I’ve been waiting for this update: when IA Writer first came out, I couldn’t use it. I was already running iOS 4.2 beta on my iPad, and the app had a few bugs with the new operating system. The focus mode wasn’t working (and that feature is possibly the most important one in the app), custom keys didn’t match. With the latest 1.0.2 that showed up a few minutes ago in iTunes, the app is finally ready for the elusive OS. Subfolders and auto-sync aren’t included yet, but they’re coming soon. Finally, I can use IA Writer. Go get it, as it seems totally worth it.
Two days ago we reported Mac OS X 10.6.5 and iTunes 10.1 were set to come out on Wednesday, with iOS 4.2 for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch to follow on Friday Nov. 12th — tomorrow. Mac OS X 10.6.5 indeed came out, without AirPrint functionality for shared printers as previously reported as well. iTunes 10.1 didn’t come out. Basing on the information we got from a reliable source, it appears that iOS 4.2 has been delayed due to WiFi connection issues experienced by many users running the GM build on the iPad. The issues have been widely documented on MacRumors forums (here and here), Twitter and Apple’s own discussion boards, both by users and developers. You can check out a video of the bug in action below. Read More
What totally convinced me to pick Noteshelf as my go-to app for handwritten notes, though, is wrist protection. When people write, they usually rest their wrist on paper – that's natural and necessary to have a correct writing position. Well gentlemen, unlike all the other apps available for iPad, Noteshelf has an option to not detect your wrist as an active touch on the screen. Welcome to natural and human writing on a tablet. As for features I'd like to see besides the upcoming Evernote and Dropbox integration and a template creator, it'd be nice to be able to pinch and zoom on pages, especially in landscape mode. I also don't like the fact that you can't select multiple pages when exporting them (email and iTunes are supported).
Noteshelf was already a great iPad app, now it’s even better. With the latest 2.1 update available in iTunes now, the developers added the possibility to export notes as images pr .PDF documents to Evernote and Dropbox, a feature many users have been asking since the first version of the app. Uploading to these services is simple and accessible through a popover menu in the top toolbar. You can also select and export multiple pages via email, or just email a whole notebook. Speaking of which, there are new notebook themes such as music notes and baseball scores. Read More
The Apple-1 is the computer that started it all. Sold by Steve Jobs and the Woz in Jobs’ garage, it was the first pre-assembled computer to come with 8k or RAM, but without a keyboard or monitor. Back then, the two folks that started Apple Computer used to sell it at $666.66, and a very few ones have survived today. Now, you can buy one if you want. Only at $200K. Read More
Once I get my hands on an Apple TV you can stay assured this is exactly one of the things I’m going to test. As TUAW reports, developer and hacker Tom Cool has recompiled an old Wiimote-to-iPhone bluetooth implementation to work with the latest gen Apple TV. The mod is based on a custom stack (from the popular BTstack) that makes sure the Apple TV activates its Bluetooth functionality. After that, a 3D render of a Wiimote is shown on screen and follows the movements of the actual Wiimote in your hands. It’s a rough demo to show that Wiimote’s control can be passed along to the Apple TV, so if you think about Wiimote-powered gaming shouldn’t be too impossible to achieve, right?
A developer submitted an app containing private APIs to work around a bug in Apple’s own SDK. The review team didn’t accept the app, so Ram emailed Steve Jobs. A few hours later, Jobs called him:
Steve Jobs has a well-deserved reputation for creating great quality products and for his passion for excellence and user experience. I've also read that he is a detail-oriented executive and a hands-on guy who is intimately involved with his company's work (in a way that few other CEOs are). His phone-call reinforced those notions and went further to suggest that he was also a very conscientious guy who cared about people. The fact that he took the time to read my email, think about the app and then personally call me was amazing.
