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Microsoft has confirmed that the Surface is due to start shipping on October 26th, with Windows 8.
It has been revealed that a Microsoft filed with the US Security and Exchange quietly reveals that the tablet will start shipping to customers on October 26th.The same day as Windows 8 is set to land, as we reported earlier in July.
The filing reads:
"The next version of our operating system, Windows 8, will be generally available on October 26, 2012... At that time, we will begin selling the Surface, a series of Microsoft-designed and manufactured hardware devices."
Since launch we've known that Intel-based Surface Pro will take longer to launch, so this October 26th launch date corresponds to the availability of the ARM-powered tablet.
There's still one big questions surrounding the Surface, though, and that's price. That really will be an announcement worth looking out for. [Win SuperSite]
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Terminal junkies, Mountain Lion has brought some new command-line utilities. Perhaps the most notable is fdesetup, which Apple explains briefly: "fdesetup allows third-party management tools to enable FileVault, determine encryption status, capture and manage recovery keys, and add users to a FileVault-encrypted system as well as synchronize directory-based user authentication credentials with the local credentials for FileVault access."
Apple provides a 'man' page for fdsetup, but if you want more information about it, Rich Trouton at Der Flounder has a very thorough walk-through with a bunch of screenshots and excellent explanations. I'm definitely keeping this one in Pinboard for the inevitable day when I want or need to use fdsetup. I'm also glad to have a more low-level tool for working with FileVault.
I had written previously about the "hoops" which were necessary to disable certain users from being able to unlock the computer with FileVault. That process is now a lot easier.
But wait, there's more!
Patrix over at the Ask Different blog discovered several other new command-line utilities. Some of them are generic Unix utilities (pgrep and pkill) but there are also some OS X specific ones, including:
◦ caffeinate – prevent the system from sleeping on behalf of a utility
◦ serverinfo – determine server status (is this OS X Server, and, if so, are these things enabled)
◦ sharing – create share points for AFP, FTP and SMB services
◦ tccutil – manage the privacy database
See the original article for more details. Of these, caffeinate seems like the most interesting. I have used Caffeine, the free app from Lighthead Software, to keep my Mac awake at times, but being able to do it in shell scripts could definitely come in handy.
Still missing your favorite Unix utility?
If Mountain Lion still doesn't have your favorite utility, don't forget you have other options. I have used Rudix when I wanted precompiled binaries, and Homebrew when I want to make my own. Mostly these days I stick with Homebrew, which is regularly updated by a bunch of people, versus Rudix which has a smaller library and seems to be mostly the labor of love of one developer.
Others may prefer Fink or MacPorts; I have used both in the past but haven't kept up with them recently. Both of them appear to have been updated for Mountain Lion.
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Following a report from iMore earlier today claiming that Apple will hold a media event to introduce the next-generation iPhone and the "iPad mini" on September 12 ahead of September 21 availability for the new iPhone, AllThingsD reports that it has confirmed an Apple media event will be taking place that week. While the report's sources have apparently not confirmed the topic of the event or the exact date, it certainly appears to corroborate iMore's claims.
Apple hasn’t yet officially announced the fall event at which it is expected to debut the next iteration of the iPhone, but it’s definitely planning one.
iMore was first to report that the company has scheduled a special event for Wednesday, September 12, and now we’ve confirmed it as well. Sources tell AllThingsD that Apple is currently planning an event for that week. And while we haven’t yet confirmed its focus, history suggests it will indeed be the new iPhone.
AllThingsD has been very accurate in the past regarding Apple rumors, and has on several occasions been the first to reveal dates for Apple media events, lending significant weight to this report's support of the September 12 date from iMore.
The report goes on to note that Apple's latest quarterly report has revealed a massive increase in component prepayments, signaling that the company is moving full speed ahead on preparing its supply chain for production on the next iPhone and perhaps other devices such as the iPad mini.
Update: The Verge has also "confirmed" the September 12 date with its own sources.
The rumor cycle this time around for the next iPhone has been a bit unusual — multiple leaks have all depicted the exact same components — but it looks like we'll be seeing what Apple has up its sleeves come Wednesday, September 12th. Our own sources have confirmed that date, and multiple websites have similar reports as well.
Update: The Loop's Jim Dalrymple also weighs in on the September 12 date:
Yep.
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This video sure looks convincing
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Found this great read for all you Hackintosh people. Complete with Video
A quick look at a new motherboard from Gigabyte that's well suited for Hackintosh builders. The Z77X-UP5 TH includes two 10 Gb/second Thunderbolt ports. This video look at Apple's Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet adapter and the 12 TB Pegasus Thunderbolt RAID on this Ivy Bridge Hackintosh.
