While Mac owners can expect to enjoy enhanced computer security by way of a recently released security update for 25 OS X flaws, another new Mac owner is about to enjoy a new MacBook Pro laptop by hacking into it.

This is the case of software engineer Shane Macaulay, who has reportedly broken into one of two MacBook Pro computers set up at the CanSecWest conference's Hack a Mac contest. This successful hack attempt comes after a revamp of the contest rules last Friday, and after previous hack attempts had failed.

Macaulay has reportedly teamed up with security researcher Dino Davi Zovi for the attempt. "The vulnerability and the exploit are mine," said Zovi, regarding how the pair worked. "Shane is my man on the ground."

As for how they plan to split their bounty, Macaulay is expected top keep the MacBook Pro laptop, while Zovi is planning to submit the detected exploit to security company TippingPoint Technologies to apply for their Zero Day Initiative bug bounty program. "Shane can have the laptop, I want the money," Zovi said. That's the rough of what's happened at the event - the full technical details are available at the source link.

Don't look now, but the always-innovative Apple corporation may shake the playing field and change the way we look at laptops and at the same time force hard disk manufacturers to lower their prices.

Shaw Wu, an analyst at American Technology Research says that Apple will soon sell blazing-fast laptops which use flash memory as the main storage device instead of the traditional hard disk. The idea is patterned after the popular iPod mp3 players of the company which use precisely that kind of storage medium.

Flash memory is much faster than the hard drives of today. This means that if the project materializes, long start-up times and file transfers may be a thing of the past. This, Wu says, will put pressure on hard drive makers to improve their wares and at the same time lower their prices to compete with the flash memory market.

Further, flash memory comes in a smaller package, is lighter and more energy-efficient than a bulky hard disk. It also doesn't have spinning parts, which makes it less prone to wear and tear. That means a much sleeker notebook is possible, all the while extending battery life.

The storage capacity of the new notebook's flash memory is yet to be determined, but knowing Apple, experts say that it should be pretty good. The machine will be running on a miniature OS X especially configured for the hardware.

Seeing the initiative from Apple, Wu challenged the flash memory industry, saying "Apple, from what we understand, is pretty much ready. The ball is in the flash vendors' court."

Are you a Mac aficionado who just so happens to think that searching for alternative energy sources - i.e. the sun - is the only way that us humans can hope to extend our stay in this big bad galaxy? If so, then you better hope you have US$ 180 to spare. According to Treehugger.com, that's the estimated cost of the home-made, portable solar kit that Pat, a blogger from Will Blog For Experience, used to power his MacBook. Here's what Pat himself said:

This kit weighs about 2 lbs, costs $180, and will power my Macbook for 1.75 hours (1.83ghz, browsing the web and checking email via Airport Extreme, bluetooth off, screen brightness about 70%) with a little more than 5 hours of good sun.

Frankly, this gadget is one hell of a good idea. An initial expenditure of a hundred and eighty bucks seems like a pretty big amount, but just the thought of how much we'll be able to save in the long run certainly has an appeal, plus, when folded, the whole thing really seems quite easy to lug around. And it's not just for MacBooks and other laptops, too. We reckon you can use this portable power source for a whole host of other gadgets. Check it out for yourself. Images of the environmentally-friendly doodad are available below.

 

LED backlit notebooks are the new fad for notebook manufacturers, the forerunners being Sony, Toshiba, Fujitsu, and Asustek. Now Apple and Hewlett Packard (HP) are going to release their models with the said technology in Q2 2007.

Even when big notebook makers are using LEDs, Taiwan LED manufacturers are unlikely to profit from the innovation, according to DigiTimes.com

The use of LED backlights has become more popular, but LED manufacturers in Taiwan would unlikely supply the demand since their LEDs simply don't cut it. The specifications of a backlit notebook is 1,680 nits, and Taiwan LED makers have yet to reach that brightness level. Patent restraints would also be a hurdle since notebook makers consider that better than cost competitiveness.

However, they will continue making the LEDs for handsets though they are constantly under pressure to be cost competitive.

Unless you're a professor for movie studies, there's no way you can copy your DVD movies, thus breaking the DVD encryption protection law. So, if you're planning on ripping your DVD movies onto you iPods and other devices, you might wanna rethink your option, or at the very least, do so at your own risk.

This comes in the wake of the US Library of Congress' rejection of a petition that would give US iPod users the right to break the encryption technology on DVDs so that they can copy it onto their iTunes or iPods. Looking into it a step further, it could be because approving the petition might lead to the opening of floodgates as to the protection of these materials.

Particularly threatening in the status quo is the steady proliferation of piracy. And of course, no matter how much you say that breaking the encryption code is legal, as it will be with consent from the government, you still cannot deny the fact that it is but another form of piracy, only placed in a pedestal and tagged as legit.

At least, that could be one of the reasons behind the rejection. It simply might set a bad precedent. And with all the brouhaha about intellectual property nowadays, it just could prove to be a good call.

