Category: Apps

Ken Case:

My apologies: I’m afraid we will not be able to offer upgrade pricing to our Mac App Store customers after all. So long as we continue to sell our apps through the Mac App Store, we are not allowed to distribute updates through other channels to apps which were purchased from the App Store.

The program Case is referring to was called OmniKeyMaster. Here’s what it did:

OmniKeyMaster is a simple app that finds App Store copies of Omni apps installed on your Mac, then generates equivalent licenses from our store - for free. This gives Mac App Store customers access to discounted pricing when upgrading from the Standard edition to Professional, or when upgrading from one major version to the next. Another benefit: since they don’t have to wait in an approval queue, our direct releases sometimes get earlier access to new features and bug fixes. OmniKeyMaster lets App Store customers access those builds, as well.

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I bet this is a result of Yahoo buying KitCam a while back.

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One of my most-used web services just received a really nice redesign. I can’t wait to see what Betaworks does with the iOS apps.

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My friend David Barnard has announced today that his company, App Cubby has a new name:

I’m incredibly proud to announce that @appcubby is now @Contrast.

Contrast has a new app — named Perfect Weather — that will be shipping soon. The app looks great in its teaser video over on Instagram. Additionally, he announced that Gas Cubby has been sold to Fuelly.

David and the other guys over at Contrast are super nice guys, and I really enjoyed spending time with them at WWDC. I can’t wait to see what else they have cooking.

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iOS 7, of course, is bringing sweeping UI changes like the operating system has never seen before. Many developers are currently hard at work, building iOS 7 versions of their apps.

From what I’ve seen, it’s paying off. I’m currently running several betas of iOS 7-only apps, ¹ and many of the apps in my SECRETS! folder feel right at home on my sacrificed-to-the-beta-gods iPhone.

But they all feel awfully similar.

I can take a look at screenshots of them and tell them apart, mind you. Developers are using color in some very exciting, unique ways on iOS 7, but white frosted glass is everywhere, as are the standard UI controls found in Apple’s first-party apps.

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David Chartier:

Dropbox continues to improve and innovate, making the service more accessible, faster, and even more secure. As part of this progress, Dropbox will disable its legacy API—the bridge that lets apps talk to Dropbox—in favor of its next-generation API on September 1st.

As we all know, sync and innovating are hard work, so we sympathize with Dropbox’s need to retire an old API that’s done its bit for king and country. If you use 1Password 3 for iOS and sync through Dropbox, you need to take action before September 1. If you use any other 1Password apps, they are already built for Dropbox’s next-generation API; you don’t need to do anything.

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Craig Hockenberry:

Like many of my fellow developers, I am in the middle of an update of an app for iOS 7. As you’d expect, it’s a lot more work than previous versions of iOS. But results are stunning: both David Lanham and I have commented that our shipping version was “feeling old and clunky.”

While cranking along on the update, a couple of thoughts occurred to me: how many other developers were doing the same thing and were they going to commit fully to iOS 7? The depth and breadth of the changes in iOS 7 makes it difficult to support older versions of the OS.

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Federico Viticci:

Today, when I remembered that exactly one year ago I was hospitalized for 22 days for a series of treatments to save my life, I tweeted about it. And then I opened Day One.

In the app’s Calendar view, I changed the year to “2012″ and, sure enough, the “August 1, 2012″ entry was there, showing photos of my hospital room; my girlfriend sending a selfie from home; and a note that I wrote about the doctors being “nice”. Bits of life. A combination of old thoughts and visual memories that I still have, in some form, in my brain, but that here, in this app — right now — I can hold and directly look at. It is, indeed, far more powerful than memory alone.

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Here’s the corporate memo:

FileMaker, Inc. is increasing its focus on FileMaker Product Line software. Thanks to the ease of creating iPad and iPhone solutions, our customers’ use of FileMaker on iOS is growing rapidly. Our increased focus will create an even better experience for these customers. As part of our sharpened focus, we will stop further development of the Bento consumer products. Bento for iPad, iPhone and Mac will continue to be available on the FileMaker Store, and the App Store and Mac App Store, through September 30, 2013. We will provide technical support for Bento products through July 30, 2014. We thank you for your support of Bento. We know that many Bento customers will be disappointed.

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There are lots of ways to gather and organize files and information on the Mac. For photos and images, however, there’s not a great option. Dropbox is great for files, but Finder is Dropbox’s UI, which isn’t always the best option. Evernote is well-liked, but can be overkill for some.

Now there’s Ember.

Ember is a digital scrapbook. Like a real scrapbook, it’s easy to add photos and images, but because it’s digital, the data can be organized easily and quickly. There are tags and collections, as well as metadata and smart folders. There are some great built-in editing and annotation tools, as well.

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After a two-year hiatus, the free video player is back as a universal app. In addition to being the best way to play .mkv files on iOS, the new version brings features like pass code locking videos, Wi-Fi sync from desktop computers, the ability to stream from Dropbox and more.

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