macOS Archive

Yesterday we reported that Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, due for release coming Friday, contained some form of malware and/or virus protection. Since the scope of this protective measure was not yet known - nor if it even existed at all - I thought it would be best to write another post detailing that yes, it's real, and yes, it's all relatively crude.

With Apple's Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard operating system arriving on people's doorsteps over the coming weekend, you'd think that all the new features are known by now, and there will be no more major surprises. Well, that's not entirely true: on Intego's Mac Security Blog, it is reported that Snow Leopard comes with anti-virus/malware functionality built-in. Update: Snow Leopard testers on MacRumors confirmed the functionality. How, exactly, it works, is not yet known, however.

Even though Apple has been hyping up the 64bit nature of its ucpoming Snow Leopard operating system, stating it will be the first Mac OS X release to be 64bit top-to-bottom, reality turns out to be a little bit different so far. With the current Snow Leopard seed, only Xserve users get the 64bit kernel and drivers - all other Macs default to 32bit. By holding down the '6' and '4' keys during boot, you can to boot into full 64bit mode - that is, if your Mac supports it. As it turns out, some Macs with 64bit processors cannot use the 64bit kernel because the EFI is 32bit. Note: I should have included in the article that 64bit applications will run just fine (including benefits) on a 32bit kernel in Mac OS X. Since this was already possible in Leopard, I assumed people were well aware of that. Turns out some were not, so my apologies for that.

The latest build of Snow Leopard, Apple's upcoming operating system, is rumored to be the "Golden Master", or final copy before the product will be released for duplication on optical media. Build 10A432 has been seeded to developers, and French Web site Mac 4 Ever has reported that the latest version is the final build, suggesting the product could be pressed onto discs very soon. The latest version of OS X is due to be released in September, but Apple has not announced an official date.

Whenever we talk about Mac clone makers such as Psystar, we all more or less accept as a fact that Apple is selling copies of its Mac OS X operating system at a price lower than it would have been if Apple did not have a hardware business. Even though we treat this statement as fact - recently, I've been wondering: where is the proof?

The critical Java vulnerability in Mac OS X which we reported on earlier has finally been fixed by Apple. "Java for Mac OS X 10.5 Update 4 delivers improved reliability, security, and compatibility for Java SE 6, J2SE 5.0 and J2SE 1.4.2 on Mac OS X 10.5.7 and later." The fix for this vulnerability is in there.

Between all the updated MacBooks and Snow Leopard news items across the web, you'd almost forget that Apple also has its own server operating system which will also got updated from Leopard to Snow Leopard yesterday. It benefits from the same improvements as the client version, but of course also has a set of its own, server-specific improvements.

"Despite its public diffidence about enterprise adoption, Apple has made Snow Leopard an easier fit for the enterprise. ActiveSync support, the death of AppleTalk, and various security enhancements are of little use to the consumer audience that Apple formally targets," InfoWorld reports.

OSNews regular Kaiwai, who we all love and hate at the same time, has written a fairly detailed article about the latest Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard build, seed 10A355. He covers the changes made, the status of the transition to 64bit, and more.

Six months ago, a certain security flaw in Java was fixed by Sun. This flaw was present in OpenJDK, GIJ, icedtea and Sun's JRE, but it got fixed in those. There's one important shipping Java implementation that still has not been fixed to remove this security flaw: Apple's Java.

Remember the Mac trojan that we reported about earlier this year? A trojan was found piggybacking on the back of copies of iWork and Photoshop CS4 found on warez sites and networks, and it would install itself after the user had entered his or her administrator password during the software's installation. This trojan didn't seem like much of a threat back then, but as it turns out, it's now in use in the first Macintosh botnet.

Back when Apple introduced Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, there was a bit of a minor controversy around the artificially implemented cut-off point; you could only install Leopard on machines with G4 processors of 867Mhz or more, leaving out capable machines like the dual 733Mhz or dual 800Mhz. The community soon found ways around this limitation, and recently, I found myself in a situation where I had to do the same.

The omnipresent "people familiar with the matter" have told AppleInsider that Apple's upcoming Snow Leopard operating system will have more to show for itself than "just" under-the-hood changes and improvements. Apparently, Apple is preparing an updated theme for Snow Leopard, to replace the Aqua one.

Apple has apologized for breaking Perl with its latest Mac OS X security update, saying it will distribute a solution to the problem with a future update. In a note to The Reg and a post to the Apple support forums, Senior Apple programmer Edward Moy apologized for "the unforeseen problems that the 2009-001 security update has caused" with Perl.