After playing around with Hyperspaces there was still one more thing Spaces is missing. Everytime I switch a space it would be nice to have a separate dock for each. Why did Apple never include separate docks for each space? It just seems like such a natural thing to do. For whatever reason, Patrick Chamelo is here to save the day with Dock Spaces.

Dock Spaces. The review begins. 

This app finishes what Apple and Hyperspaces couldn’t do. Dock Spaces has the ability to create up to 10 different docks in which you can assign to each space and even switch them on the fly. It’s great for keeping yourself organized. For instance I have a space for each type of workflow, one for graphics, video editing, and general purpose. Now I’m able to create a dock for each type. My graphics dock for example, has Photoshop, Bridge, iPhoto, and other apps like it. Continue Reading »

Today is a window to your iCal tasks and events. The minimal interface allows you to quickly view your tasks and events for the day, as well as add new ones if you choose. With the update to version 1.5, the developers have included custom alarms and growl support. So without wasting precious internet time, let’s continue on to a very short review of Today 1.5.

Today has a very small footprint on your desktop. The vertical window can however be resized to whatever size you want. On first launch, I was presented with a colour coded set of tasks and events for the day. There was no need for authorisation or syncing of any kind. You can switch which day you are looking at by switching left to right, or directly jump to a date. The tasks pane can also be hidden from view. Also - instead of taking up a dock icon, you can set it to show a show/hide icon in the menubar. And yes, the interface is super-sexy (unlike something that our friends at Redmond created).

Changes made in iCal were reflected instantly in Today — and vice versa. You can add events and Todos directly from Today, using one of the buttons at the bottom. Once you create an event however, editing it must be done in iCal (double-clicking any item opens up iCal).

The preferences provide some additional options like transparency, a global shortcut for showing the Today window, and adding alarm presets.

Unfortunately I’m not an active user of iCal, so I can’t justify the $15 price tag that Today demands. But if it’s the instant access to iCal events that you need, I don’t think you can go wrong with Today. A 10 day trial awaits those who want to check it out.

When Steve Jobs first sat down to introduce us to OS X Leopard during the WWDC conference in 2007, one of the fantastic new features was Spaces. It was showed off as a great way to organize your desktop and was able to act like having several external monitors within one. Since the release of Leopard I’ve found this feature to be incredibly useful. I’m the type of user who has many application windows open at the same time. My workspace gets very cluttered and it’s hard to navigate all the windows even with Expose. Now with spaces I’m able to move each window into new workspaces. It’s a nice feature and it’s something that really sets Mac apart from Windows. Spaces still feels like it’s missing a few features. Hyperspaces helps to remedy one of these problems.

Hyperspaces. The review.

Hyperspaces is the brain child of Tony Arnold, a member of The CocoaBots. Borrowing a few words from the Hyperspaces page,

“the ultimate way to customize your spaces. Customize each and every space the way you want using colors, desktop pictures, text labels and even the name of each space!”

Hyperspaces does exactly as advertised. The app itself sits in you menu bar showing you the name of which space your in. From the bar you can open up the preferences where the real fun begins. The first category has a few basic options, you can launch the app on login (it won’t cause a slow down on you system like a few other apps can *ahem* Bridge *ahem*), you can show the space name in the menu bar, show the desktop backgrounds in the Space Switcher, and you can choose to draw Space labels under the dock. Continue Reading »

For the past two weeks I’ve been struggling to get some sleep. Whether it be insomnia or because I sometimes need to work night shifts - I’m still not sleeping until three in the morning. I decided to look at alternative options, such as drinking warm milk and having a soak in the bath before bed - but then something struck me on the App Store, aSleep [iTunes link].

I hadn’t searched for sleep related applications - it was just there, staring at me. Needless to say I bought it.

A few words about aSleep.
aSleep plays gentle music to help you relax and in my case - fall asleep. aSleep uses natural sounds such as: Nature - Beach, Nature - Beach with Seagulls, Nature - Rain with Thunder (My personal favourite) and Life sounds such as; Heartbeat, Shower, Bubbles and much more.

