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myPantone

Jon Phillips — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:18:56 -0500

We’ll get this right out of the way: Pantone’s foray into the App Store is a success -- myPantone is slick, clever and imminently useful. But we can’t describe the killer utility of the app without first getting into the whys and hows of Pantone itself. So, color experts, please excuse the preambling primer. We just want to get newbies up to speed so that they really understand what Pantone’s iPhone app does -- and does not -- have to offer.

The app includes nine virtual Pantone fan decks that allow you to search by name or Pantone number, or browse with finger-swipes.

There’s No “Sorta” In Perfect Color-Matching
Pantone makes color-matching systems that have become essential to the world of design -- from graphic design to clothing design to furniture design and more. Because accurate color reproduction on paper, fabrics, plastic and other surfaces can be so hit-and-miss, designers often need to work within reliable, never-changing “color spaces” to ensure that the color they want to see reproduced is actually the color that is reproduced. In practical terms, this means spec’ing the relevant elements in a computer design document with a specific Pantone color code.

Let’s say you’re designing the logo for a Fortune 500 company. Hell, let’s say the logo is for a local moving company, because companies of all ambition-levels want their logos to look consistent on letterhead, outdoor signage, T-shirts, everywhere.

When it comes time to decide on a specific logo color, you open up your Pantone swatch collection -- it may take the form of a splayed-out “fan deck” or a book of perforated paper chips -- and decide on the color you want. That color has a code. For example, 636 C for a particular variant of light blue. Now, when it comes time to have your logo printed in the real world, you define the blue in your document file as Pantone 636 C, and the reproduction service will use the precise mix of inks, pigments or whatever to achieve the exact color you specified as it appears on the medium they’re printing on. In short, the Pantone color-matching system ensures that 636 C looks the same wherever it appears, be it in your Pantone fan deck, or on a business card or billboard.

So that’s how Pantone color matching works. That’s why it’s so useful. That’s why Pantone has become the leader in color standards.

All of which leads us to a little irony intrinsic to the myPantone app: It shouldn’t be used for precise color matching. Color accuracy is not what it’s all about.

myPantone: The Color Fanatic’s New Inspirational Friend
Here’s the deal: The iPhone’s screen isn’t designed for color accuracy. It’s designed for the best possible display at a small size, low price, and modest power requirements. The upshot is that even though myPantone contains virtual fan decks of nine different Pantone color libraries, a designer could never depend on the iPhone to perfectly represent how a particular myPantone color swatch will print in a real-world situation.

In this screen you get to choose which color system you want to work in. Shoot, we get inspired just seeing the covers of the virtual fan decks! But we’re geeky that way.

Of course, this is also an issue when viewing Pantone colors on regular computer displays, because even the best displays have to be precisely calibrated for the best-possible color accuracy. But the iPhone’s innate screen color accuracy isn’t anywhere close to that of, say, a 30-inch Cinema Display, nor does the iPhone have any screen calibration control -- unless you count the Brightness slider.

But, hey -- whatever. The app is a virtual goldmine of incredibly useful tools and features, for professional designers and color-minded hobbyists alike.

For starters, the app includes nine complete virtual fan decks: Formula Guide/solid coated; Formula Guide/solid uncoated; Formula Guide/solid matte; GoeGuide/coated; GoeGuide/uncoated; Fashion+Home/cotton; Fashion+Home/paper; Pastel Formula Guide/coated; and Pastel Formula Guide/uncoated. Given that individual fan decks (the ones printed on paper) start at about $60, you can see how much value this app provides, even if you just use myPantone in a casual way, like surveying color options in a conference room with colleagues. Again, you shouldn’t use the app to make final decisions on one Pantone color versus another; it’s not a replacement for printed Pantone color guides. But myPantone can provide you with a huge head start in making color decisions, thanks to its wealth of helpful features oriented around color cataloging and inspiration.

Swatch Details Like You’ve Never Seen Before
Once you’ve chosen which virtual fan deck to use, you can opt to sort it in one of two ways: with either a Visual sort (with all colors arranged chromatically, like a rainbow, from red to violet) or a Classic sort (with colors arranged according to Pantone’s own rather scientific -- and obtuse -- numerical grouping system). This sorting feature is something that’s just plain impossible to do with a paper fan deck or chip book.

