Utilities Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Maniacally cuckoo for Mountain Lion: App Store checker shell script

by Erica Sadun (Jul 24th, 2012)

In the spirit of Tim Cook's maniacal excitement about upcoming Apple products, I bring to you the shell script you can run repeatedly from the command line to check the App Store to see if Mountain Lion is ready for purchase. This is what I used last year to check for Lion; it worked. This ...

Checkmark for iPhone now available, simplifies reminders

by Dave Caolo (Jul 17th, 2012)

Checkmark for iPhone, a new reminder app from Snowman, is now available. The app was teased earlier this month and is in the App Store for an introductory price of US$0.99. As I said before, Checkmark makes it easy to create location- and time-based reminders. Here's a look at Checkmark for ...

Checkmark is a handy new reminder app for iPhone

by Dave Caolo (Jul 5th, 2012)

Checkmark is a new reminder app for iPhone from Snowman. I've been using it for a while now, and can tell you that it's faster than Apple's Reminders with unique, useful features. Checkmark builds on location-based reminders. What's nice is that you can create buttons for oft-visited locations ...

Perian posts end of life notice. Mac video enthusiasts weep.

by Erica Sadun (May 14th, 2012)

Perian has been a steadfast friend on my computer for years. With Perian, nearly any video format I throw at QuickTime simply works. Perian has been a wonder. It supports AVI. It supports DivX. It supports MKV. It's been one of the best and most useful tools I have had access to and invariably ...

Alfred updated with new themes, drag-and-drop support

by Dave Caolo (May 1st, 2012)

Alfred for Mac (our review from last year) has been updated to version 1.2. Alfred is a utility that's part app launcher, part navigation tool and part web service. This updated adds two new themes: Dark and Smooth & Pistachio (I prefer the original). There's also support for large type which ...

Disk Art visualizes hard drive space usage

by Erica Sadun (Apr 20th, 2012)

When an email from the Clean Cut Code, the makers of Disk Art, showed up in our inbox yesterday, I jumped at the chance to take a peek. I'm a huge fan of Grand Perspective's space visualization software and am always happy to try out another app to see how it compares. Disk Art, which is ...

Daily Mac App: DragonDrop provides a Finder caddy for your drag-and-drop files

by Erica Sadun (Mar 28th, 2012)

Sometimes there are problems you didn't even know you had -- and solutions that make your life so much better. DragonDrop is one of those solutions. You know when you have to drag items between folders and you end up juggling multiple Finder windows? It's such a pain getting both windows ...

Winclone tool for Boot Camp imaging comes back as paid app

by Michael Rose (Feb 28th, 2012)

Say the word "Winclone" to any Mac-centric IT person and you'll likely get a wistful sigh in return. The original Winclone utility, which provided a handy GUI wrapper around CLI tools such as the open-source NTFSprogs, did a spot-on job of backing up and restoring the Boot Camp partition of a ...

Buzz Contacts for iPhone offers fast access to contacts

by Dave Caolo (Feb 22nd, 2012)

Buzz Contacts from Savvy Apps (US$0.99) is a fast way to reach contacts from your iPhone. Organize them into groups for one-tap access to phone calls, text messages, email or FaceTime sessions. The UI is about as clean and tidy as one can get and conveniences like pre-written text messages are ...

TUAW Best of 2011: Vote for your favorite iPad utility app

by Steven Sande (Jan 1st, 2012)

The nominations are in, and the poll is ready to go! The TUAW Best of 2011 awards are all about you -- the readers -- and what you think is the cream of the crop of Apple or third-party products and software. To vote, select one entry from the top nominations made by readers. We'll be announcing ...

Daily Mac App: FlashMount quickly mounts disk images

by TJ Luoma (Dec 30th, 2011)

DMG files are often used when distributing Mac software outside the Mac App Store. While DMGs can be confusing to new users, I like them because they allow me to keep an original, unmodified version of whatever program I have downloaded. About the only drawback for me is that some DMGs come with ...

Nominate your favorite iPad utility app for TUAW's Best of 2011

by Steven Sande (Dec 29th, 2011)

During December and January, The Unofficial Apple Weblog is soliciting your nominations and votes for the best products for Mac, iPhone/iPod touch, and iPad. We'll start with nominations in a category, and then tally your votes for the top-nominated products a few days later. The winner in each ...

TUAW Best of 2011: Vote for the best iPhone utility app

by Steven Sande (Dec 24th, 2011)

Nominate your favorite iPhone utility app for TUAW's Best of 2011

by Steven Sande (Dec 19th, 2011)

Alfred: TUAW Best of 2011 winner for Mac utility apps

by Steven Sande (Dec 16th, 2011)

The readers have spoken, and they've agreed -- Alfred, the awesome free app from Running With Crayons, is the winner of the TUAW Best of 2011 award for Mac utility apps. Alfred is a veritable Swiss Army knife of an app. It's an application launcher, a quick web search tool, a calculator, a ...