Carmen Gonzalez

Two of the App Store's most widely downloaded file-sharing apps received major updates this week and now share some of the same advanced features, according to the CEO of Avatron Software.

The team of developers at Avatron Software behind the acclaimed file-sharing apps Air Sharing® and Air Sharing Pro have spent "months" with the expanded iPhone SDK to "pack more features and compatibility" into their already-rich platform to enhance users' ability to access, view, share, store and manage files with the iPhone and iPod touch, said Dave Howell, Avatron's CEO and a former Apple software engineering manager.

The app development company's efforts, based in part on user feedback, have led to the release of version 2.1 of Air Sharing and Air Sharing Pro. Avatron's flagship line of apps allows users to wirelessly connect their handheld devices to Mac, PC or Linux computers as an external Wi-Fi drive to drag and drop documents between the machines.

Air Sharing Pro, which allows users to access remote file servers for work, e-mail and print files, now allows users to connect to a Mac or Linux via SSH and to PCs via SFTP, after downloading the free Core FTP desktop app, as well as FTP and FTPS file servers. Pro 2.1 also allows users to download a file from a URL by copying a link in their Safari browsers and to search for any file by name.

Howell added that Air Sharing Pro now allows users to e-mail files directly in the app, courtesy of the expanded SDK -- rather than uploading to a file server -- and allows them to add images from Photos and save there, bookmark files and print encrypted PDFs.

Air Sharing 2.1 has been updated with some key features found in the Pro version, including e-mailing files directly in the app, the PDF Viewer that includes a go-to-page field and supports large PDFs, which would crash Mail or Safari, and automatic character-encoding detection in text viewer.

Both Air Sharing 2.1 and Air Sharing Pro 2.1 now support Illustrator documents if saved as PDF compatible, rotation-orientation lock for PDFs and images and can restore a media file's playback position when it's re-opened.

Air Sharing 2.1 is $4.99 in the App Store, and Air Sharing Pro 2.1 is $9.99.

Avatron worked with the new SDK's in-app purchase functionality to allow Air Sharing users to upgrade to the Pro version from within the app for $4.99 for the next month.

"We've really put a lot into this update of both apps, and we made sure that any improvements to the core platform and bug fixes were made to both of them," Howell said. "We hope our great existing users will see this automatic update to 2.1 as a 'thank you' from us."

Howell said Avatron is "always looking" at ways to make Air Sharing better and plans to add Dropbox support to Pro when the Dropbox SDK is released.