OS X Mountain Lion - the most successful yet

Apple has been reported as selling over three million copies of Mountain Lion, its new version of OS X in the first four days of its launch. It is the most successful version yet. It is also the cheapest. In fact, as the price has fallen, so the numbers of people buying it has risen. I'm sure there is a correlation there.

Of course, making something cheap doesn't guarantee success and Linux is free, yet few people use it. There is obviously something wrong if you can't even give away something.

Mountain Lion is actually very good as well as being cheap and for me, it is the best version yet. Other upgrades have been more like tweaks here and there, but this has more features that I actually find useful. Things like the Notification Center, the Reminders and Notes apps, the better Calendar, iCloud. They are all useful features, particularly if you have an iPhone or iPad.

Windows 8 will apparently be cheap too, but probably not the sub £14 price of Mountain Lion. If you have a Mac with 4Gb or more of memory, I would recommend it.

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Should the Google Nexus 7 camera be on the back?

In order to keep the price of the Google Nexus 7 tablet as low as possible, it was decided to have only one camera. A front facing camera, in other words, one that faces you. Is this the best option though? If you were designing a tablet and could only have one camera, would you put it on the front or the back?

One way to look at this is to consider how many apps would use the camera on the front and how many would use it on the back.

A front camera just points directly at your face and so the only applications that can be used are a photo-booth type app that takes head-and-shoulders snapshots, perhaps with special fun effects to make you look fat, thin, old, bald or whatever, and video calls. Is there anything else a front camera is used for? I can't think of anything.

A rear camera though has lots of uses. It cam be used as a digital camera, for example. Although 10in tablets are a bit bulky to carry around, they are still useful as cameras, and 7in tablets are quite portable. Even if your tablet never leaves the home there are still lots of photo opportunities, such as parties, visiting relatives, your pets doing funny things, and so on. A rear camera opens up opportunities for a lot of other apps like photo editing tools, apps that turn photos into slide shows or video clips, apps that upload photos to sharing sites like Instagram. What's the point of Instagram if you can only take photos of your face?

You can also do things like create eBay listings. You can enter the description, take the photo and do everything you need on the tablet. Without a rear camera you have to fiddle around with another one, upload the image, download it to the tablet and so on. It's not as good.

A rear camera is not just for taking photos and barcode readers and QR codes can be used too. You could take video clips too.

Given a choice, I think I would rather have the camera on the rear and not the front. I can live without video calls or at a pinch, I could turn the tablet around to face the camera. You wouldn't be able to see the person on the screen, but they would see you. Or you could stand in front of a mirror. The rear-facing camera would show you in the mirror.

You can use a Google Nexus 7 or similar tablet as a camera, but it is awkward. You have to point it away from you and you can't see the screen, which means you don't know if the shot is framed properly. The button to take the photo is on the screen too, so you have to reach round to press it, which is a bit awkward too. I does work though and the shots, although only 1.2 megapixels, are OK.

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BitDefender 2013 here already

It is only July 2012, yet BitDefender has already released its 2013 product line. I remember when we used to get next year's products in September or October, then it became August/September and now it's July/August. Where will it end? I like having dates in product names so you can tell how old something is, but when the date in the name doesn't match the date it was released it is just plain silly.

Never mind the name, I like BitDefender products because they have lots of features, configuration options and information displays, yet they are cheap too. They are consistently cheaper than rivals, yet they perform just as well.

Whenever you buy a security product you get one year's worth of updates - program updates, virus definition updates and so on. I always recommend buying new software rather than renewing the license on old software. You get the latest technology and this is needed to combat the latest threats. You also get new features too. The discounts that are often available on new security software means that it doesn't cost any more to buy brand new software than it does to renew the license.

New in BitDefender AntiVirus Plus and Internet Security is a USB immuniser. This immunises a flash memory drive from viruses when it is plugged in so you can't be infected or pass on infections to others that use it. SafePay is a new feature that increases the security when using online banking by opening pages in a separate secure browser. There's a new security widget that shows security related tasks and you can drop files on it on the desktop to scan them for viruses. (How would you get a file on to the computer without it being tested by anti viruses software?) There is an improved dashboard and parental controls.

Total Security has all this, plus Device Anti-Theft. I've not tried it yet, but it sounds like an idea borrowed from mobile phones and you can remotely lock, erase and locate a laptop over the internet. This is a useful security feature for laptop users and if it is stolen you just go on the internet using another computer or device and choose what you want to do with it. As soon as the thief connects to the internet the laptop is locked, wiped or located.


