Apple's push notifications sure are neat, but they aren't the brass ring for developers on the iPhone. That, so far, would be background processes. And while Apple has said that background processes would just be too much of a drain on the iPhone's battery, that doesn't mean they don't want them, too.

Ars Technica reports that Apple is still trying to figure out a way for certain apps to do it. There's two options laid out here: one is user-based, in which the user actually approves certain apps to run in the background, with the consequence (if you do choose to enable that) of lower battery lifetime. The second has Apple approving apps for background action, allowing certain developers to run based on limits of "resource usage such as RAM or network bandwidth."

Obviously, there are pros and cons to each plan -- giving the power to the user means they will be able to choose when the battery is drained (on a particularly busy day, for instance, or when the iPhone is plugged in), but it also means that users will have the ability to crash their own phones (allowing too many background processes could cause issues). And of course, while leaving the choice in Apple's hands will make sure background processing is only used in the "right circumstances," we all know how great Apple is at app approval.

Ars concludes on the same point that I would: if background processes are really going to make a difference, they'll likely rely on a future iteration of the iPhone, as the one we've got now is just not built to run apps all the time, no matter who chooses them. Even if Apple is working out a way to run certain apps in the background, they are almost certainly spending more time beefing up the iPhone hardware as well.

We've all been there; we've all had that sickening feeling that comes from seeing "Macintosh HD" with less than 1 GB of available space. If you're staring at your Finder wondering where you can find some additional space without having to swap out the hard drive or buying a new Mac altogether Computerworld is here to help. They have an article up on the many ways it is possible to get rid of unnecessary files in Leopard as well as disable features you may not be using all in an effort to slim down and speed up your Mac while you wait for Snow Leopard.

Many of the tips involve using software that we have previously mentioned, some of which are free and others are not. The list of tools used include such gems as Xslimmer for removing PowerPC compatibility, Monolingual for stripping out languages that are non-native to you, as well as DiskInventoryX for getting a graphical representation of where all your hard drive space went. The article also discusses improving performance by disabling 3D effects that use up GPU cycles for those users who prefer fast to pretty as well as increasing the amount of RAM installed in your system.

While Snow Leopard may still be some time away the tips provided are a great collection of steps that can be completed to help any Mac squeeze out some better performance and additional hard drive space. If you have any tips that aren't mentioned add them to the comments!

Finder icon courtesy of FHKE's Flickr stream

Lucky enough to have purchased one of those shiny new unibody MacBooks? If you happen to be in the market for a RAM upgrade you may want to hold off for a little while. It seems the latest MacBooks are a little more fickle about the RAM they support than previous models.

Users on the Apple Support Discussion forums are reporting problems with third-party RAM upgrades, noting system instability and lock-ups. Even users who have purchased RAM from providers that pride themselves on Mac compatibility such as Crucial and OWC are seeing the same issues. It seems that the only solution is to take out the third-party RAM and use Apple-branded RAM. International users with no access to an Apple store are currently out of luck.

Of course, Apple will only officially support their own branded RAM from Samsung; upgrade kits of this sort are apparently working without issue. Unfortunately for many, however, acquiring these modules has become somewhat of an act of futility as Apple's online store says the upgrade kits are unavailable for owners of the 2.0 and 2.4 GHz MacBook.

Many are guessing-slash-hoping that the problem is caused by the newness of the DD3 spec. modules in Apple's line of notebooks. Until the situation gets clarified, users are having to swap RAM repeatedly in search of a kit that will work. Hopefully Apple will shed some light on the problem and everyone can go back to getting RAM from third-party sources. Had any luck (good or bad) upgrading RAM in your new MacBook? Let us know in the comments!

[via jkOnTheRun]

Is it just me or is it pretty mindblowing what Moore's Law is doing to our computers these days? I remember when 64mb of RAM was great, and even a few years ago, I wondered why anyone would ever use 1GB of RAM (I've got 2GB in my gaming PC, and I still almost think it's too much). But apparently TidBITS has been doing some testing, and they've discovered that not only can the new MacBooks hold 4GB of RAM as Apple recommends for a limit, but stuffing a whopping 6GB in there is possible and doable. There are two DDR3 slots in the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros, and they come with either 1GB or 2GB in each DIMM slot.

TidBITS says you can switch out one of those 2GB DIMMs for a 4GB, and voilà, as long as they're the same speed and type, apparently almost everything is hunky-dory. TidBITS says there are two drawbacks: one, that dual-channel architecture requires identical DIMMs, so that's out if you're running a 4GB and 2GB configuration. Plus, it'll cost you an arm and a leg, especially if your leg is priced at around $600, which is what a 4GB stick runs. Even the DDR2 is pricey at that level (then again, if you don't like memory prices, just wait about five minutes, because that's basically how often they change).

And for some reason, there's an issue with running two 4GB sticks in there (for a total of 8GB), but TidBITS surmises that may be fixed by the time Snow Leopard rolls around. Personally, I'd love to see a program that needs 6GB of RAM -- maybe a high end 3D modeler or a financial simulator of some kind. But it's good to know that if you really need that much memory (and have the cash to spend on it), there you go.

Have you ever thought about upgrading your MacBook's scrawny 2GBs of RAM that Apple ships to something a little more deserving? Well, ChannelFlip has a very cool video showing you how to upgrade the RAM in either a MacBook or MacBook Pro. In addition they tested the performance of the 2GB and 4GB Apple RAM and the new Corsair 4GB low-latency Mac RAM. They show off the results in the video.


Thanks, Wil!

In a recent post over at Ars Technica, they say that Mac OS X users could have their login passwords recovered through physically accessing the RAM. This comes after FileVault was proven to be cracked. The article notes that Mac OS X and certain applications store the user's password in memory, leaving it there after you've logged in. While locally-running apps cannot readily retrieve the password, someone could get access to the contents of RAM after the computer has been rebooted or shut down.

This could be accomplished by physical means and might require the hacker to remove the RAM cover on your Mac and chill the RAM, as suggested by Edward Felten's research team at Princeton. This freezing allows the information to stay on the RAM for longer than the normal 2.5 to 35 seconds -- allowing someone to place it in another computer and read the contents.

In a separate approach to the password-in-RAM vulnerability, CNET witnessed an EFF demo of an attack using a custom NetBoot "EFI memory scraper" to record the RAM contents on reboot and save the data as a file on another machine over the network -- the attackers were able to clearly find the login password in the file. Again, this attack requires physical access to the machine (in order to force the NetBoot via holding down the N key on restart) within a minute or two of shutdown. However, an attacker could conceivably target a machine that was locked or sleeping (with RAM contents 'live'), power it off and back on, and use the NetBoot attack immediately.

While Apple has been made aware of the attack (notified on February 5), no fixes for these issues were reported in the 2/11 security update. According to CNET, an Apple spokesperson said they were aware of the issues and were "working to fix it in an upcoming software update." Until this update comes out, you may want to set a firmware password for your Mac, or wait longer to leave your unattended Mac after a shut down. Alternatively, we have lovely TUAW-branded tin foil hats available for purchase.

[via Ars Technica]

As good as OS X memory management may be, if you run your system for long periods of time without shutting down you'll likely see an increasing number of spinning beach balls as your uptime counter ticks away. When applications quit – especially big, memory-hungry applications – they often leave your RAM fragmented and unavailable to subsequently launched apps. The solution is generally a reboot, but if you're looking for something a little friendlier and less time-consuming, iFreeMem is a superb solution. The utility was just updated to version 2.0 with full Leopard support.

I'm a long-time user of iFreeMem. On my MacBook Pro with 3 GB of RAM, it can generally clear up about 800 MB (sometimes more) after I quit a long session in apps like Photoshop and Motion. And it's rescued me on numerous occasions where I've found myself with three or four MB free and everything starts slowing to a crawl. I just loaded version 2 and it's faster and more efficient than ever. Good stuff.

The author has signed up with Trial-Pay, which I can't say improves the image of the app or increases my respect for it, but it does provide one option to get a $19 application for free. In light of the overall positive nature of this post, I won't delve into my opinions on Trial-Pay and its ilk. Suffice to say that I'm a happy customer of iFreeMem who paid full price and have never regretted it. Oh, and the 2.0 upgrade is free for users of previous versions, you just have to re-enter your registration code. You saved it, right?

Get a feel for whether or not iFreeMem would save some reboots for you with a 15-day, fully functioning trial.

Reader John L kindly dropped us a tip that Other World Computing has upped their Mac mini memory upgrades up to a whopping 3GB of RAM. And in fact, if you really want a Mini that flies, they'll even squeeze 4GB under the hood, even though they say the Mac Mini can't really handle that much.

The performance testing they did just completely confounds me, however-- in situations where lots of memory was needed (the "RAM Hog" setup), 4GB clearly beats everything else. In fact, in most of the regular testing-- the Photoshop test and the "Stress Test" the memory runs exactly how you'd expect: more memory means quicker processing. But in the last two tests, the Halo test and the Xbench test, the mini actually ran faster at just 1GB (which is what it ships with) than the 3GB, and almost as fast as the 4GB. The reasons for that are probably technical (too technical for me, although I'm sure our talented commenters have some answers), but it seems that in some situations, extra RAM just doesn't help.

