CleanMyMac 2, Macpaw’s catch-all utility offers scanning and cleanup of accumulated fluff—generally unused files and applications—on your Mac.

What kind of fluff is removed? Generally stuff you don’t think about that hangs around in the background. Similar to Disk Doctor (), CleanMyMac 2 hones in on items such as unused language support files, developer-oriented files, and service copies of your iPhoto images that add to the bulk of your iPhoto library. CleanMyMac 2 has seven different types of scans (Automatic Cleanup, System Cleanup, Large & Old Files, iPhoto Cleanup, Trash Cleanup, Extensions Manager, and Eraser), and each scan type is customizable, allowing you to configure what files are cleaned and removed.

CleanMyMac 2 generally removes stuff that won’t be missed, and if you’re feeling cautious—for example, you want to do a large-scale scan but leave OS X’s language files alone to ensure that upcoming software installations are smooth—just click CleanMyMac, choose Preferences, and specific elements of the scan can be configured from there.

CleanMyMac 2’s interface is a series of giant buttons and tutorial animations that greet you like a happy puppy. This proves both inviting and off-putting, as the interface consumes an enormous amount of screen real estate, but CleanMyMac 2 does pack some cool bells and whistles that become worth a second look. An uninstaller application comes in handy for removing applications with assorted support files scattered throughout the operating system, and a scheduler lets you assign designated times for the program to remind you to run tests.

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Gravity Duck, a $1 universal game for iOS, stars a little pixelated duck who has been sent by his Easter-Island-like deity to collect all of the golden eggs on an island. He’s been given the ability to reverse gravity, effectively transforming the platforming gameplay into a much more complex and interesting enterprise. Across the games’100+ levels, you’ll be guiding the adorable and silent duck to capture these eggs while dodging spikes, killer caterpillars, and other classic platformer enemies.

The game controls are as simple as the premise: you can move and you can reverse gravity. There are some small caveats, however: you can’t reverse gravity while in mid-air, and if you want to change the plane you’re walking on (instead of walking on ceilings and floors, walking on walls, for example) you need to hit a special button.

You wish the game were as whimsical as its name suggested, because the gameplay is throw-your-iPhone-out-the-window-difficult. There are so many ways for Gravity Duck to die, and there are no save points for any level. So if you’ve figured out how the duck just near the goal, only to have him walk into some spikes, frustration sets in as you have to start the level—albeit short—over again. For the most part, each stage can only be solved using one particular strategy, and this funneled feeling is perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the game. Bigger stages with more features and abilities would have done wonders to keep this game on my iPhone longer.

In fact, with a more ambitious budget/vision, you could see Gravity Duck finding a home on a major console in the retro 16 bit niche—that’s either a testament to the game’s great concept and art or it being overly simplistic.

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Those who’ve hooked up their MacBook to an external display are probably all too familiar with the dreaded dance of windows (not to be confused with George R.R. Martin’s bestselling A Dance with Dragons): You’ve got all your windows positioned exactly as you like them, then you disconnect your MacBook and blergh—windows every which way.

Sound familiar? Cordless Dog’s $15 Stay has the fix for what ails you. This menu-bar utility lets you save sets of window locations and sizes. So if you like your Twitter client pinned, just so, to the bottom-left corner of your screen, you can tell Stay to remember that window position—and here’s the key—both when you’re running your MacBook on its own and when it’s connected to your external display. If you want your IM client’s contact list to hug the right edge of the screen on your MacBook’s display but the left edge of your external display when it’s connected, Stay can do that too.

Better yet, you can have Stay automatically restore your windows whenever a display is connected and disconnected. So once you’ve chosen your favorite window positions, Stay does its thing transparently. (You can instead restrict Stay to being triggered manually, either using its systemwide menu or via a user-defined keyboard shortcut.) And if you’re particular about application window locations, you can choose to have Stay restore each app’s windows to particular sizes and locations whenever you launch that app.

Because Stay uses the names of windows to match them with the ones stored in your saved sets, the utility can have issues with windows whose titles change (for example, with text editors or Web browsers). You can fix that problem in one of two ways: by manually linking your current window to the one Stay has stored, using the Link Active Window To command in the app’s menu, or by setting up a window title pattern for Stay to look for.

