In his “I, Cringely” column at pbs.org on Friday, Robert X. Cringely has reiterated his belief that Apple is working on a mechanism to allow Windows applications to run natively within Mac OS X. Amongst his predictions for 2008, Mr. Cringely said, “Apple will build into some Macs support for the Windows API, allowing Mac…
John Martellaro
John Martellaro was born at an early age and began writing about computers soon after that. With degrees in astrophysics (B.S.) and physics (M.S.), he has worked for NASA, White Sands Missile Range, Lockheed Martin Astronautics, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Apple. At Apple he worked as a Senior Marketing Manager, a Federal Account Executive and a High Performance Computing manager. His interests include chess, science fiction and astronomy. John is the host of the TMO podcast Background Mode.
Articles by John Martellaro
eWeek: iWork '08 One of 2007's Most Important Products
eWeek has published its list of the ten most important tech products of 2007, and Apple’s iWork ’08 is on the list. Google apps and the RIM BlackBerry 8820 are also on the list. Absent was the Apple iPhone. According to eWeek, Apple reinvigorated the office productivity market with distinctive new features and “demonstrated that…
Apple Security Update 2007-009 Can Cause Safari Crash
The Apple Security Update, 2007-009, for Mac OS X Tiger and Leopard published on Monday could have subtle, adverse effects on operations in Safari. It turns out that changes in Safari, in order to increase security, could cause crashes in some special circumstances. That can happen due to the way the security update affects how…
IW: Leopard Server Passes Turnkey Sniff Test
While Appleis Mac OS X desktop OS is well known, Apple has also been hard at work developing a turnkey server version, Leopard Server, that takes a unique and bold approach, according to Tom Yager at Infoworld on Tuesday. Apple has continued its tradition of making Leopard Server simple to use for the enterprise in…
Adding Christmas Lights to the Mac OS X Desktop
In a continuing series of The Festive Mac, Charles Moore at Applelinks has posted mini-reviews of five applications that will bring Christmas lights to your Mac OS X desktop. The featured applications are: Festive Lights 3.1, Nightlights, MacLamps X 1.2, Christmas Lights 2.1 and Holiday Lights 5.2 MacLamps X 1.2
Desktop Snow Applications for Mac OS X
In a continuing series of The Festive Mac, Charles Moore at Applelinks has posted mini-reviews of seven applications that will bring snow of some kind to your Mac OS X desktop. The featured applications are: Snow 1.2, Sno 2006.12.8, Snow 2.4, and Snowied 1.0. The others are screen savers previously mentioned by Mr. Moore. Snow…
Creating Custom Greeting Cards on a Mac
One can buy off-the-shelf Christmas cards, but there are also many different ways to create custom Christmas or greeting cards on a Macintosh. Using iPhoto is just one way, according to Charles Moore in his Festive Mac roundup of card creation software at Applelinks. Mr. Moore looked at and wrote mini-reviews of the following software:…
Google Unveils the Mac Developer Playground
Google announced on Tuesday the unveiling of its Mac Developer Playground. Google’s Mac team engineers spend part of their time experimenting and developing useful tools and fun software. Now they’ve opened it up, according to Sean Carlson at Google. “We’ve always had a place to showcase our consumer products. Today, we’re unveiling the Google Mac…
Yager: Time Machine Has its Limits
Time machine is designed for home users with Mac desktops and notebook computers, and itis fully automated. However, there may be some users or some occasions when itis better not to use Time Machine at all, according to Tom Yager at Infoworld. In addition, Time Machine provides data archiving, but not data protection. While numerous…
USA Today: Thoughts on Switching to a Mac
Many consumers are pondering the switch to Mac this holiday season. For those who are, Edward Baig has provided a most cogent synopsis of what makes the Macintosh so appealing at USA Today on Wednesday. In what may be one of the best written and balanced essays ever on why potential Switchers should consider Mac,…
QuickTime RTSP Vulnerability Proof-of-concept Surfaces
A few days after a flaw was discovered in the QuickTime handling of the Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP), researchers have been able to craft a proof-of-concept exploit, according to Computerworld on Thursday. “This particular exploit can cause remote code execution through the QuickTime RTSP protocol vulnerability on Microsoft Windows and Apple systems,” Symantec said.…
Intel Updates Tools for Leopard, Fuels Penryn Speculation
