Macgasm

Last night, Apple released a “Snow Leopard Graphics Update” through the system updater. It’s version 1.0. and it comes in at 69.2 MB. Not a big deal on the surface, but when you look at the actual patch notes they directly reference bug fixes for Portal, Team Fortress 2, StarCraft II, as well as their own Aperture.

What’s interesting is that Apple’s taking the time to figure out bugs with 3rd party game companies, and then patching them through software update. Now, the problems could have been on Apple’s end to begin with, so it’d make sense that these updates come from them, but I can’t remember the last time Apple patched graphics problems. A quick check on Google revealed a Leopard Graphics Update back in February of 2008, but the patch notes are so cryptic that I have no idea what it was for at that time.

Gaming’s a big deal, and as more students turn to Macs, and as iOS gets Game Center, we have to wonder if there’s more to come on the desktop and laptop fronts. A lot of people have been waiting a very long time for better games on OS X.

That being said, there are tons of independent and professional games available on the platform already. It’d just be nice if OS X was taken a little more seriously by the big development houses.

If you want to patch your machine open up Software Update.

In this episode, Josh and Grant discuss Netflix on iOS.

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Despite all the rumblings of late on the interweb – Bill Cosby is not dead ! He’s alive and kicking, still telling jokes and being the world-renowned philanthropist that he has always been. Along with that, the man who is actually a distant cousin of mine (that’s right) – has his own iPhone app. In the app you have access to Cosby appisodes (I love that term..), photos, audio clips, exclusive video, & more.

There are very positive reviews in iTunes, and to top it off – it’s free. Cosby is all over the interweb – this app is co-branded by Ustream, and I follow him on CinchCast and Twitter.

I’m certain that a ton of folks will be downloading this app today due partly to a recent Twitter exchange between Cosby and Kevin Rose.

Go get your copy in the iTunes App store here.

In this episode, Josh and Grant discuss the relaunch of the podcast, and what’s going on here at Macgasm.

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Do you remember that man who went to an Apple store to pick up an iPad for his friend, only to be brutalized while he walked to his car after procuring the device? No? How about the story of the guy who almost had his finger ripped off by a thief trying to steal an iPad? Yeah, same guy.

Turns out that the story wasn’t even close to being over. The thief, Brandon Smith, thought he could make the problem go away while he sat in jail waiting for his trial. Smith decided to order a hit on the original victim. Yup, you heard me right. This guy decided that he’d have someone killed so that he wouldn’t have to deal with the theft rap. Somehow during his time in jail he figured that the best way to beat a theft under 5000.00 crime was murder.

Well the police figured it out, and now he’s on trial for theft, assault, and trying to have someone killed. No one ever said criminals were bright.

Thankfully the victim and his family are okay.

Article Via Cult of Mac

On of the reasons we took the summer off from the video podcast was because we couldn’t find a decent streaming service that would play videos for our primary audience. YouTube does it, but their time restrictions were counter intuitive to what we wanted to do. We looked, and looked, and looked, and outside of creating our own HTML5 player we didn’t have many options.

Vimeo just changed the game. As of now, they will offer up Flash, HTML5, or native video formats based on a users browser. So no matter what your viewing your videos on, you should have access to their catalog of files. This is pretty important for us here at Macgasm. Moving forward, we’ll likely be hosting our embedded podcast episodes from Vimeo, and you’ll no longer have to wait until you get home to your iMac.

Article Via Read Write Web

I’m writing this while I travel back to the US from London. Last week, I had written an article about applications that I was planning on using while on the trip. Despite the best of intentions, I did not use any of the applications I had last week. But I did manage to use a gadget that I thought I would let everybody know about: the Lenmar ACUSB4 AC travel adapter.

For my trip, I had looked at purchasing several adapters because I knew I would be needing to charge my gadgets. I purchased the Apple World Travel Adapter, the Lenmar World Travel Adapter, and a Kensington Travel Plug Adapter. The only adapter I ended up using was the Lenmar 4 port USB travel adapter.

The Lenmar 4 port USB travel adapter comes with adapters for almost anywhere in the World, the UK/Japan/Hong Kong, the US/Australia, and Mainland Europe amongst others. With the proper adapter you are able to charge 4 USB devices simultaneously, no matter which country you are traveling towards.

The adapter is capable of handling an iPhone 3GS, an iPhone 4, an iPad and another Cell phone all without a problem. This was invaluable to make sure that my gadgets were able to call somebody if I needed. I did not use the Apple travel adapter because it only has one port, and could not be used to power more than one gadget at a time. That would not work very well if I needed to charge more than one item overnight. This device worked without any problems, and I am even using it at home now instead of the four different ones.

In addition to bringing a USB travel adapter, there are a few tips that I suggest for iPhone owners — particularly in the United States. Call AT&T and ask them if they are able to allow other SIM cards in your iPhone. I say this because I could not get a SIM Card for my iPhone from T-Mobile. Granted, this could have been due to the incompetence of the store that I went to and the fact that they did not care about what I was looking for and just made some assumptions regarding what I was needing.

I did contact AT&T regarding calling in London, which they were able to add to my account but I never actually used. The only thing that their ‘International Dialing’ services does is reduce the cost of calls by $0.30 per minute. So if you do not believe as though you are going to be making that many calls it may not be worth the $6.99 per line to add to your account.

Another thing to keep in mind is that text messages will cost you more money than standard text messages. Therefore, if you have a bunch of services that send you text messages, like Facebook, Twitter, Dominoes, or any other service, you may wish to go ahead and stop the text messages unless you want to pay an arm and a leg while you’re abroad.

There is one last option for calls that you could purchase a phone for use in your destination country. These can range anywhere from $30 to $100 or even more depending on capabilities. I debated on whether to buy one, but I knew I was not going to be making that many phone calls and determined that the best option would be to just make the phone calls on an as needed basis instead of paying $30 for a phone that I was not going to use.

Unfortunately, ThreatPost is reporting that there is a flaw in Mozilla’s Firefox browser that allows malicious websites to fool end users into giving up valuable information by exploiting iFrames to obfuscate URLs. On the up side, Mozilla is well known for taking security very seriously. I’m sure that the core developers are already hard at work trying to develop a fix.

If you’re a Firefox user, please be careful. In any case, I strongly recommend not entering any personal information on any site you don’t trust 100%. Don’t follow links from sketchy websites or comments. Be safe out there.

What do you think about browser security? Are you happy with Mozilla’s track record with vulnerabilities? Do stories like this influence what browser you use? Let us know by sounding off in the comment section of this post, or you can hit me up on Twitter.

Article Via Slashdot