What would Jason do?

Hi Mac Users,

In between telling the press that Apple has made billions of dollars and that everybody owns an iPhone, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer mentioned that Lion (Mac OS 10.7) is due to hit Apple’s App Store on 7/20/2011. I thought I would give you some insight about Apple’s new operating system and what to think about before you upgrade.

First off, to upgrade to Lion, you must meet these minimum system requirements:

• Your Mac must have an Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, or Xeon processor
• 2GB of memory or RAM
• 4GB of free hard drive space to download Lion. If you only have 4GB of hard drive space left, you need a bigger hard drive.
• Snow Leopard and the latest update (10.6.8)

To find out if you meet these requirements, you can click on your Apple menu and choose “About This Mac”

About This Mac Gives You the Information You Need

The major change with this upgrade is how you get it and install it. Lion is going to be available through the App Store for $29.99. This means that you will download it and install it, no physical media (DVD) is provided. This is why one of the requirements is to have Snow Leopard. The App Store was introduced in the 10.6.6 update. Since it is purchased through the App Store, you will be able to install it on all the Macs you own and use the same Apple ID on. The Lion installer is 4GB in size, so hopefully tomorrow won’t bring down the Internet.

Here are some things to remember before you upgrade:

1. This is a major upgrade to the operating system, make sure you backup your data before you do this upgrade.
2. Do not upgrade a computer that you depend on and can not be without until you know that your critical applications will work with Lion.
3. Rosetta is no longer supported in Lion. Rosetta allowed PowerPC (remember the G5?) applications to run on Intel. If you are using applications like Office 2004 or Quicken 2007, they will no longer work. To see if you are running any Rosetta applications, launch all the programs you use and then launch Activity Monitor (located in Applications/Utilities/), look at My Processes, and look at the Kind column. If you see an Application with PowerPC in Kind column, you are running a Rosetta application.

Check The Column for PowerPC

What is Lion going to do for you? Well, I’ll leave that up to Apple’s marketing.

Of course, I will be upgrading right away, so you can use me as a guinea pig. I will post what happens to me in the next few days.

Click the button below to purchase Lion!

Happy upgrading,

Jason

Hi Mac Users!

This weekend, I was doing a Google image search looking for butterfly icons (don’t ask). I found an image I liked on Google image search and clicked on it. With just this one simple click, I was able to experience how this new Mac malware tried to infect my computer. I documented it just for you, my loyal readers.

Here is my initial Google image search for “Butterfly”. I found the icon I wanted and clicked on it.

Wow, my Mac has a lot of viruses!

I also noticed that a file called “anti-malware.zip” downloaded to my Downloads folders without any action from me besides clicking on that butterfly icon. After the “virus scan” on my Mac, the web page looked like this.

Looks legitimate?

Notice how the web page is designed to look like a Finder window, complete with the sidebar. Clicking anywhere on this web page downloaded the “anti-malware.zip” file. After I was done playing with this page by clicking around it, I had downloaded the zip file ten times.

So, pretty interesting, huh? In Safari, I don’t have it opening “Safe” files after download, so the infected web page just kept downloading the “anti-malware.zip” file whenever I visited this web page. That is all I needed to do to keep me safe. I went ahead and clicked on the file and instead of MACDefender, the software it wanted to install was “Mac Protector”. I found another piece of malware!

Even though I happened across this trickery, I just deleted the malware and moved on. Here is the thinking that stopped this malware in it’s tracks.

1. Turn off “Open safe files after downloading”. You can do this by going to your Safari preferences and unchecking that box in the General preferences. After you turn it off, items you download from the Internet will go into your “Downloads” folder (or whatever folder you told Safari to download files to) and you will have to manually double-click on them to open them. Firefox users are always asked what to do when a file is going to be downloaded from a web page.
2. Don’t trust the Internet! It doesn’t matter what you do, the Internet is not safe and it is not private. As soon as the web page started “scanning” my computer, I knew it was a hoax. First off, it was a web page and it started accessing my computer without any warning. A legitimate website would at least ask my permission.
3. Be mindful of what you are downloading and what is being installed on your Mac. The Mac will not just install software without you initiating it or confirming it. If I had Safari opening safe files, the malware “Mac Protector” would have tried to install. I would have been presented with the first step and just quit the installation.

Hopefully, these screenshots and my words will increase your knowledge and help you recognize these kinds of threats. We may be seeing more.

- Jason

Hi Mac Users,

Looking at my news sites today, I came across the Mac community all abuzz about a piece of malware that can infect your Mac. I thought I would share some links with you to keep you informed.

Security Bulletin from Intego

TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog)

Remember, this malware is more like social engineering, it tricks you into installing this software and tries to get you to buy a bogus program. It is not exploiting a security hole in the Mac OS. This happens to Windows users all the time! Fortunately, it is much easier to remove and the TUAW articles shows you how to protect yourself.

Enjoy your day!

- Jason

Question From Lizzy: I just got this computer from a friend of mine and every time I start up iTunes opens automatically. It always takes a min or two to load and never use the program anyway. Its a real hassle to shut it off every time. Is there a way to stop this from starting automatically?

Jason Answers: Hi Lizzy, there are a couple of ways to stop this. I’ll show you both.

1. Go to the Apple menu on the top right of your screen and click on System Preferences. Click on the Accounts preferences as shown in the screenshot.

