Tablets « Tech bytes for tea?

Archive for the ‘Tablets’ Category

Adobe introduces Creative Suite 5.5

Tuesday, April 12th, 2011

Adobe’s major mid-cycle product release targets enhancements across Flash, HTML5, video, mobile App and digital publishing tools. It also extends workflows to include tablets.

Adobe announced today the new Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 product line, enabling designers and developers to target popular and emerging smartphone and tablet platforms, as the revolution in mobile communications fundamentally changes the way content is distributed and consumed.

Today’s launch marks a significant change to Adobe’s product release strategy for Creative Suite, the design and development software catering for print, video, mobile and online media.

Adobe now plans to have milestone Creative Suite product introductions at 24-month intervals and – starting with Creative Suite 5.5 – major mid-cycle releases between the milestone versions.

Product lineup and pricing

The new Creative Suite product lineup is headlined by Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Master Collection, which includes, in a single package, all of Adobe’s industry-defining creative tools, such as Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat, Flash Builder, Flash Catalyst, Flash Professional, Dreamweaver, Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects.

These products are available separately or as components of one or more of the five Creative Suite editions.

The complete Creative Suite 5.5 lineup and their estimated street prices are tabulated below, and is scheduled to ship within 30 days. Upgrade pricing, volume licensing and education pricing are also available.

Creative Suite 5.5 Master Collection: US$3159
Creative Suite 5.5 Design Premium: US$2309
Creative Suite 5.5 Web Premium: US$2185
Creative Suite 5.5 Production Premium: US$2065
Creative Suite 5.5 Design Standard: US$1579

Key enhancements

The new Creative Suite 5.5 Web Premium suite sees enhancements in HTML5 and Adobe Flash authoring tools, allowing users to create, deliver and monetize rich content and applications for virtually any screen.

This release helps enable designers and developers to deliver mobile applications on Android, BlackBerry Tablet OS, iOS and other platforms; create rich browser-based content across screens using HTML5; and leverage Flash Player to deliver premium video content, casual games and rich Internet applications.

Tablet devices are now included in the creative workflow, going beyond the desktop computer. A new scripting engine in Adobe Photoshop and an enhanced Photoshop Software Development Kit (SDK) enable developers to build tablet applications that interact with Photoshop from Android, BlackBerry and iOS devices.

Adobe also announced three new iPad applications that demonstrate the creative possibilities of using tablets to drive common Photoshop workflows – Adobe Color Lava for Photoshop, Adobe Eazel for Photoshop and Adobe Nav for Photoshop.

With the launch of Adobe Flash Builder 4.5 – available as part of the Creative Suite 5.5 Web Premium suite – and the Flex 4.5 framework, developers can easily develop and deploy mobile applications to the over 200 million Android, BlackBerry Playbook and iOS devices anticipated to be in market by the end of 2011.

With more than 131 million smartphones expected to have Flash Player installed by the end of the year, Adobe Flash makes it possible to bring rich content to desktops and devices inside the browser.

Flash Player is supported on Android, HP webOS and Google TV today. BlackBerry Tablet OS, upcoming versions of Windows Phone, Samsung SmartTVs and others are expected to support Flash Player in the near future.

For video and audio professionals, Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Production Premium suite promises breakthrough performance, workflow improvements, creative innovations, and powerful new audio editing capabilities.

The powerful Adobe Mercury Playback Engine, introduced in Adobe Premiere Pro CS5, broadens its graphics processing unit (GPU) hardware support to include laptops and more supported cards, allowing users to open projects faster, get real-time feedback and work more smoothly at higher resolutions.

Creative Suite 5.5 Design Premium suite includes Adobe’s recent product innovations in digital publishing to create slick digital editions for tablet devices. Using InDesign CS5.5, in combination with the integrated Folio Producer toolset, designers can add new levels of interactivity to their page layouts targeted to tablet devices.

Documents can include video, audio, panoramic views, 360-degree object rotation, pan and zoom of images, integration of HTML and HTML5 content and other interactive overlays. Leading to a much more robust and engaging reading experience.

Creative Suite 5.5 is tightly integrated with Adobe Digital Publishing Suite to support publication, sale and analysis of content on an array of tablet devices.

Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 products integrate with Adobe CS Live, a set of online services that accelerate key aspects of the creative workflow and enable designers to focus on creating their best work. CS Live online services include: Adobe BrowserLab; Adobe CS Review; Acrobat.com; Adobe Story; and Adobe SiteCatalyst NetAverages powered by Omniture. Adobe CS Live is free until April 12,2012.

Tags:Adobe, Android, BlackBerry, Creative Suite 5.5, CS5.5, iOS, tablets
Posted in Acrobat, Adobe, Events, Flash, Launch, Photoshop, Prices, Software, Tablets, Tech news | 1 Comment »

Creative Suite 5.5 Design Premium and Design Standard suites

Monday, April 11th, 2011

Creative Suite 5.5 Design Premium comprises new versions of Adobe InDesign, Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Flash Professional and Adobe Flash Catalyst, as well as Adobe Acrobat X Pro, Adobe Illustrator CS5, Adobe Photoshop CS5 Extended and Adobe Fireworks CS5.

Estimated street price for the Creative Suite 5.5 Design Premium suite is US$2309 while that of the Design Standard suite is US$1579. Both are part of five suite editions of the Creative Suite 5.5 line of software and will ship within 30 days.

The software in the Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Design Premium suite enables designers to produce content faster and deliver immersive, visually rich experiences to screens of all shapes and sizes. New features in Creative Suite 5.5 Design Premium bolster the many timesaving features that were introduced in Creative Suite 5 to improve efficiency of everyday tasks.

Design for both Tablets and Smartphones

With Creative Suite 5.5 Design Premium, designers can create immersive digital magazines, e-books with accompanying video and audio, websites based on HTML5 and CSS3 standards, and interactive mobile applications built with familiar Flash tools that display consistently across Android, BlackBerry Playbook and iOS devices.

Updates to Dreamweaver CS5.5 (including the Live View mode, CSS panel and Multiscreen Preview panel) streamline the design of websites that need to be optimized for viewing on multiple devices, and let designers preview desktop, tablet and smartphone browsers side-by-side.

With the new Folio Producer tools in InDesign, which work in conjunction with the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite, creative professionals can design interactive, rich media digital magazines, newspapers, corporate publications and advertising for reading on tablet devices such as Apple iPad, BlackBerry PlayBook and a wide variety of Android tablets.

Using InDesign CS5.5 in combination with the integrated Folio Producer toolset, designers can add new levels of interactivity to their page layouts. Documents targeted to tablet devices can include video, audio, panoramic views, 360-degree rotation of objects, pan and zoom of images, integration of HTML5 content and other interactive overlays.

Designers can also easily test how their content will look and feel on a broad array of tablet devices directly from within InDesign. Once content authoring is completed in InDesign, tight integration with Adobe Digital Publishing Suite allows users with a Digital Publishing Suite account (available separately) to efficiently produce, distribute, optimize and monetize content for tablet devices.

A number of features in InDesign have also been enhanced to improve reading experiences on e-book devices, such as Barnes and Noble Nook, Sony Reader and Apple iPad.

Designers can now add refined typography, images that resize automatically to fit virtually any screen, and video and audio for e-book reader applications that support HTML5 video and audio tags.

New capabilities in Flash Professional CS5.5 let designers and developers build mobile applications that run on iPhone, iPad, Android devices and BlackBerry Playbook. The apps can be easily deployed through the application markets such as Apple’s iTunes App Store, Android Market and BlackBerry AppWorld.

Beyond the Desktop

Adobe is continuing to extend productivity with cloud services and new tablet apps.

Creative Suite 5.5 Design Premium works with new tablet applications for Photoshop (available separately) that enhance the creative workflow and extend the design experience beyond the desktop.

A new scripting engine in Adobe Photoshop and an enhanced Photoshop Software Development Kit (SDK) enable developers to build tablet applications that interact with Photoshop from Android, BlackBerry and iOS devices.

Adobe has used the new SDK to deliver three iPad applications that demonstrate the creative possibilities of using tablets to drive common Photoshop workflows – Adobe Color Lava for Photoshop, Adobe Eazel for Photoshop and Adobe Nav for Photoshop.

Creative Suite 5.5 Design Premium also integrates with CS Live, a set of hosted services that accelerate key project workflows such as shared reviews. CS Live online services are free until April 12, 2012.

