Adobe Photoshop CS5 on a Mac desktop: Faster, cleanser as well as filled with kooky brandnew collection.

Photographers have their own version of sleight of palm, utilizing images to make us hold a last product is the illustration of being.

The latest version of Photoshop, a flagship image-editing application in Adobe’s Creative Suite, adds the brandnew stack of cards to a photographer’s pretence rug. Wired.com was shown demos of brandnew tools — such as a brandnew Content Aware Fill and HDR — in Photoshop CS5 which we design will amaze and greatfully photographers with a tools’ ability to hook pixels with comprehensive precision.

Photoshop CS5 will arrive as partial of Adobe Creative Suite 5, a company’s package of 14 capability apps for visual designers, photographers as well as publishers. Creative Suite 5 will boat mid-May, according to Adobe.

Prices for the apartment operation in between $1,300 as well as $2,600, depending upon that package we buy, with upgrades labelled from $500 to $1,500. Photoshop CS5 alone will price $700, or $200 for an upgrade. Photoshop CS5 Extended, that has alittle additional collection, will cost $1,000, or $350 for an ascent.

This year marks a 20th anniversary of Photoshop’s attainment, as well as there have been certainly multiform “wow” features in Photoshop CS5 which achieve the turn of technological enrichment many of us couldn’t have even dreamed of 20 years ago.

Most considerable is a new Content Aware Fill brush, a mind-bending tool which can mislay vast objects from photos, altering the credentials to make it practically crop up as yet the intent were never there. It can zap tourists, undo energy lines as well as otherwise change photos with click-and-drag palliate.

This video shows it many seemingly. Fast brazen to about a median point if we want to see a unequivocally funny things. (When this video initial started creation a rounds in March, some suspicion it was the anythingforged. It’s not: This is a genuine feature of Photoshop CS5.)

As with any new tool in Photoshop, expect Content Aware Fill to be stale: A surfeit of tourist-free images of Machu Picchu will soon be littering Flickr. But over a novelty, it’s a indeed useful touch-up apparatus that turns what used to be hours of work into the elementary draw towards of a brush.

Speaking of brushes, all of a portrayal features in Photoshop — neglected since a recover of Photoshop 7 — have been rewritten. The app rightaway features most some-more picturesque interactions. If you makeuseof the digitizer tablet, you’ll find which your brushes have been considerably more manageable. The point of view of a stylus rightaway controls a corner of a brush as well as a brandnew paint-mixing collection control color consistent, moisture as well as bristle length, creation for the really realistic painting knowledge.

Another bit of Photoshop cunning that’s turn renouned newly is high-dynamic-range imaging, or HDR. The Flickr throng is funny for it, as well as Adobe has responded by mending Photoshop’s Merge to HDR apparatus, which helps we emanate HDR images.

The brandnew HDR tool rightaway has fourteen HDR presets which can save considerable bid when hand-toning an picture. The HDR presets shipping with Photoshop range from a cartoonish to a sincerely realistic, as well as should prove all though a pickiest of HDR enthusiasts.

Composing the real HDR image requires mixed photos taken with mixed exposures, though rightaway we can fake it. Photoshop CS5 has the new set of collection to create what Adobe calls “single-image HDRs.” The formula will never utterly match the loyal HDR with multiple images, though a brandnew single-image HDR-toning discourse lets we get flattering close regulating only asingle record.

Also incredibly helpful for HDR fans is a brandnew Remove Ghosts apparatus in a HDR dialog, which makes it elementary to eliminate ghosting as well as artifacts caused by differences in between your layered HDR images. With Photoshop CS5, we can simply outline the ghosted area (say, for e.g., the flower which changed in a breeze in between shots) as well as name the singular layer for that apportionment of a picture.

Mini Bridge: You can rightaway embed a Bridge record browser into the Photoshop palette.

Photoshop CS5 isn’t only brandnew brushes. There’s been copiousness of courtesy to performance — a Mac OS X chronicle is rightaway entirely 64-bit local, a same encouragement a Windows chronicle got in in CS4. That means which we could, in speculation, chuck as most as 128 GB IMPEL during Photoshop.

This refurbish serve deepens Photoshop’s formation with Bridge, Adobe’s file-browsing tool. Bridge can rightaway be embedded in the palette insideof Photoshop (known as Mini Bridge). You can fast navigate by your images regulating a familiar Bridge interface but wanting to leave Photoshop. Interestingly, a UI embellishment for Mini Bridge seems shabby by the iPhone — when we navigate by folders, a interface slides left as well as right.

