Apple makes another weak social connection, Apple’s forthcoming “spaceship” campus isn’t as big as previously thought, and diagramming patent suits is a great way to channel your inner high-school English teacher. The remainders for Wednesday, August 17, 2011 are in subject-verb agreement.
It’s happened to all of us: You’re browsing Apple’s online store and there’s a Mac Pro configuration that’s so sweet that it’s like pure sugar. But how to share it with your fellow Mac fanatics? Well, now you can directly post a link to certain products—currently only the Mac Pro and iPod classic—on Twitter or Facebook, thanks to the online store’s new built-in social integration. Though, to be fair, with the focus on those two products, this seems to be about as relevant as tweeting from Ping.
“I agreed to make ‘simpler’ and official automated Lion updaters for VisualHub and AudialHub and offer them for free on techspansion.com, and Kagi agreed to discontinue sales and distribution of vHub Updater,” Techspansion’s Tyler Loch told Macworld via email. “The initial Lion fixes I created that we had been arguing about were free of charge, and I will not charge for the updater app.”
“This is good news for all our mutual customers and it is good news for Kagi,” said Nethery.
A true full-size Mac keyboard, the K750 includes a numeric keypad, all the standard Mac modifier keys in their proper positions, as well as special-function F-keys for controlling media playback; adjusting screen brightness; and accessing Exposé, Mission Control, and Dashboard. The silver version even resembles Apple’s current Keyboard with Numeric Keypad, thanks to an aluminum-colored body, thin design, and low-profile, white keys. (The K750 for Mac is available in five different colors.)
But though it looks similar to Apple’s keyboards, the K750 for Mac is quite a bit deeper, front to back, thanks to a row of solar cells above the F-key row—like Logitech’s Windows-focused Wireless Solar Keyboard K750, the Wireless Solar Keyboard K750 for Mac is powered entirely by ambient light. According to the company, even standard indoor lighting is enough to charge the keyboard, and with a full charge, the K750 can operate for three months in total darkness. Which means that in real-world use, you should never have to worry about running out of juice. Logitech also touts the K750 for Mac’s other green credentials, including PVC-free construction and packaging that’s completely recyclable.
Kagi, a popular payment processor for independent software developers, recently began selling a $5 Lion-compatibility patch for the discontinued-in-2008 VisualHub video converter that the original software’s developer says he didn’t authorize—and isn’t getting paid for. Kagi defends the move, arguing that it’s merely helping less tech-savvy customers that the developer abandoned.
Years ago, Tyler Loch’s one-man development shop Techspansion sold various media utilities for OS X. Among them was VisualHub, for converting movies between oodles of formats. It was a sad October 2008 day when Loch decided to shutter Techspansion’s virtual doors. Though Loch no longer offers support for VisualHub, he did post updated files and instructions for getting VisualHub working on Lion.
After getting complaints from customers about Lion compatibility, however, Kagi—VisualHub’s former payment processor—decided to offer its own vHub Updater for VisualHub patch for $5, without informing Loch.
Steve Jobs’s biography is coming, and it’s got way fewer moving pieces than an old MacBook prototype. Plus, the company behind the mysterious TabCo viral campaign is unmasked, and it’s the most disappointing reveal since The Phantom Menace. The remainders for Monday, August 15, 2011 are going to cry like it’s 1999.
Walter Isaacson’s 448-page biography of Steve Jobs, mysteriously titled Steve Jobs, will be available on November 21. The book, which we’ve mentioned before, is based on more than 40 interviews with the Apple head honcho in which no topic was off limits. The book’s cover features a picture of a younger, hirsute Jobs, and will reportedly be available in a limited “aluminum unibody” edition.
Upgrading to a new version of OS X is a process that is always fraught with peril; no matter how smooth Apple tries to make the transition—and, by all accounts, the company makes it very smooth indeed—there always a number of factors that are outside of the normal upgrade process and must be researched and anticipated, lest they trip up the unwary user and cause all sorts of problems.
One of these steps into the unknown is figuring out what’s going to happen to your peripherals once you install the new operating system. Printers, in particular, are tough to figure out: the wide variety of manufacturers and models can make determining whether all will be well post-upgrade a challenge.
Hear that sound? That’s the sound of autumn’s unceasing approach. If you spent much of the past week enjoying summery weather before fall’s inevitable arrival, we can’t say we blame you. And we won’t hold a grudge if you missed a slew of important and exciting Macworld stories because of it. Instead, we’ll fill you in on all the good articles that you missed.
The Lion Thing
Although we’ve very nearly exhausted our supply of headline-worthy Lion puns, that hasn’t stopped us from covering Mac OS X 10.7 in great detail. If you’d like to show Lion who’s king of your Mac jungle, we can help you tame Lion’s Mail and take control of Mission Control. If, on the other hand, you’re still looking to migrate some files from an older Leopard Mac, you don’t necessarily need a CAT-5 cable, but you’ll definitely want to check out Apple’s Migration Assistant update for Leopard users.
