First of all, thanks to the guys at SeoSoft for generously donating three licenses of Exces. And now without further adieu the winners in no particular order are…

Congrats to Walter Mitty, Joachim, and Mr. Bond. SeoSoft has been notified of your winning, so I would expect an email shortly.

If you missed this review, you can trial Exces for free or grab a license for ⚬19.50 from Seosoft. Be sure to subscribe to our feed to not miss any of our regular reviews.

I am going to take you through Exces a bit here but and guys over at SeoSoft have been kind enough to give us 3 licenses to give away at the end of the review – so read on for your chance to win.

Exces is a quick and easy way for users to encrypt data with a password. Version 1.5 offers various changes, including:

• Auto-lock, which locks your data after 10 minutes of inactivity. Unfortunately, files that are open will not autolock (this is to avoid data corruption).
• “Lots of polish. Little things have been changed all over the place to improve the global behavior of Exces.”
• Various bug fixes.

We reviewed Exces recently but I have some updated thoughts as well.

Privacy concerns with files makes sense to me, and there are those who need privacy with their files. I can safely say that I am not one who needs individual file security outside what OS X currently offers (File Vault – check your security preferences to check it out).

When opening the application, the first thing I noticed was the 3D globe. The whole application’s GUI centers around a graphical “security orb” which I find fairly superfluous. The application could have done without it, as the orb adds excess (punny?) screen real estate to the window. However, it is a visual reminder of the file being locked or unlocked, so it is helpful, if a little larger than expected.

You start Exces by creating an Exces File, with a storage size of your preference. You must reserve this amount of space. It’s not overly flexible right now, but allows you a space to put your files to be secured in.

When the file is locked, the orb is blue, closed, and secured.

When the password is entered, the orb is open, and ready to receive files.

And it really is that simple. You can lock, and unlock your files as you see fit.

The shrink button allows you to shrink the file you have created down to what’s in it. If you have a 10GB storage file, with only 2 GB of files within it, you can shrink down the file down to 2GB. That’s the flexibility that I wanted, but I would have preferred if the shrink function was automatic.

The preferences are minimal, and only currently offer an auto-lock function, along with an auto-updater and a registration page.

Exces is a very simple application to secure your files, and gets the job done. Consider this the convenience option of file security. But in my tests, I found that in order to unlock the file, I must have Exces installed. Not very practical if you’re sending a secure file to another person who does not have Exces. But all gripes aside, if you’re looking for quick security, Exces works well. Give it a try.

…Or win a license! This contest is simple guys. Simply tell us how you would use Exces or a feature that you would like to see included and you’re entered to win. Contest closes a week from today at midnight EST and winners will be announced shortly after that. Good luck!

If you missed this giveaway Exces retails for ⚬19.50 from Seosoft. A trial version is available.

Yes, the Macbook Air is quite sexy. I think that a lot of the Apple products get instant “wow” power, based on great design, and ease of use. But in the long run, is the Macbook Air a laptop that YOU would buy? Is it powerful enough for your tasks?

Let’s take it to the polls to get an idea.

As a power-user myself, I use a lot of processor hungry applications which deal with photo processing, audio processing, video editing, and more. The Macbook Air is not a product for me. The question that I am asking myself is: “Who is this computer for?” Is it for the internet savvy, with it’s lack of optical drive, and emphasis on wireless? Is it for the environmentally friendly, with it’s “green” design?

Is it for the traveler, for it’s small size? I would almost say all of those, but I find the price to be too close to that of a Macbook Pro to justify a purchase. I am asking you, the readers, who is this laptop for? Let us know what you think, and if you think the product is worth the price!

So if you remember I told you about how my mother’s desktop was a wreck: files everywhere, with the desktop full with icons. I could hardly find her hard drive on the desktop. Chaos!

Eventually, I gave her a cluttered-desktop makeover, making her digital life cleaner, and easier to manage. No longer was her desktop a mishmash of various files. It is now a lean-mean, file organizing machine! Now that you have your five folders for all your incoming data types, let’s organize them so you can access them quickly. For a quick review, the 5 folder types are:

• Inbox (24 hour file life, need to be moved or acted upon)
• Read, Watch, Listen (non-actionable, files that require attention)
• Pending (actionable, files that require attention)
• Current Projects (actionable, files that require attention and are grouped together)
• Archive (2 week file life, for modification or transfer later)

So for these five folders I need to access them quickly to process through them. I have found 2 ways to do this effectively:

Place them on the desktop.

Create your five folders on the desktop for quick access. Make sure to create titles for your files like this:

• 0. Inbox
• 1. Read, Watch, Listen
• 2. Pending
• 3. Current Projects
• 4. Archive

The reason I use numbers, I’ve found, is that it keeps the folders in order (when organized by name). It’s also easy to access with applications like Quicksilver (by just typing the number of the folder you want).

