Since Adobe announced the beta for Photoshop CS6 a little over a week ago, it has been downloaded more than half a million times. Even if you’ve managed to miss the onslaught of tweets and reviews, the magnitude of eager testers should indicate how anxious photographers and designers were for an update to their beloved software.
A number of articles have been written that overview the new features and changes to CS6. After working with the beta every day for over a week, I will instead try to give my impressions on what features I find most useful and am actually incorporating into my workflow already. Read on to see what features have stood out to me.
Apple has pushed two critical security updates to Java for Mac OS X this week in order to patch up some critical security loopholes found in the previous release of Java, version 1.6.0_29. The updates, which were released on Tuesday and Thursday of this week, are available via Software Update for Snow Leopard users running OS X 10.6.8 and Lion users running OS 10.7.3.
The updates were released after a Russian antivirus company, Doctor Web, discovered that Macs were vulnerable to the BackDoor.Flashback trojan, which saves an executable file on your Mac’s hard drive then downloads malicious code from a remote server.
The trojan has affected an estimated 600,000 Macs worldwide, with the majority located in the United States (around 55%), Canada (around 20%) and the UK (around 13%). An analyst at Doctor Web also reported that 274 of these infected computers were based in Cupertino, California – the same city as Apple’s headquarters meaning that some of Apple’s own computers may have been affected.
At AppStorm we love helping you get the most out of your devices, mostly by giving you the low-down on the latest and greatest apps! Occasionally, however, it’s good to highlight the very best apps available; whether they be old classics, or new gems.
Recently each site has published a massive, and eminently thoughtful, roundup of the very best apps available, and I’ve collected them all together! Our editors and teams went to herculean lengths to ensure that these roundups would be more than worth your time, so without further ado…
- 100 Mac Apps To Rule Them All
- 111 Web Apps to Rule Them All
- The Top 100 iPhone Apps
- The Top 100 iPad Apps
- Our Top 100 Android Apps
- 100+ Absolutely Essential Windows Apps
Enjoy!
Once a small classifieds list for the San Francisco Bay area, Craigslist has evolved into a global marketplace and one of the Internet’s most visited sites. Craigslist has gained a loyal following thanks to the broad range of uses, from buying and selling goods and services, to finding a casual romantic partner who shares your unusual interests.
Unfortunately, as the site has grown and become available in thousands of new cities, the bare-bones layout has remained stuck in the 90′s. The simple format of plain text and links makes load times quick and navigation a bit less cumbersome than eBay, but you can’t help wishing there was a bit more functionality in the site. CraigShopper steps in to help those of us who want a few extra features to tweak the browsing process.
So you’re quickly browsing through your Facebook or Twitter feed, taking a short break from work, when you find an interesting article or video that you know is bound to be a huge time-suck. You don’t really want to look it up later when you aren’t busy because you know you’ll forget to do it. You also don’t want to read it or see it right there because you don’t want to get too distracted or you’re not in the right situation for it.
If you’re anything like me, you’ll save it for later by bookmarking it; be it marking it as a favorite on Twitter, sending it to Instapaper, starring it on Google Reader, or any of the equivalents in any social network. But then you’ll likely never come back to it because you’ll forget exactly where you saved it (and the tons of other content that you also bookmarked on other networks for later). That’s where Favs comes in.
When OS X Lion was released last year, Apple put a lot of emphasis on how speedy it was on their MacBook Air line of ultra-thin notebooks – or “ultrabooks”, if you will. An example of this can be seen all over the operating system’s main webpage as Apple seems to be giving attention to mainly the MacBook Air in their slideshow of the key features included with OS X Lion. It’s quite apparent that Apple is trying to say something with all of this, but what exactly is that message?
I believe the corporation is hoping to move towards the MacBook Air and oust the Pro from the picture almost entirely. It was obvious that they were going to do this when they discontinued the original MacBook last year; this in turn made the Air their entry-level notebook, which is what they wanted since it sported an SSD that was ten times faster than the white MacBook – regardless of the task. But what is their master plan for all of this? Let’s explore some potential scenarios.
Thanks to everyone who took part in the giveaway this week, and special thanks to the kind people at MacPhun! I’m excited to let you know that the winners have now been chosen. If your Twitter user name is listed below, you’ll be receiving an email shortly with instructions for claiming your prize:
ffeld
plewis77
Painkiller117
Bbcversus
felixwidjaja
Congratulations to the lucky winners. Sorry to those who missed out, be sure to check back for more great competitions!
We’ve collected the top four reviews, roundups and how-to articles from across the AppStorm network in February. Whether you’re interested in Mac, iPhone, Web, Android, Windows, or iPad apps, there’s bound to be something you didn’t spot over the course of the month. Now would be a good time to explore a part of the AppStorm Network you’ve never seen before!
Thanks for reading AppStorm, and I hope you enjoy looking over some of our favourite posts from last month!
In today’s great world of digital photo retouching, it’s rare to see a published photograph that hasn’t been retouched in some way, often drastically so. This retouching process has also begun to permeate our world of social media, with photos becoming more and more obviously retouched or edited in some way. Many traditional photo-editing tools, such as Photoshop, are not exactly easy to pick up for your basic computer owner. Simple apps like Perfect365 have come along to help basic computer users retouch photos for common, everyday usage.
Perfect365 is an application that allows users to input key points and do basic portrait editing. Perfect365 offers a very simple user experience, with default views focusing on presets rather than manual editing options. Installed presets include basic structural touch-ups and a variety of makeup styles. However, users can browse online for further styles and inspiration or even create their own in manual mode. Read on to learn more about how the app works, what it’s good for (and not so good for) and my overall thoughts.
This post is part of a series that revisits some of our readers’ favorite articles from the past that still contain awesome and relevant information that you might find useful. This post was originally published on April 14th, 2011.
Mac OS X has a very high standard of interface design, more so than most other operating systems. This is thanks to designers to work extremely hard to make your software work the way you want it to. They may spend hours perfecting a single icon that you will use once and ignore – but it’s worth it.
Dmitry Novikov is a Russian designer who works for MacPaw, the software company that has brought you beautiful apps such as MacHider, Ensoul, and a personal favourite of mine that I couldn’t live without, CleanMyMac. Today, we’ll be talking to him about his processes, design decisions, and much more.
