Cody Fink

1547 posts on MacStories since January 2010

Former MacStories contributor.

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Apple surpasses Exxon Mobil as most valuable company in the world→

Apple surpasses Exxon Mobil as most valuable company in the world

Matthew Panzarino writing for The Next Web,

Apple has, at least for the moment, taken the place of Exxon Mobil as the most valuable company in the world, measured by market cap, reports MacRumors. Apple’s market cap hit $341.55 billion in valuation today, while Exxon Mobil was valued at $341.42 billion.

[…]

Apple’s record high of $404 per share was hit just last week, although it has fallen 8% to 368.40. ExxonMobil took a deeper hit, falling 20% to $70.21 allowing Apple to creep ahead.

Apple is having a great day, up 4% while Exxon’s growth remains stagnant. While both companies have taken hits thanks to the stock markets being down after the S&P downgrade, this is the first time Apple has been ranked as the most valuable public company in the world, even if for just a moment.

Update: Great quote from John Paczkowski at All Things D:

Incidentally, at $341.5 billion, Apple’s market cap is more than twelve times that of Dell’s $26.54 billion, which is highly ironic considering Michael Dell’s infamous suggestion for the company: “What would I do [with Apple]? I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.”

Update 2:  Mark Gongloff from the WSJ:

Exxon Mobil ended the day with the crown, at $348 billion in market cap. Apple ended at $346.7 billion.

(image via MacRumors)

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Twitterrific 4.3 Syncs Timeline Position With Tweet Marker

Twitterrific 4.3 is now available on the iOS App Store and on the Mac App Store, featuring timeline sync via Tweet Marker. Tweet Marker is a service that enables developers to remember where you stopped reading your timeline on one device, so you can start where you left off on another. If you value reading every tweet (and not just what’s happening right now), Tweet Marker gives Twitterrific tremendous value. There’s virtually very little users have to do on their end to enable Tweet Marker, but we’ll break down all the juicy details pertaining the purple bookmark past the break.

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Toggle Mac OS X 10.7 Lion New Features On / Off With Lion Tweaks→

Toggle Mac OS X 10.7 Lion New Features On / Off With Lion Tweaks

The latest Mac OS X 10.7 brings a whole lot of improvements along with a dozen iPad inspired UI features and animations. Although these improvements don’t come into conflict with UI design and core features of Mac Snow Leopard, many users hate the idea of bringing the iPad like UI elements and animations to Mac OS X. If you’re amongst those who want to keep Mac OS X 10.7 installed on your system but also want to toggle some of its new features, window options and animations on/off, Lion Tweaks is probably the best Mac Lion tweaking application that you can try.

We’ve posted lots of tips and tricks that require a bit of elbow grease when it comes to taking control of Lion, and we’ve even posted utilities like this one for Launchpad for hiding unwanted folders or apps. With everyone wanting to disable this or modify that, why not just create a utility that puts everything you’d want in one place? AddictiveTips has posted a utility from iFredrik that’ll have you customizing Lion with nothing more than a couple of button presses. For those of you who are fed up with slow window animations or that iCal leather, you can disable it with a simple click thanks to Lion Tweaks.

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eBay Launches a Minimal App Designed for OS X

Tired of logging in on eBay just to get a sweet deal on that gadget you’ve been eyeballing? Check it out — eBay has a shiny new app on the Mac App Store that shares visual similarities with apps like Sparrow or Twitter for Mac, and is designed so you can bid on products right from the comfort of your desktop. The lightweight eBay companion for the Mac is very nice — you can keep track of your watched items, your bidding history, make bids, search for auctions, and do everything in the Mac app you’d generally want to do online. With access to your eBay console, daily deals, and a universal search bar built right in to such a compact interface, it’s a pretty sweet replacement for the website (and much easier to navigate). You can download eBay for the Mac in the Mac App Store, and we’ve posted some screenshots after the break so you can further check it out.

Update: Hearing reports on Twitter (and a comfirmation over at Macgasm) that this appears to be US only for right now.

