A mac at one of the places I work at had it’s wireless mouse stop working (Wireless Bluetooth mouse to be specific). It turns out that the bluetooth controller on the machine wasn’t being detected. The only way it could be fixed was resetting the System Management Controller (SMC).

But wait, how could this happen! It’s a Mac right? Any who, she fixed it by turning off the Mac, unplugging it completely and then holding down the power button while being unplugged. She recalls holding the button down for around 5 to 10 seconds.

Plug the iMac back into the power source and turn it on. You might be surprised that somehow magically the bluetooth is back up and running on the machine!

I’ve included the info here for how and why from the apple KB

Note: It is possible that the SMC could encounter an issue that may cause unusual system behavior typically related to the symptoms described below. In some cases, resetting the SMC may be the only correct method to resolve the issue, however, an SMC reset should only be attempted after all other standard troubleshooting has been performed.

Before Resetting the SMC - Try each of the following steps in this order before you reset the SMC. Test the issue after completing each troubleshooting step to determine if the issue still occurs.

• Press Command + Option + Escape to force quit any application that is not responding.
• Put your Mac to sleep by choosing the Apple () menu from the upper-left menu bar and then choosing Sleep.
• Wake the computer after it has gone to sleep.
• Restart your Mac by by choosing the Apple () menu from the upper-left menu bar and then choosing Restart.
• Shut down your Mac by by choosing the Apple () menu from the upper-left menu bar and then choosing Shut Down.

If your Mac appears to be running normally but isn’t responding, force the computer to shut down by pressing and holding the power button for 10 seconds. Note: You will lose any unsaved work in any open applications.

For Mac portables experiencing issues related to the MagSafe power adapter and/or battery, try:

Unplug the MagSafe power adapter from the Mac and the wall power socket for several seconds.
Shutdown the Mac. Physically remove and re-insert the battery (if it’s removable) and startup the Mac.

If the issue is still not resolved after following the troubleshooting items above, an SMC reset may be necessary.

After performing normal troubleshooting, these symptoms may indicate that an SMC reset may be necessary:

Fans - The computer’s fans run at high speed although the computer is not experiencing heavy usage and is properly ventilated.

Lights - The keyboard backlight appears to behave incorrectly (on Mac computers that have this feature).
The Status Indicator Light (SIL) appears to behave incorrectly (on Mac computers that have an SIL).
Battery indicator lights, if present, appear to behave incorrectly (on portables that use non-removable batteries).
The display backlight doesn’t respond correctly to ambient light changes on Mac computers that have this feature.

Power
The computer doesn’t respond to the power button when pressed.
A portable Mac doesn’t appear to respond properly when you close or open the lid.
The computer sleeps or shuts down unexpectedly.
The battery does not appear to be charging properly.
The MagSafe power adaptor LED doesn’t appear to indicate the correct activity.

System Performance
The computer is running unusually slowly although it is not experiencing abnormally high CPU utilization.

Video
A computer that supports target display mode does not switch into or out of target display mode as expected.
A computer that supports target display mode switches into or out of target display mode at unexpected times.

Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC)
Resetting the SMC on Mac portables with a battery you can remove

Note: Learn about removing the battery on MacBook and MacBook Pro.
Shut down the computer.
Disconnect the MagSafe power adapter from the computer, if it’s connected.
Remove the battery.
Press and hold the power button for 5 seconds.
Release the power button.
Reconnect the battery and MagSafe power adapter.
Press the power button to turn on the computer.
Resetting the SMC on portables with a battery you should not remove on your own

Note: Portable computers that have a battery you should not remove on your own include MacBook Pro (Early 2009) and later, all models of MacBook Air, and MacBook (Late 2009).
Shut down the computer.
Plug in the MagSafe power adapter to a power source, connecting it to the Mac if its not already connected.
On the built-in keyboard, press the (left side) Shift-Control-Option keys and the power button at the same time.
Release all the keys and the power button at the same time.
Press the power button to turn on the computer.
Note: The LED on the MagSafe power adapter may change states or temporarily turn off when you reset the SMC.
Resetting the SMC for Mac Pro, Intel-based iMac, Intel-based Mac mini, or Intel-based Xserve

