Rumor: 12-inch MacBook Air Will Feature Thinner, Fan-less Design

by Tom Nelson

Making the rumor rounds this week is a report about a new 12-inch MacBook Air to be released sometime soon; well, at least before summer. The rumor can be traced to a single post on a Chinese forum called Weiphone.com (translated post). The author of the post has in the past posted accurate images of Apple products in the early manufacturing stage, although in this case, no images are included.

 

 

 

Image courtesy of Apple

The gist of the rumor is a 12-inch MacBook Air that will be very thin, using a new click-less touchpad and a fan-less design; there’s no mention of display type or processor. Due to translation issues, it’s not really clear whether the new product will be a MacBook Air, a 12-inch iPad, a new combo tablet, or just a prototyping exercise.

A touchpad that doesn’t include a mechanical click mechanism would have a smaller profile, allowing for a thinner overall design, although in the current iteration of the MacBook Air, the touchpad isn’t the only component that impedes the use of a smaller case.

Read more on About: Macs.

 

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Microsoft Security Advisory: Word Subject to New Remote Code Execution Attack

by Tom Nelson

Microsoft has issued a security advisory to warn users of PC and Mac versions of Word that a maliciously coded RTF (Rich Text Format) file opened by Word could allow an attacker to gain the same user privilege level as the currently logged-in user and then remotely execute code.

Image courtesy of Microsoft

While using Word to open an RTF file is the main issue, those using Outlook as their email client have an additional vector of attack. Because the Windows version of Outlook uses Word as the default mail viewer, an email that contains RTF formatting could cause Word to process the malicious code just by viewing an email.

At this time, Microsoft does not have a fix available; until it does, Microsoft recommends not opening RTF files with Word.

Read more on About: Macs.

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