macintosh Archives

How to be an Apple Genius

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized August 30, 2012apple, BSD, compaq, intel, macintosh, motorola, unix

Gizmodo got its grubby little hands on a training manual allegedly used in Apple Stores. It looks credible, and answers some questions.

Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.

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Games would be just what Linux needed

Dave Farquhar Linux July 27, 2012Ad Lib, amiga, apple, apple ii, atari, commodore, commodore 64, IBM, macintosh, Steve Wozniak, VGA, vista, windows 8

Valve is intending to develop for Linux, as an insurance policy against Windows 8. I think that will lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy. If more games are available for Linux, demand for Linux will increase, along with market share.

There’s historical precedence for this. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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How to quickly find the differences between two Word documents

Dave Farquhar Office, Software May 11, 2012April 23, 2017ASCII, command prompt, macintosh, thumb drive

From time to time, I have to deal with new revisions of familiar implementation guides or other system documentation, and the authors rarely include a changelog in the document. And of course the first question anyone asks about the new guide is what’s changed. That means I have to find the differences between two Word documents.

This week I found myself collaborating on a long-ish document and needing to synchronize some changes. Word’s tracked changes and comments can help somewhat, but generally I find them clumsy and annoying.

If you have five minutes and a willingness to use a command prompt, you can find the differences easily, then work from there.
Read more

Dave Farquhar

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What’s going on with Macintosh security?

Dave Farquhar Macintosh, security, Viruses April 22, 2012antivirus, apple, computer security, mac os x, macintosh, malware, McAfee, Microsoft Security Essentials, os x, symantec

The latest figures I’ve read say there are perhaps a half-million infected Macintoshes still floating around out there, an improvement from the high of 600,000 that I was seeing a few weeks ago, but probably not what Apple had hoped after releasing its most recent fix.

I argued three weeks ago that the end of the innocence was either here or very near. I’ll argue now that it’s gone: There are now 250 known Macintosh OS X viruses in existence. In 2003 there were none. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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Macintosh malware continues to evolve

Dave Farquhar Macintosh, security April 3, 2012April 15, 2017apple, mac os x, macintosh, malware, os x, pc world, STIG, vulnerability

Security experts have long warned that [Apple’s] delay in delivering Java patches on Mac OS could be used by malware writers to their advantage, and the new Flashback.K malware confirms that they were right. — PC World magazine

Last week I argued that a Macintosh-based botnet currently being distributed via Word document would likely change distribution methods, perhaps to a PDF document, in order to spread itself more effectively.

That, to my knowledge, hasn’t happened, but today I learned of the above example of Mac malware doing exactly that, jumping from Java vulnerability to Java vulnerability. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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End of the innocence for Mac security

Dave Farquhar Macintosh, security March 30, 2012Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Reader, antivirus, apple, firefox, mac os x, macintosh, malicious code, malware, Malware Domains, microsoft word, office 2007, os x, pdf files, spyware, trojan horse, vector, vulnerability, yahoo

Antivirus vendor Kapersky has identified a new trojan horse targetting Macintoshes. It spreads a botnet based somewhere in China via an infected Microsoft Word document, typically sent as an e-mail attachment.

The spin is that if you don’t use Word on your Mac, you’re safe. That’s true–this week. But going forward, it’s going to take more than that. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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Umm, no, that’s not Commodore, and that’s not an Amiga

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing March 23, 20121950s, 1980s, amiga, amiga os, apple, commodore, commodore vic 20, IBM, intel, jack tramiel, kenmore, macintosh, sears, whirlpool

Some stories floating around are suggesting that Commodore is still around, and they just released a new, overpriced Amiga.

Well, there’s a company slapping “Commodore” and “Amiga” labels on PC cases that look kind of like Apple Mac Mini cases and stuffing off-the-shelf components in them, but they’re Commodore Amigas in name only. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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Balancing safety and versatility

Dave Farquhar security December 2, 2011December 1, 20111980s, android, cyanogenmod, hp, IBM, john c dvorak, linksys, macintosh, networking equipment, proprietary unix, unix, vulnerability, wrt54g

John C Dvorak has a very simple solution to the HP printing problem. Lock down the firmware so it’s not upgradeable. And while we’re at it, do the same thing to routers and other equipment.

This solves the problem of loading rogue firmware on the devices, but there are several problems with such a draconian approach.
Read more

Dave Farquhar

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Steve Jobs and the Commodore PET

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing November 5, 2011October 11, 20171980s, 1990s, 6502, amiga, amiga os, apple, apple ii, Chuck Peddle, commodore, commodore 64, intel, irving gould, jack tramiel, KIM, macintosh, Mehdi Ali, MOS, motorola, pixar, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, tape drive, Texas Instruments

There’s a nasty rumor floating around that in Walter Isaacson’s bestselling biography, Steve Jobs, Jobs alleges that Commodore copied the Apple II when making its first computer, 1977’s PET. Here’s the story of Steve Jobs and the Commodore PET.

The book doesn’t come right out and say it, but it insinuates it. I know how the PET came to be, and the PET would have happened whether the Apple II ever existed or not.
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Dave Farquhar

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Happy Patch Tuesday, September 2011

Dave Farquhar security September 13, 2011Adobe Reader, code execution, excel, firefox, macintosh, Microsoft Office, office 2007, oracle, Patch Tuesday, pdf files, SQL, toolkits, unix, vista, vulnerability, Windows Server, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP

Microsoft has five updates and Adobe has two for us on this fine Patch Tuesday, in addition to a patch Mozilla pushed out for Firefox last week.

Don’t get too complacent if you run something other than Windows. If you run Microsoft Office on a Mac, or Adobe Reader or Acrobat on a Mac, or Adobe Reader on Unix or Linux, you’re vulnerable. The vulnerabilities in those affected products are more serious than the vulnerabilities for Windows. So keep that in mind. Don’t be smug about security. It’ll bite you.

Dave Farquhar

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