Way back in 2009 I first reviewed Dropzone, a dock-based utility by Aptonic that, through a grid interface allowed users to quickly perform common but tedious actions like uploading images or sharing text with a single drag & drop. Later, I took another look at Dropzone as a way to effortlessly download Mac apps as .DMG files, and have the app automatically extract the contents of a disk image and install an application for me.

With the 1.0 release on the Mac App Store today, Aptonic had to make a few changes to Dropzone in order to be approved by Apple and sell its app on the Mac’s native digital storefront: Dropzone is now a menubar app – which you can still decide to launch on login – and gone is the dock access that was also made popular by Dropzone’s own icon and Stacks-like appearance. However, in spite of the technical changes, Dropzone 1.0 still shares the same user interface and set of actions of the previous version: for those not familiar with the concept of the app, Dropzone offers a series of built-in actions (and others that you can manually download and install) to perform tasks automatically and save precious seconds and clicks when working with your Mac. So, for instance, you can drop pictures onto Dropzone’s window and have them uploaded to Flickr, or compressed in a .zip archive and emailed to someone. You can drop files and move them to a specific destination on your Mac, or configure FTP servers and directories if you find yourself constantly uploading files via FTP every day. Dropzone aims at letting you save time with boring tasks and, at the same time, quickly share items with your friends or coworkers without going through separate clients and web upload tools.

Dropzone is very lightweight, and it’ll ultimately make your life easier through drag & drop. Version 1.0 is available at $13.99 on the Mac App Store.