Ecamm already makes the popular Printopia app; it's a Mac-based solution for printing from iOS devices (and other connected Macs) for those that don't wish to use or purchase specific AirPrint-supported printers. Now the company has released Printopia Pro to tackle the bigger challenges of AirPrint in corporate or institutional networks.

Similar to Printopia, Printopia Pro leverages AirPrint, but without the need for investment in new, AirPrint-supported printers. Ecamm has taken the features of Printopia and powered them up in Printopia Pro to work in extremely demanding print circumstances. [Some enterprise users have aimed to solve this problem with...

Australia's Qantas airline has released a brand new iPhone app (free) with many great features, including Passbook support.

The Qantas Airways app lets customers find and book Qantas flights, book hotels worldwide, view flight bookings, access up-to-the-minute flight status, and create personalized alerts for specific flights and prices.

With Passbook support, fliers can check-in for most domestic flights and add their boarding pass to Passbook, meaning there's no need to carry a paper ticket when traveling.

Furthermore, Qantas frequent flyers can use the app to view their points balance and what their next flight is. Handy!

The Qantas Airways app is...

If nothing else, the patent applications tell you what’s coming down the pipe.
Per the United States Patent and Trademark Office, a pair of patent applications (1,...

In June, there is a local 5K race and I want to run in it. It's been years since I've done any serious running so I definitely have to prepare for this event. Like any good techie, I turned to my iPhone and the App Store for motivation. After searching, I stumbled on a new version of an old favorite, Zombies, Run!, that has been adapted for 5K training.

Zombies, Run! 5K is meant for the beginning runner who wants to train for a 5K. The app has 25 workouts that you spread out over an 8-week period. Unlike other trainers, Zombies, Run! 5K emphasizes starting slow and listening to your body as you gradually increase your endurance. You do workouts every other day and take the full 8 weeks to train.

Each 40-minute workout starts with a warm-up that is followed by a period of interval training. During the intervals, you alternate between running, walking and other activities like knee lifts or skipping. The workout wraps up...

The iPad version of Corel's Pinnacle Studio has undergone a major update that introduces a brand new speed control. Tapping on the speed button will allow users to adjust the speed of any video clip, while pinch gestures can be used to actively speed up or slow down playback. Users can also add a freeze effect with a single click, as well as use a single finger swipe in the speed control for roll trimming. Other enhancements include faster rendering, simplified audio editing, and the ability to initiate renders directly form the preview message. Pinnacle Studio 3 is available in the App Store... ...

Evomail, a $3 Gmail client for the iPad, launched Thursday morning in the App Store.
Evomail lets you share messages via social networks.
While the creators—who also developed the once-much-loved Boxcar notification service—promise that Evomail will be beautiful and innovative, at launch it looks and feels a lot like Gmail’s own free app for iOS: Both apps let you access multiple Gmail accounts, both let users search their entire mail archives, both let users see threaded conversations and profile pictures, and both let you send attachments more easily than Apple’s native Mail app.

There are some differences, however...

The market for dedicated GPS devices hasn't died despite the rise of the smartphone, and Magellan found an interesting way to tie the two together with its new SmartGPS. Along with the usual GPS navigation features you'd expect, it also ties in to Yelp! and Foursquare, gives live updates on nearby gas prices and weather, sports a 5-inch touch screen, you can upload the locations you search for on your computer, iPhone, or iPad to the GPS, and more. SmartGPS is priced at US$249.99, the companion iOS app will be available as a free download soon.

The US Department of Defense will soon approve the iPhone and iPad for use by military agencies for non-classified communications, reports The Wall Street Journal. The approval will only be for devices running iOS 6 or higher. According to the WSJ:

Separately, DISA [The Defense Information Systems Agency] is expected to rule in early May that Apple's latest operating system, iOS 6, conforms to a different security-requirement guide, the Defense Department spokesman said. That would allow iPhones and iPads to be used by military agencies for non-classified communications, such as email and Web browsing.

