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Apple Cuts Retina MacBook Pro And Some 13" MacBook Air Prices; Speed Bumps rMBPs
MacBook Pro with Retina Display vs. MacBook Air - Which Represents Better Value?
Making Dropbox Your Default Folder
Why Your Computer is a Target for Identity Theft And What You Can Do About It
Adobe Reader and Acrobat Vulnerability Report
LibreOffice Still "The Best Free Alternative To Microsoft Office" But "Leaves You Wanting More"
Opera Switching To WebKit From Proprietary Presto Browser Engine
Why Opera's Switch To WebKit Needn't Be Dreaded
Sonnet's Gb/s SATA PCI Express 2.5-Inch SSD Cards Now Support Booting in Mac Pro
Apple Cuts Retina MacBook Pro And Some 13" MacBook Air Prices; Speed Bumps rMBPs
On Wednesday Apple made its MacBook Pro with Retina display both faster and more affordable with processor speed bumps and lower starting prices. The 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display now starts at $1,499 for 128GB of flash, and $1,699 for the higher-end model with a Intel Core i5 2.6 GHz processor and a 256GB SSD. The base 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display now features a faster 2.4 GHz quad-core processor, while Apple's top-of-the-line 15-inch notebook comes with a new 2.7 GHz Core i quad-core processor and standard 16GB of (non-upgradable) RAM. Apple also reduced the price of the 13-inch MacBook Air with 256GB SSD to $1,399.
Apple emphasizes that the MacBook Pro with Retina display features the worlds highest resolution notebook display, but still offers no touchscreen notebook models. Intel Intel will make touchscreen support a mandatory Windows PC Ultrabook spec. requirement with release of its next-generation "Haswell" CPU powered models later this year, and touchscreen Ultrabooks are already available. Apple's MacBooks are expected to get Haswell processors as well later this year.
Full pricing details, technical specifications, configure-to-order options and accessories are available online at:
http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro
and
http://www.apple.com/macbookair
MacBook Pro with Retina Display vs. MacBook Air - Which Represents Better Value?
GizMag's Will Shanklin examines how the updated and price-cut 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro compares to the 13-inch MacBook Air in specifications and value.
Shanklin notes that while the Retina MBP is around 10 percent thicker overall and weighs about 20 percent more than the MacBook Air, the Air is actually is slightly longer and wider, so the Pro will be a hair more compact in a backpack.
The Retina MacBook Pro also has a faster Intel Core i5 chip, with the 256 GB model clocked higher than the 128 GB version; both MacBooks ship with integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000; the rMBP ships with double the Air's 4 GB of standard RAM, but standard storage options are the same respectively at 128 GB and 256 GB; the rMBP has a higher-capacity battery, but is also driving a display with nearly three million extra pixels so an equal seven hours of web use for both computers is claimed, and the Air is cheaper, but not by as much as it used to be, starting at only $300 less than its Retina Pro cousin.
For the full report visit here:
http://goo.gl/QwfyT
Making Dropbox Your Default Folder
Macworld's Christopher Breen says there are two ways to make your Dropbox Folder your default save folder to keep new work Dropbox-synched automatically - one being St. Clair Software's $35 Default Folder X utility; or you can just locate your Dropbox folder in the top position in a Finder window sidebar.
You can check it out at:
http://goo.gl/Z37AB
Why Your Computer is a Target for Identity Theft And What You Can Do About It
Nting that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission estimates as many as 10 million Americans have their identities stolen each year, the Intego Mac Security Blog's Derek Erwin warns that while your computer is the keeper of your digital life, relied upon for storing a wide variety of personally identifiable information, that also makes you more vulnerable to identity theft. Erwin notes that a stolen computer is a proverbial gold mine for someone looking to steal a person's identity, making it all the more important for you to protect both your computer and the personal or identifying information it contains
What sort of personal information is commonly found on a computer that leads to identity theft or fraud? How about:
- Social security numbers
- Credit card numbers
- Passwords
- Bank account numbers
- Driver licenses
- Birthdates
- Phone numbers
- Email addresses
- Personal addresses
- Passport numbers
- Tax records
- Employee records
- Health data
- PINs
And once thieves get a hold of this type of information, they can use it to commit the following crimes:
- Identity theft
- Employment-related fraud
- Loan fraud
- Credit card fraud
- Phone or utilities fraud
- Bank fraud
- Government benefits fraud
- Tax fraud
Erwin also cautions that while you may think your home computer is safer than your road warrioring laptop, regardless of which machine you use, personal information on any computer puts your identity at risk. For that reason, its important to remain vigilant of these dangers and practice security habits on both desktop computers and laptops, and that Intego's newest security product, Intego Identity Scrubber, is like a digital safe for your valuables.
