BBEdit 9.0 released
BBEdit has released its eponymous BBEdit 9 text editor, a major update that includes a rewritten project manager, improvements to search and document comparison features, and a text-completion tool.
Find and Multi-File search are now separate commands, both available from the Search menu. The dialog boxes are also now non-modal! Welcome to the 20th century. Also gone is the mysterious “don’t find” button.
Text completion appears much like the system-wide F5 trick: a pause will bring up a little pop-up menu of likely options. However, users can change the behavior to only show the menu with a click or keystroke.
Also included in the update is improved language support for JavaScript, Objective C, Obj-C++, Ruby, and YAML. The release notes are enormous, and if you have any niggling irritations with prior versions of BBEdit, they may very well be solved.
BBEdit is $129 for new users, and $30 for owners of existing licenses. Anyone who purchased BBEdit 8.5 and above on or after January 1 gets a free upgrade.
Popularity: 2% [?]
Apple Cinema Displays To Get LED Refresh?
Macrumors is reporting that new Cinema Displays are coming from Apple that will bring LED backlights to the whole line, which is in sync with the company’s plan to ditch fluorescent backlights entirely. The tipster is seeing Macworld in January as a likely time for them to pop up. They haven’t been updated in any large fashion since 2004, so this doesn’t seem that out of the question. HDMI please? [Mac Rumors]
Popularity: 3% [?]
Pogue and Macworld chime in on MobileMe
David Pogue, the New York Times tech columnist, posted his review of MobileMe last week and despite its problems he thought the service itself showed promise. It looks like a little of that promise is wearing off. The latest post to David’s New York Times blog, titled ‘MobileMess,’ isn’t exactly the kind of press coverage Apple is used to as of late. In his post Pogue dings Apple for marketing MobileMe in the wrong way, and for failing to be up front with MobileMe users during all the ‘rough patches.’ Apple declined to comment for the story.
Macworld has also taken MobileMe for a spin, and they give it 3.5 mice out of 5. The good include push to the iPhone, the web interface, and lots of storage. The bad points should look familiar by now: push doesn’t work for everything and the service isn’t reliable. [nytimes]
Popularity: 6% [?]
Apple: Yellow iPhone 3G Screen Is “Warmer” and “By Design”
Those pee-tinted screens Blam discovered in the Gizmodo iPhone 3G review are there on purpose, and are meant to make the screen “warmer” and easier to see, Apple said today in its first official response on the matter. Apple’s senior director of iPhone product marketing, Bob Borchers, told MacWorld that the yellow hue was neither a defect nor a bug.
The first gen iPhone’s whiter coloring was reminiscent of harsh, fluorescent lighting, he said, and the 3G was designed to be sunnier and warm. Jason Snell of MacWorld did some follow up on the comments, and apparently they’re accurate. The new iPhone 3G’s color temperature is roughly 6800 to 7300 Kelvins, compared with approximately 8300K on the first iPhone. MacWorld tests also confirmed that at maximum brightnesses, the new display is brighter than the old one. Borchers hinted, but did not confirm, a future software update could include color settings. UPDATE: Testing was completed by Richard Baguley of WirelessInfo.com [MacWorld]
Popularity: 7% [?]
Apple Expo ‘08 dates announced, events detailed
The Apple Expo is Europe’s Apple conference — similar to the Macworld expo in the US. Apple Expo ‘08 has posted details about the expo, including dates for this year’s conference: Wednesday, September 17 through Saturday, September 20, in Paris, France.
Currently, there are only two iPhone events scheduled out of the over 30 planned events. It is a nice change to see that the iPhone will not “steal the show” in Europe like it does at Apple conferences in the US. You can see all of the details, exhibitors, and scheduled events on the Apple Expo website.
As we noted earlier, Apple will not be attending this year’s Apple Expo.
Popularity: 11% [?]
