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How to backup your Mac App Store apps
The excellent ReadNow application, which allows you to easily read articles from your Instapaper and Read It Later articles on your Mac, has been pulled from the Mac App Store "...because of an infringement letter." Developer Michael Schneider added "[i]n my current situation I'm not allowed to provide any further information." The good news is that if you have already purchased the app, you can still download it from the "Purchases" tab in the App Store.app even though the iTunes page for ReadNow now leads to the message, "Your request could not be completed." However, as I waited for the Mac App Store to load on my iMac this morning, I found myself wondering "What would I do if I couldn't re-download it from the Mac App Store?" Fortunately I have the app on my MacBook Air, so I could go to /Applications/ReadNow.app and then select File » Compress "Read Now" (or control+click the app and choose "Compress" from the menu). Terminal option If you wanted to make a copy of ReadNow (or any app) on the command line, I believe that your best option is using ditto like this: sudo ditto -v --keepParent -kc ReadNow.app ReadNow.zip (I don't claim to be a ditto expert, but I can tell you that worked for me. The -k option tells ditto to make zip archives. The --rsrc --extattr and --qtn options are all the default, so they don't need to be explicitly specified.) I then copied the 'ReadNow.zip' file to my Dropbox so I would have it, just in case Apple removes the option to download it. This should work for all Mac App Store apps (Xcode and "Install Lion" excepted), but may not work for other apps which use an installer and may install other files besides the ones in /Applications/. Show me all of my Mac App Store apps Speaking of the command line, if you want to see a list of all the Mac App Store apps that you have installed on your computer, you can run this command in Terminal.app:find /Applications \-path '*Contents/_MASReceipt/receipt' \-maxdepth 4 -print |\sed 's#.app/Contents/_MASReceipt/receipt#.app#g; s#/Applications/##' Note: this won't show you Xcode, because Xcode is an unusual case. It is an installer which installs Xcode and then the installer is removed. An ounce of prevention There has been no indication that Apple will remove ReadNow from your list of Purchased apps, I just wanted to have a backup 'just in case.' Hopefully the "infringement letter" issue will be settled soon and it will be available again. However, if the iOS App Store is any indication, eventually jettisoned apps will become unavailable for re-download. Also, the upcoming sandboxing requirements may lead to some existing applications being removed. As always, it's good to have your own backups rather than relying on being able to re-download anything from "the cloud." I wrote a small shell script which will look in /Applications/ for any applications which have the Mac App Store receipt, and create a .zip file for each of them. (While I have tested it myself and it works for me, YMMV, use only at your own risk, etc.) To use it, download the script to your Desktop (or wherever) and then run: chmod 755 ~/Desktop/backupmas.sh And then run it via ~/Desktop/backupmas.sh (Obviously if you saved it somewhere else, use that path instead of ~/Desktop/.) It may ask for your administrator password. If so, that's the one you use to log in to your computer, not your Mac App Store password.
Drive Real Racing for Mac with an iOS device, or steer your AR.Drone with a Mac
Firemint and EA have launched Real Racing on the Mac App Store just in time for Christmas. And not only does the game offer up the same high definition racing fun of the popular iOS series, but there's another twist as well: You can use an iPhone or iPad to control the game on your Mac. That's pretty cool -- I presume that means you need a Real Racing app to do it, but there are a few free versions out, and the full versions are only a buck during the holidays anyway. Other than that, the Mac app doesn't sound too new, though there are still licensed cars, lots of tracks to play through a career mode, and of course you can use the power of your full Mac rather than just an iOS device. The Mac App Store version is $12.99 right now. And elsewhere in the world of controlling things and the Mac App Store, a company called Drone Apps has released a Mac app called Drone Station, that will let you control your Parrot AR.Drone quadricopter directly from your Mac instead of an iOS device. The software looks pretty barebones, but it has quite a few options, including the ability to get all of the incoming video from the drone, as well as control it directly with any number of game controllers you can hook up directly to the Mac. It's actually very impressive, and if you happen to have a Parrot AR.Drone (or find one under the tree this holiday), the app seems worth a try. It's on the Mac App Store for $9.99. Parrot has told us that it will be at CES again this year, and we look forward to seeing what other news they've got for the AR.Drone and its Apple-created interfaces.
