Today Apple seeded a new build of OS X 10.6.7 to developers. Build number is 10J846, while the first version released last week was 10J842. In the release notes of the new build, the updated focus areas:
Mac App Store changes weren’t mentioned in the first developer seed. [9to5 via Mac Developer Center]
The first stories of success in the Mac App Store are starting to come in. First came Evernote, with its impressive Mac adoption rate thanks to the new Store; then Compartments, from a developer who went from 7 sales a day to 1500. Now the Pixelmator developers have posted a new entry on the company’s blog announcing that their graphic editing app has grossed $1 million in less than 20 days into the Mac App Store.
Taking Apple’s 30% away out of the equation, that leaves $700,000 to the Pixelmator team. Or maybe it’s $1 million after Apple’s cut? We don’t know. Either way, it’s an impressive result that we’re sure wasn’t possible back in the days when there was no Mac App Store.
This is a well-deserved milestone for the Pixelmator devs and we’re looking forward to what’s next for the app. The Pixelmator team, for instance, implemented a clever Mac App Store transition policy that forces existing customers to buy the app again, but will give them Pixelmator 2.0 for free once it’s released later this year.
Pixelmator is available at $29.99.
Here’s an interesting new Mac app for you Terminal junkies looking for new shiny this morning. Cathode came out of beta a few weeks ago, and it’s an alternative Terminal app for OS X with lots of “vintage” themes to apply to the regular session window. As the name suggests, Cathode emulates those old TV screens you might have seen (and owned, too) in the 1970s and 1980s – indeed cathodic monitors.
In spite of its vintage look, the app is entirely written in modern OpenGL and Cocoa, with graphic processing done by the Mac’s GPU. The app, in fact, uses a lot of animations to replicate the behavior of old televisions with flickering fonts, interlacing, curvatures and flashes. It really resembles the old monitor your grandparents might still be using today. You can choose between different themes and adjust fonts and colors, enter fullscreen mode and set the curvature of the screen to your liking.
The licensing method is clever as well: you can use the app for free, but the picture quality will slowly degrade until Cathode is relaunched. If you purchase a license ($20), you can customize the interface and avoid picture degradation.
Looks like we have another “this is just wrong” story here. If yesterday’s suicide attempt from a woman who lost her iPhone wasn’t enough, here’s what we have today on the menu: a woman who wanted to become an iPhone smuggler and tried to a) get past airport security with 44 iPhones around her body in b) typical Georgian outfit. Picture the scene. 44 iPhone 4’s below the outfit to get them into Israeli without paying taxes. Must have sounded like a good plan to the woman.
The Ben-Gurion International Airport security staff of course got suspicious over this woman who was walking slowly, asked if there were any problems and the woman replied “she was not feeling well”. Perhaps 44 iPhones are a bit too much for anyone? Anyway, security called a full body scan and surprise, they found a Cupertino treasure in there.
You know what’s missing from this curious story? A white iPhone. Just because. [Engadget via Haaretz]
Rumors about News Corp.’s The Daily, an upcoming digital newspaper for the iPad, have been floating around for months now. The publication, result of months of hard work from a team of 100+ journalists in New York, is expected to introduce a new automatic subscription system through iTunes and to be heavily based on images and videos. Until now, though, these have been more or less rumors.
At the DLD Conference in Munich, Germany, James Murdoch, son of Ruper Murdoch and Chairman & CEO of News Corp, gave some additional details about The Daily. Weekly subscriptions at $0.99 have been confirmed by Murdoch himself, and the app should finally launch in the “next few weeks”. Read more
A report by Bloomberg today suggests that Apple’s next iPhone and iPad are likely to feature NFC (Near-Field Communication) technology that would allow various forms of data transfer between the iPhone and another NFC capable device. Richard Doherty of consulting firm Envisioneering Group explains that the technology would be primarily used for making purchases at physical stores, expanding Apple’s reach in commerce beyond just iTunes.
Near-Field Communication is a technology that can send and receive data between two such devices with NFC that are up to 4 inches apart. The technology has gained popularity in recent times, most notably being included in Google’s Nexus S.
By including NFC into the iPhone and iPad, Apple could use it’s existing iTunes accounts and give consumers an alternative to more traditional financial services by Visa, MasterCard and PayPal. Richard Crone, an industry advisor suggests that “It would make a lot of sense for Apple to include NFC functionality in its products.”
So with Microsoft previous attempts at a tablet/slate/UMPC/pad not going so well and with Ballmer unhappy about how successful the iPad has been, Microsoft has started a new strategy. This strategy involves putting together a marketing campaign targeting the enterprise market and claiming the iPad is not secure or flexible enough to be deployed in the enterprise.
Undoubtedly this is an attempt to try and stop or slow the iPad penetration into the enterprise after it was revealed 80% of the Fortune 500 companies were deploying iPads. The 10 page PowerPoint presentation also encourages Microsoft’s partners to position Windows 7 tablets against the iPad.
Apple’s default boot screen is an admittedly bland and very grey affair, luckily BootXChanger (which has had more than three years of development) offers a simple drag and drop way to add your own image and change the background color.
It’s recommended that the image you use to replace the Apple logo should be 90x90 pixels, any larger and depending on your Mac it may be resized or not show up at all. Images can have transparency and this is a good way to ensure the image matches the background. As a nice extra touch, BootXChanger comes with some sample images such as the old rainbow Apple logo and the Finder logo.
It appears that Apple has started approving applications that use features that will officially be introduced in the upcoming iOS 4.3 software update. StreamToMe, an app we previously reviewed here, has been updated a few hours ago with support for AirPlay video streaming, a functionality that’s not available on the current iOS 4.2. Being the feature exclusive to iOS 4.3, you won’t be able to try it unless you’re a developer. An Apple TV running the latest pre-release software is also required.
Does this mean iOS 4.3 is just around the corner? Beta 2 was shipped last week and we’ll likely see Beta 3 this Wednesday. Apple usually goes into 4-5 betas and a GM seed before public release, so we speculate we might see the final version of iOS 4.3 in late February. But then again, issues may come up in iOS betas at any time.
