Apple Mac HQ

Just in time for the new year, MacRabbit has released a Public Beta of their highly anticipated text editor, Espresso. Espresso is taking aim at the current integrated web development application leader, Coda.

I’ll spare you the fine details of what Espresso is, but it’s basically a web application suite rolled up into one application. FTP, CSS editing, and text editing in one beautiful package. Espresso is focusing heavily on a plug-in architecture. These plug-ins, called Sugars, greatly extend the functionally of the application.

I’ve briefly played around with the beta and one word describes the application so far, beautiful. Espresso is a gorgeous application that will no doubt have a large following.

You can pre-order the application for a introductory price of 60€. If you already own CSSEdit, the pre-order price is 50€. Espresso requires Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.

If your holiday shopping involves a Mac user, you might want to check out the Give Good Food To Your Mac promotion put on by a group of European Mac developers. While at WWDC this year, a group of developers came together and hatched the idea of a “great Mac feast with Mac apps made by the top European developers”. Give Good Food To Your Mac is the result of the idea seeded at WWDC this year.

The idea of Give Good Food To Your Mac is fairly simple. Choose any combination of the 28 applications available and receive a discount when you purchase three or more. As you add more applications to your shopping cart, the discount grows. Purchase three applications and you’ll trigger the 30% discount. Purchase 10 applications and you’ll receive a 70% discount. Discounts range from 30-70 percent.

The following applications are part of the promotion:

-Unity Indie
-Tables
-Pixelmator
-Together
-Feeder
-FotoMagico Express
-Art Text
-Money
-FreeWay 4 Express
-FreeWay 4 Pro
-RapidWeaver
-Merlin
-Geophoto
-Contactizer Express
-Contactizer Pro
-CSSEdit
-PulpMotion
-VideoPier
-BannerZest
-Cheetah3D
-iStopMotion Home
-Expert Wine Cellar
-iDive
-Morphage
-Magnet
-CoverScout
-Personal Trader
-Remote Buddy

I don’t own any of the applications in the promotion, but I’ve been testing CSSEdit for a while now and I’m likely to buy it. With this promotion offer, I’m going to give RapidWeaver and Pixelmator a try too.

If you’re a fan of CSSEdit or DeskShade, you could get into MacWorld 2008 for free. The developer of those applications won a booth at MacWorld as part of the Apple Design Award for CSSEdit, but he is unable to make it to San Francisco in January. He’s looking for someone to take his place and it could be you. Read his blog post for more information.