Items tagged with lion
In an effort to thwart malicious software from wreaking havoc on Mac computers, Apple introduced Gatekeeper in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion and was also integrated into its predecessor, OS X 10.7.5 Lion. Apple maintains that the most secure way to download apps for your Mac is to go through the App Store, but for apps downloaded outside of Apple’s walled garden, Gatekeeper is supposed to be the big, brawny bouncer tossing malicious apps into the street. This is how Apple describes Gatekeeper’s duties in a support document: Developers can get a unique Developer ID from Apple and use it to digitally sign their apps. The Developer ID allows Gatekeeper to block apps created by malware developers and verify...
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Has Lion really been out that long? It sure doesn't feel like it, but evidently Apple's already working up what's next for their desktop OS platform. With 10.7 inching close to maturity, it's 10.8 that's popping up on the scene this week. Apple's next version of OS X (by the way, they removed "Mac" from "Mac OS X") is being called Mountain Lion, and it's no real surprise to see that it's more of a Lion refinement than a revolutionary leap in the land of OS X. Much in the same way that Snow Leopard improved upon Leopard, Mountain Lion should make the Lion experience squeaky clean. There's plenty of new features to get excited about, and developers can start digging in as early as today. The company's...
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A few years ago, an upstart manufacturer named Psystar made headlines when it began offering low-end x86 systems loaded with Mac OS X. Psystar was predictably sued by Apple, but offered an EFI tool to make it easier for anyone with a 'Hackintosh' to run OS X. The company never contested Apple's charge that it had violated the company's copyrights, but instead claimed on appeal that Apple's Software License Agreement (SLA) was uneforceable. That argument has been rejected by a panel of judges on the 9th Circuit. Judge Schroeder wrote the opinion for the three judge panel. Psystar's argument hinged on the idea that the Copyright Act protected Apple from unauthorized copying and distribution...
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Is this Apple's way of admitting that not everyone actually has access to a fast enough Internet connection to stomach the idea of downloading all software, ever? The thought of making their latest OS a download-only affair may seem cute to technophiles, but how practical is it? At around 4GB, it's not exactly quick for those with non-broadband, and even basic cable packages can take a solid chunk of time to download. And then, there's bandwidth caps to consider. Whatever the reason, Apple has caved and produced the OS X Lion USB Thumb Drive. Basically, it's a USB key with OS X Lion on it. There's still no DVD package, but those in need of buying OS X 10.7 on some sort of physical media now have...
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Apple today announced that the next major version of its operating system -- Mac OS X Lion -- will ship in July for $29 and will only be available as a download (4GB) in the Mac App Store. That's substantially less than the normal selling price of $129, though it won't be offered as a boxed retail package. What Lion will bring to the table are 250 new features, many of them representing Apple's "best thinking from iPad," with a handful of them talked about during Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). Chief among them is a new Launchpad designed to give users instant access to apps, just like on the iPad. Open windows fade away and are replaced with a full screen display of all the apps...
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When Apple said "Back to the Mac," they meant it. The company was talking software this week at their mega event, with Mac OS X 10.7 being the star of the software show. Apple's calling the next major version of OS X "Lion," and while it will not ship to consumers until summer of 2011, it promises to be the most significant Apple OS yet. Developers are expected to start getting an early look sometime soon, and the added features are pretty impressive. Lion has obviously been inspired by many of the iPad's software features. The biggest of which is a Lion app store. That's right, a dedicated App Store for a desktop OS. Is this the end of the traditional software distribution as we know it? Has...
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A lot of people wondered what would happen to Apple once they became Apple, Inc. and not Apple Computer. Many thought that this signaled the end of the Mac computer, with Apple to now focus primarily on the iPhone, iPad and other accessories and small devices. But Apple's computer sales have consistently risen since the iPhone's introduction, proving that Apple may have changed their name but they didn't forget about their towers and laptops. Apple still refreshes their hardware line about as infrequently as any major company. Some people love the tactic, and others cannot stand it. But recently, Apple really has turned a deaf ear to their computer line. This year, all we've heard about is the...
