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Good deal: name your own price on this awesome Mac software bundle

Cody Lee ∙ Updated December 2, 2016

Good news Mac owners, StackSocial is running another one of its popular “name your own price” software promotions. There are 9 apps in the bundle, and 1 instructional course, which combined normally sell for $543. But, as the headline suggests, you can literally name your own price.

What's the catch? The deal site keeps a running average of what people are paying for the package, which is currently at $4.51. Pay below the average price, and you'll only get 3 of the applications mentioned below, but pay equal to or above the average price, and you'll get the entire package.

Lenovo breaks Apple’s MacBook in half in “hidden” camera prank vid

Christian Zibreg ∙ November 25, 2014

You may recall that Lenovo recently teamed up with Microsoft on a television commercial which dissed the MacBook Air because the ultra-thin Apple notebook is not a convertible machine like Lenovo's Yoga 3 Pro. Now the computer maker is back at it with a new video Tuesday.

Crafted in co-operation with UCB Comedy's funniest prank shoppers and presented as a hidden camera prank, the clip depicts a guy pitching Lenovo's new Yoga 3 convertible to mall shoppers.

How?

By breaking MacBooks in half to demonstrate how the Yoga 3 combines two devices into one, a traditional laptop and a tablet.

Report: Yahoo and Microsoft fighting to supplant Google search on iPhone

Christian Zibreg ∙ November 25, 2014

According to a report Tuesday by The Information, a technology website started by The Wall Street Journal writer Jessica Lessin, both Microsoft and Google are “fighting” to boot Google search from the iPhone and other Apple devices.

If true, the move wouldn't be unheard of: Apple teams up with alternate search providers in markets like China.

Apple earns a small commission from search ad revenue each time a user performs a Google search from Safari's address bar on the Mac, iPhone, iPod touch or iPad.

With that deal expiring sometime in 2015, Microsoft and Yahoo are now hoping the Cupertino firm won't renew it and will instead make their respective service the default search choice on iOS.

Apple offering free Product (RED) gift cards with select purchases on Black Friday

Cody Lee ∙ Updated April 18, 2018

Apple today announced its plans for Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving when all retailers will be hosting flash sales on many of their products. As usual, the deals aren't as good as other major stores are offering, but they are worth mentioning.

As part of its RED campaign for World AIDS Day, Apple will be giving away free gift cards with the purchase of select products on Friday. The cards can be used on apps, books and other iTunes content, and their values will depend on what you buy.

YouTube issues affecting Yosemite’s Safari

Christian Zibreg ∙ November 21, 2014

According to user-submitted posts over at both Apple Support Communities and Google Product forums, an unknown portion of Mac owners who run Yosemite are having issues playing certain YouTube videos, with some getting Safari crashes when attempting to watch a clip.

It seems to affect some, not all, HTML5 videos and does not manifest itself when using the resource-hog Flash Player, causing Safari to fall back to Flash for video delivery.

Other browsers are unaffected by the annoying problem. Neither Apple nor Google have commented on the matter yet. Digging deeper, it would seem the hiccup could be traced to the YouTube backend because HTML5 videos in Google Chrome and other browsers play without a problem.

This app records FaceTime calls to your Mac

Christian Zibreg ∙ November 21, 2014

I use FaceTime on a daily basis and have always hated it wouldn't let me save calls to my Mac in the form of a media file. Surely Apple could have implemented such a feature if they wanted, but they didn't and I think privacy is a big part of that.

If for whatever reason you need to record FaceTime calls to a Mac, Call Recorder by Ken and Glen Aspeslagh, twin brothers from Massachusetts, has you covered.

The app creates a QuickTime movie file containing an audio track for audio-only calls and a video track for FaceTime video calls. QuickTime is an industry-standard multimedia container, meaning you can play your saved video and audio chats pretty much anywhere, convert the files to other formats in software like iMovie or Adobe After Effects, upload them to YouTube and more.

Apple seeds first OS X 10.10.2 beta to developers

Cody Lee ∙ Updated April 18, 2018

Apple has seeded the first beta of OS X Yosemite 10.10.2 this afternoon. The update, labeled build 14C68k, is available through the Update tab in the Mac App Store and the Dev Center for all registered Mac developers.

Today’s release comes just a few days after Apple officially launched 10.10.1 to the public, which featured bug fixes and Wi-Fi improvements—although some users are still complaining of Wi-Fi issues after updating.

Evernote for Mac rewritten for speed and energy performance, iOS app gets Work Chat and more

Christian Zibreg ∙ November 20, 2014

Evernote, the popular note-taking and productivity platform, on Thursday issued a major refresh to its Mac app while adding a new Work Chat for sharing and collaborating to the iPhone and iPad client, among other items.

After a complete rewrite, Evernote 6.0 for Mac is now significantly faster, more reliable and consumes less energy than ever before.

As if that weren't enough, the new Mac app comes with half a dozen new features, including sleek new look optimized for OS X Yosemite, search improvements, the ability to resize images and tables, to mention just a few.

iOS and OS X editions of Evernote are available free of charge.

You can now privately share tweets in DMs

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated February 28, 2018

After previewing future platform enhancements and features during its Analyst’s Day event, the popular social service Twitter on Thursday began rolling out one of the mentioned new features: the ability to private share a tweet through Twitter's direct messaging function.

Think about sharing tweets privately with any of your followers in terms of discussing public content in private conversations, the micro-blogging platform suggested.

To do this from Twitter's main iPhone client, long-press the tweet in your timeline and choose the new “Share via Direct Message” option. The person you share a tweet with will get a push notification, said the company.

Moreover, the tweet will display directly in the conversation.

How to access Google’s Inbox service on Safari

Christian Zibreg ∙ November 19, 2014

A month ago, Google launched a new iPhone app called Inbox, a different take on email which uses Sparrow-like gestures to help you achieve Inbox Zero nirvana and surface the most relevant items that tend to get lost in an avalanche of unwanted emails users get bombarded with.

Available on iOS, Android and Chrome, Inbox leaves fans of Apple's Safari browser in the dark. It's fortunate that there's a quick workaround to that, let me show you how.

Inbox is available free in the App Store.

64-bit version of Google Chrome for Mac launches

Christian Zibreg ∙ November 19, 2014

After releasing 64-bit Chrome for Windows and a beta version of Chrome for Mac with 64-bit support back in August, Google today announced that the app is out of beta and available to everyone.

Public release of the 64-bit Chrome for Mac edition marks the end of the road for 32-bit NPAPI (Netscape Plug-in APIs) plugins as the Internet company now requires developers to provide their extensions with 64-bit support.

Most users shouldn’t be affected, however, because the vast majority of plugins and extensions are readily available in both 32-bit and 64-bit form. Chrome 39.0.2171.65 (Google, we need to talk about version numbers!) also includes more than three dozen under the hood changes for stability and performance and comes with a set of new APIs allowing extension developers to take advantage of new features.

Wi-Fi issues continue to persist for some after updating to OS X Yosemite 10.10.1

Christian Zibreg ∙ November 18, 2014

After upgrading their Macs to yesterday's OS X Yosemite 10.10.1 software update, some users continue to experience a range of intermittent Wi-Fi issues that have been plaguing Apple's latest desktop operating system since its release, according to user feedback over at Apple's Support Communities containing more than a thousand posts.

Issues vary on a case-by-case basis and include dropped or unreliable wireless connections, slow data transfer speeds, connections randomly dropping every few minutes or so, inability to connect to a Wi-Fi network after waking from sleep and more.