Hasta La Gadget!

Disappointing news for older MacBook and MacBook Pro owners: The newest update to Mac OS X, numbering 10.5.6, brings a new preference pane for the computer’s trackpad. The let down is that it doesn’t introduce the fancy new four finger gestures found on the latest unabomber MacBooks.

Fair enough, you say. It’s a hardware feature, right? Well, no. MacBooks which are already able to take three of your fingers simultaneously and can also be trained to take four, as was demonstrated by jealous hacker michaelb last month when he used his young lady’s new MacBook installer disc to add the feature to his older MacBook AIr.

Worse, the update seems to have narrowed your choices. The shot above, from Apple Daily Times, shows that you can no longer switch off the two-fingered gestures for scrolling or screen zoom, and secondary click (two fingers in the pad along with a click on the button gives a right-click) seems to have been ousted in favor of a secondary tap.

It’s galling. My MacBook Pro is one of the machines not blessed with four-digits of Apple love, and knowing that it could be makes me mad. Mad, I tell you. This isn’t the first time Apple has differentiated products arbitrarily through software. In recent memory, the iPod Touch was passed over for Google Street View. And the fickle-seeming nature of the decisions is the worst part — nobody is going to ditch a year old notebook just to get these new gestures, so really, Apple, why?

See Also:

• Original MacBook Air Hacked to Use Four Finger Gestures
• New, Hidden MacBook Features
• Why the iPod Touch Didn’t Get Google Street View
• QuickPWN Adds Street View to iPod Touch

Tut-tut Microsoft!

Recently voted most desired console, nay, present this Christmas Microsoft has kept a major failing under its hat.

Whilst the big M has said that their Xbox 360 was capable of scratching discs and offered a fairly limited exchange program for damaged games there seems to be documentation that proves that Microsoft has known about the problem since the 360 was released!

According to The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Microsoft first discovered the problem in September or October of 2005 – they even sent a “team of engineers” to stores across the US to determine the best course of action.

It sounds like they came up with three options, two impractical non-starters, which left the expensive action of installing small bumpers in each and every console.

So Microsoft offered the disc exchange instead.

These unsealed documents apparently also revealed that some Microsoft employees thought that the warning labels on the console weren’t enough, and that the company has received complaints about the problem from more than 55,000 customers as of April 30th of this year!

There’s no word of any movement just yet in theses lawsuits but one, filed back in July of 2007, is seeking class-action status on behalf of everyone that’s bought an Xbox 360.

I’ll keep you 360ers informed!

Read

So far as we can tell, the Wü Fit (see what they did there?) doesn’t actually come with the Wii Fit software. But unless we’re being badly deceived, the knockoff balance board should operate just fine with the official game (seriously!) — assuming that you can find it by its lonesome, which you can’t. The best (er, “only good”) part? It’s actually in stock for $92.95, which is more than the Big N can say about its genuine counterpart in much of the world. It’s okay, we know you’re seriously considering this over that eBay auction — we promise not to tell.

[Thanks, anonymouse]

Filed under: Gaming

Keepin’ it real fake, part CLXXII: Wu Fit — it’s Wii Fit, without the supply chain issues originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Dec 2008 05:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on April 28, 2008 by CyberNet.

If you’re using Firefox there is a very good chance that you’ve heard of the IE Tab extension. For many of us it helped ease the burden of switching to Firefox as the primary browser back when developers didn’t see Firefox as a viable alternative. That is not nearly as big of a problem as it once was.

Opera, on the other hand, is still struggling with the same issues. People are forced to use multiple browsers because of website incompatibilities, but the good news is that there is now something similar to IE Tab for Opera. Once everything is setup you’ll be able to view websites directly in Opera using Internet Explorer as the rendering engine, which can be seen in the screenshot above. Here’s what you have to do:

1. Download and install the free Neptune plugin. I know, the registration system is a pain in the butt. It’s okay to enter in fake information, but it checks to make sure it’s not something blatantly fake. You’ll be given the download link after the registration… it’s not emailed to you.
2. Now we need to copy the plugin into the Opera directory. Here’s where you will find the plugin that you need to copy (in the default installation directory):
   C:\Program Files\MeadCo Neptune\npmeadax.dll
3. Once you’ve copied the plugin go ahead and paste it into this location:
   C:\Program Files\Opera\program\plugins
4. And finally you’ll want to add a “View in IE” button to your toolbar so that you can quickly switch to the Internet Explorer view. There are two different buttons that you can add: one that opens the site in the current tab, and one that opens in a new tab. Pick which one you would like from the OperaWiki, and just drag it onto one of your toolbars.

Having installed it myself I can say that it works very well. It’s a little slower at rendering sites than Opera, but I’m sure that is more of Internet Explorer’s fault rather than the plugin. If you’ve been holding off on using Opera because of site compatibility hopefully this will do the trick for you!

Neptune [via Download Squad]
Thanks for the tip “S”!

Copyright © 2008 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

Related Posts:

• Download The Newly Released Opera 9.01
• Opera 9 Is Not Ready For Prime Time
• Opera 9 Will Now Have Weekly Builds Offered To The Public
• What do you want to "Ask Opera"?
• Opera 9 Beta Has Finally Been Released

Though not the first leather wrapped keyboard our eyes have seen, we’ve yet to spot one this meticulously crafted. In fact, each board is reportedly handcrafted on site, a process which takes around a fortnight to complete. And trust us, you pay for all that labor, as evidenced by the lofty ¥49,800 ($550; not engraved with letters) / ¥54,800 ($606; etched with characters) price tags. Eh, we’ll take pleather and a PS3 or something, but thanks!

[Via technabob]

Filed under: Peripherals

Leather wrapped keyboard utters ‘eat mor chiken’ originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Dec 2008 03:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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