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Mountain Lion to move Software Update to the Mac App Store
Every version of OS X has featured a standalone application called Software Update that delivers updates to Apple's operating system, applications, and hardware drivers. According to Pocket Lint, Software Update is being deprecated in the next version of OS X, Mountain Lion, in favor of delivering software updates entirely via the Mac App Store instead. After OS X Lion was made available only via the Mac App Store, it created a somewhat confusing situation where Apple's own programs were updated via the standalone Software Update application while many third-party apps were updated via the Mac App Store. Mountain Lion eliminates this confusion and makes the Mac experience more like that on iOS devices; Mountain Lion users will have only one interface to reckon with when updating software components on their Macs. Presumably Apple will continue to deliver updates via Software Update for Mac users running legacy operating systems like Snow Leopard (and soon, Lion). Hopefully Apple will also continue to offer standalone updates on its support site so paranoid users like me can keep downloading and applying combo updates when OS X updates come out.
Spirits out on Mac App Store now
Spirits is a really amazing title that original came out on iOS last year: It's sort of a Lemmings clone, though the art style and the game's floaty physics mechanics really add a lot of great new elements to that old classic. Now, Spaces of Play has brought the game to the Mac App Store, so if you haven't gotten to play it yet, you can see it on the big screen with full audio running. Unfortunately, there's no new content available, but Spaces of Play has of course tweaked the game's graphics and interface to work on the desktop rather than on a touchscreen. And given how good this game looks, this might be the ideal version to play with -- obviously, it lacks the tactile input of a touchscreen, but here the game's aesthetic can really stretch out across the screen, and your fingers can get out of the way. Spirits for Mac is available now for an introductory sale price of $7.99 -- if you haven't played it yet, now's your chance.
Daily Mac App: Gemini finds and removes duplicate files
After years of buying hard drives and moving files around, digital hoarders like myself eventually wind up with duplicate files all over the place. A few gigabytes here and there can add up, so Gemini aims to help you find and delete duplicate files across devices. It's a beautifully designed app, and if you're doing basic directory comparisons, is fast as lightning. To start, you just drag a few folders onto Gemini. It'll start scanning with a big circular progress bar moving around. One of the awesome features I've not seen elsewhere is the ability to see the results of a scan and do something about them while the app continues to scour your folders. Gemini is fast even though you can be impatient, which is a plus if you scan a really large set of folders. One issue I did run into was scanning a nearly-full 500 GB drive that had my Time Machine backups on it. The machine using Gemini only had about 5 GB of space available on its drive, and after about an hour of Gemini checking the external drive, my system locked up as it ran out of drive space! This is an oddball issue, according to MacPaw, and they are looking into it. That said, all the other scans of large folders I attempted worked great and went quickly without eating up HD space. Gemini's speed is really impressive. As a bonus, Gemini offers a delightfully designed interface. When you are shown duplicates, you can easily see where they are located, pick the ones you want to delete, then view a receipt of what you want to remove before you delete it. Then, when you are sure, Gemini "shreds" the receipt (and files) before your eyes. Taking something rather tedious (file management) and making it fun turns Gemini into a must-have app if you have years of files stored on external drives around your home.
