SnowLeopard
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Leopard and Snow Leopard flaw exploited in proof of concept, real-world tomfoolery surely coming soon
Look at you, all cuddled up with your Leopard install, sipping on a steamy hot cocoa, watching the snow fall outdoors, and thinking you don't have a care in the world. We hate to break it to ya but you do have a care, a big one, thanks to a proof of concept hack exploiting a buffer overflow in MacOS 10.5 and 10.6. The flaw has been known about since June, but only now has it been proven to work on Cupertino's latest, and a very straightforward code example of how to use it has been posted online. You know what that means: watch out for those e-mail attachments. Interestingly, the flaw is also said to possibly exist in the PS3 as well, which could make for a very interesting spring -- cocoa or no.
Candelair IR driver addresses Apple remote issues in Snow Leopard
As we wait on the threshold of 10.6.3, there are still some hiccups and interesting issues in Snow Leopard that might make your life a bit more difficult (as Aron mentioned recently). In particular, getting your Apple Remote to behave properly with all the apps that it's supposed to control may be an exercise in frustration. In the case of my unibody MacBook Pro, I couldn't get the machine to recognize any remote commands at all - even after verifying that the batteries were fresh (by looking for infrared flashes via the iSight camera) and trying to pair/unpair the remote. I wasn't alone; there's a five-page thread on Apple's discussion boards detailing a litany of woes with 10.6.x and remote use, with many reports of Front Row overriding remote commands destined for other apps like EyeTV. Good news, though: even if the upcoming OS update doesn't clear up the remote issues, there's a fine & free solution right now. The Candelair driver, provided by the developers of Remote Buddy, installs simply and works like a charm. You can disable/enable the driver via the provided preference pane, or activate a legacy compatibility mode to help old apps behave as expected. For me, I'm just happy that my remote is working again.
Mac OS 10.6.3 to bring many fixes
The release of Mac OS 10.6.3 moves closer as Apple has begun widespread testing of build 10D522. According to AppleInsider, this update focuses on stability and core components like AppKit, CoreMedia, Desktop Services, FileSync, Fonts, HIToolbox and more. The current build is 665.7MB in size. Reports indicate that nearly 60 crash-happy bugs have been squashed across more than 90 components with this update, like printing issues with iCal, Mail and PhotoBooth (fortunately I haven't experienced those). Additionally, 10.6.3 includes native support for the Magic Mouse. Apple began limited testing in December, and has released several builds since. Now that testing has become more widespread and the fixes increase, we move closer to release.
Snow Leopard Creator Codes: one more time, with feeling
I recently wrote about Ross Carter's Snow Leopard Creater Code discoveries and his solution, LaunchCodes. It turns out there were a few issues with the initial implementation, such as Apple Events not being passed along. Normally when you find a file in Spotlight, a PDF for example, opening it launches Preview and the query that was used to locate the file shows up in the search field in Preview. This was no longer working in LaunchCodes, though Ross says he's working on that right now. In the meantime, Michel Fortin has produced Magic Launch, and it solves the majority of the issues that have been presented. Magic Launch installs as a System Preferences pane, and you can drag and drop applications to it to register their file type. Then, you can choose a default application, but optionally specify that it should launch in it the application which created it, when possible. Probably the coolest feature, though, is the rule handling. Similar to rules in Mail.app, you can set up a series of criteria to determine when a different app should open the file. You can have multiple rules, and each rule can check things like file location, file name or extension, text contents, hex contents and/or ASCII contents. That's pretty nifty, and goes beyond the default functionality that was available before we even needed apps like this. Magic Launch is free to try out, and costs $14US for a license. If you're still finding documents annoyingly launching the wrong applications, go download it and give it a try.
SSH and the case-sensitive username in Snow Leopard
Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard introduced a lot of under-the-hood changes and many are not very obvious. One such change is to the authentication requirements for logging in remotely via SSH. In 10.5 logging in remotely via SSH was a pretty standard affair. In 10.6, however, security has been beefed up a bit to require case-sensitive login credentials. While this requirement has already been imposed on passwords, Snow Leopard now requires a case-sensitive user name as well. In other words, when logging in via SSH, Snow Leopard differentiates between the username "aron" and "Aron." This threw me for a loop for quite some time and is another one of the numerous reasons I have held off upgrading my Mac mini to 10.6.
