Tools Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Acorn updated to version 3.5, lots of new options and tools

by Mike Schramm (Oct 11th, 2012)

Photo-editing app Acorn has been updated to version 3.5, and with that update comes plenty of new features to check out. The Magic Wand tool has been updated with the ability to do contiguous or non-contiguous selections, you can now export just a single layer out of the app, there are some new ...

DevJuice: PaintCode offers resolution independent design

by Erica Sadun (Aug 20th, 2012)

PaintCode (US$99.99) is a vector drawing app that generates Quartz and Core Graphics Objective-C (and C#/MonoTouch) drawing code. First released this March, the app was inspired by Apple's introduction of the Retina iPad. It allows developers to create resolution-independent art that adapts to ...

NaNoWriMo: Some helpful hints and tools

by Steven Sande (Oct 29th, 2011)

This morning, I noticed a tweet from @rvbelzen that said, "As a NaNoWriMo veteran, do you have any tips for this NaNoWriMo newbie, maybe an article you wrote about it?" Most of the posts that I've done about National Novel Writing Month for TUAW have focused on the tools, not on the technique. ...

TUAW's Daily Mac App: IceClean

by Samuel Gibbs (Jul 15th, 2011)

OS X does a pretty good job of maintaining itself due to its Unix core, but there are times when you'd like to run some of its self maintenance tasks manually, and that's where IceClean comes in. Just using the built-in Unix System Tasks that underlay OS X, you can clean out system caches for ...

Adobe adds support for iOS development into Flash Builder, Flex

by Kelly Hodgkins (Jun 20th, 2011)

Adobe has updated its Adobe Flash Builder 4.5 and Flex 4.5 tools to support the Apple iPad and iPhone as well as the BlackBerry PlayBook. The app development tools let a developer build one app and distribute it across multiple platforms. Developers can add support for tabbed applications and ...

Apple loosens reins, allows 3rd party iOS dev tools with caveat

by Dave Caolo (Sep 9th, 2010)

Here's a surprise we didn't expect this morning -- or ever, for that matter -- Apple has changed its stance on iOS app development, now allowing all tools "...as long as the resulting apps do not download any code." Theoretically, this would include Adobe Flash CS5 but certainly includes tools like ...

Rumor: Adobe to sue Apple over SDK rules

by Mel Martin (Apr 15th, 2010)

This seemed like it was destined to happen; word out of Silicon Valley is that Adobe is planning a big lawsuit against Apple for keeping Flash off of the iPhone and iPad platforms. The final straw, apparently, was a change in Apple's SDK language prohibiting apps to be written with anything other ...

iPhone devsugar: Simple table badges

by Erica Sadun (Jan 7th, 2010)

TUAW's devsugar series helps introduce developers to tools and tricks that they might not yet be familiar with. Today's tip centers on table-level badging and how to simply and easily add badged cells to your iPhone Xcode projects. Badges are a natural partner for table view cells. When working ...

Sketches 2 available now for creating even better art on your iPhone

by Mike Schramm (Dec 22nd, 2009)

Our friends at LateNiteSoft sent word that they've updated Sketches, one of the first iPhone apps I ever picked up, to version 2.0. The app has been released [iTunes link] as an entirely new download, so even upgraders from version 1 will have to pay the current price of $1.99. LateNiteSoft tells ...

Friday Favorite: Mactracker

by Dave Caolo (Aug 7th, 2009)

Another Friday Favorite, our weekly opportunity to gush over one of our favorite apps. This week's favorite is a must-have reference for all Apple fans. Mactracker has been around for as long as I can remember and is indispensable. It provides exhaustive information on every Apple product, from the ...

Call Recorder 2.3 released

by Christina Warren (Feb 13th, 2008)

We use Skype for the TUAW Talkcast and recently, our host and podcasting guru (OK, not guru, but he is the host and we like him), Michael Rose, has been looking at possibly using Ecamm's Call Recorder 2 plugin as an option for recording our weekly talkcasts. I actually have used it to record both ...

Beta Beat: Photonic adds Leopard goodness to Flickr

by Brett Terpstra (Feb 8th, 2008)

I am, admittedly, a fan of desktop apps that keep me from having to wade through immense websites, especially when said desktop apps are significantly better looking than said websites. Photonic, which was just released as an open beta, is one such application. It brings beauty and class to Flickr ...

Torque Game Builder 1.7 helps indie game developers

by Mike Schramm (Jan 31st, 2008)

Good news for indie game designers on OS X -- GarageGames has released version 1.7 of their Torque Game Builder, which allows programmers to create games for almost any platform from within an OS X interface. This latest release improves the editors for link points and collision polygons, as well as ...

Cocktail Tiger edition goes to 4.0.1, Leopard edition 4.0.2

by Mike Schramm (Jan 26th, 2008)

Just in case you haven't yet upgraded to Leopard, but still love using Cocktail (that crazy mix of Unix functions for OS X), Maintain has released version 4.0.1 of their Tiger edition. They've fixed some compatibility problems with QuickTime, and added support for clearing font caches in Microsoft ...

An overview of Leopard for developers

by Mike Schramm (Oct 29th, 2007)

If you haven't seen this roundup yet, Matt Gemmell's huge list of everything Leopard can do for developers is pretty amazing. It's a bit on the technical side, but worry not-- about 1/4 of the way down the page you'll think that this is a list only for developers, and if you keep scrolling you'll ...