[This is an advertorial. Maclife gets a portion of each unit sold.]

You have all of the coolest tech, and it’s with you at all times. Your iPhone 5 syncs up with your Macbook, which has your Beats by Dre headphones plugged into it. On your wrist is your Pebble Watch, which tells you the time so you can make it home to play games or stream movies on your Playstation 3. All of these are great pieces of tech, but they can be fashionable accessories too with the help of Slickwraps. Get $50 credit at Slickwraps right now in our Deals tab.

Slickwraps provides a unique service: It turns your already great tech into fashion statements. Compatible with the most notable names and most popular pieces of tech around, Slickwraps can fit on almost any device to give them a whole new look. You can skin just about anything with Slickwraps to take it from your standard hunk of plastic, glass, and metal to a stylized device that expresses your personality.

You can get $50 worth of credit for a Slickwrap of your own for just $25 right now in our Deals tab. That’s a 50% savings on the normal cost and gives you enough for a Slickwrap to slap on your device of choice. Take advantage of this offer today!

Article source: http://www.maclife.com/article/news/deals_get_50_credit_slickwraps_just_25

[This is an advertorial. Maclife gets a portion of each unit sold.]

Do you ever look at your iTunes library and suddenly have flashbacks to being a kid and having your mother scold you for not keeping your room clean? We all love iTunes for its ability to deliver music, but it really makes all of our laziness front and center when there is missing information or duplicates. Get those taken care of and make your iTunes look pristine with Tunes Cleaner. It’s on sale in our latest Deal.

Tunes Cleaner is like your personal iTunes nanny, cleaning up everything that you’ve been neglecting. If you have an album by the same artist with their name spelled different ways, missing information about a certain song, blank album artwork, or anything else that may require a little bit of maintenance, Tunes Cleaner has you covered. It will even eliminate songs you have multiple copies of, clearing up some space for new songs to fill.

Tunes Cleaner from Leawo Software Company usually retails at $30. If you’d like to save on that price, head over to our Deals tab and take a full 83% off the cost. That means you’ll pay just $5 for this powerful app. Get Tunes Cleaner while you can and get your iTunes in order.

Article source: http://www.maclife.com/article/news/deals_clean_your_itunes_tunes_cleaner

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Article source: http://www.maclife.com/article/gallery/weeks_10_hottest_apple_news_stories_may_17

Ever since iTunes was introduced in 2001, Apple has continued to tinker with it, updating how it works and how you access and play music. iTunes 11 has introduced some interesting new interface components, the best of which is the new album view. This presents a grid of albums, and clicking one expands a track listing. However, although this feels simple and elegant, simplicity and elegance within iTunes are only skin-deep. The app remains a complex, frequently unwieldy beast, primarily because it now has to deal with managing all kinds of media on your Mac, including books, TV shows, movies, and apps. At best, you can sometimes hide the clutter, but iTunes is no longer an app with a razor-sharp focus, and even accessing music can be done in several different ways, which can cause confusion.

The purpose of this group test, then, is to explore alternative apps that focus on the single act of playing music. Ideally, we wanted to find apps that would enable you to work with your existing music, but that would have more straightforward interfaces and fast search functions. We also wanted any potential replacement to have multiple ways of viewing the app (like the iTunes mini player does) and to be stable and reliable.

Of the six apps we selected, there’s a surprising amount of variation in terms of design. Although some tend to resemble earlier versions of iTunes, others are more akin to iOS apps, and one oddly has the visual appearance of a real-life piece of hi-fi equipment, complete with a massive volume knob. It’s a testament to the dedication of developers that any such apps even exist—it can’t be easy convincing people to try a competitor to one of the best-known and commonly used pieces of software on the Mac. But if you’ve found iTunes to be frustrating or unfulfilling, one of these other options may offer just what you’re looking for.

Test One: iTunes Integration

How does it handle your existing music?

