A Closer Look at Snow Leopard’s Wake on Demand Feature
My Clippings August 28th, 2009 by System
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MacUser provides an in-depth look at one useful new feature in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard: Wake On Demand.
[Wake On Demand] is Apple’s name for a new networking feature that lets a Snow Leopard Mac go to sleep while a networked base …
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Tags: Apple, Leopard, Mac, Snow Leopard
Malware detection coming in Snow Leopard?
My Clippings August 25th, 2009 by System
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Filed under: Security, Snow Leopard
We usually look at news updates and blog posts from antivirus vendor Intego with a bit of a gimlet eye, since the company has been known to spread a little bit of that good old FUD when it comes to the everyday risk of malware faced by most Mac users (that is to say, pretty much none). Today, however, the Intego blog pointed out an unheralded feature of the forthcoming Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard update: some basic malware checking built into the operating system, reported by users of the beta version.
As the post notes (and sites such as The Register and ZDnet corroborate), when a problematic DMG is downloaded or mounted — containing one of two known malware components — the Finder throws the alert pictured above, warning the user not to install the software in question and to throw away the disk image. While this is a nice touch for the two security risks in question, The Register notes that the filter appears to only catch files downloaded through some of the more common apps (Mail.app, Entourage, Safari, Firefox and iChat among them) but not files copied over from removable media. It doesn’t cover the wider gamut of threats out there, nor would it detect or block Windows malware that a Mac user could unwittingly transmit; for all of those scenarios, a true AV app (paid or free) is what the doctor ordered.
You can keep up with all the latest Snow Leopard news via our category page.
TUAWMalware detection coming in Snow Leopard? originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 25 Aug 2009 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Tags: Apple, email, Inc., IO, Leopard, Mac, security, Snow Leopard, way, wind
Massive memory leak threatens to derail Windows 7 launch
My Clippings August 5th, 2009 by System
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Infoworld is reporting that there is a very significant memory leak in Windows 7 involving the chkdsk.exe utility which appears when…
you attempt to run the program against a secondary (that is, not the boot partition) hard disk using the "/r" (read and verify all file data) parameter. The problem affects both 32- and 64-bit versions of Windows 7 and is classified as a "showstopper" in that it can cause the OS to crash (Blue Screen of Death) as it runs out of physical memory.
Randall Kennedy tested the bug against a variety of different builds of the RTM Windows 7. The bug appeared in VMs, 32-bit Netbooks and 64-bit laptops. The bug also appears in Windows Explorer when you run the integrated disk check utility.
In each case, the utility executed the first three stages of the test correctly using modest amounts of memory (several hundred megabytes). Then, when it entered the fourth stage (a read test), the chkdsk.exe utility’s memory consumption started to climb rapidly until several gigabytes had been allocated to its process and the test systems in question began to run out of memory.
Kennedy goes on to say that Microsoft is blaming chip components and recommending that users buy new machines. However, the appearance of the bug in VMWare refutes that hardware is the issue. VMWare virtualizes the chip components.
The bottom line: A file system-level bug, at this late stage in the development cycle, should be considered a showstopper by most IT organizations. Worse still, user comments suggest that Windows Server 2008 R2 suffers from the same flaw. So while the act of running chkdsk.exe under Windows 7 might not be a common occurrence for most users, it is in fact something that server administrators do quite regularly to ensure volume integrity….
What this latest episode has taught me is that no major release of Windows –- not even one that is more or less a supersized patch of the previous version –- deserves a pass, and that the old wisdom of “wait for the first service pack” still applies with Windows 7.
This is, after all, a Microsoft product.
Windows 7 is currently scheduled to be formally released in October, a month after Apple’s latest generation Snow Leopard OS is slated to hit the market.
Tags: Apple, Build, ISO, Leopard, Mac, Microsoft, Snow Leopard, wind, XP
WhatsOpen tells you why volumes won’t eject from your Mac
My Clippings July 23rd, 2009 by System
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Filed under: Utilities, Macintosh, Apple, Freeware
Anyone who regularly plugs and unplugs external drives from their computer has at some point been frustrated by the operating system’s refusal to eject a volume. Lately I’ve begun using more external drives, and this phenomenon is occurring more and more frequently. Apple has acknowledged this issue, and will be addressing it in the forthcoming Snow Leopard release of OS X, but that doesn’t help us right now.
Fortunately, WhatsOpen does help us right now. The next time you run into the “disk is in use and could not be ejected” error message, fire up WhatsOpen to see what file is open from the volume you are trying to eject. It should be immediately obvious in most cases.
If you’re not interested in hunting down the offending application, and you’re not worried about potentially losing data if you haven’t saved your work, there’s a Force Eject button that will simply stop any process that has a file open on the drive, and eject the drive.
Hopefully in future all operating systems will build in a graceful way to handle ejecting external drives, but until then utilities like WhatsOpen are necessary in your tool belt.