Intel Corp. announced a major upgrade to its tools suite on Wednesday in support of Appleis Leopard OS. The latest version 10.1 of the Intel C++ and Fortran Compilers as well as the Intel Threading Blocks, Math Kernel Libraries, and Performance Primitives have been optimized for Leopard and Xcode 3.0, according to Intel. The announcement…
TimeMachineScheduler Allows Better Interval Control
Stefan Klieme has announced the immediate availability of TimeMachineScheduler. It can override Time Machineis default interval setting of one hour and set it to from one to 12 hours. Leopardis Time Machine has a default backup interval of 1 hour, and thatis not adjustable by the user even if the launchd.plist is altered. TimeMachineScheduler replaces…
Microsoft Mac BU Publishes Office 2008 Sneak Peek #6
The Microsoft Macintosh Business Unit (Mac BU) published its Office 2008 Sneak Peek #6 on Tuesday. The Sneak Peek showcases the PowerPoint interface to iPhoto and Wordis Notebook Layout View improvements. Microsoft cited these items to showcase in SP #6: PowerPoint 2008 Send to iPhoto: With Office 2008, users can share presentations from their Macs…
Ten Tricks for Customizing Leopard
For those users who want to be able to exercise some options, fiddle with Leopard to get it just right, and get more out of the new OS, Apple Matters has published its list: Ten Ways to Get More Out of Leopard on Monday. The ten areas focused on are: Back To My Mac, Time…
Mac OS X Leads Pack of Vista Alternatives
Vista’s stability and compatibility with current business software were the overwhelming concern of IT professionals surveyed recently. Mac OS X was cited as the leading alternative in the report, according to Computerworld UK on Monday. A survey of 961 IT professionals, predominantly in the U.S., was conducted by King Research on behalf of systems management…
Leopard Matches Vista's Parental Controls, Parents Win
Vista was ahead of Mac OS X Tiger in the control parents have over their kidsi computers. However, Leopard has caught up and matches Vista, according to C|Net on Tuesday. The winner is … parents. The settings in the OS, called parental controls, allow the parent, the administrator of the computer, to set policies, access…
Zenhabits: How to Get Things Done on Your Mac
Being productive on a Macintosh consists of exploiting Mac OS X to the fullest, but also entails some universal concepts that allow one to better exploit any computer system, according to Leo Babauta at his Website, Zenhabits. The free article was originally published at MacForat Magazine and covers the following topics that will help creative…
Apple 10-K Report Full of Financial Tidbits
Appleis 10-K Report for the fiscal year ending September 29, 2007 is full of interesting tidbits about financial compensation to its board of directors and senior VPs. Starting on page 24 is a synopsis of the major legal proceedings against Apple. Itis a long list and spans ten pages. On page 35 is a chart…
Marketer: Apple Needs Better Social Skills
Apple, which is renown for its marketing, has failed to engage its customers on a more personal level, doesn’t have a blog and tries to sue its bloggers, according to Andy Beal at Marketing Pilgrim on Friday. Nike and Dell do a much better job of social networking with customers. In a nutshell, Apple doesn’t…
RealNetworks Releases RealPlayer 11 Beta for Mac
RealNetworks announced on Thursday the availability of RealPlayer 11 Beta for Mac OS X, Tiger and Leopard, in concert with the general release of RealPlayer and RealPlayer Plus for PCs. Because there are four product options, TMO spoke with Ryan Luckin at RealNetworks to sort it out. 1. RealPlayer for PCs allows the user to…
Differencia 1.0 Released for Mac OS X
has released the first version of Differencia. The software is a unique tool for comparing data with different formats and is Mac exclusive. Differencia is designed to compare multiple, tabular data soures that have different file formats and data formats. “Differencia handles International Date, Time and Number formats as well as files originating from Mac,…
Dr. Macenstein: The iTablet Remains Doubtful
There are good reasons why an Apple iTablet wouldnit fly in the market, and recent rumors have done nothing to convince Dr. Macenstein that heis wrong about that. First, one has to ask who the market is for such a device and how many Apple would sell. In the PC side, the sales of tablets…
The Apple Man Behind the Google Phone
Googleis Android OS for mobile phones is poised to challenge Microsoftis assertion that open source can imitate but not innovate. In fact, the man behind Android is a former Apple and General Magic employee, Andy Rubin, according to John Markoff at the New York Times on Tuesday. There is a lot at stake as the…