It’s a big moment for 3D graphic artists who prefer Macs, as OTOY’s Octane X has publicly launched natively on the Mac, bringing unbiased rendering to all Macs that are capable of running macOS Big Sur. Octane X features full pixel parity with OctaneRender 2020, and later, bringing state of the art cinematic rendering natively to macOS for the very first time.

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Better late than never, right? Facebook is starting to ship its dedicated Messenger for macOS app through the Mac App Store. The desktop messaging software was first spotted last April in a leaked announcement that included a preview.

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On iOS, all apps must go through the App Store. On macOS, the Mac App Store is just one method of distribution and developers are free to publish their apps independently on their own website. This means app rejection policies on macOS are not as painful as with iPhone or iPad, but they are nevertheless significant.

Developers are reporting that apps made using Electron (which is a framework that allows companies to ship web apps in a native app wrapper) are now being rejected by the automated Mac App Store review process.

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Adobe Lightroom users now have a new way to subscribe to and install the pro software: Apple’s Mac App Store. Apple named Lightroom among the apps that were set to launch or return on the redesigned Mac App Store on macOS Mojave last summer at WWDC 2018, and today Adobe has fulfilled that promise.

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The Apple system status page is showing major outages for the App Store, Mac App Store, Apple Music and Radio.

While the key merely says ‘outage’ for the red triangles, this symbol is almost never seen on the page …

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BBEdit from Bare Bones Software has officially returned to the Mac App Store. Apple first teased out that the HTML and text editor software would join the new Mac App Store last summer as part of macOS Mojave’s reveal.

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Bare Bones Software has released a big update to BBEdit, the HTML and text editor for the Mac. Starting with today’s version 12.6 release, BBEdit is now a sandboxed app. The security update makes BBEdit one step closer to returning to the Mac App Store.

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Update: Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Outlook are now live on the Mac App Store.

Microsoft Office appears to finally be headed for the Mac App Store as soon as this week, based on a couple of clues. Apple first announced that Microsoft would bring Word, PowerPoint, and Excel to the Mac App Store back in June 2018 as part of its Worldwide Developer Conference.

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Epic, which is known for making the ever-popular Fortnite online game has today announced that it is launching its own Epic Games store on Mac and PC, soon.

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Back in March, app developer Qbix thought it had hit on a great new way to make money from its Calendar 2 app for the Mac. Instead of charging users, or including intrusive ads, it offered users access to pro features in return for allowing cryptocurrency mining in the background.

Apple quickly put a stop to that, and has now updated its app guidelines to explicitly ban background currency mining …

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Deckset is the latest macOS app to join the growing list of software that has outgrown the stagnant Mac App Store. Citing a lack of flexible pricing options, Deckset is leaving the Mac App Store as it launches version 2.0.

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Today Twitter has announced that it will be killing its Mac application in favor of a web client. The social media giant tweeted on its platform today that the app has thirty days to live, and that it will no longer be supported beyond that.

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On this week’s edition of Friday 5, we explore several additional paid Mac App Store apps that I use on a regular basis. Apps include titles like Bumpr, which lets you choose the browser that links are opened in, along with Affinity Designer, a remarkably deep vector illustration app that can be had for an outstanding price.

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Update 2: Apple is reporting that the iCloud.com services have also been restored.

Update: Apple is reporting that the availability of some services has now been restored but several features of iCloud are still down and undergoing maintenance.

As noted by Apple’s system status page, a multitude of Apple services are currently experiencing instability and downtime for some users. The affected services include the App Store, Mac App Store, Apple TV services, iTunes In The Cloud and critical features like Find My iPhone. We have also had a few reports of Apple Music downtime, seemingly repeating the outage yesterday, but Apple’s official status report does not mention any problems with Apple Music at this time.

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TermHere is a new app available on the Mac App Store that serves as a Finder extension. Once enabled, right-clicking inside of the Finder will present a new shortcut to jump to a Terminal window pointed to the current working directory.

TermHere may feature a straightforward premise, but it’s very nice to have if you’re a developer or avid Terminal user. Watch our brief hands-on video inside to see it in action. expand full story

Yesterday, we wrote a post about hiding the menu bar, and in the corresponding video tutorial, we used window snapping to highlight one of the benefits of a hidden menu bar. Afterwards, I received several tweets and emails asking how to perform window snapping, since this is not a feature that appears natively in OS X.

Window snapping allows you to position windows in specific areas of the screen, usually by dragging the window to the edge of the screen, causing the window to “snap” into place. This feature was first popularized by Microsoft’s Aero Snap on Windows. Even though Apple doesn’t natively support it, window snapping is available on the Mac via a variety of third-party apps. expand full story

[UPDATE: Users in comments and elsewhere are reporting similar issues with books and music, and Apple has now updated its status page.

Users are experiencing a problem with the App Store. We are investigating and will update the status as more information becomes available.]

[UPDATE 2: Apple says the issue is now resolved.]

A number of Reddit and Twitter users are reporting problems searching both iOS and Mac App Stores, with major iOS apps like Star Wars, Spotify and Google Apps failing to show up in search results – and even Apple’s own Xcode failing to show in searches of the Mac App Store. I’m seeing the same issues myself …

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Yoink is a utility available on the Mac App Store that I find to be extremely useful. When you begin dragging a file on a Mac with Yoink installed, the utility’s interface appears on the side of the screen. Yoink serves as a temporary holding area for files on your Mac as you move them between apps, folders, and wherever else in the Finder.

