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OS X Businesses Operating Systems Apple

Mac OS X 10.4.3 Released 219

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the using-safari-on-acid dept.
parry writes "Software Update just delivered the Mac OS X 10.4.3 update to my PowerBook. Key changes include improved responsiveness when searching in Spotlight, Safari now passes the Acid2 test, better performance for MS-DOS formatted volumes and numerous bug fixes."
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Mac OS X 10.4.3 Released More

Mac OS X 10.4.3 Released

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  • What will it be for early downloaders... (Score:5, Funny)

    by xactuary ( 746078 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @09:25PM (#13920082)
    Trick or Treat?

  • Yes, it is snappier! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 31, 2005 @09:30PM (#13920103)
    ... even my old Dell inspiron running Win XP is snappier now that 10.4.3 is out!

    • My iBook G4 1GHz (640MB) has been losing it's snappy in recent months. Since the 10.4.x updates have arrived, it's been feeling more sluggish and has even required a reboot to refresh its snappy. There are some "workarounds" for Safari to improve performance, but I've found that even Finder and other apps are making 10.4.x require a reboot every now and again.

      • Re:Yes, it is snappier! (Score:5, Informative)

        by Johnathon_Dough ( 719310 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @11:22PM (#13920724)
        I had the same problem on my wife's ibook, so i disabled dashboard and spotlight (she used neither) and it got a whole lot better.

        to disable spotlight try spotless [macupdate.com]

        and instructions [macworld.com] on disabling dashboard.

        • So if I never use Dashboard, or load any applets, it'll not chew resource? That would be nice.
          When I first got 10.4, I configured a small bunch of applets for the Dashboard. A week or two later, I was running Top, and noticed just how much memory/CPU these things chew up. I immediately disabled them all.

          If Apple wants Dashboard to succeed, they've got to make it much more resource efficient. Even switching to the Dashboard on my iBook G4 1GHz is sluggish - like several seconds while things slowly come up.

      • Re:Yes, it is snappier! (Score:5, Informative)

        by Mononoke ( 88668 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @11:58PM (#13920886) Homepage Journal
        Clean off your desktop.

        Seriously.

        I had been watching Activity Monitor, and an app called WindowServer was taking vast amounts of CPU, especially during startup of other apps (things would bounce 'forever' in the doc before opening.) It wasn't a pre-binding problem either. I finally thought I might clean off my computer's desktop (there were about 340 items there, as it's both my default download folder and the place I drag images and clippings to from Safari.) I simply dragged everything into a folder that I created on the desktop, restarted for luck, and all the snappiness was back.

        WindowServer is behaving itself now, and everything loading quicker and working more as expected. I don't know exactly what WindowServer does, but I do know it hates a 'dirty desktop.'

        • WindowServer is responsible for handling moving windows, drawing the frames of windows, hidding and unhiding them and the like. It doesn't handle the desktop and drawing the items on it, Finder does that.

          Likely, WindowServer got itself all tied into knots for some other reason entirely, and rebooting put an end to all that, not clearing off the desktop.
          • Likely, WindowServer got itself all tied into knots for some other reason entirely, and rebooting put an end to all that, not clearing off the desktop.
            Nope. Previous reboots (and there were several in the troubleshooting process) had no effect on the amount of CPU used by WindowServer. Clearing the desktop was the only action that fixed the problem.
          • WindowServer is responsible for handling moving windows, drawing the frames of windows, hidding and unhiding them and the like. It doesn't handle the desktop and drawing the items on it, Finder does that.

            Yes and no. WindowServer, or to be more specific, the Quartz Compositor (itself a part of the WindowServer process) is also responsible for compositing all the windows into one image to send to your graphics card. While the Finder draws the items that reside on the desktop, it sends them to WindowServer to

        • Re:Yes, it is snappier! (Score:5, Funny)

          by skinfitz ( 564041 ) on Tuesday November 01, 2005 @04:21AM (#13921861) Journal
          Windows runs faster with a clean desktop too. They must have copied that from Microsoft...
        • there were about 340 items there, as it's both my default download folder and the place I drag images and clippings to from Safari.

          Holy crap. 340 files on your desktop?

