AllThingsD » OS X http://allthingsd.com Sat, 26 May 2012 14:31:31 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 http://allthingsd.com/theme/images/logo-rss.jpg All Things Digital http://allthingsd.com/ 144 22 Psyonara Psystar http://allthingsd.com/20120515/psyonara-psystar/ http://allthingsd.com/20120515/psyonara-psystar/#comments Tue, 15 May 2012 17:05:03 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=208361 Psystar’s ill-advised campaign against Apple has ended in an utter rout.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to review the Ninth Circuit’s rejection of the Mac clone maker’s claims that Apple violated antitrust law by refusing to license Mac OS X to third-party hardware manufacturers. In doing so, the court let stand an earlier ruling barring Psystar from peddling PCs with the Mac OS X operating system preinstalled, circumventing the technological measures Apple uses to prevent unauthorized copying of Mac OS X and assisting others in doing so.

Which means this is likely the last we’ll be hearing from Psystar, which was already bankrupt when it embarked on this little adventure, though the company’s legal counsel continues to put on a brave face.

“I’m sure that the Supreme Court will take a case on this important issue eventually,” K.A.D. Camara of Houston law firm Camara & Sibley, told CNET.

Somehow, I doubt that. Recall that Psystar was found to have violated Apple’s exclusive reproduction right, distribution right, and right to create derivative works by installing Mac OS X on its hackintoshes in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120515/psyonara-psystar/feed/ 0 Apple Fights Back Against Malware Attack http://allthingsd.com/20120410/apple-fights-back-against-malware-attack/ http://allthingsd.com/20120410/apple-fights-back-against-malware-attack/#comments Wed, 11 Apr 2012 01:02:51 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://allthingsd.com/?p=195097 Apple just posted a Knowledge Base article on the the Flashback malware incident that has been the subject of so much discussion since it was revealed to have created a a 600,000-Mac-strong botnet last week.

By my scorecard, the article amounts to the first public comment Apple has made on the subject, period. And it’s very interesting indeed, especially in light of all the flak the company had been taking over what appeared, to some eyes, to have been an inadequate response.

First and foremost, Apple says, it is working on software to detect and remove the malware from an infected machine. Secondly, the company says it is working with Internet service providers around the world to disable the servers that are being used as the “command and control” network that’s basically telling compromised machines what to do.

Apparently it’s this effort that has caused trouble for the security outfit Dr. Web, which originally discovered the vulnerability in the first place: In working on shutting down the C&C servers, Apple apparently got servers that Dr. Web had used to track the spread of the outbreak shut down as well, according to this report on Forbes.com.

The vulnerability that allowed the malware to get through in the first place wasn’t in Apple’s Mac OS X itself, but in Oracle’s Java. Apple agrees with me at least with regard to machines running older versions of Mac OS: Disable it.

Anyway, here’s Apple’s article, in its entirety:

About Flashback malware
Summary

A recent version of malicious software called Flashback exploits a security flaw in Java in order to install itself on Macs.

Products Affected

Java, Mac OS X 10.6, OS X Lion

A recent version of malicious software called Flashback exploits a security flaw in Java in order to install itself on Macs.

Apple released a Java update on April 3, 2012 that fixes the Java security flaw for systems running OS X v10.7 and Mac OS X v10.6. By default, your Mac automatically checks for software updates every week, but you can change that setting in Software Update preferences. You can also run Software Update at any time to manually check for the latest updates.

Apple is developing software that will detect and remove the Flashback malware.

In addition to the Java vulnerability, the Flashback malware relies on computer servers hosted by the malware authors to perform many of its critical functions. Apple is working with ISPs worldwide to disable this command and control network.

Additional Information

For Macs running Mac OS X v10.5 or earlier, you can better protect yourself from this malware by disabling Java in your web browser(s) preferences.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120410/apple-fights-back-against-malware-attack/feed/ 0 How to Find Out if Your Mac Is in the Infected 1 Percent http://allthingsd.com/20120410/how-to-find-out-if-your-mac-is-in-the-infected-1-percent/ http://allthingsd.com/20120410/how-to-find-out-if-your-mac-is-in-the-infected-1-percent/#comments Tue, 10 Apr 2012 19:59:09 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://allthingsd.com/?p=194947 The chatter in computer security circles last week and over the weekend was about the Mac. A weakness in Oracle’s Java has led to the infection of some 600,000 Macs with malware, creating the first known Botnet comprised of machines on that platform.

Naturally, Windows apologists, sick of being the target of a decade of malware-based ridicule, were quick to jump up and down and scream that the Mac’s newfound market success has made it the next natural target for malware creators.

One thing that has been lacking of yet is a course of action for the 1 percent of Macs in use that have been hit with the malware. Kaspersky Labs, which did a thorough analysis of the malware today launched a Web-based tool to determine if your Mac is among those known to have contracted it.

The tool checks the Mac’s UUID number against a database of machines known to be affected and tells you if you have it, and if you don’t know what a UUID number is, it shows you how to find it.

If your machine turns out to be among the anointed 1 percent who some say are the harbingers of a new apocalyptic phase for Mac security, there is a removal tool.

So now that we’re nearing the end of this kerfuffle, what can we glean from this incident on the state of Mac security? First off, it’s necessary, as always, to include a hedging statement. In the investing world we often hear the phrase “Past performance is not an indication of future results.” It means that unknown, unforseen circumstances can always bring about a substantial variation in a known and established pattern.

On the subject of security the pattern has been this: Occasionally, a vulnerability, sometimes nothing more than a proof of concept, sometimes something a little more threatening, such as this Flashback malware or the MacDefender one that occurred last year, appears and re-opens the discussion. After years of marginal market share, the Mac now represents a juicy new target for malware creators, and Mac users are in for a rude awakening.

Indeed, various pundits have been saying that some onset of significant serious trouble for Mac owners is just over the horizon. This indeed could happen. A new supervirus could emerge tomorrow that causes all kinds of unforseen troubles. But it hasn’t yet.

Windows still remains a target. As recently as 11 months ago, Microsoft’s own data showed that of the 420,000 Windows users who downloaded a then-new malware removal tool, those who had infections averaged 3.5 threats per machine. And of the top 10 threats seen at that time, seven were the result of vulnerabilities in Java, something you should probably consider turning off, whether your computer runs Windows or Mac OS.

As of today, for those 600,000 people whose Macs are infected, they’re averaging only one threat per machine.

One is still too many, especially if it’s a bad one. And clearly Apple can’t act like it’s impervious to security concerns, yet there’s no evidence that it is. Just slow. Some critics have said Apple didn’t respond quickly enough to this latest outbreak, especially in light of the fact that Flashback/Flashfake took advantage of a Java vulnerability that has been known for about a month. Apple clearly could have and should have responded faster.

Apple last year hired David Rice, a former U.S. Navy Information warrior, so it has at the top of its security team a well-respected executive with a history of thought leadership on the subject.

The current state and future of Mac security will be a topic I hope AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg ask Apple CEO Tim Cook about on the stage at D:10 next month. One hopes he’ll give us some visibility into the urgency or lack thereof with which Apple views the evolving threat landscape.

But if this is the worst that the malware creators can dish out, I still like my chances on the Mac. The apocalypse isn’t here yet.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120410/how-to-find-out-if-your-mac-is-in-the-infected-1-percent/feed/ 0 Mountain Lion Safety Guide (Comic) http://allthingsd.com/20120221/mountain-lion-safety-guide-comic/ http://allthingsd.com/20120221/mountain-lion-safety-guide-comic/#comments Wed, 22 Feb 2012 00:01:02 +0000 Nitrozac and Snaggy http://allthingsd.com/?p=176612

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120221/mountain-lion-safety-guide-comic/feed/ 3 For iPad and Mobile Devices, a 'Port' out of the Norm http://allthingsd.com/20120208/for-ipad-and-mobile-devices-a-port-out-of-the-norm/ http://allthingsd.com/20120208/for-ipad-and-mobile-devices-a-port-out-of-the-norm/#comments Thu, 09 Feb 2012 02:04:27 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=172874 The pocket-size USB flash drive has become nearly ubiquitous in the PC world, for moving files among machines and for adding extra storage. But it can’t be used with most tablets because they lack standard USB ports.


[ See post to watch video ]

Now, there’s a special, modified, pocket flash drive that works as usual with PCs and Macs, but can transfer and stream files to popular mobile devices without standard USB ports, such as Apple’s iPad and iPhone, Amazon’s Kindle Fire and many other Android devices. Its secret: It has built-in Wi-Fi to beam the files to and from tablets and smartphones wirelessly. It can even stream files like videos to many devices simultaneously.

PTECH

The AirStash drive with removable SD memory card

It’s called the AirStash and is made by a tiny company called Wearable Inc., and distributed by Maxell Corp. It’s available at Amazon.com and a few other retailers for $150 for an 8 gigabyte model, which can increase the storage capacity of a base iPad by 50 percent. An AirStash model with 16 gigabytes is $180.

The AirStash is a clever device that solves a genuine problem, though not without some issues. In my tests, it worked as advertised, without crashing or exhibiting bugs. But it’s pricey and has one big drawback: When a device is connected to the AirStash via Wi-Fi, it can’t be connected to the Internet. The company plans a fix for that as early as next month.

