Rejoice, The Easter Update To Angry Birds Seasons Is Here!

Remember hearing about that “amazing” Easter update for the Angry Birds Seasons game? Well just a few hours ago that update for Angry Birds Seasons went live (for the iPad version too) with version 1.4.0 and its full of 15 new Easter-themed levels, and of course some more of those golden eggs!

The new Easter-themed levels (jump the break for screenshots and a video) look just like you would expect with the strong prominence of the Spring sun, chocolate eggs and of course Easter bunnies. Intriguingly the update also brings the ability to send some Angry Birds and Easter themed cards to others.

EASTER EGGS FOR ANGRY BIRDS!
Spring is upon us and the time is ripe for some chocolate eggs and easter bunnies! So shed the winter gear and get in – Easter Eggs have never been this delicious! If you think St. Patrick’s Day was a blast, well, you ain’t seen nothing yet! This episode will again prove that Angry Birds is the most generous update giver of them all!

New Features in version 1.4.0:

- 15 LEVELS FULL OF SPRING
- NEW THEME TO FIT THE MOOD
- GOLDEN EGGS A-PLENTY
- LISTEN TO THE TWITTER OF BIRDS TO GET MORE

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Access Recent Apps, Volumes, Servers and Documents From Your OS X Dock

Here’s an interesting tip about the OS X dock I absolutely didn’t know about, which was brought to our attention by OS X Daily. With a simple Terminal command, you can create a new “smart” stack item in your dock that will automatically collect your most recent applications, servers you’ve connected to, documents, volumes and Favorite items. The stack – which needs to be manually enabled – comes in handy if you’re looking for a quick way to re-open items you’ve recently launched – and especially for Servers and Volumes, this means the stack is collecting my most used items, not just the recent ones.

To enable the recents menu, type this in the Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add ‘{ “tile-data” = { “list-type” = 1; }; “tile-type” = “recents-tile”; }’

Then, to relaunch the Dock:

killall Dock

The new stack will automatically be placed in the rightmost section, next to the Trash. To remove it, simply drag it out of the Dock. I like this menu because it’s making me save lots of time that would have been spent into the Finder otherwise (the method above worked just fine for me on Snow Leopard 10.6.7). Check out more screenshots below.

Update: if the Terminal command throws you a syntax error, make sure to copy the plain text from OS X Daily.

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Apple Launches “Apple Support Communities” - Redesigned Discussions Website

Originally announced back in August 2010, Apple took down for maintenance discussions.apple.com – the official discussion board of the company where users could discuss in threads about various Apple products and applications – and replaced it with a brand new, redesigned version called Apple Support Communities. You can check it out now here.

ASC is basically a completely revamped version of Apple Discussions which is tailored towards making it easier to ask questions, receive feedback and answers from fellow iOS and Mac users, and browse threads by category, topic or relevance. As detailed in the tutorial and Etiquette sections, Apple Support Communities features a new design that should simplify the process of asking questions and replying with detailed information about a product. The compose window has been redesigned to have a cleaner look and more formatting options; your personal page can be customized with “widgets to bring you the content you’re interested in, from within or even outside the community”; you can receive email notifications for a specific community as well as subscribe to feeds. Top “participants” of a community (example: iPad community, or the “Using iPad” place – a term that indicates sub-sections) are featured in a new sidebar widget, and the overall design has been improved with a cleaner look, and more navigation options to see most helpful responses without reading an entire thread. You can play around with preferences for thread views and email notifications, upload an avatar and submit the products you own directly from your account’s page. Surprisingly enough, many UI elements of the new website are borrowed from the iPad with popover menus and overlays. You can also increase your “level” and collect “points” by being an active (and helpful) participant in the communities. From the “Your Stuff” tab, you can manage your bookmarks, check on discussions you’re involved with and see announcement posts. There’s indeed lots of stuff to do and tweak in this new website design. For instance, you can attach tags to your posts and “browse by tag” from the new Search page.

In an effort to better connect iOS and Mac users through discussions and answers, Apple Support Communities looks like a good first step towards a full-featured social backend that we hope will gain a native iOS app to quickly browse topics and submit posts in the future. In the meantime, you can visit ASC and create an account here. Read more

New MacBook Airs Shipping with Faster Samsung SSDs?

As reported by Anandtech, Apple has apparently switched to Samsung as the supplier for the solid state drives that ship with the new MacBook Airs (late 2010 models). When the revamped MacBook Air line was unveiled and released last October, Apple relied on Toshiba to power the new machines built around flash storage – more specifically, they ditched classic hard drive enclosures using “blade SSDs”, which basically include only the chips needed by flash storage as detailed by iFixit. Those SSDs (available in 64 GB, 128 GB and 256 GB configurations) were manufactured by Toshiba and carried model number TS128C. It’s not clear when Apple exactly made the switch to Samsung – Anandtech goes on to say they’re not even 100% sure these drives are from Samsung, yet all signs point to that – but several users are reporting recently purchased MacBook Air units come with drives carrying model name SM128C.

The best part? According to initial benchmarks, the Samsung drives are noticeably faster, as you can see in the chart below.

The interesting aspect is that the SM128C models provide quite a nice performance bump in at least one performance metric. Benchmarks posted by users show that the SM128C manages up to 260MB/s read and 210MB/s write speeds. In our tests (and corroborating what users have reported), the TS128C only offers speeds of up to 210MB/s read and 185MB/s write. The SM128C also supports Native Command Queuing (NCQ) while the TS128C does not.

