Right On Technology

Today I booted up the old Mac and noticed a gift from Apple, a new update! This is officially Mac OS X 10.6.2 for Snow Leopard. The biggest part of this update is that Apple finally decided to address a major bug that would cause guest accounts to delete part of your OS. I guess 2 months and 7 days since first reported is better then never.

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In one of the more exciting rumors I’ve heard in a while, Peter Kafka is reporting that Apple is possibly floating a deal to the various networks that would allow users to pay $30 a month rate to have on demand access to all TV programs.

The good news is that this deal would not necessarily be tied to any piece of hardware such as the oft-rumored Apple Tablet or AppleTV. The content would simply be tied to your iTunes account, thus you could access the content through any device that had iTunes.

The real question here is can Apple get the networks on board? While networks often claim they are excited to look at new revenue streams, in reality they never really want to because they don’t want to threaten the subscription fees they receive from cable and satellite providers such as Time/Warner or Comcast. I can especially see Fox and NBC balking at this idea because they want to launch some paid form of Hulu and they might worry about canabalizing sales.

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Growing up in a fairly high-tech household I have many memories of different innovations and changes in technology, from the first personal home computer to the first VCR to the first CD player, these events all stand out in my mind, if somewhat vaguely. One of the early memories that I have of the whole tech revolution happened as I watched the Superbowl in 1984. During that game, Apple Computers aired one of the most famous and effective commercials of all time. This commercial depicted a future similar to that portrayed in George Orwell’s book 1984. Hordes of drones being brainwashed by some dictator on a big screen. However, soon a beautiful woman rushes in and hurls a large hammer at the screen and introduces the Macintosh revolution.

Of course, the whole idea was that the tiny company Apple would revolutionize personal computing and the ever-present Big Brother of IBM would meet it’s match. A very effective and awe inspiring commercial, even if it didn’t ever actually come true quite like Apple thought it might.

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While yesterday’s Apple press event held a few surprises, the biggest consensus is that it was pretty much a flop. The biggest disappointment (outside of no Beatles!!!) was the lack of a camera for the flagship iPod device, the iPod Touch. Speculation ran wild yesterday as the tech world collectively asked, why give the Nano a camera and not give the Touch a camera?

Well, it turns out that the camera may still be on the way, but there were some quality issues that prevented Apple from unveiling the long awaited Touch camera yesterday. Apple Insider reports that Apple originally planned on releasing the Touch with a camera yesterday, but made a last minute decision to delay the release of the camera touch. Reportedly the camera did not live up to Apple’s quality assurance expectations. Other sources stated that this decision was actually made about a month ago while they continued to work on the device.

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Today was the day that Apple fans have been waiting for, the new Apple event where they were going to make announcements regarding their new iPod line and who knows what else. Rumors abounded from the return of Steve Jobs, to the Beatles finally available for digital download (9.9.9 being the hint that this was some tie-in to the Beatles Revolution Number 9).

Well, if you were waiting for anything really cool or huge announcements from Apple today, it was certainly a mixed bag. Given the amount of hype, it was probably a let down for most of us. The good news first: Steve Jobs is back baby! I must say it was pretty cool to see Jobs appear on the stage and give his presentation. He looked pretty healthy considering all that he had been through. So, that was rockin’ and the reception he received was certainly well-received. After that, things pretty much go down hill.

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Since the Mac’s new OS Snow Leopard came out yesterday I thought I’d throw up my review of Mac’s latest along with pictures and a review of my new rig. Snow Leopard brings some interesting new features, but over all the update isn’t anything ground breaking, although the polish is pretty amazing. This is version 10.6 to the original Mac 10 OS and comes in at a very svelte $29 bucks (take that Windows 7!). The first nice improvement that Snow Leopard brings is a new 64 bit operating system, which means that all apps can access a much large amount of RAM (usually limited to about 4 gigs under a 32 bit OS). So, this brings more speed and versatility to an already powerful OS.

Another immediate benefit you might see is an instant savings of space on your HD. Apple says you’ll see at least 6 gigs in space saving, but some reports have seen anywhere from 10-20 gigs! Nice! Apple is able to do this primarily due to how they now configure printer drivers, etc.

While there aren’t any real new revelations in the UI for Snow Leopard, there are some minor changes that folks might appreciate. The biggest tweak is the addition of Expose to the dock. Holding down on an app’s icon triggers Expose for that application’s windows, and if you drag a file onto an app, you can then select which window you want to drop it into. Here’s some video:

Additionally Apple has added some updates to Finder, Quicktime, Exchange Control for enterprise solutions, more speed and more stability. You can read some good review here and here.

Bottom line: For $29 bucks this is a no brainer, everyone with a Mac should upgrade, even if you are still running Tiger. I think it’s pretty clear that Apple has priced this so that it is affordable for everyone. This indicates to me that Apple has a plan for big things and wants to make sure that everyone upgrades now. So, my advice is to grab this, extra space, 64 bit everywhere and some nice little additions makes this worth the $29 bucks.

