Leopard

Apple updates Leopard to 10.5.3

For the legions of Mac users out there annoyed with Leopard niggles, some possible relief is now available, as Apple has made version 10.5.3 available to users via software update. The new version has a slew of minor adjustments, including fixes for AirPort and networking reliability issues, Time Machine and Time Capsule updates (including improved compatibility with Aperture), and improved Spaces usability. Anyone out there taken the plunge yet? Let us know how it’s going.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Leopard running on an Atom Processor

Using PC_efi technology (a means to run OS X on a PC without kernel modification), an anonymous source for netkas.org has managed to run and benchmark Leopard on an Atom chip, which is rumored (and denied) to be headed for Mac.

The Atom Processor would certainly make a good candidate for a mini-tablet. It’s small enough to fit any form factor, and low power enough to run for long periods in small devices. According to netkas, you can even run one of these on solar power. Here are the results of an Xbench test, courtesy of netkas:

More details are available at netkas.org.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Security company discloses iCal vulnerabilities

Core Security, in an advisory that showed a contentious argument with Apple, disclosed three iCal bugs that attackers could exploit using malicious servers, web sites, and .ics email attachments.

“The vulnerabilities may allow un-authenticated attackers to execute arbitrary code on vulnerable systems with (and potentially without) the assistance from the end user of the application or to repeatedly execute a denial of service attack to crash the iCal application,” said Core Security.

The advisory states that iCal 3.01 running on Mac OS X 10.5.1 is still vulnerable, but it’s unclear if the latest version of both iCal and Mac OS X (3.02 and 10.5.2, respectively) fix the problems. Apple asked Core Security to delay publication of its findings, but Core Security set May 21 as its drop-deadline.

Core Security first reported the bugs in January. Apple fixed one of the bugs in a security release in March (2008-002), but thought that the others were not as critical as Core Security did. After Apple pushed back the release date for the remaining patches several times, a frustrated Core Security said they would release details of the bugs.

[Via Macworld]

Popularity: 6% [?]

10.5.2 causing mega-problems for musicians?

Peter Kirn over at Create Digital Music (one of my favorite music-making blogs, by the by) has a post rounding up a lot of the issues OS 10.5.2 seems to be having with various drivers for audio interfaces, including those manufactured by Digidesign (aka the Pro Tools folks) and its subsidiary M-Audio. This is a pretty big problem, as Digidesign and M-Audio are two of the most popular manufacturers of prosumer/professional audio interfaces. Peter’s post links to apologies and explanations from the manufacturers as well.

According to Dave Lebolt, general manager at Digidesign, the 10.5.2 upgrade may have actually broken fixes that appeared in 10.5.1. And Kirn goes as far to say that he “certainly can’t recommend Leopard in its current state,” at least for making music, which is why I haven’t upgraded from TIger myself.

Does this affect you if you’re not a music geek? Probably not. But when your psycho microhouse-obsessed beatmaking roommate starts swearing and kicking his MacBook and ProTools rig around in the middle of the night, at least you’ll know what the fuss is all about.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Name mangler: batch rename your files

Most people rarely ever have to rename a whole lot of files at once. Let’s face it — batch file renaming isn’t UNIX kernel reprogramming, but it’s one of those irritating tasks that can be a surprising amount of trouble for casual or even more experienced users without the right tools. As a web designer and developer, I find myself having to numerically rename images a lot or add “_tb” suffixes for thumbnails, for example.

Luckily for Leopard users, there’s Name Mangler 2.0, a donationware app by Mac developer Many Tricks that does all the stuff you might need a batch file renamer to do: change case or extension, prefix or suffix a file name, remove characters, the works. You can even store renaming configurations as droplets that you can drop files or folders on to.

Unfortunately, Name Mangler is Leopard-only. Many Tricks has an earlier app, File List (direct download link), that apparently does the same thing for pre-Leopard systems; another alternative app is File Wrangler, which resides on my 10.4.9-running MacBook Pro quite happily.

[via Lifehacker]

Popularity: 10% [?]