Wireless World Of Ramsey

As a professional photographer, the iPhone and iPad can be excellent tools for your business. You are probably already aware that there’s a lot of great apps out there focused on editing photos, but if we’re being real, as a professional, you’re not going to use them. However there are many other great apps that can help compliment your business, and we’ve rounded up some of our favorites.

Shoot and Sell

If you’re a photographer who offers prints and canvas to your clients, then Shoot and Sell is a fantastic app to show off how your clients’ photos will look on the wall, even their wall. Designed by by the creators of Photographer’s Wall Display Guides, Shoot & Sell is sure to help you generate more sales from each client.

• $ 79.99 – Download now

See also:

• Preveal for iPad – $ 49.99 – Download now

FolioBook Photo Portfolio

FolioBook is your digital portfolio. Forget showing your website with Safari and use FolioBook to show off your work to potential clients. It lets you create a custom branded home page and as many galleries you’d like with up to 200 images per gallery. You can also create slideshows with transitions and music. The amount of customization that FolioBook allows is incredible and really lets you create a portfolio that reflects you and your brand.

• $ 12.99 – Download now

Square

As the owner of a small business, utilizing a point of sale system like Square will simplify your life and impress your clients. People don’t like carrying around checkbooks and cash, so accepting credit cards is a vital aspect of any business, and Square is a great option that will keep your costs down and bottom line up.

• Square Register – Free – Download now
• Square Wallet – Free – Download now

See also:

• Pay anywhere – Free – Download now
• Paypal – Free – Download now

Easy Release – Model Release App

If you’re a portrait photographer, you likely have your clients sign model releases and other contracts. Easy Release is a great app that comes preinstalled with some great release forms. You can also edit them to be more tailored to your business or create your own from scratch. Each release can be branded with your business and you can email to your clients immediately after they sign them.

• $ 9.99 – Download now

PDF Expert

If you prefer to stick with the contracts and release forms you’ve already created and formatted into PDFs, you can still go paperless with PDF Expert. You can easily keep all your forms organized, and since PDF Expert supports annotation, your clients can easily sign the forms as if they were printed out in front of them.

• $ 9.99 for iPhone – Download now
• $ 9.99 for iPad – Download now

Rego

When it comes to portrait photography, location is key, and Rego will help you keep track of all your favorite spots. With each location you can add photos and make notes about the lighting and anything else you want to remember.

• Free – Download now

Things

Running a business requires a lot of various tasks, and with Photography in particular, each shoot is like an individual project each of which has a set of required tasks. Things for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, is a great trio of apps to keep you on track and organize your business. It’s a bit pricey and isn’t the prettiest of apps, but it works really well.

• $ 9.99 for iPhone – Download now
• $ 19.99 for iPad – Download now
• $ 49.99 for Mac – Download now

Trip Cubby

As a photographer, you are likely driving all over the place to different shoots, and since all those miles are tax-deductible, a solid mileage tracking app is a must. Trip Cubby is an awesome choice and makes this daunting task a lot less cumbersome and is designed with IRS compliance in mind.

Trip Cubby does not support the iPhone 5′s larger screen, and this is normally a huge turn-off for me, but it’s truly one of the best options out there.

• $ 1.99 – Download now

Quickbooks Mobile

One of the most difficult parts of running a business is keeping track of the finances. If you use Quickbooks, then the iPhone and iPad versions are a must. Having the ability to stay on top of your business finances on the go is a great convenience.

• Free for iPhone – Download now
• Free for iPad – Download now

Dropbox

To successfully run a photography business, you must keep a lot of paper work, including contracts, release forms, invoices, financial records, and of course photos. The last thing you need is for some freak accident to cause you to lose it all, and with Dropbox, you can rest assured that your files are forever safe. Many of the previously mentioned apps in this list include Dropbox integration which makes it one of the best cloud solutions out there.

• Free – Download now

Your favorite apps for professional photography?

So there you have it! iMore’s best apps for iPhone photographers. Did we miss any of your favorites? What apps do you use to shoot, edit, enhance, and show off your photos taking with your iPhone?

Sad news from Propellerhead, the makers of Reason and other excellent music software for Mac and iOS: They’re planning to stop selling and supporting ReBirth for iPhone effective June 1st, according to “Synthhead” at Synthopia.

