Software

Apple has released its first real update to Final Cut Pro X with the hopes of addressing some of the (plentiful) user complaints that have arisen since its release in June. Though the update is only to version 10.0.1, there are a handful of useful updates, such as support for Xsan and rich XML, but users who long for the days (and features) of Final Cut Studio may still want to stick to their old favorite.

The majority of Final Cut Pro X 10.0.1's changes were outlined by The Loop, which spoke with Apple senior director of applications marketing Richard Townhill about the update. Townhill seemed to acknowledge the general dissatisfaction coming from professional users over the Final Cut Pro X release, adding that this first update is meant to add some of the features that users had been requesting. "We have very vocal customers and they told us what they think was missing,” Townhill told The Loop. "What we’re doing today is answering those concerns."

In addition to Xsan and rich XML (import and export) support, the latest version can now use Media Stems, allowing users to export media elements into separate files for things like effects, dialogue, and so on. There's also now something called Roles, which lets users tag tracks based on the stems they plan to export—this can also be used on graphics and video clips, which Apple says can be used to keep separate versions.

Most importantly, Apple also introduced a demo version of Final Cut Pro X, undoubtedly created to quell the fears of would-be upgraders who have heard nothing but criticism from seasoned Final Cut Pro veterans. "We are giving people the opportunity to see for themselves how powerful, amazing and revolutionary Final Cut Pro is," Townhill said, adding that the updated suite offers a modern foundation that will last "for the next 10 years."

Will the updates and free demo be enough to convince users that they don't need to call and hoard those old copies of Final Cut Studio?

Just over two months after the controversial launch of Final Cut Pro X, Apple has made "old" Final Cut Studio available once again to the public. But don't go looking for the suite at the Apple Store down the block or even the company's online store—those who want to purchase the legacy software will have to call 1-800-MY-APPLE (hey, 1996 called…) in order to get it.

Confirmed by MacRumors, Final Cut Studio can be purchased for $999 (or $899 for educational buyers). That's the same price the suite was being sold for as of July 2009, but $700 more than its newer replacement, Final Cut Pro X. Final Cut Studio wasn't just Final Cut Pro though—it included Final Cut Pro 7, Motion 4, Soundtrack Pro 3, DVD Studio Pro 4, Color 1.5 and Compressor 3.5, which was one of the many reasons why professional users were extremely irked at the abrupt changes and discontinuations. Add to that the plethora of complaints about the near complete lack of backwards compatibility and drastic UI changes between Final Cut Pro 7 and X, and pro users were practically waving pitchforks outside of 1 Infinite Loop.

The outrage, it seems, has worked. Those who want to purchase the older software can now do so by calling Apple's phone sales line. What's unclear is whether Apple will continue to support users on Final Cut Studio; we hardly expect regular software updates (or any software updates, for that matter), but the company must be willing to offer some level of user support if it's willing to keep selling the suite, right? Of course, there will be some pro users who are still dissatisfied with the results—more than 8,000 people signed a petition that demanded the source code to Final Cut Pro 7 be sold to a third party, after all.

Update: An Apple spokesperson told The Loop that the company has "a limited quantity of Final Cut Studio still available through Apple telesales to customers who need them for ongoing projects." Sounds as if the current situation with the side-by-side sale of Final Cut Studio and Final Cut Pro X is unlikely to be permanent.

A new version of Dropbox was released on Thursday without much fanfare, but Lion users will be happy to know that the update finally restores Finder integration for Apple's latest OS.

There are plenty of cloud storage options out there, but Dropbox's slick native filesystem integration is perhaps one of is most prized features. Installing the app on Mac OS X adds a Dropbox folder in the Finder. Dragging files here uploads them to your Dropbox in the cloud, and files added to your Dropbox are then automatically downloaded and mirrored locally.

With support for Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, and even your iOS, Android or BlackBerry mobile device, it makes it easy to transfer files from one device to the other, and all devices are automatically kept in sync.

Unfortunately for early Lion adopters, Dropbox's Finder integration was broken in Mac OS X 10.7. The only way to get it working was via beta development builds only available on its user forums.

Though Dropbox usually updates itself automatically in the background, TUAW notes that those updates can take as much as a week to filter out to all users. You can manually upgrade today, however, if you want to restore functionality posthaste.

Illinois-based Software Restore Solutions has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Apple, claiming that the company's Disk Utility application violates a patent on automatic computer configuration repair. The lawsuit was filed Wednesday in the Northern District of Illinois.

The patent in question, US Patent #5,832,511, is for a "Workgroup network manager for controlling the operation of workstations within the computer network." Certainly, Disk Utility does not automatically manage the configuration of client systems on a network. However, Software Restore Solutions alleges that the application, which can repair the permissions of certain system or user files, does violate claim 32 of the patent:

"A method of computer management automatically resetting a computer to a preferred configuration by executing system configuration instructions in dependence upon a comparison of prior computer status to the current condition of the computer...."

Since Disk Utility is an included part of every install of Mac OS X, the lawsuit targets every version of the OS as well as products that are sold with it, including every Mac for the last decade.

