Jack Groetzinger
When I sat down to wireframe this app, what I thought should be a simple exercise of translating a views to a larger screen turned into a big challenge. Creating an iPad UI is hard, I learned—harder than it is for the iPhone.
Christopher Breen, Macworld
Matt Brian, The Verge
Compatible with most smartphones, Dialogue sits in your Mac's menubar and silently waits to direct phone calls from your handset to your desktop. It also allows you to make outgoing calls without the need to touch the device.
Kirk McElhearn, Kirkville
Aldrin Calimlim, AppAdvice
Serenity Caldwell, Macworld
Dennis Sellers, Apple Daily Report
Steve Friess, Politico
The company marches to its own iTunes, spending little on lobbying, rarely joining trade associations and, in a pattern that’s become more pronounced this summer, refusing to negotiate or settle in many lawsuits.
Federico Viticci, MacStories
Tucker Cummings, Tapscape
Learning to animate anything is tough, but Kinemac makes even the most unsurmountable animation tasks seem possible.
Tucker Cummings, Tapscape
If you’re in need of a tool to synchronize and backup your files and disks, this is just the tool for the job!
Steven Sande, TUAW
Imagine having a way to access shared files from your Mac, PC, or iOS devices without needing to tie up a computer to act as a file server. That's the idea behind the Kanex meDrive (US$79), a tiny box that connects to your Wi-Fi router and any USB flash or hard drive, and then works with a free companion app to give you your own "personal file server" at home or office.
Jeff Blagdon, The Verge
Apple subsidiary FileMaker is dropping Bento, the consumer-friendly database app for OS X and iOS, in order to focus on its core products.
One can wish that iWork is adding (back) a database module, right?
Nathan Meurnier, Mac Life
Easily one of the more adorable iOS game offerings of late, Sky Tourist certainly doesn't skimp on innovation.
Danny Greeff, Gearburn
What I like most about the app is the way it adds contextual data to your post; it automatically records the location of where you made the journal entry (great for travel journals) and can also add information about the weather to your entry, which (in the long run) could be used to track how the temperature affects your mood, or something like that.
Sarah Jacobsson Purewal, TechHive
We’ve found some of the simplest gadgets, apps, and Web services to help you stay fit and on track, whether you’re in the air, on the ground, or flitting from city to city.
Ron Mcelfresh, McSolo
David Sparks, MacSparky
The big reason for my switch was the release of the Mac app and the ability sync podcasts.
Ellis Hamburger, The Verge
In 2013, you can order a pair of cargo shorts from across the globe in less than 30 seconds, so why can’t you download the latest email or photo app to your phone? "Can’t they just add more servers, or throw more money at the problem?" you ask. The answer isn’t so simple.
OS X Daily
Peter Cohen, iMore
Using the software you can remote-control your wearable GoPro action camera. New to this release is the ability to play back videos and view photos, and share the content you're shooting.
Mel Martin, TUAW
Flowboard is a well thought out, free app that lets you create presentations with text, video, or graphics.
Federico Viticci, MacStories
Dan Rowinski, ReadWrite
Christopher Breen, Macworld
Push to Talk allows you to do this by assigning a key that either you press to engage the microphone (like a walkie-talkie) or toggle the microphone on and off.
Dan Moren, Macworld
Just tap the magnifying glass icon and enter a name or a title. In previous versions of the app, this search option only presented results from your own library—now it will also offer Kindle Free Samples that match the search terms.
Adam C. Engst, TidBITS
Kevin Bostic, AppleInsider
At the end of a shift, as well as when clocking out to leave for a meal break, Apple's hourly retail employees must submit to "personal package and bag searches," during which the employees are off-the-clock. The complaint notes that these checks are "significant, integral, indispensable... and done solely for Apple's benefit to prevent employee pilferage."
As the employees were hourly and the checks only occurred when they were off the clock, they were not compensated for Apple's security procedures. The complaint claims the employees waited typically between 10 and 15 minutes and the end of every shift, as well as another five without compensation prior to going off for "uncompensated meal breaks."
Aldrin Calimlim, AppAdvice
Aldrin Calimlim, AppAdvice
Juli Clover, MacRumors
The personalized profile feature, which is expected to be launched in August, will allow users of shared Netflix accounts to select a unique profile when accessing the service.
Chris McVeigh, Macworld
Adobe seems to have shifted from asking, “Can we do something new?” to “Can we do something better?” Touch Type and Free Transform are perfect examples of this new approach, retrofitting old tools with new tricks that make basic tasks much easier. It’s a solid strategy and,I hope, an indication of where the application is headed.
Peter Nixey
These aren’t adjacent problems though, they literally and figuratively continents apart. There are already entrepreneurs tackling both problems but they are entrepreneurs with very different knowledge-sets. Getting frustrated with software entrepreneurs failing to feed Africa is like getting cross with Norman Borlaug for not doing a dwarf wheat iPhone app. These are different entrepreneurs with different skills and different available markets.
Angela LaFollette, 148Apps
Not only can users find and rate great coffee near them, but they can also share coffee with their friends and invite them out to grab a cup of Joe.
Richard Moss, Mac Life
A Ride Into the Mountains overcomes a few small rough spots to offer a challenging, intriguing, evocative, and memorable adventure of horseback archery with a stellar minimalist aesthetic.
Jordan Merrick, Mactuts+
Jeffrey L. Wilson, PC Magazine
The distraction-free tool creates a calm, peace-filled writing environment using audio-visual techniques.
Jamie Lendino, PC Magazine
Apple's pro-level audio workstation software just got a huge makeover, and it's a winner. If you're a musician, producer, recording engineer, or composer, you simply have to look at Logic Pro X. Even if you're a steadfast Pro Tools wizard in a commercial setting, or are loyal to Digital Performer or Cubase—all excellent software packages—the long-awaited Logic Pro X contains some brilliant innovations that are worth examining, especially if you've also got an iPad hanging around the studio.
Richard Devine, iMore
Besides pretty comprehensive listings for venues that include locations, opening hours, contact details and menus – the usual kind of stuff – it also provides curated lists picked out by the Zagat team such as "bars where you can escape the heat in NYC."
Paul Mozur, Wall Street Journal
"Their latest report contains claims that are new to us and we will investigate them immediately. Our audit teams will return to Pegatron, RiTeng and AVY for special inspections this week. If our audits find that workers have been underpaid or denied compensation for any time they’ve worked, we will require that Pegatron reimburse them in full."
Christine Chan, AppAdvice
John Gruber, Daring Fireball
There’s nothing punitive with Mansfield’s role change, nor health problems or anything like that. Just a more focused role on certain new products. His un-retirement as a senior vice president last year was always intended to be transitional, not permanent.
Aldrin Calimlim, AppAdvice
Shelfy is a personal bookshelf and wishlist app. That is, it lets you save the books that you already own (whether read or unread) and those that you’d like to own.
