Hasta La Gadget!

Amazon has refreshed its Kindle app to include support for swiping and other gesture navigation features for Macs running Lion OS X or higher. It will now display Kindle’s new Format 8 books, allowing for more complicated formatting, HTML5 support, pop-up text, embedded fonts and other visual accoutrements to spice up your Mac-based reading. The update also adds Japanese language support alongside the typical pile of bug fixes and tweaks. You can download the new reader from the Mac App Store now, right at the source link below.

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops, Software

Amazon Kindle Mac app update adds gesture features and visually richer Kindle book support originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Sep 2012 06:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Tweetbot‘s been offering a rough-around-the-edges alpha version on its upcoming refresh for a few weeks now, but it’s the latest update that’s caught our attention — again. There’s several substantial changes that could tempt you away from other desktop Twitter clients. These include a new multiple account view, with separate columns that can either be docked to your main feed or left in their own window. You can spin out mentions and search results into their own space, and even adjust each column’s height and width — if you’re looking to squeeze even more Twitter content into a single screen. A new menu bar icon offers access to your multiple accounts, new tweets, direct messages and mentions, while the latest build also improves support for media upload and Mountain Lion‘s notification bar. Tweetbot’s alpha is still free to try for now, but once the kinks are eventually worked out, expect to pay for the finished article.

Filed under: Internet

Tweetbot for Mac’s latest alpha adds experimental ‘snap-together’ column layout originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Aug 2012 19:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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OS X Mountain Lion has been released, with the update for Macs hitting the Mac App Store today. A $19.99 download – which covers all your personal Macs registered to the same Apple ID – the refresh brings with it more features borrowed from iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad, including a new Notifications Center, Game Center integration, and baked-in iCloud

There’s also Dictation, borrowing the voice recognition system from the iPhone 4S and new iPad, though Apple is yet to add full Siri support. New Twitter and – eventually – Facebook integration has also been implemented, with Share sheets throughout the OS to enable straightforward pushing of content to social networks.

Not all Macs will be compatible with Mountain Lion, however. You’ll need one of the systems on Apple’s approved list; full details, complete with other preparatory steps, can be found in our guide here.

If you bought a Mac sometime between now and June 11, however, you can get a free upgrade to OS X Mountain Lion. Head over to Apple’s Up-to-Date program to register your details and get the new software free.

You can find Mountain Lion in the Mac App Store here.

OS X Mountain Lion update goes live! is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Seemingly anyone who’s used an iPhone (and often the iPad) knows Tweetbot — it’s often the go-to Twitter app for those who prefer not to go the official route. It’s to those users’ delight, then, that Tapbots just posted a free alpha version of Tweetbot for Mac. As you’d anticipate, it’s an attempt to bring much of the app’s power user mojo to the desktop world: you can check just retweets of your content, mute overly chatty people or hashtags, and otherwise get more control than just watching your stream drift by. It’s even (mostly) Retina-ready for that new MacBook Pro. Alpha does mean that there will be a fair amount of things missing; it won’t tap into iCloud or Mountain Lion’s Notification Center until it’s official, for example. But if you’re willing to deal with that and a few potential bugs, it may be time to brush other apps aside — just note that you’ll need Mountain Lion or newer when the app is ready to face the Mac App Store, even though it works with Lion today.

We’ve had a quick spin with the app, and it largely does what it says on the tin: it’s Tweetbot, on the Mac. The primary differences are changes that make sense when a mouse pointer and a larger screen area are available. You can reply, retweet, or view whole conversations from buttons that appear as you hover, rather than using the myriad taps and swipes of the iOS apps. It’s a wonderfully minimalist app, if that’s your thing, and you can open multiple windows (currently through a keyboard shortcut) to get some of that TweetDeck-style power user layout. Our main gripe? Tweetbot on the Mac always updates in a live stream, and there’s no option for intervals; if you follow a lot of people, there’s a chance you might miss something. Still, for an alpha, it’s a decidedly polished and useful effort that doesn’t leave us wanting like a few clients, including Twitter’s own.

Filed under: Internet, Software

Tweetbot for Mac arrives as free alpha, we give a quick hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 11 Jul 2012 13:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Earlier this morning, reports started circulating that the App Store was pushing corrupt binaries to iOS and Mac users, resulting in constant crashes of the affected apps. Marco Arment, of Instapaper fame, was one of the first to notice and very vocal — bringing the issue to the attention of many in the media and at Apple. The list of affected apps is pretty staggering, including such high profile titles as Angry Birds Space, Yahoo! Search, Google Reader and, of course, Instapaper. The number of developers affected now tops 115, so we’d hold off on those updates. For the first several hours Apple was mum on the issue, but it has finally acknowledged the problem in the support forums and even reached out to developers via email. Suspicions seem to be that the FairPlay DRM is at the root, but until we have official word from Apple we’ll refrain from laying the blame at its feet. Cupertino is working (we assume tirelessly) on a fix, which will hopefully be delivered sooner, rather than later.

Update: Apple has confirmed to AllThingsD that the problem was due to a “server that generated DRM code” and has been fixed. Affected end users are advised to delete the corrupted apps and redownload them.

Apple aware of corrupt apps issue, working on a fix (Update: Fixed!) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 05 Jul 2012 16:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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