MacNewsBlog

Our sister blog, iPhoneNewsBlog.com has decided to do a giveaway and what a giveaway it's gonna be! If you've been wanting an iPhone but either couldn't afford one or have been waiting for another price drop (yeah right), nows your chance to be the winner of a 4GB iPhone!

All you need to do is follow this link and signup for their newsletter and you'll be entered to win a 4GB iPhone! The contest ends on October 31, 2007 and the winner will be notified by email. So enter today and see if you're lucky!

We got a set of 4 new "aluminum" iMacs here at the office and have been noticing that they will freeze up occasionally. Anything that is running will continue to do so, but we just can't do anything to those apps. Application switching doesn't funtion either.

Then while perusing the normal channels we discovered that folks in the Apple discussion boards are having the same issues as we are. Although we sometimes feel the discussion board is a great place to get info and feedback, we understand that it's a small percentage of people who are using that to communicate their problems. Check out these discussion threads:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1156787&tstart=15
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1107864&tstart=0

Folks there are saying it's possibly the ATI drivers but we're not entirely sure, and after trying to track down wireless problems with our MacBook Pro we're kinda taking a wait and see approach to this problem. We're crossing our fingers that Apple will be quick to fix these freezes.

How many of you who bought the new aluminum iMacs are experiencing these problems?

Update: Looks like AppleInsider is also having the same issues.

The folks at Apple have finally fixed some of the problems with slow menus and jittery coverflow on the iPod Nano and Classic. Software Update 1.0.2 is specifically for the new iPod Nano and the iPod classic (those with older iPod's won't get any updates as usual).

It's good to see that the iPod Classic and Nano are finally working the way they should have been when they were shipped. To get the updates, simply connect your iPod to your computer and fire up iTunes!

Lately, we've been noticing a whole lot of negative reporting regarding Apple, ever since the iPhone 1.1.1 software update. Even some of our favorite Apple, Macintosh, iPhone reporting sites have been exhibiting reporting of stories with a negative slant toward Apple. In fact by the way they write, you'd think that they were writing about Microsoft... not Apple!

Here's hoping that the Apple reporting community takes a breather and also time to reflect and get some perspective again. If your story is an opinion piece thats fine, but it'd be great if we all take off the tin-foil hat and try to be fair... Apple makes it's fair share of mistakes but it doesn't mean that Apple is out to get us. The Apple paranoia is getting out of hand.

Just our $.02. And yes this is an op-piece in case you were wondering!

If what we're hearing is true, Apple's next version of the OS X operating system will be available on October 26, which is a Friday. Others have speculated that it will be released at 6pm just like the iPhone was. We're excited about Leopard and all of the newest features it will bring.

We expect to see Apple update OS X 10.4 to .11 sometime this week or next. Hopefully it will fix a lot of bugs, especially the horrible Airport connectivity issue affecting MacBook Pro users.

Will you be standing in line to get Leopard the day it arrives?

We're all eagerly anticipating Leopard as well as enjoying AppleInsider's Road to Leopard Series.

Today they talk about Apple Mail 3.0 and even dive into the history of where Apple's Mail client came from. To see what new features await us in Apple Mail 3.0, check this out!

Also check out their past articles:
Road to Mac OS X Leopard: Time Machine
Road to Mac OS X Leopard: Spaces
Road to Mac OS X Leopard: Dock 1.6
Road to Mac OS X Leopard: Finder 10.5

It's gonna be all about Leopard for a bit since Apple annouced that they'll be releasing the next generation operating system on October 26, 2007. Check out all 300+ new features in Leopard here.

And the rumors are true. You'll have to have a PowerPC G4 (867MHz or faster) processor in order to run Leopard. You'll also need to meet these technical requirements:

• 512MB of memory
• DVD drive for installation
• 9GB of available disk space
• Some features require a compatible Internet service provider; fees may apply.
• Some features require Apple's .Mac service; fees apply.

Apple Insider continues their series, the Road to Mac OS X Leopard, this time detailing iChat 4.0.

