freeware
Latest
Behringer is building a free digital audio workstation
When it comes to producing music, a digital audio workstation (DAW) is one of the most important tools of the trade. This software is where musicians record and edit tracks, add effects, and play virtual instruments. Behringer -- which is well-known for its hardware-based synthesizers -- confirmed on Facebook that it will create its own DAW, which will hopefully be out sometime next year. But the company won't be going head-to-head with the likes of Apple's Logic Pro or Avid's Pro Tools: Behringer's DAW will be free.
BlueStacks emulator runs Android apps on your Mac
The BlueStacks Android emulator, which already has around 90 million Windows users, has finally arrived on OSX after an extended beta testing phase. The free emulator runs both x86 and ARM-based apps as well as provides full keyboard and mouse support. It even allows for gesture controls like pinch to zoom with a trackpad and takes advantage of your Mac's Retina display. Users can sync files and data from their mobile devices or pull new apps from Google Play directly to their Mac. You can download the program directly from the BlueStacks website.
Devolver serves up Fork Parker's Holiday Profit Hike for free on Steam
If the ongoing Steam Holiday Sale has you strapped for cash, Devolver Digital's faux CFO Fork Parker wants to cut you a deal in Fork Parker's Holiday Profit Hike, a freeware platformer released today on Steam. Developed by Enter the Gungeon creator Dodge Roll Games, Holiday Profit Hike is a vertically scrolling action game that blends gameplay mechanics from Nintendo's Ice Climber and the classic arcade game Roc'n Rope. Players ascend an icy mountain using an infinite supply of ropes and pulleys, grabbing any cash they find along the way to fill Parker's pocketbook. Be careful, though -- the climb is perilous, and each death deducts cash from Parker's savings to cover medical costs. It's a short game (there's an achievement for players who can climb the mountain in under 12 minutes), but the platforming within is surprisingly complex, and it'll take you a while to fully grasp how the rope mechanics work. Good luck, and try not to bankrupt Devolver Digital. Think of the indies! [Image: Devolver Digital)
Out of nowhere, 3D Realms teases return of Major Stryker
In the most unexpected news you'll read today, publisher 3D Realms appears to be planning the return of Major Stryker, assuming a vague, 38-second YouTube clip is to be believed. For those who don't keep meticulous tabs on the minor shareware hits of 1993, Major Stryker was a 2D, MS-DOS-exclusive vertical shooter that dropped players into the boots of the titular Major as he soared through the skies blasting enemies and collecting power-ups. At debut Major Stryker received middling reviews and the game was released as freeware in 2006. What 3D Realms has planned for the archaic shooter is unknown - the only reason we know the above teaser is even related to Major Stryker is the video's title and its catchy music - but the tweet accompanying this footage urges fans to "Get Ready for August!" If you'd rather not wait, you can download Major Stryker from 3D Realms' website. [Image: 3D Realms]
HAL 9000 wants to be your Mac screensaver
Remember the iconic HAL 9000 computer from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey? We all wanted our own HAL, even though he pretty thoroughly crashed in the movie: "Open the pod bay doors, HAL." The folks at the HAL Project have been involved with simulating the look of HAL for years. Their first project was an animated desktop back in 1999. The screensaver version of the HAL GUI has been around for years, but it's recently had a major update to provide smooth animation and really authentic simulations of the HAL screens. The screensaver is free, but there is a US$5 version that eliminates the splash screen and has eight HAL screens with the HAL unit in the middle. To be honest, I prefer the free version because it fills the full screen of my Mac, but I donated the five bucks for the paid version because I appreciate what the HAL Project is doing. It's a striking screensaver, and really looks just like the HAL screens from the movie. Kudos. 2001: A Space Odyssey director Stanley Kubrick would be proud. The HAL screensaver has just been updated to work on Mavericks, and you can get it at the HAL Project website. Look around a little bit to see what they are doing, and enjoy this tribute to one of the great movies of all time.
