Frustrated with the bugs that still remain in iOS 5 Beta 2? Today will be your lucky day because iOS 5 Beta 3 will finally fix many of those frustrations you’ve had. With this new beta, they’ve fixed most of the Camera bugs as well as various others. They also added a feature under the accessibility options called Assistive Touch. This allows the user to use the touch screen to control gestures, hardware buttons (volume rockers, home button, orientation lock), as well as recreate physical movements like shaking the device.

Beyond Assistive Touch they also included crowd sourced Wi-Fi location data to better improve the location tracking features as well as more advanced option in terms of controlling which features and applications can use this data.

Lastly, they added the ability to set custom SMS tones.

Now, with all humor aside, the home button is a major feature on all of the iOS devices, I spend more time clicking it than I do tapping home screen icons. It makes no sense to replace something perfectly fine with something as flawed, in the case of pockets, as a capacitive sensor. With that said Apple with its developer builds enabled on-screen gestures that replaced the functionality of the home button, so I guess a capacitive button is better than no button, or is it?

The only thing I can tell you from the picture is they still haven’t fixed the fingerprint problems!

Today Apple announced the second generation of their acclaimed tablet, the iPad. But before we get into the iPad, I would like to state that Steve Jobs did in fact cover the keynote, despite his medical leave from Apple. It was no surprise to see him looking frail and extremely skinny, but I found it great that he was able to present the next generation of the iPad. So, with that said lets get into the star of the post, the iPad 2.

OK to start off with the the changes, as rumored the case is now thinner and has a beveled edge, exactly like the iPod touch 4th generation. The case is now 8.8mm which is not only 33% thinner than the current iPad, but it also thinner than the current iPhone 4 (9.3mm). The back of the iPad is still the brushed aluminum. The case also now sports a front and rear facing camera, which will be integrated with the new FaceTime for iPad, as well as Photobooth and the iOS camera application. Along with the smaller case the iPad is now 0.2lbs lighter that it’s previous form.

It isn’t just the outside that changed, the insides also received some drastic updates. Apple has updated their custom A4 processor, to the new A5 which features dual 1.0ghz cores, as well as the same power consumption of the A4. While on the subject of the power consumption the iPad has been announced to have a 10 hour battery life, under general use. Back on the topic of performance upgrades, the iPad also come with a 9 times faster GPU.

The iPad 2 is going to be available in white and black as well as for Verizon or AT&T. The pricing of the iPad is slightly cheaper with an entry level (16gb WiFi only) starting at $499. The iPad sales will start March 11 in the US and then in 26+ more countries on the 25th of March.

• WiFi: 16GB $499, 32GB $599, 64GB $699
• 3G: 16GB $629, 32GB $729, 64GB $829

The iPad was not the sole star today, along with the iPad a new set of  ”Smart Cases”, as well as iOS 4.3 was announced. The smart cases are going to be magnetically attached to the iPad and are going to cover the front of the iPad, to minimize bulk. The iPad will be put into sleep mode when the case is shut and be woken up when the case is opened, this being made possible by magnets. The case will come in ten vibrant colors and two different materials (leather and polyurethane).

Personally, I am tired of hearing about Apple rumours lately, but they just keep on coming.

Best Buy listed new SKU numbers for Macbook Pros past weekend. For those of you who have never come across the term, SKU numbers before, they are unique numbers which are dedicated to certain products by companies, which limits confusion in the process of ordering. However, as with everything to do with Apple products, this does nothing but create more speculation and confusion.

Macbook Pros haven’t been updated since April 2010, so they’re most certainly due for an update. That is one of the longest periods between a refresh we’ve seen from Apple in a long while.

There are lots of ideas of what the new notebooks could include in terms of specs and features. Intel recently released their new set of processors, named “SandyBridge”, so we’re definitely going to see those. A new aluminium (aluminum) unibody construction, since the current one has been with us for a few years now. If we’re lucky, we will even get a hard drive upgrade, from 250GB (stock edition), to 320GB!

So, who’s excited for the Macbook Pros? Are you getting one?

“A new PS3 system software update, v3.56, will be released soon. This is a minor update that adds a security patch.”