Photoshop CS5 additionally gets a same large renovate to the Camera Raw engine which we’ve seen in a stirring Lightroom 3. Camera TENDER in both apps offers much improved heightening and sound rebate, which is impressive not so much for the capability to mislay sound, though to keep item whilst you do so.

Photoshop CS5 also has the few tricks written to have designers’ lives simpler, quite the brandnew Puppet Warp collection, that concede you to make path-like selections as well as hook, diverge, digest, widen as well as turn an intent.

Wired.com was shown the demo by Photoshop product physicaleducationinstructor Bryan O’Neil Hughes. He took an picture of an elephant with the straight case and, with only 3 selection points, he focussed as well as twisted the case behind so a elephant appeared to be eating.

Photoshop’s brandnew Puppet Warp apparatus in movement: prior to as well as after

Puppet Warp introduced almost no exaggeration into a finished image. Puppet Warp also provides the much simpler as well as faster way to straighten slanted horizons.

We were additionally tender with the new Lens Correction apparatus, which fixes distortion as well as other lens artifacts, regulating profiles tailored to correct specific camera lenses (the lens sort is determined by embedded EXIF interpretation, so Photoshop can establish which automatically).

Most of the alternative notasbig features which have this recover of Photoshop a must-have have been user-suggested facilities and workflow improvements. Adobe solicited user suggestions, filtered through a ideas, picking alittle three dozen ideas as well as making them a partial of Photoshop CS5.

Photoshop has multiform outstanding brandnew facilities — it’s probably value a price of a upgrade only for a brandnew Content Aware Fill tool, a 64-bit progress as well as a improvements to Camera TENDER — though what unequivocally sells this recover is volume of time it promises to save we.

Among the favorite workflow improvements: You can rightaway adjust a opacity as well as fill percentages upon mixed layers concurrently, a Save for Web dialog is accessible in 16-bit mode (and handles downsizing to 8-bit automatically), as well as Photoshop has the ability to save layer styles as the default function which even persists across sessions.

Adobe has done an considerable pursuit of focusing not only upon a whiz-bang facilities, but upon how photographers, designers as well as digital artists outlay their time regulating Photoshop, and how creation tiny changes can speed up their workflows.

Electronic-book readers have been red-hot. After the blockbuster 2009, during that an estimated 5 million inclination were sole, the brandnew collection of e-readers have been watchful to detonate into a spotlight.

A ultimate era of inclination have been easy upon a eye, lightweight as well as packaged with alittle nifty facilities such as a capability to take records, have lists as well as — for alittle — even watch video. They additionally suggest distant improved battery holdup than any netb ook or cover, mostly come with an total wireless tie for downloading brandnew books, as well as give we entrance to libraries of e-books which can tip the million titles. During a Consumer Wiring Uncover in Las Vegas this year, there were so most e-readers which they had their own special territory forged out upon a uncover floor.

Though will a difficulty sojourn as prohibited as it is now?

E-readers, as you know them rightaway, have been during the crossroads. Subsequent week, Apple is approaching to make known the brandnew tabletlike device which could additionally be used to review d igital books. It’s approaching to have the tone shade, not a monochrome E Ink arrangement found up on many e-readers. Apple is reportedly articulate to publishers to move e-books as well as magazines to a device.

Duration, alternative mechanism manufacturers have been display tabletlike inclination, that have been additionally formed upon tone LED or OLED screens.

THE device with the tone shade could unequivocally shift a landscape. Supplement a capability to watch video, foolaround games or download a pps — that many e-readers can’t do — as well as e-readers could begin to demeanour flattering obsolete by comparison.

Still, e-reader manufacturers have done the lot of strides in new months. Amazon has even combined an app store to a Kindle.

Though prior to we confirm to buy the Excite, Indentation or Sony Reader, flip by this art studio to see what will be in stores this year.

As well as keep in thoughts which an form of touchscreen tablets only competence describe a complete difficulty archaic overnight.

On top of: Cosmetic Logic

A Cadillac of e-book readers, Cosmet ic Logic’s Que proReader is the beautiful though costly device which promises to give we the “paperless briefcase.” A Que, that is targeted during commercial operation users, has an 8.5 x 11-inch touchscreen arrangement as well as a capability to hoop the operation of papers such as Microsoft Word files, PowerPoint presentations, Surpass spreadsheets, d igital books, PDFs, magazines as well as newspapers.

