Last week I told you it was the right time to take a step back and reconsider the way we use our mobile devices. The right time to re-think our setups, and free us from the need of installing new apps every day while missing the real point of iOS: the “built-in factor”. See, Apple always provided a great set of tools to get things done on a new OS without the need of going out there searching for software. With Mac OS X, most users can do stuff without ever opening Safari and browse to some developer website. With iOS it’s just the same, but the App Store and its flowing stream of new applications made us forget about the built-in factor. We often don’t remember that we can enjoy an iPhone as it comes out of the box. Read more
You Are Not Your App
The OS Doesn’t Matter→
The OS Doesn’t Matter
For the developer, what we now call the OS must supply ever-growing expressive power—think a fife versus a twelve-keyboard organ. To wield that expressive power, the programmer needs software tools. The industry uses acronyms such as API (Application Programming Interface), IDE (Integrated Development Environment) or phrases such as Application Frameworks. They define the rules and conventions—which ideas are allowed and how to express them—and the software tools that programmers need to develop an application.
This is today’s OS. User experience. Development tools.
The fact that Apple provides one of the best development suites says a lot.
Apple Approves BitTorrent App?
With all the new/revised rules for App Store approvals, who knows what will show up in the Store? First it was Google Voice apps and now a BitTorrent app? Could this one have slipped through the Apple cracks? Remember Handy Light and MiTube?
IS Drive by Derek Kepner is an app that works with ImageShack‘s BitTorrent service, which allows users to manage their downloads. While BitTorrent is not illegal as a file sharing protocol; it is the preferred method to copy the unauthorized exchange of music and video - and that’s a reason for Apple to reject applications that allow users to manage their downloads. Read more
Sparrow: New Email Client for Mac That’s Just Like Tweetie
I’ve been a Mail.app user for a long time, but a few weeks ago I decided to move my primary work mail account to Gmail under Google Apps. I love Gmail’s web UI, and even though I’m also a huge Mailplane fan I had to keep all my other Gmail / Google Apps-based accounts in Mail.app, mainly for the better integration with Applescripts, Automator workflows and plugins. Mail.app works fine, but it’s not revolutionary, breathtaking at the way it allows you to interact with messages or geared towards people who need to play with multiple accounts on a daily basis. As a matter of fact, if you put too many accounts in Apple Mail and activate too many plugins - it will explode. But then again, that’s not my main concern.
I’ve been wondering whether it’d be possible to developer a better Mail client for Mac. The Letters.app project seems to be dead or something, and I haven’t heard of other devs finding their way through IMAP and Cocoa. Not until this morning, when I got an email about - yes - an entirely new email application specifically built with Mac users in mind.
iPads and iMacs At Downing Street
The White House is full of iPad users, the same is happening at Number 10, Downing Street in London. Actually, it turns out that David Cameron’s residence might be full of iPads, iMacs and VNC clients. Read more
The Tablet Mac Project Shows You The MacBook Touch You’ve Always Wanted
We have seen cool Mac mods floating around on the internet. Remember the MacBook Air Project? That was a single modder trying to fit an entire MacBook Air under an Apple Keyboard. What we have here is slightly more “conventional”, as it’s something nerds have been dreaming about for a long time: a fully working, portable and usable MacBook Tablet. Read more
Desktop Connect for iPad, Reviewed
Since the iPadʼs announcement I have a feeling that there where quite a few people who planned on using it as a replacement for a laptop or netbook computer. I certainly bought into that school of thought. Say what you will about it, the iPad is an extremely powerful computing device, however lacking it may be in a few areas. One of these areas is the lack of an open filesystem. Iʼd love to be able to use my iPad to carry around all of my homework files to and from school, without having to store them all in Pageʼs file system via iTunes.
The workaround to this, is a VNC or other screensharing app. Iʼve been using Anteceaʼs Desktop Connect since its release last April, and it rocks. I havenʼt tried out iTeleport yet, but even so just given that Desktop Connect costs $10 less than iTeleport Iʼd consider it an awesome deal. (Itʼs $14.99 in the App Store) Read more
What If Steve Jobs Hadn’t Left Apple in 1985?
The New York Times has an interesting piece by Randall Stross today, where he argues about the consequences of Steve Jobs not leaving Apple, the company he co-founded, in 1985. Would Apple be in the same place it is today? Would Steve Jobs be the visionary leader he is today? Read more
Control Your Mac From iOS Using Dropbox And Applescript→
Control Your Mac From iOS Using Dropbox And Applescript
So in the past few weeks a bunch of text editing apps for iOS have been released that use Dropbox to sync with your desktop computer. I’ve been really liking Plaintext, and was wondering what I could use it for besides just plain writing text…
And then I remembered Folder Actions, which are an OS X feature that lets you set an applescript to run whenever a file is added to a folder (or deleted).
All you need is remember some Applescripts.