Mac notebook and other portable computing is covered in The 'Book Review. iPad, iPod, iPhone, and
Apple TV news is covered in iOS News
Review. All prices are in US dollars unless otherwise noted.
Mountain Lion News & Opinion
News & Opinion
Software
Mountain Lion News & Opinion
Mountain Lion Now Available from the Mac App
Store
PR: Cupertino, California - July 25, 2012 - Apple today
announced that OS X Mountain
Lion, the ninth major release of the world's most advanced desktop
operating system, is available as a download from the Mac App Store.
With more than 200 innovative new features, Mountain Lion
includes iCloud integration, the all new Messages app, Notification
Center, systemwide Sharing, Facebook integration*, Dictation, AirPlay
Mirroring and Game Center. Mountain Lion is available as an upgrade
from Lion or Snow Leopard for $19.99.
"People are going to love the new features in Mountain Lion and how
easy it is to download and install from the Mac App Store," said Philip
Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. "With
iCloud integration, Mountain Lion is even easier to set up, and your
important information stays up to date across all your devices so you
can keep editing documents, taking notes, creating reminders, and
continue conversations whether you started on a Mac, iPhone or
iPad."
With more than 200 innovative new features, Mountain Lion
includes:
- iCloud integration, for easy set up of your Mail, Contacts,
Calendar, Messages, Reminders and Notes, and keeping everything,
including iWork documents, up to date across all your devices;
- the all new Messages app, which replaces iChat and brings
iMessage(TM) to the Mac, so you can send messages to anyone with an
iPhone, iPad, iPod touch or another Mac;
- Notification Center, which streamlines the presentation of
notifications and provides easy access to alerts from Mail, Calendar,
Messages, Reminders, system updates and third party apps;
- systemwide Sharing, to make it easy to share links, photos, videos
and other files quickly without having to switch to another app, and
you just need to sign in once to use third-party services like
Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Vimeo;
- Facebook integration, so you can post photos, links and comments
with locations right from your apps, automatically add your Facebook
friends to your Contacts, and even update your Facebook status from
within Notification Center;
- Dictation, which allows you to dictate text anywhere you can type,
whether you're using an app from Apple or a third party developer;
- AirPlay Mirroring, an easy way to wirelessly send an up-to-1080p
secure stream of what's on your Mac to an HDTV using Apple TV, or send
audio to a receiver or speakers that use AirPlay; and
- Game Center, which brings the popular social gaming network from
iOS to the Mac so you can enjoy live, multiplayer games with friends
whether they're on a Mac, iPhone, iPad or iPod touch.
Additional features in Mountain Lion include the revolutionary new
Gatekeeper, which makes downloading software from the Internet safer;
Power Nap, which automatically updates your apps and system while your
Mac is asleep; and a faster Safari browser. New features for China
include significantly improved text input, a new Chinese Dictionary,
easy setup with popular email providers, Baidu search in Safari, and
built-in sharing to Sina Weibo and popular video websites Youku and
Tudou.
Pricing & Availability
OS X Mountain Lion is available from the Mac App Store for $19.99.
Mountain Lion requires Lion or Snow Leopard (OS X v10.6.8 or later),
2 GB of memory and 8 GB of available space. For a complete
list of system requirements and compatible systems, please visit:
apple.com/osx/specs. OS X Server requires Mountain Lion and is
available from the Mac App Store for $19.99. The OS X Mountain Lion
Up-to-Date upgrade is available at no additional charge from the Mac
App Store to all customers who purchased a qualifying new Mac system
from Apple or an Apple Authorized Reseller on or after June 11,
2012.
Link: OS X 10.8 Mountain
Lion @ Mac App Store
John Siracusa Reviews Mountain Lion
Ars Technica's John Siracusa has been publishing in-depth reviews of
each version of Mac OS X since the
Public Beta, and his detailed analysis of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion
is perhaps the lengthiest and most illuminating review you'll find.
