We have liftoff! As promised on Monday with the news that Creative Suite 6 was shipping, Adobe has taken the wraps off Creative Cloud, its .99 per month subscription service which includes all CS6 products along with a host of others.
Adobe Systems Inc. announced the immediate availability of Adobe Creative Cloud on Friday, the beginning of a new era in the company’s long history which provides a radical new way of providing tools and services for its customers.
“A subscription-based offering, Adobe Creative Cloud is a hub for making, sharing and delivering creative work and it is centered around a powerful release of Adobe Creative Suite 6 software, packed with innovation across its industry-defining design, Web, video and digital imaging tools,” the company explains in a press release.
Adobe Creative Cloud features the entire Creative Suite 6 product line for Mac and Windows, which includes the latest versions of Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, Flash Professional and more — all available for a monthly .99 subscription, based on annual membership.
When purchased separately, Creative Cloud also introduces Touch Apps into the mix for both iOS and Android, today adding Adobe Proto and Adobe Collage, as well as new features and additional language support for the existing Photoshop Touch and Adobe Ideas apps. Creative Cloud members on an annual plan will receive a complimentary month of membership upon signing into Creative Cloud from three qualifying Touch Apps. The service tops off these great tools with 20GB of free cloud storage.
“Adobe Creative Cloud members receive full access to the entire portfolio of Creative Suite 6 tools, integration with our touch tools, file storage and sharing services and Web hosting — everything they need to go from idea to finished work, at a breakthrough monthly subscription price,“ said David Wadhwani, senior vice president, Digital Media Business, Adobe. “Creative Cloud will allow our product teams to unleash a constant stream of innovation, releasing new features, apps and services as they are developed.”
Also available today is Adobe Muse 1.0, the company’s new software that enables designers to create HTML5-based websites without writing code. The software just exited a successful beta period which saw 700,000 downloads from developers who gave it a spin, and best of all, Muse is included with Adobe Creative Cloud.
Adobe Creative Cloud is now available for .99 per month with an annual subscription, and for a limited time, CS3, CS4, CS5 and CS5.5 customers can receive special introductory pricing of .99 per month for the first 12 months. Month-to-month plans are also available for .99 per month for occasional use.
(Updated to clarify that Touch Apps must be purchased separately from the App Store and are not included free with Creative Cloud.)
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Seems like everyone has some big game or app news today, so with today being a rather slow news day anyway, today’s recap is all about apps and games — but we couldn’t help but slip one app-related news story into the mix that should make Instagram fans chuckle. Can you spot it among the rest of the day’s news for Thursday, April 19, 2012?
If you’ve been busy playing Plants vs. Zombies on your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad all day, drop what you’re doing and head to the App Store! PopCap Games announced new updates to both the original small-screen version and the iPad-only HD app which delivers “the additional content, action and challenge that Apple smart device users have been anticipating.” The HD version now includes three new game modes, four new mini-games, Game Center leaderboards, 28 new Game Center achievements, mystery sprouts and additional coin packs, while the iPhone/iPod touch model now includes Vasebreaker game mode, four new Game Center achievements and an all-new Game Center leaderboard. The combined updates promise to bring the mobile apps “considerably closer” to the original Mac and PC editions. The updates are free for existing users, but some features require paid in-app purchases.
A new 3-D animated family comedy from Sony Pictures Animation is sailing into theatres on April 27, but iStoryTime is now offering a companion movie storybook app in the App Store for young readers to get a first look at the fun. The Pirates! Band of Misfits Movie Storybook app promises to tug at young readers’ imaginations, complete with a “Piratize Yourself” feature that allows them to utilize the face tracking features of iOS 5 for making themselves look like a pirate in real time. The Pirates! Band of Misfits follows the luxuriantly bearded Pirate Captain — a boundlessly enthusiastic, if somewhat less-than-successful, terror of the High Seas. With a rag-tag crew at his side, and seemingly blind to the impossible odds stacked against him, the Captain has one dream: to beat his bitter rivals Black Bellamy and Cutlass Liz to the much coveted “Pirate Of The Year Award.” The Movie Storybook app is available now on the App Store for an introductory price of only 99 cents — but buy it while you can, because the price is going up to .99 soon! The 104MB download is a universal app compatible with iPads, iPhones and iPod touches running iOS 4.2 or later.