-Playstation Blog

As a lot of PS3 owners know, there has been much hacking on Modern Warfare 2 servers and Black Ops servers. It seems like Activision hasn’t been on their game lately. Another problem that has been going around is that Geohot and many other hackers have created different versions of a Playstation 3 jailbreak, yet all of the versions do the same thing. With that said, Sony is in deep trouble. Tutorials were placed all over on the internet to teach PS3 owners how to put CFW (Custom Firmware) on their system. Most of the jailbreaks released give gamers Homebrew,  FTP clients and the ability to run backups.

Sony was obviously informed about the issue, so they created a new system update, 3.56. This update was simply a security patch, so if a hacker updated their PS3, the jailbreak would be removed. As always, you can skip the update and go on about your business, except you can’t sign into Playstation Network. However, that isn’t much of a problem for some hacking developers.

A DNS server pattern was sent out all over the internet to ensure that hackers would still be able to sign into PlayStation Network without updating their system as long as they entered the correct code. The process of the crack was very simple, as all you had to do was change your DNS server to a certain pattern.

So is this good for Sony? Are they going to release another update, 3.57, so there is absolutely no way to get passed it? Who knows. Sony needs to step up to the plate and take back the four year streak of hardly any hacking on their PS3.

With the release of the Mac App Store today, the first thing I did was to download Twitter for Mac. I’ve been wanting a new version of Twitter for quite a while now (aren’t we all?), and it’s finally here.

When Tweetie fist came out for Mac OS X, I was in love with this Twitter client. It was so much better than TweetDeck, and for that matter, every other Twitter application in my mind. I loved how simple it was and now, Twitter for Mac is out with an all new design compared to Tweetie! Let’s get on with that full review of Twitter for Mac!

User Interface

Twitter for Mac features a brand new, and rather elegant, user interface. The graphics used in Twitter for Mac blows every other Twitter application out of the dust.

Along with that, the transitions, speed, and of course, the brand new Growl integration (shows every tweet instantly once it’s posted), is amazing! All of these new features are a big plus for me.

But of course, we have to talk about what was added. Twitter for Mac features a built in retweet functionality and lists! As for myself, I do not use lists too much, but this single feature will make Echofon users switch to Twitter for Mac!

The brand new interface really is the selling point for me, even though it’s completely free! Yes, that’s right, you will no longer have that ad-support Tweetie for Mac (that is, if you owned the ‘trial’ version).

You might not of noticed this, but that rather long “where am I” bar at the top is finally gone. That thing was useless with the three finger-gestures in Tweetie for Mac. I’m just still trying to figure out when you click on a Tweet, why it doesn’t stay at the bottom/top of the window while scrolling like it does on the iPad… we have the screen space for that you know!

One other thing I have to mention is that Twitter for Mac added in a rather helpful dialog box when you right click on a tweet. And yes you old Tweetie users, that means you can now finally delete a tweet!

Another feature in Twitter for Mac, that’s rather hidden actually, are some nice trackpad gestures! If there’s a conversation, slide three fingers to the right when the mouse is over that tweet. If there’s a link in the tweet, if you slide it to the right, granted that’s no conversation, it’ll open that link for you automatically! And of course, three fingers to the left will make it go back if you need it to.

Search

We’ve been waiting for this feature for all too long, but I can proudly say, Tweetie for Mac supports full search support!

Not only that, but it also has some of the top trending topics in there! Just like the Motorola Xoom and apparently Zac Effron (seriously, why people?!).

Anyways, this was a feature in Tweetie that was really lacking. It was too basic and no where near how the search feature in Twitter for Mac works.

But all in all, the new search is lookin’ good!

Okay, maybe it’s nearly the same once you search for a query, but quite honestly, I’m hoping they’ll add those same features that are found on Twitter’s search website.

Settings / Secret Settings

Now this is where the fun begins. Back in early March of last year, I purchased the MacHeist Nano Bundle 2. They promised to give us pre-public beta access, but unfortunately, that did not happen.

