Apple has released OS X 10.4.10 for PowerPC and Intel based Macs. There is also an update to OS X Server but the Server update is not discussed here. The update includes one security patch which itself is not critical. The vulnerability allows for network performance to be degraded but cannot be used to install malware or steal data. There’s nothing spectacular in the update. Fixes and updates in OS X 10.4.10 include: Bluetooth (headsets may have shown as sound output devices after removal) Additional Camera RAW support. Fixes issues [...] Read the rest »
Microsoft’s Virtualization Flip-Flop
http://news.com.com/Mystery+surrounds+Microsofts+virtualization+flip-flop/2100-1016_3-6192220.html CNet News has a good analysis of Microsoft’s last minute decision not to expand their license to allow running the lower priced versions of Vista. Microsoft has claimed this is for security reasons since virtualization introduces security risk. Those security risks exist for all Vista versions and in fact for any OS. My favorite part is a quote from Paul DeGroot, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft: If you want to make your product more secure, then make your product more secure. when talking about the license agreement (which [...] Read the rest »
Apple TV Adds YouTube and Security
Apple has released version 1.1 of the software for Apple TV. The software includes a security update and support for YouTube videos. I covered my impressions of Apple TV in this post. The software update is only available through Apple TV’s software update feature. Apple TV checks for updates on a weekly basis so Apple TV’s should all be updated within a week. You can also trigger an immediate update by selecting Settings -> Update Software in Apple TV. The update will restart Apple TV. YouTube is encoding the videos [...] Read the rest »
Apple TV First Impressions
I bought an Apple TV a couple of weeks ago and I figured I’d give my first impressions. I’ll jump to the bottom line first to make things easier since the general slant of the review will be positive but the bottom line is less than positive and the Apple TV may not be for you (yet). I bought the Apple TV with birthday money I received. In such cases I like to get something I usually wouldn’t get and the Apple TV fit the bill (and the money just [...] Read the rest »
MacMozy Beta Updated
Mozy updated their Mac client (a.k.a. MacMozy) earlier this week. The latest version is now 0.5.1.0. The only documented fix over version 0.5.0.0 is a fix identified as “Memory leak/ absurd resource usage”. A full list of earlier fixes and additional information can be found in the MacMoxy FAQ. While not new to this latest version a couple of new features have found their way into the beta. One is that now files greater than 4MB will take advantage of block level differential backups. This means that once a file [...] Read the rest »
Inkjets Waste Ink
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070618-study-inkjet-printers-are-filthy-lying-thieves.html Ars Technica has an article reporting on a study financed by Epson that evaluates the efficiency of inkjet cartridges. The study simply defined “efficiency” as the percentage of ink used by the time the printer reported it was out of ink. I liked the article because it justified my Epson R340. But what would I expect from an Epson finance study? It found that single-ink cartridges were the most efficient which makes sense to me (and a primary factor when I buy a printer) since they need to be [...] Read the rest »
Swarmcast Accelerates iTunes Downloads
http://getautobahn.com/ Swarmcast has released a free iTunes download accelerator, caller Autobahn, which claims to accelerate iTunes downloads. The software is for Microsoft Windows only. Swarmcast claims an increase in download speeds of up to 90% (10X improvement) by using what they call multi-source streaming. This seems similar to bittorrent in theory except it’s not p2p, instead all the sources are servers. Currently, when I download from iTunes I typically download at the maximum speed of my DSL connection so I’m not sure this would help in these cases. Since it’s [...] Read the rest »
Apple iPhone Battery Life
http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9730672-7.html CNet has a article that says Apple has announced that the iPhone will have a full 8 hours of talk time and up to 250 hours of standby time. The battery will last six hours on the Internet, seven hours of video and 24 hours of audio playback. Naturally all of these are “up to” times but even with the typical vendor optimism these are pretty good times. The Apple iPhone tech specs have been updated to reflect these times. Apple had previously published specs of 5 hrs of [...] Read the rest »
Scheduling Website Backups with Transmit
I’d been manually backing up my website whenever I did changes and I use the synchronize feature in Transmit to do it. Transmit is a FTP client for the Mac by Panic Software. Transmit remembers settings between sessions so it was easy enough to do this if the only synchronize I ever did was the web backup. Or if I trusted myself to reset things correctly before each session. Since the whole point of synchronize is to only copy/delete the changes it’s important to keep things the same. Plus it’s [...] Read the rest »
Thunderbird Updated to Version 2.0.0.4
http://en-us.www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/2.0.0.4/releasenotes/ Mozilla has released an update to Thunderbird. It contains two security vulnerability related fixes among 21 updates and the addition of Korean. It’s available through Thunderbird’s auto update feature. The full version can also be downloaded from Mozilla for OS X, Windows and Linux. Read the rest »