ReBirth is the pitch-perfect iOS recreation of Propellerhead’s phenomenal “Techno Micro Composer” software that started out on the Mac – an emulation of three absolutely vital components for dance music: Roland’s TB-303 bass synth and its TR-808 and 909 drum machines. FX units and pattern sequencers let you build out entire songs.

Propellerhead still sells and supports a more expensive iPad version of ReBirth, which will continue life well after the iPhone version is put to pasture. The iPad version gives you a lot more room to work, plus it lets you export your work as an MP3 file, so you can share with folks who don’t have ReBirth installed.

That gives you a few more days to download the software if you want it. But be warned that once the deadline hits, you won’t be able to share your ReBirth creations with other iPhone users anymore. Sharing ReBirth compositions with other users was always part of the fun.

Is Propellerhead doing the right thing by focusing its attention on other software? Will you miss ReBirth for iPhone when it’s gone? Or was the iPhone screen just too small to make use of all the features?

• $ 2.99 – Download now

Turns out that spectacular Photos Every Day ad Apple released last month was just the first in a new series, as today they’ve introduced Music Every Day and it’s every bit as terrific. Like the previous spot, Music Every Day shows people using the iPhone to enjoy music. Many and different people in many and different ways.

It’s shot just as beautifully, mixed just as subtly, and highlights the iPhone as every bit the inheritor of the iPod, and cultural icon it’s become.

I might be overly predisposed to love this spot at the moment, what with all the bitter Apple-is-doomed BS of the last few months, and the cheery but forgettable ads that predated this series, but with both those things as palette cleansers, these last two ads come off especially sweet.

This is an Apple returned to their marketing savvy of old, once again at the height of their commercial powers. Hopefully they keep it up.

We knew it was coming, but now Mailbox for iPad is here! Released today into the App Store, Mailbox for iPad provides the same great email experience as the iPhone version but optimized for the larger screen. The iPad version comes by way of an update to the main app.

We’ve only been playing around with it for a short time, but first impressions are good. All the same great mail management features translate nicely to the larger screen, and swiping feels even more natural on the iPad. The added screen real estate gives you a 2-pane view, so you can scroll through your inbox while reading a message.

Also included in the update is a bunch of bug fixes, without saying which bugs they’re fixing. It is also still Gmail only for the time being folks. The download is live in the App Store now, so go get it! Then come back and tell us how you like it.

• Free – Download Now

Twitter announced Wednesday that it is offering a form of two-step authentication for security-conscious users who want to make sure that their accounts are protected from unauthorized use. The new feature is described in a post made by Jim O’Leary of Twitter’s product security team on the official Twitter blog.

Twitter’s two-step authentication process adds a verification code validation that’s sent to a mobile phone number by SMS each time you sign in to Twitter. Enter the six-digit code and you’re on your way.

This news comes on the heels of high-profile Twitter account hackings of newspapers, news television programs and news services. Victims have included the Financial Times, 60 Minutes, and perhaps most infamously, the Associated Press. The hacked AP account produced a phony tweet saying the White House had been bombed, which set off a brief stock market drop, caused by a reaction from automated stock trading systems that track news keywords.

Many of the recent high-profile Twitter hijackings have been credited to the “Syrian Electronic Army,” an anonymous group of hackers loyal to the regime of Syrian president Bashar al Assad.

Leo Laporte, Andy Ihnatko, Alex Lindsay, Chris Breen, and I talk about Tim Cook testifying to congress, new Macs made in the USA, perhaps a Retina MacBook Air, and more.

Download and subscribe: TWiT.tv

Anyone familiar with Android may well have come across LevelUp Studio. They are responsible for the excellent Twitter client Plume and the extremely popular Beautiful Widgets. Excellent apps for Android users, and now they have brought at least part of Beautiful Widgets to iOS with their new weather application; Bright Weather for iPhone.

We’re not short of weather applications on iOS, but I for one will happily welcome talented developers from other platforms into the iOS fold. It’s a crowded space, but there’s still room for a good application to stand out. So, is Bright Weather worth a look? Let’s find out.

