iTunes 11 →
Lukas Mathis:
It seems as if Apple tried to hide iTunes’ complexity under a shallow veneer of simplicity. Unfortunately, a new coat of paint won’t fix the leaning tower of Pisa.
Lukas Mathis:
It seems as if Apple tried to hide iTunes’ complexity under a shallow veneer of simplicity. Unfortunately, a new coat of paint won’t fix the leaning tower of Pisa.
As we delve more heavily into responsive imagery in my day job, production needs increase on an already overburdened staff. We needed a way to speed up PSD comp production work, and Mac app Slicy has been a great solution so far. Slicy is simple app that auto exports and slices out clean transparent pngs or jpgs of individual layers in a PSD file. Best of all, it auto exports 1x/2x images, essential for a responsive workflow. It’s developed by MacRabbit, the team behind CSSEdit and Espresso, so naturally the refinement is really high. Highly recommended for $29.
As I’ve said repeatedly here, on Twitter and elsewhere, Alfred is simply amazing. I can’t really think of any other single app that has impacted my daily workflow so significantly for the better. Pedro Lobo over at Mac AppStorm goes over some of the baiscs.
One of my favorite and most heavily used apps iA Writer just got a big update with its 1.4 version release today:
Inspired by our deep experience designing for the web, we’ve given Writer for Mac a responsive design, changing the font size based on window width. This maintains the text’s typographic proportions, zooming in and out without reflowing the text. I don’t know why it took us so long to find this obvious solution. However, given that no one else has done it, the simplicity of this solution is perhaps not as obvious as it seems in hindsight.
After playing around with the update for a few minutes I can’t find an immediate need for the three different breakpoints iA Writer offers; 95% of my time I feel like the largest font size/width is optimal. We’ll see how that evolves over time.
I’m pretty hooked on a workflow of plain text lists synced with Dropbox. That said, Clear for iPhone is pretty slick and now that they actually will be introducing syncing via the Mac…it looks a bit tempting. Available next week on the Mac App Store.
I’ve been a big fan of the “no distractions” Twitter entry app Wren for a while now but I’ve been increasingly worried regarding its lack of recent updates.
Enter Eggy. It’s a free, super simple Mac App where with a single keyboard shortcut you can leverage Mountain Lion’s built in Twitter, Facebook and Messages functionality on demand. Super simple, but it does the job so far.
Lauren Brichter:
The first thing will be an app and that app will be a game. Can’t wait to share it with you.
Lauren created the popular iPhone Twitter client Tweetie, one of the most influential, slickest made apps I’ve ever used. His company Atebits was acquired by Twitter in 2010, but eventually they parted ways.
Now he’s back, but with a game? Bit of a surprise choice, but I can’t wait to see what it looks like.
Checkmark is a location-based reminder iPhone app. True, ever since iOS 5 and Siri we’ve had the ability to add simplistic reminders via Apple’s built in apps. Yet entering a new reminder remains cumbersome. That’s where Checkmark shines – a new reminder is three quick taps away, and the UI is clean and easily digestible.
It’s currently $2 in the App Store. If you occasionally need quick reminders when you leave/arrive at work or home, it’s a good buy.
I use Rogue Amoeba’s apps on a daily basis: Audio Hijack Pro for recording Skype calls and live podcasts, Airfoil for adding a simple graphical equalizer on top of Spotify’s output. I also put Fission through its paces a few times a month, an essential tool for quick audio edits and conversions between m4a audio and mp3.
Bottom line, great apps that have never let me down on sale for the next four days. Decent discounts as well – anywhere from 25%-67% off per application.
I use Due – a simple reminder app – virtually every day on both my iPhone and Mac. There’s a lot of reminder options on iOS, but I haven’t found anything that comes close to the fluidity and speed of Due’s UI. The syncing also works slick between iPhone, iPad and Mac clients (via Dropbox or iCloud, your choice.)
The app rarely goes on sale, but they dropped the price this week from $5 to $3. If you’re in the market it’s well worth your time.