Because of the Designing Universal Accessible Web Resources Workshop and my being off on Friday there will be no news updates to MacVolPlace Thursday or Friday. See you back here on Monday.
Apple today announced an upgrade to its line of Power Mac G5 desktop computers, raising the dual-processor top-end system's speed from 2.5 to 2.7GHz. Power Mac G5s now ship in 2.0GHz, 2.3GHz and 2.7GHz dual-processor configurations for US$1,999, $2,499 and $2,999 respectively. The new systems include 512MB RAM, 16x "SuperDrive" optical drives and Mac OS X v10.4 "Tiger," ship this week.
You can use iSync to synchronize the Address Book contacts and iCal calendar and To Do information on your computer with the contacts, calendar, and to do list on your Palm OS device. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
We are all creatures of habit. But sometimes those habits aren't doing us any good. Macworld's panel of Mac superheroes will try to change that by sharing the tricks of their trade. In this second of five installments, their experts reveal their secrets for inbox efficiency.
Apple today announced that it has made its award-winning line of widescreen flat panel Cinema Displays more affordable than ever by reducing the price of the 20-inch model to just $799 and the 23-inch HD model to just $1,499. In addition, Apple's new 2.7 GHz Power Mac G5s and 1.67 GHz 17-inch PowerBooks now feature built-in support to directly drive Apple's groundbreaking 30-inch Cinema HD Display, saving customers hundreds of dollars.
Tomorrow the Office of Information Technology's Web Services Group and the Office of Disability Service are presenting a "Designing Universal Accessible Web Resources Workshop."
In its latest desperate attempt to control the media, and more specifically the presses, Apple has pulled all books published by John Wiley & Sons from its retail stores in protest of an unauthorized biography of Apple CEO Steve Jobs about to be released by the publisher. -- AppleInsider.
Manek Dubash of Techworld takes issue with Apple product marketing manager Brian Croll's statement: "There are no absolutes in security but we have done our utmost to ensure that there are no security issues outstanding." Dubash says "Croll's remarks, at the end of a demo that reveled in the coolness of the OS, were in direct contradiction to the facts, a sample of which shows Apple shipping products with known bugs left unfixed, and the Cupertino company taking three months to fix a major security hole."
ZDNN reports that a project called iPodder allows the syndication of content, including files, to iPods.
First, don't let anyone kid you that Apple is just into the music business with the iPod, or even into just the broader media and entertainment market. iPod puts Apple into the storage business too - and big time. Sure, Apple sells it as a music player, but my dentist knows better. iPod is portable storage disguised as a music player. -- Techworld
Cynthia Hughes at MacNETv2 writes, "Rarely do I ever become giddy over a piece of software, especially inexpensive shareware apps. Don't get me wrong; there is some incredible software out there for under $30 that makes your digital life more productive and/or fun. But, when you discover one that does so much, for so little, and is so much fun to use, you want to shout it from the rooftop. My shareware pick of the year is, without hesitation, Comic Life."
Yesterday we mentioned an article by Dan Knight, over at Low End Mac, which discusses the possibility of Apple making a laptop in the $500-$600 range for use in the education market. The article got the PBZone staff talking, as it has some very unorthodox suggestions, and a friend of the crew has worked in one school district with an iBook program for students. Continuing with our trend of considering future expansion of Apple's portable offerings, then, we thought we'd take a look at what Apple should, and what Apple shouldn't, do for the education market. -- The PowerBook Zone.
Apple's hyping up the new RSS reader in Safari; here are my thoughts after seeing a recent demo. -- O'Reilly Developer Weblogs.
Is your Mac ready for a smooth transition to Tiger? Maybe you're in need of a Spring housecleaning anyway. Check out these tidy tips from Derrick Story, then roll out the red carpet for Mac OS X 10.4. -- O'Reilly MacDevCenter.
The new version of Apple's operating system, Tiger, is due out Friday. Wired News' Daniel Terdiman got an -- unofficial sneak preview.
You'll find many features in the Mac OS X desktop similar to Mac OS 9, and many of your Apple applications are nearly the same. You'll also note significant differences that make working with Mac OS X easy and efficient. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
GarageBand 2.0.1 addresses issues with duplicating tracks, playhead snapping to grid, joining software instrument regions on adjacent tracks, making precise adjustments to volume and pan settings, and converting Software Instrument Apple Loops based on drum sounds into Real Instrument Apple Loops. It also addresses an issue where recorded Real Instrument regions may not properly adjust to changes in the project key.
