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Friends for iPhone: “All Your Friends, In One Place”

We’ve been keeping an eye on Taptivate’s Friends (nèe Contacts+) for a few months. When I was shown a first preview of the app, I saw a rock-solid app for iPhone capable of aggregating all your contacts from Facebook and Twitter in a single interface. It looks like the guys at Taptivate have been working hard on making the app even better, and basing on the trailer that was posted earlier today it seems like we definitely have to wait for the app to show up in the App Store.

The trailer shows us that the app will be able to pull contacts from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace and your iPhone’s Address Book. You’ll also be able to check on links and photos posted by your friends, call them using a built-in dialpad, send updates to multiple social networks at once.

Check out the video below. We look forward to see if Friends by Taptivate will manage to reinvent our iPhone contacts. We sure hope so.

How to Read Comics Like a Pro on the Mac & iPad

We here at the MacStories institute of app reviews have a feeling that your stack of Dōjinshi, Green Latern, and The Walking Dead comics have been dwindling at an alarming pace. Surely you could fulfill all your Hentai Manga needs online, but what fun is downloading RAR files just to peep JPEGs when you could get with the times and scoop some CBZ or CBR files from your favorite digital vendors? And no doubt you’ve been pulling shenanigans like scanning Super Man covers into PDFs for easy reading in iBooks instead of faxing ass photos to your boss in Italy. While there’s nothing like tearing the plastic off Wonder Woman, flipping pages is best left for the DC fanatics who have a thing for glossy covers and tongue inspired paper crinkling. It’s time to give comics a quick swift kick in the rear and bring the treasure trove of paneled heroism into the 21st century. That’s what Danger Duck would have wanted right?

Read more

The Iconfactory Posts Astronut for iPhone Trailer, We Can’t Wait

Astronut app by The Iconfactory is a game we at MacStories are really looking forward to. What would you expect from the makers of Twitterrific and Ramp Champ? Absolute excellence. And it looks like Astronut will keep up with Iconfactory’s history of great software.

A trailer of Astronut is now online, and it was produced by my good friend Josh Hellferich (@Digeratii). From what we can see, the game looks beautiful and there’ll be a lite edition in the App Store.

We can’t wait.

The Incident for iPad Is Coming To Your TV, With iPhone As A Controller [Update: Video]

We are big fans of The Incident by Big Bucket Software. Developed by Panic’s Neven Mrgan and Matt Comi, The Incident is a simple and addictive 16-bit styled game where you control a man named Frank who has to constantly jump and avoid obstacles falling from the sky. From our review:

As Frank, you’ll be climbing your way above and beyond mountains of just about anything that might fall from the sky. Couches, minivans, and propeller blades attempt to crush you under their fantastic weight; even with a little pushing and shoving, you’ll have quite the challenge in avoiding dangers from above and below.

Now, after a 1.2 update that brought game controlling from the iPhone, The Incident 1.3 will come to a TV near you. That’s right: you’ll be able to play an iOS game on your television (just like we always used to, remember?) using the iPhone as a remote controller. No technical details have been provided by the developers yet, except that all you need to get the thing up and running is “pluggin your iPad into the TV”. I guess it’s a standard VGA cable from Apple, anyway. Read more

MacGraPhoto Bundle: 9 Mac Graphics Apps, $39.99

It looks like bundles of OS X software are back and this time their creators are really focused on providing quality, rather than mere quantity. The MacGraPhoto bundle, launched yesterday, features 9 popular Mac graphics applications worth $444 at the affordable price of $39.99. That’s not a bad deal, is it?

Among the included applications, some real gems I’ve used in the past and reviewed here on MacStories. Sketch by Bohemiam Coding, for example, which we reviewed here. With the bundle you’ll also get Hydra, Posterino, Snapshot, ImageFramer, Layers, AtomicView, Swift Publisher, Sandvox and the bonus app DVD Library.

You can go buy the MacGraphoto bundle here. Again, we think it’s a great deal featuring some really neat apps for OS X.

Apple’s Tablet Computer History→

Apple’s Tablet Computer History

Now that Apple has released the market-leading iPad, with a barrage of other tablet computers and dedicated eReaders flooding the market, it’s worthwhile to look back and see where all of this came from. The focus will be on Apple, and their history with tablet computers.

I didn’t know many of those devices even existed. Great collection.

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Adobe Ideas 1.1 Adds Layers, iOS 4 Support, Goes Universal

A huge update to Adobe Ideas for iPad has been released a few hours ago in the App Store. First off, the app is now Universal for iPhone and iPod Touch, supports the Retina Display and iOS 4 multitasking both on iPhones and iPads. A Universal version of the app was one of the most requested features since the app came out on the tablet, and it’s a great addition to an already popular app.

Then, layers: available as in-app purchase (smart move, Adobe), you can insert up to 10 layers plus a photo layer in each sketch. The user interface for this functionality looks fairly simple and accessible. You can also “redo” actions now. Last, the app is now much faster and optimized for every device.

Adobe Ideas is available for free here. Check out the introductory video below.