In the e-mail they sent out, which I was very unaware of, we’re given a -major- feature! They’re giving us some super secret settings (sshhh, don’t click here! It’s secret! And this is secret too!) and we’re now promised to pre-release builds of Twitter for Mac! Woo hoo! Granted, some of these features can be unlocked with some modifications of the program (the property list file to be certain), but I guess we’ll have to see if those pre-release builds will be leaked. I’m sure @lorenb will make it so that the MacHeist customers can only activate it.

But this brings up one question: will this ‘hidden’ feature they added get this app pulled from the brand spankin’ new Mac App Store (it’s against Apple’s contract)? In all honesty, I don’t think so; Twitter is so huge and potential for Apple that I’m assuming they wouldn’t pull it. But I really want MacHeist to keep their promise at the same time.

User Profiles

Now when it comes to viewing a user’s profile information, I really have to say those Twitter designers did an excellent job! There’s not too much information about the user in the picture to the left, but I think it would be cool if Twitter started adding in some interesting facts like the people who you talk to the most, topics you talk about the most, or even the people who are most @replying you. That would be a neat feature, don’t you think?

One addition to the profile, that was really needed in the very beginning, is that Twitter for Mac now offers the ability to edit your profile! Nice!

Rather than the favorites of the user looking a little bit funky right now, I have to give a hand to the nice orange icon in the upper right! That scroll bar just doesn’t look good with the orange favorite icon being right below it.

The @replies and even the main tweet section hasn’t changed too much, but I do see that a button for the conversation was added.

Final Thoughts

I really have to say that I’m loving Twitter for Mac! It’s what I always wanted (haha, not kidding) in a desktop Twitter client. Tweetie for Mac was a great start to a Twitter client for OS X, but this just really kicks Ecofon, Socialite, and you name it, right out of the water!

I’m quite sure this will get users to switch to Twitter for Mac from <eww>TweetDeck</eww>. I’ve made several people switch to Tweetie for Mac, and now the ones who didn’t want to switch, I’m hoping this brand new update will make ‘em switch! I thought the interface in Tweetie was excellent, but in Twitter for Mac, damn, it’s friggen’ awesome!

We hope you’ll like Twitter for Mac. For the Windows folks out there, I’m hoping, just hoping, you’ll be able to find a farely decent, and official, Twitter client coming your way! I’m assuming it’ll be named Twitter for Windows so let’s see if the Windows developers over at Twitter will say anything in the coming months! I think Windows, with all respect, has the worst Twitter clients out there. When I used it, there were no decent Twitter clients. When I went to the Mac, I’ve found many!

What do you think about the brand new Twitter for Mac? It’s free, it’s fast, and it looks good!

I really have to start of this brand new year by saying that last year was awesome! Tech Cores couldn’t be any better because in all seriousness, we’re doing the best we’ve ever have! Last month, we’ve had the most visitors we had all year and that number keeps on rising every month!

Not only are we getting more visitors but we’re also gaining in search rankings. We’re at the top of the list in many Google search queries and more and more people are finding us every day. We’re really grateful for that and we hope to see more coming this year!

But all in all, this year couldn’t be any better for us. We’ve grown so much that we upgraded to a VPS, which by the way is the best thing we’ve ever did to this place, and all of our writers are much talkative lately (no seriously, I’ve had extremely long FaceTime calls with Jeff and Marc ).

This year, however, we’re giving much more to our readers with our brand new Tech Cores v2.0 theme, and along with that, we’re giving our writers more tools to produce some high quality posts in an effortless way. We’re going to try really hard to make this year much better than the last one. We hope we’ll switch over to the Rackspace Cloud soon, but until that comes, we’ll deal with our current VPS for now!

Thanks so much for everything you’ve done for us no matter if you’re a reader or even a writer!

If you like the Mighty Eagle for the iPad and want it on your iPhone / iPod touch? Well, you’re in luck because Rovio released the 1.5 version of Angry Birds. If you don’t know what the Mighty Eagle is, it’s essentially an easy (or cheap) way to beat the entire level. Here is the official list of changes:

• New theme in the Frontier Badlands
• 15 new levels
• New Golden Egg
• Mighty Eagle

Stay Tuned!