Tags:Adobe, Creative Suite 5.5, Design Premium, Design Standard
Posted in Acrobat, Adobe, Creative Suite, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash, Illustrator, InDesign, Launch, Photoshop, Prices, Software, Specifications, Tablets | 1 Comment »

New Adobe Software Development Kit for Photoshop CS5

Sunday, April 10th, 2011

The Photoshop Touch SDK and a new scripting engine in Photoshop CS5 open the door for Android, BlackBerry Tablet OS and iOS apps to drive and interact with Photoshop on the desktop.

Adobe has announced the Photoshop Touch Software Development Kit (SDK) inviting developers worldwide to create mobile and tablet applications that interact with Adobe Photoshop CS5 and Photoshop CS5 Extended software, uniting the fun and interactive experience of touch devices with the power and precision of Photoshop.

Using the Touch SDK, Adobe has developed three initial Photoshop CS5 companion apps for Apple iPad: Adobe Color Lava for Photoshop, Adobe Eazel for Photoshop and Adobe Nav for Photoshop. The apps are designed to enable users to create custom color swatches, paint and drive popular Photoshop tools from tablet devices.

Adobe Color Lava will allow creative professionals to use their fingertips to mix colors on the iPad, creating custom color swatches and themes to transfer back into Photoshop.

Adobe Eazel takes advantage of cutting-edge painting technology to let digital artists create rich realistic paintings with their fingertips and introduces a new kind of interaction between “wet” and “dry” paints. These paintings can then be sent directly to Photoshop CS5 for compositing or for taking the artwork further.

Lastly, Adobe Nav increases workflow efficiency by letting users select and control Photoshop tools using the iPad as the input surface, customize the toolbar, browse and zoom in on up to 200 open Photoshop files or easily create new files.

All three applications take advantage of the iPad tablet’s touch screen for a truly immersive, tactile, on-the-go experience.

Although the first applications available are for the Apple iPad and the iOS, the Photoshop Touch SDK makes development possible on other devices, including Android and BlackBerry PlayBook.

Utilizing the Touch SDK, developers will have wide access to Photoshop functionality with the freedom to innovate and create new apps or add capabilities to existing ones. Adobe has already engaged with a number of developers across the industry to incorporate tablets and other devices into creative workflows that empower Photoshop users in new and groundbreaking ways.

For more detailed information about features, OS support, upgrade policies, pricing and international versions, visit: www.adobe.com/go/photoshop.

Tags:Adobe, image editor, photo editor, Photoshop, Touch SDK
Posted in Adobe, Creative Suite, Launch, Photoshop, Software, Tablets | No Comments »

Android compatibility for the PlayBook

Saturday, April 2nd, 2011

Having had only 25,000 apps in BlackBerry App World, RIM’s PlayBook will tap the 150,000 apps in the Android Market to give it a headstart, while ramping up the number of PlayBook specific apps to stand against the staggering 350,000 apps in Apple’s App Store.

RIM will be opening the PlayBook to Android apps to provide customers a wider choice of apps.

Software tools for making Android apps work on the PlayBook will be available this summer, Tyler Lessard, head of RIM’s developer relations told Bloomberg in an interview.

Android is the world’s fastest-growing smartphone platform and is also gaining market share for tablet computers, based on data on global shipments from Strategy Analytics below.

Percentage of global shipments	Android	iPad
Oct to Dec 2010	22 %	75%
Jul to Sep 2010	2.3 %	95 %

Although developers can port Android apps for the PlayBook, Lessard states that developers should still create programs specifically for the PlayBook to make the most of its multimedia performance and ensure their apps work as well as possible.

Bloomberg reports that “Dozens” of games for the PlayBook will be released this year through Unity Technologies’s Union game development tool.

Tags:Android, Apple, Apps, BlackBerry, Google, iPad, RIM
Posted in Android, Apple, Figures, Gadgets, Google, iOS, iPad, PlayBook, RIM, Tablets, Technology | No Comments »

RIM readies itself for launch of its PlayBook

Friday, April 1st, 2011

RIM positions PlayBook to capture market share from its Apple and Android tablet rivals from the consumer market, even as it opens up for Android app compatibility and ramps up on building its own ecosystem of PlayBook specific apps.

