G-Technology today announced a new line of portable and desktop USB 3.0 storage solutions for a broad range of users from consumers to audio/video professionals. Given the brand's strength in the content creation and Apple Mac community, G-Technology is well positioned to move the Mac industry forward in leveraging high-capacity, high-performance USB 3.0 drives across a variety of customer segments, all while delivering one of the industry's most respected external storage platforms with proven quality, reliability and performance.

Today, new kinds of devices and media formats require considerably more interface bandwidth and higher transfer rates to move, store and edit data quickly. Backward compatible with USB 2.0, G-Technology's USB 3.0 drives deliver speeds 10 times faster than USB 2.0 and six times faster than FireWire 800. This means that users can now transfer two full-length movies from a G-Technology USB 3.0 drive to a computer in minutes.

Connectivity and optical drives are some of the first casualties of Intel's notebook slimming operation to come up with the Ultrabook specification. As a result, a new market is created for external connectivity solutions such as docking stations, which give users additional connectivity when at their desk, while maintaining the added mobility of Ultrabook, when on the move. Japan's Apricorn introduced one such product. Called the NetDock, the device holds a slimline DVD writer drive (included), provision for a 2.5-inch SATA HDD/SSD, and a 4-port USB 2.0 hub.

The NetDock draws power from an AC adapter, and connects to your Ultrabook over a USB 2.0 connection. Its DVD writer is capable of writing discs at speeds of up to 8X. One of the four downstream USB 2.0 ports is a high-current port for charging other portable devices (such as smartphones, media players, tablets, cameras, etc.). Both drives (the DVD writer, and the added 2.5-inch HDD/SSD) are visible to the host as USB mass storage devices. The NetDock measures 158.8 x 146.1 x 54.0 mm (WxDxH), and supports Windows 7/Vista/XP, and Mac OS X. It will be priced at 7,980 JPY (US $99.99).

Open source supporter Mozilla has today announced the arrival of its latest Firefox release, Firefox 12. This build brings a stealthier update system on Windows (it removes the user account control dialog pop-up), multiple security fixes, better WebGL performance on Mac OS X, automatic downloads for URLs pasted into the download manager window, support for the text-align-last CSS property and for the ECMAScript 6 Map and Set objects, and a few more tweaks and improvements.

Firefox 12 is available for Windows, Mac OS and Linux and can be downloaded via this page.

New research released by Sophos has revealed a disturbingly high level of malware on Mac computers -- with both Windows and Mac threats being discovered.
Sophos experts analyzed a snapshot of 100,000 Mac computers running its free anti-virus software, and discovered that one in five machines was found to be carrying one or more instances of Windows malware.

Although Windows malware on Macs will not cause symptoms (unless users also run Windows on their computer), it can still be spread to other computers. Additionally, Sophos's analysis shows that 2.7 percent (one in thirty six) of Macs were found to be carrying Mac OS X malware.

On the 15th of July 2010 we introduced to you the result of our first mouse-development, the EC-series, a series of competitive gaming mice developed in close cooperation with Emil 'HeatoN' Christensen.

The EC-series has a special place in our hearts, because it was the first product where we could really show off the result of the hard work and dedication we put into every product. To us the result was not only a great mouse for competitive gaming - it was also a symbol of the passion and ambition ZOWIE GEAR was founded on.

Buffalo Japan also introduced the BSKBB11SV wireless keyboard, today. The keyboard uses Bluetooth 3.0 to communicate with its host, making it compatible with several kinds of computing devices apart from PCs, such as tablets, convertibles, and smartphones. Measuring 258.5 x 128.5 x 8.5 (WxDxH, with its risers retracted), and weighing 255 g, the keyboard features an 83-key QWERTY Apple layout, with Apple Mac OS X command key. The keyboard is technically of a common-membrane type, with 18 mm key pitch, and 2.2 mm key travel (stroke). Slated for market release in late-March, the BSKBB11SV from Buffalo, will be priced at 8,400 JPY (US $102).

With legacy interfaces such as RS-232 serial obsolete and clearly phased out of PC motherboard standards, those still needing the interface, such as for connecting MODEMs, telecom equipment, robotics, etc., are finding themselves in need of devices such as the TRENDNet TU-S9. Simply put, this is an adapter cable with a USB connector on one side, and a RS-232 9-pin male connector on the other. The cable between the two is about 7 cm long. Operating systems such as Windows 7-thru-98; and Mac OS X 10.1-thru-10.6 are supported. The TU-S9 from TRENDNet is priced at US $12.99.