Shut down the computer.
Unplug the computer’s power cord.
Press and hold the power button for 5 seconds.
Release the power button.
Attach the computers power cable.
Press the power button to turn on the computer.
Additional Information
The System Management Controller (SMC) is responsible for many low-level functions on Intel-based Macs. These functions include:

Responding to presses of the power button
Responding to display lid opening and closing on portable Macs
Battery management
Thermal management
The SMS (Sudden Motion Sensor)
Ambient light sensing
Keyboard backlighting
Status Indicator Light (SIL) management
Battery status indicator lights
Selecting an external (instead of internal) video source for some iMac displays

1. Power on or restart your Mac.
2. At the chime (or grey screen if your chime is turned off), hold down Command+S on your keyboard to enter single-user mode.
3. This step is optional, but it’s a good idea because it checks the consistency of the hard disk before moving on. At the prompt, type fsck -fy and press Enter/Return. Wait for the checks to complete before going to the next step.
4. Type mount -uw / and press Enter.
5. Type launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.DirectoryServices.plist and press Enter.
6. Type ls /Users and press Enter. This lists all of the usernames on the computer – helpful if you don’t know or remember what these are.
7. Type dscl . -passwd /Users/username password and replace “username” with one of the users displayed in the previous step. Replace “password” with a new password of your choice. Press Enter.
8. Type reboot and press Enter.

Reset 10.4 Tiger password

1. Power on or restart your Mac.
2. At the chime (or grey screen if your chime is turned off), hold down Command+S on your keyboard to enter single-user mode.
3. Type sh /etc/rc and press Enter/Return.
4. Type passwd username and replace “username” with the short name of the user account for which you’d like to reset the password.
5. Type your desired password and press Enter. It won’t show itself on the screen, so be careful what you type. You will most likely have to enter it again to confirm.
6. Type reboot and press Enter.

Tricking your Mac into creating a new user account

1. Power on or restart your Mac (should work for any Mac OS X system).
2. At the chime (or grey screen if your chime is turned off), hold down Command+S on your keyboard to enter single-user mode.
3. This step is optional, but it’s a good idea because it checks the consistency of the hard disk before moving on. At the prompt, type fsck -fy and press Enter/Return. Wait for the checks to complete before going to the next step.
4. Type mount -uw / and press Enter.
5. Type rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone and press Enter.
6. Type shutdown -h now and press Enter.

The last way of resetting your Mac’s password requires some additional explanation. Instead of changing the passwords, this one fools the operating system into believing it has never been started before. This means when you restart the machine, it will take you through the entire setup & registration process all over again. Do not worry, all of your pre-existing data is still available to the hacker. Just continue with this process and do not choose the option to transfer or migrate information to the Mac.

Once you’re done, log in with the new admin account and go to System Preferences > Accounts. You will have to click on the lock icon in the lower-left corner before making changes here. You will see the original user account(s) on the left hand side. Convert the user to a standard user account (uncheck “Allow user to administer this computer”) and change the password. You should be able to log in to that account now and access all of your files and programs. If you want, you can log back in with your new admin account and re-check the “Allow user to administer this computer” option in System Preferences to grant admin privileges to the original user again.

That should cover it! As always, remember messing with single-user mode and Terminal is risky and may lead to trouble if you make mistakes. Considering you’re already locked out of the computer, though, you’ll probably be willing to take your chances at this point.

One last thing… if you have a Keychain Access password, you will probably need to reset that as well. You can do this by selecting “login” under Keychains on the left and choosing Delete from the Edit menu. You’ll lose everything in the Keychain, but you’ll now be able to start fresh and add new ones.

• jaredheinrichs.com – This is my external domain
• jaredheinrichs.local – This could be an internal domain for my home network

Using separate domain names has the advantage of having quicker internal network access.

So why does this matter? Well Apple in their bright wisdom decided to implement a technology call Bonjour. Bonjour ships with iTunes and messes with your systems DNS settings. Bonjour is installed by default on the Mac. It turns out bonjour uses .local for all network communications. I’d say at least 1/2 (I just pulled that out of my butt) of all small businesses use .local as their internal domain name.

Can you see where I am going with this? Below is Apple’s solution to the .local problem and how to kind of work around it.

