Airfoil
Audio Hijack
Farrago
Fission
Loopback
Piezo
SoundSource
Rogue Amoeba Newsletter
Volume 9, Issue 1
December 31st, 2011
1. Preface & Introduction
2. Say Hello to Piezo - Charmingly Simple Audio Recording
3. Receive From iOS and iTunes With the Latest Versions of Airfoil
4. Join Us At Macworld-iWorld 2012
5. 2011 in Review
6. Our Plans for 2012
7. Closing
1. Preface
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Introduction
As always, I'm your host Paul Kafasis. As CEO/Lackey here at Rogue Amoeba, it's my privilege to be able to write to you. It's been almost exactly a year since our last newsletter, but we've been hard at work on new products and updates for you. Read on to learn all about it.
2. Say Hello to Piezo - Charmingly Simple Audio Recording
Earlier this month, we were thrilled to introduce our brand-new product, Piezo. Piezo is a simple audio recorder, designed to make recording audio on your Mac a snap. Whether you want to record Skype conversations, web streams from Safari, or even just audio from a microphone, Piezo can help you capture audio in just seconds. In addition to being easy to use, Piezo is also gorgeous, with an alluring retro-modern feel courtesy of our excellent designer Christa.
Many of you already use our award-winning Audio Hijack Pro for audio capture, so you might be wondering how Piezo compares. Piezo isn't really aimed at our existing Audio Hijack Pro users. It's a simplified audio recorder, which lacks a great deal of the functionality found in the more powerful Audio Hijack Pro.
Our goal in creating Piezo was to provide an effortless audio recording tool to the millions of users of the Mac App Store, while also crafting a more streamlined tool useful for basic audio recording needs. If you're already well-versed in the more-powerful Audio Hijack Pro, Piezo is likely not for you.
That said, you can check out a comparison between the two applications on our site:
http://rogueamoeba.com/support/knowledgebase/?showArticle=CompareToAH
We have seen plenty of folks making use of both Audio Hijack Pro and Piezo, so if you're interested, check it out with the free trial for Mac OS X 10.6 and 10.7. When you're ready to buy, you can purchase a license for Piezo in the Mac App Store:
https://rogueamoeba.com/piezo/buy-appstore.php
or directly through our store:
http://rogueamoeba.com/piezo/buy.php
Best of all, Piezo is available for the incredibly low price of just $10!
We hope you'll check out Piezo:
3. Receive From iOS and iTunes With the Latest Versions of Airfoil
We released Airfoil 4 in December of 2010, and since then we've had thousands of upgrades and new purchases. Airfoil is more popular than ever, and we're very pleased. We aren't resting on our laurels though, as we continue to improve Airfoil regularly.
The most recent major updates came in the form of Airfoil for Mac 4.5 and Airfoil for Windows 3.1. When you update to these new versions, you'll get a powerful update to Airfoil Speakers as well. As you may know, Airfoil Speakers turns your computer into an audio receiver for Airfoil, enabling you to transmit audio from one computer to another. Now, the newest versions of Airfoil Speakers can receive audio directly from iOS and iTunes, without even needing to use Airfoil.
That's right, Airfoil Speakers on both platforms can now receive audio from any iOS device! When you play audio in almost any audio app on your iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad, you can select Airfoil Speakers from the AirPlay list provided by iOS. Once you do, you'll hear the audio right on your Mac or PC.
Airfoil Speakers can now also receive audio directly from iTunes. You've always been able to play iTunes to Airfoil Speakers, by setting iTunes as your source in Airfoil. Now you can play audio directly from iTunes on Mac OS X or Windows, right out to any Mac or PC running Airfoil Speakers.
Airfoil 4 requires Mac OS X 10.6 or higher. The latest version of Airfoil for Mac is 4.6.2, and it's a free update for all licensed Airfoil 4 owners.
If you have Airfoil 3 or earlier, you can upgrade to Airfoil 4 for just $10 here:
http://rogueamoeba.com/store/deals/AFMUpgrade.php
Airfoil for Windows 3.1 is a free update for all licensed Airfoil for Windows owners.
Learn more, and get the latest Airfoil for your platform right here:
http://rogueamoeba.com/airfoil
4. Join Us At Macworld-iWorld 2012
Next month, the 2012 edition of the Macworld Expo will be taking place in San Francisco, and we'll be exhibiting once again. Thinking of attending? We'd love to see you there, and we've even got a limited number of free Exhibit Hall passes to get you in.
