apple computer inc

According to a post on the Bugtraq newsgroup, Apple has a job listing for a security expert.

The winning candidate would "help provide guidance on security topics to all groups across Apple, and help teams design security into new cutting-edge features and technologies," and also "help analyze potential security issues and work with groups across Apple for timely resolution."

Apple has come under increased scrutiny by the criminal hacker communities in the last year, and the was the target of a January's "month of Apple bugs." In 2006, it issued more Mac OS security patches … Read more

VMware showed off some of the fruits of its Fusion project to bring its virtualization software to Apple Computer's Intel-based Macs on Tuesday at the Macworld show in San Francisco.

The software lets Linux, Windows, Solaris and NetWare operating systems run in compartments called virtual machines on Apple systems, a feature handy for using software not available on Apple machines or for programmers or testers who need to use multiple products.

The final version of the software will ship in the summer, at which point VMware will announce prices, the company said. The beta version is freely downloadable from … Read more

Darwin" core of Mac OS X, is pulling the plug.

"OpenDarwin was meant to be a development community and a proving ground for fixes and features for Mac OS X and Darwin, which could be picked up by Apple for inclusion in the canonical sources," project leaders said Tuesday at the site. "OpenDarwin has failed to achieve its goals in four years of operation, and moves further from achieving these goals as time goes on. For this reason, OpenDarwin will be shutting down."

There are several reasons for the shutdown: "The original notions of … Read more

KOffice, an element of the KDE interface software widely used with Linux, now supports the OpenDocument format and uses it by default. The change comes with version 1.5, released Tuesday, project organizers said.

ODF, a standard gaining prominence as a rival to Microsoft's proprietary file formats, is the format used by the dominant open-source application suite, OpenOffice.org.

ODF is used in KWord, KSpread and KPresenter, but work remains. "Great care has been taken to ensure interoperability with other office software that supports OpenDocument, most notably OpenOffice.org. We acknowledge, however, that the ODF support and interoperability … Read more

Apple Computer's lanyard headphones make wearing the iPod Nano as easy as wearing a necklace.

Wearing the Nano this way seems natural, like it belongs there. I tend to forget it is there. That is, until it gets soaked when I lean over the sink to wash my hands or when I get a drink from a bubbler.

An antidote to this is the OtterBox case for the iPod Nano, which can keep the Nano safe from the elements like wind, rain, sand and the rogue bubbler. The case with the included lanyard can be worn skinny dipping without … Read more

OS X contains unpatched security flaws of a type that were fixed on alternative operating systems more than a decade ago, claims a security researcher credited with finding numerous bugs in Apple Computer's increasingly popular platform.

Neil Archibald, a senior security researcher at software security specialists Suresec, told ZDNet Australia that as Apple's market share increases, OS X will come under more scrutiny by security researchers, who he believes will find plenty of "low-hanging bugs."

Archibald, who has already discovered a number of security vulnerabilities in OS X, speculates that should Apple's market share continue … Read more

Booting other operating systems on Apple Computer's new Intel-based Mac is tough, but Red Hat hopes they'll make it happen with Linux.

Red Hat spokeswoman Gillian Farquhar confirmed last week that the company hopes to help its developers figure out how to get Linux working on the new Macs. "That's definitely happening," Farquhar said of the effort, though it hasn't gone far because the Linux seller doesn't yet have any of Apple's new machines.

Fedora, Red Hat's free version of Linux geared for hobbyists, already runs on earlier Apple computers using … Read more

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Sun Microsystems Chief Executive Scott McNealy consistently credits Apple Computer for good marketing--to the point where he listed what he believes will be his own company's glorious iPod moments. But McNealy said Wednesday believes the iPod itself will be replaced in coming years by music stored in the network.

"Your iPod is like your home answering machine. It's a temporary thing," McNealy said at a panel discussion featuring reminiscences by Sun's four cofounders at the Computer History Museum here. "It's going to be hard to sell a lot of iPods … Read more

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Apple Computer's processor preferences are in the limelight as the computer maker on Tuesday began selling models using Intel processors instead of the PowerPC chips from IBM and Freescale Semiconductor that have been the computers' preferred brains since the mid-1990s. But another processor choice came to light Wednesday when Sun Microsystems cofounder Bill Joy revealed that Sun's Sparc chips were in the running during the last Apple switch, when it was moving off Motorola's 680x0 family.

"We got very close to having Apple use Sparc. That almost happened," Joy said at a … Read more