Hi All, I'm forwarding excerpts from a post I made to the mac-access list about Mac App Store sales. Apologies to those of you seeing this content again. Also, you can refer to Scott's earlier post to the Macvisionaries list about Soulver for more details about that app.
In connection with Black Friday, the first day after U.S. Thanksgiving, when there are sales to start off the Christmas shopping season, a number of interesting sales have shown up in the Mac App Store for applications or subjects that have been recently discussed. Some of these will be for today only, some for the Friday and Saturday, and some will extend through Monday. Here are a few of the items I've noted: • ABBYY Fine Reader Express $49.99 (50% off regular price, this weekend only) http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/abbyy-finereader-express/id412310371?mt=12 • Bento 4 $33.99 (price just dropped from $49.99, no comments about this sale price or how long it will last at the App Store or at the main Bento web page, where the price is still listed as $49.99) http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bento/id413293930?mt=12 • YummySoup! $4.99 (75% off regular price of $19.99 Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday) http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/yummysoup!/id402757302?mt=12 All three of the above applications (ABBYY Fine Reader Express for OCR with scanners, Bento for database, and YummySoup! for recipes) have been previously discussed on the mac-access list. All of these products have 15-day free trial downloads at their main web sites (through the link on the Mac App Store page for each product). (I'll give a direct link for the ABBYY Fine Reader Express trial download, since navigating the main web page is confusing, and while there is a link that eventually gets you to the Mac product buried in the page under a name like "Try Try", the link to "Trial Downloads" takes you to trial downloads for their Windows products). The ABBYY Fine Reader Express trial download can be found at: http://www.abbyy.com/finereader_for_mac/trial/# Other applications at the Mac App Store that have been mentioned as accessible, but that I've not used, include: • Checkbook $6.99 (normally $14.99, on sale this Friday only) http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/checkbook/id412485361?mt=12 • Checkbook Pro $11.99 (normally $24.99, on sale this Friday only) http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/checkbook-pro/id412490330?mt=12 Another Splasm Software product that I have used is flagged with the same "over 50% off for Black Friday only" label, but as far as I can tell, the price has only dropped by a dollar: • Audiobook Builder $4.99 (normally $5.99) http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/audiobook-builder/id406226796?mt=12 • Soulver $11.99 (normally $24.99, on sale for Thanksgiving and Black Friday) http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/soulver/id413965349?mt=12 Scott Howell posted elsewhere about Soulver, which is an app for doing calculations that gives you a combination of functions somewhere between calculator, spread sheet, and text editor. I'll excerpt a bit from the recent MacLife article, since that site puts in annoying ad pop-ups if you just open a link to the page: Source: http://www.maclife.com/article/reviews/soulver_calculator_review "Soulver Calculator Review posted 11/21/2011" <begin quote> Hey! You got your text editor in my spreadsheet! Wouldn’t it be nice if the calculations you scribbled on scrap paper were interactive, or if spreadsheets were easy enough to use at the drop of a hat? Soulver is a calculator that aims to combine these tools into something that’s both easy to use and powerful enough to crunch data in useful ways. Soulver lets you enter problems from simple arithmetic to trigonometry in natural language—using words as well as numbers and symbols—and combine the answers in flexible “math-processor” documents. Typing “15.3% of $29.95” will get you an answer, for example, but Soulver isn’t quite magic, or even Siri. You have to use the vocabulary it expects, which is usually varied enough to get the job done, but it still requires a trip to the built-in cheat sheet every now and then. Nevertheless, its text-friendly design is great for adding notes and context to your numbers, and it’s even better for unit and currency conversions. Soulver even recognizes stock ticker symbols, so you can quickly figure out how much your 50 shares of AAPL are worth in yen (lucky you). Soulver offers more power than just a cool input gimmick, however. You can easily define custom variables and save them for use in multiple files. Answers are summed automatically, and you can view their average, variance, or standard deviation with a click. You can even save answers as keys to use throughout a document, so when the original answer changes, problems containing its key update instantly. When you’ve finished working, Soulver exports to multiple file types, including PDF and HTML, with various styling options. The bottom line. While pricey as a simple replacement for Apple’s Calculator, Soulver is worth a look if you want something less cumbersome than a spreadsheet but much more powerful than the back of a napkin for working out complex calculations. <end quote> Although the iOS Soulver apps for the iPhone and iPad are also on sale for half price today, the number pad entry is apparently not yet accessible (although apparently you can input with a keyboard). The Mac version includes remarks about "improvements for VoiceOver accessibility:, and there's also a 10-day free trial at the main web site linked from the App Store page. Remember that many of the free trial downloads support the ability to purchase and register from within the trial apps. You almost certainly won't get the discounted prices this way, so delete these trial versions if you download them and decide to make a purchase directly from the Mac App Store. There are no trial downloads at the Mac App Store, because developers are not allowed to post apps where users must pay additional amounts at a later time to keep the app functioning. That means the developer can supply a free (Lite) version, or a full-priced version, but he cannot supply a version where some of the features later stop working unless you pay more. (That means no trial versions that expire.) All of the1Password applications (versions on the Mac App Store as well as for iOS devices) are 50% off. I'm not going to paste in all the links. You can read the AgileBits newsletter link that gives all this information: http://email.agilewebsolutions.com/t/r/e/iydukul/kjihijdki/n/ Finally, I'll just mention that the Apple Black Friday specials have discounts for the Apple Wireless Keyboard, Magic Trackpad, G-Drive Mini external disks (a good brand), the Jawbone Jambox, and many other interesting items. HTH. Cheers, Esther -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
