Tuesday, January 01, 2008

Mac OS X a growing target amongst hackers

I'm trying to remember how many times I've seen this same article over the past two years. It's obvious people at InfoWorld don't know much about Macs. First, the only way that hackers will exploit a Mac is if the Mac user is an idiot, and most Mac users are NOT idiots (most of the intellectual world uses a Mac). Second, IT departments that run Macs (like the U of Mich) run Radmind, which definitely ALLOWS AN IT DEPARTMENT TO UPDATE SEVERAL MACS AT ONCE.
The PC world just can't stop the Mac hatred...so they're trying to plant the myth that Macs are now at risk. Yes...they've always been at risk (like any system), but I still say that any UNIX-based system is far more secure than Windows.

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Fix some Mac slowdowns

Macworldlogo

Here are some good tips for fixing slowdowns on your Mac.

Macworld | Fix Mac slowdowns

I especially like the advice given for web browsing and using Mail:

Quit and Relaunch Web browsers tend to be resource hogs, and if you visit lots of media-rich sites, this effect can increase over time. Quit and relaunch your browser occasionally (at least once a day) to speed up browsing and reduce your browser’s impact on other programs.

Over time, though, these databases can become cluttered or even corrupted, resulting in slower overall performance, among other problems. You may be able to speed up your e-mail client significantly by rebuilding the message index every few months.

Mail’s Rebuild command (Mailbox: Rebuild) works only on individual mailboxes.

Shutting down with the newer keyboards

Losing my old Kensington keyboard means losing my power button. But even though I can't power up from the keyboard anymore, I can still shutdown or restart easily:

Apple - Support - Discussions - The ole keyboard shutdown ...:

Hit CTRL (yes, CTRL, not CMD) and EJECT key. This will bring up 'Are you sure you want to shut down.... dialogue box. Once in there, hit enter/return for shut down or hit 'S' to sleep.

And to bypass the dialog:

Apple - Support - Discussions - Power up from keyboard. ...:

Sleep = opt + cmd + eject
Restart = ctrl + cmd + eject
Shut Down = ctrl + opt + cmd + eject