Fans of Instacast 3 (US$4.99), Vemedio's feature-packed iOS podcast client, are doing the happy dance today. The company has announced an open public beta of Instacast for Mac if you want to get your hands dirty with pre-release software and check out your favorite podcasts at the same time.

The beta is valid through May 31, 2013 and provides most of the features you've come to know and love with the iOS app. You can choose to subscribe to a variety of top podcasts that appear in the audio and video podcast lists, or add a feed URL for less popular podcasts. There's also a search tool for finding podcasts by name.

Once you've subscribed to a podcast, a list of episodes appears and you can either play them on your Mac or beam them via AirPlay to your favorite large-screen device. Instacast for Macs makes it easy to manage podcasts, deleting past or played episodes if needed, and giving you the option to limit downloaded to a specific amount on your disk drive.

Instacast for Mac will sync with the iOS app if you are logged into an Instacast Cloud account. The Mac app also provides a number of sharing options, including Twitter, Pocket, iMessage, Mail, and App.net.

The beta is a quick download away, so go grab a copy if you're interested and be sure to offer your feedback on features and/or crashes.

Instacast for Mac beta now available originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 01 May 2013 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Instacast for Mac beta now available originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 01 May 2013 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Among the startups competing for attention (and funding) at Monday's opening round of the TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield, one unusual social app for iPhone stood out. SharePractice, from physician Andrew Brandeis and his team, aims to connect physicians to each other and give them access to the best professional advice regarding conditions, treatments and symptoms.

Although he's a full-time practitioner at San Francisco's Care Practice community clinic, this isn't Dr. Brandeis's first go-round with mobile technology; he worked with iHealth on the rollout of the company's iOS-powered blood pressure cuff in 2011. In his career, he's formed the opinion that the difference between a good doctor and a great one isn't access to medical information; it's access to experience, the implicit knowledge of thousands of patients and hours of work that helps inform better treatment decisions.

Given that most doctors don't have quick, "send a text" or "catch up in the hallway" access to the top experts in every therapeutic area, the question is how to get the power of that experience out to a larger community of physicians? The SharePractice app is one approach to solving that problem. It allows Yelp-style commenting and voting, but instead of restaurants and retail establishments, the topic of conversation is drug dosage, standards of care and best practices when dealing with a specific symptom or disease.

There's certainly no shortage of medical research and information out there, but SharePractice's premise is that much of that textbook-style data is out of date or poorly aligned with the actual standard of care in the field. With SharePractice, doctors who participate will be able to pose questions, vote up answers, comment and converse around the suggested approaches and more.

The SharePractice app is in invite-only beta right now, and interested parties can sign up at the company's website. You can see Brandeis's presentation at TechCrunch Disrupt below.

SharePractice wants your doctor to have the best advice on the iPhone originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 30 Apr 2013 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

SharePractice wants your doctor to have the best advice on the iPhone originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 30 Apr 2013 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Late in December we told you about the upcoming Rabbit video chat and screensharing service, aimed specifically at Mac users in the near term. Rabbit's team has been cranking away since then, and today the service begins welcoming invited testers to the closed beta.

Rabbit's aim is to transform the current one-to-one or one-to-many experience of video chat into a massively social experience. Chat rooms in Rabbit have no specific participant limit, and the service adapts your incoming audio to deliver the conversations "near" you without overwhelming your ears or your bandwidth.

Sharing content with your chat or Facebook buddies is also a core part of the Rabbit experience. Whether it's screenshared items from your Mac, a song on Spotify or hosted video content on YouTube or Hulu, you should all see and hear it together.

Beta invitations are rolling out to the service this month, so if you're interested, sign up and check it out.

Rabbit video chat beta kicks off originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 07 Feb 2013 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Rabbit video chat beta kicks off originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 07 Feb 2013 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Want to run over 750,000 Android apps on your favorite Mac? [Hey, it takes all kinds. --Ed.] BlueStacks is a startup that figured out a way to run Android apps on Windows machines through its App Player. The company released an alpha version of App Player for Mac in June, and today announced that it is releasing the Mac software into beta. A free download of the beta is available on the BlueStacks website.