A Que can even sync with your Microsoft Opinion comment to lift in e-mails as well as monthly calendar for arrangement upon a device. Feature-wise, it’s formidable to kick a Que. Though a cost tab is sufficient to have many people gasp.

Though if we wish asingle, be rebuilt to open your wallet wide.

A 4-GB chronicle of a Que with Wi-Fi as well as storage for about 35,000 papers will sell for $650, as well as an 8-GB chronicle, that includes 3G connectivity from AT&T, will price $800. A Que will begin shipping mid-April.

Print: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

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ANAHEIM, California — All we Trustafarians have the cold brandnew tech tool to uncover off during your subsequent drum circle.

A strange Korg Wavedrum was expelled in 1994, though Korg has updated a aged the one preferred for a 21st century. A association is display off the brandnew chronicle of a device during a NAMM Uncover attention muster here. It’s accessible rightaway for about $600.

A fake drum deskpad is about a distance of the fat frisbee. It’s tiny as well as light sufficient to lay in your path, where we can foolaround it with your hands, or we can mountain it upon the unchanging drum mount as well as daub upon it with drumsticks, mallets or brushes. THE set of controls along a tip lets we dial in literally thousands of percussion sounds, both healthy as well as fake — a demo section WE played during a Korg expo counter came with the double-sided piece inventory all a sounds in little, 10-point type.

A Wavedrum is many considerable when it’s mimicking usual palm drums. Spin it into the djembe or conga as well as a dissim ilar tools of a “skin” reply as you’d design the genuine drum to. A dr um conduct has the gratifying open to it, as well as we can hook a representation by dire down upon a conduct whilst we kick it. Only similarto the genuine drum, a edge creates dissimilar noises when we strike it in dissimilar places.

WE additionally attempted it with sticks, assigning the trap receptivetoadvice to a skin as well as the flog drum receptivetoadvice to a edge. In this mode, it constructed the healthy drain similarto the loyal bubbly beverage drum pack — the tough strike upon a flog drum creates a trap resonate, as well as clamp versa.

When we pierce into fake domain, it gets the small stupid. A Wavedrum lets we mix symphonic synths sounds in with your healthy drum textures, so it sounds similarto the drudge is singing along to your beats. There have been indeed wacked settings which have been wholly synthet ic-sounding, as good, so we can foolaround Moog-like basslines by distinguished dissimilar areas of a skin. There have been additionally about 100 built-in techno grooves as well as patterns we can foolaround along to.

A Wavedrum is reduction superb when it tries to ridicule some-more enigmatic percussion sounds. WE attempted a settings for caxixi The Brazilian shaker), alittle dissimilar tambourines, the Balinese gamelan as well as an African balafon. All of them sounded flattering cheesy. You’re improved off adhering to a basics.

A Wavedrum requires an amp as well as the energy source, patently, so it won’t be replacing a genuine drum we lift to a playground upon Sundays. Though it’s the flattering dis agreeable electronic instrumen t. If we move this thing to Blazing Male, WE gamble everybody would wish to try it. Don’t dont think about your palm sanitizer.

See Also:

K org Turns Your DS Into the Song MachineKorg Kaoss Deskpad vs. Nintendo DSGuitar Center’s Drum-Off Snares Luminary Judges

Boxee’s media player program app promises to giveaway us all from stinky, tacky preprogrammed radio by bringing web video’s hassle-free, on-demand, click-to-watch knowledge onto the HDTVs.

A rather clunky alpha recover of Boxee’s p rogram has been around giv en a commencement of a year, though a association took the large step brazen with the open entrance of a amped-up beta chronicle in early December.

A Boxee beta, that is now invitation-only though will be done accessible to all as the giveaway download during a Consumer Wiring Uncover a initial week of Jan, improves a fortitude as well as a usability of a alpha significantly.

A association will be charity the dedicated set-top box subsequent open, though a program — that runs upon roughly any mechanism — is roughly entirely baked. I’ve been contrast a brandnew Boxee beta upon an Intel Mac Mini bending up to my HDTV for the sma ll over the week. Windows as well as Linux versions have been additionally available.

Whilst I’m not ready to discussit a wire man to things it (as most as I’d adore to), my evenings have been filled with hours of streaming video pulled down from literally scores of online sources. A peculiarity ranges from watchable to spectacular.

Loads of HD options

Many importantly, a program has non-stop up the value chest of possibilities for my HDTV: in progress shows, transport shows, underwater documentaries, Ze Straightforward, Cold Sport, Star Massdeparture as well as all sorts of classical cinema. Routinely, I’d have to lay during my table or column open the laptop to take in this things. Though Boxee lets me suffer it upon a large shade wh ilst sitting upon my couch.