Aspyr has announced the launch of Quake 4 for Mac, now available for the first time in digital form. Gamers can choose to purchase the digital version from one of four outlets: Apple’s Mac App Store, GameAgent.com, MacGameStore or Amazon.com, but the .99 price is the same, regardless of where you buy from. In Quake 4, Earth is under siege by the Strogg, a barbaric alien race moving through the universe consuming, recycling and annihilating any civilization in their path. In a desperate attempt to survive, an armada of Earth’s finest warriors is sent to take the battle to the Strogg home planet. You are Matthew Kane, an elite member of Rhino Squad and Earth’s valiant invasion force. Fight alone, with your squad, or in hover tanks and mechanized walkers as you engage in a heroic mission to the heart of the Strogg war machine. Quake 4 Mac includes a strong single-player story along with online cross-platform multiplayer modes. Last but not least, Aspyr’s RAGE: Campaign Edition is seeing a price cut to .99 from the same four digital outlets.
The internet appears divided on the subject of Instagram’s recent Android port — rarely has an app going cross-platform caused such a stir. According to 9to5Mac, one of those choosing to ditch the photo sharing service following the move is none other than Apple Senior Vice President Phil Schiller, who not only deleted his Instagram account but also told an inquiring Twitter follower than the service “jumped the shark” by going to the Android platform. The move shouldn’t be surprising considering Schiller is the head of Apple’s marketing efforts, but judging from his prior tweets, he’s been an avid fan of Instagram in the past, which was acknowledged most recent with an “App of the Year” award from iTunes. Does Phil know Twitter also has an Android app, we wonder…?
Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment has announced that its universal Midway Arcade app is now compatible with iCade, the retro arcade-style cabinet designed for the iPad. As you may recall, this miniature wooden cabinet is perfectly sized for Apple’s tablet and connects via Bluetooth to bring a full-sized joystick and buttons for a genuine arcade experience. The 99-cent Midway Arcade app needs no introduction for retro gamers, offering such legendary titles as Defender, Joust and Rampage (plus seven others) in a virtual showroom which can be expanded with in-app purchases for two other game packs (99 cents each). The update is free for existing users, and you know where to find it.
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There’s been a lot of scuttlebutt passed around on the internetover the last two weeks, and it’s all pretty awesome. This week, the rumor mill is churning that Ivy Bridge MacBooks may be closer than we think. The Apple Store has a depleting supply of Sandy Bridge MacBook Pros, which makes room in the back for brand new hardware. Also, the iPhone 5 could be the biggest handset refresh we’ve had since the iPhone 4′s rounded corners, and Apple could be working on software to help beginning developers get their bearings with app development. Let’s get down to business, shall we?
According to Macrumors, Apple is set to freshen up the company’s entire MacBook Pro line by packing them full of Intel’s quad-core Ivy Bridge processors. CPUWorld says the new chipset will offer MacBook Pro users significant gains over what the current generation of Sandy Bridge-equipped MacBook Pros have been unable to offer, including an increase in graphics rendering:
“Overall, the 3820QM was found to score an average of 9% higher than the Extreme 2960XM chip, a modest improvement but one which should be significantly higher relative to the 2860QM chip from the current MacBook Pro. Taking into account a roughly 10% higher performance for the tested 2960XM Sandy Bridge processor compared to the 2860QM actually found in the current MacBook Pro, the new 3820QM Ivy Bridge processor should offer roughly 20% higher CPU performance than is currently available in the MacBook Pro.”
Now this is interesting. According to AppleInsider, Apple has filed a patent that could help iOS users create their own iPhone, iPod touch and iPad applications with an easy to use drag-and-drop, template-style interface. The app would then generate the code for the app based on what the user did on screen. Sounds pretty sweet, but unless Apple maintains a steady hand on the strict content controls it enforces in the iTunes App Store, we could quickly see a flood of homemade apps turn the iOS app ecosystem into a quagmire of the sort.
There’s not a week that goes by when we don’t hear the rumblings of an impending iPhone redesign. This time around, word of the smartphone’s changes come to us from the folks at MacRumors. According to the site, Topeka Capital Markets analyst Brian White has the goods on the fact that the next version of the iPhone will boast a four-inch screen, 4G LTE connectivity and “a new, sleek look that we believe will require a unibody case.” Will we be seeing an iPhone with a larger screen? Maybe. A lot of smartphone manufacturers have released smartphones with larger screens recently, most notable Samsung and its Galaxy Note. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Apple will follow suit. This is after all, the company that gave us the modern smartphone as we understand it today. Apple’s engineers don’t follow, they lead.
