New iPhones and iPod Touches Debut with More Storage
The Apple Store went down for a few minutes this morning as Apple unveiled a 16gb iPhone ($499) and 16gb ($399) and 32gb ($499) iPod Touch.
Very cool.
Entries Tagged as 'It's a Mac Mac Mac Mac World'
The Leopards Meow
So I’ve now got OSX Leopard Running on my 15″ PowerBook G4 and it seems to be doing OK. I haven’t really noticed much of a slowdown in performance. In fact, somethings have gotten faster.
I did have to disable one application. GROWL doesn’t seem to work under Leopard. Spotlight has finally come of age so Quicksilver is shut down for the moment while I get used to Spotlight.
There was a hit to video performance. The new Core Video is pretty processor intensive but the Powermac’s vid card seems to be taking it in stride albeit slightly slower for some operations.
Things I like: Spaces (linux users will recognize this instantly), the new look of folders and the way they show file structure in the left sidebar, Alex (the new Voice of OS X).
Things I don’t like: the Dock (2d icons on a 3d bar - looks weird), the menu bar at the top (get rid of transparent - we’re used to it being solid), still limited support for interaction with windows machines via cifs (you can try to login but when you click “connect as” you get nothing instead of an authentication screen).
Mac Trojan On The Loose
It appears Apple users are no longer immune to the affects of malware. Intego Security has posted information on a trojan for the OS X operating system designed to steal passwords and financial information. This one is totally reliant on the user so if you pay attention you’re probably safe.
Intego.com: “A malicious Trojan Horse has been found on several pornography web sites, claiming to install a video codec necessary to view free pornographic videos on Macs. A great deal of spam has been posted to many Mac forums, in an attempt to lead users to these sites. When the users arrive on one of the web sites, they see still photos from reputed porn videos, and if they click on the stills, thinking they can view the videos, they arrive on a web page that says the following:
Quicktime Player is unable to play movie file.
Please click here to download new version of codec.After the page loads, a disk image (.dmg) file automatically downloads to the user%u2019s Mac. If the user has checked Open %u201CSafe%u201D Files After Downloading in Safari’s General preferences (or similar settings in other browsers), the disk image will mount, and the installer package it contains will launch Installer. If not, and the user wishes to install this codec, they double-click the disk image to mount it, then double-click the package file, named install.pkg.
If the user then proceeds with installation, the Trojan horse installs; installation requires an administrator’s password, which grants the Trojan horse full root privileges. No video codec is installed, and if the user returns to the web site, they will simply come to the same page and receive a new download.
This Trojan horse, a form of DNSChanger, uses a sophisticated method, via the scutil command, to change the Mac’s DNS server (the server that is used to look up the correspondences between domain names and IP addresses for web sites and other Internet services). When this new, malicious, DNS server is active, it hijacks some web requests, leading users to phishing web sites (for sites such as Ebay, PayPal and some banks), or simply to web pages displaying ads for other pornographic web sites. In the first case, users may think they are on legitimate sites and enter a user name and password, a credit card, or an account number, which will then be hijacked. In the latter case, it seems that this is being done solely to generate ad revenue.”
As always the best advice is, if you don’t know what it is, don’t install it.
Make Your Site Look Beautiful on an iPhone and iPod Touch
Thanks to Sam over at Fruitbytes.uk.co I found a really cool plugin for WordPress from ContentRobot that reformats you weblog for the iPhone and iPod Touch.
ContentRobot.com: While the iPhone and iPod touch do an amazing job of displaying web pages the way they were designed to be seen, often visitors want quick access to your website’s content. The “iWPhone WordPress Plugin and Theme” displays an optimized version of your blog’s content, formatted perfectly to fit the iPhone/iPod touch’s screen - no zooming in to read the content is necessary.
Feature List
- Formats your blog content for optimized viewing on the iPhone and iPod touch.
- Automatically detects the iPhone/iPod touch’s Safari browser and only displays the custom theme to iPhone and iPod touch visitors, other visitors get your standard theme.
- Simple iPhone/iPod-like theme with common interface elements that compliments the iPhone/iPod touch’s internal applications.
- Images larger then 300 pixels wide are automatically scaled down to fit the iPhone/iPod touch optimized width.