During the alpha release, it was only possible to run a few apps -- Fruit Ninja and Pulse, for example -- but the new release should allow any Android application to run on a Mac. BlueStacks is getting a huge following in the PC world, with over 5.3 million installations and partnerships with some chipmakers and manufacturers to pre-install App Player on machines.

BlueStacks VP of Business Development John Gargiulo discussed the Mac beta release with blogger Sarah Perez at our sister site TechCrunch, and told her that the App Player for Mac release means that the popular news app Flipboard can now be run on the Mac for the first time.

BlueStacks App Player might make development for Android more attractive to mobile developers, as their apps will also run without modification on all Macs and PCs. Developers can also offer in-app purchases without having to share a percentage with Apple.

Gargiulo says that the company is working hard to add a new App Discovery system to the Mac App Player to make it easier for users to find their favorite apps. The beta currently has no end date and will "run as long as it takes."

BlueStacks App Player for Mac in beta: run Android apps on Mac originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 27 Dec 2012 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

BlueStacks App Player for Mac in beta: run Android apps on Mac originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 27 Dec 2012 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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SugarSync 2.0 is now available as a public beta to anyone who currently uses the cloud service or is thinking about moving to the platform.

SugarSync has been redesigned across the board, from the desktop Mac app to the web app, and (soon) the iOS app will be available. At this point in time, the iOS app isn't ready to fly, but TUAW readers with Android phones will find that the beta app is available for their platform. Syncing a folder is now as easy as dragging and dropping a folder onto the SugarSync 2.0 UI, and folders can be converted from synced to cloud-only to save space on your computer. The app also now provides a new photo gallery view that can be shared.

As with many of the other cloud services, SugarSync provides ways to back up individual folders to the cloud, sync folders with multiple computers, access files from multiple platforms, share files and folders with co-workers or friends, and do this all on a number of computing platforms.

SugarSync provides a 30-day free trial of their service; after that point, pricing begins at US$50 per year for 30 GB of cloud storage and up to 500 GB for $400 per year. The beta software can be downloaded by clicking the appropriate button on this page.

SugarSync 2.0 now available as a public beta originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 13 Nov 2012 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

SugarSync 2.0 now available as a public beta originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 13 Nov 2012 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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To keep a professional feel to a workplace, many businesses hire a receptionist to greet and direct visitors to an office. Receptionists may become an endangered species soon if the Reception Manager iPad platform from the Foundry Group, Rage Digital and TechStars takes off.

Currently in beta, the platform uses a kiosk-mounted iPad and customizable app to connect visitors to company employees. Upon arriving at the kiosk, the visitor taps a button to indicate the reason for their visit (a meeting, a delivery and so on), taps another button indicating the name of the employee they wish to see, enters their name and company into the kiosk, and then the employee is notified via text message.

Should that employee need to respond to the visitor, they can reply and their message is displayed on the kiosk. The service is priced at US$99 per month for companies with up to 49 employees, $149 per month for 50-99 employees and $249 monthly for more than 100 employees. Check it out in the video below.

iPad could replace your office receptionist originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 08 Nov 2012 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

iPad could replace your office receptionist originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 08 Nov 2012 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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At some point during this week, we expect to see a beta of Evernote for Mac 5.0, which promises to be a completely rewritten app with a much improved user interface. As reported on the Evernote TechBlog, the Evernote team has spent about a year working on adding over a hundred new features to speed up the app for current users and make it easier for new users.

Some of the big changes include the use of "cards" to display notes, similar to the iOS App Store search function's display. The UI is more "Finder-like" than ever before, with user-added shortcuts and a list of most recently used notebooks. There's a new TypeAhead search feature that searches across all notes, then categorizes results by notebooks, notes, tags and recent searches. It will also suggest searches based on phrases that are used frequently.

Business travelers are going to love the new Atlas feature, which shows notes on a map based on where they were written. "Place Cards" show notes ordered by proximity using geolocation metadata. Check out the details in an Evernote video below.

