For years, one of the most popular OS X FTP applications has been Transmit. Panic’s FTP workhorse is so well regarded and robust, it’s engine was even chosen by Apple to power the FTP upload feature built-in to iWeb.
But OS X has gone through a lot of changes since Transmit 3 was first introduced and the app is starting to show its age. Enter Transmit 4!
This latest update adds a completely new user interface, innovative new features like Transmit Disk as well as a slew of customisation options. I was fortunate enough to be a beta tester for version 4, so I’ve had a few weeks to play with the new version – here are some of my thoughts.
New UI
Panic is know for their sleek user interface design and attention to detail and Transmit 4 is no exception. First off, the biggest change of them all: A NEW TRUCK!
But the logo isn’t all that has been refreshed: The entire app feels brand new. Most UI elements have been given a 2010 update and the interface feels a lot tidier.
You start off with a list of your configured servers that uses a sleek black look that was made popular by apps such as Pixelmator, CoverScout 3 and SongGenie(disclaimer – I work for equinux).
You can choose an icon for your servers, or use the server favicon
Selecting a server puts you into a familiar file browsing mode – more on that below:
Buttons and features are usually exactly where you would expect to find them and unobtrusive animations and pretty icons round out the package and give the app a nice touch of Panic personality. Here are a few bits of eye candy I noticed during testing:
Progress indicator
Breadcrumb navigation
Nice use of icons in the replace dialog makes it clear which file you need to replace
File Browsing, Places & Quick Look
An FTP client fundamentally has two jobs: show me my remote files and allow me to move files between my local and remote storage. To accomplish that, an FTP application has to replicate a lot of the functionality of a regular file browser, so users can browser their local files as well as their remote files.
Transmit 4 offers single and dual file-browser layouts, (rearrangable!) tabs and the icon, llist, column and cover flow viewing styles you are familiar with from the Finder. But it also has a few additional tricks up its sleeve, that you won’t find in the Finder.
Here are some of the more interesting file browsing options:
Folders above Files changes the sort order, so that folders are always displayed before your files in a view
Quick Look makes it easy to see a file’s content and even works with remote files stored on your FTP server
Places can store shortcuts to your most frequently used folders, so they are just a click away. You can also drag files to a Place shortcut.
Places give you quick access to commonly used folders.
Places is really useful, but the way you add locations by dragging them to the breadcrumb area is a bit unconventional. Once you’ve figured it out though, it quickly became one of my favourite Transmit 4 features.
Transmit 4 offers enough view options to suit almost anyone’s preferred file browsing style. Whether you perfer to work with multiple windows, tabs, split layouts, column view etc – Transmit 4 has got you covered. While it’s debatable whether most users need so many options, file browsing habits are usually so ingrained that it was probably a good idea for Panic to include as many options as they could.
DockSend, Droplets, TransmitDisk and more…
Most of the time, I find myself uploading files to the same place over and over again. Transmit has a number of ways that give you an easy way to send a file to your FTP server straight from the finder:
Drag it to a custom droplet you can create in Transmit 4
Enable Docksend and you can drag it directly to the Transmit 4 icon in your Dock
Turn on TransmitDisk…
TransmitDisk is a nifty new feature, that uses MacFUSE to allow you to mount your FTP server as a volume that the Finder can see. Once mounted, you can interact with your FTP folders like you would with a drive on your local network.
In my experience this worked fairly well, but occasionally felt a little bit more sluggish than using Transmit’s own file browser – but your mileage may vary.
Conclusion
Overall this is a great upgrade to an already very useful application. The new features are well thought out and make working with your FTP server a lot easier and faster. While this isn’t a revolutionary upgrade, it is solid enough to make it worth your while.
If you use your Mac professionally, chances are you often find yourself typing out certain bits of text over and over again. Whether it’s a URL, a file path or email snippets, typing these snippets over and over again can waste a lot of time. That’s where utilities such as Keyboard Maestro come in handy: they allow you to define keyboard shortcuts that will type out phrases or execute commands for you.
Unlikea more general-use utilities such as LaunchBar or Quicksilver, Keyboard Maestro is designed primarily for text manipulation and keyboard shortcuts rather than general purpose file system actions and macros. Having said that, it can also replicate some of the functionality those programs offer as well, giving it a bit of an advantage over more basic text replacement tools such as Typinator or TextExpander.
Performance
If there’s one thing you need your text-replacement utility to do, it’s reliable text replacement. You want it to work immediately, regardless of which application you’re working in. If it causes any extra delay, it would interrupt your thought and you would probably be quicker off typing things out yourself.
Keyboard Maestro performed very well in this regard and worked instantly every time, regardless of which every application I tested it with.
Advanced Commands
Once you’ve become accustomed to basic text replacement, you start thinking about more advanced things.
I for instance use a number of text replacements that allow me to create URLs based on file paths I’ve copied. So by copying the path “/images/example.jpg”, I can simply type the shortcut “..imgloc” to turn that file path into the URL “http://jetplanejournal.com/posts/images/example.jpg“.
