It used to be all the rage to photograph in excruciating detail the “unboxing” of a new piece of gear, especially hardware that few people (or no one else) yet had. Unboxing was great, but it’s sort of like a wedding or a birth: The actual event is relatively brief, and the really important stuff comes afterwards, as you spend years together.
Likewise, unboxing a new Macintosh may be exciting, especially if it’s a surprise. But the important part comes next. While Apple includes quite a bit of software, and offers more for free download via the Mac App Store, what else should a new user or a fresh system get?
As a nearly 30-year veteran of Mac ownership, I have 10 solid suggestions that will make your life better by shaving off the little irritations that remain in Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite and in Apple’s bundled software. A new Mac user will be happier than otherwise, and a veteran user looking to refresh a system will find the time and effort savings quite rewarding as well.
Part 1.Top 10 Best Android Contacts Apps 1. Me excels at keeping your contacts management as simple as possible. It also pulls all your contact information from linkedIn or Google+ and other social media sites. Now Contact and Up to Date is one of the best but rather creaky these days. I reckon the future lies with web apps, such as Highrise, provided you can get on line any time you need to.
Transfer more than 12 types of data between Mac & iDevice: Music, videos, photos, apps, ebooks, contacts, messages and more. Data backup and retrieve in lossless quality at any time. Create, view, edit and clean up notes, bookmarks, contacts on your iDevice. Jul 26, 2011 With ”Contacts Sync for Google Gmail,” you can quickly & easily sync your Gmail & Mac contacts so that you can have access to your contacts wherever you go. This app distinguishes itself with its reliability, ease of use, speed, and with a true '2-way sync' that merges changes made to both your Gmail & Mac contacts.
LaunchBar
While OS X’s Launchpad and Spotlight can, in different ways, let you quickly find and open apps, documents, and other things, they can be maddening. Launchpad’s interface is hardly useful when you have more than a handful of apps, and Spotlight searches everything, rather than specific categories and in specific ways. Instead, pick LaunchBar ($29 individual, $48 family), which indexes and links to all sorts of stuff: music, contacts, apps, emoji, search history, bookmarks, and more.
LaunchBar can be invoked from a keystroke—I use the default Command-Escape. Best wireless mouse for laptop. Then you just type a few letters to select the thing you want, and press Return to launch it or open it with the appropriate app. LaunchBar’s bar, however, also lets you perform most Finder actions with a Command-shortcut and carry out calculations.
LaunchBar can also add Clipboard depth, turning into something like the old pre-OS X Scrapbook: You can revert to and cycle through previous items you’ve copied or cut.
Default Folder
There are three elements of Yosemite itself that I spend more time interacting with than any other: the Open dialog, the Save dialog (and variants like Export), and Finder window navigation. Default Folder ($35) enhances all of these to your advantage in efficiency and organization.
When installed, the app wraps your open and save dialogs in a bunch of extra interface items. On one side, you can select from volumes and special locations, Finder windows, favorited locations, and recently visited folders. The file-navigation dialogs can also be set to snap to the last document opened or other locations, while pressing Option plus the down or up arrow cycles backward or forward through recent folders. Another item allows a variety of Finder-style file actions directly within the dialog, like rename, duplicate, and move to trash.
A pane at the bottom reveals a preview, Spotlight comments, tags, and permissions, as well as file data like creation date and whether the item is locked or not. There’s a host of other options, too: Tap a key combination, and the current folder is opened in the Finder. With Default Folder installed, you never have to painstakingly navigate your drives and folders.
TextExpander
I know this is crazy talk, but what if you could replace the tedious repetitive typing of common phrases with a few keystrokes? Such shortcutting dates back decades—once known as “macroinstruction expansion” or “macros”—and TextExpander ($35 individual, $45 family) is the modern mature version of it.
Start with figuring out a few characters to type instead of your name or mailing address. Advance to using its tools for tapping a few keys to insert the current date, formatting it as you like. Move to employing prefabricated AppleScript to tap into URL shorteners, handling the roundtrip from clipboard to a tiny path. Graduate to its fill-in forms, which allow you to compose a message with selectable fill-in values to automate replies.
Smile revised its iOS version, TextExpander Touch ($5) to work within the add-on keyboard approach in iOS 8. Snippets can sync using Dropbox among Mac and iOS devices.
1Password
Security pundits, including yours truly, recommend that you create a unique strong password for every site or service you use. That’s impossible for a human to manage, but an integrated password generator and secure storage app like 1Password ($50) handles that with ease. It can create random password according to rules you set, or those absurd ones imposed by sites, and then securely store them for you.
