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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.

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Daily Update for January 24, 2012 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 24 Jan 2012 21:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple CEO Tim Cook has scheduled a "Town Hall" meeting with Apple's employees to "review our record-setting results and discuss some exciting new things going on at Apple." The meeting will take place at 10 AM Pacific on January 25, and those employees unable to attend in person will be able to watch the event remotely via Apple's internal AppleWeb service.

It should be stressed that it is virtually certain no product announcements will be made at this town hall meeting. Past meetings that Steve Jobs led focused on the company's overall strategy, and they were occasionally an arena for some choice words about Apple's competitors from the former CEO. This latest town hall meeting will likely focus on congratulating Apple's employees for the phenomenal results of the last fiscal quarter.

The event was brought to 9to5 Mac's notice barely 18 hours before it's scheduled to take place, so it seems to have been assembled on quite short notice. This isn't unusual, however; previous town hall meetings within Apple following the introduction of the iPad and shortly before the original iPhone's launch happened on similarly short notice.

Tim Cook to hold January 25 'Town Hall' meeting with Apple employees originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 24 Jan 2012 21:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In its recent conference call discussing its record-smashing financial results, Apple revealed that its cloud syncing service, iCloud, currently has 85 million users signed up. iCloud debuted alongside the iPhone 4S and iOS 5 as a free-of-charge replacement for Apple's old MobileMe service, and its growth over the past three months has apparently been explosive; during the same period, iCloud signups exceeded unit sales of Macs, iPods, iPhones, and iPads combined.

Apple has called iCloud part of its "strategy for the next decade," and as an iCloud user myself I can see why. The cloud syncing service runs much faster and much more seamlessly than MobileMe ever did, and it's very hard to argue with the price: $0 gets your email, calendars, contacts, and documents synced across all your devices with almost zero effort.

iCloud now has 85 million users originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 24 Jan 2012 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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During its earnings conference call, Apple confirmed the company is sitting on a treasure chest of US$97.6 billion. This stack of cash is steadily growing, up from $81.6 billion at the end of the September quarter. With all that money in the bank, you can't help but wonder... what's Apple going to with it all?

Rather than sitting idly in the bank, Apple said it's "actively discussing the best use of its cash," which could be a hint it's looking at strategic acquisitions. Neither CEO Tim Cook nor CFO Peter Oppenheimer would comment specifically on any acquisitions or what other plans Apple had for this cash. The only straight answer was that Apple, in the past, has spent its cash wisely and will continue to spend it wisely in the future.

Apple has a long history of quietly acquiring companies and adding their talent to Apple's hardware and software teams. In past few years, the company has acquired mapping company Placebase, 3D-map maker C3 Technologies and online music service LaLa. It recently scooped up voice control software Siri and flash memory maker Anobit.

If Apple does use some of its reserves to acquire new technology, which company will be next? Besides improving its Numbers app, what else could Apple do with its money?

What's Apple going to do with $97 billion in cash? originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 24 Jan 2012 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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During the most recent conference call discussing Apple's quarterly results, Apple's executives did something highly unusual and divulged actual sales figures for the Apple TV. Responding to a question about Apple's future plans for the TV-centric device, Apple dodged the question (as is typical when it's asked to speculate on unreleased products), and said it still classifies the Apple TV as a "hobby."

That hobby still turns out to be pretty lucrative for Apple, though. Apple sold 2.8 million units during the 2011 fiscal year -- a low number compared to sales of its other devices, but the US$99 product still added $280 million or so in revenue for the year. Nothing to sneeze at. According to Tim Cook, however, Apple's sales of the device for its most recent quarter totaled 1.4 million, so even though the device hasn't been updated in quite some time, demand for it remains steady.

Apple is in a very interesting position where it can consider a device that brought in $140 million in revenue over three months a "hobby." Cook and the other execs on the call gave no indication that the Apple TV would be updated in the near future, so the Apple HDTV remains 2012's Little Rumor that Could.

Apple TV: $140 million worth sold in three months, but still a 'hobby' originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 24 Jan 2012 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As part of today's earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook said he believes tablets will eventually eclipse PCs.

"I believe there will come a day when tablet market by unit is larger than the PC market," he said.

Cook emphasized that Apple would continue to be innovative in the tablet market, and that people want to do multiple things with them. He added that Apple does not see tablets such as iPads being in the same category as devices such as the basic Kindle and Nook. "People who want an iPad will not settle," Cook said.

