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TidBITS Watchlist: Notable Software Updates for 30 July 2012

Fantastical 1.3.2 — Flexibits has updated its Fantastical calendar and reminders app to version 1.3.2, offering compatibility with OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion and user interface enhancements for the MacBook Pro with Retina Display. After adding support for both iCal and iOS reminders in its previous version, Fantastical 1.3.2 adds support for simple repeating reminders, improves performance for those with thousands of reminders, and fixes a problem that occurred when setting the next due date of certain reminders. The update also fixes a potential problem for iCloud users who have a pre-MobileMe account that was originally set
up with mac.com. Normally priced at $19.99, Flexibits is offering Fantastical at half price ($9.99) for a limited time from both its Web site and the Mac App Store. ($19.99 new, free update, 11 MB, release notes)

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Firefox 14.0.1 — Adding a bit of confusion to its already inscrutable release pattern, Mozilla has released the latest update to Firefox as version 14.0.1 — even though there wasn’t a version 14.0. According to Ghacks.net, this was done to keep both the Mac desktop and Android mobile versions of the Web browser synchronized with the same release numbering. Offering a variety of security and privacy improvements, the desktop browser now uses HTTPS by default when searching Google to improve security
and privacy and adds a “click-to-play” option that can block the automated display of a plug-in (such as Adobe Flash) until the content is specifically activated by a click. Additionally, it improves the way a Web site’s verified identity icon is displayed in the Awesome Bar (i.e., the address field) to indicate whether or not the site uses SSL encryption or has an Extended Validation certificate. Other additions include auto-completion for URLs typed into the Awesome Bar, a native full-screen mode in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion and later, a new API to prevent your display from sleeping, text-transform and font-variant CSS improvements for Greek and Turkish localizations, and support for a Pointer Lock API that provides enhanced mouse control
for applications (such as first-person games). (Free, 31 MB, release notes)

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Nisus Writer Pro 2.0.3 and Express 3.4.2 — Nisus Software has released updates to both its word processing apps — Nisus Writer Pro 2.0.3 and Nisus Writer Express 3.4.2. Both apps are code-signed using an Apple Developer ID for compatibility with OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion’s Gatekeeper security feature, and both now require Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later. Additionally, both fix an issue where a splash screen stayed visible after Nisus Writer launched and fix a possible hang when switching to the stylesheet view while running Mountain Lion. Plus, both the Pro and Express apps improve hyphenation for
many non-English languages (including Danish, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, and more).

Amongst the voluminous changes, Nisus Writer Pro 2.0.3 fixes a variety of issues related to creating a PDF and printing (including incorrect page numbers appearing in the generated TOC, index, or cross-references), ensures that floating images won’t go missing when exporting to HTML or EPUB, preserves page breaks in exported EPUBs, and ensures that chapter headings trigger a page/chapter break in an EPUB. Similarly, Nisus Writer Express 3.4.2 fixes some of its own issues with creating PDFs and printing (such as errant white space near the bottom of pages) plus a problem with some semibold font faces being converted to full (or “faked”) bold. Note that neither the Mac App Store versions of Nisus Writer Pro or Nisus Writer Express have been updated to their most recent versions as of this writing. (For Nisus Writer Pro: $79 new, free update, 137 MB, release notes. For Nisus Writer Express: $45 new, free update, 37.7 MB, release notes.)

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SuperDuper 2.7 — Shirt Pocket has released version 2.7 of its SuperDuper drive-cloning and backup software with support for the OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion’s Gatekeeper security feature. Additionally, the new release should start more quickly (even with unresponsive network volumes) and copy files faster, and it improves the copying of active files from apps that rapidly create and delete files during a backup (which could cause some files to vanish from a backup). The status window has been updated to show what’s going on while larger files are being copied, diagnostics have been improved to
more accurately return errors when drives can’t be read or written to, and local Time Machine snapshots (.MobileBackups) are no longer copied to reduce backup failures. SuperDuper has also been updated to support the latest version of Growl (which also provides support for Mountain Lion’s Notification Center). However, SuperDuper isn’t “fully compatible” with Mountain Lion, as Shirt Pocket notes in its announcement blog post that it couldn’t complete work for supporting the automatic mounting of local volumes in time for this release. SuperDuper 2.7 requires Mac OS X 10.4.11 or later (which means it still
supports both Intel- and Power PC-based Macs). (Free for basic functionality, $27.95 for additional features, free update, 3.2 MB)

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Yojimbo 3.0.4 — Bare Bones Software has released Yojimbo 3.0.4, a maintenance update that adds no new features but instead fixes a crash that occurred when displaying certain Web archives in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, a problem that prevented pairing with an iPad running the Yojimbo iPad app, and a bug that caused drawing glitches and crashes when displaying a PDF. The update also enables you to choose a new export folder if the Sidekick export folder isn’t available at launch or to turn Sidekick off completely, adjusts the PDF importer to adhere to a “slightly less-strict” interpretation of the PDF header
format, and removes references and mechanics related to MobileMe synchronization. ($38.99 new, free update, 5.6 MB, release notes)