Evernote for Mac update preview originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 29 Oct 2012 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Evernote for Mac update preview originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 29 Oct 2012 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In a sign that iOS 6 is inching ever closer to general release, Apple flipped the switch on Genius recommendations in the App Store on Friday. The feature had been, according to developers familiar with the new OS, responding with a comment that it was unavailable. Now asking for Genius recommendations displays a "swipe to flip" list of apps you might be interested in, along with the familiar "Not Interested" button at the bottom of the screen.

Sources say that not all of the Genius features are currently working properly; the Categories button in the upper left corner of the display apparently shows only a single category -- All -- right now instead of a list of subcategories.

Each Genius "card" shows a recommended app with rating and price, a screenshot, a note telling you what app the recommendation was based on and the Not Interested button that's used to refine your future recommendations.

The availability date for iOS 6 is expected to be announced on September 12, 2012 at an Apple event.

Apple switches on Genius recommendations in iOS 6 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 04 Sep 2012 10:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Apple switches on Genius recommendations in iOS 6 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 04 Sep 2012 10:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A growing number of iOS developers use TestFlight to deliver beta software to testers. Now the company is releasing a beta of its own -- the beta of TestFlight Desktop App.

TestFlight refers to the OS X app as "a significant and much needed change in developers' beta release workflow" and is asking for devs to provide as much feedback as possible. The Desktop App provides four primary functions:

1. Archive Detection, which automatically notifies you of any new iOS archives and also provide you with access to the most recent archived apps straight from the menu bar.
2. Permit and Notify, used to choose testers directly or through distribution lists and then notify testers with a click.
3. dSYM and SDK Detection, which automatically detects and uploads new dSYMs to TestFlight.
4. Faster Uploads to TestFlight's CDN at maximum speed. Dropped uploads are resumed automatically.

If you're a developer who uses TestFlight to distribute beta apps, the Desktop App is available now to help you out. For iOS developers who aren't yet using TestFlight, this is a perfect opportunity to take a look at a powerful tool for streamlining the beta process.

TestFlight Desktop app now in beta originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 20 Aug 2012 12:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

TestFlight Desktop app now in beta originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 20 Aug 2012 12:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It seems like only yesterday that one of our readers was bemoaning the poor playback quality of the iOS YouTube app, and wishing that Apple would do something to fix it. Given that YouTube is a Google property, and the two former BFFs aren't on the best of terms nowadays, it's no wonder that the video playback app has languished. Mobile Safari does a bang-up job with most YouTube videos, so it seemed logical that the days of the standalone app might be numbered.

In the iOS 6 beta 4 build released today, that number appears to have come up. The Verge noted that the YouTube app is missing in action (per 9to5Mac) and got an official statement from Apple on the topic: "Our license to include the YouTube app in iOS has ended, customers can use YouTube in the Safari browser and Google is working on a new YouTube app to be on the App Store." Engadget's Darren Murph expands on that, as Apple told him the existing YouTube app will not be removed from iOS 5 devices.

Goodness. As the first iPhone shipped in the summer of 2007 with the YouTube app onboard, it looks like there was a five-year countdown on the bundling arrangement. Google's new App Store app for YouTube seems likely to debut with iOS 6 this autumn.

iOS YouTube standalone app to vanish in iOS 6 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Aug 2012 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

iOS YouTube standalone app to vanish in iOS 6 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Aug 2012 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Just when you thought eBay was slowly fading away into obscurity as the online equivalent of a garage sale, the company has rolled out something new called eBay Now. eBay provides users in a beta program (signup form here) with an iOS app with which they can browse and purchase merchandise from a number of local stores and then have the swag delivered to them the same day.

The eBay Now program is only available in the San Francisco area at this time, but the company has managed to partner with a number of retailers including Bloomingdales, Macy's, Target, and Best Buy.

After selecting your item for purchase from the app, you're contacted by a "Shopping Assistant" who facilitates the entire transaction by verifying the request, physically purchasing the product for you, and then dropping it off into your hands.

