Wanderful Interactive Storybooks has announced interactive storybook apps for Mac OS X. They're available in the Mac App store for US$9.99.

These apps, including the award-winning "Harry and the Haunted House" and "Arthur's Teacher Trouble," are part of the Wanderful storybook collection for iOS originally published by Living Books. The eight apps are in US English. Most come preloaded with story content in English, Spanish and French although several have different language configurations.

Users can toggle instantly between languages with either a mouse click or a tap on the keyboard. These Wanderful apps also include a Classroom Activities guide developed for each app. For more info go to http://www.wanderfulstorybooks.com .

Nektony has introduced VSD Viewer 1.0 for Mac OS X (10.8 and higher). It costs US$9.99 and is available worldwide exclusively through the AppStore in the Business category (http://tinyurl.com/c2ba83y).

Designed for anyone who use Visio drawings as a reference, VSD Viewer allows Mac users to open vsd files created with Visio 2000 - 2010, a file extension for a vector graphics format developed and owned by MS Visio.

Opening a Visio drawing on Mac with VSD Viewer is as simple as drag and dropping the file to its application window. VSD Viewer allows viewing of common document formatting.

Beezwax Datatools (www.beezwax.net) has released InspectorPro 4.1, an update to the leading tool for analyzing FileMaker databases. Now developers can host InspectorPro on FileMaker Server for multi-user development teams to collaborate on database analysis.

Also, InspectorPro 4.1 is extendable, allowing developers to add scripts, layouts, file references and value lists to create custom workflows supporting their FileMaker development projects. It also adds new Detection and Display types for Layout Objects, provides user interface and performance improvements, and offers various fixes to address known issues.

InspectorPro 4.1 is the first product version available for use with FileMaker 12 on Windows, and also updates the OS X version. It works with FileMaker 12 databases and is available now for Mac OS X 10.6 or higher and Windows Vista, 7 and 8.

FileMaker Pro 12 Advanced is required for a...

Worldwide PC shipments totaled 76.3 million units in the first quarter of 2013 (1Q13), down -13.9% compared to the same quarter in 2012 and worse than the forecast decline of -7.7%, according to International Data Corporation (IDC).

Apple fared better than the overall U.S. market, "but still saw shipments decline as its own PCs also face competition from iPads," says the research group.

The extent of the year-on-year contraction marked the worst quarter since IDC (www.idc.com) began tracking the PC market quarterly in 1994. The results also marked the fourth consecutive quarter of year-on-year shipment declines.
Despite some mild improvement in the economic environment and some new PC models offering Windows 8, PC shipments were down significantly across all regions compared to a year ago. Fading Mini Notebook shipments have taken a big chunk out of the low-end market while tablets and smartphones continue to...

Boinx Software has introduced SandboxCleaner 1.0 for Mac OS X. The tool looks for incompatible QuickTime components that cause crashes with popular video and photo apps on the Mac.

When QuickTime components are incompatible with OS X sandboxing, problems, like crashing, with many popular video and photo apps ensue, says Oliver Breidenbach, founder and CEO at Boinx Software. SandboxCleaner helps users find and disable these components, keeping systems up and running without a hitch, he adds.

"Our users were experiencing baffling crashes with FotoMagico and iStopMotion," Breidenbach says. "It took us quite a while to figure out what was wrong. When we finally identified the issue, we realized the only way to deal with it was to scan for problematic components and provide the user with suggestions on how to resolve these issues. We spent months collating data regarding issues with outdated or incompatible QuickTime components reported by our users. Now, users can...

BrainDistrict has released RaySupreme, a 3D modeling and rendering program for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux systems. It costs US$39.99 and is available at http://www.braindistrict.com .

RaySupreme enables users to create 3D work by simply typing English text. People who are not experienced in 3D can quickly and easily create complex scenes and environments, according to Ritchie Lopez of BrainDistrict. This new approach to 3D graphics is called Text-to-3D.

"Imagine the possibility of creating a complete 'modern day' scene like a living room environment by typing your text description of it," says Ritchie. "Now imagine typing an alternative year like the 1920's, then watching while your scene renders to another time in history. No programming, no special skills is required."

