Items tagged with Mac
If you've been following Apple for the past decade, then you know that the company has become adept at producing its own silicon for iPhones and iPads. Apple's A-Series SoCs are performance juggernauts, often outpacing their Qualcomm Snapdragon 8xx rivals in cross-platform benchmarks versus Android devices. That same chip design prowess, which has paid dividends for Apple's mobile fortunes, might also transfer to its PC products as well, according to a new report. Bloomberg, which often obtains some rather accurate details about Apple's unreleased product lines, says that the company will begin ditching Intel as a supplier of processors for its Macs as soon as 2020. Intel shares were down 6 percent...
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Everyone is looking to make a buck with cryptocurrency these days, and unfortunately it has gotten to the point where even unrelated apps and websites are prone to using your device's resources for mining, often without the user's consent. It has been a problem for Google Play, and now also the Mac App Store. It's been discovered that Calendar 2, a popular app for Apple systems, contains a misbehaving cryptocurrency mining feature. Calendar 2 is a scheduling app that is a bit more robust than the one that Apple includes with macOS. The added features have been popular with users, Within the last few days, however, developer Qbix injected code with instructions to mine Monero. Called xmr-stack...
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Gaming on-the-go for most people means an app on a tablet or smartphone, and there are of course the folks who will do their mobile gaming with a laptop. The catch is that gaming with high-end games requires some serious muscle of the sort that many laptops, tablets, and smartphones simply can’t muster. A new streaming gaming service is launching in California called Shadow, and it will come to more locations later (exactly when is unannounced at this time). Shadow is like a “powerful Windows 10 PC” that allows you to surf the web, play games, and use high-end software on tablets and smartphones. Shadow can also turn basic laptops into workstation/gaming class machines. The...
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Apple is allegedly far along in development on a trio of upcoming Mac computers that will feature custom ARM co-processors. These new ARM chips will work in conjunction with the Intel processors that already power the machines according to the new report, and these Macs will include two new MacBook models along with an unnamed desktop (presumably the iMac). The news that Apple will incorporate more of its own, in-house chip designs into its products should come as no surprise given that the iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch are all primarily powered by Apple silicon. In addition, devices like the iPhone include Apple-designed co-processors (M11 in the case of the iPhone 8 family and iPhone X), and...
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Updated November 29th at 11:52am Apple has issued a patch for the macOS High Sierra security exploit, less than 24 hours after it was made public. It is addressed in Security Update 2017-001, which Apple encourages all macOS High Sierra users to download immediately. Apple describes the security incident, writing: Impact: An attacker may be able to bypass administrator authentication without supplying the administrator’s password Description: A logic error existed in the validation of credentials. This was addressed with improved credential validation. The original story continues below: A major bug has been found in macOS High Sierra that could give unauthorized users full admin access...
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Apple has done very well with its Mac computers in recent years, even if it tends to focus more on the MacBook line often to the detriment of its desktop products. Apple let the Mac Pro, iMac, and Mac Mini fall by the wayside as it focused on smartphones and notebooks over the last few years. It has been three years since the Mac Mini was updated, leaving it using significatively older hardware than similarly-priced Windows products. Some Mac faithful simply don't want a notebook and prefer a desktop form-factor. There are other who aren't interested in the iMac all-in-one or the super expensive Mac Pro, leaving the Mac Mini as the only interesting product in the Mac line. A person called Krar...
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Around two years ago, researchers discovered serious firmware vulnerabilities in Mac laptops and desktops, and then developed a proof-of-concept worm to demonstrate how potentially damaging they could be. Since then, Apple has been pretty good about including EFI (extensible firmware interface) updates with its macOS security and software updates, though new evidence suggests it is not nearly enough. This time around, researchers at Duo Security took a detailed look at the firmware used in Mac systems, and found them to be lacking. This is the part of the system that makes a series of checks and instructs core components what to do, before loading up the operating system—in this instance, macOS....
