Archive for the 'News' Category

MacUpdate has released their newest bundle which includes 10 Mac apps for just $64.99 (up to a $474.76 value). One of the best features of the bundle is the inclusion of Parallels 3.0 which on its own costs $79.99. The applications include:

Hazel - create rules to automatically sort and organize your files
Art Text - create high quality headings, logos, banners, buttons
MenuCalendarClock - iCal compatible menu-bar calendar.
Leap - advanced file browsing and tagging
StoryMill - creative writing tool to outline, write and publish a novel
Typinator - type common phrases and pictures
DVDRemaster Pro - recompress large DVDs to fit on standard DVD5 disc, or for use on the iPod, iPhone, and Apple TV
Sound Studio* - record and edit audio
BannerZest* - create animated Flash banners
Parallels 3.0* - PC virtualization software for Intel Macs. Run Windows in Mac OS X

It’s here. Finally. You’ve heard the rumors, seen the video, now purchase the retail bundle. Available online for a limited period of time, the bundle contains 12 apps at a bargain price of just $49.

As usual, the MacHeist guys have done it again, with a bundle that consists of finance software, a word processor, an organizer as well as a handful of games for your Mac. Yea, lovely games.

Easter will soon be upon us and Pierre at Houdah Software is ready for the egg hunt! Houdah Software has teamed up with other Mac vendors and is putting on an Easter mEgg Hunt.

What is an Easter mEgg Hunt? According to the website, the “Easter mEgg Hunt is your chance to learn about wonderful Mac software and earn great discounts.” Houdah provides you with a basket and sends you on your merry way across the internets to find eggs on Mac software vendors’ sites. Once you find an egg, click on it and you will be awarded with a 20% off coupon. But don’t stop with one egg, there are more eggs hidden all over the site with more discounts!

Tuesdays are nearly always the Apple day of the week. It’s Apple’s release date of choice, and rightly so; it allows stock to be in stores, and hence people’s hands, by the weekend.

But 2008 has been an interesting year, and it all started with a comment at a small event, known as MacWorld from a Mr Steven P. Jobs (ever heard of him, I certainly haven’t):

It isn’t often that the world of software design generates newsworthy controversy with its products. After all, the whole point of creating new software is to help people by allowing them to be more productive, more organized, more speedy…right?

What it doesn’t generally do is force them to be more aware of their moral boundaries. One software developer, named Reza Hussain, decided to be a bit more ambitious in his design.

Much to the chagrin of numerous eager users, it was discovered that his seemingly-innocuous screen capture program called Display Eater had a much bigger appetite than they expected: if a pirated serial number was entered during registration, the software would delete the offending user’s home files; effectively killing their poor Mac.

9to5Mac is reporting that they just received a tip about a price drop for the current iPhone and iPod Touch lines within the next month or two (possibly at the February 26th event). The price drop of $100 is to be accompanied by the drop of the 8GB iPod Touch (and possibly the 8GB iPhone) from the line. The iPhone price drops are probably to prepare for the introduction of a newer 3G iPhone in late 2008.

In honor of Super Tuesday, Insanely Great Tees is offering their Steve Jobs For President shirt for just $12.

There is a catch, however, you must promise to vote in today’s primaries or later in the election season. If you are going to vote, simply use the coupon code “IPromiseToVote” when you check out!

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.

Impatience seems to be something of a virtue to many an iPhone or iPod touch owner in this day and age. Constant demand for new “JailBreaks” to the new software updates is another step in the somewhat endless cycle of new updates that break JailBreaks, and then finding the exploits necessary and re-JailBreaking again. Well, it seems as though the latest iPhone/iTouch update has indeed been broken, and until now its been super difficult to do, but today that has changed for the better.

Yesterday, TweakerSoft’s VectorDesign was revealed as the final app for the current MacHeist 2 Bundle. As Pixelmator is to Adobe PhotoShop, VectorDesign is to Adobe Illustrator. For those of us who want to be able to create and edit vector graphics (.svg, .eps, etc.), but don’t want to spend several hundred dollars, VectorDesign looks to fill the void.

MacHeist aims to bring the best shareware from the brightest independent Mac software developers to the masses. We’ve already highlighted the contents of the bundle, but since then all of the original apps have been unlocked - Speed Download has been included, and two games from FreeVerse have been added as well. So now VectorDesign has been included as well.

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.

Apple announced iTunes 7.6 during Tuesday’s keynote. The biggest addition is support for iTunes movie rentals, a feature long rumored and a potential Netflix Watch Now/Blockbuster/Vudu killer.

Aesthetically, iTunes 7.6 looks almost identical to 7.5, but the real biggies are what it adds support for. Read along to find out what’s going on under the hood.

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.