Posts tagged with "mac app store"

Apple Launches Three-Week Mac App Store Productivity Sale

As first noted by MacRumors, in its weekly refresh of the App Store homepage Apple today launched a three-week “productivity sale” on the Mac App Store. The sale includes discounted apps from the “Get Stuff Done” section: Clear, Things, 2Do, Due, Todo, TaskPaper, The Hit List, and BreakTime. The custom Mac App Store page says “Week 1” and includes apps of the “Prioritize” kind; it’s safe to assume Week 2 will feature “Organize” apps, ending with “Utilize” apps in Week 3.

Interestingly, the old link for the Get Stuff Done section no longer displays apps that had been assigned to that section, suggesting that Apple may be picking only some apps previously collected in “Get Stuff Done”.

Both on iOS and OS X, Apple has been curating a series of custom sections for the past two years. As we’ve noticed before, after a redesign of the App Store in mid-2012 with the first iOS 6 betas, Apple started increasing its curation efforts – an area that several developers indicated as Apple’s best option for showcasing apps from the App Store. However, in spite of sections being a shared effort across the iOS and OS X App Stores, some changes remained exclusive to iOS: recent examples include App and Game collections, or redesigned categories.

The timing for this sale is interesting. The App Store turned 2 in early January, and in my look at two years of Mac App Store, I noted how many developers had progressively grown tired of Apple’s unclear Sandboxing policies and restrictions.

Sandboxing has undoubtedly left a scar that won’t go away any time soon. While the world hasn’t ended, Sandboxing – and Apple’s vague stance on some technical aspects, not the best policy when combined with multiple delays – has led to a dichotomy: in spite of Apple’s best efforts, developers are still dealing with two ways to sell their apps – the Mac App Store, and their own websites.

In the same article, I noted how – after a whole year – the Mac App Store charts were still dominated by the same number of Apple apps, and how – according to AppShopper data – growth had considerably slowed down. I offered a variety of reasons to try to motivate how developers felt in regards to the Mac App Store, and what users should expect going forward.

A sale is interesting for two reasons: it highlights great software and it helps third-party developers. Apple can only benefit from letting users know that great apps for a simple, immediate concept such as “Get Stuff Done” are available on the Mac App Store. The obvious consequence is that promotions typically help sales: developers can still make a fair amount of money even at 50% off; users are happy because they can buy at a discounted price from Apple’s own store; and – at least theoretically – the featured apps should go up in the Top Paid charts.

At the moment of writing this article the Get Stuff Done apps are still not listed in the Top 10, but they’re rising quickly (plus, the Mac App Store homepage was refreshed only a few hours ago). The Mac App Store benefits from charts that aren’t dominated by 8 Apple apps out of 10.

Effectively, Apple is now doing app promotions. There have been similar initiatives in the past – Two Dollar Tuesday comes to mind – and even “bundles” grouping multiple apps together, but they weren’t Apple-sanctioned promotions. (Update: there were some apps on sale for Apple’s Back to School promotion in the summer of 2012. However, we can’t dig up any screenshots or links. Apple is also doing a similar “Back to Uni” initiative in Australia now, but there are no apps on sale.)

It’s easy to imagine how, in the future, if this will also be extended to the iOS App Store, developers will look forward to being included in Apple’s official promotions. Developers will get the exposure of the front page, the benefits of built-in social sharing on the App Store, and, possibly, a tweet from the @AppStore account – which has been posting links to apps on a daily basis. Apple is mixing the editorial aspect of the App Store (only apps “chosen by Apple” – therefore synonym of “quality” – end up in a section) with the universal appeal of discounts to generate word of mouth, sales, more variegate charts, and, ultimately, a nice 30% cut for the company.

Right now, this is just the first week of a first promotion Apple is only doing on the Mac App Store. It might as well be an isolated experiment that Apple won’t repeat again. Perhaps they will simply return to launching some promotions for Back to School in the summer. But considering the popularity of their Free App of the Week initiative, I wouldn’t be surprised to see more frequent Apple-approved promotions in the future. Apple needs a healthy, thriving third-party ecosystem, and third-party developers need Apple’s promotional and marketing machine. Old-fashioned sales might just be what (some) developers needed.

