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Square kills the need for NFC with virtual "tabs" and Card Case
Square CEO Jack Dorsey certainly had the right idea in having his presentation broadcast as part of the TechCrunch Disrupt conference this week. In an announcement made this afternoon, Dorsey essentially announced a sea change in the way that people can make purchases at local businesses. To start with, the company has announced a way to eliminate the need for Near Field Communications (NFC) capability in smartphones. By using an iPad or iPhone and the Square app as a cash register, and then providing a way for customers to set up a tab at a local business, those customers can pay for products or services in the future simply by giving the store or restaurant their name. At that point, the person operating the Square register can verify the sale by seeing a picture of the person and noting that they've done business with the company before, and then make the transaction. A receipt is emailed or texted to the customer, and the credit card transaction takes place behind the scenes. A customer would have to make one credit card transaction at that business, and then receive a text message receipt that gives them access to Square's new Card Case -- part of the Square app. In the Card Case are virtual credit cards for each business. The cards show the location of and information about the business, a full menu (and I assume a list of products for companies that aren't restaurants) and other info. At this point, Square only works in the USA, and Card Case is only set up at 50 businesses in New York, Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, St. Louis and Washington D.C. Local businesses that are interested in accepting tabs through Square can sign up now. We were expecting Square to make some sort of announcement linking the company to Apple, based on a tweet sent out by Dorsey over the weekend. That didn't happen, but perhaps we'll see the ability to set up a tab at your local Apple Store coming in the near future. In other news, the Square app was updated to version 2.0 today, presumably to add the Card Case functionality. For merchants, Square has also added "shelves" and production to the iPad app, making it easier to browse products and check out customers. The full press release of the Square announcement can be read below. Show full PR text Square obsoletes cash registers and credit card terminals with new iPad, iPhone, and Android apps Transforms everyday transactions between buyers and sellers SAN FRANCISCO – May 23, 2011 – Square, the company revolutionizing everyday transactions between buyers and sellers, today announced new features for its iPad point of sale solution. The new, free Square Register app for iPad streamlines checkout, tracks sales, and makes it easy for businesses to communicate with customers on their mobile phones. The company also introduced Card Case, which enables iPhone and Android users to explore local businesses; view menus; track and store digital receipts; and open digital tabs to make instant, effortless purchases – all on their phones. "Cash registers and credit card terminals are relics of an expensive, complicated, and impersonal commercial transaction system," said Jack Dorsey, CEO of Square. "With Register and Card Case, weʼre transforming everyday transactions between buyers and sellers into something special," said Dorsey. "We revolutionized the payment industry with the Square card reader which makes it possible for anyone to accept credit cards on their phone," said Dorsey. "Now, with Square Register, weʼre reinventing point of sale with a beautiful, intuitive iPad app. Card Case goes beyond point of sale to transform the entire buyer-seller relationship." Square Register Square Register replaces the complicated and expensive cash registers that clutter store counters with a beautiful, full featured, touch-enabled point of sale and checkout solution. Using Register, businesses can easily manage the items they sell, check daily transactions, update pricing, automate checkout, generate digital receipts, and maintain virtual storefronts so customers can discover and explore new offerings when theyʼre in the neighborhood. New features introduced with Register include: Directory Using the location-based Directory feature, sellers can be discovered by customers in their neighborhood. Consumers can explore nearby shops, cafes, and restaurants before they ever set foot in the store. Menus The new Menus feature, much like a digital sandwich board, enables local shops and restaurants to advertise current menus, prices, daily specials, and the most popular trending items right on customersʼ phones. Updates are pushed instantly, giving businesses a powerful, cost effective way to build awareness and communicate with customers. Tabs Similar to one-click purchases made popular by online retailers, Tabs make payments instant and effortless in the