Apple’s Gatekeeper feature, expected to be launched this summer as part of OSX Mountain Lion, is an extra layer of security designed to prevent Malware from entering the system. Apps with a registered Developer ID allows Gatekeeper to verify against a database of known apps that are not malware.

The Mac App Store is the safest place for users to get software for their Mac, but we also want to protect users when they get applications from other places. Gatekeeper is a new feature in OS X Mountain Lion that helps protect users from downloading and installing malicious software. Signing your applications, plug-ins, and installer packages with a Developer ID certificate lets Gatekeeper verify that they are not known malware and have not been tampered with.

Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion is widely expected to be a major topic at Apple’s WWDC, schedule for early June.

As reported by French Site MacGeneration, the database of applications available to users of the Mac App Store is now over 10,000.

By comparison, the App Store for iOS contains 600,000 applications, 200,000 for iPad. The iTunes Store, has 28 million items available.

Via MacRumors.

Other World Computing announced the release of a custom DIY kit for those who want to add a second 2.5″ hard drive or SSD drive to their 2011 Mac Minis. OWC labels this particular install as “challenging” required “advanced skills,” so watch their video to see if you’re up to the task.

OWC DIY Kit for 2011 Mac mini Includes:

• OWC 5-Piece Mini Toolkit
  
• Logic Board Removal Tool
  
• 4 Rubber Grommets
  
• 4 Hex Screws
  
• Mac mini Flex Cable
  
• Installation Manual

The kit is available for $49.99 through Other World Computing at macsales.com.

Feral Interactive’s Deus Ex: Human Revolution: Ultimate Edition has finally arrived on the Mac App Store, close to a year after its release for PCs and game consoles.

When former SWAT commander Adam Jensen is forced to undergo cybernetic augmentation, he discovers that the boundary between man and machine is a point of no return. Uncover the truth behind a global conspiracy in a first-person role-playing game where you must combine combat, stealth, hacking and social interaction to determine the course of human evolution.

In a world where amoral corporations market biomechanical modifications and those who protest against them are silenced, only those who adapt survive. Discover the true potential of your augmentations and manipulate Adam’s body into your perfect machine.

The package already includes the Missing Link additional Download Content as well as the Explosive Mission and Tactical Enhancement expansion packs.

The download also includes a “making of” documentary, a 40-page book of design and concept art, motion comic, a soundtrack composed by Michael McCann and three trailers.

In addition to a 17GB download, system requirements are heavy, requiring a recent Mac:

• Minimum System Requirements: Processor: 2.0 GHz, RAM: 4GB, Graphics: 256MB, Free Space: 17GB.

• The following graphics cards are not supported: ATI X1xxx series, ATI HD2xxx series, NVIDIA 9400, NVIDIA 7xxx series, NVIDIA 320M, Intel HD3000 and Intel GMA series.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is available for $49.95 in the Mac App Store.

Via MacRumors.

Netgear today announced the introduction of the R6300 dual band gigabit Wi-Fi router, capable of speeds approaching 1300Mbps when connecting to other 802.11ac Wi-Fi devices.

The NETGEAR R6300 WiFi Router, powered by Broadcom’s 5G WiFi IEEE 802.11ac chips, is up to three times faster than today’s 802.11n routers. With an elegant new design that fits perfectly in consumers’ living spaces, the router increases the coverage area for HD streaming in the home. The NETGEAR R6300 WiFi Router has speeds of up to 1300 Mbps on 5GHz and 450 Mbps on 2.4GHz enabling consumers to download web content from any device in the home in a fraction of the time it would take on a similar 802.11n device.

The R6300 is expected to be available starting next month at a price of $199.99. Currently Wi-Fi equipped Apple products have 802.11n chipsets, and would need an upgrade to the 802.11ac standard to achieve the benefits of higher speeds.

Via MacRumors.

