Mel Martin
Articles by Mel Martin
Adobe updates Voice for iPad with new features and themes
Adobe Voice hit the market in May and has been used by companies, small teams and individuals wanting to create audio and video presentations that look good with minimal effort. The app is free but requires an Adobe ID. Today the iPad app added the ability to color-customize backgrounds, icons, text and more – within themes – via hexadecimal color code or color wheel picker. The introduction of "Theme Lab" in Adobe Voice makes stories more customizable and versatile than ever before. Use Theme Lab to match company-specific colors and ensure brand identity or convey a colorful mood that is truly unique to each story. Today's Voice release also includes another handy feature: improved photo resizing. Now you can pinch to adjust the size of photos to make sure nothing important gets cropped out – or easily scale logos and other small images to the size you want. I've experimented with the app and found it easy to use, and the presentations look polished. It's an interesting competitor to Microsoft's PowerPoint and Apple's own Keynote app. One difference is that Keynote runs on iOS and the Mac, while Voice is iPad only. While Keynote and Powerpoint are designed to create pages, with multi-media features, Voice creates a video which is a complete self running package. Adobe has a video showing the new features, which was created, of course, with Voice. I think the remaining weakness, and one users want very much, is the ability to save the presentation to the camera roll. Currently videos can be mailed, shared on Facebook or Twitter, and inserted into a web page.
iOS users: Nest Thermostat update on the way
The popular Nest Thermostat will see a significant software upgrade within the week. The system, popular with iOS users who can control it from their iPhones or iPads, will see improvements to its auto-schedule software, a new Quick View option, and enhanced system test features. Nest says the Auto-Schedule software can "...help you save up to 6% more on your heating and cooling bills by learning new schedules quickly and adapting to changes better. So when your schedule shifts – like when summer's over and the kids are back at school – Nest can now catch on faster that the temperature adjustments you're making are part of a new pattern rather than just one-off changes." Quick View is a major GUI change. Pushing the thermostat ring will now display weather, indoor temperatures and humidity. You will also get a summary of energy used the previous day, and the next change to the schedule. Finally, a System Test will walk you through your attached hardware and check functionality. The update will be pushed from the Nest servers automatically. There will also be updates to the iOS Nest applications to support the changes. Nest says other new features are on the way. The company is getting pushed by competitors like Honeywell. I'd love to see the Nest use my iPhone to figure out if I am near home or not, so it can set the auto-away function using geo-fencing, rather than using the motion sensing feature of the Nest to see if I am home.
How to speed up adding album art in iTunes 12
I am very dedicated to getting the proper album art on the hundreds of CDs I've put into iTunes. Until version 12 arrived, it was a pretty simple process. You could Google the album art, then simply drag the album cover from the web page to the designated spot after selecting all the album tracks and doing a "Get Info" (Command-I) from the File menu of iTunes. That all changed in iTunes 12, for reasons that escape me. Doing the same sequence now gets you a newly designed dialog box that wants you to load the graphic from a location -- no more drag and drop. It takes more steps to add the album art, and who knows why Apple made the change. Don't despair! The old tried and true method is still there, but hidden. Just hold the Option key down before you select "Get Info" to bring back the old GUI that lets you drag and drop your album art right into iTunes. You can see both versions below: the current "improved" design and the "hidden" old version that you can restore by pressing the Option key. I'm a big fan of doing things easily. Maybe Apple meant to make this change, or perhaps it was an oversight. It could be part of the big package of iTunes GUI changes that have troubled many users. The fact that you can still get to the feature by pressing the Option key indicates that the changes were by design. Anyway, the older and faster method is still around; you just have to know the "trick" ... and now you do.
