Apple has focused a lot of attention on making Leopard more secure, and security analyst Rich Mogull looks at each of the promised features to explain how it will keep your data, your online communications, and your Mac safe.Show full article

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With the release last week of the feature list for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, the security world is buzzing about some extremely important updates that should, if they work as expected, significantly improve Mac security and will make me less nervous about connecting to wireless networks in Internet cafes.

Time Machine -- Before we dig into Leopard's advanced anti-exploitation technologies, we need to start with the biggest security feature that's not listed with the rest: Time Machine. Information security is based on the principles of CIA. No, not the Central Intelligence Agency or the Culinary Institute of America. In the security world, CIA stands for Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability. While we tend to focus on keeping people from seeing things we don't want them to see (confidentiality) and changing things we don't want changed (integrity), having our data and systems available to us is just as important.

With Time Machine making it easier to back up for all users, especially individuals not already protected by some corporate backup system, Apple is doing more to improve security than any upgrades to firewalls or Safari ever could. If you want to improve your security, I highly recommend you get an external hard drive with your copy of Leopard (Adam tells me that "Take Control of Customizing Leopard" will offer basic help for Time Machine, and a future edition of "Take Control of Mac OS X Backups" will provide even more detail). My backups have saved me three times already this year, and I'm excited that I can finally make backups more accessible to my mother and sister.

Stopping Buffer Overflows -- The most significant security update in Leopard is one that you'll never notice, but that will cause the bad guys no end of frustration. It's an anti-exploitation technology Apple calls Library Randomization (also known generically as Memory Randomization and as Address Space Layout Randomization in Windows Vista). To understand Library Randomization we need to take talk about vulnerabilities, exploits, and buffer overflows.

Buffer overflows are the class of vulnerability that are responsible for most of the successful attacks on computers today. Most malicious programs (worms and viruses) rely on buffer overflows to take control of your system. In security, we define a vulnerability as a flaw or defect that could allow someone to violate confidentiality, integrity, or availability. Think of it as a weak lock or a broken window the bad guy can use to get in. Buffer overflows are a vulnerability where an attack enters more data into an input than expected; if the programmer who wrote the software forgot to limit that input field, the data can flow past the expected limit and overwrite other parts of memory. Since memory on most of our computers is just a big stack of commands mixed with data, if you know exactly how much extra data to put in, you can trick the computer into running an arbitrary command by overwriting a spot where it expects a legitimate instruction with your new instruction.

You might be asking yourself why programmers don't just cap any program input to prevent buffer overflows. Why not just limit all those fields so this can't happen? I often ask myself the same question, but modern computing systems are so complex, with so much reused code, that it isn't that simple. For example, the iPhone 1.1.1 software was cracked because it used some common code (the libtiff library) for reading TIFF image files. That code had a buffer overflow vulnerability in it, allowing hackers to create special TIFF files that let them take over the iPhone. This is what we call an exploit - when you can take advantage of a vulnerability and actually do something with it.

As an aside, buffer overflows first appeared around 1988 and were used in the very first Internet worm - the Morris worm. In 1996 an exceptional paper was published detailing how to exploit buffer overflows.

This is where Library Randomization comes in. Pushing those bad commands onto the stack is more complex than saying, "Open sesame!". The attacker is attempting to subvert the guts of the operating system and has to play around with memory directly and point to different instructions in different parts of memory to get the computer to fail in a useful way. Until recently, most operating systems stored their own internal commands in known, static locations in memory. Thus the attacker could just point to those commands with his malicious instructions, and use the tools of the operating system itself to take over. Library Randomization randomly distributes those commands throughout memory every time the operating system loads. Thus, even if an attacker finds a buffer overflow vulnerability and pushes his commands onto your system, it's extremely difficult for him to turn that into a working exploit.

That's why we call Library Randomization an anti-exploitation technology - even when the bad guys find vulnerabilities (and they will) it will be much harder for them to exploit your system. This is a big move, since instead of relying on programmers to write perfect code, Apple - following the lead of Microsoft and some Unix/Linux variants - is hardening the operating system to make exploitation itself more difficult. Apple actually started down this road with Mac OS X 10.4.7 when they enabled Data Execution Protection, a feature available on some processors to let programmers mark memory locations as data only, limiting the ability of an attacker to push a command in.

I'm sure security researchers will eventually figure out a way around it, but early signs from other operating systems indicate that Library Randomization is a serious obstacle for an entire class of attacks. I've spent a lot of time on Library Randomization because, following Time Machine, it's probably the most significant security update in Leopard, but those two are far from the only improvements.

Identifying and Defanging Evil Apps -- As firewalls become more ubiquitous it's becoming harder for bad guys to attack computers directly over the network. Many are switching over to what we call client-side exploits - getting malicious code onto your system via malicious email, Web pages, and file downloads. While Apple can't prevent people from downloading dangerous stuff, Leopard has a new feature to tag downloaded applications as coming off the Internet.

The first time you run a downloaded application, your Mac will ask you to approve it and tell you when it was downloaded, what application downloaded it, and where it came from. This is another great feature that should help limit malicious software from downloading and executing programs without your knowledge. The one potential weakness I see is this warning could be used to trick you into visiting a malicious Web site, and I hope Apple is taking that into account.

Apple has also added application signing. Apple, and any developer that wants to participate, can affix a digital signature to their applications. Digital signatures are valuable because they certify both where an application came from and, more importantly, that it hasn't been modified. If a bad guy tries to subvert a signed application on your system, the modified application will no longer match its signature, and Mac OS X won't allow it to launch.

Leopard's next important feature is "sandboxing." Sandboxing is a technique of restricting specific applications so they can't perform certain kinds of actions, like limiting the files they can touch, the other applications with which they can communicate, or what they can do on the network. Some applications will always be at a higher risk than others for compromise, and sandboxing helps prevent those applications from being used to take over other parts of your system. The Leopard Web site lists Bonjour, Spotlight, and Quick Look as being sandboxed. This is interesting because those are all services that look at arbitrary files or network packets, making them more vulnerable to a popular type of attack called fuzzing, where the attacker plays with input (like files and network packets) using automatic tools, looking for a data stream that will choke the recipient service. The infamous Wi-Fi hack (see the TidBITS series "To the Maynor Born: Cache and Crash") was discovered using fuzzing, as were most of the bugs in the Month of Apple Bugs (see "MoAB Is My Washpot," 2007-02-19). I'll be curious to see the entire list of sandboxed applications, and if Safari and QuickTime are included since they are also exposed to this type of attack.

Other Notable Improvements -- While perhaps not as significant as the updates we've already talked about, Leopard also includes a bunch of other security improvements. The Mac OS X firewall, based on the open source ipfw program, has been improved and now includes the capability to block network access to individual applications. I've heard rumors that Apple's default firewall rules are no longer user accessible, which would be a major step backwards, but letting the firewall control individual applications is a long-desired feature for us security geeks.

The Keychain has been enhanced to manage multiple user certificates for email encryption and digital signatures better, which will be welcome for those of us with multiple email accounts. Encrypted disk images now use 256-bit keys instead of 128-bit keys (much more than twice as strong), and although I don't know anyone who can break a 128-bit key, thanks to the way AES functions, performance should be essentially unaffected.

