http://www.osnews.com/ Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2012, David Adams OSNews version 4 donotreply@osnews.com (Adam Scheinberg) donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Wed, 15 Feb 2012 08:32:38 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com/ 120 http://www.osnews.com/story/25588/No_Mac_OS_X_wasn_t_ported_to_ARM_by_an_intern/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25588/No_Mac_OS_X_wasn_t_ported_to_ARM_by_an_intern/ It's still early days, but this has the potential to put more fuel on the Apple rumour mill fire than anything else in recent times. A BA thesis by Dutch student Tristan Schaap details how, during his internship at Apple's Platform Technologies Group, he ported Darwin to a certain ARMv5 developer board. A few blog articles later, and the headline has already turned into 'Mac OS X ported to ARM'. So, what have I been running on my iPhone and iPad all these years? Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:56:34 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Mac OS X 23 http://www.osnews.com/topics/41 News http://www.osnews.com/story/25571/Mac_OS_X_Lion_10_7_3_Released/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25571/Mac_OS_X_Lion_10_7_3_Released/ Apple has released Mac OS X Lion 10.7.3 (by far Apple's most inelegant product name). It's a whole bunch of under-the-hood stuff, mostly bug fixes. It adds support for Catalan, Croatian, Greek, Hebrew, Romanian, Slovak, Thai, and Ukrainian. It's all in Software Update. Thu, 02 Feb 2012 11:26:43 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Mac OS X 26 http://www.osnews.com/topics/41 News http://www.osnews.com/story/25547/Apple_Restricts_Certain_APIs_to_Mac_App_Store_Applications/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25547/Apple_Restricts_Certain_APIs_to_Mac_App_Store_Applications/ "It's no longer possible to write a single app that takes advantage of the full range of Mac OS X features. Some APIs only work inside the Mac App Store. Others only work outside it. Presumably, this gap will widen as more new features are App Store-exclusive, while sandboxing places greater restrictions on what App Store apps are allowed to do." Anybody surprised by this, here's the clue stick. Please proceed to hit yourself with it. Thu, 26 Jan 2012 15:13:07 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Mac OS X 54 http://www.osnews.com/topics/41 News http://www.osnews.com/story/25294/Apple_To_Mandate_Sandboxing_by_March_2012/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25294/Apple_To_Mandate_Sandboxing_by_March_2012/ And so the iOS-ification of Mac OS X continues. Apple has just announced that all applications submitted to the Mac App Store have to use sandboxing by March 2012. While this has obvious security advantages, the concerns are numerous - especially since Apple's current sandboxing implementation and associated rules makes a whole lot of applications impossible. Thu, 03 Nov 2011 22:54:30 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Mac OS X 64 http://www.osnews.com/topics/41 News http://www.osnews.com/story/24971/Siracusa_s_Mac_OS_X_10_7_Lion_Review/ http://www.osnews.com/story/24971/Siracusa_s_Mac_OS_X_10_7_Lion_Review/ Introduction not necessary. Read it. Wed, 20 Jul 2011 16:09:08 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Mac OS X 9 http://www.osnews.com/topics/41 News http://www.osnews.com/story/24912/Mac_OS_X_Lion_Golden_Master_Seeded_to_Developers/ http://www.osnews.com/story/24912/Mac_OS_X_Lion_Golden_Master_Seeded_to_Developers/ "Apple has seeded the golden master version of OS X Lion to developers ahead of its public release sometime this month (July). The golden master download is available from Apple's Mac Developer website. The build number is 11A511. In addition, Apple has seeded Developer Preview 7 of Xcode 4.1." You'll now also be allowed to virtualise several instances of Mac OS X inside Mac OS X. Fri, 01 Jul 2011 23:05:32 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Mac OS X 12 http://www.osnews.com/topics/41 News http://www.osnews.com/story/24902/Mac_OS_X_10_6_8_Brings_TRIM_Support_for_SSDs/ http://www.osnews.com/story/24902/Mac_OS_X_10_6_8_Brings_TRIM_Support_for_SSDs/ "One item of interest regarding last week's Mac OS X 10.6.8 update reveals that Apple has enabled TRIM support retroactively for solid state hard drives shipped in Apple-produced configurations. TRIM is a feature that allows solid state drives (SSDs) to automatically handle garbage collection, cleaning up unused blocks of data and preparing them for rewriting, thereby preventing slowdowns that would otherwise occur over time as garbage data accumulates." Wed, 29 Jun 2011 09:49:47 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Mac OS X 5 http://www.osnews.com/topics/41 News Jennimc http://www.osnews.com/story/24885/OS_X_-_Safe_Yet_Horribly_Insecure/ http://www.osnews.com/story/24885/OS_X_-_Safe_Yet_Horribly_Insecure/ "Using a Mac may certainly be a safer choice for a lot of people as despite being vulnerable they are not targeted. However this is not the same as Macs being secure, something Eric Schmidt erroneously advised recently. I may be able to browse impervious to malware on a Mac at the moment, however I personally would not be comfortable using a platform so easily compromised if someone had the motivation to do so. In this article I address just why OS X is so insecure including the technical shortcomings of OS X as well as Apples policies