Mac OS X Freeware Review - Focus Booster

Focus Booster claims to be a productivity boosting piece of software which helps you to accomplish your goals through the principles of the Pomodoro Technique.  The company’s website, http://www.focusboosterapp.com/ , says that the product will change colors as time goes by and that it is fully customizable with alarms and time settings.  Essentially it is a timer.  It installs using Adobe Air or, if you don’t feel like installing it, you can run a web based version from their site.  The product is listed for Mac OS X.

After struggling to get Adobe Air to open and install the software, I set myself a couple of minutes to write the review.  The first thing I noticed was that the control icons are very small, the application looks completely out of place on OS X - it would look out of place on Windows as well though.  The menu bar also gives you nothing to work with, all of the settings are handled through the information button - a little gray on black italic “i” that is stuck on the far right hand side of the application window.  On my MacBook I didn’t see it at first because the monitor was pushed back about an inch too far.  If you have bad eyes this program will definitely be a struggle.

The program itself works fine, it does what it says it will do, it is a count down timer.  I set it for five minutes with a break after 3 minutes, I also selected the “ticking” option would made it tick like an old style clock.  Would I say it was soothing or helped me to get anything done?  Not really.  It does give you nice visual cues that your time is running out, mainly that the progress bar turns from green to red slowly which, in my view, adds a little bit of stress to the situation because it lets you know that you are about to be out of time and you might need to speed things up a bit.

So… is it worth the price?  Yes, of course it is - it is free after all.  Is it something every Mac user should have?  I can’t see myself ever using it again, but if you really want a countdown timer that changes colors, this program is for you.