This Week's Sponsor:

Copilot Money

The Apple Editor’s Choice Award App for Tracking Your Money. Start Your Free Trial Today

QuickCal 3.0 Gets Redesigned UI and BusyCal Support

Back in May I reviewed QuickCal for Mac, an iCal add-on that, through a very straightforward interface, allowed you to create new events in iCal using “natural language input”. With a combination of keyboard shortcuts and direct iCal integration, QuickCal let you write down events in plain English (example: Lunch with Cody tomorrow at Italian restaurant), and have them automatically formatted as new entries in iCal, which would then sync them to a MobileMe or online service of choice. Alternatively, QuickCal also featured native Google Calendar support, so events didn’t have to go through iCal first to be synced online. With a clean menubar list of upcoming events, support for to-dos and smart reminders, I was quite impressed by QuickCal as an iCal add-on for desktop users.

With the 3.0 update released today, QuickCal adds a completely redesigned UI, a new dynamic dock icon, and a series of improvements throughout the interface. As with the previous version, QuickCal can be invoked by pressing a keyboard shortcut (mine is Control+Shift+Q), which will open a floating panel (think OmniFocus’ quick entry/Alfred/NotifyMe) to start writing down a future event. Focus is immediately placed on the text cursor; the new QuickCal entry box design is nice to look at, and it retains the underlying simplicity of the older versions. As you type, text is automatically formatted to reflect an event’s data points like date, location, and duration. For instance, “Meet with Chris at Apple Store, Viterbo tomorrow from 5 to 6” will result in an event called “Meet with Cris”, with location, date and duration fields automatically filled in. This hasn’t changed from the old QuickCal.

QuickCal 3.0 has a beautiful dock icon with a dynamic date on it (like iCal), although unfortunately, due to Apple’s rules with menubar apps and Lion, you’ll have to manually drag it from Launchpad or the Applications folder onto your dock if you want to see it. Once it’s there, you’ll be able to click on it to open the quick entry panel, and drop text on it as well. If you don’t want to use QuickCal’s own quick entry box, you can make its natural language input work with popular application launchers such as Alfred and LaunchBar.

Other features of QuickCal 2.0 have been maintained and refined in this 3.0 release. The app can still create to-dos in a specific calendar with the “todo” prefix – this works nicely with iCal’s Reminders in Lion. QuickCal also provides a summary of upcoming events and to-dos in the menubar, and you can play around with the app’s preferences to tweak sorting options, days to show, and completed events. You can set a default calendar for new events and to-dos, enable Google Calendar sync in the second tab of the Preferences, and, as with version 2.0, activate automatic conflict resolution, so the app will turn red if you’re creating an event that’s overlapping an existing one.

One of my favorite features of QuickCal 2.0 has been ported over to 3.0, and that’s Smart Reminders. With this functionality, you can set the app to automatically apply certain alarms for events that are a day, week, or month away. This way you’ll always have a reminder available and different depending on the kind of event you’re assigning it to.

QuickCal 3.0 comes with native BusyCal support, but I haven’t been able to test this. I’ve only tested the app with MobileMe and iCloud calendars, and I’ve noticed QuickCal still isn’t completely independent from Apple’s iCal in that it requires iCal to be open to sync events to the cloud. With iCal closed but QuickCal running, new events will be saved in QuickCal, but they’ll only be synced after you launch iCal. Another app with natural language input for events, Fantastical, comes at a higher price on the App Store ($14.99), but it syncs events immediately to the cloud thanks to native CalDAV sync support.

QuickCal 3.0 is a simple and effective companion for iCal, now with a nicer UI. I prefer to call the app an add-on, rather than a mini-calendar replacement, as it requires iCal to be open to sync events to iCloud/MobileMe, and it can’t live on its own unless you’re a Google Calendar user. Natural language input is certainly more reliable than iCal’s in Lion, and the interface is unobtrusive enough to be there to assist you, but get out of the way as you don’t need it. If you’re an iCal user and you’re looking for a quicker way to enter events in plain English, QuickCal is only $2.99 on the App Store (a free 14-day trial is available on QuickCal’s website).
Read more

Support for Quad-Core ARM CPUs Found in Xcode

As reported by Chris Foreman at Ars Technica, code strings related to Marvell’s ARM-based quad-core CPUs have been found in the latest source code of Clang, Apple’s compiler for Xcode. Specifically, Ars Technica notes Clang shows support for Marvell’s Armada XP processor with an “undefined” open source flag, suggesting that only Apple can internally build code targeted towards such CPU.

A developer who works on low-level ARM assembly coding for security products was the first to alert Ars that support had been added for Armada’s Cortex A9-compatible processors in the latest version of Xcode (a claim that we later confirmed first-hand). The source code for a part of Clang that interprets what CPU type is being targeted for optimization includes a definition for an architecture type of “armv7k” and CPU type “pj4b”. PJ4B is a specially optimized CPU design used in Marvell’s quad-core Armada XP embedded processors. Source code available from the LLVM project, including Apple-specific branches, doesn’t contain any reference to the Marvell design.