All apps in our test except Album Flow and Ecoute can manage their own libraries of music, with Enqueue also providing the means to monitor specific folders. However, there was variation in the way each app dealt with existing iTunes content. Ecoute and Fidelia get it right, directly accessing iTunes library files, the former also optionally enabling you to write metadata back to the library on quit. Album Flow ostensibly also has the right idea, in working directly with iTunes, but, bizarrely, it requires iTunes to be open in order to access its music.

Ecoute uses your existing iTunes library, so it’s immediately ready to rock.

Test Two: Ease of Use

Is the interface any better than iTunes?

Sonora feels like the app iTunes wants to be. Its album-centric view is reminiscent of iTunes 11’s and is just as usable. Albums can be reordered alphabetically, chronologically, or by popularity. The app is fast and responsive, and we liked its track-queuing system, from which you can save mixes.

If Sonora’s iTunes import was as good as its interface, it’d be a winner.

The remaining three are very different. Album Flow resurrects Cover Flow but is oddly clunky. There’s no way to jump to an artist or album using the keyboard, making it tiresome to navigate large collections. Fidelia’s main view resembles a real-world hi-fi, but the library is a separate window; both feel fiddly. Ecoute takes an odd column-based approach; it’s initially strange to use, but we warmed to its iPad-app-like charms.

Test Three: Music Search

How fast can you find favorite songs?

Album Flow is almost surreal with its search. It’s very slow, and on those instances it does provide results, they’re terrible. Given that there’s no other easy way to navigate, this is a particular letdown. Fidelia’s looks like magic by comparison, despite having only a basic list that can be filtered. Having to first select a library to search seems old-fashioned.

Enqueue’s search enables related tracks to be stashed, ready for playback.

Ecoute is more impressive, its search field rapidly providing results grouped by album, artist, composer, genre, and track. However, it’s beaten by Sonora, Swinsian, and Enqueue. Sonora’s search is similar to the one in iTunes 11, but significantly faster; in a snap, you get album, artist, and track results for your search term, and you can also use the sidebar to navigate to specific artists. Swinsian is also extremely speedy, and live-filters all its views (browser, list, art grid) at once. Enqueue is perhaps a touch better in this respect, although it’s somewhat slower; selecting a track from a search result loads all related tracks into the sidebar, ready for you to browse.

Next page: Additional features, the winner, and solutions for streaming music online.

Article source: http://www.maclife.com/article/features/6_itunes_alternatives_mac

Considering how quickly Apple pulled the deceptively innocent Boyfriend Maker a few months back, it’s a little surprising that they let an app called “Bang with Friends” go live in the first place. But it’s down now, just a little over a week after its first appearance, presumably because someone at Apple just realized the none-too-subtle meaning behind the name. According to cofounder and CEO Colin Hodge, as reported by Gawker, the salacious app managed to snag over one million users before it was taken down.

It hasn’t completely vanished. The website is still up despite a temporary outage earlier, although the App Store section of the site simply states: “Be right back: We’re working with Apple to get BWF back into the App Store shortly.” There’s also text box where you can enter your e-mail address for an update in the event that Apple allows the site to go live again.

At the moment, it’s not entirely clear why Apple took the app down after greenlighting it aside from the site’s rather obvious intentions. Aside from a fairly explicit logo in the upper left hand corner and a suggestive background image, there’s very little that’s pornographic about the actual site. The concept, indeed, is simple. You’re presented with a gallery of your male or female Facebook friends (your choice), and you press “Down to Bang” under their name if you’d, you know, like to learn how to play drums with them. If they’re also using the service and they’ve selected you, you’ll get an e-mail announcing the mutual interest.

Techcrunch suggests that the issue might not be so black-and-white as it initially seems, pointing out that Zynga went after CupidWithFriends because it was using their “With Friends” trademark, not because it was objecting to the content. Yet as CNET reports, Apple‘s also has a history of removing apps with questionable content, such as one in 2011 that listed DUI checkpoints.

