NZMac.com News

News: Passware FileVault cracking, Mac OS X 10.7.3 released, the Apple iTV, and more!

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 14:25:36 GMT

A company called Passware has revealed they can crack Lion's full-disk encryption as used in FileVault 2 in under an hour. Their software, also by the same name, uses a FireWire connection to inspect the computer's memory in order to extract the encryption key — which can then be used to crack the password. Of course, there are several caveats to this kind of security: if an individual has physical access to your machine, you've likely got more issues to worry about. Plus, the software isn't cheap at US $995.

Mac OS X 10.7.3 has hit Software Update, which means you can update your machines at your leisure. It's a relatively minor update, but it does add support for a few new languages, as well as fix a few issues here and there. If you have a few machines to update or have been burnt by delta updates before, make sure you grab the combo update from the Apple website.

There's a great read on iLounge, where editor Jeremy Horwitz makes the case for (and against) and Apple iTV. It's a reasonably lengthy read, but it's definitely up there in terms of where Apple might be going with an Apple iTV in the future.

Apple were working on increasing the quality of digital music, and Neil Young reveals he was working with Steve Jobs in this area to shake up the music industry even more.

News: Final Cut Pro X update, ZFS on the Mac, scanning to the cloud, and more!

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:24:26 GMT

Apple has released a significant update to Final Cut Pro X that adds a few features in order to play catch up with some of the features requested by video pros. The second update brings the version number up to 10.0.3, but I wouldn't be fooled — the new version adds multicam editing capabilities, advanced chroma keying, and improved XML support for greater compatibility with third party plugins. Some video pros are still saying it's "too little, too late" from Apple, but if nothing else, adding such significant features means that Apple is at least trying to do the right thing.

ZFS support was slated to become a very cool new feature in Snow Leopard, but that didn't happen. Thanks to Apple's former chief ZFS architect, though, you can now use ZFS on Lion with his company's app, called ZEVO. ZEVO brings the technology of the ZFS filesystem to your Mac in a way that's entirely Mac-like; it's extremely easy to use.

Proprietors of scanners had their heads in the cloud as evidenced by their scanners which all feature some kind of cloud integration. The scanners by Neat Company, Apparent and Amblr were all portable models that all interacted with the cloud.

The newly-released AirPort Utility brings a few new interfaces, but that's not counting what functionality was removed. TUAW has a nice pictorial comparison of what features were removed in AirPort Utility 6; thankfully, Apple still allow you to download version 5.6 from their website.

News: Airport Utility updated, MacBook Air LandingZone, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, and more!

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 11:22:09 GMT

Apple has released an updated version of their AirPort Utility for Lion, and now it looks very much like its iOS counterpart. The updated AirPort Utility for Mac brings the version number up to 6, features a new visual map of your network, and is generally a very nice upgrade. Some users may lament over the ability to see client signal strength and other detailed information such as logged data, but overall this is a refreshing updated aimed at making things more visual for users.

The Verge has a hands-on session with the MacBook Air LandingZone, a curiously Thunderbolt-less dock for the MacBook Air that was recently successfully funded on Kickstarter. The LandingZone comes in both 11 and 13-inch flavours to suit both models of MacBook Air, features two USB ports, an Ethernet port as well as mini DisplayPort passthrough, but there's no Thunderbolt port to be seen.

Bill Gates wrote a letter to Steve Jobs as the latter was dying, and reports say Jobs kept the letter by his bedside. The Telegraph has the full story, including details on how Jobs' wife Laurene phoned Gates later on and told him how much the letter meant to Jobs.

TextExpander may be the king of Mac TextExpander apps, but there are often free alternatives that do similar jobs. Mac AppStorm compares two such free alternatives, DashExpander and xType.

News: Apple patents with magnets, patently false and offensive, Autodesk Inventor Fusion, and more!

