Category: Reviews-HowTos

From team meetings to long-distance love affairs, some of our most important interactions happen in instant-message clients. Apple’s Messages is one of the best, but its tools for sifting through past chats are suited to basic text searches, and finding what you want can require scrolling through lengthy chat sessions. A companion app to Messages, Chatology helps you quickly search your chat history for everything from critical notes to those — ahem — romantic photos you just know are in there somewhere.

But for Chatology to do its thing, first you need to enable logging in Messages, storing transcripts of your chats in Library > Messages > Archive for Chatology to access. Any Messages-compatible IM protocol will work (like AIM, Bonjour, Jabber, and, of course, iMessage) but only chats made through Messages on your Mac (or iMessage chats made across your Mac and iOS devices) will be available in your history. If you start, say, a Facebook chat in Messages, and then continue it on your Facebook page, those later exchanges won’t appear in Messages or Chatology.

Chatology’s view of your chat history is much easier to navigate than scrolling through conversations in.

Chatology’s single window is uncluttered and easy to use, divided into panes showing contacts you’ve chatted with, their associated chats (conveniently broken up by date and time), and the chat session content itself. You can do more than just browse, too: an icon indicates whether a given contact is currently online, and double-clicking contacts launches Messages so you can continue your conversations. Similarly, an optional setting lets you launch Chatology from inside Messages by typing Command + F (overriding the keyboard command for Messages’ built-in search)—a handy shortcut. Chatology can also reveal chat transcripts in the Finder, view images with Quick Look, move chats to the Trash (deleting them from Messages as well), and export chat sessions to plain text files. No more copying and pasting to include chats in other documents!

Beyond improved organization, Chatology offers three powerful ways to sort your chats. You can view chats from set timeframes (the current day or the preceding week, month, or year), search by keywords for chat content or contact names (but not, unfortunately, file names of documents embedded in chats), and see all of a chat session’s inline images or URLs with a click. We’d love to be able to view specific date ranges, filter for file types other than images, and see more powerful text searching, but these are refinements to what’s already a big improvement over the search features in Cupertino’s favorite IM client.

The bottom line. If you’re a Messages user who’s been frustrated searching for a link, conversation, or image buried in your IM sessions, Chatology is worth a serious look. There’s room for improvement, but the app’s search features, integration with Messages, and simple interface make it easy to quickly find what you’re looking for.

Adobe has spread the coveted Photoshop name to a number of different products across multiple platforms. Adobe Photoshop Elements 12 borrows high-end features from its namesake, making them easier than ever to actually use.

Unlike Apple’s own consumer-centric iPhoto, which hasn’t received significant new features in three years, Photoshop Elements 12 is bursting at the seams with further tools and enhancements to spruce up any digital photo and share it with ease—a task that can now be done completely from the Elements Editor, for example.

Catering to the Instagram crowd, Adobe has added a variety of one-touch effects, textures, and frames.

The biggest addition is integration with Adobe Revel, which allows users to store photos and now even videos to the cloud. While the free version is limited to only 50 uploads per month, a premium subscription ($59.99/year or $5.99/month) allows unlimited imports, making the dream of a cloud-hosted photo library a reality.

Unfortunately, the way Photoshop Elements has implemented Revel leaves some room for improvement. Revel customers already using the Mac App Store client will find their cached content downloaded a second time upon syncing their account with Elements 12. In our case, that meant doubling a nearly 6GB library of thumbnails for more than 15,000 images in two different places.

While Photoshop Elements 12 clearly offers a better environment for editing Revel-hosted images, doing so requires saving an additional, full-resolution version on your Mac’s hard drive, which an always-running Revel Agent then silently uploads to the cloud in the background. Elements intelligently consolidates original and edited images while viewing but, at least for now, Revel for Mac clutters its library by displaying them side by side.

Other new features are better executed, like automated Quick mode for adding one-click effects, textures, and frames (think Instagram), as well as the most welcome tool to date for those of us with four-legged friends. “Pet Eye” effect is exactly what you think it is: the canine or feline equivalent to removing red eye from our furry companions’ eyeballs on photos where a flash is used. No more glowing “pets from hell” look!

Photoshop Elements 12’s Guided Edit mode has been spruced up with more than 25 step-by-step techniques that make short work of complicated digital trickery and help users learn new techniques. This comes in especially handy for the Restore Old Photo option, which can be used to clean up tears and scratches, remove dust, and correct color.