Christopher Breen, Macworld
When I set about putting together one of these Mac 911 columns I can usually find an appropriate answerable question in a couple of tries. But there are days (of which this is one) when the gods seem to deliver questions whose answer largely boils down to: You are stone out of luck.
Dennis Sellers, Apple Daily Report
Christopher Breen, Macworld
Ian Sherr, Wall Street Journal
"Bob is no longer going to be on Apple's executive team but will remain at Apple working on special projects reporting to Tim," an Apple spokesman said, referring to Tim Cook, the company's chief executive.
Apple sure has a lot of special projects.
Jim Tanous, TekRevue
The 2013 MacBook Air battery life is simply incredible, and for many users it may be reason alone to upgrade to the latest models. These results also make us excited to see what Apple has in store for the MacBook Pro refreshes expected for later this year.
Jordan Golson, MacRumors
Art-Pete
Marco Tabini, Macworld
Instead of overwhelming the user with tons of features, it focuses almost exclusively on displaying a “river of news”—an aggregated list of all the items available for reading, which you can navigate one at a time.
John Shinal, USA Today
Lee Hutchinson, Ars Technica
The Leap is neat, but it's not much more than that. It's absolutely not in the same class of convenience as a touchscreen, primarily because interaction with it is so iffy and inconsistent. Lots of fiddling with the Leap control panel and attempting to tune its sensing distance and re-calibrate the device didn't yield any noticeable improvement—it's just new hardware, and it's got some growing pains to experience.
But it's cool—it's extremely cool. It's not yet a game-changing interface device, but it could be. The exciting thing is that now that the Leap is shipping, the number of developers who get their hands on the thing should greatly increase, so the amount of cool things the Leap can do will also climb.
Aldrin Calimlim, AppAdvice
Mel Martin, TUAW
Shep McAllister, Lifehacker
Instabrowser claims to cut data usage by 90% vs. mobile Safari (depending on the site, obviously), which is great if you have a very weak cell signal, or are just trying to avoid data overages. It accomplishes this feat by stripping away all of the site's formatting and CSS, leaving you with a single column of text (and images, if you want them).
Chris Holt, Macworld
Kaylie Moise, Macgasm
It’s pretty awkward to ask someone to take a picture of you when you’re touring in another city or country. You just never know when you pass over your iPhone if they’ll accidentally drop it or make a run for it. Japanese tourist spots seem to have solved this problem with camera stands.
Daniel Jalkut, Bitsplitting.org
Raphael Sebbe (@rsebbe) put together a nifty plugin for Xcode (version 4 or 5!) that coerces Xcode into substantially supporting Mercurial, in addition to its native support for Git and Subversion.
Mike Wehner, TUAW
The TaskOne houses a total of 22 different tools including screwdrivers, a knife, wirecutters, a bottle opener, and several others.
Ray Aguilera, Macworld
Feed IDentify a pile of videos, and it queries multiple databases (TagChimp, TheMovieDB.org, and TheTVDB.com) to fill in the missing metadata in your files.
Kirk McElhearn, Macworld
This week’s column deals with solutions to common (and some less common) problems that use little-known features of iTunes or third-party software. The questions this time can only be solved with a workaround, or by using iTunes in a way it’s not intended.
Mikey Campbell, AppleInsider
Apple on Friday brought the iOS, Mac and Safari Dev Centers back from a self-imposed downtime after the website was compromised by "an intruder" last Thursday. Also in the green are "Certificates, Identifiers and Profiles" and "Software Downloads."
Topher Kessler, CNET
If you try to use secondary password reset routines, you will still first have to unlock the FileVault volume so its contents can be accessed. Without this, these password reset routines will be useless. The only way to change a FileVault password when you change your account password is by using the Users & Groups system preferences, and even though there are methods for managing the FileVault password separately, in all cases, in order for the FileVault password to be changed, the disk must first be unlocked.
Dennis Sellers, Apple Daily Report
If you own an iPhone or fifth generation iPod touch, you’ll appreciate iLuv Creative Technology‘s Aud 5, the company’s first audio dock designed specifically for Lightning devices. It looks and sounds great.
Ron Miller, CITEworld
Google and Apple have always been a study in contrasts when it comes to their engineering and product development styles, but it was a point that was driven home to me in a big way this month when I tried Google Glass.
Topher Kessler, CNET
You should need to press your Mac's power button only once in order to turn it on. After doing this, you should hear the boot chimes, then see it load OS X, and drop you to the log-in window. However, what do you do if this doesn't happen, and you neither see nor hear any activity from the system?
If this should happen to you, there are several things you can do before taking your system in for servicing.
Manuel Masiero, Tom's Hardware
Sean Ludwig, VentureBeat
Taking on Google, Apple, or Nokia in the maps space as a small startup is a little crazy. But that isn’t stopping Citymaps, a high-reaching service that has mapped every city in the U.S. and includes a full-fledged social network that lets you share maps with friends.
Josh Lowensohn, CNET
"I'm taking toys out of my kid's hands so I can have something to go and do development work," said Wheeler, whose company, Alminder, makes an app that augments Apple's built-in calendar software. "Otherwise, we're dead in the water. We just can't afford it."
"Now the developer is getting all the iMessages from my son's friends," he added.
Cody Fink, MacStories
I like this idea of having a pointer, a directional compass that at least tells you you’re heading in the right direction.
Joseph Keller, iMore
Wunderlist explains Files as the ability to attach files to tasks that others in your team can see and act on. An example Wunderlist gives is how you could upload a file and attach it to a task asking an art designer to add content. Overall, it will be a useful feature for professionals who need to frequently collaborate on projects that involve media files.
Erica Sadun, TUAW
HockeyCoach helps you view and manage your crash reports.
Christine Chan, AppAdvice
Marco Tabini, Macworld
The app allows you to divide off the contents of the desktop in arbitrary containers—appropriately called “groups.” Each group can be home to as many files as you need, and, like a Finder window, can be resized to your liking.
Kelly Hodgkins, TUAW
The premise behind the app is simple -- it uses the microphone on the iOS device to detect background noise and rewards children when they are quiet for a set amount of time.
Richard Devine, iMore
Zach Khan, 9 To 5 Mac
Lee Hutchinson, Ars Technica
It's fast, expensive, and people are going to be angry it exists. Just like Thunderbolt!
Lex Friedman, Macworld
BillGuard looks for “zombie” subscriptions, recurring memberships, unwanted auto-renewals, slowly increasing monthly fees and the like, and warns you when such charges come up—complete with push notifications with the app.
Aldrin Calimlim, AppAdvice
Aaron Souppouris, The Verge
Following the recent death of a Chinese woman that was reportedly "electrocuted by her iPhone," Apple has posted guidance on its website urging citizens to only use its official chargers.
Christopher Breen, Macworld
Benedict Evans
Apple's results yesterday were actually pretty boring. But one of the more interesting things is the way that the iPad is now starting to become just as cyclical as the iPhone.
