Mac

Chris Elliott’s Mac vs. PC Commercial 2

8 Core Mac Pro is real!

So after that rumor (which now is true) put up by the Apple site in UK, the 8 Core Mac Pro is finally here! It’s now from the official US Apple site:

“… The world’s first 3.0GHz, 8-core Intel Xeon-based Mac Pro…”

http://www.apple.com/macpro/

Apple’s next-generation iMacs

Already, Futureshop is making a price drop and a sale week for all of the existing iMacs

Quote – From http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=2582:

People familiar with the matter say the Cupertino-based Mac maker has called upon its award-winning design chief Jonathan Ive and his team to cut the fat from the the current iMac line and outfit a pair of new Core 2 Duo-based models in a form factor that will be both slimmer and sleeker than today’s offerings.

For Apple, the impending iMac makeover will represent the first major industrial design overhaul to hit its flagship all-in-one consumer desktop line in nearly three years. The last eye candy to accompany an iMac update came back in August of 2004, when the company retired its “sunflower” iMac G4 design while introducing the portrait-style iMac G5.

With the burden of a major architectural transition to Intel chips weighing on its shoulders, Apple in 2006 elected to reuse the the iMac G5 design for its first Intel-based iMac offerings. At the time, the objective was to push an Intel version of its top-selling desktop into market as quickly as possible and get the ball rolling on the next chapter in Apple computing.

As part of an industry-wide shift away from desktops and towards high-powered portables, Apple’s industrial design prowess in 2006 was largely reserved for its notebook lines, which saw cutting-edge design revisions replace aging form factors at both the consumer and professional ends. In turn, those designs and compelling Intel-based underpinnings helped the firm sell nearly 3 million MacBook and MacBook Pros during the 2006 fiscal year, boosting its share of the U.S. notebook market to over 10 percent.

Apple has no plans to relent in its assault on the notebook sector in 2007 and has arranged to boost it 15-inch MacBook Pro models with more vivid L.E.D.-backlit display panels later this Spring and followup with a tiny flash-enabled ultra portable model sometime thereafter. But while 2006 was clearly the year of notebooks for the Mac maker, the electronics firm now has its sights set on high-definition digital media and plans to bring the iMac along for the ride.

It’s likely for these reasons that the firm’s entry-level 17-inch iMac model will reportedly become the subject of considerable neglect. People familiar with the matter are confident that the forthcoming iMac redesign will grace only the 20- and 24-inch models, which are outfitted with widescreen displays comparable to smaller living room television sets. The 17-inch iMac, those people say, will enter a state of limbo that could ultimately phase it out of the lineup entirely, condemning it to the same fate as the 12-inch PowerBook.

Apple’s current line of iMac personal computers includes 17-, 20- and 24-inch models.

Apple’s move to strike the 17-inch model from its next-generation iMac line raises a number of questions about the company’s plans for education and the upcoming 2007 educational buying season. A barebones 17-inch iMac has been outfitted to fill the role of the company’s primary desktop offering for educational institutions ever since the eMac hit the chopping block last spring. It retails for just $899, or about 10 percent less than the 17-inch model available to the general public.

Going forward, Apple may choose to keep a revision of the 17-inch iMac afloat specifically for education sales. Alternatively, another scenario would see the Mac maker adhere to some aggressive cost scrubbing measures in order to deliver a version of its new 20-inch offering that would sell for considerably less than the $1399 currently quoted for a 20-inch model on the Apple educational online store.

Also uncertain is precisely when Apple intends to drop the new iMac line into market. It appears, however, the systems are tracking as hardware-side complements to the company’s next-generation Leopard operating system release which, based purely on conjecture, may not be ready until May at best.

In the meantime, indications that Apple could be ready to unleash new hardware offerings as early as next month have already turned heads in international markets, where a shortage of iMacs and other Mac systems in Europe were recently met by unusual iMac price cuts at some big-box Canadian resellers. There’s also been a buzz State-side, where sources at some of the largest online retailers have passed on the word that Mac inventories could be constrained early next month ahead of major product refreshes.

