Surveillance for your Mac

If you’ve just bought a new MacBook, it’s understandable that you might be a little paranoid. You can never guarantee to have it with you all the time. With Watchmac you can monitor any infringement on your Mac while you are away.

The application is easy to set up and will monitor two types of infringements: authentication failures and failed screen unlocks. Once you come back to your MacBook, you can view how many infringements there has been and what sort they were, straight from the menu bar. Watchmac also keeps them all in a log.

One of the handy features of Watchmac is that it can take snapshots of whoever tries to force themselves onto your Mac. In the preferences, you’ll see you can take snapshots, from one to ten, and set your own interval and delay. If the intruder is a Mac user, he might notice the iSight camera changing color though.

If you feel comfortable using the Terminal, you’ll see you can control Watchmac from a simple script in the utility. I don’t advise all users to try this out though. It’s easier to stick with the normal interface.

While it monitors only two types of infringements, Watchmac is a useful tool to see if anybody has tried to use your MacBook while you were away.

Fixed: An attacker could unlock the screen without knowing the password.New: Extend Watchmac’s reaction capabilities using AppleScript and other scripting languages via the Run Scripts reaction. Check out the Watchmac Automation SDK for more info.New: Lock the screen via AppleScript and the watchmacutil command.Fixed: Corrected typography errors in German localisation.Other minor user interface tweaks and bugfixes.

Changes

• Fixed: An attacker could unlock the screen without knowing the password.New: Extend Watchmac’s reaction capabilities using AppleScript and other scripting languages via the Run Scripts reaction. Check out the Watchmac Automation SDK for more info.New: Lock the screen via AppleScript and the watchmacutil command.Fixed: Corrected typography errors in German localisation.Other minor user interface tweaks and bugfixes.