Apple hasn’t made any major updates to Aperture 3 since it was first released back in February of 2010, but they’ve managed to bring a minor software update to squash a couple of bugs, including incorrect color profiles attached to externally edited images, crashes when using brushes, and a bug that limited Photo Stream from working beyond 1,000 images for some Mac users.

The Omni Group will tell you they’re passionate about productivity, and evidence can be found in their utilities such as OmniFocus, OmniGraffle and OmniOutliner, longtime favorites of Mac (and now iDevice) owners. Their latest update is OmniPlan 2.0, a professional-grade project management application which now includes powerful new features that specifically allow users to break down tasks, optimize project resources, control costs, and monitor their entire project at a glance.

An asteroid the size of a house is whizzing by the Earth today—apparently the fifth closest fly-by of all time. Because it’s not going to crash into us, it’s been given the terribly boring name of Asteroid 2011 MD, as opposed to something fun like Death Harbinger or Violent Destruction from Outer Space. But that doesn’t mean it won’t be fun to follow, and you can do so with the SkySafari 3 app from Southern Stars, available at half price in honor of the event.

One of the events at every WWDC is the Apple Design Awards for “excellence in iOS and Mac OS X app design and development.” Introduced in 1997 as the “Human Interface Design Excellence,” it was thankfully Apple changed to the current name a year later. The winners get promotion on Apple’s developer site, a cube-shaped award that glows when picked up (see screenshot to the right), a MacBook Air, iPad 2, and an iPod Touch.

It’s Memorial Day weekend here in the United States. Along with the long weekend, parades, fly-overs and barbecues, it also brings sales, for one reason or another. Mac and iPhone, iPad, iPod touch developers have many of their own to offer, so we’ll round them all up here as they come in. Just remember to get your head out of your iPhone when the flag goes by at the parade, okay?

Continuous speech technology, which arrived in the late ’90s, was a massive leap forward for the technology. And today, Nuance’s Dragon Dictate speech recognition software is the state of the art both on Macs and Windows, capable of transcription of dictation at rates faster than I like to speak, and definitely faster than I can type, and with amazing accuracy.

Ah, digital planners and calendar programs. They are a quick and easy way to keep your to-dos in check and make an unwieldy life easier to manage, on paper at least. Some digital planners are good, and others are great. Opus Domini falls into both of those categories, depending on your needs as a user, since this app’s greatest strength is also its biggest annoyance.

The Subetsky Blog’s Mike Subetsky says he’s noticed that the longer he uses OS X, the more replacements he’s finding for Apple’s built-in applications, noting that Apple’s in-house software tends to focus heavily on design and aesthetics, but often lacks power-user features. I agree. As a Mac OS veteran of nearly 20 years on the platform, and as much as I love the Mac OS, I find most Apple software applications are too mainstream consumer oriented for my taste, and almost all of the applications I use regularly are non-Apple ones

Taking photos is a lot of fun, but manipulating them is a lot more fun. Today, we are going to look at some of the best options you have for playing with your photos without the wait. The Mac App store is giving you the chance to get your photo on, without having to trek to the store and buy software out of the box.

Steve Jobs and the rest of the Apple honchos must be smiling right now. Actually “amazed” is how Mr. Jobs described what they are feeling right now as Apple has reported there were one million apps downloaded from the newly opened Mac App Store on day one. Currently, there are more than 1,000 free and paid apps available on the Mac App Store. You can just imagine how many times the top apps were downloaded by Mac-hungry users.