At this time, there's a $5 delivery fee for each purchase over $25, although beta users get a $15 discount on their first purchase and free delivery on the first three orders. There's no word on whether eBay will expand this program to other cities, but if it does it will revolutionize shopping by giving everyone their own personal shopper.

Continue reading eBay Now for iOS offers same-day product delivery in San Francisco

eBay Now for iOS offers same-day product delivery in San Francisco originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Aug 2012 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

eBay Now for iOS offers same-day product delivery in San Francisco originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Aug 2012 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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iWork.com is dead. Long live iWork.com!

Today is the last day that you'll be able to sign into the iWork.com beta. Apple's first attempt at creating a document sharing environment for Pages, Numbers, and Keynote documents never did make it to prime time. Tomorrow, iWork.com goes the way of the dodo and MobileMe.

Apple has built in the capability of sharing your documents between your own devices via iCloud, with a recent update to the OS X version of iWork adding the ability to save to and read from iCloud.

Any documents you have stored on iWork.com should have been moved to your iCloud account, provided that you used the same Apple ID to sign into both iWork.com and iCloud.

If your documents somehow failed to make the transition to iCloud or if you just want to move them back to your Mac, Apple has full instructions here on how to download those precious files.

Continue reading Reminder: iWork.com beta shuts down today

Reminder: iWork.com beta shuts down today originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 31 Jul 2012 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Reminder: iWork.com beta shuts down today originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 31 Jul 2012 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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New York Times technology writer Nick Bilton may be breaking up with Siri, per his post on the NYT Bits blog.

Bilton's on-again, off-again love affair with Apple's intelligent assistant seems to be familiar territory for some other iPhone 4S users. He notes that "Many people I have spoken to have switched Siri off and reverted to the iPhone's voice dictation service, which is more reliable because it doesn't use Siri's artificial intelligence software."

According to Bilton, Gene Munster -- our favorite securities analyst from Piper Jaffray -- ran a series of 1,600 voice tests with Siri. It could hear requests fairly well, understanding 89 percent of requests made in a quiet room and 83 percent of those made on a noisy city street. But Siri's understanding isn't that great; Munster said that it could only accurately answer a question 68 percent of the time in a quiet room or 62 percent of the time on the street.

Munster gave Siri a "D" and says that the beta service needs to sharply improve. Bilton has spurned Siri for another sexy voice, that of Google Voice Search on Android phones. He may not realize he can already use that same technology via the free Google Search app on his iPhone 4S.

The public seems to still have a fondness for Siri. A survey by John Barrett of Parks Associates cited in Bilton's article showing that 55 percent of respondents gave Siri a high rating, 21 percent said it was "satisfactory," and only 10 percent completely dissatisfied with it.

For me, I've found that the more I use Siri, the better my success with her. Maybe Siri likes me just because I used her as the lead character in a book, but I still find her enchanting, helpful, and sometimes mysterious. Don't worry about that breakup with Nick Bilton, Siri; you'll always have me, even if my love is a bit one-sided...

Siri's novelty is wearing off ... for some originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 16 Jul 2012 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Siri's novelty is wearing off ... for some originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 16 Jul 2012 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Developers who are enrolled in the iOS 6 beta are now able to see a new iCloud Beta portal at beta.icloud.com that is complete with new versions of Calendar and Find My iPhone, as well as two new iCloud additions -- Reminders and Notes.

The expected timeframe for the general release of the new iCloud features is the same time that iOS 6 launches -- this fall. Changes that are apparent in the beta (according to a post on MacRumors) include a revision to Find My iPhone that shows the approximate battery life of the device you're trying to find, a web version of the iOS Notes app complete with yellow lined paper, a web version of the iOS (and soon OS X Mountain Lion) Reminders app.

Apple announced during the WWDC 2012 keynote that more than 125 million people now use iCloud. It's good to see that all platforms -- OS X, iOS, and the Web -- will have nearly identical apps by this fall.

Apple tests new iCloud beta features originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 03 Jul 2012 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Apple tests new iCloud beta features originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 03 Jul 2012 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Update: Here's the link that'll let you skip the queue.