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OS X Mountain Lion was released this week and with over 200 small changes, a few of them were bound to be awesome. Here are our top ten favorites.
10. Encrypted Time Machine Backups
Time Machine is a great, simple backup service that's been a part of OS X for a few years now. One of the primary complaints, however, is its lack of options. While Mountain Lion didn't bring a ton of configurability—and Apple is unlikely to add too many options in favor of simplicity—it did bring encrypted backups. If you've got some sensitive materials on your hard drive, you no longer need to worry. Enabling encrypted backups is simple: go into the Time Machine section of System Preferences, click on Select Disk, choose a disk, and check the box beside Encrypt Backups.
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Here is a very interesting article on the "new" file system in Mountain Lion. It's a bit of a brain bender but if you read right through it you'll get the idea.
It's not forcing you to work a new way at all as I first though but the in App structure, like IOS, is quite an interesting idea. Just read on and you'll see what Oliver has discovered. Make sure you read it right through to the end to really get it and how theres some interesting logic here.
Apple has been working on its file system and with iOS it had almost killed the concept of folders — before reintroducing them with a peculiar restriction: only one level! With Mountain Lion it brings its one folder level logic to OSX (no again this is not forced). What could be the reason for such a restrictive measure?
Classic folder systems don’t perform too well. One reason is that organizing folders is engaging in the tiring discipline of information architecture. Information architecture is hard brain work. Just like a chess problem, it seems obvious once done, but takes considerable mental energy to figure out a clear and simple information architecture. And mainly, you just don’t want to do it all the time. Tying folders (sort of) to an app and reducing them to one level could solve a lot of these problems.
Folders-in-folders don’t work
The folder system paradigm is a geeky concept. Geeks built it because geeks need it. Geeks organize files all day long. Geeks don’t know and don’t really care how much their systems suck for other people. Geeks do not realize that for most people organizing documents within an operating system next to System files and applications feels like a complicated and maybe even dangerous business. Remember that autoexec.bat file?
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I now have Mountain Lion successfully installed on 2 systems (I haven't tackled my Hackintosh yet and probably won't for a while)
Things have gone well, theres been the odd head scratch and then realisations of whats going on. Most things are great but there are a few niggles and one I haven't quite figured out yet. Ill start with it.
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A federal judge in California has sanctioned Samsung for destroying e-mail evidence in its ongoing patent infringement case with Apple. In an order issued Wednesday, Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal wrote that Samsung "failed to prevent the destruction of relevant evidence" that Apple could have used in court, claiming that the Korea-based company could have done more to preserve company e-mails. As a result, Grewal granted Apple's request for an "adverse jury instruction," and agreed to inform jury members that Samsung improperly handled evidence.
Under Samsung's current system, all company e-mails are destroyed after two weeks, unless saved by employees. Samsung instructed employees to save relevant e-mails, but Judge Grewal said the company never verified that its orders were being followed. The judge also pointed out that Samsung could have disabled the system altogether. Instead, the manufacturer continued to automatically delete potentially significant e-mails even after the court case had already been filed.
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Notifications can be tweaked on Mountain Lion to suit most any workflow.
Getting Mountain Lion's new system-wide notifications to work best for your own needs may take a little adjusting. Notification Center gives developers an (official) standardized way to send notifications to the user, but also a way to consolidate and control those notifications. We show you how to make the most of what this first desktop incarnation of Notification Center offers.
Apple provides system-wide notification APIs to developers, but it is up to them to support it. Apple has naturally included support in its own apps, such as Mail, Messages, and Reminders; Safari also supports notifications sent from webpages using the Web Notifications API. Some Twitter clients, such as the Tweetbot alpha, support notifications, but alas, the languishing official Twitter client does not. Other applications, such as Outlook 2011, still rely on their own notification system. Plenty of others rely on Growl, a popular third-party OS X notification system that thankfully can still run on Mountain Lion.
Taking control
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With Mountain Lion, Apple includes a Power Nap feature that allows recent SSD-equipped MacBooks to perform certain jobs while asleep, including backing up to Time Machine, checking for email messages, and performing some iCloud synchronization tasks. But owners of some MacBook Airs (2011 or newer) and retina display MacBook Pro models found Power Nap conspicuous in its absence when Mountain Lion was first released.
Late Wednesday afternoon, Apple made a firmware update for these Macs—called MacBook Air SMC Firmware Update 1.5 for the MacBook Air models—available via Software Update. Once you download the update, you just double-click it to run it. You’ll be prompted to restart your Mac and then the update will be applied. On a 2012 13-inch MacBook Air that process took a couple of seconds.
