The retail release of 10.8 Mountain Lion has just appeared for download on the OS X App Store.

The current build number for the Golden Master is 12A269 and the SHA1 hash for the InstallESD.dmg file is e5dd2bf5560033cade7dd7d7da5ceec49f701b0e.

Both retail and GM share the same build number and SHA1 hash so are exactly the same.

Mountain Lion brings a host of improvements over Lion and includes a range of new features:

Safari

It has become habit for me to install an extra browser as soon as I get a new Mac laptop, because Apple’s Safari has fallen behind Google’s Chrome. The new Safari, though, included with Mountain Lion, is a big improvement.

The new Safari feels faster than Google’s Chrome, and it has a series of new features that make it really compelling. First on the list: the address bar (finally!) doubles as a search bar; you can just type search terms into the address bar and hit enter to search Google. There is also a share button integrated right into the browser so you can easily share a link via Twitter or e-mail by just clicking it. No copy-and-paste job needed.

Additionally, with iOS 6 coming to the iPhone and iPad, you will be able to sync all your tabs with iCloud. Then, when you view a site on your laptop’s Safari, Apple says you will automatically send it to your phone or tablet. (I couldn’t test this, as iOS 6 isn’t yet out.)

You can also now save a site to your reading list and look at it later, even when you don’t have an Internet connection. Finally, Apple has jazzed up the interface; I particularly like how you can view all the open tabs in a carousel.

Messages

Until now, it’s been a bit hard to keep track of all of Apple’s messaging systems. There’s iChat, iMessage, and then FaceTime. Messages finally solves the problem by putting everything in one central app.

And it’s really that simple. I logged into my Apple account in the app and I was able to see all my chats across all three of those services. Even better, it syncs with your iPhone and iPad, so you can respond to your iMessages right on your laptop without having to pick up your iPhone. The whole app is intuitive and clean. (Messages is available for separate download for those not using Mountain Lion.)

Notification Center

It’s hard to use Mountain Lion, or even Lion for that matter, and not see the influence that the iPad and Apple’s iOS has had on its laptop and desktop operating system. And Notification Center is a prime example of mobile-like features hitting OS X. Swipe two fingers from right to left on the edge of the trackpad and Notification Center, a panel with a list of notifications, will pop in from the right side of the screen. Emails, missed instant messages, iMessages, Tweets, etc. all show up in the notification tray, and Apple is working with third-party developers so their notifications will show up there too.

iCloud Across Devices.

iCloud

Apple has said the cloud is integral to its products and services, and now its iCloud service is integrated into the heart and soul of OS X. As soon as you boot up the new operating system you are asked to log into your iCloud account. That will then sync everything on your iCloud account, including your emails, notes, reminders, iMessages, etc. across all your devices.

As soon as I logged into my iCloud account on a MacBook Pro with Retina Display running Mountain Lion, my notes from my iPad and iPhone popped right up in the Notes application. Of course, this is really only a useful feature if you own more than one Apple product. Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t offer Android or Windows versions of its iCloud apps.)

Speaking of apps, I didn’t have any issues installing third-party apps on two laptops running Mountain Lion. If there are specific apps you rely on you will want to check that they are compatible with the new software to be safe.

Sharing

Also integrated into the operating system is the ability to share, and while it sounds basic, it’s oen of the features that makes this a must-have upgrade. Apple lets you sign into your Twitter, Flickr, or Vimeo accounts right in Mountain Lion’s System Preferences. Then you can share automatically from apps like Safari, iPhoto, etc.

I was easily able to tweet photos through iPhoto (it uploaded the photo to Twitter’s photo sharing service) and then Tweet a website from Safari. But it requires you use the native Twitter client, rather than one of the third-party ones you might be running. Apple does plan to add Facebook integration this Fall.

Dictation

I actually spoke these words when writing this review. Yes, these very words. Turn on the dictation function under System Preferences, press the function key twice, put your cursor where you want your text to appear and start talking.

The software worked very well, completing full paragraphs without errors and recognizing where to put spaces, though not punctuation. While the dictation function worked in the address bar of Safari and in Gmail, it didn’t work in Google Docs.

