Apple Releases Security Update To Remove Mac Defender

The promised software update to automatically find and remove known variants of the Mac Defender malware has just been released by Apple and it’s now available in the Software Update panel or Downloads website. The KB article HT4657 explains Apple has added a “OSX.MacDefender.A” definition to the malware check within File Quarantine. On Mac OS X 10.6.7, the installation process of the security update “will search for and remove known variants of the MacDefender malware”. Users will also be notified after a MacDefender variant is removed, and Apple offers more details and information in this article as well.

Mac OS X malware list is now updated daily in the background without the need of a manual software update:

Apple maintains a list of known malicious software that is used during the safe download check to determine if a file contains malicious software. The list is stored locally, and with Security Update 2011-003 is updated daily by a background process.

Security Update 2011-003 provides additional protection by checking for the MacDefender malware and its known variants. If MacDefender malware is found, the system will quit this malware, delete any persistent files, and correct any modifications made to configuration or login files. After MacDefender is identified and removed, the message below will be displayed the next time an administrator account logs in.

Mac OS X 10.6.8 was rumored to be the software update to include a fix for Mac Defender, but it’s likely that Apple also pushed a security update for users that will keep running the older 10.6.7 Snow Leopard version, with 10.6.8 getting the Mac Defender fix built-in. Read more

iCloud To Feature Films and TV Shows Too?

After today’s press release that confirmed Apple will hold a WWDC opening keynote on Monday, June 6, to officially unveil Mac OS X, iOS 5 and iCloud, Cnet reports the launch of the new cloud service from Apple next week may see a last-minute surprise that will make movies and TV shows available on the online “locker”. No details on how users would be able to upload, stream or purchase films and TV shows they don’t own have been posted, but it sounds like iCloud would provide a solution to store files on Apple’s servers to stream them later to a variety of devices.

Feature films could be part of Apple’s iCloud launch next week.

In the past several weeks, Apple executives have stepped up their attempts to convince some of the major Hollywood film studios to issue licenses that would enable Apple to store its customers’ movies on the company’s servers, two sources close to the negotiations told CNET. Apple began discussing a cloud service with the studios over a year ago.

An Apple spokesman declined to comment.

Cnet also reports content providers and Hollywood studios will be harder to convince than record labels and publishers, mainly because of the deals that in the US tie some studios exclusively to a cable company that airs films and shows. For instance, Warner Bros. Pictures, 20th Century Fox, and NBC Universal have an exclusive distribution deal with HBO that would prevent Apple from making their films available through iCloud immediately. As Time Warner’s CEO Bewkes (Time Warner is parent company of HBO and Warner Bros) has made several positive remarks on the new Ultraviolet video standard in the past, however, industry sources claim a deal with Apple and other cloud services could get done, and the exclusive HBO deal reworked to accommodate more distribution methods.

So if Bewkes is a believer what is the holdup? Film-industry sources have say that there’s nothing to worry about, that a deal with Time Warner to relax the HBO window will get done. But can something be completed before June 6?

Whether it can or not, Apple could still roll something out with the other three studios that are without HBO blackout agreements: Disney, Paramount Pictures and Sony Pictures.

Apple has officially announced the iCloud name today, referring to it as “upcoming cloud services offering” that seems to suggest it will go beyond music to offer a broader set of tools for online sync and storage. With the launch of the Apple TV 2nd-gen last September, Apple began offering rentals from ABC and Fox at $0.99 only through streaming, as the Apple TV doesn’t allow for local movie storage.

Pulp for Mac 2.0 Released with Cloud Sync

Times, the visual news reader for Mac that came to the iPad last year, received a major update earlier today which sees the application becoming Pulp for Mac 2.0 following the re-branding on the iPad version, and the introduction of a new cloud sync service to keep settings, articles and sources in sync across the Mac client and the tablet counterpart. I’ve been testing the new Pulp for Mac for a few months, and I’m positively impressed with the quality of cloud sync and reading experience the Acrylic Apps developers have built into this latest version. First off, the new Mac app looks just like Pulp for iPad, only running on a Mac: if you followed the development of Times / Pulp with our previous coverage, you know what to expect: you can create pages to organize content sources by topic, organize feeds and articles with different layouts, as well as import websites from Google Reader if you don’t feel like entering a website’s name manually (which takes seconds, by the way). More importantly, the release of Pulp for iPad brought the possibility of reading articles with the Magic Reader, a feature that strips away all the clutter from webpages and displays truncated RSS articles in their entirety without any manual fiddling. Pulp for Mac does everything the iPad version did, it’s got the shelf to save articles for later and syncs everything via the cloud.