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Social-networking giant Facebook is continuing to grow like mad. In fact, the company grew its active membership total from 90 million users in early July to 120 million now, according to Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer. While speaking at Salesforce.com's Dreamforce conference, Sandberg also noted, “We got more (members) in the last three months than in the first three years of our existence.”If you consider the current population of the world is estimated to be about 6.7 billion, then almost 2% of the world’s population has a Facebook account. Facebook isn’t calling it quits, either. The company is hoping to continue to grow, and is adding partnerships in the process.Facebook...
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MySpace Music was expected to be successful, but this successful? It was launched at 12 AM EDT on Sept. 25th, and despite that short period of time, it has already streamed over a billion songs (and yes, we have contributed to that streaming). In comparison, (though obviously not fair as iTunes is a pay service, while MySpace Music streams for free) it took Apple nearly 3 years, from April 28, 2003 to February 23, 2006, for its one billionth music download. MySpace hasn't provided info such as username, song played or the like, but it did say the following: We’re extremely pleased with the launch of MySpace Music—clearly our users around the world are engaged and excited about the new music experience...
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Another day, another iPhone 3G "oops." Apple has just recently released the 2.1 software upgrade for the iPhone 3G, which seems to have fixed many of the issues with the device's 3G performance. While it dodged a bullet in terms of recalling millions of phones, it still has to make a major recall: millions of the small, square-shaped power adapters shipped with the phones.As Apple said on the recall website:Apple has determined that under certain conditions the new ultracompact Apple USB power adapter's metal prongs can break off and remain in a power outlet, creating a risk of electric shock. We have received reports of detached blades involving a very small percentage of the...
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Crowdsourcing just got a new outlet today with the social polling site, millionheads. The millionheads site is positioning itself as a sort of magic eight ball of personal indecision. But instead of relying on the random, one-in-twenty, and often out-of-context responses of the Mattel toy, responses to millionhead user questions are open to anyone with an Internet connection, a keyboard, and an opinion--albeit, hopefully, an informed opinion. All questions are posted on millionhead starting with the words, "Should I..." The question asker then provides details on what s/he is seeking to decide, such as these recent queries: "Which laptop should I buy?," "When should I give my kids the talks about...
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Earlier this week we reported on Scotland's Sunday Herald's claim that the Best Western hotel group was hit with the world's largest known data breach of eight million people's sensitive information, as well as Best Western's adamant denial. Even if the Sunday Herald story turns out to be true, the Best Western data breach would no longer hold the title of the world's largest known data breach. That record now goes to the Bank of New York (BNY) Mellon, which "lost" the sensitive information of 12.5 million customers. The BNY Mellon data breach itself is not new news. As documented in the Identity Theft Resource Center's ITRC Breach Report 2008, on February 27, 2008, BNY Mellon gave "an unencrypted...
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It's an obvious statement that mobile messaging is growing, but some recently released numbers from VeriSign indicate just how fast mobile messaging is growing and how it is generating staggering revenue for mobile service providers. You might be familiar with VeriSign as the company behind secure networking solutions for SSL, identity authentication, and domain name services. Perhaps less known is that VeriSign also manages mobile messaging networks that serve "more than 600 carriers and reach over 2.4 billion wireless subscribers... It powers inter-carrier mobile messaging for seven of the top ten wireless carriers in North America and other major operators throughout the world." Credit:...
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For the month of May, comScore reports that U.S. users watched over 12 billion videos over the Internet--a 45 percent increase in the number of videos viewed online a year ago. Not surprisingly, YouTube garnered the lion's share with almost 35 percent of May's videos viewed online--that's roughly 4.1 billion YouTube videos watched just in the month of May."Nearly 142 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 85 videos per viewer in May. Google Sites [mostly from YouTube] also attracted the most viewers (83.8 million), who watched an average of 50 videos per person. Fox Interactive attracted the second most viewers (60.8 million), followed by Yahoo! Sites (40.2 million) and Microsoft Sites...
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Analysts at Gartner have estimated that there are already one billion computers in use worldwide right now. That's a big number, but it's the estimated rate of growth in PC ownership that jumps off the page in their report -- 12 percent a year. That means by 2014, they estimate two billion people worldwide will be able to leave bizarre comments on YouTube videos or press the autosum button on a spreadsheet. “Whereas mature markets accounted for just under-60 percent of the first billion installed PCs, we expect emerging markets to account for approximately 70 percent of the next billion installed PCs,” says Gartner research vice president Luis Anavitarte. The firm cites the explosive expansion...
