Enterprise

Local government authorities are investigating last weekend’s explosion that injured 61 people at the Shanghai factory of  an Apple iPad 2 back-panel supplier after much outcry from China Labor Watch.

CLW was founded in 2000, according to their website, and it is an independent not-for-profit organization that has collaborated with unions and labor organizations to assess factories in China.

The Dec. 17 blast at Ri Teng Computer Accessory Co., owned by Taipei-based Pegatron Corp., was similar to the explosion at a Foxconn Technology Group facility in May, according to a Dec. 19 statement from CLW.

“The blast in Riteng is a result of aluminum dust in the workshop where ipad cases are polished,” said CLW in its press release. “A similar blast happened in the same workshop of a Foxconn’s factory in Chengdu, killing 3 workers and hurting another 15.”

CLW said there was “a lot of aluminum dust in the workshop,” but apparently, the workers were not aware of the “potential danger before the blast.”

The U.S. Occupational Health and Safety Administration said aluminum dust is highly combustible, according to its online health guidelines. The administration stressed the need to take special precautions in handling the substance in occupational settings.

Expand
Expanding
Close

The bad news is that yes, Carrier IQ is running on iPhones right now, as we speak.  Carrier IQ, you’ll recall is the rootkit that Carriers put on many of their phones to monitor customer usage.  As a security researcher found out, Carrier IQ monitors keystrokes and sends that back to its own servers.  On Apple’s devices, it appears to have been cut off from such activities.  Developer chpwn breaks it down:

Carrier IQ, the now infamous “rootkit” or “keylogger”, is not just for Android, Symbian,BlackBerry, and even webOS. In fact, up through and including iOS 5, Apple has included a copy of Carrier IQ on the iPhone. However, it does appears to be disabled along with diagnostics enabled on iOS 5; older versions may send back information in more cases. Because of that, if you want to disable Carrier IQ on your iOS 5 device, turning off “Diagnostics and Usage” in Settings appears to be enough.

So it appears that on iOS it stores less information, and it doesn’t seem to be sending anything as long as ‘Diagnostics and Usage’ (iOS 5) is turned off – which is the default (you are asked to enable it during the iOS5 setup). On older versions of iOS, especially v3, it appears to be sending data without a toggle.

Verizon representatives have said that they do not run Carrier IQ on their devices which include iPhones, iPads, and Android, Blackberry and other devices.  Other carriers have yet to make a statement on the matter but Carrier IQ brags on its homepage that it tracks information on 141 million devices (and counting) which is about half of the US population.

On iPhones where Carrier IQ is activated, it appears to send the following information back to the servers:
Expand
Expanding
Close

Windows/Linux Virtualization on the Mac is mostly a 3 player game these days. You have the open source/free VirtualBox that was purchased by Oracle as part of its Sun acquisition two years ago. It is a basic emulator which works as a get what you pay for kind of basic functionality solution. Oracle isn’t big on free Open Source products so don’t expect it to get a lot better any time soon.

That leaves the two big players, Parallels and VMware Fusion. Both companies recently released updates to their software and both can now virtualize another instance of Mac OS X (great for developers who need to test their apps on older software or users who need applications that require Rosetta for instance). MacTech did a comprehensive set of Benchmarks and came away with a clear speed winner.

In almost every test, the $79 Parallels 7 beat the $49 VMware Fusion in speed (as you can see from the graphic above).

In the vast majority of overall our tests, Parallels Desktop 7 won. Again, if you count up the general tests (including the top 3D graphics scores), Parallels won 60% of the tests by 10% or more. And, if you include all the tests where Parallels was at least 5% faster, as well as the balance of the 3DMark06 graphics tests, Parallels increased the lead further. In other words, Parallels Desktop 7 beat VMware Fusion 4.0.2 in 74.9% of the general tests we ran, and Parallels was double the speed or more in almost a quarter of the top-level tests.

VMware obviously has a larger install base in the Enterprise with a longer history of virtualization on the PC. However with benchmarks leaning heavily toward Parallels, some Mac-focused businesses may start to tip toward Parallels.

We’ll have an in-depth look at Parallels 7 coming up as well as a contest where we’ll be handing out a few interesting prizes including a MacBook Air. Stay Tuned!

Expand
Expanding
Close

IT managers’ thinking is influenced by a myriad of business factors, including research studies advising them not to adopt Apple’s computers. But their attitude is changing as Forrester Research, one of the most outspoken proponents of the Mac-free business environment, now backpedals on their 2008 report which called for a total banishment of Macs in the workplace – even for the most mundane tasks such as handling email.

According to the Fortune’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt, a new Forrester survey (available for sale on the corporate card here) of 590 IT managers, Mac users comprise “the 17 percent of information workers who use new technologies and find innovative ways to be more productive and serve customers more effectively”. Wow, talk about change in stance. But wait, there’s more. “Mac users are your HEROes and you should enable them not hinder them”, the report concludes, HEROes being a Forrester acronym for Highly Empowered and Resourceful Operatives.

