Of late, the tech world has been abuzz with alarming news of Mac malware threats, the reports given weight by the emergence of a newer and more sophisticated version of that annoying thorn in Apple’s side, Flashback. Known as Flashback.K, the latest iteration of the trojan horse which has been grabbing headlines since mid-2011 makes use of a known Java security vulnerability to launch malicious code and potentially record users personal data.
As OS X market share continues to rise, security is becoming an area of concern for more users and there’s a perception building that Macs have lost their previous status as secure computers, with some analysts even going so far as to say that we’re about to enter an era of cat-and-mouse games between Apple and malware makers. So, is the sky falling or is this all a lot of hot air?
If I had a nickel for every window management app I’ve used on the Mac, I’d be a rich man. With that in mind, it’s no surprise that a small and relatively unknown app named Spectacle faces an uphill battle in the fight for their share of the window management market.
Will its simple interface, rich functionality, and open source code be enough to give Spectacle a place in this already crowded market? We’ll go in-depth after the break.
Yesterday, CleanMyDrive, a nifty little free utility aimed at decluttering your Mac’s hard drives, hit the App Store and instantly sore straight to the top of the “Top Free” app category. To celebrate this their developers, Macpaw, are offering a generous 30% discount on three of their other popular apps, Gemini, Ensoul and MacHider, on the App Store. This discount is only valid if you purchase the items off the App Store (i.e. not from the developers website) and is valid up till June 27th.
April 23, 2007. That was the day Panic initially released Coda. The idea of Coda was revolutionary: one app, one window for the entire web development workflow. And they did it right too. They won the 2007 Apple Design Award for Best User Experience. Before Coda there were tools like TextMate, BBEdit and MacRabbit’s Espresso and CSS Edit. Yes, there was even Dreamweaver if you like spending a lot of money on a tool largely considered inferior (it does have its place). But Coda was truly a revolutionary new web development experience.
Before Coda, developing websites required a number of different tools. You need a text editor for writing code. You need an FTP application for uploading and downloading files from your server. You need a web browser to preview your work. You often need a database utility to modify your database. And you would often need a terminal application to connect to your server over SSH and make changes. Coda rolled most of the tools needed for these things into a single interface and application.
And now Coda 2 builds upon that success.
This post is part of a series that revisits some of our readers’ favorite articles from the past that still contain awesome and relevant information that you might find useful. This post was originally published on May 24th, 2011.
Macs are becoming much more popular with college students nowadays, owing to Apple’s generous student discount (around 15%) upon purchase. But once you’ve bought your shiny new computer, you’ll be wanting to know which are the best Mac apps aimed at college students and which ones to download or buy.
Up until a few years ago, Mac users had very little choice of software as they were seen mostly as a niche platform and therefore only ran specialist software.
As I was in exactly the same position when I bought my Mac, I’ve now created – for all the students out there – a list of 25 superb applications recommended for you. I’ve tried to keep this list relevant to any major and, in order to save on costs, I have tried to include free software wherever I can.
A few weeks ago we ran this post introducing you to some useful utilities baked right in to your Mac that you may not have known about. Well as I mentioned, the Utilities folder has so many useful apps that I simply could not cover them in a single post. Today I’m going to bring you seven more apps that live on your Mac.
This batch of apps is more likely to include apps that many of you won’t use, but as always, it’s nice to know they are there. And depending on what you do, it might turn out that your perfect utility was sitting right under your nose the whole time.
There is typically high anticipation when applications that could potentially compete with the powerful Adobe CS product line-up get released. Designers everywhere are very reliant on those products in a lot of situations and while they do get the job done (and typically better than any other available option) there seems to be this burning desire for something different.
Even though applications like Photoshop and Illustrator are so widely used, you’ll often see complaints about different aspects of these tools. One common gripe is that the applications have begun to feel bloated after so many years of feature additions. If you’ve ever spent time with either Photoshop or Illustrator you are nodding your head right now. That’s probably why when a prospective, more simple, competitor pops up we’re all staring right at it hoping it can be just what we want. We hope that all of the great features we love in our CS applications make it over and all the fluff dies off.
The buzz about the release of Sketch 2 started a while back and being a designer myself I followed along closely. All things pointed to this thing being pretty darn cool so I decided to take it for a spin.
As always every Wednesday, here are our weekly picks of the best (and free) deals on the App Store for this week.
Happy downloading!
Here’s a date for your diary, people.
This coming Thursday, Coda 2 will be available for download, which is a massive update featuring a completely overhauled interface, tonnes of new features (over 100 in total, according to the developers) and a few surprises thrown in for good measure as well. The update will be paid however any customers that have purchased Coda in the past month or so will receive it for free. The developers are also running a 50% off promotion for the first 24 hours of sale as well.
May is coming to a close and June is upon us, which means one thing for the Apple community: WWDC, that famed yearly event that sells out faster than a U2 concert. WWDC typically brings with it an exciting look at what’s coming down the pipe for Apple.
With any luck, we’ll get a peek at both new hardware and software that Apple will have us shelling out for all year.
In our poll question today, we want to know which product you’re most excited about. Are you one of the thousands of people who have been waiting for months and months to see a new iMac or are your sights set on the next iPhone? Vote in the poll, then leave a comment below telling us why you’re excited and what you think is coming.