Pros: Easy to access and process through groups of files.
Cons: Adds clutter to the desktop.

Make Stacks, and place them in the dock.

This is the system I am currently using and experimenting with. Create your five folders (using the number system above), and place them in your home folder (~/users/[user name]). Then, drag your folders to the dock in order from left to right. You can use the Optica Optima file icons to help create visual different between the folders.

Pros: Reduces desktop clutter, and quick to access on smaller screens when the dock is hidden. Forces you to maintain smaller file counts in the folders.
Cons: Lots of clicks required to start dealing with groups of files.

Now that I have my folders in a place where I can access them, I can now start processing through my files.

1. Place all rogue files in the Inbox.

Take every file you have without a storage place, and put in the the inbox. This will allow you to see every single file that needs to be dealt with. Make sure you set your internet downloads to the Inbox as well.

2. Start processing through your files.

• Files that need action go into the “Pending” folder.
• Files that need attention, but don’t require action go into the “Read, Watch, Listen” folder.
• Groups of files pertaining to a single project should go into a sub-folder in the “Current Projects” folder.
• Files that don’t go into any of these three folders go into the “Archive” folder.

3. Keep processing through files until there is nothing left in the inbox.

4. Go through your remaining folders periodically, to take action on files which need attention.

Remember that the files shouldn’t live in any of these folders for longer than 2 weeks. Any longer than that, and they should go into the archive.

5. Go through your archive every two weeks, to determine what can go into your User Directory Folders, and what should stay in your Archive.

The difference between the Archive folder and the User Directory Folders (Documents, Movies, Music, Pictures) is that the Archive should be considered warm storage (short term), and the User Directory folders cold storage (long term). Any files that do not require action, and will be stored for a longer time should be stored in the User Directory folders.

Hopefully, with these tips, you’ll be able to keep your desktop and hard drive clutter free!

This article adapted from experience using this article at lifeclever, and looking at desktops at the GTD flickr group. Drawer icons from Optica Optima.

OnyX, for the uninitiated, is an application that does many things pertaining to optimizing your system, including doing disk verifications and permission repairs, running system cleaning and optimizing scripts, clearing out various caches, cookies, and bookmarks.

My experience with this version has not matched my previous experiences. 1.9.0 seems to be a bit slow at first, but by default, it verifies disk statuses. You can disable this in the preferences pane. This usually speeds up the start-up time.

January 1st, 2008 marks the release of OnyX 1.9.0 for Leopard. For a more thorough rundown read our review of OnyX here.

This new release is the first version of OnyX for Leopard, and includes various bug fixes, including:

• New version totally rewritten
• Enable/disable Journaling function
• Enable/disable iChat Data Detectors function
• Hide the icon of Spotlight in the menu bar function
• Resetting the Sidebar of Finder windows function
• Deleting the Conversations log of instant messaging

You can download the new version here, but if you don’t have Leopard yet, versions for Tiger (10.4), Panther (10.3), and Jaguar (10.2), are still available.

Meet my mother: a few years ago, she was one of the few people in the entertainment industry who worked without email; a relic of an industry which used to rely solely on telephones. My mother's lack of email was due to many things, including a fear of computers. So, on Mother's Day, 2005, I forced her to conquer her fear. I gave her a computer, hoping to drag her (kicking and screaming) into the information age. She willfully agreed.

Present day: I travel a lot, and for a short while each time, I spend time with my mother. She greets me with a warm hug, a home cooked meal, and a bevy of computer questions. She wants me to help her fix her computer. Regularly. I willfully agree.

As I open her MacBook, and place my finger on the soft white power button, I hear the familiar chime of an Apple product coming back to life. The chime echoes my mother's plea for help, and quickly guides me to the desktop. A horror is brought to my eyes: the desktop has become an endless black hole for random downloads, documents, and images.

Meanwhile, amidst this cluttered nightmare, I cannot find the hard drive. There seems to be a pile (not a Stack) of files where the hard drive would be. I start moving files left, down, another one left, a fourth one down, and so on. This process continues for more than 20 files. I turn to my mother as Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now: “the horror, the horror.

It's time for a cluttered file system makeover! Here's how I work, and hopefully you, as well as my mother, will find some solace in the system I have learned, adapted, and put into place.

Start with an inbox. It's that simple. Make sure everything that you download goes into this inbox. Additionally, any files that are not organized must go into this inbox as well. This is the place where you will process and delegate files to different places. If you can complete a task from the inbox, great! If not, delegate it to a different folder. The time length of files that exist here are 24 hours.

At first, I thought, all I needed was an inbox. The problem with that was the inbox began turning into an archive: files would never leave the inbox! So, make sure you constantly are clearing out your inbox, and for those files you want to keep longer, put them into an archive.

Create an archive. The archive will be for files that you don't want to organize now, but will eventually be organized and currently do not need attention. Most of my completed design projects go into the archive in case clients need them after completion. The time length of files that exist here is 2 weeks.