The cloud service is free, and can sync ”your pages, feeds, read articles, and other settings in sync on all of your Macs and iPads”. It’s that simple: every change that’s either made on the iPad or Mac is pushed to the cloud instantly, and received on the second device in seconds. I have tested this with articles, pages and the shelf interface and it worked really well. The cloud sync can be enabled or disabled in the Settings.

I don’t particularly appreciate the page-curling effect on the Mac as I believe it wastes too much real screen estate, but the rest of the interface is really minimal, elegant, and easy to scan through. Pulp can’t be compared to other news readers like Flipboard that plug into your social streams to deliver a magazine-like experience – instead, Pulp is more focused on single websites and RSS, and on letting you build a personalized newspaper that’s now in sync with the iPad, which also received a Pulp updated today to version 1.3. If you’re already a Pulp for iPad user, you should check out the free trial for Mac and see how cloud sync and the new app work for you. If you don’t own Pulp, I still recommend you start off with the iPad version, and later consider an upgrade to the desktop application which, by the way, is an excellent port of the iPad app.

Pulp for Mac is available at $9.99 in the Mac App Store.

Potion Factory’s The Hit List 1.0 Now Available

A unicorn has been born at the Potion Factory because The Hit List just went 1.0 and is ready for download via Potion Factory’s site (with a 15 day free trial) or the Mac App Store for $49.99. Back in 2009, people who purchased the MacHeist bundle got a license for the app when it was in beta and that license will still work today.

Many people doubted that it would ever see an official 1.0 release, but Andy Kim said “This, its iPhone companion app, and its sync service were the single most difficult undertaking of my life so far bar none. I hope that it won’t dissappoint and I hope that it will help you become more productive by taking the chore out of keeping track of what to do.”

More screens and iPhone news after the break.

Read more

Apple Releases iWork for iPhone

Apple just announced the release of the iWork suite for iPhone, available today as a universal update for the existing iPad apps already available on the App Store. With the same feature set of the iPad counterparts, iWork for iPhone promises to let you easily manage and create documents, print them through AirPrint, and share them with iTunes local file sharing. All apps come with a new document manager to organize documents into folders, Keynote brings deeper compatibility with the Keynote Remote sold separately and Pages sports a new feature called “Smart Zoom” for viewing and editing data.

“Now you can use Keynote, Pages and Numbers on iPhone and iPod touch to create amazing presentations, documents and spreadsheets right in the palm of your hand,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “The incredible Retina display, revolutionary Multi-Touch interface and our powerful software make it easy to create, edit, organize and share all of your documents from iPhone 4 or iPod touch.”

Keynote, Pages and Numbers import and export documents from iWork for Mac and Microsoft Office; print wirelessly using AirPrint™; and include beautiful Apple-designed themes and templates. All iWork apps now include improved document management with thumbnail images that let you find your files quickly, organize them and group them into folders using intuitive gestures. From the Tools button in the toolbar, you can easily share any presentation, document or spreadsheet without leaving the app.

The three apps – Pages, Numbers and Keynote – retain the same feature set seen on the iPad, with the addition of document manager in the 1.4 universal update and some iPhone-specific views and zoom functionalities to make sure large documents can be edited and viewed easily on the iPhone’s smaller screen. Numbers, for example, comes with the same special keyboards of the iPhone, but places the function toolbars on top. In Pages, media, charts, tables and shapes are accessible from a Camera Roll view and file picker that’s similar to what already happens on the iPad, only smaller.

Check out more screenshots and full press release below. Read more

HockeyApp Brings Enhanced Beta Distribution For iOS Apps

Launching today is HockeyApp, a new service for developers of iOS and soon Android and OS X apps. Its main function is to simplify the beta distribution process and collection of crash reports. Like other beta distribution tools and services, such as TestFlight, HockeyKit (for iOS apps) uses Apple’s over-the-air distribution process that was introduced in iOS 4.0.

HockeyApp, however, goes beyond just offering developers an easy way to distribute new beta builds. It also has a feature that lets developers automatically inform testers about a new beta version from within the app itself – even including release notes and potential to instantly update the app right then and there. Critically for developers, HockeyApp gives developers access to key data from crash reports and can optionally also give statistics on exactly what devices, iOS versions and languages were used and for how long.

HockeyApp will offer developers three plans, varying in cost but starting at $20 per month for 5 apps, 1GB storage and 100 users. Team members and testers won’t have to pay anything and there is a one-month trial for developers available. Jump the break for some screenshots of the service.

Read more

Federal Government Agencies Embrace The iPad, iPhone and Gmail

iPads, iPhones, Gmail and Android phones; typically they have been the devices and services used (and loved) by consumers around the world. Yet in recent times they are increasingly becoming a reality for employees within the confines of the bureaucratic world of government departments. An article today in the Washington Post details how ‘federal government 2.0’ has embraced consumer devices, to solve real world problems and to appease government employees across the US.

Somewhere in America, perhaps at this very moment, a bad guy is under video surveillance. He is being watched, every movement, every step — but not on a little TV. That’s so 2009. Instead, a special agent from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is keeping tabs on an iPad.

It isn’t just President Obama that is lucky enough to own an iPad, employees in various departments in all arms of the US government are bringing them in to work and the IT staff have stopped restricting them and started embracing them. Vivek Kundra, the federal government’s chief information officer says that it’s not that people don’t like government or corporate style technology – they despise it.

Kundra’s answer to the issue of people using unauthorized devices is simple: Give them what they want.

Agilex, one of the companies contracted by the government to integrate Apple products into government agencies has said that “the demand we are seeing now in the last 90 days has been just extraordinary.” – “It’s like everybody is saying, ‘This is really happening here now’”. Gmail too has been widely adopted across many agencies in the Federal government including the State Department, NASA and the Army . Yet the best part is that it doesn’t just make the lives of government employees better, but it is also saving the government money.

[Via Washington Post]

Apple Confirms: June 6 Keynote with Steve Jobs To Unveil iOS 5 and iCloud

Apple just confirmed with a press release Steve Jobs will be on stage (alongside other Apple executives) at the WWDC keynote on Monday, June 6, to officially unveil iOS 5, Mac OS X Lion and iCloud, the upcoming cloud service from Apple. The WWDC ‘11 was long rumored to be focused on new software announcements with Mac OS X Lion set to debut this summer and an iOS 5 beta ready to be seeded to developers, but the iCloud launch was far from certain as Apple was rumored to be closing deal with music publishers, but negotiations could still fall off before the WWDC. It’s not clear yet whether iCloud will be a music service or a much larger set of tools part of a MobileMe rebrand, though Apple’s press release seems to suggest just that.

Apple® CEO Steve Jobs and a team of Apple executives will kick off the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) with a keynote address on Monday, June 6 at 10:00 a.m. At the keynote, Apple will unveil its next generation software - Lion, the eighth major release of Mac OS® X; iOS 5, the next version of Apple’s advanced mobile operating system which powers the iPad®, iPhone® and iPod touch®; and iCloud®, Apple’s upcoming cloud services offering.

Previous reports indicated iOS 5 would be released publicly this Fall, with betas seeded throughout the summer to developers. The OS was reported to feature new music, location services, “completely revamped” notifications and widgets, as well as a heavy cloud-based underlying structure that, at this point, we assume will be directly connected to iCloud for the web, desktop and mobile. Other rumors in the past months pointed at iOS 5 with new features called “Photo Stream” and “Media Stream” to instantly share photos and videos with your friends through the Cloud, similarly to how a separate report claimed the new MobileMe would be a mix of Facebook and uStream for social functionalities and video sharing.