Mac software

If you use popular computational programs such as spreadsheet workhorses Microsoft Excel and Apple Numbers, you might run into an issue in which, when using large number values, the system will appear to truncate the values of numbers entered.

For instance, if you open Excel and enter the value "12345678901234567890" into a cell, the program will change this to "12345678901234500000," where every value past the 15th character is set to zero. This happens in Apple's Numbers spreadsheet and other programs as well.

While the significance of the last numbers is perhaps questionable, it does limit … Read more

Adobe issued an emergency update to its Flash Player to fix two zero-day threats, the company announced yesterday. The updates affect all versions of Flash on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android.

The vulnerabilities currently are being exploited "in the wild," says Adobe's blog on the patches. According to the Kaspersky ThreatPost blog on the pair of zero-days, one attack targets "aerospace and other manufacturing companies" by tricking people into opening a Microsoft Word document with malicious Flash content embedded in it. The second zero-day targets Firefox and Safari on Mac OS X by tricking you … Read more

Java is not the only runtime that malware developers use to target victims of their attacks, and yesterday Adobe released an update to Flash that fixes two zero-day exploits in its popular Web plug-in software.

The two vulnerabilities in question affect both OS X and Windows systems, and allow malicious Flash content on Web sites to deliver malware to Macintosh systems via Firefox and Safari. The second vulnerability targets Windows users by tricking them into opening an e-mail attachment that contains the Flash-based exploit.

These problems are considered critical, so if you have Flash enabled on your system (which most … Read more

Google, which controls both ends of the Internet connection for a significant fraction of online activity, has a lot of power over the Internet. A little image-format tweak to one of its Web sites shows just how much.

Few others have expressed much enthusiasm for its WebP image format, an offshoot of the WebM project to promote a royalty-free video codec. Google asserts that its smaller file sizes would unburden networks and help Web pages load faster, but as Mozilla likes to point out when grappling with such matters, adding a new format to the Web means adding a requirement … Read more

With the release of its raw compatibility update 4.04, Apple software now can handle raw-format photos from two hot new cameras, the Nikon D5200 SLR and the high-end compact Sony RX1.

The D5200 is a relatively inexpensive SLR whose 24-megapixel sensor looks to have promisingly high performance -- the top rating for an APS-C-sized sensor, according to DxO Labs' DxOMark test results. The $2,800 RX1 has an even larger full-frame sensor, also with a 24-megapixel resolution, but its design uses a fixed 35mm lens.

Also supported in the Apple update is support for raw photos from Pentax's … Read more

Apple's AirPlay feature is a convenient technology for sending audio to various devices. If you are on the same wireless network as the device then it will be available to your Mac, iPhone, or iPad to play music via iTunes, or even be used as a general audio appliance for system sounds.

In general, AirPlay devices are hardware accessories like routers such as Apple's AirPort, or media appliances like the AppleTV. However, if you are not willing to shell out about $100 or more for a new AirPlay and you have an old Mac lying around (especially a … Read more

Tabbed browsing is one of the more useful features to make it to Web browsers. However, as with using single windows you might inadvertently close one and need to restore it. While you can create a new tab and then peruse the browser history to find a link to the content it contained, an easier option is to use the built-in tab restoration options in your browser.

To do this, there are two hotkeys to keep in mind. The first is the classic Command-Z for undoing an action, which in Safari will undo a recently closed tab in a specific … Read more

In Mountain Lion, Apple split off its reminder options from the provided calendar program and put them into a separate program similar to the Reminders app in iOS. This program lets you keep track of your projects, routines, or what have you, with to-do lists for each. As you make progress, you just mark each reminder as completed, and it drops off of its respective list.

But if, say, you inadvertently mark the wrong reminder as completed, don't worry, you can still get it back.

The Reminders program does have a Completed section that you can click to see … Read more

The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) project has scored its 14th consecutive victory, discovering the largest prime number so far.

The number, 2 to the power of 57,885,161 minus 1, is a digit that's 17,425,170 digits long. That's big enough that if you want to see the full text, you'll have to brace yourself for a 22.5MB download.

GIMPS, a cooperative project splitting the search across thousands of independent computers, announced the find yesterday after it had been confirmed by other checks. At present, there are 98,980 people and 574 … Read more