Deus Ex: Human Revolution Coming to the Mac

By Federico Viticci

Feral Interactive has announced that a native Mac version of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, the critically acclaimed prequel to Deus Ex, will be released in the upcoming months. The game is set to come out during Winter 2011/12, with Feral’s dedicated mini-site receiving an update with more information about the title soon.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is an action-based role-playing game developed by Eidos and published by Square Enix. It tells the story of Adam Jensen, a security chief for one of the world’s most powerful corporations; in 2027 – Human Revolution is set 25 years before the original game – corporations have extended their powers beyond the reach of local governments. Adam is forced to undergo cybernetic augmentation to fuse his body with mechanical parts, and he’s thrown in the middle of a global conspiration.

From Ars Technica’s review of the game:

The game’s uncanny ability to give you multiple ways out of situations is carried right through to the final encounter, and the game even ends with an important decision. Every option you’re given before the credits roll is attractive in its own way, though at the same time, none of the choices truly provide comfort. Human Revolution can be oppressively bleak at times, but it earns its tone.

Although the game world has plenty of room for more stories told by future titles, this story comes to a very definitive end. That’s something rare in big-budget games today, especially when they take place in an established franchise. But a real conclusion just confirms why this game deserves so much praise: by the end of the game’s impressively long run time, you’re left satisfied by the story and the characters within it.

Below is the trailer of Human Revolution from E3 2010. Feral Interactive isn’t new to Mac game ports, having released Borderlands: Game of the Year Edition for OS X last year. [via The Loop]
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Security Update 2011-005 Released, Addresses DigiNotar Certificates

By Federico Viticci

Earlier this afternoon Apple released two security updates for OS X Lion and 10.6.8 Snow Leopard to address an issue with compromised digital certificates issued by DigiNotar weeks ago.

Available for: Mac OS X v10.6.8, Mac OS X Server v10.6.8, OS X Lion v10.7.1, Lion Server v10.7.1

Impact: An attacker with a privileged network position may intercept user credentials or other sensitive information

Description: Fraudulent certificates were issued by multiple certificate authorities operated by DigiNotar. This issue is addressed by removing DigiNotar from the list of trusted root certificates, from the list of Extended Validation (EV) certificate authorities, and by configuring default system trust settings so that DigiNotar’s certificates, including those issued by other authorities, are not trusted.

The updates are available on Software Update, or directly on Apple’s Downloads website. DigiNotar’s servers were hacked last month, and began issuing false certificates, leading to security concerns among several companies. As Apple also notes, it was possible to remove the certificates manually by deleting the root entries in Keychain Access.

Direct links:

- Security Update 2011-005 (Lion)

- Security Update 2011-005 (Snow Leopard)

Bloomberg: Sprint To Sell iPhone 5 Next Month with Unlimited Data

By Federico Viticci

A new article from Bloomberg corroborates a report from The Wall Street Journal, claiming that”according to people familiar with the matter” Sprint will start selling the next-generation iPhone in mid-October, with an unlimited data plan.

Sprint Nextel Corp. (S) will offer Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s iPhone next month with unlimited data service plans to distinguish itself from rivals AT&T Inc. (T) and Verizon Wireless, according to people familiar with the matter.

Sprint, the third-largest U.S. wireless carrier, plans to begin selling the device in mid-October under a deal with Apple for the next model, the iPhone 5, said the people, who wouldn’t be identified because the plans aren’t public. Becoming the country’s only operator to offer the device with unlimited data service for a flat fee may help Sprint draw customers from AT&T and Verizon Wireless, which already carry the phone, they said.

Both Verizon and AT&T switched their previous unlimited data plans to tiered ones, and Sprint is said to be considering the iPhone as a way to win consumers over the nation’s two largest carriers – Sprint has lost money for 15 consecutive quarters, with several analysts claiming that the lack of Apple’s iPhone in its line-up has certainly contributed to the carrier’s loss. A lawsuit filed by Spring against the AT&T / T-Mobile merger earlier this week stated the company had to compete without the iPhone for nearly five years.

For a timeline of iPhone 5 news and speculation, check out our rumor roundup and retrospective.

Translate Tab Puts Google Translate In Your Mac’s Menubar

By Federico Viticci

I use Google Translate quite a bit. Automatic, “machine-made” translations of entire sentences are usually bad and may lead to some funny nonsense, but the service has gotten better over the years and, admittedly, it’s useful to quickly look up synonyms from one language to another, or get the general sense of a blog post about technology and Apple (which I do on a daily basis for articles from Macotakara or MacMagazine). And whilst heading over Google Translate via the browser is pretty effortless these days thanks to application launchers like Alfred and LaunchBar, I’ve been looking for a way to embed the translate UI of Google’s website on my Mac in a way that’s always there but unobtrusive, ready to be used when I need it.