A few changes help improve compatibility for those of us using Macs in corporate environments. Native VPN support has been updated, and Windows SMB packet signing is now available, to provide compatibility with encrypting Windows file servers. Apple also enhanced file sharing with more granular access control lists, enabling more control over who can access your shared files. (Glenn Fleishman's "Take Control of Sharing Files in Leopard" has all the details there.) While useful in any environment, I suspect some of these improvements were added to help with sharing in corporate environments and to complement the access controls in Windows environments.

Apple hid a few security features in other parts of the Leopard. One I'm really looking forward to is the guest account that purges itself entirely after the guest user logs out (for details, check out Kirk McElhearn's "Take Control of Users & Accounts in Leopard"). While I don't let many people touch my MacBook Pro, there are occasions when I want to allow temporary access so someone can copy a file from me, check email or look something up online. A temporary guest account is a great way to enable this safely and without leaving even a trace on my Mac afterwards.

We'll also now get to see the encryption status of wireless networks right from the menu bar, so you can avoid even bothering to connect to protected networks. Those of you with kids gain improved parental controls that include Web filters, activity monitoring, and even a built-in filter for Wikipedia. Finally, with the inclusion of DTrace and a new instrumentation interface, we security geeks can really dig into the system internals and see what's going on. I expect to see more than a few security tools that take advantage of this capability.

One open question I'll be checking the moment my copy of Leopard arrives is whether Input Managers are still part of Leopard. Input Managers are a valuable feature to enhance applications, but they are also unfortunately a serious security risk (see Matt Neuburg's discussion of this in "Are Input Managers the Work of the Devil?," 2006-02-20). Apple has hinted that Input Managers might be restricted in Leopard, and despite the cries from some in the development community, I believe Input Managers need to be changed to improve our security or eliminated altogether.

Overall, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is perhaps the most significant update in the history of Mac OS X - perhaps in the history of Apple - from a security standpoint. It marks a shift from basing Macintosh security on hard outside walls to building more resiliency and survivability into the core operating system. We still need to see how these features hold up once security researchers get their hands on them, but the security future looks promising and I'll sleep better at night knowing my mother can still safely bank online.

[Rich Mogull currently works as an independent security consultant and writer through Securosis.com after having spent seven years as an analyst with Gartner.]

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If you're still hanging on to Classic, and to fonts that exist only in Classic, this might be a good time to straighten out any old font suitcases that you want to bring forward into Leopard.Show full article

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[With the word on the Web being that Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard doesn't support the Classic environment, we asked Sharon Zardetto, author of three Take Control titles about fonts, including the soon-to-be-released "Take Control of Fonts in Leopard," to give TidBITS readers the low-down on how to make sure old font suitcases from Classic are successfully packed for their trip to the future with Leopard. -Tonya]

If you're planning to upgrade to Leopard but are still hanging on to the Classic environment, it's probably time to let go: reports indicate that Leopard won't let you run it, even on a PowerPC-based Mac (Intel-based Macs can't run Classic even under Tiger). But before you go bravely out into the Leopard world, take stock of your fonts - because if you have old ones hanging around, this could be your last chance to straighten out your font suitcase files for free, using Apple's ancient Font/DA Mover utility, which you can still run under Classic.

Two types of font files that predate Mac OS X are still totally useable, but possibly prone to problems: Mac TrueType suitcases and PostScript Type 1 suitcase files (the "screen font" companion files to the "printer font" files). Both of these suitcase-type files have icons that are stamped FFIL and are identified as "Font Suitcase" as their Kind in the Finder.

These elderly font files might have inherent internal problems (for the most part, those can be identified, although not fixed, by Font Book's automatic validation process), but the problems I'm referring to here are user-introduced ones.

Pack Your Suitcases for Leopard -- To use old fonts in Leopard without trouble, make sure that your suitcase files are:

• Limited to a single type of font. An older suitcase might contain both Mac TrueType and older bitmapped fonts; you should have the TrueType fonts alone in one suitcase, and the bitmapped fonts alone in another if they're serving as the companions for PostScript Type 1 fonts.
• Confined to a single font family, but with all its faces. Wolfson, Wolfson Bold, Wolfson Italic, and Wolfson Bold Italic all go in one suitcase; Wolfson Gothic is a different family and goes in a different suitcase file.
• Named for the font family within. Don't succumb to "MyFavorites" because that's just not helpful, even if your taste won't ever change.

In addition, although pre-Mac OS X systems allowed "loose," non-suitcased font files (a single TrueType face, for instance), Mac OS X can't use that kind of file, and it must be put into a suitcase.

If you remember the ease with which you could manipulate fonts and suitcases under Mac OS 9, you'll be disappointed that you can't do that under Classic - because Classic isn't really an operating system, it just pretends to be under pre-Leopard systems. But what you can do is download Font/DA Mover 4.1, last updated for System 6 (no, that's not a typo!) and run that under Classic to clean up your old suitcase files.

Sometimes you just have to go back before you can go forward.

If You Don't Have Classic Already -- If you don't have the option of working under Classic, you needn't scrap your old suitcase files. Two utilities that run under Tiger - Smasher ($50) and FontDoctor ($70) - let you manipulate suitcases, and they will, presumably, be updated for Leopard. Both are quite pricey if all you need to do is shuffle suitcase contents. FontDoctor, which is available as a standalone program or with the font manager Suitcase Fusion ($100), also fixes corrupt font files.

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What is (or are) Spaces? Will it actually make your life better? Could it be the coolest thing since unsliced bread? Could it be a major reason for upgrading to Leopard? This article introduces the concepts behind Spaces and gets you started using it.Show full article

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When Apple posted its list of 300 features that are new in Leopard, your eyes may have glazed over. Many of these new features won't mean anything to you until you've tried them, and, in Apple's list, you can't readily distinguish something small and cute from something massive and profound. (Let's face it, the "Arabesque Screen Saver," while pleasant, is hardly on a par with being able to "Back Up Everything" with Time Machine.) Furthermore, some new features are just hard to describe in a sentence or two, so a proper sense of their implications doesn't come across to the reader. In my view, Spaces is one of those features: It's massive and profound, but Apple's own explanation fails to do it justice. If someone asks you, "Why upgrade to Leopard?" the three little words, "To get Spaces," could be a sufficient reply. For sheer productivity potential, making your computer easier and slicker to work with, Spaces may be the single most important benefit of upgrading to Leopard. In this article, I'll try to help you see why.

So... what is Spaces?

Well, it's a "virtual desktop" implementation. Now, all you Unix X Window virtual desktop users can stop reading right here, or at least skip the next few paragraphs. Those of you who have tried VirtueDesktops (abandoned early in 2007) or the commercial CodeTek VirtualDesktop also have a sense of what Spaces is about (though these, to be clear, were effectively hacks; the only clean way to implement a virtual desktop feature is to integrate it at system level into the windowing system, as Apple has now done with Spaces). Right now, I want to talk mostly to the virtual desktop newbies who haven't a clue. You others, stick your fingers in your ears and go "La la la," okay?

Okay, clueless newbies - we're all alone together. Come closer. Closer! Good. Here's the deal.

