Posts tagged with "mac"

My Must-Have Mac Apps, 2011 Edition

One year after my “Must Have 25 Mac Apps” article, I believe it’s time to revisit that list of software I said I would install every time on a new Mac.

A lot of things have changed since September 2010. For one, Mac apps can now be distributed through the Mac App Store, which has proven to be a feasible and reliable platform for developers to showcase their apps to OS X users. The Mac App Store comes built into Snow Leopard since version 10.6.6, and over the past months we’ve taken a look at different numbers and stats showing how Apple’s youngest storefront is set to fundamentally revolutionize app distribution on desktop computers. But the Mac App Store’s release leads to another change happened in the last 12 months, and that’s Lion.

Originally previewed at the “Back to the Mac” event in October 2010, Lion was publicly released in late July after a round of betas that started becoming available to Mac developers since February. Lion has enabled Apple to bring new features to the Mac App Store such as delta updates for apps and in-app purchases, not to mention the fact that all new Macs sold since July 20 have Lion pre-installed, and thus the Mac App Store. At a developer level, Lion is allowing Objective-C coders and OS X designers to come up with new solutions that take advantage of Apple’s latest technologies such as natural scrolling, push notifications, popover controls, full-screen mode, and Versions. Lion has spawned a new breed of Mac software that it’s just starting to leave a sign in the average consumers’ minds, who are increasingly demanding and looking forward to applications that have been properly enhanced for Lion.

And last, there are new Macs in Apple’s line-up. Since September 2010, Apple has updated all its Mac models (except the Mac Pro) and discontinued the white MacBook, the most obvious victim of Apple’s new crown jewel – the MacBook Air. New Macs come with trackpads specifically geared towards Lion’ multi-touch support, and the new Sandy Bridge CPUs by Intel make the process of booting a Mac, and even switching between applications faster than ever.

In a way, the “September 2011” Apple is both identical and different from the company we were covering last year. But title changes and cloud strategies aside – how does the new Mac ecosystem affect the apps I listed on this site a year ago? Read more

Epic Games Brings Unreal Engine 3 To The Mac

Epic Games yesterday announced that the Unreal Engine 3 can now run on Macs with the arrival of the free Unreal Development Kit to OS X. Joystiq does note, however, that it arrives four years after Epic announced Gears of War and Unreal Tournament for OS X, but failed to deliver.

Every UDK game’s potential user base has increased dramatically yet again.

Unreal Engine 3 now supporting Macs comes after Epic introduced the Unreal Development Kit for iOS last year. Since then a number of iOS games build on the UDK have been released, including Epic Citadel (the beautiful tech demo of the UDK), Infinity Blade and Rage HD. LucasArts and Gameloft have also signed multi-year deals with Epic to produce games using the UDK.

[Epic Games via Joystiq]

Fusion and Carbon Productivity Bundle: 10 Lovely Apps for $29.99

‘Tis the season for Mac app bundles. Some are good, others are great and few are good enough to “fall in love with.” Fusion and Carbon have put together a productivity bundle appropriately described as “10 Reasons to Fall in Love and Get Things Done.” The bundle includes some of MacStories’ favorite Mac apps including Evernote & Sparrow Mail. If you tried purchasing the included apps individually you’d be paying nearly $360, so if you’re looking to add to your collection of Mac apps this is a terrific deal at just $29.99. The deal is only good for 6 more days, so share the love!

The Productivity Bundle includes:

  • Evernote Pro - Capture anything from pictures, notes, audio; access it anywhere you have access to a computer or mobile device; find everything fast with advanced tagging. The bundle deal includes 3 months of their Pro subscription (standard subscription is free). (our review)
  • Strongspace - A great backup solution to the cloud. Your precious data is always backed up, turn it on and you’re done. It even lets you share your files or a folder with one click. Like Time Machine, it also captures full snapshots of your data and if you need something you deleted, simply roll back.
  • Sparrow Mail - A minimal and fantastic alternative to Apple’s Mail.app. Sparrow has multiple account support and a unified inbox plus full IMAP support, notifications and more. (our review)
  • Carousel - Okay, maybe not every app in this bundle is for being productive but one needs a break, right? Browse your Instagram Feed, Popular and Profile photos with a choice of great app themes. Follow and explore users, like, comment, moderate comments, and more. Keyboard shortcuts to quickly traverse your feed, like, comment, and more. Drag & drop to save full-size photos to your Mac, or iPhoto. (our review)
  • Alarms - A super minimal alarm app that’s simple to use and fun. It notifies you of birthdays, sync tasks with iCal, supports Growl and has customizable keyboard shortcuts. (our review)
  • Flow - A web-based task management app that works in your browser, iPhone or email. There’s no syncing required and you can collaborate with anyone such as family, friends, and coworkers, all in one place. The bundle gives a 1 year subscription to new Flow users.
  • Koku - Easily manage all your personal finances by keeping track using the Direct Connect to safely download your transactions as they occur. You can also have your purchases tagged automatically.
  • Grasshopper - A virtual phone system designed for entrepreneurs that includes a toll free and local number with unlimited extensions. Call forwarding and voicemail is also included. Manage your account online or by phone with no hardware to purchase. The bundle gives your $100 credit towards their $9.95 and higher monthly plans.
  • Nottingham - Need an elegant notepad for your Mac? This app is designed to be lightweight and easy to use and it keeps all your data safe by syncing to your iPhone and the web via Simplenote.
  • Inbox Assistant - Extract meetings, tasks and other important events out of your emails while it automatically adds them to your calendar. Use Natural Language Processing for entry as well.

