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By Graham K. Rogers
Since the announcement of the new iPad at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts a couple of weeks ago, there has been a steady stream of app updates, most of which have included support for the Retina display as well as other fixes and changes.
ArtRage
While some people like Brushes on the iPad, which I did install on the iPhone, one of my favourite drawing programs is ArtRage. I bought this mainly because I already have a version on the Mac and love how the brush strokes and colours merge realistically as I use it.
The update to version 1.4.0 that arrived in my iTunes list this morning has a number of interesting changes, not least of which is the price (the update is free of course) which has been reduced to $6.99 for the new iPad launch. Related to this is one of the updated items: the interface has been updated for high resolution output for the Retina display (whenever that reaches these shores).
Other updated items include:
- A problem that prevented the export menu from working in Italian has been fixed;
- Cancelling login from the Gallery to Dropbox that had caused a problem is fixed;
- Title buttons in the Help system are adjusted to allow them to work better with non-English versions of the titles;
- Spanish and Italian localizations have been added.
Cinemagram
Another update is to Cinemagram and I first reviewed this near the end of February. There are a few updates to this app and it is now at version 1.4. Most important of these changes is the addition of new filters and the ability to use Push notifications. Also reported are a fix to a crash which happened when importing from the library (I had not experienced this) as well as other bug fixes and improvements.
SketchMee Lite HD
One of a number of apps I have tried for creating cartoon-style output from photogrpahs, is SketchMee Lite HD, an iPad only app that has now been updated to version 1.8. Like many other apps right now one of the changes reported is that is is now ready for the Retina display. The developers add that, related to the new iPad release, it is also updated to take advantage of Quad-core processing.
Et Alia
Also updated is Adobe Reader for iOS and the information for version 10.1.2 informs users that this incorporates changes that resolve issues on the new iPad with Retina Display.
The update to MacHash News -- an app that is a newsreader for Mac-related items -- is now updated to version 3.2.2. The update fixes an issue with display of larger fonts and has improved smaller font display too. Like many others this now has support for the Retina display. In addition, there is a new icon design and a feature that allows users to tap an icon to refresh. A new preference option is available to disable gestures while users are reading articles.
A couple of weeks ago, just as the new Catalogues section on the iTunes App Store was coming live, I looked at a couple of Catalogue apps to get the feel of how this worked. One of these was Tea Collection, which was about children's clothes and not about the beverage, as I had hoped.
Nonetheless, this was a worthy example of how online catalogues should work and the update to version 1.0.5 is a new catalog.
Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs.
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