Tag Archives: Tiger

[MacOS] Firewall: Little Snitch 50% Reduced Until Feb, 3rd

http://www.obdev.at/Images/product-icons/littlesnitch-64x64.png

One of – if not even – the best firewall software for the MacOS plattform is available for half the price… Until February 3rd, 2013.

Besides the firewall features for in- and outgoing connections, it also includes a very sophisticated network monitor.

Features

  • configurable Profiles (for home-use, office-use or use in internet café)
  • inbound firewall detection
  • research assistant
  • and many more…

Pricing

  • Single user license is 15€ (instead of 30€)
  • Multi user license (up to 5 Macs) is 55€ (instead of 110€)
  • Multi user license (up t0 10 Macs) is 95€ (instead of 190€)
  • Family license 30€ (instead of 60€)

See Objective Development’s website for further details or buy here

Screenshots

http://www.obdev.at/Images/littlesnitch/index/network-monitor.png

http://www.obdev.at/Images/littlesnitch/index/profiles.png

 

http://www.obdev.at/Images/littlesnitch/index/connection-alert.png

 

http://www.obdev.at/Images/littlesnitch/teaser-3.jpg

 

 

[iOS] iPhone Enterprise Configuration Links

Do you wanna configure large numbers of iOS devices at once? Apple made some tools available for enterprise customers. Find them here:
» iOS Enterprise Deployment: https://www.apple.com/support/iphone/enterprise/
» iPhone Configuration Utility (Mac OS X): http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1465
» iPhone Configuration Utility (MS Windows): http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1466

[Win] Oracle VirtualBox: Workaround For Initialization Issue Pt. II

Find our previously released workaround for initialization issues here.

CPU VT-X/AMD-V Issue

After configuring a dual core virtual machine and trying to start you may encounter a message box indicating:

  • Hyper-V launch failed; Either VMX not present or not enabled in BIOS.
  • Hyper-V launch failed; at least one of the processors in the system does not appear to provide a virtualization platform supported by Hyper-V.

This issue may occur no matter which host operating system you’re using. The reason for this might be:

  • you’re not using a CPU that supports hardware virtualization
  • your BIOS does not support hardware virtualization properly
  • hardware virtualization is disabled in your BIOS settings (check it!)
  • there is a bug in your current BIOS version
  • the trusted execution flag prevents booting properly

Known Workarounds

Try these settings in your BIOS:

  • Enable Execute Disable bit (depending on the motherboard manufacturer this can be called: XD-Bit, EDB, NX-Bit, AMD EVP)
  • Enable Virtualization bit (depending on the mobo manuf. this can be called: VT, IVT, AMD-V)
  • Enable VT for Direct I/O Access (depending on the mobo manuf. this can be called: VT-d based I/O)
  • Disable Trusted Execution Technology (depending on the mobo manuf. this can be called: Intel TXT, TET)

Of course, upgrading your BIOS to the latest version can also be of help, but flashing the BIOS is always a little risky.

Final Words

As we’re currently using VirtualBox only on the Windows XP platform we categorized this article under Win, anyway it is very likely that the same issue also occurs under Linux or Mac OS, as VirtualBox on all platforms derives from the same source code.

The above settings apply for example for installing MacOS SnowLeopard in a VM under Windows 7 on Gigabyte EP35-DS3 or Dell Optiplex 745/755.

[iPhone] Adobe’s CEO Fires Back at Steve Jobs

On Wall Street Journal Adobe’s CEO Shantanu Narayen yesterday nite answered to Steve Jobs latest attack. Jobs had released an open letter yesterday morning. The bottom line of Jobs’ letter is:

  • Adobe Flash is something from the past, as it is not open,
  • it is not energy efficient and
  • it does not unleash the full powers the individual platforms (meaning: the full power of Apple’s iPhone or iPad).

Narayan responded in the WSJ.com interview, that

  • It’s got nothing to do with technology, but with control.
  • Apple wants to maintain control on the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch platforms.
  • he wonders if Flash is one of the most reasons for crashing a Mac, it’s also got much to do with the operating system
  • if hardware acceleration is provided from the operating system, playing Flash takes a lot lesser energy than on a Mac.
  • Flash is an open specification

Well, well, that love is not over. We wonder how far we’re away from the point when Adobe decides to stop developing for the Apple platform? Would Apple even care? Or would they just tell thousands of designers to switch to GIMP?

We hope you don’t mind, we embed the whole WSJ.com interview as Adobe Flash ;-)

[MacOS] Recommended Apps: QuickSilver

I. Abstract

You don’t like Spotlight, because it is too slow? But you want to to speed up command execution? Yes there is a nice freeware solution available called QuickSilver by BlackTree. Wikipedia writes: Quicksilver “allows users to use the keyboard to rapidly perform tasks such as launching applications, manipulating files and data, running scripts, or sending e-mail.”

II. Links

You’d better get used to using QuickSilver. We strongly recommend to not use Mac OS without it:

» Download QuickSilver
» BlackTree Website

III. Screenshots




[MacOS] Recommended Apps: SimplyRar and MacPar Deluxe

I. Abstract

Coming from the Windows world most of us people know the .rar archive format very well. Besides the newer 7zip format, Rar allows a good compression and is widely used on internet distribution.

II. What do we need?

People who only need to have a decompressor for compatibility reasons can use MacPar Deluxe. Users who also want to be able to compress files aswell need to get SimplyRar:

» For Uncompressing only use MacPar Deluxe (download here)…
» For Compressing and Uncompressing use SimplyRar (download here)…

III. How do these tools work?

III.I.MacPar Deluxe

MacPar Deluxe is intended for unpacking only. The part of the name Par indicates its main use, as it is a tool for people downloading things from the usenet. Par files are files that contain repair information for damaged main files. Anyway: MacPar Deluxe also contains a very simply unrar engine.

III.II. SimplyRar

SimplyRar is a graphical user interface for the free command line version of rar for Mac OS. It contains (almost) all features of the command line. As a switcher I currently cannot tell what features are missing in comparison to WinRar for Windows.