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Speck's $50 PixelSkin HD Wrap for the third- and fourth-generation iPad is a hard shell case with an attached cover that rolls back and doubles as a stand. It certainly looks interesting, with a grid of tiny matte squares against an otherwise shiny cover. However, despite the slim design and seemingly intuitive functionality, there are problems with the case that you don't notice until you get some hands-on time.

Like other offerings from Speck, the PixelSkin comes in a wide range of vibrant colors, including black if you prefer to keep things simple. The tiny squares diffuse the reflection from the otherwise shiny cover, but they didn't offer any noticeable extra grip to the case. There are a couple things that I didn't like about the case, so without further ado, let's dig in.

The cover has a clasp to keep the PixelWrap closed, rather than the traditional magnets that keep the Apple Smart Cover in place. The clasp holds the cover down with a vengeance, which is both good and bad: It almost certainly won't come open on accident, but you may have to pry a bit to open the cover. I showed this to some of my colleagues, who didn't enjoy the firm grasp.

The PixelWrap encases your entire iPad front and back in flexible TPU, a type of polyurethane plastic. It has custom cutouts for all of the iPad's ports, as well as press through button overlays for the volume and Sleep/Wake buttons. The case also forms a raised bezel around the touchscreen in an effort to help protect it in the event of an accidental face-down drop.

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From the moment it debuted for iOS, the free Netflix video-streaming app has been a must-have for nearly all owners of Apple’s tablet. The streaming and DVD rental service offers a large library that can be streamed over Wi-Fi and 3G, in addition to several original programs financed and produced by the company itself.

The concept behind the app is fairly simple: those with Netflix accounts (which start at $8 a month) can stream any of the company’s movies, television shows, or documentaries available via its Watch Instantly service to an iOS device. (Depending on your country, available programming varies.) The iPhone and iPad versions differ slightly in their implementation and extra features, but if you’re looking to watch a Netflix television show on the fly, this app will allow you to do it on either device.

You can stream films or shows on your iPhone’s Wi-Fi or cellular network. Wi-Fi is—without argument—the easiest way to watch a program; I rarely ran into glitches when watching over that connection. In contrast, cellular is decidedly trickier: the videos take a longer time to load, image and sound quality can suffer, and weaker signals can cause the feed to cut out.

If you encounter a stall, Netflix does provide a recall button within the viewer for moving the feed 30 seconds back, so you can theoretically catch up with the stream. You can also pause and scrub through video, toggle between full and widescreen modes, enable captions, and exit back to the Netflix browser at any point. The Netflix app also supports Video-Out and AirPlay, so if you happen to have an Apple TV or one of Apple’s AV cables on hand, you can send video from your iPhone to your television.

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As a user of a 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro, I’ve developed a habit of switching the screen resolution based on the task at hand—and how much effort my eyes feel like expending. The Displays pane in OS X’s System Preferences utility doesn’t offer many screen resolution choices—just five on the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro, four on the 13-inch model, to be exact—and it doesn’t offer an easy way to access those resolutions on the fly. So I use a third-party utility.

Fortunately, a number of resolution-switching utilities have debuted since Apple released its Retina-equipped laptops. The latest, Louder Than Ten's $5 Pupil gives you a systemwide menu; click it, and a list of available screen resolutions appears. Choose the resolution you want, and the screen changes. Simple.

Pupil functions like a lot of other similar utilities, but it also allows for customization of your list of screen resolutions. For example, if you have three different resolutions you like to use, you can choose to display only those three in Pupil’s menu—and put them in a preferred order. Other apps, such as QuickRes, display the whole list of available resolutions at all times—which I don’t mind, but it’s nice not to have to see options that you’ll never use. (Pupil’s settings screen claims that only the top six display modes will be available in the menu, but I was able to list more than six. The developer says that this incorrect text will be revised in an upcoming version of Pupil.)

On the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro, Pupil provided me with access to 17 different screen resolutions, including 2880-by-1800 and 3840-by-2400. That’s a lot more than the five resolutions in OS X’s Displays pane, but far short of the 27 offered by QuickRes. More doesn’t necessarily mean better, though—chances are, the resolutions you need are in Pupil, and QuickRes offers resolutions you’ll likely never use. A representative for Pupil’s developer told me that the company decided to not show resolutions that don’t match the aspect ratio and color bit depth of the display.

