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Posts tagged with "os x"

HockeyApp Brings Enhanced Beta Distribution For iOS Apps

Launching today is HockeyApp, a new service for developers of iOS and soon Android and OS X apps. Its main function is to simplify the beta distribution process and collection of crash reports. Like other beta distribution tools and services, such as TestFlight, HockeyKit (for iOS apps) uses Apple’s over-the-air distribution process that was introduced in iOS 4.0.

HockeyApp, however, goes beyond just offering developers an easy way to distribute new beta builds. It also has a feature that lets developers automatically inform testers about a new beta version from within the app itself – even including release notes and potential to instantly update the app right then and there. Critically for developers, HockeyApp gives developers access to key data from crash reports and can optionally also give statistics on exactly what devices, iOS versions and languages were used and for how long.

HockeyApp will offer developers three plans, varying in cost but starting at $20 per month for 5 apps, 1GB storage and 100 users. Team members and testers won’t have to pay anything and there is a one-month trial for developers available. Jump the break for some screenshots of the service.

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How Amazon’s Mac Download Store Works

Yesterday, Amazon launched a software store for Mac applications that, using the online retailer’s usual interface to browse and buy products, allows users to purchase apps and download them on their computers without waiting for a boxed copy to arrive. In what it sounded like Amazon’s response to the Mac App Store, which as of today counts thousands of apps available from all kinds of developers, we noted Amazon’s new store launched to roughly 250 titles, and didn’t allow independent developers to submit their apps for release, as the company apparently only worked with existing large sellers (like Adobe and Microsoft) to make their applications available digitally.

Whilst the initial impression was that Amazon’s store couldn’t compete with the ease of use of the Mac App Store but competition is always good (especially when it comes to software deals), Dan Frakes at Macworld took the Mac Download Store for a spin, and it turns out the download and installation process might be worse than expected. First off, Amazon lets you save a direct link for later in your software library, but what you get when you decide to get a new app onto your desktop is not a .dmg file or an .app – Amazon gives you an additional “app downloader” to download the actual app on your Mac:

This is where the process gets quite a bit less convenient than buying through the Mac App Store. The first thing you actually download is a small disk image (2.1MB in size, in my case) containing an application-specific [Software Name] Downloader program. Open this disk image, if your browser doesn’t mount the image automatically, and double-click the Amazon Software Downloader.app inside. After a few seconds, the Downloader program begins downloading the purchased software—not to your Downloads folder, or even to your Applications folder, but to a new folder on your Desktop.

There’s more. When trying to install Photoshop Elements with Amazon’s downloader, Frakes ended up with a new .dmg and he had to figure out by himself what to do with it:

I double-clicked the Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 item, expecting it to launch an installer, but it turns out that was just a folder with a custom icon. Inside that was Install.app (along with several folders named deploy, packages, and payloads). Double-clicking Install.app launched the Photoshop Elements installer, which prompted me to enter my 24-character license key, to sign up for an Adobe ID, and to choose which components of Photoshop Elements I wanted to install.

Obviously, it’s possible that Adobe chose a convoluted process and other apps will come with an easier installation method. However, the fact that a separate downloader needs to run in order to get the stuff you bought online seems to be the norm. Personally, I wasn’t really expecting Amazon’s new Mac store to offer the same experience of the Mac App Store (which, small bugs aside, truly is the best way to discover, install and recover Mac apps), but reading Dan’s article makes me wonder how many average and “geek” users will choose this over Apple’s own store or even a boxed copy just for some small discounts or the fact that you can pay with your existing Amazon account. Make sure to read the entire post to know more about the post-installation and, more importantly, how Amazon handles licenses and software keys on multiple computers.

OS X Lion Nearing Public Release?

According to a report from TUAW, Mac OS X Lion has gone “live for internal testing” at Apple last week. Whilst it’s not clear what that means, we assume Apple has begun widespread internal testing of a new build of the OS that’s nearing GM status. TUAW suggests Lion might see a public release at WWDC in two weeks, or at least sooner than previously expected considering many had pointed at Lion on track for a late July / August release:

This suggests the new OS might possibly ship as early as WWDC with an “available today” mention at the keynote – or it might not. But Lion is looking to be one step closer to availability for Apple customers.

