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Posts Tagged ‘Mac Os’

Sprint puts out fact sheet for dual-mode U301 WiMAX modem, release imminent?
So Sprint just published an official fact sheet for a U301 USB modem with support for both WiMAX and EV-DO — it’s not accompanied by any press release or product page on Sprint’s online store, but we can only assume this means that a release is around the corner. Of course, the dual-mode capability alone doesn’t set it apart — the carrier’s existing U300 model already handles those duties with aplomb — but what seemingly sets the U301 apart is its support for Mac OS. We’d just as soon they’d release drivers for the U300, but failing that, alright, fine, we’ll take a new modem. If we’re sustaining over 3Mbps down, we’ll take a lot of carrier and manufacturer abuse, actually.

Sprint puts out fact sheet for dual-mode U301 WiMAX modem, release imminent? originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 19 Dec 2009 04:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mac 101: Building a bootable diagnostic and repair flash drive

Filed under: Troubleshooting, Mac 101

More Mac 101, our tips and tricks for novice Mac users.

It’s a good idea to have a strategy in place in case of emergencies. If your hard drive tosses you errors, behaves badly or doesn’t even appear, what to do? If programs crash at random, you need to be ready. You can prepare for this by creating a bootable flash drive containing some diagnostic and repair utilities.

This is not meant to replace or in any way affect backing up your hard drive. Time Machine makes it so easy that not having a backup plan is just silly… but so much for the disclaimer.

To make a diagnostic and repair flash drive, I’d suggest buying an 8 GB flash drive, which can be had for around US $20 these days. When you get it, it probably won’t be formatted for your Macintosh, so plug it in and run Disk Utility (in /Applications/Utilities) to format the flash drive. In doing so, you have a number of choices. With your flash drive highlighted click on Erase and choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and give the flash drive a name. Then click on Erase on the bottom right side of the screen and in a few seconds your flash drive will be ready for an operating system.

Continue reading Mac 101: Building a bootable diagnostic and repair flash drive

TUAWMac 101: Building a bootable diagnostic and repair flash drive originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 02 Dec 2009 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google Dumps Gears for HTML5

It’s official: Google is ditching its homegrown Gears offline web app API in favor of backing HTML5 for the win.

Now that the Chrome browser is becoming available for Mac, and the Snow Leopard OS doesn’t play nicely with Gears, Google has decided to trash the whole works and wait for HTML5, even though the spec isn’t yet ready and isn’t supported by commercially available browsers. Oh, the humanity… or rather, the machinery.

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In the mists of time, back when Gears first launched, we wrote, “We’ve written many times before about the need for offline web app access… And guess who is most at risk with this announcement? Yes, Microsoft. Google after all has many of the top ‘best of breed’ web apps now.”

This was before Google’s Chrome browser had hit the scene, and the Gears project was a collaborative effort between Goog, Opera, and Mozilla.

But in our coverage of last year’s Google I/O conference, we wrote of Gears, “We question whether offline access is even necessary. After all… in today’s world, you’re never too far from an internet connection. We concluded that offline access is important now, but less important with each passing day.”

Not only could Gears be used to take online data offline; Google had more in store for Gears users.

A few short months later, Google announced a geolocation API for mobile devices running Gears. We wrote, “We think that location-aware software is going to be one of the most interesting markets to watch in the near future and as as location-aware devices become more ubiquitous, we will hopefully see a lot of new and innovative services make use of them.”

But the party ended with Snow Leopard’s release. A change in the newest Mac OS prevents Gears from running on newer Mac computers. Whether or not the relationship is one of causation or mere correlation, Google is now abandoning Gears.

As one Google rep told the L.A. Times, “We are excited that much of the technology in Gears, including offline support and geolocation APIs, are being incorporated into the HTML5 spec as an open standard supported across browsers, and see that as the logical next step for developers looking to include these features in their websites.”