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Apricorn’s Aegis Bio 3.0 pairs solid performance with enhanced security features to create a nice, all-around external hard drive. The Aegis Bio harnesses biometrics to make sure you (and only you) have access to your data.

The pocket-sized hard drive comes with a built-in fingerprint scanner than helps alleviates any worries of unapproved access to the drive. Fingerprint access might sound like a bit of a novelty, but from a security standpoint it actually makes sense; passwords can be cracked—fingerprints, not so much.

Programming a new Aegis Bio 3.0 to recognize your fingerprint is a relatively straightforward task; just plug it in and wait for the green light to start blinking, then swipe your finger and repeat. Eventually, both a green and a blue light will remain solid, meaning your fingerprint has been stored and you can begin using the drive. Apricorn says that it should take most people about six finger swipes before the drive fully recognizes it, but I had to perform 11 swipes. The Aegis Bio can store up to five different fingerprints, enabling you to allow friends, family, or coworkers access to the drive.

You can add additional fingerprints at any time, but as a sort of confirmation, you first must scan a fingerprint that is already registered with the drive. If the Aegis Bio 3.0 has five registered fingerprints and you want to remove and/or add new ones, you have to completely reset the Aegis Bio 3.0 and rescan the prints. Performing the full reset on the system will wipe it clean of all data and stored prints. Seems like a hassle, but it’s actually a nice little feature that insures that your data will be safe and private even if the drive gets stolen.

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If you’re worried about dropping your iPad mini, you may want to invest in a heavy-duty, shock-absorbing case such as Cygnett’s $40 Workmate. This hard shell case is made of two different materials—a harder, impact-resistant plastic, and a softer, shock-absorbing rubber—to help keep your iPad mini from suffering damage when it falls on hard surfaces.

The Workmate comes in two dual-color combinations: slate gray and black, or red and black. Our review model is red and black. The inside of the shell is mostly made of the soft, rubbery black material, while the outside is primarily the harder red material. Putting the case on your device is fairly easy—the harder red material seeps over to the front at the four corners and on either side, so you really just have to snap those parts over the mini to set it in place.

The case adds a lot of bulk to the iPad mini, but that’s expected; it is touted as an extremely protective, shock-absorbing case, after all. The Workmate doesn’t just add bulk and thickness to the back and sides of the mini, it also adds it to the front, as there’s a thick lip around the display to help protect the touchscreen from hitting the floor and cracking if the mini is dropped facedown. This added protection is nice, but it won’t protect the mini from surface scratches (if you toss the tablet into a bag, for example).

I didn’t test out the Workmate’s drop-protection by dropping my iPad Mini onto cement, but Cygnett does have a YouTube video that shows them drop testing a Workmate-clad mini onto concrete. While the case will probably do a good job of protecting your mini from such drops, that doesn’t mean you should invite disaster by dropping your mini on purpose. Unfortunately, the Workmate doesn’t have room to accommodate an Apple Smart Cover, so your mini’s display will be left vulnerable when not in use.

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It’s hard to say why Funny or Die, a site best known for its short comedic videos, decided to make a full-length Steve Jobs biopic. But iSteve—the free, 79-minute humorous retelling of the Apple co-founder’s life—is surprisingly amusing, provided you are both a fan of Apple and of stupid comedy, and presuming you also don’t mind a little profanity sprinkled in for good measure.

iSteve stars Justin Long—the actor who wasn’t John Hodgman in the Get a Mac ads—in the title role. Lost’s Jorge Garcia fills Woz’s dancing shoes (no actual dancing included); and James Urbaniak takes on the role of Jobs’s friend and nemesis, Bill Gates. The film tells the story of Jobs and Woz teaming up to build the original Apple computer, of Apple the company, and of the Mac, the iPod, the iPhone, and, ever so briefly, the iPad.

Well, it sort of tells that story. The film—knowingly—gets many, many facts wrong. But it’s sort of like Dave Barry Slept Here or Five-Minute Shakespeare or George Lucas in Love: The better you know the original story, the more entertaining the parody version can be.

As Funny or Die tells it, Jobs and Woz’s early friendship was threatened by Bill Gates, with whom Jobs finds a certain kinship. But the two entrepreneurs themselves end up at odds, both in business and in their personal lives: Melinda Gates, here played by actress Michaela Watkins, has relationships with both Gates and Jobs.

