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Bejeweled 3 for iPhone and iPad Coming, Eventually

If you’re a loyal Bejeweled fan (dare we say “addicted”), then you must be happy to know that, eventually, Bejeweled 3 will “probably” come to the iPhone and iPad. Why the “eventually” and “probably”? The game, developed by PopCap Games, was released as a digital download for Windows and Mac last December and, especially on the Mac side of things, several gamers decided to put the download on hold, waiting for a mobile iOS counterpart. Good news is, hope isn’t lost as PopCap Games’ Garth Chouteau hints at the porting in a recent interview with Pocketful of Megabytes, which you can read here.

When asked about an iOS version, Chouteau says:

As mentioned above, we’re traditionally somewhat slow to adapt our games to other platforms after launching them on PC/Mac… Bejeweled 3 for iPhone/iPad is probably something we’ll do…eventually…!

Bejeweled 3 for iOS, if priced correctly and made universal in the App Store, would undoubtedly jump the charts in a matter of a few days. The game is popular, people want to play, PopCap wants as many downloads as possible – sounds like a plan, right? Yes, but we have to wait. Eventually, it will come. Hopefully sooner than later. [via TUAW]

GoodReader for iPad Update: Remote Sync, Better Download Management

GoodReader, one of the most popular file & download managers / PDF reader apps for iPad, was updated two days ago to version 3.3, which adds a number of notable improvements and new features such as synchronization with remote services. GoodReader for iPad, in fact, can now sync files and folders with Dropbox, SugarSync (support for this service was added in this version) and any WebDAV or FTP server. Users can select which files and folders to sync, select different files to be synced with specific services and also set options to resolve sync conflicts such as priority for local files and duplicates.

Download management has been improved as well. SugarSync support aside, you can now lock the in-app web browser with a passcode and download entire folders from a server, not just individual files. Multiple downloads can happen at once, and you can set a download folder other than “My Documents”. On top of that, download of files can now run in the background for “several minutes” – we assume is the usual 10 minutes Apple allows developers to implement for task completion.

GoodReader for iPad is available at $2.99 in the App Store. Check out the full 3.3 changelog below. Read more

iPhone Dominates in Small and Medium Sized Businesses

The iPhone is the most popular smartphone for small and medium sized business employees according to Intermedia, the world’s largest provider of hosted Microsoft Exchange email services. With a user base size of more than 250,000 email users, Intermedia says that 48.5% of email accounts were accessed through an iPhone compared to 25% accessed by a BlackBerry and 12.75% accessed through Android.

BlackBerry’s usage is also dropping and Android is gaining quickly whilst other smartphone’s such as Windows Phone 7 and other non smartphone operating systems represent 13.75%. Intermedia’s chief executive Jonathon McCormick said “staying in sync with the office regardless of time or day has become imperative in most industries.” Also interesting was that iPhone users sent the most emails whilst Android users received the most emails.

[Via AppleInsider]

We Think You’ll <3 Joypad Too: We Have Ten Copies To Give Away

If you’re not already familiar with my love of Joypad, you might want to check out yesterday’s video filled review. It’s really neat (and nerdy) to pull an iPod touch out of your pocket to play a classic on your Mac or PC with a virtual controller, and I think you’ll love this app-controller gone must-have-gizmo too. We’re giving away ten copies of Joypad to several lucky readers this weekend, so if you love blasting pixel pirates or have an iOS toting gamer in your life, you might want to click the tweet button after reading our rules past the break.

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iOS Notifications: No More, No Less

With today’s rumors about Apple considering the purchase of a third-party developer to improve the notification system of iOS, I thought I should explain why, in my opinion, Apple really needs to focus on this, developer buyout or not. The problem: iOS notifications get in the way, interrupt one’s workflow or media consumption and once they’re gone, they’re gone. In my usual setup, these are the apps that send me notifications: Twitter (replies from users I follow, DMs), Messages, Facebook, Calendar, Skype / IM, Appshopper. I think most of these apps are used by several iPhone and iPad owners. Read more

#MacStoriesDeals - Friday

In case you missed the last two days of deals, check them out here and here, the iOS deals are still good! Here’s 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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Apple Launches First Mac App Store Section: “Personal Projects”

It’s Friday, which means Apple has refreshed the iOS and Mac App Store homepages to include new featured apps and fancy graphics to showcase products released this week. With today’s refresh, Apple has also launched the first Mac App Store section: Personal Projects, available here, aggregates apps to make your Mac “a creative hub” for professionals who want to organize their projects and ideas at home. It’s got apps for musicians, designers, photographers and video editors.

