The Story Behind Hype, An Interactive HTML5 Animation Builder For OS X

Last Friday, a bunch of ex-Apple employees launched Hype, an HTML5 animation builder for OS X. The application aims to let users easily build interactive sites that rival those built with Flash. Already the idea and the implementation has proved successful amongst consumers, with the app currently ranking as the highest grossing app on the Mac App Store. The Startup Foundry met with one of the cofounders, Jonathan Deutsch, and picked his brain on a number of questions surrounding Hype.

Deutsch worked at Apple primarily as the engineering manager for the back-end of Mail.app on OS X but also dabbled in software updates, automation technology, preparing Steve Jobs’ keynotes and various other engineering projects. The other co-founder, Ryan Nielsen was a senior member of the Mac OS X Project management team – central in the development of major OS X releases. Asked why Deutsch would leave a safe job at Apple to build a start-up, he said that he has always wanted to have his own company and wanted to be part of the new HTML5 wave hitting the web.

I was faced with the decision of continuing to work with the great people on my team on a clearly high impact project, living with the “what if” syndrome, or trying to forge my own path.  ”Regret Minimization” is what should win out in life, so it did.

The idea for Hype came after Deutsch returned from a holiday in Europe and wanted to make a website sharing some of the photos he took. Yet coding it with HTML5 would have been a nightmare and he thought there must be a better way. “It stuck with me and eventually I realized this was going to be a great opportunity for a business”.

Deutsch says that Apple’s condemnation of Flash wasn’t really a part of his decision-making, rather it was Apple’s efforts at driving the web forward that played a larger role. He praises WebKit as a great project that whilst initially controversial, has driven innovation in web browsers, particularly on mobile devices that almost exclusively use WebKit.

You can download Hype in the Mac App Store for $29.99.

[Via The Startup Foundry]

MacBook Air SSD upgrade provides big storage, mixed speed results→

MacBook Air SSD upgrade provides big storage, mixed speed result

Once the storage upgrade was installed, we found the added capacity to be a blessing, but our performance results were unexpectedly mixed. The marketing materials for the Mercury Aura Pro Express claim that the drives offer up to 68 percent faster performance than the stock flash storage. In order to see such a vast a difference between the MacBook Air’s flash storage and the Mercury Aura Pro Express, we had to use automated tests that task the MacBook Air in ways that most people wouldn’t use an ultra-portable.

In conclusion, the only reason you’d need to buy a Mercury Aura Pro Express SSD is for additional storage, and not necessarily for the advertised performance benefit. The upshot is that the SSD is ridiculously simple to replace (OWC includes a pentalobe screwdriver with the purchase). While expensive, OWC sells 320 GB and 480 GB capacity drives that cost $1,096.99 and $1,499.99 respectively. This is on top of an already pricey MacBook Air purchase, and unless you really need those extra gigabytes, I don’t know if the cost of entry is justified. Where OWC’s solution might have the advantage, however, is in longevity. The company claims that their SSD solution maintain their write speeds over a prolonged period of time thanks to their wear-leveling technologies. OWC’s Mercury Aura Pro Express SSDs are one of the only upgrades you can pimp your MacBook Air out with, but before you make that purchase, I’d consider reading James Galbraith’s in depth review for all the hard numbers.

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Prototypes Turns Mockups Into Tappable iPhone Demoes

If you’re an iPhone developer, you know how long it takes to turn a mockup realized in Photoshop, Illustrator or Fireworks into a working app that can be tested to see if your idea is actually working on a device’s screen. Whilst an app screen may look good in Photoshop with its fancy graphics and menus you first sketched on your notebook, there’s always the risk that, once running on a real device with an actual multitouch display, your idea will simply suck. Prototypes, a new Mac app released today at $39.99, is a new tool for developers aimed at making the process of converting a mockup into a tappable and shareable application super-simple. Prototypes won’t magically turn your .png’s into Cocoa code, instead it will allow you to display these images on an iPhone or iPod touch screen, and allow users to tap around and get the idea of how an app works.

