lion - page 2

Shortlt after Apple announced Mountain Lion would be shipping next month, Cult of Mac reported that Cupertino had already begun preparation for the operating system by pulling the Messages for Mac Beta from their official site. The app allowed users of OS X Lion to send iMessages to iPhones, iPads and other Macs, but since it’s a headlining feature of the $20 Mountain Lion operating system, it stands to reason they’d want to start curtailing access to the service for Lion users.

That’s not all Apple’s doing, however. According to a new report, Apple is actually forcibly disabling the Messages Beta for OS X Lion users. They really want you upgrading if you use Messages,

A Software Update for Thunderbolt was just one of many Apple releases that went public yesterday, but unlike the rest, you should be in no hurry to pick this one up. Many users who have installed the update are reporting that it is causing boot failures and more on their Mac.

Those of you using OS X 10.7 Lion (which I hope is all of you) may have missed the ability to adjust the system volume in tiny quarter steps. This feature was available in Snow Leopard and ditched in the Lion "upgrade." Now, in good news for obsessive compulsive Mac users the world over, the option has returned.

Apple has added several whitepapers to its training site. All them address enterprise technologies in Lion. While many of the whitepapers have been available from Apple in the past, two of them appear to be new additions. The first of these details the use of Configuration Profiles to manage Macs running Lion as well as iOS device while the second covers 802.1X networking.

The first new whitepaper, which isn’t dated, is definitely the more interesting of the two.  It discusses Mac management as an extension of mobile device management (MDM). As we reported last week, Apple appears to be positioning Macs running Mountain Lion to be managed in the same manner as iOS devices rather than using its long-standing Managed Preferences architecture that has been built into OS X and OS X Server since their initial releases over a decade ago.

Microsoft is a company known for creating strict, labyrinthine, costly terms in its commercial and end-user licensing. With Windows 8 seen as a make-or-break product for Microsoft, the company has already been adding licensing terms intended to strengthen its hand in the mobile market. As we reported earlier this year, Microsoft’s enterprise licensing for Windows 8 has provisions to coerce businesses into buying ARM-based Windows RT tablets while punishing those that deploy iPads with more costly terms.

Ratcheting things up a notch, Microsoft’s general counsel Tim Fielden announced new details about the company’s end-user license agreements. Although not mentioning specific products or services, Fielden posted on a Microsoft blog that many new agreements will prohibit users from initiating a class action lawsuit against the company.

Last week, Adobe created a firestorm of user unrest when it issued a series of security bulletins impacting three applications of its Creative Suite and said that users must pay to upgrade to the latest versions of the apps if they wanted patches that would close the vulnerabilities.

The company was quickly besieged by users, technology professionals, and security experts demanding that it reverse course and offer security patches to users who couldn’t afford the upgrades (or didn’t want to spend the money). Even though company quietly backpedaled and announced it would offer security updates without acknowledging the reason for its about face or offering an apology, the gaffe raises concerns that Apple’s yearly OS X release cycle might lead it down a similar path.

Apple could be preparing to kill off OS X Lion early in favor of its predecessor, Mountain Lion, according to the company’s AppleCare training schedule. One source claims that the Cupertino company is already recruiting and training staff for the new release, which could get its debut in June, weeks earlier than expected.

Many people I’ve talked to are anxious to try out the new features Apple has brought to OS X Mountain Lion. Unfortunately, Apple has only made the beta of Mountain Lion available to registered developers. In this video, I’ll show you how you can get the biggest features of Mountain Lion today, using only existing apps.

Today Apple released Safari 5.1.7 alongside OS X 10.7.4. The latest Safari update includes several general improvements and bug fixes, including a new way of handling Adobe Flash on the web. If an older version of Flash attempts to run in Safari 5.1.7, Apple’s browser will automatically disable it and give you the option to install the newest version of Flash from Adobe’s website.

Boom, a terrific utility for Mac OS X that boosts system volume well above Apple’s default limit, is set to receive a new update that promises to deliver all of the features and improvements that Boom users have been asking for. That includes scroll gestures for those running Snow Leopard and Lion, the ability to access functions from the status bar icon, and more.

Recent data shows that nearly half of all companies offer or provide Macs to employees and that the Macs represent about 7% computers in the workplace. That’s according to a Forrester report that was issued last month and that prompted me to write a feature about how deploying and managing large Mac populations in enterprise environments differs significantly from supporting a handful of Macs.

In that that article, I covered a lot of the tools IT departments rely on to handle large scale Mac deployments. Knowing what those tools are is a great starting point, but there are also several key skills that IT professionals managing and/or supporting Macs in business need regardless of whether they’re dealing with a half dozen Macs or upwards of a thousand.

Apple finally gave the notice that it would be killing off MobileMe once and for all on June 30th, 2012. The soon-to-be-defunct service has already been replaced with iCloud, but Mac users who are still not running an OS X version older than Snow Leopard can’t hop on the bandwagon. You must have Snow Leopard installed to then install OS X Lion from the Mac App Store and gain access to iCloud. And chances are that if you’re still using MobileMe, you aren’t running the latest version of OS X.

Thursby last week released ADmitMac PKI 4. The release is a specialized version of the company’s ADMit Mac software that focuses two factor authentication. The solution is largely aimed at government customers and regulated industries like healthcare where data security is paramount.

Thursby’s ADMitMac is an Active Directory integration solution that offers several features beyond the built-in Active Directory support that Apple provides in OS X. It offers Mac management capabilities, improved browsing of Windows network resources including Microsoft’s distribute file system, and a number of other administrative tools.

Following two independent Java security updates and one last patch to detect and remove the Flashback trojan, Apple has released another software tool for getting rid of Flashback on a Mac running OS X Lion without Java installed.

