Tag: os

Windows Blue is Microsoft’s future low-cost OS with yearly updates

icrosoft is busy preparing its next-generation Windows client, shortly after shipping Windows 8 in October. The Verge has learned from several sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans that the company is planning to standardize on an approach, codenamed Blue, across Windows and Windows Phone in an effort to provide more regular updates to consumers.

Originally unveiled by ZDNet, the update on the Windows side, due in mid-2013, will include UI changes and alterations to the entire platform and pricing. We’re told that Microsoft is aiming to make Windows Blue the next OS that everyone installs. The approach is simple, Microsoft will price its next Windows release at a low cost or even free to ensure users upgrade. Once Windows Blue is released, the Windows SDK will be updated to support the new release and Microsoft will stop accepting apps that are built specifically for Windows 8, pushing developers to create apps for Blue. Windows 8 apps will continue to run on Blue despite the planned SDK changes.

YEARLY UPGRADES WILL BE THE NORM FOR WINDOWS SOON

We understand that you will need a genuine copy of Windows to upgrade to Windows Blue. Built-in apps and the Windows Store will cease functioning if a copy is upgraded that is pirated. Sources tell us that Microsoft will likely keep the Windows 8 name for the foreseeable future, despite the Windows Blue update. A big part of Windows Blue is the push towards yearly updates for Microsoft’s OS. Microsoft will kick off an annual upgrade cycle for Windows that is designed to make it more competitive against rival platforms from Apple and Google.

http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/28/3693368/windows-blue-update-low-cost

2 Mountain Lion Bugs That Crash Apps

Here are two OS X 10.8 bugs for your collection. Both of these critters result in crashes of the affected applications.

Network proxy bug

Network’s Proxies options: To avoid crashes, make sure the top two configurations are not enabled.
Theres good news and theres bad news here. The good news is that this bug affects only a minority of users — those that enable network proxies (as done by going to Network System Preferences, clicking the Advanced button and selecting Proxies). The bad news is that, if the bug affects you, its serious: Several different third-party programs are likely to crash on launch.

The author of MarsEdit explains:

The issue is related specifically to the Auto Proxy Discovery and Automatic Proxy Configuration settings in Network preferences. If you have one of these options checked, you are very likely to crash in MarsEdit, Safari, Tweetbot, and any number of other apps that rely on Apples networking libraries.

Another such application is NetNewsWire. Its developers write:

We believe the instability is affecting a few percent of our users, but its occurring too deep in the bowels of the networking stack to be fixable on our end, leaving us dependent on Apple to correct it in 10.8.1.

Also chiming in on this matter is AgileBits David Chartier, writing about how the bug affects Safari and 1Password: If you are experiencing Safari 6 crashing under Mountain Lion with our 1Password extension installed&it appears to be caused by a problem with proxy settings under Mountain Lion.

The agreed-upon recommended work-aroundat least for nowis to disable/uncheck Networks Auto Proxy Discovery and Automatic Proxy Configuration options. If you cant turn them off, because your network requires that these options remain enabled, you wont be able to safely use the affected apps until Apple supplies the needed remedy.

Snapz Pro bug

To avoid having Snapz Pro crash, don’t select Objects.Another program with difficulties taming Mountain Lion is Ambrosias Softwares Snapz Pro X, a screen-capture utility. The developers state: The current version of Snapz Pro X is not fully compatible with Mountain Lion. The main symptom is that selecting the utilitys Objects& option will cause Snapz to crash. In addition, Mac Audio capture will not work. The KEXT used for Mac Audio capture should be uninstalled automatically by the OS. If used, it will result in a kernel panic.

These are significant problems for Snapz Pro users. In my case, I use Objects for about 75 percent of the screen captures that I do. I was glad to read that the developers hope to have a Mountain Lion compatible update out as soon as possible. Im counting the days.

via 2 Mountain Lion Bugs That Crash Apps.

CyanogenMod 10 ported to the Google Nexus 7

The Google Nexus 7 may be the first tablet to ship with Google Android 4.1 preloaded. But that hasn’t stopped independent developers from building custom ROMs for the tablet. One of the first is an unofficial build of CyanogenMod 10 for the Nexus 7.

