After small developers fixed the bugs released by the MoAB people using APE technology, what do the MoAB people do? They go after APE and completely misinform the public, starting with CNet.

First the title, "Flaw found in Apple bug-fix tool," is all kinds of wrong. It implies that it is an Apple product, which we know is not true and is stated properly in the article text.

They then go on to describe the vulnerability. APE installs itself in /Library where its supposed to go. /Library is writable by local admins. So a local admin can replace the APE executable and gain root privileges. Read that again. A local admin can replace the APE binary to gain root access.

A local admin, an effective root user account, can gain root access.

Or they could open up NetInfo Manager and enable the root account and enter in a password of their own choosing and then log into the GUI as root. Or they could open up Terminal and run sudo sh and get a root shell.

This is simple revenge. Rosyna called them trolls and linked to an APE fix for one of their bugs. I think Rosyna may be right of the 9 published bugs, 4 of them are not from Apple provided software.

Australian tech sites are really inferior.

Apple and Microsoft: a tale of two piracy fighters is an article comparing the anti-piracy methods used by Apple and Microsoft. Besides being pointless it gets its basic facts wrong, and compares two drastically different areas of piracy, music and software.

My first issue with the article is that it sites the often quoted figure of there being only 20-25 songs on an iPod purchased through the iTunes Store. The author then lists several other sources of music and implies heavily that they are all illegal and illegitimate. He then mentions Apple has no intention of checking for illegal downloads on iPods, as if there is anyway to compare a legal ripping of your CD to a downloaded file.

However the biggest blunder is this quote: Unlike the case with Apple, the majority of Microsoft software sitting on users' machines is legitimate. From that sentence you'd imagine that the average Mac is full of pirated software, but what he really means is music not purchased via the iTunes Store.

The last bit is he's comparing the company that allows nearly full control over purchased songs, 5 computers can play back the song, you can burn it to a CD, and you can sync it to any number of iPods to the company that forced the anti-piracy Windows Geniuine Advantage as a security update, who requires activation of their software or else it disables itself and who abandoned their Plays4Sure DRM scheme for a custom one for their own digital media player.

The Zune is a social network music player. Let's see how that works.

Social Zune User 1: Here let me let you listen to this track.
Social Zune User 2: Okay.
SZU 1: Sending it now.
SZU 2: Okay.
SZU 1: Done.
SZU 2: Okay.
*SZU 2 Listens*
SZU 2: Wow what a great song. Let me go buy it right away before Microsoft's user friendly, and industry friendly, DRM limits my right to listen to shared music. Thanks Zune!
SZU 1: Yes. Thanks Zune. I don't know what we did before.

Now the iPod way, or the realistic way.

Social iPod User 1: Listen to this track. *hands ear phones to friend*
*Social iPod User 2 listens*
SiU 2: Can you burn me a copy?
SiU 1: Sure.

Tags: zune

If you have a modern Apple notebook computer, any Core Duo laptop or last generation PowerBook, it supports Apple's hibernate mode where it writes the contents of memory to disk when the power cuts off. The upside is that it uses no power for a sleep state, unlike regular sleep. The downsides are that it actually goes into regular sleep and will only hibernate when the power runs out and that OS X keeps a file the size of the amount of RAM you have installed in the computer, so a 2GB file for 2GB of RAM.

While this feature may come in handy you'll probably never be in a situation where your sleeping computer will be in danger of having its battery run out of power before you find an outlet.

To turn this off open up Terminal and paste the following into it:

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0

enter your password when prompted.

Next paste this in:

sudo rm /var/vm/sleepimage

to delete the sleepimage file.

Now you'll have that much more free space left for other things.

Tags: sleepimage, hint, apple

Here's my 60GB 5G iPod after applying Software 1.2

Tags: broken, ipod

So my MacBook has returned from Apple repair this past Tuesday and I was pleasantly surprised. It works, it actually works. I have used it as my primary computer for the past three days using it the way I would normally use my computer and it has functioned without an issue, or even a hint of an issue.

It has transcoded avi videos to mpeg-4 videos, it has ripped and encoded from DVDs, it has run Parallels along side those activities. Basically it has survived my usage without fucking up.

