“The 10.4.6 Update is recommended for all users and includes general operating system fixes, as well as specific fixes for the following applications and technologies: login and authentication in a variety of network environments; file access and byte range locking with AFP file sharing; network access when using proxy server automatic configuration files; searching iWork ’06 and Microsoft Office documents with Spotlight; creating Automator workflows for iPhoto 6; synchronizing contacts and calendars to .Mac and mobile phones; and much more.” There’s a delta update for 10.4.5, and a combo update for 10.4.0-10.4.5. Easiest method is to just use Software Update.
That’s pretty soon after the release of 10.4.5 which is running quite stable here. Updating as we speak
No problems so far. An odd thing, though, was it rebooted (as usual) and got to the grey screen with the apple logo and the spinning progress indicator. It sat that way for quite some time and then rebooted itself again and came up like normal. Not sure why, but everything seems fine now that it is up.
*update: just read the extended release notes and it says this: “With the Mac OS X 10.4.6 system software update, PowerPC-based Macs will restart twice, instead of once, after the initial installation.” So I guess it wasn’t unexpected. 🙂
Edited 2006-04-03 21:57
dual ghz g4 MDD
2 AGP G4 400s
17 inch iMac G5
20 inch iMac G5
Apple recommended you to read this before installing this update:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303419
thanks for the info. Indeed I had 5 contacts not synchronized…
The system updater just crashed there. I’m downloading the standalone installer right now. For some reason, no apps will launch. *crosses fingers*
The system updater just crashed there. I’m downloading the standalone installer right now. For some reason, no apps will launch. *crosses fingers*
I had this happen when I updated to 10.4.5. I was forced to re-image my drive, and am now at 10.4.3. This was the first time I ever experienced a questionable update from Apple for OS X, causing me to perform a complete backup to an external Firewire drive (via Carbon Copy Clone) before the next update. Needless to say, I haven’t updated since!
Let me know what your experience entails. I am interested to see if you find a solution, or possibly face no issues with the standalone updater.
For the record, here is my system:
– PowerMac AGP G4-450MHz
– Updated to a G4 1.2GHz via Sonnet Encore
– 1.5GB PC-100 SDRAM (Crucial)
– Original 15GB factory installed hard drive
– ATI Radeon 8500 (AGP)
– Acard 6280M
– Hawking HGA32T Gigabit ethernet adapter
Good Luck!
It completely hosed my system. I tried doing an archive and install last night but that wouldn’t work. I had to do a complete erase and install. Thank God for backups!
My system’s a 14″ iBook G4 with 933MHz CPU
Safari crashed twice on me last week. 10.4.4’s Safari was pretty stable, but it seems to have regressed. Hope 10.4.6 is better.
Here, I found the fix for that.
http://www.caminobrowser.org/
This one might work as well.
http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/
firefox really sux, i grew tired of it and use seamonkey/mozilla instead. great browser on all platforms.
The next release of Omniweb will be sweet too, if it ever gets released…
During update, also double restart here on G4 Gigabit Ethernet 400
“Disk Utility’s repair permissions feature will no longer report “We are using special permissions for…” messages.”
Awesome.
Omgwtfpwnz0r! Uh, how often do you run DU? Do those 5 or 10 messages really cause a problem? I’d rather Apple fix real issues then work on stupid things that merely add a few extra lines of text in the output of a utility you use to repair permissions generally only after an update!
How about they fix the kernel performance issues that make Apple servers unsuitable for any kind of decent deployment short of buying 5x the hardware you’d need with any other server os? I could name a dozen other minor/major issues, but a few lines of informational text missing in a rarely-used process doesn’t exactly seem very *important* if you know what I mean.
It looks like Mr. Sandman has taken up residence inside your vagina! Tell him to get out, because he’s turning you into a humourless, uptight, wooden plank.
It’s a cosmetic improvement, yes, but by far and large, it is a usability improvement. Every time those messages about special permissions fly by, a less savvy user would think something was wrong and was being corrected, only to be greeted by the same messages again.
The fix would have taken an Apple engineer probably 2 minutes to do.
Now, quit being such an uptight little prick.
I doubt less savvy users run DU.
None of the mac users I know did, until I told them to repair permissions after updates. So, it really isn’t a usability improvement. 
