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The Apple Blog
The Apple Blog, published by and for the day-to-day Apple user, is a prominent source for news, reviews, walkthroughs, and real life application of all Apple products.
http://theappleblog.com
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Google the Next .Mac?
People are looking for a cheap, preferably free, way of getting universal access. Question is who will achieve it first, and who will get it right?

Cloud computing seems to be all the rage these days, from business collaboration tools, like Document & Spreadsheet apps, to the YouTube's and Flickr's of the web. Either way you look at it, it would appear that universal access is getting nearer and nearer. Eventually cloud computing will be the only computing, and the only OS you'll need will be completely location independent. But for now, there are a few choices to get started with. Between Apple's .Mac service and Google Apps, which is more likely for consumers to choose?

Let's breakdown the basic features and compare the two:

Basic Features .Mac Google Apps

Mail IMAP IMAP/POP

Online Storage 10 Gigs Shared Unknown

Web Hosting

Backup

Calendar

Address Book

Syncing

.Mac

Since the most recent update, .Mac has brought new and exciting features. The .Mac Web Gallery offers unparalleled ability to share photos and slideshows. Users now have 10 gigs at their disposal to share between Mail and storing files. One feature that has most intrigued me is "Back To My Mac." Currently it lets .Mac users access any of their computers from outside their own network. If I'm at home, I can access my work computer and vice versa. What interests me most is my hope of one day seeing very similar features across the iPhone and iPod Touch platforms. Imagine throwing in a bit of Front Row access, and you're streaming your favorite videos or music from wherever you are. .Mac also offers a complete Backup and Restore utility, the ability to Sync iCal and Address Book across multiple Macs, which can come in handy especially if you're on the go. In total these features will cost you $99 a year.

Google Apps

Currently Google offers 5.6 gigs for Gmail and has announced GDrive, their answer to online storage. Currently the amount of online storage space is unknown but I imagine it to grow similar to Gmail. Knowing Google, this probably won't be your average online storage. Perhaps online sharing and then some? Currently box.net is my choice for online storage. They offer the capability of sharing as well as document editing. With Google you know if they introduce something new, it's going to go above and beyond what you expect.

Google also has Picasa and Blogger under their belt. With Picasa users can currently store and share one gig worth of photos online. Page Creator lets users create websites and upload them to Blogger. Google also features Google Docs & Spreadsheets for online editing. While you may not be able to cross sync computers, or access another computer, having your Calender and Documents stored online makes remote accessibility easy. Having everything edited and stored online means you never have to worry about syncing computers to get the most up to date information. Other features include Google Talk for online communicating, Google Reader, and your own personalized homepage. Naturally the most attractive feature offered by Google is having all these utilities completely mobile and completely free.

One Google to Rule Them All?

Gmail is the true gateway drug. As soon as you switch, you feel compelled to use all the other Google utilities and features available before you. Whether your poison is Google Reader or iGoogle, there's a strong platform to expand on. With their rate of acquisitions, Google can only stand to gain more ground. So for this user, while .Mac may look pretty and be feature friendly, but I'm sticking with Google. You can't beat free, and you can't be mobile the way Google achieves it.

However, I think it's interesting to note that the CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, is also on the Board of Directors for Apple. So while they may be competing for universal access, maybe they really are just be building off of one another.

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Energi To Go Portable Power for iPod (News and Freebies)
Energizer has released a cool new gadget to help extend the life of your iPod charge. The new Energi To Go can extend the runtime of your iPod for an additional 45+ hours of audio on a Nano and additional 11 hours of video on an 80GB video iPod.

The Energi To Go requires two e2 Lithium AA batteries (under $10) and for long trips where power outlets are scarce, this thing is a lifesaver.

The unit, does add a fairly significant amount of “bulk” to your iPod, considering most iPods are so thin…but again, I see this being used more on long trips than on your jog through the park. For the added battery life, the extra bulk is worth it.

Freebies

In addition to news about the Energi To Go, Energizer and Pandora’s new message board were kind enough to hook us up with a couple of these things to give away!

All you have to do is post in the comments below how you think this would benefit you (such as a backpacking trip you’re taking, or a long flight, etc etc).

We’ll pick two winners and Energizer will ship you one of these!

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2007 Apple Year in Review: Security
With the year rapidly coming to a close it’s time for all those year-end retrospectives to pop up across the internets (and traditional media). 2007 was an especially busy year for Apple who introduced a plethora of revolutionary new hardware and software that has given fodder for post-upon-post to blogs old and new.

