The Apple Group

According to the X-Force 2008 Trend & Risk Report (PDF) released early this year, Mac OS X Server and Mac OS X top the list of operating systems with the most disclosed vulnerabilities for 2008. Each accounts for 14.3 percent, and has been in the top five in each of the last three years. Rounding out the top five were: Linux Kernel at 10.9 percent, Sun Solaris at 7.3 percent, and Microsoft Windows XP at 5.5 percent. The purpose of this data is to compare the total number of disclosed vulnerabilities with each individual operating system. Vulnerability data is submitted to the Mitre Corp. and then appears in the CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) List.

Twin is the most flexible online backup solution for Mac OS X, compatible with most Internet servers: FTP, FTPS, SFTP, WebDAV, Amazon S3, MobileMe. It even supports offline backups to external drives. Twin is a true Mac product that preserves Finder info, resource forks, ACLs, Privileges and comes with an elegant user interface and a powerful assistant. It also provides numerous high-end features like AES-256 encryption, efficient bz2 compression, powerful exclusion rules and scheduler, support for splitting large files during network transfers, network-error recovery, individual digital signature for backed up files, multi-cores machines optimization and much more!

With its use of the latest Mac OS X technologies, breakthrough ease-of-use and innovation, all Mac users will find CheckUp very useful and even fun. It's the dashboard of your Mac! CheckUp is designed to check your disks and memory but also to monitor the usage of CPU, Memory, Disk Drives and Network Adapters in a very visual way. By adding rules that will be triggered when certain conditions are met for a specified resource on the computer, you can receive visual notifications. For example, CheckUp can alert you when a hard drive seems to have hardware failures, even when the application is not opened (thanks to an innovative background process).

Adium is a free instant messaging application for Mac OS X that can connect to AIM, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo, and more.

EazyDraw provides a full editable vector import of AppleWorks 6 drawing (*.cwk) files. Complete editable vector graphic import that conserves, colors, patterns, wallpaper gradients - all native content and accents. The only thing you will notice is how much better the drawing looks when produced with EazyDraw and the full capability of the OS X Quartz graphic engine.

A week ago, the University of Missouri journalism department announced it would require its students to purchase an iPhone or iTouch for the fall semester. Many people have voiced their opinions on the subject but the alternatives to these products have been left without a voice. Until now.

Many people have been wondering when the third generation iPhone and Apple's OS 3.0 will be coming out. Well, as we inch closer to a probable release date, there may be an exact date to circle on your calendar. Come find out when that is.

geek tool to take control of your desktop

An article discussing the features the rumored third generation iPhone might include. Before you fall in love what is talked about inside, remember, this is all just rumor and we'll all have to wait and see if it comes to fruition. Come check them out.

After updating to Mac OS X 10.5.7, a user may not be able to log in to a managed client workstation. On startup, or after entering the user name and password, the user may be prompted for an administrator name and password, but nothing can be entered. This issue can occur on PowerPC-based Macs if the file /etc/authorization is not updated correctly when installing the Mac OS X 10.5.7 Update.

In Mac OS X 10.5.7 or later, access to add or delete network printers on a client computer is controlled by membership in the lpadmin group. You can control the ability of managed user accounts to add and delete printers by controlling the membership of this group.

With all of the rumors swirling around about Apple's third generation iPhone, how about a rumor corroborated with potential evidence? The article discusses some newly found information that might give Apple fans hope for a release of the 32GB iPhone model and how much it might cost.

Ever wondered about Apple making a splash into the video game world and how it might turn out? This article features commentary on a big video game company's CEO making a prediction that Apple will make that jump. Read and chime in.

Apple's new IT tutorial series provides an immersive, step-by-step experience in Mac integration. Learn a variety of tips and tricks from our IT experts - from directory architecture to client management, there's something for everyone. Click on the videos that interest you most.

For individual Mac users or small businesses, it's usually not a problem deploying new Macs with a standard image -- as a Mac support specialist, you might just load each machine manually. But imagine if you need to deploy hundreds or thousands of Macs, PCs, or XServes. You'd need a small army of techs or a way to do the job automatically. That's where DeployStudio comes in handy. This freeware tool can be used to create deployment files using Netboot, external USB or FireWire drives, or any AFP, SMB, or NFS sharepoint on the network.

For almost any system administrator, the idea of "off-time" is fictional. Even when I'm on vacation, there's an unwritten expectation that if need be, I'm going to be summoned to solve a problem. (Even on my honeymoon, for example, I found myself spending a half-hour or so dealing with a work issue.)

The latest computing survey results from the University of Virginia's freshman class show evidence of continued Apple marketshare growth in the higher education market (via Daring Fireball). The chart above shows that Apple has made steady gains since 2003 in the percentage of incoming UVA freshman who own a Mac. The latest year (2008) shows that 37% of incoming students owned a Mac while the percentage owning a Windows computer had shrunk to 62% from a peak of 96% in 2001. The growth tracks closely with the trend towards laptop ownership amongst the Virginia freshman. In 2008, 99% of the incoming students owned a laptop.

Alternative to Front Row - I like Front Row but navigating among podcasts can be a nuisance - perhaps this can be hacked to make it easier