May 29, 2008 May 31, 2008 Friday May 30, 2008
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Now Microsoft Warning Apple of Security Leaks?
In the last week, two major flaws have been reported, one in downloading .ICS (iCal) files, and one in Safari's carpet-bombing problems. Now, Microsoft is reportedly getting in on the warnings to Apple. Basically, Tim Rains, Microsoft's security guy, says that “Safari…cannot be configured to obtain the user's permission before it downloads a resource.” That means that some hacker could create a website that would automatically download and “litter the user's desktop” with boatloads of files. Microsoft is taking the role of bigger brother and saying, “Do not follow our lead!” This is all, of course, in response to Apple's pushing of Safari on Windows iTunes' users. Naturally, Microsoft does not like other companies that try to take or steal market share away from Internet Explorer, the world's safest browser. [Via InformationWeek]
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Back-to-School Specials and AppleCare
Image via AppleInsider AppleInsider is reporting that Apple's yearly back-to-school buy a Mac and get an iPod special may be starting early this year, and may be extra special. Speculation puts the price point at about a $199 mail-in rebate. It would be nice if the rebate were enough for an iPod Touch or even an AppleTV. Of course, you do have to buy an iPod and that adds to the total cost with the hope of “free money” later. The idea of adding cost to an already expensive product begs the question about adding AppleCare to your computer/iPod purchases. After hearing some horror stories about AppleCare, I am seriously debating getting it when I purchase my iMac later this year. Though, I know there is some good anecdotal evidence as well. What are your experiences? Feel free to link to blogs with testimonials.
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Check Mac Warranty (AppleCare) with Serial Number
My work is a Mac shop. Everyone has a Mac, some people even have two (desktop and laptop). Anyway, I recently decided to do an inventory to see what we had and what was/was not under warranty. I started by making a Google docs spreadsheet and named it “Office Macs.” (Creative…I know). I then went around to each workstation and recorded the the type of mac, admin username & password, the OS version, GHZ, RAM, and serial number: Click the apple in the finder bar Click “About this Mac” (that will pop up a smaller window that tells you: OS Version, processor, Memory) Click “More Info” (that will pop up another window, which you can get the serial number from) Record all of this information in your Google doc After you have all your info, you can go to this link, where all you do is input your serial number and country, and then click continue. After a few seconds you will be shown the type of Mac and the type of warranty on it. Have fun!
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Secrets of iPhone 2, MacBook Touch and Air.
I know I promised my readers some Apple secrets in my May blogs. Trust me, I have a ton about Apple marketing that I will get around to. (I promise!) But first I wanted to finish my discussion on what I believe is the real goal (and the secret) of the MacBook Air and the iPhone. First consider this: the iPhone has more in common with a computer than a cell phone. It has a full OS, a modern touchscreen interface with soft keypad, it docks with other computers and it is software upgradeable. When was the last time you upgraded your other cell phone? Now consider the current MacBook Air. Sure it's the thinnest laptop in the world. But it has limited network connectivity - if you aren't near an open WiFi, it's an island. And don't get me started on DVD playback. So what do you get when you cross an always connected communication device (like an iPhone 3G) with a super thin computer like a MacBook Air? Simple. You get the MacBook Touch (or here's a longshot - the iMac Air). A real computer connected to the web 24x7 with a touch interface sans keyboard. Throw in the new MobileMe (.Mac replacement) and you can get your tunes, photos, movies over the air wherever you are. (The iMac killed the floppy drive - perhaps this new tablet will kill the DVD.) And we're going to see this sooner than most people think. But what does this prediction have to do with Apple marketing? Well it seems to me that the MacBook Air was a dress rehearsal for building and field testing a superthin computer and learning on the backs of early adopters. The iPhone was the field test for a light, touch mobile device (actually the first phone beta test was the original Motorola/iTunes RoKR) where programmability was bolted on a year later. Together they gave Apple's designers and product managers a real understanding of what makes a hit product. This is Apple's new way of product development, which they learned watching Microsoft push out flawed products then doggedly continuing to improve them until they were finally good enough to nearly kill Apple. Today, pay careful attention to how Apple continues to learn, tweak, improve and then repeat until we get Apple products that seem like they were always intended that way from the start. It's a very clever corollary to Steve's insistence that most people could never have dreamt up the iPod or the iPhone or the Mac UI.
