David and Katie talk about their favorite Mac Apps that are Five dollars or less.
There’s also an After Dark episode following the show where David and Katie talk about their new MacBooks. You can find that on the 5by5 site or subscribe to the new Show + After Dark feed.
Please support our sponsors:
1Password
Have you ever forgotten a password? Now you don’t have to worry about that anymore.
DaisyDisk
Manage your Mac’s drive with panache.
Hover
Domain names made simple.
Links of note
1Password and LaunchBar
Grammar Girl
SCOtutor
Moom – Many Tricks
Twitterrific
Osfoora
Tweetbot for Mac confirmed
ClamXav
Palua
Jettison
QuickCursor
GrowlVoice
iCleanMemory
Skitch
Marked
QuickCal
Caffeine
Evernote
MiStat
Mouseposé
CrashPlan Backup Software
Mouseposé
Audiobook Builder
Apptivate
Dockless
Mactracker
Levelator
DragonDrop
Rogue Amoeba – SoundSource
Why Brainstorming Sucks
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:14:19 — 34.5MB)
The “Dockless” link is missing. The link went to a MobileMe iWeb site.
Same results here. Apparently the developer was hosting the app on Mobile Me and has been paying attention to its shutdown. I haven’t looked very hard yet, but I can’t find a mirror of Dockless anywhere.
That should be: “hasn’t been paying attention”.
Fortunately I still have Dockless installed on one of my Macs. I’ve zipped it up and put it on my Dropbox public folder. Feel free to grab it at:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/169813/Dockless.zip
Hi Donald,
Grabbed Dockless from your link. Thanks!
Donald, thank you so much for the Dockless link !!
Katie.. You can use launchbar to eject volumes using the action “eject all ejectable volumes”. Also if you combine it with Keyboard Maestro you can eject volumes when closing down.
I have a problem with too menu menubar items on my 11 inch air.An amazing recent app I have discovered which is free and in beta is “bartender”. This basically hides the menubar items in its own icon.It is really excellent.
My list of favorites is
Moom
Cobook
Growl
Grandview (David you might like this.Basically a massive text texteditor)
Cookie
Ditto – another thumbs up for Bartender. Very clean menu bar–only see Evernote and Bartender (don’t know why it doesn’t sweep Evernote into its grasp).
Best
Show
Ever……
A couple of other under-$5 recommendations:
— iAudioConverter: a great app for converting to and from any audio format. I used to use iTunes for conversion but didn’t like cluttering my playlist. You can even drop movie files on it to extract audio and it handles Dolby Digital and DTS perfectly. It’s in the App Store.
— FiveLive: free app for listening to 5by5! Includes notifications when your favourite shows go live. In the App Store.
This one is more than $5 but I had to mention it:
— iFlicks: my favourite app in the App Store. Give it any video file and it will automatically find and add metadata, convert to a polished .m4v iTunes and Apple TV compatible format and import to your iTunes library. It’s perfect if you’re ripping DVDs or Blu Rays to your Mac. And, even better, with its ‘iTunes compatible’ preset it intelligently avoids re-encoding .mkv or .mp4 files if they already contain H.264 video, so you get super fast conversions that beat Handbrake by orders of magnitude in terms of speed. And it comes with a folder action to automatically convert and import any video file you add to a folder of your choice. I love it.
re: ClamXav
To Katie and David:
There are two main reasons to run AV on your Mac, and you need the ClamXav “Sentry” Module to do both effectively.
You know, the Sentry module the Mac App Store’s dumb rules exclude. So go get your ClamXav from the developer. Link: http://www.clamxav.com/download.php
The first reason to have an AV program is to protect your own system. Mostly from bad stuff that can arrive via the internet. How do you get bad stuff from the internet? You explicitly download it, you get it by “drive by download” you never intend, and frequently via email.
The point of Sentry is to check arriving downloads before they can sneak into your system. Thus if you are careful to set all your browsers to put any downloads in the same Downloads folder, then set Sentry to watch that folder, you have some protection.
If you download email to your local system, say using Apple’s Mail.App, you’ll want Sentry to monitor your Mail Folders.
Since we all inevitably drag images from the internet to your desktops, it’s also necessary to set Sentry to monitor the desktop.
That’s it. When a file downloads, Sentry does its thing. You won’t even notice. Hey, I sometimes double check a download by invoking ClamX from the Services menu. Checking even a large DMG is fast.
I don’t have ClamX do scans of the system. I just watch downloads and desktop. If I were downloading mail to a local folder, I’d watch that. Since it isn’t doing anything in the background other than watching two or three designated folders for new arrivals, there’s hardly any system load.
(Though I bet you’d have to be careful how fast Hazel renames and moves files).
I should mention there’s ways your Mac can get infected other than the internet. Intego, before I removed it and replaced with ClamX, found a virus lurking on a Windows program I was installing from CD into a Parallels VM. Apple once distributed a flotilla of new iPods infested with Windows viruses. Your friend (or David, your kids friends) might drop by with a load of viruses they don’t know are on their USB sticks. You can adjust Sentry’s settings to protect against all.
