The news is particularly good for those that picked up Canon's latest consumer digital SLR, the Digital Rebel XSi, as well as owners of the latest Pentax SLRs. Support is also included for the Leica mount-compatible Epson digital rangefinders and the high-end medium format-based Leaf AFi cameras. The complete list of models is:

• Canon EOS Digital Rebel XSi (also known as the Kiss Digital x2 / EOS 450D)
• Epson R-D1
• Epson R-D1s
• Leaf AFi 7
• Leaf AFi 6
• Leaf AFi 5
• Pentax K200D
• Pentax K20D

Posted by Mirko at 02:24 PM | Permalink

At 7.96 percent, Mac OS X will surely break 8 percent market share sometime this month, a gain of a third in just a year, and a truly astounding accomplishment for Apple. By platform, Intel Macs saw their numbers jump by a quarter of a percent to 5.26 percent, while PPC graybeards declined to 2.7 percent.

Posted by Mirko at 12:35 PM | Permalink

This guide provides an overview of features in Mac OS X that you can use to enhance security and harden your computer. In the paper, you can read instructions and recommendations for securing Mac OS X version 10.5 or later, and for maintaining a secure computer.

Posted by Mirko at 10:43 PM | Permalink

RelatedMail is a very useful plugin for Apple Mail that shows messages related to the currently viewed message.

Posted by Mirko at 10:14 PM | Permalink

One of the smartest things Apple did with Mac OS X was to offer software development tools for free to anyone with a Mac. Apple therefore made it easy for anyone to create useful and innovative Mac applications. Until recently, Microsoft charged several hundred dollars to acquire a similar set of tools.

Posted by Mirko at 03:51 PM | Permalink

The Launcher isn't intended to replace a full-blown IDE or editor. However, basic tasks are now trivial. To create "hello world", you now just type a name and click twice. And deployment of a finished application to Google is a single click away. With the Launcher, you can focus on your app instead of the tools.

Posted by Mirko at 03:39 PM | Permalink

SilverFlow is a plugin for the application launcher Quicksilver, adding a new interface.

Posted by Mirko at 11:48 AM | Permalink

A teenager is making a multi-touch table running Mac OS X, similar to Microsoft's Surface, for a science fair. The table uses infrared light emitting diodes, where an IR camera transmits input via fingertip motions to the computer running Mac OS X.

Posted by Mirko at 10:59 PM | Permalink

Parallels has released a new beta build of Parallels Server for Mac that now supports creating virtual machines to run Leopard Server. When the company released last month's public beta of Parallels Server for Mac (which also supports versions of Windows and Linux), it had removed support for Leopard Server VMs due to technical and performance issues.

Posted by Mirko at 02:58 PM | Permalink

Time Machine users, rejoice! Pierce T. Wetter III has provided a modified version of the GrandPerspective utility - a version that understands the use of file and folder hard links peculiar to a Time Machine backup. You can use this modified GrandPerspective to scan your entire Time Machine backup folder. For one thing, this tells you immediately how big your Time Machine backup really is (something that's surprisingly hard to find out otherwise).

Posted by Mirko at 02:55 PM | Permalink

Paragon Software released the free Rescue Kit for Mac OS X - Lite which allows users to recover quickly and easily from system problems by rescuing important data and restoring their system back to its original state. The tool kit comes with fully automated wizards that allow users to easily backup and restore partitions.

Posted by Mirko at 02:40 AM | Permalink

A company called Psystar claims that it’s selling a “generic Mac” for $549 (or $399 without OS X). While such a move seems to violate Apple’s end-user license agreement, it indicates just how the age-old topic of running the Mac OS on non-Apple hardware has mutated in this modern, Intel-Mac age.

Posted by Mirko at 11:57 AM | Permalink

The truth is that security through obscurity is a flawed idea. Yes, there are fewer recorded attacks on the Mac platform, but by no means does that make it secure. So what's a Mac user to do? Like the book says, don't panic. In this article we'll take a look at some basic ways you can improve your Mac's security right out of the box.

Posted by Mirko at 09:47 PM | Permalink

IBM has recently completed the first phase of a pilot program that began late last year in order to test the use of Macs at IBM's Watson Research Center. Roughly Drafted was able to obtain a document from IBM detailing the program, which was "designed to study the possibility of moving significant numbers of employees to the Mac platform." The goal is to encourage a more heterogenous, yet interoperable, computing environment.

