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Reading List gains offline reading in recent Mountain Lion builds

Safari Reading List is definitely a nice, simple alternative to third party apps like Instapaper, Readability, and Pocket for those who use Safari. Reading List allows you to save and sync links for later reading between both your Mac and iOS devices. It has been known that offline reading is coming soon to Safari on Mountain Lion, and it looks like that feature finally landed. Found by Gear Live today and a commenter on Control Your Mac 10 days ago, offline reading was enabled in recent builds of Mountain Lion. However, offline reading is sadly still not available on iOS devices; although, we would guess iOS offline support is coming at some point.

Offline reading is pretty self-explanatory. While connected, you can mark items to read in your Reading List. Once the Internet is disconnected, you can still load the article thanks to a bit of caching work done on Apple’s end. Apps like Instapaper, Readability, and Pocket have offered a similar feature for quite some time, so it is nice to see Apple finally utilize offline reading.

Earlier this week, Instapaper owner Macro Arment said (video queued below) his app has been pretty much left unfazed after the introduction of Reading List over a year ago, which points to the lack of offline reading to a possibility why Reading List may have not caught steam. Sadly, you can only use Reading List in Safari too, so Chrome users are left to find another option. This looks to be like a nice solution for the mainstreamers, however.


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Google plans to copy Apple and develop Game Center-like app

Apple introduced Game Center, an online multiplayer social gaming network, in 2010 that allows app users to invite friends, start multiplayer games, track achievements, and compare scores on a leader board, and now reports claim that Google is looking to copy Apple by creating a similar system for Android.

While not naming any sources, Business Insider claimed Google is developing a native Android app similar to Game Center, but the publication detailed Apple’s offering as “an app on the iPhone that connects players in most of Apple’s iOS games.” However, that description is selling the network short. Game Center comes standard with the current iOS, and Apple announced in February that the service would soon integrate with Mountain Lion, which is set for a late summer 2012 release (image, above).

Google’s flavor will allegedly include a social-based achievement system, as well as a leader board. The similar client would poise Google as a legitimate contender in the exploding mobile games market. Developers who build Android games use a variety of third-party solutions, like the iOS-compatible OpenFeint, but Google wants to create its own native app in the wake of Apple’s popularity with gaming.

Read the full story at 9to5Google. 


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Updated OS X Mountain Lion Preview 3, 10.7.4, Xcode builds seeded to developers

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Apple has released software updates to both of their already acknowledged, unreleased Mac OS X updates: Mountain Lion and Lion 10.7.4. The OS X Mountain Lion is a not a full new Developer Preview, but is simply an update to the already released Developer Preview 3. Changes are currently unknown, but please send in anything you find to tips@9to5mac.com. The update weighs in at 1.45GB on a MacBook Air, but that may vary on other machines. Similiarly, Apple released a few minor developer preview updates during the OS X Lion beta period.

In addition, Apple has seeded a new build of 10.7.4 to developers. The build number is 11E53, and this is notable as this is only a single build shift from last week’s release of 10.7.4 build 11E52. A slow down in build number changes often means an imminent release of whatever OS X update is being tested. Augmenting this possibility is that Apple has added the 10.7.4 change log to the installer application for the beta. Apple says the build has no known issues but asks developers to focus their testing on graphics, iCal, Mail, Printing, and Time Machine.

Apple has also released Developer Preview 4 of Xcode 4.4. The Xcode preview requires either OS X Mountain Lion or OS X Lion.


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Hackintoshers: Mountain Lion natively supports AMD Radeon HD 6950, 6970, & NVIDIA 5xx cards, no hacks required

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According to a forum post on tonymacx86, Apple’s latest release of Mountain Lion, the 10.8 developer preview, is able to natively support AMD Radeon HD 6950 and 6970 without the need for any tweaks or hacks. As for the 6950 and 6970 specifically, the reports originate from the netkas.org forums where several posters report a 6950 running Netkas EFI working natively in 10.8. One poster even reported the 6950 continues to be recognized in Lion with unmodified drivers after “warm booting back to Lion from Mountain Lion.”

There are still issues, as tonymacx86 posters pointed out: “It looks like the 69xx situation seems a bit immature and experimental at this point. Even in the new OS.” Another forum poster claimed NVIDIA 5xx cards also seem to run natively with mkchis claiming full support for the GTX 570 graphics card with no hacks or mods. He said it is “running at full res even smoother than a patched Lion. It’s like native.”

When it comes to booting from Mountain Lion to Lion with unmodified drivers, one poster warned it does not seem to work if you are connecting a display to the 6950. The good news is a prominent hackintosher informed us that Chimera was updated to run on both Lion and Mountain Lion with a dev release coming within days:

We’ve fixed Chimera to work with both LIon and Mtn. Lion- there was a small change necessary to boot 10.8. We’ll be releasing that in a day or 2 for devs.

As a side note for Mountain Lion support, Robservatory shared its method of getting VMware Tools to work when running Mountain Lion in VMware Fusion. According to the post, Mountain Lion “will kernel panic” when trying to install VMware Tools. Here is the fix:


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