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Apple Upgrading their Fifth Avenue Store with Larger, Seamless Panes of Glass

Apple’s flagship retail store on Fifth Avenue, Manhattan, is getting a new glass frame according to a new informational sign posted on the outside barrier of the store.

We’re simplifying the Fifth Avenue cube. By using larger, seamless pieces of glass, we’re using just 15 panes instead of 90.

Detailing the upgrades in an informational notice, Apple shows off past and present examples of the Fifth Avenue retail store, showing a reduction in glass panels from 90 to just 15 large strips (three vertical panes on each side and three on top). The appearance of the renovated Fifth Avenue will be much cleaner, and visually more seamless. According to MacRumors, the $6.6 Million upgrade includes work on drains, pavers, and the plaza bollards in addition to the glass replacement.

[via MacRumors]

Lion Recovery Disk Assistant

This afternoon, Apple is making available Lion Recovery Disk Assistant — an app available for the desktop that allows you to prepare an external hard drive (or thumb drive with at least 1 GB of space free) for recovery. Lion Recovery Disk Assistant will install the Lion Recovery partition to external media so you can create another boot disk. It requires OS X 10.7 Lion with a Recovery HD. Apple says in order to use the Recovery Disk Assistant, you only need to plug in an (empty) external hard drive, then run the assistant to create the recovery drive. This should make lots of people complaining about the lack of external recovery options very happy.

Download: Lion Recovery Disk Assistant (1.07 MB)

Update: Some additional details from the release notes:

  • If the computer shipped with Lion, the external recovery drive can only be used with the system that created it.
  • If the system was upgraded from Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard to Lion, the external recovery drive can be used with other systems that were upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion.

Screenshots after the break!

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Logic Pro and Express 9.1.5 Updates Available for Download

Apple has updated Logic Pro and Logic Express this afternoon to 9.1.5, fixing bugs, improving stability, and improving compatibility with various plugins.

This update improves overall stability and addresses some minor issues including the following:

  • All instrument and effect plug-ins that use LFO’s synced to the beat now behave correctly.
  • The Toggle Zoom key command now returns to previous zoom level as expected.
  • Improved compatibility with Apogee’s Duet 2.

This update is recommended for all users of Logic Pro 9.

You can download the updates via the links below.

Logic Express (138.84 MB) | Logic Pro (192.55 MB)

Release notes: Logic Express and Logic Pro

Pulp for Mac 2.1: Instant Resume, Push Sync, and Ready for Lion

Among all of the changes for the latest version of Pulp for Mac (it hit 2.1 today), we’re really excited about Instant Resume and Push Sync. If you use Pulp across multiple Macs (or between your desktop and the iPad), Push Sync will instantly update your newspaper whenever you make a change on another device. On top of always being right where you left off with Push Sync, Instant Resume will let you return to the exact point you were reading when you leave Pulp and return to the app at a later time. So with reading taken care of, what else do we have in store?

Pulp for Mac 2.1 is a big Lion update that integrates Lion gestures with the newspaper itself — as you move your fingers, the pages will curl (just like directly manipulating the interface on the iPad). Pulp for Mac 2.1 also brings full-screen mode — it’s realistic interface is a great fit for 11- and 13-inch MacBook Airs.

Pulp for Mac is ready for OS X Lion, and available in the Mac App Store for $9.99. See the Acrylic Software blog for more information.

Sparrow 1.3.2: Drag & Drop to Labels, Conversation & Reply Redesigns, and Gradients!

Sparrow has a really sweet Mac update available this afternoon from the Mac App Store, bringing lots of new features and tons of bug fixes to improve its game and interface on Lion. The last update brought full-screen support and a redesigned sidebar that’s significantly improved my workflow, and now that sidebar is getting some additional use thanks to drag & drop. Whether you’re on an IMAP account or using Gmail, you can drag and drop emails into a folder or label to quickly move and archive messages. That alone makes us really happy, but check out what else Sparrow has added past the break.

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