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Take Control of .Mac ebook revised, just in time for name change
Filed under: Odds and ends, Books, .MacTake Control Books has published the second edition of Joe Kissell's Take Control of .Mac eBook. The new version covers the use of Apple's .Mac service with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and iLife '08, with detailed information about: Changes to .Mac in Leopard Adding movies and photos to a Web Gallery Synchronization of multiple Macs through .Mac Configuring an AirPort Extreme for use with Back to My Mac ...and much more! In light of recent news about possible changes to the name and capabilities of .Mac, particularly in terms of iPhone support, it's great that this is an eBook that can be updated almost immediately by the author. If you purchase this $15 ebook now, Glenn Fleishman's upcoming Take Control of Back to My Mac title will be available to you at half-price.In the interest of full disclosure, I have authored two Take Control eBooks -- but not the Books mentioned in this post.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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Windows 7 is your old bicycle.
David Card on Microsoft's plans for Windows 7. So, apparently, the 2009-2010 version of Windows will still not have the next-gen file system I was writing about more than 10 years ago -- when "Cairo" was the lead codename -- let alone a microkernel with modules for OS "personalities" and compatibility. You're gonna fend off Google and cloud computing with a touch screen?? Good luck. I do hope there's a skunkworks Plan B in the labs. No wonder buying Yahoo "isn't strategic." Also amusing is the Microsoft reaction to Tiger's search capabilities.
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★ Spaces in 10.5.3
Spaces was one of the new features in Leopard I was most excited about, but I found the actual implementation unusable. [Henry Story wrote a fine description][d] of the problems with Spaces in 10.5.0. When I linked to his critique, [I wrote]: I’ve tried to love Spaces but can’t, because I want to divide spaces into tasks, and some apps, like my web browser, need to have windows in every space. If I’m in, say, space 3 and Command-Tab to Safari, I want Safari to activate in my current space, not jump me to whichever space contains the frontmost Safari window. In short, Spaces seems designed for app partitioning, not task partitioning. Take, for example, the task of writing this article. What I want to be able to do with Spaces is dedicate one space solely to the task. I want Safari windows pertaining to any web pages related to the article, and MarsEdit and BBEdit windows for the article itself. But I don’t want all open Safari, MarsEdit, and BBEdit windows in this space — I only want those pertaining to the article. There was simply no way to make this work in 10.5.0 through 10.5.2; you could get the windows grouped this way, but you’d keep getting switched to another space when what you wanted to do was switch to another app within the current space. Spaces really only seemed suited to putting all of any given app’s windows in a particular space (or making all an app’s windows visible in all spaces). This isn’t to say Spaces wasn’t usable, only that it wasn’t usable for grouping a few windows from different apps together in one Space. This week’s release of 10.5.3 brought good news: Apple has addressed this problem with a few seemingly minor changes to Spaces. Apple’s release notes for 10.5.3 hint at the changes, but don’t explain them in any detail: Spaces Resolves an issue in which switching to a different space and returning back to the original space may reorder the application windows with a different active window. Resolves an issue in which activating an application from the Dock switches to a different space, even if there is a window for that application in the current space. Fixes an issue in which Command-Tab may incorrectly switch to a new space. Addresses reliability issues with Spaces when syncing preferences over .Mac. Some of these are simply bug fixes. Clearly, for example, switching between spaces shouldn’t have changed the window ordering within a space. But some of these describe new behavior which only kicks in if you turn off a new-to-10.5.3 checkbox in the Spaces panel in System Preferences: “When switching to an application, switch to a space with open windows for the application”. By default, it’s checked, which means app switching under Spaces remains much the same as it was on 10.5.0–10.5.2. For example, let’s say you have two spaces, with one or more Safari windows in space 1, and no Safari windows in space 2. If you’re in space 2 and activate Safari — whether by clicking the Dock icon, Command-Tabbing, or by opening a link in some other app’s window in space 2, then Spaces will jump you to space 1, where there are already open Safari windows. If you turn this new checkbox off, however, activating an app, even one that has no windows in the current space, will not jump you to another space. Once you’re in a space, you stay there until you explicitly switch spaces, not just switch apps. This makes all the difference in the world for the way I, and others, want to use Spaces. This is a major change to the way Spaces works, but the checkbox label doesn’t exactly make