Now that we have a system for items that are a day old, and 2 weeks old, what about the items that exist between those times? You need folders for items you are going to process.

Create the core process folders: “Read, Watch, Listen, “Pending, and “Current Projects. Each folder has it's own function and use:

Read, Watch, Listen: This folder is for all of the items that don't need modification, but need my attention. This includes items to read, videos and images to watch, and audio to listen to. Items that I want to keep for longer than 2 weeks, for reference or entertainment, go into my hard drive for long term storage.

Pending: These items need attention and modification, but require something in the future. This includes items to send, files to upload, and documents that require modification from another person. As I write this article, all the images I capture, and eventually upload for this article are going into my “Pending folder. Before they are ready to be uploaded, they will be stored in a folder called…

Current Projects: In this folder, I keep all my documents that I am going to modify, or am currently modifying. This includes all source material for each project. This article, as it goes through various drafts, is sitting in my “Current Projects folder, along with all the accompanying images. All projects with groups of files go here. Pending is for single files which require action. Current Projects is for groups of files which require action.

With those folders, you have now created a dynamic filtering system for all your new documents. But you can go even further.

Stay tuned for the next part, where I will discuss how to filter, quickly access, and process through your data.

This article adapted from experience using this article at lifeclever, and looking at desktops at the GTD flickr group. Inbox icon from Optica Optima.

Of course, this process will require the latest technologies, including the iPhone 1.1.2 firmware update, iTunes 7.5, and the aforementioned Garageband 4.1.1 update (released yesterday).

The documentation states that ringtones have to be 40 seconds or less. After you have created your ringtone, you send it to your iPhone by selecting going to the Menu “Share”, and then selecting “Send Ringtone to iTunes”.

This leads me to wonder how the third-party community will react, but I assume that this move will be seen as a blessing rather than a curse.

Via [TUAW]

I’ll tell you this much: FacebookSync isn’t built for those with an eye for design. If you want to quit the application, go to the menu, and click “Quit NewApplication”. Wait. What? This application is a tool, and really nothing else. When you open the application, you have to log in with something that looks similar to a web interface for logging in. Then, you have to close the window, then reopen it to start the import process. Once again, this application doesn’t win points with design or usability.

Next, you’ll be presented with a window with all your current contacts. You can choose to update their info, as well as their photo (which is the profile photo from Facebook). FacebookSync will detect what information you have, and what needs to be updated. Select the profiles you want updated, and voila! Your address book has been updated.

That’s how this tool works, and it works wonderfully, if your friends have filled in appropriate information. This application gets the job done. Then, you are presented with this window.

If you want to run the update again, you have to manually quit, and go through the process again. FacebookSync is available from FSB Software, and is a freeware download.

There are 3 very important applications that every Mac user should download. These applications will allow you to play almost every video file on your mac, and make you a happier, more entertained person.

Just follow these steps in order:

1. Download Perian – This is the ultimate Quicktime addition, as it adds the following codecs:
AVI, FLV (Flash Video), MKV, “MS-MPEG4 v1 & v2, DivX, 3ivX, H.264, FLV1, FSV1, VP6, H263I, VP3, HuffYUV, FFVHuff, MPEG1 & MPEG2 Video, Fraps, Windows Media Audio v1 & v2, Flash ADPCM, Xiph Vorbis (in Matroska), MPEG Layer II Audio [...] AAC, AC3 Audio, H.264, MPEG4, and VBR MP3″.
Wow… that’s a lot. Perian will install an preference pane, which will allow you to check for updates automatically, and tweak audio settings. Perian is Free, and is available from Perian.org.

2. Download Flip4Mac WMV – Microsoft stopped supporting the Windows Media Player a short while ago, and told the Flip4Mac guys to take over. They have done so with their Flip4Mac WMV components. After the download, it will install the components on your computer. If you want to give them money, they’ll reward you with extra importing and exporting functions.

By this point, Quicktime should be able to play most media formats.

If not, then try to…

3. Download VLC – This is the “swiss army” knife of video players, and can handle most video formats out there. This is my go-to if my Perian-Flip4Mac-Quicktime system doesn’t work. There are so many formats supported, I’m not going to write them out. VLC is free, and can be downloaded from videolan.org.

Hopefully these 3 items will get your video files playing. If all fails, try exporting a video file out of Quicktime to a format that Quicktime can understand, like MPEG4. Good luck!

This list is by no means definitive but here is a list of my 7 must-know software download repositories for the best in Mac software, and more. Let me know if I missed any!

Apple Downloads
Includes: Categories, Editor Picks, Popular Download list, RSS feed.
Pros: Slick interface. Elegant design in the Apple way.
Cons: Lack of community. Apple applications hold prominent positions.