The cloud-based family photo manager ThisLife has been percolating in development for a couple of years, but with a new $2.75m round of investment and a fresh look, the service is almost ready for prime time. As part of the beta phase, ThisLife is offering both a Mac uploader tool for photos and an updated iOS app to help you organize and display your images or videos.

ThisLife will happily ingest photos and movie clips from a slew of online sources (Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, Kodak, Smugmug, Shutterfly, Picasa or Twitter), in addition to direct uploading with the desktop tool or simply emailing your photos to the service. The desktop uploader can optionally grab photos directly from iPhoto -- either all at once or individually, your choice -- or import them from SD cards as they're mounted on your Mac.

Once the photos are loaded to ThisLife, the magic begins. The service keeps a Library of all your images, and you flag your favorites to be called out as Moments; the Moments are what make up your Timeline, the virtual scrapbook of your family. If you're trying to track kid photos over several years without getting bogged down in fifteen near-identical snapshots of the messy spaghetti incident, this is a big help.

ThisLife also includes impressive face recognition, which will be familiar to anyone who's used the current iPhoto app; you knock out the faces that don't match, and ThisLife automatically tags recognized images with the person's name. Photos that are tagged on Facebook match up with ThisLife faces instantly, no manual tagging needed.

The web app and the iOS app are both a pleasure to look at, with an uncluttered design and responsive viewing; the web app even lets you choose between Flash and HTML5 versions. Sharing options include giving a spouse or grandparent co-curator access to a complete set of images ("sharing your Life," and the service supports multiple Life collections); individual Moments can be shared by email or social networks. A more comprehensive Moment sharing model with persistent access is coming soon.

ThisLife may not be a one-to-one replacement for MobileMe Galleries -- and with less than three days left to go before MobileMe sunsets, it's a little late to be looking for that at this juncture -- but it's got a solid foundation and an interesting approach to the challenge of managing family photos. The company was founded by a husband & wife team who simply wanted to organize their images, and the product remains focused on the specific issues of photos and family.

Invite-only registration for ThisLife is ongoing, so you can sign up at the site (or check back here later today for a TUAW-only invite link that lets you jump the queue). The service is free for up to 1,000 photos or an hour of video clips; after that, plans start at $7.99/month ($79.99 a year) for 20,000 photos.

Note: Commenter Jayne is concerned about the "entire iPhoto library import" -- please note that is optional, not mandatory.

ThisLife rolls out iOS app, Mac uploader for family photo service (Updated) originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 28 Jun 2012 08:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

ThisLife rolls out iOS app, Mac uploader for family photo service (Updated) originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 28 Jun 2012 08:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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An update to the OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion Developer Preview 4 was released yesterday afternoon, and the Twittersphere was immediately filled with missives about the features people were finding. A tweet by @Lhunar pointed out a new "Mountain Lion Security Updates" system.

The system apparently does daily checks looking for security updates, downloading and installing them automatically or upon restarting your Mac. This shows Apple's growing concern about malware attacks on the Mac platform, particularly after the Flashback attack earlier this year. The system also includes a more secure connection to Apple's update servers.

For developers who have downloaded and installed Mountain Lion Developer Preview 4, the update is a 1.16 GB download. Apple requests that those developers "[i]nstall this update as soon as possible."

Mountain Lion will be available next month via the Mac App Store for US$19.99.

Apple adds new security feature to Mountain Lion preview originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 26 Jun 2012 10:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Apple adds new security feature to Mountain Lion preview originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 26 Jun 2012 10:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ten One Design has brought a number of well-received accessories to the iOS world, including the recently announced Magnus iPad stand. Now the company has taken the wraps off of a new pressure sensitive stylus that it is publicly stating as "our first product for the iPad 3."

Dubbed "Project Blue Tiger", the stylus uses Bluetooth 4.0 to automatically link with an iPad or iPhone with no pairing required. The width of the line drawn by the stylus is controlled by pressure, and there's a tiny multi-colored LED that displays the current color of "ink" being dispensed by the virtual pen.