With the iOS App Store, Apple inaugurated this weekly trend of launching new sections to collect apps for a specific audience. We think the idea is very cool, but we would like to have a unified way to access all these sections Apple created in the past. Perhaps the Mac App Store will fix this.

Is Apple Buying A Third-Party App To Fix iOS Notifications?

Most iOS users agree that notifications on iPhones, iPod touches and iPads are nothing compared to what Google has implemented in Android, or what HP showed at the webOS event a few days ago. Personally, from what I’ve seen so far, I believe the notification system demoed on the HP TouchPad is the most intriguing one, with messages staying out of the way in the top menubar but still accessible with a single tap that opens a popup menu.

Last year, it was rumored that Apple might improve iOS notifications after hiring Rich Dellinger, creator of the webOS notification system. It didn’t happen with iOS 4 and 4.2 before that, but according to Cult of Mac Apple is now seeking to buy a “smaller” third-party developer to entirely rebuild iOS notifications. According to Cult of Mac, who cites a source that asked to remain anonymous, the smaller company already has an iPhone app in the Store.

Our source, who asked to remain anonymous, didn’t know the identity of the company, except it already has an iPhone app in the App Store.

One candidate is Boxcar, a free app from Appremix that enables push notifications for Twitter, Facebook, and email. Boxcar’s system has been highly praised, especially the new iPad version.

There’s no doubt that Boxcar offers an advanced and easy way to stay on top of updates coming from social networks, email and websites; Boxcar currently has a universal app in the App Store but the service also works on the web. The app of course doesn’t deploy its own notification system on top of iOS, but it aggregates notifications inside a single UI that’s easy to navigate and manage. I can see Apple wanting to build something like this in iOS 5, although they would still need to find a way to get rid (and thus redesign) the annoying alert boxes and unread badges that come with iOS now. Apple might as well ditch popup alerts altogether and take an approach similar to HP, aggregating everything into a central notification app as well.

It will be interesting to see what iOS 5 will bring to the table with notifications and social connections; Boxcar can be a great fit for Apple.

Space Gremlin Is A Simple App To Free Up Space On Your Mac

I stumbled upon Space Gremlin for Mac today when browsing new releases and top paid categories in the Mac App Store. Not as sexy and shiny as Daisy Disk, Space Gremlin can scan any drive connected to your Mac (external, internal Mac HD, network drive through AirPort Extreme station) and provide an easy solution to visualize files that are eating space on your computer.

Space Gremlin doesn’t allow you to delete files and folders in-app like Daisy Disk does with the recent 2.0 update, however it comes with a more standard grid view that reminds me of the popular cleaning tool WinDirStat for Windows. From this grid view (scan took a few seconds on my 120 GB SSD), you can select folders to reveal them in Finder, navigate to deeper levels, zoom back and hide free space / hidden files. What’s cool is that you can also add specific folders (like system ones) to an ignore list because you know they’re there and you can’t delete them. You can access and modify the ignore list at any time from the toolbar, which also happens to have buttons to refresh folders and perform a new scan. I really, really appreciate the fact that, together with my FireWire drive, the app also recognized the USB one attached to my AirPort extreme and shared on my local network. From the “begin a new scan” window, you also have shortcuts to popular Places like the Desktop, Documents and Applications folders.

Space Gremlin doesn’t have the most beautiful interface you’ve ever seen, but gets the job done. I would like to see the possibility to delete files within the app in a future update, and smoother animations when switching between folders in the filesystems. Overall, Space Gremlin is a well-realized utility that you can get at $3.99 in the Mac App Store.