Segall remembers Steve Jobs and Apple’s head of product design Jony (now Sir Jonathan) Ive as “inseparable”: “They were as close as lovers,” he recalled.
But, like all lovers, they had their tiffs.
Segall was shocked at one of these rare arguments between Steve and Jony – he even worried that Ive might quit Apple over the row.
After 1998’s Bondi Blue iMac Apple decided to push the boat out and release a whole rainbow of the coloured computers the next year. Many models in various hues were collected together for Jobs, Ive, Segall and a few others to select from.
But Ive was “driven crazy” by Steve’s choices, and eventually stormed out of the room to his holiday, shouting that Steve could choose any of the colours he liked but he was taking no more part in the discussion.
Eventually Apple chose Blueberry, Strawberry, Lime, Tangerine and Grape.

Builds since July 2011

According to reports coming from Italian blog Fanpage (via TechCrunch), Apple just bought Italian startup Redmatica, a company that creates software to enhance the capabilities of popular audio sampler software such as the EXS24 used in Apple’s Logic Pro recording suite. The proof apparently comes via documents from local regulator AGCOM obtained by the blog.

Apple has not yet confirmed it acquired the company, but if true it looks like Logic Pro could be getting some powerful and easy sound design tools in the near future. Among the highlights of the company’s tech that Logic and GarageBand could certainly benefit from include slick drag and drop management of sampler instruments and full AU plug in support directly in the synthesis signal chain. Another thing we can imagine Apple is probably interested in is the new Escher, Penrose and Moebius Machines, which allow for realtime detailed and sample specific gain control for every aspect of your sampled loops, and none of the gain control is destructive. The company also has its GBSamplerManager designed for managing sampler instruments for GarageBand on iOS from your Mac.

According to Fanpage Radmatica had income of just €26,000 on €100,000 in yearly revenue.

the new Logitech Wireless Solar Keyboard K760, the successor to Logitech's first solar keyboard, the K750, which earned a CNET Editors' Choice.
From a design standpoint, the K760 is more compact than the K750 and more closely resembles Apple's own Bluetooth Wireless Keyboard with the addition of the strip of solar cells at the top of the unit.

The K760 is designed for use with Macs, as well as iOS devices.
(Credit: Logitech)
The key feature upgrade here is something that Logitech calls "Bluetooth connectivity with easy-switching capability." What that means is you can pair multiple devices -- such as a Mac, iPad, or iPhone -- and quickly switch among them with the push of a button without having to reconnect.

“Pre-sandbox screening of submissions has been shockingly arbitrary and Apple staff are frequently either unwilling or unable to understand detailed technical arguments,” said one anonymous developer.

Developers looking to Apple for guidance about sandboxing their apps have been disappointed, not least because of Apple’s own failure to sandbox its apps. So far only TextEdit and Preview have been sandboxed.

“A great source of irritation for developers is Apple's own failure to sandbox its own programs,” noted one developer. “Apple has sandboxed some of its applications, but the vast majority remain outside of the sandbox and will still be available via the Mac App Store.”

“The reason that they can't sandbox their own applications is because they experience the very same problems as third party developers: appropriate entitlements do not exist, the APIs are buggy and the sandbox model makes no sense for many applications,” the anonymous developer added. “In order to sandbox their own applications they would need to remove features that users have come to rely upon. For no reason. They don't want to do so. They don't want to irritate their users.”

He claims that Apple is resort to "cheats" that third party developers would “never get away with.” He suggested: “Apple should first have sandboxed its own applications and made sure that the sandboxing works properly. Then they could legitimately have asked us to join them.”

“The sandbox doesn't really make sense and Apple knows it,” another developer, told us, anonymously.

“Something has clearly gone very wrong when Apple imposes changes that require a large proportion of non-game apps on the Mac App Store to be feature crippled. Nobody knows what the real motivation behind it is,” he noted.

“I suspect that Apple's new found love for the sandbox has more to do with exercising greater control over third party developers and streamlining their review process than with any end-user benefits,” suggested one developer, noting that Apple’s reviewers can now “just look at the entitlements to see what the application can do,” rather than “checking what an application does do.”

If you have both an iPad or Retina display device (iPhone 4 or 4th generation iPod touch) and any other iPhone or iPod touch, you can use the fantastic remote control feature to wirelessly control the iPad/Retina display device with an iPhone/iPod touch over bluetooth or wifi. Then plug the iPad/Retina display device into a TV or display through the component cable or VGA adapter and play Chopper 2 on your TV from your couch!

Chopper 2 is also one of the few games to support full 1080p output to an HD TV over HDMI from the iPad 2, and supports AirPlay mirroring with iOS 5 and an iPad 2 or iPhone 4S.

Note: TV output is only supported from an iPad, iPhone 4, or 4th generation iPod Touch or better.

This version of Chopper 2 can also be used to control the Mac version, available on the Mac App Store.

Apple’s AppleSeed program allows a select group of customers to test out Apple software before it’s even released to Apple’s registered developers. These select customers received an email from Apple on Wednesday, informing them that the company is preparing for ‘hardware specific software updates’.

9to5Mac reports that the email reads: “We are preparing for possible hardware specific software updates on OS X Mountain Lion. These contain hardware-specific bug fixes or even special features! In order to make sure you can participate in these exclusive seeds, we need your most up-to-date machine configuration information. The easiest and most efficient way to do this is with Feedback Assistant.”

[...] if you need to revert back to a prior version of Flash when using Safari 5.1.7 or higher, you can re-enable the plug-in by going to the Macintosh HD/Library/Internet Plug-Ins (Disabled)/ folder and moving the "Flash Player.plugin" file from this folder into the Macintosh HD/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/ folder (the one that does not have "Disabled" in its name).
After you have moved the plug-in to the active plug-ins directory, then relaunch your Web browsers and you should be good to go. Safari should only check once for the latest version of Flash once and not continue to disable the plug-in every time you use the browser.

Kaspersky has begun analyzing the OS X platform at Apple's request, the company's chief technology officer, Nikolai Grebennikov, originally said in an interview with Computing. The Kaspersky executive has publicly called Apple out for not taking security seriously enough.

"Mac OS is really vulnerable, and Apple recently invited us to improve its security," Grebennikov said. We've begun an analysis of its vulnerabilities, and the malware targeting it."

