Technology Info

To help you stay close to those who matter most, Logitech, the world’s leading manufacturer of webcams, today unveiled its first Mac®-compatible webcam with premium autofocus technology and Carl Zeiss® optics: the Logitech® QuickCam® Vision Pro webcam for Mac. The new Logitech webcam delivers image-perfect detail and clarity, and exceptional video calling with iChat® and Skype®.

“With this new webcam for Mac computers, we’ve integrated our most advanced video technologies to truly enrich your video-calling experience,” said Gina Clark, general manager and vice president of Logitech’s Internet Communications business unit. “The lens and autofocus, the sensor and the lighting software all contribute to create image-perfect detail and clarity. Whether you’ve used a standalone or an embedded webcam in the past, you’ll be amazed at the difference in quality our new webcam makes.” (link)

First, you should know that I’m no Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) fanatic. I’ve used the gear steadily since the Reagan era; the early Apple II and the computer-as-Cuisinart lookalike that was the original Mac were both college tools of mine. But overall, I have found Apples, as lovely as they are for certain applications, just not worth the hassle for most small businesses.

Still, even I have to admit that the latest Apple line of desktops and laptop computers is flashing some serious small-business form. Apple computers now run on the same basic electronics guts - Intel (INTC, Fortune 500) chips and the like - as any PC using the Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) operating systems. Peripheral support for Apple is strong: Every gadget vendor wants a piece of that sexy iPhone/iPod pie. And though plenty of software is still not supported on the Mac (more on that in a moment), it’s now possible to get just about any Windows program up and running on an Apple computer. (link)

If you’ve been thinking of switching to Mac or picking up an Apple pc? Well now’s your chance. I can’t think of a better time to buy one. Anyone else on the site now? That MacBook Pro looks pretty sweet.
Apple Canada

Apple confirmed for me last week that a feature for using hard drives attached via USB to an AirPort Extreme Base Station is an unsupported feature. The company declined to provide further information. This feature was available in the betas of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, as has been widely reported, but was removed from the public Leopard feature list and from the shipping version of the operating system. Apple had been working on providing me a definitive statement since my review of Time Capsule for Macworld was published on 21-Mar-08.

What a “lack of support” means is that if you attempt to use an 802.11n AirPort Extreme Base Station for Time Machine backup, you won’t get any help from Apple’s technical support, something that readers have already told me. I’ve been receiving reports that USB-attached drives work erratically with an AirPort Extreme. TidBITS editor Joe Kissell and I have been discussing the strange array of scenarios in which you find an Apple Filing Protocol (AFP) volume that’s shared by the AirPort Extreme server not appearing automatically for Time Machine. (See “MacVoices Podcast Covers Time Capsule Ins and Outs,” 2008-04-03, for links to the podcasts. I also talked about Time Capsule and this problem in a podcast on 26-Mar-08 with Jason Snell, editorial director for Macworld.) (link)

Mossberg’s column ran for about 900 words; just 70 of them, or 8 percent, by my count, suggested anything even approaching negative criticism. Apple loved the review so much that it excerpted it in advertisements. Apple CEO Steve Jobs quoted it in his speeches. But Mossberg says that his mailbox told a different story. Several Apple fans felt slighted. What did he have against Apple? they wanted to know.

There are many tribes in the tech world: TiVo lovers, Blackberry addicts, Palm Treo fanatics, and people who exhibit unhealthy affection for their Roomba robotic vacuum cleaners. But there is no bigger tribe, and none more zealous, than fans of Apple, who are infamous for their sensitivity to slams, real or imagined, against the beloved company. “It’s funny — even if I write a generally positive piece about Apple, I still get more complaints from Apple partisans” than from opponents, Mossberg says. He has even coined a term for the effect. “I call it the Doctrine of Insufficient Adulation.”

In my years as a tech reporter, I’ve dealt first-hand with Mossberg’s doctrine — as well as its opposite, the PC fans who see a pro-Apple press bias in my work (a few years ago, Salon’s customer service department informed me that a reader called to cancel a subscription in response to my piece, “Hallelujah, the Mac Is Back.”) (link)

Some of you may have noticed that the Firefox 3 nightly builds have felt a lot snappier since a few weeks ago. There’s an interesting story in that, one that I finally have time to write up. We’ve had a number of bugs on the Mac where people were complaining of bad performance compared to Firefox 2, usually involving a test where a page was scrolled by a small step 100 or so times, and the time from start to finish was recorded. In many of these tests, Fx3 was coming in at 50% to 500%+ slower. This was odd, because in theory the graphics layer (which is what scrolling is mostly exercising) in Firefox 3 should be faster, given that it’s talking almost directly to Quartz.