TUAW Best of 2011: Vote for the best Mac game app
The nominations are in, and the poll is ready to go! The TUAW Best of 2011 awards are all about you -- the readers -- and what you think is the cream of the crop of Apple or third-party products and software. To vote, select one entry from the top nominations made by readers. We'll be announcing the winner in just a few days. Vote early and often! Today TUAW is asking for your vote for the best Mac game app of 2011. While we received relatively few nominations in this area, there were several apps that stood out as potential winners in this category. The classic Pixeljam game Dino Run SE (US$2.99) made the list of TUAW staff favorites for its retro look, the variety of hats, and built-in chat room. New to the Mac App Store, sidescroller Trine 2 ($14.99) gained acclaim for its great story, amazing graphics, and immensely fun gameplay. The beautifully drawn puzzle / adventure game Machinarium ($9.99) also earned a spot in the nominations. This game consistently receives high ratings in the Mac App Store. The "true Mac classic game" Return to Dark Castle ($4.99) is another retro Mac game that captured the imagination of TUAW readers in 2011. Finally, the last spot on the ballot goes to the updated Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic ($19.99), which overcame laggy performance and became a favorite of Mac gamers and Star Wars fans. Only one of these apps will win TUAW's top honor for Mac game app of 2011. Naming the winner is all up to you. %Poll-71971%
TUAW Best of 2011: Vote for the best Mac productivity app
The nominations are in, and the poll is ready to go! The TUAW Best of 2011 awards are all about you -- the readers -- and what you think is the cream of the crop of Apple or third-party products and software. To vote, select one entry from the top nominations made by readers. We'll be announcing the winner in just a few days. Vote early and often! Today TUAW is asking for your vote for the best Mac productivity app of 2011. A huge number of TUAW readers nominated DEVONthink (US$49.99) as being an indispensable app on their Macs, so it earned a spot on the ballot. The other apps that have been nominated are no slouches, either! One favorite Mac app was Wunderlist (free), a multi-platform task manager. Priority Matrix ($19.99) is an entirely different type of task management app for Mac, using a four quadrant design to help you prioritize work and life goals. TaskPaper ($29.99) is a simple to-do list that captured the attention of several readers who nominated it as their favorite. Evernote (free) is another potential winner. 2011 saw this amazing application adding even more features, and it didn't surprise us that it made it to the finals. Finally, Omnifocus ($79.99) is another past favorite that readers love to use. Only one of these apps will win TUAW's top honor for Mac productivity app of 2011. Naming the winner is all up to you. %Poll-71822%
Daily Update for December 12, 2011
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen.
Apple Mac Store breaks the 100 million download barrier
At just under a year old, Apple's Mac App Store is celebrating a fairly significant milestone, hitting the 100 million download mark, a fact the company celebrated with a customarily self-congratulatory press release. The desktop store hit the scene in January of this year, just ahead of CES -- at present, it's home to "thousands" of apps, according to Apple. Granted, these numbers pale in comparison to the some 18 billion app downloads for Apple's other App Store, but still, not bad for a year's work. Press release after the break.
Daily Update for December 9, 2011
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen.
Daily Mac App: Keka
Great free archive utilities are pretty hard to come by on the Mac. Keka is the exception. If OS X's built-in compression utility doesn't do enough for you, Keka could be the answer. Keka's been around since 2009, but only recently made it into the Mac App Store. Unlike Growl, Keka is available both as a paid, US$2 app from the Mac App Store and as a free download from the Keka project site. The two versions will be kept in sync, so there'll always be a free option. Of course if you use it, supporting the developers, either by a donation or buying it in the Mac App Store, will help them continue to update it. Keka allows you to compress files in multiple formats. Zip, 7z, Tar, Gzip and Bzip2 are all included. What's more Keka can extract even more with RAR, 7z, Lzma, Zip, Tar, Gzip, Bzip2, ISO, EXE, CAB, PAX, and even ACE supported. Keka also supports encrypted archives meaning you can password protect compressed files, as well as split archives -- handy when you have file size limitations. Like the Unarchiver and others, you can set Keka as the default extraction client, so files can be decompressed with a double click. If you want to get a bit more advanced, the Keka Dock icon serves as the one-stop shop for compression. Drag and drop files onto it to either decompress or create a new archive in the default format of your choosing. Format and compression method can be changed quickly from a pop-up menu from the Dock icon. It's all very slick.
