Autodesk AutoCAD, the industry standard design and engineering software, is coming back to Mac. The last AutoCAD release on the Mac was in 1992. And after 13 releases on non-Mac platform since then, AutoCAD is finally back to Mac in October. Pricing will remain the same as the Windows version. Autodesk will also release a free AutoCAD WS viewer app for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.
βApple is thrilled that Autodesk is bringing AutoCAD back to the Mac and we think it’s the perfect combination for millions of design and engineering professionals,β said Apple senior vice-president of Worldwide Product Marketing Philip Schiller in a news release.
We manage our printers and print jobs using Mac’s System Preferences->Print & Fax. Beneath the hood, Mac OS X is using a powerful printing system called CUPS. Turns out that CUPS has a web interface for you to manage and administer printers and jobs on your Mac.
CUPS (some say stands for Common Unix Printing System) is by Michael Sweet and debuted in 1999. It is a free software under GNU General Public License and is also the default print engine for several Linux distributions such as Red Hat. Apple adopted CUPS since Mac OS X 10.2 in March 2002. In February 2007, Apple hired Michael Sweet and purchased the CUPS source code.
With repeated charging and draining, the battery in your MacBook or MacBook Pro will lose its capability and eventually die. If you are using Apple notebook computer as desktop replacement, you might be tempted to take out the battery and run your MacBook or MacBook Pro using just the AC power. This will save you some money from buying a new replacement battery soon, but Apple has a build-in ‘feature’ in its MacBook and MacBook Pro: Mac reduces processor speed when battery is removed while operating from an A/C adaptor.
If the battery is removed from a MacBook or MacBook Pro, the computer will automatically reduce the processor speed. This prevents the computer from shutting down if it demands more power than the A/C adaptor alone can provide.
At 35%, Mac shipment growth in June easily exceeded the market’s growth rate of 20.9%. Mac shipments grew 31.4% in the home market, topping the market’s growth rate of 25.2%. At 49.8%, the Mac’s growth in business was three times higher than the market’s 15.7%. Mac shipments in government grew 200%, sixteen times faster than the market’s 12.1%.
Microsoft has a series of video showcasing Office for Mac 2011. Follow their blog at OfficeForMac.com for more demos until the official release of Office for Mac 2011 in October.
VMWare has released Fusion 3.1 which is a minor release that is long sought after. VMWare Fusion 3.0 touted its support for OpenGL graphics when it was launched last year but the performance is underwhelmed. Fusion 3.1 promised to redeem itself with up to 35% improvement in application performance compare with 3.0 release, and up to 5X better 3D graphics performance.
Valve has released one of the biggest PC classic first-shooter game Half-Life 2 on the Mac on its Steam gaming platform. It is now at a launch offer of US$6.99.
To celebrate the launch of Half-Life 2 on Mac, Valve has a commercial.
If you find the Half-Life 2 for Mac commercial familiar, check out this:
Google today released stable version of its Mac & Linux version of Chrome, making them on par with its Windows release. The release also comes with new feature: syncing of browser setting and preferences on top of bookmarks; extension in incognito mode; html5 support such as Geolocation APIs, App Cache, web socket, file drag-and-drop. The bookmark manager is also having a facelift.
Today, Iβm happy to announce that Google Chrome for Mac is being promoted out of beta to our stable channel. We believe that it provides not only the stability, performance and polish that every Mac user expects, but also a seamless native Mac application experience that Mac users will feel instantly at home with.
Flash is not included by default in this release but Google “weβre excited to enable this feature with the full release of Flash Player (version 10.1) soon”.