AfterShot Pro 2 from Corel is a competitive Mac photo manager
Corel's latest Mac OS release, AfterShot Pro 2 (currently on sale for US$69.00) is hard to quickly characterize. It combines elements of Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. It excels as a RAW-file importer and manager with very fast performance. It easily catalogs and can search for images in extremely large libraries. It supports sophisticated batch processing and has world class noise reduction from Athentech. Images can be tagged with your own categories in addition to the standard EXIF tags your camera creates. Image editing is non-destructive, with both manual and automatic adjustments. Among the features is lens correction to reduce distortion in any of your DSLR lenses. For output, you can easily create contact sheets, templates for standard print sizes, and even create web galleries to show off your images. There is complete on-board help as well as web-based videos to walk you through the application. In this latest edition, AfterShot Pro shows you how to create HDR images and adjust them. I gave the app a spin and found it powerful, but it took a while for me to adjust to it after many years of using Photoshop. The GUI is efficient, but very different. It took a few sessions to get comfortable with where controls were located, but once I did I found the program to be fast and efficient. The HDR mode is powerful, with plenty of adjustments. I found it superior to Photoshop's HDR tools, but not quite up to where Photomatix and the NIK HDR programs are. There are several presets to get you close to your desired "look", but most people will want to adjust from there. Import of raw files is very speedy, but in the HDR mode when I had five files open, my Mac Pro would hesitate for a couple of seconds on each adjustment. Curves and the usual tonal adjustments are easy to apply, and the application supports layers which most experienced photo editors will want. There is so much here, it's worth a trip over to the Corel website to watch the videos and get an idea of what the program will do. Although reasonably priced for an app this professional, it's not going to unseat Photoshop and Lightroom, which Adobe now makes available at reasonable subscription prices for advanced amateurs and professionals. Also, Corel has an on again-off again relationship with Apple and the Mac. Corel Draw was offered and then withdrawn in 2001. They had Word Perfect for the Mac which was pretty popular as an alternative to Microsoft Word, but it was pulled off the market back in 1997. If Corel will stay with the Mac platform, the company has a chance to build up a loyal audience, especially offering this kind of software at very competitive pricing. AfterShot Pro 2 is a solid application. Although it's an excellent editor on its own, it has the ability to hand off work your to another editor like Photoshop if you want to. AfterShot Pro 2 runs on any Mac with OS X 10.7.3 or higher. It ran fine on Yosemite. It wants 250 MB of hard drive space, and at least 2 GB or RAM, but the more RAM the better. There are separate 32- and 64-bit editions. Corel AfterShot Pro 2 looks very good. I expect some areas of performance could be speeded up a bit, but for less than 70 dollars, this is a pretty incredible package. Expect to spend some time learning it, but in my tests I saw no glitches or crashes. If you are interested in AfterShot Pro 2 you can download a fully functional demo, and there is a 30 day money back guarantee.
iAnnotate PDF is a solid entry in the PDF markup app category
iAnnotate (US$9.99) is a full-featured iPad app for marking up PDF files with highlighting, diagrams, notes, and even audio comments. Standout features include the ability to markup DOC and PPT files as well as PDF documents. The app allows you to have eight documents open at once, something many of its competitors don't offer. There is a broad arrange of annotation tools, and you can create custom toolbars to speed your work along. For importing you can use Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive or WebDav, plus iTunes file sharing is supported. The app doesn't support iCloud, which is a negative, but Air Drop is supported. You can also open emailed PDFs. Documents can be searched quickly, and you can create folders to keep projects in a workable environment. I gave the app a try and found it easy to use, although extensive help is included if you need it. Drawing was easy, and you can choose a pen, line tools, underlining, and time and date stamps. There is a keyboard that is used to type notes in different colors than the document. Copy and paste is supported between documents. All the functions worked well, and sharing of the annotated documents was easy through email. I tested opening my documents in Adobe Reader and Apple Preview under Yosemite with no issues. This is a powerful and useful app if you find yourself needing to mark up documents for sharing and circulation. The variety of tools and customization is a real plus. As mentioned, iAnnotate PDF really needs to add iCloud support as it will be the default sharing method for many iOS users. iAnnotate PDF requires iOS 6.0. It ran nicely on my older iPad 2, so just about any iPad that can run iOS 6 or later will be fine. Other similar apps that are well thought of include PDF Expert 5 ($9.99), PDF Forms (which I reviewed last month - $8.99) and PDF Pro (free), which has a reduced feature set compared to the others.
