When Apple unveiled iCloud last summer and announced that it would replace MobileMe, much of the debate revolved around the MobileMe services which didn’t have a replacement in iCloud. One of those was the ability to post photographs online from iPhoto and Aperture.

That may be about to change. The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) reports that Apple ‘is preparing a big upgrade to its online service iCloud that includes new photo-sharing features.’ Some of those features, says Wired, will ‘resemble the photo-sharing app and service Instagram.’

Among other new iCloud features, according to the Journal, will be the ability to synchronise notes and reminders with iCloud.com. Also rumoured for inclusion at WWDC, according to The Guardian are iOS 6, ‘proprietary maps, Siri APIs for developers and a revamped App Store.

Online shopping is all very well, but plenty of buyers still want to see and touch the kit before they make a decision. As if to prove high-street retailing is alive and well, Apple dealer Stormfront will open its 17th store (yep, seventeenth) in St Catherine’s Walk, Carmarthen at 11am on Saturday 12 May.

The latest store is the retailer’s first in Wales, and to celebrate there’s a 10% discount on any Mac bought or ordered on the day. Stormfront will also be offering its popular ‘Personal Trainer’ service free of charge with any Mac purchase to help customers get the most from their computer.

Stormfront has been around since November 2007, when it opened its first store in Plymouth. Over the next four years it grew into the largest Apple Premium Reseller and Apple Authorised Service Provider in the UK, with stores from Cornwall to Scotland. More details at www.stormfront.co.uk.

Adobe Creative Suite is the most comprehensive bundle of pro apps available for the Mac, so a new release is always big news. This time it’s even bigger. Not only does Creative Suite 6 bring substantial updates to almost all the major components, but it comes with a new way to buy your essential software: Creative Cloud.

To get all the apps in Adobe’s Master Collection – covering print, web, interactive and video – would normally set you back over £2500. But you can now subscribe to Creative Cloud instead for just under £47 a month. Does it work out cheaper? That depends on which apps you actually use, and whether you already own a version to upgrade from, and how often you plan to upgrade, and which way the wind is blowing – we’ll help you with the calculations in our article. But it means anyone who works in the creative industries for a living, even part-time, can now afford to invest in a whole range of the very best tools.

So whatever your digital discipline, don’t miss our 28-page review of Creative Suite 6 in MacUser Vol 28 No 10, on sale now.

Also on test in this issue is FileMaker Pro 12, the new version of the Mac’s favourite database. Microsoft doesn’t make one for OS X, so if you’re an Office user this is the bit you’re missing – and if you use your Mac in any area of business it’s one of the most powerful tools you can add. But there are big changes in this release. Has the Apple-owned company got it right?

Elsewhere in our reviews section, there’s a new UK-made aid for every Illustrator user; an audiophile add-on for any Mac; a 23in monitor for under £150; and the much-anticipated Mac release of first-person role-playing action adventure Deus Ex: Human Revolution. We try two colour lasers for under £300 to see which is really better value, and a cartoonist tests Paper, the new iPad app that makes sketching a cinch.

In Praktik, our mag-within-a-mag for creative inspiration, appreciate the eye-popping panoramas of vector illustrator Rod Hunt; give your iPad publications a twist; geotag your photos; make InDesign and Pages work harder; and ogle the new generation of affordable (ish) super-resolution video cameras.

Remember, MacUser comes out every two weeks, so get it now before we make you another one. Find us at newsagents, supermarkets and bookshops; on your doorstep when you SUBSCRIBE NOW to receive three issues of Britain’s favourite Mac magazine for just £1, for iOS in the App Store, or on your Mac or iPad. Missed a crucial issue? Find it online here.

And finally, remember to send a picture of your workspace at its most gorgeous to Desk of the Month, mailbox@macuser.co.uk – you could win a beautifully made Just Mobile accessory

Apple offered 100 million yuan (£9.8 million) earlier this week to settle its trademark dispute with Chinese firm, Proview International Holdings over the iPad name.

The Beijing Times reports that the offer was made to secure the right to use the name in China, but Proview declined. It is believed to want 400 million yuan (£39.2 million) in order to pay off creditors.

On Tuesday, a federal judge approved an Apple motion to dismiss a suit brought by Proview in the US, ruling that the argument should be resolved in Hong Kong. The US lawsuit asserted that by using a proxy company based in the UK, IP Application Development, to negotiate with a Taiwanese subsidiary of Proview, Apple acted ‘with oppression, fraud, and/or malice.’ That negotiation resulted in IP Application Development buying the right to use the iPad name in China on behalf of Apple for £35,000.