Update: But in a later comment provided to Engadget, Kaspersky Lab said the quote from Grebennikov was "taken out of context by the magazine." It has asked that the original article be updated to reflect this.

"Apple did not invite or solicit Kaspersky Lab's assistance in analyzing the Mac OS X platform," the statement reads, going on to say that the analysis of OS X was "conducted independently of Apple."

While Apple has released updates for both Lion and Snow Leopard to remove the Flashback malware that’s been making its rounds, until today, the company hadn’t released a fix for Leopard. However, this afternoon Apple released a Flashback Removal Security Update for Leopard, that weighs in at 1.23MB. Along with removing the Flashback malware, it also disables the Java plug-in in Safari. Apple described the update:

This update removes the most common variants of the Flashback malware. If the Flashback malware is found, a dialog will notify you that malware was removed. In some cases, the update may need to restart your computer in order to completely remove the Flashback malware…To improve the security of your Mac, this update also disables the Java plug-in in Safari.
Furthermore, Apple also released Security Update 2012-003 for Leopard that “disables versions of Adobe Flash Player that do not include the latest security updates and provides the option to get the current version from Adobe’s website.” A similar update was released for Lion and Snow Leopard in Safari 5.1.7, which was released with OS X 10.7.4 late last week. Hit up Software Update.

This is the first major update Apple has released for Leopard since Lion was released in July of last summer.

Un'impostazione dimenticata nell'ultimo aggiornamento di sistema per Macintosh, mette a rischio le informazioni che dovrebbero essere al sicuro grazie alla funzione FileVault

An Apple programmer, apparently by accident, left a debug flag in the most recent version of the Mac OS X operating system. In specific configurations, applying OS X Lion update 10.7.3 turns on a system-wide debug log file that contains the login passwords of every user who has logged in since the update was applied. The passwords are stored in clear text.

Anyone who used FileVault encryption on their Mac prior to Lion, upgraded to Lion, but kept the folders encrypted using the legacy version of FileVault is vulnerable. FileVault 2 (whole disk encryption) is unaffected.

The flaw was first reported by a security researcher David Emery, who posted his findings to the Cryptome mailing list. The bug has not been corrected by any subsequent updates.

Microsoft has detected a new piece of malware targeting Apple OS X computers that exploits a vulnerability in the Office productivity suite patched nearly three years ago. Microsoft advised those who use Microsoft Office 2004 or 2008 for Mac or the Open XML File Format Converter for Mac to ensure those products have applied their patch.

The malware is not widespread, wrote Jeong Wook Oh of Microsoft's Malware Protection Center. But it does show that hackers pay attention if it's found people do not apply patches as those fixes are released, putting their computers at a higher risk of becoming infected.

"Exploiting Mac OS X is not much different from other operating systems," Oh wrote. "Even though Mac OS X has introduced many mitigation technologies to reduce risk, your protection against security vulnerabilities has a direct correlation with updating installed applications."

The security update that Microsoft released in June 2009, MS09-027, addressed two vulnerabilities that could be used by an attacker to gain remote control over a machine and run other code. Both vulnerabilities could be exploited with a specially-crafted Word document.



The exploit discovered by Microsoft doesn't work with OS X Lion, but does work with Snow Leopard and prior versions. Oh wrote that it is likely attackers have knowledge about the computers they are attacking, such as the victim's operating system version and patch levels.

The malware delivered by the exploit is written specifically for OS X and is basically a "backdoor," or a tool that allows for remote control of a computer.

"In conclusion, we can see that Mac OS X is not safe from malware," Oh wrote. "Statistically speaking, as this operating system gains in consumer usage, attacks on the platform will increase."

A WWII-themed corporate video from 1984 features a cameo from Apple co-founder Steve Jobs playing the role of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt as he leads Apple troops against the "blue blob" IBM.

The 9-minute video was made in-house for an international sales meeting in Hawaii and reportedly made its way to website Network World through Craign Elliott, a previous Apple employee and current CEO of cloud computing startup Pertino Networks.

A supposed follow-up to the famous "1984" Macintosh ad, "1944" cost $50,000 to produce and features hired actors as well as Apple employees like Mike Murray who was vice president of marketing at the time.

In the film, a rag-tag band of Apple soldiers are fighting against IBM in a David vs. Goliath battle that is likened to the U.S. infiltration and subsequent victory over Axis forces during WWII. The criticism that Macintosh lacked software was lampooned, with Bill Gates mentioned as a purported supporter of the Apple movement.

The hammer-throwing character from the iconic "1984" commercial also makes a brief appearance as she opens a crate full of software that spills onto the ground to be picked up and used as "ammo" for by the Allies.


Steve Jobs plays FDR in Apple in-house video. | Source: Network World


A narrator ends the film in a style reminiscent of 1940's-era news flashes:

"And so the Fighting 32nd begins its rendezvous with destiny. The battle will be long, and it will be hard, but it will be won. For the commandoes of the Fighting 32nd have on their side the most powerful weapon on Earth: an idea whose time has come."

Amazon just launched its Cloud Drive app for Mac and Windows.
The Amazon Cloud service unveiled last year, but now users can play with the desktop app counterpart, rather than their browser, to manage files in the cloud. Folders and files can transfer in the background, but the service does not support syncing or a native desktop browsing client like Google Drive, Dropbox, SkyDrive, and SugarSync.
Cloud Drive offers all customers 5GB of free online storage with unlimited access from any computer. Additional storage plans start at 20GB and extend to 1,000 GB. Unlimited music space is currently available with any paid Cloud Drive storage plan for the duration of an existing plan term.

Here's a look at the drastic product evolution that's been happening since 2001, using financial breakdowns from the company.

63.4% of the Flashback-infected machines identified themselves as running OS X 10.6, or Snow Leopard, the newest version of Apple's operating system that comes with Java.

Snow Leopard accounted for the largest share of OS X last month, according to metrics company Net Applications, making it the prime target of Flashback.

Leopard, or OS X 10.5, is the second-most-common Flashback-infected operating system, said Doctor Web: 25.5% of the 95,000 Macs harboring the malware ran that 2007 edition.

Apple bundled Java with Leopard as well, but unlike Snow Leopard and Lion, it no longer ships security updates for the OS, and so has not updated Java on those Macs.

Last month, Leopard powered 13.6% of all Macs.