Download.com
Includes: Categories, Download Cart, Editor Picks, Editor Reviews, Popular Download list, RSS feed, User Generated Ratings, User Comments.
Pros: Reliable (owned by CNet), nice looking design, quick search and interface.
Cons: Lack of community, as there aren’t a lot of user comments or reviews, and the most popular downloads are surprising. The main URL is complicated, which makes it hard to quickly get to the Mac download page.

iUseThis
Includes: Facebook Application, Popular Download List, RSS feed, Tags, User Comments, User Voting System (like Digg).
Pros: Simple interface. The voting system makes the popular application list feel more relevant. Quick and reliable.
Cons: Application list pages (New, Search, etc) includes full description and info, rather than just titles for finding an application quickly.

MacUpdate
Includes: Blog, Categories, Downloadable Client, Editor Picks, Popular Download list, RSS feed, User Generated Ratings, User Comments.
Pros: Mac-centric. Simple layout. Good for finding an application at a glance, as search reveals a list of application names.
Cons: Search is often slow.

Pure Mac
Includes: Categories, Editor Picks, File Extension Database, RSS feed.
Pros: Very simple interface. Clean. Surprisingly informational for being so simple.
Cons: Lots of Google Ads. Lacks professional polish.

Softpedia
Includes: Categories, Download Cart, Editor Picks, Editor Reviews, Popular Download list, User Generated Ratings, User Comments.
Pros: Includes a lot of applications, even obscure stuff. Quick Search.
Cons: Cluttered interface. Latest Additions is at the bottom of the page, below news and reviews. Rollover ads.

VersionTracker
Includes: Categories, Downloadable Client, Download Cart, Editor Picks, Editor Reviews, Popular Download list, RSS feed, User Generated Ratings, User Comments.
Pros: Reliable and quick.
Cons: Requires free registration for some basic functions. Interface seems a bit cluttered.

So without further adieu: the 2007 Edition of MacApper’s Staff Picks.

Taylor Sternberg
Perian – Whenever I am helping someone set up their computer, I always go to Perian first. It is the “Swiss Army Knife for Quicktime”, which means that it installs additional codecs. More codecs = more videos are compatable with Quicktime.

Adium – This is another app that I adore. It could be considered the Firefox of Instant Messaging applications (although that could change), with plugins and customization galore.

Quicksilver – Move over Spotlight! This is the best way to search for items on the Mac (even with the improved Leopard Spotlight). Although I have not yet unleashed its true power, it still remains my favorite application. I always feel silly when I try to invoke it on another person’s computer.

Miles Evans
Coda – Coda by Panic has changed the way I work on my web based projects and significantly increased my productivity.  I can’t say enough about this app, if you do any webdev at all just buy it and thank me later.

kisMac – No l33t h4x0r’s Mac is complete without a packet sniffing and WEP cracking tool like kisMac. Also check out Nmap.

Keynote – Of all the Apple apps, keynote is likely my favorite. I do a few presentations per year and keynote makes me look way more professional than I truly am. 10 stars!

Steven Owens
Adium – Has many more features than iChat and allows me to utilize multiple IM protocols.

TextMate – The ultimate text editor for any application. Literally supports every type of syntax highlighting out there. Very extendable with plugins.

NewsFire – Allows me to get all my RSS feeds in one place. Interface is intuitive and easy on the eyes.

Will Holmes
NewsFire – The best RSS Reader? It’s really well designed and easy to use.

Pages – It’s cheaper than Microsoft Word and if people gave it a chance I know they’d love it.

Quinn – It’s a really fun tetris style game. What more can you say!

Victor Johnson
NetNewsWire – Simplistic interface, offers just enough features without bloating the interface and confusing the end-user.

Aperture – Combines two very important things: Professional image editing and image organization. I used to have to resort to using both Photoshop and iPhoto, but now I am down to one application.

Mail.app – The one application that is never closed on my Mac. It plays well with IMAP as well as .Mac rules and mailbox syncing.

Alec Feld
Awaken – I would be out of school if it wasn’t for Awaken. This trusty little tool wakes me up everyday to my music choice, and acts as a full function alarm clock. The Apple Remote functions as a sleep/snooze controller, and the full screen mode is perfect for glancing at the time when waking up. Awaken is a great app from Jerry Brace at Embraceware. Jerry’s always working hard to improve the app and listen to customers, and his work shows in the app.

Remote Buddy – This app is perfect for those lazy days or weekends. With Remote Buddy, I can effortlessly navigate and control my Mac from my sofa. Need to launch a video? With Remote Buddy, it’s no problem. Navigate through it’s amazingly organized menu, find the app you want to launch, and choose the file. Remote Buddy supports a bunch of apps, and is bound to support more in the future.

1Passwd – Sometimes, filling out login forms or order forms can be tedious. With 1Passwd, forms are filled in a click. 1Passwd securely saves all of your login information for various sites, and even saves identity forms, great for quickly completing orders. To fill in a form, click the 1Passwd button in your browser, and the form is instantly filled. This app is a true timesaver, and is incredibly helpful.

