Archive for March, 2008
March 30, 2008
In his earlier review of MacBook Air, Dan Frakes (macworld.com) thought it “interesting,” but, after using it for three weeks on the road, he now finds MacBook Air “compelling.” Not only does he now consider MacBook Air “a great computer for hardcore road warriors,” he reports that he knows a good number of non-techie people who’ve purchased the Air simply because it does everything they need, in a package that’s smaller, lighter, and more convenient for their around-the-house-and-down-to-the-coffee-shop laptop life. As for me, our family’s new MacBook Air arrived last week.”
March 30, 2008
According to sources close to iPhone Atlas, we could see a public leak of the iPhone 2.0 as early as this weekend. The update is currently officially available only to folks accepted into Apple’s $99 iPhone Developer program or who have been selected to beta test the release’s enterprise functionality.
Installation of the iPhone OS 1.2 beta generally requires a special signature from Apple, but an underground team has discovered a method for bypassing this signature and installing a modified edition of OS 1.2. This installation method requires the use of “Pwnage,” a tool that leverages an exploit found in the lower levels of the iPhone/iPod Touch bootloader. Exercising the exploit allows these devices to run unsigned code. With this capability in place, Pwnage can modify the iPhone OS 1.2 IPSW (installation file), pre-activating and pre-jailbreaking it.
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March 30, 2008
“Simply put, there’s never been an easier way to back up,” reports Bob Levitus (chronicle.com) in his review of Time Capsule. After a few minor installation steps, you just “open the Time Machine System Preference pane on your Mac and click a few times. Leopard’s Time Machine backup software takes care of everything else.” And Levitus notes that “in nearly a month of constant use, I’m happy to report that Time Capsule has done its thing every hour without fail, and has never given me trouble.”
March 30, 2008
Once the second-day rules went into effect for the PWN2OWN competition, allowing browser or email exploits to be used, it didn’t take more than a few minutes for Charlie Miller, Jake Honoroff and Mark Daniel from ISE to get their 0day vulnerability to work on the target MacBook Air; they walk away with the laptop and the $10,000 prize.
Since the rules of the contest ensure that the vulnerabilities are immediately turned over to the Zero Day Initiative and the vendors are notified, this hole (presumably in Safari, although possibly in QuickTime or Java as last year’s was) should be patched in due course, and users are no more or less secure today than they were yesterday. It is a little troubling, however, that the other two laptops (Vista and Ubuntu) are still standing.
March 30, 2008
The fanboy Apple/Microsoft debate may rage on, but don’t doubt that both companies are viewing the iPhone as a big profit opportunity. Fortune has been talking to the Specialized Devices and Applications Group at Microsoft, who are responsible for Mac-friendly software like Office for OS X, and the team there are keen to stress that they’re seeing the coveted Apple cellphone as a prospective platform.
“It’s really important for us to understand what we can bring to the iPhone. To the extent that Mac Office customers have functionality that they need in that environment, we’re actually in the process of trying to understand that now” Tom Gibbons, corporate vice president, Specialized Devices and Applications Group, Microsoft
“We do have experience with that environment, and that gives us confidence to be able to do something. The key question is, what is the value that we need to bring? We’re still getting comfortable with the SDK, right? It’s just come out. So we had a guess as to what feasibility would be like, now we’ll really get our head wrapped around that” Tom Gibbons, corporate vice president, Specialized Devices and Applications Group, Microsoft
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March 30, 2008
“The quad-core Xeon-based Apple Xserve is a superbly modern 1U server with powerful options for storage and remote access,” reports Andrew T. Laurence (macworld.com). As a result of his tests, he awards Xserve four mice (out of five) and notes that “the new Xserve’s AFP performance is so fast that I could not muster enough client computers to discover its performance ceiling.”
March 30, 2008
Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney told iPod Observer in an interview that he believes Apple has ordered a second batch of 3G iPhone, amounting to 10 million more units on top of the original 10 million first generation iPhone that Apple had already ordered and committed to sell by end of 2008.
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March 30, 2008
“We’ve tested the Mac Pro, MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, the iMac, the Mac Mini, and the XServe,” exclaims Richard Hoffman (informationweek,com). “There’s not a bad Apple among the bunch, and some are truly superb.” In fact, Hoffman stipulates that “the entire product line is one of the strongest Apple’s ever had. Without hyperbole, it may be the best overall line of computers anyone has had, ever.”
March 30, 2008
No one escapes the TUAW visitation. Our methods are fear, surprise, and a fanatical devotion to the Apple! Under the best of circumstances, management can use our Reaper-like presence to convince everyone they need to get the hell out of Manhattan. In the case of Freeverse Software, the Exodus moment arrived. The entire crew has packed up their East Side offices and headed over to Brooklyn’s fashionable DUMBO district.
We wish the Freeverse crew well in the new office — with luck, those line extensions (like Airburst and Marathon:Durandal for XBox 360), iPhone games, new apps built on legendary engines, and killer vector graphics tools will keep on pumping out of the shop once the river has been crossed. We are particularly eager for an iPhone version of Jared.
A couple of months back, president Ian Lynch Smith and marketing director Brian Akaka were kind enough to show us around the old shop and let us take a few pictures for posterity before the move (gallery below). If you have questions about any of the mystery objects in the pictures, let us know and Brian can clear up any confusion. As for other independent Mac software developers? If you’re in NYC, Denver, Philadephia, Chicago, Atlanta, LA, Knoxville or the UK, let us know when we can visit. We promise not to poke you with a soft cushion.
March 30, 2008
In awarding Safari 3.1 for Windows a four (out of five) star rating, Michael Muchmore (pcmag.com) indicates that in addition to being able to resize its window from any edge, “a slew of new improvements, some unique features, impressive speed, and future-looking standards support makes it a worthy browsing partner.” It gets flying colors for complience with HTML and CSS standards, kudos for color accuracy, raves for speed and memory tests, and a thumbs up for stability: “in a couple of days’ use of the new browser, I wasn’t able to crash it once” in Windows XP SP2, Vista, or Mac OS X Leopard.
