Have a great 2008

We at Orbicule wish you a joyful and healthy new year! May all your dreams come true (or at least some of them).
We also wish you a safe year for yourself, your family and of course for your precious Mac.

After launching Undercover 2, we took some time off to relax and recover as 2008 is shaping up to become an exciting year with a major new product scheduled to be released in Q3 2008. To be continued...

A star is (re)born

We are proud to release Undercover 2, the only theft recovery solution that has been designed exclusively for Mac OS X and the first native theft-recovery application for Leopard.

With Undercover 2, we hope to recover even more stolen Macs:

• We added a dead-Mac-timeout feature: if a Mac is not connected to the net for more than two months, plan B will automatically kick in. That way, we hope to recover at least some of the stolen Macs that are never connected to the Internet.


• Undercover now only connects to the Internet when a network change occurs, dramatically reducing network traffic, while making the system even more aggressive.


• Memory footprint and CPU usage have been dramatically reduced. In most cases, memory footprint is down 75%.


• In addition, Undercover 2 sports dozens of under-the-hood improvements and fixes.


• Last but not least, Undercover is now compatible with Tiger and Leopard. One version now works on both operating systems.

Tiger instructions

First, you have to remove Undercover 1.5:

• In the Finder, remove the following file: /Library/Launchdaemons/com.orbicule.undercover.plist
• Restart your Mac
• Choose Go To Folder from the Finder's Go menu
• Enter the following path: /etc and remove the uc file in this folder

Next, you can download Undercover 2 and run the installer. You can use your existing Kagi license key (not your Undercover ID) to register Undercover 2. By upgrading, you will not use an additional license seat. In most cases, Undercover will simply recognize your 1.5 registration and it won't ask for a license key.

Leopard instructions

If you have installed Leopard by doing a 'Clean install', or by doing an 'Archive and install' you don't have to do any extra work.
Simply download Undercover 2 and run the installer. You can use your existing Kagi license key (not your Undercover ID) to register Undercover 2. By upgrading, you will not use an additional license seat. In most cases, Undercover will simply recognize your 1.5 registration and it won't prompt you to enter your license key.

If you have installed Leopard by doing an upgrade install, you first have to remove Undercover 1.5 by removing the following file: /Library/Launchdaemons/com.orbicule.undercover.plist. Restart your Mac after this removal. Next, you can install Undercover 2 as described in the paragraph above.

Leopard spotted in the wild (almost)

Leopard is almost here, and we are getting ready for it. Here is what you need to know about Undercover on Leopard:

- The current version of Undercover (version 1.5), is not compatible with Leopard.
- For the past few months, we have been working on Undercover 2.0, which will run fine on both Tiger and Leopard and which will sport some new features too.
- We will release Undercover 2 as soon as we possibly can. However we can't ship it before we can test Undercover on the final Leopard build. As I'm writing this, Apple has not released it to developers yet.
- If you want to install Leopard before Undercover 2 ships, there is no need to uninstall Undercover in advance. Note that your Mac won't be protected when booted in Leopard until we release Undercover 2.
- As soon as we ship Undercover 2, we will send out emails to all registered users explaining how to upgrade under different scenarios (upgrade, archive and install, clean install).

Just to make it clear for everyone: Undercover 2 will be totally free for all registered 1.x users! Talk about an incentive to upgrade...

Undercover recovers 4 Macs at once

We are proud to announce a new recovery story. While every recovery is unique, this story is quite special, as we recovered four brand new MacBooks at once. Read the good news yourself on our recovery page.

Exit TheftSensor

We have decided to halt development of TheftSensor. It has been a difficult decision to make, but we think it's the right choice for several reasons. I'll try to explain.

Last year, when we released the first TheftSensor beta, Apple had just introduced the Apple Remote on some of their Macs, as well as the Sudden Motion Sensor. TheftSensor made innovative use of private, unreleased APIs to access both these hardware additions. For a beta, that's OK. We hoped that Apple in the meantime would release a public API. Now with the Leopard release only weeks away, it does not look like this will happen for Leopard. If we want to make TheftSensor work on both Tiger and Leopard, we will need to use a private API, which is unsupported by Apple and which could break with any software update. As we want to release high quality software this is no option for us. Worse, the API could even change between Mac models, as is the case with the Motion sensor API, which has effectively changed at least two times between different MacBook models. We could keep working around these issues, but we don't like to build on a weak foundation.

Another reason we are not developing TheftSensor any more is that it can be circumvented in many different ways: a thief could plugin a headphone to silence the alert sound. There is no way around this. The same goes for removing the battery or for holding down the power button for a couple of seconds. There are just too many issues that we can't solve, as we obviously don't have any access to the hardware Apple makes. Additionally, TheftSensor won't work when the laptop is turned off (in a backpack) or when it's already sleeping.

Our users have been aware of all these shortcomings too, and that's why most of them installed Undercover alongside TheftSensor anyway. As Undercover is a much more robust theft recovery application that works under almost every scenario and does not have the shortcomings outlined above, we decided it does not make sense to invest any more resources in TheftSensor. We will focus all our efforts on Undercover instead. As I have written before, the next Undercover update will be released soon after Apple releases Leopard and it will feature some major advancements to make Undercover even more effective.

People who really want TheftSensor-like functionality on their Mac should have a look at iAlertU or JackSMS

Now for the good news: we will have an interesting announcement on our website tomorrow, September 11. Please come back soon...