It’s almost that time again when Intel will release its new lineup of processors, which seems to happen on a two-year cycle. Apple is always one of the first, if not the first, company to have the new processors inside its computers, so with Haswell processor expected to debut in a few weeks, it makes sense that we’ll also be seeing some new Macbooks with Haswell announced soon. And this is definitely a good thing.

Intel is stating that the new chip will have great effects on battery life, as reducing power consumption is Haswell’s main goal. Intel says that Haswell will give laptops 50% better battery life than what they had with the previous generation Ivy Bridge processors. When the laptop’s in standby mode, battery improvements will be even more remarkable, with battery life being extended by up to 20 times.

The chips will also greatly improve the integrated graphics capabilities of Macbooks, with graphic performance expected to be doubled.

Haswell is a big upgrade over the Ivy Bridge processors in the current Macbooks. It is the “tock” in Intel’s “tick tock” cycle. This means that while Ivy Bridge was only a minor update over the preceding Sandy Bridge, Haswell provides substantial improvements and changes.

There have been rumors of a new Macbook Air being announced at WWDC, which would include Haswell, so we might be able to see just how big these improvements are in a few short weeks.

We’re switching things up in the weekly app department at Macgasm. (A department of one, but the placard was already at the printer’s office.) The format has been to pick five apps by platform. Problem is, not every platform has a stellar app week, while there have been a lot of iPhone and iPad apps that we weren’t able to show you. Since we want to make sure that you get the coolest apps, this column will now just be the top 5 regardless of platform.

So this week we have for you an app to organize and share your movie wish list for iOS. We have an iPad port of a popular PC strategy title. For your Mac we have a multi monitor utility for you power users. We finally find out what the hub hub is about the latest iOS game obsession. Finally we have a project design tool for the iPad.

Limelight

Limelight isn’t a movie app for the casual movie fan. If you plan your Saturday around catching multiple movies at the cineplex and Netflix, then Limelight is going to be a big help.

You can go through and select your favorite movies and add them to your list of watched films. You can also browse through upcoming movies and add them to your ‘To Watch’ queue. You can also go back catalog and add those to your queue, for those you’d rather wait for Netflix or iTunes to rent. You can share your lists with Facebook and Twitter, or you can share with other users of Limelight directly. (They actual seed you with some high profiles users. Though these are developer types, not film critics, which may not be a good fit.)

Limelight is $1.99 from the App Store

Frozen Synapse

Frozen Synapse was an indie strategy game for the PC. With highly stylized graphics, a cool soundtrack, and fiendishly in-depth mechanics, the game was fairly popular. It was a mostly mouse based game, so its port to iOS was met with some concern, but it has been really successful.

Frozen Synapse puts you in charge of a squad of soldiers fighting in a blend of reality and cyberspace. You give exact orders for movement direction and the aim of your soldiers before setting the turn and letting the actions go and the enemy react. In addition to simple battle modes, you have escort and hostage rescue missions that require a different approach. With online multiplayer, which can sync with your PC/Mac account for stats, this game is going to keep you busy. It’s difficult, but fun.

Frozen Synapse is available on the App Store for $6.99

Multimon

Though Macs support multiple monitors, it’s never been really the focus of the OS. To make matters worse there’s never really been an equivalent to Ultramon for Windows. Second Bar was a possibility, but it was out of date and a little flakey. Multimon appears to fill that void, and it’s in the Mac App Store.

Multimon’s first and obvious benefit is to add a copy of the menu bar on your secondary monitor. This saves you a lot of mousing time. On the secondary menu bar and the Multimon icon in the primary bar, you can send the active window to your other monitor, or choose which monitor it should be on. The array of keyboard shortcuts to arrange windows and minimize and maximize them might be worth the purchase price alone.

Multimon is $7.99 on the Mac App Store.

Dots

Dots is another minimally designed game for iOS. Like Letterpress, when you’re done playing, your phone looks a little old fashioned. Well that is what most of the press seems to think. Does the game merit the hype?

Well if you like speed puzzlers like Bejeweled Blitz or 10000000 then Dots should be right up your alley. You’re given sixty second to connect group of two or more dots in straight lines. You can connect horizontal and vertical lines of dots, but you cannot move diagonally. Making squares out of your dots is actually the real key to a high score, as this clears all dots of that color from the board. There are boosts for time and clearing dots that you can purchase using your scores, or real money if you feel so inclined, which adds some strategy.

Dots is free on the App Store.

Gini

Gini is a project management tool masquerading as a mind mapping app. On the iPad you are presented an array of project templates you can use for common small business/ freelance tasks, like writing a book or starting a restaurant.

It seems a bit frivolous to lay out an article using Gini, as it’s about as overqualified as an english lit major at Hallmark. The app allows you to create ideas for your project, create areas of focus and tasks, as well as do case studies. It does it all using a custom interface, including file management, which may need a bit of a learning curve.

Gini is $4.99 in the App Store.

Evernote has just been updated to include a new feature for the Mac, iOS, and web versions of the service.  The new update introduces Reminders, which includes the three most requested features that will keep users on task and remind you to update and add new notes.

Evernote Reminders includes three features:

• In-app and email Alarms
• Quick note based to-do lists
• Pinning notes to the top of your note list

Here’s how it works: You can easily add a Reminder to any note by tapping on the new alarm clock icon that you’ll find at the top of the note on your Mac and web versions and the bottom of the note on your iPhone or iPad. If it’s something you don’t want to forget about, set a date and time for when the note needs to be completed.

When a Reminder is set, you’ll get an in-app alarm and you have the option to also receive an email on the day that a Reminder is due. Once a reminder is set, a note title will appear in the new Reminders section at the top of the note list. The order of your Reminders can be changed just by dragging them to a new spot. When a task is completed, just tap on the check or swipe to remove the Reminder from the list if you’re using an iOS device.

Reminders are notebook-based, which means wherever you add a Reminder to a note it’ll show up in the Reminder section of that particular notebook. If you prefer to see all your Reminders together, you can always go to the All Notes view.

If you use Evernote with a group or team, Reminders can be shared with everyone who has access to your notebook so that when a project is due, everyone on the team will be informed.

Get the updated Evernote for your Mac and iPhone now.

Image Credit: MacStories

François Beaufort, a member of the Google Chrome team, posted a new image to his Google+ page revealing that Google is working on bringing the Chrome App Launcher to the Mac. Chrome users can even try out a beta version of it now by installing Chromium and then running a quick command in terminal. You’ll also need to download at least one app from the Chrome Web Store in addition to Chromium.

Once downloaded, clicking the dock icon will bring up a grid of installed apps. When you click on one of those apps it will open the browser window in full with the app you selected. The icon will then go back to is usual purpose of bringing Chromium windows to the forefront. To open other apps you’ll have to do it from the browser window itself.

It’s not clear when exactly a full version of the Chrome App Launcher will be available for the Mac, but with a beta version now available it’ll likely be here pretty soon.

Image Credit: François Beaufort

While Tim Cook had revealed earlier in the year that a “Made In U.S.A” Mac was on its way that would be manufactured in the U.S. rather than overseas, he has now revealed that a number of smaller parts for the Mac will be built within America as well.

Tim Cook sat down yesterday for an interview with Politco, where he said that the Mac will include parts manufactured in various states, in addition to the manufacturing of the entire computer which will also take place in the U.S. Cook states that it is all part of a $100 million investment Apple is putting into domestic manufacturing.

“We’re going very deep in this project,” Cook said, noting that not only will the final product be manufactured in the U.S., but so will many of its components. Arizona, Texas, Illinois, Florida and Kentucky are among the states he mentioned as having parts and assembly located.

Production of the Made in U.S.A Mac is set to begin sometime in 2013. Apple has still yet to announce which model Mac will be receiving the treatment, however, the most popular predictions are either the Mac Pro or the Mac mini.

It seems as though Apple is prepping to unveil a new version of the Macbook Air at next month’s WWDC. This conclusions comes after almost every major store is reporting that they no longer have any stock of the 13-inch default high-end Air that comes with a 1.8GHz processor and 256GB of flash storage.

One of the most telling signs of an upcoming new Apple product revision is when the current stock for that product starts drying up at stores. Apple always chooses to stop shipping and producing its old computers to ramp up production of their new model and to free up space at retail stores for the new device in the weeks leading up to its release.

AppleInsider reports that the Air is currently sold out at Amazon, B&H, MacConnection, MacMall, and J&R. The only Apple reseller they found that was actually still selling the device was Best Buy.

Rumors have been circling for some time that a new Macbook Air would be unveiled at WWDC and that it would include Intel’s new Haswell processor. The Haswell processors are set to launch in a couple of weeks, so the timing works out perfectly.

Long story short, if you’re thinking about getting a Macbook Air, you should probably wait a month.

If there’s one thing that leaves me scratching my head with OS X’s Finder, it’s the lack of a display for the size of folders and subsequent files within them. It drives me crazy.

Yesterday, on LifeHacker, there was a snazzy little tip that turns on the size readings and I thought I’d pass it along.

1. Open a Finder window
2. Switch to List View
3. Click on the Gear icon
4. Click on Show View Options in the menu
5. Check the box titled, ‘Calculate All Sizes’

Why this isn’t on by default absolutely boggles the mind.

For the last little while, the Pixelmator team has been teasing a new update on their blog for the popular photo editing application for the Mac. Now the update, known as 2.2 Blueberry, has arrived for Pixelmator, bringing over a hundred new features and improvements.

With over a hundred new features, Blueberry makes image editing easier and better than ever before. The new Smart Shape tools brings easy-to-use controls for adjusting outlines and a Smart Move tool that smartly knows when you’re working with an image or shape and gives you whichever options you’ll need for each. There’s also a new Light Leak effect feature that helps you create “stunning, retro-artistically illuminated images.”

This is just the tip of the iceberg. According to the Pixelmator blog, the update also brings new Color Popovers for faster access to color swatches, new gradient presets, improved drawing tools, an improved Type Tool, the ability to copy and past shape styles, and major performance improvements.

“We’re excited to deliver even more, easy-to-use, advanced features to our Pixelmator fans and continue to create the best and most enjoyable image editing experience,” Saulius Dailide of the Pixelmator Team said on their blog, “With new state-of-the-art Smart Shape Tools, people can fully enhance their images, create logos, Web layouts, posters, and much more, all easier than ever before.”

Pixelmator 2.2 is now available in the Map App Store for free for anyone who has already purchased the App. If you’re interested in it for the first time, you can get Pixelmator for $14.99

Chat applications have undergone a huge transition over the last decade. We’ve gone from AIM and MSN to Facebook Chat, Gtalk, and Skype. The one thing that hasn’t seemed to change all that much, excluding Facebook, is how these applications look and feel. When it comes to the Mac, we’ve got two options: Adium and Messages. One of them is hard to look at and the other is hard to use because it hardly works properly.

Dawid Liberadzki and Oskar Krawczyk got sick of how Adium looks and feels and decided to do something about it. From the sounds of it, they feel the same way that I do:

Messages, looks great but is just a ridiculous bug–fest. Hardly anything works as it should. The latter, works fantastic, but looks like it just DeLorean-time-jumped from the early 2000’s – with no disrespect to the Adium team, I have a lot of respect for them.

With that in mind, the team of two put together an awesome concept for Adium, and from the sounds of it, they’re looking to give away their designs to make it a reality.

Honestly, something has to happen. Messages needs a serious ass-kicking. My messages have rarely synced properly between my iOS devices and OS X. It’s frustrating.

Anyway, it’s worth clicking through to check out the concept.

It’s been a great week with a lot of great new apps hitting the marketplace. We’ve got a few new ones for you this week. If you’re concerned about network quality we have an iPhone app for you. We have a light and less extensible version of Status Board for the iPad. A beloved iOS podcast app comes to the Mac, in beta. Our web app is a dead simple to-do list. Our game of the week is a follow up from the makers of “You Don’t Know Jack.”

iPhone/iPod Touch: OpenSignal

Our iPhones are awesome mini-computers that are always at hand, but without a proper network connection, they lose a bit of their usefulness. The open source OpenSignal app gives you a clear way to look at your current network status.

It shows the strength of your cellular and Wi-Fi connections. You can run upload and download speed tests, take a look at the coverage map in your area by carrier, and see a map with local Wi-FI hotspots. There’s a lot of data here in a relatively neat package, though this may overwhelm novice users.

Open Signal is Free on the App Store.

iPad: My Dashboard

In case you missed it, we did a huge exploration of Panic’s Status Board and the variety of panels that developers were creating. My Dashboard bares a passing resemblance to Status Board but it’s missing the power and extensibility. If Status Board was a successful engineer, My Dashboard is his cousin that’s a social media marketing expert.

That said, not everyone needs a powerful status tool. My Dashboard is a bunch of preconfigured widgets that you can place around three screens. You can drop a panel with Twitter, and another with Facebook. You can monitor a couple of different websites, including the doomed Google Reader. Another Panel gives you in app access to the current videos from your subscribed channels. There’s a music player that ties to your on-device library. The various backgrounds look really nice, tipping the hat to some clever design. To get your GMail and a to-do list you’ll need to spend an additional $0.99 above the apps purchase price, which doubles the price.

You can grab My Dashboard on the App Store for $0.99 here

Mac: Instacast

It’s going to take a lot to get anyone to switch their podcasting app, but Instacast has made a compelling argument for buying their app for all platforms. With the release of the Mac client, you can now pull all of your podcast subscriptions from iTunes or Apple’s own Podcasts app on iOS.

The app is in open beta right now, but it is in very good condition. You could easily mistake this for release-quality software. You can import your iPhone and iPad subscriptions by creating or signing in with your account. This means that you only have to go through the misery of reconfiguring your podcasts once. The Mac app actually has better sorting options over the iOS app. The instant sync is by far the most valuable part of the new software.

You can download the beta here it’s free but you can lock in the price of $14.99 if you purchase your license now.

Web: TodoCat

The internet loves productivity apps, nearly as much as it loves cats. This combines the two of them in a nice package that’s minimal. The page is the Sophisticated Cat meme with the I Should in bold, and the buy a boat underlined. You can then add your tasks which stack up below, you can clear them with a click.

It’s basically a scratch pad, no sophisticated GTD process involved. If you want to sync the web app you’ll need to create an account. However simple it may be, it’s really responsive and you can’t help but chuckle at Sophisticated Cat. If you’re buying a boat, your to-do list is already done for you.

TodoCat is a free app you can check out here.

Game: Lie Swatter

You Don’t Know Jack was a classic game that has had a resurgence in recent years, first as a console game and more recently as a social game. Developer Jellyvision has released a new trivia game called Lie Swatter. The premise is pretty simple, you get a listing of trivia facts and you have to choose all the lies for points, you lose points for selecting true facts about your subject.

The game is asynchronous, and turns work a’la Words with Friends. Each game is three rounds, so it can go pretty quick. Like You Don’t Know Jack there is a lot of pressure to plunk down some cash to stop the ad model. Playing with it isn’t too terrible, but it may hamper your progress if you’re playing a lot of games.

Lie Swatter is free and you can grab it from the App Store.

For all those who discriminate against hard drives with moving parts, the iMac hasn’t been a very good option for you. That is until now, where Apple has finally added the option to replace the default slow 1TB 5400 RPM hard drive with a quick 256GB or 512GB SSD for $300 and $600.

Before today, the storage options you could choose for the iMac weren’t too hot. On the 21 inch iMac it was previously impossible to get only a solid state drive inside it. You could either go with the default 1TB 5400 RPM drive, or you could upgrade it to a 1TB “fusion drive” for an additional $250. (For those who don’t know, the fusion drive is a sort of hybrid SSD and hard drive that includes 128GB of SSD storage as well as 1TB of standard hard drive storage.)

For the 27 inch iMac, the only SSD option was a 768GB SSD for a cool $900. Not exactly an option most customers are interested in.

$300 for a 256GB SSD is still quite expensive as far as SSDs go, but with Apple’s nearly impossible to take apart iMac, you’ll definitely want to pony up the cash if fast storage is something you’re going to be concerned about.

