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Apple Planning “Nearly Transparent Store” For France→

Apple Planning “Nearly Transparent Store” For France

Today’s cool Apple retail news comes from ifoAppleStore’s Gary Allen, who points to an article first appeared on AixEvProvence.fr magazine, which claims Apple is planning a nearly-transparent, all-glass retail store for the town located in the south of France.

A rendering posted by the magazine shows a one-level structure set back on a broad stone plaza, with a tan-colored rear wall, and all other encompassing walls made of glass. A second rendering shows the store is an extension of a design roughly based on the Upper West Side (NYC) store. Typically for Apple, the rendering does not show any Apple-like features and there are no visible Apple logos. According to the magazine, the city required Apple to build to new earthquake standards, and harmonize with the surrounding picturesque streets.

Of course, Apple isn’t new to state-of-the-art glass engineering. Steve Jobs famously said that they’ve been able to design Apple’s proposed future campus in Cupertino thanks to their expertise in durable glass constructions, which date back to 10 years ago when the company started opening retail stores featuring Apple’s distinctive glass. Most recently, Apple launched a redesign of its 5th Ave. Store in New York City using less glass panels and a patent for glass staircases was attributed to the company’s late CEO Steve Jobs.

This is a photo of the current Office de Tourisme in Aix en Provence.

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Thomas Brand On The History of Camino→

Thomas Brand On The History of Camino

Thomas Brand has published a detailed overview of Camino’s timeline and unfortunate demise earlier this year due to Mozilla’s decision to officially discontinue Gecko embedding, which Camino uses. For those not familiar with it, Camino was the advanced browser in the early days of OS X when Safari wasn’t out yet and IE was still the only decent choice for Mac users.

Even though I still have Camino installed on my computer it fails to qualify as a reliable alternative browser less than two months since its last update. I am saddened that Camino must die in the effort to save Firefox, a browser that has gotten just a bloated as the Netscape Suite it once replaced. By losing Camino we will not only see the end of a browser that once made the Mac great, but the end of development community focused solely on the advancement of a Macintosh only application.

As written on Camino’s blog back in March, the future beyond version 2.1 (current release) is “unclear”.

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Soul Calibur Coming To iOS This Week→

Soul Calibur Coming To iOS This Week

Namco’s Soul Calibur – the first episode that was released on arcade in 1998, then on SEGA’s Dreamcast in 1999 – has been ported to iOS and will be released this week, on January 19. Aside from being compatible with the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, the game will feature Retina graphics and Game Center support.

Namco Bandai also promises that the virtual pad controls on the touch screen will better recreate traditional controls. The game will have Game Center support with high scores listed on the Leaderboard; six modes (arcade battle, time attack, survival, extra survival, practice, museum); and 19 playable characters, including Kilik, Xianghua, Maxi, Mitsurugi, Taki, Voldo, Sophitia, Nightmare, Astaroth, Ivy, Hwang, Yoshimitsu, Lizardman, Siegfried, Rock, Seong Mi-na, Cervantes, and Edge Master.

Japanese blog 4Gamer offers the first screenshots of the game showing graphics comparable to the Dreamcast version, as well as touchscreen controls for iOS devices – here’s a direct link to a single screenshot. 4Gamer also posted actual hands-on material, including first impressions of a pre-release version and a trailer [Google Translation].

Fans of the original Soul Calibur can look for the game to hit the App Store on Thursday, January 19.

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“Developers, A Love Story”→

“Developers, A Love Story”

Gabe Weatherhead sums up the reason why I started MacStories in 2009, one that still holds true today:

While browsing my Application folder on my Mac, I noticed something. I have a fondness for some apps that I rarely use. I’m just glad that I own them. I may not use them all but I feel good about the money I’ve spent.

If I like a developer I buy their wares just to support their work. When I say “I like a developer” I don’t just mean I like their products. I mean that I like the people behind the products. I like the philosophy, the commitment, the personalities. Sure, I’ll buy software and services from people I think are ass-hats if they make polished high quality stuff. But I’m more likely to buy less awesome software from someone I like than I am to buy highly polished stuff from a jerk. This is especially true in the Indie Software scene. There are real people behind every pixel and algorithm.

We may talk about news and rumors occasionally, but ultimately the people that make the products we use are what really matters. Their stories, the choices they make in developing great software they use in the first place, the way they handle customer support and engage with the community only to make amazing apps that make us more productive every day. I could add a few names from my Applications and iTunes folders: all the app from Edovia. Hazel and MindNode Pro. Airfoil, Alfred, and iStat Menus. I’m serious when I say MacStories is here today also thanks to the Apple developer community. People I (and many others) trust. And great things still have to come.

What’s not to love about the iOS/Mac indie development scene, honestly? Go read Gabe’s post now.

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Mac mini Turns Seven→

Mac mini Turns Seven

Megan Lavey-Heaton reporting for TUAW:

While the Mac mini began its life as a low-end PowerPC G4 machine, current build-to-order models can meet or exceed stock-configuration iMacs. They’ve become smaller, more powerful, yet are still an excellent switcher machine for those who already own a monitor and keyboard. They also can function as a server or serve a variety of needs for homes and businesses.

