Yahoo announced today that a few of its services will no longer be support on older Macs and iOS devices. The changes will impact Yahoo Mail with Apple’s built-in Mail app on older iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches, and Yahoo Contact syncing on Macs running older versions of the desktop operating system. The changes will take place later this month on June 15th.
Since the introduction of Nuance speech technology in OS X Lion, which provides several new voice options in system preferences for the System Voice, many have compared the voice of Nuance-powered Siri on iPhone 4S to the improved text-to-speech included as free downloads within Lion. As noted by Reddit user Moosehadley, what you might not have realized is the downloadable “Samantha” voice for Lion is the same as Siri’s in the United States. Here is how to download it:
Open System Preferences> Speech> Text to Speech>System Voice> Customize> and select “Samantha” from the list. Apple will ask you to confirm the 469MB install.
Samsung’s Series 7, originally intended for Windows 7, has been hacked to run a Hackintosh version of OS X Lion, a user on the tonymacx86 forums highlighted today. Awkward, considering the whole Samsung vs Apple fight. As you can see in the video above, the version of Lion runs relatively smoothly, but the big issue is an external monitor is needed to display the video. The user highlights the tools needed:
8GB USB KEY, mini-HDMI to HDMI cable/adapter, USB Keyboard and mouse. After you make a UniBeast USB key you have some space still left on it so I made a folder and downloaded MultiBeast 4.1.0: Lion Edition.
If you’ve got a Series 7 laying around and are tired of the bleh Windows, you should definitely try this hack out (if you’ve got the technical know-how). With specs close to the MacBook Air — an 11.6-inch display, 64GB SSD, and i5 processor — this device seems pretty perfect to run full on OS X in a mobile setting. It also gives you a little more horsepower than an iPad 2, though that’s like comparing Apples and Oranges.
For all of the technical details, hit up the tonymacx86 forums. We’ve already shared our thoughts on the Hackintosh community, and we’re certainly proponents of what they’re doing. We’re going to keep an eye out as this project gets more bug fixes, specifically the screen issue. Luckily, the developer says he is committed to working on this project.
Yesterday, Apple killed MobileMe and replaced it with the iCloud online services suite which will be available free with iOS 5 this Fall. Apple has published a nice Q&A explaining what the transition means to MobileMe subscribers and how the company plans to go about it. Additionally, a notice at www.me.com/upgrade says that “you’ll be able to upgrade your account to iCloud soon”. With that in mind, you may want to prep your migration ahead of the Apple-imposed June 30, 2012 cut-off time when the MobilMe service will no longer be available. Wondering how? Turns out there’s a leaked document for that!