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OsX10.6 posts

Filed under: OS Updates, Utilities, Troubleshooting

Are your apps ready for Snow Leopard? SnowChecker can tell you

If you aren't sure whether your favorite Mac apps are compatible with OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, SnowChecker can help. It scans your hard drive for apps, and then checks their compatibility against the info posted at snowleopard.wikidot.com. Not only does SnowChecker show you whether your apps are incompatible, it also gives you details notes about which features are broken.

To quickly see which apps are going to have issues under 10.6 and might need to be updated - either by you or by the app's developer - sort the list by status. Red Xs are apps whose functionality is completely borked in Snow Leopard, while yellow alerts represent apps where one or more inessential functions don't work. SnowChecker will sometimes even offer a workaround for these, like running the app in 32-bit mode or disabling Google Gears. Snow Leopard has been out for a while, but if you're just installing now, you should run SnowChecker first to figure out what your compatibility options are.

Filed under: OS Updates, Apple, Mobile

Apple cuts off Palm OS syncing in Snow Leopard

Snow Leopard, the next generation of Apple's OS X operating system, is ushering out a lot of old technology. It's the first version of OS X that won't run on a PowerPC processor, and now Apple has announced that it will no longer sync with Palm OS devices.

While this might look like a slap in the face to Palm after Apple blocked the Palm Pre from sneakily syncing with iTunes earlier this summer, it's probably unrelated and unsurprising.

Palm OS is being phased out, and the Pre doesn't run it - it uses WebOS - so this is hardly a move by Apple to hurt an iPhone competitor. In fact, Apple had to write a Palm syncing feature into its own iSync software because Palm stopped updating its sync app for the Mac.

If you're still using a Palm Centro or Treo, you might have to look for some third-party sync options, but this doesn't affect Pre users.

Filed under: OS Updates, Apple

Apple opens preorders for OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

Apple's latest and greatest operating system, OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, was initially not expected to ship until September,. Now we know that it's on its way this Friday, August 28th. Snow Leopard just popped up for pre-ordering on the Apple Store. It's an unprecedented $29 to upgrade from Leopard, because Snow Leopard isn't a flashy update. As we reported previously, most of the improvements are under the hood, but some new important new features are included:
Long-touted as 'just' a behind-the-scenes update, Snow Leopard features support for Microsoft Exchange, a re-written Finder and an all-new QuickTime player with hardware acceleration and built-in YouTube uploading. There's also a tonne of new developer technologies to allow developers to handle multi-processor machines with Grand Central, and an all-round speed increase for all the OS components.

Snow Leopard pricing, aside from the aforementioned $29 upgrade from 10.5 Leopard, look like this: $49 for a Family Pack (5 licenses), and $169 for the Mac Box Set. The Box Set includes Snow Leopard, iLife '09 and iWork '09, and allows you to upgrade from Tiger. Remember, Snow Leopard is the first Intel-only version of OS X, so you're out of luck if you're still using a G4 or a G5.

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The World's Hardest Game 2.0 - Time Waster

So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do. Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game. The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...

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