This Week's Sponsor:

Inoreader

Boost Productivity and Gain Insights with AI-Powered Intelligence Tools

Launch Center: An Action and Shortcut Hub for your iPhone

Shortly before the Christmas holiday, a few apps got a lot of attention in Apple media after being barred from the App Store for inappropriate use of the Notification Center. These apps, App Switcher, Launch Center, and Quickpick, were submitted with the intent of using the Notification Center as a way to access a list of customized commands (shortcuts) that take advantage of Apple’s and third party URL schemes. App Switcher and Quickpick were pulled, and Launch Center simply didn’t get approval. The three apps removed this feature and are now available on the App Store as standalone applications.

If you jailbreak your iOS devices, these apps probably aren’t going to find their way into your standard toolkit. Paid and free utilities available through Cydia will mirror features available on Android through widgets, the lock screen, and the Notification Center. Purists, however, could find some value in automating common tasks and reducing the time it takes to perform custom actions. Jeff Broderick’s Settings is free, but the icons are fixed and I decided I only want access to a few. There’s also Icon Project, but I have no desire to fiddle with making icons. Of the apps noted above, Launch Center looks polished and simply presents a clean list of actions.

Read more

Concept: Redesigning the Update UI for Mac Apps

With the introduction of the Mac App Store, Mac applications are starting to follow iOS’s updating process which involves visiting the Update tab, optionally reading about what’s changed, and updating your applications from a central hub. We’re accustomed to this on iOS — it makes sense where control over each mobile application has been centralized from the very beginning and where you’re likely to have a greater abundance of small apps to update. The transition from third party software suites to the Mac App Store, however, has caused a bit of a clash between applications and how they update themselves. Coming from a world where Sparkle informs us of updates when we launch applications, we’re accustomed to seeing pop-ups informing us of new updates for our few Mac apps as we need them. I myself prefer this type of notification on the desktop.

There are problems with both methods. Sparkle’s update pop-up forces you to stop what you’re doing to deal with the update notification, and currently the Mac App Store doesn’t notify you of updates unless you manually check the store. With these two problems in mind, Lennart Ziburski designed a concept that freshly implements ideas already familiar to us from apps like Safari and Spotlight on Lion.

Read more

MacStories Apps Of 2011: Reader’s Choice Winners

We’ve had a great response to our search for the best iPhone App, iPad App, Mac App and iOS/Mac Game with votes numbering in the thousands and people really excited about the huge giveaway that we ran alongside the vote. We’ve given away most of the codes but the final winners will be emailed over the next few days, so keep your eyes peeled for that.

We’ve tallied the votes and figured out who you, our readers, have deemed as the best apps and games of iOS and Mac. The winners may be largely what is expected, but it is interesting to see who the runner-ups were - there are a few interesting results there.

Just a quick note to all those who voted; thank you! We didn’t know whether you would embrace this idea or not, and we’re thrilled that so many of you voted and that we got such a large sample of our reader’s opinions on the best apps and games of 2011.

Jump the break to find out who all those winners and runner-ups all are.

Read more

Best Apps Of 2011: Final Chance To Vote & Enter Our Huge Giveaway

UPDATE: Voting is now closed. Winners will be announced tomorrow, Saturday 24th of December.

Last Friday we opened up the poll’s, to hear what you thought was the best iPhone, iPad and Mac App - as well as the best Game for the Mac/iOS from 2011. As part of it, we put together the biggest giveaway we have ever run on MacStories - with around 250 codes to give away.

We’ve had a great response with votes numbering in the thousands and people have loved the huge giveaway. But now we are on the home stretch, as of posting there are just 10 hours left of voting, with the poll closing at 7:00 PM EST (New York time) tonight. Click here to see how long away, exactly, that is.

So if you haven’t yet voted, get a move on and vote right now - you’ll also go in the running for some of the apps we are giving away today — the final day of the giveaway! We’re giving away some truly excellent apps today, in fact, a spectacular bunch of apps:

  • Tweetbot (iPhone)
  • Fantastical (Mac)
  • Reeder (Mac)
  • Pixelmator (Mac)
  • PDF Expert (iPad)
  • Reckless Getaway (iOS)
  • Ecoute (Mac)
  • iA Writer (Mac)
  • AirServer (Mac)
  • Triple-Pack Bundle: Mr. Reader (iPad), iA Writer (iPad), AirServer (Mac)

View more details on how to enter the giveaway
View all the short listed apps

 

Real Racing 2 Now Also Available On The Mac App Store

Firemint’s hit iPhone and iPad game, Real Racing 2, has today launched on the Mac App Store. The game features the same campaign mode, tracks and cars as the iPhone and iPad versions but also allows you to optionally use an iPhone or iPad as a controller.

The most critically-acclaimed iOS racing game comes to the Mac Store! Featuring visually-stunning graphics and state-of-the-art handling, experience the excitement, competition and glory of authentic championship racing with Real Racing 2.

