It’s tax time in the USA, which means everyone is either going to be happy with a refund or sad when they owe. If you want to file your taxes online and you use Google Chrome, be sure to skip TurboTax though, which does not support the browser.

Adding insult to injury is the supported browser list: TurboTax supports IE6, but doesn’t support Chrome? WTF? Google Chrome is my favorite web browser by far, so I was pretty annoyed to find this out. I imagine this is just a simple user agent detection, since other WebKit browsers are supported (Safari), but what a boneheaded maneuver by TurboTax.

FYI: this effects all OS’s using the Chrome browser, and has been tested to not work in Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. Grr.

Apple’s Mac OS X operating system is continuing to grow in popularity, with a recent survey showing that Apple’s Mac OS X now accounts for nearly 11% of web usage, vs 86.8% with Windows and 1.3% for mobile based browsers.

What’s even more interesting though is that Apple’s share has grown 29.4% over the past year, while Microsoft’s Windows share actually shrunk 3.8%!

You can read more at VentureBeat: OS X slowly chipping away at Microsoft

Update: VLC has posted this clarifying the state of the VLC for Mac project, stating ‘VLC for Mac death is “greatly exagerated”‘, and emphasizing that the majority of development issues are in regards to the GUI, apparently it’s not as perilous as the web has assumed.

VLC Player for Mac OS X may well be nearing the end of it’s life, unless some Mac developers can step in to take over support of the codebase. In a sobering reality check, VLC developer Rémi Denis-Courmont says the following:

“There are now effectively zero active developers for MacOS.

Taking into account the learning curve to VLC development, I think it is fair to say that the situation is now critical.”

VLC is my favorite video player by far, it’s cross platform compatible and works flawlessly with nearly every video type thrown at it. I really hope some capable developers step in to take over the Mac OS X division, it would be very sad indeed if Mac users lost out on any further VLC releases.

VideoLAN Forums: VLC is looking for Mac OS X Developers

The last few days the tech world has been blazing about Google’s latest creation, Chrome OS, which is a lightweight and free Linux-based operating system intended to run on Netbooks and, eventually, Desktops. It’s basically just the Chrome web browser with some other features unique to the OS itself, which makes it very fast and able to run without much of a strain on hardware.

OK so talk is all fine and dandy, but how about we run this thing within Mac OS X! It’s actually pretty easy to do, you’ll just need to download the Chrome OS image (via torrent) as well as the free virtual machine software known as VirtualBox. The torrent is provided by PirateBay and has tons of seeders so you should be able to pick up the image file very quickly, again the OS is free so there’s no piracy issues here.

If you’re familiar with running VM’s, you likely won’t need a walkthrough guide, you just select the image and boot it. If you’re new to virtual machines or would just like a little more guidance, TechCrunch posted a great and easy to follow walkthrough on installing Google Chrome OS within VirtualBox on top of Windows, Linux, and of course Mac OS X (the walkthrough uses Mac OS X screenshots, like the one below).

TechCrunch: Try Google Chrome OS with a Virtual Machine

I ran Chrome OS for about two minutes and got bored, it’s basically just a web browser running in a VM. It’s obviously still under development and has work to be done before it is a really usable operating system, but with how easy it is to install in a virtual machine it’s a fun way to geek out and try something new. At the very least I think it’s a glimpse into the future of OS’s, with more and more of our lives and data being found, shared, and accessed online.

Holy cow. Tim Royer has posted a graph of GeekBench benchmark test suite scores for the iMac 27″ Core i5 and iMac Core i7 models, and the numbers are pretty amazing. The 27″ Core i7 model just barely underperforms a brand new $2999 Mac Pro. So what? Well, the 27″ iMac Core i7 model is only $2199, and it includes a massively beautiful 27″ LCD that doubles as a monitor. Wow. The iMac Core i7 model is a $200 upgrade to the Core i5, which is also lightning fast, but the performance increase from the Core i5 to the i7 is dramatic, so that looks to be money very well spent.

Suddenly my MacBook Pro with a 3300 GeekBench score seems hopelessly inadequate!

