15 January 2008, mid-morning
The MacWorld Keynote has been kind of dull for the most part, as pretty much everything rumored to be in the works was in the works: the iPhone Firmware update, iTunes movie rentals, a new wireless hard drive / base station, and of course, the new MacBook ultra-portable. That said, damn the new Powerbook is looking good. (Also of note for the environmentalists out there, the computer features: a fully aluminum case (good for recycling), the first fully mercury and lead free display, circuit boards are BFR free, retail packaging has 56% less volume than that of the MacBook.) The MacBook Air page is up, and I have to say that computer doesn’t look real.
[6] Apple Computers
31 October 2007, early evening
I, like many other people I imagine, went out and bought a new giant hard drive to go along with Leopard. Giant-ass hard drives are pretty cheap now — well, as hard drives go anyway. For $125 (taxes and all) you can buy a half terrabyte drive from Western Digital. I had to pay $45 more for an enclosure. I really wanted to get a firewire enclosure, but SATA to FireWire enclosures are few and far between; the few that I found were quite expensive. SATA to USB 2.0 and/or eSATA enclosures on the other hand are fairly common. eSATA is incredibly fast, but sadly my iMac has no interface for it so I am stuck using USB 2.0, which I’m not a big fan of. That said, USB 2.0 is probably fast enough for a backup drive, so I’ll live. The drive is sitting behind my iMac, making hard drive noises as I type this. It seems to be holding up quite well thus far.
Time Machine seems to work well enough. It does what Rsnapshot was doing, but I have more faith in it than I ever had in Rsnapshot, which would never seem to run rsync without spewing out a lot of errors. Last night I had Time Machine back up everything on my main drive. That was slow. Today I learned you can exclude individual folders on a drive; now the only thing I’m backing up is my User directory. Having hourly snapshots of the system or application folders seemed a bit silly. I can always reinstall the OS and my applications if the system crashes. Not that I want to jinx myself or nothing.
[7] Apple Computers
Which brings me to the jackassiest comment of the day regarding Amazon MP3, from Jupiter Research analyst David Card to the Associated Press: “In and of itself, (Amazon MP3) isn’t enough to change any market share. They have to do a good job at building their store.”
Well, perhaps Amazon can find a book or something about how to build a successful high-volume online store.
— John Gruber, More on the Amazon MP3 Store
21 September 2007, late morning
John Gruber has written what I assume will be his last post on the David Maynor Apple WiFi exploit story. Maynor has finally published a paper on the exploit, which outlines a kernel panic he found. I think Gruber’s criticism of Maynor back during the summer of 2006 was spot on. There were so many ways Maynor could have proven he had an exploit without disclosing too much information, yet he didn’t choose to pursue any of them. That’s his prerogative I suppose.
Let’s say I tell you I have in my pocket a frog that can recite the entire alphabet. You doubt it, and ask me to show you. I refuse. You ask me to show it to a trusted third party. I refuse.
A year later, I show you a frog who can recite the alphabet. That’s certainly something. But it doesn’t prove I had the frog in my pocket a year ago.
This post is a bit too bitter. The implication that Maynor didn’t have a working exploit back in 2006 doesn’t seem fair. The idea that he’s been sitting at home trying to exploit an out of date version of MacOS X seems a bit off to me. You don’t get props for exploiting out of date operating systems. He also really has no reason to lie now. He didn’t seem all too bothered by the criticism leveled against him over the past year or so. It also doesn’t seem to have effected his standing in the security community. Though the Mac community may have felt he had something to prove, judging by his actions since 2006 he certainly didn’t feel this was the case.
Maynor said that he had been under a nondisclosure agreement, which had previously prevented him from publishing details of the hack. The security researcher wouldn’t say who his NDA was with, but that agreement is no longer in force, allowing him to talk about the exploit. “I published it now because I can publish it now,” he said.