The latest developer preview of OS X Lion brought minor graphical changes to apps Apple had already updated in previous DP builds, as well as tweaks and performance improvements to make the OS more stable and faster. Developer builds of Lion have been seeded through the Mac App Store with a redeem code system, though Apple is also believed to make the OS available on DVDs or portable USB keys for users with slow Internet connections, unable of downloading GBs of data from the Mac App Store.

Kickoff For Mac Aims To Simplify Teamwork

Working and communicating effectively in a group for a project can be quite painful and difficult, but Kickoff is a new group collaboration tool that aims to make it much easier for Mac users.

Designed for small teams of people, Kickoff gives users three integral features required for effective teamwork – chat, file management and to-do’s/notes. What makes Kickoff look really interesting is that each of these core functionalities are fully featured and thought through. For example it doesn’t just store files, because it also has built-in versioning and transfers within chat, whilst to-do’s can be allocated to certain people and a dashboard provides an overall glance at everything in the project.

It syncs everything over the air in real-time and because it’s a Mac app you can easily drag files, use Quick Look on files and receive dock notifications. Unfortunately pricing will probably be a bit prohibitive for many, starting at 20€ a month for up to three users, whilst for up to 15 users it is 50€ per month, although there is a two week free trial. Jump the break for some more screenshots.

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Sparrow 1.2 Now Available

Teased earlier today at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York City, Sparrow 1.2 is now available for download on the Mac App Store. As previously reported, the new version adds a number of bug fixes and improvements, most notably enabling Facebook integration through Facebook Connect to automatically add profile pictures to contacts found in your social graph. Facebook support in Sparrow 1.2 is very straightforward: upon first run, you’ll be asked to connect with your Facebook account so Sparrow will be able to fetch your friends’ profile photos; according to the release notes, Sparrow 1.2 is also capable of letting you add new friends within the application, though I haven’t been able to test the new feature just yet. In the Settings, a new Facebook panel will allow you to disconnect from the service at any time and see friends that are also using the app.

Sparrow 1.2 brings many other functionalities such as a revamped dock icon that lets you write a new message with a right-click, new font options in the compose window and an overall interface refresh that’s quite welcome. Taking clues from Lion and other Mac apps like Twitter, Sparrow sports iOS-like scrollbars and free resizing on the message list. As I mentioned today, there’s a new Unified Inbox option that, just like iOS, allows you to see all your incoming messages from all accounts in a single tab; if you’re accustomed to this feature on your iPhone or iPad, you’ll feel right at home using Sparrow 1.2. Alongside these new options, bug fixes and localization in 8 more languages, Sparrow 1.2 brings the following changes as well:

  • Gravatar support
  • Threading by subject
  • Preference to hide Inbox selection bar
  • Account names appear faster on hover

With Twitter and LinkedIn support coming in the near future and new email functionalities likely in the works, Sparrow is shaping up to be a very interesting client for OS X that has a chance deeply change the way we think of social communication on our desktops. Go download the update here.

The Story Behind Hype, An Interactive HTML5 Animation Builder For OS X

Last Friday, a bunch of ex-Apple employees launched Hype, an HTML5 animation builder for OS X. The application aims to let users easily build interactive sites that rival those built with Flash. Already the idea and the implementation has proved successful amongst consumers, with the app currently ranking as the highest grossing app on the Mac App Store. The Startup Foundry met with one of the cofounders, Jonathan Deutsch, and picked his brain on a number of questions surrounding Hype.

Deutsch worked at Apple primarily as the engineering manager for the back-end of Mail.app on OS X but also dabbled in software updates, automation technology, preparing Steve Jobs’ keynotes and various other engineering projects. The other co-founder, Ryan Nielsen was a senior member of the Mac OS X Project management team – central in the development of major OS X releases. Asked why Deutsch would leave a safe job at Apple to build a start-up, he said that he has always wanted to have his own company and wanted to be part of the new HTML5 wave hitting the web.

I was faced with the decision of continuing to work with the great people on my team on a clearly high impact project, living with the “what if” syndrome, or trying to forge my own path.  ”Regret Minimization” is what should win out in life, so it did.

The idea for Hype came after Deutsch returned from a holiday in Europe and wanted to make a website sharing some of the photos he took. Yet coding it with HTML5 would have been a nightmare and he thought there must be a better way. “It stuck with me and eventually I realized this was going to be a great opportunity for a business”.

