Stan's List

The Mac OS X 10.5.4 Update is recommended for all users running Mac OS X Leopard and includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility and security of your Mac.

What’s included?

General

* Includes recent Apple security updates.
* Resolves an issue with saving and reopening Adobe Creative Suite 3 files on a remote server.
* Includes additional RAW image support for several cameras.
* Addresses an issue that may result in a partially installed X11 application.
* Improves L2TP VPN client reliability.

AirPort

* Addresses AirPort reliability issues with 5GHz networks.
* Addresses AirPort issues that may result in slower performance in Logic Studio or MainStage.

iCal

* Improves overall iCal reliability for meeting requests, cancellation notices, delegation, and syncing with iPhone.
* Resolves an issue that prevents deleting an iCal event without notifying the creator.
* Addresses an issue in which events in all calendars affect availability. A checkbox now enables information-only calendars to be transparent from free/busy lookups.
* Resolves a UI issue preventing delegated calendars from showing up as a separate window.
* Addresses an issue with copying and pasting attendees from one event to another.
* Resolves an issue in which iCal may not delete events after a specified time interval, even when set to do so in iCal preferences.
* Addresses an issue in which To Dos cannot be marked private.

Safari

* Addresses a potential performance issue when loading secure web pages.
* Resolves issues that may be encountered when accessing secure web pages with client certificates that reside on a smart card.

Spaces and Exposé

* Addresses an issue in which switching from a space with a Finder window keeps the Finder as the active application instead of the application residing in the destination space.
* Fixes an issue in which dragging an application from the list of application assignments in Spaces System Preferences does not assign the application to the desired space.
* Resolves an Exposé issue that may result in only a subset of windows being shown.

Pro Applications Updates improve reliability for Apple’s professional applications and are recommended for all users of Final Cut Studio, Final Cut Server, and Logic Studio.

Final Cut Pro 6.0.4
Compressor 3.0.3

The move to Intel processors brought along many hardware similarities with their now PC brethren. One advantage not always available in PPC Macs is overclocking. Previously overclocking often involved unsoldering and soldering transistors or timing crystals on the motherboard. This, unsurprisingly, created the CPU upgrade market.

Overclocking has been a staple in the PC world nearly since the beginning. Motherboards are often judged on their ability to be overclocked. ZDNet (Germany) has the first such tool for the Mac Pro. All done in software, it is an easy way to boost memory frequency, front side bus and CPU speeds:

ZDNet uses three Mac Pros as test machines. One comes from the first Intel/Mac Pro generation (Mac Pro 1.1) with 65-nanometer processors and 1333-MHz front side bus. The others come from the third generation with 45-nanometer processors and 1600-MHz front side bus, as sold by Apple since January 2008 (Mac Pro 3.1). The first computer is equipped with two 2.66 GHz X5355 processors, and runs stable at 3.10 GHz, see figure 2. The other two have two 2.80 GHz E5462 processors. These can be overclocked up to 3.24 GHz and remain stable.

All PPC Macs are not left out in the cold. If your Mac has an ATI video card, such as a Radeon 9800 Pro or a Radeon X800 XT or before, there is ATIccelerator II. The big advantage over the previous Graphiccelerator is that ATIccelerator does not flash the video cards ROM. Only the latest Radeon X1600 and X1900 cards are not supported.

ATIccelerator II can change ATI graphics cards frequencies live, on-the-fly, under Mac OS X. It’s much more sophisticated and convenient to use than Graphiccelerator for the following reasons:

* no potentially dangerous flashing required
* no cumbersome three-steps process (dump, modify, then reflash ROM)
* no need to reboot for every frequency change
* no OS 9 required (that’s right, G5s and other recent OS 9-free Macs are now supported!)

It is not only the iPhone that will be surging. iPod is predicted to increase sales by 15%. iPod classic numbers are expected to result in fewer iPhone Touches sold. MacBook and MacBook Pro may increase by as much as 35 percent. Desktops and Mac Pros are in for a 20 percent increase. It is expected that chip makers will now respect what is obviously healthy productions levels, InformationWeek reports.