Droplr is back with new features and Yosemite support
I reviewed Droplr a couple of years ago and found it to be an easy method of transferring large files. The Mac application is back with a spanking new interface and new features that are likely to appeal to people who share screen shots, screen videos and files. The app installs in your menubar, and now features support for Apple's dark menubar option. You can upload large files, and you will get a url to share the file with others. New features include quick screenshot sharing, video captures of screens (great for demonstrating software using screencasts), and the ability to share a quick animated GIF taken with your connected camera. I find that last feature pretty disposable, but some may love it. I checked the app's various options and found them to all work well. I transferred a large Photoshop file to a friend without incident. Everything was very smooth. Droplr can now work as an extension in Yosemite, so file transfers are available from the share menu in any Mac app. You can get all the details on Droplr's web page. Droplr is free for 30 days, after which you have to pick a plan. The basic consumer offering is US$4.99 a month with unlimited storage, something most other plans aren't offering. There is also a free iOS app to use with the service. Depending on your needs, Droplr is either a good deal or not so great considering some of the competition. Apple with Mail Drop now allows sending very large files (up to 5 GB) via email through its iCloud servers for no cost. Companies like MediaFire have a similar service, with paid plans starting at 1 TB of storage for $5.00 a month. Then there are file sharing services from Dropbox (1 TB at $9.99 monthly), Google and others. If Droplr's unique features, ease of use, and competitive pricing look attractive, check it out and see how it compares in your particular situation. The app is available from Droplr as a download, and will soon be in the Mac app store.
Flipboard update greatly improves this popular news app
Flipboard (free) has always been popular for reading news and following topics. The only downside is that it lacked any personalization. You got the topics you selected, but the app did not learn my favorite topics the way another news app -- Zite -- did. Times change. Earlier this year Flipboard purchased Zite to get the other company's smart personalization software, and a new Flipboard has been born, just now hitting the App Store. The new app looks better, it's easier to use, and it now has the kind of personalization that made Zite such a pleasure to use. When you launch the new app, you get more than 30,000 topics from which to choose. You can also search for topics not covered. Using the app I found a lot of the topics were right in line with what I wanted to read. Flipboard has always followed a magazine-type presentation, and the new app stays with that. The re-design is most noticeable on the iPhone version, which adds a tab bar for enhanced navigation. Looking at available stories involves swiping, or flipping up. Tap to read, then flip up again to go through the pages. It's very fast and responsive. Once you are in a story, it can be marked to indicate you weren't interested (a thumbs down) or you can save images to your camera roll. You can also open the story directly in Safari, email it, and send it to others via the usual social networks. Flipboard combines human curation with the smart Zite algorithms to make sure you are getting what you want to read. You no longer have to build magazines with Flipboard, which I thought was a weakness. Now the app learns and delivers the content you want, while still supporting magazine-style groupings of information. Flipboard delivers ads that will hopefully be relevant to readers. Flipboard will also, if you select it, deliver a news summary for you at 7 A.M local time. This is a much improved app that was already quite good. I'm still a big fan of Zite, but at some point I expect the Flipboard folks will sunset Zite, since much of the technology behind it has now been folded into Flipboard. I'm excited about the changes, and using the app is a pleasure, especially on an iPhone. If you've used the app in the past but moved on, it's worthy of a fresh look in this latest version. Flipboard requires iOS 7 or later and it has been optimized for the iPhone 5 and the new iPhone 6 series.
ProShot is a worthy addition to your app collection
ProShot (free) has been a big hit on Windows Phones, but was missing from the App Store. It's no longer absent from the iOS world, and it launches with a barrel of useful features that give your iPhone capabilities similar to a serious DSLR. Standouts are things like auto and manual ISO settings, burst mode, timers, time-lapse with fully manual control, fingertip control of ISO, shutter speed and white balance, manual focus assist and custom modes so you don't have to stick with just auto, program and manual modes. The app supports EXIF metadata, an internal camera roll, and a grid overlay that can be customized by color. Shutter speeds can be up to 8 seconds, perfect for night photography. The iOS incarnation of ProShot did not carry over all the features from the Windows Phone version, but most are coming, including the ability to shoot video. The app doesn't do any editing or processing at all. Take your picture with ProShot, and make your adjustments in another app. The screen layouts are excellent. DSLRs could learn a thing or two from the design of ProShot. I took the app for a spin around my garden and really liked the flexibility offered. Focus was quick and precise. I liked the ability to set ISO and shutter speed to taste and to match the lighting conditions. Automatic modes also worked well, but for photographers seeking more flexibility this may be the app you use the most. The only feature I missed is an HDR mode. The software is so good, I would think this app could do a nice job with the multiple exposures required to get an HDR photo. I hope it's coming. ProShot has digital zoom up to 50x and it is the best I've seen. Still, digital zoom isn't the same as optical zoom and you are better off avoiding it if you can. I'm certainly impressed with ProShot. There are hundreds of camera apps out there and many are excellent, but ProShot gets a lot of things "just right" in my view, and using it is an enjoyable experience that will get your creative juices flowing. I don't know if there are plans to charge for this app, so grab it now since it is free. Adding quality HDR, HDR alignment, and processing would make this among the very best camera apps there is. ProShot requires iOS 8 and worked smoothly on my iPhone 6. It's not universal, so it's not ideal for iPads.
