MacRumors' Mac Blog: Mac Apps, News and Rumors

The free, open-source image editor GIMP is now available for OS X as a native application. It is available for download from Gimp.org.GIMP is a popular and fairly powerful free image editor from the linux world that is basically like a freeware version of Photoshop, complete with many of the tools used for photo retouching and image manipulation that you’d expect. It’s a great free PS...

Apogee Electronics has long been one of the most highly-regarded manufacturers of professional audio equipment for Mac users, with the company's Duet 2 portable recording interface being one of its key products. The Duet 2 features dual inputs and an OLED display to help users make studio quality recordings in a wide variety of settings. Apogee is now teasing an announcement for September 4 ...

Apple today seeded a new version of OS X Lio 10.7.5 to developers for testing. The new version, Build 11G45, arrives less than two weeks after the previous seed, and the build increment of nine suggests that Apple has been continuing to make a number of tweaks to the update in preparation for a public launch. Apple continues to list no known issues with the update and is asking developers...

Following the introduction of new Twitter API guidelines -- the rules by which third-party Twitter clients must abide -- Tweetbot has decided to end the pre-release testing program of TweetBot for Mac.The public Alpha program began more than a month ago to help Tweetbot get feedback on the Mac Twitter client as the developers moved towards final release.One of the API changes relates to how...

Philipp Seibel of eightloops let us know that his company was working on a fresh new take on the OS X email client. There has been a bit of a resurgence in the interest of alternative Mail clients since the launch and acquisition of Sparrow, which has left some customers abandoned. Eightloops' new client is called Unibox and borrows a lot of organization and interface cues from chat...

Some ten weeks after the launch of the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro, Apple is just now catching up with demand, as evidenced by shipping estimates for new orders in many countries' Apple Online Stores moving to "in stock" status for standard configurations. The major exception to this status is in the Americas, where estimates have moved to 2-4 business days. These new estimates are improvements...

Apple today seeded a developer build of Safari 6.0.1 for OS X Lion for testing, giving developers a chance to test out the next minor standalone update to Apple's Internet browser. Safari 6.0.1 is included in the OS X 10.8.2 developer build seeded yesterday, but Apple will also be releasing the update for users still running OS X Lion. The Safari update comes on top of larger developer...

Following yesterday's news that testing of OS X 10.8.2 was imminent, Apple today pushed out the first developer build of the update. The testing begins just as Apple is making OS X 10.8.1 available to the public. The first developer build of OS X 10.8.2 arrives as Build 12C31a in the form of a 641.83 MB combo update, and Apple is asking testers to focus on Messages, Facebook, Game Center,...

Bloomberg Businessweek reports that a former Apple employee who was fired last December has filed suit against the company, claiming that Steve Jobs had promised him lifetime job security. The employee, Wayne Goodrich, served as the executive producer for Apple's public presentations and says that he was a confidant of Jobs. Goodrich says that he oversaw the production of a number of important...

The Moscow News reports (via 9to5Mac) that Apple is apparently making preparations to begin direct sales of its products in Russia, with retail stores perhaps set to follow in the future.Apple has registered a company Apple Rus and assigned Vitaly Morozko, the corporation’s local legal advisor, as its director general, Kommersant reported. In spring 2011, when Apple top managers travelled to ...

Apple has seeded a new beta of OS X 10.8.1 to developers, exactly a week after the first build came out, according to 9to5Mac. The release has a build number of 12B17 and Apple reports no known issues, but asks developers to focus on a wide variety of areas for their testing. The delta update -- where only items that have changed are downloaded -- weighs in at 43.27MB. According to 9to5Mac...

Apple has released a new beta build of OS X Lion 10.7.5 to developers. The new beta has a build number of 11G36. Apple reports that it has no issues, but asks developers to examine graphics performance and quality, as well as image and media importing, editing or viewing. A previous build of 10.7.5 was released on July...

EA plans to release the next version of SimCity -- the classic city-building game -- on the Mac simultaneously with the PC release this February. EA will also be delivering Origin, its digital download service, at the same time. The game will be available for purchase and download via the service.Mac users will be able to connect to the new multiplayer component in SimCity and appears to be...

Other World Computing has released a 480GB aftermarket SSD upgrade for the Retina MacBook Pro. However, while OWC's upgrades for the MacBook Air are very price-competitive with the storage upgrades available at the Apple Online Store, the 480GB Aura Pro 6G is less clear-cut.In its blog post announcing the release, OWC notes that "when introduced this past June, the MacBook Pro with Retina...

Blizzard Entertainment, the company behind Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo, today informed customers that their internal security network had been breached.The company doesn't believe that financial information has been compromised but other data including email addresses for all non-China players and scrambled passwords were taken. The company believes it will be extraordinarily difficult for...

Pixelmator 2.1 has arrived on the Mac App Store, bringing support for the new MacBook Pro with Retina Display, iCloud syncing and backup, and more. Pixelmator is a highly rated image editor that was one of the early successes on the Mac App Store. The app generated more than $1 million in revenue in the first 20 days of the Mac App Store's existence. The Pixelmator Team today released...

iFixit today announced the release of 15 new repair guides for the Retina MacBook Pro, giving users instructions on how to perform their own repair and replacement procedures for a number of components. But as iFixit notes, Apple's design direction emphasizing space and weight savings has made it difficult, if not simply infeasible, for several components to be replaced on an individual basis.For...

In the wake of recent stories focusing on iCloud's Find My Mac/iPhone feature -- one positive and one negative -- it's worth noting that there are a number of different services to help locate or erase a lost Mac.TUAW profiles Undercover 5, a $49 service that uses GPS, a new keylogging feature in version 5, the FaceTime camera and a clever "Plan B" to fool technologically inept criminals:After...