Approbation, there have been most methods for putting web video upon your TV, though Boxee is a many superb resolution I’ve seen. For a beta recover, a total user knowledge has undergone the sharp redesign.

A brandnew Boxee homepage delivers the tellurian menu where you’ll find large icons for all a critic al things — Cinema, TV Shows, Apps, Song, Photos as well as the internal file-system browser (called simply “ Files”). There have been additionally approach links to your reserve, Boxee’s settings as well as the “Now Playing” symbol which rughtaway takes we behind to your full-screen video.

Click upon asingle of a calm libraries for TV or cinema in a tellurian menu as well as you’ll see the outrageous alleviation in a approach Boxee organizes your accessible content.

A TV uncover livingroom, for e.g., rightaway aggregates all accessible shows from a web as well as from your internal appurtenance. Given any uncover is listed in a livingroom inanycase of the source, we no longer have to go into ass orted eccentric apps — Humerous entertainment Executive, CBS, Hulu feeds, etc. — to find a shows we wish. We only get the outrageous list. Arrange it or filter it how you’d similarto. WE found it utilitarian to filter out shows which need the paid subscription Similarto those from Netflix) so WE would usually see a giveaway streams.

Cinema have b een rubbed a same approach. Picks from Hulu have been churned in with documentaries from alternative sources as well as a internal files upon your tough drive.

Boxee’s homepage hub

A libraries have been low, though all roads lead behind to a Boxee homepage. It’s your heart, as well as there’s regularly something uninformed watchful for we there.

A tellurian menu takes up a total tip of a homepage. Next it, the brandnew three-column blueprint shows your personal reserve, the feed of calm endorsed by your friends (”Feed”) as well as the smoke-stack of programming selected by a Boxee staff (”Recommended”).

To get a many out of a Fee d mainstay, we have to follow alittle alternative users. As with Chatter, following is the one-way tender. Boxee creates it easy to import your contacts from alternative services. WE fast combined the garland of friends, though given a Boxee user bottom is little, WE didn’t get a inundate of overwhelming suggestions WE was awaiting. A Boxee staff seeds a Feed everyday with alittle cold viral videos, however, so even if we don’t “do” amicable networking (or if your friends have been stooges), a Feed is still utilitarian. Boxee says it will shortly let we supplement suggestions from Chatter as well as Facebook friends to your Feed.

A Feed mainstay contains often shorter clips from YouTube, thoug h a picks in a Endorsed mainstay lendtowards to be longer, feature-length videos or HD eye sweets similarto slip shows from NASA as well as a Large Design blog. By clicking around both columns, we can get the ambience of what all a cold kids upon a web have been now into.

A reserve is a most appropriate partial of a beta’s redesign. As we journey around a assorted libraries insideof Boxee, we can suppleme nt to your reserve any bit of calm which catches your eye. Afterwards only glow it up as well as let a streams upsurge. After any video, you’re since a choice to share it with your Boxee friends or pierce along to a subsequent object in a reserve. Click, click, click.

There isn’t most to contend about a revamped Apps area alternative than which it’s been redesigned to have it simpler to crop a accessible episodes insideof any channel. WE essentially outlayed reduction time browsing a c alm inside a Apps rightaway which a TV livingroom does such the great pursuit aggregating videos from opposite a total system.

Softened video playback

Video playback additionally has been softened. A stretched controls have been simpler to makeuseof, as well as a program is some-more manageable. We can makeuseof the unchanging handheld remote similarto a Apple remote to carryout playback, though it’s clunky. If we have an iPhone or an Android phone, get asingle of a giveaway central or third-party Boxee remote apps, that have been most some-more responsive.

A Windows chronicle of Boxee has changed from OpenGL to DirectX, with full hardware graphics increase in speed upon Nvidia Ion chips. This creates it probable to foolaround full 1080p HD videos up on comparatively cheap PERSONALCOMPUTER hardware. WE did my tests by hooking my Intel Mac Mini (2007 indication to an Olevia 747i with the DVI-to-HD MI wire. So even if we have an comparison, slower appurtenance as well as the large HDTV, we can run Boxee as well as get an glorious design. It might not be loyal HD in all cases, though it still looks great.

Alittle of a full-HD streams Similarto Heroes as well as Residence hiccupped whilst they played, though when WE dialed down my fortitude the step to 1280?768, a stuttering stopped. Removing approximate receptivetoadvice from a Mini concerned the painless hack.