Now to the real cool news, my new iMac! Here are the specs to my new rig:
-24 inch LCD screen
- 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
- 4 GB of DDR3 SDRAM
- 640 GB Serial ATA hard drive
- Nvidia Gforce 9400 Graphics card
- Yada yada

It’s a nice machine which I’m dual booting Windows 7 on, which runs very nice too. Here are some pictures of me which I call Christmas in August.

Rumors have abounded about the mysterious exploding iPhone for a while now, but maybe this myth is a reality. At least one person is taking this serious, the French consumer minister. It seems Herve Novelli will meet with executives from Apple to discuss incidents in which the Apple product has “spontaneously combusted”. Reportedly at least a half a dozen iPhones have exploded in France, some even having caused injury to one teen’s eye.

Up to this point, the exploding iPhone has been something of a urban myth, everyone has heard about it, but no one has actually seen it. My favorite story is that of a man in Austrailia who contacted Apple after his daughter’s iPhone exploded wanting to get his money back or at least a replacement for it. Apple agreed to replace the iphone, but sent a letter that required him to sign a non-disclosure agreement with the following language, “. . .agree that you will keep the terms and existence of this settlement agreement completely confidential”, and that any breach of confidentiality “may result in Apple seeking injunctive relief, damages and legal costs against the defaulting persons or parties”.

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For anyone that does as much travel as I do, one of the most frustrating things is going to the airport (2 hours early) just to learn that your flight is going to be delayed. If you have ever had that experience, you are going to love new start-up Flightcaster. As anyone knows, airlines are notorious for waiting until the last possibly moment to delay or cancel a flight, oftentimes knowing long before that they will probably have to do so. In fact, what most people may not realize is that airlines actually intentionally due this to rebook passengers and deal with the inevitable flight changes, etc. Enter Flightcaster, who takes on the onerous task of predicting and calling delayed flights as much as 6 hours before the airline will do so.

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Three men, including 2 Russians, have been indicted with hacking into several large companies and stealing sensitive private information, including credit card numbers. The indictment names one Albert Gonzales of Florida, who has already been charged in connection with a similar crime, for stealing up to 140 million credit card numbers. According to Cnet:

The breach involving Heartland and the others is believed to be the largest hacking and identity theft case ever prosecuted by the U.S. Department of Justice. In addition to Heartland, 7-Eleven, and Hannaford Brothers, it involves two unnamed corporate victims, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s office.

The feds charged the three men with using what is called an SQL injection attack. Essentially this involves the use of a homemade script of some type that exploits a layer of the database information that feeds into their web pages. This allowed the men to access, through a kind of back door, millions of credit card numbers. The hackers also apparently tried to hide their actions by using proxy computers, which allowed them to evade anti-virus software and delete traces of the malware that they installed on client computers.

I’ve been warning people for years that this is the true goal of most malware. Viruses are not made just to cause havoc on your machine and slow down your system for no good reason. These botnets and hackers know exactly what they are doing. They are using the resources of your computer to perform their dirty work, such as hack these other systems, while you are unaware. Then, periodically, they stop by and grab the information from you computer, thus evading detection. This is also the primary reason why there are no viruses or malware on Mac’s. It’s not because Mac’s are impervious to viruses, but because something like 90% of the world’s computers uses windows, thus there is just more market share for the hackers to take advantage of. Trust me, as Mac gains more market share, we will see viruses show up there as well.

What makes this whole thing worse is that Gonzalez was a known commodity to the feds, turning information in 2003. It seems he was still up to no good however. Since that time he has stolen millions of consumer’s information and sold it on the black market. This guy is truly a bad dude and it’s a relief that they got this guy.

Here is an interesting video if you are interested in SQL Injection attacks and how to defend against them:

One of the most frustrating things about owning a phone is that they are very fragile and susceptible to heat, cold and moisture. Many phones have these new color changing dots on the battery to help detect when an owner drops the phone in the toilet or something. If the dot changes color (indicating submersion) then the warranty on the phone is voided. This is a tough lesson my wife learned, and an expensive one. Now AppleInsider is reporting that Apple has submitted a new patent for what they call “device abuse detection” technology.

“The system may include an interface by which a diagnostic device may access the memory to analyze the records and determine whether a consumer abuse event occurred, when the event occurred, and, in some embodiments, what type of abuse event occurred,” the patent reads. “By providing the capability to quickly and easily detect whether consumer abuse occurred in an electronic device, a vendor or manufacturer diagnosing a returned product may be able to better determine whether or not to initiate a product return under a warranty policy.”

In addition to warranty protection, the abuse detection circuitry could be used to disable the electronic device if an issue is detected, potentially reducing the risk of damage to the device. The system would aim protect a myriad of parts on devices, including the screen, processor, memory, and potentially inserted devices like SD or CompactFlash cards.

The system would recognize a number of incident types, with liquid and thermal sensors detecting the elements, a shock sensor for drops, and a continuity sensor to detect tampering with the device. Apple suggests that such a system could save money for product vendors and manufacturers who receive warranty returns on products that have been abused.

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