Hasta La Gadget!

Apple has confirmed which Mac systems will be compatible with the fast-approaching OS X Mountain Lion upgrade, and it’s bad news if you’re running a MacBook dating back to before 2007 or a Mac mini from before 2009. With each iteration of OS X there’s always a list of machines that have been left behind, and Mountain Lion is no different, though Apple has not given any specific indication as to why older systems don’t meet the grade.

The suspicion over at Ars Technica, however, is that graphics on select 64-bit systems are what’s causing the issue. According to the Golden Master seed of Mountain Lion, released earlier this week, the older machines now out of the big cat loop rely on 32-bit GPU drivers, and the new OS X version won’t load them.

Apple’s decision, it seems, was to leave those machines off the upgrade cycle, rather than spend the time, money and effort involved in writing replacement drivers. That means no more significant OS updates for anything other than the list of models below, though Apple is still committed to releasing security patches and other bugfixes as the need arises.

Mountain Lion will arrive in July, released through the Mac App Store as a $19.99 upgrade.

• iMac (Mid 2007 or newer)
• MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer)
• MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer)
• MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer)
• Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer)
• Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer)
• Xserve (Early 2009)

Apple confirms Macs not eligible for Mountain Lion upgrade is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Apple, along with a large list of other technology companies, abided by EPEAT regulations to ensure that its products had a minimal impact on the environment. Just a few days ago, Apple requested that all its product be removed from the EPEAT certification list, which will have a knock-on effect for schools and businesses in San Francisco. State employees can use city funds to buy products covered by EPEAT, although they’ll no longer be able to purchase future Apple products now that they’re no longer registered under the scheme.

The city requires that any computer products that are purchased by agencies be 100% EPEAT compatible, something that no longer applies to Apple’s products. Around 50 departments and 28,000 employees currently rely on the EPEAT list for technology purchases, and the University of California is mulling a decision to suspend Apple computer purchases following the EPEAT removal. The institution is currently reviewing the decision by working with Apple over the next two weeks in coordination with school administrators.

Apple, meanwhile, is placing emphasis on other standards such as Energy Star: “Apple takes a comprehensive approach to measuring our environmental impact and all of our products meet the strictest energy efficiency standards backed by the US government, Energy Star 5.2. We also lead the industry by reporting each product’s greenhouse gas emissions on our website, and Apple products are superior in other important environmental areas not measured by EPEAT, such as removal of toxic materials.”

[via The Telegraph]

San Francisco drops Apple purchases over EPEAT withdrawal is written by Ben Kersey & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Apple has hit a major milestone with its latest version of OS X Mountain Lion. Cupertino previewed Mountain Lion back in February highlighting a bunch of features that would be common between the new Mac desktop operating system and iOS. Those features include Messages, Reminders, Notes, Notification center, Game center, and more.

This week Apple released the Golden Master version of Mountain Lion to developers. Golden Master is a designation that means it is the final version of the software to be released to the public. Final version is a term used rather loosely when it comes to operating systems, because you never know what sort of last-minute changes may need to be made if issues are discovered.

With Mountain Lion going Golden Master, the last major hurdle has been cleared for the operating system to come to the Mac faithful. It’s also worth noting that back during WWDC Apple announced the new operating system would also get other features, including Dictation, iCloud Tabs, and Power Nap. The OS will launch this month, and the update will be $19.99. If you haven’t been keeping up with Mountain Lion, check out the video below to see 30 new features for the operating system.

[via MacRumors]

Golden Master OS X Mountain Lion seeded to developers is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

This week it’s been revealed that Apple has requested that all of its products be removed from the national registry of environmentally sound products listed by EPEAT. This registry covers desktops, notebooks, and displays, and assures the public that every device with its seal of approval is environmentally sound. The EPEAT group is (as far as we know at the moment) still funded by the EPA, Apple, and a set of manufacturers across the USA.

EPEAT stands for Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool and Apple has pulled a total of 39 products (every Apple product registered there) within the past month. The EPEAT seal of approval considers energy consumption, recyclability, upgradeability, and the processes involved in producing the product.

This information comes straight from EPEAT where the seal-distributing group has little to say outside the fact that Apple has withdrawn all of its products from their big list. According to EPEAT, Apple has also been clear about their future together: Apple will no longer be submitting its products to EPEAT for environmental rating.

We’ll leave it up to you to decide why all of this is going down for the moment – stay tuned!

[via EPEAT]

Apple breaks ties with EPEAT environmental group is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 690 has already won the hearts and minds of many gamers, with its potent combination of twin Kepler cores, but how about using it for a compact GPU compute rig? That’s just what custom PC system maker AVADirect decided to try, opting for not just one GTX 690 but a four card rig squeezed into a standard 2U server.

That’s a total of eight Kepler cores all running in parallel. AVADirect hasn’t shared the rest of the specifications of the server itself, nor benchmarks – which is, we must admit, what we’re particularly keen to see.

Why would you want four high-power graphics card in a server? Well, while gaming probably isn’t high on the agenda, turning NVIDIA’s CUDA cores into a parallel processing workstation could have some significant benefits for anyone doing graphics or 3D rendering, or crunching huge quantities of mathmatical data.

NVIDIA normally pushes its Quadro or Tesla cards for dedicated parallel processing tasks, but there’s no reason the eminently capable GTX 690 – which has 3,072 CUDA cores apiece – shouldn’t turn its hand to something more serious than Crysis. No word on overall system pricing, but with each of those EVGA GeForce GTX 690 4GB cards coming in at nearly $1,100 you’re looking at almost $4,400 for CUDA cores alone.

Quad GeForce GTX 690 server scoffs at your parallel processing needs is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.