Posted by Mirko at 09:42 PM | Permalink

Many Leopard features are buried just beneath the surface, unknown or ignored by users even though they've had Leopard installed for months. These "hidden" features may be things you never heard of or noticed, or even used without realizing their presence or scope - but they're too good to miss.

Posted by Mirko at 06:04 PM | Permalink

If you need to rename several files at once every now and then, this is the application you have always been looking for. Name Mangler is a batch file renamer that supports all common renaming tasks: Find and Replace (including support for regular expressions); Number Sequentially; Change Case; Set Extension; Add Prefix/Suffix; Remove/Insert Characters.

Moreover, you can combine all of these using the Advanced renaming mode, which even comes with some extra features, such as conditional statements, nested counters, and more.

Posted by Mirko at 03:21 AM | Permalink

Some of the changes in Leopard are obvious—Time Machine, Quick Look, Spaces, and so on. Others are more subtle. Here are some tips and tricks for working with some of the lesser known new features in System Preferences and Terminal.

Posted by Mirko at 12:15 PM | Permalink

Apple would like you to believe that Mac OS X is a complete package, able to fulfill all your needs out of the box. But unless your needs are limited to e-mail and web browsing, there's plenty of room to improve upon OS X's solid foundations. You could go out and spend hundreds of dollars on software, but in most cases there's no need to fork over your hard earned cash. Here's a list of all the free software you need to trick out your Mac.

Posted by Mirko at 12:27 AM | Permalink

Whois or "Who is," is a way to query for contact information (or domain name ownership information) about the person or company in control of a site. If you want to know who runs a website, you don't have to look any further than your Mac and opening a Terminal window.

Posted by Mirko at 12:33 AM | Permalink

Mac OS X has free software fans, and a well-maintained collection of software at MacPorts, but for a long time those fans have been limited to the command line for finding, installing, and updating the offerings. Now a new utility called Porticus has arrived to present a slick GUI interface to the MacPorts collection, and it could make some converts.

Posted by Mirko at 10:44 PM | Permalink

Chris Pirillo writes: "Microsoft does some amazing things - very amazing things. My choice, however, for a primary desktop operating system is no longer Windows - it’s Mac OS X. Duh. It’s rather difficult to admit that officially, if only because… well, I think Microsoft does amazing things."

Posted by Mirko at 06:56 AM | Permalink

PGP, or Pretty Good Privacy, is a commonly used and very secure encryption program using public key cryptography. Through PGP, you can encrypt information such as messages, documents and files in a manner so that only the recipient can decrypt and open them. The goal of this tutorial is to get you up and running with PGP through terminal and familiar with its operation.

Posted by Mirko at 06:45 AM | Permalink

The fresh security update addresses 11 issues. Learn more at Help Net Security.

Posted by Mirko at 03:03 PM | Permalink

The Mac malware problem is currently tiny compared to the Windows one, so if enough Apple Mac users resist clicking on unsolicited weblinks or downloading unknown code from the web then there's a chance they could send a clear message to the hackers that it's not financially rewarding to target Macs. If they fail to properly defend themselves, however, there's a chance that more cybercriminals will decide it's worth their while to develop more malware for Mac during 2008.

Posted by Mirko at 11:53 AM | Permalink

The video demonstrates the results of the DNS changes made on a Mac OS X system.

Posted by Mirko at 08:44 PM | Permalink

Apple fixes a variety of issues, click here for more details.

Posted by Mirko at 03:12 AM | Permalink

There's never been a better time to void the warranty on your MacBook Pro and upgrade to one of those sweet 2.5" WD Scorpio 320GB drives. That was what made me throw caution to the wind and attempt a Time Machine-assisted swap. The good news is, it works as billed. You get a bit-for-bit transfer to the virgin drive with minimal fuss.

Posted by Mirko at 06:59 AM | Permalink

It's like explaining the difference between a Buick and a BMW. Both get you from here to there, only the ride is generally smoother and more fun. Put another way, Windows users tolerate their computers to get stuff done. The Mac crowd enjoys its machines, whether managing music in iTunes or pictures in iPhoto.

Posted by Mirko at 12:00 AM | Permalink

David Pogue is back with another meticulous Missing Manual to cover the operating system with a wealth of detail. Amusing and fun to read, this is the authoritative book for Mac users of all technical levels and experience. Which new Leopard features work well and which do not? What should you look for? What should you avoid? Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Leopard Edition offers objective and straightforward instruction.