Stability

There are lots of other new features in the latest version of Mountain Lion — like Game Center access and Airplay, which lets you stream what is on your computer to the latest Apple TV. But on top of those all Apple has cleaned up some of the small issues that one found in Lion. For instance, in Lion when I opened a number of photos at once in Preview, the thumbnails wouldn’t always show; in Mountain Lion they do.

Another example: When I tried to hook up my laptop to a second display using Lion, I couldn’t expand an app on the second display to full-screen. In Mountain Lion, I can. I didn’t experience any application crashes when testing the software either.

And that’s ultimately why Mountain Lion is worth your $20. Not only do you get a bevy of new features, which I found to enhance and speed up my day-to-day computing tasks, but it cleans up some flaky issues that lingered in Lion. For the price of those cups of coffee, you get a modern operating system, which more than any other right now gives you a continuous computing experience with your phone and tablet. Of course, whether you upgrade is up to you, but you cannot use the it’s-a-hassle excuse.

Mountain Lion is available for only £13.99 from the App Store as of today.

Download the AICPM patch here

Everything seems to be working fine so far with the exception of the security prefpane which refuses to open, giving an NSException…more on that later.

To get audio working I swapped to VoodooHDA as I have yet to patch ML GM AppleHDA for IDT 92HD87B1/3. I then swapped to using layout 66 (42 in hex) as this is the closest thing to the 885 layout which IDT 92HD87B1/3 is fairly similar to.

VoodooHDA needs the following fixes:

Enable VoodooHDAEnableVolumeChangeFix in Info.plist

<key>VoodooHDAEnableVolumeChangeFix</key>
<true/>

Enable VoodooHDAEnableHalfVolumeFix in Info.plist

<key>VoodooHDAEnableHalfVolumeFix</key>
<true/>

AHCIBlockStorage.kext needs patching with this script. Just extract and run. If you’re curious as to what the script does, just open it in Textmate or similar.

AppleRTC needs patching with the following, make sure you backup AppleRTC.kext first, just in case:

sudo perl -pi -e 's|\x75\x30\x89\xd8|\xeb\x30\x89\xd8|' /System/Library/Extensions/AppleRTC.kext/Contents/MacOS/
AppleRTC

The rest of the kexts are from the 10.7.4 version of the HP Probook installer.

I’ve managed to get pretty much everything working, though the ALC889a gave me a few problems to begin with.

The following file should get almost everything working, including sleep, wake, auto sleep, WOL, power management, audio:

EX58-UD5 – Mountain Lion 10.8.0

17-year-old Henri Helminen is seen pulling out the violently smoking device from his pocket and throwing it on the floor, in security tape footage acquired by Finnish news site Kauppalehti.

“The phone was working perfectly” beforehand, Helminen told Kauppalehti. The unidentified iPhone model bought no more than three months ago was destroyed in the fiery incident, he added.

Apple did not respond to request for comment on Wednesday.

Authenticating the video is nigh on impossible. However, it’s not the first time iPhone users have reported their shiny rectangles self-immolating.

In 2011, one Australian airline reported an iPhone 4 glowing red and emitting thick smoke as a plane landed in Sydney, according to The Telegraph. The case was referred to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) for investigation.

In a follow-up report, the safety regulator said there had been “no previous record in the ATSB’s databases of self-ignition involving mobile telephones or other portable electronic devices” on aircraft in the country, and the incident was a result of a “misplaced screw” in the device thought to have been from a shoddy repair job.

A week later, another iPhone 4 “spontaneously combusted” in Brazil. As it happened on dry land, there was no official investigation into the cause of the incident.

Samsung has also seen its flagship Galaxy S III smartphone in the news under similar circumstances when a report of a recently released Android device “burned from the inside out”after the owner connected it to a non-charging car mount.

Photos posted on an Irish message board showed the device’s underside had melted around the charging point.

Samsung acknowledged the board postings and signaled an investigation would be carried out. “We are committed to providing our customers with the safest products possible and are looking at this seriously,” a statement read.

