Posts tagged with "developers"

The Mac App Store and “Half-Available” Updates

Panic, the developers of popular software for the Mac like Coda, Transmit and Candybar, wrapped up a critical update to their FTP client / file manager / all-in-one solution Transmit 4 on January 6th to fix “important bugs” and correct issues with the Transmit Disk feature and Amazon S3 connection. As they explain in a post on the company’s blog, their original plan was to submit the update to Apple and release it on their website as well once the Mac App Store version got approved.

Apple didn’t approve the update after two weeks, so Panic went ahead and posted the update on the application’s website so that users who didn’t buy the app through the Mac App Store didn’t have to wait any longer to have the bugs fixed. In their own words, Transmit 4.1.5 is now “half-available” as the app in still “in review” for Mac App Store approval. Read more

Autodesk: Mac App Store Doubled Sketchbook Pro Sales in 20 Days

The Mac App Store isn’t even one month old and we have already heard several stories of success from Mac developers. The most notable one comes from Pixelmator, which grossed $1 million in less than 20 days into the new store; we have covered other experiences from developers in our Mac App Store hub. Autodesk (makers of AutoCAD) announced in a private event in San Francisco that the Mac App Store version of Sketchbook Pro, a painting and drawing application, has sold twice as many copies as the regular version did in the entire year. In 20 days. That’s quite an achievement, I would say.

The Loop reports Autodesk also had to ship a different version of Sketchbook Pro in order to be approved by Apple:

For example, Mac App Store apps aren’t supposed to use private APIs, can’t incorporate their own end user licensing agreements, and can’t employ separate copy protection. As a result, sharing code with the iOS version made the process easier, though SketchBook Pro is scaled up to take advantage of the increased processing power and memory footprint of the Mac.

Last year, Autodesk also released a new version of AutoCAD for Mac with an entirely redesigned interface and graphic engine, and shipped a mobile counterpart called “AutoCAD WS” for iPhone and iPad.

Reminder: Macworld 2011 Kicks Off Today

Apple may have stopped attending Macworld and announcing new products there, but the expo is doing well. So well that, according to stats provided by CultOfMac, more than 25,000 attendees are expected to walk around booths at the Moscone Center where 230 exhibitors will launch 100 new products. The show’s numbers are up from last year, when they dramatically dropped since Apple confirmed they wouldn’t go to Macworld anymore.

The show is shaping up good,” Macworld general manager Paul Kent told CultofMac.com. “If the numbers go right, we’re going to have about a 25% increase in attendance.

It’s a really fun time,” said Kent. “Macworld is a celebration. There’s a high joy quotient. It’s a fun place to be. There’s not a lot of places were people can do this any more.

We won’t be at Macworld, but we will try to aggregate, starting today through Saturday, the best new accessories, apps and Mac software we’ll be notified of. For all the details about the expo and the schedule of events, go here.

Pixelmator and Mac App Store: $1 Million in 20 Days

The first stories of success in the Mac App Store are starting to come in. First came Evernote, with its impressive Mac adoption rate thanks to the new Store; then Compartments, from a developer who went from 7 sales a day to 1500. Now the Pixelmator developers have posted a new entry on the company’s blog announcing that their graphic editing app has grossed $1 million in less than 20 days into the Mac App Store.

Taking Apple’s 30% away out of the equation, that leaves $700,000 to the Pixelmator team. Or maybe it’s $1 million after Apple’s cut? We don’t know. Either way, it’s an impressive result that we’re sure wasn’t possible back in the days when there was no Mac App Store.

This is a well-deserved milestone for the Pixelmator devs and we’re looking forward to what’s next for the app. The Pixelmator team, for instance, implemented a clever Mac App Store transition policy that forces existing customers to buy the app again, but will give them Pixelmator 2.0 for free once it’s released later this year.

Pixelmator is available at $29.99.

TestFlight Goes Live For Everyone - Distribute & Receive Beta Apps Effortlessly

TestFlight has been in lockdown mode for a while, and I’ve had plenty of opportunities to put the service through its paces before they opened their doors to everybody this evening. I’ll just say that TestFlight is incredibly convenient for installing beta applications on the fly - there’s nothing more annoying than unzipping iPad or iPhone files, dragging them to iTunes, syncing, and it doing all over again when updates are distributed. TestFlight simply has you log into their site via your iPad or iPhone, tap a button, and you can browse through the beta apps developers have subscribed you to for immediate downloads. It’s so much easier for developers to submit one beta to TestFlight than to package their app and distribute it to dozens of emails, and it’s much easier on the tester to be updated and install updates. It’s completely Apple worthy, and if you’re a developer we encourage you to sign up for the service so you can focus on creating content instead of worrying about beta distribution.

TechCrunch notes that the service is free to developers, while a paid Enterprise version is in the works that will allow for licensed versions of apps to be passed through the airwaves (presumably for corporate/in-house application use).

[via TestFlight, TechCrunch]

Apple Seeds Mac OS X 10.6.7 To Developers

Looks like 10.6.6 wasn’t the last version of Snow Leopard, after all. Earlier today Apple seeded a new version of OS X to developers, 10.6.7. Build number is 10J842. From the release notes, the focus areas are:

  • AirPort
  • Bonjour
  • SMB
  • Graphics Drivers

Mac OS X 10.6.6 was released two weeks ago with support for the Mac App Store. No word yet whether or not support for AirPrint through shared printers will find its way back into this new version of OS X once it’s released.

iOS 4.3 Gestures, Bezels and An Apple Patent From Last Year

In the first beta of iOS 4.3, Apple introduced “multitasking gestures” for iPad: offered as a preview for developers to play with and test compatibility with apps, these 4 and 5-finger multitouch gestures allow users to execute a series of actions otherwise assigned to the Home button. You can switch back and forth between apps, open and close the multitasking tray or pinch back to the homescreens. The gestures need to be activated through Xcode as, again, they are a developer preview of a feature that won’t even be enabled in the public release of iOS 4.3, as Apple let devs know last night.

The presence of gestures that offer some functionalities previously exclusive to the Home button also let the rumor mill run wild, with some bloggers speculating that Apple may get rid of the Home button in the next iterations of the iPad and iPhone. Personally, I think gestures on the iPhone’s tiny screen are a terrible idea – and it gets worse if you have non-average, big hands.

Gestures are a neat new feature for the iPad that provide a glimpse at something Apple is clearly working on: more multi-touch capabilities for iOS devices. These very same gestures, though, gave several developers a hard time trying to figure out how to integrate them with their apps. Read more

Nuance Allowing Developers to Easily Add Speech Recognition to their Apps

If you’re an App developer you might be interested in Nuance’s (known for their speech recognition software) latest pursuit. Nuance is now enabling other developers to incorporate and take advantage of their speech recognition software and place it into third party apps, expanding any app’s functionality in a very cool way.

Nuance has previously teamed up with Ask.com to deliver their speech recognition technology to the Ask for iPhone app and have now opened up the Nuance Mobile Developer Program for all developers. By joining, Nuance says developers will gain access Dragon Mobile SDK with support for more than eight languages plus assorted support forums and documentation.

If you’re interested in using Dragon’s Mobile SDK to add speech recognition, head over here. Full announcement is posted after the break.

Read more