Bright Weather pulls in its data from Accuweather, but the UI is all their own. The main view is packed with information, yet doesn’t feel at all cluttered. That’s due in part to the large weather animation that sits front and center. That’s where your current weather conditions are found: current temperature, daily highs and lows, the RealFeel and what sort of weather you’re experiencing that day. Clouds float effortlessly behind all of this, and if you’re lucky enough not to be in a dreary part of the UK, maybe even some sun.

Top of the display is your current location and time, along with the time since your last refresh. Down the bottom is a weekly forecast highlight. The menus for Bright Weather are all tucked away in a slide-out bar on the left hand side. Very Android like, but fits perfectly with the design of the app. It keeps everything tucked out of sight until you need it, and I like that. Inside the menu you’ll find the settings, along with all the more specialised weather information.

One of these categories is an hourly breakdown of conditions for your location, for the current day. You get a temperature, a general conditions, and a windspeed. Another category that’s interesting, is Lifestyle. This one gives you indicators on how suitable the weather is for a range of pursuits from mowing the lawn right up to going Skiing. Luckily, as you’ll see here, I didn’t much fancy going to the beach today as it’s not great out. That and it’s a 35 mile drive. If you’re into seeing the moon phases, you’re catered for too.

Settings are well catered for in Bright Weather. As you’d want, you can alter the units, clock, wind speed units, turn on the animations and set it to refresh on start. Nothing out of the ordinary, but all the important stuff is covered off. You can also manage your locations under a separate menu item, and removing one takes nothing more than a swipe and a tap.

So, what else is there to know? Well, Bright Weather is a free download from the App Store, with an optional in-app purchase of $ 0.99 to remove the ads. There’s currently no iPad version, though the developer has confirmed to us that one is in the works, most likely as an update to the main app with a universal solution. A couple of the menu options, like ‘More Info’ take you out of the app and into Safari to the Accuweather website. The information is good to have, but its a disjointing experience to be taken away from the main app and into Safari to access it.

The Good

• Well designed, good looking UI
• Fast refresh upon opening the app
• Lifestyle category a nice touch for quick glance information
• Animations are nice!

The Bad

• Leaving the app to go into Safari for some information
• Current lack of iPad support

The Bottom Line

Bright Weather is an excellent start at developing for iOS from a well respected Android developer. Bright Weather is great to look at, quick at getting you the latest information and free to download. The ads don’t really get in the way too much, but I liked it enough to pay to get rid pretty early on. The lack of iPad support is a tad frustrating, but we know that it’s coming, so it’s an inconvienience at the moment and nothing more. It’ll look fantastic on the iPad when it arrives. Leaving the app to go into Safari is more frustrating though, and I do wish there was a better way of handling the information it takes you away to get.

It’s a really nice app, and I’ve been thinking whether it’ll replace my current go-to, Yahoo! Weather. It’s quite possible, you get the same sort of information delivered in a slightly different, but still beautiful in its own right sort of way. I really hope LevelUp is here to develop for iOS for the long haul, we could see some great things from them.

• Free – Download Now

Tomorrow Tim Cook and the gang head to Washington to have a chat with a Senate committee investigating the possibility of tax avoidance (or evasion, depending on how you look at it) by Apple. Here’s what’s at stake.

Ahead of the testimony it will be giving before the U.S. Senate tomorrow, Apple (via The Loop) offered up a nicely detailed 17-page PDF document with all sorts of good information inside. The most interesting number is this: Apple pays $ 1 out of every $ 40 of income tax collected by the US Treasury. Isn’t it incredible to think that one company is responsible for 2.5% of all US income tax collection?

Despite Apple being the single largest US taxpayer, Senators Carl Levin and John McCain are accusing Apple of establishing “the Holy Grail of tax avoidance”. You can read the entire argument made by the Senate subcommittee on the Financial Times website.

While this stuff is pretty dry reading for most tech people, I find it interesting because I spent over a decade as a stock analyst and I was always fascinated by how some companies managed to achieve very low tax rates … using perfectly legal structures.

The U.S. Government’s issue with Apple stems from two arguments relating to Apple’s arrangements in Ireland, a well known low cost country. Let’s see if I can break this whole thing down into something easy to understand.

