John Carey's iOS 7 Parallax Wallpaper Pack→

John Carey is one of my favorite photographers. It is not unusual for you to see my Mac, iPhone, or iPad graced with one of his wallpaper photos.

He just released his long-awaited (by me, at the very least) iOS 7 Parallax Pack. I know from conversing with him on twitter that he meticulously sought out the optimal resolution to give enough margin to keep the images crisp and clear while playing to the fun of the parallax effect.

In the past John has given these away for free. You can get 30 of the images for free for either iPhone or iPad. But he also has 70 more available for a humble price. You can get either an iPhone only or iPad only pack for $7 each, or a combined iPhone/iPad pack for $10.

Well, I have to say this is $10 well spent for such great art that will delight me daily.

The Google Reader Shutdown is Near, Where Are You Going?

If you've been using Google Reader and haven't moved to a new feed reader service yet, you should probably find a new home in the 72 hours or so.

I've personally settled on FeedWrangler so my news addiction. I've always liked underscore David Smith's stuff, like Check the Weather.

FeedWrangler runs $19 a year, and I am totally fine with that as I like paying for things I like so they stick around. I also like its deep Instapaper support, and its take on folders — Smart Streams — are really handy.

David has also made a first party universal iPhone and iPad app, and it is really basic. It works for now, but I am really glad to know Reeder is going to support it soon. Hopefully sooner than later.

Twitterrific 5.2 Gets Pushy

Ever since Iconfactory released a long awaited rewrite to Twitterrific last year, they have been hard at work on bringing the classiest Twitter app out there to being extremely powerful.

Their previous update, 5.1, added Muffling, which is muting for users, hashtags, and links done with a spin that only Iconfactory could come up with. And when 5.1 was released, the release notes subtly teased the next update with an auspicious phrase:

Ollie will return in…OCTOPUSHY

Today’s 5.2 update to Twitterrific features Push Notifications. You can receive notifications for Direct Mentions, Replies, Mentions, Favorites, Retweets, and Follows. They even have fantastic little color symbols that show in the notification itself, which I have found handy to know the type of message at a glance.

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Right now Iconfactory is launching Push as a beta, with only the first 1000 accounts gaining access today, though they will be rolling out availability over the next couple weeks. This is being done to ensure their servers are able to handle the load. If you weren’t able to activate push yet, try again the next day to see if you can. Once your account is enabled, it can be enabled on any other number of devices.

There are all sorts of other updates in 5.2. A couple other new features are profiles now show Twitter’s banner images (and look great!) and discussions can be shared via email or Storify.

Some of the improvements are that the timeline can now show 600 tweets at a time up from 400, improvements to username autocomplete, and the load more button now animates as loads, along with a laundry list of other improvements and fixes.

If you are looking for the friendliest Twitter client out there, you need Twitterrific. Everyone’s favorite blue bird costs just $2.99 in the App Store.

Clear for Mac

A recurring theme the past two years or so with Apple’s stance on the future of the Mac is to take the best of iOS and bring it back to the Mac. And in some ways, though fewer, the Mac brings something to iOS.

Inevitably, there are apps that start on iOS and come back to the Mac. One the most shining examples I have seen yet is Clear for Mac by Realmac Software.

Clear is a simple and stylish to-do list manager. The latest iPhone update brought iCloud support in preparation for the Mac. The brand new Mac version of Clear is truly a Mac app inspired by iOS, heavily taking advantage of multi-touch trackpads. Pinching, swiping, and scrolling are the key elements to navigating Clear interface, and it couldn’t be more fun with the nifty sounds accompanying the gesture-driven experience.

Keyboard ninjas will be happy, too, as everything you could do on the trackpad can also be accomplished by keyboard shortcuts.

If you are looking for a quick, easy, and simple to-do manager for iOS and Mac that syncs effortlessly and instantly, Clear is awesome.

You can get it for iPhone for $1.99 and get it for Mac at an introductory price of $6.99 (until Sunday, November 11). After the 11th, the price will increase to around $13.99, I think. I’d get it now.

Pixelmator 2.1 Cherry

I don’t do a great deal of work with images, but when I need something a little more beyond what iPhoto or Aperture can offer, or if I need to make something from scratch, I turn to Pixelmator.

I’ve been using Pixelmator for a few years, and it has always been a better experience than that other pixel-pushing tool from Adobe.