He explains that Intego Identity Scrubber was designed on the premise that you are carrying around a lot of very sensitive information on your computer, whether you know specifically what is there or not, noting that in a scan of what personal information was on his own, less than a year old work computer Identity Scrubber found nine social security numbers, 10 passwords, nearly 300 phone numbers, almost 10,000 email addresses, and 250 addresses - more personal data than he I ever imagined.
If your computer is misplaced or stolen, you can usually retrieve your data through backups, but you wont ever get it back from the bad guys. Identity Scrubber prevents identity theft by uncovering a variety of personal information and protecting it before it ends up in the wrong hands, finding files on your computer that contain personal information, like social security numbers, credit card numbers, addresses, passwords, bank account numbers, driver license numbers, birthdates, phone numbers, email addresses, passport numbers, and more. You can search your entire computer, run a custom file search, or just look for personal information within documents on your computer. In addition to scanning files on your computer, the program also scans emails and documents, and clearly shows all files containing identity information and what type of information is in each file. Once this information has been found, you can choose to encrypt, hide, or shred files containing personal data to quickly and easily remove all traces of your identity from your computer.
Erwin says one can think of Identity Scrubber as a cross between an information detective, a paper shredder, and a safe deposit box, and now that he's aware of just how much sensitive personal information is hiding on his MacBook, he can use Identity Scrubber to destroy the information or encrypt it. That way, if the laptop were to end up in the wrong hands, the personal data has either already been removed or it has been pre-protected from cybercriminals getting access to it.
To read more, click here:
http://goo.gl/izKwn
For more information, visit:
http://www.intego.com/
Adobe Reader and Acrobat Vulnerability Report
Adobe blogger David Lenoe says:
Adobe is aware of a report of a vulnerability in Adobe Reader and Acrobat XI (11.0.1) and earlier versions being exploited in the wild. We are currently investigating this report and assessing the risk to our customers. We will provide an update as soon as we have more information. Please continue monitoring the Adobe PSIRT blog for the latest information.
You can check it out at:
http://goo.gl/czfSb
LibreOffice Still "The Best Free Alternative To Microsoft Office" But "Leaves You Wanting More"
InfoWorld's Serdar Yegulalp reports that despite a change to the left of the decimal point, earth-shaking alterations aren't in store for LibreOffice with LibreOffice 4.0, which he says feels more like a 3.7 release, considering the previous edition was 3.6.5.2.
However Yegulalp affirms that LibreOffice is still the best free alternative to Microsoft Office, and current users of LibreOffice -- or OpenOffice, from which LibreOffice is derived -- will be pleased with evolutionary tweaking of their favorite open source productivity suite, with incrementally faster startup and document load times, better compatibility with existing documents, and more features big and small, as well as happily less dependence on Java given the onslaught of Java security holes lately, with Java dependencies slowly being replaced in LibreOffice with either native platform code or Python.
For the full review visit here:
http://goo.gl/PTl16
Opera Switching To WebKit From Proprietary Presto Browser Engine
In an Opera Developer Team News blog, Opera's Bruce Lawson says that on the same day as announcing that Opera has 300 million users, they're also announcing that for all new products Opera will use WebKit as its rendering engine and V8 as its JavaScript engine. OPera will henceforth be built using the open-source Chromium browser as one of its components.
Cited advantages to Opera users include better site compatibilty, especially with mobile-facing sites - many of which have only been tested in WebKit browsers. The first Opera WebKit-based product will be for smartphones, which will be demonstrated at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona at the end of the month. Opera Desktop and other products will transition later.
Why is Opera switching? Lawson explains:
"When we first began, back in 1995, we had to roll our own rendering engine in order to compete against the Netscape and Internet Explorer to drive web standards, and thus the web forward. When we started the spec that is now called "HTML5", our goal was a specification that would greatly enhance interoperability across the web.
"The WebKit project now has the kind of standards support that we could only dream of when our work began. Instead of tying up resources duplicating what's already implemented in WebKit, we can focus on innovation to make a better browser. Opera innovations such as tabbed browsing, Speed Dial and data-saving compression that speeds up page-load, have been widely copied and improved the web for all....
"We'll continue to advance the Web by contributing to the WebKit and Chromium projects. We have great experience in making products that work everywhere. In our internal builds, we've experimented with adding support for some new standards and enhanced some features that were lacking compared with (opera's proprietary )Presto (for example, multi-column layout)."
