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Diablo III arrives for PC and Mac

May 16th, 2012
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LONG AWAITED PC and Mac gaming sequel Diablo III is upon us, bringing with it a raft of role-playing action glories.
It looks likely that Diablo III will be an absolute smash and Blizzard said that it has already taken some two million pre orders, which is a lot of swords, sandals, and elfs in anyone’s book.

Blizzard starting selling the game at midnight in launches around the world, and said that its users are already storming things in pursuit of a character called the Lord of Terror.

“This launch is a culmination of many years of hard work by our development team, and many years of passionate, dedicated support from gamers around the world,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment.

“We’re grateful for the enthusiasm of our players, and for the help of our beta testers in getting the game ready for release. Now that Diablo III is live, we hope everyone’s ready to have a hellishly good time slaying demons and collecting loot in Sanctuary.”
There are a couple of options for people buying hard copy versions, including one that sells for around the £100 mark and offers purchasers DVDs, a soundtrack and a bunch of other gew gaws.

In the understated title, players must don one of five guises – barbarian, witch doctor, wizard, monk, or demon hunter – and try to save the world of Sanctuary, a name that at best sounds misleading.

The popularity of the game might be its own worst enemy today, however, as gamers are already complaining that the servers are too overcrowded.
Players frustrated about this took to Twitter under the hashtag Error37. Searching for that term on the micro-blog brings up some colourful responses to the apparently common message.

Blizzard has acknowledged the problem in its Diablo III support pages. There it says that if users are having difficulties logging into the Battle.net then they should try logging in and out again.

“It is possible to get ERROR 37 (The servers are busy, please try again) when logging in if the servers are under heavy stress,” it said in its message to the collection of waiting barbarians, witch doctors, wizards, monks, and demon hunters.

Source:http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2174867/diablo-iii-arrives-pc-mac

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Oxford University IT staff ’somewhat overwhelmed by Mac malware’

May 3rd, 2012
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In a pair of candid blog posts, a member of Oxford’s network security staff says the Flashback malware episode is the worst they’ve seen since the Blaster worm of 2003. And Apple is “making minimal effort” and “putting customers at risk.”

So just how bad is the recent Flashback outbreak of malware for Macs?

Getting hard data about any kind of malware outbreak is always tricky.

Security companies have to make estimates, which might be influenced by their desire to whip up enough fear to sell their software. And corporations rarely publicize details about their internal workings.

That’s why it was refreshing to see a recent blog post from the network security team (OxCERT) at the University of Oxford, which offered some insights into its experience with a large population of Macs.

“Over the past couple of weeks, OxCERT have been somewhat overwhelmed by Mac malware,” the post begins.

The group has dealt with scattered problems on Macs before, says author Robin Stevens. “But with Flashback,” Stevens says, “the game has changed forever.”

We are seeing huge numbers of attacks of the sort that Windows users have had to contend with for years. Apple users, and indeed Apple themselves, just have not been ready. We are dealing with what is probably the biggest outbreak since Blaster struck the Windows world all the way back in the summer of 2003. That time OxCERT dealt with around 1000 incidents; we have seen several hundred Flashback incidents and they keep on coming.

Oxford’s critique of Apple mirrors what I’ve been saying for a long time:

Apple’s contention that “Macs don’t get PC viruses” is “technically true, perhaps, but very misleading: PCs get PC viruses, Macs get Mac viruses which may be extremely similar to that common on PCs.”
OS X antimalware capabilities are “extremely limited and no substitute for a proper third-party antivirus system.” (Oxford supports Sophos for its users.)
Apple’s claim that it “responds quickly by providing software updates and security enhancements” is met with this dry retort: “As we’ve seen, this depends very much on your definition of ‘quickly’.”
And I was gratified to see independent support for an argument I made a few days ago. Apple’s support lifecycle is too short: “There is however a nasty catch with operating system updates, of which many users will be unaware: Apple security support lifetimes are much shorter than in the Windows world.”

That issue gets a full discussion in a second post:

To the best of our knowledge, Apple do not officially state their software support policy anywhere, but from what we can gather, only support the two most recent versions of OS X. Currently that is 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and 10.7 (Lion). 10.6 released in August 2009, which means that any Mac purchased prior to that date and not subsequently upgraded will be running a version which receives no security support. That’s for a system purchased under three years ago. Granted, users can upgrade – but at a cost. Users don’t like being told that they have to spend money.