Catlateral Damage getting mew (new) modes
Catlateral Damage, the first-person knock-stuff-over-as-a-cat game from develo-purr Chris Chung will be getting some mew modes for its com-meow-cial build, Eurogamer reports. What's that? Stop with the cat puns? You gotta be kitten me! Okay, fine. When Catlateral Damage gets a commercial release, it'll include at least two new modes: Cat Ops and a "free" mode where players aren't beholden to a timer and can explore at their leisure. In an email exchange with Eurogamer, Chung explained that Cat Ops will have players try to knock over objects without waking their owner. "I feel like this mode will fulfill the desire to be a sneaky cat, and also give quite a different challenge than the current game mode," he wrote. Eurogamer also inquired about a possible Time Attack mode. While Chung wrote that it wasn't yet planned, he also noted that it would be "very easy" to add, and that he would make a note of the idea. Chung also wrote that he plans to add more levels and increase the scope of the game so that players could potentially explore an entire house. Catlateral Damage is expected to have a commercial version later this year. We assume there will be a major paw-ty when it does. Haa.
Catlateral Damage chronicles the life of a destructive kitty
Ever wonder why cats love knocking stuff off of shelves? Because it's fun, that's why. Indie developer Chris Chung tackles this aspect of feline fascination in Catlateral Damage, a first-person action game that casts the player in the role of a particularly destructive cat. In Catlateral Damage, players hop up on overhead surfaces and send household objects crashing to the floor with repeated paw swipes. Break enough of your owner's valuables (hint: combos award point multipliers) and you win. For anyone who has never owned cats, this is a fairly accurate simulation of what their day-to-day life entails. Cats are jerks. The current alpha version of the game is playable for free online, and is available as a free download for Windows, Mac, and Linux. A paid version is set to launch later this year via Steam Greenlight.
.jpeg.cf.jpg)
Happy Holidays, Instapaper is currently free to download!
It's the time of year when gifts are given away with selfless glee, improving the lives of others without asking for anything in return. Instapaper is getting in the holiday spirit by making its wonderful webclipper app free for download in the iTunes store. The app normally retails for around US$3. There's no word yet on exactly how long the app will be free, so don't dillydally. Get to downloading now. Instapaper is one of the most efficient clipping apps for iOS, allowing users to quickly save and store articles from the web on their iPhone or iPad for later reading offline. Saved articles are stored as text-only documents, stripped of their full web layouts and optimized for reading on your iOS device. You can save up to 500 articles on your iPhone or iPad, and keep unlimited articles on the Instapaper website. So get to clipping before the app costs money again and this sale becomes just a distant memory in someone else's clip folder. You can find Instapaper in the iTunes store.
Realmac introduces free Ember app for iOS
Back in August of 2013, TUAW Editor-in-Chief Victor Agreda, Jr. wrote a detailed review of Ember (US$49.99), an OS X web clipping and digital scrapbooking app from Realmac Software. Victor found Ember to be "nearly perfect for me" in his review, but he might be improving his outlook to "perfect" after today's release of a free Ember companion app for iOS. TUAW will have a full review of the app within a few days, but here's what you need to know about the universal application. It's designed to work best on an iPad or iPhone that is using iCloud syncing. The idea is to take photos or screenshots of things you wish to "collect." They're then added to collections and synced to all of your iCloud devices instantly. Ember for iOS lets you add tags to your images, then combine them in collections of related things for future reference. As with the desktop app, Ember for iOS provides a number of ways to share items in your collections immediately through AirDrop, Messages, Mail, Twitter and Facebook. Realmac says right up front that the app will be gaining additional features -- like annotation -- on an in-app purchase basis, but plans to keep the basic functionality available for free.
