If you just got yourself one of those amazing new MacBooks and are new to the Apple ecosystem, you might be wandering what are the must-have apps you have to download to get yourself started.

Well, here you have a list of a few native Mac apps that we find essential if you want to stay safe, productive and connected.
Let’s take a closer look at them.

1. Ulysses

If all the writing you do on a daily basis consists of simple notes, then the Notes application might be enough for you. But if you want something far more capable and elegant without having to upgrade to something like Pages, then Ulysses is a great choice.

5 Awesome Apps a New Mac User Must Install

If you just got yourself one of those amazing new MacBooks and are new to the Apple ecosystem, you might be wandering what are the must-have apps you have to download to get yourself started.

Well, here you have a list of a few native Mac apps that we find essential if you want to stay safe, productive and connected.
Let’s take a closer look at them.

1. Ulysses

If all the writing you do on a daily basis consists of simple notes, then the Notes application might be enough for you. But if you want something far more capable and elegant without having to upgrade to something like Pages, then Ulysses is a great choice.

The greatest virtue of this writing app is its flexibility. It is just as perfect for writing a 100 page essay as it is for keeping a few notes organized. And the app is available on iPhone and iPad as well, where it is amazingly fully-featured and look fantastic.

2. CloudMagic

This one is more of an acquired taste, but if you like apps with minimal interfaces and are looking for alternatives to OS X’s Mail app, then CloudMagic fits the bill.


It is the desktop version of the great iPhone and iPad app and supports the most popular Mail and Gmail shortcuts. So if you are a fan of those you are also covered. It is not as flexible as other email apps though, offering a single view option and little to no customizability, so that’s something to consider before taking the jump.

3. Reeder

While for most people news readers are a thing of the past, the truth is that if you have a ton of sites and news outlets you follow, there is no better way to sort and manage all their news items than with a news reader. And of all the ones available out there for Mac, Reeder for Mac is by far the most feature-complete and easy to use. It also doesn’t hurt that it is also the best-looking of the bunch either.

4. WhatsApp

Just recently, Facebook (owner of WhatsApp) released a native Mac version for the most used messaging app out there and it is great. For years, millions of users have been enjoying WhatsApp on their mobile devices and have clamored for a native desktop app. And the new Mac desktop app provides the full messaging experience.

It requires your phone to be connected to the network though, so you won’t be able to send or receive messages from/to your Mac if it is not.

5. 1Password

We have previously gone through how great 1Password can be on your iPhone and iPad, but having it on the Mac makes it a snap to add and manage many items at once.


One of the great aspects of the native Mac version of 1Password is that it offers a menu bar icon that gives you easy access to it, so you can interact with the app just to add an item or open the full application to sort and manage all your passwords.
There you have them. With these applications, you are sure to be set on the right track with your new Mac. But if you are wondering what other apps are great for your specific needs, just hit us in the comments below. We’ll be glad to help.

Nothing ruins a day like a failing hard disk. Once you determine your drive is failing, the next step is data recovery. Experts can charge thousands of dollars, but you might be able to do some of it yourself. Here’s a review of the programs and options available.

Make Sure Your Mac Isn’t Just Confused

If your backup has trouble booting and you aren’t sure what’s wrong, the first step is to run Apple’s Disk Utility. We cover basic Mac hard disk troubleshooting here. If these programs don’t fix your symptoms, it’s time to go searching your hard drive for your critical stuff.

Decide What You Need to Recover

If you don’t have a regular backup of your Mac, you might have everything you need somewhere else. That avoids added cost and time for recovery. The things people typically miss on their hard drive are:

Emails

If you use web-based email, your email is on their server. You might have had a copy on your Mac, but services like Gmail or Yahoo have a copy also. If it isn’t web-based, it may be IMAP based. That means the email server has a copy of your emails. Before you try to recover those, log into your email from the web and see if everything is there. If you don’t normally use the web to check your mail, you might have to contact your email provider to find the web interface.