A recent report from the Pew Research Center shows that the number of adult Americans who own tablets leaped from 10 percent to 19 percent over the holiday season. While Pew cited the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet being behind the ownership surge, Apple selling 15.43 million iPads in the previous quarter certainly contributed to this as well.

As Apple continues to do more with the iPad, and whatever successors it has, it's not hard to believe that Cook's predictions will come to pass within the next few years. (It's already coming true for Apple -- the iPad outsold all Macs combined by nearly three to one last quarter. --Ed)

Tim Cook: Tablet market will eventually exceed PC market originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 24 Jan 2012 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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From Bittbox: Today's grab bag of textures contains a couple old book covers and three other various textures. Each one will add a different dimension to your designs. (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

A nice set of 5 free Photoshop brushes from Bittbox: This collection of five subtle hi-res fabric brushes will add some natural surfacing to your work. Each brush is 2500×2500. (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

Shutterstock blog has a Photoshop tutorial that shows youhow to create a surreal "living" room with blue-sky walls, a turbulent sea floor, and an antique clock sun. It's a good way to also learn how to use textures. In step 3 you add textures to the walls to give them a grungy feel. And so I've included the latest from Bittbox as well: 5 free hi res wooden board textures. (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

Perfect Layers 2 is a fast, easy and affordable way to create layered files outside of Adobe Photoshop. Perfect Layers is an application that allows photographers to combine multiple images from Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, Apple Aperture, or any application, into a single-layered file. As photographers do more of their work in Lightroom or Aperture, Perfect Layers has evolved to support these changing workflows. Perfect Layers 2 is available as standalone product for $69.95 and as part of the Perfect Photo Suite 6 for $299.95. When purchasing at the onOne website, use our discount code - PSSPPT06 - for an instant 10% discount on all products, including upgrades. Perfect Layers can be used to blend multiple exposures together or build composite images. New capabilities have been added to version 2, including a Retouch Brush to remove blemishes and dust spots, a file browser that quickly finds and provides access to the right files, and flexible preview options that show changes being made side by side with the original image. Perfect Layers was developed and designed along with industry thought leader Scott Kelby as an application that would deliver the power and benefits of layered images to users working primarily in Lightroom or Aperture. The simplicity of Perfect Layers and the tools provided allow photographers to be able to quickly do what they want to without having to wade through dozens of tools they will never use. To further streamline workflows, Perfect Layers can be used as a standalone application and has been integrated into the new Perfect Photo Suite 6. OnOne has been making excellent plugins for years and continues to lead the pack with their innovative and friendly user interfaces. Plugins are meant to reduce the work load, and Perfect Layers is going to be a huge time-saver for professional photographers who need the extra power of layers to edit quickly and efficiently, as they are often under severe deadlines. And Perfect Layers will also open up the door to more creative endeavors — including stunning visual effects and complex photo montages. Key benefits of Perfect Layers 2 include: Retouch Brush: Remove dust spots, blemishes and other distractions in your image quickly and easily with the new Retouch Brush. Quick touch-ups and edits to your image are made very simple with this new tool. File Browser: Quickly find the images you want with the visual File Browser, which provides a filmstrip or light table style view of a folder. Several browser tabs can be opened at once so that multiple elements for a project can be found and opened easily. Flexible Preview Options: See a real-time preview of the changes you are making to an image side by side with your original image before you apply the changes. There are five different ways to view the mask to make adjustments and judge quality. Masking Brush: Control how much of each layer is visible with the Masking Brush created originally for PhotoTools 2.6 and FocalPoint 2. Similar to using a layer mask, the Masking Brush can be used to reveal or hide selected areas of a layer. The layer masks created by the Masking Brush are non-destructive and can be re-edited with Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. If you use a Wacom pressure sensitive tablet, you can even control the brush size or opacity by how hard you press while painting the mask. Masking Bug: Create gradient masks for making vignettes and graduated filter effects with the Masking Bug from PhotoTools 2.6. As with the Masking Brush, the Masking Bug is nondestructive and can even be re-edited with Photoshop or Photoshop Elements later if desired. Blending Modes: Bring the power and creativity of blending modes to Lightroom and Aperture with Perfect Layers. Control brightness, contrast and color of your images and adjust opacity to control the strength of the effect as you blend layers to get amazing and highly stylized effects in your image. Color Fill Layer: Create new layers filled with a solid color. Perfect Layers includes presets that simulate common color correction and black and white conversion filters. The built-in masking tools can be used to selectively place and control the strength of these color fill effects. Additionally, the Color blend mode is especially useful with Color Fill Layers to give images a special effect. Perfect Layers Requirements Operating System — Mac OS X 10.5 or 10.6, Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7. Optional Host Application — Adobe Lightroom 2 or 3, Apple Aperture 2.1 or 3. Processor — 2 GHz or faster Intel Core 2 Duo or equivalent. Display — OpenGL 2.0 Capable video card with 256 MB of dedicated VRAM at 1280x800 and millions of colors or higher. Perfect Layers Online Video Tutorials You can fnd a collection of online video tutorials for Perfect Layers at the onOne site. Topics include: Getting Started, Supported Files, Perfect Layers and Lightroom, Perfect Layers and Aperture, Blending Duplicate Images, Exposure Blending, Swapping Heads, Changing Skies, Texture Blending, Blending to Control Color and Contrast, Using Color Fill Layers, Combining Multiple Lights, Focus Stacking, Creative Composites. (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

