OS X Mountain Lion may drop support for some older Macs

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  • February 18, 2012 at 11:34 am

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OS X Mountain Lion Messages

Although Apple’s recently demoed OS X Mountain Lion may not be such a huge upgrade from OS X Lion, the same way Windows 8 will be over Windows 7, yet the new operating system for Macs does come with a set of minimum hardware requirements.

Apparently some Mac models, that can run OS X 10.7 Lion, could be out of luck when it comes to upgrading to the latest OS X 10.8 on public launch this summer. The compatibility list below was compiled by a developer and is based on the Developer Preview of Mountain Lion, so by the time the new OS hits gold state and is released to the masses, more models may be added. This is not an official Apple list.
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Bluetooth 4.0 devices get new Smart and Smart Ready branding

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  • October 26, 2011 at 5:10 am

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Bluetooth Smart compatibility mapping

Hoping that this move will actually help prospective buyers and users, rather than confuse them more, the Bluetooth SIG has introduced two new categories and respective logos for devices that include Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity.

The first is Bluetooth Smart Ready, these are devices like your laptop or phone, which are capable of communicating with any other Bluetooth device, i.e. they offer Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity but are also backwards compatible with every other existing Bluetooth device. They feature a dual-mode radio that can communicate over both classic Bluetooth and the new Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) protocol. You can include the 2011 Mac Mini, the 2011 MacBook Air, the iPhone 4S and the Motorola RAZR in the list of Bluetooth Smart Ready devices.

The second is Bluetooth Smart, these are devices that run on small button-cell batteries, and their single-mode radios use only Bluetooth Low Energy. The devices gather information and then send data to Bluetooth Smart Ready devices only, they do not connect to legacy classic Bluetooth devices. These would be for example, blood glucose or heart beat monitors, sharing information with your app enabled Bluetooth 4.0 smartphone.

So to sum it up, when you see the Bluetooth Smart Ready logo on a device it means that it has Bluetooth 4.0 but it’s also compatible with all previous versions of Bluetooth. When you see the Bluetooth Smart logo, these will be small devices that can only communicate with Bluetooth Smart Ready devices.
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Google updates Chrome, promises to finally play well with Mac OS X Lion, adds full-screen mode

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  • September 16, 2011 at 1:21 pm

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Google Chrome update with compatibility for Mac OS X Lion

We’ve had our own personal issues with Google Chrome on OS X Lion. In fact, at times, Chrome was behaving so badly on the new Mac OS that I had more or less switched to Firefox. Well, finally, Google has updated Chrome promising better stability and compatibility with Lion.

In addition, Google has added support for Lion’s full screen mode. When enabled, each Chrome window takes up the whole screen (i.e. the menu bar is hidden) and its own desktop Space. Note that you can have different Chrome windows maximised or not in different spaces.

To enable full-screen mode, either click on the two opposing arrows at the top right or press command + shift + F — Google’s blog incorrectly states Ctrl+Shift+F.
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