But Keyboard Maestro can also trigger non-text events, such as mouse movements, system events (e.g. volume, disk ejects etc.) open URLs etc. The Keyboard Maestro website has a number of ideas and suggestions to help you optimize your workflow.
But there’s more…
So Keyboard Maestro is a text replacement utility, a keyboard hotkey tool and a time saver. What other tricks does it have up its sleeve?
Well, it can also:
Store your clipboard history and manage multiple clipboards
Remote control your Mac from your iPhone using its built-in macro trigger webserver
Run regular scripts and jobs for you
Record GUI-based scripts
Gripes
Keyboard Maestro is a very powerful utility, but manages to be easy to use thanks to a fairly simple and straightforward interface. However, the UI could do with a little bit of extra polish here and there and one or two Macros that are enabled by default may be confusing:
Some of the icons could be more obvious, e.g. you enable and disable macros by clicking a (stateless) check mark. A “no entry” icon is used for delete instead of the conventional “—” icon.
To finish editing a new macro, you can either close the actions pane, or click the “+” icon, neither of which is particularly obvious.
By default, Option+backspace is remapped to forward delete, which left me scratching my head for a few seconds, as I generally use that shortcut to delete entire words.
Similarly, Ctrl+Tab is remapped to Keyboard Maestro’s own application window switching function (which is similar to the Dock expose feature in Snow Leopard) – I use that shortcut extensively to switch between tabs in Safari.
But these are all minor gripes that won’t annoy you at all once you have everything set up the way you want, so I offer them mainly as feedback to the developer.
What about the tools built-in to OS X?
I know a lot of users prefer to use the tools and functionality built-in to OS X whenever possible, so you might ask what’s wrong with those tools…
Well, although text substitution service has been beefed up significantly in 10.6, it’s still lacking the customizablity you’ll find in utilities such as Keyboard Maestro. You could also replicate a lot of the functionality in Automator, but in my experience, Automator is so slow to execute a command, it’s not worth the effort.
Conclusion
Keyboard Maestro is a great utility for anyone that spends a lot of time working with text on their Mac. Whether you might be thinking of using it to help you quickly answer repetitive email, create blog posts or just to map certain mouse-based actions to a keyboard shortcut, it’s definitely worth checking out.
I’ve tried a number of similar utilities, but in terms of extendability and scope, Keyboard Maestro seems to take the cake. At $36, it’s not cheap for a utility, but considering the time it’ll help you save I think it’s a fair price. I’d recommend you try it out and see how well it could fit into your daily workflows. A free demo is available.
Recommended.
Disclaimer: Peter Lewis, maker of Keyboard Maestro kindly provided me with a license for this review. All opinions are however, of course my own.
I’ve been using my original iPhone since early 2008 and use it every single day. But the iPhone isn’t necessarily the right phone for everyone: The pricy contracts, issues with carrier coverage, a preference for physical keyboards or an objection to Apple’s App Store policies are all reasons some users are looking to alternatives.
Take Germany for example. The iPhone is only available with a 2-year T-Mobile contract. The contracts T-Mobile Germany offers are significantly more expensive than comparable contracts from other providers, so alternatives such as the Palm Pre have received a fair amount of interest. In the US, the situation is similar, but it is primarily AT&T’s poor network performance that has customers looking at alternatives.
So the Pre might be less expensive and on a carrier with better coverage than the iPhone – but can Palm match the great overall user experience Apple offers?
Disclaimer: I received a 10-day loan of a Palm Pre review unit with Touchstone charger from O2 Germany to review, which was returned at the end of the review period. I received no other compensation and the opinions stated reflect my honest impressions. Having said that, if you like this review you can save a few bucks, support the site and buy your Palm Pre at Amazon.
The short version
There’s a lot to like about the Pre: Multitasking, the quick-launch bar, the messaging application and background notifications are just some features that I would welcome on the iPhone. Occasional slowdowns, poor build quality, a tiny keyboard and the smaller number and somewhat simpler nature of 3rd party apps means the Pre is just shy of being a true iPhone alternative. Here are my top pros and cons for both devices:
Unboxing
Your initial experience of opening a product can set the tone for your overall impression. Apple’s attention to detail really shows in this area and Palm’s legion of ex-Apple employees seem to have brought this thinking with them to Palm: The Pre comes in a sleek white box that is very clean and uncluttered. This packaging is somewhat marred though by the plastic wrapper with specs that O2 insists on wrapping it in. When you first turn on the device, you’re forced to create a Palm Profile before you can start using the device. The Pre then launches an interactive tutorial, that shows you how to navigate around its interface and explains some of the gestures. This is important, as WebOS requires the user to use gestures to navigate back through menus.
A nice mood-video completes the initial setup and does a good job of leaving the user with a good first impression of the device.