Mac 101: Making Text Replacement Work
Text replacement: it's one of Snow Leopard's really cool features. With it, you can type abbreviations and they'll automatically expand into full text. You can convert your most common phrases into just a few keystrokes, and let Snow Leopard take care of the rest. Here's a quick summary of what you need to do to make text replacement work for you. Creating Macros in System Preferences. Open System Preferences (it's in the Apple menu at the top of your screen) and navigate to Language & Text > Text. There you'll find a Symbol and Text Substitution list. Click the + button to add a new item. For this example, put (tuaw) into the Replace column and The Unofficial Apple Weblog into the With column. Leave the box to the left of these items checked. So why use the parentheses? Strictly speaking, they're not necessary. You can define text substitutions on any set of characters, as shown in the screen shot below. What these parentheses do for me, is that they distinguish between when I want to type TUAW and not have it expand, and when I want the abbreviation to transform into the full Weblog name. Enabling Text Replacement Text replacement works on a per-application basis. Many applications default to this feature being off. To make text replacement happen, right-click within any text entry area such as a composition window in Mail or the text entry field in Colloquy, etc. The contextual menu provides a Substitutions submenu. Make sure Text Replacement is checked. If it is not, select it to toggle the option from on to off or off to on. Applying Text Replacment The big secret to making text replacement happen, once you've defined the shortcuts and enabled Text Replacement in the contextual menu, is the space key. Snow Leopard does not apply the shortcut replacement until it detects you have finished typing a phrase. Only then does it perform its internal look up and substitution. Also prepare to wait a second or so. The replacement text often lags behind your typing. So go ahead and keep entering text. The operating system will catch up and perform its substitution work without your oversight. For Mike G., with TUAW affection
Creator codes make a comeback in Snow Leopard with LaunchCodes
In Mac OS X (and back into OS 9 history), a creator code is a hidden value attached to a document and bound to a preferred application, allowing the OS to know which application to use for opening that file. This is particularly helpful for filetypes that have multiple valid 'target' apps (JPEG, PDF, etc.); the creator code lets Preview 'own' its PDF or image files, TextEdit automatically open its text files, and so on. Those who are familiar with the process are already (painfully) aware that Snow Leopard ditched this system a while back (some great details at Ars Technica). For many users -- especially Windows switchers -- the new method is an improvement, allowing a more standardized response to double-clicking a document file that's driven by the file name extension (.doc, .html, and the like). If you're in the former group, though, and missing your creator codes, the developer behind PageHand has a treat for you: LaunchCodes. LaunchCodes is an extremely simple utility which restores the creator code functionality to Snow Leopard. The creator codes never went anywhere; they're still in the metadata. LaunchCodes just tells the system what to do with a filetype. Setup is fast and easy, just enter the extension for the file and assign an application to it (similar to "Always open with"). It runs quietly in your menubar and directs OS X to open the application you prefer for any given type of file. LaunchCodes is $4.95US and is available as a free trial at the PageHand website.
Psystar to shut down 'immediately,' world shrugs
Has the saga finally come to an end? Dow Jones is reporting that Psystar will be firing its eight employees and then "shutting things down immediately," in the words of the company's attorney with the bad-ass name, Eugene Action. Besides, after the latest round of losses at the hands of Apple, this should come as a shock to nobody. Now that we've put all that behind us, can we concentrate on something of importance -- like Tweeting swears from the Zune HD Twitter app?