Order your built-to-order iMac from the online Apple Store.

Instacast by Vemedio, a popular podcast app, has previously been available only for the iPhone and iPad but is now available as a public beta for Mac.

Since it’s still in beta, there’s likely to be a few bugs that will need tweaking, but you can download it now to give it a try. You can login to the same account that you use on your iOS device. Organize your podcasts by adding new lists and categorizing them however you want and star your Favorites in case you want to remember them for later.

Instacast for Mac beta is available to download now on the Vemedio website and it works with OS X 10.8 or higher.

Most people know and love Dropbox and the way it syncs files between multiple devices, but what happens when you’ve left out a couple of files and later realize you need them but don’t have your Mac with you? Enter Spotdox. Part Mac app and part iOS-accessible web service, Spotdox is an add-on to Dropbox that lets you access any file on your computer from any location or device so long as it’s downloaded on your Mac.

All you have to do is download Spotdox and keep it running on your Mac, which will extend Dropbox’s functionality. While Dropbox only allows access to files directly in your Dropbox folder, Spotdox lets you browse, copy, and send any file or folder on your computer to any other device.

When you download Spotdox, the app will request authorization to access your Dropbox account. If you have more than one account, you can install Spotdox on each one to access files on each computer. To make sure you can access the files, make sure to enable Open Spotdox at Login from the app’s menu so that Spotdox is continually running.

To use Spotdox, just load a special Spotdox URL on another device, like a different Mac, iPhone, or iPad. Spotdox uses Spotlight on your Mac to find the file you’re looking for and then moves in into your Dropbox on request. Once it’s there, you can access the file from any Dropbox app on any Mac or iDevice.

If you find that your Dropbox is full, you can even move stuff out of it and onto your Mac from any phone or web browser. So, if you’re not at your computer, you can easily upload photos while on the road to Dropbox and then transfer them to you Mac, which frees up more space.

While pricing hasn’t been announced yet, the first 10,000 users can get a free lifetime membership account. So what are you waiting for?

With WWDC fast approaching, many are speculating as to what features Apple will announce for the company’s new version of OS X. 9to5Mac is reporting from anonymous sources that the update will bring fullscreen multi-monitor support to the OS as well as a number of other features designed for power users.

The multi-monitor improvements will provide users with the ability to run full-screen apps on one monitor while still being able to access other full-screen apps or parts of the desktop on the other, something that currently hasn’t been possible. This is a feature that power users have long-awaited for and will be glad to finally see arrive on OS X.

Professionals will actually have a lot to be happy about, as the report says, the majority of the update will be towards improving the experience for power users. These improvements will include various enhancements to the Finder application and a much faster and more stable Safari.

10.9 may also bring more iOS inspired features over to the Mac, with rumors that there will be a sort of quick-app-switcher that will help with multitasking and conserving the computer’s battery life.

There are also rumors that Siri may make its way over to Mac with the update.

Look for an in-depth showcase of the new OS at June’s WWDC.

If you’re paranoid about your applications phoning home without your permission, chances are you’ve heard about Little Snitch before. A brand new update from the company behind the application has enabled Automatic Profile Switching.

From the Little Snitch blog:

When you join a Wi-Fi network, plug in an Ethernet cable, or connect to a VPN, it basically does what it says on the box: it automatically switches to a certain profile … It’s good practice to keep an “Untrusted” profile with just a few general “deny” or “ask” rules in it around.

The short of it is that the application lets you determine which of your apps can gain access to your network and internet connection on a case by case basis. The Automatic Profile Switching goes one step further and lets you set up various access controls based on your location or network connection profiles. If you’re on a public Wi-Fi you can set Little Snitch to be more aggressive with your blocking than when you’re at home or in other trusted environments.

If you’re on the go a lot, Little Snitch is a handy tool to have at your disposal. You never know who’s listening in on the Starbucks Wi-Fi these days.

Mailbox, the slick and simple e-mail client for iOS, has been massively successful both critically and on the app store’s charts since it was first released just three months ago. The now Dropbox-owned company announced that it will be expanding its popular app to the iPad as well, and that development on the tablet version is already underway.

One of the few complaints about the Mailbox app for iPhone was that it didn’t include iPad support. The app’s developers, however, recognize that its essential for a productivity app like Mailbox to be available across multiple devices. The developers revealed this information, as well as the fact that bringing the app to desktops is part of their company’s extended road map, on their Twitter account today as they took time to respond to several questions.

If you have a question for the Mailbox devs or want to read more in-depth information about what’s coming to the service, check out the company’s surprisingly active Twitter account.

Twitter’s official Mac app received its first update in nearly two years today, bringing with it retina support as well as photo-sharing enhancements.

Prior to this, Twitter for Mac, which is available on the Mac App Store, last received an update in June 2011. Because of this, many assumed that Twitter had stopped working on it completely. The new update is still fairly minor, however, and brings with it retina screen support, a new interface for sharing photos, and 14 new languages.

Twitter for Mac originally started as “Tweetie”, a third-party Twitter client that Twitter then purchased and turned into its official Mac app.

Perhaps this is the start of a regular cycle of updates for the app, as one of Twitter’s lead designers Ben Sandofsky announced on Twitter that he would be switching his current focus from Twitter’s iOS apps to Twitter for Mac.

There are still a number of popular Twitter clients for desktop that you can find, so even if you aren’t too fond of Twitter for Mac, you should still be able to find something else that works for you in apps like Tweetbot.

Exporting highlights from iBooks isn’t exactly something that comes natively with the application, but there is Digested. A free app that takes the notes and highlights out of your iBooks, Digested puts them directly into a properly-formatted PDF or straight into Evernote. That’s something we can endorse.

Using Digested is easy. All you need to do is make sure that it’s running on your Mac, plug in your iOS device, and follow the prompts. If you have the iBooks settings to automatically sync notes and highlights through iCloud then you can use any of your iOS devices during the transfer process. Yes, we said plug it in to your computer with an actual cable.

Next you’ll see a window that lists all your books that have highlights or notes, which are selected by default. You can also make your own selection though to single out which highlights you want to transfer. When you’re done, click either  of the sharing buttons at the bottom of the app to export.

Evernote export will add each note to the any notebooks that you choose. You’ll be able to see the highlight text, as well as any notes you might have added, but, unfortunately, you won’t get the title of the book that the notes came from.

PDF export works a little better since you can store and index PDFs inside Evernote if you have a Pro account. The app creates a single PDF with section headers for each book with the book’s title with the notes and highlights underneath.

There you have it, Digested is a pretty hand Mac app if you make a lot of highlights and notes when reading iBooks. It’s worth checking out.

Image Credit: Cult of Mac

Evernote recently added some exciting new features to Skitch for both Mac and iOS for PDF editing and annotation. With a premium account, or a 30-day trial for new users, you can now use Skitch’s PDF annotation features.

To use PDF annotation, just open a single or multi-page PDF in Skitch or drag it right into the app, then annotate with shapes, arrows, and text. You can point out items that need adjusting, use the Highlighter to draw attention to a certain area and add text to give your recipient instructions on next steps.

With Skitch’s new summary feature you can now add a new first page to any multi-page document that you’re sharing with someone. This page includes a preview of each piece of feedback contained in the PDF and by clicking on one it will take you directly to that annotation. The summary feature makes it easier for you to scan all the feedback you’ve received without having to go beyond the first page.

When sharing the PDF you can include a summary when you choose to email it with the share button. On Skitch for Mac, you can even attach a summary when expositing or by selecting PDF with Summary in the Drag Me bar then dragging it right onto your desktop or into other apps.

With Skitch’s new Stamps, it’s even easier to give feedback faster. Place them to approve, reject, or point out a certain part of an image. After placing stamps, you can even add more detail with a pointed and a label.

You can get the newly updated Skitch 2.5 in the App Store or Mac App Store now. It’s a free download, but after a month you’ll have to upgrade to a premium account if you want to continue using Skitch’s PDF editing features.

Pocket, the article saving app that lets you save and sync content to read later on any device, is about to get a whole lot friendlier with all new sharing features in a new update.

Pocket rebranded itself from Read It Later exactly one year ago, and to celebrate, it’s bringing a brand new feature to the Pocket experience in the form of sharing. The update is available for the iPhone, iPad, Android, Mac and web versions of the service. The new feature is called Send to Friend, which is a new and easy way to share with friends and family without having to leave Pocket at all.

Sharing on social networks like Twitter and Facebook are all the rage nowadays, but Pocket users still share content through email more than twice as often so the Pocket team has decided to really improve this feature.

Here’s how it works:

With Send to Friend it’s easier to share important content with the people you care about. With a few taps you’ll be sharing content with friends and family, along with a comment and a highlighted quote, by sending them an email with the link. If they’re a Pocket user as well they will be notified right in the app.

With Pocket’s new sharing features you can easily add shared content to your list. You’ll be able to receive shared content and once a friends sends something to you, it’ll appear in an inbox with any highlighted quotes that they really want you to see.

Pocket also has a redesigned Share Menu that highlights services that you recently used, like Twitter, Facebook, Evernote or Buffer. After you’ve shared content with Send to Friend, you’ll see shortcuts to share content with recent friends right from the Share Menu.

Notifications have also been enhanced so that, in addition to an email, Pocket users can choose if they want to receive push notifications right on their phone or tablet when something is shared.

When Pocket changed its name from Read It Later a year ago, it dramatically changed the read it later experience for the better. It now has more than 35 million items per month and the service has expanded to new platforms, including Mac, Chrome and Safari, and its network of developers and publishers has grown to almost 12,000.

Mailplane 3 has officially been announced today, which brings a major update to the popular Mac OS X application for Gmail. Mailplane 3 is completely new, but based on the same core values of the original Mailplane that was originally released six years ago.

Mailplane 3 has been completely redesigned from the ground up. On top of the features of Mailplane 2, it now supports Gmail’s new compose mode, previews attachments in Quicklook, integrates with Mountain Lion’s Notification Center and looks amazing on Retina screens.

There are two new plugins with AwayFind and RightInBox. Both companies have given Mailplane users a 30% discount until May 15. You can now easily switch between accounts instantly and up to ten simultaneous accounts are supported. Mailplane 3 also integrates Google Calendar, so no calendar set-up is required. It features tabs to switch easily between accounts.

If you’re interested in getting Mailplane 3, you can purchase it directly from the Mailplane team. Right now there are no plans to sell Mailplane on the Mac App Store.

Previous customers are eligible for a 20% upgrade discount and all customers who bought it after October 1, 2012, will get the upgrade for free. All you have to do is download Mailplane 3 and go to ‘Mailplane 3 > License…’

Image Credit: Softpedia

Our apps this week run the gamut from superfluous toys to interesting tools. It’s been a good week to dig through apps, as the weather here hasn’t really been all that corporative in the spring department. Grab your iDevices and let’s take a look at this week’s apps.

iPhone/iPod Touch: Farmstand

As the weather warms up here in the northern hemisphere, farmers’ markets begin to pop up all over town. Some of the earliest begin in May, but it’s kind of a hassle to keep all of them straight, especially when they might have random hours. Farmstand solves that by giving you a list of the local farmers’ markets, complete with hours.

There is a community aspect to the app, as you can update the entries that might be incomplete. If you find something particularly interesting, you can post it in the app. The login integrates with Facebook and Twitter, so you won’t need to remember another account. They recently added stickers to put on the images you share from the markets, giving the social layer some more polish.

If you’re looking for a good source of local food, or a social network of granola heads this is a cool app to check out. You can download it free from the App Store.

iPad: Poems by Heart from Penguin Classics

April is National Poetry month. What better way to celebrate than to actually learn some poetry? Penguin’s app tries to help you memorize poetry with an iPad that reads the poem to you, then asks you to slowly fill in more and more blanks until you’re recreating it from memory. The final test is actual reciting the poem from memory, which you can then share to Soundcloud.

The memorization games are a great way to learn, but they’re boring without content. For free you get William Blake’s “Eternity” and William Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18.” (You likely know it’s opening line: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?) After that other packs unlock poems in groups of three or four for $0.99. (Check out the Gothic Tales pack which has Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” and Percy Bysshe Shelly’s “Ozymandias”.)

You can get the base free app from the App Store here.

Mac: Coucou

Every Mac user probably collects little menu bar utilities until the top of the screen looks like a trophy case. Coucou is the kind of app that actually belongs in the menu bar. It’s a network manager that allows you to quickly see your network resources. You can then pull up its remote management page, or connect to a remote Mac using SSH or Screen Sharing. Beats having to switch away and pull up a Finder Window.

The app is limited to Mac, iDevices, Printers, and NAS’. It shows that you should be able to manage Apple network devices, which wasn’t possible when testing this app. You can also set up broadcast services on your Mac such as web apps you’re developing or MAMP.

You can get Coucou on the Mac App store for $1.99

Web: Rainy Cafe

White Noise can be relaxing and even boost creativity. You can search the App Store and find dozens of apps to generate a variety of noises, but Rainy Cafe is both free and works cross platform. At this point it’s supported entirely through donations, so there isn’t even an ad.

The site is quite simple — you are presented with two switches. One is labeled rain; the other is labeled cafe. The rain is a gentle, rolling rain sound. The cafe is a mixture of table sounds and muffled talking that sounds like a busy lunch rush. You can play both sounds at the same time. The spp works on the desktop, as well as on phones and tablet.

It’s totally free and you can check it out here.

Game of the Week: Magicka

Coming in somewhere between Castle Crashers and Puzzle Quest, Magicka was originally released for the PC back in 2011. The iPad version is developed enough for touch that you wouldn’t even notice it was a remake. You take the role of a possessed Wizard sent out on a quest to defend your city. The game doesn’t take itself too seriously and there are plenty of jokes peppered into the dialog.

The combat system is really interesting. The game is broken into side-scrolling stages with a slightly isometric perspective. Enemies come in from both sides of the screen. Your Wizard has to attack by selecting elements to cast spells and then tapping the enemy to cast them. Each element behaves differently, and some monsters are immune. The real fun comes in once you start mixing and matching the elements, finding crazy combos that illicit unexpected results. The monsters all have unique character designs and are based on Norse mythology.

This is a must-play for iPad gamers. It’s $1.99 on the App Store.

Following Apple’s recent decision to pull the popular app discovery tool AppGratis from its App Store, France’s junior minister for digital economy Fleur Pellerin visited iMediaApp, the publishers of AppGratis, to discuss the situation. Following the meeting, Pellerin stated that Apple’s decision to remove the app was both “extremely brutal and unilateral” and that the EU must begin to put in place tighter regulation over Internet companies.

It should be noted that iMediaApp is a French company, so we should obviously expect there to be some bias here.

Pellerin states that problems like these are becoming too popular within Europe. She says that Internet companies are guilty of “repeated abusive behaviour” and that she now plans on asking “the European Commission and EU member states to better regulate digital platforms, search engines and social media.”

Apple states it removed AppGratis, which was originally launched in 2010, because it violated the guidelines that Apple lays out for its developers. Before it was removed, AppGratis had a sizeable 12 million users on iOS.

Apple’s decision to remove AppGratis has certainly caused a lot of bad press for the Cupertino based company. It will be interesting to see in the coming weeks if Apple chooses to allow AppGratis to return to its App Store, or whether it will stand by it original decision.

Image Credit: Europe1

EA’s recent and controversial release SimCity, with its horrendous launch and less than stellar reviews, now has a date for its Mac release. SimCity will be released for Mac June 11, with anyone that already owns the Windows version receiving access to the Mac version as well.

EA announced that the game will in fact support cross-platform play, so Mac and PC users will be able to put their differences aside and build together in perfect harmony. Users who buy SimCity will also have access to both versions of the game, which is useful for those that like to use Macs as their laptop and PCs as their dedicated gaming desktop. EA says that the game will be released on its online store Origin as well as “other online retailers.”

EA also took the liberty of announcing in its press release that it has sold more than 1.3 million copies to date of SimCity. These are impressive numbers for a PC exclusive game that has been out for just over a month and that has received heaps of bad press.

