Did you wonder if we’ve forgotten about news this week? Worry no more, your weekly dose of news is here!
Is just that the holiday weekend is coming, and the city I live in becomes a jungle when it comes to finding a good gift. Also, we knew some really cool deals would be coming for Easter and we decided to hold off on publishing for a day.
The AppStorm team wishes you a Happy Easter — a few days in advance, because, you know, we love to anticipate great things!
News from the World of Apps
The Return of NetNewsWire
One of our favorites RSS readers been given a second life! The folks at Black Pixel stated they would be improving NetNewsWire and that its iOS version has already been rebuilt from scratch. You can also read about their attempt to use iCloud as a syncing tool between devices and how it has failed to help the developers. The best news is, NetNewsWire on the Mac will continue to be a great way to read RSS feeds, regardless of Google Reader’s impending death.
Reeder is getting Feedbin support
Yet most folks were not so worried about NNW, but Reeder, which until now had only a promise of survival. This week, the Reeder team informed the world via Twitter about their first choice for a Google Reader replacement, which is Feedbin, a RSS service that costs $2 a month. They’ve also promised to bring all of Reeder 2 for iPhone’s features to the Mac and iPad versions of their app, which should mean it’ll get support for Fever, the $30 self-hosted RSS app.
“Why not a free option?” you ask, “Like Google?” is my reply.
Feedbin is the first option for Google Reader’s replacement on Reeder.
Quicksilver is finally out of beta
In the shadow of Alfred 2′s recent launch, Quicksilver is out of beta after almost 10 years of testing. Honestly, there’s little I can say about Quicksilver that hasn’t already been said, seeing the huge history that precedes it. If you don’t know about it at all, Quicksilver was the first multi-use launcher for many, and it hasn’t lost the steam in the past few months. And the best thing? It is free.
After almost 10 years of beta, Quicksilver finally releases its 1.0 version.
nvALT 2.2? 104 comes with Simperium sync
If you love taking quick notes in plain text, nvALT is the fork for the already amazing Notational Velocity that takes the app to another level. The update replaces the Simplenote Sync for the Simperium API. Also, a command to Preview in Marked was added, to make your Markdown writing and publishing workflow even easier.
Recent OS X update adds 23 minutes of battery life to Retina MBP
After all the buzz around Mountain Lion and battery life, Apple seems to be improving the feature for its users in version 10.8.3. That is, if you have a Retina Macbook Pro, as the tests performed by The Mac Observer show no change in other machines. What’ll you do with these extra 20 minutes is up to you, but this improvement gets the Retina Macbook Pro into the advertised 7 hours of battery life.
Apple’s first quarter of negative income growth since 2003
So is Apple losing money? Is bankruptcy coming? Zombies!? Not at all (let’s hope not, anyhow). What this means is that Apple is having, for the first time since 2003, less growth on its income compared to the same period of the previous year. What drives that is a tough record to beat, as last year Apple had an outstanding 47.37% peak, while this year the margin has been between 37.5% and 38.5%.
Apple is losing revenue compared to last year’s first quarter.
The Best App Deals for Your Mac
Bioshock $19.99 > $9.99
Bioshock 2 $24.99 > $11.99
Archy $8.99 > Free
Archy is the must have app for Google Drive users.
StoryMill $49.99 > $29.99
Contour $49.99 > $24.99
Paperless $49.99 > $29.99
MacGourmet Deluxe $49.99 > $29.99
Montage $49.99 > $24.99
Mariner Persona $49.99 > $29.99
ReadKit $4.99 > $1.99
Textastic (NEW) $2.99
Textastic is the newest code editor to make its arrival on OS X
Trine $9.99 > $1.99
Trine 2 $14.99 > $3.99
RollerCoasterTycoon 3 Platinum $29.99 > $19.99
Nimble Quest (NEW) Free
Radium 3 $9.99 > $2.99
Wingman (NEW) $39
Wingman is a menubar app to manage your GitHub account.
Flow Annual Subscription (task management web app – see Web.AppStorm Review) $99 > $69
Interesting Links
Apple’s broken promise: why doesn’t iCloud ‘just work’?
The first apps on my new Mac, by Brett Terpstra
Patrick Welker’s Sweet Mac Setup
Did We Miss Anything?
That’s all of the news, deals, and interesting links for this week, but if there’s anything you think we missed, be sure to let us know in the comments below. Otherwise, check back next Thursday for more Mac news, deals, and more!
 |
 |