Just like with iPhone, “Macs are being freewheeled into the office” by corporate higher-ups – typically executives, sales reps and other workaholics – who rely on MacBook Pro machines rather than Windows notebooks which “are slowing them down”:

Employees want their PCs to boot in 10 seconds, not 10 minutes, and they don’t want to have to get a cup of coffee while opening a 20 MB spreadsheet in Excel. They’re drawn to uncluttered Macs — especially those with solid-state drives, which are more responsive and boot in seconds.

That, and the looks…

Expand
Expanding
Close

If you really want to turn your new MacBook Air out, OWC is offering up a new SSD upgrade option that promise up to 4X read/write performance (>500MB/s) over Apple’s factory installed SSDs. The SSDs, priced at $350 for 120GB and $600 for 240GB use a Sandforce 2200 controller.

• Tier 1/Grade A Toggle Synchronous NAND
• SandForce 2200 Series Processor

• Offers nearly 4x factory SSD capacity.**
• Compatible with 2011 MacBook Air

• Utilizes 6G SATA bus in 2011 MacBook Air to deliver over 500MB/s data rate performance

.

In other OWC news, they mention that yesterday’s MacBook Pro update fixed lingering issues with the 6GB SATA port on the MacBook Pros (not to be confused with the 3GB Optical port.)

See performance benefits, below:

Expand
Expanding
Close

Mac Mini Vault just announced a customized 48U APC cabinet that accommodates colocation of up to 140 Mac Minis, allowing for a high-density, high-efficiency data center solution.

Shelves specifically designed for the machine make for easy access to all power buttons and ports, with individual slots pre-wired for internet connectivity and power. Tied to the network connection are several Cisco Gigabit Switches with “redundant fiber connections to the data center’s backbone network”.

Each cabinet provides remote power cycling capability thanks to six APC switched Power Distribution Units. The PDUs themselves are powered by an APC UPS with Generac generators for back up.

Also on offer is the Mac Mini Vault RAID Storage Vault service, which will allow you to expand up to 9TB of direct-attached storage for $350/monthly. The Mac Mini Vault colocation service starts at $29.99/monthly (which includes 500GB transfer and 15Mb/s burstable speeds) and also offers an Enterprise package for $50/month (1TB transfer, 30Mb/s). You can check out the sign-up page here.

The company has also recently posted a “Why a Mac Mini?” page detailing the efficiency of their solution and running Apple’s new i5/i7 Mac mini as a cost-effective e-mail server, ftp server, offsite backup, web server etc. Mac Mini Valut is operated by CyberLynk Networks with data centers located 80 miles north of Chicago. You can get a good look at the Mac Mini Vault cabinet in the gallery after the break.

Expand
Expanding
Close

[Editors note: Big Nerd Ranch has sponsored two posts on 9to5mac allowing readers to go to Nerd Camp for free – previous post]

Hello one final time, 9to5Mac readers.

Greetings from the environs of greater Atlanta. I’m writing to you from the airport following an altogether enjoyable week at Big Nerd Ranch. My previous two entries to you offered a glimpse of the overall experience of iOS Bootcamp at Big Nerd Ranch, along with a look at how the class sessions can fulfill the promise of a well-rounded education in iOS. For my final report to you, I’d like to say something about the people and social experience of iOS Bootcamp.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Readers have alerted us that their Lion Recovery Sticks have started arriving.  Interesting upgrade from the Snow Leopard Stix that come with the MacBook Airs.

We discovered that you don’t necessarily need to buy these for the list price of $69, Apple will send these free in special cases.

Rather than spend $69 on one of these, you could drop $8 on this fugly Kingston 8GB USB stick and add a bit of this.

Backside below:
Expand
Expanding
Close

As pointed out by The Loop, Apple’s App Store volume purchase program for businesses has gone live. The program, which is currently exclusive to the United States, allows businesses to easily purchase and distribute applications – with volume-based pricing – to employees. Businesses that are interested can now enroll and you will need the following to get started:

• Basic contact information to verify your business
• Dun & Bradstreet number (D-U-N-S) number
• Corporate credit card or PCard to purchase apps

App Store distribution through this program consists of iTunes redemption codes:

The Volume Purchase Program makes it easy to distribute apps within your organization. When you buy apps in volume or custom B2B apps, you will receive redemption codes for each app. You can control who gets the apps by providing these codes to users via email or an internal website. You can also use third-party Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions to manage redemption codes centrally.