Then there’s the last reason to have AV. Those Windows viruses in Katie’s mail “blob.”
Friends don’t send viruses to friends. ClamXav might save you from innocently re-sending a friend a virus, and, yes, we all have friends, co-workers, and even clients running Windows.
And there’s always the possibility that Windows virus you send will infest a VM, or a BootCamp Mac—
I use ClamX. The way I use it doesn’t slow even my oldest and slowest Mac.
Did I mention it is free? Donate!
I liked this episode. The pace was better and I like the app recommendations. I purchased Audiobook Builder. I didn’t know it existed and am glad to have it. Overall, I would encourage you to do more episodes like this but to have a zippier pace.
Thanks for the great show ( I think “great show” and “MacPowerUsers” is tautologic).
On iPhone and iPad I often use Osfoora as twitter app. On my MacBook most of the times I use YoruFukurou (Japanese for “nightowl”). Very comfortable. And for free.
Confessions of an App Junkie
Fun shows guys. I was really hoping I would have some cool apps to share and was a bit surprised Katie mentioned Growl Voice. I’ve been using it for quite some time and never thought anyone else knew about it! I dislike typing on my little iPhone keyboard and prefer getting notified of text messages through Growl.
I do have a treat for you guys and Katie you should love this with that external display. It’s a free app called “Second Bar” that gives you a second menu bar on your external monitor. I couldn’t live without it at this point so I hope that helps someone else.
I love your sponsor Daisy Disk. I got there app the first time they sponsored MPU. I’ve been managing multiple Macs lately and 1Password and Daisy disk have been a big help. I also love the “Rename It” app that Dave mentioned in Paperless. Also, I use Free Memory Pro to free up RAM and I’m with you on noticing a difference. No one ruin it for us!
I’m an old Audio Hijack user so I stumbled into Sound Source but there is another audio app I really love. It lives in your menu bar and it’s called You Control Tunes. It’s free although they do ask for an e-mail to register but it lets you control your iTunes playlist right from the menu bar. More specifically, you can go to the previous, pause, play, skip ahead or click a little dropdown menu to surf your library. It also has settings to create these nice looking overlays that are not very distracting growl-sih) that tell you the song an the artist info. Sound Cloud is another good free music app if you want to check out music from independent artists. I’ve even got some stuff on there…won’t tell you where though.
I use the heck out of Candy Bar. There’s another fun app called Folders Factory that is similar on the sense of, both really just for icon geekery.
I keep Flash Frozen in my Menu Bar. There a really lightweight and awesome package tracker brilliantly named Package Tracking by Flip Level. I don’t use it that often. But when I need do, I’m glad it pulls up quick and gets out of my way quick as well.
I think donating $5 to Brett Terpstra and downloading some Markdown Service tools etc. should count as some good less then $5 apps.
I’ve been using that Flux App that handles monitor temperature, and had a good experience with Contacts Cleaner by Spanning Sync but I’m not sure if that cost 5 or 10.
I grabbed a copy of “ringer” to make ringtone easily and the next one I have in the cue to play with is called Cheat Sheet. It’s suppose to give you all the key commands for whichever app your in so I guess we will wait and see.
You guys should definitely do a similar episode on iPhone and iPad. I’m loving the Pomadoro timer.
It’s crazy how we get to have all this fun and there are still people out there who insist on banging there heads against the wall using the platform of which we do speak.
Thanks for 92 awesome episodes.
Regarding David’s questions about excluding his grocery lists from his Daily OmniFocus perspectives: it’s not an elegant solution, but I have a separate folder for my lists (grocery list, movies to see, wish list, etc), and my equivalent of a daily perspective as focus on all folders except for the list folder. I then have a perspective with focus on just the grocery list for when I am out doing errands.
As a brief aside, I have always preferred Divvy to Moom, though they seem to do fairly similar things. Maybe it was just using Divvy first and being more comfortable with it.
Though I am a fan of OmniDiskSweeper I gave DaisyDisk a try. It looks great and it is easy to use. As long as you are not a Shortcut-Keyboard addict (like I am). Navigating through all the lists with a cursor up/down and marking several files at a time is something I miss. But I bought it after Oleg told me that they will work on this “one day”.
Instead of Jettison, I’ve found Eject Volume to be great. I prefer to keep my menubar prime real estate and so I use a dashboard widget. Link below:
http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/status/ejectvolume.html
Great show. More like this please.
One cheap app I’d mention is Type2Phone – connects your Mac to your iOS device so you can use your computer keyboard to type on your iPhone/iPad. Useful if you have your phone next to your computer, you get a message, fire up this app and then you can type a reply using the Mac keyboard you’re already using.
Some FU on the After Dark on the Retina MBP, Katie was asking why anyone would move from the default resolution setting.
