The Mac App Store Opens for Business

Finally, the Mac App Store opened for business today (though far earlier than the rumored noon release). It is bundled with the Mac OS X 10.6.6 update, so you’ll need to run Software Update. Once you reboot after the update, you’ll have a shiny new blue icon in your Dock — App Store.

You’ll have to log in with your Apple ID — the same credentials you use for iTunes — and then you can be on your merry way to purchasing apps. And it has never been easier.

Say Goodbye to the .DMG

Installing apps has never been, well, all that easy. That’s not to say one couldn’t learn the procedure and just go through the menial steps, but there has been room for improvement for quite some time. I have seen many people running their apps from inside disk images (.dmg) because they didn’t know they needed to move the app into their Applications folder. Also, try explaining what a disk image is to someone that doesn’t know much about computing. Yeah, that’s what I thought.

The App Store makes installing apps as easy as two clicks. You click Install (or if the app is paid, you click its price), enter your password, click Buy to confirm, and the app literally zooms off the App Store page and into your Dock. It is also automatically delivered to your Applications folder. Honestly, installation doesn’t get a great deal simpler than this.

Updates

Another great feature is the App Store will notify when any of your apps have updates available, along with a list of the changes. Many third-party apps prior to today utilized Sparkle to notify and install updates, but Sparkle requires that a user opens the app for the updater to run. (By the way, it appears the developer of Sparkle “designed and implemented exciting new technology for the Installer that will be employed throughout Mac OS X” when he interned at Apple a while back, according to his resume).

Fact is, it’s easy to go for some time without an app, and you could miss out on some updates, even ones that introduce new features that might interest you in using the app again. The App Store should help mitigate those lapses. Either way, update notifications are welcome in my book.

The Future

I have no doubt about the Mac App Store being a wild success. I imagine the App Store will be the way most folks (read non-techy) discover new apps from here on out. Especially switchers. They’ll be introduced to it when they buy a new Mac at the Apple Store, and may not ever know that there is another way to get apps on the Mac (kind of unlikely, but you never know).

At the end of the day, I am all for making user experience easier.

Camera+ Returns to the App Store

Camera+ has returned to the App Store this evening sporting a version number of 2.0. You may remember Camera+ for the controversy it stirred with Apple when the developers unveiled a way to reassign an iPhone’s volume buttons to act as shutter triggers when running the app. It is unknown whether Apple outright pulled the app from the App Store, or if the developers pulled it to avoid banishment or something of the like.

Nonetheless, it is back with a laundry list of improvements. What I’m liking the best so far is the removal of the silly SLR interface that used to greet you upon launch. Now the app gets you from launch to taking a picture extremely quickly. Everything else, so far, seems mostly like polish, polish, polish.

To celebrate the app’s return, it’s on sale for a whopping 99¢ right now. Owners of 1.x need not fret, 2.0 is a free update.

Squarespace Releases iPad App

Today Squarespace announced the release of their long awaited iPad app. Squarespace is, of course, the host and CMS of this fine site. Needless to say, I’ve been waiting for an iPad app from them for some time. Naturally, I am typing this post on my iPad.

Overall, the app is very good. I’ve encountered (and reported) a couple bugs, but that is to be expected. Overall, the app is a reflowed carbon copy of the iPhone app, which surprises me that it is a separate app instead of a universal app. The main difference is the editor on the iPad is far superior (read: usable).

The editor supports undo, redo, hyperlinking, bold, italics, underline, block quote, and excerpts. It also features a marked improvement to the interface that allows you to assign categories, tags, and the publish date.

I can definitely see using the iPad to publish a post in a pinch, but most of the time I think I’ll stick with composing on my Mac.

Squarespace for iPad is a free download from the iTunes Store.

Dropbox 1.0

The amazing syncing utility Dropbox has finally left beta and entered the land of 1.0! I’ve been a Dropbox user for some time now, and really do love it. Dropbox, to me, is what Apple’s iDisk should be. By far, one of my favorite uses of Dropbox is the ability for apps to sync their databases to it (like the very wonderful 1Password), which is great for apps that have both Mac & iOS versions.

If you want to become a Dropbox user, please follow my referral link. By doing so, you’ll get an extra 250 MB of storage, even on a free account, and I’ll get the same little bump in storage. Now, get to syncing!

Apple Opening Mac App Store on 6 January

In three short weeks Apple will be opening the Mac App Store for business. Part of me does wish it was opening before Christmas, so I could show it off to my folks, mother-in-law, and sister-in-law, since I will be seeing all of them over Christmas.

Word has it that developers who want to be included in the Mac App Store’s 6 January debut need to submit their apps by 31 December.

The Future of the Apple Design Award for Mac

In my previous post I casually mentioned that I thought Reeder for Mac would be a fantastic contender for an Apple Design Award. I then remembered that this year, Apple didn’t have an ADA for Mac apps — just iPhone/iPod touch and iPad apps.

Then a notion came upon me that I wanted to share: with the Mac App Store launching soon, what if Apple reinstates the ADA for Mac, but on the condition that it has to be an App Store app?

Makes sense to me.

First Look at Reeder for Mac

I first learned about RSS (Really Simple Syndication) when Apple added a built-in reader to the Safari web browser. I used that for a while, but Safari as an RSS reader was quite cumbersome. I wanted my feeds to be more centralized and, most importantly, easy to read. This was a couple years back, and one of the more popular Mac RSS readers was NewsFire.

