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News & Opinion
Software
News & Opinion
Apple Releases Developer Preview of Mac OS X
Lion
The Launchpad in Mac OS X Lion.
PR: CUPERTINO, California. February 24, 2011 - Apple today
released a developer preview of Mac OS X Lion, which takes some of the
best ideas from iPad and brings them back to the Mac for the eighth
major release of the world's most advanced operating system. Lion
features Mission Control, an innovative new view of everything running
on your Mac; Launchpad, a new home for all your Mac apps; full screen
apps that use the entire Mac display; and new Multi-Touch gestures.
Lion also includes the Mac App Store where you can to discover, install
and automatically update Mac apps. The Lion preview is available to Mac
Developer Program members through the Mac App Store today, and the
final version of Lion will ship to customers this summer.
"The iPad has inspired a new generation of innovative features in
Lion, commented Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product
Marketing Philip Schiller. "Developers are going to love Mission
Control and Launchpad, and can now start adding great new Lion features
like full screen, gestures, Versions and Auto Save to their own
apps.
iPhoto for Lion in full screen mode.
Mission Control is a powerful, entirely new feature that unifies
Expos, Dashboard, Spaces, and full screen apps to give you a bird's eye
view of every app and window running on your Mac. With a simple swipe,
your desktop zooms out to display your open windows grouped by app,
thumbnails of your full screen apps as well as your Dashboard, and
allows you to instantly navigate anywhere with a click.
Launchpad makes it easier than ever to find and launch any app. With
a single click, Launchpad displays all your Mac apps in a stunning full
screen layout where you can launch, reorder or organize apps into
folders. You can also arrange apps into multiple pages and swipe
between them.
Lion brings the full screen experience that iPad users love to the
Mac. With one click, your application window goes full screen, taking
advantage of your Mac's brilliant display. You can swipe from one full
screen window to another and even back to your Desktop or
Dashboard.
New Multi-Touch gestures and fluid animations give you a natural and
intuitive way to interact with your Mac. New gestures include pinching
your fingers to zoom in on a web page or image, swiping left or right
to turn a page or switch between full screen apps and swiping up to
enter Mission Control.
A new version of Mail for Mac OS X Lion.
Lion also includes the Mac App Store, where you can find great new
apps, buy them with your iTunes account, and download and install them
in just one step. Apps purchased from the Mac App Store are installed
directly into Launchpad.
Additional features in Lion include:
- a new version of Mail, with an elegant, widescreen layout inspired
by the iPad; Conversations, which automatically groups related messages
into one easy to read timeline; more powerful search; and support for
Microsoft Exchange 2010;
- AirDrop, a remarkably simple way to copy files wirelessly from one
Mac to another with no setup;
- Versions, which automatically saves successive versions of your
document as you create it, and gives you an easy way to browse, edit
and even revert to previous versions;
- Resume, which conveniently brings your apps back exactly how you
left them when you restart your Mac or quit and relaunch an app;
- Auto Save, which automatically saves your documents as you
work;
- the all new FileVault, that provides high performance full disk
encryption for local and external drives, and the ability to wipe data
from your Mac instantaneously; and
- Mac OS X Lion Server, which makes setting up a server easier than
ever and adds support for managing Mac OS X Lion, iPhone, iPad, and
iPod touch devices.
Link: Mac
OS X Lion Preview
US Mac Sales Up 20% Year Over Year
AppleInsider's Slash Lane reports:
"The latest US sales data shows Apple's Mac sales are up 20 percent
year over year, putting the company on pace to meet an expected 3.6
million units sold in the March quarter. The new domestic sales data
from the NPD Group was shared Tuesday by analyst Gene Munster with
Piper Jaffray."
Link: NPD Data Shows Mac
Sales Up 20%, Apple on Pace to Sell 3.6M in March Quarter
Apple Products in 30% of Top 2010 Movies
AppleInsider's Daniel Eran Dilger reports:
"Apple product placements appeared 30 percent of the top films of
2010, more than any other brand, including Nike, Chevrolet and Ford,
which all tied for second place with placement in 24 percent of the top
movies. Placement of Apple's Macs, iPhones and iPods and other products
in films resulted in the company being cited for the '2010 Award for
Overall Product Placement' by Brandcameo."
Link: Apple Products
Appeared in 30% of All Top Movies in 2010
Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid Drive Wearing Faster in
Macs?
Hardmac's Sylvain says that some users of Seagate's Momentus XT
hybrid drive are reporting issues when installed in Macs, although Hard
Mac is using one in a 13" MacBook Pro and reports that it's been
working very well so far, speculating that there may have been a batch
of faulty early production Momentus XT drives.