If the fix had taken an Apple engineer 2 minutes to do, then why did it take 6 major updates to get it? Yeah…
I’m also none of the things you mentioned. Quit trying to insult me out of some misguided attempt to prove your “2 minute” fix is important. It wasn’t, it isn’t, and it won’t be. There are much more pressing issues, and I wish Apple would work on them.
PS – I’m sure some wooden planks are quite upset you compared them with me. Those poor planks, such slander!
Perhaps they didn’t bother fixing a minor cosmetic issue in previous updates for the very same reason that you’re preaching — importance.
The fact that 10.4.6 doesn’t fix any critical issues is testament to the fact that Apple seems to have a pretty solid OS, and they’re just working out minor kinks/low-priority bugs. Once they fix important bugs, who are you to tell Apple that they can’t dedicate some time on spit-and-polish? Don’t be so uppity.
If you actually knew anything about programming, you’d understand when I say that it was a two-minute fix. The fact that you doubt that shows your relative lack of programming knowledge.
“The fact that 10.4.6 doesn’t fix any critical issues is testament to the fact that Apple seems to have a pretty solid OS, and they’re just working out minor kinks/low-priority bugs. Once they fix important bugs, who are you to tell Apple that they can’t dedicate some time on spit-and-polish? Don’t be so uppity. ”
You’re really missing the point, and this borders on blind faith. Just because Apple didn’t fix any critical issues does NOT mean there are NO critical issues. I own a data center, I’ve tried to use Xserves to handle a lot of things, OSX just plain doesn’t work as a server OS, period. You can toss 5x the hardware at a problem, and it might work, but it’s much simpler/better to just go with a different solution. I see this as a hugely “critical” issue, and so do most people.
If Apple (my previous employer, btw…) fixed the critical issues, I’d be more than HAPPY to have them “spit-and-polish” things. Unfortunately, they haven’t. That was the whole point of my post, if you had bothered to read it, instead of insulting me.
“If you actually knew anything about programming, you’d understand when I say that it was a two-minute fix. The fact that you doubt that shows your relative lack of programming knowledge.”
Would you like my resume? I write code in everything from mainframe COBOL on OS/360-OS/390 systems (OS/VS COBOL, MVS COBOL, etc) to C/C++ and Java. I think I know what the hell I’m talking about. Especially having worked for Apple before. If it were just as simple as some guy on an OSS project simply removing the messages, sure, two minutes would be realistic. When there is a paper trail for everything, you’re assigned specific work to do, and you only do what you’re told to do, something that could have been a two minute fix becomes a year long ordeal. It’s been swept under the carpet many many times, and RIGHTFULLY so.
My point in my previous post was simply that Apple *should* worry about the critical issues (you say don’t exist…) instead of trivial “2 minute fix” jobs. Do you want to continue insulting me?
http://corenode.com <– it’s my business. Feel free to read the article on me, it’s on the front page. If you do want the resume, I’ll be glad to send it. Grow up and quit insulting me for no good reason, you really come off as an ass. Your (0.15) rating really shows it.
You sound like a self-righteous ass to me.
Hardly, go look at my prior posts. I just took offense to Tom K’s insults, and defended myself. My apologies if this offended you.
> You’re really missing the point, and this borders on blind faith. Just because Apple didn’t fix any critical issues does NOT mean there are NO critical issues. I own a data center, I’ve tried to use Xserves to handle a lot of things, OSX just plain doesn’t work as a server OS, period. You can toss 5x the hardware at a problem, and it might work, but it’s much simpler/better to just go with a different solution. I see this as a hugely “critical” issue, and so do most people.
It looks like YOU missed the point, big boy. You’re asking for a complete re-design of the OS X kernel and subsystem layers in a point release? Come on. Get real.
OS X was simply never designed to be used as a server operating system. There is too much message-passing on the kernel level, and threading performance is poor. For desktop usage, it’s perfectly fine.
Now about your big ePenis assertion of your abilities …
Do you mind telling me how being less verbose in DU’s output window would be a year-long ordeal? On the programming front, it’s 3 lines, tops — you simply echo the special lines to the log file, but not the textbox. Paper work … I would say 15 minutes tops. Anything more than that, and Apple would need to reconsider their software engineering process.
So tell me again why a minor point release is not a good chance to fix up some cosmetic/annoyance issues? You’re bitching because Apple didn’t give you a kernel redesign in a point release.