Especially pay attention to his critique of the way iCloud stores
documents tied to the applications that created or edited them, making
it impossible to open them in another application - something you might
want to do with photos, text, or word processing documents, for
instance.
Link: OS X 10.8 Mountain
Lion: The Ars Technica Review
The Register Reviews OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion
The Register's reviewer Oscar Milde (nom de plume,
perchance?) observes that OS X 10.8 is not all about bug fixes, noting
that he dictated his review because one of Mountain Lion's new features
is the facility to enter text by voice, which he says is pretty
accurate, with strong word recognition - and you can talk for ages or
even pause at length as you speak to it without a hitch, noting that
it's not perfect (for instance, it doesn't take kindly to expletives),
but it's certainly good enough to have
speech recognition companies worried.
Milde observes that there are, apparently, 200 new features in
Mountain Lion, many of which are things many users will never knowingly
come across, but that a Mountain Lion marquee feature is Power Nap,
which persuades certain Mac laptop models to do some work when
sleeping. Power Nap only works on MacBook Air models from late 2010 and
the MacBook Pro with Retina Display; ergo, it won't work on the
recently released non-Retina Display MacBook Pro models, the reason
being that Power Nap relies on flash memory to work and doesn't
function with hard disk drives.
The reviewer notes that its the feel of an OS that matters for
continued use, and says Mountain Lion comes across as slick and
confident, pronouncing it powerful, attractive and even cool.
Link: Apple Mac OS X
10.8 Mountain Lion
How to Create an OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion Install
Drive
MacFixIt's Topher Kessler notes that OS X 10.8 is only available as
an online download, but you can create your own standalone install
drive for it if needed.
Kessler suggests that, as with OS X Lion, Apple may release USB
drives containing a bootable Mountain Lion installer, but this will
cost you more than the App Store download. Additionally, while Apple's
OS should be available using Apple's various Internet recovery options,
this can often take a long time to download, especially if you do not
have the fastest broadband connections available to you.
The process requires either burning a dual-layer DVD or partitioning
a USB drive (either a flash drive or a hard drive) with over 6 GB
capacity.
Link: How to Create an
OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion Install Drive
How to Create a Bootable Mountain Lion Install
Disk
Ars Technica's Chris Foresman says that once you've downloaded the
4.34 GB OS X 10.8 installer, you may want to install Mountain Lion on
more than one of your personal machines (which Apple's personal use
license allows). Do you really need to wait 45 minutes or more for each
one? Absolutely not! Just make your own bootable install disk using
Ars' handy tutorial, which contains instructions for those of us who
just want to get it done using the donationware Lion Diskmaker app as
well as those that don't mind a little extra clicking to do it
yourself.
Note well that the OS X installer will delete the necessary file
needed to make your own install disk once it runs, so you will need to
either make a copy of the installer outside of the Applications folder
or make your install disk before upgrading.
You'll also need an 8 GB or larger USB flash drive, other external
disk, or 4.7 GB DVD-R.
Link: How to Create a
Bootable, Backup Mountain Lion Install Disk
How One User Installed Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion
on His 2006 Mac Pro
The Jabbawok blog says:
"There are two things that prevent 10.8 from installing on a
Mac Pro 1.1.
"The first is the lack of EFI64. Mountain Lion as has no support for
32-bit kernel and extensions so it will not boot. This is true of many
early Intel Macs.
"The other thing is that checks are made by the installer; against a
supported machines list. If your Mac isn't on the list, it refuses to
install.
"It's important to note that an upgraded graphics card is
virtually essential, since the stock 7300 GT isn't supported and will
cause Kernel Panic."
"The first issue can be dealt with by using the Chameleon bootloader
which will emulate EFI64 and therefore load 10.8. Chameleon has to be
booted by your Mac as if it were Windows. Apple calls this BIOS
emulation Legacy Boot. Legacy boot will only boot from internal
connectors like the SATA, so no USB or FireWire drives."