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Fall is almost here, which means cooler weather (unless you live in Texas where fall weather is at least three months away) and sports to watch on TV. This is when many cord cutters start to get nervous. It's great to not have to pay that cable (or satellite) bill, but it's not so great to miss out on all the cool fall shows and football games. Hulu has your back though with the announcement of a new Live TV streaming service that supports both Mac and PC platforms. Hulu hasn't come out and said that this service is beta, but it sure sounds like it is. Hulu is warning Mac and PC streamers that "...rather than wait until we’ve finalized our new Web experience, we’re opening up a basic version...
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For a long time, Apple's Mac line of computers were thought by some users to be immune to malware and viruses. Some of that was due to hackers and nefarious sorts aiming for the low hanging fruit of the much larger Windows user base. Things have changed with Macs growing in popularity over the years and there are many different viruses and malware out there that target Mac users today. MacRansom was one of the latest bits of malware aimed at Apple fans, and now, a malware called Fruitfly is ready to wreak havoc. The malware has reportedly been making the rounds for years (perhaps a half decade), but has gone mostly undetected and even today only a few security products are able...
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If you’re looking for a new solution to back up your entire PC or Mac, it looks as though Google is angling to get its foot in the door with a new app. Called Backup and Sync, the app is the latest extension of Google Drive, and will be available for computer running either Windows or macOS. Backup and Sync replaces the existing Google Drive for Windows and Mac, and provides a huge advantage when it comes to functionality. With the current app, your synced files are accessible within the actual Google Drive folder on your computer (and of course online). However, Backup and Sync can monitor any folder on your computer that you select and mirror the contents in the cloud. While you may be able...
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The notion that Mac systems are immune to malware is just plain wrong. Sure, Macs might be less susceptible to malware than Windows-based PCs, but they are certainly not exempt from security threats. Proving otherwise, two different security outfits have put out warnings about separate threats targeting Mac users. One of them pertains to ransomware, where a user's documents and files are encrypted and held hostage until a ransom is paid, and the other is a spyware application that sniffs out sensitive information.Image Source: Apple Starting with the former, security outfit Fortinet said its labs recently discovered a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) called MacRansom that uses a web portal hosted...
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If you have a kiddo in the American public school system, they likely are toting around a Chromebook, which runs Google's Chrome OS. A recent study of PC sales in the K-12 sector indicate that long-running favorite Apple is losing the battle in the classroom. Apple’s iPads and Mac notebooks were once kings of the playground and accounted for roughly half of the devices used in American classrooms in 2013. This number has steadily dropped, however, due to the affordability of Chromebooks. In 2016, Chromebooks accounted for 58% of the 12.8 million shipped devices, while macOS devices fell to 19%. This was a fairly significant change from 2015 in which Chromebooks dominated 50% of the market,...
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When it comes to questions swirling around Apple’s Mac division, there’s the corporate speak, and then there’s the commentary from the folks down in the trenches deep within Apple. Earlier today, we heard from Apple CEO Tim Cook that users need not be worried about the direction of the Mac. "Some folks in the media have raised the question about whether we're committed to desktops,” said Cool in a post to Apple’s employee message board. “If there's any doubt about that with our teams, let me be very clear: we have great desktops in our roadmap. Nobody should worry about that.” However, a new report from heavy-hitting Apple insider Mark Gurman details more troubling concerns within the Mac division....
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If you’re an Apple fan running macOS on your MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iMac or Mac Pro, you’re probably going to want to apply the latest security update as soon as possible. Researchers have discovered a vulnerability that takes advantage of a security hole in macOS FileVault2, which makes it possible to retrieve a user’s clear text password. How in the world is this even possible, you might ask? Well, in recent versions of OS X and macOS, Mac computers provide protections against Direct Memory Access (DMA) once the system has been fully booted. However, this same DMA protection is not afforded to systems that have been turned on, but have not yet completed the boot process. Couple that with...
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