Like the tablet’s default software, it’s based on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. But it also includes CyanogenMod enhancements including a a customizable lock screen, additional options for the power widget, and support for USB OTG — which means you can plug in a USB flash drive if you have an adapter cable.

CM10 is the first version of the popular CyanogenMod operating system to be based on Android 4.1, and the developers have only been working on the software for a few weeks.

There’s not an official build available for the Nexus 7 yet, but xda-developers form member winner00 compiled his own build based on CyangoenMod source.

If you’ve already rooted your Nexus 7 and installed ClockworkMod or TWRP custom recovery, you can download the latest version of winner00′s CM10 Kang from the xda-developers forum and flash it through your recovery app.

It’s probably a good idea to use your recovery tool to make a backup of your device first, in case anything goes wrong. While most things are working in the CM10 Kang, it is an experimental build so there’s always a chance you might want to go back to the default Android firmware.

via CyanogenMod 10 ported to the Google Nexus 7.

How to change the Nexus 7 user interface to full tablet mode

The Google Nexus 7 tablet has a user interface that looks like a cross between the Google Android UI for smartphones and tablets. With Android 3.0 through Android 4.0, things were pretty clear-cut: If you had a phone, the notification area was at the top of the screen and you couldn’t rotate the home screen. On tablets, it was at the bottom and rotation was supported.

But Android 4.1 on the Nexus 7 includes a notification area at the top of the device, home, back, and recent apps buttons at the bottom, and a default home screen that doesn’t rotate. It’s a 7 inch tablet that works more like a phone — unless you apply a patch that makes it work like a 10 inch tablet.

Google still supports the same full tablet mode we saw in Android 4.0 and earlier, but only for tablets with larger displays. The new user interface we see on the Nexus 7 is designed specifically for 7 inch tablets.

When you run some apps you’ll see the two-pane view that you get with 10 inch tablets, but overall the user interface looks more like the one you’d expect for a phone. It’s not a bad way to do things — but if it’s now what you’re looking for, there are other options.

The operating system doesn’t actually know what size your screen is. It just knows how many pixels your screen can display, what the pixel density is, and what the cutoff is for showing the 7 or 10 inch versions of the Android interface. So there are a few ways to trick the Nexus 7 into thinking it should display the notification bar at the bottom.

If all you want is a home screen that can rotate, you can install any number of apps from the Play Store, including Nova Launcher, ADW Launcher, or Apex Launcher.

But if you want to use the full tablet UI, you’ll need to root your Nexus 7 and make some changes.

Option 1: Change your LCD Density

This is the easiest way to enable the tablet UI (for now). Once you’ve rooted your tablet, just install an app such as ROM Toolbox that allows you to change your LCD density. You can find that option in the build.prop Tweaks section of ROM Toolbox.

The default setting for the Nexus 7 is 213. But if you change it to something between 160 and 170, the tablet should automatically display the full Android user interface.

Unfortunately there’s a down side to this method. The Nexus 7 has a 1280 x 800 pixel display. Normally that just means text, images, and other content will look less pixelated on the tablet than on a Kindle Fire or another 7 inch tablet with a 1024 x 600 pixel screen. But if you change the LCD density, text, images, and other content will look smaller on the Nexus 7 as well.

Basically what you’re trying to do is cram all the content that would normally be displayed on a 10 inch screen onto a 7 inch screen. If you have great eyesight or like holding tablets very close to your face, this might be a good thing. If not, you might be interested in the second option.

Option 2: True Tablet UI Patch

A group of folks at the xda-developers forum found a setting in the Android 4.1 code called ShortSizeDP. Basically this tells the operating system whether to use the phone, 7 inch tablet, or larger tablet user interface depending on your screen resolution and LCD density.

If you change the ShortSizeDP, you can get the full tablet user interface without making all the text and graphics smaller.

So they’ve posted a True Tablet UI Patch that lets you do that.

It’s still a work in progress and only works if you’re running a deodexed version of Android 4.1 on your Nexus 7. Eventually the plan is to release a version that makes it easy to switch between full tablet and 7 inch tablet modes, so if that’s what you’re looking for you might want to keep your eye on the xda-developers forum thread and wait.

For now, just make sure to use ClockworkMod Recovery or TWRP to backup your device before applying the patch — that way you can always restore from the backup if you’re not happy with the results.

via How to change the Nexus 7 user interface to full tablet mode.

