The Very Best Mac Apps from 2013

Merry Christmas!

It’s hard to believe another year has come and gone already! And yet, it’s been a great year. Apple showed us they’re still serious about pro users — and, of course, tested our faith with iWork. And then, 3rd party developers did their best again this year, amazing us with great new apps and updates. There’s so many apps that it’s hard to imagine we didn’t have last year — and old favorites that have become even dearer to us.

Whether you got a new Mac today, or perhaps got an App Store gift card that’s burning a hole in your pocket, or just happen to have some holiday downtime and would like to try out some new apps, here’s the very best app reviews, op-eds, and more from Mac.AppStorm this year. So get your reading later app ready, and enjoy!

Apple’s New Stuff

The biggest news of the year was, of course, OS X Mavericks and all the new apps that it brought, along with Apple’s new iWork and iLife Suites. Here’s our articles about everything new in them:

• Most Importantly: Everything You Need to Know About OS X Mavericks
• Pages 5: An Even Better Word Processor — something many of you didn’t agree with
• Numbers 3: Spreadsheets for the Rest of Us Takes a Risky Turn
• Keynote 6.0: The Best Presentations App, Simplified
• GarageBand X: A Free Step Backward
• Everything You Need to Know About the New Logic Pro X
• The Dilemma: Lightroom or Aperture?
• iWork for iCloud: Apple’s Shot at Making iWork a Productivity Standard
• The new iCloud.com Brings iOS 7′s Fresh Design to the Web

Email Apps

Google bought out Sparrow late last year, then largely neglected it, so email apps were on the top of our list of apps we wanted to see in 2013. And they sure delivered. Here’s the best email app articles from the year:

• Top new article of the year: Turning Mail.app Into the Best Mac Email App
  
• Airmail: The Email App That Tries to do it All — and then, it improved a ton
• Inky Gains a Sudden Surge in Popularity
• 3 Great Gmail Menu Bar Apps
• Unibox, the People-Centric Mac Email App
• MailMate, the Markdown-Powered Power User Email App
• Mail Pilot for Mac is Finally in Public Beta

And then, for some deep thoughts on the future of email, here’s James Cull on Why the Future of Email Might Not Look so Different from Email Today and Kevin Whipps on how Mail.app is Broken and Needs to be Fixed.

Adobe Creative Cloud

Adobe turned their Creative Suites into subscriptions this year, letting you get everything they sale for $49/month. And yet, that proved to be a not-so-popular decision. Here’s everything we wrote about Creative Cloud, from how it works and what it offers to its effects on the ecosystem and what other apps you can use instead:

• The AppStorm Step-by-Step Guide for Upgrading to Adobe Creative Cloud
  
• First Look at Creative Cloud File and Typekit Font Sync
• The Best Free Apps From Adobe
• An Open Letter to Adobe on Creative Cloud
• Leave Your Images at Home With Lightroom 5 — the one Adobe Pro app that’s still available without a subscription
• Most Popular: The Best Alternative Apps to Everything in Adobe Creative Cloud
• What Office 365, Creative Cloud, and Other Software Subscriptions Mean for You

The News Apps

Google Reader died this year, leaving a hole in all of our hearts — but that was quickly filled by a ton of new RSS reader apps for the Mac, along with brilliantly updated old favorites. Here’s the best:

• ReadKit 2.3 Takes the RSS Sync and Read Later Crown on the Mac
• Words App: Another Reading Later App Adds RSS Support
• Sputnik — A Beautifully Designed Cross-Platform RSS Reader
• Get Your Morning RSS Fix with Caffeinated 2
• NetNewsWire 4 Beta — a Giant Among Mac Apps Has Returned
• Leaf 2: Another Top-Contender for Mac-only RSS Reading
• The Good, the Bad, and the Terrible of Safari Push Notifications — Apple’s failed attempt to replace RSS, or something

And The Rest

There’s so many more great apps from 2013, it’d take forever to categorize them all, so here’s a ton of our favorites:

•  Alfred 2 – The Productivity Powerhouse Arrives
• Photoshop, Watch Out: Pixelmator 3 FX is here
• 1Password 4 is the Best Password App, Hands Down
• Marked 2 — The Smartest Markdown Writing Assistant
• Napkin: The Simplest Way to Sketch Your Thoughts On Your Mac
• Capture One Pro: A Pro Alternative to Aperture and Lightroom
• darktable: The Free Lightroom and Aperture Alternate
• Jumpshare Plus: The Nicest File Sharing Service Yet
• Bubble Browser 2: The Visual Evernote Browser Just Got Better
• Evernote: The Journey from XP Tablet PC Edition to an Apple Design Award
• Ulysses III 1.1 — The Writing App to End Them All
• The new VMware Fusion and Parallels
• Quicksilver: The Best Free Way to Do Everything With Just Your Keyboard, followed by a ton of awesome Quicksilver tutorials
• Can LaunchBar Snippets replace TextExpander?
• Intensify Brings Out Tiny Details in Images
• Write Your Hollywood Screenplay With Highland
• OmniGraffle 6: A Huge Leap for the Mac Diagraming App
• Wunderlist Pro is Finally Here, with Task Delegation and More
• DropDMG: The Simplest Way to Make Customized Disk Images
• Simplenote for Mac: A Beautiful Alternative to iCloud Notes
• Diptic: A Simple Way to Make Collages on Your Mac
• Shortcat: Use Your Keyboard for Everything Onscreen
• PopClip: The Unexpectedly Awesome Productivity Tool
• Ember 1.2 — The Smartest Image Library, Ever
• Lenote: Note-Taking Meets Minimalism
• LetterMpress and SimplyMpress: Making Letterpress Art on Your Mac

And some roundups:

• The 35 Best Free Apps for Your Mac in 2013
• The 8 Best Apps to Manage Your Lists
  
• The Best Apps for Simple Image Annotations
• Improving the Trackpad: Three Gesture Apps Compared
• The 10 Best Non-Subscription Invoicing and Time Tracking Apps
• 10 Must Have Mac Apps for Any Beginner Guitarist
• The 12 Best Apps for Keyboard Lovers
• The Best Apps to Read eBooks on Your Mac
• The 10 Best Indie Games to Play in 2013
• The Best Web Code Editors for Your Mac in 2013
• 16 Great Workflows to Jumpstart Your Alfred Experience

Want more great stuff? Then don’t forget about our huge roundups of the Apps We Use this year, with the lists of the tools everyone on our team uses to get their work done.

The Pocket Favorites

AppStorm’s articles were some of the most saved on Pocket this year, and we were very excited that Mac.AppStorm was included in their roundup of the Pocket Hits of 2013. Here’s the top 5 articles from that roundup — be sure to check Pocket for the rest of the list!

• Secure Your Dropbox Files From Prying Eyes with SafeMonk
• 16 Great Workflows to Jumpstart Your Alfred Experience
• Evernote: Your New Office Suite
• Paid Software is Dead. Or Not.
• The 35 Best Free Apps for Your Mac in 2013

Then, a ton of other AppStorm articles about great Web, Android, iPad, iPhone, and Mac articles were included in the Pocket roundup of the top articles from the entire AppStorm network. Be sure to check it out for some great app reading for your holiday free time.

Your Favorites

Did we miss the review of your favorite new Mac app from 2013? Be sure to let us know what your favorite app of the year was in the comments below.

Thank you so much for being a part of our AppStorm community, and we hope you’re having a great Holiday season this year!