App Review: Prowl

If you have Mac OS X, I hope you have Growl installed. If not, run and go download it, then come back here and finish reading this post. Now that we know what Growl is, I can explain what Prowl does. The notifications that are received on your Mac or PC can now be pushed to your iPhone via Prowl.  Now why would you want the notifications from your computer to be pushed to your phone? Oh the possibilities are endless. Growl can send popups for pretty much any app. Mail, Safari, Skype, Adium, Transmission and many many more. A standing list of notifications already made to your phone is kept for 10 days. More than enough time to take a peek at what has been sent your way recently. Personally I use Prowl to send myself Growl notifications for transmission. Whenever I am away from the Mac I like to know what’s happening when it comes to my apps. Just recently I downloaded an ISO of Ubuntu, once the download finished, Prowl sent me the notification and I was able to log in remotely to shutdown Transmission. Without Prowl I would have had to wait until I was home again to get that update.

As mentioned Prowl works with other applications as well, most notably is Mail. With Mail running on your Mac/PC you can essentially have Push email. Of course it truly isn’t Push email. Your messages are delivered to your computer. Once received, Prowl sends the Growl notification to your iPhone. Once the pop up shows on your iPhone, it’s up to you to open up Mail and retrieve the new message. I would say that if it was the only option of getting Push email then sure, go for it. But if it isn’t, I would turn off your current method.  Prowl also has some independent DEVs in its corner. Folks are putting together nifty little add-ons to programs to increase the usability of the app. Prowler allows you to send highlighted text from Firefox to your iPhone. This handy feature alone has made the purchase of Prowl worthwhile. My wife can now browse the web for recipes and instead of emailing them to my phone, highlight and right click “send to Prowl”, automatically send what she has chosen to prowl. Phone numbers, directions and recipes can be sent to my phone in a snap. So if you decide to get Prowl, please take advantage of Prowler.

As you can tell I love using Prowl and I know you will as well.

Rating: 9 out of 10

Pros: Great implementation of an already great application on the Mac.

Cons: No major complaints. Could be a little ‘prettier’. (But function, over looks is always good)

You can purchase this app from the App Store for $2.99