Apple wins copyright infringement case against Psystar in California

Well, well. Apple’s won its copyright infringement claim against would-be Mac cloner Psystar in California. Anyone surprised? As we’ve been saying all along, the key argument wasn’t the OS X EULA or Psystar’s failed monopoly claims, but pure, simple copyright infringement, since Psystar was illegally copying, modifying, and distributing Apple’s code. Psystar was also dinged for circumventing Apple’s kernel encryption in violation of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, but that’s just another nail in the coffin, really. There’s still some legal fireworks to come, as Apple’s various other claims like breach of contract, trademark infringement, and unfair competition weren’t addressed in this ruling, but those are all secondary issues now — and we’d expect this decision to have quite an impact on the other case currently ongoing in Florida. We’ve broken down the highlights after the break, hit up the read link for the PDF and follow along.

[Via Groklaw]

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Apple wins copyright infringement case against Psystar in California originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 14 Nov 2009 17:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mac OS X 10.6.2 update out on the prowl (update: Atom support is gone)

It’s been awhile, but we’ve got ourselves a brand spanking new OS X update in the mix, 10.6.2 for Snow Leopard. So far the biggest change here seems to be fixing that nagging guest account deletion bug — and thank goodness for that. As for whether or not it supports Intel Atom processors, last we heard this morning it wasn’t going to be there, but we’re gonna have wait and see now that it’s officially hit the nets. Leopard users who haven’t made the upgrade also get a gift today, in the form of a security update. 10.6.2 release notes after the break.

Update: We just installed it — it took forever and a day on one of our machines, and sped by reasonably quick on another. Everything seems okay otherwise, how about you?

Update 2: We’ve gotten enough reports to call it — Atom support is out. Sorry, hackintosh community.

[Via Mac Rumors, thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

Read – 10.6.2 notes
Read – Intel Atom still unsupported on Mac OS X 10.6.2 seeds

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Mac OS X 10.6.2 update out on the prowl (update: Atom support is gone) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Phil Schiller on Windows 7: ‘No matter how you look at it, it’s still Windows’

Windows fans expecting Apple to let Microsoft have its moment in the sun next week when Windows 7 launches should probably know better by now — the Mac maker is actually planning a marketing counter-offensive to hit alongside 7’s debut. According to Phil Schiller, the convoluted upgrade path from Windows XP to Windows 7 represents a big opportunity for Apple, since users have to back everything up and reformat. “Any user that reads all those steps is probably going to freak out. If you have to go through all that, why not just buy a Mac?” Well — we’re sure most of you can think of several reasons. Of course, Microsoft has long said that most people will actually get Windows 7 when they purchase a new machine, which is one reason we’re seeing such an absolute flood of interesting and innovative new PC hardware — but Phil seems to remember that was also the company line about Vista, and homeboy isn’t backing down. “We’ve been through these transitions before, and no matter how you look at it-it’s still Windows.” Harsh burn, amigo. Any last predictions? “I expect Snow Leopard will have an amazing upgrade rate, and Windows 7 won’t.” We thought you might say something like that. Good thing we’re giving Steve Ballmer a chance to respond live on the air next week, no?

[Via AppleInsider]

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Phil Schiller on Windows 7: ‘No matter how you look at it, it’s still Windows’ originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Oct 2009 12:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple aware of Snow Leopard accounts bug that kills data, is working on a fix

Apple just made a statement about that nasty Snow Leopard Guest Account bug that deletes user data — it’s not much, but at least the people in charge are working on things.

We are aware of the issue, which occurs only in extremely rare cases, and we are working on a fix.

Peachy — now if Apple would just figure out how to fix all those broken Time Capsules holding the backups, we’d be all set.

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Apple aware of Snow Leopard accounts bug that kills data, is working on a fix originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 12 Oct 2009 21:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Snow Leopard’s Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL boost video encoding app by 50 percent

It’ll take some time before we see the true impact of OpenCL and the newly-open-sourced Grand Central Dispatch on OS X, but we’re definitely intrigued by this early report from Christophe Ducommun, developer of MovieGate, who says that shifting his app to use the new tech has increased performance by around 50 percent on the same hardware. Testing on a 2007 2.66GHz quad-core Mac Pro with a GeForce 8800GT, MovieGate MPEG-2 encode speeds went from 104fps under Leopard to 150fps under Snow Leopard, and decoding CPU usage dropped from 165 percent to 70 percent. Now, yes, that’s just one app, and most users don’t have four cores to play with, but it’s still an eye-opening result, and we’re definitely hoping it’s the start of a trend.