This strikes me as the most reasonable reason for Maynor’s silence. It is possible Maynor wanted to make everyone crazy, and so decided the best course of action was to say he had an exploit, and then shut up. (That the story was as big as it was back in 2006 — a story about an exploit that didn’t exist — does in fact say a lot about the mac community and the way people react to criticism. In 2006 Maynor had basically proven nothing, yet people wouldn’t stop talking about him.)
If Maynor didn’t have a working exploit back in 2006, I imagine it would relate to the following point:
Worth pointing out: Maynor’s paper describes an attack that leads to a kernel panic. He claims it can be exploited to instead inject code and, rather than crash, take over the machine — but this is not described in the paper.
While it is true that Maynor’s paper only describes an attack that leads to a kernel panic, it also discusses in a fair amount of detail how to proceed if you want to inject code. It’s possible Maynor had figured out how to get a kernel panic, but not a full exploit. However, reading the paper, it doesn’t seem like going from the panic to the exploit is too tricky. (Of course, I don’t really know that much about this sort of thing. Patrick can probably say more on the topic.)
The most promising avenue for getting execution can be found in a function named ath_copy_scan_results. This function uses the fields that are overwritten to copy memory.
As an initial test, the author overwrote every function pointer in the structure with a pattern such as 0×61413761 (or aA7a in ASCII, which is the typical Metasploit buffer padding pattern). A crash dump with an error message about failing to execute code at a bad address like 0×61413761 proves that remote code execution is theoretically possible.
As Gruber himself said:
This entire saga boils down to one simple question: Have Maynor and Ellch discovered a vulnerability against MacBooks using Apple’s built-in AirPort cards and drivers?
The answer looks to be yes, but as of today this is really only of interest in an academic sense.
Apple Computers | Technology
19 September 2007, terribly early in the morning
Mail.app crashes like a champ when accessing my IMAP mail on Dreamhost. I don’t recall when it started doing this, but it does it consistently. My work around thus far is to load up Mutt on the Funkaoshi server, purge deleted mail there, and then load up Mail.app. This seems to fix things. Why Mail.app chokes I have yet to investigate. The lack of any good email clients for the Mac is perplexing. I’m surprised some indie-developer hasn’t tried their hand at one. There must be open-source email libraries one could start off with. Maybe I should try using Mulberry again. GyazMail looks interesting.
Apple Computers
17 September 2007, early morning
Herman, how could you? We’ve all thought about counterfeiting jeans at one time or another, but what about the victims? Hard-working designers like Calvin Klein, Gloria Vanderbilt, or Antoine Bugle Boy. These are the people who saw an overcrowded marketplace and said, “Me too!”
I was reminded of this quote when reading some of the bad press Apple has been getting about their entry into the ring tone market. I have probably said this several times already, but paying for ring tones is stupid. (Paying a $1 for a DRM’d up ACC file is also stupid, but at least when you’ve paid your dollar you have a whole song to listen to.) Back when there was no way to get a song on to your phone except via your cellphone provider I can understand paying a premium to do so, but now? It’s rare to find a phone that is missing USB and Bluetooth and WiFi. There is always at least one way to get data onto your phone all by yourself. Thankfully, we live in a world where there are people who like gadgets and hate paying for stuff they don’t have to.
Apple Computers | Quotes
14 September 2007, terribly early in the morning
While waiting for Flash Point to start, one of my coworkers and I went to get some coffee; the third stayed behind to save our spot. When we got back, she nudges me and tells me to ask the newly arrived guy in front of us about his phone. He looks at her, then me, then takes out his iPhone.
— Has your life been reduced to showing strangers your cell phone.
— Pretty much.
Damn. I want the iPod touch all the more now. You feel like you’re playing with something from the future.
Life | Apple Computers
12 August 2007, early evening
Why doesn’t undo work at all in iTunes? Erase a song from a playlist and that’s that. Actually, worse still, erase a whole playlist and that’s that. Why have an undo item in the edit menu if it doesn’t actually do anything.
[2] Apple Computers
6 February 2007, terribly early in the morning
All about my 2nd generation iPod shuffle.