The Journal also reports that certain Samsung devices, like the Galaxy S4, will receive the same approval. As the US Department of Defense has the largest employee pool of any government agency, and third-party security companies employ hundreds...

It's time to save some of that hard-earned cash with our Daily Deals, featuring a handy list from Dealnews and our own hand-picked selections that include some sweet deals on iOS and OS X software (all prices are USD).

Deals from Dealnews

• StackSocial: [Mac Software] The Mac Productivity Bundle 4.0 for Mac downloads for $50
• Other World Computing: [Computer Accessories] OWC 2012 Featured Move 'em Out: RAM, accessories, HDDs, more
• eBay: [Home Security] Refurb Philips WiFi Home Monitor for iPhone / iPad for $60 + free shipping
• ...

Twitter has released an update to its iOS app that adds new features and several improvements. The biggest new feature is the ability to view global trends. Previously a user could view local trends in the Discover tab, but now you can select global trend locations and view trending hashtags from locales across the world.

Twitter for iOS now also lets you invite friends to join Twitter from within the app. Previously this feature was only found on its web-based client. Also, retweets have been tweaked to include both the original author's Twitter handle and the handle of the person retweeting it. Finally, Twitter has improved the playback of Vine videos within the app.

Twitter for iOS is a free download....

I was hoping it was a drinking contest, but they are looking for ideas that appeal to drinkers over 60-years-old.
∞ Read this on The Loop

Jim and Dan discuss Jim being driven to strike someone at a Metallica concert, tarantulas and june bugs, a Volkswagen Beatle with an iPad dock, and more.

Sponsored by Gazelle, Shutterstock (use code DANSENTME4 for 30% off), and Shopify.
∞ Read this on The Loop

Apple has added 256GB and 512GB SSD options for build-to-order iMac customers at its online store. Picking 256GB adds $300 to the cost of a system, while choosing 512GB adds $600. Stock iMac configurations are priced between $1,299 and $1,999....   ...

Apple's Siri voice control system is already available in iOS 6 for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, but don't expect to see it show up in OS X 10.9. That's according to Ezra Gottheil from Technology Business Report who thinks Apple will have to update Mac hardware before OS X can support Siri.
The Mac Observer Spin:
Working Siri into OS X involves more than addding a couple lines of code so that developers have something to hook to. Considering the work and testing involved, plus Apple's push to overhaul iOS 7, Siri doesn't sound like a feature we'll be seeing in OS X 10.9.

No one ever slighted a useful update.
Michael Tsai’s must-have shareware program, SpamSieve, has just been updated to version 2.9.7. The new version, a 10.8 megabyte download, adds the following fixes and changes:
- Improved compatibility with pre-release versions of Mac OS X.
- Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
- SpamSieve no longer links against AppleScriptKit. This removes some GUI scripting functionality (which is now largely available by other means) but works around an OS bug that could prevent SpamSieve from launching.
- Worked around a bug in Apple Mail’s iCloud rule syncing.
- SpamSieve is better at moving trained messages when Outlook has lost track of the...

Build-to-order iMac options from Apple's official online store now include either 256 or 512 gigabytes of flash storage for both the 21.5- and 27-inch models.   ...

Evomail, an iPad-only email client that aims to truly "re-invent email," was released today. I've been testing the release candidate they submitted to Apple, and from what I've seen it's a respectable first volley of a product whose path will be, in the words of its founders, "a marathon and not a sprint." Part of the reinvention is UI-related, and part is functionality, specifically allowing full-time push notifications from a 3rd party client. This reinvention, however, comes at a cost: you need to provide Evomail access to your email account so their servers can log in to check for mail and deliver these push notifications.

Adobe is developing an iOS companion app to the desktop version of Lightroom, the company's product manager for Lightroom, Tom Hogarty, revealed Wednesday via an online show, The Grid. The app should support controlling many of the same elements as the desktop software, such as exposure, clarity, shadows, highlights, white balance, and noise reduction. At the foundation of the app though is the Smart Previews technology from the Lightroom 5 beta....  ...