Link: Seagate's Momentus
XT Would Wear Faster in a Mac
Software
PhotoLine Image Editor for Mac OS X and
Windows
PR: The German developers of PhotoLine have released version
16.50 of their Photoshop Elements and Pixelmator challenger.
PhotoLine features:
- 32/64 bit application
- Image Processing
- 16 bit per channel, support of CMYK and Lab
- Color management with ICC profiles
- Lossless imaging
- Process digital photos
- Retouch, correct
- Browse
- IPTC and EXIF data handling
- Rotate images lossless
- Rename images and create catalogues
- Create HTML galleries
- Add and edit keywords
- Powerful search capabilities
- DTP/Layout/Text
- "Real" PDF Import and Export (not just a big image)
- Multipage documents
- Calendar and barcode creation
- Rich text functions
- Internet/Animations
- Create Flash and GIF animations
- Web Export
- Tile images, create buttons and image maps
- Batch conversion
- Create slideshows
- Record actions
- Print multipage documents, flyers and labels
- USB-Stick support
- Multiprocessor support
New in Version 16:
- Better user interface
- Adjustment Layer Palette
- Palettes improved
- Image processing
- Liquify Tool
- Color Filter
- New Filters
- Miscellaneous
- Morph Vector Layers
- QR-Code
- GhostScript Import
- OS X: Scanning With Image Capture
You can download a trial version of PhotoLine for Windows or Mac OS
X. The trial version can be used for 30 days for free without heavy
limitations.
Learn more about what you can achieve with PhotoLine in the online
tutorial, or download the offline version.
System requirements: Mac OS X 10.4 and higher, Universal Binary
PhotoLine sells for €59 (approximately $80)
Link: PhotoLine
Wondershare Launches First PDF Converter on Mac App
Store
PR: A 6-in-1 PDF Converter for Mac, AnyBizSoft PDF Converter,
is now available on the Mac App Store. It is the first and only PDF
conversion tool that is available on the Mac App Store. It was released
on February 15, 2011 and sells for $69.99.
AnyBizSoft PDF Converter is an easy-to-use application that
empowers users to convert PDF to 6 popular formats including Word,
Excel, PowerPoint, EPUB, HTML and Text on Mac OS X.
By converting PDF to the Office formats, users can edit, reuse,
present PDF files easily and efficiently. Besides, converting PDF to
EPUB can highly improve ebook reading experience on iPad, iPhone, iPod
Touch, Sony Reader, and more.
Key Features
- Good Preservation: PDF Converter preserves all the elements
of original PDF files, such as text, hyperlinks, images, layouts,
tables, columns, and graphics.
- High Efficiency: PDF Converter supports batch-conversion and
partial-conversion modes. Batch-conversion allows Mac users to convert
maximum 50 PDF files at one time. Partial-Conversion helps users
specify page ranges (e.g. page 1-15) or select specific pages (e.g.
page 5, 7, 14).
- Encrypted PDF Files Conversion: PDF Converter also converts
encrypted PDF files. If the PDF file has copying, printing and editing
restrictions, Mac users can convert it with this app directly. If the
PDF file has an open password, PDF Converter requires open password to
convert this file for protecting the copyright.
- Easy to Use: Users can simply drag and drop PDF files to the
program to convert. And it only takes 3 steps to convert PDF files:
Import-Choose format-Convert.
Price: $69.99
Get AnyBizSoft PDF Converter from Mac App Store, or download the
application from the official website .
Link: AnyBizSoft
PDF Converter (download
link)
Catholic Calendar: Free Liturgical Calendar with
Saint of the Day
PR: Catholic Calendar is a Liturgical calendar for every year
from 1970 to 2300 and beyond.
The Calendar includes feasts and celebrations according to the
General Calendar and the local calendars of the UK, the USA, Australia,
New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland, and others, and also features
"About Today" pages giving more information about the saint of the
day.
System requirements:
- You need a computer running Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, 10.5 Leopard, 10.6
Snow Leopard, or later.
- This is a Universal program, meaning that it will run on both Intel
Macs and PowerPC Macs.
Freeware
Link: Catholic
Calendar (download
link)
Free Pig Latin Translator 2.0
PR: Pig Latin Translator is a Dashboard widget that allows
you to enter any text and with a quick click you can translate it into
Pig Latin.
New in
version 2.0:
- Added the ability to use Dazzle update engine.
- Rewrote the entire core from the ground up.
- General bug fixes.
- Ability to copy results to clipboard.
- Added ability to have Pig Latin texts read to you.
System Requirements:
- PPC/Intel
- Mac OS X 10.4.6 or later.
Freeware
Link: Pig
Latin Translator
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