Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Leopard apps and system tools offer subtle, yet powerful, changes
With the release of Leopard, Apple's Mail and iCal apps get significant updates that will make them much more productive for virtually all users. And Parental Controls gets some teeth at last. 
[ Full story from Computerworld Macintosh News ]
Leopard review: Time Machine
setting up Time Machine: as simple as possible Any Mac user who has bought an external hard drive to backup their computer knows that merely setting up a software routine can be complex. Many driv... [ Full story from MacNN | Product Reviews ]
Review: Leopard review: Time Machine
setting up Time Machine: as simple as possible Any Mac user who has bought an external hard drive to backup their computer knows that merely setting up a software routine can be complex. Many drive manufacturers only include Windows-based backup software or advertise simple "one-touch" solutions that still requires moderate knowledge during set... [ Full story from MacNN | The Macintosh News Network ]
Review: Leopard's Time Machine
Time Machine is arguably the most promoted feature of Leopard, designed to make backup functional and accessible to the average user, as most users are put off by the setup and maintenance required of professional backup solutions. For the basic user, Time Machine is approachable and doesn't require much advanced comprehension to set up, so it succ... [ Full story from MacNN | The Macintosh News Network ]
Quicksilver b53 for Leopard
Filed under: Freeware, Leopard
Many folks have noticed over the last few days that TUAW favorite Quicksilver had disappeared from the net. Fortunately, Blacktree's servers are now back up and beta 53 (build 3814) of Quicksilver is available for download (download link). The new version is primarily a bugfix release, but is recommended for everyone running Leopard. Alcor, the developer, says that there was a nasty bug in the plugin downloading code of b51 which brought the ser ver down. So anybody who had been freaking out over Quicksilver's mysterious disappearance should set their minds at ease.[via Hawk Wings]Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
[ Full story from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TU AW) ]
Ask TUAW: Skype & webcams, TivoToGo, installing Leopard and more
Filed under: Features, Troubleshooting, Ask TUAW
In this Halloween round of Ask TUAW we have a a bunch of scary questions about USB webcams & Skype, Dashboard widgets, installing Leopard, Tivo & Mac, and more. Well okay, so the questions aren't scary, but the answers sure are.As always your suggestions are most welcome, and questions for next week should be left in the comments. And now onward!
Continue reading Ask TUAW: Skype & webcams, TivoT oGo, installing Leopard and more
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments[ Full story from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) ]
Kinda like Goldilocks: BioBox lets mid-level consumers make their own biodiesel
Filed under: Biodiesel, Manufacturing/Plants, Green Daily
If you're interested in biodiesel but your company has too many trucks to brew your own biofuel in small Appleseed reactors and you're not big enough to be a large-scale producer, Pacific Natural Energy would like a word. Specifically, the word is BioBox, a system that PNE says is "the perfect 'pie filling' for mid-sized companies to make their own biodiesel. BioBox is a mobile biodiesel production contraption that is made up of four 20-foot cargo container s (one for the reactor, one that's a hazmat storage container and two 6,000 gallon storage tanking systems). Hey, we didn't mean mobile like the iPhone is mobile.
Anyway, PNE thinks there's a need out there for this mid-size facility, and as I think about it, I'm inclined to agree. PNE's founder and CEO, Eric McLeod, said that, "There are an increasing number of biodiesel companies now, but these companies generally cater to small-scale experimenters and users, or multi-million dollar plants. I believe that mid-market biodiesel production has been completely overlooked."
[Source: Domestic Fuel]
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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD Step behind the curtain at Ford Motor. Experience the documentary first-hand.
Leopard: Kernel Bug?
"... both the final developer seed (9A559) and the release version of Leopard (9A581) appear to contain a kernel bug that causes the disk to stop responding" [ Full story from MacInTouch ]
EyeTV For Leopard Adds Cover Flow, Quick Look and More
Elgato announced the immediate availability of EyeTV 2.5.1 which supports the following Leopard technologies: Cover Flow, Quick Look, iChat and Spaces. The update is free
[ Full story from The Mac Observer ]
iPhone Coding: Build your Leopard toolchain from scratch
Filed under: iPod Family, iPhone
Why settle for out-of-date toolchains when you can build the latest and greatest from scratch. Nicholas "Drudge" Penree put together this handy how-to that walks you through the process.
Be aware that you'll need to be running the gold master version of Leopard with the latest XCode release. These instructions do not work on the prerelease developer builds.