A court in China ruled last year that the deal with Proview Electronics Co., a Taiwanese subsidiary of PIH, to licence the iPad trademark in China was invalid because the TAiwanese company did not own the name. The ‘iPad’ trademark is owned by Proview Technology (Shenzhen) Co., a separate wholly-owned subsidiary of PIH.

Proview International Holdings is in serious financial trouble. It has been run by administrators since 2009. And its shares were suspended on the Hong Kong stock exchange in 2010 after it defaulted on payments to creditors and suppliers and failed to publish financial results. It has been warned that it faces delisting if it doesn’t publish results and demonstrate sufficient working capital soon.

In a letter to Proview founder, Yang Rongshan, Apple claimed that Proview had breached principles of good faith and dealing by misrepresenting the facts of the case to the press and warned that it could take legal action.

As the deadline for the end of MobileMe fast approaches, Apple has extended its offer of 20GB of free iCloud storage until 30 September.

Apple announced last summer that MobileMe would cease on 30 June this year and originally offered subscribers to iCloud who held a MobileMe account 20GB of storage until 30 June. As that date gets closer, Apple seems to be trying to sweep up those users who have yet to switch. After 30 September, iCloud subscribers can choose to pay £28 to keep 20GB storage for a year, or revert to the 5GB provided free of charge.

Last month Apple offered free copies of OS X Snow Leopard to MobileMe subscribers who were still running Leopard. iCloud needs Lion in order to operate, but by offering users a free copy of Snow Leopard, Apple hopes it will encourage them to update to Lion from the Mac App Store. Leopard can’t be updated directly to Lion.

When Apple unveiled MobilMe last June, then CEO Steve Jobs admitted that MobileMe had not been the company’s ‘finest hour.’ Since then iCloud has attracted 125 million subscribers, according to figures divulged by CFO Peter Oppenheimer at Apple’s quarterly earnings call last month.

If you are a MobileMe subscriber and want to know how to replace those services not included in iCloud, or want to know how to make the transition, MacUser has all the info you need in the current issue.

When Apple launched the new iPad a few weeks ago, it kept the iPad 2 on sale, and cut the price to £329. It was a smart move and one of the factors which helped the iPad increase its share of the tablet market significantly last quarter.

It was assumed that the iPad 2 on sale now was identical to the one which has been selling for the last year. But a clever piece of detective work from the guys at Anandtech has shown that not to be the case.

The newly manufactured versions of the iPad 2, or at least some batches of them, feature a 32nm A5 system-on-a-chip, rather than a 45nm SOC. The main benefit of that for us is substantially longer battery life.

There’s another benefit, however, for Apple – the ability to test the 32nm SOC on a relatively low volume product.

Apple decided to try out Samsung’s 32nm HK+MG process on the A5 used in the 3rd generation Apple TV and some of the new iPad 2s. The former is a relatively low volume product for Apple, while the latter still moves in significant quantities. To deal with that fact, Apple is continuing to ship the original 45nm iPad 2,1 alongside the new 32nm iPad 2,4. Any hiccups in Samsung’s production of the A5 and there are still more than enough iPad 2,1s to go around. The risk of moving to 32nm is effectively mitigated, while the learnings Apple gains from building the 32nm A5 will pay off later this year as Apple ramps up production of a 32nm SoC for use in the next iPhone.

How do you know if you’ve got a 32nm iPad 2? Sadly, there’s no way to tell other than to run battery life tests, so you can’t specify it when you buy.

The Kindle Fire’s position as the best-selling Android tablet and the only real challenger to the iPad was short-lived, according to new figures from IDC.

The numbers for the first calendar quarter of 2012 show that while the iPad increased its share of the market from 54.7% to 68%, the Kindle Fire slumped from 16.8% to just 4%.

‘Apple reasserted its dominance in the market this quarter, driving huge shipment totals at a time when all but a few Android vendors saw their numbers drop precipitously after posting big gains during the holiday buying season,’ said Tom Mainelli, research director, Mobile Connected Devices at IDC.

Samsung re-took its position as best of the also-rans, while Lenovo slotted in behind Amazon. Barnes and Noble’s Nook was fifth.