A guide with all the instructions is also available from Apple.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Today Apple announced End of Life (EOL) status for several boxed software titles. As of 7/20/11 Apple will be discontinuing boxed versions for the following software at Apple retail and Authorized reseller stores:

• Mac OS X Snow Leopard
• Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server
• iLife
• iWork
• Aperture
• Apple Remote Desktop
• Xsan
• GarageBand Jam Packs
• Mac Box Set

*Retail boxed versions of Logic Express and Logic Studio will still be available in-stores

The aforementioned software titles will only be available from the Apple online store.  The only exclusions are “GarageBand Jam Packs” and “Mac Box Set,” which will no longer be available through any channels.  This is certainly another move by Apple to decrease the Mac user’s dependence on physical media.  Not one of today’s Macs has an optical media drive.  Apple announced this immediate change via a “U.S. Field and Channel Sales” email sent to resellers, Apple consultant Network, and others.  This news comes hot off updates to the MacBook Air, Mac Mini, and OS X Lion release.
Expand
Expanding
Close

As we get close to the Lion launch, several tipsters have provided more information regarding the Apple retail overnight and  days after.  Tonight, Apple retail will hold an overnight from approximately 11pm – 7 am to give the retail staff enough time to update the stores visual elements with new marketing materials and re-image all display Macs with Lion.

As previously reported, our tipsters say most stores have recently received an external LaCie hard drive containing Lion installs, but we have received new information that the drives contain 3 different install images for Lion; Normal, Pro, and Joint Venture. 

JointVenture is an enterprise membership program to support businesses running Macs and iDevices.  It is believed that each of these installs will include unique software titles, and some of which could be new.

Furthermore we’ve heard rumblings that some stores will be receiving maxed out Mac Pro towers to be used as Lion distribution caching centers (speculation here).  Some believe that these stations would allow customers to purchase Lion (3.5GB) from the Mac App store and download it directly from the store server in minutes rather than hours it takes over a normal broadband connection.

MacOS X Server and internal builds of Time Capsule allow for Software Update Caching, so this is certainly something within Apple’s capabilities.  Also, Apple told Computerworld that users could come into the store to download Lion last month.

This would also be a huge help to customers who do not have access to a broadband Internet connection or users who want to walk through the install process with an Apple employee during a personal training session.  It would obviously also save Apple some internet bandwidth which at 3.5GB per user adds up.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Why run a family pictures website, DNS or any other low CPU-use server on power-hungry Intel-based hardware when an AppleTV2 does the trick?  The folks at MacMinivault.com have set up a webpage on a AppleTV 2 (go ahead, try to take it down) jailbroken with httpd as an example of what can be served off of the little 6 watt, A4-powered dynamo.  Put 10 of these together and you’ll be using the same power as a single 60 Watt light bulb.

The Apple TV is running iOS 4.2.2 (obviously jailbroken) with lighttpd for a web server. You can see the webpage we set up by visiting atv.macminivault.com. We’ll keep an eye on the CPU load and watch the analytics to record how much traffic the Apple TV receives.

They say this won’t be a cost effective solution for their customers (8 GB of storage won’t cut it) but is a ‘fun experiment.’

What’s interesting is that Apple likely has an dual core A5-platform AppleTV coming out shortly which may push a little more into the Intel server space.  Perhaps more interesting is that the A5 chips could also make nifty little ChromeOS-busting terminals or even cheaper laptops.

If you want to create your own little AppleTV 2 server, they recommend the following:
Expand
Expanding
Close

A consortium including Apple Inc, Microsoft, EMC Corp, Sony, Ericsson, and BlackBerry maker Research In Motion bought bankrupt telecommunications gear maker Nortel Networks Corp’s remaining portfolio of 6000 patents for $4.5 billion, in an auction that began early this week.

RIM reportedly paid $770 million, Ericsson paid $340 million.  It wasn’t immediately clear how much Apple paid.

Google had originally opened bidding with a $900 million bid.  The consortium of strange bedfellows will split up the portfolio based on the split of the purchase price.

The sale is subject to Canadian and U.S. court approvals which will be sought at a joint hearing expected to be held on July 11.  Full press release follows:

Expand
Expanding
Close

.

There has been a big stink (several actually) about Final Cut Pro X’s lack of ‘Pro’ features.  One such glaring omission has been the lack of Final Cut Pro 7 XML imports.  MacMagazine.br did some digging and found that the code for doing Final Cut Pro 7 imports is actually inside Final Cut Pro X and for some reason hadn’t been enabled for shipping.

As per usual, Apple will likely enable that functionality (and many others that are missing) in updates to Final Cut Pro X.  If you are daring, MacMagazine offers a workaround that might be able to import now (they haven’t yet tested).

Expand
Expanding
Close

As we broke last night, Apple is now carrying Thunderbolt parts. The Pegasus RAID units just showed up but we noticed something a little odd:

.

Interesting combo.  Currently the Mac Pro doesn’t have a Thunderbolt port.

.

