A couple popular tools for the Mac are Speed Download and Transmission, which allow you to manage downloads and harvest torrents quite easily. If you took both of these applications, ran it through a Windows (as in Microsoft) blender, and ported it back to the Mac, you’d get Folx.
Folx, All in One Torrent & Download Manager
Steve Jobs now Making Personal Calls
Update: There was some initial confusion as to who made the call and who Michael talked to. Michael apparently talked to an Apple representative, rather than Steve’o himself. The article has been edited to reflect this change.
So there’ve been some display issues with the new iMacs. No one’s denying that. Now boot issues too? Oh boy. And one Mac loyalist was so fed up with his recent purchase that he wrote a snarky email to Steve Jobs himself about the situation. And what did Steve do? He had a representative leave a voicemail on Michael Weber’s machine. What CEO does this?
Kiwi, The Customizable Rule Based Twitter Client. Review & Giveaway!
Hey all you soon to be Kiwi-heads! Before I even delve into such a review, we’re fully aware that Kiwi is currently one of the great sponsors that help keep our site up and running. In no way shape or form does Kiwi warrant or make endorsements as to the quality and content of the review!
So with that out of the way, we’re also fully aware that some of you are already touting Kiwi as your Twitter client of choice on your Mac machine. And these people also happen to be incredibly vocal about it. But for those a little leery of customization or other features Kiwi provides, let me show you around a bit. Even if you already own your copy of Kiwi, stick around anyway!
Fiwi, Easily Drag and Drop Content
Moving content around on the Mac can be incredibly easy or slightly annoying. Growing up on Windows, I’ve lived with the luxury of cutting documents before pasting them in the desired locations. Quite honestly, that’s still my preferred method of moving documents. By default, that’s absent on the Mac. And to be frank, I’ve never liked how the Mac has dealt with files and folders at all. This may seem absurd, but hear me out: To take a file from my documents, and move it into a folder hierarchy buried somewhere on my system (perhaps deeper in my documents), I either have to copy the folder then delete the original, or drag and drop. Copying, pasting, then deleting the original is a terrible way to go about things unless you’re working with text. Dragging and dropping can work okay, but it gets old when you have to go maybe five folders deep. There is no other absolute move command which cut solved.
The second problem with computers in general is screen real estate. On my laptop, every pixel counts. Dragging and dropping is made easier when you have two finder windows open, but again, it gets old having to resize windows each time. If you’re like me and you still haven’t moved to a third party application to manage your files and folders, then Fiwi can help solve the drag and drop dilemma.
Amazon Mobile Updated For The iPad
Amazon has updated the Amazon Mobile iPhone app and made it compatible with the iPad, as a universal application. The update (1.2.4) also includes new features like bestseller and recommendation lists, video preview and music track samples.
The app sports a nice interface design, and it uses split view, popovers and paper stacks much like many other applications on the iPad. It seems like Amazon put a lot of effort in this, even though it sometimes hangs or doesn’t feel too much snappy. Maybe an update will fix these issues.
Check out the screenshots after the break.
iPod Touch Prototypes Spotted on eBay? [Update: Removed]
9to5Mac has found something very interesting on eBay: two prototypes of iPod Touch, with built in camera and labelled as “DVT-1” and “DVT-2”, “Apple Development Team”. They don’t have a firmware as we know it, they’re running some sort of “Switchboard “OS” instead, which might seem a legitimate fake OS testing teams run just to see the hardware working.
The eBay seller he doesn’t have idea where the devices come from, because he bought them “from a guy at a flea market, who bought them from a live auction in the Bay Area”.
We’re pretty sure Apple is going to report this and block the auction, because the devices really seem to be actual testing units, those ones we heard about many months ago and never went into the production process.
UPDATE: Just like we guessed, the auction has been removed. I wonder what’s going to happen to the seller now.
What’s ‘Happening’ Near You? Review & Giveaway!
Where I live, shit’s sparse. I live in a rather quiet town that certainly is jam packed full of residential homes and shopping, but what’s there for the average guy to do? I’m not exactly cosy in New York City or Miami Beach, so I actually have to seek out things to do. Thank god there’s Happening for the iPhone and iPod touch.
Occasions Winners Announced
Thanks everyone who entered the Occasions giveaway.We also want to thank the Hand Carved Code developers for the promo codes they offered to MacStories readers.
Developer Recreates Toy Story iAd for iPhone
Remember when Steve showed off iAd for the first time? The cool Toy Story 3 iAd demo with the rotating menu and movie characters? We do, and s0 does developer Ted Littledale, who wanted to see if it’s actually so easy to create an iAd.
Well, probably not, because as he wrote in his blog post he had to go through some documentation from the Webkit team and play around with functions and finger swipe events to get the thing working. Also, he used pictures of his dog in the “ad”, which you can test on the iPhone here.
We’ve embedded the demo video after the break. Cool stuff.