Help thriftmac find some good free games

At first the Utilities category was the clear leader in our ongoing poll (scroll down in the sidebar) asking readers which category they consider most important for Mac freeware. Lately, though, Games have surged into the lead.

I’m not ignoring you, game fans. I’m constantly on the lookout for good ones to add to the collection, but they seem to be few and far between these days. A number of factors could be in play, but the Mac App Store seems to be the main culprit.

I suspect many game developers are hoping to make at least a little bit of money from their efforts by placing their games in the Mac App Store and charging a buck or two. There are free games in the store, but some are of such low quality that I can’t bring myself to put them in the thriftmac collection. Others are free only temporarily, some are more like demos for a paid game.

Whatever the reason, free Mac games have become scarce. So I’m asking thriftmac readers to pitch in. If you know a good free game not yet listed here, let us know in the comments or send an email. Just remember that it has to be totally free — not a crippled version, not a demo, not a temporary offer, not a beta.

I’ll be sure to check every suggestion.

date posted Posted Sunday, November 27, 2011 in

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Black Friday sale at thriftmac

We’re celebrating Black Friday here at thriftmac by offering 100-per-cent discounts on every app and program. There are no hordes, no trampling and no pepper spraying — just a wide selection of the best Mac freeware we could find during five years of service. Price: zero. And if you miss today’s sale, come back any time of the year for the same great bargains.

date posted Posted Friday, November 25, 2011 in

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Utilities — now with more subcategories

Readers have spoken in our sidebar poll: the utilities category is most important to you. I’ve responded by trying to dig up more Mac utilities that are both good and free, and I’ll keep up the effort. Meanwhile, I’ve reorganized the utilities category into several new subcategories to make it easier to find what you want.

New subcategories include alerts, compression, deletion, functionality, monitors, search and terminal. I was surprised at how many utilities devote themselves to deleting things off your Mac. And I have to admit that “functionality” might be a bit broad. It encompasses apps that give your Mac a basic new function — stuff that Apple might have included, but didn’t. I did wind up with a utilities misc subcategory for those hard-to-place apps, but so far — much to my satisfaction — there are only two in it.

As always, feel free to let me know if I could have done better. Is there an important utilities subcategory that I missed?

date posted Posted Tuesday, August 30, 2011 in

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Goodbye, Clyppan

It looks like another developer has been seduced by the Mac App Store. Clyppan — a clipboard utility — used to be free and now it costs £2.49. I can see why they do it: Apple takes care of the payment system so there’s nothing to lose by putting a price on an app. And as I’ve often said, Mac developers deserve every penny they make. But if it’s not both free and good, then it’s no longer in the thriftmac collection.

date posted Posted Sunday, August 28, 2011 in

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You have spoken, you want utilities

Thanks to the 75 people (so far) who have taken part in the poll, I have a pretty good idea of what’s most important to thriftmac visitors: utilities. The utilities category leads the poll with 22 votes, which amounts to 29.33 per cent.

Having heard the will of the people, I will work harder to bring more freeware utilities to thriftmac and work on better subcategories for them.

Judging by some of the keywords people have used to find thriftmac, it appears many are looking for a utility that recovers lost data. If anyone knows of some good, free apps that do this, please let me know. Of course, news of any other free utilities that should be in the collection would also be welcome.

(Conversely, if there are any apps in the utilities collection that you feel don’t deserve to be there, I’d like to hear about that as well.)

By the way, the poll is still open if you would like to take part. Scroll down and look for it in the sidebar.

date posted Posted Saturday, August 20, 2011 in

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Stumbling with Scrimpy

I’ve been thinking about adding a StumbleUpon badge for some time now, but these figures reported by Mashable have finally pushed me over the edge. StatCounter has declared that StumbleUpon now accounts for 50 per cent of all referral traffic among the top social sites. Yes, it even outpaces Facebook.

If you’re so inclined, you can give thriftmac a stumble by clicking on the badge at the top right of the page — graced, of course, by one of the mini-Scrimpys. We thank you.

date posted Posted Saturday, August 20, 2011 in

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Caught in the spam filter

Looks like I’ve got an overzealous spam filter for the comments. How did I find out? It wouldn’t even let me post unless I moderated myself.

If you leave a reasonable and valid comment (not spam) and it doesn’t show up, please contact me and I’ll fix things for you. Meanwhile, I’ll see if I can take that filter down a notch.

date posted Posted Friday, August 19, 2011 in

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Which Mac freeware category is most important to you?

Scroll down to near the bottom of the sidebar and you’ll find a poll asking which Mac freeware categories are most important to you. Taking part will help me when selecting new freeware for the collection, and which apps to highlight.

I’ve been assuming from past experience that games are the most popular category, but with the emergence of the Mac App Store, it’s getting harder to find new free games. My hunch is that more developers are putting their games in the store and charging a couple of bucks.

In any case, please take the time to tick a box or two in the thriftmac poll.

date posted Posted Sunday, August 14, 2011 in

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Dousing Frets on Fire

I’ve received yet another complaint about the Frets on Fire game not working properly on the Mac. It looks like development of a Mac version simply hasn’t been kept up to date. So in keeping with the thriftmac mandate of presenting only the best Mac freeware, I’ve decided to delete it from the collection. If anyone knows of a good substitute for Frets on Fire (something similar to Guitar Hero), please let me know.

date posted Posted Wednesday, August 3, 2011 in

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Flock flunks

Thanks to a tip from a reader, I’ve learned that the Flock web browser has gone belly up and is no longer being supported.

It was a noble experiment in integrating social media into a browser. Unfortunately, it just made the software bloated with features that many people didn’t find useful. As an example, I prefer to have a separate app for Twitter. And as for Facebook, it’s just as easy to go the website itself.

And so Flock has been deleted from the thriftmac freeware collection.

(By the way, I really appreciate it when readers let me know if an app’s freeware status has changed, or is no longer supported. I aim to keep thriftmac up to date.)

date posted Posted Thursday, June 30, 2011 in

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