macOS Archive

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.

"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.

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.

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.

Remember the Mac trojan that we reported about earlier this year? A trojan was found piggybacking on the back of copies of iWork and Photoshop CS4 found on warez sites and networks, and it would install itself after the user had entered his or her administrator password during the software's installation. This trojan didn't seem like much of a threat back then, but as it turns out, it's now in use in the first Macintosh botnet.

Back when Apple introduced Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, there was a bit of a minor controversy around the artificially implemented cut-off point; you could only install Leopard on machines with G4 processors of 867Mhz or more, leaving out capable machines like the dual 733Mhz or dual 800Mhz. The community soon found ways around this limitation, and recently, I found myself in a situation where I had to do the same.

The omnipresent "people familiar with the matter" have told AppleInsider that Apple's upcoming Snow Leopard operating system will have more to show for itself than "just" under-the-hood changes and improvements. Apparently, Apple is preparing an updated theme for Snow Leopard, to replace the Aqua one.

Apple has apologized for breaking Perl with its latest Mac OS X security update, saying it will distribute a solution to the problem with a future update. In a note to The Reg and a post to the Apple support forums, Senior Apple programmer Edward Moy apologized for "the unforeseen problems that the 2009-001 security update has caused" with Perl.

This weekend, we learned that Apple's upcoming Snow Leopard operating system would have a minimal user interface for the QuickTime movie player. Thanks to AppleInsider, we now have more information on the new interface, and it seems like Apple is again - just as with the Safari 4 beta - using some radical interface ideas.

Thanks to Ars Technica, we've got some Snow Leopard goodness for you. As always, Apple is quite secretive about its upcoming operating system, so even though test builds are released every now and then, information is scarce. An Ars reader has given some more insights into the latest Snow Leopard build, released on Friday.

Two interface changes coming to Snow Leopard have been revealed by those who have access to the developer releases of Apple's upcoming operating system. The trash gained a feature to directly move files back to their original locations, and the stacks feature has been improved by making directories browseable within the stacks themselves. They join ZFS, on-demand printer drivers, and location awareness as new features for Snow Leopard.

Some more details concerning Apple's upcoming Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard release are trickling onto the web. First of all, as expected, Snow Leopard will include more thorough support for ZFS, but it's reserved for the server releases. In addition to that, printer drivers on Snow Leopard will be delivered on demand, shaving off a few gigabytes of space off a default Mac OS X installation. The drivers will be obtained via Software Update if necessary.

"In essence, CoreUI is a low-level framework that - ultimately - will be responsible for drawing all the user interface widgets in OS X. Among other things, CoreUI will define the look and feel of the Aqua interface. I say 'will' and 'ultimately' because at the time of writing CoreUI is still something of a work in progress. Some folks have reported that CoreUI isn't used at all in Leopard, unless you change the scale factor from its default value of 1.0, but this is simplistic. By default, CoreUI is used for drawing a number of user interface elements in Leopard."

At ladt night's MacWorld keynote, Apple's last, one product in particular shone in absense: Mac OS X 10.6, Snow Leopard. Many had expected Apple to give out more details regarding its new operating system, maybe even a release date or a developer preview. Instead, all they got was nothing. Some say it's a mistake not to show off Snow Leopard now that Windows 7 is stealing all the thunder. Or is it?