MacMage has just released a clever little app that aims to make keeping track of your small purchases easy as pie ($7.99 for that pie). Cents ($4.99 for a full license) sits in your menubar and patiently waits for you to spend some money. Simply click the coin icon in your menubar, and the interface as seen to the right pops up. Enter the name of your purchase and how much you paid for it and you're well on your way to financial independence (priceless). You can also export your data from Cents for importing into your main financial tracking app.
Cents 1.0 requires OS X 10.5, and there is a free demo available though exporting is disabled.
One of the most surprising announcements from today's Apple shindig (at least to me) was the iFund from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. This $100 million fund will invest in companies, large or small, that want to develop innovative apps for both the iPhone and the iPod touch.
The iFund will invest anywhere from $100,000 to $15 million in funds for iPhone development. Check out the FAQ for more details.
Where's all that cash that Apple made from the iPhone and all those iPods, Macs, and iTunes downloads last year going? Why, right into Apple's mattress. According to the Financial Times, Apple currently has $18 billion sitting on their balance sheet, doing nothing much at all. And they're OK with that -- Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer recently said in the Q1 conference call that they like having that "flexibility." And after all, you never know when you might need to drop $18 billion on something important.
All that money doing nothing isn't so great for Apple's investors though, some of whom apparently want a piece of the pie. They might like to see dividends, stock buybacks, or even actual spending come out of that on Apple's part (later in the piece, I'm surprised to see that Apple only spends 3% of their sales on R&D, while Microsoft spends 14%). But no -- Apple is flush with cash from all their big sales numbers, and they want to apparently stay that way.
There are many good ways to manageyourmoney on a Mac (oh yeah, there's also QuickBooks). We at TUAW found yet another money management application for your Mac, and this one looks really good. MotiMotion's Prospects allows you to keep all of your banking accounts (and credit cards) organized with graphs, a register book, and more. When you start the program, you get an overview that has a graph of your assets and liabilities -- giving you the ability to see everything you need to.
In addition to pretty graphs of your cash, you also can create: budgets, reports, categories, rules, and more. You can import QIF, OFX, and QFX files from your online banking website or from other money management applications. So, if you are in the market for a good money management application, then you should give Prospects a try.
You can download Prospects from the MotiMotion website. They offer a free version that limits you to 100 transactions across your accounts or a single-user license for $35 (they also offer a family license for $10 more).
So as you may have seen on someothersites, there was a little bit of drama today around the iPhone unlock program written (in part) by our own Erica Sadun. Lots of rumors are flying around, and lots of folks have it almost right. But none of them knows the real story. And since Sadun works for us, we have kind of an inside track on what really happened. So here it is. First of all, Erica didn't write the unlock application itself. The iPhone Dev Team did that, and it apparently is a real, no-code-stolen software unlock-- put it on your iPhone, run it, and then use any SIM you want. Erica only started to write the barebones of a GUI application for the unlock, and gave that code to the dev team.
Which is where this haRRo person gets involved. He, a Belfast, UK man, is not a member of the dev team, but pretended to be. He apparently took Erica's code out of the IRC channel, with the intent of selling it as his own application. He even got an offer from an Australian company, $50k AUD, to allow the application he said he'd written.
But he didn't write it. At all. Because while yes, the code he tried to sell was updated from Erica's code, it wasn't by haRRo. He actually contacted another coder to do the job-- who we spoke with, and our IM conversation can be seen after the jump.
Cha-Ching, the streamlined money manager that aims to put the fun back finances, has made a minor update to v1.0.3 with some truly useful new features and fixes. At the top of the list is a database migration to Mac OS X's built-in SQLite to boost performance, as well as search enhancements for using multiple tags and searching both To and From fields, but that's not all. Included in the update are:
OFX and QFX support added
Can now sort transactions in Print Panel
Printing now uses already filtered list of transactions
Source pane can now be expanded much more
The update can be had either by running Cha-Ching (chose Check for Updates from the app menu if it doesn't check automatically), or by heading over to the Midnight Apps site.
Cha-Ching, Midnight Apps' handy Quicken-killer that takes the pain out of managing your money, has received a minor update to v0.5.2. While the notable changes like UI improvements, bug fixes and confirmation dialogs when deleting items aren't much to write home about, the third change from the emailed press release is what has me excited: "upgraded database in preparation for version 1.0." I spoke with Juan Alvarez, lead developer of Cha-Ching, about an ETA for 1.0, and it's apparently slated to land before the end of April with some rocking new features and changes. Cha-Ching itself has received a major overhaul in preparation for the big 1.0, so stay tuned for more details and some pre-release screenshots as soon as we can publish them.
Cha-Ching is a fantastic app, one of the very best out there for simply and elegantly managing your money on the Mac. I use it all the time! Erm... well, I would use it all the time, if I had any money to manage. No reason you can't enjoy manipulating your money with this great app though!
Version 0.5.1 brings mostly bug fixes, but bug fixes are important in beta apps, where a single bug sometimes mean a broken feature. Fixes include:
.Mac uploading issues.
Startup crash when iPod is connected.
Interface bugs.
QIF importing.
The developers are saying that 0.6 will include some big new features and larger updates, but aren't giving specifics.
Juan Alvarez, developer and CEO at Midnight Apps, gave a CocoaHeads presentation at the Apple Store Thursday night of the new 0.5 version of Cha-Ching, his slick money app that brings financial management out of the stone ages with the beauty of Mac OS X and Cocoa. While Cha-Ching is still in a half-1.0 beta status, it's a pretty impressive app powered by some slick innovation. Read on for some sexy screenshots and feature highlights of this latest version.