There are a number of reasons why Apple would like to test support for ARM-based quad-core CPUs. First is low-power consumption, a characteristic of ARM architectures that has allowed Apple to build mobile devices with amazing battery life. Second is performance – just like the dual-core A5 provides faster graphics and performances than the first-gen A4, it wouldn’t be a surprise to know Apple is testing quad-core processors for the next generation of phones and tablets. On the other hand, the MacBook Airs were rumored earlier this year to be considered as the first Mac model to switch to ARM (again, the rumors mentioned battery life, extreme portability, and other often-quoted ARM advantages), although such transition would require developers to update their OS X applications to work with ARM, possibly only on MacBook Airs to start with. Many doubt Apple will switch Macs to ARM in the short term, especially considering Intel’s upcoming Ivi Bridge and Haswell processors (supposed to tackle the battery life and power consumption issues).

It’s interesting to note, however, that Apple is at least testing ARM-based quad-core CPUs internally, and that these references have made it into Clang’s source code.

App Journal, Episode 4: Moom, 4Eyes, Quotes Plus, Easy Timeline

App Journal is a weekly series aimed at showcasing apps we have enjoyed using on our iPhones, iPads, and Macs, but decided not to feature in a standalone, lengthy review here on MacStories. App Journal is a mix of classic reviews, weekly app recommendations, and a diary of our experiences with apps that still deserve a proper mention.

For this week’s App Journal episode, I asked my fellow writers Don, Chris, and Graham to come up with iOS and Mac apps to highlight in our weekly roundup. The result has turned out to be “quite a team effort” and, as I was reminded in our internal chat group, I still needed to come up with a proper introduction for the episode. So there you have it: window utilities, text-based search tools for iOS, timelines and famous quotes – there’s a variety of apps in App Journal Episode 4, and we’re increasingly looking forward to the updates and new apps the release of iOS 5 with iCloud support will bring.

Stay tuned for more App Journal episodes in the next weeks.

Don: Moom

Moom is a utility for moving, resizing, and manipulating application windows. It uses a mixture of pre-defined and user-defined window settings which are accessible by hovering over the green zoom button or through customizable keyboard commands. This is one of those apps that I didn’t think I needed until I gave it a chance. I was happy using a set of AppleScripts to move the front window to pre-defined locations but the problem was it only worked with applications that supported window bounds in AppleScript. This left Twitterrific and Preview out in the cold. Thankfully Moom has no issue working with these applications.

When using Moom there are two types of controls: Mouse and Keyboard. The keyboard controls are undeniably more powerful because of their speed and plethora of alterable configurations. Despite that I still found that the mouse features were treated with equal attention. Hovering over the green zoom button displays a beautiful transparent popover that has five pre-defined and extremely useful shortcuts.

Below the five icons lies a grid that can be used to dynamically draw out where you want the window to be located. The grid must be enabled under Mooms Mouse preferences. There you will find options to adjust the size of the grid as well as an option to enable access to your custom keyboard controls. Another great mouse feature is the ability to move windows across displays with nothing more than a gesture (clicking down on an icon and dragging it towards the second display).

The keyboard functions are also quite interesting. There are basically two types. The first type allows you to define window positions and set them to a keyboard shortcut. It is the reason I bought the program and it did not disappoint. The ability to use a keyboard shortcut to resize a window to fill half the screen or even just a quarter of it depending on the situation is invaluable. The second type is a keyboard mode which is triggered by a hotkey and allows you to move a window around with your arrow keys for more granular on-the-fly positioning.

The real gem of this program is its ability to save window layouts. It basically memorizes the current positions of your windows and it saves a snapshot of them so it can restore those windows to their exact locations by way of a keyboard shortcut or from the mouse-based pop-over menu. If that wasn’t cool enough, they even added AppleScript support so you can call those saved layouts from a script!

Example: I like to keep a Desktop just for social networking applications. Now with Moom I can automate the process of opening all of my social apps and then arranging them instantly by calling the saved layout I created called “Social Networking” from an AppleScript.

The last feature I wanted to mention was its ability to run in what Moom refers to as Faceless mode. This is a mode with no dock icon and no menubar icon. Moom can also be set to show the settings panel on launch which is perfect when calling Moom from a program like Alfred. No icons to stare at and quick access to Moom’s settings from a launch bar, what could be better?

Overall this app has great functionality and a very pleasant interface, all for a conservative price. $4.99 on the Mac App Store. Read more

Western Digital Unveils Next Generation of My Passport Portable Drives

Today Western Digital introduced its newest generation of the popular My Passport portable hard drives for Mac users. They’re more compact and elegant than before with slim, all-metal designs. The My Passport Studio is a great portable solution for photographers, videographers, graphic artists or any creative that needs large amounts of storage data. It offers storage up to 1TB and has multiple connectivity options with two FireWire 800 ports and one USB 2 port. The FireWire port on the device allows for daisy-chaining with other devices such as HD camcorders, as well as Apple’s new Thunderbolt Display (which features Thunderbolt, FireWire, USB, and Ethernet ports).

The My Passport for Mac is another option for students and users that don’t need FireWire ports but still demand up to 1TB of storage.

