Drums are awesome; there’re few things as satisfying as making sounds by thumping something with a stick — even if that stick is virtual. Now, for a buck, the iPhone can be turned into a virtual museum of virtual drums, thanks to Vintage Drum by developer OutOfTheBit. Nine drum kits are available to choose from,

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Stick Some Legendary Drum Pads In Your Pocket [Review]

Section: iPhone / iPod touch / iPad , iPhone , iPod touch , iDevice Apps , Mac Software , Originals Macintosh and iPhone/iPod/iPad product updates and announcements for February 26, 2010: Macintosh iPod Macintosh iTacet Software has released Cookie Platter 1.0 , a Mac OS X application which automatically deletes all unwanted cookies and saves specific cookies based upon a user’s favorite websites. This innovative software can process cookies for multiple web browsers simultaneously and allows customization by browser, domain and type of cookie. Users can group all domains into their root domain, as well as the ability to preview the cookie’s website without opening a browser and more. Codewave Software Michael Descher has announced that MyTunesRSS has been successfully introduced at Jazz at Lincoln Center for digital music library sharing. MyTunesRSS was selected from the pool of music sharing tools because of its advantageous features and overall usability. MyTunesRSS is a Media Server that makes iTunes libraries or simple watch folders available on a local or corporate network, or even over the internet. Zevrix Solutions has announced BatchOutput Server 4.2.8 , an update to its output workflow automation solution for Adobe InDesign. Originally developed for a major publisher in the U.S., the software automates InDesign output by processing files from hotfolders. BatchOutput Server offloads printing and exporting to PDF and PostScript to a central system leaving operator workstations free from the output process

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Mac, iPhone, iPod and iPad product news – February 26, 2010

    From its humble beginnings on a grad student’s Mac Plus to its complete photo-editing domination, Photoshop has changed the world in 20 short years.   Photoshop is everywhere. And while fundamentally it is the standard professional-quality image editor, it’s also a cultural touchstone with a reach that extends to advertising, fashion magazines, television, film, and the news. Lighter versions like Photoshop Elements, Photoshop.com, and even Photoshop Mobile on the iPhone have distilled its power for the masses, and sites like PhotoshopDisasters.blogspot.com chronicle painful misuses for everyone to point at and giggle about. “Photoshop” the verb was even added to Webster’s dictionary in 1992. In such a Photoshop-saturated society, it’s easy to forget that the software hasn’t been around forever. Since February 2010 marks the 20th anniversary of Photoshop 1.0, now is the perfect time to revisit everything from Adobe’s systematic dismantling of its competition to the way the software was used to make Katie Couric “lose weight.”   Two Decades of Photoshop   We give you every single Photoshop release, plus the effects of Adobe’s software on its competition and our culture.   1987   Release: Thomas Knoll, a PhD student at the University of Michigan, creates a program called Display for his Mac Plus. It can display 256-shade grayscale images on a 1-bit black-and-white screen with dithering.   1988   Release: Display is renamed Photoshop, and the Knoll brothers (Thomas and John, an effects expert at Industrial Light & Magic [ILM]) license the first version to Barneyscan, a slide-scanner manufacturer. Approximately 200 copies of version 0.87 ship bundled with the scanners. Cultural: The first working version of Photoshop appears at Apple, and the era of Photoshop piracy begins as engineers pass it around amongst themselves and gape in awe.   1989   Release: John Knoll demos Photoshop for Adobe’s primary art director Russell Brown and founder John Warnock

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20 Years of Image Editing: Photoshop from 1.0 to CS4

You already use your computer to make your own music, edit your own photos, and create your own movies–so why pay someone else to decorate your home? Your Mac is the perfect tool for giving your interior space a dash of 21st-century modernism. Follow along and we’ll show you how. Photography by Mark Madeo I’m not a thrifty man by nature, but after cobbling together enough money to buy my first single-family home, I wasn’t about to take out a second mortgage just to get the place decorated. In fact, the very concept of hiring an interior designer or color consultant strikes me as frivolous on an intestinal level. Color theory and design inspiration is free online, and at the end of the day, what looks right is right–because perfection in home decor is in the eye of the beholder. That last thing I need is some woman named Astrid telling me my walls would look better in “Butter Crème.” But that isn’t to say that even I, in all my brazen hubris, couldn’t do a better job with the help of my MacBook Pro. If the Mac can help me in other creative pursuits, why not put it to use in snazzing up Casa Philippe? I did my research, put in a bunch of nights at the keyboard, and came up with an interior design that suits me just perfectly. And now I’m going to show you how you can do the same for your own home. First we’ll look at how you can use Photoshop or Photoshop Elements to make informed color decisions–by painting Pantone swatches directly on your walls. Next, we’ll explore photography. I’ll explain how inkjet technology can turn your shots into art prints and how to use photos to inspire digital illustration