Hotline Miami's Cactus on the price of freeware development
Hotline Miami designer Jonatan Söderström – perhaps better known by his prickly development alias, Cactus – began his career in freeware, developing smaller, experimental games that anyone with the appropriate hardware could download and play at any time, game-development hippie-communism style. Some of his games include Norrland, Shotgun Ninja, Psychosomnium, Minubeat, Clean Asia! and Keyboard Drumset Fucking Werewolf. That last one, created in three weeks in October 2011, features art by Hotline Miami co-creator Dennis Wedin.Together, Wedin and Söderström form Dennaton Games, and they are part of the rising cult of indie superstars. But the draw of fame and fortune wasn't why Söderström stopped making freeware games."I didn't want to become homeless," Söderström told Joystiq at GDC. By February of this year, Hotline Miami clocked 300,000 PC sales, and PS3 and Vita ports by Abstraction Games are currently "pretty much done," expected to hit in May, Wedin said. Söderström isn't in danger of being homeless right now. Still, reverting to freeware development poses an interesting challenge."I kind of want to start doing freeware games again, but when you put so much work into something that turns out really good, it feels hard to do smaller things that won't be as good," Söderström said. It's all about "finding the inspiration to do something that seems worthwhile," he continued. "When you work on a big game for a long while, you start thinking in ideas that only work if they are big. It's difficult to turn to the other mindset, especially when you are still working on the next big thing."Dennaton is digging into development on the sequel to Hotline Miami, a large game with parallel plots taking place in the early 90s, and after that Wedin and Söderström have ideas for fresh IPs. They'll probably be bigger games, even if Dennaton doesn't intend for them to be."Hotline Miami wasn't meant to be big," Wedin said.
Google makes Snapseed for iOS free
Google bought Nik Software and took them over on September 12th. Today, Snapseed, arguably one of the finest image editors for iOS, just went free, dropped from the US$4.99 previous price. Other changes include built in Google+ sharing, of course, and some new filters and updated photographic frames. Those frames can be colorized to match the colors in your image. I've always liked Snapseed, and at free it's a must grab. Sadly, the OS X version of Snapseed remains at $19.99, but it's worth it. Google also today released Snapseed for Android phones, where it is also free. No surprise there. Google = Android.
Stealth Bastard Deluxe quietly leaps onto Steam in November
Stealth Bastard: Tactical Espionage Arsehole is poised to hit Steam in November with a deluxe edition, Curve Studios design director revealed on Twitter. Stealth Bastard, described as Metal Gear Solid meets Super Meat Boy, has been available since November as freeware via its official site. You might recognize Curve Studios from its previous games, Explodemon and WiiWare's Fluidity.The deluxe edition of Stealth Bastard will feature, at the very least, some new stealth equipment, as pictured in the above image. Below we've snuck in an image of the new greenscreen-monitor menu. There's no word yet what Stealth Bastard Deluxe will cost, if anything.
First issue of WIRED re-released as an iPad app
Are you a fan of WIRED Magazine? The first issue of the Condé Nast tech magazine appeared back in January of 1993 with futurist Bruce Sterling talking about war and MIT Media Lab's Nicholas Negroponte pontificating about "What's wrong with HDTV." WIRED fans who want to relive the past of the future (think about it...) can now get a free iPad version of that first issue. To read WIRED 1.1.1, you're going to need to have the existing WIRED Magazine app (free), which is loaded into the iOS Newsstand. Look for an icon for "The Premiere Issue Revisited" to download the material, but make sure that you have a lot of free space on your iPad to hold the 1.3GB file. You'll also need a lot of time to download that issue. The first issue has been replicated, annotated, and includes a full photo archive and a 12,000 word oral history. For WIRED readers or those curious about a tech magazine that has survived almost 20 years when others have gone by the wayside, it's an awesome read. The two-page Apple PowerBook advertisement is worth the download time alone! [via The Verge]
HackStore is like Cydia for Mac OS X, replaces walled garden with open dacha
Despite its loud anti-piracy notice, Andrey Fedotov's HackStore sees no issue in ripping off the official App Store's interface. Nevertheless, its aim is to gather up legit and readily available apps that didn't make it past Apple's trellis for whatever reason, and hopefully with Fedotov keeping an eye out for malware. You'll find FileZilla, Gimp and many rarer specimens -- and they're all just regular .dmg files so there's actually no hacking involved. That said, we downloaded the RTF to ePUB Converter and then struggled to make it run, so we're not ready to vouch for HackStore's ease-of-use any more than its security or legality. All we're saying, officer, is that it exists.
