Mac Apps for Entertainment

Entertainment apps can be used to stream music, TV shows, and movies to your laptop or phone, and do other time-killing things. Mac entertainment apps are everywhere, but not all of them deserve to be downloaded. Therefore, it is important to find the best and skip the rest entertainment apps. Please read this article to find the right Mac entertainment app.

Apple iTunes for Mac

iTunes is a free application for your Mac or PC. It organizes and plays your digital music and video on your computer. It keeps all your content in sync. And it's a store on your computer, iPod touch, iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV that has everything you need to be entertained. Anywhere. Anytime.

Key Details of Apple iTunes:

• Manage your music and movie libraries on your Mac, iPod, iPhone, or iPad
• Last updated on 08/06/18
• There have been 0 updates within the past 6 months
• Also available on Windows

Spotify for Mac

Spotify lets you effortlessly listen to your favorite music on your Mac or mobile device, build your own playlists, and discover ready-made ones for various music genres and occasions.

PROS of this Mac entertainment app:

Browse music and build your own playlists: Search by band, album, song, genre, or era, and then assemble your discoveries into playlists, which appear in the left-hand sidebar. If you want to bring over your iTunes playlists, tap File and then select Import Playlists. You can also search for playlists created by other Spotify users and have them appear in your sidebar along with your own by following their lists.

Listen to ready-made playlists: Spotify wants you to do more than just listen to your favorites, so it works hard to expose you to new music. For example, each day, Spotify builds six "Daily Mixes" based on your listening habits. On Mondays Spotify creates a new "Discover Weekly" playlist, exposing you to songs it thinks you'll enjoy. Midweek it assembles "#ThrowbackThursday," collections of songs from recent decades. Spotify also has playlists for a broad range of genres and activities, from country and Christian to Latin and K-pop. In between are lists of songs you'd hear in a coffeehouse or when you want to chill out.

Tune into radio: Along with its playlists, Spotify has artist and genre radio stations, ranging from The Beach Boys to hits and popular misses from the first decade of the 21st century.

Charts, new releases, and tours: See and listen to daily lists of the top 50 most played songs, find new releases, and discover which of your favorite artists are on tour in your area.

Familiar interface: For those used to iTunes, Spotify takes a similar approach, with music collections, playlists, videos, podcasts, and your library displayed in the lefthand sidebar. Click an item on the left to see its contents displayed to the right.

Connect to friends: You can add friends to your activity feed to see their recent musical activity in the right sidebar. If you've connected your Spotify and Facebook accounts, you can add friends by tapping the Find Friends button at the bottom of your Friend activity feed. You can also search for a friend using their username if you know it.

CONS of this Mac entertainment app:

Free's annoying ads: The free version of Spotify gives you access to all of Spotify's catalog. You have to listen to strings of intrusive ads, however, which seem at times to run longer than the songs you just listened to. The free version is a fine way to see if you like Spotify, but a paid subscription (for $9.99 a month with a 30-day trial) is a much better listening experience.

Can't share songs easily within Spotify: At one time, Spotify had a built-in messaging feature that allowed you to easily send songs and playlists to other Spotify users right from the app. In 2017, Spotify removed its messaging tool and now directs users to share songs via social media. While you can still share, it's certainly more cumbersome.

With its seemingly endless supply of music -- along with curated playlists to help you discover or rediscover artists and songs -- Spotify offers just about everything you'd want in a streaming music service. If you can tolerate annoying ads, the free version is an option, but a subscription offers a much better experience.

Amazon Kindle for Mac

Amazon Kindle is available for most major smartphones, tablets, and computers. That means with our free Kindle reading apps, you can buy a Kindle book once, and read it on any device with the Kindle app installed can also read that same Kindle book on a Kindle device if you own one. With Amazon's Whispersync technology, you can automatically save and sync your furthest page read, bookmarks, notes, and highlights across all your devices. That means you can start reading a book on one device, and pick up where you left off on another device. Easily shop for eBooks and read the first chapter for free before you decide to buy. Read thousands of free books including popular classics like The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Pride and Prejudice, and Treasure Island. Go into your local library to check out an eBook, and have it delivered wirelessly to your Kindle app.

Plex Media Server for Mac

For users who are not just looking for a simple video management solution but a total online video content solution, this app could prove useful. With Plex Media Server for Mac, you can watch free online video content straight from the archives, manage your own videos, add your own channels, and more.