For more information and for peer support, head on over to irc.osx86.hu to the #iphone-dev and #iphone -uikit channels.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments[ Full story from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) ]
Emotional Intimacy of the Lombax [Ratchet A& Clank]
Seth Schiesel of the New York Times has written a story that rightfully gushes over Insomniac's PlayStation 3 masterpiece, Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction. In it he discusses with... [ Full story from Kotaku ]
Apple retail chief nets nearly $113 million in options move
Apple senior vice president of retail operations, Ron Johnson, recently exercised options for and then sold 700,000 shares of common stock worth approximately $130 million. According to regulatory filings with the Securities and Exchange Commissio... [ Full story from AppleInsider ]
YML Tonight: Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray
Your Mac Life (YML), with Shawn King, which airs every Wednesday night, will feature a discussion with Gene Munster, the Piper Jaffray analyst. Also featured will be a discussion about Leopard, who's using it, and who's happy
[ Full story from The Mac Observer ]
Stream Music from your iPhone to iTunes with Firefly Media Server
Filed under: iPod Family, iTunes, iPhone
Mike Ter Louw has brilliantly managed to port mt-daapd, the Firefly Media Server, to iPhone. Firefly makes use of your iPhone's built in mDNS/Bonjour media service to stream audio to iTunes. Any iTunes. The one running on your home computer. The one running on a friend's computer. Wherever. Stream from your iPhone to a quality audio system. Here's how it works.
Navigate to http://home.mike.tl/iphone/ with Mobile Safari. This adds Mike's repository to Installer.app. Then launch Installer, select Firefly and install it. Wait as the package builds your music dat abase. This can take 5-10 minutes based on the size of your iTunes library.
On your computer--or any computer you're visiting with--set iTunes to share music. Make sure your firewall settings allow communication and enable "Look for shared library" in your iTunes Sharing preferences.
[ Full story from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) ]Stacks Stands Out as Unpopular Leopard Feature
Some users aren't happy about Leopard's new Stacks. [ Full story from eWEEK Desktops & Notebooks ]
Stacks Stands Out as Unpopular Leopard Feature
Some users aren't happy about Leopard's new Stacks. [ Full story from eWeek Infrastructure ]
News: EyeTV updated for Leopard
Elgato's personal DVR software for the Mac has been updated to take advantage of several new features in Apple's Leopard system software. 
[ Full story from Macworld ]
Elgato updates EyeTV for Leopard
Filed under: Multimedia, Software, Software Update, Leopard
TUAW readers are no-doubt aware of EyeTV, the app from Elgato Systems that enables you to record TV via your Mac (with a compatible tuner). Last month's EyeTV 2.5 upgrade was a neat boost that allowed folks to use their recorded content on the newest handheld devices, but today's 2.5.1 update now make EyeTV fully compatible with Leopard.So what's added? In short: Leopard features galore. Spaces support (so that TV shows can follow you, whichever Space you swap to), QuickLook for your recordings, and the ability to browse the EyeTV Archive folder bundle with CoverFlow. Perhaps the crowning feature, however, is the integration of iChat Theater playback for your video files, along with playback controls and the ability to add your own commentary over the playback. Become your own broadcast hub!
The EyeTV update is a free download for registered customers from the Elgato website.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
[ Full story from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) ]
Security: Back to My Mac BAD?
"Do not use Leopard's new Back to My Mac feature. It contains a serious security hole, which allows anyone who can access your .Mac account to easily take full remote control of your Mac, without having to enter your Mac's password." [ Full story from MacInTouch ]
Update: BookLightning 1.6
The imposition program for booklets and simple magazines is now a Universal Binary and adds support for Leopard. [ Full story from MacInTouch ]
Beta: Merlin 2.5 Beta 2
The project management software some Leopard-specific, including Quick Look support, Time Machine support, attachment of messages from Mail 3 to any project, group, or activity, network collaboration, and more. [ Full story from MacInTouch ]
Update: Servoy Leopard updates
Servoy announced full Leopard compatibility for its line of Java-based database interface development and deployment software. [ Full story from MacInTouch ]
Update: MegaSeg 4.1
The DJ and radio automation software adds compatibility with Leopard, new pitch control buttons, improved Pitch-Lock playback quality, and other improvements. [ Full story from MacInTouch ]
Security: Mac Trojan Horse ("Critical")
"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." [ Full story from MacInTouch ]
Managed Service Answers the Call
Built on a legacy of developing longterm relationships with customers and vendors, Group & Pension Administrators (GPA) considers its delivery of superior service to clients one of its biggest differentiators in the market. All incoming calls are to be answered in less than one minute. All customer e-mails are to be answered the same business day. Interactive voice response is used to provide fax-back claim verification to providers. Bilingual representatives are always available. Agents can be reached by pager during business hours for "patient waiting" calls.