          I've been in IT for a while, and this seems to be a particular neurosis or Mac users. Inexperienced Windows users will throw everything on their desktop, but with Mac users, even many of the experienced ones do it. Everything is on their desktop, or just on the hard drive (by which I mean, not sorted at all, but in the root directory), a

          • Re:Yes, it is snappier! (Score:4, Funny)

            by derflammenhund ( 768851 ) on Tuesday November 01, 2005 @11:51AM (#13923698)
            Macs did have a proper file structure before OS X: it was whatever you wanted it to be. Personally, I stuck to the Applications/Documents format Apple presented me with on our first mac back in 1995. I still use this format, but the OS let you create as many subfolders wherever you wanted, so whatever organization scheme worked best for you was the one you used. Unfortunately, with OS X, and especially with the removal of things like Favorites-as-a-default, the HD icon is the only folder you see on the desktop at startup, so it's probably quite a bit more compelling to put things in there if you don't "know any better."

            I'd guess there's some compulsion to try to simply drag files to My Computer on windows machines for some people.

            As a more stereotypical guess, mac people tend to have relied on visual layouts in folders to deal with filesystem issues, so those people like to see all of their files in one view. A professor I have to deal with during the course of my job is like this; he has 400 files on his desktop, and then on top of that he keeps nested folder after nested folder of files for his class presentations on his drive. I have no clue whatsoever how he gets anything done, especially as one of his main subfolders is labled with his name.

            Ugh.
            • Macs did have a proper file structure before OS X: it was whatever you wanted it to be.

              "Whatever you want" may be fine for some users of single-user systems to don't care much about security, but it's not what I would call a "proper file structure". I'm not saying the system should necessarily keep you from doing whatever you want, but users should understand that storing your files in some places makes sense, and storing them in others does not. The OS should also encourage the proper behavior (using so

          • Part of the problem is that Safari's default download folder is the desktop - and every time you open a PDF it downloads it there. It's easy to accumulate tons and tons of PDFs on your desktop if you don't clean it up regularly. And Firefox is no better, because if you choose "Open with Preview" instead of "Save to..." it saves it to the desktop as well - even though if you had saved it, you could have chosen a location.

  • Seems to work fine... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by knightinshiningarmor ( 653332 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @09:40PM (#13920168)
    I installed it a few hours ago and everything seems about right. The only problem I've had so far is in starting up Safari:

    Safari 2.0.2 (v416.12) has not been tested with the plugin PithHelmet 2.6.1 (v70). As a precaution, it has not been loaded. Please contact the plugin developer for further information.

    Any ideas on getting this working?

    • RE: getting PithHelmet to work (Score:5, Informative)

      by KURAAKU Deibiddo ( 740939 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @10:14PM (#13920333) Homepage

      here is probably the easiest way, since I don't know if you're using Apple's Finder or not. Path Finder [cocoatech.com] (which I use instead of Apple's Finder) allows you to look at the contents of a package or app, which would be easier for this edit if you want to use the GUI all the way.

      first of all, you may want to make sure you have version 2.6.1 of Pith Helmet [culater.net] (the latest version). then open the Terminal. paste or type this line, all on one line:

      open "/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins/PithHelmet.bundle/Contents/Info.plist"

      (this will open the file you need to edit in the Property List Editor.)

      click the triangles to expand "Root", then "SIMBLTargetApplications", and then "0".

      Change "MaxBundleVersion" to "416".

      it should look like this [pankurokku.com].

      then hit Cmd-S to save, Cmd-Q to quit, and you're all set to use Pith Helmet. i've tested it for a bit, and so far it works perfectly.

      let me know if you have any questions.

      • someone brought it to my attention to that you will only have the Property List Editor if you installed the Developer Tools. not to worry, if you don't have it. all you need to do is use TextEdit (or BBedit if you have it). the command for that looks like this (again, all one line):

        open -a "TextEdit" "/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins/PithHelmet.bundle/Contents/Info.plist"

        about two-thirds of the way down, you want to change this bit:

        <key>MaxBundleVersion</key>
        <string>

      • This worked just fine.. Many thanks!
      • here is probably the easiest way, since I don't know if you're using Apple's Finder or not. Path Finder (which I use instead of Apple's Finder) allows you to look at the contents of a package or app, which would be easier for this edit if you want to use the GUI all the way.
        Actually, the stock Finder is happy to give you access to the contents of bundles as well. Right-click on any bundle, and the contextual menu will include "Show Package Contents".
  • it's much better than those MacB's.

  • Anyone with iTunes 5 done the OSX upgrade yet? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by artifex2004 ( 766107 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @09:50PM (#13920212) Journal
    If you have, did it stealth update to iTunes 6?
    I don't want 6, yet.