Contacts

You probably don’t have many email addresses memorized. You start typing the name and your Mac fills in the rest. Losing those will be a pain, but it might be backed up through iCloud. Check iCloud’s web interface to see what is there. If you can get to your email through the web, your address book might also be in the cloud. If not, you might be able to find the addresses of everyone you need through old emails with programs like Email Contacts Extractor.

Pictures

In my experience, pictures are the things people miss the most. They are moments in time that won’t happen again.

Music

If you bought the music from iTunes, Apple lets you download it again. Other online companies usually let you download it again. If you have the original media like the CD, you could copy the music over again. It might be a pain to rip the disks, but you won’t need to buy or use recovery software.

Office-style documents: text, spreadsheet, presentations, and databases

If you have the documents printed out already, you can use OCR software to extract the information. You might check to see if you emailed the documents to someone else.

Software and Application Programs

Most of the time you can download the program again or install it from disk. Even if you do run recovery software, it might not get the serial number or all the helper files.

Other stuff created through a program: financial documents

This category is “the rest” of the stuff you might need on your hard disk.

Old Tricks That Won’t Work

You might have heard over the years some unusual ways of recovering data. The most common example is putting the drive in a freezer. That trick works only in the most limited circumstances and runs the risk of damaging your drive further.
Another trick is to open the drive and attempt to fix the mechanical problems yourself. Unless you have a clean room, this is another trick to avoid.

In spite of these caveats and if you’ve tried the options below, it might be worth a try. Remember that these tricks are likely to permanently damage the drive.

All-In-One Tool: Data Rescue One

If your Mac’s drive is failing, that means you can’t boot off of it. You’ll need a bootable operating system to run data recovery software from. If you don’t have another Mac to run the program from you are out of luck.

Prosoft’s Data Rescue One includes a bootable 500GB or 1TB external hard drive. To do data recovery, you’ll boot from Data Rescue One. Then you’ll recover your stuff right onto that external hard drive. Best of all, Amazon sells it, so you can get it right away with Amazon Prime. The Data Rescue software retails for $99 and the Data Rescue One package is $150. That pricing is consistent with the price of an external hard drive and the software. You’re paying a premium for the convenience, but not too much.

Before You Go Any Further!

Don’t install this (or any other program) directly on the computer you’re trying to recover data from. Instead, copy the model Prosoft uses for Data Rescue One. Buy an external hard drive and download your recovery software onto that external hard drive or a USB flash drive. Do your recovery from that external hard drive. You want to leave the failing hard drive alone.

If the data is absolutely critical, you might consider services like DriveSavers. They’re expensive, but they have clean rooms for data recovery. If you try recovery yourself and fail, you could damage the disk enough that nobody could recover the data.

Pay-As-You-Go: Data Rescue Mac

If you only have a few items you need to recover, Prosoft also has a pricing model that charges you based on how much stuff they get back. If you need to recover less than 2GB, the program is free. The next level is “Lite” which gives you 250GB of data for $49. Finally, they have unlimited recovery for five drives at $99. What’s unique about this is you can start with the free version and pay more as it finds more data. If your drive is too far gone to recover any stuff, you’re not out any money.

Other Data Recovery Programs

Prosoft’s has some unique products out there for data recovery. However, they do have some competition. All these programs let you test the recovery for free without paying for it. If it doesn’t find the files you need, you don’t have to purchase it.
For ease of use, Mac Data Recovery Guru can’t be beat. After you download the software, pick the drive you need to get data off. Click Start Scan and then select the files you want to recover by clicking the Recover button. It’s that easy!

If you want a bit more control over the recovery, Stellar Phoenix Mac Data Recovery lets you recover data from disks that have trouble mounting. The program also lets you tell it what types of files to recover so you don’t waste time with stuff you don’t need. Best of all, it lets you image the drive first. That saves time scanning later. In the past, I haven’t had good experiences with support.

The most versatile program out there I found is R-Studio. It has meager system requirements of just 32 MB of RAM and runs on both Intel and PowerPC systems. It can recover not just from standard Mac or PC formatted drives but supports Linux volumes and RAID. The program interface is confusing, but they have an excellent documentation. I like the ability to set the memory usage and the number of attempts at bad sectors.

