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Mac Corner: New products for your Macintosh

  
By Larry Grinnell, Palm Beach Phoenix Apple Users Group

larry grinnellSome interesting new products have hit the shelves in recent months. Here are a few of them, with lots of help from the Macintosh News Network website.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 9: Adobe Systems recently announced the release of Photoshop Elements 9 for the Macintosh. It has some really neat new features including the Spot Healing Brush that can be used to analyze an image and declutter or repair photos.

One example offered was removing tourists from a crowded scene. This is really the Photoshop for “the rest of us,” as long as they do not need it to edit graphics intended for professional printing, as it does not support the CMYK color space — only RGB. Considering the small number of users needing CMYK color capabilities, this is an easy decision for most, as the full-zoot Photoshop CS5 starts in the $700 range. Price for Photoshop Elements 9 is a mere $99.99 ($79.99 with $20.00 mail-in rebate).

Adobe Premiere Elements 9: Finally, Mac users get access to Premiere Elements, which previously had only been available for PC users. Premiere Elements is a low-cost, high-performance video editor that can give Apple’s iMovie a real run for its money. New features include the ability to identify (tag, in Facebook parlance) individual faces.

Admittedly, Premiere Elements does not have the features of the full Premiere product, but again, Premiere CS5 is a much more expensive product, starting at around $800. Premiere Elements 9 is only $99.99 ($79.99 with $20.00 mail-in rebate), and is probably all the video editing power most of you, dear readers, need.

Adobe is also offering a bundle of Photoshop Elements 9 and Premiere Elements 9 for only $149.99 ($119.99 after a $30.00 mail-in rebate), a substantial discount over buying them individually.

Nuance has released Dragon Dictate 2, a major upgrade of the company's voice recognition utility. The app handles both text input and application commands. The core enhancement of Dictate 2 is integration of the Dragon 11 engine, which is said to improve on the accuracy and performance of MacSpeech Dictate 1.5. Nuance bought out MacSpeech earlier this year.

Macgamestore.com has introduced two new games: Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars – Director’s Cut, and Broken Sword II: The Smoking Mirror. These games were originally introduced in 1996, but have been extensively updated and modernized for today’s gamer. Both are $9.95.

TiVo has made the Pandora application available (free) to its Internet-connected Premiere DVR set top boxes, permitting Pandora users to listen to their on-demand Internet radio stations from their main TV.

Smith Micro has introduced Stuffit Deluxe 2011, $49.99, which includes a 64-bit optimized Stuffit Engine (which will greatly speed up file compression on Macs running in 64-bit mode, as well as other improvements.

PDF2Office has been updated to version 5.1, supporting Microsoft Office for Mac 2011. It recovers data stored in PDF documents for use in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. It attempts to also recover most document formatting (page breaks, graphics, annotations, and formatting). Price is $129.00.

iBank 4 from IGG Software ($59.99) is a major update of its Macintosh financial management software. You can monitor investments, account balances, maintain budgets, and manage credit cards, checking, and savings accounts, as well as almost any personal finance-related functions.

The venerable MacDraft application from Microspot has been upgraded to version 6, in celebration of the product’s 25th anniversary with the $349 MacDraft Professional and $129 MacDraft Personal Edition versions. For years, it was a great entry-level 2-D CAD program, but has been continually updated, adding new features along the way.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Readers are welcome to comment on this or any Mac Corner columns by visiting the Palm Beach Phoenix blog as well as by writing the editor of Palm Beach Business.com.

Mac Corner runs every Wednesday only in Palm Beach Business.com. Click to read the previous column.

About Larry Grinnell: Larry has been working with Macintosh and Windows PCs for over 25 years and worked as a senior technical writer and IT support professional for a major midwest-based consumer electronics and telecommunications equipment manufacturer here in South Florida. His musings on a wide variety of topics from computers to jazz guitar to strange foreign cars from the 1950s can be viewed at the MyMac.com website. Click here to reach him by email.

palm beach phoenix logoWriters of this column are members of the Palm Beach Phoenix Apple User Group, a nonprofit organization for Apple Computing Device Users, recognized by Apple Inc., with the purpose of providing educational training and coaching to its members (students, professionals and seniors alike) in a cordial social environment. The club meets the second Saturday (1-4 p.m.) and fourth Wednesday (6-8 p.m.) of each month at the Fire Station #2, 4301 Dixie Highway in West Palm Beach (just two block south of Southern Boulevard). Click here to visit their website. Click here to reach them by email.

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