…

Slashdot seems to have picked up on this, and in typical style, has completely misunderstood the post. To be clear, I do not think that Apple is in any way trying to purposely “cripple” non-Apple software. I also do not think that undocumented APIs give Safari any kind of “significant performance advantage” (as Firefox 3 should show!). However, as I said, the undocumented functionality could be useful for Firefox and other apps to implement things in an simpler (and potentially more efficient) manner. I don’t think this is malicious, it’s just an unfortunate cutting of corners that is way too easy for a company that’s not fully open to do.(link)

Apple has confirmed a security glitch that, in many situations, will let someone with physical access to a Macintosh computer gain access to the password of the active user account.

The vulnerability arises out of a programming error that stores the account password in the computer’s memory long after it’s needed, meaning it can be retrieved and used to log into the computer and impersonate the user.

“This is a real problem and it needs to be fixed,” said Jacob Appelbaum, a San Francisco-area programmer who discovered the vulnerability and reported it to Apple. He said he disagreed with the company’s response: “They won’t put it in the latest security update or release a security update just for this issue.”

Appelbaum is one of the team of researchers who published a “cold boot” paper last week describing unrelated vulnerabilities in encrypted filesystems, including Apple’s FileVault, Windows Vista’s BitLocker, and a number of open-source ones.

Unlike the security concerns reported last week, this vulnerability is specific to OS X. It’s also more sweeping because it offers–at least in OS X’s default configuration–full access to passwords stored in the Keychain, which can include passwords to wireless networks, Web sites, accounts accessed via SSH, network-mounted volumes, and so on. (link)

Apple MacBook remains price competitive too. In conjunction with MacBook Pro refresh, Apple also introduced its latest update to the low-end MacBook line, which also incorporates the multi-touch touchpad. While Apple did not change the form factor of MacBook, it updated the basic configuration to include faster processors and higher storage. In comparing the new MacBook to Dell’s (DELL) XPS line (we did not compare it with mass brands such as Dell Inspiron or H-P Pavilion) MacBook pricing was very competitive: 13.3-inch MacBook was priced at $1,099 compared to Dell XPS M1330 at $1,119 with Windows Vista Home Premium, although MacBook has a faster CPU but Dell XPS weighed slightly less. (link)

Microsoft is making crazy claims again. Vista and XP more secure than other operating systems. Jeff Jones the security strategy director at Microsoft even made up a nice PDF for you to easily read.

“This paper analyzes the vulnerability disclosures and security updates for the first year of Windows Vista and looks at it in the context of its predecessor, Windows XP, along with other modern workstation operating systems Red Hat, Ubuntu and Apple products.

The results of the analysis show that Windows Vista has an improved security vulnerability profile over its predecessor. Analysis of security updates also shows that Microsoft improvements to the security update process and development process have reduced the impact of security updates to Windows administrators significantly compared to its predecessor, Windows XP.”

But I thought Mac didn’t get viruses?

“… from what our tiny brains make of the case, such an argument doesn’t take into account factors like just how many people are trying to exploit a particular platform/vulnerability, or just how damaging each exploit can be.”

I’m sure bloggers will respond shortly.

Due out next month as Mac OS X 10.5.2, the update will deliver to users of the company’s Leopard operating system nearly 100 code corrections and enhancements, people familiar with the software say.

Among them are twenty new fixes that turned up as part of Mac OS X 10.5.2 build 9C16, which was released privately to developers during last week’s Macworld Expo. Some of the more prominent fixes in that build target problems with resuming Time Machine backups and previewing PDF, image and mail attachments.

Since seeding the first pre-release copies of the Leopard update in mid-December, Apple has asked that its developer community test the release quite broadly. The latest build arrived without exception, maintaining a list of thirty seven core focus areas that swapped out an emphasis on 802.11 wireless testing for that of Active Directory. (link)