real world. Once a customer opens a tab on their phone, sellers can verify a customerʼs identity with a stored profile and photo on Square Register and approve their purchase with just one touch. Tabs eliminate the need for cash or credit cards at checkout, enabling customers to leave their wallets at home. Receipts With Square Register, sellers can automatically generate and send digital receipts to customers, enabling them to track and store their purchase history right on their phone. This eliminates the need for costly, wasteful paper receipts. Card Case Card Case, a feature of the Square app for iPhone and Android, enables customers to access Directory and Menus, and open Tabs at their favorite merchants, making purchasing instant and effortless. Card Case can be activated through a text message invitation from Square after making a credit card purchase at a participating merchant. Availability The Square Register app for iPad is available for free beginning today in the App Store. Businesses interested in offering Card Case can apply online at squareup.com/cardcase. Consumers can activate Card Case at one of the 50 currently authorized Square merchants in Los Angeles, New York, St. Louis, San Francisco, and Washington, DC. Card Case for Android phones will be coming soon. About Square Square has revolutionized millions of everyday transactions between buyers and sellers with its free card reader for mobile devices. Square Register and Card Case are transforming the relationship between buyers and sellers. Founded in 2009, and headquartered in San Francisco, Square is currently available in the U.S. More information is available at squareup.com. ###
PhotoForge2 for iPhone has many Photoshop-like features
It's amazing how many useful features are making it to iPhone apps. In particular, photo apps for the iPhone get more and more remarkable as time goes on. PhotoForge2 is a US$2.99 app that allows you to load your photos at full resolution, and it includes high-end features like layering and masking, curves, levels, sharpening and noise reduction, white balance, RAW image import, the ability to edit GPS and IPTC photo data, channel mixer controls and much more. This would be a nice collection of features for a Mac app. It's rather amazing this is an app running on a cellular phone. In practice, the app works rather well. I found the controls easy to manipulate on the iPhone's small screen, and I could zoom all the way into my image to see individual pixels. The app has 30 different filters, including a good black and white translation and sepia tones. You can send photos via email and the various social services. Check the gallery for some screen shots of editing sessions and a look at the GUI. Alas, no app is perfect. Photos can't be loaded unless your phone has location services switched on. Frankly, this is a silly requirement. Apple requires developers to get permission when accessing location data, even data that is already tagged on your phone, but I think there are ways around this; the developers say they have some workarounds coming, perhaps as early as this weekend. When editing. changing settings can also be frustrating. When adjusting curves and levels, for example, you can barely see your image because the controls cover it. There is a software switch to hide the controls, but that makes the adjustments a needless iterative process. Also, an in-app purchase of $1.99 is needed for some additional features. I really dislike that practice and would prefer to get everything, even if it raises the price of the app. %Gallery-124111%
More developers getting on the iPad publish-it-yourself bandwagon
As the iPad shapes up to become an impressive force in publishing, we're seeing more developers get interested in providing solutions for small businesses, schools and organizations that just want to get a magazine out with a minimum of fuss. I looked at one system last month, and more are on the way. One new entrant is the Alligator Digital Magazine publishing system. The Los Angeles-based company provides an HTML 5 web-based tool that allows people to send content to a template-based content management system. The magazine supports zooming, web links, embedded video, photo albums and animations. Live updates can be done at any time. A preview app allows customers to test the magazine, and then it is published to the iTunes store. Multiple issues can be managed, and full text search is supported. If customers charge for the magazine, 30 percent of revenue has to be shared with Apple per App Store rules. Of course, your publication won't appear until it is approved by Apple. Pricing varies depending upon your online storage requirements and the number of downloads your magazine gets. Fees start at US$300 for up to 500 downloads a month. Support, if needed, is $100 an hour. Because Alligator serves as the content creator, not the publisher, you'll need your own developer account, which is $99 per year.