[…]

Now, granted, users can upgrade to a newer OS X release than their system came with. Plenty of users are unlikely to bother unless forced – their system seems perfectly adequate, why spend money and risk breaking it? One college has reported almost 50 systems known to their student registration system running OS X 10.5 or earlier.

The conclusion neatly mirrors my post the other day about the big gaps in Apple’s security response:

Apple … have been complacent in terms of their attitude to security and support, especially when compared to their chief competitor. Microsoft have learned a huge amount from past mistakes, support their products for many years, and these days I feel do an excellent job. By comparison, Apple appear to be making minimal effort, and are putting their customers at risk as a result. …

I’d like to see from Apple the following:

Timely security updates
Greater openness regarding security issues
Minimum hardware and software support lifetimes stated clearly up-front
Longer operating system security support lifetimes: at least five years
Hardware that runs a supported operating system version for longer: minimum of seven years perhaps?
In a separate report on Forbes, Andy Greenberg reports new data from the Russian security firm tracking the number of Flashback installations. The current number of infections is around 460,000, down from a peak of 700,000, with the botnet shrinking at a rate of about 100,000 a week.

Apple has still not issued any public statement on Flashback except for a small number of security bulletins.

Source:http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/oxford-university-it-staff-somewhat-overwhelmed-by-mac-malware/4937

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The Mac vs the PC

April 13th, 2012
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The popularity of the Apple Macintosh computer, or Mac, has no doubt risen in recent times. Yes, this month’s column IS on the debate about Mac versus the PC. By PC, I mean an IBM compatible machine, running a Windows operating system.

My intention is not to favour one machine over the other but just to present some food for thought and let you, dear reader, decide what you should buy.

Pricing
We start with the most obvious – price. Taking a Mac laptop as an example, the cheapest MacBook on the market today is priced at RM3,099. This basically gives you 1.6GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor, 2GB of memory and 64GB flash-based (akin to a thumb drive) solid state storage.

Buying a PC-based machine with equivalent specifications can cost you up to 20 to 30 percent less, somewhere in the region between RM2,000 and RM3,000.

While the asking price is indeed higher than an average PC-based laptop, you do get some software already in the Mac package. A typical MacBook comes equipped with Apple’s in built software such as the iLife suite, which comprises iPhoto, iMovie, and GarageBand.

Besides that, the Macs are equipped with the following software: Mail, Address Book, iCal, The Mac App Store, iTunes, Safari, Time Machine, Face Time, Photo Booth, Mission Control, Launchpad, Airdrop, Resume, Auto Save, Versions, Quick Look, Spotlight, QuickTime, and more.

If you buy the PC-based machine, you may not get the exact same kind of software and you‘ll need to factor in extra cost for a similar suite of programs. Also, it’s unlikely that you’ll get all the programs in an all-in-one package, which means you could end up spending RM500 to RM1,000 more.

Note that with the Mac, you’ll have fewer variations of technical specifications such as memory/hard disks, screen size configuration compared to PC-based machines.

Usability and build quality
Traditionally, many have found the Mac more user friendly compared to the PC.

It’s generally faster to operate; for example, a Mac takes much faster to start up compared to a Windows machine.

Although the Mac operating system is not perfect, it’s got loads of features that are very cleaver, nimble, and very intuitive to use. For example, it takes fewer steps to turn on, say the “file sharing” feature on a Mac compared to the Windows-based PC machine. Also, it has many integrated programs thrown in for free that are very innovative and intuitive to use.

From a hardware standpoint, the Mac is generally much more solidly built and thoughtfully laid out compared to the cheaper PC-based machines. For example, on an iMac desktop, you will find the USB port as part of the keyboard giving you immediate accessibility instead of having to plug it at the back of most PC based machines.
Ergonomically speaking, the Mac is simply more pleasing to the eye compared to PC.

Just take a look at the iMac desktop and compare that to a standard PC and you’ll understand why.

Software and other considerations
It’s somewhat of a misconception that the Mac is only used by those who are involved in the creative sector because of its native multimedia programs. This is however not true as the Mac can be used as a serious business desktop/laptop, being able to do everything you can on a PC.

Another untruth is that you can’t get software for the Mac or that the software is very costly. It’s true that in terms of sheer number of programs available, there is more PC-based software in the market for the Windows platform.

However, there is also a vibrant Mac community of developers and quite a fair bit of freeware and shareware that are available for downloads on the Mac.

Another plus point with Mac users is that you’re less likely to face unexplainable crashes and incompatibilities as you might on a Windows PC, as the Mac OS and Apple computers both come from the same company.

