Author: Blancer

Today’s launch of the Mac App Store will doubtless be feeding analyst speculation for some time to come. Developers who choose to work within it gain exposure; users who use it gain frictionless purchasing ability, unobtrusive DRM (perhaps too unobtrusive), and slick updating. However, there are costs — most prominently, Apple takes a 30% cut of revenues, which might not sit too well with some companies. Apple’s tight restrictions on what apps can do rule out a lot of programs which modify your system in various ways that Apple doesn’t approve of.

It’s too early to say how it’s going down with users, but how many developers have committed to the store for launch day? The Mac App Store UI doesn’t make this easy to figure out; there’s no master list of apps, but instead a sub-list for each of 35 categories (including the various sub-categories of games.) Even worse, many apps are listed in more than one place, meaning that if you start adding up across those categories, you double- or even triple-count many times. Fortunately, I have devised a method of working around this (gory details at the end of the article, if you are curious.) Click through the break for some analysis of how launch day on the Mac App Store is shaping up.

Continue reading Mac App Store by the numbers — almost 1,000 apps on Day One

Mac App Store by the numbers — almost 1,000 apps on Day One originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 06 Jan 2011 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you enjoy wearing your gadgets instead of merely holding them, then you need to check out the the Vyne. One of many inventions to help you wear your portable device, the Vyne is a belt-like flexible plastic strip with a holder at one end for your iPhone, iPod touch or other similarly sized device. The other end has a smooth curve designed to wrap gently around your neck.

Place the Vyne around your neck, attach your iPhone and you can watch movies hands-free while you walk into oncoming traffic or rest on the couch. Pricing and availability is not yet known but one thing is for sure- there is little doubt that you will turn heads when you don the accessory in public. You may also notice an alarming increase in the number of friends who now wear an “I’m with Stupid” T-shirt in your presence. Then again, if you are an influencer, you may just kick off the hottest trend of 2011.

The Vyne: Adorkable, wearable iPhone mount originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 06 Jan 2011 13:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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See this? It’s a standard iTunes link. Thing is though, that iTunes link doesn’t direct to iTunes. It goes to the new Mac App store. Do you know why?

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/angry-birds/id403961173?mt=12

First, there’s the obvious reason: the Mac App Store isn’t part of the standard iTunes suite because there’s no point in providing its features to Windows users. Here’s the less obvious, going out on a limb, thinking-about-this-in-too-much-detail reason. Although the App Store for Macintosh is a whole separate application, in its secret behind-the-scenes-superhero-identity, it’s basically just an iTunes browser.

When you look at App Store, the application, there’s really not much there there. There’s no preferences, no application management (which wouldn’t make a lot of sense, as you have Finder sitting right there behind the app, whose job it is to do exactly that), and not much of anything else other than its core feature: browsing and searching for apps, and purchasing them.

Continue reading Why isn’t the Mac App Store part of iTunes?

Why isn’t the Mac App Store part of iTunes? originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 06 Jan 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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With at least one application on the front page of Mac App Store priced at $59.99 and others in the $20 range, it looks like Mac developers are trying to avoid the iOS App Store race to the bottom syndrome. A quick survey of applications shows that Mac App Store publishers with low-priced iOS offerings are picking more realistic and sustainable pricing for their Mac apps.

Developer Kristanix, whose well-received Mahjong Epic sells for $0.99 on iOS, are offering Majong Epic Gold for Mac at $9.99, an order of magnitude difference in price. Hibari for Twitter, a simple Twitter client that might also sell at the $1 to $3 price point on iOS, has an “introductory” price of $13.99.

On the other hand, as Dave noted earlier, several of Apple’s own Mac apps are cheaper than their previous incarnations. The iWork suite comes to $60 when purchased app-by-app, versus the $79 retail cost; Apple Remote Desktop is $79, way less than the $299 cost for the boxed version (and even cheaper than the street price of about $140). Aperture 3 is also hitting that $79 price, a real bargain versus the $199 retail cost.

Participate in our poll and read more about Mac App Store pricing after the break…

View Poll

Continue reading Mac App Store: some of those apps are expensive

Mac App Store: some of those apps are expensive originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 06 Jan 2011 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Not long after the Mac App Store opened, several warnings via Twitter began to surface. “You did implement receipt checking so that people can’t pirate your app. Yes?” developer Nik Fletcher (also one of our former writers here at TUAW) asked his followers. Ged Maheux at the Iconfactory also pointed out that he was able to run a for-pay app purchased by another person, and run it on 10.5 and 10.6.5 Macs as well — none of which should be happening, it would seem.

Receipt checking is the process that lets developers verify that the app is installed as a valid purchase by checking the embedded purchase receipt, which is included (in encrypted form) by Apple and contains the UUID of the Mac authorized to run the app. Apple did not force developers to implement a particular way of handing these receipts and as a result, some paid apps are not properly protected against piracy.