InstaCar lets you share your beloved car photos
Do you really love your wheels? Instacar (free) may be just the app for you. Take a picture of your beloved car, load the photo into InstaCar and add car logo and model graphics to your photo. InstaCar grabs your location and adds it to the photo if you want, and there are a bunch of templates so you can arrange things the way you want. You can also add some text on your own. Once the car image is loaded, you can rotate or zoom it to get just the right fit. It's pretty simple really, but car guys and gals do love their autos. The app launches with a screen of helpful information, but most people won't have issues figuring it out. When you are done, save the image to your camera roll, or email directly to friends who just can't wait to gaze at your automotive stylishness. The app is free, but ad supported. There is a paid version for US$0.99, but I think most people can get by with the free one. The app needs iOS 7.0 or later. and worked fine on the new iPhones and iOS 8. Start your engines, or at least your cameras.
Superimpose for iOS lets you blend and superimpose your photos
Superimpose (US$0.99) does a first class job of taking part of one photo and adding it to another. It's great for removing your best friend from a picture taken in your living room and putting them at Niagara Falls, or taking the head of one person (or your dog) and placing it on another body. There have been other apps that do this, and of course on your Mac there are Photoshop or other image editing applications, but Superimpose makes it easy and has the added advantage of giving you tools to match the exposure and color of the two layers before you blend them. To use the app, click on the Library button and you are asked to load the background, followed by the foreground. There are a variety of masking tools that let you knock out the foreground areas that should be eliminated. One handy tool is a Magic Wand that tries to do this automatically. That's only likely to succeed if your subject is standing against a solid color or the sky. For further masking tasks, there are brushes that can be resized to get as little or as much as you want. One thing the app does very nicely is that it offsets the view of what you are masking, so you can see the image without your finger being in the way. If you miss on your masking, there is an eraser tool that lets you un-mask any parts that are sloppy. With a little practice, you'll have the best methods down. Superimpose allows you to rescale, rotate or flip the foreground to work best with the background. To make things even easier, you can match the color cast of the two layers. Nothing screams composite louder than two pictures with different color appearances. There is even a tool that lets you put a shadow of the foreground object on the added background. Superimpose also supports blending of textures and there are a variety of filters for special effects. Your saved images will be at full resolution, giving you the best possible quality. I had no trouble at all using the app, but it does take a bit of practice to learn the art of masking. The tools provided make it as easy as it can be, and you are likely to get great results. Superimpose is not an app you will use every day, but when you want to try the effect it's one of the best apps I've seen. The app contains links to video tutorials, which I would recommend you view before you jump in. Superimpose is a clever app at a reasonable price. It requires iOS 7 or later, and it's universal.
Magic Hour for iOS offers almost unlimited filters
Magic Hour (US$1.99) offers 38 preset filters with the ability to modify and save them, giving you an immense number of options when you are modifying your photos. In addition, Magic Hour can let you take photos directly, with locks for focus and exposure, flash, and zoom (digital). The app will also superimpose a grid to make sure your photos are level and help you visualize composition. The main business of Magic Hour is filters, and they are never over the top. Filters are well thought-out, with plenty of natural-looking options. Of course, you can push all the filters to get more saturation or contrast -- that's up to you. The app also features an assortment of frames and textures, some of them appearing as presets with filters, providing one-click options to enhance your photos. Fine-tuning tools like curves, rotate, crop, tilt-shift and black and white modes are also included. Using Magic Hour is easy. You take or import your photo, select from the array of filters, and then tune the individual filters to taste. Add a frame if you desire, then save the final image to your camera roll or send it to friends directly from the app. You can send your masterwork via Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr, Dropbox and E-mail and you can print via AirPrint if you are equipped for it. There is also a free filter market where you can share your creations with others around the world or download some that you like. Magic Hour also offers additional filters like HDR, Posterize and Toon at $0.99 each or all three for $1.99. Frankly, I'd like to see all the filters included in the base price. Magic Hour is a nice package. I am still a big fan of Snapseed (free), which has numerous filters and HDR conversions to die for. Still, Magic Hour has a greater variety of filters and more ability to tune them, so I think it is worthy of serious consideration. The app is not universal, but should be. It requires iOS 4.3 or later.