One oft-made remark is that Macs are freer from computer virus, malware and spyware, which trot the Internet frequently these days. It’s not that there are no Mac viruses/malware out there; It’s just that malware writers prefer to target the Windows platform as there are more users out there for them to make money out of. The popularity of Macs has gained in recent times, but so have Internet security companies’ antivirus software options for the Macs.

One truth however, is that the Mac does not support many games, which are primarily the domain of Windows PC machines.

Conclusion
So what is the verdict? Well, in my humble opinion, there is no hard and fast rule to this. I’ll sum up it this way: If you’re looking for an easy-to-use, pleasant and a fuss-free computing experience that is great looking and a well built machine to boot, and have some cash to spare, the Mac is worth your while.

But if you’re a price sensitive shopper, and will only use your machine for general computing and not multimedia activity, or as a gaming machine, you’re better off buying a simple PC-based machine that can cost RM3,000 (desktop) or RM2,000 (laptop).

Source:http://www.selangortimes.com/index.php?section=technology&permalink=20120412120255-the-mac-vs-the-pc

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Has Flashback malware made you consider installing antivirus on your Mac?

April 9th, 2012
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It appears that the Flashback malware may have corralled some 600,000 Macs into a worldwide password-sniffing botnet. Has this latest attack against the Mac OS platform made you consider installing antivirus on your Mac?

Earlier this week Russian antivirus company Dr.Web reported how a new variant of the Flashback had, over the course of two months, built up an enormous botnet consisting almost entirely of compromised Mac systems. This malware represents a new breed of Mac malware. Relying on Java vulnerabilities, it requires no user intervention to be installed on a system, and unlike previous malware attacks against the Mac, it doesn’t announce its presence on the system by bombarding the user with fake security alerts.

Apple has finally released patches for the security vulnerability, which should protect users from this attack in the future, but that doesn’t help those who are already infected, who will have to remove the malware manually.

Hello Mac users, welcome to the problems facing Windows users!

The last time we went around this loop was last year when the Mac OS X platform was targeted by a piece of malware called Mac Defender. This was primitive malware that users had to manually install and which then went on to throw up an endless parade of fake security alerts before demanding money from the user to fix the problem.

Back when Mac Defender attacks were at their peak, I suggested to Hardware 2.0 readers who owned Macs that it was time to bite the bullet and install antivirus software on their systems. While some were receptive to this suggestion, most felt that having to install third-party protection on their Macs was a disproportionate response to what they saw as nothing more than a minor nuisance. These users claimed that since Mac Defender didn’t do anything particularly evil, there didn’t seem to be a reason to clutter up the Mac OS with additional security software. And once Mac Defender vanished, it seemed that these users might have had the right idea.

Now Mac users are facing a far more serious threat. Having your Mac as part of a botnet, and having malware on the system that’s sniffing passwords is a big deal indeed, and far scarier than some fake security popup. Flashback is serious malware. Unless you do some digging around on your system, you won’t even know it’s there.

That’s serious. But is it serious enough to get Mac users to protect their Macs? I hope so, because this incident has highlighted how wide open Mac users are to attacks, and it’s clear that Apple doesn’t have their backs covered.

Source:http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/has-flashback-malware-made-you-consider-installing-antivirus-on-your-mac/19577

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Mac Trojan Infections Exceed Half Million, Expert Says

April 9th, 2012
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Despite Apple releasing a patch for Java, the Flashback Trojan has infected 600,000 Macs, according to reports. As a result, there are 600,000 Macs being remotely controlled by the growing Mac botnet, according to Russian antivirus company Dr. Web.

The majority of the botnet computers are located in the United States and Canada, according to Dr. Web. The company says: “This once again refutes claims by some experts that there are no cyber-threats to Mac OS X.”

According to Dr. Web, systems get infected with BackDoor.Flashback.39 after a user is redirected to a bogus site from a compromised resource or via a traffic distribution system. JavaScript code is used to load a Java-applet containing an exploit.

“Attackers began to exploit CVE-2011-3544 and CVE-2008-5353 vulnerabilities to spread malware in February 2012, and after March 16 they switched to another exploit (CVE-2012-0507). The vulnerability has been closed by Apple only on April 3 2012,” writes Dr. Web on their website. More information about the Mac botnet is available here.

Apple released the patch a day after reports spread about a Java-based Trojan horse that could install itself on your Mac without requiring that you enter a password. Apple released Java for OS X Lion 2012-001 and Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 7, and if you haven’t yet installed it, you should.

Flashback is a Mac Trojan horse that’s been in the public eye since it was uncovered by security firm Intego last year. The recent update saw it gain the ability to infect your computer from little more than a visit to a website.

