According to a post on the Bugtraq newsgroup, Apple has a job listing for a security expert.
The winning candidate would "help provide guidance on security topics to all groups across Apple, and help teams design security into new cutting-edge features and technologies," and also "help analyze potential security issues and work with groups across Apple for timely resolution."
Apple has come under increased scrutiny by the criminal hacker communities in the last year, and the was the target of a January's "month of Apple bugs." In 2006, it issued more Mac OS security patches than in previous years.
More telling is the requirement that the candidate "create training for development teams on security concepts and coding practices." This sounds like Bill Gates' call a few years ago for Trustworthy Computing at Microsoft.
VMware showed off some of the fruits of its Fusion project to bring its virtualization software to Apple Computer's Intel-based Macs on Tuesday at the Macworld show in San Francisco.
The software lets Linux, Windows, Solaris and NetWare operating systems run in compartments called virtual machines on Apple systems, a feature handy for using software not available on Apple machines or for programmers or testers who need to use multiple products.
The final version of the software will ship in the summer, at which point VMware will announce prices, the company said. The beta version is freely downloadable from the EMC subsidiary's Web site.
Adobe Systems, whose design software is used on Apple and Windows machines, is one company trying out Fusion. "My team maintains a vast library of VMware virtual machine images for developing and testing our software products, and because many of the engineers involved are Mac users, the ability to leverage our existing library was a compelling reason to evaluate the product," said Blake Garner, an Adobe lab systems engineer, in a statement.
"OpenDarwin was meant to be a development community and a proving ground for fixes and features for Mac OS X and Darwin, which could be picked up by Apple for inclusion in the canonical sources," project leaders said Tuesday at the site. "OpenDarwin has failed to achieve its goals in four years of operation, and moves further from achieving these goals as time goes on. For this reason, OpenDarwin will be shutting down."
There are several reasons for the shutdown: "The original notions of developing the Mac OS X and Darwin sources has not panned out. Availability of sources, interaction with Apple representatives, difficulty building and tracking sources, and a lack of interest from the community have all contributed to this."
The fizzling contrasts with the hopes Apple Computer Chief Executive Steve Jobs expressed when he announced Darwin in 1999. "If we all work on this together, we can make a better product than any one company by themselves...The open-source community is going to be excited about it," Jobs said.
While OpenDarwin may have been a dead end, some Mac OS X components, such as the FreeBSD operating system, remain active open-source projects.
KOffice, an element of the KDE interface software widely used with Linux, now supports the OpenDocument format and uses it by default. The change comes with version 1.5, released Tuesday, project organizers said.
ODF, a standard gaining prominence as a rival to Microsoft's proprietary file formats, is the format used by the dominant open-source application suite, OpenOffice.org.
ODF is used in KWord, KSpread and KPresenter, but work remains. "Great care has been taken to ensure interoperability with other office software that supports OpenDocument, most notably OpenOffice.org. We acknowledge, however, that the ODF support and interoperability is not yet perfect," project organizers said in a statement.
KOffice 1.5 also features the debut of Kexi 1.0, a personal database program, and introduces a scripting language that can automate KOffice software. KOffice 2.0 is due near the end of 2006 or early 2007 and will employ KDE 4.0 components designed to make it easy to move applications to Windows and Mac OS X, organizers said.
KDE competes with GNOME, but work is under way to bridge between the two projects.
Apple Computer's lanyard headphones make wearing the iPod Nano as easy as wearing a necklace.
Wearing the Nano this way seems natural, like it belongs there. I tend to forget it is there. That is, until it gets soaked when I lean over the sink to wash my hands or when I get a drink from a bubbler.
An antidote to this is the OtterBox case for the iPod Nano, which can keep the Nano safe from the elements like wind, rain, sand and the rogue bubbler. The case with the included lanyard can be worn skinny dipping without worrying that the water will damage your Nano.
The lightweight protective case has a clamshell design with a rubber lining. The Nano slips inside and clicks onto the sealed stereo mini jack. The case is waterproof for up to three feet of water--thus, no scuba diving allowed.
The OtterBox is a little bulky, but that has to be expected since it is waterproof. The case features a hard plastic cover to shield the display and a membrane that allows touch access to the click wheel. A removable belt-clip is also included. The iPod has to be removed from the case when charging or syncing since the dock connector is inaccessible when the Nano is sealed in the case.
