.November 2007 News ArchiveReturn to 's Current News Page.Copyright 2007 by Bill Fox All rights reserved.Last Updated: November 30, 2007Note: Use 'Find' under your browser's 'Edit' or 'Search' Menu to search each month's archive.Older Archives: 11/30 AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson blurts out 3G iPhone Available in 2008, So?At a meeting of the Churchill Club in Santa Clara, CA, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson reportedly (by ) blurted out that a 3G iPhone will be available in 2008. Is this news?
![]()
TypeIt4Me 6.0.2 (138) Multilingual macos 17.76 MB The original text expander for Mac. Get the app that's saved people time and keystrokes for 25 years. Type more quickly and accurately with less effort as your Mac expands your shorthand abbreviations for you. Timbuktu Pro 6.0.2:: 2005-01-01:: 0. TypeIt4Me 4.7.0:: 2005-01-01. 0 microsoft office plus 2010 smart driver updater internet download manager smart windows server 2012 r2 Earth internet download manager.lnk nero burning cricket captain 2019 driver booster 7.1 proficad nero burning rom driver booster nero burning rom 2017 nero burning.
Did he spill the beans? Will it affect iPhone sales? Our answers are yes, no and no.It is news because it adds a bit of confirmation to what we have all been expecting from Steve Jobs' comments on the iPhone getting faster 3G networking capability. Jobs has stated that the iPhone does not have 3G capability because battery life was far more important than 3G compatibility given that it has the slower EDGE and much faster Wi-Fi capabilities already. We certainly agree with this decision if 3G capability drops the iPhone battery life below 8-10 hours for our use. Now it's over 24 hours for us most of the time.
Jobs projected that a 5-hr battery life on a 3G network would be attainable by the end of 2008.Stephenson did not spill the beans because it is what Jobs has alluded to before, if not directly.Our view is that since it is not really new information that it will not hurt iPhone sales. Anyway, we're happy with our iPhone without 3G capability and would be very unhappy if it only got 5 hours of battery life because it used a 3G network. Bill Fox11/30 TechTool Pro 4.6.1 Update for Leopard Now Generally AvailableWe noted that subscribers to Micromat's Annual Service received a link to TechTool 4.6.1 Update for Leopard compatibility. Now the update is is generally available from or via. The Micromat web site was overloaded when we tried it before publication time. Bill Fox11/30 Apple released Xserve Lights-Out Management Firmware Update 1.1For those of you who have an Xserve and missed the announcement elsewhere, Apple released Xserve Lights-Out Management Firmware Update 1.1.
It is available for download from this Apple. According to Apple,This update includes changes to the Lights-Out Management environment of the Intel-based Xserve. It addresses the intermittent issue that causes the LOM port to be unresponsive. This update is strongly recommended for all Intel-based Xserve systems.We do not have an Xserve to test this update for you.
Bill Fox11/30 Cool Mac Software-Billings 2.5.5 Update for Leopard CompatibilityMarketcircle's Billings, a terrific time tracking and invoicing application that provides gorgeous, professional invoices in minutes, is now compatible with Mac OS X Leopard with the release of.The Leopard-compatible Billings 2.5.5 is a free upgrade for Billings 2.x customers and is available immediately from Marketcircle Inc., with U.S. Pricing starting at $59 (international applies, see the Marketcircle store), and is also offered for a free 21-day trial.Billings 2.5.5 integrates easily into existing Mac productivity workflows, co-operating fully with Mac OS X's Address Book, publishing events to iCal, and making information available via Spotlight. For optimal performance on any Mac, Billings 2.5.5 is a universal application working on Intel and PowerPC processors. Bill Fox11/29 Updated Two Leopard 10.5.1 Sleep Issues and Two Unacceptable 'Fixes'Initially, we had two sleep-related issues with Mac OS X 10.5 'Leopard.' Kernel panics in our MacBook Pro on waking from sleep were fixed with a new FirmTek eSATA ExpressCard driver (v.5.3.1) but we still have a problem with Dreamweaver CS3 unexpectedly quitting after waking from sleep. The latter is likely to be fixed eventually with an update to Dreamweaver.However, the 10.5.1 update to Leopard has created two additional sleep-related issues, both afflict our MacBook Pro and one our aluminum iMac.1. After we put our MacBook Pro to sleep, it wakes on its own some time later but the monitor remains asleep.
