mac.iLounge

It may be a little early for the Mac App Store to start shaking in its boots, but Amazon has launched its own competing service, the Mac Download Store. Split into software and game sections, the browser-based store is starting with around 250 titles, and Amazon’s offering a couple of specials: $5 off of your first paid download through June 1, and a completely free copy of Airport Mania: First Flight. Read More

Sure, Apple’s free Mail app for Macs is quite good, but its starch-white look is getting kind of old. Sparrow ($10) takes all of Mail’s best features and combines them with Twitter’s and Reeder’s Mac aesthetics. The result? A minimalist email client that lets you get in and out of your messages in a flash, with support for the most popular providers including Gmail, Mobile Me, Yahoo, and AOL. Read More

Everyone knows Mac backups are important, but having redundant “just in case” duplicates can be a challenge. Backblaze simplifies the process with its online backup tool ($50/year). It automatically backs up all of your data in the background, including the stuff that’s on connected drives. If you ever need to restore data, just click a button on the company’s secure website, or order it on a DVD or hard drive. On top of the backup, Backblaze has just added a Locate My Computer option—think MobileMe’s Find My iPhone for your Mac. Read More

Everyone knows that HTML5 is the future. Steve Jobs said so and heck, even Adobe is getting there. The modern web development standard allows you to create interactive websites that are viewable across platforms, iOS devices included. In the past there was no really easy way to put an HTML5 site together without some hard hand coding. That’s why we’re so impressed by Tumult’s new Mac app, Hype ($30 introductory price). It’s here to help you say bye bye to Flash. Read More

Maybe you just got your first Mac. Or you’ve had one for years and need to transfer some files from an old PC. Either way, it can be a pain to move key files from a Windows machine if you don’t have a ton of experience or time. Apple Stores offer One to One membership services to do this for you, but you’ll need to pay a $99 fee. Luckily, Parallels has introduced Transporter, and for now, it’s only 99 cents. Plus tax. Read More

Calendars apps generally aren’t remarkably different from one another—fill in a bunch of different boxes, hit “Done,” and the event pops up on your calendar. With Fantastical ($15), Flexibits has used Apple’s iCal as the basis for something a whole lot more natural. Read More

If you’re taking photos using an iPod touch or iPad, you almost need to add cool visual effects to your pictures to make them worthy of sharing—and there are tons of apps to do just that. Now one of them has come to the Mac App Store from MacPhun: FX Photo Studio Pro ($40) provides you with 159 different filter-style effects that can be quickly applied to any photo, resulting in dramatically enhanced colors, sophisticated explosive blurs, and other effects that might otherwise have demanded more expensive software. Best yet, the UI is very iPad-like, so it’s super easy to use. Read More

Taking pictures is easy enough, but making paintings is definitely a lot harder. What if there was a way to turn your photos into paintings? That’s exactly what PaintMee ($8) from Studio Mee does. Sold through the Mac App Store, this title removes the need for painting talent, and leaves you with beautiful results each time. Read More

Picking the right colors for a job is essential, whether you’re designing a website, redecorating a room, or simply trying to coordinate outfits for a supremely dorky family photo. CHROMAom ColorSchemer Studio ($20) is a simple, easy way to pick, choose, create, and keep track of different color palettes for any occasion. Read More

It’s free. Simple. And now there’s more to love, except for one little unfortunate change. Twitter 2.1 has just hit the Mac App Store, adding support for multiple windows, autocompletion of usernames and hashtags, and new font size preferences. All you’ll have to accept is the huge, ugly gray bar that’s been added to the top of the app’s window, which moves the close, maximize and minimize buttons further away from the icons, and provides an explanation (“Timeline,” “Profile,” “Search”) for where you are in the menu system. Read More

At this point, a computer has become as indispensable in the kitchen as a sharp knife—who wants to use paper cookbooks when the world of recipes is available digitally? Since there’s no shortage of cooking apps in the Mac App Store, it means something when we say that MacGourmet ($25) is amongst the best. Think of it as iTunes for recipes. Read More

Ordering poster-sized prints in iPhoto is easy. Making poster-worthy images to print out is hard—unless you’ve got Zykloid Software’s Posterino ($30). This deceptively simple app helps you to layout photo collages in sizes up to 20” x 30”, making it a perfect companion for your favorite large format online printing service. Read More

Telltale Games brought Sam and Max back to life, and it’s just released the first of a three-part series that feels like a spiritual successor. Hector: Episode 1 - We Negotiate with Terrorists ($10) is presented in the same style as those classic point-and-click adventure games: you control a British cop—known colloquially as the Fat Arse of the Law—who has to take over in a hostage negotiation and meet of all the terrorist’s demands. Read More

Who said great software has to be expensive? Despite its funny name, Stefan Hafeneger’s Sofortbild (Free) lets users of Nikon’s DSLR cameras control their rigs right from their Macs, making it a godsend for portrait photographers, or anyone else who needs immediate access to their shots—we’ve used it ourselves to cover events live, and it works flawlessly. Read More

Lawyers do it. Creatives do, too. Now you can automatically track the time you’ve spent working on projects with Time Track Pro ($5), an inexpensive new tool from Italy’s Bloop. Install it using the Mac App Store and a little ruler icon will appear on the top right of your screen. Click it whenever you need to see a breakdown of how you’ve spent your time, app by app. If you want to focus solely on one aspect of how your Mac’s been used throughout the day, you can turn off its ability to track certain apps and web sites; Time Track Pro keeps a daily log that you can analyze by the day, week, or month as you prefer. Reports are easy to read and accompanied by simple bar graphs. Read More