With your sort decision completed, you can finger-swipe your way through the fan deck to browse for a particular swatch. Once you find a swatch that suits your fancy, you can double-tap it for a larger-version swatch that consumes most of the screen. This larger view will also give you the color’s Pantone number code, along with the color values for RGB, L*a*b* and HTML conversion. Pro designers already know the convenience of having all this info by one’s side.

The largest swatch view possible provides a large virtual color chip – just don’t assume that what you see on the iPhone is what you’ll get on printed material.

If you want to save the particular swatch for future reference, or just want to explore more possibilities with that swatch, you can drag it into your palette collection at the bottom of the screen. The app provides slots for 10 different palettes, and each palette can contain five swatches. Even better, you can view and share your palettes in a bunch of cool ways: Email it yourself or a friend; upload it to your account on Pantone’s community website; beam it to another iPhone; or view it on an assortment of virtual wallboards. You can also tap into the iPhone’s GPS to define the location where the palette was created.

With your new favorite swatch snuggled firmly in a palette, you can tap it again to bring up its Color Details—another feature that just isn’t feasible with a real-world fan deck. Color Details shows you a medium-sized image of the swatch, along with a row of its closest color neighbors in the Pantone collection. This “color neighborhood view” is perfect for narrowing down the precise shade or hue that floating around in your mind’s eye. You also get notation on which page the swatch appears in the real-world paper fan deck, and a button that lets you record a voice memo about the color.

Hit another button under Color Details, and up pops a screen of more swatches that bear contextual relevance to the one you’ve been digging into. For example, the swatches under Cross-Reference show you analogue swatches in other Pantone color systems. Blue Coral 19-4526 TPX may not have a perfect (or even close) analogue match in every system, but this cross-referencing feature will be invaluable to pro designers nonetheless.

At the top of the screen, the Color Details feature give you the other colors that surround your swatch in the fan deck. Those swatches at the bottom of the screen are simply a collection of swatches we gathered by hand.

And then there are the Harmony groupings, which use Pantone’s own mathematical algorithms to reveal traditional color-wheel harmonies (complementary, analogous, triadic, etc) applicable to your swatch. This might be the single-best feature for folks intimidated by making color choices. Whether you want to explore “matchy-matchy” (analogous color combos, like Evergreen and True Navy) or “stark contrast” (split-complementary combos, like Evergreen and Pesto set against Oxblood Red), the Harmony choices will keep you moving around the fan deck like a free-associating fool.

The mathematically driven harmony suggestion under Color Details are great for color newbies. We just wish those crazy symbols were explained somehow.

Take a Picture, Extract a Color
So far, we’ve explained how myPantone works if you’ve already found a color you’re interested in exploring. But what if you want the app to tell you which colors to explore? Enter the color extraction tool, which is rather unceremoniously labeled Image on the app interface. Here you can either snap a photo with the iPhone’s camera, or grab a photo already in your phone, and then hit Auto-Extraction to set the magic in motion. The app will digitally dig into your image, identify its five most dominant colors, and then generate the five swatches that most closely map to those dominant colors.

Auto-extraction does a pretty fair job of identifying close Pantone matches for the colors in your photos. Just be aware that the lighting conditions in which you shoot will have a profound result on extraction accuracy (see the next set of screenshots for living proof!).

This little trick presents some interesting opportunities. For professional designers, myPantone color extraction can provide close (though not perfect) information for matching elements in a photo with colors in a Pantone library. This can come in handy when, say, you want your coverline type to be filled with whatever Pantone green most closely matches the grass in your cover photograph.

Color extraction also offers benefits to the aesthetically challenged color newbie. Let’s say you want ideas for colors that will be harmonious with your particular light-blue wall paint. You can take a close-up photo of the paint, hit auto-extract, and then receive not the single color that most closely matches the paint, but a group of colors that work with the paint in an aesthetically pleasing fashion. Did Pantone intend for a single color to generate four or five complementary swatches? We don’t know (more about that in a moment). But extracting multiple colors from what is ostensibly a single color is both a positive feature (because the harmonious color palette offers inspiration) and a negative feature (because these results remind us that the color extraction function is unreliable, and highly influenced by the light conditions in which photographs are shot).

The app doesn’t include any documentation on how color extraction works, and, in fact, one of myPantone’s very few faults is a lack of documentation and help screens. Pantone’s developers designed an interface that’s pretty darned intuitive, but we still encountered a number of features that deserved more explanation than, well, zero explanation.