Spaces is all about straightening out the clutter of windows on your screen. What is the biggest problem with windows? It's that there are always too many of them, and most of them are covered by other windows. Thanks to Mac OS X's great memory management, you can run lots of applications at once, and you can have lots of windows open at once; but, no matter how big your screen is, you usually can't actually see all of more than one or (at most) two windows at the same time. Everything else is just a big overlapping mess. And on Mac OS X, as opposed to earlier Macintosh systems, it's even more of a big overlapping mess because the windows of different applications can end up all intertwingled with one another.

The result is that when you're trying to get anything done that involves working in more than one window at once, things get difficult. There's a window in front, and then there's everything else, little corners and title bars sticking out here and there, like the aftermath of a wild game of Fifty-Two Pickup. Where is the precise other window you need to be able to see at this moment? You have no clue.

Notice, please, that I keep talking about windows - not applications. When you come down to the nitty-gritty, getting complex stuff done on your computer is not really about applications; it's about particular windows. Those windows might come from any applications: they could be different windows of the same application, or windows from various different applications.

That's why the simple tools available to you for switching between applications are never quite enough. For example, you can simplify the display on your screen by choosing Hide Others from the frontmost application's menu. Now only the windows of this application are showing. But perhaps you really want to see just one of this application's many windows, plus one window from some other application. So first you might scurry around minimizing the windows from this application that you don't want to see. Then you have to switch to the other application, making it visible, and find its desired window and bring it to the front and position it. Then you have to switch back to the first application. Now you can work in both windows. Great, but what happens when you suddenly need a different window from the first application? You have to hunt for it in the Dock, and when you expand it, there it is, blocking everything and complicating the picture. Or perhaps you need a window from a third application: you bring that application to the front, and presto, all of that application's windows are plastered all over the screen, blocking everything and complicating the picture. Is it any wonder tabs have become so popular?

Spaces is all about this problem. It lets you work with sets of windows. That's all a space is - a particular set of windows. When you are "in" this space, just this set of windows is visible. When you switch so that you are "in" a different space, a different set of windows is visible. In the previous paragraph, I was trying to make two points: (1) it's hard to arrange things to see just the small set of windows you need for Task A, and then, (2) when you want to perform Task B, bringing different windows into play complicates the whole picture. With Spaces, Space A could consist of just the windows you need for Task A, and Space B could consist of just the windows you need for Task B. You can then switch between spaces, meaning visible window sets, and everything stays simple: you are always seeing all and only the windows you want to see.

So the main thing Spaces is about is switching spaces. In fact, you can turn Spaces on and never switch spaces, and then you won't even know or care that Spaces is on! You'll be living in exactly the same world you always lived in. In fact - oh my gosh! We'd better actually turn Spaces on, or all the rest of this discussion is going to be pointless! So, do this:

Choose Apple Menu > System Preferences. Click Exposé & Spaces. Click Spaces. Check "Enable Spaces." Whew! Now Spaces is on.

So how do you switch spaces? There are four (count 'em, four) ways:

• All Spaces mode. This is what you get when you press F8, or click the Spaces icon in the Dock. (If you don't see the Spaces icon in the Dock, drag it in from the Applications folder.) It behaves a little like Exposé, in that it provides a reduced, schematic version of the world: all your spaces are shown at once, in a grid, and now you can click one to switch to that space. This is nice because you can sort of see what windows are in each space. Plus, if you want to get really cool, while you're in All Spaces mode you can press F9 to enter Exposé's All Windows mode, and now each individual space shows each of its individual windows (which are getting pretty tiny at this point) and you can click a window to pick a space and a particular window all at once! (Note: I'm saying "F8" and "F9", but those might not be your actual shortcuts for these actions, because they are customizable.)
• Use the Spaces menu. If you don't see the Spaces menu, check "Show Spaces in menu bar" in the Spaces preference pane in System Preferences. It displays nothing but numbers: the numbers of your spaces (1, 2, and so on). Choose one to switch to that space.
• Use a number. By default, the number shortcuts for switching between spaces involve the Control key. So, press Control-1. Now press Control-2. Congratulations, you just switched spaces.
• Use an arrow key. This is trickier, because it relies on a concept I haven't introduced yet. You see, your spaces are imagined as lying in a grid. You can see this imaginary grid in the Spaces preference pane where we just were a little while ago. By default, there are four spaces, and the grid is a 2-by-2 rectangle. (This grid is customizable - you can change how many spaces you have and how the grid is arranged - but for this example I'm pretending you haven't yet departed from the default.) So if you are in space 1, you can switch to space 2 by pressing Control-Right arrow, because space 2 is imagined as being to the right of space 1; but, again, if you are in space 1, you can switch to space 3 by pressing Control-Down arrow, because space 3 is imagined as being below space 1. Feeling a bit seasick? Maybe it would better not to use this way of switching between spaces until you are a certified expert (or just plain certified).

There is one more elementary concept connected with Spaces that we need to get clear on: How does a window come to be in a particular space to start with? Well, there are two ways:

• You created the window while you were in that space. For example, you are in space 2, and you start up TextEdit. TextEdit wasn't running before, and when it launches it creates a new window. So you are in space 2 and you are creating a new window, and therefore that new window will be in space 2. Of course there are many other ways to create a new window in various applications.
• You moved the window from one space to another. Huh? Since you can only be in one space at a time, how can you possibly do that? Well, if you're in All Spaces mode, you can actually drag a miniaturized window directly from one space to another. Or, while you are in one space, hold the mouse down on a window's title bar and switch directly to another space with a keyboard shortcut; the window will travel with you to the new space. Or, drag the window to the edge of the screen and pause with the mouse still down and at the screen's edge; you'll switch spaces automatically, bringing the window with you. Keen, eh?

That's all there is to know about elementary use of Spaces. I'm not going to talk about "application bindings" right now; it's too advanced for this discussion (you can learn more about that by experimentation, or you can check out my new ebook, "Take Control of Customizing Leopard," for more info). But there is just one point that I want to leave you with as you start experimenting with Spaces, and it's this: Spaces is complicated but simple. It's complicated because there are lots of different scenarios, but it's simple because Spaces always does "the right thing."

For example, let's say you've opened TextEdit in space 2, and that's the only place where any TextEdit windows are. And let's say you're now in space 1. And let's say you use the Dock, or Command-Tab, to switch to TextEdit. What will happen??? Well, what's the right thing? TextEdit's windows are all in space 2, so the only sensible thing is that you should automatically be switched into space 2 so you can see them. And sure enough, that's exactly what does happen. I could go on and on positing various scenarios of greater and greater complexity, but that's pointless; all you need to know is that Spaces will behave sensibly and simply, and that you'll catch on to its logic almost immediately with a little experimentation.

So, congratulations: You are no longer a clueless newbie. You're a clued-in newbie! With a little practice, you will soon find ways to use Spaces that will make your computer life simpler and easier. I can't tell you what they are because I don't know what kind of thing you do. Perhaps you'll usually have a space for all your Internet apps and another space for all your writing apps. Perhaps you'll have spaces for certain particular tasks that you typically perform. It's all up to you. I do have one piece of advice, though: Try it, you'll like it! Whether you've got a big multi-monitor setup or a tiny portable screen, Spaces has the potential to make your life a lot easier. You simply have to remember to use it. With a little practice, you will.