We had previously reported on Microsoft’s removing of the Autoupdate of Office 2011 because of user reports of database corruption involving Microsoft Outlook.

Microsoft has today announced an update to SP2:

On April 19th, we withheld the Office for Mac 2011 SP2 update through Microsoft AutoUpdate while we investigated issues that affected a small percentage of users. As of this morning, we posted a 14.2.1 update that fixes a number of issues, including the Outlook for Mac database issue, and you can read more about the update in this KB.

This update is primarily preventative and targets those who have not yet installed SP2; however, whether you have or have not installed SP2, please run this update to bring your installation of Microsoft Office:Mac 2011 to the latest version.

Download the Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 14.2.1 update package now.

Thanks for your help and patience during these improvements!

MacRumors

iPhoto for iPad.

The Mac version also supports the transfer of photos to IOS devices with iPhoto installed. Also, the photo retouching is inspired by iOS. The Mac version has all the necessary basic operations but would Apple users have adapted this environment as in the IOS version.

To see the new iPhoto to run Mac OS X Lion Mountain Lion or necessary. The support for Snow Leopard is lost.

Via Cult Of Mac.

Google today officially launched Google Drive, the company’s cloud based file storage solution for desktop and mobile devices.

With Google Drive, you can:
Create and collaborate. Google Docs is built right into Google Drive, so you can work with others in real time on documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Once you choose to share content with others, you can add and reply to comments on anything (PDF, image, video file, etc.) and receive notifications when other people comment on shared items.

Store everything safely and access it anywhere (especially while on the go). All your stuff is just… there. You can access your stuff from anywhere—on the web, in your home, at the office, while running errands and from all of your devices. You can install Drive on your Mac or PC and can download the Drive app to your Android phone or tablet. We’re also working hard on a Drive app for your iOS devices. And regardless of platform, blind users can access Drive with a screen reader.

Search everything. Search by keyword and filter by file type, owner and more. Drive can even recognize text in scanned documents using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology. Let’s say you upload a scanned image of an old newspaper clipping. You can search for a word from the text of the actual article. We also use image recognition so that if you drag and drop photos from your Grand Canyon trip into Drive, you can later search for [grand canyon] and photos of its gorges should pop up. This technology is still in its early stages, and we expect it to get better over time.

Drive is built to work seamlessly with your overall Google experience. You can attach photos from Drive to posts in Google+, and soon you’ll be able to attach stuff from Drive directly to emails in Gmail. Drive is also an open platform, so we’re working with many third-party developers so you can do things like send faxes, edit videos and create website mockups directly from Drive. To install these apps, visit the Chrome Web Store—and look out for even more useful apps in the future.

Users can receive 5GB of online storage for free, with packages of additional storage up to 1TB of online storage for $49.95. Users who purchase a paid plan receive upgraded Gmail storage to 25GB. Users can get started by going to the start page at Google.

Update:

Reviews for Google Drive:

The Wall Street Journal- Walt Mossberg

I can recommend Google Drive to consumers looking for cloud-based storage, with the added bonus of integrated editing, at lower prices. But the new Microsoft SkyDrive also seems worth a try.

EMJNMTMTVSZS

As Apple prepares for the next incremental update of Mac OS X Lion, build 11E52, Mac OS X 10.7.4 was released yesterday to developers.

Currently there are no known issues and developers are being asked to pay special attention in their testing on Time Machine, Printing, Mail, iCal, and Graphics.

Microsoft has pulled their automatic update of Office for Mac 2011 SP2, released this month, after users report issues with Microsoft Outlook.

Microsoft has acknowledged the issue, and offered a workaround.

