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Instapaper 2.3 Available: Faster, OmniFocus Integration - Simply Better

What I consider the best app currently installed on my iPhone and iPad just got a lot better. With the 2.3 update (which is still propagating in iTunes as I’m writing this) developer Marco Arment introduced so many fixes, refinements, optimizations and new features it’s really hard to keep track of them. Instapaper basically got a lot better, both on the iPhone and on the iPad’s larger screen (perfect for reading, if you ask me).

You can now send articles to OmniFocus, QuickReader and all the previous sharing options have been fixed to work properly again. The app now also supports a “ihttp://” URL scheme: every time you find something interesting in Safari you want to send to Instapaper (assuming you can’t get the other options to work, such as the bookmarklet) just add an “i” before the regular URL and tap Go. Instapaper will open. Genius.

On the iPhone, the article list now includes a few lines of text like on the iPad. iPad updates are faster, I can confirm. The iPhone can now toggle the Dark mode from the font panel, and you can set the app to automatically switch to dark mode at night.

Seriously, you gotta take a look at the changelog yourself (embedded below) and go download Instapaper right now if you still haven’t. Highly recommended. Read more

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Readict for iPad Aggregates Twitter and Reader Favorites, But…

I’ve been looking for a very specific type of  app since the iPad came out: something that would allow me to pull content from Twitter and Google Reader favorite items and read it on the iPad. That’s simple. I don’t need tags, categories, offline access or sharing features: if I’ve saved the articles from social networks in the first place, it’s very likely that I won’t send them to Twitter again.

See, I save lots of links both from Reader and Twitter every day: most of them is silly stuff I don’t usually go back to, but a good part of them is made of articles, posts I want to check out later and I’m not sure they need to go into Instapaper. You know what it’s like on Twitter: you put a gold star there, another one here – and you’ve faved 60 tweets on a single day. Same happens on Google Reader.

So like I said, I’m looking for a simple solution to display this content all together so that late in the evening I could sit down with my iPad and enjoy the stuff I saved during the day. This morning I found out about this new iPad app called Readict (free) which promises to aggregate all your favorite items from Twitter and Google Reader. Read more

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Preview: Daisy Disk 2 for Mac

Daisy Disk is a very popular app for Mac that allows you to find files that are eating up space on your Mac’s drive. Many apps do that, and with a little bit of patience and with the help of Smart Folders you can achieve a similar functionality in the Finder itself, too. So what’s special about Daisy Disk? Read more

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AMD Fusion Coming To iMacs and Mac Pros?

Hardware Upgrade reports that AMD showed a couple of slides yesterday during the 2010 Financial Analyst Day which suggest that Apple might be included as a partner for future AMD Fusion releases. In the slides (which you can see below, or jump to the full presentation here) iMacs and Mac Pros are the Apple computers AMD’s slides are referring to.

As Hardware Upgrade also notes, rumors about deeper Apple / AMD collaborations have been floating around for months. Apple, of course, hasn’t confirmed any of them.

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How to Read Comics Like a Pro on the Mac & iPad

We here at the MacStories institute of app reviews have a feeling that your stack of Dōjinshi, Green Latern, and The Walking Dead comics have been dwindling at an alarming pace. Surely you could fulfill all your Hentai Manga needs online, but what fun is downloading RAR files just to peep JPEGs when you could get with the times and scoop some CBZ or CBR files from your favorite digital vendors? And no doubt you’ve been pulling shenanigans like scanning Super Man covers into PDFs for easy reading in iBooks instead of faxing ass photos to your boss in Italy. While there’s nothing like tearing the plastic off Wonder Woman, flipping pages is best left for the DC fanatics who have a thing for glossy covers and tongue inspired paper crinkling. It’s time to give comics a quick swift kick in the rear and bring the treasure trove of paneled heroism into the 21st century. That’s what Danger Duck would have wanted right?

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Shareables for iPhone Makes Sharing Simple

Justin Williams of Second Gear has released some amazing iPhone and iPad apps recently: with the popular Elements Dropbox-based text editor and MarkdownMail he gained lots of users and fans in the App Store.

We at MacStories really like the iOS apps Justin Williams has created in the past months. With the release of Shareables for iPhone today (free in the App Store), Second Gear aims at making sharing on the iPhone simple and fun by enabling you to share cool links with your friends and followers with just a few taps. Read more

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Aweditorium Aims At Revolutionizing Music Discovery On The iPad

It’s great when you wake up and you find an awesome new app waiting for you in the App Store. You see, I’ve been keeping an eye on Aweditorium for a while (months, I believe) since Robert Scoble first tweeted he had tested an early demo. The name was cool, the website featured some bands I didn’t know. I was intrigued, so I started following the developers on Twitter.

Aweditorium is now available in the App Store, and it’s more than I thought it would be – but it’s got a few technical limitations I hope will be addressed in future updates. Aweditorium aims at changing rules and conventions, but it has to deal with some iOS restrictions and a few bugs I’m pretty sure are caused by iOS 4.2 incompatibilities. The main concept, however, is all there: Aweditorium wants to change the way you discover great new music on the iPad.

After two hours using the iPad app I’ve already discovered more new music than in the last two weeks reading NME or Pitchfork. Read more

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Rumor: Apple Acquired Bluetooth Headphones Company Wi-Gear

According to a report from 9to5mac, who cites a reliable source, Apple acquired San Francisco-based company Wi-Gear two months ago for an undisclosed sum. Wi-Gear used to make Bluetooth headphones (called “iMuffs”) specifically meant for iOS devices, they were pioneers in the A2DP stereo audio field for iPhones and iPods – they even released an adapter for older devices that didn’t support the Bluetooth 2.0 standard.

9to5mac notes that Apple didn’t have that much of a success with its previous Bluetooth audio attempts and, for future iOS implementations, decided to acquire Wi-Gear instead of developing everything internally. Read more

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Calendars for iPad: Google Tasks and Calendar Sitting In A Tree

In my ongoing search for the best iOS and OS X calendar setup, I found a great iPhone app called Calvetica which I’m currently using and loving. Calvetica features a great UI design and a simple yet powerful feature set, make sure to read my review if you missed it. I asked for calendar suggestions on Twitter and I received lots of app recommendations, but I’m sticking with Calvetica on the iPhone. No wonder it was also the most recommended app.

On the iPad, though, the situation is much different. The device has been around for a few months, there aren’t as many calendar apps as on the iPhone (whose App Store launched in 2008) and Apple’s own calendar software is simply great – anything like the iPhone counterpart. There’s a huge market for alternative calendar solutions on the tablet, and it looks like developers are starting to understand this. A slew of iPad apps came out in the past weeks, and we’ll review the most notable ones here on MacStories in the next weeks.

Today I’m taking a look at Calendars by Readdle, the same guys behind my beloved PDF Expert, which aims at blending the usual calendar environment with the possibilities offered by another Google product, Google Tasks. Read more

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