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A supercharged clipboard manager for Apple devices with on-device intelligence, iCloud sync, and text expansion.

Letterbox Now 10.6.5 Compatible

Letterbox is a must-have plugin for Apple Mail which takes advantage of widescreen monitors and lets you display messages in a 3-column widescreen view. Apple Mail doesn’t support this by default.

The plugin is now fully 10.6.5 compatible, all you have to do is head over the official website, download the bundle and double click on it to install. Mail will restart and the plugin will be activated. In Mail’s preferences window you’ll be able to access Letterbox’s options, which allow you to switch back to preview pane at the bottom, enable alternate row colors and show a divider line between rows. Read more

Apple Brings Ping To The iPad

Earlier today, ahead of iOS 4.2 launch, Apple updated the backend of the iTunes app for iPad to include support for Ping. Once you’ve authorized Ping in iTunes 10 on the Mac, you can access your stream through a Ping tab at the bottom of iTunes app. Just like the desktop version, Ping for iPad integrates with Twitter and automatically tweets every time you like or post something on Ping.

You can like and post songs available in the iTunes Store (sadly, there’s no way to integrate Ping with the native iPod app), check on your profile and see your activity. There’s also a concert-specific section that shows local concerts, bands on tour and links to purchase tickets on ticketmaster.

Ping integration in iTunes for iPad suggests iOS 4.2 is really around the corner now, as we reported when Apple released the second GM build of iOS 4.2 for iPad last night.

Check out more screenshots below. [Thanks, Tim] Read more

iPhone 4 Not So Great At Grilling Contest

iOS, Windows Phone 7, Android…each one of them comes with its pros and cons, advantages and shortcomings. It is up to a user’s perspective and needs to find the best platform and device. So from the video you can watch below, it appears that grilling is a priority for this user, who decided to see which device between a T-Mobile G2, HTC Surround and iPhone 4 would survice the terrific grilling contest he set up.

The iPhone 4 doesn’t win. There’s no app for that. The result, however, might surprise you. Check out the video below.

Apple Seeds Xcode 4 Preview 5 To Developers

A few minutes ago Apple released the fifth developer preview of Xcode 4 to developers. It’s available in the Mac and iOS Dev Center. The release comes a month after the fourth developer preview.

This is a pre-release version of Xcode 4, a major new release of Xcode for both Mac and iOS development. This release requires Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, and includes the iOS SDK 4.2 GM seed, to develop apps for Mac, iPhone, and iPad.

As for this very specific build, new features for tabs, editors panes and alerts are introduced:

This preview introduces new features and enhancements for tabs, editor panes, and alerts.  These features are designed to scale the single window interface of Xcode 4 to more effectively use available screen real estate, from the 11” MacBook Air, up to Macs equipped with multiple monitors.  Please experiment with these new features to see how Xcode 4 can speed up your daily development tasks.

OmniFocus for iPad Updated for iOS 4.2 Multitasking

OmniFocus, my GTD app of choice on OS X and iOS, is now compatible with multitasking on the iPad. Although iOS 4.2 isn’t officially out and it looks like it won’t be at least until sometime next week, users running the latest iOS 4.2 GM can enjoy fast app switching, background sync and local notifications in OmniFocus for iPad.

The latest 1.2 update, released a few minutes ago in iTunes, adds a bunch of new features and lots of improvements, too. The changelog is really huge, so I suggest you go check it out below. Notable new features include the possibility to receive local notifications without the need of a sync server, seven new languages, a revamped editing panel and more geolocation functionalities.

Seriously, great update. The one users already on iOS 4.2 have been waiting for. Go get it. Then read why we love OmniFocus. Read more

From Apple’s Newton to Evernote→

From Apple’s Newton to Evernote

The company was founded by Stepan Pachikov, who was kind of this brilliant mad scientist from Russia. He and his team were behind a lot of the pioneering work that went into the Apple Newton, fifteen years ago. The handwriting recognition engine was built by these guys. They had a company called ParaGraph, which Apple licensed.
So the original idea really started in the Newton days.

Evernote for iOS also got a nice update today with iOS 4.2 support, audio note improvements and printing.

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Hide and Disable Ping in iTunes 10.1

iTunes 10.1, launched a few hours ago, introduced two new options to hide Ping from the sidebar and disable it completely using parental controls. First, check out our previous post detailing how you can hide Ping’s dropdown menu using a Terminal hack.

If you want to hide the Ping element from iTunes’ sidebar, open iTunes’ preferences, hit the General tab and deselect Ping in the “Show” section. That will remove it from the sidebar.

Read more

Microsoft Targets Mac’s Lack Of Blu-Ray Support In Latest Windows 7 Ad

I haven’t really ever felt like needing to watch a Blu-Ray movie on my MacBook Pro, but apparently the folks down at Redmond think it’s worth producing an ad focused on it. In order to promote entertainment on Windows 7 machines versus Mac machines through the support of Blu-Ray disks, the video we’re referring to shows a Mac and a PC on flight, watching Avatar on the PC’s screen.

It’s nice and well-realized, overall. Check it out below. Read more

MacStories Weekly Game: Robokill

This week’s featured game is the latest effort by Wandake, Robokill. See, Robokill on the surface may look a lot like other games available in the App Store such as Minigore or Age of Zombies. You control this robot, with a bird’s eye view, and you have to face enemies coming from all sides of the screen. Unlike Minigore, though, Robokill provides a greater attention to details in level design and enemy attack patterns.

For instance, Robokill’s droids are smart, while Minigore’s monsters just care about running against you. Enemies in Robokill shoot, cover, attack, back up. That’s not bad a simple action game for iPad. Plus, once you clear levels in the game your character will evolve and become able to equip new weapons and shields. With more than 450 levels and 13 missions, that’s quite an inventory to build. You can also collect cash and hidden loot to purchase upgrades through a virtual store – which is always welcome. I like this RPG-like side of Robokill, something the aforementioned similar games surely don’t provide. Not like in Robokill. Read more