Archive for the ‘General’ Category

Pear Note 2.0.1 for iOS adds iPhone 5 support

Sunday, September 30th, 2012

iPhone 5

If you got your hands on a snazzy new iPhone 5 and have been wishing Pear Note fully supported that bigger screen, then wait no more. Pear Note 2.0.1 for iOS is now live in the App Store, including support for the iPhone 5. It also includes a bunch of fixes for running on iOS 6, playback highlighting fixes, and general user interface improvements for all. So, update away and enjoy.

Pear Note comes to iPhone

Monday, September 10th, 2012

Pear Note for iPhone

I’m pleased to announce that Pear Note for iOS 2.0 is now available. This new version takes the previously iPad-only app and makes it a universal app that will run on the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. If you’ve already bought the iPad app, then you just got the iPhone app for free.

I have a confession to make – you guys were right. Ever since the iOS App Store’s arrival, many of you have been asking for an iPhone version of Pear Note. I avoided making one though, because I was unconvinced that taking notes on something so small would be a good experience. I tried taking notes in simple text apps on my iPhone, and found it frustrating. So, I put off making Pear Note for iPhone.

I was wrong. Taking pure text notes on an iPhone is frustrating, as I can’t type quick enough to capture all the information. Taking notes in Pear Note on the iPhone is completely different, though. I can just type a few words about a concept, then rely on the audio recording to fill in the details when reviewing. This means I finally have the ability to take useful notes anywhere I am with the device I always have in my pocket.

Of course, Pear Note on the iPhone is also great for always having my notes with me. I sync all my notes via Dropbox between my devices. Now, I can be anywhere and quickly find anything. I can be at the store buying school supplies and within seconds be listening to the exact moment of the parent orientation when my daughter’s teacher described which crayons worked best. It’s really great.

So check it out. I think you’ll find it is a fantastic tool.

Pear Note for Mac 3.0.2

Friday, August 3rd, 2012

Hot on the heels of 3.0.1 comes 3.0.2. This is primarily a bug fix release that fixes some crashes. It’s available for Mac App Store customers as well as direct customers. Get it while it’s hot.

You may also notice that the Share button looks different now. Apple decided the cloud button looked too much like the iCloud icon (despite the fact that the button has looked that way for two years now). So, there’s a new button.

Let me know if you run into any problems.

Pear Note for Mac 3.0.1

Wednesday, July 25th, 2012

Pear Note for Mac 3.0.1 is now out for direct customers. This is primarily a bug fix release, but also ensures Pear Note works properly on Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion which was just released today. Notably, Pear Note is now signed with Developer ID in order to support Gatekeeper in Mountain Lion. If you’re already using Pear Note and you got it originally from anywhere except the Mac App Store, simply check for updates within Pear Note to get it.

If you got Pear Note from the Mac App Store, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait a bit longer to get it. It’s been waiting for review with Apple for almost two weeks, but Apple seems to be running very slow on reviews lately. Hopefully the review will happen soon so you can get 3.0.1 as well. The good news is that 3.0 should work just fine on Mountain Lion for you, as App Store apps already pass Gatekeeper rules.

Enjoy the update, and let me know if you have any problems.

Pear Note for iPad 1.0.5

Tuesday, June 12th, 2012

I just released a minor bug fix update to Pear Note – version 1.0.5. It improves the speed of the text editor portion of Pear Note when dealing with large amounts of text. Also, it fixes a bug in the loupe that caused excess text to show up around the loupe on a Retina screen (meaning the third generation iPad). The update should be in the App Store now.

Apps for Water

Tuesday, December 20th, 2011

charity: water

In the spirit of Christmas, several developers have decided to band together to support a worthwhile cause. That cause is charity: water, an organization devoted to bringing clean, safe water to people in developing nations. While those of us in developed nations may take easy access to clean water for granted, unsafe water is one of the leading killers in developing nations. charity: water takes aim at this problem.

So, we simple app developers have banded together to form Apps for Water. For today, December 20, 2011, we will donate all income to charity: water. For me, that includes sales of Pear Note for Mac here on this site and in Apple’s App Store, as well as sales of Pear Note for iPad in the App Store. There are lots of other great apps to purchase as well, so make sure you check out everything else.

So, buy some useful software and help a great cause. You’ve only got until the end of the day.

Pear Note for iPad

Thursday, September 8th, 2011

Pear Note for iPad is now available on the App Store!

And, for a limited time, it’s only $4.99.

