Security issues reign supreme this week, with Glenn Fleishman outlining security flaws in AppleShare and Adam looking at how Panther’s FileVault feature works – and how it should work. Glenn also passes on news of an offline Wi-Fi hotspot locator, and Jeff Carlson reveals more iChat AV tips. In the news, Eminem sues Apple, we give away copies of Interarchy in DealBITS, and Salling Clicker 2.1 and Now Up-to-Date & Contact 4.5.2 are released.
Eminem Rips, Mixes, and Burns Apple -- Rap superstar Eminem has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Detroit against Apple Computer, also naming Viacom subsidiary MTV and advertising agency TBWA/Chiat/Day as plaintiffs
Salling Clicker 2.1 Adds Symbian Support -- Salling Software has released Salling Clicker 2.1, adding support for Bluetooth-enabled smart phones that run the Symbian operating system (see "Salling Clicker in Action" in TidBITS-694)
Rendezvous with Now Up-to-Date & Contact 4.5.2 -- Many fans of Now Software's Now Up-to-Date & Contact stick with it because of its capability to host calendars and contact information on shared network servers
FTP, or File Transfer Protocol, is an easy-to-understand Internet service, but providing a good interface and helpful add-ons has meant that a good FTP program is disproportionately more powerful than you'd expect
Computer safety firm SecurityFocus has discovered a highly specific but important flaw in Apple's use of encrypted connections for AppleShare, as well as flaws in the way passwords are managed and encryption keys are confirmed
Need to find a place to connect to the Internet wirelessly, but you're not currently online? Now you don't need to let this Catch-22 leave your laptop digitally dry-docked: JiWire, a site devoted to Wi-Fi hotspot listings and how-to articles, has just released a free offline locator of public hotspot locations
A couple of weeks ago, I shared some tips from my new book, iChat AV 2 for Mac OS X: Visual QuickStart Guide. You'd think that a small, simple application such as iChat would be pretty flat, but in fact Apple's engineers have tucked in a number of details that are hard to find, or just plain clever
We've been uniformly negative about FileVault, the new security feature that Apple added to Mac OS X 10.3 Panther, but that doesn't mean we dislike the idea of protecting sensitive data
FTP in the Finder -- Apple's built-in FTP client still doesn't seem to be fully implemented, leading to a discussion of other FTP software. (27 messages)
Synchronization Software? What's the best way to synchronize your data among multiple Macs? (9 messages)
Thoth Software Closes Down -- The maker of a popular Usenet newsreader is shuttered, but the act sparks a discussion of other newsreader software