This morning we noticed the Apple TV was finally available in Italy and Switzerland. As noted by 9to5mac, though, the device will likely launch soon in seven more countries, maybe even tomorrow, as international Apple Stores are returning the same errors the Italian and Swiss ones were returning when the Apple TV wasn’t available last night:
We checked out all the Apple online stores to replicate what happened in Italy and Switzerland and sure enough Taiwan, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Portugal, The Netherlands and Belgium are all displaying the same error message. What does this mean? It means that Apple's second-generation Apple TV will be launching in those countries very soon, probably tomorrow, and maybe some HD movie rentals in iTunes as well.
We don’t know if the Apple Tv is ready just yet to appear in more countries, but surely the Apple online store suggests something’s moving, and fast. The Apple TV is doing great in the US thanks to its aggressive pricing and small form factor, although the promised AirPlay streaming functionality is still nowhere to be seen.
Those who follow me on Twitter have probably read that I’ve been struggling in trying to make iTunes play nice with Dropbox. As I wrote many times here on MacStories in the past, I moved all the files and app databases I access on a daily basis into Dropbox, but iTunes was missing. I read in many forums and blog posts that making iTunes work fine with Dropbox sync across multiple computers was quite a mess, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to take the effort and spend hours messing with 80GB of music (and hours of uploads for my connection) and all those apps I have in my library. Fortunately, I don’t store movies in iTunes. So as I wrote, I was having doubts about going Dropbox all the way with iTunes. The advantages of this method are obvious: you can sync your devices on multiple computers as long as Dropbox is updated to the latest version, you can check for app updates on any of your computers — you can add music to your library no matter the computer you’re using. With Dropbox, iTunes simply thinks it’s running on a single machine, while in fact you’re using it on multiple machines. I have a MacBook Pro and an iMac, but I’m sure the same method works on 2 or more computers. There are some tricks you must know, however, and some steps you have to follow in order to make it work and avoid errors. iTunes is not exactly the most stable app for the Mac or the easiest to tweak: by default, it stores its database in a directory other than /Library (where most apps usually reside), it relies on a .xml library file that can easily be corrupted and if you go ahead and store app betas in your iTunes Library, you’ll have to deal with additional folders. In my experience, iTunes has turned out to be the hardest application to sync with Dropbox, but I think I’ve nailed it. Here’s how. Read More
Good news, Ping users: Apple’s music discovery service just got official Twitter support, according to the Twitter blog:
Starting today Ping, iTunes’ new social network for music, and Twitter are making it even easier for people to share music discoveries with their friends by putting Ping activity, song previews and links to purchase and download music from the iTunes Store right in their Tweets on Twitter.com.
Basically, you can link your Ping profile to your Twitter account and find Ping users among the people you’re already following on Twitter. Once the accounts are linked, your Ping activity will be mirrored to Twitter, and thanks to NewTwitter’s rich embed panel you’ll be able to see song previews and iTunes links directly in the Twitter home page:
When you click on a Tweet that’s sent via Ping or that contains an iTunes link, you’ll see the song or album in Twitter's details pane, with the ability to listen to song previews from iTunes, making the experience even richer. iTunes song previews are available on Twitter.com in the 23 countries where the iTunes Store offers music.
This is a huge step forward for Ping, which is still lacking Facebook support. Ping, however, just got a lot more connect and, perhaps, useful with the addition of Twitter.
Consumer Reports thinks the MacBook Air 11-inch is a very good computer in terms of ergonomics and display, it’s versatile and has good performances. As The Loop reports, in fact, Consumer Reports gave it a 67 out of 100 rating in its latest "Laptop Ratings & Reliability", available to subscribers. As The Loop points out, the highest computer in that category used to be the Toshiba Satellite with a 51 out of 100. Read More
iLounge noticed Apple is now selling iBooks gift cards in its retail stores. The cards were spotted in the Washington D.C. area Apple Store, and it’s an interesting move because regular iTunes Gift Cards worked just fine with the iBookStore. I guess Apple wanted to make it clear that books can be bought with a gift card, and I assume those cards are going to be huge this holiday season. I still haven’t spotted them here in Italy, though.
