News for Wednesday, 22 November 2006

If Apple's newest machines all ship with draft 802.11-n WiFi cards, there are no drivers available on OSX to support the draft-n protocol.
Anyway, there wasn't either an OSX-compatible draft-n adapter. Now there is one: Comet Labs has announced the WN598MIMO, an evolution of their 802.11g & b Wireless USB adapter for Apple MacOS X.

It's a USB WiFi access point that draws its power through the USB port (nice). It works with OSX 10.3 and 10.4 and can be plugged in a USB1 or USB2 connector, although obviously, if you want to benefit from MIMO's high wireless speed, USB2 is what you want.
There are yet no information as to which draft-n routers it is compatible with.
The device has been announced at €69.
http://cometlabs.com
[their website does not yet reflect the product announcement]

Securitytracker reports on a new security flaw found in OSX.
There is a flaw in the checking of disk images, so that a maliciously crafted .dmg file can cause a kernal panic on your Mac, possibly allowing for arbitrary code execution. The problem is that Safari is set to automatically open "safe" files after downloading them, and that means that clicking on a link that triggers the download of a malicious .dmg file will crash your machine.
The best solution is to deactivite Safari's "Open 'safe' files after downloading" option (taht's in Safari's Preferences, under General). And also, be careful before opening files that come from a dubious source.

Thickness of LCD panel is the subject of a competition between LCD manufacturers. Samsung is the new leader with a 0.82mm LCD panel, 0.07mm thinner than the previous record.

This panel features a 2.1" or 2.2" display, 240x320 pixels resolution, with a contrast of 500:1 and a brightness of 300 cd/m2.
It will be mostly used in PDA and Smartphones by mid-2007.

According to Appleinsider (this is not a rumor), current sales of iPod Shuffle are simply way beyond expectations, and in USA it starts to be difficult to find it in shops. Apple could sell up to 6-8 millions of iPod Shuffle by the end of the year, if contractors can produce such numbers...
Apple resellers have confirmed those data, and in addition have reported that Core 2 Duo products are flying away from the shelves. Some historical resellers reported that they never sold that much Apple's branded products in their business life, and especially hardware.
The next financial quarter conference might really well deliver a new record for Apple.