Is Your Mac Infected By The Flashback Trojan Affecting 600,000 Macs?

The Reto Sad Mac
Sad Mac

A Mac infected by a virus used to be something of a rarity, and it was the best argument you could bring to a Mac versus PC debate. But with Mac adoption surging in recent years, it was inevitable that Apple’s operating system would become a target for hackers.

Variations of one Flashback trojan, which first surfaced back in 2007, are now affecting more than 600,000 Macs around the world. Here’s how to find out whether your machine’s affected and kill the malware.

The Russian antivirus company Dr. Web announced yesterday that the Flashback trojan is now installed on over 550,000 Macs. Hours later, Dr. Web malware analyst Sorokin Ivan announced on Twitter that figure had risen to 600,000 Macs, 274 of which were infected in Apple’s hometown of Cupertino, California.

The most recent variant of the Flashback trojan targets Macs that have an older version of Java Runtime installed. Thankfully, Apple issues an update earlier this week patching the vulnerability, but for some machines it was just too late.

Ars Technica explains how the hack works:

Like older versions of the malware, the latest Flashback variant searches an infected Mac for a number of antivirus applications before generating a list of botnet control servers and beginning the process of checking in with them. Now that the fix for the Java vulnerability is out, however, there’s no excuse not to update—the malware installs itself after you visit a compromised or malicious webpage, so if you’re on the Internet, you’re potentially at risk.

You can find out whether your machine is affected by opening up the Terminal application and typing:

defaults read /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Info LSEnvironment

If you get the message “The domain/default pair of (/Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Info, LSEnvironment) does not exist”, you must then enter:

defaults read ~/.MacOSX/environment DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES

If you get the message ”The domain/default pair of (/Users/joe/.MacOSX/environment, DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES) does not exist”, then your Mac is safe. Basically, the “does not exist” message means you’re clean.

If you see anything other than those messages, you can check out F-Secure’s guide to removing the Flashback trojan.

[via Ars Technica]

via Is Your Mac Infected By The Flashback Trojan Affecting 600,000 Macs? | Cult of Mac.

Official Google Blog: Introducing Chrome for Android

Introducing Chrome for Android
In 2008, we launched Google Chrome to help make the web better. We’re excited that millions of people around the world use Chrome as their primary browser and we want to keep improving that experience. Today, were introducing Chrome for Android Beta, which brings many of the things you’ve come to love about Chrome to your Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich phone or tablet. Like the desktop version, Chrome for Android Beta is focused on speed and simplicity, but it also features seamless sign-in and sync so you can take your personalized web browsing experience with you wherever you go, across devices.

Speed:
With Chrome for Android, you can search, navigate and browse fast—Chrome fast. You can scroll through web pages as quickly as you can flick your finger. When searching, your top search results are loaded in the background as you type so pages appear instantly. And of course, both search and navigation can all be done quickly from the Chrome omnibox.

Simplicity:
Chrome for Android is designed from the ground up for mobile devices. We reimagined tabs so they fit just as naturally on a small-screen phone as they do on a larger screen tablet. You can flip or swipe between an unlimited number of tabs using intuitive gestures, as if you’re holding a deck of cards in the palm of your hands, each one a new window to the web.One of the biggest pains of mobile browsing is selecting the correct link out of several on a small-screen device. Link Preview does away with hunting and pecking for links on a web page by automatically zooming in on links to make selecting the precise one easier.A nd as with Chrome on desktop, we built Chrome for Android with privacy in mind from the beginning, including incognito mode for private browsing and fine-grained privacy options tap menu icon, ‘Settings,’ and then ‘Privacy’.

Sign in:
You can now bring your personalized Chrome experience with you to your Android phone or tablet. If you sign in to Chrome on your Android device, you can:View open tabs: Access the tabs you left open on your computer also signed into Chrome—picking up exactly where you left off.Get smarter suggestions: If you visit a site often on your computer, youll also get an autocomplete suggestion for it on your mobile device, so you can spend less time typing.

Sync bookmarks: Conveniently access your favorite sites no matter where you are or which device you’re using.

