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OS X Businesses Operating Systems Software Upgrades Apple

Apple's Mac OS X 10.5.3 Has Landed 161

Posted by timothy from the little-nudges dept.
jaymus of dawning writes with word that, as promised, "Apple has just released the latest major revision of OS X. The update yields improvements to tons of system components and applications including the Software Update system, Address Book, AirPort, Automater, iCal, iChat, Mail, Parental Controls, Spaces, Time Machine and VoiceOver. This release contains 200 bug fixes from 10.5.2. See Apple's release page for all the delicious details."
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Apple's Mac OS X 10.5.3 Has Landed More

Apple's Mac OS X 10.5.3 Has Landed

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  • It's 9D34 (Score:4, Informative)

    by TJamieson ( 218336 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2008 @03:32PM (#23574909)
    Just like yesterday's test build.

    • Re:It's 9D34 (Score:5, Informative)

      by 0100010001010011 ( 652467 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2008 @04:43PM (#23576089)
      Updating for those of us at work:

      I'm still at work but I'd like to come home to a freshly updated system, you can do system updates over SSH.

      >sudo softwareupdate -i -a
      Software Update Tool
      Copyright 2002-2007 Apple

      Downloading Mac OS X Update 0.
      ---
      Then it'll install and you can do a
      > sudo shutdown -r now

      Hurray for BSD underpinnings.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        That won't work because the 10.5.3 update installs a new PAM that throws sudo off prior to rebooting, so the last step you mentioned won't run. So what you have to do instead is this:

        sudo -s
        softwareupdate -i -a
        shutdown -r now

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by yanos ( 633109 )
      Is the infamous airport disconnection issue [google.ca] finally been fixed?
      • I never had problems before, however after 10.5.3 I initially could not get an IP from my AP. Another reboot fixed it though. Maybe the update cleans/breaks something, and that break, when detected, gets cleaned on reboot? Seems like they're forcing all airport settings to reset in one way or other.

  • Now, like all updates (Score:5, Insightful)

    by oahazmatt ( 868057 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2008 @03:35PM (#23574959) Journal
    Now, like all updates, I'll wait a week to make sure there are no serious problems. (For those of you still in disbelief, yes, Mac systems do have their share of problems. Like pesky system updates that may or may not allow you to boot into your OS. I forget which revision that was.)

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by gyrogeerloose ( 849181 )

      pesky system updates that may or may not allow you to boot into your OS

      You know, I've had my share of problems with Macs over the years but even though I've heard lots of horror stories, no system update has ever hosed my computer. I've used some pretty unusual combinations of Apple/third party hardware, too, like a Centris 650 (68040 chip) with a PPC upgrade card and an ancient Toby Frame Buffer video card out of a Mac II installed.

      • Re:Now, like all updates (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Richard_at_work ( 517087 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2008 @04:18PM (#23575679)
        Hang around in #MacOSX on Freenode for the next week, I guarantee you will see hosed systems :) (And not just from random people popping in, regulars will be hit as well). Happens every release.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Lars T. ( 470328 )

          Hang around in #MacOSX on Freenode for the next week, I guarantee you will see hosed systems :) (And not just from random people popping in, regulars will be hit as well). Happens every release.
          Yeah, and like every release, many of the problems will have nothing to do with the update.

      • Re: (Score:1, Offtopic)

        by Megane ( 129182 )
        One update, I think it was 10.2.9, broke Classic. After re-installing and re-updating the OS, I somehow guessed correctly that it was a problem with the combo updater. So I downloaded the previous version's combo update, and the current non-combo update. Another system re-install and the two updates later, and Classic was working again.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by g-san ( 93038 )
        The OP could be talking about Leopard hosing systems with the beta of BootCamp. I had a system with 10.4 and a beta of BootCamp. Updated to Leopard, rebooted, system was toast. I had to mount my laptop hard drive as a firewire drive, copy my essentials, then had to reformat and reinstall. So it does happen, but I was playing with unreleased software.

        I am going to blame Windows for this, however, since this is Slashdot and this is a Mac topic.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by raddan ( 519638 )

      I forget which revision that was.
      10.5.2. You have a short memory! :^)
    • My friend and I are both on white iMacs, use different isps, and neither can install the upgrade, a package error is encountered.

      I haven't checked the official site but I doubt we are alone in this issue.

      While I haven't had an update completely scramble my setup its not a big fear if you keep to a regular schedule of backups, including immediate ones prior to trying to upgrade.

    • 10.5.3 hosed my system. clicked "restart" from the update window before I went to lunch, came back an hour later to find the machine endlessly attempting to start the window server, showing me some nice blue wallpaper for 30 seconds and then crashing and attempting to start the window server again.

      rather than try and work out what was wrong I decided to try out a full restore from time machine, only to find that the on installer dvd when you get to the screen where you pick the drive to restore from the f

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by barzok ( 26681 )
      No problem there. At the rate it was downloading for me last night, it'll be a week before I even can install it. Stuck on "about 4 hours remaining" for 2 1/2 hours (and yes, it was downloading all the while).
    • Like pesky system updates that may or may not allow you to boot into your OS. I forget which revision that was.)

