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As we’d expected for a few days, Thursday saw the release of a brand new MacBook Pro lineup. Though these machines look more or less identical on the outside, they come complete with upgraded processors, new graphics capabilities, and the all-new “Thunderbolt” I/O standard.
Today we’ll be providing a quick overview of what to expect in the new lineup, along with a few thoughts on hardware features we’re surprised to see left out!
We live in a busy world nowadays. What with our e-mail, text messaging, and even phone calls interrupting our flow, it can be difficult to sit down and write something of substance. And when it comes to multitasking on the computer, well there are almost always ten windows open at any one time, and if that Apple Mail icon starts bouncing, we know it’s time to go get our dopamine fix…
Because of these distractions, there have been a crop of writing programs that have popped up for the Mac and iPad recently that strip away all of the apps running in the background, letting you focus on the task at hand: writing.
But is any of this stuff necessary? Is there any reason why you can’t just sit back with your laptop and a good word processing program and get the next great novel written?
Let’s talk this out after the break…
Whatever your opinion of the new Mac App Store, it’s certainly here to stay. I believe that it has created a fantastic new channel of distribution for developers, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the seamless process it offers for downloading and installing software.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve bought around ten applications, and downloaded many more free ones to try out. This is definitely an increase over my app-downloading activity prior to the store launch, and there’s no doubt that I’m trying more software because of it.
I wondered whether this is the same for you? Is absent-mindedly flicking through the Mac App Store a regular occurrence, or is it somewhere that you rarely frequent?
Let us know in the comments, and be sure to tell us how many apps you’ve purchased so far in today’s poll!
I’d like to take a moment to say a big thank you to our weekly sponsor, gNotifier.
gNotifier is a multi account, multi service notification application for Google Apps and Gmail. Priced at $4.99, it shows notifications for your Google Apps services (Google Docs, GMail and Google Calendar), right on your Desktop.
The app will let you know when someone shares or modifies a document in Google Docs, notifies you of incoming email, and can even launch an alarm as a reminder for one of your Google Calendar events. It’s pretty versatile, and offers a big step up from the default notifier provided by Google.
Working with multiple accounts is also a big bonus, and something that sets it apart from many of the other apps out there.
If you’re a dedicated Google Apps user, I’d definitely recommend taking gNotifier for a spin to see whether it can make your life easier!
It’s time for another “Ask the Editor” post today. A big thank you to everyone who sent in their questions – it’s great to have the chance to help you out with your Mac-related queries and quibbles.
Some of the topics covered this week include digital asset management software, finding a solution to stay on top of what’s added to the Mac App Store each day, keeping your Mac running smoothly, and the dilemma of whether you need to regularly shut down.
Read on for plenty of handy Mac knowledge, and I hope you’ll find most of it useful for your own situation as well!
Winners Announced
I’m pleased to let you know that we’ve picked the five lucky winners of PDFpenPro. Your licenses will be on the way soon!
- Andrew
- Poporin
- Intellamac
- Ibrahimzen
- John Voorhees
Competition Now Closed
We have another great competition for you today, giving you the chance to grab yourself a copy of PDFpenPro! In addition to being our sponsor for the week (and offering you a 20% discount), you can also stand a chance of winning one of the feature-packed “Pro” versions of the app.
If you’re not sure what PDFpen does, take a look at the quick summary we posted earlier this week, or head over to the official website Entering the competition is really easy. All you need to do is:
- Post a link to this competition – either on your website, or via Twitter
- Leave a comment, letting me know where you posted the link!
Simple! The competition will run for one week, and I’ll pick five winning comments at random on Thursday 24th February. Best of luck, and I hope you enjoy checking the app out.
It’s amazing to see how Twitter has dominated over the past few years, rising to fame, fortune, and almost ubiquitous use by anyone interested in the web and technology. It’s a great way to communicate and stay up-to-date, and most people would agree that much of their success is attributable to an open API and the sheer number of applications built on top of the service.
As Mac users, we’re ridiculously spoilt for choice when picking a desktop Twitter client. I’d even go so far as to say there are probably more Twitter apps to choose from than email clients – a crazy situation for a social platform that has only been around for just over four years.
Personally, I’m a big fan of Tweetie Twitter for Mac, and love the changes that came along with the latest release. I’m also partial to Twitterrific (and am enjoying playing around with the latest 4.0 release). I like the simplicity of these apps, and have never considered myself a Twitter “power user”.
In today’s poll, I’d love to hear what your desktop client of choice is. I’ve done my best to include what I consider to be the main players in the poll, but I’m pretty sure I’ll have missed one or two. If that’s the case, accept my apologies in advance, and let me know in the comments!
I’d also love to hear why you use a particular client, so feel free to discuss the reasoning for your decision below…
I’d like to take a moment to say a big thank you to our fantastic weekly sponsor, PDFpen.
If you regularly work with (or need to edit) PDF documents, PDFpen can be an absolute life saver. It has a friendly, easy-to-use interface, with a feature set that rivals that of Acrobat Pro. Make changes to PDF documents with ease, replace text, add your signature to a contract, automatically perform OCR, merge pages, hide sensitive information, and much more.
You can pick up the standard version for $59.95, or opt for PDFpenPro which includes powerful tools for converting a website into a multi-page PDF, creating PDF forms, and automatically building a table of contents ($99.95).
Whether you only edit a few PDFs a month, or consider it a daily task, I can’t recommend PDFpen highly enough. It’s a purchase you won’t regret.
Smile have been kind enough to set up a coupon code just for our readers. Just use the code APPSTORMPDF when checking out, and you’ll receive a 20% discount off PDFpen or PDFpenPro.
This is good for either a single user license, or a family pack (which covers home use for up to 5 computers). It’s only valid until the 20th February, so act soon!
Winners Announced
I’m pleased to let you know that we’ve picked the five lucky winners of Radium. Your licenses will be on the way soon!
- Andrei Neamtu
- KK Wong
- Paul
- Paletta
- Mikael Konutgan
Competition Now Closed
To celebrate the launch of Radium on the Mac App Store, I’m pleased to let you know that we have five promo codes to give away! Radium is a fantastic desktop radio player, which we have previously reviewed on the site. It currently has 60% off in the App Store, and is available for just $9.99.
Catpig Studios, the developer of Radium, has taken the approach of continuing to support sales from both their own website and the Mac App Store. We’re giving away promo codes for the latter today, but all Radium users will continue to receive support and updates going forward.
Entering is really easy. All you need to do is:
- Post a link to this competition – either on your website, or via Twitter
- Leave a comment, letting me know where you posted the link!
Simple! The competition will run for one week, and I’ll pick five winning comments at random on Friday 18th February. Best of luck!
Steve Jobs worked his reality distortion field last October when unveiling updates to their Mac product line. The MacBook Air was one major part of that announcement and it was later cited as one of Apple’s financial successes for that quarter. Maybe it was all of us Apple fanatics buying it, or maybe it was Apple’s superb marketing that touted it as “the future of notebooks”.
Whether this is true for the whole industry or not, Apple has shown it has a keen interest in removing optical and traditional hard drives from machines with the MacBook Air. With all due respect to those who don’t like it, Apple has done a pretty good job at removing the need for these pieces of hardware with the Mac App Store and iTunes.
