The 10.3.4 Update delivers enhanced functionality and improved reliability for Mac OS X v10.3 "Panther" and is recommended for all users. Key enhancements include:
improved file sharing and directory services for Mac (AFP), UNIX (NFS), PPTP, and wireless networks,
improved OpenGL technology and updated ATI and NVIDIA graphics drivers,
improved disc burning and recording functionality
iPods connected via USB 2.0 are now recognized by iTunes and iSync,
additional FireWire audio and USB device compatibility
updated Address Book, Mail, Safari, Stickies, and QuickTime applications,
improved compatibility for third party applications
previous standalone security updates
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The only thing I notice is Safari is faster, especially the bookmark pulldowns! Doesn't look like the security hole was completely patched lets hope they get that done soon.
I'm under the impression that all applications are faster...
I thought i was going to DIE because i wanted my "about osx" to say .4. Now that it says .4 im much happier than i ever could be. Hopefully i dont get sick of it like i did when i saw the disgusting 10.3.3. OMg... .3 is like, so last month its not even funny.
Personally I'm just waiting for 10.4, I'm hoping for some big changes.
Supposedly the .5 point releases (eg 10.3.5) might have some noticable improvements, beyond bugfixes, or so the rumor goes.
Features features features, stability stability stability!
Damien
Well I'm about to download but gosh it pains me that there is no mention of SSL WebDav in Finder. Windows has had this for years as had Linux but I can't connect to my SSL WebDav sites via finder in OS X. ugh. Maybe in Tiger? 
Some people are reporting that this update does indeed seem to fix the recent slew of protocol handler holes. I'm downloading it now and really hope it does fix these nasty holes.
I'm with ya, impatiently waiting for that, and SFTP support in Finder. If tiger has those two features alone, it'll be worth the price (for me). 
Protocol handler holes are not all fixed. At least the afp: exploit from http://test.doit.wisc.edu/ still works. These are serious holes, I could've waited for the other improvements if it meant they closed these in 10.3.4.
Oh and I agree with Dan, "Still no SSL WebDav" seems like a legitimate gripe.
You can use Goliath (http://www.webdav.org/goliath/) in OS X for SSL WebDAV connections. Still not as good as having it native in the Finder, but at least it's free.
-G
Safari is so much nicer now. Scrolling is really faster, silky smooth infact.
10.3 has been a great release for OSX, and it's so much nicer to work with than Jaguar. I hope that Tiger can really add some great new features - I do wonder what Apple is actually doing since we haven't had all that many products from them (or it seems that way)
With WWDC coming up, it's a great time to be a mac owner!
Well done Apple! The only good thing I see from operating system that did not dissapoint me at least.
For those who worried about protocol hole problem, you can download a Ruby program that fix these protocol. goto http://daringfireball.net/2004/05/ounce_of_prevention
Mac OS X keeps getting better and better! Address Book is definitely much more stable now!
... of this update was noticing a bit in the Knowledge Base article that identified a crasher which had made Entourage unusable. Looks like the culprit was the Times font family installed by my HP print driver.
Tossed the font, and the problem is gone. Very cool.
The only thing that I find lacking in OS X is a native tool to make an exact copy of an audio CD without having to go through a bunch of steps in iTunes. Do the CD burning updates provide such a facility? If not, does anybody have any suggestions? My G4 powerbook hates cdrdao, and it made an absolutely terrible grinding death noise from tho combodrive last time I attempted to use it. I haven't had the problem since...
Yeah, it was just a wish and gripe, not trying to start any kind of war or anything. I use goliath currently but it leaves a lot to be desired. I sure wish they'd just add SSL WebDav to the finder already. How hard could it possibly be to do?
so yes, i've been wanting to get an apple computer for some time now because of OS X. i would love to get an ibook.. oh yes.. i've been skimming ebay with a real sharp eye lately.
Sweet nfs updates, Hopefully now they have remedied the general nfs blowfulness problem. With 10.3.3 my mac might as well be disconnected from the network.
Sure I could use samba, but that would be another thing to set up and keep updated. Samba also mangles my filenames since windows doesn't allow a bunch of characters that I regularly use.
Finder still crashes while trying to view hdds on my PC box 
It mounts them fine, but when trying to view it just restarts. Hopefully, this is fixed soon..
Sorry, this is off topic, but I thought someone here might know the answer to this.
Has there been any progress with Darwine? I have not seen any changes to the homepage in the last few months.
http://darwine.opendarwin.org//
"The only thing that I find lacking in OS X is a native tool to make an exact copy of an audio CD without having to go through a bunch of steps in iTunes. Do the CD burning updates provide such a facility? If not, does anybody have any suggestions? My G4 powerbook hates cdrdao, and it made an absolutely terrible grinding death noise from tho combodrive last time I attempted to use it. I haven't had the problem since..."
It's a bloody OS for (&%/&%, buy "Toast 6" instead of coming to OSnews and complain about Apple not giving you the right burningtools for their OS!
Amazingly, even with that rant, you've actually bought up a valid issue. When is something part of the operating system? a useless feature to one person is a necessity to another.
If Apple started to expand the ability to write to CDs, we would then have people claiming that Apple was being anti-competitive by bundling applications with MacOS. The fact is, its quite funny when we have people who want the feature, but when it is included, they suddenly disappear then come back claiming that their beloved company is anti-competitive.