The AirStash looks like other USB flash drives, except a bit wider. Its storage is provided by a removable SD memory card that pops into the bottom edge. You can substitute your own larger card. In fact, you can swap in the memory card from your camera and beam your photos.

This product is aimed at the iPad and iPhone, and the company has a free app for those products that makes it easy to manage and view the files on the drive. But its wireless file transfers also work, via the Web browser, on non-Apple devices, even computers. And the company plans an Android version of the app.

A typical way to use the AirStash would be to first plug it into your computer like any flash drive and copy onto it photos, documents, videos, podcasts or songs. Then remove it from the computer and press a small button on the front of the AirStash that turns on its Wi-Fi network. Next, you connect your iPad to this network, launch the AirStash app and all the files on the drive show up.

PTECH-JUMP

The AirStash app allows an iPad to wirelessly import photos from the drive.
PTECH-JUMP

The AirStash app allows an iPad to create a new directory on the drive, below.

From the app, you can view documents, play songs, watch videos, view photos or listen to podcasts. On a non-Apple device, there’s no special app, but you can still access the content on the drive. You just link up to the AirStash Wi-Fi network, launch your Web browser and go to airstash.net. A page appears with a list of the drive’s contents.

AirStash performed some feats I found impressive. In one test, I was able, from about 75 feet away, to flawlessly watch three movies stored on the AirStash at the same time on three devices. I had “Inception” playing on an iPad, “The King’s Speech” playing on a Kindle Fire and “Star Trek” playing on a Dell laptop. I stress, none of these movies was stored on the devices—all were stored on the AirStash.

In another test, I was able to watch a movie on an iPad, play a song on an Android-based Motorola Droid and read a PDF file on a Mac, simultaneously. Once again, all these files were stored on an AirStash drive 75 feet away.

The AirStash can beam material to as many as eight devices at once, except for video, where the limit is three devices. It can beam the same video to three devices at the same time. A parent could use one AirStash to provide different videos to each of three kids during a drive in the car.

Wearable, the maker of the AirStash, boasts it works in both directions: You can also write files to the AirStash from a device like an iPad. Technically, this is true. For instance, from the AirStash app, you can export photos stored on an iPad or iPhone to the drive.

But several iPad apps for viewing or editing documents, which the company says work with AirStash, require a geeky setup process, and I couldn’t get them to send edited documents back to the drive.

There are some other limitations. For instance, on non-Apple devices, the Web interface is rudimentary, and on the Kindle Fire, music can’t be streamed from the AirStash.

Finally, unlike most other flash drives, the AirStash has a battery to power its Wi-Fi. The company claims up to seven hours of continuous battery life between charges, and while I didn’t do a formal test, the battery life seemed good to me. You can recharge the device either through a standard USB wall charger, like those that come with cellphones, or by plugging it into the USB port of a computer. In the latter case, the Wi-Fi capability can’t be used while charging.

If you’re pining for easier file transfer or expanded storage on your iPad, iPhone or other mobile device without a standard USB port, the AirStash might be the ticket, albeit an expensive one.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120208/for-ipad-and-mobile-devices-a-port-out-of-the-norm/feed/ 0 Digital Music Meets Its Match in Apple iCloud http://allthingsd.com/20111130/apple-itunes-match-review/ http://allthingsd.com/20111130/apple-itunes-match-review/#comments Thu, 01 Dec 2011 02:03:21 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=148916 One of the more interesting ideas in the new wave of cloud-computing services is the music locker. This is a service that lets consumers store their music collections on a remote server and access them from any device, either by streaming the tunes or downloading them.


[ See post to watch video ]

Amazon and Google offer such locker services. But they have a big downside: You have to upload all your music to your locker first. If you have a collection of several thousand songs or more, that can take days as most home Internet connections have slow upload speeds, even if their download speeds are decent.

Now, Apple has introduced a locker service that mostly eliminates that problem by doing away with the need to upload the vast majority of your music, while still allowing you to populate your locker with your songs quickly and easily. It’s called iTunes Match, and it’s the last piece in the company’s rollout of its massive iCloud initiative, which includes things like wireless synchronization of contacts and calendars.

Here’s how it works. Instead of making you upload your song files to Apple’s servers, iTunes Match scans the iTunes library on your Macs or Windows PCs, then matches the titles you have with the 20 million songs Apple has the right to distribute via its iTunes store. If your songs are included in that 20 million, Apple simply places them in your online locker. In almost all cases, users will be left with only a small remnant of songs to upload—such as recordings by garage bands. (ITunes Match works only for digital music, not movies, TV shows or audiobooks, even if they’re available in iTunes.)

Once the songs are in the cloud, they also appear in your library in iTunes on computers, or in the Music apps on iPads, iPhones and iPod touch devices. You can stream the music, or press an icon with a downward arrow inside a cloud to download it. You can include up to 10 devices in iTunes Match. Plus, iTunes Match—which costs $25 a year for up to 25,000 songs—covers any song you own, regardless of how you obtained it. That includes songs purchased from non-Apple music services or imported from CDs, or even those that were downloaded illegally.

PTECHjp

Pressing the cloud icon beside a song downloads it to a device.

I’ve been testing iTunes Match on several Macs, a Windows PC, and on an iPad and an iPhone. In general, I found Match delivers on its promises, despite some limitations and glitches, several of which Apple told me it will remedy via software updates.

Because of Match, my music collection is now complete and essentially identical on all my computers and on my iPad and iPhone, allowing me to access any of my songs from any of these devices, without manual synchronization via a cable, or paying more than once for the same song. My Match locker is even accessible from my Apple TV device.

Match is an optional addition to an existing free service called iTunes in the Cloud, which covers only songs you bought from Apple’s iTunes store, or which you buy there in the future. Songs bought from the iTunes store don’t count against the 25,000-song limit in iTunes Match.

Google’s music locker is currently free, but limited to 20,000 songs. Amazon is now offering unlimited music storage for $20 a year as part of a broader plan that allows storing various types of files in the cloud.

One nice aspect of iTunes Match is that even if your songs are in a lower-quality format before they go into your iTunes Match locker, Apple streams or downloads them in a relatively high-quality format.

In my tests, I scanned and matched the iTunes libraries on several computers containing all my music—about 5,500 songs, a number Apple says is fairly typical for iTunes users. The process took under an hour, including the time needed to upload the minority of songs Apple couldn’t match. However, I have a mostly commercial collection and a fast Internet upload link in my home. I have heard from at least one colleague with a larger library and a slower Internet broadband link, who says it is taking forever to upload his nonmatched songs to Apple.

In my case, some of my songs weren’t accepted by iTunes Match, and were marked with cryptic icons that Apple doesn’t adequately explain. A handful were declined because of an unspecified “error.” Apple later told me these files were corrupted, sometimes so subtly that it didn’t affect playback. Others were declared “ineligible.” Mostly, these songs had been imported from CD years ago at a quality rate of lower than 128 kilobits per second. Also ineligible are things like audiobooks or PDF booklets Apple sells with some albums.

In my case, these exceptions were reasonable and few, but Apple needs to explain them better. The company says it is working on doing just that. In the case of the subtly corrupt files, Apple says a new version of iTunes coming soon will be more liberal about disqualifying a song.

I also ran into two Match problems on my iPhone and iPad that Apple says are bugs that will be fixed in an upcoming release of the operating system for those devices. One bug scrambles the alphabetical order of songs, albums and artists. Another causes album art to either never appear, or to show up only when a song is almost done playing. Apple won’t say when the bug fixes will be ready.

There are a couple of issues that Apple has no intention of changing. One: If a person has more than 25,000 songs, Match won’t allow the user to designate a subsection for storage in the cloud.

The other: On iPhones and iPads, Apple downloads the whole of any cloud-based song you’re streaming, even if you don’t want it on your device. Apple says it does this for smooth playback, and for playback when you’re offline. It adds that all songs stored on your hand-held devices are now placed in a special cache from which old or rarely played songs are automatically removed periodically to make room for new ones.

In all, I like iTunes Match, and can recommend it to digital music lovers who want all their tunes on all their devices. It’s another nice feature of iCloud, priced reasonably.

Write to Walt at walt.mossberg@wsj.com

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111130/apple-itunes-match-review/feed/ 0 Delete a Facebook Account http://allthingsd.com/20111005/delete-a-facebook-account/ http://allthingsd.com/20111005/delete-a-facebook-account/#comments Thu, 06 Oct 2011 01:00:31 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=129305 Q:

How do I permanently delete a Facebook account?

A:

Facebook doesn’t make it quick or easy. The default choice is to “deactivate” your account, which allows you to change your mind and reactivate, and thus spare the company the loss of a member. Deactivated accounts can’t be seen by others, but all their data remain on Facebook’s servers. You can totally and permanently delete an account, but this isn’t a simple process. You have to submit a request, at http://on.fb.me/n5OemK, or go to the Facebook help center and search for “delete account.” Then you have to wait awhile, while Facebook hopes you change your mind. More information on both options is at: http://on.fb.me/pxjtS2.