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When I first reviewed Alfred, the app- and file-launching utility, back in early 2011, I praised it for its simplicity: You'd invoke the utility with a shortcut key-combination, type the first few letters of an application or file's name, and Alfred would find what you wanted and open it. It did more than OS X's built-in Spotlight feature—if not quite as much as other launchers such as Butler, Launchbar, or Quicksilver—without a lot of monkeying around.

But almost as soon as I wrote that review, Running With Crayons, the utility’s developer, began monkeying around with Alfred, adding powerful new features such as global hotkeys (which let you assign permanent keyboard shortcuts to files, apps, Web searches, and other things) and extensions (which let you quickly run AppleScripts, Automator workflows, complex file searches, and more) to the essentially simple app. With Alfred 2, that trend continues. This recent major update introduces a feature called workflows for performing more-complex series of actions.

Thankfully, this added power doesn’t compromise Alfred's appealing simplicity. You can still use Alfred to reliably find and launch files, apps, and Web searches without any complex configuration. But if you're willing to dig deeper, you might be pleasantly surprised by just how powerful this easy-to-use launcher can be.

When you activate Alfred using your chosen shortcut (I use Control+Space), you get a basic text-entry box. You start typing what you want there, and Alfred returns a list of possible hits. Scroll down that list (or use one of the displayed Command-number keyboard shortcuts) and select an item to open it. So far, this sounds just like Spotlight, right? But like other third-party launcher utilities, Alfred learns which apps you launch most frequently and puts the most-used ones at the top of the results list. (I wish it did so more reliably with files.)

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It’s hard to classify Hundreds as a game, per say. Developed by Semi Secret Software, this $5 universal app for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch feels more like a post-modern art installation, or perhaps a Cold War torture device maliciously released on iOS. Regardless, Hundreds is one of the singular weirdest experiences you’ll find on the iOS platform—and its beauty is certainly in the eye of the individual player.

The name Hundreds draws from the number of levels of the game (100) and the object of the game: to achieve 100 points on a given level. The game’s ambient noise and lack of formal tutorial will perhaps dissuade the more casual of players, and the game’s quickly-ramping difficulty will frustrate all but the most dedicated (and masochistic) of puzzle enthusiasts.

Hundreds starts off simple enough: you press and hold down on the gray circle in the middle of your screen to turn it red and expand its size. The circle starts with a value of zero, but as it grows, its value increases. Once it hits 100, you win the round.

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Gumdrop's $45 Drop Tech case for the iPhone 5 looks and feels formidable for a reason: The case is definitely geared towards those who drop their iPhone often or who engage in rugged activities. As robust as the case may look, it isn't waterproof, so don't go running through the rain with it. But in all other aspects, the Drop Tech lives up to its reputation.

The Drop Tech case consists of three parts, starting with a hard plastic frame that goes around the perimeter of your iPhone, which has a clear plastic screen protector glued to it.(I found this built-in screen protector to be more of an annoyance than a help, but more on that later.) There's also a rubber casing that surrounds the back and sides of the iPhone, as well as a little piece of plastic that keeps the camera flash from getting covered. Gumdrop offers three color options: black-on-black, black-on-red, or a solid army green.

To install the case, you have to peel the rubber from the plastic frame, then snap your iPhone into said frame, and finally after adjusting the camera flash ring, jam your iPhone surrounded by the plastic shell into the rubber and press the outer case back on.

Albert Filice

The screen protector on the Drop Tech case hovers slightly over the screen, which makes tapping—especially typing—much more audible. I also discovered another hindrance after riding my bike with my Drop Tech-clad iPhone in my pocket: Condensation forms on the screen protector, which isn't something I was excited about. Making the screen protector optional, or allowing it to be fixed directly to the screen, would have made it function better.

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As a Mac user, why would you ever consider buying a high-end router other than Apple’s AirPort Extreme? Easy, because some non-Apple-specific routers cost less, offer more features, and deliver better performance. When I pitted the AirPort Extreme against the highly rated Asus RT-N66U, the Asus boxed its ears on most of the benchmarks I ran.

But benchmark performance isn’t everything; you’ll also want to consider the experience of installing and using a non-Apple device. Apple’s “think different” concept isn’t just advertising copy. So in addition to performance, I’ll also discuss the feature sets offered on each router.