But while Snow Leopard's and Leopard's infection rates are higher than their usage shares, the opposite's true of OS X 10.7, or Lion. The 2011 OS accounted for 39.6% of all copies of OS X used last month, yet represented only 11.2% of the Flashback-compromised Macs.

That disparity seems to validate Apple's 2010 decision "deprecate" Java, or stop bundling the software with OS X. Lion was the first to omit Java, although users have been free to download and install it themselves.

The lower Flashback-infection rate on OS X Lion (at far right) shows Apple's decision to dump Java was a smart one. (Data: Doctor Web and Net Applications.)

Doctor Web did not connect those dots in its analysis, but the numbers make clear that versions of Mac OS X that included Java -- Snow Leopard and Leopard -- are much more likely to be infected by Flashback. Conversely, Lion -- by default, sans Java -- is significantly more resistant to the malware.

The Russian company's data also showed that many Mac users don't keep their machines up-to-date, something ZDNet blogger Ed Bott noted on Friday.

Twenty-four percent of the Snow Leopard-infected Macs were at least one update behind, 10.4% were three or more behind, and 8.5% were four or more behind.

Lion users were no better patch practitioners: 28% were one or more updates behind.

As pointed out by MacGeneration [Google translation], Apple's Mac App Store has reached a new milestone with 10,000 apps available for purchase or free download through the marketplace.

Our own sister site AppShopper confirms the milestone, currently indexing 10,339 applications in the store. Apple launched the Mac App Store in January 2011 and has quickly moved to offer its own major software titles through the marketplace, viewing it as the future of software distribution on the Mac platform. Even OS X Lion itself is distributed via the Mac App Store.

According to MacGeneration, the Mac App Store has reached its 10,000th App.  That is of course a little shy of the 600,000 or so apps floating around the iOS App Store (or even the 200,000 specially designed for iPad) but considering the Mac App store is newer, the numbers of users is smaller and most titles are still available via old fashion installation, it isn’t too shabby.

In his new book, Ken Segall says that Steve Jobs and his team at Apple explored the possibility of shipping a free, ad-supported version of Mac OS 9. Segall says Jobs was considering the option because of the profit potential inherent in selling software updates: "this is how Microsoft does it... it's like printing money," Jobs said. The plan was to give users a sixty-second commercial upon starting up the system that would be remotely updated by Apple, and to place ads elsewhere in the OS where they had the most relevance — like an Epson ad next to a system notice for low ink. He says that the team found the concept "financially sound," and that Steve was intrigued by the idea, but later "it appeared that too many negatives had come up" and it was killed.

Following the launch of Microsoft’s SkyDrive iPhone app, the company gave a preview of its refreshed SkyDrive service for Windows 8 and OS X. Today Microsoft has launched a new app for both Windows and Mac that brings Dropbox-like file management to the service. Of course SkyDrive is seen by many as a direct competitor to iCloud and other alternative cloud services. The tool essentially allows you to manage content stored in your SkyDrive by accessing files from your desktop, dragging and dropping them to the cloud, and organizing files in familiar folders.

The release comes ahead of rumors that Google is prepping a Google Drive Mac app for its upcoming cloud service.

SkyDrive for Mac is the easiest way to access your SkyDrive from your Mac. When you install SkyDrive, a SkyDrive folder is created on your computer. Everything you put in this folder is automatically kept in sync between your computers (Mac or PC) and SkyDrive.com, so you can get to your latest files from virtually anywhere. Whenever you add, change, or delete files in one location, all the other locations will be updated. 
The application is available for download on your Mac here, and a full description of features from Microsoft is below:

Features

Access your SkyDrive right from the Finder—photos, documents, and all your other important files.
Quickly add new files to SkyDrive by dragging them to the SkyDrive folder.
Easily organize your files and folders in SkyDrive, just like any other folder.

[...] the Computer Incident Response Center of Luxembourg (similar to US-CERT) created a small and convenient utility based on my procedure, that can perform these steps for you. By simply running the application, you'll enable Folder Actions and bind the appropriate scripts to the LaunchAgent and LaunchDaemon folders on the system.

Last week, Symantec said the number of infections had dropped to 140,000. Another security researcher, Kaspersky Labs, also reported a sharp decline in the number of infected computers.
But a Russian security company named Dr. Web, which was the first to spot the fast-spreading malware infection targeting Mac users, suggests that the estimated declines are incorrect. According to Dr. Web:

817,879 bots connected to the BackDoor.Flashback.39 botnet at one time or another and an average of 550,000 infected machines interact with a control server on a 24-hour basis. On April 16, 717,004 unique IP-addresses and 595,816 Mac UUIDs were registered on the BackDoor.Flashback.39 botnet while on April 17 the figures were 714,483 unique IPs and 582,405 UUIDs. At the same time, infected computers that have not been registered on the BackDoor.Flashback.39 network before join the botnet every day. The chart below shows how the number of bots on the BackDoor.Flashback.39 botnet has been changing from April 3 to April 19, 2012.

[...] Dr. Web reported that as of April 19, 566,000 Macs were infected. If so, we're back to Defcon 1.

MacGasm reported that Apple is giving away free copies of Snow Leopard to MobileMe users to ease their move to iCloud. iCloud only works on Lion. Apple is offering MobileMe users without Snow Leopard a free copy, so they will pay $30 to upgrade to Lion. Once on Lion, they can ditch MobileMe to start using iCloud.

Apple posted a page where MobileMe users can register for their free copy of Snow Leopard. They had better act fast, because Apple is set to close the service in June to focus on iCloud in the future. iCloud plays a major role in Mountain Lion, which is currently seeded to developers for beta testing. Throughout the OS, there are several instances where iCloud becomes a very practical feature. Furthermore, I am sure you are all familiar with the iCloud integration throughout iOS. Expect iCloud to be a technology Apple is invested in for a long time to come.

Apple is essentially cutting behind users a $30 break. If you have not done so, it is about time to upgrade to Lion and join the roughly other 100 million iCloud users currently out there. What are you waiting for?

Da Cupertino arriva un update ufficiale per rimuovere il programma malevolo che sfrutta una falla di Java e pare aver già colpito centinaia di migliaia di Macintosh.

As promised, Apple just released a fix to remove the Flashback malware that is reportedly affecting 1 percent of all Macs.

