Author Archive

I remember way back in the olden days (circa 1999) driving into the city meant an hour of sitting in traffic in the back of a taxi, likely spending some quality time reading a good book or magazine. Now don’t get me wrong, I love a good read, but enduring that commute can be a lot less boring when you throw podcasts into the mix. Best of all there is some really amazing stuff out there, including some very professional video based shows, and of course I needn’t mention that all of this is completely gratis.

Recently we did a review and then later a giveaway for 2 licenses of Drawit by Pieter Omvlee. Drawit is a vector based image editing and drawing application with a really intuitive and Mac’ish interface.

We got a good response to the contest so first of all thanks to everyone who participated in the discussion. This time around we actually got the developer to choose the winners, so without further adieu, the winners of the licenses of Drawit (valued at €29/$42 each) are…

Superdotman (comment #12) and Patrick (comment #19).

Just after the new year we reviewed a very useful and quite popular text utility from Ergonis called Typinator. Typinator hates keystrokes and helps you eliminate making them unnecessarily by adding spell checking features to your programs and by filling in commonly used text chunks automatically. If you program or work with text regularly Typinator is something you should definitely check out.

The guys at Ergonis were kind enough to give away 3 licenses along with our review. If you are lucky enough to see your name after the jump then you will be getting an email with a license for the full version of Typinator shortly.

We’ve written about Skitch before as far back as last summer. If you remember Skitch will give you ‘1-click uploading of images for fast and fun image sharing‘. This is really Skitch’s killer feature but as well as that the program also allows for some basic image editing, includes iSight support, iPhoto integration, and has a really slick and intuitive interface.

For quite a while now Skitch has been open to beta testers but on a private basis. While plasq has been prety generous granting beta licenses for Skitch, the company has just announced that the beta is now fully open to the public. From my own usage Skitch has been completely solid and I would expect the company is gearing up or a final release track soon.

At MacApper we are always looking for writers enthusiastic about OS X applications and similar Apple based geekery. We are currently seeking highly motivated individuals to contribute Mac related articles on a weekly basis. Qualified individuals will be asked to contribute articles and reviews, collaborate with colleagues, and help coordination of weekly columns and articles. Expert knowledge of OS X and the Mac platform is preferred, but not necessarily required. At the very minimum you will require a Mac and the ability to write engagingly about our subject matter.

Last week we had a quick review of Drawit by Pieter Omvlee a college student from the Netherlands. DrawIt is a vector based image editing and drawing application, which is designed to be easy enough to use for novices or even non-illustrators, yet still powerful. I think Drawit’s interface is pretty unique and overall Drawit is an effective tool for building icons, logos, and other precision illustrating.

When Pieter read our review he was kind enough to offer up 2 licenses (valued at €29/$42 each) to two lucky MacApper readers. But you’re not going to get off with random comments on this one guys, the winners will be decided by the quality of their feedback. So let’s do Pieter a favor and offer up some constructive criticism for his software.

Download a copy of Drawit and offer up some good comments like maybe:

Suggest a way to improve Drawit, or implement features you find important.

As speculated here and everywhere else, Steve Jobs has officially unveiled the MacBook Air subnotebook at his MacWorld 2008 keynote about 30 minutes ago. The Air will mark Apple’s return to the small form factor notebook market, which they last delved into with the popular iBook. And this thing is small! Weighing in at just 3lbs, at its thinnest width the Air is just 0.16″ and 0.76″ at its thickest height. The 13.3″ backlit LED display is said to rival the vanilla MacBook and as you can see from the photos it is unbelievably sexy and saliva worthy.

At the top of everyone’s Macworld 2008 prediction lists was the unveiling of a new small form factor notebook. Most rumors center on the machine being cast in aluminum like a MacBook Pro, very slim with a 13.3″ display, and utilizing some type of flash based memory (maybe something like the new 1.8″ SSD hard drives shown at last week’s CES08). Further rumors suggest some type of HD capable reader/writer, possibly an external Bluray drive, but I think that’s maybe just conjecture. If you remember, many major media outlets like The Guardian hinted at Apple’s subnotebook sans optical drive last November.

MacHeist II is shaping into another really great success this time around as they quickly approach their target of $100,000 for charity. The screenshot and video capture utility Snapz Pro X (a $69 program) was just recently added to the bundle, which seemed to cause a flurry of purchases. I think in the next 24 hours or sooner we should see the bundle fully unlocked and Pixelmator also added to the package.

Update: The recently released image editing app Pixelmator has also just been added to the bundle, making it an extremely attractive offering at only $49. Also a portion of the money collected is going to several worthy charities.

This years Macworld event running January 14th-18th in San Francisco is easily the most popular and widely discussed Macworld event ever. With over 400 exhibitors, tons of buzz about potential hardware releases, and lots of BOOM from the Steve, we will all surely be encompassed by the reality distortion field well before the week ends.

The blogosphere has been super busy the last few weeks with rumors, red herrings, and buzz on what to expect at this years Macworld. Here is a list of my favorites.

Forgot to mention this yesterday but Adium 1.2 was released (thanks TUAW) to all users via the automatic update system in the program. If you read our post just after Xmas you may have been running the 1.2 beta, but it’s nice to see that it has been marked final and from what I can see it is pretty much bug free.

What are the best new features in this point release? Not too many bells and whistles but definitely the group chat interface is important to me. Overall the new interface tweaks for Leopard compliance are also pretty sleek if you’re into that kind of thing. Applescripter’s will like the completely reworked Applescript support as well.

I’m sure by now everyone with an iPhone has seen and is equally excited about the latest firmware update for Apple’s iconic shiny phone. When videos of the update running on a live phone surfaced (hat tip TUAW) this weekend I was a bit skeptical, but it appears this update is legit. Killer new features will include: saving pinned locations in Google Maps, location triangulation via cell tower location (wow!), movable springboard icons, and multiple recipient SMSing.

I’m a bit late with this one but I noticed the guys over at Adium released the latest beta of their popular multi-client chat software over Christmas. Since the 25th there have been a few more bug releases, and according to Evan Schoenberg a final release “…shouldn’t be too far off.” New features include: an improved group chat interface, Bonjour support, XMPP support, reworked Applescript support, and a plethora of interface enhancements and bug fixes.

I sure hope everyone is having a great holiday season this year. Now might be a good time to get offline, visit some people who need cheering, or just spend some time with the family. You can always bring your Mac along, or maybe buy one for someone you care about.

I decided to hit Koh Tao, this year, a really great island in southern Thailand, until the end of this month. I know some of the other guys are tied up with family, vacations, and other merry making. I can’t speak for all of the writers here but I would expect blogging here at MacApper to slow down until the holidays are over, as we all can use a well deserved break.

Joel over at MacUpdate has just sent word that the MacUpdate Promo team has now launched their 2nd bundle promo. The first MUPromo bundle about half a year ago was a huge success, and this time around there is some more really great software up for grabs. If you haven’t heard of the MacUpdate bundles they are quite a unique way to save a really significant amount of skrill on Mac software.

The deal works by buying the 7 program bundle at $49.99 within the 9 day cut-off point (started just now). So right off the bat you get $234 worth of software for $49. That’s quite a savings.