Headquartered in Dallas, GPA is one of the Southwest's largest managers of health insurance and benefits pension programs, serving some 200 clients -- ranging from large multinational corporations to a myriad of small businesses -- by overseeing a comprehensive array of programs for more than 150,000 beneficiaries.
Businesses, patients and beneficiaries rely on GPA to pay claims, handle necessary paperwork, answer questions and provide comprehensive information as quickly as possible. Customer service underpins all its efforts, illustrated by a set of performance metrics that define how it assists customers, including:
GPA maintains a contact center in Dallas, as well as offices in both Houston and San Antonio. Approximately 100 agents are employed full time, with half of them working from home at any given time. In addition, GPA relies on several teams of mobile employees, including sales professionals and IT staff, who must remain in constant touch with both internal and external contacts.
"Our entire company is focused on only one thing -- are we meeting our customers' expectations?" says Mac Mclntyre, vice president of technology for GPA. "This philosophy is shared by those in executive management, our frontline managers and by our associates. We know that if we do well by our customers, we do well as a company."
To achieve its goals, GPA knew it would... [ Full story from CRM Daily ]
Gartenberg: Leopard Redefines Personal Computing
Michael Gartenberg, a vice president at Jupiter Research, wrote that in his opinion Apple's Leopard redefines what personal computing looks like at Computerworld on Wednesday
[ Full story from The Mac Observer ]
Security: Leopard Security Roundup
Matasano looks at Leopard's Sandboxing, Input Manager Restrictions, Guest Account, Address Space Randomization, Filevault Encryption, Application-Aware Firewall, Tagged Downloads and Digital Signatures. [ Full story from MacInTouch ]
WeBot service adds Mac, Linux support
WeBot today announced that its recently-launched service for bringing multimedia content to any computer or compatible device -- like Apple's iPhone -- is now compatible with Mac and Linux systems. WeBot enables users to play music located on a home computer at work using a Web browser, and provides instant access to media across all machines and s... [ Full story from MacNN | The Macintosh News Network ]
Missing Sync updates for Leopard, BlackBerry
Mark/Space has announced information on a pair of updates for its Missing Sync programs, which allow Mac users to synchronize data such as contacts and calendar information with phones not normally supported by iSync. Currently available is the minor v1.0.2 update to The Missing Sync for BlackBerry, which adds support for unspecified new phones, w... [ Full story from MacNN | The Macintosh News Network ]
Stacks Stands Out as Unpopular Leopard Feature
Some users aren't happy about Leopard's new Stacks. [ Full story from eWEEK Technology News ]
Resisting Leopardphobia
The Macalope offers a swift kick to the overly dire warnings about Apple's new operating system. [ Full story from CNET News.com ]
News: New Trojan Horse targets Mac users
Security research company Intego on Monday issued a security alert about a new Trojan Horse called OSX.RSPlug.A that specifically targets Mac users. 
[ Full story from Macworld ]
Lightroom update for Leopard users on the way
Adobe plans for mid-November update, says users not bothered by minor glitches could still use some functions. [ Full story from CNET News.com ]
Opinion: Leopard redefines 'what personal computing looks like'
Michael Gartenberg finds Apples Leopard operating system to be stable and full of productivity enhancements. In fact, he sees it as laying the foundation for "the next generation of personal computing." 
[ Full story from Computerworld Macintosh News ]
News: Studiometry updated for Leopard
Studiometry 5.0.4 is compatible with Leopard and has various other tweaks. 
