Apple launches gestures-heavy iPhoto for iPad, can tell you weather in images. Available today for $4.99

In what many might call a long overdue move, Apple finally ported the photo management application iPhoto to iPad. The release of the software completes a trio of the most important iLife apps that are now available on the iPad: iMovie, GarageBand, and now iPhoto. The app supports images up to 19-megapixels. It also sports many familiar and popular features, including the auto-enhance tool, social sharing through Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, email, and more.

The iPhoto app is aimed at people who “want to do more with your photos.” One aspect immediately becomes clear: iPhoto for iPad is gestures-heavy (per an extensive live demo Apple’s Chief Architect for Photo and Video Randy Ubillos gave on stage).

You can use the new bezel gesture —a first for an Apple-made iPad app— to swipe from the left side of the screen to look at other images in the album. From there, just tap on an image to bring the editing interface up. When you want to bring in the thumbnail view, just swipe from the side again.

Another cool feature: Double-tapping a single image tells iPhoto to scan your entire library and compare all the images to find the ones that look similar. You can also beam photos between devices over-the-air, tap a specific area to adjust it, touch, and drag to brighten or tweak saturation, and more.

However, when it comes down to heavy image editing, the iPhoto app does not disappoint. For example, brush palettes include tools such as red-eye, saturation, and lighten. Other notables include sharpen, soften, darken, and a general repair tool. Meanwhile, the effects gallery includes black and white, vignette, tilt-shift, watercolor, and more.

More information is available below.

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Snow Leopard supplies run short in Australia/NZ. Lion coming soon?

We’re getting tips from our retail friends in the South Pacific that Snow Leopard boxes are running short and the channel inventory is drying up.  Apple resellers are literally unable to ge their hands on stock of Snow Leopard boxes.

Even Apple’s website is showing a week’s wait in both Australia and New Zealand.  These types of sporadic delays, which are frequently temporary, are usually an indication that the supply channel is changing and the boxes are no longer being made.

Obviously, this could point to an upcoming Lion release as early as next month at Apple’s WWDC, if not sooner.  The latest build, Lion Preview 3,  has been largely stable and there have been signs that Apple could even demonstrate Lion in Apple Stores next week as part of their Apple Store 2.0 initiative.

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Mac App Store Downloads Top One Million in First Day

CUPERTINO, California—January 7, 2011—Apple today announced that over one million apps have been downloaded from the Mac App Store in the first day. With more than 1,000 free and paid apps, the Mac App Store brings the revolutionary App Store experience to the Mac, so you can find great new apps, buy them using your iTunes account, download and install them in just one step.

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