Hardware
The device itself looks very attractive: the screen is flush with the body and the glossy black plastic enclosure is quite fetching. The back same glossy plastic is used on the default battery cover, which feels slightly slippery in your hand. Luckily, this can be swapped for the Touchstone-enabled back, which has a rubberized matte finish, that looks and feels much nicer. You can’t see where the screen ends and the housing begins when the screen is switched off, which gives the front a very smooth look. When closed, the Pre is a very nice size and fits nicely into your hand and most pockets.
Build quality
The single button on the front of the device has a nice “clickiness” to it, but the other the physical buttons on the device are all very mushy and feel extremely cheap (the power button is particularly nasty). For a phone with this price tag, these buttons feel almost unacceptably junky. Luckily you won’t need them very often though.
The Pre’s slide-out keyboard is hidden by a sliding hinge mechanism, which is easy to open in one hand. When the keyboard is hidden though, the screen can be wobbled slightly – quite the contrast to the iPhone’s sturdy fit and finish.
The Pre’s USB connector is hidden behind a small plastic cover on the side of the device. The cover is flush with the rest of the casing, but this does make it a bit fiddly to open. Since you’ll need to open the cover quite a bit to charge the device (more on battery life later), I’d definitely recommend investing in the Touchstone wireless charger instead, to save yourself the hassle.
Other Hardware Details
The device uses one of the various micro-USB connectors that you see on consumer electronics instead of a regular mini-USB jack. This means your existing USB cables probably won’t fit. If you plan on transferring media to the device on a regular basis, I’d recommend buying a second USB cable, as you’ll also need one to charge your Pre.
The standard 3.5mm headphone jack is nice. The Pre also comes with a wired headset, complete with a clicker for accepting calls and pausing or skipping music. The earbuds have little magnets on the side, so you can stick them together when not in use, which should help prevent the cord from tangling. The sound quality doesn’t quite match Apple’s earbuds though and the headset feels fairly cheap overall. Still, it’s nice to have and I hope we’ll see third party accessory makers offering compatible headsets in future.
Keyboard and typing
One feature many smartphone users would like to see on the iPhone is a physical keyboard. I’ve only ever used T9 text input on a regular phone keypad, so the iPhone keyboard was actually a welcome step up for me and I had high hopes for the Pre.
The keyboard is fairly tiny, so it actually offers less typing space than the iPhone’s on-screen keyboard whilst the width of the keys is about the same. The only way I was able to accurately hit a key reliably, was by using the very tip of my thumb, which slows you down a bit. On the iPhone, I can just type away and worry less about hitting each key exactly. I also feel that typing special characters, such as an apostrophe, comma or period slows things down as well: the iPhone usually autocompletes these, or has a shortcut. On the Pre, you have to hunt for the modifier key first. With some autocomplete intelligence built-in, the keyboard would be far better.
To give you an idea of how fast I was able to type, here’s a short comparison video – but bear in mind that I have much more practise typing on the iPhone:
WebOS
When Palm announced the Pre, the OS is what had everyone most excited. Palm had been floundering for years with several failed new OS projects, none of which were ever released. Palm OS was long overdue for an overhaul, but few people believed Palm would be able to produce anything to match the iPhone in the near future. Palm responded with WebOS – an entire mobile operating system built on web technologies and designed for a multi-touch interface.
WebOS feels quite snappy, but opening apps can be a little bit sluggish at times. This video demonstrates opening the phone app on both phones:
However, in contrast to Apple’s iPhone OS, WebOS is designed to enable application multitasking via it’s “card” metaphor. Open one application and it will take up your entire screen, just like iPhone apps do. But press the home button and the app will zoom out and you can launch another app beside it. You can then switch between two or more apps at any time with a simple press of the home button. Swiping up across a card closes the application.
Here’s multitasking in action:
Swipe and pinch are supported on the Pre just as you would expect from a multitouch device and it even has a few more tricks up its sleeve: Slide your finger up from the area around the home button (the “gesture area”) and you can bring up the Dock-like launch bar, for instant access to your 4 favorite apps. Swiping from right to left across the gesture area will take you back in menus and dialog screens. The back gesture could be a bit sluggish to respond at times and I don’t really a huge advantage over a soft, on-screen back button.
Unlike in the iPhone OS, taps are visualized by a small dot pointer and wave animation, that indicates exactly where you tapped (like a mouse pointer). Certain menu items, such as the wifi options in the menu bar require quite a bit of accuracy to hit, as the targets a quite a bit smaller than a finger. This is compensated somewhat by the visualization of your taps, but Apple’s approach of making every UI element in the iPhone OS finger-friendly is definitely a better solution. I sometimes found tapping UI elements in WebOS a bit challenging.
WebOS is also not quite as responsive as the iPhone OS. Scrolling in lists in just one example of the slight sluggishness you sometimes feel on the device. Overall though the responsiveness is still fairly impressive and the ability to open multiple apps makes up for the occasional slowdown.
My favorite feature in WebOS might be the global search feature. Unlike Spotlight on the iPhone, that requires you to go to the Spotlight home screen, global search doesn’t need any additional steps to get to: just open the keyboard and start typing to search within your applications and contacts. If no results are found on your phone, WebOS will offer to search Google, Google Maps, Wikipedia and Twitter.
