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Adobe To Launch 3 New iPad Apps That Highlight Potential of Photoshop Touch SDK

Adobe today announced that it will release Creative Suite 5.5 (a “mid-cycle update”) on May 3 along with three new iPad apps that will complement the full-featured desktop version of Photoshop. The three apps are actually designed as a demo of how developers can take advantage of the new Photoshop Touch SDK (which was released today) and create their own apps that complement and add additional functionality to the desktop version of Photoshop but through an Android, BlackBerry or iOS app.

The three iPad apps; Adobe Color Lava, Adobe Eazel and Adobe Nav will all arrive on May 3rd on the same day as Creative Suite’s 5.5 update goes live.  Adobe Color Lava (priced at $2.99) is in simple terms a digital paint palette that will allow you to mix paints and generate a five-color palette that can be sent to the Photoshop color chip or swatch palette. Adobe Eazel ($4.99) is essentially a basic drawing program (similar to Brushes) that features a unique interface in which by placing 5 fingers on the screen a pop-up menu will appear above each finger, sliding up with the relevant finger will select that menu which will then let you to alter the relevant value (such as color or brush size) . Finally and perhaps most useful is Adobe Nav ($1.99), this app turns the iPad into a dedicated control that has the various tool palettes displayed, selecting a particular tool will select that tool on the desktop version of Photoshop, the app will also let you easily cycle between the various files you may have open in Photoshop.

UPDATE: Shawn Welch has already shown off his third party app that takes advantage of the new Photoshop Touch SDK. His app, Photoshop Remote, allows users to view a live preview thumbnail of any image that is open on a network connected Photoshop client and it can handle multiple clients at once. It even adds a dashboard that replicates a lot of the functionality of the Adobe Nav application including; “tool selection, color selection, filters, adjustment layers, and more.” Jump the break for his video demonstrating the app.

Also after the break is a video demonstrating Adobe Eazel and Adobe Nav apps and jump over to CNet where they wrote a short review of each of the 3 apps, also if you are a developer that is interested in implementing the Photoshop Touch SDK make sure to visit the Adobe Developer Center.

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Blogsy: A Better Blogging App for iPad

The lack of great blogging apps for the iPad always puzzled me as a strange inconsistency with a device – and overall, a platform – that in the past year has proved to be more than a simple ecosystem for games and utilities. The iPad – and to an extent, iOS – has become more than a lightweight piece of glass and aluminum for watching movies and playing some Angry Birds. Sure it’s great at those tasks, but then I look at OmniFocus, Simplenote, iFiles, or LogMeIn and I realize there’s so much to do on this device than just consuming content. The iPad was indeed quickly dismissed by many as a “media tablet” when it came out last year: but think about the musicians, the writers, the designers and the movie editors that did all those amazing things using only an iPad. Clearly, this isn’t just about playing games anymore. This isn’t about the passive interaction with content: it’s about the two-way relationship with consuming and creating content made possible by the 75,000 apps available in the App Store.

But then I look at bloggers, people like me, and I don’t understand why it is so difficult to rely on the iPad as a tool for working purposes. Let’s be honest: if you’re a geek and you happen to run a blog with lots of new posts added every day, you’ve had issues with using the iPad as your main work machine. We’ve all been there before: the soft keyboard takes a while getting used to, but it’s the lack of great blogging software designed specifically for the iPad that make us question the possibilities opened by this device as far as blogging is concerned. Getting down to my personal issues with the iPad and writing for MacStories, I identify three main problems: the official WordPress app isn’t that great (an euphemism); among the alternatives, several apps lack advanced functionalities like remote draft editing or custom fields; both 3rd party apps and the official WordPress one are terrible at allowing you to easily insert links, photos, and videos. We’re swimming in a sea of text editors, but as I said many times on Twitter in the past we need a more powerful app – something that combines the simplicity of text editors with rich features like media management and full access to the WordPress backend. I know, I’m asking for a complex solution, and quite possibly a software built for a niche rather than the Doodle Jump masses.

