StyleMac.com » Apple

InstaMac Shared in Brazilian Magazine Mac+

B. Terhechte — Thu, 05 May 2011 22:39:22 +0000

The current issue of the biggest Brazilian Mac Magazine, Mac+, features a review of InstaDesk.

Also, The Unofficial Apple Weblog just chose InstaDesk to be the App Of The Day today. We’re so excited about this.

New App: GlobeTrotter – The Timezone Calculator

B. Terhechte — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 19:42:56 +0000

GlobeTrotter is a new iPhone app for everyone who frequently has to work with or depends on people in different timezones. It offers easy and quick timezone calculations. Without hassle, without calculation errors. Set up unlimited timezones and see how they relate to each other:

What time is it in Tokio if it is 3PM in New York.

For everyone who finds himself calculating timezone differences ever so often because the built-in iPhone app doesn’t cut it, Globetrotter is the perfect, solution. Guaranteed.

Find out more about GlobeTrotter for iPhone or iPod Touch

StyleMac 2.0

B. Terhechte — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 22:25:06 +0000

Back in 2005, when StyleMac started, we had high expectations. We wanted to create a Weblog that was primary based on the topics of Apple / Mac OS X, Design and Software Development / Unix. Touching all subjects that someone interested in creative work might find interesting. As StyleMac started to grow, however, it became ever more clear, that continuing on said ideals was impossible next to a day-job as StyleMac has always just been a evening project. And since the Site couldn’t hardly pay our rent, we decided to cut the time we spent in the site. From that point onward, StyleMac has seen ups and downs – mostly downs. With little content having been added since the inital first 5 months.
Now, almost 4 years after going life, StyleMac will change. Instead of trying to offer news on above topics, it will lead as the hub for all the Mac and iPhone applications we developed over the years. So the StyleMac News Blog will transform into StyleMac – Joyful Apple Software.
In addition to that, there’ll be interesting tidbits on Cocoa, Apple, Unix or Software Development. But always only then, if we encounter it in one of our projects.
Wrapping it all up: StyleMac is Dead, long live StyleMac. From now on this site will function as the information hub for our Software Developments. And since we needed something to celebrate this event, we rewrote our Safarilicious Software from the ground up, and released it just as well today:

Safarilicious 1.0
Rewritten from the ground up, universal binary, Leopard compatible, way better UI and lots of new features. Enjoy!

And a major update for OweMe is also in the works.

PS: You’ll notice that the links for our products will lead to subdomains of www.terhech.de. That’s an unfortunate side-effect of the previous state of the old StyleMac but will be resolved soon.

Thanks for your patience,
Benedikt Terhechte

iPhone Experiment One: Happiness

B. Terhechte — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 23:42:24 +0000

Back in March last year, when the first version of the iPhone SDK beta appeared, I downloaded it, installed it, and hid myself in my room for a whole weekend in order to dig into it. Back then it wasn’t possible to applications test on the iPhone itself (except for those lucky few, who were allowed to join the Developer Program), and given the reports of differences between the real device and the simulator I decided against continuing iPhone development until I could test on the device itself.

Some months ago I finally got into the iPhone Developer Program and started developing applications again. Since I’m most of the time rather busy with my job, university stuff and other things I couldn’t really invest too many ressources into this.

However, I finished my first application recently and got it into the App Store: Happiness.
Here’s the description:

Need a mood change? Are you in a sad or bad mood and need an uplift? Something happy, comforting, delightful? This is where happiness comes in. This app will change your mood within a few seconds.
The basic idea has been verified in many scientific studies. If we see a smile, if we hear leughter, and if we experience a relaxing situation, then this will lead to more happiness and joy.

Happiness creates a happy mood through comforting pictures and the relaxing sound of many a laugh.

It was a very interesting and fun project. I learned a lot along the way and even managed to bring in some of the things I learned at the university (mood management theory).

In case you’re interested, feel free to visit the details page or head directly for the App Store Entry.