Xsan Update 1.0.1 delivers overall improved reliability for Xsan and is recommended for all systems. It includes improvements for:
Credit Suisse First Boston this morning upgraded Apple from "neutral" to "outperform" on the belief that the company's next major boost will come from its success in the PC market, having just completed its second consecutive quarter of share gain. -- AppleInsider.
The Mac mini has gotten a new accessory: the miniMate. Designed to complement the new low-end Apple computer, the miniMate features three Firewire ports and four USB 2.0 ports, along with hard drive capacities of up to 400 GB.
The Hubble telescope has captured 700,000 images during its 15 years in orbit. Here are a few.
Fortune writer Peter Lewis notes that Tiger's Spotlight search feature isn't "bolted on" to the OS.
Some of the most knowledgeable Mac users let us in on a few of the secrets that help them make the most of their time. In this first of five installments, they talk about Web smarts. -- Macworld.
I have Dreamweaver MX 2002 v6.1.1842. Since installing Tiger some of the functions, i.e., insert image, cause Dreamweaver to crash.
Dave Nanian, who publishes the SuperDuper backup utility, writes in his Shirt Pocket weblog about wrestling a bizarre Mac OS X problem he calls "floating users."
Kelly Martin writes at Security Focus about the Mac's major security advantages over Windows. "Just as Windows users have become accustomed to 140,000 viruses, Apple users have become accustomed to none. It's a major cultural difference that admittedly, sometimes causes Apple users to do stupid things -- and get away with them. It's hard to describe the freedom of using a system with no malware known to have spread. It's liberating."
Now that wireless hotspots are fairly ubiquitous and users are connecting to wireless hubs in all sorts of public places, you also need to worry about securing your local machine from attacks when you're surfing at the coffee shop, the library, etc. -- Ars Technica.
JaySee at OziMac reviews the Elgato EyeHome digital media player. EyeHome allows you to access the digital content you have stored on your Mac - photos, music, video, movies - and enjoy it on your TV and home entertainment system.
This is the story of how TidBIT's Matt Neuburg's iMac G5 joined the legion of machines that recently have spontaneously failed, and how the problem was resolved.
"Though they only constitute one out of every 33 computer owners," writes Chris Taylor for TIME.com, "Mac users have long held a reputation for acting smugly superior to their Windows brethren. And with the release next week of Apple's latest operating system software, Tiger ($129), they'll have good reason."
Some people prefer to use a keyboard to execute commands rather than a mouse. Nancy Carroll Gravley offers the following list of keyboard commands that work with OS X for the benefit of everyone who prefers this option when using their Macs. -- The Mac Observer.
Spotlight hard drive indexing process happens after the first Mac OS X 10.4 startup. Spotlight indexing speed depends on the size of your storage volumes and the number of files contained therein. If you are experiencing some minor deficiencies after your first Mac OS X 10.4 boot, re-attempt the processes after the system has been active for an hour or so (or several hours in extreme cases) and check for persistence of the problems.
MacFixIt continues to note sluggish performance from Mail.app after installing Mac OS X 10.3.9. In fact, this has become one of the most widely reported problems with the update. The most common fixes recommend are emptying deleted mail, erase deleted messages' and 'erase junk mail' from the 'Mailbox' menu, Deleting Mail.app cache and .plist file and turning off SSL. The last of course I DO NOT recommend, no matter what.
Carnegie-Mellon University is the latest institution to fall victim to an infiltration at the hands of hackers in a string of incidents. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports: "The breach confirmed by officials in the Tepper School of Business is the latest in a recent string of campus computer break-ins nationally and the second since early March affecting Tepper. The intrusion occurred April 10 but was not disclosed until late yesterday so Tepper could notify potential victims, school spokesman Mike Laffin said. Officials offered few details but said it appeared someone from outside the university gained entry to Tepper's computers.
In this second article of a three-part series, Peter Seebach looks closer at AltiVec, the PowerPC SIMD unit. He explains further how you can effectively use AltiVec, discussing the choice between C and assembly, and shows some of the issues you'll face when trying to get the best performance out of an AltiVec processor. -- IBM.
Mac OS X Tiger's iChat AV has some hefty system requirements, requiring a dual-1GHz G4 or any G5 CPU to host a multi-party video conference-- leaving Apple laptop owners out in the cold (a 1GHz or dual-800MHz G4 or a G5 is required to participate).
It's Steve Jobs's plan to make this the Week of the Tiger. But Bill Gates and his minions at Microsoft are crying bull - specifically, a Longhorn steer. But Apple's is here now, and Jobs sees it as indicative of Apple's agility and drive. "Microsoft has followed our taillights for a long time," he says. "Maybe [in the '90s] we stopped innovating for a while, but now they've been copying OS X the same way they copied Mac." -- Newsweek.
