Thanks everyone who entered the Felt Tip Couch to 5K giveaway.We also want to thank the Felt Tip developers for the promo codes they offered to MacStories readers.
Here are the winners:
Savio
Dan Palmer
Erik Scottberg
Lauren
Weston Gallagher
You’ll receive the promo codes in your inbox in a few hours. Stay tuned for other giveaways coming this week.
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The big news last week was that Twitter acquired Loren Brichter’s Tweetie for iPhone, which has been renamed “Twitter for iPhone” and will be released soon in the App Store, for free.
As Twitter made this announcement people started wondering what happened to Tweetie for Mac. Brichter himself later announced that he was still working on it, but he wasn’t too clear about it. Today, with a post on Twitter Development group, Ryan Saver confirmed that they also acquired Tweetie for Mac as part of a deal, but it won’t go under any name change and will be kept free.
“One more from me. People have been asking for specific details around Tweetie for Mac and I wanted to make sure we clearly message our plans as we know it. To be clear, Tweetie for the iPhone and its developer, Loren Brichter, were the focus of our acquisition, but as part of the deal we also got Tweetie for Mac.
Loren had been hard at work on a new version of Tweetie for Mac that he was going to release soon. Our plan is to still release the new version and it will continue to be called Tweetie (not renamed to Twitter). We will also discontinue the paid version.”
So, Tweetie 2 for Mac is real, is developed inside Twitter’s office but will still be called Tweetie. And it will be free.
Now, this is great news for us.
Remember iPhone Screentaker? It’s that useful app from developer Fabian Kreiser that allows you to take a screenshot on your iPhone, move it to your Mac and embed it into a great looking iPhone template. This is a must have for bloggers who want to include beautiful iPhone screenies in their posts.
We covered the app a while ago here, and that’s just been updated to a new version.
Seems like iPhone developer Steven Troughton-Smith is on a roll these days. After managing to install the iPhone clock app on the iPad, he installed and run Windows 1.01 and Apple’s Rhapsody using Bochs on the iPad.
Sure they’re buggy and crash, but it’s a good achievement nevertheless. Not just because he managed to run Windows 1.01 (I mean, who wants to use it anyway?) but because this opens many possibilities, like trying to run Chrome OS on Apple’s new device. Stuff that geeks and hackers love, basically.
We’ve included the pictures after the break.
In my review of Twitterrific, I wrote that one of the first things I did when the iPad App Store went public was to search for good Twitter clients. Guess what, right after I settled with Iconfactory’s app I started looking for a decent RSS application. At the moment of writing this, there are not so many feeds readers available for the iPad, but I can say there are a few good ones. I bet it’s just a matter of time for Google Reader clients to come out, as developers are finally working on real devices now.
To better understand the situation, we should make a step backward and recap what’s going on with the iPhone and feeds readers. Reeder 2 is the application I’m now using every day to catch up with the news while I’m on the go and I have time to read something. It’s an elegant, minimal and polished piece of software. But, we at MacStories have reviewed many Google Reader clients before and I’ve been switching back and forth between different solutions myself, until I decided to keep Reeder 2 on my home screen. There’s this other application for iPhone though, which is very popular among users, that sports a good amount of features geared towards power users of Google Reader: Newsrack, previously known as Newsstand.
He did it again, and with his usual style we’ve gotten used to. Steve Jobs has replied to a customer mail regarding the future support for the iPhone 2G (do you even remember it?) and clearly said:
“Sorry, no.
Sent from my iPhone”
So, the first generation iPhone won’t be supported anymore from Apple. And this is quite fair, as technology moves forward and old models are left behind. We didn’t get any confirmation about this at the latest Apple event, except that iPhone OS 4.0 isn’t entirely compatible with the iPhone 3G and old iPod Touch. But now, Steve himself that not only the iPhone 2G won’t run OS 4.0 as it should, but that Apple is officially dropping support for it.
You should upgrade your phone, folks. Check out the mail screenshot after the break.
Adobe has released the Creative Suite 5, which includes new version of 14 products, 64-bit support for Intel Macs and GPU-accelerated performances.
“Several CS5 apps have advanced technologically to keep pace with advances in Apple hardware. Photoshop, Premiere Pro, and After Effects are now 64-bit native to take better advantage of the increased memory built into the Mac’s new hardware, and Premiere Pro is now better optimized for multi-core Intel Macs. Improvements in Photoshop’s OpenGL engine will make the new version faster and more responsive, as well.
As Adobe announced last year, CS5 will run only on Intel Macs and with only the most recent operating systems, such as 10.5.7 (Leopard) or Snow Leopard (10.6). In addition to native 64-bit support, Adobe has introduced the Mercury Playback Engine to Premiere Pro, its flagship video editing app.
The Mercury Playback Engine speeds up processing and rendering so editors can work on large, complex projects without delays. The key to this improvement is GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) acceleration and the full use of all processing cores. While traditionally apps use the computer’s CPU (Central Processing Unit) for performance, the Mercury Playback Engine directly accesses Nvidia graphics cards for performance boosts. Premiere Pro and the Production Premium apps require either OS X 10.5.7 or OS X 10.6.3 for GPU-accelerated performance.”
So yes, Photoshop is 64-bit now. You can take a look at the official CS5 page here, together with packages details and pricing.
The Telegraph reports that Apple has patented “iSpecs”, electronic spectacles that should enable people to watch films on the go, right in front of their eyes.
“Worn like a pair of glasses, the gadget has already been nicknamed “iSpecs” by technology fans. Plans for the device are revealed in a patent application, published this month by Apple. The document shows how users would slot their iPod or iPhone, on which the film is shown, into the head-mounted gadget. A special “smart” lens in the iSpecs then projects the image from the screen so that it can be comfortably viewed by the user.
The lens would also be able to split the image into two different frames, one for each eye, so that it appears the picture is being seen from slightly different angles. This would produce a stereoscopic image, giving the illusion the film being watched was three dimensional.
The device is also to be fitted with a camera that would stream video of the outside world into a smaller screen in the glasses. If someone approaches the user or tries to get their attention, this would be detected by infrared sensors and the video stream would pop up inside the glasses, allowing the wearer to see what is happening.”
Now, seriously, Apple patents between 20-30 new ideas per week. And while some are cool and many are crap, I can’t really see this one happening. At least not without Steve’s retro glasses.