Mike Wehner, TUAW
Cannon Crasha's old-school 16-bit design style works great on the iPad, and everything from your castle to the background environments feel both retro and extremely crisp. The same goes for the sound effects, which are basic but fit in well with the nostalgic vibe.
Nick Arnott, iMore
Apple has pushed out an update to their Developer Portal maintenance page to give developers some additional information about the current status of things in the wake of their security breach. The update announces the order in which developers can expect services and functionality to be restored.
According to the new status page, Bug Reporter is back online, together with iTunes Connect which didn't go offline in the first place.
Matt Gemmell
Josh Centers, TidBITS
AssistiveTouch lets you access system functions that may be difficult if you have some sort of physical impairment, like arthritis, a hurt or missing finger, or, in this case, a broken button.
I've turned it on even for a new iPhone, because I no longer trust Apple's home button.
David Sparks, MacSparky
Dan Ackerman, CNET
Topher Kessler, CNET
Force-quitting an application can be done directly with one keystroke, if needed.
Dan Miller, Macworld
The app relies on six different sensors to decide when it should suspend your sleep settings.
Kelly Hodgkins, TUAW
Joel Mathis, Macworld
If you’ve ever had a hankerin’ to sit down and craft your own biography—or to collect the stories of your parents or grandparents before they pass on—StoryPress, a free iPad app from GhostGear Labs, is just the place to start. It helps you record oral histories that sound nearly as polished and professional as the Story Corps pieces you sometimes hear on NPR.
Aaron Souppouris, The Verge
For the first time ever, Electronic Arts (EA), the world's third-largest gaming company, gained more revenue through Apple than any other single partner. All-told, the company's mobile and tablet revenue hit $90 million last quarter, representing 18 percent of its overall takings.
Katherine Boehret, Wall Street Journal
Gestures make most activities more fun—in the digital world and in the real world—but until the Leap Motion Controller becomes more deeply integrated into an operating system so it can replace a mouse or touch pad, this gadget will only sate a niche audience.
Topher Kessler, CNET
If you keep a text or Word file on your system that contains all of your passwords, then you might consider options to better secure it.
John Paczkowski, All Things D
Asked explicitly if the company knows the identity of the hacker responsible for the intrusion, a company spokesperson replied, “We cannot comment on that yet.”
Jackie Dove, Macworld
QuarkXPress has been revamped from top to bottom, starting with an under-the-hood conversion from the Carbon to the Cocoa programming environment and ending with a new cutting-edge graphics engine and a refreshed user interface. More than 50 feature enhancements promise to streamline the design process and improve the user experience.
Erica Sadun, TUAW
Post Haste enables you to create named directory hierarchies over and over again. You supply the project name and client name, and Post Haste builds your folders and skeleton files.
Mike Aldax, San Francisco Examiner
"Clear improvements" have been made in future technologies aimed at deterring thieves from stealing smartphones, District Attorney George Gascón said Friday.
Dan Goodin, Ars Technica
Researchers have uncovered a family of malware that targets both Windows and OS X. Janicab.A, as the trojan is known, is also unusual because it uses a YouTube page to direct infected machines to command-and-control (C&C) servers and follows a clever trick to conceal itself.
Christine Chan, AppAdvice
Dan Moren, Macworld
This simple $1 utility sits in your Mac’s menu bar and has a singular purpose: to keep you connected to your VPN. Just choose Turn On from the menu, and whenever your VPN disconnects, VPN AutoConnect will re-initiate the connection.
Lex Friedman, Macworld
Gregory Schmidt, New York Times
The comic book industry, after years of struggling to bolster sales, appears to have found a way to draw new readers, thanks in part to its push into the digital realm.
Andrew Kunesh, Macgasm
Ember allows its users to add websites, photos, applications, and other content to collections. You can annotate these items and share them to social networks or to local users via AirDrop. The app is meant to be used to collect different things that inspire you and to keep them all in one place.
Aldrin Calimlim, AppAdvice
Stephen Cass, IEEE Spectrum
The ability to watch broadcasts while out and about during times such as the aftermath of an explosion or power failure, instead of trying to glean information byte by byte via a smartphone browser, is an appealing one indeed.
Scott Gilbertson, Wired
Topher Kessler, CNET
If your mouse cursor disappears or freezes but the system is still responsive, then you can likely remedy the situation without hard-resetting your Mac.
Chris Holt, Macworld
Strategy games are commonplace on the mobile platform, but the number of games in the strategy genre is sadly lacking. Ace Patrol is not just a valentine to a bygone era in aviation, but a bygone era in gaming. That doesn't mean Ace Patrol is just another retro indulgence, however: It's one of the most clever, unique, and fun strategy games on iOS right now.
Andrew Leonard, Salon
And then everything worked. It just worked. And my crankiness has melted away. I love you, Silicon Valley! With the MacBook Air as my guide, I can now dream of a better future; a future of rainbows and unicorns and puppy love; a future in which the whole world works as well as my laptop.
Federico Viticci, MacStories
Version 1.1 is out today on the App Store, and it brings performance improvements, Open In support, and a Blur tool to pixelate sensitive information.
Lex Friedman, Macworld
Apple on Monday announced that the iTunes Store eclipsed 1 billion podcast subscriptions.
Michael deAgonia, Computerworld
If you don't need the ports or the Retina display, this Air is fantastic. It offers the best balance of mobility and power, with battery life that can exceed 10 hours with a little active power management. It feels far faster than the specs would indicate. And the battery life has outlasted any other Apple notebook I've ever used and reviewed; it's second only to the iPad.
Alec Meer, Macworld UK
This devious puzzler will either make you feel very smart or very stupid. As stripped down aesthetically as it could possibly be, but the lack of flashiness or interruption suits the thoughtful, careful challenges well. For the price, Ending is a straight-up bargain.
Dan Frakes, Macworld
The list of improvements and enhancements is long, but the short version is this: One of our all-time favorite utilities is now even better.
Lex Friedman, Macworld
"Last Thursday, an intruder attempted to secure personal information of our registered developers from our developer website. Sensitive personal information was encrypted and cannot be accessed, however, we have not been able to rule out the possibility that some developers’ names, mailing addresses, and/or email addresses may have been accessed. In the spirit of transparency, we want to inform you of the issue. We took the site down immediately on Thursday and have been working around the clock since then."
Mel Martin, TUAW
Zack Whittaker, CNET
Twitter has also been abuzz with reports that users have received password reset e-mails, including some repeated attempts.
David Chartier, Macworld
Ramy Khuffash, AppAdvice
Armando Rodriguez, Macworld
Topher Kessler, CNET
John Paczkowski and Liz Gannes, All Things D
HopStop’s area of cartographic expertise: Mass transit directions, something Apple’s mapping service doesn’t currently offer.
Yoni Heisler, TUAW
Allyson Kazmucha, iMore
Ted Samson, InfoWorld
Apple has said only that the Dev Center is "undergoing maintenance" but hasn't provided any details as to what is happening or how long the sites will be down.
