Snow Leopard ‘Guest Account’ bug deleting user files, terrorizing children?
Think your Snow Leopard woes are finally over? Don’t go logging into that Guest account, then. A flurry of reports have surfaced around the web explaining that even an accidental login to one’s Guest account within Snow Leopard could lead to mass deletion of all user files on the primary account, and when we say “mass deletion,” we mean “mass deletion.” The problem goes something like this: if one clicks on the Guest account after upgrading their machine to OS X 10.6, and everything hangs, there’s at least a decent chance that all of your data will be evaporated whenever you surf back over to the main profile. Apple has yet to address the issue (at least publicly), but we’d probably recommend disabling Guest accounts on your rig(s) until all of this gets sorted. You know, unless you actually enjoy watching your data vanish.
Credit : Engadgets
HTC HD2 launching on October 12th?
A trusted tipster with a proven past just gave us the launch day scoop on the hotly anticipated HTC Leo. A Windows Mobile 6.5 handset we recently spied with HD2 branding and a 4.3-inch capacitive touchscreen display with 800×480 resolution — a pixel density that should give plenty of room for finger-friendly TouchFlo 3D navigation. According to said source, the O2 intranet site lists the “HTC HD2″ on its future products list with an October 12th launch date. O2 peeps will immediately recognize the lack of XDA branding which makes the claim a bit suspicious. Then again, HTC has been trying to break the shackles of pointless carrier rebranding for years. Truth be told in the days ahead.
Credit : Engadget
AMD launches six-core ‘Thuban’ processor to the consumer
Look out, Intel — six cores are mightier than four, don’tcha know? Shortly after introducing a six-core processorin the server sector, AMD is reportedly angling to issue a hexa-core chip over on the consumer side. The chip maker has confirmed to Maximum PC that a six-core slab of silicon (codenamed Thuban) will be released in 2010, with the real kicker being that it’ll be fully backwards compatible with existing AM3 and AM2+ mainboards. It’ll be based on 45nm process technology and will boast an integrated DDR3 controller, 3MB of L2 cache and 6MB of L3 cache, and while the outfit wouldn’t confirm, word on the street has it that the final product will sport a Phenom II X6 moniker. So, Core i9 — what have you to say now?
Credit : Darren Murph via Engadget
Facebook ‘enhances intelligence’ but Twitter ‘diminishes it’, claims psychologist
Spending time on the Facebook networking site could enhance a key element of intelligence that is vital to success in life, a psychologist has claimed, but using Twitter may have the opposite effect.
10.6.1 released with Flash fix, Leopard gets security update
Apple has already released an update to Snow Leopard which fixes a hodgepodge of minor issues, including the “broken” Flash included with the original installer. If you’re still on Leopard or (gasp) Tiger, however, Apple has a security update with a number of patches.
New online Monopoly game is streets ahead
Players can buy whole streets and construct everything from castles and skyscrapers to prisons and rubbish dumps
GScreen’s Dual-Screen Spacebook Coming Soon
This is one of the first photos of an actual gScreen’s dual 15.4-inch screen Spacebook—two full screens (not just an extra 10-inch one like Lenovo’s W700. Really. There were renders before, but here are the photos.
Apple Announces August 28th Availability of Snow Leopard
Apple today announced that Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard will go on sale Friday, August 28 at Apples retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers, and that Apples online store is now accepting pre-orders.
“Snow Leopard builds on our most successful operating system ever and we’re happy to get it to users earlier than expected,” said Bertrand Serlet, Apples senior vice president of Software Engineering. “For just $29, Leopard users get a smooth upgrade to the worlds most advanced operating system and the only system with built in Exchange support.”Snow Leopard is available as an upgrade for users of Mac OS 10.5 Leopard for $29 as a single user license and $49 as a family pack. For users of Mac OS 10.4 Tiger and earlier, the Mac Box Set includes Mac OS X Snow Leopard, iLife 09 and iWork 09 for $169 as a single user license and a family pack for $229.
Credit: Macrumors
iPhone 3GS Supprots High-Definition Video Playback?
iLounge reports on a forum posting [Google translation] at Chinese site WeiPhone in which a user claims to demonstrate 720p and 1080p high-definition video playback on the iPhone 3GS. The poster conducted a series of test using the FileAid iPhone application to transfer video files of increasing resolution and bitrate to the iPhone 3GS, finding acceptable performance on video playback up to 1980 x 1080 resolution encoded in H.264 format at over 30 Mbps.
A forum post to Chinese-language site weiphone.com indicates that the iPhone 3GS is capable of playing back both 720p and 1080p video encoded in H.264 through the built-in video player, suggesting that Apple is currently placing arbitrary limits on the device, either to preserve battery life or keep its functionality more consistent with that of prior iPhone OS devices. Using the free document storage and viewing application FileAid, forum member fridtear was able to circumvent Apple’s video restrictions, smoothly playing back files up to 30 Mbps in 1980×1080 resolution via the iPhone 3GS’ built-in video player.
While such high-resolution video is obviously not necessary for the iPhone itself, which offers only a 480 x 320 pixel display, many users are interested in outputting video for display on external monitors, and the iPhone 3GS is by default limited by Apple in that regard to the same 640 x 480 resolution, 1.5 Mbps standard used by older iPhone models. Of course, the large file sizes involved in high-definition, high bitrate video would restrict videos to relatively short clips given current iPhone storage capacities. The tests also did not address the effect of such video playback on heat or battery life under extended usage.
Rumors surfacing in late April hinted at high-definition capabilities for what turned out to be the iPhone 3GS, but while this latest report indicates that the hardware may be capable of it to at least some extent, Apple has elected not to enable it at this time.
Credit: MacRumors
NVIDIA confirms Tegra processor within Zune HD, details it real good
It’s no big secret that NVIDIA’s potent Tegra chip will be powering Microsoft’s forthcoming Zune HD, but up until now, the former company had been rather quiet about its involvement in the project. Just a few days after the OLED-equipped portable media player went up for pre-order around the web, NVIDIA has stepped in to affirm that its own Tegra processor will be “providing the multimedia muscle in Zune HD.” We’re told that no fewer than eight independent processors make up Tegra’s collective whole, with each one engineered for a specific class of tasks; among them are an HD video processor, an audio processor, a graphics processor and two ARM cores. Each of the chips can work together or independently to minimize power consumption, and the built-in nPower technology is said to optimize system power use and enable extended HD video / MP3 playback time. Sounds good in print, but we’ve got just under a month to find out how it performs for real.
Credit: Engadget