If you've not updated your security software for a while, it's worth taking a look at these from BitDefender.

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The Archos Smart Home Phone

The Archos Smart Home Phone is an interesting idea. It is an Android phone that looks, feels and works like a mobile phone, but it is a home phone. In other words, instead of working with a mobile phone service, it works with your land line instead. You get all the benefits of a mobile phone, but without the monthly contract. Of course, there are charges for a land line, but most people have a land line anyway, so switching from a normal phone to the Archos Smart Home Phone involves no extra cost.

It is basically a mobile phone and it has 8Gb of memory, runs Android 2.2, a 1GHz processor and... well, it's just like any other budget Android phone so it's hardly worth listing the features here. The difference is that it has a base unit that plugs into your phone line. The phone uses the DECT standard (Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunication) and you can put the base unity anywhere in your home.

Is this a revolutionary new device that we will all want in our homes? It is certainly a fascinating idea and it looks very tempting. The land line phone I have now is positively stone age compared to this. It's a brilliant idea and I'd love one, but does it have a future?

Surely it would be very easy to incorporate the technology into a standard mobile phone. Then you would have a device that works as a land line at home and a mobile when you leave and go out. All Android phones have Wi-Fi, so all it needs is a Wi-Fi base unit that plugs into a standard phone socket. Is this possible? Alternatively, DECT could be built into the mobile phone. Mobile phone companies are always looking for new features to make their products stand out from the crowd. How about it?

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Malware on the iPhone

The unthinkable has happened - malware on the iPhone. An app called Find and Call in the App Store accesses your contacts stored on the phone and uploads them to a server on the internet. The contacts are then spammed with junk messages To be fair, this app is also in the Android store too, but it is more surprising to see it in Apple's store because of the strict rules and vetting procedure that you have to go through to get listed.

The app has now been removed from the stores, but it was available for a while and it's not clear how many people downloaded and installed it. Initially, it appeared to be a worm transmitted by SMS from phone to phone, but further investigation revealed it to be a rogue app. If all your contacts start receiving SMS messages supposedly from you, it may be because if this malware.

The SMS message your contacts receive contains a link to download the app and this is how it is spread. Apart from spamming your contacts, Find and Call doesn't do much else, although links on the app's website  prompt you to use PayPal to add money to your account, whatever that means. It sounds a bit dodgy.


Don't assume you are safe just because you use an iOS device. This shows that rogue software can get into Apple's App Store. Fortunately, malware in the Apple store is a lot rarer than in the Android store, so you are safer using iOS, but not 100% safe.

Kaspersky has the details here.

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Upgrade your RAM for Mountain Lion

In a few weeks Apple will release Mountain Lion, the latest version of OS X and it will be so cheap that there is no reason not to upgrade to it. In fact, there is only one reason not to download it and install it from the Mac App Store and this is if your Mac's hardware is not supported. Can your Mac run Mountain Lion?

According to Apple, these are the minimum hardware requirements:

• iMac (Mid 2007 or newer)
• MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminium, or Early 2009 or newer)
• MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer)
• MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer)
• Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer)
• Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer)

No Mac Minis older than 2009, no MacBooks older than late 2008 - almost 2009 - and only the iMac is supported beyond this and then only to mid 2007.

Are old Macs not supported because they aren't powerful enough? Is Mountain Lion so demanding that it would run too slowly? I'm not sure that processing power is the problem. Perhaps, but I think a bigger problem is the memory.

All computers are designed with a limit to the amount of memory they can accept and with old Macs this could be as little as 2Gb. I'm typing this on a 2006 MacBook that has 2Gb of memory and that's the limit. According to Apple it won't accept any more. It is running Lion just fine and I have Chrome running with five tabs open, Text Wranger open, and Activity Monitor. According to Activity Monitor 1.32Gb of memory is in use and 692Mb is free.

Mountain Lion uses lots of memory and although Apple says the minimum spec for running it is 2Gb of RAM, it takes about 1.5Gb just to boot up to the desktop. Open a couple of apps and the memory usage is over 2Gb on my new MacBook with 4Gb of RAM. During normal use I often seen memory usage creeping up to 3Gb and I'm wondering if 4Gb is enough and whether I need to upgrade.

My advice to anyone wanting to upgrade to Mountain Lion is to make sure you have at least 4Gb of RAM and if you can, upgrade it to 6 or even 8Gb. When you've got all the cool new stuff running in Mountain Lion, it's going to need it.

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