Q:

I am generally very pleased with the MacBook Air that I recently purchased. However, when I am on the road, I find that my Air loses connectivity to the wireless network that I am using. Any thoughts or suggestions? This is frustrating.

A:

I have noticed something similar lately, on my own MacBook Air that’s been upgraded to the new Lion operating system. It doesn’t randomly drop Wi-Fi connections, but it does take too long to reestablish them when waking from sleep. In my case, this is a new and recent behavior. I asked Apple about your question and my experience, and the company conceded that it has received reports of problems with Lion-equipped Macs “sporadically” dropping Wi-Fi connections and is developing what it hopes is a fix. That fix, it says, will be part of a software update to be made available soon.

MOSSMAIL

A fix is coming for MacBook Air machines with Wi-Fi problems.

Q:

I want a tablet for occasional road trips. If I get a Wi-Fi-only model do I need to worry about my passwords being stolen if I use an open network? Is it better, if cumbersome, to use my Droid X smartphone to set up a password-protected Wi-Fi hot spot and connect through it?

A:

I have long advised avoiding shared, open, public Wi-Fi networks when dealing with sensitive data. I am not a security expert, and I am sure there are ways for determined hackers to penetrate your Droid, or any smartphone. But I agree that your odds are much better with a password-protected network that you control, that only you use, and that relies on a cellular network proprietary to a wireless carrier. Just remember that your security is never guaranteed on the Internet, especially in public places.

Email Walt Mossberg at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111005/delete-a-facebook-account/feed/ 0 Commas, Zeros and the Number One: Apple's iPhone 4S Event by the Numbers http://allthingsd.com/20111004/commas-zeros-and-no-1-apples-iphone-4s-event-by-the-numbers/ http://allthingsd.com/20111004/commas-zeros-and-no-1-apples-iphone-4s-event-by-the-numbers/#comments Tue, 04 Oct 2011 23:30:49 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=128572 As Apple events go, today’s was as heavy on metrics as any in recent memory, with newly installed CEO Tim Cook kicking off his presentation with a victory lap full of commas and zeros. Below, a rundown of the numbers trotted out.

  • Apple currently has 357 retail stores in 11 countries.
  • More than six million copies of OS X Lion have been downloaded through the Mac App Store.
  • That’s 80 percent more than Snow Leopard.
  • It took Lion two weeks to reach 10 percent of its user base. It took Windows 7 20 weeks to do the same.
  • The Mac is the number one best-selling desktop and notebook in the United States; it’s approaching 60 million users around the world, and its growth has outpaced the PC market every single quarter for the past 5 years.
  • The iPod, which launched 10 years ago, is still the number one music player in the world.
  • Apple has sold more than 300 million iPods to date. It took Sony 30 years to sell 220,000 Walkman cassette players. (Note: it seems Apple is a bit off on the Sony portion of this metric)
  • The company sold 45 million iPods last year alone, and almost half of purchasers bought for the first time.
  • iTunes is the number one music store in the world.
  • There are now 20 million songs in iTunes; over 16 billion songs have been downloaded from it to date.
  • The iPhone is the number one smartphone in the world.
  • 93 percent of the Fortune 500 companies are deploying or testing the iPhone.
  • The iPhone is number one in customer satisfaction.
  • J.D. Power has ranked it as the number one smartphone six times in a row.
  • Almost 1,000 K-12 schools have a 1:1 iPad deployment program.
  • More than 80 percent of hospitals in the U.S. are testing iPads.
  • 92 percent of the Fortune 500 are testing or deploying the iPad.
  • The iPad is the number one tablet in the world.
  • Three out of four tablets sold in the U.S. are iPads.
  • There have been 250 million iOS devices sold so far.
  • There are more than 500,000 apps in the App Store. More than 140,000 are designed specifically for the iPad.
  • Customers have downloaded more than 18 billion apps to date.
  • There are about 1 billion apps downloaded per month.
  • Apple has paid out $3 billion dollars to developers so far.
  • The iPod touch is the number one portable game player.
  • By December, the iPhone will be in more than 70 countries on more than 100 carriers.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111004/commas-zeros-and-no-1-apples-iphone-4s-event-by-the-numbers/feed/ 0 A Tablet With a Keyboard http://allthingsd.com/20110921/a-tablet-with-a-keyboard/ http://allthingsd.com/20110921/a-tablet-with-a-keyboard/#comments Wed, 21 Sep 2011 22:52:13 +0000 Walt Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=123312 Q:

I am going to purchase a tablet computer. I was thinking of buying the Asus Transformer tablet, as it has a keyboard add-on. What are your thoughts on this tablet?

A:

I haven’t reviewed it, but the Transformer’s optional keyboard, which costs $150, is really a docking station that includes an extra battery and various ports.

If you just want a separate keyboard, you should know that other Android tablets, as well as Apple’s iPad, can connect easily to simple, less expensive wireless keyboards.

Q:

Is it true that Apple has stopped including iDVD, its longtime DVD-creation app, on new Macs? Has the program been killed?

A:

Yes and no. According to the company, new Macs with the Lion operating system no longer come with iDVD or another former standard program, iWeb. However, both programs are still included in the $49 iLife suite, which is sold separately. Apple defends the decision to drop iDVD on grounds that more people are sharing photos and videos online and not on disks. The company also has dropped DVD drives from some of its popular laptops.

Q:

You provided instructions on how to delete old email addresses on Gmail. I have the same problem with Apple Mail, only the old addresses aren’t in the address book but still appear when I type their names in the To field. How do I delete these?

A:

Apple Mail suggests previously used email addresses even if they aren’t in your address book. To get rid of one, accept it, so it appears in the To field. Then select it and click on the downward-pointing triangle at the right. A menu will appear. From that menu, choose “Remove from Previous Recipients List.”

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox and my other columnsat the new All Things Digital website, http://walt.allthingsd.com. Email mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110921/a-tablet-with-a-keyboard/feed/ 0 A Mac on Windows? http://allthingsd.com/20110907/a-mac-on-windows/ http://allthingsd.com/20110907/a-mac-on-windows/#comments Thu, 08 Sep 2011 01:02:29 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=118270 Q:

My goal is to watch video from Netflix and Amazon on my TV. Which of the set-top boxes you recently reviewed will allow me to do that?

A:

Of the three I tested, only the Roku 2 player will deliver both of these particular services, plus others, to your TV. It starts at $60, plus the cost of a subscription to Netflix or downloads from Amazon. The other two—Apple TV and Boxee Box—do provide Netflix, plus some services the Roku lacks, such as iTunes for Apple TV and Vudu for Boxee.

Q:

In your column last week, you noted that the latest version of Parallels Desktop for Mac can run a second copy of the Mac operating system inside a virtual computer on a Mac. Will it also allow people to run the Mac OS on a Windows PC?

A:

No, according to both Apple and Parallels. First of all, the new Parallels product, which is mainly meant to run a virtual or faux Windows computer on a Mac, can run only on Mac hardware.

The company does make a similar product that runs on PC hardware, but Apple says its Mac operating system is designed to only boot up on Mac hardware, even if it is installed in a virtual computer.

I know that some techies and engineers have been able to get around this and run the Mac OS on PC hardware, but it often doesn’t run perfectly normally, and I don’t believe average users can pull this off in any case.

Q:

I am interested in a tablet for reading books, newspapers and magazines, email and light Web surfing. Which tablet do you recommend?

A:

Assuming that, by “tablet,” you are excluding simple monochrome e-readers like the current Amazon Kindle, I’d recommend the iPad. It’s the best overall tablet I’ve tested, with the best battery life and the greatest variety of apps. All of the tablet contenders can do email and Web surfing adequately, but the iPad has a greater selection of newspaper and magazine apps.

However, there are two caveats. One is that the iPad cannot display Flash video, so if that is of prime importance, look elsewhere. The other is that Amazon is widely expected to soon offer a more limited, but less expensive, color tablet that—given Amazon’s business—might well be very good for books, newspapers and magazines. So you might want to wait to evaluate that product.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110907/a-mac-on-windows/feed/ 0 A Parallels World Where Windows Zips on Macs http://allthingsd.com/20110831/parallels-desktop-for-mac-review/ http://allthingsd.com/20110831/parallels-desktop-for-mac-review/#comments Thu, 01 Sep 2011 01:03:09 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=115987 Apple’s Macintosh computers have long been able to run Windows, in addition to their native operating system, Mac OS X. But the process has sometimes been clumsy, slow or taxing to the machine and it hasn’t been tailored to the new Lion version of Apple’s OS.

Now, the most popular utility for running Windows programs simultaneously with Mac programs has been updated in a speedier version that takes advantage of some Lion features. It’s called Parallels Desktop 7 for Mac, and it goes on sale Sept. 1, as a $50 upgrade for current Parallels users and on Sept. 6 for new users at $80. The product comes from a Seattle company of the same name.


[ See post to watch video ]

I’ve been testing the new Parallels 7 on last year’s version of the MacBook Air laptop, running Lion with 4 gigabytes of memory. That’s the recommended amount of memory for running Windows 7, the version of Windows I tested.

In my tests, this latest Parallels edition ran Windows quickly and smoothly, and integrated well with some of Lion’s new features, even though my test Mac isn’t the fastest Apple laptop available today.