[via Macworld]
WhatsOpen tells you why volumes won’t eject from your Mac originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 23 Jul 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Tags: Apple, Build, email, Leopard, Mac, MSI, Snow Leopard, XP
Simplify Your Workflow With Dropzone
My Clippings July 17th, 2009 by System
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The real power of OS X lies in all of the hidden gems beneath what you see at first glance. Technologies like Expose, Spaces, Stacks, Spotlight and others help users tap the power of their Mac, while keeping the experience sleek and elegant. Aptonic’s Dropzone, a third-party application designed to further simplify your Mac experience, fits into this group perfectly and naturally.
It’s Like an Intern for Your Dock
Dropzone is an application that resides in your Dock like any other app. The power of Dropzone comes into play when you begin dragging files onto its icon. Similar to the appearance of a Stack, Dropzone will expand giving you options of what to do with the file or files you’ve selected. Think of it like Automator for your Dock.
For example, if I have a handful of files selected, and drag them onto my Dropzone icon, I am presented with a series of choices, one of which is “Zip files and email.” As simple as it sounds, dragging the files onto this icon zips the files automatically and attaches them to a new email message inside of Mail. Gone are the days of right-clicking to compress the files, attaching that to an email and then deleting the zip file when I’m done.
Another “destination” included is the ability to install applications quickly by dragging a DMG onto the “Install Application” destination. Behind the scenes, your Mac will mount the DMG file, locate the application inside, copy it to your Applications folder and launch it, unmount the DMG and move the DMG file to the trash.
Other destinations include quick access to uploading images to Flickr (including copying the image URL to your clipboard when its done) or upload files to your FTP server. Want those files zipped before upload? No problem. Just hold down the option key as you drag the files onto the icon. It’s quick and simple and really does save time.
I’m the type of Mac user who likes to keep my Dock as simplified as possible, but I do enjoy the ability to be able to drag files onto an application icon and force the file to open in that application. Dropzone allows me to throw applications I use frequently inside of it and then I have the ability to do just that. Compared to attempting the same thing with a stack in Leopard, I only spawn Finder windows.
Tags: Apple, email, Leopard, Mac, Photo, Snow Leopard, Trash, wind, XP
3D CSS Effects in Snow Leopard Safari, And More on Future of Video and Flash?
My Clippings July 13th, 2009 by System
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In the past, we’ve speculated that Apple’s resistance to supporting Adobe’s Flash on the iPhone and their efforts to add new features to HTML/CSS is, in part, to reduce their long term dependence on Flash.
Ajaxian points to an impres…
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OS X Snow Leopard 10A402 Brings Visual Tweaks and Other Enhancements
My Clippings July 10th, 2009 by System
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With the release of the OS X Snow Leopard 10A402 beta yesterday, users have been poring over the new version looking for changes. Among the most obvious changes have been a few visual tweaks, although several other enhancements have also been discov…
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Tags: 10a402, Leopard, Snow Leopard
Tweak Your Way to a Better Finder [Mac OS X]
My Clippings June 24th, 2009 by System
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It’s disappointing that Snow Leopard doesn’t promise many major new Finder features, but with the right tweaks and plug-ins, you can make browsing files on your Mac significantly better.
Image by nono34.
Short of purchasing a license for the excellent Path Finder, you can customize Leopard’s built-in file manager with just a little effort. Here are a few of my favorite Finder tweaks. (Note: All of these apply to 10.5 Leopard for sure; I did not test them on Tiger or Panther.)
Reveal and Navigate File Paths
The main thing Finder doesn’t do well out of the box is show you where the folder you’re browsing is located in your file system, and give you easy access to its parent and grandparent folders. Some usability experts might argue that the common user doesn’t need or want to know what the full file path is; but most power users do. Here are a few ways to see where you are and navigate easily.
Show the path bar. From Finder’s View menu, check off “Show Path Bar” to turn on a clickable “breadcrumb” file path bar at the bottom of your Finder window, as shown. There you can click on any of the parent folders up the path of your current folder to navigate to it.
Add the path button to Finder’s toolbar. Similarly, the Path button isn’t on Finder’s toolbar by default, but you can add it. To do so, Cmd+click Finder’s toolbar (or chrome, the silver top to each window, and choose “Customize Toolbar.” From there, drag the button named Path onto Finder (and make any other customizations you like; there are quite a few of them). Then, you can click on the Path button to get a drop-down “steps” view of the current folder’s full path, as shown.
These two methods give you interactive buttons for navigating paths, but if you just want to see where you are in the filesystem, you can also show a folder’s full path in Finder’s title bar by running this Terminal command:
defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool YES
killall Finder
Enhance Quick Look
You already know and love Quick Look, the spacebar-tapping way to instantly preview a file’s contents. Two plug-ins make Quick Look even better.
