John Brownlee - page 142

OS X Lion is being hailed by many as the most secure operating system yet, not just from Apple, but in total. In particular, its FileVault encryption rewrite is being widely hailed as one of the most secure, low-overhead ways yet to keep your data safe.

But behind all the talk, there’s a huge security hole in OS X Lion that has been present at least since Snow Leopard. Any Mac with a Firewire port is vulnerable to it, and it’s so easy to exploit that any hacker with physical access to your computer can get your password within minutes.

Well, that didn’t last long: just a few hours after being yanked from the iOS App Store for failing to comply with Apple’s revised in-app purchasing rules forbidding direct links to outside, web-based e-stores, Google Books has been re-instated, sans the offending link.

Nicely done, Apple. Looks like no one can afford to play hardball with you on this, not even Google or Amazon.

Well, that was quick. Just a little over a week after Apple released iOS 4.3.4, plugging up the JailbreakMe v3 hole, Apple has already released iOS 4.3.5. But what’s the update for?

For many of us early testers, one of the biggest barriers to using iOS 5 Beta as a full-time upgrade on our iPhones and iPad has been the lack of Netflix streaming. That wasn’t an iOS bug, just a lack of support on Netflix’s end… a lack of support which has now delightfully been fixed.

Not much else to say: right on the heels of our story that Google Books had been kicked off the App Store for failing to comply with Apple’s new in-app purchasing rules, Amazon has removed a link to its outside e-store, now fully complying with Apple’s rules.

Apple has just seemingly banned its first big name app for not playing along with Apple’s revised In-App Purchase rules, as Google’s official Google Books app, which contained a prominent web link to an outside e-store, has disappeared from the App Store. If it has happened to Google, will Amazon’s Kindle app be the next app to disappear?

We haven’t even seen the first retina display iPad yet, but just as Apple’s been baking double-sized assets for an iPad HD into iOS since iOS 4, OS X Lion lays down some groundwork for the first Retina Display iMacs and MacBooks.

Still worried about MacDefender? That’s nothing: a new security vulnerability in MacBook batteries means that it’s possible that future hackers won’t just try to steal your credit card numbers, but might actually cause your computer to meltdown instead.

A new job application on Apple’s site has put out the call for a new Senior User Interface Designer to rework the iWork suite on both Mac and iOS devices.

Not only does the timing of the ad combined with recent updates seem to imply that Apple may not update iWork until next year, but we have to wonder if it also might suggest that Cupertino is planning a Final Cut Pro X style reboot of the popular office suite.

With AT&T in the process of gobbling up T-Mobile, and with rumors consistently suggesting that Apple will bring the iPhone 5 to T-Mobile, it’s hard not to think of this as significant: T-Mobile is now giving out iPhone 4 compatible Micro SIMs to their customers.

Apple’s fast on the track of becoming the most valuable company on Earth, and as such, they’ve been expanding. As the number of their employees grow, however, so does Apple’s need for office space, which is why they just opened a new office for 1300 employees, and why they are going to be building a huge new spaceship campus that is bigger than the Pentagon.

But how will Apple employees get back and forth between all of these campuses for meetings and the like? Simple: meet the iBike, the only way to get between the mothership and 1 Infinite Loop endorsed by Steve Jobs.

There’s not much else to go on, but according to 9to5Mac, Asian iPhone repair shops are already hawking replacement front panels for the next iPod Touch… and they’re white.

The boys over at iFixIt have started their teardown of the 2011 13-inch MacBook Air, and while much of the construction is similar to last year’s models, there is some good news for DIY upgraders: contrary to rumors, the SSDs have not been soldered to the board, meaning that you can upgrade your Air’s storage down the line.

Otherwise, iFixIt doesn’t have much to report this time around, except for an explanation of the omission of a FaceTime HD webcam in the Air: the thinness of the display makes it pretty much impossible to put a beefier camera in there at this time. Good to know.