Details:
Dates: January 26th - January 28th, 2012
Times: 12 PM - 6 PM (Thursday), 10 AM - 6 PM (Friday, Saturday)
Location: Moscone Center, San Francisco
Booth: #742
If you've been to Macworld's exhibit hall before, you've got a decent idea of what to expect. As always, there will be hundreds of Mac and iOS vendors coming together with tens of thousands of users to talk about the software and hardware we all use every day. This year there will be a whole lot more going on, from musical performances by big name bands like Modest Mouse, BT, and Moe, to great tech talks, and much more.
As I mentioned, we've got a limited number of free Exhibit Hall passes, so you can register here to get in at no charge:
https://register.rcsreg.com/r2/macsf2012/ga/index2.html?pri=MGP28940
Once the free passes are gone, they're gone, but it's still just $25 to get in.
When you're at the Moscone, be sure to swing by booth #742 to say hello.
5. 2011 in Review
As has often happened before, we ended the year 2010 with feverish effort to release Airfoil 4. Thus, we relaxed a bit going in to 2011. I did have a chance to attend Macworld in January, and it was as busy as ever.
http://rogueamoeba.com/utm/2011/02/03/from-macworld-2011/
In February SiriusXM made several change that forced us to scramble in order to keep our SiriusXM player Pulsar working as expected. Unfortunately, SiriusXM doesn't provide any outside access to developers. Fortunately, we worked around that limitation, and Pulsar is currently working well.
http://rogueamoeba.com/utm/2011/02/15/pulsar-2-2-now-with-full-siriusxm-support/
Many third party developers asked us how they could integrate with Airfoil, so in April we developed an integration API to allow them to do just that.
http://rogueamoeba.com/utm/2011/04/06/airfoil-integration/
We've now got a great lineup of audio apps from which Airfoil can received enhanced metadata and remote control, making for an even better experience when listening to audio. You can see a full list of supported applications here:
http://rogueamoeba.com/support/knowledgebase/?showArticle=AirfoilRemoteControl-Mac
If your favorite audio player isn't listed, get in touch with the developer, and link them to our blog post!
Our next major update came in July, when we released Airfoil for Windows 3. This update brought many of the new features found in Airfoil for Mac 4 to Windows, and it's been a big hit with our Windows users. If you have both Macs and Windows machines in your household, be sure to check out Airfoil for Windows.
http://rogueamoeba.com/utm/2011/07/06/airfoil-for-windows-version-3-brings-massive-improvements/
We also updated Airfoil for Mac to version 4.5, enabling Airfoil Speakers on the Mac to receive audio from iOS and iTunes (see section 3 above).
http://rogueamoeba.com/utm/2011/07/06/airfoil-for-mac-version-4-5-now-receiving-from-ios-and-itunes/
Airfoil Speakers Touch, for iOS, got a great update as well.
http://rogueamoeba.com/utm/2011/07/08/whats-new-in-airfoil-speakers-touch-2/
The fall was consumed by updates for Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion). While we'd have liked to have been there on day 1, that simply wasn't possible. It took us about a month before we had all of our software 100% compatible with the new OS, but we're now all set. If you're on Lion, be sure you have the latest versions of all our applications so everything works flawlessly.
We also made three new hires in the fall, bringing on board Grant Farr, Jose Vazquez and Ed Wynne. Grant's already had his first product release, while Jose is currently working on the next iteration of Fission. Ed has long been the mastermind behind our Instant On component while contracting for us. Now with us full-time, he's working on the underpinnings of several of our applications.
And last but certainly not least, as seen in section 2 above, we released Piezo in December. After many months of hard work, Grant's first application is now available. Read all about it above, or on our blog here:
http://rogueamoeba.com/utm/2011/12/07/announcing-our-newest-app-piezo/
Piezo has met with rave reviews, and we couldn't be more proud. Check it out for your audio recording needs.
Those were the major highlights of 2011 for us, but we're always hard at work on the future. Read on for more.
6. Our Plans for 2012
Looking at our year-end newsletter for 2010, I reviewed our then-future plans for 2011. As is true for so many things in life, almost nothing went according plan, and yet everything worked out pretty well.
At the end of 2010, we mentioned big updates we had planned for several apps. In 2011, we shipped some of those updates, and merely made progress on others. Perhaps most importantly, I'm very hopeful we'll be able to show you what we're doing with Audio Hijack Pro at some point in 2012. Beyond that, we've got some big updates for Piezo and Fission in the works, along with smaller updates for just about every product we make.
As always, this is subject to change, but it's a clue as to what we're working on. You can get more frequent information updates with the links in the Closing below.
7. Closing
That's all for now. To keep up with Rogue Amoeba more regularly, you can follow our Twitter account:
http://twitter.com/rogueamoeba
and check out our company weblog, Under The Microscope:
You can even like us on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/RogueAmoeba
As always, thanks for your support and thanks for reading. We hope you have a great 2012!
Happy New Year,
-Paul