The news from the Apple-sphere this week has undeniably been dominated with the announcement of the long-awaited iPad 3 release, which is due to be unveiled next Wednesday at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco along with a possible 8GB iPad 2 designed to compete with cheaper tablets in the market. Most Apple fans are certainly very excited for this launch as that dream of an iPad with a crystal-clear retina display may finally become a reality!
With the speculations of the iPad 3′s features aside, here is Mac AppStorm’s weekly roundup of the goings-on in the world of Mac software.
App Store reaches magical 25 billion downloads
Sometime during Friday evening/Saturday morning (depending on where you live around the globe), the App Store quietly reached the mesmerising 25 billion download mark, with the winner of the $10,000 iTunes gift voucher still to be announced. The news that the 25 billion barrier had been broken was announced on the App Store’s Twitter feed and via a banner on Apple’s home page.
The banner on Apple’s home page
Preliminary calculations have shown that the 50 billion app mark will be broken in less than 2 years if the download rate remains stable, however with iOS devices and Macs becoming ever more popular, it may not take that long for this record to be broken.
Along with the announcement, Apple also released the top iOS for iPhone and iPad apps of all time – no guesses as to which app is number 1! For the full list, head over here (link opens in iTunes)
ReadNow renamed and is now completely free
ReadNow, a popular Instapaper and Read It Later client for OS X has been renamed ReadLater as well as being made completely free on the App Store. Although not as feature-rich as similar apps (such as Reeder), ReadLater still features some crafty little tricks such as the ability to send articles to Evernote and sharing via Twitter, Facebook, Pinboard or Delicious.
ReadLater, an Instapaper and Read It Later client for OS X, is now free on the Mac App Store (image courtesy of TheNextWeb)
You’ll need either a Read It Later account (which is free) or a paid Instapaper account to use ReadLater. The update to version 2.0.2 also provides a few bug fixes and other improvements.
Link: ReadLater on the Mac App Store
Path receives an (unofficial) OS X app, Journey
Path, the great little daily digest tool, has received an (unofficial) Mac OS X app called Journey, which is available for free download from their website
Journey for OS X is a free and unofficial Path client
Path, which already has official apps for both iOS and Android, helps you to create your own personal life journal and allows you to post a tonne of different content, including photos, videos, where you are, who you are with, what you are thinking and so on. You can even let people know what song you are listening to and when you go to bed. The built-in location services also learn about where you are and can display local information which is relevant to you.
Journey is a little limited in its functionality at the moment – essentially it’s just a feed aggregator for your Path activity however every app must essentially start somewhere and more features are sure to be added soon. The fact that the app is open-source may help towards this as well.
To help out with the Journey project, head over to their page on GitHub to see what needs doing. In the meantime, you can download the app directly using the source link below (note that the app is still in beta so there may be some bugs and stability issues)
Link: Journey 0.1 (download)