This Java security update removes the most common variants of the Flashback malware. This update also configures the Java web plug-in to disable the automatic execution of Java applets. Users may re-enable automatic execution of Java applets using the Java Preferences application. If the Java web plug-in detects that no applets have been run for an extended period of time it will again disable Java applets. This update is recommended for all Mac users with Java installed. For details about this update see: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5242
Go fire up Software Update and grab this 66.8MB update now.

In a tech note published today, Apple discussed the Flashback trojan (past coverage here) and reminded users of OS X 10.6 and 10.7 that they should install the April 3 Java update to remove the vulnerability that the malware uses to infect Macs. For users of OS X 10.5 Leopard or earlier, Apple has not updated Java yet to patch the flaw; in that case, Apple's recommendation is to turn off Java in the browser to guard against Flashback.

The note also says that "Apple is developing software that will detect and remove the Flashback malware." No ETA on that yet; in the meantime, the company is working with network service providers to disable or block the command and control servers that Flashback checks in with.

While Apple has said it "is developing software that will detect and remove the Flashback malware" that has affected up to 600,000 Macs worldwide, it has yet to release any fix. In lieu of that a few security and antivirus firms have gone ahead and released their own Flashback removal tools.

Kaspersky Lab, a Russian antivirus firm, has released the Flashfake Removal Tool. The firm asks that you first check here to see if your Mac is infected with Flashback. If your Mac is, then you can download Flashfake to rid your Mac of the malware.

A second antivirus firm, F-Secure, has also released their own Flashback Removal Tool. Their tool works by creating "a log file (RemoveFlashback.log) on current user's Desktop. If any infections are found, they are quarantined into an encrypted ZIP file (flashback_quarantine.zip) to the current user's Home folder. The ZIP is encrypted with the password 'infected.'"

Before Kasperky Lab's and F-Secure's removal tools, users had to manually remove the malware by using OS X's Terminal, which some might have found confusing.

In order to make it easier for average users to check whether their computers are infected, Kaspersky Lab launched a website on Monday where people can input their systems' unique hardware identifiers (UUIDs) to see if they are among the almost 700,000 Macs known to be infected with Flashback so far.

Kaspersky also released a stand-alone removal tool for the Flashback malware, which Mac owners can download and use for free. However, it's probably a good idea to install a full-featured antivirus program after running this tool in order to prevent future infections.

In addition, Kaspersky's director of global research and analysis, Costin Raiu, made several Mac OS X security recommendations in a blog post on Monday. These included setting up a non-administrator account for everyday use, switching to Google Chrome as primary browser because of its sandboxed Flash Player plug-in and silent automatic updates, disabling the Java and stand-alone Flash Player plug-ins from other browsers, installing all software updates distributed by Apple, upgrading Adobe Reader to version 10, using a separate keychain for passwords that can unlock very sensitive accounts and disabling the IPv6, AirPort or Bluetooth services when they're not needed and enabling full disk encryption.

Following the news that an estimated 600,000 or more Macs are currently compromised and part of a massive botnet thanks to the Flashback Trojan, sales of Mac security software have jumped, according to application statistics and some antivirus vendors.

"We've seen a substantial increase in both sales and downloads of trial versions of our software," said Peter James, a spokesman for French security company Integra. "Part of this is certainly due to Flashback."


Intego, which develops and sells only Mac antivirus software, is best known for its £43.39 VirusBarrier V6. A 30-day free trial of the software is also available.

James did not provide sales figures for Intego's security software, or specify the increase his company has seen since a Russian antivirus firm said more than 600,000 Macs had been infected with Flashback, many of them in a recent campaign that exploited an at-the-time-unpatched vulnerability in Oracle's Java.



Another security provider echoed James. "It would be true to say that we have seen a rise in the download rates of our free antivirus for Mac home users," said Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant with U.K.-based Sophos. Sophos, which sells security software only to enterprises and organizations, also offers a free Mac product to consumers: Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac Home Edition.

Several other companies that sell Mac security software, including Symantec and F-Secure, did not reply to questions about their recent sales trends.

But statistics from Apple's Mac App Store, the online market that launched in January 2011, hint at a strong increase in Mac antivirus interest.

BitDefender Virus Scanner, a free app in the Mac App Store, is currently No. 16 on the top 200 list of the most popular free programs, down one spot from an earlier high of No. 15, according to AppShopper.com. BitDefender's app has been on that list for just 16 days.

Clam AV, another free antivirus program for the Mac, is at No. 14 today, down four spots from its highest point on the same list but up from No. 97 on April 2, two days before news of the Flashback infection began in earnest.

Meanwhile, Intego's VirusBarrier Plus was holding down the No. 78 spot on Wednesday, down from its peak of No. 17. The £6.99 app has been on AppShopper's top 200 list of paid apps for just one week.

Kaspersky's Virus Scanner, which also costs £6.99, is at No. 90, and reached a high of No. 73 in the seven days it's been on the list.

A functional Macintosh 128k prototype has been put up for sale on eBay, complete with rare "Twiggy" 5.25in floppy drive, original keyboard, mouse and power lead.
The only non-authentic thing here is that the seller, who calls himself 'Woz', isn't actually Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak - a fact he's happy to highlight - but an eBay user from Canada attempting to squeeze $100,000 (£62,750) or more from the pocket of an eager fanboy.


The prototype, which was created in advance of the computer's debut in January 1984, was acquired in a complete state and was not pieced together, 'Woz' claims. Several shots show casing signed by the original Mac team, parts clad with the scarce Mr. Macintosh icon and the original Apple keyboard prototype.

Its most unique feature is the Twiggy drive, though, as few still exist today, let alone one implemented in an early Mac.

The 5.25in, 871KB format, brought over from the Apple Lisa, was mooted for the Macintosh too, but due to a higher error rate with the drive, the budding company turned attentions to Sony's 3.5in version, which was added late to the design in 1983.

Immergiamoci nel coloratissimo mondo di Jelly Defense, per intense partite di strategia sugli schermi di iPad e iPhone (ma anche quelli di Macintosh e dispositivi Android).

Boris Sharov, chief executive of the relatively unknown Russian security firm Dr. Web, was notified by web registrar Reggi.ru on Monday that Apple had requested the shut-down of a domain belonging to the Moscow company on claims that it was being used as a "command and control" for Macs affected by Flashback, reports Forbes.