The application runs as an in-browser extension that allows you to plug into the feature and content of the Plex website. Once you have installed the app, launch it and you'll be taken to the Plex homepage. Here you can add and manage your own videos, or add channels to begin viewing online video content. Once you have added channels, Plex Media Server for Mac will begin streaming your selected video content for you to enjoy. Most videos are available in 720p HD and some are even available in 1080p HD. This application is easy to use and performs well. You can sign up for an account, which allows the app to save your settings and channels for future use. There's an activity tab that you can use to check your history and past activities on Plex, too. While this app offers a great service, it does suffer from the occasional loading and streaming issues.

Users looking for a video manager or a video streaming app cant go wrong with Plex Media Server for Mac. It's a sleek and functional app that offers great service with occasional streaming issues.

Key Details of Plex Media Server:

• Connect your Plex clients with your local and online media
• Last updated on 09/21/20
• There have been 6 updates within the past 6 months

SlingTV for Mac

Sling TV is everything you love about live TV minus everything you hate. Stream top live & on-demand entertainment -- anytime, anywhere. Watch 7 Days Free, no long-term commitment. Watch Pro and college football, college basketball, NBA, current hit TV shows like The Walking Dead, SportsCenter, top kids shows, and so much more. Over 100 live channels available for instant streaming including ESPN, NFL Network, Disney Channel, AMC, Comedy Central, HGTV, TNT, TBS, FOX and NBC (select markets only), A&E, VICELAND, CNN, plus 10, 000+ hours of on-demand shows, sports, kids shows, and movies.

MakiPhoneRingtone for Mac

MakeiPhoneRingtone is a free utility that can convert unprotected AAC files into ringtones for your iPhone. Since the iPhone limits ringtones to 40 seconds or less, however, you will need to first use a separate audio-editing application to shorten most songs to the acceptable length--and, if necessary, use that app or iTunes to convert the song to an AAC file. (If you try to convert a longer file, an error dialog will recommend Fission, from the developers of MakeiPhoneRingtone, but any similar app will work.)

Once you have a file of the appropriate length and format, this utility is extremely simple. Just drag the file onto MakeiPhoneRingtone, and the ringtone will appear in your iTunes under Ringtones, which will then appear on your iPhone after your next sync. This latest version fixes an issue with MakeiPhoneRingtone's Help menu.

Flutter for Mac

Flutter is an interesting application for the Mac that lets you use hand gestures to control playback of audio from your Mac. If you think of Flutter as Kinect for the Mac, you'll get a good idea of what it does, although the current version is limited to audio file playback. Flutter is a free download and installs quickly and easily.

Once installed, you can use Flutter through the Mac's camera to control your audio file playback. You can hold up a palm to stop playback of an audio file, and you can stick your thumb to the left or right to move to next or previous song (or simply move through the current song). To use Flutter properly, you need to be in visual range of the Mac camera, a distance of up to about 6 feet. We tried Flutter with iTunes, Spotify, and QuickTime and it worked with all three, and we suspect it will work with other apps too.

The developers will be extending Flutter to work with other apps than music playback, but at the moment this is all it does. Having said that, it's really cool to load up and demonstrate to your friends. Since Flutter is free, if you play a lot of audio files on your Mac you should give this a try just for fun.

Softball/Baseball Team Calculator for Mac

Softball/Baseball Team Statistics Calculator for Mac makes the process of tracking your baseball or softball team easier by monitoring your players on a per-game basis. It can quickly generate player statistics from multiple seasons and in a multitude of categories.

PROS of this Mac entertainment app:

Feature-rich: Softball/Baseball Team Statistics Calculator for Mac offers an extensive set of features. It can be used to track data related to individual players as well as batting stats for the whole team. It can also calculate division standings and even produce a box score for a particular game, showing you run totals for each team after you input the team names, date, time, and other required details.

Stats from mobile apps and game score sheets: Interestingly, you can import player statistics from mobile apps (even from Android apps) like iScore Baseball/Softball, 6-4-3 Baseball Scorecard, and K-ForCE. Of course, you can also generate stats from the game score sheets of SBC, itself.

Easy to learn: While this application offers a multitude of features and functions, working with them is quite intuitive because of the menu-driven interface.

Web site generation: SBC can automatically create a customizable team Web site with optimized views for desktop and mobile displays.

CONS of this Mac entertainment app:

Requires Microsoft Excel: You can't use it if you don't have Microsoft Excel installed. For this version, the MS Excel requirement is any of versions 2001 to 2011.

Unappealing interface: The UI is very plain, and some would even call it dull-looking. You can't do column or row highlights, color schemes, or formatting.

As a relatively basic tool for tracking player and team information and standings, Softball/Baseball Team Statistics Calculator for Mac delivers. It proves easy to use and snappy enough. However, it's not a standalone application, as it is dependent on Microsoft Excel for its presentation and calculations. Also, the interface tends to vary depending on the Excel version available.