Apple is hard at work on iOS 7 for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch ahead of it preview at June's Worldwide Developers Conference, and the changes that are in store are so big that the company has pulled engineers from the OS X update to keep iOS on schedule. That's good news for iPhone and iPad owners because it shows Apple's dedication to keeping iOS fresh and improving the user experience, but it could spell trouble for Mac users hoping for the same in the next version of OS X.

Popular music streaming service Songza for iOS updated to version 3.0 today featuring significant performance improvements and a few new features.
Users can now shake their device while on Songza’s concierge page, which allows you to make a playlist based on your activities like studying or working out. Pretty cool.
What’s New in Version 3.0
Welcome to Songza 3.0, reimagined to help make the things you do every day better!
- Doing something special? From the Concierge screen on iPhone or iPod Touch, shake your device and tell...

Microsoft is said to be planning to introduce its second generation of Surface tablets with smaller displays this June, but the company is reportedly taking a "cautious" approach after the initial models got off to a lukewarm start.  ...

Magellan has announced nationwide availability of its new SmartGPS device. The hardware GPS for cars mates with an iPhone via an iOS app to provide the in-car solution with several advantages, including connections to Yelp and Foursquare based on the user location. Live content includes fuel prices, traffic, local weather and traffic camera alerts. The hardware is initially available at Best Buy and sells for U.S> $249.00. The iOS app that provides the network links is free. You can find information for a destination on the Magellan app, then send it via Bluetooth to the GPS hardware in the car.

The reasoning is to blend the best parts of the smartphone experience with dedicated hardware. Success with this approach will depend upon whether people find the navigation solutions on their smartphones to be needing a boost from dedicated hardware.

The Magellan SmartGPS has a 5 inch touchscreen, free lifetime map updates...

When I saw the widely reported quote from BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins that there won't be a reason to have a tablet in five years, my first reaction was one of keen interest. After all, what's the opposite of dead tablets? Something else that's supercool. I expected that Heins would say something revolutionary -- that he would express, at the very least, a better vision of a tablet-free world in five years. My bad. Of course, his comments were not actually as silly as the headlines painted.

A pair of patent applications Apple filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office reveal the company is working on unorthodox battery designs with curved cells and irregular shapes, suggesting slimmer, more shapely iOS devices could be on the horizon.  ...

“I don’t think anybody has done a product that is the product that I see customers wanting. You can go through the products from all those guys … and none of them has a product that you can really use. Not Apple. Not Google. Not Amazon. … [Surface] is a first-class tablet that people can enjoy and appreciate. It’s a PC; it’s a tablet. It’s for play; it’s for work. It’s a got a great price. That product doesn’t exist today.”
– Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer
Microsoft is now one of the top five tablet vendors worldwide thanks to its Surface RT and Surface Pro devices — but not because either one is selling particularly well.
Research firm IDC says Microsoft shipped about 900,000 Surface RT and Surface Pro tablets in...

Research firm IDC has posted the results of a questionable study on tablet "market share" that makes the claim -- not supported by sales evidence -- that Android has outgunned Apple in the tablet market, with 56.5 percent share in the first calendar quarter of the year, leaving Apple with barely 40 percent. The study also claims that Asus, not Amazon, is the third-largest tablet vendor with 5.5 percent of the market, having seen 350 percent growth year-over-year. The numbers seem unbelievable -- until one notices that IDC is estimating shipments, not sales.... ...

There are some really excellent apps arriving on the App Store tonight (including Firaxis' great Haunted Hollow), but before we tackle that new crop, I did want to mention this app, released last week by Sega. House of the Dead, if you're not aware, is an arcade shooting game, where you take on a whole haunted house full of zombies and demons with a light gun (and usually a friend, if you're playing in an arcade with quarters). House of the Dead: Overkill was a version of the game that came to Nintendo's Wii system a little while back, and this version, sub-subtitled The Lost Reels, is a revamp of that game, made specifically for iOS devices.