Also:
• Apple says developer memberships and apps will not expire due to unexpected maintenance duration (Mike Beasley, 9 To 5 Mac)
David Rabinowitz, TidBITS
If you haven’t set foot in a classroom for years, you might think that educational technology still means desktop computers. They’re still commonplace, but newer and more sophisticated devices are also gaining ground.
Dan Moren, Macworld
As nice as it is to have the option of something like VLC, the vast majority of users probably will never have need for the app—but it’s good to know it’s there.
Aldrin Calimlim, AppAdvice
Jordan Merrick, Mactuts+
John Paczkowski, All Things D
Locationary is a sort of Wikipedia for local business listings. It uses crowdsourcing and a federated data exchange platform called Saturn to collect, merge and continuously verify a massive database of information on local businesses around the world, solving one of location’s biggest problems: out-of-date information.
Dan Frakes, Macworld
Actions is a clever way to get easier access to common tasks and actions. It makes your iPad feel like an extension of your Mac. It’s especially great for people who want macros but don’t want to have to remember a bunch of keyboard shortcuts or fill their Mac’s screen with a DragThing-like button window.
Scott Buscemi, 9 To 5 Mac
Andrew Cunningham, Ars Technica
One notable issue not addressed by the update is a problem with file transfer speeds over 802.11ac networks.
Bonnie Cha, All Things D
Patently Apple
Federico Viticci, MacStories
Agenda 4.0 is a solid calendar client that can be a great solution for users of iOS calendars and Reminders. I like how Agenda can give me a complete overview of a day’s events and reminders, and I appreciate the focus on inter-app communication with support for Chrome, Drafts, and Fantastical.
W. Andrew Ewell, Salon
My worry isn’t that tech companies inflate their sense of importance in our daily lives, or that they might sometimes reach beyond the limits of their scope and relevance in order to sell more widgets. That’s their prerogative, and perhaps also their imperative. My worry is that we allow them.
Allyson Kazmucha, iMore
If you use Google Maps for directions on your iPhone or iPad, you've undoubtedly ran into a spotty service area and had issues retrieving directions. Caching maps for offline use before hand can prevent something like this from happening.
Jeff Blagdon, The Verge
Edward Mendelson, PC Magazine
TJ Luoma, TUAW
These automation tools – Keyboard Maestro, Hazel, TextExpander – won't make you think that you are living with The Jetsons, but they can smooth out rough edges in your computing life, making it less frustrating and more enjoyable. That's why automation continues to be a big focus for me as I look for the "little things" that add up to a better experience using my Mac.
Chris Holt, Macworld
Joe White, AppAdvice
Brian Beam, Macworld
Mike Wehner, TUAW
Max Eddy, PC Magazine
Candy Crush Saga (free) is a quintessential time-waster casual game for iOS and Android that is as easy to get addicted to as it is to play.If you want mindless color-matching, and can withstand the temptation of in-app purchases, then look no further.
Simon Sharwood, The Register
Apple was targeted because its App Store offered apps from two outfits, PokerStars and 888 Poker, both of which offered the chance to gamble with real money.
Edward Mendelson, The New York Review Of Books
AppleScript, a simple-to-use programming language (purists call it a “scripting language”) is unlike anything else in the digital universe, even in the lawless Wild West of Linux and Android. AppleScript gives any individual worshipper much of the autonomy and freedom in using a computer that is otherwise possible only for the priesthood of programmers—and in iOS is limited even for programmers, in part through the design of iOS itself, in part because of Apple’s watchful, restrictive eye.
Kaylie Moise, Macgasm
It’s essentially a finance-tracking app that uses a simple calendar-like design to help you keep track of earnings, bills, and expenses. Like the app description says, it’s as easy “as adding events to a calendar!”
Richard Devine, iMore
The new stuff is great, and some of it – traffic in navigation in particular – maybe long overdue, but still a welcome addition. Maps on iPad is great to have, and some of the design elements are excellent, just as we've come to expect from Google. But, it's janky to use at times which isn't good, and we've come to expect so much better from Google's iOS apps.
Mel Martin, TUAW
Lets you capture irregular objects by clicking on points and then dragging those points to create a curve.
Dan Moren, Macworld
Stephen Dean, The Register
It’s a shame that the 2013 update wasn’t a little more ambitious, but the 11-inch MacBook Air is still one of the most attractive ultraportable, netbook-size laptops currently available.
Josh Centers, TidBITS
Federico Viticci, MacStories
Richard Devine, iMore
Aldrin Calimlim, AppAdvice
Version 7.0 of iCab Mobile introduced a drawing gestures feature that lets you specify gestures not only for opening websites but also for triggering actions.
Richard Devine, iMore
Marco Tabini, Macworld
The fact that the world’s largest tech company may have foregone the traditional approach towards upgrades can only signal to customers that a fairly-priced app is a good idea even if you have to fork over the full price every time a major update comes out.
Jeff Blagdon, The Verge
Lex Friedman, Macworld
The ZaggKeys Cover and ZaggKeys Folio are the first two iPad mini keyboards that I can type on without questioning my sanity. Though I prefer the Cover, either is a great option for iPad mini enthusiasts who yearn for an easier typing experience but don’t want to lug around a separate, full-size Bluetooth keyboard.
Rene Ritchie, iMore
While iOS includes its own auto-correction feature that can do some of the same things, any Mac user worth their geek cred already lives in Text Expander, and this way all existing snippets will "just work" in Vesper, the same way they do everywhere else. Typing ubiquity.
Federico Viticci, MacStories
A clever idea by Steve Streza: Ohai is a journal app that uses your App.net account to safely store photos and places you’ve checked in.
Joseph Keller, iMore
Microsoft has released OWA for iPhone and iPad, letting users access their Outlook email, calendars, and contacts. These apps are enhanced versions of the Outlook Web App, with added functionality for iOS devices, including voice actions and the ability to receive push notifications.
Jordan Kahn, 9 To 5 Mac
Joel Santo Domingo, PC Magazine
We still recommend the 11-inch model for those who need portability more than any other factor, but the fact of the matter is that the 13-inch model is ultimately a better buy and continues as our Editors' Choice for mainstream ultraportable laptops.
Roman Loyola, Macworld
If you're looking for a simple place to store notes, passwords, and to-do lists—something that's slightly above OS X's Notes app—Bluenote could work for you.
Lucian Constantin, IDG News Service
Apple displays double extensions for security reasons in the Mac OS X file manager, said Sean Sullivan, a security advisor at F-Secure, Tuesday via email. “Here, the RLO trick is being used to counter that and to make the .app appear to be a .pdf.”
Rene Ritchie, iMore
Today, with the launch of Logic Pro X one of the longest running questions in App Store history has, perhaps, finally been answered: What will Apple do when one of their major apps gets updated? And that answer appears to be, charge $199 for the new version, same way they charged $199 for the old version just yesterday.