Phone and contacts
The phone application is fine and the on-screen number pad for dialing without the physical keyboard is very useable. You can easily access your contacts and voicemail as well. Speaking of contacts, one of Palm’s heavily touted features is “Synergy” – the ability to sync and merge contacts from multiple sources. If you sign into your Google and Facebook accounts, those contacts will be displayed in a single unified list. Depending on how tidy you keep your Facebook contact list, this feature may vary in its usefulness.
Messaging
This is a bit of a mixed bag. Similar to the “Synergy” feature for your contacts, the Pre displays SMS text messages and IM messages in a single application. This makes a lot of sense, but can be confusing at first. Overall AIM and text messaging worked pretty well though and it definitely beats the iPhone, which doesn’t offer IM support at all out of the box.
Mail
The mail application is fairly basic. It has a nice “favorite” feature, that allows you to create shortcuts to your most frequently used mail folders. But it lacks batch move and delete commands you’ll find on the iPhone. It does have more advanced attachment capabilities though, so you can grab documents, videos, audio files or pictures and attach them to any mail message. On the iPhone, you’ll need to go to the respective application and either copy & paste your attachment, or select the email option in the app.
Connectivity and browsing
The iPhone 2G only has EDGE (which is fairly slow), so I mostly stick to RSS readers and dedicated apps for mobile data access on the iPhone. Apps such as Netnewswire, Facebook or Tweetie have little overhead and load data fairly quickly – even on an EDGE connection. But browsing the web is usually too slow on EDGE to be of much use, so I was interested to see how much fast browsing over 3G on the Pre is. Truth be told I was slightly disapointed: webpages still took quite a long time to load and the browser is slightly more sluggish than the iPhone, so it wasn’t the leap forward I had hoped it would be.
The browser itself is webkit-based (as is WebOS itself) and is quite snappy. Scrolling isn’t quite as smooth as on the iPhone, but overall it’s a very capable mobile webbrowser.
Battery life
I was asked by several iPhone 3G and 3GS users if the Pre’s battery life is any better than the notoriously power-hungry iPhone with 3G enabled. Whilst I don’t have exact measurements, I’d have to say probably not. My original iPhone can go about 2 days without a charge, but the Pre was usually nearing empty at the end of the day (and was probably being used less than I use my iPhone during that time). You could argue the Pre has an advantage due to its user-replaceable battery, but honestly for day-to-day use you don’t really want to have to rely on battery swaps. It is nice to know that when the battery reaches the end of its useable life, you can easily pop in a new one though.
Third party applications
Palm includes a handful of common apps with the Pre, but you can also download & install additional apps via the Palm App Catalog. The Catalog currently only has about 1000 apps, but you’ll already find apps for a lot of popular sites and services. I downloaded apps for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, weather, music services etc. and found them all to be quite useable. Strangely enough, the App catalog has a lot of subcategories, despite some of them being empty. I understand this may be due to regional restrictions, but it does seem as though the subcategories are far too detailed considering most general categories often only had a handful of apps.
The apps that were available all felt slightly less sophisticated than comparable iPhone applications – Facebook can only display and post to your news feed for example, as opposed to the near-complete experience its iPhone counterpart offers. The twitter applications I tried were similarly limited. Most of the time, they offered the main functionality I was looking for though, so they serve their purpose. The WebOS SDK is also less mature than Apple’s iPhone SDK (don’t forget, it is already in its third iteration), so I’d expect to see the apps improve in future. But by design, WebOS will only ever offer an experience comparable to a web app (but as webapps become increasingly sophisticated, this limitation will become less significant).
Background notifications
Since 3rd party applications can run in the background on WebOS, it doesn’t need the klutzy push notification system you’ll find on the iPhone to send you messages or updates that you receive whilst using another app. Notifications appear along the bottom edge of the screen and tapping a notification will open the corresponding app. Occasionally I also received notifications for applications that I had closed, but I guess that feature is limited to Palm’s own Mail and Messaging applications.
Syncing
This is one area that Palm doesn’t really compete in at all. While the Pre launched with iTunes compatibility, a few iTunes updates soon put a stop to that practice, so the Pre now only shows up as a regular mass-storage device. You can easily drag music, videos and images to the corresponding folders on the device, but that still leaves you with no way to manage applications, podcasts, purchases etc. I know some users prefer the ability to manually manage content on a device, but I think nowadays most users will prefer the iPod-like syncing offered on the iPhone.
Overall
The Pre is a great phone. But is it better than the iPhone? I’d have to say no. Launching apps and most UI interactions feel quite a bit more sluggish on the Pre than on the iPhone (and remember – I’m comparing it to my original iPhone, which is considerably slower than the new 3GS). Whilst this isn’t a huge deal breaker, it does emphasize that most other smartphones can’t match the overall quality of presentation the iPhone OS offers. Web OS is very pretty and there’s plenty of love and polish on display – but it’s just not quite as polished as iPhone OS.
