macOS Archive

Hi, I'm Thom Holwerda and I jailbreak my iPhone. There, I said it. Some suggest all jailbreakers only do it to pirate applications, but those of us familiar with the practice know there's a whole load of other reasons, the biggest of which is customisation. The iOS isn't pleasing to look at in my book, and hence, jailbreaking allows me to make my iPhone pretty. Jay 'saurik' Freeman, the man behind the Cydia App Store, is going to bring Cydia to the Mac, to bring the kind of customisation options from Cydia to the Mac.

The jokes about two evils joining up are easily made, but I'll try to refrain. Apple recently marked its Java implementation as deprecated. Well, we now know why: Apple and Oracle have announced that Apple will contribute to the OpenJDK project, effectively meaning that Java for Mac OS X will be developed by the OpenJDK community. Why do I have this image in my head?

Steve Jobs recently told a Mac user, enquiring about the probability of USB3 on Macs in the near feature, that the technology is not ready because Intel has yet to adopt the platform. A recent rumour slated Intel to integrate USB3 it into its chipsets by no earlier than 2012. LaCie electronics, however, is not prepared to wait around until 2012, and has just released an USB3.0 driver for Mac OS X. Just one catch: it only works with LaCie's hardware.

It's one of those days again. A supposed security threat appears, and the internet loses its collective brain and starts panicking like Alpha and Omega's kingdom come. This time around, it's a trojan horse thing (it's a trojan, worm, and root kit all in one, though) that targets Mac OS X and Windows. As it turns out, though, the threat this thing poses is not very large (at this point in time).

After the news that the new MacBook Airs do not ship with Flash pre-installed (which is news considering Flash has been part of Mac OS X for a very long time), we now have news that Apple is also taking what appears to be the first steps towards removing Apple's own Java runtime from Mac OS X.

"Parallels Desktop 6 for Mac launched today with a number of new features and refinements for users looking to run alternative operating systems in virtual environments on their Macs. As summarized on Parallels' site, the update brings enhancements to gaming and graphics, simpler setup and integration, greater manageability and mobility, and better performance. Beyond improvements to the standard Parallels Desktop application for Mac OS X, the company has also released a new, free iOS application, Parallels Mobile, bringing remote access on the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch to users running the desktop software."

From the apple site: "The 10.6.4 Update is recommended for all users running Mac OS X Snow Leopard. It includes Safari 5 and general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac, including fixes that: resolve an issue that causes the keyboard or trackpad to become unresponsive, resolve an issue that may prevent some Adobe Creative Suite 3 applications from opening, address issues copying, renaming, or deleting files on SMB file servers, improve reliability of VPN connections, resolve a playback issue in DVD Player when using Good Quality deinterlacing, resolve an issue editing photos with iPhoto or Aperture in full screen view, improve compatibility with some braille display."

"Xcode is a fantastic development environment for developing Mac, iPhone, and iPad applications. But it has some areas for improvement. In this post, I'll explore some improvements to how documentation and autocompletion is integrated into the development workflow and how Xcode could provide specialized interfaces for working with system frameworks."

Apple has released Mac OS X 10.6.3. "Apple on Monday released Mac OS X 10.6.3, the latest software update to its Snow Leopard operating system, bringing improvements in the reliability and compatibility of QuickTime X and addressing compatibility issues with OpenGL-based applications."

The Mac version of BumpTop, the 3D desktop which shipped for Windows last year, has been released. It more or less works the same as the Windows version, but with lots of Mac-specific features and looks. It also supports multitouch gestures on Apple's trackpads.

MacNN has just published an important news item regarding the future of the Mac OS X version of the VLC mdia player. According to VLC's developers, the Mac version is at risk of being discontinued due to a lack of developers. Update: The VLC developers claim that Apple is working against them: "Apple doesn't want us on the Mac platform and is blocking us a lot, and refuses to explain why."

A clever little Mac utility : "Airlock allows your Mac to lock itself, plain and simple. Using your iPhone or iPod Touch, Bluetooth, and a smidgen of pixie dust, Airlock determines whether you're near your computer. When you leave the room - poof! - your Mac locks itself. "And when I come back?" You guessed it: your Mac unlocks. You can also customize Airlock to perform specific actions as you come and go - have your computer talk to you, log-in or out of iChat, walk the dog, and such."

Despite reports to the contrary, current Mac OS X 10.6.2 Snow Leopard builds do not support the Intel Atom processor. The report that support had returned is a fake, and the most recent build 10C540 still does not support the Atom processor. C'est tout.

We reported on the lack of Atom support in development builds of Mac OS X 10.6.2, but a more recent build re-enables support for Intel's Atom line, popular in netbooks. "In the latest development build Atom appears to have resurrected itself zombie style in 10C535. The Atom lives another day, but nothing is concrete until the final version of 10.6.2 is out."