For instance, while I’m writing this in a Mac program on the Air, I’m simultaneously running the Windows-only Internet Explorer Web browser, and a couple of other Windows programs, with no discernible slowdown in any of them. I can easily recommend Parallels 7 to Mac users who need to use Windows programs some of the time.

PTECHjp

Parallels Desktop 7 lets Windows programs, like Excel on the left, appear on the Mac as if they were Mac programs, without the Windows desktop.

I also tested a new companion Parallels Mobile iPad and iPhone app, which allows you to remotely control both your Mac and Windows running on your Mac. I am less sanguine about this product, which also goes on sale Thursday, for an introductory price of $5 (the regular price is $20). It did work, but like similar mobile programs for controlling PCs, I found it a bit awkward to use.

Parallels works by creating a so-called virtual machine inside your Mac. Within this virtual machine, you can install a copy of Windows you’ve purchased and it will behave like a faux Windows computer, compatible with the same programs as a physical Windows PC.

You can run Windows programs on your Mac either in one large window that displays the Windows desktop and taskbar, or in a mode that allows the Windows programs you run to simply appear on the Mac as if they were Mac programs, without the Windows desktop.

Going Back and Forth

Either way, you can switch back and forth between this virtual Windows computer and your regular Mac environment. You can copy and paste material between Mac programs and Windows programs, and drag files between the two operating systems. You can even open files from the Mac side of the machine in Windows programs, provided they are compatible.

This isn’t the same as another method for running Windows on a Mac, called Boot Camp—a built-in feature of the Mac designed by Apple. Boot Camp, which also requires you to purchase and install Windows, has two big advantages over Parallels: It’s free, and it dedicates the Mac’s hardware solely to Windows, so it runs Windows programs even faster.

But it has a big disadvantage. It doesn’t allow you to run both operating systems simultaneously, or copy and paste material between them. With Boot Camp, if you want to switch between the Mac OS and Windows, you have to reboot the Mac.

I found that the new Parallels started and resumed Windows much faster than its predecessor. When launching Windows, the Mac no longer slowed to a crawl, as it had in past versions.

All Windows 7 programs I tested launched and ran quickly and smoothly, and the fancy visual effects in Windows 7, such as mini-previews for icons in the taskbar, worked great.

Playing Solitaire

I was able to run the Windows versions of Microsoft Office (including Outlook), Quicken, and many other programs. I also easily ran such Windows-only programs as IE, Windows Media Player and even the venerable Windows Solitaire.

In addition, the new Parallels for the first time can take advantage of the Mac’s built-in webcam.

It has a new wizard for creating a virtual machine. And now, it will even allow you to buy, download and install Windows right from within Parallels. Previously, you had to obtain Windows separately. This is a big improvement, in my view.

Windows in Launchpad

Windows, and Windows programs, can be displayed in Lion’s new Launchpad feature, which mimics the main screen of an iPad. They also show up and behave like Mac programs in Lion’s new Mission Control feature, which shows all the programs running on the Mac in miniature. Windows programs can also run in Lion’s new full-screen mode.

The companion iPad app has been enhanced so it not only remotely controls the virtual machine, but the entire Mac. This has some advantages, such as allowing you to view Flash videos that the iPad normally can’t play, by playing them remotely on the computer.

But I found that, as on other iPad apps for remotely controlling computers, controlling PC and Mac screens is difficult using iPad gestures.

Many Virtual Machines

Parallels 7 can create and run multiple virtual machines, and also handle operating systems other than Windows. For instance, I was able to run Linux and an open-source version of Google’s Chrome OS on my Mac using Parallels. At one point in my tests, I had four operating systems running at once, and could control all four from an iPad.

Oddly, the new Parallels can even run a second, virtual copy of Lion, on a Lion-equipped Mac, though this would mainly be of interest to developers testing products.

(Apple says Lion won’t work in a virtual machine running on a PC.)

There are a couple of drawbacks to Parallels 7. As in prior versions, it can’t run the most graphics-intensive Windows games and other programs, so heavy-duty gamers will do better with Boot Camp or a physical Windows PC. And I found it wouldn’t share my Verizon 4G data modem with the Mac OS.

If you’re likely to be using Windows most of the time, it’s best to just use a regular Windows PC. But for Mac users who need to run a few Windows programs some of the time, Parallels 7 is a fine product.

Write to Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110831/parallels-desktop-for-mac-review/feed/ 0 Essay: Jobs's Departure as CEO of Apple Is the End of an Extraordinary Era http://allthingsd.com/20110824/jobs-leave-a-legacy-of-changed-industries/ http://allthingsd.com/20110824/jobs-leave-a-legacy-of-changed-industries/#comments Thu, 25 Aug 2011 01:18:37 +0000 Walt Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=113653

Steve Jobs’s resignation as chief executive officer of Apple is the end of an extraordinary era, not just for Apple, but for the global technology industry in general. Jobs is a historic business figure whose impact was deeply felt far beyond the company’s Cupertino, Calif., headquarters, and who was widely emulated at other companies.

And now, for the first time since 1997, he won’t be the company’s chief executive.

Steve Jobs and Apple Products over the years

To be very clear, Jobs, while seriously ill, is very much alive. Extremely well-informed sources at Apple say he intends to remain involved in developing major future products and strategy and intends to be an active chairman of the board, even while new CEO Tim Cook runs the company day to day.

So, this is not an obituary. But his health is reported to be up and down, and even an active chairman isn’t the same as a CEO.

CEOs resign every day, so why is this departure so meaningful?

Most people are lucky if they can change the world in one important way, but Jobs, in multiple stages of his business career, changed global technology, media and lifestyles in multiple ways on multiple occasions.

He did it because he was willing to take big risks on new ideas, and not be satisfied with small innovations fed by market research. He also insisted on high quality and had the guts to leave out features others found essential and to kill technologies, like the floppy drive and the removable battery, he decided were no longer needed. And he has been a brilliant marketer, personally passionate about his products.

In his first act at Apple, the company he co-founded in 1976, he helped envision and catalyze the personal computer revolution. The Apple II computer he developed with Steve Wozniak wasn’t the only mass-market PC released in 1977, but it was the one that had the most enduring impact.

In 1984, he again upended computing by leading the development of the Macintosh, the first commercially successful computer to use a mouse and graphical user interface. It cemented the template for how every computer works today, even though Apple was handily bested in the PC sales wars by archrival Microsoft.

After being forced out of Apple in 1985, it’s well known that Jobs ran an unsuccessful computer firm called NeXT. But he also did a couple of game-changing things during that exile. First, NeXT developed an operating system that later morphed into the excellent Macintosh operating system, called OS X, and also the operating system that drives Apple’s mobile devices, called iOS.

In addition, he purchased Pixar, a small computer animation firm which he was able, over years, to turn into one of the world’s most successful movie studios and later sell to Disney for billions. It changed animation forever.

In his most recent act, he returned in 1997 to take over as CEO of Apple as part of that company’s purchase of NeXT. What he found was a diminished company which was reputedly only months from bankruptcy and saddled with mediocre products.

Fourteen years later, the company is a highly profitable behemoth, the most financially valuable and influential technology company in the world, whose every product is eagerly anticipated, snapped up quickly by consumers, and aped by competitors, even though they are often priced higher than rival devices.

While CEO of the revived Apple, he introduced the dominant digital music player, the iPod, and created the most successful digital media service, iTunes. He introduced the first super-smartphone, the iPhone, and the only truly successful tablet computer, the iPad, which is in the process of replacing the laptop, at least in part. And he built the world’s largest app store.

One almost forgets that he built a phenomenally successful chain of retail stores, too.

Apple’s devices and software services have dramatically changed the mobile phone industry, the music industry, the film and TV industries, the publishing industry and others.

Meanwhile, even while declaring that we are in the “post-PC era,” Jobs resuscitated his early baby, the Mac. While it may never become the world’s biggest selling computer, it is lusted after worldwide, and its sales have outgrown those of the overall PC industry for five years running. Plus, with models like the sleek, solid-state MacBook Air, he’s actually merging the tablet and the PC.

Now, rumors are rife that Apple is working on re-inventing another common device: the TV. The secretive company won’t say a word about that, but nobody should be surprised if it happens, just based on Jobs’s track record.

And that’s why the day Steve Jobs resigns as CEO of Apple isn’t like the day a typical CEO resigns.

Here is a video of me taken recently, talking about Jobs’s career:


[ See post to watch video ]

Related posts

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110824/jobs-leave-a-legacy-of-changed-industries/feed/ 0 New MacBook Airs, Lion Spike Summer Mac Sales http://allthingsd.com/20110823/new-macbook-airs-lion-spike-summer-mac-sales/ http://allthingsd.com/20110823/new-macbook-airs-lion-spike-summer-mac-sales/#comments Tue, 23 Aug 2011 10:30:50 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=112832 The debut of Apple’s new MacBook Airs and Lion OS has done what many predicted: It has sent Mac sales into the stratosphere.

According to the latest metrics from NPD, domestic Mac sales for the first month of the September quarter were up 26 percent year over year, buoyed by new hardware and an eagerly anticipated update to Apple’s OS X. That’s more than six times the growth of the broader PC market.