The Wall Street Journal is now confirming that Apple has lowered it's price for non-DRM'd tracks at it's iTunes Store. iTunes Plus was released as a way to purchase non-DRM'd tracks with a higher bitrate but also at a premium. Each iTunes Plus track was sold for $1.29 each, with today's news, the price is now $.99 cents which is closer to the iTunes competitor Amazon.com.

In an interview with Apple CEO Steve Jobs today, it is reported that most of the iTunes Plus tracks will feature the lower price either today or tomorrow. He also stated that there will be a lot of independent label music with the DRM free tracks as well.

A new Steve Jobs interview was posted this morning over at the New York Times. In it Jobs discusses Leopard, Software release strategies, Mac sales and Multi touch. A fascinating look at what's going on inside Apple.

AppleInsider starts their new informative series today on Mac OS X Server Leopard: Collaborative Info Sharing Services.

A few folks have reported some problems when'd installing Leopard. May we humbly suggest backing up your current install withva utility like Super Duper or Carbon Copy Cloner? At LEAST do this step before updating.

Besides, you'll need an external drive for time machine anyway.

A great Leopard Review
Highly recommended! Via DaringFireball.com

Adobe Releases Leopard Compatibility Information
The lowdown on Adobe Products vs. Leopard: If you use InDesign or Adobe Reader, you better stick with Tiger for now. We can confirm that Photoshop and Illustrator CS3 work fine so far!

Hackers install Leopard on an off the shelf PC
No sooner had Leopard hit the shelves, the hackers have already been able to install this bad boy on an off the shelf PC. No kidding. Not really recommended for two reasons: 1) There are a lot of things that just don't work and 2) It breaks Apple's License.

Unsanity's APE causes Bluescreen of Death for Leopard Upgraders
So you're currently using Unsanity's APE app to mod your Mac. Well ya better not upgrade to Tiger unless you remove it first. Many, many folks have modified their Macs using this application and upon installing Leopard have locked up their install. Click here to read Apple's advice on this "enhancement".

What's New in Cocoa for Leopard
A nice look at the new features for you developers out there by Matt Gemmell.

Some folks who are running Leopard seem to have problems with certain configurations of IMAP mail via Apple's Mail 3.0 application. Follow this october2007-newsletter.pdf">thread here at the Apple Discussion Forums to take a peek at some of the problems some users are encountering.

We access 3 separate IMAP email accounts and one of them doesn't work at all when attempting to download via the Apple Mail app. The only way we've been able to get email from that particular account is via our iPhone or Thunderbird. We're hoping that Apple has a fix for this soon.

This article that I found after reading simplebits.com is really cool! Especially if you want to get rid of the glass doc and use a dock that doesn't take up so much space!

How to get rid of the glass dock in Leopard.

Intego has posted this "critical" report about a "Macintosh trojan horse" reportedly in the wild. Better safe than sorry so we report here!

Exploit: OSX.RSPlug.A Trojan Horse
Discovered: October 30, 2007
Risk: Critical

Description: 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's Mac. If the user has checked Open "Safe" Files After Downloading [the default setting!] 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.

Under Mac OS X 10.4, there is no way to see the changed DNS server in the operating system's GUI. Under Mac OS X 10.5, this can be seen in the Advanced Network preferences; the added DNS servers are dimmed, and cannot be removed manually. (Intego is currently testing previous versions of Mac OS X; it is likely that they can be infected as well, since all versions of Mac OS X have the scutil command.) The Trojan horse also installs a root crontab which checks every minute to ensure that its DNS server is still active. Since changing a network location could change the DNS server, this cron job ensures that, in such a case, the malicious DNS server remains the active server.

This Trojan horse also provides different versions of itself, perhaps according to the country in which the user is located to provide country-specific spoofing. Repeated downloads of the disk image show that there are several different versions.

Means of protection: The best way to protect against this exploit is to run Intego VirusBarrier X4 with its virus definitions dated October 31,2007. Intego VirusBarrier X4 eradicates the malicious code and prevents the Trojan horse from being installed. Intego recommends that users never download and install software from untrusted sources or questionable web sites.