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Early Mac Pro benchmarks show major speed increase
The new Mac Pro isn't supposed to launch until later on this year, but Geekbench has nabbed a new set of benchmarking tests which appear to be from the new machine itself. The computer is labeled as "AAPLJ90,1" in the report, which seems strange, considering that a retail build would probably be listed as "MacPro6,1." But perhaps that "J90" is a code name of some sort, suggesting a pre-release build. The machine in question is running a 12-core processor, and 64 GB (!) of RAM, along with a pre-release build (Build 13A2054) of OS X 10.9, which we now know as OS X Mavericks. The motherboard ID also matches one known to be in the new Mac Pro, so it's likely this set of benchmark results is legit, though it might not match up to a final release of the machine. And what's the verdict? It's fast, of course. Significantly faster, in places, than a current 2012 Mac Pro build. Of course, Apple bragged during WWDC 2013 that the latest model would be "up to 2X faster" than previous Mac Pros. While that might be true for some applications, this machine doesn't meet that figure consistently. Still, considering this is probably an early version that's less than fully optimized, there's no doubt at all that the new Mac Pro will be a very slick machine indeed. [Via MacRumors]
QuickTime 7.6 addresses security issues
QuickTime 7.6 is in the wild. Released today via Software Update and on Apple's support site, the new version "includes changes that increase reliability, improve compatibility and enhance security." It also makes your whites whiter and your brights brighter while helping you avoid embarrassing social situations. More details via the update page: Video: Improves single-pass H.264 encoding quality; Increases the playback reliability of Motion JPEG media Audio: Improves AAC encoding fidelity; Audio tracks from MPEG video files now export consistently Application Support: Improves compatibility with iChat and Photo Booth As far as the security updates are concerned, the word from Ryan Naraine at ZDnet is that this patch closes several potentially serious holes that could have been exploited by malicious URLs or custom-payload movie files to execute code on target machines. Four of the seven issues addressed in this update were reported to Apple via the Zero Day Initiative, which encourages responsible disclosure of vulnerabilities by providing cash bounties for the researchers involved. Thanks to everyone who sent this in.