Midnight Apps has just released a major update to it's stupid-easy personal book-keeping software, Cha-Ching!. Version 0.4 brings a total interface overhaul, new features such as the ability to have a negative starting balance (for those starving art students such as yours-truly), associating files with transactions, as well as numerous bug fixes which fix Auto-complete and Autofill functionality.
Many might consider Cha-Ching! a pretty simple application, but for many people, simplicity is king. I don't need to be able to track taxes and all that stuff. I just want to know how many days I'll be eating ramen this month, and Cha-Ching! does just that, without all the cruft of other more complex apps.
Cha-Ching is available for $24.95, which is pricey, but is certainly worth it for an app that finally does something well the first time, and looks damn good doing it.
Moneydance 2006 (awkward name and all) is a well-rounded personal finance app with a nice selection of features including: online banking and bill payment, budget management, recurring transactions, investment tracking, report generation, Quicken/Money import, database encryption and a whole lot more.
It might be missing a few features when compared to big dogs like Quicken 2006, but it's priced accordingly: a license is $30 no matter what OS(es) you need it for, and when I say cross-platform, I mean it: Moneydance 2006 works on Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, Solaris, OS/2, and Unix. A fully functioning demo is available that allows for entering up to 100 transactions - so what are you waiting for? Go grab a copy and stop making excuses for ending up budget-less and broke every month.
...all monetary amounts translate into Apple/computer/gadget purchases. Let me explain.
A friend of mine
told me he lost his wallet containing $300 on the bus the other day (he since recovered the wallet, cash and all). I
then told a fellow Mac using friend about this unfortunate event, and the first thing he says is "Yikes! That's
almost a mini!" (To be fair, this friend is in the market for a Mac mini.) This dialog got me wondering:
how bad can tech lust get?
I'm not talking about the Apple fanboys who can't resist the urge to bash Windows
and blindly proclaim Apple's infallibility and perfect security track record (even though neither exist) on every blog
post and forum thread they invade. I'm asking: what lengths or depths have you or a family member/friend gone to for
that *one* gadget, or for the Mac you're reading this on now? Feel free to share your stories of obsession and
desperation involving Macs and gadgets - we won't hold them against you (much).
iBiz is a great time and billing management app for those who are
self-employed or otherwise might have a need for keeping track of their projects, right down to the minute and dime. It
integrates well with Address Book and iCal for all your contact and todo needs, which is great, for example, if a client
would like to see a published calendar of the time you've spent on their project.
iBiz also acts a bit like a
file/project management dashboard, as you can associate files with a project in iBiz and automatically start timing you
work when you open the file from within the app. Once a project is done, iBiz also offers a healthy array of invoice
options, ready for print, PDF and/or email. Networking capabilities are also baked in, with an iBiz Server edition
available, but I don't work in that environment so I don't have much to say on that end.
It looks like we
haven't mentioned iBiz on TUAW before, but I can personally vouch for it as a great app since I've been using it for a
couple years now. This latest update brings it to version 2.5 with better iBank integration and bug fixes, and also
adds Universal Binary goodness. A 10-day demo is available, while a single user license will run you a mere $29.99.
MacDailyNews is reporting that, just yesterday,
Apple's market worth (price of shares multiplied by number of shares outstanding) has hit $72,132,428,843, surpassing
Dell's $71,970,702,760. This sounds like quite the feat for a computer company that has only ~6% of the market.
Nice work
Jobs, Ive and company. Just don't let it go to your heads. The day you start cranking out $300 Macs with underpowered
power supplies and a whole bunch of "sign up now!" spyware pre-installed is the day you'll have a revolt on
your hands.
Ok I
realize innovation is great and all, but innovation with a purpose is even better. Unfortunately, this new "iPod-based payment system" that Engadget
found doesn't quite seem to reach the "hey I'd use that!" mark.
Ingenico, a French company, has
devised a way of embedding payment information in an MP3, and they're even working on boarding passes and biometric
information. Now I don't know much about the inner workings of FM, but isn't it a broadcast technology? Meaning:
wouldn't anyone be able to receive anything you transmit out through your iTrip?
Minor complications aside,
at least Ingenico recognizes the pointlessness of this, as stated in a press release: "While this demonstration
may not be a sign of what the future holds, it certainly proves Ingenico's ability to innovate for the benefit of its
current and future customers." Translation: "This is completely useless but hey, aint we%uFFFD cool?"
Hopefully, we won't hear anything like this out of Apple again anytime soon (*ahem*, ROKR).
MacMage has just released a clever little app that aims to make keeping track of your small purchases easy as pie ($7.99 for that pie). Cents ($4.99 for a full license) sits in your menubar and patiently waits for you to spend some money. Simply click the coin icon in your menubar, and the interface as seen to the right pops up. Enter the name of your purchase and how much you paid for it and you're well on your way to financial independence (priceless). You can also export your data from Cents for importing into your main financial tracking app.
One of the most surprising announcements from today's 
Where's all that cash that Apple made from the iPhone and all those iPods, Macs, and iTunes downloads last year going? Why, right into Apple's mattress. According to 
So as you may have seen on 
Cha-Ching, the streamlined money manager that aims to put the fun back finances, has made a minor update to v1.0.3 with some truly 
...all monetary amounts translate into Apple/computer/gadget purchases. Let me explain.
MacDailyNews is 
Ok I
realize innovation is great and all, but innovation with a purpose is even better. Unfortunately, this new "
