Just installed the Mac App Store. I don’t have an iPhone or iPad so I’m not all that familiar with a lot of these apps.
What’s useful and/or fun (mostly fun)?
Give us a few hints about yourself: what do you do (generally) to work, to play?
Absent that:
TextWrangler (free) if you ever work with text files, HTML, or code. You’ll wonder how you ever got along without it. BBEdit (not free, about $100) is the “pro” version of this, with even more capability.
Pixelmator (not free, about $40) is often touted as the “obvious” Mac replacement for Photoshop for those who only need 50-75% of Photoshop’s power (most folks).
Aperature (Apple, not free, about $80 on sale) is on sale at the moment if you’re interested in Photography beyond the level of what iPhoto provides. I don’t own this, but I’ve heard good things about it: again, a lower-end Photoshop replacement, with some Lightroom-like capabilities.
I’m into lots of stuff; my work all gets done at work with programs I can only use at work so I’m mostly looking for things that are either great fun or useful at home. I record music, do some semi-pro videography, don’t do a lot of still photo stuff but occasionally have cause to do some photo manipulation. Don’t really do a lot of word processing or other office-type stuff at home.
if you don’t know if you need or want something, why are you looking to spend money? good lord.
Just asking so I can avoid wasting money on garbage. Like I said in the OP, looking mostly for fun stuff.
I’ve heard good things about Angry Birds. Probably worth 5 bucks. What else?
It’s a brilliant marketing ploy isn’t it? A bunch of really cheap software all easily accessible any time. Two dollars her, five dollars there. Pretty soon, you’ve spent fifty dollars on software that you never would have paid that much for in a package.
I love the app store, but I have a lot of complete garbage on my phone.
EverNote (free). It’s an app which quite simply lets you write and organize notes, but they do a damn good job of it. For one, you can access your data anywhere. EverNote runs on many different platforms, including mobile devices, and you can access it over the web also. I can make notes on my Mac and then read them on my Windows machine at work, or on my iPhone. Plus, a cool feature is that you can take a picture and the EverNote server will scan the picture for text, and index it for searching later. Pretty cool!
Another one: Kindle for Mac (free). Lets you read your Kindle books on your Mac, and like all of the other Kindle apps it will sync your last reading position across devices.
I for one love the App Store, both the Mac App Store and iTunes App Store. I like seeing what cool apps are out there. There are many good free or inexpensive but high-quality apps of all different kinds.
Angry Birds is a very fun, very addictive game! I love it.
Yeah, the majority of it is so cheap that you don’t really care if it turns out to be a bum app, what’s $1.99 after all? It’s the sort of money that might go unnoticed on your dressing room table or in some jacket pockets. As you say, it all adds up and it is easy to end up spending some significant cash.
I’m liking Chopper 2. It is particularly cool if you have an iPhone and download the app for the iPhone as well as the Mac, then you can use the iPhone as a wireless controller for the game on the Mac (though you do have to pay for it twice.) The game is a side scrolling rescue/combat game where you have to complete objectives within a set time frame. The objectives generally include shooting infantry, dropping bombs/rockets on tanks, and picking up stranded civilians and taking them back to an area of safety.
I know that the game flight control is pretty great on the ipad and iphone. Does anybody know whether it works on the iMac and macbook as well?
I got this on Steam a ways back during one of their sales. Works fine; you just use your trackpad or mouse to trace the flight paths instead of your finger.
I was sure I’d replied to this. Flight Control HD is available in the app store for Mac at $5.99 (not sure if that’s USD or AUD.) It plays the same as the iPhone version although using the track pad is not quite as good as a touch screen.