When not contributing to TAB (or spying on the Caldari for the Amarr in EVE Online) my focus is on all things related to information security (i.e. my day job). With that in mind, I thought it would be interesting to do a “security year in review” as it relates to our favorite OS & hardware vendor to see where we’ve been and where we’re headed, tossing in a bit of advice to help keep your holiday computing secure.

Back To Where We Started From

January kicked off with The Month of Apple Bugs (“official” web site), a project whose sole intent was to show the world that even Apple has a chink in its dragon-scale armor. While daily flaws were revealed, none were earth shattering and the interest in their releases died down substantially very quickly into the project.

The founders showed their lack of professional integrity when they admitted they weren’t notifying vendors before releasing the exploits. If the project’s integrity wasn’t in question from the start, a contingent of vocal uses argued that various bugs had no security impact whatsoever, and it became painfully obvious that the project had to go fishing for issues in many cases since some of the bugs weren’t even for Apple-released products.

Number Crunching

According to the National Vulnerability Database, there were 79 common vulnerabilities & exploits (CVEs) for “Mac OS X” and 45 for “Mac OS X Server”. The same numbers for 2006 were 106 and 55, but these are difficult statistics to trend since the 2005 data shows 96 & 72 respectively. Overall, it does appear that the operating systems get harder to break through as Apple matures.

Apple officially released 32 product and OS security updates, each fixing one or more vulnerabilities (with their latest one for Tiger [10.4] in November 2007 fixing over 40). Unfortunately, Leopard even had a few vulnerabilities as the 10.5.1 update fixed three security issues with the new firewall.

New! Impoved! Insecure!

Two of the product highlights of the year were the release of the iPhone and Apple’s answer to Microsoft Vista - Leopard [OS X 10.5]. The iPhone had detractors from the start, and some of them went off to find a way to make it do what they wanted it to do on their schedule. These hacks have been beaten to death in the blogs and there’s even a central repository for them. Unfortunately, many of them require exposing and exploiting security vulnerabilities on the device in order to “free” them from Apple’s iron grip. Apple has not been as quick as some would like to patch the device, but they have addressed the security issues as they come up and have done a better job issuing fixes and features than other smartphones (and I’ve had smartphones from other vendors). There were reports of broken phones after updates due to using these hacks and it’s my firm belief that you get what you deserve when you decide to exploit security holes in order to gain functionality. Patience will have paid off for those users who decided to wait for Apple to do the right thing and release an API letting developers go beyond pretty iPhone-tailored web pages.

While the iPhone stole the show for the year, Leopard was not without relevance since it may have been the most anticipated operating system release ever (well, perhaps Vista beat it slightly due to the constantly sliding schedule). How successful this release was is a topic for another post, but it was not without many new security features, including application sandboxing, code-signing, library randomization and a new firewall configuration (there was a slew of changes under-the-hood as well). These features were heavily scrutinized, with the new firewall taking an especially hard beating and was the subject of the aforementioned end of year 10.5.1 patch.

Expect The Unexpected

The Mac platform gained even further popularity in 2007, but this visibility came at price. As more users flock to OS X we can expect to see hackers migrate there as well. The engineers over at McAfee’s AVERT Labs identified a rise in crimeware on OS X, showing that the bad guys see profit in targeting this new playground. This was further demonstrated in November when the Net was abuzz with the news of a trojan horse aimed at Mac users. Then again, November is a rather slow news month.

Sadly, 2008 may be a dangerous year for iPhone users with many researches flagging it as a prime target. Given how little problem Apple supporters have with handing over the platform to the enemy by identifying and exploiting vulnerabilities, I’m not surprised.

Keeping Safe For The Holidays

‘Tis the season to demonstrate our wanton consumption and many happy individuals will be recipients of a brand new Mac later this month. While the out-of-the-box Mac experience is still a fairly secure one there are some things you can do to ensure that it stays that way.

Even though new boxes will be shipping with Leopard, the Tiger Security Configuration Guide - approved by our friends at the NSA & Apple - provides a good starting point for boosting the security profile of your dektop. If you’re really the adventurous type, you can even make your Leopard firewall experience a bit more secure.

The advent of real malware on the Mac means that you should also definitely consider using anti-virus/anti-malware software. Thankfully, there are many to choose from. McAfee VirusScan 8.6 was the first Leopard compatible anti-virus product, with MacScan (more spyware-focused) and Sophos Endpoint Security & Control coming in shortly thereafter. Norton seems to be lagging behind, but it’s in good company with the freely available ClamXav.

For all those Airport Extreme recipients, you should definitely check out Glenn Fleishman’s Take Control of Your 802.11n AirPort Extreme Network to ensure you’ve configured your network as securely as possible.