Teenager problems

Asingle of a large problems WE had with Boxee’s alpha recover was fortitude: A menus would throttle mostly, as well as a app would solidify the couple of times the day, requiring the reboot. A beta is most some-more fast. It still crashes, though distant reduction often As well as customarily but requiring the reboot).

My designation of a Boxee beta had the tough time personification discs. WE went by the smoke-stack of DVD-Rs filled with .avi files, as well as Boxee wouldn’t bucket any of them. Further with .avi as well as MP4 calm streamed opposite my wireless network. WE found it simpler to draw towards a files onto a internal tough expostulate, where they played exquisitely. Tangible DVDs played OK many of a time, though a subtitles would infrequently switch upon, as well as Boxee wouldn’t let me spin t hem off. In those cases, WE would have to watch a DVD in Apple’s Front Row.

Though Boxee’s idea isn’t to reinstate your DVD player — it’ s to move the resources of streaming web video calm to your cot. As well as in which purpose, it indeed excels.

Pointer up to download a giveaway beta during Boxee.tv, as well as design to see it expelled in early 2010.

The free app communicates with a $190 base station that acts as an infrared blaster to control other infrared hardware. You plug in the base station, download and launch the iPhone app, sync the base station with your Wi-Fi network, and then you can start adding your living room devices. RedEye contains a database of different types of devices you can control, broken down by brand name. After you select the brand name and type of device, you can test remote codes until you get a working signal to choose and store.

The product is brand new, and understandably it’s a little rough around the edges. The RedEye datab ase didn’t have remote codes for some of my living room gadgets: no code for my Panasonic HDTV and nada for my A/V receiver (an obscure Japanese brand, so I wasn’t surprised). But it did work with my Comcast cable box. Unfortunately even then, the interface was hardly convenient: It looked nothing like my physic al Comcast remote; the cable box’s remote menu was a long list of numbers and buttons, so I would ha ve to swip e all the way up just to tap “1,R 21; for example, then swipe all the way down to tap “Enter.” It also lacked a Guide button to load the program directory.

But those are ju st my early impressions of RedEye, and consumers should keep this product on their radar. A project like this — creating a piece of hardware in addition to coding an innovative app — is an enormously challenging tas k. ThinkFlood’s founder Matthew Eagar sa id the RedEye database was light on receiver codes due to time constraints, but the company is working on putting together more. Keep in mind that because the hardware is alread y doing what it promises, all we have to wait for is the software to matur e. Give RedEye some time to tweak its UI and add some more remote codes, and there’s potential for a hit product here. I would love to toss that ugly Comcast remote out the window, wouldn’t you?

See a video of RedEye in action above.

Product Page [ThinkFlood]

Adobe has released a public beta of Lightroom 3, the company’s tool for processing and organizing cameras’ RAW images. While still an early release, Lightroom 3 l ooks to be a worthy upgrade tha nks to impressive speed improvements and baked-in image sharing tools.

For Lig htroom 3, Adobe completely rewrote much of the underlying co de. The result still looks like Lightroom, but it’s considerably faster than previous releases.

Large image libraries in Lightroom 2 frequently meant blurry, pixelated previews that took a few seconds to resolve into sharp thumbnails. At times Lightroom could feel like a web-based editor for how much trouble it had rendering thumbnails.

Thankfully, pixelated previews are a thing of the past with Lightroom 3. We loaded up an 8,000+ ima ge library into the new beta and not only were the thumbnail previews sharp no matter how many images we scrolled through, common tasks like switching from Library view to Develop view and exporting images to Photoshop were noticeably faster.

Speed isn’t the only thing new in this beta. Lightroom 3 will also bring integrated support for publishing your photos to the web. In the beta, that means built-in syncing with Flickr.

To use the Flickr syncing tool simply authorize Lightroom to access your Flickr account. Once that’s done, publishing your images is a drag-and-drop task. Even better, the syncing is two-way: Lightroom 3 will pull down and update your metadata with any changes made on Flickr and will also grab any comments on the image.

Lightroom 3 now imports comments on your photos from Flickr.

For those with Flickr Pro accounts, it’s even possible to edit and update images that you’ve already posted on Flickr.

The new publish tool also allows you to export image s to folders on your desktop or an external drive. It’s a nice backup feature, but it also means that you can now use Lightro om to manage your iPhone photos — just publish your Lightroom images to a folde r and tell iTunes to sync photos from that folder.