Van Lam
Mozy – Free automatic online backup. I’m no cryptologist, but it seems pretty secure to me. The interface for scheduling and retrieving backups is easy and intuitive as well. It’s free for 2 GBs, or you can pay a mere 5 clams a month for unlimited storage.

Pzizz – It may seem like a silly idea to pay for sounds waves crashing on a beach and weird ambient tones, but I’ve found that this app actually works. I now sleep a total of four hours a night, up from 2 hours. Lovely.

Nocturne – A night vision mode for your mac . It does everything OS X’s built in Cmd+Option+Ctrl 8 does, in addition to shadow & desktop background removal, and color correction. For the hacker personality, obviously.

Darcy Fitzpatrick
Final Cut Pro – There are other major Non-Linear Editing applications on the Mac that many Apple zealots may not be aware of, like Adobe Premiere Pro and Avid, but Final Cut Pro schools them irregardless of where your loyalties may lie.

Celtx – The do-everything pre-production tool. It’s ten years ahead of the screenwriting application curve and includes server-side collaboration features. Best part: it is free.

VLC – Plays everything. ‘Nuff said.

Fraser Drew
iTunes – Simplest way to manage music in OS X Period.

EyeTV /Aurora combo – Best Alarm Clock in the world. Why have *beep beep* when you can have TV!

Adium – Microsoft MSN on OS X is terrible, so until someone does MSN A/V (whether it be Adium or MS), I can’t live without it!

Michael DeLeon
Amadeus Pro – One of the best audio editing apps on the mac at a fraction of the price of other popular apps on the Mac. For podcasters, you’ll love the id3 tag editor and exporting straight to mp3. Good interface, easy to use, feature-packed and only $40.

Final Cut Express – New version out with even more features. Still wondering how they can sell an app like this that in now way seems like a “lite” version for $200.

Visual Hub – Previously used sites like media-convert.com and zamzar.com to re-encode videos to a format which I could work with. Visual Hub does that and a lot more and won’t take nearly as long.

Michael Mistretta
iChat 4.0 – I just love the tabs, and the ability to have my AIM, MSN (through Jabber) and Google Talk contacts. Video chatting and Audio chatting rock and the quality has been greatly improved. iChat theatre make sharing presentations and slideshows so simple, and screen sharing is so much fun, and is implemented wonderfully.

CoverSutra – Awesome iTunes controller, that allows you quick access to rate, skip, play, and shuffle songs. Beautiful interface, and and only there when you need it.

Skitch – Allows me to easily and visually share what I’m doing to someone else over the internet. Takes screenshots, annotates them, and allows you to upload them in one click. Amazingly easy, and changes the way I communicate my ideas to others.

Austen Saltz
Quicksilver – It’s the definition of simple, yet still has many advanced features. My favorite uses are iTunes keyboard shortcuts and Camino bookmark indexing. I simply can’t live without them. And now, it’s open source!

Schoolhouse – My homework is a lot easier to process and complete with this app. Not only does it help you keep track of assignments, but it can color-code different courses, and allow you to track your grades over the course of the semester.

NeoOffice – Cheaper than MS Office, cheaper than iWork, cheaper than pretty much anything, NeoOffice is a free, native office suite for Mac based on OpenOffice. It integrates well with OS X, and performs all the functions that I need from an office suite.

Andrew Brigmond
FontExplorer X – Simply put, this is the best font management program I’ve seen in a long time. Extremely stable in a harsh working environment and carries no price tag what so ever. Free software just tastes better.

Parallels Desktop – While Apple is an amazing company there’s still plenty of things you can’t do without a Windows machine handy. I use Parallels daily for everything from troubleshooting to gaming. The performance is amazing and new features are added often.

REALbasic 2007 – Support for the OS X platform is rapidly growing and new applications are being developed all the time. Yet sometimes what you need just hasn’t been made yet, so why not just create what you need? REALbasic 2007 lets you do just that with an easy to understand programming language and user friendly interface. And if you also happen to be a PC user still it can automatically build Windows and Linux binaries along with your OS 9/X application. This one I definitely couldn’t live without.

Sébastien Arbogast
ForkLift – The next level of Finder, I use it all the time to access remote servers like FTP, SFTP. It even handle Amazon S3 remote storage. There’s even a “delete application” button to uninstall apps properly.

Pages – Every time I send a communication to my colleagues, like an invitation for some business meeting or a newsletter, I just prepare the content in plain text, and just before sending the final version, I copy/paste it into one of the layouts in Pages. And I always some feedback like “hey, you must have spent some time on it!”. And I say “no, I’m just using a Mac!”.

Remote Buddy – Thinking about other ways to use your WiiMote? This is the application you need. It allows you to do everything on your Mac from a remote distance. You can even reprogram buttons on the Apple Remote.

