From Apple’s Web Site:

WebKit

CVE-ID: CVE-2009-2797

Available for: iPhone OS 1.0 through 3.0.1, iPhone OS for iPod touch 1.1 through 3.0

Impact: User names and passwords in URLs may be disclosed to linked sites

Description: Safari includes the user name and password from the original URL in the referer header. This may lead to the disclosure of sensitive information. This update addresses the issue by not including user names and passwords in referer headers. Credit to James A. T. Rice of Jump Networks Ltd for reporting this issue.

Not sure when James reported it though. So I don’t know if I found it before him or not. Anyways, here is my suggestion, if you use an iPhone and have EVER logged in to a web site with a username and password, you need to change that password immediately and then apply the patch from Apple to your iPhone. I know there are some people who view my site that use an iPhone and are clicking on links from other websites, therefore sending your username and password to me as well.

So what are my thoughts:
1. I think Apple shipped some faulty DVD’s. Everytime I put it in my MacBook Pro, it would try to read it and then it would eject it. I put it in the MacPro desktop and it came right up. So back to the MBP and it continued to just eject it. I then attached an LG External USB DVD drive, and it seemed to have some problems reading it on there. I then did the Apple Software update (there were a couple of Security alerts available) thinking that may help. Didn’t appear to. Then all of the sudden it loaded the installer. After an hour later and 2 reboots Snow Leopard was installed via the USB drive. They still need to work on their installer, it set at the “Time Remaining : Less than a minute” for over 10 minutes.

2. The initial startup seemed to take some time, but have not tried rebooting it yet.

3. The Finder seems extremely faster.

4. It free’d up almost 10 gig of disk space for me. I started the install with only 17gb free. After the install I now have 27.11 gb free.

So far I havn’t tried any of the other apps I use, but Adium X 1.4b9 seems to run well. I also like the new Expose, seems to organize stuff a little better. Will have to see what else has changed.

So here is my take on the stuff that is missing:

1. OS Upgrades for a multiple PC house vs a multiple MAC House. Most households probably have more than one PC/Mac in the house now days. So when a new OS comes out, how much does it take to “upgrade” the house.. Looking at the current price of Microsoft Vista Home Premimum, it is $115.99 for the Upgrade edition. MacOSX Leopard is currently $129.00. So for one computer, yes MacOS is a little more expensive, but lets look at if you have 4 computers in the house. To upgrade your 4 PC’s to Vista, you are going to pay $463.96. If you have 4 Mac’s, to upgrade them to MacOS X Leopard, $199.00.. Yes that is correct it costs you $264.96 more to upgrade 4 PC’s than it does to upgrade 4 Mac’s. This is because Apple offers a “family pack” pricing, which allows you to install the software on up to 5 Mac’s in the same household. Microsoft does not do this.

2. Office Software. If all you need is basic Word processing and spread sheet’s, iWork from Apple does everything you would need. Once again a single upgrade would cost $79, and they offer a family pack too, for $99 you can upgrade 5 Mac’s. Now look at Microsoft Office Home and Student it is $94.45 per computer. So for 4 PC’s, we are up to $377.80 now vs the $99 for iWork on the Mac. Difference of $278.80.

3. Virus protection. For the most part (read as 99%) Mac’s are free of Virus’. So there is no “software” needed on them. But on PC’s you better not even connect it to the Interwebs with out having a virus protection software on the machine. So If we look at the sort of “defacto” Norton Antivirus, it costs $39.99 a YEAR per PC. So for our 4 PC’s it would be $159.96 a YEAR, whereas our Mac is $0.

If we add all this up as if Vista and Office just came out, our cost for upgrading a house of 4 PC’s would be $1,001.72.. Versus if we were to upgrade a house of 4 Mac’s to the newest MacOSX and iWork, it would cost $298.00. For a difference of $703.72. So a having a house of Mac’s is about 70% cheaper to upgrade than a house of PC’s is.

One section of the article is just plain wrong:

Finally, there is a category of costs that could be called opportunity costs, options that are simply not
available in the Apple world.  These options include cutting edge technologies that buyers really want
including HDMI (for connecting a PC to a TV for viewing high-definition content), the aforementioned
Blu-Ray, eSATA (for fast access to external storage), media card readers (for interoperation with other
digital devices like cameras), built-in 3G wireless (to stay connected anywhere cell service is live),
fingerprint readers (to easily access secure data), and TV Tuners (to watch and record broadcast
content).  These technologies, revolutionary now, will one day be standard on all systems.  Too bad if
a Mac buyer has any interest in them.

