Time In Words screen saver has just been updated to version 1.1 and is now fully compatible with Mountain Lion. It is free to use and can be downloaded here. The basic screen saver worked before, but searching for an alternative time zone would crash System Preferences. That is now fixed. The screen saver also shows a thumbnail image when in Mountain Lion and is code-signed with my developer ID for compatibility with Mountain Lion’s Gatekeeper.

UPDATE: September 2016 - A Knight’s Move for iOS is no longer available.A Knight’s Move for Mac is still supported. “A Knight’s Move” is a fun, addictive and simple puzzle game based on the movements of chess pieces. Your goal is to move your white knight across a board to a target square using the same movements as a knight in chess. Pawns may block your way, while enemy bishops, castles, knights and the queen may try to stop you.

In Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion), Apple decided to make it more difficult to access your Library folder, presumably to stop people doing stuff that made apps crash. But as a developer, I need access to my Library folder a lot. I need to check that preferences are being saved correctly. If I have an app that uses the Application Support folder, then I need to be able to check it.

Man Reader launched on the Mac App Store a couple of days ago and yesterday I got an email from a purchaser who reported that Man Reader was not displaying the man pages for MacPorts, even though he had the paths set up correctly. I installed MacPorts to check this out and ran into the same problem. Running the command “man port” in Terminal worked fine, but “port” did not appear in Man Reader’s list.

The latest update for Pic-a-POD for Mac is now available through the Mac App Store. Bug fix: # selecting an iPhoto pic from the Recent Desktops menu now works correctly. New features: # Better indication of downloads and when large pics are not yet available Direct link to App Store in Help menu - please rate or review.

Having just completed the my first screen saver for Mac - the Time In Words Screen Saver , I thought I would share some of the experiences. I am using OS X Lion (10.7) and Xcode 4.3.2 The first thing is to create a new project in Xcode using the Screen Saver template: Xcode sets up a project for you with everything you need for a screen saver module. Start editing the ScreenSaverView.

Working out what operating systems to support in your software is always a difficult decision. I only program for Mac & iOS systems for starters. This is because they are the systems I use and understand. I am not interested in expending the time & money needed to program and test my software for other systems. Within the Mac & iOS ecosystems, there is still the decision of which versions to support.

The new iPad has a Retina display, meaning that the pixel density is much greater. For some apps, this is a problem as their graphics are now scaled and look pixellated. However Time In Words is very simple. It uses standard fonts and interface widgets with no images or external graphics apart from the icon. The icon may not look perfect on a new iPad, but the display itself should look really great.

My iPhone 4 is now 18 months old, and it’s Home button is starting to feel the strain. These buttons have been used much more than originally intended, with the new multitasking required double-presses, not to mention access to the camera etc. So basically , it is wearing out. The phone is out of warranty and there is no way I am going to pay for an expensive repair when my current phone contract will expire later this year, and hopefully the iPhone 5 will be ready for me then.

Time In Words for Mac has just been approved and is now available for free from the Mac App Store. For more details, check out the Time In Words for Mac web page.