There are few apps that I consider to be must-haves on OS X, but Yoink is certainly one of them. Moving files around the Mac is easier with Yoink installed, especially if you make the most of using full screen apps. Watch our video walkthrough inside to see how. expand full story

There are a lot of Mac app bundles around, but one from BundleHunt this week looks very appealing – offering a choice of ten top-rated Mac apps for $20.

There are a total of 40 apps to choose from, some of them costing well over $20 individually. Most are utilities, and include apps like Screens (normally $30), iStat Menus ($18), TypeIt4Me ($20) and Duplicate Finder ($30) and many more.

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Signs of change are beginning to surface on the App Store after December 17th’s notable leadership changes involving Apple’s Worldwide Marketing SVP Phil Schiller. That move happened after growing discontent from Mac App Store developers, who noted communication breakdowns and overall frustration with the direction that the Mac App Store was headed in.

Schiller is now in charge of all App Stores, taking over responsibilities from Eddy Cue, which most prominently include the iOS App Store and the Mac App Store.

It’s been less than three months since the move occurred, but we’re already beginning to see a change in the way the App Store operates. For example, we’re now seeing more regular updates of the Best New Apps section at the top of the App Store’s Featured page. In a tweet today, Schiller acknowledged the changes and indicated that more changes were on the way.

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Delveries by Junecloud has received major updates today for both their iOS and Mac applications. For the unitiated, Deliveries is an all-in-one package tracker for both iOS and Mac. Allowing the user to track multiple packages from various couriers, the app is perfect for anyone who doesn’t want to have to jump between different delivery company sites.

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Heads up to all El Capitan users: OS X 10.11.3 is now available through the Mac App Store. Apple released the first developer beta version of the software update in mid-December after shipping OS X 10.11.2 earlier in the month. The second OS X 10.11.3 beta followed at the start of January. Apple has since started testing OS X 10.11.4.

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The security researcher who identified a serious flaw in Apple’s Gatekeeper reports that the vulnerability remains despite two security patches applied by the company. Each, he says, only blocks the specific apps he used to demonstrate the method.

Gatekeeper in theory allows users to ensure that their Mac will only run apps downloaded from the Mac App Store – or alternatively, signed by a known developer if you opt for a lower level of protection. But Patrick Wardle last September found a major vulnerability in this protection which would allow any malicious app to be run no matter what Gatekeeper setting was chosen.

Wardle informed Apple, which issued a security patch in response, but Wardle has now reverse-engineered the patch and found that it provides only extremely limited protection …

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Over the last few years, indie developers have banded together just before Christmas Day to discount top iOS and Mac apps for new customers. The sale is called App Santa and includes popular apps like Tweetbot for Mac, Pcalc, Screens, Deliveries, and over a dozen other highly recommended apps for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. App Santa doesn’t last long though so check out the full list below to save some money on quality apps.

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The developers of the UI design tool Sketch have announced their decision to exit the Mac App Store, following in the footsteps of many other software makers, such as Panic.

The company cited a number of factors that contributed to this decision, including strict limitations placed on apps sold through the digital storefront—the same reason Panic gave for Coda’s removal.

So as not to leave its customers hanging without the ability to update, Sketch will allow App Store customers to move to the direct-sale version of the app.

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If you’re running the latest OS X El Capitan Update Beta on your Mac, head over to the Mac App Store to grab today’s Update Beta 5 release. OS X 10.11.2 is currently being developed alongside iOS 9.2 for iPhone and iPad as well as tvOS 9.1 for the new Apple TV. If you’re already running the OS X 10.11.2 beta, launch the Mac App Store and open the Updates tab to download and install the new release, then restart your Mac. The update is available for both developers and public beta testers. expand full story

The Mac App Store noticeably experienced some problems last night / early this morning with downloaded apps. Upon opening affected apps, the system would say that the app is ‘damaged’ and cannot be opened, just like the examples from Graham. It certainly seems scary at first glance.

The error message recommends reinstalling your apps individually. While this will fix the problem, it’s a pain to do and isn’t necessary at all: your apps are fine, but the error message makes the situation sound far worse than it is. To simply fix the problem, just reboot your Mac, running OS X Yosemite or El Capitan, and the problem will ‘magically’ go away.

The more interesting question is, why did this happen at all?

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A day after releasing the third public beta of OS X 10.11.2 to developers, Apple this evening has released the third public beta of the operating system to public beat testers. Beta 3 of OS X 10.11.2 comes just a week after Apple released beta 2 to testers.

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A security researcher has found an extremely simple way to bypass Gatekeeper to allow Macs to open any malicious app, even when it is set to open only apps downloaded from the Mac App Store.

Patrick Wardle, director of research at security firm Synack, told arsTechnica that once Gatekeeper okays an approved app, it pays no more attention to what that app does. The approved app can then open malicious apps – which Gatekeeper doesn’t check.

Wardle has found a widely available binary that’s already signed by Apple. Once executed, the file runs a separate app located in the same folder as the first one […] His exploit works by renaming Binary A but otherwise making no other changes to it. [He then] swaps out the legitimate Binary B with a malicious one and bundles it in the same disk image under the same file name. Binary B needs no digital certificate to run, so it can install anything the attacker wants … 

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[Update 1:45 PM: Apple’s system status page now reports that the widespread outage has been resolved including an issue with iTunes Connect. Apple Music services may require relaunching iTunes or Music to resume playback.]

Last night Apple announced that its Beats 1 web radio station would be the exclusive outlet for MTV to announce the Video Music Award nominees this year. The reveal was scheduled for 7 AM Pacific time this morning, but many users are finding themselves unable to tune in.

Listeners took to Twitter to point out that Apple Music, the Beats 1 station, and several other iTunes-related services are failing to load.

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