Now, this game is gross, and if you've not into gory zombies and bad guys (and girls), then you probably won't get much out of this --...

It's a mixed bag for Apple's iPad in a new report from IDC for 2013 March quarter tablet shipments. Apple gained share compared to the December quarter, but lost significant share compared to the March quarter of 2012. Samsung and "Others" took most of that share, though Microsoft is at last on the board with 1.8 percent of the market.

Following on the heels of rumors that Apple reassigned engineers from other projects (including the next OS X release, 10.9) in order to help ensure completion, a new report from unnamed sources has said that iOS 7, the forthcoming major update to the company's mobile platform, will ship on time despite pressures. Anonymous informers told AllThingsD that while the extra help was needed, the update "will ship on time" and debut as scheduled at this year's Worldwide Developer's Conference (WWDC).... ...

A TV ad released this week by JCPenney asks customers to "come back" to the department store, alluding to heavy losses suffered from sweeping changes made by ousted CEO and former Apple executive Ron Johnson.   ...

A pair of Japanese banks are considering a 100 billion yen ($1 billion) bailout loan to Sharp, to help it meet an upcoming bond redemption. The electronics manufacturer has nearly $2 billion in convertible bonds, similar to Apple's current offering, maturing in September. Lenders Mizuho Corporate Bank and Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ are also giving Sharp an extension on 360 billion yen in lending that matures in June. The offerings by the banks puts Sharp in the red to the two banks to just over $8 billion.... ...

BlackBerry's CEO seems to think the tablet market is a dead end despite the iPad's success, Microsoft can't seem to find its target audience for commercials, and Jeff and Bryan disagree on what they think Apple's iPhone strategy will be. All that, and it's poke-Bryan-with-a-stick week.

With the aid of a short Automator workflow, AppleScript can have you connected to your VPN with a single keystroke.

Apple may be borrowing from OS X to pay iOS, hackers have gone phishing for Apple customers, and Tim Cook will be playing Southern California for one night only. Can you spare the remainders for Wednesday, May 1, 2013 a dime?

Apple’s iOS 7 Team in Deadline Crunch Mode, Adding Engineers (AllThingsD)

According to numerous reports, Apple is working overtime to get iOS 7 ready for this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June. The intensive nature of the project, including its new “flat” interface, is proving time-consuming, so the company has pulled engineers from other projects, including OS X 10.9, and facilities personnel, to...

It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world.

You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here.

No Flash? Click here to listen.

Subscribe via RSSDaily Update for May 1, 2013 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 01 May 2013 18:15:00 EST. Please see our...

There are several ways to view a typeface in OS X before you use it in your document.

I'm not sure if Doc Rock will be joining me today for TUAW TV Live or not, seeing that he's at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013. But if that's the case, I should be easily able to fill an hour of time talking about some of the fascinating projects being touted at this year's event. There are also some useful and interesting accessories that have arrived at the TUAW Labs that I'll be demonstrating, and of course there are some good rumors out there that we can talk about in the chat room.

Below, you'll find a Ustream livestream viewer and a chat tool. The chat tool allows you to participate by asking questions or making comments. You'll be watching the show in glorious HD!

If you're driving somewhere and would like to watch TUAW TV Live while you're stuck in traffic, please don't -- keep your eyes on the road! However, if someone else is doing the driving, you can watch the show...

Google has recently added its Google Now service into its search app for iOS, but there's one big drawback to getting constant weather, traffic, and other local information on your phone: Location Services runs constantly. You can tell by the little arrow icon up in the corner of your home screen. Usually, that service only flips on when your phone needs to know where it is, but Google can be greedy with that information, keeping your Location Services on all the time, and thus draining your iPhone's battery much faster than it would otherwise.

So what's the solution? Inside Apple's Settings app, you can manually turn off Location Services for each app that uses it, so if you want to keep Google Now from draining your battery you could turn off Location Services altogether. Another approach, suggested by...