EA also announced today that it will be re-enabling Cheetah Speed in the game, a setting to make your city’s time accelerate to the fastest speed possible. EA had previously disabled this setting as a way to try to help manage the massive load of users it had playing on SimCity’s servers.

Fortunately, the number of new Mac players that will hop onto the game on day one is likely not nearly enough to create server issues like those of the game’s original launch. Mac users will (hopefully) be able to see SimCity launch the way it was actually intended.

Opening day was Monday, but let’s face it, there’s a lot of downtime in baseball games. Why not stock up on some apps while you’re tailgating this weekend? You can browse for new music and podcasts on your iPhone. Keep up on the MLB stats and news on your iPad. On your Mac, upgrade Command + Tab to include window previews. Find an apartment that saves you time on your daily commute, and even kill hours with a new game that recreates Snake with a twist.

iPhone/iPod Touch: Soundcloud

If you want to boil the concept of Soundcloud down to a single aspect, it’s Instagram for audio files. You can share files with your friends, but just remember that no one wants to listen to your lunch. You can search for your Facebook friends and follow them, as well as search for artists on the service.

If you’re more interested in creation, you can record and share audio right from the app. This is probably the easiest way to start doing podcasts. There are more than a few podcasts already on the service.

Soundcloud is free and can be downloaded here.

iPad: Race to the Pennant

Baseball season just started, and you’re going to need an app to keep track of standings. You could grab one of those sports network or newspaper apps, but those bring a lot of baggage along with the one thing you want. Race to the Pennant just gives you the standings, box scores, and news headlines in a simple format.

Race to the Pennant has a nice textured design and an intuitive interface. You can slide through the current standings, presented division by division as a bar graph. You can drill down for more info team by team, and get some  news headlines that open articles in an in-app browser.

Race to the Pennant is $0.99 and can be downloaded here.

Mac: HyperSwitch

There are some apps that don’t really do more than just tweak an existing utility. In the case of HyperSwitch, it lets you to switch between apps just like  Command + Tab but instead of app icons, you see a snapshot of the window that’s open in the app. If you have more than one window open, you will see each separately in the switcher.

The app is in beta, and does have some bugs. If you prefer you can change the settings to add the Windows preview to the normal app switcher, but it seems a bit slower that way.

HyperSwitch is free and you can download it here.

Web: AutoNo

There are a lot of factors to consider when looking for apartments. One that may slip through the cracks is how long it will take you to get to work from your new location. Is it a short drive? Can you catch the bus? AutNo will help you figure out  details about your commute from your new house or apartment.

The app has a really nice layout, putting your results on a map, and then showing the route to your job highlighted on the map. You can choose from all of Google Maps transit options. The individual listings show up as a modal window directly on the map. The only real drawback is that it doesn’t include Craigslist results, which is where the majority of apartments are listed these days.

You can check out AutNo here.

Game of the Week: Nimble Quest

If you’re of a certain age, there’s a good chance that you wasted a good chunk of your education playing Snake on a graphing calculator or Nokia phone. Nimblebit, makers of Tiny Tower and Pocket Planes, has resurrected the game but with a unique twist: rather than just building a snake, you collect heroes and battle enemies.

It’s a little tricky working out the timing for the battle system, but you can pick it up fairly quickly. You level up heroes by collecting gems as you defeat enemies.

Nimble Quest is free, as in freemium, and you can download it for iPad and iPhone here and the Mac here.

While it’s been roughly a year and a half since the passing of Apple’s longtime CEO, Steve Jobs still manages to find his way into many of our conversations. Because of his influence and status, the new start-up site Rememberum, a site that allows users to create their own memorials for lost loved ones, has chosen to make a memorial for Jobs as both a cool way of remembering the late visionary and as a way of promoting the site’s service.

From the site:

The Steve Jobs microsite is part of the initial release of Rememberum. We decided to create a feature-rich memorial website for Steve Jobs, to help demonstrate how Rememberum can enable visitors to easily build tasteful online memorials for their loved ones.

The memorial was created to resemble the style of Apple’s original Mac OS, complete with black and white colors and a “pixel-perfect” representation of the Mac OS’s original look. Rememberum developer David Kelly discussed some of the process on his blog:

One of the primary goals of the design was to simulate the original Macintosh OS interface as closely as possible – this meant pixelated (pixel-perfect) graphics as well as some of the original functionality of the Macintosh, such as keyboard folder navigation and double-clicking. We separated key points in his life into groups of folders and individual files. The folders have keyboard navigation and it is possible to hold down CTRL to select multiple files to open. Each file opens as a ‘textpad’ file and can be moved and cascaded like any window. This, coupled with the keyboard navigation and small retro animations helped to provide a more genuine experience of the original Macintosh computer.

Rememberum’s site is free to use for anyone looking to create their own memorials, while the site says that premium features will be added in the future. The choice to promote the site with a memorial for someone as well known and admired as Steve Jobs seems to have been a good one that will likely get many people to try out the Canadian based startup’s new service.

Apple has made a small change to its App Store, with the company prominently showcasing recommended age ratings for applications. A small informational box can now be seen just under the title’s developer credits.

Adding this box makes seeing the age rating for an app one of the first things that users will see when previewing or downloading an app. This could be seen as part of a push on Apple’s part to handle recent controversies and criticism from consumer groups over inappropriate content in apps and situations of excessive in-app purchases.

Earlier this year, a controversial incident brought Apple’s approval process and age rating system under question. A then-unrated video sharing app called Vine eventually received a 17+ age rating in February after it was discovered that the application featured widespread pornographic content on the service. At the time, Apple was promoting it as an App Store Editor’s Choice, but the title was quickly removed after the inappropriate content was discovered.

Just a few days before the Vine incident, Apple pulled a popular photo sharing app, 500px, from the App Store after it was discovered showing nude photos. Both how have the 17+ age rating.

More recently, Apple has been involved in lawsuits over angry parents whose children spend money without knowing it on different in-app purchases.  Apple recently settled a lawsuit with a group of parents who claimed that the App Store purchasing policy wasn’t working because it was too easy for children to unknowingly spend a large sum of money when unsupervised.

After the settlement, Apple added a line of text to the download pages of the “freemium” apps, letting consumers know that the titles support in-app purchases. This warning hasn’t yet made its way to the iOS App Store, and can only be seen on the Mac App Store.

It’ll be interesting to see how effective these changes will be, or whether Apple will have to take a different approach to eliminate situations like these in the future. Our gut tells us that Apple’s going to be addressing these things in iOS 7, which will almost certainly be announced at the company’s upcoming WWDC.

Image Credit: AppleInsider

Reeder is a popular RSS reading app for iOS. It relies on Google Reader, but creator Silvio Rizzi has said that Reeder will live on even after Google Reader shuts down on July 1. While Reeder is getting some updates, it will be free for the iPad and Mac, down from $4.99.

The iPhone app will remain a paid-for app at $2.99 because it already supports services other than Google Reader. Rizzi explained what he’s working on for Reeder for iPhone:

I’m currently working on integrating Feedbin and adding support for standalone/local RSS (still experimental). You’ll get these features with the next update (3.1) which should be ready soon. That’s just the beginning, the plan is to add more services you can choose from in the next weeks and months.

As of now, Reeder for Mac and iPad don’t support other RSS services, so they’ll be free until they get an update. It will be updated to version 2.0 in the coming months, bringing all the features of the iPhone version, including all sharing and syncing services.

If you haven’t already, you should definitely give Reeder a try, especially since the iPad and Mac versions are free for the next while.

The first beta of OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.4 has recently been released by Apple to third-party developers. The seed’s release notes didn’t say anything significant, but new things will probably be uncovered as developers start playing around with it.

Apple also warned developers: “Please be aware that you will not be able to revert back to your previous system after updating. Please install this update on a system you are prepared to erase if necessary.”

There are no known issues in this beta release and the focus areas include Wi-Fi stability, Graphic Drivers, and Safari.

Mountain Lion 10.8.3 was released to the public a few weeks ago, but only after going through 13 beta revisions in about 5 months.

Many were expecting a 10.9 announcement sometime in the near future, but by the looks of it, it may be a while before we see a new big cat from Apple.

Image Credit: TechnoBuffalo

Apple may have just stumbled upon a perfect new spokesperson for the company’s advertising efforts. A recent picture that has made its way out of North Korea shows the country’s current leader, Kim Jong-un, using an iMac to help command his country.

The picture comes along with the announcement that the dictator has ordered North Korea to aim its missiles at the U.S. to prepare for a potential strike. It seems that Kim Jong-un has forgotten that America is where his sleek aluminum evil creating machine was conceived.

The picture shows that the leader’s iMac is an older 21-inch model, one that still has a disc drive. If all he wants is for Apple to send him a new iMac, this is not the way he should be going about it.

If North Korea ever does succeed in destroying the U.S., however, we now know that we have Apple to blame.

Open up those wallets, you’re probably not going to see a deal like this on a Retina MacBook Pro for quite some time. Amazon has a deal going right now for 25%, or $500.00, off of a 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro. It’s being sold directly from Apple.

What’s under the hood?

• 2.5 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor (Turbo Boost up to 3.1GHz) with 3MB shared L3 cache
• 8 GB of 1600MHz DDR3L onboard memory
• 256 GB Flash Storage
• 13.3 inch LED-backlit Retina display, 2560-by-1600 native resolution,
• Intel HD Graphics 4000

I’ve had a few people ask me in the last week about buying a new MacBook. This, right here, is a steal of a deal.

You can buy this MacBook Pro directly from Amazon.

Quicksilver, a widely known OS X app launcher, has finally left beta after ten years. The app’s version number has changed to version 1.0.0 with the release and, according to the Quicksilver blog, this update “signifies a maturity of Quicksilver and a sign of what’s to come.”

The app was introduced in 2003 and has been updated constantly throughout the years, although it did have a hiatus for a while. The application lets Mac users launch applications, open folders and perform other functions by using Triggers. Triggers are simple and customizable mouse gestures or keyboard shortcuts that allow you to take advantage of the speediness of Quicksilver.

Third parties can develop plugins and AppleScript extensions for Quicksilver, making it very useful for niches within professional applications. In fact, third party applications are a big focus with Quicksilver coming out of beta. Patrick Robertson, a developer working on the app, said the following during an interview on the Quicksilver blog:

The true power of Quicksilver comes from our plugin developers, so I’ll be happy once we have a strong dev community back on our side creating great plugins, and over the coming months I’m going to be working hard to try and achieve this – we can always make things simpler for new developers!

Quicksilver is available for free via the Quicksilver website. The most recent version is Retina display compatible and will run on Mountain Lion, Lion and Snow Leopard, while alternative releases are still available for Macs dating as far back as OS X Panther.

“The highest resolution notebook ever. And the second highest.” That was Apple’s slogan for their Retina MacBook Pro, until now, when Google’s recent Pixel Chromebook has forced this slogan to change.

While Apple’s retina MacBook Pros used to top all other laptops in terms of resolution, Google’s recently released Pixel has a resolution that bests it. The Pixel sports a 2560×1700 12.9-inch display for a pixel density of 239 ppi. This is compared to 227 ppi on Apple’s 13-inch Retina and 200ppi on the 15-inch Retina.

Apple used to prominently display the Retina MacBook Pro slogan whenever anyone visited the Mac page; however, considering that the statement is no longer true, Apple has decreased this slogan’s visibility.

While Apple hasn’t totally removed the image that features the slogan from the site, it has chosen another one to replace it as the main ad on the page. The new picture’s slogan says “High performance has never been so well defined.” Not quite as catchy as the old one, but it’ll do.

It’s unclear whether Apple intends to fully remove all traces of the old slogan off its site or if it plans to keep it as a less prominent ad.

Besides its display, the Pixel doesn’t hold a finger to Apple’s Retina Macbooks. If Apple wants, it can still change its slogan to “The highest resolution notebook ever that you actually want to buy. And the second highest.”

If whipping the llama’s ass is your thing, or at least was your thing during the 90s before iTunes, you’re in luck. Winamp has released a beta version of its popular media player for the Mac.  If you’re tired of iTunes, and we know a lot of you are, the new beta comes at a perfect time.

The application syncs with Android phones, has a one-click import to grab your playlists from iTunes, and automatically syncs with your iTunes content and library so that you don’t have to manually manage your music.

You can download the beta software now, for free, from the Winamp website. Curiously, the project hasn’t been rebranded to Macamp, SnowLionAmp, or anything Apple specific.  We’ll let it slide this time though.

If next week’s release of Bioshock Infinite has got you down because you won’t be able to play it on your Mac, you won’t have to be sad for long. Aspyr Media announced today that it will be porting the game to Mac and that the game will be released sometime this summer.

“We are incredibly excited to bring the latest version of BioShock, one of the industry’s most critically acclaimed and beloved franchises, to the Mac.” said Michael Rogers, president of Aspyr Media. “We pride ourselves on bringing the very best in gaming to the Mac, and that’s exactly what Mac owners will get with Irrational Games’ masterfully-crafted BioShock Infinite.”

Aspyr is mainly known for having ported games over to the Mac such as Call of Duty: Black Ops, Call of Duty; 4 and recently Borderlands 2.

Bioshock Infinite comes out for PCs and consoles next Tuesday, March 26th and is expected to be highly praised. You can check out the reviews that start tonight at midnight to find out if it will be something worth your time.

I don’t get much time to game these days, unless whisking away dirty diapers tossing up a Hail Mary hook shot across the room into the garbage counts. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t. One game I’ve been dying to play since its release, but just never got around to is Fez. The massively, super critically acclaimed Xbox Live game from Polytron (a Montreal company, what what!) may just get a second life on iOS.

In a Reddit AMA, Phil Fish, the Fez designer, almost went as far as to confirm that Fez will be available for iOS. He stopped just short of promising it, saying the game’s presence on iOS devices was “highly probable.”

Yeah, I’m pumped. If you have a couple of hours to burn, check out Indie Game: The Movie. Not only does the film take you through the ups and downs (mostly downs, downs, downs, and a giant up) of independent video game creation, it also focuses in on Fez. It’s pretty great.

Anyway. Fez. For iOS. It’s ‘Probable.’ That’s enough for me. Well, that and it’s also going to be available for the Mac too, so my bases are pretty much covered at this point.

Smile announced recently on its company blog that the award-winning PDFpen 6 and PDFpenPro for Mac has been released with special pricing for the first 48 hours. The popular app lets you edit PDF documents by adding signatures, correcting text, ticking boxes and more.

The new version of PDFpen has a lot of new features:

• Microsoft Word export
• New editing bar and enhanced design for better ease-of-use
• Support for Auto Save and Versions
• Optimized for Retina displays
• Drag and drop to reorder Library items

To celebrate its release, Smile Software is offering a special discounted price on the app. The company also wants to address those who’ve bought previous versions from the Mac App Store, since the store doesn’t allow upgrade pricing.

Smile’s policy has always been to offer current users an upgrade path when a new version becomes available. Since PDFpen is available in both the Smile Store and on the Mac App Store, upgrades can be a little tricky.

There’s no way to offer upgrades in the Mac App Store, so to accomdate customers who want to buy the Mac App Store version, Smile is offering special pricing for the first 48 hours. PDFpen will be $29.99 and PDFpenPro will be $39.99. The special discount will end on March 20 at midnight PDT.

The Mac App Store versions include iCloud support, while the Smile Store versions don’t. Both versions are available on the Smile Store for $30 and it’s $40 to upgrade from PDFpen to PDFpenPro.

People have been saying for years that OS X and iOS are on an inevitable crash course. With Lion, Apple began bringing over some of the more popular iOS features to OS X. Mountain Lion continued the trend. Just how far Apple will carry the iOS themes to OS X is anyone’s guess, but there are a lot of things that Apple could do to make OS X feel more like iOS in 10.9.

Noah Gray has put together an interesting concept, called OSXi, that brings a new dock and menubar to OS X. Spotlight got a relocation too. It’s easy to imagine a lot of these things in OS X in 10.9, and it’s really easy to see the appeal of such an approach. Hiding the Dock and iTunes player in the way the OSXi concept does is pretty appealing for me. The less clutter in my OS, the better.