Again, there’s no confirmation Apple has switched to Samsung as the only supplier for MacBook Air SSDs, and this change might as well be a temporary solution adopted by Apple to face shortages from Toshiba. But, then again, there’s the high chance a MacBook Air purchased today features a faster SSD from Samsung. [via 9to5mac]

Official Moleskine App for iOS Now Available

Moleskine, a popular brand of notebooks, diaries and sketchbooks, released its first official app for iPhone and iPad yesterday in the App Store, bringing the look and note-taking capabilities of Moleskine products to iOS devices – also adding features only possible on smartphones and tablets like geo-location and image inserting functionalities.

Once installed, you can choose between different notebook styles like ruled paper, plain, or squared. From the settings, you can set a text size, text color, or edit the cover picture that will appear upon launching the app. Moleskine uses a mix of custom UI elements and standard iOS graphics for displaying popovers and menus; the result is, in my opinion, very elegant and minimalism. Unfortunately, playing around with this first version I noticed there’s no way to sync the iPad app with the iPhone counterpart – your notes are going to stay local on each device.

Notes – or, as Moleskine calls them, “thoughts” – can be organized by category and location. The main screen, called myThoughts, displays two buttons in a bottom toolbar to visualize categories and location points. Once you create a new note, you’ll notice a clipboard icon in the top toolbar that allows you to bring up a custom, animated pop-up menu to rename the note, assign categories / colors / labels, choose paper styles and share via Twitter, Facebook or email. The animation of this menu is really nice, although it caused the app to crash a couple of times. As far as true note-taking capabilities go, you can type text, sketch and insert images. Both text and sketches can have different sizes and colors, whilst images can be zoomed and cropped before being inserted into a document. Text automatically wraps around an image as you move it around, but images (and sketches) will be removed when you share a note via email.

Overall, this app is a good first attempt to bring the Moleskine experience to iPhones and iPads. The lack of syncing might be a deal-breaker for many nowadays, and I believe Dropbox integration could come in handy and should be considered by the developers. The app is free in the App Store, and you can check out a gallery of screenshots below. Read more

Tea: An App for Tea Drinkers

Released two weeks ago in the App Store, Tea for iPhone is a beautiful app that aims at becoming a one-step solution for seasoned drinkers and tea newbies alike that have always been looking for a centralized place to manage their brewing notes, favorite teas, suggestions and timer settings. Tea clearly isn’t an app for everyone: unless you’re really passionate about tea, your collection of leaves and, overall, the knowledge you’ve accumulated over the years, I wouldn’t suggest installing Tea from the App Store. But if you love drinking tea, this is the app to have, and quite possibly one of the most beautiful pieces of software that (together with Tweetbot) have landed on the iPhone recently.

The main screen of the app gives you access to various types of tea you can brew. In the bottom toolbar, you can access the settings to change the order of teas, group by brand and enable social sharing on Twitter and Facebook. A History button in the middle of the tab bar lets you see all the teas you’ve brewed at once, whilst the Scratchpad allows you to write down all your tea-related notes in a single location. When you add a new tea, you can choose Name, Brand, Type and Amount. Types vary from  White and Green to Black and Oolong – you shouldn’t be disappointed by the options offered in Tea. The Amount tab lets you choose between different units like grams, kilograms and ounces. Once you’ve picked a tea, the Set Brew screen displays a rotating indicator that enables you to select quantity, number of cups, brewing time, and temperature. Everything is selectable with a standard iOS menu, and the interface design is really polished. Once set, tap “Brew” in the upper right corner to bring up a beautiful timer you can pause or cancel at any time. When the time is up, you can leave a note and a rating – which will be remember by the app for future brews and infusions.

With an impeccable attention to detail and a great feature set, Tea for iPhone is the best app to prepare your teas, collect notes, share your results and manage your inventory. You can find it in the App Store at $1.99 for a limited time.
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Instagram 1.6 Gets A New Filter, Speedier Performance

Instagram is available in the App Store right this second for an update to 1.6, which includes a new filter (Brannan), improved network performance for faster uploads and downloads, and stability and bug fixes related to cameras on iOS 4 enabled devices. Instagram aims to solve both memory and performance issues with subtle network tweaks and camera fixes that are minor, but keep the everyone’s favorite photo utility snappy as you take pictures and share the results with friends. The new Brannan filter offers a new effect to play with in editing your shots, offering yet another faded vintage look (reminds me of Earlybird but lighter) . You can download the newest update from the App Store.

Instapaper Adds Revamped Dictionary, Terminology Integration

An update to Instapaper for iPhone and iPad was released a few minutes ago in the App Store, and it adds a series of new features to the built-in offline dictionary that improve the efficiency of the “define” button during a reading session. First off, the design of the inline dictionary has been revamped to host more definitions, and interlinking between words. Everything’s faster, more compact, yet with more content than before. Thanks to a collaboration with Agile Tortoise, Instapaper’s dictionary can now also forward a definition directly to Terminology, which we’ve reviewed before. Terminology will automatically find the definition for the word you’ve selected, and show a button to go back to Instapaper thanks to the implementation of the the new x-callback-url draft standard.  Handoff should also be supported in version 3.0.2.

You can find Instapaper in the App Store here. Read more

New Xcode 4.1 Build Hints At Lion Developer Preview 3

Alongside an update to the OS X Lion Developer Preview 2, Apple also released a new version of Xcode 4.1 to developers, which reaches “Preview 3” status. The new build contains bug fixes and it’s available now in the Mac Dev Center.

This release requires Mac OS X Lion Developer Preview 2 Update and includes iOS SDK 4.3. Continue to use Xcode 3.2.5 or Xcode 4 on a Snow Leopard partition if you plan to submit Mac or iOS apps to the App Store.

An interesting tidbit from the release notes: Xcode 4.1 Preview 3 has been “updated to support Mac OS X 10.7 Lion preview 3” – which hasn’t been released yet. Mac OS X Lion DP 2 was seeded on March 30th, a few minutes after Apple posted an update for the Developer Preview 1.