And if it continues, Apple will likely meet consensus estimates of 4.5 million total Mac sales for the current quarter, said Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster. “We believe Mac sales benefited from the 7/20 launch of OS X Lion along with refreshed MacBook Airs and Mac minis,” Munster explained in a note to clients. “But these tailwinds will fade throughout the September quarter and year-over-year compares get slightly tougher in the last two months of the quarter.”

The softening PC market seems to have had little to no effect on Mac sales. Nor is it likely to in the future, given current growth trends. As I’ve noted here before, Mac sales have outpaced the broader PC market for 21 consecutive quarters now. And there’s little to suggest that streak is coming to an end any time soon.

Said Barclays analyst Ben Reitzes, “We believe Apple will continue to gain share in Macs over the long term even as the iPad grows. Given the data and our checks, our estimate for Mac growth of 18 percent year-over-year for Apple’s C3Q, may turn out to be conservative even though the global economy appears to be slowing quite a bit.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110823/new-macbook-airs-lion-spike-summer-mac-sales/feed/ 0 Apple Updates Lion http://allthingsd.com/20110816/apple-updates-lion/ http://allthingsd.com/20110816/apple-updates-lion/#comments Tue, 16 Aug 2011 20:49:06 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=110785 Apple on Tuesday released the first maintenance update for its newly released Lion operating system. Mac OS X 10.7.1 improves the reliability of Wi-Fi connections and resolves some audio and video playback issues, among other things. A separate update is available for MacBook Air and Mac mini owners.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110816/apple-updates-lion/feed/ 0 Apple Tied Up in Booting Suit http://allthingsd.com/20110808/apple-tied-up-in-booting-suit/ http://allthingsd.com/20110808/apple-tied-up-in-booting-suit/#comments Mon, 08 Aug 2011 18:50:35 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=107194 It’s going to be a busy fall for Apple legal. A multitude of iPhone-related patent suits are in litigation, and now there’s a new one concerning its Mac operating system.

PatentlyApple reports that Operating Systems Solutions LLC has filed suit against Apple, alleging OS X violates a patent it owns for quickly booting an operating system. The patent at issue here, RE840,092: “Method for Quickly Booting a Computer System,” describes what seems to be a pretty basic process:

“A method for fast booting a computer system, comprising the steps of: A. performing a power on self test (POST) of basic input output system (BIOS) when the system is powered on or reset is requested; B. checking whether a boot configuration information including a system booting state which was created while executing a previous normal booting process exists or not; C. storing the boot configuration information from execution of the POST operation before loading a graphic interface (GUI) program, based on the checking result; and D. loading the graphic user interface (GUI) program.”

Operating Systems Solutions cites Apple’s MacBook Pro as an example of infringing hardware, but argues that anything running Mac OS X is liable. It’s seeking injunctive relief as well as damages.

At first glance, this seems like just another case of a patent troll coming forward to try its hand at squeezing some cash out of Apple. But as Florian Mueller notes over at FOSSpatents, there may be something else going on here as well. Operating Systems Solutions LLC appears to have acquired the patent at issue in this case from LG Electronics. And while there’s no evidence of a working relationship between the two companies (LG is not included in the suit), it’s certainly possible that Operating Systems Solutions could be a proxy for LG, which sells a number of Android-based devices that might draw Apple’s ire.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110808/apple-tied-up-in-booting-suit/feed/ 0 Lion With Office http://allthingsd.com/20110727/lion-with-office/ http://allthingsd.com/20110727/lion-with-office/#comments Thu, 28 Jul 2011 01:02:29 +0000 Walt Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=103542 Q:

I have been warned on the Web that Microsoft Office won’t work on Apple’s new Mac operating system, Lion. Is this true?

A:

In my tests, and also according to Microsoft, Office for the Mac does work in Lion, though some relatively minor features won’t work right. Also, you must be using one of the two latest versions of Office.

In my tests, using the current version, Office 2011, all features I tested worked fine, though of course I wasn’t able to test every one of the thousands of features. I even wrote my entire Lion review in Word 2011 on a Lion-equipped Mac. According to Microsoft, the 2008 version also works, though the 2004 version doesn’t.

However, Microsoft hasn’t updated Office for Mac to take advantage of Lion’s new features. More information on Mac Office compatibility with Lion is here and here.

Q:

Can you point me in the right direction for a purchase of a tablet? I am a home inspector and presently use a Toshiba Satellite laptop with a special Windows software program for my job. I need a tablet with a screen size of 12 inches or more. USB ports would be essential.

I am willing to spend up to $3,000. I need it to be visible in daylight, because I must walk around the property.

A:

You may have trouble finding a tablet that meets all your criteria. If you need to run special Windows software on a tablet with a USB port, you might consider one of the Windows 7 models, aimed mainly at businesses. A good example is the $1200 Asus Eee Slate EP121. I haven’t tested it, but it has a 12″ screen, dual USB ports, and works with either finger or stylus input. The only problem is that it uses a backlit, laptop-type screen, and these aren’t typically great for viewing in direct sunlight.

Q:

An Apple store employee told us that each Apple mobile device battery should be depleted to 0% once per month to keep its battery healthy. Is this necessary?

A:

That’s correct. Here’s part of the company’s advice on iPhone batteries: “For proper maintenance of a lithium-based battery, it’s important to keep the electrons in it moving occasionally. Be sure to go through at least one charge cycle per month (charging the battery to 100% and then completely running it down).”

In its advice on laptop batteries, the company states, in part: “Apple does not recommend leaving your portable plugged in all the time.” It adds that, if you don’t drain and recharge your Mac laptop in the course of normal usage, “Apple recommends charging and discharging its battery at least once per month.”

Email mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110727/lion-with-office/feed/ 0 MacBook Air-Related Delayed Gratification Could Juice Apple Earnings http://allthingsd.com/20110727/macbook-air-related-delayed-gratification-could-juice-apple-earnings/ http://allthingsd.com/20110727/macbook-air-related-delayed-gratification-could-juice-apple-earnings/#comments Wed, 27 Jul 2011 11:10:02 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=102939 With refreshed hardware and a brand-new OS on the market, Apple’s September quarter is likely to be another triumph for Cupertino, despite the comically low guidance the company provided when reporting third-quarter earnings.

iPad sales are booming and the iPhone 4 continues to sell well despite its age. Now, with new MacBook Airs and Mac minis on the shelves and the Mac App Store serving up one million downloads of Lion in a single day, Apple is poised to reap the benefits of what up until last week was pent-up demand for those products, particularly the MacBook Air. According to Barclays analyst Ben Reitzes, Apple’s latest ultraslim laptops will give the company a nice little financial bump for the remainder of the year.

“We believe that the new MacBook Air products in particular could be a source of upside for Apple in the 2nd half of CY11,” Reitzes says. “For the September quarter, we estimate Mac unit sales to grow 18% y/y, which may be conservative given anticipation for the MacBook Air. Also, we believe that there was a modest pause of demand ahead of Lion, which consequently should release at least some incremental sales in the upcoming quarters in our opinion.”

Seems entirely reasonable. As Apple COO Tim Cook said during the company’s July 19 earnings call, “I think some customers have delayed [Mac purchases] until Lion becomes available.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110727/macbook-air-related-delayed-gratification-could-juice-apple-earnings/feed/ 0 Courage for Lion Users http://allthingsd.com/20110726/courage-for-lion-users/ http://allthingsd.com/20110726/courage-for-lion-users/#comments Tue, 26 Jul 2011 22:58:01 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://allthingsd.com/?p=102899 Apple’s Lion has roared onto Macs, with one million downloads of the new operating system in the first day it was available. IPhone or iPad users will be familiar with Lion’s nod toward navigating with gestures. But for others, Lion could be uncharted territory. I’ve compiled some helpful shortcuts and tips for using Lion and some of its less-obvious yet useful features.

For those people frustrated by Lion, I’ll also include instructions on how to revert some features to work the way they did in Apple’s previous operating system, Snow Leopard. If all else fails, I’ll tell you how to uninstall Lion altogether. But all new operating systems require an adjustment period, so give yourself some time with Lion before giving up.


[ See post to watch video ]

Heads or Tails of Scrolling

Probably the one feature that will take the most getting used to is Lion’s new way of scrolling. Rather than placing two fingers on the touch pad and moving them down together to navigate down in a Web page, list or document, Lion does the opposite. Think of reading a real piece of paper: As you read down, your eyes would move down and you’d push the paper up. So now, scrolling down happens by putting two fingers on the touch pad and moving up. Scrolling up works by moving two fingers down the touch pad. The scroll bar disappears when you aren’t scrolling.

If you’d rather switch back to the classic way of scrolling, go to System Preferences, Trackpad, Scroll & Zoom and uncheck “Scroll direction: natural.” Also go into System Preferences, Mouse, Point & Click and uncheck “Scroll direction: natural.” If you desperately miss seeing your scrollbar, go to System Preferences, General, Show scroll bars and choose “Always” in the top of the middle section.

