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Posts tagged with "os x"

Apple Shuts Down OS X Downloads Page

As announced back in December 2010, Apple has shut down [thanks, Daylen] the OS X Downloads page that used to list applications, widgets and utilities users could download for their Macs. Instead, Apple is now featuring the Mac App Store at the same URL, which you can find here (the old apple.com/downloads/macosx URL also redirects to the new page). It’s unclear when Apple made the change to the webpage, but the last time we checked a couple of weeks ago the Downloads website was still active and listing apps for OS X. With OS X Lion approaching its public release, the fact that Apple has replaced the Downloads website with a Mac App Store banner doesn’t come as a total surprise – after all, Lion is going to be distributed exclusively on the Mac App Store, and Apple wants it to become the most popular way to discover and install new software for OS X.

Back in December, an email from Apple to developers said:

Because we believe the Mac App Store will be the best destination for users to discover, purchase, and download your apps, we will no longer offer apps on the Mac OS X Downloads site. Instead, beginning January 6, we will be directing users to explore the range of apps available on the Mac App Store.

We appreciate your support of the Mac platform and hope you’ll take advantage of this new opportunity to showcase your apps to even more users.

The Downloads page used to be a good source of traffic and page views for developers willing to showcase their apps on Apple’s website, for free. Now, they’ll need to submit their apps to the Mac App Store, which is organized in categories and has a front page with featured software and staff picks, but can’t be accessed from a web browser.

As a side note, the Widgets site can still be accessed here. On the Downloads page, Apple is also featuring links to iOS Software Updates, Safari Extensions, Mac Software Updates, Safari 5 and iTunes 10.

Apple To Developers: You Can Now Submit Lion Apps

Following the release of the Xcode 4.1 Golden Master seed and with OS X Lion rumored to be nearing its public release, Apple has just informed registered Mac developers that they can now submit apps built for Lion to the Mac App Store.

OS X Lion, the eighth major release of the world’s most advanced operating system, will soon be available to millions of Mac users around the world. Submit your Lion apps for review now so they can be on the Mac App Store when Lion ships this month.

In the past weeks, in spite of various developer previews of Xcode 4.1 for Lion available on the Dev Center, developers were unable to submit apps built specifically for the new OS. In OS X Lion, developers can take advantage of hundreds of new APIs to enable features like full-screen mode, push notifications for apps, new Aqua controls including iPad-inspired popovers, auto-save and versions, as well as sandboxing and multi-touch gestures.

Lion is rumored to hit this week, alongside new MacBook Airs with Sandy Bridge processors and Thunderbolt, and new Mac Pros. The GM build of Lion was seeded on July 1, leading to speculation that, after two weeks and with no major bugs found, the final version is ready to become available on the Mac App Store at $29 any day now. Several developers we polled in the past week told us they were ready to submit their new apps, but Apple (and Xcode) wouldn’t let them. With the release of Xcode 4.1 GM today, Apple flipped the switch on Lion submissions, but it’s unclear how many apps the Review Team could manage to approve before the rumored Lion launch. Clearly Apple wants some Lion-ready apps to be ready for Lion’s debut, so it’ll be interesting to see how this will play out in the next 48 hours.

Apple announced Lion would come out sometime in July as Mac App Store exclusive. In the past, Apple began accepting iOS 4 submissions on June 11 (roughly 10 days ahead of iOS 4’s release) and Mac App Store submissions in November, whilst the Mac App Store went public on January 6.

Updated MacBook Airs and Mac Pros to Launch Alongside Lion

If your little hearts just can’t handle the anticipation in waiting for this week’s presume launch of OS X Lion, just wait until you hear this next bit of news. If you’re a college student or professional video editor / graphic designer, you’ll have some additional goodies to look forward to. 9 to 5 Mac have a scoop with model numbers for the upcoming MacBook Airs featuring ultra-quick Sandy Bridge processors and Thunderbolt.

What wasn’t expected is rumored announcement for all new Mac Pros. It isn’t sure whether we’ll be seeing new guts or all new redesign, but the Mac Pros are rumored to include Thunderbolt as Apple updates their line, and there’s even a server model specifically designed for use in business environments.

The new Macs will ship with Lion (and Lion Server) preinstalled, and are expected to launch with the release of 10.7. 9 to 5 Mac says that the 14th is a possible launch date for all three of these items, so keep an eye on Thursday for an Apple launch-stravaganza.

[via 9 to 5 Mac]

Mozilla: Update For Firefox 5 “Coming Soon” To Fix Crashing Issue On Lion

Lion users trying to use Firefox 5 have seen the browser crash when loading a website that uses downloadable fonts, but a fix will be “coming soon” according to the Mozilla team. The bug in question has only been affecting users on OS X 10.7 Lion and as a result there will be a Mac-only update that will bump up the Firefox build number to 5.0.1.

According to Christopher Blizzard, the Mozilla Web platform director, they had alerted Apple to the problem in Lion but Apple did not fix the problem in the GM build released on July 1. Consequently Mozilla has “changed the font APIs that [they’re] using to newer versions which appear to fix the problem. He notes that the bug is serious enough that it is causing “severe crash problems” for Firefox 5 users on Lion.

Mozilla will also be updating Firefox 3.6 to completely disable downloadable web fonts when the browser runs on Lion because of a similar issue. Blizzard also ntoes that under Lion, 3.6 also has “scrollbar rendering issues” and urges users still running that version (which is set to enter ‘retirement’ soon) to upgrade to Firefox 5. If you are already on Lion, you can help Mozilla test the fix by downloading the latest build from the Aurora channel that already includes the fix.

[Via MacWorld]

Apple Preparing OS X Lion and MacBook Air Launch Next Week

According to two separate reports coming today from 9to5mac and AppleInsider, some Apple retail employees and store managers have been notified to hold “overnights” in the next week to prepare for the launch of OS X Lion, set to become available sometime in July at $29.99 as a digital download from the Mac App Store. First off, 9to5mac says retail stores are planning overnights on July 13th, which would support their earlier claims of Lion launching on July 14th. Apple retail employees would need to be trained for the new software to showcase to customers and, according to the website, new MacBook Airs are also expected to launch in the same week. A previous rumor suggested that Apple had put new Mac models on hold until Lion’s launch so that new units could come with the new OS pre-installed.

AppleInsider also reports other stores have asked staff to upgrade RAM on certain Macs, presumably to make sure Lion can run smoothly in demo sessions to customers. AppleInsider, however, says new MacBook Airs could become available the following week, and not immediately alongside the launch of Lion.

This same person also mentioned hearing rumors from colleagues that Apple may formally invite some customers to its retail locations to download the new OS from within the store so that they can receive assistance in becoming familiar with some of Lion’s more prominent enhancements.

Meanwhile, people with ties to Apple’s other operating segments are supporting claims that Apple will make Mac OS X Lion available to the general public sometime next week. They add that long-awaited refreshes to the MacBook Air line will follow the launch closely, possibly the following week.

Last week, we separately confirmed with our sources that all Apple employees will be given a free redemption code for Lion, with the retail Information Systems & Technology department getting ready for an “imminent” launch, already installing a final build of the OS on some company machines. As for the new MacBook Airs, the new models have been long in the rumors, allegedly sporting new Thunderbolt and Sandy Bridge specifications and with most recent rumors claiming they could also get faster SSDs, a 3G component and a black version to go alongside the standard aluminum one.

Fluid App Adds Lion Compatibility and Full Screen Mode

With OS X Lion expected to make its public debut on the Mac App Store in the next few weeks, it is no surprise developers are starting to release updates to their applications to support the new OS and introduce features built upon the new APIs created by Apple. Last night, Panic released four updates to bring Lion support to Coda, Candybar, Transmit and Unison. Fluid App, the popular tool to create native applications for OS X off any website or web app, has also been updated to bring proper Lion compatibility, a few bug fixes and, more importantly, support for Lion’s full screen mode.

Whilst Lion compatibility can be seen in the Fluid changelog here, full screen support is listed under changes to Fluid apps. Indeed,when I opened the Google Plus Fluid app I created earlier this week, I was prompted to perform an update in-app to enable Lion and full screen support, as well as new URL handlers in the Preferences. As with most Apple apps on Lion, full screen mode can be entered by hitting a keyboard shortcut, or pressing an icon in the upper right corner. To return to the standard window view, you’ll have to click the (blue) full screen icon in the menubar again. Animations for my Fluid app on my late-2008 MacBook Pro with SSD were fast and smooth.

Fluid App is available for free, but you can purchase a license at $4.99 via Paypal to unlock additional features like the aforementioned full screen on Lion, separate cookie storage and possibility of pinning apps to the OS X status bar.

OS X Lion GM Now Available

Apple has just released the GM seed for OS X Lion. It’s available now for registered developers in the Mac Dev Center. Build number is 11A511, and Lion is expected to be released publicly later this month. A GM seed is usually seeded to developers a few weeks ahead of the final release. At the WWDC ‘11, Apple announced that the upcoming version of OS X would be released exclusively on the Mac App Store as a digital download priced at $29.99. The company said Lion would come out in July, without specifying an exact release date. With over 250 new features including the Launchpad – a new way to launch and manage apps in iOS-style – Mission Control, new Mail and extensive usage of multitouch gestures, Lion is set to refine the desktop OS adding elements and user interactions heavily borrowed from Apple’s success on the iPhone and iPad.