Get Backup Pro is a solid backup utility for Macs
Yes, there is Time Machine, Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper!. All have their place and are terrific backup utilities, but it's also nice to see something new on the scene that adds a few tricks to your backup bag. Get Backup, from Belight Software (on sale for US$9.95) is a Yosemite-ready utility that does automatic folder syncing, makes bootable backups, allows for encrypted backups, follows automated schedules and does data archiving for things like your iTunes Library, your documents folder, or your iPhoto Library. Folder syncing is particularly nice and it's not available on most backup programs. Get Backup allows you to synchronize files and folders on your Mac with another computer or mounted drive using the sync features. Sync in one direction or update files in both locations using bidirectional synchronization. A good example is my iTunes Library. I'm constantly adding files, and the Library is on an external drive. With Get Backup I can have that folder replicated to another drive on an automated schedule and keep my copy up to date. Cloning is supported so you can copy one entire drive to another drive, and boot from the copy in an emergency. This is also a feature of Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper!. Get Backup also lets you encrypt via AES-128, AES-256, Blowfish, or Triple DES. You can back up to another hard drive, a network drive, or a CD or DVD disc. I tried several of the backup features and found the program easy to use and foolproof. The user interface is pretty self-explanatory, and if you need more information there is built-in help. I didn't experience any glitches, although backing up to a network drive was pretty slow. It all depends on the speed of your network, and mine is not all that flashy. If you'd like to try the software at no risk, there is a free version that is pretty basic. It allows full backups. versioned backups and one-way folder sync. The Pro version is much more versatile, and allows incremental backups. encrypted backups. restoring of selected files and folders, and two-way sync. I think the Pro version is the best way to go. Almost all of the available backup programs use routines from the Unix core underlying OS X. The programs are simply a front end for executing those commands, but they are all a lot easier to use than entering terminal commands. There is also a version of Get Backup at the Mac App Store, but due to Apple rules on what features utility software can have, it's not really full-featured. It lacks full cloned backups because Apple does not allow software sold in the Mac App Store to invoke administrative privileges. That being the case, I would opt for the full version from Belight. All the backup applications mentioned are ready to use with OS X Yosemite. Check out all the features on the different apps before committing to one, and find out which works best for your particular situation.
[Updated] Pixelmator is a standout photo editor for the iPad
Pixelmator for iPad had an impressive demo at the Apple event a couple of weeks ago, and the app was impressive. Now Pixelmator has hit the App Store and it's been fun to use in real-world tests. The US$4.99 app (introductory price) was designed from the ground up to be iPad friendly, so it's not a port of the Mac version of the popular photo editing app. This is a complete editing environment, not something cut down to size for the iPad. It works with both bitmapped and vector graphics, supports layers and can import Photoshop files as well as JPG, PNG and TIF variants. It also supports some core Apple technologies like iCloud Drive and Handoff. The app can also export Photoshop layers intact. It also supports a large variety of filers, plus tools like repair, lighten, darken, sharpen and more. For portraits, it can smooth skin and remove red-eye. I opened some landscape photos I had on hand and the results from Pixelmator were certainly good. I found useful things like curves and saturation tools. I could work selectively on parts of the image, changing things like sky colors and leaving the rest of the photo alone. Some of the correction tools are automatic, so one touch of the screen and your photo improves. However, you are not in any way limited to automatic adjustments only and you won't want to be. The app auto-saves your work (a feature of the Mac version), which is a nice way to protect your work and something only rarely seen on iOS. I appreciated the lighting effects, like bokeh and CGI light leaks, and some of the vintage photo effects. You won't use all of these features in every editing session, but when you want them, you'll be glad they are included in Pixelmator. Color correction tools are plentiful. There are 8 correction presets, so you have curves as mentioned, brightness, contrast, saturation, and white balance adjustments. I did my testing on a lowly iPad 2 and found the app speedy and responsive, although the Pixelmator team recommends the latest and greatest iPads. One major tool missing on my iPad 2 is the repair tool, roughly the equivalent of Photoshop's Content-Aware fill tool. It is left out of older iPads like mine -- likely due to performance issues -- but the App Store specs don't reveal this. It's an important feature, and I have other apps that run on the iPad 2 with similar rendering features that work just fine, so I'm disappointed it couldn't be put into this release. I'm hoping the Pixelmator team will re-think this. [Good news! The version of Pixelmator released October 31 now adds the missing features so it runs on older iPads. I gave it a try on my iPad 2 and now the healing tools work. They are not speedy, but the result is worth the wait. Kudos to the Pixelmator team for listening!] Other than that caveat, I think Pixelmator now stands as the very best image editor for the iPad. The Photoshop Mix app is also quite powerful and is well integrated to Adobe's total workflow, but Pixelmator has a smarter layout and seems easier to use. I do wish the Pixelmator Team would do a version that works on the new iPhones. Maybe that will come along one day if there is demand, and I'd love to be able to do this kind of quality editing on my iPhone 6. If you do a lot of image editing on your iPad, I think Pixelmator is a must buy. Pixelmator requires iOS 8 and remember that not all features will work on older iPads.
