I imagine this has to be one of the coolest jobs in the world. Apple’s product photos are both legendary and seen by millions of people world wide, either in advertisements in magazines, on Apple’s website, or sometimes even on sites like ours. Peter Belanger, a photographer whose clients include Apple, Nike, and Square, was interviewed by The Verge and asked how he recreates the kind of simplicity that Apple portrays in its marketing.
I need to have control over each and every surface so when the client asks for a highlight to be elongated, I can do that. It’s similar to working on a file in Photoshop: you don’t do all your work on one layer. I think of my lights as layers that I can adjust individually to get the desired results.
While Peter shoots with a Canon 5D Mark III, he’s also the same individual who shot the Macworld iPhone 4 coverwith an iPhone 4 itself. His process and attention to detail are absolutely amazing.
Apple’s Photos app is the default location for saving and sharing photos with friends on iOS. It’s a place where I spend a lot of time either deleting old screenshots (unique to us bloggers) or sorting images into albums as best I can before syncing them with iPhoto. The app has never made much sense to me, between how it simply handles moving images into albums from the Camera Roll or into Photo Stream, and I don’t particularly care for how it whisks away old photos after a period of time on a per device basis in Photo Stream. Peter Nixey was featured on Hacker News earlier today for his thoughts on how managing photos could be better on iOS, and I agree with the general idea:
I want the canonical copy of my iPhoto library in the cloud. One iPhoto library in the cloud, many devices with access to it. I want to edit, organise and delete photos on any device and see the same changes on all other devices. No master/slave setup - just straight cloud access.
I get that there are limitations and lots of things happening in the background, but a lot of that makes itself evident in Photos if you look closely enough. I don’t necessarily agree with Peter’s pricing ideas or that Dropbox and the like are even a threat. But what I do agree with is that the dumb syncing silo that is Photo Stream has to go. Camera Roll can stay as it is — I don’t necessarily need the two merged. When I move photos from the camera roll into a new album, that photo should be gone — moved from my Camera Roll. And those albums should simply show up everywhere from my iPhone to my iPad and on my Mac or Windows box. The “duplication” that happens everywhere with photos right now on iOS is absolutely crazy. And if I want to use the iPhoto app on iOS instead… can’t I just make that the default?
I love taking pictures on my iPhone. But the syncing, the managing, the sorting… it’s not great.
Adobe’s Creative Cloud launched a year ago as a subscription-based alternative to the traditional licensing model that went with the Creative Suites, offering access to the full Adobe Creative Suite 6 suite of software, services such as Adobe’s Digital Publishing Suite, Adobe Touch Apps for mobile devices, and online syncing and storage for a membership fee. Today during Adobe’s MAX, The Creativity Conference keynote in Los Angeles, California, Adobe announced that they would be phasing out the licensing model altogether, launching updated CS6 applications through Creative Cloud. This means that instead of purchasing an expensive Creative Suite, you’ll have to pay a monthly fee to use apps like Photoshop and Illustrator.
Creative Cloud
Adobe’s Creative Cloud can be thought of as the company’s own version of Microsoft’s Office 365. Next to Adobe’s library of applications, Creative Cloud gives customers a way to connect with others, share files, and build their creative portfolios through Behance to showcase projects and get feedback. Plus Adobe offers 20 GB of cloud storage (100 GB for teams) for storing files and syncing assets between desktops, laptops, and mobile devices like the iPad. In addition to having access to services such as those listed above, customers can take advantage of the entire catalogue of Typekit fonts for use on websites or in desktop applications.
Many of Adobe’s desktop applications will be updated and branded with CC to designate their integration with Creative Cloud. Photoshop CC, InDesign CC, Illustrator CC, Dreamweaver CC, and Premier Pro CC are the big highlights amongst HTML5 oriented Edge apps or video tools like After Effects. Lightroom is an exception as it will be both available with a Creative Cloud membership and with an individual license. Unfortunately, Adobe has said they are discontinuing development of Fireworks due to product overlap. For those who wish to continue using Fireworks, Fireworks CS6 will continue to be supported through the next major updates for OS X and Windows. CS6 itself will also remain available for purchase (and volume licensing) outside of the Creative Cloud, although you won’t have the latest features that are being introduced with Creative Cloud.
Photoshop CC
Photoshop in particular is receiving some wonderful new features with the upcoming Creative Cloud update. Photoshop CC includes an all-new Smart Sharpen tool for bringing out more detail while reducing noise and halo effects, intelligent up-sampling for scaling images with reduced artifacts, and camera shake reduction for restoring sharpness to blurry photos. The latter technology is the most impressive, as it lets anyone restore clarity to lost photos with a simple wave of the wand tool.