The apps are also just slightly less sophisticated, which seems at odds with the slightly more advanced gestures and multitasking support in WebOS. It’s a geekier, sleeker smartphone, but the apps seem better suited to less demanding casual users.
If the iPhone isn’t an option for you, the Pre is a great device. It has a lot of the features that make the iPhone special and is almost definitely a step up from your current phone. But if I had to choose, the iPhone is still an easy pick.
Digital photography has made it easier for us all to take hundreds of near-perfect shots. But digital photography lacks some of the elements that made each photo taken with an analog camera unique. The type of film, processing techniques and photo-paper used all contributed to give each image a distinctive look.
CameraBag, by Nevercenter, gives digital photography enthusiasts an easy way to introduce some of that flavour back into their photography. Like its iPhone sibling (App Store link), CameraBag Desktop is designed to be straightforward and easy-to-use: Instead of presenting users with a confusing number of options, exposure settings, histograms and color profiles, CameraBag has 9 styles, that can all be applied with a single click.
The styles are based on a mix of classic analog cameras and media formats. The manual describes as such:
Helga: Square-format toy camera with washed-out highlights and old-school vignetting.
Lolo: Shoot from the hip and take life as it comes with vibrant, colorful shots.
Mono: Smooth, refined, balanced black and white
1962: Dynamic, high-contrast black and white from the photojournalism of a bygone era.
Colorcross: Hazy, chemical color-swapping straight from the darkroom.
Instant: No need to shake this instant-developing film.
1974: Your father’s camera: faded, tinted, and hip.
Cinema: Dramatic, moody coloring with a widescreen aspect ratio.
Magazine: Rich tones for glossy pages.
Once you’ve dragged your image into the main window, apply one of the styles by simply clicking its preview thumbnail. Each style will crop your image and apply a variety of filters. You can also mix & match styles by checking the “multi-filter” option. This will allow you to apply multiple styles on top of each other, creating distinctive looks and styles. If you want to start over, simply click the “original” thumbnail, to discard all applied styles.
CameraBag also applies a crop and border to your image, based on your style. If you prefer, you can also pick these manually though, allowing for even more image variations. If one of the styles doesn’t suit your taste, you can also “Reprocess” an image to see variations of that style. If a style produces an image that is too dark or lacking in contrast, reprocessing your picture will often deliver a much better result, so if you’re not happy with the way a photo turns out, try reprocessing it!
Some styles may not be everyone’s cup of tea, and I found myself using some more often than others. But most styles do a really good job of adding some flavour to your images.The CameraBag Photo Blog has some great examples of the kinds of results you can achieve, with nice before/after comparisons.
The UI is nicely laid out and very easy to use (although I’m not quite sure why the designers found it necessary for a user to “turn on” reprocessing). EDIT: @CameraBag clarifies:
“[...] reprocess auto-enables when clicked. It’s more about the off switch to get back to each filter’s signature look”
Styles are applied nearly instantaneously and while you’re finding the right style for your images the application feels very fast. Rotating and saving images causes a slight bit of delay, but both are extremely minor. For those who enjoy a good manual with their software, Nevercenter includes a detailed PDF guide, which I personally find a lot more useful than trying to find information with OS X’s built-in help system.
Overall CameraBag is a great and affordable way to liven up your shots. It’s an interesting new type of photo stylizer that works well as a complementary tool to traditional photo editing applications such as iPhoto or Picasa.
Available for just $19, it’s a must-have for every wannabe photographer.
Belkin’s latest version of their popular 7-port hub has been redesigned and adds cable management features. This review will take a look at the changes, design and performance of Belkin’s latest offering for USB junkies.
Design
The first thing you’ll notice is the design Belkin has chosen for this hub: Its rectangular shape means it’ll take up less space on your desk than previous versions, while retaining the two top ports – useful for USB memory sticks and similar devices. The top ports are also spaced out a bit, so you should be able to connect larger USB devices without any problem as well. The device features an attractive white & blue color scheme – quite a departure from the usual gray, black and silver. Belkin also offer a brown edition of the hub, if white’s not your thing.
Cable Management
At the end of the device Belkin have included a cable loop made out of firm but rubbery plastic The loop can be adjusted slightly, making it easier to cram all your cables inside. The loop allows you to reduce cable clutter, makes for a tidier look and is useful if you need to route one or two of your USB cables to the front of your desk (e.g. for your keyboard). I’m forever losing the business end of my camera’s USB cable behind my desk, so this feature should prove to be very useful.
Build quality
As expected of a device with this price tag, the build quality is great: the materials feel very solid and smooth and even the power brick feels less cheap than other generic power adapters. The cable loop material is thick enough to be reass The only slight issue I encountered: The top USB ports were a little ‘stiff’ at first, making it quite difficult to plug in a regular Apple USB cable. After a few times it did become significantly easier though.
Performance
USB 2.0 obviously has performance rates and limits imposed by the standard itself, so you ask whether performance is an issue at all. Often though, you’ll see reduced throughput if you connect a lot of high-speed devices to a single hub. The 7-port Hub Plus performed tremendously though, even with 2 external harddrives, iPhone, digital camera, Logitech wireless mouse, iMic audio interface and printer connected.