Compose with a full orchestra on your iPad or iPhone
Many years ago I built a music synthesizer kit. It was a mass of circuit boards and wires. When I got done, any note I played warbled and quickly went off key. Times have changed, and now, rather amazingly, an iPhone or iPad can be home to a massive orchestra that will do your bidding as you compose or transcribe music wherever you are. That brings us to WI Orchestra, a new app from Wallander Instruments that allows you to create and record orchestral music, layer by layer. The app is free, but it only gives you a handful of instruments. In-app purchases let you select an entire family of instruments for US$2.99. To get them all will cost you $15. Wallander technology has been in use for years, and you'll hear its electronically created instruments in TV shows and movies. Lots of composers use the desktop versions of the software every day. The app allows you to work on up to 98 compositions at a time, and you can export the songs as WAV files. It works on any iDevice running iOS 4.0 or greater, and iPad and iPhones with more than 256 MB of RAM can have projects that run up to 5 minutes. I tried the app on my iPad and thought it was pretty intuitive. A brief help menu is supplied. The keyboard picked up how hard I was playing, and roughly adjusted volume accordingly. I realized how nice a Bluetooth or USB music keyboard would be with this app. The on-screen version worked OK, but it's certainly not tactile the way a physical keyboard would be. %Gallery-123819%
A clock of all trades for your iPad
There's no shortage of clocks and timers for the iPad. One of the most complete is Clock Pro for the iPad, which is on sale this weekend for US$1.99. Clock Pro is an alarm clock and uses notifications so you can get that important wake-up alert without leaving the app running. There is both an analog and digital clock design, a chess clock, a world clock, sunrise, sunset and tide clocks, a sleep timer, an egg timer and a countdown clock. Most clocks can run full screen and are beautifully rendered. We took a brief look at this app last year when it was $5.99 and gave it a positive review. Now it supports multi-tasking, and it's 4 bucks cheaper. A couple of caveats. The app can't wake you to your own iPod music if it is not running, but the app does allow you to choose among several different sound options if you are using notifications. Not all the clocks work in full screen, but otherwise this app does pretty much every kind of time keeping you would want. If you'd like a free version that doesn't multitask you can get it here, but I think the paid version is more useful. There is also an iPhone and iPod touch version on sale this weekend for $0.99. %Gallery-123647%
Netflix adds captioning to iOS apps
Adding captioning to movies in Netflix for the iPad, iPod touch and iPhone is going to be a big deal for a lot of people, and Netflix has added that feature today. It's already present when you watch Netflix movies with a browser on a desktop or laptop, but now mobile users can take advantage of captions as well. Unfortunately, not all films have this feature. If there is captioning, a little voice balloon icon will appear on the volume control. Tap it and select English, which is the only option for now. I tried it in several movies, and about half of those I sampled have the feature. The captions are in yellow text and are easy to read. Captions are going to be really great for the hearing impaired, or even nice for watching a movie in a crowded environment. As of this writing, the version listed in the iTunes store is 1.2.1, but the version that was delivered to my iPhone was 1.3. I think the iTunes store information is running behind, but make sure you have the latest version, which contains the captioning feature.
What does the Skype sale mean for Apple customers?
By now everyone knows that Skype has been sold to Microsoft for a huge 8.5 billion dollars. The question on all our minds is what will the sale mean to Mac and iOS users? There aren't any ready answers. Microsoft often treats the Mac as a least-favored nation. Most versions of Office have lagged behind the Windows counterparts, including some dramatic functional lapses like when Microsoft killed the ability to use Visual Basic macros in Office 2008, and then later restored that functionality in Office 2011. Microsoft bought Bungie, the creator of Halo, in 2000, just as it was going to release the game for the Mac. In 2007 Bungie and Microsoft split, but Microsoft retains a minority stake in the company. On the iOS side, things look a little brighter. Microsoft, so far behind with its own phone OS, has released some noteworthy apps for iOS, including Bing, Microsoft OneNote and Photosynth. On the desktop and laptop side, Skype for Mac has always been a bit behind the feature curve when compared to the Windows version, and recently it suffered some security problems (not to mention widespread complaining about the new UI introduced in version 5). I don't expect Skype on the Mac to be a high priority for Ballmer and friends. Microsoft will put a lot of attention into integrating Skype into the Xbox, Windows 7 and the new Windows Phone 7 OS (which doesn't run Skype at all right now). Meanwhile, Apple should step up the game for FaceTime, which was announced with great fanfare but seems a bit moribund. It's an embarrassment that FaceTime can't make calls over 3G, while Tango, Skype and some others do it quite well. Lex Friedman at Macworld weighs in with more thoughts on the implications for Mac users as Skype joins the MS fold. What's your take? Will all the financial muscle at Microsoft improve Skype on Mac OS X and iOS? Or will Skype wilt from neglect? Update: Right after this post went live, Microsoft's Steve Ballmer stated that the company would not be giving up on Mac support for Skype. It's true, Microsoft has shown a long history of Office for Mac support, and so whatever your feelings on Ballmer and his company, it seems like Skype for Mac will be just fine for the foreseeable future.