While the number of affected apps is not known — and probably very small — it’s not clear there’s anything Apple could have done to protect developers from themselves in this situation. According to veteran Mac developer Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater Software, the burden of preventing the app from running in an unlicensed setup is on the app itself, not Apple’s receipts.

“If developers think anything doesn’t check out, at any time, they are obliged to exit the app,” says Jalkut. “So nothing Apple does, short of breaking the exit system call itself, would cause an app to run when the developer’s code discovers something is not right.” Jalkut suspects that the apps in question may not have implemented a receipt check, or that the check they are using has flaws in its implementation. He also points out that Apple’s testing process only looks for “false positives,” meaning that if a valid license/receipt is present and the app fails to launch, that’s grounds for rejection; if one is absent and the app launches anyway, that’s not since receipt checking is optional. [Developer Alex Curlyo points to his open-sourced routines for validating store receipts, in case Mac app developers need some help.]

Fellow TUAW writer TJ Luoma was kind enough to share an app with me to test this. He archived an app purchased through the Mac App Store, dropped the app in Dropbox and sent me the link. I installed it, then restarted the Mac App Store. The store showed the app as being installed, and was able to use the app as if I had bought it myself. However, it did not show up in my purchased apps list. When I removed the app from the machine, the Mac App Store gave me the option of paying for a legal license instead of saying it had been purchased or previously installed in any manner.

To be clear: TUAW does not endorse app piracy, and I immediately uninstalled the app we tested. However, it’s in developers’ interest to double-check and make sure they have receipt support enabled for their products in the Mac App Store.

[And no, if you were wondering, Angry Birds is not the application we tested.]

Lack of receipt checking could enable Mac App Store piracy originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 06 Jan 2011 12:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The new Mac App Store is online, and ready for you to use. It’s an incredibly simple way to find, install, and manage your favorite software.

First of all, to see the Mac App Store at all, you’ll need to run your Software Updates (under the Apple menu) and get Mac OS X 10.6.6 System Update, or run the combo update you can download here.

After you reboot, you’ll see a new icon in your dock, right after the Finder icon. Click that to launch the app store. If you don’t want it taking up dock space, you can also get to the Mac App Store through the Apple menu, right under Software Update.

The app store looks and works almost exactly like the iPad App Store, featuring the same home page of new and popular apps. Most apps cost less than you may have seen them at retail, but some, like Things, are priced higher than we’ve seen them in bundles.

In the Gallery accompanying this post, you can walk through getting the much-anticipated Twitter for Mac app. The release was teased yesterday and showed up on time early this morning. As expected, the app is free. Its predecessor — known as Tweetie before its developer was acquired by Twitter — hadn’t been updated in quite a while, so folks looking for Tweetie 2 will want to check this out.

Check out all of the steps to installation in the gallery below. We’ll have an in-depth review of Twitter for Mac up soon. Enjoy!

How the Mac App Store works, and get Twitter for Mac free originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 06 Jan 2011 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple launched its Mac App Store a few hours early today and we have been downloading apps like crazy here at TUAW. For those who are still waiting to get the hands on the 10.6.6. update, you will be happy to know that the Mac App Store shares the same look and feel as the iTunes App store. It is a stand-alone application whose only apparent tie-in to iTunes is the Apple ID you use to purchase and download apps.

Similar to the App Store on iOS and iTunes, the Mac App Store organizes applications to help you find your favorites and stumble upon new offerings. Currently, the Mac App Store has three app-specific menu bar items including Featured, Top Charts and Categories. The Featured apps section is further broken down into the familiar New and Noteworthy, What’s Hot and Staff Favorites. As expected, the Top Charts section lists all the Top Free, Top Paid and Top Grossing apps as well as the top apps per category. The familiar categories section breaks down the apps into 21 broad categories such as Medical, Games, Productivity and more. Selecting an individual category will let you scroll through all the apps in that category or browse through the Top Paid, Top Free and Top Grossing apps for the category.

Rounding out the five menu interface for the Mac App Store are Purchases and Updates. Purchases is a sweet new feature that is not present in the iOS App Store. Clicking on Purchases will list all your recent paid or free download. Each listing includes the name of the application, the date purchased and whether it is installed or not. Unfortunately, pricing information is not included in this list. Finally, the last menu item is Updates. Similar to iOS, this section will keep track of application updates and will presumably let you download and install new versions with a single click.

Overall, the look and feel of the Mac App Store is very re-assuring and familiar for iOS users. It is responsive and installing new apps is drop dead easy; sometimes even too easy. Once you enter in your Apple ID, subsequent clicks on a “Buy” button will automatically complete your transaction.