RaySupreme includes: primitive objects, polygonal modeling, lathe, extrude, Boolean operations, smoothing,...

For more than 23 years, SimCity has entertained over 30 million fans worldwide and it returns to the platform that started it all on June 11. Electronic Arts has announced that SimCity will be coming to the Mac on June 11 exclusively as a digital release via Origin and other online retailers.

Fans who purchase SimCity will be able to play the game on Mac and PC, regardless of which version they buy, as well as access their cities from across both platforms. Players who have previously purchased SimCity for PC, either as a physical or a digital copy will receive the Mac version as a free digital download on Origin on June 11.

Players will be able to play both versions with the same Origin account, allowing them to continue their cities, achievements and leaderboard progress across the PC and Mac. SimCity has been rated E10+ by the ESRB. For more info go to www.SimCity.com .

According to "9to5Mac" (http://tinyurl.com/clg8vla) --based on documents published on the Access (formerly PalmSource) -- Apple has licensed patents from the portfolios of several former technology companies including some from Palm/PalmSource which were originally bought by HP.

Access appears to own patents from Palm, Bell Communications Research and Geoworks and has licensed them to Apple for 1B Yen, the article adds. Microsoft previously took out a license on these same "foundational patents."

Korg (www.Korg.com) has announced the Kross keyboard. It will be available in August for US$699 for a 61-key model and $999 for a 88-key version.

Kross is a mobile, affordable, keyboard workstation with audio/MIDI recording capabilities, AC or battery operation (6xAA), and a selection of cutting-edge sounds. Available with 61 keys or 88 fully weighted keys, it’s the first battery-powered, full-featured Korg keyboard workstation, according to the folks at Korg.

The Kross sports analog-style step sequencing and a built-in audio recorder. The piano, electric piano, and drum sounds have been taken from some of Korg’s flagship instruments.

Kross includes a 6-track MIDI sequencer as well as an analog-style step sequencer. The sequencer design features 16 buttons that are used to turn individual notes on or off for creating original rhythm patterns. SMF-format data can be exchanged with a computer via an...

microLARGE software has announced Disklens 1.1, an improved version of the menu bar search utility for MacOS X.

Disklens combines Apple's Spotlight search technology with a different user interface. Version 1.1 brings support for Spotlight comments, adds preferences for customizing search result presentation, brings a few user interface improvements like grouping search results by month, and extends the list of supported languages with French and Spanish.

Disklens reqquires Mac OS X 10.7.4 or higher. It can be purchased for US$4.99 at microLARGE Software's online store (http://microlarge.com). A fully functional 15-day trial is available for download.

Cross Culture has released Mergemill Pro 4.5, an update of their app for cleansing and de-duplicating data. The latest release is an enabler that automates many of the data extraction and processing steps in data mining.

Mergemill Pro takes diverse sources of data -- such as databases, web pages, e-mails and more -- and merges them with templates to produce the desired output, from web pages to customized e-mails. The program features data-processing capabilities such as data filters, multi-level data sorting, BASIC scripting, and multiple search-and-replace actions.

Mergemill Pro supports Unicode and other text encodings, and has project scheduling and auto-run functionality. Users can control output in templates through scripting with tags for content insertion, arithmetic expressions, looping, branching, statistic calculations and for marking text blocks for variable assignment or special output actions.

Mergemill Pro 4.5 is available for Macs running OS X...

RunRev has announced LiveCode 6.0, the first open source edition of its rapid application development platform that allows you to create your own mobile and desktop apps.

LiveCode 6.0 comes just five weeks after the close of one of its Kickstarter campaigns. RunRev raised nearly half a million pounds (US$750,000) to fund the development of the next generation app development platform.
 
LiveCode 6.0 represents the company’s first Community Edition, free to anyone wanting to access the LiveCode engine for custom development of full-featured mobile and desktop apps. Educators, students and business professionals have put support behind the development of open source LiveCode, recognizing the platform’s ability to change the face of programming in learning and commercial environments, according to the folks at RunRev.
 
LiveCode 6.0 is released under the GPL3 license, which allows anyone interested in developing mobile apps to do so with the LiveCode...