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Comments: 505 +-   Microsoft Responds To "Like OS X" Comment on Thursday November 12, @07:57AM

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday November 12, @07:57AM
from the imitation-is-the-greatest-form-of-flattery dept.
macosx
Z80xxc! writes "After a comment by a Microsoft employee claiming in an interview that 'what we [Microsoft] have tried to do with Windows 7... is create a Mac look and feel in terms of graphics,' the Windows 7 team has issued an official rebuttal, saying that the comment came from an employee who was 'not involved in any aspect of designing Windows 7,' and that it was 'inaccurate and uninformed.'"
Read More... 505 comments story

Comments: 610 +-   OS X Update Officially Kills Intel Atom Support on Wednesday November 11, @08:54AM

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday November 11, @08:54AM
from the hackintosh-smackintosh dept.
hardhack
bonch writes "After apparently disabling and then re-enabling support for the Atom chipset in test builds of their 10.6.2 update, Apple has officially disabled support for the chipset in the final update. This makes it impossible for OSX86 users to run 10.6.2 on their Atom-based netbooks until a modified kernel shows up."
Read More... 610 comments story

Comments: 275 +-   Apple Not Disabling OS X Atom Support After All on Thursday November 05, @04:32PM

Posted by timothy on Thursday November 05, @04:32PM
from the If-you-like-that-sort-of-thing dept.
macosx
bonch writes "Contrary to previous reports, Atom chip support is working fine in the latest 10C535 build of OS X 10.6.2. Apple's EULA still states that OS X is licensed to run only on Apple hardware, but it looks like OSX86 hackers can breathe easy ... for now."
Read More... 275 comments story

Comments: 1012 +-   Mac OS X 10.6.2 Will Block Atom Processors on Monday November 02, @06:49PM

Posted by kdawson on Monday November 02, @06:49PM
from the caveat-hackor dept.
macosx
Archeopteryx writes "According to Wired's 'Gadget Lab' blog, Snow Leopard's next update, OS X 10.6.2, will block the Atom processor and will disable many 'Hackintosh' netbooks. It is indeed true that OS X will run just fine on some netbooks if you install the right drivers and ktexts, but Apple's EULA has always specified that the license was applicable only to Apple hardware. There have always been processor types specified in OS X and that have to be worked around now for those who want to use an Atom or similar non-Apple-adopted processor, so this is likely no more than a hiccup on the road for the OSX86 crowd. But, it raises the question: is it time for Apple to sell a license for non-Apple hardware — priced accordingly of course — for those people who want OS X on platform types Apple has not yet adopted, like the netbook? The only reason OS X is not on my Eee is that I want to comply with the licensing terms. I could just pay for a license to use it."
Read More... 1012 comments story

Comments: 865 +-   Apple Says Booting OS X Makes an Unauthorized Copy on Sunday November 01, @02:39PM

Posted by timothy on Sunday November 01, @02:39PM
from the slice-the-ram-nodes-to-find-copy-four dept.
macosx
recoiledsnake writes "Groklaw has an extensive look at the latest developments in the Psystar vs. Apple story. There's a nice picture illustrating the accusation by Apple that Psystar makes three unauthorized copies of OS X. The most interesting, however, is the last copy. From Apple's brief: 'Finally, every time Psystar turns on any of the Psystar computers running Mac OS X, which it does before shipping each computer, Psystar necessarily makes a separate modified copy of Mac OS X in Random Access Memory, or RAM. This is the third unlawful copy.' Psystar's response: 'Copying a computer program into RAM as a result of installing and running that program is precisely the copying that Section 117 provides does not constitute copyright infringement for an owner of a computer program. As the Ninth Circuit explained, permitting copies like this was Section 117's purpose.' Is Apple seriously arguing that installing a third party program and booting OS X results in copyright infringement due to making a derivative work and an unauthorized copy?"
Read More... 865 comments story

Comments: 557 +-   Apple Blurs the Server Line With Mac Mini Server on Tuesday October 20, @03:36PM

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday October 20, @03:36PM
from the so-easy-a-child-can-set-it-up dept.
macosx
Toe, The writes "Today Apple announced several new hardware offerings, including a new Mac mini, their (almost-literally) pint-sized desktop computer. In a bizarre twist, they are now also offering a Mac mini with Mac OS X Server bundled in, along with a two hard drives somehow stuffed into the tiny package. Undoubtedly, many in the IT community will scoff at the thought of calling such a device a 'server.' However, with the robust capabilities of Snow Leopard Server (a true, if highly GUI-fied, UNIX server), it seems likely to find a niche in small businesses and even enthusiasts' homes. The almost completely guided setup process means that people can set up relatively sophisticated services without the assistance of someone who actually knows what they are doing. What the results will be in terms of security, etc. will be... interesting to watch as they develop." El Reg has a good roundup article of the many announcements; the multi-touch Magic Mouse is right up there on the techno-lust-inspiration scale.
Read More... 557 comments story

Comments: 214 +-   Snow Leopard Snubs Document Creator Codes on Tuesday September 08, @10:46AM