From Prototypes’ desktop view, developers can import image files and start building a new project. Once all the images are in, Prototypes offers the possibility to create connections and links between objects and pages, add tappable areas and establish dependencies between app menus and sections. What Prototypes basically does is simple: it takes all your app mockups you’ve created in Photoshop, bundles them up in a package, and takes care of including animations, transitions, hotspots, and more to give users the feeling that they’re using a real application while, in fact, they’re just tapping on “smart images” connected by links. It’s genius. Of course you won’t end up using an app on your phone – you’ll simply be running a bookmark saved from the web that’s nothing but a living mockup meant for testing purposes.

Prototypes also offers developers a way to share these mockups with users, their boss, or friends: by hosting a mockup on the free ptyp.es service, devs will be able to easily allow everyone to “install the app” using Mobile Safari and a special PIN code for extra security. You can try one of Prototypes smart mockups by heading over this link with your iPhone, saving the page on your Home screen, and entering 12345678 as PIN.

I think Prototypes is an incredible idea and a great time-saving utility for iOS developers that have been looking for ways to test a mockup without actually writing code. You can get the app here at $39.99.

Evernote Revamps Chrome Extension, Announces Developer Conference

Evernote, the digital capture tool that allows you to save anything from the web and access it from a variety of devices and computers including iPhones and Macs, announced earlier today an updated version of the popular Chrome extension that, following the recent interface changes to the iPhone app, offers a more elegant way to clip content from webpages and have it synchronized with your Evernote account.

The new extension, available here, packs a whole new UI with slick buttons and text entry fields for quick tag and note input, but more importantly adds a new Article Clip feature that, with just one click on the browser’s toolbar, automatically selects the main content of an article to save it as full-text in Evernote. The extension worked perfectly with all the blogs I’ve visited today, and the new extension window makes it easy to edit the title, tags, notes and notebook. If you feel like you don’t want to clip the whole article, but only a portion, the extension is also capable of recognizing a selection and enable you to switch between that and the full article from a dropdown menu. The same menu is also being used to only clip a page’s direct URL, if you prefer to bookmark stuff, rather than archive it as a text document. Read more

QuickCal: A Simple iCal Add-On with Natural Language Input

When I reviewed Fantastical, a new calendar utility by Flexibits that lives in the OS X menubar, I was impressed by the design of the app and the support for natural language input, a feature that allows you to write down your calendar events quickly using nothing but plain English – say you have a meeting tomorrow at your local coffee shop, with Fantastical you don’t need to click on checkboxes and date fields to get your new event set up. You can just write “meeting at coffee shop tomorrow at 5.30 PM”, and Fantastical will know how to handle it. After my Fantastical review, several readers pointed out in the comments and via Twitter that QuickCal, another calendar app that works from the menubar, does more or less the same things of Fantastical, only with a more simple and standard UI and at $0.99 in the Mac App Store, as opposed to Fantastical’s $14.99 introductory price. Because I’m a sucker for new software I love to play with and I care about my readers’ app recommendations, I decided to download QuickCal for Mac and take it for a spin. There’s also an iPhone version available, but after the break I will take a look at QuickCal for Mac – the review of the iPhone version will follow later this week.

Surprisingly, QuickCal works a lot like Fantastical. That is not to say the Fantastical developers “copied” the main features of QuickCal – I’m just surprised I didn’t know about this app before. QuickCal is indeed very similar to Fantastical in how it enables you to write down events using simple, plain English, and it’s got some additional functionalities that integrate the app with iCal, or directly with Google Calendar’s online interface. QuickCal is also fundamentally different from Fantastical in how it lets you start adding a new event, and the design of the event list in the menubar has a simpler look that, unlike Flexibits’ app, doesn’t embed a full monthly calendar, bur rather only shows upcoming events in a vertical list. Both apps have some features in common, but the implementation is ultimately different and exclusive to each one of them. Read more

Apple Promises OS X Update to Delete Mac Defender Malware

[image via]

A new support document surfaced on Apple’s website today reveals the company will release a Mac OS X software update in the next few days (likely a security update) that will automatically find, block and remove the popular Mac Defender malware from infected OS X machines.