AstroVision, which will launch an Earth Observation Satellite (EOS) in 2008, will be using Apple technology for processing data when received on Earth. -- SpaceDaily.
With all of the great gear announced at this year's NAB convention, held this week in Las Vegas , some of the more significant announcements haven't received nearly the attention they deserve. I number among these Apple's DVD Studio Pro 4, which even Apple itself seemed to want to downplay, focusing instead primarily on Final Cut Pro 5 and Soundtrack Pro. But DVD Studio Pro 4 is a dramatic, if not radical, advancement in authoring , one that will, no doubt, further propel the Mac platform to the forefront of DVD creation. -- Mac DVD Pro.
In Part One of a series on Some Lesser Known Features Of Tiger Dianna Stewart at MacNETv2 writes, "before you decide to buy Tiger or let it mature a bit before taking the plunge, we assembled some of the thoughts and conversations that have floated around the office over the past few weeks about various features we don't see being written about. There is more to Tiger than meets the eye, and the impact of this version of OS X will be greater than many people realize."
The liger is the world's largest big cat. An average male liger weighs over 900 pounds and standing almost 12 feet tall.
You could get hooked on Google Sightseeing, a Web site that takes you to the best tourist spots in the world via Google Maps' satellite imagery. Interesting locations include: Crater Lake (the deepest in the U.S.), the 32-story Memphis Pyramid Arena, Cape Canaveral and several Nuclear power plants. Kind of like looking at Sim City but real.
Digital Audio Essentials, O'Reilly's"comprehensive guide to creating, recording, editing, and sharing music and other audio," is out, and here's a 20-page sample chapter you can put to use today. -- O'Reilly Developer Weblogs.
Hard to believe, I am almost finished with teaching a full college course (one semester) -- my course at Tufts University entitled "Security, Privacy, and Politics in the Computer Age," offered by the Experimental College. It has certainly been an exhilarating few months, but it has been a very rewarding, memorable, and flattering experience. -- O'Reilly Developer Weblogs.
Should speech and video join writing and editing as the new freshman comp? Screencasting is a subgenre of film that can tell stories about the limited--but rapidly growing--slice of our lives that is mediated by software. Telling stories about software in this audiovisual way is something I believe technical people will increasingly want to do. To explain why, let's first discuss a more ancient storytelling mode: writing. -- O'Reilly Network.
John Gruber at Daring Fireball offers a translation from PR-speak to English of selected portions of Adobe's 'FAQ' regarding their acquisition of Macromedia.
Java Update for Mac OS X 10.3.9 will correct issues affecting some Java users following the installation of Mac OS X v10.3.9 Software Update.
At Apple Computer's annual shareholders meeting on Thursday CEO Steve Jobs took a swipe at Microsoft's upcoming "Longhorn" operating system and fired back at a group of environmentalists who recently attacked the company's policies on recycling. -- AppleInsider.
Take a trip back in time and see UT as it was in 1996, 2000, 2002 or 2003 or take a look at MacVolPlace in 2001, 2002 or 2003.
The full list of AppleCare Knowledge Base documents changed within the last seven (7) days.
In an editorial for the BBC published Thursday, Stephen Evans examined the culture of Mac owners and Apple fans. Dredging up the controversial "cult" word, the article compared the Manhattan Apple Store to a church, Macworld keynotes to church event, and even considered the idea that Mac users were comparable to Catholics, while Windows users are more reminiscent of Protestants. Mr. Evans resisted the urge to use these themes in a negative manner, however, and instead offered an interesting look at what most of those reading this take for granted, the Mac community.
The next time NASA launches a craft into space, it may receive many of its navigational instructions from programs run on the Mac. -- Macworld.
MacInTouch has a special report from Henry Norr covering Apple's annual stockholder meeting in Cupertino.
Secunia reports a "highly critical" RealPlayer security problem that afflicts the Mac, among other computing systems. You can Check for Updates in the RealPlayer application and download a patched version of the application.
If security concerns are your most important driver for desktop change, and Microsoft Office compatibility is your most significant barrier, then switching to Macs actually offers you the best of all possible worlds: Microsoft Office on Unix/Risc with a better GUI, longer product life, some cash savings and a performance bonus thrown in," writes columnist Paul Murphy.
I can not speak for every application but in my testing of Apple's next software release (Mac OS X 10.4) I have not had to upgrade any of my applications. I admit that if there is a free upgrade I always apply it but everything I was running on 10.3.8 is running under 10.4. I believe that part of the reason for this is that I did a clean install. Your mileage may vary.