The image above is only a small subsection of the concept. If you want to see the entirety of the design, we recommend clicking through to the concept page.

PC sales are expected to significantly drop through Q1 2013 according to a report issued by IDC. The firm has said that an economic slowdown in China is significantly contributing to the already poor PC market. China reportedly accounted for 21% of all PC shipments last year. This combined with a booming post-PC market could bring PC shipments down significantly during Q1 2013 when compared to 2012 and previous years.

Loren Loverde, an analyst at IDC, said the following on the decline:

We could see a drop [in PC shipments] touching double-digits in the first quarter and a mid-single-digit decline in the second quarter before we see any recovery in the second half of the year.

The PC market has been on a sharp decline since the modern tablet computer and smartphone hit the market. Apple, Samsung and other vendors are selling an increased number of tablets, while their desktops and laptops have continued to sink. During Apple’s first fiscal quarter of 2013, the company saw iPad shipments soar to 22.9 million units shipped, though Mac shipments clocked in at a mere 4.1 million units. This trend will almost definitely continue in the upcoming quarters.

Image Credit: mdsharpe

Whatever you do this St. Patrick’s Day, just make sure you do it with a designated driver. Even if you’re sober, just take a taxi anyway, and save yourself the aggravation. Oh, and download our weekly apps before you imbibe to ensure that you don’t forget them in a haze of green beer and corned beef.

We have a launcher for the iPhone that enables you to do some light scripting this week, and our iPad app recommendation is a streaming app from the network that’s long been a hold out for online offerings. On the Mac we have a mod that brings iOS style multitasking to Mac OS X. Finally, our  web recommendation is a lightweight text editor. For our game of the week we have a tale of redemption and fishing. Two things we love a lot.

iPhone/iPod Touch: Launch Center Pro

Fiddly app launchers are cat nip for Mac Geeks. Alfred, Quicksilver, and Launchbar are all likely to induce an hour long explanation about how much time they save. Launch Center Pro brings that same sort of fiddly control to the iPhone.

App Junkies can create a grid of their most used apps, or even groups of apps if you really have a problem. You can also create a grid of messaging and phone shortcuts tied to contacts directly, or simply invoke a contact search. Power users will love the way the app allows you to use iOS’ custom URL scheme to create a variety of workflows.

You can find a good description of many of them in this Github collection of workflows. Launch Center can serve as a good introduction to these schemes as you can see what apps use which URLs and what can be passed. Launch Center Pro is on sale for $2.99 and available from the App Store.

iPad: CBS

CBS hasn’t been the most friendly network when it comes to streaming shows on the iPad, or online for that matter. They didn’t really have an option for iPad users, and the don’t really do same-season iTunes shows.Their deal with Hulu wasn’t even for any of their current-run shows.

It isn’t hard to imagine that some people are relieved that CBS finally put out an iPad app that fills in their TV needs. Of course you’ll have to put up with ads and wait eight days to see new episodes, but that caveat exists for most U.S. TV networks’ apps. What might be most infuriating is that there are series listed that don’t include full episodes. It’s a free app you can download from the App Store if you live in the U.S.

Mac: TaskBoard

While some people lament the slow march of iOS features to their Macs, some of us embrace it fondly. TaskBoard may not come from Apple, but a clever programmer has brought iOS style multitasking to the Mac. You get a global multitouch gesture and keyboard shortcut, and then when you initiate the gesture, a banner of running apps along the bottom or side of your screen pops up.

It’s a bit silly, but it’s a neat little hack that you can show off to your geekier friends at work, especially if they’re the types that don’t believe mobile and desktop operating systems are on a crash course over the next couple of years.

TaskBoard is in beta, free, and can be downloaded from Sourceforge.

Web: Draft

It’s funny, as Google positions docs to compete better with Microsoft Office, its online offerings begin to get weighed down by corporate friendly features. Draft strips that away, and simply gives you an online, collaborative text editor.

Once you finish writing up your text, you can mark it as a draft point, and email a link off to a collaborator. You can then review their changes and accept or reject them. It’s a simple but powerful tool for text. It’s essentially like ‘track changes’ in Office, but not as annoying. It’s free to sign up and try here.

Game of the Week: Ridiculous Fishing – A Tale of Redemption

There are fishing games and then there is Ridiculous Fishing. You aren’t going to find a game where you can shoot hundreds of fish from the sky using a blunderbuss or a mini-gun outside of this one.

You drop your line in the water and try to avoid hooking fish until you get to the end of your line. When you do hook a fish, you begin reeling the line back in and try to collect as many fish as possible. Once you get your line and fish to the surface, the fish are flung into the air where you can begin shooting them down for cash.

The cash buys you guns, hats, and gadgets to get more fish. There are four levels and sixty-six different fish to catch. It’s addictive fun that can chew up a few hours pretty easily. Ridiculous Fishing is $2.99 on the App Store.

The long in development OS X update 10.8.3 was finally released today, bringing with it some useful features and fixes. The release also includes a new version of Apple’s web browser, Safari 6.0.3, and the first major security update of 2013 that addresses a number of vulnerabilities within Apple’s OS.

Here are a few highlights from update 10.8.3:

• The ability to redeem iTunes gift cards in the Mac App Store using your Mac’s built-in camera
• Boot Camp support for installing Windows 8
• Boot Camp support for Macs with a 3 TB hard drive

Apple also lists a number of other fixes included in the update that address specific issues, which can be viewed here. Reports also say that Macbook Pros with Retina display have seen a battery life improvement of roughly 20 minutes following the new update.

There you have it! Now what are you waiting for? Go try out your new Windows 8! (KIDDING. But you can if you want…)

Alfred, the popular Spotlight replacement application (it does way more than Spotlight, btw), has been updated to version 2.0 today. The application has been rewritten from the ground up, and includes huge updates and enhancements that are worth checking out.

The most important and stand out addition is the new workflow framework that is included in the application.

Think of the workflows as an Automator for your files and the web. For instance, you can use the keyword “movie” to open a trailer in YouTube, the listing in IMDB, and the ratings on Rotten Tomatoes all at the same time, from the one action. You can also connect hot keys to scripts and Apple Scripts, making the possibilities pretty endless.

If you’re tired of Apple’s Spotlight, and miss the glory days of Quicksilver, Alfred is worth checking out. It’s developed a cult following for a reason — it’s simply the best at what it does.

via MacStories

When it first launched, Apple’s newest iMac was incompatible with VESA’s popular wall mounting system. Apple has now updated its online store with a solution. The company now sells a new VESA mountable iMac.

VESA mounts are usually used to mount TVs on walls, but they have also been used to mount people’s iMacs as well. To get your wall-mountable version of the newest iMac, Apple is charging only an additional $40. The VESA version iMacs (yes the VESA mount is built-in) come with the same customization and upgrade options as the standard non-VESA versions.

Previously, Apple didn’t offer a VESA mount for the 21.5-inch model of the iMac, but this time around it’s available for the smaller iMac model.

If you’ve been eagerly hoping for a wall mountable version of the newest iMac, and were disappointed that it didn’t launch with it, then you’ll be happy to know that Apple really took customer feedback to heart and built a solution. Prices start at $1,339.00 for the 21.5-inch iMac and $1,839.00 for the 27-inch iMac. Check them out on the online Apple Store now.

Image Credit: Pocket-lint

Evernote has rolled out a new update to its app that brings shiny new Quick Note functionality to the Mac app. You’ve always been able to launch a note directly with the keyboard shortcut CTRL-CMD-N, but previously it has brought the entire Evernote application to the foreground, and takes over whatever you’re working on at that particular moment. In this update, all that quick note goodness happens directly from the menu bar. It’s fantastic.

Hitting CTRL-CMD-N will open the note in the menu bar, and from there you can add images, voice notes, and grab screenshots, as well as write down whatever you need to in that particular moment. The only thing that opens is the menubar item, and whatever you were working on in that moment will stay in the foreground on your Mac. Once you’re done, hit CMD+Return and you’ll be taken back to your last used app while Evernote begins syncing your notes.

It doesn’t get much handier than that. Once you get the hang of it, there’s no going back.

While the Mac App Store update is still in queue waiting for approval, you can grab the update directly from Evernote’s servers already.

I’ve been using Evernote more and more every day. For the last eight months I’ve used it for all my writing needs, todo lists, and the organization of content for editorials and feature posts. The app is pretty much whatever you want it to be. For us, here at Macgasm, we use it as a document repository for our writing team. It’s, by far, the best solution we’ve come across.

Pixelmator has published a quick blog post showing off its new “Convert Text To Shape” feature that’s destined for version 2.2 of the popular photo editing application. A free update, we should probably add.

The feature, in the words of Pixelmator, will let you quickly convert text into shapes, then “you can then do all kinds of cool stuff that is simply beyond text formatting. You can easily apply gradients, shadows, strokes, or even, if you want to, reshape individual letters.”

Honestly, I don’t even use Photoshop anymore. There’s a lot of you who probably groaned after reading that, but if you do minor photo edits, or quick graphics there’s no point in waiting a decade for Adobe’s photo editor to open. Version 2.2 is going to bring a lot of really cool things that I’m pumped to see. The company is innovating in a way that Adobe hasn’t done in a decade. It’s that simple.

The 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display has been found to have the best battery life out of most OS X, Windows 8 and Chrome OS-based laptops on the market. A UK publication tested a series of these laptops for battery life statistics. The four laptops include the 13-Inch MacBook Pro with Retina display, Acer Aspire M5-581T, Samsung Series 3 Chromebook and the Advent Monza T200.

The MacBook Pro with Retina display scored 388 minutes of battery life while browsing the web. In close second was the Acer Aspire M5-581T at 358 minutes. The Chromebook Series 3 and Monza T200 scored 224 minutes and a laughable 125 minutes, respectively.

It’s worth noting that these four computers have very different specs and purposes. The Chromebook Series 3 is meant to be a very low-end web browsing computer with a price tag of $249. The Acer Aspire M5-581T has a much larger screen that measures in at 15.6 inches and also features a significantly lower price than the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display. Finally, the Monza T200 and M5-581T both offer spinning hard disks while the Chromebook and MacBook Pro are only offered with flash storage.

I guess we can finally do away with the good ol’ Retina display killing battery myth.

We’re going to go light on the banter this week, but we aren’t shorting you on any apps. For your iPhone we have an app that gives you local points of interest in your area. For the iPad we have an app that delivers content from a multitude of Apple news sites and podcasts. On the Mac we have a new App.Net client. On the web, we have TV Guide for the cord cutting set. Our game of the week is a creepy walk through haunted woods.

iPhone/iPod Touch: Field Trip

Whether you’re touring around a strange city or just spending a bored afternoon in your neighborhood, finding interesting historic sites or current local events can be a bit of a crap shoot. Usually you have to track down some weekly rag, and hope that you’re getting the right issue. Google Field Trip solves this issue by giving you a list of upcoming events and points of interest in your vicinity. It’s got a nice interface that you can browse by text or maps. The historical stuff is the most detailed but you also get listings for upcoming concerts and local restaurants as well. You can grab it from the App Store for free.

iPad: MacHash

If your RSS feeds are bulging at the seams, you may want to use an app to round up all the Apple news for quick scanning without the looming unread count. MacHash is that app, and it includes a selection of popular Apple podcasts. You can mute various sites and podcasts to just your favorites. It is ad supported but you can remove the ads for $2.99. You can download it from the App Store for free.

Mac: Kiwi

Now that App.Net has limited free accounts, there is going to be a bigger market for clients. iOS has the excellent Netbot, which is a clone of the great Tweetbot, but on the Mac there isn’t such a clear choice. Kiwi is a nicely designed client that is pretty easy to use. You can cross-post to Twitter using the app as well, so if you’re still on both networks this is an easy choice. You can try the app for free, but to remove the nag banner it will be $9.99. You can download Kiwi here.

Web: CanIStream.it?

One of the most annoying things about trying to catch a show online is trying to find out where you can get the show from. Can I Stream It is a site that allows you to search for TV shows and movies by name and find out where they are available online and for how much. They include popular streaming services as well as rental and download services. If the show you want to watch is unavailable on your service of choice you can sign up to have them notify you when it is available. You can check out the site here.

Game of the Week: Year Walk

There hasn’t been a game since the original Silent Hill that managed to be as immersive and creepy as Year Walk. The game revolves around the myth that you can wander around the woods long enough to get a glimpse of the future. You find some rather creepy imagery in the woods, along with some intense jump scares. The puzzles themselves are pretty difficult; you’ll need to keep a notebook handy. (Or a walkthrough for the less scrupulous players.) This game has enough thought behind it that there’s a companion app of reading material available for free here. The game itself is $3.99 on the App Store.

CleanMyMac, an application for Mac maintenance that aims to find and clean data from Mac computers to make more free space available, has received an uptate. First released in 2009, the app has since become a well-known and highly regarded Mac cleaning tool. CleanMyMac 2 has just been released with some new updates, and is free for current users.

Among some of the new updates, CleanMyMac 2 comes with an auto-cleanup function that looks for unneeded files and cleans them up by asking you whether or not they can be deleted before actually doing so. It also removes old logs and caches, deletes master copies of previously edited photos in iPhoto, and can uninstall apps that are no longer being used.

If you aren’t a current user, a trial version of CleanMyMac 2 is available and allows you to remove up to 500 MB of stuff for free. Until March 8, the new version is available for new users at a cost of $19.95 for a single Mac license. CleanMyMac 2 requires OS X 10.7.5 or later and takes up 50 MB of disk space. If your Mac doesn’t meet these qualifications, the previous version of CleanMyMac will also work.

There’s nothing worse than have something happening on my computer, then while I’m waiting, my display and computer go into sleep mode, nullifying whatever the computer was doing and putting me back to square one again. Think a cancelled download, a cancelled Final Cut rendering, or something else of that ilk.

There have been hacks and tweaks and everything in between to stop your computer from random acts of narcolepsy at in opportune times, but now there’s an application that makes it even easier to stop the problem from happening in the first place. Wimoweh, a free app that sits in your menubar, lets you stop the narcolepsy madness while certain apps are running on your computer.

It’s pretty easy to use:

1. Install the app,
2. Find the new Lion icon in your menubar,
3. Click it.
4. Now just navigate to ‘Never Sleep Whilst Running’,
5. And click on the app for which you want to disable sleep mode while running.

There you go, done. Your computer won’t drop into sleep mode while the applications of your choosing are running. It’s great for preventing sleep while massive downloads or other file transfers are running, as well as in a host of other situations.

Hope this solves some problems for you like it did for me.

This one’s pretty simple. Actually, it’s so simple I’m kicking myself in the nether region for not thinking of doing this sooner. If you work with PDFs and images (JPG, PNG, GIF) a lot, and find your self opening several files in Preview, one after the other, getting lost in a myriad of Preview windows, fret no longer. I’m here to help.

Did you know that if you hit up the Finder, and select multiple images at once (Shift+Click a range of files), you can open them all at once in one Finder window? All you have to do is right click (or cmd+click for you purists) after selecting the group of images or PDFs you want to open. Then select the ‘open’ option from the menu.

Preview should open all of your files into one window, with each image on a new “page”. It makes it a lot easier to stomach when you have to quickly resize images all at once.

Oh yeah. Boom. Done.

2009 iMac users with the NVIDIA GT 130 graphics cards have been experiencing kernel panics dating back to a late release of OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. Most users who are experiencing the issue are running OS X Lion or Mountain Lion and have started a post on the Apple Support Communities that has over 200 replies and equals out to 14 pages of responses. The post was started almost a year ago by David Portela.

Why are iMac users experiencing this issue, anyway? We’ve seen reports of a Snow Leopard kernel issue that has yet to be fixed. What’s even more embarrassing is that the issue seems to go away when users boot into Windows via Boot Camp on their Macs, meaning that it’s definitely a driver issue with OS X, not a faulty card.