The System Preferences Window

2. After you click on the Accounts preference, click on Login Items.

Accounts Preference Pane

3. You will be presented with a list of items that startup on login. You can select items and click on the “-” button to remove them. Some items are needed by applications, so if you don’t know what it is, then leave it alone. As you can see, I have a lot of items launching at login, but no applications like iTunes.

Lots of Login Items

This is a long way around approach.

You can also right-click (hold down the “control” key while you click if you don’t have a right-click mouse or trackpad) on the icon of the application that launches on startup in your Dock. You will be presented with a contextual menu that has an option to “Open at Login”. Click it if it is checked to turn it off.

The Dock Icon Contextual Menu

This way is much easier!

- Jason

Question from Wil: My MacBook Pro (OS10.6.6) runs fine and the battery has not been a problem, however, the drop down window states “service battery”  I did a Apple battery configuration procedure and it seems fine.  Has this issue been corrected for Snow Leopard. Forums tell me this has been a problem after upgrading to Snow Leopard.

Jason Answers: Some of the symptoms we encounter with bad or depleted batteries are:

• Battery only lasts for “minutes” or not at all. You unplug from AC power and the computer shuts down.
• Battery says it has charge left, but it just shuts down. For example, your battery indicator shows 53% and then it shuts off.
• Battery icon has an “X” in it.
• Battery is bulging.

If it runs on battery fine, then the “service battery” message means that something else is being detected. It could mean that your battery could hold more charge if you calibrate it correctly. Snow Leopard includes more sophisticated battery management to deal with the built-in batteries that come with the new unibody laptops. If you have an older laptop with a removable battery or a third party battery, you could be getting false readings. I don’t know the details of what you did for the Apple battery configuration procedure, so here are some steps to recalibrate your battery:

1. Unplug the computer from AC power.

2. Use the computer until the battery is at 0% and the the computer goes to sleep. Make sure you are saving your work. Your sleep light on the front of the computer should still be on and cycling from bright to dim. Wait until that light is off, you want to drain the battery completely.

3. Reset the SMC. If your computer can have the battery removed, then remove the battery, make sure it is unplugged and press the power button for 10 seconds. Put the battery back in and plug it back in to AC power and power it on. If your battery cannot be removed, then plug in the computer, press the (left side) Shift-Control-Option keys and the power button at the same time. Release all the keys and the power button at the same time. Press the power button to turn on the computer. For more details on the SMC, click here.

4. Make sure you keep the computer plugged into AC until the light on your AC adapter turns green or the battery indicator shows 100% or charged.

5. You may need to do this whole cycle again if you keep getting the “service battery” indicator.

I would suggest downloading Coconut Battery. It is a free application that gives you power details on your battery. You can launch it before you run the calibration and after to see the change. If you continue getting the “service battery” notice. We have a battery test provided by Apple to see what is going on.

- Jason

Question from Ronald: I’m having trouble deciding which iMac I should get. I run Adobe Photoshop and will need everything to run smoothly. A colleague of mine said that Quad Core 2.93Ghz Core i7 will not run faster than the 3.60GHz Intel Core i5 on most programs. Something to do with “threading” I think. Is this true? Which iMac would you recommend to run the fastest possible?

Jason answers: Hi Ronald! The 2.93GHz i7 will run faster than the 3.60GHz Intel Core i5. The “threading” breaks out as follows:

3.6GHz i5: Dual core and supports hyperthreading for 4 virtual cores at 1.8GHz each.

2.93GHz i7: Quad core and will support hyperthreading for 8 virtual cores at 1.465GHz each.

So, you gain significant processing power with the i7. There is so much information on comparing the i5 to the i7. From what I have read, you will see between 10-40% increases in performance depending on the task. The i7 will definitely perform faster than the i5. If you want the fastest Mac and you consider yourself a power user, the i7 would be your choice. The difference in getting a 3.6GHz i5 compared to the 2.93GHz i7 is $300. I think the upgrade is worth it.

- Jason

Question from Judy: I’m a struggling user of Parallels and Windows XP for a couple of business programs that STILL aren’t available on my Mac.  Recently I downloaded the recommended by Parallels security utility.  Immediately after I couldn’t get on-line on the windows program.   I have no idea how to sort out what the problem might be – or even who to ask.  Thanks for any help.

Jason answers: Hi Judy!

First off, I would uninstall that security software from your Add/Remove Programs Control Panel in Windows. If the functionality you lost returns after your remove it, then problem solved. If it doesn’t, then something else is wrong with Windows or Parallels. You may need to bring it in to MAC-O-RAMA for us to diagnose and repair the problem.

If you are only using a couple of Windows programs and doing your Internet stuff on the Mac side, you don’t need the protection on the Parallels side. Yes, your Windows OS is susceptible to viruses and malware, but if you are working in Windows with only these business applications and you pay attention to what data you are putting on your Windows side, (don’t accept Flash drives from strangers) you should be safe.

There are other ways to protect yourself from a Windows security breach. You can create “Snapshots” with Parallels. Snapshots allow you make a restorable point of your Windows installation. For example, you could create a new Windows virtual machine, install all your software and set it up to your desire. Then take a Snapshot. Say you get a virus a week later, you can just revert to that previous Snapshot and start working in your clean environment again. Granted, your data for that week will be lost, but you were backing that up, right?

- Jason