Mihăiță Bamburic

On Thursday, Apple rolled out an update for OS X Mountain Lion. The latest iteration, which sports the 10.8.3 version number, delivers a significant number of improvements and bug fixes, among which is support for Windows 8 in Boot Camp as the main highlight.

OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.3 now comes with Safari 6.0.3, which touts improved scrolling while zoomed in and for Facebook, better performance on websites with plug-in content as well as bug fixes. Users can now redeem iTunes gift cards from the Mac App Store using the built-in camera and use Boot Camp on Mac devices with a 3TB hard-drive onboard.

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On Thursday, Canadian smartphone maker BlackBerry announced plans to secure Android and iOS devices with Secure Work Space for BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10. The company cites evolving needs and "ever-growing variety of devices" that are used within the work space as the main reason for stepping up to fortify the security of the two mobile operating systems.

BlackBerry targets both smartphones and tablets running Android and iOS through data-at-rest and data-in-transit security capabilities. The company says that administrators will be able to create a "separate and secure work space" which contains corporate apps, calendar, contacts, web email and other features, and configure, interact, secure and wipe the new compatible devices.

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There are plenty of benefits of living in the cloud, but some major downsides too. Nearly five months ago an Amazon Cloud outage took down BetaNews' group chat service, alongside Heroku, Flipboard, Foursquare and Reddit among others. And, two days ago, Microsoft users went through a similar ordeal which mostly affected Hotmail, Outlook.com and SkyDrive -- three of Microsoft's more essential cloud services.

Microsoft's vice president, Arthur de Haan, has chimed in on the matter in a blog post which links the outage to the upgrade process from Hotmail to the new out-of-beta email service Outlook.com. Since 13:35 PM PDT on March 12 until 5:43 AM PDT on March 13, de Haan says that "a small part of the SkyDrive service, but primarily Hotmail.com and Outlook.com" suffered from a service interruption caused by a firmware update which failed "in an unexpected way".

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Two days ago, US carrier AT&T introduced the BlackBerry Z10 into its portfolio, allowing users to pre-order the new smartphone for $199.99 on a two-year contract. And on Thursday, following AT&T's lead, rival mobile operator Verizon also made the BlackBerry Z10 available for pre-order.

The big red has chosen to offer the BlackBerry Z10 for the same price as AT&T -- $199.99 on a two-year contract. The smartphone will be available in two color options -- black and white -- and will hit the online and bricks and mortar Verizon stores starting from March 28, a mere two weeks from today.

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Expressing his disappointment towards Google killing Reader from July 1, my colleague Alan Buckingham said in our newsroom, "I swear I am switching to Firefox, Bing and Outlook.com in protest!". Other users, however, have resorted to less extreme measures and instead chosen to show their non-acceptance through petitions.

Less than 24 hours since Google gave us the sad news, there are at least three petitions on change.org with more than 37,000 signatures combined demanding the search giant "Keep Google Reader Running" and "Do not remove Google Reader on July 1, 2013". One petitioner tried to appeal to Google's good side with "Please do not shut down Google Reader". The number of signatures may not appear to be high enough at the moment to reach the goal, but that will undoubtedly change in a matter of days, if not hours.

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Just how big is too big? In late-August, last year, I made the case for 15-inch tablets being suited for resource-intensive tasks, as well as lying on the couch to catch up on the newest episode of my favorite show, but somehow I sense that manufacturers have taken things too far.

The latest entry in the mammoth touchscreen genre comes from American company Dell which, on Wednesday, unveiled the XPS 18 AIO (All-In-One). As you might imagine judging by its name, the XPS 18 features an 18-inch touchscreen display, with a resolution of 1920 by 1080, or as Dell likes to call it "twice the screen size of Apple's iPad" (like the two are in some sort of competition -- which they are not).

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Brace yourselves because tomorrow Samsung unveils the next Galaxy flagship at the Unpacked event held in New York. And, even if there are more than 24 hours until the announcement, UK mobile operator EE (previously known as Everything Everywhere) has joined the pre-show hype bandwagon with an announcement of its own.

In a Twitter post, featuring the same teaser photo that Samsung released yesterday on its own Twitter account, EE has announced that it will carry the next Galaxy (presumably called Galaxy S IV) but with the added bonus of "superfast" 4G LTE connectivity.

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Intel Open Source Technology Center has released an Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean developer preview build of "pre-alpha quality", which is also "buggy and not highly optimized", albeit one that has a major trick up its sleeve. Unlike the common version of the green droid operating system, which mostly runs solely on the ARM architecture, the aforementioned developer preview build -- dubbed Android-IA -- is designed to work on Intel's x86 processor architecture used on Windows-compatible devices.