I think there is a misconception about the display on the Retina Pros. At the default setting, while everything (optimised) looks incredibly crisp, you only get the equivalent of 1440×900 in screen real estate. So you don’t get much on screen. In fact you get no more on screen than you did on the normal MBPs or on the 13″ Airs; it just looks better.
So using the other settings allows you to get more screen real estate. To me, though, there is a noticeable drop-off in quality once you move away from the the default setting. This is the compromise of the new screens – better quality or more space.
Dockless isn’t available at the link!
Is there anywhere I can find it? Or is there a similar app out there? This is something I need.
With the close of MobileMe, it looks like the Dockless link is now dead. Unfortunately all attempts to search for Dockless in Google just point back to this same dead link. The good news is that after searching all of my machines, I luckily happen to have Dockless installed on one of them. So I’ve zipped it up and have put it on my Dropbox. Feel free to grab it at:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/169813/Dockless.zip
After installing Mountain Lion, it appears that Dockless no longer works at all. I closed an app, dragged it into Dockless’s “Simple” window where Dockless told me it would no longer appear in the Dock. Launched the app, and there it was back in my dock.
Looks like we need another method. Katie; you said you run with a nearly empty Dock. What are you doing under Mt. Lion?
It works for me, but I haven’t used it in simple mode. It hasn’t been updated for a while, so I agree it’s time to start looking for alternatives. Any Devs out there looking for a project?
A free alternative to Mouseposé is Omni’s OmniDazzle (it works pretty well). I don’t use ClamXav, I use Sophos for anti-virus. They have a free version for non-commercial use. A cheaper alternative to Jettison is unDock,
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/undock/id402359583?mt=12
It doesn’t have the sleep features, but it just unmounts all connected disks. I found it long before I heard of Jettison.
Hey Guys,
Yet another great show. You mentioned many of my personal favorites. (It’s my vice, these cheap yet rather useful apps)
I’d like to draw your attention to another gem I’ve found lately and have been messing around with. Control Plane (http://www.controlplaneapp.com/)
To sum it up, it’s basically context sensitive computing.
You set up 1 or more contexts, and there are various ways of doing it and then setup actions for when a context is triggered.
I’ve got it set the default printer for when I’m at work or home, open certain work apps when I get to work, open OpenDNS updater when I’, at home etc.
It’s a great time saver and best of all it’s free!!!
Hope you find it useful too
Cheers,
Pedro
Forgot to mention, another cool alternative to jettison if Clean My Drive (by the guys that brought us Clean My Mac).
It’s free and super useful!
Cheers,
Pedro
Hope more apps are updated for retina display soon. Had a look in my Applications folder for some of my favourite Apps:
mplayer2 freeware video playing app – it is much better for subtitles than VLC.
http://code.google.com/p/mplayerosx-builds/
Sadly it is not retina display yet, so it looks fuzzy compared to watching video in iTunes.
Appfresh – for updating non-MAS apps
aTMonitor – similar to Activity Monitor
Booksmart – software by blurb.com to make blurb books
Capster – uses Growl to show when you press Caps Lock
Checksum+ – checks file hashes
MediaInfo – tells you what h.264 profile a video has been made in
Metronome Plus – MAS that is a metronome
XLD – for converting FLAC to Apple Lossless, it is so fast.
nvALT – favourite text app
Moom is $10. Not sure if this was a recent change or not.
Great show.
You asked for feedback as to whether you could run a show like this more often.
Personally, I found the show too long. I would prefer to see you have a pick each at the end of each show maybe before the feedback.
Maybe even do it only once a month for $5 apps. And rotate with other themes for the rest of the month. i.e. week 1 $5 apps, week 2 utilities(including pref pane apps, week 3 iOS apps, week 4 – internet services and online apps.
Just a thought
Just a quick note on your sponsors “Hover” I transferred a while ago and they’re rad. But what makes them truly rock in my opinion is that if you google “transfer domain hover” the first unpaid result is “How to transfer your domain to hover: by hover.com. Cool, yeah, nothing special there, but the second unpaid result is “How to transfer your domain away from hover” by hover.com.
If your talking about cool guys in the usually skanky world of domain management, I don’t think there’s a much better advertisement than that.
ANyway, I’m a happy customer and thought I’d share.
MPU 092: Five Bucks
I liked this show.
Also check out for dups song sergeant itunes and PhotoSweeper for iPhoto
I tried all the competitors for itunes and song sergeant is the best. It does way more than just dups. Very fast too.
I couldn’t figure out how to leave a comment for this show.
I think you guys talked about this one too. I may try it if the price goes down a bit.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/gemini-the-duplicate-finder/id463541543?mt=12
Loved the show, but then I’ve loved every one I’ve listened to. To follow up on the brief Crashplan discussion, I’d appreciate a show on backup configurations and practices. I use Time Machine with an external HD to back up each of my Mac Mini and MacBook Air, but after listening to discussions on a few of your shows, I get the impression that this is woefully inadequate.