A recent phishing scam has targeted Mac users by redirecting them from legitimate websites to fake websites which tell them that their computer is infected with a virus. The user is then offered Mac Defender “anti-virus” software to solve the issue. This “anti-virus” software is malware (i.e. malicious software).  Its ultimate goal is to get the user’s credit card information which may be used for fraudulent purposes. The most common names for this malware are MacDefender, MacProtector and MacSecurity.

In the coming days, Apple will deliver a Mac OS X software update that will automatically find and remove Mac Defender malware and its known variants.  The update will also help protect users by providing an explicit warning if they download this malware.

Whilst an internal AppleCare document leaked last week suggested Apple was telling employees not to remove the Mac Defender malware from users’ computers (also telling the same employees to redirect users to the Mac App Store to find proper antivirus software), it appears the company is taking the necessary steps to make sure Mac Defender won’t spread even further – they’re also offering in the same support document updated today a handy removal guide to manually find and delete the malicious application. Mac Defender began spreading quickly in early May, when hundreds of users reported online they discovered a malware-scanning utility on their computers that they did not want to have installed. It turned out Mac Defender still required a manual installation to be activated, though downloads effectively happened without a user’s consent when visiting certain webpages, often linked on Google Image Search. [via]

Daedalus Touch for iPad

I’ve started to shy away from the bulk of text editors that hit my inbox since few bring something different to the table. There’s only so many ways you can rewrite a text editor, and while I’d love to cover everything the ones I really want to showcase have to offer something truly unique for me to sit down and crank out a review in TextMate. It’s terribly difficult to find something that stands out, but I think those disappointed with the App Store’s current offering may find something of interest here. Daedalus Touch for the iPad is different in part because of how it allows you manipulate documents in a hybrid stack & coverflow style that takes advantage of gestures, and not lists, to organize your ideas. There are no lists or hierarchy of folders, but rather stacks of sheets that contain your text. Of course it has Dropbox and TextExpander support (a must nowadays), which means you don’t have an excuse not to check Daedalus past the break.

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Kickstarter Project: SoundJaw - An iPad Sound Booster

Here’s a simple yet great idea over on Kickstarter for an iPad accessory - the SoundJaw, by Matthew McLachlan. It’s an iPad accessory that redirects sound, giving it a louder and richer tone (all without batteries). It makes an incredible difference according to Matthew. The SoundJaw is very portable, so you can keep in your pocket when not using it. He also says that it makes the biggest difference when you are outside or somewhere with a lot of background noise.

Besides sound quality, he also wanted it to compliment the slimness of the iPad with a slim accessory. The SoundJaw works with the iPad in either landscape or portrait mode, no interference with your hands. It also works with a Smart Cover as well. Matthew even says that a future, more flexible version will also work with an iPhone 4, truly making the SoundJaw a universal accessory.

Promo video after the break. Read more

Apple Updates Logic Pro, Logic Express and Adds GarageBand for iPad Import

Apple updated Logic Express and Logic Pro to version 9.1.4 a few minutes ago, improving overall stability of the apps and fixing issues reported in the previous versions. More importantly, the updates bring compatibility with GarageBand for iPad, allowing users to import GarageBand projects into Logic Express and Logic Pro.

Changelogs below:

Logic Pro 9.1.4

This update improves overall stability and addresses a number of minor issues, including the following:

  • Support for opening projects imported from GarageBand for iPad.

Logic Express 9.1.4

This update improves overall stability and addresses a number of minor issues, including the following:

  • Support for opening projects imported from GarageBand for iPad.

The new versions can be downloaded on Apple’s website, or the Software Update panel. Full list of detailed changes available here (Logic Pro) and here (Logic Express).