So it’s nearly the middle of November, which means that those of you doing NaNoWriMo this year should be almost half-way through your novel. Assuming you’ve kept up the daily word count.
Among NaNo writers there’s a thriving subculture of AlphaSmart users.
“AlphaSmart?” you say. “What on earth is that? Doesn’t sound like a Mac.”
Apple has just released the 10.6.2 update to OS X, which includes scores of bug fixes and improvements, including the nasty bug that can delete your data when using a guest account.
The “Guest Account Bug” was the big one, but Apple says the update fixes sundry issues, from Exchange contacts not showing up inSpotlight search to glitchy four-finger gestures. Full list of fixes after the jump.
The update has been eagerly awaited by Snow Leopard users suffering problems from spotty WiFi to constant spinning beachballs.
The update is available through Software Update or can be downloaded as a standalone installer. It’s available in two flavors:
Mac OS X v10.6.2 Update (473MB)
Mac OS X v10.6.2 Update (Combo) (479MB)
The update’s size when downloaded through Software Update can vary depending on your machine and the previous updates already installed.
Some readers might remember the fuss a few weeks ago, when Snow Leopard came out and people noticed that it did something screwy to the way files behave.
Last week’s bombshell that Apple’s upcoming OS 10.6.2 update dropped support for Atom processors seems to be unfounded.
The Atom is the chip of choice in netbook hackintoshes, and many speculated that Apple was trying to kill the hackintosh market.
But Stell, the hacker who first sounded the alarm, now says support for Atom is mysteriously back.
“… in the latest development build Atom appears to have resurrected itself zombie style in 10C535. The Atom lives another day, but nothing is concrete until the final version of 10.6.2 is out.”
Warning: This method no longer works. To jailbreak the latest firmware, check out greenpois0n/limera1n/Pwnage Tool
George Hotz a.k.a GeoHot has released blackra1n RC3, which is an update to a 1-click jailbreak that adds activation options and an add-on blacksn0w, which unlocks latest iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS baseband version 05.11.07. To use blacksn0w, make sure you have this new baseband (check under Settings –> General –> About –> Modem Firmware) and if not, then update to a stock 3.1.2 firmware.
It is pretty easy to use and worked perfectly with my iPhone 3G. Besides the tool, there’s a blackra1n application that gets automatically installed on the iPhone after jailbreak, which gives you option to install Cydia and some other alternatives like RockYourPhone and the ‘sn0w’ option to use blacksn0w unlock solution as well.
Please note that if you have an iPhone 2G, you can still jailbreak using blackra1n but blacksn0w will not unlock for you. You must use BootNeuter available in Cydia for that purpose. Also, if you purchased an iPhone 3GS or iPod Touch (any capacity) in October or later, there is a high probability that you have a new model. Blackra1n currently performs only a tethered jailbreak for these new devices, which means you need to use blackra1n every time you boot the device, otherwise all your jailbreak data gets wiped.
Here’s see how it works.
If you’re still not convinced about the need for regular backups, maybe talking with some Snow Leopard users will. The Apple support boards are buzzing with reports of Leopard users finding data zapped.
“Users start their Macs up as normal only to find they’ve logged in as ‘Guests’ on their machine – with all the files and data held on their Mac in their own user account seemingly deleted,” according to 9to5.
About 18 percent of Mac users have upgraded to Snow Leopard since its release August 28, we reported earlier this month.
About 18% of all Mac users upgraded to Snow Leopard in just a month, new numbers from the online research firm Net Applications suggest.
Snow Leopard was released on August 28. Thanks to its low $30 price tag, Mac users are pouncing on it. But a nearly 20% percent adoption rate is fast — by anyone’s standards.
Net Applications estimates market share by measuring the number of visits to a network of sites, recording things like browser and operating system. According to the firm, about 1% of all computer users are currently running Snow Leopard. The firm estimates that 5% of computer users worldwide are Mac users, which means about 18% of Mac users are running Snow Leopard.
On interesting thing to note is the peak in Mac users during weekends. Presumably, people are surfing on PCs at work during the week, and using a Mac at home over the weekend.
