Hasta La Gadget!

Apple’s next operating system, Mac OS X 10.6, aka “Snow Leopard,” hits stores Friday. If you’re already a Mac user, you’re probably going to get the upgrade sooner or later, thanks to its low $30 price tag.

But it’s not a major upgrade. Apple has stressed that this OS mainly delivers a performance boost for Macs equipped with 64-bit Intel processors. Thus, many of the changes aren’t going to be immediately obvious.

Apple did not provide Wired.com with an official review copy, but we did have a chance to test drive the “Gold Master” version of Snow Leopard, which should be functionally identical to what’s in stores Friday. Based on our tests, here’s a list of things you should know about the OS before installing it on your machine.

It’s a Performance Boost, Not a Roaring Upgrade

The changes in Snow Leopard are, for the most part, invisible. This OS is built to take full advantage of faster 64-bit Intel Macs. That means all apps included with Snow Leopard have been rewritten for 64-bit processors. Apps coded by third-party developers who opt to rewrite their software with 64-bit support will also be snappier.

If your activities are not very processor-intensive, then you won’t notice a huge difference. If you’re editing movies or photos regularly, you’ll immediately be able to feel the improvement. We tested movie exporting in iMovie and photo editing in iPhoto, and both apps ran much more smoothly than on Leopard.

There are a number of other performance improvements that aren’t obvious. For example, when you wake up a MacBook from sleep, the AirPort connection will only take about a second to reconnect to your Wi-Fi network, compared with a few seconds on Leopard. Also, the Finder, which you use to navigate your files, is a lot less laggy than before: Thumbnails display almost immediately, and scanning through folders is smooth.  Subtle and sweet.

Not All Third-Party Software Is Guaranteed to Work

As is often the case with OS upgrades, there are going to be some third-party developers who procrastinated on testing their software to ensure compatibility with Snow Leopard. Most applications working on Mac OS X 10.5, aka Leopard, will most likely work in Snow Leopard. Leopard was a 64-bit system that also supported 32-bit software, and Snow Leopard is still compatible with 32-bit applications.

If a developer hasn’t rewritten his or her application for Snow Leopard, that most likely means it’s just not 64-bit capable. It’ll still work, but just not as fast as it could be if it were optimized for 64-bit computing.

However, if you’re running third-party software that you absolutely need, it’s always smart to check the developer’s website to see if the app has been tested on Snow Leopard. Adobe, for example, has already stated that Creative Suite 3 has not been tested on Snow Leopard and may have compatibility issues. We were able to test Adobe Photoshop CS 3 on Snow Leopard and thus far have had no problems. We also tested QuickSilver, App Zapper, Adium, Tweetie and Evernote, and all seemed to work fine. But do some research and pretest on a nonproduction system if you’re concerned.

Apple has promised that after installing Snow Leopard, the OS will note which applications are incompatible with it. On the test machine we saw, none of the apps became incompatible after upgrading from Leopard to Snow Leopard.

In short, if you’re running relatively new software, you probably won’t have to worry. With more dated apps (three years or older) you should consider double-checking.

Minor Tweaks to Interface, Usability

Don’t expect this to be a brand new experience: Most of the UI changes are small. For example, Exposé, the window-management tool, has been implemented into the Dock. Clicking a Dock icon and holding it down will show only the windows of the selected app, which could be useful if you’re a digital clutterbug like I am. (See screenshot at right.)

Another small but good change: When snapping screenshots, the images are assigned a file name containing a time stamp of when they were taken.

The most significant refinement to built-in software occurs in QuickTime, now dubbed QuickTime Player X. The player interface gets a makeover — a gray-and-black gradient (see screenshot at right). Other than that, there are new tools including movie recording from your webcam, audio recording from your microphone, and screencasting.

Hardware Requirements: No Support for PowerPC Macs

If you own an older Mac powered by a PowerPC chip (rather than Intel), then you’re out of luck: Snow Leopard won’t run on your machine. The requirements are as follows: You must own an Intel Mac equipped with at least 1GB of memory, and the install requires at least 5GB of free hard drive space for the install. And of course, you’ll need a DVD drive to be able to read the disc and run the installation. (MacBook Air owners: We hope you have an external optical drive.)

Not sure what kind of processor you own? Click on the Apple icon in the upper-left corner and select “About This Mac.” If the word “PowerPC” comes up in the “Processor” field, then you can not run this upgrade. If it says “Intel,” you’re fine.

You Get up to 7 GB More Hard-Drive Space

Snow Leopard is less bloated with system files than its predecessor, so after upgrading to it, you’ll get some free space. Apple promises the install “frees up to 7 GB of drive space.” The upgrade freed up only 3.5 GB of space for our test machine, but hey — we’re not complaining. More space is always better.