Mighty and Napoleon
Projects Mighty and Napoleon are announced hardware offerings from Adobe XD, which consist of a Wacom-like pen stylus and a digital ruler. The devices are cloud connected, interfacing with your Creative Cloud account. For example and as shown in the video above, the pen allows artists to copy and paste snippets between Adobe’s suite of touch apps for mobile devices. The digital ruler is also interesting as it projects shapes to trace on the screen, acting as pocket-able replacement for a large variety of traditional pen and paper tools.
Creative Cloud Pricing
Creative Cloud costs $19.99 a month for a single application, and $49.99 a month for access to every application and service Adobe provides. For the first year, previous Creative Suite customers will only have to pay $19.99 a month if they have Creative Suite 6, and only $29.99 if they have a license for a previous Creative Suite. Students can also get promotional pricing for their first year, paying only $19.99 a month after proving their institutional affiliation. Students should apply by June 25th.
Teams, or small businesses, will have to pay $69.99 per month per user, or $39.99 per month for the first year for previous Creative Suite owners. Teams should sign-up and add users by August 31st. Educational pricing for teams is also set at $39.99 per month per user.
Moving forward, Adobe will only be offering their latest desktop applications through the Creative Cloud. The CC updates for Adobe’s desktop applications will go live on June 17th, but you can join Creative Cloud at any time to take advantage of previously-mentioned services.
BerlinSidewalk has a large collection of beautiful opening day photos of Apple’s latest retail store in Berlin, highlighting the launch event amongst cheering employees and long lines. Rumors of Berlin’s Apple Store can be dated back to 2005, and the ifoAppleStore has an early picture of the building before it underwent renovation in 2011.
Also at the store’s opening was Macerkopf, whom collected a series of photos and videos amongst a brief of the store’s opening hours and weekend schedule. Opening yesterday evening at 5:00pm to a crowd of thousands, 200 staffers at the 5000 square meter retail space handed out 4,500 commemorative shirts to the first visitors. The store is Germany’s biggest amongst the eleven stores, as well as the European region’s largest, featuring a conference room and an auditorium on the second floor to showcase film, music, and photography. The store also offers expeditions for children, who are encouraged to create and share creative projects to parents and teachers. The employees at the store can speak 12 languages between them as the store is expected to be a popular attraction and showcase for Apple in Europe.
Apple has a history of both repurposing and maintaining the structural integrity of historic sites for many of their retail locations, and this store is no different. The retail store sits along the Kurfürstendamm, known locally as Ku’damm, a long boulevard in West Berlin home to many luxury fashion boutiques and businesses. Open at Ku’damm 26, the Apple Retail Store is a renovation of the Union Palast, a historic theater that’s known as one of Berlin’s first, opening in 1913.
Not only is Minecraft - Pocket Edition listed as one of Apple’s All-Time Top Paid Apps for both the iPhone and iPad on the App Store, Mojang has been announcing their own incredible milestones this month. Following an astounding 10 million copies of the PC edition sold at the beginning of April, Mojang wrote on their blog Monday that the company has sold 10 million copies of Minecraft - Pocket Edition across mobile platforms. “We are very thankful to all the support that we have gotten and people playing and talking about our game,” Daniel Kaplan wrote. “We have been working hard on restructuring the backend of a lot of things for Minecraft – Pocket Edition to make future updates smoother.”
Minecraft - Pocket Edition feels very much like Minecraft its beta days, giving players a choice between simpler creative and survival modes. Mojang plans to continue updating the mobile edition of the popular franchise, with the company preparing to release Minecraft Realms as a multiplayer component by the end of May. Realms is a cloud service that will let players easily create their own Minecraft servers for friends and family, giving small groups of players an easy way to play together. For Minecraft - Pocket Edition on iOS, Mojang plans on letting players rent server space through an IAP subscription, which only hosts will have to pay.
Talking about Google, A Google representative has confirmed to TechCrunch that iPhone owners will in fact be able to use text messaging and navigation features with Glass. The representative noted that Glass will work independently of the device it’s connected to, and it’s an affirmation of a statement made by Google earlier in the year. Currently, Glass wearers can only use the full set of features with an Android smartphone with the MyGlass companion app.
Frederic Lardinois makes clear that Glass doesn’t have its own connection to the Internet to use such features, but will rather tether off of your smartphone to access data and pull in relevant information.
In this context, it’s worth noting that one of the myths surrounding Glass is that it is independently connected to the Internet. That’s not true, however. Instead, Glass users need to have a tethering plan for their phones to connect Glass to the Internet. In the eyes of your wireless provider, Glass is just another device that uses your phone’s personal hotspot feature.
Also keep in mind that at least on iOS, text messaging won’t work with Apple’s iMessage service. Instead, Glass will likely integrate with Google’s rumored messaging service, Babel.