OK, recently exhibited at the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art. (Huge version of this.)
When does an operating system UI element become a work of art? Is it when Artie Vierkant replicates it many times over and makes it into a huge print? Or was it art in the first place?
Snow Leopard can give your Mac a 50% performance improvement when running optimized software, a developer has found.
Running a Mac Pro from 2007, programmer Christophe Ducommun compared Snow Leopard to Leopard while encoding and decoding video with his MovieGate software.
Ducommun is optimizing MovieGate to take advantage of two important new technologies in Snow Leopard: Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL. While OpenCL allows powerful graphics processors to perform work for applications, Grand Central Dispatch takes advantage of multiple cores, distributing work among all the available cores.
Together, they apps a pretty big speed bump, according to MacBidouille, which published Ducommun’s results:
Snow Leopard
150 frame/s for encoding in MPEG-2
70% CPU load for decoding
130% CPU load for MPEG-2 encoding (ffmpeg)
Leopard
104 frame/s for encoding in MPEG-2
165% CPU load for decoding
100% CPU load for MPEG-2 encoding (ffmpeg)
Overall, the optimizations give an overall performance increase of about 50%. Ducommun’s Mac Pro is a 2.66 GHz Quad Core machine with a GeForce 8800 GT video card.
Apple has introduced a new system for controlling the way files are opened in Snow Leopard, and some users are very upset about it.
“Apple has made a huge, dumb mistake,” says Ross Carter, a developer whose application, Pagehand, is affected by the change.
Adobe’s Flash is fixed in the Mac OS X 10.6.1 Snow Leopard update that’s in the hands of a limited number of developers.
The seed updates Adobe Flash to version 10.0.32.18. Snow Leopard shipped with version 10.0.23.1, which is known to be insecure and needs to be patched to close various security holes. (If you’re running Snow Leopard and haven’t updated Flash, follow this link to download the latest version).
Apple seeded the update less than a week after shipping Snow Leopard on August 28. The other fixes seem to be relatively minor. According to World of Apple, which has published the seed notes, the 71MB update includes:
– compatibility with some Sierra Wireless 3G modems
– an issue that might cause DVD playback to stop unexpectedly
– some printer compatibility drivers not appearing properly in the add printer browser
– an issue that might make it difficult to remove an item from the Dock
– instances where automatic account setup in Mail might not work
– an issue where pressing cmd-opt-t in Mail brings up the special characters menu instead of moving a message
– Motion 4 becoming unresponsive
It’s not unusual for Apple to continue working on the operating system after the launch of a major OS update. In the past, the first update has typically been released in a couple of weeks.
You just installed Snow Leopard. Now what?
Here’s the best 10 tips and tricks we found for putting the beast to best use.
The British security firm Intego has published a security memo that provides a clear and detailed view of Apple’s new XProtect anti-virus system in Snow Leopard.
There are several interesting tidbits: Apple’s new XProtect system cannot recognize all the variants of the Trojans it is supposed to protect against, for example.
Also, the XProtect system does not spot Trojans hidden inside .mpkg files downloaded from the internet, a major weakness, according to Intego. (Apple’s installer recognizes two types of files — .pkg files for simple packages, and .mpkg files that contain multiple packages to be installed.)
The memo is patently self-serving — Intego sells several anti-virus and privacy packages for the Mac — but nonetheless provides a clear and detailed view of what Apple’s new XProtect system does — and doesn’t do.
The full memo after the jump.
The more I play with Snow Leopard, the more it looks like it’s designed to run Apple’s upcoming tablet.
Look at Expose in the Dock — the new feature that reveals all an application’s open windows when you click and hold the application’s icon. It’s tailor-made for fingers. Even more convincing is Stacks in the Dock. Hit a folder icon in the dock, and up pops the folder and all its files. Each icon is a big target for your finger, and the window has a big, fat slider for scrolling up and down (no more fiddly little arrows at the top or bottom). Both of these UI tweaks scream ‘touchscreen.’
