I have returned from my business trip to San Diego in one piece so I will be able to start implementing some updates I had planned. I am in a wedding this coming weekend, so it might not happen right away. My girlfriend is also visiting in a few weeks so that might hinder things. I expect to update most of the pages on the site. I want to redo The Mac Toolbox section so it lists all of the software I use, not just troubleshooting tools. I also want to finish my Art Gallery and clean up some odds and ends that have went untouched for a while. I will post more updates as I do them. 

I like surprises, so when I just received my July 2008 edition of Macworld and turned to page 90, I freaked. Starting on page 90, you will be reading about “Best Automator Downloads”. Keep reading to page 91 and you will see Maintenance listed. This marks the 2nd time Maintenance has been featured in the printed Macworld, among numerous other times its been featured on Macworld’s website. Awesome!

For those of you who do not get the print version of Macworld, this is what is said:

“Performing routine system maintenance, such as repairing disk permissions, can be tedious. Automator’s built in actions won’t make it any less tedious, but Jesse Hogue’s Maintenance can. It lets you initiate a variety of system maintenance routines, including repairing permissions, clearing cache files, and rebuilding the Spotlight index, from within an Automator workflow. Mainteance is not an Automator action per se. Rather, it’s a customized version of Automator’s Run Applescript action, saved as an application. You run it by double-clicking on it in the Finder, by opening it in Automator, or by adjusting the workflow’s Applescript code and telling iCal to run it as an alarm, so it’ss happen regularly with no intervention from you.”

You can also view the little blurb on Macworld.com

Help the good folks over at Mozilla break some records. Download Firefox 3.

Update: Firefox was downloaded over 8 million times on June 17th!

Steve jobs took the stage today at WWDC, announcing a slew of new products pretty much nothing.

3G iPhone - New iPhones are 3G (who would have guessed!). Slew of new applications were demoed (and the audience fell asleep for this). New phones come in black or white. Improved battery life, price cute to $199 for 8GB and $299 for 16GB, but AT&T raised the price of their data plan $10 a month, so this effectively eliminates the price cut. What gives? Read more about the new iPhone on Apple’s iPhone page.

MobileMe - Yet another announcement that was anticipated, Apple will re brand .Mac with MobileMe. To be perfectly honest, the only way I can describe this is yet another over-priced service like .Mac. Read more here.

Mac OS X “Snow Leopard” - Jobs also briefly mentioned that Apple will release Snow Leopard sometime within the next year. The new OS was not called “10.6″ so I am not sure what numerical name it will get. Snow Leopard will focus on stability and security, not new features. There is no official Apple press release on this, but you can read about it in more detail at Appleinsider.

To be perfectly honest, I am extremely disappointed with the announcements. This was basically an all iPhone related event. Jobs didn’t even go into detail about Snow Leopard (I would have liked an explanation of the reason why Apple chose such a horrible name). There was no new hardware released, no mention of any other product besides the ones outlined above. Apple has truly lost its focus, I wouldn’t be surprised if they only sell iPods and iPhones in 5 years. What a waste of people’s time! The majority of the event was boring demos!

There have been a bunch of rumors floating around the last few days about OS X and I wish to touch on them briefly:

Mac OS X 10.6 to be named Snow Leopard? - Rumors have been flying that the next release of Mac OS X will debut at WWDC (If you remember I predicted this a while ago…did I get credit? Nooooo) Its rumored that this will be more of a service pack like upgrade with no new features (Think 10.0 to 10.1). If this is so, they better not charge for this. Charging people for fixing bugs is absolutly wrong. Apple made the software and should fix the bugs they didn’t fix to begin with. Considering the name, I just hope its a code name and not the final release. In my opinion, they need to elminate the cat names and stick with numbers. Mac OS X 10.6 sounds a lot better then Mac OS X Snow Leopard.

10.5.4 to be dropped at WWDC? - A few other sites have been reporting that 10.5.4 will see the light of day at WWDC. This would make since considering the .mac name change and any other new items that might be released. The only question I have is why release 10.5.3 then release .5.4 a few weeks later? Why not just wait and make it all 10.5.3?

Apple has released a 200+ page guide for Leopard security (link is directly to the PDF). I haven’t read through it, but it seems to be intended for advanced users, so a good majority of the content will not make a bit of sense to the average user. Hell…I am already confused and I am just reading the table of contents! (Ok I kid….kinda)

The good folks over at Macworld have a great article discussing some common Mac maintenance tools that people often use. The majority of these tools are included in Maintenance 3.8, so it hits somewhat close to home for me. But reading this does bring up a very good point…I haven’t ran any tool in months on my Mac. I haven’t had the need. I have had some funky issues, but rebooting has solved them all. Case and point: Most Mac tools (including Maintenance) are to be used for trouble shooting purposes.

A person by the name of Nitesh Dhanjani recently discovered 3 security issues within Apple’s Safari browser and the security world is buzzing about them. The main one that has gotten attention has been called a “carpet bombing” flaw that will download numerous files to the users Desktop (Windows) or Downloads folder (Mac OS X) if the user goes to a website that exploits the flaw. This obviously could be used to automatically download malware or viruses to the users computer, which is a big problem. Apple has not been very worried about the issue saying

“…the ability to have a preference to “Ask me before downloading
anything” is a good suggestion. We can file that as an enhancement
request for the Safari team. Please note that we are not treating this
as a security issue, but a further measure to raise the bar against
unwanted downloads. This will require a review with the Human Interface
team. We want to set your expectations that this could take quite a
while, if it ever gets incorporated.”

Now let me first say, I do think this is an issue. Any flaw that lets websites download files to your computer without your authorization is bad. But I also must say…don’t go to the infected sites! Most sites of this nature have been well documented as bad and anyone who actually keeps up with security news would know this first hand. My suggestion until this gets fixed: Be careful.

Looks like I was a week or two off with my prediction. Apple has released 10.5.3 to the masses. You can find details here.