It seems that the iWork malware attack that surfaced last week is only getting worse.

Now we find that infected versions of Adobe Photoshop are being passed around. Yet another reason not to copy that floppy (...or torrent that disk image.)

If you do run antivirus software on your Mac, most of the latest updates should catch this malware. Though the obvious solution is to simply not download pirated software.

On January 24th, 1984, Apple released the first Macintosh and a new movement within computing was born.

Your faithful editor was all of five months old at the time, quietly reflecting on life from a crib in northern California, just an hour's drive away from Apple's Silicon Valley headquarters.

It's not much of a stretch to say that i've grown up with the Mac. First introduced to the machines in elementary school, one of my first purchases after getting a job in high school was a refurbished G3, and it wasn't until I began writing for vnunet that I owned my first PC.

And what a 25 years it has been for Apple as well. The company saw first-hand the ups, and downs, and ups of the computer industry. Through it all, the Macintosh has been its flagship product. Whether it was Quadra, Performa, iMac or Mac Pro, there has always been a Mac out there.

So what about the next 25 years? How will the Macintosh get to 50?

If recent years are any indication, the Mac may see its influence drop. The computers are no longer the stars of Apple's big speeches and events; those honors have been passed to the iPhone and iPod lines.

Even Apple's own name, shortened from "Apple Computer" to "Apple Inc." indicates that the Mac's run atop the priority list could be coming to an end.

But not so fast. Though it may not have the entire spotlight to itself, the mighty Mac is still Apple's bread and butter. Keynote time isn't everything, you know. The Mac still makes up the biggest portion of Apple's revenue, and it is selling better than ever.

If anything, we could see the Mac take over the duties of other Apple products in the coming years. For example, the Apple TV: as iTunes continues its metamorphosis into a one-stop entertainment shop, and as the iMac gets slimmer, wider-screened and cheaper, a day may very well come soon when your home computer really does double as your television, and few systems are closer to that setup than the iMac.

Then, of course, there's the MacBook. Notebooks aren't going anywhere, and some of Apple's biggest gains in market share are coming from the success of these two lines. Those college kids using MacBooks on campus will soon be professionals using Macs at home and in the office, particularly with the rise of the Intel-era and the advent of dual-platform programs such as Boot Camp, Parallels, and Fusion.

The continuation of the x86 chip series in the Mac could also be beneficial for the Mac Pro in the next 25 years. The advantages of the Mac in multimedia creation fields have in the past been offset by incompatibility with often-essential Windows software tools. As seamless transitioning from Mac programs to Windows programs comes closer to reality, we could see high-end Macs continue to march into enterprise markets.

That's not to say there aren't going to be challenges in the coming years. The health issues that have befallen Steve Jobs are leaving the company without its top executive for the first time in over what has been a very successful ten years. And we all know what happened the last time Apple tried to make a go without Jobs.

There's also the economy to fret over. While Apple has so far defied the downturn, consumers may begin to decide that paying a premium for a Macintosh is just not feasible.

The next 25 years will, almost certainly, contain just as many ups and downs for Apple and every other computer maker. If the first 25 were any indication, however, the Mac will live in some form to see 50.

Heck, perhaps we'll be doing this all over again in 2034 when both myself and the Mac hit the half-century mark.

Steve Jobs has officially gone on medical leave. Having handed control over to Tim Cook, Saint Steven has officially retired from the public eye for at least six months.

It's understandable then, that when a report surfaced in Bloomberg News that Jobs may need a transplant, the Apple CEO's response was: "Why don't you just leave me alone?"

I handed it to Jobs when he announced that he was going on leave. His handling of the issue until now was quite poor and deserving of criticism.

However, the man has left the company. He's no longer head honcho at Apple and it's quite evident that the time off will be spent regaining his health so that he can return to the company. It's just about time that we lay off Saint Steve.

Apple is more than Steve Jobs. Though his well-being is of immediate importance, the torch has unofficially been passed, and Apple is in the hands of other people than Jobs.

Maybe we ought to pay more attention to the people taking over than the guy who just left. There has to be plenty of speculation on Apple's new management. Time to let Steve Jobs spend some much-needed time with his family and hopefully recover.

In the meantime, isn't there more than enough material from those now taking over?

It seems that Apple has allowed a fresh crop of web browsers to make their way onto the iTunes store.

Granted, none of them are really "new" browsers in the sense of their essential components- everything we've found thus far is based on Safari. However, they do offer some cool new features.

Some offer a 'stripped down' view that eschews the toolbar and gives a better view of the page, while others load new pages when you shake the handset, and still others offer a sort of tabbed browsing functionality.

Still waiting for the really cool stuff (like Flash compatibility,) but it's always nice to see a new class of apps show up for the iPhone.

As if Steve Jobs didn't have enough to worry about. First, lingering health issues force him to take some time off to bulk up, and now his one-time internet doppelganger is trash-talking him.

Former Fake Steve Jobs blogger Dan Lyons did some thinking on Apple post-Steve, and his sentiments quickly turned into a rather unflattering portrait of the man he once lampooned to internet stardom.

In the words of FSJ, here's the 'money quote'...
See, in the world of Steve, it's all about Steve. When he does go, he will be remembered as a tremendous genius--but also as a petulant narcissist with a grandiose sense of his importance and a sadly limited view of the world around him. Ironically, it is Gates, his archnemesis, who will likely go down in history as the classy one: the one who knew how to exit gracefully, the one who is devoting the later years of his life, and all of his billions, to helping the world's poorest people--and not clinging to his CEO job while he insults reporters and plays petty cat-and-mouse games with Apple shareholders and fanboys.

