Just a treat. Enjoy this Leopard wallpaper as a gift from Icon Designer ;).

Thanks for the downloads! This image has seen about 6000 downloads since it’s inception two days ago, and I’ll make a version without the ‘mess’ behind it for release soon.

The new Apple Leopard page lists a specific tab under “Technology” about security. Some interesting points are there, and I must say, some promising developments on this front.

We’ve seen the sandbox daemon in the Leopard preview builds, but while I pointed out that there were some default services running that were subject to exploitation, it seems Leopard will have some protection to these ‘problems’. From the Apple site:

“Helper applications in Leopard — including the network time daemon and the Spotlight indexer — are sandboxed to guard against attackers.“

Now that’s a good improvement. But there’s more.

“…files downloaded using Safari, Mail, and iChat are screened to determine if they contain applications. If they do, Leopard alerts you, then warns you the first time you open one.”

There’s one less avenue for malicious content being automatically opened. Given the track record of Mac users buying the upgrade of their favorite OS, we’ll see a lot more secure population in October. But wait, there is, indeed, one more thing.

“Leopard can use digital signatures to verify that an application hasn’t been changed since it was created.”

Why of course it can! After all, didn’t it use ZFS? Which does has the ability to checksum everything. We can also use Filevault, which isn’t really discussed on the Apple site, but uses a new encryption scheme, of which details are unknown at the time of writing. Fortunately;

“The Disk Utility tool in Leopard helps you create encrypted disk images using 128-bit or even stronger 256-bit AES encryption.”

And Apple Mail already supports signing certificates and authorities. This is getting a great OS for using the many facilities of securing your digital life. Strong new encryption possibilities are great. On Apple’s security page, they underline their commitment to keeping the kernel open-source, which, in my opinion, is also a critical part of the security and integrity of OS X.

That was it for now. If some of my fellow developers come back, I’ll have the penetration tests on the beta ready for everyone.

I must say, that’s been a huge disappointment. So far, I have complained over every occurrence of the new standard at Apple to make UI captions in capital letters (see the iTunes sidebar), and some hardware trouble, but this is just insane.

I hope Steve is making a joke when he said that they had figured out a ‘sweet solution’ to development on the iPhone. It’s quite clear that making AJAX apps isn’t a solution at all. I’m extremely, extremely disappointed to hear that Apple is panicing so far as to deny even widgets to run on the iPhone (although we don’t know all it’s features yet, they’d probably say Dashcode is the IDE to go if that was the case). Obviously, the device will get hacked one way or another – but what do you think? Steve Jobs has just disappointed all developers on the starting keynote of the whole WWDC. Great job, I think that’s a first.

Think of everything we could have done; multi-touch image editors, interactive games, the most cool stuff you can imagine on the new multi-touch platform won’t become reality. We’ll have to rely on just Apple for the creation of apps.

Well, the news is out; no Praetorian before WWDC. I can’t give out a beta that would really be a close call to be called an ‘alpha’. I’ll keep all testers informed over the next few weeks and what I think is a realistic new date to set for the first beta release.

WWDC buzz. It’s everywhere. What will we see at WWDC this year? Well, as I am one of those unfortunate souls that can’t go this year, I’ll just do the most pathetic thing I can do; speculate about what we’re going to see. It’s also a bit of wishful thinking.

When it comes to hardware, ideally, a good headless Mac that’s cheap. I think Apple might be revamping the Mini for some good graphics performance in Leopard, and perhaps put it in a different price class. The iMac, I hope, will also see improvement soon. It’s a close call between those two, as the iMac will certainly get a good upgrade now that the Macbook Pro’s got it’s specs bumped.

And Leopard – ohh, Leopard. Yes, I am quite sure it will be truly amazing what Apple has in store for us at at the keynote. Rumours about a new look for the GUI aside, we’ve got tens if not hundreds of things to wonder about. Apple’s got us where they want us, curious to the point of biting our fingers off. Some pessimistic souls claim that there won’t be anything surprising for us in store, and as always, after the keynote there will be a crowd that expected miracles or something with religious significance and express their disappointment. However, I’ve got good faith and knowledge that this year will be amazing to all Mac users. From WWDC, it’s one straight run to the finish; Leopard on all Macs. And that’s what’s really getting me excited.

What do you expect to see this year? Or perhaps more truly, what do you want to see?