Here’s the first major item as described by Senate:

Apple’s cost sharing agreement (CSA) with its offshore affiliates in Ireland is primarily a conduit for shifting billions of dollars in income from the United States to a low tax jurisdiction. From 2009 to 2012, the CSA facilitated the shift of $ 74 billion in worldwide sales income away from the United States to Ireland where Apple has negotiated a tax rate of less than 2%.

Plain English? The government doesn’t like the idea that Apple’s Irish subsidiary is treated as a cost center to the US operations, resulting in less US profit and more Irish profit. Apple’s comments regarding this structure are pretty compelling. They’ve had a cost sharing arrangement in place with the Irish subsidiary since 1980. It sounds like the Irish operations are responsible for paying for part of Apple’s US-based R&D efforts, and in return it claims ownership of a certain percentage of the intellectual property that comes out of that R&D. Apple says, “These agreements were sanctioned by the US Congress in 1986 and are expressly authorized by US Treasury regulations.”

Furthermore, Apple points out that these cost sharing arrangements benefit the US because it keeps high-cost R&D jobs in the domestic market. In Apple’s own words, “Some commentators have urged eliminating these types of cost sharing agreements, but doing so would harm American workers and the broader US economy. If cost sharing agreements were no longer available, many US multinational companies would likely move high-paying American R&D jobs overseas.”

I don’t know how other readers will interpret these documents, but I think Apple presented a much stronger argument.

The second major item the Senate is focused on:

Offshore Entities With No Declared Tax Jurisdiction. Apple has established and directed tens of billions of dollars to at least two Irish affiliates, while claiming neither is a tax resident of any jurisdiction, including its primary offshore holding company, Apple Operations International (AOI), and its primary intellectual property rights recipient, Apple Sales International (ASI). AOI, which has no employees, has no physical presence, is managed and controlled in the United States, and received $ 30 billion of income between 2009 and 2012, has paid no corporate income tax to any national government for the past five years.

What’s this mean? The US government is saying that Apple funnels profits to Irish subsidiaries and then doesn’t pay any tax because the Irish subsidiary isn’t a US resident, based on US tax law, but isn’t an Irish resident either, based on Irish tax law. The suggestion the government is making here is one of, “Well, if you’re not a resident of any particular tax jurisdiction, you must be skipping out on taxes!”

Again, Apple puts forth a very straight-forward argument in explaining its setup. Apple Operations International (AOI) is a holding company incorporated in Ireland. Being incorporated in Ireland, that corporation is not a US taxpayer. End of story. It also just so happens that because of Irish law (which probably requires a certain number of employees or physical presence) it is not an Irish taxpayer either. So AOI doesn’t pay tax. But that’s missing the point. AOI is a holding company. All it does is collect payments from other Apple subsidiaries (payments that have already been taxed) and manage the money from a central location. The money AOI collects in the form of inter-company dividends has already been taxed.

Putting this in simpler terms, let’s say you had 3 separate companies in Ireland. Each company makes a profit and pays required taxes. Wouldn’t it be simpler to dump all of that money into one holding company so you can manage the investment of this money in an efficient manner? Of course. That’s what Apple is doing. Oh, and that money is managed by US people, held in US banks.

The bottom line is the US Senate Subcommittee is bitching about Apple supposedly not paying enough taxes, despite the fact that Apple pays $ 1 out of every $ 40 of income tax collected by the US treasury, and despite the fact that the US is responsible for establishing all of the laws that Apple is now abiding by. Furthermore, the Subcommittee is putting its hands where they don’t belong. The Irish subsidiary AOI is clearly not a US resident for tax purposes, since it is incorporated in Ireland. That is where the argument should end. It is irrelevant to the US whether or not the Irish government allows Apple to consider this entity a non-resident of Ireland. Maybe Ireland encourages this practise, making it an ideal place to incorporate holding companies. But regardless, it’s none of the US Treasury’s business so long as it is not a US resident corporation. Newsflash, Senate … you don’t get to control Irish law. You control your own law and the law is pretty clear. If AOI is incorporated in Ireland, it’s not a US taxpayer. End of story. Whatever the Iaw says about taxation in Ireland are none of your damn business.

