Apple has issued an update for its Mail e-mail client program in OS X Mavericks. The update addresses a number of outstanding bugs that have been affecting users who have installed the new OS, specifically involving managing messages in Gmail accounts. In addition, the update fixes problems with inaccurate unread message counts.

This update is likely a welcome one for those experiencing these problems, but Apple does issue a few words of caution for those who are eager to install the update.

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First, as with any software update, Apple recommends you make a full backup of your system, preferably using Time Machine, but you can also use a system cloning tool if you have one. In addition Apple warns rather generally that this update may have unexpected results if you have third-party software installed that affects it or the operating system. Examples of such software could be third-party spam filters and plug-ins for Mail and related services, even firewal... [Read more]

Gigabyte's Gsmart Simba SX-1 Android phone will come with Mozilla's Firefox browser preinstalled.

Mozilla has a new way to persuade people to use the Android version of its Firefox browser: get hardware makers to preinstall it.

On Thursday, Mozilla announced that new Kobo Arc tablets and the Gigabyte GSmart Simba SX1 smartphone will have the nonprofit group's mobile browser built in.

That could be helpful to Mozilla, which is trying hard to extend the browser influence it has on personal computers to the fast-growing mobile realm where Apple's iOS and Google's Android browsers dominate usage statistics.

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But it would be more helpful if Mozilla could get its browser on higher-profile devices -- those from top-end Android device makers like Samsung, HTC, ... [Read more]

A Microsoft anime video promoting Internet Explorer gave a nod to two JavaScript speed tests, Mozilla's Kraken and Google's Octane.

Google has updated its Octane speed test for measuring JavaScript performance, expanding its scope and rounding out the benchmark with computing tasks from rival browser makers Mozilla and Microsoft.

With the expanded scope, Google tries to measure not just execution performance but also delays that can trip up Web pages and Web apps, Google said in its Octane 2.0 announcement Wednesday. Specifically, it added new tests to gauge sluggishness from the initial compilation of JavaScript programs into machine-executable code and from the memory-scrubbing operation called garbage collection.

More politically interesting is Octane 2.0's addition of Microsoft's Typescript compiler and the zlib compression software from Mozilla's Emscripten project. The latter is particularly interesting since it's affiliated with Mozilla's asm.js project to dramatically improve JavaScript performance by optimizing browsers for a particular subset of the language.

Benchmarks appe... [Read more]