Lest you think Apple was Software Restore Solutions' only target, however, the company unsuccessfully sued 26 software vendors last year over the '511 patent, including Apple, Adobe, Autodesk, Capcom, Citrix, Corel, Intuit, Sega, Skype, and THQ, among others. The case was closed after all the defendants were dismissed, some with prejudice.

Software Restore Solutions acquired the '511 patent from Acacia, another apparent patent troll, which acquired the patent from original inventor Beck Systems. Litigating the '511 patent appears to be Software Restore Solutions' only business activity.

Rev up your Software Updaters, because Apple has released its first update to Mac OS X Lion. The 10.7.1 update is recommended for all Lion users and contains fixes for a number of sanity-eroding issues, and there's even a special 10.7.1 version for the 2011 MacBook Air and Mac mini.

The main update for those of us who don't own the latest and greatest Apple releases addresses issues that caused the system to hang when watching a video in Safari and audio to stop working when using HDMI or optical audio out. There were also some complaints about flaky WiFi, and some users ran into problems when trying to migrate their data to a new Mac running Lion—both of which have been resolved, according to Apple. Most annoyingly, some Lion users said that their main admin accounts were missing after upgrading to Lion, which has apparently been fixed.

For the 2011 MacBook Air, Apple has applied all the same updates, plus a fix for a problem that caused the Air to boot up when the MagSafe connector was attached and another related to flickering displays. The Mac mini also got a fix for a problem that caused the SD card slot to operate at reduced speeds.

It's a bit early to tell whether Apple sneaked other bug fixes into this update, but some users are still holding out hope that it will help speed up their systems after upgrading. If you have already applied the update, do you see improvements?

A recent raid by Russian police has revealed evidence that a company called ChronoPay is indeed behind the Mac OS X scareware program MacDefender, despite the company's earlier denials. But while the raid and the arrest of ChronoPay's CEO may put a dent in the company's profits, it's unlikely that MacDefender or its variants will disappear just yet.

When MacDefender first hit the scene, it was called MAC Defender, and it seemed to show up on Mac users' machines after those users followed poisoned Google Image search results. Unlike many scareware apps for Windows, however, this one was actually designed to look like it was made for a Mac, and it claimed to be able to rid the user of viruses—if only he or she would hand over a credit card number. The viruses were, of course, fake; instead, the app was merely collecting payment information so that scammers could abuse the credit cards at a later date.

When we conducted our own investigation into MacDefender, we discovered that it wasn't taking over the Mac world like some had predicted, but the scareware app had made its way into the general population to some degree. Apple soon began combating MacDefender on the OS level, and there hasn't been much news about the malware/scareware since.

But as it turns out, whoever was behind MacDefender continued chugging along, raking in money from unsuspecting Mac users until Russian law enforcement descended on the ChronoPay office in late July, as noted by Forbes Russia. And when police searched ChronoPay's office, they found "mountains of evidence" that ChronoPay employees were doing tech and customer support for MacDefender and a plethora of other fake antivirus programs, according to former Washington Post reporter and current security expert Brian Krebs.

One such piece of evidence was a support document that shows the website credentials and call records for various fake antivirus programs—MS Removal Tool, Clean This, MacDefender, and Marketplace Billing. This is despite ChronoPay's statement issued in May claiming that the company was "not involved with MacDefender in anyway, not [sic] are we involved with any virus production as has been alleged."

Krebs notes that while the raid may slow down ChronoPay and its ilk from seeding fake antivirus software onto the Internet, the industry is far too profitable for scammers to stay away for long. "Given fake AV’s status as a reliable cash cow, the industry is likely to bounce back rapidly," Krebs wrote.

Microsoft's iconic productivity suite Office for Mac will gain support for new Lion features, including auto save and fullscreen mode, in an upcoming update. But don't get excited just yet, as those features won't be available for the next few months.

As we noted in our visual look at Lion, the main Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 applications—Word, Excel, and PowerPoint—ran for us as expected. Files opened without issue, and we experienced no obvious bugs in functionality. Most of the suite works fine under Lion and doesn't necessarily need anything to continue functioning as usual.

However, Microsoft's Pat Fox noted last week that Communicator, a corporate-only version of Windows Live Messenger, had a serious crashing bug. That bug is being addressed by a fix being pushed out in the next day or so, according to Fox, so corporate users should be back to messaging in no time.

The other major bug is that Outlook 2011 can't import e-mail from Lion's version of Mail. If you are installing Office 2011 new, you won't be able to use the import function. If you have already been using Outlook, though, this won't be an issue. Beyond those two bugs, Fox noted that there are some little nagging issues like windows that don't align as they did under Snow Leopard.

On Thursday of this week, Fox further explained that a future update for Office 2011 will also add support for new Lion features. That includes Lion's new file management features including auto save and versions, as well as window management like fullscreen mode and auto resume. Unfortunately, adding support will be "measured in months not days—just to set expectations." 

Such a wait may be vexing for users who are becoming used to such features in Lion, especially given that developers have had access to the OS for several months. Still, large applications like Office take quite a bit of time and effort to add new features, not the least of which because Office uses gobs of custom UI code that must be tested to prevent regressions.

Smaller bugs will be addressed by regular updates, and Office 2008 will also benefit from such fixes. However, Office 2004 is dead in the water—it's a PowerPC app and Lion doesn't offer Rosetta compatibility.