Microsoft served up its latest Surface Pro on Tuesday, sidestepping the tablet wars by going straight for the throat of MacBook Air owners. But the move couldn’t come at a worse time, as The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that China has now banned Windows 8 from new government computers, effectively slamming the door on any potential big contract shipments there. But hey, they still have plenty of consumers to sell them to…right?
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Sequels Now Raging War on Mac
Aspyr Media announced Tuesday the Mac release of Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, with full versions of both games — including all available DLC packs — now available for download from Steam, GameAgent.com and other online game retailers. Featuring cinematic, action-packed single-player campaigns and cross-platform competitive multiplayer and cooperative online play, the second and third chapters in the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare saga join the fourth release, which has been available on the Mac since 2011. Mac gamers are encouraged to first visit GameAgent.com to confirm if their hardware is up to snuff before buying.
OS X 10.9.3 Increases VRAM in Recent MacBook Models
MacRumors reported Tuesday that owners of recent MacBook Pro with Retina Display and MacBook Air models are seeing an increase in the maximum VRAM used by the built-in Intel HD 5000, 5100, and 5200 graphics chips after updating to OS X Mavericks 10.9.3. A similar boost has also been spotted on 2012 models with Intel HD 4000 graphics chips as well, which appears to be the result of enhanced 4K display support added to the most recent OS X update. Intel HD graphics use shared memory, and now consume upwards of 1536MB on recent 2013-2014 MacBook models, while earlier systems appear to have been increased from 768MB to 1024MB, despite no official confirmation on the change from Apple.
Ember for Mac, iOS Adds Dropbox Sync
Realmac Software announced Tuesday the release of new updates to Ember for Mac and Ember for iOS which add what the company calls “the biggest feature request” ever: Dropbox support. Ember users now have a choice of keeping their library local or storing it in the cloud via iCloud or Dropbox. While those options are all or nothing, Realmac does offer a support document explaining how to move a library from one location to another, which is as simple as performing a backup, switching to the new location, and restoring.
Google+ Stories Turns Photos, Videos into Digital Albums
The Google Official Blog announced Tuesday the debut of Google+ Stories, which can “automatically weave your photos, videos and the places you visited into a beautiful travelogue.” Available now via web and Android with an updated iOS app “coming soon,” Google+ Stories requires users to back up their photos and videos to Google+, but that’s the only hard part, since the search giant’s Auto Awesome tool will get to work in the background and notify users when a new story or movie is available for viewing.
LifeLock Removes Wallet Apps Over Security Issue
LifeLock is a company known for providing maximum identity protection for its users, which is why it’s a little disconcerting to hear the service recently withdrew its LifeLock Wallet app from the App Store, Google Play, and Amazon Appstore. Citing “certain aspects of the mobile app [which] may not be fully compliant with payment card industry (PCI) security standards,” LifeLock has purged all mobile app data from its servers, but plans to return with a new app that meets the above criteria in the near future. The company claims the move does not affect current LifeLock subscription customers.
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