Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Best Mac Apps 2022!”.
Thanks to ting for sponsoring this video, the mac was starting to feel a little stale. It was getting updated with new intel processors, but the design had stayed the same, but now well. The design is it’s still the same uh but there’s a new m1 chip. That’S found in the macbook air, the macbook pro and the mac minion, eventually making its way to the rest of the macs. I bought a new macbook air for myself as my main computer.
It was replacing a 2018 macbook pro and, as i’ve been using it, i found a bunch of apps that have been incredibly helpful that have been updated to run, especially on the m1 chip. So these are my favorite mac apps that i’m using on my new macbook air, but also they have universal versions as well. So, if you’re on an intel, computer they’ll work perfectly and are just as useful on your machines. And if you want to stay tuned to the end of the video.
I kind of give a mini review of the m1 macbook air and my experiences with the chip and how well it’s performed for me. So for a long time, photoshop was like the default way to really do granular edits. With pictures i found an app on the ipad called affinity photo actually one of my friends who’s, probably the most talented photographer that i’ve ever met uh drew photo as his handle does all of his editing using affinity on the ipad. So it was good enough for him.
It’S good enough for me to try uh when i was using the tablet, but they’ve got a version for the mac and it has been absolutely awesome, uh. So there’s a free trial available. It’S not a cheap, app uh. It’S just under 50. If you want to have a lot of control over what you’re doing you don’t want to pay for creative cloud subscription, but you really want to get into photography and photo editing. Affinity photo has been absolutely amazing and i’m really surprised with how powerful it’s actually been all right. So this next one is called magnet and if you are coming from the windows 10 side, this is one you’re going to want to download immediately it’s 2.99. You can get it from the app store actually, in my estimation, i think it steals the best features of windows.
10. It’S a snap feature where you can take. Windows, drag them off to the side and they’ll resize for you, so you can get two apps side by side out sort of doing a manual resize. It takes that idea and kind of goes a step further. You can have it snap to the sides like windows tend to snap to the top and bottom you can set shortcuts to do certain snaps, if you want to when you pull it out from being snapped, it’ll resize, if you like it back to the size, that Was before it is absolutely a must-have and a feature that i’m shocked, that apple has not put in to mac os, yet all right, so the next app is called jettison. It’S about five bucks, but there’s a free trial. It’S a macbook air. It’S got two ports and it’s meant to be portable and go with you, so you’re, probably always going to have drives plugged in for me.
Sometimes i have drives some editing on. Sometimes i have time machine drives. Sometimes i’m just moving footage over. I have a bunch of drives already in here and it is admittedly like a first world problem and a minor inconvenience to have to like manually eject all of those drives, and i forget, since i don’t do it, my computer yells at me.
I don’t know how important it is to actually eject things, but i tend to like to do it, especially when i have important files on that drive. I don’t take the chance of anything getting corrupted, so what jettison does and it’s very simple when i put my computer to sleep, it automatically ejects all of my drives, so i can just unplug it and go it’s a small thing. But for my mind for that five dollar price point: it’s certainly worth it to own the app and never have to worry about corrupting any files and just pull those plugs out whenever i want to go so bartender. Isn’T that perhaps you’ve heard of – and you might think it’s going to teach you how to make the best cocktails available? It’S not going to do any of that stuff for its 15 price, which is a big chunk of change, but hear me out. While i think it’s worth it, if you don’t want to pay it, you can try the the free trial it lets you customize the menu bar and the more i use my computers, the more things i have cluttering my menu bar and bartender gives me complete control Over that menu bar from simple things like what i want to show or not show it’s being able to add pull downs and almost like tabs up there. It just lets me do whatever i want in the menu bar. It’S another sort of feature that i think should very clearly be built in to mac os. But since it’s not yet got ta rely on third party apps do that for you and if your menu bar looks like a jar, bubbled mess and you wan na just clean it up.
Bartender, i think, is absolutely worth it and gives you a ton of control. So i know some of those apps, it cost a few bucks, but i’m going to counter it and give you guys a way to save some money. Uh with ting mobile i’ve been talking about them for a while on this channel. I think it’s one of the best ways to shave bucks off of your cell phone bill.
If you look at it, it’s probably costing you much more than you expected initially signed up and you’re, probably at home anyway, not using all those gigs of data that you’re paying for so a couple reasons that i really like it first uh. It’S super easy to switch. You don’t have to go to a store. You can just go to the website, do all of your information there and they will send you a sim card pretty much any phone works with king, which is great, but there’s a checker there.
