Hasta La Gadget!

Bertrand Serlet, Apple's senior VP of Mac software engineering, developed the Mac OS X operating system. Photo courtesy Apple.

Apple announced Wednesday that Bertrand Serlet, lead developer of Mac OS X, is leaving the company, just a day before the operating system turns 10 years old.

Though less publicized than Apple executives Steve Jobs and Tim Cook, Serlet is a legend at the company. He was basically the Jony Ive of Apple’s software design. Mac OS X, which originally released March 24, 2001, has played a crucial role in driving the success of Apple’s Macs and mobile products.

“I’ve worked with Steve for 22 years and have had an incredible time developing products at both NeXT and Apple, but at this point, I want to focus less on products and more on science,” said Serlet, Apple’s senior VP of software engineering, in a press statement. “Craig has done a great job managing the Mac OS team for the past two years, Lion is a great release, and the transition should be seamless.”

Serlet has a lot to brag about. His baby, Mac OS X, not only powers Apple’s Mac computers, but also the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch — all blockbuster products.

After Apple fired Jobs in a power struggle in 1985, the exiled CEO founded NeXT to build a Mac-like computer for education that would put Apple out of business. Serlet, a former Xerox PARC employee, was on the NeXT team.

Then when Apple nearly went bankrupt in 1996, the company acquired NeXT to build a new Mac OS. That brought both Jobs and Serlet on board at Apple, and the two have been working together for 22 years.

When Mac OS X debuted in 2001, it had a somewhat rocky start: Many features were missing, and there were some compatibility problems with external hardware. Over the past decade, Apple pruned out OS X’s issues and polished the OS. Apple released iOS in 2007. It’s a specialized version of Mac OS X for the iPhone, and later the iPod Touch and iPad.

The next version of Mac OS X, dubbed Mac OS X Lion, is due for release sometime 2011.

Apple has apparently responded to the public outcry surrounding Exodus International’s controversial “gay cure” app. The app, which stirred up protest from gay rights groups earlier this month, culminating in a petition signed by nearly 150,000 people, has disappeared from the iPhone App Store.

Apple has long been a friend of the LGBT community, opposing California’s Proposition 8, removing the anti-gay Manhattan Declaration iPhone app, and earning a 100% score from the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index. I am shocked that this same company has given the green light to an app from a notoriously anti-gay organization like Exodus International that uses scare tactics, misinformation, stereotypes and distortions of LGBT life to recruit clients.

Bertrand Serlet, the guy who led the development of Mac OS X since the beginning, is leaving Apple. He was one of the heavyweights and a legendary figure at the company, even while he wasn’t well known by the general public. But why is he leaving? More »

Unsurprisingly, El Goog gifted the Android versions of Latitude and Places with these updates a few weeks back, but now the iOS loyalists are being brought into a similar circle. The search giant has just added check-ins to the iOS version of Google Latitude, with any iDevice using iOS 4 or higher being deemed compatible. In related news, the Applefied build of Google Places is now available in 30 languages, and there’s an added ‘Saved Places’ feature for keeping tabs on your favorite spots. You can check your phone for updates, or if you haven’t dug in yet, have a poke around in the App Store.

Google brings check-ins to Google Latitude on iPhone, 30 languages to Places originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Mar 2011 20:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple's new MacBook Pros have faster chips and a Thunderbolt port. Image courtesy Apple.

by Mark Brown, Wired UK

According to numerous forum threads on Apple’s official discussion boards, the latest fleet of MacBook Pro models is plagued with technical hiccups that have lead to lock-ups and freezes.

The issues, which some speculate derive from the graphics card, graphics driver or power management, cause the laptop to completely freeze up when under any kind of stress. Users have complained that when trying to render a clip in iMovie, play a game or use Adobe Flash the CPU temperature rockets and the unit locks up.

Some users believe that the problem is in the software, rather than hardware. Forum poster portergoodness says that he could get his MacBook Pro to reliably freeze in a matter of minutes by encoding a video, running Netflix and playing Civilization V at the same time. When he did the same test on Windows 7, the laptop ran the three processes without a hitch for half an hour.

If this is the case, it means Apple could solve the problem with a software update, rather than an expensive product recall. This isn’t the first time that Apple’s solved a technical glitch in this way — in 2010, a firmware update managed to fix intermittent flickering on iMac screens, and updated iOS builds have solved various Wi-Fi problems on the original iPad.

Polish forum poster Horniasty claims that Apple revealed, in a support phone call, “that they are sure that this is an firmware/driver related problem, not a hardware one, which raised my hope up a bit.” Apple hasn’t yet released an official statement on the subject.

Last week, the same forum erupted with claims that the new MacBook Pros were having trouble connecting with iTunes Home Sharing. Apple hasn’t acknowledged this issue either.

Apple, like most major hardware manufacturers, has a history of engineering issues. The iPhone 4 caused a frenzy in 2010, for example, when consumers realised that touching a specific point on the phone’s edge caused signal strength to tank. The firm called an emergency press conference and distributed free rubbery bumper-cases to all customers.

The technology giant currently has another problem on its hands with the iPad 2, thanks to a potentially defective screen that lets dots and rays of light bleed from around the edges. Once again, Apple hasn’t commented on those complaints.

This story was originally published on Wired UK: MacBook Pro users complain of hardware failures.