Software

Twist, the app that tells people you’ll be late

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Wired:

Whether you have a habit of arriving awkwardly early or annoyingly late for meetings, a new app called Twist is here to help. The location-based app, which launched on Wednesday, is akin to Find My Friends, but adds the useful element of notifying family, friends or colleagues when you’re going to arrive at a specific location.The app offers a clean and simple way to accomplish multiple tasks: Track a person’s location, receive directions, share photos along your route, send messages, and get venue and weather details. It’s not the snazziest-looking app, but the uncluttered experience is actually refreshing in a world where apps are trying to stuff as much as they can into the iPhone’s 3.5-inch screen.

I absolutely hate being late and tend to show up 30+ minutes for appointments. Conversely, if someone I’m meeting is 5 minutes late, I worry they’ve been in an accident and are lying dead on the side of the road. This free app might alleviate some of that stress.

The future of Office for Mac and iOS

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Chris Breen, Macworld:

Macworld has learned that when the new Office launches, Microsoft will deliver an update to Office for Mac 2011. With this update, Office for Mac licenses can count as part of an Office 365 Home Premium subscription, making it possible to access your Office documents in the cloud.

There will also be Office Mobile for iOS.

Pixelmator 2.1 to add Retina support

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Pixelmator 2.1 Cherry is already fully Retina-ready, including all of the user interface elements as well as the image editing engine itself. And, what can I say—Pixelmator on the new MacBook Pro with Retina display (we’ve got a few of those around the office) looks totally incredible.

Love Pixelmator. Check out the video too.

Adobe acknowledges InDesign issue with latest MacBook

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“We’re taking this issue very seriously,” he said. “I wish we had more to share at this time but I’ll be sure to share what comes down the line from the engineers relating to solutions or any workarounds they can find.”

Good for them for acknowledging the issue.

Engineer snuck into Apple to finish canceled project

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That’s when the real sneaking around began. For the next two months, Avitzur had to find new ways of getting into the building. He kept his canceled badge around his neck and timed his arrival for when he knew there’d be crowds coming through the front door.

What a fascinating story. A must read.

Twitter restricts API – could kill your favorite client

Written by

The Next Web:

Twitter’s success has long been intertwined with the independent developers that have chosen to use the platform. The third-party ecosystem made Twitter what it is in the most literal fashion possible.That’s why there has been some consternation over a post on Twitter’s developer blog today. The gist of the posts was that Twitter was cracking down on how third parties were using its APIs.

Along with GigaOM’s “Careful, Twitter — remember what happened to MySpace and Digg”, there is growing concern the folks at Twitter are doing what is best for their short term economic interests – and those actions may kill the service in the long term.

TextExpander 4 adds features, leaves Mac App Store

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Macworld:

Smile on Thursday released TextExpander 4, the latest incarnation of its typing shortcut utility. Among the new features are additional options for “fill-in-the-blank” snippets, fill-ins for multi-line text fields, dropdown menus for multiple choices, and optional text blocks that you can trigger as needed when expanding a text snippet.But because TextExpander 4 can’t adhere to Apple’s recently-enforced sandboxing guidelines, the new version of the app isn’t available in the Mac App Store.

TextExpander is an indispensable piece of software for me.

Want iOS 6? No problem. Buy it from a scofflaw developer

Written by

Wired:

If you’re a diehard Apple fan who desperately wants to run a buggy alpha version of iOS 6 right now, your only legal option is to shell out the $99 to join the iOS Developer Program. Affordable for a developer, the barrier to entry is high enough to keep out casual fans from accidentally bricking their phones and cluttering up the Genius Bar.But over the last couple years, a cottage industry’s popped up around illicit UDID activations — startups exploiting Apple’s Developer Program to sell access to pre-release iOS software, usually for less than $10 per device. The craziest thing? Apple doesn’t seem to care.

Bento 4 for iPad now available

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Bento 4 for iPad adds easier customization capabilities, spreadsheet like table view and calculations, and more functionality.

iOS 6 introduces 200 new features

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iOS 6 will bow this fall for iPhone 3GS and higher, iPad 2 and newer and fourth-gen iPod touch, and it sports more than 200 new features.

Mountain Lion ships in July for $20

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Apple plans to ship OS X Mountain Lion – with 200 new features, including Game Center support, Power Nap and improvements to Safari – in July for $20.

Foursquare launches major redesign

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IDG News Service:

Foursquare on Thursday launched a major redesign of its app for the iPhone and Android devices, incorporating features from social discovery and local search applications, as well as the “like” feature made famous by Facebook.

Foursquare described the redesign as “a whole new app.” The app’s “explore” function will now allow users to browse locations by category or conduct a specific search like “free wi-fi” or “dumplings,” a company blog post announcing the launch said.

Good for them. I’m still not going to use it.

Email clutter

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I recommend using a simple four-step process to get your electronic mailbox as close to empty as you can, every day.

I know what Dave says makes sense, but I work in exactly the opposite way. I have email in my inbox dating back many years and have no problem finding anything, at any time.

With the way search works in OS X and in Apple’s Mail app, I can search individual emails by just using a few keywords — that simple method has rarely let me down. I just mark messages I need to do something with as unread and move on with my day.

Granted, that’s probably not the most efficient way to do things, but I’ve tried to be more organized with email in the past and it took more time than it was worth.

The bonus is that I always know where all of my email is.

What Google Maps actually just unveiled: Anxiety over Apple Maps

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Massive Greatness:

What Google actually unveiled today is their own vulnerability in the space. Beyond a few tiny leaks, no one knows what Apple’s mapping product will be like. Google has by far and away the best mapping product on the planet. But they still felt the need to hold this meaningless press conference today. That’s fighting down, not up. And it’s a big mistake because it conveys the opposite of what Google was trying to convey: concern, not confidence.

Even before today’s non-event, I had been thinking more about Apple’s move into mapping. When the news broke, everyone knew it was a big deal, but I actually still think it’s being underplayed. It could be a massive deal.