macOS Archive

Apple Already Testing Mac OS X 10.6.1 Update

Thom Holwerda 2009-09-03 macOS 11 Comments

"Apple is moving quickly to patch holes and repair incompatibilities within Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, having already providing some developers with betas of the first maintenance and security update planned for the new operating system. Three people familiar with the matter say the Mac maker issued the first external builds of Mac OS X 10.6.1 to a select group of developers on Monday, September 1st. The move comes just four days after Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard hit retail shelves."

Submitted by Hakime 2009-09-01 macOS 17 Comments

Ars Technica's John Siracusa has published his in-depth review of Mac OS X Snow Leopard. As always, this is the only review you really need to read. Great stuff, as usual - even if you don't care about or don't use Mac OS X. He concludes: "Snow Leopard is a unique and beautiful release, unlike any that have come before it in both scope and intention. At some point, Mac OS X will surely need to get back on the bullet-point-features bandwagon. But for now, I'm content with Snow Leopard. It's the Mac OS X I know and love, but with more of the things that make it weak and strange engineered away."

Submitted by waid0004 2009-09-01 macOS 3 Comments

"Among other things, the update for Mac OS X 10.5.8 also fixed an interesting kernel bug related to the way the fcntl call is handled. The bug was identified as CVE-2009-1235 and the first exploit seems to be from June 2008. The variant that I discovered is much simpler and is, as far as I know, the one that really convinced Apple to solve the issue. The oldest kernel I was able to test the problem was Darwin 8.0.1 which corresponds to Mac OS X 10.4 â€œTigerâ€. The Tiger was announce in June 28, 2004 but was released to the public on April 29, 2005 and it was advertised as containing more than 200 new features. The bug was closed on August 5, 2009 so the number of days the vulnerability was alive was 1599 days (4 years and 3 months)."

Mac OS X 10.6 Brings Serious Performance Gains

Submitted by Michael Larabel 2009-08-29 macOS 36 Comments

Some detailed benchmarks of Snow Leopard. "The performance improvements we encountered in Mac OS X 10.6 through our benchmarks we were quite astonishing. Thanks to the introduction of the Grand Central Dispatch, 64-bit migration, OpenCL support, and other refinements made "under the hood" of Snow Leopard, this is one hell of a fast operating system. We were quite appalled with multiple tests exhibiting nearly 50% performance boosts over Mac OS X 10.5.8. While that was an extreme improvement, many other tests ran 10~16% faster. In a few tests, the performance was the same or the delta was statistically insignificant, but in a couple tests, there were regressions."

Snow Leopard Reviews Positive, Upgrades Tiger Too

Thom Holwerda 2009-08-27 macOS 49 Comments

We're certainly not done yet with Snow Leopard on OSNews! The operating system will be officially released tomorrow, but that hasn't stopped various news outlets from cranking out reviews of Apple's latest big cat. As usual, the reviews are fairly consistent: this latest release is the best yet. In addition, very welcome news for Tiger users: the Snow Leopard "upgrade" disk can upgrade Tiger installations too, and performs no checks to see if Leopard is installed.

Snow Leopard’s Anti-Malware Feature Explained

Thom Holwerda 2009-08-26 macOS 24 Comments

Yesterday we reported that Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, due for release coming Friday, contained some form of malware and/or virus protection. Since the scope of this protective measure was not yet known - nor if it even existed at all - I thought it would be best to write another post detailing that yes, it's real, and yes, it's all relatively crude.

Snow Leopard To Include Anti-Virus/Malware?

Thom Holwerda 2009-08-25 macOS 54 Comments

With Apple's Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard operating system arriving on people's doorsteps over the coming weekend, you'd think that all the new features are known by now, and there will be no more major surprises. Well, that's not entirely true: on Intego's Mac Security Blog, it is reported that Snow Leopard comes with anti-virus/malware functionality built-in. Update: Snow Leopard testers on MacRumors confirmed the functionality. How, exactly, it works, is not yet known, however.

Snow Leopard To Be Released August 28

Thom Holwerda 2009-08-24 macOS 30 Comments

True to the "under-promise and over-deliver" mantra, Apple has announced that it will start shipping Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard August 28. The original release date was announced to fall somewhere in September, so Apple is delivering ahead of schedule.

