Software

Retina Mac Apps

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This site keeps track of all the apps that have been optimized for Apple’s Retina display.

Don’t panic

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Paul Haddad from Tapbots:

There’s been a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt generated by Twitter’s latest announcement. I wanted to let everyone know that the world isn’t ending, Tweetbot for Mac is coming out soon, Tweetbot for iOS isn’t going anywhere. So sit down, grab a towel and let’s go over some of these API changes.

TextExpander

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The new <a href=”http://loopu.in/P7xRCA>TextExpander 4 from Smile dramatically increases the options for automating your work with advanced “fill-in” snippet types. They are great for creating form letter templates that can be personalized on the fly. Check out the video demo and see the new multi-line text fields, multiple choice popups, and optional text blocks in action.

Registered TextExpander users can upgrade for $15. (There’s no charge for the upgrade if you purchased after January 15, 2012.)

Still haven’t tried TextExpander? <a href=”http://loopu.in/P7xRCA>Download the free demo! There’s even a new Snippet Creation Snippet to get you started.

Twitter: Drop dead

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Gruber summed up my feelings nicely, including pointing out that its own app started out as a third-party client.

An exclusive social network

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Joe Caiati:

For many, the lure of an exclusive social network and the lust for reaching the masses will keep most attached to both services; including myself. As much as I would rather just be navigating to one unified service, App.net has the potential to disrupt my social experience. A disruption that can turn out to be pleasant surprise or another failed startup.

Joe brings up some good points about App.net. It’s intriguing, but right now people are splitting their time between the two. Until it gains critical mass, we really won’t know how it will do. But the price — any price — may stop that in its tracks.

Many have asked if I supported App.net. I tried but something happened during the sign-up process. I contacted them via the support email and tried on Twitter to get a response, but never heard back. So, no I didn’t pay for the service, but I would have.

TextExpander [Sponsor]

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The new <a href=”http://loopu.in/P7xRCA>TextExpander 4 from Smile dramatically increases the options for automating your work with advanced “fill-in” snippet types. They are great for creating form letter templates that can be personalized on the fly. Check out the video demo and see the new multi-line text fields, multiple choice popups, and optional text blocks in action.

Registered TextExpander users can upgrade for $15. (There’s no charge for the upgrade if you purchased after January 15, 2012.)

Still haven’t tried TextExpander? <a href=”http://loopu.in/P7xRCA>Download the free demo! There’s even a new Snippet Creation Snippet to get you started.

Twitter posts stats from Olympics

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We saw more than 150 million Tweets about the Olympics over the past 16 days. Let’s take a look at some of the big trends within that massive conversation.

Truly some great moments at the Olympics.

Microsoft standing up for what’s right

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Ed Bott:

When Microsoft shipped its Release Preview of Windows 8 in June, it announced that the default browser, Internet Explorer 10, would have the Do Not Track (DNT) signal enabled by default. That action unleashed a heated debate in the Tracking Protection Working Group of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).To the advertising and analytics companies that make up the tracking industry, this issue is an existential one. If the default browser in the world’s most popular operating system is set to disallow tracking, the effect would be profoundly disruptive to companies that live and die by their ability to follow users around the web.

Kudos to Microsoft for doing the right thing.

Pixelmator 2.1 available on Mac App Store

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Another great release from the Pixelmator Team.

Pixelmator 2.1 is a major update introducing several new features and improvements, including the following:* Retina-Ready: Both Pixelmator’s friendly user interface and its powerful image editing engine are now optimized for the Retina display. * iCloud: Built right into the app and keeps your Pixelmator work up to date across all your Macs. * Effects Browser: The best and the most fun way to browse: instantly preview and quickly apply special effects or add color adjustments to images. * New Effects: Use the new Vintage, Miniaturize, Black and White, Rain, and Snow effects. * Alignment Guides: Quickly position, align, and evenly distribute objects in your Pixelmator compositions with pinpoint accuracy. * OS X Mountain Lion Support: Pixelmator takes full advantage of all the latest and greatest technologies.

Twitter’s future platform

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David Chartier:

Twitter can get the consistency it wants and the revenue it needs by changing the direction of its platform, but there is more than one way to adjust a ship’s course. There’s still time to try less turbulent tactics.

Hacked. Hard

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Mat Honan:

At 4:50 PM, someone got into my iCloud account, reset the password and sent the confirmation message about the reset to the trash. My password was a 7 digit alphanumeric that I didn’t use elsewhere. When I set it up, years and years ago, that seemed pretty secure at the time. But it’s not. Especially given that I’ve been using it for, well, years and years. My guess is they used brute force to get the password (see update) and then reset it to do the damage to my devices.

I’ve known Mat for a lot of years and he’s a really smart guy. This should be a lesson to all of us.

Bring back Web Sharing in Mountain Lion

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Adam Engst:

But it’s important to distinguish the marketing discussion of new features from release notes about precisely what has changed, and one change might have escaped your notice: the elimination of the Web Sharing options in the Sharing pane of System Preferences.

Adam gives a couple of suggestions on how to bring the feature back for those that need it.

Mountain Lion tops 3 million downloads

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Apple on Monday said OS X Mountain Lion topped 3 million downloads in just four days, making it the most successful operating system release in the company’s history. Mountain Lion is only available through the Mac App Store and costs $19.99.

Facebook posts a net loss of $157 million, but met expectations

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The social network earned a non-GAAP 12-cent profit, on target with expectations, on revenues of $1.18 billion, the latter up 32% and a tad above estimates.Facebook suffered a net loss of $157 million, or 8 cents a share, largely because of accounting for employee stock plans post-IPO.

So overall, not a bad first quarter as a public company. It met analyst expectations and if not for the stock plans, it would have reported a profit.

Subscribe to feed Safari Extension

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Daniel Jalkut:

My beta-quality, more-or-less unsupported Subscribe to Feed extension adds a handy button to the toolbar that, when a page offers RSS or Atom feeds, can be clicked to easily open the feed:// link, which should automatically open your favorite news reader.

Carbon Copy Cloner v3.5

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One of the best backup applications for your Mac is Mike Bombich’s Carbon Copy Cloner, now up to version 3.5. The new release brings Mountain Lion support and has “transitioned” to a fully paid application – while Bombich worked for Apple, the software was donationware. Mike is no longer at Apple and he wants to get paid!

CCC creates automated, incremental and bootable backups and makes backing up simple and easy.

The new version costs $39.95 but is on sale for $29.96 for a limited time.

On Sparrow’s Google acquisition

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Google’s acquisition of Sparrow has engendered a lot of discussion, but Marco Tabini really nails it with his analysis.