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Leopard overhauls file sharing for services like AFP (remembered fondly as AppleShare), Samba, and FTP, while bringing back the long-missed shared folders options. The new approach makes it much easier for any user to share files over a network or the Internet. Show full article

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I'm a jaded Mac OS X user. Since 10.2, when Apple made a host of basic functional improvements over 10.1, I've expected mostly incremental changes with each new system release. iChat AV and Spotlight - but, for me, not Dashboard nor Exposé - were notable marquee exceptions. So it was with a heavy heart that I prepared to work on "Take Control of Sharing Files in Leopard" with a beta of Leopard obtained through my membership in the Apple developer program a few months ago. I expected that Apple would refresh interfaces and add a few new items, but nothing more.

I was pleasantly surprised. Apple not only consolidated file sharing options for Apple Filing Protocol (AFP), Samba (or SMB), and FTP into one place, but they added back folder sharing, a feature never seen in Mac OS X, even though it was widely used in Mac OS 9 and releases before that.

Apple's changes allowed me to cut more than 30 pages from the book while improving its utility: no longer do you need to edit text configuration files and change obscure settings. It's mostly check a box, click a button, and choose a value from a pop-up menu. As Steve Jobs would say, boom.

Major Streamlining -- Let me give you a quick overview of what has changed in file sharing.

• AFP, Samba, and FTP are all controlled from one place. In Tiger and before, Apple gave its own names to AFP and Samba (Personal File Sharing and Windows Sharing), and assigned them to three separate checkboxes in the Sharing preference pane's Services tab. In Leopard, there is a single File Sharing service in the Sharing preference pane that consolidates access for all three services.


• Folder sharing. It's a blast from the past! You can take any folder or mounted drive and share it as though it were a volume. Share like it's 1999! Or 1997.
• Granular access permissions. The File Sharing service lets you assign specific read and write permissions for users and groups to each volume.
• Sharing Only accounts. Apple neatly added a way to create accounts that are enabled only for sharing, and lack a home directory or permission to log in via SSH.
• Guest account. There's a guest account that has a separate choice for allowing password-free server access to specific folders. It has some limits that I'll discuss later.
• Finder access to sharing. Apple rejiggered how servers appear and how volumes are mounted in the Finder to make life much better for average users and power users alike.

Let's look at how this works for setting up file sharing.

File Sharing Setup -- With File Sharing selected in the Sharing preference pane, you might be briefly baffled as to where you go to turn on any of the three sharing protocols. Click the Options button, and you'll find a checkbox for each of AFP, Samba, and FTP, which can be enabled in any combination. Samba access is enabled for specific accounts due to concerns about its method of storing passwords being easier to crack than Apple's very strong method. (This is unrelated to AFP, Samba, and FTP passwords being transferred over a network; only Samba passwords are encrypted by default.)

The main File Sharing dialog linked previously shows two lists: Shared Folders and Users. Any mounted volume or folder that you're sharing as a network volume appears in the list at left. To add a folder to that list, either drag it in, or, in the Finder, select a folder or volume, choose Get Info, and check Shared Folder. You can also click the + sign below the list and then navigate to and select folders or volumes.

When you select a shared folder - you can only select one at a time - the associated access rights show up in the Users list. The Unix users already assigned to a folder appear, and you can add or remove users and groups.

For each user or group, you can choose one of three types of access: Read Only, Read & Write, and Write Only (Drop Box). With the write-only option, Leopard creates a Drop Box folder in the volume to which the specified remote user or users with access can copy files, but whose contents they can't view - it can't be opened. (The special Everyone user, which encompasses all users including the Guest account, has an extra status of No Access. It's a way to disable access without removing the folder from the Shared Folders list.)

To add users, you click the + sign below the list, and then choose named users under Mac OS X or people in your Address Book. For Address Book selections, Leopard prompts you to create a password, which it uses to then make a Sharing Only user account, if you haven't already done so.

The File Sharing options all take effect right away - you don't need to restart anything or click other buttons to make the changes available immediately. Shared volumes can be accessed by any other system - with AppleTalk enabled on the appropriate network interface, you can even discover shared folders from Mac OS 9. (See the postscript at the end of this article for a discussion on AppleTalk.)

Making the Right Kind of Drop Box -- There's one multi-step process worth walking through: Creating a drop box. A drop box is a folder with special permissions that lets a remote user with write-only privileges drop files into the folder, but not open the folder to view or copy its contents. (This can be used among users on the same computer; it is what each user's Public folder's Drop Box folder is partly for.)

You can set user permissions for a shared folder to be Write Only (Drop Box), but that makes the entire volume write-only. When a user mounts that volume, they're told that they can't read the contents, which could be confusing.

Instead of making the volume a drop box, create a nested folder, inside which you put the drop box. First, create a folder that will be the volume; let's call it "Put Files Here". Next, share that folder by dragging it into File Sharing's Shared Folders list. Select it in that list, and choose Read Only for all the users who need access. Don't put any files in that folder.

Now create a new folder called "Drop Box" inside "Put Files Here". Select "Drop Box" in the Finder, choose File > Get Info, and in the Sharing & Permissions section, set all the users you want to limit to Write Only (Drop Box) access. (You may need to click the lock icon and enter an administrator password to make this change.)

When users mount "Put Files Here" as a volume and open its window in the Finder, all they'll see in that window is the "Drop Box" folder with a downward-pointing arrow indicating it can only be written to.

Finder Tune-up -- The way that volumes are mounted in the Finder and appear on the Desktop has hardly changed since we moved from the Chooser in the classic Mac OS to the often-problematic network browsing in Mac OS X. Leopard reworks this, partly by combining some of the aspects of the Chooser with Mac OS X - no kidding!

You can still use Go > Connect to Server in the Finder to type in an AFP name, an IP address, a domain name, or the name by which Windows identifies a shared volume, or to pull up a server you've added to favorites. But the browsing option is what's new and improved in Leopard.

In any Finder window, you can now see available network servers and connected servers in the sidebar. You can choose whether servers visible over the network and connected servers appear in the sidebar by selecting Finder > Preferences, clicking the Sidebar button, and unchecking Connected Servers or Bonjour Computers. (The list of Bonjour Computers includes Windows servers advertised via NetBIOS servers, too.)

Select a server in the sidebar, and Leopard automatically tries to connect as Guest using AFP, and shows you the available volumes in such a case. Click the Connect As button in the upper right of the window, and you can use a standard server login dialog to enter a username and password. If you store your login details in the Keychain, the server automatically logs on the next time you click it after unmounting.

Networked volumes no longer appear on the Desktop by default unless you use the Finder's preferences to make them appear. Choose Finder > Preferences, click General, and check Connected Servers. Otherwise you will, like me, be scratching your head, wondering where those volumes went to!

In an extremely welcome change, Apple has added a bit of underlying magic called AutoFS to eliminate the Finder lockups (complete with the spinning pizza of death) that we've all grown to loathe when mounted network volumes become inaccessible for some reason. With AutoFS, Leopard spawns a separate thread - a separate thought process, as it were - to handle mounting the volume. You no longer wait for it to mount, and your system shouldn't lock the Finder if the volume suddenly becomes unavailable. I have yet to test this extensively, but AutoFS has worked in this way on other Unix systems for quite a while.