“They told the registrar this [domain] is involved in a malicious scheme. Which would be true if we weren’t the ones controlling it and not doing any harm to users,” Sharov said. “This seems to mean that Apple is not considering our work as a help. It’s just annoying them.”

The domain in question was one of three Dr. Web was using to monitor the spread of Flashback in what researchers call a "sinkhole," or a spoofed command and control server. This technique allowed the firm to first uncover the trojan that has so far rooted into an estimated 600,000 machines, more than one percent of all operating Macs.

Apple may have prematurely requested the shutdown, which is standard practice in this type of security scenario, before further investigating the background of the server and Sharov believes that the move was merely a mistake.

Adding to the confusion is Apple's notoriously secretive nature. Sharov said that his company has dealt with the oft-maligned Microsoft on similar situations which, unlike Apple, has fostered fruitful working relationships with outside security firms. Apple has not seen a botnet of this scope and therefore does not share the same ties with outside security sources, he adds.

If you're running a botnet, the goal is to avoid detection for as long as possible. Flashback took an interesting approach to hiding itself — if one of several popular antivirus or monitoring tools is detected, it immediately deletes itself. Merely installing a utility like Avast, Clam Antivirus, Little Snitch or HTTP Scoop was enough to protect you, even if you didn't keep them running.

Funny enough, major commercial antivirus utilities like Norton Antivirus, McAfee VirusScan, and F-Secure weren't included in the blacklist. It seems the Flashback authors aren't afraid of the effectiveness of those utilities or, maybe, the technical expertise of their customers.

From the threat description:

On execution, the malware checks if the following path exists in the system:
/Library/Little Snitch
/Developer/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/MacOS/Xcode
/Applications/VirusBarrier X6.app
/Applications/iAntiVirus/iAntiVirus.app
/Applications/avast!.app
/Applications/ClamXav.app
/Applications/HTTPScoop.app
/Applications/Packet Peeper.app

If any of these are found, the malware will skip the rest of its routine and proceed to delete itself.

Note the presence of Xcode, Apple's IDE for Mac and iOS development. To a virus author, the presence of development tools like Xcode is a perfect indicator of a tech-savvy user... the kind of person most likely to detect your work.

if you do a Spotlight search, then select an item by moving the up- or down-arrow keys, you can then copy that item and paste it into the Finder. This works not only for files and folders, but also for contacts (it pastes a vcard), e-mail messages (it pastes an .emlx file), though it doesn't work for web pages in your History or for chats.
[Also works on Mac OS X 10.6]

If you do have Java installed on your system and would like to disable it, you can easily do so in the Java Preferences utility. When you open the utility you will be presented with a list of the Java runtimes installed on your system, and a check box next to each. By unchecking the runtimes you will prevent them from being used, and unchecking all will disable Java entirely.
[...] Unfortunately there is no direct or easy way to uninstall Java, so once installed the only way to remove it and all of its components completely is to reinstall OS X; however, you can remove the Java virtual machine (the runtime) from your system and thereby perform a similar routine as an uninstall. To do this, go to the /System/Library/Frameworks/ directory and remove the file "JavaVM.framework," which contains the Java runtimes. Additionally, empty the contents of the following directories on the system which link to the runtimes in the framework:
/System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines
/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines

[it] requires editing one line in one text file.
The file is /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist
You need to add/edit two lines: the first is Kernel Flags and the second is mbasd=1.
<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string>mbasd=1</string>

Older Intel-based Mac systems are out, even though 32-bit Windows systems will run the software.

sl takes the most common use of Unix ls, to display the files in a directory compactly in multiple columns, and makes it substantially more useful.
sl groups files by purpose so you can mentally organize many files quickly; for instance, it collects HTML and PHP files together, as opposed to leaving them mixed up with supporting images, CSS, and JavaScript. sl points out interesting files, which include those that have been recently modified, read relatively recently, are relatively large, have warnings, or need to be checked in to or out of version control.
sl is also aesthetically pleasing due to attention to layout and filtering as well as limiting color and text annotations to salient information.

iPhoto for OS X does not have the Photo Journals feature. It allows sharing to MobileMe (not for long), Flickr and Facebook. Some photo sites, like Picasa, provide plug-ins that will let you upload directly from iPhoto. It would seem pretty obvious that the Mac OS version of iPhoto would allow this, but as of today it doesn't.

If iPhoto for Mac gets the Photo Journal feature it will go a long way toward making customers happy, especially the people thinking about moving from the PC to the Mac. For my friends who have recently made the switch, they often mention the simplicity of MobileMe galleries. Tim Cook hinted last fall that some of the expiring MobileMe features could be rolled into iCloud, and this seems to be a start. Maybe that good idea is not dead yet.

[...] I decided to write a script that would download, install and set up profiles for any version of Firefox. About halfway through, I stumbled upon a script called "install-all-firefox" by Max Glenister. It did a lot of what I wanted, so I forked it and worked from there.

Apple Configurator rende semplice per chiunque la configurazione simultanea e la distribuzione di iPhone, iPad e iPod touch in una scuola, azienda o istituzione.
Tre facili flussi di lavoro ti consentono di preparare nuovi dispositivi iOS per la distribuzione immediata, di supervisionare i dispositivi che necessitano di mantenere una configurazione standard e di assegnare i dispositivi agli utenti. Aggiorna rapidamente 30 dispositivi alla volta con l'ultima versione di iOS, configura le impostazioni e installa app e dati per i tuoi studenti, dipendenti o clienti.
Apple Configurator può essere utilizzato da grandi organizzazioni e imprese per configurare nuovi dispositivi, installare app aziendali e registrare ogni dispositivo con una soluzione "Mobile Device Management" per la gestione remota da parte di un amministratore IT. È perfetto per laboratori o classi di studenti in cui i dispositivi devono essere rapidamente ripristinati e tenuti aggiornati con impostazioni corrette, politicy approvate, app e dati. Apple Configurator può essere utilizzato anche per personalizzare dispositivi con dati e documenti per utenti specifici.

[There is] a hidden folder inside my Dropbox folder: .dropbox.cache.
[...] if you see a sudden decrease in disk space, you can check this folder. If you use Terminal you know how to get there; if not, you can open it from the Finder. Choose Go > Go to Folder, and enter ~/Dropbox/.dropbox.cache (assuming that your Dropbox folder is at the default location at the top level of your home folder; change the path if it is not). You can delete the folders with no worry of losing files.