Continue reading "O'Reilly releases "Mac OS X Leopard: The Missing Manual"" »

Posted by Mirko at 05:40 AM | Permalink

What's the deal with SNMP? Well, the 'deal' is that people wanted a flexible, relatively low overhead way to manage their network. They wanted a way to read and set information, and have devices inform them when something goes wrong, or is about to go wrong. The result is SNMP. Now, why "Simple", when, as we shall see, it's actually pretty complex. Well, it's "Simple" in the sense that there's not much to it. There's about three things that can happen in SNMP:

1. You can query a value and get a reply
2. You can set a value and get a return code
3. An SNMP-enabled device can send you a notification, or "trap"

That's pretty much the entire range of SNMP right there, and of the three, two is the least common. It's what you do with those numbers that gives you the power, or rather, what utilities like Nagios, Cacti, and Lithium do with the numbers that make things interesting.

Posted by Mirko at 06:24 AM | Permalink

Shopping for Mac users and Apple fans can sometimes be a challenge -- especially if you want to get something other than the obvious choices, or if you're not as big an Apple fan as the person you're shopping for. With that in mind, here are 10 great gift ideas for the Mac user on your list.

Posted by Mirko at 12:12 AM | Permalink

The new version of Mail in Leopard introduces a ‘message:’ URL handler that allows you to refer to individual messages in Mail from other applications. You can use a utility such as RCDefaultApp to see that Mail registers as the default handler for the “message:” scheme. That Mail now supports these URLs does not seem to be documented by Apple anywhere, but it’s fairly simple, and very useful.

Posted by Mirko at 11:00 AM | Permalink

Leopard includes more information about Wi-Fi networks in the vicinity of your computer than meets the eye. The revised Mac OS X updates the AirPort menu in the system menubar after you select, which is a neat feature and provides more accurate results. It also shows a lock icon next to networks protected by some form of encryption. But there's more information you can extract by holding down the Option key while selecting the menu.

Posted by Mirko at 06:09 AM | Permalink

The discussion begins with a mailing list message called Interesting Behavior of OS X, in which Steven Edwards describes the discovery that Leopard apparently contains an undocumented loader for Portable Executables, a type of file used in 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows. More poking around revealed that Leopard's own loader tries to find Windows DLL files when attempting to load a Windows binary.

Posted by Mirko at 01:46 PM | Permalink

A very welcome new feature in Leopard is the ability to view fonts directly in the Finder. You can get a full-alphabet-preview in two places: Column view, and Quick Look. The rest of the views display an icon with the letters “Ag.” Hitting spacebar from any view will give you and alphabet preview (in Quick Look). No need to open Fontbook, or a 3rd party browser anymore.

Posted by Mirko at 11:25 PM | Permalink

While the general Mac user community is ooh-ing and ahh-ing over Mac OS X 10.5 features like Time Machine, or opining about the new Dock, Stacks, et al, those of us who support Mac users are deep into learning about one of the biggest below-the-hood changes to happen in any version of Mac OS X: The end of Netinfo. When I say “end,” I mean it in the most “end-ish” sense. In Mac OS X 10.5, Netinfo is gone. Not “deprecated,” not “hidden away for only the most advanced users.” It’s gone. Deleted. It does not exist. No more Netinfo database, no more Netinfo Utilities such as nicl, no more Netinfo Manager.

Posted by Mirko at 01:09 AM | Permalink

Apple recently released Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard”, including Safari 3. The latest Safari is also included in Mac OS X 10.4.11, the latest update to Tiger. A corresponding version is available as the latest Safari for Windows Beta, including the new features and lots of stability and usability improvements. Apple’s site can tell you a lot about the new end-user features of Safari 3. But a lot of the goodness is on the inside, in the WebKit engine that powers Safari. Here’s a list of ten of the most exciting engine enhancements since the Safari 2 version of WebKit, with lots of details and demos.

Posted by Mirko at 09:04 PM | Permalink

If the high price tag for Apple hardware has kept you from buying a Mac but you're willing to roll up your sleeves and get adventurous, you can build your own "Hackintosh" - a PC that runs a patched version of OS X Leopard.

Posted by Mirko at 08:53 PM | Permalink

For those who haven't experienced it, Leopard's new iCal follows Apple's trend of doing away with the "drawer" concept by introducing an info pop-up over events and to-dos. While this new UI tries to mimic Web 2.0 calendaring apps like Google Calendar, Apple missed some of the key details that make those other apps work.