The big field of green you see here is not a myPantone swatch. It’s a close-up photograph of the top of a Pantone Flight Stool spec’d in 15-0146 TPX. This photo was shot in poor lighting conditions. The app’s auto-extraction tool generated four color matches from an ostensibly single color, and none of the matches are 15-0146 TPX.

Here’s a wider-angle shot of the Flight Stool – we wanted to prove to you that it was indeed spec’d (and labeled!) as 15-0146 TPX. Again, Auto-Extraction couldn’t find this specific color in the photograph. But we blame hardware limitations, not Pantone.

While we really want to see documentation, help screens, and even color-theory reference materials in a version update, we really can’t fault Pantone for the app’s lack of color accuracy, either in the way it renders colors, or in its function for extracting colors (which, by the way, uses nearly the same algorithms that are employed in Pantone’s handheld Color Cue 2 extraction device, which currently sells for $249). The Pantone app developers did a stellar job in side-stepping the iPhone’s hardware limitations, and simultaneously making the best possible use of its unique hardware opportunities.

SuperSync

Susie Ochs — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 11:16:00 -0500

iTunes 9’s Home Sharing lets you drag-and-drop content between up to five computers on your home network after you tie each to your iTunes Store account. SuperSync obliterates Home Sharing’s limitations, letting you sync and share music and videos between as many machines as you like, either over the local network or the wide-open Internet.

That’s its main draw. But it can also restore media from an iPod and export items to an external drive or directory to keep your library backed up. You could keep your whole collection on a NAS drive and use SuperSync to download content to your local machine for syncing to an iPod. And its built-in Web server and TiVo Media Server let you access your MP3s from a Web browser, an iPhone, and your TV.

SuperSync is like iTunes' own sharing, but without any of the pesky rules and limits.

SuperSync is easy to set up. The symbol-heavy, color-coded interface can be confusing at first, but the thorough documentation helps and everything’s tweakable. At any time, the app can be connected to a local library and a remote library, then you can compare the two libraries, so you can decide what to sync. The options are extensive but simple to manage by unchecking boxes to filter out certain file types, duplicates, items missing metadata, and more. Or you can use the browser menus to only sync specific genres, artists, and albums.

SuperSync will only sync to other Mac or Windows computers running SuperSync, so you need a separate license code for each, but multipacks are affordable, and you get free updates for life. Transfer speed depends on your network connection, but we synced a 20GB music library to a new laptop over a local 802.11n Wi-Fi network in just under an hour. Syncing over the Internet requires forwarding the ports on your router, but if your router is UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) compliant, SuperSync can attempt to forward the ports for you.

Web Browser Access (which only supports MP3s) lets you log in from anywhere to listen, using the attractive Flash-based player. An iPhone-optimized player lets you use Mobile Safari to browse and search for tracks, then play them. Plus, SuperSync has a TiVo Media Server (also just for MP3s) that lets you access and play your music through a Series 2 or Series 3 TiVo on the same network. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get it to work with a brand-new TiVo HD.

MachineCodex DateLine

Ray Aguilera — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:29:36 -0500

We’re calendar geeks. Without iCal, we’d be completely lost. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement. For one, we often wish there was a quick way to view dates on the calendar without having to switch over to iCal and break the flow of what we’re currently working on. A simple day/date display in iCal would come in handy for everything from scheduling deadlines to planning weekend trips with friends. DateLine is a donationware application that adds a lightweight calendar display to your Desktop and also gives you one-click access to iCal.

Keep an eye on your calendar in DateLine's horizontal window.

DateLine runs as a standalone app, so the easiest way to include it seamlessly in your daily Mac regimen is to add it to your Login Items (System Preferences > Accounts > Login Items). DateLine’s interface is a resizable horizontal strip that displays the days and dates of the current month. There’s a small pip to indicate the current day, and that’s it. It’s relatively unobtrusive and perfect for folks like us who live and die by the calendar. Clicking on a specific day launches iCal’s Weekly view, focused on the particular day you’ve chosen, though we’d like options to use Month or Day view instead.

DateLine’s preferences allow you to control the width of the display (there’s no option for a vertical calendar, unfortunately), as well as setting colors and choosing the display level. We opted for the Floating Windows setting, which forces DateLine to remain visible above all our other windows, but frequent users of Exposé will appreciate options to display DateLine unobtrusively on the Desktop icon level.

Doug Adams Dupin

Roberto Baldwin — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 03:20:00 -0500

Initially we all had just one Mac and one iPod. We’d dutifully sync our iPod with our Mac, and life was grand.

