Apple has posted a few software and firmware updates, which address issues with airport not able to turn off or on, and drive noise with optical drives. The updates should be available through Software Update, so be sure to check there.… Read more
Once set up, the parental controls and permissions restrictions for an account in OS X should be fairly secure for a booted and running system. Despite this, a number of parents are running into problems where their kids are cleverly getting around the parental restrictions. Here are the ways they are doing this, and how to best combat them.… Read more
Updatable firmware is a mixed blessing. On one hand, it can help keep your hardware from obsolescing as new accessories ship; fix bugs; and expand feature sets on older models. But it's also beginning to feel like camera manufacturers have jumped on the (annoying) ship now/patch later software bandwagon.
More and more, companies seem to announce firmware updates within weeks of a camera's widespread availability: the Canon EOS 7D, Pentax K-7, Olympus E-P1 are all among the cameras that had firmware updates available within the first few months after shipping. The latest to add to that list … Read more
Just in time for the holidays and facing heavy competition from Barnes & Noble's upcoming Nook e-book reader, Amazon has announced that it has improved the Kindle's battery life when the wireless connection is turned on and will now be offering native PDF support for its e-book reader. Both the battery-life boost and native PDF support will be available to owners of new Kindles and some older models via a firmware upgrade.
In a press release, Amazon says the Kindle now has battery life of up to seven days with wireless turned on compared with four days previously. … Read more
We've already had some time with the new Xbox Live Dashboard update, and now the new firmware, which will bring Facebook, Twitter, and Last.fm to the console, is available for download today.
In addition to these services, Microsoft will be rolling out Zune Video, which promises instant-on 1080p video streaming as well as 5.1 surround sound.
We should note that Twitter, Last.fm, and Facebook will require an Xbox Live Gold membership ($50/year) and both Twitter and Facebook services require all users to be at least 18 years of age.
If you aren't a member … Read more
Canon has released new firmware for its EOS 7D camera that it says fixes a ghost-image problem in which faint traces of one image could show in the next.
Version 1.1.0 of the camera firmware "corrects a phenomenon that in images captured by continuous shooting, and under certain conditions, barely noticeable traces of the immediately preceding frame may be visible," Canon said of the update.
The ghost-image problem showed only in some circumstances when the camera was used in continuous-shooting mode and was more apparent when software was used to enhance the image.
A few users have described a problem with their Macs where upon loading the boot screen with the grey Apple, instead of showing the revolving indicator below the Apple logo the system will show a grey progress bar. In some cases the system will boot normally once the progress bar completes, but in others the system will turn off about half-way through the progress bar.… Read more
When Apple releases a firmware update, the updater will download to the Utilities folder and run from that location. It will then automatically launch, apply the update, and restart your system. After the update is complete, the system will give you a notification that the update has been successfully installed and that should be the end of it. However, while this is what is the normal behavior, some people have mentioned this final notification keeps popping up at every system reboot.… Read more
Canon has warned that traces of one photograph taken with the company's new higher-end EOS 7D SLR can sometimes be seen in the next.
The good news: new software for the camera should be able to fix the problem at some point. "Canon is currently investigating and analyzing the cause of this phenomenon, and we are planning to release a firmware update to address this issue," the company said in a a service notice.
The problem occurs only when shooting continuously, Canon said: "In images captured by continuous shooting, and under certain conditions, barely noticeable traces … Read more
When I reviewed the Toshiba SV670U series nearly two months ago, the review was based on the second of two review samples. Let's call them T1 and T2.
Why the need for a second sample? T1 suffered from a pretty glaring problem in my opinion. In certain scenes, parts of the local dimming LED backlight would flash intermittently and at random. Here's how I put it in my original draft of the review:
The Toshiba had a propensity to interrupt dark areas with brief flashes of brightness that were confined to small zones on the screen. The instance we noticed first was during the demonstration sequence from "Digital Video Essentials: HD Basics" (around the 2:50 mark).
When the computer-generated plants fade in from black, flashes appeared in the lower left and upper left of the black background as the overall brightness of the scene increased. When watching "Austin Stevens, Snakemaster" on Discovery HD Theater, we saw brighter flashes, akin to blooming, in the darkness around Austin's head as he leaned toward the light in a cave.
During "Watchmen" the flashes also appeared occasionally and for no reason we could discern. In the initial fight, for example, the lower-left corner flashed briefly just as the Comedian's blood drips down onto the smiley-face pin. A zoom in to President Nixon created another flash in the lower right. Our guess is that LED elements were lighting when they're not supposed to.
When we talked to Toshiba about what we saw, the company insisted on sending T2, which didn't suffer from the flashing issue. We mentioned the problem with T1 in the review, telling readers we'd update the situation when we knew more.
Now we do.… Read more
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