Reviews

Pros - Quick Brushes; new adjustments such as curves; brushing in adjustments; better RAW processing.

Cons - Requires a fast computer to run optimally; Faces can bog down the system; some users have reported troubling bugs; inability to group brushed-in adjustments.

Pros: Vastly improved slideshows, impressive new brushes, multi-touch aware, ability to split and merge libraries, easy export to Flickr and Facebook

Cons: Sporadic reports of potential problems when upgrading older libraries, web page creation hasn’t been overhauled, need a powerful Mac and lots of RAM to run well

Gorillacam is an alternative to your iPhone's built-in cam app, and it's just plain better than the original. It has some of the same settings you might find on a small, dedicated digital camera, rather than a phone cam: a self-timer, a time-lapse setting, and an anti-shaking feature. It also has a leveler -- a simulated bubble at the top of the screen to tell you whether the shot is framed perfectly horizontally.

Its grid function divides the screen into nine squares to better plan a shot, a Press Anywhere feature lets to snap a photo without having to find the button on the screen, and a burst function will snap 3 shots in rapid succession.

The new features in the latest edition of Gorillacam are digital zoom, touch to focus, and the antishake feature. The focus feature only works in the iPhone 3GS.

Pros - Very nice design; great flip-out LCD screen; very good image quality; very good low light performance.

Cons - Rear buttons too easy to accidentally push; lost some nice features from the G10.

E-books have numerous benefits. Eliminating paper saves resources. E-book readers take up little room in travelers' backpacks and purses, and yet can store the equivalent of a whole bookshelf. You don't have to go anywhere to buy or borrow an e-book title. For the vision-impaired, the ability to adjust font size can mean the difference between being able to read a book and having to hope that the publisher will eventually release an audio version. Some e-book readers double as music players, and some even have a speech capability for reading books aloud.

We recently completed thorough hands-on testing of several of the top e-readers available today and came to a surprising conclusion: Our number one choice isn't from Amazon at all; it's the Sony Reader Touch Edition. Of course, no company's lead in the rapidly evolving e-reader market is safe.

When Apple said the iPhone 3G would include a GPS (Global Positioning System) receiver, everyone immediately assumed we’d get turn-by-turn direction software, too. Not quite. It took a while for Apple to make the iPhone OS mature enough to support turn-by-turn apps with the release of iPhone OS 3, and for developers to start taking full advantage.

But since the release of iPhone OS 3, we’ve been inundated with turn-by-turn GPS apps and several waves of updates to those apps. Here’s a review of nine GPS navigation applications that are worth a look.

If you work much with PDF files, you may find that Preview isn’t quite powerful enough for your needs. While Preview, especially in 10.6, includes many annotation features (circles, lines, comments, etc.), that’s about the extent of its powers—you can’t easily insert an image into an existing PDF, for example, nor can you modify the text within that PDF.

SmileOnMyMac’s PDFpen not only marks up PDFs, but it makes short work of inserting images and even modifying, to some degree, the text within a PDF. It’s also got one very unexpected feature, especially in a program with a reasonable $50 price tag.

Pros - User-friendly front on OS X’s existing firewall; makes troubleshooting connectivity issues easier; detailed documentation on how and why to secure your Mac.

Cons - Update may be of limited value to existing users.

How you choose to protect--or not protect--your iPhone is a matter of personal choice. Sure, plenty of people like to leave their iPhone naked, reasoning that any protective cover diminishes its sleekness. But the majority of iPhone owners realize that it's probably a good idea to give your precious device some degree of armor, particularly if you don't like the idea of seeing your iPhone's lovely finish dinged and scratched up over time.

But there's protection from cosmetic damage and then there's protection from real damage--I'm talking drops or someone accidentally sitting on your phone (maybe even you) and cracking the screen. If that's the kind of heavy-duty shielding you're looking for, this is the list for you.

With version 4 of Parallels Desktop having come out less than a year ago, a lot of existing users are wondering what, other than official Windows 7 support, makes version 5 worth the $49.99 upgrade.

The bigger concern...is whether the new stuff has been put through the necessary testing with OS X 10.6. It was no secret that version 4 had many problems on release, and Parallels Desktop 5 did seem to drop out of the sky and onto our desks. There wasn't an open public beta, so no one really knew what to expect. Has Parallels learned from its past mistakes, or is this another potentially great release buried under a mound of bugs? Read on to find out.

Pros - Easy to use, with handy help button; body-based image stabilization; very good overall imge quality.

Cons - Limited control over autofocus; no auto-orientation sensor; no Live View; no video recording features.

Pros - Impressive speed; amazingly fast Core i7 option; great image quality from display at any angle; improved speaker system; new SD card slot.

Cons - Glare and reflections from screen may frustrate some users; FireWire 400 peripherals require an adapter; Apple Remote not included.

The Good:
Swiping back and forth through your browser history beats clicking or keyboarding
Momentum scrolling is extremely well-implemented
No place for palm cheese to be deposited
Pleasing heft
Tracking

The Bad:
Not the most ergonomically pleasing mouse
Occasionally interprets movement as a swipe
Secondary-click implementation could be better

Pros - New Recompose tool adds intelligent cropping; Smart Brush is a nice addition to selection tools; lots of minor productivity and interface enhancements.

Cons - Lack of Organizer means no direct photo sharing or synchronization services; Photomerge Exposure feature not entirely successful; can only print centered images.

Pros - Solid construction; stereo microphone; smooth digital zoom; good color and light balance; dead-easy to operated; 2-hour storage.

Cons - Can shoot a little too bright indoors; HDMI cable not included; no image stabilization; digital zoom looks grainy.