Daily Mac App: Quick File Renamer
Bulk renaming files can be a time consuming pain without the right tool. If it's a problem you face often, you've probably already got a favorite batch-renaming app residing on your Mac, but if not, Quick File Renamer might be a good place to start. It has a user-friendly interface with straightforward options -- "idiot proof" you might call it. Add the files that you want to rename into the "Before Rename" box by using the file finder built into the program or dragging and dropping from Finder. You then select the kind of renaming action you want from the presets, input your custom name, set whether you want to save the renamed files in the same location or another, and whether you want to delete the original files. If you want to do something a little more complicated, the advanced tab lets you change or add numbers to an existing series or clear the name entirely. You can also modify things such as upper or lowercase names, add dates, suffixes or prefixes, remove or replace sections of names or add audio or photo tags. A comprehensive help system will guide you through the more complicated actions, which is accessible via the good old F1 key. Quick File Renamer comes in two flavors -- a free 'lite' version, which lacks some of the more advanced renaming and tagging options, but will rename and append file numbers without issue; and a fully capable paid version that'll set you back US$1.99. There are quite a few other batch renamers available for the Mac including Renamer, Name Mangler and Photo A.K.A, while you can achieve the same result with a bit of Automator magic. But if you're looking for a decent free batch renaming app for the occasional file renaming task, then Quick File Renamer Lite is a good start.
Daily Mac App: Brightness Slider
Using a Mac laptop at night is great thanks to automatic-brightness controls and a backlit keyboard. Trouble is that sometimes even the lowest setting is too bright for midnight screen gazing. That's where Brightness Slider comes in. It's a menu bar utility that lets you adjust the screen's backlight brightness. It gives you linear control over your backlight and lets you dim your screen even further than either the brightness keys or System Preferences allow you to go without turning off the backlight completely. Unlike other applications that allow you to "dim" your screen, such as Sunset, which actually put a shade or dark tint over your screen to reduce perceived brightness, Brightness Slider gives you direct control over the actual backlight. If you ever wish you had quick access to finer grained control over your Mac's backlight than the backlight keys F1 and F2 give you, or you want it just a little bit dimmer at night, then Brightness Slider is worth a free download from the Mac App Store.
Daily Mac App: Memo
I've written about quite a few note-taking apps in my pursuit of the best one. Most shy away from the Post-It note paradigm because OS X comes with Stickies, a pretty decent representation of the repositionable note, but Memo takes it head-on. Memo is basically Stickies with iCloud and password support. Create a new little yellow note, write yourself a reminder, text snippet or love-letter to your Mac, and move it to where you need it. Like many other programs, the note sits behind the active window and can be easily resized to accommodate more text. The notes can be password protected by clicking the little padlock icon, which keeps prying eyes out of your business if you're letting someone else use your Mac. You can change the font used, size of text and all the standard paragraph formatting you might expect. Unfortunately you can't change the colour of the note itself -- it's yellow for offline memos, blue for cloud memos and green for private memos, which are secured with a password. The blue "Cloud Memos" sync with iCloud to any Mac or iDevice with your iCloud ID and the free Memo app for the iPhone or iPad. If you're looking for a Stickies replacement for just text, Memo has a couple of advantages that might make it worth looking at. It's free, available in the Mac App Store and has free companion apps for the iPhone and iPad.
Daily Mac App: FormatMatch
Copying and pasting text is something everyone does. In OS X you have two choices by default -- copy and paste, which retains formatting; or paste and match style, which strips out the source formatting. If you're like me, you almost never want the source formatting. Cmd+V is the shortcut for regular pasting and Cmd+Shift+V is usually for paste and match style. However, depending on the program, the latter's shortcut is sometimes Cmd+Shift+Opt+V, which is a bit of a stretch for my poor fingers. You can streamline this process using FormatMatch to paste plain text at all times. When enabled, the menu bar utility makes pasting plain text the primary function for Cmd+V. A keyboard shortcut will disable FormatMatch when you want to retain styling. While it solves one of my pet hates, I wish you could disable the menu bar icon. If you're like me and almost never want the formatting to come with the text and can't remember the right shortcut key combo for paste and match style depending on the program, then check out the free FormatMatch from the Mac App Store. Alternatively, if you don't like the switchable app approach, you can swap the shortcuts for paste and paste and match style as this tip suggests.