Since Apple has yet to responded to 2009 iMac users about the issue, you should definitely post in the Support thread in order to bring it to Apple’s attention. It looks very bad on Apple’s part to ignore this type of issue when people spent over $1,000 on the desktop just four years ago.

Image Credit: Mudhut (Apple Support Forums)

Apple has just pushed an update to all OS X 10.7 and 10.8 users. The patch fixes two separate Java vulnerabilities, one being a ’zero-day’ vulnerability. This update comes after Oracle released Java 7 Update 17 this morning that killed these two security holes. Mac users can update their Macs to Java SE 6 version 1.6.0_43 right now via the App Store. Not only does this update close holes within Java, but the update also disables Java plugins on machines that aren’t running the latest Java release.

We’d highly recommend updating your Mac right now. One of the holes is an ‘unknown’ vulnerability that is already being exploited around the net. Oracle said it originally heard about the bug on February 1st and that the bug was found “too late to be included in the February 19th release of the Critical Patch Update for Java SE”.

What’s worse is the fact that since Oracle released the latest set of Java fixes, five more vulnerabilities have already been found as of this morning. Even though Java is working on investigating these new vulnerabilities, we’d highly recommend disabling Java completely on your Mac unless you absolutely need to use it.

Another day, another Java vulnerability. Get your stuff together, Oracle. Better yet, just remove Java.

Image Credit: naan

Apple users in Canada and the United States will now be able to get their new, super-slim iMacs in 1-3 days. The computer’s ship times have dropped into the realm of the reasonable. These ship times apply to both the 21.5-inch and 27-inch iMac without the Fusion Drive. If you want to add a Fusion Drive to your new iMac, expect to wait 7-10 days for the 21.5-inch model or 2-3 weeks for the 27″ model.

Recently, we saw the computer’s ship time increase to 2-3 weeks, so it’s nice to see Apple start to  catch up with demand for the desktop. The new iMac was released in October of 2012 at Apple’s iPad mini press conference. However, the desktop didn’t start to ship until late-November due to supply issues.

At this point in time, it’s a bit surprising to see Apple almost completely catch up with demand for the computer. In late January at Apple’s Q1 2013 earnings call, Apple CEO, Tim Cook, said that he wasn’t so sure that Apple would be able to catch up with the demand during Q2, and that supply should improve slowly.

Now that award season has finally ended, we can get back to what’s most important: apps. This week we have a few more wonkish apps for you to check out. Trying to keep track of unit conversions can be a pain, but we have an iPhone app to make it easier. On the iPad we have an app for those of you who like to cheat on iTunes with a certain online retailer. For the Mac we have another Google Reader client. On the web, there is finally an alternative to Google Reader for online RSS. Our game of the week brings some crazy arcade action with a demonic twist.

iPhone/iPod Touch: Amount

Conversion calculators are in the App Store aplenty, but most of them are a mix of complex and expensive. Amount is still a bit of the former, but it’s free so its complexity is forgiven. When you first open the app it asks you to enter a number. Then you are given a huge list of categories of units. After selecting the category you want, you can click between the available units to see how they stack up against the others. It isn’t perfect, and though you can change units and amounts easily in the app, you have to force quit it to get the initial set up back again. It’s not perfect, but it’s one of the best I’ve seen since Tapbots’ Convertbot, and you can get it for free from the App Store.

iPad: Amazon Cloud Player

In a sign that Amazon is far more concerned about selling you media than devices, they have been aggressively pushing their services on Apple’s platforms. Their Cloud MP3 player was already out for iPhone, but they have recently added support for the iPad. It matches the design scheme of the Kindle and Video apps previously released by Amazon. The “Now Playing” images are a really nice touch that elevates this over the default iTunes player. You can stream your MP3s or download them for later play. Even if you don’t regularly buy MP3s from Amazon, check out the app because you may have some free MP3s based upon physical albums you’ve bought. It’s a free app you download here.

Mac: Leaf

If you’re an avid user of RSS, you likely have accumulated a fair amount of feeds. Sometimes just scanning through the news is all you’re looking for, rather than reading through each and every article. Leaf is the scanner’s RSS reader. It simply lists all of your articles from Google Reader in a big list and allows you to scroll through and see previews via Readability. It’s light on sharing options, which may be it’s biggest drawback. However, if you like simplicity and the ability to scan, Leaf is the RSS reader for you. It’s $3.99 and you can grab it from the Mac App Store.

Web: The Old Reader

There has long been a shadow hanging over most iOS and Mac RSS readers: Google Reader’s status as the default RSS sync service is not a supported API. It doesn’t seem the Reader itself is even on Google’s radar anymore, despite how important that API is to the RSS developer community. The Old Reader is the first new web based RSS reader in awhile, and seeks to restore a lot of the social sharing that was removed from Reader when Google started pushing Google+. You can easily import your Google Reader feeds, or import an OPML file to start using your account. There are extensions for both Safari and Chrome as well, but as of yet there isn’t an API. They promise a later iOS app. At the very least you can stash your Google Reader list here just in case the service gets shuttered suddenly. The Old Reader is free and you can check it out here.

Game of the Week: Hell Yeah! Pocket Inferno

Hell Yeah! Pocket Inferno is an arcade take on Sega’s console title from late last year. In the new iOS game you take control of Alex, the skeletal rabbit ruler of hell (just go with it), and go level to level collecting skulls, killing monsters and generally being evil. It’s takes a bit from Jetpack Joyride, but is broken down into levels. This game has to be seen and played to understand its charm. You unlock new weapons and character customizations in the shop as you play with in-game currency. It’s a simple but fun game, and you can get for $0.99 here.

MacBook Pro with Retina display users (including myself) have been awaiting the release of the Twelve South BookBook case for quite some time now. Luckily for us, the wait is over as Twelve South has just announced that they’re bringing the vintage-styled case to the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display. The case is available now via Twelve South’s online store for $79.99.

If you’re unaware, the BookBook is a case for the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro with Retina display that looks identical to a vintage book. You can use your MacBook inside of the case when it’s open and to protect and disguise your Mac when on-the-go. The case is very light, adding a mere 22 ounces of weight to the MacBook Pro with Retina display.

TwelveSouth also makes the BookBook for the iPad, iPad mini and iPhone. The iPhone BookBook doubles as a wallet while the iPad BookBook looks almost identical to the MacBook case. I personally owned a BookBook for my iPhone 4S and used it daily for months at a time. The case featured stellar design and build quality, so I’d definitely recommend it.

Note: The BookBook for the 13-inch MacBook Air is also compatible with the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display.

The fine folks at Realmac Software (one of our favorite development teams btw) has just announced that they have teamed up with the Leap Motion folks to bring controller support to its Clear application. Instead of using a trackpad or keyboard, you can now swipe your finger through the air to mark tasks as complete, among other things.

It’s pretty damn snazzy. Check out the video to see it in action.

I imagine the fine folks at TwoManShow got a little tired of waiting for Apple to bring AirDrop support to iOS. Instashare, an app that lets you send files from your iOS device to your Mac, and back again, is the solution to many iOS problems these days.

Instashare transfers files across both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connections, so there’s no need to worry if you’re sitting down at your ‘Friday Office’ at the local pub and need to move a file from your phone to your computer. Gone are the days of emailing photos and attachments to yourself so you can get them on your Mac. Instashare, like its namesake, makes it instant, makes it simple.

Again, the app is free, so it’s worth picking up to play around with. You can pick it up on the App Store (Mac and iOS).

Via The Next Web

Gene Munster, a well known analyst at Piper Jaffray, has predicted that Apple’s Mac sales have been on the rise over the last month. After looking over some NPD sales figures, he has predicted that sales of Mac desktops have risen by 31% during the month of January 2013 when compared to the month of January 2012.

It’s surprising to see such high numbers considering Apple’s new iMac is still experiencing shipping delays of over two weeks in some parts of the world. Apple CEO, Tim Cook, noted that Apple still may not be able to meet 2012 iMac demand during Q2 2013. Despite this, Munster said that Apple has seen an increase in the number of iMac shipments since the end of 2012. This likely helped Apple’s desktop shipments grow during the month of January.

On a related note, Munster has also said that Apple’s iPod sales grew in January as well. Apple experienced a 2% growth of iPod sales in January 2013 when compared to January 2012.

I guess the Mac and iPod aren’t dead after all.

Image Credit: T J M

If you’re anything like me, there’s probably quite a few System Preference options that you never use. Ultimately it results in lost time when I’m trying to find something, having to scan all the options to find something like Energy Saver. Did you know that Apple gives you the ability to re-organize the entries based on alphabetical, or categorical sorting? Did you know you can remove icons?

Here’s how:

1. Open up your System Preferences,
2. Click on the View menu item,
3. Pick either the “organize alphabetically” or “organize by category” option based on your needs.

That’s the first step. Now you can eliminate icons and preferences that you never use:

1. Open up your System Preferences,
2. Click on the View menu item,
3. Click Customize.

A checkbox should appear next to all of the System Preference icons. Unchecking them removes them from sight every time you launch your preferences. It’s a great way to get rid of things like Perian or Parental Controls if you don’t need them. Just click the done button when you’re finished.

As an aside, you can also remove (uninstall) System Preferences by right clicking on the icon and then selecting remove. In true Apple fashion, this will only work for third-party preferences you’ve installed.

Future releases of Google’s Chrome Browser will bundle its Chrome OS app launcher along with it for Windows, OS X and Linux.

The app launcher lets you run Chrome apps without launching the browser itself, allowing the apps to work offline and have access to a wider range of APIs than normal web apps. Think of the Chrome app launcher as a home for all your apps, which makes them easier to open outside the browser. The app launcher is a similar experience to the Chromebook, but for other platforms.

Google’s app launcher is currently only available with the developer version of the Windows Chrome browser, but will soon be available on the OS X and Linux developer versions as well.

Image Credit: AFSWA

The Enhanced Edition of Baldur’s Gate for Mac will be out and available for download tomorrow, February 22. Baldur’s Gate is a fantasy role-playing video game that involves mystery, intrigue and adventure.

Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition for PC was released at the end of November and was quickly followed by an iPad version in December. A new element of the game is the ability to play cross-platform cooperative multiplayer across PC, Mac and iPad. Sounds pretty cool. The makers of Baldur’s Gate, Overhaul Games, are also working on bringing the Enhanced Edition to Android devices.

The chief developer at Overhaul Games, Trent Oster, said: “The development of the Mac version of Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition has been a longer process than we had planned…We strove to create a high quality release for the Mac fans of the series and we feel proud of the current version and feel the extra development time was effort well spent.”

Other enhancements for the game include:

• New Adventure: The Black Pits
• New Character: Dorn Il;Khan
• New Character: Neera the Wild Mage
• New Character: Rasaad yn Bashir
• A new collection of player character voice sets
• Native support for high resolution widescreen displays
• New hand-painted player portraits
• Improved multiplayer support, with connectivity between all platforms

The game will cost a hefty $19.99US, and will be available for download from the Mac App Store.

Image Credit: OnlySP

It is being reported that Apple, along with at least 40 other companies including both Facebook and Twitter, were targets of malware attacks that have been found to originate from a group of hackers in Eastern Europe.

According to people close to law enforcement, the hackers used an iPhone-developer website to attack the companies with malware designed to attack Mac computers, and are said to be searching for company secrets. Cupertino released a statement that reads: “We identified a small number of systems within Apple that were infected and isolated from our network. There is no evidence that nay data left Apple. We are working closely with law enforcement to find the source of the malware.”

According to several reports, the attacks may be coming from a site called iPhoneDevSDK. iPhoneDevSDK has released a statement saying they themselves are investigating reports of their involvement in the cyber attacks. It remains unclear whether or not they had any involvement.

Investigations into the attack are ongoing, and it remains unclear when the attacks began, or whether the hackers were successful in stealing any data. These attacks are being described as the highest profile cyber attack so far on Mac computer-run businesses. Previously, hackers have focused on Windows-run operating systems. Over the last few years, criminal hackers have begun to focus more on Apple products and develop sophisticated ways to attack Macs. The malware infecting Mac systems came from a vulnerability in the Java plug-in for browsers.

Apple has said that it plans to release software for customers that can be used to identify and repair Macs that have been infected with the malware used in the attacks.

Image Credit: Cult of Mac

A number of Apple’s company computers were recently infected by hackers, the same hackers that were revealed last week to have also attacked Facebook. The malware that infected the computers is one specifically designed for Macs and has reportedly been spreading across several different companies that use Macs in their workforce.

The malware infects the computer through a “vulnerability in the Java plug-in for browsers” and spreads itself across computers when the Mac visits a specific popular website used by software developers. The attack currently seems to be the biggest attack on Macs ever seen, although Apple refused to comment on exactly how many companies have been hit by the malware.

Apple said in a statement, “We identified a small number of systems within Apple that were infected and isolated them from our network. There is no evidence that any data left Apple.” Apple says that they are working closely with law enforcement to find those responsible for the attacks.

Apple stated that they plan to release a download on Tuesday that users at home can use to identify whether their Mac has been hit with the malicious software and repair it if it has.

Looking for another reason to kill Java forever? If you haven’t yet, now’s probably a good time to do it.

A Taiwanese report claims that Apple has begun lining up suppliers to launch the new MacBook Air, complete with Retina display, and the next-generation iPad with redesigned touchscreen technology.

One of these reports claims that Apple’s list of suppliers for its next iPad includes companies such as Nitto Denko, TPK, and Japan Display Inc. The report also says that assembly will be done by Foxconn, Apple’s regular partner, and that Wintek could lose out on iPad orders for the next-generation model.

Another report claims that parts for the new MacBook Air with Retina display are scheduled to begin shipping in the second quarter of 2013, with plans to launch the new MacBook Air in the third quarter. In 2012, Apple began offering Retina display resolutions on its MacBook Pros with redesigned and thinner hardware, while continuing to offer MacBook Pros with lower resolution screens and integrated disc drives.

The iPad 5 is assumed to have a similar design to the iPad mini, which will make it both thinner and lighter. Another report repeats previous claims that Apple’s next-generation iPad will use the same ‘GF2′ display technology that is found in the 7.9-inch iPad mini, instead of the thicker glass-on-glass design feature of the most recent full-size iPad generation.

Image Credit: Bloomberg

Microsoft has just raised the price of Office 2011 for Mac in order to push Office 365 on Mac users. Office 2011 for Mac now costs $140 for the ‘Home & Student’ edition while ‘Home & Office’ will run you a not-so-nice $220. These prices compare to the previous price points of $120 and $200, respectively. This equals out to 17% and 10% price hikes.

With these changes, Microsoft has also discontinued multi-user Office for Mac bundles. This is a big disappointment for small businesses and multiple Mac owners who will have to purchase separate Office licenses for each of their Macs if they choose to not subscribe to Office 365.

Microsoft raised the price of Office for Mac in order to push Office 365. Currently, a year of Office 365 costs $99.99 while college students can get a discounted four-year plan for $79.99. Office 365 is a Microsoft Office subscription plan. Standard subscriptions include five Office licenses for Macs, PCs and Windows tablets. Other perks include additional SkyDrive storage and 60 minutes of Skype credit per month. Student accounts are limited to two computers.

iWork pricing is looking really attractive right now.

Tip: Amazon has not adjusted Office for Mac pricing yet, so if you want a copy, act quickly!

Image Credit: Collin Anderson

Getting your hands on Apple’s super-slim iMac seems to be quite a challenge lately. With delivery times lingering around 2-3 weeks, the wait can be tough to bear especially if you’re in dire need of a new Mac. However, Apple’s Refurbished Store has just stocked two 21.5-inch new iMacs at a discounted price and a shipping time of only 1-3 days.

Apple is offering a $200 and $230 discount on both the 2.7GHz and 2.9GHz quad-core models of the 21.5-inch iMac. Both systems feature a 1TB hard-drive, 8GB of memory and a FaceTime HD camera. The 2.9GHz model features an NVIDIA 650m graphics card while the lower end model runs off of a 640m card. Apple also has refurbished last-gen iMacs in stock which start at $979.