Jobs Says Yes to 3rd Party Apps on iPhone
So the big news out of Cupertino this week is Steve Jobs says Yes to 3rd Party Apps on the iPhone. But it’s going to have to be done the Apple way. Here’s a link to the letter which appeared on the Apple Start Page blog on October 17th 2007. Unfortunately they don’t use permalinks so the link is just to the page - you’ll have to dig around to find it.
Apple blog - October 17th 2007:”Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers’ hands in February. We are excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users. With our revolutionary multi-touch interface, powerful hardware and advanced software architecture, we believe we have created the best mobile platform ever for developers.
It will take until February to release an SDK because we’re trying to do two diametrically opposed things at once—provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc. This is no easy task. Some claim that viruses and malware are not a problem on mobile phones—this is simply not true. There have been serious viruses on other mobile phones already, including some that silently spread from phone to phone over the cell network. As our phones become more powerful, these malicious programs will become more dangerous. And since the iPhone is the most advanced phone ever, it will be a highly visible target.
Some companies are already taking action. Nokia, for example, is not allowing any applications to be loaded onto some of their newest phones unless they have a digital signature that can be traced back to a known developer. While this makes such a phone less than “totally open,” we believe it is a step in the right direction. We are working on an advanced system which will offer developers broad access to natively program the iPhone’s amazing software platform while at the same time protecting users from malicious programs.
We think a few months of patience now will be rewarded by many years of great third party applications running on safe and reliable iPhones.
Steve
P.S.: The SDK will also allow developers to create applications for iPod touch.”
iPhone 1.1.1 Jailbreak Released
From the Well that didn’t take long file: The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) is reporting that the iPhone Dev Team has released a jailbreak for iPhones running 1.1.1
TUAW: “The hack applies only to the iPhone at this time and is not meant for iPhones with modified basebands. An iPod touch jailbreak will be published at a later date. For the actual hack procedure, check out this zip file (mirror here). You’ll find detailed instructions on:
- Downgrading to 1.0.2 (if necessary)
- Preparing the iPhone for a jailbroken update
- Performing a software update, leaving you with a jailbroken v1.1.1
- Forcing v1.1.1 to mount read-write so you can access it
- Installing SSH and BSD world
- Activating with a Non-ATT SIM
- Patching SpringBoard to allow third-party applications
- Clean-up”
Does this mean I’m going to hack my iPhone to run 3rd party apps again? Nope. Apple has something planned I think I’m going to ride it out and see what they have in mind. So my iPhone will be the plain, boring one Apple wants.
Photo by Josh Bancroft via Flickr.
Apple Updates iLife and iWork ‘08
Apple has released major updates to their iLife and iWork ‘08 suites. Mostly the issues are compatibility issues and some small fixes. No major product enhancements or changes with this round of updates.
Done with it? Delete it!
One cool new feature I’ve found on the iPhone is it gives you the option to delete videos from it’s memory to save space when you’ve completed watching them.
I can see this as leading to the ability to download movies from the iTunes store and then delete them when you’re done. Hopefully iTunes will know you’ve bought the movie and it’s not in your inventory so it’ll download it when you start your Mac next. Otherwise it’d be a big waste of money.
New Toys for the Apple Fan Boys
We just got back from the Apple store where I picked up one of the new aluminum wired Apple keyboards and I must say, it’s honestly the best keyboard I’ve ever used. No I mean it. I’m a peripheral sort of guy and this is really the best keyboard I’ve owned for both Mac and PC. Typing is VERY easy and really fluid.
We also grabbed the $19 iPod video cable from Apple. It works with any color iPod and plugs directly into the headphone jack. From there plug it into the RCA jacks of any TV or converter. No problem. Be sure to go into your Video Preferences on your iPod and enable TV out. You can set it to ask you each time so you have the option of showing it on TV or reviewing.
Upgrading MarsEdit to 2.o
I did upgrade my copy of MarsEdit to the new version 2.o and honestly, I like the old style better. Yes, the new version does look more like all the new Mac applications but that’s part of the problem, it gets lost in the shuffle.
Before it stood out nicely with the sidebar and unique shape. Now, it’s just another boxy application. I’m also a bit peeved you can’t control the width of the column that shows your blogs. It’s fixed width which means to see the title of the posts I have to expand the overall window. Not cool.
Also I’m not a huge fan of the new icon set. It looks more like something you’d find on a Linux box running KDE or ICE.
I wonder what else is out there? Suggestions? Throw me a bone. Must be a Mac application.