But if you’re the kind of person who absolutely needs an app to see if certain things could happen with your friends instead of, you know, asking, you can take heart in the fact that Apple allowed BoyfriendMaker back on the App Store after the developers bumped up the age rating from 4+ to 12+ and cleaned up its act a little. And for what it’s worth, Bang with Friends is still available over at Google’s no-holds-barred Google Play store.

Follow this article’s writer, Leif Johnson, on Twitter.

Article source: http://www.maclife.com/article/news/apple_boots_bang_friends_app_store_after_10_days

We’ve got some apps that will teach you things and get you your news and even maybe break the ice with that hottie at the party. So what are you waiting for? Go and improve yourself today.

Chess Pro – with coach

Want to get better at chess? Of course you do. You could play, or you could let this usually $10 app coach you for free.

Web to JPEG

Take screenshots of whole pages and turn them into jpegs. Do it for free, like the pros.

Hitpad – See What’s Up

Find news by letting it find you and do it for a buck. An Apple featured app.

iCatcher!

We’re no fans of Apple‘s free podcast app, but with iCatcher! you have a better solution, currently sitting at $2.

Calligraphy Art

Learn the ancient noble art of calligraphy for only a buck. Hey, get some class, eh?

National Gallery, London HD

Cheaper than a trip across the Atlantic, this app hooks you up with some incomparable art for one single dollar.

GPlayer

ZDNet said this filled the gap made by the departure of VLC, and for a buck you can get some of that sweet any-video action.

Funny Fish – Fishing Fantasy

Fishing should be relaxing, not a bloodsport, which is why Funny Fish for free can give you that relaxing time you want with a hook, line, and sinker.

You Gotta See This!

Create unique, artistically inspired, spacial collages of images that you take by slowly moving the camera around in 3D space. $2 when it’s usually $7.

Fingle

Like Twister for your fingers, this game will break the ice and get you hand-holding in no time for only a buck.

ToonCamera

Turn your mug into a cartoon with this photo app and it only costs one single comic book we call George Washington. 

BusyCal 2

We’ve heard nothing but good things about BusyCal 2, save that at $50 it’s a chunk of change. How about if it was $29.99. Save $20 and grab it now while the getting’s good.

Mathemagics

But why do we want to learn math tricks with summer coming up, your kids will whine. But you know this $2.99 will keep them on task and having fun until next year.

Bluenote

A neat little note taking app that syncs, encrypts, and saves on the fly. It’s 90 percent off from AppyFridays, so it’s only one buckaroo.

Article source: http://www.maclife.com/article/news/price_drop_weekends_best_ios_app_deals_may_17

If you’ve found yourself wanting a MacBook Air over the last couple of days, you might be better off waiting, according to AppleInsider. In fact, you may even have a hard time finding it. All across the country. from Amazon.com to BH and MacCollection, resellers and retailers are reporting that the lightweight laptop’s completely or nearly out of stock, and the increasing shortage is being trumpeted as proof that Apple will release a new model at WWDC on June 10-June 14.

The news is well in line with the predictions earlier this year by KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, which we reported on back in January. Kuo has a knack for accurately predicting Apple‘s releases, and as MacRumors reports, in April he announced her suspicious than the MacBooks and MacBook Airs built with Intel’s latest Haswell processors would be the product highlights of WWDC. MacRumors went on to report that Kuo doesn’t believe we’ll see retinas displays with the release, citing “cost, thickness, and production concerns.”

There’s plenty of reason to believe that there’s truth to the rumor; after all, reports of dwindling stock by third party resellers have been used to predict the release of upcoming new Apple products many times in the past. Still, it appears some resellers are doing their best to keep some of the virtual shelves (that, or consumers are returning them). In the time between AppleInsider’s announcement of the shortages to the writing of this article, the number of available 1.7Ghz 128GB 11.6-inch MacBook Airs on Amazon went up from 10 to 13.

Follow this article’s author, Leif Johnson, on Twitter.