So what would you need to run this "buggy and not highly optimized" Android 4.2.2 build? Intel says that Android-IA can only boot with UEFI mode enabled within the BIOS, which straight off the bat narrows down the list of compatible devices and therefore the ability to run this green droid build, and includes support for dual-boot alongside Windows 8. The chip maker also warns that even if your device is theoretically compatible, in order to dual-boot with Windows 8 onboard there are certain aspects to be considered beforehand.

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Aimed at the Android developer and modding community, Taiwanese company HTC has introduced a new iteration of the One smartphone that was introduced three weeks ago, called One Developer Edition. The two devices share the same underpinnings, except for two major changes in the software department.

The One Developer Edition is aimed at the US Android enthusiast as it features a carrier unlock and unlocked bootloader out-of-the-box, whereas the One will come without any of the two coveted specifications when purchased from local mobile operators. The price difference, however, may force you to reconsider acquiring the new iteration.

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Every once in a while I find myself having to reinstall the operating system from scratch on my laptop. Unlike previous occasions when I would contemplate choosing between Windows 7 and Windows 8 as the default OS, this time around something rather strange has happened. Instead of having to deal with conflicting thoughts, and even remorse, I installed Windows 8 and never looked back. I now wear my "Windows 8 user" tag proudly and not with regret.

If you asked me whether I really want Windows 8 not much longer than two months ago I would have said that "I love and miss Windows 7" -- and for good reasons at the time. My complaints mostly focused around the Modern UI, which was designed with tablet use in mind and not for users like me (and likely you as well) that are accustomed to Microsoft's operating systems on more traditional devices like full-fledged PCs and laptops. So what changed?

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Great news for BlackBerry fans! Just yesterday AT&T announced that it will carry the BlackBerry Z10 in its smartphone portfolio, and today the recently-introduced device is available to pre-order at the US mobile operator.

On a two-year contract at AT&T, the BlackBerry Z10 goes for $199.99 alongside a qualifying data plan and new activation. The US carrier also offers a one-year contract option at which point the price of the device goes up by $250 to $449.99. And, if you want to pay for the BlackBerry Z10 upfront AT&T charges you $549.99.

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As if the hype surrounding the next Galaxy flagship was not enough, after a couple of teasers Samsung released yet another one on Tuesday with a picture showing what appears to be the new Galaxy S IV. Well, is it?

Samsung asked us "Who’s ready for the Global Unpacked Event on March 14?", but if that's what "the next big thing" looks like, count me out. All the blogs were raving today with big headlines suggesting that Samsung actually released a teaser showing the Galaxy S IV in a shadowy background, when in fact the device in question is the plain old Galaxy S III bar the headphone grill and likely surrounding sensors and front-facing camera.

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If you're the sort of person deeply rooted in Google services, at first glance migrating to Windows Phone 8 from either Android or iOS can be a total drag. The information giant has released a single app so far, which can be used to search the web, but nothing else. Luckily, there are plenty of third-party alternatives to choose from that offer decent and sometimes superior experience for Google users.

But finding the right replacements can be tricky, as the Windows Phone store features more than 130,000 apps and a simple search query returns many results of variable quality -- some great, some not so great. To make your job easier, I've prepared a list of Windows Phone 8 alternatives to traditional Google apps, ranging from Google+ to Google Maps, Google Reader and even YouTube.

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BlackBerry Z10 owners rejoice! Updated LinkedIn and Twitter apps for BB 10 are now available, touting new features and improvements over previous iterations. The update promises to improve the social experience on BlackBerry's latest mobile operating system with "an enhanced tweeting experience and helpful business tools", according to the Canadian device maker.

Let's take them one by one. The LinkedIn app, which has seen the least number of improvements and new features of the two, now allows users to view LinkedIn profiles in full screen mode, search, view and save recommended jobs, chat with connections through LinkedIn Messages and filter news by industries through LinkedIn Today.

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Almost a year and a half ago, Motorola introduced the skinny Droid Razr smartphone which was followed shortly by its Droid Razr Maxx younger brother, thicker but with a beefed-up battery onboard. Originally the two devices came with Android 2.3 Gingerbread but Google's subsidiary upgraded both to Ice Cream Sandwich in mid-2012.

And, now, Motorola has another surprise in store for Droid Razr and Droid Razr Maxx owners -- Android 4.1.2 is coming. The Verizon-branded handsets will be able to take advantage of a plethora of new features and improvements courtesy of the first Jelly Bean iteration. There are also a number of bug fixes and less branded apps included alongside the coveted software upgrade, which bears the "98.72.16.XT912.Verizon.en.US" moniker.

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