GIMP offers a nice feature set, for a free image editor
GIMP, the original Open Source image editor, has finally been upgraded to a fully-native OS X app. GIMP has long been a popular image editor for those who didn’t need the power (or expense) of Adobe Photoshop, even though it required the use of the X11 environment to run. Now that it’s a native app, you have no excuse not to give it a shot if you’re in the market for an image editor.
If you’ve upgraded to OS X Mountain Lion, you may have noticed that turning on Web Sharing is no longer available.
But that doesn’t mean it’s not there. I suspect Apple would prefer users who need to serve websites from their Mac upgrade to Mac OS X Server instead.
Thankfully, you can install and configure everything you need to start serving websites from your Mac by following this relatively simple tutorial. It’s not the ideal situation, but it works.
One of the features Apple chose to kill off in Mountain Lion is the RSS Subscribe button in Safari. While RSS feeds aren’t quite the rage they used to be, many users still use RSS feeds religiously. The king of RSS Readers is of course Google Reader. And if you miss the subscribe button, there’s an easy way to get it back.
Add to Google Reader Safari Extension adds the RSS feed of the page you’re currently on to Google Reader. It works extremely well!
Another extension that works with any RSS reader you have installed is Subscribe to Feed, a side-project by Red Sweater software, maker of the MarsEdit blog editor.
I get to try a LOT of applications and utilities, but few of them remain installed on my Macs for the long haul. This is especially true of small shareware utilities that tend to solve a relatively minor issue that few people even consider a problem to begin with.
When I tried Yoink, from Eternal Storms Software, I suspected this might be yet another one of those apps that was more trouble than the problem it attempted to solve. After using it for a short while, I was happy to find this was not the case at all.
When Lion shipped with the Full Screen feature, I found it to be cumbersome to use all the time because it limited drag & drop access between the Finder and apps that were in Full Screen mode. The problem for me was, I was really starting to enjoy using Full Screen with as many apps that would support it. Yoink solves the single, very annoying problem.
Yoink places a small window on your screen as soon as you start dragging a file which you can then drop the file on to store it. You can drag multiple files to the window if you wish. Then when you’re ready to drop the files into another program, you simply drag them out of the window. Normally, Yoink’s window lives on the screen edge, but you can configure it to appear just next to your mouse cursor when you start dragging a file.
I find Yoink particularly useful when I want to attach several files located in multiple locations in the Finder into Mail when it’s in Full Screen mode.
You can view a brief video of Yoink in action, then purchase Yoink here for only $2.99. If you’re unsure if Yoink will work for you, there is a 15-day trial available.
With Instagram, Facebook chose to allow it to live-on for now – but I suspect it will eventually get fully integrated into Facebook’s brand apps. Unfortunately, Google has not been as kind. They’ve made it clear that they have no intention on adding features to it in the future. It’s dead. And while Facebook only hired the developers and not purchased the apps themselves, they’re essentially dead as well.
I’m not suggesting that you should not buy apps from independent developers. They’re what makes the Apple community great. And I absolutely do not blame any developer for selling their company for large sums of money. They worked hard to create a great app or service and they deserve the rewards.
But you should take these recent acquisitions into consideration when you purchase your next app that may be a mission-critical one. Let me give you an example. (more…)
Developers who wish to sell their software in Apple’s Mac App Store have to abide by certain rules. As of last month, Sandboxing is in effect, which restricts the level of integration with the OS any particular app has. In theory (and in practice, actually) this will help protect unsuspecting Mac users from malicious software downloaded from the Mac App Store.
The realities of Apple’s Sandboxing rules go much deeper though. For developers of some extremely popular applications like TextExpander, YoJimbo, BBEdit, TextWrangler, a difficult decision must be made. Do they completely withdraw the app from the store, or remove the features which don’t comply with Apple’s Sandboxing rules? Removing features is likely to anger existing customers, and greatly reduce the enticement to purchase the app to begin with. Removing the app from the store completely means a significant drop in exposure for the app, and more expenses involved with selling it on their own.
Ted Landau has some great commentary on the whole Sandboxing issue, along with some thoughts from a few high-profile developers and Apple pundits in his Apple’s Sandboxing…One Month In article.
Large, medium and small icon options in OS X’s Mail sidebar
If you’re running OS X Lion on your Mac, you have the ability to enlarge the icons in the sidebar of Mail and the Finder. This is particularly useful for those with less than stellar eyesight, or who simply have large LCD screens and want an easier target to hit when dragging files to or otherwise clicking the icons.
Changing the sidebar icons in Mail is actually not an option if you adjust the size of the Finder’s sidebar icons. Oddly enough, both are controlled in the System Preferences under the General icon. Simply choose the size you wish from the drop-down menu next to the Sidebar Icon Size item and both Mail and the Finder’s sidebar icons will immediately adjust accordingly.