Research In Motion (RIM) whose BlackBerry smartphone was a hit with corporate customers, is also targeting developers of consumer applications, including games and magazines.

The 7-inch tablet will be preloaded with applications such as Tetris – my favourite game on an Apple Macintosh during my college days, and the Kobo e-book reader.

An online version of Pro Football Weekly magazine will also be available for sports aficionados.

The PlayBook goes on sale in the US on April 19 and will feature a new operating system, a dual-core processor, and the capability to play applications for Google’s Android platform.

I had the chance to play with a beta release version of the PlayBook when it was first brought to Singapore three weeks ago and the display not only looked great, the processor was lightning fast, multi-tasking 8-10 CPU/graphics-intensive apps without showing any latency.

Although RIM has not been as successful as Apple or Google in attracting independent developers to write consumer apps for the BlackBerry, it is trying to rectify this with the PlayBook.

Hugo Miller from Bloomberg quoted Travis Boatman, senior vice president at Electronic Arts as being impressed with the PlayBook.

“It’s one of the fastest devices out there … You take a good software environment and great hardware, you’ve got a device that designers and developers can create great content on.”

The Redwood City, California-based company will release “Tetris” and “Need for Speed Undercover,” a car racing game, on the PlayBook.

Research In Motion launches the PlayBook on April 19 RIM will be opening the PlayBook to Android apps to provide customers a wider choice of apps. There are more than 150,000 apps in the Android Market, compared with more than 25,000 in BlackBerry App World and more than 350,000 in Apple’s App Store.

“We are absolutely targeting the consumer, personal apps market as much if not more because there is such a vast market out there,” Tyler Lessard, head of RIM’s developer relations told Bloomberg in an interview.

Polar Mobile, a Toronto-based developer of apps for magazines including Time, GQ and Sports Illustrated, is building over 100 PlayBook apps including Pro Football Weekly, that will be ready in July, said Polar CEO Kunal Gupta.

Like other newcomers to the tablet scene, the PlayBook will be hoping to chip away at the market share of Apple, the market leader who has enjoyed little competition since the launch of its iPad in April 2010.

Analysts estimate that Apple has shipped more than 15 million iPads so far, and sold about 500,000 of the newly launched iPad 2, over its March 11 debut weekend.

Tags:Android, Apple, Apps, Google, iPad, iPad2, Playbook, RIM
Posted in Android, BlackBerry, Gadgets, iOS, iPad, PlayBook, RIM, Tablets | No Comments »

HTC and Acer switch fortunes as smartphones and tablets outmode netbooks and PCs

Thursday, March 31st, 2011

HTC is now valued at 22.2 times reported earnings, compared with 10.6 for Acer. Only in February last year, HTC had a PE ratio of 11 times, while Acer was at 22.

Taipei-based HTC is the world’s largest maker of handsets using operating systems from Google and Microsoft. Acer is the world’s second-largest manufacturer of personal computers.

HTC makes Android and Windows Mobile smartphones The wheel of fortune for the two companies seems to have turned as sales of smartphones and tablet computers grew at the expense of notebooks and personal computers.

Prior to the explosive growth, set off by Apple, of the smartphone and tablet sector, Acer had snatched the lead from Asus for a similarly explosive growth in the netbook sector.

From HTC’s low in February last year, it has rallied some 264 percent, while Acer has fallen by 36 percent. According to Kevin Chang from Citigroup, Acer is the biggest seller of consumer notebooks in the developed world.

In a report dated March 28, Chang wrote that “Consumers are not buying notebooks because they have already spent money on new tablet PCs or on upgrading their handsets from feature phones to smartphones.” He adds that Acer could become “a much smaller company in the next few years,” if tablet PC sales grow to exceed those for notebooks.

Not surprisingly, Chang has a “sell” rating on Acer’s stock and a “buy” recommendation on HTC.

A March 24 report from the Goldman Sachs Group estimates that HTC’s market worth may reach $100 billion in the next three to five years from $30 billion now, as the company ships a possible 200 million smartphones and 30 million tablet computers a year.

