It’s official – video game company Valve announced today that its Steam gaming service is coming to the Mac, along with a native version of gaming engine Source that will bring with it popular titles such as the Half Life series, Left 4 Dead 2, Portal and Team Fortress 2.

Most important is the fact that Valve is not using emulation to make this all happen, as some suspected it would. Emulation would see the original versions of the games being played on the Mac in a spoofed Windows environment. Instead the developer has created a native version of its gaming engine – built for OS X. (more…)

Skype 2.8 for Mac (and 4.1 for Windows) is a decent update to the application with some welcome new additions, including improved video quality, Skype Access wifi management and screen sharing. However, it also adds annoying notifications every time someone updates their mood message, or status.

Disabling the notifications isn’t obvious either. I expected the setting to be under the ‘Notifications’ area in the Skype options or preferences window – where it intuitively should be. But it isn’t. (more…)

Note: I have updated this guide for Snow Leopard. If you use OS X 10.6+ then make sure to follow step 3.

The following is a guide for setting up a Huawei cellular USB modem on a Mac. It will work with any cellular network, any APN and does not require any third-party connection software. Just your Mac, OS X Leopard or Snow Leopard (10.5+ or 10.6+), and a Huawei modem with an active SIM card for the network you are connecting to.
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Microsoft’s Fall Dashboard update to the Xbox 360 added DivX and Xvid codec support for media playback on the console, reestablishing the 360 as the leader of the next-generation console pack in terms of features and making the Xbox 360 a compelling media centre device. Not only is the 360 a rocking gaming platform with superior online features, but is also a media powerhouse capable of playing just about any music, photography or video file you throw at it.

This functionality is made even radder by the fact that the 360 supports external storage devices or can be used as a media extender for any computer running Windows Media Center. You can even share media stored on a Mac in iTunes using connector software called Connect 360.

Of all the options available storing media on an external hard drive seems most logical to me, but this is easier said than done given the Xbox 360’s limited support for filesystems.
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Apple has announced its launch of the world’s thinnest laptop during the 2008 Macworld keynote presentation by company CEO Steve Jobs.

The Macbook Air is about half a centimeter thick at its thinnest point and achieves its remarkable form-factor due to Intel secretly developing the smallest Core 2 Duo processor to date for Apple’s new product. (more…)