macOS Archive

From the apple site: "The 10.6.4 Update is recommended for all users running Mac OS X Snow Leopard. It includes Safari 5 and general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac, including fixes that: resolve an issue that causes the keyboard or trackpad to become unresponsive, resolve an issue that may prevent some Adobe Creative Suite 3 applications from opening, address issues copying, renaming, or deleting files on SMB file servers, improve reliability of VPN connections, resolve a playback issue in DVD Player when using Good Quality deinterlacing, resolve an issue editing photos with iPhoto or Aperture in full screen view, improve compatibility with some braille display."

"Xcode is a fantastic development environment for developing Mac, iPhone, and iPad applications. But it has some areas for improvement. In this post, I'll explore some improvements to how documentation and autocompletion is integrated into the development workflow and how Xcode could provide specialized interfaces for working with system frameworks."

Apple has released Mac OS X 10.6.3. "Apple on Monday released Mac OS X 10.6.3, the latest software update to its Snow Leopard operating system, bringing improvements in the reliability and compatibility of QuickTime X and addressing compatibility issues with OpenGL-based applications."

The Mac version of BumpTop, the 3D desktop which shipped for Windows last year, has been released. It more or less works the same as the Windows version, but with lots of Mac-specific features and looks. It also supports multitouch gestures on Apple's trackpads.

MacNN has just published an important news item regarding the future of the Mac OS X version of the VLC mdia player. According to VLC's developers, the Mac version is at risk of being discontinued due to a lack of developers. Update: The VLC developers claim that Apple is working against them: "Apple doesn't want us on the Mac platform and is blocking us a lot, and refuses to explain why."

A clever little Mac utility : "Airlock allows your Mac to lock itself, plain and simple. Using your iPhone or iPod Touch, Bluetooth, and a smidgen of pixie dust, Airlock determines whether you're near your computer. When you leave the room - poof! - your Mac locks itself. "And when I come back?" You guessed it: your Mac unlocks. You can also customize Airlock to perform specific actions as you come and go - have your computer talk to you, log-in or out of iChat, walk the dog, and such."

Despite reports to the contrary, current Mac OS X 10.6.2 Snow Leopard builds do not support the Intel Atom processor. The report that support had returned is a fake, and the most recent build 10C540 still does not support the Atom processor. C'est tout.

We reported on the lack of Atom support in development builds of Mac OS X 10.6.2, but a more recent build re-enables support for Intel's Atom line, popular in netbooks. "In the latest development build Atom appears to have resurrected itself zombie style in 10C535. The Atom lives another day, but nothing is concrete until the final version of 10.6.2 is out."

Anyone who hangs around on websites with information about installing Mac OS X on non-Apple labelled computers has probably already encountered this report, but it's newsworthy anyway. The upcoming release of Mac OS X 10.6.2 will remove support for the Intel Atom line of processors from Mac OS X.

John Siracusa, the Mac OS X guru who writes those insanely detailed and well-written Mac OS X reviews for Ars Technica, once told a story about the evolution of the HFS+ file system in Mac OS X - he said it was a struggle between the Mac guys who wanted the features found in BeOS' BFS, and the NEXT guys who didn't really like these features. In the end, the Mac guys won, and over the course of six years, Mac OS X reached feature parity - and a little more - with the BeOS (at the FS level).

We generally don't report on individual bugs or security issues in operating systems, but a pretty serious bug has reared its ugly head in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. If you had a guest account enabled prior to installing Snow Leopard, then you are at risk of losing all your data.

Way back, when we were recovering from our hangovers from the millennium parties, Apple introduced, for the first time, Mac OS X and the Aqua user interface. This was still a preview, so it wasn't quite as polished and finished, of course. It also contained a feature that never made it into the final releases: single-window mode. Or did it...?

"It seems that UTIs are in the news again. It all started with a change in application binding in Snow Leopard. In a scant few weeks it's degenerated into a sometimes-angry bout of cross-blog debate. I have an opinion about the changes in Snow Leopard, and I'll get to that eventually, but my main goal is to clarify the issue. It's really not that complicated, and seeing all the confusion on the web has been disheartening."

There are several things which take quite some getting used to when switching from any platform to the Mac. There are things like the universal menubar, the dock, Expose, and many more. One of the things that often leads to confusion for new users is the installation process for applications. Mozilla developer Alexander Limi talks about the problems Mozilla runs into when it comes to Firefox' installation process on the Mac, and a possible solution. Update: A possible solution?