Please.
“It looks like YOU missed the point, big boy. You’re asking for a complete re-design of the OS X kernel and subsystem layers in a point release? Come on. Get real.”
No, I was simply pointing out one “critical” issue, of which you said none exist. I can name some others, the samba support is still somewhat broken. Sharing doesn’t work with various versions of Samba. Very recent releases of Samba have a work-around for Macs, but the flaw is with the Mac, not Samba.
There are still major holes in the filetype/metadata information. Even after the last half dozen security updates. It’s great to rely on metadata to determine filetype, but when it can be set to anything arbitrary, it’s not good.
Mac Mini’s still have problems with some DVI displays (older Minis, I haven’t used the newer ones so I cannot comment) in which the DVI display will not function properly. Go read Apple’s support forums.
In OSX server, mail is horribly broken for virtual hosting on multiple domains. Let’s ignore the server performance issues. If you use multiple domains with vhosting (that’s the whole point…) anti-spam/anti-virus are non-functional. You have to drop down to terminal and do everything by hand (and subsequently cannot use the GUI for changes.)
I could go on, really. Again, Apple needs to work on what matters. Those are not complete re-implementation changes requiring a kernel swap. They are, however, worthy fixes. Save the 2 minute polish for when they have really addressed all the issues.
PS – You can verify all of the above using apple’s discussion forums. There is a lot more, too.
With that all being said, I’m off now. I’ll let you and this thread continue into oblivion, because I have no intention of carrying on a conversation where I am constantly insulted.
Cheers
Changes/fixes like that are introduced in major point releases, or major releases — not minor, quickie ones.
I wasn’t quite implying that OS X is completely free of issues, but apparently Apple has decided that they are not quite high-priority at this time. You are not one to second-guess the developers and planners.
OS X was simply never designed to be used as a server operating system. There is too much message-passing on the kernel level, and threading performance is poor. For desktop usage, it’s perfectly fine.
Even for a server operating system it isn’t too bad; as long as you don’t push it to an extreme, its going to perform no worse than a standard Windows 2003 box in a SMB – when its not ‘stressed’ by 10 people accessing the server, its heating the room – hardly stressing the operating system.
As for the kernel design and so forth, you are right, but it has more to do with responsiveness being pushed as a higher priority than throughput; very rarely can you have an ultra-high throughput computer whilst at the same time have low latency and high responsiveness.
Good point about the throughput vs. responsiveness.
However, I believe that Windows Server 2003 would trump OS X in any server-class benchmark. Windows NT has very high-performance threading mechanisms.
True, but like I said, where one would use a single processor, sole server sitting by itself, there wouldn’t be enough stress on the machine for you to actually see the differences in scalability and load handling, in respects to the threading design.
Most people *barely* stress their home desktop, go into any SMB, and the most they’ll use it for will be to file serve, and possibly suck down their male off the ISPs pop server ever 15 minutes or so.
That’s true.
MySQL benchmarks are a good indicator of threading mechanism designs, though. I heard that OS X is laughable on these. Linux manages to do really, really well with NPTL, and Server 2003 does pretty well too.
About those performance issues when used as a server – this may be interesting:
http://ridiculousfish.com/blog/archives/2005/06/03/mystery/
“How about they fix the kernel performance issues that make Apple servers unsuitable for any kind of decent deployment short of buying 5x the hardware you’d need with any other server os? I could name a dozen other minor/major issues, but a few lines of informational text missing in a rarely-used process doesn’t exactly seem very *important* if you know what I mean.”
Well how about not being a total clown and using an OS that is truly designed for those operations – maybe Solaris, AIX or whatever tickles your carriage. I bet you’ve been hassling oracle for a BeOS port of 10g too. Once again your priorities arent indicative of the majority of OS X’s usage cases…primarily it is a desktop multimedia OS not a transactional behemoth.
I use Solaris (10) and Nevada builds. I certainly don’t hassel Oracle for anything, I can’t stand their product. I use PostgreSQL thank you very much. My priorities may not be, but they advertised a product that does not deliver, the end. If they didn’t intend on delivering a server OS, they shouldn’t have. My interests are better served via alternative OSs to OSX, if you had bothered to read my post, you would have seen I explicitly stated that. If you had bothered to read the followups, you would have seen my post with another 3 or 4 critical issues NOT related to OSX as a server OS. Etc etc, I could go on and on, but I won’t.