In setting up a media server with my old MacBook earlier this week, I thought about getting a newer, faster Mac mini to do the job. My MacBook Pro has an internal SSD whilst the standard mini comes with a spinning drive, but on the other hand the new minis blow my old MBP’s performances out of the water and offer Thunderbolt, which is something I’d like to have on a media server looking forward. Plus, my MacBook’s internal SSD is only 128 GB, whereas a standard Mac mini has 500 GB of storage and can be easily extended with different, even multiple drives.

Maybe I’ll get a Mac mini someday. Thing is, I believe the Mac mini is the coolest machine Apple makes: not the most powerful or successful, just awesome to have around. It can be extended. It’s got minimal footprint but it’s packed with powerful internals. It’s extremely reliable, otherwise the good folks at Macminicolo wouldn’t have built a (terrific) business on it.

Happy birthday, Mac mini.

[via 512 Pixels]

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Mac Apps To Watch In 2012→

Mac Apps To Watch In 2012

Mac.AppStorm has published a nice list of upcoming Mac apps to watch in 2012. The list includes some MacStories staff favorites like Coda, TextMate, Spotify and Caffeinated. Other new apps worth keeping an eye on are Mou (Markdown text editor), Wunderkit (from the creators of Wunderlist) and Chocolat.

Today we want to reverse things and start looking forward instead of reviewing what has already come. We’ll introduce you to ten apps that are going to make big waves in 2012. Interestingly enough, most of them happen to be geared towards designers and web developers so if you fit that description, you’ll definitely want to take a look! We’ll also look at an awesome new Google Reader app, what’s in store for Spotify and even get a glimpse of the gem that 6Wunderkinder has been keeping up its sleeve.

I had some additions I wanted to share, but I decided to run a quick poll among my Twitter followers first. Surprisingly, it appears we all share the same apps we’re looking forward to.

OmniFocus 2, confirmed in 2011.

A new app by Bjango, aimed at designers (WIP icons above).

Alien Blue for Mac, confirmed months ago.

Two new music apps, Sonora and Enqueue, currently in beta.

OmniOutliner 4, also confirmed and possibly featuring new cloud syncing capabilities.

Someone even mentioned Things with cloud sync. There’s also an interesting list of “rumored” software, such as iBooks for Mac, a new iWork, Aperture 4, and Flipboard for Mac (or the web?).

2011 has been a great year for third-party Mac software. From the looks of things, I think 2012 is going to be fantastic.

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World of Goo iOS Download Stats→

World of Goo iOS Download Stats

Developers 2D Boy released an iOS version of their popular puzzle game, World of Goo, on the iPad last year. In the first month, they reported over 125,000 sales through the App Store – an impressive number compared to the best 31 day period on WiiWare (68,000 sales) and Steam (97,000 sales). 2D Boy later ported WoG to the iPhone, and made the app universal. Today, the developers have announced one million downloads and published a post detailing the download stats for the app.

- 69% of downloads and 79% of revenue came from the Universal version.

- 29% of downloads and 17% of revenue came from the iPhone version.

- 2% of downloads and 4% of revenue came from the Mac App Store.

The universal version ($4.99) brought a larger chunk of revenue than the iPhone app ($2.99). You’d think iPhones would bring in more sales thanks to their bigger installed base, but more often than not I’m hearing people willing to pay two bucks to get an iPad version “just in case”. Most of the times, of course, it is because they do have an iPad and 2 bucks are well worth the universal download. The Mac, on the other hand, brought only 2% of downloads, but the app is sold at $9.99 there – plus it’s likely that Mac users have already played the old PC/console versions, or bought the iOS app.

Android numbers are noteworthy as well. They’re smaller than iOS when it comes to paid downloads (70,000 copies sold in a month), but impressive in the free demo with over 450,000 downloads. 2D Boy says during the same period last year they sold around 180,000 copies of WoG for iOS. My takeaway after reading this post and Gina Trapani’s Todo.txt sales numbers for iOS and Android – as well as talking to several Android users’ experiences with the Market – is that the App Store still generates much larger numbers of paid downloads (especially when tech coverage and Apple promotions are involved), but Android, too, is growing on that front. I wouldn’t expect Infinity Blade II kind of growth on Android, but 70,000 copies isn’t bad for an indie development studio.

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The Omni Group’s Lion Update Stats→

The Omni Group’s Lion Update Stats

The Omni Group has updated its software update statistics document with Lion data:

Because we’re nice folks who want to help the development community, we’ve decided to make the information we gather public (in aggregate form) so that you can also benefit from this knowledge.

Below you’ll find statistical information about all collected configurations to date. The information is provided as-is. We’re not going to tell you exactly how many individual users have submitted the information, nor can we place any guarantee on the accuracy of this information. Remember, this is not a poll of the Mac OS X community at large, just a subset of our customer base.

Looking at the data, you can see how OmniFocus (by far Omni Group’s most popular app) shows a steep Lion usage increase in July (obviously), and a gradual growth throughout January 2012, whereas lesser known apps like OmniWeb have shown an initial decline in user adoption of the latest OS, then stable updates. Surprisingly, OmniOutliner users don’t seem to upgrade to Lion much.

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