Summary

The Multicast DNS feature of Bonjour technology allows devices on a local network to connect to each other by name without a separate DNS server. See this article for more details. By default, any hostname ending in .local is treated as a Bonjour host rather than by querying the DNS server entries in Network preferences.

Though the .local domain is not defined as a valid top-level domain on the Internet, some private networks have DNS servers that assign hostnames in the .local domain. By default Mac OS X does not use the DNS server to resolve these names. This may result in unexpected failures to connect to .local hostnames defined by your server. If .local names are assigned by a DNS server on your network, use the solution below to configure Mac OS X 10.3 to look up .local names in both ways.

Products Affected

Mac OS X 10, Bonjour

Create and run the following script. To create the script, execute each of these commands in Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/). Each command is preceded by the dollar sign ($), which represents the Terminal prompt. You must be logged with an administrator account to perform these steps. After the first command (sudo), you will be prompted to enter your administrator password. After typing each command, press Return to execute it. After entering the "cat" command, you will not see a prompt ($) for the next four lines, though you must still press Return after each. For the line that says "[Control-D]", press Control-D.

The commands:

These steps create an executable shell script named "EnableUnicastDotLocal" that will create and populate the necessary configuration files to enable dual lookups of .local hostnames.

To run the script, execute this command:

Important: The address of the DNS server configured by this script for .local name lookups will not change automatically if your default DNS server address changes. (Your DNS server address may change if you change network locations, if a change is made by your DHCP server administrator, or if you change it manually in Network preferences.) To change the DNS server used for lookups in the .local domain, you must run this script again. To disable unicast DNS lookups entirely after running this script, delete the file /etc/resolver/local.1.

Note: For the Active Directory plug-in to work with .local domains, you must update to Mac OS X 10.3.3 or later.

I love when I hear Mac Fanboys say how much better designed the Mac GUI is.

While I do have to agree parts of the Mac GUI look nice if not nicer then the Windows, The GUI is fundamentally flawed in my opinion.

Here’s a side by side comparison of Safari on a mac vs Internet Explorer on the PC. At first glance most people might not notice this, but do you realize how much vertical space is lost on a Mac due to the way the GUI is designed? Notice how in Windows you start seeing the webpage much higher up then on the mac. In face the PC shows the page almost where Favorites bar  starts on Safari.

I don’t know about you, the less scrolling I have to do in an application the better. My wrists feel better and I work faster.

Another thing in my opinion that I hate about the Mac GUI is where the Close, Minimize and maximize buttons are located. Since they are so close to the Mac Menu bar I’ve so many times when someone accidently clicked on these buttons by accident.  Again it wasted space in my opinion.

Because the Mac Menu bar is at the top of the screen and the doc is at the bottom you loose even more space. While you can’t see it in the picture I provided there is a lot of White or unused space with Mac Applications because of where the Mac Menu Bar is located.

Most Mac heads come back and say while it doesn’t matter that the dock takes up so much room because “I can hide the Dock and I then I have even more space then Windows users”. I then have to say you are misinformed. The Windows Start has had the ability to hide itself since Window 95. That puts the mac still lacking in space vs the same Windows machine.

Now with all this information I am really puzzled. Of ALL people who need  the most space, Photoshop/CAD users are the ones that need it most. While thankfully most people using CAD are on PC’s, there has been a stereotype that Mac are better for “Artists” because of the need for photoshop.

I laugh when my two year old sony Viao Laptop opens Photoshop  CS5 and Lightroom 3 FASTER then most brand new macs. It applies loading filters FASTER. It has more visual space to work with then most macs, and it was $800 cheaper then what Macs cost at the time I bought this machine. I can count on one hand the number of “Crashes” I have had with Windows 7.

I’d love to hear other people’s comments on what they don’t like about the Mac Interface…

Of course, its fans have to put up with some irritations, too: Simply being a member of the club still means you must endure unending jabs from the other side of the socio-political-techno aisle. But do they have to wear their suffering as a badge of honor?

And so, with protective helmets in place, off we go:

1.) Free Speech, Anyone?

Even if you’re no Apple fan, this particular issue might not rise to the top of your own personal gripe list–but hey, we’re journalists. So sue us.