Posted by timothy on Tuesday September 08, @10:46AM
from the mind-the-new-mantrap-in-the-living-room dept.
macosx
adamengst writes "In this TidBITS article, Matt Neuburg explores how Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard changes how the operating system handles preferred application bindings, dropping support for the creator codes that have been part of the Mac OS from the early days. He also explains how to work around the problem, if you want, for instance, text documents created with BBEdit to open in BBEdit even when TextEdit is the default handler for text files."
Read More... 214 comments story

Comments: 158 +-   How Snow Leopard Cut ObjC Launch Time In Half on Sunday September 06, @09:33AM

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday September 06, @09:33AM
from the paring-down dept.
macosx
MBCook writes "Greg Parker has an excellent technical article on his blog about the changes to the dynamic linker (dyld) for Objective-C that Snow Leopard uses to cut launch time in half and cut about 1/2 MB of memory per application. 'In theory, a shared library could be different every time your program is run. In practice, you get the same version of the shared libraries almost every time you run, and so does every other process on the system. The system takes advantage of this by building the dyld shared cache. The shared cache contains a copy of many system libraries, with most of dyld's linking and loading work done in advance. Every process can then share that shared cache, saving memory and launch time.' He also has a post on the new thread-local garbage collection that Snow Leopard uses for Objective-C."
Read More... 158 comments story

Comments: 276 +-   A Different Perspective On Snow Leopard's Exchange Support on Saturday September 05, @07:01PM

Posted by timothy on Saturday September 05, @07:01PM
from the your-jeans-are-100pct-patches dept.
communications
imamac writes "Apple Insider has an interesting perspective on the MS Exchange support built into Mac OS X 10.6 and how it essentially frees Apple from all things Microsoft: 'Windows Enthusiasts like to spin Apple's support for Exchange on the iPhone and in Snow Leopard as endorsement of Microsoft in the server space. From another angle, Apple is reducing its dependence upon Microsoft's client software, weakening Microsoft's ability to hold back and dumb down its Mac offerings at Apple's expense. More importantly, Apple is providing its users with additional options that benefit both Mac users and the open source community.'"
Read More... 276 comments story

Comments: 230 +-   The Story of a Simple and Dangerous OS X Kernel Bug on Sunday August 30, @12:39AM

Posted by timothy on Sunday August 30, @12:39AM
from the chink-in-the-armor dept.
bug
RazvanM writes "At the beginning of this month the Mac OS X 10.5.8 closed a kernel vulnerability that lasted more than 4 years, covering all the 10.4 and (almost all) 10.5 Mac OS X releases. This article presents some twitter-size programs that trigger the bug. The mechanics are so simple that can be easily explained to anybody possessing some minimal knowledge about how operating systems works. Beside being a good educational example this is also a scary proof that very mature code can still be vulnerable in rather unsophisticated ways."
Read More... 230 comments story

Comments: 290 +-   Snow Leopard Drops Palm OS Sync on Thursday August 27, @05:47PM

Posted by timothy on Thursday August 27, @05:47PM
from the exclusivity-demands-it dept.
cellphones
adeelarshad82 writes "It's been just a little over a month since Apple blocked iTunes sync with Palm Pre, and now Apple takes that strategy one step further by blocking Snow Leopard sync with Palm-OS powered smartphones. Even though Palm has officially retired Palm OS and is now focusing hard on its next-generation WebOS in the Palm Pre, the company is still selling Palm OS-powered smartphones; two current models are the Treo Pro on Sprint and the Centro."
Read More... 290 comments story

Comments: 270 +-   Replacements For Adobe Creative Suite 3 Apps? on Wednesday August 26, @05:05PM

Posted by timothy on Wednesday August 26, @05:05PM
from the best-of-luck-to-ye dept.
graphics
Gilmoure writes "With rumors of Adobe not supporting Creative Suite 3 applications on Mac OS X 10.6, I was wondering what Open Source apps folks would recommend to replace Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and Dreamweaver? If the apps can work with the native file formats, all the better but if they provide the same functionality, that's still good. I have several designer friends that are looking forward to the speed boost of OS X 10.6 but don't want to go through the Adobe upgrades so soon after the CS2 to CS3 upgrades. Especially when Adobe's already working on CS5."
Read More... 270 comments story

Comments: 335 +-   Report That OS X Snow Leopard May Include Antivirus on Tuesday August 25, @03:02PM

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday August 25, @03:02PM
from the pinch-salt-toss-over-shoulder dept.
security
File this firmly in the "rumor" category for now. the JoshMeister writes (in the third person) "Mac antivirus company Intego broke the story this morning that Apple is apparently including antivirus functionality in its upcoming operating system, Snow Leopard. But which antivirus engine is Apple using? Security researcher Joshua Long discusses the likely candidates."
Read More... 335 comments story

Comments: 647 +-   Apple To Ship Mac OS X Snow Leopard On August 28 on Monday August 24, @01:59PM

