An article in Wired News today warns of a potential security hazard in the iPhone:

...every application on the device—from the calculator on up—runs as “root,” i.e., with full system privileges. As a result, a serious vulnerability in any of these applications would allow hackers to gain complete control of the device.

While there are no published exploits for this vulnerability yet, and it is unlikely any will show up soon, security experts are warning that it may be only a matter of time, and any attacks that take advantage of this could have dire consequences:

With the limited bandwidth of the iPhone, malicious code would be unlikely to slow portions of the internet. But malware could wreak creative havoc of a different kind. It might, for example, cause a phone to call numbers without the user’s knowledge, seize text messages and a list of received and sent calls, turn the phone into a listening device, track the user’s location through nearby WiFi access points, or instruct the phone to snap photos of the user’s surroundings—including any companions who may be in view of the camera lens.

Apple plans to release an SDK to allow third parties to develop applications for the iPhone, but said it was working on ways to maintain the device’s security while doing so.

For legions of Mac OS X users, “Fix the F***ing Finder” has become a mantra, a battle call, if you will. For years, the Finder has gone mostly ignored, with little in the way of serious improvements. Sure Panther added the sidebar, but by and large the Finder has not seen much in the way of major enhancements since OS X’s release. The Finder needs a bit of help. Does Leopard finally fix the Finder?

Since we are still three days away from Leopard’s launch, all most of us--myself included--have to go off of as of now are screenshots of the Finder and videos posted on Apple’s web site. All I can do for now is speculate.

Finder’s flaws

In his many Mac OS X reviews over the years, John Siracusa of Ars Technica has dedicated a good portion of each review to the state of the FInder. In 2003, he wrote a ten-part essay on what was wrong with the Finder (at that point, Jaguar was the current OS X release) and how Apple could go about fixing it. His biggest gripes are, among other things, the lack of a true spatial (one window per folder) Finder and general inconsistency. There is currently the “browser” Finder mode and the quasi-spatial mode (triggered by clicking the pill button in the upper-right corner of the window) in the current Finder. I say it is a quasi-spatial mode because it allows for this sort of thing to happen:

That’s not exactly a one-window-per-folder…
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With Leopard’s release mere days away, Mac developers are starting to post information on how their apps will work under Leopard, and posting updates if necessary. This will be an ongoing list of news from Mac developers regarding Leopard compatibility. Go ahead and bookmark this page, because it will be updated as we learn more.

DEVELOPERS: If you have any information regarding Leopard compatibility and want to let us know, leave a comment or shoot us an email: .

Disclaimer

Note that at this time it is impossible to guarantee compatibility with the final release of Leopard until users get their hands on Leopard. With that in mind, take this information as a guidance, but not as a guarantee that applications will work with the final, shipping version of Leopard.

At any rate, here is Leopard compatibility info from various developers, in no particular order.

Panic

According to Cabel Sasser’s blog, Panic’s apps should run fine on Leopard for the most part. Transmit has a couple issues with Leopard, but an update to correct these issues is forthcoming.

Unsanity

At this time, Unsanity has not released any information on Leopard compatibility. Watch this space for more updates.

UPDATE: Unsanity has posted a compatibility info page.

M Cubed

According to the M Diced blog, Code Collector and Code Collector Pro should work fine in Leopard. There may be some minor issues with Minim, however.

Rogue Amoeba

The company has announced Fission 1.5.2, which adds Leopard support. See also this post in their company blog.

Delicious Monster

No official word regarding Delicious Library 1.6.6 yet; version 2.0 will be a Leopard-only release, though a release date has not yet been announced.

Plasq

No announcements yet. site

ThinkMac Software

No announcements yet. site

Flying Meat

No announcements yet. site

Realmac

Realmac deems RapidWeaver 3.6.4 to be “Leopard ready.”

MacRabbit

CSSEdit has been updated for Leopard (version 2.6).

FileMaker

Oddly enough, FileMaker Pro 9 and its various editions is not compatible with Leopard. The irony? FileMaker is a subsidiary of Apple.

The Omni Group

The Omni Group has posted Leopard compatibility information for their applications.

Blacktree

Quicksivler has been updated for LEopard. Their site is down at the moment, but here is the VersionTracker link.

Previous Days of Leopard articles

Days of Leopard is Deep Thought’s series of Leopard-related articles posted in the days leading up to and immediately following Leopard’s launch on October 26, 2007. Collect them all!

• Deck your Mac out Leopard-style
• Is Leopard really a major upgrade?

Apple has released its earnings results for its fourth fiscal quarter for 2007. The results? Revenue of $6.22 billion. Profits of $904 million. 2.164 million Macs sold (a new quarterly sales record). 10.2 million iPods sold. 1.119 million iPhones sold. Not bad.

“We are very pleased to have generated over $24 billion in revenue and $3.5 billion in net income in fiscal 2007,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We’re looking forward to a strong December quarter as we enter the holiday season with Apple’s best products ever.”

“Apple ended the fiscal year with $15.4 billion in cash and no debt,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. “Looking ahead to the first quarter of fiscal 2008, we expect revenue of about $9.2 billion and earnings per diluted share of about $1.42.”

Watch this post for live updates from the earnings conference call, which begins at 5 PM ET, 2 PM PT.

Conference call updates - reload for latest

In reverse-chronological order, updates every 2-3 minutes..

-3:02: And that’s a wrap! Podcast of the conference call will be available later on iTunes.
-3:01: Q: how much has each iPhone $100 rebate created in sales? A: not saying (basically)
-3:00 PM PDT: Q: asia pacific 2.5G or 3G? A: “nothing to announce today” (Did anyone expect otherwise?)
-Q: iTunes. looking for new forms of content? A: iTunes is largest library of content for sale. unparalleled.
-2:58: Q: as apple scales up can it maintain its advantages? A: a lot of room left for growth. apple…
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Last week, our good buddy Paul Thurrott wrote a piece that is undoubtedly one of the least professional news writeups I’ve seen in a while. This stuck out in particular:

Apple’s next-generation Mac OS X operating system, code-named Leopard, will be released to the public on October 26, the company announced. Leopard is the fifth minor revision to the company’s OS X system, and it is shipping almost exactly a year after Windows Vista, an OS that Apple incessantly ridiculed for its tardiness.

Emphasis mine.

Okay, ignore the general shittiness of the article for just a moment (though Thurrott did make a valid point about Apple ridiculing Vista’s delays and going on to delay Leopard; I’ll give him that point). This section’s reference to Leopard as a “minor revision” got me to thinking, just how major of an upgrade is Leopard?

Definitions, please

What constitutes a “major” versus a “minor” update depends on who you ask. Do ten huge new features make it a major upgrade? How about hundreds of minor updates across the OS? To come to some sort of answer for the sake of this discussion, let’s compare a service pack or two to an update like Windows Vista.

As far as service packs go, there are a couple that come to mind off-hand: WIndows XP Service Pack 2 and Mac OS X 10.4.4. Windows XP Service Pack 2 made its debut on August 2004 (Was it really that long ago already? My, the years fly by!) and was…
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