Posted by Mirko at 09:00 PM | Permalink

The article, written by Leo from Zen Habits for Mac Format, is available for download in PDF format.

Some of the top tips in the article:

1. How to clear your Mac desktop.
2. How to create a minimalist working environment.
3. Why Spotlight makes filing unnecessary.
4. How to use utilities such as Quicksilver, Mail Act-on, and others to be productive.
5. How to make quick decisions.
6. How to clear your mind so you can focus on the task at hand.
7. Why single-tasking is better than multi-tasking.

Posted by Mirko at 01:31 PM | Permalink

Posted by Mirko at 01:22 PM | Permalink

Stacks is pretty much Leopard’s only non-eyecandy change to the dock, and it had the potential to be pretty handy, but the fact that the icon representing the stack is whatever the top file in the folder happens to be really ruins it (for me at least). However, if you haven’t yet given up on stacks and thrown them off your dock, there is a solution: overlaying stacks icons.

Posted by Mirko at 10:36 AM | Permalink

You must set a VNC password in Leopard's System Preferences in order for the TightVNC client to connect to it. (Or else TightVNC will give you an error about the server not supporting the right security protocol.) To do so, in System Preferences, go to Sharing, and from Screen Sharing, click on the "Computer Options" button. Set your password there and TightVNC will be able to remote control your Mac given its IP address.

Posted by Mirko at 03:12 AM | Permalink

If you're into customization, check this site.

Posted by Mirko at 12:03 AM | Permalink

WidescreenMailPlugin for Mail.app (Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard) turns the message view from a two-row horizontal view, to a two-column vertical view.

Posted by Mirko at 01:32 PM | Permalink

Daniel writes: "If you, like me, have essentially kept a single keychain from the dawn of time, there’s a feature in the Keychain Access application you need to know about: “Keychain First Aid.” You find it under the Keychain Access menu, just below Preferences. Whenever I see anything unusual happening with my keychain, I try to remember to hop into Keychain Access and re-run this. Putting aside the question of why my keychain is allowed to get so routinely screwed up that it requires “first aid,” let me say that I appreciate this repair functionality because it generally solves problems quickly and effectively."

Posted by Mirko at 07:28 PM | Permalink

If you enjoy Leopard’s new Mail Stationery for sending beautiful HTML email, but wished you could personalize it more, read on for some very good news! Apple has made Mail’s new Stationery feature quite easy to edit to your heart’s content, as long as you have an image editor that can save .jpg and .png files, and an HTML editor such as Dreamweaver (or just text edit if you’re a die-hard HTML coder). Just follow these simple steps.

Posted by Mirko at 07:14 PM | Permalink

The packaging is considerably more minimal than the last release. The box is roughly the size of a double disc music CD and contains a single installation DVD and a "Welcome to Leopard" booklet. Here's a quick install guide with some useful tips.

Posted by Mirko at 06:02 PM | Permalink

Depending where you are located in the World, you may already have a copy of Mac OS X Leopard installing on your machine. If you're one of those unsure if you should upgrade, check out Pogue's review at the New York Times.

No doubt there will be a myriad of reviews popping up all over the blogosphere and the mainstream media in the days to come so prepare to be overwhelmed. I for one am enjoying all the press and can't wait to get my hands on Leopard. If you still haven't, you can order through Amazon and get $20 off.

Posted by Mirko at 07:49 PM | Permalink

Much analysis and opinion has swirled around this coming OS upgrade - most positive and pleased with features - but in this article the author points out what he sees as a deeper meaning behind some of the top features and why a tipping point will occur.

Posted by Mirko at 09:35 AM | Permalink

With the release last week of the feature list for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, the security world is buzzing about some extremely important updates that should, if they work as expected, significantly improve Mac security and will make me less nervous about connecting to wireless networks in Internet cafes.

Posted by Mirko at 08:52 PM | Permalink

Install some software updates and delete files you don’t need anymore. Because you’ll be making so many changes, you shouldn’t perform these steps until after you’ve made a complete backup. After you’ve cleaned up your Mac, restarted, and verified that everything is working properly, you should update your backup so that it’ll be closer to the state of your disk when you upgrade to Leopard.

