Apple posted today the 10.5.4 update recommended for its Mac OS X 10.5, 10.5.1, 10.5.2, and 10.5.3 Leopard operating systems. The 10.5.4 update includes general operating system improvements that enhance the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac. You can download the 561MB update code directly from Apple, or by using the Software Update feature in Mac OS X Leopard.

Nowadays everyone will tell you that most virus, spyware, malware and other malicious definitions are written solely for Windows, but it appears that times have changed a bit. Security experts are warning now about a new Trojan horse released in the wild, targeting Apple operating systems or more specifically Mac OS X Tiger and Leopard (version 10.4 and 10.5). In addition to the usual stuff a trojan can do (run in background, open ports, steal your passwords, replicate etc.) this one can also log what you type in every moment, take screenshots of your active desktop and even take a picture of you using Mac's built-in iSight camera. Here's how it works: AppleScript.THT comes either as a 3.1MB application dubbed AStht_v06 or as a 60KB compiled AppleScript script called ASthtv05. Once started on a Mac OS system it adds itself to the System Login Items and thus runs with root privileges every time the OS is started. Once the system is infected AppleScript.THT also moves itself into the /Library/Caches/ folder. To protect your system against this threat, security experts advice to run SecureMac MacScan 2.5.2 anti-virus software with the latest Spyware Definitions update (2008011). More details on the malicious code and additional removal instructions are posted here.

Quick Time users may now update their current player version to the latest 7.5 release. The update supposedly adds performance enhancements and addresses security issues dealing with the way QT handles PICT files, AAC-encoded media, URLs and Indeo video. More information can be found on the Apple web site. Download Apple Quick Time 7.5 for Windows XP or Vista here.

Apple has released a major update for its latest Mac OS X Leopard operating system. The Mac OS X 10.5.3 Update is recommended for Mac OS X 10.5, 10.5.1, and 10.5.2 Leopard. It includes general operating system improvements that enhance the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac. For detailed information on this update please read below or click here. Download the Mac OS X 10.5.3 Update from this page.

Despite all the criticism Apple has gotten throughout the years, they seem to be doing pretty well for themselves. While the United States has economic issues that might otherwise prevent an investment in expensive technology, and the rest of the world becomes more eco-friendly, Apple is happy and/or smug to report that two out of three pre-built computers that cost $1k or more were built by Apple. Even in the market that isn't tres-chic, Apple is doing very well for themselves, boasting a 14% market share in all computers sold in Q1 2008. According to the vice president of analyst firm NPD, the sales of Apple computers are about as likely to decline as oil prices. "In notebooks [Apple is] growing two times the market; Windows notebooks are pretty much flat right now. IMacs are growing and the Windows desktop ain't. No matter how you look at it, Apple is outperforming Windows."

Man & Machine, a Landover, Md., maker of medical keyboards and computer peripherals, said on Tuesday it has filed a trademark-infringement lawsuit against Apple and CBS over the Mighty Mouse name. The company says that it has been selling its Mighty Mouse, "a waterproof optical mouse for medical, industrial, and marine applications," since March 2004. Apple began selling its wired and wireless Mighty Mouse for MAC PCs in August 2005. "This action arises from Apple's use and proposed continued use of the trademark 'Mighty Mouse' in violation of M&M's rights in its own 'Mighty Mouse' trademark," the complaint states. "Apple's use of the 'Mighty Mouse' trademark takes place under color of an agreement with CBS purporting to license such use." M&M is seeking undisclosed damages and a court order preventing Apple from using the name Mighty Mouse for its mice.

Apple today announced that new movie releases from major film studios and premier independent studios are available for purchase on the iTunes Store on the same day as their DVD release. New releases and catalog titles will be available from 20th Century Fox, The Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Lionsgate, Image Entertainment and First Look Studios. Movies purchased from iTunes can be viewed on an iPod with video, iPhone, Mac or PC or on a widescreen TV with Apple TV, with new releases priced at $14.99 and most catalog titles at $9.99.