Originally, Flashback masqueraded as an installer for Adobe’s Flash Player — hence the name — but the malware has changed tacks at last once since then, instead pretending to be a Mac software update or a Java updater.

Source:http://www.pcworld.com/article/253360/mac_trojan_infections_exceed_half_million_expert_says.html

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Lack of Hardware Updates Leading to Lighter-Than-Expected Quarterly Mac Sales

April 6th, 2012
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Previously-released data from NPD on U.S. Mac sales for January and February have demonstrated relatively anemic year-over-year growth, with January sales tracking only 1% above the previous January’s performance and February sales coming in 4% higher. Still, analysts have suggested that ongoing growth in international markets could compensate for stagnation in the U.S. market as consumers continue to wait for product updates. Consequently, analysts have generally been holding firm on their predictions of 15-20% Mac unit growth on a worldwide year-over-year basis for the full quarter.

Some analysts had also held out hope that Apple could sneak in at least one update to its Mac lineup before the end of the quarter to provide a spark for Mac sales, but with the first group of Intel’s Ivy Bridge processors not launching until the end of the month, Apple was unable to update its main Mac models within the first three months of the year.

Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty is out with a new research note today incorporating NPD’s data on U.S. Mac sales for March, and as might be expected given the lack of hardware updates, Apple continues to fall short of analyst expectations, with Mac shipments down 4% year-over-year for the first calendar quarter.

Huberty continues to believe that international growth will offset at least some of the flat performance in U.S. sales for the quarter, although she appears somewhat pessimistic that it will be able to reach her 15% growth target on a global basis. Nevertheless, Huberty seems optimistic that booming iPhone and iPad sales will make up for any shortfall on the Mac side due to the balance of profits among the segments.

Although the US retail market improved in March, Apple shipment growth decelerated as the company faced much tougher Y/Y comparisons due to a notebook refresh this time last year. US retail data suggest Apple shipments fell 4% Y/Y in C1Q12 compared to our estimate of 15% global Mac unit growth. We expect faster international growth to offset some of the deceleration in the US. In fact, the divergence between international and US growth has accelerated from about four points in prior quarters to 15 points in C4Q11. More importantly, we expect demand upside from iPhone and iPad (83% of gross profit) to more than offset any Mac downside (9% of gross profit).

On a broader basis, the PC market is seeing even more substantial declines in sales, with U.S. PC sales tracking for declines of 10-15% year-over-year for the quarter. That performance is, however, better than Huberty had been modeling for, and major PC manufacturers such as HP and Dell could see some upside if their final results fall in line with data released so far.

Source:http://www.macrumors.com/2012/04/05/lack-of-hardware-updates-leading-to-lighter-than-expected-quarterly-mac-sales/

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Reflection Mirrors iOS Devices on the Mac

March 7th, 2012
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When Apple first introduced Keynote for the iPad, I thought it was a neat proof of concept. But I had a hard time getting around the disconnect of using a handheld tablet as a presentation device, unless you’re presenting to two people next to you.

Fast-forward two years. (Yes, it has been only two years since the iPad’s introduction.) When I gave a talk about iMovie for iOS at the San Francisco Apple Store during Macworld | iWorld in January, I did it entirely from my iPad 2 using the Keynote and iMovie apps; the iPad was connected via cables and a VGA Adapter to the store’s audio-visual system. (Actually, that’s not completely correct: I ended up setting my 15-inch MacBook Pro on the lectern just to read my session notes, because I forgot to print them out prior to the presentation.)

That event was still fairly low-tech in the sense that a VGA connection is ancient history compared with the capability, introduced in iOS 5 for the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S, to mirror the screen to an Apple TV using Apple’s AirPlay technology. The VGA cable was easiest for the Apple Store staff to set up, but I could just as easily have carried the iPad untethered if an Apple TV had been available; that’s how I rehearsed at home.

But outside of the living room, I’m guessing you won’t find an Apple TV in most settings (although I’ve read reports that the combination of an iPad and an Apple TV is making inroads into the classroom). What has been missing from this scenario is the capability to share the iPad (or iPhone 4S) screen on a Mac.

Now that limitation has crumbled with the release of Reflection, a $14.99 Mac OS X app that makes an iPad 2 — and presumably the next iPad model being introduced this week — or iPhone 4S see the Mac as an AirPlay destination. Older iOS devices lack the necessary hardware for mirroring. (Another application, AirServer 4.0, reportedly also mirrors an iOS device’s display on a Mac, but I haven’t tried it yet.)

