mac.iLounge

Apple’s Messages app held a lot of promise when it was announced, and for the most part, it works. In addition to being able to instant message, you can text your friends through iMessage. A lot of the bugginess has been worked out since the app first launched, but there’s still a major problem: searching through your chat logs. Try typing in a search term, and your Mac will likely freeze up altogether. That’s where Flexibits Chatology ($20) comes in. It works in conjunction with Messages, allowing you to actually search. Read More

If there’s one peripheral category that the term “necessary evil” fits more than any other, it’s printers. Despite the digitization of pretty much everything, sometimes you just have to put ink on a sheet or ream of paper. To that end, Brother has introduced a new line of all-in-one printers, notably including its MFC-9130CW ($400) and MFC-9340CDW ($450) Digital Color All-in-One Printers with Wireless Networking, each worth considering if you’re doing a lot of printing. They’re Mac-compatible over USB or 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, and feature AirPrint support for direct iOS printing as well. Read More

Alex Arena created Preferences Quick Launch (Free) in a weekend because he wanted a quicker way to get to the Sound pane buried in OS X’s Preferences. His project is our gain, as the set of applications in this package make getting to any of the different settings in Preferences even easier. The .zip file contains a folder of 27 tiny apps, each corresponding to a different pane, from General to Startup Disk, Bluetooth to Users & Groups. Read More

If any company knows mics for the Mac, it’s Blue Microphones. The company’s latest design is Nessie Adaptive USB Microphone ($100), currently available exclusively through Apple. As we’ve come to expect, the USB-based mic is a great-looking peripheral, and it has some unique functionality that makes it ideal for whatever kind of audio you’re recording. It packs a single cardioid condenser capsule inside a shock mount with a pop filter, eliminating or reducing unwanted sounds. Read More

Apple’s AirPort wireless routers have changed form factors a handful of times over the past decade, shifting from classic iMac-matching pod-like shapes to rounded rectangles and squares. This week, Apple introduced two new AirPort routers: the 802.11ac AirPort Extreme ($199) and renamed AirPort Time Capsule ($299-$399). Both feature the same 3.85” square footprint and white plastic design of last year’s AirPort Express, but now stand 6.6” tall versus the 0.85” Express. Why do they look like fancy little milk cartons? Apple says that the new set of six antennas needed extra space to disperse their wireless signals. More details and hands-on photos are now included here. Read More

Apple is taking another swing at web-based productivity. Although iWork.com was a flop, it thinks iWork for iCloud is going to be thing thing. It takes Pages, Numbers, and Keynote, and adds them to the cloud. By launching iCloud.com, you can now view, create, and edit documents from wherever you might be, on Mac or PC. Really, anything you can do natively on the Mac, you can now do in the browser. Read More

“Can’t innovate anymore, my ###,” said Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller, as if he was dropping a microphone after an amazing performance. We were hoping Apple would use WWDC to show off a brand new Mac Pro ($TBD), and it didn’t let us down: shaped like a tapered metal tube, this is a radically different machine from not only the previous Pro, but anything Apple’s done before. Everything’s built around a thermal core, with Intel’s Xeon as the brains of the whole system—up to 12 cores and 256-bit floating point math, promising around twice the power of the prior generation. All expansion is handled externally, over Thunderbolt 2. It comes standard with dual AMD FirePro GPUs for crazy graphics power, including support for up to three 4K displays. And wow, is it tiny: it’s 1/8 the volume of the previous generation. The entire top is a handle. Read More

Apple calls the MacBook Air ($999-$1299) the future of the notebook, and the line’s just been updated across the board. The key feature: all-day battery life. These Macs use Intel’s new Haswell processor system, meaning they can get really impressive new battery life of up to nine hours for the 11” model, and 12 hours on the 13” version. They’re also packing 802.11ac for faster Wi-Fi. You can pick up a new MacBook Air starting today. Read More

Bye bye big cats; here comes OS X Mavericks ($TBD). Introduced at WWDC 2013, Apple’s newest Mac operating system release is loaded with all sorts of new features, and is the first release in a series named after locations in California. Just like the rumors suggested, there’s tabbed Finder browsing. It’s just like Safari, but allows you to easily access and move documents across what would have been, in the past, multiple folders. Even cooler: tagging. You can tag your files with different colors and categories, and easily sort them in the Finder sidebar.  Read More

We first wrote about InfiniWing’s LandingZone ($99-$199) way back at the end of 2011 when it was still a project on Kickstarter, and now, finally, we have it in our hands. The look and function are still the same as they ever were: LandingZone is a docking station for your 11” or 13” MacBook Air, designed to give you a clean and simple way to connect to a display and peripherals. Read More

A follow-up to the 2011 original, 11 bit studios has just released Anomaly 2 in the Mac App Store. This game is an advanced take on the popular tower defense genre, adding in elements of real time strategy, and really great looks. It features both single-player and multiplayer campaigns, including a new mode that reverses play: you take control of the turrets, and attack the humans marching through. Read More

If you’ve ever tried to set up a new Mac from scratch, you know that it’s challenging to install all of the platform’s essential apps one at a time. Get Mac Apps has decided to step in and take care of that issue with its website, getmacapps.com (Free). As of press time, it has 37 great apps from a variety of developers listed; you simply pick the ones you want, and the site walks you right through a super simple installation process. Read More

The odds that you’ll actually need the protection offered by LaCie’s new XtremKey USB 3.0 ($85-$140) are probably pretty low, but it’s still a fun accessory. This flash drive is built to stand up to anything thrown at it, or anything you throw it at—water, cold, heat, drops, and crushing, to name a handful of dangers it can withstand. And it’ll hold your term paper, too. Read More

Huge. Really huge. Seeing Chrome’s Citadel ($190) in person, it’s hard for the first thought to be about anything except the size of the company’s largest laptop backpack. Moving on past that, you’ll discover a really high-quality bag, the likes of which we’ve come to expect from Chrome. According to the company, it’s designed for “weekend adventure trips where laptops are required.” Citadel is made of weatherpoof nylon, and lined with waterproof truck-tarpaulin liner. Read More

We’ve already seen that Satechi can pack ten USB 3.0 ports into a single hub, so seven ports at the same price may not immediately seem like that great of a deal. But if you care about looks, you might be excited about the company’s new 7 Port USB 3.0 Premium Aluminum Hub ($70). It takes style cues from the earlier four-port version, using an angled silver aluminum design with black accents—a perfect match for your favorite Mac. Read More