Snow Leopard Seeds Use 32bit Kernel, Drivers by Default

Thom Holwerda 2009-08-18 macOS 97 Comments

Even though Apple has been hyping up the 64bit nature of its ucpoming Snow Leopard operating system, stating it will be the first Mac OS X release to be 64bit top-to-bottom, reality turns out to be a little bit different so far. With the current Snow Leopard seed, only Xserve users get the 64bit kernel and drivers - all other Macs default to 32bit. By holding down the '6' and '4' keys during boot, you can to boot into full 64bit mode - that is, if your Mac supports it. As it turns out, some Macs with 64bit processors cannot use the 64bit kernel because the EFI is 32bit. Note: I should have included in the article that 64bit applications will run just fine (including benefits) on a 32bit kernel in Mac OS X. Since this was already possible in Leopard, I assumed people were well aware of that. Turns out some were not, so my apologies for that.

Apple’s Snow Leopard Rumored To Be Golden Master

Thom Holwerda 2009-08-11 macOS 2 Comments

The latest build of Snow Leopard, Apple's upcoming operating system, is rumored to be the "Golden Master", or final copy before the product will be released for duplication on optical media. Build 10A432 has been seeded to developers, and French Web site Mac 4 Ever has reported that the latest version is the final build, suggesting the product could be pressed onto discs very soon. The latest version of OS X is due to be released in September, but Apple has not announced an official date.

Mac OS X 10.5.8 Released

Thom Holwerda 2009-08-05 macOS 28 Comments

Apple has released Mac OS X 10.5.8. "The Mac OS X v10.5.8 Update is recommended for Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard users and includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility and security of your Mac. For detailed information about the security content of this update, please visit this website." It's in Software Update, so update away!

Why Do We Claim Mac OS X Is Subsidised at Retail?

Thom Holwerda 2009-07-03 macOS 85 Comments

Whenever we talk about Mac clone makers such as Psystar, we all more or less accept as a fact that Apple is selling copies of its Mac OS X operating system at a price lower than it would have been if Apple did not have a hardware business. Even though we treat this statement as fact - recently, I've been wondering: where is the proof?

Apple Finally Fixes Critical Java Vulnerability

Thom Holwerda 2009-06-15 macOS 11 Comments

The critical Java vulnerability in Mac OS X which we reported on earlier has finally been fixed by Apple. "Java for Mac OS X 10.5 Update 4 delivers improved reliability, security, and compatibility for Java SE 6, J2SE 5.0 and J2SE 1.4.2 on Mac OS X 10.5.7 and later." The fix for this vulnerability is in there.

From NeXTSTEP to Cocoa

Submitted by johan 2009-06-11 macOS 17 Comments

"Although OS X is relatively new, it is built on top of technology that has been under development since Steve Jobs founded NeXT in the mid '80s. Erik Buck, author of Cocoa Design Patterns, has been working with this platform for over two decades. His perspective on the development of Cocoa, from its beginnings in NeXTSTEP and its evolution through the OpenStep specification, provide some interesting insights."

Snow Leopard Server Details

Thom Holwerda 2009-06-09 macOS 13 Comments

Between all the updated MacBooks and Snow Leopard news items across the web, you'd almost forget that Apple also has its own server operating system which will also got updated from Leopard to Snow Leopard yesterday. It benefits from the same improvements as the client version, but of course also has a set of its own, server-specific improvements.

Guest post by snydeq 2009-06-08 macOS No Comments

"Despite its public diffidence about enterprise adoption, Apple has made Snow Leopard an easier fit for the enterprise. ActiveSync support, the death of AppleTalk, and various security enhancements are of little use to the consumer audience that Apple formally targets," InfoWorld reports.

Building a Hackintosh Apple Can’t Sue You For

Thom Holwerda 2009-05-26 macOS 101 Comments

Getting Mac OS X up and running on a computer without an Apple label has always been a bit of a hassle. You needed customised Mac OS X disks, updates would ruin all your hard work, and there was lots of fiddling with EFI and the likes. Ever since the release of boot-132, this is no longer the case. Read on for how setting up a "Hack"intosh really is as easy as 1, 3, 2.

Submitted by kaiwai 2009-05-21 macOS 15 Comments

OSNews regular Kaiwai, who we all love and hate at the same time, has written a fairly detailed article about the latest Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard build, seed 10A355. He covers the changes made, the status of the transition to 64bit, and more.

9 Month Old Critical Java Vuln. Still Not Patched in Mac OS X

Thom Holwerda 2009-05-19 macOS 34 Comments

Six months ago, a certain security flaw in Java was fixed by Sun. This flaw was present in OpenJDK, GIJ, icedtea and Sun's JRE, but it got fixed in those. There's one important shipping Java implementation that still has not been fixed to remove this security flaw: Apple's Java.

Submitted by REM2000 2009-05-12 macOS 36 Comments

After a long gestation period, Apple has updated its Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard operating system to version 10.5.7. This latest update comes packed with lots of bug fixes for several components of the Mac OS X operating system. Update: Various security updates for Tiger and Safari:Win were also released.