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TextExpander 3 makes short work of keyboard shortcuts
Filed under: Software
TextExpander, one of my very most favorite (yes, I like it that much) utilities has been updated to version 3. This is a major update and renovation of the program, which has changed from a preference pane to an application.
I honestly don't think that I could use a Mac without TextExpander anymore. I have a customized list of "frequently misspelled words" that I have it correct for me, as well as a snippet of text for creating a new shell script, a shortcut to insert the current date or time, HTML markup, and more.
TextExpander has been able to sync via MobileMe for some time, but version 3 also includes the ability to sync via Dropbox. It can also correct "double caps" at the beginning of a sentence which happen when you accidentally hold down the shift key for too long. There is a feature to capitalize new sentences as well, but that feature was a little hit-or-miss for me.
In its new application form, TextExpander has to be running for it to work. That may seem obvious, but since it used to be a preference pane, users may be used to it running "hidden" as a daemon in the background. There is an option to hide the application icon in the dock. If you hide it in the dock, you can still access TextExpander from its icon in the menu bar. They've even included several different styles of icon for the menu bar, which is good news for those of you who believe that menu bar items should only be black and white.
The menu bar offers a slew of cool new features, including a search function and a list of all of the folders and snippets for you to navigate, in case you have forgotten a shortcut. This is a good reason to start sorting snippets into "Groups" which were previously a bit of a pain because you had to tell each group to sync via MobileMe. Syncing is now an "all or nothing" option.
You can also create a new snippet, edit the last expanded snippet (handy if you realize that you need to "tweak" it), or use the clipboard to make a new snippet. New in this version is also the avility to create global "hotkeys" which will reduce the "friction" involved in making a new shortcut. I know I've previously thought "Oh, I ought to make a shortcut for this" but I usually wait too long before I finally get sick of re-typing it and actually do it.
I've only just started playing with this new version, but it looks like a great upgrade to what was already a full-featured application.
TextExpander costs $34.95, but they offer a full-featured demo and a 90-day guarantee which is far longer than I'm used to seeing for software. If you own an earlier version of TextExpander you can upgrade for $15. Those who bought TextExpander on or after November 1st, 2009 are eligible for a free upgrade.
There's even a companion application for the iPhone and iPod touch called TextExpander touch which will sync to your local Mac, so you can use your snippets in a wide range of iPhone apps.TUAWTextExpander 3 makes short work of keyboard shortcuts originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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E-books are largest category in App Store
Games have fallen into second place in the App Store, with nearly 30,000 e-book apps to choose from.
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Apple releases MainStage 2.1.1, fixes 32-bit issues
Apple on Wednesday released MainStage 2.1.1, providing fifty minor fixes to the program including issues with 32-bit plug-in support.
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How Epic fit the Unreal Engine into Apple’s iPhone
Epic showed off a working version of UE3 running on an iPhone 3GS...
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Hack: The iPod serial library enables homebrew remote controls
Filed under: Hardware, iPod Family, Hacks, iPhone
Warning: If you are baffled by people who think dismantling technology is fun, and completely fail to understand the excitement of building robots to battle other robots, this post may not be for you. Just so you know.
On the Make: magazine blog, they recently posted a piece about the evolution of a project. It was an iPod remote from last year that has gone from a "start and stop" only device to a full featured remote. It is a lovely piece of tech, powered by Arduino hardware. Arduinos are open-source circuit boards and software you can use to develop interfaces with all sorts of electronics.
I remember reading the first post about this remote last fall and being interested in where he would take this project, mostly because I love seeing what people do with Altoids tins. I have to admit hooking one up to a giant "Easy" button for my car never really occurred to me, though.
I really like the idea of building my own remote; partly so I can say I did it, but also because it would be a nicer way to get my iPod or iPhone (depending) working nicely with my car stereo.
Honestly I only understand about half of what he's talking about in this article, but I'm good at following instructions and I am reasonably handy with a soldering iron, so this doesn't look completely unreasonable. If I do end up building one I'll be sure to post all about it for you. In the meantime, have you built an unholy alliance between your Roomba and your iMac, or any other variety of Mac Tech Mashup? Tell me about it, I'd love to see what you all can do!
Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/finsprings/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0TUAWHack: The iPod serial library enables homebrew remote controls originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Analyst: iPhone to Overtake BlackBerry in 2011
A few years ago it would’ve been only the insane and the insanely prescient who were predicting that Apple would replace RIM in terms of world mobile phone market share. Now it doesn’t seem that outlandish, but the question of how soon we’ll actually see it happen remains up in the air. According to a new [...]
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Chinese tablet maker threatens, then rips off Apple with iPad knockoff
The publicity whores at China's Shenzhen Great Loong Brother tablet-PC maker are at it again...
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You Look Ridiculous: The Other Augmented Reality Issue
Augmented Reality (AR) is a hot topic in the app stores these days. So, what’s AR? It’s multiple technologies being used simultaneously to provide you with data relevant to your location. This includes your phone’s compass to determine the direction you are facing, GPS to determine your exact location, Internet connection to gather information about [...]
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Google working on Android-powered set-top box with Dish Network
Google Inc. is testing a new television-programming search service with Dish Network Corp...
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Don't trust the critics: Four Apple products they thought would fail
Filed under: iPod Family, iPhone, iPad
Ever since the iPad's introduction a month and a half ago, the internet has been awash in criticism of the as-yet-unreleased device. "It's just a big iPod touch," many have said. "No Flash, no multitasking, no sale," others bemoaned. And a few have gone so far as to say, "It doesn't do a lot of things that a netbook that costs half as much will do." For these reasons and many more, many of the pundits and forum dwellers have but one prediction: the iPad is going to crash and burn.
Don't you believe it, because the critics have been wrong before. Several times, actually, according to The Week, which provides a list of five Apple products the critics thought would fail. Out of those five, only one, the Newton, failed to find mainstream success. The other four were industry-defining products which went on to sell millions of units each.
What did the critics have to say about these four "failed" Apple products when they first debuted, and which products were they? Click "Read More" to find out.
1. The Mac
It seems absurd now, but there was a time when some critics thought the Mac would be a complete failure. They considered the mouse-driven interface "Useless." Ponder that one for a bit. "Awkward," "Not easy to learn," and of course, "Costs too much" were other 1984-era complaints leveled at Apple's latest creation. These critics were used to the keyboard-driven interface of DOS-running PCs, and from the sounds of things, they considered the Mac, with its graphic user interface and "awkward" mouse, to be nothing more than an overpriced novelty, doomed to fail.
I hardly need to tell you what happened next. The original Macintosh completely revolutionized the computer industry. Within only a short time, companies like Microsoft scrambled to duplicate the GUI/mouse combo the Mac brought to the market. Today, nearly every desktop, notebook, and netbook out there runs a GUI/mouse interface. And 26 years after the first Macintosh debuted, Apple still sells Macs by the millions every year. I wish I could fail half as hard as that.
2. The iMac
"No floppy drive?!?" was the echoing cry among the tech world in 1998. Add to that the iMac's hermetically-sealed case and not particularly upgrade-friendly components, and once again, tech critics and build-it-yourself users who had been used to beige towers predicted the iMac would never catch on. Instead, the iMac sold like crazy and almost instantaneously doubled Apple's PC marketshare. Twelve years later, the iMac is still Apple's best-selling desktop, and it shows no signs of going anywhere anytime soon... unlike those floppy disks everyone once thought were so crucial.
3. The iPod
One of the greatest things about the internet is that in a way, it's the closest any of us will get to time travel. Let's go back to October 23, 2001, and get Slashdot's now-famous opinion of the just-announced iPod: "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame."
The comments that follow are even better. "I don't see many sales in the future of iPod." "All I can say is, as an Apple 'fan', I'm sad." But don't just take Slashdot's word for it. The forum folks at MacRumors had some true gems too: "Great just what the world needs, another freaking MP3 player." "I still can't believe this! All this hype for something so ridiculous! Who cares about an MP3 player?" "'I'd call it the Cube 2.0 as it wont sell, and be killed off in a short time...and it's not really functional." "The Reality Distiortion Field[TM] is starting to warp Steve's mind if he thinks for one second that this thing is gonna take off." "Not exactly 'revolutionary'. " "The real money is in DRM and distribution (ala Real Musicnet). If Apple were smart they would be focusing on high gross revenue from services rather than a playback device." "It is by no means revolutionary or groundbreaking. It is an MP3 player. BFD. It is just a step in the evolution of an MP3 player [...] Think different is dead."