Apple has already detailed the Lion upgrade process for businesses and education, and confirmed that new Macs bought after June 6 will be capable of getting Lion for free through a request within 30 days of Lion’s release.

In addition to the OS X Lion Golden Master, Apple has also released Xcode 4.1 Developer Preview 7 and OS X Lion Server GM seed. Both GM seeds of Lion need to be redeemed in the Mac App Store with a redemption code – previously, Apple had made available builds both through the Dev Center and Software Update for minor changes to the developer preview code. Read more

First Thunderbolt Tests: “Dramatically Faster” Than FireWire, Supports Booting from Disk

With the release of the official Thunderbolt cable from Apple earlier this week, the first Thunderbolt-enabled products also started appearing on the Apple online Store. As announced back in February soon after the introduction of the new MacBook Pros with Thunderbolt, Promise made available a set of four different RAID systems called Promise Pegasus R4 (4x1TB and 4x2TB configurations) and Promise Pegasus R6 (6x1TB and 6x2TB capacities). A few publications managed to get their hands on the newly released models and the first results are coming in, detailing how, indeed, the Thunderbolt technology is incredibly faster than regular USB 2.0, but also FireWire 400 and FireWire 800.

First off, AnandTech received a 6-bay 12 TB model of the Promise Pegasus and, whilst a full review will be available later this week, they have confirmed that booting OS X from an external Thunderbolt disk properly partitioned will be possible, unlike some reports in the past months suggested. Thanks to Thunderbolt’s high speed and possibility of daisy-chaining devices, it’ll be interesting to see how fast will Lion run when configured on an external (perhaps even SSD) drive with other peripherals connected.

All of the available Pegasus systems ship with 7200RPM 3.5” hard drives, although Promise mentioned that we will may see SSD enabled configurations in the future. The 12TB R6 we received uses six Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000 2TB drives (HDS723020BLA642) in a 9.7TB RAID-5 configuration. The 7K3000 spins its four platters at 7200RPM and buffers data with a 64MB on-board cache. The drive has a 6Gbps SATA interface although the Pegasus R4/R6 supports SAS drives as well. All of the Pegasus devices ship in RAID 5 however they do support RAID-0/1/5/50/6/10.

Similarly, Macworld received a Thunderbolt 6-bay 12TB Promise Pegasus RAID system and put it through a first round of tests to measure its speed against common standards like USB and FireWire. Unsurprisingly, Thunderbolt scored better reading times – between 6.8 and 11.5 times faster than a FireWire drive from Promise itself, while a copying process of a 2 GB file was 30 percent faster on the Thunderbolt-equipped R6.

We used two different systems to test the RAIDs: a 15-inch 2.2GHz Core i5 MacBook Pro with a 256GB solid-state drive and 4GB of RAM; and a 27-inch 2.7GHz Core i5 iMac with a 1TB hard drive and 4GB of RAM.

When connected to the MacBook Pro (which has a slower processor than the iMac, but a faster internal SSD), we see that the R6’s AJA System Test results are very similar to the results when the R6 is attached to an iMac. In our tests involving the 2GB file and 2GB folder of files, the R6 benefited from the solid-state drive in the MacBook Pro. Across the board in these tests, the R6-MacBook Pro/SSD combination outperformed the R6 attached to an iMac with an internal hard drive.

More benchmarks will be available this week as people get their hands on new Thunderbolt products.

Apple Releases Java Updates for Mac OS X 10.6 and 10.5

A few minutes ago Apple released two separate updates for Java on Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and 10.6 Snow Leopard. The updates are available now on Apple’s website and Software Update desktop app, and they’re both aimed at improving “compatibility, security and reliability” alongside other Java SE 6-related updates.

Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 5

Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 5 delivers improved compatibility, security, and reliability by updating Java SE 6 to 1.6.0_26.

Please quit any web browsers and Java applications before installing this update.

Java for Mac OS X 10.5 Update 10

Java for Mac OS X 10.5 Update 10 delivers improved compatibility, security, and reliability by updating J2SE 5.0 to 1.5.0_30, and updating Java SE 6 to 1.6.0_26 for 64-bit capable Intel-based Macs.

J2SE 1.4.2 is no longer being updated to fix bugs or security issues and remains disabled by default in this update.

Please quit any web browsers and Java applications before installing this update.

More information about the updates are available in Apple’s support documents here and here.