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LaunchBar 5.3 — Objective Development has released LaunchBar 5.3, offering improved compatibility with OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion (including compliance with the Gatekeeper security feature). The update improves access to 1Password bookmarks, tags, and folders (which may require a new 1Password indexing rule), adds Growl notifications for new events and reminders, makes a distinction between reminders and calendar items, speeds up the sending of files or text to contacts from your address book, and now indicates whether an application’s recent documents list is located in iCloud. LaunchBar offers built-in support for
Apple Mail, Mailplane, Microsoft Outlook, Postbox, and Sparrow, and your default email client can either be chosen automatically or selected manually in LaunchBar’s preferences. On the fix front, LaunchBar 5.3 addresses issues related to indexing applications via Spotlight and indexing contacts in Mountain Lion, plus it now displays phone numbers labeled as “iPhone” as a mobile number. ($35 new with a 20-percent discount for TidBITS members, free update, 2.3 MB, release notes)

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Scrivener 2.3.1 — Literature and Latte has released Scrivener 2.3.1, offering a number of improvements that take advantage of some of the new features in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. You can now easily tweet your daily writing session goal via the Twitter icon in the Project Targets panel, use Notification Center if Growl isn’t installed (or force Scrivener to use Notification Center even with Growl installed), and bring up a QuickReference or Quick Look panel from the binder, corkboard, outliner, or synopsis search results using Quick Look gestures (three-finger taps by default). Additionally, the app has been
code-signed to comply with the new Gatekeeper security feature. The update also adds a new option for saving KindleGen source files along with the .mobi file, and improves the “Capitalize ‘i’” function. Among many other fixes, the release works around a system bug that added extra spacing above images when a line height multiple is applied, and squashes a bug with new .doc, .docx, and .odt importers that could cause a hang with certain files. It’s available in two versions from the Literature and Latte Web site’s downloads page — one for 10.6 Snow Leopard and later (also available from the Mac
App Store
) and one for 10.4 Tiger and 10.5 Leopard. ($45 new from Literature and Latte and the Mac App Store, free update, 30.4 MB (32.5 MB for OS X 10.4/10.5 version), release notes)

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MacBook Air SMC Updates 1.5 and 1.6 — Apple has issued two System Management Controller (SMC) updates for the MacBook Air — version 1.5 for models released in June 2012 and version 1.6 for models released in 2011. Both updates enable Power Nap support when running OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, while the version 1.5 update for mid-2012 MacBook Air models also fixes several sleep and wake issues that should improve overall stability. Version 1.6 (for mid-2011 models) requires 10.8, while version 1.5 (for mid-2012 models) requires 10.7.4 or later. To ensure you get the firmware
update for your specific model, we recommend relying on Software Update. (Free, 698 KB/663 KB)

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BusyCal 1.6.4 — BusyMac has released BusyCal 1.6.4, which lands just two days after the release of version 1.6.3. That update provided support for the Gatekeeper security feature in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, as well as a few minor fixes (a dock icon redraw bug on the MacBook Pro with Retina Display and a 403 error when syncing an iCloud WebDAV calendar). It also added support for the Daylite CalDAV server. Version 1.6.4 was released quickly to fix a Gatekeeper code-signing bug that caused some installation errors. ($49.99 new, free update, 6.7 MB, release
notes
)

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Aperture 3.3.2 — In addition to adding compatibility with OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, Apple has updated Aperture to version 3.3.2 with a smattering of improvements. The professional photo organizer now enables you to sort projects and albums in the Library Inspector by date (in addition to name and kind), and adds the capability for Auto White Balance to correct color using Skin Tone mode (even when Faces is disabled). The update also fixes an issue that affected performance when entering or exiting Full Screen mode. ($79.99 new in the Mac App Store, free
update, 530 MB)

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iPhoto ’11 9.3.2 — Apple has released iPhoto ’11 9.3.2, a small update that brings compatibility with the new sharing features in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. In addition to performance and stability improvements, the update now enables you to share photos via Twitter as well as Messages, Mountain Lion’s replacement for iChat. ($14.99 new from the Mac App Store, free update, 637 MB)

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iMovie ’11 9.0.7 — Amidst an onslaught of updates geared toward Mountain Lion, Apple has released iMovie ’11 9.0.7 with nary a mention of the big cat. Instead, the update focuses on improving overall stability with fixes for preventing a crash that could be caused by third-party QuickTime components, previewing MPEG-2 video clips in the Camera Import window, and not including audio when importing MPEG-2 video clips from a camera. It also bundles in the improvements — including support for the MacBook Pro with Retina Display — found in the last update (see “iMovie ’11
9.0.6
,” 13 June 2012). ($14.99 new from the Mac App Store, free update through Software Update or the Mac App Store, 1.01 GB)

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