HealthTap launches a live medical advice service that uses your iOS device
HealthTap+ today announced the launch of HealthTap Concierge, its pay-as-you-go medical consulting service. This is an addition to the current HealthTap services that can be delivered over the web to a computer or your iOS device. HealthTap Concierge is meant to address the three biggest problems you face when trying to get fast reliable medical advice from your doctor: 1. It takes too long to get an appointment. 2. It's inconvenient to travel to the doctor's physical office and waste time in the waiting room (while getting exposed to health risks spread by other patients). 3. Doctor visits and even insurance co-pays often cost too much. HealthTap will connect you directly with your doctor and other top specialists and generalists of your choice-virtually by HD video, text chat or voice with its iOS app or PC or Mac. You can also get advice and even medication refills with no wait time. Your instantaneous virtual consultation is as easy as clicking a button in a mobile app, privately and securely. If you join up (prices detailed below) it costs US$44 per consultation, close to a cost of a typical co-pay from more traditional medical services. HealthTap Concierge also allows you to build a Care Team of high-quality care providers at no cost by providing 24/7 access to the Virtual Practices of more than one million doctors from 105 medical specialties. Starting today, anyone can get a second, third or tenth opinion from top specialist via HD video or secure text chat, from anywhere in the world. The company has more than 64,000 doctors in the U.S. to help. In addition to the live chats and interaction, the app offers more generic health tips from trusted sources, and some checklists to get you into a healthier mode of life. HealthTap may be on to something with a marriage of technology and a national medical system that has fallen behind in getting people the kind of treatment and hands-on attention they want. The system is actively recruiting additional doctors, and people who have doctors can try to get their own physicians engaged in the service. Patients pay by the encounter. This kind of virtual health experience is unique in the industry, and may set a trend. There are multiple levels of service available. HealthTap does not provide medical care or diagnosis. Experts provide general information. HealthTap Prime does provide limited medical care as appropriate, but is not meant to be a substitute for your local doctor. HealthTap is free, but the personal services are part of a paid plan. Here's how the plans work. A free non-member plan allows you to look at material that has already been collected and see how doctors answered questions from others. That's not much different from finding information on the web, although the information from HealthTap is curated. A basic plan, also free, gives you the curated material, a personalized news feed, healthy living tips, the ability to securely store health tests results, and share them with your doctor. The Prime Membership adds the above and offers Doctor referrals, ability to ask questions of doctors, video or text chat, and coverage of Primary care doctors. This service is $99.00 per month for an individual, and $10 extra per family member. The Concierge service, the newest offering, is by invitation only and aims to include your own doctors during office hours. That's subject, of course, to your doctor agreeing. Consultations are $44 per 'visit' (free for Prime Members), and adds specialists in 105 categories. As you can see, the paid options are not cheap, but may be of great benefit to people who want something additional to basic insurance and more access to doctors and information at any time and from any location. You can get more details on the HealthTap website. Services like this may well become the future of healthcare, as more and more smartphones with video capability are deployed.