The hub also comes with a power supply. Whilst you can use the hub without power, you’ll need it to use (and charge) devices such as iPhones, iPods or USB-powered harddrives.
Support & Warranty
Belkin offer a lifetime warranty of this device and I was pleased to find a single folded piece of paper with all their technical support numbers in the box. Whilst this may seem like a given, a lot of manufacturers will bury that kind of information of their websites. I don’t expect needing a lot of support with a hub, but it’s still nice to know it’s available.
Conclusion
The hub performs very well and will also help you to reduce some of the cable clutter on your desk. If you have a MacBook, it’s great to be able to just plug in a single USB plug and have access to all of your devices. Whilst more expensive than generic hubs on the market, it’s thought-out form, design and functionality are well worth it.
Podcaster? Screencast creator? Amateur musician? If you’ve ever tried your hand at any of those, you’ve probably found yourself wondering how to record better audio with your Mac. There are many solutions out on the market, but most require a bunch of bothersome cables, fiddling with filters or an audio engineering degree.
Enter the Røde Podcaster: This USB microphone promises to make recording professional-sounding audio with your Mac really simple. But does it live up to the promise?
What’s in the box
The Podcaster comes in a sturdy black box: Apart from the mic itself, you’ll also find a USB A to USB B connector (the kind most printers require but never include), and an adapter ring for connecting the mic to a stand.
Build Quality
The microphone has a solid metal enclosure that gives it considerable heft and weight, but in a really good way. It has a fairly large pickup area that is also protected by the outer casing, which is good as the mic grill is something that is often damaged by knocks or drops on traditional microphone designs.
The adapter screw also doubles as the USB port enclosure and is also entirely made out of metal. This should also do wonders for this mic’s durability, as the stand adapter is often under a lot of strain on mics and can often crack if made out of plastic.
The one minor gripe I have is the headphone volume control on the front of the mic: It’s made out of plastic and feels a bit wobbly and out of place on a mic this well made.
Audio performance
Probably the most important factor when choosing a mic: How good does it actually sound? Røde promise “High quality broadcast sound” and I’m pleased to tell you that the Podcaster delivers. It has an incredible textured sound that gives recordings a “studio” feel. It sounds very accurate without too much treble and produces clean, warm audio.
A normal recording setup requires:
- A mic
- A mixer with preamps and monitoring capabilities
- An audio interface
Whilst there are some solutions out there that can act as an interface as well as a mixer, this mic is so much quicker to get set up: A single cable to your Mac, plug in your headphones and you’re set. Ever tried to record decent audio without hearing yourself? Or without hearing your overall mix? Getting monitoring set up (without a delay!) is usually more trouble than it’s worth – the Podcaster solves that issue nicely and you have zero timing issues.
I’ve created a short audio snippet to give you an idea of the audio quality: Both the voice and guitar heard in this video were recorded with the Podcaster.
Compatibility
The Podcaster works out of the box with OS X: Just connect the USB cable and you’re all set. There are some Windows drivers and applications on the CD that’s included, but you can safely ignore those. Fire up Garageband, select one of the vocal presets and you’re good to go. It also shows up as an audio output device immediately as well.
Tip: Remember to turn off Garageband’s live monitoring feature if you use the Røde as your output device (the mic will already pipe your audio to your headphones) – otherwise you’ll start hearing yourself twice!
Conclusion
The Røde Podcaster is a great microphone for any Mac user. It is well suited to creating podcasts, screencasts, movie voiceovers and even recording music. The build-quality is almost flawless and it offers an ideal feature combination of features for fast and easy recordings.
I’ve found myself quickly recording song ideas and voiceovers, simply because it’s so much less hassle to do so (previously I had been using an interface with a traditional microphone, which usually required extensive setting up and configuration to get decent results).
The Podcaster includes a 10 year guarantee and is available online for around $229 – less than a traditional microphone, audio interface with mixing capabilities would cost you. The convenience and audio quality you get for that price is currently unmatched in my opinion. Highly recommended.
Things, a task-management application for OS X, debuted this year at Macworld after a lengthy public beta. Despite being Cultured Code‘s first foray into the world of task management apps, Things 1.x is an extremely polished, attractive app – but does it actually make you more productive? Read on to find out…
UI & Design
Cultured Code really nailed the visual presentation of Things: The UI is very “mac-like” and looks very nice. Features are easy to discover and UI elements are easily identified.
The list view Things uses to display your tasks feels as though it is very iPhone-inspired does a good job of displaying your tasks and metadata without clutter. Cultured Code make a point of not using the typical column-based layout you see in other apps, and only show the information you’ve entered – not empty columns.
You won’t find any revolutionary UI innovations in Things, but the UI works and is well thought out – far more important in this type of application.