Er, that’s probably not the right turn of phrase to use, considering that in December 2004, Apple filed a lawsuit against the AppleInsider, O’Grady’s PowerPage, and Think Secret Web sites for posting information about upcoming technologies that Apple had shared with outsiders under nondisclosure agreements. In the case of O’Grady, the news was of a FireWire interface for GarageBand. In the words of O’Grady himself: “yawn.”

Apple pressured the sites to reveal their sources, and even worse, pressured the sites’ ISPs. In May 2006, a California court said no way, ruling that online journalists enjoy the same First Amendment rights as “legitimate” offline journalists. Seems silly in today’s world, doesn’t it? Recently, the court ordered Apple to pay the sites’ legal fees–about $700,000.

2.) More Secretive Than Homeland Security

Those feds are secretive, but they’re no match for Apple reps’ infuriating stock answer: “We don’t comment on future product plans.” Being an Apple adherent means never knowing for sure if the shiny new MacBook or iPod you just bought is about to be rendered obsolete by a Steve Jobs keynote.

Of course, Apple is merely the most famous secretive Silicon Valley company, not the only hush-mouthed one. And tight lips make for explosive buzz when the company does decide to drop a bombshell. But contrast Apple’s secrecy with Microsoft’s lack thereof–Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and company love to talk about their company’s upcoming products, and they still get their fair share of buzz. Even though many of those plans have a tendency to not actually come true.

3.) Ain’t Too Proud to Blame

When Apple shipped iPods containing a worm last year, instead of issuing a humble mea culpa, Apple took a swipe at Microsoft, saying, “As you might imagine, we are upset at Windows for not being more hardy against such viruses, and even more upset with ourselves for not catching it.” As you can imagine, that didn’t fly with security experts. How about an apology to the folks who were unlucky enough to buy the infected iPods, period?

4.) iHate iAnything

Apple first floated the idea of product names with a leading lowercase letter in 1994 with eWorld, an ill-conceived online service that went belly-up after a year and a half. But when it introduced the original iMac in 1998, it hit on a phenomenal success–and prompted hundreds of third-party manufacturers to follow with sickeningly cute Bondi Blue products with names that also began with a lowercase “i.” Now dozens of Apple and third-party product names begins with “i.” Their manufacturers are all jumping on the bandwagon, hoping that a single letter will sway us to buy their stuff. Meanwhile, you can’t even start sentences with the products’ names.

Is it any wonder that we’re inclined to like Apple TV in part because it turned out not to be iTV? Or that we’re kind of sorry that Apple was able to strike a deal with Cisco to share the name iPhone?

5.) Where’s the Blu-ray?

Steve Jobs was the CEO of animated-movie studio Pixar; Apple is represented on the Blu-ray Disc Association board of directors. The Mac is supposed to be the computer of choice for video professionals.

So where is the option for a Blu-ray Disc or HD DVD player in the fancy new quad-core and eight-core Mac Pros? They’re stuck with the same-old SuperDrive. Mac apologists will no doubt provide you with a complex explanation of why this makes perfect sense, but the fact is that next-generation optical drives are available and make sense for some folks, and Macs don’t have them. (If the company announces support for one or the other by the time you read this, see “More Secretive Than Homeland Security” above for why we didn’t know about it.)

6.) Nobody’s Perfect

All companies make design mistakes, and in truth, Apple makes far fewer than most. But, despite what the most extreme aficionados say, even Apple’s design sense isn’t anywhere near flawless. And when it makes goofs, they tend to be doozies.

Examples: The iMac’s perfectly-round, ergonomically egregious puck mouse, or the Toilet-Seat iBook (complete with handle). Don’t forget the Shuffle audio player, whose lack of a screen or other discernable navigation aid Apple has successfully spun as a “feature.” (Yes, we know that the Shuffle is wildly popular–and yes, we’d still rather buy a player that can tell us what it’s playing.)

7.) Give Me a Sign

Does anyone want to tell us when the next Mac OS X software updates will hit? What security vulnerabilities Apple is working on fixing? In April, Apple released a patch that plugged more than two dozen vulnerabilities–with absolutely zero advance notice. Mac users were wide open to attacks, and they never knew it. Even Microsoft (usually) tells people when to expect patches, and often tells you how to protect yourself until the patches are ready.

8.) No Good For Gaming

Browse the Apple Store’s games selection–go on, we’ll wait. Oh, back so soon?