A scathing review, but I can't say that I disagree with much, if any of it. Jobs' personality traits are well-known, and while they may not have made him a lot of friends, they are also arguably what has helped him guide Apple back to success. Nonetheless, there are plenty of people who think he's a jerk.

While Jobs is absolutely under no obligation to retire into a life of philanthropy and jump into the charity spotlight (I'm sure he already donates a good deal of his own money to worthy causes without any fanfare,) Gates has in recent years turned the table. Now, the former Microsoft founder is the starry-eyed world-changer, while Jobs has turned into the calculating business mogul. More so, Gates has managed to extract his image from the company to a large extent. He's not just the Microsoft guy, he's also the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation guy these days.

I know we've gone through this many times before, but back to the issue of whether Jobs' health is anybody's business: as long as the stock price jumps up and down on reports of his health, the physical well-being of Steve Jobs is public business. It's hard to draw a parallel with any other company because, well, no other CEO is as involved with the inner-workings and general operation of the company as Jobs is. And while I don't think that the press should be entitled to check his medical files, the man and the company should have a bit more appreciation for the fact that people have their retirement plans and college funds invested in Apple stock, a stock that can fluctuate rapidly if people don't trust Jobs to be in good health.

The open letter was a good first step. Hopefully, Apple can use Jobs' time off to continue to show Wall Street that it is more than its CEO and that plans to operate without him are in place. It would be nice to see Steve Jobs not only get his health back, but also free his company financially from the medical rumor mill.

Well, another Macworld keynote come and gone. This year, it was Phil Schiller who took the stage in what was Apple's swan song for the iconic Mac tradeshow.

Enough has been said on Schiller, Jobs and the future of Apple, so let's get to the meat of the matter and take a look at a couple of the bigger announcements.

iTunes: The service will go completely DRM-free by the time baseball season kicks off this year. It's been a long time coming, but this has to be great news for anti-DRM activists, or even just the average user who was sick of all the locks companies put on music files that the user paid for.

There was also the announcement that the iTunes music store would now be working on a 3G connection. A small thing really, but something that iPhone owners will really appreciate. Accessing the store from anywhere will be the sort of thing people will take for granted a few years from now, and the idea that the iPhone could only download music from a wifi hot spot will be laughable.

New MacBook Pro: Big new screen and a beefier battery. Like the other MBP models, it has the spiffy aluminum case that is supposedly the sort of thing recycling plants drool over, which makes it a super-green product, apparently.

It was also the most controversial computer release from Apple since the MacBook Air debuted at last year's MacWorld expo. Like the air, the new model sports a built-in battery. Apple claims that this allows the company to make a super-duper long-life battery that last years longer than removable models.

I'm a bit torn on this one. I only own one battery for my MacBook Pro, so for me it may as well be built in. I know that others who work in situations where power isn't always handy carry around a spare, so this could be a deal-breaker for many. On the other hand, if the new notebooks get the sort of life Apple is claiming, the need for a second battery may go away for a lot of people.

We've all seen what a damper Steve Jobs absence from the Macworld Expo has put on everyone's plans for the event. The new product buzz has all but died. Press attendance looks to fall through the floor, and though Macworld organizers say that the crowds should be similar to last year (bolstered by registrations made well before the Apple pull-out,) this is no doubt going to be Macworld's farewell party in the eyes of a great many.

But not all is lost. Sure, Saint Steve may have foresaken the expo, but the other Steve, (the one most of us would rather hang out with anyways) sure hasn't.

That's right, Steve Wozniak will be at Macworld. The brain behind the Apple I and II will be making an appearance on Tuesday at the booth for Axiotron, a company that specializes in frankensteining Apple notebooks into touchscreen tablets known as "Modbooks."

Woz is scheduled to take the stage at the company's booth at noon, shortly after Phil Schiller finishes up Apple's last keynote ever.

So there you have it, turns out there will be a "Steve" speaking at Macworld after all.

Ever since the news surfaced that Steve Jobs would be sitting out this year's Macworld keynote, the speculation machine over the Apple CEO's health has been working in overdrive.

The latest reports cite insider sources as saying that Jobs' health issues are so grave that he could be out as early as this spring.

The general consensus seems to be that if Steve Jobs really is this ill, he has already begun the process of removing himself from the company with the decision to send Phill Schiller to the MacWorld keynote.

Hopefully, the reports are wrong, and the decision is merely a strategic one and Jobs' health is just fine. However, we also have to take a look at what things could be like should Jobs retire in the near future.

For the man personally, it would almost certainly be a good thing. When people have their retirement plans invested in a company's stock, there is some room for debate as to whether the health of an executive as powerful as Jobs should be made public. When he leaves the company, there is no debate. Steve Jobs health will be nobody's business and he can seek out treatment however he wants without any effects on the company.

If the price fluctuations from recent rumors are any indication, Apple stock may not fare as well. People seem to be convinced that Jobs alone can run the company and that in his absence, Apple will revert back to its bumbling mid-90s days of woe.

It's possible. After all, there's not a single company in the industry that is said to be run with as much control as Jobs wields with Apple. Without that force at the top, there could be plenty of confusion and infighting as the exec team struggles to find a successor.

That doesn't, however, mean that Apple is poised to return to the days of the Newton and Performa. The company pre-Jobs was a mess of execs who lacked a single vision or plan for the company. These days, Jobs has surrounded himself with such people as Tim Cook and Jonathan Ive who appear to be more than capable of developing and putting out great products even without the guiding hand of Jobs.

Where the company may be 5 to 10 years after he leaves is anyone's guess, but it's safe to assume that once the initial shock of his departure and the power vacuum it leaves have worn off, Jobs will have created a blueprint that should keep Apple on course for some time after he hangs up his spurs.