Psystar banned from copying any version of OS X, helping others install it
And it's all over, folks: The US District Court for the Northern District of California has just permanently forbidden wannbe Mac cloner Psystar from selling modified versions of OS X, providing any tools that enable users to bypass the OS X kernel encryption, and / or intentionally aiding anyone else from infringing Apple's OS X copyrights in any way. We knew this was coming following Apple's decisive victory against Psystar last month -- the only open questions were whether the court would include Snow Leopard and Psytar's Rebel EFI software in the ban, since the lawsuit was specifically about Leopard and Rebel EFI wasn't the subject of any proceedings. Both issues were predictably resolved in favor of Apple: the court specifically included Snow Leopard and any future versions of OS X in the scope of the injunction, and while Judge Alsup couldn't address Rebel EFI directly, he did expressly forbid Psystar from "manufacturing, importing, offering to the public, providing, or otherwise trafficking" in anything that circumvents Apple's OS X hardware locks -- which we'd say covers Rebel EFI's functionality pretty thoroughly. Psystar has until December 31 to comply, and the Judge Alsup isn't kidding around: "Defendant must immediately begin this process, and take the quickest path to compliance; thus, if compliance can be achieved within one hour after this order is filed, defendant shall reasonably see it done." Psystar can still appeal, obviously, but it's already got its own hefty legal bills and a $2.67m fine to pay to Apple, so we've got a feeling this one might have reached the end of the line. P.S.- Amusingly, Judge Alsup appears to be pretty sick of Apple's shenanigans as well: in the section discussing Snow Leopard, he says Apple first tried to block any discovery of Snow Leopard before the OS was released, and then pushed to include the software in the case after it launched. That's why the Florida case over Snow Leopard wasn't merged into this case -- Alsup thought it was a "slick tactic" that "smacked of trying to 'have it both ways,' and offended [his] sense of fair play." Ouch.
Using Snow Leopard's Image Capture app, or how to clean up a room
One of the lesser-known changes in Snow Leopard is the update to the Image Capture application. This little gem of the Mac has always been available to grab photos from devices such as digital cameras and scanners, but with Mac OS X 10.6, Image Capture has turned into my personal hero. In 2007 and 2008, my in-laws both passed away and in the process of closing out their estate, we inherited many family photos. When I mean many, I'm talking about boxes and albums filled with them, enough to fill a spare bedroom in our house! Rather than just tossing the photos, we wanted to keep them because many of them were cherished family pictures, and others (taken by my father-in-law) were spectacularly good travel photographs. I've had an Epson Perfection 4490 Photo scanner for a few years, and the software that came with it was adequate. However, I just didn't feel like I wanted to spend the time and effort to scan a bunch of photo prints, and was considering sending them off to be digitized professionally. Then, in a fortuitous experiment, I tried Image Capture 6.0. This latest version has made it possible for me to slap down a bunch of photos on my scanner without regard for orientation, and have the scanner digitize them individually for placement in a folder. All it takes is making sure to check the Detect Separate Items checkbox, and Image Capture analyzes the overview scan to pick out the individual photos, straighten them out, and save them to a folder, auto-numbering them in the process. Once I've digitized a large batch, I drop them into a folder on my wife's MacBook Pro, where they're dragged into iPhoto, tagged, edited, and organized. The originals? They go into the trash. Image Capture is faster than the Epson software that came with the scanner, it allows me to scan a lot of photos very quickly while working on other things on my Mac (like writing TUAW posts), and it's making it possible for me to burn through digitizing thousands of prints without spending thousands of dollars using commercial scanning services. The best part of this entire project is that in the process of converting atoms to bits, we're going to recapture some space in our home. Your mileage may vary depending on the scanner model you're using, but if you haven't given the Snow Leopard edition of Image Capture a try, check it out.
Widgets: "iPhone apps, I am your father."
Don't get me wrong, I love the iPhone and its App Store juggernaut, it's just sometimes it seems that people have forgotten all about the iPhone app's father: the Dashboard widget. First introduced in Mac OS X Tiger in 2005, widgets changed the way people quickly accessed simple information on their Mac. And though Apple did not create the concept of a widget, it did present them in the best way. With the press of a button I had access to my portfolio, my Yahoo! news, my local weather, calculators for everything, translators, you name it. Widgets were small, simple, and beautiful. They performed one function and did it exceedingly well. Widget ports created half of the first apps ported to the iPhone (think the Weather app, Calculator app, Clock app, and Stocks app). So in honor of the widget being partially responsible for the origins of iPhone apps, I'd like to present you with my four favorite ones. I hope you'll list your favorite widgets in the comments section too.