That would be perfectly dandy, but not terribly useful if that’s all it did. However, 1Password also comes with browser plug-ins for Safari, Chrome, and Firefox, which let you invoke the app while visiting a site. Tap a keystroke, and it either prefills a username, password, and more, if there’s only one match; or lets you choose among multiple accounts for a site. When creating an account, the password generator can be invoked in the same way.
1Password also stores and can fill in one or more identities (address information), as well as credit-card details. Versions are available for Windows, iOS, and Android, and a password database can be synced among them. (The App Store version is required for iCloud sync with OS X and iOS.)
The similarly featured LastPass is an alternative for those who want to be able to gain access to passwords via website, which 1Password doesn’t offer.
Dropbox
Keeping files up to date among multiple computers was a pain for many years. It wasn’t until Dropbox (free tier with 2 GB to 16 GB; 1 TB Dropbox Pro, $10/month or $100/year) appeared—a harbinger of cloud storage—that it became simple. Dropbox has a single folder into which you can place anything, and it’s copied to its Internet storage in your account, while also synchronized to any computer logged into the same account. (You can selectively omit specific subfolders on each machine.)
That would be enough, but Dropbox also offers two kinds of sharing. Shared folders sync the contents to any members who have joined the folder. A shared link allows any recipient to download a file or folder, or browse a folder’s contents.
Because Dropbox keeps a copy centrally, it keeps track of every change. Older versions and even deleted files are available for up to 30 days after a change or removal, and a $39-per-year upgrade to Dropbox Pro, called Extended Version History, extends that to a year. Dropbox’s iOS client lets you browse its cloud-stored versions, forward files, and download them to the app or open in other apps.
Skype
You already have FaceTime available on your computer and iOS devices. Why would you need Skype (free)? Because not everyone you know has a Mac, iPhone, or iPad, and because FaceTime doesn’t come with a calling plan, even though in Yosemite, OS X can access your iPhone to make and receive calls to landlines and cellular numbers.
Skype has a tattered history of Mac updates, but it remains the lingua franca for person-to-person and group Internet telephone calls. The service also has inexpensive calling plans for making unlimited phone calls to specific countries (such as the US and Canada), and cheap per-minute rates without a plan or to countries not included in a plan. You can pay for one or more incoming “real” phone numbers, too, placing them in countries in which you routinely receive calls, making it a local call for residents there.
It offers audio only and video calls, as well as screen sharing, file transfer, and instant messaging, along with SMS. I’ve used Skype for years as my main incoming and outgoing business line to avoid the fixed cost, and as it’s typically higher quality than a cell call.
CrashPlan
CrashPlan can back up any selection of files to a locally connected drive, a local-area network volume, a peer’s drive elsewhere, or its cloud service—in any combination. Only the cloud storage comes with a fee attached, $4-$6/month individual, $9-$14/month family. The family subscription option lets you pull in any of your otherwise backup-adverse relatives without them having to manage the details of a separate account themselves.
The peer-to-peer option lets you push your encrypted files to someone else’s drive anywhere on the Internet. That other person gives you a code, and off your files go onto their backup volume or a separate volume you could provide, offering true offsite backup without a recurring fee.
CrashPlan isn’t a full-system clone. For that, Time Machine or Super Duper ($28) is a better option. Rather, CrashPlan is best at archiving your documents, preferences, and applications, and can store endless revisions of the same files for recovering older drafts.
I have about 1.5TB stored with CrashPlan’s cloud service across my own and several family computers, and have relied on restoring files from the cloud and local drives many times, both through its Mac interface (including over 600GB after a recent drive failure) and its iOS app.
CrashPlan’s major downside is that it continues to require Java, an extra installation in OS X for years. Installing Java for CrashPlan is safe, because it’s not enabled for use on the Web without extra steps. Still, if that’s a stumbling block, Backblaze (unlimited storage, $4–$5/month per computer) comes highly recommended by many colleagues.
Airfoil
AirPlay is one of the best things about Apple’s ecosystem of audiovisual-friendly devices, and many strictly audio devices support AirPlay audio playback, too, including a Yamaha receiver I purchased a couple of years ago. But AirPlay has a number of limits. iTunes is the only Apple software that has a specific AirPlay option, which includes simultaneous playback to multiple devices. Otherwise, you’re limited to choosing a single device from Sound preferences to which to shunt all system audio.