It goes on like that, for pages and pages. And this is at a site full of Apple fans, the majority of whom were unimpressed with the iPod at best and thought it was Apple's death knell at worst. People who weren't great fans of Apple at the time, like the guys behind Penny Arcade, had even harsher things to say about the iPod, even two years after its release (not safe for work language -- it is Penny Arcade, after all). Over nine years later, where are we? Over a quarter of a billion iPods have been sold since then, and it's largely due to the iPod's momentum that Apple has become the phenomenal success it is today.
4. The iPhone
For the first half of 2007, before the iPhone actually hit stores, people either thought it was the greatest innovation of the past ten years (at least) or an overpriced, overhyped device that lacked features common to many other phones. Of course, there was no lack of punditry from those who thought the iPhone was doomed, and Apple right along with it. Tech critic John Dvorak said of the iPhone, "I'd advise people to cover their eyes. You are not going to like what you'll see." A former CEO of Palm said, "We've learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They're not going to just walk in." And who could forget Steve Ballmer of Microsoft, perhaps the best-remembered critic of the iPhone: "There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance." Ballmer claimed Apple would be lucky to get 2-3% cellphone marketshare.
Over 42 million iPhones later, Apple has become the largest mobile device company in the world. And whether you agree that HTC and other phone manufacturers have violated Apple's patents or not, the influence the iPhone has had on the smartphone industry is undeniable. Before June of 2007, almost all smartphones looked like clones of the Blackberry. Less than three years later, an awful lot of smartphones now look like clones of the iPhone instead.
With these four products, Apple drove the evolution of three industries: PCs, portable media players, and smartphones. All four products were smashing successes despite all the doom and gloom from both professional and armchair tech critics. Now, with the introduction of the iPad, Apple is aiming at a new industry: ultraportable computers. For the past month and a half, at least half of everyone paying attention to the iPad has laughed at it, pointed out its shortcomings, and predicted its failure. My prediction? A year from now, we're going to have a very long list of misguided iPad quotes to point and laugh at.TUAWDon't trust the critics: Four Apple products they thought would fail originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Twitter to begin screening some links for phishing
Twitter launched a new link-screening service aimed at preventing phishing and other malicious attacks on users of the popular microblogging service.
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Xerox PARC pioneer turned Microsoft researcher Charles Thacker wins Turing Award
Mr. Thacker, 67, was a member of the storied crew who shaped the future of computing...
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Ex-Sun chief dishes dirt on Gates, Jobs
Jonathan Schwartz has started dishing dirt from his days at Sun in a blog called "What I couldn't say..."
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GDC: Ngmoco hopes to rule with new mobile games
At the Game Developers Conference, Ngmoco previewed two upcoming releases for the iPhone and iPod touch. We Rule and Godfinger both put you in the shoes of a usually benevolent ruler -- as a monarch in the case of the former, or as god in the case of the latter.
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GDC 2010: Real Racing and Flight Control on the iPad with Firemint
Filed under: Gaming, Software, Freeware, App Store, iPad
We got to sit down with Australian developer Firemint here at the Game Developers Conference 2010 in San Francisco -- it's a mobile game developer who hit it big last year with the very popular iPhone game Flight Control, and while it used to make mobile games for just a handful of larger game publishers like EA, the company is now trying to cement a reputation for making a smaller stable of high quality App Store games. "We like to joke that we went from ten customers to ten million," community manager Alexandra Peters told us.
She also showed us their second game, Real Racing, which has been winning all kinds of awards even in the crowded accelerometer racing game genre, and talked with us both about Flight Control HD (their upcoming "soon after launch" title for the iPad) as well as what's next for the company.
Real Racing was impressive for an iPhone racing game. While the accelerometer-as-steering is basically a cliche in iPhone games at this point, Real Racing pulls it off pretty well by focusing on that -- depending on the settings, you can simply let the car accelerate and even break on its own, and just focus on hitting the curves while driving 48 different cars around the game's 12 tracks, or actually jump in and control the car yourself.