Administrators and File Sharing -- Mac OS X has always had an issue with the relationship between users who had been granted administrator privileges in the Accounts preference pane and file sharing. Until Leopard, if you turned file sharing on, an administrative user could access all mounted hard drives, and any folders within those drives that they had permission to access. That typically included everything but the contents of folders in other users' home directories.

Leopard doesn't share anything automatically except the Public folder in each user's home directory, which is typically empty. To share your startup drive, for instance, you add the drive to the Sharing Folders list and its default permissions are pre-filled in the Users list.

Here's where it gets tricky. Three entries appear in the Users list: System Administrator, which is the Unix root account, set to Read & Write; Administrators, a group comprising all users on the system with administrator access, set to Read & Write; and Everyone, a Unix group comprised of all user accounts on the system, set to Read Only.

You might think, well, I'd like to remove administrative users' access, so I'll just select Administrators in the User list and click the - (minus) button below the list. Wait! You can hear the spooky music starting as you move toward that button. Removing Administrators from the Users list doesn't affect just the sharing permissions attached to the shared volume, but also the underlying file permissions used for local access.

In my test, my startup volume's icon shifted from a hard disk to a folder with a red circle icon on it with a horizontal line. If I'd restarted the machine at that point, I would not like to think about what might have happened. Adding the Administrators group back in restored the drive's icon and access.

My advice? Don't share entire drives or partitions unless you're sure you want all administrator-level users to have access to the files they would if they were sitting in front of the computer with direct access.

What's Missing -- While Leopard is a big step forward, Apple made a few choices I hope to see improved upon or at least explained in future updates:

• The Guest account can't access FTP. For some reason, the Guest account can access only AFP and Windows servers. This might be a security feature, but I've not yet found a way to override this limitation; I'm still looking. (It probably requires a configuration change, but Apple has changed how it creates configuration files for services in Leopard, too.)
• Secure FTP (SFTP) isn't integrated with File Sharing (nor has it been in the past). The encrypted FTP server option requires that you turn on Remote Access in the Sharing preference pane. SFTP is technically a component of SSH, a way of securely connecting to remote systems for command-line sessions. So SFTP honors Mac OS X accounts, but doesn't honor the shared folders you've set up. Any Mac OS X user can connect via SFTP to any drive or mounted volume that they have permission to access, which typically means almost every one outside of system resources and individual users' home directory contents. It would be nice to see SFTP more fully integrated with File Sharing, although Apple is working with constraints that are designed into SSH.
• AFP login options have disappeared. Most of these options had to do with secure logins, and my colleagues in the worlds in which secure AFP was used say that setup was always somewhat wonky. TidBITS friend Chris Pepper reports that they aren't available in the Leopard Server administration tool, either.

More Information -- If you're looking for more information about sharing files in Leopard, check out my new book on this topic, "Take Control of Sharing Files in Leopard." The 89-page book is full of step-by-step instructions for working with everything mentioned above, plus a detailed section on sharing iTunes and iPhoto libraries among users on the same computer or users connecting across the network. The book starts with a set of sections on how to figure out what kind of file sharing best fits your needs and the challenges that face you - along with their appropriate solutions.

A Postscript about AppleTalk and AFP -- AppleTalk has a tricky history relative to AFP. While Apple enabled AFP-over-IP or AppleShare-over-IP using Internet networking instead of AppleTalk as the transport mechanism starting with Mac OS 9, it didn't disable AppleTalk as an option until Tiger. Further, the way that AFP volumes are advertised on the local network under Mac OS X since 10.2 isn't backwards compatible with earlier system versions. In brief, and I believe I now have all the nuance in here:

• Mac OS 8 can access Tiger and Leopard AFP-shared volumes and see those volumes in the Chooser if AppleTalk is enabled on Leopard on the network interface feeding the network that the Mac OS 8 computer is connected to, such as an Ethernet network.
• Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X 10.1 to 10.3 can access AFP-shared volumes via either AppleTalk or AFP-over-IP. (Mac OS X 10.0 doesn't allow AppleTalk connections, but I can't imagine anyone in their right mind still running 10.0.)
• Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X 10.0 to 10.1 can't discover AFP volumes that are shared without AppleTalk on the network they're connected to, but they can connect by IP address or domain name.
• Mac OS X 10.2 and later can use Rendezvous (10.2, 10.3) and Bonjour (10.4, 10.5) to discover AFP-shared volumes.

Apple's technical note on the matter has quite a lot of additional detail that should help people using networks with different versions of the Mac OS sort it all out.

In short, if you're still using a variety of older versions of Mac OS on your network, you should enable AppleTalk. Tiger and Leopard can't connect to an AFP server via AppleTalk, but they can serve it up for older machines.

To enable AppleTalk in Leopard, open the Network preferences pane, select the interface - like Ethernet - and choose the AppleTalk tab. Check the Make AppleTalk Active box. You can have AppleTalk active on only a single interface at a time under the regular version of Leopard; the server version lets you activate AppleTalk on multiple interfaces.

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When Leopard arrived, I couldn't resist slipping into something more comfortable... picture included!Show full article

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When the FedEx delivery truck arrived around 11 AM today with my pre-ordered copy of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard from the Apple Store, I quickly slipped my feet into my trusty new leopard slippers in order to go outside and sign for the box. I learned that Apple had warned FedEx ahead of time to expect a lot of Leopard packages today and that FedEx had been asked to try to deliver them as early as possible. He said that for the Ithaca-based FedEx branch, there were about 150 boxes. (Thanks to Adam for taking my photo.)

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You'll be reading about Leopard in TidBITS for some time, but for significantly more detail about Apple's new operating system, check out the five ebooks we've just published - over 650 pages all told!Show full article

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Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is finally here, and we can now share with you the fruits of an incredible amount of work over the last few months: five of our most popular ebooks completely updated for Leopard, all available right now. You can get help upgrading to Leopard, customizing all of Leopard's new features, sharing files much more elegantly than in the past, managing your fonts with Leopard's new font activation capabilities, setting up user accounts, and much more.

To the thousands of you who pre-ordered our Leopard ebooks, thanks! You can now click the Check for Updates link (or red starburst) on your pre-order PDFs to download the full versions. If you haven't yet ordered, we have three options for you:

1. Buy just the ebooks you want individually. They're all $10, except for the 217-page "Take Control of Fonts in Leopard," which is $15. If you've bought the Tiger or Panther versions of any of these ebooks, click the Check for Updates button in your copy to save 20%.
2. Buy our core "Take Control of Upgrading to Leopard" and "Take Control of Customizing Leopard" titles for $15, saving 25%. This bundle is linked on the left side of these books' pages on the Take Control Web site.
3. Buy our "I Love Leopard" bundle of all five ebooks - over 650 pages in all! - for only $38.50, saving 30% off the cover price. Again, the bundle is accessible from the left side of each book's Web page.