Today, Pixelmator 2.1 Cherry was released, making an already easy to use image editor even easier. It’s ready for both Mountain Lion and the Retina display, includes iCloud document storage support, and features a new effects browser and alignment guides.

Effects always intimidated me because they resided by name only in a menu. I didn’t know what each one did. With the new effects browser I can see what an effect will do before I apply it.

As for alignment guides, this is something I have wanted for a while. Now it is super easy to center or align objects in an image amongst each other. This makes Pixelmator a precision tool.

The Pixelmator team has some great walkthroughs of the new features on their site.

The best part of Pixelmator is the price. It’s just $29.99 $14.99 on the Mac App Store.

Quotebook 2

I've loved Quotebook on my iPhone since its debut. It's a well-designed app for capturing, organizing, and sharing memorable quotes. I've used it to capture both famous quotes and even profound things friends have said.

Today, Lickability (love their logo) released Quotebook 2. After nearly nine months of work, Quotebook has come to the iPad and supports iCloud sync. It is absolutely gorgeous, and if you have a penchant for quotes, you need Quotebook in your arsenal.

Frictionless

Aaron Mahnke has launched a new project called Frictionless. His goal is to help you and me remove frictional stresses from our lives. It’s inspiring and encouraging.

I recommend that if you are reading this, you go download Aaron’s PDF of The Frictionless Manifesto. It requires signing up for his newsletter (for now), but I think that newsletter will be worth it. It’s always easy to unsubscribe if necessary. It took me about ten minutes to read the manifesto, and it is truly great. I’m already starting to rethink some of my daily routines and processes.

I have a lot of friction to remove, and a lot of work to do so. I’m sure you do, too.

Cards Updated for Mother's Day

The best kind of app is the one that does one thing really well. When Apple released its Cards app for making physical cards to physically send to someone, I thought it was kind of neat, but I may not have a need for it.

Well, as I was on the road traveling for Easter, I remembered that I forgot to send my Grandmother a birthday card, and I didn’t have time nor opportunity to buy one to send then. So, when my family and I stopped to get out and stretch our legs, I snapped a picture of my boy real quick on my iPhone, dropped it into the Cards app, wrote something nice, and tapped the buy button.

It cost $2.99 to send a custom card, including postage, to my Grandmother. And I did it all in the span of three minutes just off I-29. Often, cards at Hallmark cost more than three bucks and don’t offer that level of personalization. Also, a couple days later, I received a push notification on my phone telling me the card was out for delivery to my Grandma’s house.

Well, today Cards was updated with some new designs for Mother’s Day. I’m already planning to use it for the occasion. Cards is a free app from Apple on the App Store.

Pixelmator 2

Pixelmator is my pixel editor of choice. It doesn’t take up too many resources on your computer, it’s fast, and it looks great on your Mac.

Today it looks even better. Version 2 is available on the Mac App Store for a whopping $30 for a little while. The price will go up to $60 soon, so be sure to grab it quick. If you previously purchased it on the Mac App Store, the update is waiting for you free of charge.

Pixelmator 2 is made for OS X Lion, supporting features such as Full-Screen, Versions, and Auto-Save. It also brings other great features to the table, such as a Healing Tool with Content-Aware Fill, vector shape and drawing tools, smudge, sponge, burn, and dodge tools, red eye removal, a pixel-precise tool, revamped eyedropper tool, revamped type tool, and a handy info bar.

Pixelmator is right up there for many people’s Photoshop needs at a fraction of the price. You’d be crazy to not have this in your Mac’s arsenal.

Instapaper 4

One of my favorite apps had a major update today. I’ve been using Instapaper since version 2, and the interface hasn’t changed much. Version 3 brought along an iPad interface, but it really felt like the iPhone interface, except blown up.

All that changes with Instapaper 4. This release really focuses on the iPad, completely changing the interface from just a list of headlines to a grid of headlines, sources, and the first few lines of the story. The new grid layout makes Instapaper on the iPad really feel like a digital newspaper.

Other features I have been wanting for a while are the ability to have the choice of archiving or deleting an article when I tap the trash can (instead of the trash can having one or the other via a preference toggle), and the brightness slider actually controlling the device’s brightness (instead of adjusting contrast as it did previously).

There is so much more in Instapaper 4.

As Shawn Blanc calls Instapaper:

The $5 App That Justifies my $500 iPad

Be sure to buy Instapaper today if you aren’t already enjoying it.