We only got to drive a few laps, but the game's crystal-clear presentation got us interested enough to want to play more. The game is currently $4.99 in the App Store, but there is an interesting lite version to try as well -- Volkswagen actually approached Firemint after the success of the game and commissioned an "adverware" version to release on the App Store. It's there to try -- unfortunately, the content is a little light for a game with so many ads, but it's one of the better integration models for in-game ads I've ever seen, and the extra commission for Firemint certainly help offset the costs of development for a free game.
Firemint also told us about the version of Flight Control they're working on for the iPad. It will be called Flight Control HD, and of course it'll make use of the bigger touchscreen, but like most developers, Firemint hasn't had an actual iPad dev device to work with -- they've only got the game running in the iPad SDK simulation. Peters said the iPad makes for a "very personal and very immersive experience," so they're hoping to take advantage of that with Flight Control HD -- they've even set up a Wacom tablet to test the larger control scheme out. And they're hoping the game comes out soon after the iPad's launch on April 3rd, so look for it then.
Other than that, Firemint also has two other games in development, still under wraps. The first will be coming out later this year, and the other one is definitely the biggest iPhone project they've ever done (we got the impression that it would be a larger, 3D action project) that will be out sometime in 2011. We asked them if those games were planned for the iPhone or the iPad, and they told us while they were currently working on both of them for the iPhone, "we'll have to wait and see" on the iPad.
All in all, Firemint seems to be a company that has really taken advantage of the opportunities in the App Store, and grown both their reputation and their repetoire thanks to Apple's platform. Flight Control and Real Racing have both been excellent examples of their "just a few good games" philosophy, and we can't wait to see what they do with other titles and the iPad.TUAWGDC 2010: Real Racing and Flight Control on the iPad with Firemint originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Apple’s iPad + Hollywood
Yes, Steve-o really was at the Academy Awards ceremony, looking dapper in a classic black tux...
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"Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" uses Macs to solve mysteries
Filed under: Cult of Mac
If you happen to have gotten caught up in the phenomenon known as the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, then you know that the computer of choice for these world-class computer genius hackers is made by Apple. I screened the film version of the story, and MacBook Pros are visible throughout as the the tool used to solve mysteries. It's a good film as well, as far as taut thrillers from Sweden go. In fact, I found it a refreshing take on the thriller (with a little social commentary thrown in) and was unsurprised to find it was based on a highly-regarded novel.
The lead character, Lisbeth Salander, actually uses her MacBook Pro to hack into all manner of places, just as Macs have managed to appear in all sorts of movies. There's even a Flickr group dedicated to chronicling the appearance of them in film and TV. If you got a kick out of Hackers back in the day, Lisbeth will be a little familiar, but she's a nice modern spin on the "cool hacker" type.
TUAW is part of a "blog hunt" for clues to win prizes for the movie, and you can find out more on the next page...
Join the Dragon Tattoo Blog HUNT -- an Internet-wide scavenger hunt tied to the feature film launch of the bestselling book The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Win great prizes: free movie tickets, books, the movie soundtrack, posters and more. To join the contest, start at the beginning of the HUNT by visiting the contest page for full details and the first clue. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is in theaters near you starting March 19th.
The next clue:
No 9 to 5'ing for this guy. Just like Lisbeth and Mikael, this renegade, Jonathan Fields, made his own way (he even wrote a book about it) and he helps people find the career that lets them do what they love to do.TUAW"Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" uses Macs to solve mysteries originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Why Apple Should Buy Adobe
The rumors of Adobe being bought by Apple come up every so often. Apple could easily afford such a purchase and the results would be interesting. I would love to see Adobe restructured by a company like Apple. Adobe has many applications that are the gold standard but it seems to lack focus. These are [...]
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First Look: FileMaker Pro 11
A year after the launch of FileMaker Pro 10, the Apple-owned database company is back to debut the latest version of its franchise product. FileMaker Pro 11 introduces long-awaited features and builds on the interface and engine improvements to create new capabilities. I have been taking the product through its paces for the last few [...]
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Analyst: Apple “Disrupting” iPhone Competitors With Legal Threats
Via Apple 2.0, Oppenheimer analyst Yair Reiner asserts in a research note that Apple’s lawsuit with HTC over the iPhone interface was the culmination of “blunt talks” with other phone manufacturers. According to Reiner, starting in January Apple began closed-door discussions with OEMs regarding the company’s “growing displeasure” with the theft of Apple’s intellectual property. That displeasure [...]
