mac

Microsoft said on Tuesday that it has released its first update to Office 2008 for Mac, fixes that should boost stability and performance in some areas, while closing some security holes.

In an e-mail, Microsoft said that version 12.0.1 adds "suite-wide stability and performance improvements," along with the security fixes.

On its Web site, the company offered a little more detail, adding, "This update fixes critical issues in Office 2008, including issues that might cause Office 2008 applications to stop responding or quit unexpectedly."

After some delay, Microsoft released Office 2008 in January. The … Read more

Microsoft today released its March 2008 security bulletin, which includes four bulletins, all deemed critical by Microsoft.

The most serious of these affects Microsoft Excel, which alone has six specific "Common Vulnerablities and Exposures" vulnerabilities noted, one of which has been exploited in the wild. The next most serious affects Microsoft Outlook. In that one, a vulnerability in how the software parses "mailto" URIs could lead to remote code execution. A third bulletin affects how various Microsoft Office apps open maliciously crafted files. The final bulletin concerns how Office interfaces with the Web and includes one … Read more

It's just way too easy to pile on the Transportation Security Administration.

Sure, they've got a blog and all, but the TSA is not high on business travelers' lists of efficient, tech-savvy organizations. That's not going to change with the revelation that the TSA detained a new MacBook Air customer because they couldn't figure out what type of unusual laptop-like device he was carrying.

Michael Nygard related the tale on his blog last week, explaining how gate agents were flummoxed when the X-ray machine couldn't find the hard drive. A younger member of the TSA … Read more

Last week Lenovo lent me one of its X61 ThinkPad laptops so that I could give Ubuntu Linux a try. Having had a bad experience with Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop a few years ago, I had sworn off desktop Linux and determined not to return.

A week into a new trial with Ubuntu Linux, however, it's clear that desktop Linux has come a long way. I found it extremely easy to use, including when I had to install a program (Skype) that wasn't included in the supported applications list. This is an operating system that my grandma could (and, in fact, did) use.

This isn't to say that my week with Ubuntu Linux was uneventful. I had a few struggles, which I'll detail below. These struggles, however, were almost entirely due to running Ubuntu on unsupported hardware, and not any fault of Ubuntu (or Linux) itself.… Read more

There was plenty of laptop news in this week before our clocks spring forward, so let's get right to it.

We discovered two ways to ruin your brand-new MacBook Air: either coat it with gold and crystals (to the tune of $40,000) or take it apart. Meanwhile, Steve Wozniak doesn't want to ruin his MacBook Air, he just wants to know what to do with it.

Intel announced a new supersmall processor and platform called Atom, designed for "netbooks" and mobile Internet platforms. The energy-efficient chips aren't expected to hit the market for several … Read more

I finally decided to put my OS where my mouth is. Or, at least, where my typing fingers are. I'm typing this from a Lenovo X61 ThinkPad...running Ubuntu 7.10. I'm going to spend the next week or so reporting on the experience, including some first-person accounts from the lady who has cut my hair for the past 21 years, Valerie, and my grandma, whom I've noted before has been locked out of the Linux experience.

Well, today we're going to see just how much substance there is to my prior contention.

Before I begin, I have to admit that I'm going to be biased by the hardware I'm using...in a positive way. Before switching to the Mac, I was a hardcore IBM ThinkPad devotee. This is my first experience with the post-IBM ThinkPad, and it's an impressive piece of hardware. Equally important for this review, it seems to work flawlessly with Ubuntu.… Read more

One of the first questions most venture capitalists ask would-be entrepreneurs is about the size of the target market. Selling into a niche market is generally frowned upon.

That is, of course, unless you're Kleiner Perkins and you want to throw $100 million at startups focused on the BOOMING iPhone applications market. With all of 10 million iPhones projected to be sold by the end of 2008, it's unclear how this is a good idea.

Perhaps the iPhone user demographics are such that an overwhelming majority want to buy applications, but I doubt it. Look at the Mac market. I'm a rabid Mac fan, but if I'm starting an applications company, I'm not going to go public on a Mac-only platform. … Read more

LAS VEGAS--I was in the Mix '08 press room Thursday chatting with Directions on Microsoft analyst Greg DeMichillie, and somehow the subject came around to the MacBook Air.

It turns out we've had the exact same reaction to Apple's waif-like laptop. Every time we see or touch the MacBook Air we decide it's the perfect laptop for us.

Then, with its seductive thinness more distant, we think about its specifications: its slower processor, small hard drive, and lack of connection ports.

"It's a left-brain, right-brain thing," DeMichillie said. It wouldn't have to be … Read more

Mac users are often left standing with the short straw when it comes to the kinds of smartphones they can sync with OS X. If you believe the hype, it almost seems as if Apple's own iPhone is the only way to go. Well, it's not. Plenty of other phones can be synced properly with iCal, Entourage, and even Apple's own Address Book, with the help of third-party software. In this tip segment, I'll focus on the BlackBerry.

RIM does offer a syncing software solution for the Mac on its Web site, called PocketMac for BlackBerry. … Read more