Chrome is now available in Beta from Android Market, in select countries and languages for phones and tablets with Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich. We’re eager to hear your feedback. Finally, we look forward to working closely with the developer community to create a better web on a platform that defines mobile.

Posted by Sundar Pichai, SVP, Chrome and AppsCross-posted from the Chrome blog and on the Mobile blog

via Official Google Blog: Introducing Chrome for Android.

How to: Unroot the Galaxy Nexus, Re-lock the Bootloader and Return to a Factory State

Unlocking the bootloader and rooting your Galaxy Nexus is really only half the battle. There may come a time when you need need to lock everything back up, including that bootloader. Thanks to the Android team, we have the factory images that can not only fix a bootlooping or soft-bricked device, but make it look like you just pulled it out of the box.  

Instructions:

1.  Download the Android 4.0.2 factory images to your PC. [Download]
2.  Unzip the file and its contents into your SDK/Tools folder (wherever your adb.exe and fastboot.exe files are).

*Make sure they are not in their own folder, but have all been extracted to Tools.

3.  From within your Tools folder, open a command prompt (SHIFT + right click – “open command prompt here”):
4.  Type the following commands, allowing each to finish before moving onto the next:

adb reboot bootloader
fastboot flash bootloader bootloader-toro-primekk15.img
fastboot reboot-bootloader
fastboot flash radio radio-toro-i515.ek02.img
fastboot reboot-bootloader
fastboot flash radio-cdma radio-cdma-toro-i515.ek05.img
fastboot reboot-bootloader
fastboot -w update image-mysid-icl53f.zip
fastboot reboot-bootloader
fastboot oem lock

5.  Reboot your phone by highlighting “Start” and pressing the lock switch.
6.  It really is as simple as that. Your phone is now back to a 100% stock, unrooted and locked state.

via Droid Life.

How to: Root the Galaxy Nexus 4G LTE, Flash a Custom Recovery and Make a Backup [Verizon]

Time to root your Galaxy Nexus now that @Koush has released official Clockworkmod Recovery for the LTE version. We have gone ahead and posted the manual instructions for you, because well, if you have a Nexus you should probably know most of these standard adb and fastboot commands. It’s not hard by any means, especially knowing that you all have the SDK set up after unlocking your bootloader. Should take all of 5 minutes, maybe less.

Ready?

Rooting and flashing a custom recovery:

*Unlock your bootloader first. [Instructions]

1.  Download ClockworkMod Recovery for the G-Nex. [Download]
2.  Place that file in your SDK/Tools folder (same place as your adb.exe).
3.  Download the superuser file aka the root file. [Download]
4.  Place that file in your SDK/Tools folder.
5.  Open a command prompt from within your Tools folder and type the following:

adb push su.zip /sdcard/

6. Then reboot into the bootloader:

adb reboot bootloader

7.  When the boot menu loads, flash the new recovery image:

fastboot flash recovery recovery-clockwork-5.5.0.4-toro.img

8.  When that finishes, use the volume keys to highlight “Recovery mode,” press power to select it.
9.   From recovery, scroll to “Install zip from sdcard.”
10.  Then “choose zip from sdcard.”
11.  Choose the “su.zip” file and install it.
12.  When that finishes, back out of recovery and reboot the system.
13.  Enjoy being rooted with a temporary recovery. (Permanent instructions below)

Afterwards, you will want to install ROM Manager from the market and have it re-flash recovery for you.

Make your first backup:

1.  Now that you are rooted and have a custom recovery, it’s time to make your first clean backup.
2.  In ROM Manager, flash Clockwork recovery again (it’s the first option up top).
3.  Then tap the option to reboot into recovery just below that.
4.  Once in recovery, scroll down to “backup and restore.”
5.  Choose “backup” and let your phone create a backup.
6.  When finished, back out of recovery and reboot the system.

If you want permanent Clockwork Recovery (via XDA):

1. Install Root Explorer from the market and delete /system/reboot-from-recovery.p – *Mount as R/W first*
2. Reboot into Fastboot Mode: Power off your device and (Power + Volume Up and Down)
3. Flash CWM (fastboot flash recovery recovery-clockwork-5.5.0.4-toro.img)
4. Reboot into OS (fastboot reboot)
5. You now have CWM recovery permanently installed

via Droid Life.

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