Considering all I use OSX for now is word processing, opening a bunch of terminals to ssh with, and Logic Pro, I think I know where it’s strengths lie. That doesn’t mean it’s ok for Apple to advertise as a “superior” product when it is clearly inferior. If they didn’t intend to compete in the server market, they should have stayed out of it. People like you claiming it “wasn’t designed” for those operations, just support Apple in their ways. Don’t get me wrong, I love my macs. I just wouldn’t dare use them as a server. From the sounds of it, neither would you. So why do they sell OSX Server? Xserves? Etc. If they have no intention of being competative, they might as well throw in the towel. Look at the dominance (lack thereof) of Xserves/OSX Server in the marketplace. There is a reason for that. Forgive me for suggesting a possible cause. Keep defending blindly, one day you might skewer something worth skewering!
Update appears to have gone perfect so far on my 12″ Powerbook. System restarted twice, like noted, and then booted up normally. Finally those special permission messages are gone from the Disk Utility! Now on to installing it on our iMac G5.
Went just as smoothly on the iMac G5 with iSight. The dreadfully slow start up time on the G5 even feels not quite as dreadfully slow too.
The good news (among other things) is that iSync will now work with my Nokia 6680 phone
(at least that’s what it says).
Let’s just try it… Backing up (Carbon Copy Clone to the rescue).
… and I meant 6820 :p (I gotta get some sleep)
Damn! my 3G phone, motorola E1000 it’s still unsupported,it shouldn’t be difficult to support it, since it uses same tecnology of other V and E series phones (I managed to sync it 2 updates ago simply adding the phone into a iSync plist file) why they don’t support it?
My Samsung D600 is also non-supported, even though it is SyncML compliant. It drives me nuts, I refuse to purchase anything made by *SONY*. I don’t care for Nokia phones (although some of the newer ones look much more interesting), and Motorola phones have terrible UIs IMO.
Unfortunately, this is all Apple seems to care about. Grr.
I guess I can’t blame them for targetting the majority of users though.
[Edit: Changed compliance, I typo’d!]
Edited 2006-04-04 01:37
Did anybody else’s Spotlight mysteriously stop working after this update? I tried adding and removing my volume from Spotlight’s privacy list and even doing a manual mdimport -f from the command line to no avail. It’s not just files: Address Book, iTunes, iCal, you name it. I’m actually kinda worried (G4 PowerBook, 867MHz, 12″)..
Mine still works.. Haven’t noticed any ill effects from the update..
http://hardware.mcse.ms/archive138-2006-2-279251.html
Second post might help.
I’ve done that. Spotlight is just totally… gone. 🙁
I spoke too soon! Deleting the volume index for my hard drive, rebuilding it, then adding my home folder to Privacy tab and removing it fixed my problem. Kind of an odd set of things to do, but at least Spotlight (mostly) works now.
Hi there,
I just want to know if anyone has a similiar problem, which is quite weird. I have IBook 1.33 GHz with ATI Mobility Radeon 9200 graphic card. With 10.4.0 everything runs fine. When I’ve updated on subsequent versions, I have a strange problem. Sometimes when it goes into sleep mode (without shutting the lid), I see lot of colored rectangles on the screen, IBook is not waking up, I have to do hard reset. But after the reset the system does not come up. I see the message that MacOSX is loading, but before the progress bar is completed, the message disappears, I get background screen without any symbols. The only way so far was to reinstall the system and downgrade to 10.4.0 again. I’ve tried all the updates so far and everyone had this behaviour. I also couldn’t find something similiar in Apple’s databases.
So if anyone knows what happens here, please drop me a note.
Thanks
Anton
I would get the machine looked at by an apple tech. I was getting some of those similar visual artifacts on my iBook (G4 1.0 GhZ ATI 9200) for about a month, and one day the display just went bonkers. The screens vRam was hosed and I had to replace the display. . . thank the lord for apple care on that one I guess.
These updates should speed up the machine not make it slower.
But, there is always something to complain on…
The first reboot after an update is always slow.
I’m pretty sure this is because part of the patch is applied during boot. I’ve found subsequent boots are snappy.
My Apple Cube seems to be dead also…Take care!
i can’t even right click on any email to reply, this sux.