If you didn’t already know, we’ve set up a new twitter account for Deals, it’s @MacStoriesDeals. We’ll tweet the daily deals there as well as exclusive weekend deals too. Help spread the word! Here are today’s deals on iOS, Mac, and Mac App Store apps that are on sale for a limited time, so get ‘em while they’re hot!
#MacStoriesDeals - Friday
Cydia Tweak Activates Multitasking Gestures On iPhone
With iOS 4.3, Apple introduced the possibility for developers to activate “multitasking gestures”, a set of multitouch-based four and five-finger gestures that allow you to quickly switch between apps, go back to the homescreen, or invoke the multitasking tray. The gestures didn’t make it into the public version of iOS 4.3 (they were meant for dev test-only since the beginning), but they still can be enabled with a copy of Xcode, also sold in the Mac App Store at $4.99. Personally, I love multitasking gestures on my iPad and I use them all the time. Gestures are the future, and on the iPad they help me do things faster, in a much more intuitive process.
A new Cydia tweak called MT Gestures allows iPhone 4 and iPod touch 4g owners to turn on the multitasking gestures – with the same preference panel seen on the iPad. These settings have been there all the time, but they need to be manually enabled with an hack. This is exactly what MT Gestures does, for free. It’s available in ModMyi’s repository.
We don’t think, however, multitasking gestures are that great on the iPhone. If you want to be reminded why, check out the video below. [via Redmond Pie] Read more
What’s Going On With Apple and Best Buy?
An article published by CrunchGear last night suggested Apple “blacklisted” Best Buy over a misunderstanding between the company and the retailer which, allegedly, had been holding off on selling iPad 2 units they had in stock. Apple didn’t like the strategy, and stopped sending new iPad 2 shipments to Best Buy altogether. CrunchGear also reported it was unclear why Best Buy would keep iPads in stock without selling them (telling customers iPads weren’t available at all), with this information coming from “a reader who works at Best Buy.” The report also went on to claim that – according to the tipster – Tim Cook was involved in negotiations with Best Buy, and the situation was pretty bad for the American retailer.
As it usually happens with rumors involving Apple, the report got picked up by several blogs last night. But since CrunchGear posted the tip they received from a Best Buy employee, it all got more interesting. CrunchGear updated their original report with a purported email from Tim Cook sent to the tipster. Read more
Apple Design Award Winner Star Walk Brings Augmented Reality to iPad 2
We’re huge fans of Vito Technologies’ Star Walk products here at MacStories: winner of an Apple Design Award in June 2010 and released on the Mac under the “Solar Walk” brand a few months ago, Star Walk is an incredible product that enables you to explore the universe (stars, constellations, planets, satellites) with swipes and taps thanks to iOS multitouch integration.
If you own a copy of Star Walk for the iPad and you recently bought an iPad 2, a brand new update is awaiting in the App Store. Released 2 days ago, Star Walk 5.2 (also available on the iPhone, the app is not universal) celebrates the 50th anniversary of the first human spaceflight (completed by Yuri Gagarin in his Vostok spacecraft on April 12, 1961) by adding several features like full Augmented Reality support. Similarly to how the SkyView app we reviewed in March allowed you to point your device to the sky and see the position of stars and constellations in real-time, Star Walk now lets you do the same and it works really well on the iPad 2. Among various bug fixes and enhancements to the control buttons, Star Walk 5.2 also includes a calendar of celestial events to plan your stargazing sessions within the app, and the possibility to search through all categories at once. We feel the Augmented Reality introduction is, however, the biggest and most important addition in this update, and you should consider giving a try to the app if you’ve heard of Star Walk in the past, and you just got an iPad 2. Exploring the universe is way more comfortable and elegant on the tablet’s large screen.
Star Walk for iPad is available at $4.99 in the App Store. The iPhone version is available at $0.99 here.
Apple Releases Boot Camp Update for MacBook Pro 2011 Owners
Boot Camp, the utility OS X users rely on to natively install Windows on their hard drives, was updated late last night to address several issues with the MacBook Pro 2011 models released in February. The update, available here, fixes some issues with unexpected shutdowns and Japanese / Korean keyboards, and it’s highly recommended for owners of the new MacBook Pros.
