Get your mice clicking ladies and gentlemen, as Parallels has offered up the final test version of Parallels Desktop for Mac, their virtualization software that allows you to run almost any OS right within Mac OS X. With this version, however, Parallels has increased the a 's final price to $79.99, as they have incorporated their Compre or Server tool (due to user feedback) into the software package for streamlining and optimizing your virtual machines and the amount of disk ace they occupy. The beta testing pre-order price of $39.99 is still in place, and probably more a etizing than ever. Other new features and improvements in the Release Candidate 2 include:
- Significantly improved performance
- Improved U performance and broader device su ort
- Improved Host-guest networking
- Automatic network adapters now switch on-the-fly
- Guest OS no longer steals host IP addre in some DHCP servers
- Fullscreen mode is now customizable
- Integration with Virtue is now bug-free
- Customizable Ctrl + Click ma ing
- Guest 32bit color is su orted when Parallels Tools is i talled
- Improved Shared folders performance
- Resolved shared folders/MS Office incompatibility i ues
- Windows 98 no longer co umes 99% host CPU even when idle (in VT-x mode)
Fix one problem, and another comes up. Everyone was a big fan of how A le's .Mac webmail used to sometimes attach a text document when you simply replied to someone. I mean, I know I was utterly overjoyed to go back, copy and paste, remove the attachment, and reply. Wow, that was really easy, wa 't it? Yeah. Well now A le has fixed that with their shiny new "Web 2.0"-ish email. Unfortunately, there's a new problem. When I reply to certain emails (usually Reply All in a list), the addre is often filled out with the person's name, followed by their email addre . This makes se e, as pretty much every email system in the world does this. But A le, ever the i ovator, has made this "break" your email. Trying to send will result in an error, claiming quoted contents aren't valid email addre es. Golly A le, thanks for saving me from my own stupidity! Now I get to manually edit the addre es just to make sure they are correct. Another time waster. Don't get me started on how it's taken our favorite fruit half a decade just to build an almost-usable email client a lication (certainly won't be busine -cla anytime this decade). I mean, waiting until 2007 just to have a proper email client? Super. Anyone else not really digging A le's lame attempts to manage email?
Credit Sui e thinks that A le can expand their iPod busine by 20% a quarter for the foreseeable future. Sure, there are those who think that the iPod craze is cooling off but Credit Sui e brings the numbers to back up their 'out perform' rating for A le stock. It seems that only about 10% of PC users have an iPod, and the people that do own an iPod are replacing them sooner (every 1.5 years as o osed to 2 years previously). They also point to the fact that A le really ha 't been concentrating on the European market, so there are lots of potential customers out there.
The Get Info window works in a few similar but at times mysterious ways, and Rob Griffiths has put together an article that outlines each of its three iteratio in Mac OS X 10.4 (Panther has two). While this might be rudimentary to some of you hard-core Mac OS X users out there, this is a handy feature walk-through of each slightly different version - Get Info, Super Get Info and Summary Info - for those who haven't covered this ground yet. Check it out.
Poor Sony, they just can't seem to win lately. At least they have apologized for those batteries that had a tendency to make lapto burst into flames, and that has to count for something right?
Adobe has posted version 9.0.28.0 of its ubiquitous Flash Player browser plugin. The update includes many fixes and improvements, including Windows Vista su ort (hey - Adobe even beat the Zune to that!), su ort for full screen mode in web players and a security update addre ing the HTTP Header Injection Vulnerabilities, as described Security Bulletin A 06-18.
An astute Daring Fireball reader discovered A le's Workgroup Manager icon on Microsoft's Vista Busine Edition "buy now" page. The icon has since been hastily replaced since John Gruber posted about it. He gra ed a screen cap of the original, thankfully, and I can confirm that I saw it for myself this morning.