Apple today introduced the updated all-in-one iMac, which now offers the latest Intel Core 2 Duo processors and the most powerful graphics ever available in an iMac. The ultimate all-in-one desktop computer includes faster processors with 6MB L2 cache, a faster 1066MHz front-side bus across the entire line, and 2GB of memory standard in most models. And the 24-inch iMac now offers a 3.06GHz Intel processor and the high-performance NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS graphics as options. Available immediately, the new iMac starts at just $1,199 preinstalled with Mac OS X Leopard and iLife '08. Find out more here.

Apple today presented financial results for its fiscal 2008 second quarter ended March 29, 2008. The Company posted revenue of $7.51 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.05 billion, or $1.16 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $5.26 billion and net quarterly profit of $770 million, or $.87 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 32.9 percent, down from 35.1 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 44 percent of the quarter's revenue.

Probably the story of the day, Apple is taking a big step in the IC business by purchasing the microprocessor design company P.A. Semi for $278 million in cash. P.A. Semi is a fabless semiconductor company that was founded in 2003 by Dan Dobberpuhl, the former lead designer of the Alpha and StrongARM microprocessors developed by Digital Equipment in the 1990s. Currently the company has 150 employees and delivers PWRficient 64-bit multicore processors for the high-performance embedded-computing markets. "Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not comment on our purposes and plans," said Apple spokesman Steve Dowling. That leaves us with almost no information to share. First reports speculate that Apple will target the chip maker's product for the iPhone or other systems like Apple TV.

In the past, Macs were sometimes argued to be better for image editing than Windows-based PCs. To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure if this was true or a complete myth, but it looks like things may not be like that anymore with the introduction of Adobe's Windows-only 64-bit version of Photoshop Creative Suite 4. Until now, Adobe has strived to ensure that both the Windows and Mac versions of Photoshop come with similar features. However, due to a choice by Apple not to make the Carbon technology that is used to develop Photoshop available as 64-bit, Adobe has decided it will not be providing a 64-bit version of CS4. Adobe's product manager for Photoshop, John Nack, said:

We're not going to ship 64-bit native for Mac with CS4. We respect Apple's need to balance their resources and make decisions right for that platform. But it does have an impact on developers.

Adobe's preliminary testing suggests that the 64-bit version of Photoshop CS4 will offer a performance boost of 8-12%, with the benefits being much greater for memory-intensive tasks due to its ability to take advantage of more than 4GB of memory.

Apple and NVIDIA released a new graphics upgrade kit today. From now on all first-generation Mac Pro users can swap their old video card with NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT GPU for as much as $279. When Apple first released Mac Pro in January 2008, they offered the GeForce 8800 GT as an upgrade option, however due to firmware issues, the 8800 GT was not compatible with first Mac Pros - until today. "The computer is more visual than ever, and Mac users in particular demand an exceptional visual experience," said Ujesh Desai, general manager of GeForce desktop GPU business at NVIDIA. "Adding a GeForce 8800 GT to the first-generation Mac Pro system will deliver a major graphics boost, resulting in faster processing for a complete range of visual computing applications." North American customers can purchase the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT upgrade kit online from NVIDIA or the Apple Store for $279. Consumers outside of the US, Puerto Rico, and Canada should order from the Apple Store.

All hypes and myths about Apple being the most secure OS, or at least being the last OS to be hacked may have been busted by Charlie Miller on Thursday when he managed to hack an Apple MacBoock Air for 2 minutes flat during the CanSecWest security conference's PWN 2 OWN hacking contest. Show organizers offered a Sony Vaio, Fujitsu U810 and the MacBook as prizes, saying that they could be won by anybody at the show who could find a way to hack into each of them and read the contents of a file on the system, using a previously undisclosed "0day" attack. Nobody was able to hack into the systems on the first day of the contest when contestants were only allowed to attack the computers over the network, but on Thursday the rules were relaxed so that attackers could direct contest organizers using the computers to do things like visit Web sites or open e-mail messages. Miller, best known as one of the researchers who first hacked Apple's iPhone last year, took advantage of the new privileges given by the jury and within 2 minutes, he directed the contest's organizers to visit a Web site that contained his exploit code, which then allowed him to seize control of the computer. He was the first contestant to attempt an attack on any of the systems, and that was enough for him to win quick $10,000 and perhaps show how secure the MacBook Air was. Continue reading the full story with more details here.

