Mad Catz Interactive is shipping the F.R.E.Q. Wireless Surround Headset, a gaming headset compatible with practically any audio source including Macs, PCs, game consoles, mobile and smart devices. It allows gamers to enjoy expansive wireless surround sound via AM3D Audio technology.    The F.R.E.Q. features a discrete integrated mic that allows gamers to communicate online, as well as use the headset with smart phones, tablets and more, all without the need of a boom mic obstructing their movement. With no need for a boom mic to be attached, gamers can stay connected with multiple devices and enjoy the headset in a variety of situations.   The F.R.E.Q. features Bluetooth technology and can connect to practically any audio source thanks to the adapter box that connects to a standard digital optical or analogue source, transmitting wireless audio directly to the headset. The F.R.E.Q is available for pre-order for US$299.99 at http://tinyurl.com/p8b6by8 .

Seagate (www.seagate.com) has launched what it says is the "world's slimmest" portable hard drive: the Seagate Seven. It's a 500GB drive with a 7mm depth. According to Mark Whitby, senior vice president of Seagate Branded Group, the company leveraged the latest of the company’s drive technologies and manufacturing processes to create the drive.  The deep draw process allows for the all steel enclosure to be shaped in a method that the material could not be any thinner and still hold the structural integrity needed to perform as an external portable storage device, he says. The steel encasing also provides a rigidity, which allows for the incredibly thin design to be functional. The low profile motor technologies used in the bare drive are designed to include extreme Gyro handling capabilities with tablets and thin computing in mind.  This is a true benefit when considering that Seagate Seven is a storage device that people will carry with them in their bags or pockets.   The Seagate...

WD (www.wd.com) is demonstrating what it says is "the world's fastest 4 TB hybrid drive" at the SATA-IO booth at Storage Visions 2015. WD's prototype drive utilizes the SATA Express PCI-e interface, 4 TB 3.5-inch hybrid hard drive, and up to 128 GB solid state drive. The two WD SATA Express interface demonstrations at Storage Visions 2015 will include commercially available motherboards from WD partners ASRock and Gigabyte. These systems will demonstrate cabled SATA Express PCI-e interconnect flexibility and configuration options for single-volume caching and RAID. Heavy desktop usage scenarios will benefit from larger cache sizes (64 GB will be demonstrated) by enabling retention of key hot data across multiple applications, which improves overall performance, says Matt Rutledge, senior vice president, Storage Technology, WD. In WD's labs, WD's SATA Express 4 TB drive with 64 GB cache achieved a PCMark8 benchmark score of 4459, demonstrating near-SSD performance at an optimized GB-...

A new tool submitted to GitHub (www.github.com), a a web-based Git repository hosting service, claims to be able to perform password dictionary attacks on any iCloud account, seemingly able to evade detection from Apple’s rate-limiting security that is supposed to prevent such dictionary attacks from happening, reports "9to5Mac" (http://tinyurl.com/pqj3qkf). The source code for the tool has been released onto GitHub. It tries every possible word in its 500-long word-list as the password for a given iCloud account email. This means while it will succeed "100%" at trying 500 times over, the tool is by no means guaranteed to succeed at cracking your password, notes "9to5Mac." According to Apple: "iCloud secures your data by encrypting it when it's sent over the Internet, storing it in an encrypted format when kept on server (review the table below for detail), and using secure tokens for authentication. This means that your data is protected from unauthorized access both while it is...

Happy NewYear greetings to all our readers and advertisers. MacTech will be "closed" today and will reopen for business as usual on Friday, Jan. 2.

Former Apple supplier, GT Advanced Technologies, is asking a bankruptcy court for permission to give "executive bonuses" of up to $2 million to help motivate and retain "key" employees, according to AppleInsider (www.appleinsider.com). In October GT Advanced Tech, Apple’s partner in a sapphire production facility in Arizona, together with certain of its direct and indirect subsidiaries (collectively, GT), commenced voluntary cases under chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Hampshire. That same month it was announced that GT Advanced and Apple had reached a settlement agreement under which GT will wind down its sapphire materials production in the company’s Mesa, AZ and Salem, MA locations. The company indicated that it will exit from the market as a producer of sapphire materials and will refocus its business as an equipment supplier, manufacturing and developing sapphire growth systems and processes. Under the terms of the...