You can read more about each of the ebooks on our Web site, but in short:

• "Take Control of Upgrading to Leopard" is the latest edition of the title that launched Take Control back in 2003 with Panther. In it, Joe Kissell shares his hard-won advice about the best ways to install, test your installation, troubleshoot problems, get going in Leopard, and more.
• "Take Control of Customizing Leopard" provides a tour of new and revamped features in Leopard by the ever-opinionated Matt Neuburg. Matt demystifies Time Machine, shows you how to use Spaces effectively, and explains why Spotlight in Leopard is so much improved over Tiger.
• "Take Control of Users & Accounts in Leopard" describes different types of accounts in Leopard, which ones are right for the different people who use your Mac, how to share files between accounts, and what you can limit with new features in Leopard's parental controls. Kirk McElhearn also explains how to create and use a troubleshooting account should problems crop up.
• "Take Control of Sharing Files in Leopard" makes file sharing easy between two Macs, among a mixed-platform office workgroup, or between far-flung computers on the Internet. Wi-Fi guru Glenn Fleishman explains each of Leopard's file sharing technologies and helps you connect to file servers from a variety of major operating systems.
• "Take Control of Fonts in Leopard" explains everything you need to know about how fonts work in Mac OS X and what has changed with Leopard. In particular, veteran Mac author Sharon Zardetto looks at Leopard's new and updated fonts, along with Leopard's new font activation capabilities, font previewing via Cover Flow, and font sample printing.

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Six things about Leopard I just can't stand. I've been dying to talk about these, and now I'm going to.Show full article

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Let's all do the Leopard Moan. Yes, Time Machine is cool, Spaces is neat, but oh (moan!), the interface! What were these people thinking? Yes, you've got a rant inside you, waiting to howl to the moon, and so do I; it's a full moon right now, so let's take this opportunity to get it out of our systems (pun intended). Herewith, then, some things I just can't stand about Leopard.

The Dock -- The Dock now expresses itself as a silly reflective shelf. My objection to this is not merely the business of "wasting CPU cycles drawing trendy 3D junk." In order to accommodate the reflection, the Dock icons have to sit considerably higher than before, robbing the user of valuable screen real estate. Even worse, the indicators of an icon's status, in particular the marker that tells you that an application in the Dock is currently running, are darned near invisible, lost in the reflective shelf's shiny suckitude. Luckily, at the last minute, after the last seed but before the Golden Master, Apple relented and provided an alternative mode of Dock display; this alternative is now the default if you move the Dock to the left or right side of the screen, and can be applied even to a Dock at the bottom of the screen by using some Terminal trickery. In short, issue these two commands in Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES
killall Dock

The Grey -- Remember when your Mac had a 9-inch screen and every pixel was either black or white? It looks like Apple does, too, with nostalgia. This system declares war on color. The result is just plain ugly. That's right, folks, you heard it here: the "unified textured look" of windows in Leopard, for which iTunes was evidently the incubation laboratory all along, is ugly. The title bar of a window is big and grey. The title bar of a window that isn't frontmost is a lighter grey, which is backwards: surely it's the frontmost window which should light up, not all the background windows? In the Finder, they've also slapped a grey background behind the sidebar; since the text and icons in the sidebar are also now tiny (with no preference to make them any larger), they are both ugly and illegible. An empty folder icon is no longer a lovely shaded three-dimensional-looking blue filing folder; it's a flat grey rectangle. Plus, standard folder icons, as for the Applications, Library, Users, and other built-in folders, are now uniformly blue-grey as well; there does seem to be some kind of icon drawn on each of these folders, but it's tiny and in another grey, so it's virtually invisible. I had no idea how much I relied on the subliminal cues of the large, colorful icons on these folders, until they vanished and I found myself lost in a uniform Finder.

The Menu Bar -- The menu bar is now somewhat transparent. So if your desktop picture is purple, the menu bar is also slightly purple. If your desktop picture has stripes or bright dots, the menu bar has stripes or bright dots. Menus that drop down from the menu bar are also somewhat transparent; they were before, too, but the native stripes that used to mask that fact are gone, so they inherit the problem. The result is that the menu bar, along with the menus themselves, is less prominent, harder to read, and has a somewhat unready or disabled look, entirely inappropriate to its function.

The Stacks -- Let's pause to remember how a folder in the Dock used to work, as we kiss it goodbye forever. In Tiger, the story is like this. You have a folder in the Dock. It looks like a folder. Click it and it opens in the Finder. Command-click it and you view it (in its containing folder) in the Finder. Control-click it and you get a hierarchical menu of its contents, the contents of its folders, and so on. Just about all of that is now gone. Gone! What was wrong with it? Nothing! It was great. But now, a folder in the Dock, if it has any files in it, doesn't look like a folder; it looks like a file (in particular, it takes on the preview of one of the files it contains). The hierarchical menu of the folder's contents is completely missing. Worst of all, clicking on the folder icon doesn't open the folder; instead, it pops up a lot of icons representing the contents of folder. That's okay, I guess, if any of those preview icons represents a document that you wanted to open, and if you can tell that from the preview icon; in that case, just click it. But I can't usually tell anything from preview icons, and anyhow, the main thing I want to do with a folder is usually not to open a document within it. What I want is a Finder window listing the folder's contents, so I can study that list, or sort it, or navigate further into the hierarchy, or whatever. In Leopard, arriving at such a Finder window is now a two-step process: first click the folder icon in the Dock; then find and click the "Show in Finder" button. Or, hold the mouse button down on the folder icon in the Dock to make the menu appear; then click the Open menu item. Yeeesh! Talk about making something hard that should have been easy.

The Help -- When you choose something from the Help menu in any application, what opens is no longer the Help Viewer application. It's an orphan window that floats over, and blocks your view of, everything else on the screen. It belongs to no application, so you can't hide it or switch away from it. Now, what's the most common thing to do while you're reading an application's help documentation? You read something in the Help, you switch to the application to try it; you see something in the application, you switch back to the Help to learn about it. No more. Now, as soon as the help window opens, you're stuck: you're in the help window and that's the only place you can be, until you close the window (or minimize it into the Dock). I suppose this is no problem at all if you have massive tracts of screen real estate, as in Al Gore's triple Cinema Display setup; but for most of us, it's horrible. This is going to be a disaster for professional authors of online help, such as, uh, me, because it makes our carefully written documentation effectively unusable. I've already started to make plans for writing my own alternative help application that will act like an ordinary application. The irony is that it took from Mac OS X 10.0 right through to 10.3 (Panther) before Help Viewer even started to become a pretty good application; now Apple has thrown all of that progress right out the window. The floating window, that is.

The Classic -- Apple might not like to condone or even to believe this fact, but there is a large installed user base out there consisting of people who, every now and then, have to run a Mac OS 9 application. Some of us have data in a Classic format, such as a HyperCard stack, and now and then we like to peek at that data. Some of us even make a living out of running a Classic application, as I do with FrameMaker. (It's still the best way on earth to create first-rate PDFs, or large structured documents; it's also an absolutely brilliant XML editor.) I was able to accept, when I acquired my first Intel-based Mac a few months ago, that it wasn't going to run Classic; I can well believe that there might be something about an Intel processor that inherently makes Classic emulation prohibitively difficult. But there is nothing about a new system version, running on a PowerPC-based Mac, that blocks Classic from running; Apple's decision not to support it in Leopard is arbitrary (and feels not a little spiteful).

There, I've done my screaming. The Great Moan is over. I had to do it, just this once. I've said what I had to say, and now I won't have to mention any of these things again. And maybe, just maybe, Apple will see fit to address some of these complaints in a forthcoming update to Leopard. I'm not holding my breath, but you never know.

