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MacStoriesDeals is the best place to find great deals for Mac and iOS apps and games, Apple hardware deals, and some great book and audio specials.
There are thousands of software and hardware deals online. We carefully pick the best ones and collect them in a single post with links to buy or share discounted products. You can find us as @MacStoriesDeals on Twitter, where we tweet the best App Store deals every day.
When I was beta testing Editorial in 2012, I used Glassboard every day to report feedback, send screenshots, and discuss the app’s feature set. Glassboard is a private chat for groups and small businesses that has threaded conversations, attachments, notifications for new messages on mobile devices, and other cool features such as location sharing and possibility to bookmark messages. Aside from the Editorial beta, I used Glassboard to communicate with friends in private boards, send feedback for other betas, and discuss features of MacStories. I was worried about the future of Glassboard when it was put up for sale and relived when Second Gear announced that they acquired it. I’ve always believed in the idea behind Glassboard and I wanted to see it thrive.
Glassboard’s future under Second Gear management begins today with the launch of a long overdue update to the iPhone app, which is ready for iOS 7. The app still isn’t available on the iPad, but this new version provides a solid new foundation to build upon and I’m confident that Second Gear will consider an iPad counterpart.
For those not familiar with Glassboard, the service lets you create discussion boards where you invite people. Nothing is ever shared publicly and everything is kept private with an invite-based system. People can post new messages and add comments to them, which will be grouped in a conversation. What’s unique about Glassboard is that, in the age of social networks that demand constant public activity with opt-out systems for privacy controls, Glassboard is a modern, elegant, and private forum board for groups of friends or teams. My use of Glassboard may have been limited to work-related communication, but I know of several people who rely on it to organize meet-ups or get together at conferences thanks to the service’s location sharing feature.
The new iOS app is simple and nice. There’s a sidebar where you can switch between boards and access your personal Settings; next to each board, you’ll find a gear icon to control your notification preferences and see every member of a board. The All Boards view at the top of the sidebar offers a unified view of all conversations from all boards, but you can of course open a specific board and view messages pertaining to it.
The entire app has been polished for iOS 7 but there are no major feature additions for this relaunch. I like the cleaner look and I’m a fan of the Views at the bottom of the sidebar to view all Photos and Videos and Notifications from all boards at once.
Glassboard is supported by its users. There are no ads; instead, you can pay $24.99/Year to become a Premium user, which will give you access to extras such as export options, up to 1 GB of attachments per board, and more features that Second Gear will roll out in the future. The Premium subscription is available as an In-App Purchase in today’s iOS update, or it can be unlocked on the web.
Even without new feature additions, I’m glad that Glassboard is back on iOS with a refreshed app and plans for the future. As I mentioned above, I’m looking forward to an iPad version and a redesign of the web app, which still carries the original Glassboard design.
Glassboard 3.0 is available on the App Store. I’ve had the chance to ask a few questions about Glassboard to Second Gear’s Justin Williams, and you can find the interview below. Read more
Apple has today aired a new iPad Air commercial called “Your Verse Anthem” focused on the capabilities of the iPad as a device to express the creativity of the human race. The ad features voiceover by Robin Williams taken from the movie Dead Poets Society; in the clip that Apple chose, John Keating (Robin Williams) describes why people read and write poetry and how everyone can contribute a verse to the world. Interestingly, as noted by Linus Edwards, this isn’t the first time Apple has been inspired by Dead Poets Society. Read more
In December, I covered This Week, a lightweight Reminders client for iPhone that displayed todos on a weekly basis, providing a simpler and more intuitive interface than Apple’s Reminders app. Since my post, the developers added three additional views to the app (List, Day, and Month) and, last week, released version 1.2 with iPad support, making This Week Universal.
On the iPad, This Week is a nice alternative to the stock Reminders app: on the left side of the screen, you’ll get a small calendar widget at the top and view filters at the bottom. Depending on the view you choose, time blocks in the calendar will be highlighted with a white selection; by default, All > Month gives you a complete summary of all your due and overdue reminders from all your lists. Tap one of the lists, however, and the app will filter results on the right, dimming unselected lists in the sidebar. You can tap reminders to view details in a popover, or tap & hold them to open the popover in “Information” mode, where you can’t edit and you’re limited to viewing details.