A security researcher speaking at the Chaos Computer Congress in Hamburg demonstrated a hack that rewrites an Intel Mac's firmware using a Thunderbolt device with attack code in an option ROM, reports 9to5Mac (www.9to5Mac.com). Known as "Thunderstrike," the proof of concept (http://tinyurl.com/nla6jqt), infects the Apple Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) in a way he claims can't be detected, nor removed by reinstalling Mac OS X. According to researcher Trammel Hudson, it's a "a vulnerability that allows the installation of persistent firmware modifications into the EFI boot ROM of Apple's popular MacBooks. The bootkit can be easily installed by an evil-maid via the externally accessible Thunderbolt ports and can survive reinstallation of OSX as well as hard drive replacements. Once installed, it can prevent software attempts to remove it and could spread virally across air-gaps by infecting additional Thunderbolt devices." Apple has already implemented an intended fix in the latest...

Chevron Oil has plans to expand its use of Apple Pay to gas pumps in the new year, according to a tweet the company sent out to a customer Monday — as noted by MacRumors (www.macrumors.com). In the message, Chevron says that it is working with Apple to bring Apple Pay payment solutions to pumps by early 2015. Apple announced Apple Pay in September, describing it as “a new category of service designed to transform mobile payments with an easy, secure and private way to pay.” It works with the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus through a NFC antenna design, a dedicated chip called the Secure Element, and Touch ID. Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, says Apple Pay is easy to set up, so hundreds of millions of users can simply add their credit or debit card on file from their iTunes Store account. Apple Pay will also work with the newly announced Apple Watch, extending Apple Pay to over 200 million owners of iPhone 5, iPhone 5c and iPhone 5s worldwide.

According to the latest forecasts from market intelligence firm, ABI Research, tablet growth is expected to resume and continue over the next five years with a forecast of nearly 290 million tablet shipments in 2019. As the calendar year comes to a close, many of the world’s tablet vendors are looking forward to opportunities in 2015 and are hoping to avoid a repeat of lackluster 2014 results. Apple, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Google are expected to show year-over-year declines in branded tablet unit volume, while Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, LG, Microsoft, and Samsung should end higher in calendar year 2014. "Historically, Apple has counted approximately 35% of its iPad sales in the last calendar quarter of the year," says Senior Practice Director Jeff Orr.  :Unless Apple can pull off a 32+ million unit quarter, sales for CY2014 [calendar year 2014] will be down for the first year since the iPad launched." ABI Research predicts iPad sales to reach nearly 68 million in 2014,...

Fidelity Media has updated MegaSeg (www.megaseg.com/), the DJ mixing app and broadcast automation system made especially for Mac, to version 5.9.4. The upgrade boasts over 60 improvements, including OS X Yosemite optimizations, new Denon controller presets, and an updated sound engine with superior quality pitch-lock and seamless looping. MegaSeg Pro provides features for pro DJs and VJs, radio and TV stations, and hospitality businesses such as restaurants and hotels. The Pro edition incorporates video playback for ambient visuals, hot keys for instant sound effects, automated music scheduling, ad messaging events, track separation rules, request lists, and more. The DJ edition offers features including visual beat syncing, headphone outputs for preview, MIDI support, automatic volume control, fast category searching, track logging, integrated iTunes playlists and protected audio playback. MegaSeg 5.9.4 DJ and Pro editions are available from MegaSeg.com for US$99 and $199...

Here are some of the latest apps available at the Apple App Store for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Ultralab has announced Iceberg Tower. In the free game, players must build a high column by carefully placing sliding ice blocks. In order to get points in Iceberg Tower, one needs to accurately stack ice blocks upon each other in a way that the edges of a new block match the edges of the previous one. MehtaiPhoneApps has released G-Zone. In the free game, your goal is to control a moon to avoid asteroids and stay alive for as long as you can. Tap and adjust the orbit of a moon to control it and dodge asteroids that are flying across the screen. Eilean Design has introduced Tic Tacular. It's a free puzzle/strategy game. At the end of each turn a mark disappears. After the marks have finished counting down, the piece disappears allowing a new piece to be placed on that space. You can play against the computer or play against your friend. ViPrak Web Solutions has unveiled Christmas...

Softobe (http://www.softobe.com/) has released FoldersSynchronizer 4.2, an upgrade of their tool to sync and backup on Mac OS X. FoldersSynchronizer lets you sync and backup files, folders, disks and boot disks. It provides options like Timers, Multiple Folders, Filters, Exclude Items, Auto-Mount local and remote volumes, the ability to launch your own AppleScripts, the ability to set how to resolve conflicts, the ability to execute an incremental or an exact copy, the ability to include locked files, a preview panel, log files, and more. FoldersSynchronizer 4.2 adds a File Versus Folder" option to the Conflict panel (Tab E). You can now set how FS should behave in case of replacing a whole folder by a most recent file with the same filename. You can set "Replace the folder" (default) or "Skip," and "Ask the user for what to do at running time." Previous versions of FS always skipped and left the folder untouched. Softobe introduced this option since the new operating systems...

