John Casasanta is the developer of the popular and award-winning multiple-clipboard application iClip, and also the winner of the 1999 Apple Design Awards for Best Macintosh User Experience with his shareware game, Food Chain, which is pretty cool. I started working with John last year, as he coded the Black 'n' Blue and Macworld widgets for WidgetMachine, and also worked with our artist Piotr Gajos on iClip lite. Later that winter, we traveled to Macworld Expo San Francisco together along with AppZapper developer Austin Sarner, and had a blast working with the MacUpdate guys at their booth.

Recently, John has been behind some interesting marketing tactics for iClip, including giving away tens of thousands of copies of the app last weekend and creating a free Dashboard widget, "iClip lite", to complement the full application. We talk about his marketing ideas in this interview. Continue reading...

I've worked with artist Adam Betts in the past, namely on MacThemes, and he is pretty much one of the top icon artists out there. One of his creations, of course, is the now pretty iconic Adium duck, and he was happy to sit down for a bit and chat about its history, and its future. Thanks again to Adam, and enjoy! Continue reading...

Here's an essay I posted on a defunct E3 blog, Wiishfulthinking. Too busy with my Mac stuff to keep a game blog going unfortunately, but thought you guys might enjoy this. PS, if you haven't picked up a Nintendo DS lite for yourself yet, I highly recommend one, it's a great console with the best Nintendo game library in generations. (Console generations that is.)

Nintendo's E3 press conference left me pretty satisfied. I think it's fair to say that they delivered a healthy lineup of video game support for the Wii. I mean, who can complain with both Mario and Link slated to power the Wii launch? As for the reveal of the last big Wii hardware secret, it sounds like a great idea to me. All right, it isn't exactly total immersion 3D laser goggle technology, or whatever you were expecting, but still, who can't get excited by the idea of hearing an arrow whiz out of your hands and into an enemy?

In a lot of ways, the conference reminded me of a classic Steve Jobs Macworld Expo keynote performance. Flashy new software and updates, sleek hardware revisions and reveals, and of course a really excited and responsive audience. Iwata is no Steve Jobs, in terms of on-stage charisma, but he had plenty of great news to deliver to a ready audience, and deliver it he did. Continue reading...

As a college student, I'm currently extremely happy with my base model MacBook acquired about a month ago. Talk about bang for the buck! Well, today, Apple has upped the ante with a new model of iMacs for edu customers selling at... $899. Yeah. That's $150 less than a base MacBook model in the educational store (and $300 less than the previous base iMac model), for what are basically slightly better specs. (17" monitor vs. a 13.3", and 20 gigs more harddrive space.) Oh yeah, and you still get your free iPod nano, adding another $129 in savings. So, taking that into effect, if you sell the iPod on ebay, you're getting a brand new Intel iMac (all-in-one computer with keyboard and mouse) for basically under $800. Sounds pretty amazing to me!

Also, I wanted to add a note for those of you thinking about purchasing this, and possibly hesitating on the Intel GMA950 Integrated Graphics. It's really not that bad. Believe it or not, I was even able to run Half-Life 2 under Boot Camp at playable speeds, and World of Warcraft, etc. should do just fine. Not too shabby for a sub $900 Mac! This is seriously raising the bar for good value here. By the way, out of curiosity, are any of you recent MacBook customers, or planning to get one of these iMacs instead? Let me know by commenting.

It's been a long time coming, but the Adium team has finally reached the first major milestone to 1.0. You can download Adium 1.0 b1 on the beta page. The update features vastly improved support for the chat protocols, including working file transfer for AIM, pretty significant UI enhancements, an Xtras manager, and much much more. Kudos to the dev team, and look out for the promised "Pimp Your App" for Adium soon!

I've tried HandBrake in the past, but never got through importing a single full movie due to painfully slow encoding times. Waiting 5-6 hours to rip a movie wasn't my idea of fun, and as a result, it's been sitting in the "cool but not ready yet" list of apps for a while. Plus, the crazy pineapple icon (pictured in its full glory on left) was yet another reason to trash it as soon as possible. Seriously. And by the way, anyone know why the hell the icon is a pineapple and mixed drink anyway?

Anyway, HandBrake has since been upgraded to "sweet app that now sits in my Dock" status, and I've been happily ripping movies over the past week. What made me change my mind? Two things.

Continue reading...

It's been an amazing start for this blog with something like 50,000 visitors the first day, thanks in large part to the top ten list being featured in my three favorite tech sites. I guess this sets pretty high standards for what's to come in the future, but I think if you liked what you saw here today, you'll like what's to come. Seriously. Keep on coming.

Oh, and PS. For all of you Adium users who were disappointed in its absence in the top ten list, I think you'll enjoy a feature coming in a few days. (Oh, and give me a break, pop open the "about" window in your favorite chat app and see who comes up as a previous contributor. )

Thanks to everyone again!

Top ten lists are a dime a dozen, but I haven't seen one floating around yet on the most beautiful OS X apps out there. And as someone who's hitting MacUpdate daily as a small part of my job, always on the hunt for what's cool and new, I thought I'd share some of my insight, condensed down for mass consumption into a neat little list. Before you go on, remember that this is going to be controversial no matter what. I haven't found a single top ten list that doesn't get most people complaining. But honestly, after a lot of thought, I feel there are very few truly beautiful OS X apps left out if you include the honorable mentions. Oh, and before you begin, note that Apple apps (like Front Row and Aperture) have been knocked off the list. This one features independently developed freeware and shareware apps. So, without further ado, presenting the ten most beautiful OS X apps in the world:

The List

Starting off this list is the first of two extremely eye-pleasing P2P apps. (Coincidentally, the other one links to this from within its Help menu as the recommended BitTorrent client.) Transmission is an exercise in simplicity and Aqualicious UI design, with notable exception to its icon. (Look for a replacement icon coming soon on this blog by Tom.) For all of you Azureus and BitTorrent users out there, feast your eyes on this baby. And for an even appearance, download an alternate set of toolbar icons by artist Matt Ball.

The  Potion Factory's second release may not be quite as useful as Podcast Maker is for many podcasters (it's also on this list), but the UI is just as lickable. Starting with the mouth-watering application icon (ok, I'll stop with the food analogies there), the eye candy gets only better. (Doh.) You definitely have to try this one to experience it. For what is ultimately an extremely fun voice recording and filtering toy, there's been a lot of love put into this app. You'll notice some really cute icons for each filter effect by the excellent Mischa McLachlan of Zyotism, and the secondary windows for setting reminders and viewing alerts are just as gorgeous. If you have any kids, or never fully grew up, check this one out. Useful as a voice recorder, fun as a prank tool, and costs less than a Yakbak or Whoopee cushion.