  • Non-iMacs using Front Row beware (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rshane ( 27512 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @10:01PM (#13920258)
    Although I've had no problems with Front Row since I upgraded my Mini, there have been several reports of Front Row failing to work for those not using iMacs (shame on you, pirates! ;)) after this upgrade. Use at your own risk.

      • Update downloaded and installed : checked
      • Stability : checked
      • iApps : checked
      • FrontRow for Mac mini : checked

      By the way, for those who tried the "Bezel" thing, it doesn't seem necessary (and didn't in 10.4.2). The little applescript app was not really necessary too, just press ctrl-esc when Front Row menu is there.

      As a remote I use my phone + Romeo (and a simple plugin to start, map keys, quit), the only tricky thing is the fast forward that works with long cursor key down, which is not simple with a ph

  • According to their tech notes:

    Disables Quartz 2D Extreme--Quartz 2D Extreme is not a supported feature in Tiger, and re-enabling it may lead to video redraw issues or kernel panics.

    I'm confused. Is Quartz 2D Extreme a Mac OS X "Tiger" feature or not? Quartz is listed as a Tiger feature [apple.com] and there's a page that describes it [apple.com]. But 10.4.3 sounds like it disabled it.

    Then again, John Siracusa at Ars Technica [arstechnica.com] says it super fast, but I thought I had read it wasn't ready for 10.4.0. so is it there or not? Was it eve

    • Re:Quartz 2D Extreme disabled? (Score:5, Informative)

      by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @10:52PM (#13920545) Journal
      You are being confused, I think, by the fact that three technologies have very similar names.

      Quartz 2D (often just Quartz) is the 2D rendering system used on OS X. It uses a display list format that has a 1:1 mapping with PDF display lists, allowing resolution-independent UI elements to be drawn.

      Quartz Extreme was the hardware accelerated compositing system introduced with (I think) Jagwyre. Each window in Quartz 2D is rendered to a buffer. Originally, these were then composited in software. With QE, they were rendered to OpenGL textures and then composited in hardware. This allowed things like translucent windows to be drawn quickly, and made effects like Exposé possible.

      Quartz 2D Extreme moves a lot of the things in Quartz 2D into hardware. For example, each character in a font is rendered into an OpenGL buffer with Q2DE, and then composited in the window by the GPU. This makes text rendering much faster with Q2DE (assuming that the GPU is fast enough).

      Apple never advertised Q2DE. It was mentioned at the WWDC, but that is a developers conference - and developers can enable it for testing purposes. They advertise Quartz 2D and Quartz Extreme, because these are shipping features.

      • Apple never advertised Q2DE. It was mentioned at the WWDC, but that is a developers conference - and developers can enable it for testing purposes. They advertise Quartz 2D and Quartz Extreme, because these are shipping features.

        Q2DE was, once upon a time, listed as one of the coming attractions in Tiger on www.apple.com, back before 10.4 was released. Like, months before. So it's an understandable disappointment that it didn't actually ship working. Anyway, from the 10.4.3 release notes I get the i

    • From the ArsTechnica Mac.Ach 10.4.3 thread [arstechnica.com]:
      Posted [arstechnica.com] by MightySpoon:

      Quote:why has apple dropped the development of Q2DX in tiger?

      To avoid potential lawsuits from Vanilla Ice.

      (Say Quartz Two Dee Extreme out loud and then try not to shoot yourself in your face. You can't do it.)

      The truth hurts, doesn't it? ;p
  • I installed it nothing seems to have been broken on my powerbook.

    One interesting thing I noticed is in the Finder's preview pane for applications. It basically lists the architectures the application is built for, the information does not appear in the 'get information' window. At this point in time, only the developers tool include the intel binaries. Maybe it was there before, but I did not notice it.

  • The last update of Mail broke MacGPG compatibility (fixed with an updated download from http://macgpg.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]). Can anyone using the update tell me whether it is affected with this update?

  • mail.app snafu? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by FFFish ( 7567 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @11:18PM (#13920701) Homepage
    In Mail, I can not access the "advanced" panel of Junk Mail Preferences; nor can I edit the rules listed in the Pref Pane. :-(

  • I Broke Safari's ACID2 Support (Score:4, Interesting)

    by nuxx ( 10153 ) on Tuesday November 01, 2005 @12:04AM (#13920912) Homepage
    By visiting the ACID2 test [webstandards.org] and then scrolling downward in Safari using my Apple Mighty Mouse I'm able to break the ACID2 test rendering. Here [nuxx.net] is a screenshot of it. The face breaks and the better part of it scrolls across the page. I don't think this is the expected behavior, but I guess I may be wrong?