it clear. (I don’t have a better label to suggest; it’s a tough feature to describe in the length of a checkbox label.) Sadly, the help content for Spaces does not seem to have been updated to even mention this checkbox, let alone describe what it does. One non-obvious detail is that you can switch to another space by clicking an app’s Dock icon multiple times. If you click a running app’s Dock icon once, that app will activate in the current space. If it doesn’t have any open windows in the current space, it will activate without creating a new untitled window. But if you click that same app’s Dock icon again, you’ll jump to the next space in which that app does have an open window. If the app has open windows spread across multiple spaces, subsequent clicks on its Dock icon will cycle through those spaces. So if you have four total spaces, with Safari windows in spaces 1 and 3, you can repeatedly click Safari’s icon in the Dock to cycle between spaces 1 and 3. If you’re starting in space 2 or 4, clicking Safari’s Dock icon once will activate Safari in that space but without a window. Using Command-Tab to switch between apps, you will never automatically switch to another space when this new “switching” checkbox is turned off. (It’d be nice if the Command-Tab window provided some sort of indication for which apps have open windows in the current space.) I also ran into an issue specific to web browsers. In the General tab of Safari’s preferences window, you can specify whether links from other applications open in a new Safari window or in a new tab in the frontmost existing Safari window. I had been using the “in a new tab” option. However, with this new Spaces feature, opening a link from another app in a space that has no Safari windows will jump you to the next space that does have one. Ideally, I’d like to see Safari create a new window in the current space in this situation, but as it stands, changing Safari’s preference to open links in a new window is good enough. (This same thing applies to other tabbed web browsers, such as Firefox and Camino.) In short, if you were happy with the way Spaces worked through 10.5.2, you shouldn’t notice any changes, because the default behavior remains the same in 10.5.3. But if, like me, Spaces drove you nuts by switching between spaces when you only wanted to switch between apps within the current space, give it another shot after turning this new checkbox off. Kudos to the Spaces team. Lastly, I should mention that I had problems getting this new feature to work at all. After upgrading to 10.5.3 and seeing the Spaces-related changes in the release notes, I tried it out. Toggling the new checkbox made no difference for me, however — I got the same old “jump to another space when switching apps” behavior either way. I solved the problem by trashing my com.apple.dock.plist preferences file (which, since Spaces is controlled by the Dock, is where most Spaces-related prefs seem to be stored). After logging out and logging back in, the new checkbox worked perfectly.
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Help Firefox set a Guinness world record
Filed under: Software, Freeware, Internet, Internet ToolsThe Firefox team would like to invite the world to join in their quest to set a Guinness World Record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours. How do they planning to do this? They want as many people as possible to pledge to download Firefox 3 within 24 hours of its release as part of Download Day 2008.While the release day is still unknown -- sometime in June is as much of a hint as we're getting -- pledging signs you up for updates about the imminent release of Firefox 3. You can also use your favorite social networking group (Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Twitter) to follow the journey of Firefox to a world record.When I wrote this post, 356,554 people had pledged to grab Firefox 3 on Download Day 2008. The US is leading with 58,862 pledges, with Brazil in second place with 23,030. Wherever you reside, be sure to participate in this fun event!Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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Apple is music industry’s Public Enemy No. 1
So long, file-sharing. Dan Moren says Apple has supplanted piracy as the music industry’s biggest nemesis.
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How do you get to 10 million?
There's been some confusion about how Apple expects to get to its stated goal of having sold 10 million iPhones in 2008. Some have said that it's 10 million by the end of 2008 and therefore should include the 3.7 million phones sold in 2007 while other have said it's 10 million sold in calendar 2008. Turns out it's the latter. Google it up and you'll see that this has been confirmed by many an analyst and, to be honest, it is not what the Macalope thought -- he thought it included 2007. It doesn't, however, and the brown and furry one apologizes for the error. And, really, he should have known better. 10 million by the end of 2008 would have made iPhone sales completely flat or down for calendar 2008 as 3.7 represents about 6 months of sales and 3.7 X 3 = 11.1. Regardless, Macworld's Jason Snell has already detailed how Apple will likely beat the 10 million mark for calendar 2008. So the question really is just by how much.
