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The Little App Factory - Pay What You Want
Buried amidst Apple's latest announcements is news to make your digital life easier. The Little App Factory, which produces very useful utilities, offered up a "pay what you want" bundle for five of its Macintosh apps via Paddle: Evom, Grappler, Ringtones, RipIt, and iRip. All of the apps work in Mac OS X 10.6 and up. The deal is available until September 27, 2013. The current average price for the five utilities is US$3.45, while the recommended price is $29.00. No matter what you choose to pay, these apps will not disappoint you. Evom, which I confess is free on the site, takes video and converts it to an iOS-compatible format. I've used it to convert YouTube videos, Flash, AVI and WMV files. As The Little App Factory advertises: Drag. Drop. Convert. It's that easy. Grappler, according to The Little App Factory, lets you play and save video or audio off the Web. I've never used it, so I can't tell you anything about it, but you can read about it on the site. It normally sells for $19.95. iRip helps you copy your files off your iPod onto your computer. I've recovered a variety of music libraries from PC and Macintosh formatted iPods, and think iRip works really well. I had tested version 2.0, but 2.1 is the current version now. Normal price is $24.95. RipIt takes your personal DVD library and lets you convert it to iPhone, iPad, or an iPod compatible file. It works well and lets you protect your original media from children's abuse, dog teeth, and any number of other mishaps. Normal price is $24.95. Ringtones lets you take your favorite music and use slices of it as your phone ringer. It works with DRM-free music. I used it to rip a line from Jevetta Steele's "Calling You" from the Baghdad Cafe movie soundtrack. Fun stuff for the normal price of $12.95. This is a bit off topic, but if you want to see Jack Palance and CCH Pounder (Warehouse13) in very non-traditional roles, rent the movie! Paddle offers other bundles also, but I've not bought from them previously. My notice of The Little App Factory deal came via email from Wallpaper Wizard, to which I subscribe.
Jobs to dev on app name change: "Not that big of a deal."
I don't know if this was the right thing for Steve Jobs to say, but on the other hand, I do think it's the perfect thing for him to say. The story, as reported by our buddy Daniel Brusilovsky over at Crunchgear, goes like this: A company called The Little App Factory got a letter from Apple, who had a legal issue with one of their apps, formerly named iPodRip. Apple didn't like the fact that "iPod" was clearly in the name, and so despite the fact that the software was meant to transfer songs back and forth specifically from an iPod, Apple wanted the name changed. The company's co-owner, John Devor, sent a very long and well-reasoned letter to Mr. Jobs himself explaining that their only wish was to extend Apple's hardware's capabilities, and that they were all Apple fans, and that they'd used the name for a long time and they were worried that a competitor might steal their customers and Jobs was an inspiration to the guy, who'd just dropped out of school, and could they please get a pass on this one? Jobs' response -- yes, he wrote back personally -- was just three lines: Change your apps name. Not that big of a deal. Steve Sent from my iPhone Kids, that's how you become the kind of guy who runs a brilliant computer company, is seen on the cover of Time multiple times, gets named CEO of the Decade and just generally rocks. I feel for The Little App Factory, I really do, but you gotta believe the Steve. It's not that big of a deal. We'll do our part, though: the app formerly known as iPodRip is now known as iRip, and is available with a free trial period from the developer's site. [via Techmeme]
