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If you take a look at the Buyers Guide on MacRumors, you’ll notice that the iMac has been lying dormant for just under a year (since May 2011 to be precise), the longest period of silence since before 2008. The site recommends that any potential iMac buyers hold off for the time being, seeing as ”updates are due soon”. This would tie in with Apple’s product refresh cycle, which usually occurs every year.
But this hibernation got me thinking about two things. Firstly, are we due to see a massive overhaul of the iMac product line sometime in May/June and secondly, have Apple forgotten about their fantastic range of desktop computers?
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Both the iTunes App Store and the Mac App Store have given developers a great place to easily distribute their software to customers. While some developers may feel lost in a sea of competition, others find ways to stand out and become overnight success stories.
Though the two platforms are similar, it’s interesting to note the differences. For instance, it seems free apps abound on the iTunes App Store but developers seem more prone to charge for their work on the Mac platform, which isn’t a bad thing at all. Through AppStorm I’ve met lots of hardworking developers and am more than happy to drop a few bucks for a great app to help make it worth the developer’s time.
Today I’m curious about how far you’re willing to go to get your hands on an awesome app. What’s the most that you’ve ever paid to download an app from the Mac App Store? Answer the poll to be counted and then leave a comment below telling us about the apps you’ve purchased at this price point.
This week saw some pretty big announcements in the world of Mac software, especially with the release of Photoshop CS6 beta on Thursday with a completely revamped interface and tonnes of new features aimed at making editing photos an absolute breeze.
However, Adobe news aside, let’s take a look at what else has been going on this week.
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Just 5 days after we wrote about the fact that Adobe was putting the finishing touches on Creative Suite 6, which promised to be their biggest update to the software package yet, Adobe has released the public beta of Photoshop CS6, the first of the new programs to hit consumers. The beta, which can be downloaded for free from Adobe’s website (you’ll have to have an Adobe ID, though, to download and register the demo), clocks in at just under 1 GB and runs on all multi-core Intel-based Macs with 1 GB or more of RAM installed (click on the image below to be linked).
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Even if you’re new to all things Mac, you’ve most likely already realized that your computer comes packed with a great selection of built-in applications designed to cater to most people’s basic needs. However, it’s when installing third-party apps that the fun can really start and there’s a massive amount of software available for OS X, much of it free or priced competitively.
It would be impossible to cover every single app in one article but we can make a good start here, so with this in mind let’s take a look at ten apps which should be considered an essential download or purchase for every new Mac user.
With Lion, Apple completely rethought the Mail.app interface, largely drawing from what they had done on the iPad. Along with the visual upgrades came some functionality boosts as well, such as vastly improved searching and a more robust tagging system.
Despite these efforts, many users are still flocking to third party email solutions. Sparrow has made a huge splash in the email world and brings a lot of innovation to this market in terms of UI. It’s simple, beautiful and still feature rich enough to use as your primary email client.
Another major competitor is Postbox, which has long held the spot as the go-to client for Mac users who want a truly powerful alternative to Mail.app. The Postbox conversation reply formatting put’s Mail’s to shame and the entire client tightly and effortlessly integrates with your favorite Google services.
The question we want to know today is, “which is your favorite?” For those of us that work at our computers, email can be something that eats up a significant portion of our week and it’s important to make sure we use a client that makes our workflow as easy and efficient as possible. Cast your vote for your favorite client and leave a comment below telling us why you use the one that you do.
Our featured sponsor this week is xPlan, a powerful, friendly and attractive project management application.
Project management tools tend to be both complicated and expensive. If you’re a small business owner or are just new to this category in general, you need something that’s affordable and approachable without sacrificing important features. The tool you’re looking for is xPlan. With it, creating, tracking and managing your projects will be much easier than ever!
xPlan is designed to keep track of tasks and calculate a project’s cost. The easy to read Gantt Chart interface gives you a graphical representation of your projects including tasks, resources, start and end dates, milestones and completion. You can also import/export Microsoft Office documents and share your projects online so collaboration with others is a snap.
Go Get It!
If you’re in the market for a better way to manage your team or small business, xPlan is the way to go. It’s overflowing with useful features while remaining simple enough that you can easily implement it quickly across your entire team. For more information, or to pick up a trial copy, check out the xPlan website today.
The news that has dominated the Apple newssphere this week has been the launch of the new iPad on Friday in 10 countries around the world, with further launches scheduled for the next week. However if you’re not bothered about this new iPad model (or you’ve already got one), then here’s Mac AppStorm’s weekly roundup of the news in the Mac software world.
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Adium, the popular free open-source chat client for OS X which supports multiple IM protocols (including Windows Live Messenger, Google Talk and Facebook) has been given its first update in a year and a half, bringing it up to version 1.5.
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Apple has released another update to Safari, version 5.1.4, which has a total of 83 improvements to its performance, stability and, most importantly, security. The renewed offering of Apple’s default browser, which was released on Monday via the Software Update, is available to OS X Snow Leopard and Lion users and clocks in at roughly 45 MB download size (depending on your OS).
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