The Upgrade Only Costs $30

Apple is advertising Snow Leopard as a $30 upgrade “for Leopard users.” If you’re upgrading from Tiger, Apple advises you to purchase the full Mac Box Set for $170. However, there don’t appear to be technical reasons preventing a Tiger-to-Snow Leopard upgrade.

Wired.com was able to confirm that the Snow Leopard upgrade can be installed on a machine running Tiger. Of course, the transition isn’t guaranteed to be as smooth as it would be from Leopard to Snow Leopard, and that’s because some older, Tiger-only third-party applications need to be upgraded to newer versions that work with Leopard or Snow Leopard.

Separately, Lifehacker has confirmed that it was able to erase a hard drive and install Snow Leopard. That means if you backup your files on Tiger, you should be technically able to buy Snow Leopard for $30, install it on a clean drive and then migrate your files over. Again, you’ll likely have to download newer versions of third-party software that are Leopard — or Snow Leopard — compatible. That extra work is probably worth it, because this OS is a pretty big performance upgrade if you’re switching from Tiger.

Of course, using the $30 upgrade to go from Tiger to Snow Leopard may violate Apple’s terms of service. We were unable to confirm this with Apple, which did not respond to our queries about Snow Leopard pricing.

Conclusion

This upgrade won’t deliver any radical interface changes to blow you away (not that we would want it to), but the $30 price is more than fair for the number of performance improvements Snow Leopard delivers.

Stay tuned for Wired.com’s full review of Snow Leopard as we continue to test it over the week.

Updated 6 p.m. PDT to correct a statement about Exposé functionality.

See Also:

• First Look: Windows 7 Shapes Up as Microsoft's Best OS Yet …
• 7 Good Reasons to Switch to Windows 7
• 7 Reasons to Avoid Windows 7
• Apple Euthanizes PowerPC Macs with Snow Leopard
• Apple's Snow Leopard Will Triangulate a Mac's Location

The Dell Latitude 2100 is a computer designed for use in a classroom. Inside, the device is crammed with the guts of a standard netbook: Atom processor, 1GB of RAM, Windows XP. But on the outside it’s got a rubberized chassis designed to deflect filthy fingers, a keypad that kills bacteria, and a light that tattles when you’re not supposed to be online. (Don’t worry, we figured a hack aorund that.)

But are we, bitter seasoned journalists qualified to rate something clearly meant for kids? As much as we enjoy dressing up like Power Rangers and playing hooky from work there’s a dimension only someone born during the Clinton administration can provide for a product like the 2100. That’s why we drafted young Andrew Walker, a frequent Gadget Lab reader and 11-year old boy to help us with the above video.

Of course you can always check the full review right here.

(Camera work and editing by Michael Lennon, produced by Annaliza Savage)

Say hello to Thomas and Janet, two humanoid machines who claim to be the first robotic pair to share a kiss.

The kiss between the robots was unveiled in December during a performance of scenes from the Phantom of the Opera at National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, says IEEE Spectrum.

Since then the robots have been working on their technique. Chyi-Yeu Lin, a mechanical engineering professor at the Taiwanese University says a kiss requires some sophisticated hand-eye co-ordination among the robots and self-balancing mechanisms.

“To make the robots smooches and expression seem realistic, the team adopted several techniques, including manual molding, non-contact 3-D face scanning and 3-D face morphing,” says Spectrum, which interviewed Chyi-Yeu recently.

The kissing robots are similar to other efforts to help robots express emotions in ways that are familiar to humans. For instance, researchers recently created an incredibly realistic Einstein robot that can smile and frown. Earlier, researchers used to have program each of the robot’s 31 artificial muscles individually but eventually trained the robot to use machine learning techniques to learn select emotions on its own.

Thomas and Janet have six expressions that are created using servos pulling at several points in the face and mouth. Eventually, they hope to be part of a group of autonomous performing robot actors.

See Also:

• Robot Band Plays Music, Obsesses About its Online Followers …
• Meet Dento-Munch, the Robot That Bites
• Homebrew Robot Raises Hand to Call Attention to Tweets

Video courtesy: Spectrum Magazine

The deal may have first been announced somewhat quietly last month, but now that Sony’s come out with what’s arguably its most attractive e-reader to date, the availability of over a million public domain books in the Sony-friendly EPUB format is sure to garner a fair bit more attention. As Google announced on its Inside Google Books blog, those books are now all available for download starting today and are, of course, completely free and able to be used on the EPUB-supporting device of your choice. The move also takes on a particular prominence in light of Google’s recent fight with Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon and the Open Book Alliance, who have taken issue with Google’s settlement with book publishers and authors that would give it the right to digitize orphan works and make the now out-of-print (but non-public domain) books widely available.

Filed under: Handhelds, Software

Google makes over a million public domain books available in EPUB format originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Aug 2009 17:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As with any good touch-screen phone, the display on the T-Mobile MyTouch 3G will lock after a few minutes of inactivity. It’s definitely a needed feature, unless you enjoy it when your …