This Week 1.2 is a nice update but the app still has a long way to go to become a full-featured Reminders client. URLs in notes aren’t tappable and there are no settings to control font size; there’s no URL scheme for power users, and the app could use more filter and navigation tools to, say, only show repeating reminders or those with a location attached. Considering the scarcity of Reminders clients for iPad, though, This Week 1.2 is a welcome addition, and $4.99 on the App Store.
In my review of Ecoute 2 for iPhone, I noted how the app lacked a proper queue management system to replicate the Up Next feature of iTunes for Mac:
Ecoute has a “Play next” feature, but, alas, there’s no Up Next-like queue management: adding a song to the queue will put it at the top of the queue, not at the bottom after songs you’ve already queued up. On iTunes for Mac, you can either play a song next or add it to Up Next, but Ecoute can only “play next”. Furthermore, the Play Next button is based on another workaround that’s a byproduct of playback managed by the Music app: Ecoute can’t create a real queue in Music, and therefore every time you’ll add a song to the queue you’ll hear a brief interruption as the currently playing song stops and resumes itself. This is a hack, and it works, but it’s not elegant and the app doesn’t have all the queue-related features of iTunes 11, which is unfortunate.
In an otherwise excellent update that made Ecoute 2 my favorite alternative to Apple’s Music app, the lack of Up Next stood out. Fortunately, developers Louka Desroziers and Julien Sagot were already working on improvements to the queue functionality, which are available today in version 2.1 of Ecoute, released on the App Store.
When playing music in Ecoute, you can now choose between “Play Next” and “Add Up Next” from the tap & hold menu; this works for individual songs as well as entire albums or playlists. The way Ecoute’s queue works mirrors iTunes 11: you can play a song immediately after the currently playing one, or you can stack songs at the bottom of the queue.
Up Next can be accessed by tapping the clock icon in the Now Playing screen (which has been redesigned to show blurred album art in the background, like Apple’s Remote app). Songs can be removed and rearranged in the queue, and you can add more through the “+” button in the top left corner. Right now, Ecoute uses the default Music picker to add songs manually to the queue, but the developers confirmed they are working on their own solution.
There are still some bugs and hacks that Ecoute has to employ to work around Apple’s limitations for iTunes Match and queue management on iOS. Overall, though, Up Next is a solid addition to an app that I already considered superior to Music for navigation and responsiveness of the interface. Ecoute is $2.99 on the App Store.
Back in 2006 and 2007, there was an initiative called MacSanta that, through a holiday sale, allowed users to buy great Mac apps at discounted prices. Today, App Santa has launched, and while the project isn’t affiliated to the old MacSanta, the core idea is the same: great, award-winning apps on sale for Christmas.
The apps included in App Santa are all for iOS devices and have been discounted up to 60% off the original price; the project is the collaboration of indie developers Tapbots, Q Branch, Contrast, Readdle, TLA Systems, Junecloud, Edovia, Realmac, and Bloom Built. These are all great apps that we’ve reviewed or mentioned in the past on MacStories, so check out the links below for the full discounts available on the App Store.
Note: If you don’t see the discounted price on the App Store yet, keep refreshing – price changes are propagating in iTunes.
Music streaming service Rdio has today released an update to their iOS app that brings a new design for Profile views, a sleep timer, and various UI improvements for iOS 7.
The Rdio app has been regarded as one of the iOS 6 apps that, in hindsight, got the design of iOS 7 right before Apple even unveiled iOS 7, but, after the release of the OS in September, Rdio hasn’t done much to turn what was a forward-looking iOS 6 app into a real iOS 7 app. Today, version 2.5.4 shows an iOS 7 keyboard for search and it brings subtle changes to backgrounds, but otherwise Rdio hasn’t received a major redesign for iOS 7 yet.
Profiles views have been updated, showing avatars in the middle of the screen on a blurred background of the profile picture itself. The new design is available for both your personal profile and other people’s profile views, and it gives you easier access to a person’s “FM” station as well as the song they last played on Rdio.
In this update, Rdio also included a sleep timer feature: from the Settings, you can choose to automatically stop music playback after 15 to 120 minutes, which is a handy addition for people who like to put on some music before bedtime. You can get Rdio 2.5.4 on the App Store.
Released today as a free update for existing customers, Camera+ 5.0 for iPhone brings new editing features in a section called “The Lab”, redesigned icons, and interface updates to captions and filter layering. Read more