And To All A Good Night

Overall, my take is that 2007 was a good year for Apple in terms of security. The Cupertino crew smacked down bugs as quickly as they arose and managed to build products with new features that have laid the foundation for even more secure applications and operating systems in the coming years. Despite the news that Macs are in the sights of more malicious malcontents, it remains the most secure and productive computing platform available today.

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FastMac Optical Drive Upgrade Kit
I have two older Macs at home, a Powerbook G4-1.5Ghz and an iMac G5-1.8Ghz (both purchased in 2004 and now out of AppleCare). When I was given the opportunity to upgrade the DVD-burner in ether of those machines with the FastMac Optical Drive Upgrade Kit ($149.95), I jumped at the opportunity. Burning CDs or DVDs takes forever. I was sent the APP-5691 kit, which is a 8X Super Drive. The box is about 2.5″ high, and just a bit larger than a CD. Upon opening the box I see a lot of padding, a CD, and the drive in an anti-static bag.

I looked through the files on the CD, and discovered this drive would work in either of my computers. Having opened my Powerbook case before, I knew I wouldn’t be doing that again anytime soon. So I looked through the CD for the instructions on how to replace my iMac’s drive. Hmm, odd, no instructions. I went to the FastMac web site, and couldn’t find any instructions there either. In fact, I kept going in circles through their site navigation. Intuitive it wasn’t.

So I submitted a tech support email. Three hours later I received a message back saying that they needed to know the size of my screen and speed of the processor so they could help me. I sent them that information, and 15 minutes later was told to download the documentation from Apple.com. It seems quite strange to refer customers to the manufacturer’s web site for instructions, but ok. The Apple manual was very detailed, and having opened up my iMac before to upgrade the RAM and to install an Airport card, I was sure this would be an easy upgrade.

Yeah, and I won’t get any junk mail from any politicians before November’s elections.

I Need a What?

I did a backup of my data, just in case. I then used Disk Utility to create an empty DVD disk image. I burned that disk image to a DVD, and 53 minutes later, it was finished. I unplugged everything from the iMac, gave it a few minutes to cool down, then lay it face down on the carpet, opened the case, unscrewed the brass screws (and only the brass screws) and removed my DVD drive from the iMac. That’s when I noticed the FastMac drive didn’t have the connector on it. The connector plugs the back of the drive into the iMac motherboard. No problem, I’ll just unscrew it from the old drive and put it on the new drive. Look closely at the connector in this photo:

It takes a tiny Torx screwdriver. Ugh! Who has those lying around? I email technical support again asking where to get a tool for that. They write back quickly to suggest an electronic or computer store. Gee, thanks. I put the iMac back together. The next day I go to the local hardware store, and buy the smallest set of Torx bits I can find. I take the iMac apart again, remove the drive, and yell. The bits are too large. I put everything back together again. The next week I visit a computer store and buy a Torx bit set, with sizes T3 through T10.

I get home, dismember my iMac again, and discover that the iMac G5 uses a T6 Torx screwdriver. I take the connector off of the iMac drive, and connect it to the FastMac drive. Whew, almost done! Of course then I notice that the iMac drive is wider than the new drive. Of course, I also have to remove the mounting bracket from the iMac drive, and add that to the FastMac drive. Again, you need the T6 Torx bit, and be careful not to mess up the rubber along the bottom edges of the mounting bracket. You need to slide the drive out of the bracket by pushing fairly hard on the drive. Do not squeeze the drive while handling it, you can mess up the alignment of the laser. Fifteen minutes later I mount the new drive onto the iMac. Everything goes back together, plug all the cables back in, and voila! The iMac starts right up.

I check System Profiler and it does see the new drive:

I then burn the empty DVD image. It’s finished in 24 minutes. I get another disk, and burn a backup of some of my Music folder. 14 minutes, all done, works great.

One thing that is different is the original drive had a covering over the slot, so when you insert a disc it slides more smoothly. The FastMac drive has a larger opening, so it feels like the disc is not actually being inserted, but then the drive will pull the disc in. It’s just different, and I think I’ll get used to it.

Bottom line

FastMac Tech support is ok, although their web site could very easily be improved by adding in a few web pages pointing people to the Apple upgrade documentation, and FastMac should tell people about needing to move the connector and mounting bracket from the old drive to the new drive. I’m wondering if FastMac is expecting to only sell these upgrades to consultants and other geeks, rather than the general home user. Apple’s instructions assume you are replacing the drive with an Apple-supplied part. The drive so far has worked just fine. The actual drive swap was fairly straightforward, although if you’ve never done a hardware upgrade before, it will be scary. If you have an older Mac, a drive upgrade will help you keep some life in the machine. Another school of thought is to not upgrade older computers, and instead put that money into your computer replacement budget.

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