Agen Schmitz
Agen Schmitz has worked within the Apple eco-sphere since helping manage conference speaker content for Thunder Lizard Productions in the mid-90s. After spending time at Amazon in the early 2000s (as senior editor for the Electronics, specializing in PDAs and MP3 players—he still has his original pre-release iPod), he has continued to focus on e-commerce content and works with a variety of brands across the e-retail landscape. Agen lives in Seattle with his wife and son (who, sadly, has moved onto Windows for gaming), loves making monthly music mixes, and is always dreaming of Iceland.
Brings back “enclosing folder” as a destination for move/copy operations plus improves support for Growl in the file cleanup utility. ($25 new, $10 upgrade, 5.0 MB)
Redo of recent Service Pack 2 release (14.2.0) that aims to quell problems occurring with Outlook, Word, and Excel. (Free update, 110 MB)
Adds support for Auto Save and Versions plus HD 720p video recording in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion and integrates with Ecamm’s Call Recorder for Skype app. ($39.99 new, 3.3 MB)
Maintenance release squashes a variety of bugs and migrates to a new keychain to prepare for OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion’s Gatekeeper security feature. (Free update, 6.5 MB)
Simple tool for sending document and image files to your Kindle reader or iOS app. (Free update, 8.1 MB)
Release focused on Windows users and developers, with path to automatic updates added to Windows version. The Mac version gains a few minor security fixes and feature tweaks, along with improved developer tools. (Free, 30.1 MB)
Adds iCloud folder creation and management support to both the Mac apps and the PDFpen for iPad app. ($59.95/$99.95 new, free update, 43.3 MB)
Maintenance update to resurrected launcher utility with a variety of bug fixes. (Free, 2.4 MB)
Brings a plethora of improvements and bug fixes to the launcher utility, including changes related to playback performance in iTunes and creating calendar entries in iCal. ($35 new, free update, 2.1 MB)
The font management utility gains a wealth of new features, including introduction of the Extensis Font Panel to Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop for activating fonts on the fly. ($99.95 new, $49.95 upgrade, 63 MB)
While there was much to celebrate with its recent $1 billion acquisition by Facebook and a successful Android software launch, the Instagram photo sharing service found itself caught in a backlash by some users worried about Facebook’s privacy policies and the possibility that Facebook would ruin the service. If you’re thinking of deleting your account (or even if you’re staying in the Instagram fold but want to maintain local copies of your images), Agen Schmitz looks at three options for backing up your photos.
Adds compatibility for Adobe’s PDF browser plug-in to Safari when running in 64-bit mode, as well as to Firefox in 32-bit mode. (Free updates, 137.4 MB and 69.6 MB)
Brings enhanced connectivity to Microsoft’s SharePoint collaboration service plus improvements and fixes to Outlook, PowerPoint, and Word. (Free update, 110 MB)
Minor update improves compatibility with third-party PCIe and Thunderbolt I/O devices plus offers a grab bag of tweaks and fixes. ($299.99 new, free update, 1.38 GB)
Maintenance release improves support for Keyboard Maestro and adds a signed developer ID for OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion’s Gatekeeper (€19.99 new, free upgrades, 2.1 MB)