HTC’s value has quadrupled since reaching a low of $7.4 billion in February last year, while Acer’s market capitalization has declined to $5.6 billion from a peak of $9.4 billion reached in January 2010.

Tags:Acer, HTC, netbooks, smartphones, tablets
Posted in Acer, Android, Figures, Gadgets, HTC, Notebooks, Phones, Tablets, Tech news, Windows Phone 7 | No Comments »

RIM’s First-Quarter forecasts behind estimates

Friday, March 25th, 2011

Research In Motion (RIM), maker of BlackBerry smartphones, has forecast first-quarter revenues and profits that fail to meet analysts’ estimates. Its launch of new models like the Torch has failed to stop a slide in its market share.

The average of analysts’ estimates were compiled by Bloomberg for comparison. Below are the key numbers:

First Quarter Forecast	RIM	Analysts average estimate
Profit per share	$1.47 – $1.55	$1.66
Revenue	$5.2 – 5.6 billion	$5.65 billion
Gross Margin (% sales after production costs)	41.5%	42.7%
BlackBerrys shipped (4th Qtr)	14.9 million	15 million

In the meantime, Bloomberg quotes Pierre Ferragu from Sanford C. Bernstein & Co as saying that “The company’s sales in the high end have been shrinking for the last 12 months, even if the launch of the Torch has slowed down the trend in the last two quarters.”

Although RIM has traditionally been the darling of large corporations because of its secure messaging, it has seen customers adopting rival devices.

Hugo Miller of Bloomberg reports that JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup are some of the banks that has begun testing iPhones and Android devices late last year, according to at least three people familiar with the trials.

The table below summarises how RIM’s share of worldwide smartphone sales has slipped from a year earlier, compared to its rivals.

Worldwide smartphone marketshare	RIM	Apple	Android
4th Qtr 2010	14%	16%	< 11%
4th Qtr 2009	20%	16%	16%

RIM PlayBook debuts in US on April 19

RIM will be launching the PlayBook in the US on April 19, while the company is already taking orders.The company revealed that the tablet would be able to play apps from Google’s Android.

The PlayBook will strive to chip at the huge market share that Apple has enjoyed with its iPad and iPad2.

The iPad has has a full year’s headstart over the PlayBook and has sold over 15 million units so far. Apple also claims that 65 percent of Fortune 100 companies are testing or deploying the iPad, including Procter & Gamble.

This is the same market sector that RIM targets.

Tags:BlackBerry, Playbook, RIM, Torch
Posted in BlackBerry, Figures, Gadgets, PlayBook, RIM, Tablets, Torch | No Comments »

Adobe launches Photoshop Express 2.0 for iOS

Thursday, March 17th, 2011

Adobe has announced the release of the free Photoshop Express 2.0 for iOS devices, as well as a new $3.99 Adobe Camera Pack that you can purchase from within Photoshop Express.

Adobe Photoshop Express has more than 20 million subscribers on iOS and Android devices. It provides easy-to-use features for capturing, organising, editing and sharing of photos on popular social networks like Facebook, giving users on the road the ability to work on their digital photos on smartphones and tablets.

Adobe Photoshop Express 2.0 for iOS devices can be downloaded free on the Apple iTunes Store. From within the app, you can purchase the new Adobe Camera Pack which includes the following features.

Reduce Noise: Removes and smooths out grain and speckling from photos to improve them.

Self Timer: Set a camera timer to three or 10 seconds to control when a photo is to be recorded.

Auto Review: Provides a quick look at photos taken before saving or deleting it.

Photoshop Express 2.0 requires iOS 4.2 or later. To use the Adobe Camera Pack, customers must have an iPhone 3Gs, iPhone 4, iPod Touch (3rd or 4th generation), or an iPad or iPad 2 (note that Photoshop Express does not include support for the iPad 2 camera at this time).

Tags:Adobe, Apps, image editor, iOS, photo editor, Photoshop Express
Posted in Adobe, Cameras, Phones, Photography, Photos, Photoshop, Tablets | No Comments »

RIM’s Playbook displayed in Singapore for the first time

Friday, March 11th, 2011

Two units of the beta-release Playbook were specially flown into Singapore as part of the Adobe Refresh Roadshow.

True multi-tasking using SMP for the dual-core processor.