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Leopard lets you share and share alike, offering your system up for remote viewing and control, as well as letting you take control of others' systems (with their permission). But Tiger can play nice, too, through built-in Mac OS X support and Chicken of the VNC.Show full article

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Screen sharing is the nifty new craze sweeping the nation - but Leopard users only need apply, right? No! You, too, if you're a Tiger user, can hop on the electric funk train. (Yes, I'm punchy following Leopard's release.) All it requires is a checkbox and maybe an extra piece of free software.

Screen sharing enables remote control of another Mac OS X system running Leopard. You turn the feature on in System Preferences by selecting the Sharing preference pane and checking the Screen Sharing box. (You can choose to limit access to certain users, too.) You can access a remote screen in one of four ways with Leopard - and a fifth trick works for Tiger:

• With iChat, any other iChat user running Leopard can share your screen with your permission (just as though they were initiating video chat), although you can control that behavior, too. Screen sharing via iChat can automatically traverse NAT gateways that handle private addressing for networks created by Wi-Fi and broadband routers; NAT otherwise stymies access from outside the local network.
• With the Screen Sharing program, which you can find hidden in the /System/Library/CoreServices folder (a folder chock-a-block with other nifty doodads, too). Launch Screen Sharing and then enter the IP address or domain name for the computer you want to connect to. With this method, the system you're trying to reach must have a routable IP address.
• On the local network via the new Sharing section on the Finder's sidebar. Select any server in the list, and then click Screen Sharing in the upper right, to the left of Connect As, if file sharing is also enabled on that same server, or by itself if just Screen Sharing is turned on.
• With a .Mac account that you use on multiple computers, the Back to My Mac feature provides access to both network volumes (via File Sharing) and remote control. (Back to My Mac, in turn, is activated in the .Mac preference pane in the Back to My Mac tab.) Back to My Mac, too, can handle NAT traversal.

The fifth approach couples Leopard's Screen Sharing feature with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. It turns out that you can make it possible to control a Mac running Tiger remotely from a Leopard-based Mac by turning on the Apple Remote Desktop service in the Sharing preference pane's Services tab on the Tiger Mac. That enables just Tiger-from-Leopard control.

For the Leopard-from-Tiger direction, you need a separate, free application. Screen Sharing is based on, and compatible with, VNC, a widely used remote-control protocol. You can thus use a VNC client under Tiger to connect to Leopard systems. First, on the Leopard Mac, in the Sharing preference pane's Screen Sharing item, click Computer Settings, and then check the VNC box and enter a password; note that VNC doesn't rely on or integrate with Mac OS X user accounts. Back on the Tiger Mac, install the free Chicken of the VNC, and use it to connect to and control the Leopard Mac. (A VNC client on Macs running older versions of Mac OS X or computers running other platforms can also work with Leopard's Screen Sharing.)

Chicken of the VNC can discover local systems, including those running Leopard, that are sharing screens by using Bonjour; or you can enter a remote, routable IP address.

Screen Sharing plus NAT traversal simplifies having remote access to your own system or systems, as well as providing tech support to colleagues and your family members.

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As Leopard rolls out around the world, we're hearing more and more about what third-party applications work, or don't, in the new Mac OS X. FileMaker, Inc. has posted an article in their knowledge base about known problems with FileMaker 9.Show full article

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As the scramble to install Leopard spreads across the globe, we're learning more and more about what software works, and what doesn't, in Apple's eagerly awaited new operating system.

Lots of applications seem to work fine, though most developers are holding off on official statements of compatibility until they've had an opportunity to test their software with the final release version of Mac OS X 10.5, which most developers could first obtain last Friday, along with the rest of us.

A few applications have known problems running under Leopard, and the folks over at FileMaker, Inc. have posted an article in their knowledge base on FileMaker's compatibility with Leopard. The company says FileMaker Server 9 and FileMaker Server 9 Advanced don't currently "deploy properly on Leopard," and they're working on a compatibility update. FileMaker Pro 9 and FileMaker Pro 9 Advanced "generally run on Leopard," with two known issues:

• Instant web publishing doesn't work
• FileMaker only works if its language version matches the region set in the Mac's "International Formats Region" preference under System Preferences. (The English language version, for example, only works when the Mac is set to the United States region.)

The company says it has not tested versions of FileMaker prior to FileMaker 9 under Leopard, and has no plans to update earlier versions.

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Now that Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is released, we're starting to see an expected set of updates and incompatibilities. Login and Keychain Update 1.0 corrects issues with accounts created in early versions of Mac OS X; the new Back to My Mac feature could allow someone with access to your .Mac account to take control of your machine; Apple warns Aperture users not to run the software while Time Machine is performing a backup; and a slew of compatibility updates are also available.Show full article

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Leopard may be the sixth release of Mac OS X, but it's important to remember that it's also a dot-zero release, the first version of a major update of the operating system. There are bound to be some incompatibilities and fixes that Apple is aware of but didn't get a chance to fix before the discs had to be pressed, or that have cropped up since hundreds of thousands of people started running it.

Here's a rundown of some current important issues with Leopard.

Login and Keychain Update 1.0 -- This update resolves an issue caused by using an account that was created in Mac OS X 10.1 or earlier, which used a different login authentication method. It also addresses connecting to some 802.11b/g wireless networks and changing the password of an account with FileVault enabled. The update is available via Software Update or as a 10 MB download.

Application Enhancer and Blue Screen After Installation -- Many people who run Unsanity's Application Enhancer utility are ending up stuck with a blue screen after performing an upgrade installation. Apple has posted an article with recommendations on how to recover from the problem (though your best bet is to make sure all of your utilities are disabled before upgrading as Joe recommends in "Take Control of Upgrading to Leopard," and that's especially true of system-level "haxies" like this). Unsanity claims the problem stems from people using versions of Application Enhancer earlier than 2.0.3, and that they're working on ensuring Leopard compatibility. (Most third-party developers didn't receive their final release versions of Leopard until after the retail copies shipped on Friday, which puts some of the blame for incompatibilities squarely on Apple's shoulders.)

Back to My Mac Security Warning -- Alan Oppenheimer and Open Door Networks are cautioning Leopard users to turn off the Back to My Mac feature due to a security vulnerability that enables anyone with access to your .Mac account password to control your Mac remotely. Back to My Mac is located in the .Mac preference pane, and is enabled by default. [Open Door has now posted more details.]

They write: "The problem came in when we selected the server Mac in the client's sidebar. Instead of either connecting to that Mac's File Sharing as a guest, or asking us for that Mac's password, Back to My Mac automatically connected to the server Mac's File Sharing as that Mac's owner without ever asking for the owner's name and password. Worse yet, the same thing happened when then clicking on 'Share Screen...' giving us full remote control of the Mac without ever entering its password."

Aperture and Time Machine -- Apple is advising users of its professional photography software that the Aperture database could become inconsistent if the program is running during a Time Machine backup (which occurs every hour). Apple's wording is interesting: "If you use Time Machine with Leopard, be sure to set your computer up so that Time Machine only does manual backups." Presumably this refers to being able to customize the Time Machine backup schedule, a feature Apple demonstrated but which didn't appear in the released version. Or, I could be reading it wrong and Apple just means that you manually switch Time Machine on in the Time Machine preference pane to trigger a backup.

