Tag: Mac

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Snow Leopard New 64-bit Mac OS X with Microsoft Exchange 2007

Snow Leopard

Snow Leopard, the next major version of the world’s most advanced operating system, Mac OS X changes more than its spots, it changes focus. Taking a break from adding new features, Snow Leopard — scheduled to ship in about a year — builds on Leopard’s enormous innovations by delivering a new generation of core software technologies that will streamline Mac OS X, enhance its performance, and set new standards for quality. Snow Leopard dramatically reduces the footprint of Mac OS X, making it even more efficient for users, and giving them back valuable hard drive space for their music and photos.

Special Features:

“Grand Central,” a new set of technologies built into Snow Leopard, brings unrivaled support for multicore systems to Mac OS X. More cores, not faster clock speeds, drive performance increases in today’s processors.
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Snow Leopard extends the 64-bit technology in Mac OS X to support breakthrough amounts of RAM — up to a theoretical 16TB, or 500 times more than what is possible today.

Snow Leopard includes support for Microsoft Exchange 2007 built into Mail, Address Book, and iCal. Mac OS X uses the Exchange Web Services protocol to provide access to Exchange Server 2007.

Using media technology pioneered in OS X iPhone, Snow Leopard introduces QuickTime X, a streamlined, next-generation platform that advances modern media and Internet standards.

Another powerful Snow Leopard technology, OpenCL (Open Compute Library), makes it possible for developers to efficiently tap the vast gigaflops of computing power currently locked up in the graphics processing unit (GPU). With GPUs approaching processing speeds of a trillion operations per second, they’re capable of considerably more than just drawing pictures. OpenCL takes that power and redirects it for general-purpose computing.

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Apple updated its 3G iPod nano software with 1.1.2 update.

iPod nanao

Apple updated its 3G iPod nano software. Notes on the update are limited. Neither the download or Apple’s support pages contain any specific information on what was fixed.
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The only information Apple provided was that the update included some bug fixes. The 1.1.2 update is only available through iTunes at this time.

source:read
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Studio Express 4 A New Version of Toon Boom Animation Creation Software Released

studio-express-4

A new version of Toon Boom animation creation software has released Studio Express 4 for Mac OS X and Windows.

It costs US$99.99 (normally $149.99). Upgrades are priced at $9.99 for a limited time.

Toon Boom Studio Express 4 is a tool for creating animations used on Web sites, Flash banner ads, interactive projects and games, videos and more. It has some limitations compared to the full Toon Boom Studio package, such as an absence of cut out animation tools, animated elements, advanced lip syncing or advanced importing.

New to the version 4 release is a more flexible docking user interface, calligraphic line styles, the ability to feather edges, vectorization using textures, more peg functionalities and more than 30 new features including Flash pre-loaders and HTML embedding.

System requirements, Mac OS X v10.4 or later.

source:read
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Photoshop CS4 to Favor Vista 64bit Not to MAC

Adob CS4

Adobe is prepairing a new version of its Creative Suite, the software bundle that includes Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, and other applications for print and Web design. Only this time there’s a twist: The new version of Photoshop will support 64-bit memory addressing for the first time — but only if you’re running Windows.

Simply put, more bits means you can access more memory, which means you can work with bigger files. By taking advantage of 64-bit CPUs, Adobe is making it possible for designers and photo manipulators to work with really, really big images at high resolutions. Think posters, advertising displays, or even billboards.

As it turns out, Photoshop for Mac OS is written using older APIs that don’t allow access to all the latest Mac OS X features. To bring the software up to speed will require a total rewrite, a time-consuming process that could leave Mac users in the cold for some time.

Will the extra power of Photoshop CS4 for Windows cause designers to jump ship? It seems unlikely. Only a very tiny segment of Photoshop users works with files big enough to warrant 64-bit capability — and designers still like their Macs.

source:read
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PWNED iPhone 2.0 bootloader hacking tool by Next week

 Iphone

The iPhone Dev Team have already hacked the 2.0 firmware, but Pwnage Tool Application releases sometime in the next week for Mac OS X 10.4.x, 10.5.x and Windows.