[...] the Mountain Lion App Store will automatically detect any app that has historically been updated through Software Update and ask to register it to your Apple ID, along with a unique hardware identifier.
What this means is that the App Store will soon be able to update select Apple apps that were purchased outside of the App Store. Theoretically, this should also mean that these apps will then be available for download on any machine tied to that Mac App Store account.

you can find the log at ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.QuarantineEventsV2 on Lion or ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.QuarantineEvents on Snow Leopard (where "~" is the path to your home directory). If you upgraded your Mac from Snow Leopard to Lion, you might have both files.

The information is stored in an SQLite 3.x database

Developers are getting this email today from Apple:

The Mac App Store is the safest place for users to get software for their Mac, but we also want to protect users when they download applications from other places. Developer ID is a new way to help prevent users from installing malware on their Mac. Along with Gatekeeper, a new feature in Mountain Lion, signing applications with your Developer ID certificate provides users with the confidence that your application is not known malware and has not been tampered with.
Get your applications ready for Gatekeeper today. It’s easy to get started with Developer ID using the automated certificate request tools in Xcode 4.3 or the Developer Certificate Utility.

This list comes from the Mountain Lion installer. We added on the side the name of the oldest model supported for each line of product. The Mac mini and Xserve are the two lines that appear to pay the highest price, for the Mac mini the models that came out before 2009 will not be supported and for the Xserve only the Xeon Nehalem will be supported. It is interesting to note that the 2008 Xserve is not supported while the Mac Pro, which has almost the same architecture as it came out that same year is supported.
For the laptops, all the non-unibody models are left behind. To make the long story short, any model that doesn't have an NVidia 9400M or and Core iX for the laptops, 64 bits EFI for the Mac Pro or an aluminum frame will be left behind.

The Sideburn is a small mount that plugs into the SD slot on an iMac or MacBook to keep your iPhone in a usable place. You won't have to tear your eyes away from your big screen to check your new messages or catch an incoming call.
You also won't risk losing your iPhone to the voracious stack of papers that has been collecting on your desk for the last five years.
The mount is made from aluminum to match the look of your other Apple products. It swivels around for an adjustable viewing angle.
The Sideburn is in fundraising mode on Kickstarter with an ambitious $35,000 goal. A $35 pledge will get you a dock of your own, should the project reach its goal. Just be sure to check that your particular Mac has an SD card slot available.
-> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1756214656/sideburn-iphone-dock-for-your-imac-and-macbook

Brian Caulfield reports for Forbes that new "fusion" processors from AMD had a shot at upstaging Intel by making their way into Apple's popular MacBook Air notebook for last year's refresh. People familiar with the matter indicated that Apple had given the "Llano" processor, which combined the CPU and GPU into one part, serious consideration for use in its thin-and-light portable.
However, a former employee indicated that AMD was unable to get early working samples of the chip to Apple on time, though tipsters disagreed on exactly how close the company was to delivering the chip, with one claiming that AMD "had it." According to the report, too many of the parts ended up being faulty and AMD lost the deal.
Sources also said AMD had proposed a low-power processor named "Brazos" for a revamp of the Apple TV box, but Apple declined to go with the option. "Brazos" went on to make inroads in the netbook industry and reportedly kept the company afloat.
"If Brazos had been killed, AMD wouldn’t be in business," one former employee said.
A separate report from late last year also claimed that Apple had considered the AMD "Llano" option "plan A" for its MacBook Air, but AMD was said to have "dropped the ball" at the last minute.

Developer ZeptoLab UK Limited released a Mac App Store version of its physics puzzler Cut the Rope originally released by publisher Chillingo on iOS in October 2010. According to Chillingo, the iOS game reached over 1 million downloads in just nine days and the franchise has now hit over 100 million downloads. The Mac App Store version is the first full desktop release of the game and it was optimized for landscape orientation with “crisp images on monitors up to 2560×1440 resolution.”

ZeptoLab also redesigned some of the game’s original levels for a smooth experience with mice and trackpads. Scoreloop is supported currently when it comes to online leaderboards, but the press release said there would be support for Game Center on OS X when it launches. The game is available on the Mac App Store now as a 133MB download and features 250 levels and 10 level boxes for $4.99 (requires Mac OS X 10.5 or higher).

Developers now have until June 1 to make their applications compliant with the new Mac App Store sandboxing restrictions, Apple announced on Tuesday.
The original deadline was March 1, but developers now have an additional three months to bring their software in line with the new rules. The sandboxing entitlements are already found in OS X 10.7.3 Lion and new APIs in Xcode 4.3.

Microsoft is readying a significant update to SkyDrive in Windows 8, and reportedly leaked screenshots of the revamped file syncing and cloud storage service show that a Mac OS X client could be poised to compete with Apple's iCloud.

The purported SkyDrive images were posted on Saturday by Brazilian blog Gemind, and show demo downloads (machine translation) for Windows or Mac apps that will allow for automatic syncing, storage and remote access to files from the cloud.

Also of note are paid storage options that can be purchased in 20GB, 50GB or 100GB flavors for approximately $10, $25 or $50 per year, respectively.

The march of progress continues in OS X Mountain Lion, and with it comes a new set of minimum requirements. An anonymous developer clued us into the minimum requirements for OS X 10.8, and there's bad news for some older Mac owners. Mountain Lion will only run on the following Macs:

iMac (mid 2007 or later)
MacBook (13-inch Aluminum, 2008), (13-inch, Early 2009 or later)
MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid-2009 or later), (15-inch, 2.4/2.2 GHz), (17-inch, Late 2007 or later)
MacBook Air (Late 2008 or later)
Mac Mini (Early 2009 or later)
Mac Pro (Early 2008 or later)
Xserve (Early 2009)
This means the following Macs which are supported under OS X Lion will not be able to run Mountain Lion (model identifiers in parentheses):

Late 2006 iMacs (iMac5,1, iMac5,2, iMac6,1)
All plastic MacBooks that pre-date the aluminum unibody redesign (MacBook2,1, MacBook3,1, MacBook4,1)
MacBook Pros released prior to June 2007 (MacBookPro2,1, MacBookPro2,2)
The original MacBook Air (MacBookAir1,1)
The Mid-2007 Mac mini (Macmini2,1)
The original Mac Pro and its 8-core 2007 refresh (MacPro1,1, MacPro2,1)
Late 2006 and Early 2008 Xserves (Xserve1,1, Xserve2,1)