Create a fluid transition from login window to desktop in two easy steps
I always thought it would be cool if you could customize the background image of the Mac's login screen. That's the image you see behind the login panel when you turn your Mac on (if you have disabled Automatic Login in System Preferences). Why? Because if I could have the login image match my desktop image it would create a more fluid transition if, when I entered my password, the login box would fade away and my desktop and all its items would seamlessly appear. Necessary? No. Cool? Heck, yeah! Until Apple gets around to building this functionality into the OS, I'm going to show you how to do it on your own. Step 1: Set your desktop background image. Open up 'Desktop and Screen Saver' in System Preferences and select your desired desktop image.
Dare to be Creative announces Parachute backup utility for Mac OS X
If there's one thing you've probably learned over the years from reading TUAW, it's that backups are important. Many of the bloggers here are obsessive about backups, doing Time Machine backups, SuperDuper! bootable backups, and using services like BackBlaze for offsite backups -- and that's all for one Mac! With the importance of viable and easy-to-create backups for your Mac, it's not surprising that Belgium development firm Dare to be Creative has just announced a new backup utility, Parachute [US$39.00]. The application is Snow Leopard-ready, and can be used to back up your Mac's data to your primary hard disk (definitely not recommended by our team), external disks, FTP or SFTP servers, USB drives, network volumes, and even your iDisk. Parachute has many features that are found on other backup utilities. For example, you can schedule backups to run hourly, daily, weekly, or manually. The application also does incremental backups after the initial full backup, so subsequent backups take much less time. There is one feature that does appear to be unique to Parachute, and that's the ability to create multiple backup tasks for different files and folders on your Mac, and use a variety of destinations for each task. There's a 15-day full-functioning trial available for download here. While you are in your tryptophan-induced coma after tomorrow's Thanksgiving Day feast, you can set up some Parachute backups and rest assured that your data is safe.
Mac OS X 10.6.2 hacked to allow Atom support
No bonus points for calling this one, but it looks like Atom support has returned to Mac OS X 10.6.2 -- less than two weeks after it was unceremoniously removed to the dismay of hackintoshers. Of course, this new "fix" doesn't come courtesy of Apple, and it does take the art of hackintoshing to some risky new levels. Developed by a member of the InsanelyMac forum, the hack is actually a full-on replacement kernel for OS X, which means it will require a good bit of fine tuning to get installed, and some considerable faith in the developer on your part. It does seem like quite a few trailblazers are happy with it, however, so hit up the links below if you're ready to take the plunge.
It's alive: Intel Atom support returns to 10.6.2
The day that Apple killed Atom support with the release of 10.6.2 was a sad one for many in the hackintosh community. Just as many expected, however, Atom support has returned; and no, Apple had nothing to do with it. InsanelyMac forum member teateam has developed a replacement kernel for installation on Atom-powered, hackintosh netbooks. Keep in mind that this is bleeding-edge stuff here and not for the faint of heart. Nevertheless, this development bodes well for those of you running your own version of a MacBook mini. [via Macworld]
Mac OS X 10.6.2 update out on the prowl (update: Atom support is gone)
It's been awhile, but we've got ourselves a brand spanking new OS X update in the mix, 10.6.2 for Snow Leopard. So far the biggest change here seems to be fixing that nagging guest account deletion bug -- and thank goodness for that. As for whether or not it supports Intel Atom processors, last we heard this morning it wasn't going to be there, but we're gonna have wait and see now that it's officially hit the nets. Leopard users who haven't made the upgrade also get a gift today, in the form of a security update. 10.6.2 release notes after the break. Update: We just installed it -- it took forever and a day on one of our machines, and sped by reasonably quick on another. Everything seems okay otherwise, how about you? Update 2: We've gotten enough reports to call it -- Atom support is out. Sorry, hackintosh community. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]
Mac OS X 10.6.2 is on the prowl, plus security update for 10.5 users
