Macking 74

Macworld NY Expo
I didn't go to this, and neither did anywhere near as many people as usually attend. Yet in spite of that, it was the biggest tech show in New York this year, including the PC Expo. The user reports on Macintouch were underwhelming, partly because because major vendors stayed away this time, Apple had no new hardware to show off, and all the interest and excitement there was involved OSX applications and the announcement of version 10.1, due in September.
There were many cool hardware devices, including a USB video microscope (finally) to compete with Intel's, which has deliberately excluded Mac users. To find out more, visit Bodelin's site.
The OS revision adds speed and a few more features, more compatibility with external devices and the kind of general improvements that have been expected all along as OSX development proceeds.
Remember, I warned you all to stay away from OSX, except for exploration and experimentation purposes. Well, with over a thousand applications, utilities and shareware/freeware items available for it now, there is plenty to experiment with. There is no productivity software as yet from the major vendors (Adobe, Quark, and the dreaded Microsoft) but all will be shipping products between fall and winter.
There is a serious price drop on the 733 MHz G4 tower, and the two new models are an 800 MHz twin processor model and an 867 MHz single. That 733 used to cost you $3500 last year; now it's under $1700. The high-end models also get you a CD/DVD SuperDrive (writes to both formats) and even, with some tweaking, writes to the 4.7-gig Rewriteable DVDs. Now THAT's useful backup!
The long-awaited iMac with TFT (thin-film transistor, aka active-matrix LCD) monitor replacing the CRT did not appear, which means it won't be in time for the school fall season. But that's okay, most of the students will be getting the new white iBooks instead, and some colleges are buying them by the thousands for their students. My guess is that the design isn't ready, or the suppliers of TFT screens are not equipped to supply them in the million-lots that Apple would require, at a price that keeps the unit attractive. Or maybe they're waiting to incorporate Bluetooth. Nobody who knows is talking, of course.
The one thing you need to remember is that Apple is growing, selling all the Macs they can build, while the rest of the computer industry is in a severe depression, laying off people right and left. And Apple regained their #1 position in the education market on July 18.
One other thing Apple announced was the end to the Alien Psoriasis and Bad Acid iMac case designs. Now the only colors you can get iMacs in is indigo, snow, and graphite. You like the patterns, better buy soon. I guess my initial reaction against them was right after all. All iMac models got a speed bump and none ships with less than 128 megs RAM; the top two come with 256 and all have a slot so you can add more. Fastest iMac runs at 700 MHz.
Jobs' keynote mostly addressed the major developers who are working on OSX-native applications. To Microsoft's credit (it hurts to say that), they are putting Office 2001 into maintenance mode (no further development, just bug fixes) and concentrating their efforts on the OSX-only Office 10, which is due late this year. Adobe, Quark, FileMaker and Connectix are also finishing up their OSX products.

Buy that RAM Now
Prices are staggeringly low; in some configurations less than 25 cents per megabyte ($140 for a 512MB module). Some production lines have been shut down to reduce market glut, and the fall release of Windows XP will send Wintel users out to upgrade their RAM in droves. Yoyoing RAM prices is an industry tradition; what goes down will rise again. And then fall.

AirPort on the Fritz?
Apple has identified an issue with a small number of AirPort Base Stations, which causes the following symptoms - even after a hard reset:

• Continuously blinking status lights
• No response to wired or wireless connections
• Resetting every few seconds

Six out of Ten
Last month was the 10th anniversary of this magazine's founding in 1991. Nobody told me or I would have mentioned it too. Six years ago I started writing the Mac column after the previous writer and past PMUG president Neil Wolf was killed in a car/train wreck.
Now it seems that Macking is the longest continuing column. Although there are writers who have been at it longer, they are not monthly. This column celebrates its 74th episode with this issue. Obviously I would have been booted out long ago if you readers hadn't found some useful information in it. When I started it was during Apple's darkest days and it looked like a dying platform. Now, in the middle of the severest depression to hit the tech industry to date, Apple is selling every Mac they can make (except the Cube) and they are making profits while all the other major manufacturers are scrambling.
Of course Microsoft never loses money, even if they have to resort to scams like the BS Alliance to do it.

Ho, hum, another virus
As the rest of the PC world is plagued by viruses, Mackers can be happy in our immunity, but not complacent. All it will take is for one of those twits to take an interest in us and we will have the same kind of problem to fight as Wintel users. Sure, we don't have the same kind of security holes as the Windows OS, but there are rather simple exploits that are available and any cracker/vandal worth his iron pipe knows what they are. They just don't bother.
How many of you received a copy of the CodeRed Worm? Did it just land on your desktop looking confused and wondering what to do next? If you are in the address book of any PC user that gets infected, you will certainly get a copy. PC users can become immune as well, but they MUST pay attention to ALL updates and keep on top of things, as the admins at Pioneer Pacific College (an advertiser and co-sponsor of ComputerBits Radio) will tell you. Their network has not been violated by these worms but they are fanatically devoted to keeping it secure. Some safety can be had by avoiding Outlook and using Eudora instead, but if a PC user double-clicks an attachment, they're infected.
The Mac version of Outlook Express does have a small security hole of its own, so if you are using it then you should switch to Eudora, or even Netscape. Besides, your mail will be safer. While I have had calls from clients to come rescue their mailbox after Netscape and Outlook have munged it, I have many times been unable to do so. I have never failed to restore Eudora mailboxes.