After months of waiting for the perfect blogging app to come around and convince us that the iPad could also be used professionally for blogging, I looked at Blogsy with a bit of skepticism. At first glance, it seemed that this new app borrowed a lot from dPad, an HTML editor I reviewed a while ago that’s aimed at quickly inserting media in documents. Considering that Blogsy, however, was touted as an app for bloggers with WordPress and Blogger integration, I decided that I could take it for a spin. Read more

How many Macs did Apple sell last quarter?→

How many Macs did Apple sell last quarter?

None of the 43 analysts we polled – professional or amateur – think Apple sold more than 4 million Macs in the quarter that ended two weeks ago. But as a group they expect unit sales grew even faster – nearly 24% year over year. The high estimate of 3.865 million – submitted by both Traderhood’s Nicolae Mihalache and Apple’s Gold’s Dennis Hildebrand – represents more than 31% growth year over year.

For Apple’s first quarter fiscal results for the new year, Apple reported 4.13 million Macs sold following a strong demand for the MacBook Air. While we have seen updates in the MacBook Pro which include Sandy Bridge and Thunderbolt, analysts are predicting that Macs will see a decreased demand this quarter, which is in line with the sales trends from 2006. Analysts are also predicting that Apple will sell 19 million iPhones for the second quarter according to Fortune.

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$200,000 Program Gets Kindergartens iPad 2s & Apps

In the past months, we’ve heard several stories about the iPad being deployed in education with pilot programs aimed at testing the device in educational contexts Apple perhaps didn’t think about in the first place as a possible main focus for the tablet. Many schools all over the world have shown interest in the iPad, mainly thanks to the large selection of software available that makes it easy for teachers to find exactly the apps they need, and for students to be engaged with a great digital experience. Singaporean schools added iPads to their teaching resources, and a $100,000 school program we mentioned last December got every 4th grader at two elementary schools in Hancock Count an iPad full of apps for reading books, doing math, and so forth. Overall, the biggest surprise wasn’t the iPad itself as a technological advancement: rather, it was about how student of every age interacted with it and was willing to learn more through software that impressed teachers, Apple, and bloggers.

Of course there’s more coming. The iPad 2 was released a few weeks ago, and those schools that didn’t have the chance to deploy it in their educational program last year now can have access to an overall better device, with a thinner and lighter design and better battery life. A new $200,000 program was approved in Auburn, Maine to give every kindergarten of the district access to this new teaching resource that is Apple’s iPad, complete with apps bought from the App Store and “insurance” (we assume it’s AppleCare). The district has bought 285 iPad 2s to use in the classroom; eventually, all elementary schools in Auburn will get an iPad as the program begins its rollout in May, and should be completed by the end of September. The 285 iPad 2s are only part of the initial rollout.

So why did the school board approve the program? Because teachers who owned an iPad saw an improvement in how kindergarten kids were learning the alphabet (always a difficult task) thanks to educational apps. So rather than buying new laptops (which are expensive), the district and the school board opted for iPads. Simple as that.

Maybe Apple didn’t expect this quick success in education, or maybe they saw this coming all along. I don’t know. What I do know, though, is that – once again – it’s not really about the specs, the RAM or the openness. These teachers could have asked for Xooms but they didn’t. It’s about the platform, the experience, the pleasure you get from using a device, the intersection of technology and liberal arts. There’s nothing more honest and genuine than a kid having real fun, and if educational software can do that whilst retaining its ultimate purpose of teaching stuff – then I think we have a winner here.

Check out the news video below. [via TUAW] Read more

Apple Looking Into Verizon iPad 2 3G Issues, Fix Likely Coming In Next iOS Update

A thread on Apple Discussions detailing connectivity issues experienced by some users on the Verizon iPad 2 WiFi + 3G model caught the attention of the Internet today as more than 80 replies were posted on the original thread confirming that the issue occurred when turning on / off the 3G signal and trying to get it to work again. Other users reported tricks like temporarily activating Airplane mode on their iPad 2 to “kill” 3G and restart it didn’t work as a solution to re-enable connectivity on the device.

