MacBooks Upgraded to Santa Rosa, Trojan Horse Hits Mac OS X, and More

Anonymous's picture

MacBooks Upgraded to Santa Rosa, Trojan Horse Hits Mac OS X, and More

Posted 11/01/2007 at 10:42am | by Mac|Life Staff

 

Santa Rosa has arrived! Welp, we doubted Monday's rumors of updated MacBooks, and we were wrong. Apple quietly upgraded the MacBook to Intel's Santa Rosa architecture, giving it a faster frontside bus and better graphics. (See specs here.) The benchmarks show modest speed gains, up to 10 percent. Still no aluminum case, though. Apple is also offering new options for the MacBook Pro: a 2.6GHz Core 2 Duo chip, and a 250GB hard drive upgrade.

 

Security alert! Porn lovers beware, because a Trojan horse designed for the Mac OS has surfaced on several porn sites. It's rated as a critical risk by Intego. Does this mean Leopard isn't so secure after all?

 

Woz Up? Laptop magazine has an interesting interview with Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak. What does he think of Leopard?

Leopard tales. Speaking of Leopard, here's one tech writer's struggle against the Blue Screen of Death while installing Mac OS 10.5: "I was blued, tattooed, and totally screwed." If you installed successfully, or you're waiting to see if your favorite apps will still work before you pull the trigger, the Leopard compatibility list keeps on growing.

 

In iPhone news, Time magazine's Invention of the Year is coming to Germany on November 9, and T-Mobile announced the plan rates today.

 

In the future... Wondering what's next for Apple? Who isn't, right? Well, MacRumors reports that the company is looking at touch-surface keyboard technology. And Steve Jobs himself is reportedly interested in FON's wireless-sharing technology and service. Which sounds pretty cool to us, too.

Tags:
Related Articles
7

Comments

+ Add a Comment
avatar

Bill Sommerville

November 03, 2007 at 4:59am

In my profession security is not the one of many keys to protection, it is the only key. With what I just learned that the first security hole is that Leopard's firewall turns itself off by default on installation—even if a user had the firewall turned on before upgrading. Next
the fact that Apple uses versions of open source software in which bugs have already been found and documented by the developers is cause for concern for me. It is like paying for the same bugs twice.

The worst was that even with the firewall up and everything blocked, Security researchers were able to see the BIOS information with little effort. NOW COME ON APPLE (STEVE), EVEN THE WINDOWS GUYS KNOW BETTER THAN THIS. To say I am highly disappointed would be an understatement. Now I am faced with the same dilemma that made me leave Windows for MAC's in the first place.

Either I purchase a 3rd party security software and hope it plugs the holes, go with what I have and hope Apple fixes this, or send the OS back. I have the third choice because I have not opened the box yet.

avatar

PGM

November 02, 2007 at 5:15am

Santa Rosa is not the name of a chip, but of a "platform" from Intel that includes a Core2Duo chip. So Apple may have chosen not to follow Intel's marketing by using the Santa Rosa name, but still only uses the Core2Duo terminology.

avatar

Michael Dunlop

November 01, 2007 at 1:54pm

I went on store.apple.com and checked out the "new" macbooks but they still say Core 2 duo and nothing about "Santa Rosa". What's up?

avatar

hawaiian717

November 01, 2007 at 1:16pm

Well, it is a real security threat. This is exactly what a trojan horse is: Something that tricks the user into installing it because they think it's something else (remember that "Word 2004" beta that was on Gnutella shortly before the real Word 2004 release), or is included with something else (all that spyware included with Windows P2P applications). Just because it's not something that can spread on its own or install itself when you visit a web page, doesn't mean that it's not something that the Mac user community needs to be aware of.

avatar

Daniel M. Clark

November 01, 2007 at 12:41pm

I'm disappointed that Mac|Life would run the "news" of the trojan horse as if there was a real security threat. From what I read in the linked articles, a user would need to visit a site, download a DMG, and enter the admin password - manually - to get infected. That's software installation not virus infection. You're giving permission to the software to do whatever it wants. If you're downloading "software" from a porn site, you have to know that you're putting yourself at risk. There's only so much Apple can do to protect users from themselves.

avatar

Anonymous

November 01, 2007 at 12:53pm

I think that any time there's a Mac virus/TJ, it's news, regardless of how hard it is to get it. They don't happen often, so when they do, it's news worthy.

avatar

Llib Setag

November 01, 2007 at 12:26pm

Is it just me, or is it funny that there is a "Trojan" Horse & "Virus" on Porn websites...?
=8-)

Log in to Mac|Life directly or log in using Facebook

Forgot your username or password?
Click here for help.

Login with Facebook
Log in using Facebook to share comments and articles easily with your Facebook feed.
Don't have an account? Join Now.