mac

A match made in heaven: Apple's MacBook Air and Iomega's eGo Helium

Earlier this year, we took a close look at Iomega's eGo line of portable hard drives. We tested both the brown leather eGo and the camo eGo, with superb results: we liked both Iomega's Drop Guard design that protects the drives from drops up to a meter above the floor, and the quick transfer speeds.

Now, Iomega is taking the drives' aesthetic value one step further by introducing the 320GB eGo Helium. The drive is just .63 inches, and its sleek exterior casing is anodized silver to match perfectly with Apple's MacBook Air. Inside the chassis, you'… Read more

Apple gaining North American notebook share

Apple's picking up notebook market share faster than any of its competitors in its home continent, according to DisplaySearch.

Market research figures released Wednesday have Apple's share of the North American market for notebooks, up from 6.6 percent to 10.6 percent in the second quarter of this year, compared to last year. Every other major notebook maker's market share was either flat or down, compared to the previous year, with market leaders Hewlett-Packard and Dell picking up just 0.3 percent and 0.2 percent, respectively, and Acer's share plunging 4.2 percent, including … Read more

A funny thing happened on the way to the file system

When Apple's MacBook Air first came out, I was woefully unimpressed. Sure, it was plenty pretty, but it lacked the thing I needed most: a big hard drive.

Well, a funny thing has happened in the past year. I've stopped using my hard drive.

Yes, I still install applications, all of which require hard-drive space. And yes, I still use Handbrake to rip DVDs to my hard drive to watch on long flights.

But I've also started keeping all of my e-mail on my company's Zimbra server. But it's not just e-mail: I keep all … Read more

Gears for Safari now officially available

Google has finally made the Safari-friendly version of Gears available. Savvy Mac users could have downloaded and installed a rougher version of it as early as three weeks ago, however only Monday did the company announce a new version that's been readied for mass consumption.

Like its predecessor, the Mac version of Gears requires version 3.1.1 or higher of Safari, or version 1.5 or higher of Firefox, along with a machine running the most recent build of OS X 10.4 (Tiger) or 10.5.3 (Leopard). It offers the same offline-goodness as its Windows counterpart, … Read more

Mac OS 10.5.5 packs fixes for slew of security flaws

With the release of Mac OS X 10.5.5 on Monday, the Cupertino, Calif., computer company provided patches for almost three dozen software flaws. Some of the fixes are specific to Apple features, such as image processing and Finder. Other fixes are updates to various open-source projects including Bind, ClamAV, OpenSSH, and Ruby.

Version 10.5.5 can be obtained from the Apple Software Downloads page.

ATS This patch affects users of Mac OS X v10.4.11, Mac OS X Server v10.4.11, Mac OS X v10.5 through v10.5.4, and Mac OS X Server v10.5 through v10.5.4. The update addresses the issue in CVE-2008-2305 in which viewing a document containing a maliciously crafted font may lead to arbitrary code execution. Apple credits Chris Ries of Carnegie Mellon University Computing Services for reporting this vulnerability.

BIND This patch affects users of Mac OS X v10.4.11, Mac OS X Server v10.4.11, Mac OS X v10.5 through v10.5.4, and Mac OS X Server v10.5 through v10.5.4. The update upgrades users to BIND version 9.4.2-P2, which addresses performance issues associated with BIND version 9.4.2-P1.

ClamAV This patch affects users of Mac OS X Server v10.4.11 and Mac OS X Server v10.5 through v10.5.4. The update addresses the vulnerabilities detailed within CVE-2008-1100, CVE-2008-1387, CVE-2008-0314, CVE-2008-1833, CVE-2008-1835, CVE-2008-1836, CVE-2008-1837, CVE-2008-2713, and CVE-2008-3215 by updating Mac OS users to ClamAV version 0.93.3.

Directory Services This patch affects users of Mac OS X v10.5 through v10.5.4 and Mac OS X Server v10.5 through v10.5.4. The update addresses the vulnerability detailed in CVE-2008-2329, in which a person with access to the log-in screen may be able to list user names. Apple says an information disclosure issue exists in Log-in Window when it is configured to authenticate users with Active Directory. "By supplying wildcard characters in the user name field, a list of user names from Active Directory may be displayed."

Directory Services II This patch affects users of Mac OS X Server v10.4.11, Mac OS X Server v10.5 through v10.5.4. The update addresses the insecure file operation vulnerability within CVE-2008-2330, in which a local user may obtain the server password if an OpenLDAP system administrator runs slapconfig. … Read more

Crazy Apple rumor of the day: New MacBooks already shipping

We usually hate acting as an echo chamber for the viciously self-inflating Internet rumor mill, but this one is so gloriously out there that we can't help but weigh in.

Usually respectable financial outlet Barron's (owned by Dow Jones & Company, after all), caught our eye with the following report:

Citigroup's Richard Gardner asserted in a research note this morning that..."field checks" have confirmed that shipments of new MacBooks have begun; he says the most distinctive features of the new MacBooks are "very thin aluminum casing, an LED-backlit display and an aggressive entry-level … Read more

Apple releases Mac OS X 10.5.5

Apple has released the latest version of Leopard, with bug fixes and security updates accompanying the fifth update to the operating system.

The company sent over a list of improvements about 30 minutes ago, and the full list of fixes and improvements should be up on Apple's Web site any moment with the update itself popping up in Software Update. Two notable updates from the "General" section were a fix for the video playback problems that affected some MacBook Air owners, as well as a puzzling bug "in which some Macs could unexpectedly power on at … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 809: Best Buy, Napster. What, now?

Don Reisinger joins the cast today for a rousing discussion that goes something like this: "Best Buy bought Napster." "Really?" "Yeah, I know, right? Weird." "Huh. Yeah. Wonder why they did that." "Dunno." It's a great show. You'll love it. (No, seriously! Don rants more than I do!)

Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 809

Best Buy nabs Napster for $121 million http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10041431-93.html http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080915-best-buy-eyes-apple-microsoft-with-napster-purchase.html

In-flight Internet: Web sites, but not phone calls http://blogs.zdnet.com/gadgetreviews/?p=353… Read more

Google Chrome...is Windows inside, which may be a strategic error

In a fascinating post, Scott Hanselman pulls apart the Google Chrome browser to discover Windows inside or, rather, Windows Template Library (WTL). WTL was open sourced by Microsoft back in 2004 and went somewhat silent until now, when it popped up in Google's open-source browser.

Hanselman calls out the reason for WTL's inclusion:

Chrome uses abstraction libraries to draw the GUI on other non-Windows platforms, but for now, what sits underneath part of ChromeViews is good ol' WTL. Makes sense, too. Why not use a native library to get native speeds? They are using WTL 8.0 build 7161 from what I can see.

Speed matters, and getting top speeds on Windows may require using native Windows libraries, graciously offered by Microsoft back in 2004 as open source.

However, not everything came free of charge (and effort) from Microsoft, as Hanselman points out, and it appears from a recent PCWorld article by Neil McAllister that the effort to bring Chrome to the Mac and Linux will be even harder. Hanselman writes:… Read more