Link: How I
Installed Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion on My 2006 MacPro 1,1
Apple Is Killing the Mac We Know in the Name of
Progress
Mac 360's Ron McElfresh notes that for a few decades Apple's
fortunes rested upon the loyalty of tens of millions of Mac users who
disdained the Windows way of computing life, but today, the Mac
represents the short leg of Apple's three-legged profit stool, taking a
back seat to both iPhone and iPad, and noting that despite Apple's
currently producing the highest quality Macs ever made with the best
value ever, the march of change will not leave our beloved computing
platform unscathed.
"The Mac as we know it is changing, even dying," McElfresh observes,
"now in the beginning stages of transmogrifying to a device that may
have more in common with iPhone and iPad and iOS than the Mac we knew
and loved up until a few years ago," with Apple making the Mac more
like iOS, its OS for the masses
"How long," says McElfresh, "before AppleScript, the little
scripting tool that could, is completely removed from OS X because
it is integrated with the OS to perform functions and tasks not fit for
the great unwashed masses of new Mac users . . . In the name
of progress, Apple is killing the Mac as we know it. Long live the
Mac."
Link: In the Name of
Progress: How Apple Is Killing the Mac (as We Know It)
From O'Reilly: OS X Mountain Lion: The Missing
Manual and OS X Mountain Lion Pocket Guide
OS X Mountain Lion: The Missing Manual
PR: What do you get when you cross a Mac with an iPad? OS X
10.8 Mountain Lion. Its 200 new features include iPaddish goodies like
dictation, Notification Center, and Reminders - but not a single
page of instructions. 
Fortunately, David Pogue is back with the
expertise and humor that have made OS X The Missing Manual
the #1 best-selling Mac book for over 10 years straight.
In Pogue's OS X Mountain Lion: The Missing Manual, you'll
learn about:
- Big-ticket changes:
- Twitter and Facebook integration
- AirPlay TV mirroring
- Power Nap
- Game Center
- Documents in the Cloud
- iMessages
- Gatekeeper
- Mountain Lion Watch: This book demystifies the hundreds of smaller
enhancements, too, in all 50 programs that come with the Mac: Safari,
Mail, Messages, Preview, etc.
- Shortcuts. This must be the tippiest, trickiest Mac book ever
written. Undocumented surprises await on every page.
- Power users. Security, accounts, networking, build-your-own
Services, file sharing with Windows - this one witty, expert guide
makes it all crystal clear.
Link: OS X Mountain
Lion: The Missing Manual ($18.45 at Amazon.com)
OS X Mountain Lion Pocket Guide - The Ultimate Quick Guide
to OS X
Get the concise information you need to start using OS X Mountain
Lion, the latest version of the Mac operating system. This handy guide
by Chris Seibold goes right to the heart of the OS, with details
on system preferences, built-in applications, utilities, and other
features.
Once you're familiar with the fundamentals, use this book
as a resource for problem-solving on the fly. You get configuration
tips, lots of step-by-step instructions, guides for troubleshooting,
and other advice - all in an easy-to-read format.
- Learn what's new, including improved iCloud integration and other
iPad-inspired features
- Discover how working with multiple devices is easier and more
streamlined with Mountain Lion
- Get a guide to the Finder, Dock, user accounts, and other
essentials
- Use Mountain Lion's system preferences to customize your Mac
- Take advantage of OS X applications, such as FaceTime and Time
Machine
- Manage passwords and secure your data
- Work more efficiently with a complete list of keyboard
shortcuts
Link: OS X Mountain
Lion Pocket Guide ($14.99 at Amazon.com)
News & Opinion
Apple Quietly Pulls OS X 10.7 Lion as Mountain Lion
Launches
Cnet's Josh
Lowensohn says if you were in the market for Apple's previous OS X
release, you're out of luck, since Apple has erased all signs of it
from its two online stores.