Airfoil ($25) works around this limit by letting you take just the audio output of any software or audio input device and route it to one or more AirPlay-compatible receivers, including an Apple TV or AirPort Express. Better still, Rogue Amoeba offers Airfoil Speakers apps, free software for receiving Airfoil audio for Mac, Windows, Android, iOS, and Linux.
VLC
VLC (free) is the Swiss Army knife of video playback software. QuickTime Player can handle popular formats in a straightforward way, but everything it can’t, VLC can. VLC can play Internet streaming video of all sorts, read various disc formats, and convert some files it can’t read. If you deal with older file formats, say, those used by people that eschew H.264 because of patent issues, or video created or distributed for Windows and Unix variants, VLC is a one-stop shop.
Beyond video file support, VLC can open and convert tons of audio formats, which you might find in sorting through several decades of cruft on the Internet and in your own digital history, depending on your age. It can also directly open YouTube URLs, subscribe to podcasts, make video playlists, and play Internet radio stations from a large, built-in list.
GraphicConverter
As VLC is to video (and audio) formats, GraphicConverter ($40) is to image files. While Apple’s Preview offers a decent subset of image viewing and manipulation controls, GraphicConverter has more in common with Photoshop without the subscription fee now required for Adobe’s graphical-editing pioneer, nor nearly as steep a learning curve.
GraphicConverter can open just about anything, offers photographic (non-linear levels) and image-editing (gradients, fills, and like) tools, and the basics like cropping, canvas resizing, and up- and downsampling. I often turn to GraphicConverter’s Browse command to view images in a directory, where I can preview and see file data, as well as rename or delete them.
You can directly import images from scanners and cameras (including in RAW format), and GraphicConverter can upload directly to Google+, Flickr, and other services. And if you need to process a number of images—converting a folder from TIFF to JPEG, for instance—the program has simple batch processing, with more advanced options available to those who need them.
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Managing your time has long been a part of the knowledge worker’s day, and calendar apps have been around almost as long as email. But while the quantity of available options is high, the number of quality calendar apps is a small handful.
The option that is best suited for you will depend on your needs, but a closer inspection has shown us that, for most people, Fantastical 2 is the best calendar application for macOS users.
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Plus, we also have included a couple of our custom productivity templates for you to get started with. These templates are right out of our popular productivity course.
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What We Looked For When Looking for the Best Calendar App
A calendar app on its own is a simple thing. You put items on it to show where you need to be, how long you’re going to be there, or what you’re going to do. Any calendar app must include those features to be useful in any way.
But a useful and effective calendar app requires those features to be well-designed, as well as include other functionality. Here’s what we looked at to arrive at our decision.
The Calendar App Contenders
The Verdict: Fantastical 2 is the best calendar app for Mac
The original Fantastical for macOS was the best option for quickly adding and reviewing calendar entries. Version 2 keeps all its advantages while adding the functionality of more robust calendar applications.
Ease of Use
There is a lot to like about a number of these calendar apps, but what makes Fantastical stand out is the first item on our list of criteria: it’s the easiest to work with. For a calendar app, ease-of-use needs to be considered in a few different ways.
First, how easy is it to glance at your day, week, or month and quickly get a feel for how your time is going to be spent? Second, and perhaps more importantly, how easy is it to get items into your calendar? Because many calendar apps do a decent-to-good job of displaying your events, we could argue that ease-of-entry is the most vital part of a desktop calendar app.
And, in this regard, Fantastical leads the way.
Aside: savvy macOS users could point to the fact that desktop utilities such as Alfred, LaunchBar, and Spotlight make ease-of-entry a non-sequitur. And I agree: I often use LaunchBar to add events to my calendar rather than Fantastical … but this is a review of the full-fledged functionality of the desktop calendar app landscape. If launcher type utilities are your thing, check out our review.
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From its inception, the focus with Fantastical was its natural-language parsing, the ability for the user to enter random bits of text into the entry box and the app just figures it out. It’s almost magical and it set the bar for calendar apps on macOS.
That has not changed with Fantastical 2. Although the app is no longer just a menubar utility, the ease of getting items into your calendar is the same. The great part of Fantastical 2 is that for those who loved the simplicity of the first version, you can use it in the exact same fashion. The full fledged app interface never needs to be seen.
Indeed, the menubar functionality is now a must-have for a calendar application. I want to be able to glance at my day without having to open the full application. Fantastical gives me that option and builds on the original experience of the first version to also give the full functionality and bigger long-term views of more traditional calendar apps.
