macOS Archive

Back in 2007 when Apple released Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, a much-heard criticism was the lack of support for Java 6. Leopard shipped with an older version of Java, 1.5, even though 1.6 had been released by Sun almost a year prior. Sun had already released Java 1.6 for Linux and Windows, but did not do so for Mac OS X, since Apple insists on developing their own version of Java, according to Sun. Now, 6 months later, Mac Java programmers can rejoice.

Apple waited a full week before seeding the latest version of Mac OS X 10.5.3 (9d19) to developers on Friday. The latest version of Mac OS X Leopard adds 31 bug fixes to the growing list of issues addressed in the upcoming release. Features that are specifically targeted for focused testing include AirPort, Back To My Mac, Spaces, Time Machine and many others.

"Apple issued the first Mac OS X 10.5.3 seed (9d10) to developers yesterday. The latest update to Apple's Mac OS X Leopard addresses dozens of outstanding issues. Fixes range from Dashboard, Parental Controls, iCal Synchronization, memory leaks and stability issues. All in all, 75 distinct bug fixes are listed in the accompanying seed notes."

"Become an Xcoder is a free little eBook we wrote to help beginners with no or little programming experience to start their journey into the world of Mac OS X development with Objective-C and Cocoa. I'm glad to announce that the book has been updated for Leopard and Xcode 3, thanks to the work of Alex Clarke."

"Leopard started out with a generous share of first-version glitches, but almost all of them have now been resolved by the second of two automated updates, which brings Leopard up to version 10.5.2. Finally, Leopard is extravagantly overdressed for the jobs that it's designed to do, and its pervasive eye-candy starts out looking dazzling but soon becomes distracting. Fortunately, from the beginning, the OS started out with options that let you put it on a low-eye-sugar diet, and the latest update has even more."

"Apple recently released its second update to OS X 'Leopard', and the latest version of its shiny operating system is now numbered 10.5.2. When I reviewed Leopard two days after its initial release I called it the best operating system ever made for the vast majority of users. I think that's even more true now that 10.5.2 fixes some of the first-release glitches that annoyed me in 10.5 and in Apple's first, quick, bug-fix update 10.5.1."

"Apple has brought its unique brand of richness and simplicity to servers. OS X Leopard Server is the fifth generation of the software half of Apple's server platform. This time around, Apple took what is a unique and bold approach for a Unix server. Leopard Server continues the OS X Server tradition of delivering platform-independent file/print, e-mail, Web, and network edge services (such as stateful firewall, VPN, proxy, virus, and spam filtering). But it is as easy to set up and run as a desktop. Truly; the typical Mac user could get a Leopard Server going, because the default administrative interface is a match for a Mac's System Preferences."

This article is about new aspects of the never-ending story of how Apple is protecting MacOS X for running on different hardware than Apple's. The keyword is virtualization, which allows running unmodified version of Mac OS X as virtualized instance.

One of the three authors of Sun's DTrace, Adam Leventhal, has discovered something very interesting using DTrace on Mac OS X. "As has been thoroughly recorded, Apple has included DTrace in Mac OS X. I've been using it as often as I have the opportunity, and it's a joy to be able to use the fruits of our labor on another operating system. But I hit a rather surprising case recently which led me to discover a serious problem with Apple's implementation." So, what is this problem? "Wow. So Apple is explicitly preventing DTrace from examining or recording data for processes which don't permit tracing. This is antithetical to the notion of systemic tracing, antithetical to the goals of DTrace, and antithetical to the spirit of open source. I'm sure this was inserted under pressure from ISVs, but that makes the pill no easier to swallow. To say that Apple has crippled DTrace on Mac OS X would be a bit alarmist, but they've certainly undermined its efficacy and, in doing do, unintentionally damaged some of its most basic functionality. To users of Mac OS X and of DTrace: Apple has done a service by porting DTrace, but let's convince them to go one step further and port it properly."

"Elgato's EyeTV software has been the best application on the Mac platform for watching TV by a mile. Their 2.x series cemented their position for me and drew me in as a big fan of their software. Now Elgato has released EyeTV 3, with major new features and a lot of refinements. In this review we'll cover the new features and then figure out if it's the right program for you."

"When Steve Jobs announced Apples transition to Intel's x86 processor line, a huge stir occurred among some Mac OS X users who depend on 'Classic' the OS9 environment in Mac OS X for their day to day Mac usage, as Mac OS X on Intel means no more 'Classic' and they were right. Rosetta allows PowerPC applications to run on x86 through JIT (Just In Time) architecture emulation, but its translation is not on a low enough level within OS X to allow 'Classic' to work on x86 and as such those among us who use OS9 applications have been left out in the cold. Until now that is: a project called 'Sheep Shaver' was created to allow BeOS on PowerPC emulate the PowerPC architecture to run another PowerPC operating system on top of BeOS. This application was ported to Mac OS X with the demise of Be Inc. and has since been ported to Mac OS X on Intel processors."

"Mac OS X 10.5.2 Update, the next in a year-long series of planned updates to Apple's new Leopard operating system, promises to be one of the most hefty maintenance releases put out by the company for its operating system software in recent years. According to people familiar with the matter, Tuesday evening gave way to the first test builds of the software update for developers, including a 354MB bare-bones delta build and a 362MB combo updater- both of which were labeled OS X 10.5.2 build 9C7."

"No one is unhappy with Mac OS X Version 10.4, known as Tiger. OS X is not an application platform that needed repair, speeding up, or exterior renovation. Motivations for major upgrades of competing system software - roll-ups of an unmanageable number of fixes, because the calendar says it's time, or because users are perceived to have version fatigue - don't apply to OS X. People buy Macs because the platform as a whole is perfect, full stop. Leopard is a rung above perfection. It's taken as rote that the Mac blows away PC users' expectations. Leopard blows away Mac users' expectations, and that's saying a great deal."

On the Wine mailing list, there is some interesting information on Leopard's apparent ability to load basic Windows binaries. "When tracking down a crash in the kernel32 loader test, Dmitry found a bug in the Mac OS loader when Wine tried to load his dummy PE file. Upon further research I found that the Mac loader seems to have its own undocumented PE loader built in. I did some further testing with a Windows binary and got some really interesting results." The first thought was that this was a remnant from Mac OS X' EFI support, but upon further investigation, this really seems like new, Leopard-specific behaviour: "This is new to Leopard. On Tiger, dlopen rejects PE files as expected. The Wine testing that Steven was originally trying to do would probably not crash on Tiger." Apparently, Apple is trying its best to hide this behaviour.