Last November Apparent Software had a fantastic and successful bundle sale. Now, they’re back with another great ProductiveMacs bundle that contains some even more excellent utilities that will help you get work done. Some of the highlights of the bundle are Dropzone (our coverage), Gemini (our review), Paperless, and Crossover. If you had to purchase all nine of these productive goodies separately they would cost $245 but this new bundle is priced at the super-low total of $29.99.
A New ProductiveMacs Bundle: 9 Great Mac Apps for $29.99
PlexConnect for Apple TV→
A clever little hack to display Plex content on an Apple TV with no jailbreak required:
Essentially, you run a program on your computer which masquerades as the Trailer app. Next, change one setting on the ATV, and you’re up and running. It took me less than 2 minutes to install and get it running. It already uses the new transcoder (which means great support for subtitles), and I suspect it’ll support myPlex soon as well.
There’s a bit of manual configuration to do with this first version of PlexConnect. You can find an official discussion board, check out the FAQ, roadmap, or grab the source code here.
Apple Starts Decorating Moscone West with WWDC 2013 Banners
With WWDC 2013 kicking off in San Francisco on Monday, Apple has today started decorating Moscone West for its five-day event. Last year, with WWDC starting on June 11, Apple began Moscone preparations on June 5, showing off colorful banners with app icons and, in the process, confirming iOS 6’s official new icon ahead of the conference.
So far, banners put up by Apple at Moscone West are showing the same colorful graphics of the official WWDC 2013 logo that Apple unveiled in late April. While much has been said about whether the WWDC logo may hint at a visual refresh in the next versions of iOS and OS X, the shape used by Apple is simply reminiscent of iOS app icons – something that Apple has often used for WWDC banners.
This year, Apple is using the “Where a whole new world is developing” tagline for the initial set of banners.
We’re receiving the first photos from Moscone West, and we’re including them after the break. We will update this post with more photos as we receive them throughout the week. Read more
Apple Releases OS X 10.8.4
Apple today released version 10.8.4 of OS X Mountain Lion. The update, which is available now through Software Update on the Mac App Store, brings bug fixes and improvements. Notably, 10.8.4 includes Safari 6.0.5, a fix for connecting to enterprise WiFi networks, improved FaceTime calls to non-US phone numbers, and Exchange improvements in Calendar.
On a dedicated webpage, Apple mentions that a popular issue of iMessage and the Messages app has been fixed with today’s update: “A fix for an issue that may cause iMessages to display out of order in Messages”.
Apple has posted direct links for the 10.8.4 update – as usual, both in standard and Combo versions. You can get them through the links below.
App Camp For Girls→
A fantastic initiative by Jean MacDonald. Show your support and help fund the project.
Gmail for iOS Gets New Inbox, Improved Notification Settings
Announced last week, Google has today released an update to its official Gmail app for iOS that adds support to the new inbox and brings finer controls for push notifications.
The new inbox, configurable from Gmail’s desktop website, allows you to enable different categories for “primary” emails and other messages such as promotions, social updates, or notifications from online forums. As we described the feature last week, “categories and tabs are basically pre-defined filters and labels with training wheels”. Messages can be moved from a tab to another to train Gmail’s algorithm in better automatic organization; currently, Gmail will try its best to automatically sort an incoming message into the appropriate category, but there isn’t an option to create new custom categories from scratch.
The Gmail app now shows Inbox categories in the account sidebar, where they’re listed with custom icons and colored badges for unread emails in each category. Like the desktop website, you can move messages across categories, but you can’t configure the Inbox directly on iOS (the app will remind you to open Gmail “on a computer” to do that).
Gmail’s notifications have been updated to reflect the change. With today’s update, you can set notifications for all new mail, none, or only messages that are marked as “primary”. Notification settings are available inside each account, where you can also activate your mobile signature and vacation responder.
Gmail for iOS is available on the App Store. For a refresher on the new Inbox, here’s Google’s blog post from last week.
Dispatch: A New Email Client for iOS with App Actions and Snippets
In April, I wrote about Triage, my new favorite email app for iPhone. Here’s how I concluded my review:
Triage is based on a simple, efficient, and rewarding process that works by leveraging the iPhone’s most obvious gesture and one-handed operability. Unlike other new email apps, Triage doesn’t let you scan your inbox to turn messages into to-dos: it uses a one-message-at-a-time approach to see what’s up, what needs attention, and what can be kept for later.
Dispatch, made by Muh Hon Cheng and Lin Junjie, is a new email client for iPhone that’s aimed at the later part. I have been using every day it for the past two months, and it’s now on my Home screen alongside Gmail and Triage.
As I explained in the past here on MacStories, my iOS email workflow was perfectly fine until Sparrow showed interesting new ways to interact with messages on the iPhone. Sparrow got acquired by Google, which, a few months later, came out with a completely revamped Gmail app that is now my primary client for searching and composing longer messages on the iPhone and iPad[1]. I don’t like how Google’s app relies on web views across several areas of the interface; in spite of Google’s additions, Gmail doesn’t make for a great experience to archive or delete emails with a one-handed operation. That’s what Triage is for.
At this point, I have two wishes left ungranted from email on iOS: a fully native Gmail app and a client with inter-app communication. Dispatch wants to be the second one. Read more
iOS 7 Education Wish List→
A great follow-up by Fraser Speirs. Fraser is the co-host of the Out of School podcast, and he makes some interesting suggestions for iOS 7 and education.
Byword 2.0 Gets Publishing Services, Improved Sync, And More
Metaclassy’s Byword is one of the finest Markdown text editors for iOS and OS X. On the Mac, a great selection of keyboard shortcuts and support for native full-screen mode make Byword an experience that’s both powerful and intuitive; on iPhones and iPads, the app’s excellent MultiMarkdown previews allow the Markdown-savvy writer to always keep an eye on the final outcome of a document. With sync (both through iCloud and Dropbox) and solid exporting options (including PDF), Byword has become many’s preferred solution to write down thoughts and longer essays – with a focus on Markdown, rich text, and cross-device availability of documents.
Byword 2.0, released today for iOS and OS X, introduces new publishing options for WordPress, Tumblr, Evernote, Blogger, and Scriptogram, more robust sync with offline support and better conflict resolution, and several other enhancements. I have been testing Byword on all my devices for the past month, pointing the app to my /Apps/ folder in Dropbox where all my text files are stored. Read more