Only down side is that my keybaord bulges out around the sides and looks odd. I shall be going to an Apple store to see if they can fix that in store.

The title is too long for the title field in my database. I suck.

Tags: macbook, apple, applecare

I ordered a brand spankin new 2GHz MacBook through Amazon in mid August. Here it is September 1st and I have yet to use the computer for more than an hour straight. It has spent more time in with Apple's repair shop than on my desk, or warming me up at night.

The MacBook suffers from a severe case of “I don't want to do that” syndrome and shuts down or goes to sleep when any heavy work needs to get done.

So 48 hours after opening it the MacBook went back to Apple. They replaced some video cable stuff and it came back rather quickly, unfixed of course. Within an hour of using it I could repeat the problem and called it in. It came down as a backlight issue, silly me for focusing on the backlight and only mentioning it going into a sleep/shut down state every single time, and mentioning that it worked when hooked to an external display.

So back it went to Apple, as a backlight issue. When they were unable to reproduce the issue it went into an “on hold - need information” state. The peculiar thing about this state is that you have to contact Apple, the fact that they know your contact information from the initial call and the form you fill out doesn't mean they will contact you. So I called Apple up, gave the AppleCare phone chick more information, which I gave everyone already but boiled down to a simple “backlight issue.”

So there my computer sits, in the repair queue, waiting to be fixed and join me back where it belongs.

Tags: apple, macbook, applecare, problem

What .Mac Needs To Become - O'Reilly Mac DevCenter Blog is yet another post about how Apple's .Mac service is failing people and falling behind the times. I will take each of his 5 wants point by point.

iApps on the Web. I completely agree with this one. I want to edit iCal calendars on the web and have it sync with my desktop iCal. I'd love to add quick edits to an iWeb site through the web and have it resync to the desktop copy of the site. So he's +1.

.Mac as a hosting supplier..Mac costs about $9 a month and Dreamhost costs $8 a month for much more space, bandwidth, email accounts, etc. But there's one major difference. Apple makes programs that allows people to use thier .Mac space while Dreamhost bets on people not using their space. In other words to be competitive in the web hosting market Dreamhost has to offer these specs at this price or they'll get no customers while Apple makes tools to allow their customers to use this space. It's that simple. Right now I have 300MB of space left on my iDisk, the bulk of that is taken up by my automated backups. It's quite easy to clear that out and start the cycle over again. If I had more space I'd keep it around much longer, and, you know, actually use that space I have. By Not knowing the market that .Mac is marketed to and how Dreamhost can offer what they offer he gets deducted a point to bring him back down to 0.

.Mac as a web server solution. The point of .Mac is for integration with the iLife suite of programs. To want a complete hosting package out of that is to not get what .Mac is. However I could see a .Mac Pro that allows for this advanced functionality with the classic .Mac ease of use for an increase in price. I'll call this one a wash so the score remains 0.

Seamless sync. This one already exists in .Mac and can be enabled in the .Mac system preferences. For not knowing the existing features of .Mac he gets a deduction of 5 points to bring his score to -5

Speed and Reliability. No complaints from me about speed or reliability, but pushing for faster and better scores him one point for a final score of -4

As you can see most people don't get .Mac and what it is. .Mac enables people to be creative and put their digital life online. Hosting providers allow it but don't help you. Web 2.0 apps allow it but aren't seamless. The storage will increase, the features will be added, and the ability to use .Mac features in desktop apps will become more common when the .Mac SDK 2.0 is released.

» Mac Pro pricing: Where did Apple's edge go? | Paul Murphy | ZDNet.com

So where did Apple's price/performance advantage go? How do you lose competitive advantage on price and performance while everyone's component prices are going down at about the same rate and you're using the same manufacturing services everybody else is?

The answer in three letters? MacTel.

No. The real answer in three letters is RAM. Apple charges an astronomical markup on RAM prices which creates an artificially high price for a top of the line system. When I ordered my MacBook to get 2GB of RAM from Apple it would have cost me $500, I went with a third party and got it for $155+2 day shipping. If you deck the Mac Pro out with a full 16GB of RAM from Apple you might as well sell your kidney to cover the cost.

iTRC has received some good reviews on MacUpdate and Versiontracker, so here's a sneak preview of what 1.4 will look like.