Apple last updated its iMac offerings in September, when it equipped the 17- and 20-inch models with Core 2 Duo processors from Intel and added a dazzling new 24-inch widescreen model atop the line.

Top 15 Terminal Commands for Hidden Mac OS X Settings

One more thing to add to my list when I get a Mac

Quote – From http://www.macosxtips.co.uk/index_files/terminal-commands-for-hidden-mac-os-x-settings.html:
There is a huge amount of hidden settings for Mac OS X and its applications that aren’t accessible from preferences dialog boxes or the System Preferences. Applications such as Tinkertool and Mac Pilot allow you to access some of these, but the real flexibility is from the Terminal. From here it is possible to edit any preferences file for any application on your Mac.

You’ll find the Terminal in the Utilities folder within the Applications folder. To carry out any of the following commands you will need to copy/paste or type in the line of text then hit enter. For the most part, applications will need restarting before changes take place. For most applications you can just quit and open them again, and for the Finder you can use the Force Quit dialog, just log out and log in again or type “killall Finder” into the terminal after the command.

Feel free to add any of your favourites in the comments.

1. defaults write com.apple.Dock showhidden -bool YES
Makes hidden applications’ dock icons translucent. NO to reverse.

2. defaults write com.apple.iTunes invertStoreLinks -bool YES
Normally the arrows next to artists and albums in your iTunes library search the iTunes store when you click them. This command changes them so that clicking will search your iTunes library instead. Put NO at the end to reverse.

3. defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES
This allows you to drag widgets out of Dashboard onto the desktop. Requires the dock to be relaunched to take effect, so type “killall Dock” and press enter. Now, if you click and hold onto a widget in the dashboard and press F12 to return to the desktop, the widget won’t disappear with the rest. Put NO at the end to reverse.

4. defaults write com.apple.mail PreferPlainText -bool TRUE
Forces all mail to be displayed as plain text. Replace TRUE with FALSE to reverse.

5. defaults write -g NSNavPanelExpandedStateForSaveMode -bool TRUE
Sets expanded save dialogs as default (showing column/list view of folders rather than a drop down menu). Replace TRUE with FALSE to reverse.

6. /System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/ ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine -background
Displays the currently chosen screen saver to be shown as the desktop background. Press Control-C or Command-. to stop. More details here.

7. defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow AdminHostInfo SystemVersion
Displays useful system stats in the login window. More details here. Replace “SystemVersion” with one of the following for different stats:
SystemBuild
SerialNumber
IPAddress
DSStatus
Time
HostName

8. sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow HiddenUsersList -array-add shortname1 shortname2 shortname3
To remove accounts from the login window type this command with the short name of each account you wish to remove. More details here.

9. com.apple.frameworks.diskimages skip-verify TRUE
Skip disk image verification. Potentially risky, use with disk images from trusted sources. Replace TRUE with FALSE to reverse.

10. defaults write "Apple Global Domain" AppleScrollBarVariant DoubleBothPuts double scroll arrows at both ends of scroll bar. Use Appearance pane in system preferences to reset.

11. defaults write com.apple.CrashReporter DialogType none
Disables the unexpectedly quit dialog that normally appears when an application crashes. Replace “none” with “prompt” to enable again.

12. defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitHistoryItemLimit 2000 and/or
defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitHistoryAgeInDaysLimit 30
Sets the history limit in Safari to a certain number of items and and/or a certain age.13. defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
Shows hidden files in the finder. Replace TRUE with FALSE to hide hidden files again14. defaults write com.apple.safari IncludeDebugMenu 1
Enables the debug menu in Safari. Type again but with 0 instead of 1 at the end to disable.

15. defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES
Deactivates Dashboard. Requires the dock to be relaunched to take effect, so type “killall Dock” and press enter. Replace YES with NO to enable again.

More OSX apps

Well, I would blah on this time. So, here you go

Quote – From http://toddlambert.com/edition11/free-software/:

You get what you pay for – although not always!