Getting GPS on a Wi-Fi iPad with New Sky
Last week I reported on a Bluetooth GPS solution that will give you full navigation features on both the Wi-Fi only iPad and on the iPod touch. Today I was able to test the device and see if was a useful solution to navigating on iDevices that don't have GPS built-in. The quick answer is that it does work, and it works very well. The GPS receiver, provided to us by New Sky Products, is about the size of a thin tape measure. You turn it on, pair it with an iPad or iPod touch, and you are good to go. There is a small slide switch on the unit to tell it you are connecting to either an Apple iOS product, or anything else, like a laptop or Android phone. Using the GPS requires that you download a free app that will tell you there is a successful connection and show you visually what satellites you are using for your GPS fix. You do not have to access the app while navigating, but it must be installed. Once you pair the GPS with your iPad, you can run any navigation program with built-in maps. With Google Maps, you get a nice little blue dot showing your location, but without 3G connectivity, there is no map display. (Note: The receiver itself is made by Dual Electronics and is a model XGPS150.)
Voice Brief for iPhone is updated with some welcome new features
I first reviewed Voice Brief in March. The app uses a synthesized voice to read your email, Twitter feed, Facebook, the current weather, stock prices you follow and some RSS feeds that you choose. I liked the app and said it had great potential but needed some updated features. Today it has some of those new features, and they are worthwhile improvements.The new version integrates with your alarm clock, so it can wake you up to the latest news and weather. It supports Google Reader and improves linking with RSS feeds. It now allows integration with multiple calendars and allows a musical selection to function as a bridge between topics. There are also some bug fixes that should make the app more stable, although I didn't find any issues with the original version. Voice Brief is not a small app. It weighs in at 271 MB because all the voice files are on your iPhone. The next update will add a fresh GUI and improved mail account support. The current version only supports Apple's built-in mail and Gmail. I always thought Voice Brief would be great if it was combined with the Siri app, which has powerful search and speech recognition, but it doesn't talk. Apple has bought Siri, and it's likely to be part of the iPhone OS at some point in the future, so I expect lots of upgrades. Voice Brief is US$3.99 in the App Store, and you can see a video of the app in action here.
TUAW's Daily iOS App: Holy Moly Dragons
Holy Moly Dragons is a fun and colorful tower defense game in which you place down dragons (actually their eggs, but they quickly grow up into attacking dragons) to try to defeat waves of incoming enemies. It's a pretty standard tower defense game, but the stages are very open, so it's up to you to figure out how to guide the enemy waves around and where you want to strategically place your dragons. Additionally, you have access to various dragon types and special abilities, which can be used to take down the 15 levels and three various challenge modes. Holy Moly Dragons doesn't do a lot of new things with the tower defense genre, but it benefits from a solid presentation and an excellent and fun premise. Game Center integration rounds out the feature list. It's currently on sale for US$0.99 (there is a lite version out as well), so if you're a fan of the genre, definitely check it out.
App review: Seamless for iOS and Mac (video)
If you're the kind of person who's always listening to music and wouldn't be caught dead headphone-less, pause that song for a quick second and check out Seamless. This lightweight app links your iPhone's Music player to iTunes on your Mac in a pretty clever -- not to mention Cupertino-esque -- fashion. The whole crux of it is the "transition," which simultaneously fades out a song on one end while bringing it to full blast on the other. All it takes to get started is a quick $1.99 download for your i-device and free Mac-centric companion app. Does it work as advertised, or is it really just a gimmick? Head past the break for a quick rundown of just how seamless this utility really is.
BananaTunes beta streams beautiful music from iOS to your Mac
One of the great things about being a buddy of Erica Sadun is that sooner or later, she surprises you with an amazing app. [Ed: This is also known as "assault by beta testing" under Utah's penal code.] Her BananaTunes beta evolves iOS-to-Mac video app BananaTV to the next logical step -- it transmits full stereo music from your iOS device to your Mac. Built around the recent AirPlay reverse engineering, Sadun promises that this capability will eventually be factored back into BananaTV, her iOS-to-Mac video app. For now BananaTunes allows you to bring your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad to the office or a friend's house and use its built-in iPod app AirPlay functionality to stream music to a Mac running this software. BananaTunes is currently available as a limited-time beta app so that Erica can work out bugs as time permits. It requires Mac OS X 10.6 and 64-bit, so be sure that you know what you're running before you try out the Mac app. When BananaTunes becomes part of BananaTV, users will need to bring their own key.pem file for authentication. Want to give it a spin? Either download these two zip files off of Erica's site and follow the instructions, or use this all-in-one installer package. Word of mouth is that the installer package works great, but our standard TUAW paranoia mandates that we warn you that we've been unable to authenticate its contents. (In other words, use at your own risk, but it's probably just fine.) In my limited beta testing today, I found that BananaTunes worked very well with my iPad 2. Tunes beamed from my iPhone 4 experienced some garbling. This could be due to network traffic, so be aware that your mileage may vary. Then again, it was a 1950s Dean Martin recording, so he may have been gargling Scotch while crooning the tune I was listening to. In the end, BananaTunes is a fun Mac app for when you want to control your music world from your iPad.