Christopher Breen, Macworld
Thanks to its easier-to-use interface, it becomes a viable next step for GarageBand users. Those seeking drum tracks that sound like the real thing rather than loops will be impressed by Logic’s Drummer tracks. Bass players not entirely committed to their hardware rigs (or who can’t lug them around everywhere they hope to record) will appreciate having modeled amps and speakers. Keyboard players seeking traditional timbres should be thrilled with the Retro Synth and B3 instruments. Producers and engineers are already well aware of Logic’s depth and attractions. They simply get more expansive with this release. And everyone with an iPad should be happy with the convenience wrought by Logic Remote.
Jordan Kahn, 9 To 5 Mac
Jim Dalrymple, The Loop
Logic Pro X is the best music software release I’ve seen from Apple in a while. They added a lot of pro features, but at the same time managed to make the app more approachable—that’s a difficult thing to do.
Aldrin Calimlim, AppAdvice
Bob LeVitus, Houston Chronicle
Emil Protalinski, The Next Web
The security firm Malwarebytes first spotted this latest threat, noting that criminals have ported the ransomware scheme to OS X and are even exploiting a Safari-specific feature.
Topher Kessler, CNET
There may be several reasons why Apple's Dictation service will not convert spoken word to text in OS X.
David Pierce, The Verge
There's exactly one reason you should buy the 11-inch MacBook Air: you want the absolute smallest computer you can buy, and you don't want a Windows PC. There are plenty of reasons to buy an Air, from the fantastic battery life to the world-beating keyboard and trackpad, but only buy the $999 11-inch model if small is your endgame.
Peter Cohen, iMore
The free app provides you with access to the free web site's compendium of movie knowledge, using an interface that's thoroughly optimized for mobile devices. And the new 3.3 release adds, for the first time, the ability to buy movie tickets from directly within the app. That function is available only to U.S. citizens, for now.
Federico Viticci, MacStories
Users can now leverage iOS’ geofencing to tell OmniFocus to sync its online database in the background and automatically whenever they enter or leave a specific location.
Agen G. N. Schmitz, TidBITS
Webin has added Feedly support to version 2.2 of its ReadKit RSS reader and bookmarking app.
Joanna Chiu and Ng Kang-chung, South China Morning Post
Apple has promised to "fully investigate" reports that a woman was killed by an electric shock from her iPhone 5 while charging it at home.
A spokeswoman for the technology company said: "We are deeply saddened to learn of this tragic incident and offer our condolences to the ... family. We will fully investigate and co-operate with authorities in this matter."
Joe White, AppAdvice
Michael Brown, Macworld
If you’ve purchased a new MacBook Air, you’ll get significantly better performance with the 802.11ac Time Capsule than you will with Apple's 802.11n Time Capsule. If you’re using an older Mac client with an 802.11n Wi-Fi adapter, my benchmarks indicate the new Time Capsule will also deliver much higher performance—provided Apple fixes the file-sharing issue, that is.
Stuart Dredge, The Observer
Hollin Jones, MacFormat
Recording sound from a record into your Mac is much the same as recording any sound source with a microphone, except the cabling is slightly different. Hook up the turntable either to a specialised USB audio interface with phono inputs, available from as little as £80, or connect the record player to your Mac's audio line in port using one of the aforementioned cables.
Aldrin Calimlim, AppAdvice
Bugshot is an app that lets you annotate screenshots for reporting visual bugs in iOS apps.
Sarah Guarino, 9 To 5 Mac
Aldrin Calimlim, AppAdvice
Ben Guerrette sure loves adding geometric effects to photos. As an independent developer, he has released not one, but two iOS apps that enhance photos with geometric effects of various shapes and sizes.
Richard Devine, iMore
Topher Kessler, CNET
You can greatly narrow search results in the Finder by adding logical operators to include and exclude specific files.
Steven Sande, TUAW
Mac Gamer HQ
Mark Crump, GigaOM
It’s still missing one pretty big piece, but it’s also a really useful service for those who use both Mac and Windows.
Lex Friedman, Macworld
Because of the way Dropbox works, it offers one other significant potential advantage over iCloud: Developers who are working with Datastore can actually peek directly at the syncing data on Dropbox’s servers as they test and build their apps, a level of visibility that iCloud simply hasn’t offered to date.
Macworld spoke with several developers to get their thoughts on Datastore as compared to iCloud. Expectations are mixed.
Jeffrey Mincey, Bohemian Boomer
Sarah Jacobsson Purewal, TechHive
Instead of defending a static tower or central point while enemies move through your map, Roaming Fortress asks you to defend a moving tower.
David Sirota, Salon
Why are cash-starved school districts sending public funds to Apple -- while laying off teachers? Follow the money.
Richard Devine, iMore
Starting today, for just two days only, Best Buy is offering a $200 gift card when you trade in your old but working iPad 2 or iPad 3. The gift card is valid to use towards any in-store or online purchase, so if you wanted to pick up a new iPad, or iPad mini, you're looking at a hefty saving when you trade-in your old one.
Christopher Breen, Macworld
The only thing that will prevent me from using it on into the future is the requirement that I rent rather than own it. Audition is a wonderful tool, but its talents and audience make it an inappropriate choice for subscription-only access.
Kirk McElhearn, Macworld
In this week’s column, I look at a few very different topics. One common question I get is about the iTunes Store and sending gifts to other countries; another concerns joining two music files to make one; and I also explain how you can cross-fade songs on an iOS device.
Topher Kessler, CNET
If a program cannot be accessed because it's outside of the limits of your display, here are a couple of options you can try to restore it.
Jefferson Graham, USA Today
Agen G. N. Schmitz, TidBITS
Erica Ogg, GigaOM
UpTo is merging the need for a better calendar with its original premise, which was to create social connections around activities and events. In addition to syncing with Outlook, iOS Calendar, Google Calendar and Yahoo Calendar, users can follow streams of activities and RSVP or talk about the event with friends right in the app.
Kaylie Moise, Macgasm
Tiny Thief is a point-and-click puzzle game that requires you to find hidden objects along your adventure.
Ilene Hoffman, TUAW
If you open and close many files throughout the course of a day, at some point you may forget what you named a file or even which program you used to create or open a file. Recent Menu from developer Tim Schroeder addresses this annoyance with a menu item app.
Matt Brian, The Verge
Apple has said it has "lead a fact-finding visit" to Bangka Island, Indonesia to identify if its suppliers are sourcing tin from unregulated and illegal mines. In an update to its Supplier Responsibility page on its website, Apple confirmed it has funded a new environmental task group to investigate mining operations in the area to "better understand the situation." The move addresses a sustained Friends of the Earth campaign calling for Apple to publicly come clean about where the tin in its smartphones comes from.
Agen G. N. Schmitz, TidBITS
DEVONnote and all three versions of DEVONthink provide support for importing Evernote notes (including names, tags, and dates), as well as importing references from the Bookends reference management app.