Back in 1999 my father encouraged me to read a book called “The Soverign Individual”. As per the Amazon description, “In The Sovereign Individual, Davidson and Rees-Mogg explore the greatest economic and political transition in centuries — the shift from an industrial to an information-based society. This transition, which they have termed “the fourth stage of human society,” will liberate individuals as never before, irrevocably altering the power of government.”

Today the U.S. government is under pressure to collect more tax revenue. They’re fighting information-based global companies like Apple who have organized themselves, legally, in the best interests of shareholders.

This is a battle the U.S. government will lose, and they better start looking at alternative ways to solve their tax revenue problems. Picking a fight with their biggest taxpayer seems utterly stupid.

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It’s been a busy, busy week on iMore, and this time the iOS headlines have been dominated by news from ostensibly competing conferences — BlackBerry Live and Google I/O. The main conversation topic this week was cross platform messaging from BlackBerry and Google both, though also making the headlines was Google’s answer to Game Center, Amazon taking on iTunes on the desktop, and the App Store finally hitting 50 billion downloads. Read on for the recap!

The big story early in the week came from BlackBerry Live in Orlando. While we may have expected some news of the enterprise kind that affected iOS devices, we weren’t quite prepared for what came next. CEO Thorsten Heins took to the stage and announced that their signature messaging tool, BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) would be coming to iOS this summer. Some see it as too little, too late, but there seems to be a healthy early interest in the product. We’ll be looking forward to putting it through its paces later this year. It also now means, as Rene pointed out, that each competing platform owner now makes apps for iOS. Apple by contrast, makes squarely nothing for any of its competitors.

• BlackBerry Messenger coming to iOS this summer
• Every major mobile competitor makes apps for iOS

Messaging was the talk of the town over in San Francisco too, at Google I/O. Much-rumored leading up to the conference, Google debuted their new, cross-platform, Google+ Hangouts messaging service, now available on iOS as well as Android and the web. Hangouts seems to amalgamate the existing Hangouts experience of group video chat, with the existing Google Talk instant messaging service. Early impressions are good, but for the complete run down be sure to check out Leanna’s full review.

• Google+ Hangouts for iPhone and iPad review

Also coming out of Google I/O was news of an iPad version of Google Maps heading our way this year, updated Google Now cards and Google Play game services. Google’s answer to Game Center, the game services API’s are going cross-platform and are available to developers of iOS games too. Our own Peter Cohen gave his take on Google’s new services following the announcement, so be sure to give it a read.

• Google Maps for iPad, new features coming this summer
• Google takes on Game Center with Google Play game services

The third competing platform announcing a move to Apple products this week was Amazon. Until now, Amazon’s Cloud Player music service has only been available via the web browser, but the launch of a desktop version takes on Apple’s own iTunes. Initially, Cloud Player is only available for Windows PC’s, but there is a version for the Mac in the works. This is great news for Amazon MP3 Store customers however, as getting your music onto your Mac and into iTunes isn’t the most user friendly experience as it stands.

• Amazon taking the fight to iTunes on the desktop with new Cloud Player client

One piece of big Apple news this week, was the App Store finally reaching its milestone 50 billion downloads. The lucky winner was one Brandon Ashmore, who downloaded Say The Same Thing to win the $ 10,000 App Store gift card. Congratulations to Brandon!

• Apple announces 50 billion app downloads. For real

Elsewhere this week, the iMore staff gave us their thoughts on a variety of subjects. Leanna gave us a sterling round up of the best photography apps for the iPhone, while Peter weighed the pros and cons of all three (!) of Apple’s current 13-inch MacBook offerings, and also gave us the arguments against touchscreen Macs . All excellent items well worth reading if you missed them the first time round.

• Best apps for iPhone photographers
• Battle of the 13-inch MacBooks: Which one wins?
• Time for touchscreen Macs? Hell no!

Rene, meanwhile, is still pining on a better way to surface files on iOS. Four years of that and counting. Will Apple finally put him out of his misery?

• iOS 7 and my continued, unrequited desire for a Files.app!

There you have them, the best of iMore for week. What stood out for you in everything that went on in the last 7 days? What do you still want to comment about? Have at it below!