Comparing Apple and RIM smartphone numbers for the past year
There's been a lot of back and forth lately about Apple and RIM and their smartphone sales -- of course, with the iPhone, Apple has laid claim on the "new and shiny" market. But RIM continues to be huge, with lots of users still stuck on the BlackBerry and its various services. Jim Dalrymple at the Loop decided to break down the numbers and see who's really selling more devices. So what's the truth? All told, it's Apple. RIM has shipped 52.4 million devices in the last year, which is nothing to sniff at, and definitely in opposition to anyone claiming the company is washed up. But Apple edges RIM out, shipping 57.39 million iPhones. For all four quarters of the past year, save for the period between last May and June, Apple has shipped more smartphones than RIM. Keep in mind, however, that these numbers, at least on RIM's side, are for shipped devices, not devices sold. Apple has announced that it sold 18.5 million iPhones in just the first quarter of this year, and it's likely that RIM lags behind that number a bit. Apple's pulling ahead, but there's still some competition in the smartphone market among these two.
AT&T filing shows that smartphone data is facing huge growth
AT&T has submitted a document to the FCC in the process of trying to get that T-Mobile merger approved, and it reveals that AT&T was overwhelmed by the amount of smartphone data traffic it had to push through with the arrival of the iPhone. 2010 saw an 8000% jump in data rates over 2007, according to the document, which adds that "a smartphone generates 24 times the mobile data traffic of a conventional wireless phone, and the explosively popular iPad and similar tablet devices can generate traffic comparable to or even greater than a smartphone." The total apparently went up to 10 petabytes of data per month in 2010. Because of all that data, AT&T is trying to suggest that it "faces network capacity constraints more severe than those of any other wireless provider." And while AT&T says that connecting with T-Mobile will help both companies be better able to handle their data issues, things aren't going to get easier. The company expects to deliver the same amount of data it served in 2010 in just the first five weeks of 2015. Lest the FCC start feeling bad for AT&T and its predicament, don't forget that by connecting with Apple for the iPhone in the first place, AT&T gladly took the bullet for all of that data. But yes, AT&T and other data providers have quite a goal in front of them, considering how fast consumer data consumption is growing thanks to Apple's devices.
iPhone said to be tops in worldwide revenue
Pretty impressive. The young upstart iPhone (just about 4 years old) has just dethroned Nokia in revenue. That's the word from Strategy Analytics today, as the research firm looked at mobile phone revenues from January through March. Nokia has been a consistent revenue leader around the world by generally selling less expensive feature phones. Nokia recently joined forces with Microsoft and is adopting Windows Phone 7 software for its smartphones. Apple iPhone revenue rose to $11.9 billion in the last quarter, while Nokia slipped to $9.4 billion. Apple, AT&T and Verizon have also reported robust iPhone sales to Wall Street. Other analysts claimed Apple surpassed Nokia in the Winter 2010 quarter, but Nokia dismissed that report at the time. [via Reuters]
Amnesty International releases iOS game to raise money and awareness for human rights
Bulletproof is a new game that's out on the App Store right now. The premise is interesting and a little macabre, as you're tasked with stopping bullets from a firing squad by touching in the right places on screen. I like it, actually. The action starts slow and eventually becomes pretty frantic. The simple, but effective, graphics keep you on your toes (or fingers, as the case may be). But the most interesting thing about this app is the story behind it. It was actually commissioned by Amnesty International from developers Mobigame, and it's being sold to raise awareness of human rights violations from around the world. All proceeds from Bulletproof are going to Amnesty International (minus, presumably, Apple's standard 30 percent cut), and the game itself is a pretty effective way of getting the message across. This isn't the only instance of charity organizations looking to video games to raise money for their cause. OneBigGame has been doing just that on iOS and other platforms. But this is a solid cause and a solid app as well.