Pixelmator 2.1: Retina Graphics, Mountain Lion Ready, iCloud Support and Great New Features

Back in October 2011, we wrote about the release of Pixelmator 2.0, a hugely popular and award winning image editing application for the Mac. New features to version 2 gave us new drawing tools, shape settings, new heal and retouching tools, an improved type tool and more. Pixelmator was one of the first major success stories of the Mac App Store with $1,000,000 in sales for the first 20 days.

The retina-ready Pixelmator 2.1, code named Cherry, was released this morning with even more new features. Version 2.1 adds a new Effects Browser, several new effects like vintage and miniaturize, a new smart Alignment Guide system and more.

Pixelmator has always been great at helping everyone access the benefits of image editing, said Saulius Dailide of the Pixelmator Team. And now, with all the amazing new features, as well as Retina Display, Mountain Lion and iCloud support and the app’s affordability, Pixelmator 2.1 is definitely the best way to tap into creativity.

New Features

  • Retina-Ready: Pixelmator’s friendly user interface is now fully Retina-ready.
  • Built-in Support for iCloud: iCloud automatically stores images edited with Pixelmator and seamlessly makes them available on all of a user’s Macs.
  • New Effects Browser: The best and most enjoyable way to browse: instantly preview and quickly apply special effects and color adjustments to any image. Over 160 different breathtaking effects to play with. Tag and access favorite effects instantly in one place. Combine different effects for unique, near-effortless artistic creations. See stunning results in real time.
  • New Effects Added: The new Vintage, Miniaturize, Black and White, Rain, and Snow effects help quickly transform any image into something dramatically unique.
  • Smart Alignment Guides: The new smart Alignment Guides let users quickly position, align, and lay out objects evenly in Pixelmator compositions.
  • OS X Mountain Lion Support
  • Much more: Optimized image editing engine support for the new Retina display on the MacBook Pro. Built-in Mountain Lion sharing to iPhoto, Aperture, Facebook, Flickr, Airdrop – all right from Pixelmator. Easy way to access Color Adjustments from the Effects Browser. Enhanced to take advantage of the latest OS X Mountain Lion technologies.

The new Effects Browser is slick; the palette works in a way that as you move your mouse over a selected effect, there’s a vertical line that animates and shows the effect’s intensity inside the Effects Browser. It’s a lot like the way Apple does it with iPhoto groups and iMovie clips. There are some excellent effect presets in here too and they can all be combined to give you great results. The guides work a lot like InDesign CS6 in that they show centers, alignment measurements and more. The share menu works exactly as advertised and feels very much at home running on OS X Mountain Lion. iCloud support will be very handy for editing on multiple Macs, working on one machine then having the ability to reopen it on another. Version 2.1 runs very well on my 2007 iMac running Mountain Lion, I haven’t had any issues.

Pricing and Availability

Pixelmator 2.1 is available exclusively from the Mac App Store for a limited-time price of $14.99, a great savings off the usual price of $59. It is also available as a free update for existing users who have purchased it from the Mac App Store. If you’ve been thinking about buying this great app, $14.99 is a great price and an excellent update to the already great app.

For more information on Pixelmator 2.1, head over to the Pixelmator website. If you want to be a better Pixelmator user, they have a wonderful tutorial site as well.

Aperture and iPhoto Libraries Now Unified in Retina Display Update

Touching on two very important photo editing updates today, Apple has released Aperture 3.3 and iPhoto 9.3, specifically targeting the MacBook Pro with Retina display. In this update, Aperture and iPhoto will now share the same libraries — this means that you can import images into iPhoto from your iPhone 4S, then edit specific images later in Aperture without having to import or duplicate images. The unified library should make life much easier for photographers wanting to get the most out of their images.

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Trickster Keeps Your Recent Files and Applications at your Fingertips

Remember Stacks? These days I keep my Dock hidden at the bottom of my display, with Stacks occasionally providing quick shortcuts to downloads and recent documents. My workflow is funny since I don’t quite want to work in full-screen mode in most applications, but I still want to have windows fill the display. This way I can still bring up my Twitter app without switching to another window, I can use a hot corner to temporarily hide windows as I access whatever mess is on my Desktop, and I can quickly bring up the Dock without swiping down twice. Too, I have the benefit of bringing up a Finder window when I need it — more often than not I’m accessing the Downloads folder from a stack for press kits, images, and files I grap from our work channel. Trickster, a rebranded Blast which I reviewed a couple years ago, fixes having to go through the motions of unhiding the Dock, opening my Downloads stack, then clicking the “more” button or on the file itself. Basically, Trickster is a quick-access panel for applications, documents, music, photos, and video that supplants Stacks and All My Files in the Finder.

