Hasta La Gadget!

Apple is well-known for wanting a close spread in hardware requirements with OS X upgrades, having dropped PowerPC like a hot potato when Snow Leopard arrived just three years after the Intel switch. Whether or not you’re a fan of that policy, it’s certainly carrying forward with Mountain Lion. When the newly-finished OS hits the Mac App Store, it will rule out the very first wave of 64-bit Macs: certain MacBook Pros, Mac Pros and other early systems will be denied a taste of 10.8. Some sleuthing from Ars Technica suggests that it’s a matter of graphics drivers rather than capriciousness on Apple’s part, as the Macs excluded from the mix are using 32-bit drivers that won’t play nicely with Mountain Lion’s 64-bit Utopia short of a wide-scale conversion effort. It’s little consolation to those who dropped a pretty penny on certain Macs just a few years ago. That said, Apple is still going the extra mile to support some systems — if you’re reading this on an original aluminum iMac, you’re sitting pretty.

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops, Software

Apple sunsets a few 64-bit Macs with Mountain Lion, video drivers likely the culprit originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 11 Jul 2012 11:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Ars Technica  |  Apple  | Email this | Comments

Microsoft is still determined to explore every nook and cranny of Windows 8 on its way to the newly official October launch, and now it’s swinging its attention towards File History, its revamped approach to preserving our data. The new component supplements Windows Backup, which Microsoft admits is “not a very popular” app, and is more than a little transparent in bringing OS X’s set-it-and-forget-it Time Machine strategy to the Windows crowd. Not that we’re complaining: the same basic philosophy of getting an automatic, version-aware backup of all our personal files is convenient on any platform, especially when we can get a temporary internal safeguard while we’re on vacation. The differences in platforms have equal rewards and drawbacks, however. File History provides more control over backups than its Apple counterpart, including frequency (finally!) and backup age, but it can’t be used to backup whole apps like with a Time Machine drive. As always with these in-depth Windows 8 explorations, there’s much more to see at the source, so click on through if you’ve ever been worried about deleting a file by accident.

Filed under: Storage, Software

Microsoft details Windows 8 File History, takes us through a Time Machine originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 10 Jul 2012 13:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Building Windows 8  | Email this | Comments

Earlier this morning, reports started circulating that the App Store was pushing corrupt binaries to iOS and Mac users, resulting in constant crashes of the affected apps. Marco Arment, of Instapaper fame, was one of the first to notice and very vocal — bringing the issue to the attention of many in the media and at Apple. The list of affected apps is pretty staggering, including such high profile titles as Angry Birds Space, Yahoo! Search, Google Reader and, of course, Instapaper. The number of developers affected now tops 115, so we’d hold off on those updates. For the first several hours Apple was mum on the issue, but it has finally acknowledged the problem in the support forums and even reached out to developers via email. Suspicions seem to be that the FairPlay DRM is at the root, but until we have official word from Apple we’ll refrain from laying the blame at its feet. Cupertino is working (we assume tirelessly) on a fix, which will hopefully be delivered sooner, rather than later.

Update: Apple has confirmed to AllThingsD that the problem was due to a “server that generated DRM code” and has been fixed. Affected end users are advised to delete the corrupted apps and redownload them.

Apple aware of corrupt apps issue, working on a fix (Update: Fixed!) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 05 Jul 2012 16:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  TechCrunch, AllThingsD  | Email this | Comments

You’d be forgiven for assuming that the ModBook dream died with release of the first iPad. After all, the first version of the hacked notebook predated Apple’s announcement by a couple of years. When the iPad finally hit in 2010, it did a lot to address the desire for a slate device running Apple software. Since then, things have largely remained silent on the Axiotron front. In fact, the last time we heard a significant peep out of the company was back in 2009. Its former CEO Andreas Haas assured us, however, that the real reason for the company’s silence is a bit more complicated than the story of yet another product falling victim to the Apple steamroller.

“Axiotron itself was a great company,” says Haas. “Back in 2008, I took the company public, everything was really great. There was one little thing that turned out to be a huge problem, which is that the company was largely bank-financed and 10 days after it went public, Lehman Brothers went belly-up and put the whole financial market in a tailspin. After that was mostly spent on trying to somehow restructure the company, and ultimately there was just nothing that could be done about it.”

As the newly reborn Modbook Inc. teased via its Facebook page yesterday, however, the name lives on. This week marks the return of the tablet in the form of the 13.3-inch Modbook Pro, a device slated to ship early this fall. Can such a device survive in a world that’s been downright flooded by tablets in the years since its predecessor’s release? The company clearly feels it can — that its new product is unique enough to set itself apart in amongst the deluge of slates, calling the new Pro, “the world’s most powerful and largest-screen tablet computer.” And in a space where hardware and software are relatively neutered, it’s understandable how the company might be inclined to make such bold claims about the converted notebook.

Continue reading The Modbook Pro gets official, CEO Andreas Haas talks success in an iPad world

The Modbook Pro gets official, CEO Andreas Haas talks success in an iPad world originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Jun 2012 11:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments