Archived Post

Notable apps and app updates for Sept. 19, 2016

iOS Apps/Updates

Chomp Chomp Apps has introduced Square Borne Farm 1.0. It’s a physics puzzle adventure in which players choose from a variety of cute characters to play through over 100 levels. Players can compete with their friends through leaderboards and achievements. Square Borne Farm is free, but does tout in-app purchases.

EMH Enterprises has launched Text Maid 1.0. The $3.99 app lets users schedule customized texts. They can be scheduled minutes, months or years ahead; it’s possible to send re-occurring texts as well.

Haypi has debuted Mush War 1.0. In the free tower defense game, the mushroom prince has started his adventure to find the legendary Castle of Dreams in the Clouds. Magic has been bestowed upon the Royal Guard, so they can defend the Prince and lead him to the Enchanted Land.

RunX has created RunX Fit 1.0 (https://itunes.apple.com/app/runx-fit-gps-running-heart/id1089605118). The free app is designed to empower runners of all skill levels with pace coaching and heart rate fitness tracking. RunX Fit features training tools to help users improve their fitness and run faster. Users are given a goal pace to run at based on their current fitness level. RunX Fit measures and tracks the users’ fitness improvement with patented, run-specific heart rate based fitness tracking tools.

 

Mac OS X Apps/Updates

Einstein’s legacy has announced Deframe 2.0.1, an update to their video post-production utility for OS X. It provides a way to extract and repurpose the images and segments from their video assets. 

Those extractions can be used by other application or shared via internet-based applications like Facebook, Twitter and Vimeo. Version 2.0.1 introduces an enhanced user interface, new data types and a simplified extraction workflow.

Deframe 2.0.1 is available for $19.99 and is available worldwide from the Mac App Store. It requires Mac OS X 10.11 or higher.

Maintain has served up Cocktail 10.0 (Sierra Edition), a new edition of Cocktail for users running macOS Sierra 10.12 (due for release tomorrow). 

It’s a general purpose utility for macOS that lets users clean, repair and optimize their Macs. The new version adds compatibility with Sierra and contains miscellaneous bug fixes, improvements and enhancements as well as updated Automator actions and Help files. It also comes with an automatic Pilot mode and more.

Cocktail costs $19 for a single user license and available for purchase from the Maintain website. When unregistered, Cocktail runs in demo mode and will expire after the tenth launch.

Isle of the Kakapo has released RailModeller Pro 5.2, an update to their model railroad and slot car layout design solution for Mac OS X.
RailModeller Pro offers design tools that enable hobbyists to design model train and slot car track layouts via drag and drop. The app includes a library catalog covering over 200 track systems in all major model scales, allowing for custom designs of almost any layout a user can visualize. Version 5.2 adds:

Image import: you can use original plans, Google or Apple Maps, aerial photography, or hand drawn sketches as a template for building model train layouts. Complex room shapes or even a bird’s-eye view of a park or garden are integrated to be used as a basis for planning layouts. A variety of image file formats is supported, including PNG, JPEG, PSD, GIF, TIFF, and PDF.
Customizable key bindings: Hot keys for all menu commands can be changed to adjust the app to personal preferences, providing a great way for both casual and power users to work even more effectively with the app.

RailModeller Pro 5.2 is available for $29.99 exclusively through the Mac App Store. A free version, RailModeller Express, which is suitable for small layouts with a limited number of tracks and layout dimensions of up to 0.5km – is also available through the Mac App Store in the Graphics and Design category.

Solesignal has revved SmartBackup, their backup and cloning utility for OS X, to version 4.0. The new version features a new next generation sync engine that’s multi-thread capable.

It also includes many other new technologies that make it significantly faster than other similar tools, especially when using SSD/Flash based storage, according to the folks at Solesignal. On modern storage it is twice as fast creating a bootable clone of macOS. SmartBackup 4 now also includes built-in scheduling and is ready for macOS 10.12 Sierra, they add.

Single licenses are available for $34.99. A demo is available at Solesignal online. Upgrading from version 3.0 is free if the license was purchased in 2016. For all others upgrade pricing is available for $19.99.

Dennis Sellers
the authorDennis Sellers
Dennis Sellers is the editor/publisher of Apple World Today. He’s been an “Apple journalist” since 1995 (starting with the first big Apple news site, MacCentral). He loves to read, run, play sports, and watch movies.