That’s understandable, because sorting the store’s games selection by the newest available produces titles that were introduced two or more years ago on Windows. Games have always been scarce on the Mac, and Apple still can’t convince many developers to make their titles compatible with its computers. Apple does equip some of its systems with high-end graphics cards, but with slim pickings to play on them, they’re a waste of money for most people.

True, Apple’s Boot Camp will let you run Windows games on a Mac, but we still don’t know many hardcore gamers who choose to go that route.

9.) Limited Selection

Apple offers just three desktop computer systems these days–and one of them is the Mac Mini, with its aging processor, piddly 512MB of RAM, and tiny 60GB hard drive. Neither the Mac Mini nor the iMac accepts internal upgrades beyond more memory, so to get a system that will accept additional components later, you’ll have to spring for a dual-processor Mac Pro, which starts at a steep $2200.

You can buy a starter Windows system for less than a fourth the cost of the Mac Pro; later on, if you decide you need a speed boost, you can buy a new motherboard and CPU and probably install them yourself. If you want a speed boost on the Mac, you have to buy a whole new Mac.

In the portable realm, MacBooks and MacBook Pros are nice machines. But again, you get only three choices. Opt for Windows, and you can choose anything from palm-sized micro-PCs like the OQO Model 2 to huge, honkin’ laptops that are more powerful than any mobile Mac.

10.) Doesn’t Play Well With Others

Give Apple credit for (finally) allowing Windows to run on the Mac. But the company still maintains a closed-door policy on many aspects of its technology. For example, iPods play only a couple of transportable audio file formats (AAC and MP3); they won’t play files in Microsoft’s WMA format, used by much of the rest of the world. Even the much-derided Microsoft Zune plays all three formats. And if you import WMA files into iTunes, you must wait while the application converts them to its favored AAC format.

Okay, we understand that DRM has been a necessity to get music companies to release music for sale on the iTunes Music Store. But our bigger gripe is that you can’t play music purchased from the iTunes Music Store on anything but an iPod or the upcoming iPhone, because Apple won’t license its FairPlay digital rights management technology to makers of other audio players. Even if those players recognize AAC files, they can’t decrypt them, so they won’t play. Even when Apple begins selling music without DRM, you’ll pay extra for it; most tracks will still have the DRM restrictions.

What is so bad about this trojan Virus? DNS servers are the white/yellow pages of the internet. Imagine one day you went into your phone book. Everything seemed to be the same way that things always had been. You go look up a very common company like “Superstore” or “Walmart”. You then go to the phone number section. Because you TRUST the phone book you take it’s word that this is the correct phone number to call. So you call the phone number. What would happen if that phone number actually went to a competing store or even worse it was a criminal wanting to steal your identity!

This virus works very similarly but the consequences are a lot worse and worst of all once you’ve been infected you can never trust internet name resolution until you remove the virus.

Here’s how the virus works once it is installed. When ever you look up a domain like “Google.com” or “Apple.com” your computer actually uses a server called a DNS server to lookup where to go. So in Manitoba we use MTS or Shaw. Both Companie’s have their own DNS server. When you make a request the request for the IP address goes to their DNS servers. Most of the time they already know the IP address and send that number back to you. Your browser then gets routed through the internet looking for that “IP address”.

Here’s the scary part! If you want to go somewhere your computer is now relying on the virus for directions and not your Internet Service provider. To make things even worse the domain names have been set up such that when the main IP goes or is taken down, cybercriminals can easily move the backend to another IP address without the need to change code or scripts.

Here’s a screenshot of what the virus looks like. Doesn’t it look very “Mac” like?

The Trojan is supposedly a QuickTime Player update with the file name QuickTimeUpdate.dmg. As with its earlier variants, users are prompted to download the malware when trying to view certain online videos from .com domains with the IP address, 91.214.45.73 such as:

• allincorx
• bigdron
• cikaredo
• civilizxx
• comeandtryx
• deribrowns
• draxxtermania
• givendream
• hitrowzone
• jumborad
• ltdkeeper
• operationelx
• oxxadox
• paxxtiger
• rednetx
• rstdeals
• simplexdoom
• sinisteer
• tdenuwas
• tniredrum
• ufapeace

If infected, a victim’s Web traffic can then be diverted to the website of the attacker’s choosing.