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday August 24, @01:59PM
from the it's-about-time dept.
macosx
okapi writes "Apple announced that Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard will go on sale Friday, August 28 at Apple's retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers, and that Apple's online store is now accepting pre-orders."
Read More... 647 comments story

Comments: 152 +-   Mac OS X v10.5.8 Ready For Download on Wednesday August 05, @07:14PM

Posted by timothy on Wednesday August 05, @07:14PM
from the upgrades-are-for-wimps dept.
macosx
mysqlbytes writes "Apple has posted an anticipated v10.5.8 patch for Mac OS X, updating a number of components in the operating system, one of their last updates to Leopard. The update brings improvements to Safari, Airport, Bluetooth, among others and rolls out the latest OS X security fixes." Worth glancing at are some of the security-related notes on the update.
Read More... 152 comments story

Comments: 391 +-   New Linux Kernel Flaw Allows Null Pointer Exploits on Saturday July 18, @07:17AM

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday July 18, @07:17AM
from the recipe-for-fun dept.
security
Trailrunner7 writes "A new flaw in the latest release of the Linux kernel gives attackers the ability to exploit NULL pointer dereferences and bypass the protections of SELinux, AppArmor and the Linux Security Module. Brad Spengler discovered the vulnerability and found a reliable way to exploit it, giving him complete control of the remote machine. This is somewhat similar to the magic that Mark Dowd performed last year to exploit Adobe Flash. Threatpost.com reports: 'The vulnerability is in the 2.6.30 release of the Linux kernel, and in a message to the Daily Dave mailing list Spengler said that he was able to exploit the flaw, which at first glance seemed unexploitable. He said that he was able to defeat the protection against exploiting NULL pointer dereferences on systems running SELinux and those running typical Linux implementations.'"
Read More... 391 comments story

Comments: 52 +-   Apple Issues Firmware Upgrade For MacBook Pro on Tuesday June 23, @09:01AM

Posted by timothy on Tuesday June 23, @09:01AM
from the there-there-here-you-go dept.
macbook
Lucas123 writes "After declining comment on an apparent downgrade to the serial ATA hard drive interface in its new MacBook Pros, from 3Gbps to 1.5Gbps, Apple today issued a firmware upgrade to fix a problem reported by 'a small number of customers' using drives based on the latest SATA specification. Apple warned that it has not shipped drives operating at the higher-speed specification, saying, 'While this update allows drives to use transfer rates greater than 1.5Gbit/sec, Apple has not qualified or offered these drives for Mac notebooks and their use is unsupported.'"
Read More... 52 comments story

Comments: 361 +-   Apple Removes Nearly All Reference To ZFS on Wednesday June 10, @01:15AM

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday June 10, @01:15AM
from the you-say-technology-i-say-politics dept.
storage
Roskolnikov writes "Apple has apparently decided that ZFS isn't really ready for prime time. We've been discussing Apple/ZFS rumors, denials, and sightings for some years now. Currently a search on Apple's site for ZFS yields only two hits, one of them probably an oversight in the ZFS-cleansing program and the other a reference to open source. Contrast this with an item from the Google cache regarding ZFS and Snow Leopard. Apple has done this kind of disappearing act in the past, but I was really hoping that this was one feature promise they would keep. I certainly hope this isn't the first foot in the grave for ZFS on OS X."
Read More... 361 comments story

Comments: 431 +-   Trojan Hides In Pirated Copies of Apple iWork '09 on Thursday January 22 2009, @10:40PM

Posted by timothy on Thursday January 22 2009, @10:40PM
from the good-reason-not-to-pirate-software dept.
security
CWmike writes "Pirated copies of Apple's new iWork '09 suite that are now available on file-sharing sites contain a Trojan horse that hijacks Macs and leaves them open to further attack, a security company said yesterday. The 'iServices.a' Trojan hitchhikes on iWork '09's installer, said Intego, which makes Mac security software. 'The installer for the Trojan horse is launched as soon as a user begins the installation of iWork, following the installer's request of an administrator password,' Intego said in a warning. Once installed, the Trojan "phones home" to a malicious server to notify the hacker that the Mac has been compromised, and to await instructions."
Read More... 431 comments story

Comments: 545 +-   Windows 7 Taskbar Not So Similar To OS X Dock After All on Thursday January 22 2009, @08:19PM

Posted by timothy on Thursday January 22 2009, @08:19PM
from the this-comparison-is-not-like-the-others dept.
gui
cremou brulee writes "Redmond's photocopiers have been unusually busy for the last couple of years, with the result that Windows 7 copies a lots of Mac OS X features. First and foremost among these is the Dock, which has been unceremoniously ripped off in Windows 7's new Taskbar. Or has it? Ars Technica has taken an in-depth look at the history and evolution of the Taskbar, and shows just how MS arrived at the Windows 7 'Superbar.' The differences between the Superbar and the Dock are analyzed in detail. The surprising conclusion? 'Ultimately, the new Taskbar is not Mac-like in any important way, and only the most facile of analyses would claim that it is.'"
Read More... 545 comments story
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