Pixelmator 2.1: Retina Graphics, Mountain Lion Ready, iCloud Support and Great New Features

Back in October 2011, we wrote about the release of Pixelmator 2.0, a hugely popular and award winning image editing application for the Mac. New features to version 2 gave us new drawing tools, shape settings, new heal and retouching tools, an improved type tool and more. Pixelmator was one of the first major success stories of the Mac App Store with $1,000,000 in sales for the first 20 days.

The retina-ready Pixelmator 2.1, code named Cherry, was released this morning with even more new features. Version 2.1 adds a new Effects Browser, several new effects like vintage and miniaturize, a new smart Alignment Guide system and more.

Pixelmator has always been great at helping everyone access the benefits of image editing, said Saulius Dailide of the Pixelmator Team. And now, with all the amazing new features, as well as Retina Display, Mountain Lion and iCloud support and the app’s affordability, Pixelmator 2.1 is definitely the best way to tap into creativity.

New Features

  • Retina-Ready: Pixelmator’s friendly user interface is now fully Retina-ready.
  • Built-in Support for iCloud: iCloud automatically stores images edited with Pixelmator and seamlessly makes them available on all of a user’s Macs.
  • New Effects Browser: The best and most enjoyable way to browse: instantly preview and quickly apply special effects and color adjustments to any image. Over 160 different breathtaking effects to play with. Tag and access favorite effects instantly in one place. Combine different effects for unique, near-effortless artistic creations. See stunning results in real time.
  • New Effects Added: The new Vintage, Miniaturize, Black and White, Rain, and Snow effects help quickly transform any image into something dramatically unique.
  • Smart Alignment Guides: The new smart Alignment Guides let users quickly position, align, and lay out objects evenly in Pixelmator compositions.
  • OS X Mountain Lion Support
  • Much more: Optimized image editing engine support for the new Retina display on the MacBook Pro. Built-in Mountain Lion sharing to iPhoto, Aperture, Facebook, Flickr, Airdrop – all right from Pixelmator. Easy way to access Color Adjustments from the Effects Browser. Enhanced to take advantage of the latest OS X Mountain Lion technologies.

The new Effects Browser is slick; the palette works in a way that as you move your mouse over a selected effect, there’s a vertical line that animates and shows the effect’s intensity inside the Effects Browser. It’s a lot like the way Apple does it with iPhoto groups and iMovie clips. There are some excellent effect presets in here too and they can all be combined to give you great results. The guides work a lot like InDesign CS6 in that they show centers, alignment measurements and more. The share menu works exactly as advertised and feels very much at home running on OS X Mountain Lion. iCloud support will be very handy for editing on multiple Macs, working on one machine then having the ability to reopen it on another. Version 2.1 runs very well on my 2007 iMac running Mountain Lion, I haven’t had any issues.

Pricing and Availability

Pixelmator 2.1 is available exclusively from the Mac App Store for a limited-time price of $14.99, a great savings off the usual price of $59. It is also available as a free update for existing users who have purchased it from the Mac App Store. If you’ve been thinking about buying this great app, $14.99 is a great price and an excellent update to the already great app.

For more information on Pixelmator 2.1, head over to the Pixelmator website. If you want to be a better Pixelmator user, they have a wonderful tutorial site as well.

Apple by CLOG — A Book Review

I usually do not read books about Apple, the web, or design related topics. There are enough weblogs and people on Twitter linking to all kinds of content about more or less everything, so I usually don’t need additional resources in the form of printed paper. When I need to delve into the technical details of a particular topic, I’ll pick up a book so that I can soak up that in-depth knowledge. And it usually is safer to buy technical books, because you can ensure that the text it contains is professionally well researched, written, and edited by people who care about the subject, thus the chance of reading erroneous information is quite low. I especially want that kind of comfort when it comes to quite precarious subjects like art (and its “subgenres” like typography and architecture) or company ethics and philosophies. You need a strong education in history, development, current techniques, and standards of creation in the respective fields to discuss them precisely. Call me conservative, but I want to read such explanations on printed paper, written by people with years of experience and knowledge.

During the last three weeks, I was on a circular trip throughout the United States. It was my first time I got to see the country. Besides stunning cities and beautiful landscapes, I also got to see many Apple location highlights, including the 5th Avenue Store in New York City and the Yerba Buena Center Of The Arts in San Francisco, which in my mind will always feature the colorful Apple banner promoting the iPad presentation in 2010. Just blocks down the road from the YBCA, inside the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art museum store, I found the book I’m about to present now: “Apple” by CLOG.

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Starbucks Signs Up For Square

Announced just a short time ago, it has been revealed that Starbucks has partnered with Square, who will process all US credit and debit card transactions by this fall across their 7,000 locations. Additionally, Starbucks will be integrating “Square Directory” into its own “apps and digital network, unlocking other Square merchants to Starbucks patrons new and old to Square” as TechCrunch reports.

In a letter by Jack Dorsey (co-founder and CEO of Square), he drew parallels between the small and humble beginnings of both Square and Starbucks. But Dorsey assured other Square merchants that this big deal with Starbucks won’t change Square’s dedication to building “simple, affordable, and fast tools that level the playing field for everyone”.