All Things Digital now reports an official statement from Apple, with the company confirming that they’re “investigating” the issues:

We are aware that a small number of iPad 2 customers have experienced connectivity issues with the Verizon 3G network and we are investigating it,” the company said in a statement to Mobilized. A Verizon representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Apple has been rumored to be wrapping up the release of another iOS update, version 4.3.2, to make it available in the next two weeks. If Apple has confirmed their engineering team is looking into connectivity problems, there is the high chance these issues will be addressed in the aforementioned iOS update, which is going to be focused on bug fixes and performance enhancements for all iOS devices.

Essay: The Smart, Intuitive HTML Powered Text Editor for iPhone & iPad

Constantly we’re bombarded or introduced to new text editors and word processors that attempt to redefine and strike a balance between what’s necessary and what isn’t. I’m personally getting to the point where enough is enough, as the focus on being new and imaginative in the iOS and Mac App Store has degraded into providing more of the same under a different name and a slightly different interface. While most of us are perfectly content with trend setters such as PlainText and Elements, Essay ended going above and beyond my expectations for an iOS text editor. Sure there’s SimpleNote, but with DropBox sync and a slew of formatting options I’ll sacrifice instant sync with Notational Velocity for HTML goodness.

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Angry Birds Seasons Will Get “Amazing Update” for Easter→

Angry Birds Seasons Will Get “Amazing Update” for Easter

With a series of tweets posted on the official @RovioMobile account, the Angry Birds developers have confirmed to their fans that Seasons will get an amazing and “great” update for Easter. A preview of the new features will be posted soon, but if we had to guess we wouldn’t be surprised to see more eggs and some kind of evil rabbits. Angry Birds Seasons was updated in the past to include Halloween levels, Christmas specials, a Valentine’s Day edition and a green St. Patrick’s Day version. The update is expected to drop in the App Store before Easter (which is on April 24 this year).

With other tweets, Rovio is also suggesting Angry Birds Seasons for Mac will be released before Summer, and a huge update for the regular “Angry Birds” game is set to come out in the next few months, hopefully around May / June. Check out Rovio’s Twitter timeline here to get more details on the updates the development studio is working on. Honestly, we can’t wait to have some more Angry Birds in our hands. And with a new record of 10 million downloads in 10 days, I’m pretty sure the next updates will dominate the App Store once again. [via]

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YouTube is going LIVE→

YouTube is going LIVE

Today we’re announcing the initial roll out of YouTube Live, which will integrate live streaming capabilities and discovery tools directly into the YouTube platform for the first time. This begins with a new YouTube Live browse page (www.youtube.com/live), where you can always find the most compelling live events happening on YouTube and add events to your calendar. Subscribe to your favorite YouTube live-streaming partners to be notified of upcoming live streams on your customized homepage.

Broadcasters like TWiT already stream their content live when it hits the air, but imagine how much exposure independent or amateur content creators can get through the power of YouTube. We’ve started to see the shift from traditional news outlets to independent blogs and journalists, and the same disruption is happening with consuming video. While Hulu, Netflix, and others are making strides to offer content outside of traditional cable media, the launch of live video on YouTube will make this transition more apparent and continue to deliver more options to consumers. I’m not surprised that Hak5 is already streaming, and Geek Beat will also have upcoming programming this evening. Also of interest: there’s already sports programming for the NBA Playoffs. Could good independent vloggers unroot traditional news channels like ESPN? The exposure YouTube brings, plus what it chooses to feature on their live page, will be significant.

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Hands on With iheartradio for iPad

It’s Friday afternoon, and if you’re not already slacking off at work why not put your feet up on your desk and turn on some tunes. The iheartradio app has launched on the App Store, giving you access to all of your favorite artists, local (Clear Channel) and national radio stations, artist interviews and videos, and image galleries captioned off for your entertainment. It’s been a while since I’ve checked out an iheartradio app (which is gratuitously advertised by my local radio station), but I have to say I’m impressed with just how fast the iPad app is. Radio station’ connect instantly, there’s AirPlay built in to pipe tunes and video to your Apple TV, and you can favorite stations so you can quickly access all of your favorite radio channels from a handy playlist. If you hear a song that tickles your boom-tubes, you can purchase the song from iTunes in a snap. The features only get better, and we’ll conclude our short review just past the break.

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