The Trojan contains component files detected as UNIX_JAHLAV.D and obfuscated scripts detected as PERL_JAHLAV.F. The Perl script then downloads a file from a malicious site and stores it as /tmp/{random 3 numbers}, detected as UNIX_DNSCHAN.AA, which allows a malicious user to monitor the affected user’s activities. This may also cause the user to be redirected to phishing sites or sites where other malware may be downloaded from.

It would serve Mac users well to stay away from the above-mentioned domains and IP addresses or be wary of prompts to download software updates that do not come from Apple’s legitimate website.

Read more: http://blog.trendmicro.com/mac-os-x-dns-changing-trojan-in-the-wild/#ixzz0O4WVxlRp

In one of its brilliant “I’m a Mac” ads recently, Apple lampooned the complexity of Microsoft Windows with a dizzying display of fine print that eventually filled up the screen and covered up both characters.

I thought of that ad when I saw Apple’s recent announcement that it was going to make its next Mac OS X upgrade, Snow Leopard, available as a $29 upgrade. That sounds so much better than the broad range of prices that Microsoft is going to charge its customers for Windows 7 upgrades. Too bad the $29 upgrade is not that simple. In fact, according to my analysis of Apple’s own sales figures, 57% of Apple’s customers who bought and paid for new Macs in the past five years are ineligible for those cheap upgrades.

That hasn’t stopped casual observers and even some seasoned analysts from falling for Apple’s ruse. Michael Gartenberg, for example, issued this critique in response to Microsoft’s announcement of Windows 7 pricing:

Apple showed the way. Snow Leopard is also not [a] major update but rather an enhanced version of Leopard. With an upgrade price of $29, that’s about where MSFT should be for the Home Premium version of 7…

Yes, $29 for an OS upgrade sounds like a great deal, if you qualify. But do you? I looked at the fine print for this offer, and was shocked—shocked, I tell you—to discover that the majority of Mac owners don’t qualify for that pricing. In fact, a significant number of Mac owners won’t be able to upgrade to Snow Leopard at any price.

According to Microsoft, roughly 90% of Windows users purchase the operating system preinstalled with a new PC. And if you ignore the Hackintosh crowd, 100% of Mac owners purchase OS X with a new Mac. Any PC purchased with Windows XP or Windows Vista since October 2001 qualifies for a discounted upgrade to Windows 7, for a price as low as $50. But only a select group of Mac owners qualify for those $29 upgrades. A large number will have to pay $169 for the privilege of installing Snow Leopard, and another large group of Apple customers won’t be able to install Snow Leopard at all.

So where do you stand? Find the date when you bought a new PC or Mac and look in the table below. The Windows 7 numbers represent the cost of a Home Premium upgrade, which will be available for the next two weeks for $50 and then will be set at an estimated retail price of $120 after the OS ships on October 22. The upgrade cost is $0 from June 26, 2009 to January 31, 2010, thanks to Microsoft’s Windows 7 Upgrade Option program.

Both Microsoft and Apple have announced technology guarantee programs for new PCs or Macs ordered before the new OS comes out. The Mac program starts on June 8, Microsoft’s program on June 26.

Apple’s core market for the $29 upgrade is its most loyal group of hardware buyers, who’ve already paid their “Apple tax” at the highest marginal rate. You qualify for that $29 upgrade price if you are one of the 15 million or so people who spent $1000 or more for a new Mac in the past 21 months. (Yes, I’m leaving out the Mac Mini, which sells for under a grand but represents a minuscule fraction of Apple’s sales—less than 7% according to one analyst’s rough estimate.) Any Mac purchased after October 1, 2007 satisfies the upgrade criteria: an Intel-based system running Mac OS X version 10.5 (Leopard).

That leaves out a huge number of Apple’s customers.

From January 2006 through September 2007, according to Apple’s financial reports, 11.1 million people purchased new Macs. All of them came with OS X Tiger installed. If you paid Apple $129 for a copy of Leopard at some point along the way and your system has an Intel processor, you qualify for the right to pay Apple an extra $29, making your total upgrade cost $158. If you own one of those 2006-2007 PCs and are still running Tiger, the upgrade to Snow Leopard will cost you $169, which is the price of the Mac Box Set.

