Reader John has a hard disk gone bad and needs to recover some files off it before he moves on to a newer, more reliable disk. With that, though, he's having trouble deciding which data recovery software to use, in part because there are no good reviews of any options out there.

Shocked, we say. Shocked. We are utterly shocked*. Sales of the HTC First—the so-called "Facebook Phone—have reportedly been so bad that AT&T is ready to kill it. The device was announced on April 4th, but according to BGR, AT&T has sold just 15,000 units and is ready to pull the plug.

Samsung announced on Monday that it has tested a technology the company is calling "5G" that can transmit data at up to 1Gbps, a speed that is up to ten times faster than today's LTE networks. The company said that it could weaponize commercialize the technology by 2020.

Personal assessments of what technology to adopt and what to ignore is what we do these days. Developers develop, technical columnists experiment and report, and individuals decide yea or nay. However, basing those decisions on old-fashioned or emotional preconceptions in increasingly unproductive. John Martellaro roughs up the technical hobgoblins and sizes up iOS 7.

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates was recently interviewed by Charlie Rose for 60 Minutes, and one of the topics of discussion was the late Steve Jobs. Mr. Gates became quite emotional when thinking back to his last meeting with Mr. Jobs, and he said he wished he had Mr. Jobs's sense of design.

When Adobe announced that it will be dropping its traditional perpetual license model for Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, and the rest of its professional creative apps in favor of the Creative Cloud software subscription model, the public response was less than enthusiastic. The reaction from at least some Adobe app users was so negative, in fact, that an online petition quickly popped up urging Adobe to keep the Creative Suite perpetual license model alive. But that petition may not matter.

Your iPhone or iPod touch makes for a handy camera, and both can take nice images. That doesn't, however, mean you won't need to make some quick adjustments on the go. You can turn to a long list of apps designed to help with that, including Apple's own iPhoto, but if you only need to make some minor adjustments, the Photos app has a nearly-hidden editor just waiting to help out.

The Mac Observer's Managing Editor Jeff Gamet joined The BIG Show from the British Tech Network to talk about Adobe's switch to Creative Cloud subscriptions for its professional design applications, along with Bill Gates bagging on the iPad.

Amazon unveiled its Cloud Drive Photos for the iPhone and iPod touch over the weekend along with a companion Mac app in what looks like a move to compete with Apple's iCloud Photo Stream feature. Cloud Drive Photos includes 5 GB of storage and lets users upload images to their Amazon Cloud and then download them to other devices.