Or not. Lowensohn notes further that Apple has confirmed the removal
of the software, but says that customers can still purchase a copy from
its online store's telesales agents.
So why would you want to buy OS
X 10.7 Lion anyway with Mountain Lion available? Likely only if you
have one of the Mac models sold between 2006 and 2008 that are
compatible with Lion but won't run Mountain Lion. These include
Late 2006 iMacs,
the original 2008 MacBook
Air, Late 2006 through Early 2008 MacBooks, Late 2006 15" and
17" MacBook
Pros, the 2007 Mac mini,
2006 Mac Pros, and 2006 through
2008 Xserve models.
For more on this topic from Macworld's Lex Friedman, including how
to re-download Lion from the Mac App Store if you've already bought it,
see http://bit.ly/O9kulJ
Publisher's note: I guess Apple has decided for me (and perhaps
millions of other Mac users who hadn't yet upgraded from OS X 10.5 Leopard or 10.6 Snow Leopard to 10.7 Lion but
have Macs that can't run Mountain Lion) that we don't ever want to go
there. Granted, thus far I have seen no reason to go there, but that
doesn't mean that someday I may not want to install it on my 2007 Mac
mini. I'm sure many others are in the same boat. dk
Link: Apple Quietly
Pulls Lion Amid Mountain Lion Launch
Safari 6 Snubs Lion, Drops Windows and Snow
Leopard Versions
The Register's Neil McAllister notes that Apple has shipped Safari 6
to coincide with the release of Mountain Lion, but to take full
advantage of the newest Safari, you'll need to be running Apple's
latest OS, because although Lion users can download Safari 6, not all
of the browser's features will work on the older OS, and users of
earlier versions of Mac OS X can't get the update at all.
McAllister also observes that Apple's Safari website no longer
includes a download link for Windows, which would seem to suggest that
Safari for Windows has been scrapped.
Publisher's note: It would be fair to say that Safari for Windows
never got much traction. Here at Low End Mac, where you would expect
Windows users (31% of our traffic) to be open to Apple's browser, about
1.5% use it, placing it well behind Android Browser, Firefox on Linux,
Opera (all platforms), Camino on Mac, Chrome on Linux, and Mozilla
Compatible Agent on iOS. dk
Link: Apple's New
Safari Snubs Older Macs, Drops Windows Version
Mac OS X/Crisis Trojan Discovered by Intego Virus
Team
PR: Malware: OS X/Crisis
Risk: Low; this malware has not yet been found in the wild. It does
install itself without user permission, and hides itself well if
installed with root permission.
Description: Intego has discovered a new Trojan horse, Crisis, which
is a Trojan dropper. This Trojan horse has not been found in the wild,
but it exhibits some anti-analysis and stealthing techniques that are
uncommon among OS X malware.
This threat works only in OS X versions 10.6 and 10.7 - Snow Leopard
and Lion. It installs without need of any user interaction; no password
is required for it to run. The Trojan preserves itself against reboots,
so it will continue to run until it's removed. Depending on whether or
not the dropper runs on a user account with root permissions, it will
install different components. It remains to be seen if or how this
threat is installed on a user's system; it may be that an installer
component will try to establish root permissions.
If the dropper runs on a system with root access, it will drop a
rootkit to hide itself. In either case, it creates a number of files
and folders to complete its task; 17 files when it's run with root
access, 14 files when it's run without. Many of these are randomly
named, but there are some that are consistent.
With or without root access, this file is installed:
-
/Library/ScriptingAdditions/appleHID/Contents/Resources/appleOsax.r
Only with root access, these files are installed:
-
/System/Library/Frameworks/Foundation.framework/XPCServices/com.apple.mdworker_server.xpc/Contents/MacOS/com.apple.mdworker_server
-
/System/Library/Frameworks/Foundation.framework/XPCServices/com.apple.mdworker_server.xpc/Contents/Resources/
The backdoor component calls home to the IP address 176.58.100.37
every 5 minutes, awaiting instructions. The file is created in a way
that is intended to make reverse engineering tools more difficult when
analyzing the file. This sort of anti-analysis technique is common in
Windows malware, but is relatively uncommon for OS X malware.