The Office 2011 SP2 release improves database resiliency and detects inconsistencies that went unnoticed prior to this release; however some users have experienced issues related to corrupted databases after the latest updates. We have support and workarounds available for you in the following situations:

Before installing Office 2011 SP2, use the following article to rebuild your database in 14.1.4 to ensure that your database is in a good state for the upgrade to safely apply: Rebuild the Outlook for Mac 2011 database to resolve problems

If you’ve already installed Office 2011 SP2, and you receive the message ‘Please upgrade the Office database,’ please check out the following article for the workaround: Outlook 2011 start error: “Please upgrade the Office database”

We apologize to users who were affected by this issue. Users who successfully updated report very noticeable improvements including performance and a host of other fixes.

Via MacRumors.

Ming-Chi Kuo, a research analyst with KGI Securities, has published a new report predicting possible End Of Life status for the 17″ Macbook Pro, in exchange for a “fully new”  Macbook model which will feature “the advantages of the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro.”

Apple’s Mac business in 2Q12 will be boosted by several factors. Three of which are:
(1) Mountain Lion, which integrates iOS features with Mac OS, Apple TV’s interaction function, will be launched in June;
(2) upgrading to Ivy Bridge; and
(3) back-to-school demand.

We forecast Apple will sell 5.32mn units of the Mac series (up 28.5% QoQ and 35.2% YoY) in 2Q12, making it the main growth driver.We also predict Apple will roll out a fully new MacBook model in early 3Q12, boasting strong performance and easy carryability by combining the advantages of MacBook Air and MacBook Pro.While adding new products, Apple is likely to stop making the 17” MacBook Pro this year due to falling shipments, in order to maintain a lean product line strategy.

While it is unclear that Kuo is advocating a replacement of the Macbook Air, the prediction is quite clear for the 17″ Mabcook Pro, which According to Kuo, only saw sales of 50,000 units in the first quarter.

Rumors have surface over recent months of a slimmer Macbook Pro more in line with the Macbook Air.

Kuo estimated 1.1 million units of the Macbook Air were sold, but he believes that that met and did not exceed Apple’s sales expectations. At issue is capacities of solid state drives which are in each model of the Macbook Air. However, the shift toward solid state drives as a replacement for traditional laptop-sized hard drives continues, as SSDs continue to become more cost competitive.

Via MacRumors.

Adobe announced the official launch of the next version of its Creative Suite product, CS6, along with Creative Cloud, a new subscription service providing access for CS6 downloads and online storage for its tablet products.

“Creatives get a ton of innovation across CS6, with milestone releases of all our flagship products,” said David Wadhwani, senior vice president, Digital Media Business, Adobe. “With CS6 and Creative Cloud, we’re also introducing new products, new mobile workflows and advanced publishing capabilities that show we are laser-focused on ensuring design, Web and video pros have everything they need for the delivery of high-impact content and apps.”

Adobe plans a live launch event, streaming starting 1PM ET, April 23 at and will be available there as a continuous rebroadcast from 11 a.m. – 4 p.m. PT on April 23. An on-demand version will be available at http://tv.adobe.com beginning April 24.

Feature updates from Adobe:

In Photoshop CS6, designers will experience incredible performance, powered by the Adobe Mercury Graphics Engine, enabling near instant results from essential editing tools, including Liquify, Puppet Warp, Transform and Lighting Effects.

Adobe has built on Photoshop’s breakthrough Content-Aware capabilities with advanced new Content-Aware Patch and Content-Aware Move features.

Illustrator CS6 debuts a revamped modern interface, and features include a new image tracing engine, easy pattern creation and ability to apply gradients to strokes. The Mercury Performance System delivers speed and stability, including 64-bit support for Mac OS and Windows.

InDesign CS6 continues to blaze a trail in publishing, streamlining the creation of multiple layouts from a single set of content with new Adaptive Design Tools – Alternate Layout, Liquid Layout, Content Collector Tools and Linked Content.

A brand new application, Adobe Muse™, a radical tool that enables designers to create and publish HTML5 web sites without writing code, was also announced today.

For its web production tools:

Web pros can conveniently integrate HTML5 animations, created with Adobe Edge preview, into their Dreamweaver projects, driving home Adobe’s leadership in tooling for the HTML5 Web standard.

