Mac Apps: Weekly Review
Last week’s review is here.
The Applications reviewed this week
- Pixelmator
- OmniGraffle
- Money
- Racer
- Battle for Wesnoth
Pixelmator:
This is an interesting program I picked up. It has an interface very similar to Photoshop, but it’s not quite like Photoshop. It’s covered in hundreds of features and advance editing tools. One big bonus for this application compared to Adobe’s Photoshop, is the fact that this program is a native Cocoa app, while Photoshop is Carbon. For those who don’t know about Cocoa or Carbon, it means that Pixelmator is much faster, more efficient, and less bug prone. Saying this I do have to point out a few problems I’ve encountered. The first one is the image browser, I have yet to ever get this working. Every time I open it it freezes not just the application, but the whole system, making me have to do a hard shutdown. It is also very limiting when trying to create an image from scratch, rather than tweaking one. Overall it’s a fairly nice alternative to Photoshop.
Latest Version: 1.1.3; 4 March, 2008
Price: $59, shareware
Developer: Pixelmator Team Ltd.
- Type: Image Editor
- Efficiency: 4/5
- Features: 3/5
- Graphics: 3/5
- Stability: 4/5
- Ease of Use: 4/5
- Modern Mac Look: 5/5
- Price: 4/5
Total: 27/35; 77%
OmniGraffle:
If you need a graphical representation or diagramming software, this is about the best program I’ve used whether on the Mac or PC. It has many different categories for the job you need done. It even contains pre-made graphics to design a user interface sketch (if your making an application). In fact there are so many features and assets within this program that at times it can be a little hard to navigate through to find what you were looking for. After a while though it becomes second-nature and a great full-featured application.
- Latest Version: 5.0; 5 March, 2008
- Price: $99(Standard) and $199(Pro)
- Developer: OmniGroup
- Type: Diagraming Software
- Efficiency: 4/5
- Features: 5/5
- Graphics: 3/5
- Stability: 5/5
- Ease of Use: 3/5
- Modern Mac Look: 5/5
- Price: 5/5
Total: 30/35; 86%
Money:
This is a little nifty program for people that like to organize their personal finances. This application is like a database that keeps track of spending and even your bank accounts. It has a very intuitive feature that actually will connect to your bank account and update automatically with it. I have found this program to be extremely simplistic, so it’s not for advance usage, but it is fairly nice. In truth I think the price is a little high, I believe it should be donate ware or maybe $14.99.
- Latest Version: 5.0; 5 March, 2008
- Price: $99(Standard) and $39.99(Pro)
- Developer: jumsoft
- Type: Diagraming Software
- Efficiency: 4/5
- Features: 2/5
- Stability: 5/5
- Ease of Use: 5/5
- Modern Mac Look: 5/5
- Price: 2/5
Total: 23/30; 76%
Racer:
This is a pretty nice racing game. It’s a multi-platform online game which uses the mouse to accelerate and turn the cars. For a free game it has really nice graphics, and great game play, Saying this, it is very very easy to drive and doesn’t completely follow real physics. Along with this, just a tab from another car will send you spinning like crazy.
- Latest Version: 0.5.4.3; 6 March, 2008
- Price: Free
- Developer: Ruud van Gaal
- Type: Racing Game
- Efficiency: 2/5
- Features: 3/5
- Graphics: 3/5
- Stability: 4/5
- Ease of Use: 5/5
- Modern Mac Look: N/A(Opengl Based)
Total: 18/25; 72%
Battle For Wesnoth:
A very addictive game. It’s similar to Civilization or Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, with a turn based RPG style simulation. The theme in this game is fantasy as you build up your army of warriors. There are many different sagas with in it and a lot of replay value. The graphics aren’t the best, but I love the music.
- Latest Version: 1.4; 8 March, 2008
- Price: Free
- Developer: The Battle for Wesnoth development team
- Type: Turn Based Strategy Game(fantasy themed)
- Efficiency: 3/5
- Features: 4/5
- Graphics: 2/5
- Audio: 3/5
- Stability: 5/5
- Ease of Use: 4/5
- Modern Mac Look: N/A(Opengl Based)
Total: 21/30; 70%
Tags: apple, application, battle for wesnoth, mac, macintosh, money, omnigraffle, pixelmator, program, racer, review, software, weekly