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Despite running into a few glitches at the start of the record-setting attempt for the most software downloaded in 24 hours, approximately 8.3 million full copies of Firefox 3 were downloaded during the first 24 hours of its availability. The Mozilla folks are working with the blokes from Guinness World Records to determine if in fact a true world record has been set. As there is no previously established official record for the most software downloaded in a day, the record is likely to keep. We'll drink to that! At a highpoint during the download barrage, the Mozilla developers reported:"Mozilla.com web traffic is pushing well over 2 Gigabits a second of just pure HTTP traffic. That is in addition...
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There should be no doubt as to whether the engineers at HP dream in black-and-white or in color. The question should be: How many colors do they dream in? The answer: over one billion. That's how many colors HP's new DreamColor LP2480ZX LCD is capable of displaying: "The HP DreamColor Display features a new liquid crystal display (LCD) that provides a range of more than 1 billion colors in a 30-bit, LED-backlit display. The display is now shipping worldwide for a U.S. list price of $3,499."Three and a half grand might seem pretty steep for a display, but for a number of professional-level, color-accurate-critical applications, the level of accuracy that the price buys is truly mission critical:...
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The Cell microprocesssor is the very powerful heart of the Playstation 3 gaming console. People have found all sorts of uses for them other than playing Assassin's Creed, including using them for medical research through the Folding at Home program. Now the US military has spent $133 million to put together the world's fastest supercomputer, capable of performing over one quadrillion calculations per second (a Petaflop) using almost 13,000 slightly improved versions of the Cell processor, along with some AMD Opterons. They call it Roadrunner.To put the performance of the machine in perspective, Thomas P. D’Agostino, the administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, said that...
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Your Digital Video Recorder might not have found Sarah Conner yet, but it seems to be responsible for the disappearance of six million primetime TV viewers since last May. Some of the miserable ratings of this year's crop of primetime shows could be laid at the feet of the writer's strike, but that really can't explain the whole number. It's starting to dawn on the TV industry that there's no such thing as primetime anymore. ...the more significant shift can’t be blamed on the strike. In the past television season, there has been a sharp increase in time-shifting. Some of the six million are still watching, but on their own terms, thanks to TiVos and other digital video recorders, streaming video...
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Grand Theft Auto IV sold six million copies in its first week alone, netting $500 million for its publisher, Take-Two Interactive. That's even better than the wildest estimates by industry pundits, and probably will make Electronic Arts' bid to purchase Take Two a whole lot more expensive. The significance of the sales extends beyond buoying Take-Two, a company that has had its share of legal, financial and management struggles in the last few years. The company is the subject of a $2 billion hostile takeover effort by Electronic Arts, which is offering Take Two shareholders $25.74 a share for control of the company. If Take-Two can exceed sales expectations on Grand Theft Auto IV, it has the...
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What is a hacker to do? The general computer using population is becoming more educated about security, and modern browsers are taking the bite out of phishing scams. Why not kill 2 birds with one stone and find a way to infect legitimate sites?That is exactly what hackers are now doing, with alarming success. Thus far estimates range from the high 200 thousands to half a million infected websites, most of which seem to be legitimate:"On Wednesday, several security companies, including San Diego-based Websense Inc., said large numbers of legitimate sites, including ones with URLs belong to the U.N., had been hacked and were serving up malware. Those latest compromises were only the most recent...
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Remember the father who sold his pot-smoking son's Guitar Hero III game on eBay as punishment? The father netted $9K in that auction. The mom here won't get that much, but at least she's teaching her kid a lesson.A 13-year-old kid in Virginia has backtalked to his mom for the last time. When he was told to do his chores instead of play Xbox 360, he went and intentionally broke the vacuum cleaner to get out of it. What'd his mom do? Well, she's selling his Xbox and all his games on eBay. And that was before she found out he was surfing porn sites by checking out his browser's cookies.Porn on a teenage boy's PC? No! Let's hope she gets enough for a new vacuum. eBay needs a new...
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