MagicPrefs for Magic Mouse (Mac OS X only)

I bought a Magic Mouse almost as soon as it came out and, as much as I loved the touch interface, thought it was a bit limited in terms of functionality. The older Mighty Mouse had side buttons and a middle click button which allowed me to trigger Mac OS X features like Expose, Spaces, or Dashboard. These buttons were gone in the Magic Mouse to make room for the beautiful design and large touch surface.

MagicPrefs is a very small and lightweight app that runs in the background and takes full advantage of the Magic Mouse’s touch surface. It gives full control over touch gestures and empowers the Magic Mouse with features found on the newer MacBook touchpads and the iPhone.

To download MagicPrefs, click here: http://vladalexa.com/apps/osx/magicprefs

If you want to see it in action before downloading, just watch the video below:

Snow Leopard Data Deletion Bug!

Over 100 cases across online discussions forums indicate that there is a critical issue with guest accounts that affect Apple’s newly released Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.

Apparently, when singing into a guest account, Snow Leopard treats the main account as if it were a guest account as well and wipes the entire user folder clean.

This should be the normal behaviour of only only guest accounts, which are temporary accounts that can be enabled to allow guests to sign onto a Mac computer. After the user signs out, the guest account data is deleted. However, this reported bug does this on non-guest accounts, which is a problem to those who enable guest accounts but expect to sign back on their main accounts and find their data intact.

We advise you to always make several backups of your data, both local and remote or offsite. You may want to check out the various backup solutions offered by zuuMedia here: http://www.zuumedia.com/zuumedia/backup/zuubackup-home.html

For the BBC article on this issue, click this link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8304229.stm

Apple Updates Snow Leopard

Apple has released an update to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, bringing the operating system to version 10.6.1.

The update provides:

• Printer compatibility enhancements for printers that do not properly appear in the Add Printer browser.
• Bug fix for DVD playback (when playback stops abruptly)
• Bug fix for the Dock (bug prevents removal of icons from the Dock)
• Bug fix for account set up and sending mail via SMTP servers in Mail
• Bug fix for Sierra Wireless 3G modems
• Adobe Flash Player update (new plug-in version 10.0.32.18)

The Flash update is particularly important as it addresses a key security issue.

Other security updates may also be available alongside 10.6 as well as for older versions of Mac OS X such as 10.5 and 10.4.

To update your Mac, click the Apple logo in the top left corner in the Menu Bar, then click “Software Update.”

Apple Event Announcements

This is a mobile post:

Apple announced today the release of iTunes 9, which includes a plethora of upgrades and enhancements to the way it handles media. Of note is the ability to sync music with up to 5 computers on a network.

Apple also announced the release of iPhone OS 3.1, a free update to both iPhone and iPod Touch users that has added functionality.

A main feature touted by Apple is the ability to manage iPhone/iPod Touch apps on the home screens right from within iTunes.

To download the new version of iTunes, please visit: www.apple.com/iTunes

To download OS 3.1, download iTunes 9 and then check for an update within your iPhone/iPod Touch summary tab.

The First Mac OS X Botnet

Well the title of this post sounds scarry – sorry it is not meant to. Let me quickly explain.

First what is a Botnet:
Botnet is a term for a collection of software robots, or “bots”, that run autonomously and automatically. The people that create these often get them installed on computers so they can then do many things including sending spam, attacking the servers of a company to distrupt their services (denial-of-service attacks).

Second:
For PC users the Mac OS X is like Windows XP or Vista, it is the operating system on the latest Mac Computers

The reason this is so significant is that owners of Mac computers think they are secure from these types of security risks – this demonstrates that this is not the case.

At zuuMedia we think it is critical that all computers, both PCs and Macs, have security software installed and running; which is why we provide a suite of security software for every customer – it is included in the price.