  • Bugfixes are nice (Score:2, Informative)

    by Toothpick ( 23095 )
    10.4.3 fixes the annoying bug that prevents X11 windows from raising to the top when switching apps. Dashboard is noticeably snappier.

    But hey, I've only been a Mac owner for three weeks. The Finder still drives me batty.
    • Try Path Finder [cocoatech.com]. I've been running it for a year or so and don't think I'd ever be able to go back to regular Finder. I just wish the 4.0 update would hurry up and get here, as it's shaping up excellently.
    • Does it fix the problem where other apps will open their windows in front of the current app? That's one thing Mac OS 9 had gotten right that Mac OS X has still failed to do.

      Also, try opening 20-or-so QuickTime Player video files at once and watch your display get corrupted beyond the borders of the windows. Try it with files that use various codecs and video sizes.

      I'd try it myself, but I can't do it until tonight, and the one report of failure to recognize the built-in Firewire ports on a B&W G3 is
  • There were rumors flying that this update would include an improved version of iChat that would support tabbed chats in a single window, like Adium [adiumx.com] does. Alas, no joy. I like Adium well enough, but I like the tighter integration of iChat with the rest of the OS (showing who's online in Mail.app, for instance).
  • to coincide with Safari 2.02 and, by extention, 10.4.3. Main change is that most features now do not require admin access to enable.

    Can be found at http://www.lordofthecows.com/ [lordofthecows.com]

    Tinker Tool still appears to work with 10.4.3, but it's pretty safe given that it makes changes to preference files that can also be made through terminal.
  • Installed. Restarted and walked away. Returned to KP at the login window.

    Restarted. Logged in. KP while trying to type first KP report.

    Restarted. Logged in. Send in KP report. Spotlight remix kicks off and things seem OK.

    Only other thing I've noticed is that the fan behavior and power supply noises seem to have reverted sorta to the way they were before the 10.3.3 update. PSU noise is more intermittent and unpredictable and the fan behavior has the aggressive responses of pre-10.3.3 but total average
  • My dual 2.5GHz G5 crashed after upgrading. Second time around, it booted well. Perhaps it was due to the fact that I had Q2DE turned on...
  • I got excited about iChat encryption - it'll help it move up to some of the requirements companies have for video conferencing software. But then I got this:

    "You need to sign up for a .Mac account to enable iChat encryption."

    What the Frell? I have to pay the .Mac tax to get a feature on the core OS? For shame, Apple... for shame.

    Additionally, I had a major issue when I upgraded, and I wasn't alone according to the discussions on the Apple support site. All my firewire devices freak

  • Updated two machines simultaneously. PowerMac G5 1.8GHz single processor and iBook G4 1GHz.

    The PowerMac G5 was sent for reboot after finish updating. While iBook was sent to shutdown after update completed.

    Now, iBook G4 is spinning wheel at grey apple. The longest I waited was about 15 minutes before hard shutdown. I have put it into Target Disk Mode to be Verified by PowerMac G5, the filesystem is not corrupted.

    I can hear the harddisk clicking in iBook which makes me salivate (I don't know why). Migh

  • First reboot after this update WILL BE LONG.

    A lot of minutes on G5 2x1.8 (YMMW)
    Just wait.
    And after second reboot all will be ok.

    There are some heavy things system doing during first reboot.
    Don't shut it down or hard reset!
    • Yep, it seems to do some kind of firmware update maybe. You get stuck at a grey screen with a spinny, and the cpu fans flip to their highest spin rate for several seconds.

      Probably depends on the system, it took about a minute on my 1.7GHz iMac.
  • My volume and brightness keys on my 12" PowerBook don't seem to be working. Is anyone else having this problem? They used to work relatively well (if sometimes slower than I'd like).

  • Safari Problem with graphics (Score:3, Interesting)

    by skinfitz ( 564041 ) on Tuesday November 01, 2005 @06:03PM (#13927160) Journal
    Check this [www.mcse.ms] out. Google ad running down the side obscuring the text for anyone else? I've been seeing it on a lots of sites since upgrading the PB to 10.4.3. Think I'll hang on for the updated update before patching the G5.
    • Google ad running down the side obscuring the text for anyone else?

      Yep, and I'm not even using Safari. I just tested it, and it's doing the same thing for Safari 1.3.1 on Panther, on Camino, on Firefox/Mozilla.

      Complain to the people who run the site, their HTML is broken... I suspect they only tested it on one version of Internet Explorer, ever.

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