Motherboard manufacturers in Taiwan have an aggressive increase in orders for high-capacitance multi-layer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs) used in the manufacturing of CPUs allegedly for the use in an AMD-based Apple notebook. With Intel getting in on the Apple action, there's no reason why the other major CPU manufacturer in the world shouldn't get a piece of the warm Apple pie. AMD Taiwan have refused to comment on this.

Although some are saying that an AMD Apple notebook is in the works, other motherboard manufacturers have claimed that there are no AMD/Apple notebooks around, firstly due to Intel having processor superiority over AMD with its latest Core Duo 2 line-up, and that AMD has insufficient capacity to manufacture chips for Apple notebooks.

This is a nice area to look at, and with the success of Boot Camp and the integration Intel processors, and if AMD processor integration goes ahead, Apple computers may steal a lot more of the notebook market, taking even more people away from their Windows laptop loyalties.

Major airline Virgin Atlantic has eased its restrictions on laptops today, allowing both Dell and Apple laptops to be used on board as long as their serial numbers have been checked by a member of the in-flight cabin crew. This comes no more than a week after the airline banned the use of Dell and Apple laptops on their flights following the same kind of ban from Australian airline Qantas. The whole shenanigan started with faulty Sony batteries supplied to laptop manufacturers all over the world including Dell and Apple, some of whose laptops started to explode.

Virgin Atlantic has trained its cabin crew to check the laptop batteries, and Virgin Atlantic has said that if a battery is not on the recall list, then the laptop can be used without restriction. However, if the suspect laptop does in fact come fitted with one of the affected batteries, then it must be removed immediately. "In cabins where the seats are fitted with in-seat power supplies... Leads/adaptors will be offered," the airline said. "Any removed or spare batteries must be individually wrapped/protected and placed in your carry-on baggage. This is limited to two batteries per passenger."

Virgin says that the extra security measures will be lifted once the safety issues had been fully resolved. Watch this space; Qantas will probably be making the same changes to their policies too. If you are in any doubt about whether or not you will be able to use your laptop in-flight, we advise that you contact your airline before the flight.

This is a haul that any thief would like to run into. It's a video of the 700+ MacBooks that will be handed out to Kutztown School District High students, totalling to a whopping $980,000. No longer do students have to walk around with 10-year old Dell Laptops, because they'll be strutting with brand new MacBooks, complete with Mac OS X Tiger installed packages. This, in itself, could be modern art, with the amount of MacBooks stacked up in unison, just waiting to be used. It's certainly more interesting than an Elephant that's been painted to resemble wallpaper anyway.

The haul of MacBooks also includes a barrage of nice-looking MacBook bags for the students to carry them around in. Unless you've been inside an Apple warehouse, this is probably the biggest stash of MacBooks you'll ever witness. With a range of MacBooks rolling out across the country, it appears that Apple have re-asserted their position in the American classroom.

Apple recently did an internal audit on its wireless drivers that there's now a Security and AirPort update for Mac OS X. Recall that a month ago, SecureWorks released a statement that the MacBook wireless software driver showed vulnerabilities -- only to retract such statement by saying that they had used a third-party driver and not AppleÂ?s driver.

This apparently prompted Apple to work on an update that strengthens their drivers against potential vulnerabilities. But Anuj Nayar, Apple's spokesman, stressed that they had initiated the internal audit themselves.

If you're an Apple user, you can get the update via the Software Update mechanism in Mac OS X.

The issues on vulnerabilities affected select Apple laptops such as Power Mac, PowerBook, iMac, Mac Pro, Xserve, and PowerPC-based Mac mini computers. The internal audit showed that two separate stack buffer overflows exist in the AirPort wireless driverÂ?s handling of malformed frames.

To exploit the vulnerability, an attacker in local proximity may be able to trigger an overflow by injecting a maliciously crafted frame into a wireless network. When the AirPort is on, this could lead to arbitrary code execution with system privileges. If the heap buffer overflow that existed wasn't tackled, it could have allowed attackers on a wireless network to cause system crashes, privilege elevation or arbitrary code execution.

Have you been having problems with your MacBook suddenly shutting down by itself? Well thanks to a certain German engineer who took it upon himself to break down and snoop around his MacBook, we now have a simple DIY solution to this predicament.

According to the German engineer, the cause for these shutdowns is the heat sensor cable found next to the CPU's heat sink. What happens is that when the heat sink expands as you use your laptop, the heat sensor cable touches the sink and melts its insulation. The result? Cable is shortened and MacBook is turned off. And after the heat sink cools down and shrinks, your MacBook can now be turned back on.

What to do: bust open your case and cover the affected areas of the sensor cable with some insulation tape. Now unless the tape also melts, you shouldn't have any problems with sudden shutdowns anymore. A little warning though, doing so may (or may not) void your warranty. Our "Germengineer" isn't sure about this so it's still best to get Apple to fix it for you. But if the sudden shutdown is majorly pissing you off, you can try this simple solution and see if it works.