Apple released a massive set of patches on Tuesday afternoon fixing more than 90 vulnerabilities in almost every component of its operating systems. Apple's "Patch Tuesday" patches fix bugs in both the client and server editions of Mac OS X Tiger and Leopard. The Leopard bundle included fixes for AFP Client, Apache, Application Firewall, ClamAV, CUPS, macs, Help Viewer, Image Raw, Kerberos, mDNSResponder, OpenSSH, pax archive, PHP, Podcast Producer, Preview, Printing, System Configuration, UDF, Wiki Server and X11. The Tiger update fixes holes in AFP Client, AFT Server, Apache, AppKit, CFNEtwork, ClamAV, CoreFoundation, CoreServices, CUPS, curl, Emacs, file, Foundation, Help Viewer, Kerberos, libc, notifyd, OpenSSH, PHP, System Configuration and X11. Security Update 2008-002 is available here for Mac OS X v10.4.11, Mac OS X Server v10.4.11, Mac OS X v10.5.2, Mac OS X Server v10.5.2. For detailed information, please visit this website.

According to the Financial Times, Apple is currently in discussions with music companies regarding the possibility of providing users with unlimited access to music downloads. The plan would most likely involve customers having to pay a premium for iPods/iPhones and then being able to download as much music as they want - essentially embedding the cost of music into the price of the player itself. However, the discussions are apparently stalling a bit at present as the companies negotiate over pricing. Apple is reportedly offering only $20 per device, which is much lower than companies like Nokia, which is paying almost $80 per handset for a similar plan. Another possibility is that users may pay a subscription fee each month to have unlimited downloads, with the capability of keeping 40 to 50 tracks each year even if the subscription is cancelled.

Apple today introduced Safari 3.1, the world's fastest web browser for Mac and Windows PCs. Safari loads web pages 1.9 times faster than IE 7 and 1.7 times faster than Firefox 2. Safari also runs JavaScript up to six times faster than other browsers, and is the first browser to support the latest innovative web standards needed to deliver the next generation of highly interactive Web 2.0 experiences. Safari 3.1 is available immediately as a free download at www.apple.com/safari for both Mac OS X and Windows.

Apple Inc. was sued Wednesday over allegations its iTunes online music store and iPod music players are illegally using a patented method for distributing digital media over the Internet. Atlanta-based ZapMedia Services Inc. sued Apple in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, accusing the Cupertino-based company of violating two ZapMedia patents. ZapMedia wants royalties on Apple's sales of iPods and iTunes music, which reached nearly $11 billion last year. The success of iTunes has helped make Apple the No. 2 music retailer in the U.S. behind Wal-Mart Stores Inc., according to market researcher NPD Group. The patents in question cover a way of sending music and other digital content from servers to multiple media players, a broad description that could also apply to a wide swath of other companies selling digital media and the devices to play it. ZapMedia applied for the patents in 1999. One was granted in March 2006, the other on Tuesday. ZapMedia said it met with Apple to discuss licensing, but Apple rebuffed the offer. "When someone takes our vision and our intellectual property without a license after several attempts, we have no option but to protect it through every means available to us," Robert Frohwein, ZapMedia's general counsel, said in a statement.

Apple today announced that more than 100,000 iPhone developers have downloaded the beta iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK) in the first four days since its launch on March 6. The iPhone SDK provides developers with the same rich set of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and tools that Apple uses to create its native applications for iPhone and iPod touch. "Developer reaction to the iPhone SDK has been incredible with more than 100,000 downloads in the first four days," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "Also, over one million people have watched the launch video on Apple.com, further demonstrating the incredible interest developers have in creating applications for the iPhone."

