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Posts tagged with "os x"

Macworld 2011: The Future of the Mac [Video]

Here’s a 48-minute video for your typical Sunday morning: at Macworld Expo 2011, Daring Fireball’s John Gruber, Macworld’s Jason Snell and Dan Moren and Tidbits’ Adam Engst talk about the future of the Mac, the Mac App Store as the biggest innovation happening to the platform, the iOS influences on OS X and much more.

One argument that really made me think after watching the video is the idea of two kinds of Macs in the future: a “simplified Mac” with a closed system similar to iOS, and a Mac for advanced users. I don’t know how I would react to a closed, straightforward and really  simple Mac personally, but I do know that I would appreciate a new system for managing and deleting apps. Perhaps Launchpad will bring some fresh air on Lion. But then again, should Apple just make the Mac as simple as possible and let “power users” enable the features they want (like, say, the Finder) in the machine’s preferences? And how does the Mac App Store fit in all this? Great discussion in the video above.

The AppSumo “Unleash The Beast!” Bundle Giveaway

The month of OS X has to come to an end, but not without a spectacular bang from the vaults of AppSumo awesomeness. Digging deep, they came up blazing with heavy hitters that’ll send non-power users crying over their slow Windows keyboards. The Beast will only strike once, and in its claws you can obtain Yummy FTP, deep discounts on Arq and ScreenFlow, as well as a one year subscription to the magical Skitch. We’re not done just yet: MacStories readers have a chance to win one of five copies of this final bundle in a month of OS X (and don’t forget that AppSumo’s MEGA bundle is still up for grabs).

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Cloud Connect Pro: A Finder for iPad

iOS devices don’t have a Finder, and in many ways that’s a good thing. Apple simplified the approach to file management by making the filesystem virtually invisible to the users and delegating “database functionalities” to apps, which are nothing but containers of files, data and information. Apps like Pages, PlainText or the Photos app itself keep actual files together, it’s just that on iOS users aren’t forced to manage, organize, clean and sort them like on the desktop. It’s a simpler and more intuitive approach. For many, though, file management sometimes is necessary. Either because of an app that doesn’t support sharing (thus documents can’t get out) or working needs that require access to a specific file in a specific location, several users over the years have lamented the impossibility to have a Finder-like system on their iPhones and iPads. We have also seen apps like Berokyo trying to bring folders and files together on iOS by making compromises with iOS’ default interface style and features.

Cloud Connect Pro, a new app by Antacea I’ve been testing for the past week, aims at bringing true Finder-like options and file management capabilities to the iPad with deep cloud integration. This app can connect to any computer, Dropbox or iDisk instance and WebDAV / SFTP / FTP server to access folder structures, files and media. It can stream music and videos, double as a lightweight but useful VNC client, open and preview document and much more. Read more

Pixelsync Transfers Photos Between Aperture and iPad

Professional photographers who own an iPad and have seen that lightweight photo editing is possible on the tablet have been asking for a portable version of Apple’s Aperture software for quite some time now. While there’s no evidence that Apple is working on a native iPad version of Aperture with focus on the OS X audience and the Mac App Store (where Aperture is being sold at a nice discounted price), third-party developers have set out to create alternatives to the most popular “pro” Apple apps like Final Cut and, indeed, Aperture.

Pixelsync, previously known as “Tagalicious”, is a new app by developer Bart Jacobs that can sync Aperture photos between the iPad and the Mac. With a minimal and elegant interface (that’s dramatically improved since the first version of the app which, frankly, was quite ugly) that resembles the default Photos app, Pixelsync needs to communicate with a “helper” software users will have to install on their OS X machine running Aperture. Pixelsync Helper will than make it possible for the iPad app to fetch photos from the desktop application.

In Pixelsync for iPad you can’t edit photos, but you can play around with the metadata. Put simply, you can rate photos and assign color labels. Once projects and / or albums have been imported, you can edit and organize these data on the iPad and then sync back to Aperture. It all happens wirelessly with no USB cable required.

At $5.99 in the App Store, Pixelsync might be a little too pricey; still, Aperture users who have been looking for a lightweight iPad companion should give it a try.

Skype 5 Out Of Beta, Group Calling Part Of Premium Package

Skype 5 is official this morning, delivering an enhanced interface and group video calling, which is part of a paid premium package and available with a seven day trial. Otherwise, expect to pay $4.99 a day or $8.99 a month for access to the bandwidth hogging feature. Video calls are also seeing the return of the much requested full screen mode. Trimming down the interface, Skype has reduced whitespace and tightened visual accessibility, and have plans to launch a contest where Skype users can design the perfect interface for the Mac.

You can download the latest update by visiting the announcement post on Skype.com, or by visiting this direct link.

The AppSumo MEGA Mac Sumo Bundle Giveaway

We’ve given away some AppSumo bundles as of late that include everything from productive power plants to apps that allow you to just sit down and relax. What if we combined all of those previous bundles, and added must-have utilities like Skitch, Yummy FTP, and IconBox2? The MEGA Mac Sumo Bundle might initially sound like a character out of Mega Man, but it’s really just the latest bundle we’re giving away to another five lucky readers.

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The Finder’s Legendary Selections→

The Finder’s Legendary Selections

Terrific post by Mike Lee on the Finder’s selection behavior. Lots of things I didn’t know in there:

If you’re not a software engineer building apps for the Mac, none of this really matters. It’s just an interesting bit of trivia you can use to not really impress anyone.

If you are a software engineer building apps for the Mac, buckle up, because like Past Me, you have no fucking idea how these selections work, which is a real problem, because one day you are going to implement selection behavior in your app and completely fuck it up.

I say go read it no matter if you’re a software engineer or not.

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Cathode Is A Vintage Terminal For OS X

Here’s an interesting new Mac app for you Terminal junkies looking for new shiny this morning. Cathode came out of beta a few weeks ago, and it’s an alternative Terminal app for OS X with lots of “vintage” themes to apply to the regular session window. As the name suggests, Cathode emulates those old TV screens you might have seen (and owned, too) in the 1970s and 1980s – indeed cathodic monitors.

In spite of its vintage look, the app is entirely written in modern OpenGL and Cocoa, with graphic processing done by the Mac’s GPU. The app, in fact, uses a lot of animations to replicate the behavior of old televisions with flickering fonts, interlacing, curvatures and flashes. It really resembles the old monitor your grandparents might still be using today. You can choose between different themes and adjust fonts and colors, enter fullscreen mode and set the curvature of the screen to your liking.

The licensing method is clever as well: you can use the app for free, but the picture quality will slowly degrade until Cathode is relaunched. If you purchase a license ($20), you can customize the interface and avoid picture degradation.

Go download Cathode here. More screenshots below. Read more