Extract your DSDT or open your current DSDT and find your SATA device, amend it to the following:

Device (SATA)
            {
                Name (_ADR, 0x001F0002)
                Method (_DSM, 4, NotSerialized)
                {
                    Store (Package (0x02)
                        {
                            "device-id",
                            Buffer (0x04)
                            {
                                0x81, 0x26, 0x00, 0x00
                            }
                        }, Local0)
                    DTGP (Arg0, Arg1, Arg2, Arg3, RefOf (Local0))
                    Return (Local0)
                }
            }

 
 
Then remove any IDE devices you may have.
Compile and fix any errors.
Save the DSDT as NEWDSDT.aml and place in /Extra
Remove any block storage injectors.
Reset your permissions and rebuild your kernelcache.
Reboot and type DSDT=NEWDSDT.aml at chameleon.
Once satisfied everything is working, replace your DSDT in /Extra with NEWDSDT.aml
 
 
Tested on a GA-EX58-UD5 rev1.0 F13w BIOS
Undertake this at your own risk, I accept no responsibility for anything that goes wrong, breaks, falls on you eats you etc.

The shot up above (and the ever-so-slightly-different one below) comes from 9to5Mac, who received them from a tipster who claims to have spotted the device on his way home from work.

Alas, these two just-too-far-away glimpses are as good as it gets for now. While most news reporter-types out there would run through a pack of angry charging bulls and scale a building covered in butter for a shot of the iPhone 5, the tipster seems to have practiced at least a bit of caution in their undercover photography session. The person holding the device was supposedly being quite cautious to keep it at least partially covered, masking the Apple logo behind their fingers throughout.

Fortunately, their eyes worked a bit better than their camera. Here’s what they had to share about the purported prototype:

• This was not an iPhone 4 or 3GS, they say. The tipster previously owned both, and was positive it was nothing they’d ever seen before.
• It supposedly has an “almost EVO-like screen”, which fits with the long-living rumor that the next iPhone has an edge-to-edge display. Now, the EVO has a 4.3″ display — and unless Apple is planning on making the next iPhone considerably bigger, I’m doubting the iPhone 5′s display will get nearly that huge. My sources long ago told me to expect something in the 3.7″ – 3.75″ range. With next to no bezel, though, a 3.7″ display could look much bigger from a distance than it actually is.
• Rounded metal (as opposed to square) edges, with what appeared to be a tapered, black glass back — just as the rumor mill has been saying for months

Could this be the real deal? It’s plausible. The iPhone 5 is said to be coming in just over a month (sometime in September), which means there absolutely are iPhone 5s out there, right this second, being field tested. Apple can install as many cell towers on their campus as they want, but it’s nearly impossible to release a phone without testing its signal attenuation and performance in the real world. After Antennagate, you can bet that Apple is going to make damned sure that the iPhone 5 has rock solid signal performance.

With that said, think back to the lost iPhone 4 prototype. At first glance, it looked just like an iPhone 3GS — because Apple had disguised it as one. A special case was made just to mask the new hardware as something not worth a second glance. Would Apple really let an iPhone 5 prototype lurk about in public in the nude? Maybe in the back of a blacked out van — but on what looks to be something like CalTrain? Doubtful.

Also doubtful: where the heck is the camera flash? While my geek side would love for this to be an iPhone 5, my skeptic side is saying it’s a 3GS shot from a strange angle.

What say you? Real? Photoshop? Just a really fancy fake from China? Weigh in down in the comments.

1. Fresh install of 10.6.3 using Chameleon Bootloader
2. Update to 10.6.8 using combo update – DON’T REBOOT!
3. Install chameleon 2.0 rc5 r699
4. Install the following into E/E

FakeSMC.kext
VoodooPS2Controller.kext
VoodooPS2Trackpad.kext
AtherosL1cEthernet.kext

5. Install/replace the following into S/L/E

VoodooHDA.kext
27aeAppleIntelGMA950.kext
27aeAppleIntegratedFramebuffer.kext
AppleACPIBatteryManager.kext
IO80211Family.kext

6. Install dsdt.aml
7. Install SMBios.plist
8. Install com.apple.boot.plist
9. Install mach_kernel_atom_10.6.6
10. Rebuild caches
11. Reboot

This can now mostly be done with an installer, if you would like to use this please download the zip file from here