Free Indie Games is a lot of free indie games chosen by Terry Cavanagh
Terry Cavanagh, indie-game maniac behind VVVVVV, Chat Chat and At a Distance, has started a new website with a title to make an SOE enthusiast blush: Free Indie Games. Guess what it offers? Free indie games, as chosen by Cavanagh based on their newness, goodness, freeness, indieness and gameness.Currently, Free Indie Games "highly recommends" Wither, Game Title: Lost Levels and Dys4ia, but recent titles we find intriguing include Nausea and Socially Awkward Conversationalist. But they're all free, so really, every single one is quite intriguing to begin with.
EasyFind is a free alternative to Spotlight
EasyFind is a free application that helps you find files and folders on your Mac. And yes, it's better than Spotlight. EasyFind is made by the folks at DEVONtechnologies who are well-known for developing powerful search software DEVONthink, DEVONagent Pro, and DEVONagent Express, which is to say that EasyFind is made by people who know a lot about search. Compare that to Spotlight, which was a marquee feature of OS X six years ago but never grew into something great. When you launch EasyFind, you will see several options and choices. Don't let years of Spotlight's simplistic UI overwhelm you; options and choices are a good thing. Take a minute to see what's available, and just start searching. Down the left-hand side of the window are criteria for searching: Files and Folders, Only Files, Only Folders, or File Contents. Next choose to search for All Words, Any Word, a Phrase, or Unix-Wildcards. You can also specify whether or not the search should be case sensitive, whether it should look in package contents, or include invisible files and folders. You can also set the scope of the search to be a specific volume/disk, or a specific folder such as your Home folder. 99% of my searches are for things I know are "somewhere" in my Home, or "somewhere" in my Dropbox. Spotlight only lets you choose "current folder" or "everything" which is almost never what I want. That's far more control and options than what Spotlight gives you (or at least what Spotlight gives you without resorting to byzantine keywords), but what I really love is what you get in the results of your search. Of course you get the filename (and you can expand that column to make it wider, I just made it narrow in the screenshot above), but you also get the creation date, the modification date, the size, the kind and location. If you don't want any of those columns, you can turn them off. If you want to change the order of those columns, or if you want to sort your results by any of those columns, you can do that too. EasyFind can search for the content of files, but it is not using Spotlight's database, it is actually running the search when you enter it. That means that it won't be as fast as Spotlight, but on my MacBook Air it is still very quick (the speed will be determined by the number of files you are searching plus the speed of the disk). I keep Spotlight around for those times when I need it, but in actual practice I rarely even do. In fact, I've reassigned my Spotlight Keyboard Shortcut to launch EasyFind instead. (Aside: I had even disabled Spotlight for awhile on my Mac, but there are many things which just don't work properly if Spotlight is completely disabled, so I ended up turning it back on and just ignoring it. YMMV.) You can download EasyFind from the Mac App Store or directly from DEVONtechnologies. If you download it directly, you can get a version which will work on Mac OS X 10.5 or higher (PowerPC or Intel), which is good news for folks running older versions of Mac OS X. Thanks to the folks at DEVONtechnologies for this cool app. Take a look at their other freeware apps too!
Daily Mac App: Go2Shell
Here on the Daily Mac App we love apps that do one thing really well. Today's app is no exception. Go2Shell is a tiny little 0.3MB app available for free from the Mac App Store that has the potential to speed up your work-flow if it involves Terminal. Go2Shell simply launches a Terminal session with the current folder you're navigating in Finder, or the folder that Go2Shell is located in, open for work. It even supports iTerm, iTerm 2 and xterm if you're not a fan of Apple's own-brand Terminal. It's so simple, it's almost beautiful and if you happen to have to modify files in Terminal, or any other similar task, Go2Shell could be just ticket to save you time. The best way to use Go2Shell is to drag it onto your Finder toolbar and from there launch it whenever you're in the desired directory. If you need something a little more advanced you should check out one of our previous Daily Mac Apps, DTerm, which gives you hotkey access, and a floating entry form into the Terminal session. Go2Shell is a great free download from the Mac App Store that does one thing and one thing well. So if you're a Terminal guru (even the app's preferences are accessed through the command line) then give Go2Shell a whirl. You might like it.
