Hasta La Gadget!

If you prefer your Passports to sport the same Mac sensibilities as your go-to work machines, Western Digital has upgraded said portable hard drives for the aforementioned laptop variety. The My Passport for Mac family of external HDDs have received the same USB 3.0 boost and increased 2TB capacity that the regular ol’ My Passport got cozy with back in the spring. However, the Apple flavored offerings tout Time Machine compatibility and a ruggedized WD Nomad casing that should keep your files safe from dust, moisture and unintentional drops. Options include 500GB and 1TB units as well, with prices ranging from $99 on up to $200 for the 2TB portable drive. The entire trio is available now and a few more details await in the full press release that follows.

Filed under: Storage

Western Digital My Passport for Mac portable hard drives get stamped for USB 3.0 and 2TB capacity originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Aug 2012 08:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This week Parallels Desktop 8 for Mac has been revealed with the power to integrate OS X Mountain Lion and Windows 8 like a boss. With features that take into account the most integral features of both systems, you’ll be working on the Mac computer of your choice with all the greatness of the most advanced operating systems from both Apple and Microsoft. Both Parallels Desktop 8 Switch to Mac Edition and standard Parallels Desktop 8 for Mac are ready to make your next-generation operating system cross-use easy as pie.

Integration features on your Mountain Lion system are numerous with this new bit of software, starting with dictation support on Windows app – like they’re running natively. You’ll have keyboard layout synchronization for all the languages you’ve got on your Mac inside Windows apps as well and working with Smart full screen capabilities as well as Retina display support, you’ll have a more HD experience than you ever though possible with your Windows system running on your Mac.

You’ll have the ability to drag and drop email attachments from your OS X environment over to your Outlook icon, you can use your Mountain Lion Notification Center for Windows messages, and you’ve got a fabulous Presentation Wizard to work with for both systems together as well! Right along those lines – so to speak – you’ll be working with a brand new Windows “launchpad” that makes your Windows 8 experience much more user friendly.

Inside Windows 8 apps you’ll be able to use Mountain Lion gesture galore – rotate, zoom, pinch, and a whole lot more. Compared to the last version of Parallels, you’ll be running 30% faster input/output operations, 30% faster graphics for games, and your virtual machines will run up to 25% faster as well.

With Parallels Desktop 8 Switch to Mac Edition you’ll have a collection of tools that allow you to move away from your Windows device and towards an Apple computer as quickly or as incrementally as you with. You’ve got a Parallels High-speed USB transfer cable right in the box so you can transfer from one device to the other with ease, and video tutorials are included as well so the whole process is made simple. This pack also comes with online backup and recovery from Acronis as well as Mac and Windows security software trial subscriptions from Norton and Kaspersky – just incase you’re nervous!

Both bits of software will be on the streets starting on 09/04/2012 – that’s on-shelf availability, in other words, and there’s a Tech Guarantee in effect working from 8/1/12 until 10/31/2012 as well. The full version of Parallels Desktop 8 for Mac will ring in at $79.99 MSRP while the Switch to Mac edition will cost you $99.99 USD. There’s also a Student Edition coming up for $39.99 USD as well – grab it!

ALSO NOTE: There’s also a Parallels Mobile App for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch out there as well – right now you can grab it for a limited time price of $4.99. You can run Windows applications on your devices like a pro on your Apple mobile device too – who woulda thought!?

Parallels Desktop 8 for Mac priced and dated for Mountain Lion and Windows 8 is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

This week someone at Gizmodo has gotten their hands on a workbook of training documents used by Apple to make sure their Genius Bar works for the customers that need it. While it might seem that any Apple document not meant to be seen by the public would be full of undeniably valuable or otherwise magical information, here the content is essentially bland. The majority of the manual, it would seem, is dedicated to making sure that each Genius makes the customers they work with happy – and satisfied enough to buy products in the future.

The manual brings on just as much psychological training as it does technical info, with the phrase “Everyone in the Apple Store is in the business of selling” right at the core. There’s a section by the name of “Selling Gadget Joy” which uses the letters A.P.P.L.E. to make the concept simple for whoever’s aiming to become Genius material. (A)pproach, (P)robe, (P)resent, (L)isten, (E)nd. That’s the Apple way for a Genius.

One of the main abilities that every Genius is taught – or that they need, rather – is the ability to empathize with whoever they’re conversing with. Apple makes it clear that a Genius should often be using the “Three Fs: Feel, Felt, and Found. This works especially well when the customer is mistaken or has bad information.” This “Fs” situation works best when a Genius (or any other Apple Store employee, for that matter,) is speaking with a customer about a product that they feel has a feature that’s out of place – or if a product is too expensive.

“Customer: This Mac is just too expensive.
Genius: I can see how you’d feel this way. I felt the price was a little high, but I found it’s a real value because of all the built-in software and capabilities.”

There are a list of words not to use in the manual which all lead the Genius to agreeing with and helping the customer. For example instead of saying “freeze” or “frozen” or “crash”, a Genius should try to use “unexpectedly quits”, “does not respond”, or “stops responding”. Another example is “bug” or “problem” – a Genius is taught to say “condition”, “issue”, or “situation” instead.

In the end, the most controversial part of the training was the supposed set of Apple employees (or former employees) who found the training itself to be robotic. See if a Genius tells you the same next time you’re getting help from them in an Apple Store – was your training intense? They may very well tell you that they certainly felt that it was just fabulous.

[via Gizmodo]

Apple Genius Training student workbook “leaked” is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

It’s a day of upheaval in the boardroom at Apple — in the good sense. Remember how Hardware Engineering Senior VP Bob Mansfield said he would retire in June? He’s had a change of heart and will keep working on future products. Meanwhile, two of the vice presidents who’ve been mainstays of Apple’s recent plans, Mac Software Engineering VP Craig Federighi and Hardware Engineering VP Dan Riccio, have been promoted to Senior VP. All three will report directly to CEO Tim Cook, and both Federighi as well as Riccio will get their first turns at Apple’s executive management team. While the shift isn’t going to signal a dramatic change in strategy, it’s notable that Riccio’s role is expanding: he’s moving from his earlier iPad focus to overseeing all the hardware Apple makes. We can only guess at what the ultimate goals might be for the new assignments, although we can imagine Apple jumping through hoops to keep a hardware executive as skilled as Mansfield on its side.

Continue reading Apple promotes pair of execs to Senior VP level, Bob Mansfield to hang around after all

Filed under: Cellphones, Desktops, Laptops, Tablets

Apple promotes pair of execs to Senior VP level, Bob Mansfield to hang around after all originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Aug 2012 16:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Trouble looked to be brewing for Apple last April: an International Trade Commission judge made an initial ruling that Apple infringed on a standards-essential Motorola WiFi patent, raising the possibility of a trade ban if the verdict held true. The fellows in Cupertino may have caught a big break. A Commission review of the decision on Friday determined that Apple didn’t violate the patent, and it upheld positions that exonerated the iPhone maker regarding two others. Apple isn’t entirely off the hook, however. The ITC is remanding the case to the judge to review his stance that Apple hadn’t violated a non-standards-based patent, which still leaves Apple facing the prospect of a ban. However, having to revisit the case nearly resets the clock — we now have to wait for another ruling and a matching review, and that likely puts any final decision well into 2013. Google-owned Motorola isn’t lacking more weapons in its arsenal, but any stalled proceedings take away bargaining chips in what’s become a high-stakes game.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

ITC decides Apple didn’t violate Motorola WiFi patent after all, tosses case back to judge originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Aug 2012 18:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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