Greg Healy
RapidWeaver – Whenever I need to throw together a quick website, nothing beats RapidWeaver. Being able to add a video gallery, flash slideshow, and blog with one click sure is better than doing it by hand.

ImageWell – As an Editor here at MacApper, I sometimes have to resize the images in some contributor’s posts. ImageWell makes this as easy as dragging the image onto it’s icon in the dock, typing in my restraints, and then clicking “Send.” Couldn’t be easier.

iClip – This application has become invaluable to me. Being able to have multiple clipboards is a life and time saver. If you do not have iClip 4 or an application that allows you to have multiple clipboards, I suggest that you go and download one right now!

Well that about wraps it up! What are your 3 favorite OS X apps?

David Allen’s book “Getting Things Done” has been hailed as the in-vogue system for, naturally, getting things done. Or as I like to think, a to-do list on steroids. I will admit, I’ve read David Allen’s book, and it does make sense.

As for keeping all of my to-dos in one place on my Mac, I have drifted from many different applications. I have used iGTD with limited success, and eventually moved over to iCal by using categories and the integrated to-do list. It’s limited, but does gets the job done. When I first heard about OmniFocus, I was very intrigued. This is an application from OmniGroup: a company that A) IMHO makes great apps, and B) has been with OS X development since the beginning. When I heard that OmniGroup was taking advice from Merlin Mann and Ethan Schoonover, both GTD masters in their own right, I knew I had to try this app.

I think the first thing to say about OmniFocus is that it’s deep, which I feel is the best and worst part of OmniFocus. It offers all the bells and whistles that power users demand, but is so complex that it may intimidate GTD beginners. At this time, I could not find appropriate documentation for OmniFocus in the help menu, but a quick-start video (180mb, 50mb version here) and an interface reference chart PDF do exist. Perhaps at release, the documentation will be enough to educate new users.

To put it plainly, OmniFocus feels like Microsoft Word: At the surface, it gets the job done, but to get to the true power of the application, you really have to know how to use it well. It’s not as click-and-go as other Mac applications tend to be. Your palette for tasks is the Inspector window, which allows you to modify your actions as you see fit. There are so many options to play with, it’s like having a huge piece of paper with a box of 300 crayons: it’s intimidating, but your options are virtually limitless.

However, I sometimes felt constrained by the Inspector window. I couldn’t figure out how to change the default “in-order list” to “single-action list” without consulting the inspector window. Somehow, I wish that this option would be in a contextual menu, but alas, it isn’t. Putting the depth aside, OmniFocus is a really great application. The design is what won me over. It’s elegant, simple, and retains the graphical polish that OmniGroup puts into all of it’s apps.

Adding items is a dream, and uses a auto-complete feature to allow you to enter everything by keyboard. No extra clicks or drags required. Got a due date on a task? OmniFocus uses natural entry as well, and can translate the text “tomorrow” to an actual date. OmniFocus integrates well with other applications like iCal and Mail.app: it allows you to sync your to-dos with iCal, and get information from Mail.app quickly into OmniFocus. I can’t tell you how much I love having my GTD actions synced to my iPhone calendar.

Notifying you of upcoming events works well, and there are plenty of preferences, including adding a number of upcoming items in the dock, the sidebar, and the menubar. This application is geared towards people who have hundreds of actions, and caters to alerting you to a very specific list. It’s sometimes hard to just get to a master list. Only the future will tell us what OmniFocus may bring. OmniFocus will retail for $79.95, but if you pre-order now, you can get it for $39.95. OmniFocus officially releases on January 8th, 2008, but a beta can be downloaded right now.

Mind you, I am still somewhat of a GTD beginner, so I tend to gravitate to simple systems. iCal was a simple system, and I naturally was drawn to it. OmniFocus has many more “bells and whistles” than my iCal system, but with many new GTD applications on the horizon, OmniFocus has enough power and exposure to lead the pack.

Like everyone else, I’m always looking for ways to make my dock more productive. Thankfully, this tip, via macosxhints.com, teaches you how to make a recent items folder for the dock.

You can add a Recent Applications, Recent Documents, Recent Servers, Favorite Volumes, or Favorite Items stack to the dock. After the trick is applied, a “Recent 10 Things” stack will appear (but only expand into tile mode).

The steps are really simple:

1. Open the Terminal in Applications > Utilities > Terminal
2. Type this command into the window:
   defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add '{ "tile-data" = { "list-type" = 1; }; "tile-type" = "recents-tile"; }'
3. Type killall Dock to restart the Dock.
4. Look down to your Dock, and you should see a new folder on the right. Click and hold, or control click to get a contextual menu which will present you with the 5 types of things to display.

If you don’t like the new Dock addition, there is also a Remove From Dock command in the contextual menu. Voila!