Apple makes every effort to turn the phrase “it-just-works” into reality. Flexibits does the same with its ability to take what you throw at it and turn your words into events that make sense. And, as alluded to earlier, ease of use also includes a few other touches. Viewing a calendar filled with events and tasks is one factor, but we’ll touch more on the UI below.
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Another way many calendar apps cause frustration is in editing events already in your calendar. Some of our options add friction to the process of editing existing entries, most often in the form of multiple clicks. Fantastical does no such thing. Simply click on an existing event, and update fields as desired. Other options require you to click a button or double click an entry before field values can be added. Advantage Fantastical!
There are a few other common tasks that are (thankfully) easier than was common several years back. Adding invitees, locations, or notes to a calendar entry is a fairly simple process in Fantastical, BusyCal, and Calendar.app — both in creating a new entry, or with editing an existing one. In this regard, Outlook adds slightly more friction to the process.
Aesthetics
In many interfaces, the “less is more” mantra is an ideal goal. Most clean, well-thought out UI’s make ample use of whitespace and contrast to differentiate between different types of content.
The hard part of designing a calendar application is that the designer has to give the user the ability to view a large amount of information (a month or year view of a busy person’s calendar), yet still maintain clarity. No easy task. In this regard, Flexibits has done a laudable job with Fantastical.
The desktop calendar space for macOS had long been ruled by options putting functionality over aesthetics or options that came close to usable, but slightly missed the mark (Apple’s own Calendar app).
Power Play
The problem with many of the apps that place the highest priority on aesthetics, ease of use, and a clean experience is that power features are often sacrificed. And in most cases, this is a good thing.
But applications that can provide a clean user experience and full functionality will rule the roost. That’s the case with Fantastical. No one could ever accuse BusyCal of not delivering on features, but it, and other options, lack the grace of Fantastical. So, when talking about feature sets, this must always be kept in mind.
How does Fantastical fare with features in mind? Very well, thank you! It integrates with iCloud and Google accounts, the two most used options for macOS users. But it also plays nicely with Exchange (for those poor souls living double lives), Yahoo, and CalDAV accounts. Is your Google account configured to use two-factor authentication? No problem.
In essence, desktop calendar applications can be thought of as wrappers. The full functionality is dependent on the background service (iCloud, Google etc). But each client on macOS integrates with those backend services to differing degrees. Fantastical does a fair job of offering the majority of options that iCloud and Google calendar apps provide.
However, one feature Fantastical does not include is the ability for users to share their calendars. But, neither do any of the other options we considered (apart from Outlook giving you options to share Exchange calendar accounts). Overall, most of the apps considered have parity in this regard. None of the other options add enough functionality to overcome Fantastical’s excellent design.
Price
For many comparisons of desktop applications for macOS, cost is not a determining factor, simply because the range of prices is mostly consistent, but with Calendar apps, price does come into the discussion. This is due to the fact that Apple provides a free option within the desktop OS, but also because Microsoft Outlook is more than 4 times the cost of the other contenders.
With Fantastical and BusyCal sitting at $49, people have two questions to answer. First, do these third-party applications offer enough advantage over the free app already installed on their computer? If the answer to that question is yes (and for many people, it likely is), the next question to answer is whether or not Outlook offers enough advantages over Fantastical and BusyCal to justify the $219 price tag.
Lastly, one consideration when factoring in price to a decision such as this is support. When a Mac user makes a purchase of this nature, choosing a third-party tool over what Apple already provides, you have to consider what kind of company your purchasing power is supporting. Part of what makes macOS so special is the thriving community of developers. They truly make macOS a better platform (as well as iOS), extending what it can do beyond what Apple envisioned.
It’s just another reason that makes Fantastical our top choice. It feels good to support the Flexibits team. Reciprocal benefit is a beautiful thing!
Fitting In
Another vital aspect of a desktop calendar app for macOS is fitting in and being a good neighbor. With iCloud, an app that makes adding and viewing reminders has a distinct advantage over an app that does not. And again, Fantastical meets the need, and does so better than the other contenders.
This may be one of my favorite touches with Fantastical. To add a reminder to one of your Reminder lists, simply toggle the switch in the new entry window.
The same benefits to adding an event to your calendar apply to your Reminders. Simply start typing in the entry window, then toggle the switch as shown above. Want that reminder to have a due date? Not a problem — just type it in like you would for an event. The natural parsing of Fantastical handles events and reminders with ease.
