Developers and IT managers have reason to smile today, because it looks like Apple is changing its approach to virtualization. According to Mac Rumors, users who download the client version of OS X Lion will be able to run one or two virtualized copies on a single Mac, using tools like VMware or Parallels. This functionality first surfaced with Leopard, but was only available to users who obtained a pricey OS X Server license. The EULA for 10.7, however, suggests that Lion owners won’t need any extra licenses to tinker away in an alternate OS universe. This is the sort of news that the enterprise community will certainly welcome, but we’ll have to wait a little longer before riding the Lion into a virtual realm, later this month.

SOURCE via Mac Rumors

You know the rigmarole by now — product gets introduced, product takes forever to ship, and at long last, product hits the hands of a few lucky souls. And then, the fine folks over at iFixit rip said product limb from limb in the name of science. This goes ’round, they found twelve larger chips and a smorgasbord of other bantam components within Apple’s first Thunderbolt cable, and they didn’t hesitate to suggest that the $50 asking price was at least somewhat justified. A Grant’s worth of dissection photos awaits you in the source.

SOURCE via iFixit

Four months ago, Intel and Apple debut their awesomely fast Thunderbolt I/O with 10Gbps transfer speed, and boy, that four months sure pass by fast without any sound. The MacBook Pro and iMac lines have since been refreshed with the new inter-connect, but early adopters haven’t had much more than a fancy port to stare at.

Thankfully, Apple’s $49 T-bolt cable is finally available as your ticket to the 10Gbps superhighway. Apparently, it quietly hit Apple’s web store this morning along with some fresh Promise Pegasus RAID enclosures ($1k for 4TB up to $2K for 12TB) to support it.

All of the peripherals appear to be in stock and ready to ship; so if you’ve been eagerly waiting to make use of that extra port, now’s your chance.

SOURCE via Apple Insider

Apple updated their Time Capsule to a bigger size reservoir last week, which now comes with 2TB-3TB. They also listed these as “Serial ATA server-grade hard disk”, standard equipment on the device’s official spec sheet. And well, HardMac opened it up to find something else.

It’s generally assumed that for a drive model to be qualified as “enterprise,” it must sustain a mean time between failures — MTBF for short — in excess of one million hours. So what’s the MTBF for the Western Digital’s WD20EARS (Caviar Green) in HardMac’s Time Capsule?

Conveniently, the hard drive maker wouldn’t say. Of course, we guess the definition here is up for interpretation, but given past experiences with the wireless backup gizmo, we’d certainly hope this improved revision fares better.

SOURCE via HardMac

It looks like Apple’s getting another fix in before the Lion officially roars into the scene. Mac OS X 10.6.8 is now available for download, and brings with it a number of “general operating system fixes,” including further support for IPv6, improved VPN reliability, and removal of known variants of Mac Defender. It also promises to fix a glitch that has Preview randomly shutting down, and will get the App Store ready to roar for when Lion lands on the scene.

SOURCE via Apple

It’s been a good long while since Apple unveiled a new Time Capsule, almost two years since the 2TB model rolled out. At the time that was a volume of storage that you couldn’t possibly fill up — even if you ripped your entire Peter Gabriel collection in lossless. Now, nearly 24 months later, you’re out of room for the latest Greatest Hits compilations. Now Apple has your back, releasing an updated Time Capsule offering up to 3TB of storage for all your former Genesis frontman listening needs. The 2TB model slides into the $299 slot while the 3TB takes over the $499 position.

SOURCE via Apple

Apple announced OS X Lion officially a couple of weeks ago via WWDC, and according to CNET TV’s Brian Tong, it seems that we be able to get our grubby paws (ha ha) on a Lion machine sometime between the end of July and the first week of August.

Brian’s information comes from his source within the Cupertio stronghold, which looks to be the same one that accurately predicted the launch of the latest generation of iMacs in April or early May, and names Sandy Bridge processors and Thunderbolt ports as the key features of these new products.

Historically, Malaysian launch dates come a week after a new Apple product is launched in the USA, so keep your eyes peeled for more updates!

SOURCE via Brian Tong (Twitter)

MacRumors was digging through the latest developer beta of Mac OS X Lion when it found a rather intriguing new option — if you choose “Restart to Safari” on the user lock screen, the computer will reboot into a mode which consists entirely of the web browser.

This is actually the new honeypot feature in Lion. If your Mac gets stolen, the idea goes, it’ll need to be connected to the internet for you to be able to track it with Find My Mac or perform a remote wipe, so you’ll let the thieves browse this guest account to keep them busy without letting them peruse your personal files.

Smart idea? Well depends on how smart the thieves are too.

SOURCE via Mac Rumors

Apple today announced that Mac OS X version 10.7 Lion will be available in July as a download from the Mac App Store for $30.00 (only as an upgrade to Mac OS X version 10.6 Snow Leopard). The eighth major release will add more than 250 features and 3,000 developer APIs to the company’s desktop operating system. Mac OS X Lion Server will require Lion and will also be available next month from the Mac App Store for $50.00.

As expected, the OS will not be available for purchase in retail stores on a physical optical disc. The download will weigh in at around 4GB, or around the size of a typical DVD.

Lion adds new multitouch gestures and animations that let you interact directly with content on the screen. New gestures include momentum scrolling, tapping or pinching your fingers to zoom in on a web page or image, and swiping left or right to turn a page or switch between full screen apps Read more…

Apple has refreshed their Mac lineup with the latest Intel Sandy Bridge processors, but not all of them. The MacBook Air and Mac Mini are still using the aging Intel Core 2 Duo processors, and so what’s holding Apple back from the refresh? Well, it seemed that Apple is testing out their A5 ARM SOC on their MacBook Air.

Not surprising, as the A5 processor is capable of 1080p playback, and is dual-core, making it somewhat more powerful than the Intel Atom processor and comparable to the lower end Intel Core 2 Duo processors. What’s more, it uses less power, and doesn’t require a cooling solution.

According to Japanese website, Macotakara, a trial of the ARM chip is already underway. Apple’s reportedly been experimenting with a Thunderbolt-equipped MacBook Air with the A5 on board, and “according to someone who has seen a model running with [Apple's] A5 processor, the performance is better than had been thought.”

I won’t be surprised if Apple actually throws in an overclocked 1.5GHz A5 chip into the MacBook Air. Previously we heard that the MacBook Air is bound for a refresh sometime in June or July using Intel’s new 17w Sandy Bridge mobile processors, so things may be turning in a way or another, but I’m pretty sure the refresh is on the way.

SOURCE via CNET