Speaking of Aperture, Apple has also released Aperture 1.5.6 Update (a 130.6 MB download), which provides Leopard compatibility and addresses issues with iPhoto, the iLife Media Browser, and recovering an Aperture Library from a Vault.

Stability Updates from Apple -- Each of the following Apple software updates provide improved stability and compatibility with Leopard (and don't mention much else): iLife Support 8.1.1 (6 MB), iDVD 6.0.4 (6.5 MB), GarageBand 3.0.5 (14.4 MB), and Backup 3.1.2 (6.3 MB).

FileMaker Pro Has Known Glitches -- FileMaker Inc. has posted an article in their knowledge base on FileMaker's compatibility with Leopard. The company says FileMaker Server 9 and FileMaker Server 9 Advanced don't currently "deploy properly on Leopard," and they're working on a compatibility update. FileMaker Pro 9 and FileMaker Pro 9 Advanced "generally run on Leopard," with two known issues:

• Instant Web publishing doesn't work
• FileMaker works only if its language version matches the region set in the Mac's "International Formats Region" preference under System Preferences. (The English language version, for example, only works when the Mac is set to the United States region.)

The company says it has not tested versions of FileMaker prior to FileMaker 9 under Leopard, and has no plans to update earlier versions.

We'll write more if and when other notable problems arise.

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Leopard's new backup feature finally brings easy backups to the masses. But is it really all that? And when is that backups book of Joe's going to be updated, anyway?Show full article

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In "Take Control of Upgrading to Leopard," I spent a few pages talking about how to turn on and configure Time Machine, but I didn't go into much detail because I already have another book, "Take Control of Mac OS X Backups," which is all about backups and is therefore the proper place to put a full explanation of if, when, why, and how to use Leopard's new built-in backup feature. I am at this very moment working hard on a new version of that book that will tell you everything you want to know about Time Machine, and though I can't project an exact release date yet, we will certainly make it available as soon as we possibly can.

However, my work on the new book has been slowed down considerably by having to take time out, on at least a dozen occasions in the last few days, to answer email messages about what I think of Time Machine, how well or poorly it accomplishes some task, whether it's appropriate for enterprise backups or a suitable replacement for Retrospect, and so on. (The messages usually start, "I know you're probably going to cover this in an update to your backups book, but...") I am, of course, always happy to answer messages from readers, but I never dreamed Time Machine would turn into such a drain on my productivity! So, in the interest of heading off more inquiries for a few more days so that I can actually get the book finished, I'd like to take a moment here to offer my initial impressions of, and suggestions regarding, Time Machine. For more information... wait for the book!

Out of Time -- First, some bad news. At the Worldwide Developers Conference in June 2007 - just four months ago - Steve Jobs announced that Time Machine would work with an AirPort Disk (a USB hard drive attached to an AirPort Extreme N base station). As recently as two weeks ago, the same claim appeared on the Time Machine page on Apple's Web site. But then it mysteriously disappeared, and sure enough, the shipping version of Leopard offers no support for AirPort Disks. For whatever reason, presumably technical difficulties of some sort, Apple dropped that feature at the last minute. So, while it's still possible to back up multiple Macs in your home or office over a network, even wirelessly, doing so requires a host Mac (running Leopard or Leopard Server) - a step backward in convenience. The same limitation applies to NAS (network-attached storage) devices from other vendors. Although it may be possible to work around this problem, I wouldn't trust my backups to an unsupported hack, and I strongly discourage you from doing so as well.

That's not the only missing feature. Apple had previously claimed that Time Machine would support encryption, but it doesn't. It does keep FileVault archives encrypted, but the cost of doing so is not being able to back them up until you're logged out of your account - a significant inconvenience. Yet another missing feature is the capability to specify a time limit beyond which older files will be deleted from your backup disk; now Time Machine simply keeps going until it nearly fills up your disk, and then starts purging older files - with an optional warning, but without an option to offload those older files to other media for long-term storage.

Apart from things many of us expected because Apple had told us about them, Time Machine lacks numerous important features common in other backup programs. A biggie: it can't make bootable duplicates; if your hard drive dies, you'll spend long hours restoring your Time Machine backup to a new drive before you can get back to work. It doesn't let you schedule times when it won't run, though you can manually turn it on and off whenever you want. You can't specify more than one destination disk and switch between them automatically (as you might want to do, for example, to keep an extra backup offsite - something I recommend). (It is possible to work around this in various ways, but I have to do more experimentation before I can provide reliable advice.) You can't back up to an iDisk or to optical media. You can't compress your backups - you're going to need, at a bare minimum, free disk space 1.2 times the size of the data you want to back up. And although you can manually specify files, folders, or volumes to be excluded from your backups, Time Machine offers no intelligent filtering (for example, excluding all disk images or all downloaded videos).

Go Forward to Go Back -- I started with the bad news not to diss Time Machine or persuade you that you shouldn't use it, but to put it in perspective. It's the very first version of a brand-new technology. It has limits and bugs (such as a problem with Aperture - see "Leopard Early Fixes and Warnings"), and seemingly lost some features just before its initial release. So despite the one-click setup (very nice) and the groovy 3-D interface for restoring files (extra super nice), it is not the Ultimate Mac Backup Program. At least, not yet.

On the other hand, I can think of at least one excellent reason you might want to start using Time Machine right now: it's guaranteed to be compatible with Leopard! Some of your existing backup software may not be. For example, the developers of SuperDuper are working hard on a Leopard update, but it's not quite there yet. EMC has announced that a Leopard compatibility update for Retrospect will be available within 30 days, and Prosoft says that they're preparing an update to Data Backup 3. Among the backup software already working under Leopard is CrashPlan, thanks to an update on 27-Oct-07. A new version of Carbon Copy Cloner released last week appears to work with Leopard, but may have a few glitches left. And Apple's own Backup just had a minor update for Leopard compatibility (among other things). If you're using any of the dozens of other backup utilities out there, check with the developer for information on its support for Leopard.

Time Machine Impressions -- I've been using the final version of Leopard on my main Mac for the past few days, and based on what I've seen so far, Time Machine appears to work approximately as advertised. It does back up and restore files correctly when I ask it to. However, a few things are not quite as I expected:

• Hourly backups, even to a fast external hard drive with a FireWire 800 interface, often take as long as a half hour! So basically, Time Machine is actively copying files at least half the time. Why does it take so long? It appears that several factors are involved. First, I have .Mac Sync turned on, which results in quite a few files being modified (and therefore, marked as needing backup) every time it runs, whether manually or on a schedule. Ditto for iDisk Sync - since I have a local copy of my iDisk, every time I modify a file there, Time Machine wants to back up that (very large) disk image again. Also, I have Mail checking six IMAP accounts, and every time I get new mail, not only the messages themselves but also Mail's envelope index file and junk mail filter statistics are updated. A number of other background processes on my machine also change files fairly frequently. The net result: on my Mac, Time Machine backs up tens of thousands of files, totaling hundreds of megabytes, every single hour.
• Disk images are a bit of a problem. If you use Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion, you probably have a very large disk image to hold your Windows installation. Every time you change even a tiny file in Windows, Time Machine is obliged to back up that entire huge file again. The same goes for PGPdisk or even an encrypted disk image you create with Disk Utility to hold confidential files: any small change