Technology

Adobe currently has three dozens apps in the App Store. But one app is still missing. According to a report from Bloomberg, the company could be working on a full-fledged version of Photoshop for the iPad. And it makes sense for a ton of reasons.

First, itclear that the iPad has become powerful enough to run complicated image editing software. Just two days ago, Serif launched Affinity Designer for the iPad, an Adobe Illustrator competitor. You can also look at benchmarks to find out that the iPad Pro is now more powerful than most mid-range laptops.

Second, now that you can effortlessly sync your files and projects across multiple devices, many people work using multiple devices. Itbeen true for many years if you&re just working on a Microsoft Word file on your work computer and your personal laptop for instance. Maybe you use Dropbox or OneDrive to stay on the same page. But italso true with huge media libraries now.

A few years ago, people looked at their devices based on contexts. Maybe you had a work laptop, a couch-computing iPad, a big desktop computer for games, etc. But this is a thing of the past now that you can literally work from all your devices.

And when it comes to Photoshop, the Apple Pencil and touch screen makes the iPad a particularly useful device. Maybe you need a big screen to look at a photo, but maybe you want to use the Apple Pencil to interact with the photo.

Bringing Photoshop to the iPad could let you seamlessly work on the same file across multiple devices, switching back and forth between those two devices. Illustrators could really use this kind of flexibility and ditch their Wacom tablet.

You might remember that Apple has put together a Pro Workflow Team for the same reason. You could imagine launching Final Cut Pro X or Logic Pro X on an iMac and on an iPad to interact with a project in different ways. Apple may not be working on Macs with a touchscreen, but itclear that there will be ways to interact with a creative project using your finger or the Apple Pencil.

Finally, bringing Photoshop to the iPad makes sense on a business model perspective. Now that Adobe has shifted to a subscription model, the company needs to increase stickiness as much as possible. If you end up spending more time in Adobe apps because your favorite app is on all platforms, you&ll keep paying for Creative Cloud every month.

This project will be an engineering achievement. But this isn&t the first time Adobe is developing a single app for multiple platforms.

Bloomberg says that we might hear more from Photoshop for iPad at the Adobe Max conference in October. Adobechief product officer of Creative Cloud Scott Belsky confirmed that the company was working on releasing these new versions as quickly as possible.

A clever little robot made by researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev can roll around, flip itself over, and even crawl like a turtle through rough terrain. The robot uses wheels, a set of star-shaped rollers, and cleverly articulated arms to ride along at various speeds.

The robot, called Rising STAR, uses wheels and spoked &whegs& to roll around at about one meter per second and it can fold itself flat and pull itself forward when it finds mud or sand. It can also make itself very skinny to ride through tight spots and can even flip itself over if it falls.

A weighted &head& can keep the robot balanced as it tools along, allowing it to climb up and over steep surfaces and, the researchers say, even sneak through pipes or between tight walls.

Rising STAR is an updated version of the universitySprawl-Tuned Autonomous Robot that it displayed in 2013. This new version is far more capable and, thanks to its &whegs& and turtle-gait, far cooler.

Hello and welcome back toEquity, TechCrunchventure capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

This week we had the full crew in the studio along with a friend. The excellent Connie Loizos hosted, and Matthew Lynley and I were both on as well, along with our guest this week:Graham Brown, a partner atLerer Hippeau, an early-stage venture fund based in New York.

We took a slightly different tack this episode. Yes, scooters came up, but we have some later-stage notes that should be a welcome reprieve for regular listeners. Also, no crypto!

Up first was the Uber-Lime deal. Lime, one of the two domestic scooter darlings, raised a brick of new capital recently, including monies from ridesharing giant Uber. Getting a tie-in with Uber does two things. First, it dramatically raises the profile of Lime domestically as it can perhaps tap into the Uber customer base. Second, it puts pressure on Lyft (an Uber competitor) and Bird (a Lime competitor) to do a deal themselves.

We weren&t sure if those two would link up, but hey, it2018 and nothing is impossible.

Moving along we took a peek at the epic scale of new venture funds being raised. At issue is how those funds are going to have a shot at putting up venture-tier returns. Or is IRR kaput We also chatted over some venture results from the second quarter, including a quick scan of some numbers from my team concerningthe United States and global venture markets.

Lastly, we masticated over a recent WSJ article concerning Vista Equity Partners& work ingesting SaaS companies, lopping off costs, and working to boost growth. It matters, as the market is currently seeing more money flow into software companies that are a bit more slowly growing. The rising prices that less-attractive firms are managing to command is a good indicator of the marketcurrent heat.

And if you have a minute, listen to the bonus clip after the closing stuff. We&ll be back in a week!