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EDGE and 3G and tripping down memory lane
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iPhoneMy relationship with my iPhone hasn't been an easy one. On the one hand, it's an absolutely brilliant platform -- I just love programming for it. On the other hand it's a money hole. To keep it legit, I'm forking over a wad of cash each month to AT&T and from there on to Apple (not to mention the $99/year new iPhone play tax). One of my biggest decisions on that end involved giving up my data plan. Leaving the $20/month data plan behind as my "optional extra" has saved me $240 over the course of the year. Read on for more about the iPhone and EDGE and my 3G service dilemma.Continue reading EDGE and 3G and tripping down memory laneRead | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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Lancaster mall to get Apple store in fall
Filed under: RetailIs it strange to feel affectionate towards a shopping mall? While I didn't visit Park City in Lancaster, PA as a kid, I still have a sense of it being "my mall" -- my wife grew up in Lancaster, and I think over the years I've absorbed some of her connection to the place. Retail nostalgia by spousal proxy? I'll have to check for that in the DSM-IV. Now, with confirmation that an Apple Store is heading for Park City (initially reported by ifoAppleStore in April), I'm struck by this odd sense of pride mixed with relief. Pride, because my adopted mall is getting its own Apple Store at last; relief, because now I can dispatch my father-in-law somewhere closer to home when he needs hardware help. Maybe I should visit the Genius Bar there and leave them a photograph and an system profile, just in case. LancasterOnline.com reports that the store will occupy a 4,900-square-foot slot in the mall, and it's expected to open by late October 2008. Thanks, CR!Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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‘Mobile Me’ Strings in iPhone Beta SDK
Dmitry Chestnykh finds “Mobile Me” in a few resources in the latest iPhone 2.0 beta SDK. ★
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'Mobile Me' the new name of .Mac?
Filed under: .MacAs Mat noted last night, it's looking like a name change is in store for the .Mac service. CodingRobots.com and Deep Apple (via Daring Fireball) have found some additional interesting strings in the newest release of the iPhone SDK, building on strings found in other parts of the Mac OS X update (iCal, Mail and more) released Tuesday. Apparently, Mobile Me looks like it wil be the name of the new service: CodingRobots has a screenshot of the "MobileMe" string inside the SDK 2.0 release. Add in the 2006 AppleInsider report, noted by DF, that Apple filed a trademark application for the name "Mobile Me" in early 2006, and all signs point to the new branding for .Mac. What Mobile Me could offer is known only by Apple at this point, though Gruber speculates that Mobile Me might extend the over-the-air sync capabilities of iPhone 2.0 (as announced, limited to Microsoft Exchange/ActiveSync users in the enterprise) to the rest of us.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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TUAW Review: Fireworks CS4 beta
Filed under: Software, Beta BeatAh, Fireworks. I remember it as the app that introduced me to the PNG file format in 1999. I was disappointed when it was excluded from Adobe Creative Suite 3 (Design Premium Second Mortgage Edition), and kept my copy of Fireworks 8 in protest. I was elated when it married Jeannie, but then saddened when it left her for Diane. Fireworks CS4, part of the group of beta apps that Adobe introduced on Tuesday, is the latest in the long line of Macrome -- I mean, Adobe's -- rapid website prototyping tools. Long-time users of Fireworks will be pleased that most of the app's functionality has been retained -- at least in the beta. Users looking for a more Photoshop- or Illustrator-like experience will probably be disappointed. If my last review is any indication, there will be nothing but fireworks after the jump.Continue reading TUAW Review: Fireworks CS4 betaRead | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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Back To My Mac alternative: TeamViewer
Filed under: SoftwareBack To My Mac got you down? After the 10.5.3 update, all BTTM is telling me is what I already know -- my Comcast-supplied router is old and doesn't support NAT-PMP or UPnP. iChat Screen Sharing works, but really needs someone on the other end of the connection to activate it. Yeah, Timbuktu has been available for years, but who knows what Motorola is going to do with it in the future? MacHelpMate is wonderful for supporting clients, but what if I just want to access my own Mac when I'm on the road?TeamViewer is a popular GoToMyPC-like app that was Windows-only until May 28th, when the Mac client was announced. The application is free for personal use, which is nice for those of us who want to get "Back to our Macs" but can't get BTTM to work or don't have .Mac accounts. I gave the freebie service a test last night, accessing my home iMac from my MacBook Air over a Sprint Mobile Broadband connection. Setup was simple: I installed the application on both Macs, then wrote down the ID and password generated by TeamViewer on the iMac. I left TeamViewer running on the iMac, then went out to dinner. While enjoying a few beers, I popped open the MBA and fired up TeamViewer. I told it to connect to my iMac, gave it the ID and password, and was rewarded with complete control of my machine at home. TeamViewer works well for remote control, file transfers, and blasting presentations out to co-workers. For commercial use, TeamViewer sells licenses varying from $249 for six months, or an unlimited license for $1399. If you're a system admin who needs to control both Macs and PCs remotely, TeamViewer may be the app for you. Download TeamViewer here and see if it works for you, too!Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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Mac OS Ken: 05.30.2008
Report: Movie Rentals and Sales Coming Soon to iTunes Canada and UK / Hutchison Telecom to Take iPhone to Hong Kong and Macau / Popular Mechanics Weighs in on Next iPhones / Chinese Developer Claims to Have Sold Handwriting App to Apple for iPhone 2.0 / Apple Seeks Patent for Everything You Can Do with an iPod and More / Apple Tops AMRs Supply Chain 25 / Apple Gains Respect in Japan / Apple Updates RAW Compatibility, Logic Express, and Server Admin Tools / Canada: Hollywood Agent of Evil? / iFund Funds Social Recommendation and Home Remote Control Apps
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★ Mobile Me?
