Seems like I just can’t enough of desktop URLs shorteners: Andy wrote an Applescript for that (hem) and I reviewed Shrinker, a simple app that handles the whole process of shortening urls with various online services like bit.ly and tr.im. So, I was re-organising my bookmarks today (you know, minimalism) and I stumbled upon this neat application which was lying there in my toolbar: Squish.
And I was like: “Omg”.
Find out why.
“Aqua offers a photo-illustrative icon style—it approaches the realism of photography but uses the features of illustrations to convey a lot of information in a small space. Icons can be represented in 512 x 512 pixels to allow ample room for detail. Anti-aliasing makes curves and nonrectilinear lines possible. Alpha channels and translucency allow for complex shading and dimensionality. All of these qualities allow you to create lush, vibrant icons that capture the user’s attention.”
That’s what Apple says in the Human Interface Guidelines document about icons. Icons are a great way to convey information about the application you’re using and give you some eye-candy at the same time. In this roundup I’ve collected 50+ of the most beautiful, well-designed icons of 3rd party apps for Mac OS X. Do you know more? Feel free to share them in the comments.
Enjoy! ;)
Idea Organizer, that cool notes / pictures / voice memos organizer for iPhone I reviewed a few weeks ago, has just been updated to 1.1. The latest version brings some cool refinements and improvements:
Unlimited recording time;
Landscape keyboard;
Automatically save ideas when the app is interrupted.
At $1.99, you should go download Idea Organizer now.
“My question is: why won’t Apple allow me to try an app before I buy it? The availability countdown works great for content rented from the store like movies. I can play all I want for 24 hours, and then it’s deactivated. That would be ideal for apps too. I download it, see how it works, and after some time the app prompts me to purchase when launched. The prompt has a link to the app’s page in the store and I can make my decision. This is often how it’s done on the desktop. Why not the iPhone?”
It’s not up to Apple to provide a demo version of each application. Every developer should release lite versions of their apps to let the users test them before purchasing the full version.
But with the recent in-app purchasing system, things could become a lot more interesting: what if every app is free for - say - 3 days then the user must buy it in order to continue using it? This method would have the huge pro of deleting all those Lite / Free apps that clutter the App Store and most important, would allow us to test and then decide to purchase. Much like David Klein writes in his post, a “limited-time demo”.
There an interesting debate which is going on since many years about how Mac apps should be distributed an installed. Back in September John Gruber wrote this interesting piece, outlining the pros and cons of three popular formats of delivering Mac apps: .zip, .dmg and installer. He was inspired by this post where Alexander Limi (founder of Plone, working at Mozilla now) discussed the problems of the installation process of Firefox on the Mac platform.
In this post I’ll discuss all the possible scenarios, referring to other articles found on the web to give you my idea of how Mac applications should be distributed.
Though the App Store was a revolution for Apple, and besides the fact that everybody uses the App Store, there are many apps which Apple will never approve. You know, SDK. Backgrounder, BiteSMS, Twidget,Winterboard: the best hacks for your iPhone can only be installed with Cydia, the amazing “alternative App Store” from Saurik. Obviously, you’ll have to jailbreak to install and use Cydia.
But anyway, if you already have a jailbroken phone, you should know that Saurik launched a few months ago the Cydia Store, a real store within Cydia where you can purchase paid apps. Today, I’d like to talk about two new apps from the Cydia Store, Overboard and Multifl0w.
Great tip.
