We just got a look at one new mechanical keyboard designed for Macs at CES last week (Matias’ Tactile One), and now we have word of another option for those who take their typing seriously. Das Keyboard confirmed today that a Mac version of its Model S Professional keyboard will be available on April 15th, and that you can pre-order it now for 3 (a 15% discount off its list price). It brings with it the same gold-plated mechanical key switches found on the existing Model S, but with the additional of all the keys you’d expect on a Mac-specific keyboard — plus some other bonuses like a two-port USB hub and an instant sleep function. Unfortunately, Mac users looking to go truly minimalist with an Ultimate edition will either have to wait and hope that one’s coming or break out some black paint.

Continue reading Das Keyboard Model S mechanical keyboard heads to the Mac this April

Das Keyboard Model S mechanical keyboard heads to the Mac this April originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Jan 2012 05:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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[Thanks, Stephen]

Windows XP users will finally need to upgrade to enter the iCloud originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 10 Jun 2011 16:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The news is mostly good:

• Steam and all games will run natively, in OpenGL
• If you bought it for PC and it’s available for Mac, you already own a Mac version
• It will be Leopard-compatible (which is good, because I’m still on 10.5.8… why, I ask myself?)
• Macs and PCs can play with each other, no problem my friend
• Coming “soon”

For a full list, including a couple chipsets that will not work, head over to the Steam forums.

[via MacRumors]

Just a handy reminder to all you PC gamers out there that Valve has fully released the new Steam Client UI update.

If you didn’t already grab it, or don’t have Steam (what?!), then mosey on over here and make with the downloading. No word on the Mac version, though. Can’t be much longer now!

This was found on Battle.net forums.

Q. Mac beta please! Any information?

A. We are currently working on a Mac version of the beta and hope to release it sometime in April. Hang in there!!

Of course we still don’t have a concert release date yet but at least Mac gamers can rest easy knowing that the game of long-anticipated sequel will work on their system without any dual-booting nonsense.

Razer specifically mentioned the upcoming line of StarCraft II peripherals, which makes sense in light of the fact that Blizzard has always released a Mac version of their games at the same time as their PC versions. From the press release:

RAZER™ REAFFIRMS COMMITMENT TO SUPPORT MAC® USERS

Game Developers Conference, San Francisco, Calif. – March 10, 2010 – Today at the Game Developers Conference, Razer, the world’s leading manufacturer of high-end precision gaming and lifestyle peripherals, announced an effort to increase support for Mac users by issuing driver support for all upcoming Razer products, including the Razer StarCraft® II peripheral suite.

“I’m very proud to say that at Razer, we are committed to supporting both Mac and PC gamers,” said Robert “Razerguy” Krakoff, president, Razer USA. “We are constantly working to increase driver support for Mac with our existing Razer products and have plans to release all of our new products with dedicated Mac and PC drivers. This is a really exciting opportunity to expand the gaming industry and make it more inclusive for Mac users by providing the same level of support that we give to our PC users.”

In April of 2008, the Razer DeathAdder™ for Mac was revealed, crafted specifically to provide Max OS X users with the same legendary ergonomic form factor and precision enjoyed by the PC gaming community. Complete with lunar white accents to accentuate the crisp, clean lines customary to Apple® products, the Razer DeathAdder for Mac is loaded with 1000Hz Ultrapolling™ technology and five independently programmable Razer Hyperesponse™ buttons.

Today, Razer is proud to offer several options for the Mac gaming community, providing full Mac support for the Razer Naga™, the world’s best selling MMO gaming mouse, as well as the Razer DeathAdder, a cult favorite among the right-handed gaming community. Razer is completely committed to supporting Mac users and will be releasing drivers to equip existing products with Mac compatibility. Basic Mac support is already available for the Razer Orochi™, Razer Mamba™ and Razer Imperator™, with further updates scheduled for later this year.

Valve’s Steam is a popular online store for games. Customers browse the catalog of popular PC games—which includes recent hits like Modern Warfare 2 to DOS classics like Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis—through a browser or the Steam desktop client. Games are playable once paid for with a credit card or PayPal, and after the desktop client has downloaded the content. No need to keep a game disc in your optical drive, no need to jump through copy-protection hoops.

Throughout it’s entire existence, Steam has been Windows-exclusive. Linux enthusiasts have gotten some of the games to work on their favorite build, and of course Mac users get BootCamp to run Windows on their computers. But Valve’s lucrative gaming ecosystem has been officially a Windows PC project.

Bringing Steam to Mac OS X involves certain obstacles, from a development point of view. Most of the games available on the catalog don’t have a Mac version, especially older games that originally ran on DOS. But since Apple’s PCs use the same hardware as Windows PCs, I don’t think Valve will have too much trouble, especially if Apple has started taking Valve seriously. A good number of games already have Mac counterparts/work on a Mac anyway.

So is Steam Coming to the Mac? Right now, your guess is as good as mine. But I’ve never known Valve to blatantly mislead its customers, so I’m leaning on “yes”. Only time will tell though, so stay tuned for updates.

Post from: The Gadget Blog

The Price:

1TB for $270, 2TB for $370 and 4TB for $700

The Verdict:

It does a lot, and it does it pretty well, for not a lot of cash.

