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Firefox 9.0 offers Mac OS X Lion gesture support
Firefox 9 is out now (the public page hasn't been updated yet as of this writing, but the build is available from official links already), and while that in itself isn't really big news (the uberpopular browser updates all the time, and plenty of people have already chosen to use Chrome or another browser anyway), there is one big note in this update worth mentioning: The app will now natively support two-finger swiping gestures on your MacBook (or Magic Mouse or trackpad, if you have one of those running). That means that without extra add-ons, you can now swipe two fingers forward or back to browse through your history, in addition to the other usual gestures available to most apps, like using two fingers to scroll and so on. The update to version 9 also adds improved theme navigation for OS X Lion as well, so that's a nice bonus. One thing that's not in the app yet is an actual Lion-style full-screen mode. Firefox has its own fullscreen mode, but it's not exactly the one-app view that Apple expects. And while Firefox is easy enough to install and update on its own, there's no Mac App Store version yet. Mozilla may not be interested in running updates through Apple's App Store, but it might be easier for users to do so. At any rate, if you're running Firefox on your Mac, you should grab the update now. I personally like Firefox, but for some reason it's never run well on my MacBook, and I switched over to Chrome full time a few months ago. But it's a solid browser (aside from some issues with memory leaks, mostly having to do with Flash, in my experience), and this update adds a little more Mac-specific functionality as well.
Apple needs to fix their PowerBook DL trackpad software
Ever since I picked up this 15" PowerBook DL (Dual Layer SuperDrive) about a month ago, I have occasionally run into situations where I see the kernel_task in Activity Monitor spiking to about 60% CPU usage, grinding my machine nearly to a halt and making it generally unusable until I restarted. None of the typical maintenance tasks seemed to help matters, and since I was planning on wiping the book clean this weekend for the upcoming semester anyway, I simply chalked it up to some little utility I had been playing around with. Oh the troubles I go through for you readers...Well after wiping the book this morning and getting everything reinstalled (huge time-saver tip: keep all your 3rd party apps in an Applications folder in your Home folder, this way OS X can still find them, yet it's easy for you to back them all up), I found I was still having these kernel_task issues - even before I installed all my extras. Getting frustrated, I finally decided to do some googling and discovered that, once again, MacOSXHints had already gotten to the bottom of this issue.As it turns out, this kernel_task usage problem is a result of Apple's own trackpad software horribly misbehaving on these latest PowerBooks, even on a 100% clean system, which I verified this morning. MacOSXHints did find a 3rd party solution in the form of SideTrack, a shareware trackpad software replacement for PowerBooks and iBooks that has a few neat tricks up its sleeve. While I can verify SideTrack fixed the issue on my PowerBook, it alters the behavior of two-finger scrolling and, of course, costs money ($15). I also can't stand some weird thing it does to mouse movement and acceleration; it feels and acts differently than Apple software, and these two dings caused me to uninstall it and take my chances with keeping kernel_task happy again.Moral of the story: Apple needs to fix their PowerBook trackpad software, and soon. This kernel issue destroys productivity, usability and battery life, and also causes a PowerBook to get pretty hot. If you're running into issues like this (or any other kind), I urge you to add your voice to the pile at apple.com/feedback.
