Lex Friedman and Dave Addey both have thoughtful articles about app pricing. Go ahead, you really should go read them if you care about apps or developers.
I can’t disagree with their premise. There’s a common perception that apps should cost next to nothing.1 The low cost of software is changing the traditional business model of software.2
While I don’t disagree with Lex and Dave’s fundamental premise, I think that neither article recognizes a basic sea change taking place in software: The average computer user is losing their fear of software and that means a bigger market for everyone.
Hammer is a Mac application for coding up static HTML. It looks very pretty and has some handy features like custom tags for includes and file paths. Itcan compile SASS, HAML, CoffeScript and Markdown to HTML.
Available in the Mac App Store for $24. You’ll also want the free companion app Anvil.
Spotdox provides a service and application to remotely move any file or folder on your remote Mac into Dropbox. This is a nice option for those times when I’m away from my Mac and realize I forgot to copy something into my Dropbox syncing directory.
Check out Dan Frakes' review on Macworld
I am starting to get a little nervous about giving so many services access to my Mac and my Dropbox data.
Kerry Dawson has a really nice overview of using DEVONthink for scanning and filing paper. This is a nice intro to the DEVONthink inbox for quickly gathering scans. This is the mechanism I use for scanning, even if it does not stay in DEVONthink.
By way of Devontechnologies
Here’s nice application bundle. It’s $20 for 7 apps. I already use and recommend Voilà, which is normally $30.
ccstone has a nice cheat sheet over on Github. It’s a quick reference for BBEdit Regex.
By way of Mac OS X Hints
Ulysses 3 has already been updated with some fixes. They’ve already fixed one of my biggest gripes. TXT files are now treated as Markdown.
Jonathan Poritsky’s review of Ulysses 3 has a very different perspective than mine. I appreciate seeing this side of the app and he has some excellent points. I’m looking forward to the rough edges getting some attention so I can get back to using it.
Pattern Digger is a little Mac application for searching a tracking code comments and todos.1 It’s a simple interface but has some clever tricks like saved searches, project and document search and live updating of results. Checkout the demo video. If you’re a developer, it’s a pretty handy piece of kit.
As a side note, I love that the MAS has enabled small applications that are focused on solving one problem well.
My first acquaintance with Ulysses was brief and long ago. I tried it sometime around the end of version 1 and didn’t really like it.
Today, Ulysses 3 is available and I have to say, it’s a great application but still not for me.
I’ll get this out of the way now. Ulysses is very nice. It’s layout will be familiar to nvALT junkies but it’s far more attractive and brings some powerful features to bear on text files.