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 13:14:49 GMT

A new set of patents from Apple reveals what the company could eventually do with magnets, and what a fantastic patent it is (even if it, like most technology described in patents, never sees the light of day in actual products). Magnets could eventually be used to control ferrofluids to provide haptic feedback in keyboards, for example, or even to implement security devices using magnets. The full patent report by Patently Apple is an eye-opening read.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has called the New York Times report on Apple's supply chain "patently false and offensive", after the Times asserted that high-level Apple executives turned the other way when faced with issues regarding the treatment and conditions at many of Apple's component supplier factories. If nothing else, Apple cares about their supply chain — as evidenced by the supplier responsibility report they released not too long ago.

Macworld is over for another year, but not before Autodesk revealed their plans to bring Inventor Fusion to the Mac. Inventor Fusion was previously a product only available to Windows customers — and now, Autodesk says they'll be releasing a tech preview in the next few weeks with the full version to follow not long after.

The Apple Campus is adorned with memorable pictures and quotes of Steve Jobs, in a continued tribute to the man who made Apple the great company it is today.

News: employee discounts, MyBook Thunderbolt Duo, Cobook, and more!

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 14:21:04 GMT

Last week Tim Cook held a meeting at Town Hall where he unveiled to Apple employees a new employee discount. The new employee discount sees Apple employees receiving a $500 discount on new Mac hardware, as well as $250 off the price of iPad. What's interesting is that 9 to 5 Mac report that the discount is on top of an already-existing 25% discount on hardware, but given the generous discount some Mac models are excluded: most notably the Mac Mini.

Just like CES before it, Macworld|iWorld has unveiled a few new products that may be of interest to Mac users. Particularly interesting is the unveiling of the Western Digital MyBook Thunderbolt Duo, an external Thunderbolt device that allows units to be daisy-chained in order to make one logical unit. What's more, the drives within the unit are user serviceable, meaning that you'll be able to upgrade or replace the drives yourself without voiding your warranty.

Fantastical has been widely acclaimed for adding natural language support to iCal, and now Cobook is doing a similar thing with Address Book. It's not available yet, but it was shown off at Macworld just the other day.

A new Mac SuperBundle has been launched, and it contains 10 bestselling Mac Apps for just $49. Parallels makes the bundle worth it just by itself, but there are other Mac apps that make it worth it.

News: Cook on iCloud, lesser-known facts from Apple's earnings call, Inside Apple, and more!

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:34:16 GMT

The transcript of Tim Cook on the Apple earnings call has a small section dedicated to iCloud, but his remarks on iCloud are as important as the rest. With 85 million iCloud subscribers, Gruber says it's extremely likely iCloud will be a big part of what Apple are aiming to do in the next ten years, and would be surprised to see any Apple product released from here on in without some kind of iCloud integration.

Chris Rawson from TUAW discusses a few of the lesser-known, but still important points from Apple's earnings call. Sometimes it's all too easy to focus on the big numbers and compare them to Apple's competitors, but when people want more Apple gear and they already have iOS devices, where do they look? Towards the Mac, of course.

Adam Lashinky's much-publicised book Inside Apple is now available on the iBookstore, except apparently if you're a resident of New Zealand (apparently you guys don't even have a paid iBookstore to call your own). What's up with that, Apple? Australia has had paid iBooks for quite a while now, so what's the holdup on the other side of the pond? Anyway, you can probably buy the book from Amazon or similar.

Simplify is a new mini player for the Mac that allows you to control iTunes, Rdio (which is available in New Zealand), Spotify (which isn't), has customisable keyboard shortcuts, presents a nice album art picture, and is available on the Mac App Store.

News: Apple's quarterly results, Lion Server for home use, Macintosh birthday, and more!

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 12:57:34 GMT

Apple's quarterly earnings call happened yesterday, and the results were pretty amazing (even for a company like Apple). Record sales of $46 billion coupled with a record profit of $13 billion alongside 37 million iPhones, 15.4 million iPads, and 5.2 million Macs. With those kinds of numbers, Apple now has almost $100 billion in cash — which begs the question: are they looking to do anything with all that money laying around?

Ars Technica investigates whether Lion Server is suitable for use in a home environment. With the introduction of Lion server, many things were simplified in an attempt to make things easier for the server administrator — but that, in itself, has lead to additional complexities that even experienced server admins might not know about. At the end of the day, it's probably not as suited to home use as it could have been.

The Macintosh turned 28 earlier this week, and it was on January 24, 1984 that the very first Macintosh was announced by none other than Steve Jobs. Happy 28th birthday, Macintosh — perhaps you're not as popular as your iOS counterparts seem to be, but you'll always have a special place in my book...

...Which makes me quite hesitant to read articles like this from ZDNet, where they speculate that Apple's success could kill off the Macintosh as we know it. I doubt such an event would ever happen, but there's anecdotal evidence that it could.

News: gigabit Wi-Fi, iCloud bookmark bugs, Apple's product packaging, and more!

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 13:04:49 GMT

Apple are expected to adopt the gigabit Wi-Fi standard much earlier than the spec will be fully ratified by the IEEE, similar to how they supported the draft versions of 802.11n before that was fully ratified. Their support for the new 802.11ac standard will most likely be due to chip-maker Broadcom, who already support the new standard in a few variations of their chips — chips that are used in most Apple products for Wi-Fi.

ICloud bookmark syncing doesn't seem to have worked out so well for many users, with many users complaining of duplicated — sometimes hundreds, even thousands of times — bookmarks. Nothing that users do seems to alleviate the issue, either: turning off iCloud sync, removing the bookmarks, then turning iCloud bookmark sync back on again just re-downloads all the thousands of bookmarks.

It should come as no surprise that Apple has a designer whose job it is to design the best possible implementation of the pull-tab you see on many Apple products, the pull tab that separates the clear protective plastic from the actual packaging of the device itself. Some call it an unboxing room, but I just call it par for the course at Apple.

If you want to play with the new iBooks Author but can't get it installed on your system because you're still using Snow Leopard, you'll be happy to know there's a simple workaround. It involves editing the SystemVersion.plist, and OS X Daily has the steps to take you through it.

News: Universal Audio Apollo, 349 million microphones, OS X and data on separate drives, and more!

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:50:30 GMT

As we start to see Thunderbolt devices trickle into the market, we start to see impressive Thunderbolt devices enter the market. The Apollo is one such peripheral from Universal Audio that is a high-resolution audio interface that's rackmountable and features classic analog sound. It's an incredibly impressive piece of hardware for audio professionals, that is best suited for studio-quality recordings.

349 million is a pretty big number, especially when you consider it's the number of microphones that Apple used for iOS devices in 2011. According to iHS research, MEMS microphones likes the ones used in the iPhone 4, iPad 2, as well as the headphones with microphone are becoming increasingly popular — and with Apple, 349 million microphones means it's the world's number one buyer of microphones.

Some iMac models can come with a solid state drive that's separate to the main spinning hard drive, so what do you do if you want to keep your OS and data separate from each other? Macworld has the answer, and it involves moving your home folder to another volume, but thankfully there's a nice place in OS X that makes it all very easy.

Apple just introduced iBooks and iBooks Author for easy-to-create interactive textbooks, but what you might not have known was that Steve Jobs originally said "what's wrong with education cannot be fixed with technology" in a 1996 interview with Wired.

News: iBooks Author hands-on, made in China, xScope 3, and more!

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 14:23:36 GMT

IBooks Author is a fantastic new piece of software from Apple that allows users to create interactive textbooks with ease, but its launch has been marred by licensing and format issues, report Ars Technica. More specifically, the EULA of iBooks Author seems to imply that people cannot sell their iBooks Author-produced work outside of the iBookstore — just like apps on iOS, produced using Xcode.

The New York Times has an intriguing article on why Apple products are made in China — it's the kind of article that could have been written about any company, but has a particular relevance to Apple as it was President Obama that asked the question of what it would take for iPhones to be made in America. With the release of the Apple supplier responsibility report providing a nice context, the Times' report on this issue is extremely interesting.

XScope 3 is a new Mac app that was released not too long ago. It's primarily a design app, aimed at those that do any kind of precise design work with iOS or Mac apps — and it has a few cool features, such as the ability to mirror a Mac app on your iOS device.

The Mac Observer has a nice feature on how to use the Console to diagnose and troubleshoot problems with your Mac. Sometimes all it takes to track down the culprit of crashes is a short trip into a few logs, and that's exactly what the Console is designed for.

News: iBooks Author, Mac malware statistics, LaCie d2 USB 3 review, and more!

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 18:21:40 GMT

Apple announced and released a few tools this morning as part of their education event that took place in New York, and one of them was the Mac portion of the iPad education revolution. IBooks Author allows users to create, edit, and publish their own multi-touch books for the iPad using web standards such as HTML5, JavaScript, and webGL, and the final products that can be produced are simply stunning.

Security analysts F-Secure has released statistics to do with malware on the Mac platform. F-Secure says the Mac faced 58 malware threats during the latter half of last year, and of those, roughly half were trojans, with between 10 and 12 occurrences of malware every month.

Macworld review the LaCie d2 USB 3, which comes with much more than just a USB 3 connection, also including FireWire 800 and eSATA. What's interesting is that Apple seem to prefer Thunderbolt over USB 3, but Thunderbolt isn't a feature on this particular drive. What gives, LaCIe?

Another day, another release of OS X 10.7.3 seeded to developers. Build 11D46 was made available for download two days ago, coming a little under a week under the release of 11D42. This will most likely be the last release before a public release.

News: episodic TV content, Inside Apple preview, Das Keyboard for Mac, and more!

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 17:38:52 GMT

AppleInsider describes a patent by Apple that details how episodic TV content could be used in a new Apple TV. The patent, which credits Steve Jobs as the inventor, describes how episodic content could be organised according to metadata, and also the display of that content in a user interface similar to the multi-level system of the current Apple TV.

Inside Apple is an upcoming book which attempts to detail the secrets behind one of the most secretive companies of our time. Audhor Adam Lashinky also tells the story of an Apple executive named Scott Forstall, who, he says, could be poised to become the next CEO of Apple after Tim Cook.

The thing about most mechanical keyboards is that they're designed for the PC — finding a mechanical keyboard for the Mac has been an exhausting exercise — until now, with Das Keyboard now taking pre-orders for their Model S for the Mac.

Lion introduced media capabilities right inside the Finder, and OS X Daily tells you how to leverage some of those with their tip on how to convert video to an audio track directly from the Finder.

News: email to Apple staff, textbook publishing, interview with John Sculley, and more!

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:49:49 GMT

An email was sent to Apple staff the other day from CEO Tim Cook, and in that email Cook described the current situation of the conditions of Apple's supply chain. The general tone of the email was overall positive, and the email was released around the same time Apple released the 2012 Supplier Responsibility Report, which also contained details on Apple's suppliers, as well as a list of over 150 companies that supplied Apple with materials or parts used in their products.

New rumours have surfaced regarding the Apple education event set to happen in New York later this week, which attempt to pinpoint exactly what Apple will be announcing and/or releasing. At the moment, all signs point to a release that will potentially "digitally destroy" textbook publishing, and there's even hints that a GarageBand for eBooks could potentially be released, whatever such a statement implies.

The BBC recently interviewed former Apple CEO John Sculley, who took the opportunity to clarify a few things about Apple. Namely, the fact that he didn't fire Jobs and how he's seen the company grow from only having $2 billion in cash to having the amount it does now, over $82 billion.

TUAW has a few secrets to show you that are all to do with the hidden secret apps of CoreServices, a little-known folder that contains a few useful utilities.

News: MacBook Air birthday, video pros moving away from Apple, iTunes Store previews, and more!

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:13:21 GMT

The past week or so has been a huge week in terms of Apple product birthdays and anniversaries, and this week seems to be no exception. The MacBook Air turned four just the other day, the ultraportable machine that was announced at Steve Jobs' last Macworld appearance and the penultimate Macworld Apple would actually attend. This is truly one of the times we can say Apple was ahead of the competition by four years — only now have competitors' ultrabook machines started to catch up.

Ars spoke to a few video professionals, and their thoughts on Apple and professional-level video editing was "not good". It's not that Final Cut Pro X is all bad, per se, but that Apple seemingly don't care about the pro market — that much is evident with the lack of updates for the Mac Pro, as well as ignoring the guys that have been with Apple since the beginning.

A small but welcome change has been noticed in the iTunes Store, which has now added popup previews for content. Simply hover over an app icon, click the little "i" button that appears, and voila, a small preview popup appears.

The Omni Group has published a blog post that details their Omni Sync Server usage stats. It's an interesting post that details how their sync server is being used, as well as detailing how more Omni apps will gain Omni Sync in the near future.

News: halogen-free power cables, education event predictions, Skype 5.5 beta, and more!

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 11:35:29 GMT

As a part of Apple's continued push towards greener electronics, a company called Volex is making the move to halogen-free power cables. Apple is currently Volex's biggest company, and Volex supplies Apple with USB and power cables. The switch to halogen-free cables is reported to cost around $6 million, but these are one-time costs and Volex is otherwise confident that profits this year will meet expectations.

There's an Apple education event happening in New York in a few days, and Macworld has compiled some speculation as to what will be announced. Dan Moren and Lex Friedman think the event will be all about enhancing the pre-existing iBooks offering, perhaps by making it available on the Mac — or even spruce up iWork for Mac a little more. Only time will tell.

The Skype 5.5 beta for the Mac has been released, which features a few calling improvements and user interface improvements so users have easier access to commonly-accessed actions, such as muting their microphone.

OS X 10.7.3 has been released to developers once again, this time with a newer build number of 11D42. MacRumors thinks it's very possible this will be the last beta before the public release, due to it containing what might be the final release description.

News: Apple confirms education event, Anobit acquisition, Snapseed for OS X, and more!

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 12:38:55 GMT

Apple has confirmed their education event in New York, as reported by Ars Technica. Details are pretty scarce about what the event will actually be about, but all signs point to an improved iBooks platform — perhaps even some sort of self-publishing or other education-related deal, such as the availability of textbooks. Alternatively, the EPUB 3 standard could also play a part, allowing educators to showcase books that contain much more multimedia than we've previously experienced.

Apple has also made official their acquisition of Anobit, the Israeli flash memory company that manufacturers and produces flash memory. Just as the rumour blogs said, Apple paid roughly $390 for Anobit in a deal that reportedly wasn't finalised until earlier in the month.

Snapseed is one of the few iOS image editors that has impressed reviewers everywhere, and while it doesn't have the power of a more fully-featured program such as Pixelmator or Photoshop, Snapseed makes image editing relatively easy. Plus, the developer says Snapseed is coming to the Mac App Store in the future.

It's (well, was) the Mac Mini's 7th birthday just a few days ago, finishing off the week in huge Apple anniversaries. We've come a long way from a computer that was originally designed to be an entry-level machine for people to switch to the Mac from their PCs without having to re-buy keyboards or displays, and the Mac Mini is still a great machine.

News: Thunderbolt products at CES, Lightroom 4 beta, OWC MacBook Air SSD upgrade, and more!

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 15:24:49 GMT

The Mac lineup has been equipped with Thunderbolt for about a year now, and we're finally starting to see Thunderbolt products. Many of these Thunderbolt products aimed at consumers (as opposed to professional video editors or those with incredible storage needs) are coming out of CES, where companies like Elgato, LaCie, and OCZ have unveiled storage options that all feature Thunderbolt; particularly interesting is Elgato, who are probably more well-known for the TV tuning products.

A Lightroom 4 beta has been unveiled by Adobe, who have also made it available for the public at no cost. The free public beta for Lightroom 4 runs until sometime in "early 2012", when the full version will be released. Changes include a slew of new editing tools, support for GPS locations in photos, as well as soft-proofing and the ability to create photobooks — all features Aperture has had for a while now.