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Updated Editor’s Choice Section Hand Picks Best of the Best

Last week’s App Store update introduced Editor’s Choice banners on the iOS and Mac App Stores that highlighted that week’s best apps. In turn, App of the Week became Apple’s way of promoting cherry picked apps while offering them for free (similar to app deals found on Amazon’s App Store for the Kindle Fire). This week, Apple has subsequently introduced a rebranded “App of the Week” as the Editor’s Choice section in the iOS App Store, showcasing both iPhone and iPad apps. The Editor’s Choice section of the App Store aims to showcase the highest quality and the most innovative apps on their store, with the showcase being divided into new and previous picks. Apple recommends that you check back often to check for new applications.

The Editor’s Choice section for the iPad can be found here, while the Editor’s Choice section for the iPhone can be found here.

Espionage 3: Effortless Encryption for your Mac

Tao Effect’s Espionage has always taken a novel approach to encrypting data on OS X. In contrast to applications like TrueCrypt or Knox that protect data in individually encrypted virtual disks or vaults, Espionage does its best to mask encrypted disks from the end user. Rather than interfacing with virtual disks that are individually encrypted, Espionage uses the folders you want to protect as a reference point and applies a 1Password approach to the protected folders on your system. Espionage solves two problems: it centralizes all of your protected data and makes that data easy to access through a single master password. Espionage’s approach to securing your data means that you can interface with folders on OS X as if they were regular folders — tasks like mounting and unmounting encrypted volumes are taken care of for you in the background through a streamlined interface. Protecting your data shouldn’t have to come at the cost of convenience.

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Concept: Redesigning the Update UI for Mac Apps

With the introduction of the Mac App Store, Mac applications are starting to follow iOS’s updating process which involves visiting the Update tab, optionally reading about what’s changed, and updating your applications from a central hub. We’re accustomed to this on iOS — it makes sense where control over each mobile application has been centralized from the very beginning and where you’re likely to have a greater abundance of small apps to update. The transition from third party software suites to the Mac App Store, however, has caused a bit of a clash between applications and how they update themselves. Coming from a world where Sparkle informs us of updates when we launch applications, we’re accustomed to seeing pop-ups informing us of new updates for our few Mac apps as we need them. I myself prefer this type of notification on the desktop.

There are problems with both methods. Sparkle’s update pop-up forces you to stop what you’re doing to deal with the update notification, and currently the Mac App Store doesn’t notify you of updates unless you manually check the store. With these two problems in mind, Lennart Ziburski designed a concept that freshly implements ideas already familiar to us from apps like Safari and Spotlight on Lion.

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Real Racing 2 Now Also Available On The Mac App Store

Firemint’s hit iPhone and iPad game, Real Racing 2, has today launched on the Mac App Store. The game features the same campaign mode, tracks and cars as the iPhone and iPad versions but also allows you to optionally use an iPhone or iPad as a controller.

The most critically-acclaimed iOS racing game comes to the Mac Store! Featuring visually-stunning graphics and state-of-the-art handling, experience the excitement, competition and glory of authentic championship racing with Real Racing 2.

BURN RUBBER ON YOUR MAC!
Take control of the wheel with your iPhone or iPad – or use your Mac to steer your way to first place!

It’s the latest iOS game to be ported over to the Mac and distributed through the Mac App Store, which Firemint itself has previously done with Flight Control. It’s something that wasn’t very common just 12 months ago when the Mac App Store was yet to launch and demonstrates how the ease of use and popularity of the store has led to a surge of casual games being launched on the Mac - where previously it was thought that there was an insufficient audience for it to be practical.

The game weighs in at over 700 MB and costs $12.99 on the Mac App Store (non-US users can purchase it via this link). Jump the break for the full release notes.

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