This Week's Sponsor:

Inoreader

Boost Productivity and Gain Insights with AI-Powered Intelligence Tools

Sponsor: Smile

Our thanks to Smile for sponsoring MacStories this week with PDFpen 6.

PDFpen makes it easy to sign PDFs, make edits to text and images, and perform OCR on scanned documents. Fill out interactive forms, adjust resolution and contrast for better legibility, and mark up PDFs for proofreading and note-taking. Export documents to Evernote and share PDFs through iCloud or Dropbox to edit your files on the go with PDFpen on the iPhone and iPad.

PDFpen 6 is optimized for the Retina Display and now takes advantage of Versions and Auto Save available in Lion and Mountain Lion, which better saves your edits from accidental loss. Take advantage of the improved resolution with the easier to use editing bar. Lastly, export your PDFs to Word documents for convenient sharing with coworkers.

PDFpen 6 is now available on the Smile Store and the Mac App Store. For a limited time, PDFpen 6 is available for only $29.99, normally retailing for $59.95.

Learn more about PDFpen 6 here.

Apple Releases iOS 6.1.3 With Passcode Bypass Fix

iOS 6.1.3 Update

iOS 6.1.3 Update

Today Apple released iOS 6.1.3. It is an incremental improvement to iOS that includes a security patch for the previously publicized vulnerability that allowed access to the Phone app even when the screen was locked. The release notes also mention improvements to the Maps app for users in Japan. Perhaps some of our kind Japanese readers can give us some insight in to the changes Apple might have made to the Maps app. Finally The Next Web is reporting that some of the vulnerabilities required to jailbreak iOS devices have in fact been patched which means that the cat and mouse game between Apple and the jailbreak community continues.

The update is now available through iTunes and iOS’ Software Update panel and it is assumed that the update will ship to all iOS devices that are iOS 6 compatible.

A Month with Mailbox

Mailbox, Inbox Zero

Mailbox, Inbox Zero

Orchestra, the company originally behind Mailbox, set out to redesign the traditional mobile email app by transforming the inbox into a to-do list. Recently acquired by Dropbox to the tune of $100 million, Mailbox has been making waves in the media on the promise of helping people act-on their email more quickly and efficiently. Anticipation for the free email app began late 2012 and came to boil over as the app launched in February, thanks to an incredible amount of press attention and clever marketing through Twitter.

Questionably, Mailbox launched with a reservation system to cope with demand. Available on a first come, first served basis, Mailbox was initially only available to those who signed up for the service early-on. So far, over a million people have signed up to use the app, and the company has filled over 500,000 reservations according to a recent TechCrunch interview with Mailbox founder Gentry Underwood.

Mailbox has had its fair share of both praise and criticism. Understandably there’s a healthy amount of skepticism over whether Mailbox actually helps you deal with the bulk of email people receive in their inboxes.

I gave Mailbox my phone number before much of the recent press, leaving me with a reservation somewhere in the early 20,000s. My reservation was filled relatively quickly. As I downloaded the app, I decided I’d pass on early impressions to get a good feel for whether Mailbox could be my daily driver on the iPhone.

As Mailbox is structured around the principles of Inbox Zero, the actions that can be performed are built on top of making quick decisions about what’s necessary to keep. With mobile in mind, Mailbox is designed to help people quickly archive, delete, snooze, or put email in a “do someday” list. People are always checking their phones throughout the day, so why not give people an easier way to weed out the things that don’t matter?

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Acknowledging The Threat Of Samsung


In the past week Apple’s marketing chief, Phil Schiller, gave three interviews and the company sent out a new “Why iPhone” email campaign - both timed perfectly around the announcement of Samsung’s new flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S4. Some have called it out as Apple going on the defensive, others have said it’s Apple on the offensive. I’m not sure that you can categorically say it’s one or the other – it doesn’t really matter much.

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Apple Releases OS X 10.8.3

After nearly four months in testing and thirteen betas seeded to developers, Apple has today released OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.3. As with previous software updates, the new version is available on both the Mac App Store and Apple’s website.

10.8.3 includes some new features and bug fixes. Notably, the update comes with the usual stability improvements, but, this time, also a fix for the notorious File:/// URL bug that could crash certain Mac apps. Safari 6.0.3 is also part of the update, with improvements for scrolling on Facebook.com, fixes for zoom, restoring position, and bookmarks issues that could cause bookmarks to be duplicated on iOS devices.

As far as new features go, Boot Camp now comes with support for Windows 8 and Macs with a 3 TB hard drive. Introduced in late November 2012 with iTunes 11, Mac App Store gift cards can now be redeemed using a computer’s camera.

Detailed release notes can be found here. The software can be downloaded with the links below:

- OS X Mountain Lion Update v10.8.3 (540.46 MB)

- OS X Mountain Lion Update v10.8.3 Combo (793.69 MB)