We only ran into a few minor inconveniences, the most troubling of which is the inability of the Mac App Store to pick up previously installed applications. Apparently, the Mac App Store does not exhaustively scan your computer for apps when it is first installed. Apple applications like iPhoto were picked up but some third-party apps were not. We assume this annoyance will go away once you filter all your app purchases through the Mac App Store. For a closer look at the Mac App Store Interface, check out the gallery below.

Mac App Store: initial impressions originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 06 Jan 2011 11:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This morning it was all “Where’s Waldo?” on my computer as I hunted and hunted for the new app store after spending far too much time updating my system. It turns out that I don’t need to upgrade my glasses, just my recognition skills. The new App Store icon is automatically installed into your Dock under 10.6.6, just to the right or below the OS X finder icon, into the second slot on your Dock.

App Store is an application, just like most of the other items in the top or left portion of your Finder Dock. Removing it from the Dock adds a little room back into your applications collection — and you can do this without losing access to it from Finder. The secret is that App Store is built right into the Apple menu at the top-left of your finder window. Why take up precious Dock space when you can get to the app so easily?

If you’re looking to conserve space in your Dock (and, frankly, what Dock-aholic isn’t), you can easily remove it and still find it when needed. To remove App Store, just drag it out from the dock into the finder. You’ll be rewarded by a lovely visual poof and an accompanying sound effect.

Of course, if you change your mind and decide that you want App Store back in your dock, just hop into your Applications folder and drag the icon from the folder window right back over into the dock.

Mac 101: Finding App Store on your Mac originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 06 Jan 2011 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While researching the reduced price behind Apple’s Remote Desktop — $79.99 on the Mac App Store versus $299.99 for up to 10 seats through Apple’s website — we in the TUAW newsroom found ourselves debating the number of allowed installs.

I perused the individual license attached to the Apple Remote Desktop app on the Mac App Store, and it said the app can be installed on computers you own or control in accordance with with the Mac App Store Product Usage Rules. These rules (which weren’t on Apple legal’s site as of yet, but you do see them when doing your first purchase in the Mac App Store) specify that “You may download and use an application from the Mac App Store for personal, non-commercial use on any Apple-branded products running Mac OS X that you own or control.”

So that shiny copy of Remote Desktop you just downloaded? It goes to any personal Mac you own. Granted, most people aren’t going to own a plethora of Macs, but it’s still a better deal than $299.99 just to even use the product. Same goes for Aperture, which is $79.99 on the Mac App Store, but $199.99 through the website. Commercial enterprises will still need to buy individual licenses.

It answers a concern about whether or not Apple will restrict the number of installs you can do on the Mac. Likewise, iOS apps downloaded through the iOS App Store can be installed on any Apple-branded products running iOS.

Updated terms specify number of installs from the Mac App Store originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 06 Jan 2011 10:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Tomorrow the US$99.00 iPhone 3GS will be half that. That’s the word from the Wall Street Journal and other media outlets. It’s not a big surprise. AT&T will likely lose iPhone exclusivity any time now, and they want to lock customers in to 2-year contracts before that happens. It’s also not the first sale on the 3GS, as Radio Shack recently had a similar promotion.

Apple still lists the 3GS at $99.00 on its own website. The 3GS would make for a good starter smartphone for many people, but lacks FaceTime, the retina display, HD video recording and HDR for stills.

Even without those features, the 3GS is an excellent phone, and if you live in an area with good AT&T service, it’s an attractive deal. The offer is through AT&T retail stores and online.

AT&T slashes price of iPhone 3GS to $49 originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 06 Jan 2011 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple’s iWork suite is a nice collection, but some users don’t need all three apps. Fortunately, the Mac App Store lets you pick and choose between iWork and iLife apps. Starting today, you can buy and install only the apps you want for US$20 each. For iWork customers, that means Pages, Numbers and Keynote. Buy all three and spend $60. That’s a savings of $40.

Now some of you are probably saying “$40? But iWork ’09 only cost $80? So if I can get them for $60, that’s a savings of $20.” Ah, but you are forgetting that the app you are buying can be used on all of your computers, meaning that you are really getting what used to be called the “Family Pack” which sold for $100.

The Mac App Store also recognizes if you already own them, so you won’t have to buy them again.

Similarly, the iLife apps can be purchased individually. You’ll find iPhoto or iMovie or GarageBand on sale for $15 each. That’s a significant savings over the $80 for iLife Family Pack. There’s one big caveat, however: you will not find iWeb or iDVD in the Mac App Store. Maybe they’re coming later, but it seems more likely that Apple signified that they were cutting them lose when they were included in the boxed set of iLife but never mentioned during the announcement.

Where is iWork ’11?

Several of us were surprised to see that iWork ’11 is not on the Mac App Store. iWork ’09 is, obviously, a few years old now and the Mac community has been anticipating a new release. the Mac App Store just seemed like it would be a good opportunity. Not yet, but hopefully soon.