For more information about Boot Camp, visit Apple’s dedicated webpage.
Plex Releases Major 1.1 Update: The King Of iOS Media Players
If you’re serious about your media library, you’ve probably heard of Plex: dubbed as the “solution for local and online media”, Plex is a fantastic multi-platform media center that runs on Macs and Windows PCs and has great iOS and Android clients. Once installed on your desktop machine (which becomes a “server”) Plex can fetch music, movies and TV shows stored on your computer or anywhere else on an external hard drive, organize them properly into categories by adding the correct metadata, and handle streaming to the clients (such as the iPhone or iPad apps) with live conversion of unsupported video formats. All your media can also be played locally on a computer without the need of a mobile client thanks to the desktop Plex app, which is highly customizable: you can add your own themes, install plugins (like Spotify) and connect to online content providers such as the CNN, Vimeo, Cnet TV, Youtube, Apple Movie Trailers and many others. If that’s not enough for you, Plex can also enable you to connect to your media library remotely via WiFi or 3G with a global hostname, through the iOS apps. Read more
iBooks Can Now Open EPUB Files Directly→
iBooks Can Now Open EPUB Files Directly
Adam Engst at TidBITS details an important change in how iBooks handles .EPUB files opened directly on iOS:
The practical upshot of this fix is that you can now transfer EPUB files into iBooks far more easily than before, when the only way was to drop them into iTunes and do a USB sync. For individual users, that means you can send yourself an EPUB via email and transfer the attachment to iBooks, and you can also copy EPUB files into Dropbox and use the iOS Dropbox app to send them to iBooks.
From our perspective as a publisher, even more important is that you can now tap a link to a .epub file in Safari and use the Open In interface to open the file in iBooks.
Basically, forwarding books bought / downloaded in Mobile Safari to iBooks got a lot easier thanks to the “Open In…” menu. Project Gutenberg books work great with this method.
PhotoSync 1.1 Lets You Upload to Dropbox, AirPlay Videos
PhotoSync is a universal iOS application I reviewed a couple of months ago which allows you to share photos and videos shot on an iOS device in a completely new way: thanks to its powerful feature set, PhotoSync can send media from iOS to iOS, and from iOS to a Windows PC or Mac. Unlike several other iOS apps that usually launch a WebDAV server locally to share photos with a computer, or only enable you to send files over to another machine through a standalone utility running on the desktop, PhotoSync can do an actual iOS-to-iOS communication as well as standard desktop sharing. It requires a companion app if you want to send items to your computer, but configuration is painless if you just want to share photos and videos between iPhones and iPads using WiFi or Bluetooth.
The latest update to PhotoSync, released a few hours ago in the App Store, adds the possibility of uploading files to Dropbox or FTP servers directly from the app – a highly requested feature I’m sure will come in handy for those large photo collections that need to go into Dropbox. Uploads in original size (and even RAW) are also supported. Multiple files at once can now be uploaded from the app’s web interface, and videos can be streamed to an Apple TV thanks to AirPlay integration (iOS 4.3 is required).
PhotoSync 1.1 is available at $1.99 in the App Store. Full changelog below. Read more
Hamachi: A Powerful, Free Alternative to Apple’s Back to My Mac
I love iTunes Home Sharing. Introduced almost two years ago with iTunes 9, Home Sharing allows you to share your music and movies, TV shows, podcasts and playlists with friends and family on a local network. With an active Internet connection and an Apple ID configured with the iTunes Store, you’ll be able to easily share your entire iTunes library and enable other users to connect to your iTunes installation to stream songs, video files, and so forth. It is a great feature of iTunes, and with the latest iOS 4.3 update for iPhone and iPad it also works exceptionally well with mobile devices: once activated on the desktop, your entire iTunes library will be sent to the iOS iPod app without the need of syncing or manually copying anything. Just make sure you’re on the same WiFi network, and you’re all set. Read more