As noted by MobileCrunch, alternative 3rd party iPhone browser Skyfire did great in its first weekend in the App Store. Even though the app wasn’t exactly off to a great start (the developers had to pull the app as they couldn’t keep up with the server demand), it still managed to win the hearts of thousands of iPhone users who apparently needed a browser capable of playing Flash videos:
The company isn't sharing exact numbers, but they did just tell me that their download numbers for their first weekend on the store were well over 300,000. At $2.99 a pop, that works out to one hell of a bounty. SkyFire isn't walking away with that whole million, of course; Apple's going to get their 30% cut, which brings SkyFire's share down to somewhere between $600-700,000.
If you migrate those from a 10.6.5 prerelease build (there seem to be many floating around torrent sites and file sharing sites – build 10H542 works; naturally I can’t link you to the files themselves, sorry!) to your machine you’re just one step away from having AirPrint working.
The final key thing is you have to remove and re-add your printer in the Print & Fax preferences pane.
What I consider the best app currently installed on my iPhone and iPad just got a lot better. With the 2.3 update (which is still propagating in iTunes as I’m writing this) developer Marco Arment introduced so many fixes, refinements, optimizations and new features it’s really hard to keep track of them. Instapaper basically got a lot better, both on the iPhone and on the iPad’s larger screen (perfect for reading, if you ask me). You can now send articles to OmniFocus, QuickReader and all the previous sharing options have been fixed to work properly again. The app now also supports a “ihttp://” URL scheme: every time you find something interesting in Safari you want to send to Instapaper (assuming you can’t get the other options to work, such as the bookmarklet) just add an “i” before the regular URL and tap Go. Instapaper will open. Genius. On the iPhone, the article list now includes a few lines of text like on the iPad. iPad updates are faster, I can confirm. The iPhone can now toggle the Dark mode from the font panel, and you can set the app to automatically switch to dark mode at night. Seriously, you gotta take a look at the changelog yourself (embedded below) and go download Instapaper right now if you still haven’t. Highly recommended. Read More
Just like we previously reported, it looks like Apple removed AirPrint support from 10.6.5. Available to developers in previous beta versions, the feature allowed iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch users on iOS 4.2 to print documents to printers shared via Mac OS X or Windows. It turns out AirPrint now only works with supported HP printers, as noted by Macworld and Ars Technica. We’re also getting reports from readers who have already installed 10.6.5 (which came out a few minutes ago) confirming that, indeed, AirPrint to shared printers from iOS 4.2 GM isn’t working. Read More
The long-awaited OS X 10.6.5 update is finally out of the cage and available for you to download in Software Update. Mac OS X 10.6.5 is the the fifth maintenance update for Snow Leopard — version 10.6.4 was released in June 2010. Read More
I’ve been looking for a very specific type of app since the iPad came out: something that would allow me to pull content from Twitter and Google Reader favorite items and read it on the iPad. That’s simple. I don’t need tags, categories, offline access or sharing features: if I’ve saved the articles from social networks in the first place, it’s very likely that I won’t send them to Twitter again. See, I save lots of links both from Reader and Twitter every day: most of them is silly stuff I don’t usually go back to, but a good part of them is made of articles, posts I want to check out later and I’m not sure they need to go into Instapaper. You know what it’s like on Twitter: you put a gold star there, another one here — and you’ve faved 60 tweets on a single day. Same happens on Google Reader. So like I said, I’m looking for a simple solution to display this content all together so that late in the evening I could sit down with my iPad and enjoy the stuff I saved during the day. This morning I found out about this new iPad app called Readict (free) which promises to aggregate all your favorite items from Twitter and Google Reader. Read More
Last night we reported some developers on Apple’s forums noticed information about AirPrint through shared printers on Macs and PCs has been mysteriously removed from Apple’s online printing documentation. According to those developers, Apple Tech Support chimed in as well claiming that AirPrint through shared printers had been cancelled from the upcoming 10.6.5. So it’s not that AirPrint has been pulled. Rumor has it Apple may have cancelled or delayed the functionality through a printer shared on Mac or Windows. Read More
The common-sense approach to make money on the App Store used to be to do anything to get on the top charts. In-app purchases changed all of that. Good in-app purchases can make your app profitable without being anywhere on the charts, and are the best hope for the independent developer. Come to this session to learn why IAPs can be so effective and how to leverage them effectively: what makes a good IAP, how to increase your user involvement, how to present IAPs in an attractive way, what things attract users, and what things turn them away. We'll go through lots of detailed real-world data from Flower Garden and other games with strong IAPs.
