Brett Terpstra

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Brett Terpstra has been tinkering with computers since he hooked his first cassette recorder up to a PC Jr. to back up his LOGO programs. A silicon journey through Commodores, Trash-80s, the Apple II alphabet and a plethora of PCs finally led him to embrace the Mac, and only the Mac.

He makes his living as a web developer and graphic designer, and spends the money he earns on indie software and as many peripherals as he can lay his hands on.

In what some would consider free time, he avidly pursues knowledge in the areas of design, programming, hardware hacking, personal productivity and other things that make him unpopular at parties. He does not enjoy long walks on the beach, or sleeping.

Brett Terpstra's Latest Posts

Mac 101: Using Keynote as Motion in a bind (Updated)

by Brett Terpstra (Jun 9th 2011 5:00AM)

Update: KeynoteUser.com notes that it's easy to export your Keynote animations with an alpha channel, making it much simpler to work with them in pro editing apps or in Motion. On this trip to WWDC I packed light. One backpack, a MacBook Air and a camera light. I haven't had my Air for very ...

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Prototypes makes iPhone mockups a breeze

by Brett Terpstra (Jun 1st 2011 10:00AM)

This is a cool one, at least for iPhone app designers. Prototypes is a Mac app that lets you take those handcrafted mockups of iPhone screens and turn them into a clickable demo you can share with any iPhone or iPod touch user. Prototypes takes just about any image format, including straight ...

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Code Pilot 2.0 with Xcode 4 compatibility

by Brett Terpstra (May 31st 2011 3:00AM)

Macoscope has released version 2.0 of its Xcode navigation plug-in, Code Pilot. Technically, it's still a beta -- judging from the 2.0b6 version number -- but it's been rock solid for me so far. This version brings Xcode 4 compatibility and a revamped interface. If you code and you haven't ...

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Byword 1.2, now with Markdown support

by Brett Terpstra (May 23rd 2011 10:00AM)

Byword is a full-screen, "distraction-free" word processor that has an interesting twist: it focuses on just the text around your cursor (or even just the current line), dimming the rest of your composition so that even that can't distract you. Byword (and its predecessors) are based on the idea ...

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New Core version of Curio in the Mac App Store

by Brett Terpstra (May 16th 2011 9:00AM)

We've mentioned the brainstorming, mind mapping, project managing notebook application Curio a few times before. The full version, Curio Professional, runs US$169.99, and the Standard version is $119.99, and both are well worth it in this blogger's opinion. Today, however, Curio announced a new ...

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Rock the electronic with SynthTronica for iPad

by Brett Terpstra (May 16th 2011 6:00AM)

SynthTronica is a new synthesizer app for iPad that provides some seriously cool audio modeling features. If you're a musician looking for some new sounds or even a live-performance instrument, this is worth a look. Even for the hobbyist, this US$4.99 app is a great way to explore some musical ...

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History 3D brings the Civil War to life

by Brett Terpstra (Apr 12th 2011 9:00AM)

Just in time for the anniversary of the Civil War, History 3D for iPad brings the past to life. If you have a pair of anaglyph 3D glasses (the red and blue kind) handy, it gets even better. There are two dozen pictures to view in black and white and anaglyph 3D. The 3D images were taken using ...

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QuickCal for Mac: natural language events and todos for iCal

by Brett Terpstra (Mar 25th 2011 11:30AM)

QuickCal has been one of my favorite ways to add items to iCal. It started with a Dashboard widget that let me use natural language to add calendar events. I loved it (actually wrote about it back in '09). Then it became an iOS app, QuickCal Mobile, and I was able to add entries with blazing ...

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ColorSchemer Studio in the Mac App Store, and TUAW has free licenses!

by Brett Terpstra (Mar 21st 2011 1:00PM)

ColorSchemer Studio, my favorite Mac app for designing color combinations and palettes, is now available on the Mac App Store. I've mentioned it a few times before, and we've had a few licenses to give away in the past. To celebrate the arrival in the Mac App Store, ColorSchemer has given us three ...

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ScreenFloat, a great productivity booster for Mac

by Brett Terpstra (Mar 15th 2011 5:30PM)

ScreenFloat, now available on the Mac App Store, is a small utility that does one simple thing: float screenshots above all your other windows. Seems silly at first, right? It's not. I've been beta testing this app for over a year, and every time I open it, I'm amazed at how useful this ...

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