software - page 10

Just a week after we got Photoshop on the iPad, along comes an app that looks like we all expected Photoshop on the iPad to look. It’s called Laminar, and the best way to describe it is as Lightroom lite.

Apple is getting really serious about using the iPad in large organizations. School and workplace admin people are going to be very pleased with Apple Configurator, a new Mac app which lets you — surprise! — configure multiple iPads at once, all from the comfort of your own computer screen.

It’s all about software.

Watch the video of this morning’s iPad event, and note how Apple’s execs spend more time talking about the apps that the new iPad can run than the new iPad itself.

As we thought, Apple has launched iPhoto for the iPad, meaning that — at last — we won’t have to deal with the awful built-in Photos app so much any more. As you’d expect if you have used GarageBand or iMovie on the iPad, iPhoto keeps the spirit of its desktop cousin, but has been completely remade for the touch-screen tablet. And while it is sure to shine on the new iPad’s Retina display, it will also run on the iPad you have today.

In a move that would surely have Steve Jobs — the man willing to go thermonuclear war against Android — rolling over in his grave, Apple has apparently offered licensing deals to Samsung and Motorola in an attempt to settle ongoing and future patent suits. According to sources speaking with Dow Jones Newswires, Apple has offered licensing deals in the tune of $5 to $15 per device or the equivalent of 1% to 2.5% of net sales per device. Interestingly enough, these fees are on par with what Apple deemed “unreasonable” after attempts to license patents from Motorola.

I have been using Photoshop Touch almost obsessively for the past week, despite being holed up in the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona for much of that time. At first look, I thought it was yet another photo-editing app, and in many ways it is. But as I dig in more and more, its clear that — while this is no substitute for desktop Photoshop — its an amazing app in itself. And all the more so as it runs in just 512KB RAM.

First, what Photoshop Touch for? That’s not as dumb a question as it might seem.

The patent saga continues with U.S. Circuit Judge Richard A. Posner in Chicago ruling that Motorola and Google must provide Apple with information regarding Android development as well as information about the impending merger. It’s unclear exactly what specific “information” must be provided and while everyone goes ahead and assumes it’s some sort of top secret documentation, I’m betting it’s nothing of the sort and Apple won’t be gaining any trade secrets out of this. It’s all ridiculous and will only end as all of these patent suits have ended, with nothing more than a software update.

Valletta is yet another Markdown editor for the Mac, but one with a crucial difference. Instead of using a separate window to preview your document, it converts only the current line you’re editing, leaving the rest as clean and beautiful preview. It’s a clever idea, but we’ll have to see how well it works in practice.

One of the big things missing from Lightroom — Adobe’s excellent photo processing app — was printing. Not boring old printing where you have a big, expensive box in the corner of your office spit out endless sheets of paper until one of them is right. No, we mean remote printing, where you choose some images, hit a button and, a short while later, a gorgeous book appears on your doorstep.

Apple’s iPhoto and Aperture have had this for a while. Now, thanks to Blurb, the brand-new Lightroom 4 has it too.

Android and iOS users will now be able to quickly access the places they have searched for on Google thanks to Google’s new “Recent” icon on their mobile search page. Any user who has Web History enabled and is logged into Google when searching for a place will have that search saved and accessible via the “Recent” icon. Searches will be saved for approximately 24-hours and will give users the convenience of starting searches from their desktop and later pulling up that information while mobile.

Were you awakened this morning by the sounds of enthusiastic golf claps? It was photographers everywhere applauding Adobe’s release of Lightroom 4 for only $149 — half the price of Lightroom 3. Upgrading will run you less at $79, but price is only part of what’s new and noteworthy.

I bet you thought you were pretty cool showing off your X-ray app and farting cat. Well, it’s time to get schooled by some professionals who are going to show you just how amazing your phone could be. Watch as car-hacker/engineer Dr. James Brighton recreates the popular mobile racing game Reckless Racing 2 using two MGF sports cars and an Xperia Play and Xperia S. This was all done in conjunction with Xperia Studio, a project created by Sony which invites people across the globe to test the limits of mobile technology. It never ceases to amaze me what some individuals can accomplish and it’s projects like these that get me excited about the future.

Y’all know Instapaper, right? It’s the amazing read-later service from Marco Arment which lets you save anything your find on the web to read at your leisure on your iPhone, iPad or Kindle. Now a new, free, Mac App Store app called Read Later will let you read your articles on your Mac.