Where you can just confirm the same cell networks that you’re pretty much used to anyway, so you get coverage pretty much everywhere, but you can check the coverage map. There’S no contract, so you’ve got flexibility and of course you can keep your number uh porting. Your number is really easy to do again.
You do it all online they’ve got different plans too, to fit your needs. If you’re, not using much data, you’ve got a flex plan, it costs you 10 bucks a month. It’S unlimited talk and text and then it’s five bucks per gigabyte on top of that, so for, like essentially like bucks a month, you’ve got your cell coverage and i challenge you uh to find a better deal than that.
If you sound like something that you want to check out, uh ting’s gon na sweeten the pot a little bit if you go to john.team i’ll, give you 25 bucks when you sign up which, if you price your plan right, it’s like up to a month and A half of free cell service, so it’s pretty awesome but we’ll put all the links to it down below. So those are the apps that were meant for the mac, but there’s like a whole secret stash of other apps uh that you can run on your m1 computers and those are apps that are meant for your ipad or iphone, and some of them can be downloaded Right from the mac app store developers have the choice if they want their app to be able to be installed on computers. Having said that, though, there might be some apps that you really want to have on your computer, that you use all the time on your iphone that you just can’t download from the mac app store.
I mean i’m looking at you instagram. It would be really nice to have that app running on your computer and if you search the app store you will not be able to find it. So a big shout out to my friend quinn from snazzy q for showing me something called imazing.
So what imazing does it’s a tool that lets you easily transfer files between your mac and your ios device uh, but because they’re using the same silicon, the binaries are the same. You can actually transfer the whole app package from an iphone to a computer uh and it will actually work uh, so these apps do function. There are some downsides, though.
Obviously you cannot get like updates on it. The version you have installed is the version you are going to rock and roll with, and it’s obviously not been meant or optimized to work with a keyboard and mouse or or trackpad. So you know do that your own peril – i guess, but if you do want to try to get some of those apps working, you can definitely do it and actually do it pretty easily. So those are the apps that i’ve been using, but like they’re, only so good unless you’ve got a computer to use them on uh and i’ve been really happily rocking uh the m1 macbook air. I opted to spec it up a bit, so i went for the eight core version and 16 gigabytes of ram and that may not have been necessary to have, but i usually keep my laptops for about two years, so i wanted to give myself at least the Best chance, especially since the m1 chip in my mind, was unproven and it absolutely flies for me.
So the best compliment that i can give the macbook air and my experience with it is it works like any other computer. In fact, if you didn’t tell me, there was a special apple design silicon chip inside, i would have no idea. This thing runs fast, it runs efficient um and every app i have opened has worked perfectly whether it was an arm app or an x86 app. I’Ve had no issues, one small, weird quirk.
I guess was that rosetta doesn’t come pre-installed uh on the computers. When you try to open your first x86 app, it then installs rosetta, but once it’s installed, i am very hard pressed to tell if the app i’m using was made for intel or it’s made for apple silicon. Everything just works, and it is amazing how smooth and fluid these apps perform.
In all fairness, i’m not doing heavy 3d rendering on it. Like, i said, i’m not doing really big. You know video editing projects on it, i’m not playing games on it. But for me to use it as a computer for work, it has been awesome and the biggest surprise and most welcome thing about the computer and perhaps the biggest reason that i think i can wholeheartedly recommend it. Battery life is stupid.
Amazing. I was able to use this computer off charger for 10 hours. I mean just sitting at a desk for 10 hours, total. That is unheard of with my macbook pro.
I maybe got four five hours if i turned the brightness all the way down. I did nothing different with the macbook air. I just used it and 10 hours was absolutely unheard of for me.
So if you’re, a road warrior or eventually the world gets back to normal, you are a road warrior or you’re in class a lot. The macbook air has been awesome and amazing, and i imagine the macbook pro be the same thing just a little bit faster because it’s got the fan in there has the options for it same thing with the mac mini. But if the macbook air made me feel anyway about the m1 chip, it’s really positive, especially when you start getting more powerful versions with more cores for imacs and imac pros and 16-inch macbook pros and eventually a mac pro is a really capable processor, and i was Really pleasantly surprised by how well it’s performed .