This tool takes iPhone hacking to the next level by patching the bootloader to let you load any firmware image you want — even images not signed by Apple. That means custom patched firmware can now be loaded directly from iTunes, which simplifies the jailbreaking / unlocking process tremendously, and also means that a patched version of the 2.0 firmware is coming soon. We’re putting the tool through its paces right now and we’ll have a hands-on with it (and the Dev Team’s patched 2.0 firmware) as soon as we get it all working, but check out some highlights after the break, and hit the read link for more info.

* The tool contains revised logos and icons.

* PwnageTool does NOT ship with any Apple licensed software, Intellectual Property, trademarks, logos or images.

source: reed

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Mac Gets Hacked First in Contest by Charlie Miller

 MAC-Hack

Charlie Miller took the first of three laptop computers — and a $10,000 cash prize — Thursday after breaking into a MacBook Air at the CanSecWest security conference’s PWN 2 OWN hacking contest.
Show organizers offered a Sony Vaio, Fujitsu U810 and the MacBook as prizes, saying that they could be won by anybody at the show who could find a way to hack into each of them and read the contents of a file on the system, using a previously undisclosed “0day” attack.

Miller, best known as one of the researchers who first hacked Apple’s iPhone last year, didn’t take much time. Within 2 minutes, he directed the contest’s organizers to visit a Web site that contained his exploit code, which then allowed him to seize control of the computer, as about 20 onlookers cheered him on.

He was the first contestant to attempt an attack on any of the systems.

Miller was quickly given a nondisclosure agreement to sign and he’s not allowed to discuss particulars of his bug until the contest’s sponsor, TippingPoint, can notify the vendor.

Contest rules state that Miller could only take advantage of software that was preinstalled on the Mac, so the flaw he exploited must have been accessible, or possibly inside, Apple’s Safari browser.

Last year’s contest winner, Dino Dai Zovi, exploited a vulnerability in QuickTime to take home the prize.

Dai Zovi, who congratulated Miller after his hack, didn’t participate in this year’s contest, saying it was time for someone else to win.

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New Apple Safari 3.1, World’s Fastest Web Browser?

Apple Safary 3.1

Apple has introduced Safari 3.1, describing it as the world’s fastest web browser for Mac and Windows PCs.

The claim is that Safari loads web pages 1.9 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 and 1.7 times faster than Firefox 2. Safari also apparently runs JavaScript up to six times faster than other browsers.

Safari 3.1 is the first browser to support the new video and audio tags in HTML 5 and the first to support CSS Animations. Safari also supports CSS Web Fonts, giving designers limitless choices of fonts to create stunning new websites.

“Safari 3.1 for Mac and Windows is blazingly fast, easy to use and features an elegant user interface”, said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing.

“And best of all, Safari supports the latest audio, video and animation standards for an industry-leading Web 2.0 experience.”

source:pocket-lint

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Apple’s Beatles Rumours May Come True Soon

 Apple

The Beatles would go digital with their back catalogue in 2008. Cue a whole host of rumors, and, on Monday, his promise seemed to have come true with the story that the remaining Beatles had done a $400 million deal with Apple to put their entire back catalogue on iTunes.

But the very next day, one of the companies that owns the rights to a vast majority of the back catalogue denied the reports.

Sony/ATV Music Publishing, the joint venture owned by Sony and Michael Jackson, branded them “untrue”, adding that if a deal had been made, they would know about it.

And today, it’s Apple that has stepped up to deny the claims.

