The Winter Festival Of Artisanal Software
I’ve always liked Notesy. When I compared my favorite text editors for iOS last year, I called it the app “for everyone” that was able to meet all the common requirements of a Dropbox-enabled, Markdown-ready text editor for the iPhone and iPad.
Giant Yak Software took over Notesy’s development a few months ago, and today they released version 2.3 of the app.
My thanks to CrashPlan for sponsoring MacStories this week.
–
CrashPlan lets you backup your data to your own computers and hard drives or friends & family with no storage limits. CrashPlan gives you the peace-of-mind that only comes with continuous, minute-to-minute backup. CrashPlan has been a favorite of the Mac community for years because of its “set it and forget it” ease of use and ability to provide continuous, minute-by-minute backup without interfering with normal Mac operations. Using sophisticated byte pattern analysis and data de-duplication to detect file changes, CrashPlan preserves multiple versions of files; if you don’t want to always use your Mac, the files you were just working on minutes ago can be accessed from our phone or tablet using CrashPlan’s free mobile apps.
This week only, MacStories readers can get 33% off CrashPlan by using this special link.
Find out more about CrashPlan here.
Apple aired a new iPad commercial during the 85th Academy Awards. The ad, focused on apps for photographers and video editors and iTunes Store content, also included a brief demonstration of Apple’s Maps showing a 3D animation of the historical Hollywood sign.
The new commercial uses the same style of the ones Apple aired a week ago. There is no narration, just a series of words quickly shown on screen alongside apps available on the App Store. The words that are spoken out loud are “lights”, “camera”, and “action”. The apps shown in the video include: iMovie, Pinterest, Apple’s iTunes Movie Store, MovieSlate, 8mm for iPad, Action Movie FX, and Instant. Movie Clips from Indiana Jones and Back to the Future are also shown in the ad.
You can watch the video below. Read more
Tweetbot for Mac, Tapbots’ Twitter client that I first reviewed in October 2012, has been updated today to version 1.2, which is available on the Mac App Store. Among the notable features of this new version, Tapbots is introducing notifications for specific users, support for inline Flickr and Vine previews, and compliance with the Twitter 1.1 API. Read more
My thanks to Smile for sponsoring MacStories this week with TextExpander.
TextExpander is the best utility to save time while typing. Why type the same thing over and over? Your email address, your phone number, your email signature can all be made into snippets and inserted with just a short abbreviation. You can use TextExpander to correct common typos (using autocorrect snippet groups or adding your own corrections to the snippet library), insert the current date in several formats with just a short abbrevation, and even quickly automate the creation of form letters with multiple choice pop-ups, optional fields, and more.
Furthermore, TextExpander is integrated in over 140 iOS apps including Things, iA Writer and others that I personally use every day, like OmniFocus and Day One. TextExpander comes with Dropbox sync, so your snippets will always be in sync across iOS and OS X.
Find out more about TextExpander here.
Apple has just released two new adverts for the iPad and iPad mini with a strong emphasis on the apps available for the devices. The adverts are different to many past iPad and iPhone ads in that there is no real narration, with just three words said in each.
The first, titled ‘Alive’ features the words; ‘Loud’, ‘Deep’ and ‘Alive’. After each word is said, a number of apps related to the word are demonstrated. For example, after “loud”, music apps are shown, a medical app showing the ear and a fashion app are demonstrated. The second ad, ‘Together’, features the words ‘Wild’, ‘Bright’ and ‘Together’. Both ads are described on Apple’s YouTube page as “With over 300,000 apps, iPad is up for anything you are”.
Both ads are embedded below.
Like many others, I got access to my Twitter archive last night.
The option, launched a few months ago, enables you to download a complete archive of all your tweets and retweets inside a .zip file that contains CSV and JS archives with a nice HTML page you can browse. With over 50,000 tweets since February 15, 2009, my .zip file weighed at around 9 MB. Seeing tweets from four years ago has a strange effect in that it shows the ephemeral nature of 140 character-long status updates in better context. In other words, I used to tweet “good morning” and “goodnight”; with time, I lost my good Twitter manners.
The Twitter archive was a feature I had been anticipating for quite a while. As you know, I have been a strong proponent of solutions to archive and search your Twitter account – such as Manton Reece’s Tweet Library, Cue (formerly Greplin), and CloudMagic. Prior to the rollout of the Twitter archive, all these solutions allowed you to search your most recent tweets (Cue and CloudMagic) or download the past 3200 (Tweet Library); none of them could, per Twitter’s API limit, access your entire Twitter history.
With a press release published this morning, Apple has announced they have updated the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air lines with new prices and faster processors.
Apple is making the MacBook Pro with Retina display faster and more affordable with updated processors and lower starting prices. The 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display now starts at $1,499 for 128GB of flash, and $1,699 for a new 2.6 GHz processor and 256GB of flash. The 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display now features a faster 2.4 GHz quad-core processor, and the top-of-the-line 15-inch notebook comes with a new 2.7 GHz quad-core processor and 16GB of memory. Apple today also announced that the 13-inch MacBook Air® with 256GB of flash has a new lower price of $1,399.
Thanks to @setteBIT, here’s a quick rundown of the changes: the 13” MacBook Pro with Retina Display is now $200 and $300 cheaper for the 128 GB and 256 GB (with SSD) models, respectively; the CPU has been bumped from 2.5 GHz to 2.6 GHz. The price difference in Euros is €250 and €350. The 13” MacBook Air with 256 GB SSD is now $100 cheaper (€150).
The 13” MacBook Pro with Retina Display was announced on October 23, 2012 – 113 days ago; the 15” MacBook Pro with Retina display was announced at WWDC ‘12 – 247 days ago.
In the first fiscal quarter of 2013, Apple sold 4.1 million Macs. It’s unclear whether Apple might have been able to lower the prices of Retina MacBook Pro (while offering faster performances) due to possible reductions of component prices (i.e. high-resolution displays), but the timing is interesting: just a few days ago, Apple and other tech companies (such as Adobe) were summoned to appear before the Federal Australian Parliamentary Committee that has been investigating IT pricing in Australia. In response to the inquiry, Adobe promptly dropped the price of its Creative Cloud service.
My thanks to Orbicule for sponsoring MacStories this week.
–
Undercover is Find My Mac done right. After a very simple installation, Undercover will run in the background, constantly monitoring the location of your Mac. If your Mac gets stolen, in addition to tracking location Undercover will also snap mugshots through the computer’s built-in camera and capture keystrokes.
I personally use Undercover 5 because I like its web-based interface better than Apple’s Find My Mac. If you’re looking for a more powerful Find My Mac, I highly recommend Undercover 5.
Find out more about Undercover here.