Here’s a little rundown of aSleep:
- 50 high quality sounds
- Volume slider
- Auto-saves everything from your previous use.

The result: What a brilliant application! After 20 minutes (if not less) I fall into a deep sleep and wake up feeling refreshed. What I like about the app is that my iPod shuts itself off after playing the sounds. There are a few bugs though; the continuous loop sometimes falls out and you have a one second pause which can wake you or make you jump - this is the only set back in my opinion.

Now, after finding this sleep-saving application, was there anything that could excel further than aSleep? Was this even possible?

Please welcome our next contender - Mindwave [iTunes link].

Mindwave’s target is to have the same effect as aSleep - but does it in a different way. Is it going to be better? Let’s find out.

Mindwave, for starters, doesn’t use sounds based on ‘real life’ experiences. Mindwave uses technology called binaural sounds/tones [Wiki]. Here’s a little snippet explaining binaural tones:

Binaural beats or binaural tones are auditory processing artifacts, or apparent sounds, the perception of which arises in the brain independent of physical stimuli.

The brain produces a phenomenon resulting in low-frequency pulsations in the loudness of a perceived sound when two tones at slightly different frequencies are presented separately, one to each of a subject’s ears, using stereo headphones.

So to sum up - it makes your brain create actions based upon the sounds. Simple!

Mindwave comes with 10 preset binaural tones. These are: Study Aid, Sleep Induction, Relaxation, Deep Meditation, Mental Refreshed, Coffee, Creativity Boost, Focusing Attention, Weightloss, Headache Treatment.

The interface is somewhat basic compared to aSleep’s. Also, the same looping problem with plagues aSleep, makes its way into Mindwave - so you get a few second pause between the sound, which can distract or disturb your thoughts.

Anyhow, I tested this to see if it could live up to aSleep’s standard. I listened to the “Sleep induction” tones and unfortunatly after 20 minutes it started to really get on my nerves - so much so, that I opened up aSleep and decided to get the job done properly.

Now I assumed there could have been a number of variable factors here, so I had a second go the next night. Outcome? Exactly the same. Perhaps it’s just me? Perhaps my Bose headphones weren’t right? There are certainly plenty of reviews saying, “it worked for me!!”.

My output? It’s a perfectly good idea but hasn’t been delivered properly (i.e. it doesn’t work as intended).

So who’s the winner?
So, to finalise my review of both products (and to finally get some much needed beauty sleep) my personal winner would have to be: aSleep. At $0.99, aSleep is also whole $1 cheaper than Mindwave!

Please note this is based on my personal experiences and could greatly differ from your personal experience - try it for yourself!

Good night everyone & if you have any comments, tips or experiences with either of these applications, or want to recommend similar apps, shout it out in the comments.

This past week, we received the new MacBook Pro at our test labs (Thanks, Aditya). Yes, we’re aware how early we got our hands on it, but that’s how things work here in India. In fact, Apple’s new releases have been reaching the shores far more early compared to the previous years. I’ve had the pleasure of using the unit to my heart’s content and besides a few cons, the new design is one of the best things Apple has produced in its entire history. 

Since it has been quite a while now that the new products have been available for sale in the international markets, a wide array of blogs have already written in-depth reviews of the MacBook Pro. Our unboxing and product pictures are available in the gallery here. We urge you to take a look at the gallery, as we have some really awesome shots waiting for you. Continue Reading »

I was always under the impression that getting FLAC into iTunes involved some clever hackery that someone like me would never be able to comprehend. So I used AudialHub to convert any FLAC files I had to AAC and then imported them.

Little did I know that there was a utility that makes it look like FLAC was part of iTunes. Fluke, developed by designer Dmitry Kichenko, provides a bridge between the widespread lossless format and our favourite music manager. 

Fluke is really quite simple. The installer you download installs the components necessary for it to work: XiphQT, FLACImporter, and Set OggS. Fluke itself is an AppleScript saved as an application bundle. I kept the script inside the bundle editable so it’s all nice and open-saucy.