Olympus makes it easy to step up from a compact camera to a DSLR

Pros: Fun to use, Live View mode, low-light performance, compact size, intuitive menus

Cons: Slow high-quality burst mode, overheats if Live View is used for hours

Smile On My Mac is well known for their TextExpander application for Mac OS X, and now they've brought some of that same snippet expanding magic to the iPhone and iPod touch. The app may not be quite as full featured as it's Mac-based brother, but it's still a handy utility that's sure to save you many keystrokes, or maybe thumb taps.

TextExpander touch is designed to do one job: watch for specific abbreviations and expand them into full words or phrases -- also known as snippets. It includes a list of pre-made snippets, and you can add your own by coming up with unique combinations of letters, numbers and punctuation and then linking them to words or phrases that you use on a regular basis.

Pros - Significantly improved media management and syncing features; major improvements to iPhone-app organization; Home Sharing feature lets you easily copy media between iTunes libraries; Genius Mixes feature provides automatically generated playlists.

Cons - Home Sharing's auto-transfer feature limited to iTunes-purchased media; no way to edit Genius mixes, or even view their contents; growing feature list and responsibilities add to interface clutter; occasional crashes.

Pros - Larger display; video camera and microphone; built-in video effects; buffered FM radio with iTunes Tagging; pedometer.
Cons - Video shot indoors looks poor; FM reception adequate but not great; same old earbuds.

Backups work best when you have multiple copies, at least one of which is both current and offsite. OS X’s Time Machine feature plus high-capacity, low-cost hard drives make it possible to back up regularly and to rotate drives through backup sets and store a full backup somewhere away from the data that’s on it.

But what about when the worst happens? When fire strikes, a lightning bolt fries your computers and backup drives, or a burglar runs away with the goods? A drive stored offsite helps—but the files stored on it are out of date the second it’s unplugged and lugged away. An online backup service can be the perfect addition to your backup plan.

With large amounts of storage and faster Internet connections, backing up your files online has become more viable. These hosted backup providers can also add depth to your archives, since most of them store data in such a way that you can retrieve several—or even several hundred—previous versions of a modified file.

Here’s a look at eight services with OS X software to manage automated backups.

Pros - Easy to use; impressively extensible; superb, thoughtful privacy features.

Cons - Not a huge improvement on its predecessor; speed boost claims don’t tell the whole story.

Pros - Good looking video under most circumstances; bright 2-inch display; HDMI output; removable battery; FlipShare software limited but convenient.

Cons - No image stabilization; digital zoom unimpressive; no included HDMI cable.

Pros - Extensive reporting options; effective spam filtering.

Cons - Complicated setup; no IMAP support; runs as a standalone program; non-standard and confusing user interface; no full user manual.

Nikon’s D5000 strikes a great balance between price and features. It deviates from the nomenclature of its closest siblings, the Nikon D60 and Nikon D90, but no matter: It combines many of the best aspects of both while adding its own extras to the mix.

Pros - Tilt and swivel screen; compact size.

Cons - Video doesn’t autofocus; battery life unimpressive.

Right on schedule, Apple has introduced the third iteration of the iPhone to the public. The new model, called the iPhone 3GS, is much like the iPhone 3G introduced in 2008 but, as Apple says, the "S" stands for speed. There are a number of other improvements made to the iPhone 3GS that differentiate it from its less-speedy sibling, but the one thing that will stick out in any phone owner's mind after playing with one will definitely be its zip.

We have already reviewed the large majority of iPhone OS 3.0 that comes with the iPhone 3GS (and is available for all past iPhone and iPod touch models), so this review will mostly focus on changes to the device that differentiate it from previous versions.

Pros - Bright, high-quality fingerprint-resistant touchscreen; extremely fast and responsive; built-in GPS and compass; voice control for phone dialing and music; decent autofocus camera with SD video capability; all the new features of iPhone OS 3.0 Software Update.

Cons - Soft-looking video; Voice Control lacks some polish; onboard video trimming is destructive; requires two-year commitment to AT&T Wireless for lowest prices.

Pros - Unparalleled tools for numbering a document’s structural elements; extremely flexible note options; excellent handling of double-byte and left-to-right language fonts; clean full-screen editing mode; affordable price; new licensees get two full years of tech support and free upgrades.

Cons - Can't track changes; no macros; page-layout features less capable than those in some competing programs; not especially intuitive.

Ars Technica's iPhone OS 3.0 Review

iPhone Central's iPhone 3.0 Review

Walt Mossberg's Review

Engadgets' iPhone 3G S Review

The Loop's iPhone 3.0 Review

Andy Ihnatko's iPhone 3.0 Review

Michael Gartenberg's iPhone 3G S Review

This past fall, when the 15-inch Macbook underwent its stunning unibody redesign that added an edge-to-edge LED-backlit display, a multitouch-enabled touchpad, and dual graphics cards, we heaped plenty of praise upon it; but lamented its lack of a memory card reader, and its hefty price tag. Apple has seemingly taken our gripes to heart, and has re-introduced the 15-inch MacBook with a number of noteworthy changes, including a lower starting price ($1,699 vs. $1,999), an SD Card reader, and a long-lasting lithium-polymer battery that delivers more than 8 hours on a charge. We wish there were more USB ports on board, but you won’t find a more powerful 15-inch notebook that’s this easy to carry.

There's been no shortage of Twitter app reviews. But now, another Mac app and iPhone app have intersected in the Twitter world.

Until now, Tweetie had been my Twitter client of choice on both my Mac and my iPhone. I was pretty content with the set up, but had one issue: If I were out and about all day and checking Tweetie on my iPhone, I'd have to re-read all those tweets when I got home because the two programs had no way of communicating what had been read and what hadn't. TweetDeck has finally found a way around this issue, offering syncing between your iPhone client and your Mac client.