Lightroom 4 isn’t nearly as big of an update as versions 2 or 3, but that’s more of a sign of a mature product than anything else. There are a few all-new features, but the one thing that will really, really want to upgrade is the new Highlights and Shadows section. It really is good enough to justify this point-release upgrade all by itself.
The world’s favorite music streaming service Spotify has just added a bunch of new music apps. Spotify apps are widgets that run inside Spotify and let you access the music in various ways. The first apps launched a few months ago on the Mac (they’re still not on the iPhone), and the second wave has just dropped. I have taken a quick look, and there are a few gems in there.
Adobe’s next version of Photoshop — CS6 — is now available as a free download in beta form. The update packs in a lot of new features, but it really feels more like a reboot, with a redesigned interface and several features ported back from Photoshop’s sister product, Lightroom.
I’m a dead treeware holdout when it comes to cookbooks, and as such any recipes I save from the web are scattered across Pinboard, Instapaper and Simplenote. But Basil is the app that might just change all that. Yes, it’s another recipe organization app, but there’s a difference. Basil lets you throw in recipes from just about anywhere, formats them and categorizes them ready to use.
Do you use your iPad as a second monitor using Air Display to wirelessly extend your desktop? If so, bet you wish you could harness your new iPad’s retina display, don’t you? Unfortunately, the functionality currently isn’t baked into Air Display, but that’ll soon change… and for the first time let millions of OS X users experiment with the hidden HiDPI mode in Lion and Mountain Lion.
Google Earth just got what turns out to be rather a big update. On paper it seems like nothing more than a few interface tweaks and the ability to open KML and KMZ files linked from Safari, but one new bullet point — “Touring support: load tours from the Earth Gallery or from mountain layer” — turns the map app into something entirely different.
We’re only two days away from experiencing the new gravity defying, interstellar slingshotting Angry Birds Space game and Rovio wants to make sure we don’t forget. Today they released the official game trailer and while we’ve already been exposed to in-game footage, the trailer gives us a bird’s eye view of the latest avian egg abduction. So grab your freeze-dried astronaut food, pack yourself a month’s supply of adult diapers and start counting down to this year’s out of this world blockbuster.
Yesterday, we showed you how to fix apps that get stuck “waiting” as you downloaded everything to your newly-restored iPad. That’s fine and all, but what if you really, really need to check your RSS reader of choice to read the latest Cult of Mac stories? With this incredibly simple tip, you can just tell the iPad to download that app right away.
It’s been an expensive month for many the Apple fan. The new iPad isn’t cheap, and after spending between $500 and $830 on a new top-of-the-line tablet, it might be hard to scrape enough money together to actually furnish your iPad with apps, music or movies.
Don’t worry, we got you covered. Here’s how to save 20% off all App Store or iTunes purchases.
The Humble Bundle is back again, this time bringing five games never-before-seen on Android. If you’re wondering what Humble Bundle is, it’s a pay-what-you-want bundle of multi-platform, DRM-free, and independently developed games. Not only do customers get to pick their own price, but they also get to allocate their payment by deciding how much goes to the developers, how much goes to charity, and how much goes to Humble Bundle (which pays for the bandwidth and development of the promotion). They usually offer a slew of games for the price of “whatever” and then throw in a bonus game for those willing to pay more than the average customer (which isn’t that expensive).
Activision Product Director Noah Heller talked with T3 a bit about their Call of Duty Elite app and its natural progression from smartphone to tablet.
“We’re working on the tablet app right now, I can’t tell you much about it but what I can tell you is that it will be a truly native, customised application for the tablet, it’s not just a simple port.”
Bringing COD Elite to the tablet has many advantages to the smartphone counterpart as it allows Activision to take advantage of the additional screen space. What additional features will be added to the tablet app remain a mystery but there’s been talks about possibly adding live Heat Maps among other things.
There is, you may be aware, a new iPad launching today, along with its fancy new camera. That’s great and all, but what if you a) don’t want one b) live outside the first wave of launch countries or c) just don’t care?
Then why not make a little improvement to the camera already in your iPhone or iPod Touch, with a little app called CameraSharp which, today at least, is free? CameraSharp is an app with a single purpose: to make taking photos easier.
After unboxing your new iPad and getting it setup, the first thing you should do is open up the App Store and download some essential apps. We’ve compiled a list of 12 of the App Store’s greatest offerings, which we think should be installed on every iPad. These are apps you certainly won’t want to miss.