Displaying your reminders is also done well. In the Mini Window (capitalized for your pleasure), your reminders are placed at the end of your list of events. If one has a due date and time, it shows amidst your events at that time. In the full app window, the reminders show in both the sidebar and the full calendar view.
Apple has made an attempt to have Reminders be the default to-do list of the casual computer user. Unfortunately, they fell short making the experience fluid. However, Fantastical makes up where they lack. With Fantastical 2, the experience of adding, viewing, and interacting with reminders makes it feel as if Reminders is a natural extension of the calendar.
Fantastical has a fantastic (sorry … you knew it was coming!) Today widget. None of the other contenders offer that functionality. If the menubar is not your thing, then a quick three finger swipe can bring up the Today window for a look at what’s coming.
Basically, Fantastical makes working with your calendar and your reminders an experience. It’s the best option for fitting in with macOS. By far!
iOS Counterparts
Although not essential to the experience on macOS, any desktop application that has counterparts on iOS (or Android) extends the overall experience. Outlook is complete in this area, as is Apple’s Calendar app. However, the same smart design touches that make Fantastical the preferred option on macOS also give it the edge with the iOS versions.
We’ve written in detail about the Fantastical iPhone app in a separate review. Read more about that here.
Once again, Fantastical comes out ahead in our comparison.
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Other CandidatesBusyCal
Probably the most feature complete option we considered, BusyCal is the best choice for those who value function over form. It certainly gives you all the features you could want. Where it lacks for yours truly is the aesthetics: it looks and feels a little like corporate software.
I used BusyCal several years back when there were less options available to replace Apple’s iCal (you can almost smell the faux leather). Today, BusyCal is greatly improved, even to the point where it competes feature-by-feature with Fantastical.
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A good example is the menubar functionality. Although BusyCal started as a full desktop app, in contrast with Fantastical’s progression from menubar utility to full app, it includes a nice menubar option that allows for quick calendar entry. It even uses Fantastical-like language processing.
Where it falls short of our choice is the overall look and feel.
OutlookBest Contacts App For Mac 2018
One consideration a review of this type requires is how to approach Outlook. Do you compare the calendar function only? Because it’s a full-fledged application that covers multiple categories (email, calendar, contacts, tasks, and notes) with a price tag to match, you have to decide if the additional functionality should factor in to the comparison.
For this review, it did not. If an all-in-one approach is your preference, then Outlook is certainly a potential good fit for you. But, when considering calendar-specific features on their own, Fantastical is a much better overall experience than what the calendar portion of Outlook has to offer.
Another issue to weigh is the cost. Is Outlook good enough to overcome the larger price tag? Not in this author’s mind. If fitting in with Exchange is a must have or if you already subscribe to Office 365, then Outlook merits serious consideration. For anyone else, the other options are all a better fit.
Calendar
Last, and certainly least, Apple’s own Calendar must be considered. It’s free, it’s installed on every Mac, and it has improved over the years (the Scott Forstall faux leather years, to be specific). For the most casual user, it can certainly fit the bill.
Where does it lack compared to Fantastical? Well, it does not have a menubar option. As mentioned under ease of use, this is a must have for yours truly.
The oddest part of Calendar is its lack of integration with other iCloud items. Want to interact with your Reminders in your calendar app? Then Calendar is not for you. Same for the Calendar Today widget. Because Apple separates Reminders into its own app, you cannot see these tasks (even if they are time-based) in the view of your day. You’d have to keep both apps open.
Once again, the completeness of Fantastical surpasses the contender.
Wait. There’s a Bonus….Custom Productivity Templates
We have a set of custom productivity templates that work well with the iPad app, GoodNotes. And if you want to try them out, we’ve put together a free guide that can help you.
We’ll show you…
Plus, we also have included a couple of our custom productivity templates for you to get started with. These templates are right out of our popular productivity course.
Contact Management Software For Mac
The custom templates and the guide are available for FREE to our email subscriber community. And you can get it right now. By joining the Sweet Setup community you’ll also get access to our other guides, early previews to big new reviews and workflow articles we are working on, weekly roundups of our best content, and more.
Why this over other optionsContact Manager For Mac
With our full comparison, while there is feature parity for the most part, none of the options can compete with Fantastical in terms of overall design and ease of use. BusyCal comes close feature-wise, but is lacking the grace of a more well-designed application. And while Apple’s Calendar has the benefit of already being on your machine, it falls short in terms of usability.
Best Contacts App For Ios
Fantastical is the king of the hill. You need look no further!
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