Translate Tab does this at $2.99. It takes Google Translate, and puts it inside a nicely translucent, white Lion-like popover in your Mac menubar, which you can access with a keyboard shortcut (and if you’re geek enough, customize with automatic clipboard entry through Keyboard Maestro). Tab Translate can be considered a site-specific browser, and I like how it’s been slightly tweaked to fit inside the popover with no horizontal scrollbars, retaining Translate’s functionalities such as alternate translations.

If you use Google Translate a lot and you’re tired of opening a new browser tab every time, you might as well spend $2.99 on Translate Tab on the Mac App Store.

My Two Weeks with Keyboard Maestro

By Federico Viticci

I’ve been intrigued by Keyboard Maestro since I first heard about it on Daring Fireball years ago, but never installed and tried the app because of a somewhat widely shared notion that it’s “too difficult to use”. Recent Keyboard Maestro coverage on Brooks Review, ShawnBlanc.net and MacDrifter took my curiosity to a whole new level, so thanks to the Productive Macs bundle, I pulled the trigger and got a copy of Keyboard Maestro, which was later upgraded to version 5.0 for free with the same license.

There’s no easy way to describe Keyboard Maestro, but I’ll try: Keyboard Maestro is a trusted and powerful assistant for your Mac. When you don’t know how to do something, or how to make an existing menu or functionality faster and easier to use, you can turn to Keyboard Maestro and start building your own way out of options third-party developers or Apple didn’t think about.

Keyboard Maestro empowers you to take existing apps, menus, keyboard shortcuts – anything your Mac can perform – and mix them together to achieve something that fits better your workflow.

Keyboard Maestro isn’t strictly about tweaking. The app’s real power lies in how it puts the focus on discovering and building what’s better for you, and sticking with it. It’s no toy, but it’s fun to use once you get the (easy) hang of it.

Writing a review of Keyboard Maestro it’s like asking someone to “write a review of Apple”. The subject is so broad, the offer so variegate and ever-changing, it makes almost no sense to go into every single feature and over-analyze it with no context. Rather, I’d prefer to provide a more empirical look at this app in that I’ll share some of the tricks and functionalities I’ve come to learn and use in the past weeks.

A simple way to understand Keyboard Maestro is this: you tell the app to do something for you automatically, in the background, whenever you want, and all you have to do to start such sequence is a trigger. The trigger can be a keyboard shortcut, something you typed, a system event – you choose the trigger and there’s plenty of options to look at when deciding which action should initiate a process. Read more

Google Launches “Google Music” Web App Optimized for iOS

By Federico Viticci

Announced with a tweet a few minutes ago, Google has rolled out an iOS-optimized (iOS 4 or later is required) web app for Google Music, the company’s invite-only cloud locker that allows users to upload music to Google’s servers. The web app can display music libraries and play songs from an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad running iOS, with a dark interface that’s also been optimized for the iPad’s larger screen with tabs for Artists, Albums, Songs, Playlists and Genres.

The web app has a search function for large libraries, lacks any upload feature on iOS devices, and because it acts as a standard audio source on iOS from Mobile Safari, it can run in the background and be controlled from the multitasking tray. The app supports swipes to switch between album and artists, and overall it looks like a very slick experiment from the Music Beta design team. The Next Web has the first details and screenshots:

The app looks pretty great and feels much snazzier than your average Google app. Hopefully this is a sign of good design to come. Functionally it is a pure ‘player’, with no ability to upload any music or browse any catalogs of music, much like the rest of the Google Music service at the moment.

If you’ve been invited to Google Music, you can check out the new web app from your iOS device at music.google.com. Google Music Beta was first launched in May with no iPhone-optimized interface.

Google Releases Blogger for iPhone

By Federico Viticci

Earlier today Google announced the release of Blogger for iOS, an iPhone app aimed at Blogger users who have been looking for a way to edit or write new blog posts directly from their mobile devices. The app is free, and available on both iOS and Android. Blogger retains the service’s typical orange schemes; Blogger itself recently went under a major redesign for its entire platform. The app allows you to create a new blog post with tags, pictures and plain text, or edit an existing one or draft that you might want to finish on an iPhone.

You can also open a blog post you’ve been working on from your computer and continue editing it while you’re on-the-go. Your blog posts are automatically synced across devices, so you’ll always have access to the latest version. Pictures are worth a thousand words, and the Blogger app makes it easy to add photos either by choosing from the gallery or taking a new photo right within the app. You can also add labels and location to provide more details about the post.