And then today I discovered an unheralded feature that the minute I saw it, I thought, “Game over! Here’s rock-solid proof that Snow Leopard is designed for touchscreens. This is a tablet operating system.”
Snow Leopard is being widely touted as a performance increase, but the OS upgrade resulted in a 10-15% performance DECREASE on both my Mac Pro as well as my MacBook Pro — at least, according to the Xbench benchmarking tool.
Now of course, that could just be things that Xbench measures, perhaps it doesn’t account or provide sufficient weight for multi-threading, and multi-tasking. But we would like to get to the bottom of this, and are asking for your help.
If you followed our handy dandy upgrade guide you ought so still have a functioning Leopard install to boot from. If so, please follow this testing protocol:
Use the same protocol with your Snow Leopard install, but name the result CoM – YOURNAME – POST.
Thanks in advance I’ll be releasing results in the next few days.
** Why no drive test? XBench places too much emphasis on hard drive performance, and in an era where all hard drives perform basically the same, it skews all performance tests to the center. Running the test without drives provides a better picture of the actual performance delta.
A lot of people will be upgrading to Snow Leopard this weekend. There’s the right way to do it, and there’s the wrong way.
Here’s how to do it right.
It looks like Apple is finally getting serious about security — not!
Apple has added a very rudimentary antivirus system to Snow Leopard, which is due out in stores Friday. The system is so basic, it kinda defies belief. It’s the Fisher Price of anti-virus blockers; a system so simple and limited, it appears basically worthless. It pops up a warning if you try to install an internet nasty, and advises you to move the file to the Trash. Here’s all you need to know in three easy steps:
* It includes information about just two Trojan Horses: OSX.RSPlug.A and OSX.Iservice. Both of these Trojans are in the wild but are fairly rudimentary. OSX.Iservice has been found in pirated copies of iWork on the file sharing networks; and OSX.RSPlug is typically found on porno websites masquerading as video codecs that need to be installed by the user, who types in their system password.
* It intercepts files downloaded only using Safari, Firefox, Mail, Entourage, Thunderbird and iChat and several other applications, according to The Register. It does not check files downloaded by hundreds of other applications or files on CDs, DVDs or USB thumbdrives.
* The system was quietlycadded to the latest builds of Snow Leopard. It’s present in build 10A432, the most recent version that is widely assumed to be Gold Master. It can be found in the system files: /System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources/XProtect.plist
Of course, Apple may update the system in the future with more malware definitions and applications. Ironically, Apple is running a new ad touting the Mac’s invulnerability to viruses and headaches.
UPDATE: Apple’s US and Canadian stores also briefly said August 28th will be the release date. The stores have now been changed back to “September.”
Though it might lack the wow factor of Leopard or revolutionary features like Tiger brought to bear, Mac OS X Snow Leopard is still going to be completely amazing. Some times tuning up everything under the hood is a lot more important than changing the icons in the Dock.
And, from what we can tell, we’ll all (well, some of us) finally get to enjoy a fully 64-bit OS, advanced multicore support via Grand Central, OpenCL, and the rest very soon. The Apple Store UK yesterday listed an August 28 release date for the little upgrade that could (it’s since changed to “September,” but I think that’s just trying to shove the cat back in the bag), so get ready to spend next weekend benchmarking your machines.
Via MacRumors
Apple is introducing dozens of arty new desktop backgrounds in Snow Leopard, the new version of OS X due in the fall.
There are 40 new desktops in the latest test seed delivered to developers this weekend, including reproductions of famous paintings from artists like Edward Hopper, Van Gogh and Monet.
The new desktops include:
* Van Gogh’s Starry Night, Monet’s Lilies, Hopper’s Nighthawks, Degas’ Ballet Dancers on the Stage, and Katsushika Hokusai’s Tsunami.
* Three graffiti desktops that will make your computer look like a New York subway car circa 1978.
* Several high-res shots of snow leopards, including the one above.
The art is classic, but the themes struck me at odds with Apple’s optimistic image: madness, loneliness, alienation and death. I don;t know if I want my files hanging out with Hopper’s lonely souls.
All 40 Snow Leopard desktops after the jump.
