up a drop target where the existing process entries in the Bokeh menu could be dragged into to create a new group which would then appear in this sub menu.
Existing groups would be editable by double clicking on them. Process items could then be dragged off the group target to remove them. Removal of the last process will delete the group.
The second item I would add would be in the top section of the menu underneath of the “Focus on ” entry. This again would be a top level menu item called “Focus on Group”. Expanding this would reveal the existing process groups. Choosing one of these would place the focus on the apps in the chosen group.
Not sure how to handle the scenario where a group is chosen who’s processes are not active. Possibly not make these selectable. If a group contains three apps and only one of these apps is actually launched, the focus would be on just that single app then.
Hope this helps a little.
Thanks,
Steve
If it’s not yet implemented, I’d like to see it show a HUD or any control window like Coversutra when pressing certain shortcuts so you don’t constantly have to go to the menubar to make changes.
I would love to see the ability to exclude certain apps from being frozen… for instance I may want to leave my IM application unfrozen so I can receive incoming messages, or my email application so I can receive an important email.
Having a simple list in preferences that you can add or remove apps to or from would be quite enough, but this feature could be extended to have more fine-grained control and allow you to create different sets of apps to focus on at a time… sometimes this is important to have the ability to do if you want to run a combination of apps that rely on each other… such as Compressor, Final Cut and Batch Monitor.
Another thing that would be nice to have is the ability to selectively unfreeze an application… for example: I have Final Cut doing a render and all apps but that are frozen… I want to check something online so I open the Bokeh menu and select to unfreeze Safari…. it could even have a behavior that automatically unfreezes an app that you click on to select, or an app that you open while a freeze is in effect. Or, say if you click on Safari while everything is frozen (except Final Cut) it could pop up a window asking if you want to unfreeze your entire system, unfreeze this one app, or even add the app to your list of “freeze-immune” apps (the first feature I mentioned).
I’d like to be able to lock myself into an application for a set amount of time. A blurred background is great but it doesn’t do much to keep me from losing focus…I suppose willpower is another alternative though.
Hmm, seems like a nice program. But possibly more screenshots? Like it, gonna check it out!
allocating cpu % to pre-selected apps would be a great addition! nice app!
I’d like a couple different visual style to be added that you can can choose for when it focuses/defocuses.
I would love to see the ability to “focus” but without pausing ALL applications. I know you can pause some, but I want the blur effect retained. Also a slight darkening of the background would be nice in addition to the blurring.
I got Freeze Frame as a part of MacHeist and it’s really useful for when I’m exporting stuff from iMovie.
it would be great to add a clock feature so that you could control how long it focuses on a particular app before resuming normal processing allocation.
Ability to blur background without shutting down the rest of the system …. for those of us who aren’t doing anything cpu intensive, but have short attention spans.
Auto iTunes detection, so that music automatically keeps playing when focusing on another app.
@Nick C & the developer re: the group thing (photo edit mode)… Any way to tie it to Spaces? So the active apps in a designated space get the processor preference and the others are shut off? I guess that’s tricky, as the same app can be active in multiple spaces. Do you guys use Spaces in a professional setting?
When Forcas is given to the application, the function that the background grows dim is my favorite.
In addition, if the function that the effect such as making the growing dim condition and the color sepia can be adjusted is added, it is the highest.
I think it is more convenient when the function to give focus automatically when one application is used longer than the set fixed time is provided.
anyway it is wonderful application.
I would love to see the possibility to focus on command-line apps like VisualHub’s ffmpeg implementation.
AFAIK it’s only possible to focus on apps which also have a dock icon.
Greetings
It liked it very much in a wonderful concept.
The mouse operation where it goes to the dock seems to remain in the focus release. I think it is better when whether the investigation outside focus is invalidated or it maintains it can be set.
The effect that a part not active becomes senile is very cool.
Cannot focus be given by an arbitrary shortcut key?
Even the current state is very attractive. However, I think that it becomes more convenient if focus is given to two or more applications at the same time.
One thing i’d like to do when i need to focus is play instrumental music. I’d like it if iTunes is switched to a specific playlist.
addition to my previous post:
That would include the previous comments by adam and roderick, itunes would need some processing power to play anyways.
When consider the case that doesn’t have the GPU power, I think it’s good when the effect such as painting out with the shadeing off black can be selected.
The application list under the start is called with the shortcut key.
I think that convenience improves if focus is given there.
I think it is convenient when the application can be selected, and “Focus is given and start” do with the context menu.
It is a wonderful application. so, please do localize to a lot of languages.
It is best when there is an option not to release focus when non-active area is clicked.
Can it not be freezed by registering the application that wants to operate by the background?
It would be nice to have it integrated with Spaces so that the focus is on each Space be it one app or two or more related apps.
More control over the blurring of the background, or even blacking it out a certain color a la Think http://freeverse.com/apps/app/?id=7013
Can the window of the application to make it freeze made translucent or brightness be lowered? I think that it becomes easy to recognize the freezed application if it is possible.
It is a wonderful application. If the desire is said, I want the option that CPU utilization of each application can be displayed next to the application list.
How about the following functions?
The frieze exclusion application is registered beforehand.
Even if focus is given to the application, the registered application is not freezed. This is useful to work with Photoshop while listening to music with iTunes.
It is convenient that ON/OFF of the focus of the selected application changes when the shortcut key is pushed
how about the option to focus on more than on application at the same time. i really like the suggestion by nick c concerning profiles.
We are really talking about a program being used to get control over the Mac performance, and I give you not one but three ideas:
I really would like to see an option to empty all the disk space that is used for swap or virtual memory. I’ve noted that after I’d run several apps, not only the Mac performance fades but also the free disk space reduces, so I do a logoff/login in order to refrain from this side-effect – sometimes just a restart seems to solve it :~(.
Other than that, I also would like to quickly see what is the version of all the running apps at one time, so I could compare 2 or more Macs in a shot.
And third, how about an option to see the version of an app that is neither running nor focused on the finder, just resting on the dock? I keep on the dock my essential apps, and while browsing the net often I’ve to check what version is already installed.
Thanks for the time Bokeh is conquering for us.
Thanks for your time.
I think it would be useful to mark particular apps as always being high priority or always being low priority. So for instance, whenever I run MATLAB, it gets preference for processor cycles over other apps. Accordingly, I can set it so that Mail.app I can set it as low priority and will always yield processor cycles to other programs.
I’d like the ability to freeze apps when they reach a certain threshold. Sometimes I’m watching a movie and browsing on Safari, and a flash site will eat up my CPU cycles. To prevent the movie from skipping, I’d like to freeze Safari if it jumps past a certain number.
I would like to see a hot-key switching system that freezes all windows but the current one, rather than freezing and unfreezing.
Allow a program to be focused on and have a ‘temporary’ defocus for single programs- IE, you switch to that program and use it as needed, but as soon as you switch back to your ‘focused’ program, it refreezes to keep your program fully focused.
I would like the ability to have more than one application to be a focus (when a group of prgrams may be working together). Also the current mount of CPU usage next to the list of active apps.
There is a quicksilver plugin that does this and it’s free. You can also do it in terminal. For free.
Thanks for the heads up, Bokeh seems a fantastic app! When invoking the “Freeze Frame” capabilities, I would appreciate a sort of grey box that displays which apps are heaviest on the processing power.
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