iPhones for Print Production?

It's true many folks will resist being able to monitor print production from their phones. Being available anytime anywhere has its negative points and makes vacation time difficult. Accessibility can be annoying!

SOURCE: www.printoolz.com
Tuesday, June 30, 2009

The folks at Helios had this to say in their last newsletter:

"This year's WWDC also had a strong developer presence around the iPhone, which builds a second platform for the Apple business. Some customers say that Apple shifts too much into the consumer business. However we see this differently. The iPhone based on Mac OS X offers a tremendous platform for applications. Of course the first wave of Apps are daily utilities and games, but many business applications will follow. New capabilities like the iPhone push notifications allow server applications to inform mobile users within seconds without polling. We are confident that many businesses will benefit from future iPhone Apps in a big way."

It's true many folks will resist being able to monitor print production from their phones. Being available anytime anywhere has its negative points and makes vacation time difficult. Accessibility can be annoying!

However consider the print related apps already available at the Apple Apps store.

The New Yorker caused quite a stir when it published cover artwork created entirely with Brushes, a $4.99 iPhone app. The artist created the image on his iPhone in under and hour with no actual brushes to clean when he was done.

“Print & Share,” a $6.99 app from EuroSmarts for iPhone lets you print information from your iPhone/iPod touch to a printer connected to your computer, via network or local including emails, files, web pages, contacts and images. The app also allows you to share files with your desktop computer.

Of course iPhone OS 3.0 with its cut and paste feature and other enhancements makes the iPhone a more useful tool for editing text. Unfortunately my second generation iPhone doesn't have the hardware support needed for cut and paste.

Photo Lab is an app that allows you to apply 15 different filter effects to pix from your iPhone, with a touch of a finger. Current price for the app is $1.99.

ReaddleDocs is a complete document and file management solution for your iPhone and iPod Touch. It can catch documents from almost any possible source you can imagine: Windows, Mac or Linux computers, various web sites, email attachments, MobileMe iDisk and other online file storages and even other iPhones. All files are saved to your iPhone or iPod Touch file storage so you can enjoy reading them anywhere! The app features a document viewer, file manager, network file server, web storage client and web browser combined within single iPhone application package. Price is $4.99

Paintbook 2.5 is a 100% vector based natural media drawing, painting and sketching program rather than a bitmap paint program so there are no bitmapped jaggies. The $4.99 app offers infinite undo and infinite zoom, and allows you to rotate "paper" to any angle.

There are certainly many more apps, but the trend is clear: apps for the iPhone and other SmartPhones are becoming increasingly more capable and useful.

What's your favorite iPhone app to help you with print production? Email the author at SB