I won’t spend too much time talking about features here, as you can just click on Pear Note for iPad above to see that. The highlights are:

  • Timestamped audio recording – just like you’re used to in Pear Note for Mac
  • Rich text notes – yes, actual rich text notes where you can bold a word, make something a heading, highlight a key point, use bullets or numbered lists to make an outline, and more
  • Dropbox syncing – easily move notes between your iPads and Macs automatically

Frequently Asked Questions

  • What about the iPhone? – I wanted 1.0 to be a universal app for both iPad and iPhone, but the timing didn’t work out. I plan to make a future version universal, but it likely won’t be released before 2012. This is actually one of the reasons I decided to cut the price in half for now. So, buy it now while it’s a deal, then get the update to universal later for free!
  • What about video? – You can play back video recorded in Pear Note for Mac today. I’m considering adding video recording to Pear Note for iPad in a future version if there’s enough demand. So, drop me a note to let me know that you want it if you’re interested.
  • Can I use a bluetooth keyboard with Pear Note for iPad? – Yes
  • Can I use an external USB microphone with Pear Note for iPad? – Believe it or not, yes, though you need the USB adapter from the iPad Camera Connection Kit

Coming soon to an App Store near you

Wednesday, August 31st, 2011

Pear Note for iPad is coming very soon. I can’t say exactly how soon, as Apple is in control of that. It has been submitted to Apple, and will be available for purchase on the App Store whenever they approve it. In the mean time you can learn more about what’s coming by looking at the new Pear Note for iPad page here on this site.

Also, Pear Note for Mac 2.1 is now available. The main change in 2.1 is an updated file format that is compatible with Pear Note for iPad. Pear Note for iPad can sync notes via Dropbox with other iPads or Macs running Pear Note. If you’d like to sync over old notes, you’ll have to open them with Pear Note for Mac 2.1 and re-save them. They’ll be updated to the new file format, making them readable in Pear Note for iPad.

There’s another small but very important change in Pear Note 2.1. Pear Note and Lion did not get along as well as I had hoped, resulting in a bug there that could cause recordings to disappear. I apologize to any of you that lost recordings due to this, but it’s fixed in Pear Note 2.1. If you’ve upgraded to Lion, I recommend you update Pear Note for Mac to 2.1 immediately to avoid running into this.

Pear Note in Lion

Monday, July 4th, 2011

A new major version of Mac OS X, version 10.7 dubbed Lion, is about to be released. I’ve gotten some questions about how Pear Note will work in Lion and I wanted to answer them here. First, let me say that Pear Note will continue functioning just as it does today on Snow Leopard when Lion ships with one exception (which I’ll get to shortly). So, feel free to upgrade away and don’t worry about losing Pear Note.

There are a bunch of new features in Lion that apps can take advantage of which many of you have asked about, including Resume, Auto Save and Versions, and Full Screen. While I would love for Pear Note to support some of these new features right away, they require some major reworking of Pear Note. So, Pear Note will continue working as it did on Snow Leopard and not use these features for a little while. Once I get the iOS version of Pear Note released, then I’ll look at incorporating some of these Lion features in.

Importing Keynote and Powerpoint slides

As I said above, there’s one thing that’s not going to keep working in Lion. The method I use to import Keynote and Powerpoint slides files does not work any more in Lion. The truth is, it never worked perfectly, and often had trouble with complicated presentations. So, Pear Note is dropping support for importing Powerpoint and Keynote files as of version 2.0.6 (just released). It will continue to work on Leopard and Snow Leopard as it has before, but it is being dropped as an official feature (meaning it won’t be advertised as a feature any more).

Don’t worry that you won’t be able to use the slides part of Pear Note any more, though. You just have to convert your slides to PDF using their respective applications before adding them to your Pear Note document. This is a much, much more reliable way of importing the slides, as Powerpoint is excellent at reading Powerpoint files and Keynote is excellent at reading Keynote files (it’s like they were made to do it). More detailed instructions on how to do this are available here.

Thanks for your understanding.

Pear Note 2.0.5

Tuesday, May 10th, 2011

Pear Note 2.0.5 is now out. This is a maintenance release, and is now available for update from here or through the Mac App Store.

Pear Note 2.0.5 includes improvements to the web player created when you share your notes. These include compatibility with new versions of Mobile Safari on the iPad. This means that when you share your notes now, they’ll be playable on the iPad as well as in the browser. If you’ve had problems with your old notes playing back on the iPad, now you can just re-share them after updating to 2.0.5 and they should now play.

Pear Note 2.0.5 also has a new preference to set how much time to jump back when you hit the jump back button. 30 seconds is still the default, but if you miss the 10 seconds jump from Pear Note 1 or want something else, you can now set it to whatever you like.

So, update away and enjoy!