Just a reminder: there has never been Mac upgrade pricing on iWork or iLife, so if you buy Pages from iWork ’09 today for $20 and iWork ’11 is introduced next week, expect to pay full price for that upgrade. Caveat emptor.

UPDATE: If you already own these apps but the Mac App Store doesn’t recognize it, make sure they are up to date (iWork just had an update last night). After updating apps, restart App Store app and it should recognize they are installed.

Buy individual iWork, iLife apps from the Mac App Store originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 06 Jan 2011 10:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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One day before CES begins here in Las Vegas, Klipsch invited journalists to visit a gallery of their products, and that’s where we got to see the company’s new line of “soundbars,” specially made speaker docks that will come equipped to support Apple’s own AirPlay system. The docks we saw were prototypes only, so they weren’t actually running any music from an iOS device, but eventually, they will stream music directly from any iOS 4.2 or higher equipped device through the AirPlay protocol.

The docks come in three different models — the Studio model is the smallest, and it can fill a small room with sound for US$399, the Forum model is a little bigger for $599 and the Arena model, above, checks in at a whopping $799. That’s pretty pricey (even considering the sound quality), but these are basically meant to be all-in-one solutions for audio, with the added bonus of streaming iOS music from anywhere. The Arena model has both a USB port on it (for older iPod models), and an auxiliary input for a television or another sound source.

Klipsch told us that it was excited to use Apple’s AirPlay standard for these devices, and it eventually expects that Apple will allow for a “one-to-many” streaming service, where you can send different audio feeds out to different speakers throughout the house. There’s no release date yet for these docks, but those in search of a quality all-in-one, Apple device friendly solution can look for them in Q2 or Q3 of 2011.

Klipsch shows off AirPlay-enabled speaker docks at CES originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 06 Jan 2011 09:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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At CES, Bowers & Wilkins announced the Zeppelin Air, its next generation iPhone/iPod speaker dock with AirPlay support. This lovely piece of audio hardware features class D amplifiers, improved bass thanks to Flowport technology and digital signal processing and exceptional performance courtesy of new 25bit-96KHz capacity DACs. In addition to its standard USB connectivity which lets you sync to iTunes on your computer, this latest Zeppelin model now supports AirPlay so you can wireless stream your music directly from any iOS 4.2 device or iTunes 10.1 Mac or PC.

If you prefer to dock your device, the Zeppelin Air has a spring-loaded docking port that accommodates all models of the iPhone, all models of the iPod touch, the iPod classic and the iPod nano (6th, 5th, 4th, 3rd and 2nd generations). Pricing is not yet available, but if previous models are any indication, this fusion of style and function will not be cheap. Click through for the press release after the break or head to B&W’s website for all the details on this gorgeous AirPlay speaker system.

[Via Engadget]

Continue reading B&W Zeppelin Air looks cool, connects via AirPlay

B&W Zeppelin Air looks cool, connects via AirPlay originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 06 Jan 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Many users, including a few of us here at TUAW Towers, have had the release of the Mac App Store this morning blighted by the message We could not complete your App Store request. An unknown error occurred (100).

The fix for this seems to be simple. The release of the Mac App Store has provoked yet another set of iTunes Terms and Conditions for us all to agree with (seriously, Apple, I think we can all agree we’ve surely agreed enough by now?), but the App Store seems to be flakey about reporting this to you. Quitting the Store and reloading it appears to be enough to bring it to life; you’ll know when you get it right because you’ll be walked through the usual T&Cs process. Other users are reporting success with restarting iTunes instead, or restarting their entire Mac, so that’s also an option if the first approach doesn’t work for you.

Mac App Store reporting “Error 100”? Here’s what to do originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 06 Jan 2011 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Now that the Mac App Store is available, we’ve taken a look at pricing of some of the top apps (all links will open the Mac App Store). Here’s a quick look at some apps we’ve been anticipating, including a very steep discount.

Pixelmator 1.6.4, the image editing app billed as a light weight Photoshop alternative, is US$29.99.That’s a huge discount over the price at the Pixelmator website, which is $59. As you see in the graphic above, there are other deals to be had. Aperture is selling for $79, which is a steep drop from is former price of $199, and Apple Remote Desktop has fallen to $79.99 for unknown seats.

Meanwhile, Things from Cultured Code, the popular project management software, is selling for $49.99 (up four cents from Cultured Code’s web price). Meanwhile, Delicious Library 2 from Delicious Monster is $39.99, the same as its web price.

There are several free apps as well. Twitter for Mac (formerly Tweetie 2) is indeed in the store as we expected from yesterday’s leak, and is free. In fact, it’s currently listed as the top free app. Additionally, Evernote and one of my favorites, Alfred, are also available at no cost.

We’ll have much more on the Mac App Store as the day progresses. Stay tuned.

Mac App Store pricing of featured apps originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 06 Jan 2011 09:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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