Japanese company Century Co., launched the CROS2EU3CP 2-bay SATA HDD/SSD dock. The dock is built in the typical toaster/cartridge form-factor, and holds two drive-bays, that support SATA devices in the 3.5", 2.5", and 1.8" form-factors, using standard SATA data+power interface. The dock connects to a host PC over USB 3.0 and eSATA. A unique feature here is the dock's ability to clone HDDs/SSDs without needing a host PC. Measuring 143 x 70 x 132 mm (WxDxH), the dock weighs 544 g. The dock is PnP compatible with Windows 7, Vista, XP; and Mac OS X. Slated for market release on March 2, the Century CROS2EU3CP costs 7,980 JPY (US $100)

Launched yesterday as a developer-preview, Apple's OS X "Mountain Lion" will support fewer Macs than its predecessor, probably because of increases in hardware requirements for smooth operation that older Macs can't quite guarantee. The support list for Mountain Lion looks like this:

• iMac (mid 2007 or later)
• MacBook (13-inch Aluminum, 2008), (13-inch, plastic, Early 2009 or later)
• MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid-2009 or later), (15-inch, 2.4/2.2 GHz), (17-inch, Late 2007 or later)
• MacBook Air (Late 2008 or later)
• Mac Mini (Early 2009 or later)
• Mac Pro (Early 2008 or later)
• Xserve (Early 2009)

As you can see, some x86 Mac models are out of the support list, including importantly, the pre-Unibody plastic Macbook Pros. Perhaps Apple will support Mac OS X "Lion" with security updates for a lot longer.

Earlier today, Apple unveiled a developer preview of its upcoming operating system for Macs, Macbooks, Mac Pro, and Mac Servers, codenamed "Mountain Lion". It could be observed that Apple mentioned the new OS as simply "OS X", without the "Mac" (as in Mac OS X). A quick run through the new developer preview by The Verge, revealed that the change took effect in the software as well, as all about boxes and information pages reflected it. The article also notes that Apple conspiracy theorists may draw a line between today's development and the 2007 decision to rename the company Apple Inc., from Apple Computer, indicating that Apple is prioritizing on its portable computing device product lines a lot more than its core product, the Mac.

Apple today released a developer preview of OS X Mountain Lion, the ninth major release of the world's most advanced operating system, which brings popular apps and features from iPad to the Mac and accelerates the pace of OS X innovation. Mountain Lion introduces Messages, Notes, Reminders and Game Center to the Mac, as well as Notification Center, Share Sheets, Twitter integration and AirPlay Mirroring.

Mountain Lion is the first OS X release built with iCloud in mind for easy setup and integration with apps. The developer preview of Mountain Lion also introduces Gatekeeper, a revolutionary security feature that helps keep you safe from malicious software by giving you complete control over what apps are installed on your Mac. The preview release of Mountain Lion is available to Mac Developer Program members starting today. Mac users will be able to upgrade to Mountain Lion from the Mac App Store in late summer 2012.

VMware, Inc., the global leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure, today announced the availability of new VMware View Clients for Kindle Fire, Mac and Linux, along with updates to its popular VMware View Clients for Android and iPad. Available today as technology previews, the new VMware View Clients for Mac and Linux allow IT organizations to empower more agile, productive and connected workforce or school communities by enabling an easy to access, high fidelity desktop virtualization experience optimized for the device of their choice.

"More and more people want the freedom to choose the device that best fits their computing needs in school and into the workplace," said Pat Lee, director, end user clients, VMware. "With the new VMware View Clients, both IT and end users win with a complete, secure and easily-accessible virtual desktop on the devices that best meet their needs."

Corsair, a worldwide designer and supplier of high-performance components to the PC gaming hardware market, today announced of 8GB and 16GB DDR3 memory upgrade kits for Apple Mac desktop and laptop systems.

Mac systems with two memory slots have traditionally been limited to only 8GB of memory. By increasing the individual module capacity to 8GB, Corsair's latest memory upgrade kits allow Mac owners to upgrade to 10GB, 12GB, or even 16GB of memory.

Cupertino-based Apple Inc. has just announced that its Mac-friendly app store has managed to surpass 100 million downloads in less than a year. Launched on January 6th (2011), the Mac App Store is accessible to Mac OS X Snow Leopard and Mac OS X Lion users, and offers thousands of free and paid apps covering Education, Games, Graphics & Design, Lifestyle, Productivity, Utilities and other categories. In contrast, the iOS-only App Store has over 500,000 apps and has surpassed 18 billion downloads.

