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Five Mac Apps Worth Checking Out - July 2019

unfunfionn said:
I also like the Touch Bar, but only since I installed GoldenChaos. The stock Touch Bar is terrible, but I absolutely love it now. I'm just curious how Pock compares to GoldenChaos, which is a fantastic idea but each release comes with new bugs and that gets a bit tiring.
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i haven't tried GoldenChaos, but Pock is pretty much JUST the dock. It does allow you to go into folders and act as a little Finder, but unsurprisingly that's not useful.
As a second dock, it does show you notification badges, but that's about it. Looks like GoldenChaos can do much more, but a pain if it's as flakey as you say.
 
BetterTouchTool is a must have to me and it has one primary purpose... you can set it up so that there some gesture on your track pad which does middle click. I have it set so that "right tip-tap" is the gesture. With this, I can middle click links in a browser which opens a tab and goes to the tab. However you rig up your tab settings, half will be more readily available because they can be triggered by the middle mouse button.

It can do lots more but the middle mouse click is huge for me.
 
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BugHunter said:
I think I'm the one person on the planet that likes the TouchBar.
Click to expand...
The touch id is great. And I think the touch bar needs to be on more places. e.g. wireless keyboards, etc.

I've yet to actually use it much but I still like the idea. One small disappointment is I was assuming that Adobe would get their apps to use it so I don't have to remember 50,000 keyboard short cuts but, unless I'm missing something like an option to turn it on, they don't really seem to leverage it.
 
How do I use the "double tap control" feature to switch between Pock and the System Touch Bar. The preference check box doesn't seem to activate it if it's checked or unchecked. Does the touch bar have to be configured in a specific way?
 
When I unlock my 2019 rMBP from a blank screen, Pock does not place the dock on my Touch Bar. I have to select Pock Customize from the menu bar for it to happen. Doesn't seem to be any way to provide feedback to the developer. I am running the release of Mojave 10.14.5. Even though I clean installed apps instead of using Migration Assistant, I hesitate going up to Catalina (which is on beta 3) with all the problems other people are having.
 
My HP Photosmart 6520 is wireless, and that works just fine for printing. For scanning, however, it refuses to function as it did when in the first 2 or 3 years, but then it was sporadic. HP was not updating the software for my 2013 model. When updating my Mojave recently, I had to go to the App Store to find it. I found HP Easy Scan. Now I can scan documents again, edit and SAVE them as scanned, not just a screen shot of the document. :D
 
pedzsan said:
The touch id is great. And I think the touch bar needs to be on more places. e.g. wireless keyboards, etc.
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I think that's my main problem actually. Typing on butterfly keyboards is such an unpleasant experience - (combined with the excessively large false-positive picking up trackpad) that I try to use an external keyboard whenever possible.
The arm reach to get the touch bar is too far then.

Also re your note about Adobe not embracing the Touch Bar. You've probably heard people throw around Pixelmator here and there, but they've always done their best to take advantage of everything native on macOS, Touch Bar included.
(Also I'm assuming you're only talking about Photoshop, there's many more Adobe products that have functionality that Pixelmator doesn't - but worth a look if you haven't seen it before).
 
BugHunter said:
I think I'm the one person on the planet that likes the TouchBar.
Note I didn't say that I find it useful or an increase of productivity, but that I like it. Makes my laptop feel more alive.

As a result of this article I tried Pock and I've got to say, with some tweaks in its preferences, I think it's great.
Depending on how many apps you have running (thanks to a VM I have quite a few), you might want to set it to Show only running apps, Hide Persistent Items, and set Item spacing to 0 or even negative.

Then the touchbar works as a replacement for your dock. It can't provide the right click functionality, but otherwise very useful if you don't have a second screen handy, hate the pop in/out dock, and want to save that screen real-estate.

So yeah, aint for everyone, probably only for 5% of people if that, but, well, I'm happy :D
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Then I'm the second. I enjoy the touch bar. I use it frequently. I'm on the fence about Better Touch. I keep my machine as clean as possible with the least amount of extraneous software.

Now keep in mind I'm crazy because I love the keyboard too!
 
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rlhamil said:
BetterTouchTool, in addition to mapping additional touchpad gestures (and keystrokes, Magic Mouse, etc) can now put the Dock on the Touch Bar too; it has for some time now been able to do other things with the Touch Bar, while coexisting with system or application specific uses thereof.
.
Click to expand...

Hmm, can't find that
 
BugHunter said:
i haven't tried GoldenChaos, but Pock is pretty much JUST the dock. It does allow you to go into folders and act as a little Finder, but unsurprisingly that's not useful.
As a second dock, it does show you notification badges, but that's about it. Looks like GoldenChaos can do much more, but a pain if it's as flakey as you say.
Click to expand...

GoldenChaos is definitely still worth it. Even with bugs, it’s infinitely more usable than the stock Touch Bar.
 
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stiwi said:
Microsoft To-Do offers incomparable level of features for free compared to todoist which in free version doesn't have reminders or file uploads...
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I’m not sure which “incomparable level of features” you’re referring to. MS To-Do is sadly lacking in oh-so-many ways and I really wanted to like it (our company is big on Office 365). I much prefer spending my own money for Things 3 than taking advantage of the company’s provision of To-Do.
 
Rique said:
I’m not sure which “incomparable level of features” you’re referring to. MS To-Do is sadly lacking in oh-so-many ways and I really wanted to like it (our company is big on Office 365). I much prefer spending my own money for Things 3 than taking advantage of the company’s provision of To-Do.
Click to expand...

Ironically for me the only one that I found as disappointing as Microsoft To-Do was actually Things. I spent two weeks trying the demo a couple of months ago and I don’t understand the hype. For me something like TickTick is infinitely better.
 
I also enjoy these articles, but when I click on the Flotato link I get this message:
This site can’t be reached
vendors.paddle.com’s server IP address could not be found.
DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN
I am from Canada if that matters.
Sounds like an interesting app.



- Flotato (Free) - Flotato is designed to create web apps from your favorite website, so you can get quick access to the web services that you use most often. Flotato web apps can be dragged right into the dock, so you can set up quick access for things like Google Docs, Facebook Messenger, Netflix on the web, favorite news sites, and more.
 
Any long-time user of Microsoft To-Do could share his experience ?

Great article btw, macOS developers like me need visibility :)
 
tosbsas said:
Hmm, can't find that
Click to expand...

I don't think it's in the app store (better touch tool).
I've used it for at least 7 years on my macs. It gets updates and I've literally never had any complaints with it.
I have so many custom gestures and keyboard shortcuts for it, i couldn't be without it.
Some of my gestures are used system wide for entering/exiting full screen, closing or centering windows etc and some are app specific when i realise pinch to zoom is oddly missing from an app or something..

I LOVE BETTER TOUCH TOOL! It should be called better Mac tool :)
 
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(1) MacUpdater by CoreCode: all apps always up-to-date
(2) BetterTouchTool: and suddenly the TouchBar is the best thing since sliced bread
(3) BBEdit: tried a lot of text editors, have always come back to this one
(4) Nimble Commander: hate Finder, needed this
(5) Carbon Copy Cloner: backup > peace of mind
 
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joss.b said:
(1) MacUpdater by CoreCode: all apps always up-to-date
(2) BetterTouchTool: and suddenly the TouchBar is the best thing since sliced bread
(3) BBEdit: tried a lot of text editors, have always come back to this one
(4) Nimble Commander: hate Finder, needed this
(5) Carbon Copy Cloner: backup > peace of mind
Click to expand...

+1 MacUpdater - such a better app than that other app from a similar named website (take off the "r) ;)
 
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