El Informante

PC Tools on Monday announced the launch of iAntiVirus Beta Edition, an anti-virus and anti-spyware software application designed especially for the Mac. It's free to download, though US$29.95 nets you full support and updates for one year.

iAntiVirus' database is Mac-specific and doesn't contain any information about Windows-based threats, according to the developer. It's designed to work in the background when in monitoring mode, unobtrusively blocking threats and removing them with minimal system impact. It automatically places detected infections in quarantine and lets you view and restore items, displaying an alert below the system menu bar. You can also configure different scans, depending on your security needs.

Some may question the efficacy of Mac antivirus software, given the relative dearth of Mac-compatible viruses compared to the PC. iAntiVirus' developers note that the release of Mac-compatible "malware"--software designed to exploit security holes or poor security practices--are on the rise, and points to Apple's own recommendation to install and use anti-virus software to scan files in its Security Configuration Guide.

"The Mac has a solid reputation for remaining relatively threat free. However, we are witnessing the use of low level malware scripts, to identify whether there is the potential to infect the Mac OS, as well as the opportunity for malware producers to obtain a significant return on investment," said PC Tools CEO Simon Clausen.

System requirements all for Mac OS X 10.5 or later and 15MB hard disk space.

The most significant thing about what's changed in OS X 10.5.4 may be what hasn't changed with Monday's release of the OS X update. The ARDAgent security hole--discovered just a few weeks ago--remains unplugged. This actually isn't all that surprising--if the chatter around the Internet is to be believed, Apple has been working on the 10.5.4 update for quite a while, predating the discovery of the ARDAgent issue. System updates are complex things with many inter-related parts, and adding in a fix for the ARDAgent issue would have required more testing, and perhaps delayed the release of 10.5.4.

So what will happen with the ARDAGent hole? Only Apple knows, of course, but I think we'll see a standalone security update released in the near future to address that issue (as well as any other security issues that haven't been patched with the 10.5.4 release).

As for new things introduced in OS X 10.5.4, I dug around a bit in the bom files, as I did with May's 10.5.3 release. This latest update is much smaller than 10.5.3, and I didn't find anything nearly as interesting as I did last month, other than the non-fix for ARDAgent. There are a slew of extension updates, though it's tough to figure out exactly what changes those may entail.

There were a number of updates to PDF-related utilities, including the Mail PDF, Save as PDF-X, and Save PDF to Web Receipts Folder workflows, as well as changes to many PDF-related Automator actions. Non-English language files in many programs were updated, and there was some sort of change to Mail's preferences, though I couldn't see any obvious change when compared with Mail on a 10.5.3 machine. iChat received updates to the balloons, boxes, and compact styles, as well as some (also not obvious) changes in its preferences.

The Apple-provided dictionary in Dictionary was also updated, adding (at a minimum) the definition of MobileMe, Apple's soon-to-launch online service:

An Internet service from Apple Inc. for Macintosh computers, iPhone, iPod touch, and PCs. A MobileMe subscription provides push email, push contacts, and push calendar to keep your data automatically up-to-date on all your devices.

Given the size of the updated file, I expect there are more new definitions, but MobileMe was the only one I could think to check.

There are also changes on the Unix side of OS X. Some Perl and Ruby related bits were updated, as were snmp-related Unix programs, and various other Unix components, such as the pasteboard server.

I've been running 10.5.4 on two machines now for a few hours, and haven't experienced any issues--though as with any update, I strongly recommend having a current backup before proceeding.

That was fast! We're only one day into the post-Bill Gates era, and already Microsoft is taking steps to improve interoperability between its Office suite of productivity applications and competing products, including open source alternatives such as OpenOffice.org.

The new initiatives pertain not only to Office 2007's new Open XML file formats, but to the earlier, binary-only Office document formats, as well. Mostly they involve documentation -- thousands of pages of technical documentation, designed to allow third-party developers to more easily read and write Microsoft's file formats -- but they also include actual translation software, as well. Can Microsoft really be turning over a new leaf?

First, Microsoft has issued technical documentation describing proprietary Microsoft protocols used in Office 2007, Exchange Server 2007, and SharePoint Server 2007. This is big news, because third-party software developers have long had difficulty interoperating with these products. Linux users, in particular, have never had a way to connect with SharePoint Server.

Next up, the company has posted some 5,000 pages of previously-unreleased technical documentation that describes the binary-only file formats for versions of Microsoft Office before Office 2007. Open source office suites have had good success deciphering these formats before now, but the translation is never perfect. This documentation should help to iron out any remaining bugs.

Finally, Microsoft has launched software projects to develop translators between Office Open XML and other file formats, including ODF (Open Document Format) and UOF (Uniform Office Format), an open standard that is popular in Asia.

Some of the information Microsoft has made available is covered by Microsoft patents, so it's not technically "free," even if the documentation is used to create open source software. But Microsoft has pledged not to assert patent claims against open source developers, as long as they do not develop and distribute their software as part of a commercial enterprise.

Of course, one could argue that Microsoft is making none of these gestures out of pure altruism. It still has anti-trust judgments to worry about, both at home and in the European Union. Faced with the threat of still more fines, you could almost say that the marriage of Microsoft and open standards is a shotgun wedding.

There's another catch, too. Even Microsoft employees have admitted now that "ODF has clearly won" the office-document file format war. Wouldn't it be funny if Microsoft went through all this effort just to drum up support for file formats and protocols that, in the end, no one will really want?