Apple went to considerable effort and expense to find a middle ground.[...]
I have a personal flaw in the form of a small conspiracy theorist who lives in my head. He worried that this may have been created as just a temporary stepping stone — like Rosetta for the Intel transition, or Carbon for the OS 9 to OS X transition — and that one day, the Mac App Store-only option might still be enforced.
But I can’t find it in me to disparage this goodwill effort that Apple has undertaken to not turn every third-party developer upside-down with regard to app distribution. To me it’s a great sign that they’re aware and at some level sympathetic to our concerns, while remaining committed to a high-security experience for users.
Further cementing this feeling is the fact that we were invited to a private briefing at Apple about Gatekeeper a week before today’s announcement. Cabel was told point-blank that Apple has great respect for the third-party app community, and wants to see it continue to grow — they do not want to poison the well. I think their actions here speak even louder than their words, though.
One worrisome rift
There remains one thing that is of concern to me. Despite these great strides forward, Apple is walking a dangerous line with regard to features that are only available to App Store distributed apps. The two most prominent examples are iCloud and Notification Center. Cabel asked Apple if, thanks to Gatekeeper and Developer ID, App Store-only features would be eventually be available to signed apps that were not distributed through the App Store. There was some shuffling of feet and a “we have nothing to announce at this time”. It didn’t sound particularly optimistic.
It would be a shame if this trend continues, as it creates an artificial gulf between App Store and non-App Store apps. For example, as things stand today, we won’t be able to offer iCloud syncing in, say, Coda 2, when you purchase it directly from us. Only App Store purchasers would get that feature. Making matters worse is Apple offers us no real facility to “cross-grade” you from a direct purchase to an App Store purchase, should you change your mind.
There’s no real engineering reason that I can think of for this. It seems marketing or money-driven, and I think it’s un-Apple-like to chase the money at the expense of user experience in that manner. We hope they change their minds about that particular facet.

On March 1st, Apple will change the rules of the Mac App Store to require all applications to run inside of a ‘sandbox’. Unfortunately, this will disallow important SourceTree functionality that was previously acceptable under store rules. Complying with the sandboxing rules would force us to change SourceTree in ways that would remove features, damage the usability of the app, and hurt our users; therefore, we will no longer submit SourceTree updates to the Mac App Store after March 1st, 2012. New updates will be available, for free, directly from sourcetreeapp.com (and via the in-app update). We will continue to monitor the situation in case Apple improve their sandboxing implementation or revise their rules. Note that we will still be signing SourceTree with our Apple developer certificate so SourceTree should work fine with the default settings of Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion when it’s released.

For the full story of what forced us to take this disappointing decision, keep reading.

In its announcement of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion on Thursday, Apple failed to mention that a handful of Macs that will be cut from the fold when the next generation operating system debuts this summer due to end of support for older Intel integrated graphics chipsets. [...]
List of affected machines:

Any Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook from late 2007 to late 2008 (Model Numbers: MB061*/B, MB062*/B, MB063*/B, MB402*/A MB403*/A MB404*/A, MB402*/B)

Mid 2007 Mac mini (Model Numbers: MB138*/A, MB139*/A)

Mid to Late 2006 polycarbonate iMac (Model Numbers: MA406xx/A, MA710xx/A)

Early 2008 MacBook Air (Model Number: MB003LL/A)

According to French-language site MacGeneration, any Mac sporting Intel’s sluggish GMA x3100 or 950 chip won’t be able to run Mountain Lion. While we’ve gone a long way since the GMA graphics, you probably have somewhere under your table or in the basement a legacy Mac which doesn’t have enough oomph for Mountain Lion. Anything older than the mid-2007 iMacs, early-2008 Mac Pros, early-2009 Mac minis and early-2009 Xserve gets left behind. The same goes for MacBooks based on any Intel Core 2 Duo processor and the original 2008 MacBook Air. Sorry folks, that’s the price of progression. In addition, the following platform changes may interest you…
On the software front, kernel extensions in Mountain Lion must be 64-bit. Also indicative, Apple declared most of the Carbon APIs deprecated in Mountain Lion. The company urged developers in the technical documents to resort to more modern technologies provided by the Mac operating system:

In OS X v10.8, most of the APIs in the Carbon Core framework are deprecated. In many cases, there are alternative APIs you can use, such as APIs in the Core Foundation, Foundation, GCD (Grand Central Dispatch), and Disk Arbitration frameworks.

[...] Cook noted laptops will continue to exist alongside the tablet market, but merging the two products, and the different chips various Apple devices use, is a possibility the company is considering. Cook said, “We think about everything. We don’t close things off,” but he also noted the Mac is still “incredibly important.” He continued:



“We see that people are in love with a lot of apps and functionality here. Anywhere where that makes sense, we are going to move that over to Mac… We think about everything. We don’t close things off.”

When asked if he still views Microsoft as competition with the upcoming releases of new version of Windows, Cook said the only pressure is “self-induced” and that he does not “really think anything Microsoft does puts pressure on Apple.” While noting that Apple has now changed the name of Apple-developed Mac apps to reflect iOS, such as Contacts instead of Address Book, and Calendar instead of iCal, in a separate interview Phil Schiller, he said the update would be “more than people expect”:

“We took a logical pass at what the user is going to experience using these products to make it all make sense. This is more than people expect.”

As for competitors copying the MacBook Air, a product Cook apparently “expressed pride” about when talking about the future of Apple’s Mac business, the CEO said other companies will have a difficult time:

“The industry at large is trying to copy it in some way, but they will find that it is not so easy”

While adding the Mac is still “incredibly important,” Tim referenced growth in China stemming from interest over the iPhone. Mac sales in China doubled during 2011. Cook said:

“They know about Apple and what Apple stands for… Then they search out and look for the Mac.”

You must use a 64-bit, Intel-based Mac running either Mac OS X v10.6.7 Snow Leopard or OS X Lion and have at least 8GB of free disk space to install the OS.

