Amazon stealthily releases Kindle app for Mac
Filed under: Software No press release , no big fanfare, but reader Chris sent in the news earlier tonight: Amazon’s long-awaited Kindle application for Mac is ready for download. The 22 MB free application works on Intel Macs running Mac OS X 10.5 and above, and reports a version number of 1.0.0 beta 1. The app has been anticipated since last October, back when the iPad was still a rumor. [ Update : The press release was a couple of hours behind the software release, but 9to5 spotted it; it notes that full-text search and annotation features will be coming soon.] The app allows you to download Kindle books you already own, and read them at leisure on your Mac; synchronization of your progress through the book is automatic, and will keep track with your Kindle or iPhone reading. It displays your bookmarks and highlights from your Kindle reading sessions, but doesn’t let you create new highlights. You can adjust font size and line length to suit your visual acuity; turning pages is accomplished by using the scroll wheel on your mouse, or with the arrow keys. It’s definitely no-frills, but it’s good to see that the Mac app for Kindle reading is finally seeing the light of day, although it’s too bad PowerPC and Tiger users are left out of the fun
iLife ’09 drops full PowerPC Mac support (Macworld UK)
Tests have revealed that Apple’s recently released iLife ’09 suite of applications is not fully compatible with older PowerPC based Macs. GarageBand ’09 , designed to help you learn and play piano and guitar, new ‘Artist Lessons’ only works on Intel based Macs reports Ars Technica, a computer enthusiast’s resource.
Marshal8e6 Continues Commitment to Education Market With Launch of Authenticator for Apple Single Sign-on Capability (Centre Daily Times)
Marshal8e6 , the leader in Web and email security for the K-12 market, today announced Authenticator for Apple – a new software application that works in conjunction with the 8e6 R3000 Internet Filter. Authenticator for Apple allows Apple workstations and laptop users connected to the 8e6 R3000 Internet Filter easy one-step authentication previously only available to Microsoft Windows users. …
Google Chrome for Mac is a Hack
Those who simply cannot wait for Google to release the official version of Chrome for Mac have the option now of checking out CodeWeavers’ free Chromium download, a proof of concept project to get Windows executables to be run as-if-natively on Intel-based Unix operating systems such as Linux and Mac OS X. Sound like fun? Those interested in previewing the Chromish experience on the Mac should understand, first, that it only works on Intel CPU architecture – no PowerPC – and has no auto-updater, so if you’re a security skeptic, forewarned is forearmed. Chromium is built from the open source Chrome code base, however and CodeWeavers helpfully provide a tarball for the source code for those who like to get under a browser’s hood, but, there are still some fairly significant reasons to think hard about whether Google’s browser is for you, even if the official Mac version was on offer. As presently built, Chrome’s “porn mode” – a feature that allows one to browse the Internet without passing identifying information to visited web pages – is not supported on sites such as Facebook, nor is Chrome capable of being used to collaborate via Google’s own Google Docs application, as an article Sunday at TechCrunch points out.