First, we tried removing all directly-attached peripherals (a huey PRO, FirmTek Expresscard, iPod, iPhone and our FW800 Time Machine hard drive) but that didn't work.Next we took the batteries out of our new aluminum wireless Apple Bluetooth keyboard-bingo! Apparently, the keyboard's power management feature occasionally polls the computer and causes it to wake. This did not happen with 10.5. This is not a problem if we use an original Apple Bluetooth wireless keyboard instead of the new aluminum one.The fix-Turn the aluminum keyboard completely off by holding the power button until the green light goes off or move it more than 30 feet away or use another keyboard.2. On waking our 15' MacBook Pro or 24' aluminum iMac from sleep, it can not be used because the monitor does not wake. The happens only occasionally on our MacBook Pro but frequently on our aluminum iMac. One has to press the power button until the Mac shuts down, then press it again to restart.The fix-Set both Mac and monitor to never sleep, letting the screensaver take over after a short period.Curiously, the wake from sleep/dead video issue has never happened with our Mac mini Core Duo nor any of our PowerPC Macs running Leopard.
In fact, our PowerPC Macs seems to be completely problem-free running Leopard 10.5 or 10.5.1. Update: Corrected aluminum wireless keyboard power off procedure. Bill Fox and Dana Baggett11/29 Updated Apple warned Boot Camp Beta Users of December 31 DeadlineAs users of beta versions of Boot Camp with Tiger, we received the following thank you note, warning and Leopard pitch from Apple:Dear Boot Camp enthusiast:We hope you've enjoyed the opportunity to preview an exciting new feature of Mac OS X Leopard.With the introduction of Leopard, the Boot Camp Beta program has ended.
The Boot Camp Beta software will expire on December 31, and Apple won't offer further updates of Boot Camp Beta for Mac OS X Tiger.If you'd like to continue using Boot Camp, Apple invites you to upgrade to Mac OS X Leopard.Thank you for your participation in the Boot Camp Beta program.While the final Boot Camp Beta 1.4 expires December 31, that does not mean that your Tiger Boot Camp partition will no longer work. In fact, it will continue to work. Based on our observation of previously expired beta versions, the Boot Camp Assistant will just stop working so that no new partitions can be created, no new driver CDs can be made and the existing partition can not be removed.
To do any of those things after December 31, one will have to own a copy of Leopard or follow these on setting back your computer's clock. Bill Fox11/29 Tonight on The Tech Night Owl LIVE-Holidays Gear, Mac Security, Web Ads and Successful Web Site CriteriaTonight, host Gene 'Night Owl' Steinberg checks out the hottest gear for the holidays with Steve 'Mr. Gadget' Kruschen. You'll also get an update on the state of Mac security and some of Leopard's glitches from author and commentator Kirk McElhearn.If you ever wondered just how they manage to target Web ads for you or the audience you want to reach, you'll want to hear from an expert on the subject, Scott Switzer CTO of Openads (a Web-based ad server system).And HostICan's Denis Motova joins Gene to explain how you can tell when your site has truly become successful.Coming December 6: The return of Bob 'Dr.
Mac' LeVitus.You can tune into the tonight from 6:00 to 8:00 PM Pacific, 9:00 to 11:00 PM Eastern. Bill Fox11/28 Microsoft Mac Business Unit touts Office 2008 for Mac-Sneak Peek 6 is OutMicrosoft's Mac Business Unit (Mac BU) set up a for Office 2008 for Mac due out early next year.
