MacFormat UK – June 2019

Software STORE GUIDE

BEST BUYS... Curated picks of third-party apps

macformat.com @macformat JUNE 2019 | MACFORMAT | 103

PHOTO EDITOR (MAC)

Affinity Photo

£48.99 serif.com

VIDEO EDITOR (MAC)

Final Cut Pro X 10.3

£299.99 apple.com/uk

NOTE-TAKING APP (MAC/iOS)

Notability

£9.99 (Mac), £9.99 (iOS) gingerlabs.com

WRITING APP (MAC)

Scrivener

About £34 literatureandlatte.com

UTILITY (MAC)

Carbon Copy Cloner 5

£31.10 bombich.com

SYSTEM ENHANCEMENT (MAC)

Bartender 3

£11.10 macbartender.com

OUTLINING APP (iOS)

OmniOutliner 3

£9.99 for Essentials, £38.99 for Premium

omnigroup.com

PRODUCTIVITY APP (MAC/iOS)

Fantastical 2

£38.99 (Mac), £2.99 (iPhone)

flexibits.com

EMAIL MANAGER (MAC/iOS)

Spark

Free sparkmailapp.com

It’s hard not to love

Affinity Photo. Whether

you fancy yourself as

a seasoned pro or a

photo novice, you’ll

find this image editor powerful and easy

to use. Its interface offers the perfect

blend of ease of use and quick access to

powerful features, and its useful batch

processing is a great addition. An app

that packs both power and practicality

for less than £50? We’re in!

Apple’s Final Cut Pro

has always been a good

option for video editors,

and the latest version

makes it even better.

It introduces ‘roles’, which can be

colour-coded to make your timeline’s

components easier to navigate, something

that’s further boosted by the streamlined

interface. This version also supports the

Touch Bar and wide colour gamut display

on recent models of MacBook Pro.

If you want a note-

taking app that can do

just about anything, buy

Notability. It’s great if you

need one that’ll recognise

and convert handwriting to text, import all

sorts of file types, and sync your work to

iCloud. You can annotate content as you

please, and it’s even better when used

with Apple Pencil. You can even combine

audio recordings with annotations as you

speak. It’s the complete note-taking app.

It’s not often that a

sequel is even better

than its predecessor,

but Scrivener 3 is a great

example. Version 2 was

already good, winning MF319’s group test,

but version 3 adds so much. Its revamped

interface is hugely customisable, its

templates are fantastic, managing

footnotes is a breeze, and the whole app

is light and speedy. If you write, Scrivener

is absolutely essential.

When disaster strikes

and your hard drive fails,

having a backup can be

a lifesaver. This app

makes creating and

restoring from backups an absolute

breeze. It comes with a helpful guided

restore feature, plus a Cloning Coach that

monitors what you do and looks out for

potential problems. If you’re looking to

clone or back up your hard drive, this is

the app you need.

Some apps are so

simple and effective

that you don’t know

how you lived without

them. Bartender is

one: it lets you choose what appears in

the menu bar, and when things appear

too. You can set triggers, such as an app

only appearing when it’s updating, and

rearrange items. Bartender’s settings are

clear and concise. It sounds simple, but

it’ll change the way you use your Mac.

Feeling inbox anxiety?

The solution could be

Spark, an email app for

Mac and iOS. It’s centred

on a ‘smart inbox’, which

prioritises your emails based on perceived

importance – no more losing that vital

work email among a sea of spam. You can

snooze messages to be reminded about

them later, and search your mailboxes by

expressing yourself in natural language,

too. And to top it all off, it’s free.

If your calendar and

reminders are getting

out of control, Fantastical

can sort things out. It

has support for natural

language entry, so you can enter events

and reminders as you would say them. It’s

got a nifty menu bar shortcut, plus a great

interface, clever calendar management

and a powerful iOS app. It won MF #338’s

group test, underscoring its prowess.

Sometimes you just
need to get your ideas
down quickly. For times
like that, you need to
get OmniOutliner 3.
It’s extremely easy to get started, and
enables you to quickly search and
reorganise your notes. The Pro version
adds encryption, automation, custom
templates and much more. It’s the best
Im way to jot down and organise your ideas.

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