• Pixelmator’s black icons on a HUD window background have always bothered me and seem like a bad UI choice
• iStatmenus is pretty, but never feels very Mac-like
• TuneUp is the antithesis of a beautiful Mac app. It leeches onto iTunes and looks & feels more like a Firefox plugin than a Mac app.

But the list has a few lesser-known entries as well, so it’s worth reading for a few gems that you don’t see on every other list (I’m typing this in blogo which I hadn’t heard of before…).

Link

]]> http://jetplanejournal.com/jetlinked-20-beautiful-mac-apps/feed/ 1 http://jetplanejournal.com/jetlinked-installing-applications-on-the-mac-still-broken/ http://jetplanejournal.com/jetlinked-installing-applications-on-the-mac-still-broken/#comments Sat, 25 Jul 2009 07:37:23 +0000 Adrian http://www.jetplanejournal.com/?p=963 Lukas Mathis has posted some thoughts on the issues Mac newcomers have with .dmg files. I also talked about this issue a while back in a post on the most common issues switchers have, but it’s worth noting it again. I agree with his followup post that adding another file format isn’t really the way to go either –   DMG files are a great feature to have – once you’ve understood them. But from a usability and customer support perspective, a simple zip file seems to be the better choice.

I’d still be interested to see what kinds of customer support issues you run into with zip files though:

• Do people using alternative browsers, that don’t automatically open “safe” files like Safari does, struggle with them?
• Do users who prefer to manually download updates have several versions of the same app sitting in their Downloads folder?
• Are there any issues if users have a 3rd party archive tool installed (I’m looking at you StuffIt)?

But despite those questions, I think there is a valid reason to reconsider whether .dmg files should still be considered “best practise” for app distribution.

So here’s a few productivity apps that students might find are worth checking out. Affordable, intuitive and ideal for quick notes, references, links and more.

VoodooPad

As I mentioned in my look at VoodooPad Lite a few months back, VoodooPad is a great tool for storing all your notes, links, images, PDFs etc in a wiki-like structure. This ability to create your own structure out of a collection of notes is really useful and as simple as typing in a text file.

I really enjoy the simplicity of this app, however there are limits to it’s usefulness as a general note-taking app, mainly the way images and other files are handled. Images and other files are either linked to or pasted in, meaning you either have to click each file link to view the file’s contents, or you have huge images in your document that you can’t resize. On the other hand, VoodooPad offers support for custom scripts and can run code in various languages with a simple keystroke, so CS students will love VoodooPad for storing code snippets.

Overall it’s very useful for text-based notes and the wiki-like structure is a very flexible way to organise information.

VoodooPad 3 – $29.95, free Lite version available

Schoolhouse 2

This awesome, free app has a slick UI that allows you to easily track and manage your assignments and other homeworks tasks on your Mac. It can also help you collaborate with partners, keep track of notes and request feedback from your instructor. 

Whilst it’s probably a little overblown for most freshman-year assignments, it’s great for larger projects that need quickly become unmanageable without some sort of structure or if you have a lot of projects going simultaneously. 

I ran into one crash whilst trying it out, but it’s fairly solid overall and is a great app at an unbeatable price. Definitely take this one for a spin and consider donating if you like it.

Schoolhouse 2 - No license fee, donations accepted

Circus Ponies Notebook

Notebook’s UI basically mimics your typical college ring-bound notepad and lets you sort your notes and files into pages inside a notepad. The concept works pretty well, but I found that the navigation tabs for individual pages  can become a bit cluttered if you’re not diligent about filing pages into sub-categories.

Notebook has great support for other file types though: Just drag in PDF files, images, timetables etc. and they’ll all show up in your document as images that you can resize and position as you need them. A double-click will then open the file in its native application. This is a great for creating a rich-document notebook entry with a proper layout.

Notebook 3 is due out soon and new features such as sketching, support for graphs and more have been announced. Anyone who buys Notebook 2 now will receive a free upgrade to version 3 when it’s released.

Circus Ponies Notebook - Academic license: $29.95

That’s it for this roundup, more Back-to-school tips are coming soon though, so be sure to check back or subscribe!

So here are 3 sites I’d recommend anyone new to the Mac should check out if you’re looking for the right app for the job:

1. Pure Mac 
   These guys do a great job of organizing the current best OS X apps into useful categories and include descriptions of the extent of an app’s functionality. Unfortunately, although they include a “last modified” date, that lets you ignore old or discontinued apps, there’s no way to hide those whilst browsing.    

   Verdict: Comprehensive, but you’ll need to spend a bit of time.
    

2. Open Source Mac & Best Mac Software
   A much more exclusive list than Pure Mac’s: OSM & BMS only list the “best of class” apps for the each of their categories. The two sites are run by the same company, but OSM only has free open source projects for OS X, whilst BMS has both open source and commercial applications. The apps are sorted into categories and include descriptions and (working!) download links (which you would think could be taken for granted, but often isn’t the case on some other sites).   

   Verdict: Great way to find the most commonly used apps for every task. 
    

3. OS X Applications   
   Almost older than OS X itself (the site was launch in 1999 to track OS X Server apps – a few months  before the release of the OS X Public beta client version), it boasts the largest number of tracked application (current around 19,000). However, clutter on the site is kept to a minimum and it lets you find the apps you want quickly and without lots of additional clicking to finally get to your download.   

   Verdict: Comprehensive, clean and easy to use.

So head on over and you may be surprised to find you’ve been missing out on some great apps…

These apps look and feel just as good as some of the included iPhone applications. If you want to see how the iPhone SDK is going to change the way we think of mobile phones as a computing platform, check out these 3:

1. MobileChat

Okay, so MobileChat is basically an iChat clone that mimics the iPhone’s SMS app. But it works exactly as you’d expect it to: Your buddy list is retrieved automatically when you sign in, tapping a contact’s name starts a new chat and you can even receive messages when mobileChat isn’t the frontmost application (something that Apple says applications developed with the official SDK will not be able to do).

It’ll be interesting to see if this one is ever released “officially”, especially given the aforementioned limitation and the fact that AOL have already announced their intention to release an official iPhone client.

mobileChat Homepage

2. mobileTwitter

Okay, so you’re either addicted to Twitter, or you don’t get it. But most people who try it are hooked and feel the need to Twitter constantly. There are now a plethora of web-based and native clients for Twitter on nearly all platforms. Not only does mobileTwitter look better than most desktop twitter apps I’ve tried, but it puts a twitter client where you need it most: on your phone.

Twittering via SMS always seemed like a 20th century way of doing things and mobileTwitter lets you get your Twitter fix on your iPhone in style.

Nice touch: Once you’ve updated your status, mobileTwitter transitions the view back to your updated list of tweets. Now that’s good UI design.

mobileTwitter blog

3. Tris

Okay, so it’s Tetris.

But it’s touch-enabled, drop-dead gourgeous, touch-interface Tetris! Tris has a sleek look that’s mildly reminiscent of Simon Härtel’s excellent Quinn:

Tap the screen to change block-shape, move them across the screen with the touch of a finger and swipe down to drop them into position. (Bonus tip: swipe up to cheat and move the piece back up a bit). Simple, stylish and a perfect iPhone timekiller.

Tris Project website