Poking around the updated files in 10.5.3, the Russian-language site Deep Apple noticed that iCal’s “Localizable.strings” resource file now contains placeholder text for the name “.Mac”, with the following comment: /* Label of the .Mac button in iCal’s General preferences. %@ is the new name of Apple’s online service (was .Mac) (remove -XX02) */ This is new to 10.5.3; in 10.5.2, the name “.Mac” was hard-coded, not a localizable string. Dmitry Chestnykh at Coding Robots followed Deep Apple’s lead and uncovered similar localization strings for “.Mac” elsewhere, including Safari and Apple Mail. Chestnykh writes: I looked into binaries to find out what the new name is, but it seems like apps take this value from /System/Library/PreferencePanes/Mac.prefPane, which still has the old name. It seems like it will be updated via Software Update once Apple renames .Mac and — boom! — all your apps will have the new name. It’s not exactly a secret that, as I wrote a few weeks ago, .Mac is .bad. But in addition to the service being of sketching quality, the name is crap, too. It looks and sounds silly, for one thing (you know it’s a bad name when it sounds so similar to a Microsoft initiative like .NET), but for another, tying the service’s name explicitly to “Mac” would make it awkward to, say, introduce new features for over-the-network synching of data to iPhones and iPods belonging to Windows users.1 Why expand .Mac to include iPhone synching? Consider the new over-the-air push synching of email, contacts, and calendars Apple has already revealed for the scheduled-for-later-this-month iPhone OS 2.0. As it stands now, these features will only be available for users of Microsoft Exchange. Awkward. Assuming Apple wants to bring similar features to non-Exchange users, too, what we now call .Mac seems the mostly likely route. But so what might the new name be? Sync and web seem like apt words, but Apple’s already used “iSync” and “iWeb”. Mobile, perhaps? That fits with Apple’s priorities. At the end of my “Why Apple Won’t Buy Adobe” piece two weeks ago, I wrote: And so if Apple, under Jobs, is tightly focused, what is it that they’re focused on? It’s not the pro market. It’s mobility — iPhone, iPod, MacBook Air. “iMobile”, though, sounds wrong.2 But a bit of searching leads back to these reports from January 2006 regarding trademark filings from Apple for the term “Mobile Me”. AppleInsider reported that Apple filed four separate filings for the term, including two portable electronic devices and a music-over-the-network service. But it’s the fourth filing for “Mobile Me” that’s the most interesting: “Telecommunication services; electronic transmission and retrieval of data, images, audio, video and documents, including text, cards, letters, messages, mail, animations, and electronic mail, over local or global communications networks, including the internet, intranets, extranets, television, mobile communication, cellular and satellite networks; electronic transmission of computer software over local or global communications networks, including the internet, intranets, extranets, television, mobile communication, cellular, and satellite networks; electronic mail services; facsimile transmission; web site portal services; providing access to databases and local or global communications networks, including the internet, intranets, extranets, television, mobile communication, cellular, and satellite networks; internet service provider services; message transmission services, namely, electronic transmission of messages; telecommunication services for the dissemination of information by mobile telephone, namely the transmission of data to mobile telephones; mobile telephone communication services.” Sounds a bit like the description of a revamped .Mac geared toward over-the-network synching to iPhones, no? Although perhaps no more so than using the sounds-like-something-related-to-music name “iTunes” for an app that handles video and the synching of photos, calendars, and contacts. ↩ But, then again, I thought “MacBook” sounded wrong, too. ↩