Steve Jobs taking a medical leave

B. Terhechte — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 22:24:12 +0000

The NY Times is reporting that Steve’s rumoured health issues seem to be more complex than initialy thought. Thus Steve will take a time out until June in order to treat the ‘hormon imbalance’.
Let’s hope that we’ll see a healthy and fit Steve Jobs at this years WWDC.

via the New York Times

Nokia (Trolltech) releases Qt under LGPL

B. Terhechte — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 19:53:20 +0000

Last year Nokia aquired the Norwegian company ‘Trolltech’ in order to gain access to their very popular cross plattform framework ‘Qt’. Qt builds the foundation for the KDE desktop and has been able to gain a lot of very attractive developer features over the years. Just recently they added a strong graphical framework which comes in many ways very close to CoreAnimation (or rather the CALayer technology sans the animation features). One strong argument for Qt are the cross plattform possibilities. Qt works on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and several mobile devices which makes it very, very interesting for developers toying with the idea of cross plattform development.

One severe problem has always been the restrictive Qt license. One could develop for free, as long as the resulting application was going to be released as open source. As soon as one would develop a commercial application, one had to buy a rather expensive (especially for indy developers) license.

Long story short: Nokia just released Qt under the LGPL license which means that one can build commercial applications using Qt, without having to buy said expensive licenses.
This would allow many a developer to start developing his new application cross plattform instead of focusing on just one plattform. All in all, this could result in a greater variety of new Mac OS X compatible applications, as the usage of Qt for a Windows application would automatically result in Mac and Linux versions as well.

The iPhone Nano, 2

B. Terhechte — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 20:38:18 +0000

TUAW has a small article mentioning at additional leakage and rumours hinting at a possible iPhone Nano. As I wrote just some days ago, I doubt this due to the fact that Steve won’t be at MacWorld Expo. There’s something I’d not thought about though. Maybe the rumours regarding Steve’s pancreatic cancer really are closer to the truth than we fear. So my take is, that if there’ll actually be an iPhone Nano, it could be considered as a solid point hinting at a worsened situation regarding Steve Jobs health.
A new Mac Mini, a new iMac, sure, that could be a Phillnote just as well – but the iPhone, Steve’s Wunderkind?

The iPhone Nano

B. Terhechte — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 14:59:07 +0000

So, there’re new rumours regarding an alleged iPhone Nano. This time there’s even a picture illustrating the new device. I think that this is once again fake. For one, Apple just axed Steve’s speech at this MacWorld. If there really was an iPhone Nano, wouldn’t Steve Jobs want to disclose it to the public himself, instead of letting Phil Schiller do it?

Another doubt comes with the sole idea of a minimized version of the iPhone. A large deal of the iPhone experience comes from the App Store. These applications have been written for the specific display resolution of the current iPhone / iPod Touch hardware. A new device with a smaller screen wouldn’t be able to sufficiently run these applications. I highly doubt that Apple would want a differentiated device landscape, where every developer has to include countless special cases in his code to account for all the quirks of the different devices available (much like with web development).

So, given that there’s not Steve Jobs at MacWorld, and that an iPhone Nano presumably wouldn’t be able to run App Store applications, I highly doubt the existence of an iPhone Nano. I hope I am wrong though, as a cheap iPhone would expand the App Store audience even further.

Apple threatens to close iTunes

BradHall — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 18:40:10 +0000

The Copyright Royalty Board is deliberating right now as to whether the royalties paid to music publishers and writers would be increased to 15 cent.

Currently, Apple pays 9 cent per song to the publishers.

Apple states that an increase in price for royalties will end iTunes’ profitability.

Apple threatens to close iTunes

Steve Jobs: Still Alive

BradHall — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 16:27:04 +0000

Most big newspaper organizations have obituaries written in advance for almost every celebrity, whether or not that person is close to death. This is done so that if a celebrity does die unexpectedly, they can rush in, fill in a few details, and publish the obituary within minutes.

Of course, when people are involved, accidents do happen. Yesterday around 4:30PM EST, Bloomberg accidentally published their most recent obituary for Steve Jobs. Presumably, the obituary went live accidentally while the writer did touch-ups.

Steve Jobs, who had been battling pancreatic cancer over the past several years, is not dead yet.