Ease of use
One issue I’ve had with other todo managers in the past has been the barrier of entry: Managing todos is something you can easily do with a pen & paper, so a dedicated application needs to offer functionality beyond that. However: if entering todos is too convoluted and time-consuming, you may question whether it’s worth the effort – particularly if the task isn’t that important, time-consuming or complicated. Task managers can only help you avoid “I’ll get to it in a minute”-syndrome if entering tasks doesn’t become its own chore.
Extremely stripped down managers tend to be too simple – preventing you from adding supplementary information or tags to your tasks. At the other end of the spectrum you have todo managers that are too complicated, overwhelming you with sub-categories and scheduling features – so you end up spending more time managing your tasks than completing them.
Things manages to strike a nice balance between those extremes. You can use it as a simple notepad to scribble down a list of things you need to get done, but you can also set up projects, repeating tasks and areas of responsibility, if you’re so inclined.
Quick Entry
To allow for even quicker task entry, Things offers a Quick Entry hud-panel, that can be activated via a system-wide keyboard shortcut. Tasks added via the panel will be discreetly added to your Inbox, allowing you to continue working on whatever you happen to be doing.
Tagging
Things offers powerful tagging features, offering some features that cause clutter in other task management apps: You can of course just assign regular keywords, but Cultured Code also suggests assigning your tasks time estimates, difficulty ratings and priority levels. Using tags to add that sort of metadata is a very clever way of hiding complexity: Users that don’t need that kind of detail won’t be distracted by those fields cluttering up the task entry interface, but power users still get the features they need.
Adding tags to your tasks is also nicely supported: In addition to iPhone-esque tag autocompletion, Things also intelligently assigns each tag a keyboard shortcut. Just select a task and hit the corresponding letter on your keyboard to tag it. Shortcuts can be edited later on, but by automatically assigning keyboard shortcuts, Things removes another step on your path to productivity.
Syncing
Under preferences, you’ll find syncing options for iCal and a companion iPhone application, which I’ll be reviewing separately soon. Those two options make it simple to get your tasks onto your mobile device, but there’s no built-in support for Mac-to-Mac syncing. But Things does support selecting your own library location, so you can easily set up syncing using a free Dropbox account.
Suitability for students
Students will appreciate the flexibility Things offers: You can choose to create Projects for some more involved courses, or just add your assignments and reading requirements to a semester-specific project or area of responsibility.
For team projects, the ability to delegate certain tasks to teammates is also very useful, helping you to keep track of jobs and follow-up with collaborators if necessary. On campus the iPhone application has proven invaluable, as it allows me to quickly make a note of something I can later follow up with when I sync up with my MacBook.
(And if you think Things is a bit expensive on a student’s budget, be sure to check out Cultured Code’s generous educational pricing offer!)
Hidden gems
While preparing this review, I found myself frequently coming across little points of detail in the application, that just go to show how much attention to detail was paid by the development team:
Ability to print lists with several formatting options
Support for teammates, including iChat status indicators and Address Book integration
Things has definitely helped me get organized and plan out my university assignments, work to-dos, personal projects and other errands. It’s easy to pick up the habit of adding even mundane tasks to your Things inbox and there’s nothing more satisfying than crossing off something you’ve completed.
The intuitive interface makes it easy to enter to dos, but also allows you to focus on certain tasks and plan out your day – something more basic task managers usually don’t offer.
But most important of all: Things stays out of your way and allows you to focus on your tasks and not on managing them, allowing you to get things done.
There have always been a number of decent Bittorrent clients for OS X, however it’s only the last year or two that we’re finally seeing some competition in this area. For the purposes of this shootout I’ve decided to focus only on the clients that are updated semi-regularly. For that reason I haven’t reviewed clients such as BitRocket and Xtorrent, that haven’t been updated since the beginning of 2008.
The candidates
Based on the criteria outlined above, I’ve selected four popular clients that are under active development to compare. All of these clients are free and Leopard compatible.
Transmission
Transmission is a cross-platform client with a clean and simple interface that also boasts a small memory footprint. But underneath the relatively simple UI, there are a range of advanced features for power users as well, including an iPhone optimized web interface that allows you to monitor and manage your torrent downloads remotely.
uTorrent for OS X
uTorrent has been one of the most popular clients for Windows, largely due to its small memory footprint. So when the team announced a Mac version last year, it generated a lot of interest. uTorrent now belongs to BitTorrent Inc. and the Official Client is apparently at least partially based on uTorrent code.
uTorrent for Mac is currently still in beta, but it already supports most of the features that Transmission offers. The UI is sleek and performance is pretty good as well.
The official Bittorrent Client
As mentioned above, the Official Client is based on uTorrent code, so performance should be comparable. However: the UI of the official client is currently still Java based, and its feature-set is quite different as well.
Vuze (formerly known as Azureus)
Vuze easily has the most configuration options of all the clients featured in this roundup, boasting a Firefox-like plugin architecture and media transcoding for popular devices. But all those features do come at a price. The java-based interface stands out like a sore thumb on OS X and even when idle RAM consumption weighs in at a hefty 110MB.
