Marco Arment:
But now, I’ve lost all confidence that the apps I buy in the App Store today will still be there next month or next year. The advantages of buying from the App Store are mostly gone now. My confidence in the App Store, as a customer, has evaporated.
Next time I buy an app that’s available both in and out of the Store, I’ll probably choose to buy it directly from the vendor.
Replace Safari 6’s missing RSS button with this extension by Daniel Jalkut.
Megan Lavey-Heaton at TUAW:
With the launch of OS X Mountain Lion, Carbon Copy Cloner has made the transition from donationware to commercial product. The cloning software that makes a bootable backup of your hard drive will be $29.96 until August 12, then the price rises to $39.95. A free 30-day trial is available.
To run CCC on Mountain Lion, you’ll need the new paid version. I use CCC all the time, and have no problem paying for it.
Apple:
iWork 9.2 is recommended for users of iWork 9.0 and later when using OS X Lion v10.7.4 and above. In this release, the iWork for Mac apps are updated for OS X Mountain Lion and take advantage of features such as iCloud and Dictation.
The iWork apps are also enhanced to take advantage of the Retina display on new Mac hardware, so presentations, documents, and spreadsheets appear sharper and more vibrant.
If you’re a Mac nerd with a new Nexus 7, you’re going to want to download this little app.
If you’re running a PowerPC Mac and are getting sad about your browser choices, add this to the list.
Good for them; maybe not so awesome for the rest of us.
Updated: From Sparrow’s email to users:
We will continue to make available our existing products, and we will provide support and critical updates to our users. However, as we’ll be busy with new projects at Google, we do not plan to release new features for the Sparrow apps.
It’s been an honor and a pleasure to build products for all of our wonderful users who have supported us over the years. We can’t thank you enough. We look forward to working on some new and exciting projects at Google!
Nate Weiner:
We’re incredibly excited to announce today that we’ve raised a $5 million round of funding made up entirely of our existing partners, led by Steve Vassallo of Foundation Capital and joined by Steve Anderson of Baseline Ventures and Joe Kraus of Google Ventures. They are passionate about what we’re building, have been immensely helpful since joining us last year and now have doubled down on everything we plan to do together.
Gabe at Macdrifter:
This is the MAS as I see it: It is not for utility apps or power users. Apps like 1Password, TextExpander and Keyboard Maestro should all be purchased directly from the developers site.1 The MAS is for people afraid of using a computer. I applaud Apple for taking the fear out of technology. I also will not purchase my utilities from the MAS. Apple may be happy to have the nerds along for the ride, but they are not their target market. Normal people that just want to use a few apps and don’t care about tweaking their experience are Apple’s new target demographic.
It also appears that the new version does work with Apple’s sandboxing.