Apple is yet to strike a deal with China Mobile over the iPhone, but that hasn’t stopped the Cupertino company from supporting China Mobile customers who want to use its latest smartphone with the carrier unofficially. Just a month after Apple confirmed that the iPhone 4S has issues with China Mobile SIM cards, it has fixed the device to eliminate signal issues.

The latest ruling to come out of the ridiculous patent game comes in favor of Apple and awards them an injunction on Motorola Android products found to infringe on an Apple patent regarding scrolling behavior in the photo gallery application. What does this ruling actually mean for German users? Nothing really. Motorola will simply push an update to change the scrolling behavior and that will be the end of that. Will German Motorola users notice the change? Most likely not. So what was the point? The same point of everything that involves lawyers — money.

While Siri seems to get all the attention when it comes to voice actions, Motorola wants to remind people that Android not only does voice actions, but does them extremely well, if not better. At least that’s the message we’re getting out of Motorola’s latest campaign pitting Android’s voice actions against its top contender Siri. Motorola runs through a slew of voice action challenges using three different Motorola phones and the results are impressive. I’m blown away by how fast both OS’s perform the tasks given and it’s an excellent reminder of the fact that Android has been perfecting voice actions for quite some time. I’m betting there are a lot of you that didn’t even realize your phone could do the things your about to see. Check out the videos after the break.

A brand new update from Spotify adds a couple of great new features. The Mac and Windows versions of the subscription music service both now support gapless playback and crossfading of songs. There is also a scattering of other tweaks and improvements.

Users of Google’s Flight Search will now be able to receive the same great desktop features on their mobile devices. Flight Search is now available for both Android and iOS users who search for a flight via their mobile browser. Just search for a flight departing from the US and watch as Google provides you with a table that shows available flights, including duration and prices. Benefits of Google’s Flight Search include:

If you went ahead and loaded the developer preview of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion onto your Mac, you likely already played around with the new Notification Center. Until you got bored and fired up Growl once again so you could enjoy notifications from all your apps, not just Mail and Calendar. Wouldn’t it be great, though, if all those Growl-capable apps could talk to Notification Center instead? With Hiss, they can.

Acorn describes itself as “an image editor for humans”, and that sums it up in a nutshell.

What you get inside Acorn are pretty much all the image editing features you’re ever going to need, for a fraction of the price of some of the competing apps.

Today a German court ruled that most of Motorola’s products infringe on Apple’s slide-to-unlock image patent with the only exception being the slide-the-circle gesture used in the Motorola XOOM. This ruling allows Apple to enforce a permanent injunction against the Motorola products found in violation. Motorola can still appeal the decision therefore Apple would be taking a very big risk enforcing such an injunction at this time. Should the ruling be overturned, Apple would have to reimburse Motorola for any lost sales due to the injunction. Regardless of Apple’s decision, one thing is for sure: Motorola will now have to make changes to their UI.

One of the big headline features in Apple’s new Mountain Lion OS is Gatekeeper, designed to keep malware and other nasties away from your computer. So is this another step towards App Store-only software on Macs?

The short answer is yes, it is. But it doesn’t have to be. Gatekeeper gives you the choice: do you want to stick to App Store-only apps, or be able to install anything from anywhere?

When you’re snapping a tacky, cliched vacation photo, isn’t it annoying that all those other tourists are buzzing around and generally getting in the way of that monument/handsome plaza/amusing statue? Short of climbing up into a bell tower and, well, you know what, there’s little that you can do to remove these scampering human ants. You could take a sequence of photos and buy Photoshop just to paint out the milling hordes, or you could try Scalado’s Remove app. If you had an Android phone.

Ever wondered how come iOS titles make it into the App Store’s top 25 list? Some iOS developers have been using download bots to purchase their own apps and manipulate the App Store’s top 25 list, according to a new report from Inside Mobile Apps. The software has been in use for over 12 months to fraudulently promote iOS titles, and some marketing firms charge up to $15,000 a time for the service.

Fashion and photography go together like peanut butter and jelly, or Kentucky and Bourbon. So it’s not surprising that the newest Hipstamatic Pak, Made in America, is influenced by famed fashion photographer Chiun-Kai Shih, and released just ahead of New York Fashion Week. And it’s free throughout the 16th.