applications

Apple’s Mac App Store is broken. For developers and Mac users alike, the online store just isn’t working.

It’s too hard for buyers to find good software. And, thanks to Apple’s picky restrictions, the Mac App Store can make life difficult for developers.

Setapp, a Netflix-style subscription service for Mac apps, offers an innovative alternative. Instead of buying apps individually, you rent a bunch of them for $9.99 a month.

While it might sound unnerving to anyone accustomed to the idea of buying Mac apps outright, after using the service for two months, I found it liberating. Setup is dead-easy. And the selection is fantastic. Setapp serves up more than 60 Mac apps, all handpicked by MacPaw, the Mac development company that dreamed up the service.

Facebook is working on a breaking news app that would deliver news outside of the main Facebook app, according to a report. The app would ask users to pick out publications and topics that interest them, then it would broadcast bite-sized news alerts when new articles get published.

Publications that get on board would be able to send out instant notifications to all of its followers for the latest news. They’re allowed 100 characters of text and a link to the news article. Sounds pretty much like a tweet, right?

If you’re afraid of ever being in a dangerous situation without any witnesses or good samaritans nearby, you might want to consider downloading this new app appropriately named Witness. Calling itself the ‘panic button for the smartphone age,’ one tap broadcasts live video and your current location to a list of preset emergency contacts, who can then decide if it’s appropriate to take action.

Of course, if they do nothing, they could potentially have front-row seats to a very morbid and disturbing show.

It’s a little late to the party, but three betas in Apple released the News app it announced at WWDC 2015. Soon to be on every iPhone and iPad running iOS 9, News lets users customize the topics that are most important to them, then browse and read distraction-free news articles.

If you’re not running iOS 9 beta 3 or in a supported country like the U.S., fear not, we have the full tour.

The Finder in Mac OS X is specifically designed to help you find stuff. In any Finder Window, you can arrange the icons or lists of files alphabetically by Name, by Kind of file, by the Application that opens that file, by Date Last Opened, Added, Modified, or Created, and also by Size and by Label.

In list view, you can also click on the top column title to sort the list in ascending or descending order. It’s a pretty comprehensive way to find your stuff in the Finder, without even having to search for it.

Did you know, however, that you can also arrange Applications by application type (Productivity, Social Networking, Music, Video, and so on)? I didn’t, so here’s a tip on how to do just that.

Have you tried to get rid of an application or document from the Dock after an upgrade to Mountain Lion? Before now, it was a simple drag and release: click on the offending icon, drag it away from the Dock, and let go. The little “poof” cloud would appear and the icon would be gone from the Dock. New OS X users would freak out, crying, “You got rid of my app!” and I would laugh. Also, I would show them where the actual app was, and how to put the icon back in the Dock, as the icon is simply a pointer to the real app. But I digress.

In Mac OS X Mountain Lion, this doesn’t work in quite the same way anymore. Try to click, drag, and release just ends up with the icon speeding back to its previous place in the Dock. You want to get rid of it? You have to learn a new, subtly different behavior.

Following the release of OS X Mountain Lion this morning, it seems Apple is also pushing out updates to its applications to ensure they’re compatible, and to take advantage of new features. One of the apps on that list is iPhoto, which now has new sharing options in version 9.3.2.

Since its debut back in 2009, the iPad has dominated the tablet market. At the time of writing this piece, the device holds around 55% of the market share in the United States. Rival tablets from the likes of Amazon, Samsung, and HTC have tried to do battle with it, but they’ve had very little impact on its success.

But there is one tablet that Apple will need to keep its eye on: Microsoft’s new Surface. It’s already being dubbed an “iPad killer” by some, and although we’re skeptical the Windows-powered slate will “kill” Apple’s device, there are a number of reasons why the “Pro” variant will have more of an impact than you think.

I don’t know about you, but I’m constantly reaching up to swipe or tap on my Macbook Air display, unconsciously attempting to use it like an iPad. While today’s tip may make things even worse by turning the Finder into an iPad-like grid of iOS-style icons, I’m willing to take the risk to make my Mac look that much cooler.

If you haven’t taken advantage of our latest Cult of Mac deal — The Mac Superbundle — you’d better hurry. You’ve only got a few hours left to pick up 10 great apps at a fraction of their regular price.

DigiTimes has revived speculation that Apple will release two new iPads this year, citing “industry sources in Taiwan” who claim we’ll see an iPad 3 complete with a Retina display in March, and a much improved iPad 4 with “killer applications” in October.

As Apple pulls us all forward into the Next Great Thing, some widely-used Previously Cool Things get left behind. It’s happened with HyperCard, PageMill, and all PowerPC-only applications. Today one reader ponders the uncertain future of his favorite program, iWeb:

I bought my first Mac in ’85… Being an Old’nAging Geezer I saw that an encroaching Class of ’61’s 50-year Reunion deserved a website so I volunteered, commandeering iWeb for the very first time (successfully aided by FileZilla and my generous wonky Mac-pal Greg) to ultimately be rewarded by several of my classmates and a few fanboys’ sporadic kudos–AND proving once again that old, time-proven saw of Macintosh’s unassailable user friendly superiority.

All that to bring me to this QUESTION: Will iWeb live?

Paul

Here’s a quick trick that lets you open files in the application you want, even the app in question thinks it can’t understand that file type. This can be useful with some older word processing files, for example.

Here’s a good resource to take a look at if you plan on upgrading to OS X Lion this month. Roaringapps.com is a crowd sourced application compatibility database for OS X Lion. The site depends on user input about the compatibility of existing applications running on Snow Leopard or whether or not apps will need Rosetta.

Lodsys seems to be hell-bent on ruining things not just for application developers but for Apple as well, and it seems owing to its new-found skill in patent trolling for the odd buck, the App Store’s approval process for in-app purchases has now been frozen.

iAd slots in iOS applications designed for children will no longer be filled with adverts, according to an email one developer has received from Apple.

Mike Zornek, the developer of the Dex a Pokemon browser application for iPhone and iPod touch, noticed that his iAd fill rates had dropped and emailed Apple’s iAd Support Team for an explanation:

The latest build of Mac OS X Lion introduces an iOS-like method of removing applications installed via the Mac App Store. Within the new Launchpad application, users can click and hold on an app’s icon to start the ‘jiggling’ – just like in iOS – and an ‘X’ button appears in the corner of each icon which users can click to uninstall applications.

Don’t worry about deleting applications accidentally, however; just like iOS, users will be greeted with a message that asks them whether they’re sure they wish to delete the application. Clicking delete will move the application, and any files associated with it, to the Trash.

This feature currently only works with applications purchased from the Mac App Store, but I’m hoping it works with any application installed on your Mac when Lion is finally released.

[via MacRumors]

The App Store has spawned some pretty good looking applications for iOS devices; apps for iPhone and iPad are largely renowned for their simplicity and alluring design. With that said, you’d think iOS applications that have an Android sibling – from the same developer – would be just as pretty, right? Wrong.

Here’s a gallery of screenshots that compares iOS apps with their Android versions and highlights some of the differences: