Appletell

For those of you who want Spore, but are still running Tiger, we’ve got the fix for you. With some simple .plist editing, you can be on your way to making strange looking aliens in no time! Read on for the fix.

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Apple today released Security Update 2008-002 for Mac OS X 10.4.11 and 10.5.2.

The update addresses more than 40 known bugs. AppKit, X11, CUPS, and Foundation are the most addressed in the update. Password problems that might show your passwords to other local users were addresses in the areas of Podcaster, Kerberos, Preview, and Printing.

There is also an issue that was addressed with the Image RAW framework. The bug made it possible for someone to send a maliciously crafted image that could cause application shutdowns: “A stack based buffer overflow exists in the handling of Adobe Digital Negative (DNG) image files. By enticing a user to open a maliciously crafted image file, an attacker may cause an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. This update addresses the issue through improved validation of DNG image files. This issue does not affect systems prior to Mac OS X v10.5.”

The update is availabl via Software Update and for download for PowerPC [Regular | Server], Leopard [Regular | Server], and Intel [Regular | Server].

Read [About Security Update 2008-002]

Almost all of us have switched over to Leopard, and Tiger may be getting its last update, 10.4.12. MacEnstein reported that “[They] have it on good authority.” Tiger was released two years ago, and very few are on this OS any more. I doubt this means that Apple will be dropping support, and they shouldn’t. Tiger is still useful to many users who use special apps that aren’t Leopard compatible. We can expect them to support Tiger for several years, but move further away from it and closer to Leopard. MacEnstein also reports that they don’t have any specific details on what the update will be for besides, “numerous bug fixes and security updates”

Microsoft employee Jeff Jones has released his findings from a comparison of Vista, XP, OS X Tiger, and RedHat Linux.

“Windows Vista One Year Vulnerability Report” by “Jeffrey R Jones, Security Guy (and Microsoft Director)” already has an inconclusive feel about it as soon as that title page is splashed up. But let’s give it a chance.

Before the report starts, we are met with an Executive Summary, telling me first that “This paper analyzes the vulnerability disclosures and security updates for the first year of Windows Vista and looks at it in the context of its predecessor, Windows XP, along with other modern workstation operating systems Red Hat, Ubuntu and Apple products.”

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Déjà vu?

You are probably wondering what’s going on here. Apple just released a Security Update a couple days ago. Why are they rereleasing it as Security Update 2007-009 1.1? On the surface, this update contains apparently no new features or bug fixes. Actually, the list of changes is exactly the same as the original 2007-009 update.

“Core Foundation / CUPS / Flash Player Plug-in / Launch Services / perl / python / Quick Look / ruby / Safari / Samba / Shockwave Plug-in /Spin Tracer”

It’s turns out there is more here than meets the eye. Apple has found that there browser, Safari, was crashing on “certain” web pages, and re-released the update in order to fix that bug. The update is for Leopard and Tiger, and is recommended for all Safari users. If you haven’t installed the original Secuirty Update 2007-009 yet, you only have to install the new one.

Via [Macenstein]

According to rumor site AppleInsider, the next iteration of Tiger is supposed to solve a whole lot of issues. Known as Mac OS X 10.4.11 build 8S2151 (Intel) and build 8S151 (Power PC), the update will address more than three dozen bugs.

Apparently, the Intel build is currently hindered with bugs that could prevent drives from mounting. In its current form, the update measures a sizable 65MB for Power PC Macs and 119MB for Intel Macs. Expect to see it sometime this month or in early October.

Read [AppleInsider]

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.

1. Time Machine
Time Machine is one of Leopard’s features that I’m most excited for, because I absolutely dread backing up. It takes up time and processing power, and takes up a lot of space when doing multiple backups. However, Time Machine seems to simplify this by backing up in the background, as well as saving multiple versions of files. Unfortunately, no current application truly lives up to Time Machine, but an app called SuperDuper seems to do the trick pretty well. SuperDuper does smart backups, which means that it’ll backup your whole drive once, and from then only backup changed files. This means that a full backup only needs to be done once, and future backups are much smaller.

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