Daily Mac App: Starred
If you're a Gmail user who leverages more than the simple mail potential of Google's email service, you'll know how valuable labels, stars and other organizational features are. Trouble is, to take advantage of them you normally have to resort to using the Gmail web app in its various guises, or an app like Sparrow Mail. Starring emails and threads is particularly useful if you don't have time to process the information there and then, but don't want the email to get lost in the sea of your incoming email. A simple little menu bar application, Starred, makes using stars in Gmail even more useful. The tiny little app sits in your menu bar as a star with a counter. The counter tells you how many starred emails you have currently in your account. Clicking on the icon spits out a drop-down menu that gives you the subjects and senders, as well as the first line of the starred emails. Click on the snippets and you're presented with a plain text pop-up of the email, allowing you to read and deal with the emails without having to open up your email client or the Gmail web app. The only thing that it's currently missing is the ability to remove stars directly from the app -- for now you have to head into the Gmail web app to do that. Starred is a nice and simple, free app that should fit into your workflow nicely if you're a hardcore Gmail user and don't already use something like Sparrow Mail or Mailplane on your Mac. If you star things for later, give Starred a whirl.
Daily Mac App: Quick Note
Lots of people still use notepads to jot down quick reminders, even when they're in front of their Macs. Quick Note is a note taking utility that gives you the simple, quick writing experience of a pad of paper on your desk, but on your Mac. Simplicity and speed are key in this kind of app and thankfully Quick Note delivers. It's super simple. Click the "+" for a new note and type away. It gives you a pleasing yellow lined paper-style note pad, complete with a black leather textured top, that reminds me of some of the A4 "refill" pads I chewed through when I was a kid revising for exams. Type your note and it's saved in the pop-out drawer to the side complete with a search tool for easy access. Simple and efficient. If you want your notes synced to different Macs, currently Quick Note has support for cloud syncing via Diigo.com, but support for Google Docs, Dropbox and some other cloud services are "coming soon" according to the developer. Quick Note is a simple, straightforward note taking utility that can replace that paper pad you still keep next to your Mac for scribbling down notes. If you're not after the complexity of something like Evernote, and alternatives like QuickNotes or OS X's own Stickies are too simple for you, then Quick Note could be the app for you. It's free, but ad-supported -- thankfully you can quickly close the advert so it's not intrusive in its current implementation. Checking it out if you're still looking for that perfect note taking app for your Mac.
Daily Mac App: Snap App
Taking screenshots on Mac OS is easy thanks to its decent built-in capture utilities, but taking nice ones is not as simple as you might think. App Snap is a developer-orientated screenshot utility that makes taking screenshots for app display a bit easier to manage. It's not just handy for developers, the utility is great for anyone who regularly takes screen captures of application windows, whether it's in an iOS or Android simulator or just regular desktop Mac apps. App Snap does what most other capture utilities will do, takes an image of the window of the app in question. Where it really shines is in the ability to quickly create aesthetically pleasing captures without having to mess around clearing your desktop and worrying about image sizes or aspect ratios. Once you've captured your window, App Snap will place the capture on an App Store orientated background, in this case the default desktop wallpaper at the right size and ratio for submission to Apple. It automatically obscures finder and anything else you might have on your desktop and gives you a nice clean App Store-ready capture in one click. In writing up these Daily Mac Apps, I often fight with screen capture tools with a combination of OS X's built-in tools, SnagIt and Skitch, aided by BackDrop to obscure the rubbish I have littering my desktop. App Snap has replaced all those apps with one click for US$0.99 If you're an developer for the Mac or iOS app stores, or even the Android Market, then App Snap could be a great addition to your workflow that takes the hassle out of screen captures.
Growl developers describe the app's major changes
Growl, the notification system for Mac OS X, was recently updated to version 1.3. While "dot updates" to apps usually don't signal a major change, that's not the case with the latest version of Growl. In a post on the Growl blog, the team described the major changes that have taken place: Growl is no longer free. The app has a full-time development team, and all of the money made from the sale of the app on the Mac App Store goes toward supporting the continuing development. Growl is available for US$1.99, and the team reported that without moving to a paid app model, development would have ceased. It's still, however, an open source project. Growl doesn't have to be installed for you to get notifications. When developers update their apps to take advantage of Growl 1.3, Growl no longer has to be installed for users to get notifications. As the team puts it, "Think of these updated applications as Growl, and the Growl application as Growl Pro. The Growl 1.3 SDK includes a framework which can display a notification, even if Growl is not available." Growl 1.3 supports sandboxed applications. Sandboxing is becoming a requirement for any application on the Mac App Store, and would have broken Growl had the team not made changes. The team says that Growl 1.2 and earlier will no longer work with sandboxed apps. Out-of-date apps don't work with Growl 1.3. Some apps will need to be updated in order to work with the new version. Developers can contact the Growl team for assistance, and users can download Growl Version Detective to determine if an app works properly with Growl. It's still Open Source. The team says that Growl "will remain Open Source for as long as people want to be able to modify the code." The source code is available at their Google Code Hosting project under the BSD license.