Researchers display evidence that iOS 4 records all your travels, again (updated)
If you didn't already think your smartphone knows too much about you, here's a handy reminder. A duo of UK researchers have uncovered a potentially worrying (and oddly enough, undocumented) feature in iOS 4: it asks your iPhone to record your location constantly, then timestamps that data and records it for posterity. The trouble with this unsolicited location tracking is that the hidden file that holds the data -- consolidated.db -- is relatively easy to uncover and read, making any desktops you've backed your phone up to and the phone itself even bigger privacy dangers than they would usually be. Some extra digging revealed this behavior has been known about for a good while (see Courbis and Alex Levinson links below), though mostly by people involved in computer forensics. Additionally, restoring a backup or migrating to a new device keeps the data logging going, which the researchers point to as evidence that what's happening isn't accidental. See a couple of visualizations of the extracted results on video after the break. [Thanks, Tom] Update: The original text of this article was updated to reflect that this was already a known issue, albeit in limited circles. The ability to easily visualize the data is new.
Photosynth now 'cool enough' for iOS
It's funny how times change. In 2008 Microsoft released Photosynth for Windows, an impressive technology that allowed the stitching of several photos into one large panorama. Microsoft said at the time that they weren't "cool enough" to run on Mac OS. Well, I guess times have changed, and Apple has eaten Microsoft's lunch in smartphones and tablets, so now Photosynth is available for at least the iPhone. The app was released today, and it's free, so I gave it a quick checkout in my neighborhood. You take an image, and then move the camera in any direction. The app continues capturing pictures, and when you are ready, it stitches them all together and saves the resulting panorama to your camera roll. It works pretty well, although it got a bit lost doing a 360 degree sweep. Also, Photosynth sometimes wanted to take a picture while I was still moving, and I saw some blurry results. Still, the app looks promising, and it's nice to see Microsoft bring it to iOS. I think 360 Panorama from Occipital ($1.99) has a bit higher quality, but Photosynth is worth a look and provides pretty good results. Images can be saved to your iPhone, Facebook or Bing Maps. Hopefully Microsoft will stay with it and improve the software. Check the gallery for a couple of quick images I did. They are cropped to remove uneven edges and reduced in resolution and size for quick downloads. %Gallery-121543%
TouchRetouch: A powerful photo retouching app for the iPhone and iPad
Do you have photos on your phone that need a little 'help' without going back to your Mac for iPhoto clean up or Photoshop work? It happens to me all the time, and TouchRetouch for US$0.99 gives you some powerful tools to remove defects, people or objects from photos with only a little effort. It is especially nice when you are on an outing or vacation and want to get some photos emailed to friends or uploaded to a sharing site, but the photos aren't as perfect as you would like. TouchRetouch lets you load an image from your camera roll, and using your fingers, either draw a lasso around the offending part of the photo or use a brush to highlight it. Using some smart software, the object or person will be removed, while the background is intelligently filled in. It's similar to Content Aware Fill on the new Photoshop CS5, but this app costs a lot less money. The software has unlimited undo, and you can erase all or portions of the mask that you create. When you're done, you can save the photo back to your camera roll or email it directly from within the app. The app also supports sharing on Facebook, Flickr, Picasa and Twitter TouchRetouch has built-in video tutorials and a clone tool to repair parts of an image that the retouching process doesn't fix perfectly. %Gallery-121452%
Printopia updated with customised settings and security
I've been a big fan of Printopia since it first came out. It allows you to print from an iOS device to any printer on a wireless network or directly connected to a Mac. After Apple's half-hearted AirPrint feature was launched, people were pretty upset to learn that it worked on only a handful of HP printers. Printopia fixed that with an app that sits in your system preference window, and gets you printing to just about any printer you have. The app requires a Wi-Fi network for connectivity. The new version adds password security, unlimited virtual printers, and some new customization options giving users full access to printer settings, like page size, paper tray and color settings. It retains the print to Mac function which sends a JPEG or PDF to your Mac, and also allows you to send JPEG and PDFs to Dropbox or Evernote. I've used the original version since it came out and it has been flawless. Current owners can get the update for free by clicking on Printopia in System Preferences, new users will pay US$19.95 and anyone can try a 7 day free trial.