NewsFire is an attractive reader, but is updated rarely, and lately, many of my favorite sites I subscribe to haven’t been updating properly in NewsFire. Also, with the advent of the iPad, I have found I do enjoy to casually read easily digestible bits of information, such as blog posts and news articles on it. (For long-form reading, such as a novel, I still enjoy my Kindle). There are a wealth of iPad RSS readers on the App Store, but I wanted to have one on my Mac, too, as I do enjoy casually flipping through my feeds and exploring links on my Mac, too.

I had long heard about Google Reader, but I honestly find many of Google’s web app user interfaces to be hideous and not the easiest to use. I had also thought of using a Google Reader client such as NetNewsWire, but I just didn’t care for the app. So I stuck with NewsFire.

A couple days ago, a popular iPhone and iPad Google Reader client, aptly named Reeder debuted a beta for the Mac (the developer refers to it as a Draft. Kinda classy). I have instantly fallen in love with the Mac version, even though it isn’t feature complete yet.

First off, let’s start with the icon. There are two different ways Reeder for Mac can visually notify you of new items: the first is a Mail-style badge, and the second (my preferred style) is to have the number of new items displayed as part of the icon itself. That’s just classy, right there.

Next, Reeder has an almost papyrus texture to the user interface, even in the UI chrome at the top and bottom of the window. The left sidebar is defaulted to show icons, but can be dragged wider to switch to text. I prefer the text, honestly.

If you click on a link in Reeder’s viewing pane, the left sidebar shifts out of view, and the viewer expands and becomes an in-app browser. It’s a nice touch.

Reeder also has a good deal of services available such as Instapaper (my favorite), ReadItLater, Pinboard, Delicious, Zootool, Twitter, and the ability to email a link or open the article in your favorite browser.

The first draft of Reeder is off to a great start. I’d love to see three-finger swipe gestures added to move forward and backward through your new articles, just like you can use to move among your messages in Mail. You can bet that I’ll be requesting that feature.

I can’t wait to see how Reeder develops, and I have to wonder if the developer is aiming to debut it in the Mac App Store. I think it would be worthy of an Apple Design Award.

Update on 2010-12-03 00:01 by Chris De Jabet

I found a keyboard shortcut cheatsheet for Reeder for Mac.

Find My iPhone Becomes Free Service

Find my iPhone is a feature of Apple MobileMe service. MobileMe is a $99 per year subscription service that provides syncing of your calendars, contacts, & bookmarks across your computers and iOS devices, along with an email account, iDisk server storage, photo galleries, and Find my Iphone (or iPod touch or iPad). When Find my iPhone was added as a feature of MobileMe, I thought (and still think) it is a great part of the service.

Say your iPhone slips out of your pocket while you’re sitting at a coffee shop. You leave, and a while later, you reach for your iPhone and have a near heart attack. Never fear, you can hop onto me.com or the Find my iPhone app from another device (say, your spouse’s or your friend’s) and locate your iPhone on a map. From there, you can passcode lock the screen, send a custom message with an alert sound that overrides the volume or mute switch, or, in extreme circumstances, remote wipe the device. This works for iPhones, iPod touches, and iPads.

(It should be noted that if you wipe the device, you won’t be able to track it again. Wiping resets everything to factory condition).

Well, today Apple updated the Find my iPhone app and is allowing any iPhone 4, 4th-Generation iPod touch, or iPad to use that portion of MobileMe for free. Download the app to sign up for an account.

There is a little trick here if you have an older device. Just register your Apple ID on someone else’s current generation device, then delete your info from their device. Once you have registered on a supported device, you can then activate Find my iPhone on any of your older devices.

I’d really like to see Apple open this up for all of their iOS device users, but I understand their desire to encourage folks toward newer devices. Apple is a business, after all.

I recommend that everyone take advantage of the Find my iPhone program. It could save you a lot of panic and headache if you were to ever lose your device.

Update on 2010-11-23 02:14 by Chris De Jabet

It appears MobileMe Gallery may also have become a free service today. Interesting.

Blast Off to Fun with Astronut!

The Iconfactory today released their long-awaited hyperjump back into iPhone gaming Astronut! You play Jacques the Astronut, leaping planet to planet through 24 levels across 6 sectors. Astronut is also Game Center compatible, sporting 40 achievements and leaderboards.

Needless to say, The Iconfactory has boldly gone into the super high resolution territory of the Retina Display, bringing graphics so sharp it’d make Buzz Lightyear jealous.

You get the first 4 levels for the steep price of free, and then an in-app purchase of $1.99 gets you the rest of the game. This is a great compromise for a sort of demo try-before-you-buy. If you like the first 4 levels, you’ll really love the rest.

I’ve had a hard time putting Astronut down today, and my twitter followers are probably tired of hearing about my achievements. I can’t recommend this game enough. Go get it.

P.S. Don’t forget to grab the gorgeous free wallpaper pack for Astronut.

P.P.S. Astronut’s arrival totally makes up for Apple’s yawn of an announcement regarding The Beatles earlier.

Instapaper Updated with Even More Awesome

Yesterday, Marco Arment’s excellent Instapaper app for iOS was updated with some thoughtful new features. Among these are combined length/progress indicators for saved articles à la Kindle, new sharing options, and a Light/Dark theme toggle within articles on the iPhone or iPod touch (this has been present on the iPad for a while).

Naturally, there’s one more thing.

Not only can small-screened iOS devices now toggle Light/Dark mode within an article, but Marco built an amazing location-aware feature that checks the sunset times for your locale and automatically switches to Dark mode at night and Light mode during the day. Marco describes this feature as “ridiculous.” I describe it as wonderful.

Instapaper is a great free service on the web, but I have found the iOS app well worth the $5 several times over. And each free update makes it even better. Needless to say, I love how many apps, including Twitterrific, have Instapaper support for sending links to read later.

If you aren’t using Instapaper, shame on you.