Testing
The clients were compared by their memory footprint, (as far as can be ascertained by a user), feature-set and performance while downloading. The most important criteria – download speed – is also the most difficult to measure as factors such as number of seeders, network congestion etc. all play a role. So for purposes of this review, I downloaded the heavily-seeded Ubuntu 9.0.4 .iso torrent with each client to get an estimate if any app stood out. However the results are only a general indication of performance and shouldn’t be seen as absolute numbers.
The Results
As you can see, the speed results are close, so I’d call that a draw. Transmission and uTorrent are quite close when it comes to memory consumption. A lot of other features are quite comparable, so it mostly comes down to memory consumption and how picky you are about your user interfaces.
And the winner is…
For me personally, Transmission is the ideal balance between feature-richness and performance. Despite it’s cross-platform roots, it’s lightweight and fast, much like uTorrent, but has one or two features that the latter doesn’t. Vuze is great if you’re looking for a feature-packed client, but in my opinion it’s a bit too cluttered and tries to do too much. Both Vuze and the Official Client also a bit slow for my liking, but you might want to check out Vuze for some of it’s more advanced features such as automatic transcoding of video content.
Well, Chrome is here and so far I’m pretty impressed. Although currently only available for Windows (you can’t actually download the Windows version if your browser identifies you as a Mac user – I had to select a Windows user agent for the download page to let me download it) it’s quite snappy, even running under Parallels.
I had no trouble loading any pages and even complex pages such as my netvibes.com customized homepage (which is slow to load on other browsers) seemed to load very quickly (and this was in a virtual machine!).
As many iPhone owners may have noticed, the headset Apple includes with the device is pretty decent and very useful – but the sound quality is just not that great. Other headphones you have may sound better, but don’t offer the handy microphone / clicker functionality of the original.
Enter V-Moda. Despite being relatively new to the Apple accessory industry, their flagship Vibe Duo earbuds for the iPhone seem to be the ideal replacement for Apple’s stock ‘phones…
What’s in the box
The Duo’s are in-ear headphones that are designed to block outside noise and sit just inside your ear canal. They feature an attractive all-metal enclosure and a sturdy fabric-shielded
cable. Apart from “Gunmetal Rouge” (pictured), V-Moda also offer black and chrome versions of the Duos. The main selling point for iPhone users is the built-in mic / clicker that lets you answer calls and skip tracks just like you can with Apple’s headset.
I know a lot of Mac users have been looking for a decent bluetooth mouse for some time now and for whatever reason most manufacturers fail to get some essentials right. Most competitors are either designed only for travel use, lack an on/off switch or gobble through batteries like there’s no tomorrow. (Or in the case of the Apple Wireless Mighty Mouse, they have a scroll-ball that gunks up after a few months of use and is impossible to clean!)
For some years now Microsoft has made pretty decent peripherals and surprisingly enough their Mac support is usually not bad either. The Wireless Laser Mouse 8000 is no exception: Aside from rugged good brushed-metal looks that go great with a Mac Pro or Macbook Pro, the mouse can also be customized to your hearts content using the powerful Microsoft Mouse preference pane. But before we get into details, here’s a rundown of the main features that drew me to the Wireless Laser Mouse 8000:
Features:
- Bluetooth, so you can use your Mac’s internal bluetooth device
(If you enjoyed this review, you can support the site by buying your Metrolite II via my Amazon affiliate link.)
Update – November 10th 2008:
I’ve had a few emails as to whether this case would fit the new aluminum MacBooks as well. Short answer: Definitely. The new MacBook is smaller than the old one and the slightly wider new MacBook Pro should fit with a tiny bit of a squeeze as well.
Full Review
I was able to get hold of a Brenthaven Metrolite II case to take a look at, so this is a review after using it for a few days. Bear in mind I take my Macbook to university or my company Macbook to work on my bike nearly every day, so that’s the usage scenario I’m working with.
First look
This case is mainly designed to carry a Macbook or Macbook Pro around and also has a number of additional compartments for your accessories and other stuff.
Earlier this week I mentioned Times, a new RSS reader for OS X that has been generating some buzz.
Written entirely by 19 yr old Dustin MacDonald it makes extensive use of the latest Leopard technologies for a truly unique but intuitive take on the feed reader concept.
Now that it’s out, here are a few notes after using it for the past 3 days.
Yeah I know – reviewing the “free teaser” version of a Mac shareware application isn’t really the point of having a “lite” version. But everyone needs a little organisation in their lives, right? VoodooPad Lite is a great & free way to start your off in the right direction…
What’s it for?
Everything! If you’re anything like me, you’ll have a hundred little bits of information, clipboard contents, urls, email addresses and short-term todos to keep track of on any given day. Continue reading →
Everyone knows Last.fm right? Y’know those crazy british guys that let you track the songs you’ve played in iTunes and find similar music for you… Well, unfortunately the music player on their website (last.fm radio) is flash based, so it (currently) won’t work on your iPhone.
Never fear! Thanks to “Sam” and his awesome iPhone app, MobileScrobbler, you can now enjoy some Last.fm love on your iPhone. Continue reading →