So if you are an active user on YouTube you would probably have noticed YouTubes’ new video player.

Below is a picture of YouTubes’ new video player when your mouse isn’t hovered over the video.

And this is the player when your mouse is hovered over the video.

Now the major differences between no-hover and hover is when your mouse isn’t hovered over (picture 1) the player is very faded and the loading bar is skinny. When your mouse is hovered over the video (picture 2) the player turns darker making the buttons more visible and the loading bar expands along with a slider to fast-forward/rewind through the video.

After using this player for 10 videos I actually began to HATE it. When your mouse is hovered over the video the loading bar expands making your eyes automatically point to it instead of viewing the video. After you remove your mouse it takes a good solid 3 seconds to shrink back to what figure 1 looks like.

Something else very obvious is they relocated the volume toggle and placed it to the left which is close to the “next video” button which gets annoying when you accidentally click the Next Video button instead of the volume toggle button, but they actually did something good to the volume toggle as you can see in the image below.

Now the volume toggle no longer expands upwards blocking a portion of the video instead expands to the right obstructing no video! making viewing a lot more enjoyable.

What are your thoughts about the new YouTube video player?, Do you like it?, Do you hate it?, Comment below.

But as of right now, everyone is in there except for a few who I still need to talk to.

I really didn’t know what other image to use for the post because it’s more of an update post. If you’re not on the about page for some reason, give me the details needed and I’ll add you up; given that I have the time to fix up your image if needed.

I’m glad that everyone is in there! I remember when there was only one person on that page. Thanks all for your awesome writing! We all benefit from it!

In early January, it was leaked that the early version of this update was being tested. During that time, a lot of users began speculating what exactly was going to happen with this new update.

This software update takes a large toll at 435.2MB  and is simply named, “Mac OS X Update”.

From what Apple says in the update, lots of things changed:

The 10.6.3 Update is recommended for all users running Mac OS X Snow Leopard and includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac, including fixes that:

• improve the reliability and compatibility of QuickTime X
  

  Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6.3)

• address compatibility issues with OpenGL-based applications
• address an issue that causes background message colors to display incorrectly in Mail
• resolve an issue that prevented files with the # or & characters in their names from opening in Rosetta applications
• resolve an issue that prevented files from copying to Windows file servers
• improve performance of Logic Pro 9 and Main Stage 2 when running in 64-bit mode
• improve sleep and wake reliability when using Bonjour wake on demand
• address a color issue in iMovie with HD content
• improve printing reliability
• resolve issues with recurring events in iCal when connected to an Exchange server
• improve the reliability of 3rd party USB input devices
• fix glowing, stuck, or dark pixels when viewing video from the iMac (Late 2009) built-in iSight camera

For detailed information on this update, please visit this website:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4014.

For information on the security content of this update, please visit:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222.

We’re one step closer to Mac OS X 10.7!

Around October of 2009, I said to myself, “wouldn’t it be cool if I created a new Tech Cores?” And that’s what exactly happened. This screen was up for about a month while I was working on the redesign.

At that time, we were not that popular, especially compared to now. At the rate we’ve been going, I would estimate (while Taylor pulls out his graphing calculator to graph this to get an estimated answer) that we would get around 27,000 unique viewers per month by the end of the year. Of course, that number is based on how we’ve been doing so far. If we can do better than that, that would be wonderful!

But I really just have to thank all of you for making us come this far!

We’ve been making changes ever since we rolled out the new design. As of right now, the design really fits our needs and all the bugs are fixed. We’ve just been adding more things to the site to make your experience better!

Designing the new Tech Cores took a lot of work (especially when one person is doing the graphic designing, coding, and integrating with WordPress). It was an enjoyable experience to create a WordPress theme from scratch, but hopefully we can keep this design until we really need to change it.

And of course, if any of you have any recommendations to improve Tech Cores, please let us know! We will try out best to correct or improve anything on Tech Cores.

On a recent Microsoft Office 210 blog post, Microsoft has given the new users of Microsoft Office 2007 a chance to upgrade to the new Office 2010, just the the Windows 7 upgrade program.