This week Deke shares one of his most asked-for techniques, how to turn an ordinary portrait into a line drawing. It seems that when people encounter wonderful photo-realistic line drawings out in the wild, they immediately equate said photo-realism with Photoshop. And, if nature didn’t endow you with the ability to draw, then applying some careful Photoshop effects to a well-chosen photo is indeed the way to go. In this week’s free movie, you’ll see how to take a photographed portrait, apply the Photocopy filter and then adjust and finesse your drawing with the Levels command, Gaussian Blur, a little hand-work (you’re calling it a “drawing” after all), and finally some advanced layer effects. The result is a technique that can work on any well-defined portrait. For example, check out how this unsuspecting photo booth poser in the upper image can become the proto-Nagel woman you see in the lower image below (while doing some fairly wonderful things to my chalkboard in the process). For members of lynda.com, Deke has an exclusive movie in the Online Training Library this week called Adding a crosshatch shading pattern that really sells the illustration effect. By the time you go through Deke’s meticulous steps, you’ll take this dramatic photo on the left and turn it into the deadly (but awesome) line drawing on the right: You can get a free 7-day trial to the lynda.com Online Training Library. A credit card is required to ensure uninterrupted access to lynda.com, if you choose to remain a member after your free trial ends. There is no long-term commitment required, and you can cancel any time. The free trial allows access to over 60,000 video tutorials instantly. (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

From lynda.com: Earlier this week, Adobe released a public beta version of Lightroom 4 for Windows and Mac. To help you get up to speed with what’s new, we’ve published Photoshop Lightroom 4 Beta Preview with Chris Orwig. a free 2-hour tour of Lightroom 4′s new features, including its enhanced photo- and video-editing features, its ability to tag your photos to a map, and its Blurb book-layout module. And because free is a very good price, we’ve made the entire course free, meaning, you don’t have to be a lynda.com member in order to watch it. The Lightroom 4 beta software expires at the end of March, and when it does, we’ll retire this course. You can see all the free Lightroom 4 video training tutorials here. 1 - Working with Video (30m 20s) Video playback and trimming 06m 31s Editing the color and tone of a video file 06m 13s Organizing video files in a Lightroom database 05m 24s Capturing a still image from a video file 02m 49s Exporting or publishing a video to your hard drive 05m 23s Publishing videos to Flickr and Facebook 04m 00s 2 - Creating a Custom Book Layout (19m 11s) Overview of the new Book module 05m 55s Creating and customizing a layout 03m 13s Editing pages 06m 50s Exporting and ordering books 03m 13s 3 - Introducing the Map Module (14m 03s) Overview of the new Map module 03m 43s Tagging images with locations 04m 25s Creating saved locations 05m 55s 4 - Develop Module - Image Editing Improvements (39m 09s) Overview of the new Develop module basic controls 07m 28s Using the new Develop module basic controls 03m 40s Working with clarity 02m 30s Making RGB tone curve adjustments 05m 19s Overview of the adjustment brush improvements 05m 06s Using the Adjustment Brush and Graduated Filter 03m 32s Fixing chromatic abberation and white balance 02m 21s Soft Proof reinvented 09m 13s 5 - Other noteworthy improvements (14m 24s) E-mailing photos from within Photoshop Lightroom 05m 54s Improvements in Fast Load and Lossy DNG 07m 19s Using the Module Walkthrough help feature 01m 11s See more videos on our Lightroom 4 Tutorial and Free Download Page. (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