Means of Protection
VirusBarrier X6 protects users from this malware with malware
definitions dated July 24, 2012 or later. VirusBarrier X6's real-time
scanner will detect the file when it is downloaded, and its
Anti-Spyware protection will block any connections to remote servers if
a user has installed the Trojan horse. VirusBarrier Express and
VirusBarrier Plus, available exclusively from the Mac App Store, detect
this malware with malware definitions dated July 24, 2012 or later, but
these programs do not have a real-time scanner due to limitations
imposed by the Mac App Store; users should scan their Macs after they
have updated to the latest malware definitions, or manually scan any
installer packages they have downloaded if they seem suspicious.
Intego's Lysa Myers says:
"Intego found samples of this malware on the VirusTotal website, a
site used by security companies to share malware samples. This threat
has not yet been found in the wild, and so far there is no indication
that this Trojan has infected users so right now the threat is
considered to be a low risk. Nonetheless, Intego VirusBarrier X6
detects and removes this malware using today's definitions. It detects
the dropper component as OS X/Crisis, and the backdoor component as
Backdoor:OS X/Crisis. It will also block connections with the IP
address the backdoor component seeks to connect with.
"Intego VirusBarrier X6 users need to update as soon as possible to
get protection from this threat."
Link: New Apple Mac
Trojan Called OSX/Crisis Discovered
Link: Intego VirusBarrier
X6
New Mac Malware Discovered on Mountain Lion
Eve
The Sophos Naked Security blog's Paul Ducklin reports that Sophos
Labs recently received a intriguing Mac malware sample, variously known
as Crisis and Morcut.
"We're still digging into the details of the malware itself," he
says, "but the delivery mechanism is interesting....
"The malware package arrived in a file named
AdobeFlashPlayer.jar."
Ducklin suggests that if you don't yet have anti-malware on your
Mac, why not try the free
Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac Home Edition? (No registration, no
password, no expiry. They don't even ask for an email address.) And if
you're planning on picking up a brand new Mac with Mountain Lion drops,
why not start off secure?
Sophos Anti-Virus on all platforms detects and blocks the various
components of this malware as follows:
- Troj/JVDrop-A: the outermost JAR file.
- Troj/JVDrop-A: the cross-platform .class file inside the JAR.
- Mal/Swizzor-D: the Windows malware inside the JAR.
- OS X/Morcut-A: the OS X malware inside the JAR.
Link: Mac Malware Crisis
on Mountain Lion Eve?
Google's Sparrow Acquisition Highlights the
Dangers of Depending on Closed Source Software
OSnews' Thom
Holwerda comments that Sparrow is/was an email client for Mac OS X and
iOS (and Windows) that brought a decent Gmail experience to these
platforms - as opposed to Apple's own not-so-good Gmail support and
Google's Gmail iOS application, the latter essentially just a
webpage.
However, Google has now acquired Sparrow (see
below), and basically all hell has broken loose, Holwerda reports,
noting that with Google's acquisition of Sparrow, all major development
on the email clients will end - with only security and bugfixes from
now on. Many Sparrow fans evidently feel angry and betrayed, because a
product they paid for will no longer see new major revisions.
However, Holwerda observes that Sparrow customers got an email
client that works and will still work tomorrow - and still be getting
updates - so buyers got the product they paid for, and it will perform
the same functions tomorrow as it does today.
He argues that the only true way to ensure your preferred software
will never die is to use open source software, and that if you use
closed source software - for-pay or free - you will always be at the
whim of the developer, and if they decide to abandon the project, for
whatever reason, you won't be getting new versions. Quite often, you
won't even get security and bug fixes, noting that had Sparrow been
open source, there'd be several other people starting forks right away,
and that an application's survival does not depend on free vs. for-pay
- but rather on closed vs. open.