Then follow these instructions

1. Fresh install of 10.6.3 using Chameleon Bootloader
2. Update to 10.6.8 using combo update – DON’T REBOOT!
3. Download and extract Novatech X10 – 10.6.7.zip
4. Open Terminal and run ‘sudo -s’ (without quotes) enter your password
5. cd to the Novatech X10 – 10.6.7 directory 6. Install dsdt.aml
7. In Terminal run ‘./installer’ (without quotes)
8. When prompted, select your partition
9. Press i to run the automated script
10. Once it has finished install the contents of ‘Place these in SLE’ to S/L/E
11. Install kext utility from ‘Install these’
12. Rebuild permissions
13. Install the Keyboard Layout located in ‘Place contents in Library Keyboard Layouts’ to Library/Keyboard Layouts, and then select the input source ‘British’ (the one without the flag) from preferences -> languages -> input sources.
14.Reboot

You should now have Q/E, audio, webcam, ethernet, wireless, sleep, restart, bluetooth, 2 finger scrolling, 1 finger scrolling…etc

The keyboard layout has been customised for a british keyboard and has mappings to what is on the actual key. The cmb, alt and ctrl keys have not been moved, so alt=cmd, win=alt ctrl = ctrl.

The brightness and volume function keys also work.

I have set this up as a macbook air so Remote Disc is working nicely, as obviously this netbook doesn’t have a cd/dvd drive so it’s quite handy to have.

I hope this helps someone out as I’ve been working on it for quite some time.

The guys over at TUAW, who don’t normally play the rumormill game, claim they have reliable sources indicating that Mac OS X 10.7 (aka Lion) has been released for internal testing within Apple.

This means we may see Mac OS X Lion announced and made available as early as the WWDC conference which runs from the 6th-10th of June.

I look forward to getting my hands on the real thing and seeing how well the final version plays ball with non-Apple hardware.

Over his career his studio has brought us the Rollercoaster Tycoon series, Thrillville, Lost Winds, and most recently Kinectimals. In the background, however, Braben has been trying to tackle another problem: getting programming and general learning of how computers work back into schools.

Braben argues that education since we entered the 2000s has turned towards ICT which teaches useful skills such as writing documents in a word processor, how to create presentations, and basic computer use skills. But that has replaced more computer science-like skills such as basic programming and understanding the architecture and hardware contained in a computer.

His solution is not to create his own course, but instead to manufacture a very low cost PC that can be given to kids for free and courses built up around their use. When we say low cost, we mean so low even the OLPC would be impressed.

Braben has developed a tiny USB stick PC that has a HDMI port in one end and a USB port on the other. You plug it into a HDMI socket and then connect a keyboard via the USB port giving you a fully functioning machine running a version of Linux. The cost? $25.

The hardware being offered is no slouch either. It uses a 700MHz ARM11 processor coupled with 128MB of RAM and runs OpenGL ES 2.0 allowing for decent graphics performance with 1080p output confirmed. Storage is catered for by an SD card slot. It also looks as though modules can be attached such as the 12MP camera seen in the image above.

We can expect it to run a range of Linux distributions, but it looks like Ubuntu may be the distro it ships with. That means it will handle web browsing, run office applications, and give the user a fully functional computer to play with as soon as it’s plugged in. All that and it can be carried in your pocket or on a key chain.

This tiny, cheap PC is going to be distributed through a new charitable foundation called the Raspberry Pi Foundation. It will also promote computer science studies in schools.

As for when the Raspberry Pi device will become available, Braben says he hopes to be distributing it within the next 12 months.

Read more at BBC News

ead more and more speculation is pointing towards a September or later release date. In fact yesterday we had a report that suggested that the iPhone 5 won’t even begin production until September, with a release date looking more likely towards the end of the year.

Now another report this time from All Things Digital, claims that word on the street is the iPhone 5 will make it’s debut at Apples music event in September. Apple traditionally use the music event to focus on iPod’s and iTunes. While the iPhone is normally announced at WWDC

As I’ve reported here before, Apple doesn’t plan to unveil a new iPhone at its Worldwide Developers Conference, which this year will be largely software-focused. And increasingly, I’m hearing speculation about the company possibly commandeering its annual September media event to launch the device instead. Which seems plausible.

In the past, All Things Digital have been fairly well informed and are quite often right with their “speculations”. As their post goes on to explain the decline of the iPod and it’s appeal, it does seem to make sense that Apple would announce the iPhone 5 at the event.

I’m sure many of you are quite possibly holding out on upgrading to the iPhone 4 at this stage and are waiting for the iPhone 5. What happens if Apple don’t announce the next gen iPhone at this years WWDC? Will you be moving to Android? Or can you wait?

Let us know in the comments