Daily Mac App: Gelatin
Some tasks need a really simple, straightforward, no-nonsense app to get the job done. Combining PDF files is one of those tasks, and Gelatin is the app to do it. Preview can do a similar thing, but it's certainly not as straightforward as Gelatin. The app offers a window to drag-and-drop the files you want combined together onto. Select them in finder in the order you want them melded and drop them onto Gelatin. The app will take care of the rest spitting out a PDF with all the files you've dropped onto it joined end-to-end. You can take the file and edit it up with Preview, email it off or save it. Gelatin is free for a limited time and is worth a download for the shear ease of use. If you ever need to combine PDF files, making Gelatin part of your workflow could save you time and effort.
Daily Mac App: Discovr Music
Music discovery has become harder and harder, especially if you, like me, don't listen to the radio. There are quite a few radio-type music discovery services, things like Last.fm and even Spotify will do it. But what about when you simply want to search, listen to snippets and explore artists that might tickle your fancy based on your favorite bands? Discovr Music does just that. It allows you to explore a plethora of artists, all linked in a mind-map style interface. Start by searching for your artist of choice. From there you can listen to song clips, read their biographies, get links out to their music videos on you tube, as well as links to Last.fm, iTunes, Amazon, MySpace, Spotify, Rdio, Mog and even Rhapsody. Bouncing back to the map you can visually explore similar artists, and a simple double click takes you into their info page, to preview songs and see whether you like them. It's a really engaging and slick experience. It's certainly a lot faster and more effective for finding new artists you might like than relying on the radio-style suggestions of Last.fm and their ilk. The problem I have with Discovr Music, and something that comes from the modern expectation that, rightly or wrongly, everything should be free -- it's US$4.99. Although the music search is good, the clips of songs are just that, clips. I can appreciate that a developer needs to make money, but $5 just seems a bit steep to me -- it is purely a music discovery app, not something to replace the likes of Spotify. Having said that, the app works well, is a great alternative to the likes of Last.fm for music discovery, and if you're into music and finding new artists, then you'll probably find it's $5 well spent.
Photoshop Elements 10, Premiere Elements 10 now in the Mac App Store
Announced by Adobe back in September, Photoshop Elements 10 and Premiere Elements 10 are now available in the Mac App Store. Photoshop Elements made its official Mac App Store debut with version 9 earlier this year, but this is the first time Premiere Elements has appeared in Apple's OS X storefront. Photoshop Elements 10 has the same underlying app engine as its bigger brother Photoshop, but is released with a smaller set of tools and features designed for the consumer. The biggest improvement in the latest version of Photoshop Elements is the addition of content-aware tools that let you easily replace a portion of your image by selecting it or brushing over it with a Smart Brush. Similar to Photoshop Elements, Premiere Elements is a scaled-down version of Adobe's professional video editor Premiere. Premiere Elements is designed to be a video editor for consumers who want to create home videos quickly and easily. It includes several one-click tools to correct flaws in a video, an InstantMovie builder and export support for Facebook and YouTube. Both Premiere Elements and Photoshop Elements can be purchased for US$80 each from the Mac App Store. [Via The Loop]
Apple now requiring Mac App Store applications to be sandboxed by March 2012
Apple's already made OS X more like iOS in more ways than one, and it looks like it will soon be taking another step in that direction. As of March 1st, 2012, Apple will require all apps available in the Mac App Store to be "sandboxed," which Apple says is "a great way to protect systems and users by limiting the resources apps can access and making it more difficult for malicious software to compromise users' systems." The other side of that coin is that by limiting access to said system resources, applications are also more limited in what they can do, which has left some developers facing a tough decision: either comply and get in the App Store, or go it alone. They will be able to request access to some resources, but they'll have to provide a justification for it to Apple as part of the submission process. As TUAW notes, however, this isn't a completely new development -- Apple had actually intended to implement the requirement this month, but it's apparently decided to give devs a bit more time to get used to it.