The beta version of the BlackBerry Playbook was first unveiled during the Adobe Max 2010 developer conference in October last year. Two units were brought in by Sarim Aziz, Senior Application Development Consultant at RIM, to make its first appearance in Singapore.

Aziz showed how the Playbook was able to mult-itask various memory/CPU intensive applications simultaneously without missing a beat.

He explained that the both of the processors in the dual-core Playbook were allowed to work simultaneously to enable true multi-tasking using Symmetric Multi-Processing – apps continue to run at full tilt even in the background without being paused.

I had the chance to play with the 0.9 lbs (425g) Playbook and here are some snapshots. Check out the details at the Playbook’s website. Essentially, it is about 9mm thick, sports front/rear cameras (3 and 5 megapixels respectively, both capable of HD video), a 1 GHz dual-core processor with 1 GB RAM.

The operating system is from QNX, which RIM acquired in Apr 2010. Both Flash and HTML5 are supported.

BlackBerry Playbook from RIM - shown for the first time in Singapore.

In terms of interface, something interesting is that the 1” black border around the 7” 1024×600 pixel screen is also touch-capable. Swipe down from the top border brings in the operating system’s menu, like the Start button in Windows – not sure if this will stay in the final product.

Tapping the lower left corner activates the soft keyboard onscreen, and swiping upwards from the bottom border displays the thumbnails of apps currently running so that you can switch to another app.

Even with 8-10 apps running, Quake was going at 60 fps without dropping frames. Apparently, should the RAM maxed out, the operating system will quietly shut down the least used App to free up memory space. Quietly – as in it won’t even ask the user.

Price-wise, we’re probably looking in the region of US$500 with launch in late March to early April for N America followed by the rest of the world.

Tags:BlackBerry, Multi-task, Playbook, RIM
Posted in Events, Gadgets, RIM, Tablets | 5 Comments »

Adobe Refresh Roadshow in Singapore

Thursday, March 10th, 2011

Two product “evangelists” and the Product Manager of Flash Professional show designers and attendees how to design once but deploy to different hardware and software platforms and screen sizes.

Instead of designing for the standard desktop monitor at standard screen resolutions, end-users are accessing web content using a whole range of devices with different screen sizes/resolutions, and on different hardware and software platforms.

These devices range from the traditional PC to the whole range of smartphones and more recently the tablets and web TVs.

Richard Galvan, Product Manager - Flash Professional Flash Professional Product Manager, Richard Galvan, went through the trends of the day and predicted that the number of people surfing the Internet using smartphones and tablets will surpass the number using PCs by 2013 – maybe earlier.

He demonstrated how the existing and upcoming versions of Adobe’s Flash Professional and Flex application development platform facilitates the ability to develope apps only once but deploy to devices running different operating systems such as Google’s Android, Apple’s iOS and RIM’s BlackBerry.

Paul Burnett, APAC Evangelist - Adobe Systems Inc Michael Stoddart, APAC Evangelist - Adobe Systems Inc The product “evangelists” Paul Burnett and Michael Stoddart also illustrated how the software assisted coders by providing features such as code hints, code completion and code snippets – so much so that even designers could have a go at the coding.

Some of the sneak peeks of features being explored for future products were also presented. Some of these were first shown in Adobe Max 2010 developer conference in October last year.

The beta version of the BlackBerry Playbook, which made its first appearance during Adobe Max, was also displayed for the first time in Singapore.

Photoshop on a tablet?

Galvan also gave a demo on the recently released Wallaby – an experimental piece of software for converting Flash files into HTML5.

The simple animation he converted were identical before and after conversion – handy for banner ads without audio, video, or ActionScript.

Multi-touch interface for a future version of Photoshop?

Galvan believed that Flash and HTML5 were complementary instead of being mutually exclusive. He emphasised that Flash and HTML5 will continue to complement each other into the future, with Flash providing additional features and capabilities to HTML5 based content.

The roadshow was held at the NTUC auditorium at One Marina Boulevard from 8.30am to 5.30pm.

Tags:Adobe, Flash, Flex, smartphone, tablets
Posted in Adobe, Events, Flash, Gadgets, Notebooks, Phones, Photoshop, Software, Tablets, Technology | No Comments »

Tech bytes for tea?