Publisher's note: Holwerda is exactly right. For instance, I am
writing this in Claris Home Page
3.0 on a 2002 Power
Mac running OS X 10.4 Tiger because Apple/Claris/FileMaker decided
to stop development of the friendliest, easiest to use WYSIWYG HTML
editor I've ever used, and I need to use Classic Mode to run it.
Although expensive commercial alternatives exist, I have not found a
single free or open source alternative that can really replace it,
although both KompoZer 0.7 (and not
the newer 0.8 release) and BlueGriffin are good steps in that
direction. Home Page itself is quite dated, forcing me to massage files
using TextSoap and TextWrangler to update HTML 3.2 source code, but
it's a process that works for me.
Likewise, I am still using AppleWorks on all of my
Macs. AppleWorks did make it to OS X and runs very nicely under OS X
10.6 Snow Leopard, but it will not run on 10.7 Lion - just one more
reason I never made that switch. AppleWorks just works for me, and the
upgrade path is Apple's separate Pages and Numbers applications, which
are every bit as proprietary and closed source as Home Page and
AppleWorks. The best thing I've found in an open source alternative to
AppleWorks for word processing is Bean, and I really haven't
looked at alternatives to the spreadsheet module. I will stick with
AppleWorks as long as possible, as I have hundreds of files created by
it. dk
Link: Google's Sparrow
Acquisition Highlights the Dangers of Dependency on Closed Source
Software
Nearly Half of Consumers Fail to Upgrade Software
Regularly, One Quarter Don't Know Why They Should Update Software
A Skype blog says Skype, together with other top brands in consumer
technology like Norton and TomTom, kicked off International
Technology Upgrade Week (July 23-29, 2012), spreading the word
about why it's important to keep your software in top condition -
access to cool new features and ensuring you have the latest security
updates being chief reasons.
Click the image for a much larger, more legible version of this
infographic.
Throughout International Technology Upgrade Week, Skype will provide
helpful content about the benefits of upgrading, as well as tips and
tricks to make sure that your software is operating at peak
performance.
As part of International Technology Upgrade Week, Skype surveyed
consumers in the UK, US, and Germany to learn more about their
behaviors and attitudes related to regular software updates and created
an infographic that summarizes their findings, hoping it will
encourages users to update their software to get access to new features
and peak performance from the applications and devices they're
using.
Publisher's note: Apple has done a good job by including Software
Update as part of the Mac operating system since Mac OS 9, and
with OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion has passed that responsibility along to
the Mac App Store, just as the iOS App Store handles it on iDevices. In
other cases, software makes will notify of a new version each time you
launch an outdated version of their app (unless you specifically
disable that feature). In the best cases, the software will also
download and install the update, then quit itself and launch the new
version for you. Of course, the worst thing is when software prompts
you to update to a version that isn't compatible with your current
setup.dk
Link: Survey Finds
Nearly Half of Consumers Fail to Upgrade Software Regularly and One
Quarter of Consumers Don't Know Why to Update Software
Software
Google Acquires Sparrow Email Client
PR: The
developers of the Sparrow email client software announced Friday:
"We're excited to announce that Sparrow has been acquired by
Google!
"We care a lot about how people communicate, and we did our best to
provide you with the most intuitive and pleasurable mailing
experience.
"Now we're joining the Gmail team to accomplish a bigger vision
one that we think we can better achieve with Google.
"We'd like to extend a special thanks to all of our users who have
supported us, advised us, given us priceless feedback and allowed us to
build a better mail application. While we'll be working on new things
at Google, we will continue to make Sparrow available and provide
support for our users.
"We had an amazing ride and can't thank you enough.
"Full speed ahead!"
