Fresh off the presses, here is MacAppStorm’s weekly news roundup.
Happy reading!
Tweetbot Alpha 5 released
The developers at Tapbots sure have been busy over the past several weeks ever since the first public alpha for Tweetbot for Mac was released, and this week has, again, been no exception. On Monday, version 0.7.0 (or Alpha 5) was released to the public, however due to sandboxing requirements this version of Tweetbot has to be installed manually (i.e. you’ll have to download it from their website, unpack and install it over your previous installation). The update is unfortunately not found if you simply head over to the Check for Updates option in Tweetbot’s menus.
One of the new features in the Alpha 5 version is the ability to drag tweets out onto the desktop, where they are saved as a .webloc file.
The new version brings support for drafts, keyword muting, profile editing and Storify support. It is also the last alpha that will support Lion – from the next version Tweetbot will run on Mountain Lion only. One of the developers at Tapbots, Paul Haddad, also hinted on his Twitter feed that development for Tweetbot for Mac is on track and a beta version will be ready soon.
The tweet sent out by Tapbots developer Paul Haddad, readying us all for a beta version sometime soon.
Given the fast turnaround for alpha updates, we can be pretty sure that the beta version will be heading our way soon. To grab the latest alpha, head over to the Tapbots website (direct download link).
Microsoft is not updating Office 2011 for retina displays
If you’re craving after an alternative to iWork on your retina MacBook Pro, then you may be waiting quite a long time unfortunately. Although Microsoft Outlook, the default email program in Microsoft’s popular Office 2011 productivity suite for OS X, has been updated to support retina graphics, the three remaining program’s (Word, Excel and PowerPoint) haven’t and still continue to offend owners of the new MacBook Pro with their blury interfaces and pixelated icons.
And unfortunately it looks like it’s going to stay that way. An official post from the Office for Mac team stated that they cannot comment on any future updates for Office 2011, effectively putting a spanner in the works and stating that nothing is in development at the moment.
Office 2011 will not, for the time being anyway, be updated to support the new retina display on the MacBook Pro.
Microsoft aren’t the first ones to do it, either. The developers of Postbox have repeatedly refused to comment on future updates to their popular email program, stating that they will monitor demand to see whether optimising Postbox for the retina MacBook Pro is worth it – there are, according to one member of the Postbox development team, over “300 icons to optimise” for the new, high-resolution screen.
Cheddar for Mac beta finally unleashed
Nothing Magical, the developers behind the popular iOS task management utility Cheddar, have now released the public beta of the Mac version. At the moment, it’s only available to Cheddar Plus users (which is billed via a monthly subscription of $1.99 per month) however once the demo becomes public it will be free to everyone.
The Mac version integrates with your Cheddar account and allows you to manage all your tasks on your Mac. Once you’ve altered them, the changes will be visible across all your devices (Cheddar is available for iOS and also has a web version).
You can keep track of the beta development via Cheddar’s blog and for a full list of changes, head over to the changelog. To download the beta, click here (direct download link, OS X 10.7 and above required)
Java finally fully supported for OS X
On Tuesday of this week Oracle, the developers of Java, announced that the latest update to Java, Java SE 7 Update 6, has been released for OS X, which finally brings along full native support for the Mac. The release includes the Java Runtime Environment for OS X, which allows users to run Java applications and applets, the Java Development Kit (JDK) and the JavaFX 2.2 rich client platform, which allows programmers build Java software natively within OS X and the new JavaFX Scene Builder.
Java is now finally fully supported for OS X with the release of SE 7 Update 6
Java was natively bundled into every single release of OS X until Lion, when the responsibility of updates was transferred from Apple to Oracle and since then there has been a lull in the development of Java for OS X (with the Windows platform most notably receiving more attention), and this may potentially have resulted in a rise in the number of Java exploits for OS X, the most notable of these being the FlashBack trojan.
The update to Java can be freely downloaded from Oracle’s website.
Heard Anything Else?
If you’ve heard anything else exciting that’s happened this week then go ahead and post a link to it in the Comments section below for the benefit of our other readers!