Juicy Cocktail – Blog

Juicy Cocktail Apps on Mountain Lion

2012-07-25T00:00:00+02:00

Apple released OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion today. Current Juicy Cocktail apps are fully compatible with Apple’s newest system and will work just fine. Both apps will get additional OS X 10.8 support and great new features in the future. Please remember to make a backup before you upgrade to Apple’s newest OS. Everything should work fine under normal circumstances, but it’s better to be on the safe side, especially when you have a lot of personal entries in Memories or Delicious Recipes.

Lately we’ve been quiet on our blog. That’s because we work hard to get an awesome new version of Memories out later this year. There will be a lot of new features and some vastly needed improvements. We are sure that you’ll like what you see. I would love to give you more specific information and some screenshots, but we’re currently in the process of finishing the last two features and improving the most popular feature request so that it’ll work across all of your devices (guess what I’m talking about).

That’s all for now. We’ll be probably locked up in our cellar rooms for the next couple of months to finish what we started. To say that we’re excited would be an understatement. Thanks again for supporting our work.

Enjoy!

iChat IRC Plugin

2011-08-29T00:00:00+02:00

The release of OS X Lion brought a lot of new great features. One thing we were specifically interested in was plugin support for the new iChat 6 in OS X Lion. We use IRC throughout the day to exchange new ideas, to share links with design concepts and for casual discussions. In OS X Snow Leopard we used the versatile and free Adium that has built-in IRC support. iChat gained some amazing features and usability improvements with the introduction of OS X Lion. The thing that made me anxious every time I’ve seen iChat running on other people’s machines was the overall aesthetics and lightness of its user interface.

It seems that several weeks after Apple’s announcement there’s still no third-party plugin for iChat. We thought that we can improve the situation and show a first proof of concept that lets you connect to IRC servers. Apple provides great developer documentation and some examples on which we built this plugin. After you download the free plugin you need to move it to the “/Library/iChat/PlugIns” folder. Then you have to restart iChat and you can add a new account in its preferences. iChat should automatically connect you to the server and you can try to enter some basic commands (e.g. try to connect to “irc.freenode.net” on port 6667 and then join the ##mac channel with “/join ##mac”).

Keep in mind that this is just a first proof of concept that doesn’t deliver the whole IRC experience in iChat. Basic commands work though and you can use iChat to chat with your friends and colleagues over IRC.

Please let us know if you have problems, questions, or suggestions on improving the plugin.

Download the free iChat IRC plugin

Enjoy!

Full Lion Compatibility

2011-07-20T00:00:00+02:00

Apple released OS X Lion today and we’re glad to tell you that all of our apps (Delicious Recipes & Memories) are Lion compatible. We provide full support for the new operating system and will continue to integrate great new features that will leverage the full potential of the next generation operating system.

If you bought one of the above apps this year you should already have the latest version installed on your system.

Finally, if you’re looking to buy, there’s no need to wait. We will provide all of our Lion specific updates for free, so you don’t need to worry about paying an upgrade fee to use advanced features supported only on Lion.

Memories is only $5.99 and exclusively available on the Mac App Store. You can find a more detailed description at the Memories product page. We will increase the price with the next (big) update and now is a good time to grab a copy since you’ll get the update for free.

Delicious Recipes is only $8.99 and also exclusively available on the Mac App Store. The Delicious Recipes product page features more information for you.

Enjoy!

Limits 1.2 Available On The App Store

2011-07-19T00:00:00+02:00

A couple of days ago we announced that there will be an update for Limits and today the update hit the App Store. We are very excited that the app finally got a graphical overview. You can use it to better track and analyze your data and distinct data points. Another change is the new icon that better emphasizes on the functionality of Limits. It also looks a lot better than the old one.

We’ve also improved the legibility at several places and it’s possible to delete items in the history.

Hello World

2011-07-18T00:00:00+02:00

You’ve probably already seen that we completely revamped our website and uploaded it on our servers at the beginning of last week. During the last couple of days we corrected some last spelling mistakes (thanks for the overwhelming feedback!) and optimized the speed of our new and shiny site. We moved all images to the cloud, so you can enjoy the full experience, no matter where you live or currently are.

