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MacMall discounts iPads, Macs and more in Black Friday sale

Cody Lee ∙ Updated October 12, 2018

Continuing on with our Black Friday coverage this week, popular online retailer MacMall has kicked off its big holiday sales event today. The deals, which will be good through midnight on November 29, include significant discounts on Macs, iPads and more.

Among the discounted products is the all-new iPad Air. MacMall is offering various deals on Apple's latest tablet, starting at $41 off for the 16GB Wi-Fi model all the way up to $70 off the 128GB. And it's taking $102 off all MacBook Airs and 13" MacBook Pros...

Hands-free ‘OK Google’ search comes to your Mac

Christian Zibreg ∙ November 27, 2013

Yours truly is a huge fan of Google Now so it goes without saying I've long been yearning for that kind of hands-free voice searching on my Mac desktops and notebooks. Available via Google's free Search app for the iPhone and iPad since November 5, the cool feature dutifully listens to the 'OK Google' keyword which initiates a voice search. It's severely crippled, too, as 'OK Google' only works if the Search app is running, as opposed to the always-on implementation on the Nexus 5 and Moto X.

Blame it on Apple's strict policy that prohibits third-parties from listening to the microphone input in the background. Well, there are no such restrictions on Macs (yet) and Google has taken advantage of the fact and released a nice little extension for its browser allowing you to talk to Google (when you're using Chrome) hands-free, no typing required...

Digital scrapbook app Ember coming to iPhone and iPad in December

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 23, 2018

Ember, a digital scrapbook app from the Clear to-do app's creator Realmac Software, arrived back in July as a rather pricey $49.99 Mac App Store download. Despite its punishing price tag, I wrote that Ember struck me as an Evernote replacement I’ve long been yearning for. The team has since added a few new features such as Smart Drawing, Colours and iCloud sync, while squashing dozens of bugs.

And now, they've confirmed that the iOS version will be available in December. This is great news as I can now introduce Ember into my daily workflow, hopefully being able to jot down notes, create journals and manage my notebooks on whatever device I happen to be using, be it a Mac, iPad, iPhone or iPod touch...

Red Mac Pro designed by Jony Ive, Marc Newson sells for $977,000 at auction

Cody Lee ∙ Updated March 15, 2018

Remember that beautiful, one-of-a-kind red Mac Pro designed by Apple's Jony Ive and Marc Newson we told you about last month? Well it and several other items designed by the pair sold this weekend at their Sotheby’s (RED) Auction in New York.

And as with most high-profile charity auctions, the selling prices for most of these items were pretty ridiculous. The Mac Pro, for example, was expected to sell for between $40,000 and $60,000, but it ended up selling for just shy of a million dollars...

Apple adds new features to iWork for iOS and Mac

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated September 17, 2017

As you know, Apple earlier in the month has promised to bring back dozens of recently-removed iWork features over the course of six months. In keeping with that promise, a barrage of updates has gone live Wednesday on the App Store and Mac App Store, adding new capabilities to the iWork suite of applications on Macs, iPhones, iPads and iPods.

This is the first major refresh since last month's downgrade stealthily removed arguably less popular though essential features in favor of cross-platform document compatibility between OS X, iOS and the web.

I've included full release notes and a couple of highlights right after the break...

Good deal: 88% off Mac software bundle

Cody Lee ∙ Updated April 14, 2018

A little over a week from now, retailers everywhere are going to open their doors to hordes of holiday shoppers as they rush towards their must-have items. Everything from TVs to iPads will be heavily discounted for what is known as Black Friday.

But these holiday sales aren't just limited to consumer electronics—take this new Black Friday Mac Bundle from Stack Social, for example. The deal site is offering up a package of 11 popular Mac apps (well 10 apps and 1 game) at an 88% discount...

Good deal: get Parallels + 7 awesome Mac apps for one super low price

Christian Zibreg ∙ November 20, 2013

Black Friday is nine days away, but that's not stopping companies from advertising huge holiday discounts like there's no tomorrow. Notable deals Cody told you about in the past week or so include 28% off the iPhone-controlled Cobra iHelicopter, 46% off id America's iPhone 5/5s accessory bundle, 55% off Jony Ive and Inside Steve’s Brain book combo and more.

You can put Parallels on your shopping list as the virtualization company is now offering eight great Mac apps for the price of Parallels Desktop 9 alone - that's 82 percent off or a cool $356 in savings right off the bat...

Tweetbot for Mac updated with quick notification replies, smoother scrolling

Cody Lee ∙ November 20, 2013

Tapbots has updated Tweetbot for Mac this afternoon, bringing the app to version 1.4. The update brings about the ability for OS X Mavericks users to reply to tweets or direct messages, directly from notifications.

The new app also includes a number of other welcome improvements as well, such as smoother scrolling (10.9 only) and faster refreshing on lists and saved searches. And as usual, there are a flurry of bug fixes...

How to launch Mac apps from unidentified developers on a case by case basis

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated January 18, 2016

OS X has a feature that prevents apps from unidentified developers from launching out of the box. While this is a noble cause, it presents issues when launching legitimate apps from great developers that don't happen to be on Apple's whitelist. That message reads "XYZapp can't be opened because it is from an unidentified developer."

You can go into OS X's system preferences and disable this protection altogether, but there's a much more sensible option than that. Instead, how about enabling apps from unidentified developers on a case by case basis?

Best Buy knocking $100 off iPad 2 and up to $200 off Macs for Black Friday

Cody Lee ∙ Updated March 15, 2018

Following Black Friday sale previews from Target and Walmart, major electronics retailer Best Buy has published a number of deals it will be offering up on the popular after-Thanksgiving-day shopping weekend.

Folks looking to get an iPad for a friend or family member for the holidays will be interested to hear that Best Buy will be selling the iPad 2 for $299—$100 off. And it will also be discounting Macs, iPods and more...

Apple support site now allows customers to initiate screen-sharing

Cody Lee ∙ November 12, 2013

Apple has updated its support site this week with a new feature allowing users to initiate screen-sharing with AppleCare representatives when receiving Mac help via phone call. This option was previously reserved for reps only.

But enabling customers to initiate screen-sharing with a support tech will one, give them more control over their overall support experience, and two, help facilitate quicker, more accurate responses from Apple's support staff...

How to quickly search the contents of iDB using Alfred

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated April 14, 2018

Alfred is one of my favorite launchers available for OS X. It serves as a replacement for Spotlight search, and can do a whole bunch of other cool things using custom workflows, searches, etc.

I could write a whole series about Alfred, because it's just that deep. But first things first. To start, I'm going to show you how to perform a custom search on iDownloadBlog. I've included a downloadable custom search in this post that you can import directly into Alfred. Have a look inside to see how it works.