The computing giant has told Reuters that the story is “unsubstantiated speculation”, and added: “This is not news nor is it a scoop”.

 source:pocket-lint

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‘Apple MAC’ Next Major Target For Hackers & Crooks

MAC

A web poll of 355 computer users, conducted by security firm Sophos after the discovery of the first financially motivated malware for Mac OS X, has revealed that 93% believe Apple Macs will be targeted more in future. Not surprisingly, however, half of those polled said they did not believe the problem would be as great as that faced by users of Microsoft Windows.

The survey results, revealed in a Sophos podcast entitled “Big Mac attack or super-sized hype?”, purportedly show that Apple Mac users are becoming less optimistic about the likelihood of their computers being attacked in future. According to Sophos, a similar survey two years ago, found only 79% believed that Macintosh computers would become more commonly targeted by hackers. However, as neither survey identified how many Mac users were among the respondents, it is difficult to see how a conclusion about the optimism of Mac users concerning their computer security can be drawn.

In the latest Sophos web poll, the following questions were asked between 9 January-7 February 2008 with the resulting responses:

The first financially motivated malware for Macintoshes has been discovered. Do you think in the future Macs will be targeted more often?

Yes, but not as much as Windows        50%
Yes                                                            43%
No                                                            07%

“Yes, the Macintosh malware threat is a concern – but it’s important to put it in perspective. Sophos’s podcast discusses the history and evolution of Macintosh malware, helping IT administrators better understand the problem and protect their systems.”

Last month Sophos published its annual Security Threat Report, which described how financially motivated hackers had targeted Apple Mac computers with malware for the first time.

 

source:itwire
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MacBook Air Poor Battery Life

 Macair

The PC World Test Center has seen some problems with respect to battery life. Unfortunately, you’ll still be making major compromises with the Apple MacBook Air. In The PC World Tests, the Air produced respectable system performance, but mediocre battery life.

The Performance Numbers By PC-World

When the PC World Test Center ran its tests using Apple’s Boot Camp utility–which enables a Mac system to run Windows, too–the Air’s WorldBench 6 score was 57. That score is just below the average WorldBench score of 59 for the field of 17 ultraportable notebooks we’ve tested recently for our Top 10 Ultraportables chart.

The MacBook Air’s performance is more impressive, however, when you consider it against the nine ultraportable models we’ve tested with a minimum weight of four pounds or less (I selected this subset of data for comparison as these are the most likely competitive choices of someone considering a MacBook Air against its PC competition): There, the average WorldBench score is just 50.

The Sony VAIO VGN-TZ510N/B, the slimline PC notebook Steve Jobs compared MacBook Air to in his keynote, scored just 38 on WorldBench 6 tests.

Only two models, the Asus W5Fe-2P025E and the Lenovo ThinkPad X61 bested the MacBook Air’s final, post-Boot Camp WorldBench 6 score of 57. And, both the Asus and the Lenovo were running a faster processor than the MacBook Air: a 2-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7200. f

The MacBook Air runs a 1.6-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor (a 1.8-GHz processor is an option), and includes 2GB of memory, an 80GB 4200rpm hard drive, and a 13.3-inch display.

The only other model in tested with a 1.6-GHz Core 2 Duo processor and 2GB of memory is the 4.5-pound Lenovo ThinkPad X61t; this model received a 64 on our WorldBench 6 tests compared with the Air’s 61.

The Lenovo X61t has other specs that may have helped its performance,  the MacBook Air: the X61t’s 100GB hard drive spins at 5400rpm and its comparatively smaller display measures 12.1-inches on the diagonal.

Subpar Battery Life(Pc-World)

The Air’s battery life averaged 2 hours, 31 minutes, which isn’t even enough juice to cover the flight time from San Francisco to Dallas, let alone get a road warrior clear across the continent with a powered laptop.

The battery life performance of the Air also is quite dismal when we compared to the other nine laptops  in the four-pounds-and-under category. The MacBook Air’s battery life was the third worst among those nine models. The average battery life score among these models was 4 hours, 37 minutes, and five models exceeded five hours in battery life.

source:pcworld