This first version of Blogger runs on the iPhone and iPod touch – there’s no native iPad client yet. You can download Blogger for iPhone here.

iTunes U: 600 Million Downloads Since Launch, 300 Million Last Year Alone →

Linked By Federico Viticci

iTunes U: 600 Million Downloads Since Launch, 300 Million Last Year Alone

The Loop reports on official iTunes U data provided by Apple today:

According to Apple, iTunes U has had more than 600 million downloads since it first launched in 2007. What’s even more impressive is that they’ve had more than 300 million in the last year alone — a testament to the growing popularity of the service.

Currently, iTunes U boasts more than 1,000 universities with active accounts. Schools contributing to the program range from big to small and include some of the world’s most prestigious institutions like Harvard, MIT, Cambridge, Oxford, University of Melbourne and University of Tokyo.

Apple’s iTunes U service – a collection of learning material that includes research, lectures, and more – may not be as popular as other consumer-oriented iTunes products like TV shows and apps, but it’s undoubtedly one of the company’s finest resources for education. Apple also confirmed 30% of iTunes U traffic comes from iOS devices – I wouldn’t be surprised to know the iPad helped rising mobile traffic since last year. And, 60% of iTunes U users are outside the United States.

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1Password Now On The Mac App Store: 50% Off, Menubar Icon, Lion-only

By Federico Viticci

AgileBits’ 1Password, a fantastic tool to securely store, manage and organize passwords, online accounts, notes and credit cards which we’ve covered several times here on MacStories, is now available on the Mac App Store. The long-awaited release (1Password is one of the most popular third-party Mac apps, and it’s no surprise customers wanted a way to get it from the most popular OS X software marketplace) comes with a 50% sale price (1Password is currently $19.99) and a series of new features implemented in this new 3.9 Mac App Store version.

To get the app on the Mac App Store, AgileBits had to fine tune some aspects of their application, and at the same time update other areas to properly take advantage of the new features introduced in OS X Lion. This means 1Password has full 64-bit support, is Lion-only, and can run in full-screen mode. 1Password has always been that kind of app I want to keep open without looking at it all the time, so full-screen mode in Lion provides the perfect compromise to keep 1Password a swipe away, running in the background in its own space.

Version 3.9, however, doesn’t stop at simple Lion integration: AgileBits went ahead, and implemented application sandboxing before Apple will start requiring for all Mac App Store apps this November. Sandboxing limits what parts of your computer the app can access, and it’s a change Apple is enforcing to make apps more secure, and users feel safer when downloading third-party software. So with the new 1Password, you can either keep the app’s .agilekeychain file (the database with all your passwords and data) in Dropbox as usual, or within the app’s sandbox. If you choose Dropbox sync – which will enable you to sync the app across computers and iOS devices – you have to make sure Dropbox is located in your OS X account’s home folder (it should be if you follow Dropbox default settings). Because of this new architecture, when you’ll delete the app via Lion’s Launchpad its data file backups will be deleted, too, and only one 1Password data file (again, the database) is allowed. Last, the developers have enhanced the app’s security with PBKDF2 Calibration – they have a blog post here so you can read more about it. That’s it for the technical changes. 1Password works better with Lion, it’s more secure thanks to Apple’s new APIs for 10.7, and it already complies to rules that the company will start enforcing in two months.

When it comes to new user features, 1Password 3.9 has a series of welcome additions that should simplify a user’s workflow and make the app more intuitive for Mac App Store newcomers. Whilst 1Password correctly recognized the old .agilekeychain data file I had in my Dropbox, those who haven’t used 1Password before will find a new first-run screen to help them find their way around browser extensions (more here), strong passwords, and automatic save and fill. 1Password’s preferences have been redesigned and simplified, as you can see from the screenshots; several menu items have been removed for simplification as well.

The biggest new feature in this Mac App Store release, from a user’s standpoint, is the new 1Password icon in the Mac’s menubar, which will help you with Folder / Tag Go & Fill access, AutoSubmit, and easily locking/opening 1Password directly from the menubar. The Go & Fill option is especially useful if you don’t want to manually type a URL in your browser, and prefer to let 1Password “take you” to a website, and have it automatically fill the login for you. The new menubar helper works great with the latest Safari on OS X Lion.

I’ve said this many times – 1Password is a must-have application for any Mac user who’s serious about keeping his personal data safe, protected, and always in sync across platforms. The newest update to the app is only $20 on the Mac App Store right now, and customers who purchased 1Password from AgileBits’ website within the previous 30 days can request a full refund if they’d rather buy it through the Mac App Store. Looking forward to a major 4.0 update, 1Password 3.9 is now on the Mac App Store and finely tuned for Lion.