My iPod shuffle made its way from China to my office over the course of a week, arriving yesterday morning. (The trip from China to Toronto took all of 2 days, the sorting and then waiting another 5.) This iPod replaces my 3rd generation 15 gig iPod. In some ways this is a step backwards — I have less space and no screen. I think I can live with that. I haven’t been using the full 15 gigs of my old iPod for ages now — certainly not since I left school. I usually listen to a couple albums a day, alternating between them. I don’t use the built in calender, notebook, or any of that extra jazz, and I’m usually aware of what music I’m listening to: I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to live without a screen. The iPod shuffle is quite nice. It is wicked small, dwarfed by the headphones I plug into it. Syncing a full gig of music onto it took about 5 minutes or so, if that. Apple says you can fit 240 songs on the player, but that’s if you encode them as 128bit ACC files. I usually encode at 224bit, so the files are bigger; I can fit about 150 or so songs on the player, which is still enough for me. Right now the shuffle picks tracks randomly from the music that was on my old iPod. I think I’ll keep this behaviour for the next little while. So far I’m quite liking the shuffle.
(I engraved Soundwave: Superior on the back of the iPod. It’s written in the tiniest text. I couldn’t fit Constructocons: Inferior as well, which is a shame.)
[2] Apple Computers
9 January 2007, early morning
In a few hours Apple will announce all sorts of crazy-shit at Macworld. There seems to be even more hype around this Macworld than any other I can recall. People are hoping for an iPhone (I don’t see it happening), a new Finder for OS X (this I do see happening), a crazy MacPro (also likely), and a host of other new gadgets from Apple. Apple usually doesn’t announce new iPods till later in the year, so I don’t expect to hear anything about video iPods today. As usual, I will probably post my thoughts on the expo later today.
Some Macworld links of note:
Update: Macworld is happening right now.
Update: Jobs puts to rest stories about iTunes sales slowing. Apple is now the 5th largest music reseller, beating out Amazon. Apple sells 5 million songs a day. (That sounds unbelievable.) As I have said before, buying DRM’d music for a buck sucks, but clearly most people don’t seem to care. Television and Movie sales are also doing well on iTunes.
Update: The Apple TV has been announced. This was the produce billed as the iTV earlier.
Update: Holy shit there is an Apple Phone! I want one so badly. You have no idea. Engadget has a preliminary page up with information on the phone.
Update: Apple has changed their name from Apple Computers, Inc, to simply Apple, Inc — I guess this is to indicate that they make more than personal computers now.
Update: Engadget’s coverage of the event is really good. Now that the expo is over, the page loads much faster.
Update: MetaFilter discusses the iPhone.
[4] Apple Computers
12 September 2006, early morning
Apple’s big iPod event of the year is happening today. There is lots of speculation as to what will be announced, but we won’t know for certain till 10:00 Pacific Time. I’m hoping for an iPhone or some such nonsense. Or something that is totally insane and unexpected. Chances are after today you’ll be able to buy 8 gig iPod nanos at the very least.
Update: As expected, we have fancier iPods, but nothing shocking was announced. You can buy movies through iTunes now, though DVDs seem like a better deal to me. Gizmodo has detailed coverage of the event.
[3] Apple Computers
8 August 2006, the wee hours
I spent the whole day with Shima and had a very lovely time. I had so nice a time in fact that I completely forget that the WWDC was taking place! I certainly missed a lot. Apple announced the Mac Pro, which is using Intel’s Xeon (64-bit) processor. Apple’s now moved their entire line over to Intel chips; the transition was much faster than I suspect most people thought it would be. Apple also announced some of the feature’s we’ll see in the upcoming version of Mac OS X (Leopard). Kottke’s got an open thread on the WWDC. He sounds less then impressed with what was announced for the next version of OS X. I would agree it is a bit lackluster, though some of the things announced look pretty cool: the remote desktop sharing with iChat, the new backup system, and the inline to-do stuff in Mail all seem pretty neat. If you are bored, or geeky, you can watch the Jobs’ keynote address in its entirity.