While on the surface mo st of Lightroom 3 looks just like Lightroom 2, the import dialog has been radically revamped. Not only is the import tool muc h faster, it now offers full-resolution image previews and the ability to de fine import templates.

Lightroom 3's import dialog is faster.

The other standout feature in the Lightroom 3 beta is the new set of sharpening and n oise reduction tools, which makes it a snap to get rid of noise in high ISO images.

The new algorithm managed to get rid of a significant amount of color noise without overly softening the images we tested it with. Although the results weren’t perfect, Lightroom 3 did a much better job than its predecessor. The noise reduction tools will be particularly useful for those who’ve upgraded to some of the new, extremely high ISO cameras from Nikon and Canon.

Addicted to hi gh ISO levels? Lightroom 3 can h elp reduce the noise.

On the f lip side of the noise spectrum, Lightroom 3 sports a new “fil m grain” tool that allows you to simulate the look high-ISO film grain without using an external editor. So if graininess is your thing, you can put it back in as easily as you can take it out.

So far Adobe has not set a releas e date for the final version of Lightroom 3. If you’d like to test Lightroom 3 you can grab a copy from the Adobe Labs website. Be careful though, this is a true beta with kno wn bugs. We definitely don’t recommend using it for production work and highly recommend making a backup copy of any images you plan to import.

Apple’s new 27-inch iMac is a speed demon, especially the model shipping with the new Core i7 processor. Even better, the latest iMacs ship with the new Magic Mous e, Apple’s first single-button mouse that gets it right thanks to the powers of multitouch.

Wired.com’s Mike Calore is mesmerized with his Core i7-powered iMac. He gave it a rating of 8 out of 10:

Put one of Apple’s new 27-inch Co re i7 iMacs on yo ur desk, and you run the risk of alienating yourself from your friends, co-workers and loved ones.

Sure, the sheer speed of the thing is amazing — the new Core i7 processor is outrageously fast — but it’s the massive screen that will turn your brain into a gob of HD-saturated jelly. Seriously. The iMac’s screen is so freaking huge, so bright and so crisp, it will render you dumb with child-like glee. You’ll just want to sit there and wat ch movies all day and night.

And yours truly was a fan of the Magic Mouse. I th ink it’s the first Apple mouse that doesn’t suck. (I wasn 217;t a fan of the Mighty Mouse because of its gunk-collecting trackball.) I gave it a 7 out of 10, knocking off a few points because of the lack of Expos? functionality:

The Magic Mouse ditches the lozenge-shaped body and gunk-c ollecting trackball of its predecessor (the Mighty Mouse) in favor of a curvy wedge shape with a fully touch-sensitive housing. The new form factor fits more naturally in your hand than previous Apple mice — enou gh so to erase the painful memories you have of that atrocious hockey-puck mouse from the ’90s.

….

As is often the case, these gains come with loss, too. The Mighty Mouse had a click able scroll wheel and two squeeze sensors on the si de that could each trigger the Expos? and Spaces tools for desktop management. The Magic Mouse doesn’t have any built-in gestures for Expos?, which seems like a wasted opportunity.

Want the full gist? See Mike’s full review of the iMac and my writeup of the Magic Mouse at the Wired Reviews site.

See Also:

Apple Unleashes New Macs, Multitouch MouseNew iMacs Outperform Mac Pros in Benchmark Tests

Photo: Mike Calore/Wired.com

A few days ago we got Motrola’s Droid in the mail. The device is quite awesome. Beyond being offered on Verizon’s network (which consistently squelches AT&T in coverage and speed) the phone is forged from super-solid (and stylish) hardware. Plus it runs freaking Android 2.0 as its OS. From reviewer Priya Ganapati:

The Droid runs Android 2.0 (aka ?clair) as its OS. It feels more refined than the first version of Android on T-Mobile’s G1 and it’s certainly better than the muddled interface on Motorola’s Cliq.

The Droid’s 5-megapixel camera has up to 4x digital zoom. It produces photos that aren’t too noisy and it does well even in low light, thanks to the built-in LED flash.

The most exciting feature of the phone, though, is the Google maps app — with built-in turn-by-turn, voice-guided navigation. Replete with text-to-speech features, the maps are layered with traffic data and a satellite view. But here’s the best part. It’s free! Hear that? You don’t have to pay $10 a month as subscription or buy a pricey $100 TomTom app. You can just zip around with the Droid and Google Maps.

$200, motorola.com

8/10

You can, of course read the full review of the Mottorola Droid on our reviews website.

Photo by Jon Snyder for Wired.com