Willie Nelson auditions to be Gandalf.

A widely publicized study that reported that voice assistants like Apple's Siri aren't any safer than manually texting while driving failed to test Siri as it was actually designed to be used in its distracted driving experiment.  ...

John Paczkowski quoting a source on AllThingsD:

“Yes, yes — it’s essentially a repeat of the iPhone/Leopard scenario,” one source said, referring to Apple’s 2007 decision to pull engineers from OS X 10.5 to work on iPhone. “Not as much of a fire drill, though. It will ship on time.”

Yep.

The US Department of Defense should grant two separate security approvals to iOS 6 devices and Samsung Galaxy phones in the coming weeks, according to sources for the Wall Street Journal. Apple's iOS 6 is expected to be vetted as safe for non-classified data uses, namely email and web browsing. Galaxy phones, meanwhile, will allegedly be judged as conforming to the DoD's Security's Technology Implementation Guide, allowing use by some military agencies for sending and receiving internal email....  ...

Many airlines have embraced the iPad as a way to replace the 40-pound flight bags containing charts and manuals, but until now there's been little talk about how those tablet deployments are going. At the Tablet Strategy conference in New York yesterday, American Airlines VP of Airline Operations Technology Patrick O'Keefe discussed how the airline is aggressively moving ahead with adoption of tablets and the benefits that are already becoming apparent.

All of American's 8,600 pilots will have iPads by the end of May, each device containing over 3,000 pages of material that used to be printed out and manually updated. Now the charts and manuals are digitally updated, saving flight crews a lot of busy work. But the biggest win for American is in terms of crew safety, as O'Keefe noted that "We've reduced the single biggest source of pilot injuries,...

Apple last week released its earnings for the March quarter and posted revenue of US$43.6 billion along with a quarterly net profit of $9.5 billion. Product wise, the company sold 37.4 million iPhones, 19.5 million iPads, and 5.63 million iPods.

All in all, another impressive quarter from Apple. But one data point in particular that jumped out at me was just how insignificant the iPod has become to Apple's bottom line. In the quarter gone by, Apple's iconic MP3 player accounted for a paltry 2.2% of Apple's quarterly revenue.

Meanwhile, the iPhone and iPad together comprised 72.5% of Apple's Q2 revenue.

Think about that for a second -- the iPod, the device that fundamentally changed the musical landscape and raked in millions upon millions in profits for Apple is now nothing more than a footnote on Apple's balance sheet. In fact, during the quarter gone by, Apple generated more...

At just $49, the Mac SuperBundle nine application suite is an unbeatable value and features the best-selling Parallels Desktop 8 for Mac. This new software bundle offers apps that are valued at over $400 if purchased separately and in addition to Parallels Desktop 8, includes the award-winning TextExpander, the powerful website builder RapidWeaver 5, plus Circus Ponies Notebook, MacGo BluRay Player, PDF to Word Converter for Mac, Tidy Up, Font Explosion and Hyperbolic Smart Trash. All titles are the latest and full versions. The Mac SuperBundle is a limited-time offer that expires on May 15th.

Twitter has updated its official iOS app to v5.6, making some significant tweaks. Above all is the the ability to see trending topics according to location, whether nearby or in other cities around the world. Retweeting has also received some attention, as replies to retweets will now include the identities for both people involved....   ...

The iPhone and iPad have already been cleared for use by a number of US government agencies, and in February the US Defense Department confirmed plans to open its networks to 100,000 new devices from Apple and Google by February of next year. Today, The Wall Street Journal reports the DoD is about to grant two more important security approvals that could increase the number of agencies allowed to deploy iPhone, iPads, and Samsung Galaxy devices:
The Defense Information Systems Agency, or DISA, the agency that sanctions commercial technology for Pentagon use, is set to rule that Samsung’s Galaxy line of smartphones, preloaded with Samsung’s Knox security software, conforms with the Pentagon’s so-called Security Technology Implementation Guide,...