Love it or hate it, iTunes is a central part of the lives of most Mac and iOS users. According to 9to5 Mac, Apple currently has its software engineers hard at work at the next iteration of it’s one-stop music, movie, TV and app software solution. If the rumors are correct, iTunes 11 will boast support for iOS 6 and include tighter integration with iCloud. Thanks to a dedicated iCloud panel baked into iTunes 11, it’s speculated that users will be able to control their iTunes Match settings, iOS backups, and other iCloud centric bits and pieces in one centralized location. 9to5Mac also mentions that in addition to the added iCloud controls, iTunes may also be seeing a complete overhaul of the iTunes Store, featuring an updated user interface and a overhauled content discovery system.
All this talk lately about how apps optimized for the iPad’s Retina Display are taking up all the precious storage real estate reminded me to tell you there’s actually a solution to all of this. While it might sound inconvenient to store your media on a separate device, it might be time to consider it so that you don’t have to forfeit downloading new apps to make room for media. Many manufacturers now offer Wi-Fi-enabled hard drives that stream to your iOS device, and it’s worth the additional cost if you use your iPad primarily as an entertainment portal.
Our favorite Wi-Fi hard drive so far is the Seagate GoFlex Satellite, which offers 500GB of storage for your media, music, and documents. It’s easier to simply transfer over data to the hard drive rather than waiting for iTunes to convert and import everything, and all you need to do is download the GoFlex media app for it to work. The GoFlex satellite also works with up to three devices at time. Seagate has also updated the firmware on the hard drive to allow users to simultaneously surf the web and stream to the iPad.
If you’re looking for something more compact, the Kingston Wi-Drive offers up to 32GB of of flash storage and is only a third of the size of the GoFlex Satellite. Like Seagate’s offering, the Wi-Drive streams to your iOS device via a free app, and also lets you surf the web as you’re streaming to the iPad.
Or, if your iPad stays at home most of the time, you could consider getting a Buffalo Cloudstor or some other kind of personal cloud device and accessing your media that way. Regardless, don’t let your iPad’s limited storage space get in the way of enjoying its remarkable capabilities.
It’s been a long and winding road for Apple subsidiary FileMaker, but this week all roads lead to one place: FileMaker Pro 12, the company’s latest major update to their flagship database software, which aims to “instantly create stunning databases” while making the cost of admission cheaper than ever before for mobile users.
FileMaker, Inc. has announced the release of FileMaker Pro 12, the company’s latest edition of the popular database software for Mac and Windows. Version 12 aims to make FileMaker databases more appealing with new eye-catching themes and Starter Solutions aimed at businesses — and best of all, the company’s once costly iPhone and iPad apps are now being offered free of charge.
“FileMaker Pro 12 is the fastest way to create stunning databases for you and your team,” explains the company’s What’s New page. “Now you can quickly build solutions that are crisp, clean, and make you more productive than ever. Instantly change the look of your layout by applying one of 40 stunning new themes specifically designed for your iPad, iPhone and desktop. Each theme comes with pre-defined fonts, colors, and object styling. In just a few clicks your layout has a professional, new look. Easily customize a layout to meet your needs by adding gradients, images, and more.”
All-new Starter Solutions have been built from the ground up to better showcase your data, including layouts customized for the iPad and iPhone, while enhanced container fields now allow storage of any type of file inside a database — including photos, videos, music, documents and more.
New Quick Charts will make short work of creating FileMaker charts. Simply sort and group your data, then click to bring up an integrated set-up window with an Inspector-like tool palette that allows users to preview and customize a chart. Five new chart types are also included.
Last but not least, all-new FileMaker Go apps for the iPhone and iPad are now available and for the first time ever, they’re absolutely free — the previous versions were .99 and .99 respectively, so this makes being a FileMaker Pro user much less expensive than it used to be.
As usual, a free 30-day trial of FileMaker Pro is now available for Mac or Windows; version 12 is 9 (9 upgrade), with Pro 12 Advanced, Server 12 and Server 12 Advanced also available. The new FileMaker Go apps are available free of charge from the App Store.
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