Christopher Mackay’s Blog

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.

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.)

The Street: “Mac Owners Are Snobs”

So, according to this article,

Mac owners are more likely:

• to be perfectionists
• to use notebooks
• to use teeth whitening products
• to drive station wagons
• to pay for downloaded music
• to go to Starbucks
• care about “green” products and the environment
• to own a hybrid car
• and last but not least … to buy 5 pairs of sneakers in a year

• Perfectionist? Nit-picky, maybe, but I’ve never really mastered it, so, no.
• I do use notebooks (paper ones and laptop computers; not sure which they mean…)
• My teeth don’t need to look like they’re made of plastic, thanks.
• Don’t own a station wagon. Ask me again in two weeks, though…
• I do buy all of my music from iTunes. I’ve become allergic to CDs, and I value my time too much to use P2P networks.
• I don’t recall ever buying a drink in a Starbucks. I might’ve, once: I was with other people, and wouldn’t have gone in on my own… Does that count?
• Caring about the environment makes me a snob? Wow. There’s a baseline in need of adjustment…
• No hybrid car. Doesn’t make sense when most of your driving’s on the highway.
• I don’t think I’ve bought five pairs of sneakers in the last fifteen years. Maybe I should walk more (would that make me an environmental snob, though?)

So there.

(Via TUAW.)

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.

Twittering From My Newton on Flickr - Photo Sharing!: Grant Hutchinson out-geeks us all…

I really should fire up the old eMate again…

(Via John Moltz.)

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.

Money quote:

You can run up to eight 30-inch Apple Cinema HD Displays at the same time with just one Mac Pro.

This image only shows 6, by the way.

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 ?

Apple’s beta release of Safari 3.0 has certainly got lots of people talking. While I didn’t have any issues with installation or launch, as some have reported, I did have it crash on me once, which is quite uncharacteristic.

Today I noticed a really odd behaviour: I was doing some data-entry, copying-and-pasting data from BBEdit 8.6.2 into a web form in Safari 3. Copy, switch, paste, switch, copy, switch, paste… The weird thing is that it was sometimes (maybe 10%?) remembering previous clipboard data. E.g.: first “a” is copied-and-pasted, then “b” is copied, but “ab” gets pasted. Impossible; each new “copy” clears the previous one.?Ǭ