Fresh off the presses, here is Mac AppStorm’s weekly app news roundup.
Happy reading!
Tweetbot for Mac spotted in the wild
Tweetbot is one of my most requested Mac applications of all time, especially given the poor offerings of Twitter clients for OS X, and thanks to a cheeky image posted by Mark Jardine, a designer at Tapbots, on his Twitter account, we may have been given our first glimpse at Tweetbot for Mac.
Mark Jardine posted a picture of his new retina MBP on his Twitter account which clearly shows Tweetbot for Mac running in the background.
Further confirmation can be found by heading over to his Twitter account, where most of his tweets appear to be coming from the Tweetbot for Mac client:
The interface of Tweetbot for Mac shares a lot in common with the iPad version, with easy access to your timeline, mentions, direct messages and so on running down the left-hand side. We may also see plenty of features on the mobile version in the Mac version as well, such as gestures (swiping left and right to view a tweet in more detail or a conversation), iCloud timeline sync, support for third-party services such as CloudApp and Droplr and possibly integration with Mountain Lion’s notification centre.
There has yet been no official word from Tapbots regarding the Mac version but given Mark’s screenshot, it’s looking like its in the final stages of development so keep your fingers crossed for the official announcement. We will, of course, keep you updated with its progress and have a full review once it comes out!
TextExpander 4 is the first victim of sandboxing
TextExpander 4 was released on Thursday of this week (check out our full review here) as a paid upgrade with plenty of new features however has fallen victim to Apple’s strict App Store sandboxing regulations, which were imposed starting June 1st and is consequently only available as a download from their website.
The new version of TextExpander, version 4, with a cleaner user interface.
Seeing as the app must monitor your keystrokes in order to form your snippets (the main aim of the program), this doesn’t fall in line with the new guidelines which only allows bug fixes to existing programs – any new or updated programs must conform to Apple’s rules.
According to the developers, Smile, anyone who has purchased previous versions of TextExpander from the App Store are not exempt from the slightly preferential upgrade pricing of $15 – if you choose to download the newer version via their website the app will note the presence of the App Store version and offer you the discounted rate.
Growl will work with Mountain Lion’s Notification Centre
For those of you who don’t want to sacrifice Growl for Mountain Lion’s new notifications system then there’s good news. According to a post on their official blog, the new version, Growl 2, will integrate seamlessly with Mountain Lion notifications:
For Growl 2 we’re simply going to add a Notification Center action display as well. This is going to make it easy for anyone who wants to see notifications in Growl, and also in Notifcation Center.
The post also includes some information for developers on how to integrate their new Mist framework with Notification Centre, so that both will work at the same time.
Growl’s developers call it “irresponsible” for them to not support Notification Centre and abandon their existing developers however we’ve heard no word on whether the new version is going to be released (presumably with Mountain Lion in July).
How to hack paid upgrades in the App Store
If you’re wondering how to link back to old upgrades in the App Store then iOS and Mac developer David Smith has provided a great little guide on his blog. All it involves is navigating to:
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftwareRedownload?id=295660203&mt=8
and replacing the id bit with the ID of the app you want to re-download again (however this only works on the iPhone and iPad).
The topic of paid upgrades has been a hot one recently, especially for users who have just bought previous versions of the app and have to pay again for the new version, something which seems slightly austere (but which nets both the developer and Apple additional revenue) and David’s guide seems to be a great way to save a little money on upgrades.
For the full version, head over to his personal blog.
iTuneUp bundle currently on sale for $30
If you’ve got a dirty and disorganised iTunes library, then the iTuneUp bundle currently on sale for $30 (RRP: $50) can help you bring some law and order back to your music collection. It includes the following apps:
- Clean – a way to fix any missing song information (such as artist info or song names) by using advanced waveform technology.
- CoverUp – an automagic (trademarked) way to download missing album artwork.
- DeDuper – removes any duplicated song files.
- Tuniverse – delivers music videos, artist biographies and concert alerts based on your music collection.
And finally (in other non-related app and non-related Apple news…)
Microsoft announces its iPad-competitor, the Surface
Microsoft introduced the world to its new range of tablet computers, the Microsoft Surface range on Monday in a special announcement. Although the exact technical specifications and pricing of the new devices are currently unknown, the Surface will feature a 10.6″ screen, up to 64 GB of on-board storage (expandable via microSD) and will run the new Windows 8 Pro operating system.
The new Microsoft Surface tablet, which was announced on Monday.
The new tablet has been described as a possible “iPad killer” by some and will come in two models, the standard one which uses a Nvidia Tegra CPU and a Pro one, which uses an Intel Ivy Bridge Core i5 processor (similar to the new range of MacBooks). There has been no word from Microsoft about the release date but it’s likely that the new range will be released alongside Windows 8 this coming autumn.
For a closer look at the new range, head over to Microsoft’s sneak preview on their website.
Heard Anything Else?
If you’ve heard anything else exciting that’s happened this week then go ahead and post a link to in the Comments section below for the benefit of our readers!