A few minutes ago Apple launched a new app for the Mac called iAd Producer which is aimed at developers and designers willing to create visually rich, interactive iAds. iAd Producer “automatically manages the HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript behind your iAd” and also offers advanced Javascript editing and debugging.
iAd Producer is available for download on Apple’s developer website and it requires Mac OS X 10.6.5, Safari 5 and iOS SDK 4.0. A user guide is available here. Read more
Today it’s all about the QUALITY -> Here’s some great deals for today on iOS & Mac apps that are on sale for a limited time, so get ‘em while they’re hot!
Jump to the 16-minute mark for the juicy bits. Basically, the game was ready and the developers even managed to deploy a system that allowed Mac and PC users to play together on a special server. The game had a few bugs but was a few weeks away from golden master. Retail stores orders were coming in.
It was done. So why didn’t it come out? Hint: Apple.
Great news, Back to the Future fans and Mac owners: you’re getting a BTTF game for the Mac this week. Telltale Games announced the release date of “Back to the Future: The Game” last week, and it looks like the BTTF franchise will get a series of games for Mac and PC that will be made available as “episodes” from December through summer 2011. The first episode called “It’s about time” is coming out this week, on Wednesday. Just in time for Christmas.
First off, those who pre-ordered the game will get a free copy of Puzzle Agent and will also contribute a 1 dollar donation to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. As for the game, it seems like it’ll be based 6 months after the ending of BTTF 3, and it will be an adventure where you’ll control Marty in his effort to go back in time and find Emmett Brown. Telltale says the game has been developed with the fans of the movie in mind, it will feature alternate timelines and will be the first game for Mac and PC where space and time continuum really matters.
Sounds exciting to you? I’m just worried about the episodic nature of this game series – I never liked games released in episodes. Still, this is Back to the Future we’re talking about and Telltale is well-known for creating sweet gems. Which means I’ll be waiting eagerly for the game to come out on Wednesday.
It’s been a while since we last covered Sparrow, a native Gmail client for Mac. The first version of the app came out in early October, and the developers have been busy fixing bugs, introducing new features and refining the design in these past two months and a half. What started as a nice Gmail app clearly inspired by Loren Brichter’s Tweetie slowly evolved into a stable, unique and feature-rich Gmail app for the Mac. Read more
The Little App Factory has published some great Mac apps in the past year. First for me came Evom, a simple and free utility that can save videos from the web (even Flash videos) and convert to a number of different devices, such as iPads or Apple TVs. Then I installed Rivet, another little utility for the Mac that can stream video from your local machine to a PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 console in your local network. Works like magic.
Last week I took a look at The Little App Factory’s latest effort, Grappler for Mac. Grappler provides an integrated view to browse Youtube without leaving the app and download videos to convert for an iTunes-compatible format. It’s got a great UI, inline previews and a lot more. Make sure to check out my review here if you missed it. Read more
In case you missed it at Apple’s Back to the Mac event, Mac OS X 10.7 “Lion” is getting redesigned scrollbars and a brand new scrolling system. In fact, Apple is taking iOS’ “rubber banding” effect and minimal, fading scrollbars to the Mac with the next major iteration due next year. As demoed by Apple’s Craig Federighi in the Mac App Store app running on Lion, scrollbars will behave similarly to iOS – you won’t any scrollbar if you’re touching the trackpad. Read more
By default, Loren Brichter’s Tweetie for Mac comes with Twitlonger shortening capabilities. That means, if you have a tweet longer than 140 characters (it usually happens for long iOS / Android debates, or Apple’s events commentary) Tweetie will automatically post that tweet using Twitlonger – a service that puts a link in a tweet to read the entire message in the browser. It works pretty well, but it doesn’t look exactly great.
Twtmore is a service that’s been in closed beta for some months, until the developers opened up its APIs for everyone to use. It’s similar to Twitlonger, but it’s beautiful. This is a twtmore page, for instance. As you can see, it’s delicious. Tweetie Twtmore is a SIMBL plugin (yep, another one) that replaces the default Twitlonger shortening feature with twtmore.
To install Tweetie Twtmore, make sure that SIMBL is installed on your computer. You can go download SIMBL for free here. Once SIMBL is running correctly, download the Tweetie Twtmore bundle, extract it and place the file in /Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins or ~/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins if you want to install it for all user or just your account, respectively. Restart Tweetie for Mac.
The plugin works great even if Tweetie for Mac will keep saying “Post with Twitlonger”. As you can see in the screenshots below, long tweets will be forwarded correctly to twtmore. Go download the plugin here. Read more
I like to hunt down different indie games that fulfill the ever growing desire to feast my eyes on well made, yet simple titles that are available on a variety of platforms so that even our Windows readers can take part in all the fun. But mostly I’m just looking for some casual pixel love for my midnight Mac gaming cravings. Last week I came across Invader Corruption, where a unique name creates an individual gaming experience so that no two games are quite the same. What starts off as a boring and possibly mundane shooter ends up being compelling and totally addictive. Shoot past the break to learn more about this frantic free title.