Features

Before we dive into the benchmarking numbers, let’s examine the features of each router. The AirPort Extreme and the RT-N66U are both based on the tried-and-true IEEE 802.11n wireless networking standard, and both routers have 3-by-3 antenna arrays to support send-and-receive rates up to 450 megabits per second (mbps).

Apple

Note that 450 mbps is a link rate that doesn’t take into account protocol overhead, range, or many other factors. You can expect the real-world performance for both routers to be significantly lower than that. I’ve found routers based on the draft 802.11ac standard to be faster and to offer better range than 802.11n routers, but the IEEE won’t officially ratify that standard until 2014. Apple doesn’t offer an 802.11ac router today, and none of its current computers have 802.11ac network adapters onboard.

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Logitech’s $80 Wireless Solar Keyboard K760 for Mac, iPad, iPhone is one of my favorite Mac keyboards of the past few years, thanks to—as I put it in my review—an appealing design, good keys and key layout, a nice batch of special-function keys, a reasonable price, and multi-device Bluetooth support. The company has followed up with the $100 Bluetooth Easy-Switch Keyboard K811, a keyboard that’s similar to the K760 in many ways, yet different enough to make it even more tempting to some people. (The Easy-Switch is specifically designed for Apple devices; the Bluetooth Illuminated Keyboard K810 is a nearly identical keyboard designed for use with Windows PCs and Android devices.)

At 11.4 inches wide, 5.1 inches from front to back, and less than 0.5 inch thick, the Easy-Switch is about the same width and thickness as the K760, but the Easy-Switch is about 1.5 inch shallower than the K760 (and smaller overall than Apple’s Wireless Keyboard). The Easy-Switch is also nearly flat, front to back, which is ergonomically preferable to a sloped design. And whereas the K760 was silver with white keys, the Easy-Switch’s silver-and-black design is a better match for current Macs. My only complaint here is that the black keys show fingerprints and skin oils much more than did the K760’s white keys. The body of the Easy-Switch feels sturdy and solid.

The Easy-Switch’s smaller front-to-back dimension compared to the K760 is largely attributable to the fact that the Easy-Switch’s rechargeable battery isn’t solar-powered, so it doesn’t need the K760’s large swath of solar cells. Instead, you recharge the Easy-Switch by using the included cable to connect it to one of your computer’s USB ports. According to Logitech, a 3-hour charge lasts for between 10 days (with key backlighting on full) and a year (with backlighting off), depending on how much you type each day. Over a month or so of using the Easy-Switch with the backlighting at the second-brightest setting, I needed to recharge it only once.

Light ’em up

Wait, backlighting? Yes, the Easy-Switch, unlike the K760 and most other wireless keyboards on the market, features laser-etched, backlit keys to make it easier to see the keys in dimly lit working environments: The keys’ white characters are lit from behind. Unlike Apple’s backlit laptop keyboards, this model shows a bit of light bleed around the edges of the keys, but overall the Easy-Switch’s backlighting looks great. The keyboard automatically adjusts the brightness of the backlighting (four levels of brightness are available) based on the ambient light level, or you can press the F8 or F9 key to manually lower or raise, respectively, the brightness level. You can also manually disable backlighting to extend battery life.

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Editor’s note: The following article is reprinted from Macworld UK. Visit Macworld UK’s blog page for the latest Mac news from across the Atlantic.

Old-school role-playing games are making a bit of a comeback. Recently we saw an enhanced—but still determinedly 2D—update of Baldur’s Gate (), and now Almost Human has unexpectedly released a Mac version of Legend Of Grimrock, which originally came out on the PC about a year ago.

Legend of Grimrock aspires to be nothing more than a good old-fashioned dungeon crawl, with minimal plot and character interaction, and graphics that are closer to 2.5D than true 3D. It even allows you to turn off the game’s on-screen map so that you can grab a stack of graph paper and sketch out the twists and turns of the dungeon by hand.

The plot is barely worth mentioning. Grimrock is a vast prison, a towering great spire that reaches up into the clouds. You and three other prisoners are thrown in right at the top, and have to fight your way down to freedom the base of the tower. The game doesn’t even require you to create a character, as you can jump straight into the game using a ready-made group of escaping prisoners. If you prefer to create your own party then you can choose from four different races (human, minotaur, lizardman, or insectoid) and then play as a warrior, wizard, or rogue. And, of course, you gain experience points for killing monsters, which you can then use to learn new skills and abilities.

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