If you purchased a new computer with Office 2007 or Office 2007 in a retail store, you’ll be able to qualify for this program only if you bought it from March 5, 2010 to September 30, 2010. You also have to have some other things like a Windows Live ID, and you have to redeem your tech gurantee by October 31, 2010 at http://www.office.com/techg.

Unlike Windows 7 upgrade, where you had to pay a bit for the shipping, this is downloadable online, so not fees at all.

Microsoft has also noted in this article that the RTM versions, release to manufacturing, will be released next month!

Along with that, they have also stated that on May 12, 2010, every business will be able to get their hands on a copy.

And the part you’ve been waiting for, consumers will be able to purchase Microsoft Office 2010 on the shelfs this June! This is some great news and I cannot wait to see how this launch will go.

If you’re too eager to wait, you can of course pick up the beta at the link below:

http://www.office.com/beta

I really hope that Microsoft will improve on Office 2010 and really make it faster and more efficient. Microsoft has the tendency to slow their final releases down a bit compared to the beta which run very fast. Hopefully, that will not happen this time.

And just as a side note, remember those other things I pointed out in the quote in the previous Office 2010 blog post? One of the things, having it on a web browser, is happening!

http://blogs.technet.com/office2010/archive/2010/01/25/accessing-office-documents-using-your-phone.aspx

And like always, thanks for this blog post that reveals all these dates, Microsoft!

http://blogs.technet.com/office2010/archive/2010/03/04/get-office-today-or-tomorrow.aspx

This time around, Microsoft will be releasing an update that’ll fix seventy known bugs in this system for Windows 7, which Microsoft has stated today. You’ll be able to get this update from their Microsoft’s Genuine Windows website on Tuesday, February 16. For Windows Server, this update will not be directly offered, granted that it uses a different system.

This update will be first rolled out to Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate Windows 7 users later in the coming weeks.

Joe Williams, who is the manager of the genuine Windows team, said that:

Although the update contacts Microsoft’s servers to check for new threats…these checks do not include any personally identifiable information.

Just like what you’d expect, this update will not go looking through your files and folders, but it will check to see if you have a valid activation and see if there are any new threats Microsoft should address.

It’s kind of funny that Microsoft is making this an optional update to install, because granted in the past they would never of think of it; they for sure learned their lesson on what their methods were before, which was basically hiding these updates from the user.

It’s great to know that Microsoft is finally getting it right this time, and I hope that they’ll get it right this time when they deploy the update.

But it would always be nice if they would just do what Apple does; trust the user and have no activation…

One of the only issues with this is that if you’re planning on using 64-bit Windows 7, only a certain number of computers will be supported.

You’re probably wondering if you’re already running WIndows 7, how do you update to these newer drives?  All you need to do is simply run the Apple Software Update utility when in Windows. It should find all your drivers and update them accordingly.

Now if your already running Vista, and you want to upgrade, make sure you download the Boot Camp Utility for Windows 7 Upgrade Installation Utility. This utility…

safely unmounts the read-only Macintosh volume on Microsoft Vista

So this is excellant new for the people who want to run Windows on their Mac. For me, this Mac (yes, I am typing this on a MacBook) will never see Windows “natively”.

Now you know that you can run Windows 7 with having your Mac OS X partition still boot up, have aero work, and have a very stable operating system running on your Mac.

And yes, we’re very “link happy” in this post!

Source: MacRumors

From a business perspective, it seems to be that Microsoft tried really hard to make Windows 7 sound great to the business-class user. Unlike Vista where they didn’t stress business enough, Windows 7 is taking a great role in the business field. When Vista first came out, companies really didn’t want to switch over to Vista. This is really where Vista was a failure – in the business market. Vista wasn’t popular at all during its launch, or even after it for that matter.

With Windows 7, Microsoft really seemed to change all of that. Even people at Microsoft admitted that Vista wasn’t all that great. So far, Windows 7 has lived up to its name. According to Softpedia, Windows so far supports around 800,000 applications and to make that number sound great, it even supports around 240,000 devices! If you can remember, unlike it’s previous successor, Windows Vista, Vista wasn’t very friendly to a lot of software out there. In Windows 7, Microsoft introduced a XP mode that’ll allow you to run XP programs just like it was on a XP machine. Having XP mode really makes Windows 7 more business friendly, which is important to a lot of users.