ComputerWorld reports that the gain is 100 percent from what it was 2 years ago. “Apple has graduated into the big league.” Then it was one or two Macs, now there are reports of 50 to 1000 are present in a number of businesses. A substantial motivation is the ability to virtualize other operating systems. The reliability and stability are recognized, but interviews reveal there will be no whole sale replacement as some do not see the software tools equal to that of Windoze. While, surprisingly IT personnel are pointing out that the Mac OS tools are not always recognized for what they are or what potential they have. More …

Open XML Converter allows you to convert Open XML files that were created in Office 2008 for Mac or Office 2007 for Windows so that you can open, edit, and save them in earlier versions of Office for Mac. Open XML Converter can convert Word documents, Excel workbooks, and PowerPoint presentations that are in the Open XML Format so that you can open and edit the files in Office 2004 for Mac and Office v. X for Mac. You can choose to convert and open one file, or convert a large number of files.

Download

Office 2008 12.1.1:
This update contains several changes that improve stability and performance for Office 2008 for Mac programs.

Description of the Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac 12.1.1 Update

Office 2004 11.5.0 update:

The Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac 11.5.0 Update improves compatibility when you use documents that were created in Office 2008 for Mac and in 2007 Office for Windows. If you have installed the Open XML File Format Converter for Mac, this update enables Office 2004 for Mac to read and to write Office documents that are in Open XML Format. This update also improves stability.

Description of the Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac 11.5.0 Update

Intego Security Memo:

Exploit: OSX.Trojan.PokerStealer

The Trojan horse, when run, activates ssh on the Mac on which it is running, then sends the user name and password hash, along with the IP address of the Mac, to a server. It asks for an administrator’s password after displaying a dialog saying, “A corrupt preference file has been detected and must be repaired.” Entering the administrator’s password enables the program to accomplish its tasks. After gaining ssh access to a Mac, malicious users can attempt to take control of them, delete files, damage the operating system, or much more.

Security Focus reports of multiple Mac Trojan horses in the wild. The attack is against Apple Remote Desktop and rooted through AppleScript: osascript -e ‘tell app “ARDAgent” to do shell script “whoami”‘; for anyone, unless the normal user switched to fast user switching.

As with all Trojan Horses, the possibility of success is totally in the hands of the user. In order to succeed, an email must induce you to click on a URL (web link) which takes you to a malicious webpage, or you web surf and find the malicious webpage. There you are further induced to download the Trojan Horse and then open the file once downloaded. As in phishing, the success rate is small, but it does not take but a few to make it worthwhile.

Nathan points to discussion on the subject on MacInTouch’s Security Reader Report.
http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/security/index.html#d21jun2008

First, he wants to emphasis, due to the amount of user participation necessary, there is still no need for anti-virus software.

The Trojan Horse has the ability to do damage by escalating its security privilege to Root because a vulnerability in ARDAgent allows access to SetUID.

This workaround removes SetUID:

A viable fix right now is to remove SetUID from the ARDAgent executable. Run this from an administrator account:

This will cause a warning with Repair Permissions but will prevent the problem until Apple releases a fix.

Editorial: If everyone was as sharp as Nathan (compliment) then phishing would never work. Unfortunately, this is not true. I have anti-virus software as I sent and receive a ton of email, visit a number of web pages in search of information for this list. I do not want to inadvertently forward a virus or a trojan horse.

Apple announces that over 5 billion songs have been downloaded. The milestone seemingly has no where to go but up, especially with the largest music catalog now with over 8 million songs, 2 million more than just a few months ago. More than 50,000 movies are rented or purchased everyday.

The iPhone is predicted to steal market share from the iPod. I have a 3rd and 4th generation iPod, and each are used often. The iPhone will not replace these iPods. With an iPhone, I do not want a video iPod. This will only continue with an increased capacity iPhone. What becomes a possibility is an Apple TV.