Elwood "Woody" Norris pointed a metal frequency emitter at one of perhaps 30 people who had come to see his invention. The emitter -- an aluminum square -- was hooked up by a wire to a CD player. Norris switched on the CD player.
"There's no speaker, but when I point this pad at you, you will hear the waterfall," said the 63-year-old Californian.
And one by one, each person in the audience did, and smiled widely. -- Associated Press.
There are rumors swirling of imminent releases of speed bumped PowerMacs and iMacs. Some of the rumors go a bit farther than positing a mere increase in processor speed and intimate that the new PowerMacs will feature dual-core G5 chips. -- Apple Matters.
I updated my McAfee anti-virus software this morning and just for kicks and giggles I decided to run it to scan an clean my Mac running Tiger. The result, drum roll please, as always was, (as always) NADA. It took the software over thirty minutes to look at 314K files on my DP G5 and find nothing.
Since the Question Time from 3 weeks ago was so popular, Apple-X.net decided to showcase a plethora of tips for a specific application every once in a while. This week's showcased app is Safari. Here are a bunch of tips that could make your browsing experience more enjoyable. Note that while most of these tips will apply to all versions of Safari, it was specifically created with Safari 1.3 in mind, which comes with Mac OS X 10.3.9.
Consumer electronics companies continue to search for the killer multimedia app for consumers. It ain't gonna be the cell phone, argues TR editor Wade Roush. -- MIT Technology Review.
Corey Greenberg said he has received payments from Apple as well as Sony, Hewlett-Packard, Seiko Epson, Creative Technology and Energizer Holdings, after his private contracts were disclosed in a report by the Wall Street Journal. -- The Washington Post.
People are getting pretty freaky about the security of the files on their drives. Especially since they've learned that even though they "trashed" some of their most personal and sensitive files and thought they were gone forever, they're still recoverable. And not just recoverable by the FBI lab, but by your average junior-high student.
That's why Apple created a secure version of the Empty Trash command called (big surprise) Secure Empty Trash. Without going into too much techno-geek-speak, it deletes your file and writes over the drive space where it once lived so many times that agents from top-secret government agencies that we're not even supposed to know exist couldn't resurrect those files. In short, use Secure Empty Trash when you really want your files gone for good.
The full list of AppleCare Knowledge Base documents changed within the last seven (7) days.
On Wednesday, Apple won two Awards for Innovation in Media at the National Association of Broadcasters conference in Las Vegas. Apple's Final Cut Pro 5 won an award in the Content Creation category and QuickTime took honors in Content Management. -- Macworld.
Harmonic Vision on Wednesday announced Music Ace Maestro, a software application for Mac and Windows that is aimed at music educators working with elementary-aged students.
Download latest nightly builds If you are having problems with Firefox, Mozilla, or Camino under Mac OS X 10.3.9, make sure to download the latest nightly build of the problematic browser.
IT Enquirer has a brief overview of the Blu-Ray disc format, which Apple recently announced it would back.
This is a reprint for an article on MacInTouch. I reprint it here because it reinforces the point that UT's OIT Information Security Office has been making about having STRONG passwords.
Jeff Harrell describes a successful cracking attack against Mac OS X in a story posted to his weblog:
[Jeff Harrell] I wanted to let you know about a short anecdote I wrote over the weekend about an experience with a remote hacker from Argentina who used the POP service on a computer running Mac OS X Server to gain access. It's not that there's a bug in Mac OS X Server that needs to be fixed as much as there is just a design flaw in the POP protocol that your readers should be aware of.
Yesterday, starting at about 11:30 in the morning, a malicious individual from Argentina -- who, for sake of argument, we will call Little Timmy Timmytums -- started trying to find user accounts on my friends e-mail server by interrogating it through the POP protocol. Here's a sample from my friend's log file.
Apr 16 11:28:57 pop3d[5609]: badlogin: 168-226-129-131.speedy.com.ar[168.226.129.131] plaintext user "asdf" mail account is not enabled for this user
And so it went. Little Timmy started by trying to log in as gibberish accounts -- "asdf," "qwerty," "zxcvb," "12345," "temp," "oracle," "press" -- then moved on to real names. He started with "ryan," "peggy," "joe," "daniel" and "tyler," and then he stumbled upon an account that actually existed: "david." In just a few minutes, Little Timmy managed to guess the names of a dozen e-mail users at my friend's company. It was at that point that he started trying to guess passwords.
