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News & Opinion
Reviews
Software
News & Opinion
Want Security? Google's Eric Schmidt Says 'Get a
Mac'
Pocket-Lint's Hunter Skipworth reports that Google's executive
chairman Eric Schmidt has pointed to Macs as the weapon of choice for
those in need of security.
In a move that Skipworth says will undoubtedly spark Apple versus
Windows comment wars the world over, the ex-Apple board member said
viruses are less likely to affect Mac users, but did mention using
Google Chrome as a browser
for increased security, also suggesting adopting the two tier
identification connected with Gmail.
Skipworth also observes that Google's email system is now considered
so secure that the US government recently announced it will move
institutions like NASA and even the Army over to Gmail.
Publisher's note: We also use Gmail for lowendmac.com email.
dk
Link: Want Security? Get a Mac Says
Eric Schmidt
Security Update 2011-003 Addresses MacDefender and
Future Malware
Security Update 2011-003 (Snow Leopard) is recommended for all users
and improves the security of Mac OS X.
Previous security updates have been incorporated into this security
update.
For information on the security content of this update, please visit
this website: https://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222
File Size: 2.36 MB
System Requirements: Mac OS X 10.6.7
Publisher's note: Not only does this update specifically address the
MacDefender malware (see last week's Mac News
Review for more), it also adds daily checking for new malware
definitions. dk
Link: Security Update
2011-003 (Snow Leopard)
Jobs to Show Mac OS X 10.7 Lion and iOS 5 at
Keynote Address on Monday, June 6
Apple CEO Steve Jobs and a team of Apple executives will kick off
the company's annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) with a
keynote address on Monday, June 6 at 10:00 a.m. PDT. At the keynote,
Apple will unveil its next generation software - Lion, the eighth major
release of Mac OS X; iOS 5, the next version of Apple's advanced
mobile operating system which powers the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch;
and iCloud, Apple's upcoming cloud services offering.
WWDC will feature more than 100 technical sessions presented by
Apple engineers. Mac developers will see and learn how to develop
world-class Mac OS X Lion applications using its latest technologies
and capabilities. Mobile developers will be able to explore the latest
innovations and capabilities of iOS and learn how to greatly enhance
the functionality, performance and design of their apps. All developers
can bring their code to the labs and work with Apple engineers.
Link: Apple Worldwide
Developers Conference
Market for Hard Drives Spinning Down
The French site silicon.fr's Christopher Lagane says that, faced
with competition from SSD/flash memory development, the venerable hard
disk drive (HDD) will experience a serious production slowdown in
coming years.
Lagane notes that the market for PC hard drives is less and less
profitable, as evidenced by the recent merger of the industry's
surviving big players - Seagate acquiring Samsung's HDD business a few
weeks after Western Digital swallowed Hitachi Storage - and tech marker
analyst firm IHS (formerly iSuppli) predicting a "dramatic slowdown" of
income for the HDD sector between 2011 and 2010 - a deceleration that
will continue in coming years.
Lagane cites IHS HDD market projection metrics that forecast a
market for disk storage media totaling $32.1 billion in 2015, a
relatively modest increase from $27 billion in 2010.
The lazy growth potential for hard drives is attributed by IHS
storage systems analyst Zhang Fang to competition from flash memory
based mobile devices which, according to the analyst, have broken the
"hegemony of the PC" as consumers increasingly switch to tablets and
smartphones as hardware for surfing the Internet, downloading and
streaming video, and sharing content, with tablets in particular
nabbing consumers' money that would have otherwise been spent on
laptops or netbooks, and by extension because tablets use flash memory
for storing data rather than hard disk drives, that translates into
lost sales for the hard drive industry.
Perceived brighter outlooks for the HDD industry are found in the
proliferation of Cloud based Internet services over the next few years,
combined with continued strong enterprise PC market dynamics.
Link: Le Marché du Disque dur
en Pente Douce (English
translation via Google Translate)
Hard Drives: Chronicles of a Planned Decline
Riffing on a report by silicon.fr's Christopher Lagane, Hardmac's
Lionel notes that while the hard drive market is still growing, there
are more and more signs indicating that it's approaching peak
production, citing a series of huge acquisitions with Western Digital
acquiring Hitachi's hard drive division, and Seagate following suit
with Samsung's, leaving only two manufacturers left in the 3.5" hard
drive market (Toshiba and Fujitsu still make 2.5" laptop drives).
Lionel observes that real impact on HDD production is deriving from
the popularity of smartphones and tablets that use only flash memory to
store data, with a similar dynamic slowly coming on small laptops like
the MacBook Air, but says the HDD market is not dead yet, and it should
still grow a little in the next few years with the development of all
the cloud services like the data center Apple is building in North
Carolina that will require huge numbers of hard drives.
Link: Platter Hard Drives: Chronicles
of a Planned Decline
Migrating from Photoshop to Pixelmator
T-GAAP's E. Werner Reschke says that he's been a Photoshop user since 1992, starting
with Photoshop 2 (that would be "2" not "CS2"), and is pretty adept at
using Photoshop. Reschke notes that over the years there have been
would-be Photoshop challengers, like CorelDraw and Painter, but nothing
ever seemed to hold a candle to Photoshop - until he encountered a game
changer.
An acquaintance told him about Pixelmator, how good it was, and how
he could do most things that he used to do with Photoshop (but couldn't
afford to purchase a new copy), noting that for $59, a mere fraction of
the cost of Photoshop CS, it was almost a no-brainer to give Pixelmator
a try.
