Instadesk: The First Instagram Client for Mac

Thanks to Instagram’s huge success and the release of an API that allows third-party developers to plug into the service to fetch images, user information and much more, in the past weeks we’ve seen the quick rise of dedicated Instagram clients for iOS that don’t focus on shooting and uploading new images (the API doesn’t allow that, yet) but instead turn Instagram’s social aspect into a central part of the experience. Apps like Instagallery for iPad or the popular Flipboard make great use of Instagram’s API and third-party tools by letting you browse popular photos and read comments directly from the tablet’s larger screen; they also let you like and comment on pictures, see your own photos and profile or follow other people. Photo taking capabilities aside, these apps are proving that there’s a whole world of social interactions and media behind “a simple iPhone app” that deserves to be studied and implemented through native software for iPhones and iPad. Not to mention other clever experiments with the Instagram API we have covered on MacStories, such as printed photos and web apps.

But what about the Mac? When you follow a link to an Instagram picture from, say, your Twitter client of choice, the photo will open into the web browser. Instagram’s website lets you see the photo at higher resolution and check out the author’s details, but there’s no “social backend” to browse photos and people just yet. Instadesk, a new app available in the Mac App Store, wants to bring Instagram’s full experience to the desktop. The app has a clean and nice design with thumbnail previews and beautiful icons in the top toolbar; it enables you to create local “albums” to save photos for later; it lets you share photos from you or others through a variety of social networks supported by Instagram.

Instadesk is a full-featured Instagram client built specifically for the Mac. Once you’ve authorized the app with your credentials and granted permission to access your account through the API, Instadesk will place a link to your profile in the sidebar, right below links to the feed, most popular photos and tags, and status updates. In the profile tab you can check out all your photos, people you follow and your followers. As you click on a thumbnail in Instadesk, the photo is automatically brought in the foreground with a slick animation and a new screen that shows the author on the right (with buttons to follow / unfollow) as well as comments and likes,  and a box to leave a new comment yourself. You can like a photo or open it in the web browser, download it locally on your computer or hit the Share button to share the instagr.am link with your Facebook friends, Twitter followers and email contacts.

The popular section offers a selection of the most viewed photos and tags, whilst the Feed displays items posted by you and the people you follow. Instadesk also comes with a slideshow functionality and a “find user” option to manually search for a person on Instagram.

Instadesk provides a nice way to browse Instagram from your Mac. At $1.99 in the Mac App Store, it’s not a bad deal if you’re a loyal (and addicted) Instagram user. More screenshots below. Read more

Angry Birds Rio: 10 Million Downloads In 10 Days→

Angry Birds Rio: 10 Million Downloads In 10 Days

Perhaps Rovio’s success with the Angry Birds franchise doesn’t surprise anymore as much as it did in 2010, but we still think the numbers these games for iOS and Android are generating are impressive. The latest game of the series, Rio, is based on a collaboration with Twentieth Century Fox to merge the gameplay of Angry Birds with the world of Rio. With a tweet, Rovio said that Angry Birds Rio hit “10 in 10” – suggesting 10 million downloads were achieved in 10 days since the release of the app for iOS and Android devices, both in free and paid editions.

A bit of investigation by Mobile Entertainment has proved that, as expected, said tweet referred to the number of downloads in the same number of days.

Rovio didn’t provide detailed numbers for iPhone, iPad and Android sales, nor did they specify whether the free version was downloaded more than the paid one. Still, 10 million downloads in 10 days is impressive. Now about that fake movie trailer…

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iPhone Has 25% Market Share In The US, Verizon iPhone “Most Acquired Handset” in February

Data released yesterday by market research firm comScore for the November 2010 - February 2011 period details smartphone market share numbers in the United States and provides additional insight into platform vendors’ stats and performances. First off, the study “study surveyed more than 30,000 U.S. mobile subscribers” to find Samsung the top cellphone manufacturer with a 24.8% market share; comScore also claims for the three month period detailed by their study 234 million Americans “ages 13 and older used mobile devices”. As far as OEM market share goes, Apple ranked 5th behind Samsung, LG, Motorola and RIM with a 7.5% share in February, up 0.9% from November 2010. As comScore notes Apple saw the “strongest gain” thanks to the release of the Verizon iPhone 4, which was the “most acquired handset in the month of February” in the United States.

The situation is different from the smartphone OS point of view, with Google’s Android operating system seeing the strongest growth:

69.5 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the three months ending in February 2011, up 13 percent from the preceding three-month period. Google Android grew 7.0 percentage points since November, strengthening its #1 position with 33.0 percent market share.

Data from Nielsen referring to the last months of 2010 indicated Apple’s iOS and Android were on the same level of market share in the United States with approximately 28% and 27%, respectively. Another report from January indicated Android had become the most popular smartphone OS worldwide with a 33% share in Q4 2010. comScore’s new numbers place Apple at 25.2% market share behind RIM with 28.9%. RIM, however, saw a 4.6% decrease from November 2010, whilst Apple had a 0.2% increase – not as significant as Google’s Android but still growth.

It’s also worth considering that, as comScore only tracks iOS’ market share on the iPhone, Apple can’t compete by the numbers with the variety of Android and BlackBerry devices available. It would be interesting to see statistics about iOS and Android total market share on every mobile device (media players, smartphones, tablets) to gain better insight into the US’ market trends and sales.

iPhone 5 To Feature 8-Megapixel Camera from Sony?

9to5mac reports Sony CEO Howard Stringer, in an interview with Walt Mossberg at Carnegie Hall in New York City, said shipments of camera sensors to Apple will be delayed due to Sony’s facility in Sendai that was affected by last month’s earthquake and tsunami. Stringer’s statements come as a surprise considering Sony has never been a supplier for Apple’s camera-enabled mobile devices (iPhone, iPad 2, iPod touch 4th gen) as the company chose to implement Omnivision’s image sensors in the past years. Omnivision’s lens modules are used in the iPhone 4 (5 megapixel sensor), iPod touch and iPad 2.

Stringer just said that their camera image sensor facility in Sendai was affected by the tsunami. Getting image sensors to Apple will be delayed.

MacRumors also points to a transcript of the interview by the Wall Street Journal itself, which seems to confirm Stringer’s hints at image sensors set to be shipped to Apple in the near future:

Early on, he raised the irony of Sony supplying camera components for Apple devices. It “always puzzles me,” he said. “Why would I make Apple the best camera?”

It is unclear what devices he was talking about as Sony isn’t known to supply key camera components, known as image sensors, to Apple; A Sony spokeswoman declined to comment and an Apple spokesperson couldn’t be reached for comment.

Following Stringer’s interview, speculation is running wild on the Internet about whether he was referring to a brand new Apple product still in early production stages, or a new version of the iPhone or iPad. A report from April of last year, however, provides more insight into Stringer’s mention of image sensor for Apple: analyst Ashok Kumar claimed that Apple had signed on with Sony for an 8-megapixel camera lens to be used in the “2011 iPhone” – which would be the iPhone 5 set to be announced sometime between summer and fall. The report from Kumar also correctly indicated that Omnivision would be the supplier of a 5-megapixel sensor for the iPhone that Jobs would announce at WWDC 2010 – indeed, the iPhone 4 with a 5 MP camera module from Omnivision. In the past months, several bloggers also speculated Apple could implement Omnivision’s new 16:9 CMOS image sensor in the iPhone 5, although the reports didn’t provide any additional details. The iPhone 5 is also rumored to feature a bigger screen, the same Apple A5 processor seen in the iPad 2, NFC capabilities and a new aluminum design with internal antenna.

dPad Is A Lightweight iPad HTML Editor for Bloggers

I haven’t written many blog entries from my iPad, and the main reason is that inserting links and rich content like images and video embeds can be really, really annoying on the tablet. No HTML editor for the iPad nailed it when it comes to offering an interface and a set of tools that allow bloggers to rely on the device as their main blogging machine; and especially if you write for blogs with several articles every day and you need to keep up at a fast pace, wasting time trying iPad apps is impossible. But I believe also those folks that post status updates and journal entries on their personal blogs must have noticed the iPad is far from being an ideal mobile blogging device, and the lack of dedicated apps is worrying. Sure, there are plenty of iOS text editors out there, even with advanced HTML and Markdown formatting capabilities; for bloggers like me, though, that is not enough. Either with WordPress, Movable Type, Drupal or a custom CMS you might be using on your blog, there are usually a lot of writing and management options to consider that most apps don’t support. The official WordPress app doesn’t even accept custom fields and many, many other things that millions of bloggers rely on every day. The situation is almost unacceptable, and I really don’t understand why – with more than 15 million iPads out there – someone hasn’t set out to create the ultimate iOS blogging app. I really don’t. Yet we keep hoping. Read more

10 more useful iPhone tips & tricks→

10 more useful iPhone tips & tricks

5. Screen zooming… To enables this gem, go to your Settings app and tap General. Then tap Accessibility and then tap Zoom. Flip the switch to on and then you can three-finger-double-tap your way to screen magnification bliss whenever your heart desires.

We’re supposed to be iOS geniuses here at MacStories, but a few of these tips & tricks I wasn’t aware of. Mainly some of the obscure ones such as the one above I didn’t know about, and the two finger tap to zoom out in Maps is just awesome. John Casasanta over at tap tap tap has put together a really beautiful and well written blog post about becoming a pro at using your iPhone or iPod touch, and I recommend that seasoned pros and beginners (maybe new Verizon iPhone owners) alike stop by and check it out - I’ve tucked this away for quick reference in Yojimbo myself.

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OS X 10.6.7 Introduces OpenType Text Bug (You’re Not Alone)

If you find yourself scratching your head over jumbled text in (commonly) PDF files after the 10.6.7 update, it’s an issue that’s cropped up and found its way on Apple’s Discussion boards according to the folks over at Macworld. The text bug occurs with OpenType Postscript fonts, which aren’t included by default with your new Mac but can be later added with the installation of third party software (Adobe is noted). The problem seems to only occur in apps utilizing OS X’s rendering engine outside of the Preview application, displaying jumbled text that’s impossible to read. Upon printing, you may encounter an “invalid font error” in rare cases. The bug only crops up if you’re using software such as Adobe Reader, and the PDF you’re reading utilizes the aforementioned fonts. By using Preview or opening documents that use a common font such as Helvetica for example, it’s possible you’ll never see the word scramble in action.

[via Macworld]

Image credit Macworld

iBackupTunes: Copy, Backup & Share Your iOS Music Library

Released yesterday in the App Store, iBackupTunes by drahtwerk is one of the most powerful music apps for iOS I’ve recently installed on my iPhone and iPad. This time, though, I’m not talking about a new iPod replacement app that aims at enhancing music playback with Wikipedia or last.fm integration: instead, iBackupTunes is “powerful” in the way it lets you copy songs and albums off your synchronized iPod library, back them up locally on your device and share them with others, even wirelessly. Whilst the procedure of importing songs might sound a little too complicated at first, iBackupTunes provides a graphical user interface that makes it easy to choose music, listen to it, and back it up. Read more

#MacStoriesDeals - Friday

Happy birthday Apple! 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!

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