If you purchased a new Mac before January 9, 2006, you can’t upgrade to Snow Leopard at any price. That’s because systems built before that date were based on the PowerPC processor, which is not supported by Snow Leopard. According to Apple’s own numbers, more than 8.2 million customers bought Macs in 2004 and 2005. All are now officially orphaned by Apple. And that number understates the true count. Apple didn’t complete its transition to the Intel platform until August 2006, and its likely that some older PowerPC-based machines were still in the sales channel in early 2007.

Apple has been selling its OS upgrades for $129 since the introduction of OS X in 2001. Microsoft has been similarly consistent with its pricing throughout Windows’ lifespan. If Windows 7 didn’t exist, how much would Apple be selling Snow Leopard for? (Hint: The correct answer has three digits.)

Apple’s $29 pricing decision is a clever one. They’re counting on gullible reporters and analysts to make oversimplified comparisons with Windows 7, and they’re hoping to goad Ballmer and Company into reacting with a slashed price of their own. If Microsoft is smart, they won’t take the bait.

Another example of Mac Viruses / Malware.

Researchers from ParetoLogic are reporting on a newly discovered Mac OS X malware variant posing as fake video ActiveX object found at a bogus Macintosh PortTube site.

The use of fake video codec’s is a social engineering tactic used by hackers who have typically targeted Windows. Seeing it used in a Mac OS X based malware attack proves that successful social engineering approaches remain OS independent.

Prior to PareteLogic’s sample, SophosLabs appear to have received an email from the author of last month’s discovered OSX/Tored-A sample, allowing them to add generic detection for any upcoming releases.

Here are some of the PornTube templates used in the social engineering attack, a description of the malware, as well the descriptive filenames used in some of the campaigns:

OSX/Jahlav-C is described as:

“OSX/Jahlav-C is a Trojan created for the Mac OS X operating system. The initial malicious installer is distributed as a missing Video ActiveX Object.

As a part of the installation a malicious shell script file AdobeFlash is created in /Library/Internet Plug-Ins folder and setup to periodically run. The script contains another shell script in an encoded format which in turn contains a Perl script with the main malicious payload. The perl script uses http to communicate with a remote website and download code supplied by the attacker.”

Another Example

The campaign is also using descriptive files such as, HDTVPlayerv3.5.dmg; VideoCodec.dmg; FlashPlayer.dmg; MacTubePlayer.dmg; macvideo.dmg; License.v.3.413.dmg; play-video.dmg, and QuickTime.dmg.

What’s Apple’s take on this emerging trend?

Earlier this week, in a rare comment of potential Mac OS X related insecurities in the face of malware, the company not only acknowledged OS X Malware, but also pointed out that :

“The Mac is designed with built-in technologies that provide protection against malicious software and security threats right out of the box. However, since no system can be 100 percent immune from every threat, antivirus software may offer additional protection.”

Is the company finally taking the right decision to generate security awareness on a threat that is prone to become a daily routine in the long term, or was it too slow to stop using the Mac’s massively advertised immunization to malware as a key differentiation factor?

http://techdirt.com/articles/20090118/0055003449.shtml

The EU Regulators need a smack. They try and convince Europians they are doing things in their best interest but they really are not. The original EU case was poor at best. Microsoft decides to payout and get things over with. Now they are coming back to sue for more money.

You know who EU needs to go after is Apple.

I’d like to see that Mac vs PC commercial after that happens. It might go something like this…

Hi I’m a Mac and I’m a PC…

Pc: Hi Mac! How come you look like you’ve a bounch of holes in you!

Mac: Yah… For some reason the UA regulators say that my “It’s my way or the highway mentally just doesn’t fly” over here in Europe. They made me remove key technology out of my OS X and now what was a great system now is buggy. The way I see it, it’s kind of what happened to you in the late 90′s and 00′s.

PC: I used to look like you but after all the sh*t that EU put me through I kind of let myself go.

Mac: You mean???

PC: Uh–hu…..

Mac: I’m going to get fat a bloated???

PC: uh–hu…..

Mac: Maybe If I can only get what Steve Jobs has and maybe I can stay thin.

End of Commercial.