Five Mac Apps Worth Checking Out - February 2021

[MacRumors]

Apps developed for the Mac don't typically receive as much attention as apps designed for iPhones and iPads, so we've created a series at MacRumors that highlights useful Mac apps worth checking out. This month's picks feature new apps for managing email, organizing calendar events, enhancing productivity, and more.

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• Shareful (Free) - Shareful enhances the built-in sharing options on the Mac. You can copy shared items to the clipboard to be pasted into another app, save a shared item to a specific directory, or open a shared item in any app. When enabled, Shareful is available in any app that has a built-in share button, which is applicable to both Apple's own apps like Safari and third-party apps. It's a simple app that adds additional sharing utility for those who need it.
• Postbox ($40) - Postbox bills itself as a "Power Email" app with a built-in Message Triage feature for quickly getting through what's in the inbox. There's a Quick Bar with a series of quick actions for dealing with emails, a built-in unsubscribe feature, gesture support, filters, and deep organization to keep everything where it belongs. There are also quick reply features, canned responses, search tools, professional email examples, quick-insert clips, signatures, image effects, and more. There are also anti-tracking features to let you know if emails contain tracking tools.
• Jettison ($4.95) - Jettison is a simple little app that's designed to eject all external drives automatically when you put your MacBook to sleep. With the app, there's no need to manually eject external drives, and when you open your MacBook back up, any drives that are still connected will mount again automatically.
• Spotter (Free) - Spotter is a productivity tool that lets you search for and launch application actions and the apps themselves, so you can get everything done that you need to from one little app. It's open source and supports custom hotkeys.
• Superpowered ($10/month) - Superpowered is a scheduling app that lets you see your upcoming events for the day and join Zoom and Google Meet meetings with a single click. A menu bar addition counts down the time to your next meeting or event, and lets you know when it's time to join. Multiple calendar accounts and subscriptions are supported so you can see everything you need to do at a glance. Superpowered has a free trial, but costs $10 per month after that.

Know of a must-have Mac app or game that we haven't highlighted yet? Let us know in the comments below and we might feature it in a future video. Many of our Mac apps that we share are recommended by MacRumors readers. For more of our Mac app picks, check out our Mac apps archive.

Article Link: Five Mac Apps Worth Checking Out - February 2021

 

[Stella]

Superpowered seems overpriced - $10 a month for a calendar app? Fantastical offers much more value for money, and cheaper. Supports Zoom as well.

 

[EugenesSoggySalami]

I havent found a single useful app yet for my MacBook Pro, all the basic functions that I need are already built in.

Edit:

I take that back, I do have AdGuard which I find very useful.

 

[yellow8]

40$ to pay upfront is quite difficult. It's easier to be convinced by testing first. IMHO.

 

[mckenzzzzie]

Jettison is handy for me as I can't let my MBP sleep while connected to the VPN. It has a nice dialog that it throws up identifying which app might be blocking you from ejecting, and it is applescriptable (which means I can chain it with other actions in Keyboard Maestro.

 

[ddtmm]

I don't know about the rest of the apps, but Postbox is great. It's a lot like Apple Mail but done right. I much prefer it over Mail. Tried it out many years ago and never looked back.

 

[ddtmm]

Superpowered seems overpriced - $10 a month for a calendar app? Fantastical offers much more value for money, and cheaper. Supports Zoom as well.

I've had it with subscription apps. If I can live without them I will. Such BS.

 

[EugenesSoggySalami]

I don't know about the rest of the apps, but Postbox is great. It's a lot like Apple Mail but done right. I much prefer it over Mail. Tried it out many years ago and never looked back.

Well even children from my nearby kindergarten can code a better Mail app than Apple does, and Apples Mail app has been somewhat broken for the past 20 years or so.

 

[tharitm]

Superpowered seems overpriced - $10 a month for a calendar app? Fantastical offers much more value for money, and cheaper. Supports Zoom as well.

Exactly my thoughts.

 

[2021]

40$ to pay upfront is quite difficult. It's easier to be convinced by testing first. IMHO.

There's a free trial.

 

[fwmireault]

Superpowered seems overpriced - $10 a month for a calendar app? Fantastical offers much more value for money, and cheaper. Supports Zoom as well.

Can’t agree more. I’m not as hateful on subscription model as some may be, but this app is ridiculously expensive and limited compared to other apps like Fantastical.