If you're going to use the OtterBox skinny dipping, get some waterproof headphones as well.
The OtterBox for the iPod Nano sells for $39. It is 5.13-by-2.25-by-1 inches. OtterBoxes are available in other sizes for the iPod Video, Shuffle, Mini and so on.
OS X contains unpatched security flaws of a type that were fixed on alternative operating systems more than a decade ago, claims a security researcher credited with finding numerous bugs in Apple Computer's increasingly popular platform.
Neil Archibald, a senior security researcher at software security specialists Suresec, told ZDNet Australia that as Apple's market share increases, OS X will come under more scrutiny by security researchers, who he believes will find plenty of "low-hanging bugs."
Archibald, who has already discovered a number of security vulnerabilities in OS X, speculates that should Apple's market share continue to increase, users of the platform could actually end up less secure than users of other platforms such as Microsoft Windows or Linux.
"The only thing which has kept Mac OS X relatively safe up until now is the fact that the market share is significantly lower than that of Microsoft Windows or the more common UNIX platforms.Â? If this situation was to change, in my opinion, things could be a lot worse on Mac OS X than they currently are on other operating systems, regarding security vulnerabilities," Archibald said.
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Booting other operating systems on Apple Computer's new Intel-based Mac is tough, but Red Hat hopes they'll make it happen with Linux.
Red Hat spokeswoman Gillian Farquhar confirmed last week that the company hopes to help its developers figure out how to get Linux working on the new Macs. "That's definitely happening," Farquhar said of the effort, though it hasn't gone far because the Linux seller doesn't yet have any of Apple's new machines.
Fedora, Red Hat's free version of Linux geared for hobbyists, already runs on earlier Apple computers using PowerPC processors.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Sun Microsystems Chief Executive Scott McNealy consistently credits Apple Computer for good marketing--to the point where he listed what he believes will be his own company's glorious iPod moments. But McNealy said Wednesday believes the iPod itself will be replaced in coming years by music stored in the network.
"Your iPod is like your home answering machine. It's a temporary thing," McNealy said at a panel discussion featuring reminiscences by Sun's four cofounders at the Computer History Museum here. "It's going to be hard to sell a lot of iPods five years from now when every cell phone is going to be able to automatically access your library wherever you are."
Of course, Sun has a vested interest in the view: It hopes to sell the hardware and software that would be used for such a networked service.
McNealy doesn't use his iPod, he said, but it's nothing personal.
"I just never have time. With four boys, age 4,6,8 and 10, if you don't hear anything you've got to be scared. Every moment on an airplane I am sleeping or reading hard copy. When I'm in the car I'm listening to KCBS and getting angry. My wife doesn't like it when I come home and put on my iPod," McNealy said, pantomiming the act as he called out "Hi honey" and performed a brief seated boogie.
Apple sold 14 million iPods in the fourth quarter of 2005, the company said Tuesday.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Apple Computer's processor preferences are in the limelight as the computer maker on Tuesday began selling models using Intel processors instead of the PowerPC chips from IBM and Freescale Semiconductor that have been the computers' preferred brains since the mid-1990s. But another processor choice came to light Wednesday when Sun Microsystems cofounder Bill Joy revealed that Sun's Sparc chips were in the running during the last Apple switch, when it was moving off Motorola's 680x0 family.
"We got very close to having Apple use Sparc. That almost happened," Joy said at a panel discussion featuring reminiscences by Sun's four cofounders at the Computer History Museum here.
Apple chose PowerPC, though, which along with one Apple acquisition attempt and two Sun-Apple merger attempts were a "personal disappointment" to Joy.
update Duke University students who wish to tune in to radio shows "The World" and "Studio 360" will soon be able to so for free on their iPods. The university has struck a deal with Public Radio International to provide faculty members with segments of the shows for use in their classrooms. The trial program will run from September to December.
Currently, file downloads of the shows are only legally available for a fee. For instance, one episode costs $3.95 on Audible.com, or you can sign up for a weekly subscription at a discount.
Duke garnered much attention last year for handing out free iPods to all incoming freshman. Since then, the program has been cut back to include only those students who are taking certain classes.
Correction: According to James Todd from Duke University's News Office, "This American Life" will not be available for download, only for streaming.
