macOS Archive

"The IndieHIG Wiki is a place where developers and UI designers can come together to create a new set of Human Interface Guidelines to supplement Apple's guidelines. Apple has neglected to update their HIG with modern UI designs and controls, so developers have been forced to replicate these UI elements on their own to keep their applications from looking dated. Since each developer has slightly different implementations of these elements, it has resulted in a fairly inconsistent look and feel for Mac OS users." Meanwhile, for the first time in over three months, Apple is asking its developer community to begin testing and providing feedback on a forthcoming update to Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger.

Not too long ago Apple released a new build of Mac OS X 10.5, Leopard, to select testers. AeroXP now has some screenshots of this new build. They report, for one thing, that even though it is available, ZFS is not actually working in this build. Update: ThinkSecret has more screenshots and an overview.

A French user has discovered that ZFS is now 'officially' supported in Leopard , while testing the latest build of Apple's upcoming operating system. Indeed it is now possible to create disk images or partitions formated in ZFS (screen capture included). However, it seems that it is not possible yet to install the OS on a ZFS partition.

"There are probably a lot of features and functions that Apple could -- and probably will -- add to OS X. But we're not pointing out missing features; we're focusing on 15 of the little things already in OS X that need refinement or rethinking based on our everyday use of Macs." More here.

Apple website Apple Gazette is reporting rumouring that Leopard will come with an all-new interface, supposedly with lots of black glossy things (similar to Vista, indeed): "Apple Gazette has received a tip from an apple insider that the Mac OS Aqua User Interface will be replaced with a new UI named Illuminous. The source goes on to say that we will see a demonstration of Illuminous at Macworld 2007." I have never heard of this website, so I cannot make an assessment of its reliability, but suffices to say that it is highly debatable. Interesting nonetheless. Update: More info.

Apple yesterday seeded a new version of Leopard (build 9A326) to internal Apple employees. Apple continues to gloss over the interface, refining it even more and there is an overly presence of black gloss. Among the new features, Safari 3 has the ability to view videocasts and listen to podcasts in browser while TextEdit can now export and open new Word 2007 documents.

The third installment in the Leopard Technology Series for Developers provides an overview of Leopard's application technologies: Time Machine, iChat Theater, the Instant Message Framework, the Calendar Store, the Ruby and Python Cocoa bridges, the new Scripting Bridge, Core Animation and 64-bit GUIs.

"Recently, I had a chance to sit down with a few folks from Apple who gave me a guided tour of Apple's upcoming server operating system, which is slated for release sometime in the spring of 2007. Mac OS X Server 10.5, or Leopard, will be the seventh release of the server operating system since 2000 and the second version to run natively on Intel processors."

Parallels has released a new beta of its virtualisation product for Mac OS X. This new release includes one major new feature, something Parallels calls Coherency: "Shows Windows applications as if they were Mac ones. Try it and enjoy best of both worlds truly at the same time. No more switching between Windows to Mac OS." Screenshot.

"The ImageIO framework, introduced in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, allows applications to read and write popular image file formats. ImageIO works in conjunction with Quartz and is designed for maximum performance, convienient metadata access, and color management. As the definitive way to access image data on Mac OS X, you should consider using ImageIO in your application as a high-performance substitute for Image Importers or other image handling libraries. This article gets you started working with ImageIO, shows how to read and write data to and from Quartz, and points to some of the capabilities in working with Core Image that you can explore further on your own."

On Thursday, antivirus firm F-Secure published a brief analysis of a proof-of-concept adware program for the Mac OS X that could theoretically hook into any application to run attacker-specified code. The program, dubbed IAdware by F-Secure, could be silently installed in a user's account without requiring administrator rights. "We won't disclose the exact technique used here - it's a feature not a bug - but let's just say that installing a System Library shouldn't be allowed without prompting the user," stated F-Secure in the blog post. "Especially as it only requires copy permissions." My take: I'd say, hand over the code, then we'll talk.

The 'Month of Kernel Bugs' project has found two unpatched security vulnerabilities in the way Mac OS X handles .dmg files. The first vulnerability, rated 'highly critical' by security-firm Secunia, can lead to privilege escalation, denial of service, and system access by a remote user (if Safari's open 'safe' files option is checked). The second issue is similar in nature, in that a corrupted UDTO HFS+ .dmg can lead to a denial of service condition. A workaround for both issues is to disable Safari's option to open 'safe' files after downloading, and to not open any .dmg file from a source you do not trust.

"Yesterday, I read what I consider to be a provoking piece at ZDNet. It pointed out that while there is no question that Macs are not the malware targets that Windows machines are, they're most certainly not immune to an attack of the right variety. It went on to backup its point with a real world scenario in which a University of New South Wales Mac server had been hit by malware. Disturbingly, the server had apparently been running the latest updates from Apple and still managed to get hit. It mentioned that, in the author's opinion, Apple was 'misleading people' into believing that their OS was more secure than it really is. Whether or not that is true is frankly immaterial to me. It should be noted that no OS is 100 percent bulletproof, and I believe this is what it was driving home at. Unfortunately, some people within the Mac community felt differently."

"OS.X Macarena poses no viable threat as currently conceived. Although we don't have our hands on the virus source code, according to Symantec (who initially publicized the virus last week) OSX.Macarena can infect neither PowerPC-exclusive binaries, nor Universal binaries. It can only affect binaries that are Intel-specific. That would include various system files, but since OSX.Macarena can only infect files in its own directory and has no means of gaining the privileges necessary to escalate into directories where most system files are stored, the the threat level is mitigated."