Adobe Systems is having a big week, shipping Creative Suite 6 on Monday and Creative Cloud expected on Friday, but in-between they’ve quietly slipped Photoshop Lightroom 4 into the Mac App Store, marking their fourth title to land on Apple’s virtual store shelves.
Adobe has released Photoshop Lightroom 4 to the Mac App Store, which now joins Photoshop Elements 10 Editor, Premiere 10 Elements Editor and Adobe Revel (formerly Carousel) on Apple’s Mac storefront. Lightroom 4 is priced at 9.99, which matches Adobe’s own retail pricing, but it’s not much of a deal considering the software can be purchased at a discounted for customers also buying a Creative Suite 6 bundle, which Adobe shipped on Monday.
“Adobe® Photoshop® Lightroom® 4 software helps you create amazing images that inspire, inform, and delight,” the app description reads. “Perfect your shots with powerfully simple one-click adjustments and a full range of cutting-edge advanced controls. Craft elegant photo books, organize your images, and share them easily on social networks, in web galleries, and more — all with one fast, intuitive application.”
Unlike the Mac App Store-only “Editor” editions of Photoshop and Premiere Elements 10, Lightroom 4 appears to be feature complete when compared to the boxed copy offered by Adobe. (The company had to remove Elements Organizer from its consumer-based photo and video editing apps, but the software was otherwise intact.)
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 is now available on the Mac App Store for 9.99 as a 388MB download; the software requires Mac OS X 10.6.8 or later and a 64-bit processor.
Follow this article’s author, J.R. Bookwalter on Twitter
There’s a lot of pocket-themed news today as “read later” service Read It Later rebrands itself as simply Pocket, and Pedia software developer Bruji finally makes a long-awaited return to the App Store with Pocketpedia 3. No, these two “pockets” don’t have anything to do with each other, but they’re cool apps that we love, so suck it up and read on for the details in our Tuesday, April 17, 2012 edition.
“Read later” services are on the rise, but it seems as if they’ll need to mix up their product offerings a bit to draw attention. Such is the case with Read It Later, the aptly named cross-platform service which today tossed aside its legacy and rebranded as Pocket. The service has eliminated their paid app for iOS and Android, making it free to all takers while adding “a cleaner, lighter reading and viewing experience.” That’s right, the move to Pocket has largely been motivated by the recent disclosure that many users were using Read It Later to save video content as much as websites for later reading, and the developers have responded accordingly. Existing Read It Later logins will continue to work just fine in Pocket, and the app features a slick new UI with the option to present stories in an eye-pleasing grid view in addition to the traditional list view. Existing users can step up to the Pocket app by checking for updates in the App Store; for everyone else, the 6.1MB download is available free of charge right now.
It seems nothing can stop Verizon Wireless from 4G LTE domination across the United States. The Big Red carrier today announced that they’ll be lighting up an additional 27 new markets on April 19, and that’s on top of 44 existing markets that will be getting expanded LTE service at the same time. That puts the number of 4G LTE cities at 230 this week, covering more than two-thirds of the U.S. population and absolutely smoking AT&T’s current total, which stands at 32 at this writing. Verizon offers more than 20 4G LTE-enabled devices for its network, including the new iPad. Can an LTE iPhone be far behind? We think not. Be sure to hit the link to see if your region is getting bombarded with 4G LTE this week.
The kids love White Stripes, and frontman Jack White in particular. As you probably already know, White is about to debut his first solo effort entitled Blunderbuss, and fans can spin the entire album free for a limited time thanks to iTunes. “After spending years reworking the rock ’n’ roll foundation with The White Stripes, The Raconteurs and The Dead Weather, White has crafted his first statement as a solo artist,” the iTunes page reads. “And yes, it rocks. Listen to the whole album for free right here. Then pre-order Blunderbuss and the track ‘Sixteen Saltines’ will download immediately.” The full album lands on April 24 and can be preordered for a mere .99 — but we don’t have to tell you that, we probably had you sold with the mere mention of the man’s name…
If you have a large collection of DVDs, books, CDs or video games, you’ve no doubt discovered Bruji’s excellent Pedia apps for the Mac (aptly named DVDpedia, Bookpedia, CDpedia and Gamepedia, respectively). While these apps keep great track of your collection while at home, having them available while on the go has required a lot of work — until now. Bruji today introduced Pocketpedia 3, its third attempt at an iOS client for syncing your desktop libraries to the iPhone. The first two versions were unfortunately sidelined by Amazon.com, which Bruji previously used to pull content data into its apps. The new Pocketpedia — as well as the Mac Pedias themselves — now retrieve this data from their open source library called Doghouse, which users can contribute to by sharing their own libraries. Even better, Pocketpedia 3 is now a universal app with native iPad support, Address Book integration and Retina Display graphics. New collections can be added from the iOS app, which then sync back to the Mac version along with entries marked as borrowed, returned or bought. Finally, the new iOS app is only .99 for the first week, so head to the App Store and grab it while you can.
