While browsing around the apple site today I stumbled across their Get a Mac FAQ section. Now I was familiar with Apple’s answers to most the questions I was suprised by the following:

Do I need virus software for a Mac?

Apparently, the official answer from Apple is NO! I bet this makes Norton feel great. While I myself have never run any anti-virus software on my Mac I always assumed that others did. Since I’ve never had any virus type symptoms and I know the UNIX base for OS X I always felt comfortable that my system would stay “healthy”..

Let us know in the comments if you use any Anti-Virus software on your Mac… and if so, why? If not, why have you never felt the need to do so?

More and more often content distributors are choosing to stream content over the internet instead of allowing users to download the files locally to their machine. This allows the distributors a bit more control over their content.

Unfortunately, it makes it difficult for you to grab that one portion of a song that you want to include in your podcast, or the funny audio clip that would fit perfectly into your class presentation. I know I’ve often wondered how I could still get a decent quality recording of the streaming audio shared on the internet.

Thankfully, the developers over at rogueamoeba.com developed Audio Hijack Pro. Audio Hijack Pro is a share ware application that allows you to record any sound that comes through your system. It allows you to pick specific applications to record sound from like Safari and create recordings in mp3, acc, and aiff format.

Using Audio Hijack Pro

While Audio Hijack Pro is not free ($32 for the complete version) it does allow anyone to run a fully functional demo that only adds noise to recordings over 10 minutes. So essentially, its free until you start making really long recordings.

To start recording streaming audio:

1. Open Audio Hijack Pro, click Quick Record
2. You can select an input device, System Audio will record anything coming through your sound card, while selecting Application and then the specific app you’re trying to record from will limit the recording to just sounds coming from the selected application.

3. Click Hijack and then Record


4. Start the streaming audio

From here your system will record the streaming audio and save it to the location you selected. As long as your audio recording is under 10 minutes you should receive decent quality recordings that you can use as you feel fit.

Apple has released an update to OS X Leopard putting it to version 10.5.3.

If you haven’t already downloaded and installed the update you can by clicking the apple and then Software Update…

Updates were made to Automator, iCal, iChat, and other portions of OS X.

For details about everything included in the 10.5.3 update head over to the Apple Support page with complete details on changes made to the OS.

I’ll be honest, I was once a huge fan of America Online. In 1992 and with my 14.4kbs modem it was one of the most efficient ways to connect to the internet. AOL was one of the first dial up services to offer world wide web support and while it was nothing compared to Google, AOL’s web Spider search engine was great.

Unfortunately for AOL time hasn’t been kind to them. They desperately were late to offering home users broadband internet connection and failed to optimize on their exclusive content.

Additionally, the software they provided to connect to their network and internet was labeled as malware and spyware. It often took over your entire computer and caused more problems than solutions it provided. In fact, it was the number 1 piece of software I instructed people never to install. But, it looks like AOL may have learned from all their mistakes.

Catching Up With The Times

Recently AOL released a new desktop application for the Mac. And unlike their previous software versions it appears that AOL has finally caught on. AOL Desktop For Mac version 1.0 is a small and simple application. Installed it is only 32mb and the application itself is very lightweight.

The application launches quickly uses webkit as the base for its own web browser. Additionally, most of all of AOL’s exclusive content has been moved to the web, so the icons and keyword links launch web content instead of custom AOL content.

So, despite the previous AOL track record and being considerably late in offering a modern solution to internet content, the new AOL Desktop For Mac is worth trying out… for those of you that still have your AOL accounts and miss out on all the Favorites they saved to their account back in the 90s.

Now that you’ve spent all your money on a nice new Mac, iPhone, Apple TV etc., your budget is starting to get very tight. But you still want to run Windows without Bootcamp, or check out that ubuntu thing that your geek friends talk about without spending any more cash. Well, fortunately you’re still in luck with VirtualBox. VirtualBox is a free virtual machine from sun microsystems. While it may not have all the bells and whistles that Parallels or VMWare Fusion offer, its price tag makes VirtualBox an attractive alternative. In fact, VirtualBox can install certain operating systems that Parallels currently does not support (such as the latest version of Ubuntu Linux). If you want to check out VirtualBox keep in mind the following:

• Memory - You’re going to need at least 512MB of ram for the guest OS. That means you will need at least 1GB of ram for your Mac, preferably more, in order to run comfortably. Otherwise, running a virtual machine will be an exercise in slowwwww.
• Intel Mac - You’re gonna need one to run VirtualBox
• Drive Space - If you have a MacBook Air with a 60Gb or 80Gb drive, keep in mind that a guest OS will take up Gigabytes of space. Running out can be painful.
• Patience - VirtualBox runs on many platforms but it is still in Beta for the Mac. Things may not work out the first or second time. Most virtual machines will add additional modules to the Operating System (called kernel modules). Kernel modules can bring the whole system down. But with a little patience you can still have an enjoyable experience.

So if you want try a virtual machine on the cheap, VirtualBox is for you.