Apple’s Boot Camp users must wait for Windows 7 support
If your copy of Windows 7 has arrived and you are champing at the bit to get it installed on your Mac via Boot Camp, you may want to slow down. According to an Apple Knowledge Base posting (via MacUser), Apple has plans to eventually support Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate, but… not right now. An update for Boot Camp that supports Windows 7 will be coming before the end of the year, but will still have several caveats.
For starters, the update will require Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard—those of you stuck on Leopard won’t be upgrading to Windows 7 either. Secondly, Apple has dropped support for many of the machines it manufactured in 2006. If you run a 17″ or 20″ iMac, 15″ or 17″ MacBook Pro, or a Mac Pro from that year, you may be out of luck.
Gone yesterday, here today; Atom support back in dev seed
We reported earlier this week that Apple had seemingly dropped support for Intel’s Atom processor from the most recent developer seed of Mac OS X 10.6.2, leading some to speculate that Apple did so to thwart some users from running the operating system on non-Apple hardware. We thought that Apple’s move wasn’t malicious in intent, but more likely related to code optimization. Still, the news left many Netbook users running Snow Leopard fearing the worst. It was truly a “here today, gone tomorrow” scenario.
The source of the news, who was quite surprised that their post received all the attention it did, is now reporting that the most recent build of OS X 10.6.2, 10C535, has seen the rise of Atom support from the ashes like some sort of software phoenix. That’s right, everything is back to normal, nothing to see here, everyone can go back to running Mac OS X on their underpowered baby laptop.
Psystar’s $50 hackintosh tool not all it’s cracked up to be
Psystar’s latest tactic in making money off the hackintosh community, Rebel EFI, promises to help install Mac OS X Snow Leopard on any generic Intel-based PC. As Computerworld recently discovered, it tends to work OK as long as your hardware is close enough to what Apple ships and drivers are available. However, the $50 you spend essentially pays for software that’s freely available online and doesn’t guarantee a better working system.
Rebel EFI works much like Boot-132 or PC EFI: once burned to a CD-ROM, you can boot a PC from it and it will allow you to install Mac OS X directly from a regular install DVD. Though Rebel EFI allows you to “install any OS,” it’s clearly aimed at installing Mac OS X. Once Mac OS X is installed, a Rebel EFI application can be installed, which will help automate the process of finding and installing drivers for your particular hardware.
Apple owns up to odd—but serious—Snow Leopard data-loss bug
Snow Leopard has, in our experience, been a mostly problem-free upgrade. However, an unusual and potentially serious bug has been identified related to guest accounts and Snow Leopard upgrades. Unfortunately, using a guest account has the potential to wipe your own user account clean of all data, though Apple has acknowledged that it is aware of the problem and is working on a solution.
The problem doesn’t affect every Snow Leopard user—it seems to be linked to changes in the way guest accounts are handled between Leopard and Snow Leopard. To trigger the bug, a machine running Leopard with the guest account feature enabled must be updated to Snow Leopard. The next time the guest account is accessed, it appears to wipe the user’s main home directory clean, as if it were also a guest account.
Apple’s Boot Camp users must wait for Windows 7 support
If your copy of Windows 7 has arrived and you are champing at the bit to get it installed on your Mac via Boot Camp, you may want to slow down. According to an Apple Knowledge Base posting (via MacUser), Apple has plans to eventually support Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate, but… not right now. An update for Boot Camp that supports Windows 7 will be coming before the end of the year, but will still have several caveats.
For starters, the update will require Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard—those of you stuck on Leopard won’t be upgrading to Windows 7 either. Secondly, Apple has dropped support for many of the machines it manufactured in 2006. If you run a 17″ or 20″ iMac, 15″ or 17″ MacBook Pro, or a Mac Pro from that year, you may be out of luck.
New Magic Mouse requires Mac OS X 10.6.2, release imminent (Updated)
Apple’s new multitouch Magic Mouse brings multitouch gestures to desktop machines with its touch-sensitive surface. According to the device’s manual, however, it requires lists Mac OS X 10.6.2 as one compatibility requirement, suggesting the update will be released any day now.
Mac OS X 10.6, Snow Leopard, was released August 28. The first update, 10.6.1, was released just 12 days later. It wasn’t long after—about three weeks—that 10.6.2 betas were seeded to select developers for testing. Given that shipments of the new Magic Mouse from Apple’s online store lists a lead time of 5-7 days, 10.6.2 should be available by the time Snow Leopard is just two months old.
Week in Apple: failing Time Capsules, Snow Leopard bug, Google-Apple ties
Google and Apple continued to cut their official ties this week while Apple irked musicians with iTunes LP. The company also admitted to a major Snow Leopard bug and may be working on adding FM radio functionality to the iPhone. Catch up with our roundup of the week’s top Apple news:
Time Capsule failures lead to opening of virtual cemetery: Is there a Time Capsule pandemic going on? There may be, as more and more people are reporting dying units to the Time Capsule Memorial Register.
Google-Apple board ties severed; collaboration next to go? Google and Apple no longer share any board members thanks to increasing legal scrutiny from various government entities. Because of this, the two companies can no longer afford to be public friends, but does that mean the end of collaboration between them? It might.
Apple owns up to odd—but serious—Snow Leopard data-loss bug
Snow Leopard has, in our experience, been a mostly problem-free upgrade. However, an unusual and potentially serious bug has been identified related to guest accounts and Snow Leopard upgrades. Unfortunately, using a guest account has the potential to wipe your own user account clean of all data, though Apple has acknowledged that it is aware of the problem and is working on a solution.
The problem doesn’t affect every Snow Leopard user—it seems to be linked to changes in the way guest accounts are handled between Leopard and Snow Leopard. To trigger the bug, a machine running Leopard with the guest account feature enabled must be updated to Snow Leopard. The next time the guest account is accessed, it appears to wipe the user’s main home directory clean, as if it were also a guest account.
Fusion 3.0 gains Snow Leopard, Windows 7 Aero support
VMware Fusion, the Windows (and other OS) virtualization software for the Mac, is going Snow Leopard with its latest release. The company has announced that Fusion 3.0 will be available on October 27 for download and in retail with more than 50 new features and some performance enhancements. 3.0 can be preordered today, and the new version will cost the same as the current version—$79.99. An upgrade from a previous version of Fusion will cost $39.99.
The first and most obvious new feature is that Fusion 3.0 is now optimized for Snow Leopard, with a new 64-bit native virtualization engine. It will also be the first major virtualization package to offer support for Aero and Flip3D within the upcoming Windows 7 OS, which itself is slated for release on October 22. And since we know the gamers in the crowd are reading, Fusion 3 comes with support for OpenGL 2.1 and DirectX 9.0c Shader Model 3.
Fusion 3.0 gains Snow Leopard, Windows 7 Aero support
VMware Fusion, the Windows (and other OS) virtualization software for the Mac, is going Snow Leopard with its latest release. The company has announced that Fusion 3.0 will be available on October 27 for download and in retail with more than 50 new features and some performance enhancements. 3.0 can be preordered today, and the new version will cost the same as the current version—$79.99. An upgrade from a previous version of Fusion will cost $39.99.
The first and most obvious new feature is that Fusion 3.0 is now optimized for Snow Leopard, with a new 64-bit native virtualization engine. It will also be the first major virtualization package to offer support for Aero and Flip3D within the upcoming Windows 7 OS, which itself is slated for release on October 22. And since we know the gamers in the crowd are reading, Fusion 3 comes with support for OpenGL 2.1 and DirectX 9.0c Shader Model 3.