Calvertr: A unique calculator and conversion app
Calvertr (US$2.99) is a clever evolution of the standard calculator and conversions app. As a calculator it is pretty basic, but where it really shines is in its conversion abilities. As a currency converter, for example, it supports 157 different monetary systems around the world. Categories or types are searchable, conversion data can be shared with friends, and the app lets you share a note along with results. There are literally conversions for almost anything: astronomical, calendar days between dates, radioactivity, ROI, fuel consumption, and the list goes on and on from the mundane (like calculating tips at restaurants) to the more arcane like viscosity and torque conversions. The app supports AirDrop sharing and printing if you are so equipped. Calvertr also supports the new iOS 8 Notifications Center widgets, which lets you select your most-used functions and have them available instantly in Notifications Center. The look and feel of the app is attractive, with screens that are easy to read and understand. When you first launch the app there are help screens to get you started. To go back to any previous page, just flick the screen to the right. After seeing so many calculator apps and conversion apps, it's nice to see some fresh thinking. I'd like the calculator to take on more functions, though. It seems out of balance with the terrific conversions side of the app. I found one rather interesting bug: in calculating days between any two dates i could not get any date other than today on both ends of the calculation -- that will clearly need to be fixed, and soon. The app is worth the money, and the widget support is a welcome feature. Calvertr requires iOS 7 or greater. It's a universal app and it is optimized for the iPhone 5 and 6 series of iPhones.
Flare 2 is a solid photo effects editor for your Mac
Flare 2 for Mac (currently on sale for US$9.99 regularly $14.99) is a well thought out and executed app for photographers who want to get beyond the basics in photo effects. The app comes with dozens of filters, and each can be adjusted by the user, making the options almost infinite. In addition to things like the usual color washes, there are textures, borders, frames, tilt-shift, Bokeh rings (out of focus points of light), vintage film effects and more. RAW formats are supported, along with niceties like unlimited undo and batch processing. Photos can be exported as JPG, PNG and TIF. There's a complete online user guide which is detailed. Using the app is simple. Import your image, select a filter, then modify to taste. Previews are real time, and the layout of the app encourages experimentation. The effects are artistic, and I never wound up with anything horrible looking. The developers know their way around image editing, so you don't get cartoonish photos at the end. As a bonus, Flare 2 offers a free, universal iOS photos extension called Flare Effects, which adds Flare's filters as editing options to Apple's Photos and Camera app. That is to say, after installing and setting up Flare Effects for iOS (it walks you through the dead-simple instructions) you can use the filters and effects that that Flare offers from within the two apps from Apple. Note that I'm not calling Flare Effects for iOS an app, because it's an extension. Don't think of it as an image editor like many others. Instead, it adds Flare's great filters to two apps you're probably already using: Camera and Photos. It sounds confusing, but once you launch the app and follow the setup instructions, it's not. Flare 2 for the Mac requires Yosemite. It's a well done photo editing app that offers some things the 'big boys' like Photoshop don't have.
New in Yosemite: Mail Drop, signatures and annotations in OS X Mail
Mail in OS X hasn't gotten a lot of love over the last few years, with its feature set remaining pretty inert. Finally, with the release of Yosemite, Mail has received some very nice and useful updates. One of the most compelling features in Mail is a feature called Markup. Once you add a graphic or a PDF to an email message, you can then add various shapes like squares, circles, stars, arrows and more. There's also a tool that lets you insert your signature using your laptop's trackpad or even a camera. I did it on my Mac Pro using my Bluetooth trackpad. To get it going, you click on the trackpad graphic and then sign your name using your finger. It might take a little practice, but you'll get a good signature very easily. I created two signatures, one with my first name only and one with my full name depending on how formal the document is. The only drawback of this feature is that you can only sign a graphic or a PDF. It would be even better if you could just insert a signature anywhere in a blank mail, so any note that you send could have a signature. Of course you can create a signature graphic and drag it into any email, but Apple could make this much easier. The other new and important feature is Mail Drop. It comes up as a pop-up menu when you add an attachment that is too large for a regular email transfer. Mail Drop allows you to send any file up to 5 GB in size by bypassing your ISP and using iCloud as the means of transmission. If you are sending the large attachment to another Mac the process is seamless, but if you're sending to another kind of computer the recipient will get a link to click on. It's similar to Dropbox and some of the other cloud-based services, but Mail Drop is free. Mail Drop also does not take up space on your iCloud storage allotment. It looks like you can send as many attachments as you want, without any penalty. Mail Drop works on any email service, including Gmail Yahoo and Microsoft Exchange. These new features are significant updates to Apple Mail, and I think most people will find their use of mail improved.
