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Mac: You can find your Apple accessory’s battery life buried in your System Preferences, but if you’re looking for a quick and easy way to see how much juice they have left, Battery Status is an app that stuffs that info right in your menu bar. More »

OS X Mountain Lion brought with it a world of new keyboard shortcuts and trackpad gestures that make working with your Mac faster and easier. We’re still getting used to many of them, but here are some of our favorites right out of the gate that you should definitely learn. More »

Windows (On a Mac): If you’re running Windows on your killer Mac hardware, then you’ve probably noticed that the trackpad isn’t quite as smooth and feature-filled as it is in OS X. Trackpad++ Brings more gestures, better scrolling, and lots more to Mac trackpads in Windows 7. More »

Readers offer their best tips on removing Android battery covers, seeing which friends have actually quit Facebook, and improving your Windows trackpad with a minimal tweak. More »

Apple on Tuesday released the first software update for the Retina Display MacBook Pro to fix possible trackpad input issues a little over 24 hours after the new machine was debuted on Monday.

The upcoming Windows 8 operating system has some serious challenges ahead of it. In changing how Windows has fundamentally worked since Windows 95, some consumers are looking at this new OS and thinking it’s too radical a change.

But in playing with the just-launched Windows 8 Release Preview on a laptop with still-in-beta gesture controls, I’m starting to like Windows 8 better and beginning to see how Microsoft could convince more people to adopt it.

Release Preview is the next-to-last version of the OS that developers and the public will be able to try out before the full Windows 8 version launches. If you’ve read about the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, then you know what you’re getting with Release Preview for the most part. Instead of unveiling sweeping changes this time around, Release Preview is all about refinement and subtle improvements. Changes include Internet Explorer 10 having Adobe Flash, new Bing Metro-style apps, Zune Pass integration, and social sharing.

As much as those changes are welcome in Release Preview, my favorite feature hands-down is gesture controls. I’ve been testing still-in-beta gesture controls on a Samsung Series 9 notebook running Windows 8 for about a day so far, and it adds a lot the experience.

For example, moving your finger from the left edge of a trackpad can let your scroll through all recently used programs. If I open a web browser, a streaming music app, a photo-editing app, and a word-processing app, I can just scroll through those quickly from the left edge, making productivity and multi-tasking fast.

If you move your finger from the right edge, you can bring up the right-hand sidebar for universal search, sharing, device access, and PC settings. Essentially, this makes doing basic tasks in Windows 8 easier.

When you are inside Metro style applications and swipe down from the top edge of a touchpad, you get a menu that helps you navigate the app. Inside the new Bing Sports application (which is quite nice), you can select between Favorite Teams, NFL, NBA, NHL, and more. Or inside the Bing Travel App, you can choose destinations, flights, hotels, and “best of web.”

It might seem like a small step to add gesture controls on the touchpad, but the change makes navigation way easier and has made me a bit more bullish on Windows 8.

Unfortunately, the beta gesture controls aren’t available to the public just yet. But, Microsoft is clearly working on it and I have no doubt it will help sell Windows 8 on laptops. Microsoft will also continue to work on getting manufacturers to support gesture controls by adding advanced-enough touchpads to laptops.

Check out the full Release Preview Gallery below to get a better taste of the new OS:

Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat

Mac: Selecting a large block of text with a Macbook’s trackpad is kind of a pain and doesn’t always work that well. SlideMode is a simple little app that adds a keyboard shortcut to make selecting large blocks of text as easy as a swipe. More »

We previously learned that they key to effective home design is a nice arrangement of collections and images that are important to you. Today’s featured workspace is a great example, offering travel maps on the walls and a collections of souvenirs. Everything else is pretty simple. The desk is this nice and inexpensive MICKE desk from IKEA, a pair of LaCie Speakers, a MacBook with Apple’s Bluetooth keyboard and trackpad, and a pen. Simple, nice, and personalized. More »

If you’re a fan of eating and playing around on the internet you’ve probably covered your trackpad in a thick layer of greasy finger-residue from snacking on chips. Reddit user LukeTheAlright slaps down a post-it note over his trackpad to keep the grease from soaking in. More »

Windows: If you’re colorblind or just need to constantly know what colors are on your screen the free program Colorblind Assistant might be for you. The program tells you whatever color is displayed at the current location of your mouse/trackpad pointer. More »