BURN RUBBER ON YOUR MAC!
Take control of the wheel with your iPhone or iPad – or use your Mac to steer your way to first place!

It’s the latest iOS game to be ported over to the Mac and distributed through the Mac App Store, which Firemint itself has previously done with Flight Control. It’s something that wasn’t very common just 12 months ago when the Mac App Store was yet to launch and demonstrates how the ease of use and popularity of the store has led to a surge of casual games being launched on the Mac - where previously it was thought that there was an insufficient audience for it to be practical.

The game weighs in at over 700 MB and costs $12.99 on the Mac App Store (non-US users can purchase it via this link). Jump the break for the full release notes.

Read more

Evernote Releases Skitch for iPad

Skitch is a popular tool for annotating screenshots and images with the ability to quickly share them with others. It was purchased by Evernote back in August of this year and today they are proud to present Skitch for iPad.

Skitch is the amazingly fun and surprisingly powerful way to move your ideas and projects forward using fewer words. With Skitch, annotate and draw on just about anything that you see, whether it’s a new or existing photo, a webpage, screenshot, map, or a blank canvas. Then, share your work with friends, colleagues or save it all to Evernote. It couldn’t be simpler.

Skitch for iPad has a handful of useful features as well as some not so useful features, all of which are housed in the very common “home screen” style interface. I am not personally a fan of apps that lump their main features in to a grid of large square icons. I think it is a lazy approach to user experience on a touch screen device. The fonts, colors and images used for the layout elements makes the entire app feel like a cartoon. After all the featured icons are the thumbnails of the drawings you have added. To remove them you have to tap and hold like you would expect to do on a home screen except the icons don’t jiggle as an indication. Because of this, it feels like an unfinished implementation. When you are finished removing images you can’t just tap in an empty area of the screen like you would with an actual home screen, you have to find the tiny Done button on the bottom corner of the screen. These are certainly not a huge issues, just more like disappointments and it all goes back to the lack of thought that went in to the design of this app.

Read more

Steve Jobs to be Honored by The Recording Academy with a Trustees Award

The Recording Academy has announced its 2012 Special Merit Awards recipients; Steve Jobs, Dave Bartholomew, and Rudy Van Gelder are expected to be formally awarded a Trustees Award on February 11th, 2012, during a special invitation-only ceremony. The Trustees Award is awarded by the Recording Academy’s National Trustees to those who have made significant contributions (other than performances) to the recording industry.

Steve Jobs transformed the music industry when he unveiled the first iPod in 2001. The iTunes Store was unveiled almost two years later in April, 2003, ushering in a world of digital music that could be immediately downloaded and synced to Apple’s portable MP3 players. In 2010, Apple announced that they had surprased 10 billion songs downloaded from the iTunes Store. Steve Jobs was known for his love of Bob Dylan, and Apple recently succeeded on adding The Beatles to iTunes. Steve Jobs was also nominated by NBC News’ Brian Williams to be 2011’s Person of the Year.

“This year’s honorees offer a variety of brilliance, contributions and lasting impressions on our culture,” said Neil Portnow, President/CEO of The Recording Academy. “It is an honor to recognize such a diverse group of individuals whose talents and achievements have had an indelible impact on our industry.”

The Recording Academy also announced recipients of the Lifetime Achievement Award category which includes Allman Brothers Band, Antonio Carlos Jobin, Diana Ross, George Jones, Gil Scott-Heron, Glen Campbell, and the Memphis Horns.

Formally, the 54th annual GRAMMY awards will be televised by CBS at the Staples Center in Los Angeles on February 12th.

[Grammy.com & Mercury News]

 

 

Apple Rolls Out New “Complete My Season” Feature, Improves “Complete My Album”

Over the past 24 hours Apple has introduced “Complete My Season” for iTunes TV shows and has improved its existing “Complete My Album” feature. The “Complete My Season” feature enables users who have purchased some episodes from a TV season to purchase the rest of the season using the “Season Pass” but at a reduced price that takes into account the already purchased episodes. It allows users to easily purchase all the episodes of a TV season with effectively one click and not having to worry about purchasing one of the episodes again, when you already own it.

However it appears as though the feature may be limited to those in the US iTunes Store - I checked on my TV purchases in the Australian Store and was unable to utilise this feature, similarly, it appears not to be enabled in the UK. If you live outside the US and do have access to this new iTunes feature, please let us know in the comments below.

The similar feature for music albums, “Complete My Album” (which has been available for a few years) also received a nice update today. Previously, this feature could only be used in the first 180 days since purchasing a song from an album. Today MacRumors notes that Apple has revised the support document about the feature, noting that there is no longer any reference to the 180 day limit (see below for current statement).

How long do I have to take advantage of Complete My Album?

When you buy individual songs from any qualifying album, you can complete the album at any time, as long as the album is available for sale on the iTunes Store.

[Via MacRumors (1) (2)]