‘Digital Manners Policies’ is a marketing term. Let’s call this what it really is: Selective Device Jamming. It’s not polite, it’s dangerous. It won’t make anyone more secure — or more polite”
Best argument for open-source software; now what about open-source hardware?
How to Protect Yourself From The New Mac OS X Trojans
The first rule of using a Mac is to always trust Adam Engst. I’ve been trusting him for 15 years, and I’ve never regretted it.
This issue isn’t likely too likely to bite any individual user, but the precaution is easy to take.
All that remains to be seen is whether the next patch from Apple requires us to put ARDAgent.app back before patching.
It’s just over 12 hours until Steve takes the stage at WWDC, which makes this as good a time as any.
I think we’ll see the following announced tomorrow:
On a sidenote, I got a phone call from Bell this week, asking me if I was happy with my cell phone, pointing out that my package was okay since I wasn’t going over my alloted minutes, and letting me know that I could switch to any cellphone I wanted and get $150 off my renewed contract. I resisted the urge to ask for an iPhone.
I’ve had a cell phone for years now, and this is the first such call I remember. The timing is interesting, coming less than a week ahead of a possible new iPhone release and new competition from Rogers.
June 9 update — here’s my report card:
So, 6.5 out of 9: 72%. They were pretty conservative predictions, though, to be fair.
Mac OS X first to fall: “In the first attempted attack in the PWN2OWN contest, a security analyst breached the defenses of Apple’s Mac OS X using a bug in the Safari browser and won $10,000 as well as the computer that he compromised.”
(Via SecurityFocus.com.)
TidBITS Macs & Mac OS X: Leopard Emerges from Beta as 10.5.2 Ships.
What is it with everyone’s obsession with Leopard’s transparent menubar?
If you’re using a desktop image that’s in any way useful — as in it’s easy to find icons on the desktop, you know, big blue sky, as opposed to some noisy, distracting pattern that camouflages everything you put on it — then it’s not a big deal.
I agree with Matt’s assessment that iCal’s new behaviour of requiring a double-click to show event details is still an annoying step backwards, though.
The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) (via the Sydney Morning Herald):
However, [Torvalds] went on to say that both companies are using their operating systems to propel more software and hardware sales.”
Simply shocking. I can’t imagine what they’re thinking…
Apple’s calendar software, iCal, has taken unfortunate steps backwards in Leopar, Mac OS X 10.5, which were not remedied by the 10.5.1 update.
When users of iCal under Mac OS X 10.4.x invite users of 10.5.x to an event, the behaviour is quite different than it used to be. Regardless of the calendar the sender had assigned an event to (e.g. Home, Work, etc.), when inviting a Leopard iCal user, the event arrives as part of the Home calendar.
Worse, it’s impossible to edit the event or its notification/reminder. You can’t change the Calendar to which it belongs, it will have a 15 minute alert — even when the sender chose an hour — and there’s no way to confirm or decline the invite.
Here’s hoping 10.5.2 addresses some of these issues.
Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) is a fine update to Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4), which was already quite solid as a day-to-day operating system. I’m going to focus here on the most prominent changes to the user interface; these are my observations after a month of using Leopard (10.5.1) day-to-day in a production environment.
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Mac OS X 10.4.10’s Mail programme has a very serious flaw, and it’s not one I’ve seen written up anywhere before.
One of the things I have to deal with is multiple email accounts, on different servers. Due to ISP issues, I can only send messages from certain accounts when logged on via different ISPs.
In Apple’s otherwise-excellent Mail programme, switching the account which an already-composed message will be sent from sometimes deletes much of the message. Trying to close the message without saving doesn’t work, because it doesn’t prompt you to save, thereby denying the opportunity to revert to whatever you might have saved before catastrophe struck.
There goes a whole lot of work down the drain. Thanks, Apple.
Remember those wonderful web badges that obnoxious webmasters used to put on their home pages? You know, “Optimized for Netscape 3.0″? As if people would go to the trouble of downloading and installing a web browser just to see some idiot’s latest enhancement to their web site (usually something involving the “blink” tag).
Well, I had a flashback to those days today. I visited Bell.ca, and I had the audacity to do it with a Mac and ?