 

[Dc2006ster]

Two apps I use many times a day and that I think should be part pf the Mac OS are Dropzone ( to copy and move files, open apps or send files to different device) and Popclip ( select text and instantly access various context specific actions ).

 

[Cinetagonist]

Screen Expander: https://apps.apple.com/app/screen-expander/id1505216993?mt=12
Must have for MacBooks with small screen. Especially for M1 models.

 

[Rochy Bay]

I would buy apps i really need. Not the ones you want to sell for a good margin. 😝

 

[paultopia]

How does Jettison work with time machine? I often have loong backups where I leave my time machine drive connected and let my machine go into power nap but keep backing up. Does jettison handle this intelligently?

(The dream for "intelligently" for me would be: keep backing up until done, then automatically eject the drive after the backup is complete, and keep it ejected when I wake the machine to check if it's done and unplug the drive....)

Jettison is handy for me as I can't let my MBP sleep while connected to the VPN. It has a nice dialog that it throws up identifying which app might be blocking you from ejecting, and it is applescriptable (which means I can chain it with other actions in Keyboard Maestro.

 

[Stella]

Screen Expander: https://apps.apple.com/app/screen-expander/id1505216993?mt=12
Must have for MacBooks with small screen. Especially for M1 models.

Looks interesting. Shame there is no "Demo" / time limited version, need to see how it works in practice before buying it.

 

[zepfhyr]

Spotter looks interesting. I normally use Alfred for this, but that's almost all I use Alfred for anymore these days. A lightweight, open source alternative would be nice.

 

[humblecoder]

Superpowered seems overpriced - $10 a month for a calendar app? Fantastical offers much more value for money, and cheaper. Supports Zoom as well.

Yup! Also, Superpowered website currently (conveniently?) has a "decorative" dot hiding the "per month" wording in their price on the homepage.

 

[StevieD100]

I havent found a single useful app yet for my MacBook Pro, all the basic functions that I need are already built in.

Edit:

I take that back, I do have AdGuard which I find very useful.

I'll second Adguard.
The one app that I miss because of Oracle not shipping updated JVM's for MacOS is DocFetcher. I can search for words inside .docx and .pdf with ease. When you have multiple versions of documents/stories it is really an essential app. I've not managed to get it to work with other JVM's.

 

[StevieD100]

Well even children from my nearby kindergarten can code a better Mail app than Apple does, and Apples Mail app has been somewhat broken for the past 20 years or so.

I've never tried the Apple Email client. I've always used Thunderbird since around 2004/5. Does everything I need from an email client.

 

[Stevez67]

Well even children from my nearby kindergarten can code a better Mail app than Apple does, and Apples Mail app has been somewhat broken for the past 20 years or so.

The kindergarten remark hyperbole aside, Apple's email client works fine and isn't in any way broken in Big Sur on my MacBook Pro. And the security of knowing your email data isn't being scraped and sold is invaluable.

 

[frode]

Could I suggest our own Author word processor? It's a highly rated academic word processor, available on the macOS App Store. You can see what I am talking about here: www.augmentedtext.info

Adam Cheyer, inventor of Siri has this to say:

“Frode Hegland's Augmented Text tools are essential components for textual thought productivity. These tools espouse many of the philosophies of Doug Engelbart, one of the greatest thinkers in computer science history. Hence, making these tools widely available is quite important both for historical purposes, as well as everyday use practical purposes.”

Bruce Horn, programmer of the original Finder in the original Macintosh:

“The original vision for the Macintosh was to bring the power of computing to the creative class. Frode Hegland’s Augmented Text Suite is to writing what the Adobe Creative Suite is to multimedia: an enormously powerful set of tools to enable writers and thinkers to do their best work. There have been few advances in this area since the invention of the word processor, and none as well thought-out or accessible as Author and the accompanying Reader and Liquid apps.”

I hope you will find it relevant and interesting.

 

[steve333]

I'd like to know what are the best Adblockers. I've tried a few and have to keep switching because of issues

 

[grr74]

I'd like to know what are the best Adblockers. I've tried a few and have to keep switching because of issues

I'd recommend AdGuard. It is customizable and stable. I have set it and forgotten I have it

 

[lexvo]

40$ to pay upfront is quite difficult. It's easier to be convinced by testing first. IMHO.

There is a 30 day trial period.