Autodesk Motion FX for OS X Lion arrives on the Mac App Store
Autodesk, developers of the amazing AutoCAD and Sketchbook apps for the Mac, has just released a new free app that is not only a lot of fun, but could be useful to amateur filmmakers. Motion FX for OS X Lion is a 25.1 MB app that requires Lion and creates "stunning real-time video effects using your computer's camera." The app is powered by the brains of the Autodesk Maya software, applying real-time fluid dynamics technology to create effects that react in real-time to movements. There are five modes available -- motion detect, which streams the effects from motion detected by the camera; face detect, which emits effects from visible faces in the camera's field of view; color detect, which blasts effects from only specific colors on the screen; effect paint, which lets users "draw" the effects using a mouse or trackpad; and video warp, which warps video using a mouse or trackpad. The app allows saving of screenshots with a tap of the spacebar, supports Lion's full-screen mode, and supports multiple cameras. Motion FX also supports multiple displays, which Autodesk touts as useful for VJs and performance artists who can use one display to control the app and another to project to an audience. If the description above doesn't really explain to you what Motion FX does, then the video below will.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: HardwareGrowler
Have you ever wanted to keep an eye on what's happening with the hardware on your system using pop-up notifications? Well a little known extra to a very well known program called Growl could be just the ticket. HardwareGrowler (HwG) comes packed with Growl in the "Extras" folder on the Growl disk image (as seen above) and can be installed just like any other application. Once up and running, HwG will notify you of any hardware changes to your system. If the MagSafe adapter gets yanked out or the power cuts out, HwG will tell you. If you plug in a USB drive or a network drive disconnects, HwG will let you know. In fact if anything changes behind the scenes on the hardware front HwG has you covered. It's a nice simple application that has no user-configurable preferences to speak of, simply launch and you're ready to go. If you want to change the style or sounds associated with the notifications all you have to do is change it in the Growl Preference pane. HwG has a persistent dock icon, but you can get rid of manually with quick tweak. So if you've been after a program to notify you if your MacBook gets accidentally unplugged, or you lose connection to a vital network or network drive, HardwareGrowler is a brilliant free little utility that you probably already have but just didn't know it. HardwareGrowler can be downloaded as part of the free Growl package from Growl.info. Thanks to miguelpontes for the suggestion.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: IceClean
OS X does a pretty good job of maintaining itself due to its Unix core, but there are times when you'd like to run some of its self maintenance tasks manually, and that's where IceClean comes in. Just using the built-in Unix System Tasks that underlay OS X, you can clean out system caches for both the user and root, delete temporary files and remove log files all from IceClean's menu-orientated UI. If you feel your Safari is a trudging a little, there's even an option for a Deep Safari Cleanup, which should go someway to helping speed up your experience. IceClean isn't all about cleaning though, it features a whole host of maintenance options including the usual verification and repair of your system disk, disk permissions and .plist files, as well as database optimizations including Launch Services. You can run the whole lot with one command or even schedule the maintenance tasks to be run daily, weekly or monthly at a time to suit you. IceClean can also poll the system for all sorts of information like system, disk and kernel information. Whois and network lookup tools are there too for network diagnostics. You can also force a Time Machine backup, kill Dashboard, speed up Spotlight indexing, force empty the Trash, modify screenshot settings and perform many other small tasks using the Utilities menu. IceClean is a one stop shop for most of your maintenance needs. It's not as user friendly as other options like Onyx, but for the sheer utility built into one app, IceClean is worth the free download.
