Posts in mac

Legendary Transparent Mac SE Doesn’t Last Long On eBay

This Mac SE wasn’t meant for public release, it was a special unit designed for Apple’s employees – and most specifically, designers – so they could look at the actual components while using the machine. A transparent Mac SE coming straight from the late ’80s, sold on eBay for more than $25,000.

The item has been sold pretty quickly (heck, Jobs himself might have bought it feeling the nostalgia), and it comes from an ex-Apple employee who worked at the R&D team back in the day. Whoever bought it will have to boot it off of an 800k floppy, as the hard disk boot isn’t working anymore.

So, new transparent Mac SE owner: congratulations. You own a very rare piece of Apple’s history now. [Gizmodo via eBay]

Dropbox For Mac Hits Version 1.0

Dropbox, one of our favorite sync services here at MacStories, just hit version 1.0 on the desktop. The new build, released for Mac, Windows and Linux, it’s available for download on Dropbox official forums here.

If you’ve been following the development of Dropbox for Mac closely, then you know that this 1.0 build is actually a “remixed” version of the 0.8 that’s been available on the forums for a few months now. Dropbox 1.0 comes with a redesigned preference window that makes it easy to check on your computer’s settings and your account information, but the real new feature is selective sync: located in the Advanced tab in the settings, selective sync allows you to choose which folders already on your Dropbox account you want to sync back to your computer. If you want to keep a folder online but not locally, it will not download or sync to your computer. Very useful for files you just want to keep a backup of, but not an actual local copy.

Dropbox 1.0 is available here. As for what you can do with Dropbox, here’s where to start. Check out the full 1.0 changelog below. Read more

Osfoora Is Coming To The Mac [Screenshots]

Osfoora is an insanely popular Twitter client for iPhone and iPad that has gained thousands of aficionados in the past months. Released on the iPhone last year, Osfoora made its way to the tablet a few months ago with a really nice client that took advantage of the larger screen to offer a landscape “split view”.

Osfoora is now coming to the Mac, according to a screenshot of the “pre-alpha version” posted by the developer on popular design-sharing website Dribbble. We can’t see much from the teaser, but it looks like the desktop client is going to feature a minimal look with a sidebar that – again, basing on this first small screenshot – looks a lot like Tweetie’s one.

With Tweetie 2 on the horizon, Weet for Mac and now Osfoora – I  guess it ain’t really over for Twitter clients on the Mac. We look forward to seeing more about this new iteration of Osfoora.

Update: we’ve got another screenshot from Osfoora’s developer, showing the timeline with photos indicators. Looks nice to us.

Apple Takes Down AirPrint Hacktivator, But It’s Already Back Online

Remember AirPrint Hacktivator? It was a neat little hack thrown together by the folks over at Netputing which, by copying system files from the old developer betas of OS X 10.6.5, could enable AirPrint support for shared printers on the public version of 10.6.5. Admittedly, it wasn’t the most polished and “legal” hack, but it worked. And people liked it. And blogs covered it.

Too bad that when you publish software that re-distributes Apple’s source code, it comes a point where Apple legal makes a call. That’s exactly what happened to Netputing: they got an email from omm.com (one of Apple’s legal representatives) and were forced to remove the old versions of AirPrint Hacktivator, the one that copied old system files back into OS X 10.6.5. Read more

Apple Confirms: No Demos In The Mac App Store

Following last night’s seeding of a new build of Mac OS X 10.6.6, Apple updated its Developer News portal with a few tips for developers to consider before trying to submit their Mac apps for approval. Among these tips (which include file system usage and custom graphical controls), Apple confirmed what many developers feared since the Mac App Store was announced: Apple won’t accept any kind of demo, trial or beta version in the new Store.

Apple is, in fact, suggesting developers to host demos on their own websites, as the Mac App Store only accepts retail versions of apps:

Your website is the best place to provide demos, trial versions, or betas of your software for customers to explore. The apps you submit to be reviewed for the Mac App Store should be fully functional, retail versions of your apps.

We don’t know yet if Apple will provide a way to better showcase links to developers’ website in the App Store description pages (right now, the iOS App Store features two links buried under an app’s description, right above screenshots) but sure this is bad news for many developers who were hoping Apple would announce the possibility to release demo versions in the Mac App Store.