From the standpoint of someone creating the content to be presented, having the iPad’s screen on a Mac offers a few advantages:

Speakers can attach the destination Mac to a projector, so they can both use the iPad untethered and switch to showing Mac applications as necessary.

Developers can demo iOS software running live on a real device, not in a simulator.

Educators (and authors like me) can finally record video of iOS interactions on the Mac without fussing with extra video capture equipment or jailbreaking the device.

How It Works — Reflection runs as a regular app under Mac OS X, and once you launch it, you may forget it’s there. The rest of the setup is similarly easy.

On the iPad 2 or iPhone 4S, enable AirPlay mirroring: Double-press the Home button to reveal the row of recent apps, swipe left to right to display the playback controls (on the iPhone 4S, you need to swipe twice), and tap the AirPlay button. Your computer will show up as an AirPlay-capable receiver. Select it, and then tap the Mirroring switch to On.

On your Mac, Reflection displays the iOS device’s screen in a device-specific frame. You can get rid of the frame by choosing Device > Show Frame (Command-B) if you find it as distracting as I do.

Other options include forcing landscape or portrait orientation, switching to Full Screen mode (where Reflection runs in its own desktop space), and setting a password to allow the connection (so not just anyone can display their device on your Mac).

Reflection also includes options for “optimizing” the resolution, which means Reflection forces the incoming screen into a set image size rather than zooming to the full screen size. However, it doesn’t stay true to those specs: Connecting my iPhone 4S with the option to optimize for “Retina iPhone (640×960)” gives me a window sized at 685 by 1027 pixels. The iPad 2, when set for “iPad (1024×768)” presents a screen that’s just a hair larger than that at 1052 by 790 pixels.

You can also optimize for “Any Device (1280×720)” or for “Hi-Res (1920×1080),” but those aren’t honored either; Reflection really wants to zoom the screen as large as your Mac’s monitor will allow. That’s fine, to a point — if you’re giving a presentation, you probably want the largest possible version for your audience. But as an author and video producer, I’d like to see an option to force a pixel-accurate resolution. Resizing makes everything a little fuzzy due to anti-aliasing.

Still, that’s not a deal breaker for my main interest: capturing the screen. With Reflection displaying the live contents of your iPad or iPhone, use the screen-recording features of applications such as QuickTime Player, Snapz Pro X, or ScreenFlow. I created a short example in Snapz Pro X of getting video while working in iMovie for iOS.

In general, the response isn’t bad. There’s a slight lag between what you do on the device and what appears on the Mac, but I didn’t notice dropped frames or other performance degradations in normal use.

Where I did occasionally run into spotty performance was playing video content, such as from the Videos app. In that situation, mirroring stops, and Reflection hands the video off to QuickTime Player, which sometimes couldn’t buffer the video fast enough to keep up. However, at other times I had no problem, so I can’t rule out other traffic on my network, such as a local CrashPlan backup of my wife’s laptop downstairs. (Oddly, when viewing movie trailers using Apple’s Trailers app, the video wasn’t passed along to QuickTime Player. Movie trailers exhibited the same video playback controls as usual, but Reflection stayed in its mirrored state.)

Games that can use AirPlay for output, such as Real Racing 2 HD, didn’t display the correct aspect ratio. (If you don’t own an HDTV, being able to use the iPad as a game controller to play a game like that on a 27-inch iMac would be a lot of fun.) I also noticed that changing the iPad volume didn’t affect the volume coming from Reflection on the Mac, although I suspect that’s by design so you don’t have warring volume levels. Still, it would be nice if you’re already controlling the device and running something like GarageBand to adjust the volume in the app, instead of manipulating it separately on the Mac.

I’d like to see one key feature added: a gesture indicator, so you can see where the iPad user’s fingers make contact with the screen. When doing my iMovie presentation, the audience couldn’t see what I was tapping: I had to vocalize my motions to make sure everyone’s attention was at the appropriate control (“Now I’ll tap the Project Settings button, the one with the gear icon in the upper-right corner”). Having a circle appear for a speaker’s finger touch, for example, would make the interaction immediately apparent.

Overall, though, Reflection is a good 1.x release that makes AirPlay even more useful to me. As I said earlier, it costs $14.99, or $49.99 for five licenses, and a trial version that shuts off after 10 minutes is available as a free download.

But now I have a new problem: looking at my Mac’s screen and wondering why my mouse isn’t controlling the iPad. Perhaps that, too, will come in time.

Source:http://tidbits.com/article/12833

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