Five...no, Six useful Mac apps from Thoughtful Tree
TUAW receives a lot of app submissions for review, both for Mac and iPhone. But it's unusual when a developer sends us individual press releases for a relatively large number of apps. Steven Degutis is the brain behind a company called Thoughtful Tree. In his words, "I'm an indie Mac developer who writes apps that make my job easier and smoother, and then if I think they're useful enough, I share them with everyone via my company Thoughtful Tree Software. That's just how I roll."
The first application that caught my attention was one called Docks (US$10), which takes snapshots of what icons are in your Mac OS X Dock, and then lets you swap out Docks depending on what kind of work you're currently doing (see screenshot below). Need a writing Dock? Put Word, Storyist, and WriteRoom in a special Dock. Doing a lot of photo work? Create a Dock with PhotoShop, Aperture, and any other special tools you like to use. The new Docks 2.0 is now integrated with Spaces, so retrieving a specific Space sets up a custom Dock as well.


Next on the list of Thoughtful Tree Mac apps is TunesBar (US$5.00). Want to know what's playing in iTunes without having to flip to the application? TunesBar displays the song name and artist in the menu bar (see screenshot below), and a quick click on that information will let you control iTunes playback of your music library.



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Source: http://thoughtfultree.com/
TUAW receives a lot of app submissions for review, both for Mac and iPhone. But it's unusual when a developer sends us individual press...
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I'd recommend the free Tea Timer (http://www.herwig-henseler.de/teatimer) as an alternative option for those needing a basic timer on their desktop. I've been happily using it for years.
August 08 2009 at 7:16 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyI use iController to have a scrolling display of the artist/song display in the Menu Bar. Worked really well for me and it's free.
August 07 2009 at 9:06 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyNot even joking, having a separate dock per screen in Spaces should have been included by default. Buying Docks right now.
August 07 2009 at 8:18 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply@ars_workerbee Thanks for the tip! Just removed all the unneeded desktop icons :)
August 07 2009 at 5:15 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplySpeaking of cluttered desktops, do Mac users know that the more stuff you have on your desktop, the more of your computer's resources are being sucked away by all the clutter?
August 07 2009 at 12:41 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyYou Control Tunes is showing what tunes is playing, giving you menu buttons too to next/previous/pause. It can show overlays with the album, title, etc etc.
http://www.yousoftware.com/tunes/
This is free and more powerful than the TunesBar. :)
Well, there's QuickTunes (http://www.dbachrach.com/opensoft/index.php?page=QuickTunes). It seems to be substantially the same described functionality, and given what I asked of it (JUST PUT TITLE/ARTIST INTO MENU BAR. PERIOD.) it's doing that quite well.
I kept seeing control panels and all this stuff on other iTunes assistant programs, and all I wanted was something that I could read title/artist info from without switching apps or having to otherwise break task workflow. This does that admirably.
@ Michael Levin
This one's free and pretty good. You can customize it as well.
http://www.yousoftware.com/tunes/
Just go with Bowtie. It's on your desktop and not the menubar but is so customizable (and free) that you'll never look back.
August 07 2009 at 10:55 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply@TUAW
Thanks for the awesome reviews! There will be more than six apps, soon, by the way ;)
@Michael
There are some apps that do similar things as TunesBar, but the closest one I've found, BravoTunes, has a scrolling effect which is not removable, and is too distracting for me to work with (the constant scrolling in my peripheral vision just made me dizzy).
Thanks for your software and look forward to seeing what else you come up with.
August 07 2009 at 12:43 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyHot Apps on TUAW
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