The new iPad’s Retina Display is perfect for reading, so some of the most highly-sought after app updates are going to be the ones that make the best iPad e-reading apps compatible with the doubled resolution. And, in fact, many such apps, like Kindle, Evernote and Readability have already updated.
Unfortunately, when you get your new iPad today, you’ll have to slog through Marco Arment’s best-selling e-reading app Instapaper in fuzzy old SD. But don’t despair, Retina Display support is coming soon.
If you’ve just upgraded from an iPad 2 to an iPad 3 a new iPad, no doubt you’ll be wanting to put the new device’s super powers – Retina screen, LTE wireless data, improved camera, and A5X processor – to the test.
Here’s a short list of apps that’ll help you do that.
Paypal has finally made it into the mobile payment market after being beat to the punch by the likes of Square and Intuit. PayPal may be late to the party but they have a more recognizable name in the world of payment systems and that may just be enough to push them to the front of the line. Besides their name, they’re also offering merchants a 2.7% flat rate on transactions versus the 2.75% offered by Square. PayPal didn’t stop there either, launching a full on geometrical attack by choosing a triangle as the shape of choice for their card reader dongle.
Experts at the Intrepidus Mobile Security Group came across some interesting parsers definitions within Google Wallet’s source code that could hint at a possible iOS release. How Google actually plans on getting Google Wallet to work on a non-NFC/SE iOS device is another story, but for now, let’s take a look at the iOS definitions found by Intrepidus.
By all accounts, text-heavy apps really shine on the new iPad’s Retina Display, so I’m glad to see that Amazon have already updated my favorite iOS e-reading app to work at native 2048×1536 resolution.
And that’s not all. Amazon has also taken the opportunity to redesign the Kindle library view so that it’s organized in two separate tabs, “Cloud” and “Device,” which should make it easier to tell which e-books you have stored locally and which ones need to be slurped down from Amazon’s databanks.
You can download Kindle 3.0 on the App Store right now for free.
There are a number of half-baked third-party email clients for the iPhone, but until now, there hasn’t been a real replacement for the iPhone’s built-in Mail app. Sparrow for iPhone finally changes that. It’s crammed full of terrific features that make Apple’s solution look pretty amateur, and yet it’s still incredibly easy to use. In fact, I think it’s just as spectacular as Sparrow for the Mac.
Before our full review next week, here’s a great little how-to guide on using geotagging in Lightroom 4. Adobe’s photo-editing and cataloging app has caught up with iPhoto and Aperture in its latest version, and you can now view any photos with embedded GPS co-ordinates on an in-app map. This means any of your iPhone photos can be browsed by location, which is a surprisingly useful tool.
But what if you want to reverse tag your photos? Say your camera doesn’t have GPS, but you have a track log recorded on a GPS device or with an iPhone app. How do you put this data together in a useful way? Below, Adobe’s Terry White shows us how.
Oh Lord, after a dozen years, it’s finally come: Blizzard Entertainment has finally slapped a release date on their much-anticipated horror and fantasy themed hack-and-slash RPG, Diablo III. And that magic date?
After a brief moment in the iTunes in the iTunes App Store sun last week, Markdown text editor ByWord has officially arrived on your iPad and iPhone. It’s a companion to the excellent OS X version of ByWord, and is one of a growing number of apps to sync using iCloud.
Sometimes, we need to speed up the response of our mouse or our trackpad, like for a First Person Shooter game. Other times, we might need to slow it down, so we can work with more detailed graphics files in a drawing program. SmoothCursor, from the folks at leftbee apps, is a simple little utility that does just that.
We’re huge, unwavering fans of Tapbot’s Tweetbot Twitter client for iPhone and iPad. It just blows the official Twitter client out of the water in every respect. Ahead of the debut of the new iPad on Friday, though, and in accompaniment with their recent update to Camera+, Tapbot has pushed through the 2.1 update of Tweetbot for iPad (iPhone version coming soon), and not only does it support Retina Display resolution and Camera+ 3.0 image capturing and editing… it introduces streaming to the mix!
Instagram is one of the most wildly successful apps to ever hit the iOS App Store. The app’s co-founder, Kevin Systrom, recently revealed that Instagram now boasts 27 million active users on the iPhone alone during the South by Southwest conference (SXSW) in Austin, Texas.
We’ve all been clamoring for the popular social photography app to make its way to Android for many months, and it has been confirmed that Instagram for Android is coming “very soon.” The app is currently being tested in private beta.
The boldest claim Systrom made was that Instagram for Android is, in some ways, “better than our iPhone app.”