Avoid This Scenario

The best data recovery solution is a good backup. Whether you pick a cloud service like Amazon or Apple’s built-in Time Machine, keep your backup up-to-date. If you think your disk is having problems, test and repair it before it’s too late

Perhaps the most important element that we take for granted when it comes to our Mac computers (and any computer in general) is their storage. As the storage in our computers has expanded, it has also become increasingly complex. And learning about at least part of that complexity can provide you with a better understanding of what goes on ‘behind the scenes’ whenever you use your Mac.

In this article, we take a look at the storage technology used by modern Mac computers: What it is, how it works and how its integration provides Mac users with a (relatively) painless and smooth experience when using their computers.

Partition Schemes

One of the most important elements of any disk is its partition scheme.
A partition defines the limits or boundaries of a storage disk. Applying a partition scheme to a disk is the process of applying certain logic parameters to it. Even if you have multiple partitions on one disk, it is always necessary for each of them to have its own partition scheme.


The latest versions of OS X support three types of partition schemes:

• GUID Partition Table (GPT): This is the partition scheme used as default by Mac computers. It is used by all Intel Macs (and by older models running OS X v10.4.6 or later) and is also supported by Windows Vista or later.
• Apple Partition Map (APM): The default partition scheme used by older PowerPC Macs, mainly to start up from. Newer Mac models also support this type of partition scheme, but no version of Windows includes native support for it.
• Master Boor Record (MBR): The default partition scheme used by non-Mac computers, hence it is also the one you are most likely to find applied on most new drives and devices that use some sort of internal memory. Even so, this partition scheme is also supported by Macs.

Once you have your disk partitioned, it is time to apply a format to its volume/s.

Volume Formats

The format applied to each of the volumes on a disk define how your files will be saved to it. This is especially important when it comes to compatibility since you might want your files and disks to be easily accessible by some computers (friends and family for example), so it is always wise to consider which volume formats they use.

Here are the volume formats supported by OS X as read/write:

• Mac OS Standard: The older volume format used by previous versions of Mac OS. Considered legacy and rarely used anymore.
• Mac OS Extended: Another legacy volume format. It is actually an upgraded version of the Mac OS Standard format.
• Mac OS Extended (Case-Sensitive): A volume format created to address the issue of volumes that do not differentiate between file names written in lower and upper cases. However, this type of Volume format displays a series of issues with some third party applications, which is why it is not supported by default by OS X client systems.
• Mac OS Extended (Journaled): An additional option for the ‘Extended’ volume format that adds advanced file-system journaling. With it, the system monitors all the operations that files go through at any given moment, which in turn helps prevent file corruption and also makes the check and repair process after a crash a lot smoother.
• Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted): This format type adds full disk, XTS-AES 128 encryption.
• File Allocation Table (FAT): The FAT format is one of the most popular ones out there. And with every iteration, it supports larger volumes (that’s where the FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32 names come from). The format is also used by Mac OS X’s Apple Boot Camp to run Windows XP (from a FAT32 volume), but OS X itself cannot start up from this volume format.
• Extended File Allocation Table (ExFAT): This format was created specifically for large flash storage disks of the type coming out more often lately.
• UNIX File System (UFS): As its name implies, the purpose of this volume format is to support UNIX systems.

As for the volume formats supported by OS X as read-only, they are:

• New Technology File System (NTFS)
• ISO 9660 / Compact Disc File System (CDFS)
• Universal Disk Format (UDF)

Core Storage

Core Storage is one of the most important elements of OS X file management system. What it does is add a management layer between a partition scheme and the volume formats of a disk.
This, of course, adds complexity to the file system, but at the same time, it provides it with great flexibility, allowing it, for example, to encrypt and decrypt a volume without interrupting its normal operation (a function that is essential to FileVault).

Core Storage is also an essential component of the now popular Fusion Drive technology available in some Macs, which run various disks as if they were one. This technology is also a reliable and safe way to store data.

Conclusion

As you have seen in this article, the way your Mac’s storage works goes much deeper than it might seem at first. Understanding how it all works might not be mandatory for every Mac owner, but knowing how it all comes together will definitely help you make better decisions when it comes to managing your Mac’s storage.