New and Noteworthy: Micromat, Publishing Your Mac's Serial Number; Microsoft's Allchin: Why I said I'd buy a Mac; more

Micromat, Publishing Your Mac's Serial Number O'Grady's PowerPage reports that Micromat slipped some broad and sweeping anti-piracy measures into a TechToolPro update awhile back. "TechToolProtection, the daemon that constantly runs on every Mac installed with TechToolPro, does much more than "protect" your Mac, as its name implies. TechToolProtection starts a Bonjour service that is constantly broadcasting critical pieces of information about your Mac to other systems... information that anyone on a network subnet can read." More.

Microsoft's Allchin: Why I said I'd buy a Mac The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports on the statement "I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft," made by Windows chief Jim Allchin in a January 2004 e-mail to Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates and a subsequent hedge. "Now, in a blog post responding to the coverage, Allchin cautions against taking the statement out of context and writes that he 'was being purposefully dramatic' to make a case for a major overhaul of the Windows development process. In the 2004 e-mail, Allchin wrote that he saw 'lots of random features and some great vision,' but he warned that the Windows teams had lost their way." More.

Authorize More Than Five Computers for iTunes Wired Blogs reports that someone finally figured out how to authorize songs and videos purchased on iTunes on more than five computers. "On both Macs and Windows PCs, the authorization data lives in a hidden directory: /Users/Shared/SC Info/ on a Mac, and C:Documents and SettingsAll UsersApplication DataApple ComputeriTunesSC Info. on Windows. To pull the trick, you back up the directory, de-authorize a given computer and then restore the directory. This will reauthorize your computer without taking up one of your authorization slots." More.

Previously on MacFixIt

• Aperture 1.5.2 released: "overall reliability and performance" enhancements
• Apple: MacBook Pro, Intel-based iMacs may become unresponsive in target disk
• Mac Pro EFI Firmware Update 1.1 (#4): Another potential fix for problems applying

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