Adobe Dreamweaver® CS6 addresses the challenge of responsive Web designs with the ability to build fluid grid layouts replacing the tedious manual process of creating and configuring separate CSS-based interfaces for phone, tablet and desktop.

Through direct integration with Adobe’s recently announced PhoneGap Build service, Dreamweaver CS6 helps round out Web professionals’ skillsets and enables them to produce native mobile applications for multiple platforms.

Adobe Flash® Professional CS6 users can easily translate and transition their skills to HTML5 using the Flash Professional Toolkit for CreateJS. Flash Professional CS6 also helps designers create exciting and impactful gaming experiences and advancements include the ability to generate sprite sheets that improve workflows and performance.

Pre-built native extensions and new packaging options, leveraging the latest Adobe Flash Player and AIR runtimes, help expand and ease app delivery to Android and iOS devices.

For its Production Premium Bundle:

With dozens of new features, Adobe Premiere® Pro CS6 is the hub of any professional video workflow, featuring a sleek new editing environment. The powerful Adobe Mercury Playback Engine now supports OpenCL on MacBook Pros.

The most significant After Effects release in a decade, Adobe After Effects® CS6 is faster and more responsive than ever. With Global Performance Cache, previews are saved and ready to go – cutting the time spent bouncing between projects.

New to Production Premium are Adobe Prelude™ CS6, which streamlines logging and ingest workflows in post-production, and Adobe SpeedGrade, which contains powerful finishing tools for film finishing and color grading.

Adobe Audition® CS6 accelerates audio post-production: real-time clip stretching makes it simple to stretch clips to fit an edit; and Automatic Speech Alignment introduces a powerful new engine for automated dialogue analysis.

A new third party API for hardware integration – Adobe Mercury Transmit – allows broadcast video monitoring to connect directly into the Mercury Playback Engine via third-party cards from AJA, Blackmagic Design and Matrox.

Adobe Creative Suite 6 products and Adobe Creative Cloud are scheduled to be available within 30 days and can be pre-ordered now. Adobe continues to offer 14 CS6 point-products as well as Adobe Creative Suite 6 Design & Web Premium (US$1,899), Adobe Creative Suite 6 Design Standard (US$1,299), Adobe Creative Suite 6 Production Premium (US$1,899) and Adobe Creative Suite 6 Master Collection (US$2,599) for purchase. Upgrade pricing is also available to eligible customers. Customers can purchase CS6 products via Adobe.com and through select retail, resellers and online stores. More information on product pricing is available at at Adobe.

Adobe Creative Cloud membership for individuals is US$49.99 per month based on annual membership and US$74.99 per month based on month-to-month membership. A special introductory offer of US$29.99 per month for CS3, CS4, CS5 and CS5.5 individual customers is also available.

Photoshop CS6 Beta is currently available from Adobe as a free download.

Blizzard announced a free weekend to battle.net account holders to play Diablo III, Blizzard’s new online multiplayer role playing game.

We’re pleased to announce the Diablo III open beta weekend, which offers open access to all players with a valid Battle.net account! Beginning this Friday everyone is invited to log in and help us put the game and servers through their paces in this three day stress test as we march toward the game’s release on May 15. You can begin downloading the Diablo III client right now!

From Friday, April 20 at 12:01 p.m. PDT (noon), until Monday, April 23 at 10:00 a.m. PDT you’ll be able to log in, team up with friends, and play each of the five heroic classes to level 13 as you fight to save the world from the impending demonic invasion.

Via ArsTechnica.

Aspyr Media launched the popular multiplayer shooter game Quake 4 on the Mac App Store. Cross platform play is available online for Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Tournament, Capture the Flag, Arena Capture The Flag and DeadZone scenarios.