After checking it out for a while, he reckons that Pixelmator is a
very good substitute for Photoshop, can do most things Photoshop can
do, and often does them a lot better. He cites the four main reasons
he's switched to Pixelmator:
- Speed
- Similar Workflow
- Price (with far less digital rights foo-fa-ra to contend with)
- Built for the Mac
Link: Migrating
from Photoshop to Pixelmator
Link: Pixelmator (App
Store link)
How to Get Mac OS X's Best Features on Windows
Life Hacker's Whitson Gordon says that whether you're a die-hard
Windows fan or simply a Mac user required to occasionally use Windows,
it's hard to argue against the fact that Mac OS X has some killer
features. He shows how to get the best of them on Windows.
Link: How to Get Mac OS X's Best
Features on Windows
Reviews
Anand Lal Shimpi's Exhaustive 27" 2011 iMac
Review
AnandTech's thoughtfully authoritative Anand Lal Shimpi has posted
one of his amazingly thorough and detailed reviews - this one of the
recently-refreshed Thunderbolt
iMacs
Shimpi concedes that he's never liked the iMac. He understood its
appeal, but it wasn't for him for a variety of reasons, which he cites.
However the same series of developments that allowed him to dump his
Mac Pro and use a Sandy Bridge MacBook Pro have made the iMac that much
more interesting to him.
He also notes that while Apple has never been a value player, the
27" iMac is especially tempting, as the display alone is worth $999,
which means that you're getting a Sandy Bridge Mac integrated for only
an additional $699 - "downright Dell pricing."
There's much, much more in this review, which has to be regarded as
the definitive 2011 iMac review among those I've scanned.
Shimpi concludes that having gone the mobile route and now using a
MacBook Pro as his desktop, he's very tempted by this iMac, which he
says addresses all of the issues he has with his MacBook Pro while
maintaining most of the benefits, but it reintroduces the problem of
portability - the more you need or want to travel, or for that matter
simply like changing locations, the more the balance shifts towards
portable computing.
Link: The 27-inch Apple iMac Review
(2011)
Software
FountainPen, a Free, Beautifully Simple Writing
Environment
FountainPen has just what you need to write, with none of the
clutter. A menubar, a compositions panel, a toolbar with four buttons,
and all can be hidden, leaving just you and your writing.
It only takes a tiny bit of clutter to distract you. FountainPen
offers several simple tools to combat this, like the Backdrop, which
covers up Desktop cruft. Other features include autosaved compositions
and integrated support for the Markdown system of plain-text
formatting.
New in version 0.7:
- Added and refined numerous features in FP 0.7; among them:
- Set your own Central Compositions folder anywhere you can see
- Adjustable margins & leading for more pleasant composing.
- Compositions remember where they were on screen.
- More sensible composition deletion, and more stable composition
handling.
- Easier backdrop access through menu command and optional toolbar
button.
System requirements:
- PPC/Intel
- Mac OS X 10.5 or later
- Some features require or work better with OS X 10.6 or later
FountainPen is free, always has been, and always will be.
Link: FountainPen
Free Avast! Antivirus for Mac Beta
Avast has announced a new major version of "Avast! Free Antivirus
for Mac". The current popularity of Apple products is making them more
interesting for the bad guys so it's prudent to prepare for the battle
sooner rather than later. The new version of Avast! has been almost
totally reworked compared with the developer's previous solution for
the Mac OS.
They're kicking off with three shields and an on-demand scan. The
Web Shield together with the Mail Shield will check the vast majority
of incoming data from the Internet. Avast! Free Antivirus for Mac is
also equipped with a File Shield, which scans all programs stored and
executed from your hard drive. Everything is packed in a brand new GUI
and is now available as a public beta.
Features
- On-demand scanning: It's possible to scan the whole file system,
network volumes or a mounted removable volume. You can also run a
custom scan. Scan reports are automatically archived and are accessible
from the GUI at anytime.
- Onscreen alerts: Alert messages are displayed onscreen whenever a
threat is detected.
- File Shield: The File Shield scans the binaries of started
applications and all files at the time they are modified.
- Web Shield: The Web Shield monitors and filters all HTTP traffic
coming from web sites on the Internet. Connections from your web
browser are redirected to the Web Shield module. The Web Shield in turn
connects to the requested web server and while downloading the content,
it simultaneously scans it for viruses and Trojans. Only clean data is
delivered to the browser, all malware is stopped before it gets saved
on your Mac.
- Mail Shield: The Mail Shield monitors and filters all POP3 and IMAP
traffic coming from mail servers on the Internet. It does not prevent
saving of infected files (doing so could lead to irreversible data
loss), it just detects them. The File Shield prevents any infected
attachments from causing harm to your system.
- Automatic updates: The scanning engine is automatically updated
with our regular VPS database updates.
Known Issues
- Drag and drop functionality on the Dock icon is not available when
the GUI is not running.
- Some of the Avast! windows aren't automatically activated during
application startup and may be hidden behind other application
windows.
- Sometimes Apple's default icon is shown in the Dock and Finder
instead of the Avast! icon.
- The Growl framework (http://growl.info) is necessary for the popup
alert functionality. We recommend installing Growl before installing
Avast!
- Some items in the menus and some buttons in the GUI are greyed
out/disabled as their functionality is not yet fully implemented.
Installation & Uninstallation
To use the Mail Shield, you need to disable encrypted POP3/IMAP
connections in your email client's settings so the traffic can be
scanned. By default, the Mail Shield encrypts all outgoing traffic
itself if the mail server supports it (encrypted connections can be
forced for selected mail accounts in the Mail Shield settings).
Uninstallation must be carried out from the application's menu bar
item "Uninstall avast!"
Link: Avast! Free Antivirus
for Mac (download link)
Desktop Mac
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