Before you rush out and order one of the as-yet-unnamed styluses, please understand that Ten One Design hasn't yet made the decision to produce the device. As Ten One states on their website, the product will ship after being approved by the FCC, and if there is enough developer support. The company has developed a free API to allow developers to integrate the stylus with their drawing or painting apps.

Full details of the stylus, including the name and price, should be available soon. Be sure to check out the demo video below.

[via MacStories]

Ten One Design outs iPad 3 pressure sensitive Bluetooth stylus originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 05 Mar 2012 18:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Ten One Design outs iPad 3 pressure sensitive Bluetooth stylus originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 05 Mar 2012 18:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Every time a developer preview of a new version of Mac OS X or iOS arrives, we at TUAW wait for the onslaught of emails telling us about the favorite apps that did or did not work, peripherals that suddenly won't work, or machines that end up being totally borked. Jason O'Grady at ZDNet has written a wonderful cautionary tale about what might happen if you pull the tail of Apple's OS X Mountain Lion.

O'Grady installed OS X Mountain Lion DP1 on a backup 11" MacBook Air and basically loved the new OS and how well it worked with most of his existing apps. He was impressed with the integration of iOS capabilities and the improved security. And then all hell broke loose.

While working with eBay client iSale on the MBA, things started going bad -- the app crashed repeatedly. So O'Grady decided to try a reboot ... which didn't work. To make a long story short, he "elected to take the "nuke and pave" option. I ended up booting from my Lion flash drive, reformatting the SSD and re-installing the relatively stable Mac OS 10.7 (non-Mountain) Lion. Patching it up and calling it a day."

O'Grady ends the post with a reminder that all of us who are anxious to try out developer previews need to have pounded into our brains every time Apple tempts us with a new and shiny OS release -- don't install developer previews on production machines, and always assume that the worst will happen. As O'Grady found out, sometimes that worst possible case does happen and in this situation, you'll be mauled by an angry Mountain Lion.

Mountain Lion: It's called a developer preview for a reason originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 27 Feb 2012 12:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Mountain Lion: It's called a developer preview for a reason originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 27 Feb 2012 12:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Last year, Things developer Cultured Code announced a cloud syncing service for the Mac (US$49.99), iPad ($19.99), and iPhone/iPod touch ($9.99) versions of their to-do app. Now the company has finally announced the availability of the public beta of Things Cloud.

Prior to today, Cultured Code was adding beta testers through an invitation-only beta test. According to the developer's blog, more than 35,000 testers have been putting the sync service through its paces. At the present time, the service creates an extra database so that existing user data is untouched. Their next step will be to turn on the ability to import existing databases into the beta.

Cultured Code says that they've received "incredible feedback" from their users about the beta, saying that Things Cloud is fast and stable. Some users have apparently created large databases to test the capabilities of Things Cloud, although the company notes that they need to "work out some kinds and performance bottlenecks related to such large databases."

Things has been a popular to-do app and project manager, winning an Apple Design Award in 2009. Cultured Code has been slow to create a cloud syncing solution, earning the criticism of Things users who pointed out that other to-do apps like OmniFocus and Firetask were able to move to the cloud quickly. The availability of the public beta is a sign that the long wait may finally be near an end.

Things Cloud public beta goes live originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 21 Feb 2012 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Things Cloud public beta goes live originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 21 Feb 2012 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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According to information sent to TUAW by developers, there are no known issues with the seed, which indicates that 10.7.2 may be released in the near future. Apple has asked developers to focus on the functionality of AirPort (Wi-Fi), AppKit, Graphics Drivers, the Mac App Store, Mail, and Spotlight.

The first update to Lion, OS X Lion 10.7.1, was released six days ago and addressed issues with Wi-Fi, Migration Assistant, video playback in Safari, and a problem with audio playback when using HDMI or optical audio out.

OS X Lion 10.7.2 seed 2 now available for developers originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 23 Aug 2011 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

OS X Lion 10.7.2 seed 2 now available for developers originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 23 Aug 2011 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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