Has the person never heard of USB media card readers? They are UNIVERSAL… I have a couple of them, work great with the Mac. I also have an Elgato USB TV Tuner that does HDTV, clear QAM and allows my Mac to record shows. There is no reason  you couldn’t put a Blu-Ray reader in a Mac Pro, or even get a USB enclosure for it. Just because some PC’s come with all this stuff built in, unless you are going to user it, does it really matter if it is there. Heck I have a new printer that has one of the Media Card readers in it, so when it is connected via USB to the Mac it looks like any other removable media device.

The final part of the article that sort of is ridiculous, is the author assumes that to do wireless on a Mac you need an Airport Extreme. Sorry to burst your bubble, but there is a reason it is called 802.11[abng] it is a standard that EVERYONE uses. You don’t need to have a specific brand unless you really want to be brand loyal or don’t know any better. I have a $40 Linksys wireless router that works 100% fine with the Mac’s I use. He also talks about the $100 cost for the family pack of the iLife software. I have 3 versions of this, and it is worth the money. Microsoft has NO comparable software offering for that price with the functionality that iLife provides. Even if they did, they would not be selling 5 licenses for $100. It would probably be $50 to $80 per license.

The other issue that he brings up is that most software that works on Windows XP will work on Vista, but people who switch from PC to Mac will have to buy all new software. This is not entirly true. You can use Windows XP/Vista on Mac Hardware either via BootCamp or VMWare Fusion/Parallels Desktop. I do this for a couple of applications that I need that are only available on Windows. But for the most part I have found that everything I need for my day to day computing on the Mac is free software. There are only a couple of programs I have bought because I needed functionality that the provided.. But for the most part there are equivalent Mac programs for every Windows one, and most of the time they are better and some times Free.

I think the next time before some one tries to say how much more Mac’s cost they need to really do their home work. Yes the hardware costs more up front, but in the long run, it last longer, runs better and has less problems. I used to have a Dual G4 for a desktop. It used dual 533Mhz processors and ran MacOSX Tiger just fine. Try running Vista on a Pentium III and we will talk.. Windows is getting better about the bloat, but they still have a LONG way to go.

People it is really easy to move stuff between PC and Mac. Apple even has a small 2:30 minute video on how to do it.. Don’t let the Big Box stores charge you for something that is easy and any one can do it.

So my recommendation, if you are going to buy a Apple, get the AppleCare along with it.

Some little things I have noticed now:

1. If you leave iCal on the Doc, it now shows the current date, unlike Tiger only showing it if you had it actually running.
2. Everything seems a lot quicker than Tiger. But it could also be that I had not reinstalled Tiger since I had bought the MBP.
3. Coverflow in finder. It is cool for going through my documents folder.

I also picked up the new iLife 08. I like the new iPhoto. Now to just get everything set back up the way I had it before.. So far I like what I see, and like the new speed..

Any ways, I decided to try and figure out how to get the JAVA Citrix Web client to run locally with out the need for a web server. Well tonight I figured it out, and it works so far for what I need. It does give one error on startup, but it does not affect the use of the client as far as I know.

So how do you do it? Pretty “easy”:

1. Download the Citrix JAVA client (I got 9.3) from Citrix’s web site, Note, it will say that you should not try to install it your self… well I can’t read that part
2. Unzip it in to a directory, I.E. /home/{userid}/citrix
3. Create an App script, for example this is what I use for accessing GroupWise (eck!) from Citrix:
   #!/bin/sh
   CLASSPATH="JICA-coreN.jar:JICA-browseN.jar:JICA-configN.jar:JICA-seamlessN.jar:JICA-clipboardN.jar:$CLASSPATH"
   export CLASSPATH
   /usr/bin/java  com.citrix.ConnectionCenter -address:CitrixICA.Server.Addrses -InitialProgram:"#GroupWise 65 SP4" \
   -HTTPBrowserAddress:CitrixICA.Server.Address -TWIMode:on -desiredcolor:4
4. The desiredcolor make is so that it uses the higher color palette, otherwise you get the nice 256 colors
5. TWIMode is for the Seamless windows
6. Initial Program is the name of the App that is published on the Citrix Server.

I tested this from my MacOSX 10.4.6 MacBookPro, and from my Solaris 10 x86 machine. Works fine on both. I will say though don’t tr to run it in TWM (I ran it through vnc), not fun to deal with right now. Hope this helps some other people who are missing a good client for each of these os’. I am going to see about drive mapping next.

An Apple a day keeps Dr. Watson away

For those who don’t know what Dr. Watson is, it is a program error debuger for Windows.

If Apple had a contest for new slogans I wish I could enter this to win something ..

There are several people with the same problem discussing it here in the MacBook Pro discussion forum on Apple’s website.

The University of Iowa has a page on it as well.

I have talked to Apple on the phone a couple of times, and they did now know anything, but I credit that with the fact that I think they were level 1 people. I did finally get something from a higher support level and they wanted some captures done and sent to them so I did that. Hopefully they will get it fixed soon, as this is a little annoying.