Hasta La Gadget!

In response to widespread media coverage Monday, Apple has acknowledged a bug in its latest operating system, Snow Leopard, that involved some users losing a large amount of their data when logging into guest accounts.

“We are aware of the issue, which occurs only in extremely rare cases, and we are working on a fix,” an Apple representative said in a statement.

As far back as September, a number of Snow Leopard users documented the problem on several forum threads. They said the bug involves the home directory — the Mac’s primary user folder — being replaced with an empty folder after users log in with a Guest account. That resulted in loss of documents, downloads, pictures, music and other types of files, the affected users claimed.

“My home folder had been replaced with a ’straight out of the box’ home folder,” wrote user “dubaidan” in a Sept. 3 forum post. “Standard desktop, standard dock, nothing in my documents folder, standard library. My entire home folder is gone.”

Lost data can easily be restored with a backup of a hard drive. But if Snow Leopard users did not back up data prior to experiencing the bug, it would be difficult, and sometimes not possible, to recover lost files.

Though fewer than 100 Snow Leopard users have reported experiencing data loss, information security researcher Jonathan Zdziarski said this bug is considered a serious “screwup” in IT. He theorized the problem could be that the Mac OS confused the home folder for a guest account and accidentally flushed out the data.

Whatever the case may be, Zdziarski called this bug an “embarrassment” for Apple.

“Apple seems to be downplaying [the bug] to an asinine degree,” Zdziarski said. “It’s actually pretty serious to the end-user, and Apple is likely working hard to get their legal department ready to respond to massive lawsuits.”

Apple has yet to publish a fix, but for the time being, Zdziarski recommended for Snow Leopard users to back up their data regularly.

See Also:

• Apple’s Snow Leopard Is Less Secure Than Windows, But Safer …
• Apple’s Snow Leopard Ships With Older, Vulnerable Version of Flash …
• Review: Snow Leopard Combines Minor Improvements, Major Future …

Photo: Tambako the Jaguar/Flickr

TiVo enhanced its reputation as a platform, not just a DVR, with the addition of video-on-demand services from Blockbuster on Tuesday.

Blockbuster On Demand video-rental services will be available on TiVo
Series2, Series3, TiVo HD, and TiVo HD XL boxes, allowing users to rent (not own) the titles in Blockbuster’s online catalog. Prices will range from $2.99 for older movies to $3.99 for new releases, according to both companies.

The deal is the culmination of an agreement the two companies struck in March, which will also allow Blockbuster the rights to sell TiVo’s DVRs inside of its own stores.

“By bringing Blockbuster’s content direct to TiVo subscribers, we show
once again that TiVo offers much more choice and convenience for our
customers compared to other DVR offerings,”said Joe Miller, senior vice president of sales and marketing at TiVo, in a statement. “We are very pleased to say
that customers can now walk into a participating Blockbuster store to
purchase TiVo DVRs and that together both companies have succeeded in
bringing even more entertainment direct to the living room.”

TiVo has a similar deal with Amazon, which can stream HD versions of Amazon Video on Demand movies down to the TiVo box for $3.99 to $4.99. Although Blockbuster is making 1,000 titles available to TiVo customers, they’re all in standard-definition for now, a TiVo spokeswoman said in an email. HD titles will be priced at $4.99 when available, she said.

Post updated at 12:19 PM with HD pricing.

The traditional mouse’s shape is ideal for the desktop, but less so for the living room. With Internet video increasingly invading the biggest screen in the house, several peripheral companies have already taken a stab at creating the ideal controller for the reclining viewer. Now GlideTV has stepped in with the GlideTV Navigator.

Using a design new for mice but old for ashtrays, the GlideTV Navigator is a shallow bowl-shaped device that combines the functions of a keyboard, mouse, and remote. The clickable touchpad lets you choose on-screen items, while the playback buttons make it easy to start and stop media. It works with a rechargeable battery, so you don’t need to constantly load it with AAs.

The GlideTV Navigator was a hit at CES this year and now it’s finally available. Pick it up for $149 (steep, right?) at the GlideTV site.

We’ve written before about Brutal Legend, the just-released video game starring big-screen funnyman Jack Black. Produced by Tim Schafer, who has several cult classics (from Grim Fandango to Psychonauts) under his belt, the game has built up a lot of positive industry buzz, but is also in danger of being overshadowed by a flood of fall 2009 blockbusters, from Uncharted 2 to The Beatles: Rock Band.

Does Brutal Legend–a wide-ranging action/adventure about a foul-mouthed heavy metal band roadie who gets smacked on the head and wakes up in a D&D-style fantasy land–have what it takes to rock gamers this holiday season?

Dan:
Having seen and played a few segments of the game at different times over the past eight months, I was eager to have a chance to spend a weekend playing through a bigger chunk of the main campaign. Several hours in, Brutal Legend has done an overall excellent job of treading the very fine line between comedy and gameplay–but not without some serious stumbles along the way.

I’d be the first to say I’m not a Jack Black “fan,” but this is clearly a role he was born to play. He’s apparently into it as well, and shows up as himself for a clever live-action intro video. The game’s writing is sharp, even if much of it is clearly constructed from contextual one-liners that Black’s character, Eddie Rigg, spouts off in a semi-random fashion.

But we ended up having more fun listening to the dialog than playing the game itself. Brutal Legend doesn’t seem to know if it wants to be a hack-and-slash action game, an open-world exploration RPG, or a squad strategy game–as Eddie picks up small armies of head-banging locals to order around with basic follow/stay/attack D-pad commands.

Perhaps trying to mash all these genres together caused a few of the rough, unfinished edges we saw. Cut scenes and in-game dialog crashed awkwardly into each other, cutting off characters mid-sentence. Transitions between dialog and action scenes were abrupt and sometimes disorienting.

But despite some muddled ideas, we kept going back for more, drawn in by the Frank Frazetta-style art (think ’70s metal album covers) and inside baseball music biz jokes–and as someone who has spent some time in a self-parodying heavy metal band, that’s high praise.

Jeff:
It’s tough to name a game that has as much hype this. It’s probably because of the talent involved in the game; Jack Black has sported a Brutal Legend T-shirt everywhere he’s gone for the last year and voice work comes from rock legends like Lemmy Kilmister (Motorhead) and Ozzy Osbourne.

Brutal Legend is unique, in that you’ll experience a variety of gameplay genres mashed up together inside. The game incorporates open-world driving, action/adventure, real-time strategy, and elements of role-playing.

If there’s one thing the game does right, it’s establishing the metal atmosphere. …

Toshiba’s beastly Dynabook was last updated in April, but at the time, Toshiba was still walking around with its chin up and refusing to integrate Blu-ray technology into its products. Now, however, the 18.4-inch Qosmio G60 (Dynabook MX in overseas markets) is finally bringing together a Cell-based SpursEngine HD video co-processor with a Blu-ray drive, ensuring oodles of movie watching bliss for those mettlesome enough to lug this thing around. Other specs include a 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo P8700 CPU, NVIDIA GeForce GT 230M GPU, 500GB hard drive, 4GB of RAM, twin TV tuners, Windows 7 Home Premium and a 1080p panel. If all goes well, it’ll ship next month (at least in Japan) for around ¥220,000 ($2,457), though your guess is as good as ours on a US release.

[Via Engadget Japanese]

Filed under: Laptops

Toshiba finally weds SpursEngine and Blu-ray in 18.4-inch Qosmio G60 laptop originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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