Uncovering Exposé

If you’re like me, you loved using Snow Leopard’s Exposé, which took a four-finger downward swipe to expose all running apps. Lion has a more robust way of viewing all the things on a Mac, called Mission Control. A feature called App Exposé uses a three-finger downward swipe to expose all windows running in an app. This isn’t on by default, so go to System Preferences, Trackpad, select the More Gesture section (top right) and check the box for App Exposé.

To use a four-finger-swipe for this, I selected the tiny arrow in this command’s description and chose “Swipe Down with four fingers.”

Several new gestures are built into Lion for navigating to things like the Desktop, Launchpad and Mission Control. But if you don’t want to learn a bunch of new gestures, you can try Hot Corners. These let you navigate to these features by just moving the cursor to any corner of the computer screen.

Set up Hot Corners by going to System Preferences, Desktop & Screen Saver, select Screen Saver and then click on Hot Corners in the lower left. Here, you can use drop-down menus to designate how each corner will function.

You’ve Got New Mail

Apple Mail has been updated in Lion to look better and work better. Rather than displaying all messages in a top section with the body of one message shown in a window below, emails are displayed in a left-hand column with bodies of those emails displayed on the right.

If you’re yearning for the way things used to be, select Mail, Preferences, Viewing and check the box labeled “Use classic layout.” If you’d like to see icons representing folders and mailboxes on the left, like the old Mail, click “Show (or Hide to hide this)” in the Favorites Bar of Mail.

Another change in mail is conversation view, which is on by default. It numbers messages in an email back-and-forth so you know what order they go in, rather than wondering which message was most recently received. To turn off conversation view, click on the View menu in Mail and uncheck “Organize by Conversation.”

Full Screen—Finally

At last, getting a full-screen view of an opened window on a Mac doesn’t have to be done by dragging out corners of the window.

Clicking on a full-screen button (two outward-facing arrows) built into many programs in the top-right corner lets the window truly take over the entire screen, like it’s the only thing that works on the whole computer.

Several apps can run in full-screen mode at once, and swiping three fingers left or right on a laptop’s touch pad will switch between these running apps.

Clean Up Launchpad

A new gesture—pinching with your thumb and three fingers—pulls up Launchpad. This resembles the iPhone or iPad home screen, with everything on the Mac represented by small icons. Some icons are already grouped into folders, like Microsoft Office programs, if you have Office installed. Others can be grouped into folders just like on an iOS device: by dragging and dropping them onto one another to create a folder and then naming that folder.

To delete these icons, click on one and hold down until all icons start jiggling. Those icons for apps downloaded from the App Store can be deleted right here, just click on the small “x” that appears to the top left of each app icon. Other programs can be deleted only by opening the Applications folder in Finder and moving unwanted things to Trash.

Give Up?

If you absolutely give up on the Lion upgrade you downloaded and want to revert back to the Snow Leopard operating system, you’ll need to erase your drive and reinstall Snow Leopard from the original installation discs.

Before you do this, back up your data in Time Machine so it can later be moved back onto the machine.

Write to Katherine Boehret at katherine.boehret@wsj.com

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110726/courage-for-lion-users/feed/ 0 Lion Downloads Top One Million http://allthingsd.com/20110721/lion-downloads-top-1-million/ http://allthingsd.com/20110721/lion-downloads-top-1-million/#comments Thu, 21 Jul 2011 20:33:46 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=101424 Lion, the latest iteration of Apple’s OS X operating system, is off to a great start. On Thursday afternoon, the company announced that more than one million copies were purchased and downloaded during its first day of availability. “Users are buying Lion faster than any other OS release in Apple’s history,” the company said in a statement.

Impressive. Recall that Apple sold two million copies of OS X Leopard during its first weekend at market, and that OS was distributed on optical discs sold online and off, not exclusively through the still quite new Mac App store.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110721/lion-downloads-top-1-million/feed/ 0 Apple's Lion Brings PCs Into Tablet Era http://allthingsd.com/20110720/mossberg-lion-review/ http://allthingsd.com/20110720/mossberg-lion-review/#comments Wed, 20 Jul 2011 12:32:31 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=100410 With its iPhones and iPads, Apple has led people toward a new way of operating digital devices that relies on direct manipulation of items with finger gestures, not a mouse and scroll bars. App icons are arrayed front and center, not buried deep in a file system or limited to a strip at the bottom of the screen.


[ See post to watch video ]

Now, Apple is bringing those concepts and others to the personal computer via its most radical new Macintosh operating system version in years. It’s called Lion and it goes on sale Wednesday for $29.99—a price that allows installation on as many personal Macs as you own.

Lion is a giant step in the merger of the personal computer and post-PC devices like tablets and smartphones. It demotes the venerable scroll bar at the side of windows and documents, relying primarily on direct manipulation of documents and lists. It eliminates the need to save your work, automatically saving every version of every document. It resumes programs right where you left off. It can display programs, or an array of all your app icons, in multiple full screens you simply swipe through. And it elevates the role of multitouch gestures and adds new ones.

The new system doesn’t turn a Mac into a tablet. It retains traditional computer features not present on smaller devices—like the usual file system, multiple windows, the mouse and physical keyboard. It still runs traditional Mac programs, still can handle Adobe Flash, and doesn’t run iPhone or iPad apps. It doesn’t use a touch screen, instead continuing to rely on the touch pad to perform finger gestures.

But it’s a big change. Lion also is a harbinger of things to come. Apple’s historic rival, Microsoft, is working on its own radical overhaul of the dominant Windows PC operating system, due next year, which is also aimed at putting multitouch and other concepts borrowed from smartphones and tablets front and center.

I’ve been testing Lion on four Macs, and I like it. I believe its many new features—250 in all—make computing easier and more reliable. I found upgrading easy, and compatibility with existing apps to be very good. Only one app I use frequently proved incompatible, and its maker says a new revision solves that problem.

I only suffered one crash in Lion. It occurred on one of many occasions I used iTunes, but Apple says a forthcoming version of iTunes made for Lion should eliminate that.

macbook_launch

Pressing a special key on a new Mac, or an icon on an old one, brings up a full screen, iPad-like display of app icons.

To take full advantage of new features such as full-screen mode (which hides menus), auto-saving and auto-resuming, programs will have to be rewritten. But, in my tests, current versions ran fine. I am writing this column on a MacBook Air running Lion using an unrevised version of Microsoft Word for the Mac, with no problems.

An Adjustment Process

There are, however, downsides to anything this new and major. In my view, the biggest of these is that switching to Lion will require a major adjustment even for veteran Mac users, though it will be easier for those who use iPhones or iPads. Lion will significantly increase the learning curve for Windows users switching to the Mac.

One of the biggest changes is in scrolling. Instead of moving the top of a page upward by dragging the scroll bar down, or moving your fingers downward on the touch pad, you do the opposite—you just push the page up. A scroll bar appears only while scrolling. (Older programs may still have the traditional scroll bar.)

Standard programs and features like Apple Mail are significantly different, too, and there are smaller changes in almost every corner of the operating system, including some keyboard shortcuts. Just mastering all the new and altered touch-pad gestures—a couple of which are so unnatural I actually had to practice them—will take time. (Luckily, almost all of the actions performed by the gestures can also be done with a mouse, icons, menu commands, or keys.)

If you dislike some of these changes, Apple provides settings to return to traditional scrolling, the classic Mail layout, and to turn off gestures and other things.

Upgrading

Another big change is in the way Lion is being distributed. It won’t be sold on a disk, initially only via download from the Mac App Store. Since it’s a 4 gigabyte download, that could be a problem for people with slow Internet connections. Apple says its stores will help such users with the download, and that it will sell Lion on a USB thumb drive for $69 in August.

In my tests, the download alone took under half an hour on a very fast connection, and about an hour and a half on a more typical one. Once I downloaded the product, the rest of the installation took about an hour.

Also, you can only upgrade to Lion directly from the prior OS version, Snow Leopard. So, if you’re running an earlier version, you’ll first have to pay to upgrade to Snow Leopard.

macbook

Each auto-save creates a “version” of a document and all the versions can be viewed in a visual stack.

In addition, Macs with the older PowerPC processors can’t run Lion, and even some of the earliest Macs with Intel processors are shut out. These are mainly machines released in 2006. Older programs originally designed for PowerPC, which still ran on Snow Leopard, will no longer work in Lion. The best known of these is Intuit’s Quicken 2007.

Migrating

Even if you buy a new Mac with Lion pre-installed and your older Mac has Snow Leopard, you’ll have to download a new version of Apple’s migration program for Snow Leopard in order to move over all your programs, settings and files. The company made this new migration utility available on Tuesday. When I tried to migrate my stuff from a Snow Leopard machine to Lion using the current migration program—normally a strength for Apple—the process failed. Apple sent me the new version and it worked.

Lion also introduces a new migration feature that will move data and settings—but not programs—from a Windows PC to a Mac, though it requires a free Windows migration utility that Apple couldn’t provide in time for this review.

New Macs

Speaking of Macs with Lion pre-installed, Apple also is upgrading its thin and fast MacBook Air laptops so they use faster chips from Intel. It’s killing off the bottom model of its laptop line, the plain MacBook. But the new MacBook Airs, available Thursday, have the same design, prices and base storage capacity as their predecessors, so this review is focused on Lion.

