Archive for the 'Tips' Category

Installing Apple’s Leopard Operating System

Monday, October 29th, 2007

Most of us face the prospect of upgrading our operating systems with a mixture of excitement and dread. True, a new OS brings cool new ways to work. But that doesn’t change the fact that when you install a major version of OS X you’re essentially gutting your Mac and replacing its virtual insides.

Luckily, Apple’s improved the upgrade experience with each new cat, making the process much less daunting. But despite the Installer’s useful guidance, there are things it doesn’t tell you, and places where its help falls short. With that in mind, here’s my guide to making the upgrade process as trouble-free as possible.
What You Need

Before you get started, the two most important things you need are a compatible Mac and a complete backup of all your data. Leopard requires a Mac with an Intel or PowerPC G4 or G5 processor; a DVD drive; built-in FireWire; at least 512MB RAM; and at least 7GB of free hard-disk space. (I recommend at least 1GB RAM and 10 to 15GB of free disk space.)

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Russian Hackers Behind Attack PDFs

Monday, October 29th, 2007

A notorious Russian hacker gang is responsible for ongoing attacks using malicious PDF documents, a researcher said Wednesday.

Users can thank the Russian Business Network (RBN), a well-known collective of cybercriminals, for the malware-armed PDF attachments that began appearing in in-boxes Tuesday, said Ken Dunham, director of response for iSight Partners Inc. If the rigged PDFs succeed in infecting the target Windows system, the attack code installs a pair of rootkit files that “sniff and steal financial and other valuable data,” said Dunham via e-mail.

The rogue PDF documents are attached to spammed e-mail and arrive with filenames such as BILL.pdf, YOUR_BILL.pdf, INVOICE.pdf or STATEMET.pdt, said Symantec Corp. in a separate advisory Tuesday. They exploit the “mailto:” protocol vulnerability disclosed more than a month ago by U.K.-based researcher Petko Petkov.

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Google Launches IMAP Support for Gmail

Monday, October 29th, 2007

Google Inc. has launched a new IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) service for Gmail that will allow users to sync Gmail with their e-mail clients.

“It keeps the same information synced across all devices so that whatever you do in one place shows up everywhere else you might access your e-mail,” said David Murray, associate product manager, in a blog post. “For example, I can read an e-mail in Gmail, then move it to the ‘Starred’ folder on my iPhone, then archive it by moving it to ‘All Mail’ in Thunderbird, then see all of those changes on my BlackBerry or any of [these] devices for that matter.”

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Rain Doesn’t Stop Leopard From Roaring in NYC

Monday, October 29th, 2007

Even pouring rain and gusty winds didn’t stop the Mac faithful from turning out for the release of Apple’s Mac OS X “Leopard” at the Apple Store in New York’s SoHo neighborhood Friday night.

The sidewalk in front of the store and around the corner was a sea of colored umbrellas as about 200 people lined up to be among the first to purchase Leopard in North America. Those who hadn’t prepared for the weather hunched under pieces of cardboard or just got wet, as people bustled past on busy Prince Street and wondered aloud what all the fuss was about.

The New York launch was part of a worldwide rollout of Leopard, which went on sale at 6 p.m. local time around the world Friday, beginning in Australia and New Zealand. Rain also plagued the Leopard launch in Tokyo, which marked the first place the OS went on sale at an official Apple Store, but didn’t deter users from lining up ahead of the time there, either.

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Apple’s Mac OS X Leopard fully unveiled

Monday, October 29th, 2007

No matter what rampant rumors have been tossed around, we always knew there was going to be one main attraction to WWDC 2007: a feature-complete version of Leopard. Steve Jobs and co. didn’t disappoint, announcing 10 of the “300 new features of the OS.”

1. New Desktop - First off is the new desktop, featuring a new menu bar, a snazzed up dock and “Stacks” to help you keep your desktop clean. For instance, there’s a default Stack that collects all your downloads in one place on the dock.

2. New Finder - More on the aesthetics side, Apple is going with a unified look for apps, which nixes the brushed metal style and instead mimics the current iTunes theme — surprise, surprise. In fact, the new Finder looks and performs almost exactly like iTunes, all the way down to integrated Cover Flow for shuffling through your files. You can also save smart searches in the “playlists” side of the interface. On the back end of things, Leopard includes “Back to my Mac,” which keeps track of your home Mac’s IP address through various (and secure!) magicks, letting you browse your files remotely as if they were on a local network. Spotlight search also works over networks now, as expected.

3. Quick Look - Another new Finder integrated function, Quick Look lets you open up previews of most common document types without opening the respective app, and unsupported doc types can be added through extensions.

Keep reading for the rest!

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