We are very excited to finally share months of hard work with the whole world!

You’ll perhaps ask why it took so long to redesign just a few pages? I can tell you that it was a lot more behind the scenes than is visible to you. We completely redesigned every already existing page and added a bunch of new pages, so you can get more information and enjoy other benefits, too. It’s easier for you to decide if you want to buy one of our apps, because every app has its own page now. You can take a look at the beautiful screenshots and read more about the functionality. Furthermore all of our apps have a completely new and distinct support page. All of those pages have a contact form so that you can get in touch with us easier and faster than ever before. We set a high value on great and friendly support and we think that we’ve once again raised the bar higher.

During the redesign we especially focused on aesthetics, an easy to understand navigation and high quality. All attributes combined stand not only for our high attention to detail, but also the love and work that is represented through all of our products. I.e. you can browse our site without any concessions on your Mac, iPhone, iPad and even on a PC. We made sure that every page looks great in Safari, Chrome, Firefox 3.6 and newer, Internet Explorer 7 and newer, and even Opera. Above all we also improved the code behind the scenes so that it will be a lot easier to maintain our website. We’ll also have more time to focus on all of our current apps and some yet to be announced secret projects.

Another important milestone was to completely localize the site in two languages: English and German. This was no easy job, but the rewards are astonishing. At the end we counted 42 pages with different content, graphics and structure (without counting the imprint).

After we finished our work on the website, we’ll focus again on updates for all of our apps. Last friday we’ve already submitted an updated version of Limits, that should be in the App Store in the next couple of days. My wife and I are very glad to develop & deliver faster and with a higher quality.

You are welcome to browse through our new website. Please get in touch with us, when you have further questions, suggestions or other improvements.

Enjoy!

Delicious Recipes 1.0

2011-04-22T00:00:00+02:00

We are happy to announce our new recipe management app Delicious Recipes. The approval took only three days and we are as excited as you that it went so smooth and fast! Delicious Recipes is our second app in the Mac App Store that enhances your daily life with your Mac. There are already great features in version 1.0 and we will enhance them in future releases:

Easy to Use
Very Fast Entry of Your Recipes
Gorgeous Full Screen Cook View
Outstanding Email Template
Optimized Printing
Intuitive Drag & Drop
HTML & RTFD export

Delicious Recipes is only $8.99 and exclusively available on the Mac App Store. You can find more a detailed description at the Delicious Recipes product page.

We will also give away Delicious Recipes promo codes today on Twitter. Just follow @juicycocktail on Twitter to grab our fresh and tasty recipe app.

We are currently on Easter vacation and will return at the end of next week. Until then we will answer your emails during 72h, instead of the usual 48h. We didn’t want to withhold Delicious Recipes until next week, because it fits perfectly to Easter.

We wish you great cooking with Delicious Recipes and your favorite meals during the upcoming holiday season.

Enjoy!

Memories 1.0 Hits The App Store

2011-02-14T00:00:00+01:00

We are happy to announce that after our initial development phase and a rather long waiting period for approval of about a month, our brand new diary application Memories reached the Mac App Store. We are quite excited to see our first application in the all new and shiny Mac App Store. With Memories 1.0 we focused on the following features:

Easy to Use
High Privacy Standards
Customization and Attachments
Auto-Save
Full Screen Mode
Fast Export
Printing

Memories is only $5.99 and exclusively available on the Mac App Store. You can find a more detailed description at the Memories product page.

Enjoy!

Edwin 3.0 Beta With Helluva Changes

2011-02-13T00:00:00+01:00

It has been more than one year since the last Edwin update. Finally I want to tell you that we are working on a new version of Edwin, which is currently in a late alpha version. I’m very excited about the changes.