The game requires a recent Mac with a non-integrated video processor:

In order to run the game with satisfactory performance, your Mac must meet these minimum system requirements: 2.4 GHz CPU Speed | 2 GB RAM | 3.5 GB free disk space | (ATI): Radeon HD 2600; (NVidia): GeForce 8600 | 256 MB VRam

Supported Video cards:
NVIDIA GeForce 8600, 8800, 9400, 9600, GT 120, 320M,330M
ATI Radeon HD 2600, HD 3870, HD 4670, HD 4850, HD 5670, HD 5750, HD 5770, HD 5870, HD 6750M, HD 6630M, HD 6770M, HD 6970M
Intel HD Graphics 3000

Recommended System Requirements:
CPU Speed: 2.6 GHz | Memory: 4 GB or higher | Video RAM: 512 MB

Notice: Integrated video chipsets are not supported (GMA 950 Mac Mini(2006,2007), iMac(2006), Macbook(2006,2007), GMA X3100 Macbook(2007,2008), MacBook Air(2008)) ATI X1000 series

NOTICE: Apple Intel Chipsets only.

NOTICE: This game is not supported on volumes formatted as Mac OS Extended (CaseSensitive)

Quake 4 is available for $19.99 in the Mac App Store.

After the release of Developer Preview 3 of Mac OS 10.8 Mountain Lion, a seed of Safari 5.2 Update 3 has been issued to developers. New media access features include controllers in HTML5, new CSS filters, timed tracks, and a redesigned web inspector.

SVG Filters

Using SVG Filters, you can combine several filter primitive elements and light source elements into a single sophisticated filter, which can then be applied to any SVG element.

HTML Assets

An HTML5 media controller can synchronize or otherwise coordinate the playback of multiple HTML5 media elements. For instance, you could use a media controller to overlay a sign language interpretation track over a video track, and keep the two in sync.
A media controller has the same methods and events as an HTML media element. This means that, for example, when you call the pause() method on a controller, any
media that is slaved to that controller will be paused. Or, when a controller receives a canplaythrough event, all media slaved to that controller can be played through to the end without buffering.
HTML5 timed text tracks enable captions, subtitles, descriptions, and chapters by letting you specify the timing of text that appears with an HTML5 video element.

CSS Filters

CSS filters let you apply pixel effects to any image or web page element with a single line of code. Available filter functions include sepia, hue-rotate, saturate, invert, opacity, brightness, contrast, blur, grayscale, and drop-shadow. Filters can be combined, and changes to the filter property can be animated with CSS transitions or animations.

 

Web Inspector

The Web Inspector has a streamlined new design that speeds up common development tasks. It features a new all new iconography, a navigation bar that lets you easily switch between different web page elements, a persistent JavaScript console, integrated timelines, and more. Additionally, JavaScript debugging is now enabled by default, and the page source view now opens in the Web Inspector automatically.

Web Audio API
The Web Audio API is a high-level JavaScript API for processing and synthesizing audio in web applications. While the HTML5 audio element allows for basic streaming and audio playback, the Web Audio API is powerful enough for more complex audio applications that require mixing, processing, or filtering audio data, such as a modern game audio engine or an interactive audio production application.

Via AppleInsider.

Accelsior delivers accelerated speeds up to 780MB/s read and 648MB/s write for the most demanding needs. With up to 100K IOP/s, business critical applications are given an instant boost while Accelsior’s extreme performance speed dramatically reduces level-loading and save times for games.

Mercury Accelsior starts at $359.99 for a 120GB model from Other World Computing.

Kaspersky had previously offered users a free Flashback detection and removal tool.

Kaspersky says the latest Flashback exploit was spread through vulnerabilities in WordPress installations. WordPress has since been updated, but as Apple’s market share increases, vulnerabilities to exploits will increase as well.

The firm mentioned Apple’s upcoming Gatekeeper function, adding additional levels of protection from future malware.

Via ArsTechnica.

TheNextWeb details Apple’s latest Developer Preview Release for Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.