[2] Apple Computers | Technology
17 May 2006, early morning
The MacBook was announced yesterday. The MacBook replaces the iBook as Apple’s consumer-level laptop computer; it is quite the replacement. The processors, memory, and bus are identical to those used by the iMac and the MacBook Pro. The two higher end models come with superdrives as well—though at this point in time that is hardly a big deal. Macworld has their first impressions of the MacBook online now. They are quite happy with the machine. Slashdot also wrote about the story yesterday; as always, some comments are better than others. Tyler noticed that the keyboards in the MacBooks look quite strange. Macintouch has started getting reports from its readers on the new MacBook. One thing that caught my eye was the fact the machines ship with those stupid glossy screens you see on PC laptops. Who thought a highly reflective monitor was a good idea? Probably someone in marketing.
Apple is only shipping 13” models of the MacBook at the moment; this may be one way in which they differentiate between the MacBooks and the MacBook pros. Many years ago, the iBooks were G3 laptops, and the Powerbooks were G4 laptops. However, by the time the iBooks and the Powerbooks were phased out, the things that differeniate the two models were superfluous at best. Shima’s G4 iBook is very similar to the 12” Powerbook, once you get past the build of the two machines. If Apple starts shipping 15” versions of the MacBook, I can see a lot of people opting for those rather than the MacBook Pros. My feeling is that Apple will use screen size as what separates the “Pro” models from the “Consumer” models.
Apple is shipping a computer that looks to pack a lot of punch; at $1099 the machines are also very cost effective. (And as with the other Intel Macs, you can run windows on this machines as well.) You (and by you I mean Tyler) should buy the machine and take it home right now.
Update: A cousin in Sydney pointed out that the new MacBooks don’t have dedicated video cards; they use Intel’s integrated video card, much like the Mac Minis.
[5] Apple Computers
5 April 2006, evening time
Windows running on a Mac is like Windows running on a PC. That means itll be subject to the same attacks that plague the Windows world. So be sure to keep it updated with the latest Microsoft Windows security fixes.
What the blood? Now, I am sure there are plenty of Mac users looking forward to playing all sorts of video games on thier Macs now; I can’t imagine another good reason to run Windows XP on a Mac. Apple’s stock jumped at the news this is going to be built into Mac OS X 10.5. Strange days lay ahead my friend.
[4] Apple Computers
29 March 2006, the wee hours
I usually email Shima a picture of me from Photo Booth everyday. I don’t know anyone else with an iSight, so I don’t really have much use for the thing beyond mucking around in Photo Booth.
[3] Intel iMac | Apple Computers
28 February 2006, lunch time
There are two new Intel based Mac Minis available today one is a Intel Solo Core 1.5Ghz machine, the other is a Intel Dual Core 1.66Ghz machine.
Read the rest of this post. (451 words)
[9] Apple Computers
10 January 2006, lunch time
I think Apple has a warehouse full of new Intel powered Macintosh computers. They have already developed Intel versions of all of their computer lines. The rumors were running wild with what would be announced at this expo. Apple more or less released the exact opposite of what people were expecting. Intel iBooks? You wish, we have MacBook Pros now. An Intel mini? No dice, we have new Intel iMacs. (Nevermind that the last revision of the iMac is something like 2 months old now.) It will be interesting to see just how fast these new machines are. The chips are all dual core (which is like having two different CPUs inside one chip) and each core is apparently faster than a G5.
MacRumors provided good coverage of the expo, as usual.
[4] Apple Computers
12 October 2005, lunch time
Apple’s big mystery event is taking place as I type this. So far they have announced new iMacs, and a new Apple remote control, and new video playing iPods! Hot damn. Engadget has quasi live coverage happening. Apple apparently picked a venue with no WiFi or cellular coverage to host the event. I can picture a person running in and out of the building, waving flags to signal what has just been announced.
Update: Apple didn’t mess around with this pre-Christmas product announcement.