Now, technically speaking it's quite a challenge to crack an encrypted password. It can take days, even on a very fast computer. But when your e-mail user name is "hernando" and your password is "hernando," breaking into your account is much easier.
Long story short: Little Timmy from Argentina was able to gain access to my friend's e-mail server and delete the contents of an entire partition.
[Eric Taylor] What can we learn from this? Mostly various lessons related to good server administration, starting with use of the Authentication tab in Server Admin application. In Server Admin, select the Open Directory->Settings->Authentication tab, and make sure to set at least a minimum password length of 6 and check the box for "Must differ from account name". Choosing longer "short" usernames when creating accounts and possibly not assigning mail accounts for Administrative users are also steps in the right direction.
So, is your Mac's password a strong one? If not, why not?
Mobility Electronics today announced Apple will begin selling the iGo EverywherePower 3500 Series power adapter with an interchangeable tip for use on the iPod portable music player. Beginning in the second quarter of 2005, the EverywherePower 3500 Series is expected to be available from the Apple Store Online and in its retail stores.
Simon Brown's weblog talks about his experience with Virtual PC for Mac. I think for light work, VPC is going to be a really useful addition to my Mac. Being able to restart Windows and keep working in OS X is kind of fun but by far the most reassuring aspect is knowing that all of the usual Appley goodness is just a single press of the Apple key away, even when running VPC in full screen mode.
Finally a good use for all those old iMacs that many organizations have laying around collecting dust. The University of North Dakota at Grand Forks has set up a 5 node (4+1 controller) iMac beowulf cluster, which is appropriately named Skittles, and is running PPC Yellowdog Linux, with MPICH 1.2.6 cluster message passing software.
There is an article on OSNews Rich Wareham wrote about how the guy behind Desktop Manager goes about reverse engineering APIs from Mac OS X with a brand new example not revealed anywhere else.
NewsForge interviews the Bastille project lead Jay Beale about Bastille's cool new assessment feature, which reports and scores Linux security and -- as always -- makes Linux lockdown super-easy. Available for many distros and Mac OS X, too. Best of all, it's free and open source.
All right, I admit it. The Mac is so much prettier and nicer than my PC that already I can tell that I'm going to use for just about everything from now on. -- John Scalzi.
Security Update 2005-004 delivers a number of security enhancements and is recommended for all Macintosh users
Garage Band Jam Pack 4 (1.0.1) will update your version of Jam Pack 4.
Mac maker reaches deal with second of three men accused of posting developer copies of OS X release on file-sharing sites. -- c|net.
After installing Mac OS X 10.3.1 Update or later, you won't be able to use the Mac OS X Panther Install disc--part of the Mac OS X Up-To-Date program--to completely reinstall the operating system.
If you have Mac OS X 10.3 Panther retail CDs, DVD, or Restore discs, you can simply reinstall Mac OS X. You don't need to follow the steps in this document.
This document explains build versions, such as "Build 4K78," which appear in the About This Mac window, Apple System Profiler, or the Startup Disk 9.2 control panel.
When changing Ownership & Permissions in the Info window, clicking "Apply to enclosed items" copies only permissions. It does not affect the owner or group setting. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
Does Mac Help Viewer quit unexpectedly when you try to use it from within an application? Learn what you can do if this happens to you.
Sometimes, Mac OS X 10.3 Panther Calculator results may include "rounding errors". Choose a lower Precision setting from the View menu to avoid this issue in the main Calculator window. [I do not see this in "Tiger." -mam] -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
Want to send a fax to several recipients? Mac OS X Panther makes it easy. Note: This document is about Mac OS X 10.3's built-in fax feature--the suggestions might not apply to third-party fax software. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
Learn how to make sure your faxes get sent. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
My son experienced the 10.3.9 and Java Glitch described here yesterday, on his G3 iMac. He applied the workaround recommended by Apple and it fixed the problem.
Regarding how Mac OS X saves files, this Macworld article explains the frustration caused by Panther's Save dialog box and why it does what it does.
Apple's reach extends well beyond digital music players and laptops. They are the stars of NAB's humming South Hall. Remember that "HD" thing Steve mentioned a while back? -- O'Reilly Developer Weblogs.
Todd had no intention of giving up his Linux and Windows boxes to become a "Mac switcher." But he had heard good things about OS X, so the Mac mini presented the opportunity for him to become a Mac-tryer. He details his experiences here. -- O'Reilly MacDevCenter.
After many months (years for some early adopters) of waiting, users are finally able to see the light of day for Markspace's, MissingSync for the HipTop. T