Known Issues
- On systems with FileVault enabled, canceling the restart to the Mountain Lion Developer Preview 3 Installer may leave your system unable to present a password dialog at boot time. You
can repair the problem by holding down command-R to boot to the Recovery OS and then using Disk Utility to unlock and Repair your volume.
- Installing OS X 10.8 over 10.7.2 or earlier with FileVault turned on may fail
- Pre-Lion FileVault user accounts are not supported in this Developer Preview
- Some Apple menu items such as Restart may not work when a sandboxed app is in the foreground
- iTunes no longer syncs Notes
- Mail’s photo browser cannot access the iPhoto library
- Back to My Mac doesn’t work for the first 5 minutes after rebooting
- DVD Player may not launch after inserting a DVD on some systems
- Most help topics are unavailable in this Developer Preview
- In the Recovery HD:
- Some icons may be missing
- Network Utility’s Lookup pane does not work
- Time Machine restoration via a AFP share does not work
- Restoring from a Time Machine backup via AFP does not work
- Migration from a Time Machine backup that excludes paths such as /System may yield an unusable system
- Brightness settings may change unexpectedly after reboot
- Display brightness may be dim after sleep or reboot
- If Mail is hidden at logout time, it may not be correctly relaunched during a subsequent login but will appear to be running
- Java applets may not work in Safari
- QuickTime screen recordings may produce corrupted videos or cause an exception when run on machines with NVDIA graphics
Game Center
- In this seed, the Game Center application will view Production data by default. Games in development will be programmatically switched to use the Sandbox server environment
- No Top Games are displayed on the Me tab and no game recommendations are shown on the Games tab
- To use Game Center in your game on OS X, you must install a provisioning profile that enables Game Center for your app. Code signing, entitlements, and provisioning profiles are all
described in detail in Tools Workflow Guide for Mac
- Multiplayer gaming with Game Center between iOS and OS X is not available in this seed
- In the Game Center app, game detail information such as game provider, pricing, etc. is not displayed
- The local peer-to-peer GameKit API (GKSession, GKPeerPickerController, and related classes) is not supported

Apple expects a summer release for Mountain Lion, likely available through the Mac App Store.

As reported by Macgasm, customers who are still on MobileMe and Leopard can receive a free copy of Snow Leopard from Apple. iCloud requires at least Mac OS 10.7.2, and users then must purchase Lion through the Mac App Store which will be available to users of Snow Leopard to upgrade to Lion to be able to use iCloud.

In an article sent to MobileMe customers, Apple has recommended that potential customers get in touch with Apple to receive a free DVD of Snow Leopard so that users can upgrade to Lion, and move to iCloud. All you have to do is follow this link, log in to MobileMe with your Mobile Me account, and fill out your mailing information. Apple will then send you a Snow Leopard DVD for free.

Apple has released an updated version of its Apple Configurator Mac app. Configurator is used to mass configure multiple iOS devices in a school, business, or institutional environment. Version 1.0.1 includes stability and performance enhancements.

Apple Configurator is a free app available at the Mac App Store.

This update improves overall stability and performance and addresses a number of issues, including the following:

Enterprise apps packaged as .ipa files are imported and installed correctly.
Redemption codes for apps that contain a comma in their title can now be imported.
A redemption code may be reused to install an app on another device if the original device is unsupervised and erased by Apple Configurator, or if the app’s installation did not complete on the original device.
The redemption code used to purchase an app in iTunes may also be used to install the app on one device with Apple Configurator.
The number of redemption codes remaining for an app is now displayed correctly.
Notes and bookmarks entered into iBooks and iTunes U are deleted when a backup is restored to a supervised device.
The WPA2 password is saved when editing a Wi-Fi profile payload.
The name of a stored backup is saved when edited.
The storage capacity of an 8 GB iPod touch is now displayed correctly.
The “Erase all contents and settings” checkbox on the Prepare pane has been relabeled “Erase before installing”.