MacBook Air Hacked in 2 Minutes, Aperture 2.1, iPhone SDK beta 2, and More
Posted 03/28/2008 at 10:14am
| by Mac|Life staff
HackedBook Air: Charlie Miller used a vulnerability in Safari to break into a MacBook Air in two minutes. But the actual exploit will be kept under wraps until Apple has a chance to fix it. The stunt won him $10,000 in the CanSecWest conference's "PWN 2 OWN" hacking contest. (Hope he doesn't find his new laptop too slow.) Miller is the same guy who discovered an exploit in the iPhone's version of Safari.
Plug it in, plug it in: Apple has released Aperture 2.1, which now has an open plug-in architecture. This will let you use third-party imaging software without leaving Aperture. We've got a review of Aperture 2 coming soon to Mac|Life and MacLife.com.
SDK beta part 2: The second version of the iPhone SDK beta is out. Its big new feature is the Interface Builder, which helps developers -- wait for it -- build their apps' interfaces. In, um, layman's terms.
Another baby Leopard: Apple is also testing the next Leopard update, Mac OS 10.5.3. It's presumed to be released sometime in April or May.
Get your macro mojo workin': For everyone upset that Office 2008 doesn't support macros written in Virtual Basic, some very good news: MacTech magazine is publishing a 150-page guide for transitioning VBA scripts to AppleScript.
Handwriting on the wall: Apple is hiring a handwriting recognition engineer, to advance the technology for Mac OS X. (Hmmm, doesn't the iPhone use OS X?)
And finally: Wired's "Evil Genius" cover story is making people wonder whether Apple is turning evil. ITworld warns us that "even Apple will be hated one day" (and Google too). Do you think Apple is evil? Let us know why or why not in the comments.