Could there be a light at the end of the patent war tunnel? According to The Verge, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh has sent attorneys for Apple and Samsung into mediation, where they’ll have 90 days to hammer out “the possibility of a settlement.” These talks will also include the respective CEOs for both companies — Tim Cook in Apple’s case, Choi Gee-sung in Samsung’s. Should the mediation fail to stick, the rival companies will be forced to “submit a streamlined version of their claims and defenses” and we’ll all be back for another round. Settlements have been rumored over the last few weeks, so it will be interesting to see what the two companies can come up with once they’re locked away outside of the courtroom.
Follow this article’s author, J.R. Bookwalter on Twitter
Whenever a new product is imminent from Apple, the first thing most die-hards do is rush to the online store to check for the familiar yellow sticky note. On Tuesday night, however, the online store went down briefly and the yellow sticky was MIA.
MacRumors is reporting that Apple has replaced that familiar “We’ll be back soon” yellow sticky note graphic on its online store. Although Apple is no different from any other company and sometimes needs to take their virtual store down for maintenance, this yellow sticky graphic is often equated with new products about to arrive, much to the glee of Apple junkies.
Well, say hello to Apple’s new and improved “We’ll be back” message, which made its debut appearance on Tuesday night as the online store did some behind-the-scenes maintenance with no apparent changes when it lit up again.
“We’re busy updating the Apple Store for you and will be back soon,” the new graphic with an OS X Lion-like linen background reads. The message is nearly word-for-word a match from the previous yellow sticky version, with the exception of “store” having been replaced with a more specific “Apple Store” and “shortly” replaced by “soon.”
MacRumors notes that a number of Apple products are due for a refresh in the months ahead, including the MacBook Pro which missed its annual update earlier this year, and the Mac Pro, which hasn’t had a significant update in years beyond spec bumps.
So, welcome the new “We’ll be back soon” graphic — we’ll likely be seeing a lot of it this year. And of course, RIP to the yellow sticky version, too…
Follow this article’s author, J.R. Bookwalter on Twitter
(Image courtesy of MacRumors)
March is winding to a close and our attention turns to April and beyond, wondering what exactly Apple might have up their sleeves for us in the coming months. Meanwhile, competitors like Nokia and HTC are ramping up their Windows Phone initiative with two highly anticipated devices arriving on the same day (!?!) as the kingpins of the cell phone market duke it out over a proposed “micro-SIM” standard that promises to shrink our handsets even further. If you missed today’s news, sit back and soak in what’s happening on this Monday, March 26, 2012.
Nokia’s long, winding road back into the U.S. smartphone market will be culminating with the arrival of the company’s much-anticipated Lumia 900 on April 8, confirmed this morning in a press release from carrier AT&T. While not the first Nokia Lumia handset to wash ashore here — that would be T-Mobile’s Lumia 710 — it’s the first 4G LTE Windows Phone device launching on Ma Bell, and it’s incredibly cheap at only .99 with two-year agreement. That’s crazy inexpensive for a brand-new smartphone, which lives up to Nokia and Microsoft’s promise to get more aggressive about the platform. And it will have a little competition right out of the gate: The Verge is reporting that the sequel to HTC’s Titan will also be arriving at AT&T on the same day, but for a less wallet-friendly 9.99. Seems like HTC is getting the short end of the stick here, but both handsets seem like worthy competitors for the iPhone, so we’ll be keeping an eye on them.
