Posts in Linked

Adobe Lightroom Mobile for iPad Now Available→

Behind the scenes, Lightroom desktop creates Smart Previews of photos marked for sync and uploads them to the Creative Cloud servers. Smart Previews retain much of the editability and detail of the source images (even raw files) but occupy much less storage space. In Lightroom mobile, the app downloads low-resolution previews for display in its Grid layout, and when an image is opened it pulls down the higher-resolution Smart Preview file (enabling you to zoom in to check details if needed).

Make a change to a photo on the iPad, and that change should appear in Lightroom desktop within seconds, removing the need to export or import images. Edits you make to the photo synchronize back to Creative Cloud and Lightroom desktop when you close the image—in fact, only a small XML file describing the edits is transmitted, which is why updates appear in the desktop and mobile applications quickly.

Adobe’s Lightroom application made its way to iOS overnight with the launch of Lightroom mobile for iPad and Macworld’s Jeff Carlson has a detailed preview of the app. Adobe looks like they have done a really nice job with bringing the app to the iPad thanks to their implementation of a clever sync system (as explained above) and extensive compatibility between this mobile version and the desktop version of Lightroom.

As with most of Adobe’s offerings in recent years, Lightroom mobile is bundled as a part of their Creative Cloud subscription service, so whilst the app is free to download, you will need to sign up for one of their subscription plans to use Lightroom mobile.

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Learning To Love Evernote 2.0→

I’ve re-recorded every video with new tips, tricks, and workflows. The Evernote iOS apps have changed drastically since the original version was released, so I hope you enjoy the free update.

My friend Bradley Chambers has released version 2.0 of his Evernote eBook (which I first mentioned last year) with updates for the new Evernote apps (the iOS one has changed a lot).

I like Bradley’s book because it gives practical examples – for instance, the screencast on scanning receipts into Evernote shows a real receipt being scanned and uploaded with Scanner Pro – and it’s only $4.99 on the iBooks Store.

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The Ultimate Guide to Solving iOS Battery Drain→

This is not one of those “Turn off every useful feature of iOS” posts that grinds my gears. My goal is to deliver practical steps to truly solve your iOS battery woes.

One quick thing before we start — 99.9% of the time it is not actually iOS that is causing your battery to drain quickly. I guarantee you that if you erased your phone and there were no apps or email on it, it would last for ages. But, no one uses their device like that, nor should they. Hopefully with these steps you will be living in iOS battery bliss while still using all the apps and features you love.

If you’ve ever had iPhone battery life issues, or constantly get pestered by friends and family with poor iPhone battery life, this article by Scotty Loveless is a must-read. Unlike many rather sensational articles that suggest a myriad of ‘solutions’ that may or may not actually work, Loveless offers just a handful of rational and practical solutions and explains why he is suggesting them.

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The Woman Behind Apple’s First Icons→

My philosophy has not really changed – I really try to develop symbols that are meaningful and memorable. I started designing monochrome icons using a 32 x 32 pixel icon editor that Andy Hertzfeld created. Subsequently I’ve been able to take advantage of more robust tools and higher screen resolution, and also design vector images in Illustrator. But design problems are solved by thinking about context and metaphor – not by tools.

Priceonomics (via 512 Pixels) has a profile of Susan Kare, who created the icons and fonts for the original Macintosh. The interview includes a lot of tidbits, original photographs of Kare’s sketchbook, and links to Andy Hertzfeld’s Folklore website. It’s a great read.

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The Prompt: Beautiful Flower→

This week, 5by5’s international trio of Apple users discuss Microsoft and Android (with an awesome special guest). They also announce a revolutionary new photo management service.

The discussion with Russell (he works on one of my favorite iOS apps) about the differences between the App Store and Google’s Play Store was particularly interesting for me. Get the episode here.

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Use Voice Search With The Apple TV→

Amazon introduced its Fire TV yesterday, and one of the features the company touts is “voice search.” Using a tiny microphone in the device’s remote, you will be able to speak when searching for content, instead of pecking out letters by moving a cursor around on your TV screen. For example, you might want to look for a specific movie to watch, so you will simply say its name into the remote to have its text typed in a search field.

But you can already do this with the Apple TV; not with its own remote, but with the iOS Remote app.

Nice tip by Kirk McElhearn – this doesn’t exactly replicate the experience of having a remote with a microphone built-in, but it’s close. Plus, the Remote app for iOS 7 is pretty good.

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GAget for iPhone→

First released in October, GAget is my favorite Google Analytics app for iPhone because it makes it easy to look at stats for the current day and past 4 weeks with a clean design. Most Google Analytics clients tend to display as much information as possible at once, whereas GAget is a dashboard for your Analytics account – readable and with just the right amount of numbers and charts.

The latest 1.1 version adds support for traffic sources, platform data, and social stats that are displayed at the bottom of the screen with icons and percentages. Developer Zoltan Hosszu also makes GAget for Mac (which we covered in 2011), and the iPhone app is useful for quick overviews. GAget is $1.99 on the App Store.

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More On The AppleScript Improvements In Latest iWork Update→

With yesterday’s update of the iWork suite for OS X, Apple reintroduced several AppleScript functionalities that had been removed in October, and brought new scripting features to Pages, Numbers, and Keynote as well.

Ben Waldie published an overview of the changes at Macworld, noting that the AppleScript improvements aren’t only focused on additions: Apple is now using a consistent AppleScript dictionary that should allow scripts to be easily reused across all iWork apps.

What’s especially interesting is that these suites are consistent from app to app. In other words, since all the apps have certain features in common, the same exact AppleScript terminology is used to script those features. This is huge: It means that if you write a script that builds a table or chart in Numbers, you can change the app name in your code to Keynote and your script should “just work” in Keynote. Want to add an image, replace some text, change the volume of every movie in a document? The code you write is the same for any of these tasks, regardless of which app you’re targeting.

When Apple relaunched iWork last year, they stressed how the apps had been rebuilt with full 64-bit support and a new unified file format. The return of AppleScript in iWork seems to highlight – as Waldie notes – a collaboration between different teams at Apple to improve consistency between apps, data exchange, and scripting features.

It took six months, but AppleScript appears to be alive and well at Apple. It may not be a priority anymore, and there’s no denying that Apple put power users through a rough transition last year, but the new scripting capabilities of the iWork apps are fairly impressive and it sounds like there’s still room for improvement.

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