News tagged ‘Mac OS X’

As far as we know, Apple pushes out a refreshed iMac every 8 months and a major update every 27 months. The last major update was in October 2009 and the last refresh was in July 2010. So, the iMac lineup is due for a refresh this March.  The update will up-to-date the iMac, prepare it for Mac OS X Lion. Moreover, Apple is expected to start bringing the MacBook Air Solid State Drive (SSD) modules to the rest of the Mac family, will add the new Intel’s microarchitecture Sandy bridge to improve graphics and resolution on the 21.5" and 27" displays. Adding this option to the iMacs will improve the readability. Perhaps, Apple will also add an anti-glare option to their iMac display offerings. This will be a minor update, with a major one expected sometime around January 2012.

Yesterday Apple seeded the second beta of Mac OS X 10.6.7, known as Build 10J846, to developers. Apple has reportedly asked developers to concentrate on AirPort, Bonjour, SMB and Graphics Drivers and added Mac App Store as an area of focus for developers. Mac App Store changes weren’t mentioned in the first developer build seeded last Thursday.  Apple also issued a new beta of Mac OS X 10.6.7 Server, which includes one known issue, in which clients may fail to NetBoot from NetRestore image of 10.6.6 created with Mac OS X Server 10.6.6.

Yesterday we reported that Apple might discontinue some of its server-relating products at the end of this month and cut Mac OS X Server from Apple’s lineup. One of MacRumors readers emailed Steve Lobs to let know if the serve might be discontinued.

MacRumors’ reader: “If you are abandoning enterprise solutions by eliminating the Xserve, does that mean OS X Server is not far behind? It seems that way. I would hate to see that because I like the product.”

Steve Job’s answer: “No”

His response might mean that Mac OS X Server is not under the danger. Though, Jobs always addresses questions selectively and in rather clever way.

In early November Apple announced that it would discontinue its Xserve line of rackmountable servers at the end of this month. This statement has caused turmoil among the product's fans, while Steve Jobs has suggested that poor sales were the reason for the decision. But the Xserve discontinuation may only be the beginning of a move by Apple to pare down its storage- and server-focused offerings. Xsan and Final Cut server could be among the programs being discontinued, as Apple's management would be wondering whether to continue to develop and support them in the future. Apple could opt to do away with its Mac OS X Server releases entirely, although the company is still expected to release a server version of Mac OS X Lion later this year.

Jonny Evans from ComputerWorld has recently published another article where he suggests what features can reveal iOS 4.3 about the forthcoming Mac OS X Lion. We gained all his ideas into this short list:

Read the rest of this entry »

In a few hours after Apple opened its Mac App Store ‘pirates’ found the way to install and run paid apps for free.

According to John Gruber’s blog Daring Fireball, the vulnerability appears to be in those apps that do not follow app validation advice given by Apple.

Read the rest of this entry »

Apple today has opened the Mac App Store with over 1,000 apps available at launch and released update Mac OS X 10.6.6 for Snow Leopard bringing the new Mac App Store via Software Update.

The Mac App Store, is a new application users will find in the Dock, and it includes the following features:

Read the rest of this entry »

According to The Loop, Apple is planning to launch the Mac App Store at 12:00 pm (noon) ET on Thursday. That puts it at about 9:00 am PT where Apple is headquartered in Cupertino, California. The Mac App Store lets you browse new and noteworthy apps, find out what’s hot, view staff favorites, search categories and read customer ratings and reviews. You can purchase, download and install apps in just one click and start using them immediately like on the App Store. The Mac App Store will be available to Mac OS X Snow Leopard users as a free download through Software Update. Purchased apps can run on all of your personal Macs and updates are delivered directly through the Mac App Store.

Yesterday Apple released updates for Garageband and iMovie '11 for Mac OS X 10.6.

GarageBand:

GarageBand 6.0.1 requires Mac OS X 10.6.3 or later and is recommended for all GarageBand '11 users. This update improves overall stability, and addresses compatibility and a number of other minor issues, including:

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday Apple revealed that its Mac App Store will be opened on Jan. 6, 2011.

New App Store will offer both paid and free applications for Mac OS X Snow Leopard in such categories as Utilities, Productivity, Lifestyle, and Graphics & Design. Steve Jobs also told it will be available in ninety countries at launch.

"The App Store revolutionized mobile apps. We hope to do the same for PC apps with the Mac App Store by making finding and buying PC apps easy and fun. We can't wait to get started on January 6".

Read the rest of this entry »

Recently Jay Freeman, better known as Saurik, creator of popular alternative store Cydia for jailbroken devices, claimed during the 360|MacDev conference that Cydia is coming to the Mac. Not surprising! Cydia is used by more than 10 million devices (about 10% of all iPhone users) and provides access to some amazing tweaks, apps and extensions of iOS. There are well over 30,000 packages available for iOS. The Cydia’s creator refers to that Cydia as a store for things that are not apps, but extensions of what iOS devices can do. Saurik feels like the same type of store would be useful for Mac OS X devices. That is why he created Mac Cydia, which will be available in some weeks. We don’t know exactly what kind of tweaks and apps could be sold into Cydia for Mac. Perhaps Cydia will be aimed at offering easy installation of themes, system mods and tweaks.

On Wednesday Apple released a MacBook Air EFI firmware update 2.0 to resolve issue with display. The update is recommended for all new 11-inch and 13-inch MacBook Air models and requires Mac OS X 10.6.5. It addresses problems where the MacBook Air is unresponsive or displays just a black screen after booting or waking. Despite scattered reports of issues with the MacBook Air, the laptop has continued to sell well, especially the 11-inch model. Analysts tracking retail activity on Black Friday found that the 11-inch MacBook Air was "flying off the shelves" and a "customer favorite."

Download the MacBook Air EFI firmware update 2.0

Yesterday Apple released a new 7.6.9 version of QuickTime media software, which has 15 vulnerabilities patched, including issues with FlashPix, PICT, GIF and JP2 images and AVI, MPEG, Sorenson, QTVR and other movie files. Most of it could cause an arbitrary code execution in case of exploit or unexpected application termination.

The security update is necessary only for Mac OS X Leopard 10.5 and Windows users, as Mac OS X 10.6.5 already has fixes to the vulnerabilities included.

QuckTime 7.6.9 can be installed through Software Update or by visiting the QuickTime website.

Yesterday AppleTell revealed that Apple asked developers to prepare their applications for a launch as soon as possible. According to an unknown source, the upcoming Mac App Store will be revealed on Monday, December 13. But initially Steve Jobs planned to launch it even sooner than today, said the author of the note Kirk Hiner.

"That obviously didn't happen, but Apple appears to be way ahead of schedule on the Mac App Store nonetheless, and looks to take advantage of the Christmas rush".

Read the rest of this entry »

As we wrote earlier, the latest release of Mac OS X 10.6.5 did not include the support for AirPrint, though Apple had earlier announced it. After a while the guys at Netputing released an app called AirPrint Hacktivator, which was simply copying system files from those developer betas of OS X 10.6.5 that had AirPrint support implemented.

But eventually Netputing received an e-mail from one of Apple's legal representatives omm.com,  where it was asked to remove any versions of AirPrint Hacktivator from the company's site as they redistribute Apple’s source code.

The guys were forced to agree but have kept a good heart and finally came up with a new solution:

Read the rest of this entry »