Nick Spence, Macworld UK
Music discovery app Shazam automatically identifies music around you with great success.
Michael Muchmore, PC Magazine
Dan Moren, Macworld
With all the advances and conveniences that iOS offers, there’s one place that OS X continues to trump Apple’s mobile platform: automation. But with the appearance of IFTTT for iPhone, that gap is perhaps narrower than it once was.
Serenity Caldwell, Macworld
Cal, Any.do’s new calendaring app, attempts to show you your schedule in a way that lets you maximize your free time during a day.
Jonathan Seff, Macworld
Federico Viticci, MacStories
Christopher Breen, Macworld
You’ve likely found yourself in this position more than once: Your Mac is playing audio that you’d love a permanent copy of, but the application you’re using doesn’t provide a way to do that. While you could turn to one of the few commercial Mac applications that perform this task, there’s a way to go about it that won’t cost you a nickel.
Heng-Cheong Leong, MyAppleMenu
This is just a short note to tell you that SushiReader, the little RSS news reader app for Mac OS X that I've build for myself, has been updated to version 2.0.2. This version includes bug-fixes, as well as an activity window to show currently-refreshing subscriptions, as well as a better (in my humble opinion) full-screen view.
Christian Donlan, Eurogramer.net
Chris Barylick, O'Grady's PowerPage
Joseph Roth, InfoWorld
Bill Stiteler, TechnologyTell
Grab your two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew and off-brand cheesy snacks; Knights of Pen and Paper +1 Edition is a love-letter to old school tabletop dungeon crawls, told with a lot of humor and 16 bit graphics. A delightful combination of sitting around a table rolling dice and playing a Gameboy RPG, it overcomes repetitious gameplay with humor.
Topher Kessler, CNET
In addition to system menus, menu extras in OS X can be quickly accessed with a keystroke.
Laura Miller, Salon
After settling with the DOJ, publishers were allowed to continue selling their e-books via retailers using a commission-based system called the agency model. However, the agency model typically allows publishers to set the retail prices of their titles. Under the terms of the settlement, retailers are now allowed to discount these e-books, but only until 2014. “After the DoJ sanctions end in 2014,” Albanese wrote, “publishers will largely have control over final consumer prices, and thus, in 2014, you will likely see e-book prices rise, depending on other market factors, of course.”
Jon Brodkin, Ars Technica
In its opening statement, Apple identified five "essential links" the plaintiffs had to establish to prove Apple led the conspiracy. These links, Cote wrote, were that the publishers signed Apple’s agency agreements with an MFN and price caps, that the MFN sharpened the publishers' incentives to demand agency agreements from Amazon, that the agency demands convinced Amazon of the futility of resistance, that Amazon agreed to agency deals in circumstances in which it would not have if not for the Apple MFN, and that publishers raised prices to the price caps as per the agreements with Apple.
"All of the 'links' that Apple identified in its opening statement were established at trial, and Apple did not argue otherwise in its summation," Cote wrote. "Apple similarly abandoned by summation its theory that Apple was unaware that the Publisher Defendants would use their new pricing authority to raise e-book prices; over the course of the trial, Apple’s witnesses admitted that they expected the Publisher Defendants to raise their e-book prices to Apple’s price caps."
Timothy B. Lee, Washington Post
[Judge Cote] goes through a list of all the individual clauses [in Apple's contracts with publishers], and says none of those are problematic individually. [But Judge Cote ruled against Apple because of] her sense that the launching pad for this particular negotiation was the lure of higher prices.
But Apple can make a defense of each of these clauses. I run into these cases with some frequency. You teach a case and you say what’s the practical advice? The line between the legal and the illegal seems so thin. Apple’s trying to make a decision in a very narrow window [the negotiations with publishers lasted from November 2009 to January 2010], and we’re going to scrutinize it at leisure after the fact.
Adam C. Engst, TidBITS
Cote’s 160-page opinion is remarkably well-written and is a fascinating read, at least if you’re interested in the chronology and minutia of this case. I’ve read the entire thing, and have found it far more compelling than the soap opera media coverage of the trial, which took place from 3 June 2103 through 20 June 2013. It also clarifies numerous points and questions that came up during and since the trial. Rather than attempt to summarize the entire opinion, I’m going to focus on answering questions surrounding it, based on what Judge Cote wrote.
Allyson Kazmucha, iMore
If you're a fan of Dr. Seuss, Oceanhouse Media has just released yet another one of the popular stories in iPhone and iPad format. Aside from reading Bartholomew and the Oobleck, there are many interactive bonus features available as well.
Adi Robertson, The Verge
Any individual agreement between Apple and the publishers, including contracts that set prices, could have been legal. But the Sherman Antitrust Act prohibits firms from collaborating "with the effect of raising, depressing, fixing, pegging, or stabilizing the price of a commodity," and bans "horizontal conspiracies," where a group of companies who should be competitors band together to raise their bottom line.
But while Apple clearly wasn’t directly competing with any publishing house, it could still be liable if it had been part of the scheme and helped to make it possible. To win its case, the Justice Department needed to first convince Cote that a price-fixing conspiracy between publishers existed, and then that Apple had been a "knowing participant" who facilitated the agreement.
Unfortunately for Apple, Cote decided that the Justice Department had proved its case on both counts.
Larry Neumeister, Associated Press
Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr says Apple didn’t conspire to fix e-book pricing and would continue to fight the “false accusations.”
Also:
• Apple’s Chances on an E-Book Ruling Appeal Are Lousy, Say Legal Scholars (John Paczkowski, AllThingsD): Samuelson’s point: Apple argued that the facts show no conspiracy in restraint of trade. But Cote found that the company’s actions were a per se violation of antitrust law. In other words, they were inherently illegal, so there was no need to prove that they had any anticompetitive effect on the e-books market. And Cote’s opinion relies so heavily on facts that it leaves very little room for an appellate court reversal.
Aldrin Calimlim, AppAdvice
Jonathan Stempel, Reuters
A federal judge on Wednesday ruled that Apple Inc conspired to raise the retail prices of e-books, and said a trial for damages will follow.
The decision by U.S. District Judge Denise Cote in Manhattan is a victory for the U.S. government and various states, which the judge said are entitled to injunctive relief.
Lex Friedman, Macworld
Moment is tidy, elegant, and makes quick work of updating your Facebook status and keeping tabs on your notifications. If those features appeal to you, the app’s sure to please.
Joe Kissell, Macworld
Dante D'Orazio, The Verge
At its first ever developer conference today, the company revealed a new service that takes Dropbox away from just files and folders. With a new API called Datastores, the company is hoping to power the way third-party apps sync data like contacts, to-dos, game saves, and more across multiple platforms in near realtime.
Scott Buscemi, 9 To 5 Mac
Yoni Heisler, TUAW
The feature, however, isn't yet live in every city and will be starting out in San Francisco exclusively before rolling out to additional locations in the coming weeks.
