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TidBITS#869/05-Mar-07

Does your mouse not behave as you’d expect? It’s probably not the mouse itself, but Mac OS X’s acceleration curve, which Apple changed from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X – Parrish Knight explains what’s going on and how to retrain your mouse to track your movements more appropriately. Also this week, Adam shares some surprising findings about Internet surveys and looks at Picnik, a Web site that provides most of iPhoto’s image-editing features; Glen McAllister finds local music performances using iConcertCal; and Glenn Fleishman celebrates the expunging of the court case against security researcher Randal Schwartz. We also note the release of Parallels Desktop Build 3186 (essentially, version 2.0), a security update for QuickTime, the availability of Macworld Expo session videos and audio files, and a new estimate of the number of Mac OS X users (22 million!).

Adam Engst No comments

ExtraBITS Transitions to TidBITS Publishing System

Those of you who read our breaking news items in ExtraBITS may have noticed some changes this week. As part of the major overhaul to our back-end, something we're calling the TidBITS Publishing System, we can now make articles in our database available on our home page (and in searches) before they appear in a TidBITS issue

Glenn Fleishman No comments

QuickTime 7.1.5 Patches Panther, Tiger, XP, Vista Exploits

Apple has released an update to QuickTime for Mac OS X 10.3.9 and later, Windows XP, and Windows Vista. QuickTime 7.1.5 fixes numerous bugs, along with a flaw that could enable a maliciously crafted file to crash a program employing QuickTime or to allow arbitrary code execution - a phrase that often means there's a potential for an attacker to gain control of a computer or, at least, install malware. Affected file types are broad: 3GP videos, MIDI files, native QuickTime movies, images in the venerable PICT file format, and QTIF files

Adam Engst No comments

New Interviews with Adam and Joe

Tune in to the latest podcast interviews with TidBITS editors! At Macworld Expo, Adam talked about the show announcements with host Harris Fogel of Mac Edition Radio, and more recently, Joe spoke with Gene Steinberg of the Tech Night Owl Live (he's in the final third of the 01-Mar-07 show).

Jeff Carlson No comments

Macworld Expo Sessions Available for Download

At Macworld Expo in January, I delivered a session called "Graduate from iMovie to Final Cut Pro" as part of the Users Conference track. I thought it went pretty well, especially since public speaking doesn't come naturally to me (but I'm working on it). As I was leaving, one man asked if the presentation would be made available online (and I'm sorry I didn't get your name, so I hope you're reading this)

Glenn Fleishman No comments

Security Hacker Returned to Life

Randal Schwartz was too curious for his own good. As a contractor at Intel in Oregon in the early 1990s, he poked and prodded a bit too much, especially in the area of demonstrating how poorly chosen - how weak - many account passwords were in the groups he worked for

Adam Engst No comments

Lessons on Internet Surveys

We've been watching the results of our reader survey roll in, with over 2,800 responses so far. You can still vote, but I can likely predict how you'll vote, based on current responses

Adam Engst No comments

Picnik Duplicates iPhoto on the Web

For an impressive example of what can be done in a Web application these days, check out Picnik, an online photo site that provides - almost exactly - the same set of editing features as Apple's iPhoto, and some of iPhoto's sharing capabilities