If you’re someone that regularly edits photos, or enjoys graphic design work, then you’ve likely used Pixelmator, which is arguably the best alternative to Photoshop on the Mac. Today, the popular $15 app is getting a huge update, known as 2.2 “Blueberry,” which includes over 100 new features. I’ve been testing out the new options, and they’re pretty great…
We already told you about some big app news today with an updated Twitter iOS client and the release of popular MMO Guild Wars 2 for Mac. Below is the rest of the notable apps and updates hitting the App Store today:
Pixelmator version 2.1.1: A big update today goes to version 2.1.1 of the Pixelmator Mac App Store app. The updated app includes a new Healing Tool that’s up to 20x faster than the previous version, UI improvements for Retina MacBooks, and a number of fixes and performance enhancements. A full list of changes is here.
We are bursting with pride to tell you that this is the best and the fastest Healing Tool in the world. Pretty sophisticated algorithms and the latest OS X technologies have allowed us to create a tool that performs at an incredible speed. We hope you’ll be as excited about it as we are… A lot of other good things are here, too: the ability to temporarily hide the Alignment Guides with the Command key, significant performance improvements, the effects you’ve missed, and much more.
Amazon Cloud Player version 1.2.4: Amazon updated its Cloud Player app for iOS today, which allows users to stream and download music from their Amazon Cloud account. The biggest news in the update is that Cloud Player is now available in the UK, Germany, and France. Amazon is also introducing support for French and German languages.
Reeder version 3.0.4: The iOS Fever, Readability, and Google Reader client was updated today with a few new features. Included is enhancements bringing full support for iPhone 5 and iOS 6. The update means Facebook sharing becomes an iOS 6 only feature after updating. The developers have also included a fix for issues with Fever syncing and missing folders.
Read more
On top of a few great game deals, including savings on Shift 2 Unleashed for iPad and the Mass Effect Infiltrator iOS app, there are a number of noteworthy apps and updates hitting the App Store today. We will update the list, as always, throughout the day.
Things 2.0: One of the leading iOS and Mac productivity apps was updated today to version 2.0 with a ton of new features. Included in the update is “Things Cloud”. It is a cloud service that syncs your to-dos across Macs and the iOS client. A new Daily Review feature makes important to-dos appear when you need them, and a “revolutionary scrolling Date Picker makes selecting dates more natural than ever.” The UI has also been updated along with a new engine that provides “blazingly fast Things Cloud performance.” These and other new features and improvements are included in the Things for iPad app.
Things 2.0 (Mac App Store): In addition to free updates to the iOS versions of Things, the Mac App Store client was updated today to version 2.0. The update includes the “Things Cloud” service mentioned above, allowing you to sync across platforms, while other new features include a “Daily Review” that presents important to-dos for the day, full Mountain Lion support, Retina graphics, full-screen mode, a number of other enhancements.
Pixelmator version 2.1: Popular image editor Pixelmator was updated on the Mac App Store today with a much needed Retina-ready UI and image-editing engine, iCloud support to keep projects up to date on multiple machines, as well as a new effects browser containing “new Vintage, Miniaturize, Black and White, Rain, and Snow effects.” Also included in the update is full OS X Mountain Lion support and alignment guides to “quickly position, align, and evenly distribute objects in your Pixelmator compositions with pinpoint accuracy.”
Tweetdeck version 1.5.3: Today’s massive update to the popular Mac Twitter client brings a slew of user-interface enhancements such as the ability to use the Columns button to quickly jump to any position. Users can also navigate the arrow buttons to scroll left and right several columns at a time, use swipe gestures on the trackpad to scroll, access key user and Tweet actions from the new actions menu, and fit more columns on screen by enabling Narrow Columns in Settings. The update also boasts improved animations for tweets and column management, performance improvements, and many bug fixes.
Pomodorable version 1.0: Released on the Mac App Store today, Pomodorable is a task management app that its developers said takes a “fresh approach to managing to do lists” by taking full advantage of Notification Center, Notes, Reminders, and other Mountain Lion features. While at first glance it might appear to compete with Things, the app actually includes support for Things and OmniFocus. It allows you to view tasks from those apps within the Pomodorable, and the app is 50 percent off for a limited time following today’s launch.