Apple’s Refurbished Store still doesn’t have any 27-inch iMacs in stock, though Amazon has the low-end 27-inch super-slim iMac in stock and ready for shipment immediately for a wallet-busting $1799. If you’d prefer a new iMac, Amazon is also stocking 21.5-inch models for $1299 and $1494.

Apple’s new iMac has been having supply issues since launch. Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, has talked about these issues numerous times in the past two earnings calls. Most recently, Cook said that Apple is working on raising production of the computer over the current quarter, but it’s unlikely that Apple will be able to catch up to demand because it’s so high.

We hope that everyone out there had a great Valentine’s day. We promise a mush-free apps post for you this week. We have an avatar generator for the iPhone, which is pretty cool. Also a tool that you can use to plan out some healthy meals with a new iPad app. There was a big update to show you on a popular note-taking app for the Mac, and you can create your own infographics using a new web app.

After creating the back alley of the web, M00t has created a creative and fun game that you need to check out.

iPhone/iPod Touch: iMade Face

Trying to create a neat picture to use as your avatar can be a pain. You can always use a headshot or an old cartoon icon, but why not create something unique. iMadeFace is a free iPhone app that helps you create a cartoon image of yourself using a tool that resembles character customizers from RPG games. If you do not like the generic faces offered by the basic generator, you can purchase hats and masks as separate packs for $0.99 each. You can download the app here.

iPad: Cooking Light Recipes: Quick and Healthy Menu Maker

One of the hardest things about cooking at home is trying to construct a complete meal and keep all of the nutritional facts straight. Cooking Light Magazine has created an app that helps you balance entrees, sides, and deserts. In the bottom right hand corner you get a running total of the calories, sodium, and fat content for your meal. Lean too hard in one direction and the indicator turns red, letting you know you’ve gone over. The app is $3.99 and is on the App Store.

Mac: nvAlt

Notational Velocity is a pretty popular note-taking app, but Brett Terpstra forked the project to create nvAlt, which beefs up the software’s shortcuts and Markdown support. You can easily sync nvAlt with your Simplenote account, or push out your notes as a webpage using Peggd. One of the more useful features is that you can link notes together, which allows you to relate your projects together. It’s a free and open source app you can download here.

Web: Infogr.am

Infographics are the lolcats of news and productivity sties. However, you need to have a pretty good eye for design and data to make them, and even then making them quickly isn’t easy. Infogr.am is a fairly easy web interface for quickly making charts and infographics like the one above. You can edit the titles and text, then put in your data. Once you’re finished with the graphic you can share it out to Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. It is also saved to your Infogr.am account so you can get back to it later. The most useful feature is that you can embed the Infographic on your own site. It’s free to sign up here.

Game of the Week: Drawquest

When the creator of the app has 4Chan on his resume, people tend to think that they’re about to see something lurid. However, M00t has always been more about freedom and creativity than sleaze. Drawquest shows off that creativity with a daily art challenge that you participate in. Once you complete these you can compare you creation with others. It isn’t a straight up game per se, but it is a fun exercise. There are social aspects that allow you to follow other users and connect the app to your Facebook. The app is free from on App Store.

Back in August, EA announced that it would be bringing a Steam-like digital distribution platform to the Mac, and subsequently, it released a limited alpha version in January of 2013. Today EA has officially launched Origin for Mac, bringing some of the company’s biggest games to our favorite Apple computers so we can really get our nerd on. It’s about time too.

The launch of Origin on the Mac means that Apple users can now access big titles like The Sims 3, Dragon Age 2, Batman: Arkham City, and LEGO Harry Potter. Here’s what EA Origin Vice President of Production Mike Blank had to say:

“Origin is going to allow us to get games into the hands of our consumers as quickly as we can, to enable our gamers to connect with their friends and to enjoy their gaming experience as quickly and directly as possible.”

Origin for Mac will give users the ability to download cross-platform games on multiple machines, with purchases and in-game progress that will be saved to their accounts. ”Part of the goal of Origin is to provide real value to our gamers. With key titles from The Sims franchise and its expansion packs, if you download it once, you can download it again across both platforms,” Blank explained.

When asked about the reason for bringing Origin to the Mac, Blank  pointed out that the  Mac is growing in user share faster than some actually realize. “The Mac’s gradually increasing market share, as well as a vocal community of Mac gamers, drove the decision.” Traditionally, developers have focused more on the PC platform, but Blank sees a new trend coming into effect and Origin “is the first step in a strategy you’re going to start seeing coming out of EA.”

Origin for Mac can be downloaded from EA’s website. It requires a Mac with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor running OS X 10.6.8 or higher.

As you might already know, Grooveshark is a great online music streaming service that lets you browse an unlimited amount of music, upload your own music, save and share playlists and discover new songs with the radio. Now with Shiny Groove, you can bring the Grooveshark experience to your Mac.

In its beta right now, Shiny Groove lets you control your music with a sleek mini player, keyboard shortcuts like the next, previous and play/pause keys, or using your Apple remote or iPhone/iPod headphones.

It packs all of the great features of Grooveshark into a neat little corner of your desktop and easily expands when you want to get full access to playlists, search, and other features. You can then minimize the miniplayer when you’re ready to start listening to your tunes.

The app will download and display album artwork and flip the artwork over as the songs change. When you want to hide the miniplayer from your desktop, just grab it with your mouse and give it a shake and it’ll disappear. To bring it back, you just use the menubar icon (this also works to make it disappear).

Shiny Groove is free while it’s still in beta and you can check out all of the cool features on the Shiny Groove website. When it makes it to the online store and Mac App Store, Shiny Groove will be available for $3.99 and requires Mac OS X 10.8 or greater.

Image Credit: Shiny Groove

For those of you suffering from Macworld envy, we have some apps to keep you entertained. You may not be able to see demos of upcoming software, but you will be able to get updates on the grocery list in real time while you’re at the store. You even get to wait in line like you’re at Macworld.

Hey, you don’t get to enjoy that notoriously fickle San Francisco weather, but we have an app that shows you a current model of all the wind in the world. You can watch the breeze off the bay that’s likely chilling your favorite Mac pundits to the bone.

You might be able to find your next iPhone case in the exhibit hall, but you can see what’s taking up all that space on your iPhone with Phoneclean.

Finally, instead of vendor parties, you can see all the upcoming movie trailers and set an email reminder for yourself, and if you’re already sick of the coverage, you can waste your weekend with a game that has some real retro appeal. If you are at Macworld, you can still download all these apps, no waiting lists required.

iPhone/iPod Touch: Anylist

There is nothing more irritating than forgetting that one thing at the grocery store, or being told the minute that you get home that there was something else you needed to pick up. Anylist makes list creation easy with autocomplete and searchable selections.

There are also starter lists, so if you tend to have the same couple of things you need to pick up every week, you can save yourself having to type them out.

The sharing features work off the email you use to sign up for an account with Anylist, but you can search for names in your contacts to share the list with.

You can search for recipes in the app as well. It even allows for easy list creation outside of the culinary world, allowing you to just get a plain text list. Anylist is free and available from the App Store.

iPad: Windscape

There is a certain kind of Earth Science nerd who is going to love Windscape. For the rest of you, this is the sort of thing that is just cool to look at, much like Star Walk and a few other science apps for the iPad. Windscape shows an animated model of all the wind in the world. The wind is animated over a satellite view of the earth by a series of dots. The temperature of the wind is represented by the color of the dots. The app is $0.99 and can be downloaded here.

Mac: Phoneclean

For the real digital hoarders, Apple has introduced the 128GB iPad. The rest of us can probably get by with a bit less space. With Retina apps, image caches, and a host of other digital kipple sitting in our less used apps, it can begin to take up a lot of space that would be better used for our music or taking more photos. Phoneclean is a free app that gets rid of those caches, and frees up some space on your device. It’s a simple open and run app, and you can double check everything before it’s deleted. It will only scan the first iOS device it finds, so it’s best to just keep one plugged in. This is a free app and can be downloaded here.

Web: Movie Cron

If you have your Apple TV in front of you as you read this, take a look at the Trailers section. There are dozens and dozens of movies to preview on there with disparate release dates, and some with very little commercial coverage. Movie Cron allows you to watch trailers, and then set an email reminder for yourself to see the movie when it comes out. (If you’d like, you can add your mobile number and get a text when the movie is released as well.) This is a solution for a first world problem, but it’s a good one. It’s free and you can check it out here.

Game of the Week: Mutant Mudds

Mutant Mudds is a game that wears a lot of nostalgia on its sleeve. It looks like the classic games of the NES era. However, rather than delivering some twitchy, jumpy arcade experience, Mutant Mudds actually brings a lot of the design sense from that era to bear on the mobile game. There is a great soundtrack that emulates old NES sounds perfectly.

The game is 2D with some 3D gimmicks thrown in; whoever made this really knows the 90s gaming tropes. I think what I like most is that the game manages to be challenging and deep without breaking that quick-in, quick-out feel needed on a mobile title. This one will be in your regular rotation for some time. The game is only $0.99 and you should download it from here.

The folks at MacPaw have just announced the next major release of CleanMyMac, the popular Mac drive cleaning software. CleanMyMac 2 will be available next month and has been completely redone from the ground up. The purpose of CleanMyMac is to clean old and useless files off of your Mac’s hard drive or SSD.

After years of use, your Mac’s drive tends to get filled up with old binaries, international language files and other junk you either don’t need or don’t want. CleanMyMac easily erases these files for you, clearing up valuable space on your Mac’s drive. The application will also clear up leftover files from uninstalled applications that were left behind.

Personally, my favorite feature of CleanMyMac 2 would have to be iPhoto Cleanup. This feature cleans up unneeded service photos and copies of images from your iPhoto library. This feature will be invaluable to photographers with extremely large iPhoto libraries.

The best part about CleanMyMac 2 is its upgraded user-interface. The new UI is basic, but it’s very clean-cut and is filled with dark colors and beautiful graphics. Unlike previous releases of CleanMyMac, all of the app’s features are displayed from the get-go, so you don’t have to travel through multiple menus before hitting the the feature you want to use. We’ve embedded a few screen shots above for your viewing pleasure.

CleanMyMac 2 will be released to the public in February for $29.95. All current users of CleanMyMac will be upgraded to version 2.0 free of charge.

Apple has just been forced by the European Union to stop selling the current version of the Mac Pro in all European Union countries. Apple confirmed this to Loop Insight earlier today. The company will continue to ship new Mac Pro orders via its online store as well as at physical Apple Stores across Europe until February 18th. On March 1st, Apple will not be able to ship new computers to European resellers and these resellers will only be able to sell their remaining stock. The Mac Pro will continue to be available in all countries outside of Europe.

We’ve embedded Apple’s statement to Loop Insight below:

“Due to evolving regulatory requirements, Apple will stop selling Mac Pro in EU, EU candidate and EFTA countries on March 1, 2013. After that date, resellers can sell existing inventory but Apple will no longer ship Mac Pro in those countries.”

Apple was forced to stop selling the Mac Pro in Europe because it doesn’t meet Amendment 1 of regulation IEC 60950-1, Second Edition. The Mac Pro violates this amendment because the computer’s fans are unprotected and could possibly cut your finger if touched.

If you’re in Europe and are looking to purchase a Mac Pro after the March 1st deadline, don’t worry too much about the computer’s discontinuation. Apple CEO Tim Cook told users last year that Apple is working on something “really great” for Pro users and that it’s set for release sometime in 2013. We’re assuming that this “really great” product is a much-needed updated Mac Pro. Well, we’re also “hoping” it is too. Time will tell.

Image Credit: Teamugi-

Just had this sent to me by my brother. I laughed. Man, Apple makes some awesome commercials. Also, I hope these things aren’t in landfills. If you’re thinking about throwing one out, the terrorists win.

Apple has just pushed an SMC update to MacBook, MacBook Pro and MacBook Air users to fix battery issues. The update only affects people who have MacBooks with over 1000 charge cycles. Before the update, some of these heavily used machines would randomly shut down or stop working altogether.

From the update:

“This update addresses a rare issue on some Apple notebooks where a battery that has accumulated more than 1000 charge cycles may unexpectedly shut down or stop functioning.”

We’d highly recommend updating your Mac now, especially if you have an older machine with many charge cycles. You can either update your machine via Software Update or manually via the links we’ve embedded below:

• MacBook SMC Firmware Update 1.5
• MacBook Pro SMC Firmware Update 1.6
• MacBook Air SMC Update v1.8

Image Credit: tobiasbischoff

Some of you might remember the Optimus Maximus keyboard from Art Lebedev. It had LED keycaps that displayed a tiny image on top of each key, but it was pretty pricey. Well, the E-Inkey Keyboard by designers Maxim Mezentsev and Aleksander Suhih is kind of the same idea, but even more practical.

The point of the e-ink keycaps on this concept design is for the keys’ image to change depending on function. You could have certain symbols that show up when you hit the Ctrl, Alt, or Caps Lock keys, or have displays that are app-specific. You could even change the layouts depending on your international region or whether it’s hooked up to a Mac or a PC.

The E-Inkey Keyboard sort of combines the keyboard of the iPad, but with actual keys and a touch of an e-reader screen, like the Kindle.

It’s a pretty cool idea, even if it never actually becomes a real shipping product.

Running a blog has a lot of perks, one of which is being able to live most of your life in a browser without ever needing anything else to get your job done. Sure, native apps help for a lot of things but 90 percent of the time I’m just jumping around a dozen browser tabs. Something I need, but often find myself without, is quick access to a scratchpad. Somewhere to write something down really quickly, and then move on. Opening an app to do that, filing it in a system like Evernote, especially when it’s something as simple as a quick phone number, is pointless.

Thanks to this quick hack form Jose Jesus Perez Anguinaga, you can now turn a browser window or tab into a quick scratch pad or note pad with one quick line of code in a browser’s URL bar. It works in Chome, Safari, and most modern day browsers:

data:text/html, <html contenteditable>

I know, it looks scary, and unless you’re a developer you’re probably gonna have a hard time remembering it. So, to solve that problem, you could bookmark the page. You could set up a Text Expander snippet, or even a text replacement setting in the Language & Text section of your System Preferences. I set it up as a Text Expander snippet, but that’s just how I prefer to roll.

For the record, this is a scratch pad. It won’t save. It won’t sync. It will, ultimately, end up disappearing in one way or another. Use it wisely.

Apple’s super-slim 2012 iMac has started to pop up on some Apple Authorized Resellers websites. Resellers including Amazon.com, MacMall and MacConnection, among others, have started to offer some models of the computers on their websites. It looks as if all sellers have received limited quantities of most standard models of the computer along with some customized 21.5-inch models.

As of the time of writing this article, both Amazon.com and MacConnection are sold out of all new iMacs except for the low end 27-inch model. On the other hand, MacMall has most models in stock, except for the low end 21.5-inch models. B&H Photo and Video currently only has high end and mid-range 27-inch models in stock. If you’re in the market for a new iMac and can find one from one of the listed resellers, you should purchase quickly as the Apple Online Store is currently sold out of all 2012 iMacs.

This is the first time we’ve seen Apple sell the new iMacs via third-party retailers. Apple has been experiencing major supply constraints since the computer was unveiled on October 23, 2012. However, we heard last week that Apple may have finally gotten over these supply constraints, and this is probably why they are popping up in third-party online retailers’ stock. If you’d prefer to order your iMac via the Apple Online Store, expect to wait 2-3 weeks for a 21.5-inch model or 3-4 weeks for a 27-inch model.

According to a report from China Times, Apple may have finally solved production issues affecting the super-slim iMac. The publication reportedly received this information from a Taiwanese Apple supplier that has been mass producing parts of these computers since December 2012. Apple is expecting a huge jump in sales throughout the current quarter. China Times (translated by Bright Wire) has also told us that Apple device sales tend to peak within the first four months on the market, so demand should stay steady for the iMac.

Apple’s new iMac has been experiencing production issues since its announcement in October of 2012. In Apple’s past two earnings calls, Tim Cook has acknowledged these issues and has worked to assure us that Apple is indeed in the process of fixing these production issues.