Photoshop Elements 12 introduces Content Aware Move, a pro-level trick borrowed from Photoshop, allowing users to move an object and automatically heal the space left behind. This feature has been the highlight of low-cost competitors such as Snapheal for some time, so it’s nice to see Adobe finally catching up to its rivals.

The bottom line. Adobe Photoshop Elements 12 is loaded with new features that continue to be well worth the money for iPhoto defectors.

Upgrade, or wait for the next version?  It’s the eternal question, but video editors working with older versions of Premiere Elements might consider taking the plunge this time around.

Despite the name, Adobe Premiere Elements 12 bears little resemblance to the company’s Premiere Pro software and has more in common with iMovie, Apple’s consumer-level video editor.

Guided Edits is now more of a mini film school, teaching users about the new tools and skills they’re working on.

While Apple has let the grass grow around its feet with iMovie, Adobe is tweaking Premiere Elements for the fifth year in a row. For 2013, there aren’t many entirely new features, but Adobe focused on a handful of welcome enhancements. The new features focus on two areas: built-in video tutorials that teach the moviemaking process while in Guided Edit mode, and the ability to download, upload, and share videos from the subscription-based Adobe Revel service.

Video is a relatively new addition to Adobe Revel, which was previously used only for unlimited cloud photo storage at a rock-bottom price of $59.99 per year (or $5.99 per month). The good news is the price and unlimited storage remain, and free users can still upload 50 photos or movies each month.

Unfortunately, Revel’s video capabilities have yet to be fully realized. Videos can be added directly from the editor, but require downloading full-resolution video files first before Elements can use them. Revel already maintains a 720p MP4 thumbnail preview of each movie; we’d prefer to see a way to speed up the process using these smaller files for a rough edit and then swap for high-resolution files during export.

Adobe Revel is quite handy when it comes to uploading and sharing finished videos, which can then be viewed from any web browser or the free iOS app. Sadly, the official Mac application doesn’t yet support video, but content can now be published and shared straight from Premiere Editor.

The built-in Guided Edit tutorials are a much better fit: distinctive white and yellow boxes and on-screen arrows guide users step-by-step through each process, adding an educational layer for those who want to learn the nuts and bolts of editing. They’re also a great way to get up to speed quickly—especially handy in an age where printed manuals no longer exist.

We were quite impressed with how simple it is to add motion-tracking to any video. Make a selection, choose a graphic or text and, like magic, the software will follow that object’s every move. The end results aren’t quite as smooth as those from pro applications like After Effects, but it’s plenty usable for all but the most discerning prosumers.

Adobe has also spruced up the overall UI to make everything easier to find, organize, and use. Premiere Elements 12 also piles on additional effects and styles, including a handful of new FilmLooks (our favorite is Cross Process), along with more than 50 musical scores and 250 sound effects for adding a finishing touch.

The bottom line. Premiere Elements 12 isn’t a must-have upgrade, but it’s well worth the investment in a bundle with Photoshop Elements 12, especially for Adobe Revel subscribers looking to get extra value out of their unlimited cloud storage.

It doesn’t matter how big they can build internal hard drives or SSDs; our data needs are getting bigger by the day. And while external USB or Thunderbolt drives are reasonably affordable and easy to use, for maximum portability and minimum clutter, most people prefer internal storage. That’s where The MiniDrive comes in. It’s a modified SD card–sized adapter designed to hold a micro-sized card and sit flush with the chassis of your MacBook for extra, semi-permanent storage.

Using The MiniDrive (not to be confused with a similar, more expensive product by Nifty) is simple enough. Slide a microSD card into the slot, and insert the whole thing into your Mac’s SD card slot. Since it’s designed to sit flush in the slot, you have to be careful to insert MiniDrive quickly and firmly to properly seat it, since pulling it out to reinsert it is something of a chore.

Just add microSD to increase your Mac’s internal storage.

Once mounted, your microSD card acts like any other drive connected to your Mac. You can use it to store files, or even as a Time Machine volume if you reformat the card as a Mac volume. Of course, the speed is limited to the speed of your microSD card, so if you’re planning on using the MiniDrive as a repository for large files or media, you should probably spring for the fastest microSD card you can find.

Depending on how you plan to use The MiniDrive, it’s either an amazing idea or a bit questionable. Many microSD cards come with a free SD-sized adapter, which does essentially the same thing as The MiniDrive. The only difference is that The MiniDrive fits fully into the slot, so you can leave it in place in a MacBook and not worry about breaking the card when you pack up your laptop.