Some of the changes I like, and some I can live with. But in Leopard, you took away my rounded screen corners. Well, thanks to the Apple developer community, the guys over at Many Tricks have brought back rounded screen corners with their application Displaperture.

The application weighs in at 169 KB, so it certainly has a small footprint. It runs as a process rather than modifying specific files; for system modification chickens, this is a blessing, but a curse for resource hogging fiends. You must keep the application on your drive for your corners to remain rounded.

Users can adjust how much their corners are rounded, and which corners will be modified. Furthermore, you don’t have to round all 4 corners: you can modify just the upper corners, the lower corners, the upper right one and the upper left one, or any other combination that you desire.

Displaperture is freeware and can be downloaded from Many Tricks.

By holding down the shift key when minimizing and maximizing a window, the animation takes a longer time, but does it in slow motion. The same happens with Exposé. This little trick shows the power of OS X’s native animation capabilities.

With Core Animation, I’m sure it has less of a load on the system; but Apple didn’t stop there for Leopard. As I was trying to use a stack this morning, I found a new addition to the “Impress Your Friends” skill set. I thought that, perhaps, if I held down shift, I could select multiple icons out of the stack (which I couldn’t). Instead, the stack moved in slow motion back into the dock.

And I did it again and again to the sound of my boyish giggles and unblinking stare. It was so slow that I was able to get this screengrab:

A few users have turned to iToner, the custom ringtone application, but the development has turned into a cat and mouse game. Each subsequent release of iTunes blocks iToner, and Ambrosia comes back with a new version which works.

However, as many people are reporting, you can add your own custom ringtones without any hacks with iTunes 7.5 and iPhone firmware 1.1.2.

Here’s how you do it:

1. Take an .m4a file, and edit it down to 30 seconds or less.
2. Save it, and rename the file with a .m4r extension.
3. Open the file in iTunes by double clicking it or dragging it to the window.
4. Sync your iPhone (make sure you have ringtone syncing enabled. You will see your custom ringtone in the list).
5. Enjoy your new ringtone!

Hopefully this “hole” in the system will continue to exist. Or, as I anticipate, there will be an iTunes 7.5.1 update which will end our free ringtone fun… for now.

As for iToner, the developer Ambrosia Software states that the latest version is compatible with iPhone Firmware 1.1.2.

Well, call me surprised, because Chax has now released a beta of their iChat enhancer. Supposedly Apple didn’t completely remove the door into the Input Manager, they just introduced stricter security rules. And I’m so glad, because I love Chax. Chax adds features that Apple didn’t include, like a built in log viewer, Growl support, the ability to change fonts in the contact list, and many other tweaks.

What’s new in the 2.0 beta? The developers announced these changes from the previous alpha:

• Extra Growl notifications no longer appear
• Fixed possible visual bugs in the log viewer and contact list
• Now distributed as a package installer bundled with SIMBL
• Removed nonfunctional group font customization field
• Update checker is now functional
• Exporting logs from the log viewer works again
• Fixed AV chats not being received properly

So head on over to the developer blog to download Chax, as the beta download does not appear on the main Chax page just yet.

Now if Chax would just bring back the video hologram effect that had us drooling over Leopard a few months back.

For more info on Chax check out our recent review.

Currently my POP mail is sent to my GMail account so all my email will sync with my Mail.app and iPhone! In the new Leopard Mail, you can now write Notes and To-Dos. If you have IMAP set up, those Notes and To Dos will also sync up with your IMAP (GMail) account.

In this new version of Mail, Notes will normally appear in your inbox. If you set up IMAP with Mail, your Notes will appear as messages from yourself in your inbox on your server (in my case, Gmail) and in Mail.app. If you set up Gmail IMAP on your iPhone, Notes will appear as read messages in your mail inbox. Too bad note syncing on the iPhone didn’t work out this time around. But Notes in my email gets the job done for now.

To-Dos are a different story, and sadly, somewhat disappointing. When I go into my Gmail account, the To-Dos that I wrote appear in the “All Mail” section (not the inbox) and are labeled as “Apple Mail To-Do”. Here’s what the syntax of a To Do looks like:

Looks a bit messy to me, but perhaps I’m spoiled by the cleanliness of the Mac. I would have preferred my To-Dos to also appear in my inbox. All in all, it’s a cool little feature that I’ll be using in the future. Have you had any luck with Gmail IMAP and Mail.app? Let us know!

Reports (Engadget, 9to5mac) are coming in from all over, testing the jailbreakme.com site to see if it works with the 1.1.2. Low and behold, it doesn’t. Moral of the story? Wait before you upgrade your iPhone if you want your 3rd party apps, themes, and all the other goodies. You could also wait until Apple releases the SDK, or just hold off on upgrading iTunes until jailbreakme.com figures things out.

There doesn’t seem to be any new “features”, but that may change as hackers start exploring. For now, we’re still without 1st party IM chat, voice notes, or a portable shaver (that last one isn’t planned). If you live in the U.S., 1.1.1 isn’t too bad.