The new iMac features a super-slim design, although the front of the computer looks relatively similar to that of previous generations. The iMac runs off of Intel’s latest Ivy Bridge chipsets and can be configured with a standard HDD, SSD or a Fusion Drive. The Fusion Drive is an SSD and HDD combo which is optimized for speed. The new iMac starts at $1299 on the Apple Online Store.

Image Credit: Lucy Takakura

What’s weird about the release is that Valve hasn’t made any official announcement or statement acknowledging the new Mac version. In fact, if you look on the Half-Life page on Steam, the game is still listed as being Windows only. Mac users, however, are still able to purchase and download the 1998 game and have it work just fine.

While it’s weird that it took this long for Valve to bring their 15 year old PC hit to Mac users, it’s good to see that Apple’s computers are continuing to get classic games added long after most people are interested in playing them.

Those looking to kill some headcrabs in one of the most critically acclaimed games of all-time can drop $9.99 here.

iPhone/iPod Touch: CARROT

Is your todo list mocking you? Sitting there each day endlessly taunting you with an ever growing list of things that need to be done. Have you tried gamification and still can’t get motivated? Try CARROT, the abusive AI personal assistant. Now at least when your todo list mocks you, it’s actually mocking you. You enter your todo list in a similar manner to Clear. As you clear your tasks, you earn points, but even as you level up, you’re still judged on the amount of time it takes to clear tasks and how often you check in with the app. When you do level up, CARROT offers you a fortune, which usually predicts your grisly demise. You may not be able to carry GLaaDoS around in your pocket, but this is pretty close. CARROT is $0.99 and you can download it here.

iPad: iYoga Premium

You may have already given up your hardcore cardio workouts at the gym, but there is still hope for your workout resolutions at home. Rather than another stressful routine, why not try a more gentle workout with Yoga? Instead of trying to find a Yoga group down at the local Whole Foods, you can just get an instructor on your iPad. iYoga Premium has all the trappings of yoga — the teacher with the slightly too calm voice, and bells that ring as you change positions. The app is compatible with AirPlay mirroring so you can easily use you Apple TV to get an easier view from your yoga mat. The poses are both narrated and animated, making it easy to follow along. The app does a really good job of showing which muscles are supposed to be stretching and contracting, so you know if you’re doing it right. This is a nice easy workout with a variety of preset routines you can choose from along with a custom routine option. The initial app is $1.99, which gets you 81 poses, and you can unlock additional poses for another $4.99. You can download the app from the App Store here.

Mac: Clean

Do you keep a lot of extraneous files on your desktop? For a lot of Mac users the desktop becomes a sort of scratch pad for files. You save downloads there, screenshots, and quick text files you might need later. The problem is that at some point your desktop begins to be less of a desktop and more just a pile of files that you need to hide with your applications as quickly as possible. Clean tries to clean that up, but rather than simply committing all of your files to the Trash, Clean seeks to arrange them in folders for you. After it runs, Clean creates a folder by month or day in your Documents folder and moves your Desktop files there. You can run it manually or let it run in the background all the time. Clean is free and available from the App Store.

Web: Branch

Branch is the platform for open discussion with closed membership. It’s actually a pretty simple concept. The site lets a moderator filter out all those people who simply join a conversation to be antagonistic. There’s a lot of potential here as an idea, though I would like to see the ability to embed conversations rather than simply link to them. For many sites that simply lack comment sections, this is an easy way to start a conversation around their articles. You sign up using your Twitter account. You can try the app out here.

Game of the Week: Ghostbusters

For people of a certain age (Read: Old), these developers could have released an app that did nothing but play a loop of the Ghostbusters theme, and it probably would have been at the top of the app charts. Instead, with this new game, you get a mixture of a time management game and RPG. You go around town busting ghosts and collecting money and slime samples that allow you to unlock more levels in a tower. Sadly, the main Ghostbusters are here in name only, and there’ s an assortment of new b-team characters, but the game is fun enough to look the other way. This is a Freemium game, so be prepared to wait for the upgrades unless you’re willing to pay extra. Ghostbusters is free from the App Store.

In a statement, Mike Frazzini, Director Amazon Games, said:

“We’ll continue to build services that make monetization easier and remove undifferentiated heavy lifting from developers. Game developers build games that are used across multiple platforms and mediums. In-App Purchasing for Mac, PC and Web-based games is our latest service that helps game developers grow their business and increase their customer-base. For years, Amazon has focused on making the online shopping experience as frictionless as possible, and we are excited to share this expertise and technology so that game developers can offer customers this same great experience.”

Extending in-app purchases means a new source of revenue for Amazon and another link to developer communities. As of now, The Amazon Digital Games Store has around 3,000 titles.

Just like the in-app purchasing that Amazon added to Android and Kindle Fire apps last year, users can use credit cards, Amazon gift cards or other Amazon credit cards to make in-game purchases on the newly added platforms.

This also makes a good deal for developers in terms of marketing. Amazon promises that the in-app items on games that incorporate Amazon’s IAP “can show up on best seller lists, recommendations and merchandising campaigns, helping customers discover new games and items.”

Apple fans in the United Kingdom may have to wait a bit longer to receive their brand new 21.5-inch iMac. The computer’s dispatching time has just increased to 2-3 weeks from a previous estimate of 7-10 days. As of now, this shipping time increase has only gone into effect in the UK and Asia Apple Stores. Here in the States, I’m still seeing 7-10 days as a shipping estimate, though this may change in the near future.

It’s strange to see such a high shipping estimate for the new iMac considering the computer was announced in October of 2012 and started shipping in late November 2012. New Apple devices are usually “in stock” after a month or two of being on the market and shipping times almost never increase after being significantly decreased.

The reason for such a high shipping estimate on Apple’s latest desktop is a mixture of both high demand and supply shortages. Apple admitted to these hardware shortages back in October during an earnings call. The company has partially blamed LG for these shortages as it can’t seem to laminate the display panels fast enough. Hopefully a solution to these shortages is found in the near future.

Listening to the evolution of the startup chimes one right after another is pretty amazing. The subtle changes and nuances from one chime to another is phenomenal. It’s pretty easy to overlook them every time a change happens. I couldn’t even being to imagine how much time and effort went into getting the chimes right for each new iteration.

Which is your favorite?

While the iMac is a great desktop computer, it has one major issue: screen dust. If your house or apartment is dusty, you probably know this issue all too well. It turns out that the folks at RadTech feel your pain and have started to offer the ScreenSavrz for iMac. This product is essentially a large microfiber cloth with form fitting edges that wrap around the corners of your iMac, forming a seal that keeps dust out when your iMac isn’t in use.

When the ScreenSavrz isn’t being used to protect your iMac’s screen from dust when it’s not in use, it can be used to clean your iMac’s screen of fingerprints, existing dust and other annoyances. The product is crafted from RadTech’s popular Optex fabric. This fabric is non-woven, making it smooth and safe for your iMac’s glass screen. If needed, you can also use the ScreenSavrz cloth to clean your iPhone or iPad’s screen as well as CDs and DVDs.

If you’d like a ScreenSavrz cloth for your iMac, you’ll have to pay somewhere between $19.95 and $54.95 for a cloth. The product is available in 8 different colors and is available for the iMac G4, G5 and all Intel models, though the 2012 iMac edition is still “coming soon”. You can purchase the ScreenSavrz cloth via RadTech’s website.

Well, that was quite a week. We had a lot of rumors about the supply chain that ultimately hammered Apple’s stock, while the rest of the Apple press launched themselves into full on Sherlock mode alleging stock fixing, bad reporting, and a host of other crimes and misdemeanors on Nikkei, the Wall Street Journal, and anyone who believed the story.

Apple and Amazon were told to settle their “App Store” lawsuit outside of the court. Samsung won a decision in a Dutch court, which found that the Tab did not violate the iPad’s patents, all while AT&T continues to try to freeze out Unlimited Data users by denying them FaceTime over cellular.

Facebook announced a search engine, for some reason. Tim Cook didn’t get to have a happy Friday when he found out that he was going to be subject to a four-hour deposition in the anti-poaching case. The week closed out with yet another supply rumor; this time it was Sharp saying that Apple cut orders for the full-size iPad screens. If any of this is of interest to you, here are the most important stories we covered this week…

Monday

• Car Smashes Into Chicago Apple Store
• Apple Reportedly Cutting iPhone 5 Component Orders Due To Weak Demand
• Waze Gets Its First Update Of The Year
• PayPal Adds Three New Retailers For In-Store Payment Technology, Tests Order-Ahead Pickup
• NRA Releases Shooting App, Appropriate For Ages 4+?
• Third Party Lightning Accessories Finally Hit Apple Stores
• New Do Not Disturb Concept From Auxo Designer A Great Idea
• This Better Be The iPhone 6…
• Smartphones Consuming More Data Than Tablets

Tuesday

• Belgian Consumer Group Suing Apple Over Warranty Practices
• How To Start Your Car Remotely With An iPhone, SMS And An Arduino Board
• Facebook Announces Graph Search, A Search Engine For Facebook
• Your Cat Can Take A Nap In This iMac

Wednesday

• Apple, Amazon Told To Try And Settle “App Store” Suit Outside Courtroom
• Samsung Galaxy Tabs Don’t Infringe On Apple Devices Rules Dutch Court
• AT&T Brings FaceTime Over Cellular To All Data Plans, Unless You Have Unlimited Data
• Microsoft Launches Free Disaster Relief App
• Facebook Brings VoIP Capabilities To Facebook Messenger For iOS

Thursday

• Apple And Samsung Allowed To Add New Devices To Next Major Patent Lawsuit
• Turns Out Walmart’s Unlimited iPhone 5 Data Plan Not Actually Unlimited
• Amazon Flips Off Apple, Makes MP3 Store Available In Mobile Browsers
• Google’s Nexus 7 Knocks Apple’s iPad Off Its Throne In Japan
• Auxo Designer Shows Off Impressive Do Not Disturb Alert Concept
• Facebook Wants a Deeper Look Inside Your Kimono

Friday

• Your Mac Keeps A Log Of All Your Downloads
• Hearst Magazine Lineup Now Comes To iOS Newsstand Before Anywhere Else
• U.S. Judge Orders Apple CEO Tim Cook To Be Questioned For Four Hours In Anti-Poaching Case
• Four Cool Apps You Should Check Out Over The Weekend
• This Lock Screen Concept Needs To Happen In iOS 7
• iPad Mini Popularity May Have Sharp Cutting Production Of iPad 4 Displays
• This iMac G4 Was Updated With An Intel CPU, Mountain Lion
• Free Press Starts A Petition Against AT&T’s Violation Of Net Neutrality Laws

We also have a few open offers through Deals.Macgasm.net:

• Coding For Dummies (Or Kids) Course
• Ruby on Rails with Michael Hartl
• The Ultimate Xcode For iOS Apps Course
• The DSLR Camera Course Bundle
• The Online Entrepreneur eBook Bundle
• The Bolster Your Business E-Book Bundle
• Turn Your iOS App Ideas Into Reality
• Keep Your Mac Clean With CleanMyMac Double Pack
• The Yazsoft Mac Bundle
• The Ultimate Premium Fonts Package
• The Master iOS Programming Course
• The Digital Design Resource Bundle
• Adobe Illustrator Creative Design Course

DIY expert Jonathan Berg, or “Dremel Junky”, has just turned his 20-inch iMac G4 into an Ivy Bridge beast. Berg has restored many iMac G4s, though his most recent project may be his biggest and best feat yet. He has taken an Intel NUC (Next Unit of Computing) system and fitted it into the iMac’s shell. He’s even gone so far as to fit the I/O ports into their original position and use an original Apple power cable, though he left the bulky external power adapter behind.

Unfortunately, since the hardware isn’t made by Apple, Berg had to do some additional hacking to port Mountain Lion to his custom iMac. He Hackintoshed the machine using the Unibeast/Multibeast method and got everything up and running smoothly. Of course, if you’re not so keen when it comes to Hackintoshing, you can always make your iMac into a pretty Linux or Windows box.

For those interested in this DIY project, Berg has uploaded a video tutorial on how to do this to your own iMac. However, the project requires a soldering iron and Dremel tool work. If you’re comfortable with these tools and have a few extra bucks, free time, and an iMac G4 lying around, we’d say go for it.

The apps we have for you this week are fairly varied. They run the gamut from social users to power users, and feature the first tandem app offering in this series. Without further ado, here are your apps

:

iPhone/iPod Touch: Cleverbug

Judging by the majority of posts, you would assume that Facebook exists for two things, drinking and birthdays. One of Facebook’s best uses is keeping track of birthdays, but leaving that impersonal wall post for your spouse, parents, or siblings is definitely going to put you on the Goofus side of the comic. Instead, why not use Facebook to get the right date, a nice picture, but still actually have a physical card. That is exactly what Cleverbug does. For around three dollars and a stamp, you can send your card to someone from your Facebook list using a photo from their page. If you don’t find something you like, you can also upload an image from your phone. There are a variety of cards that fit the relationship and gender of the person. If you don’t have their address you can also send the card to yourself for delivery. The app is a fairly neat use of Facebook and the first card is free to try. You can download Cleverbug from the App Store here.

iPad/Mac: Hot Keys

Keyboard shortcuts have always been the domain of the power users. Unless you’re really into using an app everyday, it can be hard to remember the more esoteric time savers. That’s where Hot Keys comes in. You have a small server app on your Mac and a client app on your iPad. After establishing the connection, using the button that looks like a refresh symbol, you can then get the default OS X shortcut pack automatically. If you switch to remote packs you can see a pack for Photoshop as well. What’s most intriguing about this app is the ability to make custom packs for the apps you use most. For example, in Byword you can make a quick couple of shortcuts to push the Markdown text into the clipboard as HTML. You need both apps for this to work, and they are both free. The Mac App is here. The iPad app is here.

Web App: Typing.io

Trying to learn a new programming language means remapping to figure out where the main symbols you need are located on the keyboard. Do you need to hit “<”, or use “[” ? Well, Typing.io is a web app that allows you to type along to a program in one of seventeen languages. These are real apps too. The C++ lesson is HTMLDocumentParser.cpp, C is the Linux kernel, and Objective C is Cheddar. Even novices can get some good finger exercises and some help with learning some of the more obscure keyboard keys. The app requires a Google account and you can see the lessons here.

Game of the Week: Temple Run 2

Temple Run wasn’t the first Endless Runner on the iPhone. It was a huge hit though, and made a big enough splash that Actvision’s rerelease of Pitfall! was a clone of Temple Run. In Temple Run 2, there are some new obstacles, as well as new characters you can unlock and play. The game does a great job of showing off the new content early, and it’s just as addictive as its predecessor. It is a free app you can get from the App Store here.

One More For The Road: Bet To Win

If you’re constantly betting your friends over silly things like “who’s going to win the next roller derby match,” but have no way of keeping track of your bets and your winnings, you should check out Bet To Win. Developer Arctic Empire has finally made making frivolous bets easier, and pretty instant. Plus, you get to smack talk your friends any chance you get, which makes the app a lot more fun to use. The app is available for both the iPhone and iPad

If you’re an avid Bluetooth user, then you probably know that some devices work better than others, especially when it comes down to how fast your device eats up batteries. If you’re having issues with the quality of sound from your Bluetooth speaker or problems with the performance of a Bluetooth keyboard, it might have to do with the batteries you’re using, but it could also be the signal strength between your Mac and whatever Bluetooth device you’re using.

There’s an easy way you can check the strength of each signal on each Bluetooth device you’re using right from your Mac. Here’s how:

• Make sure your device is paired with your Mac.
• Launch System Preferences.
• Click on the Bluetooth icon to launch that specific preference pane.
• Once paired, the device will say “Connected” with a green dot next to it under the name of the device.

Now, to check the signal strength:

• Click on the device you want to check.
• Press the Option key on your keyboard and a little signal bar will come up (similar to the Wi-Fi indicator on an iPhone).
• The more bars you see, the stronger the signal.

