July 4 - 12:15pm EDT   At its current stage of development, the Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard beta is not outperforming 10.5 Leopard by any wide stretches, as developers dive into the new OS with GeekBench. The Netherlands' Mac Zone writes that benchmarking numbers indicate that 10.6 performs better than 10.5, but only by a small margin. This hardly is conclusive of the final product, however, given that 10.6 Snow Leopard is still under early development – early betas of 10.5 Leopard had a very Tiger-like interface and poorer performance than the final build. [full story]

June 24 - 8:35am EDT   Logitech this morning made one of its rare webcam offerings for Macs with the advent of the QuickCam Vision Pro. A close cousin of the QuickCam Pro 9000, the USB camera is targeted at Mac mini and Mac Pro owners whose computers don't already have built-in iSight cameras but who want a better-than-average replacement for iChat, Skype, or other video apps. The Vision Pro not only has true glass optics from Carl Zeiss, rather than plastic, but also has a voice coil motor for autofocusing which is much faster and more fine-grained than the stepper motors on most webcams. [full story]

June 19 - 3:05pm EDT   A new vulnerability connected to Mac OS X's Remote Management feature has been discovered, says the security firm Intego. The issue is specifically associated with ARDAgent, a component of the feature, which has a "setuid" bit set. Running an executable of this type gains root control, and so ARDAagent may potentially be used to gain access to base functions without a password. [full story]

May 28 - 8:40pm EDT  Apple on Wednesday released dozens of security updates part of its Mac OS X 10.5.3 update for Leopard and Security Update 2008-003(PPC Tiger client, Intel Tiger client, PPC Server, Universal Server) for Mac OS X Tiger, including critical bugs for remote shutdown, arbitrary code execution (multiple including JPG2000 issues), denial of service (via viewing PNG files), private information information disclosure (via SSL, Tiger Mail, Unicode, malicious BMP/GIF files and Image Capture) as well as a critical code execution bug for the continually updated Adobe Flash plugin. Apple also updated its Single Sign-On feature (CVE-ID: CVE-2008-1578) to prevent passwords from being supplied other local users. [full story]

April 28 - 4:35pm EDT   FmPro Migrator Developer Edition 4.14 ($200) for migrating FileMaker databases. The new release as been enhanced with an automated 2-pass dependency resolution feature for FileMaker table consolidation conversion projects. Additionally, the XML code defining each layout can now be exported as a raw XML file, containing all of the embedded images, and layout object definitions. Layout XML files can be post-processed separately and used for projects in which FileMaker Layouts need to be re-purposed for other development projects. [Download - 16MB] Google Sitemap Automator 1.9.5 ($30) helps web-masters get their web site listed in Google, Yahoo and MSN search. XML Sitemap files were ... [full story]

March 18 - 5:15pm EDT   Apple today unveiled Security Update 2008-002, which provides a number of fixes for several system vulnerabilities found in AFP, CUPS, AppKit, and several other system-level resources. Most of the vulnerabilities revolve around maliciously crafted URLs granting access to system-level privileges, while others allow users to bypass system security. The majority of fixes are for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and Tiger Server users, while some apply to the 10.5 Leopard equivalents. [full story]

January 25 - 5:50pm EST   Similar to the Office 2008-related permissions problem reported earlier today, Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and 10.5 Leopard users may be susceptible to additional vulnerabilities. MacNN reader Robert Myers reports that when using a standard user account to copy software in to the Applications folder, the authentication that takes place not only allows the software to be inserted in to the folder (as it should) but also changes the owner of the application to the current user. [full story]

January 10 - 6:05pm EST   HighPoint Technologies today updated its RocketRAID 3120 to support Apple's Power Mac G5 and Mac Pro systems under both Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and 10.5 Leopard. The RocketRAID 3120 is a PCI-Express x1 dual port SATA RAID controller featuring the Marvell 5182 (400MHz) hardware RAID engine and with 128MB of DDR2 local memory. The RocketRAID 3120 is available for $170. [full story]

December 14 - 8:50am EST   Apple has officially released a new Java client, specifically tailored to Mac OS X 10.4. Release 6 requires that a Mac be updated to Mac OS X 10.4.10, specifically, and is an 80MB download. The update is said to improve "reliability and compatibility" for Java SE 5.0 and Java 1.4; the former shifts to v1.5.0_13, while Java 1.4 has been patched to v1.4.2_16. The download is a Universal Binary; as of press time, Apple has not properly updated its release notes page to document all changes. [full story]

November 28 - 8:55pm EST   Although Boot Camp is a feature of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Apple has been offering a beta trial of the service for 10.4 Tiger for almost two years, and announced today that it will be discontinuing support for Tiger Boot Camp users. Originally introduced in April 2006, the Boot Camp beta allows Tiger users to install Windows on their Intel-based Macs, making it easier for Windows users to switch to a Mac, while offering Mac users a wider variety of software and games. Existing Boot Camp beta participants will still be entitled to keep their Windows partitions, but the software that manages installations will be deactivated, and Apple will no longer provide updates, requiring ... [full story]