Tag Archives: Apple

[e-Biz] Microsoft Reacts to Apple’s “Get a Mac” Advertisments

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It’s taken quite a long time. At least for the last two years Apple is transmitting their “Get a Mac” advertisements thru the internet. The story is quite simple: three guys are talking about computers and the stupid guy is the one to say “I’m a PC”. It’s taken quite a long time for Microsoft to react on this, but now Microsoft put their “I am a PC” ads on the air. On the campaign’s (“Life without Walls“) internet page people are encouraged to upload photos to show that they are PCs, aswell.

In the ad Microsoft deconstructs the stereotype of the Apple created PC guy by showing a cross section of the world’s society. Microsoft shows exponents of (almost) every societal stratum, but introduces them by saying: “I am a PC and I am not what you call hip.” and lets Deepak Chopra repeat almost at the end “I am a PC and I am a human being”. See for yourself here:

[MacOS] MacOS X Leopard Update 10.5.5

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Finally Apple released update 10.5.5 yesterday. Features of 10.5.5 include Apple’s recent security updates, Addressbook bugfixes and lots of other fixes (read all details here). To sum things up: Apple recommends to apply this update as soon as possible. And yes we will obey.

All genuine Mac users can safely update. There are no reports about problems. You may do so using the Software Update App.

OSX86 user may wait some days, we are just examining the steps. Most likely best thing is to download the Combo Update from here and use our instructions here. People report broken audio drivers on ALC883 chipsets (AppleHDA patcher solved this). We’ll get back to you once we checked out all the details.

[e-Biz] Psystar countersues Apple

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Mac clone manufacturer Psystar said to countersuit Apple for anticompetitetive business practices on Tuesday (see our recent report here). For this operation Psystar hired antitrust specialist attorney Colby Springer from Carr & Farrell.

Psystar will file sues on the basis of two U.S. american laws to prevent monopolies and cartels (see Sherman Antitrust Act and Clayton Antitrust Act). Tying MacOS X to Apple labeled hardware only is “an anticompetitive restrain of trade”, said Colby Springer. Psystar wants the District Court from Northern California to rule Apple’s End-User-License-Agreement for MacOS X invalid.

Stay tuned…

[e-Biz] Google’s Android Market feels like Apple’s AppStore

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It looks like Google learned from Apple in the question how to distribute content and useful applications to the customer. Google will introduce a marketplace, that is quite similiar to what Apple already introduces as AppStore. As Google puts it: “We chose the term “market” rather than “store” because we feel that developers should have an open and unobstructed environment to make their content available. Similar to YouTube, content can debut in the marketplace after only three simple steps: register as a merchant, upload and describe your content and publish it.”

Google also plans to integrate a wide range of statistics and analytic tools to the developers. More infos and more photos to be found here. We feel like Android’s GUI looks like Google learned a lot more from Apple than other companies in this short time. Isn’t it sarcastic, that Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt is member of Apple’s Board of Directors?

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[iPhone] Apple’s AppStore DRM broken

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You don’t trust DRM protections? You read that Microsoft and Yahoo switched off their DRM servers thus disallowing the continuous use of legally bought Music?

Then this might be the news for you. Sources that wish to stay anonymous confirmed and explained that removing of AppStore’s DRM of your legally bought applications is fairly simple for people who know what a command line is.

The technique only requires a jailbroken iPhone that got SSH installed. Once you legally bought the application you can run it on your iPhone / iPod Touch. Then you log in via SSH, determine the process ID and dump a part of the memory. Since the application needs to be decrypted in order to run on your iPhone it will be decrypted before it’s going to be executed. So in memory you have the decoded binary and you only need to dump in to a file. Using the GNU debugger here makes your life easy. After that you only need to replace the part of the encrypted binary with the memory dump and set a flag to not encrypted. People who know what ProcDump in the early Windows days did: this is exactly the same technique without the automatization.

Anyway we’re not sure if more concrete information may violate Germany’s weird intellectual property rights, we can’t go into further details here. We recommend to do a Google search. You will most likely find one or two tutorials that go in to detail step by step. Applying that technique will allow you to save your very bought apps. We don’t condone misuse or piracy.

[iPhone] Apple To Hire iPhone Security Engineer

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It seems Apple wants to make the iPhone more secure. Currently they are searching for a security expert to validate the security architecture for the iPhone.

Find detailed information about this job opportunity here. Excerpts:

(..)
Responsibilities
Review and provide feedback on security mechanisms implemented in OS X
* Provide risk analysis of potential security threats to our embedded products
* Develop “proof of concept” attacks on the current security mechanisms
* Come up with new and innovative ways of increasing security while preserving ease-of-use and increasing the quality of the end-user experience.
(..)

Required Experience:
* A genuine passion for analyzing security technologies and developing “proof of concept” attacks
* Demonstrated creative and critical thinking capabilities and troubleshooting skills
* Industry exposure to and knowledge of OS security and UNIX internals
(..)

Reading this, we think it might not be too easy to find a probable employee whoes curriculum vitae is not in violation of the DMCA. Since this really sounds like a nice job offer only to guys formerly known as hackers…

[e-Biz] Open Tech: The Next Mac Clone Manufacturer

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Open Tech inc. – a previously unknown company is in the starting blocks to provide Intel based computers that are able to run MacOS X. We hackintoshed seniors may be irritated by such an announcement since almost any Intel based computer is able to run MacOS X, nowadays.

In contrast to Psystar, who is currently being sued by Apple for copyright violation, Open Tech inc. will not pre-install MacOS X on their computers. As there is currently no more information available, stay tuned for more news…

[e-Biz] Apple apologizes for Inconveniences with MobileMe

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For having had inconveniences (we reported here) with their new MobileMe services, Apple offers customers an additional 30 days trial period for free. Apple reps said that all issues that were occurring during transition from .Mac to MobileMe have now been solved and webservices work correctly. However they won’t use the notion “Push-Services” for now, because syncing all devices currently takes up to 15 minutes.

» MobileMe: Exchange for the Rest of Us

[e-Biz] Mac Clone Supplier Psystar sued by Apple

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Eventually Apple sues Psystar for having broken license terms and having committed copyright infringement of MacOS X 10.5 Leopard and Leopard Server. Psystar offers PCs pre-installed with MacOS X Leopard. As reported in german media heise.de Apple claims these points:

  • Psystar may have broken Apple’s license terms that allow installing MacOS X Leopard only on “Apple-labeled computers”. Apple says this means “Apple manufactured hardware”.The debate about what an “Apple-labeled computer” exactly is, is as old as tutorials that deal with installing MacOS X Tiger and Leopard on white box PCs. People in forums were joking about putting an original Apple sticker on your PC case may fit the necessity of the notion “Apple-labeled computer”. Obviously this is not enuff and Apple’s guerilla strategy comes to an end when other companies begin to develop business model out of their work. This will be a major topic and we are quite curious how Apple will explain the notion “Apple-labeled computer”.
  • Psystar may have violated Apple’s copyrights by providing modified MacOS X updates for their “Open Computer” customers.
  • Psystar may have damaged Apple’s brand, because of Psystar’s support for MacOS X being poor.

Apple’s lawsuit comprises of 35 pages and was issued shortly after Psystar began distributing a modified version of the Mac OS X 10.5.4 update. An online version of it can be viewed here.

We yet reported about Psystar’s business here:

» The never ending Psystar Story
» Psystar offers OpenPro
» Psystar offers Mac Clone