Here’s a list of the exciting bits on the Ix2-200′s feature list:

• Automated backup and restore: Full Time Machine support for Macs as well as Retrospect, a different backup scheme, for PCs and Macs.
• Automated copy jobs, which can automatically and incrementally copy (either with Windows file sharing or rsync) files off of network shares and dump it onto its own storage, or the other way around. Perfect for backing up other network shares for double data security
• RAID1
• DLNA, iTunes Servers
• Quiet running
• SMB features like email notifications, event logs, iSCSI, automated video surveillance (provided you have a compatible camera) and USB printer support
• A load of networking support, like Apple File Sharing, Bluetooth, FTP, NFS, Rsync, SNMP and standard Windows File Sharing (CIFS)
• Torrent downloading
• Remote access

Instead of building a Windows Home Server, like so many others have done, Iomega decided to build their own system from their own technology, and came out pretty feature-rich because of it.

The setup process is slightly finicky—you install the Iomega Solutions CD and wait while it searches your network for the server. This can actually take a few hours (we thought the Mac version was malfunctioning until it completed its setup and discovery process), but once you’re up, you’re up.

You control the server with a web interface, which works with a local app to provide integration into your file system. It’s pretty simple to use, and there aren’t too many tabs or options to confuse users with.

Backup and file storage

Time Machine works as well as if you were just shoving in a USB hard drive, and there’s little difference compared to running your backups over the network as if it were a Time Capsule. Iomega tells us that they’ve learned from HP’s first Windows Home Servers, the ones who weren’t able to run a complete Time Machine restore in the event of a total drive failure, so Mac users shouldn’t need to worry.

Retrospect, another backup software, can also configure backup plans on a schedule and automatically execute them without any input from you. Just choose which drives and folders you want to back up—it even backs up your network folders—and pick your schedule. If you don’t have a Windows Home Server on your network to handle your Windows backups, this is a pretty good substitute. And of course you can use Retrospect to restore your backups to your machine, in case of data failure.

Automated copy jobs is another feature that’s especially sweet for me, since I have a lot of network storage and I always worry about what would happen if one fails. This way, the Ix2-200 can maintain up-to-date copies of whatever’s sitting on other network drives, and act as the schoolmarm for all your data.

Networking and other features

Some of the other features are pretty much evaluated on a yes/no basis in terms of whether or not they work. The fan is very quiet even when transferring a mass load of files—although the hard drive is not, so that’s kind of moot—but is virtually silent otherwise. RAID1 works, and comes set up by default. The DLNA and iTunes streaming works in their respective clients, and Xbox 360/PS3 has no problem streaming files off of the server.

BitTorrent download works, but the server gets confused if you give it a URL to download a .torrent file from, so to play it safe you should just go ahead and download the .torrent yourself and feed that instead. Download speeds are decent, and you can configure what the maximum upload/download speeds are so as to not saturate your internet connection. You should also change your default port as well, since ISPS throttle that 6881 port hard.

All the networking stuff works as expected, as do the email notifications and event logs. The rest of the higher end stuff, like video surveillance integration and iSCSI we didn’t test, so we can’t say if there are any issues with them or not. It’s more than likely that they do work, but we don’t know if there are any quirks you should watch out for.

It’s a pretty good deal

Iomega’s aiming this at both the prosumer and the SMB market, which means that for most people, it’s going to have a lot of features that they don’t need. But that doesn’t matter! The Ix2-200 is so packed with stuff that it should satisfy the needs of just about any user who’s hurting for a network storage solution. And at a starting price of only $270 for the 1TB version, it’s a cheaper alternative than Windows Home Servers, and can do just about all the same things. Plus with its user-replaceable drives and three USB ports, you can easily upgrade the storage yourself and expand your storage after the fact. [Iomega]

Great backup options including Time Machine and Retrospect


Small, quiet and fast


Feature loaded


Fairly cheap for what you get


Setup process isn’t as easy as it could be

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The DoubleTwist video view.

Certainly, DoubleTwist is a useful solution for a lot of people, especially since it incorporates automatic video transcoding for a lot of the supported devices, which is the feature that drew me to the software. However, the program is not without its pitfalls, and some of them are sure to cause no small amount of frustration. For example, the video transcoding–done during the syncing process–takes forever. Conversion speed was roughly two times normal speed, so a 90-minute movie took 50 minutes or so to encode and transfer. Still, considering DoubleTwist offers this feature for free and integrates it so simply, I’m willing to forgive the sluggishness.

Much more annoying is how slow the video library loads in thumbnail mode, and while it is loading, you can’t actually browse the selections.

…

Originally posted at The Download Blog

Amazon has just made their new Kindle for PC available for pre-order online, a move that turns almost any PC in the entire world into a fully-fledged ereader. The software comes on the heels of all of the big Win7 announcements today evens up the playing fields when it comes to PC-based ereaders.

Amazon has long had the Kindle but Barnes & Noble launched a PC ereader long before Amazon, putting them at a disadvantage. B&N also has versions of their reader for OS X, BlackBerry smartphones, and the iPhone/Touch.

Kindle for PC Demo on Windows 7

The actual Amazon PC version isn’t quite available – it’s still coming soon – but it’s currently floating around in Beta. Unfortunately there is no planned Mac version either, something that B&N already has. Interestingly, Michael noted the value of “opening up” the Kindle service to multiple devices back in August 2008 and it seems that they’re clearly seeing ways into new markets untouched by the current ereader craze.

The B&N’s PC/Mac/iPhone e-reader is here.

I also have this song in my head: