I personally don’t use Gmail, since I much too much prefer MobileMe on the web and on the desktop, but I’ve heard a lot about Mailplane and how it really improves the Gmail experience on the desktop. With the recent release of Mailplane 2, it was the perfect time for me to take it for a spin. 

First, let me go over some of the things you can do with Mailplane 2. 

Version 2.0 sports many 41 features, including full Gmail 2 support, new Gmail add-ons and keyboard shortcuts, better account notifications, more ways to create email attachments, plus a new OmniFocus plugin.

That said I launched Mailplane 2. Basically a browser in a box, Mailplane loads the same familiar interface using the Safari WebKit engine, but the Mailplane toolbar features all kinds of bells and whistles that makes moving around your Gmail box a whole lot easier. 

I tried composing, replying, deleting emails and I noticed that it was much quicker than clicking through the links in the Gmail interface. I really liked the address book integration, where you can select a bunch of contacts from your address book and compose an email. Keyboard shortcut support make this an almost native app. Of course, besides the obvious Gmail support, MailPlane 2 features a bunch of other features that set it apart from the browser experience.

Bunch of features

Attachments and Media. Mailplane has direct access to your iLife media library. I liked the fact that you can just drag a file into the MailPlane window and it will automatically compose a new message with that file attached. If the file is a picture, MailPlane throws up a resize option to reduce the file size. And thankfully, it zips up folders and iWork document so you don’t have any problems on the other end. 

Built in Chat. I liked the built in Chat feature, including the video chat which Gmail now supports. I would have liked the chat window to have some kind of dock notification system to tell when there are new messages. Still it is handy to have just the chat window floating around without the full Gmail baggage. 

Multiple Accounts. This is a huge feature for those using multiple accounts. You can stay logged into both accounts at any time, and then switch between them at the click of a button. I’ve seen people having to use two different browsers to stay logged into a two accounts, so this is definitely a killer feature. 

Notifications. MailPlane puts notifications all over the place (and can be turned off wherever you don’t want them). The dock badge shows the mail count and you can even see the email headers by clicking the menubar icon. I’m not a growl user, but looking at the stock screenshots that looks like a helpful feature as well.

Screenshots. This is one of those features that really shows when a dev is thinking ahead of you. Click the screenshot button, MailPlane hides, and once you are done it is automatically attached to the message. Slick!

Overall

While I obviously won’t be using MailPlane on a regular basis, owing to my MobileMe worship, but I can’t see a better way to access Gmail on your Mac. You get the full power of Gmail’s interface and powerful search features, with the speed and richness of your desktop.

If you are a Gmail user I’d highly suggest you take MailPlane on a 30 day trial, after which it is $25 for a single license.

The MailPlane 2 Giveaway!

Here we are again with another giveaway. This time round we have licenses of MailPlane for, you guessed it, lucky winners! Our thanks to Ruben Bakker, the guy behind Mailplane for this offer. How do you win? The rules are simple.

1.  A single entry per person
2. Valid email address (only to contact the winner)
3. Download the trial and let us know what you think about it in a comment.
4. (Optional) Tweet or blog about it, with the words ‘@smokingapples’ and a shorturl back to this page for another entry into the draw.
5. (Optional) The dev wants to know whether a Windows version of Mailplane is a good idea. Your thoughts?

The winners of the giveaway are Blake and Rong. Congrats! 

As Mac users we’ve always been so proud to point out the lack of malicious software to worry about. Sure there were some “concept” viruses but they required administrator access and pretty much a complete idiot to do even the slightest amount of damage. We can thank the incredible UNIX system in which OSX is built off of. It may also help the fact that we are in the minority.

Virus authors really don’t want to concentrate on attacking the Mac family since therea is a much bigger market out there. Until recently, we’ve been seeing only two Mac viruses come out into the open, and both of them require your admin/password to break through the rock solid UNIX core of Mac OS X. And even then, they just changed some DNS setting which pointed your Mac to a hacked site, the damage which could be reversed by manually changing your network settings.

First let me say this, you really have nothing to fear if you’re smart. Now I want to go through a few things about what exactly viruses intend to do, what these viruses are, and how to protect yourself.

The Objective of a Virus

Wikipedia defines a computer virus as being:

A computer program that can copy itself and infect a computer without permission or knowledge of the user.

In the early days of virus’ most of the programmers really just wanted to show off their stuff. They used to first only say “Hey look at me! I got on your system without you knowing”, then they progressed to actually harming your files and now days they are used to either steal from you are steal from others. Viruses have become a money maker for their authors and it’s also become a business.

You don’t need Anti-virus software!

It’s true! Did you know that the majority of security experts on Windows really don’t need to run anti-virus software? They know how you can get viruses on their system so they just avoid doing those things. Consumers (like you and me) are not quite as knowledgeable and will click something they shouldn’t have. Anti-virus software doesn’t keep viruses away 100%. It’s only a second line of defense, a moat surrounding your fortress. Enemies can still get smart enough to vault over that moat and get in your castle.

The first line of defense is yourself! You just need to be smart when you’re on the internet. Unfortunately Mac users have become so lax in what they do because they don’t have to worry about viruses. This might our downfall because we are quite a few years behind in thinking securely (as a whole) than Windows users.

You are the first line of defense

Mac users have really nothing to worry about if we play it smart when it comes to viruses. OSX is still inherently more secure than Windows and Apple has included some fairly nice security features in it. Leo Laporte of the TWiT network has some pretty good advice that I think can be applied to Mac users:

• Don’t click unknown links in emails This is basically how phfishing works. People get an email from their banks saying they need to come and confirm their account. Someone clicks the link, enters their account info and bam! The scammer has your bank info. The safest way to deal with email links is just to copy and paste the link or enter in the URL yourself and navigate to the desired address.
• Don’t open unknown email attachments For Mac users this isn’t quite so bad because if anything wants to run it needs administrator access. On Windows you typically want to verify that you were expecting the attachment and then just run it through a scanner. Eventually Mac virus authors will find a way to circumvent the Administrator install feature.
• Run Windows update automatically Well obviously Mac doesn’t have Windows update but you should still run Software Update regularly. Usually though you’ll find out about a security patch because it’s been blogged thousands of times.
• Don’t go to sites you can’t trust Pretty much the same thing for email links/attachments. If your not sure about the legitimacy of a website get out of there right away. Of course, Safari 3.2 now features phishing and malware protection so you will be mostly safe from this.

I remember Together from when it was just released. Previously named KIT, Together 2.0 sought to bring in an interface more adept to Mac OS X. Back in the days however, it was very buggy, crashy and somehow didn’t feel right to me. I gave up the idea.

Then recently Together 2.2 was released, and I thought why not see whether or not this app has matured into something usable and meaningful. The screenshots are all press shots since taking shots of my own library would expose my deep dark secrets!

Seeing as I’m getting ahead of myself, I’d better take this opportunity to introduce Together. As a universal document manager, Together keeps all your documents, PDFs, images, movies, bookmarks and web pages in a single unified interface. Continue Reading »

Going by the trends in the west, people are already decorating their houses with Christmas lights. So why not give your desktop some holiday love as well? Creepy as that sounds, here’s SnowFall, the snowy screensaver.

Snowfall is a beautiful 3D snowflakes screensaver that uses native quartz extreme to render those frames. The snowflakes apparently come from a work of a William Bentley, ‘the snowflake man’. It comes with a default red background but you can and should set a nice christmas-sy background to go with it. From what we’ve heard, even the Apple Stores are using this as their screensaver. In the screenshot I’ve used one of Vlad’s wallpapers as the background. 

If you’re looking for some nice backgrounds to go with the screensaver, check out Vlad Studio, or this collection of 25 winter wallpapers. Grab the qtz file, navigate to Mac HD » Library » Screen Savers, and dump it there. Then go to System Preferences and activate it. And despite the developer’s insistence that it is Tiger only, my Leopard installation begs to differ. Yes, I know that he’s only warning the Panther crowd.

There aren’t a lot of things out there that iPhone users wait for more anxiously than Apple’s free firmware updates. Unlike every single other company in the industry, Apple has taken it upon themselves to provide iPhone users with regular software updates that actually add valuable new features to these devices without costing them a dime (although iPod touch users do generally have to pay a price for them)!

All the iPhone and iPod touch users among our readership will be glad to know that, after a lot of leaks and rumourmongering, Apple has just made available the v2.2 firmware update for both these devices. The focus this time round has primarily been on enhancing Google Maps and adding podcasts to the “iTunes application” (that’s what Apple is calling it now because, with the addition of podcasts and the ability to download them over the cellular network, the original name ‘iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store’ would perhaps have been a misnomer). Continue Reading »

Over the past several years we have noticed that various indie developers come together and offer a bundle of applications for a discounted rate. There’s the MacHeist bundle, the MacBundle, and for the third time now, we have the Give Good Food to your Mac bundle.

The difference in this one is that you can choose which apps you want rather than be forced to pay for those you don’t need. The rules are simple. Buy 3 apps and get a 20% discount, buy 4 apps and get a 30% discount, and 5 or more apps fetch you a 50% discount on the total. 

There are some popular apps like Speed Download, Rapidweaver, Houdaspot, as well as some little utilities that you always wanted to buy but found a little too expensive. 