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Customize Your Home with Your Mac

Section: iPhone / iPod touch / iPad , iPhone , iPod touch , iDevice Apps , Mac Software , Originals Macintosh and iPhone/iPod/iPad product updates and announcements for February 1, 2010: Macintosh iPod Macintosh TheMacBundles has announced that new weekly specials have been posted to its website. Until 2/7, TheMacBundles is offering the backup utility Parachute for a saving of over 60%. Additionally, Radiologik DJ is being offered for a saving of over 40%. People who order the weekly special also can receive an immediate discount off of the already low price of the January bundle. TheMacBundles has received widespread praise from journalists, Mac users, and software developers. Ben Software has announced SecuritySpy 2.0.3 , the premier multi-camera video surveillance software on the Macintosh platform. With features such as motion detection, real-time compression of multiple video and audio feeds, and network video and audio streaming, SecuritySpy is designed for demanding video surveillance applications. It supports a wide variety of network cameras and video servers, as well as FireWire, USB, and PCI video input devices. The Escapers has announced Flux 2 , their web design application for Mac OS X. After a long beta development period, Flux 2 from The Escapers has left it’s beta status behind. To celebrate leaving beta status, The Escapers have relaunched their whole website and created new blogs where future directions of Flux will be discussed. Flux 2 is a WYSIWYG design environment, but you can hand crank code too.

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Macintosh/iDevice product update roundup – February 1, 2010

Section: Software + Apps , Miscellaneous , Third-Party , iPod + iTunes , iPod touch , iPhone , iPhone , iPhone SDK & Apps , Mac + Computers , Software Macintosh and iPhone/iPod updates and announcements for January 21, 2010: Macintosh Ortelius 1.0.5 , the vector-based map illustration tool for Mac OS X, was released today for download. Ortelius is loaded with hundreds of map styles and symbols, dozens of royalty-free vector map templates, and special cartography tools that help you streamline the creation of custom map graphics, plans, and scaled drawings. Ortelius 1.0.5 is a free update for existing users and is available as a free download for evaluation. Conceited Software has announced Linkinus 2.1.2 , an advanced chat app for Mac OS X. Linkinus 2 provides a rich, social IRC experience, featuring embedded media, short URL expansion, message starring, combined chats, emoticons, and much more. Assign colors to chat participants, grouping consecutive messages into a unique block, customizing emoticons, smart scrolling, putting the spotlight on specific channel users, jumping to highlights and being alerted of relevant content automatically. Xeric Design has announced EarthDesk 5.2 , an update to its award-winning, real-time dynamic desktop map.

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Macintosh/iPhone software update roundup – January 21, 2010

From marking its first year this past summer, to boasting over 100,000 applications in its catalog, the App Store has been great for many developers on the iPhone platform this past year. With 2010 right around the corner, we wanted to take a look back at the 100 greatest iPhone apps of 2009. These applications were nominated by Mac|Life readers. All of these apps have something in common: They’ve helped make the iPhone better over the past year.    MobileMe iDisk (free) This little iPhone app lets MobileMe users browse through files stored on their iDisk with ease. The app also lets you view files like PDF, Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Image files, and iWork files. In addition, you can share files right from your iPhone.   Evernote (free) Evernote is the free online service/application that lets you store notes and images in notebooks for later use. The iPhone application really comes in handy, especially since it syncs with the cloud. Coupled with the new offline viewing for premium users, Evernote has to be one the best iPhone apps, hands down.    Facebook (free) It seems like all of our friends are on Facebook these days, so why shouldn’t Facebook be everywhere? Well, with their iPhone application it can definitely seem like that. This application allows you to manage all of your friends, posts, messages, uploads, and otherwise use Facebook without being inside of a browser.

