We’re still waiting for Tweetie 2.0 for Mac to be announced (though we’ve heard something new is going on this week) yet a lot of developers haven’t given up on developing and refining their own unofficial Twitter clients. And since Apple released Safari 5 with the possibility to install extensions on it, it was just a matter of time until someone developed a “full-featured” Twitter client for it.
Meet Ostrich.
So you have a kid right? Then I’m sure you’ve done this a lot or have had this happen at least once: You download an innocent game to keep them busy, handed them your iPhone, and let them have at it. The kids get carried away, and you wake up the next morning to a bank alert claiming you’ve incurred $300 in App-app purchases. This leads to a few nasty emails sent to Apple and the developer, claiming fraudulent charges and demanding your money back.
But just so you know, developers aren’t trying to screw you over. Apple has an odd API concerning purchases and password caching. While you probably realize that Apple gives you the opportunity to purchase multiple items in the store so you don’t have to keep entering your password, you might not have realized that this caching translates to in-app purchases as well.
So what do you do when Steve Jobs says your entire industry is going to be replaced by digital formats? Refute it of course! Jobs claims that Internet based downloads will surpass Blu-ray, stating that, “Bluray is looking more and more like one of the high end audio formats that appeared as the successor to the CD - like it will be beaten by Internet downloadable formats.”
The Blu-Ray Disc Association responds, “According to market analysis Blu-ray Disc has a rate of adoption is very similar to that of DVD at the same seniority (18 million U.S. homes with Blu-ray in Q4 ‘10, the same numbers as the penetration of DVD to Q1 of the fifth year on the market of that size, Adams Media Research), we agree that the Internet will increase its importance to both stream that content to be scarce, but we do believe that the physical media like Blu-ray Disc will continue to dominate for many years, due to ease of use, high durability, and certainly the ability to deliver high definition experience and quality available anywhere.”
Anywhere you have a Blu-ray player that is. Personally I prefer just to instantly download movies, so I’m going to side with Jobs since I’m not a fan of discs at all. But what do you guys think? Will Blu-ray continue to remain in the market for years to come because of its market penetration? Or will downloadable content cause Blu-ray to sizzle out and end up like the CDs of today?
[via 9 to 5 Mac]
You’ve come such a long way, µTorrent. I remember when I used to launch you on Windows, back in my other life when I was a PC user. Then I moved to a Mac, and started using the much-acclaimed Transmission, a fantastic client which has recently been updated to 2.0, with tons of new features and optimizations.
But like I said, you’ve come such a long way, kid.
One of the greatest things about the App Store is that you don’t have software licenses to keep. You have an account, you purchase apps, those apps are tied to your account. No paid upgrades to keep track of across mailboxes, no registration emails, in-app purchases at best. That’s why people buy applications in the App Store: because it’s simple and you only have to setup a Paypal account or enter your credit card details.
The same cannot be said about the Mac: there’s no unified store, and if you want an app you have to visit the developer’s website and download it. You have a license for each app, and storing all of them in a single location can be a huge time waster. That’s why softwares like AppChest come in handy and, guess what, we’ve got 5 (ahem) licenses to give away.
Writing about Tweetie for Mac updates has become some sort of a joke to me. “Tweetie for Mac has been updated? Yeah, sure.” That’s why many people last night didn’t initially believe Twitter actually pushed an update with OAuth support, and once they realized it was real, they just didn’t update. Why? Because they’re not trusting Loren Brichter anymore. And considering what happened to Tweetie for Mac last night, go prove them wrong.
Dropbox, the most popular online / desktop backup tool for Mac, just got a brand new feature: all your files in your Dropbox can be shared, not just those saved in the Public folder.
You just have to right click on a file or folder int he desktop or web view and select “Get shareable link”; this will redirect you to a web page with a short link for that file or folder. This is a long-awaited feature, which has made sharing file with Dropbox a lot easier. Good job.
I almost can’t believe I’m writing this: Tweetie for Mac has been updated. Sadly, it’s not the long awaited Tweetie 2, but at least it’s got OAuth support, meaning that the app won’t die when Twitter will officially kill the old authentication system.
Since Twitter acquired Loren Brichter’s Tweetie for iPhone and Mac, we all feared that the new team would only focus on the iPhone app, leaving Mac users behind with a version based on a deprecated authentication system. Knowing that they didn’t even have plans to make it an official client didn’t help either. Then, two weeks ago we reported that an update for the Mac version was on its way this month, and here it is: a rather minor update that brings OAuth, better Magic Mouse support and removes Fusion Ads according to Twitter’s new Terms of Service.
It’s kind of surprising though that there’s still no official word about the 2 version (we don’t want that much, a tweet would be enough) especially considering that thousands of users entered the latest MacHeist sale just to get their hands on an early beta version of Tweetie 2 for Mac. But, we heard some rumors last week from a source close to Loren, who claims that he’s up to “some amazing stuff for Tweetie”. I bet he is. Working at Twitter must be awesome.
Anyway, that’s not the point. There’s a new version, go check for updates, Tweetie for Mac won’t die. At this point, I’m afraid to say it’s enough.
You can find the changelog of the new 1.2.7 version after the break.
[UPDATE] They’ve pushed another build that fixes the authentication problems, 1.2.8. It’s available here. Still, you know my position about this.