RPX Corp. (www.rpxcorp.com) says its subsidiary, RPX Clearinghouse LLC, has executed an agreement to purchase the patent assets controlled by Rockstar Consortium LLC. Rockstar is the entity formed in 2011 by Apple, Blackberry, Ericsson, Microsoft, and Sony to purchase approximately 6,000 patent assets from the Nortel bankruptcy estate. Approximately 2,000 of these patent assets were previously distributed to various Rockstar owners and aren't part of this transaction. RPX Clearinghouse will receive license payments from a syndicate of over 30 companies, including Cisco and Google. Upon closing, which is subject to regulatory approval and other customary conditions, syndicate participants will receive non-exclusive licenses to the Rockstar patents, and RPX Clearinghouse will make the patents available for license to all other interested companies under fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms. "We are pleased to act as a clearinghouse and underwrite an agreement between...

AppleXsoft Software (www.applexsoft.com) has released a new version (5.5.5.1) of AppleXsoft File Recovery, a do-it-yourself recovery software tool for Mac OS X. The upgrade adds e-mail recovery and more. Users can now scan and recover deleted or lost emails. AppleXsoft File Recovery supports such e-mail clients as Outlook, Windows Live Mail, Outlook Express, Mozilla, Becky, and Eudora. File Recovery has been developed to help Mac users to recover accidentally deleted photos from memory cards, CompactFlash, and other storage media. It uses individual scan algorithms for each supported file type and also supports the raw photos of cameras made by Nikon, Sony, Canon, Panasonic, Samsung,  Olympus, Kodak, Fuji and others. AppleXsoft Photo Recovery for Mac 5.5.5.1 requires Mac OS X 10.4 or higher. It costs US$99.95. A demo may be downloaded from the AppleXsoft website.

Apple has released security updates for the NTP (network time protocol) service on the the Mountain Lion, Mavericks, and Yosemite versions of Mac OS X. It's available via the Mac App Store. According to Apple, "This update addresses a critical security issue with the software that provides the Network Time Protocol service on OS X, and is recommended for all users."

Voilabits has released PhotoWatermark 3.0 (http://tinyurl.com/kwqfwsd), an update of the Mac OS X app that allows users to batch add a variety of personalized watermark to photos to avoid unauthorized copy, and promote brand identity. The app has been optimized for Mac OS X Yosemite. PhotoWatermark offers a one-click feature to apply a watermark to several photos at once and to and customize your watermark (text, image, brand logo, etc.). It also lets you save your work to popular image formats and share it via Twitter and PhotoWatermark is compatible with Mac OS X 10.7 and higher. A single license costs US$19.99; a license for five Macs is $39.99.

Software and Computer System Company (SCSC) has released a new version (1.9) of Scannerz for Mac OS X. The upgrade is compatible with Mac OS X Yosemite. Scannerz 1.9 also includes the new Performance Probe 2, as well as Phoenix and FSE. This new release can be used on any systems running Mac OS X 10.5 and higher. All versions of Scannerz come bundled with FSE or FSE-Lite, Phoenix, and Performance Probe. FSE and FSE-Lite are file system event monitors that can track excessive file system activity and identify possibly rogue processes. Phoenix is an operating system extraction tool that can be used to create emergency boot volumes and perform basic cloning operations. Performance Probe monitors system activity, CPU usage, and memory usage, and may be of use isolating processes that are too resource intensive. SCSC says there's no price change in their product line, with the cost of Scannerz with FSE-Lite being US$39.95 and Scannerz with FSE being $49.95. Scannerz-Lite is now selling for...

Here are some of the latest apps available at the Apple App Store for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Lucky Clan has announced Video Zoom. The US$1.99 app lets anyone apply zoom to videos from their existing iOS Photo Library. You can use Video Zoom to add zoom effects to existing videos, or just crop the video. JH Solutions has released Save the Princess - 1D Edition. The free game — inspired by One Direction — takes fans of the band on a journey across a mythical land to save the princess who is being held captive. Reliance Games has introduced Ultimate Robot Fighting. It's a free, single-player action game with 3v3-style gladiatorial brawling among robots. Taprrific has unveiled UponPixels. The $0.99 device allows anyone to add beautiful typography and design elements to their photos, then share them with family, friends, or the general public.