In addition to the pre-release version of the operating system, Apple also made a number of related resources available, including guidelines for developing apps for Mountain Lion, GameKit, and GLKit programming guides that explain how to write Game Center-compatible games using social gaming and graphics technologies that debuted in iOS 5 and more. Finally, following a brief removal of Xcode 4.3 from the Mac App Store this morning, the new Xcode 4.4 Developer Preview for OS X Mountain Lion is now available in your dev account and it includes the Mac OS X 10.8 SDK and iOS 5 SDK.

Il sistema operativo dei Macintosh fa ulteriori passi nella direzione mostrata da iPhone e iPad aggiungendo app e funzioni introdotte da iOS.

Since the days of version 10.4, OS X has had a feature called File Quarantine, which checks apps before they run for the very first time. You most often encounter this feature when you download an app and run it for the first time—a dialog box appears informing you that it’s a file downloaded from the Internet, and asking for you to confirm that you do indeed want to run it. (This feature only works with files downloading by certain apps, including web browsers and email clients. A file copied from a USB drive or from a network volume doesn’t get checked.)

Gatekeeper uses this same feature. Instead of just asking you for permission to launch an app for the first time, Mountain Lion will check its security settings to see what sort of apps are allowed to launch. Located in the General tab of the Security & Privacy preference pane is a setting called “Allow applications downloaded from,” with three options:

Anywhere: This choice uses the same set of rules as every previous version of Mac OS X. If an app isn’t known malware and you approve it, it opens.

Mac App Store: When this choice is selected, any apps not downloaded from the Mac App Store will be rejected when you try to launch them.

Mac App Store and identified developers: This is the new default setting in Mountain Lion. In addition to Mac App Store apps, it also allows any third-party apps that have been signed by an identified developer to run.

Mac OS X — sorry, OS X — is going on an iOS-esque one-major-update-per-year development schedule. This year’s update is scheduled for release in the summer, and is ready now for a developer preview release. Its name is Mountain Lion.1

There many new features, I’m told, but today they’re going to focus on telling me about ten of them. This is just like an Apple event, I keep thinking. Just like with Lion, Mountain Lion is evolving in the direction of the iPad. But, just as with Lion last year, it’s about sharing ideas and concepts with iOS, not sharing the exact same interaction design or code. The words “Windows” and “Microsoft” are never mentioned, but the insinuation is clear: Apple sees a fundamental difference between software for the keyboard-and-mouse-pointer Mac and that for the touchscreen iPad. Mountain Lion is not a step towards a single OS that powers both the Mac and iPad, but rather another in a series of steps toward defining a set of shared concepts, styles, and principles between two fundamentally distinct OSes.

[Isaacson] writes, “Jobs wanted a simple and elegant design, which he hoped would set Apple apart from the other machines, with their clunky gray metal cases… He offered a local consultant, Jerry Manock, $1500 to produce such a design.”
Manock says the deal was for $1800, and has a letter signed by Jobs to prove it.
Isaacson goes on: “Manock, dubious about Jobs’ appearance, asked for the money up front. Jobs refused, but Manock took the job anyway. Within weeks, he had produced a simple foam-modeled plastic case that was uncluttered and exuded friendliness. Jobs was thrilled.” [Jobs] was satisfied enough with Manock’s work on the Apple II — and subsequent Disk II — to hire him full time as corporate manager of product design.
For three and a half years, Manock and his colleagues worked under Jobs, perfecting the Mac. He witnessed Apple’s early innovation, exponential growth and subsequent conflicts — including the one between Jobs and CEO John Sculley. Although Manock left Apple before Jobs was ousted, he recaps, “The minute Sculley got the majority on the executive council, it was all over.”

[...] there appears to be a bug in the latest version of OS X Lion in which the quarantine flag is attached to existing files on the system, preventing some code such as user scripts from being executed. If you create shell scripts, for instance, then opening them in TextEdit and making changes to them will result in them no longer being executable and will result in an "Operation not permitted" error in the Terminal.
Some users have found that this problem happens even if you make edits but do not save the file, suggesting the problem could lie with the system's Autosave features. But if this were the case then it would happen to all programs that support Autosave such as Pages or other iWork programs, and that hasn't been reported happening, which suggests the problem is elsewhere.
After investigating the problem, I found it appears to only happen with Apple's sandboxed applications, such as TextEdit and Preview, suggesting the issue has to do with alterations to the sandbox rule configuration in the OS.

Why do we need this? Because Apple quit releasing full retail versions of Snow Leopard with 10.6.3. If you have an Apple computer made after the Core 2 Duos, the 10.6.3 retail disk may not boot, and the 10.6.0 version won't boot at all. Early 2011 MacBook Pros fall in this category. Version 10.6.7 was the last version released on DVD, but the DVDs were locked to specific machines. We are are going to unlock a 10.6.7 DVD and make it a universal Installer.

While Apple has sought to avoid excessive work by developers, it wants Mac software to rapidly adopt these security features, and will soon (by the beginning of March) add sandboxing to the other minimum requirements of developers who want to sell software through the Mac App Store.

Apple has yet to bring sandboxing to its own iLife and iWorks apps, having focused initially on sandboxing apps and processes that run plugins or access codecs, such as Safari, Quick Look, QuickTime and Preview. That should change rapidly next month once the company's self imposed sandboxing deadline kicks in.

Apple similarly rolled out incremental enhancements its own bundled apps and separately sold app suites to incorporate support for 64-bit, starting with apps that benefitted most from the architectural shift.

Apple has reportedly notified resellers that the white polycarbonate MacBook is now officially classified as "End of Life" and has been discontinued.

AppleInsider was first to report last year that the white MacBook would be phased out. A day later, Apple pulled the white MacBook from its consumer-facing website.

The Cupertino, Calif., company then announced that the laptop would only be available to educational institutions. MacRumors reported on Wednesday that Apple has stopped even those sales and notified resellers that the MacBook is now classified as "End of Life."

The MacBook was Apple's entry-level notebook for years, but it faced internal competition in 2010 with the release of the 11.6-inch MacBook Air, which also started at $999 and was an instant hit.

Apple introduced the MacBook in May 2006 during the transition from PowerPC to Intel processors. In 2008, it temporarily received an aluminum makeover, but that machine was later rebranded as the 13-inch MacBook Pro. Apple released a unibody polycarbonate design in 2009 that remained until the product was discontinued last year.