To make sure the update was applied correctly, launch System Preferences, select the Energy preference, and look for the Enable Power Nap option in the resulting window.
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This is a reprint from Macworld
by Dan Frakes, Macworld.com Jul 26, 2012 2:00 am
Like Lion (OS X 10.7) before it, Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8) doesn’t ship on a disc—it’s available only as an installer app downloadable from the Mac App Store, and that installer doesn’t require a bootable installation disc. But there are a good number of reasons you might want a bootable Mountain Lion installer on an external hard drive or a thumb drive (USB stick).
For example, if you want to install Mountain Lion on multiple Macs, a bootable install drive can be more convenient than downloading or copying the entire Mountain Lion installer to each computer. Also, if your Mac is experiencing problems, a bootable install drive makes a handy emergency disk. (Mountain Lion’s OS X Recovery feature, known as Lion Recovery prior to Mountain Lion’s release, is a big help here, but not all Macs get it—and if your Mac’s drive is itself having trouble, recovery mode may not even be available. Also, if you need to reinstall Mountain Lion, recovery mode requires you to download the entire 4GB+ installer again.) Finally, if you need to install Mountain Lion over Leopard—assuming you have the license to do so—a bootable install drive makes it easier to do so.
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A new piece of malware is trying to take advantage of Opera's popularity as a mobile browser alternative on Android smartphones.
read on ……
Parallels says the current Parallels Desktop 7 for Mac (version 7.0.15104.778994, released on July 10, 2012) supports Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8) and enables users to enjoy Apple’s latest operating system while simultaneously running Windows apps.
If you’re currently using Parallels Desktop 7 for Mac, be sure to check for updates to ensure you’re running the latest build and Mountain Lion ready. This is easy to do -- simply go to the Parallels Desktop menu, select Check for Updates, and install the latest build. For those currently using an older version of Parallels Desktop for Mac, before you upgrade to Mountain Lion, be sure to upgrade to Parallels Desktop 7 for Mac.
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Apple Released Mountain Lion OS X 10.8 today. It's the the Little Details that can make a big difference and here are some of them
A lot goes into a major update to an operating system. Rather than write yet another comprehensive review we want to touch on features and shortcuts that you might not easily encounter on your own — or that we think are so cool they deserve mention.
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Apple CEO Tim Cook said the company would ship Mountain Lion, the latest version of its OS X operating system, starting Wednesday.
COMPLETE COVERAGE
OS X Mountain Lion (10.8)
Mountain Lion features you may have missed … Read on ….
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This is a reprint of Paul Thurotts ( winsupersite.com )interesting article that seems pretty balanced to me in regards to where the Nexus 7 tablet really fits in the scheme of things.
I have to agree with a lot of his points especially in regards to evolution rather than revolution and its more about the eco system your getting into.
Read on and let me know what you think……
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Now this has got to be good news for users. Microsoft has released the details on how they plan to run the apps released through the new App Store coming with Windows 8. We have known about the store for a long time, but this is the first time we've heard about the inner workings of the apps, like the cut Microsoft plans to take.
First and foremost, all paid apps will cost at least $1.49 as opposed to the $0.99 other platforms allow. And most importantly for consumers, Microsoft plans to implement a 7-day "try before you buy" setup with apps that will let you opt-out of the full purchase if you don't like it.
Microsoft seems to also want to provide app developers with an incentive to churn out apps for its platform. Although they are sticking with the same 30% royalty cut that Apple takes, Microsoft's new store will only take 20% once your app earns $25,000 in sales.
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Microsoft Office for Mac will be offered 'at no additional cost' to subscribers of Office 365 pay-as-you-go plans
Computerworld - Saying that a spokeswoman "misunderstood" questions from Computerworld, Microsoft today backtracked and confirmed that Mac owners who subscribe to the upcoming Office 365 Home Premium will be able to acquire Office for Mac 2011 as part of their subscription plan.
Previously, the company had said that Mac owners would have to purchase Office for Mac 2011 separately -- at list prices starting at $120 -- but could link a copy of the suite to their Office 365 subscription plan for some basic file sharing functionality. Read on …………….
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Editor’s Note: The following article is reprinted from the Today @ PC World blog at PCWorld.com.
Microsoft’s combination of SkyDrive and Office Web Apps is great for working online...as long as youre using a traditional mouse-and-keyboard PC. But if youre using a tablet such as an iPad or one of the many Android slates, you must use app-based options such as Apple’s Pages for iPad to edit your SkyDrive docs...or do you?
Even though Microsoft does not yet officially support the iPad with its Office Web Apps, you can still access the online productivity suite on Safari or Google Chrome It’s not a perfect solution, but if you need to get some editing done in a pinch itll work. Read on ……………