Sneak Peek 6 shows how Office 2008 offers simplified ways to share and manage your projects in PowerPoint 2008 and Word 2008 with the following Office 2008 forMac enhancements:PowerPoint 2008. Send to iPhoto: With Office 2008, users can share presentations fromtheir Macs to their iPods. By enabling users to save slide shows to iPhoto, PowerPoint makes it easy to deliver mobile presentations from your iPod. Just save the show as either a PNG or JPEG file and transfer to an iPod to enable portable pitches, proposals and presentations.
Apple Remote Control-enabled: PowerPoint 2008 takes advantage of Apple Remote control, allowing presenters to roam the room while using the simple six-button functionality to remotely control their slideshow.Word 2008. Notebook Layout View Improvements: The Notebook Layout View in Word has been improved to provide greater flexibility to manage your thoughts. Users now have the ability to customize their workspace with different backgrounds, as well as add color-coded tabs to ensure a more efficient note-taking taking experience. All this in addition to the powerful features users are familiar with including synchronized audio notes, and task integration with Entourage.In December, the Mac BU promises to deliver even more feature updates and a significant RTM (Release To Manufacturing) milestone. Bill Fox11/27 Brief Hands-On Report-Parallels Desktop for Mac 3.0 Beta Build 5570 improves Leopard CompatibilityParallels released Desktop for Mac 3.0 beta Build 5570 to replace Build 5540. It is available for download via.Build 5570 has improved Leopard and USB device compatibility as well as numerous bug fixes.We uninstalled Build 5540, downloaded and installed Build 5570 and updated Parallels Tools in our Windows XP and Vista virtual machines.
When we first tried to launch the Windows XP virtual machine we got an Error 2 but a restart of our MacBook Pro solved that problem.We updated Windows XP and Vista with the latest security patches from Microsoft and then updated the Apple and Mozilla applications. After brief use, no issues were encountered with either virtual machine. Bill Fox11/27 Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.10 is OutIt is available for download within the application (Check for Updates under the 'Help' menu) or from this Mozilla or from.Version 2.0.0.10 fixed the following security issues:MFSA 2007-39 Referer-spoofing via window.location race conditionMFSA 2007-38 Memory corruption vulnerabilities (rv:1.8.1.10)MFSA 2007-37 jar: URI scheme XSS hazardAll three are rated 'High Vulnerabilities' by Mozilla.We are using Firefox 3.0b1 so we did not download and install the 2.0.0.10 update for Firefox 2.0.x.
![]()
Bill Fox11/27 Apple looking into MacBook Seagate Hard Drive Data Loss IssueThere have been complaints that some MacBooks with certain Seagate hard drives are experiencing data loss issues. The drives in question have firmware revision 7.01 that can be found by looking under 'Hardware-Serial-ATA' in the System Profiler after selecting the Seagate hard drive in the Serial-ATA Device Tree window.According to, Apple is looking into the matter.'
We've received a few reports that some MacBook consumer notebooks may have hard drive issues, and we're looking into it,' said an Apple representative.Our 15' 2.4GHz MacBook Pro has a Toshiba hard drive but our Mac mini Core Duo has the affected 80GB Seagate 2.5' model with firmware revision 7.01. The latter has shown no problems so far.
Dana Baggett & Bill FoxReady. Apple's 'Black Friday' Shopping Event is Today'Black Friday' is the day after Thanksgiving Day and by tradition it signifies the day that retail businesses start to make a profit for the year, i.e. They move from being in the red for the year to being in the black.Today Apple is having a special one-day 'Black Friday' shopping event called 'Ready. At its online and retail Apple Stores. Apple says you'll find dozens of great iPod, Mac, and iPhone gift ideas - all with free shipping.Update: You can save up to $101 off a MacBook or iMac, $21 off an Apple iPhone Bluetooth Headset, up to $31 off an iPod and up to $201.95 off various non-Apple products.Good luck shopping! Bill Fox11/23 Brief Hands-On Report-Micromat released TechTool Pro 4.6.1 for LeopardMicromat released a Leopard-compatible update v4.6.1 to, its disk maintenance utility. As a subscriber to Micromat's Annual Update Service, we received an email with a subscriber link to download the update.We ran the installer and used it on our MiniMate 80 GB external FW400 hard drive on which we have cloned the internal drive of our 24' 2.8GHz aluminum iMac Core 2 Duo using SuperDuper!
