[psmith2.0]

Seems so, according to both MacRumors and AppleInsider.

Seems there was an accidental, premature launch earlier but the official release is tomorrow (Monday).

$9.99, but apparently limited to 1600x1600 pixels?

Discuss...

[Moogs]

Looking forward to trying it out. Looks to have a more evolved toolset than the original. [Not sure where that resolution limit comes from / what the reason for it would be... iPad 3's screen and camera should provide for much more than that in the long dimension so not sure what gives there. Maybe just a performance thing / not wanting the device to choke on the image processing.]

[chucker]

AIR. They've really forgotten how to build software.

[Moogs]

You mean AIR limits their ability when programming an app like that to build something that would process larger images quickly?

[chucker]

No; my comment has nothing to do with the resolution thing.

[addabox]

This should probably be in the Windows 8 thread, but this is more recent.....

Anyway, MS has posted videos of touch and mouse interactions in W8. I have to say, mouse driven Windows 8 looks like a hot mess to me.

The Metro language seems to amount to, much of the time, really big icons with really thin type. There seems to be a sort of promiscuous use of possible interactions that don't, to me, map onto anything coherent in terms of usability.

You have that big Metro Start screen, to begin with, which on a desktop is just a big heap of giant icons, the "liveness" of which strikes me as having dubious utility and which conceptually mixes apps, services and categories in a side scrolling, have to go over there to see what you have disaster. I mean, I'm really really not getting the idea that the screen is a window onto a much larger grid of tiles that you have to scroll around to even see what's there. And the zoom out overview deal? I believe that's what you call "folders", expect more unwieldy. At zoomed out size the tiny icons of the individual tiles don't provide any useful information, so really you're just looking at the thin type text labels with the extra visual clutter of little windows in a little grid.

The same problem of overview is built into the "previous app" deal that both touch and mouse use, albeit at the other end of the scale-- go over to the left edge or corner and you see your last app. You can just keep dragging stuff from the left in a continuous stream of previous apps, without knowing what you'll get (unless you happen to memorize the order that you've opened app). How is that ever very useful? Apple gets derided for not having "real multitasking" in iOS, and the modest ambitions of its app switcher, but at least you get a quick scrolling overview of your previous apps, which makes it easy to move to the one you want. Getting dealt a blind deck of cards one at a time is pointless, IMO.

Of course you can get a drop down column of some number of previous apps, but here again the Metro language dictates that they be big tiles, which takes up screen real estate without actually providing much useful information. If I want to switch to Illustrator from Safari, I would vastly prefer to just click on Illustrator's icon in the dock or doing a quick command/tab glance at what's open (in OS X) or quickly scroll through the app switcher (in iOS) than look at a visually confusing stack of tiles with whatever window I was last looking at in the app replacing an easily recognizable icon. I mean, do I need to see an actual Illustrator window in miniature to figure out where I'm trying to go?

And then I can, I guess, kind of sort of do a standard Windows thing by pinning stuff to the task bar? So I have icons down there, tiles on the left, and charms on the right. Each of which is a different way of approaching visual representations of files, services or categories and each of which mixes all three. To me that feels like several different OSes inhabiting the same screen at the same time.

For the desktop, the video suggest you "right click for more options" but only show that bringing up a task bar "all apps" icon (maybe it invoked the task bar, which for the demo just has all apps in it?), which produces something like Apple's much reviled Launcher but much worse, in that the icons are smaller and the text is that crazy thin Metro thing.

I like the dockable side apps thing, especially for touch. I like the type to search. I like the overall crispness of the design language. I just don't see how the desktop iteration, in particular, is going to go over very well. In fact, I think MS could have a real problem on its hands, although it wouldn't be the first time I've been completely wrong about the success or failure of a product.