Deutsch says that Apple’s condemnation of Flash wasn’t really a part of his decision-making, rather it was Apple’s efforts at driving the web forward that played a larger role. He praises WebKit as a great project that whilst initially controversial, has driven innovation in web browsers, particularly on mobile devices that almost exclusively use WebKit.

You can download Hype in the Mac App Store for $29.99.

[Via The Startup Foundry]

Second Build of Mac OS X 10.6.8 Seeded to Developers

Last night, Apple seeded the second build of Mac OS X 10.6.8 to developers. The new build, weighing at around 1 GB, carries number 10K524 and it’s available now for download in the Mac Dev Center. According to people familiar with the new release, focus areas mentioned in the seed notes are still AirPort, Graphics Drivers, Mac App Store, Networking, QuickTime and VPN.

The first build of 10.6.8 was seeded last week on May 13, coming as a surprise for those who thought Mac OS X 10.6.7 would be the last Snow Leopard update. Apple is expected to unveil the final version of 10.7 Lion at the WWDC in June with a public release this summer, leading many to believe 10.6.8 will be the last maintenance update for machines running Snow Leopard.

DropIn Enhances Dropbox with Menubar Drag & Drop, Filters, Previews

I rely on Dropbox on a daily basis to sync files between computers, my iTunes music library and have access to folders shared with the MacStories team or my friends. In fact, Dropbox is the first app I install on every new Mac or fresh installation of OS X, being the service that stores my most important data, app libraries, and more. But for as much as I love Dropbox and couldn’t work without it anymore, I loathe the desktop Mac app. Not the syncing service that displays a badge next to my files or folders, or the preference panel that (in the latest version) allows me to set up selective sync: I can’t stand the menubar utility, which is an icon that does nothing but displaying my available space on Dropbox and changing its looks depending on whether Dropbox is syncing or not. It doesn’t do anything else, and more importantly it sits in the menubar but it doesn’t let me drag files onto it for quick uploading.

Meet DropIn, a $1.99 utility from the Mac App Store that enhances your local Dropbox installation by letting you drag files in the menubar, browse recent files, set up notifications and filters. Sure, it’s another icon in the menubar, but at least it lets me do a bunch of things the official app can’t. DropIn has two main functionalities: it displays a preview of recently changed files and enables you to create filters for the files you want to see in there; it comes with a Droplet feature that allows you to move files to Dropbox by dragging them onto the menubar, avoiding the Finder altogether. In DropIn’s preferences I told the app to simply copy files into my Dropbox main directory, but you can choose sub-folders as well or enter your account ID to upload files to the public folder and get a link in your clipboard automatically. This one’s a feature I’ve been looking forward to have on my Mac because I dislike stacks in my dock, and I’d rather have an icon in my menubar instead of having to open a new Finder window every time. And it works great in DropIn.

As for recently changed files and notifications, this is something you can do with the official Dropbox app and Growl, but DropIn lets you set up the number of updated files to display in the dropdown menu and it’s also got inline previews and a button to reveal a file in the Finder. Furthermore, you can set up advanced rules in the Filters section to show / hide specific files and make sure you’re only being notified about things you care about, and not those info.plist files from iTunes.

At $1.99, DropIn is a great addition to Dropbox, if only for the drag & drop functionality that makes it incredibly easy to move anything to your personal cloud. You can get the app from the Mac App Store here. Check out more screenshots below. Read more

OS X 10.6.7 Changes Finder Sidebar Behavior→

OS X 10.6.7 Changes Finder Sidebar Behavior

Adam C. Engst at TidBITS:

With Mac OS X 10.6.7, Apple not only messed up (and then fixed) font handling (see “OpenType PostScript Fonts Troublesome in 10.6.7,” 27 March 2011, and “Apple Releases Snow Leopard Font Update,” 26 April 2011), they also changed the way you remove items from the sidebar. Now, instead of just dragging items out, you must either Command-drag them out or Control-click them and choose Remove from Sidebar.

I’ve noticed the change too: I was trying to drag a folder out of the “Places” tab, but it wasn’t working. At first I thought I had to restart my Finder for some reason, but that didn’t work either. So I realized maybe something had changed since the 10.6.7 software update, and tried to CMD-drag like I would for items in the menubar. Items in the Finder’s sidebar now share the same behavior of draggable items in the top menubar; Engst believes the change was made after some complaints about accidental removals happening too often, but, frankly, I never removed an item from the Places tab by accident.

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