All went well using the Intermediate Suite of Tests, Directory Maintenance and Optimization. That drive had over 12,000 frags and now zero.Then we booted the iMac with the MiniMate hard drive and ran TTP 4.6.1 on the iMac's internal drive. Again all went well.
The defrag process takes less than a second per frag. The iMac HD had about 10,000 frags and now zero.Everything seems to work fine. A good job by Micromat. Dana Baggett11/22 Tonight on The Tech Night Owl LIVE-Holiday Gifts, Leopard, iPhone, Writers Strike and Tech BuzzwordsTonight, host Gene Steinberg explores sales prospects for such tech gear as iPods and high-definition TV sets this holiday season with Ross Rubin, an industry analyst with the NPD Group.You'll also get up-to-the-minute comments about the state of Leopard and the iPhone with Macworld's Jim Dalrymple and Jason Snell. In addition, Jason, a TV expert, will talk about the consequences of a long writer's strike to the current TV season.And HostICan's Denis Motova joins Gene to explain the meaning behind such high-tech buzzwords as 'geo-targeting' and 'load balancing' and what it may mean to you if you have a fast-growing online business.You can tune into the tonight from 6:00 to 8:00 PM Pacific, 9:00 to 11:00 PM Eastern.
Bill Fox, the maker of anti-malware software, sent us a note describing a vulnerability in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard's 'quarantine' system involving Mail attachments and providing a proof of concept. Intego rates the bug they term 'OSX.Exploit.MetaData.B' as a low risk.Intego's advice is the usual. Do not try to open attachments from people you do not know or that you do not expect even from people you know. This vulnerability was first posted. Bill FoxA beta release of the next generation of Mozilla's Firefox web browser is available for testing for those who like to try bleeding edge software that may have bugs.
Firefox 3.0b1 is available for download via.11/21 Brief Hands-On Report-StuffIt Expander 12.0.1 is OutThe venerable StuffIt Expander is a free utility from Smith Micro that allows you to decompress most of the popular archived files that software developers use to compression their files for faster transfer. It is available for download from.What's fixed in v12.0.1 is:. Fixed an issue where StuffIt Expander wouldn't auto-quit after finishing an expansion operation when using the 'Watch Folder' feature. Fixed an issue that prevented expansion of Compact Pro archives that contained a comment. Fixed an issue that prevented complete expansion of some older StuffIt 5 archives. Fixed an issue that prevented expansion of some older self-extracting Zip archives (.exe).We downloaded he new version and tested it on a few files. No issues were encountered.
Dana Baggett & Bill Fox11/19 Updated Hands-On Report-Multiple SUID Warnings in Mac OS X 10.5.1 Permissions CheckIt appears that if you installed Mac OS X 10.5.1 via Software Update, then using Disk Utility to verify or repair permissions results in many SUID warning reports being listed in Disk Utility's window. We have checked all of our Mac OS X 10.5.1 installations with Disk Utility and they all display the multiple warnings.
However, we have not noted any issues with Mac OS X 10.5.1 in extensive use on multiple Macs since 10.5.1 was installed on them last Thursday and Friday.The warning reports do not go away with multiple runs of repair permissions in our experience, although that has been suggested by some Mac Web sites. What does make all but one of the warnings disappear on all of our Macs is reinstalling Mac OS X 10.5.1 using the stand-alone file available from these Apple Web pages for the or the editions.The one SUID warning that does not go away is:Warning: SUID file 'System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/ARDAgent' has been modified and will not be repaired.We do not know what caused these warnings.