Square began with a really simple idea: everyone should be able to accept credit cards. It should be easy and free to get set up, it should use simple technology people already own, and, most importantly, it should instantly adapt to any size business—from the person chasing a dream to the largest organization on the planet. By embracing Square, Starbucks has validated these ideas as powerful tools—not just for small businesses, but for smart businesses.

TechCrunch also reports that Starbucks is investing $25 million in Square with CEO Howard Schultz also joing Square’s Board of Directors. You can view the full letter from Jack Dorsey below the break.

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Amazon And Apple Take Steps To Fix Security Holes Revealed By Mat Honan’s Hack

Amazon and Apple have taken serious steps today in responding to news of how Mat Honan was hacked, which was done not with brute-force but by using social engineering to trick Apple and Amazon support staff to give out various pieces of information and reset some passwords. Amazon reacted first and arguably more decisively by enacting a new security policy of no longer allowing users to change account settings (such as credit card information and email addresses) via the phone.

Apple has meanwhile enacted a 24-hour freeze on resetting account passwords over the phone whilst they review their security practices. When Wired then tried to reset an AppleID password through Apple support staff on the phone, the representative said “Right now, our system does not allow us to reset passwords. I don’t know why”.

An Apple worker with knowledge of the situation, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Wired that the over-the-phone password freeze would last at least 24 hours. The employee speculated that the freeze was put in place to give Apple more time to determine what security policies needed to be changed, if any.

[via Wired (1) (2)]

Apple Posts New iPad Advert: “All On iPad”

Apple has today released a new advert for the 3rd generation iPad called “All On iPad”. It runs though a bunch of tasks that you can do, ‘all on iPad’ - highlighting apps such as iBooks, FaceTime, Keynote, Square, Real Racing 2 and iPhoto.

Read it. Tweet it. Be surprised, be productive. Make a sale, make some lunch. Make a movie night. Play a game or an old favourite.
Do it all more beautifully with the retina display on iPad.

Apple previously released “This Good” and “Do It All” adverts for the 3rd generation iPad.

Weather HD 2 — Yet Another Weather Forecast App?

Hello and welcome to this MacStories review of another tremendous, beautiful, high-quality weather app for iOS. Seriously, I’m running out of ideas for how to start a new weather app post without it sounding like one of the many we’ve done before. Why are so many developers spending their time making forecast apps? Maybe because the iPad still has no native one. Maybe because making a good weather app is a fun challenge for developers, since you have to combine appropriate data visualization with intuitive UI. Personally, I tend to think that people developing weather apps for iOS know that they have awesome coding skills but don’t have any major projects to test them on. Whatever the reason, I’m truly thankful that the people at vimov decided to make a weather app because their newest release, Weather HD 2, is one of the finest approaches to data visualization and UI design I’ve ever seen.

Weather HD 2 is the first major update to vimov’s original Weather HD. Fortunately for anyone who bought that version, the company decided to make 2.0 a free update instead of a new standalone app, so there will be no charge for existing customers. The original Weather HD attracted iPhone and iPad owners with its large, animated weather images, smooth UI, and large typography displaying all kinds of stats from temperature, humidity, and wind to more boring ones like sunrise time. Weather HD 2 incorporates new weather animations to enhance the variety of weather it can display, while the rest of the “old” features look the same. Additionally, the update includes three big new features: 3D weather maps, push notifications for severe weather alerts, and QuickView to view the weather at multiple locations side by side. While it is a universal app, I will only cover the iPad version here since it is much cooler to look at and use. Read more

Mat Honan: How Apple and Amazon Security Flaws Led to My Epic Hacking→

Mat Honan: How Apple and Amazon Security Flaws Led to My Epic Hacking

You may have heard about Mat Honan (Wired writer) being hacked last week, with his Twitter account being compromised and the hackers using iCloud to remote wipe his iPhone, iPad and Mac. Today he’s written up a detailed article on Wired that goes through how exactly the hackers got access to it all. The scary thing is that it wasn’t done by brute force, but rather by using social engineering to trick Apple and Amazon support staff.

But what happened to me exposes vital security flaws in several customer service systems, most notably Apple’s and Amazon’s. Apple tech support gave the hackers access to my iCloud account. Amazon tech support gave them the ability to see a piece of information — a partial credit card number — that Apple used to release information. In short, the very four digits that Amazon considers unimportant enough to display in the clear on the web are precisely the same ones that Apple considers secure enough to perform identity verification. The disconnect exposes flaws in data management policies endemic to the entire technology industry, and points to a looming nightmare as we enter the era of cloud computing and connected devices.

It’s undoubtedly a scary story about the perils of putting our entire lives in the hands of a cloud service - because more so than ever, physical access isn’t needed to wreak havoc. It’s also a friendly reminder to ensure you’re using strong passwords, isolating critical accounts and creating local backups wherever feasible as a last resort if indeed this or something similar does happen to you.

My experience leads me to believe that cloud-based systems need fundamentally different security measures. Password-based security mechanisms — which can be cracked, reset, and socially engineered — no longer suffice in the era of cloud computing.

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