Two American universities have decided to try and attract more students by offering free iPhones and MacBooks. Oklahoma Christian University is offering all new students attending New Student Orientations a brand new MacBook, and current college students will be given the opportunity to trade in their current laptops to receive one. In addition to this, the University will also offer students an iPhone or iPod touch, depending on whether they're willing to pay the contract fees. Meanwhile Abilene Christian University in Texas is offering a similar deal to all freshmen, giving them the choice of an iPhone or iPod Touch. Dr Dwayne VanRheenen of ACU said:

Because 93 percent of ACU students bring their own computers with them to college, we are choosing to take them to the next level by providing converged mobile devices.

All you iPhone owners out there should know that Apple released firmware update 1.1.4 today for the iPhone. The last update - 1.1.3, introduced a few new capabilities such as the ability to customize the home page, but the only thing noted as new in 1.1.4 are "bug fixes". Please connect your iPhone to iTunes to start downloading the new software.

Apple today introduced new models of the MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops. MacBook Pro models feature the latest Intel Core 2 Duo processors (running at up to 2.6GHz with 6MB of shared L2 cache), larger hard drives (up to 300GB), and 2GB of memory standard in most models. They also include the latest NVIDIA graphics processors - with up to 512MB of video memory - and an innovative Multi-Touch trackpad, first introduced in MacBook Air. The three new models of the MacBook feature faster processors and hard drives: sleek white 2.1GHz and 2.4GHz models with 120GB or 160GB 5400 rpm hard drives and a black 2.4GHz model with a massive 250GB 5400 rpm hard drive. The 2.4GHz MacBook ships with 2GB of memory standard, expandable up to 4GB across the line. Available immediately, the new MacBook and MacBook Pro models start at just $1,099 and $1,999, respectively.

The Apple Air was recently pushed out into the public. The public doesn't mind it, and for those who can actually afford it, it's quite a nice laptop. It's thin, it's light, it's powerful, and it's easy to use. However, an independent firm got curious as to exactly why the Air was so expensive, so thin, and so pretty. So, they took it apart, and promptly declared it was like nothing they've ever seen, in a very bad way. Beneath the glowering surface is an ugly interior, which uses unnecessary materials, and quite possibly keeps heat trapped inside. The official statement from the investigators:

Based on the results of our teardown project, we guess Apple is not paying much attention to both workmanship of the hardware design and comprehensive cost reduction. The company seems to have focused on aspects, where its expertise lies, such as external appearance, software and user interfaces.

With Windows and Macintosh operating system refreshes/updates abound, someone has to separate the good from the bad. PC World is doing their part by pointing out whom they fell falls into the extremely good category. When one particular review member got their hands on Mac OS X 10.5.2, they simply couldn't stop flowering it with praise. Four pages of amazement can be summed up in the following points, and elaborated upon by following the source link.

• The operating system has plenty of features which have real-world application, such as truly automated backups, document and spreadsheet preview images in folders, and notes and to-do lists integrated into the mail program.
• Leopard is "startlingly fast, brilliantly streamlined, and packed with conveniences and innovations".
• Whatever glitches were originally in the Leopard release are all but eliminated.

When the going gets rough, people simply don't see a need to spend so much on luxuries. A prevalent example is Apple. Now that the economy as a whole is slowing down, Apple is realizing that people simply aren't going to buy a gazillion iPhones and iPods this year. Considering the majority of the aforementioned devices used memory from NAND, Apple suddenly decided that they don't need to buy so much memory from NAND after all. Estimates of growth for NAND suddenly took a turn for the worse, going from upwards of 30% to a rather low single-digit number. Unfortunately for NAND, this announcement comes after NAND decided to increase capital investment by 20%. DRAM, on the other hand, has it worse. They've already predicted abysmal growth, but with a continuing demand for low RAM prices, abysmal growth translates into extreme losses.

Apple today introduced Xsan 2, the first major upgrade to its easy-to-use, high-performance, enterprise-class Storage Area Network (SAN) file system for Mac OS X. Xsan 2 combines enhanced performance with Apple's legendary ease of use, allowing even first-time users to set up and quickly deploy a SAN. It introduces MultiSAN, which allows users on a single workstation to access multiple SANs at the same time. Fully integrated with Mac OS X Leopard and Mac OS X Server Leopard, Xsan is also now qualified to work with third-party RAID storage.