From Agile Web Solutions comes the long awaited 1Password update. I’ve been testing version 3.0 for months and it’s a worthy upgrade, even at a healthy price. 1Password makes it trivial to manage login IDs and passwords, but does even more by handling serial numbers, licenses, credit card information, and does easy synchronization with my iPhone. From Jeffrey Mincey on Mac360:

There are less expensive ways to manage and secure information on a Mac, but none make managing login IDs, passwords, license information, or serial numbers so seamless between Mac, iPhone, and the web as 1Password.

My favorite new feature is 1PasswordAnywhere. Remotely view your keychain in any modern browser.

Titles like that raise my blood pressure. Christ Matier does not seem to understand the difference between a virus and a trojan horse, so he announces that malware for Mac users is growing. How about some stats with retarded observation, Chris?

Malware for OS X is a problem that is growing, and it is growing quickly.

That’s both true and utterly ridiculous. Windows PCs are infected with tens of thousands of viruses, worms, and trojan horse malware. The Mac? Name five. See? Not so easy, huh? The problem here is scale. If there are four in the wild trojan horses and viruses for the Mac, and one more arrives, that’s growing, and growing quickly; a 25-percent increase with just one. See the problem?

As the popularity of Macs grow, the popularity of Mac malware will grow proportionally.

No it won’t. Proportion has nothing to do with anything. If the Mac has approximately 10-percent (rounded up, easy math) of business desktop and home user market share, then shouldn’t the Mac have 10-percent of the hundreds of thousands of malware in the wild?

The reality is that Mac OS X, from a user perspective, is inherently more secure than a Windows PC, especially XP. Say thank you to Unix permissions. The Mac’s underlying structure makes it crazy difficult for a malware writer to deliver a virus, worm, or trojan horse, the latter of which is the easiest because it is user dependent.

User dependent? Yes. I can write a small script, give it to you to install on your Mac, and if you do, it can erase your hard drive. It’s that easy. The problem isn’t the Mac, it’s the user. That’s not the case with a virus or worm which can cause damage, and replicate itself and spread. That doesn’t happen on the Mac without user intervention.

The latest threat is a little program called Puper, a trojan that hides itself as a disk image for a program for MacCinema. Once installed, it goes about the dirty work of downloading more nasty stuff to your system every five hours. Now, as is the case with all viruses, malware, and spyware, it is easy to avoid.

Italics are mine. Bad advice, Chris. Go back to the definition of virus, worm, trojan horse, spyware, and malware. If you’re a Windows XP user avoiding any of those is not so easy.

Puper will not be the last piece of Mac malware; we will continue to see more and more everyday. Soon, I expect that Apple or some other vendor will have a constant virus scan suite for the Mac just like Windows does.

Wrong. Everyday? Get real. That means by the end of summer there would another 60 or so, at only one per day, right? No, that won’t happen. A single malware does not a threat make. Chris doesn’t seem to understand that there are already virus protection software scan titles available for Mac users. They’re about as effective as scanning the air for viruses.

Take the time to know the differences in malware; a virus is not a trojan is not a worm is not necessarily spyware. Be prudent about downloading and installing software to your Mac. But don’t cave in to blaring headlines from hit mongers or security software vendors.

Amid all the hoopla and celebration of Apple’s App Store hitting the one year old milestone, you may have missed another momentous event. VLC media player, in development since the pixel was invented, is now at version 1.0.0. VLC is a QuickTime-like media player that runs on Mac, Windows, Linux, and here and there but not the iPhone. Oh, and it plays more audio and video formats than there are celebrity attendees at the Michael Jackson Memorial.

VLC Media Player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols.

If you’re geeky about your media, you’re celebrating this momentous event.

Apparently, the best software for Macs comes with a hefty price tag, requires classes to learn, and loved by IT departments. Erik Vlietinck in IT Enquirer:

The Award winning applications we are listing win their IT Enquirer Award of Best Software of the decade for consistently delivering the same excellent quality over many years (although not necessarily the full past ten).

Fair enough. The credibility of the list disappears entirely with the first winner:

In the first place we would like to award Adobe its Best Of The Decade Award for Acrobat, Photoshop, After Effects and Illustrator. These are four applications that have been around for a long time and which have consistently been upgraded to improve and expand on features.

So why do many customers look for alternatives? How many awards in how many classes?

In the videocast recording and virtual TV market space, Boinx gets the Best Of The Decade Award for BoinxTV, although it does lack an integrated output to uStream, Justin.tv, and other streaming video services. The reason why BoinxTV gets its award nevertheless is that I have yet to see a BoinxTV update that still has bugs in it or which has no interesting new features. BoinxTV also is the easiest to use application in its class.

Have you seen the price tag on BoinxTV? Plenty of awards for high end photographic software and plugins for Photoshop. That means they’re expensive. The most accurate award goes to Panic.

We would like to give Panic Software a Best Of The Decade Award for Coda, Transmit and CandyBar. Panic is one of those developers that consistently succeed in delivering both high-quality products and support—as if they were much bigger companies.

Agreed. The least accurate award goes to… the envelope, please…

The Escapers also find themselves in the same category, earning a Best Of The Decade Award with their flagship product Flux. Flux is well on its way to become a much better Dreamweaver, and even a serious contender for Panic’s Coda!

Ludicrous. Far more ludicrous is Microsoft winning an award—Best Of The Decade Award—for Microsoft Office for Mac. In one of the few awards that make any sense for Mac users who pay attention, is Apple for their Pro Apps.

Interesting list. Nice products. Most (but not all) of them are over-priced, bloated, complex lock-in applications that IT departments love.

If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then Snow Leopard’s performance report depends on who you talk to. ZDNet’s Adrian Kingsley-Hughes:

Over the past few days I’ve been keeping a close eye on the Apple support forums and while there are plenty of issues being raised by folks who have made the switch, there doesn’t seem to be any sign of any serious issues plaguing this latest OS release.

The Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Kingsley-Hughes had this to say two days before Snow Leopard actually launched:

There are a whole raft of applications that either flat out don’t work, or just don’t work right… its hard to tell who’s to blame here. Have developers had enough time with the 10.6 code to ensure compatibility, or are developers getting lazy and choosing to wait until the OS is out before working out the kinks?

Before Snow Leopard made it out the door, Kingsley-Hughes was blasting Apple’s new kitty as untested.

At least Microsoft makes betas and release candidate versions of new operating systems available for everyone to be able to test.

Yes, and that worked out so well for Windows Vista, which, as I recall, was smooth sailing for Microsoft’s reluctant customers, right? Or, not. How do guys like him find work?