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100 Greatest iPhone Apps of 2009

Many readers are likely familiar with the Getting Things Done craze of the past few years. This task oriented methodology has spawned a system for managing the chore that is email, with battle-cries of “Inbox Zero!” resounding around the Internet. While I’m not exactly an “inbox zero” kind of guy (close enough I suppose), I have found that the concept of “desktop zero” rings quite true with me. If you’ve ever seen a computer desktop covered in icons, we’re talking about the antithesis here. Read on to find out some compelling reasons to strive for desktop zero, and some tool tips on how you can easily achieve desktop zen. When I was young I bought a coin dish from a garage sale that read, “A clean desk is the sign of a sick mind.” (I added it to my already over-cluttered desktop in my room.) While I still find humor in that memory, the computer nerd in me is pretty particular about my digital workspace being neat and tidy. Just as inbox zero brings clarity, closure, and a sense of accomplishment to each day, so can keeping your computer’s desktop free of clutter and unnecessary files or folders. A Clean Starting Place I find it quite satisfying to boot up my machine, and have nothing but a hard drive “cluttering” my desktop. It feels like turning to a clean page in a Moleskin, or using a full-screen text application — there are just no (or very few) distractions to getting started with your work. Not to mention that if you need to drop a file there temporarily for quick use before deleting, it will be easy to find when not amongst dozens of other items. A Sense of Organization I’m quite particular about a sound data hierarchy to file things under, yet another place where my physical and digital lives are at odds with one another. If my desktop is littered with random files (email attachments, web downloads, the latest file lazily saved to the desktop to file later) and folders, it just means they aren’t in the place that I should be looking for them in the long term. Though on occasion I’ll relent and (temporarily) drop an alias (’shortcut’ for those of you new to Mac) of a folder on the desktop if it’s for a project I’m working in the majority of the time. At least that way, stuff it still in its proper place when I’m through. Revel in Your Wallpaper Here, we move from the arguably practical reasons to the more fun, and subjective

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6 Tips for Getting to Desktop Zero

Section: iPod + iTunes , iPod touch , iPhone , iPhone , iPhone SDK & Apps , Features , Originals My family never had many traditions. Back in the ‘70s, we always watched King Kong on channel 43 on Thanksgiving, and there was The Sound of Music on Easter. But as far as family traditions outside of what most families did, we were never really that creative. Except for this; every year on Christmas Eve, we’d get home from the evening church service and gather ‘round the record player to hear dad’s old, scratchy 45 of Louis Armstrong reciting “Twas the Night Before Christmas.” Now, the iPhone is no substitute for a vintage turntable, and Louis Armstrong is simply irreplaceable. But if you’re in a pinch for a peaceful way to end your Christmas Eve, there’s no shortage of iPhone apps available to do the trick. Do a search for “Twas the Night Before Christmas” and you’ll turn up 18 apps. A few of these are games (Santa’s Delivery Dash? Uh…okay.), but the majority feature the classic poem by Clement C. Moore. If you’re the type who likes to read the poem yourself, BeamItDown Software’s Twas the Night before Christmas by Clement Clarke Moore is about as traditional as you can get. The main feature here is that the app scrolls the text as if on a teleprompter, so it’s easy to read without the pauses of turning pages. Also, it doesn’t hurt that it’s free. For a more modern, iPhone-style approach that still keeps its roots in tradition, check out Twas the Night Before Christmas Illustrated Story with Music from OnceUponAnApp. As implied by its name, it features a music accompaniment, but the real draw are the original illustrations by Curtis Wager-Smith. This app just looks like Christmas…or, at least what we want Christmas to look like.

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“Twas the Night Before Christmas” on the iPhone

Serious Apple fans probably already have iPods, iPhones and such. So if you’re looking to surprise a diehard fanboy (or fangirl) this holiday season, you’ll have to go a little off the beaten track in your search for the perfect gift. We’ve scoped out some of the most unique Apple-related products, as well as a few that you’ve no doubt heard of already, but we’re sure would delight any Mac fan. Either way, we’re sure you’ll find something awesome for the Mac geek on your list.   Exploded 128 shirt Party like it’s 1984! Well, maybe “party” is a bit of an overstatement, but you can certainly bring some Apple-geek cred to your wardrobe when you rock this awesome shirt. Designed by artist Garry Booth, it’s a faithful graphic recreation of the guts inside the original 128k Mac. And yeah, that “128” refers to the 128 KB of RAM that the world’s first Mac had built in. Add in a 9-inch monochrome screen, and a chunky mechanical mouse, and you had the most innovative home computer that $2,495 could buy. Lucky for you, the shirt’s only 19 bucks. Hoodies and screen printed posters are also available. Plush Jobs Ever wish you could ask Steve Jobs for advice? Maybe he can finally figure out why you can’t selectively copy text in the iPhone’s Messages app

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10 Gifts for Die Hard Apple Fans