Apple

After the news that the new MacBook Airs do not ship with Flash pre-installed (which is news considering Flash has been part of Mac OS X for a very long time), we now have news that Apple is also taking what appears to be the first steps towards removing Apple’s own Java runtime from Mac OS X. The wording is a tiny little bit ambiguous, but it would seem like Apple is preparing to ditch Java as a standard part of Mac OS X. In the ‘new and noteworthy’ section of the release notes for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 3, they note the deprecation of Java. ...

Follow up from: Panda security launches Panda Antivirus The number of Mac OS vulnerabilities has quintupled in less than a year. In 2009, 34 vulnerabilities were detected for Mac OS. So far in 2010, this number has risen to 175 vulnerabilities. Furthermore, the platform can also be affected by 170,000 macro viruses for Windows and there are 5,000 classified strains of malware that specifically target Apple systems, according to Panda Security. ...

A German source is signaling that those who haven’t downloaded FaceTime for Mac just yet may want to hold back on the desire to video chat with their iPhone-wielding friends, as there may be some serious security risks involved. During yesterday’s Back to the Mac special event held in Cupertino, California, Apple’s CEO confirmed the availability of FaceTime for Mac. ...

Panda Security has announced the launch of Panda Antivirus for Mac. This new solution delivers comprehensive protection against malware affecting Mac OS and Mac OS X; it also prevents Mac users from transmitting malware to other users of Windows and Linux operating systems. Panda Antivirus for Mac scans files and email, detecting and eliminating or blocking many types of threats, including viruses, Trojans, spyware, keyloggers, adware, hacking tools, botnets, dialers, scareware and other threats that have traditionally targeted Windows users. ...

Apple is cashing in on the popularity of its iPhone and iPad to boost demand for its oldest product, the Macintosh. The company launched a revamped MacBook Air at an event dubbed “Back to the Mac” at its Cupertino headquarters. The computer is seen as a marriage of what Apple has learned from desktop computing and mobile devices. Like the iPad, the Air will have no hard drive and rely on flash memory. ...

Peter Kafka at All Things Digital thinks that Steve Jobs might want to buy Facebook. His reasoning is that Jobs, when asked what Apple plans to do with its now $51 billion in cash, said, “We firmly believe that one or more unique strategic opportunities will present itself to us, and we’ll be in a position to take advantage of it.” Kafka believes that one such “unique strategic” opportunity is called Facebook. ...

Apple’s CEO says that Android is fragmented and that the open vs. closed dilemma is not important as long as Apple’s proprietary mobile operating system manages to provide a better user experience. “Many Android OEMs install proprietary user-interfaces to differentiate themselves from the commodity Android experience. The user is left to figure it all out. Compare this with iPhone where ever handset works the same. (…) We think the open vs closed is just a smokescreen to try and hide the real issue, which is: What’s best for the customer? Fragmented vs. integrated. We think Android is very very fragmented and becoming more fragmented by the day.” ...

There has been an “unprecedented wave” of exploits against vulnerabilities in Oracle’s Java during the third quarter of this year, according to data from the Microsoft Malware Protection Center. The software giant provided the following data to back its claims, outlining three specific vulnerabilities (all of which have patches available) that are being exploited en masse: CVE Attacks Computers Description 2008-5353 3,560,669 1,196,480 A deserialization issue in vulnerable versions of JRE (Java Runtime Environment) allows remote code execution through Java-enabled browsers on multiple platforms, such as Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Apple Mac OS X. 2009-3867 2,638,311 1,119,191 Another remote code execution, multi-platform issue caused by improper parsing of long file:// URL arguments. 2010-0094 213,502 173,123 Another deserialization issue, very similar to CVE-2008-5353. As you can see, the first two are particularly worrying: they’ve gone from hundreds of thousands per quarter to millions. The third one is the newest, so it’s possible that it will also do the same. ...

Apple’s chief executive, Steve Jobs, said that Google’s mobile platform was “fragmented” and bad for developers and consumers. Steve Jobs launched in to an astonishing five-minute critique of rival companies, operating systems and platforms during the earnings call, in which Apple announced record profits of $20bn for the quarter. He said that the Google Android platform was “fragmented”, and not as open as some people made out, while also saying that iPad-style tablet computers with smaller 7in screens would be “dead on arrival”. ...

Hmmm. That’s not what the source code says We started out the day fat fingering the spelling of “youtube.com” and ended up at the typo squatting site behind the URL “youube.com.” youube.com redirects you to http://youtube.com-prizes.com – obviously a URL intended to make you think it’s really YouTube. Like so many of these “survey” scam web sites, the offer was available “today only: Thursday, October 7, 2010.” Obviously, this is to add a little bit of sales pressure to make a visitor go for the prize ASAP, or at least before midnight. ...