“I’ve said here before that, ‘I’m more secure on a Mac than I was on Windows,’” Kenneth van Wyk writes for Datamation’s IT Management. “But now we have a couple new(ish) kids in town: Windows 7 and Snow Leopard. It’s time to see if that statement still holds true.”

“Well, after using Snow Leopard for a few months, and taking Windows 7 for a good spin, I’m happy to report I’m still more secure on a Mac,” van Wyk writes.

“To paraphrase Jeremiah Grossman, it needn’t be the case that one operating system is more secure per se; what matters is where you’re safest,” van Wyk writes. “Safe and secure are two different concepts, and I’m convinced that what matters to the consumer is where he is safest. And I’m convinced I’m safer on a Mac than I ever was on Windows.”

Full article here.

Source: MacDailyNews

“The headline might seem self-evident to most of us, but there are still quite a few drooling idiots who are incapable, or unwilling (it’s a hit-whoring prerequisite, after all), of seeing the vast gulf between Windows and Mac OS X security and the effects on end users,” SteveJack writes over in our Opinion section.

“‘Security via Obscurity’ is a defense mechanism for the delusional and also tool for Microsoft apologists and those who profit from the Windows economy that’s designed to be used when attempting keep Windows sufferers from straying. 30 million Mac OS X installs is not ‘obscure’ at all, but nine (9) years of Mac users surfing the Net unimpeded certainly is ‘secure,’” SteveJack writes. “Besides social engineering scams (phishing, trojans; no OS can instill common sense) the only thing by which Mac users are really affected are large swaths of compromised Windows machines slowing down the ‘Net with spam and nefarious botnet traffic targeted at exploiting even more insecure Windows boxes.”

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“Bug reports from the early builds were spotted in November and as early as December Mac OS X 10.7 signatures appeared in web logs from Apple-owned IP addresses,” Arnold Kim reports for Mac Rumors. “More spottings have been since reported, and we’ve found Mac OS X 10.7 signatures in our own web logs.”

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_7; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.7.1 (KHTM
L, like Gecko) Version/4.1 Safari/532.7.3

Kim reports, “John Gruber had said he had heard that Mac OS X 10.7 would be ready for developer release by WWDC this June.”

Full article here.

Source: MacDailyNews

Apple has released the latest drivers for Brother, Canon, HP, and Lexmark printers and/or scanners for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.

More info and download links:

• Brother Printer Drivers for Mac OS X 10.6: This download includes the latest Brother printing and scanning software for Snow Leopard (99.9MB)

• Canon Printer Drivers for Mac OS X 10.6: This download includes the latest Canon printing and scanning software for Snow Leopard. Requires Mac OS X v10.6.1 or later (274.59MB)

• HP Printer Drivers for Mac OS X 10.6: This download includes the latest HP printing and scanning software for Snow Leopard (387.44MB)

• Lexmark Printer Drivers for Mac OS X v0.6: This download includes Lexmark printing software that shipped with Mac OS X v10.6 (117MB)

Source: MacOSXHints

Apple has released Mac OS X 10.6.2 vis Software Update.

The 10.6.2 Update is recommended for all users running Mac OS X Snow Leopard and includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac, including fixes for:

• an issue that might cause your system to logout unexpectedly

• a graphics distortion in Safari Top Sites

• Spotlight search results not showing Exchange contacts

• a problem that prevented authenticating as an administrative user

• issues when using NTFS and WebDAV file servers

[Read more →]

Apple’s Mac OS X v10.6 was released two weeks ago and for most of us the
transition from Leopard to Snow Leopard went by without incident.
However, we’ve spent part of the last few weeks scouring Apple’s discussion
boards and support site for solutions to problems people have been
reporting with the upgrade.

Mac OS X Snow Leopard v10.6.1 Security Content

The first update to Snow Leopard, according to Apple, only contains one security update. That update is an upgrade to Flash Player plug-in for Safari. The upgrade brings the plug-in to version 10.0.32.18. You can find more information about the plug-in at Adobe.com.

Mac OS X Snow Leopard v10.6.1 Update

This update released last week and Mac|Life covered it here.

Problems with MAMP and MAMP PRO

Mac|Life recently published a how to for this incredible tool that you can use to design and code web applications that rely on a webserver running Apache, MySQL and PHP on your Mac. Problems with the older versions prompted the developer to release version 1.8.2 of MAMP and MAMP Pro that is compatible with Snow Leopard. You can download the update from the vendors website.

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It may not get the attention shown to a new version of iTunes or even an iPhone OS update, but QuickTime also saw a new version rolled out on Wednesday. QuickTime 7.6.4 adds support for the newly released iTunes 9 as well as improved audio device support for Windows Vista users.

According to Apple’s release notes, the 7.6.4 update also tackles some security issues. The update patches flaws where viewing a maliciously crafted H.264 movie could lead to an unexpected application crash or arbitrary code execution. The flaws were caused by memory corruption issues, a buffer overflow, and a heap buffer overflow in the way QuickTime handles h.264 movies, according to Apple, which credits Tom Ferris of the Adobe Secure Software Engineering Team, Alex Selivanov, and an anonymous researcher working with TippingPoint and the Zero Day Initiative for reporting the H.264 issues.

[Read more →]