By definition, an OS *should* burn CDs. Wasn't the term "operating system" originally called a "disk operating system"? CD-Rs are just a newer form of media, that's all. Should I have to buy a $79 piece of software to write to a floppy as well? How about printing, should the OS do that?
funny your name is Linux/Mac, while you confuse OS with DOS...
It's a long tradition of PC operating systems. Even in the days of DOS you needed to buy a third party application for diskette cloning, CopyWrite or PC-Tools, for example. The same was true for Macintosh.
File copying was possible with the OS but low level cloning wasn't.
to answer your question Dice, not that i'm aware of. i actually burnt a copy of Darwin 7.0.1 and am attempting to install it on my notebook now..
I've got an older G3 Grape iMac, installing this update makes an error dialog pop up saying that a new version of the OS is installed
I've got Systemworks 2003 installed on the mac, and Its not happy that my version has changed, nothing on the symantec side... just have to wait I guess.
Maybe it's just a first time thing, like things were
being reinitialized, so I'm guessing the next reboot
will be normal speed--wait a minute, I hardly have to
reboot, har har windows suckers!!
:P
DISCLAIMER: I use windows, mac, and linux.
Well atleast it's free. Me personally I've been kind of disappointed with Apples updates. It's like I belong to a OS subscription service that I have to renew every year or two.
So far, 10.3.1-10.3.4 have been released for free, right?
10.2.1-10.2.8 were as well.
I'm waiting for a Panther-enabled Mac to arrive at my door, but having used Jag on my machine and Panther on a friends, it seems like Panther contains enough new stuff to justify an "upgrade."
If you look at Windows ... technically Win95 was 4.00.95 or something like that, 98 was 4.1. In the same vein, Windows 2000 is 5.0, XP is 5.1. Why does nobody complain about that?
You have the windows naming system mixed up.
Windows 2000 is NT5
NT4 was quite a different beast from "Windows 4" (Windows 95) just the same way as NT3.x was totally different OS from Windows 3.x
XP is NT5.1 and Windows 2003 is NT5.2
The Apple developers are passionate about their new OS. They have the passion that BSD and Linux developers have. I love it, we have innovation again like we did in the 80's. We actually have choices.
It's a bloody OS for (&%/&%, buy "Toast 6" instead of coming to OSnews and complain about Apple not giving you the right burningtools for their OS!
I just think that it's odd that OS X allows you to use the disk utility to make disk images of data CDs but not audio. Every other burning software that comes free with the purchase of a CD burner includes a utility to copy an audio CD. I don't see why OS X should be any different.
I know you're looking for something free, but I can highly recommend Roxio's Toast 6. I use it almost daily for duplicating CDs of all kinds. You should check out its feature set - while it's not exactly a cheap piece of software, it's worth every penny if you do even a moderate amount of burning. It's definitely on my "indespensable OS X software" list. I didn't like Toast 5 all that much, but 6 is quite nice. It does everything I need for working in a mixed Windows/Mac environment.
That being said, I do think that the CD burning abilites of OS X are quite anemic, out of the box. Same goes for XP. However, with such a fine application to meet my needs (Toast), I don't really mind.
And no, I'm not getting paid by Roxio to say this. 
well, lets see.... OS X lets you copy files onto a disk image and then burn them.... it lets you copy files onto a floppy disk, a USB drive, a hard drive.
the only think that upsets me is that it doe snot have packet writing built in, so writing files to a CD is much more cumbersome than writing to another medium. you want duplication, that is not a basic system function.
have you looked into seeing if Carbon Copy Cloner can make an exact copy of a CD to a disk image which you can then write to a CD?
oh, and yes, OS X does make ISO images, you set it to make a master image and you end up with a foo.cdr file. change the extension to .ISO and it works with out a hitch.
Have you tried the Missing Media Burner? (look for it at versiontracker.com) I think it you can make it use cdrecord instead od cdrdao
Wouldn't a "dd if=/dev/diskXYZ of=~/DiskImage.iso" do to rip a Audio CD? Does someone know if that works?
'I've got Systemworks 2003 installed on the mac, and Its not happy that my version has changed, nothing on the symantec side... just have to wait I guess'
Symantec should never be installed in OS X, it is a nightmare. Use it from the CD if you must. Sez me
Downloading now on my lame ISDN connection. I have to take issue with the value for money crowd here though. I have a Wallstreet Powerbook that I managed to get Panther onto with XPostFacto, I had OS9.2 and then Jaguar on there and there are definate speed improvements with every release and patch.
Maybe you don't notice this on your 1ghz+ machines but my humble little 300mhz needs every ounce of optimisation it can get.
Try running WindowsXP on a 7 year old laptop and see what happens...
Well played Apple I say, since Panther I have been using my 3ghz pc less and less, it's gonna be a games console only soon
Wouldn't a "dd if=/dev/diskXYZ of=~/DiskImage.iso" do to rip a Audio CD? Does someone know if that works?
No, that doesn't work on Linux or OS X. The data format for
an audio CD is different from a data CD. The sectors on a CD actually
are something like 2700+ bytes long. On a data CD, 2048 bytes of data
are recorded in each sector, the remaining bytes are used for holding
a long error detecting and correcting code. Audio records some 2500
bytes of digital data, and uses a smaller error checking code. When
reading a disk normally, the CD drive just delivers the audio data or
regular data minus the error checking codes. Unless you have software
and a drive that can deliver the raw sector data, you can not get an
exact duplicate. Using dd to copy is also not going to get what you
want off of an audio disk.