Installing and living with the new Sonos Boost
I've been a long-time fan of the Sonos whole house music system. When it was first introduced about a decade ago, it provided high quality music to several rooms in my house, and later updates allowed me to have complete control of the system from my Mac, iPhone or iPad. The only issue I ever had with my system is interference. I live in a pretty densely-built neighborhood, and I see Wi-Fi signals coming into the house at or near the signal strength of my own Wi-Fi router. As a result, music would sometime drop out or Sonos would report insufficient bandwidth to play the music. Design To solve the problem for me and countless others, Sonos has just introduced the Sonos Boost. It's a small US$99.00 white box that promises 50% greater range, and freedom from wireless interference. Configuration and Conclusion Hooking up the Sonos Boost is easy. In my original configuration, I had one of my Sonos boxes -- a Connect: AMP -- hooked directly to the router in my office. I unplugged that ethernet cable, and plugged in the Boost instead using the same cable. My Connect: AMP was now mated to the system wirelessly. I followed the quick setup steps in the Sonos Controller app on my Mac, and I was quickly reconfigured to use the Boost. The Boost has three internal wireless antennas which are designed to overcome just about any kind of interference. Real World Testing I've had the Boost as part of my Sonos system for about a week and so far I haven't experienced a single dropout. That's a decided improvement to my pre-Boost system. Before, I was constantly having to change the wireless channel the Sonos was using in order to try to stay away from channel changes on other people's home Wi-Fi systems. Everything is now calm and stable. In fact I've tried all the available wireless channels on the Sonos and they all work without dropouts or music interruptions. I simply could not do that before, as every channel change was at risk of losing connectivity. If you currently have a working Sonos system in your home, the Boost really isn't for you. But if you are living in any kind of Wi-Fi interference hell with your Sonos system, it appears that the Boost will give you a ticket out of your issues and into a state of audio nirvana.
New in Yosemite: Dark Menus
You might not have noticed it, but hidden away in the System Preferences General tab in Yosemite is a new feature called 'Dark Menu Bar''. What it does is simple; it darkens the menu bar and the dock, making icons and text really stand out. It does the same to any menus in any applications. I particularly like the look of Photoshop menus with this feature turned on, because they are not as distracting as bright white menus. The menu bar and dock are still a bit translucent, but the look is very striking. The only downside is that some menu bar icons disappear when dark menus are turned on because they have black icons. Some programmers were smart and sense the dark menubar and turn their icons and text white. I like the look of the dark menus, and with Yosemite's new typeface it makes for a striking visual experience. Not everyone will want the change, but give it a try and see if it strikes your fancy.
Pro HDR X is a solid advance in High Dynamic Range photography
I reviewed Pro HDR many years ago when it was among the first High Dynamic Range apps and best of the camera apps for the iPhone. In short order, Apple added HDR capability to its own software, but in general the third-party apps do a better job. Pro HDR X (US$1.99) is a new app that has evolved from Pro HDR. It has solid roots, and this new app pushes your iPhone camera toward better HDR imaging. Pro HDR X takes three images rather than the two that most HDR programs are limited to. In auto mode, the app analyzes the scene, picking the best exposure combinations to get you the best looking photo. If you want to do this manually, the screen presents three targets that you drag to the darkest area of your photo, to the mid-range tonal values, and to the brightest part of the scene. The app can also edit photos from your on-board library, up to 24 Megapixels in size. When using the app, each exposure is precisely aligned, and the final images are saved at full resolution. One nice and unique feature is that after you take your photo(s), Pro HDR X has built-in controls that allow you to set the amount of HDR strength applied. The app features lots of tools for finishing, including a large collection of frames, and filters, including monochrome. You can geotag your photos, or turn that off in the settings. Using the app is straightforward. I got some very nice images just before sunset, where the light is warm and shadows are deep. I thought the photos were better than the old Pro HDR, and what is what the developer wanted to accomplish. Pro HDR X is among the very best of the HDR apps I've tested. It is far better than Apple's built-in software, and the HDR photos produced by Pro HDR X are natural and realistic, unless you want to stretch the settings and deliberately go for something more garish. Pro HDR X requires iOS 8, and can run on any device that supports the latest Apple software. It's universal, so it will be nice on iPads, especially the new ones with improved cameras. It's very fast on my iPhone 6 and the taking of three exposures seemed no slower than taking a single shot. Merging and processing takes a couple of seconds. Pro HDR X is a solid evolution in HDR apps. It's faster than the original version, it takes better pictures and let's you have more control of the final image.