by Sometimes it’s tough to keep up with all the Mac-app updates and new releases, especially over the holidays. Your friends at Macworld have put together a selection of notable new arrivals.
Acorn 3.5: Gus Mueller’s most excellent graphics editing app has received an update with lots of bug fixes and a number of new features, such as the capability to extract and save a single layer from an image. Scripting fans have also gained a few additional APIs that let them interact more closely with the app. Although not a match for heavyweights like Photoshop, Acorn is more than capable of satisfying the vast majority of everyday image-manipulation activities—plus, unlike most of its competition, it’s dead-simple to use, and it will set you back only $50 (updates are free for existing users).
Adium 1.5.4: If the Messages app has got you down, chances are you’ve sought refuge in the ever-popular Adium, a free and open-source instant-messaging client that’s been a mainstay of the Mac community for years. The project’s latest release, 1.5.4, brings a few improvements. The most significant is better notification support thanks to compatibility with Growl 2.0 and, more important, OS X Mountain Lion’s Notification Center—a piece of welcome news for anyone tired of having to switch windows every time a new instant message arrives. A number of security fixes and performance improvements round out the release.
BusyCal 2.0.1: There’s no such thing as perfection, as all developers find out the moment their software gets in the hands of more than one person. Faced with this reality, developers are usually hard at work on updates as soon as an initial version ships. That’s probably what happened to the developers at BusyMac, who just released version 2.0.1 of the company’s flagship product. As can be expected from this kind of release, most of the items in the release notes include some variation of “Fix,” and that, of course, is great news. BusyCal (
), which costs $30, is a standout calendaring app that helps you get your life organized by integrating your schedule with all sorts of additional information (like weather data) and showing it to you in a variety of different formats.
To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
