Friday Morning News

<img class="imgright size-medium wp-image-78" title="1048016_550_art_r0" src="http://www.mactalk.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/1048016_550_art_r0-215x300.jpg" alt="1048016_550_art_r0" width="215" height="300" /><a href="http://developer.apple.com/wwdc/">Apple finally announced dates for WWDC '09</a>. June 8 to June 12, San Francisco, Moscone West. If you're planning to go, get in early, as Qantas have cheap flights to San Francisco (only $1200 return!) and Apple are offering a US$300 discount on the WWDC ticket if you order before April 24th. <a href="http://forums.mactalk.com.au/19/61698-wwdc-09-june-8-12-a.html">Forum thread about WWDC*'09</a>

<a href="http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/hardware/soa/Apple-Australia-s-300m-iPhone-boom/0,130061702,339295667,00.htm">Apple Australia has filed their ASIC financial reports for 2008</a> and it can be seen that Apple made $1.16 billion in revenue here in Australia and after-tax profits of $35 million. Have some fun and work out percentage of Apple's Australian profits you contributed to!

<a href="http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/03/new-osxrsplug-variant-masquerading-as-media-applications-1.ars">Sophos has released a video of a Mac OS X trojan, called OSX.RSPlug.F</a>, which pretends to be a media player. The website where the trojan lives, is actually quite believable. The trojan itself is kinda harmless, but it should wake us up to the fact that Mac OS X isn't invincible to this sort of stuff.



More security stuff from Tom's Hardware, who <a href="http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pwn2own-mac-hack,2254.html">interview the chap who hacked Safari in a couple of seconds at the Pwn2Own hacking competition</a>. Not too much Mac specific stuff, but a great look at a true expert in computer security.

Snow Leopard is coming soon, but Apple hasn't shown anyone the rumoured new and coherent Mac OS X UI, but <a href="http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/03/25/apple_close_to_unveiling_guarded_snow_leopard_ui_o verhaul.html">AppleInsider have some info that Apple may unleash this new UI soon in developer betas</a>.

The Crazy Apple Rumors site is one of my favourite pages on this entire interwebs and it just got a new update (which are sadly, far and few between these days) - <a href="http://www.crazyapplerumors.com/?p=1081">Apparently Greg Joswiak's kids are not allowed to own Zunes.</a> What a tightarse.

<a href="http://db.tidbits.com/article/10159?rss">Retrospect</a>, the iron fist in Mac OS X backup programs has *finally* been updated to version 8. <a href="http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/771/marsedit-23">MarsEdit</a>, the wonderful blogging app can now tie into Tumblr and has a couple of other features in it's 2.3 incarnation. And MacTalk local, Bok, has given a little peek as to the iPhone native app version of <a href="http://www.itransit.com.au/blog/?p=49">iTransit</a>, which is looking very nice indeed.

The iPhone is finally coming to China. China Unicom, the largest mobile carrier on earth with over 150 million subscribers, <a href="http://www.9to5mac.com/china-unicom-iphone-confirmed">is prepping to launch the iPhone 3G on May 17.</a> Why do I care about the iPhone in China? Well it means a lot of people will be exposed to the iPhone and hence, more apps up on the App Store!

John Carmack, video game engine coder maestro/god loves the iPhone and was disappointed that there were no Id games on the iPhone. So he sat down for a few days and ported over the classic Wolfenstein 3D. <a href="http://www.idsoftware.com/wolfenstein3dclassic/wolfdevelopment.htm">He also sat down and wrote about the development process and getting a game onto the iPhone.</a> This is nerd manna right here.

MacHeist has been controversial at times, with claims developers have been cheated, problems getting products to customers, developers not supporting future versions of apps sold via MacHeist and a sentiment of cheapening the Mac software scene by offering the apps at such a vast discount. There's a lot of discussion going around about it as MacHeist 3 goes on currently. The developer of <a href="http://log.scifihifi.com/post/89882957/macheist">Podworks &amp; Cocoalicious</a> gives his 2c, as does the <a href="http://www.marco.org/89686877">lead developer of Tumblr</a>, developer at <a href="http://homepage.mac.com/simx/technonova/index.html">Ellipsis Productions</a> - and a whole lot more around the place. <a href="http://forums.mactalk.com.au/11/61608-macheist-3-software-bundle.html">There is a discussion on the forums about MacHeist 3 too.</a>