      Yes, although it wasn't Apple's fault, that still was a pain for a some when certain unsupported 3rd party hacks to add OS 9 style system extensions broke with an update.
      There was good reason for Apple doing away with the OS 9 type of system extensions when releasing OS X. While they allowed doing some great things, they were a major source of stability issues in OS 9 and earlier. Not only did t

  • freakin scary, that was (Score:5, Informative)

    by Gewalt ( 1200451 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2008 @03:38PM (#23575009)
    During install, my MBP restarted an additional time or two. I thought for a minute there that I was gonna have to restore from a week old super dupe. Alas, on the third startup, it actually started.

    • Re:freakin scary, that was (Score:5, Informative)

      by BarryJacobsen ( 526926 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2008 @03:43PM (#23575079) Homepage

      During install, my MBP restarted an additional time or two. I thought for a minute there that I was gonna have to restore from a week old super dupe. Alas, on the third startup, it actually started.
      Well, the update was 420mb; it's understandable that you'd need to wait a little for the smoke to clear :P

      Kidding aside, this is semi-common with OS X updates. Usually if it doesn't require an extra reboot, the reboot it does do takes a few extra minutes. I'm guessing that since this update is

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by jaredmauch ( 633928 )
        I have 3 macs two got the 198M update one got the 420M. Odd, they're all intel and I don't immediately know why the variance.

        The dual-reboot thing has gotten to be more common than in the past, the first time it happened i freaked out thinking the box ate itself. Just worrying when it happens for the first time. And a reminder to do a backup before any upgrades :).

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by TJamieson ( 218336 )
          Interesting, I had a similar experience. Moreover, the machine that got the 200M update took *forever* to install, but the 420M update machine went blazing quick.

          By any chance, are your two 198M macs running with ATi Graphics?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Niten ( 201835 )

      If that scared you, you should have seen what it did to my old iBook G4 ;)

    • Soo, it's turning out that Apple is becoming more like Microsoft? Or at least OSX is becoming more like Windows?

  • No Server version yet (Score:5, Informative)

    by audunr ( 906697 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2008 @03:53PM (#23575257)
    10.5.2 Server has a show-stopper bug with AFP/Open Directory which gradually makes authentication impossible. Gradually, you get no file access, no VNC, no SSH and in the end you cannot log on locally with an attached screen and keyboard. The issue has been heavily discussed at http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1251475&tstart=0 [apple.com]

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by SoylentRed ( 1246018 )
      This is what has kept us from 10.5... we upgraded from 10.4.x about 2-3 months after Leopard launched.

      We ran into issue after issue of this exact same bug. We even ran into this in our Apple Training - was great watching the trainer think nothing was "officially" wrong. Seems for us that it was when we did screen sharing (during training) just 1 computer connecting to the server would cause the crash.

      Now - we have purchased servers that only support 10.5 - and we haven't had a SINGLE issue with AFP c

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kisielk ( 467327 )
      We ran in to the same problem. We had to roll back our file server to 10.4
  • I've had serious crashes in 10.5.2 with CoreAudio and Time Capsule, and many small annoyances with iChat, window behavior, Spaces, etc. Hopefully this fixes the bulk of them, at least the serious ones. So far, so good.
    • I think iChat got worse. Video & Audio chats crash more often for me. Sykpe works great though.

      Still have issues when I press keys they don't appear in what I am typing. This release, it's the return key - often when trying to log on.
  • I'm still waiting for a fix for the stupid Dock folder problem [arstechnica.com]. Yes, I know there's a workaround (you can put a file or an alias or a folder or something inside the folder, name it something that will be first in an alphabetical sort, and paste a reasonable icon onto that). But I want Apple to recognize how completely retarded this idea was from the beginning, and actually FIX it, the way they fixed the menubar transparency issue [furbo.org] first by reducing the transparency [sulciphur.com] before release, then eventually adding an

    • Re:Retardedness (Score:5, Informative)

      by Poltras ( 680608 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2008 @04:15PM (#23575619) Homepage
      You know they actually fixed the dock folder problem, right? If you right click and check "Display as Folder", it shows as the icon of the folder itself. You can then choose the icon of the folder itself to fit your needs. It's been there since at least 10.5.2.

      • Re:Retardedness (Score:5, Funny)

        by oahazmatt ( 868057 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2008 @04:34PM (#23575955) Journal

        If you right click ...
        Hey, now! Shhh! Don't let them know we've been able to do that.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Phroggy ( 441 )
        Ooh, my bad! Thanks, it looks like that's exactly what I was looking for. I must have missed hearing about this when the 10.5.2 update came out. (I haven't upgraded to Leopard yet, that's why I hadn't seen the option for myself).

  • Still No TimeMachine On Remote Drive (Score:4, Informative)

    by neoform ( 551705 ) <djneoform@gmail.com> on Wednesday May 28, 2008 @04:13PM (#23575595) Homepage
    Am I just not seeing why this would be hard?

    I really want to be able to backup to a remote drive. Perhaps allowing me to save to a disk image?