The two week app sale runs until the 1st of December, so hurry if you need those apps. And while you are there, take a look at the neatly designed website that it is.

When it comes to Mac applications, the ones that get talked about mostly are the ‘big brands’ as it were - MarsEdit, Netnewswire and so on. Apart from those, I am in love with these nifty little applications:

GimmeSomeTune
I like my iTunes Library to be organized - replete with detailed information: album artwork, lyrics and so on. After toying with several applications and Dashboard widgets that help you enhance iTunes’ features, I finally settled on GimmeSomeTune. (For more ways to extend your iTunes experience, check out our post on iTunes extenders)

Safari Stand
While I wanted to check it out for it’s sidebar tabs feature, I particularly like the ease with which one can download YouTube videos. Being a fan of TV ads I find it quite handy. Safari Stand also features a bookmark shelf, enhanced search features, and a whole bunch of other tweaks. Of course, there are other Safari enhancers (I have tried Saft for Panther) but Safari Stand is free.

Sniper
Think of it as iPhoto and an offline version of Flickr combined. Instead of clicking on links, Sniper allows you to download photos of your contacts and favorites right into iPhoto. [Ed: Unfortunately, there is no search feature which takes a way a lot of the Flickr experience. There is also no editing feature for tags or descriptions, and the interface is a bit windowsy.]

Pic-a-Pod
I am a sucker for good photographs and Pic-a-Pod makes downloading ‘picture of the day from sources like National Geographic and Wikipedia, a breeze. You can then directly set the wallpaper as your desktop background or switch between days. 

Which ones would feature in your list?

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 »

For someone who stays 24/7 on the internet, I’ve signed up for a lot of internet services. However, due to overlapping of functions in many of these services, it becomes difficult to keep up with everything. So I end up neglecting some (facebook) and overusing others (twitter). Someone obviously thought that all of it needs to be brought into one central location: where you can manage, update, and publish new content -  all in a single windowed application.

Now that I’ve set the stage, let me introduce you to my new favourite application, EventBox. The first product out of a newly set up UK based software development company “The Cosmic Machine”, EventBox seems to want to take a very bold step. “Pack your Social Networks in One Box” says the tagline — EventBox incorporates Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Digg, Pownce and Reddit. It can also act as your RSS feed aggregator.

A pretty bold task for a single application to manage, one would think. Each of these services has a different interface, a different way of working with content, so putting it in one box would result in chaos, or so I thought. Continue Reading »

Doing what I do, I have deal with a lot of text on a day-to-day basis. There’s text coming from evil sources like Microsoft Word, and there’s text that just isn’t formatted right for the web. Over time I’ve become very particular about presentation (partly due to the constant visits to the well designed Apple’s product pages), and so far the only option for having it automated was using the powerful find/change tool in InDesign. After more than three years of using a Mac, I’ve only recently stumbled upon this little gem of a utility, Apimac’s Clean Text.

Clean Text helps you rapidly clean our your junk text, fix formatting issues, and do a whole bunch of other things that just make working with text easier. Apart from the “Fix All” button, which does a run through your text and fixes all the possible problems. However, you can fix very specific problems. My most used functions are fixing paragraphs, removing quote characters (those >> found in email forwards), and removing returns. When working with a program like InDesign, I have to constantly deal with people sending in documents with double returns for paragraphs, which obviously needs to be fixed. And CleanText is a much quicker solution than using InDesign’s find/replace.

I’ve also extensively used the “Convert straight quotes to smart quotes” function. While in most cases I use the keyboard shortcut, there are times when typing in speed it becomes difficult to implement the shortcut. Also knowing that Clean Text is there to back me up at the final stages is a great help.

The interface of Clean Text is extremely clean. Even all the functions sport a dimmed out grey so you get to see more of your text. Each function is labelled very clearly, so there is no confusion as to what you are clicking into.

Find/Replace
A text replace function, while not as powerful as the the one included in InDesign, features three separate find/change fields. This allows you to change multiple entries without constantly having to switch words.

Macros
I haven’t found the need to create macros, as the functions are so easy to click on. However, creating new Macros is just a matter of selecting what functions you want applied, and saving it. This would be useful to deal with if you have a lot of text coming in from a single source.

Add a bunch of Miscellaneous functions
While this doesn’t really come across as something required to cleaning text, the application can insert the date or time, show you statistics like word and character count, as well as a potentially unlimited number of undo levels.

The Verdict
Apart from it’s slightly old aqua-ish interface, Clean Text is an amazing application and I would highly recommend it to anyone working with a lot of text. A full license costs $27, while a 5-user site-license costs $37. Take the trial for a spin and I’m sure you are gonna find yourself looking at damaged text in a whole new way!