Features

Here are some of the main new features in Lion:

• Auto-Save and Versions: Apps running in Lion automatically save your work when you pause or every five minutes. There is no interruption during this process and you can still save manually. This isn’t a new idea, but it’s implemented beautifully and can work on all programs whose authors issue new versions to take advantage of it. Right now, it works on some of Apple’s own programs.

The best part of this is that each auto-save creates a “version” of your document and you can view all these versions in a visual stack arranged by date, next to your current version. You can swap back to an older version, or even copy and paste text from one version to another. These versions are created by storing the changes behind the scenes, not by creating numerous files.

To prevent auto-saving, you can lock a document and, for privacy, when you share or transfer a document, only the latest version is copied or sent.

• Resume: If you relaunch a program, any document you were working on appears again with the cursor right where it was, and even any highlighting is preserved. If you restart the Mac, all your programs are resumed in this manner, unless you check a box to prevent this.

• Full-screen apps: You can launch some apps, or individual browser tabs, in a full screen, by just clicking on an icon at the top right. In full screen, the menu bar and other controls are hidden unless you move the cursor to the top of the screen.

• Launchpad: Pressing a special key on a new Mac, or an icon on an old one, brings up an iPad-like display of all your app icons in full screen. If they occupy more than one screen, you just swipe through them.

• Mission Control: One of the nicer features on the Mac was called Exposé, which, with one click, showed all your open windows in miniature. Now, it’s been subsumed into something called Mission Control, which does the same thing, but also displays any fullscreen apps or extra desktops. I found it cluttered and wished the simpler, prior feature had been retained.

• Gestures: The Mac already had a variety of iPhone-like gestures you could perform on the touch pad. But Lion has changed some of these and added more. One I liked: You can double-tap with two figures to resize a section of a Web page or PDF to zoom in to fill the screen, just like on the iPhone or iPad. Two I dislike: the gestures for calling up Launchpad and Mission Control require pinching or zooming with three fingers and a thumb—a clumsy method for such important features.

• Mail: Apple’s Mail app has been totally overhauled to look and work more like the Mail app on the iPad. One particularly nice feature is that it sports a beautiful optional conversation mode, which combines and numbers each message in a thread. It also hides duplicate emails. There are too many changes to detail here, but, after hating the new Mail at first, I have come to like it. And you can switch to Classic mode if you wish.

The Bottom Line

The past two major computer operating system releases, Windows 7 and Snow Leopard, were incremental. Lion is very different. It’s a big leap, and gives the Mac a much more modern look and feel for a world of tablets and smartphones. If you are willing to adjust, it’s the best computer operating system out there.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110720/mossberg-lion-review/feed/ 0 OS X Lion Roars Into Town http://allthingsd.com/20110720/os-x-lion-roars-into-town/ http://allthingsd.com/20110720/os-x-lion-roars-into-town/#comments Wed, 20 Jul 2011 12:30:37 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=100299

Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, the latest iteration of Apple’s operating system, debuted this morning, just as CFO Peter Oppenheimer said it would during the company’s third-quarter earnings call Tuesday.

Unlike previous OS upgrades, Lion is available exclusively as a $29.99 download from the Mac App Store. It brings some 250 new features to OS X, among them a number culled from iOS, and is intended to bring the best of Apple’s mobile OS to the desktop. Also included: A completely new version of Mail, AirDrop — a peer-to-peer Wi-Fi-based network for document sharing — and Resume, a feature which works systemwide to remember what app you were using and what you were doing with it. You’ll find more details and a thorough review from Walt here and the full press release below.

Mac OS X Lion Available Today From the Mac App Store

CUPERTINO, California—July 20, 2011—Apple® today announced that Mac OS® X Lion, the eighth major release of the world’s most advanced operating system with more than 250 new features, is available today as a download from the Mac® App Store™ for $29.99. Some of the amazing features in Lion include: new Multi-Touch® gestures; system-wide support for full screen apps; Mission Control, an innovative view of everything running on your Mac; the Mac App Store, the best place to find and explore great software, built right into the OS; Launchpad, a new home for all your apps; and a completely redesigned Mail app.

“Lion is the best version of OS X yet, and we’re thrilled that users around the world can download it starting today,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “Lion makes upgrading a Mac easier than ever before; just launch the Mac App Store, buy Lion with your iTunes account, and the download and install process will begin automatically.”

Additional new features in Lion include:

• Resume, which conveniently brings your apps back exactly how you left them when you restart your Mac or quit and relaunch an app;
• Auto Save, which automatically and continuously saves your documents as you work;
• Versions, which automatically records the history of your document as you create it, and gives you an easy way to browse, revert and even copy and paste from previous versions; and
• AirDrop, which finds nearby Macs and automatically sets up a peer-to-peer wireless connection to make transferring files quick and easy.

Pricing & Availability
Mac OS X Lion is available as an upgrade to Mac OS X version 10.6.6 Snow Leopard® from the Mac App Store for $29.99 (US). Lion is the easiest OS X upgrade and at around 4GB, it is about the size of an HD movie from the iTunes Store®. Users who do not have broadband access at home, work or school can download Lion at Apple retail stores and later this August, Lion will be made available on a USB thumb drive through the Apple Store® (www.apple.com) for $69 (US). Mac OS X Lion Server requires Lion and is available from the Mac App Store for $49.99 (US).

Lion requires an Intel-based Mac with a Core 2 Duo, i3, i5, i7 or Xeon processor and 2GB of RAM. Lion is an upgrade and can be installed on all your authorized personal Macs. Details regarding Business and Education licensing can be found at apple.com/macosx.

The OS X Lion Up-to-Date upgrade will be available through the Mac App Store at no additional charge to all customers who purchased a qualifying new Mac system from Apple or an Apple Authorized Reseller on or after June 6, 2011. Users must request their Up-to-Date upgrade within 30 days of purchase of their Mac computer. Customers who purchased a qualifying Mac between June 6, 2011 and July 20, 2011 will have until August 19, 2011 to make a request. Additional information can be found at apple.com/macosx/uptodate.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110720/os-x-lion-roars-into-town/feed/ 0 Lion, MacBook Air Refresh Will Spike Mac Sales http://allthingsd.com/20110614/the-mac-is-kicking-ass/ http://allthingsd.com/20110614/the-mac-is-kicking-ass/#comments Tue, 14 Jun 2011 11:32:47 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=86321 According to the latest sales data gathered by NPD, the Mac is indeed kicking ass, as Phil Schiller Apple’s SVP of Worldwide Product Marketing observed at the company’s annual World Wide Developers Conference earlier this month. And when it’s finally reported, Mac sales for Apple’s June quarter will likely clock in well ahead of those of PCs.

Again.

Through the first two months of Apple’s third quarter (April and May), domestic Mac sales rose 15 percent year over year, a significant jump over April alone, during which they rose just 9 percent. That bodes well for June, says Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, who notes that an easy comp for the month — sales rose 11 percent in 2010 — should make a nice year-over-year gain pretty easy.

And if the company happens to bring those rumored new Sandy Bridge-based MacBook Airs to market sometime this month, well, then it’s a different story entirely.

Another refresh of the Air will likely send sales into the stratosphere, just as it did last October. In fact, Deutsche Bank’s Chris Whitmore figures it could cause units to ramp to as high as 1.5 million per quarter, which is about half of Apple’s MacBook business. Add the impending release of OS X Lion to this mix and Mac sales should rise even more, since OS refreshes have historically bolstered demand and accelerated sales.

“Past OS upgrades have resulted in average Mac unit growth of ~30 percent in the 2-3 quarters following the release,” Whitmore says. “In addition, in terms of broad feature set enhancements we believe the Lion upgrade most parallels Leopard which saw ~45 percent Y/Y Mac growth following the release and +81 percent Y/Y Software growth. In aggregate, we believe Lion will drive a strong upgrade cycle due to: 1) low ASP, 2) significant OS enhancements and 3) arrives in conjunction with MacBook Air refresh.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110614/the-mac-is-kicking-ass/feed/ 0 Mac Daddy Serlet's Surprise Departure More of a Planned Transition http://allthingsd.com/20110323/mac-daddy-serlets-surprise-departure-more-of-a-planned-transition/ http://allthingsd.com/20110323/mac-daddy-serlets-surprise-departure-more-of-a-planned-transition/#comments Wed, 23 Mar 2011 19:55:32 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=59063

“Inside Apple there is a system to search the source code for every product they ship. The idea is that when you need to track down the definition of that primitive method that keeps crashing on you, you just go to this site, type in the function name, and get the source laid out in front of you (nicely syntax highlighted, of course). Well, one day I got the idea to use this tool to search for people, instead of functions. For a while now the policy at Apple has been that engineer’s names don’t go in the public headers that ship…but there’s no rule about internal code that the outside world will never see. So I typed in “Bertrand Serlet” into the search, and the first thing that popped up?

malloc.c

Seriously! The rest of the list was equally impressive including the original implementation of NSObject, a bunch of CoreFoundation, and on, and on. Avi Tevanian often gets credit for the work that he did on Mach, but Bertrand was most of the brains behind Cocoa.”