Update: As noted by our commenters and cross-confirmed with OS News, the 10.6.2 update appears to drop support for the hackintosh-centric Atom processor. This was spotted in earlier builds, but it was not clear whether the support for the netbook CPU would be in or out in the final configuration. We've been expecting Mac OS X 10.6.2 for a while now, especially since Apple initially said that the new Magic Mouse would require it, but it has just arrived. Alongside the OS update for Snow Leopard users, Security Update 2009-006 is out for users of Leopard. Use Software Update to make sure that you get the right update for your computer. Bug fixes are reported for AFP Client, Adaptive Firewall, Apache (2), Apache Portable Runtime, ATS, Certificate Assistant, CoreGraphics, CoreMedia (2), CUPS, Dictionary, DirectoryService, Disk Images, Dovecot, Event Monitor, fetchmail, file, FTP Server, Help Viewer, ImageIO, International Components for Unicode, IOKit, IPSec, Kernel, Launch Services, libsecurity, libxml, Login Window, OpenLDAP (2), OpenSSH, PHP, QuickDraw Manager, QuickLook, QuickTime (4), FreeRADIUS, Screen Sharing, Spotlight, and Subversion. No word on any new features or enhancements yet. Stay tuned. Here's the update list from Apple via Software Update: The 10.6.2 Update is recommended for all users running Mac OS X Snow Leopard and includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac, including fixes for: an issue that might cause your system to logout unexpectedly a graphics distortion in Safari Top Sites Spotlight search results not showing Exchange contacts a problem that prevented authenticating as an administrative user issues when using NTFS and WebDAV file servers the reliability of menu extras an issue with the 4-finger swipe gesture an issue that causes Mail to quit unexpectedly when setting up an Exchange server Address Book becoming unresponsive when editing a problem adding images to contacts in Address Book an issue that prevented opening files downloaded from the Internet Safari plug-in reliability general reliability improvements for iWork, iLife, Aperture, Final Cut Studio, MobileMe, and iDisk an issue that caused data to be deleted when using a guest account For detailed information on this update, please visit this website: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3874.
Orb for Mac finally arrives, streams media from OS X to any internet-connected device
Wow, where've you been, Orb? It's been a full year since we heard anything from the once-adored media streaming outfit, and while it's been streaming out content to iPhones for quite some time, those relying on Macs to do it have been left in the damp night air. Until now, that is. Orb for Macintosh has finally hit the streets, bringing with it OS X 10.5 and 10.6 compatibility that enables any and all media from iTunes to be sent out over the internet and consumed on any outside device with access to the web. We're talking laptops, UMPCs, smartphones and even that ancient PC your grandmother still uses with Windows ME. There's no mention of any DRM restrictions, and it'll even allow you to stream live TV if you can manage to connect a tuner card to your Apple. Oh, and did we mention that Orb is completely free? Hit the download link below to get your weekend started off right. Read - Download Orb Read - Press release
Perhaps Apple won't block Atom support after all
There was a report this week that Mac OS X 10.6.2 will block Atom support, leaving Hackintosh owners stuck at 10.6.1. Intel's Atom processors have been used in netbooks by MSI, Dell and ASUS for their low cost and modest energy consumption. Hackintosh owners were disappointed. Shortly after that report was published, Electronista noted that a newly-released build of 10.6.2 (10C535) brought it back. Of course, we're talking about "support" for hackintoshes in a developer build of the OS, so keep that in mind. The moral of the story: Apple can kill this when ever they please, so have fun while you can. [Via Engadget]
Latest Mac OS X 10.6.2 beta build brings back Atom support
Well, it looks like reports that Apple might be killing Atom support in the next Snow Leopard update may have been slightly overblown, as the latest developer build of OS X 10.6.2 (10C535) has apparently restored support for the processor and simultaneously brightened the spirits of hackintoshers the world over. What's more, there doesn't appear to be any explanation for the switch-a-roo from Apple which, as Electronista notes, could indicate that it was simply a bug or a temporary measure -- although it does of course also mean that Apple can just as easily flip the switch again if it sees fit (which seems like at least a 50 / 50 shot).