Update: Well never mind, modmyifone is reporting that the iPod touch has indeed been jailbroken, possibly via the symlink exploit hackers have mentioned. Metaplsoit has an interesting article explaining the exploits for the curious.

The iPhone/iPod team, including Pumpkin, Edgan, Dinopio, Drudge, Kroo, and all the rest have already jailbroken the iPod Touch version 1.1.2. The picture above for a jailbroken touch is courtesy of hacker planetbeing.

Details will be coming soon once the method is debugged and some safety features and put in place.

iPhone 1.1.2 Firmware hack has to be coming soon guys. I would advise you to let people guinea pig it for you before attempting it once it lands.

James Shiner is the operator of LeopardDocks, a site that hosts Dock Replacement images, and the Dock Replacement Automator script (by Brian Rice). He has archived 70+ Dock replacement images for your enjoyment, including many colors, patterns, and open application indicators.

Make sure you read the instructions carefully, because when I tried to replace my dock images, it didn’t work initially. You have to delete the old dock image files before you can move the new ones over. Make sure you back up the original files, but in case you don’t, Shiner hosts the original files on the site. After a quick Terminal command to restart the Dock, the image files will load correctly.

The Automator script did not work for me, but your mileage may vary.

In case you don’t like the 3d dock, there are also instructions for making the dock 2d with the new iteration (which can be seen when the dock is set to display on the left or right side of the screen), or the classic iteration.

Hopefully in the future, there will be a better software solution to cosmetically changing the dock (like the popular utility ClearDock, which is not currently compatible with Leopard).

Good luck, and try to avoid Leopard Fashion Faux Pas.

Tom Karpik writes:

Leopard's Finder has a glaring bug in its directory-moving code, leading to horrendous data loss if a destination volume disappears while a move operation is in action. I first came across it when Samba crashed while I was moving a directory from my desktop over to a Samba mount on my FreeBSD server.

It appears that moving files within your own directory is fine, but moving to other directories can be troublesome if the volume you send to is interrupted. This includes all exterior storages devices: USB keys, External Hard drives, Remote Servers, etc. If you move a file that takes enough time for a disconnect to happen, the only data that remains is the information that has already been copied to the remote server. The source files are then lost.

It is my understanding that the problem happens if you move the file, not if you copy it. A move (where the original is deleted after copy occurs) is executed in the Finder if you hold down the Command button during the drag-and-drop.

Daring Fireball’s John Gruber advises to copy all your files instead of moving them, and delete after the copy has occurred. But this is something that can be detrimental to a lot of users. Leopard deletes the source material even if the move hasn’t completed successfully. That doesn’t sound good.

Furthermore, MacRumors is reporting that a certain drive that has been installed in a large amount of Macbooks and Macbook Pros contain hard drives which “[cause] gouges in the hard drive platter.” Once again, perhaps Time Machine wasn’t a feature, but an insurance plan for Apple’s Lawyers!

Yahoo News is reporting that the “Leopard App Casualty List [is] Growing”, and for many a power-user, this isn’t a good thing. Apple is set to release 10.5.1 in the near future, but the incompatibilities may last through the upgrade. What applications and services specifically have been targeted as not working up to par?

For one, there may be a firewall problem. The Leopard firewall isn’t turned on by default, but when on, “users are complaining that the VOIP (voice over IP) application Skype and the online game ‘World of Warcraft’ are breaking after being activated from within the firewall.

Over at eWeek, their article “Leopard Has More Holes than Spots” states that the Leopard Firewall has been dumbed down significantly, and the power can only be harnessed by users by the Terminal. For others, the settings are confusing, and the firewall doesn’t work as well as it did in 10.4.

Meanwhile, developers are scrambling to update their applications for Leopard, and this list at MacRumors shows the current known incompatibilities.

Yahoo is reporting that Adobe CS3 is having a few problems (which I have experienced personally), and many users are experiencing 802.11g speeds which are inconsistent and slow.

As for all the applications that are incompatible, you can be assured that we here at Macapper will let you know which applications work with Leopard and which do not.

I think it’s time for another backup.

Try this with one of your most used software suites or a group of programs that fit within your workflow. You might also try placing all of your favorite system utilities in a folder and making a Stack for that. The process is really simple.

1. Create a new folder with the title of the group (Microsoft Office, CS3, webdev).

2. Create aliases of all the applications you would like by right clicking them and selecting Make Alias.

3. Place each alias in the new folder.

4. Place the folder in your Dock.

5. Unleash The Stack, and enjoy!

Now only if Apple would allow us to use custom icons as the stack icon.

Via WebBake.

Could this be the next Apple product to hit the market? Will Apple give the failing tablet PC market a jolt by making a tablet cool? Or will the current offering be the market example? Read the rest