Mac OS

Ubuntu strikes many people in the western world as an odd name for an operating system. They may not know that in the African languages of Zulu and Xhosa the word means roughly "humanity towards others."

It's a name that sums up the concept behind the Linux distribution known as Ubuntu -- especially since it was South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth, one of the key financial backers of its development, who selected it.

Microsoft has a bit of advice for people using the Windows 7 operating system introduced earlier this month: Follow the law. In a blog posting at the Microsoft SMB Community Blog, Eric Ligman of the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Group wrote that a number of blogs and postings are offering hacks that enable the use of a less-expensive upgrade disk for a new Windows 7 installation.

VMware has made aggressive moves toward the cloud, but the virtualization solutions provider hasn't abandoned its quest to optimize the Microsoft Windows experience for Apple Macintosh users. VMware is rolling out VMware Fusion 3 on Oct. 27 and aims to make it easier for users to run Windows applications, including graphics-intensive games, alongside Mac applications. In total, VMware Fusion 3 offers more than 50 new features and enhancements.

Apple released a king-sized security update for Mac OS X on Thursday, a separate fix for its just-released Snow Leopard, and an update to the iPhone operating system. Some of the updates fix problems, but others seem to cause new ones.

Thursday's updates fix 33 vulnerabilities in the Mac OS X Leopard operating system involving third-party applications such as Adobe Flash, Samba, MySQL and PHP. The Leopard update also addresses potential security vulnerabilities in Alias Manager, CarbonCore, CUPS, ColorSynch, ImageIO, Wiki Server, CoreGraphics and Launch Services.

Search giant Google's recent announcement that it was would enter the operating system arena with its newly unveiled Chrome operating system (OS) caused quite a buzz in the tech world.

That's not surprising: When Google announces a new product, people generally listen, in large part because of Google's programming muscle and its reputation for boldly venturing into untested waters.

The first jailbreak application for Apple's new iPhone 3GS has been made available just two weeks after the iPhone debuted. George Hotz, a 19-year-old Google employee originally from New Jersey, created the application.

Jailbreaking the iPhone 3GS allows a user to install any programs directly onto the iPhone, including applications that are not from Apple.

Confirming one of the more open secrets of the tech industry this spring, Microsoft announced Tuesday that the launch date for Windows 7 is Oct. 22. That is several months earlier than the software giant forecast last year, when it projected a launch in the first quarter of 2010.

The likelihood of a 2009 release increased significantly this spring, when Microsoft sent out its official release candidate and hinted at a the possibility of a "holiday 2009 launch." The actual release will be some weeks ahead of even that optimistic target.

The evolution of video on the Web from a curious experiment to a cornucopia of channels took another step Thursday as Hulu.com released a beta of a downloadable application that allows viewing its collection from the desktop.

Eric Feng, Hulu CTO, wrote on the company blog that Hulu Desktop enables users to "find and enjoy your favorite Hulu videos in a rich, full-screen computer window that you can control with your mouse or keyboard or any six-button PC or Mac remote control."

'Step Outside' of Browser

Patch Tuesday is a Microsoft institution, but competing software companies are stealing some of the attention this week with security issues of their own. On Tuesday, Apple released Mac OS X 10.5.7, an update for its operating system that aims to improve application performance and stability -- and fix 68 security issues.

The invitations have been sent out (and posted to the Web), so it's official: The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) will be from June 8 to June 12 at the Moscone West Convention Center in San Francisco.

Speculation about possible announcements is already running rampant on the Web, with predictions concentrated on three themes: The release of a new version of Mac OS X, dubbed Snow Leopard; an announcement of features and a release date for a new version of the iPhone; and the future role of CEO Steve Jobs.

Focus on Development