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ExtraBITS for 26 January 2015

In this week’s collection of ExtraBITS links, you’ll find out how to watch the Super Bowl for free, see how iOS has evolved over the years, learn why you should upgrade from Leopard if you use Dropbox, discover why you should avoid MacKeeper, and read about which hard drives are the most reliable.

Cord Cutters: Watch the Super Bowl for Free — Good news, cord cutters! NBC will allow you to watch 11 hours of content on Super Bowl Sunday for free — no paid TV subscription required. The so-called “Super Stream Sunday” will begin at noon Eastern time on 1 February 2015, and will include the Super Bowl, the halftime show, pre- and post-game coverage, and an episode of “The Blacklist.” You can watch through NBCSports.com or the NBC Sports Live Extra app.

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Infographic Shows the Evolution of iOS — British online retailer 7dayshop has produced a long infographic showing the visual evolution of iOS from iPhone OS 1 (it took a few years to be called iOS) to iOS 8. Most notable are images of each version’s default home screen and the design changes across time for each of Apple’s main iOS apps. Hat tip to Khoi Vinh for the link!

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Dropbox Dropping Leopard — Bad news if you use Dropbox to sync with ancient Macs: Dropbox will no longer support Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard as of 18 May 2015. Users will still be able to use the Dropbox Web interface, but the Dropbox app (and thus Finder integration) will no longer work.

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Why You Should Avoid MacKeeper — You may have heard of the system maintenance utility MacKeeper, which claims to keep your Mac running smoothly. According to iMore’s Peter Cohen, who also works at an independent Apple reseller, MacKeeper is best avoided. Cohen calls out the company’s shady marketing tactics, the instability it can introduce to Macs, and how difficult it is to uninstall.

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Hard Drive Reliability: One Year Later — Last year, online backup service Backblaze released its internal data on hard drive reliability. The company has now updated its findings with some surprising results. In their new tests, 3 TB drives, especially those from Seagate, were dramatically less reliable than other capacities. The most reliable drives for the price were 4 TB drives from Seagate.

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