Fred Cirera

Apple has just released a new configuration guide to help the the users of MacOS to secure their operating system. This manual is available for MacOS desktop and server edition as well as for Leopard (10.5), Tiger (10.4), and Panther (10.3).

This guide has more than two hundred pages describing the MacOS X architecture, secure installtion, information on patching, protecting and securing the peripherals, securing user account, backups, certificates, vpn configuration, etc. This is a very thorough manual.

This manual is intended for IT, and specialists. Users can browse through it to find interesting information and increase their security awerness.

Download your Mac OS X Security Configuration Guides

Next week Steve Jobs will announce the new Apple products at the WWDC. One of the most expected new product is new iPhone with GPS and 3G as well as the new version of the iPhone OS version 2.

If we believe the rumors the new iPhone is ready for shipping. And right after Steve announcement you will be able download the new version of the OS and upgrade your iPhone.

Here is the list of the new features that should be available.

• smaller (thinner) and lighter
• available in new colors
• video recording
• video conferencing
• GPS
• faster network connection with 3G
• ActiveSync, allowing the iPhone to be compatible with Microsoft Exchange
• Cicso VPM
• Scientific calculator

New low end models with a price around $200 should be announced as well.

It is possible to add custom headers to mails your are sending with Mail.app. You need to open and type the following commands. This is very useful to add headers with your mail priority, a default reply-to field or with your GnuPG or identity.

No wonder why the batteries life is so short, Leopard is constantly accessing the disk. I have unsuccessfully tried to find which process constantly access the disk to kill it.

A few years back, I was a heavy FireFox user. After Safari came out, I started using FireFox less and less with every new version of Safari.

This afternoon I have installed MacOS 10.5, better known as Leopard. Here are some of my first impressions.

• The new finder is way better. Everything important is on the left side bar. One of the sections I find interesting is the shared section. I have a bunch of disks I share through the network. I also have some machines I have converted into small severs. Just a few clicks in the shared section, I can now access the disk or the machines on my network.

• Screen Sharing is great. Before I was using the free version of VNC to do administrative work on my small servers. Screen Sharing uses the same protocol as VNC but it is faster. The cut and paste and drag & drop from the desktop to the remote desktop works well. I can even have access to my Windows XP box. I just have to run a VNC server on Windows.

• I don’t have much to say about Spaces it is convenient, and it does the job. Before I was using Virtue.

• Spotlight seems to be faster. My main machine is an old PowerBook G4 and spotlight was a little bit slow on Tiger. It seems they improve the performances on Leopard.

• Preview also has been improved. Now you can do simple images manipulations, such as select, extract shapes, resize, and convert images into other formats.

• I also like the new Mail.app. Integrating the Notes, and To Do List into the mail, seems to be a good idea. Before I was saving my notes and list of things to do into files, all over my disk. I was loosing them frequently. Now everything has been centralized into mail. I have played a lot with the Calendar The integration with the mail seems OK.

• Before installing Leopard, I was very excited to see how Time Machine worked with FileVault. That was the big disappointment of the day. Time Machine does not work if your home directory is encrypted with FileVault.

• One more thing I found disappointing is the poor stability. I had a crash with Mail.app and one with Preview. I hope these problems will be fixed soon by Apple. We don’t want MacOS to look like some of the Microsoft products.

That’s all for today. If I find something wrong or great I’ll keep you posted.

A repository for every keyboard secret in OS X. Some of these are well known, some are not. Shortcuts in the Menu category are common rather than universal.