Also with Vista, a lot of devices didn’t work right, or at all for that matter, when it was first released. SP1 for Vista fixed all of those issues, but with Windows 7, it’s perfect from the stat. I haven’t had a single compatibility problem at all; in fact, Windows 7 installs all my drivers for me! I really do not have to go downloading and installing drivers anymore. That, in my mind, makes it easy to install Windows on any computer without worrying about driver support.

How has Windows 7 been for you. I would really like to see what Microsoft will be doing in SP1 for Windows 7.

Microsoft is already getting ahead of the game and they are working on the first service pack for Windows. If you have no idea what a service pack is, it basically installs all the latest updates to your computer and it also does some things that an update will not do, like increase the performance of your computer for example.

On the Within Windows blog, they were able to scoop out some details Microsoft hides from us, or at least tries to. In the registry of Windows 7, which is basically like a big database, they found a key that’s cleverly named, “Win7SP1″.

If you would like to know the full path of this registry key, it’s located at “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\Win7SP1″. One small warning though, don’t go browsing in your registry if you have no idea what you’re doing; you can really tinker with things so much, that you can start breaking your copy of Windows.

I personally looked if I had this key, and I did not have it. But just to let you know, Microsoft always applies these keys to our registry to allow Windows Update to install service pack updates.

If I had to take a good guess, I would have to say somewhere, somehow, someone has Windows 7 SP1 installed on their computer, whether that’s an internal test machine, or even a machine of Lenovo’s.

I am wondering what Microsoft is going to do in SP1 for Windows 7. Windows 7, in my mind, is an extremely stable operating system. I can see Microsoft spooling out some security patches and maybe even performance updates to make it even more stable.

What do you think Microsoft is going to do with Windows 7 SP1?

If you have any ideas or suggestions we could do to make the forums a bit better, please let us know in the comments area below. Otherwise, could you please fill out the questionnaire below?

Don’t get me wrong, I love how Microsoft manages all of their updates and service packs, but it seems to be that they can be a bit ahead of themselves. Yes, that’s right, Microsoft is planning on forgetting Windows 7 and creating Windows 8 in June of 2012. That might be some ways away, but I would still like Windows 7 to get some service packs to make it even faster and more reliable.

Windows 7 was a huge success (and still is); it really is their best product they have ever released. They have spent so much time (and money) in advertising Windows 7, that people actually want to upgrade now (remember Vista).

No one really knows what’s going to happen with Windows 8. But to be honest, I care about what’ll happen with Windows 7 as of right now. Microsoft should really focus more on improving Windows 7 than planning the release of Windows 8; the still have about 3 years until Windows 8 is released. I would love to see on what Windows 7 will offer us in the future.

Your comments are always welcome below.

Source: Ars Technica

For example:

• A new look to the forums
• A new downloads center
• A status updater
• A feature will it’ll show you all the tags used
• Ads that’ll be used to pay for hosting and maybe some more things to make Tech Cores better. Don’t worry, all the money will be towards this site!
• A calendar icon in every blog post. This is so much better than the text we used to have!
• A social media plugin to post our content to all of your favorite sites!
• A newsletter – yes, we will start sending you things very soon!
• A new background. The old one was about 320KB and was horrible for dial-up users. We created a new background, and made that size go all the way to 20KB!
• Tech Cores is a lot faster with the automatic scripts it runs to keep it good as new!
• Now none of you will notice this, but every night at 12AM (GMT -5), Tech Cores creates a backup of its database to insure no data loss!
• There’s much more back-end stuff, but there’s some of it!

We hope all of you have a great experience with Tech Cores and keep the suggestions coming! We’re always looking for people to help out with blogging and posting in our community! :)

Tech Cores is now connected to Taylor Jasko’s Twitter account.

This blog post is being automatically posted to Twitter also! This makes it easy for you to get all of your updates in one simple fasion!

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