Believe us Google, no one is looking forward to the cross-browser, cross-OS implementation of HTML5 as much as we are.

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ZFS open source project abruptly shuts down, Snow Leopard weeps icy tears

The on-again / off-again love affair between Apple and ZFS seems to be all but over, with a brief but potent message on the Mac OS Forge project site stating the following: “The ZFS project has been discontinued. The mailing list and repository will also be removed shortly.” If you’ll recall, the implementation of the ZFS file system within Snow Leopard server was so close to happening that Apple actually published it as a feature of the forthcoming OS back in June of 2008. Now, however, all hope has presumably been lost. We’d bother explaining the rumors behind why all of this has suddenly crumbled, but honestly, will knowing the reasons really help the pain? No, no it won’t.

[Via TUAW]

Filed under: Software

ZFS open source project abruptly shuts down, Snow Leopard weeps icy tears originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 24 Oct 2009 14:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Snow Leopard box set makes short-lived cameo in Apple’s online store

Whether or not Snow Leopard build 10A432 is really the ready-for-shipment “golden master,” Apple’s own site is giving hope to the masses that its next platform iteration is gearing up for a launch sooner rather than later. MacRumors is reporting that a Mac Box Set containing OS X 10.6 , iLife ‘09, and iWork ‘09 popped up on Apple’s online store today priced at $169 for single users and shipping within 24 hours. The page itself no longer exists, although not before Google’s spiders managed to pick up on it. It’s probably wishful thinking to think this is indicative of a release before its projected September launch window — and really, at this point, that’s only a couple of weeks away — if you were gonna hope for it anyway, here’s some fodder for ya.

Read – Snow Leopard box set briefly appears in Apple Online Store
Read – Google entry for now-defunct page

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops, Software

Snow Leopard box set makes short-lived cameo in Apple’s online store originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Aug 2009 23:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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tr.im Throws In the Towel

Nambu Networks, the company behind tr.im, pic.im, and the Nambu social application for Mac OS and iPhone has announced that tr.im will no longer be shortening URL’s for the public. According to a blog post, the reason behind the decision is Twitter’s decision to use bit.ly for their URL shortening, as well as the cost for servers and development while there are many other solutions for URL shortening.

Nambu Networks will now focus it’s attention on Nambu for Mac OS and iPhone.

tr.im did well for what it was, but, alas, it was not enough. We simply cannot find a way to justify continuing to work on it, or pay its network costs, which are not inconsequential. tr.im pushes (as I write this) a lot of redirects and URL creations per day, and this required significant development investment and server expansion to accommodate.

Nambu Network’s doesn’t specifically say how many URL’s have been shortened, but looking at Twitter, tr.im was quite popular. The URL’s already shortened with tr.im will not be affected, but all tr.im links will continue to redirect, and will do so until at least December 31, 2009.

tr.im has been added to the Deadpool.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

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Found Footage: Pull My Finger stands for freedom

Filed under: Found Footage, iPhone, App Store

I’ve got a soft spot in my comedy heart for The Daily Show’s Wyatt Cenac, one of the newer correspondents on the program; he often manages to give interview subjects just enough Colbertian leeway to wander into the danger zone, then lets them blunder about, bumping into the awkward silences to excellent effect.

That’s exactly what Cenac did this week when he interviewed the creators of iPhone fart apps Pull My Finger and iFart, who have a long-simmering feud over who gassed whom on the fart-app frontier. The whole thing is fine and funny… right up until the point that Pull My Finger developer Eric Stratton compares his app’s struggle against injustice to Jackie Robinson breaking the color line in baseball. That’s when it becomes deliciously, painfully hilarious. For the record, Stratton claims he was joking.

You can check out the video in the second half of the post. Nice work, Wyatt.

[via Mac OS Ken and AllThingsD]

Continue reading Found Footage: Pull My Finger stands for freedom

TUAWFound Footage: Pull My Finger stands for freedom originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 25 Jul 2009 11:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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