Apple’s newest snazzy NYC store got 10,000 job applications and just over 200 were hired, making a 2% acceptance rate. BusinessInsider points out this is lower than the 7% acceptance rate at Harvard University. I imagine the economic situation contributes to the slew of resumes, but even still, those are some pretty remarkable statistics.

Source: BusinessInsider: Harvard is easier than Apple

Mac OS X 10.6.2 has been released, for most Mac users this is great news because it fixes over 40 problems and bugs, including the rare but very problematic user account deletion bug. If you have an official Apple Mac then go right ahead and update to Mac OS X 10.6.2, but if you have a Hackintosh Mac Netbook… well you will want to hold off. It has been confirmed that the final release of 10.6.2 kills Intel Atom support officially. Hackintosh Guru StellaRolla reports:

The netbook forums are now blowing up with problems of 10.6.2 instant rebooting their Atom based netbooks.

A quick glance at the Hackintosh forums on MyDellMini.com confirms this:

So, I can tell you 10.6.2 DOES NOT WORK with the Mini10v.

OSX tries to start, but it hangs before you can see the apple and system ist trying to boot again … you are in a loop…

StellaRola goes on to note that the OSx86 community is pretty crafty and a modded kernel will likely surface in the near future. In any event, if you have a Hackintosh, hold off on the official 10.6.2 until more information is available.

You can read more about the Mac OS X 10.6.2 Update from Apple.com

[ Sources: Gizmodo: 10.6.2 bug fixes and StellaRola: Official: Atom Not Supported in 10.6.2 and MyDellMini.com Forums ]

Not to sound like a flip-flopping broken record or anything, but it is now confirmed that the latest 10.6.2 build 10C540 does not support the Intel Atom chip, the processor that is so common in Hackintosh Netbooks. Popular Hackintosher StellaRola has confirmed this with his sources, and he even includes a video of a MSI Wind U100 trying to boot 10.6.2 but it is stuck in a continuous reboot (shown below). With how fast things are changing (supported, unsupported), it’s a mystery as to whether the final release will include support for the Atom chip, but as we said before, if you’re a Hackintosh user you should probably avoid the update until it has been confirmed one way or another.

StellaRolla via 10.6.2 kills support for Atom processor

Fortune Magazine has named Steve Jobs the CEO of the decade, and it’s a pretty fitting title really, the guy is a powerhouse. Nearly 10 years ago Apple was struggling to find their place in the technology world, there were rumors of collapse and impending bankruptcy or buyouts, the first release of Mac OS X (10.0) was a slow cumbersome dud, and they had just entered an extremely crowded MP3 player market with a seemingly overpriced product with a weird name, the iPod. Apple stock at the time was right around $7. Now fast forward to today, where the iPod is the only MP3 player people talk about, the iPhone is taking over the cellular world, and Apple’s market capitalization is greater than Google’s, with their stock sitting comfortably at $193. CEO of the decade? After pulling all that off, that might be an understatement.

Here’s the readers digest version as to why they think Steve Jobs is so remarkable, summarized in the articles first paragraph:

Youthful founder gets booted from his company in the 1980s, returns in the 1990s, and in the following decade survives two brushes with death, one securities-law scandal, an also-ran product lineup, and his own often unpleasant demeanor to become the dominant personality in four distinct industries, a billionaire many times over, and CEO of the most valuable company in Silicon Valley.

As a longtime Apple fan I think the article leaves out some of the other obvious and important contributions, but I can’t argue with much of what they do cite. If you’re a part of the Cult of Jobs, or just a fan of Apple, the Fortune article is worth a read:

Fortune: Steve Jobs – CEO of the Decade

It’s baaaaaack! Like a relentless zombie in a bad horror flick that just can’t be killed, the Intel Atom chip is now supported again in the latest developer build of 10.6.2, 10C53. This doesn’t mean much since it’s just a developer build, but for now Hackintosh Netbook users can feel a bit better about their uncertain future. StellaRolla reports:

…the latest development build Atom appears to have resurrected itself zombie style in 10C535. The Atom lives another day, but nothing is concrete until the final version of 10.6.2 is out.

So that’s all fine and dandy, but will the Atom truly survive? Time will tell.

Thank you to OS X Daily reader Tony for notifying us of this change!

[ StellaRolla via ArsTechnica ]