Still, in situations that ask for a lot of memory, having more will definitely give you a nice bonus in speed, and it looks like the mini can now hold more than ever. When I buy mine (in October when Leopard drops, assuming Steve lets it live that long), I'll probably just double it to a reasonable 2GB. But if you want that extra power, it's good to know it's there.

If you've ever opened up your Activity Monitor and looked at the System Memory tab, you've no doubt seen something similar to the above. But if you're like me, you've often wondered just what the labels mean. Just what is wired memory, anyway? Well Alex at Bits about Bytes has a nice little article explaining just what those labels mean, how different applications (particularly virtualization tools) affect memory usage, and how to figure out if you need to add RAM to your system. Oh yeah, and wired memory turns out to be memory "used by the OS [which] is pretty much untouchable. Another application can't 'borrow' wired memory." Good stuff.

[Via FreeMacBlog]

iStat nano, a handy system monitoring Dashboard widget, has been updated to version 1.51b with support for CPU temps on Intel Macs. The one catch is that you'll have to install SpeedIt, a System Preference pane and kernel extension that allows this kind of functionality (and much more). We've heard nothing but good things about SpeedIt and the features it provides (such as controlling CPU whine by regulating voltage), but we'd understand if the thought of installing kernel extensions has already made you skip this post in your newsreader.

If you're still reading this, however, it seems both iStat nano and the SpeedIt kernel extension are provided free, so have at it.

[thanks Aaron]

Two of my favorite system monitor widgets have been updated: iStat pro 2.3 and iStat nano 1.5. The main new additions are drive filtering, as in: CDs, DVDs and .DMGs will no longer appear in the drive list, and support has been included for MacBook Pro batteries. Unfortunately, it looks like the temp and fan monitors don't support the MacBook Pros just yet.

Both of these widgets are available from iSlayer.net, apparently for free, as I can't even find a donation link. Also: their download links do point to these new versions, so don't pay any attention to the versions listed on their site, as it seems they haven't updated it to reflect these new additions just yet.

Macworld does what most of us won't: they void their MacBook's warranty by opening up the battery compartment and removing the RAM and hard drive. And as a special treat for us all, they posted the video on YouTube. Thanks guys!

Wow, easily removable drives on an iBook MacBook? Wow, how many Dell engineers did they have to hire to pull that one off? Personally, I'm just happy the battery on the MacBooks will no longer have those ugly seams around the battery visible while the machine sits on my desk. The iBook looks great, but I never understood why the seam had to extend up the side of the machine... Apparently Ive didn't see why either.

And for the record, the mere act of doing what Macworld did won't automatically void your Apple warranty. But, according to the terms, if anything goes wrong (like, in the future even), they can always negate your claim because you did the swap. So those of you looking to save some bucks by ordering a lower-capacity model and upgrading should consider the warranty and its restrictions first.

Those of you who have had the pleasure of replacing an iBook or Powerbook hard drive know what fun it is: drag out the teeny, tiny tools and (basically) take your entire machine apart. AppleInsider reports that the process is quite different with the MacBook. All you need to do is remove the battery plus a single protective shield and presto, you've found the hard drive. Incidentally, the RAM slots are also located underneath the battery. No word on how doing this yourself will affect your warranty, but at least it's easy enough.

We don't have one in TUAW headquarters yet, so we've got to take AppleInsider's word on this one. Does anyone feel like removing the battery from their day-old machine and telling us what is found in there?

Thanks, Eric!

Oh those enterprising hackers, whatever are we going to do with them? First they're blazing their own trail by getting Windows XP on a Mac, and now they're overclocking their GPUs. Hardmac.com posted about one forum member's discovery (in French) that, when compared to similar PC notebook hardware specs, his MacBook Pro's GPU seemed to be a bit underclocked - by over 100 MHz. However, these specs are on paper, and I haven't seen reports as to whether this is a practice exhibited by other manufacturers.

So what's a hacker to do? Why, use ATI's tools to get some overclocking action on! ATI offers a set of video card tools that unfortunately are Windows only, but if you come to the same results and just gotta have some more MHz, using Boot Camp to run these tools under Windows XP ought to do the trick for you. Just don't blame us if your MacBook Pro suddenly morphs into liquid metal form.

[via Engadget]