I am what many would consider a power mac user. Not one that uses a Powermac, but one who uses Macs religiously and tends to know a lot about them. I have been using Macs since the beginning, in fact, before they were even called Macs. I started on an Apple II and actually began my graphics and web career on an Apple Lisa.

In all that time I have used thousands of different types of software. I’ve used everything from 3-D software to Photoshop and the Terminal. One of my favorite catgories of software is called “Free” software. I like it because it is FREE! This differs a bit from other types of Free Software that is more like free speech than just free as in free beer.

Today, I will be listing some of the Free Software that I have found and use and that in most cases beats out non-free software for just being best in the field. Some of these applications I have used for a long time, while others I have just recently discovered but quickly grown to love.

WhatSize

Download WhatSize

The first application I am going to highlight is called “WhatSize” and it is one of my favorites. WhatSize is an application designed to one thing and it does it flawlessly. From the developer’s own description: WhatSize is a simple tool that allows the user to quickly measure the size in bytes of a given folder and all subfolders and files within it. You would be surprised at how many useless files might be laying around on your hard disks. The files and folders are automatically sorted by size, with the biggest sizes first.

This application is nearly identical to the non-free software called Omni DiskSweeper except that the price is much better; Free! I can’t say enough about this simple program – it just works. It is helpful to find hidden files on your system that are needlessly taking up valuable space.

RSS Menu

Download RSS Menu

This is one that I use on a daily basis and I love it for it’s simplicity as well. I have tried almost all the RSS feed reader programs available today and while some of them are wonderfully overstuffed with features and whiz-bangs, they lacked what I was looking for: a simple, menubar based RSS reader. RSS menu delivers just that. It has everything I need, all in one small compact menubar item or menuling. The developer seems to keep it very updated and the program is super lightweight and takes up very little resources. It’s also running all the time, so I don’t have to worry about checking for news, it just gets it for me.

Serverskine

Download Serverskine

This is a newer application in my list but one that I am quickly finding hard to live without. It is developed by a fellow web development team and is designed for web developers who need to keep track of lots of information regarding servers, customer login information, and other daily details that can often overwhelm. There are tons of PIM programs out there, but very few that are as well-done and thought out from a web developers point-of-view.

Gawker

Download Gawker

Gawker is one of those applications that bears out of necessity but then shines showing that software doesn’t have to cost a lot in order for it to be valuable. I started using Gawker to access my iSight camera and record movies. I have been having trouble with my puppy (or so I thought) and I wanted to record the times that I am away from home to see what is happening and by whom. Apple requires Quicktime Pro in order to be able to capture movies with the iSight camera. This is just dumb and another reason why I think Apple needs to do away with the whole “Pro” registration racket that it uses, but this is material for another post, another time.

Gawker also offers something that is absolutely vital to what I needed, which was time elapsed videography. Who wants to sit and scan through hours of video watching to see what dog does what and when. Gawker lets me record every 5, 10, 30 seconds or any time value I wish. It also displays a timeclock onscreen which really helps a lot. Overall, Gawker is almost so good, that it really should be distributed with iSight to begin with, although it works with other cameras too.

There you have it, four applications that are free, yet immensly valuable. Hope you enjoy them and if you do, reward the developer by sending them a free beer or by donating to them through Paypal.

Top 10 Free Mac Downloads

Useful tools that every mac users should have

From http://lifehacker.com/software/lifehacker-top-10/lh-top-10–free-mac-downloads-244619.php

 

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8-core Mac Pro Leak at Apple UK?

Ok, personally, I don’t think it’s going to happen yet.

Quote – From http://www.macrumors.com/2007/03/12/8-core-mac-pro-hints-at-apple-uk/:

Apple’s UK Store leaks some information which suggests that 8-Core Mac Pros are coming soon.

