Items tagged with OS X
Good news, Office for Mac users: Microsoft has just released the first public preview for its upcoming Office 2016 suite. Of course, opting into the preview is free, and installing it will not replace a current install of Office 2011.
In recent months, Microsoft has rolled-out updated versions of OneNote and Outlook, per ZDNET's Mary Jo
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Conventional wisdom in years past was that hackers didn’t bother to exploit Apple’s OS X operating system because its relatively insignificant market share didn’t warrant wasting resources to exploit it. The reasoning was, why bother with OS X when Windows was pushing over 90 percent of the worldwide OS...
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Microsoft no longer needs to feel singled out by Google and its Project Zero team for disclosing multiple unpatched vulnerabilities in Windows. It wasn't personal, just an inflexible policy on the part of Project Zero to give companies a 90-day window to patch any vulnerabilities it finds before making them public...
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When a computer vulnerability is revealed by both the Department of Homeland Security and Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute, I'd say there's a pretty good chance that it shouldn't be ignored. Apparently, Apple agrees. Today, the Cupertino firm released its first-ever forced update, taking...
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Apple issued an update to its Safari web browser earlier this week that was supposed to patch more than a dozen security vulnerabilities, but has now pulled it offline due to issues affecting some users. Those affected by the buggy update say that it reports installing correctly, but actually removes the browser from...
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One of the disadvantages to buying an Apple system is that it generally means less upgradeability and flexibility than a system from a traditional PC OEM. Over the last few years, Apple has introduced features and adopted standards that made upgrading or using third-party hardware progressively more difficult. Now...
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When people think about Internet security, they still think of the various bugs, flaws, and malware that pervade the online world as a Windows problem. Macs have long enjoyed special status thanks to limited market share, while smartphones aren't generally considered to be an attack vector, no matter which OS you...
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Today's Apple headlines are dominated by the iPad, but it'd be a sad thing to completely overlook another important release: OS X 10.10, dubbed Yosemite. Its release comes three months after Apple broke tradition by offering a public beta of the software, and perhaps it's that beta period that ensured that Yosemite's...
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Red Hat has announced that it has issued a complete set of patches to battle the 'Shellshock' Bash bug that it revealed to the world last week. You might notice that I said "patches", and that's because shortly after the initial CVE-2014-6271 was discovered and patched, more vulnerabilities came to the surface. These...
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Three days short of a full month ago, Apple released its first-ever public OS X beta for its upcoming Yosemite (10.10) release. Today, the company has followed-up with a new build, which closely matches the Developer Beta 6 release that came out earlier this week. While Apple highly recommends that everyone using Beta...
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This past April, Apple surprised us with an announcement that the general public would soon be able to access OS X betas. The reason for the surprise is the simple fact that Apple's forever been a conservative company, careful about what winds up in its customer's hands. So to give them not only beta software, but a...
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Are you interested in testing out pre-release versions of OS X, but don't develop? Don't fret: Apple's just loosened the restrictions on its beta OSes, and now everyone is free to participate. This move is substantial for Apple, as it's traditionally been quite strict about what beta software reaches the public -...
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There's mounting evidence to suggest that Apple has put Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6) out to pasture, thereby leaving users of what's become a legacy operating system to fend for themselves out in the wild. For the second time, Apple rolled out a security patch for present and past OS X builds dating back to OS X 10.7, or...
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Prior to the Windows 8 launch last fall, Microsoft had a strong belief that it was going to change the computing world forever. Instead, it became one of the worst-received OSes the company had ever pushed out. I'd bring up the definitive "worst", but I fear for reoccurring nightmares. Still, while much of...
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Time and time again, we're reminded that Windows isn't the only operating system that malware writers target. It's the most popular platform for malware, sure, but it's not the only one. If you're a Mac user, don't let your guard down, and be especially leery of browsers plug-ins you run into, especially those that claim they're required to...
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It's not often you hear an Apple user bash his platform, especially a relatively high profile one like Lloyd Chambers, a photography enthusiast and author of the Macintosh Performance Guide. Chambers, who worked as a professional software engineer for 25 years and has been using Macs since they first appeared in the 1980s, wrote an interesting...
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Believe it or not, but Macs are susceptible to security vulnerabilities too, and perhaps erring on the side of caution, Apple has begun removing dated versions of Oracle's Java software from OS X when Mac users upgrade to the latest release. "Java for OS X 2012-006 delivers improved security, reliability, and compatibility by updating Java...
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OS X is a significant step forward for Apple and it has reached a very mature stage. Obviously, we've only got another point release before we roll to OS 11, or whatever Apple ends up naming it. To best understand what makes this edition worthwhile though, let's look at what's new. The actual desktop space of OS X 10.8 isn't dramatically different...
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Mountain Lion is off to such a fast start that Apple dubbed it "the most successful OS X release" in the company's history. Prior to the weekend, estimates pegged Mountain Lion downloads at around 2 million after just 48 hours of being uncaged, and since then Apple has come out said downloads of OS X 10.8 have topped...
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When Apple unveiled its Mac OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) operating system back in June, the Cupertino outfit said it would be available in July from the Mac App Store, but refrained from offering up a specific release date. With barely two weeks left in the month, Apple is running out of time to make good on that...
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For years, Apple has propogated the myth that its computers were inherently secure thanks to its BSD roots, inherently better security management, or because Steve Jobs sacrificed puppies under the new moon to keep your platform safe. This created a dangerous perception that Macs were immune to viruses, trojans, or...
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Contrary to what some Mac fanatics might tell you, their platform of choice isn't inherently immune to viruses, spyware, and other forms of malware. Malicious software certainly isn't anywhere near as prominent on Macs as they are in Windows, but like Bob Dylan said, the times, they are a changin'. Thanks in no small part to the wildly popular...
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