TechVirtuoso

Apple discontinuing their Xserve lineup

November 5th, 2010 at 8:57 AM No Comments Michael Stanclift

Adding a bit of uncertainty to what exactly Apple is doing up in North Carolina with two (maybe three) datacenters, it’s now public on the Apple website that after January 31, 2011, you’ll no longer be able to purchase an Apple Xserve.

Maybe it’s because of the datacenters, that Apple cannot keep their own internal systems online and still sell the servers at retail? Doubtful. Apple is suggesting administrators transition over to either Mac Mini or Mac Pro based servers. Neither of which are particularly rack mount friendly.

It’s just hard to imagine Apple doing any sort of massive datacenter project and fill it with such inefficiently designed server systems, yet it’s equally hard to see an Apple datacenter with Dell or HP systems. I’m sure they have something interesting up their sleeves and maybe will be releasing a new server lineup down the road.

US Cyber Command now ‘fully operational’

November 5th, 2010 at 8:46 AM No Comments Michael Stanclift

Word from the Department of Defense has it that the new Cyber Command has “achieved full operational capability” … if you think that sounds like Grand Moff Tarkin said right before destroying Alderaan you’re not alone.

Fortunately the purpose of this new command is a bit less ominous than the Death Star. As General Keith Alexander, chief of Cyber Command and head of the National Security Agency put it:

“Cyberspace is essential to our way of life and US Cyber Command synchronizes our efforts in the defense of DoD networks.”

Currently the Air Force, Army, Navy and Marines all have cyber forces, which will all be unified under the new joint command. The Air Force has the largest cyber force, with an entire wing dedicated to it. The Cyber Command is responsible for protecting (and attacking) anything in the .mil world while the Department of Homeland Security is responsible for the protection (and probably less attacking) of the .gov world.

via The Register

Kiss your BIOS goodbye, first look at EFI based booting

November 4th, 2010 at 8:21 PM 3 Comments Michael Stanclift

Apple has been using EFI on their Intel based Macs ever since they moved off Power PC based processors, but for some reason the PC world has been slow to keep up the pace. EFI has many advantages over the decades old BIOS including support for booting off drives larger than 2TB, faster boot times and a more modern interface.

SWEClockers has one of the first looks at an UEFI based Intel motherboard, providing a look at our glorious future.

via Engadget

Google rolls out instant search on mobile devices

November 4th, 2010 at 7:49 PM No Comments Michael Stanclift

Google has begun rolling out it’s instant search feature on iOS and Android browsers. When you visit www.google.com find the “Instant (beta) is” option at the bottom and search away. Results will appear instantly in your browser.

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Microsoft admits iPad cutting into netbook sales

November 4th, 2010 at 12:16 PM 2 Comments Michael Stanclift

Does this really shock anyone?

Nick Eaton over at Seattle PI got Windows product manager Gavriella Schuster on record as saying that that the iPad is cutting into netbook sales:

“These are definitely getting cannibalized,” she said. “These are really a second device. But they are getting cannibalized.”

As they should. Netbooks, for the most part, have sucked. Under powered, small screens, stripped down Linux OS or Windows XP. Compared to the iPad or other tablets for similar price, who wouldn’t make that decision in favor of the iPad?

Apple dominates global tablet market

November 2nd, 2010 at 3:01 PM 1 Comment Michael Stanclift

Tablets are nothing new, Microsoft has had them around for years. But despite their best efforts they were nothing more than laptops with screens you could write on with an ugly stylus. They were reserved for business, hospitals and education. The battery life was horrible. They weren’t something your grandma could pickup and figure out how to use. They weren’t sexy.

Enter the iPad.

The iPad is everything Windows tablets were not. Designed for consumers, no stylus required, with an awesome battery. And being mostly glass and aluminium it sets the definition of sexy in the tablet space.

And as such, it has done what Windows tablets have failed for nearly a decade to do. Sell.

Apple now, just six months after launching, dominates the market according to research firm Strategy Analytics. At 95% Apple is now the monster to beat. Best of luck to the Samsung Galaxy Tab, the BlackBerry PlayBook, and the HP Slate (in either Windows 7 or WebOS flavors) — you’ve got your work cut out for you.

via Computer World

Sophos releases full featured Mac OS anti virus for home users

November 2nd, 2010 at 11:49 AM No Comments Michael Stanclift

We’ve covered this before: the need for Mac users to secure their systems with a proper antivirus. But unlike the Windows space, there are not many/any really good, small footprint AV clients that are free. Until now.

Sophos has released a free client for Mac, based on their popular business product, which you can download from their website.

“While most businesses recognise the importance of protecting their Mac computers from malware threats, most home users do not,” said Chris Kraft, product management vice president at Sophos. “By offering free industrial-strength security to home users, we aim to protect Mac users against today’s and tomorrow’s Mac threats. Everyone knows that Macs are beautiful computers – Sophos wants to lend a hand to keep them that way.”

Internet Explorer 9 tops HTML5 benchmarks

November 1st, 2010 at 8:13 PM No Comments Michael Stanclift

The W3C recently ran a comparison benchmark of HTML5 conformance among the beta’s of the 5 major browser engines, and (somewhat) shockingly, Internet Explorer has managed to come out on top.

Chrome 7 beta came in a pretty close second, followed by Firefox 4 beta. Opera and Safari trailed in last place. Pretty amazing to see Microsoft leading Google and Mozilla in standards compliance. It should be noted though that CSS3 functionality and compliance was not tested, nor was JavaScript, and that it’s the combination of those three pieces that continue to make up the modern web.

Still, nice to see Microsoft making some headway, even if it’ll probably only last for a little while.

via Neowin

iOS 4.2 is golden, should be released in the next week

November 1st, 2010 at 7:02 PM No Comments Michael Stanclift

Apple has posted the gold master version of the iOS 4.2 firmware to the Apple developers website.

With this release, the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch will all be unified under one code base and have more feature parity. However the most important part of this release is that the iPad will gain the much coveted mutlitasking abilities that have been present in the iOS firmware since version 4.0 on the iPhone and iPod Touch.

As Engadget points out:

if you’ve got a friend with an iPhone Developer Program subscription, now would be a greattime to get cozy

Indeed. Typically the gold master will run on any device, not just ones which are registered to a developer account. Also, the gold master is typically released to the public within a week or so of hitting developers, so expect this to be finalized very soon. Apple promised 4.2 would be out in November and they seem on track to deliver.

And just in time for me to buy an iPad this week.

Google sues the federal government for wanting to use Exchange

November 1st, 2010 at 6:35 PM 1 Comment Michael Stanclift

So the US Department of the Interior decides that it wants a new email system, and after consideration decides it wants to use Microsoft’s hosted Exchange platform.

Pretty straight forward, right?

Well, until Google decides that the DOI should have used Google Apps instead, and goes to sue the government for wanting to use Microsoft’s products. Nevermind the fact that Google doesn’t even have a GSA contract and cannot actually sell products to the federal government without one.

Google’s case makes it sound like they’re trying to protect the government from disaster by going with Microsoft’s product, providing a filing full of reasons why their platform is superior and Microsoft’s is run by idiots. Nevermind the fact that Google Apps has had it’s fair share of issues in the last few months (even in the last week) and that they’re constantly adding/changing/removing features that would probably not be welcome in a government setting.

via TechDirt

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