Rob Papen Soundware has rolled out RAW, a new Mac (32- and 64-bit, AAX, AU, and VST for Mac OS X 10.6 or higher) and PC (32- and 64-bit, AAX and VST for Windows Vista, 7, and 8) compatible soft synth specializing in "distorted" sounds for electronic dance music production (and beyond) "RAW has a focus on ‘distorted’ sounds, so this means that it has a different signal setup, synthesizer-wise," says Rob Papen. "We have two oscillators and a filter, but what is new when compared to our other synthesizers is that you have an EQ that can be pre- or post-distortion. After that, there is also a waveshaper and dedicated distortion module with several types of distortion, as well as a low FI control. This is new to this synthesizer, and it’s part of the concept that the distortions are on the voice level, so it’s not just a case of a total signal going into the distortions, but rather each voice has its own waveshaper, distortion, and low FI." In addition to the X/Y fields found in the OSC 1...

SuperSync has announced a freely available download that provides all the files and installer millions of users need to play Minecraft on Mac OS X Yosemite. The SuperSync announcement comes after months of confusion and frustration for users playing Minecraft on Macs running Yosemite. To date users have been stymied by error notices recommending users install the legacy Java SE 6 runtime. This error message is confusing as Java 6 is no longer supported by Apple. The SuperSync fix for Minecraft on Yosemite is a DMG file that users can open and install. Gamers can drag the Minecraft application to their Applications directory, and begin playing Minecraft on Yosemite within a matter of minutes. You can download the SuperSync Fix for Minecraft on Yosemite at http://supersync.com/minecraft.php .

Piezo has introduced Skype Call Recorder 1.1.0, an update of its utility application for Mac OS X. It's designed to record your Skype conversations in automatic and manual modes. Skype Call Recorder can record both Skype-to-Skype calls, and calls to mobile phones and land lines. All you have to do is install the application and provide it with access to the Skype client. Skype Call Recorder can record both Skype to Skype calls, and calls to mobile phones and land lines. When working in automatic mode it doesn't require any actions from users while still allowing them to start and cancel recordings manually. The application records calls with contacts or group of contacts to different files. Skype Call Recorder 1.1.0 runs on Mac OS X 10.7 or later. It costs US$9.99 and is available worldwide through the Mac App Store in the Utilities category.

Here are some of the latest apps available at the Apple App Store for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Riada has announced Glooze. The game — free but offering in-app purchases — requires skill in memory, visual recognition and strategy. Dynamic shapes are generated completely algorithmically from random seeds from the seven included themes. Players swipe matching shapes together to form new higher level shapes. Tequila Games has introduced Earthcore: Shattered Elements, its free-to-play Card Crafting Game exclusively on the Canadian App Store. Card Crafting enables players to construct decks as well as experience a new kind of strategic gameplay. Gamers can fuse cards together in order to create new cards. Shelly Data Doodles has released Pyramid Pathways for the iPad. It's a $1.99, Egyptian-themed strategy board game. ShEk Tech has launched 100 Doors Brain Teasers 2. It's a free escape puzzle game in which the player has to use logic and puzzle solving skills to open a series of...

Dejal Systems (http://www.dejal.com/simon/) has announced Simon 4.0, an update to the server monitoring tool for Mac OS X. Simon checks web pages, FTP and DNS servers, local or remote ports or volumes, and many other kinds of services for changes or failures. Version 4.0 includes a new design, unifying all of the lists, logs and editors into a single window. It also introduces groups, unlimited tests. email services, a context filter, filter output in the preview, password protection and more. Dejal Simon 4.0 requires Mac OS X Yosemite. It's available for US$99; a demo is available for download. This is a paid upgrade for licensed Simon 3 users, with upgrades available for $49.

Feral Interactive says the historical strategy game Total War: SHOGUN 2 – Fall of the Samurai is now available for the Mac. Developed by Creative Assembly and published by SEGA for Windows, it's the standalone expansion pack for Total War: SHOGUN 2, brought to the Mac by Feral earlier this year. The game is available for download from a variety of digital partner sites worldwide including the Feral Store, Steam and the Mac App Store. Here's how the game is described: "It is 1864 and Japan is under intense western pressure to open itself to foreign trade, heightening tensions between the isolationist Imperial forces and those loyal to the more outward-looking shogunate. Players will choose a side and deploy their mastery of real-time battle tactics and turn-based campaign strategy as all around them Japan hurtles into the modern age, a time of urgent political reform, dramatic social changes and rapid industrialization." A premium version of the game containing all additional content...