[ Full story from Macworld ]
Apple's Leopard has security holes, experts say
The company's latest operating system upgrade is expected to be a sales success, but some features designed to protect user data may not be implemented completely. What to watch out for [ Full story from IT World Canada: Daily IT NewsWire ]
Logitech mouse control in Leopard
Filed under: Peripherals, Software
We've mentioned the problems folks have had with the Leopard upgrade with unsanity's APE installed. As Gruber points out, however, the same problem can affect people who have installed the Logitech Control Center software that comes with Logitech mice and keyboards, because LCC apparently uses APE behind the scenes. While some finger wagging is due to Logitech for this, the question now comes up as to what to use instead of LCC to gain access to all the buttons. It turns out that there are at least t hree options: USB Overdrive ($20), SteerMouse ($20), and ControllerMate ($15), all of which are now Leopard compatible. Of the three, I've only used ControllerMate myself and would recommend it. However, any of the three should give you back control of your Logitech mouse -- it's just a shame you have to spend extra money to get this kind of functionality.[via Daring Fireball]Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
[ Full story from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) ]
Leopardphobia
Some overly dire warnings about Apple's new operating system [ Full story from CNET News.com ]
Joystiq impressions: InstantAction (PC)
Filed under: Culture, Mac, PC, Action, Adventure, First Person Shooters, Online, Puzzle, RPGs, Strategy, Business, Casual, Galleries
Do gamers need yet another platform? GarageGames hopes so. The company's latest project, the InstantAction "platform" -- that word was specifically used -- sits inside a web browser, creating a new environment for gaming. And unlike Flash's 2D limit, InstantAction will support a variety of developer-driven technologies and engines, scaling up to first-person-shooters that even utilize video hardware acceleration. (GarageGames had its hand in the Tribes games after all.)Like other browser plugins, InstantAction has cross-platform intentions. It's first launching for PCs in early 2008, Mac support will be coming as soon as possible, and a Linux version is under consideration. Gamers will be abl e to download several titles at launch with pricing to be determined. (Free content may be an option, while paid titles could follow subscription models, multi-game package sales, or single purchases.)
We recently explored an in-development version of InstantAction to wrap our heads around the platform-in-a-browser concept. The execution impressed us, but we're still unsure if InstantAction attempts to solve a problem nobody has. Will 3D and developer-driven environments be enough to displace Flash, as GarageGames hopes?
[ Full story from Joystiq ]
Meizu's M8 MiniOne gets touched
Everybody's favorite IP duplication engine is back in the news. Meizu's M8 Mini One iPhone clone just received an iPod touch makeover in a bid for protection from Apple's lawyers. See, the M8 is a phone, the touch is an MP3 player -- so toootally different your honor. They've also bumped the display from 3.3- to 3.4-inches with pricing still pegged at about $265 / $320 / $400 for the 4GB / 8GB / 16GB models if they ever make it Stateside... or locally to China for that matter. We're at 10 months and counting since it was announced.
[ Full story from Engadget Mobile ]
Apple claims two million Leopard sales
According to the company, the latest version of the Mac operating system took four days to hit two million sales [ Full story from ZDNet UK News ]
Steve Wozniak on Apple, Leopard and Jailbreaking the iPhone
Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, was interviewed by LaptopMag.com about various topics surrounding Apple.
Wozniak provides his insight into Leopard, Mac Marketshare, as well as some disappointment at the direction computers h... [ Full story from MacRumors : Mac News and Rumors ]
Wozniak provides his insight into Leopard, Mac Marketshare, as well as some disappointment at the direction computers h... [ Full story from MacRumors : Mac News and Rumors ]
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Update: Timbuktu Pro 8.7
Netopia released a Leopard-compatible version of its cross-platform remote control software. [ Full story from MacInTouch ]
Update: PopChar X 3.3
The character utility adds Leopard compatibility, a new magnifier tool, and some tweaks and bug fixes. [ Full story from MacInTouch ]
Update: Power Manager 3.7
The Mac power management software adds support for Leopard, a new wake action, and time zone support, plus improvements to the documentation, status menu, and Quick Schedule. [ Full story from MacInTouch ]
Update: Lingon 2.0.1
The free graphical launchd configuration file editor has been updated for Leopard only and adds a simplified interface plus other improvements. [ Full story from MacInTouch ]
Announcement: NewerTech MAXPower G4/7448 single and dual processor upgrades
Newer Technology announced that all MAXPower G4/7448 CPU upgrades have been tested and verified for full compatibility with Leopard. [ Full story from MacInTouch ]
Update: ConceptDraw Business Suite
CS Odessa released a Leopard-compatible version of its ConceptDraw Business Suite, which includes ConceptDraw 7, ConceptDraw Project 4, and ConceptDraw MINDMAP 5. [ Full story from MacInTouch ]
Apple: 2 million copies of Leopard sold
Filed under: Desktops, Laptops
Leopard is on track to be Apple's most successful OS ever. According to Apple, Leopard sold two million copies in its first weekend, "far outpacing" Tiger -- Apple's previous best selling OS. Anyone have Vista's first 2.5 days sales numbers available? Come on, it's always fun to compare.
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[ Full story from Engadget ]