IDC commented that while Android sales dropped off in the first quarter, the future looks more promising as manufacturers like Samsung and Lenovo get their acts together. ‘It seems some of the mainstream Android vendors are finally beginning to grasp a fact that Amazon, B&N, and Pandigital figured out early on: Namely, to compete in the media tablet market with Apple, they must offer their products at notably lower price points,’ Mainelli said.

In addition to improvements from Samsung and Lenovo, new tablets from Amazon and Google should improve Android’s share of the market, explained Mianelli. ‘We expect a new, larger-screened device from Amazon at a typically aggressive price point, and Google will enter the market with an inexpensive, co-branded ASUS tablet designed to compete directly on price with Amazon’s Kindle Fire.’

The Advertising Standards Authority is not satisfied with Apple’s marketing of the new iPad, despite assurances from the company that it had removed the term ’4G’ from its website and from a promotional video.

According to the BBC, a letter from the ASA to one person who had complained that Apple’s use of the term 4G was mis-leading said ‘Apple “have advised us that no further reference to the 4G capabilities of the iPad will be made on their UK website”.’

That was enough to satisfy the ASA, but the term is still being used on Apple’s site, albeit with a footnote explaining that 4G LTE capabilities are not supported in the UK. Apple has so far refused to comment but according to the BBC, a source at the company ‘insisted that no undertaking was given to remove all references to 4G from its site.’

There are are currently no 4G LTE networks in the UK, but even when they’re up and running, the current iPad won’t operate on them. That’s because it uses the 700MHz and 2100MHz spectra, and not the 800MHz and 2600MHz spectra which will be used in the UK for LTE.

Apple offered full refunds to customers in Australia after some customers complained that it didn’t work on the LTE networks in that country.

The UK’s five biggest internet service providers have been told by the High Court they must block access to filesharing website The Pirate Bay.

Mr Justice Arnold ruled in February that the site breached UK copyright laws and today’s decision means that Virgin Media, Everything Everywhere, Sky, TalkTalk, and O2 must begin blocking it immediately. BT was given an extension after requesting more time to consider how to implement a block.

Opponents of censorship were critical of the move. Jim Killock of The Open Rights Group said: ‘Blocking the Pirate Bay is pointless and dangerous. It will fuel calls for further, wider and even more drastic calls for Internet censorship of many kinds, from pornography to extremism.’

‘Internet censorship is growing in scope and becoming easier. Yet it never has the effect desired. It simply turns criminals into heroes.’

The order to block The Pirate Bay was requested by the BPI and other representatives of rights owners, who claim that the site generated £1.8m in advertising revenue last year from its 30 million users worldwide.

Robert Ashcroft, chief executive of PRS for Music said: ‘We’re delighted the high court has sent another clear signal to damaging sites like the Pirate Bay that they will be blocked.’

Tim Cook has ruled an Apple product which would combine the MacBook Air and the iPad. ‘You can converge a toaster and a refrigerator, but those things are probably not going to be pleasing to the user,’ said Cook in response to a question from analyst, Tony Sacconaghi during the conference call which followed the announcement of Apple’s second quarter results.

Sacconaghi asserted that PC manufacturers were working ‘towards trying to combine the PC and tablet experience,’ thanks partly to Windows 8 and its Metro layer, which is designed to be used as a touch-screen user interface. ‘Isn’t it realistic to think in a couple of years we’re going to have a device that’s under 2 pounds with great battery life that we can all carry around and open as a notebook or close up in a clever way and use as a tablet? Can you comment on why you don’t think that product might not come or why you believe these markets are separate?’

Cook’s response was unequivocal: ‘Anything can be forced to converge. But the problem is that products are about trade-offs, and you begin to make trade-offs to the point where what you have left at the end of the day doesn’t please anyone…I think to make the compromises of convergence, so — we’re not going to that party. Others might. Others might from a defensive point of view, particularly. But we’re going to play in both.’

Later in the call, Cook addressed the patent litigation in which Apple is currently involved and explained that his preference was to settle out of court. ‘I’ve always hated litigation, and I continue to hate it. We just want people to invent their own stuff. And so if we could get to some kind of arrangement where we could be assured that’s the case and a fair settlement on the stuff that’s occurred, I would highly prefer to settle versus battle. But the key thing is that it’s very important that Apple not become the developer for the world. We need people to invent their own stuff,’ said Cook.

Transcription of the conference call courtesy of Seeking Alpha.