The Mac App Store opening isn’t too far away now, so we’ll know more about the whole process in the upcoming weeks.

New OS X 10.6.6 Build Seeded To Developers, Public Release Soon?

(image via 9to5mac)

As noted by MacRumors, a few hours ago Apple seeded a new build of Mac OS X 10.6.6 to developers. Build number is 10J537, and it comes 21 days after the public release of OS X 10.6.5. A first build of 10.6.6 was seeded before the actual release of 10.6.5.

The new build is apparently listed as GM (“golden master”) for the developers having access to it through the Mac App Store development program. Other registered Mac developers, as also reported by MacRumors, don’t see the build being listed as GM. Listing an OS update as golden master makes us think that Apple might be willing to release it soon, although it is quite curious that some developers haven’t been notified of the change.

Apple is set to open the Mac App Store in late January 2011, and we’re hearing there’s a deadline going on now for Mac developers to submit their apps for approval before the grand opening. This build of 10.6.6 provides “developer support for fetching and renewing App Store receipts” and Apple has explicitly asked developers to test fixes in Dock, Bonjour, Spotlight, OpenGL and Printing. Does that “printing” sound a lot like “support for shared printers in AirPrint” to you as much as it does to us?

Could Apple release OS X 10.6.6 and catch the popular two birds with one stone by delivering AirPrint fixes and Mac App Store in the same OS update? We sure hope so. After all, Jobs promised more on AirPrint is coming. Plus, the clock’s ticking on the Mac App Store.

What’s for sure is, exciting times are ahead for Mac users.

Weet for Mac Beta Now Available, Looks Beautiful

Weet, a popular Twitter client for iPhone released a few months ago (my review here), is now available for Mac users as “beta”. You can download the first version here.

From what we have seen so far, Weet for Mac looks like an extremely polished and elegant app to access your Twitter timeline. It seems like the developers did a great job in implementing lots of features, too. The app presents a tabbed interface at the top to let you switch between your timeline, mentions, direct messages, lists and search. The search tab contains your saved searches and trending topics. In the Lists tab, you can subscribe to a new list or check on your existing ones.

Weet’s interface is very clean and resembles the iPhone counterpart, great pixels by designer Marcelo Marfil are all over the place. After 5 minutes of usage, I can say I like the subtle tones of the “message bubbles” in the timeline, but I’m not sure about the huge scrollbar you can see in the screenshots. The app comes with multi-account support and lots of other stuff to tweak in the preferences. It’s also pretty fast at fetching tweets, although there’s no visual notification of refresh. Weet for Mac also features a Mute feature and keyword block functionalities.

Look for a detailed review here on MacStories tomorrow.

More screenshots below. Read more

FlickrExport 4.0 for iPhoto and Aperture Released

FlickExport by Connected Flow is a popular plugin for Apple’s iPhoto and Aperture which allows users to upload photos to online photo sharing service Flickr without having to leave the app. Today Connected Flow announced the release of a major update to FlickrExport, which reaches version 4.0 and, among a number of overall performance improvements and a simplified user interface, adds several new functionalities to an already powerful and full-featured package.

FlickrExport for iPhoto adds the possibility to upload videos, while both the iPhoto and Aperture versions got support for multiple Flickr accounts. All you have to do to add a new account is open FlickrExport’s window (which will sit on top of iPhoto or Aperture) and log in with your Flickr credentials. Switching between accounts is as easy as selecting one in a dropdown menu. Both versions are now also capable of uploading photos to multiple photosets, a much requested feature in version 3.x. Last, FlickrExport for iPhoto finally lets you edit a photo’s license once the photo is uploaded. Read more

So, Uhm, Soon You’ll Be Able To Use AirPrint With 6 More Printers

We thought AirPrint would make us print again, thanks to the power of iOS 4.2 and printers shared through OS X or Windows. It turns out achieving stable driverless printing ain’t that easy even for Apple, and the engineers at Cupertino were forced to remove support for AirPrint on OS X 10.6.5. We’ve already heard this story.

Steve Jobs promises more is coming soon and a few alternative solutions to print via OS X have surfaced, but as it stands now AirPrint officially works only with 7 HP printers out of the box. Read more