Mountain Lion, Mac OS X 10.8 coming later this year, will include a new feature called Gatekeeper. It divides all third-party software into three categories: from the Mac App Store, not from the Mac App Store but digitally signed by an official Apple developer ID, and anything else. By default the user will be able to only install software in the first two categories. But the setting can be adjusted to allow all three, or only the first one. The second category allows developers to create anything not allowed in the Mac App Store, like system tools, but still take responsibility for their work and allow Apple to take action if something malicious comes to light.
What do you think of this new feature of Mac OS X?
Attention peaked this week on working conditions at Chinese factories where Apple products are built. ABC’s Nightline took a look inside the Foxconn factory on Tuesday night’s episode. You can see the video here.
While talk about how Apple and other electronics companies manufacture their products has been going on for years, renewed interest started last month when the New York Times published an article looking in to the human costs of the process. Apple CEO Tim Cook will be commenting on this issue at today’s shareholder meeting.
In other news Apple is planning on building a new data center in Oregon. The new center, likely years away from completion, will use solar power like Apple’s North Carolina data center. It will also take advantage of the cool central Oregon climate to keep energy use down.
“I need a backup drive, the photos on my Mac are priceless!”
“Here’s one for $100.”
“Do you have anything cheaper?”
We’ve certainly seen many new ways to move characters around in games with iPhone touch screen and accelerometers. Here’s a new one: in Beat Sneak Bandit you tap to the beat. The character moves only if you hit the beat right, and you can guide the character by deciding when to move and when to skip a beat. Add in some very cool artwork and you’ve got a nice game.
The Delete key will delete one character at a time. But hold down the Option key and press Delete and it will delete the previous word. Hold down the Command key and it will delete the whole line. Using FN+Delete will delete the next character. And FN+Option+Delete works too.
There are many rumors surfacing about an announcement and release of a new iPad next month. What new features would you like to see in the iPad 3? Post your wishes and ideas here below.
You can determine what happens when you insert a CD or DVD into your Mac by going to the System Preferences, CDs & DVDs pane. You can have your Mac prompt you for instruction, or have it automatically launch an application. You can even have different settings for blank media, music CDs, picture CDs or video DVDs.
A new version of Mac OS X was announced this morning, named “Mountain Lion.” The new Mac OS X 10.8 was released for testing to developers. General release is scheduled for late this summer.
New features will include new apps and more: Messages, Notes, Reminders, Game Center, notifications, Twitter integration and AirPlay mirroring. All of these features mirror or tie in to similar features in iOS.
You can view your Gmail email through the built-in Mail app, and you can also use Safari to access it through the web. But the best way to use Gmail is through Google’s free Gmail App. This lets you get notifications, read threaded conversations, label messages the Gmail way and use special Gmail features like priority inbox.
“I can’t believe those losers wait in line for hours to buy an iPhone when there’s absolutely no one in line to get this new Samsung phone!”
The release of iBooks Author brought criticism several weeks ago that the license agreement forbade users from exporting PDFs to be sold outside of Apple’s own store. But Apple clarified things this week by stating that the restriction is only for the iBooks format, which can only be used in iBooks anyway. iBooks Author can be used to produce PDFs that can be sold anywhere, and even iBooks-formatted files that can be distributed freely anywhere.
Apple continues to push the new feature of Lion Internet Recovery to more Macs. Many 2010 models received a firmware update this week that allows them to boot using firmware, connect to Apple servers and install Lion onto an empty hard drive. This functionality is needed as Lion does not come on a DVD like previous operating systems.