[Via MacRumors]

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Snow Leopard’s Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL boost video encoding app by 50 percent originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 17 Sep 2009 18:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple’s Grand Central Dispatch goes open source — get at those cores, people

Grand Central Dispatch may not exactly be a household name to the average Apple user, but it’s certainly a hot topic among developers, who may know it better as “libdispatch,” and are no doubt thrilled that Apple has now made the whole thing open source. Among other things, that means developers are now able to take full advantage of multi-core processors in Snow Leopard, which obviously has some fairly big implications for applications as soon as those developers are able to get a handle on things. Know what you’re doing? Just like to get in over your head? Then you can find the complete source code and other necessary information at the read link below.

[Via Slashdot]

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Apple’s Grand Central Dispatch goes open source — get at those cores, people originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Sep 2009 15:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mac OS X 10.6.1 update now live

Well, that was fast — just over week after Snow Leopard officially shipped, the first update’s on the books. Nothing major in the changelog here, but we’re told Flash has been updated to a newer, more secure version. Let us know how it goes for you, eh?

Continue reading Mac OS X 10.6.1 update now live

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Mac OS X 10.6.1 update now live originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 Sep 2009 18:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Entelligence: Will Snow Leopard’s Exchange support earn Apple a new entourage?

Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he’ll explore where our industry is and where it’s going — on both micro and macro levels — with the unique wit and insight only he can provide.

Apple, Microsoft and the Mac have an interesting history: Microsoft was among the first developers for Macintosh, yet not long after, Apple would sue Microsoft for copying the look and feel of Mac OS in Windows. By the late 90s, Microsoft made a huge splash at Macworld with an announced 150 million dollar investment in Apple and promises of further development of Office and Internet Explorer for Macintosh. Office in particular was a major issue as it was a key requirement for business users. Early on, Office applications for Mac were far more advanced than their Windows counterparts. Excel was actually introduced for Mac users before Windows users could get their hands on it. But by the mid 90s, all that changed, the Mac versions of Office lagged behind Windows in terms of features and performance. It took forever to get things such as a common set of file formats, so that users of Office on the two different platforms could exchange documents with ease (it seems like something we take for granted but having managed and supported PC and Mac users in mixed shops, it was a nightmare to deal with). The latest version of Office for Mac, Office 2008 showed that Microsoft could produce top quality Macintosh software. I personally, think Office 2008 for Mac is the best version of the software that Microsoft has ever done (far better than Office 2007 for Windows, as it preserved the core part of the Mac UI while co-existing nicely with the ribbon UI). Obviously, however, a situation with such broad inconsistency is untenable.

Continue reading Entelligence: Will Snow Leopard’s Exchange support earn Apple a new entourage?

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Entelligence: Will Snow Leopard’s Exchange support earn Apple a new entourage? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Aug 2009 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Snow Leopard takes a bite out of support for legacy Palm OS devices

Still rocking that Palm Zire with your new Intel-based Mac? Then you might just want to reconsider that upgrade to Snow Leopard, as Apple has apparently decided to ditch its support for legacy Palm OS devices in the latest incarnation of iSync. That, as you may be aware, had previously acted as a conduit for Palm’s aging but still available Palm Desktop software, and let folks easily sync up their contacts and other data from their Centro, Treo, Zire, Tungsten, or even a venerable old PalmPilot. Of course, that doesn’t quite rise to the same level of controversy as the whole Pre / iTunes situation, especially considering that Palm itself has mostly moved on from said devices, and there are still some third-party sync solutions available for folks that want to keep the Palm OS dream alive.

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Snow Leopard takes a bite out of support for legacy Palm OS devices originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 Aug 2009 16:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Entelligence: Stains on the sleeve of my operating system

Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he’ll explore where our industry is and where it’s going — on both micro and macro levels — with the unique wit and insight only he can provide.

I originally started this column on my take on what an Apple tablet might be (I literally dreamed about it and started to write it down when I woke up). I was really into it, which explains why I didn’t save it as I wrote. I think you can see where this is going.

Like a cartoon character who notices that he’s no longer standing on solid ground and suddenly begins to fall, I reached over to save, but was too late. My trusty XP install suddenly blue screened. Muttering just a few choice words, I rebooted, only to blue screen again. No problem, there’s always “safe mode.” Too bad safe mode blue screened as well. With little hope of getting anything recovered, I gave up, fired up my Mac and started from scratch. It’s not the first time this has happened to me, where for some reason or another I’ve lost work on my computer. I suspect it’s happened to a few of you out there too.

But this latest bad experience changed my thought process from Apple tablets to what’s wrong with the whole PC landscape and today’s operating systems.

Continue reading Entelligence: Stains on the sleeve of my operating system

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Entelligence: Stains on the sleeve of my operating system originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Aug 2009 18:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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