macOS Archive

Review: EFI-X

  Submitted by alcibiades macOS 6 Comments
MacInTouch reviews the EFI-X kit, a pre-assembled computer equipped with the EFI-X module which allows you to boot Mac OS X on a non-Apple machine without having to resort to hacks. They conclude: "The EFI-X kit offers the ability to run Mac OS X Leopard without hacks, to run Windows without special Boot Camp drivers, and to run nearly any other personal computer operating system from Linux to Solaris to OpenVMS! It's not quite the seamless experience of Apple's Mac computers, but it comes darn close. Its quad-core 3.82-GHz Core 2 Quad, combined with a fast Nvidia 8800 GT video card and 10,000-RPM Western Digital Velociraptor hard drive, leaves even today's quad-core Mac Pro in the dust. For anyone but scientific and engineering users, the EFI-X kit offers even more real-world performance than Apple's high-end, eight-core Mac Pro costing over twice as much."
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Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6) Possibly in Q1 2009?

  Submitted by PowerMacX macOS 4 Comments
From MacRumors: "Apple's Director of Engineering of Unix Technologies Jordan Hubbard spoke at LISA '08 last week. This year's conference invited Apple's Jordan Hubbard to speak about the evolution of Mac OS X from large servers to embedded platforms". The presentation slides (PDF), besides generally interesting info on Mac OS X, feature a table that shows a release date of Q1 2009 for OS X 10.6 Leopard.
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Snow Leopard Gets Cocoa Finder, ImageBoot?

  Submitted by Joe macOS 29 Comments
Even though Snow Leopard is supposed to be all about tweaking and performance, AppleInsider claims to have some information regarding new features coming in Snow Leopard. They claim Apple is working on bringing Exchange support to iCal, Address Book, and Mail, a feature called ImageBoot, and - insert drum roll - a new Finder written in Cocoa. Testers also claim that other bundled applications are written in Cocoa. This isn't all that weird seeing Carbon doesn't come in a 64bit flavour.
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Discover OS X’ Hidden Artistic Side

macOS 10 Comments
"One of the most frequently used Cocoa classes is NSImage which, as the name suggests, is all about displaying and manipulating image data. The imageNamed: method of this class retrieves an image reference for you - provided that you know the name of the image you're after. Many of the images that can be retrieved via the imageNamed: method have well documented names, but there's a lot of stuff in there that's not well-known. It's those images - including some for Windows - that I'll be digging into here. I shall also give you source code to a little utility that uses an entirely different mechanism to retrieve images used by OS X."
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“Top 10 Usability Highs Of Mac OS”

macOS 102 Comments
An interesting article has been making its way around the internet the past few days, titled "Top 10 Usability Highs Of Mac OS". Mac OS X indeed does some things very, very right, just like many other operating systems and graphical environments do some things very, very right. The issue with the list of the article in question is that many of the items on the list are not exactly examples of "Usability Highs" at all.
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Why OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Should Leave PowerPC in the Cold

  Submitted by Dan Warne macOS 44 Comments
An opinion article at APCMag: "The focus of Snow Leopard is on core upgrades, not shiny new features. A bedrock focused update that delivers a streamlined, enhanced OS X. Stability. Efficiency. A "new generation of core technologies." All this is about raising the floor on the entire system. Multi-core optimization, support for 16TB RAM (yes, Terabytes), and a language to allow developers to tap the power of the graphics processor are just a few of the key upgrades. But you can't lift the floor and let people walk around where the floor used to be all at the same time. Not without leaving holes for a potential rising damp problem further down the track."
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Mac OS X 10.5.4 Released

macOS 8 Comments
Apple keeps on improving is Leopard operating system at a serious pace. The company released Mac OS X 10.5.4 today, with the standard blurb attached to it: "The Mac OS X 10.5.4 Update is recommended for Mac OS X 10.5, 10.5.1, 10.5.2, and 10.5.3 Leopard. It includes general operating system improvements that enhance the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac. " The update includes fixes concerning AirPort, iCal, Safari, Spaces, and Expose. Software Update will bug you with the new release, or you can just start the updater yourself.
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Snow Leopard’s Weight Loss Tips for a Tight Leopard Install

macOS 38 Comments
Apple has already announced the successor to Leopard, called Snow Leopard, during the WWDC not too long ago. They explained that Snow Leopard would not focus on user-visible features, but instead would deliver performance improvements and resource footprint reductions. One of the measures Apple has taken is the size reduction of application bundles, which has resulted in dramatic weight loss for a lot of applications. AppleInsider has found out what exactly Apple has been doing to lose that much weight.
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Snow Leopard Previewed and Pictured

  Submitted by Taylor macOS 18 Comments
TestMac.net has published a quick look at Mac OS X Snow Leopard. "The biggest changes are under the hood. Snow Leopard is fast. Very fast. Like, surprisingly fast. From boot times to general application usage, Snow Leopard was noticeably quicker then Leopard when using the same system. Apple and 3rd party applications alike, they all launched faster and performed smoother. I'm sure this can be attributed to the new 64-bit architecture, but its amazing how much of a difference it really is." Screenshots included.
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New Trojan Leverages Unpatched Mac Flaw

macOS 29 Comments
On OSNews, we try to steer away from speaking of specific security incidents, trojans, or viruses, unless they are in one way or the other special, or very influential. Over the course of the past 12 months or so, many incidents concerning Mac security arose, but most, if not all, were lemons: they required the user to actively enter his administrator password, or to manually launch the malicious program. In my book, these cases do not constitute as serious breaches of security, and hence, OSNews ignored them. However, a new security breach has been making rounds around the internet lately, which does pose a serious breach in security.
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