When searching for “Mac” in the UK Apple Store, the listing for the Mac Pro is:

Mac Pro
Now quad-core or 8-core processing power.
Configure yours today.
Rumors that Apple would incorporate two of Intel’s Quad-core chips into a Mac Pro to produce an 8-core Mac Pro have been ongoing since late last year.

Update: Apple appears to have found it and are updating their sites.

Macbook inferno

The pictures says it all (batteries caught on fire)

From http://mactalk.com.au/forums/showthread.php?t=28926

Antialiasing Quality on Macs

There are actually differences. How are the older generations of Win/Mac users going to live with that? Throw iTunes out?

Quote – http://brycekerley.net/mp/2007/3/11/antialiasing-quality-on-macs:

I’ve noticed that some antialiasing on macs is video-card dependent – in particular, the scroll bar and volume slider in iTunes Coverflow full screen get drawn by some anti-aliased method while the buttons are probably bitmaps (I took a spin around iTunes.app but couldn’t quickly find them). It’s in this situation where we can see the difference between graphics rendering. In particular, look at the waves coming out of the speaker to the right of the volume slider.

Screenshots follow.

iMac with Intel GMA 950 graphics:

MacBook with Intel GMA 950 graphics:

iBook with ATI Radeon 9550 graphics:

MacBook Pro with ATI Radeon X1600 graphics:

For grins, Dell Latitude, Windows XP Pro, Quadro NVS 120M graphics:

Note that in Windows they don’t even bother to antialias the text, which is in the “wrong” font compared to Mac (here’s the iMac shot again:)

I’ve also seen this problem in OmniWeb’s Downloads window when using Exposé, but I resized the window and it went away (how’s that for an edge case), and I can’t find the precise window sizing that makes Exposé scale it just right (or wrong, depending on your point of view).

Howto: A more secure OS X before Leopard

So, Any Windows ones? (Still waiting for the Mac)

Quote – From http://blog.cocoia.com/?p=13:

In this howto, I will show you some things I have done to secure OS X beyond it’s default settings. There are very basic, and some advanced things in here. I am in NO WAY LIABLE for ANY DAMAGE you might do to your Mac by messing around with the things I describe here, because it could very easily cut you off from the internet if you don’t know what you are doing, and you’ll be emailing me to death from some internet café while receiving strange looks from people because you just ate your Mac’s supplied stickers.

First off, there is some odd stuff going on with Tiger’s default security settings. Upon setting up your Mac, you are essentially it’s administrator. You can even change the password of the highest power on the computer, root. Therefore, if there ever would be a security danger, and you are running with such privileges, it is a lot easier to exploit the system. To fix this hassle, make a new user. Awww, you just had your whole Mac set up with a ton of programs and settings? What, you are expecting me for some migratory script? Well, suck it up, because it’s not done yet. Swallow the bitter pill for now, as I am still struggling with the ‘defaults’ command-line tool to copy all the settings. You can relieve some loss of settings by copying relevant preferences from (Initial User)/Library/Preferences to (New User)/Library/Preferences. NOTE: NOT /Library! The Library folder in your $HOME. (EDIT; gregr over at digg pointed this out: “- if you have your account set up the way you want, then create a new user as advised here but make that the admin one (just don’t call it admin or similar), put a good password on it and then make your user a ‘normal’ user.” This is, of course, a much more hassle-free way to do this. Thanks gregr!
Also, people rarely realize – your firewall is off by default. Even better, we have an intensely impressive firewall option. First, here’s the gem; it’s hidden in the Sharing preference pane (what genius thought that one up?) under it’s own tab. And there, the fun begins.

What is all this then? Oh, remember, you created a new, unprivileged account. Just checking on you.

Ok, unlock the thing, authenticate, and click the obvious ‘Start’ button. It’s on when it reads stop. Easy so far. Now, click the almost hidden “Advanced” button.