Keep in mind that when it’s a negative number, the closer it is to zero the better. So next time you’re having an issue with your Bluetooth device, open up your System Preferences and see what kind of signal you’re getting.

Also, remember that batteries can have an effect on signal strength of Bluetooth devices, so if you’re magic trackpad isn’t very responsive and you have a low signal, you can try replacing the batteries.

This kind of thing comes in handy when you’re losing connections to keyboards, mice, and other peripherals and you have no idea what’s causing the problems.

Image Credit: Cult of Mac

Entitled “Portable Computer,” U.S. Patent No. D674382 was given to Apple by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Illustrations of the patent show the “ornamental design for a portable computer.” Among those who were responsible for designing the trackpad are none other than Steve Jobs and Jony Ive.

In the patent, Apple explains that the surface of MacBook computers is metallic and the illustrations show Apple’s existing trackpad design found below the keyboard on a MacBook.

The patent comes from a number of application continuations. The first was filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 2008. In the filing, Apple refers to the MacBook illustrations as “our new design.”

The bigger glass trackpad first appeared in Apple’s MacBook Pros in late 2008 when Apple began its major redesign with unibody aluminum enclosures. Previous versions of MacBooks featured a button below the trackpad for clicking, while the new MacBook Pro glass trackpad was the first one to act as a single button that also included multi-touch gestures.

Image Credit: Softpedia

Don’t. Even. Have. Words. Well, maybe a couple. You know you’ve considered it.

None of these apps are 4K, 3D, feature Windows 8, or have some insane use for an iPad that will likely damage your child’s psyche. Since these apps are already released, there’s zero chance they’ll vaporware. So pretty much this entire article is filled with things that are the anthesis of CES. Here are the apps of the week.

1. Ink for iOS

There are a ton of note-taking, notebook, and sketching apps in the App Store. All of them have an array of features, most of which make getting to creation a multistep process. Ink strips all of that away and presents you with a blank page and a single button. Double tap that button and you get a few different sharing options: Mail, Save to Camera Roll, Twitter, and Facebook. The menu also offers the ability to Print, Copy or Clear the note. If you just flip the button up, your page is saved to the camera roll and a new blank page is created. One color pen, one color paper. This is as simple as an app can get, it’s free and can be downloaded from the App Store.

2. MusicTiles

Peter Gabriel has been an artistic pioneer since he was dressing up in weird costumes with Genesis. In celebration of the 25th anniversary of his So album, Gabriel has released a remix app for the iPad. The app is called MusicTiles. A collaboration with professor Henrik Hautop Lund, the app uses a series of tiles to represent different tracks of music that change as you drag them around the field and link them together. It’s $2.99 and you get six songs — three Peter Gabriel songs and an additional three from other artists (although technically you only get two Gabriel songs, as there are two instrumentations of Red Rain). You can either download the rest of the So album one track at a time for $1.99 each, or pay $13.99 for the whole album. There are several mixes for each song. If you like to tinker with music, this is a fun app. Download it here.

3. ReadKit

The app ReadLater was a good Instapaper client until it became the official Pocket client on the Mac and the original app stopped being updated. ReadKit is a simple Instapaper, Pocket, and Readability client for the Mac. It’s got a clean multi-pane interface, and it allows you to mark items as read, starred, archived, and file them in your folders. Instapaper’s web interface has never been as good as the iOS app, but ReadKit comes close. There’s a few different themes for reading, as well as a minimal interface mode that removes the chrome and folders while you read. ReadKit can be downloaded from the Mac App Store for an introductory price of $1.99.

4. Clueful

This one is only for the iOS crowd. Though Clueful is a web app, it started life in the App Store. (There doesn’t seem to be a clear reason why the app was removed, but it does use other developers’ icons and names.) Clueful is a web app that allows you to search for apps and see what data they access, and if applications are sharing that data with third parties. It has a limited database at this time, but it does have a pretty big list of current apps. If an app you’d like to check isn’t listed, you can email the creators to request it be added. Clueful is a free web app and you can save it to your home screen here.

5. Hundreds

SemiSecret made Canabalt, which was Temple Run before there was even Temple Run. Their follow-up title, Hundreds, shares a similar sense of design while being completely different. The idea is pretty simple — you have to press and hold circles to grow their number to 100. Simple enough, but as you try to grow the circles they move and if they touch while you’re touching them, you loose. Later levels add different obstacles that increase difficulty. The game has a cool soundtrack along with a secondary cipher puzzle system, so there is more than enough to make this your go-to time waster. Hundreds is available on the App Store for $2.99.

Apple has just released an update for all 2012 MacBook Airs. Apple has noted that this EFI update fixes a color issue with HDMI connected displays, a Windows issue that prevented MacBook Airs from booting properly as well as a Thunderbolt issue that caused MacBooks to freeze when Thunderbolt devices were unplugged.

EFI is a BIOS standard developed by Intel. An EFI is essentially a standard BIOS on steroids with tons of added features. This is why large hardware issues tend to be fixed with EFI updates as it allows your system to update its core components.

You can download the MacBook Air EFI Firmware Update 2.6 via Apple’s website or you can update to it via Software Update on your Mac. Keep in mind that this update may take a few minutes to install and that your MacBook should be plugged in while installing the EFI update.

Image Credit: p_a_h

Anyway, if you’re big on the ‘deck then here’s a list of updates you can expect when you hit the update button:

There are over 90 fixes + updates from the previous version. Highlights include:

• Performance upgrade for displaying multiple high-velocity columns
• Embed this Tweet right from the Tweet itself, for use in blogs and webpages
• Introduction of a new search box with Typeahead and People Search
• Ability to reduce the app window to 2 columns

Yeah, the update notes read kinda like a security update note from Apple. What can we say? The 90 plus fixes don’t sound so huge now after all, does it?

Apple has begun selling refurbished 15-inch Retina Macbook Pro models at a 15 percent discount from the standard price. There are two versions for sale: the entry-level model with 256GB of flash storage and a 2.3Ghz processor for $1869, and the high-end model with 512GB of storage and a 2.6Ghz processor for $2379. Customers will save $330 on the entry-level model and $420 on the high end.

This is a good deal for those looking to buy a discounted Retina Macbook Pro. Apple’s refurbished models are typically in brand new condition and it would be tough to find discounts as big as these on brand-new models somewhere else. Unfortunately, no 13 inch Retina models have popped up on the store yet.

Those looking to take advantage of this offer should act fast as new refurbs tend to be sold off fairly quickly.

Mountain Lion has finally taken a majority of Mac web traffic by owning 32 percent of it. This statistic comes courtesy of Net Applications, a firm that charts web metrics using OS share and other fun stuff. Mountain Lion was first released in July 2012, but has only caught up and surpassed OS X Lion in the past month. Net Applications reports that during the month of November, Mountain Lion and Lion were neck and neck with 29 percent and 30 percent of Mac web share respectively. It took Mountain Lion roughly half of the time it took Lion to become the dominant OS X build after only five months.

Unfourtantly for Apple, OS X Snow Leopard still holds roughly 29 percent of Mac web traffic. This is likely because Snow Leopard was the latest build of OS X from late-August 2009 to mid-July 2011. Apple has recently been moving OS X to yearly release cycles, so it’s unlikely that we’ll see Lion or Mountain Lion hold such a high marketshare for the same period of time as Snow Leopard.

Happy New Year everyone! The holidays are finally behind us, and hopefully you’re not stressing over your resolutions. We’ve got some more apps for your Apple gear.

iPhone/iPod Touch: Piction App

Captioned photos is the second language of the Internet. People may spend hours crafting a thoughtful blog post, but it doesn’t hold nearly the same possibility of viral spread that a silly photo of your cat with a clever phrase superimposed over the top does (if you want that kind of thing, hit us up on Facebook). Piction makes creating these images on the iPhone easy. You can either take a new photo or caption an existing photo from the Camera Roll. It’s a pretty easy interface, and it has a wide variety of fonts. The app is only $0.99 and it’s available here.

iPad: Jamie Oliver’s Recipes

Considering that diets are the perennial New Year’s resolution, it may be wise to reach out for help in learning how to cook healthy. Jamie Oliver has spent his career trying to get people excited about healthy food. The iPad has always made for a great kitchen companion, and Jamie Oliver’s app is meant to be useful to both novice and advanced cooks. The app automatically adjusts recipes based on the number of servings and can create shopping lists automatically. The app is free at first, but to get more content requires a monthly subscription. However, you can sample ten recipes and three of the tutorial videos. You can download the app here.

Mac: Wunderlist

There are very few to-do list apps that can beat the simplicity of Reminders on the Mac. Power users, on the other hand, find Reminders’ simplicity limiting. Wunderlist was recently upgraded to its second version and has added a host of features that greatly surpass the built-in Reminders. You can set up repeating tasks, share your project lists and tasks, as well as sync your lists across devices. Best of all, Wunderlist is free, which beats many of the other task managers out there. It can be downloaded from the Mac App Store.

Web: Save Publishing Now

Hyperbolic name aside, this is a pretty cool little Bookmarklet. It is a utility that will parse an article for all available sentences that can be Tweeted. After selecting the Bookmarklet, all of the Tweetable text is highlighted in red. You can then copy and paste your highlights to Twitter when sharing the latest great editorial here at Macgasm.  <\shamelessplug >  You can grab the bookmarklet here

Game of the Week: The Grading Game

Learning games are not always fun. The Grading Game manages to give a grammar game a veneer of schadenfreude, and manages to create something really fun. The game puts the player in the role of a TA desperately trying to work off their student loan debt by grading papers for the sadistic Dr. Snerpus. Snerpus delights in getting revenge for nasty social networking posts about his class by challenging you to find enough mistakes in the student’s writing to fail them. There are several modes and tons of unique stages. The full game is only $0.99 but you can try a limited free version here.

Fans of the iPen will be excited to hear that Cregle, makers of the Kickstarter-funded iPen, has created a second generation of its popular digital pen. The iPen 2 is also a Kickstarter project and will have an iPad model, but what’s new is that the iPen 2 will have a Mac version of the digital pen, which lets you write directly onto an iMac or Apple Display with glass panel. According to the Kickstarter page, “iPen 2 turns your non-touch Apple Display into pen display and is compatible with every application in Mac OS and Windows.”

The iMac model iPen 2 stylus for Apple Display will go for $169. It lets you write or draw directly on an iMac screen by using a set of sensors that attaches right to the iMac display, making it compatible with every app on Mac OS X. The iPen 2 is pressure sensitive so you can control your strokes easily, it is angle agnostic so no matter how you hold your pen it will still write accurately, and it’s lightweight inking so you don’t have to press really hard into your device to make it work. The iPen 2 takes 75 percent less weight to generate inking than the iPen 1.

The iPad version of the iPen 2 has a case that attaches to the Lighting connector dock port, and then attaches to the back of the iPad. This stylus will go for $119. Developers are hoping to stretch goals to make the smaller sensor case possible.

The sensor system, for both iPad and Mac, uses two different invisble light sensors that triangulate the pen’s location on the screen, which is then transmitted to the Mac, making a digital pen that works across the whole screen.

To back this project, Cregle is asking for a minimum $1 pledge. There are 33 days left to meet the funding goal of $360,000. If you want to learn more about this project, you can watch the video above or head over to the Kickstarter page.

802.11ac has been referred to by many as ’5G Wi-Fi’. The technology allows for “faster throughput, higher capacity, wider coverage and improved power efficiency.” The current networking standard of 802.11n can provide connections of up to 450mbps with three antennas, while 802.11ac can easily reach the same speeds with one antennae and can reach speeds of 1.3gps when it uses three.

The Broadcom chip is reportedly still in development, however, and not immediately ready for mass production. The report claims that the plan is for the chip to be ready for the upcoming Mac lineup; however it is unknown whether the chips will find their way into other Apple products such as the iPhone and Apple TV.

Apple adopting a new and improved technology like 802.11ac should be a great thing for both consumers and other tech companies alike. A massive company like Apple can easily help the technology take off and gain popularity with the hope of quickly making it an industry standard. This will lead to companies developing products and accessories with 802.11ac in mind and will eventually bring the world a more enjoyable, capable and faster Internet experience.

Apple has just given all refurbished 2011 Mac minis a nice $50 price cut online at the Apple Refurbished Store. The refurbished Mac mini now starts at only $469 and gives you a 2.5GHz dual-core Intel i5 CPU with 2GB of RAM and a 500GB hard drive. Like the rest of Apple’s refurbished lineup, these Mac minis come with a standard one-year Apple warranty free of charge. Here’s what you can get:

• Apple Mac mini MC815LL/A Intel Core i5 Dual 2.3GHz with 2GB RAM, $469
• Apple Mac mini MC816LL/A Intel Core i5 Dual 2.5GHz with 4GB RAM, $549
• Apple Mac mini MC936LL/A Intel Core i7 Quad 2GHz with Lion Server, $759

I personally use a low-end Mac mini on a daily basis to complement my MacBook Air for writing articles, web browsing and light photo editing. The machine is perfect for my uses, though I’d highly recommend purchasing additional memory from a third party as 2GB is barely enough to run OS X. But for just under $470, the refurbished Mac mini is a total steal if you’re looking to get into OS X for the first time. Make sure to act quickly as Mac mini deals tend to sell out quickly!

We’ve made it through the Apocalypse and Christmas, now all we need to do is survive New Year’s Eve and Day, and everything should be back to normal. While you’re simultaneously pondering a crash diet and planning an epic hangover, we’ve got some apps to pass the time.

iPhone/iPod Touch: Timer Bundle

This is another supplement to the Clock app built into iOS. This time, instead of great design, Timer Bundle is purely about fixing functionality. There is only a single timer included in the default Clock app, and Timer Bundle allows you to create multiple timers that run concurrently. This is great if you’ve got more than one dish to keep track of when cooking, or a couple of presets that you would like to keep. You can customize each timer with a unique color and sound. This is a simple app but can be quite useful. It is $1.99 and can be downloaded from the App Store.

iPad: ReadQuick

There are so many things to read on the web, it’s often overwhelming. ReadQuick promises to train you to read faster using content you already want to read on a daily basis. ReadQuick’s tutorial says they do this by flashing words faster than you can sound them out allowing you to comprehend the word, but not allowing you the time to speak it in your head. It begins at 350 words-per-minute and can be set as high as 800 words-per-minute. It would be simple to build this kind of app without an eye on how to fill it with content. That’s where ReadQuick excels, since it connects to your Instapaper or Pocket queues, giving you custom content. In addition, they have a variety of their own online sources you can draw from. There are stats and playlist features to really round out the app. It is $3.99 and you can download it from the App Store.

Mac: Wedge

The jury is still out on whether App.net is a noble experiment catering to smart geeks or an actual force to be reckoned with. Trying to fight Twitter was never going to be easy, but getting clients on every platform is an important beachhead. There have been some notable iOS clients, but App.net did not have a well known Mac app. Wedge appears to be an app that can really meet a lot of geeks’ wish lists. It’s got a unified timeline, Retina support, and gesture support. If you’re a Mac user on App.net, you should download it for free here

NOTE: App.net is five bucks a month and is required to use Wedge 

Web: Beeminder

Once you’ve shaken off your hangover on New’s Year’s Day, you can program in your quantifiable resolutions into Beeminder. They offer everything from losing weight to Inbox Zero. It integrates with some services like Fitbit or WiThings, and graphs out your progress. You can sign up for an account directly with Beeminder or you can use several other services to sign in. If you really want to incentivize yourself, you can pledge what you’re willing to lose if you fail. The interface has a nice graph and calculation program that can help you visualize your necessary progress to meet your goal. Beeminder is free and can be found here.

Game of the Week: Life is Magic

Location and gamefication has gotten some pretty bad press from spam generators and apps that seem to be games in name only. Life is Magic is a location game per se, as it uses your real world location to create game levels.

Instead of bragging about how many times you’ve been to the Subway this week, you’re using MP to influence shops for better prices and journeying into dungeons with your friends. It has some rough spots, but is fun enough to slog through. It’s a free game available in the App Store.