Then we got a MacBook, another iPod, and finally, an iPhone. Soon it was apparent that our music library was scattered across multiple machines and the idea of trying to figure out which machine had which songs became an onerous task. So we just threw them all together, resulting in tons of unwanted duplicate tracks.

Even without Foreigner, we had double vision--but that was before Dupin cleaned up the duplicates in our iTunes library.

Dupin scours your iTunes library for duplicates and helps cure you of double-track syndrome. iTunes contains a Show Duplicates feature, but it’s woefully underpowered. It works fine for a couple tracks, but music fans with larger libraries will by stymied by its extremely limited definition of “duplicate.” Dupin turbocharges the process, making it easier to find actual duplicates--as opposed to different versions of the same song. With 10 selectable criteria for defining duplicates and the ability to confine searches by playlist or specific library, there are few rogue tracks that can escape Dupin. iTunes doesn’t have to be open for the application to do its thing, and, in fact, you can continue listening to iTunes music without fear of interruption from Dupin.

Once the dupes are identified, you can set filters for the application to determine which files to keep in your iTunes library and which to purge (keeping higher-bit rate versions and tossing lower-quality copies, for example). We threw multiple songs with the same name, songs stored on different devices, and songs with varying bit rates at Dupin, and it was able to reliably separate the keepers from the unnecessary duplicates.

You can tell Dupin to simply remove the tracks from your iTunes library without deleting them, send them to the Trash, or have them deleted on the spot. We recommend hanging on to them, but we wish Dupin gave us the option to move the files to a specific folder--which would reduce the size of our Music folder while still giving us the chance to back up the duplicate files. Purged tracks that are sent to the Trash can be manually recovered, but you lose the Artist/Album folder nesting that iTunes creates, leaving an organizational nightmare.

ContentWatch Net Nanny for Mac

Jan Hughes — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 11:48:25 -0500

When a friend’s child ran up to us at a dinner party with a shocked look on her face and proceeded to describe what one of the older boys had “accidentally” stumbled upon on the Internet, we realized that the time had come to impose some serious restrictions on Web activity in our house. Enter Net Nanny, recently available for Macs, which helps you limit access to the Internet’s darker corners. And while there are parental controls built into OS X, they may not be strict enough.

Configuring Net Nanny is fairly straightforward, considering the levels of filtering you need to set up. An administrator sets up individual password-protected accounts. In addition to blocking sites that contain porn, Net Nanny can also disable sports, gambling, gaming, and auction sites, among other categories, and can redirect the searcher to a family-friendly website of your choosing.

Net Nanny spies, thwarts, and tattletales--just what you want in your new Websitter.

The app has smart filters that can recognize the difference between salacious and educational content--looking up “breast cancer,” for example. You can also configure accounts to block streaming video (no more YouTube) or peer-to-peer access (adios, illegal file-sharing). Antipredator mode blocks inappropriate language in chat sessions.

Once you’ve set up the parameters for each user, you can administer Net Nanny from any Internet-connected computer using the Remote Management feature. Net Nanny will also email you logs of your kids’ online roaming--with screenshots--although we had trouble getting this to work because our email provider requires a secure connection for outgoing mail, and the app doesn’t support certain secure email connections. Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail all require secure TLS or SSL connections, for example, so you should check with your email provider if this feature is important to you. Or you can simply look at the Net Nanny’s Overview screen, which provides a settings summary and usage report.

Net Nanny can be very strict, blocking all but the most G-rated sites (a Harry Potter website was blocked because it mentions alcohol), so you may need to manually enter sites you want to enable. And don’t forget your password, or you will have to reinstall Mac OS X to reset it.

TextExpander touch

Leslie Ayers — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:57:49 -0500

We imported these existing TextExpander snippets from our Mac to our iPhone using the Add via Local Network option under Groups (though some identifying details have been changed to protect the innocent).

SmileOnMyMac's TextExpander utility for Mac OS X is the ultimate in keystroke-saving goodness--automatically and instantly expanding short "snippets" you designate into longer chunks of text to eliminate the repetitive retyping of oft-reused text, like addresses, phone numbers, email signatures, signoffs, and much more.

Of course, as a Preference Pane extension, TextExpander for your Mac works much differently on your computer than it does on your iPhone or iPod touch because Apple doesn't allow iPhone apps to run in the background.