Posted by Mirko at 06:02 PM | Permalink

Apple updated their website and introduced a myriad of details about the features Mac OS X Leopard Server is gonna have.

Posted by Mirko at 11:52 PM | Permalink

As the default app for email on the Mac, Mail gets lots of feature requests and lots of complaints when things don't work as expected. For example, Mail 2.0 in Tiger drew gasps from its use of nonstandard toolbar icons that grouped functions together in bubbles. Apple has significantly updated Mail for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, introducing support for Notes, To Do reminders, RSS feeds, Data Detectors, and HTML Statonery. Here's a look at what's new.

Posted by Mirko at 01:21 PM | Permalink

Spaces is an entirely new feature in Mac OS X Leopard, but the idea of virtual desktops -- and multiple desktops - has been around for a long time. Here's a look at what's new and different about Apple's approach with Spaces, why virtual desktops have run into problems before, and how well Leopard's Spaces actually works in practice.

Posted by Mirko at 10:20 PM | Permalink

Apple has significantly updated Dictionary 2.0 for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, expanding it from a simple word lookup into a complete multilingual reference tool. Here's a look at what's new in Dictionary.

Posted by Mirko at 02:09 AM | Permalink

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard remains on track for an October release on or around October 26, sources report.
advertisement. That date, the last Friday of the month, is similar to the release date of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, which had been said would debut in April 2005 and finally launched at 6:00 p.m. on Friday, April 29.

Posted by Mirko at 12:00 AM | Permalink

Making your Java application look and feel like a native OS X application has until recently been one of those things that is hard to get right. There are various solutions floating around, but they tend to force you to build and package the application on a Mac and they often involve some manual steps. The OS X Application Bundle Maven plugin solves the packaging part of creating Java applications for OS X.

Posted by Mirko at 02:28 PM | Permalink

Apple in a matter of weeks will roll out Preview 4.0 as part of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, a significant update to its homebred media viewer that will see the application expand from a simple PDF reader into the beginnings of a full-fledged image editor. Here's an extensive look at what's new in Preview.

Posted by Mirko at 08:17 PM | Permalink

Want to try out the latest Leopard beta, but don’t have a dual-layer DVD burner? or maybe you’re just too cheap to buy dual-layer DVDs? This guide will help you install Leopard using only a single-layer DVD. You will need a standard blank DVD and roughly 15 gigs of free space on the drive that you will be performing the image manipulation on. All references to time are based on a 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook and your times may vary depending on processor and drive speed.

Posted by Mirko at 09:10 PM | Permalink

Here's an article about how to use Automator to write a very simple backup utility—you’ll be able to compress and copy a given folder with a single mouse click. While not an ideal backup solution, it’s a great way to make sure your most important folders can be easily backed up. The general idea of the hint isn’t necessarily the specifics of this backup script, but rather to show how simple and yet powerful Automator workflows can be.

Posted by Mirko at 08:50 PM | Permalink

Mac OS X is a powerful platform for Java development. While the Java development environment is fully integrated into Mac OS X, the Eclipse IDE brings a fully integrated Java development environment to Mac OS X that provides a consistent cross-platform experience. Discover how to use this environment to import existing Xcode projects into Eclipse, tweak key bindings, and integrate Eclipse with the Mac OS X-bundled CVS.

Posted by Mirko at 02:12 PM | Permalink

Apple recently seeded developers with yet another build of Mac OS X 10.4.11, destined to be the final update to Tiger. Builds 8S155 (PowerPC) and 8S2155 (Intel) deliver an additional number of bug fixes, including remedies to issues with the BSD Kernel and interlock timeouts, ASR and scanning and restoring, CoreText Layout, and a bug with ImageCapture that creates problems downloading images from an iPhone when the phone has a large number of saved photos.

Posted by Mirko at 05:29 PM | Permalink

The image below shows what happens when you CMD+A in the Applications folder on a MBPro (2.33 GHz Intel with 3 GB DDR2 SDRAM) and accidentally double click....EVERY application on the computer opens at the same time.

Posted by Mirko at 01:14 AM | Permalink

More than a year after claiming to have found a way to take over a Macintosh computer using a flaw in the system's wireless card, David Maynor has published details of his exploit. The details were included in a paper published in the September issue of Uninformed.org, an online hacking magazine. The lengthy paper describes how to run unauthorized software on a Macintosh by taking advantage of a flaw in Apple's AirPort wireless drivers.