"In just three years the App Store changed how people get mobile apps, and now the Mac App Store is changing the traditional PC software industry," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. "With more than 100 million downloads in less than a year, the Mac App Store is the largest and fastest growing PC software store in the world."

For more info about the Mac App Store just see Apple's website.

Hot on the heels of our previous story of Apple Macs falling prey to a DDoS trojan, we now have another Mac trojan come on the market, as explained by Sophos. Yes, the Apple platform must indeed be becoming more popular to get this one. It's an unfortunate fact of life that the popularity of any computing platform, including smartphones, can be judged by the number of criminals who will attack it. This little nasty, called OSX/Miner-D or 'DevilRobber', hijacks Mac OS X to perform various tricks, which include minting Bitcoins (the virtual and now virtually worthless currency) stealing usernames and passwords (of course) taking screenshots and stealing the victim's Bitcoin wallet while it's at it, if there is one. And for good measure:

it runs a script that copies information to a file called dump.txt regarding truecrypt data, Vidalia (TOR plugin for Firefox), your Safari browsing history, and .bash_history.

So, now the criminals also know about all the sites one has visited, eroding user privacy even more. It looks like this malware has covered all the bases, but wait, there's more.

For years Apple Mac users have felt smug that their computers didn't need any security software installed, unlike their poor Windows counterparts which were always coming down with a cold. This they believed is because their beloved operating system is inherently more secure than leaky old Windows (which it used to be). This smug feeling has been especially strong over the last decade, since the release of Mac OS X in 2001, as it's based on Unix which has always had security baked into it. They therefore felt safe from the multitude of viruses, keyloggers, trojans and various other nasties that the bad guys like to infect operating systems with. However, there have been successful attacks in the past on every Apple Mac operating system since the first one in 1984, just nowhere near the number of attacks as on Windows. Of course, what Windows users, Linux users and other OS users have also been saying for years is that Apple's operating systems simply weren't popular enough to bother with and aren't particularly secure. After all, the hackers do this for fun and financial profit, so why aim for a little teeny tiny target, when you can aim for a big, fat one like Windows?

In a court ruling on Wednesday 28th September 2011, Apple's assertion that any kind of 'Hackintosh' was, is and always will be, illegal, was conclusively affirmed. This will bring great dismay to Psystar customers, potential purchasers of other "alternative Macs" and the many PC enthusiasts who want to run the latest Apple OS on the high-spec rigs they've built themselves from hand-picked components. This ruling has unfortunately sounded the death knell for enterprising and surprisingly plucky upstart outfit, Psystar, who showed what could be possible with an open mind and technical skill. UPDATE after the jump.

Post production pros know that you can never have enough fast, cool and reliable storage. Dedicated to serving the Apple Mac and creative professional audio/video (A/V) markets, G-Technology by Hitachi is demoing its first 4TB hard drives at IBC 2011 (Stand #7.D12a) in its two-drive, RAID 0, G-RAID solution. Continuing to develop innovative and creative storage solutions for those looking to push creativity beyond the limits, the 8TB G-RAID demo shows how G-Technology is making digital production faster, super-sized and affordable, giving users a competitive edge in the demanding entertainment and film industry.

Apple today updated the MacBook Air with next generation processors, high-speed Thunderbolt I/O technology, a backlit keyboard and Mac OS X Lion, the world's most advanced operating system. With up to twice the performance of the previous generation, flash storage for instant-on responsiveness and a compact design so portable you can take it everywhere, the MacBook Air starts at $999 (US) and is available for order today and in stores tomorrow.

"Portable, affordable and powerful, MacBook Air is the ultimate everyday notebook," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "MacBook Air features our most advanced technology and is an ideal match for Lion, especially with its new Multi-Touch gestures, full-screen apps, Mission Control and Mac App Store."

Apple today announced that Mac OS X Lion, the eighth major release of the world's most advanced operating system with more than 250 new features, is available today as a download from the Mac App Store for $29.99. Some of the amazing features in Lion include: new Multi-Touch gestures; system-wide support for full screen apps; Mission Control, an innovative view of everything running on your Mac; the Mac App Store, the best place to find and explore great software, built right into the OS; Launchpad, a new home for all your apps; and a completely redesigned Mail app.

"Lion is the best version of OS X yet, and we're thrilled that users around the world can download it starting today," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "Lion makes upgrading a Mac easier than ever before; just launch the Mac App Store, buy Lion with your iTunes account, and the download and install process will begin automatically."