— A former Apple engineer on Bertrand Serlet

So Bertrand Serlet, senior vice president of Mac software engineering and the guy who spent the past decade defining, redefining and iterating Mac OS X, is leaving Apple. Why now?

The party line says he’s decided “to focus less on products and more on science.” That’s a plausible explanation, given Serlet’s mad scientist airs and background, which includes stints at Xerox PARC and NeXT. And while the timing of the announcement might seem odd–Apple is ramping up for the release of Lion, the next iteration of OS X–the truth of the matter is that this is a planned transition.

There’s a reason Craig Federighi, who is to take over Serlet’s role, handled demo duties for Apple’s Lion preview demo last year (see video below). And there’s a reason Serlet has been selling off Apple shares recently. They’ve been preparing for this day, which sources tell me is not at all the result of a spat over differences in strategic direction or the diminishment of OS X’s importance to Apple.

“There’s no acrimony there,” one source close to the company told me. “Bertrand’s just decided it’s his time to move on. Avie (Tevanian, former senior vice president of software engineering) handed off to him and now he’s handing off to Craig. It’s just a changing of the guard.”

In other words, Serlet isn’t leaving because because Lion heralds some subsuming of OS X to iOS and the setting of his star at Apple. He’s leaving because he feels it’s time and likely because Lion seems a perfect monument to his legacy at Apple.

Below, video of Serlet and Federighi in action.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110323/mac-daddy-serlets-surprise-departure-more-of-a-planned-transition/feed/ 7 IOS Devices Generate 2 Percent of Global Web Traffic http://allthingsd.com/20110202/ios-devices-generate-2-percent-of-global-web-traffic/ http://allthingsd.com/20110202/ios-devices-generate-2-percent-of-global-web-traffic/#comments Wed, 02 Feb 2011 14:15:07 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=56960 A small, but noteworthy, milestone for iOS. According to the latest worldwide browser market-share survey by Net Applications, Apple’s mobile operating system now accounts for more than 2.06 percent of all Web browsing traffic. Interestingly, iOS appears most popular in Singapore and Australia, where it accounts for 9.98 percent and 5.6 percent, respectively, of all Web browsing traffic–quite a bit more than it claims in the United Sates, where it accounts for just 3.4 percent. IOS is the third-largest source of global browsing traffic after Mac OS (5.25 percent) and Windows (89.7 percent). Google’s Android OS is the sixth, with .49 percent.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110202/ios-devices-generate-2-percent-of-global-web-traffic/feed/ 4 Cisco Security Survey Finds Windows Vulnerabilities And Spam Decreasing http://allthingsd.com/20110120/cisco-security-survey-finds-windows-vulnerabilities-and-spam-decreasing/ http://allthingsd.com/20110120/cisco-security-survey-finds-windows-vulnerabilities-and-spam-decreasing/#comments Thu, 20 Jan 2011 14:40:09 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://newenterprise.allthingsd.com/?p=2000
Cyber criminals have fewer ways to attack Microsoft Windows, and sent less spam in 2010 than in 2009–a first-ever decline of spam from year to year. Those are among the findings in an annual report on the state of Internet security released today by networking giant Cisco Systems.

All the security attention paid in recent years to securing the Windows desktop and the applications running on it have paid off a little, Cisco found, making it harder for computer scammers to successfully carry off their intended crimes on that platform. The trouble is they’re now starting to focus more attention on mobile devices, including Apple’s iPhone and iPad, and devices running Google’s Android operating system, Cisco said.

Meanwhile, the overall global volume of spam, which often contains troublemaking links that are used to deliver attacks, decreased for the first time ever in 2010. Even so, spam still increased in some developed countries where broadband connections are multiplying. In the United Kingdom, spam volume nearly doubled, while the volume in France went up 115 percent. The U.S. saw a slight decline–11.1 trillion messages down from 11.3 trillion in 2009. Spam in Brazil, China and Turkey also declined. Some of the decline can be attributed to last year’s arrest by FBI agents in Milwaukee of a Russian accused of being the “king of spam,” and to the shutdown of a few botnets used by scammers to send spam.

One thing about Cisco’s report that’s likely to draw some attention is its finding that the raw number of vulnerabilities on Apple products appear to be growing. Apple users are usually pretty sensitive about this topic, and any comparison of the Mac to Windows on the security front tends to make them grind their teeth and pound out annoyed comments on tech blogs. I know because I’ve done the same teeth-grinding and have in the past criticized other reports for similar findings.

Here Cisco is addressing vulnerabilities that Apple has itself documented and patched in software updates. One thing that’s not clear to me–though it sure looks like it–is whether Cisco is combining vulnerabilities found on both iOS (iPhone and iPad) and OS X (the Mac). The data it’s using is from its IntelliShield service, which tracks vulnerabilities and security incidents, and shows that over five years Apple’s vulnerabilities rose, from less than 200 in 2006 to more than 350 in 2010. That rate was higher than Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard and Cisco itself, the report found, though it goes on to say that Apple has worked harder than most other vendors to protect its users. Security is one of the reasons Apple imposes such strict rules on what’s available in the App store, though people still jailbreak their phones.

Another trend Cisco found is something called “money muling.” Tom Gillis, VP and general manager of Cisco’s Security business unit, describes money muling as using unsuspecting people who are attracted by “work at home” spam messages and Web ads to participate in money laundering by moving small amounts of money into bank accounts, just a few thousand dollars at a time. He says the operations around this are becoming increasingly elaborate, and criminals will devote a lot of effort to developing it this year.

I talked with Gillis about the report and other security trends that Cisco found. Here are a few highlights from our conversation:

NewEnterprise: So you’re seeing fewer attacks on Windows and more on mobile devices. Is that simply because there are more of them?

Tom Gillis: It’s the simple fact that there’s this new class of mobile device coming into the enterprise that used to be a phone and now it’s a computer, and it can access enterprise information. So what we’re seeing is that the raw number, but not the severity, is down on Windows. Part of this is that Windows 7 was a very good release on Microsoft’s part from a security standpoint. And we’ve got these new devices coming into the enterprise, and so we’re seeing a shift in focus of attacks on these mobile devices. They’re vulnerable to attack and they’re relevant in the enterprise. Two years ago this would have been too small a population to be meaningful.

What kind of attacks are you seeing?

It varies. In some cases there’s a little “phone home” code in a free gaming app. Pretty gentle stuff so far. But as people start using smartphones to access sensitive information we need to start thinking about security considerations on these devices. There’s a larger theme here that the whole nature of attacks is changing dramatically. The fact that spam volumes dropped at all is a big tell. For 10 years this has only gone up. We’re not forecasting a steady decline in spam, but the fact that it slowed down at all is an indicator of the shift in the way that attackers are using email. The attacks are more targeted and personal, for one thing.

Can’t some of this decrease be attributed to some of the arrests that happened last year?

It can. There’s been a handful of arrests. And they went after not only the botnet operators but other parts of the spam value chain. There are firms and entities that build botnets of compromised machines that relay the spam, and then there are other firms and entities that rent time on those botnets that do the merchandising. The biggest category is selling fake pharmaceuticals. Some of these fake pharma operations were shut down and the people associated with them arrested. It’s not an easy thing to do, because they’re global, they move around, and so to make an arrest in this space is a huge accomplishment.

So what is the thinking now about securing the mobile device?

We think there are two ways to make mobile devices work in the enterprise. The flood of devices into the enterprise is huge, and everyone wants to use them to check their email and access corporate directories and other fundamental things. There needs to be some kind of software on the end point–the phone or device. It will have to be light. You can’t have some kind of antivirus suite running on the phone. It would be a little piece of software that’s on all the time that knows when you’re behind the corporate firewall and when you’re not, and manages your connection accordingly. We bought a company called ScanSafe that has 40 data centers around the world. When you’re outside the firewall it connects to you the nearest data center and enforces your corporate policies, but all you as the user know is that it just works. This notion of being on or off the corporate network goes away. And we can do all kinds of scanning for security, independent of the device that’s being used.

This year we also saw the Stuxnet attacks, which we now know for certain were carried out against the Iranian nuclear program. Clearly this is a new kind of attack that can be mounted against industrial control systems via computer networks. Is Cisco researching this?

Massively. Often these types of attacks are targeted against Cisco’s biggest enterprise customers. Who buys Cisco’s infrastructure? The biggest banks in the world, the defense contractors. If the goal of an attacker is to disrupt an economy, their targets will be our customers, and they’re demanding a response from us. I like to call it global threat correlation, but it comes down to taking huge samples of network traffic and picking out good traffic from the bad. Cisco has a good advantage here because our equipment is so widely deployed around the world. As we start measuring traffic we can develop reputation data on every publicly routable IP address on the Internet. As we start putting telemetry info into that equipment–and the customer can choose to enable it or not, and it’s turned off by default. But people turn it on because it helps them against the unknown kind of attacks that are popping up. If a Web server says its a Web server, but you just saw it sending spam three minutes ago, there’s a pretty good chance it’s part of a botnet. Once you know that you know that, you can start to mount a pretty good defense. We’re putting a lot of energy into developing that, and it’s proven to be pretty robust.

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