To use Text Expander touch, you launch it, then tap Compose. Up pops a blank composition area, into which you can type your desired snippet, such as aaddr for your mailing address, ttel for your phone number (which you will obviously have to edit after you've installed the app), or any other snippets you've added to your library by editing the default snippets that come preloaded or creating your own unique ones.

Once the snippet has expanded in the note screen, tap the Share icon at the bottom-left of the screen. This gives you the option to Send to Mail, Copy All Text, or, if you have a supported Twitter app installed, send to your Twitter app to add to a new tweet. (The Twitter apps currently supported are Echofon, aka Twitterfon, BirdFeed, Tweetie, Twitteriffic, and Twittelator Pro.) The reason TweetDeck isn't supported, according to SmileonMyMac, is that it "does do not support a URL schema such that it can be launched by TextExpander along with message content."

As far as we're concerned, that's not a deal-breaker, though, since there are plenty of excellent iPhone Twitter apps that TextExpander touch does support. And SmileonMyMac has made it easy-as-pie for other app developers to integrate TextExpander touch support by releasing an SDK.

While using the app on your iPhone or iPod touch takes a little getting used to--especially for TextExpander users whose fingers and brain are trained to type snippets on a Mac without even thinking--TextExpander touch does indeed save time and finger cramps when composing email and text messages, notes, Twitter posts, and the like. As such, it's more than worth its $4.99 price tag.

Consider this scenario: You're planning a big work event, wedding, family reunion, or other shindig that requires advance planning and communication with lots of people. People email you regularly asking for specifics. With TextExpander touch on your iPhone, you need not tap your fingers to the bone retyping the same basic date, time, location, or other details. The shortest way to get a long chunk of text into TextExpander touch is to email it to yourself to an account you already have set up on your handheld device. In the email, select the text, copy it. Launch TextExpander touch, tap Groups, select a group, then tap the + icon. Give your new snippet a name in the top field, then double-tap under Content and tap Paste. Voila! Now you have all that info at your fingertips for the next time you need it.

Step 1: Create a new snippet or edit an existing snippet by giving it a name in the Abbreviation field and typing or pasting the content into the Content field below it.

Step 2: Tap the icon in the lower-left of the screen and select the option you want. In this case, we selected Copy All Text.

Step 3: If you're using a function like SMS that's not directly integrated into TextExpander touch, launch the app and in the text field, double-tap and then tap Paste.

If you already use TextExpander on your Mac, you can even import existing snippets to your handheld device via your local Wi-Fi network. In the Groups view on your iPhone or iPod touch, tap the + icon, then Add Via Local Network. As long as your device and your Mac are connected to the same Wi-Fi network, your device will find the Mac. Tap the Mac from which you want to pull snippets and choose your snippet group. On that Mac, a dialog will pop up in the TextExpander System Preference pane asking if it's OK to share the data. Click OK to continue.

iPhone Helper Apps for Insanely Specific Scenarios

Leslie Ayers — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 02:06:00 -0500

Every day, life presents any number of problems that need solving—from settling bets to knowing which fish are OK to eat to remembering where the soupspoon goes in a formal table setting. Your iPhone or iPod touch can act as a digital Swiss Army knife, offering up the right tool to get you through almost any dilemma. We review and rate a collection of handy helper apps and ass-saving accessories that are sure to boost your rep as the consummate boy scout, always prepared for anything.

For Anyone Who's Ever Asked, "How?"

Howcast.com's free iPhone app puts the site's eclectic collection of how-to videos in your pocket

Think of all the things you’ve always wanted to know how to do: fold origami, set a formal dinner table, pick a lock…or maybe have sex in a car? Amazingly enough, you can learn how to do all of these things—and many more—with Howcast’s free iPhone app. This excellent freebie puts an iPhone “wrapper” on the mind-blowing array of how-to video content available on Howcast.com.

Click here to read a full review of this app

Search for topics in the search bar or tap on Most Recent or Featured to see a list of how-to videos on Howcast.

Howcast How-To Videos
Howcast Media
www.howcast.com
Free

Six More Ways to Skin a Cat (Not Literally, OK?)

These apps offer more practical solutions to real-life problems

Heads, You Win; Tails, You Win

Need to settle a bet but don’t have a coin to toss? If you spend a buck on My CoinFlip, you’ll never be without a way to force your friends to choose between two options. The app features 11 different types of coins, including a variety of euro coins.

The Vatican euro offers a nice option for your Catholic friends.

My CoinFlip 1.2.3
Sandro Stricker
www.software.sandrostricker.de
$0.99

Wait, How Many Spider Rolls Did We Order?