Link: Sparrow +
Google
Barnes & Noble Releases Nook for Web
PR: Sample books for free; explore everything from your
favorite subjects to new releases and best-sellers. Read right from the
Web Open any book in your Nook Library and pick up reading right where
you left off.
Barnes & Noble have introduced Nook for Web, an innovative and
free new browser experience that offers readers the ability to explore
the latest digital titles and best-selling books right from their
computer with no sign-in, software download or Nook account required to
begin reading. With fast and easy access from a variety of major PC or
Mac Web browsers (see below), Nook for Web seamlessly combines Nook's
award-winning digital reading experience with access to Barnes &
Noble's expansive Nook Store. Now, anyone who loves to read can browse,
sample and become instantly immersed in a Nook-like reading environment
from any browser, with support coming this fall for Internet-enabled
tablets, smartphones and other mobile devices.
Beginning immediately, Barnes & Noble is offering six
best-selling Nook Books in their entirety at no charge for readers to
try Nook's digital reading experience online. With popular summer
titles the entire family will enjoy, customers can visit
http://www.nook.com/NookforWeb to browse the list of complimentary
titles available, including Map of Bones by James Rollins, Sex and the
City by Candace Bushnell, The Vow by Kim Carpenter, The Boxcar Children
Summer Special by Gertrude Chandler Warner, Brave by Tennant Redbank
and Perfect Island Getaways by Patricia Schultz, instantly read the
sample, and then download the entire book for free on any browser
through July 26.
Browser compatibility:
- Nook for Web lets you read using Internet Explorer, Chrome,
Firefox, and Safari.
Link: Nook for
Web
Microsoft AutoUpdate for Mac Office 2008 and 2011
Users
PR: Redmond says this update to Microsoft AutoUpdate for Mac
is part of Microsoft's continued effort to provide the latest product
updates to customers. Note that in order to receive future product
updates, you must install this update.
The update applies to: Office 2011, Office 2011 Home and Business
Edition, Word 2011, Excel 2011, PowerPoint 2011, Outlook 2011,
Communicator 2011, Office for Mac Standard 2011 Edition, Microsoft
Office for Mac Home & Student 2011, Microsoft Office for Mac
Academic 2011, Office 2008, Office 2008 Home and Student Edition,
Office 2008 Special Media Edition, Word 2008, Excel 2008, PowerPoint
2008, Entourage 2008, Microsoft Expression Media for Mac, Remote
Desktop Connection for Mac 2, and Open XML File Format Converter for
Mac.
Supported Operating Systems
- Operating System Versions for Office 2008 or Open XML File Format
Converter for Mac: Mac OS X version 10.4.9 (Tiger) or a later version
of Mac OS
- Operating System Versions for Office 2011: Mac OS X version 10.5.8
or later
Link: Microsoft
AutoUpdate for Mac 2.3.5 Update
Free Sophos Antivirus for OS X Supports Mountain
Lion
PR: Sophos' free Mac antivirus supports OS X 10.8 starting
immediately.
Intego X6 Products Updated for Optimum Mountain Lion
Compatibility
Intego's Lysa Myers says that Apple is improving OS X security with
a new feature known as GateKeeper. In conjunction with Wednesday's
release of Mountain Lion OS X 10.8, Intego has released updated
versions of all their products to ensure compatibility with the new
operating system and the Gatekeeper function.
Intego strongly recommends that you update your Intego software
before updating to Mountain Lion. To do this, use NetUpdate, which you
can launch either from the Intego menu in your menubar or from the
System Preferences application. There you'll find the necessary updates
for all of your Intego software.
The following are the products that have been updated:
- Internet Security Barrier Suite
- VirusBarrier
- ContentBarrier
- Personal Backup
- Personal Antispam
- FileGuard
- Washing Machine
Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac Home Edition supports Mac OS X 10.4 and
later on PowerPC and Intel Macs.
Link: Sophos Anti-Virus
for Mac Home Edition
Desktop Mac
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