Posted by Mirko at 03:45 PM | Permalink

For the most part, connecting a Mac to a corporate LAN doesn't have a world-shattering effect on performance or support. According to William Green, director of networking at the University of Texas in Austin, the Mac has had a minimal impact on the school's infrastructure.
"All OSs behave differently; if you have a multivendor environment, you have to deal with the differences," said Green. "There have not been any special problems related to Macs."

Posted by Mirko at 03:55 PM | Permalink

Apple's Open Directory is a powerful directory services platform that supports a variety of clients, most notably Mac OS X and Windows. Open Directory is based on open-source software, including OpenLDAP and Kerberos, and includes some components specific to Mac OS X Server. As such, Open Directory is an easy-to-manage application for Mac and multiplatform networks. It functions well as a network's sole directory service and can integrate well with Active Directory or, for that matter, with any LDAP-based directory services platform.

Posted by Mirko at 09:25 PM | Permalink

Posted by Mirko at 12:21 AM | Permalink

As Leopard’s release comes closer and closer, everyone’s trying to find new ways to emulate the new OS’ features on Tiger. We’ve already seen how to modify your UI to look like Leopard, but what about the actual Leopard features? Using current, pre-existing apps, you can move some of Leopard’s functionality right over to Tiger.

Posted by Mirko at 04:32 PM | Permalink

Apple will apparently use a media event next month to unveil a new breed of iPod digital music players that have been injected with Mac OS. The Mac, iPhone and Apple TV already rely on derivatives of the Mac OS. In surgically replacing the iPod's Pixo-influenced OS with a modern-day variant of its homebred software, the company will have effectively scaled the Mac OS across its entire product matrix.

Posted by Mirko at 06:03 AM | Permalink

Since time immemorial (or the advent of UNIX--pretty much the same thing), the init program has been the first user-space program to run on Unix-like systems. As systems grew more complex, so did system initialization. The responsibilities of init grew multifold and its implementations diverged. Beginning with the "Tiger" version of Mac OS X, Apple introduced a powerful new way of system initialization: launchd.

Continue reading "Launchd: one program to rule them all" »

Posted by Mirko at 12:30 AM | Permalink

The latest seed, labeled Mac OS X Leopard 9A500n, arrived via Leopard's Software Update mechanism as a "recommended" update for all developers running Mac OS X Leopard build 9A499. In a brief set of release notes, Apple said the 505MB update provides general bug fixes and stability improvements. Developers who've installed the software have responded favorably thus far, reporting that they immediately noticed speed optimizations and improvements to the overall stability of the system.

Posted by Mirko at 01:21 AM | Permalink

In OS X, Apple has innovated with an underlying Unix kernel for better security and less costly management on large networks. But Mac OS continues to run only on Apple's own well-engineered PCs, attested to by many enterprises and other business as more crash-resistant, reliable and long-lasting than other PC hardware. Furthermore, Mac OS continues to require fewer patches than Windows, for easier and less pricey maintenance.

Posted by Mirko at 08:53 PM | Permalink

OS X's commercial credentials recently got a major boost from the Open Group. Thanks to the efforts of Apple's OS boss Kevin Van Vechten and his team, Leopard has cleared all of the hurdles required to attain UNIX 03 certification. That places Apple in elite company. Only Sun, IBM and HP are certified, so OS X turns the Big Three into the Big Four.

Posted by Mirko at 11:24 AM | Permalink

Apple seeded developers this week with the first new builds of Mac OS X 10.5 and Mac OS X Server 10.5 since its Worldwide Developers Conference. Build 9A499 is a 6.9GB download for Mac OS X, and 6.3GB for Mac OS X Server. Detailed release notes are not available for the new builds, but sources have passed on preliminary notes and screenshots.

Posted by Mirko at 12:48 PM | Permalink

All Macs are ready out of the box, but what happens after they're removed from the cardboard cocoon? Lethargy. Torpor. They get slower, too.

For the sake of your Mac's soul, here's 10 commandments of keeping your Mac fresh - Cupertino fresh.

Posted by Mirko at 05:56 PM | Permalink

If you need to get a packet trace and you don't already have a favorite utility for doing so, you can use the tcpdump command line tool. All versions of Mac OS X include this tool, as do many other Unix-style platforms. Keep in mind that the BSD subsystem must be installed in order to use tcpdump.

Posted by Mirko at 12:58 PM | Permalink