Since there’s nothing sticking out of the card slot, removing The MiniDrive is a bit of a pain. You have to thread an included piece of very thin wire through a small opening, and use that to pull The MiniDrive out of your Mac. It’s inconvenient, and you’re sure to lose the wire sooner or later. On the other hand, if you’re removing the card frequently, you should probably just stick to a regular-sized SD card in the first place.

According to TheMiniDrive.com, the product was designed in response to Nifty’s MiniDrive, which sells for twice the price; obviously this is a product with a definite market. We just wonder if even $20 is too much to spend. The makers of The MiniDrive have been promising a $6 version, but with no updates in over a year, and the $20+ versions selling via Amazon, we’re not sure how realistic that is.

The bottom line. It’s the cheapest way to increase your on-board storage, but TheMiniDrive still feels more expensive than it ought to be.

Most notable stealth-action games — including Metal Gear Solid, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, and Mark of the Ninja — make sneaking about and leaving enemies undisturbed merely an option, also providing the ease and capability of dealing out death as desired. Not so in the first episode of République, which follows Hope, a teenage girl held captive for possessing revolutionary materials within the school of a totalitarian regime. Aside from wielding the occasional pepper spray bottle or a one-time-use taser, she’ll need to creep around every corner and stay totally unseen to avoid being recaptured. And unlike in the average stealth affair, you’re not even directly controlling her actions.

Instead, you’ll take the role of a disillusioned security worker, who helps free Hope and shepherd her through the facility by viewing her surroundings via closed-circuit video cameras and sending directives to her device. It’s an approach well suited for a touch interface, as you can simply tap to direct Hope towards her next destination (including leaned up against a wall, or crawling through a vent opening), switch cameras, “hack” open locks, or trigger a contextual action, like pickpocketing a guard when his back is turned. You’re essentially still controlling her in the end, but that kind of context helps explain why the touch-centric mechanics are simpler than in the average genre entry.

It’s all very streamlined, but there’s still room for tactical thinking — and it’s a necessary level of simplification to make a console-inspired game like this work comfortably on iPad and iPhone. Navigating the world via cameras has its clumsy moments; the slow panning and limited views mean you may swap between a few such feeds to get through a single area. That may help build atmosphere, but it’s still kind of a pain. Yet aside from the occasional misplaced movement marker, République does a stellar job of reading your taps and giving you solid control of Hope, even without active movement inputs. That said, the depth of interaction seen in this initial episode had better be just a taste of what’s to come, or else things could get repetitive very quickly down the line.

We don’t see all that much of République’s world in Exordium, the first of five planned episodes; mostly sterile hallways and security rooms, plus a more lavishly decorated library and surrounding areas — but the detailed visuals still impress, aside from the occasional animation glitch, and the voice acting is also excellent. Exordium unfolds a few small bits of narrative across its three-or-so-hour runtime, but it’s never quite clear what that’s all leading to. Like most initial entries in episodic series, it’s content to set the table for the later chapters, but what it teases is plenty enough to generate intrigue and keep you around for further installments. And we love its unique personality amidst what could have been a very dry kind of environment; the little jokes keep things lively, while collectable Atari-esque game cartridges based on other iOS games are a wonderful touch.

The bottom line. Streamlined stealth and an intriguing premise blend well to get République off to a promising start in Exordium.

First released in 2004 for the PlayStation 2, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas still ranks among the biggest, most ambitious, and most impressive games ever made. With an open game world that spans three distinct cities and miles of open countryside in between, it tells a story that starts with petty gang wars in a facsimile of early ’90s L.A., and eventually balloons to include government conspiracies, jetpacks, and massive casino heists that lead to absurd wealth. The idea that it’s now playable on our phones is a little mind-blowing — and yet here it is, without visible sacrifice or compromise, looking, sounding, and playing just like we remember. Well, almost.

San Andreas is complete on iOS — every big, epic mission and semi-hidden side activity is represented here — but exploring it with a touch screen device like an iPhone or iPad can be tricky. And despite several options for touch-screen controls (cars, for example, can be steered with onscreen buttons, a virtual thumbstick, or simple flick gestures), everything feels clumsy, in part because this was the GTA that decided to experiment with RPG elements. At the beginning of the game, protagoinst Carl “C.J.” Johnson is purposely a lousy shot and a worse driver, although he gets better at these things the more you do them.  (He’s also supposed to eat and exercise regularly, or he’ll get hungry/fat — although so long as you save frequently and are relatively active, you won’t have to spend much time at restaurants or the gym.)