The SirCam Worm
Another worm plaguing the Net is this 250K file that also seeks out email addresses from Internet Explorer cache files, as well as Outlook address books. It will tie up your 26.4 connection seriously as some people have been sent dozens of copies of the worm. In Eudora, there is a simple settings option that will prevent it from tying up YOUR system.
Go to the Special menu and choose Settings. Scroll down and click on the Checking Mail icon and look for the Mail Management option. Check the box for Skip messages over ____ K. Type in 50 or 100, depending on how big your email messages and attachments usually are. When a large attachment reaches your mail server, Eudora will only load the first few paragraphs of the message and tell you to click the "download" icon (a black down-pointing arrow) at the top of the window, and then check mail again. If you don't want the attachment, click the trash can icon instead and it will be deleted at the server. Netscape doesn't appear to have this option, and I don't know if Outlook Express does either.

Eudora Welty dies at 92
(from TidBITS e-zine) Pulitzer Prize-winning author Eudora Welty died last month at age 92. Welty was a lifelong resident of Jackson, Mississippi, and an icon of American literature. Among her best known works are the short story collection The Golden Apples and the novels Losing Battles and The Optimist's Daughter; two of her works (The Ponder Heart and The Robber Bridegroom) also became Broadway plays. Her stories tended to focus on the lives of sheltered characters in southern America, but also quietly contradict easy categorization into any particular genre. Welty is also noted for her photographs, particularly images of the South during the Great Depression taken when she was working as a "junior publicity agent" for the Works Progress Administration.
In relation to the Macintosh world, the popular email program Eudora is named for Eudora Welty, specifically because of her famous short story "Why I Live At The P.O.," published in her first collection in 1941. Programmer Steve Dorner read the story in college, and it was still with him years later when it came time to name the first version of his new email program.

An OSX Insecurity
From the Bugtrack list, this info applies to people who ran the beta version of OSX and then upgraded to the released version:

Subject: Re: MacOSX 10.0.X Permissions uncorrectly set
Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2001 22:14:23 +1000 (EST)
To: bugtraq@securityfocus.com

On Tue, 26 Jun 2001, kangoo wrote:
> Permissions of /Users/yourname/Desktop which show your desktop is
> xrwxrwxrwx, allowing every user to read/write on your own Desktop folder.
>
> Fix: chmod 755 or chmod 750 /Users/yourname/Desktop
>
> Apple have been warned long ago and as of 10.0.4 it is stil not fixed.

I've just looked into the root of a machine we have here. Not an upgrade
from OS 9. Started with install off the release cd, and now 10.0.4 is
installed. Seems the following have write access by any user, by default.

drwxrwxrwx  21 root    wheel        670 Jun 19 10:06 Applications (Mac OS 9)
-rwxrwxrwx   1 root    wheel     942080 Jun 26 11:03 Desktop DB
-rwxrwxrwx   1 root    wheel    2831842 Jun 26 09:17 Desktop DF
drwxrwxrwx   3 root    staff         58 Jun 29 21:51 Desktop Folder
drwxrwxrwx  11 root    wheel        330 May 29 10:33 Documents
-rwxrwxrwx   1 root    wheel          0 May 30 13:33 Late Breaking News
drwxrwxrwx  49 root    wheel       1622 Jun 28 14:29 System Folder
drwxrwxrwx   3 xxxxxx  admin        264 Jun 28 14:40 Temporary Items
drwxrwxrwx   2 root    wheel        264 May 28 12:30 TheFindByContentFolder
drwxrwxrwx   4 root    wheel        264 May  7 10:12 TheVolumeSettingsFolder
drwxrwxrwx   2 root    wheel        264 Jun 28 14:29 Trash
-rwxrwxrwx   1 root    wheel  547356672 Jun 28 14:26 VM Storage

xxxxx is currently logged in. "VM Storage" is an interesting one. Running
strings on it gets about 500 outputs of "ISP_Guard_Page", so I assume
there's some sort of protection scheme happening there. I don't see what's
stopping trojans being installed in Applications, considering it's
writable to all and sundry.

Subject: Re: MacOSX 10.0.X Permissions uncorrectly set
Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2001 20:02:38 -0700
From: Etaoin Shrdlu 
To: Bugtraq List 

Jörg Preuß wrote:
> kangoo  wrote:
> > Permissions of /Users/yourname/Desktop which show your desktop is
> > xrwxrwxrwx, allowing every user to read/write on your own Desktop folder.
>
> That seems to be correct. My station is running on osx 10.0.4 and all
> desktop folders have permissons 777 - even that one from root...

Well, I was quite curious about this, having been a part of the beta
test of macos X for quite a while. We upgraded to 10.0.4, and lo and
behold, some accounts had the problem, and some did not. Turns out that
those created during the beta test period were the problematic ones. We
scrubbed the disk, and reinstalled. All accounts now have the correct
permissions.

Sounds like the problem accounts were upgrades from beta versions. If
you are running an upgrade from a beta, then you might want to take a
second look. Fresh installs seem to be just fine.

No Microsoft products were used in the production of this column.

email mp at moonmac dot com. (I took out the mailto link because that's how the spammers find me.)