as a company that contribute to the situation." Sat, 25 Jun 2011 08:55:14 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Hadrien Grasland) Mac OS X 86 http://www.osnews.com/topics/41 News John http://www.osnews.com/story/24880/Mac_OS_X_10_6_8_Released/ http://www.osnews.com/story/24880/Mac_OS_X_10_6_8_Released/ "Apple has now released Mac OS X 10.6.8, the eighth maintenance update for Snow Leopard, via Software Update. The update offers a number of fixes implemented since the release of Mac OS X 10.6.7 in late March." Thu, 23 Jun 2011 22:51:23 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Mac OS X 32 http://www.osnews.com/topics/41 News http://www.osnews.com/story/24812/Mac_Defender_Security_Update_Thwarted_Few_Hours_After_Release/ http://www.osnews.com/story/24812/Mac_Defender_Security_Update_Thwarted_Few_Hours_After_Release/ Looks like Apple might have changed their mind and rushed a security update against Mac Defender a bit too quickly. "Hours after Apple released [the] update and the initial set of definitions, a new variation of Mac Defender is in the wild. This one has a new name, Mdinstall.pkg, and it has been specifically formulated to skate past Apple's malware-blocking code." Update: And one day later, Apple has updated its malware definitions to detect the new version. MD's turn. Thu, 02 Jun 2011 09:14:18 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Hadrien Grasland) Mac OS X 19 http://www.osnews.com/topics/41 News http://www.osnews.com/story/24792/Amazon_Launches_Mac_Software_Game_Download_Store/ http://www.osnews.com/story/24792/Amazon_Launches_Mac_Software_Game_Download_Store/ It seems that the fight between Amazon and Apple has just entered into a new phase. The two companies are already in the world's silliest tussle over the trademark for the term 'app store', and now Amazon has kicked it up a notch by launching a competitor to the Mac App Store. While not nearly as large as the Mac App Store, it contains a number of big-name titles which are not available through Apple's offering - such as Microsoft Office. Thu, 26 May 2011 21:22:09 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Mac OS X 4 http://www.osnews.com/topics/41 News http://www.osnews.com/story/24783/Apple_Finally_Addresses_MAC_Defender_Promises_Fix/ http://www.osnews.com/story/24783/Apple_Finally_Addresses_MAC_Defender_Promises_Fix/ Well, it took them long enough. Apple has finally acknowledged the existence of the MAC Defender trojan, and has offered removal instructions. The company has also promised a security update to Mac OS X that will block MAC Defender and its variants from working. All this information was published in the form of a support document on Apple's website. Update: Well, that was fast. A new variant of the trojan, called Mac Guard, has been discovered. Unlike previous variants, this one does not require users to enter their administrative password. Wed, 25 May 2011 17:02:27 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Mac OS X 67 http://www.osnews.com/topics/41 News kaiwai http://www.osnews.com/story/24744/Apple_Releases_Lion_Developer_Preview_3_and_Xcode_4_1_Preview_5/ http://www.osnews.com/story/24744/Apple_Releases_Lion_Developer_Preview_3_and_Xcode_4_1_Preview_5/ "Per MacStories, Apple has released a new Mac OS X Lion Developer Preview 3 to its developers this evening as well as Xcode 4.1 Developer Preview 5. Apple last updated Lion for developers in late April. That version contained several UI changes presumably based on feedback from developers." Mon, 16 May 2011 15:44:09 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Hadrien Grasland) Mac OS X 4 http://www.osnews.com/topics/41 News poundsmack http://www.osnews.com/story/24732/Here_s_to_the_Crazy_Ones_a_Decade_of_Mac_OS_X_Reviews/ http://www.osnews.com/story/24732/Here_s_to_the_Crazy_Ones_a_Decade_of_Mac_OS_X_Reviews/ "Ars Technica's John Siracusa looks back with a decade's hindsight at his early reviews of Mac OS X. He talks about what went right, what went wrong, and what he's still waiting on." I've read them all over the years, and Siracusa is by far the best reviewer on the web. His Mac OS X reviews are worth it for the technical details of the inner workings of Mac OS X alone - even if you don't use or like Apple's operating system. Fri, 13 May 2011 10:30:26 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Mac OS X 9 http://www.osnews.com/topics/41 News http://www.osnews.com/story/24699/Apple_To_Release_Mac_OS_X_Lion_Through_Mac_App_Store_/ http://www.osnews.com/story/24699/Apple_To_Release_Mac_OS_X_Lion_Through_Mac_App_Store_/ "With the release of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion this summer, Apple will make the switch to a new kind of digital distribution for its operating system upgrades by releasing the software first through its new Mac App Store, AppleInsider has learned. The Mac App Store, available to all users running the most recent version of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, will become the de facto method for obtaining the Lion upgrade, people familiar with the matter have revealed. Users will be able to upgrade instantly without the need for physical media by purchasing Lion through the Mac App Store." The old-fashioned regular disc version (and hopefully, on a USB drive for Air owners such as myself) will still be available. Wed, 04 May 2011 21:51:02 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Mac OS X 40 http://www.osnews.com/topics/41 News poundsmack