Article source: http://www.maclife.com/article/news/macbook_air_shortages_may_hint_new_release_wwdc

On the off chance that you need further evidence of mobile gaming’s rapidly changing landscape, IDC and App Annie recently released the results of a study demonstrating that revenues for iOS and Google Play gaming rose sharply in 2013′s first quarter. Revenues for the handheld gaming devices made by Nintendo fell during the same period. Google’s still behind Sony and Nintendo’s overall revenue for the time being, but with the rate of growth they reported during their recent I/O, it’s expected that Google Play, too, will overtake traditional handheld gaming devices sometime during the next quarter.

Keep in mind that the study isn’t skewed by non-gaming apps. Games account for nearly 40 percent of all downloads for both the App Store and Google Play, according to the study. The study also reveals that games account for almost 70 percent of consumer spending on the App Store and over 80 percent for Google Play. In some ways, as IDC and App Annie point out, such numbers might seem unfair to Nintendo and Sony. Both companies tend to experience explosive growth during the holiday season, which occurs directly before the first quarter.

But the study reveals that such seasonal cycles mean little to nothing in the world of mobile games for the iPhone and Android systems, particularly when you factor in cost and the availability of almost every game whenever and (depending on connection) wherever you want it. AllThingsD also reported that Nintendo and Sony are also simply against a staggering wall of numbers. The global install base for devices like Nintendo’s 3DS and Sony’s PlayStation Vita amounted to a “mere” 200 million, whereas research firm Gartner reports that more than 2 billion phones and tablets will ship out in 2013 alone.

There’s still time for Nintendo and Vita to reverse their fortunes. One of the most touted features of Sony’s upcoming PlayStation 4 is its ability to support gameplay through its Vita device, and in a more dubious move, Nintendo’s been working with developers of phone games to create versions for its Wii U. Both companies also have a substantial list of releases planned for the coming months.

But such measures may only delay the inevitable. At least there’s a silver lining–if this keeps up, maybe we’ll finally see Super Mario Bros. or The Legend of Zelda on the iPhone after all.

Article source: http://www.maclife.com/article/news/game_spending_ios_outpaced_3ds_vita_early_2013

Summer is rapidly approaching, and with that comes the burden of moving. Whether your family is expanding and needing more space, college kids are returning home, or you’re a young urban professional fearful that your roommate is trying to cook you into a stew, we all get locational angst. With all of the sketchy services out there, it can be exceptionally difficult to find the living situation that works for you. Well, be bound by Craigslist and its Machiavellian promise no longer.

Realtor.com’s Rental app offers a narrower scope than their traditional app, which is actually a blessing. Providing both a Google Maps or Earth view, you can see the listings that are in your area, or you can search based on an address or neighborhood. The parameters for price range, bedrooms and bathrooms are easily adjustable with sliders, and the search results are nearly instantaneous. The coolest feature, however, has to be the boundaries you can draw for yourself within the region you wish to live in.

While only one source for available apartments, what the Rental app really does best is provide a lay of the land for the prospective renter. Whole neighborhoods and their price borders are readily apparent, and thus you can plan accordingly. Of course, be wary of the usual realty tricks, especially if you’re an urban environment, lest you find that the trendy neighborhood you’re hoping to move to stretches on indefinitely.

Click here to download Realtor.com Rentals from iTunes.

1 of 5

Realtor.com Rentals Screens

• View the full image

  This is a prime example of how the local map can give you a general idea of what’s going on in the neighborhood just by looking at the rents beyond “invisible” dividing lines.

• View the full image

  Everyone loves sliders, though I imagine people tend not to prefer to slide these all the way.

• View the full image

  There is a bit of a masochistic edge to looking for dwellings in New York.

• View the full image

  I’m looking for somewhere in this region for y’all to make me lose my mind. Up in there. Up in there.

• View the full image

  Brooklyn steam powered heat, for all of you steampunks. Be careful, you WILL burn yourself on those pipes.

Article source: http://www.maclife.com/article/columns/free_app_friday_realtorcom_rentals

• Future is AOP and PPA Consumer Digital Publisher of the Year.
• Mac|Life is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. We produce content across five core areas:

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Article source: http://www.maclife.com/article/reviews/turnado_review