You can buy episodes of Lost at $2 a pop from Apple. Sweet Jesus I love Apple. Oh, Shima, you can buy Desperate Housewives too if you are so inclined. Prices are about the same as buying the show on DVD. With DVDs you have to wait till the end of the season; for your paitence you are rewarded with extra features. I think for many people, $2 televisions shows will be a worthwhile purchase. I’m not sure if it will make a dent with the bit torrent crowd though.
The new iMacs look really impressive. They cost the same as the old ones, which makes them more or less unfordable, but they are thinner and feature iSight cameras built in now—not too shabby. I think with the announcement of the Apple remote control and FrontRow, and television show downloads, Apple is trying to position them as alternatives to televisions. They’d definitely work well for kids in dorm rooms and the like, or people like myself.
The new iPod and the iTunes announcements are probably what most people will focus on. Apple has said they wouldn’t make a video iPod because they didn’t think there was any demand for people to watch movies on the go. I don’t like to watch a movie in disjoint chunks, but I know plenty of people who don’t care all that much. I suppose television, which is normally chopped up due to commercials, might be a better fit for video on the go. If the battery life on the new iPods remains as long as it is right now, these new iPods will be pretty slick beasts.
[9] Apple Computers
8 June 2005, late morning
Today, Apple put out a press release I never thought I would ever see: Apple to Use Intel Microprocessors Beginning in 2006. This is a big deal—but if you aren’t particularly geeky, you can stop reading now.
My first Macintosh was a Powerbook 5300cs, which ran on a PowerPC 603e. Apple had made a big switch from Motorola 68k chips to IBM PowerPC chips in the early 90s. Ars Technica has a great write up on the history of PowerPC chips at Apple for those who are interested in such things; the article also explains some of the advantages RISC machines have over CISC machines. Intel x86 computers are all classified as CISC machines. PowerPC based computers are all RISC machines. Intel and AMD are also basically the only compaines that still make CISC computers, as they went out of vogue in the 90s.
Back when I bought my Powerbook 5300cs, RISC chips were simpler, smaller, and more energy efficient than their CISC competitors. One big advantage RISC chips had over CISC chips was that the simple instruction set on RISC machines lent themselves to pipelining to speed up the processing of instruction. Pipelining involves having the processor work on several instructions at the same time.) Nowadays, the distinction between RISC and CISC chips is very subtle; modern Intel chips do things that were the domain of RISC chips alone several years back. For example, I think most modern CISC chips will break down a complex instruction into a series of smaller instructions suitable to be pipelined. In this way they behave very much like RISC chips. Mind you, I could be talking out of my ass here.
I’m not sure how Apple will spin the change. They have spent so many years touting the advantages of their hardware as well as their software over their competitors. Their hardware advantage hasn’t disappeared, but it certainly has diminished.
Update: I’ll post links to other sources of info as I find them.
[10] Technology | Apple Computers
11 January 2005, lunch time
So the rumors were true. Damn. Rishi is going to bust a nut.
The Mac mini looks like a 3” tall CD drive. A short cube. All the connections, DVI and VGA. The Mac mini fits in the palm of your hand. Hook it into your own keyboard and mouse, or Apple’s. Comes with Panther and iLife 05. Price point:$499 $599.
Live updates of Jobs Keynote address at MacMerc.com. The computer is supposed to be available on January 22nd. The rumors about a new word processor called “Pages” were also true apparently. And the rumors about the iPod flash player were also apparently true.
iPod Shuffle: really tiny (smaller than most packs of gum), no screen, weighs under 1 ounce.
Apple has updated their homepage:iPod shuffle, Mac mini, iWork. I suspect 2005 is the year Apple takes over the world.
[17] Apple Computers
20 September 2004, mid-afternoon
So, for those of you who have been reading this site for sometime may recall, my copy of Apple’s email client stopped downloading my mail. I have been making due with Mailsmith, Thunderbird, and other clients all the while hoping one day my “Mail” would just start working again. Today I got sick of waiting. Well, I also only had 5 more days to demo Mailsmith.