So yeah, Apple art team either jumped the gun, used the wrong equipment, or pre-announced the new Mac Pros.  We were hoping for a slight redesign which doesn’t look to be the case (see what I did there?)…
Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple has finally unleashed the video recordings of this year’s WWDC lab sessions. Registered Mac developers can view them on the Apple Mac Developer website or through iTunes.

Expand
Expanding
Close

We know Apple charges a premium on storage.  That’s why many people buy RAM and HDD/SSD storage for their Macs from third party retailers, saving lots of money.   With iOS devices, however, Apple is able to keep out third party upgrades because the devices are sealed shut.  That’s why a device with 16GB costs $100 less than a device with 32GB of RAM, which in turn costs $100 less than a device with 64GB of flash storage.  Apple buys Flash for less than anyone else on earth but mere mortals can get storage for a fraction of what Apple charges.

So here’s this Time Capsule thing.

.

 $299 for 2TB.  To upgrade to a 3TB drive, you’ll need $200 more.  How absurd is this?  The difference between a 2TB and 3TB drive is like $40.

Not only is this beyond the call of the “Mac Tax” but it is crazy easy to get around.  For an extra $150 (Still $50 less than the 3TB model) you can buy a perfectly good 3TB USB Seagate or Western Digital hard drive from Amazon.  Then just plug it into the back of the 2TB model and you have 5TB of addressable space.    You’ve been able to use USB drives since 2008 as Time Machine backups or Network Attached Storage.

.

Of course it is nice to have the drive in a convenient little package with only one plug, but for $200, only getting an extra TB seems a little absurd.  
Expand
Expanding
Close

Had you heard? Final Cut Pro X hit the virtual streets today ($299 App Store Link).  Motion 5 ($49 Download link) and Compressor 4 ($49 Download Link)

Some users aren’t quite as happy as others.  Those include first generation Mac Pro users with ATI video cards.  Reader John writes:

BAD NEWS: I have a 2 year old, Mac Pro 2 x 2.8 Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon with 6 Gigs of memory and I can’t download FCP X from the app store because my Mac Pro isn’t good enough!
I have an ATI Radeon HD 2600. What about all those iMac editing stations when they cant upgrade either? Nice timing, right before the new Mac Pros to be released.

I spoke to Apple, my Mac Pro from Early 2009 needs NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 Graphics Upgrade Kit for Mac Pro (early 2009) for $149 1-2 week wait.

You can find out if you are in good Graphics card shape here.  You’ll want an OpenCL-capable graphics card with 256 MB of VRAM.  Somehow Apple accepts Intel HD Graphics 3000 (or later), even though earlier GPUs are much quicker.

It is good however, to know that the App Store is blocking purchases before they are made.  Chalk another one up for having an integrated App Store.  As for system requirements, this is Apple:  We’re fairly certain some new FCPX Mac Pro rigs are right around the corner.  But, for now, you older Mac Pro users will need to drop $149 on this.

Another pro reader writes in:
Expand
Expanding
Close

One interesting feature of iOS 5 that we’ve been tracking since yesterday is that users have been reporting the above ‘unsecured call’ warning. While it isn’t in any of the documentation we’ve seen, it appears that Apple is warning users of the possibility that their phone calls can be eavesdropped on.

It likely warning of the possibility of a GSM IMSI Catcher basestation which can intercept unecrypted calls.  Wikipedia notes that unecrypted call detection isn’t new:

there are a few mobile phones that show a small symbol on the display, e.g. an exclamation point, if encryption is not used. Another point is the calling number. Since the network access is handled with the SIM/USIM of the IMSI-catcher, the receiver cannot see the number of the calling party. Of course, this also implicates that the tapped calls are not listed in the itemized bill.

Video of a DEFCON talk on IMSI catcher below:

Expand
Expanding
Close

Simply add a few bucks (to the Mac App Store) to get the “Server.app”.  Apparently that’s all you need according to this screenshot from Lion Help. (via Hardmac).  No word on exactly how much the server.app costs (we’re thinking a few hundred?) or how much Lion itself will cost for that matter.  We’ll know soon, though.

Expand
Expanding
Close

In an interesting move, Canada-based BlackBerry maker Research In Motion announced an upcoming new version of BlackBerry Enterprise Server that will support iOS and Android devices in the workplace. Yeah, Apple’s big rival in the smartphone arena will let its BlackBerry-using business customers manage and secure BlackBerry, iOS and Android smartphones and tablets from a single web-based console. iOS and Android support will be an optional component.

It’s based on RIM’s newly acquired ubitexx technology and allows for easy deployment of multiple components in a virtualized environment on a single server. The tool is somewhat limited because the new BlackBerry Enterprise Server won’t support all BlackBerry features on Apple and Google devices. For example, the new BlackBerry Balance capability that separates work from personal data only works with BlackBerrys. What’s in it for RIM?

Expand
Expanding
Close