OWC has released a storage upgrade for the MacBook Air in the form of a 6Gbps SSD that reportedly boosts the speed of the drive by over three times factory-installed SSDs. The new OWC drives come in 120GB and 240GB capacities, and come in at $350 and $600 price points, respectively.

Also from CES are the Henge Docks, this time for the MacBook Air. It's pretty much the same thing you've already seen for the MacBook Pro, just designed for the MacBook Air, instead.

News: Tim Cook's salary, interview with Dom Leca, Griffin's Twenty, and more!

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 13:26:33 GMT

Depending on what Apple-related blogs you currently read (current website excepted, of course), Apple CEO Tim Cook's salary in 2011 was somewhere in the vicinity of $1.4 million or almost $400 million. Fortune helps clear up any confusion about the matter, though, saying that Cook didn't make anywhere near $400 million — at least not on his salary. According to the proxy statement Apple filed on Monday, Apple paid Cook just under $1 million in total — with the rest in the form of 1 million "restricted stock units".

The Verge has an interview with Dom Leca, co-founder of what is easily one of the best Mac email clients of our time — Sparrow. They ask him mundane questions such as what phone he uses, all the way up to what he thinks about adhering to popular OS X UI conventions and forging your own path. It's a great interview.

If you want to send AirPlay audio to a set of unpowered speakers, how do you do it? The Griffin Twenty is the device that could help you out here — it's a powered amp that takes an AirPort Express and a set of unpowered speakers, then allows you to stream AirPlay audio directly to it.

OS X Daily show you how to password protect zip files in Mac OS X. Pretty simple tip.

News: Thunderbolt from CES, Blackbox Bamboo, enabling TRIM in Lion, and more!

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 15:09:46 GMT

The Consumer Electronics Show for 2012 is now well underway, and a plethora of new products are being released all over the place from every consumer electronics brand you've ever heard of. The real news is that Thunderbolt docks and hubs are finally starting to make an appearance, with the likes of Belkin, Lacie, and even Lenovo laptops featuring the newest connection standard. 9 to 5 Mac has more coverage.

The Blackbox bamboo case is a very stylish case for your MacBook Air that is, like its name suggests, made out of natural bamboo. GigaOM had a chance to take a look at the case, and said that was well-suited to harsh treatment, and best of all, the case itself even comes in a version made specifically for the iPad 2.

Lion is somewhat notorious for only enabling TRIM with Apple-provided SSDs, but if you've installed a third-party SSD there's a way to enable TRIM on that courtesy of the Groths.org TRIM Enabler for Lion. As usual, make a backup before you go messing with any critical system files.

A smart little article from Macworld teaches you the basics of Services in OS X. What are services? What can they do for you, and how do they work? Macworld has all the answers.

News: Apple Retail, Mac App Store, 2012 predictions, and more!

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 14:41:46 GMT

2011 was a year of 10-year anniversaries for Apple, including the 10-year anniversary of its retail operations. Ten years of Apple Retail later, and Apple is one of the most successful retail chains in the world — but what's next for the Cupertino-based electronics company? AppleInsider take a look at what's in store for Apple Retail in the next ten years, and what other records will be broken by Apple during that time.

The Mac App Store is also one year old as of a few days ago, and MacStories has a great insight into what happened during the first year of the newest download-only store, from the launch of various Mac App Store exclusive apps, to the user confusion when faced with re-buying apps (and the decision to do so based on what benefits the Mac App Store would offer them).

As per usual, 2011 was a great year of Apple predictions. Over at Macworld they've assembled the best of the best Apple writers around, and they take a look at how their scorecard was for 2011 — as well as gazing into their crystal ball and seeing what this year will hold.

A new year, a new start — GigaOM has a great guide on how to get started with cloud backups for your Mac. If you already back up with Time Machine and are looking for something a little more off-site, then this might just be what you're after.