Apple announced that Mac OS X Lion, the eighth major release of the world's most advanced operating system with more than 250 new features and 3,000 new developer APIs, will be available to customers in July as a download from the Mac App Store for $29.99. Some of the amazing features in Lion include: new Multi-Touch gestures; system-wide support for full screen apps; Mission Control, an innovative view of everything running on your Mac; the Mac App Store, the best place to find and explore great software, built right into the OS; Launchpad, a new home for all your apps; and a completely redesigned Mail app.

"The Mac has outpaced the PC industry every quarter for five years running and with OS X Lion we plan to keep extending our lead," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "The best version of OS X yet, Lion is packed with innovative features such as new Multi-Touch gestures, system-wide support for full screen apps, and Mission Control for instantly accessing everything running on your Mac."

Apple introduced iCloud, a breakthrough set of free new cloud services that work seamlessly with applications on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac or PC to automatically and wirelessly store your content in iCloud and automatically and wirelessly push it to all your devices. When anything changes on one of your devices, all of your devices are wirelessly updated almost instantly.

"Today it is a real hassle and very frustrating to keep all your information and content up-to-date across all your devices," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "iCloud keeps your important information and content up to date across all your devices. All of this happens automatically and wirelessly, and because it's integrated into our apps you don't even need to think about it-it all just works."

Seagate, today announced GoFlex Satellite mobile wireless storage, the first battery-powered external hard drive to wirelessly extend the storage capacity of any Wi-Fi enabled mobile device. With 500GB and Wi-Fi access over 802.11 b/g/n and a rechargeable battery, this latest member of the GoFlex family provides the ability to carry an entire library of video, music, pictures and documents with you. Devices are wirelessly connected directly to the GoFlex Satellite drive by use of the free GoFlex Media app-available now on iTunes and the Apple App Store-or a web browser. GoFlex Satellite is available immediately for preorder from Seagate.com, Amazon and BestBuy.com for a manufacturer's suggested retail price of $199.99, and is scheduled to arrive in Best Buy stores in July 2011. Global availability is planned for later this summer.

"With the growth of the tablet and iPad markets and the larger volumes of high-quality media now being consumed, there is a clear need for access to content that is not plagued with the challenges of streamed video over the Internet," said Patrick Connolly, vice president and general manager of Seagate's retail group. "The unfortunate fact is that these popular new mobile devices are hampered by their limited storage capacity while one of their primary functions is that of media consumption.

Seagate today announced the availability of its new GoFlex Slim portable hard drive -- a svelte, 9mm, 2.5-inch external drive designed for the latest trend of portable, thin, stylish laptops and netbooks. Initially showcased at the 2011 International Consumer Electronics show in January of this year, the new GoFlex Slim performance drive is now available on Seagate website, in-store and at select online retailers. A 320GB version of the GoFlex Slim drive can be purchased for a manufacturer's suggested retail price of $99.99 USD.

At an ultra-sleek 9mm-38 percent leaner than the current GoFlex ultra-portable drives-the new GoFlex Slim drive is roughly the width of a pencil. Sliding effortlessly into a pocket, purse or messenger bag, the GoFlex Slim portable drive enables transport, access and enjoyment of personal digital content from anywhere, making it the perfect complement to today's mobile lifestyle. Equipped with a 7200RPM drive and a USB3.0 interface to accelerate transfer speeds up to 10x faster than USB2.0, this attractive super-slim drive delivers quick access to large, multi-media files such as HD movies and video games. The faster drive speed takes full advantage of the included plug-and-play USB 3.0 interface, while still maintaining compatibility with USB 2.0 ports. The GoFlex Slim portable drive also allows for use between Windows and Mac computers, interchangeably, without formatting or performance loss. Additionally, the drive's included p remium backup software provides automatic and continuous backups and encrypts files and folders.

Addressing the personal preferences of the Mac community, Seagate today introduced a new collection of GoFlex for Mac external drives designed to make it easy for those who use Mac OS X and Time Machine to backup, shuttle, or share their digital content.

These new portable and desktop solutions are HFS+ formatted out-of-the-box, making them fully compatible with Apple Time Machine backup software, while maintaining the ability to work across both Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X computers. A truly unique feature, GoFlex for Mac drives can also be used with computers running Windows by simply downloading an HFS+ driver for Windows from Seagate.com , which will provide full read-write access to the drive from a Windows computer.