Pdfscanner (for Mac Review Rating Pcmag.com
. Pros Fast processing. Generous language support. Combine multiple documents into one PDF. Could not be simpler to use. Cons Limited editing features, some of which are not easily accessible.
Hit and miss OCR. Bottom Line Although it lacks the panache of more expensive alternatives, PDFScanner is the simplest and cheapest way to OCR documents on the Mac. PDFScanner for Mac ($14.99) does precisely what its name suggests: It scans documents and recognizes text. The software will run optical character recognition (OCRT) in a bevy of languages, from Finnish to French, on existing PDFs or documents captured from an external scanner. As long as your scanner is compatible with Mac OS X Image Capture, PDFScanner is ready and eager to assist.
PDFScanner will not replace, nor does it aspire to; however, if you're looking for a quick, easy, and inexpensive way to make flat PDFs searchable, PDFScanner is an excellent option. Getting Started Installing PDFScanner is as simple as using it. In addition to its availability on the Mac App Store, PDFScanner integrates with the OS X Notification Center, which alerts you of completed processes. You can use this application in two ways. If you have an external scanner supported by Mac OS X Image Capture, you can scan documents directly from PDFScanner.
Considering, your scanner is probably compatible. Alternatively, if you don't have or don't want to use a scanner, you can simply process text in existing PDFs. Scanning Documents I tested the application's scanning functionality using a and an As soon as I plugged in the Epson, PDFScanner recognized my unit and prompted me to select my resolution (I choose 300 DPI), color mode (black and white), and paper size (letter).
If you're using a feeder, as I was, you can even change the orientation of the document. For OCR, PDFScanner supports about a dozen different languages, ideal for international offices. I tested English and German documents printed in Times New Roman.
I was impressed with the speed and fidelity of OCR recognition. After PDFScanner completed the physical scans, it immediately began processing pages at a speed comparable to that of Adobe Acrobat. When I copied text into a Word document, it matched original printed pages. Processing PDFs My experience scanning PDFs was a bit of a mixed bag. To recognize text in a PDF you must open it in PDFScanner and select Recognize Text under the Edit menu.
By the same token, the option to Convert to Black & White is also tucked away in this menu. Why PDFScanner doesn't foreground these features, I cannot say. I did find that when I scanned documents with esoteric typefaces and vocabularies, fidelity suffered. For example, a captivity narrative from the early-eighteenth century, printed in cursive, flummoxed PDFScanner's OCR (as you can see in the slideshow). Antiquated documents are searchable, but just barely. PDFScanner performs admirably, however, with contemporary work published in simpler typefaces such as Helvetica, Times, and Verdana. Notable Features PDFScanner isn't a complicated piece of software—to its credit—but it does offer several useful features that could be overlooked.
Under Edit, where you can Recognize Text and Convert to Black & White (for PDF scanning), you can also choose to de-skew and rotate pages. Under Preferences, you can automate file naming by dragging and dropping in pre-set tags. For example, if I were scanning student papers, I could add tags for the date, time, and user name, automatically appending those details to file names. I could even combine multiple files into one PDF via the Import function under the File menu.
. Pros Simple to use. Improves battery performance via daily targets and maintenance cycle.
Integrates with the Mac OS X menu bar and Notifications. Cons Intrusive default notifications. Free alternatives perform many of the same functions.
Bottom Line The FruitJuice app lets you squeeze more juice out of your Apple laptop. I know that I should not leave my notebook plugged in. However, what's harmful for my MacBook battery also happens to be convenient for me.
Pdfscanner (for Mac Review Rating Pcmag.com)
So convenient, in fact, that I sometimes forget about my battery altogether. The Battery Project's FruitJuice utility ($9.99) gives voice to that languishing battery and helps to improve longevity by providing daily usage targets. Thanks to its perch in the menu bar and integration with Mac OS X Notifications, FruitJuice is easy to find and hard to ignore (sometimes to a fault). But if you listen to its exhortations, you will likely find that you squeeze additional juice from your MacBook battery. Getting Started FruitJuice is easy to find, download, and install from the Mac App Store. Before I began using The Battery Project's utility, I found that my mid-2010 MacBook Pro averaged just south of two hours per charge, which isn't terrible for a battery living on borrowed time. (I've reached nearly 1,300 cycles on a battery estimated to last 1,000).
FruitJuice found that my battery was in 'good' condition, though it did recommend a maintenance cycle. The maintenance sequence, recommended once monthly, runs your battery from a full charge down to about twenty percent capacity. While this feature will aid battery performance and longevity, it's something that users can achieve without FruitJuice.
The utility's real value is in its ability to reshape user behavior. Targets, Notifications, and Usage Central to the app's goal of helping you better manage battery usage are the utility's daily targets. Each day, FruitJuice sets the minimum amount of time you should use your laptop without a wall outlet. These targets are not burdensome. Today, for example, I was prompted to use my laptop's battery for twenty-four minutes, a goal I achieved writing the first two sections of this review. Unfortunately, notifications can be too plentiful.
For example, I found that I did not need to know about my dwindling power reserves (by default, you receive notifications every hour) or when my capacity had dropped below sixty, then forty, and later twenty percent. Thankfully, notifications can be easily changed from the utility's preferences. For those who want to know more about their usage, FruitJuice offers Power History and Power Info panes.
From the Power History pane you can track your battery and power usage via useful visualizations; the more you use the utility, the more data you will have to peruse. Under Power Info, also, you can see the age and condition of your battery. More Juice After using FruitJuice for about ten days, I've noticed that my battery performance has improved to an average of about two and a half hours. That might not sound like much—and it isn't by the standards of the latest MacBooks—but it represents an increase of about thirty-five minutes, a near twenty-percent improvement. It's worth noting that there are other free options that achieve the same thing. Apple has released its own guide for calibrating notebook batteries, and there are free utilities, such as Battery Health, that do similar work without the price tag. I encourage Mac users to investigate all options, but recommend FruitJuice for users who want an easy-to-manage way to improve MacBook battery performance.