Flashback is the name of a virus that was able to infect a Mac and link it up to a botnet of around 600,000 other Macs. If you’ve updated your Mac with the latest Java patch, you should be fine, but Apple has provided this new tool for safe measure to Mac users running Lion without Java already installed.

Last week I took a brief look at how managing a handful of Macs differs from managing dozens or hundreds or even thousands of Macs. Some readers asked how big companies like Apple, Google, Viacom, or IBM actually go about managing large numbers of Macs – both in terms of the tools they use and in terms of how their IT processes differ from supporting Macs in small businesses.

I can’t speak for how Apple manages the Macs of its thousands of employees, but I have worked with several large companies as a Mac IT professional – along with a number of schools and colleges, government agencies, and small businesses. Here’s a look at the tools and processes that they use to configure, deploy, and manage Macs on a grand scale.

The after effects of the Flashback Trojan are going to be felt for a long time to come. Although there’s been the occasional Mac malware announcement over the past few years, none was ever found to be rampant in the wilds of the Internet. Most were easily avoided by Apple’s basic security elements or by simple user actions like telling Safari not to immediately open so-called “safe” files after downloading them.

As a result, the Flashback Trojan caught a lot of people off guard – including individual Mac owners and some IT professionals who ought to have known better. It also highlighted deficiencies on the part of Apple when it comes to security.

Apple has issued a second update to Java in just two days this week as the company works to patch vulnerabilities that have led to the infection of over 600,000 Macs. The Java for OS 2012-002 update is now available to download via Software Update, and it’s recommended that you update.

Like many technology companies, Apple offers training and certification programs. The company’s certification options have typically been aimed at three different core competencies: hardware troubleshooting/repair, IT support and systems administration, and creative professionals using Apple’s “Pro” applications.

As Apple has moved out of the data center over the past year and a half, it has been making major changes to its training and certification options for IT professionals. Some of these changes could have been anticipated and some have been big surprises with major consequences to individuals and to organizations that have long employed Apple enterprise solutions.

When Lion was released last summer, there was a big outcry because Apple had decided to kill off Rosetta, the emulation engine that allowed Macs with Intel processors to run apps designed for Macs with Power PC processors. Apple’s position was that it had made the switch to Intel and stopped selling Power PC Macs five years earlier and it was time for users and developers to move on. Most developers did move on to releasing universal apps that could run on Macs with either processor or that were Intel-only.

One company that dragged its heals was Intuit, maker of the popular Quicken personal finance app. When Lion shipped, users of Quicken 2007, the most recent version, were faced with options that really weren’t that good: not upgrade to Lion, install a stripped down version called Quicken Essentials that was built for Intel Macs, run the Windows version of Quicken, or switch to a different app.

A common complaint that I heard earlier this week at the CITE conference in San Francisco was that Apple wasn’t a “real” enterprise vendor. IT professionals have whined and moaned about the fact that Apple doesn’t behave like most enterprise vendors for years (as a long time Mac and Apple IT professional myself, I’ve probably muttered under my breath about Apple’s approach to the enterprise many more times than most of the CITE attendees). What’s changed, however, is that CIOs and other IT leaders can no longer simply say “no” anytime Apple or an Apple product is mentioned.

This week, Apple even reiterated the point by dropping Apple Configurator, a completely new free tool for managing iOS devices in business. It’s a tool that offers new workflows when it comes to how businesses work with iPads (and to a lesser extent iPhones) and Apple released without telling its mobile management partners or its enterprise customers.

To all those IT folks bitching and complaining that Apple doesn’t publish 18-month roadmaps and doesn’t reach out to every enterprise months in advance of a product upgrade or cancelation, I have to say this: deal with it.

Along with announcing the new iPad and Apple TV (and related iOS and app updates), Apple released a new tool for managing iOS devices in business and education. The new Apple Configurator app is a free download in the Mac App Store for Macs running Lion. Although it takes the sting out of managing iPads, iPhones, and iPod touches for smaller organizations, it won’t replace more full feature mobile management solutions for mid-size or larger companies.

Calvin And Hobbes — Bill Watterson’s beautiful elegy to imagination, impishness and inquisitiveness — is still a comic strip that is unmatched in my affections over fifteen years after the final strip ran. In fact, it’s always been interesting to me to imagine what Calvin might be doing now if he’d aged in real-time. He’d be around 32, and really, what company better for him to explore his imagination and his inquisitiveness than Apple?

Since such musings tend to pop around my head, I was delighted to stumble upon this great Reddit thread, in which Redditor ClassicWinger merged Calvin And Hobbes with OS X Lion’s default wallpaper to come up with an all new wallpaper, in which Calvin and his tiger look up at a densely packed universe in the hushed awe it deserves. You can download it in full-resolution here.

Love the wallpaper above, but wishing for something more appropriate to Mountain Lion? We’ve got it after the jump, alone withan even better wallpaper, featuring my favorite Calvin alter-ego, Spaceman Spiff!

Valletta is yet another Markdown editor for the Mac, but one with a crucial difference. Instead of using a separate window to preview your document, it converts only the current line you’re editing, leaving the rest as clean and beautiful preview. It’s a clever idea, but we’ll have to see how well it works in practice.

While there are many features in OS X Lion that excite me, one that does not is the Resume feature. Clearly, Apple thought that opening windows from the last time an App was open would be a time saving feature, but I just find it annoying. Are you with me?

If so, we’ve got three separate ways to get rid of this behavior.

Yeah, that gray linen login screen looked cool when it first appeared in OS X Lion, but honestly? It’s gotten a bit bland. As is typical of Apple, of course, there’s no built in way to change it. We’ve found two ways, one that messes with the system files (you’ve been warned!) and one that uses a third party app to allow us all to have even more pictures of LOLcats on our computers. Or, you know, our kids or pets or something.