Snow Leopard and Lion users: You’ve got a little something waiting for you in Software Update today. Apple has released a minor update to Safari, bringing the web browser to version 5.1.5 which “contains a fix for an issue that could affect website usability when running Safari in 32-bit mode.” Hmm… that doesn’t sound very exciting, especially when we ditched 32-bit mode some time ago, but we imagine both of you folks still using it will be tripping over yourselves to download it.
Apple and Nokia started duking it out last week over the fate of the nano-SIM, which promises to shrink the traditional SIM card we all know and love even smaller than the micro-SIM currently used in the iPhone 4/4S and the iPad. The Verge got their hands on the proposed nano-SIM and it looks pretty much like a regular SIM card with all of the plastic or cardboard cut away from it (seriously, hit the link to check it out). Nokia and BlackBerry maker Research in Motion seem to be in their own camp while Apple is planning their own variation, which is scheduled to be reviewed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) later this week. It seems like the Nokia/RIM camp is looking to shake things up with “a more thorough reboot of the now 20-year-old Subscriber Identity Module,” while Apple’s design is (shockingly) the more conservative of the two. Should be interesting to see which camp gets their way…
Jeez, a lot of you really, really like Angry Birds, don’t you? Rovio’s latest chapter in the irritated fowl gaming series launches the birds into orbit, and the company took to their Twitter feed Monday morning to brag about how many folks have downloaded it already. “10 million Angry Birds Space downloads in less than three days!” the chirp-chirp of the tweet revealed. “Thanks to our fans, stay tuned for more!” Hard to imagine where the birds could be launched next, but knowing Rovio, we won’t have long to find out.
M.I.C. Gadget is reporting that Apple’s 25th billion app download winner Fu Chunli was flown to Beijing to collect her ,000 iTunes Gift Card in person at the Apple Store there (she’s pictured above holding said gift card). Much to the chagrin of Apple fanboys worldwide, it turns out she’s not even all that much of a Cupertino fan to begin with! “Fu Chunli was not a big fan of Apple, and had only purchased her iPhone for about one month, still learning how to use the App Store,” the report reveals. “She didn’t know anything about the competition until she was contacted by Apple. When she received a call from staff at Apple (China), she thought it was a hoax. She was still confused when a friend told her that she received a prize from Apple, but did not believe her luck until she saw an email from Apple Inc.” Doesn’t she know not to trust email? Well, at any rate, all’s well that ends well, and the website has photos covering Fu’s visit from her hometown of Qingdao; she has been called by the local media as “The Apple Girl.”
Follow this article’s author, J.R. Bookwalter on Twitter
(Image courtesy of M.I.C. Gadget)
While it may not be on par with the defendant who won that big lawsuit with McDonald’s over their coffee being too hot, Apple is again faced with legal action, this time from an 83-year-old woman who walked into the glass door at a Long Island retail location.
CBS 2 New York is reporting that 83-year-old Evelyn Paswall of Queens is looking to collect upwards of a million bucks from Apple Inc. after “smashing her face on a glass door at a Long Island Apple Store” — which she now considers “a risk to the elderly.”
While she may not have seen that glass door coming, anyone reading this story can probably see where her attorney is coming from. “Apple wants to be cool and modern and have the type of architecture that would appeal to the tech crowd, but on the other hand, they have to appreciate the danger that this high-tech modern architecture poses to some people,” attorney Derek T. Smith told The Post.
For her part, Paswall claims she didn’t know she was about to walk into “a wall of glass” as she approached the store, but “that she broke her nose as a result of the collision.”
The lawsuit claims “The defendant was negligent . . . in allowing a clear, see-through glass wall and/or door to exist without proper warning.” While Apple has yet to make a statement on the matter, warning strips have been posted on the glass at the Apple Store in question as of Saturday morning.
Sadly, the report doesn’t reveal what Paswall was intending to purchase at the Apple Store, but we’d sure like to know. In the meantime, feel better, Evelyn! (And for the record, we’re not suggesting that she’s evil… just that Dr. Evil might have found an easier way to make a million bucks.)
Follow this article’s author, J.R. Bookwalter on Twitter