Well, that’s one way to end an argument about last month’s AT&T bill. A New York man has apparently been arrested after trying to ram his girlfriend’s iPhone down her throat.

Well, here’s an interesting little factoid: with $76.2 billion in the bank in cash as of the June quarter, Apple now has more money than the gross domestic product of almost two-thirds of the world’s countries… and more than the GDP of the world’s fiftiest poorest countries combined.

Wondering why your laptop’s battery life has dropped and its CPU temperature has gone through the roof now that you’ve installed OS X Lion, especially when watching YouTube videos or browsing Flash-heavy sites?

Surprise, surprise: Adobe Flash is having more problems post-Lion, as Apple’s favorite punching bag has sheepishly admitted that there seems to be an issue with Flash Player under OS X 10.7.

Now that Apple has released new MacBook Airs, you might be tempted to buy one of them (we recommend this one because of the blistering performance that an SSD provides. You should be: once you start computing on an SSD, you’ll never want to go back, and the MacBook Air is a wonderful introducing to the powers of solid state storage.

That said, if you’re used to have a 500GB or 1TB hard drive to play around with on your laptop, you might be worried that it’s hard to live in a small 64GB or even 128GB footprint.

Don’t sweat it. I’ve been using a 64GB MacBook Air as my main work machine for the last nine months, and I’ve found it very easy to live within that space, after having learned a few tricks. Here’s how to make the most of your MacBook Air’s SSD.

This morning, I slapped my parakeet on my shoulder, placed a patch over one eye, clamped a pipe between my teeth, tied one of my girlfriend’s scarves around her head, appropriated one of her blouses and wore it unbuttoned down to the waist and dusted off my early 90s parachute pants.

Why? Yarrrrrrrrrrrrgh. Sid Meier’s classic pirating simulation game, appropriately known as Sid Meier’s Pirates! is now available for the iPad.

You’d think Apple would be dumping Samsung components from their iPad 2 design as Cupertino tries to reduce their dependence upon the partner who keeps on ripping off all of their best ideas. Instead, though, they’re just tucking deeper into bed with Samsung, despite the international IP lawsuits flinging about.

What’s going on? Well, it might all be about that sexy tablet-sized Retina Display Samsung has floating around.

Apple’s refreshed 2011 Mac minis are a tempting choice for users who want a roc solid, low-footprint desktop machine on a budget. But exactly how much of a budget do you need to allot yourself?

No matter which Mac mini you buy, you’ll be getting a deceptively small machine, absolutely packed with some top-of-the-line tech, like Thunderbolt. But if we had to recommend just one, we’d recommend the $799 Mac mini with a 2.5GHz Intel Core i5 processor and 4GB of RAM.

Here’s why.

With OS X 10.7 Lion now available on the Mac App Store, a lot of people will be upgrading their Macs today. Even though the install process makes Lion the easiest upgrade yet, though, there’s a right way to install Lion to your machine, and a wrong way.

Here’s how to do it right.

Along with the new Mac minis and MacBook Airs, Apple is also updating their 27-inch LED Cinema Display. But now they are calling it just the Thunderbolt Display.

Today, Apple released new Sandy Bridge MacBook Airs with Thunderbolt ports, backlit keyboards and all-around upped specs. Any MacBook Air you get will, in all likelihood, be the best laptop you’ve ever owned, but how do you know which MacBook Air is right for you?

After nine months of using and loving our last-gen MacBook Airs, we know which one we’d recommend to most people: the 128GB 11-inch MacBook Air with 4GB of RAM. Here’s why.

A little under two years after Snow Leopard’s debut, and after we’ve all waited for what seems like twice as long, Apple has finally released OS X 10.7 Lion to end users.

Apple has just released a tiny 768kb update to Migration Assistant for Snow Leopard, and if you’re planning on transferring your files and settings from a Snow Leopard Mac to a machine with Lion, you’ll need to grab this, because otherwise you’re out of luck.