Whether you are a member of the creative community or simply use your Mac to enjoy digital content on-the-go, users will find the perfect portable storage solution with WD’s My Passport Studio and My Passport for Mac high-capacity portable hard drives,” said Jim Welsh, executive vice president and general manager of WD’s branded products and consumer electronics groups. “We know the value our customers place on their digital content, which is why we set demanding requirements for durability, security, and long-term reliability, with all our drives.

These two drives are available right now via the WD Store (and other retails) and start at $99 for the 500 GB My Passport for Mac, and $129 for the 500GB My Passport Studio.

Financial Times’ Web App “More Popular” Than iOS App

Reuters reports on the Financial Times’ web app’s performances, noting that the HTML5-optimized version of FT.com has now 700,000 users, proving it to be “more popular” than the newspaper’s iOS app. Financial Times made headlines when it couldn’t agree with Apple on iTunes’ subscription rules for publishers – which require companies to give a 30% revenue cut to Apple, and make sharing of subscriber data opt-in. It was previously reported that 50% of iTunes subscribers opted to share their personal information; however, the Financial Times wanted more control over its mobile application, and decided to develop an HTML5 version instead. The iOS app was then pulled from the App Store.

People who are using the app are spending much more time with the content,” he said. “They are consuming about three times as many pages through the app as they are through the desktop in an average visit.”

The FT’s Web-based mobile app accounts for 15 percent of FT.com subscriptions and 20 percent of total FT.com page views from mobile users, Grimshaw said.

After launching the new web app on June 7, the Financial Times reported after three weeks they achieved 200,000 downloads, with 100,000 in the first week alone. In spite of its web app nature, the iOS-optimized FT app recommends users to “add it to their home screens”, requesting access to increased database size for local cache.

Apple has been doing a number of things to address the issues with subscriptions and delivery of content on iOS devices. They first launched iTunes app subscriptions in February, making it easier for users to subscribe to newspapers and magazine with their existing iTunes accounts. Then at WWDC the company announced Newsstand, a new unified virtual shelf on iOS devices for content a user is subscribed to. Adobe has already announced its publishing tools will be updated to take advantage of iOS 5’s Newsstand. The Financial Times is not the only publisher to find an alternative route out of Apple’s App Store, as Amazon released a web-based version of its Kindle reader with direct integration with the Kindle Store.

Both the Financial Times and Amazon couldn’t comply with Apple’s subscription rules, even after Apple slightly modified them to open up to more publishers in June.

“iPhone 4S” Name Shown On OtterBox Case Packaging

According to a series of tweets posted earlier today by @chronic on the @chronicwire Twitter account, accessory maker OtterBox has built over 3 million cases for a rumored upcoming “iPhone 4S” device. As seen in the photos posted online, the packaging of one of such cases depicts the “iPhone 4S” name, as well as what appears to be a redesigned position for the iPhone’s volume buttons, seen on the right of the device. You can check out more photos over at Twitter.

Chronic has been a source of Apple-related “leaks” in the past. For instance, he posted screenshots of several internal iOS 5 settings (high-quality YouTube and FaceTime over 3G), as well as information in the weeks that lead up to Apple’s Back to School promotion in June. Chronic was, however, incorrect in reporting MacBook Air updates weeks before Apple actually shipped the refreshed models.

There’s been a controversy in iPhone-related rumors in the past months as to whether Apple will ship a “completely redesigned” iPhone 5 in October, an iPhone 4-like “iPhone 4S” device (such name was first used by 9to5mac in discussing an A5-powered iPhone 4), or both. According to recent speculation, Apple is set to hold a media event to introduce the next iPhone on October 4th. A number of cases from third-party manufacturers have surfaced in the past months, showing both signs of a redesigned device and something very similar to the iPhone 4 – thus the discrepancy in iPhone 4S-iPhone 5 rumors. You can read more about this in our iPhone rumor roundup and retrospective.

Apple Continues Opening New Stores This Weekend

Apple has been very active the last few months in opening numerous new Apple Stores across the world and this weekend is no exception, with a total of six new stores opening. It starts with the Nanjing East store in China opening tomorrow (Friday, September 23) and then the IFC (Hong Kong), Hornsby (Australia), Centro Sicilia (Italy), New Haven (Connecticut) and Metrotownn (Canada) Apple Stores will open on Saturday.

The Nanjing East store (shown above) is the third Apple has opened in Shanghai, but this one is a little more interesting because in addition to spanning two floors, ifoAppleStore notes that three additional levels will be used as training rooms, meeting rooms and administrative offices. Jump the break for some picture of the store.

Over in Hong Kong, Apple will this Saturday open a store in the IFC Mall (shown below), the first to be located in Hong Kong. ifoApple Store notes that the store will occupy two levels and feature a unique design:

The rear wall of both levels are glass windows looking out towards the city. On the inside, the lower level has two wide stainless steel walls, with a visitor entrance in the middle. The walls include back-lit display cases promoting Apple’s products. The upper level has an all-glass front window visible from the mall hallway.

[Via ifoApple Store [1] [2], Shanghaiist]

Read more