Apple updates Final Cut Pro X with multicam, more
Apple released an update to Final Cut Pro X, bringing the video editing app to version 10.0.3. The latest update adds several significant features for video professionals including new advanced chroma keying, support for XML 1.1 and beta broadcast monitoring for Thunderbolt devices and PCIe cards. The most significant change is its new multicam editing feature that lets you sync up to 64 angles of video and photos. Though you can still do it manually, this multicam editing feature will automatically sync the incoming feeds. Jim Dalrymple of the The Loop talked with Richard Townhill, Senior Director of Applications Marketing at Apple, about these new features, including the automatic syncing. Townhill explains that FCP X uses audio waveforms from the different cameras to sync them together. The audio doesn't have to be the final production track and can be used for syncing purposes only. Customers who own Final Cut Pro can download the 10.0.3 update from the Mac App Store later today. New customers can purchase the latest version from the Mac App Store for US$299. [Via The Loop] Show full PR text Apple Updates Final Cut Pro X CUPERTINO, California-January 31, 2012-Apple® today released Final Cut Pro® X v10.0.3, a significant update to its revolutionary professional video editing application, which introduces multicam editing that automatically syncs up to 64 angles of video and photos; advanced chroma keying for handling complex adjustments right in the app; and enhanced XML for a richer interchange with third party apps and plug-ins that support the fast growing Final Cut Pro X ecosystem. Available today as a free update from the Mac® App Store™, Final Cut Pro X v10.0.3 also includes a beta of broadcast monitoring that supports Thunderbolt devices as well as PCIe cards. Final Cut Pro X v10.0.3 includes a collection of groundbreaking new tools for editing multicam projects. Final Cut Pro X automatically syncs clips from your shoot using audio waveforms, time and date, or timecode to create a Multicam Clip with up to 64 angles of video, which can include mixed formats, frame sizes and frame rates. The powerful Angle Editor allows you to dive into your Multicam Clip to make precise adjustments, and the Angle Viewer lets you play back multiple angles at the same time and seamlessly cut between them. Final Cut Pro X builds upon its robust, one-step chroma key with the addition of advanced controls including color sampling, edge adjustment and light wrap. You can tackle complex keying challenges right in Final Cut Pro X, without having to export to a motion graphics application, and view your results instantly with realtime playback. In the seven months since launch, the third party ecosystem around Final Cut Pro X has expanded dramatically. XML-compatible software like DaVinci Resolve and CatDV provide tight integration for tasks such as color correction and media management. The new 7toX app from Intelligent Assistance uses XML to import Final Cut Pro 7 projects into Final Cut Pro X. In addition, some of the industry's largest visual effects developers, including GenArts and Red Giant, have developed motion graphics plug-ins that take advantage of the speed and real-time preview capabilities of Final Cut Pro X. Broadcast monitoring in Final Cut Pro X is currently in beta and allows you to connect to waveform displays, vectorscopes, and calibrated, high-quality monitors to ensure that your project meets broadcast specifications. Final Cut Pro X supports monitoring of video and audio through Thunderbolt I/O devices, as well as through third party PCIe cards. Pricing & Availability Final Cut Pro X v10.0.3 is available from the Mac App Store for $299.99 (US) to new users, or as a free update for existing Final Cut Pro X customers. A 30-day free trial of Final Cut Pro X is available at www.apple.com/finalcutpro/trial. Full system requirements and more information on Final Cut Pro X can be found at www.apple.com/finalcutpro. Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices with iPad.
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.
PSA: Limbo now available on Mac via Steam
If you've been waiting for the Mac-compatible Steam release of 2010's noir-existential platformer, Limbo, know that your wait is over. Limbo has, of course, been available via the Mac App Store for about three weeks, but the fact that Steam's version of the title includes cross-platform SteamPlay support may have been enough to convince some people to keep their credit cards in their wallets until now. All we need are 3DS and Vita ports and we'll be able to play Limbo on virtually everything we own.
World of Goo oozes onto a million devices through iOS and Mac App Stores
World of Goo developer 2D Boy has reached one million sales of its sticky puzzler across both Mac App Stores. In classic style for the indie developer, the duo are being highly transparent about where their sales came from. The breakdown: 69% of downloads (79% of revenue) from the Universal version 29% of downloads (17% of revenue) from the iPhone version 2% of downloads (4% of revenue) from the Mac App Store "The Mac version has been out for a while and selling well," 2D Boy's Ron Carmel told us. That million only covers Mac iOS and OSX sales combined through their respective App Stores. 2D Boy also noted the free Android demo of Goo has been downloaded 450,000 times, and the full game has been purchased 70,000 times since its November launch.
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.
Limbo is in Mac App Store now, damned to Steam in January
Playdead promised you a Mac OS release of its charming (but grim!) indie platformer, Limbo, by "the end of the year," and while we're not quite ready to call it a Christmas miracle the Danish developer has delivered on its promise. Limbo is live in the Mac App Store today, with a $9.99 sticker price accompanying the 83 MB download. Waiting for the Steam release, so you can take advantage of the cross-platform SteamPlay feature? Playdead's Dino Patti tells Joystiq that Limbo will be available on Steam on January 13th, a little over three weeks from today. But if that's too long to wait and/or you don't want to drop cheddar on the Mac App Store release, we think we've got a solution: Patti gave us a handful of codes to share with you all, which we'll be dropping onto Facebook and Twitter sometime today.
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.