For more information, visit:
http://my.opera.com/ODIN/blog/300-million-users-and-move-to-webkit
Why Opera's Switch To WebKit Needn't Be Dreaded
Blogger John Resig says he's seen a lot of gnashing of teeth on Twitter over Opera is switching all of their browsers (both mobile and desktop) to use WebKit (specifically, Chromium), and that he used to feel the same way back in 2008-2009.
However, Resig argues, "this is 2013 and the Chrome/Chromium team has made it obvious that any form of stagnation or lack of innovation does not need to occur when using WebKit. In fact it possibly gives you the ability to accelerate your development, spending less time worrying about implementing common standards."
He also specifically refutes several arguments against the switch.
You can check it out at:
http://ejohn.org/blog/webkit-is-the-jquery-of-browser-engines/
Sonnet's Gb/s SATA PCI Express 2.5-Inch SSD Cards Now Support Booting in Mac Pro
Sonnet Technologies has announced an upgrade to its Tempo SSD and Tempo SSD Pro 6Gb/s SATA PCI Express (PCIe) 2.5-inch SSD cards to support booting in Mac Pro computers (early 2008 and newer). With the update, users can boot from a Mac Pro even in a RAID 0 configuration with two SSDs (solid-state drives). Booting is also supported for Windows 7 and 8 computers as well as Server 2008 and 2012 (although not from a RAID drive).
With the Tempo SSD and Tempo SSD Pro, users can purchase one or two SSDs separately and then easily mount them on PCIe cards. Unlike other PCIe SSD cards, the Tempo SSD Pro and Tempo SSD utilize widely available 2.5-inch SATA SSDs (sold separately), giving users great flexibility in selecting the SSD capacity and performance that best suit their needs and budget, as well as the option to upgrade easily as required. With the ability to boot from attached SSDs, Mac Pro users can now extract the best performance possible from their system with significantly faster operation.
Delivering performance that can't be matched by spinning-disk drives, SSDs have become important components in systems requiring extremely fast data transfer speeds and large numbers of I/O operations. Instead of relying on proprietary SSD modules, Sonnet chose to support standard 2.5-inch SATA SSDs to allow users access to the most common SSD form factor, which is generally available at better prices than proprietary SSD modules. The Sonnet Tempo 6Gb/s SATA cards offer twice the bandwidth of the Mac Pro's native 3Gb/s SATA bus for superior performance.
The Tempo SSD card uses a high-performance 6Gb/s SATA controller and a PCIe 2.0 interface. It features a unique modular design that supports one SSD with the card at half-length, or two SSDs with an included bracket that extends the card to full length. The Tempo SSD supports sustained read speeds of up to 500 MB/s from a single SSD or up to 660 MB/s from two SSDs configured as a RAID 0 set.
The Tempo SSD Pro card can mount two SSDs in a full-length PCIe slot, like those in the Mac Pro. The Tempo SSD Pro features a higher-performance 6Gb/s SATA SSD controller that supports sustained read speeds of up to 960 MB/s from two SSDs configured as a Mac Pro-bootable RAID 0 set.
The Sonnet Tempo SSD and Tempo SSD Pro cards install into a Mac or Windows computer's PCIe slot, or into a Thunderbolt expansion chassis for PCIe cards such as Sonnet's Echo Express line, or the xMac mini Server PCIe 2.0 expansion system/1U rackmount enclosure. With SSDs attached, both cards are narrow enough to occupy the space of only a single-width card.
"Our Tempo SSD and Tempo SSD Pro cards have enabled users to install ultra-fast SSDs in their computers or Thunderbolt-to-PCIe expansion chassis to take advantage of SSDs without cables, adapters, or cases, while providing them complete price/performance flexibility in their choice of high-performance SSDs," says Sonnet Technologies CEO Robert Farnsworth. "Upgrading these cards to support booting from attached SSDs in the Mac Pro enhances their usefulness and flexibility."
As a benefit to all previous purchasers of Tempo SSD and Tempo SSD Pro cards, Sonnet has posted software on its website that enables users to update their cards to gain the new capability. Users may find the software at:
http://www.sonnettech.com/support/
Compatible with OS X 10.6.8+ (including Mountain Lion), Microsoft Windows 8, 7 and Vista, and Server 2012 and 2008, the Tempo SSD (part number TSATA6-SSD-E2) is available now at a suggested retail price of $149.95, and the Tempo SSD Pro (part number TSATA6-SSDPR-E2) is available now at a suggested retail price of $299.95. More information on the Tempo SSD is available at:
http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempossd.html
More information on the Tempo SSD Pro is available at:
http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempossdpro.html
More information on Sonnet and its other products is available at:
http://www.sonnettech.com
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