    • Re:Still No TimeMachine On Remote Drive (Score:5, Informative)

      by raddan ( 519638 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2008 @04:35PM (#23575965)
      Just use SuperDuper! [shirt-pocket.com]. Their Smart Update feature is fast enough that taking the 15 minutes out of your day to do a backup is relatively painless.
      • Watch out for that. SuperDuper will stop if it encounters any error at all. Like if the 3rd file on your hard drive has a problem you won't get any backup at all. It seems to detect problems that other backup and disk repair utilities can't find. :/

        Anyway, make sure your backup is complete before you need it if you're using SuperDuper. Or use something that behaves differently.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The app you want is called CCC and is available at www.bombich.com. It works wonders, can clone discs or create images that can be burned. Has built in ASR support as well. Good stuff.

    • Re:Still No TimeMachine On Remote Drive (Score:5, Informative)

      by GalionTheElf ( 515869 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2008 @05:01PM (#23576409) Homepage
      If you mean remote as in a share on your network, you can enable using Time Machine on SMB & NFS shares by entering "defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1" in a console.

    • Time Machine uses Unix/HFS filesystem-only features such as "hard links" to achieve its time-travel tricks and these features don't work (or don't work reliably) via networks.

    • Supported from the start (Score:5, Informative)

      by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2008 @06:36PM (#23577929)
      Actually ever since the release of Leopard you could use Time Machine on a network drive, as long as it was shared by another Mac.

      You mean a standalone network drive, and that need is supported by Time Capsule.

      Or you could create the TM volume on a disk attached to your local system, then put it up on a network shared device (like attached to an Airport).

      Or you could use any number of workarounds to allow you to use the remote system as a TM drive...

      It's not like there are not options, some of them even Apple supported, and many of them working ever since TM was out.
      • I've been using time machine over the network to another mac for a while now, I learnt something interesting today though.

        I installed 10.5.3 and it messed up and wouldnt boot. kept crashing shortly after loading the window server, getting into an endless loop of loading the window server, crashing and attempting to load the window server again.

        "never mind" I though, "I'll try out the time machine complete restore". so I boot off the leopard dvd and pick restore from backup. I get to the screen where you
        • Actually network restore works, but it's annoying to get to. You have to open up Terminal.app (!) before you start the restore (one of the options from the menu at the top when you boot from disc) and mount the remote TM volume, then go through the restore process and it will treat that TM volume like a local drive. I think the command is afp_mount, or something like that...

          I had to do that myself once...

          The weird thing about that is, I can't see how that works with Time Capsule either unless you do the s
  • What new drivers are in there for hardware that apple has not came out with yet?
  • how long be for psystar comes out with own update for 10.5.3?
  • Usually I wait AT LEAST a week to see what sort of problems folks have before considering going for a big update, but this time I decided that I'd just go ahead and give it a shot on my lappy (2.2G Macbook).

    It was a 420MB monster for this machine, and took a considerable time and a couple of auto-starts, but it's up, it's running, I don't have any new problems (yet?), and a couple of small peeves with 10.5.2 appear to have gone away.

    Time will tell, but so far I'm either lucky or actually came through unscat

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kelnos ( 564113 )

      (As to number of updates, I'd rather have Apple's way of doing it over Microsoft's - I don't understand waiting for long periods until you get a large enough mass of updates to make a giant "Service Pack" for the system. Quicker, more directed upgrades at reasonable intervals suit me fine.)
      I thought MS released patches once a month [wikipedia.org]...
  • I encountered an error installing 10.5.3; downloading the Combo Update and running it again fixed the problem. I had moved some of Apple's software from /Applications to /Applications/Apple; the installer tries to guess where you've moved it, but apparently the 10.5.2 installer guesses wrong. My /var/log/install.log read:

    May 28 15:14:57 macpro payloadExtractor[5981]: Diverting "./Applications/iSync.
    app/Contents/Resources" to "/System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1
    .8/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/do

  • This pretty much fixes Spaces (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 28, 2008 @08:03PM (#23579033)
    Leopard's Spaces had been criticized for making it hard to organize virtual desktops by task rather than by application (for example at http://blogs.sun.com/bblfish/entry/why_apple_spaces_is_broken [sun.com] and http://www.dribin.org/dave/blog/archives/2007/11/13/spaces/ [dribin.org]).

    10.5.3 seems to address most of these criticisms with two small changes: Command-Tab now tries to find application windows in the current space before switching spaces, and there's a new preference to not switch spaces at all when switching applications.

    This makes a big different in the usability of Spaces!
  • 10.5.2 -> 10.5.3 === M.m.p -> M.m.(p+1)

    Isn't this merely a point revision? Oh, "revision" not "version". Back to sleep...

  • It will still fail to properly terminate a file copy when it experiences a low-level read error. After acknowledging the error dialog, the progress dialog sticks around without progress for hours unless the Finder is force-quitted, and sometimes the problem drive has to be powered down temporarily for the Finder to relaunch.

    I've been getting this with external SATA drives connected via a backplane to the two extra SATA ports in a Mac Pro that aren't lined up with hard drive bays (presumably intended for use

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