After scouring the discussion boards at Apple’s web site, I came to the conclusion that perhaps one of the emails on 1and1’s servers was some how corrupt, and that this was causing Apple’s email client to choke. My solution was to download all the emails I had been saving on the 1and1 server. ( I had been keeping them there in the hope that when Mail started downloading email again, it could grab them all.) I used a clean copy of Mailsmith to do this, and when I grabbed all the mail, I exported it all into an mbox file. My 1and1 server was now empty of all email.
That was all I needed to do. Mail is now happily downloading my email. I imported all the mail that has been collecting all these months, and things are back to normal. I feel good.
Life | Apple Computers
21 May 2004, terribly early in the morning
I haven’t been receiving mail recently from a mailing list I’m on. In the past there have been issues with the list, so I didn’t think much of it. Shima mentioned a few days earlier she had forwarded me an email, which I also didin’t get. I didn’t think much of it at the time, and quickly forgot she had mentioned forwarding me anything. Tonight, for some reason, I thought I should send myself an email. I did so, and waited for it to arrive. It did not.
1and1 is pretty useless when it comes to any sort of support. I’m not paying for my space, or my email addresses, so who am I to bitch? I thought, if there was a problem, I should try and figure out as much as I can myself first. I logged onto their webmail client, and discovered a whole lot of mail that I had not seen. Apparently, Apple’s email application, Mail, suddenly stopped downloading email. Or was the fault on 1and1’s side? I had hoped for the later case, because I had a lot of faith in Mail. I opened up Entourage, Microsoft’s email client for the Mac, and tried to download my email with it. All my email messages arrived, one after another. So, for some strange reason, Mail has suddenly stopped downloading my email.
Has this happened to anyone else? Can anyone recommend any other nice Mac email clients? I may go back to Entourage if I can’t solve this problem.
[6] Life | Apple Computers
28 April 2004, lunch time
Apple realeased several updates today for those products related to its online music venture.
There is a new release of quicktime which promises dramatic improvements to ACC. There is also a new lossless encoder that will encode songs to some apple format which is about half the size of the equivalent CD audio. This would still be quite large for most people I imagine, but could be good if you have a big iPod but a small CD collection (or if you have a giant hard drive).
There is a brand new iTunes, which has a slew of new features. You can read more about them at the iTunes site itself. The update looks promising. One of the more interesting features is posting your playlist online, and the ability to vote other people’s playlists up and down the online playlist charts.
Finally, if you own an iPod, grab the new iPod updater to take advantage of the changes made to iTunes.
Update: Jim Heid provides a more compressive review of iTunes 4.5.
Apple Computers
21 January 2004, the wee hours
The 4th iPod TV Spot is freaking wicked. You should check it out, it’s the best one they have done so far. I like break dancing, Apple, and iPods a lot though, so there may be some bias here.
[1] Interesting Links | Apple Computers
19 January 2004, early afternoon
I’ve been mucking around with my iPod since it arrived yesterday. I’ve been ripping my CD’s for the past few days, and am probably a third of the way done now. Right now my iPod is just filled with my albums. I’m not sure if I can get my entire CD collection on the iPod, but here is hoping. (I’m probably going to rip all my ‘fan ban’ chinese cd’s at 128 bit ACC to save space.)
You’ve probably read plenty of stuff on people raving about how great their iPods are, so I will try and tell you some things I’ve noticed that apple could improve on. First, the touch wheel is really sensitive, a bit too sensitive. It seems far to easy to accidently have your iPod do stuff while it is just sitting in your pocket. Secondly, I don’t like the way apple has engineered the syncing mechanism. It works nice if you want your iPod to mirror your iTunes music collection, but if this is not for you there are no real alternatives besides manually managing your music. I was hoping that I could upload all my albums, erase them from my hard drive, and then select some play lists in iTunes that I want to iPod to keep in sync with. I am hoping Apple will improve the syncing in a new release of iTunes.
All that said, the thing is very nice. I’m liking it so far.
[5] Life | Apple Computers