PDF Expert version 4.2: Readdle’s PDF Expert app was updated recently with a new “Presentation Mode” that allows you to connect an iPad to a projector ” and make interactive non-linear presentations” with content from PDFs, videos, and images. The update also includes live annotation tools, new annotation colours, and a number of other improvements.
Read more
With the announcement of the 2012 Worldwide Developer Conference today, Apple also opened its Apple Design Awards nomination page for iOS and Mac developers. Apple announced last year that the annual awards would now only apply to Mac and iOS apps residing in the App Store, which appears to be the case this year as well.
Through the website set up for WWDC, developers can sign up and nominate apps for inclusion in the awards. To be considered, the app must be on the App Store or Mac App Store by May 1. Note: Apps that are not nominated can still win an Apple Design Award if they catch Apple’s eye.
Last year’s winners included iPhone apps Infinity Blade, Cut the Rope, and Golfscape GPS Rangefinder, and iPad apps djay for iPad, Osmos, and Our Choice. For Mac developers, apps including Capo, Pixelmator, and Anomaly Warzone Earth took home last year’s awards. At WWDC 2011, Apple also handed out awards to student developers, which will likely happen again—especially given Apple’s new scholarship program for the 2012 event.
Winners will get an Apple Design Award trophy and usually some Apple gear or prizes that have not been announced. Apple broke down the criteria for apps considered for the awards:
Apple just issued a press release announcing that its App Store mobile bazaar now carries over half a million apps for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. Additionally, customers have downloaded apps from the Mac App Store over a hundred million times. The App Store has passed over eighteen billion downloads since its inception and continues to clock more than a billion downloads a month.
An Apple spokesperson confirmed to The Loop’s Jim Dalrymple that Mac App Store downloads don’t include Lion, updates or downloads to other Macs. Apple CEO Tim Cook said at the October 4 iPhone 4S introduction that they were approaching 60 million Mac users worldwide and that Mac OS X Lion had been download from the Mac App Store over six million times. The press release quotes Apple’s head of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller:
In just three years the App Store changed how people get mobile apps, and now the Mac App Store is changing the traditional PC software industry. With more than 100 million downloads in less than a year, the Mac App Store is the largest and fastest growing PC software store in the world.
The statement also features quotes from Autodesk and Pixelmator, developers who saw tremendous success with their iOS and Mac offerings. AutoCAD in late-August 2011 made its Mac App Store debut, along with companion iOS apps on the App Store such as the free AutoCAD WS app for iPad and iPhone or sketchbook for iPhone, a pro-grade paint and drawing app that recently raked in fourteen million dollars, or about $9.8 million after Apple’s customary thirty percent cut.
Pixelmator, a popular image editing program, was recently updated to version 2.0. This nifty Photoshop alternative is being exclusively distributed on the Mac App Store and in no time proved one of the most popular downloads on the store. The success has prompted Apple to name Pixelmator the Mac App of the Year in the iTunes Rewind 2011 charts released last week.
As for Adobe, they released Photoshop Elements Editor 1 and Adobe Premiere Elements 10 on the Mac App Store, the Carousel image management app for the Mac and iOS devices and promised to deliver a range of iPad apps soon. Microsoft, the world’s leading software maker, is rumored to bring Office to iOS. Full release below the fold.
Update: October 27th: It is now live – go get it!
For those who don’t need all of the bells and whistles (and overhead) of Adobe’s Photoshop for photo editing, another product has taken off in the Mac platform. Pixelmator is a $30 Mac App, now in the App Store which gives you 80+% of what Photoshop offers.
The good news is that Pixelmator 2.0 drops tomorrow with additional tools which may be able to take care of the needs of light Illustrator uses as well with the inclusion of Vector Drawing tools:
Enjoy perfectly precise, full-featured drawing tools that allow you to easily create and edit any vector shapes, whether simple or advanced…and some more sophisticated Photoshop tools like content aware fill and a more advanced type tool.
Users who buy the current $29 version will be upgraded for free tomorrow.
All the new features after the break.
Read more
