Hasta La Gadget!

With not so much as a hint of fanfare (and a very loose definition of “coming soon“), Amazon has quietly unleashed its Kindle app for Mac. The 22MB file is for Intel-based machines only, OS X 10.5 and above. Nothing too fancy, it does exactly what you’d expect in terms of functionality… and not much else. What else is there to say? Time’s a-wastin’, hit up the source link to download.

Kindle for Mac now finally available originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Mar 2010 00:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Curious folks around the world enjoy a bit of hackintosh every now and then (although once is enough for many), but no geek has successfully ventured as far as Toni Nikkanen of Finland, who became the first person to run OS X on a phone — the Nokia N900. As you can see in the video after the break, Toni’s hack relies on PearPC — a PowerPC emulator — to install good ol’ OS X 10.3 (Panther), but the mammoth sluggishness means it’s far from usable. Still, if you can spare 90 minutes for each boot-up plus plenty more for the snail-paced cursor, then head to the source to learn from Herra Nikkanen.

[Thanks, Matija]

Continue reading Mac OS X 10.3 installed on Nokia N900 via PearPC, barely usable for impatient geeks

Mac OS X 10.3 installed on Nokia N900 via PearPC, barely usable for impatient geeks originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 31 Jan 2010 19:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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PC users have been making a 3D mess of their virtual Windows 7 desktops with BumpTop now for nearly a year, and have been doing it two-fingered since October saw the 1.2 multitouch release. Now you Apple fans can get a feel too, with BumpTop Mac newly available. There’s a free version for you to try, or a $29 Pro edition that adds support for multitouch trackpads, enabling you to quickly form piles of docs and filter through them. Yes, piles of documents, much like that leaning tower of expense reports your co-workers have been giving a wide berth whenever they walk by. After the break you’ll find a video of it all in action, and you can get your free trial at the read link — assuming you’re running OS 10.5 or higher.

Continue reading BumpTop hits the Mac, covers your OS X desktop with piles just like your real desktop (video)

BumpTop hits the Mac, covers your OS X desktop with piles just like your real desktop (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Jan 2010 09:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Look at you, all cuddled up with your Leopard install, sipping on a steamy hot cocoa, watching the snow fall outdoors, and thinking you don’t have a care in the world. We hate to break it to ya but you do have a care, a big one, thanks to a proof of concept hack exploiting a buffer overflow in MacOS 10.5 and 10.6. The flaw has been known about since June, but only now has it been proven to work on Cupertino’s latest, and a very straightforward code example of how to use it has been posted online. You know what that means: watch out for those e-mail attachments. Interestingly, the flaw is also said to possibly exist in the PS3 as well, which could make for a very interesting spring — cocoa or no.

Leopard and Snow Leopard flaw exploited in proof of concept, real-world tomfoolery surely coming soon originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Jan 2010 09:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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And it’s all over, folks: The US District Court for the Northern District of California has just permanently forbidden wannbe Mac cloner Psystar from selling modified versions of OS X, providing any tools that enable users to bypass the OS X kernel encryption, and / or intentionally aiding anyone else from infringing Apple’s OS X copyrights in any way. We knew this was coming following Apple’s decisive victory against Psystar last month — the only open questions were whether the court would include Snow Leopard and Psytar’s Rebel EFI software in the ban, since the lawsuit was specifically about Leopard and Rebel EFI wasn’t the subject of any proceedings. Both issues were predictably resolved in favor of Apple: the court specifically included Snow Leopard and any future versions of OS X in the scope of the injunction, and while Judge Alsup couldn’t address Rebel EFI directly, he did expressly forbid Psystar from “manufacturing, importing, offering to the public, providing, or otherwise trafficking” in anything that circumvents Apple’s OS X hardware locks — which we’d say covers Rebel EFI’s functionality pretty thoroughly. Psystar has until December 31 to comply, and the Judge Alsup isn’t kidding around: “Defendant must immediately begin this process, and take the quickest path to compliance; thus, if compliance can be achieved within one hour after this order is filed, defendant shall reasonably see it done.” Psystar can still appeal, obviously, but it’s already got its own hefty legal bills and a $2.67m fine to pay to Apple, so we’ve got a feeling this one might have reached the end of the line.

P.S.- Amusingly, Judge Alsup appears to be pretty sick of Apple’s shenanigans as well: in the section discussing Snow Leopard, he says Apple first tried to block any discovery of Snow Leopard before the OS was released, and then pushed to include the software in the case after it launched. That’s why the Florida case over Snow Leopard wasn’t merged into this case — Alsup thought it was a “slick tactic” that “smacked of trying to ‘have it both ways,’ and offended [his] sense of fair play.” Ouch.

Psystar banned from copying any version of OS X, helping others install it originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 Dec 2009 13:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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