Daisy Disk is a very popular app for Mac that allows you to find files that are eating up space on your Mac’s drive. Many apps do that, and with a little bit of patience and with the help of Smart Folders you can achieve a similar functionality in the Finder itself, too. So what’s special about Daisy Disk? Read More
But iTunes is one of Apple's most flexible applications, offering a huge library of AppleScript commands and properties. AppleScript virtuoso Doug Adams has been running the Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes Website for years, collecting scripts that he and others have written, and providing them for free. Here are some of the best AppleScripts that I've found on Doug's site.
Great tips and great list. The Embed Artwork one is exactly what I was looking for. Make sure to visit Doug’s website for more AppleScripts. via [macworld.com]
If you live on the Internet, if you ready dozens of blog posts every day but you hate the fact that the latest trend among publishers is to put tons of sharing buttons in their pages — then you’ll love this extension fo Safari called Shellfish. Also available for Chrome and Opera users and released a few months ago, Shellfish strips away all the Twitter, Facebook and Digg buttons that suggest you share stuff with your friends. “Be Shellfish”, writes the developers on the extension’s site. Other services such as AddThis, AddToAny, Apture and Tweetmeme are blocked as well. Shellfish is available here and works as advertised. If you think there’s no need to share anything, go install it.
Hardware Upgrade reports that AMD showed a couple of slides yesterday during the 2010 Financial Analyst Day which suggest that Apple might be included as a partner for future AMD Fusion releases. In the slides (which you can see below, or jump to the full presentation here) iMacs and Mac Pros are the Apple computers AMD’s slides are referring to. As Hardware Upgrade also notes, rumors about deeper Apple / AMD collaborations have been floating around for months. Apple, of course, hasn’t confirmed any of them.
With a press release today Apple announced its exclusive partnership with Japanese brand agency Dentsu Group to bring iAds to Japan. The iAds following this partnership will be rolled out in Japan in early 2011 and Dentsu “will be responsible for the selling and creative execution”. Dentsu subsidiary cci will provide creative production and media planning. Check out the full press release below. Read More
CopySwap is a neat utility for Mac OS X that, through a custom keyboard shortcut, lets you automatically copy the text that you’re replacing while pasting. It doesn’t sound as cool as it is when you see it in action. Read More
There’s no doubt Smule knows how to release popular applications. If you look at their iOS portfolio, there’s not a single app that hasn’t sold thousands and thousands of copies in the App Store: I Am T-Pain, Magic Piano, Ocarina, Glee Karaoke and now, again on the iPad, the new Magic Fiddle. Just like Magic Piano allowed you to play some sort of digital piano based on its own rules and system, Magic Fiddle recreates a violin on screen you can play with a few taps and swipes. The app is getting rave reviews on many blogs and publications, and while I haven’t tried the app myself (I’m not really a big fan of music apps in general) I have to admit it looks good from the screenshots and video posted by the developers. The app contains a tutorial section to teach you how to bow, pluck, trill, vibrato and glissandi with your fingers; when you’re good enough to show off your skills, you can play with your friends and aim at the global leaderboards. Graphically speaking, Magic Fiddle looks interesting. Magic Fiddle is available at $2.99 in the App Store. Check out the demo video below.
I imagine prior to the launch of the iPod, or the iPhone, there were teams saying the same thing: the copy + paste guys are *so close* to being ready and we know Walt Mossberg is going to ding us for this so let's just not ship to the manufacturers in China for just a few more weeks… The Apple teams were probably embarrassed.
But if you're not embarrassed when you ship your first version you waited too long.
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