Ordering sushi for large parties can be an exercise in chaos—especially after a few sake rounds. Sushi Boat! presents a list of common sushi offerings—nigiri, sashimi, and maki—so you can you pass your phone around to capture a digital account of your order. When everyone’s weighed in, tap My Order to see the tally, which can then be read to the server by whoever’s most coherent.

Handy translations ensure you won't order hamachi (yellowtail) when you want maguro (tuna).

Sushi Boat! 1.0
Impresario Digital
www.impresariodigital.com
$0.99

Automatic Name That Tune

Can’t put a name to the tune that’s playing over a public speaker system or at a party? Shazam can ID the song, artist, and album—then let you buy it directly from the iTunes Store. Just tap Tag Now and hold up your iPhone so it can “hear” the music.

Shazam effortlessly recognized Len's "Steal My Sunshine," after only hearing the first couple seconds of the song, which is a bunch of talking.

Shazam 1.5
Shazam Entertainment Ltd.
www.shazam.com
Free

Wash and Wear

LaundryPal is exactly what college kids whose moms coddled them and newly divorced bachelors need: It deciphers the often mystifying care symbols found on clothes labels, ensuring that you don’t machine-wash a hand-wash or dry-clean-only item. Even better, it includes a laundry how-to, as well as tips in each symbol section (Wash, Tumble Dry, Iron, and Bleach, Dry Clean, and Dry). If only it could fold your laundry too!

The Do Not Dry symbol is presumably interchangeable with the symbol for Do Not Tumble Dry. Otherwise there will be a lot of laundry noobs walking around wearing wet—albeit clean—clothes!

LaundryPal 1.2
Hip Fire
www.hipfire.com
$0.99

You Go Green, Girl!

We debated including this, worried that the manly men out there would balk at the app’s title. This iPhone version of Sophie Uliano’s best-seller Gorgeously Green provides you with the core info from the eco-conscious lifestyle guide. What tipped the scale in the app’s favor was ultrahandy lists and tips, such as which types of fish are OK to eat, how to decode the numbers on plastic bottles, which produce you should always buy organic, and more.

Which produce should you always buy organic? The GG Survival Guide's got your back.

Gorgeously Green Survival Guide 1.2
Optima Drama
www.gorgeouslygreen.com
$0.99

Unlike Mace, It Doesn't Require a Permit

Panic Alarm is a personal alarm that can’t immobilize an attacker the way mace or pepper spray can, but could very well be all you need to scare off a would-be perp. The app consists of a large Alarm button that appears on launch, which, when tapped (or if you shake your device), sets off a very loud alarm. You can also set the app to call an emergency contact after the alarm sounds for a certain period before it’s turned off.

In the settings, designate a contact to call if the alarm goes off for a specified period without being turned off.

Panic Alarm 1.0
Adduce Studios
www.adduce.se
$0.99

The Little App Factory RipIt

Ray Aguilera — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 11:50:43 -0500

In-flight movies suck. They’re usually not the greatest films to begin with, and then anything that could possibly offend anyone--otherwise known as “the good parts”--gets edited out. Lucky for you, all you need is a MacBook and some headphones to stage your own film festival at 35,000 feet. But spinning a DVD takes a serious toll on battery life, which is where DVD ripping comes in.

RipIt takes the sometimes complex task of getting video off of DVDs and onto your hard drive and turns it into a single-click affair. In keeping with that simplicity, the app doesn’t force you to fuss with video codecs or bit rates, instead creating VIDEO_TS folders that exactly mimic a DVD’s structure are played back with the DVD Player app you use on your Mac to watch actual DVDs.

RipIt skips complicated options in favor of a simple interface.

Playing back the resulting files on your Mac works exactly the same way it would as if you had inserted the DVD itself into your optical drive--except you don’t need to worry about losing or scratching your expensive discs, and you can avoid the noise and battery drain of a spinning DVD drive. All of the menus, special features, and other options of the disc itself are intact. On the flip side, the resulting files won’t play on your iPod or iPhone, and they’re quite large--a feature-length DVD typically weighs in between 4 and 8 gigs--although apps like HandBrake (free, handbrake.fr) can easily convert RipIt’s output to compressed files that will playback on your other devices.

RipIt’s simple interface and reliable output are perfect for serious movie collectors looking to consolidate or back up their collection, or anyone who wants to watch DVDs in all their glory on the go, without the inconveniences of schlepping around actual discs.