 

Skype for Mac Beta Gets Facebook Integration

With a blog post published a few minutes ago, Skype has announced a new beta version of its desktop client for OS X, which adds Facebook integration for chat, news feed, and friends’ posts. The new Skype for Mac 5.4, available for download here, allows users to connect with Facebook directly within the app – without having to open Facebook’s website – to start chatting with Facebook friends, like their posts, or read and update the News Feed.

Once authenticated with Facebook in-app, Skype 5.4 will display an additional Facebook tab in the Contacts view, enabling you to filter the buddy list down to only people who are available for IM through Facebook. The cross-platform IM solution seems pretty reliable in this regard, in that I was able to easily find a Facebook friend, and start chatting with her while I was using Skype 5.4 for Mac. She received my messages correctly on Facebook’s website. When another friend tried to contact me on Facebook via chat, a new message showed up in Skype’s sidebar next to his name (the Mac version of Skype also supports Growl notifications).

Similarly, I was able to read posts from my news feed, like them, and even post a status update using Skype 5.4.

Skype has also confirmed this release brings a new advertising platform to the app, although I haven’t been able to personally verify this yet:

We are also introducing an advertising platform in this new release, but if you are a paying Skype consumer or have Skype Credit, you won’t see any display ads; similar to the model that is currently being used in our Skype for Windows client.

Skype 5.4 beta for Mac can be downloaded here. After Microsoft’s acquisition, the company recently brought HD video calling to the Mac with version 5.3, and released a native client for the iPad.

iMessage for OS X To Be Integrated with iChat?

According a series of code strings found by MacRumors in the current version of iChat for OS X Lion, Apple may be building support for the new messaging system first announced at WWDC for iOS 5 devices inside its IM desktop application. The properties found in iChat’s code refer to “read” and “delivery” receipts, two iMessage features that inform users when a message has been read or simply delivered to another device, respectively. These code strings can’t be found in earlier versions of iChat, apparently, and MacRumors believes they can relate to iMessage support being built inside iChat for Lion.

The “timeDelivered” and “timeRead’ fields indicate the tracking of delivery and read receipts for instant messages. These features, however, are not supported in any of iChat’s native messaging protocols, while the same features are offered in Apple’s iMessage protocol. These properties were also not present in previous versions of iChat prior to OS X Lion. We believe the only reason Apple would have added these properties was to build in cross compatibility with their new iMessage protocol.

Ever since its introduction in June, many have wondered whether Apple could support iMessage, a free messaging protocol for iOS devices, on the desktop as well, allowing iOS users to send text messages to Mac users in their Address Book, and vice versa. Unlike FaceTime, iMessage works on both WiFi and 3G, but similarly to Apple’s video-calling solution it’s completely free of charge and works with email addresses and phone numbers – if an iOS user is already in your Address Book and he’s using the same phone number or email, iMessage will work. The service will be iOS 5-only when it launches this Fall, and Apple hasn’t revealed plans for OS X or Windows versions yet. iMessage has been compared to other free messaging solutions, like RIM’s BlackBerry Messenger, or Google’s Huddle.

A few code strings are no confirmation of Apple’s plans to build iMessage for Mac, but if history is of any indication, it would make sense for Apple to support its new app on multiple platforms. Whereas iChat as an app is still nowhere to be seen on iOS, FaceTime as a service was ported to the OS X and later built into every new Mac. For this reason, many are speculating iMessage could follow a similar trend, perhaps as a standalone app, or a service plugin for iChat.

In the past months, a number of fan-made mockups have tried to imagine what an hypothetical iMessage for Mac would look like. Just like the theories floating around, some imagined the service being supported in existing apps like iChat or Mail, others created videos showing iMessage working as a separate app for effortless Mac-iOS communication. Below, we’re embedding an iMessage concept by Jan-Michael Cart.

iMessage is currently available for iOS 5 beta testers, and it’ll publicly launch with iOS 5 and iCloud this Fall.
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