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Bookwatch: Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X gets updated
Filed under: Books, Developer
Way back in December, our Christmas Gift Guide featured our pick of the many OS X-related books out there. One of the recommendations was the (very excellent) Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X by Aaron Hillegass - commonly referred to as 'The Bible' in the Mac development community.

At the time the book was a little outdated -- however in the last couple of weeks an updated third edition has been published. New sections feature Objective-C 2.0, Core Data, Garbage Collection, Xcode 3 and Core Animation, meaning this third edition is all ready for many of the new technologies in Mac OS X Leopard.

At just $32 (via Amazon.com), this updated version clearly ought to be on every developer's bookshelf (and aspiring developer's wishlist).
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Photoshop CS4 to include GPU acceleration?
Filed under: Rumors, Software, Graphic Design
One of the nicest features of the latest round of OS X image editors like Pixelmator and Acorn is their use of GPU acceleration. They use your Mac's graphics processor to radically speed up various image tools like filters and transformations, etc. Now it appears that the big boys are finally getting ready to play.

TG Daily is reporting that Adobe recently previewed the next version of Photoshop (CS Next / CS4) with GPU acceleration. And as expected it made for an enormous improvement in speed. They they observed "the presenter playing with a 2 GB, 442 megapixel image like it was a 5 megapixel image on an 8-core [Intel] Skulltrail system."

There was no specific mention of the Mac version (the demo seems to have been done on a Windows machine) and also no discussion of if and how the 32-bit limitation of CS4 on the Mac might affect this GPU assisted performance boost. Nonetheless, the addition of GPU acceleration is a big deal, and perhaps will push Apple into getting more high performance graphics cards into its systems.

[via Gizmodo]
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Scene: INT. APPLE STORE - DAY
Filed under: Retail, Cult of Mac
After being declared a good place to meet men, rock out, and torture the staff the inevitable has finally happened: the Apple Store is going Hollywood. ifoAppleStore is reporting that the teams from the official Apple Store contractor, Shawmut Design and Construction, have been seen building a "a partial retail store set inside a sound stage for filming an unknown movie" at the Burbank Studios.

So what do you think? What kind of scene just demands an Apple store setting?

[via TG Daily]
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Thinvelope for MacBook Air
Filed under: Accessories, MacBook Air

Since the MacBook Air was introduced with its iconic envelope commercial there have been a variety of envelope style cases. However, the Thinvelope from BeyzaCASES is really in a class by itself, combining high quality leatherwork with what looks like an extremely elegant design. Over at Gear Diary Judie Lipsett has a rave review with plenty of pictures, comparing it favorably with designer leather goods costing much more. That said, the Thinvelope is itself a pretty penny at $215. But, really, isn't your MacBook Air worth it?

[via jkOnTheRun]
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Big changes in Nisus Writer Pro 1.1
Filed under: Software, Productivity

In the latest skirmish in the endless battle for word processor supremacy, Nisus Writer Pro has been updated to version 1.1. The new features include enhanced commenting, a Mail Merge capability that uses the Mac OS X Address Book or csv files for a record source, a vastly improved Table of Contents generator, indexing, bookmarks for navigation or cross-references, an enhanced Nisus Macro Language (take that, Microsoft!), and the ability to embed Perl scripts. There are even more features, so visit the Nisus site for details.

Nisus does a great job of listening to their customers, and it appears that Nisus Writer Pro 1.1 has included many of the features requested by users of the initial release. The download version of Nisus Writer Pro 1.1 is $79 to new users, $49 for owners of Nisus Writer Express and free to owners of Nisus Writer Pro 1.0. A 15-day free trial download is available for this Universal Binary app (Mac OS X 10.4 or better required).
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Things brings the sync
Filed under: Software, Productivity
If you love Things, you just got a whole lot more to love. The folks at Cultured Code have finally added iCal sync, and they've done a spectacular job with it (outdoing, in my opinion, OmniFocus' sync). In the preferences, you can sync just your "Today" tasks, or just your "Next Actions," or you can get crazy with it and assign calendars to different tags, projects or areas of responsibility. This allows for utterly amazing flexibility and an array of possibilities.

The major benefits of having Things synced with iCal all revolve around the tight integration that iCal and Leopard's To Dos have with the rest of OS X. Being able to refine what is actually synced means you have complete control over what you see on an iCal printout or even what you put on a public or shared calendar. To Dos can be delegated, emailed, linked, prioritized and more, and Things is picking up every external change I throw at it.

You can have a calendar that functions as an inbox and use whatever input method you like to get tasks there. The "@" symbol can be used to add tags as well. Moving a task from the inbox calendar to another calendar synchronized with Things will do exactly what you think it will ... move the task to the project or area of responsibility assigned to that calendar.

This also solves my other major problem with Things, no easy way to turn Mail.app messages into tasks. Now, with a right click to make a new To Do you can create a new task in Things that contains a link to the original message. Unfortunately, Mail.app's handling of To Dos is a little buggy in some cases, but that problem is easily taken care of by using MailTags to create the tasks.

The final reason I'm so excited about this new release is that Leopard To Dos are part of an API that all kinds of third-party programs can access, and can therefore integrate with Things now. Anxiety, Out of Mind, Today, MailTags and other little applications we've mentioned can all work in two directions with your task manager.

I'm a little obsessed with Charilaos Skiadas' GTDAlt bundle for TextMate right now (along with piles of Ruby code to extend it), but the new sync feature in Things made it extremely easy to pull my tasks in and take it for another spin. Having sworn off the "pretty" task managers and pledged my allegiance once again to all things plain text, I don't have the heart to change my system again quite yet ... but it's becoming obvious that when Things comes to fruition, it will be a force to be reckoned with. If this was holding you back (like it was me), it might be time to take a look. Things is going to be $49 after release, but you can still get in on it for $39 right now.
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Talkcast Sunday night, special early start at 9 pm ET: Farewell Nik
Filed under: TUAW Business, Podcasts
Last week's talkcast was a very full house and a very long show, as we delved into the reasons why we mourn the 12" PowerBook G4 and which Apple TV ad shows Mac users in the worst possible light (hint: it stars Milo Ventimiglia, from Heroes). Download the show from Talkshoe, play it from the Flash player in the continuation of this post, if you like, or pick it up on iTunes.
Join us again Sunday night, May 25 at a special early time -- 9 pm ET, 6 pm PT. This week (really this time!) we say farewell to our colleague across the pond, Nik Fletcher. Bring your own beer and your favorite Nik stories and come hear why he's moving on (it's exciting!). We'll even be doing some Niktrivia and giving away some collectors' items (a MessagePad 2000 manual and a copy of the Internet Yellow Pages circa 1996).
Continue reading Talkcast Sunday night, special early start at 9 pm ET: Farewell Nik
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