Yoni Heisler, TUAW
Aldrin Calimlim, AppAdvice
Andrew Stevens, 148Apps
Jonathan Stempel, Reuters
This came after Apple issued to Amazon a covenant not to sue over the online retailer's use of the term, eliminating the need for Amazon to pursue a counterclaim seeking permission.
"We no longer see a need to pursue our case," Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet said. "With more than 900,000 apps and 50 billion downloads, customers know where they can purchase their favorite apps."
Jeffery Battersby, Macworld
While Office for iPhone may provide a modicum of value for some users, the reality is that most Microsoft Office users will see no benefit from this app. The app’s Office 365 requirement, poor user interface, and odd editing tools combine to make Office for iPhone something you should only use if you have to.
Cliff Joseph, Macworld UK
NoteSuite isn’t the most polished note-taking app we’ve ever seen, but it does have one big advantage over rivals such as Evernote in that it uses Apple’s iCloud service to sync your notes and to-do lists across multiple devices.
Aldrin Calimlim, AppAdvice
QuikIO, the quick and easy utility app that lets you stream, download, or share any files from your computers to your iDevices, has just been updated to version 3.0. QuikIO 3.0 brings support for video subtitles, playlist creation and importing, more audio codecs, passcode, search, and photo zoom.
Cliff Joseph, Macworld UK
Max Payne 3 is a very violent and bloody game, and one that should definitely be kept away from the kids. It is, however, very stylish and well told, and will certainly appeal to fans of Quentin Tarantino.
Richard Devine, iMore
Version 4.4 adds an auto-pause function that kicks in and pauses your music the instant you mute your device, a handy touch to have, and slightly easier than turning on the screen first to manually pause, for sure. Also, in an effort to improve playback quality, Pandora claims to have improved buffering so if you find yourself on a "flaky connection" you shouldn't experience as much stuttering.
Aldrin Calimlim, AppAdvice
Allyson Kazmucha, iMore
Sugar Rush for iPhone and iPad is sure to grab your attention if you fancy playing either Candy Crush or Bejeweled Blitz. The general game play is easier but the concept and the reliance on your friends to give you lives is very much like Candy Crush.
Brent Dirks, AppAdvice
Federico Viticci, MacStories
Reading a DM in Twitter for iOS will now automatically mark it as read in Twitter for Mac, the Twitter website (both desktop and mobile versions), TweetDeck, and Twitter for Android.
Andrew Childress, Mactuts+
Skitch maintains a lightweight and easy to use feel that has made it a must-use, for me, on the Mac. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to use Skitch to take, crop, resize and annotate screenshots taken on your Mac — and much more besides.
Topher Kessler, CNET
Sometimes OS X's Disk Utility may show errors with a drive when it's run from one location, but will describe the drive as perfectly healthy when run from another.
Josh Centers, TidBITS
Originally an app designed as a viewer for read-later services, such as Instapaper, Pocket, and Readability, ReadKit now supports bookmarking services Pinboard and Delicious, plus RSS syncing services Fever, NewsBlur, Feed Wrangler, Feedbin, and it even has its own internal RSS support. The effort has paid off.
Christopher Breen, Macworld
Like Spaces, Total Spaces will display a menu bar icon that indicates the desktop you’re currently viewing. From this icon you can select the desktop you’d like to view or choose an overview, which shows you large thumbnails of each desktop.
Aldrin Calimlim, AppAdvice
Basically, the app is an audio recorder that, especially when it’s allowed to run in the background, lets you capture moments from a few seconds or even from a few minutes back. These moments, which you would otherwise miss out on, can range from instructions to meeting proceedings, from your friend’s jokes to your baby’s first words.
Joe Kisell, Macworld
You may not be able to achieve a completely paperless life, but that doesn’t mean the paperless office is a myth or failure, any more than the fact that you can still drive a car makes airplanes a failure. Going paperless doesn’t have to be all or nothing to be effective.
Derrick Story, Macworld
Agen G. N. Schmitz, TidBITS
The new release adds actions for popping open the Keyboard Maestro status menu as well as for setting Safari and Google Chrome checkbox and radio button behaviors, conceals probable passwords in the Clipboard history, improves accessibility detection and behavior under OS X 10.9 Mavericks, and enables you to read the plain text version of the Clipboard when desired.
Richard Devine, iMore
Along with the iPhone 4 and 4S, the iPod classic is the last of the 30-pin devices.
Also:
• The iPod classic: the long goodbye? (Sanjiv Sathiah, Electronista
June Thomas, Slate
Candy Crush teaches me nothing and steals my time and money. I can’t stop playing it.
Adam Dachis, Lifehacker
Tucker Cummings, Tapscape
If you play a lot of “find the hidden object” games, you’ve probably noticed that many of these games are quite similar to each other. What makes Sophy Adventures so interesting to me is the way that it attempts to break the traditional hidden object mold with some interesting features.
Khidr Suleman, IT Pro
Office for Mobile is useful for those who want to view documents and carry out minor edits on the move. It's not built as a comprehensive standalone app hence why it comes free for those with an Office 365 subscription. We would prefer an iPad version and the ability to sync with non-Microsoft cloud repositories as well.
Dave Caolo, TUAW
Allyson Kazmucha, iMore
Despicable Me: Minion Rush is highly addicting and if you're anything like me, you've probably spent several runs trying to collect bananas, Gru tokens, and more in order to advance.
Rene Ritchie, iMore
OS X Daily
The default font size for messages and texts on the iPhone is fairly small, and while it may look fine to many users, it’s simply too tiny to be easily readable for others. iOS makes it easy to change the text size though, offering a wide range of options that are suitable for just about everyones visual preferences.
William Fenton, ITProPortal.com
Whether you are writing a novel or a review of a word processor, Scrivener is a reliable companion for your journey. If my experience proves the least bit representative, using Scrivener will take some acclimatisation. Most writers are accustomed to contorting their writing around their word processors. Using Scrivener will demand trust – trust that you can step away from Word, and trust that those fragments will coalesce into a manuscript. Rest assured, you can, and they will. (And where they have not, I cannot fault the software).
Tera Thomas O'Brien, Tera Talks
Joe White, AppAdvice
Finest Hour is a brand new turn-based strategy game for the iPhone and iPod touch, in which players must control an army of tanks and fight across the battlefields of Europe in a fun, exciting multiplayer mode of gameplay.
Marco Tabini, Macworld
If you listen to podcasts, Instacast belongs on your Mac, particularly if you find yourself switching between devices when you're on the go.
Josh Centers, TidBITS
Star Walk might not be the newest app on the block, but it’s mature, packed with features, and a lot of fun. It’s a great excuse to get outdoors on a warm summer night and a wonderful way to introduce children to astronomy.
Ted Landau, Macworld
Aldrin Calimlim, AppAdvice
Matchbook, the app that lets you bookmark your favorite restaurants, bars, pubs and shops, has just been updated to version 2.0.