Here's a simple and effective tutorial from Photoshop Daily that shows how to create a rich black and white conversion using the Channel Mixer adjustment. There are quite a few techniques you can call upon when it comes to converting an image to monochrome. One of our favourite methods includes using the Channel Mixer adjustment layer. This is especially useful if the Black and White adjustment isn’t part of your inventory. The Channel Mixer gives control over the individual RGB values, allowing for the finest tweaks to certain areas of the image for emphasis. Read full tutorial... (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

From Bittbox, a free set of 4 subtle rust brushes for Photoshop. (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

I really like this free set of 10 Moon Brushes from PE at iDeasplayer.com: As always they are free for both personal and commercial use. I really hope yo'’ll like them. Enjoy! (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

Lens Effects simulates a variety of camera filter and lens effects that you can virtually apply to your image. These effects are used to correct or enhance characteristics of your image. Here are samples of some of the filters and lens effects that illustrate how they will change and enhance your images... (Order Lens Effects from Topaz Labs and use our coupon code PHOTOSHOPSUPPORT for an instant 15% discount.) (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

Adobe has released Lightroom 4 beta for Windows and Mac, and it is available as a free public download from Adobe Labs. Here is an overview of Lightroom 4 from Mark Galer. (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

It’s all well and good to use Deke's impeccable masking techniques to meticulously isolate objects—like, say, this week's car—and set them down on new backgrounds. But the fact is, if you don't bring the shadow of your object along for the ride, your subject is never going to look like it really belongs there. That’s why in this week’s free movie Deke shows you how to capture the shadow under an object—like, say, this week’s car—and prepare it for use in any new background. The technique centers around the Calculations command (don’t worry, Photoshop does all the math) and some standard masking clean-up techniques. Check out the difference in these before (plopped down without a shadow) and after (with the shadow intact) images: Don’t leave your transported objects floating out in space, ground them in reality by including their shadows. You can get a free 7-day trial to the lynda.com Online Training Library. A credit card is required to ensure uninterrupted access to lynda.com, if you choose to remain a member after your free trial ends. There is no long-term commitment required, and you can cancel any time. After signing up for the free 7-day trial to the lynda.com Online Training Library you'll gain access to over 60,000 video tutorials instantly. Subscriptions to the lynda.com Online Training Library provide anytime access to tens of thousands of video tutorials covering Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, web design, digital imaging, 3D, digital video, animation, and many other topics. View free video clips. (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

I've heard a lot of good things about Pixelmator and right now you can get it at 60% off. The list price is $59.99. The just announced sale price is $19.99. Pixelmator is an easy-to-use, fast and powerful image editing program that has everything you need to enhance, edit and transform your photos. Made for the Mac, Pixelmator takes advantage of built-in iPhoto support and one-click access to iSight. Use layer-based image editing, color management, filters and special effects to quickly achieve impressive imagery. 130+ Filters and Special Effects See results in real-time—choose from standard filters such as blur, sharpen and distort, as well as many unique filters like comic-style halftones, title, kaleidoscope and thermal camera. Layer-Based Image Editing Stack portions of your image on top of one another and quickly create layers from photos, selections and more. You can also blend layers, change layer opacity and add layer masks to hide portions of layers. Add images as layers via drag-and-drop. Color Correction Tools 16+ color correction tools help you make quick corrections to your images with Auto Enhance, Levels and Curves. Adjust hue, saturation, exposure, brightness, contrast and more. Add Text to Your Images Create editable text layers and use the type tool to create your own invitations and logos. Select, Paint and Retouch Tools One-click iSight® support takes your computer and adds it as a layer in Pixelmator. Access your iPhoto® Library, events, albums, Smart Albums and Pictures folder with the built-in Photo Browser. Supports Spotlight™, ColorSync®, Quick Look and many other Mac-only technologies, and takes advantage of Core Image and OpenGL®. Built-in Automator actions let your quickly enhance, resize and transform images with batch processing. Supports Popular File Formats Export to 100+ file formats including PSD, JPEG, TIFF, PNG, GIF, PICT, BMP and PDF. Also supports Adobe Photoshop files with layers. System Requirements Macintosh:Mac OS X 10.5 or higher, with full support of Snow Leopard; Power Mac G5, iMac G5, or Intel Processor; 512MB RAM or greater (1GB recommended); 1GB hard disk space; Core Image supported graphics card recommended; Some features require iLife (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

From Bittbox: These five hi-res wood textures come from looking down at a tree stump. The line detail in these is really interesting. Each texture is 4500×3000 (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)