His initial lack of ability, however, makes the already-iffy controls feel unresponsive, as cars carom into walls in spite of our input and C.J. shoots in random directions as we frantically swipe across the screen to turn the camera to face enemies. It’s awkward, and it greatly increases the amount of patience players will need to master the basics and move on to the really good stuff. Playing with Logitech or MOGA’s Made for iPhone controllers does a lot to ease these problems, but playing on an iPhone carries its own problems, the biggest being that the radar — essential for knowing where missions are and where to go next — is tiny on an iPhone screen, making it hard to read.

San Andreas was considered rough-looking in 2004, and its blocky characters and low-res textures haven’t aged very well, even on a small screen. Even so, we still ran into performance issues, including frequent choppiness on an iPad 2 (which could be corrected by quitting out and restarting the game). Thankfully, a few things have been modernized; San Andreas’ auto-saving usually lets you pick up right where you left off, without requiring a trip back to a save point, like the console versions did. Also, a cloud-saving feature means you can continue your game on whatever device you feel like using at the time, so long as it’s using your Apple ID.

Technical issues aside, San Andreas is still an impressive sandbox to play in, and players who can power through the initial frustrations long enough to get out of L.A.-inspired Los Santos and move on to the San Francisco/Las Vegas facsimiles of San Fierro and Las Venturas will be rewarded with a huge, seamlessly explorable world filled with fun things to do, and a story crammed with memorable characters and celebrity voice actors. There’s a wide variety of open terrain to explore, from the rocky slopes of Mt. Chiliad to the deserts surrounding Las Venturas, and hours of eclectic licensed music to listen to while you do so. And there are plenty of fools to roll up on and shoot, whether you’re wresting gang territory away from the rival Ballas or thrown into pitched battles against small armies of corrupt cops. It’s huge, and although the barriers to entry are a little higher this time, they’re still worth surmounting.

The bottom line. It may be nearly a decade old, but in spite of technical hiccups, difficult controls, and a slow start, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is still one of the best open-world games of all time.

If you’ve ever played “What would you take to a deserted island?” the response probably included any number of practical, real-world items needed for basic human survival. In our case, 1Password would rank squarely near the top. Compatible with web browsers such as Safari, Google Chrome, Firefox, and now Opera, 1Password acts as a secure central depository for logins and passwords, as well as credit cards, reward programs, and even personal identities, providing websites one-click access to sensitive information.

With a complete UI overhaul, 1Password 4 for Mac improves categories by adding new options like Social Security numbers, driver’s licenses, and passports in a clean, easy-to-understand layout that keeps data locked away behind a master password. Also new to version 4.0 is Security Audit, which scours a user’s personal data and keeps tabs on how long it’s been since passwords were last changed, even identifying weak or duplicate credentials.

1Password 4 for Mac offers a refreshed, streamlined look and feel that keeps sensitive data organized yet easy to access.

1Password for Mac has always been an application that users spend little time directly interacting with, and that’s especially true with the latest version, thanks to a menu-bar option called 1Password mini. Unlike previous versions, which frequently offered unique layouts depending on the browser being used, 1Password mini provides a universal experience across each, along with rapid-fire access to stored data.

1Password mini includes the ability to generate, save, and recall secure passwords, while a handy search field allows users to quickly pull up relevant information with a minimum of keyboard strokes. Most of the time, users will save or access existing logins, and these options appear front and center at the top of the list for one-click login to most websites (although there are invariably websites that vex 1Password).

While we’re generally thrilled with 1Password mini’s newly universal approach, we can’t help but lament the loss of the old browser extension’s contextual menu, which provided less back and forth with the cursor. However, this is an adjustment even longtime users will have little trouble adapting to, and ultimately the new method has far more benefits.

Another new feature we like is the ability to have multiple or even shared vaults. The former comes in handy for keeping personal and business data separated, while the latter provides a way for users to selectively share data with each other. This requires a bit of extra setup within Dropbox, and sharing can’t be done on more than one item at a time, but otherwise it works well.

The newly universal 1Password mini is a downsized menu-bar version of the full application, which performs most of the tasks users need daily.

Speaking of sync, the Mac App Store version of 1Password 4 now allows data to be stored in iCloud, providing easier setup for novice users, although it can’t be used on shared vaults. Last but not least, version 4.0 restores Wi-Fi Sync, allowing users of the companion iOS app to skip the cloud entirely while keeping sensitive data in sync with mobile devices.

The bottom line. Hands down, 1Password for Mac is one of the desktop applications we can’t live without, and version 4.0 proves that even the best can find ways to improve over time.

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