I’ve tested Fluke this past week and am happy to report that it works perfectly. Just open any FLAC file with Fluke and it asks you whether you want to import it into iTunes. Clicking ‘Yes’ brings up some windows I don’t quite understand (and make no attempt to) but they stay there for about a second, after which the track is imported right into iTunes as it normally would. 

You can then convert that track to AAC or MP3 if you want to load it up on your iPod or iPhone. And that’s all there is to it. Awesome? Yeah, baby!

This week, we take the ‘App Store Day’ wagon to the folks over at Readdle and explore their A.I.Disk app for the iPhone.

We here at Smoking Apples are great fans of the iPhone and 3 of us already have a MobileMe subscription. As much as we like the sync features of iDisk, it was always a problem to access your files on the move given that MobileMe lacks a mobile interface or even a dedicated app on the iPhone. Readdle’s A.I.Disk is a app available for the iPhone that allows you to connect to any WebDAV storage on the web and access those files on the movie, right from your iPhone. Yes, that includes MobileMe’s iDisk and even Box.net.

Let’s take a closer look at what the app has to offer.

A.I.Disk’s prime feature is its ability to connect to and browse through a number of WebDAV services on the web, including MobileMe, MyDisk.se and Box.net. Not only can you login to your iDisk and access your own files, you can also browse the public folders of other MobileMe users. These files are downloaded onto the app when you first access them, thus giving you access to them anytime in the future. A progress bar tells you how much of the file has been ‘received’ by your iPhone, so you might want to be careful with larger files, specially if you’re not on an unlimited connection.

You can create as many ‘Online Identities’ as you wish. Here in this screenshot, I’ve saved my personal iDisk and a friend’s Public Folder. Take note that the public folder has the blue colored icon, unlike the pink iDisk icon. Tapping on either of the two gives you access to the folders hosted on the disk. A.I.Disk has a nifty little button on the top, which is aptly titled ‘Get All’ and lets you download all of them at one go.

To open a file, simply tap on the name an it opens up right in the app. A.I.Disk supports a wide array of file formats,, including PDF, doc, docx, xls, xlsx, ppt, pptx txt, fb2, rtf and even html. The bar at the bottom of the inbuilt viewer allows you to do the following functions:

• Bookmark
• Send the file(s) via Email to your contacts
• Scroll down multiple pages using the percentage bar
• View the file FullScreen

Furthering our tradition of putting an app from the App Store in the Spotlight every Wednesday, today we’re going to take a look at Rocking Pocket Games’s 2D game, the Blue Skies - Air Force Academy.

The game involves flying a helicopter over a a mixed terrain and your aim is too shoot down enemy planes, blowing up enemy tanks and other similar things belonging to the evil warlord leader Hans Kraven and his mercenaries—Bruno, Takeshi, and Rachel. Each one of these enemy commanders controls specific units. The enemy tanks in the game are controlled by Bruno, Takeshi controls black helicopters, and Rachel attacks with golden helicopters. 

The game makes full use of the iPhone’s accelerometer, allowing you to control the speed of the helicopter by tilting your phone forward or backward. Maneuvering the helicopter is done by tilting the phone left or right and, in general, controlling the helicopter is very exciting. The controls have been very well implemented and there is no lag or delay whatsoever. To enable you to use your weapons, the developers have made use of the tap-on-the-screen method. Air-to-air weapons are fired using the left side of the screen, while air-to-ground missiles are launched using the right. There are crosshairs provided for each weapon type. You can also collect additional money and buy more weapons from your R&D lab at the base.

Continue Reading »

iTunes 8 was launched during Apple’s special music event yesterday. I was very excited to try it out and downloaded it the first thing this morning. Here are my initial Impressions and review of the new features in iTunes 8.

The biggest feature touted at the keynote is Genius Playlists. The idea is that iTunes will automatically generate playlists, based on the current song, with other songs that ‘go well together’. iTunes will initially index all your music and send it back to Apple’s servers where a database based on your playlists, play counts, likes, and dislikes will be built. It then matches this with other users’ databases and brings back all that genius information, updating it from time to time. You need to have an iTunes Store account to use the Genius features (one more reason to have an iTS account). All this is well and good in theory, but how does it perform in the real world? Continue Reading »