Kirk McElhearn, Macworld
In a grab-bag installment of The iTunes Guy, I look at how to ensure that tags and metadata get retained when you re-rip CDs, how to deauthorize computers for iTunes Store accounts, and how to change the name of your iTunes library for Home Sharing.
Jake Vander, Touch Arcade
The appeal of Dots is in the execution.
Laura Hazard Owen, PaidContent
You know you can blog with Tumblr or WordPress, or self-publish a book on Kindle or iBooks. But what's next for the publisher who wants to sell a mobile-native magazine, or the blogger who's sick of messing with plugins?
Laura Hudson, Wired
And while Image comic books will still be offered for sale on ComiXology, iBooks, and every other platform where they were previously available, Image’s Director of Business Development Ron Richards says that offering the direct-to-consumer downloads is important. “There’s something to be said for the ownership factor. If readers purchase a book on ComiXology, that may be their library [on the service] but from what I understand that could be revoked. And God forbid, if ComiXology goes under or their data center has an earthquake all their hard drives go away — then you’ve got nothing.”
Smon Jary, Macworld UK
Michael Grothaus, TUAW
David Price, Macworld UK
Austere, melancholy, yet often hilarious, LIMBO Game is a work of art. Puzzle gaming experts may consume its evocative delights so quickly that they're left demanding more, while the less able may find the steep learning curve towards the end somewhat taxing, but both groups will find something here to love.
Joe White, AppAdvice
Yu Wei and Gao Yuan, China Daily
Apple users in China may no longer be buying apps that cost 99 cents in the US for 6 yuan because the company is adopting new pricing tiers in several of its international App Stores.
David Pogue, New York Times
Thomas Brand, Egg Freckles
The public unveiling of each new version of Mac OS X has brought a new default desktop picture, and a new hunt to find a full-res copy of that wallpaper before the official release.
Dave Caolo, TUAW
A lunch hour app is one you can pick up and play at anytime. There's no story arc, save points or asset management. A game can be as brief or as involved as you like. There are many games that fit the bill here, and we've selected our favorites.
Paul Lloyd, Macworld UK
Joseph Keller, iMore
The objective of these new levels is to protect the eggs in the nest from advancing pigs using an upgraded Red Bird, which can now be directed towards their target after launch.
John Markoff, New York Times
Jordan Kahn, 9 To 5 Mac
Horace Dediu, Asymco
In years gone by I would have said that Brand management was Steve Jobs’ direct responsibility. Today I would say that it’s something that needs a direct manager. This is something for which Paul Deneve might be well suited.
Charles Moore, MacPrices.net
Charles McLellan, ZDNet
It may lack an ultra-high-resolution display and touch functionality, but there's little else to fault it.
James Galbraith, Macworld
Aldrin Calimlim, AppAdvice
Aldrin Calimlim, AppAdvice
Limbo, the popular monochromatic puzzle platformer created by the Danish indie game developer Playdead, has finally gone out of iOS development limbo and has finally appeared in the App Store.
Michael Steeber, 9 To 5 Mac
Agen G. N. Schmitz, TidBITS
Jonathan Seff, Macworld
iFlicks does its job with a clean, responsive, and very Mac-like interface that makes working with the software intuitive and fun.
Jonathan Seff, Macworld
Looking to liberate the movies in your DVD collection from the confines of their plastic-and-metal prison so you can enjoy them on your iPhone, iPod, iPad, and Apple TV? Well look no further—all you need to do is get some free software and follow a few steps.
Macworld
Ryan Whitwam, PC Magazine
An app called Actions for iPad lets you build a custom palette of buttons that control just about anything on your Windows or OS X computer.
Topher Kessler, CNET
Tom Stafford, BBC
Sensing phantom phone vibrations is a strangely common experience. Around 80% of us have imagined a phone vibrating in our pockets when it’s actually completely still. Almost 30% of us have also heard non-existent ringing. Are these hallucinations ominous signs of impending madness caused by digital culture?
Not at all. In fact, phantom vibrations and ringing illustrate a fundamental principle in psychology.
Poornima Gupta, Reuters
Deneve, who joined Yves Saint Laurent in 2011 after holding senior positions at fashion brands Courreges, Nina Ricci and Lanvin, held several sales and marketing jobs at Apple in Europe between 1990 and 1997.
Zac Hall, 9 To 5 Mac
Mike Schramm, TUAW
The graphics have been updated to look better than ever, and if nothing else, this sequel offers over 80 new levels to play through. There are also new ways to watch replays, including ghosts and an Everyplay tie-in.
Richard Devine, iMore
James Cull, Mactuts+
Graham K. Rogers, AMITIAE
Aaron Souppouris, The Verge
Richard Devine, iMore
Aldrin Calimlim, AppAdvice
Macworld
When customers purchase a Mac for college, they’ll receive a $100 App Store Gift Card, alongside the usual educational pricing discounts—up to $200—that the company offers.
Laura Miller, Salon
For Apple, the stakes remain high. If it is found to have violated antitrust law with the iBookstore, it will not be asked to pay damages. Instead, the DOJ will likely demand that Apple clean up its act and insist on overseeing its operations, perhaps as it did in settling the antitrust case against Microsoft in 2001. E-books make up a small sliver of iTunes sales, but the rest of the content offered there — music, apps, video — is obtained on very similar terms. Having the DOJ hovering over and meddling in future agreements would decidedly cramp Apple’s style. There are also pending and potential civil suits filed by states’ attorneys general and consumer groups seeking damages that would get a boost from a decision against Apple.
But for the Big Six publishers, this “defeat” has a surprising upside. They appear to have achieved much of what they wanted in the first place, which was not money but a more competitive e-book market and more control over the prices (and perceived value) of their books.
Nathan Olivarez-Giles, The Verge
Agen G.N. Schmitz, TidBITS
Ben Bajarin, TechPinions
After a week and a half with the new MacBook Air I can testify that this notebook more than delivers on its battery life claims.
John-Michael Bond, TUAW
Ben Lovejoy, 9 To 5 Mac
Fraser Speirs
大元 隆志, Yahoo! Japan
先月ロシアで「iWatch」の商標が登録されていたことが話題になったが、日本でもアップルが「iWatch」の商標を登録していたことがわかった。出願日は6月3日。
Also:
• Apple files for 'iWatch' trademark in Japan (Michael Grothaus, TUAW)
David Chartier
For the first time, a MacBook has trounced the iPad’s battery life, but there are still some important differences in where that newfound portability can take you.
Chance Miller, 9 To 5 Mac
Kelly Hodgkins, TUAW
Here is a list of popular third-party RSS reading software and their current syncing status.
Also:
• The Big Comparison Of Google Reader RSS Feed Alternatives (Barry Schwartz, Marketing Land)
Brett Terpstra
It’s a simple app which “slices” an article, pasted text or text file into pages and display them, one paragraph per page. It’s designed to make reading long form articles easier for those of us who don’t do as well with reading long pages.