Google Now for iOS launched on Monday through an update to the Google Search app, which displays location and context aware cards underneath Google’s search options. For a little while, I’ll be using Google Search to reference tidbits of information on the Internet instead of Safari or Chrome on my iPhone, while also living with Google Now to discern its value on iOS. An early conclusion I came to, like many tech writers have, is that Google Now uses additional battery life when turned on. Lifehacker, reporting on a Cult of Mac story about the battery drain caused by Google Now’s use of Location Services, was later contacted by Google. A Google spokesperson wrote:
Reports that Google Now drains battery life are incorrect. We understand people’s concern about seeing the Location Services icon stay on when they use Google Now. Many apps that keep the icon on actually do drain the phone’s battery because they require very accurate location. (For example a navigation app has to run your GPS all the time to keep you from missing your turn.) Google Now is built very differently: it uses cell towers and wifi hot spots for much lower battery impact.
We extensively tested Google Now on iOS for months and didn’t see reports of significant battery impact — we would encourage you to try it in the Google Search app for a few days and we don’t expect you to see significant impact on your battery. If you are seeing a problem, please do tell us (just tap feedback in the app settings). We take user feedback very seriously.
It’s a very defensive statement by Google — there’s conflicting statements about battery drain and a note that Google Now on iOS was built to specifically use cell towers and Wi-Fi hotspots instead of GPS. Even if that’s the case, location aware apps do make use of Assisted GPS with or without a clear line-of-sight to a satellite. Nearby Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers are used to more quickly pinpoint where you are in the world, or are used completely in the absence of GPS. In their release notes, Google also notes that the Google Now will stop tracking location once battery life is low (from what I’ve seen I believe this is at 20%), and that the app only starts actively tracking location once you move a long distance.
As far as battery drain issues go, Google does say that they haven’t seen internal reports of “significant battery impact,” which I think is fair, even if they originally outright denied it. Many apps, in addition to Google Now, that use Location Services or take advantage of features like Geofencing do eat up additional battery life. Apps like Passbook use Geofencing so that you can quickly swipe open a ticket or gift card at a place of business, and apps like Reminders also use Geofencing to remind you of a task at a given location. These apps, however, remain in the background until needed and aren’t significantly impacting daily battery life, which is the key word here.
Google Now wants to deliver “up-to-the minute” information. The difference between apps like Passbook and Reminders in comparison to Google Search is that Google Now appears to always be actively tracking your location, as a navigation app like Maps would, even after it’s closed for a period of time. Google claims that the icon in the status bar remains as Google Search will occasionally report your location to update traffic alerts for example. Google Now’s Location Reporting in particular is used to periodically check location information when the app is not in use, for use with directions and nearby places. But Google Now isn’t sending push notifications, and the only time it really needs to update cards is when you open the app. Unlike Google Now on Android, Google Now on iOS is sandboxed inside an app and not integral to the OS.
Why doesn’t Google Now simply refresh the cards only when you open the Google Search app, pinging for your location at that time? That sounds like a better solution to me, even if I had to wait an extra second or two for cards to be updated.
If battery life is of concern, you can disable Google Search in Location Services through Settings. You can then manually refresh the cards when you’re looking for something nearby.
TNW: There has been much talk recently on the ‘decline’ of Apple, as reflected in its stock price. What’s your take on this ‘decline’ and the suggestions that Tim Cook should be fired?
Dediu: I’ve written about the perception of decline several times. The quick answer is that as Apple has risen, the number of people who have taken it upon themselves to give commentary on how Apple should improve itself has increased. If the increase in commentary is in proportion to Apple’s sales then it has risen ‘exponentially’.
Our gut feeling is that professional equivalents to applications such as Aperture, Final Cut Pro, and Logic could eventually find their way to the iPad alongside a future iOS announcement or in their own Keynotes. We’ve talked at length before about how apps like Aperture could power mobile studios, utilizing Apple’s existing software stack of services like iCloud and Photo Stream. And we weren’t too far off the mark at the time — a month later Apple announced iPhoto for iOS devices, which offers more advanced editing features in contrast to the tools available in iOS’ Photos app.
Adobe, which already has its own iPhoto and Photo Stream alternatives with Revel (launched as Carousel), looks to be expanding their professional suite of photography solutions with a mobile complement of Lightroom on mobile devices such as the iPad. Jeff Blagdon from The Verge writes,
The app, which is still in the early stages of development, uses the lossy DNG Smart Previews new to Lightroom 5 to keep the footprint on your tablet to a minimum, and will use the same image processing model employed in Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw.
… During his appearance, Hogarty used an iPad 2 to zoom and scroll inside a large 5D Mark III RAW image, tweaking adjustments to shadows, highlights, and color temperature.
Christian Zibreg of iDownloadBlog also has a YouTube clip of the development build, along with a preview of the Smart Previews feature included in Lightroom 5.