Edwin 2 has collected some dust (please keep in mind that all users who bought or will buy the current version will receive a free update to Edwin 3). We wanted to improve all of the shortcomings of the old version and make it a better citizen on newer devices. Here are a couple of changes that we’ve already implemented or plan to implement in the final release of Edwin 3:

Support for full resolution images on the iPhone 4: A lot of people want to print out there photos and the iPhone 4 finally gives us the computing power to support higher resolutions.
Reduced user interface complexity: During our usage we discovered that the whole interface got in the way and was rather counterintuitive. We wanted a very simple interface with access to all functionality. One important requirement was to capture a photo as fast as possible. That’s the reason why we focus on one central interface in the new version.
Speed enhancements: I have to be honest here and admit that the prior image calculation wasn’t optimal and way too slow. Every time a new frame or filter was selected Edwin recalculated it in the background and displayed the already processed image. In the new version you will see an instant preview and the calculation gets postponed until you actually do something with the image (share, save, …)
More filters and frames: there can never be enough.
Better Twitter / e-mail integration and new Facebook support.

There are plenty of new photography apps in the App Store, but I think that we have some major advantages compared to our competition. Instagram is focused on the sharing aspect. You only get square images, you do not really own your images. We think that their whole concept is focused more on casual photography. In Edwin you own your images, we support full resolutions and do not crop your images. You have several possibilities to store and share them. We also have improved frames and filters. On the other end are apps like Camera+ that are more complicated and give you too many choices. We like to have a very simple interface that gives you enough power and of course great processed pictures. I think that the quality of filters and frames is also one of our biggest strengths.

If you are interested in testing the new version, please send us an email (via our contact form) with your current device ID (there is an free app called UDIDit). Any feedback is highly appreciated.

If you “Parlez-vous français?” there is even an article in your favorite language. If you are French and interested in iPhoneography I highly recommend this blog. Thank you Yann!

Enjoy!

The Future of Juicy Cocktail

2011-02-12T00:00:00+01:00

It has been a long time since the last update on our site. It’s been more than a year in fact. We are not dead—quite the opposite—but we feel that we owe you an explanation. 2010 was a very busy year for us. We did a lot of contracting work for fellow developers and some bigger companies and released updates for our iOS apps. We even had two major updates and one new application. That was a lot of work and we lost focus on our products.

What does all of this mean for the future of Juicy Cocktail, our products and most importantly, you?

With the beginning of 2011 we completely abandoned contracting work and started to focus solely on Juicy Cocktail. We think that you as our customer and user deserve our entire attention and the best products we can deliver working full time on them. The first step is our new Mac OS X application Memories that will be released in the next couple of hours and be available on the Mac App Store.

There will be another change. Our current apps Gebühren and Glücksfee focus on the German market. We will expand to new markets and try to reach all English speaking users. That doesn’t mean that we will leave behind our German users, we just have more time to work on all of our products and maintain several languages.

So what’s next on our timeline? We will release a completely updated, and improved version of our photography app Edwin. We worked for a couple of months on the new release, overhauled the whole user interface and image algorithms. We are quite happy with our progress so far. The only things we have to do are some bug fixes and a beta period. The release is planned for late 2011. We’ve also worked on a new web site that will present all of our products, not only some of them, and will be updated soon. The new design will be a lot cleaner and more modern. This will not only give you a better overview of our current and future work, but also give us the possibility to lessen the burden on web site maintenance and add new updates way quicker than in the past.

We are quite excited about this year and what it will mean for Juicy Cocktail. My wife and I hope that you’re also as excited as we are.

Enjoy!

Limits 1.0 Available On The App Store

2009-01-03T00:00:00+01:00

We are proud to release our first own product for the iPhone and iPod touch: Limits, tadaa. After working really hard, solving some problems with our provider and fixing the last bugs we are happy to bring our product to every iPhone and iPod touch user out there. The journey wasn’t easy, but now the product is even more polished than we thought.

The current release is definitely a 1.0 one, but we’re already working to provide you a lot more features and an even faster and less cluttered interface. Our idea is that the program shouldn’t get in your way while you want to work with it.

Limits is available on the App Store. You can find more details on the Limits product site.

Enjoy!