Perhaps, it is due to an incomplete revision or listing of permissions by the installer using Software Update. We do not use Apple Remote Desktop so whatever triggers the remaining warning is unlikely to cause us any problems. And, as we previously noted, we've experienced no issues at all since installing Mac OS X 10.5.1 which leads us to believe that the warnings are benign even if a bit unsettling. Update: Reader William Smith pointed out that Apple has posted a on the ARDAgent SUID error warning indicating that it is benign.
Another reader, Ken, thought that it is due to an Apple Remote Desktop update that occurs right after installing Leopard. Bill Fox & Dana Baggett11/16 Brief Hands-On Report-Mac OS X 10.5.1 is Out, Fixes Potential Data Loss IssueApple released Mac OS X 10.5.1 update for Leopard and it is available via Software Update or as a stand-alone file from these Apple Web pages as the or the edition. According to the ReadMe file,The 10.5.1 Update is recommended for all users running Mac OS X Leopard and includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility and security of your Mac.Here are more details from Apple on the bug fixes:Here are the security fix details:Application Firewall-CVE-2007-4702-The 'Block all incoming connections' setting for the firewall is misleading. This update addresses the issue by more accurately describing the option as 'Allow only essential services', and by limiting the processes permitted to receive incoming connections under this setting to a small fixed set of system services: configd (for DHCP and other network configuration protocols), mDNSResponder (for Bonjour), and racoon (for IPSec).
The 'Help' content for the Application Firewall is also updated to provide further information.Application Firewall-CVE-2007-4703-Processes running as user 'root' (UID 0) cannot be blocked when the firewall is set to 'Set access for specific services and applications.' This update corrects the issue so that any executable so marked is blocked.Application Firewall-CVE-2007-4704-Changes to Application Firewall settings do not affect processes started by launchd until they are restarted. This update corrects the issue so that changes take effect immediately.None of these issues affect systems prior to Mac OS X v10.5.We downloaded and installed 10.5.1 on several Macs including: 15' 2.4GHz MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo, 24' 2.8GHz aluminum iMac Core 2 Duo, 1.66GHz Mac mini Core Duo, 12' 1.4GHz PowerBook G4, 1.4GHz PowerMac G4 Cube and a Dual 2GHz PowerMac G5. All installations completed with no issues and none were encountered in several hours use.Our problems with Leopard have been limited to our 15' 2.4GHz MacBook Pro, the only Mac on which we used a safe Archive and Install of Leopard. We had occasional kernel panics on wake from sleep but this issue was resolved with new FirmTek firmware/drivers v5.3.1. We still had, prior to installing 10.5.1, an occasional blank screen on wake from sleep and frequent unexpected quits of Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 usually following wake from sleep.
Neither of the latter issues have occurred since installing 10.5.1 but it is too soon to tell if either has been resolved. Bill Fox & Dana Baggett11/16 Brief Hands-On Report-iMac Graphics Firmware Update 1.0 is OutApple released iMac Graphics Firmware Update 1.0 and it is available via Software Update or as a stand-alone file from this Apple. According to Apple,This update is for 20-inch and 24-inch aluminum iMac computers with the ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro graphics running Mac OS X 10.4.10 with iMac Software Update 1.2.1 or Leopard with iMac Software Update 1.3.It updates the graphics firmware on the ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro to improve system stability.We installed the firmware update on our 24' 2.8GHz aluminum iMac Core 2 Duo running Leopard with no problems. We weren't having the screen freeze issue before installing the update and no issues were encountered since installing it.
Dana Baggett11/16 Brief Hands-On Report-Cocktail 4.0 Leopard Edition is OutCocktail 4.0 for Leopard is out and available for download via 'Check for Updates' within the application.
Stella is an Atari 2600 VCS emulator released under the GNU General Public License (GPL).
![]() Comments are closed.
|
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
January 2023
Categories |