Ooh, doesn’t that sound yummy. “Stealth Mode”? Damn, screw all that, my Mac’s going to be like a fucking Stealth Plane! Uh, anyway, ignore the buzz for now and check it out; UDP filtering is off by default, this ‘Stealth mode’ thing is off, and logging too. Insane. Put them all on. Little note here; if you want to be a diehard bittorrent downloader and want to optimize other P2P traffic, you best leave the UDP filtering out. What does this leave for attackers? Network Time, 2 exploits in the last years, CUPS (Printing), 1 DoS exploit found and strangely, MS Word (use OpenOffice.org!).

So, does this all do what it says? Nope. If you don’t want to share your printer, or share files over the Windows protocol, then these are left open, regardless of what you fiddle with in the preference panels. Bonjour is also always allowed in, and for some arcane reason, DNS is allowed outwards. This is almost like waiting for an exploit to happen. To somewhat augment these insane defaults, you can open a terminal and fiddle around with the ipfw command. You will need priviledges, gained by using sudo. You can also use Waterroof, a visual editor of your firewall rules. Dandy.
Anyway, the UDP filtering by default just allows anything Bonjour and Printing Server in. To fix this strange behaviour, just use ipfw;

sudo ipfw del 20321
followed by;
ipfw del 20322
Only do this with all settings in the ‘Advanced’ tab enabled! You might end up deleting the wrong firewall records. Anyway, what does this do to secure you? With inbound Bonjour UDP and CUPS UDP forbidden, foreign hosts will not be able to see what patchlevel you have (OS Version and Hardware type) and not be able to use CUPS exploits. It disables printer sharing, iTunes sharing, and other Bonjour-services.

Now, the Firewall a bit more secure, you can check to make sure Bluetooth is off by default (it is ON and discoverable on new users by default), and that it is set to non-discoverable. Now, click the Bluetooth icon in the menu bar, and go to Bluetooth Preferences.

Ensure that the checkmarks are like in the picture. Most important here is the field with the key icon, which means authentication is on. Some are off by default, an insanely stupid move. There are lots and lots of Bluetooth vulnerabilities out there, and the first worm for OS X used Bluetooth to propagate itself.

Other common security fixes for everyday life is ensuring you log into gmail with https://, and browse Gmail with https://. Gmail drops the secure session after login, but you can force it by typing https://gmail… in the browser. In Apple Mail, make sure you have encryption enabled. Otherwise, you can secure a non-secure connection to a server you have SSH access to with the following terminal command;

sudo ssh2 -l username@server.com -L 25:server.com:25 -L 110:server.com:110 server.com
This essentially forwards the ports 25, and 110 (respectively SMTP and POP3, replace for IMAP or IMAPS with adequate port numbers) to the server in question and ‘tunnels’ the traffic through SSH, encrypted et al. You can now set the server settings in Mail for incoming to ‘localhost:110′ (without the brackets, doh) and outgoing to ‘localhost:25′. The ssh2 command forces SSH2.0, for more security.

For Laptop safety, you can first disable the most stupid feature in history, namely auto-login. It will make it much easier for people who steal your laptop to make use of it. This included people with sensitive data, who, if they don’t mind performance degradation, should use my settings;

Yup, disable auto-login, make sure there is a pass on your screen saver / wake-up, ensure virtual memory is encrypted (performance drop here) and Filevault is on with a very complex password that stretches the imagination. (and don’t start asking me why this is greyed out)

Okay, so that all makes us a bit more secure and aware of our security. For other security, in the sense of anonymous internet access, you can use Vidalia with Tor. There was a recent proof-of-concept attack on Tor, but it’s not to be used as a completely anonymizing tool – it does it’s work very well, though, and it goes recommended for any computer for me.

This concludes this howto to harden OS X. If you have the abilities to compile something, please take a look at Bastille for OS X, whose co-author Jay Beale showed many of the faults in defaults in this document. It requires X11, the developer tools, and the latest developer release of Perl-Tk to function, and it can assess your system security with a number. It will automate many of the things I have advised and howto’d here in a friendly Tk-dialog. For now, have fun hardening your OS, and remember, hardening breaks future exploits! With the surge in Apple’s marketshare, we will start seeing malware.