Web Development & Design | Online Marketing
Unsolicited notes, links and advice from an online development firm in Kansas City.
There’s been a lot of loud belly-aching over the marketplace implications of the $0.99 price point’s popularity in Apple’s iPhone App Store. Well, Mobile Orchard blew all that out of the water yesterday. Check out the sales distribution of iPhone Apps sorted by price:
iPhone App Store Sales by price
Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories has cooked up a delicious double entendre for your viewing pleasure and they didn’t skimp on the photos. The secret ingredient? A 45 watt carbon-dioxide laser they used to cut a perfect Apple lattice in the top crust. (And love, of course.)
Heads up, creatives! You’re precious Mac’s are (slightly) less secure than you thought. Two pieces of malware surfaced last week. From ZD net:
Two pieces of malicious software affecting Apple’s Mac OS X appeared this week: a Trojan horse with the ability to download and install malicious code of an attacker’s choice, and a hacker tool for creating backdoors, according to security vendors.
The Trojan — called ‘OSX.RSPlug.D’ by Intego, the Mac security specialist that discovered the threat — is a variant on an older piece of malicious code but with a new installer, Intego said.
“It is a downloader, and it contacts a remote server to download the files it installs,” Intego said in an advisory. “This means that, in the future, the downloader may be able to install payloads [other] than the one it currently installs.”
In other respects the Trojan is similar to previous versions of RSPlug, which first surfaced in October 2007, Intego said. It installs a piece of malicious code known as DNSChanger, which routes the user’s internet traffic through a malicious DNS server, leading users to phishing websites or pages displaying advertisements.
The Trojan is found on porn websites posing as a codec needed to play video files, a technique used to trick the user into downloading and installing it.
Intego said OSX.RSPlug.D has been widely confused with a separate threat publicized this week by several security firms. That threat is called OSX.TrojanKit.Malez by Intego and OSX.Lamzev.A by other vendors, including Symantec and Trend Micro.
OSX.Lamzev.A is a hacker tool designed primarily to allow attackers to install backdoors in a user’s system, according to Intego. However, the company dismissed the tool as a serious threat because a potential hacker has to have physical access to a system to install the backdoor.
“Unlike true malware and Trojan horses, OSX.TrojanKit.Malez requires that a hacker already have access to a Mac in order to install the code,” Intego stated.
Other antivirus vendors noted that Lamzev could be disguised as a piece of legitimate software and used to trick users into creating the backdoor themselves.
Lamzev is not related to RSPlug, despite several high-profile reports confounding the two, Intego emphasized. “This hacker tool has nothing to do with the RSPlug Trojan horse,” Intego stated.
The Mac platfrom has been virus-free for so long because it wasn’t really a very worthy target. But now that OS X has cracked 8% market share, it seems like the hackers are coming around to the idea that the Apple pond is crowded enough to fish in. (This isn’t surprising, security experts in just about any field will tell you that security through obscurity is not really security at all.)
Having said all that, this is stuff you have to give permission to, before it can install on your machine. So, keep your wits about you, and you should be alright.
Character Illustration by Squiggley Studios.
From Apple Insider…
For the quarter ending in September, Microsoft released revenues of $15.06 billion, net profits of $4.37 billion, and a reserve of cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments that added up to $20.7 billion.
Apple reported $7.9 billion in revenues and $1.14 billion in net profit, but those numbers don’t include most of its iPhone business, which is hidden away in subscription accounting under GAAP rules. For that reason, Apple also released its real earnings: $11.68 billion in revenue and $2.44 billion in net profits. The company also reported a cash position of $24.5 billion.
For a company often looked down upon by Microsoft brass, Apple sure is showing them a thing or two. Here’s a chart to put in perspective. When looking at this chart, remember that for years Microsoft’s position on Apple has been that “everyone uses Windows” so they don’t care about Apple. That’s statement still has some truth behind it, but it’s a self defeating argument in light of figures like these. It just goes to show that Microsoft isn’t very good at making money.
Reports of the Mac Mini’s death are greatly exaggerated…
So, you want to show someone something that is on your screen. Problem is: they’re not in the room. You need to take a screenshot. And that’s OK, because the Apple engineers behind OS X have provided you with a virtual smorgasbord of screenie-snapping options…
Need more control? Fine: Hold down these additional keys while selecting an area via Command-Shift-4 or Command-Control-Shift-4 and you get even more functionality…
…And now you have a portable version of exactly what you see.
Rejoice, fellow Mac-heads. Google has a search just for you! No more quantifying your software, screen saver, or hardware searches with the perfunctory “for Mac” at the end.
